← Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cash Flow, CFO Leadership, and Building Stronger Businesses with Brent Berger of NXT Ascent 6-9-26
00:29:42
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- [00:01]
A
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B
This is Scott Becker with the Becker business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant chief financial officer who has built one of the most fascinating careers that I've had a chance to watch. We're joined today by Brent Berger. Brent is currently the CFO of Next Ascent. He's a Northwestern local graduate from Northwestern University. A brilliant, brilliant person who has spent time at some of the best brands in the world, including brands like Tropicana and others. Brent, can you take a moment and tell us a little bit about your career and what you do as a core in your professional life?
- [01:08]
C
Absolutely, and thank you for the very kind words and I'm thrilled to be on this on the podcast. So I'm currently the Chief Financial Officer of Next Ascent. Next Ascent is a consumer goods company that's focused on creating solutions around every corner of the home. We've currently got two businesses that we've launched both D2C businesses right now through our website and also on Amazon. The first business is called Adorn. Adorn is basically a business that's taken the most ignored part of your home, the mailbox, and we've rebuilt it with security, function and design in mind. We've been around since 2024. That business is, is growing on a regular basis and soon to be in a Walmart, hopefully near some of the people listening to this. The second business we have is Soar. Soar is a basketball company and it was created to give the Hooper the tools they need to level up premium basketball hoops with full installation and then also, you know, kind of a cultivated environment of content, stories and community, you know. And you know, like you mentioned, I also did the good fortune to work for some pretty iconic brands. I've been up and down the food chain. I've done everything from soy burgers to orange juice to breakfast sausage. And then I've also, you know, had a pretty long stint in personal care products as well. So, you know, I've really Run the gamut of the consumer goods function.
- [02:35]
B
No, it's, it's really a fascinating career when you work with founder led businesses, mid market businesses, and you've also worked with mega business is what are some of the things you see businesses do right? What are some of the mistakes they make? Talk a bit about that and then where the CFO fits into a lot of that.
- [02:53]
C
Yeah. So one of the things I will tell you regardless of whether or not we're dealing with some of the bigger companies or you know, clearly that, that low mid market opportunity is there's this, this concept of, and what you hear about all the time is that growth solves problems or sales cures all ills. From my point of view, growth doesn't necessarily solve problems. Growth audits them. You know, if your unit economics are broken, scaling revenue means you're just magnifying the destruction of cash flow. So the things that I think about there, like, you know, let's talk about that growth, you know, pricing wrong leads to getting more things wrong. You know, broken inventory processes break faster. A weak cash conversion cycle just chews through cash faster. So when I say, you know, growth is an audit, an audit tool, that's how I think about it. I think one of the other things that tends to happen in these businesses is finance stays as a reporting function way too long. By the time a company needs real financial infrastructure, you're already behind. And it's not because the controller's not doing their job, but nobody's really taken the time to build the system that tells leadership what to do next. They're just really great at talking about what's happened. And then I think the third thing is sometimes revenue gets celebrated before cash is understood. You know, top line growth is one of those easy things to chase, but it's also the easiest way to hide a broken business.
- [04:17]
B
Take a second on pricing and revenues because we see so many businesses and rightfully are so anxious to get customers and grow revenues that they price it away that it's very hard to build a profitable business. Talk about the interchange of pricing, revenues and profitability and how companies use CFOs and interacting with business development with CEOs to try and hit pricing. Right. So you don't end up in the situation where you're doing more sales but not making more money. Talk a bit about that pricing component, if you don't mind. Sure.
- [04:55]
C
So, you know, when I think of pricing, you know, I typically tend to, to talk about gross margin. So that's kind of the perspective I Take about this. You know, one of the biggest things that you see in companies is everybody talks about gross margin. Gross margin is X, gross margin is Y. Gross margin was this versus this last year. Gross margin, when they talk about it like that is blended gross margin. And honestly I think it's one of the biggest lies in low to mid market companies. Because blended gross margin, it's like it's a report card. It's like what you did, it's not necessarily what you're doing. So when you think about pricing, that's when I really focus on unit economics. Like you need to understand by product, line by product what your gross margin is, what your price was, what your discounting scenarios are, what your cost of goods are to get to a true gross profit. Because you may have a phenomenal top line, but you could be hiding a gross margin issue, could be hiding in plain sight. Scott. And it's a byproduct of one of those things. But you really need to think about, you know, what am I going to do with that pricing? That's the thing you put in front of the customer. And you know, you need to gut check what you're hearing from marketing, what you're hearing from the sales team. And you need to be the person that corrals those discussions and drives that, that process.
- [06:15]
B
Thank you. No, I think that's so right on. And it's this fine balance because you need good enough pricing that you could actually pay your people and grow your business. But you also need good enough pricing that's not so high that your customers will buy what you're selling. And part of that's, are you selling to the right customers? Are you, you building the right business? Talk for a second about at what point does a growing business need a full time CFO versus fractional or outsourced or just rolling on a controller? At what point do you see that you probably really need a cfo?
- [06:48]
C
So I think the trigger for that is when financial decisions are starting to outpace the current team's capacity to inform or answer them. And I think there are three big signals there. There are three big kind of main events. One obviously is raising capital or taking on debt. You need that person that can build the model and defend it to a pretty sophisticated counterparty. I think the second thing is, or the second signal is when the board or your investors are asking questions the controller is just not equipped to answer. And it's not because that controller's not talented, it's just because they're not the person that's set across from PE sponsors and lenders before. And then I think the third one is when cash surprises are happening. You know, when leadership's hearing about liquidity problems after they've already formed, that's not an accounting problem, that's a forecasting and judgment problem. And again, you know, that's not to shortchange the work that's being done because the people that are doing them, they're doing what they know how to do. They're putting out their best effort. But those are the signals to me that say, hey, it's time to bring a CFO in on a full time basis. We need somebody in that chair that's thinking about this stuff on a daily basis.
- [08:01]
B
Take a second on key performance indicators, core metrics. As a CFO, sometimes I see leaders put in front of me five core metrics, sometimes I see 100 core metrics. How do you decide what's a core metric and what to focus on? You mentioned a great point, revenue versus actual collectibility. Revenue versus cash flow. Two very different things. If you're booking revenues but not collecting it, it's not really reven revenues. But, but talk about what do you see as, and you've been doing this for a long time with lots of different companies. How do you sort of focus on what are the top core metrics in, in KPIs that you think are the most important and avoid people being, you know, sort of distracted all over the place? Sure.
- [08:44]
C
There are three main ones for me. Cash position weekly, not projected. But what's actual like how much do we have in the bank today and what are the next 90 days look like? You know, regardless of the size of the organization that I've been in, you know, cash has been a paramount discussion. You know, back when I was in, you know, a, I had a stint in commercial real estate. My job was cash and you know, that was a company that was, you know, at the time around $5 billion. And we were still having cash flow discussions similar to what I have today in a company that's, you know, under 50 million in revenue. So Cash position weekly is a critical one. And the second one which I touched on briefly, gross margin by product line. You know, you need that, you know, like I said, blended gross margin tells you what the business earned production line margin tells you what the business is actually worth. You know, at the end of the day, you need to be able to defend your products, your pricing and you know, when somebody sits out and looks to potentially buy you, you need to understand what Your unit economics are top to bottom. And then I think another one is the headcount to revenue ratio. I mean you've got CEO CFOs that approve headcount plans, but I think you know the ones that are really good track what those headcounts are producing and you know that kind of those are the three ones, the three that really stick out to me. But you know, it all kind of looks into the one that I think could potentially be the most overlooked and the most dangerous gap, especially in the mid market space, is that distance between EBITDA and cash. EBITDA is that metric that we all talk about over and over again. It's how we value companies, value deals. But that EBITDA to cash flow conversion is where so many things sit and reside and your problems exist. So at the end of the day, one of the things that I try to get my CEOs to think about is don't ask me if we're on plan, ask me if we're generating cash. To me, cash is fact and profits and opinion.
- [10:48]
B
No, no. And I love that sort of the concept that cash really is king and it's really the the what businesses run on. Just like armies used to run on their stomachs, businesses run on their cash flow. And that's what you really need to reinvest, to grow, to double down. I love the concept on unit economics. I also love the ratio of revenues to people. Some business leaders pride themselves on having huge headcount at the end of the day. We know that that's not often the answer in revenues over how many people you have is within reason a better metric. I love that. And also the comparison of cash flow to ebitda. When you take over as the CFO of a company and you're also, you're often brought in in a critical spot where they're either growing or they're needing to change out a CFO or they're doing something new or different. What are the three or four things that you try and look at right away to understand the health of a business? When you come into the business and you might have already partnered to answer this, of course, but talk to us about when you come in, what are the first few things that you want to get your hands around?
- [11:55]
C
Sure, three. And you're right, I have touched on a little bit. First and foremost, cast, position and forecast. I ask for a 13 week cash flow model. If it doesn't exist, that tells me a lot. If it exists and it's not being used to make decisions that also tells me almost as much the gap between what that model shows and what's hitting the bank starts to give me a place to think about where are the problems? Where are the things that I need to address immediately. The second thing that I think about is the finance team quality. And to me, I don't assess quality by titles or resumes. I assess quality by work product. You know, clean reporting, delivered on time. That answers what happened, why it happened, and more importantly, what we're doing about it tells me about the type of finance team I have. You know, good finance teams hit those first two questions and they do a great job of it. The finance teams that can answer that third one, what are we doing about it? Those are the people that I want on my team and that's what I look for. And then the third one, which I did touch on was, you know, the EBITDA free cash flow conversion. Anything that explains why the income statement looks one way and the bank account looks a different way. That's the stuff I want to look at. Because those are the problems, those are the things I need to attack. You know, I'll tell you, I walked into a company where EBITDA was strong and sponsor was happy, but, you know, underlying all of that, underlying that EBITDA working capital and debt service was chewing through cash and, you know, the dots just hadn't been completely connected yet. And, you know, those type of gaps kill companies and more. And in the world I run in, it erodes credibility. With PE sponsors.
- [13:38]
B
Take a second on a couple of things there. When you come into that situation and you find that things are not as leadership thought they were, how uncomfortable position is that with the cfo, with the private equity sponsor? And you're not an alarmist by nature. You're a calm, thoughtful leader. But. But how challenging are those discussions? Do you ever feel like the messenger is going to get shot because you're delivering news they don't want to hear?
- [14:03]
C
It hasn't been my experience yet. And, you know, at this point, we're coming up on 30 years and, you know, I've been in, you know, roles where I've basically been head of finance CFO for the past almost, you know, over a decade. At this point, you know, more than anything else, the people that you're working with, whether it's PE sponsors, the executive team or whatnot, they want the answer, they want the truth, they want the story. And can it be uncomfortable if it's something they haven't heard before? Yeah, that creates a Little bit of discomfort. But more importantly, that's one of those things that it happens. You get past it really quickly because you're looking at what really matters now. And that's, that's where I find those discussions tend to go. Nobody wants to hear when there are problems, and nobody wants the CFO to walk in with the person in the dark cloud or whatnot. But importantly, a CFO is here to help get to the truth and whether that's good or bad,
- [15:04]
B
100%. And talk a little bit about you've worked with some great management teams, some great private equity sponsors. How do you know when you're working with a really good team, a really competent team? Are there things that you could see right away that make you feel like, hey, I'm with a team here that's going places, that's really doing things right? Are there things that you see when you choose to join a firm as a CFO that sort of leave you thinking, this is the right team, they know what they're doing. And conversely, are there situations where you feel like, you know, I don't really want to join that team because I'm not confident they know where they're going. Talk a little bit about that, Brent, about what gives you confidence when you work with the, with a management team.
- [15:47]
C
Yeah. So one of the things that, you know, I, I think about when I'm looking at an opportunity is how do the people that I'm talking to, you know, not only how do they speak about the business, but what do they say when they talk about the business? You know, am I getting business speak and jargon or somebody coming to the table and talking about, like, results, performance, things to focus on margin. And like I said, you know, one of my favorite things in the world to talk about, product level margins, you know, that kind of gives me a sense of the type of operator that I'm working with. So that's, that's a big thing for me. You know, when I get into situations where, you know, I. The picture isn't as clear. Somebody, you know, and I've been in worlds where I've been given, you know, in my past, I've walked into situations where it's, here's the password to QuickBooks, here's the password to our bank account. Have at it. I know I've got my work cut out for me, but there's something you
- [16:50]
B
mentioned a moment ago. We end up periodically running to people that I think speak business rather than do business. And I love your perspective there. And people that Almost feel like they're going through the motions versus really getting things done. Can you talk about that for a moment? Because I've seen that throughout my professional career a great deal of fantastic leaders and then some that seem to be playing the role versus doing the role. Talk about that in terms of teams that really solve problems, that really want to know, that really want to work
- [17:19]
C
through things, teams that really want to work through things, know like to what we were talking a little bit about earlier, the 3, 5, 7 top KPIs they need to focus on. And you know, they can look at it on almost a daily basis and say we're doing well or we're not. And if we're not, it's how to change things. And those people that I know, one, not only do they understand the business, they're passionate about it. And when you're in, in something that you're passionate about, like you want to spend the time getting underneath the hood, you want to spend the time understanding the mechanics of it. And you know, when you cross paths with more of that kind of just going through the motion, one of the things that I notice is lacking or it's, it just comes off as superficial is there's just no passion.
- [18:16]
B
Absolutely. You certainly see some people that are really good at executing getting things done, others that the buck never seems to stop and you're like, oh my God, is anything really going to get done here? And I've watched into different situations. Let me ask you another question, Brent. As you look forward, I'm going to ask you two different questions. As you look forward to the next three to five years, what trends in finance, AI capital markets or business operations do you think you're going to have the biggest impact on lower and middlemark companies? That's sort of one. And then second, I'm going to ask you a question about sort of where you see yourself. Where are you most focused and excited today? I know you're leading right now at next and doing a tremendous job, but what are you most focused and excited about? And then what do you think are the big trends in finance next few years? Sure.
- [19:01]
C
So I might buck some of the popular things nowadays and say that the biggest trend is in AI. In my opinion, I think the biggest trend is cash discipline replacing financial engineering as the primary value creation lever in private equity. I think that's the big trend. And I'll explain that in a little bit more detail. When you think about the fact that there was a time period when debt was at 3%, a social operator can be a genius just through leverage and multiple expansion. But with the way debt sits today, one of the true ways to drive IRR is operational efficiency and that's squeezing cash out of the balance sheet, accelerating inventory turns and tightening the cash conversion cycle. So some of those topics like working capital optimization, covenant management, inventory discipline, that were part of some of the discussions in the treasury aspect of managing cash, that's the kind of stuff that I think is board level now. And those are the conversations that are being had. So, you know, that's kind of where I see that becoming even more of a trend over the next three to five years. But along with that, I will say that AI is the support. So what AI is going to do for us is compress cycle times and that creates structural advantages. So your 10 day close is 3 day close. Your cash forecast updates in real time. AI is the tool to assist, but it's not the answer. You know, the judgment about what that output is or more importantly, judging that output that's coming out of it still requires somebody who's been in that room when things have been wrong and they've had to figure out how to fix it. The CFOs going forward that know how to use AI to compress cycle times and then exercise that operational judgment will have that clear advantage over everybody else. I think of AI as speed and the CFO as the calibration. And then.
- [20:57]
B
But I love your point. I want to take you back to one second. You said something a while ago. During periods of the right vintage of investing, a financial sponsor, a private equity fund, could do great by just investing at the right time and seeing multiple expansion happen over several years and then selling. And that works even if EBITDA and cash flow don't improve. What we've seen the last five, seven years is we don't see that multiple expansion, the cost of debt's higher. And so you actually have to improve operations, not just financially. Engineer. And I love that point that you're making there. Let me take you back to where you were at because you were mentioning something that I started to cut you off on. Brent.
- [21:38]
C
Oh, no, no problem at all. Yeah, I mean, I seriously, that's probably, like I said, hands down, I'm convinced that's the biggest trend, what you just reiterated there. The other thing that I see happening over the next three to five years is this kind of shift in the CFO position in general. And I call it being a reporting CFO versus an operational cfo. I think historically we've seen A tendency where you tend to hire the reporters. And now I think the market itself is actually starting to price the difference between the reporter versus the operational person who can help change what happens next. And I see that shift accelerating and I think that it's creating a real separation between the operators who can do both of those things and those that can just do one. I think that's the third trend. So that cash positioning and cash management as the first trend. AI is the supporting tool. CFO is the calibration. And that shift from reporting to true operational management, those are the trends that I see.
- [22:49]
B
No, and I love that, quite frankly. And we've seen that with CFOs throughout our career. A great percentage that are fantastic on the reporting ships running on time, make sure everything gets cleared, the month the books get closed, et cetera, et cetera, but not necessarily the strategic operator. And when you can combine those skills, you have people that either can be the best CFO they can be or could be end up in the CEO suite as role as well. And I think that's. That's right. Having both those skill sets. Brent, take us through. Last question. What are you most focused on and excited about now as you watch business and what you're doing and so forth?
- [23:30]
C
I love being able to have more information at my fingertips. It's funny, you know, I, when my career started, the world of ERPs was just starting to scale up. You know, we heard, we all heard the stories back then and you know, the Kool Aid was served. ERP is going to change everything. It took a lot of time for that to really start to manifest itself. And then at the end of the day, you're still dealing with ERP systems where whatever data you put in is whatever information you put out. So if your process was broken before you picture your RPN and you didn't fix your process, you still have a broken process. You just reported in a different tool. So I think the ability to get to information and to understand data and to leverage tools like ERP and AI that I get super excited about, like the ability to be able to sit down and you know, you used to talk about all these cool cockpits where we're going to build this cockpit and this dashboard for the cfo. It's going to be living and breathing. You know, those were kind of pipe dreams and they were these nice to haves and they were built by, you know, and built and sold the companies based on, hey, this is the world you can get to. But it was mocked up Data or data that was designed for a demo that's going to have an expected outcome. I think now you're getting into a world where you can chew through it. You can use things like AI to digest huge amounts of data and really cut to the chase on things and really give you the information to make the decision. So if you think about, you know, what a CFO is, is, is, is supposed to be really, really good at is being able to digest a ton of, of, of numbers, tell a story, but more importantly have the bandwidth to opine on what's going to come next. You know, that's what I'm excited about. You know, I can sit down every day and I look at KPIs for, you know, or businesses that we're running here at Next Descent at a level that I've never been able to look at them before in any company and there's not like this huge cost or this huge implementation. I can just get to numbers faster and I have the ability to say, okay, well what did we do yesterday and what can we potentially change today? And we've had discussions about pricing in the middle of the month and being in a D2C business, we've been able to make some tweaks about things we do, whether it's offering promotions or whatnot, and we can see the immediate impact of it and actually kind of course correct in the month. That's the kind of stuff I get excited about. That's what gets me fired about coming to work every day.
- [26:13]
B
But, but that's a wonderful thing to be able to adjust, look at things in real time and make decisions which was just, and that's one of the things you talk about in terms of the AI world, the world of, of sort of being able to move information a little bit quicker so you can make decisions with it little bit smarter, a little bit quicker. I love that.
- [26:34]
C
Yeah. And you know, that's, I, I, I think that's one of the most powerful things about what I do and that's one of the things I get most excited about. And you know, it's, it's amazing what you can do when you know you actually have the right information in hand. You don't, you know, I, I've, I've been in environments where, you know, you think about what, what the end of the month looks like. You know, you take your 10 plus days to close the books and then you sit down and you start explaining results and you hear, well, you know, we had prior period adjustment of this accrual Reversal of that. Like, to me, that's all noise. Like, what I want to talk about is like, let's talk about volume. Where did we miss? Why did we miss. What are we doing right now in this month to make up for last month's mission? You know, what are we seeing in terms of our costs? What are we seeing in terms of our mix? What are we seeing in terms of a new product launch? How's that look? Or in my world, today had a different. When we sell a mailbox, we put a mailbox together with the post address numbers and a flag and sell a bundle. How's that bundle performing? Is it driving sales? That's the stuff that's really, really cool. And, you know, I also see, you know, some of this AI piece, like I said, as a tool to help you with the foundational stuff, the nuts and bolts, the debits, the credits, the ar, the ap, the bank reconciliation. So you get that stuff tight and locked down at a level that you haven't been able to do before. You have all this bandwidth for what I like to call fun finance and fund finance strategy, API measurement, you know, scenario.
- [28:18]
B
But I think that's so important because if you're not burning your team out and yourself out, getting all the data in the right place and getting, you know, the, the, the sort of monthly closing done, or getting the information you need that if that becomes easier, a CFO doesn't have to spend so much time working with managing their team to get that done, and they could spend much more time thoughtfully as to, hey, can we make impacts here? Can we make impacts? There's and, or working with the CEO and the leadership team to make those decisions because you're not so bogged down and burnt out by some of the core fundamentals that got to be put in place.
- [28:54]
C
Absolutely, Absolutely. One of the things that some people on my teams have heard about in the past, I had this kind of. You can look at the world in one of two ways. You think about FP&A. FP&A, in a nutshell, is financial planning and analysis. But you have to stop and ask yourself, how many situations have you heard about, been involved in, where FP&A was financial production and adjustments?
- [29:20]
B
No, I think, I think that's well stated. You end up in a situation where you put a ton of money in a team into financial planning and analysis. It often ends up being not right, not correct. And then you're back to production and trying to figure out where we're at and why didn't that not go right because we don't have the FPA going in the right direction to begin with. And then you end up with spending a lot of resources and time on it and not really getting what you need. I think that's. I don't know if I'm saying what you're saying correctly, but I've certainly seen that.
- [29:48]
C
Yeah, you totally get what I'm saying.
- [29:51]
B
Yeah, no, we've seen a lot of it. Brent, what a pleasure to visit with you again. Brent Berger, Chief Financial Officer, Next Ascent. Just a brilliant leader. Brent, thank you so much for joining us on the Becker Private Equity and Business podcast. What a pleasure to visit with you. Thank you so much.
- [30:04]
C
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation and appreciated being a part of this.
- [30:12]
A
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