Bill Canady

Business improvement processes for companies focused on rapid profit growth

11/01/2026

A buyer is pricing the uncertainty around future earnings.

Bill Canady explains why a buyer's investment committee examines concentration risk, key-person risk, forecast credibility, earnings quality, and contract structure. His point: uncertainty can become a pricing adjustment even when nobody reads the risk list back to the seller.

What would a buyer ask you to prove about future earnings?

Watch the full EP10:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLifQA2AH20

10/31/2026

Cut what you buy by 1 percent, and EBITDA goes up 6.2 percent.

Sell your way to the same money, and you need three dollars of new revenue for every dollar you save.

Here's the worked example from Cost Is a Choice, an illustrative manufacturer with $180 million of revenue and $18 million of EBITDA. It buys $112 million a year from other companies — 62 cents of every sales dollar. One percent of that is $1.12 million, and it drops straight to EBITDA. No new customer, no new shift, no new inventory.

At nine times EBITDA, that 1 percent is worth about $10 million of value. Three percent is worth $30 million. Five percent, $50 million. To earn the same $1.12 million from sales, at about 33 cents of contribution per sales dollar, you need $3.4 million of new revenue — and every one of those dollars arrives with a customer to win, capacity to find and a receivable to fund.

Here's the rule. Work the spend before you push the sales line. A dollar saved on spend is still the cheapest dollar in the business.

Somebody in your company decided what you pay your ten biggest suppliers. Find out who, and when anyone last checked.

The full worked example is in Cost Is a Choice.

Cost Is a Choice, free until midnight Eastern on December 31 — one per person, ebook or audiobook: https://eighty20publishing.com/first-1000?book=cost_is_a_choice&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=first-1000&utm_content=t01

10/31/2026

Build a company that can run without you.

Bill Canady connects owner independence with preparing for the next stage of life. Building a business that can operate without you also gives you a chance to practice the personal transition while you still lead it.

Which decisions still depend entirely on you?

Watch the full EP10:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLifQA2AH20

10/31/2026

The CEO connects the money and the work.

Bill Canady describes two different conversations: a board discussing returns and a team discussing headcount, roadmaps and urgent problems. The CEO’s job is to connect those conversations with a clear financial explanation.

What financial outcome does your operating update explain?

Full EP22 episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sepRDUFJQVk

10/30/2026

Before cutting a cost, understand the revenue it serves.

Bill Canady uses a hypothetical 15% indirect-spend cut and hiring freeze to explain why the easiest visible budgets can belong to the functions supporting a company’s most profitable accounts.

Do you know which revenue your next cost cut supports?

Full EP6 episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wGPCRv6wkw

10/30/2026

It took me thirty years to build this library.

Every CEO seat I've held, I ran the same operating system. Find the few customers and products that make the money. Fund them. Starve the rest. Run it every day. I call it the Profitable Growth Operating System, and I'm still building it out.

It's a library now: price, cost, sales, marketing, strategy, people, product, operations and the deal.

To celebrate, I'm giving away 1,000 copies.

Pick the one book for the problem on your desk. It's free, as an ebook or an audiobook, your pick. Every copy is numbered, 0001 to 1000.

When you claim yours, you can send a free copy to a friend. They pick their own book and get their own number.

Free until midnight Eastern on December 31, or until all 1,000 are claimed.

Get your free copy: https://eighty20publishing.com/first-1000?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=first-1000&utm_content=p01fb

10/30/2026

Owner, board member, executive: in a family business, one person can hold several roles.

Steven Lustig explains why everyone needs to know which role applies to the discussion they are having.

Is that clear in your next meeting?

Watch the full conversation with Steven Lustig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oemdz-Dtnv8

10/30/2026

At 40, my bloodwork came back pre-diabetic. My father had it. I'd watched where that road goes.

I did the only thing I knew how to do: I ran it like a turnaround.

Gather the data — full workup, food log, the honest baseline nobody wants to write down. Segment the problem — 80/20 says a few inputs drive most of the damage, and for me it was processed food and what I did after 8pm. Make the few critical moves — protein up, garbage out, same meals most days. Track weekly, adjust monthly. No heroics, no cleanse, no 90-day miracle.

Six months later the metrics had turned. Same playbook I'd use on a distressed P&L, applied to the only asset that's genuinely non-transferable.

If you want tomorrow to be different from today, do something different today. Your body keeps books too. It just calls the audit a diagnosis.

10/30/2026

“Continue” is not a verdict.

Bill Canady gives every priority three possible decisions: kill it, keep it, or double down. The output is a short ranked list with one owner and a measurable target for each item, backed by an explicit stop-doing list. Adding a priority without subtracting anything ignores the capacity needed to deliver it.

Which priority should your team stop doing this quarter?

Watch the full EP9:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgl1oC1AxJw

10/29/2026

How much can you pay to win a new customer? Most budgets never ask. They fund the channel and count the leads.

The 80/20 Marketer starts from a ceiling. Everything it costs to win a customer must come back from that customer's material margin within eighteen months.

In the book's worked example, a composite manufacturer, a new Fort customer, one like the few who carry the company, buys $90,000 in its first year and $180,000 in its second. Eighteen months of that buying, at a 44.5 percent material margin, is $80,100. Call it $80,000. A B customer buying B products for $10,000 a year, at 22 percent, has a ceiling of $3,300. Two sales visits and a box of samples will spend it.

Then work backward. Ten new Fort customers at a 25 percent win rate need forty qualified opportunities. Forty at 35 percent need 115 qualified conversations, about ten a month. So each qualified conversation is worth about $7,000. Nine trade shows had cost $520,000 and produced nine of them, about $57,800 each.

Here's the rule. Set the ceiling before you set the budget. Then hold every channel to what a conversation is worth.

The full method is in The 80/20 Marketer.

The books, free until midnight Eastern on December 31 — one per person, ebook or audiobook: https://eighty20publishing.com/first-1000?book=marketer&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=first-1000&utm_content=t36

Address

11161 E State Road 70 Unit 110/910
Lakewood Ranch Corporate Park, FL
34202

Website

http://billcanady.com/

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