Scaling promises to bring not just more revenue, but more profit, more cash flow, and a sense of ease in doing business. And it seems every business owner is eager to get there. In this season opener, Sarah Delevan is answering the #1 question we get asked inside The Good Food CFO Community - “How do I scale my business?”

Profitability is the goal of every business. But at times it can feel like you are doing everything right, everything traditional business media says that you should be, and yet your business is still running out of cash. In this episode, Sarah breaks down a different way of thinking about your finances and improving your cash flow and profitability.

Nikki McNeil is a Co-Founder at Vividly, a trade spend management software which aims to deliver clear value through efficiencies when analyzing trade spend dollars. Whether you’re a founder managing trade spend for one partner or hundreds, having the right system in place can ensure you stay on budget and receive proper payment from all of your distributors and retailers. In this episode, Sarah got to sit down with Nikki to discuss managing trade spend, and what kind of systems you can put in place to support you and your team at any size.

Traditional business media celebrates big revenue, new accounts, and most of all growth and scale. Cutting revenue in the short term, letting go of accounts and scaling back are the exact opposite of that. So of course right-sizing your business can make you feel bad, and like you’re moving in the wrong direction.

We need to look at the benefits of doing things differently, the benefits of doing what is right for YOUR business, rather than what is generally celebrated in the public eye without context.

In this episode, Sarah shares the reasons behind right-sizing and pulling out of retail, and we hear from 2 founders that chose to right-size, and their reasons behind the move. Sarah also discusses how right-sizing can impact your bottom line in a positive way, and gives us an update on our founders’ stories.

We are kicking off Season 8 of the podcast with a run down of the changes that are happening this season. You’ll meet our show producer, Chelsea Stier, as she and Sarah share all that we have in store for you.

Then, you’ll hear the conversation that has been on Sarah’s mind since August. It all started on a birthday road trip, while overhearing many frank conversations about money. Sarah asks the questions that came up for her after noticing an interesting pattern.

Q4 and the Holiday season bring with them HUGE opportunities for sales and top line revenue. But without the proper planning, sales don’t always translate to profits. Q4 planning includes having a strategy for not only your sales, but also production, labor and shipping! In this episode, Sarah is taking the stress out of creating your Q4 plan! And she’s offering up all the free and low cost resources available to make it even easier.

In this episode, we’ve invited individuals from throughout the food industry for a discussion about the true cost of food. Sarah is joined by food industry members from up and down the supply chain as they start to crack open the layers and consider all of the costs (financial and otherwise) that create the food system that we work within today, and discuss the changes that could benefit producers and consumers.

In this episode of The Good Food CFO Podcast, Sarah is sharing her process for getting clear on the current state of your business, and how she uses a 3 point Profitability Checklist to determine your path forward to financial sustainability and profitability.

In this episode, Sarah is going through the inbox and answering listener questions related to goal setting for the year ahead, forecasting for a business that isn’t IN business yet, and budgeting for trade spend with sustainable profitable growth in mind.

Having a Financial Forecast is like having a road map for your business. The more robust that forecast is, the more confident you can be that you are headed in the right direction. But many Food Founders don’t complete the process due the uncertainty around sales projections and promotional planning.

In this episode, Sarah welcomes back Felice Thorpe as they discuss forecasting, and introduce the brand new Annual Planning Workshop they have created to help founders simplify the financial forecasting process.