Why Single-Point Forecasts Are Career Killers – And What to Do Instead “We forecast $2.4 million in pipeline from this campaign.” Famous last words. When you deliver $1.9M, you’ve “missed.” When you deliver $2.8M, leadership wonders why you sandbagged. The problem isn’t your forecasting ability – it’s that single-point forecasts are the wrong tool for […]
How our obsession with measurability blinds us to the forces that actually drive decisions Marketing executives have spent decades perfecting ways to measure advertising effectiveness. Brand recall studies, aided awareness surveys, post-campaign research, all asking variations of the same question: Do consumers remember seeing your ad? But what if the question itself is wrong? New […]
Why VCs and CFOs Should Care About Churn More Than CAC In 2008, Canadian musician Dave Carroll watched United Airlines baggage handlers throw guitar cases onto the tarmac at Chicago O’Hare. By the time he landed in Omaha, his $3,500 Taylor guitar was destroyed. What happened next would cost the airline far more than a […]
What e.l.f. Beauty’s 34% Stock Drop Teaches the C-Suite About Profitable Growth A case study for CEOs, CFOs, and CMOs navigating the tension between growth investment and margin discipline On November 5, 2025, e.l.f. Beauty reported its 27th consecutive quarter of net sales growth. The company gained 140 basis points of market share. They launched […]
And What Will: Speaking Finance’s Language in the Boardroom You walk into the quarterly business review with what you think is a winning hand: “Our campaigns delivered 4.2x ROAS this quarter.” The CFO nods politely. The CEO moves to the next agenda item. You wonder why nobody seems impressed by numbers you worked so hard […]
How the Fed’s Favorite Tool Explains Marketing Investment Better Than Any Dashboard The Federal Reserve uses a deceptively simple framework to make trillion-dollar decisions about the economy. It turns out this same framework is the key to explaining marketing investments in a way that makes CFOs actually lean forward in their chairs. When economists talk […]
The Hidden Reason Finance Says No (And How to Fix It) Your campaign hit every target. Revenue up. ROAS strong. Pipeline full. Then the CFO cut next quarter’s budget anyway. What happened? You probably violated the one rule that trumps all marketing metrics: you burned cash at the wrong time. “Revenue is vanity, profit is […]
And Why It Should Be Your North Star Too “The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power. If you’ve got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you’ve got a very good business.” – Warren Buffett When the world’s most successful investor distills decades of wisdom into […]
The Risk Metrics Finance Uses – And Why Your Numbers Look Scarier Than You Think You report that your campaigns averaged 3.5x ROAS this year. The CFO looks unimpressed. You don’t understand – 3.5x is solid. But here’s what the CFO sees that you don’t: your month-to-month results swung from 1.2x to 6.8x, and that […]
The Attribution Problem Finance Actually Understands – And How to Talk About It “We can’t prove that campaign caused the sales lift.” Every marketer has heard this objection. But here’s what nobody tells you: finance faces the exact same problem – and they’ve developed sophisticated frameworks for making decisions anyway. Let’s steal them. The attribution […]
