The Surprising Reason Successful Businesses Are Going Broke Now

I recently had lunch with a business owner who proudly announced his revenue had hit 8-figures.

“That’s incredible!” I told him, “How’s your cash position?”

His face told me everything. Despite record-breaking revenue, he was in the worst cash position he’d ever experienced.

Surprised? I wasn’t.

This is what happens when we consistently default to “more” as the solution to everything. More revenue. More clients. More services.

But here’s what most semi-successful business owners miss: More revenue doesn’t automatically mean more profit. More success. More fulfillment.  In fact, three months after their highest-revenue month, businesses typically take on significant new expenses that put them in a WORSE position with more risk.

It’s a pattern I’ve seen in my work a thousand times. The business hits new revenue heights, makes assumptions about the trend line, acquires more fixed expenses and then… cash flow decreases.

This is why the traditional forecasting and budgeting methods fail most small businesses. The reality is, small businesses are fundamentally different from big corporations. While Fortune 500 companies have endless data and dedicated finance teams to create meaningful forecasts, small businesses rarely have the data necessary to forecast any area of their business effectively. 

I developed the CASE Framework for Cash Flow Engineering to combat this statistic.

We all love an acronym, right?

CASE stands for:

• Compile: Gather complete, accurate data about your business

• Analyze: Find meaningful trends and patterns

• Strategize: Develop solutions with asymmetric upside

• Execute: Take intentional action aligned with your priorities 

Here’s the big distinction: Instead of focusing on “more,” it’s designed to help you OPTIMIZE what you already have. 

Think about it - what if you could double your cash flow without adding a single new client or service? What if the breakthrough you’re desiring is already hiding in your business?

I learned this lesson the hard way. Back in 2019, I offered a course called “Recession-Proof Your Business.” Before even building out the program, I tested the idea on social media. Despite being called an idiot by many, I sold out the program. 

But here’s the interesting part, almost no one showed up for the live sessions. When I reached out to registrants, I discovered they had only bought to support me - they didn’t actually believe a recession was coming. 

The problem wasn’t poor content - it was my failure to properly articulate the value. The course wasn’t really about recessions. It was about the steps you should take to make your business as recession-proof as possible so that when a recession does happen (and it inevitably happens), you’re already on the offense. 

The experience taught me something crucial about cash flow: we often overlook the obvious in pursuit of more.

That’s exactly what the CASE framework is designed to prevent. It’s a systemic process to apply intentional thinking to your cash flow decisions.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll break down each component of the framework in detail. But for this week, I want you to consider one question:

What if the solution to your cash flow challenges isn’t about doing more, but about engineering what you already have to work better?

Stay tuned for the breakdown on how exactly you can use the CASE Framework in your business, but if you don’t want to wait - reply to this email and I’ll send you a PDF copy of my best-selling book Rigging the Game and you can get all the details today. (The CASE Framework is in Chapter 17.)

Here’s to your success and financial certainty.