Balance Sheets, Balance Waves

Field Notes

The June rate cut felt like a clean shoulder-high swell, but the ECB’s own data says banks still tightened credit standards for firms in Q1 2025. A net 3% of lenders kept the leash short, and SME loan demand slipped again. Translation: cheaper policy rates don’t mean easier money. If you want capital this summer you’ll need to show that your balance sheet has more glide than drag.

Signals worth tracking

• Loan demand from SMEs fell (net −3%) even before the latest cut, because founders delayed capex and hoarded liquidity.
• Banking supervisors are warning about a rise in unsecured consumer and SME arrears if founders confuse a headline rate with actual bank appetite.
• Credit committees now expect founders to prove how each euro of debt props up marketing, operations and innovation in a balanced ratio.

Marketing Pulse

Work from the wins you’ve already paid for. Turn one high-performing landing page into three short-form riffs and push them through channels where organic still has reach. The Personal Business Trainer (PBT) should tag every story with the cash it burned and the cash it brought back. When your media mix shows a positive cash loop, you walk into a loan meeting with proof that marketing isn’t a bonfire.

Operations Flow

Build a liquidity board that updates nightly: runway, receivables ageing, burn per sprint, automation savings, tax cushion. Feed those five numbers into the PBT so it can ping you before a variance becomes panic. Then, hold a 30-minute “cash sparring” call each week with whoever signs or chases invoices. Show lenders, suppliers and teammates that somebody is steering the tide charts in real time.

Innovation Muscle

Protect two micro R&D sprints every month. Use the trainer to stack old user interviews, scraps from Dawn-Patrol essays and loose audio notes into a brief so experimentation feels lightweight, not indulgent. When you pitch a bank on new capital, you want to show that innovation hours are scheduled, budgeted and measured against specific market signals.

Experiments for this week

1. Upload your last three invoices into the trainer, tag the blockers, and script one automation or template per blocker. Send the before/after latency chart to your lender.
2. Recut a past live session into a 90-second “why we deserve capital” story and close it with a simple CTA: join Dawn Patrol or book a working session. Log the CAC delta.
3. Run a “cash x creativity” retro: list every experiment from the last quarter, the spend attached, and the measurable learning. Archive it inside the trainer so you can forward it during due diligence.