76% of your clients vanish in a day. Your team is looking at you through a Zoom screen for reassurance. You can do the maths and you know the runway is short, but you still have to lead. That’s where we start Episode 1 of The Climb, as Cherie tells the raw story of The Digital Picnic’s darkest stretch through COVID and beyond, and why it became the “no good, very bad year” that actually lasted years.
We talk cashflow shocks, founder stress, and what it’s like to carry a pandemic in 30 different ways for a team that’s lonely, burnt out, and stretched thin. Cherie owns the leadership mistakes too: people pleasing, avoiding hard conversations, a feedback culture that turns explosive, and the slow erosion of accountability that quietly poisons company culture.
Then the numbers get real. We unpack delayed financial advice, the e-learning boom, the half-million-dollar course built from a walk-in wardrobe, and the money mindset decisions that stopped that win from becoming true stability. By 2022, Cherie is half a million dollars down, tries to close the business, realises she can’t even afford to shut it, and attempts a sale that falls apart. The turning point is brutal and empowering: nobody is coming to save you.
If you’re a founder, leader, or marketer building a business, this is a clear-eyed look at resilience, financial management, accountability, and the cost of delaying tough decisions.
This episode was proudly sponsored by Mel Browne Money.
Key Takeaways:
- Founder honesty matters, but so does financial transparency
- People-pleasing leadership can damage business culture
- Poor financial visibility makes bad decisions worse
- Revenue growth does not fix broken operations
- Founder burnout is a business risk, not a personal weakness
- Delaying hard decisions usually makes the outcome worse
- Nobody is coming to save your business
- Values still matter, even in the worst seasons
Hosted by Cherie Clonan [@cherie_thedigitalpicnic] and co-hosted and produced by Steph Clifford [@stephssocials]
Follow us on Instagram @theclimbpod_
Check out our agency @thedigitalpicnic > we teach digital marketing, and we can manage yours, too.
