💸 You should leave money on the table

People often preach that you should “never leave money on the table”, that you should grab every penny. I fundamentally disagree.

You absolutely should leave money on the table. You want money left on the table.

If you’re not leaving money on the table then there is something very wrong with your business.

Let’s explore why.

Let’s start with a thought experiment: If I earn $200 per hour, should I spend 5 hours of my time chasing an additional $10 sale?

No. Obviously not. We can all see that. We agree that it would be smart to leave that money on the table.

But sometimes chasing that small sale is exactly what we do.

There are caveats here, for example if that $10 sale is likely to lead to a “customer lifetime value” exceeding $1,000 (5 hours x $200 per hour). You often don’t know for sure whether it will be worth it, but you can make an educated guess. The business gods reward you most for educated guesses that turn out to be right.

Some people know the famous Bill Gates problem of whether he should pick $100 off the floor (his answer is yes, he would), but few people think as in-depth about whether they should take a similar action. Should they put in the effort for a seemingly large or easy reward that may actually be “chump change” for them?

We act by default and/or we treat all leads the same. It is counterintuitive - especially when you feel overwhelmed or busy already - but taking the time to pause and reflect whether the action you’re taking is worthwhile will save you a lot of time and effort. By stopping and spending time, you save time. Weird, but true.

The relationship between effort expended and earnings is typically not linear. Effort (such as time, resources, and energy put into business activities) vs earnings often follows an S curve (example below).

I’ve written about firing bad clients, how bad clients are worse than no clients, and wantrepreneurs vs entrepreneurs. I strongly believe that the best entrepreneurs purposefully leave money on the table. It is more profitable to leave money on the table.

Sometimes it is better to refuse the work, it makes space for higher leverage or more lucrative work. Back yourself. Leave bad money on the table.

Effort expended vs earnings in a small business. Thanks, Mr GPT.

The sweet spot is around 60-80% of your possible effort. You make the most, you can be proud of your effort, but you don’t burn out.

Note that the graph isn’t a smooth line. The rewards you get and/or the amount of effort you can put in will vary daily. That is completely normal.

What that graph doesn’t include is the extra effort can actually produce NEGATIVE returns. The quality of your decision making skills drops massively when you’re tired.

Ever spent loads of time working on something when you’re tired only to wake up the next day and realise what you did when you were tired sucked and you need to do it again?

Ultimately, if you work too hard you will burnout.

Work smart instead.

Kaidi (60 second video) from session 24th February 2025: don’t bother selling to all leads right now (situational advice).

I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-march-26-2025

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