The first recurring sale I ever made was for fifteen dollars a month.
It was a website hosting deal. Some tiny client whose name I cannot fully remember now. I billed it annually for one hundred and eighty dollars, because at the time I did not have a way to set up automated recurring billing and I did not trust myself to send a fifteen-dollar invoice every month for the next several years without forgetting one or two of them. I was paying out almost the full amount to the actual hosting company. There was almost no profit in it. It was, by any honest measure, a stupid little deal.
It was also the most important sale of my career. Because every January after that, I did not start from zero. I started from one hundred and eighty dollars.
That is the entire argument for recurring revenue, and it is so understated that almost every owner I talk to nods along, agrees in principle, and then goes back to running a business that re-sells everything from scratch every single month. They know they should build recurring streams. They have not.
Today I want to make the case one more time, and then I want to give you the smallest possible action you can take this week.
The math nobody wants to do
Most owners do not separate recurring revenue from one-time revenue in their books. That alone is a problem. If you do not chart recurring separately, you cannot see the line.
I started doing this in my agency more than a decade ago. Every year, our overall revenue has grown. Every year, our recurring revenue has also grown, often faster. That tiny fifteen-dollar-a-month deal turned into one hundred a month, then a few thousand, then more, until annual recurring revenue is now over a million dollars a year.
We could close zero new business in 2027 and still produce a million dollars in revenue from work we have already done. That is what lets our team sleep at night when the news cycle gets weird or a single big client pauses a project. The recurring base means the worst week of the year still pays the team and the lights stay on.
Without recurring revenue, every January you walk into your office and the bank account is back to zero. That is exhausting. It is the reason most owners I know in their forties and fifties either burn out or sell.
The objection I always hear
Almost every time I talk about this in person, somebody raises a hand and says, "But Jay, my business is not really a recurring business. We sell projects. We sell installs. We sell one big thing at a time. There is nothing to make recurring."
I will tell you what I told the contractor who said that to me last year, the dentist who said it to me the year before, and the consultant who said it to me three years ago. You are wrong. There is always something. You just have not asked the right question.
Landscaping is project work. It is also seasonal maintenance, which is recurring. Plumbing is project work. It is also annual inspections, water-heater flushes, drain monitoring, all recurring. Pool builders build pools. They also clean them. Insurance agents sell policies. They also run annual reviews. Accountants do tax returns. They also do monthly bookkeeping. Doctors do procedures. They also run wellness memberships. Coaches sell engagements. They also sell quarterly cohorts.
The pattern is the same in every industry. The customer you just sold something to is the cheapest customer you will ever sell to again. The acquisition cost is sunk. The trust is built. The relationship is open. Asking them to pay you a smaller amount on a regular cadence to maintain, support, monitor, or extend what you just sold is the easiest second sale in your business.
If you cannot find a recurring service to layer onto what you already do, you have not actually tried. You have just decided in advance that the answer is no.
action
1. Pick one service you currently sell as a one-time project. 2. Sketch the recurring version: maintenance, monitoring, seasonal renewal, or subscription. 3. Define what is included, the monthly price, and the lightest version a current customer would say yes to. 4. Before Friday, pitch it to one existing customer who already trusts you. 5. Start tracking recurring revenue separately in your books this week.
Pick up the phone.
