VOL 4 - BUILD TO BREAKTHROUGH by Lawrence M. Schneider

Reinventing Your Business Model Before It FailsSales are climbing. Customers are multiplying. The business looks stronger from the outside.
 
So why is the bank balance lower than it was last month?
 
You may be profitable on paper and still feel one payroll, one delayed customer payment, or one unexpected expense away from real trouble. You check the account more often, 
push harder for sales, delay purchases, chase receivables, and wonder how a growing company can keep running out of cash.
 
That contradiction is the warning.
 
Build to Breakthrough examines the Financial Constraint that appears when revenue, growth, and ambition move on a different schedule than the cash required to support them. The 
problem may not be that the business is failing to earn. It may be that money is arriving too late, leaving too quickly, or being committed before the underlying economics have been 
proven.
 
Lawrence M. Schneider explores seven recognizable faces of this constraint:
 
Revenue Without Cash — sales are recorded long before customers actually pay.
Cost Structure Creep — products, features, services, and overhead quietly outgrow the value they produce.
No Forward Visibility — the bank balance tells you what already happened, not what is about to.
Premature Scaling — more ads, employees, equipment, locations, or infrastructure are added before the model has earned them.
Acquisition Without Economics — customer count rises while the cost of winning each customer exceeds what the relationship can return.