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"it is possible for a company to show net profit and a good ROI and still go bankrupt." "You mean if it runs out of cash," I say. "Exactly," he says. "Bad cash flow is what kills most of the businesses that go under." "So you have to count cash flow as a third measurement?" He nods.

"Let's say you figure it out and you come up with $10 million net profit . . . an absolute measurement. Offhand, that sounds like a lot of money, like you really raked it in. But how much did you start with?" He pauses for effect. "You see? How much did it take to make that $10 million? Was it just a million dollars? Then you made ten times more money than you invested. Ten to one. That's pretty goddamned good. But let's say you invested a billion dollars. And you only made a lousy ten million bucks? That's pretty bad." "Okay, okay," I say. "I was just asking to be sure." "So you need a relative measurement, too," Lou continues. "You need something like return on investment . . . ROI, some comparison of the money made relative to the money invested."