family owned business

Many businesses today have access to more financial information than ever before.

Monthly reports arrive consistently. Dashboards track performance in real time. Forecasting tools have become increasingly sophisticated. On paper, businesses should have more visibility than they’ve ever had before.

And yet many leadership teams still feel stuck.

Part of the reason is that information alone rarely improves decision-making. Reports tell you what happened. Strong advisory leadership helps determi…

When people think about financial leadership inside a business, they often think first about reporting.

Forecasts, dashboards, cash flow models, and financial statements all matter. Businesses need accurate reporting and visibility into performance. But in my experience, the real impact of strong financial leadership shows up operationally long before anyone talks about reports.

You can usually feel the difference inside a business fairly quickly.

Leadership conversations become more grounded…

Business owners today are surrounded by advice.

Boards, peer groups, consultants, podcasts, advisors, networking circles — everyone has opinions about growth, hiring, pricing, systems, and leadership. Some of the advice is useful. Some of it is poorly informed. Much of it sounds reasonable on the surface but ignores the realities of the specific business receiving it.

That is where problems begin.

I’ve seen companies hire too quickly because they believed growth required it. I’ve seen busines…

One of the patterns I see most often in growing businesses is not a lack of effort or intelligence. Most owners are working hard and carrying a tremendous amount of responsibility well.

Where businesses tend to lose momentum is in the accumulation of unresolved decisions.

A pricing adjustment gets delayed because leadership is concerned about customer reaction. A key hire stays open too long because nobody feels fully confident in the timing. Operational inefficiencies become accepted because …

Last week, I asked you to step back and identify where your business isn’t running as well as it should.

Most people can do that pretty quickly. There’s usually a part of the business that feels slower than it should be, more manual than it should be, or harder to manage than it needs to be. That’s a good starting point.

But here’s where most businesses go next—and where things start to break down: They assume the solution is technology.

More specifically right now, they assume the solution i…

 There’s a question I keep hearing right now, and it usually comes up pretty quickly in a conversation:

“How should we be using AI in our business?”

It sounds like the right question. It feels practical. It feels like something you shouldhave an answer to right now.

But it’s actually the wrong place to start.

In last month’s Ask the CFO session on AI with Ken Scales, we kept coming back to something much simpler. Ken Scales said it directly:

“What are we trying to achieve first? It’s not, l…

When preparing for a business transition—whether passing it to a family member, selling to an external buyer, or stepping back from daily operations—certain risks can significantly impact the process. Two of the biggest challenges business owners face are customer concentration and management team readiness. These factors can affect business valuation, buyer interest, and long-term stability after the transition. Addressing these early can make the difference between a smooth transition and one …