Why Private Equity LOVES the Flash Report (And You Should Too)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (00:34):
All right, to get us into our topic
today.
Quick trivia round for you, edand Rory.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (00:40):
Here we go again.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2 (00:40):
Question one in the Justice League, which
hero once Outran Superman in arace?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (00:48):
Oh my gosh.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2 (00:50):
It's gotta be Flash Gordon.
Flash the flash, the.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2 (00:53):
Question two,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (00:53):
as

emily-sander_1_08-14-202 (00:54):
what's the portable storage device you
carry on a key chain?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (01:04):
That's a tough one.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14- (01:06):
Flash drive.

emily-sander_1_08-14-202 (01:07):
drive.
Last one.
What is the momentary

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (01:11):
Wow.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (01:11):
burst in a pan?
Before a flambe,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (01:16):
I'm, I'm going o for three on this.
I guarantee a burst of.

emily-sander_1_08-14-20 (01:22):
there's a saying.
It was a.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (01:25):
Flash in the pan.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (01:25):
There we go.
Rory, you got the last one?
Flash Japan.
Yeah.
Dark horse.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (01:30):
clever than that.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_15 (01:31):
Oh my gosh.
Very good.
Speaking of flashes, that'sthat's what we're here to talk
about.
The Flash report.
The Flash report.
We've all used this in ourleadership teams at a place.
We work together and I thinkwe've each used it different
companies since then.
I certainly have spoken to somany chiefs of staff about the

(01:54):
Flash report and they'veimplemented the flash report at
their companies to greatsuccess.
So super excited for this topic.
Ed, can you kick us off withlike quick, high level
definition and maybe thebackstory of how, how we picked
it or how you picked it G two?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (02:13):
Hmm.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14- (02:16):
Sure.
So the flash report is.
Essentially compiling the keymetrics, not more than six or
seven key metrics that cover theperformance of the business for
a short period of time.
So we did ours weekly.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (02:34):
I

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-20 (02:35):
Um, and then also a brief, and I, I
had a narrative, brief narrativefrom each of the key.
Business units of what was goingon and what was critical.
And the entire key to the flashreport was I would receive it.
So I asked for it from the team,I would receive it and could

(02:59):
digest the critical elementsbefore our weekly, our weekly
staff meeting.
Um, so I could see what neededto be covered and I could do it
in 10, 10 minutes.
And then after the staffmeeting, we may make a tweak or
two, and then we distribute itto our private equity partners,
and then they could see in 10minutes or 15 minutes what was

(03:19):
going on with the business.
And then when I had my Friday,so that was normally on
Wednesday when I had my Fridaycall, we would be able to pin
down off the same common set ofdata.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (03:28):
Yeah,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2 (03:29):
kind of the key things that we need
to be covering this week as faras business operations or
performance.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (03:35):
Yeah,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14- (03:36):
Okay.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (03:36):
used it as a leadership team in our
leadership team meetings as kindof a starting point for our
discussion and.
team members were meant to readthat beforehand.
So it would be distributed, readit, scan it, get a gist of it,
and then we weren't just likeverbatim reading the flash
report to each other.
It was discussion points thatneeded to be discussed as a

(03:58):
group or, Hey, I have a questionfor you on this.
I saw this.
Or Any handoffs.
Or interdependencies and thingslike that.
So as a participant.
the leadership team meetings, Ifound it really useful to know,
quick snapshot of what washappening around the business,
and then have a more fulsome,robust discussion.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (04:19):
Yeah, totally.
I think, um, this is such auseful tool for many businesses,
but I think the, the, the mostuse that you can get out of a
tool like this is.
For businesses where it's a,it's a culture of transparency.
And I mean, you know, I, I sortof came up in my executive
journey through Ed, a lot ofwhat I, you know, kind of values
I share today were from workingfor Ed, with Ed.

(04:43):
you know, it's, it's, it isabout transparency.
You're trying to have all ofthe, you know, heads of the
business, March in the samedirection, which aligns to a
strategic plan, right?
And so you're measuring thingsbased on that and.
is a just real simple,effective, efficient way to have
everybody get on the same page.
And then you talk about not onlyinternally, but with your

(05:06):
external stakeholders, yourboard, your investors, whomever
is really interested in kind oflike the pulse of the business,
what's going on there.
It just saves a tremendousamount of time getting people up
to speed in individual meetingsevery month.
Uh, you know, when they haven'thad continuity with information
flow.
And this is just a really waygood way to.
things down into concise, uh,metrics and commentary.

(05:28):
Um, qualitative, quantitative,if you will.
And yeah, I mean, it's, can'tsay enough about the usefulness
of such a tool.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (05:36):
And as Ed mentioned, this is not a
full debrief.
Let's spend half a day to gothrough every single metric.
It's, it's a flash report

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (05:44):
your

emily-sander_1_08-14- (05:44):
snapshot.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (05:45):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_15 (05:46):
So this is just kind of getting
people a pulse on the business.
And I mean, I've talked aboutthis in a number of, of episodes
and conversations where our PEgroup.
Loved the Flash report.
'cause Ed and us as a teamintroduced that to them.
They loved it so much.
they rolled that out to all oftheir portfolio companies.
Like, everyone is doing a flashreport, we want this from

(06:07):
everybody.
So that's how useful it was forthem.
And I think you, you two haveboth mentioned separately as CEO
and CFO.
The follow up questions you gotfrom them were more.
Not like better questions, butjust more informed and closer to
the pin so you could get rightto the crux of the The issue.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (06:26):
key.
Yeah, exactly that.
Yep.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (06:28):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (06:29):
just you spend so much time at board
meetings sometimes, or even injust all hands meetings, uh, or
even leadership meetings likerehashing you left off like a
month or a

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (06:40):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (06:41):
which is just a waste of time.
Honestly.
We all have time is so precious.
So the less time you spend onthat, the more time you spend,
you know, getting down on theissues that need to be discussed
and decisions made.
More importantly, you can do sowith this sort of like, you
know, uh, consistent, uh, youknow, information set, if you
will.
So,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (07:00):
Yeah, and it.

rory_1_08-14-2025_15 (07:02):
excellent.

emily-sander_1_08-14-20 (07:03):
Another benefit for me was it made me
sit there for, you know, 10, 15minutes go like, what did happen
this week?
Everything's flying around andit's like, oh my gosh, let me
look at my last entry in theflash report.
Oh my gosh, so much has happenedsince then.
Let me make sure to documentthat in the anecdotal section
and we'll show an example herein the second half of, of the

(07:24):
pod.
But, um, ed, you were kind of,this was off the balance
scorecard.
Which is the methodology weused, um, at G two, which is the
place we work together, butpeople now are thrown, have OKRs
and EOS and different types of,uh, metric gathering and
reporting systems.
Um, maybe just a quick backdropon you selected Balance

(07:49):
Scorecard and how that got us tothe flash report.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-1 (07:51):
balance scorecard actually predates G
two.
So I actually implementedbalanced scorecard when I became
CEO of Bline, um, about fiveyears prior to that.
Uh, and did it because, justneeded a framework to be able to
analyze business, makedecisions, and whether it's
balanced scorecard or whetherit's OKRs or whether it.

(08:13):
You know, anything that you canget, as long as there's a
system, a, a framework thatallows you to organize thoughts
and organize information and beable to make intelligent
decisions, that's kind ofcritical to the operation of a
business.
And so, you know, it doesn'tmatter which one of those you
choose, just choose one and thenkind of focus on implementing

(08:35):
that fully through theorganization.
The, the Flash report thenbecame our weekly.
You know, we pick the, one ofthe things with balance
scorecard is you pick just a fewkey components that you're gonna
measure that are really thedrivers for your performance.
And you, you do a lot of workahead of time to analyze, you

(08:55):
know, what are my, what are mykind of key elements that drive
the internal, internal focus,which then drives customer
focus, which then drives kind ofthe, the financial performance
ultimately of the business.
And so we would look at thosevarious perspectives and come up
with a couple key performanceindicators at the department

(09:16):
level, um, and then consolidateit for the company.
And that's what we would reportout.
That would be kind of number onereport out on the, on the, uh,
flash report would be how are wedoing with those particular
initiatives around the, the, thebalanced scorecard perspectives.
And the second piece would bethe ones that.

(09:37):
Any business, doesn't matter whoit is or what your business is,
needs to understand on a weeklybasis.
So what's our cash position?
What are our sales, what's thepipeline look like?
So really revenue drivenmetrics.
And then, you know, we had a,we, I was mostly, I've spent
most of my career in, um,services, tech enabled services

(09:58):
and technology, uh, financialservices businesses.
So we'd have key indicatorsaround headcount.
'cause that was our largestexpense.
And then if it was assets, youknow, what the performance of
those asset pools look like.
And we'd just report that out.
And within 10 minutes, Iwould've a, a good picture of
where we were at on all of thoseeight or 10 key indicators of

(10:20):
how the business was doing.
And then a, a quick glance downat each of the initiatives
around kind of strategicinitiatives that we had, and
then performance in each of thedepartments.
It's, it's a, it's a gamechanger.
Absolute game changer.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (10:33):
And I think you mentioned some
specific industries you were,you were in, but the Flash
Report can, is industryagnostic.
So it can be used for almost anyindustry and you would,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-202 (10:42):
Oh yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14- (10:42):
obviously the metrics that are most
meaningful for you and mostrelevant for you and your team
to

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (10:47):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (10:48):
at.
Um, and I think another thingthat you.
Hit on there.
Ed was backing up the, the Flashreport and, and inherent in the
balance scorecard methodologythose four perspectives and they
feed into one another.
So the learning and developmentis where things started, that

(11:09):
led to internal process, secondperspective, which then led to
the third perspective customer,which then ended with financial
performance.
And that was, I remember hearingthat.
Going, oh, that's different.
'cause most people gospreadsheet numbers, jam it down
into the business and make thisnumber happen on a spreadsheet.
And the way the, the, themethodology and approach behind

(11:31):
what we were doing, which youwere espousing, was No, no, no.
We start with the learning anddevelopment.
We start with our people.
They take care of our customershappy Customers buy more things.
And the natural end game, orbyproduct or result is

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-1 (11:45):
Mm-hmm.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_15 (11:45):
of the business.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (11:46):
Yep.
Yep.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (11:49):
Rory, you were in the CFO seat for for
this.
So what were you looking at interms of putting together the.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (11:55):
I was looking, you know, kind of, uh,
longitudinally if you will.
I, what I remember, you know,and I'm, it's funny, I, I, I'm
working for a company now andwe, we also use the flash
report.
Our CEOs uses that as primarytool, uh, to communicate with
our board on a weekly basis.
And, you know, we're an earlierstage business, so like the
metrics we look at.

(12:16):
quite a bit different than evenlike a private equity stage
business.
So, know, earlier stagebusinesses you're looking at,
you know, certain things aroundgrowth, liquidity, you know, as
you say, even people and kindametrics around those things.
Operational and, and in our casewe're a lender, so, um,
portfolio performance.
Is everything.

(12:36):
You know, you in a lendingbusiness, you know, it's one
thing to be good at, you know,lending out money, you also
gotta be able to collect it.
So, we keep a very, you know,close eye on those things.
But that's different than maybeif you're working for a SA SaaS
business, you know?
Um, so my point here is, youknow, the, the framework of the
flash report can be consistentacross any business, but the

(12:59):
specific.
Metrics and elements that you gothrough could be very customized
to a business.
And I think, you know, we'veworked with other companies to
help them develop the right kindof flash report for them in our
consulting businesses.
But, um, know, as the CFO, likeI've, I've often used it to look

(13:19):
around at my peers, you know,whether it's the C-I-O-C-C-T-O,
whatever, COO, and kind ofwhat's going on in their
organizations because I seethings from the, the numbers
framework.
Um, but you know, looking at theactivity and the things there
helps me understand even thedrivers to why the numbers are
that they are.
I'd like to think that most ofthe time I have a good read on
that anyway.

(13:40):
But things come up, you know,and as you said earlier, working
for a fast-paced company, you'relosing time.
You know, being able to look atwhat the, what else is going on
in the business, in otherbusiness units, super important.
You can glean a lot from thatand then kind of adjust course
I, I as A-C-C-F-O.
I use that to adjust myforecast, my financial forecast

(14:01):
a

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (14:02):
Okay.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (14:02):
know, if you're seeing a lot more
throughput or if you're seeinga, a lot more, um, you know,
call it asset acquisition orCapEx or whatever, you know,
like that helps me what thefuture's gonna look like based
on activities that are happeningtoday.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (14:17):
cool 'cause I love the flash report
as Chief of staff.
So when we first used a G two, Iwas not chief of staff, but
later on, um, we used the flashreport when I was chief of
Staff.
And one of the things I likedabout it is I would be having
these individual conversations.
Executives and they're like, whyis this happening?
Like, why isn't he doing this?
Like, this just makes no senseto me.
And then on the other side ofthings, you know, someone over

(14:38):
here is going, why is she like,why does she just do this?
That would make my life so mucheasier.
What the heck is going on?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (14:44):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-202 (14:45):
having the flash report as a discussion
for our, our weekly leadershipmeetings, which I took point on.
It was, it was this discussionwhere like, oh, have context now
I understand, might not agreewith it, but I understand now.
And it was also way to say, Hey,as a leadership team, and that
was a phrase that Ed you and Iused to kind of snap people out

(15:08):
of, you're not, you'refunctional head anymore, you're
part of the leadership team,you're a leadership team member,
and you're on two teams, almostyour functional team and
leadership team.
For the, for what's best for usas a group.
Like where do we go from here?
What's the best next step forthe leadership team?
So I really liked the Flashreport'cause it just lent itself

(15:29):
so well to having that type ofdiscussion, which I think is key
for having a really robust,lively, engaged, informed
leadership team.
So I love that aspect of it.
From chief of staff.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (15:40):
teams, even with the best intentions
and the

emily-sander_1_08-14-20 (15:43):
Mm-hmm.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (15:44):
you know, well-rounded, uh, leaders
to, to, to not be in silos.
You, it, you can't, if you'rerunning that kind of a program,
as you said, like, you know, uh,everyone's in their lane trying
to execute on their own metrics,but someone like you can look
across the, across the businessand have some way of.

(16:04):
Um, helping solve a problem intechnology or in operations or
whatever it may be.
Um, just by knowing what else isgoing on, what are people doing,
you know, what are people notdoing?
More

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (16:14):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (16:15):
you know, what and what's happening
from the customer standpoint.
Right.
So, yeah, I just like it becauseit's basically a, you know, it's
a, it's a foundation, it's apoint, you know, that's
consistent and it's metricsdriven.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (16:27):
Ed, what kind of questions would you
get from the board or PE groupoff the Flash report?

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14- (16:34):
Well, let me, let me take a, take a
step back and actually add towhat you just said, Emily.
'cause I think it's reallyimportant the flash report.
Is the methodology by which youensure that the executive team
is pulling the same direction asit pertains to a strategic plan.
So the two you, you kind ofhave, you can put, I can put a
flash report together for anybusiness and go, well, you're

(16:56):
gonna wanna measure cash and acouple of these other drivers.
But the most effective flashreports are ones that are
designed around the business'sstrategic plan.
And that strategic plan, like Isaid, pick a framework, doesn't
matter what it's.

rory_1_08-14-2025_1513 (17:09):
exactly.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2 (17:11):
That that flash report becomes the.
The cadence, the tempo, thecommunications of we're all
pulling the same direction.
Here's knowing that we're makingprogress.
'cause you're seeing itquantitatively and qualitatively
on a flash report.
It answers a bunch of thosequestions like, well, why is X,
Y, and Z doing what they'redoing?
Well because this is a strategicplan and everybody kind of knows

(17:31):
what it is, and it provides acommunications framework for
everybody to go, okay, we've gota common common communications
methodology in a flash report.
I can see what's going on.
I know we're pointing towardthe.
The strategic, you know, it'spointing toward the strategic
objective, strategic goals.
And I could see our progress orwhere there's not progress.
'cause again, as you noted, the,the leadership team has, is

(17:52):
responsible for strategicexecution collectively.
And then they're also, and thenthey've got their specialty
areas.
And that's a lot of thequestions I would have from the
private equity guys.
Once at, at G two, we kind ofhad to train the private equity
guys on.
The, the balance scorecard andon the flash report, and again,
as you noted, what kind of, oncethe, the light bulbs went off,

(18:14):
this became the, yeah, we'redoing this.
Um, but with the, with the Flashreport piece, it really did
become one of those, you know,the private equity guys would
go, okay, we've got, weunderstand based upon our
quarterly board meetings, whatyour strategic initiatives are
for this quarter.
And so we're gonna, they wouldask questions.

(18:34):
'cause we, I would tell folks,don't, don't sugarcoat if we've
got an issue, put issues inhere.
And a lot of them would be techrelated, tech enabled.
And they'd be like, do you needadditional resources?
Do we have the right folks?
Do we need a contractor?
Is, is this gonna delay aproduct launch?
And the other thing that theywould look at,'cause it's
private equity and we're drivingtoward cash.

(18:54):
You know, debt compliance forcovenants and growth was what's
in the pipeline and what's theprobability of close.
And so we'd spend a lot of timegoing, okay, are we, you know,
we'd be getting our reportingout of this, the CRM, whether it
was Salesforce or HubSpot or, orwhatever the, those were the two
that we've used.
And we'd go, okay, what's kinda,what the pipeline look like?

(19:15):
And we talk through, okay, thewhat is, what does the pipeline
look like and how is thatplaying to the strategic plan?
Sometimes we'd have peopleissues.
Those would be in there as well.
So it would tend to be strategyissues first would come out of,
would be their questions.
'cause it was structured aroundthe strategy and we'd get buy-in
on the strategy every quarter.
And what we expected toaccomplish that quarter.

(19:36):
The second would be pipeline andsales.
How are we growing and how arewe going?
And then the third would be anypeople issues that were
identified in there, whetherthat was resource needs or
whether that was people leavingor whether'cause we would report
that and or whether that was,you know, I've got, I've got a,
a performance issue in aparticular area that might be
reported out by one of theexecutives there.

(19:59):
And again, our private equityfolks were great partners.
So they would, you know, ask keyquestions to make sure we were
kind of making some of the rightdecisions, or I was making the
right decision as the chiefexecutive.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151 (20:09):
I remember you going, no
surprises, good or bad, nosurprises.
There should be no surprises forthe board.
At board meetings.
There should be no surprises.
Tell, tell me, you know, tellthe group what's

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14- (20:20):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (20:20):
good or bad, ugly.
Just get it out there, which wasand and relieving.
I.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (20:26):
CEO at my business that I work at, you
know, he's, he's a, he's a greatCEO and he's.
He's a, he's taken a, you know,kind of a, a spin on the flash
report and kind of boiled somethings down to good, bad, ugly,
right?
Like every, every business hasall of those things.
You want things to be more, uh,good than anything, but you
gotta deal with all of it.

(20:46):
So, yeah, I think it's a good,it's a good way to communicate
everything, that's salient.
And you then end up spending thetime going through more decision
making, more thoughtful.
Planning than kind of likespending your meeting time, like
going through, what did you dolast summer, quarter or week or
whatever.
It's, it's so much more of astimulus for actually making

(21:10):
shit happen, you know?

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (21:12):
Yeah, well, I mean, again, as chief of
staff, one thing I would try tofacilitate but also look for is
win the leadership team.
When one member would say, wedidn't meet our goal here.
Here's why.
I know why, and this is bad newsand I'm sharing it with the
group.
And other people wouldn't, youknow, beat this person over the
head or they'd be like, okay,well how do we help you fix
that?

(21:32):
Or Here's an idea.
Or like, here's also the reasonwhy my team didn't hand this off
to you properly.
All that stuff.
It, it was bad news, but I lookfor these little responses from
people and that would tell mehealth of, of the leadership
team.
That was an aspect ofleadership, team health, um,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (21:49):
stuff that like is maybe not trending
in the right direction.
You see those shoots come upearly rather than.
If you work in silos and youdon't have regular information
flow, somebody's gonna try tobury that until they can't
anymore, and then it becomes areal problem.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (22:05):
And they can bury it.
It's easy to bury it when you'renot having discussions around
this.
So this gets it out in the open.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (22:11):
yeah, yeah.
I just, I just believe so muchin the leadership culture of
transparency, and this is justthe right tool for that, you
know?

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (22:17):
Yeah.
All right.
Should we show folks?
Let's do a little share screen.
Let's do

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (22:22):
yeah, yeah.
Bust it out.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151 (22:25):
a little show and tell.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (22:26):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (22:27):
All right.
So here's, we're gonna do likethe blank template just to get
people used to it.
And then we have an exampletemplate we'll go through.
Um.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (22:34):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (22:34):
But, uh, this is just on a good old,
good old spreadsheet.
You can, I've seen zoom flashreports that are

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (22:40):
Oh gosh.
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (22:41):
like, like, like a ship.
They're in the shape of a shipand each of the sails is like a
perspective.
And I'm like, that is,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (22:47):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (22:48):
But you can also,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (22:48):
it's, it's, it's function over form.
But there's some really, I meana lot of people use like Power
BI and other things

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (22:54):
yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (22:54):
where you can really make it pretty
sophisticated with sorts ofother bells and whistles.
But at the end

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (22:59):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (23:00):
you know, good old Excel

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (23:01):
So.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (23:02):
what the whole economy's built on,
basically.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_15 (23:04):
So there's, two main sections of
the flash report.
The top section captures thehandful of KPIs for each
perspective, and then there'sthe second part, which are kind
of the, in your own words.
Key executives, C-suiteexecutives, leadership team,
whatever that is for yourcompany.

(23:26):
Tell us what has happened inyour respective department.
In a few sentences, just in yourown words, in a few bullet
points, what happened?
What's the most

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-1 (23:34):
Mm-hmm.

emily-sander_1_08- (23:34):
information, um, what do you guys want people
to know about this top section?
So for folks listening, we have,um, four different sections that
correspond with a perspective.
So learning and development,internal process, customer and
finance.
what's the general,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (23:53):
I, I mean, just kind of what Ed said
earlier, aligns ultimately tostrategic plan, which then
typically aligns to an operatingplan for a period, whether
that's the current year or maybea three year plan or something
like that.
Um, and so then in this, in thisformat, you're gonna be pulling
the key metrics that underpinthose, and you're gonna measure
them.
And you're

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (24:12):
yeah,

rory_1_08-14-2025_1513 (24:13):
quantify them up.
In this top section, the topsection is quantitative,
basically.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (24:16):
let me pull up the actual example
here.
So,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (24:18):
go.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (24:19):
um.

rory_1_08-14-2025_1513 (24:20):
Exactly.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (24:20):
This has a lot of financial metrics,
but,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (24:24):
Yeah,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (24:24):
but you can, you can see here's the
plan.
Like literally there's a columnthat's like, here's what we're
trying to hit, here's thetarget.
Um, one quick thing though, Ithink the flash report, putting
that together, reporting out onit, having discussions, but
almost separate from that andprior to that.
We did have discussions onliterally what is our mission
statement, what's our vision forthe company as a whole?

(24:46):
And then for this next year,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-202 (24:48):
Oh yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (24:49):
are we going to break it down by
quarter?
So everyone knew the big picturecontext, but I just wanna get
that out there.
For listeners who were like,wait a minute, are they building
this flash report too.
There were separateconversations in a series of,
workshops that that went tothat, alright, ed or Rory Walk?
Walk.
Walk us through.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14- (25:08):
Yeah, in this.
I was gonna say, this particularFlash report is actually a
sanitized version from one ofthe companies that I've been
working with.
So, you know, essentially you'vegot the elements that, that, uh,
you had noted, Emily, whereyou've got, you know, again,
financial tends to, tends todominate.

(25:28):
It's, it's, if you think aboutyour strategic plan, financial
is the ultimate outcome of yourother perspectives.
And so in one sense you arelike, this should be, this isn't
driving the train.
It's actually where the train isgoing.
And so the, the, this is really,how are you performing?

(25:49):
So you do tend to see a lot.
And, and, you know, candidly,the, the metrics around finance
tend to be, um, tend to beeasier to measure, easier to
manage, uh, maybe not manage,but easier to measure and easier
to see.
Um, but that's ultimately whatyou're looking to do is, you
know, how are we performingfinancially?
The other three perspectivesdrive into each other to that

(26:10):
financial performance in abalanced scorecard world.
And so in each one of those, youknow, this is almost, I would
say this is as much as you wouldever wanna put in a, in a flash
report.
'cause you have really hereabout 20 different metrics.
And I like to try and reduce itdown even further to maybe 10 or
12.
Um, but you know, again, yourkey, your key drivers and you

(26:34):
know, when you look at, when youlook at these components, the
customer, the internal, and thenlearning and development or
people and tools is how I tendedto use it.
Resources, internal resources,um, you know, we would look at.
You know, those elements and go,okay, are we, and you can see
that it's longitudinal here.
And, and you know, Rory and Ilike to use that word'cause it's
long, uh, and it's got two andit's got attitude net, so it's

(26:56):
longitudinal, which basicallymeans you're looking at a period
over period over period andtrying to analyze a trend.
So you're going, okay, is thiskind of bouncing around where we
expect it to?
Is it trending up or trendingdown?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (27:07):
Yeah.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-20 (27:07):
are we going toward our plan or away
from our plan?
And so when I do a flash report,I would tend to have.
A longitudinal analysis where Ican go, okay, am I, am I going
the right direction or not?
And, you know, and if we'reseeing significant changes,
especially in these other, inthese three perspectives that
you've got up on the screen,that's gonna eventually be

(27:28):
driving my financial performanceand, you know, six days or 66
months.
And I, and this piece here withthese, um, three, with the three
perspectives and these KPIs.
Tend to be what your levers areto pull for your financial
performance.
And if they're not all tiedtogether, then that is where you
tend to have a problem.

rory_1_08-14-2025_1513 (27:47):
Exactly.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (27:48):
And, and just for folks listening, so
for an example, within thelearning and development
perspective, we have three itemshere.
Things like training completion.
Eight sales academyparticipation and f and i
certification completion.
This, again, can be customizedto your business, but those are
the three items.
And then we have, you know,February, um, we have January,
February, and the actual,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (28:11):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2 (28:11):
outcomes there.
And then we have the projectedyear to date for all of 2025 or
for whatever year you're in.
So we're measuring the actualsagainst the,

rory_1_08-14-2025_15135 (28:20):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I like, I mean, in thiscase it's, it's great because
you get the, you get the bothvariants of your, you know,
current performance against theplan.
You have the trend relative toprior period, and then you have
the forward looking view and howthat, you know, shakes out based
on, on those trends and how youperform.
So you really can get kind ofthe full picture with, just as

(28:42):
you see here, you know, aboutsix or seven columns of
information.
You know, several metrics in, inthe rows.
I mean, it's really a powerfultool.
Um, and then, you know, on thefinancial side, you know, I, I
mean every business isdifferent.
A manufacturing business isgonna be much different than
say, know, tech enabled servicesbusiness.
But you know, you're generallylooking at kind of.

(29:04):
Top line, uh, you know, sort ofrevenue sales metrics, that's
what's gonna drive yourbusiness.
You look at your and CapEx, sosomewhere around those three
things, you know, you should beable to see the whole story
based on the rest of thebusiness and how it's trending
out.
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (29:22):
And I remember at at G two stood
this thing up from scratch andso a big portion of our
discussion was goes on thebalance scorecard, but also what
goes on the Flash report.
And that was a group discussion.
It wasn't just, oh, you're thehead of this department,
therefore you come up withwhatever you think is best.
It was, again, us as aleadership team going, what do

(29:43):
we really think best representsif we're headed in the right
direction?
For this perspective, what aresome leading indicators?
What are some laggingindicators?
How do we best capture this?
Again, in a snapshot, in a flashreport?
And we would have discussionsand rounds of back and forth on,
um, on this and anyone could,could participate and would,
would be expected toparticipate.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (30:04):
to.
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (30:04):
Yes.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (30:05):
yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (30:05):
maybe like what are you guys' thoughts
on what should make it onto aflash report?
'cause not everything can be onhere.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (30:13):
Yeah.
Well a lot of that time you'lldo, you'll have done the vetting
of that.
When you measure, when you kindof create your balanced
scorecard, you know, metricsand, and or you know, call it,
you know, the key things you'retracking for your business.
This is just derivative of that.
So a lot of times you'll havedone that work already and
you're just pulling into thisparticular report, which with a
little slightly different view.

(30:33):
But you know, I think one, oneelement that is.
I, I believe to be true is youshould always be evaluating
whether the metrics you're arewhat matter, you know, and that
may change over time.
So, you know,

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14- (30:48):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151 (30:49):
shouldn't be afraid to make changes.
You know, especially if they'restarting from scratch.
You're gonna, you're gonnastumble around a little bit
before you find your footing onyour business if you've never
done it before and your team'smaybe not used to it.
So, be open to.
of amending things, but justreally focus on truly
understanding what drives yourbusiness, know?

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-20 (31:13):
the best practice is to do what you
just said, Emily, which is, youknow, you've got a balanced
scorecard or some others, uh.
And again, I, we've, we've usedthat'cause the three of us have
been immersed in it.
But basically any strategicframework and you've kind of
worked through this thing andbeat it up and beat it up and,
and gone back and forth as agroup and, you know, it got

(31:33):
consensus on the drivers and aremeasuring that, that's a best
method.
The second best method is.
What Rory just said, dosomething, measure something,
you got an idea.
And then if you, if it's, ifit's wrong, adjust what you're
measuring.
But the worst thing is to donothing'cause you're trying to
figure out what, you know, Idon't have a strategic thing and

(31:55):
you know, and they telling me todo a strategic thing and it's
gonna take nine months to dothat.
So best thing is.
Have that second best thing isto have something and the worst
thing is to, is to kinda spinaround and, and, you know,
overanalyze trying to get tosomething that's gonna give you
a picture of how your businessis performing on a regular

(32:16):
basis.
That's more frequently than mymonthly close.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (32:20):
well, well, what's funny is I
remember, so I don't rememberthe specific, but one of my
metrics or goals was.
Determining what the propermetric should be.
So that was like my very firstone in one category.
I forget exactly what it was,but it was Emily.
come up with what metric is mostaccurate.
So like dig into the data andfigure out what actually is

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (32:42):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (32:42):
most correlated with this thing we're
trying to measure from yourgroup.
Another one, my initial one wasto get a baseline.
Set of data, and I was runningclient management at the time
and we wanted a baseline set ofdata around, I think it, I
forget what, but, it was like,okay, for this quarter my job
was to show progress on creatinga baseline of data.
And that was, you know, are you85% done?

(33:04):
Are you 90% done?
How close are you?
Um, but that was, that was thefirst one for me.
Um, Rory, do you remember any ofyour kind of thematic or
specific ones you had on yourflash report?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (33:17):
Yeah, well for us, um, we were so
focused on top line growth inthat business, and so a lot of
what, you know, our metrics werehighlighting was bookings and
kind of revenue, uh, cycle timesto revenue from, from bookings,
things like that, that.
what drive, what drove ourbusiness, which was a very

(33:37):
profitable business, was, youknow, as, as much acceleration
on top line as you can get.
So, you know, in the few metricswe have, you know, it was much
more geared around that.
So I partnered a lot with thesales team, you know, um, on
those types of things and had aCRM to, you know, pull
information from.
So a lot of businesses have thatinformation at your fingertips,
which is great.

(33:58):
you know, and so, um.
You know, I'd say that was kindof the bulk of it.
Now, you know, again, indifferent business, my business
today, similarly around growth,but it's also around sort of
liquidity measures and sort ofcapital related things.
Uh, you know, from an earlystage business, you know, that's
super important.
You know, if you're totallyfunded and you're not worried,

(34:19):
worried about sort of um, youknow, you're gonna probably not
use up a lot of real estate onthis report with that kind of
stuff, you know, so.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (34:27):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (34:28):
again, depends on, on the focus.
And if you're a growth stageprivate equity backed company,
that's gonna, where you're gonnasee a lot of the areas, you
know, whether it's subscriptionrevenue or recurring revenue or,
you know, churn is a huge onetoo.
We track churn very closely.
you know, those are, you justhave to know drives your

(34:48):
business in particular, and thenmeasure around that.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (34:51):
Yeah, and, and one thing we did too is
there were like separatemeeting, there's, there's two
series of meetings.
One was for the flash reportrollout where you'd actually go
through the information on itand there was a separate.
Meeting series.
That was how, how is thisprocess working?
So do we need to change anythingin the, in the flash report?

(35:14):
Not like the.
Information contained in theflash report, but the mechanics
of like running the flash reportitself, which I remember, um,
two of our teammates were veryconfused about, they would
always ask me, Emily, do I saythis thing in this meeting or
this, this, that thing in thismeeting?
And uh, but it was the actualstanding up of the process and
checking in on, you know, canyou pull data easily and are we

(35:37):
measuring the right things andall these different pieces.
But that's another way to do itwhere you separate.
The actual report out of thecontents of the flash report and
then how the structure andmechanics of the thing are
working.

rory_1_08-14-2025_1 (35:50):
absolutely.
Yeah.
It's like any other thatrequires maintenance, right?
Is you gotta kind of, okay,you've, you've got something
running, but is it, is itrunning the right way?
Is it, you know, performing asyou need it to perform?
And I think, you know, uh, thisis where I think like having a
chief of staff or a resourcelike that, that is sort of like
cross-functional, can like drivesomething like that, you know,

(36:11):
big time.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151 (36:12):
I mean, when I was chief of staff,
ed and I, ed and I worked soclosely, but

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (36:17):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2 (36:17):
standing up the thing for the first time
and figuring out.
What's our source of data forthis?
Is it a manual pull to start?
Can we automate that?
Is it accurate?
Ooh.
And another big one is, is thisdata segment that we're
reporting out over in this sideof the Flash report, do those
numbers match with this othersubset of data that we're

(36:38):
reporting out this part of theflash report?
Because if they don't you, me,we will get questions on that.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (36:43):
Yes.
Garbage in, garbage out still isa thing on one of these.
So you have to make sure thatthe data that you're working
with is, you know,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (36:51):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (36:51):
and accurate and all that stuff, so,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (36:53):
And sometimes they are legitimately
different, but you have to beable to explain why.
And Rory, I'm gonna call you outin a good way here.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (37:00):
okay.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (37:01):
You were present for my very first
board meeting.
Um, I apologize again for howmuch I sweated in that meeting,
but, um, you said, you saidEmily because I was doing rounds
and rounds of prep because I wasover analyzing and over
preparing and everything andfreaking out

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (37:16):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (37:16):
and, um.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (37:17):
that's you, yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (37:18):
One of the best things you've ever
said to me is, Emily, don't justsay the number on the screen,
explain the story behind thenumber, explain like why that
number is there, even if it's abad number.
I was like, okay.
So I literally went throughevery single number and data
point that I had on my slidesand like wrote down a story

(37:38):
behind them, which was fine forwhat I was doing at the time,
the stage I was at.
But I would encourage people.
Maybe not to that level, but Iwould encourage people in that
sentiment to know what's behindthe numbers, and to be able to
explain and not just recite ina, in a rote manner.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (37:56):
had a, my own ComeUp, it's when I first
started talking to the board andthis type of thing, I mean, I
was always knew the numbers, butit was, it was like the context
behind the MA numbers is whatmatters.
And I mean, that was probably mybiggest learning curve myself
and I was a numbers guy, is tobe able to like synthesize that
and, know, provide some novelinsight from that that you know,

(38:19):
is not obvious, you know.
Yeah, I, I'd say I have thatconvers, I had that conversation
with, um, my, a person on mystaff yesterday is like, we go
through a monthly businessreview on financial metrics.
I'm like, CE already knows thenumbers.
You've shared the p and l and,and tell a story behind it, you
know?
So, yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (38:37):
What.

rory_1_08-14-2025_1513 (38:38):
probably Ed taught me, and maybe I shared
that with you and, you know,your cycle

emily-sander_1_08-14-202 (38:42):
Circle of life sims.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (38:43):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (38:44):
Well I remember we were at a board
meeting and it was like, it waslike this one board member, we
all know him, but he was like, Ican read.
And he said it like that.
It was like, oh shit.
Okay.
Like he can read the slide.
Stop just reciting the numbers.
Um.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (38:57):
well, I, I kind of got the sort of
beat down proverbially from, youknow, our actual private equity
partner.
You know, like he, he, you know,he's like, this guy needs to
like, learn how to, you know,speak to a board basically.
You know, he obviously knows thenumbers, but he's, he's just,
he, there's no differencebetween what he is doing here.
As a financial analyst and ACFO, he needs to step it up.

(39:18):
So, you

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (39:18):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (39:19):
the kind of motivated thing I needed
to hear.
And you know, then I spent somuch more of my time, as you
just talked about for yourself,is like understanding the why
behind it rather than just like,you know,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (39:31):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151 (39:31):
basically reciting the numbers and it's
like, no shit.
You already sent out the report.
They already seen it.
They

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151 (39:35):
I can read.
I always remember that.
I can read,

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (39:38):
and what does it mean?

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (39:39):
yes, yes.
What does it mean?
What am I doing about

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-2 (39:42):
Yep.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_15 (39:42):
So Ed, we have this example on the
screen here.
So for people on, on YouTube,this is a sanitized version of
one, of one of your companiesyou've been in involved with.
Can you just walk people throughmaybe just some key elements of
each of the perspectives hereand kind of why you chose those
ones and how they feed into eachother.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-202 (40:01):
So let me caveat this by saying I
can't read it'cause it's tiny.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_15 (40:05):
do you want me to

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-202 (40:06):
So I'm gonna have to put my glasses
on.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (40:09):
Let me make this

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-20 (40:10):
Um.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (40:11):
And people watching.
Can you see this any better?

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-20 (40:16):
Oh, good.
Yes, that's better.
Okay, so, so we'll start withthe, uh, people and tools
section or learning anddevelopment section.
Um, small, relatively smallcompany.
And so one of the keycomponents, uh, and it's, and
it's a relatively esotericbusiness, so one of the key
components for us for successwas to have people learn, not

(40:36):
only learn the business, whichis really where you've got the.
Sales academy and the, and thetraining completion, um, and f
and i completion, uh,certification completion.
It was, it was really, can weget everybody trained?
Can we get our key stakeholdersexternally trained, um, so that
they better understand thebusiness?
'cause again, if they understandthe business from a fundamentals

(40:59):
perspective, that's gonna go along way.
Both product and businessfundamentals.
It's gonna go a long way to usbeing successful.
Um, so that's why we chosethose.
Um, and then we kind of split itup based upon hiring plan, a
number of, a number of folks weexpected to be able to
throughput on a given month asto what our targets were gonna
be.
Um, same thing if you look atthe internal processes, uh, a

(41:20):
lot of what we did wasprocessing of various, various
things, whether that was, youknow, and, and Rory and I, you
know, coming out of Bline, youhave proof of claims.
Um, where you were filing, uh, aproofs of claim for, um, for
bankruptcies.
Um, so you know, this, thishappens to be a insurance, uh,

(41:42):
administrator.
So you've got, you know, whensomeone files a claim, you want
to pay that claim timely.
And so can we, are we hittingour timelines?
Um, are we, um.
Making sure that when we get a,when we get a contract or policy
in that the contractor policy isactivated fast in case there's a
quick claim, um, we don't haveit, you know, you're not in my

(42:03):
system type of thing.
Um, and then, you know, how muchof that is automated versus how
much of that is manual with agoal to really drive automation
through the business?
Not because you know, one forscalability, but two for
accuracy.
And, you know, the more what wefound was the more people touch.
Uh, process, um, the morelikelihood you're gonna get

(42:24):
variation in the process, andthen inconsistency in
performance.
And so we wanted to automate asmuch as we could.
And so that's really where theinternal processes came from.
Um, and within each one ofthose, there's a bunch of other
things that, you know, there.
Here's the why they're therekind of going to the discussion
we just had.
Um, but they're, they're alsodriving a bunch of other metrics
that aren't shown here, but arejust, that are critically

(42:46):
important, especially when itcomes to the customer, which
gets us here, which is a netpromoter score essentially,
where, what do our customersthink of us?
And again, if you're in abusiness that's kind of customer
facing and you're expected tohave a high level of service,
and we're that in particular inthis type of business, if you've
ever dealt with a healthinsurance company, you know what
it's like when you've got aclaims problem.

(43:07):
If we can exceed.
Expectations and do really well,we're gonna be able to grow that
business.
So we knew that, hey, this isgonna drive our financial
performance because most peoplesuck at this.
And so if we could be reallygood at this as measured by net
promoter score, which is a aconcept that essentially says,
you know, if you rate eight,nine, or 10, on a scale of one

(43:28):
to 10, when you say, you know,would you recommend us to a
friend?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (43:31):
Yeah.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-20 (43:31):
Uh, or to, would you recommend our
services if they rate you aneight, nine, or 10?
That's a plus.
And then kinda anything else isgonna be a minus.
And you want to have, yeah, addyour pluses and your minuses to
get your net.
Um, and so that's what we werelooking at, you know, new, new
dealer, new agent enrollmentsbecame the, you know, are we
growing, um, from a, from thestandpoint of growing the base

(43:53):
of distri, the distributionbase, and then the average time
to close a ticket.
So again, this is being techenabled.
Um, part of our, our customerswere utilizing our technology to
process at their locations,whether that's doctor's offices
or what have you.
Um, and so as a result, wewanted to make sure that if they
submitted a ticket.
Then they were having problemsthat we were able to get that

(44:14):
resolved because if we couldn't,then they were gonna be unhappy.
And if they're unhappy, itimpacts their financial
performance.
Again, as, as Rory noted, thisbusiness was a, was kind of
early stage red, uh, kind of a,a restart.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (44:27):
Yeah.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-20 (44:27):
Um, so, you know, we said, okay,
we've, we have to have a certainnumber of, of.
Policies, um, sold or servicedon a regular basis.
And so what does that break evencount, which is, comes off of
our budget, our plan, um, what'sour average sales price, um,
what's our net sales price?
And there's a, there's a cost ofgoods factor that allows us to

(44:49):
determine what our, um.
Sales pricing or what our sales,uh, pacing is.
So the sales pacing is how muchwe expect to sell that month.
And we had a, this business hasa subsidiary in Mexico, so we
measured US versus Mexico.
The pricing could be a littlebit different as well.
Um, we looked at that on thebackside, but again, you don't
want to have so many variablesin here that it gets confusing.

(45:12):
So we said, okay, what's thecritical piece?
How's the US doing?
How's Mexico doing?
Are we short or over our break?
Even if we're behind our breakeven that means we're gonna have
a, a net loss.
So what's our net loss?
Then we have ebitda, which isessentially takes out the
non-cash pieces.
So we say, okay, what's ourebitda?
Then we go, what's our cash?
For both.
You know us and this has Europein it.

(45:34):
So what's our cash for US andEurope?
Europe and US dollars?
What's our long-term debtbalance and line of credit
balance?
And then what's our burn rate?
So on a monthly basis, what arewe burning?
And then kind of the bottom, howmany months of runway do we
have?
And you know, and if we, and wehad investments, we had an
investment balance sitting outthere.
Um, or you could use line ofcredit, uh, max or you can, any

(45:57):
of one of those things.
But we basically said if we burnthrough our cash, how much
runway do we have?
Two and a half months.
If we utilize our line of creditfully and pull in all of our,
our investments, what's ourrunway?
A year, A year, a month and ahalf.
So, you know, we got a littleover a year of runway to get
this thing flipped, the cashflow positive where we're gonna
need to do a capital call andthis, and we would be able to

(46:19):
look at this and go, okay.
You know, what did we expect itto be at the end of the year and
where are we at today and are weimproving or not improving?
And again, this is a growthbusiness, so there's an
anticipated burn rate.
Um, that's, that's a feature,not a bug in this particular
case.
But we knew that we also weregoing to have to rely on
additional investment from theprivate equity sponsor in order

(46:42):
to be able to get ourselves, youknow, this growth rate
otherwise.
You know, we would have to pullback and manage to that months
of runway.
So that's, that's what drovethis particular, um, this
particular set.
But every business is gonnahave, um, its own kind of
unique.
A lot of the stuff at the top isgonna be somewhat similar for

(47:02):
almost any business.
And that you're measuring cashand cash burn rate and EBITDA
and those kind of things, andsales, sales, uh, trends.
But the stuff at the bottom isreally what's driving these
numbers.
And that's what we would look tomanage on a regular basis.
So whether that was, you know,performance, et cetera.
And then, um, Emily's just, uh,kind of moved it for those folks

(47:24):
who can't, who can't see this,have moved, has moved the flash
report down to initiativeupdates.
So we had.
Three initiatives, uh, a techroadmap, um, where we were
having certain, uh, technologydeveloped internally and, and
deployed, um, the financialperformance and then, uh, m and
a and strategic partnerships.

(47:44):
And these are like two, no morethan two or three sentences of
here's where we're at, you know,and I'll give the example on the
tech roadmap platform upgrade Vtwo in, in, uh, qa.
It's expected to deploy in Q3.
So that's, it's just, you know,quick hits so that whoever's
looking at this can, can kind ofgo, okay, we've got a problem.
There's a AI chat botimplementation.

(48:06):
It's got, it was delayed'causethere were hall hallucinations
on it.
So it's been pushed out twoweeks to try and improve the
model associated with the AIchat bot.
So that's, that's, and so that'swhere, as Rory had noted, you
know, it could be good, bad, orugly.
This is an ugly'cause we'retrying to automate all this
stuff and it's, or it's bad and,you know, we, we roll something
and it's, you know, the thingstarts telling you to, you know,

(48:27):
mail in your toothbrush alongwith your dental, along with
your, uh, you know, dentalimpressions to get your, to get
your dentist bill paid.
Not a good, you know, not a, nota good answer from the chat bot,
so you have to pull it down andfix it.
Um, but.
And that was supposed to go liveand there's an expectation of
savings, uh, or at leastfacilitating growth that you
know isn't gonna be realized.

(48:47):
It's a relatively short issue.
And that's, you know, that'swhat we would do.
And then the next section wouldbe kind of key department
updates.
Um, and you know, it's got salesand customer service and
marketing and, you know,production operations, um,
overseas.
So each of the, the C level orVP level folks would put
something in here.

(49:08):
Um, and so like our marketing,our marketing vice president for
instance, had, you know,planning underway for apac, Asia
Pacific.
Um.
So the APAC summit and thenexpecting 5,200 attendees, um,
websites being, uh, re-scope forthe, for the, the company.
Three competing firms arelooking at doing that work.

(49:29):
That's it done.
It's a, it's relatively short,snappy.
Here's what's going on.
Um, and then we may get aquestion from our private equity
sponsor that would say, look, ifyou're expecting 5,200
attendees, you know, should weattend?
Are there gonna be folks thatare in your client base that
maybe we should be talking to,or, you know, the website is

(49:51):
being scoped and you got threecompeting and you got three
competing firms looking at it,what are you getting as early
indications as it cost?
Is it, you know,$10,000,$150,000?
'cause that's going to impactsome of the, you know, some of
the projections that they mayhave for a capital call based
upon the burn rate above.
So that would be the type ofquestions we would deal with and
they would, but again, you canget through this entire flash

(50:13):
report and pull out the keypieces for questions, decision
making or issues to discuss atthe staff meeting in 15 minutes.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (50:23):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_ (50:24):
That was really helpful.
I think our listeners will findthat really beneficial.
And if you are, if you arelistening to this, I would
encourage you to check out theYouTube version where there's a
video.
Also, the show notes will havelinks to the template and the
example that we just wentthrough.
But Ed was talking through as Iwas scrolling through the key
sections of the flash report.
So you gotta, you got a previewor a sneak peek.

(50:47):
Of how those are put together.
Um, what else is important forpeople to know about the Flash
report?

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (50:59):
I just think it's, uh, you know, uh,
great leadership teams shouldimplement something like this,
you

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (51:05):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (51:05):
Um, like I said earlier, you gotta
crawl before you walk.
It's not gonna, it's not gonnastart out perfect.
You're gonna have to get peopleto buy in, um, in terms of,
especially if they, they're notused to doing this kind of
reporting or having these typesof discussions on a regular
basis, but.
Gotta get over that growing painand, and make it happen'cause
it's so useful, saves so muchtime is such an easy way to

(51:27):
communicate clearly, um, bothupwards to your board and your
ownership, but also sideways,um, to your colleagues.
Um, you know, it's how you solvebusiness problems is with
information.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (51:40):
that, I would say this replaced all of
our other reporting.
So people kind of did theirsiloed reporting or maybe they
handed off one piece of data toanother team.
But this became the source oftruth and everyone knew,
everyone in our company knewwhat the Flash report was.
Even mid-management rank andfile folks up to our senior
board members.
Everyone knew what the Flashreport was and how it worked,

(52:03):
and I think that was.
A positive and one of thebenefits of everyone kind of
knows what this thing is andthey know they're part in it as
well.

rory_1_08-14-2025_1513 (52:12):
Exactly.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14- (52:13):
Yeah, I would say that the last thing,
which is.
I don't wanna say it's counterto what Rory just said.
It actually reinforces it isdon't make the flash report so
difficult to compile so complexor overthink it to the point
where you have to hire an FTE todo the flash report.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (52:29):
No.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-20 (52:29):
The flash report should actually be,
you know, again, the bulk of thenumbers piece I've, I tended to
assign to either the chief ofstaff or to the.
Um, chief financial officersteam or the accounting team to
pull in, but it should be comingoff of reporting that's already
in the can, so it shouldn't takeyou a day to put together a
flash report.
The flash report should take anhour or two to put together, and

(52:53):
the individual VPs or managersthat are putting their
components in shouldn't takemore than 10 minutes or 15
minutes to, you know, like yousaid, Emily, it, it's a forcing
function to go, what has, whathave we done this week?
What issues are there that weneed to put, you know, kind of
put on the table.
Then just write that down anddon't overthink it and get it
out.
Um, I, I have seen someorganizations where we

(53:16):
introduced a flash report orwhere I've introduced the
concept of a flash report, andpretty soon they've turned it
into like a monthly reportingpackage on a weekly basis
instead, and it's just overcomplicated.
It turns into a rub Goldbergmachine, and you just can't

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (53:30):
Yeah.

ed-barton--derp-_1_08-14-202 (53:31):
do that.
It's gotta be simple, easy, easyto put together, quick to put
together, quick to read, quickto digest, and quick to action.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (53:37):
And I think this is for chiefs of
staff listening.
This is Bread and Butter Chiefof Staff Initiative, and this
was an ongoing initiative that Iwas on point for.
So there's the initial standupand introduction of the Flash
report to the leadership team,and then there's the.
A second phase where youactually, how do you pull the
data, what deciding what's gonnago in it, and then the ongoing,

(53:59):
you know, cadence of the flashreport outs, and, and sometimes
if a leader is brand new to it,they've never done it before,
it'll take months to get them ina regular ca cadence where they
feel comfortable.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (54:10):
True.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (54:10):
The other story I wanna throw in
here is I was going back andforth with.
Um, a board member on the secondpart of the flash report, which
is the little sentences inpeople's own words, and I'm
like, Hey, like, what are youtrying to hear?
Is there a format you want?
And the person I was talking towas Emily.
I like it when it's in their ownwords.
I don't mind that it's indifferent formats and people

(54:32):
have bullet points, or thisperson has choppy sentences, or
this person does it this way.
I can, I know these people.
I can actually hear them sayingit, and I like hearing it in
their own words, and I alwaysremembered that.
So I just wanted to.
that out for for folks as well.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (54:46):
Yeah,

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_1 (54:47):
um, awesome.
I think we've covered a lot.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (54:51):
pod yet.
I think

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025_151 (54:52):
I think it's worth it though.
Flash Report is game changer.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (54:55):
Yeah.

emily-sander_1_08-14-2 (54:56):
changer.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (54:57):
stuff.
Yeah.
Good.

emily-sander_1_08-14-202 (54:58):
listen to this again.
Go watch it on YouTube and thenin the show notes we will have
the link to that blank templatethat you can use if you want,
and customize it yourself.
And then also the example wejust went through to have side
by side as well, but.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (55:12):
out to any one of us individually, I
think, uh, probably

emily-sander_1_08-14-2025 (55:14):
Yeah.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (55:15):
in touch with us.
to, happy to shed more light onit.
So

emily-sander_1_08-14-2 (55:19):
Awesome.
Thanks Rory.
Thanks, ed.

rory_1_08-14-2025_151351 (55:21):
next time, team.
Bye-Bye.

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