Improve Your Cash Flow without any Loans

Josh Haley.m4a Hi everybody, today I'm going to be sharing with you something that maybe not so sexy but is actually going to be a fundamental shift in your business, allowing you to be able to continue to grow and scale your e-commerce business. Today, I'm going to be talking about how you can grow your cash flow in your business and increase it, so that you can launch more products, stay more profitable, and be able to afford things without taking on additional loans. As a secret tip, I'm going to be also showing you how you can take up to 90 days to pay your Amazon ad charges; it's all about that cash conversion cycle, and I'm going to be sharing With you some tips today, all right! So first of all, who am I? First of all, I am a father of four, husband to a beautiful wife-that is my pride and joy. I'm also an eight-figure brand owner myself, actively selling on Amazon, and our goal is to get to a nine-figure business. And then last but not least, I am also the host of the Econ Breakthrough Podcast. This podcast is meant for seven-figure sellers that are looking to scale to eight figures and beyond. Every week, I share three actionable strategies that you can implement in your business today to help you scale to that next level. So, step number one: we want to improve our cash flow and We want to do this first with our ads, okay? So if that's what we want to do, step number one you're going to go to Amazon Advertising in that console, okay? And then you're going to open up a support ticket with Amazon Advertising and you're going to send them this exact copy-and-paste message that you see here so go ahead take a screenshot whatever you need to do but it's very basic, okay? Essentially what you're asking them to do is instead of charging your credit card every $500 in ad spend what you need to do is come over here and ask them to increase it and from what I have gathered $10, 0. 00 seems to be the maximum amount that they will wait to charge you until you've accumulated $10, 000 and in spend then they'll charge your credit card and this is why it becomes so important, okay. So secondly, let's talk about this: if you're not paying with your ad spend with credit cards, that's a massive mistake in your business. Because if you're allowing Amazon to simply deduct it from your Amazon payouts, number one, you're losing out on credit card reward points, that is important, but I think the most important aspect of that is that you're not paying for your credit card-you're not paying for this-and this is your cash flow. It's immediately leaving the business, you haven't received any funds from Amazon, and yet they've already walked away with all of your capital, which makes it extremely challenging to be able to launch and grow new products. So make sure you're paying it with credit cards, alright? Next step number three is: you want to open up multiple credit card accounts, okay? Now start with one, and then just start layering in this strategy. So those that are more experienced-if you are, if you're already have multiple credit cards-like this is how you take things to the next level. So open up multiple credit card accounts and ideally what you're going to want to do is open them on different Like weeks okay, so when you register or sign up for one credit card do so on like the second day of the month, okay? Next time you go sign up for another credit card do it seven days later than the time you signed it up so for example I sign up on February 2nd, the next credit card that I want to sign up for I'm I should wait until March 9th, okay? Because it's seven days later. And the reason why is because you want to have your credit card start dates for those statement periods. You want them to be staggered because this is where the magic comes into play. All right, now, if you're an American Express (Amex) customer, one of the things that you can do is go to their support feature and they can change your billing start dates and end dates. So again, if you're Amex, you don't need to go through all the hoops of like, oh, I need to sign up on this day next month, do it on this other date. Don't worry about that. Reach out to one of your Amazon or your Amex support reps and ask them to change that for you. All right, so essentially what you're trying to do is open the cards on different days. And ideally, there's a couple different cards that I would recommend that you use. So they are all in the Amex family. But if you have an American Express Gold card, it's going to give you four Amex cards. Four X, the ad spend. So if you spend $10,000 in Amazon advertising, they're going to give you 40,000 reward points on your Amex account. Pretty, pretty awesome. And it's for the first $150,000 that you spend in that calendar year. Now, here's the magic of where, let's say maybe the reward points is not something that you're interested in or value as much, but you value cash flow and being able to keep more cash in your bank account. Well, that's where you're going to use the Amex Plum Card. And the Amex Plum Card gives you 60 days after the statement date closes in order to pay off that credit card statement by its due date, okay? So no extra interest, it's free money, right? You're able to extend your payment term. So that's step number three. Now, step number four is you need to document what are the start dates and the end dates for my statement periods for all of my credit cards, okay? So once you've done that, then the goal is this. You want to process, you only want to process charges on each credit card during the first five days of each statement period. And here's the reason why you want to do that. So if you take a look at this on the board, it shows you like, hey, your statement period's gonna last you for 30 days. So if my statement period starts on, let's say it's January 1st, my statement close date is gonna be January 30th. Okay? So what I want to do, the only charges that go onto that credit card are only charged on January 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th. After that, we make sure that we never process another charge on that credit card. And the reason why is because guess what? All of those charges that were charged during the first, second, third, and fourth, and fifth of the month, that statement end date doesn't occur until January 30th. Then guess what? If it's a normal American Express (Amex), Gold, or Green card, after the statement end date, you have another 25 days in order to pay off that credit card, okay? Without any interest, without any penalties, no effect on your credit score or anything, like you're just paying it by its due date. So all of a sudden I've taken these charges and I've extended my payback period for all these charges. Like cash doesn't leave my bank account for 55 to 60 days. That's the magic behind it, okay? Now, Amex Plum Card will boost it up. Instead of talking about this 55 to 60 day payback period, now we're talking about a 90 day payback period because Amex, the feature of the Amex Plum Card, you don't get the rewards, but you get 60 days after the statement date closes in order to pay back or pay off that credit card statement. So that's the magic. That's how you get to a total of 90 days. All right, now here is the strategy that we're using. So ultimately what you want to do, have all of your Amex cards or all your credit cards, really, listed out here, okay? And then you can see we have each of the statement start dates and the end dates for all of these. So now they're documented. So what my executive assistant will do is every week she'll come in because again, the only person that can change the credit card is the master account holder, unfortunately. Like that's, they don't have user permission. They don't have permission to change credit cards for anybody else right now. So my EA will email me and be like, 'hey, by the way, it's time to start using this credit card.' So let's imagine, let's say you have 10 different credit cards, okay? If you have 10 different credit cards, then I would make sure that all those statement dates like are staggered and they start, like if you have 10 over the course of 30 days, you want them starting every three or four days, okay? So guess what happens? Now I'm only billing that credit card during the first three days of its statement period. Again, it just starts to extend payment terms. And some of you may be like, well, aren't you just kicking the can down the road? Yes, I'm perpetually kicking the can down the road. And guess why that's so important? Because when I launch products, we all know we have to invest heavily into PPC upfront. But if I don't have to pay those credit card or those ad charges for 90 days, guess what? My product's probably already starting to rank organically and it's starting to be profitable. And I'm getting money into my bank account before I've ever even had to pay for those ad charges. So that's how we continue to launch products without having to take on additional loans. Here's a list of those credit cards that we use. The Amex Gold Card gives you 4X on your ad spend for the first $150,000 per year. Amex Plum Card for an extra 60 days of payback period. Chase Business Preferred, this gives you 3X the ad spend on your first $150,000. You got Chase Business Premier, 2. 5% back on any charges that are over $5,000. So that's why, again, you wanna reach out to Amazon support. Make sure you get a higher billing threshold so that you could use credit cards like this. And now, instead of getting the normal 2% back, I get 2.5% back. Capital One Spark Card, City Executive World, because I'm in Dallas and I fly on American Airlines. All right, now here's the other secret tip that I leave with you to noodle on a little bit more. But do this exact same strategy, but with all your supplier invoices. So how does this work? You work with your manufacturer, and what you're going to do is, instead of paying them a wire deposit, what you're going to do is you're gonna pay them, and they don't even know it's gonna be different, but use Melio, that's what we're using, okay? You get to pay that invoice, so if I have a $30,000 invoice, for my manufacturer, I will get charged a 2%. 9% fee to use Melio and my credit card, but if I charge that at the beginning of my statement period, okay, I'm going to get 2. 5% back on my, because I'll use one of my Chase credit cards. So I'm getting 2. 5% back, so really, like, the wash is a 0. 4% difference. Like, that, I'm considering it my fee to extend my payment terms, okay? So all of a sudden, manufacturer is going to get an ACH, a wire transfer, normally, and that's gonna be sent through Melio. Like, they don't know the difference, but for me, I've used my credit card, and the real magic is, like, if I bill that on the statement start date, I've now changed my net payment terms to that supplier, net 60, without me having to even negotiate with that manufacturer. So, guess what happens if you actually have good payment terms with your manufacturer? What if you have net 90 terms? If you have a strategy on top of that, you've got net 150-day payment terms. You wonder how the bigger brands are able to launch products quickly? It's because they don't have a cash flow issue, and it's because they're using strategies like this. They have really good supplier payment terms, and what that does is, like, you make money and profit on those product launches before you've even spent the money. Before it leaves your bank account, you've already profited from all those product sales. Imagine how that changes your business. So that's my secret tip for you guys. If you want to learn more strategies like this that can truly, like, revolutionize your business and help you scale to eight figures and beyond, follow my podcast, Ecom Breakthrough. It's ECOM with two Ms, and every week I share strategies just like this.