Tag: Business Planning
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We’re Not Thinking Big Enough
Supersize Me “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” — Doc Brown, Back to the Future Let me describe your typical business owner routine: In a nutshell, this is business ownership. This won’t be another newsletter on how to work on your business, instead I want to talk about thinking big. My business partner and I…
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Smart Owners Keep Getting Smarter
Compounding Knowledge “Those who keep learning will keep rising in life.” — Charlie Munger What was the MOST impactful thing you’ve learned recently? The truth is that you will never “find” time to take a step back from your business to learn, reflect, and improve. Instead, you’ll have to force yourself to make time for…
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Planning Made Simple
Planning What’s a plan? “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower I recently finished reading The 12 Week Year (covered in Book Recommendations Volume I) and already find myself putting these into practice. Note: this sort of time planning is different from business planning. Let’s see if I can use the Feynman Technique to…
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Books Every Business Owner Should Read (Vol. I)
Grab a book “In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.” — Charlie Munger I sat down to write this week’s article with plenty of topics in mind (an acquisition I’m working on, planning for Q4 goals, navigating a debt recap, and various other…
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Getting Started on the Financial Journey
Let’s say you’re running a business and have a pretty good handle on: But when you open up the bank account or QuickBooks? Stopped dead in your tracks. I was there too at one point. Below, I’ll share a 7-point list of where you should start on your financial journey (whether 1st inning or 8th…
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Are you a Wartime or Peacetime CEO?
Business is war (usually) It was a perfect storm. Payroll and loan payments were set to hit on the same day. And the largest vendor was demanding payment for some stale invoices. Oh, and your best customer was dragging their feet on a (very late) invoice. Business owners are battling every single day. Whether it’s:…
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Defining Your Financial Situation
Before digging into the financial plumbing of a new business, client, or acquisition, I like to level-set on where the business stands: We don’t need to do any deep analysis to answer these questions. “Do you have debt? Yes! I have a big bank loan.” Today, we’ll look at a few business situations to help…
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Business Bingo Card
Writing out a yearly plan is a fairly simple process. In a nutshell: This year, I’m creating a “business bingo card” for a quick overview of the things I want to accomplish in 2025. That way, I’ll have a nice visual layout of my goals and everything lives on one page. How it will work…
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Business Breakdown Part III: Projections & Planning
This is the final installment of a multi-part case study on Starbucks Corp. We previously covered the business model, profit model, unit economics, and financial statement analysis (links below). The goal for today is to create a quick-and-dirty financial projection and build an action plan for this company. Quick recap — Starbucks is a vertically integrated retailer of…
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Building Good Financial Processes
There’s a hierarchy to a well-oiled financial system: Here’s what that hierarchy looks like visually: What’s the takeaway? If you don’t have good bookkeeping — start there; find an excellent partner. If you have good books and regular reports — consider a fractional CFO or advisor. The ROI on those 2 items will shock you.