Taking A Company Public - Mergers And Acquisitions - When Organic Growth Isn’t Enough

In a perfect world public and large private companies could experience rapid growth by simply treating their client base right and taking and gradually making more transactions to increase revenues to subsidize the additional costs of more locations, employees etc. This is fine if you’re only trying to build a company worth a few million and then fold up when you’re ready to retire.

But if you are looking to build a legacy company that you can hand down to generations, create jobs, expand globally and constantly have a steady stream of purchase and merger offers as a safety net, you need to grow through acquisition and the best way to raise the capital for this process is to go public.

Going public is a technical process where the post public promotion referred to as IR or Investor Relations is the key to stabilizing and growing your share price. Limit the volume of shares for public consumption, pump out maximum publicity, make brokers and investors comb the planet to find available shares and force the price to grow by leaps and bounds by creating demand.

When you need funding use PIPES and pay off the loan so the PIPE firm doesn’t liquidate the shares onto the market, get those shares back.
I had a client email me a letter he got from a Do It Yourself investor relations firm. They claim to be able to train CEOs of public companies to take care of the IR campaigns for companies on the London, OTCBB and Pink Sheets. The claim that they can teach you to never need the services of an IR firm again and my response to this client was….Um…Are you an idiot? I guess I was a little upset since I own five percent of the company that he was proposing this DIY solution for IR.

Here is the deal. You need to three basic things to have a solid investor relations campaign. First you need a Pump solution. Don’t confuse pump with pump and dump. Remember, you always want to limit the shares put out to the public but you need to pump public demand and hunger for your shares to keep the price where it’s high enough to use as collateral for loans to subsidize growth without having to release more shares onto the market.

Next you need volume. Keep the shares that are in the market place moving. Hold corporate shares to your chest and keep the shares in the public moving, without volume you won’t be able to do anything with your stock. Don’t mistake the concept of creating volume with releasing shares into the public to create cash. Last but not least you need to be in the public eye. You need to have a publicist that will get you on industry expert panels on radio, tv, blogs, podcasts and every publicity medium in between. Get your CEOs face, company name and trading symbol on the bottom corner of everything including but not limited to the bicep and forearm of every sales executive in the company. Ok maybe that’s a bit much but my point is an organization that stands together behind their CEO is an organization that will survive and thrive.

These were just a few of the points that one needs to consider when going public, trying to stay public and promoting a public company. In this industry the old conviction of . . . Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see is the golden rule.

April 30th, 2010 - Posted in Blogging | | 0 Comments

Montreal Maintains CFL Dominance With Win Over Winnipeg

The Montreal Alouettes demonstrated the form that has made them the CFLs top team in a Saturday visit to Winnipeg. Anthony Calvillo threw four touchdown passes as the Alouettes prevailed easily over the Blue Bombers by a 39-12 score.

CFL bettors who backed Montreal cashed their tickets as the Als easily covered as -8 road favorites. Montreal improved to 5-2 against the number while the Blue Bombers slipped to 4-3 against the spread. The combined 51 points scored exceeded the posted total of 47, leaving each team with a 4-3 edge to the OVER this season.

Calvillo not only through four TD passes, he through three consecutive passes for touchdowns which is a feat that he cant recall accomplishing before:

“Somebody mentioned that to me out there. I didn’t realize that and they asked me if it’s ever been done or if I’d done it before and I can’t recall.”

Montreals defense held Winnipeg to four FGs and recovered four Blue Bomber turnovers that led to Alouette scores. After the game, Calvillo gave all of the credit for the victory to the defense:

“Our defence put us on the short field throughout the night and we capitalized on the turnovers. We have a lot of work to do. We had a few dropped passes, a few misreads by myself and two turnovers. We’re always looking to improve and we definitely have to improve on offence.”

Kerry Watkins caught one of Calvillos touchdowns and spoke of playing with the CFL legend in his postgame interview:

“It’s a great accomplishment, but something we don’t keep track of. It’s an honour. That’s a living legend. I’ve been so fortunate to play my whole (six-year) career with him.”

Bombers head coach Mike Kelly, who also serves as the teams offensive coordinator, chafed when asked if it was time to revamp the offense:

“There’s nothing wrong with this scheme. I’ve seen this scheme work 1,000 times .If you want to get right down to it, we have to block when we need to block and catch when we need to catch and throw to the right people. And right now we’re not doing those things so we’ll continue to look at it.”

Winnipeg defensive tackle Doug Brown concurred with his coachs assessment:

“Let’s put it this way, we were in a good enough dogfight without as many critical errors as we made ourselves. You play a team of this calibre, the last thing you need to do is dig yourself your own hole with penalties and turnovers and missed tackles and not executing our assignments and so on and so forth.”

Both teams return to action next Friday night, as Montreal hosts the Saskatchewan Rough Riders and Winnipeg heads out on the road to play the BC Lions.

April 29th, 2010 - Posted in Blogging | | 1 Comments

Raiders Start NFL Preseason Action With Blowout Of Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys received a solid effort from QB Tony Romo in his first action of the NFL preseason, but ultimately went down in defeat to the host Oakland Raiders by a 31-10 final score. Romo went three and out in his first series, but orchestrated a nice drive on his second go-round culminating in an eight yard touchdown pass to Jason Witten. Oakland’s first team struggled, but their reserves badly outplayed their Dallas counterparts in securing the win.

Theres been a lot of concern about the need to develop more long yardage passing threats after the depar’ture of Terrell Owens. After the game, he brushed aside this talk:

“I don’t think it means anything. If one guy caught six straight balls and then we scored, that’s fine, too. It’s just about whatever the defense allows us on that specific play.”

Receiver Roy Williams caught one pass on the evening, and after the game sounded his vote of confidence with the Cowboys offense:

“If we execute like that, any team is going to have trouble. But we’re going to have our adversity and have our hard times where we can’t get open or the quarterback gets sacked or a bad throw. But tonight it all fell into place.”

Raiders QB JaMarcus Russell didnt have a particularly productive outing, but Oakland coach Bruce Cable still gave him props for a good effort:

“I thought he was very aggressive with the ball, made good decisions. That’s what I’m talking about with him. When he plays the game at a fast enough speed, it allows him to be on time and he showed that tonight.”

The story of the rest of the game was the mistake filled play of the Cowboys reserves and the opportunistic effort of the Raiders second stringers. Cowboys coach Wade Phillips chalked the loss up to a learning experience:

“Our second group and our young guys, they made a lot of mistakes. You could see them out there. Those things shouldn’t happen but they did. Our guys will learn from those things.”

Dallas begins the NFL regular season on Sunday, September 13th at Tampa Bay. Oakland will start their 2009 NFL campaign at home against the San Diego Chargers on Monday, September 14th.

April 29th, 2010 - Posted in Blogging | | 0 Comments

Miami Tops Tampa Bay In NFL Preseason Florida Battle

Success in the NFL mandates that even when teams aren’t playing their best they need to find a way to win. After spotting the Bucs a 6-0 lead, Miami used a late first half field goal and scored the only touchdown of the second half to comeback for the 10-6 win. The victory improved Miamis preseason NFL record to a perfect 3-0 while Tampa Bay dropped to 1-2.

A starting QB battle in Tampa was the biggest storyline of the game and veteran Byron Leftwich appears to have gained the edge over Luke McCown. Bucs coach Raheem Morris has indicated that hell be making a decision soon, though he refused to show his cards in postgame media comments:

“Obviously you want somebody to jump up and take it. We’ll find out when we go back, look at the tape and evaluate this thing.”

McCown had a rough night, with two sacks and no points scored. He gave a verbose no comment on his status as starter:

“It’s not for me to say. … My part in it is preparing every day, being the best I can be and getting better from my mistakes. As long as I feel like I’m doing that, then I’m OK.”

Leftwich, meanwhile, was 9 of 17 for 100 yards and came up big on several third down completions. He had very little to say about the ‘QB controversy’ and instead focused on his performance:

“Hopefully, I’m the guy. I felt good. I missed a few, but I hit a few also. Luckily for me on the ones I missed, I made plays on the following play to get those first downs.”

Bucs running back Cadillac Williams returned to action after major knee surgery seven months ago. Hes been limited in the last three seasons due to injuries, but looked solid in picking up 54 yards on eight carries. Afterwards, he said the knee problems are not an issue:

“The knee is not an issue to me. … I feel great. I’m just loving what I do.”

The game had several delays due to rain and lightening, the longest a 45 minute stoppage Dolphins QB Chad Pennington said that its hard to evaluate his team’s performance due to the strange starts and stops:

“It was a very odd game for us, as far as the rain delay, a lot of stoppages of play and things like that We were able to come out get a score before halftime and get a score after the half. We’ll build on that. We’ll be critical of ourselves and make sure we don’t let a win overshadow what we need to do to get better.”

The Dolphins will conclude their NFL preseason play next Thursday against the Saints at New Orleans. Tampa Bay will host Houston next Friday in their final preseason contest.

April 29th, 2010 - Posted in Blogging | | 0 Comments

Lions Look To Regain Momentum With CFL Win Over Roughriders

The BC Lions may have turned the corner after a disappointing 1-4 start to the CFL season. This past weekend, a clearly motivated Lions team defeated the Saskatchewan Roughriders 35-20 to improve to 2-4 in CFL play. The Roughriders dropped to 3-3 in the early going in the CFL season.

Lions defensive end Brent Johnson said that the motivation for this game was simple”his team was just sick of losing:

“We were sick of losing. That was our only option - to win tonight. This was the must wins of must wins.”

Johnson led a fearsome Lions defense with three QB sacks. Overall, the BC defense combined for five QB sacks and three interceptions.

Lions running back Martell Mallett caught one touchdown pass, ran for another and generally made himself a problem for the Riders defense all night. After the game, he praised the play of his offensive line:

“We just went out there and executed. The offensive line blocked well. I was just hitting the holes. They opened it for me and I got in it.”

BC starting QB Buck Pierce had been hearing some criticism from the Vancouver media suggesting that he lose his starting spot. His solid play in the victory may have turned down the heat for now. After the game, he spoke of the team effort in the win:

“I was very proud of our offence tonight. “The way we stayed poised, the way we moved the ball. Running and throwing the ball, we were very good.”

Saskatchewan quarterback Darian Durrant blamed the loss on his teams lack of execution and failure to capitalize on opportunities:

“It was frustrating. B.C. gave us plenty of opportunities to put more points on the board. We just didn’t capitalize.”

Despite the much needed win, Lions coach Wally Buono realizes that his team still has plenty of work to do:

“We have to play much better football than what we did. I saw the intensity that you need, I see the resilience and I saw some guys make some plays.”

BC will travel east to play the struggling Toronto Argonauts. Saskatchewan will head home to face the Hamilton Tiger Cats.

April 29th, 2010 - Posted in Blogging | | 4 Comments

Chargers’ Running Back Tomlinson To Miss Second Straight Game

LaDanian Tomlinson is still not fully recovered from a sprained right ankle, and as a result hell miss his second consecutive NFL regular season game this Sunday. Tomlinson was hurt in the San Diego Chargers season opening victory over the Oakland Raiders and didn’t play last week. The Chargers are slated to host the Miami Dolphins on Sunday afternoon.

After playing in eight consecutive regular season games last year, the superstar running back has missed three of the Chargers last four games. Most significant was last January, when a groin injury kept LT out of the Chargers AFC playoff loss to the eventual Superbowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers.

Tomlinson refused comment when asked about his injury:

“I don’t have a comment about it. It is what it is.”

Until his recent bouts with injury, Tomlinson had been one of the most durable running backs in the league. Prior to last season, the only start hed missed in his career was the season finale in 2004 when then-coach Marty Schottenheimer rested Tomlinson and other starters in advance of the NFL playoffs.

Chargers’ coach Norv Turner spoke about Tomlinson’s injury:

“It’s hard because you’d like to have all your guys. It’s crazy, because on Sept. 1, when people were asking me what I thought about camp, I said it was great that we were healthy and had all our guys, because that’s something we haven’t had in a while.

“I think we’re doing the right thing with L.T. Obviously he couldn’t play this week, you know, but he’s getting better and hopefully he’ll be able to go next week. if not, he’ll be ready to go when the bye’s over.”

The Chargers also have a half dozen players listed as questionable due to flu like symptoms. Turner spoke about their prognosis:

“I think we’re beyond the guys who had it. I obviously have a concern that they’re not too drained, but I think we have a couple days to get them back. My concern is what’s going to pop up tomorrow morning or Sunday morning because obviously it’s going through the building.”

Darren Sproles started in LTs place last week, and has performed well this season. Hes not as powerful a back as Tomlinson, but is a heady player who uses his speed and elusiveness to pick up yardage.

The Chargers are a -6 home favorite against the Miami Dolphins this Sunday, with the total set at 44. San Diego will travel to the Steel City of Pittsburgh next Sunday to face the Superbowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers, and then enjoy a much needed bye week. Theyll return to action on Monday, November 19th hosting the Denver Broncos.

April 29th, 2010 - Posted in Blogging | | 0 Comments

Keyword Research Service: The Foundation Of SEO

Keyword research service specializes in keyword research and they specifically know what keywords will work and what keywords will not work when it comes to improving your website traffic. They believe in supplying high quality keywords, thus ensuring that your website has unique and impressive information on all of its pages.

In search engines terms, you should use a strong keyword list to use in your optimization method. You can get the best visitors from search engines results, but in order for them to be targeted your site must be optimized for the most relevant keywords in your line of business. In other words selecting the right keywords for your site is crucial at the start. If you structure it on some keywords that are not applicable using what you give you might end up with visitors that have no value for your website. When a visitor that gets there on your site searching for some specific keywords and finds precisely what he was looking for, is more likely to return to your website, buy or subscribe to what you’re selling.

An article should be well written with the use of appropriate keywords so that it is able to create impact on reader’s mind. Writing is more than assimilation of words and construction of phrases. It demands right use of keywords and phrase in a neat and clean language that should be easily understood by the reader. This applies to every field of writing including writing for internet. Though you could compose articles yourself, it’s best that you have them prepared by experts. The professionals research and write an article that is both keywords (SEO) optimized while it is kept interesting and focused to your website. Above all it is composed while keeping in mind your target audience, boosting their desire to visit your site for learning more.

It is important to make sure you know the appropriate keywords and keyword phrases for your website and you must use them completely. An article must have good keyword density for a search engine to feel its presence. Articles must at the least have ten to fifteen percent of keyword density within their content for search engines to rank a website high in their search results. Obtaining a high rank is what articles do best for the website. Keyword density is the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is employed on an article. The number varies according to the variety of words utilized in an article. A good article must have a keyword density that isn’t too big or too small. With a quite high density, the essence of the article is lost and may let down a reader as well as the search engines. While a low quantity of density could be overlooked by the search engines.

Keyword rich articles and educational sites are the sites that are currently getting all of the web traffic. The greater traffic your website gets the more income gaining potential your website produces. Keywords may instantly increase the income generating potential of any website. Your business improvement and growth depends upon the proper use of keywords. The utilization of keywords is part and parcel of an effective Internet marketing strategy. The search engines marketing will be far more successful if you use the right keywords.

April 28th, 2010 - Posted in Blogging | | 0 Comments

Classified Ads as Free Advertising Media for Home Business

We often hear about the budget constraint of home business. In fact it is common to hear this in every organization. Even non-commercial organizations are restricted in term of money they can spend on prospective resources. In general, home businesses are small-scale business ran from residential houses or small factory centers. They range from manufacturing labor intensive products such as crafts to skill intensive ones such as counseling service.

Many online retail shops are also home businesses which can run their operational activities efficiently and professionally. Yet cost is still a constraint and everyone wants to reduce it without selling less. At the middle point, we know advertising can takes a big proportion of your budget. And we also know that advertising is crucial to get sales and reach new customers. But thanks for the growth of Internet utilization that we now have many more choice to advertise products and services. Have you ever heard or used online classified ads to market your business? If not, you should consider it as one of the feasible ways to market online on Internet.

Almost similar to offline classified ads, we prepare ads draft based on the allowed character (which is usually big enough), find online classified ads sites to post ads on, and measure your ads performance. First of all, they are almost all free. Home business can advertise their products and services without worrying of paying too much. Secondly, they are easy to manage.

You do not have to waste time on talking to classified ads agencies, handling your ads drafting to them, or waiting for weeks and months until your ads is published (in case of free offline classified ads). If you pay for your ads being posted, then you still have limited exposure because the traditional classified ads are usually posted on one or few editions only. There is less possibility that people will read your ads and get the information. This is not yet to mention the cost you incur, from managing the first contact with the classified ads agency to paying your ads cost.

It takes much longer time and waste much more energy, obviously. The case is much different when you manage online classified ads. Would it consume time? Yes, if you are just starting it for the first time. But it is not that much at all. Posting ads on classified ads sites is as easy as signing up for a new email or social networking account. And the ads stay there for a long time or even permanently! With the unlimited exposure provided by online classified ads, you can expect better performance too. Of course, they need to be measured for effectiveness, as usual. Bu the time and cost you spend is much less.

This is a big opportunity for home business. As they have more focus on creating more sales and attracting more buyers, they can utilize the advantages of online advertising media. Well, of course classified ad is not the only one media to use. There are still many others such as social media, social networking sites, niche forums, online business directories, online ads listing, search engine marketing, and so on. But classified ads can be a great start for ever business, especially if you are not that familiar with the other available options yet.

April 28th, 2010 - Posted in Online Marketing | | 1 Comments

The Way To Understand Piano Notes - Analyzing Piano Notes

You have to be familiar with the name, piano. Piano is a musical instrument, played by a keyboard. Despite being non cartable and the high-priced one, piano is the most crucial musical instrument in western music for solo performances, chamber music, composing and rehearsals. The reason behind it is the versatility and omnipresence that has made piano one of the most familiar music instruments.

Learning to read piano notes involves a couple of different concepts and needs much practice. Reading piano sheet music comprises understanding the time and key signature, both bass and treble clefs, and having the ability to read the particular notes. In this piece, I’m going to teach you a quick and simple memorization trick to read piano notes.

There are 2 clefs in piano sheet music. The notes in the lines and spaces read differently for each clef. These notes start at A, continue down the alphabet to G, and then repeat. As an example, if you start on C, the next white key would be D, followed by E. Since this pattern repeats, A will come after G. Reading the piano notes from really sheet music is a little trickier. The simplest way to go about this is to create acronyms as a memorization method.

The treble clef is generally played with the right hand. The lines on the sheet music represent the notes of E-G-B-D-F. I’ve always recalled this with the acronym each Good Boy Does Fine. The spaces on the treble clef represent F-A-C-E. I don’t believe any one has used anything other than “FACE” to learn this one.

The bass clef is played with the left hand. This clef also has some fun packed acronyms to remember the piano notes. The lines stand for G-B-D-F-A. A straightforward saying for this is “Great huge Dogs Fight Animals.” The spaces of the bass clef are A-C-E-G, or as I really like to say, “All Cows Eat Grass.”

If you do not wish to use these acronyms, you can make your own that you’ll remember best. Don’t underestimate this strategy ; it is basically a gigantic help when trying to discover how to read piano notes. With some practice and experience, you will eventually be in a position to read music from the page while not having to cast your mind back to the memorization trick.

April 27th, 2010 - Posted in Blogging | | 0 Comments

Take My Business Public Successfully: The Spoke Wheel Approach - OTCBB

The ‘Spoke Wheel’ Approach To Taking Your Company Public.

A public corporation, just as a private company is composed of several contributing factors that dictate the outcome of its success. If you visualize your corporate entity as the ‘hub’ of the wheel and each spoke as a ‘contributing asset’ to the company you’ll find that the more spokes in the wheel, the more weight the wheel can carry as its strength rests on scores of unified connections working together, each with one simultaneous point of interest, the hub.

These hub connections can be anything that contributes to the overall success and perpetual, yet controlled, growth strategy of the company such as: a dozen strategic partnerships that act as growing distribution channels for your product or service, finance alliances that take care of your growth capital needs, multiple legal professionals that you can tap into for advise and corporate strategies, dozens of companies within your industry that focus on a different element of the industry but cooperate as a referral source for new business and on and on.

Your goal, in creating a solid, strategically aligned pre public and post public corporation is to keep building spokes and bringing on partners and executives that can instantly contribute to adding more strategic alliances and growth enhancers to your ever evolving and emerging corporate wheel.

If you are a public company, partnerships that you should have heavily represented in your model should be securities attorneys, market makers and broker dealers, several publicists with different areas of media focus, viral publicists, investor relations facilitators and service providers etc. Don’t forget the political contacts and padding contacts. By ‘padding’ I mean contacts that may serve no active role other than having some big names affiliated with your company that can gain attention within and outside your specific industry genre.

April 27th, 2010 - Posted in Blogging | | 0 Comments