← Back to work
Profit & Operations Review — Case Study

Finding the money in a local event venue.

The owner had been told to "post more on social media." The real problem was the business was quietly losing money every month — and no one had looked at the numbers.

~$100K/yr
in losses surfaced that the prior consultant missed
61%
proposal-to-booking rate — demand was never the problem
5–7 days
from access to a plain-English report & 90-day plan

01 The situation

A busy local event venue with real demand and a strong reputation came to me already holding a marketing "audit" from another consultant. Its advice: post more on social media, run a photo shoot, get on TikTok. The owner sensed money was slipping but couldn't see where.

02 What I found

The prior audit had never looked at the cost side of the business — so it couldn't see the actual problem. When I built the numbers, the picture was clear and uncomfortable: the venue was running at a structural monthly loss of roughly $8,000–$10,000 (around $100K a year). The cause wasn't marketing — fixed costs, led by the lease and payroll, simply exceeded what the venue earned. Demand and conversion were actually strong (61% of proposals booked). And it was quietly giving event space away for free and paying for overlapping software.

"The problem was never visibility. It was the economics — and the prior plan couldn't fix a six-figure gap with another TikTok."

03 What I built

Not another to-do list — the actual tools to turn it around:

  • An independent, plain-English findings report: where the money was going and the highest-impact fixes, in priority order.
  • An adjustable P&L & breakeven model so the owners could see profit move as they changed price, volume, and costs.
  • A membership program to convert free recurring events into predictable monthly revenue (worth roughly $11K–$17K/year).
  • A website & booking-funnel rebuild — fixing a dated site, cutting a redundant tool, and tightening the path from inquiry to booking.

04 The levers that mattered

  • Pricing: a 15-hour, 120-guest rental was underpriced — the single fastest path to margin.
  • Stop giving space away: convert comped recurring events into paying members.
  • Cut the bloat: remove redundant software and switch to annual billing.
  • Fill dead inventory: weekday/corporate bookings and recurring rentals on hours already paid for.
What the client walked away with

A clear-eyed picture of their real numbers, a prioritized 90-day plan, an interactive model to test decisions, and the fixes built — so the next month looked different from the last.

Want this kind of look at your business?

An honest, independent read on where you're losing money and missing revenue — with a plain-English plan. The first call is free.

Book a free 15-minute call

Client details anonymized for confidentiality. Figures are rounded and representative of the engagement.