SBO Financial

08/06/2026

Discounting is not the enemy. Discounting without a reason is.

There are situations where cutting your price is the right financial call. Clearing stock that is costing you more to hold than to sell. Running a structured acquisition campaign where the economics have been properly modelled. A deliberate volume trade-off with a buyer.

And there are situations where discounting slowly destroys your margin while looking like a growth strategy. The two can be hard to tell apart in the moment, which is exactly the problem.

We wrote about the two scenarios where discounting actually makes sense for eCommerce businesses, and a quick framework to help you decide which side of the line any given decision falls on.

Read the full blog here: https://sbo.financial/blog/ecommerce/when-is-it-ok-to-offer-discounts-in-my-ecommerce-business/

05/06/2026

You built something profitable. You took the risk, did the work and generated a real return.

So why does paying yourself a dividend feel like something you need to justify?

The source of that discomfort is worth understanding. So is the 2026 compliance picture, because how you structure a dividend matters as much as whether you pay one.

We wrote about both: the mindset side and the practical side, including what Australian Founders need to have in place before a distribution moves.

Read the full blog here: https://sbo.financial/blog/accountants/why-we-should-celebrate-paying-dividends/

Learn why paying dividends matters. SBO explains how dividends reward investors, build trust, and signal long-term business success.

03/06/2026

Does free shipping increase sales? Yes, almost always.

Does it increase profitable sales? That depends entirely on whether you have run the numbers first.

A lot of eCommerce businesses offer free shipping because it feels like the right move. Customers expect it, cart abandonment data supports it, and competitors are doing it. But offering it without modelling the gross profit impact first can mean you are converting more customers while making less money from each one.

In the current environment, with freight costs still elevated, that margin gap matters more than it used to.

We wrote about the mechanics behind free shipping, the scenarios where it works and where it does not, and how to find the conversion uplift your business actually needs to make it viable.

Read the full blog here: https://sbo.financial/blog/ecommerce/should-you-offer-free-shipping/

Free shipping might increase conversions, but that doesn’t mean it’s profitable. Here’s how to offer free shipping without hurting your bottom line.

01/06/2026

When a sale stalls, knocking something off the price feels like the obvious move.

Most of the time, it is the most expensive decision you make that month.

Discounting does not just affect this sale. It shapes what customers expect next time, what they tell others and how your pricing is perceived in the market. The financial cost hits immediately. The perception cost builds quietly.

In the current Australian market, where cost pressures are real on both sides of the transaction, the businesses holding their margins are not the ones discounting to win volume.

We wrote about what discounting is actually costing your business, including the numbers most owners have never run, and what to do when a prospect asks for a lower price.

Read the full blog here: https://sbo.financial/blog/wealth-creation/the-true-cost-of-discounting/

Discounting is a great tactic to close a deal but are you aware of the true cost of discounting? If done right it can increase your profits!

29/05/2026

Do you actually know what your best clients are worth?
Not just this year. Over the full course of working together with them.
That number is called Customer Lifetime Value, and it changes the way you think about almost every decision in your business.
It helps you:
✅Rank your clients by actual long-term value, not just this year’s revenue
✅Set a ceiling on how much you should be spending to acquire new ones
✅Understand why retention is one of the most powerful levers in your business

Most business owners calculate it incorrectly. They use revenue instead of gross profit, which grossly overstates how valuable a client actually is.
In our latest blog, we cover what CLV is, how to calculate it correctly and three practical ways to increase it in your business.

Read it here: https://sbo.financial/blog/accountants/customer-lifetime-value/

27/05/2026

Pay yourself too little and you burn out. Too much and you starve the business of the capital it needs to grow.

The right salary depends entirely on which stage your business is in. And the number that is appropriate at one stage can be genuinely damaging at another.

We put together a practical stage-by-stage framework to help Founders work it out, including what to avoid at each phase and the governance rules the taxman expects you to follow.

Read the full blog here: https://sbo.financial/blog/accountants/how-much-can-i-pay-myself-as-a-founder-and-ceo/

25/05/2026

Is your business model designed to make you wealthy? Or is it designed to keep you busy?

Most Founders focused on sales, product, team, and operations. The model itself is just the water they swim in.

But after working with hundreds of businesses from early-stage startups to publicly listed companies, it is clear that the structural design of the business is the single biggest factor in whether a Founder builds real wealth or just works very hard for a long time.

The businesses that generate sustained profit and cash flow share a set of specific characteristics. Some Founders stumble into them. The smart ones build them deliberately.

We wrote about what those characteristics are and how to assess whether your model has them.

Read the full blog here: https://sbo.financial/blog/wealth-creation/is-your-business-model-making-you-wealthy/

Building a financially successful business is mostly about what business model you choose to operate. What you need to build a wealthy model?

22/05/2026

How much revenue does your business actually need to generate each month, once your personal living costs are factored in?

Not just enough to cover the operating costs. Enough to cover those costs and pay you a salary that covers your actual life.

Most Founders are either drawing too much too early and constraining their growth, or drawing nothing and slowly eroding their savings. Very few have calculated the exact point where their personal needs and their business economics need to intersect.

We wrote about a straightforward three-step calculation that answers this question precisely, and what to do with the number once you have it.

Read the full blog here: https://sbo.financial/blog/wealth-creation/lifestyle-break-even-bake-cake-eat-slice/

20/05/2026

What is the minimum amount of money you actually need to live on each month?

Not what you would prefer. The real floor. The number that keeps the lights on and gives you a satisfying enough quality of life to stay focused on building.

Once you know that number, you can calculate something even more important: how long your savings will actually last without business income.

That is your runway. And if you do not know it, you are making one of the most significant financial decisions of your life without a key piece of information.

We wrote about how to calculate it in three steps and how to use it as a decision-making tool once you have it.

Read the full blog here: https://sbo.financial/blog/featured-blog/whats-your-mvl-minimum-viable-lifestyle/

MVL, or Minimum Viable Lifestyle, is a term I first coined when I started my business to calculate how much money I could live on without debt. Here’s how to calculate yours.

18/05/2026

Here is the follow-up question most Founders do not ask.

You have worked out what your time is worth. You have identified the low-value tasks eating into your week. You have even started handing some of them off.

So where did those hours actually go?

For most Founders, recovered time does not automatically flow to high-value work. It gets absorbed. More meetings. More email. More operational noise. The diary fills back up and the needle barely moves.

The difference between Founders who break through this and those who stay stuck is not how much they outsource. It is how deliberately they redirect what they recover.

High-leverage Founder time tends to concentrate in a few specific areas: key relationships, bottleneck removal, team development, strategic thinking, and sales. These are not the loudest things on any given day. But they are the ones that compound.

We wrote about what high-value Founder time actually looks like in practice, a simple test for checking whether recovered hours are going to the right places, and a practical starting point for this week.

Read the full blog here: https://sbo.financial/blog/startups/true-value-time-business-owner/

I juggle wearing a couple of hats in my professional and business life with working in a full time job and running a small business