Investors don't want to talk to the CFO until they're in d. So I've worked with a number of startups, as you would imagine, and the worst thing that I've ever seen is when founders try and send their CFO O in to do the initial pitch with an investor thinking that. That's the way that they'll be able to convince the VC or the angel that they're on top of their numbers and know their game.

But the reality is that that actually acts against them. It's a disadvantage because investors want to hear from the founder, the CEO, about. Their vision for the business, their story, their narrative, how they came to build, what they're building and why they're building it, how they're gonna encourage employees to join them, what they're gonna do with the money, and how they're gonna spend it, how they're gonna grow, and ultimately how they're gonna return money back to the investors.

By sending your CFO in, you're effectively saying that. You don't know what's important, because the reality is the numbers come after the initial pitch. They're part of the due diligence that investors want to do once they've bought into the story that you've told them. So remember, never send your CFO in to do your initial pitching.

That's up to you as the founder of the ceo, your CFOs there as a back stock to guide you through the due diligence. Make sure that all of the numbers are covered and make sure all of the boxes are ticked to get that investment closed. But that first conversation, it better be coming from the ceo.

If you are the CEO and haven't made a sell, you're not the ceo. The CEO has one role and one role alone, and that is to sell. It may be that you're selling to employees. It may be that you're selling to investors or suppliers, but it may even be that you're selling to customers. Under no misconception, you are selling one way or the other.  And if you haven't sold or made a sell, especially to a customer, then as far as I'm concerned, you can't be the CEO because you cannot have understood the pain points that your customer is facing. You won't have understood the nuances of your product and how to sell it in to your customer, and for anyone else to take that role on, they need to have a playbook to make sure that they can maximize the number of sales that they're.  But ultimately a ceo, given that your one role is to sell, that's what you should be doing day in and day out, selling yourself, your business, and your product. So if you aren't making a sell, as far as I'm concerned, you're not a ceo.

Contracts are there for when things fail, so always have one in. It's really easy when you're in a startup to ignore the basics. You know what I'm talking about? It's fine. Let's get them started. We can sort out the paperwork later. They're fine. I've worked with them before. We don't need to do anything in writing.

I've been in situations chasing people to sign off contracts after I've already begun working with them and learned quickly never to make that same mistake.  it is incredibly dangerous because whilst things may go right, even 99% of the time, you want to be co covered for the 1% of the times that they don't.

And a contract is there to detail what should happen and what happens in the event that things do go wrong. And heaven forbid, you get into a place where things do fall apart, but you want a contract in place to make sure that you know how to navigate them. Pray you'll never use them, but always have a contract in place.

You are not your business however much it may feel. There was a time when I slid into a huge depression over the performance of one of the businesses I was leading. We were struggling on all fronts, unable to bring talent in, pay bills, make payroll, and I took it all incredibly personally. I wrapped up the failings of the business in my own ego, and that led to a downward spiral.

The reality is that you are not your business. You can do everything right and still go through rough patches as every business does. Removing your ego from the equation will help you, help you make better decisions, and ultimately ensure that you don't damage your mental health. It's really important and only comes with time.

But you have to extricate your own personal emotional wellbeing from that of your business, cuz only in that way will you be able to make the right decisions for both yourself personally as well as your business.

My business can't be in good shape if my mind and body aren't. This is a pretty personal one but it reminds me of something a client said to me more than a decade ago. He was someone who had struggled with weight and needed to book two seats on a plane to accommodate himself. You'd never have known it to see him.

We're in the gym one day, and he said to me, there's no excuse for not taking the time to manage your body and to manage your health, because if you can't manage yourself, how can you be trusted to manage anything else, let alone a business? And this goes further. When you look after yourself physically, you have more energy and more drive.

You're more likely to be able to function at a higher level. If you take this a step further and look at the mental health side of things, it's really apparent that if you. Taking care of your mental health, there is a hu higher likelihood that you're gonna burn out over time and you're gonna make poor decisions as a result of your poor mental health.

So the best thing I ever did was start looking after myself as someone who has really battled with weight issues and with depression. Even at times, looking after both my physical health as well as my mental health has really helped me focus and drive my businesses forward in the way that I wanted to.

So, remember, Your business can only be in good shape if you and your mind are both in great shape as well.

The buck stops with me. Blaming others for failure is never a good look, but especially when you're in a leadership position. As a leader, you have to own the failures even more so than sharing the successes. Firstly, if you don't, then you're signaling a weakness in leadership because if something went wrong and you weren't at the helm, then the first question I'm gonna ask is, well, who was, and whether you're in a leadership role or not, there's nothing more empowering than owning your mistakes because learning starts where failure end.  In fact, these a hundred lessons were really the result of many, many times that I have either failed or made mistakes and have had to learn from them. But the reality is, if I didn't take ownership of those mistakes, I would never learn, I'd always pass a buck to someone else and say it was their fault, and they would be the ones that either learnt or suffered as a result of my lack of ownership of my mistakes.  The buck has to stop with me because I'm the one who's in charge of what I do.  There we go. Hit me up in my dms on LinkedIn or Twitter if you've got any questions. Otherwise, let's get back to building.

Poor leaders say I. Strong ones say we. We've all seen this before. Really great leaders know that to achieve anything, they need their team behind them to deliver. But there are really awful leaders out there who hog the limelight and see every win as a personal achievement. Conversely, when things go wrong, they're the first to throw others under the bus.

But great leaders by building up their teams do a few things. They create an atmosphere of. They create filthy and loyalty, and this is really amazing when you need teams to deliver in hard times. . I've been in a number of situations where I've seen leaders, you know, take all of the accolades for positive movements in their numbers, whether that's their revenue or their user base or their profitability.

But the reality is that to deliver those numbers, there were likely a huge number of people underneath them. Working day and night to make those things happen. Whether that's the marketing team building a new campaign or a new designer that's designed an amazingwebsite, or even an engineering team that's created efficiency, that drives more usability.

Cash flow, balance sheet, profit and loss. In that order.  now, a lot of people will be sitting there going, Arish, what are you smoking? Everyone asks me about my revenue. Everyone wants to know what's going on in my p and l, but the reality is that the p and l is a really blunt instrument, and it isn't the one that you should be using to manage your business internally.

Why is that? Well, as we learn early on in this podcast, cash trumps everything. That's why you need to focus on the cash flow First and foremost, you want to know where your money's coming. Where it's going out, how much you're spending, how much you have left, and what that means in terms of the decisions that you are making.

It is imperative to be on top of your cash flow, and that's why I put it first out of the three statements. The balance sheet comes next. Why? Because like the cash flow statement, it gives you a realistic picture of where you are financially. It tells you what you are owed, i e who owes you money and what you owe.

I e who do you owe money to? And if you know those two things, you can plan accordingly. If your focus on the other hand, on your profit and loss statement, you could get yourself caught in a twist because as I've said before, sales is van. Prophet is Sanity and Cassius King. A profit and loss statement is a function of an accountant's mind.

We work in this magical world of accruals and timing differences where we move money around to make sure that we are doing it in line with accounting I F R S standards. And that may mean that whilst your business looks rosy, It might not be. So let me give you an example of that. You may book a hundred thousand pounds worth of sales, but those cells may be sitting on your balance sheet sheet as an uncollected debtor.

And if they're an uncollected debtor, they haven't hit your cash flow. So you haven't got the cash to play a supplier or your employees, even though you've booked that revenue. This is why I always say focus on the cash flow and the balance sheet before the p and l. And remember, an accountant is someone who can take the numbers one and seven and make them negative 20.

Cash flow, balance sheet, profit and loss in that order.

Your accountant, and I cannot stress this enough, is not your cfo. I can't tell you the number of founders that I've spoken to that think that their accountants can do the job of their cfo. They assume that anyone with a qualification in accounts is going to be good enough to lead the executive function of their finance department.

And I'm here to tell you they are really, really mistaken. So what's the difference between an accountant and a cfo? Well, an accountant typically is someone that does your stats, your VAT returns, your bookkeeping. They make sure that you do all the things that need to be done to keep h m rrc and companies house in check, but they aren't operators.

They don't know your business in any kind of death, so they can't really give you direction on what you should be doing and the sort of decisions that you should be making. Your CFO on the other hand, should be intimately aware of what's going on in your business. They need to be advising and directing you on what to do next and how to manage your capital, where to spend that money, how to allocate it, when you should be hiring, when you should be doing a fundraise, how much you should be raising, where to raise it from, and all the other things that come with being a cfo.

The worst thing you can do is hire an accountant and assume that they will be able to do that job because the reality is they just won't have the experience. I've been brought into loads of businesses where ultimately they've hired someone very junior with an accounting qualification, call them a finance director or cfo, and assume that they'll be able to do the role.

And unfortunately, I'm here to tell you that you end up paying a lot more to pick up the pieces than to get the right person in in the first place. Do the right thing. Hire a great cfo, someone that's worked in your industry, in tech, in finance, with the experience at senior level. You will not regret it for one moment.

Insurance exists for a reason. Plan for the worst, even in the good. I am sure most of you already understand this, but insurance exists in case of the worst happening, not because it assumes, fuck, say 19. Insurance exists for a reason. Plan for the worst, even in the good times. I'm sure most of you understand this.

But it bears saying that insurance exists in case the worst happens. It doesn't assume that the worst will happen, and the reality is that for lots of founders, it can be really frustrating to be paying out that monthly premium even though you don't expect anything to go wrong. But I'm here to tell you that the worst can happen.

About a decade ago when I was out in Papua New Guinea, one of my businesses literally burnt to the ground. If we hadn't had insurance in place, we wouldn't have been able to recover that business, recover from that fire, and grow that business into the future. The reality is that you never expect the worst to happen, but that's the point.

It can happen at any time in any place. Make sure you have the insurance. Keep up with your premiums, and obviously shop around. Find the right thing that suits your business because not all insurance is created. Equally, build a relationship with your broker or with your insurance firm and make sure that you are covered just in case, because you don't want to be in a position where the worst happens and you've got nothing to fall.