Bobby sits down with Mark Whitmire, a CFO with more than 35 years in finance and accounting, to close out the Know Your Numbers series. Part one was the mindset. Part two was the math. This is the practitioner.

Mark's father was a CPA and president of the Georgia Society of CPAs, and Mark grew up watching him drop tax returns at the post office at midnight. He has the accounting gene and deliberately did not become an accountant. What he has instead is 35 years of being the person who finds the financial problem in somebody else's business.

His verdict, after decades of counselling owners: there has never been an instance where somebody was doing better than they thought. Not once.

The conversation covers why a builder reading a tax return may be looking at a business eighteen months old, the spec house that did not sell and why nothing in an income statement will ever reveal what it cost, the warranty money that leaves after the closing, and why you should raise three times what you think you need and raise it while you still do not need it.

Then it turns, as these conversations do, from money to people. Hiring to your weakness, the way Charles Schwab and Richard Branson both did. Why effective partners tend not to be friends. Why most business plans are simply "more," and what a finish line should look like instead.

"Engineers will build something nobody wants. Salespeople will sell something they can't produce."

"My to-do list tends to be one item."

Chapters:

0:00 The house you didn't sell

1:13 Why owners struggle with the numbers

3:29 Mark's father, and the adding machine

7:19 Advice for a new owner: triple it

9:57 Raise money before you need it

11:28 Your tax return is 18 months old

13:13 Regular reporting, and the discipline it takes

16:45 Warranty, and the cash that leaves after closing

17:47 Nobody was ever doing better than they thought

19:02 Hire to your weakness

21:00 Most business plans are simply more

23:34 Don't hire your best buddy

29:09 Go think

31:39 Your to-do list is one item

38:16 Homes where families create memories

41:02 Write your eulogy

42:01 Close

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A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.