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OK, you’re ready to take your company to the next level and your CFO and legal counsel have advised you to go public to raise capital as well as to retain some of those prize employees with stock options and to bait that new sales executive with a signing bonus made up of stock options. You’ve looked into everything from pink sheets to reverse mergers to OTCBB to IPO and you have come to the conclusion you’re going to need to take on investors so that you can afford to follow through with your plan. If you’re lacking the funds to dive right in and start creating your public structure, here is a way that just about any business can afford to go public.

First, get a real business plan. Your business plan needs to sizzle and reel in the investor and clearly paint a picture of your vision to the investor and their advisors. Next, you’ll want to raise an initial round of cash quickly so that you can afford to take your company public without hindering your current company structure with additional ancillary costs. You’re going to need something fast and affective; you should consider having a professionally authored private placement memorandum put together for your company.

If you are trying to go public via OTCBB a Regulation D Rule 504 exemption will suffice, if you are trying to achieve an IPO you’ll need to go with a Regulation D Rule 505 exemption (pink sheets and reverse mergers into shell corps are not very successful in immediate and long term success so I would suggest you stay away from these structures). Build into the PPM verbiage that you are raising an initial round of capital that will be used to take your company public. When savvy investors see that they are investing in a real, viable pre-IPO or pre-OTCBB formation you will see investors climbing out of the woodwork to give you cash if your business concept is sound.

Next you hire the consultants (usually the same firm that wrote your PPM) to start the process of taking you public. On the PPM your Mini/Maxi should allow you to use capital almost immediately to get the ball rolling on your public company. You can count on a solid OTCBB going for between $75k and $250k and an IPO going for $1M+ so have your PPM written accordingly. If you follow the path set forth above you will notice something extraordinary.

The only out of pocket expense you had was for your Private Placement Memorandum (and your business plan if you didn’t have one) and 100% of the capital needed to go public was supplied by greedy investors who are excited to invest because of the quick payoff of their investment when you go public. This process means you can literally take your company public for less than $5,000 (the typical cost of a strategic Private Placement Memorandum. This is a simple, strategic and inexpensive way to get the capital you need for your company quickly, without using your limited financial resources in the process.

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When the principles of a company make the decision to go public there are many things to take into consideration. First and foremost, trying to wade through the pariah infested waters of the OTCBB, Investor Relations and strategic growth strategies on your own is a guaranteed suicide mission and you’ll fail. Find a consultant who understands your business and has the contacts to create a turnkey solution to take you from public to private and all the other necessities you’re company is going to need to make it.

As part of your consultant pre qualifications here are the niches you’re the consultant absolutely must be well versed in order for your company to succeed with the public offering and a solid trading volume post public. Better yet, here is what you’re going to need so you can measure your questions against this list when qualifying the consultants to see who is the best fit.

First you’re company will need structuring. What I mean by structuring is that you’ll need to put a sturdy skeletal structure together to carry around your corporate bag of bones, an iron clad skeletal structure would consist of: board of directors with esteemed educational and professional pedigrees and proven track records for assisting companies in your particular genre with getting to the next level from the level your company is currently at pre public. You also need powerful strategic alliances that will increase your name recognition and overall market awareness by affiliations with inter-industry powerhouses. Use strategic partners for promotion, expansion, resellers, referrals, service and product brokering, name recognition, and more.

Talk to your accountant about your corporate structure. Delaware C corporations are a sturdy home state for public companies as the states statutes go back to the original 13 colonies and offer optimal protection and case law to support a growing public company. Some oversees companies prefer Nevada for their quick fix to the foreign owned company problem but ask your accountant and attorney to give you the pros and cons. Statutory domicile will be the advantage to the home of your corporation but if you are operating in another state you’ll still need to file locally while the state of incorporation can offer legislative support from previous case law history. Don’t believe that you won’t have to pay taxes if you incorporate in Nevada, this simply isn’t the case. Read up on this and then get the real deal from your attorney.

Every public company needs solid CEO, CFO, COO, Board of directors, Board of Advisors, Strategic Partnerships to start off. Now, when you have the above you need to start working on monetize-able purchase orders and offering net terms to your clients, in other words start building your book of business aggressively by offering credit terms. This will make you a stronger company and when investors see your mountain of purchase orders they’ll be impressed and will be more apt to invest. General signed contracts will typically have too many contingencies to have an impact as contracts are not very enforceable whereas purchase orders are like currency and can be monetized if your company finds itself in a crunch. This shows investors that you’re prepared for the ups and downs ahead.

Now after you’ve gone through the s1 comments with the SEC and the 15c211 has been filed by a market maker with FINRA, let’s assume you have your trading symbol and you’re ready to start selling shares. You are going to need a powerful, expensive, rock solid investor relations and market build strategy. Don’t use a pump and dump house as if you do so you will never recuperate. Instead your IR strategy should include: phone room support for announcing your company to industry insiders to create awareness (not selling stock), solid, opt-in email alerts to seasoned, accredited investors looking for stock in your industry, press releases should go out to announce everything from a new executive hire to an new contract to a new strategic partner and anything else that will give you a reason to notify the public on your company’s growth. Expert panel reviews for your C level executives to talk about the industry as an expert insider promote the company to the masses where they will get to see first hand the massive knowledge you possess about your industry which may prompt listeners to investigate your stock for a potential purchase. Don’t forget about viral publicity through high pr video, social bookmarks, blog entry, articles and the prototypical twitter, facebook, myspace and Linkedin properties.

Going public should be part of an overall strategy for expansion as opposed to having a go to just ‘go public’ to raise money.

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I was recently on a conference call with a new client and their accountant who insisted on meeting with me because he wanted to pre qualify me. After a few questions when I was setting up the call I could tell right away that this accountant was a pure amateur and was trying to look like the ‘big dog’ to his clients, being one who invites and enjoys confrontation I took on the meeting. I love negotiating and debating on topics in which I’m well versed so I knew this would be fun.

The call started with the accountant jumping in to take control of the conversation and asked me if I wouldn’t mind explaining what I am planning to do for this client. From beginning to end, this individual was completely out of his element as he’s never had direct contact with an IPO or Global strategies facilitator or someone with international legislative contacts to put to work on behalf of the client to expedite growth and revenues.

After my brief 30 second presentation there was silence on the other end of the line which typically means the opposing party cant intellectually formulate a response due to the sheer lack of experience in this field. So then I continued but instead of a presentation, I became concerned that I was getting involved in a project that had flees and I may need to step away if too many unqualified people were involved.

I proceeded to ask him the following questions that any consultant should ask of a person who claims to be an insider with your client. “How big is your accounting practice”…2000+ clients he boasts. My next question was “Wow! Great then please give me the breakdown of the inter-client base strategic partnerships you have created on behalf of this client to speed up their growth and increase their revenues?” He couldn’t respond because he didn’t know what strategic alliances were. I continued, being that this company has been trying to raise capital for over a year, with 2,000 clients obviously you have access to accredited investors, how much money have you raised and what SEC approved vehicle did you use to distribute shares for equity?” again, there was silence on the other end of the line. This was the way the entire call went which demonstrated to my client that they will obviously have to break out of that relationship for and experienced accounting firm who understands how to work with clients in expansion mode.

When you hire an accountant to do the books for your company, of course you want to make sure that they can perform the general tasks of numbers but you also need to evaluate their current client base and their track record for setting up partnerships between their clients? An accountant who doesn’t network his client base isn’t worth the fee. In this economic environment you need to choose your accounting professionals based off of strict criteria.

You don’t need a number cruncher. You need a number crunching networking executive with a strong and influential contact base to set up round table meetings, make introductions and help grow your company. Anyone with a general comprehension of tax law, book keeping and QuickBooks can be an accountant but few are able to facilitate all the additional services needed for an expanding corporation. You should pick an accounting firm based off of 10% expertise, 30% fees and 60% contacts and track record for helping expanding companies. Don’t settle for anything less.

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With legions of halfwit, template loving business plan wannabe writers polluting the web it’s no mystery that companies are having a tough time getting funding. It use to be that when a company was ready to get down to business for serious expansion they would call a consultant that would help them bring all the pieces together in a strategic fashion and then this consultant would take their extended industry knowledge in combination with the unique concepts of the client’s business and he would author a business plan.

This business plan would include everything that the venture capital firms, angel investors, private investors and institutional lenders would need in order to make a quick, no nonsense decision about whether to fund the company and how much equity they would get in return.

Today with the cancerous cloud of predatory consultants seeking out startup business prey to suck dry that businesses are too broke and exhausted to move forward with a solid consultant after they have been through the costly obstacle course and fun house of mirrors set up by wannabe consultants who reel in their prey with a few big words and industry terms and at the end of the day, they are going to put your business plan together with some cracked template software that spits out overly generalized business plans that receive laughs and snickers before being tossed in the trash by investors and venture capital firms.

If you want a real business plan, call a consultant that is completely submerged in the venture capital industry and has experience with plugging businesses into the capital machine. An consultant will first give you a consultation so he can assist in any corporate structuring or turnaround issues that need attention before the business plan is together. After the company’s structure is complete with executives, solid management, strategic partners, advisory board and board of directors, there is still one more thing to do before the business plan. You must decide what mechanism you’re going to use to raise capital. Are you seeking debt or equity investment or both, how much equity you will give away for the amount of cash you’re seeking. How many shares does your corporation currently have and so on. You’ll most likely need to put together a private placement or consider taking your company public on the otcbb. After all this is done then it’s time to write the business plan.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot, don’t write the business plan yourself, when you’ve found a consultant, here are the topics that should be covered in the business plan (this knowledge will help you audit their work before you even hire them). The table of contents should read, at a minimum, like this: executive summary with objectives, keys to success and strategic advantages; Market, Market: Growth and Development Analysis with Industry Analysis and Location Based Services; Current company position with Company overview and vision, key successes to date, technical achievements and commercial position, include info about your technology platform. Talk about your management team, product and services offering, competition, market entry/ Five Forces Analysis, barriers to market entry, comparable business model, target market needs, target market characteristics, market demand drivers, PEST analysis, SWOT analysis, marketing implementation and strategy overview and tactical components, process development map, financial model and projections.

There you have it, the process to follow before the business plan is written and the concepts to be covered in the business plan so that you get the attention you need from investors and the money you deserve for your business.

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