For the economically nave and entrepreneurial utopia seekers, this isn’t an article for you. Press that ‘X’ at the top right side of the computer screen and open up a new browser and go to the official Obama page where you’ll get the lies you need in order to feel like your corporate concepts actually have a place in reality.
For those of us who are more comfortable with the truth and understand that the gentle lapping shore is nothing more than a typhoon of lava spinning uncontrollably around you, keep reading. Every second of ever day there is a new crisis that will come to a head via methods by your opposition that is out of bounce and under the belt. They don’t care about your image damage or crumbling client base due to this blatant ‘lie’ or sucker punch aftermath. Your response should be just as dirty and everlasting.
Never allow an individual, client or competitor to get close enough to where they can engage and initiate an offensive but when it happens, you need to take this ‘tap to the chin’ and respond with a sledgehammer to the skull of the opponent. You will need to pummel them from every angle both personally and professionally.
The first thing you need to do is downplay the negative publicity issued by this entity in regards to you or your company. For this you need to take every ounce of legitimacy and industry authority and first call it into question by publicizing concepts that will confuse the public as to the company’s ability to follow through with their claims, next inject cancer into the cell that carries the message attached to this company so that every area of coverage that this company has becomes infected with the message that you put out.
Find out, first about the individual that has taken it upon themselves to publicize their negative opinion about your company, next who is his direct management, who is the executive over this management and next who are their most obvious strategic partners and who is their most critical distribution or sales alliance and finally are they public or a private entity.
With the above information you should chart the entity with a plan for annihilation, this offensive must be quick, strategic, planned to the ‘t’ and without mercy. And finally this devastation must be via third party and as public as possible. The best way to get this done is by calling up localized competitors who have been affected by the market presence of this company and organize them as a regional militia that will infiltrate the entity and follow through on your behalf. To get them to the point of action, show them the advantages of owning the regional market share of this target. Offer them economic supplementation for their efforts. Use an outside social media vendor to help this militia gain the regional advantage and distribution mechanism under their name via your social media vendor. You need to stay in control of the social media distribution so that the information release is timed perfectly.
The attach must encompass the individual personally that initiated this process against your company. Every ounce of legitimacy they have must be called into question and then stamped out of existence so that their presence can’t possibly be perpetuated in the industry by getting another position in this particular niche. Then work your way up the management chain, each time mentioning the initiator that put this into motion.
Corporate crisis management is not a defensive but a war strategy offensive. It’s not an act of ‘reaction’ it’s the act of obscene annihilation that is swift, public and a demonstration to others of what will happen if they try to cross you.
The objective of today’s CEO is survival; survival in terms of enterprise position. The CEO has to pick up the shattered remnants left behind by the lies and failures of elected officials and institutions. Today’s senior executive needs to be a congressman, judge, mayor and priest all rolled up into one. The livelihood of one’s employees/constituency depends on the expansion tactics, emotional stamina, intellectual foresight and willingness to enter into an economic cage brawl to protect the company, shareholders and employees that depend on the entity’s survival for monetary sustenance.
Surround yourself with the most proven advisers you can find as you expand and go public. Recruit guerrilla networking maniacs to set up strategic alliances to grow your company into new areas. Expand when competitors expect you to roll up and die. Keep in touch with shareholders. Communicate with newsletters, email, press release and via expert panel interviews on TV and radio.
Step up and take your position at the apex of the influence pyramid of your industry by demonstrating your expert status with podcasts, ipod and ipad information applications, webinars and a solid blog. Give the market what it wants, free information. Make ‘how to’ videos, write informative articles. Educate the public and lead them to your company for facilitation. Always promise low and deliver in a way that is beyond the expectations of the customer and shareholder.
In every environment there are leaders and followers. The leaders will each have a flock. Do your research and initiate communication with these shepherds. Show them the advantages to coming down your path and the rest will take care of itself. Win/win relationships always yield possibilities for capitalization.
Seek out board or advisory positions with inter-industry entities and set up powerful alliances where you can share the weight of publicity and merge distribution channels. Get to know your legislative representation. Find out what bills they are sponsoring and co-sponsoring and offer expert input and cooperation for legislation having to do with your industry. Once you’ve achieved a relationship or mention in a bill, publicize it. Become the face to a movement.
Lastly, do some good! Get involved at the grass roots level and change people’s lives. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, put together a company scholarship to help hardworking seniors go to college, coordinate with your employees to volunteer at nonprofit events and of course you’ll put this interaction through the regular publicity channels to set the standard for your locality as well as your industry.
People no longer believe in their congressman, senator, president or prime minister. These positions are filled by do nothing power enthusiasts. C-level executives step up and step forward. The road will be difficult and challenging to navigate but in these times we need leaders who see the bigger picture and are willing to carry the torch and lead.
I’m a fan of all things Machiavellian, the only downside, well, he’s been dead for a while so I had to settle for ‘The Prince’ in audio, video, books, mp3 and every other way I can get my political strategies kick. I found myself being drawn to type in certain keyword phrases and came across a company called Princeton Corporate Solutions, a boutique corporate and political strategies firm working globally with political crisis management and domestically on the IPO scene.
I had the pleasure of being introduced to the CEO of this company, James Scott, while I was in Midtown, Manhattan last week. I was coming out of the Yale Club and saw a group of 10 or more consultants standing next to a Lincoln Town car and inside, there he was, on the phone and puffing the infamous Baccarat Churchill, sunglasses and completely unaware of the group waiting to talk to him when he got out of the car. I heard the name Machiavelli a dozen times in less than 60 seconds and I was hooked, I had to find out who this guy was.
After a few minutes, he stepped out of the car, the first person to greet him was an NYU student who asked him to sign her thesis paper (that’s not a joke, that actually happened). He signed someone’s copy of ‘The Art of War’ and even the box of an audio version ‘The 48 Laws of Power’. All you could hear is ‘Mr. Scott, where are you staying?’ and ‘Are you going to be speaking in the city’ and so on.
He took off his sun glasses and put on his black rimmed specs and imagine my dismay when I saw he wasn’t even 40 years old, handsome, exquisitely dressed and a look that could hypnotize a cobra, I had to meet him.
If you are an economic or political strategist, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve certainly heard of him. He’s called on by governments who need economic turnaround strategies. He’s called on by publicly traded corporations for crisis management and to give his blessing to the board on their new CEO choice or bless the CEO’s decision to make a move against another industry player. He works his magic when a pre public company needs to be globalized with strategic alliances to set a solid pathway to a fast tracked success. He can pick a board of directors for a new company going public that would bring a tear to the eye of any shareholder. His crisis management will shift the defensive position to a company’s largest competitor. He’s taken what started as hostile takeover and turned it into the most financially prosperous year his client’s corporation has ever had.
James Scott has a reputation for perpetual success and the inability to lose. He is what every CEO wishes they could be and what every board wishes they could hire. You’ve never seen focus until you watch his eyes when counseling COO on how to grow a company by 30% in a year while cutting 15% of its workforce and shutting down 11 locations by off shoring, carefully identified partners for hard-hitting global alliances and other strategies that defy logic but seem to work every time.
After about 20 minutes things calmed down and I was accompanied by a friend who is with one of the broker dealers downtown who knew him and I asked for an introduction. He was walking down to a cigar shop down the street (one of those members type places, the name escapes me) we walked with him. During the five minute walk his phone rang a number of times and in that time I heard him speak Korean, English, Spanish and Mizo (a language spoken only in one state in the northeastern section of India called Mizoram). The phone stopped ringing long enough to say hello and get a quick intro.
I shook his hand, introduced myself and asked him “What is your secret?”, he chuckled and then asked me, “What is the difference between a tactician and a strategist?” I said, “I don’t know” he responded, ‘Neither does anyone else and that’s the secret’. After that he went down the steps to the members lounge and I’ve only been reading about him ever since.
It’s funny. I thought I had it all together until I came across this man. I felt that I had general economics figured out and that I was on a fast paced road to success and I find myself pondering the reality that I’m 64 years old and I haven’t even scratched the surface.
As a journalist I find myself ghost writing books for self absorbed executives and politicians and never able to take credit for it. I usually get a call from the executive’s publicist and they want me to write a bunch of garbage about his soft side, his humanitarian side or his golf swing. The article is written, published, the clients happy and I feel like a sell out with no journalistic integrity because in this industry, to pay the bills means to compromise and do things you don’t like. This interview was different, completely different.
I met James Scott at Earl’s, a fine dining establishment for Bucks County’s upper crust. The waitress was a snob, I was invisible to the bartender and the experience of waiting for him to arrive was a pride swallowing nightmare that is difficult to put into words then James walks in, polished, confident and ready to get down to business. “Why is my friend still standing” he snapped at the waitress walking by, “I’ll be with you in a…” before she could finish, he interrupted, “we’ll find our own seat, you’ll find us and bring us menus, Steve follow me”. We grabbed a table and to him, this was normal. “If you wait once you’ll spend your life waiting. So what can I do for you?”
I was expecting someone older, in their 50’s or 60’s, he was in his 30’s with a chip on his shoulder to act as warning to any opposition, anytime, anyplace that you may start an argument or debate, he’ll finish it. I became drawn in immediately. He received a call as we sat down from a congressman in the north east and spoke with such confidence, eloquence and authority I felt as though I was sitting in front of an 80 year old statesman that’s been born and bred into the political strategies game.
When he hung up my first question was “Where do you get your confidence to talk to power players with such comfort and ease?” He looked up at me with a glare that was focused and made me feel he was looking into me as opposed to at me and replied, “I think confidence is all relative to what you know and what you know you know” with a grin, he crossed his legs, ran both hands over his slacks and continued, “I made it a habit early on to say as little as possible so that when I was ready to talk I had the attention of the entire room. I made sure that I studied the attendees and read through the body language and speech patterns of everyone there to find the leaders, followers, supporters and skeptics and after collecting all this information I could determine who I needed to address in the room. After 12 years of studying body language and voice patterns it becomes a process of analyzing the situation at hand and responding with an objective strategy that can be applied to the situation. I gained confidence from the successes of using this process time and time again.”
“How do you define this unique area of consulting that you specialize in? There are only 3 or 4 other consultants globally that have the contacts to both economic power players and political lobbyists and special interest groups. How do you keep everyone happy in such a stressful environment where crisis management is typically the job you’re being hired for?”
The waitress arrived at the table, it was 10:35am, some people were still having breakfast, I ordered a coffee, he ordered a vodka tonic, double Belvedere with extra lime as if drinking in the morning was normal behavior. He answered “My core consulting genre is strategic facilitation. I started with public and pre public corporations by setting them up properly to go public, then my firm would take them public, put together a post public investor relations process to grow their marketability to investors and then help them expedite their growth with acquisitions and merger identification and facilitation.” He continued, “I began getting involved on the political side as I would be contacted by a lobbyist group that was working with a congressman or senator who had issues they were trying to sort out and there was no one to call so they would typically get referred to me from a board member of a company I structured and they would say something like, ‘our candidate is having a similar issues that the CEO of ABC Inc was having and we wanted to see if you could come on board to help us work it out . . .’ and that’s how I started getting involved on the political side. Politics just like general corporate and economic strategies have many similar threads. I just try to use the experience from one project for the next and so on. I guess more than anything now I’m a fixer but I’m working more with lobbyists and special interest groups.”
I asked him what prompted the change from focusing on corporate strategies to lobby and special interest, “Well, at the end of the day politicians are the visual identification for an agenda. The agenda is typically started by demands from the localized constituency. Lobbyist and special interest groups spend millions of dollars researching statistics and geographic layouts to find the areas of the country/world that their prototypical support base resides. The next move is to identify the political power-base in that region and initiate support planning. If the political figures are open the next thing is localized job creation and general economics. The convergence of the two in a way that is conducive to instantaneous capitalization and results is where I come in. I work with lobby firms because that is where the real power is, not the actual politician.”
Again, every word was pronounced perfectly, his vocabulary was authoritative, his eyes didn’t blink, his posture was perfect and I have to admit, I couldn’t find a single chink in his armor. There wasn’t an ounce of pretentious or insecure put-downs or belittling of anyone and in talking to him I felt myself gaining more and more respect and admiration for him.
This 30 something ‘kid’ has more global political pull than even the most seasoned politician yet he was comfortable in his skin and completely calm. His breathing was paced and as I looked for the prototypical nervous habits such as a bouncing foot on the floor, sweaty brow, nail biting etc, none were present. He was, in every sense of the term a W.A.S.P without a single trace of insecurity. I was in awe and when I think about it now I believe I took something away with me that day. I’m 54 years old and I have to admit, I look up to him. That may sound strange and it’s even stranger to admit this after I’ve been writing on economics for 25 years.
As we wrapped up the meeting (he only set 20 minutes aside for me and time flew by) his next meeting rolled in. A Chinese oil company needing his strategies to help them out of some issues in Africa. “have a seat gentlemen” he said “I’m going to walk my friend out and will be back in a moment.” He walked me out and we shook hands and he said, “I know you’re a journalist and you’ll want to ask me how I want to be portrayed in the article and I would say this, just go with your gut. I have nothing to hide and my reputation is more about what I am able to accomplish for my clients as opposed to what potential clients read about me. Just write for your readers and it will be fine.” He put his left hand on my shoulder while his right hand stopped shaking my hand and just held it for a moment and then he walked away.
That’s it. That was my interview with James Scott, CEO of the almighty Princeton Corporate Solutions. We didn’t get into the juicy family topic because he wouldn’t mix work and family, we didn’t cover any controversy that surrounds him because there is none, there are no legitimacy issues with him as his cell phone has the world’s most influential professionals and political organizations on first name speed dial.
What I took away from this interview is one thing. The economy is in shambles our government is a disaster but there is a part of me that feels safe and secure knowing that James Scott is involved in the process. We need people like him to help the power structure keep order and to make the moves by these groups solid, strategic and strong enough to help us rebound the devastation we are now experiencing. We need leaders who were born to lead to take us as a people by the hand and tell us that it’s going to be OK and to just focus on our jobs and family, there are qualified people working in the shadows that don’t need nor want special recognition or their names in lights. James Scott is the silent leader that enables crumbling economies to rise again and hopeless corporate organizations to thrive. Keep an eye out for him; chances are he’s turning around a company or an economy near you.
In the strategies of war, how does a new regional military power or upstart guerrilla troop solidify their position? They identify their adversaries and eliminated them. How is business any different? The truth is the strategies are identical while the actual elimination process differs. War is fought with bombs and guns, economics is fought by crushing an idea or believe system that perpetuates the money machine behind a company, take away the public believe system based on the concept put out by a company and you’ve eliminated their ability to survive.
Corporate branding, marketing and all promotion centers around piercing the minds of the public to inject an idea that ultimately triggers them to have an emotional need for your service or product. Few purchase decisions are spontaneous but for those that are it’s a matter of putting making something available with the threat of taking it away.
When injecting an idea in the mind of the involuntary recipient it must be like a candy coated indigestible as opposed to a spinal tap entry. Smooth and easy as opposed to painful and forced. Some sugar coatings take on the identity of a comedic TV commercial where laughter is the mechanism used to bypass the critical faculty while a sappy emotional segment may work for others.
The key to obtaining and maintaining one’s position is to identify your immediate competition, deal with them and once this is facilitated move on to the next potential threat. For the immediate competitor one elimination strategy that tends to work regardless of industry is to analyze the regional market in which you find a competitor of equal size who is in direct competition with you and then find his localized upstart or micro competitors and via third party strategically align your agenda with their promotional tactics. Help them to collectively and unknowingly pinpoint and weaken specific products and services that pronounce the actual threat to your company. Phase two is to make yourself known to them via this third party introduction and buy equities in these companies and contractually obligate them to use this capital for designated promotional solutions that will grow that regional company. You want this money to be used to infiltrate the region with your services/products and have the new partners go into their established client base with mailers, phone calls and in person sales calls and introduce your company and solutions to them.
Your initial competitor will begin to lose traction (assuming they are a public company) and their stock price will begin to fall, you want to begin buying stock in this competing company but not enough to stimulate or increase the share price. A combination of multiple subsidiary elements ganging up on this one particular company in addition to your firm buying equities in a plummeting stock will deliver to you the control you need in order to remove this entity as an obstacle to your growth.
As the company lessens in market share and comes into a new phase of financial hardship, help the process along by now adding the sell/buy process to damage their stock that much more (obviously, before initiating this phase talk to legal counsel for advice). Now that the stock is at a critical volume and price you can step in and flood the market with the stock that you purchased to send them into ‘penny stock’ domain, the kiss of death for any company that wants to stay on or eventually qualify for the NASDAQ (don’t look at this as losing money, you should see it from the perspective of gaining long term market share) and when the company is close to shutting their doors, you can step in as the savior with investment capital, acquisition proposal or workout a subsidiary type merger.
By this time the company is so weak they have no choice but to accept on of the above options thus, you’ve accomplished the elimination of a competitor while creating a virtual monopoly in this regional based strategy. There is a template strategy that straddles political and economical situations. The template is the same while it needs to be adapted with a customized process.
Today, companies are truly moving forward or crumbling, there is no in between. I hate clichs but this is reality. By now, unless you’ve been living in a cave you’re highly familiar with the successes, failures and genius of global securities guru Warren Buffet and monopoly mastermind Bill Gates. They’ve changed the face of business and all who come to the scene now seem to be some morphed hybrid of the two as neo consultants and corporate strategists draw their inspiration from all or a portion of ideologies and processes originated from these two men.
They’ve introduced a side to acquisitions, mergers, globalization and monopolizing markets that university business professors and modern day corporate leaders were blind to but now a sub industry has been introduced based on the theories and concepts of these entrepreneurs. As a freelanced writer and ghost writer for blogs, journals, newspapers and other medias I spend my life researching the ‘next great thing’ and in this case of spend years researching the next international economic trend setter, rule breaker and the one individual that will do the impossible, merge economics with politics in a socially positive and economically responsible approach.
We all know that money is the driving force behind politics but no one has been able to blatantly stand in front of a room of American and European economists and trend setters and actually prove the ability to formulate real, publicity friendly strategies for actual domestic and global alliances between major economic powerhouses and international political figureheads, lobbyists and special interest groups. But last week my search ended when I was having drinks and a small out of the way hotel in the Washington DC suburbs of Alexandria, VA.
Let me walk you through my experience. I was meeting a lobbyist for Israeli affairs to get some insider information and quotes for an article I’m writing on the Palestinian/Israel conflict and my source agreed to meet me for a few minutes before another meeting he seemed to be pretty excited about. We sat down and the first thing that took me back was this gentleman, an extremely renown strategist for all things ‘lobby’ as he’s called on specifically when governments or other lobbyists are in crisis management mode. As we were sitting down he said, ‘Here you sit there and I’ll sit here, I don’t want to be late for this meeting as it will dictate my firms survival in the near future’ as he said this he seemed nervous. We sat down at two armchairs in the lobby so that we could talk and view the guests for this insider’s meeting as they came in.
As it got closer to 9pm (the time the meeting was to start) I witnessed some of the most influential senators, congressmen, ex-presidents and prime ministers and other major lobby group senior partners, not to mention CEO’s and CFO’s that I’ve only seen on TV and read about in Fortune and other business journals that have turned down my work in the past (I’m not bitter…ok maybe I am). At this point I knew something was up so I asked my source if I could join him and I’d do the note taking so all he had to do was sit and listen as none of his staff was with him to take up this task, he agreed.
As the meeting was ready to start I found myself in a room with 50 of the most prestigious names in politics and some of the most pedigreed men in business (strangely there wasn’t a single female in the room which I didn’t realize until I looked over my attendance notes before writing this freelance entry). The room was nothing but an ocean of whispers and head nod greetings and I truly felt as though I had stumbled upon some Bilderberg sub-group or illuminati think tank meeting. Above the whispers I kept hearing one word ‘Machiavelli’ but there was no tongue and cheap grin after the name, these men were using this name with curiosity and absolute awe.
The meeting was called to order just like a traditional board meeting and the ’speaker’ was introduced, James Scott from Princeton Corporate Solutions. I heard of the company but never the name of the individual. As he was introduced everyone sat up straight then leaned in to hear what this guy had to say with the focus you would if you believed you had the winning lottery ticket at the number announcement.
James came from the back of the room to the front. He stood there in front of a room of political and corporate masters and I could see the reality and truth in everything that I’ve ever heard about an invisible puppet master behind every face of a political, Fortune 100 CEO/Board and special interest group. As I’m looking at him I’m looking at the men in the room and feel myself getting whiplash as I’m trying to put the pieces together. Turns out James Scott has been the strategies consultant to some of the biggest moves in recent global economic and socio-political history. He’s assisted these men with getting elected to their positions via multiple indirect ‘cat’s paw’ consultants and this was actually the first time many of these gentlemen have actually met him though he’s created and perpetuated their careers.
As he spoke you could hear a pin drop in the room. This 30-something strategist could pierce the Berlin wall with the focus in his eyes. His voice spoke with the authority of a demigod with a hundred lifetimes of strategies experience with zero indicators of second guessing or insecurity in his voice. His posture was Napoleonic and each time he would mention one of the attendees by name they would crumble and blush like the child of a father praising them for a job well done.
As I began to recuperate from this mind warp I felt a nudge from the lobbyist I was accompanying and he motioned a pen to pad gesture which indicated that I was to get down to taking notes. The meeting came down to introducing economic and influential political contacts to one another as both sides were delegated a particular task. This was the first time that I’ve ever witnessed someone of influence offering a strategically entwined relationship between business and the legislators who directly influence the outcome of business decisions and vice versa in a way that wasn’t damaging, lopsided or with a critical ulterior motive that would injure one side while serving the other.
Here is what I took away from the meeting in short, as I’m trying to condense a 5 hour meeting into a few paragraphs, basically impossible but let me try though the attempt to assimilate this information in a way that is conducive to getting my point across which may be fatal from the onset but I’ll give it a shot.
The approach by James Scott was entirely Machiavellian in nature with the realities that in order to serve the greater good, some contributors fall to the wayside while others are part of the future picture and overall stratagem. Some of the people in the room were tacticians while others were affiliated because they were strategists. The difference between the two in this case were the tacticians were those in the scholastic/analytical field of a lifetime of memorization of previous policy contributors while the strategists were the facilitators of those formulaic tactics by adapting policy and scholastics to the real world environment and current events.
Corporations create the jobs that fuel the local economies which collectively can turn around a domestic economy. Politicians are assisted by lobby organizations and special interest groups in gaining a platform which brings with it the followers that will vote to keep them in office to perform the tasks that will assist in the greater good and put into action the ideas and concepts of the lobbyists as the lobbyists are the ultimate voice of the people. This circle of influence is what fuels economic prosperity and lack of communication between these groups can deteriorate an economy (basically what we are seeing now). The path has been deviated one too many times and the convergence of policy makers and facilitators has been derailed and we find ourselves in international chaos at every front.
This meeting cracked through, captured and set a road map for economic recovery by taking into consideration all the elements and parties as pertaining to this recuperation equation. The incestuous necessity of voter spearheads, legislatures and corporations is a mandatory prerequisite to a growing and stable socio-economic formula that will rebound and flourish. I must admit, the above is a pathetic Cliff Notes version of the meeting and it would take multiple encyclopedia size entries to even attempt, though most likely fatal, to give the reader a modest breakdown of the influential decisions that were made in that room and the positive path we set for real, long-lasting recovery.
As I left the meeting there was a sense of overall ease and a refreshed outlook on the future and for the first time in a long time I actually felt good about the outlook of this country, the west and the global strategies in motion and being configured to make this world a better place for all of us and all this rooted in the strategies formulated by a guy you’ve never heard of and a company you probably couldn’t hire even if you wanted to. It’s a strange world we live in but thanks to leaders such as James Scott (I’m currently researching him and will post more entries about him and his background as new information is made public) who would rather focus on a positive influence then standing in front of cameras as self promoters we will evolve out of this diseased global situation and into one that flourishes for all of us.
For those of you in a mad dash for funding you’ve obviously realized that banks and institutional lenders aren’t going to be parting with their cash anytime soon. The bailout money provided to them by our tax dollars was meant o jump-start the entrepreneurial community and spike job creation but this just as everything else our government does with the shake down capital it rapes from it’s citizens is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Yes they are taking your money and placing our children in the greasy talon grip of indentured servitude without a choice and yes the banks were suppose to use this bailout money for our economy but the hand is quicker than the eye and here we are again, broke and left in economic limbo as once again the system and the government sucker punched hard working citizens, drug them into a dark alleyway and put the beat down on Joe Public. Who will come to your defense if the government that has an emergency IV hooked up to your bank account and wallet will do nothing but lie as reciprocation for destroying your company, taking your money and pummeling your children into submission as future economic lab rats.
There has been a lot of talk about Regulation d (regulation d 504, regulation d 505 and regulation d 506) also referred to as a Private Placement Memorandum which is a little used process of raising public capital via private placement with an SEC approved process for raising capital for private companies. In a typical economy investors will get involved and let their investment ride while the company restructures and pays out modest dividends prior to the payback of the Reg D payback.
Here is the problem with Regulation D, in these current economic conditions an investor is demanding a built in exit strategy with a time limit and the investment must be done in a strategic, solid manner. A prototypical, off the shelf PPM will have too many restrictions for an accredited investor to be able to sell their shares to a ready market which means the investor will need to hang onto those shares for 24+ months and just hope that the company doesn’t go broke during that period.
Here is an alternative. Use the regulation d rule 506 exemption as a pre public structure to raise just enough capital to get your company moving and use the additional proceeds to go public on the OTCBB (over the counter bulletin board). Place the pre public investor’s names on the s1 so that they can trade without restriction when the company is public just a few months later. There is you exit strategy and optimal capital raise. Make your fund raising efforts count, reg d is a great pre OTCBB structure which will provide the powerful exit strategy that will have investors banging your door down with interest.
Before you decide to go public allow me to paint a picture for you. You’re on a crowded beach, the water is warm, the waves are calm and you decide to break away from the crowd and confidently swim a little further than everyone else. All is calm; the sun gently warms your back as one stroke after the next takes you further from the beach and closer to the distant horizon. A few minutes later the sun is covered by clouds and like a bomb ‘BAM’ a crack of thunder, lightning lights up the sky and buckets of rain begin to pour from gray clouds. You look back and the entire beach is deserted.
The lifeguard shack is empty and the waves begin to build. You’re trying to swim back to shore but the current violently drags you out further into the ocean. You fight to stay afloat as one wave after the next crashes upon you. Your lungs fill up with water, you’re muscles cramp and just as you’re about to give into your fate, the rain stops and the water becomes calm. You can gather just enough energy to begin to swim back to the beach. All of a sudden you feel a bump on your thigh and then a sharp pain on your foot as you’re drug down into the darkness and as you fight to free yourself you notice that you’ve unknowingly swam into the center of a starving school of sharks and they take turns gnawing off pieces of your flesh.
Your arms, back, legs, neck, face, chest and feet all shredded by the razor sharp teeth of sharks. The blood only attracts more sharks of different colors and shapes. All you can do is kick, punch and scream to keep your limbs intact then suddenly you feel sand beneath your feet, you’ve reached the shoreline and you craw with every ounce of strength you have left toward the abandoned lifeguard shack. Once you’re on land you look out at the ocean and the entire expanse of the water is teaming with sharks. You look down at your body and though in one piece has been ripped to shreds.
This is the most accurate description I can give of what it’s like to try to go public or expand globally without the proper game plan and consultants watching your back and helping you contemplate your chain of moves as you go forward. There is an entire industry out there that is just waiting for you to step off the path and into the shadows so they can get a piece of you. Wasted capital here, wasted capital there, it all adds up.
When taking your company public or planning a product or service expansion into outside geographic proximities why go it alone? Seek out qualified consultants that can navigate you through the shark infested waters so that you can achieve your goals quickly and with as few bumps in the road as possible.
I was recently on a conference call with a new client and their accountant who insisted on meeting with me because he wanted to pre qualify me. After a few questions when I was setting up the call I could tell right away that this accountant was a pure amateur and was trying to look like the ‘big dog’ to his clients, being one who invites and enjoys confrontation I took on the meeting. I love negotiating and debating on topics in which I’m well versed so I knew this would be fun.
The call started with the accountant jumping in to take control of the conversation and asked me if I wouldn’t mind explaining what I am planning to do for this client. From beginning to end, this individual was completely out of his element as he’s never had direct contact with an IPO or Global strategies facilitator or someone with international legislative contacts to put to work on behalf of the client to expedite growth and revenues.
After my brief 30 second presentation there was silence on the other end of the line which typically means the opposing party cant intellectually formulate a response due to the sheer lack of experience in this field. So then I continued but instead of a presentation, I became concerned that I was getting involved in a project that had flees and I may need to step away if too many unqualified people were involved.
I proceeded to ask him the following questions that any consultant should ask of a person who claims to be an insider with your client. “How big is your accounting practice”…2000+ clients he boasts. My next question was “Wow! Great then please give me the breakdown of the inter-client base strategic partnerships you have created on behalf of this client to speed up their growth and increase their revenues?” He couldn’t respond because he didn’t know what strategic alliances were. I continued, being that this company has been trying to raise capital for over a year, with 2,000 clients obviously you have access to accredited investors, how much money have you raised and what SEC approved vehicle did you use to distribute shares for equity?” again, there was silence on the other end of the line. This was the way the entire call went which demonstrated to my client that they will obviously have to break out of that relationship for and experienced accounting firm who understands how to work with clients in expansion mode.
When you hire an accountant to do the books for your company, of course you want to make sure that they can perform the general tasks of numbers but you also need to evaluate their current client base and their track record for setting up partnerships between their clients? An accountant who doesn’t network his client base isn’t worth the fee. In this economic environment you need to choose your accounting professionals based off of strict criteria.
You don’t need a number cruncher. You need a number crunching networking executive with a strong and influential contact base to set up round table meetings, make introductions and help grow your company. Anyone with a general comprehension of tax law, book keeping and QuickBooks can be an accountant but few are able to facilitate all the additional services needed for an expanding corporation. You should pick an accounting firm based off of 10% expertise, 30% fees and 60% contacts and track record for helping expanding companies. Don’t settle for anything less.
So many times corporations look outside of their company to grow by way of mergers, acquisitions, licensing etc. Most companies lack the discipline to look inward and examine the elements inside the existing company to synergize and expand. Here is what I mean. Let’s say that you’re large landscaping company and you offer three services under this landscaping umbrella consisting of: hard-scape, lawn mowing and landscape architecture.
Now, most likely your promotions will place the general corporate image which would be ‘landscape services’ at the top of your promotional material as your efforts are to use direct mailers and yard signs to promote this service and as people call they will be introduced to your other solutions but try this.
Step one: take each of these services and treat them as standalone subsidiary entities each with their own targeted demographics promotion, tagline, logo, phone number etc. Brand each company like a stand alone and use your parent company name and logo as a stamp on each promotion and logo.
Step two: when promoting with your own phone number, ads and yard signs, imagine all of the responses coming in like a funnel. A targeted approach will strengthen the sale and speed up the selling process and then you can offer your other services individualized by their own logo but unified with the parent company stamp of approval. Target your market first, sell quickly, offer up sells to your other services.
Step three: ongoing treat each subsidiary as its own business entity. When you buy an ad for one, negotiate a deal to get the other companies in under that umbrella. Have them visually close to each other and you’ll find that will different phone numbers and logos many times people will end up calling all three subsidiaries for services, that give you three times to sell them and to get your sales staff out for an estimate. This is a powerful technique that can ad rocket fuel to your expansion efforts. Many times is most affective when you look inward not out!
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