Writing For Finance Industry

No one is waking up at 7am, sipping coffee, thinking, “Wow, I really hope someone explains holistic wealth architecture today.” People want clarity. They want content that feels like a conversation, not a lecture. They want to understand what you’re saying the first time they read it. Write like you're talking to a real person. Not trying to win a Pulitzer. - Use short sentences. - Cut the jargon. - Sound like someone they’d trust with their money, not someone who spends weekends writing whitepapers for fun. Confused clients don’t ask for clarification. They move on. Here’s how to make your content clearer: 1. Ask yourself: Would my mom understand this? If the answer is “probably not,” simplify it until she would. No shade to your mom, she’s just a great clarity filter. 2. Use the “friend test.” Read it out loud. If it sounds weird or overly stiff, imagine explaining it to a friend at lunch. Rewrite it like that. 3. Replace jargon with real words. Say “retirement income you won’t outlive” instead of “longevity risk mitigation strategy.” Your clients are not Googling your vocabulary. 4. Stick to one idea per sentence. If your sentence is doing cartwheels and dragging a comma parade behind it, break it up. 5. Format like you actually want them to read it. Use line breaks. Add white space. Make it skimmable. No one wants to read a block of text the size of a mortgage document. Writing clearly isn’t dumbing it down. It’s respecting your audience enough to make content easy to understand. What’s the worst jargon-filled phrase you’ve seen in the wild? Let’s roast it.

Mastering the Sales Lingo 💼 Every finance and accounting professional needs to speak the same language as their sales team. When sales says "we booked $50K this month" and finance shows $12K in revenue, confusion follows. Understanding these key terms will help you communicate better with stakeholders and build more accurate forecasts. ➡️ BOOKING VS SALE VS REVENUE Booking happens when a customer commits to buying, typically signing a contract. A sale refers to when a customer gets billed or invoiced for a portion of the contract. Revenue is what you've earned, not necessarily billed or collected, based on accrual accounting. These three events can happen months apart, which is why your sales team celebrates while your P&L looks flat. ➡️ MONTHLY RECURRING REVENUE (MRR) MRR is the predictable monthly amount you expect from active subscriptions. This metric helps you forecast cash flows and understand your baseline business performance. For SaaS companies, MRR is often more important than total revenue because it shows sustainability. ➡️ CHURN, EXPANSION, AND CONTRACTION Churn is what you lose in revenue or customers in a given time period. Expansion happens when an existing customer increases their spend mid-contract. Contraction occurs when a customer reduces their contract value but doesn't cancel. These three metrics together tell you whether your customer base is growing or shrinking. Net revenue retention combines all three to show your true growth from existing customers. ➡️ CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COST (CAC) CAC is the total cost to acquire one new customer. Include sales salaries, marketing spend, software tools, and any other costs directly related to bringing in new business. Divide your total acquisition costs by the number of new customers acquired in that period. If you spent $10K on sales and marketing last month and gained 5 new customers, your CAC is $2K. Smart finance teams track CAC alongside customer lifetime value to ensure profitable growth. ➡️ PIPELINE AND WEIGHTED PIPELINE Pipeline represents all active deals in progress. Weighted pipeline adjusts for likelihood of closing, giving you a more realistic forecast. A $100K deal at 20% probability contributes $20K to your weighted pipeline. Smart finance teams use weighted pipeline to predict quarterly results and plan cash flows. === When you understand sales terminology, you can ask better questions during pipeline reviews. You'll spot discrepancies between sales reports and financial statements faster. Most importantly, you'll help your sales team forecast more accurately by teaching them how their bookings translate to recognized revenue. What sales term confuses you most? Share it below 👇

The CFA Curriculum Didn't Make Sense Until I Did This... Let’s be honest. Some parts of the CFA curriculum don’t just connect from reading alone. That’s when I discovered what I now call DIY Practice and it changed the game. 📌 When I was studying FRA (now FSA)... Deferred tax, pension accounting, revenue recognition, LIFO vs FIFO, IFRS vs GAAP... hell! 😉 I was getting lost and confused So I did something different. I picked up P&G’s annual report and read through it ( yes, even the notes.) I also pulled up our company’s financial statements (we’re listed) and started reading, especially the sections that involved my division. It was like decoding real-life CFA. Suddenly, the goodwill and impairment jargon made sense because I was seeing it play out in numbers I understood. Even the corporate governance and equity section clicked better when it was about a company I could relate to. 📌 Markowitz Didn't Make Sense... Until I Built It The Portfolio Management section talked about efficient frontiers, security market line... but they were not clicking. So I opened Excel. Created an imaginary portfolio. Played with asset weights, calculated risk and return, and plotted the graphs. Only then did terms like “optimal portfolio” stop sounding abstract. I built the frontier before I understood it. 📌 No Bloomberg? No problem. I didn’t always have access to Bloomberg. But Investing.com and Yahoo Finance came in handy. Those PEG ratios and valuation terms you’re trying to memorise? Go check them for Microsoft, then compare with P&G or Nvidia. That’s how I internalised growth vs value, not just reading definitions, but seeing the difference live. 📌 ETF Practice That Actually Stuck I also picked two ETFs I liked (XLP & XLF). Pulled their holdings. Linked their prices in Excel. Tracked their rebalancing. That’s where I applied tracking error, return attribution, and weight drift. It wasn’t theory anymore, it was practice. I even played with Bond duration, convexity and all in Excel at some point 📌 But where’s the time for all this? I get that question a lot. The truth is, I didn’t do all this on “study time.” I played like this on low-energy days, after long work hours, weekends, commutes or days I don't feel like reading at all ( a lot of days 😀). I was not reading cos it would be a waste of time but I was playing and making progress. If you're going the self-study route like I did, DIY practice might be the best energy booster you need. 📌 Remember this: Studying smart isn’t about doing more. It’s about making it real and making progress If you're on the CFA journey or have completed it, share your most effective study strategy below. #CFA #FSA #ExcelForFinance #PortfolioManagement #ETFAnalysis CFA Institute #Finance #management #technology #FinanceSkills #CFAJourney #StudyTips #SelfStudyCFA #DIYPractice

Understanding financials is probably one of the most important skills needed to be an effective executive. You need to be able to read and understand things like a P&L & Balance Sheet, and have a handle on things like Rule of 40 and CAC.  If you’re not familiar with these kinds of things, it can be intimidating, and if you’re looking to impress people you may feel uncomfortable asking questions about what  terms or calculations mean. But here’s what many people don’t realize. The definitions of many financial terms are not universal. Even some terms that you may THINK would have a straightforward definition. For those who are aspiring to executive roles, it is key to recognize that you often need to ask how a term is defined within your organization or by the person using it. Here’s an example. Lifetime Value of an account, or LTV, may seem like a pretty straightforward number. It’s the total revenue collected from an account over its lifetime - right? Not always.  There are at least 3 different ways you can look at LTV.  ➡ There is Revenue Based LTV, which is good to look at for early stage businesses focused on top-line revenue growth.  ➡ There is Gross-Margin based LTV, which is focused on profitability and more appropriate for mature businesses.  ➡ There is LTV based on initial ARR, with churn and expansion included, calculated against the number of renewal cycles, which is good when you're trying to model revenue over time. If you aren’t aware there can be different definitions, you may feel embarrassed if someone challenges you on a calculation. If they are more senior than you, or if you are battling with a bit of imposter syndrome, this can trigger you to shut down and assume you’re just not smart enough to get it. Instead, know that these things are not always universal. When delving into calculations and metrics, seek to understand how THEY are using the term, learn if there may be different ways to calculate things based on what your goal is, and together determine how you’ll align. Making the jump to think like an executive requires a different mindset, and while you do want to have confidence, it’s important to know when you need to ask more questions. This will not only make you smarter, but can help drive needed conversations that may uncover misalignment within your organization regarding how people are using terms or definitions. #revenuearchitecture #saas #executivecoaching

Your accountant and your board speak different languages. Same document.  6 different names.  Zero clarity. In 2026, most nonprofit leaders sit in board meetings nodding along. Someone says "P&L." Someone else says "Statement of Operations." Your auditor writes "Statement of Earnings." All three mean the same thing. But if no one told you that, you're already behind. And this confusion is costly. It erodes trust. It slows decisions. It makes you look unprepared in rooms that matter. Learn vocabulary. Not because it's impressive. Because it's your money and you deserve to understand it. In 15 years of audit and controllership work, I have watched capable leaders lose credibility in board meetings over terminology confusion not incompetence. That's fixable. The Income Statement goes by many names: → Earnings Statement → Operating Statement → Profit & Loss Statement (P&L) → Statement of Operations → Revenue Statement → Statement of Earnings The structure is always the same: Revenue → minus Cost of Goods Sold = Gross Profit → minus Operating Expenses = Operating Income → minus Non-Operating Items = Pre-Tax Income → minus Income Tax = Net Income When you know the structure, the name doesn't throw you. You can walk into any audit, any board meeting, any funder conversation and hold your ground. Financial confidence isn't a personality trait. It's a skill. And it starts with knowing what you're looking at. Save this. Share it with your team. And if your finances need more than a vocabulary lesson, comment SYSTEMS and let's talk. Follow Christina W. for more plain English financial clarity.

When I invest in businesses, one of the first documents I study is the Profit & Loss (P&L) statement. Most people see a P&L and freeze. Rows of numbers. Finance jargon. It feels like something only accountants should touch. But if you run a business (or plan to), your P&L is the best snapshot of whether you’re making money, losing money, or just treading water. Here’s how to make sense of it 1. 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 This is how much money your business brings in. But the key is not just the number, it’s the trend. Is revenue growing month by month? Is it seasonal (e.g., retail spikes in December)? Are you too dependent on one client or product? If a catering business shows $50k revenue in June but only $10k in February, that implies sales are seasonal, so you may need off-season income streams. 2. 𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐚𝐭 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐬 Expenses are usually broken into categories like salaries, rent, marketing, software, etc. Don’t glaze over as this is where most businesses sink. Are costs rising faster than revenue? Do you have “nice-to-have” expenses eating profits? Let's say you run a fintech spending $5k a month on software but only make $20k revenue, that’s a serious cost structure problem. 3. 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐭 Gross profit = Revenue – Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) This shows how much you make after covering the direct cost of delivering your product/service. Let's say a bakery sells bread for $5 but ingredients cost $4. That’s just $1 profit per loaf or a 20% gross margin. If industry average is 40%, you’re underperforming. 4. 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐭 Operating profit = Gross Profit – Operating Expenses (rent, salaries, utilities, marketing). This tells you how efficient your operations are. Consider 2 startups that are both making $100k revenue. One spends $80k on overheads (leaving $20k operating profit). The other spends $60k (leaving $40k). Same revenue, but very different efficiency. 5. 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐩 𝐍𝐞𝐭 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐭 Finally, after interest, taxes, and other extras, you get net profit. This is the real money left over. For instance, if a healtech shows $500k revenue and $450k expenses. On paper, it’s profitable. But after $40k in taxes and loan interest, it’s only left with $10k. That’s razor-thin. When you analyse the P&L, you can determine the following: Should you raise prices? Do you need to cut certain costs? Is your business scalable, or will expenses grow as fast as revenue? Are you building something sustainable, or just busy? If you can glance at a P&L and answer those questions, you’ll run your business with clarity. Your P&L is your business in numbers. If you can read it, you can steer your company in the right direction. Otherwise you may find out from your accountant that you’ve been running a charity, not a business.

𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝟵𝟵% 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆" 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝟭% 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀" 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆’𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿. As the President of TiE Atlanta and having sat on the board for years, I’ve seen thousands of pitches. There is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing a brilliant founder with a world-changing brand lose an investor’s confidence because they can’t speak the language of the term sheet. When a founder confuses financial jargon or glosses over key clauses, it creates an immediate "trust gap." Investors start to wonder: If they don’t understand how the equity works, can I trust them to manage the capital? 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵-𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽.  𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴. To help bridge this gap, I’ve put together this "𝗧𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝗦𝗵𝗲𝗲𝘁𝘀" guide. It breaks down the 21 most critical clauses, in simple terms. 𝗠𝘆 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀:  • Don't wing it: If an investor asks about your "participation rights," a "maybe" is a "no."  • Study the "Downside": Everyone plans for the exit, but clauses like "Anti-Dilution" protect you when things get bumpy.  • Leverage your network: Use resources like TiE to ask the "dumb" questions before you get to the boardroom. I want to see more founders succeed, not just get funded. Save this, study it, and walk into your next meeting with the confidence of someone who knows their business and their math. 📈🤝 Learn more about TiE Atlanta Highschool Program and TiE Atlanta Angels (TAA) to get funding opportunities through TiE #TiEAtlanta #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital

Finance has a jargon problem. Basis points. RMDs. Asset allocation. Diversification. Yield curve. If you've ever sat in a financial meeting and nodded along while secretly thinking, "I have no idea what any of these things mean," you're not alone. I've worked with brilliant clients who've worked high-power jobs, raised families, made six and seven figures, and still felt intimidated by all these terms. Let me break it down for you: - Basis points: A fancy way of saying percentages. 100 basis points = 1%. - RMDs: Required withdrawals from your retirement accounts starting at a certain age. - Asset allocation: How your money is split between different investments. - Diversification: Not putting all your eggs in one basket. - Yield curve: A chart that shows the interest rates on bonds over time. When you put it in plain English, it's not all that complicated. But Wall Street wants it to seem more complicated. And I don't believe that's an accident. Believe me when I tell you: it's NOT rocket science. Jargon makes makes any industry look smarter, more complicated, and more exclusive than it actually is. When you dress up simple financial concepts in fancy language, it makes it harder for the average person to understand (and easier for Wall Street to charge more in fees and commissions). Good advisors understand the value of transparency, and won't speak in jargon. If someone else does, they're probably not the right fit for you.

Intimidating lingo is one of the biggest artificial barriers to anything new. When I first got into investing, I kept hearing terms I pretended to understand. LP. GP. Carry. Pro rata. Cap table. Term sheet. Due diligence. I'd nod like I knew. I didn't. 🫢 So here's the cheat sheet I wish someone had handed me — in actual human language: LP (Limited Partner): You put money into a fund. Someone else picks the investments. You're a passenger with a window seat — you can see everything but you're not flying the plane. GP (General Partner): You ARE flying the plane. You pick the deals, manage the fund, and make the calls. More control, more risk, more upside. Angel investor: You write a check directly to a company you believe in. No fund, no middleman. Just you and the founder. Cap table: A spreadsheet that shows who owns what percentage of a company. If your name isn't on it, you don't own anything. Carry (carried interest): The GP's cut of the profits. Usually 20%. This is how fund managers get rich — not from fees, from carry. Term sheet: The deal memo before the deal. It outlines how much money is going in, at what valuation, and what rights investors get. If you don't understand the term sheet, you don't understand the deal. Due diligence: The homework you do before you write the check. Financials, market, team, competition. Most people skip this. Don't be most people. Pro rata: Your right to invest more in the next round so your ownership percentage doesn't shrink. This matters more than most first-time investors realize. None of this is complicated once someone explains it without the jargon. The investing world keeps these terms gatekept on purpose — because confusion keeps people on the sidelines. You're not on the sidelines anymore. Save this post. Send it to someone who needs it. And drop a term below that you've always pretended to understand — I'll break it down in plain language. #AngelInvesting #WomenAndMoney #BoldMoves #VentureCapital #FinancialLiteracy #KOVA