Explain your business in 45 minutes

PROFIT MASTERY PRESENTS
The Profit Move
The 2-page overview most owners skip
{{current_date_full}} · Part 1 of 3
Read online

Hi {{first_name|there}},

Welcome to the new Profit Move. Same Thursday habit, new home, and more coming that I'm genuinely excited to show you.

This week I'm kicking off a short, 3-part planning series. Part 1 is the one document that explains your whole business in plain English, and most owners have never written it. First, two things you can use today.

▍ IN THIS EDITION

•  The number that decides whether you make payroll

•  This week's move: get paid weeks faster

•  Part 1 of 3: can you explain your business in 45 minutes?

•  Worth knowing: rates, a tax break, and the one cash rule

27 days: the median small business's cash buffer. Source: JPMorgan Chase Institute.

▍ THIS WEEK'S MOVE

What: Send the invoice the day the work ships or the job closes. Not at month-end. Not on a billing cycle you set up years ago and never revisited.

Why: Your payment clock doesn't start until the invoice goes out. Bill 20 days late and you get paid 20 days late, every cycle. Over a year, that's weeks of cash you're handing back for free.

How: Turn on same-day invoicing, block 15 minutes each afternoon to send whatever shipped that day, and put your terms in writing: Net 14, not Net 30. Want the cash sooner? Add "2/10 net 30" (2% off to pay within 10 days).

Grab this: Want the one-page Business Overview checklist from today's article? Reply with "checklist" and we'll send it over.

▍ WORTH KNOWING

•  Revenue isn't profit, and profit isn't cash. Three different numbers. The bank balance is the one that keeps the doors open, so never assume the other two match it.

•  Cheaper money isn't coming yet. The Fed held its rate at 3.50-3.75% in June, the fourth hold in a row. If you've been waiting on a cut to borrow or refinance, plan around today's rate.

•  Buy equipment, write it all off. 100% first-year bonus depreciation is now permanent, and the Section 179 limit is $2.56M for 2026. If a purchase is on your list, the timing has real tax value. Check with your tax pro.

READER QUESTION

An owner in the trades asked:

Colin: Nothing's broken. Growth eats cash. You bought more inventory, you're carrying bigger receivables, and payroll went up, and all of it leaves the bank before the new revenue lands. Your P&L is right; the cash is just tied up in the growth. Two moves: get a line of credit in place to bridge the gap, and watch receivables like a hawk. Most owners who hit this are twelve to eighteen months from a cash scare if they ignore it.

━━━

Got a numbers question? Hit reply. The best ones get answered right here.

▍ WHAT WE'RE BUILDING

We're not just moving the newsletter. We're building the full Profit Mastery system:

•  The PM community and monthly Office Hours with Colin: live now.

•  1:1 coaching sessions: book time to work through your numbers, live now.

•  Daily video content: for PM Pro members and across our social channels, rolling out.

•  The PM scorecard software to see your numbers in one place. In build.

•  Performance Groups and the PM app: on the way.

•  Colin's book: coming Q1 2027.

The bigger picture: we want Profit Mastery to be the financial operating system you run your business on all year, not a class you take once and forget. That's where we're headed, and honestly, we haven't been this fired up about it in years.

Tell us what you think. We just rebuilt profitmastery.net and we're still tweaking it. Take the 5-minute survey, help shape what we build next, and get 25% off your first year of PM Pro.

▍ UPCOMING

Office Hours: Jul 10, 10am ET · Virtual · PM Pro members (in the PM Community)

Never Get Caught Short: Jul 17, 10am ET · Virtual workshop · Free for PM Pro / $149

Turn Profit Into Cash Flow: Jul 23, 12:30pm ET · In-person, Indianapolis · $175

Virtual Bootcamp: Aug 11-27 · Free for PM Pro / $895

THE CFO'S TAKE   Part 1 of 3 · Planning
━━━━━━

Colin King, CPA, CFA · CEO, Profit Mastery

"Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." (Eisenhower)

When you meet someone new and they ask what your business does, how do you respond?

Now, how does your answer change when talking to the bank? Or employees? Or (most importantly) yourself?

Planning starts with a clear and concise picture of what you do, how you make money, where you've been, and where you want to go. These are the basic building blocks necessary before diving deep into the numbers.

There are 3 main components to the planning process:

Let's start with the Business Overview.

When I worked as a stockpicker, I noticed public company management teams had an incredible knack for giving crystal clear explanations of how their business works. You'd be shocked how much storytelling plays a role in good financial management.

After years of listening to investor presentations and reading annual reports, I've translated this into a slimmed down version for us ordinary business owners. The business overview process will emulate the standard public company disclosures shared with their investors (it's easier than you think); and once completed, you'll have a document that can be shared with any advisor, banker, investor, or team member to help you accomplish your goals.

The overview has six parts:

Here's the best part: this should take only 45 minutes or so, start to finish. Most of these questions you can answer straight from memory. Keep it to two pages max, ideally one, and light on numbers.

Here's what becomes the Full Edition

In a few weeks, the rest of Colin's article (the full six-part walk-through, the worked auto-shop example, and the monthly Office Hours recap) moves to the paid Full Edition. This week, it's yours, free. We're doing it so we can keep going deeper every week and keep building the system around it.

Your options going forward:

•  Free. The Number and the Move, every Thursday.

•  Full Edition ($10/mo). The complete newsletter every week: Colin's full article and the worked example, the monthly Office Hours recap, the monthly Pro Drop (a plug-and-play template or tool), and the full searchable archive.

•  PM Pro ($1,200/year or $400/quarter). Everything above, plus the whole system: the tools and PM scorecard software, the community and 1:1 coaching, free monthly webinars and workshops, our flagship quarterly virtual bootcamps free, and Performance Groups as they roll out. Includes the newsletter.

THE CFO'S TAKE, CONTINUED
━━━━━━

1) Background. Describe the business in 3-5 concise sentences: what it sells, who it serves, where it operates, the legal structure and ownership, and the high-level numbers.

2) Products & Services. List your "core" offerings (they should be 70-80% or more of sales). For each: what is it, who buys it, recurring or one-time, high or low margin, and how is it priced?

3) Markets. Your main customer groups, geographies, and channels: best and worst customers, concentrated or diversified, B2C or B2B, local or national.

4) Sales & Marketing. How you find, convert, and keep customers: where leads come from, who sells, and how much is repeat business.

5) Operations. How the product or service gets made and delivered: the key steps and the key resources.

6) Key Roles. The key roles and top responsibilities; headcount, direct vs. indirect.

A few notes. Keep it to two pages max, ideally one, at about a 5th-grade reading level, and light on numbers (round them: $2.1 million, not $2,147,092.67).

What's the point? We get deep in the weeds. With the finances, we occasionally need to step back and look at the big picture, what we'll call "zooming out." This overview is the story behind your business. As we review the numbers and build tools, everything should connect back to it. If it doesn't, something's missing in the numbers or in the story. It also helps you spot gaps, raise capital, and align your team.

TL;DR: Write your business across six areas: background, products and services, markets, sales and marketing, operations, and key roles. Before you can plan for the future or optimize your financial situation, you need to clearly understand what you already own.

The fill-in-the-blank Business Overview template and the full 3-part planning system live inside PM Pro.

▍ NEW IN PM PRO

Your membership got a new home.

PM Pro was a shelf of courses you had to dig through. We rebuilt it into one member dashboard: everything you've unlocked, in one place, easy to find.

•  Your courses and the Toolbox: 12+ plug-and-play templates, new ones every month.

•  Every live event: one-click registration, no codes. Members attend free.

•  The Replay Vault: every webinar, workshop, and Office Hours from this year.

•  Community, 1:1 coaching, and the weekly Operating Move: waiting when you log in.

PM Pro members have full access. It's live now.

$1,200/year or $400/quarter · everything above, included.

If you ever want to connect with our team about anything, just reply to this email. Have a great rest of your week.

━━━

Colin

P.S. Next Thursday: Part 2 of the planning series, your Financial Situation. That's where the numbers start to talk.

Know your numbers. Command your cash. Scale with confidence.

The Profit Move is education, not personalized financial or investment advice.