The Hidden Revenue in Your Business: Skye Blanks' Perspective on Untapped Growth
Written by Matt Emma
Skye Blanks has a provocative claim for struggling business owners: most companies are sitting on untapped revenue they do not even know exists. As founder of Herman Todd Consulting Group (HTCG) and a certified ProfitCoach, Blanks has built his practice around a counterintuitive premise: businesses do not need more customers or bigger marketing budgets to dramatically increase profits. They need better systems for capturing value they are already creating but failing to monetize.
This approach runs counter to conventional business advice. When revenue stagnates, most consultants recommend increased marketing spend, expanded product lines, or aggressive discounting to drive volume. Blanks takes the opposite approach. He helps businesses identify and eliminate profit leaks before pouring more resources into acquisition.
The methodology stems from his experience across multiple sectors, from co-founding one of New Jersey's top cannabis dispensaries to serving as Chief Operations Officer at the International Council for Small Business (ICSB). Across these contexts, Blanks observed a consistent pattern: businesses often possess valuable assets, relationships, and capabilities they systematically underutilize.
Consider customer relationships. Most businesses focus exclusively on initial transactions while ignoring the ongoing value of existing customer bases. Blanks helps clients implement systems that identify upsell opportunities, optimize pricing strategies, and create loyalty programs that increase customer lifetime value without spending additional marketing dollars.
The Herman Todd approach emphasizes data-driven decision-making through proprietary forecasting tools that reveal hidden patterns in business financials. Many business owners operate on intuition and incomplete information, making decisions without clear visibility into which products, services, or customers actually drive profitability. Blanks’ consulting process starts with comprehensive financial analysis to identify high-margin opportunities being overshadowed by high-volume but low-profit activities.
This analytical foundation distinguishes HTCG from traditional business coaching. Rather than offering generic advice or motivational platitudes, Blanks provides customized action steps based on each client's actual financial data. The ProfitCoach Business Center platform enables clients to model different scenarios, forecast outcomes, and track progress toward specific profit targets using their own real numbers.
The emphasis on measurement and accountability reflects Blanks’ broader philosophy about business growth. He has observed that many businesses confuse activity with progress. They are busy but not profitable, growing revenue while shrinking margins, expanding without improving fundamentals. HTCG focuses on sustainable profit growth rather than vanity metrics.
As highlighted in USA Wire, this approach has particular relevance for small and medium-sized businesses facing pressure from larger competitors. These businesses cannot outspend corporate rivals on marketing or undercut them on price. Their competitive advantage lies in operational excellence: doing more with existing resources, optimizing what is already working, and eliminating what is not.
Blanks brings this operational perspective from his work at the ICSB, where he helps enterprises worldwide improve efficiency and profitability despite resource constraints. The principles that help micro-enterprises in developing markets compete effectively apply equally to established businesses in competitive U.S. markets: focus on fundamentals, eliminate waste, and maximize value from existing assets.
The consulting process begins with what HTCG calls a “Pathway to Profit,” a customized roadmap based on comprehensive business analysis. This is not a one-size-fits-all template but a tailored strategy addressing each business's specific challenges and opportunities. Some clients need pricing optimization. Others require operational streamlining or customer retention systems. The key is diagnosing root causes rather than treating symptoms.
Blanks emphasizes that finding hidden revenue does not require dramatic business-model changes or risky pivots. Often, the highest-impact improvements involve relatively simple adjustments such as restructuring service packages, implementing abandoned-cart recovery systems, optimizing inventory to reduce carrying costs, or identifying and focusing on the most profitable customer segments.
This practical, incremental approach makes the consulting accessible for businesses that cannot afford lengthy, expensive transformation programs. The Herman Todd methodology delivers quick wins that fund ongoing improvements, creating positive momentum rather than requiring large upfront investments with distant payoffs.
For business owners frustrated by stagnant profits despite working harder, Blanks offers a different paradigm. The solution is not necessarily working more or spending more. It is working smarter by seeing what is already there. Every business has inefficiencies, underutilized assets, and missed opportunities. The question is not whether hidden revenue exists, but whether owners have the tools and perspective to find it.
As Blanks demonstrates through Herman Todd Consulting Group, the path to profitability often runs through optimization before expansion, through better execution of existing strategies before pursuing new ones, and through understanding what you have before seeking what you do not. For businesses ready to stop leaving money on the table, that is a message worth hearing.
