The Hidden Lag Killing Your Profitability #383

G' day guys. You're listening to the Den Lenny show.

The podcast for established video business owners.

Who want to scale smarter, not harder. We talk strategy, systems and the scale method that turns busy founders into strategic CEOs.

If you're feeling broke right now, it's not necessarily because of this month. It's because of what you didn't sell 90 days ago. Most video business owners don't realize that there's a three month lag in between your marketing efforts and your income. You grind all summer on production. Then you wonder why October feels quiet. It's not random, it's just maths. The real cash flow crisis isn't the bad months. It's an inconsistency. You're busy but broke because your pipeline stopped being fed 90 days ago. And once you understand this rule, the 90 day rule, you'll finally see why your bank balance never seems to match your effort. Let me share exactly how this lag works and how to fix it for good.

I've worked with hundreds of video professionals and this pattern shows up everywhere. Someone crushes it in July, lands 130,000 in new business, feels unstoppable. Then August comes. They only book $29,000 worth of work, and by October they're panicking because the bank account looks rough. Here's what actually happened. In July, they were too busy delivering work to sell anything new. August saw the consequences of that gap. October is now feeling the impact of both this isn't actually a you problem. This is a business model problem that nobody warns you about when you start running a business. Today we're breaking down three things. First, why this 90 day lag exists and why it catches everyone. Second, the real cost of inconsistent selling. And third, the simple system that eliminates this cycle forever. By the end of this session, you'll know exactly how many sales conversions you need to have every single week to never hit a cash flow crisis again. Let me walk you through what actually happens in your business or over 90 days. Day one to 30 is about marketing and lead generation. You're posting on LinkedIn. You reach out to past clients. You have discovery calls. You're planting seeds, but nothing closes yet. You're not broke. You're investing time, but there's no money coming in from this activity. Days 31 to 60 is about proposals and negotiation. Some of those conversations turn into proposals. You send quotes. You follow up. You revise scopes. You're moving deals forward, but you're still not being paid. If you stop marketing during this phase because you're busy with proposals. Guess what happens 30 days from now? Nothing. Your pipeline dries up. Then we're on to days 61 to 90, contracts and payment. Finally, deals, close, deposits, land. You get paid for work. You started conversations about three months ago. This is when you feel rich. But if you spent the last 60 days only delivering and not selling, you just created your next cash flow problem. This is the cycle. It's always 90 days. Always. Here's the brutal truth. Most video business owners operate in feast and famine mode all the time. They sell hard when they're quiet, then they get busy and they stop selling. They wonder why they're broke again three months later. You can't turn sales on and off like a tap. The lag doesn't care about your production schedule. It just exists. And if you don't feed the pipeline every single week, the lag will destroy you. So what does this actually cost you? Let's talk about what inconsistent selling actually does to your business. And I'm not talking about the obvious cash flow stress. I'm talking about the hidden costs that compound over time. First, you make desperate decisions when you're broke. You take bad clients. You discount too much. You say yes to projects that don't fit your positioning because you need the cash. Now, I've seen business owners cut their rates by 40% just to close something fast. That's not strategy. That's panic. Second, you lose momentum with your good clients. Let's say you land a great client in July. They love working with you. But then you disappear for three months because you're too busy. When you finally reach out again, they might have moved on. They found someone else who stayed in touch. You just lost a repeat buyer because you couldn't maintain the relationship during delivery of other clients. And third, your team suffers if you got people on payroll. Inconsistent revenue means inconsistent capacity to invest in them. You can't give them stability. You can't give them growth. They feel the stress too. And eventually they leave. I worked with a business owner earlier this year who was making half a million dollars annually. But he felt like he was always broke. When we looked at his numbers, here's what we found. He had three huge months where he sold 40 to $50,000 each. Then he had six months where he sold almost nothing because he was too busy in delivery mode. His average monthly income looked fine on paper, but. But his actual experience was chaos. One month he'd had 15,000 profit. The next month he'd lose $17,000 because all the delivery costs hit before the final payments came in. That's not a sustainable business. That's a mental health crisis disguised as entrepreneurship. So how do you fix it? The fix is actually stupidly simple. But most people won't do it because it requires discipline. You need to sell every single week. Not sometimes, not when you feel like it. Every week. Here's the framework. STEP 1. Know your weekly sales target. Figure out how much revenue you need to generate per month to cover your costs and hit your profit goals. Let's say it's $40,000 a month. Divide that by four. That's now $10,000 per week in new sales. Not delivered Work, new sales. Now. Most video projects don't close in one conversation. So you need to reverse engineer how many conversations it takes to close $10,000 in sales. If your average project is $5,000 and you close one out of every three proposals, you need six meaningful sales conversations per week. Step 2. Build a weekly selling rhythm. Block time out every week for sales activity. I don't care how busy you are, if you're not selling, you're dying. Most people in the VBA community do Tuesday mornings for pipeline work. They send connection requests on LinkedIn. They follow up on quotes they call their past clients. Here's what one business owner does. Every Tuesday, he reaches out to 20 people on LinkedIn. Every Thursday, he follows up with three past clients just to check in. Every Friday, he reviews his pipeline and identifies which deals need attention next week. That's it. Three hours a week maximum. And it keeps his pipeline full year round. Step three. You have to track everything you can't manage. What you don't measure. Use a simple spreadsheet or a CRM software. Track every conversation, track every proposal, track every deal. When you see the lag in real time, you'll stop being surprised by it. I've got a business owner we work with who tracks his LinkedIn outreach on. On a shared Google sheet. He can see that he's reached out to seven and a half thousand people over two years. He's generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from that activity. But more importantly, he knows his conversion rates. He knows how much activity it takes to generate results. So now, when things slow down, he just does more activity. No panic, just process. He simply goes back to the list and sees who he needs to follow up with next. Step four. Never stop, even when you're busy. In fact, especially when you're busy. This is where most people fail. They get a big project, they go head down, bum up for two months. They Stop marketing and three months later they're broke again. You have to treat sales like brushing your teeth. You don't skip it because you're busy. You just do it. Even if it's 30 minutes on a Tuesday morning, even if it's just five LinkedIn messages, you keep the engine running. One of the most successful business owners I know blocks out every Tuesday for sales and strategy work. No shoots, no client calls, just pipeline. He protects that day religiously. And his business has never had a cash flow problem since then because his pipeline is always full. It's the same day we have our weekly VBA elite call. So it makes sense. When he's in that mode of working on the business, not in it.

That's the system. Know your target, build your rhythm, track your activity, and never stop. Here's the bottom line. If you're feeling broke right now, it's because you didn't sell consistently 90 days ago. But the good news is you can fix this. Starting today, pick your weekly sales target, block the time, start tracking, and commit to doing it every single week for the next 90 days. Do this and three months from now, you won't be asking where the work went, you'll be asking how to deliver it all. The 90 day lag doesn't go away, but once you understand it and build a system around it, it stops controlling you. So here's a quick question. What's your biggest challenge with staying consistent on sales? Is it finding the time, not knowing what to say, or just feeling uncomfortable reaching out? If you're watching this on YouTube, drop your answer in the comments. If you're listening, hit me up on Instagram or LinkedIn. I read every single comment and I'll give you feedback on what's actually holding you back. And if you found this helpful, make sure you're subscribed, wherever you watch or listen from. And of course, if you'd like some help and you want to work with me directly, check out how we can do that over@denleny.com.

This is the Den Lenny Show. If you've built a solid production business but feel stuck in the grind, it's time to think bigger. Over the past 14 years, I've helped 178 companies generate more than 52 million in documented growth using the scale method and our elite mastermind. If you want to create predictable pipelines, attract higher value clients, and finally buy back your time, head to denleny.com that's where the next level begins.