PODCAST · business
Strategy Meets Finance
by Steve Coughran
Welcome to Strategy Meets Finance, the podcast for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to start, grow, and run a business that lasts. Most business owners struggle because they treat strategy and finance as separate. But without a clear strategy, your finances won’t support long-term growth. And without strong financial planning, even the best business ideas fall flat. On this show, we bring both sides together—so you can grow your business with confidence, improve cash flow, increase profit, and make better decisions. Hosted by Steve Coughran, a former CFO and founder of Coltivar, each episode shares simple tools, real examples, and practical advice from working with companies of all different sizes. You’ll learn how to set smart goals, fix money leaks, build stronger teams, and create lasting value.
Episodes
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Your Team Doesn't Know What Winning Looks Like. Here's How to Fix It. | Ep 264
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a call with us. Ask one of your direct reports to name the three to five things that define success in their role. If the answer is vague, you have a clarity problem, and it is costing you more than you…
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The Difference Between Making a Profit and Making Money | Ep 263
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a call with us. Most business owners look at the bottom of their income statement, see a profit, and assume the business is doing well. That number ignores one of the biggest costs in the business: invested...
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8 Levers of Cash Flow: The Invested Capital Levers | Ep 262
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a call with us. Most business owners focus all their attention on profit. But some of the biggest cash flow problems in a business have nothing to do with profit at all. In this episode Steve covers the…
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8 Levers of Cash Flow: The Profit Levers | Ep 261
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a free call with us. Most business owners know cash flow matters. Very few know the specific levers that actually control it. In this episode Steve kicks off a two-part series on the 8 levers of cash flow,...
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Are You Competing in the Right Market? Here Is How to Know | Ep 260
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a free call with us. Most businesses are so busy chasing work that they never stop to ask whether they are competing in the right market in the first place. In this episode Steve digs into one of the four…
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The Simplest Business Advice Nobody Actually Follows | Ep 259
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Schedule a free call with us. Steve was in a wrestling class recently when the coach said something that stuck with him. Just do stuff that works. In this episode, he takes that idea into business and makes the case...
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Everything You Know About Strategy Is Wrong | Ep 258
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Most business owners think they have a strategy, but most of them do not... In this episode Steve gives you three quick ways to find out if your strategy is actually working, breaks down…
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This Financial Disability Is Killing Your Business | Ep 257
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Most business owners think financial visibility means getting an income statement every month. It does not. In this episode Steve breaks down what real financial visibility actually looks...
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These 3 Numbers Tell You Whether Your Business Will Make It | Ep 256
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Most business owners track revenue. Some track profit. But there are three numbers that actually tell you whether your business is healthy, building value, and set up to last. In this…
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The Gap Between Your Strategy and Your Results | Ep 255
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Most businesses have a strategy. They have done the offsite, built the plan, and know where they want to go. Then you look at the financials and the strategy is nowhere in the numbers. In...
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The Moment a Good Business Starts Becoming a Great One | Ep 254
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. There is a specific moment Steve has seen over and over again inside businesses. Revenue becomes more predictable, cash flow steadies out, and the owner goes from reactive to proactive. In...
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Is Your Business Really Generating Value? | Ep 253
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Most business owners look at profit on their income statement and assume the business is doing well. But profit and value are not the same thing. In this episode Steve breaks down why the...
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The Problem With Your Annual Budget (And What Actually Works) | Ep 252
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Every year business owners build a budget. They set targets, present the numbers, tie bonuses to it, and by March it is already wrong. In this episode Steve makes the case that a static...
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Your Best Customers Might Be Your Worst Financial Decision | Ep 251
Know your numbers, fix your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Most business owners know their best customers by name. Longest relationships, biggest contracts, most consistent work. But in this episode Steve shows why looking at revenue per customer…
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What Buyers Actually Pay For When They Buy a Business | Ep 250
Know your numbers, grow your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Two businesses, same revenue, same profit. One sells for three times EBITDA. The other sells for eight times. On a $2 million EBITDA business that gap is $10 million. In this episode Steve...
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Why Your Pricing Has Nothing to Do With What You Charge | Ep 249
Know your numbers, grow your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Most business owners set their prices based on what competitors charge, what feels right, or what they think customers will pay. None of those approaches have anything to do with the value...
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Business Lessons I Had to Learn the Hard Way | Ep 248
Know your numbers, grow your cash flow, and build a business that works for you. Start free with myColtivar. Steve started his first business at 16 out of his sister's garage with no money, no financial background, and no idea what he was doing. He made every mistake you can make. In this episode...
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What Your WIP Schedule Is Trying to Tell You | Ep 247
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most specialty contractors either do not have a WIP schedule or do not treat it with the attention it deserves. And if your WIP is wrong, Steve will tell you straight…
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Profitable But No Cash? This Is Why | Ep 246
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Revenue is up. The team is celebrating. And the business owner is quietly pulling on the line of credit because cash is constantly tight. In this episode Steve breaks down...
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Listen to This if You're Using AI to Optimize Your Business | Ep 245
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Everyone is talking about AI right now. Which tools to use, how to automate, how to stay ahead. Steve thinks AI is important too. But in this episode he wants to have the...
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Why Most Contractors Price to Win Instead of Price to Profit | Ep 244
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Winning work and profiting from work are two completely different things. Most contractors are only doing one of them. In this episode Steve breaks down why pricing to be...
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The #1 Thing I Fix First When a Business Is Struggling | Ep 243
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit When Steve walks into a struggling business, people expect him to start with leadership, culture, or strategy. He never does. In this episode he walks through the one…
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If I Were Running a Construction Business, Here's Exactly What I'd Do | Ep 242
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Steve gets asked this question all the time. If you were running my business, where would you start? In this episode he answers it directly. He walks through exactly what…
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Why Contractors Run Out of Cash (And the Four Levers That Fix It) | Ep 241
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most specialty contractors know cash flow is important. What they do not know is what actually controls it. In this episode Steve walks through the four levers that...
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The 3 Biggest Strategy Mistakes Business Owners Make | Ep 240
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business owners have sat through a strategy session that felt productive in the room and changed nothing back at the office. In this episode Steve breaks down the…
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Your Gross Margin Is Probably Wrong. Here's Why. | Ep 239
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most contractors who track their gross margin are still getting it wrong. Not because they are doing anything dishonest. Because the way their accounting is set up does…
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3 Things I Learned as CFO That Every Contractor Gets Wrong | Ep 238
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit When Steve became CFO of a billion-dollar construction company, he thought he had seen it all. But sitting inside a business at that scale taught him things no classroom…
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Your Balance Sheet Is Deceiving You | Ep 237
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business owners feel pretty comfortable with their income statement. Revenue, costs, profit. Simple enough. But the balance sheet is where the real story lives and...
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Why Your Business Gets Harder to Run as It Grows (And What to Do About It) | Ep 236
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Revenue is up. The team is growing. There is no shortage of work. And somehow the business feels harder to run than when it was half the size. More stress, more decisions,...
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5 Warning Signs Your Business is Heading Towards a Crisis | Ep 235
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Businesses almost never collapse without warning. The signs are usually there months before things get critical, sometimes even longer. The problem is most owners either…
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The Conversation Most Business Partners Never Have | Ep 234
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business partnerships do not fall apart because of personality conflicts. They fall apart because two people building something together never got aligned on the...
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The Number That Tells You If Your Business Is Worth Buying | Ep 233
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business owners have a rough idea of what their business is worth. Usually it is based on what a friend sold theirs for or what feels right. But what a business is...
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3 Things Every Successful Business Turnaround Has in Common | Ep 232
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Steve has been inside a lot of businesses that were in trouble. Some were losing cash. Some were profitable on paper but couldn't make payroll. Some had great teams and...
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You Can't Scale Your Way Out of a Margin Problem | Ep 231
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit More revenue sounds like the answer when a business is struggling. But Steve has watched too many business owners chase growth thinking it would solve their cashflow...
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The Habits That Separate Growing Businesses From Stuck Ones | Ep 230
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit After working inside the financials of hundreds of businesses, Steve says the difference between the ones that grow and the ones that stay stuck almost never comes down to...
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Let Me Reintroduce Myself | Ep 229
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Steve does not talk about his personal life much. But when he does, the response is always the same: people reach out and say they could have written that story…
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Why Contractors Keep Losing Margin Even When Jobs Go Well | Ep 228
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit The job went well. The crew performed. The client is happy. And the margin still is not there? Most contractors blame the field when this happens. But in this episode…
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Cutting Costs Is the Wrong Move (Do This Instead) | Ep 227
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit When the business starts struggling, the first instinct is almost always the same. Cut costs. Cut headcount. Cut marketing. Cut everything that is not essential. Steve…
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Your Accountant is Not Your CFO (And It's Costing You) | Ep 226
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Your books are clean. Reports come out on time. Taxes are filed. And you still don't know if you can afford that next hire, whether you should take on that big contract…
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5 Numbers That Tell You the Truth About Your Business | Ep 225
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business owners track revenue. Some track profit. Almost none track the five numbers that actually tell you if their business is healthy, growing in value, and built…
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What Nobody Tells You About Scaling Your Business | Ep 224
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Scaling sounds like the goal, but it’s also where a lot of businesses quietly break. Growth doesn’t fix problems, it exposes them. If margins are tight, they get tighter.…
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The #1 Struggle Business Leaders Face | Ep 223
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit A lot of business owners think profit is the goal, but the real problem shows up when the cash is not there. This is one of the most common struggles leaders deal with....
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The 3 Phases Every Failing Business Goes Through (And How to Escape) | Ep 222
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most businesses don’t fail overnight. They go through the same three phases, and most owners don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late. It starts with a strategy...
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Why Your Business Makes Money But Never Seems to Have Any | Ep 221
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Your income statement says you made money, but your bank account says something else. This happens in more businesses than you think. Steve explains why profitable…
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If You've Been Watching the News, You Better Know Your Numbers | Ep 220
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit There is a lot of noise in the economy right now. Inflation, labor shortages, geopolitical tension, and constant disruption. In times like this, guessing in your business...
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This is Why Profitable Companies Run Out of Cash | Ep 219
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit A lot of companies are profitable on paper but still run out of cash. The problem usually comes down to something most owners never measure called the cash conversion…
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The #1 Thing Holding 99% of Businesses Back | Ep 218
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit It’s not cash. It’s not strategy. It’s not training. The thing that holds most businesses back is the story the owner tells themselves. Steve shares real examples of...
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Why Working Hard Isn’t Fixing Your Business | Ep 217
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Working 60 hours a week. Missing dinners. Grinding nonstop. And still losing money. Steve shares a story about a frustrated president who was doing everything he could to...
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How Strategy Turns Growth Into Cash Flow | Ep 216
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Growth does not automatically create cash flow. A lot of businesses learn that the hard way. Steve explains how strategy is supposed to turn growth into real free cash…
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The 8 Cash Flow Levers Every Business Owner Should Know | Ep 215
How much cash is hiding in your business? See if you qualify for a Free Financial Health Check Financial Intelligence Toolkit Most business owners think they have a profit problem. What they really have is a cash flow problem. Steve breaks down the eight cash flow levers that actually control how...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Welcome to Strategy Meets Finance, the podcast for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to start, grow, and run a business that lasts.
Most business owners struggle because they treat strategy and finance as separate. But without a clear strategy, your finances won’t support long-term growth. And without strong financial planning, even the best business ideas fall flat.
On this show, we bring both sides together—so you can grow your business with confidence, improve cash flow, increase profit, and make better decisions.
Hosted by Steve Coughran, a former CFO and founder of Coltivar, each episode shares simple tools, real examples, and practical advice from working with companies of all different sizes. You’ll learn how to set smart goals, fix money leaks, build stronger teams, and create lasting value.
HOSTED BY
Steve Coughran
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Strategy Meets Finance have?
Strategy Meets Finance currently has 341 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Strategy Meets Finance about?
Welcome to Strategy Meets Finance, the podcast for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to start, grow, and run a business that lasts. Most business owners struggle because they treat strategy and finance as separate. But without a clear strategy, your finances won’t support long-term growth....
How often does Strategy Meets Finance release new episodes?
Strategy Meets Finance publishes regularly with 341 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Strategy Meets Finance?
You can listen to Strategy Meets Finance on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Strategy Meets Finance?
Strategy Meets Finance is created and hosted by Steve Coughran.
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