Get Cash Keep Control BLOG

By Stefania Aulicino

Does your company have a backup system for your computers?
What if one of your key executives was stricken unexpectedly?

What if you could backup your team –in just 90 seconds?

Ted’s 5 year old company was in the midst of introducing a new product in the medical endoscope field. Jerry, his VP of operations was his right hand.

As the visionary, Ted came up with the features and Jerry in operations translating production into a saleable process which was cost effective.

Parts were designed, vendors were being selected, the beta customer was ready
Then Jerry ended up in the hospital. continue reading…

By Stefania Aulicino

Do you consider your company to be passion-driven: Are you on a mission?
Do you have a business plan, whether written or at least a game plan in your mind?

Consider this:
It’s not enough to have a BUSINESS plan for your passion-driven company.
You also have a PERSONAL plan.
A Personal Plan to rejuvenate the PASSION behind the business builder you are.

As the driving force behind your company, if YOU are not in TOP condition, is it really possible for your company to be sustainable in this fast changing world? continue reading…

By Stefania Aulicino

How do you drive value in your business? Is it planned or spontaneous?
Opportunistic or predicable?

Entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for new profit-making opportunities.
But is your process Re-active or Pro-active?

98% are entrepreneurs are REACTIVE.
What do you think the growth of a Reactive Entrepreneur looks like?
Yes, reactive Entrepreneurs:
• take any client that is willing to work with them to feed their organization so they struggle with commodity prices in an ever increasing world
• can’t attract top talent so growth is exhausting
• these Entrepreneurs are chronically short of cash
This reactive growth like this is more risky than the Optimum Growth Strategy which is proactive.

Yet only 2% of Entrepreneurs are PROACTIVE about focusing on their Optimum Growth Strategy
What do you think the growth of Proactive Entrepreneurs looks like?
Yep, Proactive Entrepreneurs:
• Have their choice of the right clients who happily pay premium prices
• attracts top notch talent to implement their vision
• are a magnet for cash
These proactive E are energized by pursing their Passion and their growth is FAST, PROFITABLE and SAFE.
continue reading…

By Stefania Aulicino

Do you spend your time focused on growing your company’s best future? Or are you really relegated to just focusing on today’s immediate needs? Is there a tug of war between short term cash flow and long term big profits? Between survival today and quantum leap success tomorrow? It’s the business builders’ challenge.

What is your passion-driven growth? Consider your revenue today; what is your profit margin on your current level of sales? Now, project out 5 years capturing all your best profit making opportunities. What is your revenue out 5 years from now? What is your new profit margin? Is it 1.5x, 2x or more bigger than today? So, what’s holding you back?

3 Stages of growth. You are a successful business owner with a passion to make a difference in the world. You had a salaried job, but you saw a better way to serve your clients. Your commitment to excellence drove you to break out. You are a special breed- a business owner, ready and willing to build a future only you could see. Your reputation, integrity and laser focus is paying off. Your innovative products or services delivered better than you promised and word of mouth has resulted in raving fans who encourage others to buy, because your solution is that important to them; sales and profits followed. You remember with fondness stage 1 of the passionate entrepreneurs’ growth stage: Passion dictated every decision. The team culture was cohesive. Such a pure message and experience in the marketplace fueled the early years of the company’s growth. Instinctively, at stage 1 you pursued a passion-driven growth strategy.

Then came the terrible 2’s- the 2nd growth stage. continue reading…

By Stefania Aulicino

“I knew when I started my business it was to build a significant player in the market. Many entrepreneurs are small business people and their goals are modest. Not me: I started with a big end in mind: to be a valued partner to my clients, attract a team to help me grow to our full potential, be recognized for innovation and performance in our niche rewarded with premium prices for our unique solution, and to channel my passion to deliver solutions in an area where I am uniquely suited to contribute. In short: make a big difference in the world.That was and is my goal, but reality falls a bit short. When we began, everything was on track. We built upon our unique perspective and insights. We attracted our ideal clients and our proprietary solutions began to sell. Word of mouth and trade press followed and sales grow.
Early on we used our limited resources very carefully, balancing innovation and talent investments matched with internal resources. As we attracted more and bigger customers we had to bite the bullet. We started to seek financing to put infrastructure in place to support these larger customers. As an expert in my industry I am very comfortable with analyzing decisions related to product and service, but I was a new-be about finance.
The bank seemed like the conservative thing to do so we selected a relationship. But the bank has not been as I had hoped. The bank was willing to finance a building, or extend credit as a percentage against selected accounts receivable or inventory that met their criteria, but the bank offered no help with what I really needed—growth capital, to fuel tomorrow; the bank offered only working capital based on what I have today.
Now I am getting scared. If I want to grow and I can’t use debt from the bank that means I have to seek out investors who want equity ownership and control. I feel confronted with a terrible reality: stay small or take on equity partners who expect to have a say in the future I want to build and let others control my destiny. I’d have everything riding; my family’s security would be at risk of decisions I don’t control. What a terrible choice.”
If this is you, do you resonate with these growth stages of your company? continue reading…

By Stefania Aulicino

“I wanted to grow, but I was afraid to grow. Didn’t want to add more staff to manage.
My time is scacre as it is. Don’t know I can handle any more.
Sure I know there is opportunity out there, but financing is always a struggle and I just don’t have the energy to fight so many battles
Wonder if I would be better off with a corporate job again”.
On our worst days as Entrepreneurs, do you ever have secret fears like those shared by Bill, above?
When Bill shared this with me I offered him a solution, in the form of a question:
Are you pursing your OPTIMUM GROWTH STRATEGY?
“Growth?! Our growth is what I can finance.”

That is the beginning of the problem for too many Entrepreneurs.

What is at stake is your Optimum Growth Strategy: the one that delivers the highest return with the lowest risk.
As entrepreneurs, we all know that Growth does not occur without Finance to fuel it.
But too many entrepreneurs link these strategies in the wrong way.
The right way is to insist that GROWTH strategy dictate FINANCE strategy, never the reverse.
If you try to address FINANCE first, you end up reaching out to the wrong types of sources and you don’t get full value so you end up paying more than you should. continue reading…

By Stefania Aulicino

YouTube, Twitter, Groupon, and Zynga are members of a new club– “fastest from founding to $1B valuation” club, — Zynga, the social gaming pioneer, earned its membership in just 19 months.

Explosive growth is not confined to social media companies.
Costco (the membership warehouse retailer chain was the first company to grow from zero to $3 billion in sales in less than six years and today is $78 B in revenue.

Think of other fast growing companies you admire.
Disney, Four Seasons Hotel, Patagonia, South West Airlines, Harley Davidson, Green Mountain Coffee, Target, Legos

Why do all these companies grow so fast?
My interpretation is that successful fast growing companies leverage cheap customer acquisition models!
To be a sustainable growth company in the 21st century you need to build a cheap, scalable, automatic model to acquire customers

Please note: customer acquisition is NOT the same as sales acquisition.
• sales and marketing strategies are about how to get people to buy what you have to sell today
• customer acquisition is building a continuous pipeline of people who will buy
anything you can sell them today and in the future at, at higher prices, with accelerating frequency.
continue reading…

By Stefania Aulicino

I love science. Many people know me as an entrepreneur. Not too many people know that I was president of the biology club in high school in Westchester NY. I still retain a fascination with the Discovery Channel: how exciting that we can actually SEE what is going on inside the body.
My delight is learning about how we can understand what makes our incredible human engine work!

Just discovered a book called The Talent Code. Greatness isn’t born. It’s grown. Here’s how.
Daniel Coyle does a remarkable job of story telling backed up by exhaustive interviews with the cutting edge neurologists and scientists which he puts into English!

I’m only on page 69, but I wanted to tell you about this! Something we entrepreneurs can take to heart.

It’s about how people become geniuses. continue reading…

By Stefania Aulicino

What have you learned from social media?
You could answer a lot of things, but I think it boils down to this:
People like to connect with each other!

And no wonder.
Your mother thinks you walk on water.
The better people know you, the more valuable you are!

Where are you most valuable?
Most likely your family: that’s your blood and your in-laws. Beyond that smallest community, your value grows as you extend your community reach to include those who share hobbies, sports, and those who know you at church, community work, and your neighbors.
Your value continues to grow reaching out to your class mates, colleagues you know from business, trade associations.
When you reach out even further, perhaps you are viewed as a thought leader in your industry, even in the world at large.

That’s the business of social media: social media makes the case for a cheap client acquisition model for business.
• Friends are a source of wealth! The better people know you, the more they value you.
• When you understand your clients, the more those clients value you.
• Creating friends is free: Customers deserve to be friends
continue reading…