✊ The step-by-step guide to increasing your profit, time & creative margin in 2026
Published about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Hi friends,
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about both the business I want to build in 2026 and the one I’m most excited to help my clients build.
The result of my reflection boils down to one word.
Margin.
Specifically, margin in three specific categories of our businesses.
Interestingly enough, it was one of my clients, Susan, who first got me thinking about the concept of “margin” applying to anything beyond finances while I was auditing her show (which was originally titled Beyond Margins)
And while we ultimately decided to move on from that show name, the idea behind it stuck with me.
To the point that I’ve become a little obsessed with it.
Because at the end of the day, margin is what we all want.
Or, more accurately, we want a business with high net margins in the following areas:
Profit Margin — Where our business generates significantly more revenue than we need to cover our costs and pay our bills. This allows us to build up a significant financial buffer in both our business and our personal lives that lowers the stress and fear that come with running a business... while also allowing us to re-invest in the business, accelerating our growth further, and take bets on projects that don’t need to pay off in the immediate term… but might just unlock major growth.
Time Margin — Where we have significant excess time in our days and weeks after accounting for all the activities our businesses require to generate that financial margin. This allows us to bring more of our best energy to our work, further reduces stress, increases our capacity for inspiration and idea generation, and leads naturally into our final form of margin...
Creative Margin — Where our businesses afford us the time and space to put our creativity to use on big, ambitious projects… and we have the resources to invest in bringing them to life. For artists and pure creators, this form of margin might (if you’re lucky) eventually lead to the other two, but for business owners, creative margin is almost always the product of—and reward for—achieving the others first.
Alright, so three forms of margin we’re aiming for.
So far, so good.
But then there’s the obvious next question:
How?
The formula is actually fairly straightforward.
To unlock Profit, Time, and Creative Margin, you need to meet the following interconnected criteria:
A surplus of opportunity — Where you have more people who want to work with you than you can take on…
Which then unlocks your ability to embrace a premium pricing model — Allowing you to charge 5–10x more for each unit of work…
Which allows you to either increase your margins… or reinvest the excess to make the flywheel spin faster.
Now, before you ask, yes, I know.
If creating a surplus of opportunity were so easy, we’d all just snap our fingers and do it.
Don’t worry, we’re getting to how we create that surplus, but it’s important to understand the domino chain of cause and effect.
Alright, so to sum up so far:
We unlock Profit, Time, and Creative Margin by creating a surplus of demand that unlocks our ability to charge premium pricing.
So, next question:
How do we create a surplus of demand for a premium offer?
Simple:
We must become known as the go-to expert for solving a narrow, specific, high-value problem (ideally for a narrow, well-defined customer base).
Ok, ok, yeah I know.
That’s exactly why you started your show in the first place.
Which is great!
But…
My guess is that—if you’re like 95% of expertise-based business owners—your strategy hasn't worked out all that well thus far.
The reason is this:
Most people have at least a vague idea of the chain of dominoes (higher authority → higher demand → higher pricing → higher margins) that will lead to a better business…
But they don’t have a clear idea of how to tip over that first domino of becoming known as the go-to expert on their problem in the first place.
So let’s break down how we do it together, shall we?
First, we need to sharpen your positioning and POV — Which attracts more closely related opportunities and projects to you, allowing you to rapidly develop world-class expertise and experience in solving those specific problems. Any client paying a premium wants certainty that their investment will pay off. And the best way to instill that certainty is by having solved their problem dozens (or hundreds) of times before for clients similar to them.
Second, we need to develop and package your IP — Into a signature model, framework, or methodology that informs your client work, product offers, and all the content you create. Not only does your model provide cohesion across your marketing channels, it communicates to potential clients that you’ve thought deeply about their problem and the solution and instills confidence that you have a proven method and are not making things up on the fly.
Third, we need to re-structure (or tighten up) your offer and sales process — Most experts could charge at least 2-3x more than they’re currently charging… but not with their current offer and accompanying sales process. To fix this, we need to start by identifying the specific “anchor problem” to develop the offer around, the ideal way to frame it as the most urgent, high-value problem for your ideal clients to solve, and then craft a Logic Based Offer that sells itself simply by talking clients through how it works.
Fourth, we need to design a podcast concept that irrefutably demonstrates your expertise — The best way to do so is by creating a show designed to showcase the process you work through with every client, thus positioning you as a zero-risk, high-reward expert worth paying a premium for… because your listeners have already seen exactly how you think, work, and solve problems similar to theirs.
Finally, we need to build out your product marketing back end — Specifically, we need to build out an email marketing strategy that acts as the central distribution hub between your various assets (podcast, social, YouTube, offers, lead magnets, etc) and install regular Conversion Conduits to invite buyers into the sales process.
The chain of dominoes, set up and just begging to be nudged into motion.
None of these steps are necessarily easy, mind you.
But not because they take obscene amounts of work or some kind of arcane strategy.
Instead, they’re hard because they require courage.
Courage to focus your positioning and declare it publicly.
Courage to take a stance via your POV.
Courage to develop a bigger, bolder, more expensive offer around a bigger, bolder, more transformative promise.
But…
If you’re able to muster up the courage to make the first tentative, halting baby steps down the path of defining, declaring, and owning one big idea—and one big problem—in the minds of your buyers…
Well, the marketing tactics take care of themselves.
Yesterday, I recorded a video for my clients talking through my vision for how I will be helping them build more margin into their businesses in 2026.
Clearly, it struck a nerve, and generated a bunch of discussion about where people were currently at in the process and the work that remained to be done.
Based on the level of resonance, I wanted to share the video here, too.
If the goal of creating more Profit, Time, and Creative Margin aligns with where you’re looking to go this year, hit reply with the word “Margin” and I’ll share some info on exactly how I can help you build it over the next year.
Stay Scrappy,
PS. If the cohort wasn't right for you, but you'd like to work with me personally to dial in a show concept that is designed specifically to generate growth and profit, hit reply with "Concept Help" and I'll send over the details.
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