7. Clients | Progress Program

7. Financials

We're now at section seven of the Progress Pyramid—Financials. It’s where the rubber hits the road. You can have a great mission, strategy, team, and brand—but if your numbers don’t work, your business won’t either. This session is about getting on top of your financial universe—so you’re not flying blind, guessing, or just hoping things work out. We’re here to help you move from reactive and confused to clear, confident, and in control.

Key Concepts

Most business owners don’t have real-time visibility of their financials. If you can’t see it, you can’t fix it. Accurate, timely numbers are your control panel. Treat them like mission-critical data.
Financial clarity brings emotional freedom. It stops the late-night stress and second-guessing. A proper set of financials lets you lead with confidence—not gut feel.
You need financial reports that actually tell a story. That means your chart of accounts must match your operational reality—divided by team, service line, geography, or whatever matters to you.
What gets measured gets managed. Build a culture where everyone knows the score. Financial targets should be visible, understood, and tied to the day-to-day. Make the numbers real—and make them matter.

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Hey, well welcome back to section seven of the Progress Pyramid, which is Kelly Partners' unique trademarked and proprietary framework to help you get in touch, get on top, and take control of the torrent of issues that we have as business owners. It helps you organise your mind so you can take focused action that actually makes a difference.

Now, we're talking financials. Imagine that—your accountants talking about the financials in your business. What’s a major issue that Warren Buffett looks for when assessing a business? It’s the same for you: how a dollar flows through the P&L.

If you bill this, what are your cost of sales? What’s your gross profit? What are your overheads? What’s your operating profit? When does the cash turn up? Your balance sheet is essentially asking: when does the cash turn up and how will you fund the business? Your P&L asks: are we doing anything people are willing to pay for, and are we doing it profitably?

Your financials aren’t complicated. And at Kelly Partners, we can help you with them. Ask us to build your business performance scoreboard. Whether it’s one of ours or a custom version, you need a live scoreboard on your phone in real time. If you don’t have one number that matters—and know it in real time—you’re flying blind.

In most businesses, that number is gross profit. Do you know yours? Do you know it today? Don’t wait for monthly, quarterly, or year-end accounts. Real-time accounting is here. You can have it.

After 30 years as an accountant, I run live scoreboards in our organisation—not because I don’t know the numbers, but because it aligns the whole organisation with the financial outcomes we’re driving. It gives our people confidence that we have a future.

Whether you say it or not, your team knows: if the business goes bad, the boss doesn’t fire himself. He fires the junior first. So help your team understand what number drives their job security, what financial contribution they make, and reward them when it’s going well.

It’s not hard: clear scoreboard, clear valuation framework. So, why value your business? Even if you’re not selling, and you’ve just started—why not learn what drives value early, so you build towards it? Most people come a year after they should’ve sold, saying, "I think my business is worth $5 million," and we have to break the news that it isn’t worth much at all. Because it wasn’t built or structured with value in mind.

For example, long-term multi-year contracts with clients are far more valuable than one-off transactions. Countless owners say, "If only I’d known that." Well, now you do. Early on, value your business. Get a snapshot report. Report more often.

Want to improve your body? Go to the gym more. Want to improve your business? Look at your numbers more. Daily, weekly, monthly. Not three weeks after month-end—that’s like trying to score a try three weeks after the game ended.

So here’s the real advice: stop under-investing in your financial knowledge. Stop under-investing in your tax planning. It’s madness. Get a great accountant and push them to do more. That’s where you’ll get real leverage.

And in each area of your business, every process should be driving one number—a number that everyone understands. Financial clarity isn’t complicated. And at Kelly Partners, we’re here to help you get on top of it.