Growing up in Hollis, Queens, Daymond John was just 10 years old when he started working after-school jobs, such as handing out flyers for $2 an hour. By the time he graduated from Bayside High School, he had significant entrepreneurial experience and a strong work ethic. Juggling jobs and a desire to work for himself, he began selling t-shirts and later turned to the emerging hip-hop culture for clothing inspiration. In 1989, he began to sell headwear, and then shirts branded with his company's name, FUBU, which stands for “For Us By Us.” Early on in this endeavor, Daymond's mother taught him to sew, and when he received his first big orders for $300,000 from a single Las Vegas retailer convention in 1994, he returned to their home to set up production. But he needed cash to pay for the means of production—sewing machines, fabric, employees. With orders in hand, Daymond approached banks to obtain a loan, and was declined 26 times.¹ So, he and his mother took out a $120,000 mortgage on their house to enable him to acquire the eight sewing machines and the material he needed to fulfill his orders. He also hired eight tailors. For the next two years, the home he shared with his mother would become his factory.

The money Daymond had borrowed was sufficient to fulfill his order and make a decent profit, but having done so, he was virtually broke—and new orders were coming in. He had failed to factor in the need to pay in advance for his material, which took 120 days to arrive from overseas. To add to his challenge, he had to deal with the delay in cash flow arising from the manufacturing time. The ultimate cash flow pain point was the 120-day payment terms he offered his retailers. As a result, his liquidity had to accommodate a revenue cycle that spanned more than 240 days, not to mention the growth he was experiencing from new orders. In desperation, with just $500 left in his bank account and no banks to assist him, he took out an ad in The New York Times that said, “A million dollars in orders. Need Financing.” Fortunately, someone at Samsung Americas textile division saw and answered the advertisement, helping avert a financial disaster. Over the next 25 years, Daymond John's companies sold $6 billion in clothing, and he became a nationwide celebrity on the cast of the syndicated reality show Shark Tank.

Daymond John freely shares the story of his early brush with business failure. I heard the story from him when he was speaking to the Inside Track Forum, which is an event that STORE Capital annually sponsors for its customers to inspire and teach them. When looking back on his self-taught experience as an entrepreneur, Daymond wishes that he had started FUBU with a greater degree of financial literacy. His first big financial lesson, which nearly cost him his business, was this: “What Is Business Investment?” This important question is where business model frameworks start and is the first of six universal financial variables that collectively guide investor returns.

It is common for people to think of business investment as chiefly plant and equipment. Such a notion is also somewhat consistent with accounting terminology, where assets are divided between those that are “long-term” and those that are “short-term,” or “current.” When I ask students to define business investment, they think predominantly of long-term assets, such as real estate or machinery. Daymond John knew investment to be more than this. He had eight sewing machines. But then he also had to purchase the fabric and pay the eight tailors to sew his garments. In accounting terms, both these costs together would be included in inventory. So, Daymond knew he had to make inventory and equipment purchases. However, he had to tie up his cash in raw material inventory for 120 days before he took possession of it. In accounting terms, that would be a deposit. This meant that, while waiting for the fabric to arrive, he would still have to carry some operating costs. And, once the completed garments shipped, he would have to wait another 120 days to be paid. In accounting terms, that would be classified as an account receivable. So, altogether, the business investment needed to operate FUBU on an ongoing basis included five major components:

1. Sewing machines and other equipment.
2. Deposits paid by the company for the raw material inventory.
3. Inventory, which included the combined cost of the fabric and labor to produce the garments.
4. Accounts receivable.
5. Cash

The last business investment component is cash, which is needed to absorb start-up costs like general and administrative costs, utilities, and other operating costs to be borne prior to the receipt of revenues. Cash is also a good thing to have in case of unforeseen expenses or delays in the corporate cash flow cycle caused by elevated levels of inventory or delays in accounts receivable collection. All good business plans need to have margins for error, and the most important margin of error insurance is centered in liquidity access.

If, for the sake of argument, Daymond John fulfilled nothing but this one-time order for his product, then the business investment would be effectively liquidated as the deposits went away upon inventory receipt, the inventory vanished upon its sale, and the receivables likewise disappeared upon their collection. Effectively, the company would profitably liquidate as the cash flow cycle played out. However, over time, FUBU received and fulfilled many orders, and went on to achieve sales of $350 million within a decade. These investments not only recurred but grew far larger over time.

Daymond needed money to carry these five major investment components that comprised his business investment.

As FUBU grew and achieved success, the relative amount of business investment required would be expected to decrease, and the company's liquidity would increase. That is because the sellers of fabric would be less likely to require deposits from a successful and proven company. In fact, they might have offered payment terms for the fabric. Accounts payable to vendors are a reduction from business investment because they are unsecured claims on a business and often cost nothing. The vendor gives you title to the fabric in exchange for an unsecured, often free, obligation to pay at a later date.

With success would also come bankability, which would allow the company to have banks provide letters of credit that would guarantee vendor payments without tying up company cash.

Had Daymond John been able to secure his initial inventory without tying up cash for 120 days, his liquidity would have improved. Better still, if he had trade vendor terms on his inventory that would enable him to pay for the inventory long after he received it, his liquidity would have improved a lot. Had his buyers been willing to pay faster than 120 days after merchandise receipt, that would also stand to raise his liquidity.

Finally, there is often the potential for businesses to radically alter their operating model. For instance, had Daymond John been able to have the seller of the fabric also fabricate the garments, deliver them to him, wait for payment, and have his customers agree to pay faster, he would have had greatly improved liquidity, together with less invested in sewing machines and staffing.

In essence, he would have adopted an “asset light” operating model that would require even less corporate liquidity, with fixed overhead and equipment costs transformed into less risky variable expenditures. Operating model creativity entails considering such options and exploring their feasibility to improve business model efficiency that can elevate the potential for value creation.

With all these possible changes to his business model, Daymond John stood to lower his required business investment, potentially materially.

Businesses have diverse cash flow cycles. In the case of a manufacturer like FUBU, it is common to have vendor trade payables that are small relative to the inventory and accounts receivable required to operate the business. A restaurant business will be just the opposite. The cash receipts from sales are immediate. Inventory levels are low because the inventory tends to be sold every three days or so. Meanwhile, the trade payables from food vendors might come with 30-day terms, meaning that you could literally sell your inventory 10 times over before ever paying for the first inventory you had.

Accountants vs. Entrepreneurs

If you think in accounting terms, you probably think of business investment as the “left side” of a balance sheet, which is where the assets are. I do not view business investment in this light. I am a finance person, which is the foundation for accounting, but one step removed.

Finance is like music; it is a universal language, whereas accounting is not.

There exist multiple global accounting standards, which are subject to frequent changes. The dominant standards are US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which is used by much of the rest of the world. With that said, GAAP is widely used globally among larger companies owing to its requirement for a US stock exchange listing. Accounting was devised to represent financial reality to investors and financial statement readers. However, the reflection will always have material imperfections. This is why there are so many analysts who make a living from interpreting financial statements. This is why financially inclined value investors pore over financial statements to see what the markets cannot.

From a finance perspective, total assets as they appear on a corporate financial statement do not equal business investment. To arrive at business investment, a financial analyst must ignore all the non-cash accounting conventions. This means that items like “accumulated depreciation,” which is designed to illustrate the cumulative “wear and tear costs” of a business on its hard assets, need to be added back. It's not that assets don't have wear and tear; they do. It's that the wear and tear does nothing to alter what the assets originally cost. Wear and tear does not alter the business investment. Since the accounting profession has added numerous non-cash financial reporting conventions over the years, you can be busy eliminating balance sheet items.

The somewhat shameful fact is this: If you are looking at a corporate financial statement and actually trying to understand business investment, the number is nowhere reported. Our accounting profession has wrongfully determined that it is unimportant to keep track of what assets originally cost.

The next chapter will discuss the “right side” of the accounting balance sheet, which discloses liabilities and shareholder equity. But as a finance professional, some of the liabilities must be netted against cash assets at cost to arrive at business investment. Those liabilities are the ones having no cost and no claim on the assets of a business. Normally, there are two such liabilities: accounts payable and accruals. We have already briefly discussed the first of these, which represents trade vendors who are willing to give you clear title to their merchandise and then wait a period for payment. The second of these represents the timing gap between a service being provided and payment for that service. The most major example of this is employee wages; employees come to work and then generally must wait two weeks for their paycheck. There might be other unsecured, non-interest-paying cash obligations, such as customer deposits, which would be shown on the financial statement as a deferred income liability.

Variable #1: Business Investment

Number 1 of the Six Variables is business investment. To determine it, simply net accounts payable, accruals, and other unsecured, non-interest-paying cash obligations against the cash assets at cost. A short version of the business investment variable is shown below. Later on, I will expand this important variable to show its components.

While the accounting profession may have difficulty determining what business investment is, entrepreneurs generally can zero in on the number. One thing they know is that a lower business investment is better than a higher investment because it requires less funding. Certainly, the growth in global supply chain technology sophistication has played a role in the rise of “asset light” as a business term. If you can have less inventory, have extended trade credit terms, outsource your manufacturing, and then sell your product with fast payment terms, your required business investment can be substantially reduced. Had Daymond John been more “asset light” at the outset, his business investment requirement would have fallen materially, his liquidity would have substantially risen, and his risk of business failure reduced. As I learned a long time ago when I started out in banking, “Companies do not go out of business because they lose money. They go out of business because they run out of cash.”