MARGIN AND GROWTH FOR OWNER‑OPERATED BUSINESSES

Your business is
making more than
you're keeping.

Small gains, every line

Most businesses have a few percent hiding in their pricing and every cost line. Enter your revenue, then slide to see what finding it is worth.

Price you could capture
Waste you could take out
Fine-tune your cost breakdown

We’ve estimated your costs from a typical small-business mix. Enter your own annual figures to sharpen the result.

Extra profit in the first 12 months $0
Net margin –
Annual profit lift –
Cumulative profit, 12 months after engaging The Margin Lab
Business as usual With The Margin Lab

The maths is the easy part.

Book a margin review

THE REAL PROBLEM

Margin rarely disappears
in one place.

We help established owner-operators find and recover hidden margin.

It's almost never a single cause. It's years of small things: expense lines creeping up, pricing that hasn't kept pace, processes that grew on the fly and now depend on you for every single decision. Which is why you can't take a proper holiday.

You know your business and your customers better than anyone. What you don't have is the time, or the distance to pull it apart. That's the job we do.

01

Pricing that hasn't moved

Costs went up but your rates stayed loyal to customers from five years ago.

02

Expense creep

Small upward drifts across supplier, software and labour lines nobody has audited.

03

Processes in your head

Nothing written down, so work gets redone and every decision lands on you.

04

Decisions on gut feel

Without clear numbers, you're relying on assumptions instead of evidence.

Every P&L has a number hiding in it.
Most owners never go looking.

YOUR BRIEF

You run your own business for a reason. That reason sets the goal.

Not every owner wants the same thing from their business. We start by finding out which one is actually yours.

More time

We work out what to systemise so the business runs efficiently without you.

More profit

We find what's stopping revenue from showing up as profit, and fix it.

Room to grow

We model the paths and help you choose the one the numbers support.

HOW IT WORKS

Four steps. You can stop
after any of them.

01

One Session

Margin Check

Send us your P&L. We find one opportunity worth acting on, or you get your money back.

• A focused overview of your numbers

• One dollar-valued finding and what to do about it

• Fee credited toward the Diagnostic

02

2 weeks

Margin Diagnostic

We find what's holding the business back and provide an actionable number on it.

• P&L reconstruction and pricing review

• Ranked margin opportunities, each with a dollar value

• A clear call on what to fix first

03

60-90 days

Turnaround Sprint

We implement the highest-value findings with you, inside a set timeframe.

• Scoped directly from your Diagnostic

• Implemented alongside you, not handed over

• Measured in dollars, not hours

04

60-90 days

Fractional Ops / CFO

A part-time operations manager and financial controller inside your business, so the gains actually hold.

• Capped hours each month

• Performance tracked against agreed targets

• Offered once a Sprint is complete

SPEAK WITH AN EXPERT TODAY

In their words.

  • "Within just a couple of sessions, Matt managed to highlight exactly where the opportunity was hiding across our locations, and gave us a plan we could actually act on. It's rare to get that level of clarity from a consultant."

    Garielle Abela
    Owner, Elevate Performing Arts

  • "We needed someone who could get up to speed fast on a very unique market; copper recovery from Auto Shred Residue (ASR). Almost nobody outside the industry knows it exists, let alone understands it. Matt managed to turn it into something investable with no prior background in ASR or copper markets. He did the work, sourced the data, built the market and pricing analysis, and produced a financial model and pitch deck that held up to scrutiny. He treats an unfamiliar industry as a research problem to be solved properly, not a reason to wing it."

    Colin Johnson
    Co-founder, CuRo Innovations

  • "We provided Matt a single column of figures and an idea. He came back with a financial model and pitch deck built on industry insights and market data, getting us in front of investors and ultimately funded.
I'd recommend him to any early-stage team that has a great idea and a thin dataset."

    Brian Trainor
    Co-Founder, RuckList (USA)

  • "Across two stints as Operations Manager, Matt rebuilt how we ran the business, backing every decision with real data. Years later, when determining if expanding into both QLD and Abu Dhabi were real opportunities or just ideas, he was the first call."

    Nathan Garlick
    Managing Director, Leak Stoppers

WHY THE MARGIN LAB?

We’ve been in your position.

Margin is not what's left over.
It's what you decide to protect.

"Before The Margin Lab, I built businesses from both sides of the table. I’ve co-founded, scaled and exited ventures, alone and with partners, and I’ve worked inside established businesses, from healthcare to trade services, as the outsider brought in to fix what wasn’t working." 

Matthew Weir
Founder

See the full track record

Operator,
not advisor

Most SME consultants are ex-corporate. They've analysed businesses like yours. We've owned them, operated them, made payroll in them and sold them.

Investor-grade modelling, SME pricing

P&L reconstruction, discounted cash flow, sensitivity analysis and capital-raise materials where warranted - work normally out of reach for a business under $5M.

Fixed fees, dollar-denominated outcomes

Every engagement is a fixed fee, scoped against a ranked list of margin opportunities with dollar values attached. No open-ended hourly billing.

HOW IT WORKS

Fixed fees, agreed before we start.

Start with a $399 Margin Check. If we don't find at least one opportunity worth $[X] a year, you get your money back.

START HERE

Margin Check

$399

One finding, or your money back.

Credited in full if you go on to a Diagnostic.

BOOK A 20-MINUTE CALL

THE FULL PICTURE

Margin Diagnostic

$4,400

Founding-client rate*. Standard fee $5,500.

Less your $399 Margin Check.

THEN, IF IT MAKES SENSE

Turnaround Sprint

$12K - $20K

One fixed fee.

Set from your Diagnostic findings.

THEN, IF IT MAKES SENSE

Turnaround Sprint

$2.5K–$4K/ month

Capped hours, set by scope. Offered after a Sprint.

*Founding-client rate for the first [number] clients, until [date]. All prices in AUD, [incl./excl.] GST.

ARE WE THE RIGHT FIT?

We're not for everyone,
and we'd rather say so up front.

Margin Lab is for you if:

• You own and run an established business turning over roughly $100K–$5M, and revenue isn't showing up as profit.

• You're in trades or field services, hospitality or venues, a service business, or consumer products.

• You want the truth about your numbers and you're prepared to act on it within 90 days.

Margin Lab is not for you if:

• You're pre-revenue. That's a different problem and a different offer.

• You're after validation rather than change. The diagnostic is honest, and that can sting.

• You want a report but you're not ready to act on it.

SPEAK WITH AN EXPERT