MBA ASAP

You have decided to make the commitment to take this course and I want to help make your learning experience as effective as possible.

Learning How to Learn

Thinking focused and diffuse.

Learning how to learn is life’s most important skill.

The ability to take responsibility for your growth — self-directed learning is a superpower in the age of knowledge abundance.

Ordinary folks want to be entertained. Extraordinary people want education and knowledge. The world’s most successful people are known to read at least one book per week. They are always learning.

Understanding how our brains work can help you learn more efficiently and significantly reduce frustration. Neurological research indicates that we have two distinct fundamental modes of thinking and can only operate in one at a time. Both are needed to help us learn and assimilate information differently.

First, the ‘focused mode’ is used when intently and directly concentrating on something you’re attempting to learn or understand. The ‘diffuse mode’ allows for more creative thinking and broad-range perspectives. This more free-flowing and creative mode is related to the brain’s neural resting states.

The diffuse mode of thinking is best applied when the problem you’re working on requires new ideas or approaches or concepts you haven’t even thought of before.

The diffuse mode is related to creativity and originality. Here is a quote from Monty Python member John Cleese that describes the diffuse mode approach:

“This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If you just keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later, you will get a reward from your unconscious.”

In the absence of actually having thought a particular thought before, you can’t know how the neural pattern associated with the target thought ‘feels’, or which neural connections give rise to it (and indeed where these connections need to occur in the brain). So, the interesting philosophical question is — how can we develop a novel thought in the first place?

To sharpen our understanding of these two fundamental modes, we’re going to draw a pictorial analogy between the neural framework of the brain and a pinball machine. Incidentally, both metaphor and analogy are powerful learning tools.

Jose Ortega y Gasset said:

The metaphor is perhaps the most fruitful power of humanity. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation, which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.

The focused mode of thinking can be visualized as a densely packed array of pinball machine bumpers, making it difficult for a specific thought (the pinball in this analogy) to travel around and explore different regions. Similarly, the diffuse mode has far more expansive spaces between bumpers, facilitating new neural connections and thought patterns.

The more relaxed diffuse mode offers a valuable big picture perspective. Indeed, you can’t focus as intensely to finalize problem-solving or understand the finer aspects of a concept — yet the diffuse mode enables you to get to the initial place you need to be to go about finding a solution.

When learning something new, especially something difficult, your mind needs to smoothly transition back and forth between the two fundamental learning modes to assimilate the desired material best. So, let’s drop in one more analogy to conclude this section. The most effective way to build neural structures, and thus knowledge, is to do a little work each day over an extended period instead of resorting to frenzied last-minute cramming.

In the same way, muscles can only be developed little by little through sustained commitment over a prolonged period. Neural structures also must be built up steadily over time to ensure robust and reliable foundations of knowledge.

The care and feeding of our brain is critical to acquiring and retaining knowledge.

The path to success is the continuous pursuit of knowledge.

Success is the product of accumulative advantage. When it comes to personal development “sudden” is the result of a lot of “gradual.”

Staying on the path and making incremental progress requires combating procrastination.

The best thing a person can do is help another person learn more.

Download my ebook micro mba.  This is the essential overview and reference book for this course.  The next lecture is a copy of my complete text MBA ASAP.  That book is longer and this one will get you going fast.  Both are recommended and its your choice how you want to approach all of this material. 

This book is in Kindle format and can be opened on any device with the Kindle Reader, which is free to download from the app store.

Download my book MBA ASAP and use it as a reference throughout the entire program and for your future reference.

Entrepreneurship and Startups

Value creation is the first general topic we will explore. At the core of every business is a value proposition. It is made of products and services that people want, need, or desire.

Value creation is the essence of entrepreneurship. The playbook of creating value while managing risks and increasing the probability of success has developed in Silicon Valley in the past few decades.

Many of us aspire to create something new; do original work; make an impact, and help people solve their pressing needs. We have all heard of the entrepreneurial heroes like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. We use and benefit from the tools, products, and services that they created.

If you harbor hopes of doing something similar, making your dent in the universe, here is where you can get a quick handle on the latest thinking and processes for turning your dreams into reality and creating sustainable, profitable businesses.

I'm starting this overview of business administration with a study of entrepreneurship because entrepreneurs are searching for product/market fit.

Achieving product/market fit is the cornerstone of any successful business enterprise.

What you want to sell has to fit a customer need. The total of those potential customers is the market.

A Startup is a temporary organization in search of a sustainable business model.

That is the essence of every business enterprise: a business model that works and fits your product and customers.

In this rapidly changing and evolving business landscape, driven by technology and customer expectations, every company needs to be constantly re-evaluating their position and offerings and thinking entrepreneurially. That mindset and practice is the goal of strategic thinking, planning, and execution.

We, and our enterprises, need to be adaptable. As Reid Hoffman said, "In times of change and uncertainty, adaptability creates stability.'

For these reasons, entrepreneurship tools and techniques are a sensible launching platform for gaining context and intuition into all business activities.

Excel is a versatile and indispensable tool for business, finance and investment professionals. Its importance cannot be overstated, as it is used in a wide range of financial tasks, from data analysis to financial modeling and reporting.

1. Financial Analysis and Reporting: Excel enables finance professionals to sort, analyze, and visualize data to identify trends, perform variance analysis, and forecast future financial scenarios. It supports using pivot tables, advanced formulas, and various graphing tools, which are crucial for creating detailed financial reports.

2. Financial Modeling: Excel is widely used for financial modeling, allowing analysts to build models that can predict income, budgeting, cash flow, and other financial projections. Using advanced functions and creating flexible, dynamic models is critical to making informed business decisions.

3. Excel Proficiency is a Game-changer for finance professionals, significantly boosting productivity by saving time. The ability to automate tasks with macros, handle complex calculations with ease, and manage large datasets efficiently are just a few ways Excel streamlines financial tasks.

4. Excel is not just a tool; it's a universal language in the finance industry. Mastery of Excel is often a prerequisite for many finance roles, making it an indispensable skill for job proficiency and career advancement.

5. Decision Making: Excel helps finance professionals in decision-making processes by providing a platform to work through various financial scenarios and analyze potential outcomes. What-if analysis and sensitivity tables are instrumental in this regard.

6. Accuracy and Precision: Excel's precision in handling financial data is critical. A single error can result in significant financial discrepancies; thus, the ability to use Excel to manage and cross-check numbers accurately is vital.

7. Integration and Compatibility: Excel can integrate with many business applications and databases, making it an effective tool for consolidating information from various sources for financial analysis and reporting.

Knowing Excel in finance is not just about understanding the basic features; it involves a deep understanding of its advanced capabilities, which are essential in the sophisticated world of finance.

Excel proficiency is a foundational skill that enables finance professionals to perform their roles effectively and efficiently, whether running regressions, building a discounted cash flow model, or analyzing complex datasets.

Download the MBA ASAP Ultimate Excel Handbook and level up your skill set.

Vlookup vs. Hlookup vs Xlookup

Learn the most popular Excel functions and which ones to use when

Lookup functions are REALLY popular in Excel.

Because they allow you to “lookup” a value from a dataset based on the criteria that you enter.

Most people only focus on Vlookup without realizing that there is a far more powerful lookup function called Xlookup.

Let’s explore these three lookup functions and become a pro:

VLOOKUP

How it works → Searches VERTICALLY in the first column of a specified range and returns a value in the same row from a column you specify.

Syntax → =VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, [range_lookup])

Pros →Easy to use for vertical lookups, Supported in all versions of Excel.

Cons → Limited to vertical searches, Searches must start in the first column of the range.

My take → VLOOKUP is probably the most common lookup function, but it’s sooo limited. Learn to ditch this function and focus on XLOOKUP!

HLOOKUP

How it works → Searches HORIZONTALLY in the first row of a specified range and returns a value in the same column from a row you specify.

Syntax → =HLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, row_index_num, [range_lookup])

Pros → Useful for horizontal lookups, Supported in all versions of Excel.

Cons → Limited to horizontal searches, Inefficient with large datasets.

My take → HLOOKUP isn’t as popular as VLOOKUP but is very similar. As mentioned above, while this may get the job done, there is a bigger and better option with XLOOKUP.

XLOOKUP

How it works → Searches for a value in an array or range in EITHER DIRECTION and returns a value from a corresponding array or range.

Syntax → =XLOOKUP(lookup_value, lookup_array, return_array, [if_not_found]

Pros → Can search in any direction, Allows for the return of an array, and provides an option for a default value if no match is found, which is very efficient.

Cons → Only available in Excel for Office 365, Excel 2019, and later versions, can be complex.

My take → XLOOKUP solves all the issues that VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP have, and it will gradually take over the Excel lookup universe.

What makes this even more powerful is nesting another XLOOKUP inside your XLOOKUP, which allows you to find the value with both your X and Y axes.

30+ Best AI tools to 10x Productivity!

AI is the future. All should take AI seriously.

AI Algorithms Explained

1. Logistic Regression: Predicts yes/no outcomes.

2. Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN): Understands sequences like stories.

3. K-Means Clustering: Groups similar items together.

4. Principal Component Analysis (PCA): Packs important data into a small space.

5. Autoencoders: Compresses and reconstructs images.

6. Neural Networks: Learns from examples like our brain cells.

7. Reinforcement Learning: Learns with rewards, like training a dog.

8. Q-Learning: Finds the best path in a maze.

9. Naive Bayes: Predicts outcomes based on prior knowledge.

10. k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN): Finds similar items by asking friends.

11. Bayesian Networks: Predicts by considering different factors.

12. Support Vector Machine (SVM): Separates items with the straightest line.

13. Genetic Algorithms: Mixes traits to create the best solution.

14. Linear Regression: Predicts outcomes based on past data.

15. Random Forests: Combines multiple answers for accuracy.

16. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN): Recognizes patterns like faces.

17. Decision Trees: Makes decisions with yes/no questions.

18. Gradient Boosting: Improves with each small mistake.

I'm starting this MBA curriculum with a study of entrepreneurship because a startup is a microcosm of business that is focused on the essentials.

Entrepreneurs are searching for product/market fit, and a Startup is an organization in search of a sustainable business model. 

That is the essence of every business enterprise: a business model that works and a fit between your product and customers. 

And in this rapidly changing and evolving business landscape, driven by technology and customer expectations, every company needs to be constantly re-evaluating their position and offerings and thinking entrepreneurially.

For these reasons, entrepreneurship tools and techniques are a sensible launching platform for gaining context and intuition into all business activities.

Let's get started!

Startups and Entrepreneurship

The process of creating successful startup companies has transformed over the past few decades as the reality of what works, and what is just an exercise, has sunk in.  We used to think of startups as mini versions of existing companies and entrepreneurs as mini versions of CEOs.    

Entrepreneurship and Startups

Many of us aspire to create something new; do original work; make an impact and help people solve their pressing needs.  We have all heard of the entrepreneurial heroes like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zukerberg and Elon Musk and their achievements.  We use the tools, products and services that they created.

If you harbor hopes of doing something similar, making your own dent in the universe, here is were you can get a quick handle on the latest thinking and processes for turning your dreams into reality and creating sustainable profitable businesses. 

The front-end activities of starting a business enterprise have gone through a radical rethinking in the past decade. In the previous century the thinking was to apply the tools and techniques of business administration in a scaled down version.

Entrepreneurial thinking is about taking ideas and making them into products or services that meet the needs and wants of customers. Lets call the product/service mix P/S for short. The incubation of ideas into concrete P/S is performed in a startup.    

The key criterion of the P/S is that it meets some need or want of a group of potential customers. The pool of potential customers is referred to as the market. The function of a startup is the search for product/market fit.    

A startup is not a mini version of an existing enterprise. Startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, sustainable, scalable Business Model. The goal of a startup is to evolve itself out of existence and into a company. A startup is a caterpillar and the resulting company is the butterfly. 

Here are some business model questions from Seth Godin. If you get them right, everything else is easier:

· How will you get new paying customers?

· Why will your paying customers tell their friends and colleagues?

· Will this business work at a scale that you can both achieve and are happy living with?

· Is it easy to start?

· If it is, what will keep others from starting it?

· How do you avoid a race to the bottom where you’re trapped making a cheap commodity as a middleperson?

· Will it get easier as you go? Why?

· What incentive do customers have to stick with you instead of switching to a cheaper or more convenient choice?

Businesses that are cheap to start, depend on providing a useful service at a cheap margin and are largely fungible are often difficult to turn into thriving sustainable enterprises.

Customer traction, the network effect and emotional connection can change this, particularly if you build them in from the start.

Startups fail for a myriad of reasons and usually from some combination of the top 20 reasons described in the slide deck with this lecture.  The slide deck starts with ways to come to gripes with failure as something not to avoid but to acknowledge early on and course correct in order to work around obstacles. Fail fast and cheaply and learn from what isn't working. 

Y Combinator ????????? ??????? ??????

Much advice given to startups is tactical, meant to be helpful daily or weekly. But some advice is more fundamental.

YC has collected what they consider the most important, most transformative advice for startups.

Ex Nihilo

Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing"   

That is what entrepreneurship and startups deal with: creating something out of nothing.  We are looking to create something that fits a need, something of value. We do it for a profit so that the process is scalable, meaning it can grow.    

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, wrote a book about entrepreneurship called Zero to One based on this premise of going from nothing to something; that the act of creation is singular and incredibly worthwhile.

The Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is a simple and quick way to think about and grasp the major parts of any business. The BMC is a template used to organize our thinking around developing business models.    

A Business Model outlines how a company creates value for itself by delivering products and services to customers for revenue and profit.    
   

The Business Model Canvas is a visual chart with elements describing a firm's offering, customers, infrastructure and finances. It is comprised of nine interrelated elements:   

       o  Value Proposition

·      Customers   

      o  Customer Segments   

      o  Channels   

      o  Customer Relationships   

·      Infrastructure   

      o  Key Resources   

      o  Key Activities   

      o  Partner Network   

·      Finances   

      o  Cost Structure   

      o  Revenue Streams
    

Thinking about an enterprise, whether it is one you want to start or an existing one, can get complicated. We need a tool that can overlay any business situation and ask the basic questions about how it is structured, what is being offered and to whom. This tool is the Business Model Canvas.  It helps us keep the whole picture of the business enterprise in our mind so we can evaluate it, test it, and make productive changes.

The Business Model Canvas is where we capture our best guesses about the key business elements and turn them into facts by testing them against potential customers in our search for a viable Business Model. We will look at this testing and searching process in the next section Lean Startup Methodology. But first lets look at the nine elements of the Business Model Canvas in more detail.

Business Model Canvas

The Nine Elements

Value Proposition: What are you building and for whom? Here we need to be careful not to be overly product or technology focused. It’s all about perceived value to customers. In order to be in business, we have to be solving a customer problem or satisfying a customer need.     

Customer Segments: You exist for them and you need to understand them in detail: who they are and why they would buy.    

Channels: How you deliver your Value Proposition to your Customer Segments. Its about logistics, distribution and communication; how do you sell and deliver. Pre 1990s channels were all physical: stores, sales people, and warehouses. Now there are virtual channels as well: Web, Mobile, Cloud and digital downloads and streaming services.    

Customer Relationships: How do you get, keep and grow customers. This is the role of Marketing and, as we will see in the Growth Hacking section, these customer engagement attributes are becoming baked-in to products and services. The first stage is Customer Acquisition where we activate customers to do something through calls-to-action. Next we want to keep them and not lose them to competitors. Then we want to grow them by giving them compelling reasons to spend or use more of what we offer.    

Key Resources: What do you need to make the Business Model work? What are the working capital requirements? What physical resources are required for fulfillment: manufacturing, machines, inventory, and delivery trucks. What Intellectual Property is needed: patents, customer lists. What are the Human Resources needed?    

Key Partners: Strategic alliances, joint ventures, and suppliers.    

Key Activities: What are the most important things the company must do to make the Business Model work? Is it Production, making something or Problem Solving like consulting or engineering, or Supply Chain Management? What do you need to become expert at?   

Costs: What are the costs and expenses to operate the business? What is the cost structure of the product/service? What are the fixed and variable costs? Are there economies of scale and scope? What are the most expensive resources and activities as a percent of the budget?   

Revenue Streams/Models: How do you make money from your product/service being sold to customers? What value are customers paying for? What is your strategy to capture value: direct sales, subscription, or freemium? What are you pricing tactics?   

The Product-Market Fit Framework by Sequoia Capital

Finding product-market fit is the central quest of every early-stage startup.

Rather than diagnosing whether you have product-market fit, this framework outlines three archetypes of PMF that help you understand your product’s place in the market and determine how your company operates.

Ultimately, product-market fit is about your product’s place in the world. 

The Value Proposition Canvas (VPC) expands on the relationship between the Value Proposition and Customers.  The goal is achieving a fit between what you are offering, the value proposition, and what customers want and need.  We call this Product/Market Fit. 

The VPC helps you create the value your customers want by organizing, mapping, and matching the dimensions of your customer’s needs and your product’s feature set.     

The VPC is a simple way to understand your customer’s needs, and design products and services they want. It works in conjunction with the Business Model Canvas. 

The Lean Startup Methodology is a way to bring analytical rigor and a systematic process to understanding and refining a new venture or growing enterprise and making it successful. Lean Startup reduces the risk of failure and ups the odds of success. Lean startup has become incredibly popular because of how effective it is. It was developed and promulgated by Steve Blank and Eric Ries.    

The Lean Startup Methodology applies the Scientific Method to venture development. It starts with a set of hypothesis (guesses) about the various elements of the business model, tests them against customer expectations, and revises and refines them based on the feedback.    

There are three basic components of Lean Startup methodology:   

·      Business Model Design   

·      Customer Discovery   

·      Agile Development   

Lean Startup is an iterative process searching for a Business Model that is stable, reproducible and sustainable. The goal is to develop a Business Model that works over and over, each and every day and that is scalable. This means that there is a profit or net income relative to sales. If you put one dollar in, you get two out. This is the mechanism and model that allows a business to thrive and grow.    

The first step is to fill out the Business Model Canvas. As you fill out the Business Model Canvas you end up with a series of thoughtful first guesses about:   

·      Who do we think our customers are?   

·      What are we making for them?   

·      How much to charge?   

Odds are these initial guesses are wrong but it’s a great first step. Next we will change those guesses into facts through the Customer Development process.    

Lean Startup Process

Crafting a viable Business Model is an iterative process of exploring the relationship and engagement between your core product/service features and feedback from potential customers. 

The goal of this process is to achieve Product/Market Fit. This is where your product or service offering resonates deeply with a customer base and they can’t get enough of it even in its limited prototype configuration.  The two components of this process of moving towards product market fit are a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Customer Discovery.    

The Value Proposition Canvas and mapping we discussed above is a great tool to help formalize this process

We want to perform this process Lean, meaning we want to conserve our limited resources in this exploration and discovery phase. We need lean discipline in order to deploy our resources in a way that allows us to refine our offering in the face of customer feedback until we hit on a truly compelling match. We need money to go back to the drawing board.

Most startups fail because they run out of money. We want to limit that risk. In order to run lean, we develop our prototypes with just the core essential features and present that to customers ASAP in order to get feedback.  This is the MVP idea. Get something meaningful in front of potential customers and start the learning and refining process. The MVP can be a website splash page, a PowerPoint slide, a wireframe or cardboard mockup, or a working prototype. It needs to embody a feature set that customers can respond to, but little more, so it can be changed, tuned and calibrated to meet customer needs.    

This type of development process is called Agile Development. It’s a set of engineering principles designed to quickly iterate around feedback from customers.  Also check out other development frameworks like TRIZ, Scrum, and Six Sigma.    

Customer Development is about by getting out and talking with potential customers, partners, and vendors centered on presenting the MVP and getting feedback. We do this, not in a random way, but with some rigor and a process:   

1.   Design Experiments   

2.   Get Data   

3.   Get Insights   

4.   Rinse and Repeat   

By keeping the development costs low and lean and focusing on learning from customers we can course correct, iterate, pivot, or persevere in search of the holy grail of Product/Market Fit and a viable, scalable Business Model.    

When you have achieved this goal, then you are ready to write a business plan, negotiate funding, and build a company!   

The OODA Loop is a tool for better decision-making. The OODA Loop refers to the decision cycle of observe, orient, decide, and act, developed by military strategist and U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd. 

It has been adopted by entrepreneurs as a learning tool and method for dealing with uncertainty. The OODA loop concept complements the Lean Startup methodology in customer discovery, assessing MVP feature sets, and product/market convergence. Use the OODA Loop approach to course correct as you iterate forward.

CENTS Framework

MJ DeMarco, author of the book "The Millionaire Fastlane" developed the CENTS framework. The CENTS framework helps in evaluating ideas before jumping into them.

The more of the five commandments an idea meets, the more likely the business idea is to be successful.

C —Control:

Make sure that no one entity, source of income, or business can dictate your future. Being reliant on a single platform, supplier, or customer could be the source of this vulnerability. Do you think starting a YouTube channel is a good business to build wealth that can change your life, for instance? YouTube, however, has the authority to suddenly change the terms or ban you from the site. It's over. The same holds true for every other platform, including Facebook, Twitter, Medium, and Google.

Your website and email list are examples of assets you own and control. B e sufficiently diversified to handle changes.

E —Entry:

Barriers to Entry. What Warren Buffett calls moats.

How challenging is it to start up your company and compete? If its profitable, everyone will do it if they can. Due to the intense competition, developing a YouTube channel or growing an Amazon drop-shipping business is challenging. Businesses that produce wealth have entry barriers that keep most people out.

Be devoted and persistent enough to overcome obstacles that will minimize your competition.

N —Need:

You must have a product or service that the market wants or needs. What you provide must offer delight or solve a problem to create value. Do something different from the current providers. If you provide another similar product or service from many other competitors, you will fight on price and race to the bottom.

Remember, it is not about what you love but what the market needs.

T —Time:

All startups require a significant time commitment in the early years. However, after things get up and running, you must be able to run your business primarily without your involvement if you don't want to be permanently bound to it. This independence could be through automation or hiring people to run it for you.

Of course, you must make enough money to hire someone.

S —Scale:

How simple is it to grow the company? For example, do you have a website where you can sell digital downloads to 1 million people as efficiently and cost-effectively as to just 100? Or are you only able to accommodate a certain number of customers daily, like making and selling sandwiches?

You must be able to scale if you want your income to increase exponentially.

Understanding Your Customers is the Secret to Success.

The holy grail of entrepreneurship is product/market fit.

Design Thinking

The Lean Startup methodology came out of business and engineering thinking about how to create a standardized process for developing startups that limits risk and ups the odds of success. Design Thinking is a methodology evolved out of the design field. It is more creative and aesthetic in its approach and concept and entrepreneurs have adopted it.    

Like Lean Startup, Design Thinking is also an iterative process that focuses on understanding the needs of potential customers, testing ideas, and searching for product/market fit. It is a user-centered way to conceive and create successful products.   

Designers use this approach to solve complex problems and find optimal solutions. A design mindset is solution focused and action oriented. Design Thinking draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systemic reasoning, to explore possibilities and to create desired outcomes that benefit the end user, the customer.   

Design thinking is inquiry-based and open-ended. It forces you to put yourself in the customer's shoes. It is initially about generating empathy with the customer and their needs and wants.    

There are a number of variations, but the basic steps in the Design Thinking process are:   

·      Empathy   

·      Define   

·      Ideate   

·      Prototype   

·      Test   

Like Lean Startup, Design Thinking is based on building a Minimal Viable Product, a product with enough features to gather meaningful feedback in order to see what's working, and double down on those features that really moved the needle.   

Design Thinking is a systematic innovation process for gaining deep customer understanding and deciding which features and which products to design and launch.   

In the world of startup incubation, Design Thinking is often compared and contrasted with the Lean Startup approach, which is more engineering-based and quantitative. The two methods are far from mutually exclusive as both seek to effectively serve customers' needs through a systematic, low-risk path to innovating in the face of uncertainty.   
   

******************

Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.   

Tim Brown CEO, IDEO

Growth Hacking

There was a time when television and magazines ruled and marketing meant advertising campaigns. This was the Mad Men era.  Now marketing means an entire suite of activities based on product/market fit and customer engagement. It’s no longer about manufacturing desire for a fait accompli product. Customer needs and feedback are baked into the product and the customer experience is integrated into the company.

Growth Hacking is about customer participation in the marketing process and turbocharging awareness campaigns by creating viral products and content.   

Growth Hacking resides at the intersection of Marketing, Engineering, and Programming. It takes advantage of all the new tools of websites, mobile, analytics, email and social media available to us that help us reach and communicate with customers and measure their behavior in order to provide the best user experience possible. It has gone from one-way advertising to two-way engagement.      

Growth Hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels, like email and social media, and also product development focused on enhancing the user experience. The goal is to identify the most effective, efficient ways to grow a business by understanding what is most compelling to customers both in messaging and product feature sets.    

Growth Hacking refers to a set of marketing experiments that leads to the rapid growth of a business. The experiments are run by A/B testing features and messaging, and measuring which aspects customers respond to best. Measurement tools like Google Analytics provide the measurement metrics and feedback that help refine awareness campaigns and product features.   

It’s about how you get, keep and grow customers. The first stage is Customer Acquisition where we activate customers to do something through Calls-to-Action.  Calls-to-Action are designed to activate lead generation and sales. Initially it could be a sign up or download of valuable content and ultimately leading to becoming a paying customer.   

Next we want to keep them and not lose them to competitors. Then we want to grow them by giving them compelling reasons to spend more or use more of what we offer.   

Marketing funnels are developed to measure how many people respond and then convert to being customers. This process is obsessively measured and continually refined and optimized.   

Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) are calculated and compared to the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer. We obviously are looking to optimize CAC<LTV. Conversion Rates are tracked and optimized along the customer journey.   

Growth Hacking includes engagement with customers through delivering content like blogs, digital downloads, and social media posts. Viral Marketing is a method where customers are encouraged to share information about products or services via various Internet channels especially social media.   

Growth hacking was born from the challenges of startups.

Traditional marketing has a comprehensive focus, and while that skill set is critical in an established enterprise, it is not relevant early in a startup.

In a new startup, you don't need someone to build and manage a marketing team or establish a strategic marketing plan or any other thing that marketers do. A startup needs growth.

A growth hacker has different objectives from a marketer.

Every move a growth hacker makes is informed and driven by growth. The focus of every strategy, every tactic, and every initiative are growing the user base and customers.

A growth hacker's sole focus is growth.

Traditional marketers care about growth, but not to the same single-minded extent. A growth hacker's effectiveness is their obsessive focus on a singular goal. By ignoring everything else, they achieve the one task that matters most early on in a startup.

This focus on growth has given rise to several methods, tools, and best practices, that didn't exist in the traditional marketing repertoire.

Traditional marketers understand traditional products and advertising channels. The Internet has transformed products, services, and advertising channels.

Products used to be physical. Now they are also invisible bits and bytes in the form of software products and digital downloads and streaming services. Products used to be only things like cars, clothes, books, and candy. Now Facebook is a product. Online accounting software is a product. Something you can't hold is now products and services.

This transition is responsible for the new age of growth hackers. The Internet has given the world new kinds of products and services, which demand a new type of thinking about marketing.

Now, a product can be instrumental in its adoption through the exponential power of networking effects. A product like Snapchat allows you to share their product with other friends to make your own experience on their platform better. Toothpaste can't do that. A product like Dropbox can give you free cloud storage if you get a friend to sign up. Washing machines don't do that.

To fully grasp growth hacking, you need to come to grips with this new classification of products, services, and advertising that the Internet has produced.

Startup Funding

The whole process of funding and developing startups has become more widespread because the cost of getting a product to market has dropped so precipitously. In the past couple of decades, launching has gone from millions of dollars to anywhere from under $20,000 to around $500,000.

The funding levels are relatively manageable by investors, and the potential returns are enormous. Potential. The risks are very high of any economic return, but the few startups that break out create legendary fortunes. That is why there are startup founders and startup investors.

A startup goes through a series of funding rounds on its journey from the founder’s idea and then developing an MVP and customer discovery, finding Product/Market Fit, and scaling up operations and sales.

There are many terms tossed around to describe the various rounds of funding that a startup can potentially receive.

These are the typical rounds encountered in an Angel and Venture-Backed Startup, and not all startups receive all these rounds. Most small businesses don’t plan on scaling to become Unicorns and don’t pursue this funding journey.

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Unlocking the mystery behind startup valuation: It's not just about the product, but the potential!

Here's why it's pivotal:

??????????? & ???????????: Guiding your financial decisions.

?????? ??????????: Influencing incentives for your team.

????????? ??????: Planning your company's trajectory.

???????????? & ????????????: Paving the way for collaborations.

Dive into the power of startup valuation calculators:

????-?????? & ????-????????: Streamlining the process for efficiency, these calculators offer user-friendly interfaces, making valuation accessible to all.

????-?????? ???????? ??????: Built on robust algorithms, these calculators analyze critical financial and market data, ensuring objective valuations with reduced guesswork.

??????????? ????: Gain a deeper understanding of your business's strengths and areas for improvement by comprehending the factors influencing its value.

?????????? ?? ????????????: Armed with well-informed estimates, negotiate confidently with investors, grounded in data and market realities.

7 Valuation Methods, explanations on when to use them, and valuation calculations under given assumptions:

1. Discounted Cash Flow Method

2. Valuation by Multiple

3. Comparable Companies Method

4. Replacement Cost Method

5. Net Book Value Method

6. Berkus Valuation Method

7. Venture Capital Method

The relationship between an angel investor and a startup is not just a financial transaction but a symbiotic alliance. Each entity plays a crucial role—the entrepreneur dreams and creates while the investor empowers and nurtures. When aligned, this partnership does not just generate wealth; it propels innovation, fosters economic growth, and brings transformative solutions to society. This is not a journey you embark on alone, but a collaborative effort that involves a community of like-minded individuals.

Download my book on the topic for a deep dive.

Startup Funding Rounds

The following presents startup funding stages in their evolutionary order relative to the development of a startup.

Sweat Equity

At the beginning of most startups, the founders will work on the idea for free. This work is where things start. All the ownership resides with the founders at this point. They figure out how to develop the business concept using their resources. This ground zero is where hustlers and builders push the development of their company forward without outside funding.

Like Teddy Roosevelt said: "Do what you can, where you are, with what you have."

If your idea is compelling enough, you can enlist others' talents to work for sweat equity. Sweat equity compensation may take the form of paying a computer coder to help develop an MVP in exchange for stock in the company instead of cash.

Bootstrapping

Bootstrapping is taking early revenues from products and services developed with sweat equity and plowing it back into more development work. There is some outside money from early adopter customers, but not from investors. Initial paying customers is an important milestone because it signals a need for what the company is creating. It is a signal that the founders are resourceful and committed to finding a way forward. This scrappiness is the kind of grit investors look for in founders.

The 3 Fs

The 3 Fs are usually: Friends, Family, and Fools, but I like to replace the last one with Fans. Once a fledgling startup has developed the concept and identified some initial customer interest, and has a clearer idea of the next steps, it is time to tap the founders' personal network. The personal network is personally risky because raising money from your grandmother or uncle and then throwing in the towel in six months can make for an uncomfortable Thanksgiving get-together. You want to be sure that you are on to something before hitting up loved ones and old college roommates.

The first two stages move the idea along and also help develop discipline about how to parsimoniously deploy these precious funds in the most effective and efficient manner.

Here you want to have a plan to get to clear milestones and deliverables that will be inflection points of added value and reduced risk. This plan needs to include a detailed budget of how to get from here to there. An entrepreneur needs to be scrappy and capital efficient.

Self-Funding

Self-funding founders are a select group that has the resources to fund the initial development. A serial entrepreneur who has sold previous startups are in this category. These are founders that want to focus on building an MVP without having the distractions of pitching investors before knowing whether the idea is feasible and customer interest is reasonably there.

These seasoned folks also realize that the further along the business is, the higher the company's valuation and the less equity they need to give up to raise capital.

Incubators and Accelerators

Incubators and Accelerators are formal programs that accept startups and put them through a program to help develop their idea and then present the graduates to an investment community during a presentation day.

Founders can get a modest amount of funding from these programs. They also get credibility because they have been scrutinized, vetted, and accepted by the incubator program.

Y Combinator is one of the most popular incubators, and they have had some great success stories come through their program like Dropbox and Airbnb.

Crowd Funding

Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others have made crowdfunding a viable option for taking projects from ideation to execution and prove market validation.

These website driven funding sites are attractive because they represent a funding vehicle that is non-dilutive. Non-dilutive means that the money raised is not in exchange for equity (ownership) in the company. Instead of equity, other incentives are offered, such as exclusive access to the founders or early access to the product.

A crowdfunding project can also act to gauge demand and generate interest in a concept early on.

Angel Investing

This funding round is also called Seed Funding and represents the first professional outside investment. Most founders get their seed round after successfully going through two or three of the early-stage funding strategies discussed above.

Angel investors are individuals who scout for great startup opportunities and generally make a lot of relatively small money investments in early-stage high-risk ventures. They are essentially buying lottery tickets on the founder's character and the potential upside of a company breaking out into a huge success. They look to make 100 times their money back if a company "exits" successfully by being acquired or going public.

Angels represent varying degrees of professional investors, and they must be convinced of the potential of a startup to scale and become hugely valuable. After looking at many such deals, their greed needs to overcome their skepticism for them to invest.

Series A

Series A is the funding round where the company becomes a professionally organized entity: a corporation. As part of the deal, professional venture capital firms join the board and create proper "governance" to participate in this funding round. Proper governance means that the company is legally incorporated, holds regular board meetings, and keeps a detailed record of board resolutions designed to increase its share price.

Before the Series A, founders run the show and answer to no one. The focus is on trying to find product/market fit. After Series A, the CEO will spend a significant amount of time (25%) managing the board and addressing its legal requirements.

Series B,C,D etc.

These are the follow-on rounds once a company makes the transition to being a professionally managed operating entity.

Cap Table

The cap table is short for the capitalization table. It is the official list of all the company shareholders and how much they paid for their shares. The above funding rounds represent the people that populate the cap table.

Exit

The exit is the event that represents the big payday for early investors and founders. A funding exit is either an acquisition or an IPO Initial Public Offering. An IPO is where a company gets listed and traded on a stock exchange and sells shares to the general public. IPOs are relatively rare.

The more usual exit is an acquisition where the startup is bought by an established company to add to its portfolio of offerings or other strategic reasons.

The company's purchase price is divided among the various shareholders, and the value of their pro-rata portion determines their return on their original investment. The exit is the end game goal of venture-backed startups.  

In the high-stakes world of entrepreneurship, securing investment is often the critical turning point between a visionary idea and a thriving business. It's the moment when your passion, preparation, and perseverance collide with opportunity. But how do you stand out in a crowded field where investors hear countless pitches and see endless potential? The answer lies in your idea and how you present it.

Whether you're gearing up for your first pitch or refining your approach for the next big round, these nine steps will empower you to connect with investors on a deeper level, showcase the true potential of your startup, and ultimately, secure the backing you need to bring your vision to life. So, dive in, absorb these insights, and prepare to inspire belief—not just in your idea but in you as a founder.

Crafting the Perfect Pitch Deck: A Blueprint for Visionaries

As an entrepreneur, you stand at the precipice of innovation, armed with ideas that can reshape industries and redefine possibilities. But every great idea needs a vessel—a way to convey its power and potential to those who can help bring it to life. That vessel is your pitch deck.

The anatomy of a perfect pitch deck is not just about presenting facts or figures; it's about crafting a compelling story. This story should encapsulate the essence of your vision, highlight the problem you're solving, and showcase the unique value you bring to the table. It's about painting a vivid picture of the future—a future where your solution is the catalyst for change.

The following cheat sheet provides a roadmap to constructing a pitch deck that resonates. From articulating your purpose and vision to detailing your market strategy, every component is designed to build credibility, spark interest, and, most importantly, inspire action.

Remember, your pitch deck is more than just a presentation—it's your chance to make a lasting impression. It's your opportunity to turn skeptics into believers and investors into partners. With the right pitch deck, the possibilities are limitless.

So, as you embark on this journey, think big, be bold, and let your passion shine through. Your story is worth telling, and this pitch deck is your stage. Now, let's set the foundation for your success.

How does your ownership as a founder in your startup change over time?

Dilution can happen in all sorts of ways.

Peter Walker recently compiled a large amount of data from US Carta startups (45,000+) on how these slices of equity pie are distributed over time.

The deck below digs into each source of dilution provides some current market benchmarks for how startup founders are building today and gets into the real details.

It covers:

• SAFEs and convertible notes before price equity (friends & family, angel, pre-seed, and "seed on SAFEs")

• Priced round dynamics

• Employee option pool size impact

• Convertible instruments (either SAFEs or Notes) signed in-between priced rounds

• Examples of ownership at IPO

I hope you find it valuable!

This lecture is an introduction to the strategic cascade framework detailed in the book Play to Win by the former CEO of Proctor & Gamble.

Lean Strategy is a concept that has been adopted by entrepreneurs and startups.

What many entrepreneurs fail to grasp is that rather than suppressing entrepreneurial behavior, effective strategy encourages it—by identifying the bounds within which innovation and experimentation should take place.

What should be derisked at each funding stage?

At each funding stage, it’s crucial to mitigate risks to ensure the success of your startup.

Let’s delve into the specific areas that need to be derisked at different funding stages:

- Pre-Seed:

Product Development: Understand the risks of building your product. Are you optimizing costs while developing your minimum viable product (MVP)?

Technical Debt: Be aware of technical debt and address it proactively.

- Seed:

Customer Acquisition: Identify your first customers and assess their willingness to pay for your product or service.

Market Size: Investors will evaluate if your market is substantial enough to yield healthy returns.

- Series A:

Go-to-Market Strategy: Develop a reliable, predictable approach for customer acquisition.

Ideal Customer Segments: Capture your target customer segments effectively.

- Series B:

Market Share Expansion: As the race intensifies, focus on expanding, scaling, and optimizing your target market against larger competitors.

- Series C+:

Leadership and Culture: Build a startup culture supporting a growing team. Maintain core values even as your company scales.

Incredible numbers cited by the Harvard Business Review!

According to HBR, 70% to 90% of innovations fail!

Business Executives often name innovation as their highest priority.

Yet, it's important to acknowledge that they also often find it to be one of their most significant challenges, a struggle shared by many.

Despite large investments in research and development, big data curation, and even AI, there's little evidence that these numbers are improving.

In this Cheat Sheet, we examine six models that can help organizations and leaders innovate faster and more effectively.

The six models we explore are:

1/ Gap Analysis

2/ The Value-Complexity Matrix

3/ Design Sprint by Google

4/ Lean UX Cycle

5/ The 6 Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono

6/ The Kano Model

Are you overly focused on solving problems?

You may need to change your thinking and spend more time on problem-framing first.

"All good innovation starts with FINDING and FRAMING problems...and it's only after we have unpacked problems to really understand them and define them that good responses (and therefore innovation) can actually happen." - This comes from the excellent Problem Framing Canvas by the Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation.

What's the problem with skipping over the "framing" stage?:

? You can end up "solving" the wrong things

? You can get stuck re-using "solutions" that just aren't effective

? You can feed a bias for action (over empathy & reflection)

? It can lead to a one-size-fits-all approach.

Innovation starts with finding problems – Things we can't stop thinking about, that annoy us or our colleagues or customers intensely, and that we can't let go of. The noticing, finding, exploring, discovering, understanding, and ultimately framing of problems that matter.

Here are five steps to ensure that you don't jump to solutions:

1️⃣ Expand (e.g., how might we?)

2️⃣ Examine (e.g., what are the deep causes?)

3️⃣ Empathize (e.g., what are the pain points?)

4️⃣ Elevate (e.g., what are the interconnections?)

5️⃣ Envision (e.g., what's our ambition and what steps are involved?)

Does this resonate with you? Is it something you do well? I must admit that I love jumping in and trying to "fix" things... even when I know that's not sensible.

The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups, by Paul Graham (YC Founder)

"In a sense, there's just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. If you make something users want, you'll probably be fine, whatever else you do or don't do. And if you don't make something users want, then you're dead, whatever else you do or don't do. So really this is a list of 18 things that cause startups not to make something users want. Nearly all failure funnels through that."

40 Questions to Crash-Test Your Startup

What Questions Should You Ask Before Joining or Investing in a Startup?

If you’re considering joining a startup, asking the right questions is essential to ensure you’re making an informed decision.

Here are some questions from Y Combinator, the famous startup accelerator and venture capital firm you can ask to learn more about a startup company’s mission, values, history, and business model.

How to Pitch Your Company

Customers and Investors need to understand what your company does. As a founder, you'll be pitching your startup a lot. An effective pitch has to be clear and concise.

Go through the pitch creation process by answering these seven questions. When you can answer all seven questions succinctly, you'll be well prepared to pitch.

What Should Be In Your ????? ?????

Whether you're steering a business, introducing a new product, or aiming to boost sales, a well-crafted pitch deck is your secret weapon. It's a powerful tool that enables you to effectively communicate with potential clients or investors, showcasing what you can bring to the table and why you're a smart investment choice.

The secret to a winning pitch deck, typically consisting of 10-15 slides, is to tell your story in a way that's both brief and impactful. This means crafting a narrative that's not only compelling but also tailored to your specific audience.

Your pitch should foremost include these:

1. The problem and opportunity

2. Traction so far

3. Your value proposition.

4. Your business model(s) that give you a "competitive advantage"

5. Competition

6. Your team's capability to accomplish your goals

7. The capital you need and how that will create much greater value

Optional slides (depending on your startup's size, stage, and industry):

• Market Validation

• Market Size

• Marketing Plan / Go to Market

• Use of Funds

Which ones do you consider must-have slides in a pitch deck?

Credit: Guy Kawasaki, Sequoia, Crowdfunder, 500Startups

In a world fixated on productivity hacks and efficiency, it’s crucial to remember the unique nature of the human brain, which is far from being a mere machine.

Scientific evidence underscores the significance of both analytical and creative thinking, the two sides of the brain, in shaping our overall success and well-being, empowering us with a holistic cognitive approach.

Let’s embark on a journey to challenge conventional wisdom with 7 antithetical productivity rules that can revolutionize your cognitive abilities, inspiring you to think beyond the norm.

Here I discuss Facebook's business model.

Summary

The methods described in this course are not mutually exclusive approaches. Apply design thinking, lean and agile methodologies, and growth hacking together. Integrate them into your creativity and development process. The interplay is valuable. Keep it lean and experimental. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

The goal is to get to know the customer well. Put in the minimum amount of effort and resources to get the maximum learning ASAP. One way is to build a web page to see if people will click on it. Another way is to place keyword ads around your core feature or value proposition. As an entrepreneur, repeat this process again and again. Keeping the process cost-effective allows you to do more iterations.

An element of Lean Startup is the notion of the pivot. If the data invalidates your hypothesis, you keep some features fixed and change other parts. But how do you know where to pivot? The guiding principle is a deeper customer understanding. This scenario is an example of how Design Thinking and Lean Startup can interact: The empathy you gain through Design Thinking helps you identify possible pivots.

A startup venture is a series of hypotheses about who's a customer, what makes your product or service attractive to these customers, etc. Lean Startup provides a rigorous framework that you use to prove or disprove as many of these hypotheses as possible at as low a cost as possible. The interesting question is, how do you generate the hypothesis? If you have not already identified the user need through your own experience of a pain point, having experienced it firsthand, how would you discover that need?

Again Design Thinking can help. In Design Thinking, you develop a prototype and use it to get qualitative feedback, and Lean Startup makes the process more rigorous. In this way, you don't delude yourself that the feedback is necessarily positive.

These approaches complement each other and can be used to converge on insanely great products and services that meet customer needs and wants. When features are baked in that facilitate Growth Hacking, you are on your way to a very promising Startup Venture!

Venture Capital Due Diligence Questionnaire

This document provides a structured and comprehensive list of elements VCs consider during the due diligence phase.

Even though VCs and angel investors take different approaches to due diligence, this document is also beneficial for individuals planning to become angel investors.

A Guide to Venture Capital Term Sheets

It includes

A. What is a Term Sheet?

B. The Investment Process

C. What terms are typically included in a Term Sheet?

1. Type of share

2. Valuation and milestones

3. Dividend rights

4. Liquidation preference and deemed liquidation

5. Redemption

6. Conversion rights

7. Automatic conversion of share class/series

8. Anti-dilution (or price protection)

9. Founder shares

10. Pre-emption rights on new share issues

11. Pre-emptive rights on transfer and tag-along rights

12. Drag along or bring along

13. Representations and warranties

14. Voting rights

15. Protective provisions and consent rights (class rights)

16. Board of Directors/Board Observer

17. Information rights

18. Exit

19. Registration rights (US)

20. Confidentiality, Intellectual Property Assignment and Management

Non-compete Agreements

21. Employee share option plan

22. Transaction and monitoring fees

23. Confidentiality

24. Exclusivity and Break Fees

25. Enforceability

26. Conditions precedent

V Venture Capital Glossary of Terms

VI Example of a Term Sheet for a Series A round

All credit goes to Simpson Grierson.

10 free websites so valuable they should come pre-bookmarked on every browser.

Steve Jobs famously said, "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundreds of other good ideas that exist. You have to pick carefully."

When To Say No

For business leaders and their colleagues, one of the most challenging skills is learning how to say "no."

Here's how to master the art of when to say No:

According to the Harvard Business Review, leaders with higher business acumen are 40% more likely to reach the executive level.

Why? In today’s competitive landscape, you must set yourself apart from the also-rans gunning for your promotion.

To think otherwise is to light a stick of dynamite at the feet of your next big job offer.

This graphic explores six business frameworks that every leader must know.

The six are:

1. McKinsey’s 3 Horizons

2. Smart Insights Framework

3. Porter’s Five Forces Analysis

4. TAM SAM SOM

5. Ohmae’s 3 C’s

6. The GE-McKinsey Nine-Box MatrixBiz models

Bank Reconciliation - Manual vs Automated

Automation wasn't even in sight when I started preparing bank reconciliations as a general ledger accountant.

Yes, there was a time when you had to manually reconcile GL transactions and bank statements line by line.

Print them both and knock off reconciled items one by one.

You couldn't even download bank statements as CSV files.

The statements used to be paper-based and received in snail mail.

That also meant difficulty in reconciling bank accounts before the month-end close.

These days, life is much easier!

• Bank portal integration with the accounting software/ERP.

• Downloadable bank statements in the format you need.

• Automated reconciliation software.

You name it, you have it.

When entering transactions in the ERP system, one crucial consideration is that you must accurately tag each transaction so that the reconciliation software can read and compare it with the bank statement.

And tags should be aligned with the data provided by the bank.

Otherwise, reconciliation software is not very useful.

Remember, the review and approval process remains integral to bank reconciliation even after automation.

Here is a comparison of how accounting processes have evolved by leveraging technology.

1- Gathering Data

2- Match Transactions

3- Identify Differences

4- Adjustments

5- Ending Balances

6- Reconciliation

7- Review and Approval

8- Resolve Discrepancies

9- Final Reconciliation

The basics of accounting

This PDF will teach you everything you need to know

Here's what you'll learn:

- Accounting Cycle & Accounting Equation

- List of Accounts and Its Classification

- Accounting Principles

- Journal Entries, Adjusting Entries, & Closing Entries

- Financial Statements

13 Accounting Principles

Accounting is the language of business.

If you want to read financial statements, you MUST understand these 13 principles:

ACCOUNTING PRINCIPLES

→ The rules, benchmarks, and procedures in the accounting field companies should follow while reporting financial statements. In the United States, the common set of accounting standards is GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).

ECONOMIC ENTITY

→The Owner & business are two different entities with separate liabilities.

REVENUE RECOGNITION

→ Revenue should be recognized using the accrual basis of accounting.

CONSERVATISM

→When there are two acceptable options for reporting, the less favorable option should be chosen.

CONSISTENCY

→The usage of methods and principles should be consistent until another method proves to be better.

HISTORICAL COST

→Assets should be recorded based on their original purchased value.

FULL DISCLOSURE

→All important information should be disclosed within the financial statements or as a footnote.

GOING CONCERN

→Business is assumed to carry on forever with no intention of liquidation.

MATCHING CONCEPT

→All debits should have a matching credit, and all credits should have a matching debit.

MATERIALITY

→Any information which will have a significant impact should be reported on the financial statements.

MONETARY UNIT

→Transactions that carry a monetary value should be recorded in terms of a monetary currency (Eg, Dollars)

RELIABILITY

→Transactions should only be recorded that can be proven & have significant evidence.

REVENUE TIMING

→ Revenues will be recognized at the time of the transactions regardless of whether payment has been made.

TIME PERIOD

→There should be a standardized time period for the reporting of the financial statements (Ex: Monthly, Quarterly, or Annually)

Do any of these principles need further explanation? If so, let me know in the comments section.

Accruals and Provisions

The Confusing Duo of Accounting. Let's Demystify!

Understanding the difference between accruals and provisions is fundamental for accurate accounting and financial reporting.

It is common for business owners or even us accountants to need clarification on the two.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Not, at least, after the information I have put together to demystify the confusion.

This is what you will find in the excellent PDF attached:

1- The Confusion

2- The Reason for the Confusion

3- Why Understanding the Difference is Important?

4- Impact of Incorrect Classification?

5- The Concept

6- The Purpose

7- The Recognition

8- The Estimation

9- The Timing

10- The Reversal

11- The Adjustments

12- The Examples

13- The Impact on Cash Flow

14- The Accounting Treatment Process Flow

The General Ledger Closing Checklist

As I write this, I am helping a client streamline their month-end closing and reporting process, including developing and implementing best practices to close each function within the finance department.

Once complete, part of the project is to develop a management and board reporting pack to ensure a seamless record-to-report process.

The accuracy of the General Ledger is critical to achieving accurate and reliable reporting.

Accounting teams cannot avoid the task of closing the books at the end of the month.

It always seems like the next month-end closing is upon us before we close the previous month.

The cycle keeps repeating itself over and over again, like Groundhog Day.

For those days, checklists become handy to ensure we have completed each task necessary to close the month.

I'm a big fan of checklists. Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto is a great book.

One such checklist is the general ledger closing checklist.

Here's something I've created for my client. I am sharing it with the broader audience.

It is helpful to take this and create one based on your processes and dates.

Here's what I have covered in the graphic:

1. Preparation and Planning

2. Review Subsidiary Ledgers

3. Adjusting Entries

4. Revenue Recognition

5. Expense Recognition

6. Depreciation and Amortization

7. Bank Reconciliation

8. Accruals

9. Financial Statement Preparation

10. Review and Approval

11. Documentation & Audit Trail

12. Adjusting Entries

13. Aging Reports

14. Post-Closing Adjustments

15. Final Review

GAAP vs non GAAP

If accounting is the language of business, as we often teach, understanding its high-level concepts is essential.

Yet, when listening to insiders or stock market veterans, they often use industry jargon and alphabet soup acronyms without explaining what each means.

In today’s lesson, we will tackle one of accounting’s most confusing terms, which is crucial to understand when going through a company’s financial statements: GAAP, which stands for generally accepted accounting principles.

GAAP accounting is a commonly accepted set of rules and procedures designed to govern corporate accounting and financial reporting within the United States.

GAAP rules were jointly established by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB).

GAAP rules are applied to profitable corporations (overseen by the FASB) and government and non-profit organizations (regulated by the GASB).

This raises an important question: Why do companies report non-GAAP results if GAAP rules are for corporations?

Non-GAAP refers to accounting practices that do not comply with the GAAP standards. As a result, these metrics aren’t audited and don’t have a standardized reporting format.

Many companies report non-GAAP results to shareholders (in addition to their GAAP results) to add important color and nuance to their numbers that the GAAP standard misses.

However, it’s important to note that non-GAAP numbers can also disguise weaknesses in a company’s results.

Therefore, a discerning investor must carefully comb through the numbers, comparing the GAAP with the non-GAAP results, to see an accurate picture of companies’ finances.

You can't control your Profit if you can't control your Costs.

There are main Cost Drivers you should control to drive your profitability.

Some are within your control (internal) or outside your control (external).

Your internal cost drivers are within your business's control, and you can influence them through your operations and management practices.

Prioritize these drivers to improve your cost structure and competitiveness.

Internal cost drivers include volume, efficiency, process improvements, and quality.

External cost drivers are outside your business's direct control and are influenced by external market conditions, such as supply and demand, commodity prices, and regulatory requirements.

Monitor these drivers and adapt your strategy to respond to market conditions.

External cost drivers include material costs, labor costs, and overhead costs.

Here's how you can use each of these seven drivers to impact your Costs positively:

1️⃣ Volume

• Increase production volumes to take advantage of economies of scale

• Implement a just-in-time (JIT) inventory system to reduce inventory costs

• Consolidate your production facilities to reduce fixed costs

2️⃣ Efficiency

• Reduce your cycle time by implementing lean manufacturing

• Automate manual processes to increase productivity

• Improve product design to reduce waste and scrap

3️⃣ Process improvements

• Streamline workflows and eliminate non-value-added activities

• Invest in technology to automate manual processes

• Implement kaizen programs to drive process improvements

4️⃣ Quality

• Implement quality control procedures to reduce your defects and scrap

• Invest in employee training and development to improve your product quality and performance

5️⃣ Material costs

• Optimize your material usage through better inventory management and production planning

• Explore alternative materials or substitutes to reduce costs

6️⃣ Labor costs

• Cross-train employees to improve flexibility and reduce overtime costs

• Improve employee retention and engagement to reduce your turnover costs

• Use temporary or contract labor to supplement permanent staff

7️⃣ Overhead costs

• Outsource your non-core functions to reduce fixed overhead costs

• Implement a telecommuting program to reduce your office space costs

In the realm of modern business, agility is not just a buzzword—it's a strategic imperative. Flexible budgeting emerges as a pivotal tool for organizations seeking to adapt swiftly to market shifts, optimize resources effectively, and drive sustainable growth. Let's delve into how embracing flexibility in budgeting can empower your business.

Why Embrace Flexible Budgets?

Flexible budgets empower businesses to navigate unpredictable economic landscapes with resilience and foresight. By adjusting financial plans based on real-time data and market dynamics, organizations can enhance operational efficiency and seize growth opportunities proactively.

? Key Benefits of Flexible Budgeting:

Adaptive Planning: Adjust budget allocations in response to changing market conditions.

Risk Mitigation: Anticipate financial risks and implement timely corrective measures.

Strategic Allocation: Optimize resource deployment to align with organizational priorities.

Operational Excellence: Improve decision-making with accurate and actionable insights.

Practical Examples of Flexible Budget Implementation:

Explore how industries leverage flexible budgeting strategies to drive innovation and operational excellence:

? Manufacturing: Dynamic production budgets adapt to fluctuating raw material costs and demand patterns, ensuring optimal efficiency and cost control.

? Services: Real-time cash flow budgeting enables service firms to manage billing cycles effectively, enhance profitability, and maintain financial stability amidst market uncertainties.

? Retail: Flexible marketing budgets adjust expenditures based on seasonal trends and consumer behavior insights, optimizing promotional campaigns and driving customer engagement.

In conclusion, flexible budgeting isn't just about adapting to change—it's about driving innovation, managing risks effectively, and positioning your business for sustained success in a dynamic marketplace. By embracing flexible budgeting strategies, organizations can foster agility, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and achieve long-term growth objectives.

How does your organization leverage flexible budgets to drive strategic initiatives and navigate market uncertainties?

Cost Accounting Formulas

This PDF teaches you everything you need to know

Here's what you'll learn:

- Total Cost (TC)

- Average Cost (AC)

- Marginal Cost (MC)

- Contribution Margin (CM)

- Gross Profit (GP)

- Break-Even Point (BEP)

- Return On Investment (ROI)

- Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)

- Overhead Allocation

- Cost Variance

- Price Variance

- Labor Efficiency Variance

- Predetermined Overhead Rate (POR)

- Economic Order Quantity (EOQ)

- Cost of Quality (COQ)

- Production Volume Variance

- Margin of Safety

- Availability

- Reorder Point

- Takt Time

FP&A Internal Controls and Best Practices

Management and the board rely on your analyses and insights, making decisions based on your TIMELY reports.

A single error can question the accuracy and reliability of the entire report.

How do you achieve accuracy, reliability, and timeliness?

Always remember two things:

1- Accuracy and reliability through internal controls

2- Efficiency and timeliness through process improvement & technology

Here's something to help you achieve just that:

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Establish clear budget procedures and approval processes and monitor performance.

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Implement controls to monitor actual outcomes versus projections and conduct variance analysis.

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Financial data accuracy, completeness, and reliability in FP&A require data validation checks and reviews of data sources and inputs.

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Implement controls to ensure financial analyses, reports, and recommendations are subject to appropriate review and approval.

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Establish segregation of duties within the FP&A function to prevent conflicts of interest and reduce the risk of errors.

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Implement controls to manage changes in processes, models, or methodologies.

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Implement controls to protect sensitive financial information.

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Maintain proper documentation of FP&A activities, including assumptions, models, and calculations.

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Establish controls to ensure compliance with relevant financial regulations, accounting standards, and internal policies.

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Implement controls to monitor the performance and effectiveness of the FP&A function.

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✅ Alignment with Strategy

✅ Collaboration & Communication

✅ Driver-Based Planning

✅ Use of Technology

Provisions in Accounting

Understanding provisions is critical to protecting your business from unexpected financial hits.

Here's a straightforward guide on everything you need to know.

A provision is an amount set aside from a company's profits to cover future liabilities or losses that are probable but uncertain in timing or amount.

It helps businesses prepare for potential financial obligations and ensure their financial statements reflect an accurate and fair view.

What Business Owners Should Know:

-> Provisions enable companies to present a clearer financial picture by accounting for future liabilities in the current period.

-> By setting aside funds for potential future expenses, provisions help businesses manage risks effectively.

-> Proper provisions ensure compliance with accounting standards and regulations, avoiding legal and financial penalties.

Managing provisions accurately is vital for your business's financial health and stability.

Ensure your financial statements reflect an accurate and fair view by properly accounting for future liabilities.

12 Steps Approach to Process Improvement

Improve any process within your organization by following these steps.

With years of corporate experience and a current focus on helping establish and improve processes, I've witnessed the transformative power of streamlining processes.

From enhancing efficiency to boosting productivity, the results speak for themselves.

Here are some of the benefits:

- Enhances quality and consistency.

- Increases efficiency and reduces waste.

- Supports compliance and risk management.

- Facilitates better communication and collaboration.

- Promotes continuous improvement and innovation.

Leveraging my experience, I am helping SMEs document and improve accounting and finance processes and supporting them in doing the same in other departments across the organization.

Here are some examples of processes across the organization:

- Accounting & Finance: Customer Invoicing

- Human Resources: Employee onboarding process

- Operations: Manufacturing workflow optimization

- Customer Service: Customer support ticket resolution

- Information Technology: Software deployment and update process

- Supply Chain Management: Inventory management and replenishment

Here's how you can follow the systematic approach to improve any process within your organization:

1- Understand the Current Process

2- Define the Current Process

3- Identify Pain Points and Bottlenecks

4- Set Objectives

5- Engage Stakeholders

6- Research Best Practices

7- Design the Future State

8- Document the Improved Process

9- Implement Changes Incrementally

10- Provide Training

11- Monitor and Measure

12- Iterate and Refine

Intro to Financial Statements

What are financial statements?

The 3 Financial Statements

Understanding Financial Statements

When you have completed this section of MBA ASAP, you will have a solid understanding of Financial Statements, and you will be able to draw meaningful conclusions from their contents. This knowledge can be highly impactful for the quality of your career, job prospects, and life.

Financial Statements are the primary language of money and business. Everyone should have a basic understanding of Financial Statements: what they are and what information they provide. It's a competency that can open up opportunities and vistas that are closed off otherwise.

Executives like the CEO, COO, and CFO routinely share and discuss financial data with marketing, operations, and other direct reports and personnel. They also compile and share financial information with stakeholders outside the firm, such as bankers, investors, and the media.

But how much do you really understand about finance and the numbers? A recent investigation into this question concluded that even most managers and employees don't understand enough to be useful. Check out the quiz in this section to see how you stack up. I will offer the quiz again at the end of the course so you will be able to gauge how your level of financial competency has improved.

Three Main Financial Statements

There are three main financial statements, and they are linked together to provide a picture of an enterprise's financial position and health. They represent the end product of accounting, meaning they are the reports generated by accounting covering all of a company's transactions.

The three primary financial statements are the

• Balance Sheet: which shows firm's assets, liabilities, and net worth on a stated date

• Income Statement: also called profit & loss statement or simply the P&L: which shows how the net income of the firm is arrived at over a stated period, and

• Cash Flow Statement: This shows the inflows and outflows of cash due to the firm's activities during a stated period.

Knowing how to read and understand financial statements is a business skill you can't ignore. It can help work your way up the corporate ladder by communicating with others in your company and understanding the big picture. It is also a useful skill to know where your efforts and work can make the most impact.

When you are thinking about possibly changing jobs and working for a company, you can check their financials and make sure they are healthy. If you are considering starting your own company, you will need to have financials prepared by your accountant to talk to investors, bankers, and vendors.

Suppose you want to invest wisely in the stock market, analyze the competition, or benchmark your performance. In that case, you can look up any publicly-traded company's financials at the Securities and Exchange Commission website's' EDGAR filings and get an idea of how they are doing. Check out any public company's most recent 10K filing there. A 10K is the Annual Report of the company and its most important business and financial disclosure document.

Next, we will go over each of the financial statements individually and how they are interrelated. You will find lots more information in the books and other downloadable documents that accompany this course.

Imagine being a business owner and not understanding how much your company’s assets are worth.

Or being a CFO who didn’t know the difference between net income and free cash flow.

While these scenarios are nearly unbelievable, it is just as vital for investors to understand how financial statements work as it is for company executives.

Every investor needs to be able to read and analyze the three financial statements companies provide to their shareholders:

1. Income Statement

2. Balance Sheet

3. Cash Flow Statement

Let’s briefly review the purpose of these statements, why they’re essential, and the basic information each reveals.

In this video I discuss that Financial Statements are what accounting produces.  Double entry bookkeeping and accounting helped usher in the modern world. History of Accounting and Commerce

The Fundamental Importance of Understanding Financial Statements

Being able to read and understand financial statements is a fundamental skill to understanding how businesses function. Since financial statements are the end product of accounting, understanding them provides the context for understanding accounting. Mastering this skill will help you become a better manager.

Being able to read financial statements will also help you make better investment decisions in the stock market because you will be able to get meaningful information out of an Annual Report or a 10K.

If you are an entrepreneur planning a startup then understanding financial statements is critical for your credibility as you meet with angel investors, bankers, and VCs.

Financial Statements

Accounting information is prepared, organized, and conveyed is in Financial Statements. Financial statements are reports in which accounting information is organized, so users of financial information have a consistent, quick, and thorough means of reading and understanding what is going on in the business.

There are two basic financial statements: the Balance Sheet and the Income Statement.

Interested parties need to understand the financial and accounting activities of a business. The Balance Sheet and Income Statement are a formal record of the economic activities of a company. They are presented in a structured manner and in a form that is consistent and easy to understand once you understand the format.

Financial Statements provide a high-level view of accounting and a summary of how a business is performing. They give a quick picture that can be easily compared across companies and industries. Understanding how to read and analyze a Balance Sheet and Income Statement is a great place to start understanding accounting and finance.

Financial statements are the end product of bookkeeping. Think of financial statements as the destination or goal of bookkeeping and accounting. When you know where you are going and who the audience is, it is easier to make good bookkeeping decisions. When you understand the liquidity, solvency, and capital structure of a company, you can make good financing and investment decisions.

Financial Statements contain information required to analyze and assess the relative health of a business quickly. A basic understanding of financial statements also provides the high-level perspective on the bookkeeping work and accounting entries' goals. The daily operations of a company are measured in the money that comes in as revenues, the money that goes out as expenses, the money that is retained as profit, the money invested in operational assets, and the money that is owed. It's all about the money. Financial statements let you follow the money.

Finally, understand the numbers side of Business. Financial Literacy matters to your career and success Senior executives routinely share and discuss financial data with marketing directors, operations chiefs, and other direct reports. But how much do those managers really understand about finance and the numbers? A recent investigation into this question concluded most managers understand not enough to be useful. Asked to take a basic financial-literacy exam—a test that any CEO or junior finance person should easily ace—a representative sample of U.S. managers from C-level executives to supervisors scored an average of only 38%. Lack of financial literacy matters and impacts an organization's ability to perform optimally. Those who can't speak the language of Business can't contribute much to a discussion of performance and are unlikely to advance in the hierarchy or reach their full potential. Does a lack of financial literacy matter? From a managers' point of view, it indeed does. Those who can't speak the language of Business can't contribute much to a discussion of performance and are unlikely to advance in the hierarchy. They may get caught off guard by financial shenanigans, as many employees at Enron were.

They also are unable to gauge the health of a prospective or current employer. The CFO of a small manufacturing company often asks candidates for engineering positions whether they would like to review the past two years of the company's financials. None yet have taken him up on the offer—knowing, perhaps, that they could make neither head nor tail of the statements. People don't tell their bosses that they don't speak finance. It's the usual human reluctance to admit ignorance. In a survey, managers were asked what happens in meetings when people don't understand financial data. The majority chose answers reflecting that reluctance, such as "Most people don't ask because they don't want to appear uninformed in front of their boss or peers." Don't let this be you. Take this course and understand Financial Statements.

Download the two attached eBooks for a thorough understanding of financial statements and the terms associated with them.

I'm proud to say that the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts are using MBA ASAP 10 minutes to Understanding Financial Statements as a pre-read to their Business Valuation Certification Program. Download your copy here and level up your financial literacy!

The Income Statement

The basic structure and components of the Income Statement are reviewed in this lecture. The Income Statement is sometimes called the Profit and Loss Statement or P&L for short.

The components of the Income Statement are:

• Revenue

• Expenses

• Net Income

• Profit

• Earnings
  

The Income Statement

The daily operations of a business are measured in the money that comes in as revenues, the money that goes out as expenses, the money that is retained as profit, the money that is invested in operational assets, and the money that is owed. It's all about the money. Financial statements follow the money.

The report that measures these daily operations, of money in and money out over a period of time, is the Income Statement.

Revenues minus Expenses equals Net Income

The Income Statement can be summarized as Revenues less Expenses equals Net Income. The term Net Income means Income (Revenues) net (less) of Expenses. Net Income is also called Profit or Earnings. The words "profits," "earnings," and "net income" all mean the same thing and are used interchangeably. They are synonyms for the bottom line number on the Income Statement. Revenues are often called Sales and are represented on the top line.

You understand the dynamics of this concept intuitively. We always strive to sell things for more than they cost us to make or buy. When you buy a house, you hope that it will appreciate in value so you can sell it in the future for more than you paid for it. It's also the rule for stocks: buy low, sell high. In order to have a sustainable business model, in the long run, the same logic applies. You can't sell things for less than they cost to make and stay in business for long. If you own run a sandwich shop, you had better make sure that you are selling the sandwiches for more than they cost you to make.

Think of the Income Statement in relation to your monthly personal finances. You have your monthly revenues: in most cases, the salary from your job. You apply that monthly Income to your monthly expenses: rent or mortgage, car loan, food, gas, utilities, clothes, phone, entertainment, etc. Our goal is to have our costs, or expenses, be less than our Income.

There is an adage: "If your outflow is more than your income, your upkeep is your downfall."

Over time, and with experience, we become better managers of our personal finances and begin to realize that we shouldn't spend more that we make. We strive to have some money left over at the end of the month that we can set aside and save. In business, what is set aside and saved is called Retained Earnings.

Some of what we set aside, we may invest with an eye toward future benefits. We may invest in stocks and bonds or mutual funds or invest in education to expand our future earning and career prospects. This decision is the same type of money management discipline that is applied in business. It's just a matter of scale. In business, we buy assets that help the enterprise expand or perform more efficiently. There are a few additional zeros after the numbers on a large company's Income Statement, but the idea is the same.

This concept applies to all businesses. Revenues are usually from Sales of products or services. Expenses are what you spend to support those sales in terms of the operations: Salaries, raw materials, manufacturing processes and equipment, offices and factories, consultants, lawyers, advertising, shipping, utilities, etc. What is left over is the Net Income or Profit. Again: Revenues – Expenses = Net Income.

Net Income is either saved in order to smooth out future operations and deal with unforeseen events (save for a rainy day); or invested in new facilities, equipment, and technology. Or part of the profits can be paid out to the company owners, called shareholders or stockholders, as a dividend.

The Income Statement is also known as the "profit and loss statement". Business people sometimes use the shorthand term "P&L," which stands for profit and loss statement. A manager is said to have "P&L responsibilities" if they run an autonomous division where they decide about marketing, sales, staffing, products, expenses, and strategy. P & L responsibility is one of the most critical responsibilities of any executive position. It involves monitoring the net Income after expenses for a department or entire organization, with direct influence on how company resources are allocated and responsibility for performance.

Google the term "income statement," and you will see lots of examples of formats and presentations. You will see variety depending on the business's industry and nature, but they all follow these basic principles.

Remember: Income (revenue or sales) – Expenses = Net Income or profit.

Learn Income Statements like a pro! With our guide, discover the basics of financial reporting and boost your financial knowledge!

1️⃣ What is an Income Statement?

An income statement, also known as a profit and loss statement (P&L), is a financial report that shows a company's revenues, expenses, and profits (or losses) over a specific period, typically a fiscal quarter or year.

2️⃣ Components of an Income Statement

Revenue (Sales): The total income from selling goods or providing services.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): The direct costs of producing the goods or services.

Gross Profit: Revenue minus COGS, representing the initial profit before operating expenses.

Operating Expenses: Costs related to the day-to-day operations of the business (e.g., salaries, rent, utilities).

Operating Income: Gross profit minus operating expenses, indicating the profit from core operations.

Non-Operating Income (Expenses): Additional income or expenses not directly related to core operations.

Net Income (Profit or Loss): The final result indicates the overall profit or loss after all income and expenses.

3️⃣ Analysis of an Income Statement

To evaluate a company's Income Statement, various margins and ratios are used:

Profit Margin

(Net Income / Revenue) x 100

Gross Margin

(Gross Profit / Revenue) x 100

Operating Margin

(Operating Income / Revenue) x 100

EBITDA Margin:

(EBITDA / Revenue) x 100

Revenue Growth Rate:

((Current Period Revenue – Previous Period Revenue) / Previous Period Revenue) x 100

Return on Equity (ROE):

(Net Income / Shareholders' Equity) x 100

Return on Assets (ROA):

(Net Income / Total Assets) x 100

4️⃣ Interpreting an Income Statement

Positive Net Income: The company is profitable, and the amount represents its earnings for the period.

Negative Net Income: The company incurred losses for the period.

Trends: Analyze trends over multiple periods to assess the company's financial health.

Comparisons: Compare the income statement with those of competitors or industry standards for benchmarking.

5️⃣ Importance of the Income Statement

• Investor Insight

• Management Tool

• Creditworthiness

• Strategic Planning

• Legal Compliance

• Transparency and Trust

• Benchmarking

14 Types of Costs You Should Know

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- Relevant/Incremental Costs: Future costs that are relevant to decision-making

- Irrelevant/Sunk Costs: Past costs that are irrelevant to decision-making

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- Product Costs: Inventoried costs associated with the production of products or services

- Period Costs: Costs not related to production and expensed in the period

- Manufacturing Costs: total costs associated with the production of goods, including direct materials, direct labor, and manufacturing overhead

- Operating Costs: total costs associated with day-to-day operations

- Conversion Costs: costs incurred when converting raw materials into finished products

- Overhead Costs: indirect costs not tied to a specific product or service, often including items like rent, utilities, and administration costs (can be manufacturing or non-manufacturing)

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- Direct Costs: Costs that can be traced directly to a specific cost object

- Indirect Costs: Costs that cannot be traced directly to a specific cost object

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- Fixed Costs: Costs that remain constant regardless of the level of production or services

- Variable Costs: Costs that vary in direct proportion to the level of production

- Semi-variable Costs/Mixed Costs: Costs that contain both fixed and variable components

- Step Costs: Costs that remain fixed only for a certain volume or range of activity

Economic Costs: the total cost of producing your goods or services, including explicit costs (such as wages and materials) and implicit costs (such as opportunity costs).

Allocated Costs: indirect costs that you cannot directly trace to a specific product or service and which you instead distribute to products based on a pre-determined method ideally driven by a cause-effect relationship

Income Statements don't have a universal look or layout.

That's because management teams have complete control over the terms & layout of their financial statements.

Here are the other words that management teams can use when creating their Income Statement:

INCOME STATEMENT SYNONYMS:

→Revenue Statement

→Earnings Statement

→Operating Statement

→Statement of Earnings

→Statement of Operations

→Profit and Loss Statement (P&L)

REVENUE SYNONYMS:

→Sales

→Income

→Top Line

→Receipts

→Turnover

→Gross Sales

→Gross Income

COST OF GOODS SOLD SYNONYMS:

→Goods Cost

→Direct Costs

→Cost of Sales

→Cost of Revenue

→Cost of Products Sold

GROSS PROFIT SYNONYMS:

→Sales Profit

→Gross Margin

→Gross Income

→Gross Earnings

OPERATING EXPENSES SYNONYMS:

→Overhead

→Operating Costs

→Operating Outgo

→Sales & Marketing

→Business Expenses

→Operational Expenses

→General & Administrative

→Research & Development

→Selling, General, and Administrative Expenses (SG&A)

OPERATING INCOME SYNONYMS:

→Operating Profit

→Business Income

→Operating Margin

→Operating Earnings

→Operating Cash Flow

→Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT)

PRE-TAX PROFIT SYNONYMS:

→ Pretax Profit

→ Pretax Earnings

→Income Before Tax

→Profit Before Tax (PBT)

→Earnings Before Tax (EBT)

→Operating Profit Before Tax

→Earnings Before Income Taxes (EBIT)

INCOME TAX SYNONYMS:

→Direct Tax

→Revenue Tax

→Earnings Tax

→Tax on Income

→Corporate Income Tax

→Fiscal Charge on Income

EARNINGS SYNONYMS:

→Profits

→Income

→Earnings

→Net Profit

→Bottom Line

→Net Earnings

→Profit After Tax (PAT)

→Net Income After Taxes

→Earnings After Tax (EAT)

→Net Income Before Extraordinary Items

SHARES OUTSTANDING SYNONYMS:

→Issued Shares

→Outstanding Stock

→Outstanding Equity

→Basic Shares Outsanding

→Diluted Shares Outstanding

→Outstanding Shares of Stock

→Fully Diluted Shares Outstanding

EARNINGS PER SHARE SYNONYMS:

→EPS

→Profit Per Share

→Net Income Per Share

The P&L Statement, Visualized

If you're in business, you MUST understand how a Profit & Loss Statement works.

P&L has many different names, including:

• Income Statement

• Revenue Statement

• Earnings Statement

• Operating Statement

• Statement of Earnings

• Statement of Operations

The P&L shows a company's profitability at multiple levels over a period of time using accrual accounting.

Its purpose is to track a company's revenue, expenses, and profits.

Main sections:

? REVENUE: Total Sales

➖ COST OF GOODS SOLD: The cost to deliver the product or service

? GROSS PROFIT: Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold

➖ R&D EXPENSES: All expenses related to developing products & services

➖ SG&A EXPENSES: All other overhead expenses

? OPERATING INCOME: Gross Profit - Operating Expenses

➖ INTEREST EXPENSE: Interest paid to bondholders & banks

? PRE-TAX INCOME: Operating Income - Interest Expense

➖ INCOME TAX: Taxes paid to Governments

? NET INCOME: Pre-Tax Income - Income Tax

To analyze a P&L quickly, focus on changes in margins.

GROSS MARGIN

Gross margin is a profitability metric that indicates the percentage of revenue after subtracting the cost of goods sold (COGS).

Calculation

Gross Margin = Gross Profit / Revenue

Gross Profit = Revenue - COGS

OPERATING MARGIN

Operating margin, or operating profit margin, measures the percentage of operating income (profit after operating expenses) relative to total revenue.

Calculation

Operating Margin = Operating Income / Revenue

NET MARGIN

Net margin, also referred to as net profit margin or simply profit margin, represents the percentage of net income (profit after all expenses, including interest and taxes) relative to total revenue.

Calculation

Net Margin = Net Income / Revenue

How do we analyze companies?

Start with the income statement.

It can show us the revenues, expenses, and profits over a specific period.

The income statement can give us insights into whether the company is growing or shrinking.

Here is the breakdown of an income statement in its most common form:

???????: This includes all income from sales, services, or other primary business activities.

???? ?? ????? ???? (????): Direct costs attributable to the production of goods sold by a company.

????? ??????: Calculated as Revenue minus Cost of Goods Sold. It represents a company's profit after deducting the costs associated with making and selling its products.

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???????, ???????, ??? ?????????????? ???????? (??&?): Expenses related to selling products and managing the business.

???????? ??? ??????????? (?&?): Costs of developing new products or services.

????????? ?????? is Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT), which is calculated by subtracting operating expenses from gross profit.

???????? ???????: The cost incurred by an entity for borrowed funds.

????? ??????/????????: Non-operational revenue or costs, such as gains or losses from investments or foreign exchange.

???-??? ??????: Income before income taxes are deducted.

Income Tax Expense: The amount of tax owed based on pre-tax income.

??? ??????: The final bottom line of the income statement, calculated as Pre-tax Income minus Income Taxes. This figure represents the total earnings attributable to shareholders after deducting all expenses.

Also crucial to analyzing an income statement is margins:

• Gross margin = Gross profit/revenues

• Operating margin = Operating profit/revenues

• Net Income margin = Net Income profit/revenues

Ideally, we want stable or growing margins.

The bottom line is that we want a growing, profitable company that can lead to further digging.

4 Types of Income Statement Analysis

1. Vertical Analysis:

Vertical analysis dissects the income statement vertically, showcasing each line item as a percentage of total revenue.

This method offers a snapshot of the proportion of expenses, making it easier to identify trends and assess cost structures.

2. Horizontal Analysis:

By comparing income statements across multiple periods, horizontal analysis unveils the evolution of financial performance over time.

Understanding year-over-year changes aids in identifying growth patterns, potential areas of concern, and overall business stability.

3. Ratio Analysis:

Ratios derived from income statement figures provide a deeper understanding of a company's financial health.

Key ratios like the profit margin, return on assets, and earnings per share offer valuable insights into profitability, efficiency, and overall operational effectiveness.

4. Common Size Analysis:

This analysis involves expressing each line item as a percentage of total revenue.

It provides a standardized view of the income statement, facilitating comparisons across different companies or industries.

Common size analysis helps investors and analysts evaluate the relative importance of each expense category.

Embracing these diverse analytical approaches empowers financial professionals to make informed decisions, assess risk, and strategize for sustained business success.