Profit Mastery

Two weeks out. The Master Your Numbers Bootcamp goes live August 11.

If you've read my posts all month and thought "I really should get this down," this is where you do it. Six live sessions, twelve hours, one clear outcome: you leave able to read your numbers and run a cash forecast on your own.

Forty years of field-tested teaching, compressed into three weeks of live Zoom sessions. Miss one? Replays keep you on track. Already in PM Pro? You're enrolled at no charge.

Enrollment closes when the first session starts. Don't spend another quarter guessing at your own business.

Details in the comments.

There's a number quietly strangling growth at a lot of good businesses, and it never shows up on the P&L. It's your AR days, the average time customers take to actually pay you.

Here's why I harp on it. You land the sale and book the profit, but the cash sits in your customer's account, not yours. Grow fast with slow collections and you can run yourself broke while the income statement looks terrific.

The dollars are real. A million-dollar business carrying $100K in receivables collects in roughly 36 days. Shave one day off and about three thousand dollars lands back in your account. Let it drift the wrong way and that same three thousand goes missing, quietly, every day.

Watch AR days like you watch revenue. Then go collect.

Most owners were never taught to read their own numbers. Nobody handed them the manual. If that's you, this is the fix, and it starts August 11.

The Master Your Numbers Bootcamp is the whole Profit Mastery method, taught live across six Zoom sessions. Not a course you start and abandon. An instructor walks you through reading your statements, protecting your margin, finding break-even, and building a cash forecast, using your business as the example.

By the last session you have a scorecard and a system you actually run, plus replays to revisit any time.

It's the same method 250,000+ owners have used, now live with a real person answering your questions. PM Pro members are already in, free.

Save your seat. Details are in the comments.

The first half is on the books. Reset your cash for the rest of the year before Q4 sneaks up. Swipe for the five-step mid-year reset.

Most owners set a plan in January and never look up. By now the numbers have drifted and the plan you set is stale. A reset takes an afternoon and changes how the next two quarters go.

You'll close the first half clean, read the six-month trend, rebuild your 13-week forecast, reset your minimum cash line, and pick the one number you'll move before year-end.

Do this now and Q4 stops being a surprise.

Monday gut check, and this one is timely. The first half is closed. If your books are clean, they hold the three numbers that should steer the rest of your year.

Here they are: your gross margin trend since January, your months of cash at today's burn rate, and your growth rate against the plan you set in the winter. Not last month's revenue. These.

Most owners can rattle off revenue and go quiet on all three. That's exactly the gap a mid-year check closes. Fifteen minutes with a clean first-half P&L and balance sheet, and you know whether to press the gas or tighten up for the back half.

The first half is on the books. Read it before you spend the rest of the year guessing.

Which of the three could you not answer right now?

Friday Forecast. You found your tightest cash week. Now move one number to lift it.

You don't need a dramatic fix. Cash timing runs on small, deliberate nudges. Call the customer sitting on your biggest open invoice and ask for payment early. Or push a vendor payment out a week, to the other side of the trough.

One move like that can turn a red week into a week you sleep through. The forecast surfaces the problem early enough that the fix is easy instead of frantic.

Fifteen minutes, one lever. That's the routine.

What's the one number you can move before your next tight week? Drop it below.

A river that's six feet deep on average will still drown a six-foot man. I think about that every time an owner shows me an annual cash number and calls it healthy.

Averages hide the week that sinks you. Your business can average plenty of cash across the year and still hit a Tuesday in the tightest month where payroll and a big vendor bill land together and the account can't cover both. The average felt fine. The trough was fatal.

That's why I push weekly cash forecasting so hard. You aren't looking for the average depth. You're looking for the shallowest point, the week you'd run aground, so you can add depth before you get there.

Read the low week, not the average. That's the whole game.

This week's Profit Move goes deeper on finding your trough. Link below.

If you've been meaning to actually learn your numbers instead of guessing at them, here's your shot. Our Master Your Numbers Bootcamp runs live, starting August 11.

Six live sessions on Zoom, Tuesdays and Thursdays through August 27. Twelve hours with an instructor, not another recording you'll never finish. We build the whole method with you: reading your three statements, pricing to protect margin, finding your break-even, and building a cash forecast you actually run each week.

You walk away with your own scorecard and a system you keep using, not a binder that collects dust.

Miss a session? Replays have you covered.

It's the same method 250,000+ owners have used. PM Pro members attend free.

Want in? Details and registration are in the comments.

Every business needs a floor under its cash, a minimum balance you protect and never dip below. Swipe for how to set yours.

Most owners run to zero and hope. A minimum cash balance flips that. It's the number that covers your fixed costs through your slowest stretch, plus a buffer for the surprise you can't name yet.

Set it once and it becomes a line in the sand. When cash gets close, that's your signal to act early: chase a receivable or slow a payment. Not panic, just a trigger you decided in advance.

The peace of mind is the point. You stop watching the bank balance like a heart monitor.

Do you have a minimum cash number, or do you run thttps://buffer-media-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/64beac406626afde4e087b66/6a5e4e6ff378f73e36085fe5/69280616ae7db8c97a882837e168791c.original.png o empty? Tell me where you're at.

Monday gut check. If the phone stopped ringing today and no new sales came in, how many days could you keep the lights on?

That number is your runway, and most owners have never worked it out. Take the cash you have on hand, add what you could pull from a line of credit, then divide by what the business burns in a normal month. The answer is how long you would last.

Knowing it changes how you act. Plenty of runway means you can be methodical. A short runway means you move now, while you still have choices.

The number isn't there to scare you. It puts a date on the calendar so nothing sneaks up.

Do you know your runway in days right now, or is it a guess? Tell me below.