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Tools for real business owners

Practical frameworks, guides, and reference materials drawn from the financial conversations in Celmado episodes. Designed for Argentine entrepreneurs navigating real economic conditions.

Financial Frameworks

What concepts come up most in our interviews?

These are the financial frameworks and concepts that appear most frequently across Celmado episodes — the building blocks of real business financial literacy.

Break-Even Analysis

Understanding the point at which your revenue covers all costs — fixed and variable — is the most fundamental financial milestone for any new business. Many entrepreneurs in our episodes didn't calculate this before starting.

Startup Cash Flow Planning

Cost Structure Mapping

Separating fixed costs from variable costs, and understanding which costs scale with revenue versus which don't, is a recurring theme in episodes. This framework helps identify where businesses are most financially vulnerable.

Operations Fixed Costs Margins

Cash Flow Runway

How many months can you operate if revenue drops to zero? The concept of cash runway — knowing exactly how long your reserves will last — appeared in nearly every episode as something entrepreneurs wish they'd understood earlier.

Liquidity Risk Reserves

Working Capital Cycle

The time between paying for inputs and receiving payment from customers creates a working capital gap. In Argentina's inflationary context, this gap has specific financial costs that many entrepreneurs don't account for when pricing their products.

Inventory Inflation Pricing

Opportunity Cost Framework

When entrepreneurs discuss what they would do differently, opportunity cost comes up repeatedly — the cost of choosing one path over another. This framework helps evaluate financial decisions beyond their direct cost.

Decision-Making Strategy Hindsight

Contribution Margin by Product

Not all products or services contribute equally to covering fixed costs. Understanding which items in your mix have the highest contribution margin — and focusing on selling those — is a practical tool for improving overall business health.

Pricing Product Mix Profitability
From the Episodes

Recurring financial lessons

These patterns appear across multiple episodes, regardless of sector or city. They represent the shared financial experience of Argentine entrepreneurship.

Underestimating startup costs Almost every entrepreneur we've spoken to spent more than they planned in the first three months. The categories most often underestimated: permits and registration, initial inventory, and the cost of the first hire.
Delaying the first salary Most entrepreneurs delayed paying themselves for far longer than planned — often over a year. This has real personal financial consequences that affect decision-making and resilience.
Pricing without full cost visibility Businesses that priced their products or services without a complete picture of their actual costs — including their own time — consistently found themselves working hard for little or no margin.
The cost of the wrong first hire Hiring decisions made too quickly, without clear role definitions, appear repeatedly as expensive mistakes — not just in salary cost, but in the time spent managing the situation and the impact on early operations.
Informal financing and its real cost Many entrepreneurs used family loans or informal credit. The financial cost of these arrangements is often zero — but the relational cost can be significant, and it rarely gets discussed openly until it's a problem.
The inventory trap Buying too much inventory to get a better unit price — without accounting for storage costs, spoilage, or demand uncertainty — is a pattern that appears across food, retail, and manufacturing episodes alike.