Most owners can tell you their revenue instantly and have no idea what they kept. This episode is about the eight numbers that tell you the truth about your business, and why smart, hardworking leaders end up flying blind anyway.

Bobby opens with a builder who had 24 houses under construction, the most work he had ever had going at one time, and who was putting personal money into the business to make payroll. They costed out his last five closed houses. Two made money, one broke even, two lost real money. He was not having his best year, he was having his busiest year.

From there it is the airplane test. A pilot watches altitude, airspeed, fuel against distance, oil pressure, engine temperature, weather, wind, cabin pressure and navigation, and makes corrections so small that nobody in seat 14C ever feels one. Then the question: what is actually on your dashboard, and what did you look at with your own eyes in the last seven days?

Bobby walks through eight gauges, one at a time, and what each one warns you about before anybody else notices: cash, gross margin, sales pipeline, backlog, cycle time, warranty, employee turnover and customer satisfaction.

The part most business content skips is the second half. If measuring is this obviously valuable, why do so many good leaders not do it? Fear, embarrassment, never having been taught, being too busy, a CPA who was never asked to teach, a report with forty lines on it, and nobody owning the number.

"Volume without margin is not growth. It's just a faster way to find out you have a problem."

"Companies do not go broke because they lose money. They go broke because they run out of cash."

Chapters:

0:00 Two of the last five lost money

0:35 Welcome

1:05 Forty years, and one question

2:17 Why smart people make bad business decisions

2:45 A feeling wearing a business suit

3:02 Activity is not progress

3:44 Busy and profitable are not the same thing

4:04 The builder with 24 houses

4:51 Putting personal money in to make payroll

5:14 Costing out the last five houses

5:36 His busiest year, not his best year

6:07 Volume without margin is not growth

6:24 He had no instruments

6:44 Feelings versus facts

7:31 Your instinct is a hypothesis

7:53 Restaurants, coaches and doctors all measure

8:52 So do Amazon and Chick-fil-A

9:27 Awareness, decisions, results

10:06 The airplane dashboard

10:19 The captain who flies by feel

11:01 A feeling is not knowing

11:28 What a pilot actually watches

13:18 Small corrections, not heroics

14:09 You are the pilot

14:32 What is on your dashboard this week

15:27 That discomfort is information

15:54 Pilots crash because they ignore it

16:28 The reports nobody opens

17:29 Let us build the dashboard

17:52 Gauge 1: Cash

18:27 Growth eats cash

19:09 Gauge 2: Gross margin

20:09 Gauge 3: Sales pipeline

21:11 Gauge 4: Backlog

22:20 Gauge 5: Cycle time

23:12 Gauge 6: Warranty

23:58 Gauge 7: Employee turnover

24:55 Gauge 8: Customer satisfaction

26:02 Why leaders avoid their numbers

26:42 Fear

27:04 Embarrassment, and nobody ever taught you this

27:55 Too busy, and a CPA who was never asked to teach

28:41 Forty lines on a report, and nobody owns it

29:28 What you avoid controls you

29:58 This week's leadership challenge

30:29 Pick five numbers

31:14 Look at them every Monday

32:07 Say them out loud to your team

32:30 Back to the builder with 24 houses

32:57 Fewer houses, more money

33:22 What is coming next week

34:37 Close

Learn more: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast

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