What Are The Advantages To Taking Your Company Public? – PIPE Loans – S1 Filings – Corporate Expansion
Companies decide to go public for many different reasons: expansion, need for capital, exit strategy, acquisition facilitation, globalization etc. But what are the real advantages to going public? First, let’s go over the disadvantages. Your life becomes an open book and as an executive your spending habits and failures will be a matter of public information with your annual and quarterly filings. You’ll be accountable to shareholders. You’ll have a board whose main interest is the company and the shareholders no you or your need for a new luxury car, financial bonus or need for a quick loan from the company that was once possible and easy when your company was a sole proprietor entity. You need trading volume and without it your stock is worthless and your company becomes a blind, deaf, mute, quadriplegic (a bit extreme but you get the point).

The advantages are numerous if your company is ready for the public realm. With a solid trading volume, minimal dilution of stock, solid executive management, an active board of directors, powerful strategic alliances and the ongoing advisory of a strategies consultant your company can expand globally, identify and grow through acquisition and subsidiary mergers, purchase entities and services with stock to retain cash flow. Banks and other institutional lenders will make more funding solutions available. Your exit strategy is built in and turn-key.

The most successful public companies have a few common themes built into their infrastructure. They have recruited a proven and tested CEO, CFO and COO with professional pedigrees and track records that are recognized in the industry and media and will bring with them a strong following of partners and solution mechanisms that will typically yield instantaneous, empirical results on behalf of the company. The board of directors is restructured so that major industry enhancing components are represented such as industry niche legal, financial, distribution, domestic and international. Each of these board members will put their contact portfolio to work for your company for immediate and long term growth and stabilization. One other aspect that all prosperous public entities have is a strategies consultant that keeps everything in line. This individual is also what is referred to as a ‘fixer’. This professional will typically stand in the background constantly analyzing every aspect of the company for weak points and correct them. Whether it be a lazy board member, potential acquisition, CEO not pulling his/her weight, potential legal issues etc., this strategist has a keen eye and typically a massive contact base that, when put into place can correct virtually any situation quickly and seamlessly.

Going public is a great strategy for the right organization. Having all your ducks in a row pre and post public is the key to a successful offering and public markets longevity.

Do you want to take your company public, expand globally and build a corporate infrastructure that will dominate your industry all at the same time? How would you like to do this with minimal overhead? Then you need to watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a3FOxAQVjE

Are you a corporate CEO who wants to have offers flooding your voicemail day in and day out? Do you want to become a demigod in your industry? Then you need to watch this video now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Smt3mYIODE

Do you have a public company that is struggling to gain investor interest and/or confidence? Is your company having a difficult time achieving the volume needed to actually gain a competitive edge for your company? Watch this video and watch your world transform fast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQIeXVCnC8

Call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183
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Corporate Expansion and Raising Capital: How To Do Both Effectively
When a corporation grows stagnant and lacks growth and the financial reserves are drying up the company’s C level executives need to give the three thousand foot analysis and look at all angles of the corporate entity as objectively as possible to find leaks and chinks.
First let’s look at the obvious and controllable, the board of directors and advisory board, if you don’t have both then that could be part of your problem. The difference between the two is the board of directors is the most elite of the two. The board of directors are C level pedigree with an extensive track record of success and are typically compensated in restricted stock and some type of annual option and the advisory board is typically used for the occasional introduction, advice etc and is typically brought on for far less compensation without options. The advisory board members are usually building their resume and hope to eventually make it to the board of directors. Both BOD and BOA must have extensive contacts and contribute those contacts in a way that is conducive to expedient materialization of strategic alliances, conversion of securities into cash, distribution sources and globalization/expansion strategies. A BOD typically meets around 5 times per year but is on call anytime you need them and the BOA may meet one time per year and should be eager to get a call from you so they can earn their keep. Use your BOD and BOA as much as possible to grow the company, if they are not living up to their contractual obligation, dump them and recruit a member that will give you the attention you deserve.

Next, brainstorm with company executives. Sit in a room and mind map every possible solution to increasing distribution, branding, publicity and alliance expansion. Take not of the executives who are not participating or have little to contribute as these are the people you want to replace as soon as possible. By the end of the meeting have a list of names, number and companies that you will be reaching out to as a group to solidify relationships that will result in a win/win for both sides. This should actually be done once per week even if your company is experiencing the required growth.

There are multiple other processes that should be built into your business model to grow but to get to the point the next and final issue that we’ll cover in this article will be publicity. You should have a clear channel of targeted recipients for your press release distribution and a press release should be authored and distributed for anything and everything that your company does that would be considered noteworthy such as a new: client, contract, employee, location, alliance, affiliate, product, service, etc. You should also offer your opinion and expertise to local radio and television news affiliates. There is no better way to gain the status of an upper echelon existence than to be an panel expert on talk radio or TV interview.

Corporate Expansion, Product Globalization and the Mob Mentality: How To Win Every Time
Whether I’m speaking to a group of university students who are under the delusional assumption that they are going to change the world or a group of board members who have just had their butt handed to them by the shareholders or ‘C’ level executives trying to take a regional or domestic corporation global, the crowd is generally the same.

In every audience you’ll have the sheep, fox and the over-analytical. The sheep are easy, the over-analytically are even easier but the foxes can pose a challenge so let’s start with them. The fox is the cynical, backstabbing individual who will take what you say and twist your words to shape their argument against you to establish an upper hand but if you can bring the fox onto your side, their flock of sheep will follow. I will typically look for certain ‘tells’ such as intonation, eye contact, gestures etc to find the fox in the room and by including these individuals in the conversation you’ll quickly win them over to your side and their flock will follow. Engage the fox, ask them questions and merge their concepts into your presentation without losing the overall concept but some sacrifice is necessary for your presentation to have a lasting effect on the audience. Use their first name, use them as an example that can be plugged into certain solution based material. If you do this effectively you’ll win over the fox and the sheep.

That said, don’t leave the sheep out of the customized aspects of your presentation, when you’re not using the names of the foxes you are addressing the room in general terms such as ‘you’, ‘we’ etc.

Now for the over-analytical, you know the type, they are constantly trying to come up with questions for nothing other than the simple matter of their insecurity. Their reputation for analyzation is all they have and for the most part the topics they bring up and the questions that they have do nothing for additional comprehension by the group and when challenged they are often without a response. This individual will waste your time, don’t let them control the presentation. Challenge them head on at the onset of their attempted inquisition. Use the Socratic method of argument to passively prove to the group that this individual is hardly qualified to be in the same room as you let alone challenge you in public. Crush them quickly and scatter their pieces, but do it with class and distinction. Don’t be a butcher. Pay close attention to your intonation, posture and vocabulary. Get more power from the individual word as opposed to wasting a paragraph of speech on this individual.

Corporations of all sizes and genres are finding themselves in the difficult position of expanding as a mandatory necessity as opposed to solely building value as a part of growth strategies. If you find yourself in a position which makes globalization a requirement for survival here are a few things to make the process easier.

When taking your company from strictly a regional or domestic entity and trasnfering your energies into an international formula there are 4 basic elements that you should take into consideration before doing anything: corporate infrastructure, brand, distribution and capitalization.

Corporate infrastructure as far as management, divisions, subsidiaries etc are the first step to planning your expansion. First, cut the dead weight. Management must re-interview for their jobs, divisions and subsidiaries will be eliminated, merged or kept as is. Take into consideration the need for minimal input and maximum output. Where are your highest profit margins, what employees offer the most expertise for the least financial outlay? Make sure that your corporate structure is conducive to scalability and is streamline enough to be considered ‘lean and mean’ in every sense of the term.

As far as your corporate brand you’ll take the foundation you’ve constructed up to the present and infuse it with a plethora of strategic alliances both inter-industry and outside of your immediate industry. Piggyback off of the successes of partners, team up on announcements using various press release and news release vehicles and make it every executives job to be on the lookout for ways to merge and create relationships with other companies with the same goals.

Just as with your corporate infrastructure your distribution process should be perpetuated and expanded with minimal input and maximum result. The best way to do this is to create tight strategic partnerships at both the corporate and legislative levels. Teaming up with companies that are already established distribution mechanisms in the global marketplace and creating win/win situations will make growth via alliances quick and easy. Offer them an exclusive distribution on a new cutting edge widget or service that your company is offering. Offer them some free promotion by including them in your media package or publicity submissions. At the legislative level this is most important in industrializing nations such as China, India and western Europe. In these regions politicians act as powerbrokers for commerce and getting in with them can be vital to creating long lasting and profitable localized strategies and relationships.

Lastly, capitalization is the most crucial of all elements because without it, none of the above can be facilitated. Maximizing profitability without sacrificing quality, customer services or turnaround time is the name of the game. Cutting costs internally is typically what needs to be done here as well as minimizing marketing and promotional costs by streamlining your efforts with joint promotional ventures and the above described strategic alliances.