SMB FinanceOS
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ACCOUNTING DOESN’T START WITH BOOKKEEPING. IT STARTS WITH STRATEGY.
ACCOUNTING DOESN’T START WITH BOOKKEEPING. IT STARTS WITH STRATEGY. read it on smbfinanceos.com Tuesday night I went to an event and ended up in one of those “so what do you do?” conversations. I told them I’m a fractional CFO. You could see it on their face. They’d been burned before. So I asked what happened. They were part of a family office. One of their companies was growing fast, and they brought in a fractional CFO through an outside firm because they wanted strategic help. What they...
RULES AS TOOLS: FUNDED GROWTH (WITHOUT THE CHAOS)
RULES AS TOOLS: FUNDED GROWTH (WITHOUT THE CHAOS) read on smbfinanceos.com Growth is great, until it creates a cash crunch, forces bad borrowing, or overwhelms your team. That is what this last part of the Rules as Tools series is about. Because the moment you step on the growth lever, the business starts asking you for money faster than it hands you money. A business owner I recently spoke to had about $1M sitting in accounts receivable. On paper, they were fine. But their line of credit was...
RULES AS TOOLS: PAY YOURSELF + PREVENT REGRET
RULES AS TOOLS: PAY YOURSELF + PREVENT REGRET read on smbfinanceos.com One of the most common things I hear from business owners is, “My business is doing great but it doesn’t feel like it.” Does this feel familiar? The business is “working,” but the owner’s life isn’t improving. The P&L looks fine, but cash feels tight, so payouts feel unsafe. The team keeps saying “we need this,” and a year later you’re carrying a cost structure you never consciously chose. If you’ve ever felt like you’re...
RULES AS TOOLS: MONEY RULES FOR BUSINESS OWNERS
RULES AS TOOLS: MONEY RULES FOR BUSINESS OWNERS read on smbfinanceos.com A few years back, Ramit Sethi popularized the idea with simple rules that remove decision fatigue and keep you aligned with what you actually value (his phrase: build your “Rich Life”). Here’s his current list: 10 Money Rules. Before Ramit, one of the most widely adopted personal finance frameworks was Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps, which was a simple sequence that tells you what to do first, second, and third so you stop...
GROWTH REQUIRES SUBTRACTION: THE ANTI-COMPLEXITY RITUAL
GROWTH REQUIRES SUBTRACTION: THE ANTI-COMPLEXITY RITUAL Read it on the website Over the last two weeks we’ve talked about complexity in two ways: Complexity is the silent killer (it feels like growth, turns into weight) Complexity creates a tax (profit and cash quietly disappear through errors and slow decisions) So now the real question is: what do you do about it? Most owners try to solve complexity with motivation. More discipline, more accountability, and better (more frequent)...
THE COMPLEXITY TAX (WHERE PROFIT AND CASH QUIETLY DISAPPEAR)
You ever have a month where the team is slammed, revenue looks fine, and you still feel like margin disappeared? Not because you got lazy. Because the business has gotten heavier. A little more custom work.A few more exceptions.One more tool.One more “we’ll just handle it.” That wear and tear shows up in two places fast: gross margin and cash. Now, here’s what’s inside this week’s newsletter: THE QUICK HIT: A simple gross margin definition you can use. DEEP DIVE: The Complexity Tax (where...
WHAT HOME DEPOT TAUGHT ME ABOUT CLEAN FINANCIAL DATA
WHAT HOME DEPOT TAUGHT ME ABOUT CLEAN FINANCIAL DATA read on the website A few weeks ago I reunited with a long-lost friend: Home Depot. For years before we had kids, we were always working on a project. I worked on some flip houses, renovated my own house from scratch, and we became very familiar with each other. When I walked back into the store a few weeks back, it was a different type of task: building a sandbox for my children. I gathered the wood. I grabbed the landscape fabric. I...
GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT A SYSTEM
So we missed the newsletter last week… I was on a trip dealing with family sickness, and had an article queued up, and managed to not schedule it. I didn’t realize this till Friday, and at that point figured, well, guess we’ll just talk to everyone next week. So here we are. Sickness is gone, and we’re getting back in the groove. Here’s what’s inside: DEEP DIVE: GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT A SYSTEM CFO CORNER: BSCAI CONFERENCE RECAP + CASE STUDY (AND THE QUIZ) WATCH OR LISTEN: LESSONS LEARNED FROM...
THE 3 FUNDAMENTALS THAT KEEP A BUSINESS ALIVE
You can do a hundred things right, but if you miss the few fundamentals, the business still dies. And the opposite is also true: if you do the fundamentals right, you can have duct tape and zip ties on the rest for a while and still be okay. I released a podcast this week where I discussed this with my business partner, Travis. We talked about our experience as advisors and how interesting it is to see “live.” It’s easy for us to get into a business and judge what they’re doing, but the...
WHEN THE PLAN BREAKS: PAIN, INJURY, AND THE NUMBERS THAT KEEP YOU GROUNDED
This week we're going to just have an article from me, as I reflect on a recent accomplishment. We tie it to business, so you'll get the same stuff you're used to. But before we do that, I want to remind you: May 18-22, we're running my workshop again, 5 Days to Financial Clarity. I'm not sure I've done the best job selling this, as we changed it earlier this year and the feedback sense has been the best we've ever gotten. Why the change? I changed it because while the last version did a good...
Get smarter about business finance in 5 minutes a week. Join 35k+ business owners and leaders learning financial statements and growing their business, for free.