Get Cash Keep Control BLOG

By Stefania Aulicino

You, the entrepreneur, are the most advanced specs on the planet. Entrepreneurs alone have the ability to create a future that does not exist- until you make it. Yet many take this willingness to change the future for granted. If you don’t share your passion with the world about where you want to go, you don’t have an asset to sell: an unshared future is a lost asset. Confidence to share your future creates your biggest asset. When you share the future you are really passionate about it becomes an asset others can understand and even help you achieve. Your future is an asset of greater value than most entrepreneurs realize. You see, you, the business builder, are the Golden Goose. A franchise is a classic example of turning your future into an asset others (franchisees) are willing to buy. But you don’t have to franchise your business to get credit for the asset of your future.

Credibility turns this asset into your own valuable currency. The more credible your future the more valuable is your currency. The fastest way to build credibility of your future is the mosaic approach. The concept of a mosaic, applied to finance is based on the principle of divide and conquer. Divide your financial needs into small pieces, like so many flecks of color, each with their own risk-taking appetite. Conquer an ever-widening range of funding options, as each piece you put in place lowers the uncertainty and risk to the next. As you assemble those funding sources, like the Italian artisans of old Pompeii, you create your own financial solution- now that’s a valuable work of art! Best of all, with a mosaic approach, no single creditor is responsible for your success and you are hostage to none.

With your own unique currency you can finance the future you want because there is currency in your passion. But not everyone can see your future to give you all the currency in your passion: only those who share your passion. When your future is bigger than your past, you need to make your future tangible enough for others to see. You need a Corporate Resume. Unlike a personal resume which details only past accomplishments leaving the future to the reader’s interpretations, a Corporate Resume uses past accomplishments as credibility of the future you intend to create. A Corporate Resume translates your passion of that future into a language others can understand. To be succinct enough to fit in a 2 pager, a Corporate Resume translates your passion into the universal language of business- dollars and cents using a set of financial projections in which your business strategy dictates your funding strategy. A Corporate Resume converts your passion into a currency you can tap to get credit for your exciting future today. Tapping the currency in your passion makes you economically self sufficient.

Most entrepreneurs think it’s lack of money holding them back, but in reality it’s not sharing your passion that causes them to lose control, which is key to sustainable, profitable growth.

Like a personal resume, a Corporate Resume can be hard to write because you are a fish in water and it’s hard to gain objectivity. Fortunately, a Corporate Resume is 2 tools: a “story” and a “document”. Even before you complete your Corporate Resume, the experience of crafting it gives you prowess at making your future tangible enough for others to give you credit for that future today. That’s ideal because the story is for everyone, while the document contains confidential information designed for selected recipients. As soon as you begin work on your Corporate Resume you build momentum and create an immediately usable result.

When you let your business strategy dictate your funding strategy, fueled with the currency in your passion, you enter a world of abundant resources so you are in control of your own perpetual cash making machine. You become a Golden Goose. Control puts you in the ideal position to capitalize on today’s volatile and changing economy where innovation and passion are the key drivers to build value. Which future you do you really want?- – it’s your Corporate Resume When you make your future tangible enough for others to buy you have cash and control to take your company to successive levels of profitable growth, faster safer than you ever thought possible– your own sustainable engine.

Where are you in the process of converting your passion into a perpetual cash-making machine – your own Golden Goose? Don’t let this be just a fairy tale for you.

Stefania Aulicino is founder president of CapitalLInkUSA. For 20 years Stefania has helped business builders uncover the right capital for their optimum growth strategy so you get cash and keep control to build the business you really want. www.CapitalLinkUSA.com

By Stefania Aulicino

As an innovative Entrepreneur, you have more control over your company’s future than other businesses do in today’s economy- including the ability to access cash for growth.

Today’ economy is challenging many business owners. No, the principles of successful entrepreneurship have not changed, but the game board has:

The size of the playing field has expanded due to globalization

The rate of success, or failure has accelerated because we operate in internet time.

Taken together that has introduced a phenomenal degree of uncertainly and volatility. But there is a positive effect as well; the scope of possibilities has increased exponentionally. Today, innovation is the key driver to build value.

That puts you- the entrepreneur – with your unique skills, in the ideal position to capitalize on today’s economy—IF you are careful to distinguish between traditional growth and proactive growth. Let me define my terms: traditional growth is when you “find” a fast growing market, jump in and then just follow its trajectory. In contrast, proactive growth is when you identify a problem, innovate a solution and design your own optimizing growth strategy. Proactive growth is what differentiates entrepreneurs to investors.

Traditional growth is very risky. You find yourself coping with all kinds of risks factors imposed from the outside and beyond your control. Today’s volatile and uncertain economy makes this reactive mode of traditional growth overwhelming and exhausting. In contrast, proactive growth actually takes advantage of dynamic market changes, as fuel!! Proactive growth is built upon what YOU do best. It leverages all your natural strengths. For an innovative entrepreneur that means your biggest risk is that of opportunity lost. A sure way to lower risk of your next growth stage is to grow proactively.

Let me offer an example. I’ve always been fascinated with what I perceive to be the transformation of the sneaker industry which today we call “athletic footwear”. A couple of decades ago, no one would say that sneakers were a hot growth opportunity. In fact the other day, I saw someone wearing a flat canvass lace up shoe and thought to myself, how uncomfortable that looks.

Well, Nike made the same observation, a few decades ago. They identified the problem of comfort for people active in every day sports. Nike experimented with waffle bottom designs used by the competitive sports professional and Nike introduced cushioned, comfort “sneakers” for the consuming public. But did not stop there with one shoe for all, but one for basket ball, one for tennis, and another for jogging, etc. And Nike continued to innovate within the industry they knew well-
Not one shoe for all, but one for each.

Can you remember how much a pair of sneakers cost back in the ‘80’s? Perhaps $10 bucks. Contrast that to how much Nike’s athletic footwear cost today: over $100.

While Nike capitalized on proactive growth strategies, a brand name in the sneaker marketplace, KEDS succumbed to the risks of traditional growth and lost its dominant position.

Pursuing an ambitious proactive growth strategy was not risky for Nike because Nike knows “sport foot comfort”. Nike has been rewarded with the transformation of a market in which they remain the leader today. Even as new entrants follow, Nike just keeps innovating and profiting from their unique understanding of a market they created.

This kind of proactive growth can position your company to access a new and exponentially higher level of business performance. Let me share the 3 predicable results of proactive growth:

1)
Exponentially higher profit from innovative energy you are already investing,

2)
Dramatically lower risk as you accelerate revenue building upon your unique strengths

3)
Enhanced shareholder wealth as you maintain control over your destiny in the face of a volatile economy.

This is what makes you attractive to cash.

Are you taking full advantage of your innovative entrepreneurial talents to pursue proactive growth to keep control over your company’s future?

Stefania Aulicino is founder president of CapitalLInkUSA. For 20 years Stefania has helped business builders uncover the right capital for their optimum growth strategy so you get cash and keep control to build the business you really want. www.CapitalLinkUSA.com

By Stefania Aulicino

What is the first thing you did that marked you as an entrepreneur?

Remember the first customer that bought what you had to sell?

My first client at CapitalLinkUSA was someone who knew me at my prior employer- as an investment banker at Bear Stearns. Denny Ogden asked me to write a business plan to raise money for a company he wanted to grow. Not only did I write the plan but I raised Denny more money than he thought possible. Best of all, I obtained a very attractive valuation which meant Denny kept more ownership control than he had expected.

When other business owners learned of this result, they asked me to do the same. The more I worked with these business builders, the deeper became my knowledge and understating of their challenges. Following my passion, I narrowed my market niche to work exclusively with business owners committed to grow their company leveraging my distinctive insights. In true entrepreneurial fashion, I did not address client challenges in the same way as a traditional investment banker, financial advisor, or consultant- I created my own solutions and the Cash And Control System was revealed.

What I did is not unusual- it is the essence of entrepreneurship. Getting paid for something you create – doing what you love- is my definition of entrepreneur.

Your unique ability to create a future that would otherwise not exist is your most valuable asset.

When you – the business builder- have the confidence to use this asset you can grow your own clients; attract abundant growth capital to fuel your vision; profit from your passion.

You already possess the asset to control your destiny because you ARE the golden goose. All you need is to liberate your confidence to build upon that asset.

Stefania Aulicino is founder president of CapitalLInkUSA. For 20 years Stefania has helped business builders uncover the right capital for their optimum growth strategy so you get cash and keep control to build the business you really want. www.CapitalLinkUSA.com

By Stefania Aulicino

What is the best economy for an entrepreneurial company: a robust, stable economy or an uncertain, even weak economy?

Since entrepreneurs typically build their businesses based on innovations which rock the status quo, it is often hardest to introduce those changes in strong economic times. However, when customers are focused to find new ways to protect their top and bottom line, they tend to be more receptive to innovations and new solutions in unstable, or even weak economies.

Surely a robust economic environment is like a tide that raises all boats. But that is exactly why it is not the best of all times for an entrepreneurial business builder. In good times, customer and vendors have no need to try new things. Their profits are secure and doing what was done yesterday is always more comfortable.

One way to get customers out of their confront zone is an unstable economy. At times like that, they must search out new solutions.

The recent “green revolution” is a classic example. As long as oil was below $50 a barrel it was hard for any innovative entrepreneurial company with energy efficiency features to gain any traction. However, as oil soars above $70, and oil wars loom, even the most staid companies have become receptive to new products with energy efficiency. “Green” has even become the new Siren call for the venture capital community.

Sure you can grow in a good economy, like all other companies, but if you are an innovating entrepreneur, you have the opportunity to thrive in economies where others can’t even survive.

By Stefania Aulicino

I just met a dynamic company with a big future, perhaps like your company. The CEO, Max, addressed a market pain with such a high performance solution that he had been able to gain acceptance by a number of Fortune 500 customers and attract an impressive Board of Advisors.

Sounds like a dream situation—but it was not. Max was operating from assumptions about money that were holding him back.

Max had given up 40% ownership in exchange for several rounds of funding from family and friends that had contributed $4 million but only resulted in $750,000 in revenue after 3 years of operation. Was lack of cash the problem, or a symptom? I explained to Max he could not continue to raise money like this or he would not have enough ownership left to attract the deep pocket investors appropriate for his global rollout, much less to earn an entrepreneurial return on his own investment of sweat and equity.

Max was misusing his entrepreneurial genius: anyone that can raise $4 million can sell! But Max was giving up equity without achieving value escalation; he was not applying that powerful entrepreneurial talent to building his business. Unfortunately it happens all too often: Max is an industry expert but Max was not yet schooled as a business builder. No one ever told Max how to capitalize on the power of his entrepreneurship to get cash and keep control.

Max, like too many entrepreneurs, was blind to the value he was creating for clients, vendors and even investors so each time he needed cash he begged for it. He had no other way to think about his situation in the context of his world view—until I challenged his core assumptions about resources being scare, expensive, and his company was not worthy of hard cash.

By the end of the conversation, Max had opened himself up to a new way of thinking about the value he was creating. “I’m really inspired- I never thought of my own entrepreneurial solutions as the scarce resources and cash and as the commodity”. Max was excited, but a bit afraid to believe my “fairy god mother” promise of financial self-sufficiency. Until the next day when Max called me to say he just got $400,000 and it cost him nothing. Something before our conversation he did not believe was possible.

A favorite client had called to place a new order. Normally Max would have apologetically asked for 30 day terms, knowing this big company would not actually pay for 60-90 days. Instead, this time Max, applied his mind shift of entrepreneurial power and asked his customer what the customer could do to help alleviate Max’s cash flow pressures. Without a pause, the client offered to pay 100% of his order in advance- $400,000. After picking himself up off the floor to accept the offer, Max made a call to thank me for his new mind shift about the value he had to sell.

Max had seen the future of financial self-sufficiency and he liked it better than his past view of financial scarcity.

When you don’t understand your entrepreneurial power, you will give it away. That’s how you lose control, lose capital appreciation and lose the entrepreneurial return you deserve. For Max, it was not a lack of cash, but Max’s own limiting perception of the value he was creating that was holding his company back. What about you? Are you undervaluing the value you create?

Stefania Aulicino is founder and president of CapitalLinkUSA which in 2008 celebrates 20 years of helping business owners to get cash and keep control so they can take their company to its next level of profitable growth, faster, safer than they ever thought possible.

By Stefania Aulicino

“Gung Hey Fat Choy” (Wishing you Prosperity and Wealth). I learned a lot more about Chinese New Year this year because we have a new friend, Julia, who is from Taiwan.

2008 is the year of the Rat. That’s special because the Rat is the first of the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac.

Julia explained to us that the animal order was created when the Emperor of the Heavens invited the animals to a race across the river. The rat was the first to cross. That means the year of the rat is very auspicious, as it is the beginning of a 12 year cycle.

We took advantage of our Taiwan-born friend Julia to celebrate the New Year in Chicago’s China Town. While we have visited China Town many times before, this time it was much more fun and educational.

Julia took us to her favorite Dim Sum restaurant (Phoenix on Archer Ave.) and personally selected from the endless carts of food, serving as translator and culinary guide so that we had a chance to savor the best and most interesting items. Then we visited Ten Ren’s Tea store which offered over 100 varieties of tea and Julia translated the recommendations of the expert staff there to get the perfect choice for our tastes. It was well worth braving a wind chill factor of 35 degrees below zero, dressed like we were visiting Siberia to usher in the Year of the Rat with our knowledgeable guide.

Stefania seeking good fortune from the Dragon while celebrating Chinese New Year in Chicago’s China Town

The visit to China Town coincided with a week of strategic focus on my business- tweaking my own business model, which I do every year. But after learning it was the year of the Rat, I could feel this was a special kind of new beginning for me and my 19 year old company.

Perhaps this is an auspicious time to think about bigger plans for your company based on more than the usual annual strategic check in. You could even take advantage of a guide if your journey might take you to places you don’t know well. There really is no reason to practice on yourself.

No matter what year it is of the 12 animals, locals always look to the dragon for good luck because, as Julia explained, the dragon is responsible for rain and for protection of life. Perhaps your small business would benefit from more cash to become the big business you really want it to be.

Wishing you and your company prosperity and wealth in this year of the Rat.

Stefania Aulicino is founder president of CapitalLInkUSA. For 19 years Stefania has helped business builders uncover the right capital for their optimum growth strategy so you get cash and keep control to build the business you really want. www.CapitalLinkUSA.com

By Stefania Aulicino

Sponsoring organizations with the best of intentions are creating an expanding calendar of investor showcase events for companies seeking growth capital.

Should you sign up?

Can a company use a rock star performance approach to get the cash you need to fund its future?

Can you use an investor showcase event to give a carefully honed elevator pitch, crafted with the help of the showcase venue’s selected team, to inspire the right investor give you the cash you need?

My experience says no.

This is not a beauty contest. Equity investor selection is like a marriage. What does it take for a good marriage? Dialogue; communication; synergy. The key is feedback and interaction which allows you to evolve your view of your own company, the market in which your company must succeed, and the investor’s contribution.

You only get one chance to make a first impression. Do you really want to participate in an investor showcase where a standardized impression leaves little room for that special spark?

What is the alternative? Think of a product “beta test” approach. It’s iterative. The key is to select your best customer prospect—because feedback is only as good as the source. Next engage in dialogue to learn how to optimize a win win –the best product sale creates a relationship. The same is true of an investor; a relationship which respects the company’s role to design a vision leveraged by the investor’s resources to fuel that vision because the investor believes you are the best opportunity for getting a great ROI on their investment.

If you want equity capital that will allow you generate the highest ROE (return on your energy and investor’s equity- which is your equity as well) then you want to carefully select investors whose feedback you will value. Meet them face to face, learn from their insights and refine your own thinking about the right investor for you. Why miss the opportunity to get a PhD in your own company from the University of the Marketplace? Date until you are confident you have identified the right investor for you. A great marriage is bliss, the alternative is ……

Stefania Aulicino is founder president of CapitalLInkUSA. For 19 years Stefania has helped business builders uncover the right capital for their optimum growth strategy so you get cash and keep control to build the business you really want. www.CapitalLinkUSA.com

By Stefania Aulicino

One of the biggest challenges business builders have is to make your future credible to get credit for your future. That’s the challenge of growth, which makes your future bigger than your past.

Here’s a solution. Using the universal language of finance- dollars and cents- practice describing your company’s future based on its “Economic Building Blocks” to demonstrate how your financial projections predictably flow from your core expertise.

“Company W sustains less than .0001 defect rate delivering customized components in chasse-specific order to the right customer plant out of 4 nationwide; Company X delivers custom solutions in 1-3 days based on embedded software in its core product, while competitors take 3 weeks building to customer specifications; Company Y receives 15-20% price premiums based on its effective branding. Company Z’s in-house training insulates it from the industries double digit turnover rate by making new hires productive in 2 days.”

I began calling these Economic Building Blocks when I noticed companies had numerous components which make up their competitive economic distinction. What made each company unique was how it combined a number of insights about the needs of its market i.e. perhaps related to logistics, service, pricing methodology, packaging, after sale support, etc. After all, isn’t that why you went into business in the first place- to solve a problem differently? Like so many LEGO pieces, many children have access to the same set of blocks, but somehow each child builds a different creation. In today’s fast changing global market, you can create “new” building blocks that others don’t have, or add the building blocks of others (outsource, in-source etc) as your own. As you assemble a collection of bocks you imbue them with your own corporate personality.

Try it: describe your company uniquely without using your corporate name. This no-name discipline forces attention on your own Economic Building Blocks to describe your company’s uniqueness. As a business builder, Economic Building Blocks represent the distilled learning, reflected in your business model refined over your career and your years of experience, that lend credibility to your future and its financial projections.

If you want to get credit for your future, you need to make that future predicable to others. Just like in the stock market, predictability of future growth enhances the value of any stock. As you improve your skill in using the universal language of business, you’ll quickly discover how powerful this language is for more audiences than you might guess. Yes, it’s the language for raising capital from investors- family and friends, angles or venture capital. And more, customers and vendors love it too.

Stefania Aulicino is founder president of CapitalLInkUSA. For 20 years Stefania has helped business builders uncover the right capital for their optimum growth strategy so you get cash and keep control to build the business you really want. www.CapitalLinkUSA.com

By Stefania Aulicino

Ever seen a company that is perennially in the “fund raising mode”? Why is that?

Any business is naturally a profit making endeavor: you have a solution that is of value to a set of customers, you price it to cover your costs and end up with a profit. So that is the problem?

True, many business models are dependent upon a scale issue. Serving one customer is different than serving a market full of customers. Scale requires an investment in infrastructure including rent, marketing, on-going product development, product-delivery on a mass scale etc.

The challenge of building infrastructure is that you must invest in it before you are rewarded with the increased revenue that your infrastructure is designed to support. Scaling a business is made up of 2 elements: building the infrastructure and funding the timing gap.

The timing gap – before revenue synchronizes with expenses to yield the profit you designed into the model- is the place where many companies let themselves become equity addicts. It seems like its necessary to get outside funding, so they do, and then, it becomes an addiction.

Actually, most of your infrastructure (such as raw materials, production, even marketing) can be funded with non equity sources- for the asking- when it comes from sources who stand to benefit from your company’s success. And when you reach out to such non equity sources, your growth will be safer. The most valuable source of funding for any company is customers, and after that vendors. Involving customers and vendors also delivers a market discipline, which ensures that any growth is market-supported.

Customers, voting with their purchase dollars, will prevent you from adding features that are not valued, or otherwise going in directions that will not increase your revenue stream. And when you are delivering solutions to resolve the customer’s pain, customers will be happy to offer you more than revenue dollars. It’s not unusual to receive advance payments to fund production; or for customers to act as an extension of your sales force encouraging peers to buy, because your solution is so important to them. Even outright gifts- no strings attached are possible. Vendors can do the same thing plus offer you breathing room with deferred payments much in excess of traditional trade credit- even 270 days or more. Used properly, you can create a mosaic of different small pieces from different sources, which together make up your unique financing solution for all your know expenses.

Unfortunately, companies that use “OPM” (other people’s money) lose that powerful feedback mechanism. That’s why it’s so dangerous to get your business into the equity addiction.

Yes, you will need some equity, but sharing your future with participants who will benefit from your success will limit the amount of equity you really need. Equity should only be applied where nothing else will do.

Now you can limit your need of equity for just that timing gap-the unknown of how long will it take for the market at large to accept a new product or service. Just like the unknowns in your family life, the only way to deal with the unknowns is a safety net. Family’s have “emergency cash reserve” to address the unexpected. Your company deserves a safety net also- which, like your family cash reserve, must be liquid. That is the proper use of equity. Now you need never be an equity addict.

Stefania Aulicino is founder president of CapitalLInkUSA. For 20 years Stefania has helped business builders uncover the right capital for their optimum growth strategy so you get cash and keep control to build the business you really want. www.CapitalLinkUSA.com

By Stefania Aulicino

To put your vision-driven growth into action, y you need a corporate resume. Just like a concise, personal curriculum vita, a corporate resume is typically just 2 pages, but instead of documenting only the past, your corporate resume builds upon your company’s strengths and distinctions- like so many economic building blocks, so the reader can see your future- written in the universal language of business- in dollars and cents.

A corporate resume includes a set of financial projection based on 2 important assumptions: unlimited resources and unlimited time. It shares your goal, out 10 years from now, assuming all the money needed to build your business were your own.

Why is this important? Because if you don’t communicate to the world where you want to go, no one will know and no one can help you get there.

Daniel Burnham, Chicago’s famous urban planner who gave us the legacy of a beautiful lakefront city said “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. Make big plans…”

Based on your 10 year revenue goal, declare your profit margins. As a double check, your profit margins should be bigger than they are today- by a factor of 2 or 3. Enhanced profit margins are a mathematical confirmation that you are building only upon what you do best- your competitive economic distinction. When your projections capture all your most attractive profit-making opportunities, you gain benefits of:

1.
Successfully penetrating new markets and preempting competition

2.
Winning premium prices for your innovative solutions

3.
Economic efficiency reflecting technology, optimized capacity and scale.

Together these elements contribute to a dramatically richer bottom line and stronger cash flow

Best of all, you just might notice this growth strategy, based on your company’s uniqueness, is much less risky than the strategy you might have pursued, constrained by the usual assumption of limed resources. I say this because I believe this optimum growth strategy is the one you would intuitively pursue if all the resources needed were your own. It’s the strategy with the highest return and the lowest risk, built upon your company’s uniqueness. That makes it the most exciting, safest and most profitable future possible.

True, to get there you might need some resources you don’t have. In fact you might not even know how to get there. That means you are limited in your ability to select others to help

Part of the magic of sharing your corporate resume is to attract resources that can help you address what you don’t know you don’t know. A corporate resume lets you reverse the process: share your vision and let resources “self select” themselves. This is how you attract resources that share your vision and want you in control.

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This works extremely well with top notch talent: while it’s hard for you to know the right skills, it’s easy for talent with hindsight and experience to see where you want to go and offer what you don’t know to ask for.

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Sharing your future also attracts your perfect customers who just might offer to underwrite financial costs to accelerate your ability to serve them. I’ve seen all kinds of resources offered, from 100% advance payment with order to outright gift –not equity, not debt- a gift- all because your product is important to your customer.

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Vendors too respond to big goals. They get excited about the new market you are building, and would like to share in it. I’ve seen generous payments terms as long as 270 days, on top of excellent preferential pricing

As entrepreneurs we have a unique ability to create a future that does not exist until we make it-that is our pain unless we make it our asset. A corporate resume is the key to communicating your vision-driven growth and putting it into action. A corporate resume attracts others who can fuel your passion and keep you in control of the future you want.

Stefania Aulicino is founder president of CapitalLInkUSA. For 20 years Stefania has helped business builders uncover the right capital for their optimum growth strategy so you get cash and keep control to build the business you really want. www.CapitalLinkUSA.com