From Campaigns to Cash Flow: How to Build a Forecast That Works

[00:00:00] Brian Sakansky: there's like an infinite amount of things that you could be working on at any given time. And so one thing I really appreciate about the process of forecasting. Is that structure gives you something to focus on.

And one of the things that I realized coming out of that experience was that really that lack of focus can lead to so many areas of your business, bleeding cash or just lacking in tension, which can have a huge negative impact to the business's trajectory and outcome. And so really like. When I think about forecasting I think about it as like giving you a sense of structure and a way to act in certain ways so that it keeps you on course versus diverting, getting consumed with something else that could take you onto a different trajectory.

And you could just see how that spirals out of control in, in so many cases. 

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[00:01:23] Richard Gaffin: All right folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective, and I'm joined today by a special guest. He's never been on the pod before, but we're really, really excited to have him. It's Mr. Brian Sakansky, who is ex And remind me, what's your, what's your title again?

[00:01:38] Brian Sakansky: I am one of the growth strategy managers here at CTC.

[00:01:41] Richard Gaffin: yes. Growth strategist now. Growth Strategy Manager here at CTC. And so what we wanted to have Brian on for is, is a couple reasons, but the main one is that. Brian is a wizard at sort of understanding and articulating how we operationalize our forecasting here at CTC. So we talk a lot, kind of in the broad sense.

Taylor and I have talked, Luke and I have talked about the value of forecasting and why it's so important. Maybe the type of forecasting forecast that needs to be built with daily expectations, et cetera, et cetera. But we haven't really delved into how to tease that all apart. So part of kind of the setup for this is that.

You know, Taylor and I talked on the podcast that came out I believe when this comes out, have just been yesterday. We talked a little bit about our BFCM performance across our suite of clients, and we were within 10% to goal and in almost every case, over by between zero and 10% to goal on almost every major metric across all of our clients.

In other words. We're very good at this and part of what I want Brian to tease out for us is exactly the little sort of like, kind of peel back the curtain and show how we kind of construct this thing that gets us such accurate forecasts. So, yeah, I'm, I'll turn it over to you, Brian, and talk to us just a little bit about maybe first, like a little bit about kind of your background, what you're currently sort of like working on with our clients, and then we'll kind of dig into maybe the specifics of forecasting.

[00:03:01] Brian Sakansky: Yeah, for sure. So I've been in ecommerce now for a little over a decade. And before coming to CTCI was in a number of different roles, different types of organizations that kind of hit the industry in different ways, platforms, agencies, brands, et cetera. And right before coming to Common Thread, I was actually building out my own brand.

So kind of took it from scratch. We created a product, launched it on Shopify, went through the whole sort of like early operator experience. And so that's ultimately what led me to Common Thread. I was listening into the pod, listening to you, Richard and Taylor Jam on different topics and just kind of learning different methodologies and implementing it.

As an operator. And so that's ultimately what drew me here. I joined as a, a growth strategist a few years back now and have just been continuing on, especially as I've gotten deeper and deeper into the methodology, it just gets richer and richer. So that's what keeps me going here. And yeah, it's been a ton of fun.

And especially, you know, to see. How the work comes to life over a weekend, like Black Friday, cyber Monday is just such a thrill. The team absolutely crushed it. There was tons of wins being shared in the Slack channels. So that really is what shows like the value and how fun it is to be leaning into this work and, and see things come to life in such a way is, is really its magic.

[00:04:19] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. So that's like one element of your background. And I think that of course is like very, I think pertinent to this is the fact that you come from an operator background. And so this is like your, your your experience with forecasting and your sort of reason for getting into this stuff, like listening to the pod, whatever is like, there's, there's nothing academic about it.

This is all. Because you needed it, because it was so crucial for your execution. So let's then kind of like pivot into diving in a little bit more into, into kind of like how we operationalize the actual forecasting piece.

[00:04:50] Brian Sakansky: Yeah, let's, let's jump in. And one thing I wanna set up for it too is coming from an operator background, you, you see how there's like an infinite amount of things that you could be working on at any given time. And so one thing I really appreciate about the process of forecasting. Is that structure gives you something to focus on.

And one of the things that I realized coming out of that experience was that really that lack of focus can lead to so many areas of your business, bleeding cash or just lacking in tension, which can have a huge negative impact to the business's trajectory and outcome. And so really like. When I think about forecasting I think about it as like giving you a sense of structure and a way to act in certain ways so that it keeps you on course versus diverting, getting consumed with something else that could take you onto a different trajectory.

And you could just see how that spirals out of control in, in so many cases. So yeah, I'll just, I'll tee up with that. But when it comes to operationalizing the forecast, the way I think about it is, when, when you set up a forecast, what we're actually doing is not necessarily saying this is the target, and there is a target setting exercise that comes from forecasting.

But what forecasting does is very much like a weather forecast, right? It's like we're expecting that there's an X percentage chance of snow coming, right? In this case, this is the the new revenue expectation, the returning revenue expectation. Based on the trajectory. So this is where the planning starts, right?

And it's very it's very common for us to get into a conversation with a brand about a forecast where there's some tension, right? Hey, this is what we're seeing is likely to happen, and then this is what we and the brand want to do from a growth perspective. And those are two very distinct things. So the forecasting exercise is really just the first step.

In developing the plan so that we can actually grow the business, get to the targets that the brand wants to hit, and craft the plan collaboratively in order to achieve that. And so like we use the term like forecasting to do this, but really that's just the start. And we've talked a lot about like. You know, setting like a budget or a board budget and and bonus forecast and scenarios for a business.

But really that baseline forecast before you get into kind of these three different scenarios is largely just to say like, here's like some of the risks. Here's why we're optimistic in some cases, right? But then here's actually what we're gonna go do to execute in order to achieve. You know, the success that we're all striving for, and those are really key things for people to keep in mind before we get into like operationalizing the full process.

[00:07:41] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Talk to us like a little bit about like the, and if you have any specific examples, I think that would be helpful too, but like the conversation about bridging the gap between the expectation of the client and what we believe is likely to happen. How does that. Maybe it's even just sort of practicals of like, how do you break the news to them?

How do you come to a consensus about where to meet and like where to find a middle ground, I guess.

[00:08:05] Brian Sakansky: For sure. Well, I think the first, first thing to approach it with is this sentiment of like, we're all on the same team, right? And we want to win, right? I think everybody who, who's here at CTC, like we're all competitive. We want to win. We wanna see the clients win. And of course, like clients. Pay us and opt into a partnership because they want to win alongside us, right?

So that that's like the first piece is just approaching every conversation with like, we want this to work, we want to grow, and we're gonna figure out every way possible to do that. But what we're ultimately trying to do is just ground the conversation in what is, what is, what is the trajectory so that by the time we get to the end of the month, or the quarter or the year, right, we knew what the risks were, we knew upfront where the opportunities were, and we had clarity about how to go craft our plan against those things.

And so once we've kind of established that piece, Hey, we're all in here to win. We're all in here to grow. Here's just kind of like where we're at today. We want to get to the top of the mountain. So now let's come up with the ways to climb the mountain together and maybe a few different ways, depending on what resources are available to us, what kind of scope we have in play.

And then here are the things that you should go build. Today are the things we should focus on, which are maybe longer term strategic projects that will set us up further in the future to grow at a different rate or to grow more. But here are the things we could tackle today. So it just sort of starts the conversation with clarity of, hey, like here's a realistic look.

So now our job is to find the ways to exceed what that realistic trajectory is as of right now in this current point in time. 

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[00:10:56] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's easy for that to maybe initially come across as like. Being sort of like doom and gloom when you say like, Hey, we can't actually just two x revenue.

Kind of apropos of nothing but once that's like, I think the problem with the sort of realist sometimes is that they'll say that and then just like and say, that's it.

There's nothing you can do about it. But that's not what this is at all. This is establishing a baseline of like a baseline of reality and then a genuine like, like. Authentically workable plan to get to the stated goal at the beginning. So it's just a, a way of creating a path

essentially. 

[00:11:29] Brian Sakansky: For sure. And one thing I'll add to that too is like in some cases a target or a plan is coming from somewhere outside of the partnership, right? We might have a main point of contact who has a certain set of goals that were designed from some process in the past, and understanding that is really key because then we can at least expose what are the metrics, you know, we track so many different metrics at any given time.

Of where they're stabilized today or what the trajectory is today. And and then that allows for us to then say like, here is actually like the lever that's gonna move and the calculus that comes from it to then lead to the number that we have. And so when you show them math, I think then there's a clarifying moment of, oh, there is actually like.

A reason for this, and it separates kind of the humans from it in a certain way, which allows for us to kind of, rather than looking at each other in a room and being like, no, you're wrong. No, you're wrong. It's actually we're looking at the problem together and collectively solving it together.

[00:12:31] Richard Gaffin: Okay. So you mentioned the levers that these sort of like conversations reveal. So let's talk about those. Let's talk about the actual opera. We've all had problems with that

operationalization. Piece of this.

[00:12:43] Brian Sakansky: Yeah. So, we have a very routine planning process and forecasting process that every every person on the team goes through. So it goes in different cycles, but I'll just start with like the monthly cycle. So, at least a month before this before the month kicks off, we're already talking to the client about what does their marketing calendar look like.

So I guess like. We've already done for January, a look at what's on the marketing calendar for January, what kind of promotions, product launches you know, is there new things that are happening on site, like key things that are different from the status quo of the business and just sort of business as usual activity.

And Al already looking into the future around that to get a feel for what is, what is on the calendar in most cases, like. Brands will have you know, marketing calendars that will look quarters, years in advance, or we're partnering with them to help them craft that plan of what it should look like. And we're making recommendations well in advance of that, which I'll get to the annual and quarterly cycle in a moment here.

But for monthly we're doing that. And then very quickly in that first week of the month prior. We're, we're going right into the forecast, so we're looking at and we have a number of different models we look at here at CTC one being our A MER models, which help us forecast like what is the trajectory for new customer revenue.

We have a returning revenue model, and there's a few different variations of that depending on the business, and I can deep dive into that if we want. We also look at the event effect model, which is like how marketing moments and promos and product launches and different things that are happening on site are gonna change the daily trajectory.

Of specific things, and then that goes into, you know, what is gonna be the sales outcome, the contribution margin outcome, how many orders are gonna be produced in the future from that cohort. So we, we do a, a first pass at that. And then pretty much through the, the rest of the month, it's a lot of refinement.

If there are depending on who the channel owners are, if we have folks running Meta or Google or TikTok, they're gonna go through and produce their media plan sort of alongside that. And over the course of the month, we're gonna have these conversations with the client, which is around, hey, like, here's what the trajectory is, right?

This initial forecast. And then in the weeks following that, it's gonna be putting together. These, as I mentioned before, like the board budget and bonus scenarios so that we can outline well in advance of presenting this to the client of, Hey, here's like what we're expecting, here's kind of what we're we're aiming for, and then here's like what we consider success against your target.

And we lock that in before the month starts, usually in that last week before the month kicks off, so that by day one. Of the month that we're acting against this plan, all the daily flows have been set. The monthly target is clear, not only for the brand, but for CTC, and we all know what we're marching towards so that we can take action against that once the month kicks off.

And then there's a ton of different metrics that fit into that Every day has a plan and we're all clear on it going in, and then it's just execution against that plan once we get into that month.

[00:16:06] Richard Gaffin: Okay, so, so let's, let's then pivot to that part, right? So like once, once day one hits, it's January 1st, whatever the case may, and you have the plan built. You have a month some sense of like monthly expectation, daily expectation, and maybe even you've built annual expectation as well. So day one hits what's, what happens?

What's the sort of day in the life here at CTC when it comes to bringing that to life?

[00:16:28] Brian Sakansky: For sure. So, even before day one starts, like there is a connection between one month's plan to the next month's plan. So in some cases, right, we might have to make budget adjustments going into the following month. Maybe we're gonna push a bit more volume to kick off a specific month. So it really does start the day before.

And that could be in the form of adjusting budgets, changing our, our cost controls. Maybe launching some new campaigns, right? It's all case by case. But once that day hits you know, what we're ultimately doing is we have inside of stat and Encompass, we have a number of ways that we're, orienting our actions against. So of course, like at the growth strategy level, we're looking at contribution margin. We're looking at revenue, we're looking at orders, we're looking at a MER, weighted cac, a lot of these like, business metrics to sort of assess where do we need to push, where do we need to pull, et cetera.

And then at the channel level, we're looking at, you know, what's our budget target, what's our, I OAS target for that day? And making sure that the channels. Are steering towards that? Are we trimming in some areas? Are we adding into other areas? Are we creating net new things? And even before all this happens, we've, during that prior month have planned out.

What are the campaigns we wanna launch? What are the contingency plans that we're gonna have if things aren't going the way we are? Because even though you might start a month with a specific plan. Day one could already show something is dramatically different than what your expectations were. And so in those cases, we want to be prepared with what's the next move?

What are the actions to take in order to steer towards what we care about, which is when we get to the end of the month, we hit our target, we exceeded our target, and then we're set up for continuing towards our quarterly and annual goals as we proceed through the rest of the year.

[00:18:21] Richard Gaffin: Right. Yeah, I mean it strikes me, you used the analogy previously about of like the weather report or

like a weather forecast. And as with any weather forecast I live, for instance, in Portland, Oregon, the forecast is, it's gonna be rainy every single day for the next like 10 days or whatever. But what

will happen is, of course, by the time we approach, say Tuesday of next week, all of a sudden it's only partly cloudy and then maybe the next day it's like, okay, actually tomorrow's gonna be sunny. Right? So there's a little bit of that as well, I would imagine. Right. It's not just that. Okay. You know, it's the first week of December, you've already have January built, and then it's sort of a just like, well, let's just follow kind of the, the program that

we've set for ourself. It's, it's that every single day you have to, in a sense, reforecast or re kind of like, evaluate what tomorrow's going to look like. So to walk through like how that process works of like the kind of shifting or executing a contingency plan, I guess.

[00:19:09] Brian Sakansky: For sure. And one thing before I describe, like the contingency plan is just clarifying, right? Like what a forecasting exercise does is it, it evaluates what your expectations are. Before reality kicks in, right? And that, that feedback loop is so critical for deeply understanding what is happening in your business and how to adapt to changes in your business.

And so, even though in a lot of cases, right, we're gonna see numbers land a different way, right? We're using signal from ad platforms to make decisions. We want to have the best possible understanding of what our expectations are. So that over time things get smarter and smarter and better and better. And that's what kind of allows for us to make the best most well-informed tactical decisions going into the future.

So, you know, when it comes to like seeing that targets are off, right? And you could see this in like the stats overview dashboard, right? You'll see green and you'll see red, and it's very clear what things are above expectation, what things are below expectation. And that's just an incredibly quick way to triage what is happening and then to make decisions.

So for example, right, like we might enter a month and we had a 50 50 split on Google meta budget. We had specific IRO as goals against those channels. Meta might come in day one and perhaps be under IROS target, right? And so that's a quick, a quick indicator for us to go and deep dive on that channel.

And say, is there something we need to change in the channel? Right? Maybe we need to tighten up cost controls. Maybe we need to push into certain campaigns. Maybe we need to launch those campaigns that were on reserve. Or there's a number of different tactics that we'd make in that decision. Or perhaps maybe Google is so far out ahead of its IR OAS goal.

Maybe we just need to shift the budget and rebalance in a different way. So even though we have a plan in the beginning. What we care about is really the number at the top, which is contribution margin. And so all things serve that function or that that metric. And so really the ad channels and what we do at the ad level is just serving that purpose, which is why we, we have a plan.

We know what we're executing against. It's based on expectations that we had, but we're willing to pivot in order to drive towards the thing that we ultimately care about, which is contribution margin.

[00:21:37] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. And, and one thing about like, so I've, I've sat in with you while you actually sort of did a little bit of this process with some of our admission members, for instance,

the, the sort of the triaging thing. So now in these cases, they didn't necessarily have targets in place. However, your ability to like kind of look at the. Dashboard identify sort of, okay, so this is their contribution margin or whatever. And then very quickly say like, it seems like you have a clear a OV problem

and the way that like those things are able to pop out and, and then the set of solutions to an A OV problem are limited.

Like there's like, okay, maybe you do some bundling or some cross-selling, or whatever the case may be. But that's the idea behind this sort of dashboard and having the expectation built in is that. Again, it radically simplifies like a problem solution. Like you can identify the problem, the set of solutions to that problem is relatively limited, so you can go go ahead and execute on that without really having that issue that I think everybody kind of runs into, which is like, what do I do with my budget?

Like what am I supposed to be doing right now? That questions kind of ends up being answered for you, right?

[00:22:35] Brian Sakansky: sure. And certain metrics are more or I guess like, like stronger or like, I don't actually know the right way to start this, but like a, a better lever than others in order to achieve the target, right? Like. A OV being off expectation could just be a function of different product selling than what our expectation was.

But if we're driving new order volume or returning order volume, maybe at a lower A OV, but a higher rate of orders and we're hitting our revenue and contribution margin targets like that, that actually could be a fine outcome. It's gonna be business specific, of course. And over time, we might want to think through, to your point, Richard, like.

Bundling or maybe a different product offering or perhaps like new products that we wanna start to merchandise. All those things are considerations, but at least like we have clarity of where our A OV is falling. So then it allows for us to say like, if we were to raise a OV by 10%, what would be the business outcome of that?

And it's very easy to do the math once you've already established where you're at, what you've forecasted, what are the different scenarios? And we go through this all the time, and I didn't get into quarterly or annual forecasting, but there's a number of times where we'll get into a conversation around an annual forecast, which you're looking so far in the future, right?

Like we don't know everything that's gonna happen in 2026. We know some of the seasons and some of the cycles, but who knows, right? Like there could. A major event that totally changes the trajectory, right? We had like tariffs. You go back further, you had COVID. There's all these number of things we can't necessarily plan for, but you know, when we get into those scenarios and a brand might say, Hey, we wanna grow 20%.

Our forecast might show 12%. Then the gap of getting from 12 to 20 might be what if we raise a OV by 10%? Right. What does that look like? Like what does that actually feel like for this particular type of brand? And it's the conversation starter to say, here are the ways that we see commonly lead to an a OV increase.

But then the brand has kind of a, a nudge to say, okay, cool. Here are the things that I can now go action against and get my team to rally behind so that we can close that 12 to 20% gap over the course of, of the year.

[00:24:44] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so speaking of closing gaps then, let's go back to the conversation. We were, we were starting earlier around the contingency plan.

So let's say again there's a scenario of day one met is not hitting the way that we want it to, whatever the case may be. What, what is the sort of series of events that then occurs in order to kind of bring it back to where it needs to be?

[00:25:04] Brian Sakansky: for sure. So, I mean, it all starts with like planning for more than what you expected you would need. And so an example of that would be like using meta as a platform example, right? Like ample creative, right? We get into a number of conversations around like what is the right amount of creative that we need, and we now have, you know, our creative demand models, which give us clarity into the amount of ads that we would suggest are needed in order to hit a specific target.

But when it comes to what are we going to need in order to achieve the target, right? There's like the necessary number, but then there's like. The number that gives us enough buffer so that we are even more confident that if that first set doesn't work, we have items on backup to launch into the ad account that will allow for us to hit that target.

Because there are instances where certain campaigns don't hit, certain moments don't hit. So it's, it really comes down to planning for. More in that case. Other examples of this, right? 'cause like creative is just one element of being successful on meta. It could be a different campaign structure or different types of campaigns to have ready.

So a lot of our accounts run with like Monroe as a bid strategy. So having. Incremental attribution set up, or cost per result rate. Bid caps, like having these sort of on backup or just having, you know, different landing pages, right? Different collection pages we want to feature. So all these things are kind of like on standby, right?

You know, kind of like having bench players on a basketball team ready to go. If, if things don't work out, we still wanna win the game, right? But we need to have all those things ready to go. So that if the, the first set doesn't work, we have new things to try to make sure we steer towards our target.

So that's just like examples of meta. There's obviously like Google strategies, TikTok strategies on site strategies. And I think like a really specific example that I'll bring up from the BFCM weekend, which you know, folks were celebrating in some of our share channels, right as we had some offers that went live over BFCM and things were not looking good and this is the weekend where things should be looking good.

But the particular growth strategist on this account, you know, went through the numbers made a offer recommendation change, and you could see the before and after of conversion rate, right? It's like conversion rates here, and then conversion rates here after they made that switch. And so that wouldn't have happened unless there were contingency plans ready to go, a willingness from the brand to be flexible and it to be communicated that this could happen, and we were able to execute it and ultimately lead to the target that they had, right?

So us tracking on a daily basis, an hourly basis, especially over BFCM weekend. Allowed for us to triage that issue and see it very quickly and then come to a recommendation of how to then hit their goal by the end of the weekend.

[00:27:58] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, that's a perfect example of this, of this process from beginning to end. So I'm glad you brought it up of, of like, yeah, so Black Friday's not hitting, so that's like generally speaking, a probably a panic moment. But our strategist is able to go into stat lists very pretty rapidly.

See that the problem is conversion rate,

if the problems conversion. What are the set of solutions to it? Well, it clearly, it has to be something to do with the offer. It's Black Friday, people are trying to buy, but there's something blocking it. And I think the situation here was that it was like offer with code.

So they switched it around to like just a site white

discount or something like that. So again, right, so the discount is just like automatically applied in the cart. You check out, you're done. And then conversion rate. Basically, yeah, basically like write it itself and then the rest of the day was great and they ended up hitting goal. So yeah, I think that's, that's just a great example of how clarity on expectation, clarity on data and then having a plan and, and a set of plans actually the month before can lead to like this type of being able to find that solution very rapidly, I guess.

[00:28:58] Brian Sakansky: Exactly.

[00:29:00] Richard Gaffin: . So ba basically, so what, what I wanna ask now is a question that I ask pretty much everybody who comes on the show or who is, it's their first time, which is that, like, let's say that you do not have access to the set of tools that we have access to.

Now, I will say if you do want

access to them. Get a profit system, common thread code.com. Hit hire us. We'd love to talk to you if you are an eight eight or nine figure brand. Now, let's say that you are sort of like an operator, smaller brand. You don't really have these tools at your disposal. Like what, what is the first thing or the most important thing that you can put into place right now to bring that kind of operationalization of your forecast about?

[00:29:38] Brian Sakansky: Yeah. So I think the first thing is, and you could use something as, as simple as a Google sheet to at least get a feel for what is your annual plan look like, broken out by month. So how you would start is by taking the last, like one to two years of, of, you know, your budget, where your new revenue landed, where your returning revenue landed.

Order volume, a OV revenue and contribution margin and different columns, just to kind of visualize how sort of the year starts.

[00:30:09] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:09] Brian Sakansky: And then from there, building a set of expectations by month into the future so that you can kind of see, hey, like from February to March we tend to, you know, see a, an increase in efficiency that leads to like.

10% more new revenue. I'm gonna expect that to be sort of the trajectory. 'cause maybe I have a seasonal thing that when springtime picks up my brand tends to see more effectiveness and, and more productivity. So that's like the first step from there. And then especially over, I mean, you should do this always is, is have a exercise.

To outline, what does your daily flow look like in any given month? Like that gives you clarity of every single day, what are the actions you need to take, but in particular for holiday season or big marketing moments, what is my daily spend plan broken up by channel? What are the targets I have by channel?

How does that impact new re customer revenue? Returning customer revenue, my A OV, my order expectations, the contribution margin that comes from that. It so that you can see and say with clarity what those expectations are going to be and why they're going to be that way and the why thing is really important, right?

Like, 'cause it's really easy to just say, well I think we're gonna hit $500,000, right? Well, why do you think you're gonna hit $500,000? Is that 'cause your a o v's gonna go up? Is that 'cause your order volume's gonna go up? Is that gonna be a function of conversion rate, more traffic on site like it's going to.

Enable you to go through the exercise of being thoughtful of why, so that if that doesn't happen, you know exactly where in your mental frameworks something went wrong. And there's, and that's okay, right? It's okay if you're wrong about things because then you know exactly where you can iterate and learn from it.

And that's like, I think that's like the most important. One of the most important takeaways of of sort of the way we approach approach forecasting is like, you're gonna get smarter over time by being disciplined in this process. And so, yeah, I would just encourage anybody who listens to the show that you go through, you know, what your monthly expectations are, why it's that case based on maybe last year's trajectory as a starting point when you're in a month.

Make sure to have a daily flow written out written out with all those kind of baseline metrics. And then that's gonna give you clarity into your expectations by month by day so that you can go action against that. And when you're wrong or when you're off, that gives you now the opportunity to say, why was I wrong?

And then you could adjust your, your, your plan going forward.

[00:32:50] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Cool. Alright, well I think that's that's gonna do it for us. Any, any last thoughts, any last pieces of advice here for the folks? Brian?

[00:32:57] Brian Sakansky: I, I would just encourage everybody to to kind of go back to two key things, which I've said kind of throughout the, the podcast, but I'll, I'll just kind of summarize it with this. I think number one is like when you look at a forecast. Like, make sure you distinguish in your head the difference between a forecast and what your scenarios and your plans are, right?

Forecast is like, here's the current state and the trajectory scenarios and plans are like, here are like what we're striving towards with maybe an optimistic look, a conservative look, and an on target look, right? I would say that's the first thing. The second thing is the process is more important than the outcome.

And what I mean by that is going back to this feedback loop, right? When you go through the process of doing this, it forces you to understand where the gaps are, where maybe you were too pessimistic about the outcome and go through then the exercise of understanding why, so that you get smarter. Over time.

Right? And this refinement and this framework is so critical to doing that to where you then over time just have more compound interest, which is gonna lead to better and better results, smarter and smarter decisions, and then ideally write a growing and a healthier business over time. So those are the two things that I just, I wanna leave listeners with.

[00:34:18] Richard Gaffin: Love it. Makes sense. Yeah. Well, the, the process being more important than outcome is, is wise general life advice as well. So that's a, a good thing to leave the folks with, but,

alright, 

[00:34:26] Brian Sakansky: what we're here for.

[00:34:26] Richard Gaffin: That's right. All right. Appreciate you joining us, Brian for everybody else listening out there thanks so much.

Now, I, I will mention again, as I mentioned in the middle of the pod, like if you want us to build this for you. We are ready to go waiting for you. If you're a business that's in the eight, nine figure range, we would love to put together a profit system for you. Construct this forecast. So, common thread co.com.

You know where to find us. Hit the hire us button. We would love to chat more. But yeah, I think that'll do it for us. Until next time, take care everyone. Bye-bye.

[00:34:53] Brian Sakansky: Thanks, Richard.