One of the best TED Talks I ever watched was by Sir Ken Robinson, an education advisor and global thought leader.
In it, he shared three things everyone should learn, yet none of them are taught in school:
As I listened to a recent RevOps Champions podcast with guest Max Emma, I couldn’t help but come back to the first one.
Because personal finance is not just a personal skill. It is a leadership skill that shapes better decisions.
Max runs a nationwide bookkeeping franchise called BooXkeeping and spends his days helping business owners see what is actually happening in their finances.
Max shared an insight that comes up again and again in his work with business owners:
“Knowing how much money you have in the checking account is not the same as knowing how profitable the business is.”
In larger, growing organizations, the challenge is rarely that leaders don’t understand this.
The challenge is that most of the people in the organization cannot see how their work affects the numbers.
When financial understanding stays confined to the executive team, the business loses leverage. Teams optimize for activity instead of impact.
Here is the real problem:
A bank balance tells you what exists right now.
It doesn’t explain what created it.
It doesn’t show which actions improved it.
It doesn’t reveal whether growth is actually strengthening the business or simply making it busier.
When I’ve seen companies truly scale, both revenue and profit, financial understanding didn’t stop at the leadership level. It showed up in how teams prioritized, executed, and adjusted their work every day.
When that understanding isn’t shared, the cracks tend to appear in familiar ways.
Teams hire too early or too late because they can’t see the financial tradeoffs.
Investments are made based on optimism rather than math.
Surprises show up in taxes, debt, inventory, payroll, vendor terms, or seasonality.
And trends go unnoticed until they turn into crises.
Max shared a painful example from earlier in his career.
He grew a construction business fast, from three to 96 employees. When the recession hit, work slowed, but equipment payments did not.
His takeaway was simple:
“If we paid more attention to accounting, we would just catch this problem early on.”
That is the whole point of visibility.
Not to produce reports.
To make better decisions sooner.
This is also where I see a clear parallel inside growing companies using CRM systems.
Most teams track activity.
Marketing looks at leads and MQLs.
Sales looks at pipeline and close rates.
Service looks at tickets closed and response times.
Those numbers tell you what is happening.
They do not always tell you what it means.
Financial literacy inside a business is not about turning everyone into a finance expert. It is about giving each team a scoreboard they can actually use.
For marketing, that means understanding the revenue created from the work they do.
For sales, it means seeing not just what closes, but what closes profitably.
For service teams, it means understanding how efficiency, retention, and customer experience impact margin over time.
For leaders, it means connecting all of that activity to financial outcomes, not just volume.
When dashboards connect day-to-day work to revenue, margin, and sustainability, finance stops being abstract.
It becomes actionable.
This is why finance belongs in the same bucket as nutrition.
Not because everyone needs to become a CPA or a CFO.
Because everyone deserves to understand the scoreboard.
Especially leaders. And the more people in a company who understand this, the stronger the business becomes.
If you are a franchisor, financial visibility protects unit health and brand health.
If you are a franchisee, financial visibility protects your household and your future.
If you run any growing business, financial visibility turns gut feel into grounded leadership.
Finance is a life skill.
If this email made you think of a colleague who could benefit from seeing financials as a superpower, feel free to share. Understanding the scoreboard leads to better decisions and better futures, personally and professionally.
Kristin
Kristin Dennewill
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