Wealth Management
April 5, 2008
Dragons' Den Wants You
Money Magnet: Attracting Investors to Your Business
April 4, 2008
Would You Think Agriculture Was the Next Bubble?
Prices are quoted in US dollars per gallon for regular unleaded. March 1, 2008
Oslo, Norway $6.82
Hong Kong $6.25
Brussels, Belgium $6.16
London, UK $5.96
Rome, Italy $5.80
Tokyo, Japan $5.25
Sao Paulo, Brazil $4.42
New Delhi, India $3.71
Sidney , Australia $3.42
Johannesburg, South Africa $3.39
Mexico City $2.22
Buenos Aires , Argentina $2.09
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia $0.09
Kuwait $0.08
Caracas , Venezuela$0.12
April 1, 2008
Does writing a business plan have power?
Unfortunately, that fairy tale does not always end happily. You are probably aware of the statistics on just how many companies fail before reaching their five year mark. It is just not true that owners take home the big bucks. Too often they are paying everyone else first and when it’s time to pay themselves, they find the cupboard bare.
Business entrepreneurs are crucial for the future wealth of our country but are often given little thought (look at the last Ontario provincial election – need I say more?). Now with the alarming question of “Is this a recession?” even the news headlines have turned away from Hollywood celebrities and toward the economy” – although CNN did still make Heath Ledger’s death their top story the same night that every stock market on the globe was falling off a cliff. But what the heck, I enjoyed looking at Anderson Cooper’s blue eyes and his combination of Wall Street pinstripe suit with purple and gray striped tie!
With this incoming tsunami of trouble, our provincial governments are turning their attention to SMEs and pondering how to help them. If you buy the life-boat theory - you cannot save everyone from drowning - you need to answer the question of just who does get to climb into the life boat. Rather than encouraging any and every start up, government can focus on assisting industries with high growth potential. If you start a computer industry-based company, your chances of growing far exceed those of starting a hotel, a clothing store or a consulting company.
What is missing in the economy are those growing companies finding a financial investment of $1M to $10M. Supporting those investors ploughing money into growth companies would be a smart move. Venture capitalists and private equity funds investing amounts under $10M tend to excel in filtering out which businesses and owners are most likely to grow our Canadian economy.
As an entrepreneur, you know economic change is upon us. You no longer have time to point the finger at China, India or our government policies. Right now, you need to make decisions to get ahead of the global crowd. Scott Shane, professor of entrepreneurial studies at Case Western Reserve University and author of The Illusions of Entrepreneurship, says, “the typical entrepreneur makes decisions that lower the chances for success. Part of it is that they're in a hurry and don't have time. So to give you a good example -- a business plan. We have lots of evidence that all kinds of performance measures of startups are enhanced if you write a business plan” [www.businessweek.com, 1/7/08]. Why doesn’t the average owner write a plan? Besides being busy, owners just don’t see the benefit.
If you want your business to be more than a lifestyle, write that plan. Take this weekend to break out your laptop, Google “business plan” and you will find a plethora of templates to use. Then share it. If your only employee is your dog, tell your mother. “Tell everyone,” says Tony Griffiths, one of Canada’s top investors in growing entrepreneurial companies. Tony, who invests in growing companies, recalls how years ago, while he was watching his wife play tennis, a young man sitting next to him struck up a conversation. The subject moved to business and the young man shared his business plan with such enthusiasm. Tony made the decision there and then to become an investor.
Six Ways to Say “Yum!”
Marketers who support the new reality that girl power is here - and it’s not just Scary Spice being cheeky - will be ahead of the pack. I just spent my weekend holed up with high testosterone Bay Street money men judging the Ivey Business Plan competition. Once again, the $20,000 top prize went to a female-led team and as I sat with the Venture Capitalists, they recalled the previous year’s female winner saying, “What a fire cracker!” I have no doubt these fellows would hand over twenty thousand cool ones to any woman who demonstrated she could bring in a sustained revenue stream of $5M. If women want to get ahead in Canada, they need to make the decision from a very young age to live, breath, and die for business.
This blog also appears in The Women's Post.
January 27, 2008
Competitiveness No Longer Only A Government Issue
What can be missed is that small companies who have up until recently been ignored by investors, would not have been given the money to grow because of lack of cash. Now, a family owned company can get a new lease on life as they are able to get sophisticated partners to take their business to a new level. Private equity injects small business with growth hormone to make even Sylvestor Stallone jealous. A growth opportunity for privately held companies gives enormous competitive advantage to a country, particularly over the next ten years as Canadian companies go global and need the money to take higher risks. Old style investors would reach for their PASS stamp where private equity investors say OK - let's give this a go. Competitiveness is to be nurtured.
"Increasingly competitiveness is no longer a government driven process, it's a process where government and business and universities and other institutions work together to raise the bar,"
What I find heartening is seeing the funds in action with the family businesses we have helped grow with private equity financing. I helped find a CFO for a construction firm and I could see directly how having the fund manager also participate in the interviews was fuel in the tank for the owners. Would your bank manager do this for your company? Would your shareholders on the public stock market do this for you? Would your Board members?
This Monday morning, out on the shop floor participation is the secret of how private equity rolls up their sleeves. Their day-to-day work that they add to the company is the magic ingredient in the financial recipe. Those private equity people coming into a business have entrepreneurial energy. It's very hard for outside experts to measure and nearly impossible to understand if you do not have business running through your veins.
If Marketing Experts Ran Election Campaigns
January 24, 2008
Leadership Lessons of Field Marshall Montgomery
- Where are you going with our enterprise?
- Will you go all out for our enterprise or campaign?
- Will you go all out for us?
- Have you the talents and equipment? (This includes your knowledge, your past experience and your courage.)
- Will you take decisions, accepting full responsibility for them and take risks where necessary?
- Will you then delegate and decentralize, having first created an organization in which there are definite focal points of decisions so that the master plan can be implemented smoothly and quickly?
The best leaders know that they must answer the above questions fully to gain support from their people. Montgomery emphatically states that a leader must:
- be able to make decisions in action and maintain calmness in the crisis.
- know what he wants.
- see his objectives clearly and strive to attain it;
- let everyone else know what he wants and what are the basic fundamentals of his policy.
- create ‘atmosphere”.
Montgomery says,
"Some commanders consider that once their plan is made and orders issued, they need take no further part in the proceedings. Never was there a greater mistake.
Leaders need a firm grip, not interference, or cramping initiative of subordinates; indeed it is by the initiative of subordinates that the battle is won. They need to get out to the people."
He goes on to emphasize, “The strength of an organization is, and must be, far greater than the sum total of its parts." Remember, this was written before Peter Drucker's best sellers on how to be an effective executive in an organization. To get a sense of the thinking behind Montgommery's actions, read these selections from his writing on leadership:
"That extra strength is provided by morale, fighting spirit and mutual confidence between the leaders and the led and especially with the high command and the quality of comradeship and many other intangible spiritual qualities.”
"The raw material with which the general has to deal is men. The same is true in civil life. Managers of large industrial concerns have not always understood this; they think their raw material is iron ore, or cotton, or rubber – not men but commodities. In conversation with them, I have disagreed and insisted that their raw material is men. Many generals have also not grasped this and that is why they have failed.”
"A leader must understand human nature. Bottled up in men are great emotional forces. It these are given an outlet, they can be used in a positive and constructive way, and which warms the heart and excites the imagination. If the approach to the human factor is cold and impersonal, then you achieve nothing. If you gain the confidence and trust of your men and they feel their best interests are safe in your hands, then you have in your possession a priceless asset and the greatest achievements possible."
"The morale of the soldier is the greatest single factor in war and the best way to achieve high morale is by success. Communicate your successes."
"All men are different and you need to match the personality to the job. Don’t
try and make a warm personality sit in the back office, counting figures."
Montgomery has comments on strategic planning which are still useful today:
Operations must develop within a premeditated pattern of action. If this is not done, the result will be compromise between the individual conceptions of subordinates about how operations should develop.The master plan must not be undermined by the independent ideas of individual subordinate commanders at particular moments in the battle.”
Montgomery believed there was a strong use or “place of the conference”. He advises,
"It will be weak if it is just to gather ideas. A leader needs to be well
prepared before starting the process.He needs to have previous thoughts, he must
have made wide field visits, he must have strong staff contact and not just the commanders one level below, he must listen to staff and once again, not just the
commanding staff. The commander should know what he wants to do and if it is possible."
If a conference is necessary, Montgomery advises that it should be to give orders and to assess where everyone thinks they are going. The leader should not bring the men to him but should go out to the people. "Do not have a conference at Head Office." Montgomery again emphasizes,
“The big mistake is to think that once the order is given there is nothing more for the leader to do. The leader must take it upon himself to outline the plan in his own words and images and put it in writing. The Commander must write this himself first. Staff and subs can then take the draft and initial plan and fill in the more detailed work. When the plan is based on the written word of the commander it minimizes mistakes and powers action."
One of Montgomery’s heroes was Sir Winston Churchill. Montgomery liked to read Churchill’s study of Marlborough and quotes,
“The success of the commander does not arise from following rules or models. It consists in an absolutely new comprehension of the dominant facts of the situation at the time, and all the forces at work. Every great operation of war is unique. What is wanted is a profound appreciation of the actual event. There is no surer road to disaster than to imitate the plans of bygone heroes and fit them to novel situations.”
The senior commander should keep himself from becoming immersed in detail. He needs to push this down to his subordinate officers. Do not aim to see every tree because you will not see the woods. The leader should make time for quiet thoughts and reflections."
The above article is taken from the book:"The commander needs to be thinking at least two campaigns ahead, not just of the upcoming battle. The Master Plan is a changing document. Successes gained in battle can be used in the next one and the ones planned further ahead.”
Above all, Montgomery advises that leaders must realize that people have a need for truth. Montgomery says that people always find out the truth and, if the truth has been distorted or delayed, then there will be a loss of confidence. Timely truth is critical. The truth will out anyway. In summary, Montgomery believed leadership to be an exercise in effective influence. He believed that your leadership is measured by the strength of flame that burns in peoples’ hearts for the common cause, and the magnetism that draws hearts towards you.
Field Marshal Montgomery, The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery; My Doctrine of Command, Collins, London, 1958.