A veteran financial strategist shows SMB owners exactly where profit hides — and how to get it back.
GROWTH PILLAR: Sales & Revenue
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: How to spot hidden profit leaks before they drain your business. A clear picture of what forensic financial analysis actually does. Practical steps on AI, tariffs, pricing, and supplier risk — built for real business owners, not just enterprise teams.
Most business owners are watching revenue come in. Very few are watching where it quietly walks out.
Karena Bell is the Founder and CEO of ProfitLinz. She's a veteran financial strategist with over 25 years advising Fortune 500 executives and mid-market business owners. Her firm specializes in forensic-level financial analysis — digging into the numbers most leaders never see to uncover hidden losses, pricing gaps, and untapped profit.
On this episode of Knack 4 Business, Karena breaks down how one client had 133 loss-leader customers quietly costing them $602,000 a year. She explains why the gap between top-line revenue and bottom-line profit is wider than most owners realize — and what to do about it.
What gets covered:
Connect with Karena Bell on LinkedIn or visit ProfitLinz directly.
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Bernie (00:05)
We have a question for the audience. Are hidden profit leaks, rising trade costs or unexpected AI expenses quietly draining your business?
That's exactly what Karena will tackle on this episode of Knack 4 Business. She'll reveal how forensic level financial analysis uncovers overlooked profit opportunities, helps leaders navigate complex trade and tariff issues, and exposes the hidden costs of AI before they erode your bottom line. If you're ready to stabilize cash flow, scale smarter, and stop profit from slipping away, listen in. Our guest today is Karena Bell from ProfitLinz. She's a veteran financial strategist and founder
and CEO of ProfitLinz where she helps business leaders uncover that hidden profit potential and rescue struggling companies. With over 25 years of experience advising Fortune 500 executives and men market owners, she specializes in forensic level financial analysis, digging deep into the numbers to reveal inefficiencies, losses and untapped revenue streams most reviews miss. Her expertise spans overlooked profit strategies, trade and tariff management. That's a big one.
considering these times and uncovering the hidden costs of AI, which is also one of the common things in these times. Helping leaders make smarter and more profitable decisions. No one for turning financial chaos into clarity. Karena guides organizations through high-stake turnarounds, repairing cashflow, restructuring capital and stabilizing operations to develop measurable growth. Her work has unlocked six and seven and even eight figure profit improvements, making her a trusted partner.
for CEOs navigating critical inflection points. Fun fact, she also taught herself how to play the steel drum. And Karena, it is an absolute pleasure to have you here today. Welcome, and do you have a favorite quarter saying?
Karena (01:51)
my gosh, you know, thank you both first and foremost for having me here this morning and I have many I'm one of those people that get inspired by quotes But I think my favorite is success usually comes to those who are too busy looking for it When you have your head down and you're doing what you were meant to do success will always find its way to you
Bernie (02:12)
And is there a business tagline guys you work with?
Karena (02:16)
Yes, ⁓ at ProfitLines we turn your data into dollars.
Bernie (02:22)
Very nice, very nice. Can count those eggs and count those chickens. That's the important part. So the love of numbers, there's some folks, that's their thing, some folks it's not. What brought you into the numbers and financial game and doing strategies?
Karena (02:39)
Actually, I fell into it. When I was working for large Fortune 500 companies, I was tasked with optimizing operations across the organization and the different segments and sectors and then going out to market, finding the technology to support those processes. And as part of that was to optimize the financial aspect of that sector or that segment as well. And I did that begrudgingly. I didn't like it.
Growing up, know, was that always always a struggle always a struggle But then I was asked to come into a project just to unravel the financials It was about a 20 million dollar budget and they didn't know where the money was coming or going from and to so it took me about Six weeks, but six weeks to two months to really get into it. And then I pushed the results back in
said, you know, I'll go back to my, what I was doing. And they were so pleased with it that they then kind of tattooed me with it where they started pulling other projects in that were, there was lacking that financial clarity. And then after a couple of projects, I realized like, you know, this is, I'm kind of good at this. And I started leaning into it. And then after that, it was just, it was, it became a game.
It's still a game and it's a game I love and a lot of people when they talk numbers or finances you get that. And but for me, it's not sexy, but the results are.
Karena (04:05)
Yeah.
Bernie (04:10)
I'm interested in how you got your name and does it still fit you? Is it still the right name? How would you unpack your name for me?
Karena (04:22)
corporate life? yeah
Well, I wanted the the name of the company to resonate with what it is we focus on and what we do When I talk to people and they ask what it is I do and I describe it and I mentioned, know management consulting We are a boutique specialized advisory and consulting firm We only focus on those elements that will increase the profit line of a business and I wanted our
our name to reflect that. Anything else we're not focused on. It's only those things that are going to pull the levers on the profit line of a business. Now there are over a hundred different levers in a business you can pull to increase the profit line. Most people don't know that. Obviously we don't implement them all but there are so many options and when
that is all you work on and that is all you focus on, that is all you do, you become a master in that trade. Now the accounting, trust and believe guys, you don't want me in your accounting. The financial side, absolutely, all day long. We can identify opportunities in accounting areas. However, it would be the accounting experts that would go and fix those.
Bernie (05:42)
You've got me inspired. 40 years ago, the only thing worried in accounting was compliance. Everything was about looking, making sure you weren't going to jail for last year's data. That's not you. Tell me how you went, how you broke through that. If in an industry that was all about compliance, tell me a story.
Karena (06:02)
Absolutely. When ⁓ working in organizational processes, you know, we're looking at the processes, naturally the budget and the cost were always an element of that. And it was always an afterthought. Or this is how much it costs. And I would always question. I have an endless sense of curiosity. So I'm always questioning the results. I'm questioning the source. know, that's something that is a theme with me.
is in God I trust everyone else bring data. So the financial side is not given the focus that it should. I was shocked and surprised. Working at large Fortune 500 companies, the same thing applied where we would bring the analysis, the recommendations, and the potential results. And it was only the big boulders that they wanted to go after. They didn't want to go after the other
small rocks, medium rocks, things like that. Which in a large business you don't want to go after everything. However, you want to go after a majority of it. When it is working capital and cash flow that's literally hiding in your business, why wouldn't you bring that to the forefront? So for me, in every role I've ever had, regardless of whether it was a corporate role or my own, I always acted as an advocate.
for the organization. I had an entrepreneurial mindset from as far back as I can remember. When I was managing teams in corporate, the budget was mine. Those were my people. I needed to know where the money was going and where it was coming from. And I thought everybody thought that way. And as I worked with different leaders and I found out that no, that wasn't the case, that a lot of times it's very siloed.
in where they're looking and what they're focusing on. In the C-suite, I think there is an unjust expectation that most C-suite executives I work with or business leaders that are in that C-suite role, the expectation is that they're hired to be strategic. Now, the reality is a majority of their time, they're pulled into operations out of self-preservation for the organization.
And why do C-suite tenure, why are they so short? Because they were hired for strategy, but organizationally they were not structured for the C-suite success. The operations was pulling them back into the day-to-day. So then they are transitioned out because they didn't meet the objective of the board because they were brought in for strategy, but the organization wasn't supported or structured.
to support their success. So they're caught between the push-pull of their roles. And that expectation still exists today. And I think it's unjust and unfair because so many organizations have become very lean. And I think there's appropriate structure and it's subjective based on the business. I might have gone a little too far on that one, but I'll pause there.
Bernie (09:19)
So as you describe this, and even when you mentioned there's there's a hundred different ways to almost leave your lover, so to speak, not 50, but a hundred ways to improve what you got on the go. Is part of that then, well, I got a couple of questions out of that. One, what is the unexpected thing that most people overlook typically, or businesses overlook? And the second one is, is it also part and parcel what you just described?
This person has been hired for strategy and there's been a, almost like scope creep. If we could add this to your daily tasks, which is kind of mess up your overall game. are the, tell me something about that. Am I hitting it on the head or what?
Karena (09:59)
You are, are. Because, you know, the reason that an executive is not strategic a majority of the time is because they're fighting fires. Realistically, a CFO, a COO, even a CEO, they're fighting fires. If they don't have that structure, that process, that predictability in their business. And again, systems and processes, you know, people
It's great nighttime reading when you're having trouble sleeping. However, the systems and processes, when they're put in place and they're monitored and they're managed, they create predictability, not just predictability of what each department is going to do, it's predictability of the revenue they're going to generate, predictability of the profit they're going to retain. And so the systems and processes in a business, if the business is chaotic,
their finances are gonna be chaotic. If your systems and processes are tight, your financials should be tight. Now they may not be, but your systems and processes are only going to support your financials or they're gonna drain them. That's one of the big surprises I see is the gap between the top line revenue and the bottom line profit and how wide that typically is.
with a lot of the businesses that we work with because a lot of the, and here's a reason why, the reports that leaders are getting to make decisions are summaries. It's rare. In fact, I've never run into a leader that was working from line item level of detail. Now they don't do that, they don't have to do that every day or every week. However, that's your source. When you're getting down into the line item level of detail,
I can tell you exactly what each customer, how much profit they're putting into the business. I can tell you exactly how much they're losing. Those are really fun conversations. I'll give you one example. We had a client and with our forensic financial analysis, they had 366 customers. We identified 133 customers that were loss leaders.
for that business. 133 That was $602,000 a year that was walking out the door with these customers. The worst customer, they booked $289,000 in revenue and lost $110,000 when it was all said and done after the direct and the indirect expenses were applied.
One customer pulled six figures out of a business. How critical line item level detail is. And that is where we do a lot of our work is in that space. We come in strategically, we're strategic support, but we get tactical. And then when we find that information, then we're developing recommendations of, how can we recover this? And they know exactly how much we're going after.
Karena (12:46)
That is how.
Karena (13:10)
So it's not a guessing game. We know exactly what we're going after and how we can go get it for them.
Bernie (13:16)
a lot of our listeners are what I would call solopreneurs. And we're surrounded by jargon of enterprise language. And no one that owns a business wants to say they don't have a clue, even when it's true. When you talk CFO, they go, is that my bookkeeper? Is that my accountant? What is a CFO? What does he do? And they, I don't think they know. And I think you could tell them.
Karena (13:19)
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely. And, you know, it depends on the size of your business. You may not need one. You might not need one. That is and I love, especially for growing businesses, fractionals. Fractionals are great because one, you can test drive them and it's a very easy, easy in, easy out if it's not a good fit. And two,
I mean, I've seen companies in the 30 and 40 million annual recurring revenue that don't have full-time CFOs. In reality is oftentimes a small business can benefit from a fractional CFO sooner than they might think. And again, it depends on what the scope of their responsibilities.
I talk to fractional CFOs all the time that are very clear on what they do and they're twice as clear on what they don't do. So you want to make sure you have a very good idea of what your definition of a bookkeeper and accountant is and what the definition of a CFO is. A CFO for a smaller business, they are planning and projecting and they're also, they should be analyzing.
your current financial state, but they're also looking out. They're looking out for you. They are monitoring markets, whether it's very local or national or potentially global. They have people, typically a bookkeeper works with the CPA and the CPA works with the CFO. However, it depends on the expertise of the CFO and where they actually get into.
Going back to the forensic financial analysis, we do a lot of work with fractional CFOs and full-time CFOs because they do not get into the level of detail we do. So it's having very clear expectations of roles and responsibilities for each of those because again, the finances are the lifeblood of your business. And I always say, revenue is your blood flow of your business.
And ⁓ you definitely want someone that is not only watching the numbers, they understand the numbers. If it's a business owner, if the business owner is the CFO, something I see often is they don't understand the numbers or they're not getting the reports from their accountant or their bookkeeper that they should be getting. That's typically one of the first questions I ask is,
share the reports, share the monthly financial reports you're getting from your bookkeeper or your accountant. And oftentimes I'll get the...
What? You know, there's owners that aren't even getting monthly financial statements from whoever is managing their books and their finances. So there's a lot of... And you can do this with minimal amounts of structure because I know sometimes structure is a bad word. But we want to stay lean, especially as a solo in a growing small business. You want to stay as lean as possible. However, there are key...
functions that must be there. And especially as a solopreneur, I always encourage them. I have two priorities. Sales are your number one priority every day. You wake up every morning and you focus on what do I have to do today to generate more sales? the second is how much revenue do I have to generate to bring in help? Solopreneurs work solo for far too long.
I like to beat that drum because I see burnout so often. when the business is generating the revenue to really bring in some fractional help.
Bernie (17:21)
You opened the genie bottle about bringing in help. It's been proven now that if you do a podcast, you have to say AI at least six times or the FCC calls. So I have a question. What is AI being used for correctly in small medium business? What is smoke that it's just talked about, not understood, and how do you like using it?
Karena (17:49)
There's a lot of questions in there. How is it being used in small businesses today? You know, marketing, business development, the sales outreach, automated receptionist, automated reminders, things like that. Marketing and sales, actually, it can create, where I have seen it create significant advantage is in all of those areas.
Sales and marketing specifically, because of the hyper personalization it has capabilities of, if it's done correctly. One thing I warn against is don't be sloppy with it. Because everything you push out into the wild is your brand, is your reputation. So in an effort that you hear the same messages I hear, if you're not using AI,
You're going to be left behind. You're going to be out of business in two years. No, you won't. No, you won't. There's a lot of noise out there and it's, know, AI doesn't belong everywhere in everything. What you do need to determine is, and this is, you know, a short analysis. Within a couple hours, you can determine or have someone help you determine
What is the lowest investment AI solution you can bring in for the highest return? That is key. That is key. Whenever I talk to someone and they say, we need AI, my first question is why? Share your strategy with me of why you need AI and where are the first places you're going to it. Based on their response,
I know how much they've invested in their strategy or where the conversation needs to go to develop a true strategy. know, AI is not the end all be all. It is not. It is a high performance employee. And employees need management. They need care. They need correction. They need to learn new information as new information comes out. So AI should never be
a set it and forget it. It is a high performance employee that has to be, there has to be oversight. There has to be oversight.
Karena (20:05)
with it.
Bernie (20:07)
It's interesting. You've just described a couple components here. AI itself, what's your strategy? And is it a labor saving tool or is it a dive deep into the data tool? Like for example, do you use AI to supply the dashboards so you get a sense of what your numbers are doing and then give context? The person that doesn't read the financials typically?
this is a flag and by the way, call Karena now because you're off the rails versus AI being a strategy where I'm just, I wanted to attach to my software for editing documents, right? Without naming a brand, you can have one that comes and helps you and which case it's, or you have the local box that's sitting there with its ears on all the time and you say, hey, by the way,
If I mentioned its name, it'll start speaking now. No, we're not gonna do that. Is that the AI you speak of or is just like a whole strategy and then is it just more than just, know, a strategy I'm sitting there or is that where you have an expert come in and go, yeah, let's map this out both short and long-term for the low hanging fruit and the higher to reach fruit.
Karena (21:18)
Yeah, it's to answer your question, you can use AI, you can use AI, or you can utilize AI. And there's a difference. Most people are using it. They're not utilizing it. Depending on the size of the business, you know, for instance, profit lines, we provide an AI analysis for $5,000. Within a couple of hours,
regardless of the size of the business, we do this for large enterprise. And oftentimes they're like, really? That's it? And I was like, yeah, that's it. Because we want to give you direction. If there's no direction, then there's no sense in going forward. But with a direction, you have a strategy. Now we have a blueprint. Now we have a priority. With AI, my recommendation, your pilot should be small. Do a proof of concept. Always start small.
⁓ If we're in the small, let's stay with the small business arena. If we're a small business, do something like automating the reconciliation of your invoices to your POs. That's a big one. That's a big time suck right there. That can take weeks for people to complete and it can be done in minutes. That's a great use case. And go through it.
whether it's you or one or two people on your team, go through it with somebody who might be working with you. If you have a technology team, they might be doing it themselves, or it's a third party that's going to do it and bring it in for you. Go through that whole process to see how you're performing, your employees are performing with it, and then see the benefit on the back end. What I do see a lot of is people are trying to boil the ocean right out of the gate.
We've got to do it all. No you don't. No you don't. Let's... This is a cultural shift.
Anything you implement with AI, and here's some additional points I'm going to hit on because I think they're so key. AI is a shift in culture. If we bring AI in, will that mean I'm going to lose my job? How are we communicating that with our staff? How are we protecting our staff with AI? How are we supporting our staff?
in providing them better opportunities because AI will take care of those tasks none of us want to do. The repeatable stuff. Sometimes the dirty stuff. Also, what is our AI policy? Is everything inside a walled garden within the organization? Is there some things that can go out into the wild or do we never go out into the wild? When we go out into the wild, what does that mean? Who can do it? How is it done?
How are we protected? An AI policy should sit right next to your cybersecurity policy. AI is a fantastic opportunity for vulnerabilities of a business, regardless of your size. Small businesses are a big target for the bad actors and the hackers out there, because oftentimes, small businesses think, won't happen to me, I don't need cybersecurity.
I don't need an AI policy. I'm just doing this. And it just takes one time for that gate to open into your business, into your electronic wall, and the vulnerabilities could
Karena (24:45)
exist.
Bernie (24:45)
And I'm going to ask you a question that I hope by the time it airs is moot. Right now as we are airing or cutting this, tariffs is the big word in our culture. And I'm asking in your opinion, is that going to keep supply lines muddy for years? Is it going to get dropped because it didn't make sense? Is it the new reality?
Are we all going to have to go back to hyperlocalization and less profits? Crystal ball it for me.
Karena (25:16)
that's a good one. remind me if I don't hit all of them, Wayne. Previously, tariffs were predictable. They were put in place and the management was very simple. Now, the tariff arena has become highly volatile and tariffs are being approved and then implemented within days.
without planning, without process, without an opportunity for businesses to respond and they're left to react. And what does that mean? If you don't have any other options, you pay the tariffs. And so many organizations and businesses, small and large, if you are a U.S. business importing or exporting, you are not escaping this, have been impacted. I call it the tariff torpedoes.
that are literally killing businesses. And the reason that tariffs were implemented was to bring that, to force the manufacturing back in on US soil. However, the challenge in that type of a, and I'll say plan loosely, is it takes years to build and establish that type of manufacturing facility.
whether you are manufacturing an ice scraper for a car or you're manufacturing a microchip for computers and cell phones. It takes years to build manufacturing facilities to bring things up in that short amount of time. to actually apply heavy tariffs on businesses right now versus say in the future, two or three years in the future saying if you don't have
Karena (26:43)
to.
Karena (26:59)
US sourced in a year or two or three years, then these tariffs will apply. It's actually taking the money out of the economy to go build those manufacturing facilities. so what the impact that tariffs have on businesses right now is they don't have, a lot of times they don't have the internal staff that know how to manage the volatility. They don't know how to manage the classifications.
A lot of businesses don't realize every time a tariff changes, there's a window of opportunity to reconcile previous tariffs that have been paid to claw back money that they overpaid. We also will audit historical tariffs that have been paid for misclassifications or tariffs they shouldn't have paid at all and claw back hundreds of millions of dollars.
you have to be, you have to manage that with tactful gloves, tactful gloves. We fulfilled the objective. We fulfilled the objective of our client. But, you know, for smaller companies, it can be hundreds of thousands or even, you know, one or $2 million or $10 million. That's a lot of money.
That's a lot of money. Six figures for even a small business, that's impactful. That is impactful and that's where we can help them with that. And then there's a heavy reliance on brokers. And a lot of companies think that, ⁓ I gave it to my broker, my broker is going to take care of it. Most brokers just report what you give them. They're not validating the classification, the percentage of, you know, let's say, steal.
Steel is a new tariff that just came in recently in August. In fact, August 15th. It was announced at 729 PM, Friday, August 15th, 729 PM, and it was implemented that Monday at 8 AM. So the tariff is a multi-tiered tariff. If you have a percentage of steel in a finished product that's coming in, there's a tariff. So you have to, the manufacturer actually has to provide
the percentage of steel in that product for you to report back. Now you're relying that the manufacturer's information is correct and that your broker is reporting it correctly. So you can see there's a number of touch points here. So there's a lot of opportunity for errors and misclassifications to occur. And that's where you need somebody that's focused on that. That's all they do. Our head of tariff management, she's been doing that for 20 years.
And then once you get your tariffs, once you get your arms around your tariffs, then we can help you plan and forecast tariffs, even as we're seeing swings in the volatility of it. And then also, I'm going to run down this rabbit hole, You open that door. Tariffs, are tariffs a part of your pricing model? Have you?
Have you accounted for tariffs in your pricing model year over year over year? What's interesting, what we find is oftentimes the total cost of goods. There are a number of points within the total cost of a good or a service that are not accounted for in the pricing model. Oftentimes pricing is based on what the competitor is doing or my favorite.
Karena (29:59)
Hold.
Karena (30:15)
and not what the total cost of production and then also the market. What will the market bear? A lot of times pricing has been inherited by someone who might have done it years ago and it's not changed very often or it's changed based on reaction and not market data. Where some industries are, it's very productive and profitable to utilize dynamic pricing.
Dynamic pricing is going out, you know, when it's a consumer facing product, the market may bear a different price on a different day, a different time of year. Also with your supply chain, you know, we help businesses set up different suppliers. Right now, that's very big. We were pulling supplies from Brazil when tariffs were 10 percent, then overnight they went to 50 percent. hello, Argentina. Hello, Venezuela. You know,
And then oftentimes smaller businesses, and this is very risky, is they will have one supplier and not multiple suppliers. And that's where we help with the risk management aspect of it as well. So, yeah, it gets really interesting. Like here in the South, the Southeast region, we're in Hurricane Alley. The last thing I want to see is any business that has only a supplier in the Southeast region or the Northeast region in the wintertime.
Can the trucks get out? Can the planes get out during winter? So you have to have contingencies and that, and a lot of times smaller businesses, they don't have the bandwidth for that. But it's, and again, it's that fractional aspect that you only need it for a minute to go build it and put it in place. And then you don't need it again until you have another challenge or another opportunity. But Wayne, did I hit on everything that?
Bernie (31:57)
And just because there's an audio podcast part of this, you made a very, very sensible thumbs up. doing it by the wind that would be lost if it was an audio. So yes, that was your thumbs up. I just wanted to add that, but you hit it perfectly. So when you're talking about revenues, you talk about pricing and then I get, I get the dead reckoning piece, right? You kind of guesstimating.
And that might be a last minute thing. And you want to cover your costs and you want to have a certain profit margin. What's a good profit margin? And is it based on the number of skews? And then, you know, some will be higher, some are less. And is it like, is it, you know, like a coffee shop? They'll they'll sell the coffee and they'll, you know, give a part of it away. And but the donut, there is no, there is no margin. There's no fat in there except for what you're about to eat.
Right. That margins tight, but the coffee has a large, typically alert swing of margin in there. How do you find that perfect? You know what the market bears? get that. I've had an accountant talk to me, says Bernie, when you change the prices, French Canadian guys, had a gravelly voice, really sharp, dude, really sharp, dude. He says there's something called elasticity and you stretch it too much. It snaps. That's it.
Yeah, you lost your customer, right? Because you want to keep adding the price because profit can be enticing and getting lots of profit be enticing. But at a certain point, you just killed the goose that laid the golden egg. How do you manage that piece?
Karena (33:29)
And there isn't one answer to that question because it depends on your industry, it depends on your market, it depends on your products. Now for companies that have a high number of SKUs, there is a SKU optimization. That's typically a common question is when's the last time you've optimized your SKUs? Because that's a good one. When we provide a report that says these are all the products that are loss leaders for you. Now,
Karena (33:41)
...
Karena (33:57)
There are intentional loss leaders to your point. The donut is a loss leader. We'll make donuts all day. The loss is so minimal, but we're making our margin on the coffee. Absolutely. Where it makes sense. What we're running after are those losses they're not aware of. And it's the L and the P and L because in my mind it's like, why do we have an L? Why do we have an L? And everybody's looking at the P, but no one's looking at the L.
And so that's, and there are a number of companies out there, especially in consumer goods, very common, very common to have loss leaders. But what happens when you have a lot, people forget, they forget about the lot, the intentional loss leaders because they now, now we've moved to something else and they've never removed or they never reanalyzed. Should this still be a loss leader or should we actually cut this product right out of the catalog?
Karena (34:32)
of skews.
Bernie (34:51)
When you're doing this whole process, then when you come through with a company going, hi, I've done the analysis here, here you're here where you can make changes that'll help you have better outcomes. Do you have a system where modeling system where going, you know, I'm to add a skew, a new skew, a new product, or I'm going to go to a new manufacturer, a new supplier, and you kind of plug it in and see, you know,
You plug it in and went into the machine, have AI spin the dial, roulette wheel, and then going, what's it going to look like when it comes out the other end? Does it have to show impact either short-term or mid-range or long-term?
Karena (35:32)
Yes, absolutely. And right down to the region. Where would this, where will this sell best? Yes. Yes. And that's all customized to the client. We come in with an AI engine and then we customize it to the client. In fact, I was looking at one of our models yesterday and we have a four quadrant and they're actually called cash cow.
I'm not going to remember them all, but there's four quadrants where the top two are the ones you want to focus The CEO and the CFO want to focus on and then the bottom two are lost leader and I think it's profitable but low margin. Things like that. Again, it's not just showing the data. It's actually this is what you do next. Where we come in and where we help is with the implementation of it.
We want to create a self-sustaining team. So they have the tools to do what they need to do and get the information they need and call us when they need extra help. I don't ever want to seat in anyone's organization. We work with a sense of urgency and there's a reason for that. When I started ProfitLines, I had experienced consulting
Contracts, know paying a quarter million dollars for a report that took six months to generate and when we get it back It was all the same stuff we had been talking about internally and going guys. We know the what it's the how that we don't have How do we do this and that's that's where I said, you know when I start my own business This is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna I'm gonna shake up the snowglobe of the consulting Structure in the model and I'm gonna throw it out
we're gonna come in and our focus is on short 90 day sprints. If there are longer term projects that need to be longer term, great. But the idea is there's a problem that typically has a reasonable quick fix that we can implement. that's our model. That's our model. If after 90 days we've met all our objectives,
and you have no other problems you need help with. We shake hands, we're friends, and we'll come back when you have another challenge or another problem. We earn the right to come back every month. We do not, I'd rather work, I like working with volunteers, not hostages.
Bernie (37:55)
I've never seen anyone that knows so many people as Bernie. He's amazing. And some people are in the enterprise model. And I try to listen and I try to make it fit. But it isn't necessarily the listener I know that can use that model. And every owner I've ever met
wants to make sure he's sitting at the big kid's table, even if he doesn't fit. But I'm sensing that you have a way to find a ROI, a return on investment for companies smaller than they thought they could use you. Tell me more if this makes sense.
Karena (38:33)
It does.
Karena (38:33)
It it does, because we've all started small. Every business out there started small. some of our analytics are a bit deep and complicated, but they're not for everyone. There are a la carte solutions that we can apply. In fact, we have many contingency solutions, which I love because I love to put skin in the game.
you know, let's put our cards in the table. Everybody put your cards in the table. And I love that because if we don't produce any positive benefit for you, you don't pay anything. You know, so especially for that smaller, a small business or solopreneur, we do work with businesses that are generating at least five million in ARR.
Bernie (39:15)
Thank you.
Karena (39:17)
You're welcome.
Bernie (39:18)
You're welcome. ⁓ offbeat question. Steel drums. That's not all about.
Karena (39:22)
You know, I love the Caribbean and I love the reggae music. And I loved it so much. said, you know what? I want to learn how to play the steel drum. So I ordered a steel drum from Trinidad and I used to play the alto and the tenor saxophone in school. So I love music. Music is always in our house. And, you know, like most people, I sounded, you know, a small child banging wooden spoons on a
on metal pans in the kitchen sounded better than I did. But like anything, I stuck with it because I really wanted to learn it. And I enjoy it. It's one of those things I do when I want to decompress. And it really takes me away. It really takes me away. I've learned how to play it. I haven't played it well. It's that expression part that I haven't ⁓ developed yet.
Bernie (40:12)
So you're not on a band then yet. You're working.
Karena (40:14)
⁓ no, sir. no, no, no, no, no, no, that that small child in the kitchen might be a better a better hire
Bernie (40:21)
So you've given us a great snapshot, Karena. And I know that you're in the Southern Eastern States, but we're also on this thing called Zoom that lets us talk to the world. What's the best way to reach you and where do you like to, and you've told us about annual returns. How do we reach you and how do you serve them best?
Karena (40:42)
Yeah, LinkedIn, Karena Bell on LinkedIn or our website, the contact form on our website. My email is in the footer of the website. You can contact me directly. I always want to make myself ⁓ accessible. I am the CEO. However, I am an operator. I will never not be an operator. I love it. And the principal strategist. That's where I have my most fun. And we actually, we work globally. We work with businesses all over the world.
Bernie (41:10)
Thank you.
It's been great. So Karena has taught herself how to play the steel drums. That's a good, it's a good start to just to find out what that's all about. But she also helps you master the curiosity and persistence of what's going on in your business. You know, where can you make more inroads and have a better success? You know, best fit. Look at, you know, look at where you're getting your KPIs and your your SKUs. And if you don't know what a KPI or SKU is,
You know what? Reach out to, reach out to Karena. She can probably help you out on that and then find the other other hidden treasures that are in behind the scenes.