Do You Know What Your Cash Position Will Be in 90 Days?
Thanks to AI, there's no excuse not to, according to Alan Pentz, who will take questions at today’s 21 Hats Founding Members Zoom.
Good Morning!
Here are today’s highlights:
If you sense that the latest version of ChatGPT is a step back, you’re not alone.
Seth Goldman, who just placed his second tea business on the Inc. 5,000, reminds that fast growth is no guarantee of success.
In California, a manufacturer tries to cope with the 50-percent tax on imports from Brazil.
So far, a wave of tick bites is changing eating habits and business models mostly on Martha’s Vineyard—but the tick belt stretches from Oklahoma to Long Island.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Alan Pentz, who will be my special guest at today’s Founding Member Zoom, tells of a financial analyst who asked a CEO if he could say what his cash position would be in 90 days: “Silence. Mind you, this was a $100 million company. Strong revenue. Confident leadership. But ask what was sitting in the bank, and you get a sea of blank stares. Then came the line that stopped the room cold: ‘Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. But cash is king.’”
“It’s one of the most powerful truths in business and still one of the most ignored. Now, before AI, it MIGHT have made sense. Cash flow was buried in spreadsheets. Many owners tied their identity to revenue because it was visible, easy to celebrate, and proof to the outside world that the business was thriving. It became the metric they chased, often without realizing how far it could drift from the reality in their accounts.”
“But now? You can know your future cash position down to the week. Simulate ‘what if’ decisions. Hire vs don’t. Expand vs wait. You can build a company that sees its cliffs before it hits them. Today, cash is real-time. Nearly predictable and always actionable. Your only excuse? Willful blindness.”
Replay to this email if you’d like to join Alan at today’s Founding Member Zoom. READ MORE
