This ONE Mistake Can Destroy Your Business

Welcome to episode 128 of Dawn of a New Era, and this podcast is the absolute number one out of all podcasts I have ever, ever recorded you must listen to, because we're going to be talking about the one mistake that could destroy your entire business. Now, the reason I say why this is important is it's really easy to fall into this trap. And believe you me, I have been there. Many of my clients have come to me and they've experienced it.

So the reason I say listen to it, the reason I say write this down, really connect with what I'm saying, is that sometimes what happens is we're so in flow in our business, we're so busy, we're so busy firefighting even, that we take our eye off the ball and we forget that one thing is paramount. And this one thing is maybe not your favourite thing, but it's money, because the one thing that can destroy your entire business is not managing cash flow and not having enough money to pay you and your bills. Now, I want to cover four things to mitigate this, but the reason that I put so much emphasis on this topic is that it mentally destroys you, okay? And this can happen fast.

The cash flow in your business can disrupt everything, and I mean everything, in a matter of weeks. It can absolutely tear your motivation down. It can give you sleepless nights. It can absolutely impact on your mindset, your mental health, your physical health, your whole energy in your business.

And once it starts, it is really difficult to stop. But the good news is, is there is a way out. So if you have experienced this, please believe me that you are not in the minority. You are in the majority.

So never beat yourself up, because this is something that can happen through no control of yours. But what we want to do is we want to make sure that even if we're thrown a curveball, that we can manage it, and it won't matter to our business in a way that it might be a bit painful, but it's not going to destroy it. So the number one thing that can happen is that we listen to others telling you that you need to do something. But this relates to their sales objectives, not your true objectives.

And so often in my lifetime in business, 24 years, I'm approached every single day by people telling me, Dawn, you need to do this. Dawn, you need to do this. Dawn, you need to do this. Yes, there are thousands of things that I can do, but there are certain things that I choose to do.

And the things that I choose to do are things I know will move the needle in my business. Now, think of it almost like having a pile of bricks. So every time someone shouts out to you and says, Oh, you need a new website. You need branding.

You need SEO. You need social media. I mean, the list goes on. Pile all the bricks up and then leave them over there, and only move a brick into your conscious, into your goals, when it truly relates to your objectives, when it is right for right now.

Because I guarantee you, that person selling to you will not be thinking about it. And what happens then is that we get lured into feeling like we've neglected something epic in our business, like we're made to feel like, I can't believe you've not done your SEO. I can't believe your website looks like this. I can't say, sitting here today, and this is the honest truth, that I love my website.

I don't. But will I die if my website doesn't change colour? No. So the thing is, is it's just not right now.

I do have a rebrand, and I have that in a schedule, in my projects, and it's coming forth, but it's not the most important thing. Now, the reason for that is the majority of time I'm talking to potential clients, I'm talking to them on a call, and they buy from me on a call. So yes, my website supports. Yes, it gives information.

Is it bad? No, it's just not perfect, okay? But business and life doesn't have to be perfect to earn money, because guess what? I did seven figures in seven months, and I'm telling you here, I don't love my website.

Now. The thing is that if you listen to everybody who has an opinion, you'll become overwhelmed, but you'll also become very drained of cash. Because if every shiny object, every interesting thing, or everything that you're told that you need that we action, we will drain all of the money out of our business. And it's really tempting, especially when we start to earn good money and we're paying the bills and we're in flow, we think, right, we've got to invest to grow.

And I truly believe that, but we have to invest in the right things. So please be mindful in what you are actually investing, because if you're believing and putting your entire faith into an investment and thinking, right, this is going to change my world, think carefully about what that is. Now, I make guarantees to every potential client. I have guarantees on my website.

Now, the reason behind that is I have never in my entire life worked with a client that we haven't moved the needle on cash. I know my model inside out. I've worked with thousands and thousands of businesses, so I now know how quickly I can move a client's income and sales and revenue and profits, and I will be clear because it's bespoke for each person. Now, some will be quicker, but I'm telling them, and I'm not sugarcoating it, I'm telling them the truth, how quickly they'll get cash in.

Now, that's important because if they're making an investment with me and I only work with my clients for a year, they need to know, number one, how quickly will they get their first month's investment back, in a matter of normally. Less than two weeks, okay? So that guarantee, I say 100% confidently, and I am sure, right? I'm not going to ever say to a client, let's say if I was running an advertising agency, could you have that guarantee?

No, you couldn't, because there are too many variables in it, like testing and, you know, you're appealing to the algorithm, the captions, the copy, their ad account, the time that they've been in business. I mean, there's so many things. When I'm running my own framework, because I've done it thousands of times, I know exactly what I'm looking for. I audit the business.

I can give real, realistic, truthful goals. And if someone was ever going to be pressed for cash and I didn't think it was right, I wouldn't work with them because guess what? It's not right for right now. But I will write to somebody telling them what I believe working with me will do, and I have faith and trust behind that because I always win.

And guess what? I always underestimate it because when you deliver an experience for a client and you exceed it, then everything just gets better and better. So think about when someone approaches you. Think about what they're saying.

Think about where your finances are. And you have to be absolutely in a position where you can invest in something and say, right, you know, if it's an advertising campaign, I've got to allow for testing. I'm not reliant on this money. I have this amount of money to allow and budget to set it up to test until I start getting it.

And let's say the advertising company says, well, normally it takes 12 weeks. Factor that in. And if it doesn't feel right in your gut and you think you're going to be put under pressure, wait until you've got something else in play until you do those things. I always say to people, if you're going to invest in ads, you have to have a stable, consistent 3K coming in.

But that might be more depending on how much that person's bills are, okay? They have to have profit in the business, and you have to have profit in the business to be able to invest comfortably. We always hear that you have to invest and push yourself out of your comfort zone. Of course, I get that.

I've done it myself. I've invested in coaches and mentors and masterminds, but I've done it. When I'm feeling fully committed, I'm not putting all my absolute faith into, say, a mastermind. But when I've done something like a strategic plan with a coach, I know that I'm going to move things forward.

There's no way I can go back. So there's certain things that feel right, and you have to consciously focus on, if it's cash, what that strategy is for pulling cash in. Just investing in something isn't good enough. So quite honestly, if you're going to put money into a coach or mentor, make sure that they are focusing on what your priority is.

And if the priority is that you need fast cash, you want to get stability and cash flow, you want consistent high income months, then that has to be the plan. So I'm very clear with what works, how quickly it will work, when people will get the return on investment, when they will make back their entire investment. Within 30 days, the majority, 80%, if not more, of my clients have made back their entire year investment. Now, that's pretty epic, but you have to make sure that whoever is giving you these guarantees backs it up.

I have it on my website. I will say to someone, if after six months you've invested with me and you haven't made back your entire money and more, I'd give you money back. I can say that guarantee because I know it would never, ever happen. Why?

Because I qualify my clients. I get super clear on the goals. If their goals are something that I truly can back and get behind, we're on a winner. If they say to me that they want

to do something that I feel is totally unrealistic and unachievable, I wouldn't work with them. So there is faults on both sides, and I've fallen into the trap of investing in things and doing things I think, oh, I need to do in my business just because someone's telling me and sort of making me feel bad that I haven't done it, that, you know, I should have. But the thing is now is because I use this BRICKS mentality, I box everything over there and I think, what is right for me right now? Now, I had a client who came to me and said, Oh, someone said to me I had to invest in a new CRM and a new ad campaign, and I just didn't realize how long it was going to take.

We're six months in and we're still moving, and it's draining money and it's cost more than I thought. So we have to make sure that if we invest, we know exactly what the project total is going to be. We have to set clear parameters of when we're going to make the money back, and we have to be realistic about timing because often, and we've all been there, we've often underestimated how long something takes. So you need to know your numbers.

And in business, if we don't know our numbers, we can fall into the cash flow trap so quickly because we think, Oh, well, we've got such and such coming in, and then a client goes awry and decides that, you know, they're not going to work with you for the next X amount of time, and then you've lost a huge amount of revenue, and then there's a big dent in your cash flow. So make sure when you are setting goals, they're achievable and they're realistic, because quite often we can pull figures pie in the sky, but, you know, saying that you're going to get 20 clients, where from? Where is the fact showing that you've done this before? Is it proven?

Are you brand new, just trying to launch? Have you ever launched before? We have to almost err on the side of caution to make sure that we're not overestimating, and then we're not going to be, you know, thoroughly disappointed when we don't get those results. So working hard can't always fix cash flow, and, you know, if it's out of sync, it's out of sync.

But please remember that when this happens, we've all been there. Money doesn't grow on trees. There has to be a strategy around money. And there has to be abundance in the feeling in your mindset towards money.

If we get out of our mojo, it's quite easy to fall out of sync of our actions as well. And one of the biggest things in marketing is messaging. I always tell a story of when I launched a course, put my heart and soul into it. The team worked really hard.

We spent like six months getting it all together, maybe even longer. But it felt painful because when we put it out, it just didn't fly, didn't hit the targets. But we were unrealistic about the targets because we had no scientific fact to say it was going to get there. We were listening to other people.

They're like, Oh, it'll easily make this, and, you know, we were getting research, but not maybe from the right people, maybe not talking to our ideal clients enough. The messaging was so off point. So we could have scrapped it, but we didn't. We went back to the drawing board and we went again, and it was tough because I felt really, really dinted by the experience.

And I felt really deflated. But when we reworked it, it just felt better. And I had to go with my own gut because the messaging just felt so much clearer. I didn't have any overwhelm around it, and I really felt a conscious difference in the way that I was showing up and marketing.

It just felt lighter. It felt easier. It felt really good to explain it. I got really clear on my sort of pitch around who it was for and why it would work, and we changed the name.

And then that course itself, that one program made a million in 17 months. One program. And it's still one of our signature programs in my academy. So it goes to show that just subtle changes, that if you are experiencing hardship in money, in cash flow, it can take 24 hours to start making changes.

And every 24 hours, you can be adding to it, changing the strategy, moving the messaging, becoming clearer, looking at the model. Always go back to the model, because one thing that happens is that we like to build as business owners. We love ideas, don't we? And then we start to build things on, and our businesses grow legs, and we become so unclear about all the propositions and the packages and the bundles that we've built that sometimes we have to stop, simplify, and clear it all back down again, and then go again.

And think about, you have to spend 80% of your time, effort, and money marketing the thing that is most profitable in your business. So we know it's absolutely 100% crucial to manage cash flow effectively in order to sustain and grow our businesses. But what I want to do is, we know the things that can happen, but here are some key points, some actions that you can really use in your business to address some of these issues that I've just highlighted, because there is light at the end of the tunnel. I can tell you because I've done it a thousand times, not just for me, but for clients.

Very often I'll meet clients who have done epic things in their businesses, and then they've changed one small thing, and then it's gone out of kilter. And then they come to me and say, Oh, you know, I just really, I'm struggling to grow, or I've hit a plateau, or it was really easy in the beginning, or it was really hard in the beginning, and then it got easier, and then vice versa. So things can change month by month. The exciting thing is, is these 24-hour increments in our business.

So what are these four things? Well, number one, focus on your true objectives. So it's important that you align any of your business decisions and investments with your actual objectives and goals, rather than being swayed by other people's agendas. So if you're going to invest in a coach or mentor, amazing, great.

But as I said, if I am working with a client and they say, My objectives are cash, consistent cash flow, consistent month, or I want to get to this, that is the number one thing, which brings me on to number two, which is a conscious cash flow strategy. So prioritizing strategies and investments that have a clear and measurable impact on cash flow, not something that we don't know the outcome. We need to know the ROI. So if someone invests with me, I can tell them the return on investment.

I can tell them the time period, and I know I will always, always smash that, so they'll be delighted. Now look again for guarantees. If you're going to work with somebody, what is the guarantee? What is this ROI?

When will you get your money back? When do you need it back, more importantly? And this might involve focusing on initiatives that have a direct and timely return on investment, and just really focusing in on that strategy until you have absolute unshakable belief and certainty in your cash flow, and that's fine. And number three, understanding impact of investments.

And again, I feel the pain here because I have done it myself. So we have to assess the potential impact of any investments on cash flow. So we almost have to play devil's advocate and really understand, like, what's the worst case scenario? What could happen to destabilize my current cash flow?

So being cautious of initiatives that maybe will take longer to yield the returns, such as certain ad campaigns or implementing new systems like a CRM. We have to be true to where we are. If something like losing one client could set you out of kilter, maybe it's not right now. If you could lose three clients and still pay everything, then great, okay?

So number four, last but not least, know your numbers and set realistic goals. So understanding your financial metrics sounds boring, but so important. And actually setting achievable goals, because it's essential for managing cash flow effectively. If you don't have that, you don't know what could ruin your business or what could catapult it into the next level of growth.

So it's crucial to base your decisions on a solid understanding of the financial health of your business. And we think about our own health. We think about our physical, our mindset, but your business health, cash flow pumping through the veins of that business, feeding the heart, need to happen. Because if you don't have the cash flow, your business will die.

Now, prioritizing a conscious and pragmatic approach to managing cash flow is absolutely where I am coming from, because I believe in success from the soul. But we need to be aligning decisions with our true objectives in order to do that and maintaining a clear understanding of your business's financial reality. And financial reality sometimes is hard because it opens up some truths that maybe you're not ready to hear. But you can better protect your business from cash flow challenges that could potentially jeopardize its success just by leaning into this.

Now, I know, and my podcast often Do handle some of these subject matters that is tough. And sometimes it does bring an epiphany moment to your mind that you think, oh my God, like, what have I been doing? But better to wake up and be conscious to what is happening so that we can make changes. Because remember, everything can change.

24 hours is all it takes to change. I've changed clients' lives in a matter of a week. We have done VIP days that have re-geared the whole trajectory of a business. Now these things are special because if you want to make a true return on investment, invest in the things that align to your business goals, that will give you the money back and more in the time frame that matters to you, nobody else.

Remember, stay in your own lane. Keep your blinkers on. Don't be swayed by other people's agendas, and make sure that your truth is your certainty. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast, and I hope you definitely took something from it.

Never feel bad when cash flow or money isn't going well, because I promise you, every single business owner has had it happen. It may still happen to you, but it's something that we have to acknowledge. But if we understand it, we can change it. So take care and have an amazing week.

Thank you for listening to Dawn of a New Era podcast, and for your free checklist to find out how to boost your business for growth, profit, and success, and join our community, go to dawnmcgruer.com.