Why knowing your numbers is the ultimate CEO power move

Here's the ultimate CEO power move: know your numbers before they know you. You'll turn ambiguity into cash, control, and confidence, and make smarter decisions faster ...

Ultimate CEO power move, Bold and strategic, Leads the company to success, Brave decisions made

If you don't know your runway, you're not the CEO, you're a passenger. Claiming the ultimate CEO power move means you grab the controls and read the instruments. You do that by separating story from signal: revenue tells you the size of the story, profit tells you if the story is worth telling, and cash tells you whether you can keep turning the pages.

You can sell a lot and still fail because of profit lag!

And you can book profit yet run out of cash because timing, taxes, and receipts don't obey your optimism. When you see the system this way, decisions become boringly rational and reliably effective.

Start with a forecast P&L that you will actually use, not a spreadsheet museum piece. Map monthly revenue, cost of sales, operating expenses, and expected tax so there are no surprises when the VAT return lands or the corporation tax bill is due.

Then run the base, stretch, and downside scenarios, and update them when reality deviates. You can measure churn because revenue that leaks is more expensive to replace than to retain, and track gross margin. After all, margin is the oxygen of any operation.

Calculate the actual cost to serve each client, not
just the convenient average!

You load in delivery hours, support tickets, discounts, software seats, travel, and payment terms to see who fuels growth and who quietly burns your runway. You will discover that some 'flagship' accounts are loss leaders without a strategy attached; either redesign the offer or exit with grace. You'll then align pricing, scope, and service levels to the economics you can actually sustain.

And make peace with the fact that revenue is not equal to profit and profit is not equal to cash, especially when VAT is involved.

You can be cash-poor after a great quarter because VAT on invoices is not your money, deferred revenue brings obligations, and late payers turn forecasts into fiction. You shorten cash cycles with deposits, milestone billing, and clear credit control, and you keep a rolling thirteen-week cashflow so you know your runway by date, not by vibe. Clarity here is not accounting trivia; it's operational survival.

Every month, run a one-hour review:

• P&L against forecast,
• cash movement,
• pipeline quality,
• churn and margin by segment,
• and variances with owners and fixes.

Keep a simple dashboard that shows cash runway in weeks, gross margin trend, net revenue retention, debtor days, and top five cost lines. Share it with your leadership team because secrecy breeds speculation, while transparency breeds alignment.

Tackle the common blind spots before they tackle you!

VAT and taxes are predictable if you calendar them and treat them as restricted funds. One-client dependence is a strategic risk, not a badge of loyalty, so cap your exposure, diversify your pipeline, and design offers that can be sold repeatedly. Debt can be a lever if it buys profitable time, and a trap if it buys denial; model the interest, covenants, and exit before you sign.

And if you say no to work that breaks your model, you will sleep well knowing that taxes simply become paperwork, not drama. Yes, you will still face uncertainty, but your numbers will turn uncertainty into options.

And that is the ultimate CEO power move!

Until next time ...

STEPH BIRCH
Founder & Transformation Catalyst

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About Steph Birch ...
With over 17 years of hands-on experience, Steph is that rare unicorn who’s done it all - and done it brilliantly. From transforming scrappy contact centres into high-performing hubs, to leading full-scale functions across finance, tech, product, data, compliance, sales and more - she’s scaled it, fixed it, or rebuilt it from the ground up. Steph’s superpower? Blending big-picture strategy with sleeves-up execution. She’s led operational strategy at board level in industries like Insurance, SaaS, Tech and BPOs — and knows how to drive results whether she’s supporting a scrappy founder or steering a complex enterprise. She’s passionate about people, powered by data, and obsessed with making operations smoother, smarter, and future-ready.  Are you ready to go from firefighting to future-focused, without losing the heart of your business?

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