The Soap Effect: The Overlooked Secret to Predictable Profits

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Last Updated on August 11, 2025 by Bill Truby

Every business owner, CEO, and senior executive wants more profit. It’s not just a desire—it’s a
necessity. Profit funds your mission, fuels growth, and gives you the freedom you envisioned when
you started your company or stepped into senior leadership.

But chasing profit directly—by cutting costs, pushing harder, or selling more—often leads to
burnout, not abundance.

What if the key to sustainable profit is something simple, overlooked, and already within reach?

Let’s explore something unusual to explain. Soap. That’s right – soap.

Stay with me. I’ll show you a profound lesson to increase your profit in this story.

The Soap Effect – Hidden in Plain Sight

For thousands of years, civilizations used soap-like substances. Ancient Babylonians made it as
early as 2800 B.C., but not for hygiene. Sometimes it was used in cleansing ceremonies. Egyptians,
Greeks, and Romans used it for tanning hides, rituals, and sometimes laundry.

In the Middle Ages, soap-making spread in Europe, but it was still seen as a luxury for the wealthy.
Still not focused on hygiene.

Then, in the 1840s, a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis noticed something alarming: in
one maternity ward, nearly one in three women died after childbirth. In a nearby ward run by
midwives, the death rate was much lower.

Why?

Semmelweis realized doctors were coming directly from performing autopsies—without washing
their hands. His solution was simple: wash hands with soap and antiseptic before delivering
babies. Mortality dropped from nearly 30% to under 2%.

Later, hospitals discovered that cleaning surgical instruments with soap between uses slashed
surgical death rates from 50% to almost zero.

The tool—soap—was always there. The shift wasn’t chemical; it was perspective.

I call this a Soap Effect Moment—a breakthrough not from inventing something new, but from
seeing what’s already there in a different light and applying it in a new way.

History is full of these moments. The pottery wheel existed long before someone thought to turn it
upright, attach it to a cart, and create mobility.

In modern times, a shift in perspective can create an amazing new outcome – even with the same
materials. One of our clients, a large commercial plant nursery in Delaware, used to take two
weeks and many workers to cover their young plants for winter. Then someone asked, “What if we
used bigger rolls of plastic and a tractor?” The same materials, applied differently, allowed two
people to do the job in three days.

The Soap Effect is seeing what’s already there, then applying a new “how” to the same “what.” How
do you get there? You ask questions. “What if….?” Asking new questions about old processes gets
your mind in a different place. Revolutionary changes come from new perspectives more than new
inventions.

What Soap Effect is waiting in your business…or even in your life?

The Truby Management System – A Soap Effect for Profit

Most owners try to improve profitability with the usual methods: Cut costs, sell more, work harder,
run leaner.

Our Soap Effect moment about profit came when we stopped asking, “How can we make more
money?” and asked a new question, “What creates money in the first place?”

The answer was obvious: the quality and efficiency of operational processes.

So we drilled down and followed the logical trail of questions by asking, “What drives process
quality?”

The answer was hiding in plain sight, too: People.

So we asked…

“What enables people to work well together?”

The logical trail of answers continued. People work well together when there is: Teamwork.

Drilling down even more, we asked…

“What builds high-performing teams?”

Again, the answer was obvious, supported by research, and clearly evident in our experience.

Teams can only exhibit true team dynamics when they have good LEADERSHIP.

There it was:
Leadership → Teamwork → Operational Excellence (Process) → Profit

Profit isn’t the starting point—it’s the byproduct of excellent processes and systems run by
empowered people led by effective leaders.

This was a simple, but profound perspective on profit. Normally, we start at the end of that lineup.
We focus on the money first, maybe look at operations, but rarely look as far back as teamwork and
leadership, and how those dynamics affect profit.

This insight—following the profit trail backwards to the perspective of equipping leaders as the
highest-leverage profit-making action—was our Soap Effect moment. Like Semmelweis with
handwashing, we discovered a small shift in focus (leadership) transformed everything.

But leadership development and training must be the kind that truly equips leaders for real world
action. Not theoretical, academic, or hypothetical in nature.

What Kind of Leadership Development Works

Too often, leadership training is fluff—meditation lessons for stressed managers or misguided
attempts to force alignment by silencing dissent. Many programs focus on theory, personal
wellness, or soft skills detached from real business needs.

No wonder many CEOs say, “We don’t need touchy-feely stuff. We just need to work harder.”
We took a different path. The Truby Management System is a boots-on-the-ground, no-fluff
approach to solving real leadership problems—delegation, accountability, team performance,
operational smoothness – in short, tools and teachings to address challenge a leader or manager
might face in leading a team or running a business.

It’s not theory. It’s a proven system used as a business model, a team process framework, and a
growth engine.

Why It Works

We built the Truby Management System to be based on simple, commonsense principles anyone
can relate to and implement. It is a practical framework of four phases and eight actionable steps
that guide a company from chaos to clarity, stagnation to scalable success.

Our system trains leaders to:

• Build high-performing teams
• Create smooth, repeatable operations
• Strengthen alignment and accountability
• Drive predictable profit growth

And it works because it follows the commonsense chain learned in our Soap Effect Moment:
Leadership → Teamwork → Operational Excellence → Profit.

It’s Not Just About Profit—It’s About Freedom

Many leaders are overcommitted. Delegation fails. People don’t step up. Even when leaders try to
pull back, they get pulled back in.

It’s not because they’re weak—it’s because no one taught them how to lead in a way that multiplies
effort instead of adding to their workload.

Train leaders well, and your team owns their work. You stop carrying the weight alone. Stress
drops. Turnover decreases. Operations smooth out. And you reclaim your life.

Your Soap Moment Is Here

Soap existed for thousands of years before anyone saw its lifesaving potential. Your business is no
different—you already have the people, tools, and passion.

Maybe what you need is a new lens.

The Truby Management System is that lens. It delivers increased cash flow, reduced stress,
operational ease, and a renewed excitement for your business.

If your business feels more like a drain than a dream, don’t just trim more, sell more, tolerate more.
Instead, go back to the source: rebuild leadership, realign teams, refine processes.

If you’re tired of firefighting, juggling roles, or watching money slip away, this is your moment. The
profit you want isn’t “out there.”

It’s already in your business—waiting to be unlocked.

Follow the chain:
Leadership → Teamwork → Operational Excellence → Profit

Profit will follow – Always!

Ready to start? Join our membership today.

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About: predictable profits

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