Revenue up 40%. Margins healthy. Growth trajectory perfect. Cash balance: $200,000. Days until payroll default: 60.
This was the reality facing a $35M software company when they called us in desperation. Six months later, they're sitting on $3.2M in cash reserves. The transformation didn't require new funding, dramatic cuts, or revenue miracles. It required facing the brutal truth about where cash actually comes from.
Growing broke isn't a temporary condition—it's a systematic failure that compounds until it destroys otherwise healthy companies. Here's how we engineer the turnaround.
When you're bleeding cash, you can't afford a lengthy analysis phase. We implemented three immediate interventions:
Daily Cash Visibility Dashboard Within 72 hours, we built a real-time cash position tracker showing:
The CEO's first reaction: "I had no idea it was this bad." That's always the first reaction. You can't fix what you can't see.
Collections War Room We identified $2.3M in receivables over 60 days old. Not bad debt—just uncollected invoices nobody was chasing. We assigned every invoice over $10K to an executive owner and launched a collections blitz. Result: $1.4M collected in 30 days.
Expense Triage Every recurring expense got classified: Critical, Important, or Zombie. We found $180,000 per month in zombie expenses—software nobody used, services nobody remembered ordering, duplicate subscriptions across departments. Killed immediately.
Cash flow isn't just about collecting faster—it's about paying smarter. We renegotiated payment terms with strategic focus:
Vendor Payment Restructuring:
Customer Payment Acceleration:
The impact: 23-day improvement in cash conversion cycle.
This is where the hidden cash reveals itself. We attacked three areas:
Inventory Rationalization ($800K freed): Dead inventory is cash in prison. We identified slow-moving SKUs, liquidated obsolete stock, optimized reorder points, and implemented just-in-time ordering where possible.
Receivables Factoring ($600K immediate cash): For select customers with long payment terms, we implemented selective factoring. Yes, it costs 2-3%—but when you're cash-starved, liquidity beats margin.
Prepayment Incentives ($400K acceleration): We offered 10% discounts for annual prepayment to monthly subscribers. 40% took the deal, injecting immediate cash while improving retention.
Cash problems are often efficiency problems in disguise. We found profit leaks everywhere:
Project Profitability Analysis: 30% of projects were cash-negative after fully loaded costs. We either renegotiated, restructured, or terminated them.
Headcount Efficiency: Not layoffs—optimization. We found $200K in contractors doing work that internal teams could handle. Brought capabilities in-house, improved quality, reduced cost.
Technology Consolidation: Seven project management tools. Five CRM systems. Twelve marketing platforms. We consolidated to best-in-class solutions, saving $67,000 monthly while improving functionality.
Not all revenue is created equal. We shifted focus from growth to quality:
Customer Profitability Segmentation:
Pricing Optimization: We hadn't raised prices in three years. A 7% across-the-board increase with grandfathering for A-tier clients added $200K monthly to cash flow.
Contract Restructuring: Moved from milestone-based to subscription billing where possible. Predictable cash flow beats lumpy revenue every time.
The turnaround only matters if it lasts. We built systems to make cash excellence permanent:
Weekly Cash Council: Every Wednesday, 8 AM. CEO, CFO, Sales VP, Operations VP. Review cash position, forecast accuracy, collection status, and payment priorities. Non-negotiable.
Automated Early Warning System: Built triggers for cash concerns:
Cultural Transformation: Cash became everyone's business. Sales owned collections. Operations owned inventory turns. Marketing owned CAC payback. Finance owned visibility.
Six months from near-death to financial strength:
Before → After:
After engineering dozens of turnarounds, the pattern is clear:
Visibility: You can't manage what you can't see in real-time Velocity: Cash has to move faster in than out Discipline: Every dollar has an owner and a purpose
Companies don't grow broke because they lack revenue. They grow broke because they lack systems to convert revenue into cash efficiently.
The tragedy? Most companies wait until crisis to fix these issues. The $35M company we saved could have built these systems at $10M and never faced crisis at all. But humans rarely fix what isn't visibly broken—until it's almost too late.
Your turnaround doesn't have to wait for crisis. Every day you operate without these systems, you're choosing risk over resilience. The methodology is proven. The timeline is rapid. The only question is whether you'll act before or after the crisis arrives.
Cash rich isn't about having money. It's about having systems that generate it predictably, protect it systematically, and deploy it strategically.