In this episode, we talk about the life’s blood or the oxygen that keeps a business alive and that is cash flow. This is about how you get cash into your business.

Path to Cash Blueprint

It deals with three elements: Marketing, Sales and Path. There are three aspects of each of these: Purpose, Process and Payoff. The blueprint is all about how you can manage the upstream to generate traffic and create engagement effectively in order to make sure that you have buyer-ready prospects. You want to convert that into the sales process which builds ecstatic customers with whom you create a transformative relationship. Give them a strategic journey along the path and your cash isn’t going to be a problem.

Let’s look at the Path to Cash Blueprint in detail:

Marketing

• Purpose: The idea behind marketing is literally to create traffic. It is about attracting and enrolling people in the process so that you can create a flow.
• Process: The process of marketing is to get engagement, not sales. It is to attract and engage the market so that they understand that we are serving their needs with a unique solution.
• Payoff: The result is that the traffic turns into prospects. They are qualified buyers who are ready to buy.

Sales

• Purpose: Sales is about converting. In today’s world, we need to be distinct so that we stand out, command higher prices and maintain attention.
• Process: Building trust through guarantees and warranties so instead of just having satisfied customers we have ecstatic customers.
• Payoff: It is to transform the relationship with your customers in a meaningful way because you have created value for them and in the process you generate sales.

Path

• Purpose: Create a strategic relationship so that you can design a journey that is meaningful and it is capable of amplifying the relationship to a higher level.
• Process: It is to expand what you offer. Two primary ways to do this is by providing ancillary services, and by bundling to increase the perceived value in the marketplace.
• Payoff: When you do this effectively, the payoff is cash. It fuels your growth, expansion and accretion.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy, where we teach you how to design a business and create a life: A life of financial freedom and peace of mind.

And welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show. In this episode, we’re going to talk a bit about, what I think is the life’s blood, the oxygen that keeps a business alive and that’s cash. And I’m going to introduce you to what I call, The Path to Cash Blueprint and it’s not what you think it is especially coming from an accountant like me because it’s not about budgeting, it’s not about cost cutting.

Yeah, those things matter but we’re not going to spend the time on that. We’re going to talk about something else and I want to introduce you to that right after this brief introduction.

And just like every episode of my show, this one comes with a tool, a template, a worksheet. This one actually comes with my Path to Cash Blueprint. If you want to download that go to MelAbraham.com/session039 and you’ll be able to download The Path to Cash Blueprint that you can use in your business.

And if you’re not at your computer, maybe you’re out; maybe you’re out running, maybe you’re at the gym. I know a lot of folks listen to me at the gym or they may be on a drive. And you’re not next to your computer, go ahead and just text. Text MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces to 38470. We’ll send you the download link. That way you can make sure that you get your tool also, so we can get that implemented and executed in your business.

So, right after this brief introduction, we’re going to come back here. We’re going to talk about your path to cash. Talk to you soon. Bye.

Hey there, welcome back. I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show. And in this episode we‘re going to talk about something that is, well as an accountant it’s near and dear to my heart, that is cash, cash flow; how do we get cash?

And I know that many, many entrepreneurs are … they feel challenged with this concept of How do I get Cash into the Business? What do we do? And the interesting thing is that a lot of times when we start to struggle cash-wise, now we, I’m going to be real clear about this in the sense that: I’m not saying that we don’t need to budget but when we are trying to deal with our cash flow in the business, many times we start to look at costs and we start to look at expenses, and we start to cut away and shave away at the expenses and hopes to get the cash flow up.

And I think that it’s important for us as business owners, as entrepreneurs to realize that there’s two sides, two pieces of this equation that affect cash. And at some point in the future, I will talk about the costs and the expenses and the budgets and all of those things that a lot of entrepreneurs just really don’t want to do because it’s not fun when you start looking at numbers and all that.

But there’s two parts to the equation:

1. The costs side. That’s the money going out the door to pay for things like salaries and raw materials and production costs and all rent and all those things. That’s the cost going out the door. So that’s one part of the equation.
2. The other part of the equation is the money coming in the door, the revenues, the sales that are coming in the door.

And the key here is this—is that we can never, one of the first things we need to do is generate sales in order to get cash flow. If we never generate sales it doesn’t matter what our expenses are. We’re never going to have cash flow.

And so, what I’d like to do in this episode is talk about what I call The Path to Cash Blueprint.

It is the process of how I see cash flow being generated. When you’re successful with it you create a machine. When you’re not, when you don’t get this whole thing right:

• You’ll find yourself struggling.
• You’ll find yourself approaching markets that may be aren’t viable.
• Markets that aren’t profitable.
• Markets that you can’t get sales in.

You’re hitting your head against the wall constantly and nothing is happening. Nothing is coming to fruition. And I think what we need to do is be more conscious and more intentional about how we do things and where we go with things.

And then, like I said, at a later day we’ll talk about the cost side of it and:

• How do we manage costs?
• How do we budget costs?
• How do project costs? and
• How do we cut costs?

But what I want to do is first come to the other side and let’s figure out this sales piece and in order to do that I want to introduce you to what I call my Path to Cash Blueprint.

And it’s really about, “How do I build a machine?” A machine that is creating sales; that are profitable sales on an ongoing basis that allow me to expand those sales and grow on a regular basis because if I can manage that sales number effectively. If I can manage that revenue, the inflows effectively—the cash flow out will get dialed in.

And so, what we’re really looking at is a couple of things here is:

• I want to understand the marketing piece of it which is, there’s three segments to it. So, I want to understand the marketing piece of it.
• I want to understand the sales piece of it, and
• I want to understand the path that I am creating for my customers and all of that.

Then, there’s another aspect of it and that is to understand:

• What’s the purpose of each of these elements?
• What’s the process we’re putting in place?
• And what’s the payoff when we get it right?

And so, let’s just start. I’m going to talk about the marketing piece and this is where it all begins, is what kind of marketing are you doing?

And the idea behind marketing:

• Is literally to create traffic.
• Is to create a flow.
• Is to create customer flow.

When I had the Karate school, if we didn’t have this constant foot traffic, if we didn’t have this constant flow, we would see a begin in decline in new student count. And so, we needed to figure out a way to create traffic which was really about how do I enroll people in the process not enroll people in the class yet because that’s a sales piece. But enroll people in getting their attention, getting their eyeballs on me and attract them to the solutions that I might have.

So, one of the questions that I have for you is this, is:

• Do you have a process to create flow?
• A process to create traffic?
• A process that creates people—

Coming to your website.
Coming to your store.
Coming to your organization.
Coming to your ads; any of that.

• Do you have one?
• Are you tracking it?
• Is it working?

If it’s not, then you can say you have one but if it’s not working then it’s not meaningful. So, we need to create one that works and we need to look at the traffic source and the flow in a way that, “How do I find that market, enroll them into it, attract them so I can get attention in the process?”

Now, what’s the process of marketing? And how I want you to think about it and shift your mindset around it is: The process of marketing is to get engagement. It’s not to get sales.

• It’s to get attraction.
• It’s to get engagement.

It’s to turn around and have someone raise their hands to open their eyes and say, “I see you and I think you can help me because it looks like you have the solution for my needs.”

And that’s what this is really about. Is that we want to understand that, we want our market to understand more readily that we are serving their needs with a solution that we will talk about is unique and distinct in the process.

So, the question is, “If I have the traffic source, am I engaging them? Am I serving them where they need to be and moving them beyond?” And if that’s the case you’ll see that there is results and those results is that they turn into prospects. They actually turn into someone that says, “You got my attention, I’m curious, I want to know more.” Okay?

We can go out to people and other marketplaces and try to find people those are suspects. I don’t want suspects unless I can convert them into prospects. I want prospects because prospects are qualified buyers that are ready to buy. And that’s the process of marketing is, “Let me get the traffic in. Let me create the engagement at a level that the prospects are qualified buyers that are ready to buy.”

• I don’t need tire kickers.
• I don’t need time wasters.
• I don’t need any of that.

I want qualified buyers that are ready to buy and the process of marketing should be focused on creating that.

And once we get those prospects in, we now then shift gears from marketing to sales. Now, marketing and sales are two different things. Sometimes they try to, people try to talk about them in the same context but they’re not. Marketing is about attention and engaging and qualifying and getting prospects. Sales is about converting.

So, the first piece is this, is about distinction. In order to get the sales, I believe,

• In today’s environment,
• In today’s economy,
• In today’s world,

In today’s connected world through the digital media and the variety and the plethora of choices—that’s a big word plethora—of choices that we have amongst us that we need to be distinct and if we’re not distinct we will not stand out and we’re not going to be able to command the higher price and we’re not going to keep their attention.

Remember, we got their engagement, we got them as a prospect; now we need to speak to them and convert them into sales, convert them into sales with distinction. And when I talk about distinction, it’s really about the conversion process and the experience you bring to them and that’s where distinction can come from, is that you create a customer experience that’s vastly different.

I’ll give you a for instance that just happened to me last night. I’ve got an upcoming event, it’s called Titan’s Thinktank of Thoughtpreneur Academy that I do where I’m … It’s a live event to work with people and packaging their intellectual property and creating intellectual property in a way that is valuable and teachable and commercially viable so we can sell what we know and also my mastermind, The Thinktank.

And I went to the venue, to a venue that I was evaluating to determine, “Should we do this event here?”

And I got to tell you, they didn’t know me from anyone. I showed up there for the most part unannounced. I called while I was driving, “Hey you know what?” It’s a Sunday night and I happen to be driving by, “Can I stop by and look at the venue and look at the room?”

And they said, “Sure come to the front desk. We’ll take care of you.”

And not only did they take care of me. They gave me so much attention and they were so curious about what I did. And they asked questions and they wanted to know, sincerely wanted to know, at a level that—I walked out of there and said, “This is a cool feeling. This is a cool place.” And it looks like that’s where we’re going to hold our event because of the fact that that’s the way they treated me.

They created a unique experience that was memorable. To me that was valuable and it’s an experience that I wanted to experience, want to experience again and I want my highest level clients in my Mastermind, my Thinktank and Thoughtpreneur. I want them to experience that care and that caring also. And so, they created an experience that’s going to convert into a sale form and to convert into a customer form.

And now once they’ve done that, what’s the process?

It’s really about building trust. It’s about building trust. It’s about limiting and reducing the risks of people doing business with you and primarily we do that by guarantees, warranties and living by our word because at that backend of this what I want, is I don’t want satisfied customers, it’s great to be satisfied. We had a meal that was satisfying.

Can you imagine, could you imagine, going home to your spouse and they cook, they just slave all day on dinner and they go, “How was it?” And you go, “Yeah I’m satisfied?” It would be, I would deserve a strangling and I would deserve it because she’s a phenomenal cook and she does some amazing, amazing things and I think I need to acknowledge that. So, what I want is not a satisfied customer. I want ecstasy. I want them to be ecstatic with the work they do.

And so, do you have a process in place through this sales process that creates a situation, experience for the customer that builds trust and makes them ecstatic that they did business with you and that they’re running and being willing to give you more money to do more business in the future? And if you don’t then,

• We need to create it.
• We need to redesign it.
• We need to re-do it.

If you’re not sure, we need to go out in the marketplace and ask. And ask,

How do they feel about it?
What could they have done differently?
What more could you have done?
What are they looking for?

Ask them. Ask them so you’re not guessing in the process because the payoff on that is that you transform that relationship.

You transform a relationship in a way that is meaningful because you’ve created value for them and in the process you create sales.

Which takes us to this next piece, the piece is, what’s the path?

– The longer term journey, the path for your customers, for your clients in the process.

And many times, we think of things transactionally which brings us to the next piece and that’s the path that you’re creating for your customer, for your client. And I mean that sincerely in the sense that we should be thinking about a journey, about a path for them. Not a single transaction. We don’t want transactional relationships in business. We want strategic relationships that walk down a path. And so, and the purpose behind this is to design a journey.

When someone comes to work with me, some people will come in because they literally, they just, they just happen to get a hold of my book. In fact, someone came in. They said that they saw it in a bookstore up in Half Moon Bay and bought it and they loved the book and now they’re coming to one of the events and so the question is, “What is the journey you’ve created for your customers? What’s the next logical step that they need to take to further their relationship with you?”

And give that to them. Because what it’s really about is saying, “Let me create a strategic journey”

That’s meaningful to them.
That will elevate what they just got from me to another level.
That will fulfil something that is a gap that maybe they haven’t filled yet.
That amplifies the relationship to another level.
The sales to another level.
The revenue to another level because it amplifies from a strategic standpoint.

You want to layer in what the next logical step is for your customers. So, it’s predetermined and you want to strategically present it in front of them.

And in fact, every transaction should carry with it some sort of, every interaction should carry with it the next step, the next … I don’t want to, I’m going to use a term but I don’t want it to come out in a negative way, but an Upsell.

What’s the next step to serve them?

If they need it, you want to be real sincere. If they don’t need it, they don’t need it. But create something that’s strategic that creates a journey for your customers and the process is really to expand what you can offer them. Expansion of what’s your breadth of services and breadth of products are.

And there’s two primary ways to do this. There’s a lot of other ways and I go deeper into them in some of the workshops and some of the trainings but by and large to look at things like, “Are there ancillary kinds of lines of business that might exist?”

And I know that some of us will look at things and say, “Just off one or two degrees right or left, there may be an additional line of business that I could bring into play that might make sense.”

Let’s just take the venue for instance. The venue is there to provide venue services. So, they’ve given us meeting space.

• But just off that is catering.
• Just off that is audio visual needs.

So there are ancillary services that just off of that is decorations or things of that nature, gifts and that type of thing.

So, what happens is that you go into get the, to get meeting room space and they say, “Hey by the way do you need AV needs. Because if you need AV needs we have this ability to do this for you and because of that we can serve you at a broader level.”

Which brings up the other piece of this which is bundling. So, in some cases they turn around and say, “Here’s what we can do for you. We’ll give you the meeting room space and we’re going to bundle it with an AV package to give you your microphones, your music, your projector, your screen.” And so, now we create bundled services in which what happens. And here’s why this is important. It’s to create things that have a low additional cost to provide but a high perceived value in the marketplace.

So, here’s what happens. Let me just give you some numbers. And I know I’m going to give you numbers but we’re talking about cash. So, let’s give you some numbers, so you understand this.

Is that may be my first product I sell for a 100 dollars and it costs me 50, no let’s, it costs me 70 dollars to provide it. So, I make 30 dollars on a 100 dollars, that’s 30 percent. But what happens if I can provide another product for another 100 dollars that is the next logical step. But in order to provide that second product it’s only cost me 20 dollars. So, it cost me 70 dollars for the first, 20 dollars for the second. That’s 90 dollars total but I made 200 dollars instead of 100 dollars which means that I made a 110 dollars on 200 dollars vs. 30 dollars on a 100. It’s a huge change. It exponentially shifts your income.

So, we got to start thinking. So, if you look at your business ask yourself,

Are there ancillary things that I can provide one to two degrees right or left from what I already provide?
Or is there a way to create low cost bundles with high perceived value in the marketplace?
Can I bundle some things together that bundle the next logical step for your client to go through?

When you do this effectively what it translates into is cash.

And the key behind this is cash is what fuels your growth and when we’re focused on expansion, it’s called, there’s a term called, “Accretion” which means that there’s a layering of cash at a higher and higher level. Meaning that, that’s why we were able to get, instead of 30 dollars in profit after we pay a cost, a 110 dollars. And so, we want to make sure that we have a growing cash.

Now, I get it. I said this is the Path to Cash Blueprint but when but we didn’t spend a lot of time talking about cash. We did. We just didn’t talk about dollar bills or the euros or whatever currency you’re in. What we talked about is:

• What creates it?
• What generates it?
• What makes the difference?
• How do we get it?

Because if I can swim upstream and manage that process upstream. Some of you that out there have been through my training, you understand what prime indicators are. When I can swim upstream, if I can manage the traffic effectively, create engagement effectively which makes sure that I have buyer-ready prospects; created an experience for them

• That converts them into the sales process.
• That builds ecstatic customers with trust.
• That gives them a transformative relationship of value.
• And then give them a strategic journey along the path.

> Your cash isn’t going to be a problem.

The challenge is what we focus on, and this is again coming from an accountant, what we focus on when we start to have cash flow problems is we focus on the bank account. The bank account is just the bucket you put the cash in. What we need to focus on is the machine that generates the cash and the machine that generates the cash is your sales machine. It’s the marketing and sales function that generates the cash. And let’s get that dialed in.

And in, like I said, in a future episode we’ll talk about dialing down the cost because we don’t want to just flippantly spend money. We want to be cost-efficient, cost-effective; dialing down the costs in a way that makes sense. But I want to make sure that you’ve got the most optimal, well-run, well-oiled cash making, cash generating machine which starts with this piece.

• What’s your Marketing: traffic, engagement prospects?
• What’s your Sales: distinction, trust, and value?
• And what’s the Path you’ve created: with a strategy, creating expansion and creating cash?

That’s the key.

I hope you found this of value. I hope you look at your business and I invite you to look at your business and look at your life and say,

Where can I improve?
Do I have all of these things in place functionally at a level that is really converting?

And if not, this is where we need to spend our time. We need to investigate it further, we need to tweak it, we need to test it and build it at a level because trust me, when you get this right; man, the floodgates open.

• You don’t have cash flow issues.
• You’re not thinking about cash flow.
• Now, we’re thinking about, “What do we do for the next step, the next stage?”
• And now we manage the cost structure in the process.

So, I hope you found this of value to you. And again, you can download the Path to Cash Blueprint by going to MelAbraham.com/session039. And again, if you’re not at your computer where you can download it immediately, just go ahead and text MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces to 38470. I’ll make sure that we send you the link to the download page so you can download the Cash Blueprint and move from there.

And if you haven’t done so already do me a favor, Subscribe. Stay with me on this. Stay with me on this journey. I’ve got all kinds of things that I want to give to you, I want to help you with because I really believe that the entrepreneur’s journey is the way of the future. We’re creating these entrepreneurial economies and these micro-economies as I call them of places where we can have life on our own terms, where we can take control and do things in a way and I want to make sure that you have the proper tools, the proper skills, the proper strategies and the proper guidance to make that happen at the fastest level possible. So, make sure that you subscribe.

And if you have a friend that you think that this would be of value to, go ahead and share it with a friend. Let’s bring them on board this train also. Let’s get this information out there in a big way. Let’s make a difference, go out there and build something that’s impactful and profitable and that makes a difference and builds your legacy.

And until we get a chance to see each other in the next episode,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Bye!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel

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