Margin Partners founder and margin recovery specialist, Paul Allen, will take 10 years of margin findings public for the first time, in a six-city breakfast series across Australia and New Zealand running from June to October 2026.
The series presents a single, documented pattern – most businesses are not losing margin. They are giving it away.
Built on more than 70 client engagements, 750 CEOs through Vistage and the CEO Institute, and over 1000 written voices, the findings hold across every sector, every revenue band, and every business size.
“The pattern is most visible in manufacturing, packaging and B2B service businesses – the operators who deliver value every day and rarely get paid in full for it,” Allen said.
According to Allen, EBITDA moves in one of two directions every day – either it is leaking or it is being protected and grown.
He explains that the direction is decided by the presence or absence of four behavioural disciplines, which are:
- Contracting
- Over-Servicing
- Up-Selling
- Measuring
In the engagement data, Contracting was found to be absent or weak in 87 per cent of businesses, with the result being a documented pattern of over-generosity that quietly costs more than leadership ever sees.
“The visible symptom is the team running too hard for too little reward. The root cause is the contract that never said no,” said Allen.
“Margin is given away in moments. The reluctant yes. The unspoken extra. The favour that never made it onto the invoice. Because it is behavioural, and internal, it is fixable.”
Each event of the breakfast series will run as a focused breakfast briefing – a 30-minute presentation of the decade of findings, followed by a hosted Q&A with a local business leader who has lived the work, and live FRAME valuations on real scenarios from the audience.
The schedule of events are:
- Perth: Wednesday 10 June – moderated by Jimmy McGregor, managing director of Westref
- Adelaide: Friday 3 July – moderated by Eleanor Clausen, CEO and founder of The International Spine Centre
- Auckland: Friday 31 July – moderated by Jo McCauley, CEO of Medical Assurance Society
- Melbourne: Friday 14 August – moderated by Marty Matassoni, managing director of Beechworth Bakery
- Sydney: Friday 28 August – moderated by Keith Wootton, founder and director of AV1
- Brisbane: Thursday 1 October – moderated by Steve Tassone, general manager of Oztix
Attendance is a flat $85 per person, and all net proceeds (after event costs) will be donated to the Snowdome Foundation for the Australian events; and Leukaemia & Blood Cancer New Zealand for Auckland. Click here to register.
