Where’d the Money Go?
Imagine this: You’ve had a really good year so far, after the mess of the last couple years. Top line revenue looks much better than expected. New business is up, returning customers are buying again, and your sales team are feeling great about the prospects for the balance of the year. Only one problem: Net […]
Does Your Business Model Need to Change?
We took on a new client back in 2019, a British entrepreneur who wanted to open a food and entertainment venue in Los Angeles to copy a successful model he’d developed in London. While he researched possible locations, we helped him refine his business plan, polish his pitch, and develop contacts to raise capital. We […]
Employee Loyalty: 5 Ageless Ideas
It’s amazing how some business problems just keep coming around again and again. I looked at some of our published guidance from 25 years ago and saw an interesting piece on the disloyal attitude that so many employees had for their employers (often richly deserved, I might add). The manifestation of that problem was high […]
To CFO or not to CFO – That is the Question
I’ve been reading headlines recently about newly hired CFOs at several large companies. Some eye openers to be sure: PayPal delivered a package worth $6 million to their new financial guy. Walmart threw in a $5 million signing bonus, Pfizer paid their new CFO $5 million up front, and Moderna delivered a package worth over […]
ESG – Not What It’s Cracked Up to Be
If you sit on a Board or invest in equities (and read about how they’re doing) you have seen those powerful initials many times. Environment, Social, Governance – the phrase intended to fix everything that is self-serving about corporate America. Just one small problem: it’s not working. The Economist wrote last week that there is […]
Everyone Wants to Lend You Money – Big Surprise!
I have a “side hustle” when I’m not occupied with running the CFO for Rent business; it’s investing in commercial real estate, along with some of my clients and close friends. It’s the business I’ll pursue more fully when I’m no longer offering consulting services, and the brokers and money lenders know that. Our office […]
Is it Time to Upgrade?
We have a client that has been coming out of a revenue decline induced in part by COVID 19, and they’re now in the black and growing nicely. But their accounting team has consistently been below an acceptable standard for performance. So when we started working together we connected them with an outsourced accounting firm […]
Don’t Let Your Accounts Receivable Escape!
You’ve got a solid business that sells on credit and makes a nice profit doing it. That assumes, of course, that you get paid substantially all of your accounts receivable, even though some of your customers may want to use that money elsewhere, and others would prefer not to pay you at all. How […]
Checklist for hiring a top notch CFO
Sometimes a company needs a full time CFO, not a fractional one. I can live with that. We are really good at helping mid-sized privately owned companies that need a good slice of a CFO, but we can’t ever be there every day, a requirement for many larger companies and virtually all publicly traded ones. […]
Exit Challenges When There’s a “Special Sauce”
I had dinner with a group of friends this week, one of whom is a CEO looking to plan an exit from the consulting firm he built over the last 25 years. Since this group occasionally discusses business issues, we talked about the options and issues our friend will face going forward. The discussion brought […]