Okay, so we've established that margin creates patience.
Now let me show you what happens when you lose patience.
Because this is where good founders … smart, hardworking people … quietly break their own businesses.
Here's the pattern …
Cash gets tight. Not catastrophic. Just... tight.
So you do something that feels responsible … You look for quick wins.
Maybe you run a flash sale to hit the month.
Maybe you push a bundle to boost AOV.
Maybe you add urgency copy to your emails.
Maybe you test a new offer to "capture more of the market."
And here's the thing … It works.
Revenue bumps. You feel relief. Crisis averted.
So you do it again next month.
And again.
And slowly … so slowly you don't notice … you've trained your business to need pressure to function.
Your customers start waiting for discounts.
Your email list stops responding unless there's urgency.
Your acquisition starts attracting deal-seekers instead of believers.
Your retention softens because people aren't buying for the right reasons anymore.
None of this shows up in your dashboards immediately. It shows up later … in refunds, in support tickets, in churn, in the feeling that you're working harder but not getting ahead.
I see this all the time with brands between $2M and $10M.
They're not failing. They're just ... stuck.
Revenue is there, but it feels fragile. Growth is happening, but it doesn't feel sustainable.
And when you dig into it, here's what you find …
The business is aligned, but it's under-yielding.
Meaning: The Flywheel is working. Customers like the product. The fundamentals are solid.
But the system isn't creating enough surplus per customer to give the founder breathing room.
So they compensate with pressure. And pressure creates short-term results but long-term fragility.
Tomorrow I'm going to show you what this looked like for one brand … and how they fixed it without changing their product, their pricing, or their ad strategy.
Because the fix isn't what most people think.
See you tomorrow,
Jeremiah
P.S. If you're reading this and thinking "I feel personally attacked" … good. That means you're paying attention. The fix starts with seeing the pattern clearly.
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There was no review queue, no editorial process, no post-facto revisions. I just wrote it and sent it … therefore, I can pretty much guarantee some sort of typo or grammatical error that would make all my past english teachers cringe.
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