Pulling Levers
I've worked in finance and accounting for over 15 years at some really large companies and with a ton of really smart people. Across all of the roles and responsibilities I've had, the thing that I probably enjoyed doing the most was teaching a class.
The credit card company that I worked for required everyone from new C-suite executives to fresh college graduates to take a financial fluency class called "How We Make Money." The curriculum was developed by our learning and development team on the belief that if everyone understood at least the basics of how the company made money, that they would be able to make better and more informed decisions. When my boss "volunteered" me to be an instructor I wasn't sure if I would enjoy it, but after getting over my initial nervousness I realized that helping people not be scared of numbers was really fulfilling. That's ultimately what the spirit of this newsletter is about: making business math less scary and so that you can understand how it impacts the rest of your life.
Every business, and your life in general, is a never ending series of decisions. Should we hire more people? How much inventory should we buy? Should we offer discounts? On and on and on. No matter how many hours you spend trying to figure it out, you will never be 100% certain what the right answer is. Eventually you have to commit to a decision and "pull the lever" to make it happen. Sometimes things go exactly as you expected, and other times they don't go to plan at all. Isn't that right Kronk?
A Basic Framework
So what do we do with all these decisions? How can we understand why they are being made? Realizing why a business does anything is actually not as complicated as it seems.
Let's ask another question: What is the one thing most businesses are obsessed with more than anything else?
GROWTH
While the particulars will vary, every business is trying to do some version of the following:
- Sell more stuff.
- Reduce the costs that go into making the stuff you sell.
- Control overhead and expenses (i.e. do the first two with as few people as possible).
Every decision that a business makes falls roughly into one of those three categories. These are the big levers you are trying to pull. The next time you are sitting in a meeting at work, ask yourself which lever the meeting is about. No matter how complicated the subject, I guarantee you it will be one of these three.
Goals For This Newsletter
Meet readers where they are. That means making topics as approachable as possible and admitting when I'm confused too.
Publish at least biweekly, but ideally weekly. When I tried writing on Substack a few years ago, I picked topics that took a lot of time to research and that ultimately caused me to write less and eventually fall off. I still want to do some of those more deeply researched pieces, but I don't want that to get in the way of publishing regularly.
Turn some of these pieces into video based content and vice versa. Sometimes a long piece can be perfect for turning into a video. Other times, a short video might merit deeper exploration. I'm a big believer in showing my work so that readers can be confident I'm not just making things up.
This isn't a goal per se, but I do plan to move all of my writing from Substack over here so that it can all be in one place.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and I hope you'll subscribe.
Author's Note: Borrowing from Ryan Broderick's excellent Garbage Day newsletter; I'm a one man band with no editor, so any typos are on purpose.
