The 3 Reasons Your Business Isn't Making More Money

Hey, it's Coach Will,

Last week, 3,368 of you opened the first issue of THE FIX. Two people left. The rest of you stayed.

That tells me you know something's off in your business. You just haven't been able to name it yet.

This week I'm naming it.

🔥 THE PROBLEM: The same 3 problems are killing 90% of the businesses I've worked with in 50 years.

💊 THE FIX: Which one is bleeding YOU — and the one move to stop it.

🎯 WHY IT MATTERS: These three have an order. Skip one, and the rest falls apart.

⚡ THE ACCELERATOR: A prompt that diagnoses which one is costing you the most right now.

📆 NEXT WEEK: I pointed The FIX Playbook at my own business. I'll show you what it found.

Fair warning: if you've got a plan you're proud of, a sales process that hums, and clients who send you Christmas cards — this one's not for you. For the other 90%... pull up a chair.

I've been building, buying, and fixing businesses for over 50 years.

After all of it, I can tell you this: 90% of the businesses I've seen struggle have the exact same three problems. Not cash flow. Not marketing. Not "the economy." Three things. Every time.

➡️ They don't have a plan to make money.

Not a strategy deck. Not a mission statement; somebody paid a consultant $10,000 to write it, and nobody read past page three.

A real plan that answers: what am I selling, to whom, at what price, and how many do I need this month?

Most owners can't answer those questions. They've got a vague sense that if they keep working hard, the money will figure itself out. It won't. In 50 years, I've never seen money figure itself out.

Money doesn't have a plan either — it goes where someone tells it to go.

➡️ They don't know how to sell.

Not sleazy selling. Selling as in: clearly communicating the value of what you do to someone who needs it, and asking them to pay you for it.

Most owners would rather reorganize their entire filing system than make that phone call. I know this because I've done it. Twice. The filing system looked fantastic. The bank account did not.

➡️ They don't build real relationships with their clients.

They get the client. Do the work. Move to the next one. Nobody follows up. Nobody checks in three months later. Nobody asks "what else do you need?"

That's like leaving your house every morning to look for a new family. The one you've got is sitting at the breakfast table, wondering where you went.

Like it’s some big secret (and maybe it is), here's the thing nobody tells you about these three problems.

They have an order.

✅ You can't sell if you don't have a plan. You don't know what you're selling, who you're selling it to, or why they should care. Every pitch feels like guessing because it is.

✅ You can't keep clients if you don't know how to sell. Because if you're not clear on what value you're delivering, neither is the client. They'll leave — not because you did bad work, but because they never understood what they were paying for.

✅ And you can't grow if you can't keep clients. Because you're on a treadmill — replacing every client you lose with a new one, never building momentum, never compounding.

🔥 Plan → Sell → Keep. In that order.

That's not theory. That's 50 years of watching businesses live and die by these three things.

The owners who figure this out — with guts, grit, focus, and discipline — eventually make money. Good money. The kind that compounds year over year because the foundation is solid.

The owners who skip straight to tactics — "Should I raise prices? Should I run ads? Should I use AI?" — keep spinning. Because they're optimizing a machine without an engine.

I've watched smart people spend three years fine-tuning a business that was broken at the foundation.

It's like waxing a car with no motor. Looks great in the driveway. Doesn't go anywhere.

Which of these three is broken in your business right now?

You already know. You've known for a while.

I'm not giving you three things to fix this week. That's how people stay stuck — trying to fix everything and ending up with nothing.

Pick one. Just one. The one that hit hardest.

If it's the plan: 30 minutes. Blank doc. Four questions: What am I selling? Who's it for? What do they pay? How many do I need this month? That's a money plan. It's more than most owners have.

If it's selling: Reach out to one person who needs what you do this week. Don't pitch. Ask what their biggest problem is. Listen. That's where selling starts.

If it's keeping clients, find the client you haven't talked to in 90+ days. Call them. Not email — call. "How's everything going? What else do you need?"

One move. This week.

Try this. Right now. Be honest with it, takes 3 minutes:

(Use Claude? Copy the prompt above.)

This is what The FIX Playbook does automatically — diagnoses your Plan, your Sell, and your Keep in 5 minutes. AI-powered. Built on the same questions I've been asking for 50 years. Your business. Your blind spots. One clear answer.

I took The FIX Playbook and pointed it at my own business. Same 10 questions. Same brutal honesty I'm asking from you.

It found things I'd been avoiding.

Next week, I'm sharing what it surfaced. Run yours before then. We'll compare notes.

Which one hit you?

🟢 The Plan — I know what I'm selling and exactly how the money comes in.

🟡 The Sell — I'm good at what I do, but I hate the selling part.

🔴 The Keep — I get clients, but I don't keep them long enough.

Hit reply. One color. One sentence. I read everyone.

And if you want to tell me which one you've been avoiding the longest, I'll take it apart in a future issue.

Think Bigger • Play Smarter • Win More!

— Will

P.S. Know a business builder who's bleeding profit and doesn't know it? Forward this email. They can grab a copy of THE FIX here. Free. Uncomfortable truths included at no extra charge.