CEO-turned-CFO & finance instructor, Lauren Pearl, drops a daily tip that helps startup founders grow their businesses and control their destinies. Learn why this growing list with a 60% open rate led to LP being named top 25 Finance Thought Leader and host of the #3 CFO podcast for 2025
Summer slump
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I’ve watched a lot of founders make the leap from high-growth SaaS to lifestyle brands. At face value, the switch looks easy: "I just want to take a break for a while and deal with a simple, real business" But under the hood? It's a totally different game. Here’s one of the weird things that catches them off guard every time: Seasonality. In SaaS, you’re taught to fear the dip. Revenue is supposed to glide upward — steady, predictable, compounding. If MRR goes down, it’s a fire drill.
But when you’re running, say, a cozy sweater brand (and it’s June) That sales cliff isn’t failure; It’s the calendar. And if you don’t know that? You might jump ship on a perfectly fine business because it doesn't “feel like” it's viable. Here’s the shift: You’re not tracking MRR anymore. You’re managing YTD. Welcome to a seasonal business. You’ve got peaks. You’ve got valleys. Your cash flow, credit line, inventory, marketing - all of it needs to flex with the cycle. Different model = different metrics. Different playbook. Because you can't expect straight-line growth from a curvy business. And if you don’t plan for the summer slump? It’s not the business that’ll break. It’s you. Your Daily CFO, Lauren |
Founder-Friendly Finance
CEO-turned-CFO & finance instructor, Lauren Pearl, drops a daily tip that helps startup founders grow their businesses and control their destinies. Learn why this growing list with a 60% open rate led to LP being named top 25 Finance Thought Leader and host of the #3 CFO podcast for 2025
When you transition from being an employee to being a founder, You need to completely rewire your internal performance gauges. As an employee, you're rewarded for meeting or exceeding expectations. You can’t mess up. Your job is to impress your higher-ups. As a founder, the rules flip. Your #1 goal is to iterate as fast as humanly possible. Getting it right every time is completely unrealistic. Your job is to do as many things wrong, as quickly as possible, in hopes of finding the one thing...
Why is the activity of building a financial model so transformational for founders? Because learning how to build a financial model Is akin to learning how to read. And building one for your own startup Is like reading the instruction manual On how your business works. Your Daily CFO, Lauren
"When I first started my business, I made a little simple financial model. It really wasn't impressive, but I could use it at least to track what was going on. Then I hired a Fractional CFO. They completely rebuilt my model and now it's much more sophisticated. Which is great, only now I have no idea how to use it. Now I just rely on them to run it and tell me what's going on. I have to ask their "permission" if I want to add anything to it, But mostly, I sorta just stay away from it." This...