AN INSIGHT HERE, A STRATEGIC CHANGE THERE
How businesses actually transform — and why the biggest returns
come from the smallest exercises.
In 25+ years as a CFO inside real businesses, I have never once
seen a company transformed by a grand reinvention. I have watched
dozens transformed by something far less dramatic: an overlooked
truth, surfaced by a simple exercise, acted on decisively.
An insight here, a strategic change there. That is how it
actually works.
Let me give you two — free, complete, and runnable this week.
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INSIGHT ONE: DO THE TARIFF MATH BEFORE THE TARIFF PANIC
When the latest 50% tariff announcement hit, I watched owners
react to the headline. Very few reacted to their own number.
Consider a Canadian specialty coatings manufacturer: 80% of
production exported, high-margin products sold to electric
utilities worldwide. The headlines suggested catastrophe.
The arithmetic said otherwise. The US represented 30% of exports
— which means 30% of 80%, or roughly 24% of total revenue. A 50%
tariff on 24% of revenue is a serious, manageable, quantifiable
problem. It has answers: trade-agreement arbitrage into Europe
and Asia-Pacific, landed-cost repricing, market reweighting.
What it is not, is existential.
The strategic change: this company stopped defending its US book
at any cost and started accelerating into markets where Canada
holds preferential trade access — and where, in the current
geopolitics, a Canadian supplier is welcomed precisely because
it is not American.
One afternoon of arithmetic. One redirected strategy.
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INSIGHT TWO: YOUR TOP 10 CUSTOMERS ARE LYING TO YOU
Run this exercise: rank your top ten customers by revenue. Now
rank them again — by net net margin, after rush orders, technical
support hours, expedited freight, documentation demands, slow
payment, rebates and allowances and your own personal time servicing them.
In hundreds of client conversations, I have never seen the two
lists match.
I have seen a #1 revenue customer rank #8 in profit — a
relationship demanding custom testing, consignment inventory, and
90-day terms. The customers who appear on the first list but not
the second are prestige you are paying to keep.
The strategic change: repricing two accounts, restructuring the
terms on a third, and redirecting sales effort toward the quiet,
profitable customers nobody was paying attention to.
One afternoon of analysis. Several points of margin.
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THERE ARE 40 OF THESE
The two insights above come from a handbook I have assembled — 40
exercises drawn from 25+ years of battleground CFO experience,
100+ business valuations, and five integrated disciplines: CPA,
CFA, CBV, C.Dir, and predictive data analytics.
Each exercise takes an afternoon or less. Each uses data you
already have. Each is designed to produce the same reaction:
“I never checked that.”
Individually, each insight is modest. Compounded, they are how a
business quietly becomes more profitable, more resilient, and
more valuable — an insight here, a strategic change there, until
the transformation is complete.
WHAT YOUR NUMBERS ARE HIDING
The exercises are free to read. The value is in running them —
against your numbers, your customers, your markets. That is what
I do.
If your company generates $2M–$100M in revenue, a 30-minute
conversation will tell us which insights apply to you — and what
they are likely worth.
Please book a 30 minute meeting here:
https://calendar.app.google/ddKzKsNtAFBBttjK8
Sanjay Kulkarni, CPA, CFA, CBV, C.Dir
Sankul Enterprises Inc. | 647-297-7025 | sanjay@sankulinc.com