Strategy Meets Finance

3 Things I Learned as CFO That Every Contractor Gets Wrong | Ep 238 04.06.2026 16Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit When Steve became CFO of a billion-dollar construction company, he thought he had seen it all. But sitting inside a business at that scale taught him things no classroom or accounting firm ever could. In this episode he walks through the three financial mistakes he sees contractors make consistently, regardless of trade or company size. They are not complic...

Your Balance Sheet Is Deceiving You | Ep 237 01.06.2026 13Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business owners feel pretty comfortable with their income statement. Revenue, costs, profit. Simple enough. But the balance sheet is where the real story lives and where most of the damage hides. If your balance sheet is a mess and you ever have to clean it up, those corrections will hit your profit directly and could affect your taxes going back years...

Why Your Business Gets Harder to Run as It Grows (And What to Do About It) | Ep 236 28.05.2026 18Min.

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 growing. There is no shortage of work. And somehow the business feels harder to run than when it was half the size. More stress, more decisions, more fires, and at the same time less margin, less cash, less clarity. In this episode Steve breaks down exactly why this happens and why it is almost never an operations problem. It is a...

5 Warning Signs Your Business is Heading Towards a Crisis | Ep 235 26.05.2026 16Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Businesses almost never collapse without warning. The signs are usually there months before things get critical, sometimes even longer. The problem is most owners either do not know what to look for or they see the signs and convince themselves things will turn around. In this episode Steve walks through the five warning signs he looks for when he walks int...

The Conversation Most Business Partners Never Have | Ep 234 21.05.2026 17Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business partnerships do not fall apart because of personality conflicts. They fall apart because two people building something together never got aligned on the financial fundamentals. How much do we pay ourselves? How fast do we grow? What do we reinvest? What does a good exit actually look like? In this episode Steve walks through the financial conv...

The Number That Tells You If Your Business Is Worth Buying | Ep 233 18.05.2026 19Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business owners have a rough idea of what their business is worth. Usually it is based on what a friend sold theirs for or what feels right. But what a business is actually worth and what an owner thinks it is worth are almost never the same number. In this episode Steve breaks down exactly how a sophisticated buyer looks at a business, what the calcul...

3 Things Every Successful Business Turnaround Has in Common | Ep 232 11.05.2026 14Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Steve has been inside a lot of businesses that were in trouble. Some were losing cash. Some were profitable on paper but couldn't make payroll. Some had great teams and great customers and still couldn't figure out why nothing was working. In this episode he breaks down the three things he has seen in almost every business that actually turns around and mor...

You Can't Scale Your Way Out of a Margin Problem | Ep 231 07.05.2026 14Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit More revenue sounds like the answer when a business is struggling. But Steve has watched too many business owners chase growth thinking it would solve their cashflow problems, only to watch it make everything worse. In this episode he breaks down why scaling a broken margin just multiplies the problem, how to know if your business is actually ready to grow,...

The Habits That Separate Growing Businesses From Stuck Ones | Ep 230 05.05.2026 12Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit After working inside the financials of hundreds of businesses, Steve says the difference between the ones that grow and the ones that stay stuck almost never comes down to talent, market conditions, or even strategy. It comes down to habits. Specific, repeatable habits around how owners and their teams use financial information to make decisions. In this ep...

Let Me Reintroduce Myself | Ep 229 30.04.2026 21Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Steve does not talk about his personal life much. But when he does, the response is always the same: people reach out and say they could have written that story themselves. In this episode he steps back from the frameworks and the financials and shares where he actually came from. Growing up without a dad, leaving home at 16, starting a business out of his ...

Why Contractors Keep Losing Margin Even When Jobs Go Well | Ep 228 28.04.2026 24Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit The job went well. The crew performed. The client is happy. And the margin still is not there? Most contractors blame the field when this happens. But in this episode, Steve makes the case that the margin was already gone before the first shovel hit the ground. It was set in pre-construction, in estimating, and in the gaps most owners never think to look at...

Cutting Costs Is the Wrong Move (Do This Instead) | Ep 227 24.04.2026 16Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit When the business starts struggling, the first instinct is almost always the same. Cut costs. Cut headcount. Cut marketing. Cut everything that is not essential. Steve gets it. But in this episode he makes the case that cutting costs is usually the wrong move and why doing it without a strategy can send a business into a spiral it never recovers from. He br...

Your Accountant is Not Your CFO (And It's Costing You) | Ep 226 21.04.2026 22Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Your books are clean. Reports come out on time. Taxes are filed. And you still don't know if you can afford that next hire, whether you should take on that big contract, or how much you can actually pull out without breaking the business. In this episode, Steve breaks down why having an accountant or controller is not the same as having a financial system a...

5 Numbers That Tell You the Truth About Your Business | Ep 225 16.04.2026 22Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business owners track revenue. Some track profit. Almost none track the five numbers that actually tell you if their business is healthy, growing in value, and built to last. Steve sits down in this episode and walks you through exactly what he looks at in the first ten minutes with any business. These numbers connect together, build on each other, and...

What Nobody Tells You About Scaling Your Business | Ep 224 13.04.2026 11Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Scaling sounds like the goal, but it’s also where a lot of businesses quietly break. Growth doesn’t fix problems, it exposes them. If margins are tight, they get tighter. If cash flow is inconsistent, it gets worse. And if the strategy isn’t working, scaling just accelerates the damage. This episode breaks down what no one talks about when it co...

The #1 Struggle Business Leaders Face | Ep 223 02.04.2026 7Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit A lot of business owners think profit is the goal, but the real problem shows up when the cash is not there. This is one of the most common struggles leaders deal with. Steve breaks down why profit and cash flow don’t match and shares a simple way to measure how much of your profit actually turns into usable cash. Once you see this number, you’ll under...

The 3 Phases Every Failing Business Goes Through (And How to Escape) | Ep 222 24.03.2026 16Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most businesses don’t fail overnight. They go through the same three phases, and most owners don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late. It starts with a strategy that quietly stops working, then margins get squeezed, and eventually cash runs out. Steve breaks down these three phases and shows how to spot them early so you can fix the real problem b...

Why Your Business Makes Money But Never Seems to Have Any | Ep 221 17.03.2026 11Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Your income statement says you made money, but your bank account says something else. This happens in more businesses than you think. Steve explains why profitable companies can still feel cash-strapped and where the money actually goes. Most of the time it disappears in just 3 places: margin problems, working capital, and owner distributions. When you unde...

If You've Been Watching the News, You Better Know Your Numbers | Ep 220 12.03.2026 18Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit There is a lot of noise in the economy right now. Inflation, labor shortages, geopolitical tension, and constant disruption. In times like this, guessing in your business can get dangerous fast. Steve explains the 3 numbers every business owner should understand to stay in control. When you understand these numbers together, you can see what is really...

This is Why Profitable Companies Run Out of Cash | Ep 219 09.03.2026 24Min.

How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit A lot of companies are profitable on paper but still run out of cash. The problem usually comes down to something most owners never measure called the cash conversion cycle. Steve explains why profit and cash flow are different, how working capital traps cash inside a business, and why growing too fast can actually make the problem worse. Once you understan...