The Sweeney Agency

About Joe Knight – Speaker on Financial Intelligence:

Finance isn’t just for finance and accounting people anymore. Everyone needs to understand how financial success is measured and how they make an impact to be both personally and professionally successful. Finance speaker Joe Knight’s keynotes reveal the secrets of finance to non financial audiences around the world. And his enthusiasm is so contagious that after every keynote audience members ask for more. Joe uses a mix of humor, story telling and education to share with his audiences what they really need to know about finance in order to work, manage, and lead more effectively. As Joe says, Every day is a great day for finance!

Joe is co-author of Harvard Business Press’ best seller Financial Intelligence, A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean. Named one of the 100 best business books of all time in the book of the same name, Financial Intelligence received rave reviews from both financial and non financial media. CFO.com says, Its like the Elements of Style of finance. And Human Resources IQ says, Financial Intelligence…is a must-read for the human resource experts who want to be able to talk confidently about the numbers and make a difference in their organization. Joe continues to write articles and blogs on a variety of topics, and journalists and radio hosts regularly interview him for current financial news stories.

As a partner at the Business Literacy Institute, Joe trains managers and leaders at Fortune 1000 companies such as CVS Caremark, GE, MetLife, NBC News, Northrop Grumman and Visa. And his unique ability to combine content with energy and humor make his keynote addresses resounding successes with diverse audiences including the Construction Industry Institute; Independent College Bookstore Association; International Institute for Supply Management; National Association of Broadcasting; and Society for Human Resource Management.

As an experienced facilitator, Joe has worked for over 15 years with large and small companies, associations, non-profits and universities.

Joe’s philosophy holds that a financially literate workplace leads to both higher employee satisfaction and increased profitability. As CFO of Setpoint Companies, Joe spearheaded the financial education of engineers in this automation equipment and roller coaster manufacturing company. Under his leadership, Setpoint became an Inc. 500 company and was featured in Inc. magazine.

Joe received a bachelor's degree in economics from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Joe’s mission is to ensure that everyone understands how financial success is measured and challenges everyone to go back to their jobs, find the one or two key numbers they impact and work toward improvement.

What Joe Knight Talks About:

The Love Affair with EBITDA
There are all sorts of financial measures that leaders and managers watch to ensure their companies are moving in the right direction. But there is one that almost everyone agrees is important to watch – EBITDA. In this engaging and fun (yes, finance can be fun) keynote Joe shares how EBITDA came to be a critical measure, why it is a good measure of performance, and the other key measure that is moving in on the love affair.

Audience members will be able to:

• Speak the language of business, the numbers
• Participate in meetings as a financially savvy team member
• Explain the elements of EBITDA
• Identify who cares about EBITDA
• Describe why EBITDA is a good measure
• Discuss the other measures that the marketplace might fall in love with next

The Secrets of Finance Revealed
Most functions in business — marketing, research and development, human resources management, and so on — are obviously subjective, a matter dependent on experience and judgment as well as data. But finance? Accounting? We think that if a number shows up on a financial statement, it must be an exact reflection of reality. Right? Well, actually, no.

The fact is, accounting and finance, like all other business disciplines, are as much an art as they are a science.

In The Secrets of Finance Revealed, Joe shares what financial professionals do every day as part of their jobs — that is, make estimates and assumptions that lead to a bias in the numbers. He then outlines the questions they need to ask and the places they need to look to take into account the estimates and assumptions. This knowledge will give them the power to critically evaluate options, make solid business decisions, and create a strong, balanced organization.

Audience members will become:

• Savvy decision-makers who employ appropriate data and judgment to make good business decisions
• Insightful managers and leaders who understand the performance of their company
• Department leaders who can balance the power of the accounting and finance departments to create a healthy organization

The Power of Financial Intelligence
Don't you wish you could look at a company's financial statements with a crystal ball and see the real story? In the Power of Financial Intelligence keynote, Joe shows audience members how to discover the story behind the numbers. Imagine salespeople understanding the key financial issues of customers and prospects. Imagine managers understanding the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. This is the keynote that will show your audience that they can uncover the real story behind the numbers.

Audience members will be able to:

• Identify ratios that reveal the story underneath the numbers
• Discuss strengths and weaknesses in competitors’ and customers’ financials
• Explain the art of finance

The Five Critical Numbers
Lots of numbers get thrown around by Wall Street and its analysts when looking at companies’ results. How do you know what to look at and how to compare companies? When it comes down to it, there are really just five numbers that are critical to the marketplace. In The Five Critical Numbers keynote, Joe Knight explains those five and why they are the key numbers to study and understand. Once armed with this kind of knowledge about any company, you’ll be ahead of most of your peers and many of your bosses.

Audience members will be able to:

• Speak the language of business, the numbers
• Describe the big five numbers and why they are important
• Analyze a company’s results using the big five
• Explain what the marketplace is considering and why

The Financial Meltdown Exposed
What happened? It started with a few bad mortgages. The mortgage companies that were at fault were blamed. Then banks started to fail. And then, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed a rescue. And finally, the entire system (it seemed) was in peril.

All of this has all of us talking about finance, and probably learning more than we ever thought we would about balance sheets, bad assets, equity warrants, and more. But what does it all really mean, and how did it happen? The Financial Meltdown Revealed keynote will show you, in a clear and straightforward way, how it all started, and why it came crashing down. And in the process, you'll learn about strong balance sheets, and weak ones, why the credit market is so critical to both Wall Street and Main Street, and how you can watch financials in the future to protect your money.

From this timely and important keynote, audience members will be able to become:

• Savvy consumers of the information we are given by the news media, by the government, and by Wall Street
• Insightful employees, managers, and leaders who can look at their own (and any other company's) balance sheet and assess its health
• Confident investors who understand how the house of cards came tumbling down

The Financially Intelligent Approach to Project Based Businesses
Many project-based businesses struggle to measure profitability on long-term projects while they are in progress. Accounting conventions recommend recognizing revenue and profit by comparing actual cost on a project to the projected budgeted cost. Unfortunately, this method leads to inconsistent project-based income statements and can lead many project-based businesses to financial trouble.

In this session you will learn how a small project-based business, Setpoint Systems, found a solution to the cost-based project accounting problem and how it was implemented. Attendees will hear about project earned value concepts that Setpoint used to develop a weekly tracking system and a ‘big board’ where the entire company gathers weekly to review company financials, including key profitability indicators such as gross profit per hour and percentage of total labor charged direct to projects.

Audience members will be able to:

• Describe the problems with traditional project management
• Explain how earned value more accurately reflects the revenue and costs earned in a project
• Develop a tracking system and communication plan around projects