Six Words To Guide You To Successful Management And Operation Of Your Business.

The job of a CEO, a business manager, an owner/operator, or whatever you’re calling your leadership position, frequently involves hands-on operation, sales, problem-solving, receivables collection, bill paying, etc. You’re busy, busy, busy and are doing everything you have to do… so you think.

The reality is that while most CEO’s are trapped in task-oriented activities, there is a better plan: Train, plan and review. This is the job of the leader.

TRAIN
Constantly training, cross-training and upgrading the skill level of your employees, be it direct hands-on training, hired training, or a managed employees-training-employees system, is the first goal. Training is the lifeblood of a business and of successful implementation of a growth plan. Further, training combined with a career path development process will result in the first stages of supporting a successful business. Further, this effort will support greater employee satisfaction, long-term employment and higher quality goods and services.

Frequently, “training” equates to learning on the job, without plan or purpose, and is usually a learn-as-you-go situation with tips from the person closest to the employee. It’s inefficient, unproductive, less successful, uncontrolled, undisciplined, erratic and sometimes even dead wrong.

Training must be done with purpose, definition, focus and should be designed to elevate the skills of your employees, sharpen their abilities and build upon their career path.

PLAN
The second job of a senior leader is to plan, short-term, medium-term and long-term. He needs to plan operations, plan fitness and plan sales and marketing on the short- and medium-term while planning growth and development for the long-term. Planning is the lifeblood of growth and development. No plan and you remain flat and directionless, doing the same things you always do. Plan, and you will advance the mission. No plan, no advance.

REVIEW
Once a plan has been established there must be benchmarks and key indicators, ways of measuring productivity to determine where on the development path the program is and how successfully the growth plan is being implemented. This will allow for accountability, a key requirement for successful growth.

Now, how do you manage your business on an operational level as the operational manager? Track, monitor and control.

TRACK
It’s all about checking the progress of your employees, holding them accountable for predetermined goals and objectives and tracking their productivity. Setting goals and then measuring success, giving your employees the appropriate feedback to support their success at their tasks and overall job, this completes the circle. It’s a key requirement of the manager. Every employee must be tracked and managed by this review process.

MONITOR
This is actual act of paying attention to the key indicators that you are tracking. Make certain that this is consistently being done as the employees are watching your follow-through as well and if the monitoring is not done, tracking is irrelevant and controlling is impossible.

CONTROL
This is all about making the necessary adjustments that are revealed and required from the tracking and monitoring efforts. Once tracked and monitored, you must do something with the data. Use it to sharpen the workforce. Share with them the results and support their goals of reaching greater heights and more success. The greater the job satisfaction for all, the greater the success for the business.

Six words are all the guidance you need: Train, plan and review; track, monitor and control.

We guaranty our SBA defaulted loan workouts. WOW!!!

The two most frequent objections we hear from potential clients inspecting our services are:

1. Too good to be true.
2. What happens if we pay you what you are asking and it does not work?

Well, two reasonable objections.

Having heard this far too many times, we have decided to take a bold stand and demonstrate in a meaningful way that we deliver what we say, we are good, and there is little risk of  our failing.

Here is why and how:

WE NOW GUARANTY RESULTS. WE WILL PAY YOU YOUR MONEY BACK OR COVER THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT WE PROMISED AND WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED, IF WE DO NOT DELIVER.

We will:

1. Deliver our promised results.

2. Strip 100% of the debt off the business assets.

3. Remove all liens from your home when the workout personal guaranty is paid off.

OR OUR GUARANTY WILL PAY YOU BACK.

Now do you still think we are too good to be true?

Call us, let us evaluate your situation and provide you with our guaranteed result.

It cannot get much better than this!

Call Norm at 413-584-2581 He will arrange a no obligation tele-conference for us to review your situation and create a winning strategy. Guaranteed!

When buying or selling a business, do you assign the lease or create a new one?

It’s a frequently confronted situation and one that requires some experience to evaluate.

Here is the difference: If you assign a lease, you, the original business owner and the new lessee both remain liable for the contract until its end even with the assigned new business owner in control of the space. If you do not assign and require a new lease for the new buyer, the new owner/lessee will be solely responsible for the liability of the contract; freeing the seller completely.

Additionally, if you assign the lease contract the terms and conditions remain the same. If you create a new lease for the buyer, the terms and conditions can be re-negotiated based on changing circumstances. It is possible to amend the original lease but less likely than with a new lease.

In the current tight market with reduced revenues, reduced rents are far more likely with a new contract. Landlords do not want an empty facility in this low demand market but resist negotiating with an in place lease. The new buyer has enormous leverage to change the terms and lower the lease cost. It should be done with a new lease not an assignment.

How deep can debt forgiveness go when working out a defaulted SBA guaranted loan (or a non guaranteed bank loan)?

This is a very complicated issue with many contributing factors:

Some of the issues are net worth, income, spousal income, protected retirement investments, family, basic overhead, secured debt, other assets, other business interests, medical issues, education, age, where you live, what the assets in your business are worth, structure of the offer, and previous income history to name a few. There are just as many more not listed as each case is unique and each case requires a unique evaluation and presentation. Each case requires its own special evaluation.

However, if done appropriately and within SBA guidelines and as dictated by much experience seeing what works and what does not work, if done correctly and presented effectively and if a trust relationship has been established between the bank and us as third party representatives of a defaulted borrower, we have typically experienced forgiveness debt between 90% and 95%! That works.

We have seen attempts to execute an effective Offer in Compromise with the SBA on a defaulted loan directly by the borrower, refused with a significant 50% cash offer. Why? Not presented or evaluated correctly and the borrower is the last person to effectively create a trust relationship with the bank as he already broke his word and defaulted on the contract, the borrower is the least credible and the least likely to get the best possible result.

Of course there is the issue of what to offer and how to offer it, that only experience will reveal and if doing it for the first time, as a borrower would be doing, it is impossible to know what to do. Even your lawyer, unless he specializes in Bank workouts and SBA workouts with massive debt forgiveness, he too will be clueless as to how it really works.

Most Offers in Compromise are rejected. Some do eventually get worked out but at much higher amounts than if handled by experts who know the path.

When properly done, our clients pay between 3 – 10 cents on the dollar, with some paying in a lump sum while others we arrange term payoffs over time, a few years up to 5 if necessary.

This is affordable. This truly allows the borrower the opportunity to get on with his life again and move into a new income producing venture be it employment or entrepreneurship. He has his life back and has not lost his home.

While most homes are upside down and, thus, offer no value from foreclosure liquidation, some are not upside down and have equity and these must be handled in a few specific ways to prevent the loss of one’s home. We know how to do this and most borrowers do not. So we can easily say not one of our clients has ever lost their home to a bank or SBA liquidation process if they were represented by us prior to the foreclosure and liquidation.

Debt forgiveness and no loss of one’s home are possible, if you know what you are doing.

Workouts are not a get rich quick plan

It happens from time to time, and it comes in a few different varieties.

Small business owners with significant debt want to do a workout to reduce their debt and call us for such support. We evaluate their finances and occasionally it does not add up.

In a few, we see a successful business possibly with reduced revenues from the business decline we are experiencing, but the reality is they are still profiting and, thus, we really cannot and should not employ our skills to reduce debt through our strategies just to help them avoid paying a loan that they can and should repay because they are solvent and profitable. We walk away from these potential clients. We are not in business to do this.

Another issue we confront is when the client has sizable wealth accumulation. This too presents a challenge because while we can strip debt off an underperforming business preserving them from foreclosure, however, when confronting the workout for the personal guaranties, we cannot hide existing wealth. For example from time to time we come across a potential client who has paid off his mortgage and has a valuable house. It is a blank check for the banks and there is little we can do about it. They must pay more than if they had a mortgage and the house was upside down. Their exposed equity becomes a basis for pay back.

A third issue which we confront from time to time is when the business is doing well but the business owner takes cash out before depositing it and, thus, makes the business look under performing while building up cash reserves under his mattress. Yes, this happens.

We are not in business to support this activity. We do not represent small business owners who are misusing the system. This is unethical and not within our operational standards.

I have selected post number 666, the biblical sign of the devil to discuss this issue, as what better post to discuss our ethical standards.

We must all eventually answer to ourselves, how we conduct ourselves and what kind of business person we are. We have determined our standards and while we make no judgment for our clients or potential clients as everyone is entitled to determine how they act for themselves, we will not align ourselves with business owners who do not maintain an ethical standard that complies with our definition of what our mission is.

We are not here to make someone rich. We are not here to help business owners cheat. We enter a workout with integrity and with full disclosure and this works. We are in business to support small business owners who are drowning in debt and cannot survive. That is what we do.