Book

Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine

Mike Michalowicz · amazon.com Paid Beginner

Flips the standard margin conversation on its head, allocate profit first, then run the business on what's left, which forces real cost discipline instead of hoping margin appears at year-end.

  • Allocate profit as a percentage before covering expenses
  • Forces visibility into true product-level profitability
  • Widely cited by small-business owners for cash discipline
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It answers 3 questions

  1. What's the difference between a P&L, a cash flow statement and a balance sheet - and which one actually tells me if I'll run out of money?
  2. How do I set my price once I actually know my costs, what margin should I be targeting?
  3. What are the biggest financial modeling mistakes D2C founders make?

Read with it

  1. A forecasting-specific companion to the general modeling articles - useful for the founder who has a model built but needs to... info.woolman.io Article D2C - Ecommerce Financial Forecasting Woolman
  2. A free, current summary of the Profit First method and its allocation percentages, useful if you want the framework without... relayfi.com Article Profit First Method: The Complete Guide for Small Businesses Relay
  3. A free calculator-plus-guide combo for turning your landed cost into a retail price with a target margin, useful as a quick... freetoolstack.com Tool E-Commerce Pricing & Profit Margins Guide FreeToolStack
  4. The clearest walk-through of how a real DTC model connects operational levers - ad spend, conversion, CAC, retention - to the... eightx.co Article Financial Modeling for DTC Brands: Revenue Forecasting & Unit Economics Eightx
  5. A build-along from an operator, not a template vendor - useful precisely because it shows the reasoning behind each assumption... medium.com Article The Only Financial Model You Need for Your Ecommerce Business Imad El Fay
  6. Purpose-built for the cash flow statement specifically - the document most founders skip in favour of the P&L, and the one that... clear.co Template Free Ecommerce Cash Flow Statement Template Clear.co
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