Revenue is not cash. Growing fast enough will teach you that the hard way.

Doubling revenue three years in a row is the kind of number that gets celebrated in board meetings and mentioned in every investor update. Everyone is watching the top line. Almost nobody is watching the cash.

Not all growth is created equal. In businesses where cash lags revenue, scaling up means funding the gap. The faster you grow, the wider that gap becomes. Astute leaders are aware of this and limit growth to avoid growing into bankruptcy. The danger is that strong revenue growth is the perfect distraction: it signals health while the cash balance quietly erodes beneath it.

Their work was billed on net-90 terms, meaning cash came in three months after delivery. Less than ideal terms aside, the margins were great and the P&L showed stable and profitable growth. But they weren't stable, they were adding headcount every quarter to service new contracts, and payroll doesn't wait on your collections cycle.

So they tapped the revolver, made payroll, waited for cash to come in, paid it down, and repeated the cycle. For a while, it worked. Then it didn't. By the time we were engaged, the revolver had stopped being a bridge and become a lifeline.