Ten Ironman Mindset Strategies To Improve Financial Health

If you need to improve your financial health or cut costs, adopting an Ironman mindset can help. Achieving success in an Ironman competition requires unwavering discipline, strategic planning, and relentless focus—equally critical qualities in business. By setting clear goals, empowering your team, and applying a structured approach to expense management, you can turn financial setbacks into opportunities for significant growth. Here is a list of ten proven strategies to streamline your operations and enhance profitability with the resilience and determination of an Ironman.

1. Set Clear Goals and Stay Committed

• Fastest Way to Make More Money: Keep more of what you earn.
• Expense Analysis Goal: Target a specific reduction percentage. For instance, we aimed to cut 20% of expenses and landed at 16%. In one business, reducing monthly expenses by $96k translates to $1.15M saved annually, boosting profits significantly.

2. Empower Your Team

• Leverage Leadership: Set a meeting with your leaders to align goals.
• P&L or Budget Review: Each business unit should see its target reductions.
• Manager-Led Cuts: Let managers make initial cuts—they know their teams best.

3. Cut the Bloat in Dues and Subscriptions

• Subscriptions: Reduce the number of seats, tools, and renegotiate rates.
• Audit Example: Eliminated duplicate software like Mailchimp, Zapier, and Hubspot.
• Renegotiation: On average, we secured 30%+ reductions just by asking.
• Found Revenue: $5-20k per business.

4. Focus on Projects and Business Units

• Underperforming Projects: Eliminate “zombie” units.
• Spring Cleaning: Google’s annual spring cleaning kills underperforming projects. We’ve cut 2.
• Agency Example: Axed a newsletter, community, consulting offer, and physical product line.

5. Optimize Contractors and Vendors

• Negotiation: Review and renegotiate contracts.
• In-House Ads: Transitioned ads internally to save $4k + a percentage of ad spend.
• Underperformers: Removed inefficient contractors, reallocating some funds to existing team members.

6. Prune Employees Judiciously

• Avoid Layoffs: Pride yourself on minimizing layoffs while growing steadily.
• Underperformers: Let them go quicker in down markets.
• Splinter Effect: If a name frequently comes up for needing “fixes,” it’s a sign they aren’t the right fit.

7. CADO Process: Cut, Automate, Delegate, Outsource

• Cut: Stop activities that don’t drive revenue.
• Automate: Replace manual tasks with tools.
• Delegate: Assign tasks to lower-cost earners.
• Outsource: Use Virtual Assistants (VAs) or other external resources.
• Example: Automated social media posting and outsourced manual review tasks.

8. Turn It into a Game

• Incentivize Savings: Offer bonuses to employees who propose cost-saving AI solutions.
• Results: Saved $2k in monthly expenses through AI ideas.

9. Annual Cleaning Process

• Regular Review: Schedule a yearly expense analysis to cut the fat.
• Example: Goldman Sachs’ 2009 profit distribution increased 47% over 2008 through earnings and cuts.

10. Know When to Invest

• Resource Allocation: Focus on growing businesses or departments that need more resources.
• Example: From 2008 to 2011, we invested in Plant Health Care and Pest Control (chemical treatments), and the GM% of those services is insane.

Ironman Mindset Insight: Recessions and downturns offer a chance to ensure efficiency, not just speed. It’s tough but necessary. Stay committed, and you’ll emerge stronger.

About the author: Serial entrepreneur, author, podcaster, and Ironman athlete Robert Clinkenbeard is CEO of green industry consultancy and peer group organization Wilson360. Connect with Robert at Robert@Wilson-360.com