Finance Your Business Survival Kit (Survival Kit Series) [Kindle Edition]

Deaver Brown (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The Finance Your Business Survival Kit pares down the enormous amount of information on the subject to provide you with the core essentials on the subject of financing your business. Less is more in the survival business--and we work hard to keep our books lean and useful.

The author has include straightforward practical tips about securing funding, from equity investments to bank secured lending. The fancy footwork is left out so you can focus on the fundamentals to make your business work. A related audiobook is published by Amazon's audible.com division, enter the title, author, or Simply Magazine, to reach the title at audible.com, itunes store, or amazon itself. The audiobook reinforces the messages, is cross platform working on MAC/PC and all portable devices.

The author has found through his serial entrepreneurial experience and advisory ones to many emerging companies that the key to successful fund raising is to go to the right people and organizations at the right time. In other words, you must do a self-analysis, which the author assists with, to determine what stage of business development your company is at--and find the sources that specialize in your niche.

The tracks illuminate what you will learn and have to work with in this ebook.

Contents

Finance Your Business Survival Kit
Author Deaver Brown
About the Survival Kit Series
About the Finance Your Business Survival Kit
General Approach: About this ebook

Chapter One: Business Focus
What Business Are You In?
Three Rules for Success
All Results are Outside Your Company
Know Your Deal: What is It?
Elevator Ride Pitch

Chapter Two: People and Their Motivation to Invest
Why Do Companies & People Invest in Emerging Companies?
Why They Don’t Invest
Their Perspective on Your Deal

Chapter Three: Planning
20 Quick Tips
Executive Summaries & Business Plans
The Executive Summary: They Get Read
The Business Plan: They Get Filed
Make the Executive Summary & Business Plan Work for You

Chapter Four: Self-Audit
Are You Willing to Be Diluted?
Are You Willing to Pay a Significant Amount to Money Raisers?
Are You Willing to Lose Control?
Can You Delegate to Others?
Is This What You Want?

Chapter Five: The Skill Set
Ten Talents to Raise Money
Learn Your Craft
Develop a Focused Mission

Chapter Six: Let’s Get to Work
Traditional Funding
Reaching Out to Family Members, Friends, Neighbors & Peers
Investors
Cash, Credit Card & COD Businesses
Calculate Your Needs
Capital Sources
Angel Investing

Chapter Seven: Hiring Financial People

Chapter Eight: Accounting & Bookkeeping

Chapter Nine: Danger
24 Quick Tips Regarding Risks
Financial Risks
Cashflow: Nine Steps to Improve It
Control the Cash
Credit: The Risks of Debt
Bankruptcy

Chapter Ten: Exit
Steady State
Selling Out
Valuation Approaches
Standard Valuation Guidelines
Candidates to Acquire Your Business
IPO: The Brass Ring of Entrepreneurship
Basic Requirements to Get One
Benefits & Liabilities of an IPO

Chapter Eleven: Daily Reports
Financial Flash Report
Sales Flash Report
Operations/Production Flash Report
Financial Contact Files

Chapter Twelve: Suggested Readings

Chapter Thirteen: Just for Fun
Deaverism as My Friends Call Them

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 178 KB
• Publisher: Simply Magazine; 3.0 edition (March 4, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003ELPRQO
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #375,606 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Deaver graduated with a Magna in History from Harvard College, with his senior thesis being, "Civilizing the Machine: Civil War to 1900." He went on to Harvard Business School (HBS) and concentrated on marketing and operations. "Marketing is how you catch the bear; operations is how you skin him and determine whether you profit or not," says Deaver. One of his favorite quotes is Thorstein Veblen, "The more useless the activity the more it is highly regarded."

Deaver is a serial entrepreneur who has been up, down, and sideways. "This is what makes me a good teacher, writer, and talker. I am a minor league entrepreneur who had some successes, but failures and so/so's too. The great coaches are like that, such as Bill Belichick and Phil Jackson. They can relate to the more average among us because we are too."

His ups included the Umbroller Stroller company sold to Graco and on to Rubbermaid/Newell; refocusing American Power Conversion (APCC) from solar inverters to UPS's for the growing PC business in the 80s and 90s; helping sell Peterson to Cosco, Cosco to an LBO, and Cosco to Doral; and Pride Retail Systems to Compaq and on to HP. He did not succeed with the PumpQuick no pressure fire extinguisher, CD Titles, or Simply Media. He did so/so with Apollo, General Sound, and Westboro, selling them to larger companies.

He wrote his first book, The Entrepreneur's Guide, published by Macmillan and Ballantine in mass market paperback, after selling his interests in the Umbroller Stroller company. Deaver said, "The biggest issue is one's temperament. The more you hire people the more you realize that temperament determines so much. Technical and can do skills are relatively easy to assess. It is the will do skills that are so hard. Temperament is key to 'will do.' He lists 8 core traits to assess in yourself in the book." Deaver, "My favorite letters and emails say, 'I wasted my money; I wasn't fit to be an entrepreneur.' I always write back, 'That is my intention--to save you from it if it doesn't suit. The thank you letters are wonderful.'"

Next he emphasizes the core 4 skills. Deaver, "Most books emphasize markets, financing, and such things. I emphasize the key 4: Sales, Making, Delivering; and getting Paid. Do those 4 right, and everything else is straightforward."

Lessons learned could fill a book--and do! One of his favorite projects was an HBS Case, now widely distributed along with an accompanying video, "Deaver Brown & Cross River." He co wrote this with Professor Amar Bhide at HBS, now at Columbia, on having 10 minutes to sell Kmart, the Walmart of its day, and Macy's. Deaver, "Most students say it is the best case of the year. They learn you either sell something or you don't. As I tell them, most of you won't be selling product or services, but be in the financial area. But think, 'Can this person go into the pit, as in this case, and close the deal. More importantly, can they be tossed out, and come back?'" Only former IBM salespeople closed Deaver when he was in the class acting as a buyer. They were cool, calm, collected, focused, and listened. They also gave the buyer what the buyer needed, not what the salesperson wanted.

Deaver Commented, "Amar asks for volunteers and often has a tough time getting them. When my cofounder at Umbroller, and old friend Alex Levitch came to class to observe, he said it best, 'If you don't want to volunteer, leave the class. If you don't want to pitch, you'll never make it. If you worry what others think, you'll never make it.' Perfect advice."

Deaver said he recommended students in their careers as investors recalling who could pitch or couldn't, and thinking about how a prospective candidate would do in that situation--based on his experience with his Harvard tutor, Neil Harris, later Chairman of the History Department at University of Chicago. "Neil would read my work out loud and lift an eyebrow at the appropriate moments. I always think about that eyebrow when reading my own work."

"Also, Neil was the poster boy for learning. He invited me to one of his lectures when he used my material to bolster his analysis. He winked at me when doing so. Neil was always learning, as we all should."

"Commencement is the beginning not the end of learning. I read 80 books per year which the Kindle makes so much easier and less expensive, not to speak of Amazon's audible.com that does so for audiobooks at iTunes and Amazon. We also have them at www.discountaudiobooks.com."

"Each work has other suggestions. No one has the final answer, except the not very smart. There is always more," says Deaver.

Picture: "I am the shorter guy standing up. An impromptu gathering of friends at the 40th Reunion at HBS, for lunch at Anthony's Pier 4. Read; have fun; share with friends. The picture says it all for me and I hope for you too."