NSS Workshop Series for CEOs and Business Owners

Leadership Skills for the Next Stage of your Company

Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2011   7:30am – 9:30am – Snowdate will be Friday, Feb 11th same time and place

Host: Bridge Bank | 1050 Winter Street | Suite 1000 | Waltham, MA

You have been growing your company significantly and are now contemplating how to take it to the next stage.  What new leadership skills do you need to successfully take the company through this transition? Whether you are contemplating succession planning, market expansion or business process technology to improve productivity, the ultimate success of this next change will depend on your leadership.

This workshop will focus on the complex demands made on CEOs and how to develop the specific and personal leadership skills you need. The goal of the workshop is for you to identify the 3 most important leadership skills you will need and what you might consider as your next steps in your development.

Who Should Attend?

This workshop is exclusively for Presidents, CEOs or Business Owners of a company with $10MM+/- in sales. If you are not a candidate of the above criteria, please forward this email to clients and colleagues who are.

About the Discussion Leader:  Gerry Donnellan, PhD

Gerry Donnellan is president and founder of Big Leap (www.big-leap.com), a consulting company that utilizes innovative approaches in working with family and closely-held businesses. Trained as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, Gerry has over thirty-five years of professional experience. As an organizational consulting psychologist and family business consultant, he works with families and their businesses as they navigate their way through the ups and downs of owning and running their businesses, all while hoping they all will still want to be together for Thanksgiving dinner.

He is adjunct professor at the International Business School of Brandeis University and has held university faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School and the City University of New York. He was awarded the Certificate in Family Business Advising by the Family Firm Institute (FFI). He is on the faculty of the certificate program and is a frequent presenter at FFI conferences. He was founding director of the Institute for Organizational Consulting Psychology at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (MSPP), Boston.

He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

About the NSS CEO Workshops Series

Next Stage Solutions, Inc (NSS) is a financial consulting firm providing CFO and Controller support to growing businesses on an interim or ongoing basis. Through its extensive network, NSS began offering the workshops in 2010 exclusively to CEOs and presidents of growing companies.  These workshops are interactive in nature and encourage company leaders to explore new ways of tackling the complexities a 21^st century business, to learn from each other and gain new and more effective tools in leading their business to the next stage.

Sponsored by Next Stage Solutions, Inc

Attendance is complimentary, but registration is required. Limited seating and workshops fill up quickly.

Call today 617-449-7728 or send an email info@nextstagesolutions.com to save a space

NSS Workshop Series for CEOs and Business Owners

Private Equity Transactions: From Raising Growth Capital to Making an Exit | What you Need to Know.

Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2010   7:30am – 9:30am

Host: Wolf & Company | 99 High Street | Boston, MA 02110

Who Should Attend?

This workshop is exclusively for any President/CEO or Business Owner of a mature company with greater than $10MM in sales. If you are not a candidate of the above criteria, please forward this email to clients and colleagues who are.

Attention: This workshop will be strictly confidential. Names and contact information will not be released.  No solicitations.

Moderator:

Frank Leibly, Partner, Alcon Partners

Panelists:

John Fernsell, CEO, Ibex Outdoor Clothing

Ethan Flaherty, Partner, Pabian & Russell

Laura Kevghas, Partner, Mirus Capital

Discussion Topics:

• What is Private Equity, and how is it relevant to my business?
• What kinds of transaction structures are common?
• What questions should I be prepared to answer?
• What types of companies are good candidates to work with Private Equity firms?
• Should I hire an investment banker or business broker?
• What are the steps towards a capital raise and an eventual exit?
• What does a due diligence process look like?
• Why a private equity transaction instead of a strategic sale?
• What to expect after a transaction is complete?
• Is now a good time for a private equity transaction?
• Horror stories and how to prevent them.

Sponsored by Next Stage Solutions, Inc

Attendance is complimentary, but registration is required

Call today 617-449-7728 or send an email info@nextstagesolutions.com to save a space

The workshop was sponsored by NSS and hosted by WilmerHale Venture Group. The NSS CEO Workshop Series is intended for CEOs of revenue producing companies.

The board room was chuck full at the WilmerHale Venture Group office in Waltham. The invited speakers were Joan McArdle of Mass Resource Capital, Jane Braun of Silicon Valley Bank, Robin Lockwood of Flybridge Venture Partners and Christopher Mirabile of RacePoint Capital LLC.  The panel discussion was led by Lee Schindler of WilmerHale.

The focus was around changes in the funding arena and how that has affected each group.  We then opened it up to a dialogue with the CEOs.

Here are some interesting facets of this discussion (loosely defined by NSS):

• Significant changes in activity around Angel Groups, almost a flip side between VC and Angel funding.
• More syndications between Angels and VCs.  Angels are valuation centric.
• Huge migration in the VC world and closing of funds from 800-900 down to 600-700 VC funds
• Because of high multiples among some VCs,  Angels are filling some of that gap
• With uncertainties in economy it has been hard for companies to commit to expansions
• Lots of Re-Capitalizations are happening.  Good timing.  With lower interest rates it is advisable to reconsider a re-cap with the layers of debt and the different view from lenders a company may have.  Mass Capital Resources provides this type of re-cap with a 2-3yr interest only financing.  Mass Capital is currently doing deals in the $1M to $5M range and at an interest rate typically between 10% and 12%.
• Companies are starting to invest again.  All agreed that they are seeing an uptick in business activities.
• There is a huge Global push
• More VCs give smaller checks
• VC’s today are investing in companies that are capital efficient or not at all.
• It’s more difficult to get investment in a product or services business than it is in a software business.
• How do you get a highly leveraged company to an exit in today’s market?  Not really any differently.
• How can an entrepreneur know how much money to raise?  Determine what the life of an investment is and then try to match it with the right investor.  For example, an investment of $500K to $2.5M over the life of the investment probably won’t be appealing to a typical VC.  Putting in $30M over the life of the investment would be more appealing.
• How often do Angels and VC participate in similar events?  There are some forums when a mixture of investors is present.
• How about grants as a way to get some funding?  That may be a good thing (it’s non-dilutive) as long as it fits your business strategy.  Do not lose focus.
• Whether or not an angel or VC invests in the company depends in large part on how good the entrepreneur is.  “Can he/she do it?”
• Best thing to do if you’re raising money – Don’t go around town asking for money.  Instead, spend your time building relationships with investment community, asking questions like “what would you do if you were me?”
• M&A activity is picking up and deal flow is up

Our next CEO Workshop will be Tuesday, November 9 from 7:30am-9:30am and the topic will be around “Merger & Acquisitions”.  Save the date!

Mark Ott joined Next Stage Solutions this Spring.  Read on to see what Mark has been up to – he has a great story to tell!

Most Satisfying: In your CFO work you have done in the past, what is the most satisfying feedback you got from the CEO?

The most satisfying feedback I received is when the CEO told me that he knew he could spend a considerable amount of time out of the office (with customers, investors, board members, press, etc.) knowing that everything back at headquarters was being looked after with me looking after things.

Most Inventive: Given that as CFO we understand the importance of providing our clients with more than just accounting and financial reporting, share with us a project that truly made you a value creator.

When we moved a company from California to Massachusetts, I had to build a complete infrastructure pretty much from the ground up.  This included the recruitment/interviewing and engagement/hiring of new corporate attorneys, external auditors, Accounting Manager, Office Manager, and Human Resources Manager as well as establishing new banking relationships and corporate insurance programs.  All of this had to be done in a matter of three months.

Most Positive: CFOs have different skill set, yet often we are viewed as one of the same.  Tell us a story where your actions made a powerful positive change and why.

When I was European Controller for a large networking company, I had eight country controllers reporting to me.  Some of the countries (like the UK and Germany) were larger contributors to the results of the overall operation than others (like Spain and Sweden).  In that environment the controllers for the larger countries tended to be more influential in group decisions and the controllers for the smaller countries would sit back and complain that their needs were always overlooked because of their size.  This ultimately led to a team that did not work very well together and this was reinforced by pre-existing cultural differences.  One of the things I did to turn this around was to solicit ideas from the controllers concerning topics to be covered in an upcoming quarterly staff meeting.  When the time for the meeting came, I appointed the controller who suggested the topic as the leader of the discussion leader and subsequent action items.  This forced the smaller countries to play a much more active role in the group in identifying their issues and forced the larger countries to sit up and listen and help find solutions as they were cast in more of a “follower” role.  Following this pattern in subsequent staff meeting resulted in a much more cohesive pan-European staff.

Best Business Book: What should every CEO be reading going forward in this tepid economy?

“Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty:  The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times” by Ram Charan, McGraw-Hill.

Funniest Fact: Tell us something funny about you.

My fraternity brothers used to call me “Howard”, which is my middle name.  They thought that it was an “amusing” middle name, so they thought they could get me going if they kept calling me by that name.  It worked for a while but the nickname stuck throughout college and they will even use it today in those rare occasions when we get together.

Stay tuned for our next team member’s story!

MIT CFO SUMMIT:  November 19  7:30am – 6:00pm

Register today at www.mitcfo.com

Next Stage Solutions will be attending and we hope you will join us!  Following the success of prior years, the MIT Sloan Alumni Club of Boston will be hosting this annual MIT CFO Summit on November 19, 2009. They are welcoming 500+ CFO’s to this year’s Summit for an interesting day of dialogue & discourse.

• Joe Capezza, Chief Financial Officer, Health Net
• David Goulden, Chief Financial Officer, EMC
• Steve Isakowitz, Chief Financial Officer, US Department of Energy
• Kurt Kuehn, Chief Financial Officer, UPS
• Gunter Niederhuder, Chief Financial Officer, BMW German Market
• And many more!

Special thanks to Gold level event sponsors ALTRAN Control Solutions, KPMG , and Silicon Valley Bank; Silver level event sponsors AFP, Credit Suisse, Mintz Levin, MUNCMedia, and Watson Wyatt; as well as Networking Sponsors Basware, HR Knowledge, MIT Sloan Executive Education, and Sentinel Benefits.

Jack McCullough and Jeremy Seidman
Co-Chairs
MIT Sloan CFO Summit

email: info@mitcfo.com
web: http://www.mitcfo.com