I started my company with about $200,000. I knew it would be more than enough to get the company into a profitable position. After several months the burn rate of cash was far beyond my expectations. I was just about out of money. My resources were tapped out. It was a nightmare. What made it worse was I was the managing partner of a very successful CPA firm in Southern California . We had never had a cash flow problem and had never run out of money. Here I was having a new experience…the pain of running out of money. It was awful. The anxiety was beyond anything I had ever felt during my business career. I knew it was just days before my dream was to end.

Have you guessed it yet? I developed a cash flow software program designed to predict profit and cash flow, and I hadn’t used it for my own business.  Here I was a CPA telling people how important it is to predict profitability and cash flow and not following my own advice. Shame, shame on me for not practicing what I have preached for so many years.

I immediately jumped out of bed, threw on some jeans and headed for my laptop. I needed to get a handle on just how long the little cash I had would last. I entered my assumptions, crunched the numbers…and was shocked to discover that the disaster I was sure of was at least three months away. Suddenly, there was no more anxiety; I had some time left to fulfill my dream. Best of all, I had the time to do what was needed to get the resources and keep the company going.

So now, by my own experience, I discovered sleepless nights are not unusual. In fact, they are all-too-common. Whenever I ask entrepreneurs if they have ever had a cash flow nightmare as I described, I get a resounding yes