Strategy Meets Finance

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a call with us. Margins are getting squeezed from every direction, and most companies are reacting too slowly to keep up. Often the people slowing things down are the very leaders who should be driving the change. In this episode Steve explains why so many businesses are stuck moving slow, how a profitable inc...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a call with us. Ask one of your direct reports to name the three to five things that define success in their role. If the answer is vague, you have a clarity problem, and it is costing you more than you think. In this episode Steve shares the moment as a CFO that showed him how broken the typical review proces...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a call with us.   Most business owners look at the bottom of their income statement, see a profit, and assume the business is doing well. That number ignores one of the biggest costs in the business: invested capital. In this episode Steve breaks down the difference between accounting profit and economic profi...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a call with us.   Most business owners focus all their attention on profit. But some of the biggest cash flow problems in a business have nothing to do with profit at all. In this episode Steve covers the second half of the eight levers of cash flow, the four that impact invested capital. Accounts receivable,...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a free call with us.   Most business owners know cash flow matters. Very few know the specific levers that actually control it. In this episode Steve kicks off a two-part series on the 8 levers of cash flow, starting with the 4 that drive profit. He walks through each one, why the order matters, and why the le...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a free call with us.   Most businesses are so busy chasing work that they never stop to ask whether they are competing in the right market in the first place. In this episode Steve digs into one of the four boxes in his strategy framework: market focus and position. He breaks down the three things you need to...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a free call with us.   Steve was in a wrestling class recently when the coach said something that stuck with him. Just do stuff that works. In this episode, he takes that idea into business and makes the case that most owners already know what works. They just keep getting pulled toward everything else. The ne...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar.   Most business owners think they have a strategy, but most of them do not... In this episode Steve gives you three quick ways to find out if your strategy is actually working, breaks down what strategy really means beyond the vision days and planning sessions, and walks through the framewor...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar.   Most business owners think financial visibility means getting an income statement every month. It does not. In this episode Steve breaks down what real financial visibility actually looks like, why the gap between what most owners see and what they need to see is costing them money every s...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar.   Most business owners track revenue. Some track profit. But there are three numbers that actually tell you whether your business is healthy, building value, and set up to last. In this episode Steve walks through exactly what those three numbers are, how to calculate each one, and what they...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar.   Most businesses have a strategy. They have done the offsite, built the plan, and know where they want to go. Then you look at the financials and the strategy is nowhere in the numbers. In this episode Steve breaks down exactly what is happening in that gap, why strategy without a financial...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar.   There is a specific moment Steve has seen over and over again inside businesses. Revenue becomes more predictable, cash flow steadies out, and the owner goes from reactive to proactive. In this episode he breaks down exactly what that moment looks like in financial terms and the five condi...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Most business owners look at profit on their income statement and assume the business is doing well. But profit and value are not the same thing. In this episode Steve breaks down why the majority of businesses are not generating returns above their cost of capital, what that actually means...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar.   Every year business owners build a budget. They set targets, present the numbers, tie bonuses to it, and by March it is already wrong. In this episode Steve makes the case that a static annual budget is one of the most limiting financial tools a business can use and walks through exactly w...

Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Most business owners know their best customers by name. Longest relationships, biggest contracts, most consistent work. But in this episode Steve shows why looking at revenue per customer and profitability per customer are two completely different things and why the gap between them might be...

Know your numbers, grow your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar.   Two businesses, same revenue, same profit. One sells for three times EBITDA. The other sells for eight times. On a $2 million EBITDA business that gap is $10 million. In this episode Steve breaks down exactly what creates that difference and why sophisticated buyers are not just looking a...

Know your numbers, grow your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar.   Most business owners set their prices based on what competitors charge, what feels right, or what they think customers will pay. None of those approaches have anything to do with the value your business actually delivers or what your business needs to be financially healthy. In this episo...

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check   Financial Intelligence Toolkit   Steve started his first business at 16 out of his sister's garage with no money, no financial background, and no idea what he was doing. He made every mistake you can make. In this episode he shares the five lessons that would have saved him millions of dollars and...

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check   Financial Intelligence Toolkit   Most specialty contractors either do not have a WIP schedule or do not treat it with the attention it deserves. And if your WIP is wrong, Steve will tell you straight: your financials are wrong too. In this episode he breaks down exactly what the WIP schedule is trackin...

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check   Financial Intelligence Toolkit   Revenue is up. The team is celebrating. And the business owner is quietly pulling on the line of credit because cash is constantly tight. In this episode Steve breaks down exactly why profitable businesses run out of cash, what is actually happening between the income s...

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check   Financial Intelligence Toolkit   Everyone is talking about AI right now. Which tools to use, how to automate, how to stay ahead. Steve thinks AI is important too. But in this episode he wants to have the conversation almost nobody is having. Not which tools to use, but whether those tools are actually...

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check   Financial Intelligence Toolkit   Winning work and profiting from work are two completely different things. Most contractors are only doing one of them. In this episode Steve breaks down why pricing to be competitive and pricing to actually make money require fundamentally different thinking, where the...

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check   Financial Intelligence Toolkit   When Steve walks into a struggling business, people expect him to start with leadership, culture, or strategy. He never does. In this episode he walks through the one thing he fixes first in every struggling business, why everything else is pointless without it, and wha...

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check   Financial Intelligence Toolkit   Steve gets asked this question all the time. If you were running my business, where would you start? In this episode he answers it directly. He walks through exactly what he would do in the first 90 days running a $10 million specialty contracting business, the specific...

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check   Financial Intelligence Toolkit   Most specialty contractors know cash flow is important. What they do not know is what actually controls it. In this episode Steve walks through the four levers that determine whether a contracting business has cash or not. They are not complicated, but if you do not kno...