Category: Financial Analysis
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Pulling Levers
Turning 1 into 2 “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world” — Archimedes Leverage can be beautiful (just ask your banker), but what is it? Getting “leverage” means creating a multiplier effect in your business. It’s exponential, not linear. It literally turns 1+1 into 3…
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The Intersection of Sales & Profit (FINAL PART)
Sales & Profit Today, we’re wrapping up a 4-part series on sales & marketing & profit: Check out the links above to recap previous articles. Our goal today is to improve decision making when it comes to sales & marketing (S&M) efforts through feedback loops. First, what is a feedback loop? We measure our marketing…
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The Intersection of Sales & Profit (Part 3)
Sales & Profit “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” — John Wanamaker For newcomers, we’re in the middle of a 4-part series on the intersection of profitability with sales & marketing. In Week 1, we set the stage for this series, in Week 2,…
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The Intersection of Sales & Profit (Part 2)
Sales & Profit Last week we kicked off a 4-part series on sales & marketing: It’s likely you already have some “strategy” for marketing your products. Maybe it isn’t well defined or written down, but it’s you’re already doing something as it stands today. “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well…
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The Intersection of Sales & Profit (Part I)
Sales & Profit There are only 4 ways to increase profitability: You might assume that strong financial management is needed for each of these 4 paths, but you’re only partially correct… A quick story… I was chatting with one of our clients recently, we’ll call him Jimmy. We work with plenty of ambitious entrepreneurs, but…
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What’s Your Neighbor Up To? (A Guide to Benchmarking)
Wouldn’t it be helpful to know the financial performance of other businesses with your exact same business model? It’s a surefire way to see if you’re leaving money on the table. “I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out.” — Charlie Munger What is benchmarking? After completing a financial review,…
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Do These 3 Things With Your Financials
Prepping the numbers This week, I gave a keynote to a group of franchisees outlining how to read and use their financial statements (a novel concept). It started with the idea of “mise en place.” If you’re not familiar with the thorough preparation phase before cooking, then let me give you some quick background: Mise…
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Building a Financial Review Routine
What’s your financial cadence? Business owners have a typical financial review process that goes something like this: Financial statement analysis is the primary tool when it comes to evaluating business performance (I’ve said this before). There’s a “what” component and a “when” component to that analysis; here’s a simple routine that should work for most…
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The Quarterly View
Taking the quarterly view It’s not too late to review 2024 annual financial statements. In fact, most public companies are still reporting Q4 and full year results. Like other business owners, I have a strong preference for monthly financial statements; but, with yearend in full swing, it felt like a good time to pitch the quarterly…
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Exit Planning Tips and Tricks
It’s a seller’s market The typical business sale goes something like this: Not all deals go that way, but the “quick exit” ones typically do. The average sale process can take 6-12 months, but the exit planning process in front of that can take 2-3 years. Earlier this week, my partner and I attended a…