I'm presenting at a growth event today at Herts Growth Hub, talking through the Seven Growth Levers: the seven ways any business can grow. It's a talk I give regularly and one thing always surprises the room.
Cutting costs is last on the list.
It's the first place most founders go when they want to improve profit. It feels like control. And I'm not saying ignore your overheads. If there's waste, cut it. Stay on top of it.
But there's only so far you can go. Costs have a floor. Revenue levers don't.
The dangerous version is when founders cut things that are actually working. Marketing spend. Software. Tools. These are usually the first things to go in a cost review. They're also often the most efficient pounds in the business. If they're generating a return, they're not a cost. They're doing a job.
I've seen this play out recently with AI spend. Token costs and subscription fees show up on a spreadsheet and someone puts a line through them. I've even heard of businesses capping or stopping AI usage altogether because of the cost.
That makes no sense to me.
If you've got people in your business who are genuinely using AI well, let them run. See what they produce. The cost of the tokens is nothing compared to what a team properly embedding AI into their work can do. You don't cap that. You encourage it.
Cutting costs is the least creative thing you can do to grow a business.
Sometimes it's necessary. But it should never be the first move, and it should never touch the things that are quietly doing the work.
There's always a better lever to pull.
Until next week,
Luke