The TMG Fireside Chat Podcast

Build to Grow™ Pillar #4: Reporting Most fire protection contractors say they have reporting. Far fewer make decisions with it. In this episode, John Mackey sits down with two leaders who run the same business through two different lenses — Pam Gartner, CFO, and Clinton Campbell, Director of Sales — at Approved Fire Protection & Security, a Central New Jersey contractor that's been family-owned for nearly a century and is led today by CEO and owner Diane. It's a rare, candid look at how reporting actually gets built and lived inside a real, well-run FLS business: how it evolved from instinct to system, which KPIs earned their place, what the weekly and quarterly cadence looks like on the ground, and how the financial and operational lenses get integrated into one operating picture. The newsletter gave you the framework. This conversation gives you the reality. In this episode: Why operations drives the financials — not the other way around — and what that means for how you measure The integrated tech stack (ProfitZoom / Valen Software) that lets the books close continuously instead of in a 25-day rear-view scramble The "are you with me?" moment that set the culture — and how radical transparency (a dozen screens of live financials throughout the building) creates company-wide alignment The KPIs that earned their place: new business installed, customer retention, gross margin and job profitability, AR aging, and tech revenue per day Best-in-class benchmarks in practice: invoicing in under a day (industry standard is 5–6) and a DSO around 15 days A quiet competitive advantage — ranking customers by number of solutions to drive stickiness and protect against churn The real operating cadence: daily dashboards, Monday sales huddles, end-of-week service reviews, a management cadence that graduated from weekly to bi-weekly, and quarterly all-hands alignment meetings How a CEO stays informed and leads without sitting in every meeting — and what "working on the business" looks like when you actually build the team and systems to do it Where the two lenses come together: how finance and operations collaborate on a big job — margin, resources, subs, capex, and training — without finance ever playing "the police" Rapid reflections: One KPI you'd never give up — Clinton: New business closed. Pam: Gross margin / profitability by job. One metric that's overrated — Quantity-based sales activity targets (number of meetings per rep), dropped in favor of qualified, quality pipeline. One piece of advice for an owner starting this journey — Get the right people in the right seats, and put a real accountant and a real financial system behind your operation. Without that visibility, you're guessing. ________________________________________   🎧 The framework behind this conversation: Read the May BTG Mindset newsletter — Reporting That Drives Decisions: The 10 KPIs the Best FLS Contractors Actually Run On - https://mackeygroupllc.com/insights/f...   👉 Get the tool: Reply "DECIDE" to the May BTG Mindset newsletter to receive the Reporting Pillar Readiness Diagnostic — a 10-minute, 20-question assessment across Metric Architecture, Operating Cadence, Data Trust, and the Decision Loop, scored against industry benchmarks with a 90-day focus output. Take it solo or run it as a leadership-team exercise. Three ways to get it: Reply "DECIDE" to the May newsletter and it lands in your inbox Email [email protected] and we'll send it directly Download it from the BTG Mindset library at mackeygroupllc.com 📅 Next month: We close the four-pillar arc with the Built to Grow Operating System — how People, Process, Technology, and Reporting come together inside a single 90-day rhythm. ________________________________________   Guests: Pam Gartner, CFO, and Clinton Campbell, Director of Sales — Approved Fire Protection & Security (New Jersey). Hosted by John Mackey, founder and managing principal of The Mackey Group, a strategic growth advisory firm working exclusively with Fire Protection and Life Safety contractors and the owners, C-suite leaders, boards, and investors who back them.   The Mackey Group | BTG Mindset™ | Build to Grow™ | [email protected]