https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKb4OOMKxSs Video Posted: October 1, 2025
Profit Is a Choice
If a business fails, that doesn’t make the owner a failure—it just means the model didn’t work. That’s an important distinction. As Michelle Williams explained, she had to learn how to separate herself from her business.
John: Most business owners aren’t looking at the big picture. Each financial decision connects to something else, and if you don’t see those connections, you can get stuck. Today I’m excited to have Michelle Williams with me on my podcast Money Isn’t. She runs Scarlet Thread Consulting, and also co-founded Metrique Solutions, which provides outsourced accounting. She even hosts her own podcast called Profit Is a Choice. Michelle: Thanks, John, I’m glad to be here. John: A few years back, one of my clients started working with you. She was a new interior design business owner—talented, but struggling to make money. You helped her turn things around and make her firm profitable. Michelle: I remember her well. She came to me only months into starting her business. She was bringing in revenue but losing money. Within a year, her net profit grew 800%. That experience reinforced for me that profitability isn’t an accident. John: What’s interesting is your own path. You worked at Dun & Bradstreet for a decade, then left corporate America and started a soft furnishings company from your basement. Michelle: That’s right. I loved the flexibility it gave me as a mom, but three years in, I realized I was selling a lot and still not making money. I was working long hours and burning out. I had essentially created a job for myself with razor-thin margins. It wasn’t sustainable. John: And you realized you weren’t giving your time away for free—you were undervaluing it. Michelle: Exactly. I was undercharging, overdelivering, and not holding boundaries. The turning point came when I separated “Michelle” from “the business.” Once I started creating company policies and standing behind them, I could make decisions for the business without taking everything personally. John: And then came the painful moment—doing your taxes and realizing your business had drained your family’s finances. Michelle: Yes, I had to tell my husband that the company was losing money and it was coming out of our household income. That was a wake-up call. I had to change, or go back to corporate. John: So many entrepreneurs fall into that trap. They think they’ve created flexibility, but instead they’ve created what you call a “jobby”—a job disguised as a business. Michelle: Exactly. I see it all the time. Business owners get stuck working in or on the business, but not letting the business work for them. Without boundaries, they end up serving everyone else and never themselves. John: You also discovered that a lot of entrepreneurs don’t understand their own numbers. Michelle: Right. I started inviting other designers and makers to my house. We talked pricing, profitability, how to deal with clients. What I learned was that most didn’t know how to read their profit and loss statements. They were guessing at prices, not running businesses strategically. That showed me there was a gap—and an opportunity to teach. John: And that led you to start courses like Pricing Without Emotion and later Master Your Profit. Michelle: Yes, because profitability is a choice. You can design your business just like you design a room: intentionally. Every decision—pricing, hiring, managing cash flow—either moves you toward profit or away from it. John: That’s such a powerful idea. I tell clients all the time that their P&L is just a reflection of their decisions. If you don’t like the numbers, you have to change the choices that created them. Michelle: Exactly. One of the best exercises is writing a job description for net profit. Net profit has to do a lot: pay taxes, fund retirement, reduce debt, reinvest in the business. If you don’t define what you want it to do, the money gets spent elsewhere. John: And business owners often confuse gross profit and net profit. Michelle: Right. You have to define both. When you know the job description for gross and net profit, you can make intentional choices. Otherwise, you risk entrepreneurial poverty—working hard, bringing in revenue, but living on less because you’re not managing money effectively. John: I love how you connect it back to design. Just as a room needs to be intentional with textures, colors, and flow, a business needs to be intentionally structured. Otherwise, it looks like a house with random add-ons from every decade. Michelle: Exactly. Most owners put incredible intention into their client work, but not into building their own company. Profit doesn’t happen by accident—it’s the result of strategy and design. John: That’s the lesson right there. Profit is a choice. Michelle: Yes. And if you own it, you can change it. That’s the most important thing for business owners to remember. You’re not powerless—you’re the designer of your business. John: And if people want to take the first step, they can go to Scarlet Thread Consulting, listen to Profit Is a Choice, or check out your resources online. Michelle: Absolutely. And I’d encourage every owner to write down what profit means to them. Define it, and then build toward it. Because without that clarity, your business will run you instead of the other way around. John: That’s a perfect place to leave it. Thank you, Michelle, for joining me today. Michelle: Thank you, John. This has been a great conversation.
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