Meeting Title: Robert x Megan | Q2 Budgeting Review Date: 2026-03-09 Meeting participants: megan, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:03:48.010 ⇒ 00:03:48.890 Robert Tseng: Hi, Megan.
2 00:03:49.390 ⇒ 00:03:50.669 megan: Hey, how are you?
3 00:03:50.670 ⇒ 00:03:53.240 Robert Tseng: Good, sorry, sorry I’m late.
4 00:03:53.560 ⇒ 00:03:58.560 megan: Good! I saw on, I saw on Slack that you were out of office, so I was like.
5 00:03:58.560 ⇒ 00:03:59.260 Robert Tseng: I am.
6 00:03:59.260 ⇒ 00:04:00.590 megan: Okay.
7 00:04:00.760 ⇒ 00:04:04.369 megan: Yeah, one of those. Well, hope you’re going somewhere fun.
8 00:04:04.600 ⇒ 00:04:10.619 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m in Panama. I’m kind of, like, just waiting for my cab driver, so I’ll be camera off.
9 00:04:10.880 ⇒ 00:04:16.470 megan: Oh, okay. Yeah, gotcha. Well, do you… do you want to reschedule? I.
10 00:04:17.029 ⇒ 00:04:25.229 Robert Tseng: I have some thinking time, so I’d like to kind of just go through what we were gonna talk about, and then, I mean, I’m gonna be able to work on some stuff here and there.
11 00:04:25.440 ⇒ 00:04:27.060 megan: Okay, yeah.
12 00:04:27.090 ⇒ 00:04:43.490 megan: I, I mean, I definitely… I’m glad you had, reached out, because I’ve had some, you know, ongoing conversations with Utam, but, you know, I obviously want to make sure that you’re in the loop and giving input, and then kind of taking it
13 00:04:43.490 ⇒ 00:04:52.969 megan: to one step further is in that we’ve, like, kind of got a fully baked plan, and we, you know, have the right metrics we’re tracking with, so I think just, like.
14 00:04:53.160 ⇒ 00:05:01.820 megan: The, you know, input you’d given so far, just about how to group things, I think is the first step, for sure. And then…
15 00:05:01.870 ⇒ 00:05:08.400 megan: Yeah, I didn’t, like, prepare anything formal for this, because I figured we’d have just more of a discussion about, like, how
16 00:05:08.410 ⇒ 00:05:28.359 megan: you know, we can set things up so that it can actually be helpful in managing the business, because we could do all kinds of different things for reporting, but if it doesn’t translate to, like, how you’re actively thinking about and operating the business, then it’s, you know, not very useful, which obviously we want to avoid, so…
17 00:05:28.360 ⇒ 00:05:42.639 megan: But yeah, just wanted to start with, like, what… what thoughts do you have? How can I help? Like, what… what are the gaps that you feel like you’re… you’re missing, or the things where you’re like, it would be really cool if we knew that, and maybe we start…
18 00:05:42.640 ⇒ 00:05:58.869 Robert Tseng: I guess, like, the kind of catalyst for me reaching out about this specifically is we’re starting to budget for Q2 and onwards, so… and we think about it more in terms of, like, business areas now. Like, I want to be able to give
19 00:05:59.090 ⇒ 00:06:11.549 Robert Tseng: our go-to-market lead, now that he’s wrapped up, like, you have this budget for everything in your team, headcount, and also, like, resourcing, and I can’t do that. I mean, I don’t feel like I could…
20 00:06:11.550 ⇒ 00:06:16.069 megan: clearly give him a number right now. Like, we kind of just backed into it from looking…
21 00:06:16.150 ⇒ 00:06:31.400 Robert Tseng: I mean, I… I did… I looked at your November or December reports, and then I kind of just had this, like, ballpark. I think we should… 20% should go to market, and then I… that was the budget we used for Q1, so I think I want to go more…
22 00:06:31.680 ⇒ 00:06:34.480 Robert Tseng: granular than that this time, and…
23 00:06:34.820 ⇒ 00:06:38.929 Robert Tseng: I mean, I think, you know, they’re in the different subcategories, like.
24 00:06:39.210 ⇒ 00:06:46.730 Robert Tseng: I don’t know if we’re double counting, necessarily. I think there’s, like, this kind of… like, COGS makes sense, that’s just, like.
25 00:06:46.990 ⇒ 00:06:47.600 megan: Yeah.
26 00:06:47.600 ⇒ 00:06:50.399 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that’s just billable hours, so… Right.
27 00:06:50.400 ⇒ 00:06:51.160 megan: Bingo.
28 00:06:51.160 ⇒ 00:07:07.360 Robert Tseng: However, then there’s also kind of, like, payments that we’re catching up on still that are kind of being grouped into something else, and then I think, obviously, there are some people that kind of split their time billing clients directly, and also kind of logging their hours with Talkify for our business, and so…
29 00:07:07.360 ⇒ 00:07:15.130 Robert Tseng: you know, you flagged certain things, like, hey, Greg filled a bunch of time directly at Brainform, is this even right? And I think those are the right
30 00:07:15.130 ⇒ 00:07:27.019 Robert Tseng: signals to look at, because, like, I want to know, like, how much is Greg spending? Like, someone like Greg, like, how much time is he spending on the business versus, like, on clients? But yeah, it’s just, like, not super clear right now, so…
31 00:07:27.070 ⇒ 00:07:38.969 Robert Tseng: I guess, like, I was hoping that we’ve… I mean, I’m sure we don’t necessarily have to do it on this call, but to get closer to cleaning up some of those categories so that I can, like.
32 00:07:39.230 ⇒ 00:07:47.730 Robert Tseng: I mean, I can do all the… I mean, I can do some stuff in spreadsheets as well, so I just want to be able to kind of have some…
33 00:07:48.190 ⇒ 00:07:52.669 Robert Tseng: more clarity as I’m, like, building out this model for the next… for the next quarter.
34 00:07:53.430 ⇒ 00:08:07.690 megan: Yeah, for sure. And, well, maybe I could just kind of give you, a little bit of context that can help, like, you know, at least give some clarity to that now, which is just, like, how we’re… how we’re tracking and reporting things, so…
35 00:08:07.730 ⇒ 00:08:22.189 megan: Yes, you’re right. The, the, you know, when we pull everything from Clockify, we flag, like, okay, this is billable hours, and then it ends up in COGS, and then we sort it, like, we’re… we also basically, like, tag it to the client.
36 00:08:22.190 ⇒ 00:08:34.309 megan: work so that we can look at, like, in any given month, how much were we invoicing the client, and then how much were our costs? So that gives us, like, basically, like, a project level.
37 00:08:34.309 ⇒ 00:08:53.120 megan: or customer level profit margin, gross margin. So that was what I sent around today, which you probably haven’t had a chance. I did it, like, right before we got on this call, but, pretty much just flagging, like, over the past 2 months, here’s what we invoiced for January, here’s what we billed, and that’s actually related to
38 00:08:53.120 ⇒ 00:09:09.539 megan: the time, that’s, you know, that’s billed to the clients. And so, that’s a little different than cash flow, which is a separate thing I’ll get to in a second, but the way that we’re rolling everything up from a reporting perspective is that
39 00:09:09.540 ⇒ 00:09:18.919 megan: you know, the revenue happens, and the expense happens in the same line, so when we’re looking at all of February,
40 00:09:18.920 ⇒ 00:09:24.000 megan: Which right now is preliminary, because Kenzie hasn’t finished clothes.
41 00:09:24.000 ⇒ 00:09:48.909 megan: yet, but, but honestly, it’s one of those, like, the biggest expenses that we have, as you know, are the people costs. So once we load all of that, for the month, and we’ve determined that all the invoices for February are complete, like, effectively, our financials are, like, pretty much 95% done at that point. We have, like, some little things that we need to do, like accruals, or, you know.
42 00:09:48.910 ⇒ 00:10:07.059 megan: prepaids or tracking insurance and things like that. Those are more of, like, the accounting and accounting things, but the primary driver here is the people cost, because that translates to revenue, obviously. And then there’s, like, the catch-up cash flow, so…
43 00:10:07.140 ⇒ 00:10:22.340 megan: So I guess the first thing is, like, when we’re looking in the month, like, that’s all the activity that happened in the month, which is definitely what we want to look at, but that does not really translate to the, you know, the money that went out, because we’ve had, like.
44 00:10:22.370 ⇒ 00:10:38.790 megan: this whole, you know, for the past year, really, that we just, you know, between spend, like, increasing spend, investing in the business to start getting those higher dollar months, you know, it’s just… it’s one of those chicken and the egg things, too. It’s like.
45 00:10:39.060 ⇒ 00:10:49.380 megan: I get that there’s an investment in ramping up resources so that we can, you know, secure and deliver revenue, because so much of it is tied to people doing work.
46 00:10:49.390 ⇒ 00:10:57.010 megan: So, there’s kind of, like, this, this… this lag, I guess. So, and… and that…
47 00:10:57.010 ⇒ 00:11:15.300 megan: particular challenge is also then compounded with, like, you know, the credit cards are also, like, we have… we continue to have the liquidity issue that we do, which, you know, is really only going to be alleviated with some pretty, you know.
48 00:11:15.380 ⇒ 00:11:20.909 megan: Pretty tight spend management, but then, you know.
49 00:11:20.910 ⇒ 00:11:28.960 Robert Tseng: So, and that’s why we track the liquidity so… so long, which is basically just, like, the current assets over current liabilities.
50 00:11:28.990 ⇒ 00:11:34.119 megan: Because until that number’s over 1, then we’re going to continue to feel
51 00:11:34.130 ⇒ 00:11:51.290 megan: that liquidity crunch, because basically there’s not enough assets to cover what’s owed. And so, until we can get, like, ahead of that, that’s… that’s the ultimate challenge. So… so yeah, but I mean, from a modeling perspective.
52 00:11:51.570 ⇒ 00:12:00.119 megan: We can definitely model everything out, like Utam and I have always talked about tracking as a percentage of revenue, which I think is the right way to
53 00:12:00.170 ⇒ 00:12:05.499 megan: To track in this business, and so, like, we can model out
54 00:12:05.550 ⇒ 00:12:19.600 megan: pretty much like what you’re think… whatever you’re thinking, like, if sales and marketing, if that is 20% of revenue, then we can model that out, and that’s what you’ll see in Fathom. Fathom’s basically taking
55 00:12:19.600 ⇒ 00:12:39.840 megan: the February financials, which we know are, like, 95% done once the people costs are loaded and the invoices are out, and then everything kind of going forward is all based off of either, you know, kind of average recent spends, like in the case of software, we’re kind of just taking an average of the past few months and assuming
56 00:12:39.840 ⇒ 00:12:48.750 megan: you know, that going forward. But then all the team costs are all based on percentage of revenue, so we can model any of that out.
57 00:12:48.920 ⇒ 00:12:52.079 megan: Like, I think right now we’ve had…
58 00:12:52.190 ⇒ 00:13:11.629 megan: 5%, you know, just because I haven’t really had, like, a solid enough, like, plan of, like, okay, like, where are we putting the investment? And, you know, we can kind of model that out and see where the gaps are, too. And then the other gap that I’ve had,
59 00:13:11.660 ⇒ 00:13:20.629 megan: is all the top line growth, too. So, right now, I just kind of am taking, like, a flat $183K per month.
60 00:13:20.730 ⇒ 00:13:28.179 megan: you know, just going forward, just so we have something. But I’d love to get a little bit more…
61 00:13:29.730 ⇒ 00:13:40.359 megan: You know, get that more in line with, like, what your actual sales goals are, so that we can just be kind of looping it all together, so that it’s actually, you know, kind of…
62 00:13:40.450 ⇒ 00:13:55.319 megan: downstream based on, like, how you’re planning for the business. So, that’s… that’s another piece that I’ve been missing, so… and again, I’m happy to model any and all of that, just based on assumptions, and then we can kind of, like, workshop it a little bit.
63 00:13:55.470 ⇒ 00:14:06.709 megan: And we can even do that on the fly, another time, and just kind of say, okay, well, if we change this spend to this, what’s the impact on the financials and liquidity? So…
64 00:14:08.720 ⇒ 00:14:22.109 Robert Tseng: Yeah, thanks, thanks for the overview. I think, sorry if you can’t hear me super clearly, but, I just got in the car, but there’s a… I’m just gonna break it down a few ways. So, on the top line situation, like, I’ve… I’ve…
65 00:14:22.370 ⇒ 00:14:36.730 Robert Tseng: I mean, I run sales for Brain Forge, and then I also have built out, forecasts, so, I, I, yeah, I manage our forecasts. I have an annual forecast as well, but then, I think what’s more…
66 00:14:37.150 ⇒ 00:14:43.339 Robert Tseng: I guess what’s probably more accurate is just, like, we have, like, a operating forecast for the next
67 00:14:43.340 ⇒ 00:15:04.779 Robert Tseng: I mean, I only do it out for 3 months at a time, and then there’s, like, there’s, like, 3 scenarios that I model out. So, we’re kind of tracking to my first scenario, but, I mean, I can share all these spreadsheets. I feel like you should have access to these docs already, but I don’t know if anybody has really taken the time to walk you through it. So, maybe I’ll record a video on that, just so you can see kind of how I’ve… how I’ve modeled
68 00:15:04.830 ⇒ 00:15:15.549 Robert Tseng: our go-to-market spend there. Like, one of the main metrics that I look at is, like, that I have to constantly tweak is, what I call,
69 00:15:15.980 ⇒ 00:15:23.110 Robert Tseng: it’s, like, pipeline expected revenue versus, like, actual revenue. So, like, taking…
70 00:15:23.140 ⇒ 00:15:34.930 Robert Tseng: I mean, we look at our pipeline in a few different ways. I guess earlier in the pipeline, we… that’s… we call it… there’s, like, different stages, right? So there’s, like, marketing… marketing leads, and then there’s also, like, sales leads.
71 00:15:34.930 ⇒ 00:15:44.150 Robert Tseng: And I assign different values and percentages to close rates for each of these things, and that helps me to kind of, like, calibrate,
72 00:15:44.210 ⇒ 00:16:01.220 Robert Tseng: you know, when we’re starting to talk to a prospect, like, how likely are they going to close, and how do we value them? So, that’s really… it’s pretty high maintenance right now. I bet I’m fine with that exercise, because it helps us learn the business, and I read this out to the team at least once a month.
73 00:16:01.240 ⇒ 00:16:08.219 Robert Tseng: So I’m sure I can definitely work with you to help you on the top-line forecasting.
74 00:16:08.310 ⇒ 00:16:09.760 megan: Yeah, awesome.
75 00:16:10.390 ⇒ 00:16:25.969 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then on, like, the other parts for… yeah, I guess what I’m hearing is that… yeah, which makes sense, like, the P&L statement right now is a monthly snapshot of, kind of, all activity going in and out. It’s not necessarily, kind of, in a view where I get to see, like.
76 00:16:25.970 ⇒ 00:16:34.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah, our gross margin looks good, like, 60% is great. Is that truly, like, kind of, as a percentage of revenue?
77 00:16:34.280 ⇒ 00:16:51.510 Robert Tseng: Or is that just kind of what it looks like for the current month? It’s kind of… it’s unclear, and I understand that, revenue kind of comes in. We’re starting to do a lot more kind of, like, bill-upfront contracts. Anything under 10K, I’ve basically been pushing clients to pay up front entirely.
78 00:16:51.520 ⇒ 00:17:07.889 Robert Tseng: And obviously, we’re doing, like, kind of, like, two… like, 14… net 14-day terms, generally speaking. So I think we’re getting the cash in faster, and then for bigger contracts, we’re trying to do longer… longer contracts, right? So I think, like, it’s really gonna… I think, like.
79 00:17:07.890 ⇒ 00:17:22.169 Robert Tseng: revenue should… like, money should be coming in faster this year than it did last year, so I’m not too concerned about that. Obviously, I know we’re on a cash credit crunch currently, so Upton and I are thinking about, like, when do we need to go, kind of.
80 00:17:23.020 ⇒ 00:17:41.519 Robert Tseng: get an oak… like, a line of credit, and, I think just to, like, kind of ease the pressure off in the business. So, I think there’s… those are some… some things that I… I want to be able to have a clear line of sight towards, at least in the next couple months, like, and, yeah, so I… I am very interested in, like, kind of working out a…
81 00:17:41.770 ⇒ 00:17:48.840 Robert Tseng: a better view for… it’s a different view, it’s not necessarily a better view of the business, on where we can really see things as percentage of revenue.
82 00:17:49.010 ⇒ 00:18:02.359 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I think, to your point, the operating expense… or, I mean, the operating margin was, like, around 5%, you said, like, that… I mean, that’s obviously concerning to me. I don’t really know where… where the, like, why.
83 00:18:02.480 ⇒ 00:18:16.489 Robert Tseng: it’s so high after the 60%, like, I mean, ideally the goal is we keep it under 20… like, we keep it around 20%, and I know we’re closer to, like, seems like it’s 30 to 35%, so, like, it feels like there’s some…
84 00:18:17.260 ⇒ 00:18:22.819 Robert Tseng: Stuff that we need to cut, and now that we have, kind of, like, a couple…
85 00:18:22.880 ⇒ 00:18:24.460 Robert Tseng: We have another, you know.
86 00:18:24.510 ⇒ 00:18:38.860 Robert Tseng: lead ops person, kind of, who’s ramped up, like, I want to direct his attention to, hey, like, help us find another 10% on our current business, too. So, like, I think, like, this is something that I would like to kick off with him, and
87 00:18:38.860 ⇒ 00:18:44.609 Robert Tseng: in the next quarter, if he’s… you know, we already do, like, kind of small cuts here and there, but, like, I just wanna…
88 00:18:44.610 ⇒ 00:18:47.270 Robert Tseng: Of somebody who’s kind of owning,
89 00:18:47.290 ⇒ 00:18:56.739 Robert Tseng: make sure that our operating margin is, like, under whatever percent… whatever target we set. So, yeah, I think that’s probably the most urgent thing to me to kind of…
90 00:18:56.770 ⇒ 00:19:03.419 Robert Tseng: clean up so that I can actually start passing it to him and having him, like, attack that.
91 00:19:04.570 ⇒ 00:19:17.740 megan: Yeah, exactly. We’ve… we’ve got the reports today that we can, pull and show the percentage of revenue for all the different departments, so I think that’s a… that’s a super easy follow-up.
92 00:19:18.340 ⇒ 00:19:21.940 megan: So… so yes, I think that’s…
93 00:19:22.440 ⇒ 00:19:22.810 Robert Tseng: So…
94 00:19:22.810 ⇒ 00:19:27.330 megan: Yeah, that’s something I can give you pretty easily, and then you’ll be able to see…
95 00:19:27.330 ⇒ 00:19:41.440 megan: you know, kind of where the investment is going, but yeah, you’re right, it is, and then… and then kind of beyond that, like, the other… we’ve got some other reports set up that give all of the details, so if we’re looking at, like.
96 00:19:41.440 ⇒ 00:19:51.830 megan: like, I’m looking at, February, so we have G&A was, like, 16 grand. We can also pull reports and show, like, what makes up that 16 grand, and who
97 00:19:52.240 ⇒ 00:20:11.199 megan: spending that time. So we do have it, like, broken out. Like, the first… the first step was kind of getting all the right buckets set up, so now we’ve got an operations department that we can, you know, track against. We’ve got, you know, internal AI and engineering, and then recruiting and people ops.
98 00:20:11.200 ⇒ 00:20:17.089 megan: And then G&A. Those are kind of the primary categories outside of the go-to-market team.
99 00:20:17.250 ⇒ 00:20:19.830 megan: So, so yeah, so…
100 00:20:20.120 ⇒ 00:20:27.149 megan: I mean, and any… any of that that’s like, oh, I just need to see this, like, as kind of a one-time, but kind of once we land.
101 00:20:27.150 ⇒ 00:20:32.600 Robert Tseng: And that was through Fathom, because when I was, like, kind of clicking in and I was trying to drill into it more, I wasn’t able to.
102 00:20:32.750 ⇒ 00:20:44.670 megan: It… it’s not. That’s in QuickBooks, so the details… Oh, it’s in QuickBooks, okay. Yeah, so, so Fathom just kind of brings in the, the category level, so all the details is gonna be in there.
103 00:20:44.670 ⇒ 00:20:53.029 Robert Tseng: Have all the categories translate from Fathom to QuickBooks? I guess I haven’t personally logged into Cookbooks, so maybe I should just do that. I can go and try to…
104 00:20:53.300 ⇒ 00:21:03.420 Robert Tseng: figure that out, because there were, like, some duplicate categories, like, obviously I called that out, so I’m assuming that in QuickBooks, then, you’re… I’d be able to click into those categories and see what’s in there?
105 00:21:03.920 ⇒ 00:21:14.509 megan: Yeah, exactly. And, I can also send you… there’s, like, a profit and loss detail report, and that’ll show you everything. So that’ll show you not just the people cost.
106 00:21:14.510 ⇒ 00:21:21.510 Robert Tseng: Is that by the customer detail? If you sent that… you sent that this morning, I looked at… is that not the same one? Because I did look at that one.
107 00:21:21.680 ⇒ 00:21:37.030 megan: Yeah, it’s, it’s different. That… the customer, we’re kind of just looking at the… just all the gross, kind of, like, above the OPEX line. So that’s purely looking at the… the customer level profitability.
108 00:21:37.030 ⇒ 00:21:49.380 megan: So, yeah, but there’s a profit and loss detail report that, that’ll show you, like, not just all the people that make up, but it’ll show you, like, all the software, and kind of where all that spend is going, too.
109 00:21:49.520 ⇒ 00:21:55.559 Robert Tseng: So, so yeah, let me pull that for you, and I can shoot it over, and just take a look when you get a chance.
110 00:21:56.020 ⇒ 00:21:56.600 Robert Tseng: Okay.
111 00:21:56.600 ⇒ 00:22:10.969 megan: I think that’ll be helpful, especially… I know you’re… I know you’re good at spreadsheets and all that, too, so feel free to, like, dig in, and and once you kind of, like, land on, you know, something that would be helpful, then let me know, and we can figure out how to automate it.
112 00:22:10.970 ⇒ 00:22:21.350 megan: So that you’re getting, you know, a good view of exactly the data that you want, and it’s something that, like, just gets delivered to you instead of having, you know, to pull it, so…
113 00:22:21.350 ⇒ 00:22:21.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
114 00:22:21.970 ⇒ 00:22:36.059 megan: But yeah, profit and loss detail, I’ll pull that for you for, like, just for a year-to-date so far, since now we’ve got everything, kind of, like, organized in a good way, then you’ll be able to see, like, where everything’s,
115 00:22:36.180 ⇒ 00:22:43.930 megan: like, what’s really driving all those other numbers. I think that would be helpful, just to kind of start getting your arms around everything.
116 00:22:45.420 ⇒ 00:23:00.160 Robert Tseng: Okay, perfect, that sounds good. And I guess, like, I know you talked to Tom as well, so… I mean, is there anything that you’ve been recommending to him that maybe kind of got dropped that you want to resurface? Like, I guess, like, I just want to see how I can…
117 00:23:00.160 ⇒ 00:23:09.250 Robert Tseng: kind of go back to him, be like, hey, I talked to Megan today, and like, you know, we were revisiting some things that maybe we missed, like, yeah, anything that you wanted to flag.
118 00:23:10.180 ⇒ 00:23:15.399 megan: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s really just, like, we need a good, solid, like.
119 00:23:15.560 ⇒ 00:23:28.899 megan: two or three months of good profit margin if we’re gonna get out of this liquidity crunch, and I get the, you know, the framing of, like, oh, we need to invest in the business, but at some point, too, it’s almost like we also need to
120 00:23:29.350 ⇒ 00:23:42.299 megan: you know, be mindful, like, people are… it just… it starts to drain over time when people are, like, constantly paid late, you know, and, you know, carries a lot of risk, so I do want to make sure that we’re…
121 00:23:42.510 ⇒ 00:23:47.740 megan: You know, spending wisely, especially it’s all the internal time.
122 00:23:47.740 ⇒ 00:24:12.110 megan: all the non-billable time, like, the gross margins are, like, are really solid, like, it’s… and not just solid, but, like, consistently good. So, it’s not… it doesn’t seem like it’s a problem of, like, servicing the customers, but it’s all the internal management is just getting, is just a continued challenge. So, I’d love to see, like, almost some…
123 00:24:12.110 ⇒ 00:24:14.090 megan: aggressive short-term.
124 00:24:14.160 ⇒ 00:24:19.679 megan: Cuts for, you know, to really kind of help give that runway to alleviate
125 00:24:19.680 ⇒ 00:24:37.219 megan: that… that crunch, so that we can get in a good habit of, you know… like, it would be great once we can get to a point of, okay, we’ve loaded everybody’s February payments, they’re all scheduled to go out on the 15th, like, and we know we’ve got the cash to cover it, so… but, you know…
126 00:24:37.220 ⇒ 00:24:38.850 megan: Until we can really…
127 00:24:39.130 ⇒ 00:24:48.759 megan: see that liquidity ratio above 1, then we’re… we’re not gonna be out of that race yet. So.
128 00:24:48.760 ⇒ 00:24:49.690 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
129 00:24:49.690 ⇒ 00:24:59.690 megan: That’s pretty consistent. I feel like that’s been every meeting I’ve had with Uten for the past, like, 6 months, so… maybe longer than that. So,
130 00:24:59.910 ⇒ 00:25:09.629 megan: But yeah, I’ll start with sending you this, this P&L detail report. I think that will be helpful. And as you’re going through.
131 00:25:09.630 ⇒ 00:25:24.989 megan: If, if you see things that are like, oh, this software is really like a… this is the software we use for, you know, our clients, or if things look like they should be in a different place, then let me know, and we can always change them.
132 00:25:24.990 ⇒ 00:25:31.119 megan: Because ultimately, I want it to be, like, helpful so that we can put together good forecasts, and then…
133 00:25:31.370 ⇒ 00:25:37.760 megan: And then, yeah, when you get a chance, definitely doesn’t have to be today, but when you get a chance that,
134 00:25:37.770 ⇒ 00:25:54.399 megan: I know the doc you’re referring to, I definitely have it bookmarked, with your big spreadsheet that has all of the metrics, but if there’s anything in that that, like, you can just point me to and say, yeah, this is really the forecast we’re using to drive.
135 00:25:54.400 ⇒ 00:25:54.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
136 00:25:54.750 ⇒ 00:26:03.170 megan: accountability for the team, let me know, and then I can start to incorporate that so that we’re forecasting something that kind of lines up.
137 00:26:03.790 ⇒ 00:26:04.610 megan: And then we can make.
138 00:26:04.610 ⇒ 00:26:05.080 Robert Tseng: Totally.
139 00:26:05.080 ⇒ 00:26:06.100 megan: adjustments.
140 00:26:06.240 ⇒ 00:26:22.550 megan: I think that, like, maybe we’ll do those couple of things, and then, maybe next week, once you’re back and settled, then we can kind of just, like, workshop some of this stuff real time, and, like, make the adjustments and move around the assumptions, and…
141 00:26:22.600 ⇒ 00:26:26.450 megan: Just kind of get that to a point, that it’s helpful.
142 00:26:27.560 ⇒ 00:26:43.699 Robert Tseng: Totally. Yeah, I mean, I know I’m off… technically off this week. I think really what that means is I’m just, like, I’m hiding from our clients and taking that away from our team, so this… I get to have time to do stuff like this, which is what I… I care about, and I know this is our first time, really, like, kind of talking, so I know we’re kind of…
143 00:26:43.700 ⇒ 00:26:59.879 Robert Tseng: talking all, like, around a lot of different things, too, so I, you know, I appreciate what you’ve done, you know, for the business up to this point, and I know sometimes it can be a little bit confusing having both Utam and I kind of jumping in. I mean, I think it’s also a healthy kind of, like.
144 00:27:00.090 ⇒ 00:27:09.659 Robert Tseng: kind of discussion that we have, where… Yeah, Utam definitely invests in the business more aggressively than I do. I think my goal is really to get, especially since
145 00:27:09.660 ⇒ 00:27:25.559 Robert Tseng: I’m… we finally finished the C-Corp transition, and we’re both gonna be coming on payroll, like, I want us to be taking consistent payroll out, rather than me just, like, withholding amounts and from Pungo and from contracts. Like, that’s not the way I want to operate moving.
146 00:27:25.560 ⇒ 00:27:45.519 Robert Tseng: not even moving forward, like, I want to get out of that as soon as possible, so, it just obviously doesn’t look good on our business, and obviously, it’s kind of weird for me from a tax perspective, too. I would much rather be on Bradford’s payroll. So, yeah, I mean, I don’t know if he’s throwing these numbers at you, but I want to see a path for both of us to take, kind of be able to take
147 00:27:45.520 ⇒ 00:27:51.499 Robert Tseng: 20K a month out, by, you know, hopefully by the end of Q2 or something, and…
148 00:27:51.500 ⇒ 00:28:05.540 Robert Tseng: I think I… I will be kind of looking for these, like, different cuts, probably more aggressively than he will. So, I definitely will work with you to try to find this, this, this kind of liquidity for the business.
149 00:28:06.210 ⇒ 00:28:17.220 megan: Awesome, yeah, no, I, and I know that… I mean, this is… it’s a good partnership, though, like, you kind of need, like, the, the practical to balance out the…
150 00:28:17.220 ⇒ 00:28:28.769 megan: Yeah, I, you know, I get, like you said, investing aggressively in the spend, but at some point, then you have to also aggressively invest in the cuts, so…
151 00:28:28.770 ⇒ 00:28:29.350 Robert Tseng: Yes.
152 00:28:29.350 ⇒ 00:28:31.330 megan: Yeah, so…
153 00:28:31.480 ⇒ 00:28:42.609 megan: But yeah, I’ll shoot this P&L detail report over to you, and yeah, looking forward just to continuing the conversation, and for sure, I think, like, once we get in a good
154 00:28:42.650 ⇒ 00:28:55.020 megan: once we get in a good rhythm, I think, like, the three of us sitting down to review financials on a monthly basis, would be just an awesome, you know, habit to get into. So.
155 00:28:55.020 ⇒ 00:28:57.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah, definitely work towards that.
156 00:28:58.310 ⇒ 00:29:11.689 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, that sounds good. And I know you’re in Austin, right? We’ll both be in Austin next month, for Vixelthon, so… yeah, I don’t know, maybe we’ll be able to get together or something when I’m in town next month.
157 00:29:12.140 ⇒ 00:29:22.659 megan: Yeah, that’d be awesome. Just let me know, we can meet for lunch. I’m in South Austin, so it’s super easy for me to get anywhere in town. But yeah, that would be awesome. It’d be great to meet IRL.
158 00:29:23.300 ⇒ 00:29:24.980 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, that sounds great.
159 00:29:25.690 ⇒ 00:29:26.670 megan: Awesome.
160 00:29:26.790 ⇒ 00:29:42.400 megan: Well, enjoy the, the week, and, yeah, just let me know if you need anything, or if, like, something comes up later, you’re like, oh, I wish I would have asked that, just shoot me a note, and happy to… happy to help. I like… I like working with you guys, so it’s… it’s fun.
161 00:29:42.630 ⇒ 00:29:47.849 Robert Tseng: Great, thank you, thank you, Megan. And I think all the follow-ups you said sound great. I think those are good next steps.
162 00:29:47.850 ⇒ 00:29:50.749 megan: Okay, great. Sounds good.
163 00:29:51.400 ⇒ 00:29:52.060 Robert Tseng: Thanks.
164 00:29:52.340 ⇒ 00:29:53.730 megan: Alright, bye.
165 00:29:54.000 ⇒ 00:29:54.540 Robert Tseng: Bye.