Season 2, Episode 13: The 80/20 Rule of Staffing Firm Profitability with Ben Hansen
Thu Oct 23 2025
In this episode, James Lawton speaks with Ben Hansen, The Profit Doctor, about the common traps scaling firms fall into, which he terms "Profititus"—solid revenue growth but flat net profitability. Drawing on his experience building a multi-million dollar staffing business, Ben advocates applying the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) to profitability, starting by eliminating the worst 20% of low-performing customers and employees. He emphasizes that for staffing and recruiting firms, the biggest profit leaks often come from straying outside their niche or "sweet spot" to fill challenging roles, and from a growth-obsessed psychology adopted from the VC-backed tech world. Ben encourages operations leaders to focus 20% of their energy on profitability and offers free resources to help identify and triage major profit leaks.
The SROP is hosted by James Lawton: ex-recruiter, now helping enterprise-level companies with high volume hiring with automation and AI.
More about Ben Hansen
Ben Hansen, known as The Profit Doctor, is an expert in helping businesses uncover profit leaks, fix inefficient operations, and scale sustainably. Through his flagship program, The Profit Accelerator, he helps business owners achieve an additional five points of net profitability in 90 days. Ben’s expertise centers on leveraging best practices—and learning from his own past mistakes—to optimize profitability in staffing, recruiting, and other service-based firms.
To learn more about the Profit Accelerator go to www.profitdoctor.com/accelerator
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More
In this episode, James Lawton speaks with Ben Hansen, The Profit Doctor, about the common traps scaling firms fall into, which he terms "Profititus"—solid revenue growth but flat net profitability. Drawing on his experience building a multi-million dollar staffing business, Ben advocates applying the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) to profitability, starting by eliminating the worst 20% of low-performing customers and employees. He emphasizes that for staffing and recruiting firms, the biggest profit leaks often come from straying outside their niche or "sweet spot" to fill challenging roles, and from a growth-obsessed psychology adopted from the VC-backed tech world. Ben encourages operations leaders to focus 20% of their energy on profitability and offers free resources to help identify and triage major profit leaks. The SROP is hosted by James Lawton: ex-recruiter, now helping enterprise-level companies with high volume hiring with automation and AI. More about Ben Hansen Ben Hansen, known as The Profit Doctor, is an expert in helping businesses uncover profit leaks, fix inefficient operations, and scale sustainably. Through his flagship program, The Profit Accelerator, he helps business owners achieve an additional five points of net profitability in 90 days. Ben’s expertise centers on leveraging best practices—and learning from his own past mistakes—to optimize profitability in staffing, recruiting, and other service-based firms. To learn more about the Profit Accelerator go to www.profitdoctor.com/accelerator Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.