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Posts Tagged ‘take your company public’

I’ve been involved with more mergers and acquisitions and IPOs than I can even count. I’ve been called many names when I’m getting involved with corporate turnaround consulting but the most common of these terms are: arrogant, cocky and hardheaded. I take these names as a feather in the cap and a notch on the belt because the worst thing that can happen is that a company or board of directors hires a wimp or pushover. Having swagger when walking into a negotiation session or presentation makes all the difference. Refuse to lose and have the contacts to back up your moves.

CEO’s and executives take note…it’s ok to be cocky of you can back it up with performance. My clients love me. The people on the receiving end of my firm’s negotiations hate me (until they hire me on their next project). My hate of losing exceeds my love of winning and I’ll never stop until the clients pull me off of the project or until the transaction is done. This mentality is a must for today’s executive and corporate consultant.

I’m not saying this to impress anyone or to get more business. I’m trying to express to new CEOs of public companies and pre public companies that you have to be fierce. When you step in a room everyone has to feel it. Your presence has to be loathed by some and the epitome of curiosity by others. Keep them guessing.

Demonstrate loyalty to your client and make competitors fear being on the receiving end of your attention and above all, be calculated with your moves and stealthy with your strategy. Don’t speak until you can level the room with what you have to say and understand the reality that for every action there will be a reaction and for every strategic move you make on your clients behalf, there will be countermeasures taken by the opposition.

It’s ok to stay up at night distracted by ideas that will press the throttle peddle on behalf of your client. It’s a forgivable sin to force-feed strategies and alliances to your client that will help them get a competitive edge over their competition. And above all remember this, at the end of the day in global commerce the winning side achieves more than domination but the ability to keep and create jobs and grow through acquisition which creates more jobs and profitability. Arrogance and the refusal to lose is the beginning of this entire process. Get it or get out!

For Corporate Turnaround Services or Investor Relations and Publicity, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

Taking Your Company Public? Post Public Investor Relations Can Make Or Break Your Company Going public is an amazing undertaking with the light anticipated at the end of the tunnel is increased market share, financial stability and of course the almighty strategy of growth through acquisition. The problem is for most companies that light at the end of the tunnel isn’t anything even remotely close to the above; instead it’s a train that will crush you under it’s weight as it’s steaming full speed ahead. That train is a personification of the ‘lack’ of solid investor relations strategies in your post public existence.

Investor relations is the process of working with broker dealers, market makers, stock alert services, press release distribution, fielding calls from the media, potential investors and others interested in your company as well as general publicity to get your executive, company name and trading symbol on as many TV screens, radio waves, social media platforms and email boxes as possible.

The above is the traditional comprehension of a ‘newbie’ public CEO. What most new public CEOs lack the understanding of the post public IR concept so they don’t know what questions to ask the IR firm and have no knowledge to compare services so they sign a crap deal, the stock price doesn’t open, then plummets and everyone begins pointing the finger and on and on with the blame game.

Here is a part of investor relations that most companies never consider. A solid IR firm will have a strong network of investors, broker dealers, private equity funds etc. to create liquidation options for pre IPO investors in a way that will not damage the stock price, to the contrary, the share price will typically go up.

You need to have your consultant set up a safeguard so that when people buy and sell your shares it’s done in a way that doesn’t cause panic but induces investor confidence. When you are interviewing Investor Relations firms a few questions to ask is: how to they create the market, what safety nets and precautionary measures do they put in place to protect the integrity of your newly public company stock and how vast is their ’speed dial’ investor network (investors they have rapport with so that they can offer buy and hold stock positioning which will minimize your risk when seed investors start cashing in their shares).

For Corporate Turnaround Services or Investor Relations and Publicity, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

The ‘Spoke Wheel’ Approach To Taking Your Company Public.

A public corporation, just as a private company is composed of several contributing factors that dictate the outcome of its success. If you visualize your corporate entity as the ‘hub’ of the wheel and each spoke as a ‘contributing asset’ to the company you’ll find that the more spokes in the wheel, the more weight the wheel can carry as its strength rests on scores of unified connections working together, each with one simultaneous point of interest, the hub.

These hub connections can be anything that contributes to the overall success and perpetual, yet controlled, growth strategy of the company such as: a dozen strategic partnerships that act as growing distribution channels for your product or service, finance alliances that take care of your growth capital needs, multiple legal professionals that you can tap into for advise and corporate strategies, dozens of companies within your industry that focus on a different element of the industry but cooperate as a referral source for new business and on and on.

Your goal, in creating a solid, strategically aligned pre public and post public corporation is to keep building spokes and bringing on partners and executives that can instantly contribute to adding more strategic alliances and growth enhancers to your ever evolving and emerging corporate wheel.

If you are a public company, partnerships that you should have heavily represented in your model should be securities attorneys, market makers and broker dealers, several publicists with different areas of media focus, viral publicists, investor relations facilitators and service providers etc. Don’t forget the political contacts and padding contacts. By ‘padding’ I mean contacts that may serve no active role other than having some big names affiliated with your company that can gain attention within and outside your specific industry genre.

Go Public With Your Company, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

Our firm takes small companies and industry genre leaders public in the United States. We specialize in the OTCBB, A to Z facilitation as well as NASDAQ IR and strategies consulting. We work with global corporate entities from Greece to China, from South America to Europe. I say this not to boast or market myself but to give you some comfort that what you are about to read is based purely on experience and absolutely objective and if you are about to take your company public or trying to turn-around or restructure your public entity, this information will be of tremendous help to you.

I see companies rise and fall before and after the ‘going public’ process. Some companies have great ideas and constantly struggle, some are hardly worth their weight in pocket fuzz but thrive and to understand why we must step back and look at a public and pre public concept as you would a globe that you can set on a desk and spin slowly over and over again. Stand on the desk and kneel on the ground, stand on your hands if you have to and the point of this exercise is to look at your public entity from every imaginable angle searching for any and all chinks in the armor.

Think past the basics of going public. Any informed CEO, COO or CFO of a pre or post public entity will comprehend the basics: you’ll have a first round seed capital raise, you’ll need a solid board of directors and solid executives with an appealing pedigree, your company needs a viable and yes, ‘recession proof’ product or service. You need a solid pre public corporate publicity strategy to make your company stand out like a blinding beacon with strategies that wrap around the corporation as well as each executive to increase the market awareness of their existence in the industry power structure and of course you’ll need solid and massive post public investor relations to stabilize and grow that stock price.

Now here is something that you may not have taken into consideration but is a necessity to filling in the gaps of your corporate profile as well as strengthening those invisible inferiorities in the corporate armor. Political power structure contacts are a must. Yes, political in every sense of the word. I mean you need strong contacts in your operating country’s political electoral system of influence to gain access to those ‘no bid’ contracts. It’s a mandatory evil that separates the men from the boys. Get to know lobbyists, congressmen, political attorneys, senators and most importantly get on a first name basis with the direct executive assistants for each of these players as they are the ones that will make the introductions.

Your face needs to be seen in the papers and journals alongside of these power players. Your name needs to be mentioned in cigar filled rooms where these individuals congregate. Don’t think for a second that hard work, blood sweat and tears will get your company to the next level; it’s all about connections and the public conception of you and your company.

Simultaneously you need to take into consideration the social political conception of your company. Truth be told, celebrities and corporations get involved with charities and socially conscientious callings such as Poverty Awareness, Haiti Financial Assistance, African Relief and like strategies not necessarily because they have a spiritual awakening and want to make the world a better place.

These companies are piggybacking off of the free press and the social idea that free money to charity somehow justifies the means in which they earned it. Free handout charity affiliation has a way of wiping the slate clean and telling the public that if they buy your product or use your service they are, in some strange way, making the world a better place and instantly something that was once considered a guilty pleasure (such as a $5 coffee and $8 scone from Starbucks) is now a socially responsible action because .02 cents per $20 net profit intake goes to pay for coffee beans that grow in a third world country that is trying to ‘get by’ and grow organic, whatever.

Going public is one thing, staying public is something entirely different, staying public and profitable is almost unheard of. Increase your chances of success by looking at all the angles!

Corporate Power Strategies That Work! , Take Your Company Public, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Public Strategies Consulting success the easy way!

We get calls all day, every day from companies that talk about ‘wanting’ real corporate publicity that will transform their company but few have the stomach for what it really takes and even fewer have the financial dedication it takes to obliterate their competition and take their rightful place at the top of the food chain.

Of course it’s important to cater to the traditional media (TV, radio, newspaper, industry journals, etc) but the genre of publicity that wins every time is viral publicity consisting of video, social and news bookmarks, article submissions, press release submissions and photo/logo sharing sites. The reality is online publicity is where you’re going to completely annihilate your competitors and claim your rightful position.

When you take into consideration the ultra powerful medium and stealth of viral publicity, all other promotional genres cower in comparison. Online your pre public or post public company will claim instant viewers and a cult-like following that TV and radio can’t even remotely compare. Billions of searches take place every day and it is the viral publicists job to do what SEO and traditional publicists can’t do and that is get solid search engine ranking while simultaneously bringing in powerful results that are targeted and strategically placed.

Forget pay per click, it’s a waste of your time. crush everything in your path with viral publicity that claims power positions on the natural search results on all search engines. You must have a solid combination of mediums at use to take control of targeted keywords and industry genres.

So the next time you tell your self-proclaimed publicist or seo agent that you need publicity that will claim your position and deliver virtually instantaneous results for your company, you’ll understand why there is silence on the other end of the line…because they have no clue as to what it takes to get serious results that will rip and shred everything in your path. The powerful combination of viral publicity and massive exposure will force-feed your concept to the willing masses who are pleading with a company in your industry to step up and spoon-feed the very info that your company is offering.

Stop wasting time and money with so called ’solutions’ that don’t work. You need a publicist, investor relations specialist and SEO demigod that will take you by the hand and pave a way for your company to succeed.

For Corporate Consulting or Investor Relations Solutions, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Corporate Publicity That Works the easy way!

Business Owners: Build A Corporate Structure That Investors Love! Ok, you’ve decided to go after investment capital but you’re not sure where to start. Here are the basics that you should pay close attention to before putting your company in front of investors.

First and foremost you need to perform an industry analysis that answers the questions pertaining to where you are in the industry and who are your competitors. It doesn’t matter what product or service you offer. You could be selling underwater sock fitting kits and there is a competitor and industry leader somewhere in the world. Don’t be so naive in thinking that there is no competition or that you are at the pinnacle of your industry. Show your audience that you’ve done your research and that you’ve identified the players in your market.

Next get your executive team together and it better be the who’s who in your industry. If you can’t attract the upper echelon of your industry genre then you need to do some serious PR on behalf of your individual executive team to show the public what they are made of. Brand them as the up and coming powerhouse executives in the industry. Publish their articles and knowledge on industry blogs and article submission sites. When a funding source initiates general due diligence you need to shine like a lighthouse in the fog. Each and every executive team member needs to have an image that screams power, success and investor security.

The next thing you need to do is take a serious look at your board of directors. Who is on your board, what is their compensation and is there someone that is a better fit for formulating strategies and alliances than those who are currently populating your director staff.

One of the main reasons that investors turn down companies for funding is because they lack the backup of industry players in connection to strategic alliances. You need to identify and contractually reach out to companies that will enhance your overall business strategy. Your minimum goal should be 10 solid, aged companies that have already branded their names in the marketplace and are willing to add you to their mix of advertising and ongoing strategy and they will expect the same from you. Show investors that it’s not just you treading water in the industrial whirlpool and that you’ve built a life preserver of alliances.

Now you are ready to write a business plan and private placement memorandum that takes all the essential elements above and puts them in two well authored and to the point documents that will make an interesting and informative read for investors who have a track record of investment in your particular industry. If you’ve written your own business plan, toss it. If investors are going to take you seriously you need a professionally written business plan that touches on all the triggers that investors are currently looking for.

Next, it’s best to use the Regulation D, Private Placement Memorandum as the vehicle for staying within SEC guidelines for raising capital and you should use a Direct Public Offering as the process for raising the actual capital. Reaching out to friends, family, industrial counterparts and alliances should be the first place you go for funding. If you are lucky the consultant you hire to assist you with the above processes will have a solid database of investors to assist you in your initial, first round raise via DPO.

Last but not least you should consider, even though it’s not a mandatory requirement for a PPM or DPO, getting an independent audit done on your company to demonstrate an objective analysis of your financial reality so that investors can find their comfort level quicker without a prolonged comments stage.

There you have it. These are the basics to what it takes to achieve equity investment in this current market. Get out there and raise some money!

Want To Go Public With Your Company, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!