Business, Finance & Leadership
Long-form thinking on what it actually takes to run a healthy business — from someone who spent years on the other side of the credit desk.
Grow Without Growing Broke
A profitable company can grow itself broke. Here is how to build the capacity, protect the cash, and make growth a choice instead of a threat.
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Your Client Is Profitable. That Doesn't Mean the Business Is Healthy.
A business can string together profitable years and still be quietly weakening. Here is what to look at beyond the income statement — and why it changes the kind of advisor you are.
Accounts Receivable Is Telling You More Than You Think
The AR aging report tells you more than how quickly the business collects. It tells you about customer quality, billing discipline, and whether the revenue on the income statement is real.
When a Business Actually Needs a CFO — and What Kind
Most businesses in the $2 to $20 million range don't need a full-time CFO. What they need is CFO-level thinking applied at the right frequency. Here is how to tell the difference.
How to Have the Hard Conversation About Numbers
The most technically difficult part of advising a small business owner is rarely the analysis. It's telling the owner something they don't want to hear — and making sure it lands.
The First 30 Minutes with a New Client's Books
When I pick up a new client's financials for the first time, I'm not reading them linearly. I'm running a triage. Here is the sequence that finds the real problems fast.
Your Client's Tax Return Is Not a Financial Statement
The tax return and the financial statement are prepared under different standards and answer different questions. Treating them interchangeably is how advisors end up with a distorted picture of the business.
Every Owner Has an Exit — Most Just Don't Know What They Want From It Yet
Four paths. A set of questions that reveal the real answer. And the reason slowing the conversation down at the beginning is the most valuable thing an advisor can do.
How Surety Underwriters Think About WIP and Bonding Capacity
A surety company gets nothing when a bond claim is filed. That changes how they read everything — and the WIP schedule is the document that drives most of those decisions.
How Lenders Use WIP to Decide What Your Contractor Client Can Borrow
Experienced construction lenders look past the trailing income statement. The WIP schedule is the forward-looking picture — and it's where most contractor credit decisions actually get made.
What the WIP Schedule Is Actually Telling You
The work-in-progress report isn't just a project tracking document. It's one of the most important financial indicators for any contractor doing multi-month jobs — and most advisors don't know how to use it.
Large Companies Close in Five Days. Your Small Company Should Too.
Large companies close faster because the work is owned, scheduled, and completed all month. Small companies can build the same discipline.
What Should Your Back Office Actually Look Like?
A practical matrix for matching bookkeeping, controllership, CPA support, and fractional or full-time CFO leadership to the business you are becoming.
The Ten Numbers That Decide Whether You Grow or Grind
An $8 million shop, fifteen years in business, a real backlog — and the owner can't tell you the gross margin on the job in front of him. Here's the fix.
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Buying a Business Is Easy. Surviving One Isn't.
There's a wave of content telling people to buy boring businesses. The opportunity may be real — but the financial illiteracy going in with a lot of these buyers isn't.
Don't Pay Sticker Price for a Business
Most small business acquisitions are priced off a multiple of earnings. That number is a starting point for a negotiation. It is not what the business is worth.
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You Can't Be Nordstrom and Walmart
The small businesses that try to be everything — competitive on price and exceptional on service — end up being neither. Pick your lane, then price to defend it.
What Your Banker Sees When You Walk In the Door
Most business owners think a loan decision comes down to profit. A banker is asking a different question: can this business cover debt if things go sideways?
You Can Outsource the Books. You Can't Outsource the Understanding.
I've met a lot of business owners who are proud of the fact that they don't look at their numbers. Here's what that actually costs them.
Do You Actually Know Where You Stand?
Most owners can tell you last year's profit. Fewer can tell you whether the business can survive a bad quarter. The balance sheet is the answer to that question.
When the Numbers You Trust Are Wrong
I review balance sheets before anything else. If it's not clean, you can't trust the rest of the financial picture. Here are the five errors I see most often.
Can You Survive a Bad Quarter?
There are dozens of ratios. You only need the ones that answer the real question: can this business survive a bad quarter and still pay its lenders?
Why Growing Companies Run Out of Cash
A business can be profitable on paper and still run out of cash. That gap lives on the balance sheet, not the income statement.
The Numbers Behind Every Big Decision
Good decisions are based on what your balance sheet is actually saying, not what you hope the numbers mean. This is how you use that statement as a tool.
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I Love It When a Plan Comes Together: Leadership Lessons from Hannibal Smith
Col. John 'Hannibal' Smith never ran a Fortune 500 company. He never sat through a two-day strategy offsite or delivered a board presentation. But somehow, week after week, he assembled a team of misfits, faced impossible odds, and pulled off results that no conventional playbook could have predicted. Sound familiar?
Rusty Griswold - The Steadiest Kid in the Station Wagon
Clark Griswold gets all the credit. Nobody talks about the kid in the backseat who watched his dad tie the dog to the bumper and drive away — and somehow stayed completely sane through all of it.
Cash Flow Is King, But Most Small Businesses Never Crown It
I've sat across the table from hundreds of small business owners who were confused about why their bank said no. Their income statement looked fine. Sales were up. They were profitable. So why was the line of credit being called?
What Bankers Actually Look At When You Apply for a Loan
The five Cs of credit are real, but they don't tell you what a banker is actually thinking when your loan package lands on their desk. Here's the unfiltered version, from someone who spent years on that side of the table.
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New articles published regularly.