Michael Barbarita: The Five Numbers Every Window Treatment Owner Should Track Weekly

Episode 360 of Window Treatments for Profit

0:00

0:58:26

360: Michael Barbarita: The Five Numbers Every Window Treatment Owner Should Track Weekly

Today with Michael Barbarita:

You already know the feeling. You glance at the checkbook, you see a number that looks okay, and you decide that’s good enough. You don’t open QuickBooks. You don’t look at your gross profit percent. Some part of you is afraid that if you actually looked, you might not like what you’d find.

Michael Barbarita has spent thirty years inside businesses just like yours, first as an owner himself, growing a retail company called Ski Town USA from two and a half million dollars to eight million in under five years, and now as a fractional CFO through his company, Next Step CFO, working mostly with owners in the trades. He told LuAnn something simple that changes how you think about your numbers for good: the time to look is when it’s cloudy, not when it’s raining.

Michael doesn’t ask his clients to become accountants. He gives them five numbers, what he calls the vital five, and a rhythm for checking them. Sales, gross profit, gross profit percent, and net profit get pulled from your weekly P&L, and for most owners, that report is already sitting in your accounting software waiting to be opened. Cash is the one exception. That number gets checked every single day, because cash is what can sink you fastest, and it’s the one number you can’t afford to only glance at once a week.

LuAnn connects Michael’s framework directly to something she and her husband Vin have pushed Exciting Windows members toward for years, a fifty five to sixty percent gross profit margin. Once you’re actually watching your gross profit percent every week, you have a real answer to whether you’re anywhere close to that target, instead of a guess.

The conversation goes further into why so many business owners let their accounts receivable slide, and Michael’s five components of what he calls a compelling offer, the framework he uses with clients to get them out of competing on price. LuAnn ties it back to something she’s said for years, that you have to sell the transformation your work creates, not the blind, the shade, or the drape itself.

If pricing and margin are the piece that’s nagging at you after this one, go back and listen to WTFP #199, Solo Margins Matter, for the fuller case on what discounting below a healthy margin actually costs your business.

More About Michael Barbarita:

Michael Barbarita has owned and operated Retail, Manufacturing and Service companies over the last 30 years. One of the retail companies he operated called “Ski Town USA” grew from $2.5 Million to $8.0 million in less than 5 years. One of the products he manufactured was “Cookies To Scoop Frozen Cookie Dough” and was featured on the QVC Home Shopping Network and was selected as one of the top 20 products in the State of Massachusetts in 1997.

He has sat on the Board of Directors of 5 different companies. He was a Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer for a large specialty retailer. He was Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer for all of his previously owned companies as well. Michael has been involved in the structuring of leveraged buyouts. He has experience in owning both commercial and residential investment real estate. He also has experience exporting and doing business on a global scale.

He is an award winning public speaker.

He has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and majored in Accounting.

Connect with Michael Barbarita:

Website

Our Favorite Links

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Windowworksnj.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Exciting Windows⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

What’s new with LuAnn Nigara

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Power Talk Friday Tour 2025⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch the Docuseries!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.luannnigara.com/cob⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Purchase LuAnn’s Books Here: