Russell Benaroya, Stride Partner
Russell began his career on Wall Street after graduating from UCSB with dual degrees in accounting and economics. Shifting his focus to entrepreneurship, he went on to receive his MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. He has spent the last twenty years investing in private equity and as a healthcare entrepreneur, building and exiting two start-ups. In addition, he is a former Techstars graduate and a longtime member of EO (The Entrepreneurs’ Organization).
Russell’s genius zone is helping business owners achieve financial freedom. He is an experienced and strategic coach to entrepreneurs, with an emphasis in financial strategy, capital raising and organizational development. He shares his knowledge with both individual clients and groups, and previously instructed a course on healthcare entrepreneurship at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.
Russell is also a partner at Stride, an outsourced bookkeeping, accounting and strategic financial services firm. Stride provides its back office services with an emphasis on automation and data analytics to unlock efficiency and actionable insight to drive growth and profitability. Stride knows first hand the challenges that service business owners have with finance.
When he’s not working on Stride, you can find him striding in the mountains pursuing his passion as an ultra distance trail runner. Russell currently is living in Seattle and leads Stride’s client acquisition initiatives.
The stresses involved when profitability and cash flow are falling are significant, often at an existential level. We became entrepreneurs to build successful, long-lasting businesses. Cash flow is the foundation to sustainability, and declining cash flow and profitability can ignite organizational strife. This stress, while understandable, needs to be countered by the original reason you became an entrepreneur: financial freedom. The more money your business can earn, the more money you can invest and continue to fuel your business’ growth or use it to weather periods of uncertainty. By knowing the right questions to ask and the best actions to take, you’ll set yourself and your team up for success, and consistently be ahead of the curve.
Topics we’ll cover in this session:
We know the #1 rule as an entrepreneur is to not run out of money. Cash is king.
It’s pretty challenging if you have no currency to lubricate your business. Being out of money equates to being out of business. However, companies won’t grow unless they make the right investments and keep those investments working (the “flow”part of cash flow). Successful service companies understand their cash cycle, optimize it, and make decisions with conviction, supported by data, where impact can be measured. It’s bold and it’s essential when cash is king.
Topics We’ll Cover in this session:
You will not “save” yourself to success and profitability. The name of the game is growing revenue, strategically and tactically. Recurring revenue business models can give entrepreneurs better business stability that allows them to better plan, invest, and thrive. But recurring revenue models require a different mindset than project based or transaction level revenue. They also require grasping a different set of financial and operating metrics to gauge progress. When companies have a recurring revenue business engine, significant equity value opportunities exist.
Topics we’ll cover in this session:
Deep inside your financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement) you will find the keys to unlock important strategic decisions in your business. But it is a puzzle that needs to be teased out and formatted correctly so that the solution will reveal itself. Business owners know that the language of business is accounting but putting that into practice can be a major energy drain. In this workshop, we will work through asking (and answering) some of the most sought after questions.
Topics we’ll cover in this session:
Board reports are not just about a bunch of pretty formatted graphs with a few bullet points. When executed concisely, they act as a catalyst for smart decision making, prioritization and growth. Too many business owners are sloppy about their organization of their company’s financial information for strategic decision-making. That leads to suboptimal outcomes. If smart people are going to sit around the table and help you analyze your business, squeeze the most out of that time by having reports together that tell the real story of the trajectory of the business. When you do it well, everyone rows in the same direction.
Topics we’ll cover in this session:
Russell is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur and has shared his experiences in business and life with dynamic organizations including the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, Techstars, Health 2.0, and StartUp Week Seattle. Most recently, Russell spoke for the clients of Equinox Business Law on the 5 Levers of Cash Flow and Profitability Management.
