200,000 People Just Voted on How Often You Should Check In

The SEC recently proposed a change that sounds like inside baseball. Public companies could report their results twice a year instead of four times.

Optional. Not required. Quarterly would still be the default. Companies could simply check a box if they wanted to report less often.

Then something remarkable happened. More than 200,000 comments poured in. The most responses the SEC has ever received on any proposal, according to The Wall Street Journal. And the overwhelming majority said the same thing: don't take our quarterly information away.

My favorite comment came from a public school teacher. She pointed out that she's required to report grades every quarter so parents can track their child's progress. Her question for the SEC, roughly: if quarterly paperwork is such a burden, would you be fine with your kid's teacher reporting out twice a year?

Every parent knows the answer. You don't wait until December to find out your kid is failing math.

Think about that. These are investors who own a sliver of a company they will never set foot in. Most will never meet the CEO. And they flooded a federal agency with letters to protect their right to a check-in every 90 days.

Now the uncomfortable question. Your business likely represents the majority of your net worth. When was your last investor call?

If a financial advisor told a client to put 80% of their net worth into a single stock, they'd fire them. Yet that's the position most business owners are in, without the quarterly discipline that public-company investors just fought to keep.

Here's the thing about frequency: the exact rhythm matters less than having one. Some of our clients meet quarterly. Some meet three times a year because their business cycle keeps them buried nine months out of twelve. Public companies may report quarterly, but behind the scenes they're doing this work every month, every week. The point isn't the calendar. The point is the commitment.

Here's the detail that seals it. Europe dropped its quarterly requirement back in 2013. The UK did the same about a decade ago. And what happened? Many companies kept reporting quarterly anyway. Even the ones that switched to semiannual, names like Nestlé and Roche, still give investors updates in the off quarters. Nobody makes them. They do it because the discipline is worth more than the exemption.

One page. Hard questions. Clear commitments. What did you say you'd do last quarter? Did you do it? What's standing in the way of the next one?

And you don't do it alone. Public CEOs answer to analysts. You need your own version: an advisory circle, a management team, a spouse, a peer group, anyone who will ask what you overlooked and hold you to what you said. Call them your accountability partners. The gotcha question that sinks a public CEO is the same question that transforms a private one.

If you want to see this discipline under pressure, look at IBM that same week. Their quarter came in short, and rather than wait for their scheduled earnings date, they pre-announced the miss early in a letter to investors. The CEO's own words: "this quarter we faltered."

But notice what came next. The letter didn't stop at the confession. It explained what went wrong, laid out the initiatives they're launching and accelerating to fix it, and confirmed they'd be back on their regularly scheduled call the following week to go deeper.

That's the whole formula in one letter. What happened. Why. What we're doing about it. When we'll report next. Nobody made them do any of it. The falter isn't the failure. Showing up without a plan would be.

The SEC asked if twice a year was enough. Two hundred thousand people weighed in. The answer, overwhelmingly: no.

They were talking about companies they barely own. You own all of yours. How often are you checking in, and who's asking you the hard questions?

P.S. I joined my friend Glenn Dunlap on the Best Metrics podcast to talk about what a business is actually worth, and why so few owners know their number before a buyer names it for them. Worth an hour of your drive time:

Sources: Corrie Driebusch and Caitlin Ostroff, "SEC Expected to Change Quarterly Earnings Rule Despite Public Backlash," The Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2026. & Arvind Krishna, "Arvind Krishna's Letter to IBM Investors," IBM Newsroom, July 14, 2026.