On Recovering From A 93% Revenue Loss Due To COVID

Bill Flynn

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Published: March 24th, 2022

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Bill Flynn

Founder, Catalyst Growth Advisors

$20K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Catalyst Growth A...

catalystgrowthadvisors.com

from Concord, MA, USA

started April 2016

$20,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools Bill recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Bill recommends to grow your business!

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Want more updates on Catalyst Growth Advisors? Check out these stories:

1. How I Generate $32K/Month As A Business Coach (2020) ➜

This is a follow up story for Catalyst Growth Advisors. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

Hi! My name is Bill Flynn. I am a multi-decade, serial entrepreneur and decided recently to work for myself as a business coach. Before that, I was part of the leadership team of ten different startups in the Boston area.

I started Catalyst Growth Advisors to help business owners take the guesswork out of growth and create their future. I do this by helping leaders fire themselves from the day-to-day so they have more time to predict and plan the future.

My business revenue has doubled every year since I started (until COVID, it was poised to double again in 2020), I speak internationally and have written a book - Further, Faster - The Vital Few Steps that Take the Guesswork out of Growth and co-authored a soon to be released a second book about constraints.

on-recovering-from-a-93-revenue-loss-due-to-covid

Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?

I lost 93% of my monthly income for three months starting in March 2020. I ended the year revenue neutral from the previous year. It was a good year all things considered. My business has begun to grow again but slowly. My book sales have been ahead of expectations. I have joined a fantastic coaching organization run by Marshall Goldsmith, a world-class executive coach. Many of my peers on MG100 are well-known authors, athletes, coaches, and speakers. The association can only help me to be a better coach and person.

Also, I have done almost one hundred podcast interviews since my last article here.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

My biggest lesson has been to diversify my revenue streams in a bigger way. I am looking to add more speaking revenue to my portfolio and I am looking for ways to start cohort roundtables to reach more people and increase my revenue.

Another great lesson that was reinforced is one I share with anyone who will listen - there is another economic crisis headed our way. One happens every 6-8 years. This century, we have already had 9/11, 2008, and COVID. Make sure your business is financially and operationally prepared. Have enough working capital to ride out an extended dry spell. Identify all the income and cash resources available to you. It will happen again and sooner than you think!

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

My goal is to reach $1,000,000 in revenue by the end of 2023. I have identified several paths to get there.

Strategy is not a plan. Strategy is the thinking of value, differentiation, and defensible combinations that greatly influence the plan.

I am currently working on all of them to explore which are the most viable and desirable. I would like to work with clients no more than 100 days/year. This will give me time to speak, travel, and volunteer my time to worthy causes. I will also get to spend more time with my daughter as she graduates from college and begins exploring her career aspirations.

Have you read any good books in the last year?

I have curated, categorized, and prioritized a list of almost one hundred books along with podcasts I enjoy. You can find them here.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

Most businesses fail (50% w/in 5 years and 75% w/in 15 acc. to the Bureau of Labor Statistics), many struggle, and few thrive. In working and speaking with hundreds of CEOs and companies around the world, I have found the following, for the most part:

We do change wrong – We implement first, then sell for engagement and completion.
We do vision wrong – Vision is less about a sentence and more about a painting.
We do people wrong – We are all a little crazy! We are highly emotional, irrational, impulsive beings. Leaders who do not understand this are at risk.
We do teams wrong - Teams do most of the work. Leading teams, and teams of teams, is a skill we rarely teach.
We do feedback wrong – “Feedback is often me talking about me in the presence of you.” Ashley Goodall
We do innovation wrong – It is not about the number of ideas generated but of detecting anomalies – invaluable weak signals identified before they are commonplace.
We do strategy wrong – Strategy is not a plan. Strategy is the thinking of value, differentiation, and defensible combinations that greatly influence the plan.
We do hiring wrong – The unstructured interview – rife with unconscious bias - is the worst method to consistently generate a successful hire.
We do decision-making wrong – The type of decision we are making is as important as the framework we use to make it. If we use a framework at all.
We do meetings wrong – Meetings, for the most part, devolve into status updates versus execution adjustment, decision processes.

Why does this happen:

There is a meaningful gap between what science knows and what business does. For example, a core customer is worth about 16X more than an ordinary customer.
Few things truly matter, but those that do matter tremendously. Spend more time here.
Leaders rely too much on effort, luck, timing, and force of will to achieve “success”. These do not scale profitably.
Tiny errors compound - The weight of these errors eventually slows or slays the business.

Catalyst Growth Advisors helps leaders take the guesswork out of growth by getting them to fire themselves from the day to day to focus more time on confidently predicting the future by realizing and focusing on the following:

Why performance is a team sport - The attracting, hiring, and training of highly motivated and skilled people, and placing them in the right jobs and on the right teams.
How to run your business as a coherent system – A business is an interdependent system made up of multiple subsystems and components.
How and why cash rules - Cash IS the primary financial growth metric.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

I have hired and unfortunately fired dozens of people over thirty years. I do not want my business to grow to be larger than something I can handle on my own.

Where can we go to learn more?

If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!