LEADERFORCELEADERFORCEBelow is my read of the three income statements you sent: calendar 2024, calendar 2025, and January through September 2026, all cash basis from QuickBooks. Every line of the three statements is loaded in the explorer further down, where you can toggle years, select cells for quick sums and run queries. Underlined figures anywhere on this page open the explorer on the line they come from.
Where I draw a conclusion the statements cannot support on their own, I mark it Hypothesis and it appears again in the questions at the end. Your own caveat applies throughout: the revenue and expense tagging is close but not exact, and Kassi is cleaning it up going into 2027. I have reconciled every group, section and derived total to the statements as they stand, so the figures here are the ledger's figures, not restatements.
Podcasts, salon dinners, webinars and whitepapers: $613K, $791K, $927K through September. 53% of revenue and up 50% like-for-like.
$408K through September, up 28% on last year's pace. Q3 fell to $51K against $65K a year earlier; Q4 2025 was $208K. The booking calendar decides the year.
$362K against $442K a year earlier, with two months at $600. It is the highest-margin dollar on the statement, with no direct cost.
$385K in April 2025 and $382K in April 2026, driven by salon dinner and whitepaper receipts. Q3 is the softest quarter every year.
Wages run a flat $25K a month with year-end amounts on top. Net income plus payroll is $698K, $880K and $1.01M year to date.
Chris Leighton's sales commission ($123K), Michael Horn's FutureU share ($52K) and Kiri Mohan's speaking commission ($37K) in 2026. Chris is 13% of editorial revenue, not the 23% the raw line implies.
Editorial services, the sponsored content portfolio of podcasts, salon dinners, webinars and whitepapers, produced $613K in 2024, $791K in 2025 and $927K in the first nine months of 2026. It was 47% of revenue in 2024 and is 53% this year. Speaking grew from $155K to $525K and is $408K through September. Consulting and advisory is the one line that has shrunk: $362K against $442K a year earlier. Book income was $188K in 2025, most of it Dream School advances, and $21K this year.
The sponsorship portfolio is the asset with a repeatable sales motion and a cost base that can be managed; speaking and consulting are your calendar. The year-to-date decline in consulting is the first line I would ask about, because it is the highest-margin dollar on the statement and the line most likely to be a function of your available days.
Monthly receipts in 2026 range from $79K (May) to $382K (April). April was also the largest month of 2025 at $385K. In both years the April figure is driven by salon dinner and whitepaper receipts ($153K and $80K this year; $101K and $88K last year, plus $98K in webinars). The third quarter is the softest in every year on the statement, and the first quarter of 2026 was the strongest quarter in the three-year record at $717K.
HypothesisThe April concentration reads like an annual sponsorship cycle, either a spring renewal date or a single anchor event around which sponsors are billed. If so, a large share of the sponsorship year is decided in one window: a planning fact and a concentration risk at once.
Because the statements are cash basis, a month shows when a sponsor paid, not when the work was delivered or the contract signed. The contract view underneath it does not exist in HubSpot: you confirmed the CRM has been used solely for audience development, with no deal pipeline or revenue history, and that Chris keeps the pipeline separately.
$427K in 2024, $587K in 2025, $362K through September 2026 against $442K at the same point last year. It has also become lumpy, with $600 in April and again in July. The likeliest explanation is your available days, which is why it leads the questions.
Book income was $61K, $188K and $21K; the 2025 figure is mostly Dream School advances ($135K) with royalties of $42K. Other income is small and irregular: a $50K sponsorship or grant in September 2024, $17K of writing fees in February 2025 and $20K of television show income in February 2026, a new line with no history.
Speaking receipts were $408K through September, up 28% on the same period in 2025, with $357K of it in the first half. The third quarter fell to $51K (July $28K, August $13K, September $10K) against $65K in the same quarter last year. Q3 is seasonally soft, so one quarter does not settle it. Q4 2025 produced $208K; whether 2026 finishes ahead of 2025 or behind it depends on what is booked for October through December, which is the first thing I need from you.
Paid on speaking and booked under commissions: $37K through September, about 9% of speaking receipts. You mentioned Kiri does not use HubSpot for speaking either, and that CRM use can be made a condition of commissions.
Salon dinners are the largest product and have held their size: $198K in 2024, $313K in 2025 and $321K through September 2026. Podcasts and whitepapers have grown the most this year. Podcast sponsorship was $83K in all of 2025 and is $238K through September; whitepapers were $183K in 2025 and are $252K already. Webinars have moved the other way, $212K last year and $117K so far this year.
Gross profit here is each product's revenue less its own expense lines, before Chris's commission and before your time. Every one of those lines sits in cost of goods sold on the statements, so what remains is gross profit in the accounting sense. The 2025 commissions line is undivided in the ledger, so Michael Horn's share of FutureU is shown inside podcasts for 2026 only.
Salon dinner cost includes venue, gift and uniform lines. Webinar expense was nil in 2025 as recorded.
The ledger's "Commissions Paid" line is three different costs. In 2026 it is itemized: Chris Leighton, your commission-only sales rep, at $123K (20% on deals under $50K and 25% at $50K and above, corporate clients, no current contract); Michael Horn's share of FutureU podcast revenue, booked as Horn-Ed, at $52K; and Kiri's speaking commissions at $37K. Read that way, the sales-commission load on the sponsorship portfolio is Chris's $123K, about 13% of editorial revenue, not the 23% the raw line implies. Horn's share is a cost of the podcast product and Kiri's is a cost of speaking. The 2025 line, $166K, is a single undivided figure, and 2024's was $17K.
With Horn's share moved into podcasts, the podcast economics still flipped: production cost $136K against $83K of sponsorship in 2025, and $64K of production plus $52K to Horn against $238K this year. Salon dinner costs have risen with the product, from $39K to $105K including venues. Whitepapers carry the best gross profit of the four.
In your words, you are "stuck with an unworkable commission schedule for some products"; you have not said which products or why. The 20/25 rate is confirmed for corporate deals, higher-ed clients would need a different rate, and Chris has no current contract going into 2027. What I need: the 2025 split of the $166K, Chris's effective rate by product, which products you mean and what makes the schedule unworkable for them, and the terms of the Horn split on FutureU.
Each bar is a product's revenue for the year shown. The segments are its own production cost, Michael Horn's share (podcasts, itemized in 2026 only), Chris's commission at the rate you set, and the gross profit that remains to pay for your time, the fixed cost base and any profit. The marker on the portfolio bar shows where the commission actually recorded that year would land: $123K for Chris in 2026 (13% of portfolio revenue), and the undivided commissions line in 2024 and 2025. Set the rate to none to see gross profit before any commission, as recorded.
Product cost is each product's own expense lines (salon dinners include venue, gift and uniform lines); the portfolio bar adds graphic design. The rate is applied to revenue, which is how the 20/25 schedule is described; deal sizes by product are not in the statements, so the under-$50K and $50K-and-up split cannot be applied per deal. In 2024 and 2025 the recorded commissions line is undivided, so the marker there covers Chris, Horn and Kiri together.
At 20%: 27% production, 22% Horn, 20% Chris, 31% left; 26% at the 25% rate. The thinnest line once both are paid.
33% of revenue is venue and hospitality before any commission. $64K to $80K is the largest single commission cheque.
68% to 73% left in percentage terms, but only $23K to $29K of commission on $117K. Whether a deal is worth Chris's time depends on deal size, which the statements do not show.
Gross profit is what the portfolio returns after every cost of goods sold on the statement, including commissions and graphic design. It is the figure that pays for your time, the fixed cost base and anything added next. Kiri's speaking commission is excluded from the portfolio in 2026; in 2025 it sits inside the undivided commissions line.
Payroll is the largest expense line, and the pattern suggests it is largely your own compensation: wages run at a flat $25,000 a month in 2025 and 2026, with year-end amounts on top ($170K bonus and $112K SEP in December 2024; $280K of December wages in 2025; $49K of SEP contributions so far in 2026). The 2024 statement shows a loss of $60K after $758K of payroll. Read as owner economics, net income plus payroll, the business produced about $698K in 2024, $880K in 2025 and $1.01M in the first nine months of 2026.
The recurring base excluding travel and the spring software renewal is roughly $48K a month, of which $27K is your salary and payroll tax. Everything else is contractors: a $5,800 monthly consulting payment, a VA at $2,800, an "Operations" line at $8,500 that began in July 2026, and accounting at $1,650. Chris, Kiri and Horn are paid variably and sit in cost of goods sold. There is no rent and no second salaried employee on the statement. That makes the question less about cutting cost and more about which of these roles become the company's, and on what terms.
Every account from the QuickBooks statements, with group and section totals recomputed and reconciled to the originals. Click a cell to select it, drag to select a block, click a row name for the row or a month header for the column; hold Cmd or Ctrl to add to a selection. The calculator bar at the bottom shows the sum, average and count. Escape clears. The query box takes an account name or code with a year, quarter or month, or plain arithmetic.
Try: consulting 2024 to 2026 salon dinner apr commissions 2026 total travel 2025 net income wages dec 2025 software mar 2026 (927K - 618K) / 618K
The P&L answers how much and when. It does not answer who, how many or at what price, and the next step depends on those. In order of importance:
By sponsor, product and year, with contract values and renewal status. It gives concentration (how much of 2025 came from the top five), renewal rate and average deal size, and it explains April. It lives with Chris, not in HubSpot.
How many salon dinners, webinars, whitepapers and podcast episodes you delivered each year, and the list price of each. Revenue per unit is what gross profit by product is built on.
Who is on payroll and who is a contractor, what each does, Chris's effective rate by product, Horn's FutureU terms, Kiri's rate, and your own target compensation.
Contracts signed for Q4 2026 and 2027, deferred or prepaid sponsorship, receivables and cash. Cash-basis statements hide all of it; the speaking question is a bookings question.
Days on the road and hours per product line. Revenue per day of your time is the measure that matters most, and only your calendar can supply it.
Grouped by what they unlock. The first six are the ones I would ask you to answer before our next working session; the rest we can cover in the session itself.
Cash basis. 2026 covers January through September. Net income is after interest income and charitable contributions recorded below the operating line ($19.9K in 2024, $32.2K in 2025, none in 2026).
Chris Leighton: commission-only sales representative, 20% on deals under $50K and 25% at $50K and above, corporate clients; no current contract. Kiri Mohan: scheduler, paid on speaking. Michael Horn: FutureU co-host, revenue share booked as Horn-Ed. Roles as you described them, October 2026.
Source: Academic Intelligence, LLC, Profit and Loss by Month, QuickBooks cash basis, 2024, 2025 and January to September 2026. All group, section and derived totals recomputed from the account lines and reconciled to the statements.