A critical part of planning requires you to carefully examine all of the opportunities available to help you build your business … and to apply consistent criteria so that you can compare them equally. In this podcast, we describe the first criterion: What are your core competencies and how do they inform your decisions about the handful of opportunities you should really go after.
Remember in building your business … think big, take action and make sure you’re integrating these concepts of Strategy, Finance & Leadership into your everyday decision making.
“There comes a moment when you have to stop revving up the car and shove it into gear.” — David Mahoney
“Cheery little column,” my editor said recently when he read of the rampage of Pestilence and War, the first two horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yet, it’s no exaggeration that middle market business leaders pay little attention to business finance. You may say that’s not true – “I look at my monthly financial statements” … “I know what they say” … “We’re on top of things.” Maybe, but I have seen little evidence that executives have worked nearly as hard to unleash the power of business finance as they have to learn more about marketing programs or social media or lean manufacturing techniques.
If your first inclination is to run toward the exits when business finance is mentioned, it’s only because you’ve been led to believe that these principles are understandable only by seasoned and studied financial professionals. Hogwash.
Yes, you’ll have to devote some time and attention to it, but these principles are very accessible and you can learn them, certainly well enough to work closely with your financial team to make sure everyone’s paying attention to the right things. If you’re going to be a successful business executive, you can’t ignore these principles … and if you keep reading, you’ll see that I’m willing to help you.
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By now, it should be pretty clear that at Exkalibur, we believe in the value and power of business finance for middle market companies … and we know you can find it if you devote some time and attention to it. We’ve even designed a separate Financial Adrenaline blog feed to collect all of our published material so you can easily access all of it.
Then, to provide more graphic and visual insights about the principles of business finance, we’ve created a Financial Adrenaline video library … all of it free to everyone … to help you advance your own understanding of business finance principles.
Now, we’ve come up with an easy-to-understand postcard-style PDF to summarize the features and benefits of our Financial Advisory services using the proven tools of the Business Ferret™.
So, why not download our Financial Adrenaline postcard to keep as a handy summary of the features and benefits of these powerful business finance tools, and how they can help you help you integrate business finance into your everyday business decision making?
“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.” Peter Drucker
What are we going to cover? First, we’re going to pull up to the dumpster to drop off the the excuses everyone uses for the lack of planning. We’ll see why plans in your head are only ideas and why unless they’re written down, they’re pretty much worthless. Why the terminology of “strategic planning” throws everyone off course … and why you don’t need a Harvard MBA or the GE auditorium to conduct a powerful and meaningful planning session. So, take an hour with a blank sheet of paper to jumpstart the process and you’ll be amazed at the clarity you’ll achieve.
These days, we’re all busier today than a woodchuck chucking wood … so it’s refreshing when we can listen for a few minutes on the way to work to grab a little inspiration to jumpstart our day.
That’s why we’re inaugurating a new podcast series to help middle market companies achieve “excellence at the intersection of strategy, finance and leadership“. Our Building a Business podcast series is organized to give you short but powerful bursts … about 5 minutes each … of practical strategies that you can immediately put to work.
The introductory podcast explains this series and what we’re trying to do to help middle market business executives become better leaders and managers. We’ll cover a broad range of issues, from leadership skills and techniques … to corporate governance, communication, innovation, planning, pricing, the works.
As always, I welcome your feedback. Let us know if this series is helpful and what more you’d like to hear. Don’t hesitate to offer your comments. We welcome a vigorous dialogue … so, with a wink and a term borrowed from my talk radio days … “we fully respect your right to be dead wrong”. So, fire away and let’s keep the conversation going!
What do you say?
Do you think you could distill a lifetime of experiences into a handful of sentences … so that when your grown children read them, they would hold them as dearly as they once held their teddy bears?
I’ve recently published several lists of “life lessons”, for lack of a better term, that keep coming my way from a variety of sources. These lists, scratched on the back of an envelope found in a plane crash, or tucked in a wallet for 50 years, are treasures because they’re personal … and each person believed he or she had captured the unique nature of their humanity.
So, now come the Guideposts of business philosophy taken from the book, Marriott — The J. Willard Marriott Story by Robert O’Brien. It’s longer than most … not a note card but still a single sheet of paper … maybe Willard did more than most? Some may seem old-fashioned, others a little harsh for the more indulgent company cultures of the 21st century … but most of them are rooted in sound business practices. Work your way past some of the pedestrian entries to uncover a few nuggets and valid reminders that you can add to your own list.
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I’m starting to hate multitasking. I’ve known for some time that it’s not healthy … And not particularly productive. I caught myself in the spring with The Misleading Meandering of Multitasking. I ignored the Stanford researchers … and I actually reported almost a year ago that multitasking doesn’t work by most accounts.
But I hung in there, clutching my iPad like a new bride while doing everything else. Watch TV. Check! Miss half of the show and don’t really know what’s going on but checked my email 5 more times, read 10 more blogs, chased a bunch of links. Check.
Take the plunge. Give it up … for a while, at least
I could tell you the final score but how someone played? Not sure, really. Hey, did you see those crazy pitches Lincecum threw to get that guy out? Huh? We won the game, right? Did you see that beautiful pass from Brady? Who’s playing again?
So, I’m pretty much done for awhile. I’ve got enough material for the next few hundred blog posts and meeting agendas. It’s time to do more, read less, write more, think less, focus more, multitask … way less. Actually get more done.
How about you? Your brain need a rest, too?
“The most important thing about education is appetite.” — Winston Churchill
Did you think there would come a day when the infamous Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would be galloping across your playing field?
I did. You see, I’ve been on a finance jag recently and have been wracking my brain over why business executives aren’t able to keep these riders off the premises. I’ve recently had more discussions than I care to recall with business owners, and often their finance leaders, who can’t find 30 minutes – no cost or obligation involved – to understand the true nature of the finance issues that are choking their companies.
You’re thinking, that can’t be right, can it? Why would a capable business executive – not you, of course – ignore the problems crippling his company? Is he somehow immune to the ravages of the lingering economic malaise?
A few weeks ago, I spoke at the annual Wine Industry Financial Symposium in Napa about strategic finance. There, too, wine industry cognoscenti spoke about the need for stronger financial management. That’s what got me thinking … when do middle market companies pay attention to business finance? I’m afraid, for many, it’s only when the Four Horseman are streaking across their property.
The first horseman sits astride a white horse. That’s good … white is good, right? Alas, not, for the man on the white horse is Pestilence carrying a bow, and the arrow is the plague of poorly managed cash flow.
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“Speed, for lack of a better term, is good”.
That’s not quite what Gordon Gekko said in the original Wall Street movie, but it’s close enough for our purposes.
So, who’s complaining about the super-fastest fiber-cable ever? Nobody that I know of, but here’s what caught my attention. It isn’t just the extraordinary speed extolled in Forbes’s recent article, Wall Street’s Speed War. Sure, it cost about $300 million to bury a one-inch underground cable over the 825 mile distance between New York and Chicago. Yes, it’s been done in stealth mode so no one would find out and build one even faster, and yes, it’s about to go live.
Big deal? Apparently so … but here’s the thing. The only reason this cable got built was … grab your abacus … to save 3 MILLISECONDS off the previous route for such cable traffic. That’s equal to THREE 1/1000 OF A SECOND!
What for? Here’s a few of the effusive remarks that Forbes quoted: ‘That’s close to an eternity in automated trading” … or “Anybody pinging both markets has to be on this line, or they’re dead.”
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Welcome to Exkalibur. I’m Lary Kirchenbauer, President of Exkalibur Advisors, Inc. Please take advantage of our resources to help you build your business ... and let me know what more we can do to serve you.
Read my latest column from the NY Times affiliate, the North Bay Business Journal.
Lary began advising our company when we were going through some difficult challenges, and now, two years later, we are in a completely different and significantly better place. His advice was specific, direct, and not always what we wanted to hear, and that was invaluable. Lary has been quick to cut through to the heart of an issue. His coaching, prodding, and tough questioning helped us to make changes that truly and measurably have helped both our top and bottom lines.
Paul Levitan, CEO Galaxy Desserts, Inc.
