our investment in your small business
We believe successful businesses are ultimately the result of valuable partnerships. Our core
service offering is designed to foster long-term business relationships not just between your company
and ours, but also across a range of business professionals who we believe are best positioned
to contribute to your success.
Our original business model was based upon a typical angel / venture fund formula :: in exchange for the
investment of time, resources & money, we acquired an ownership interest in a client company.
We quickly realized, however, this had 3 major drawbacks when it comes to serving "main street:"
- most "main street" businesses don't have a near-term "exit" plan. This means few practical opportunities
for converting equity into cash.
- people place a higher priority and value on goods and services for which they pay cold hard cash.
There is no benefit to encouraging a scenario that potentially diminished our role in helping to
build a customer's business.
- this model doesn't work at all for the not-for-profit organizations we are interested in helping.
So we developed an innovative model for recouping our investements in main street businesses. We resolved issue #2
by applying an extremely affordable fixed monthly fee to each client relationship. In a typical core engagement,
this translates to between $400 - $1,000 per month (based upon 16-40 hours of on-site services). We then resolved
issue #1 through a "revenue sharing" model tied to a customer's achievement of specific, measurable results. These
two solutions combined to resolve issue #3.
So basically, because our work typically focuses on helping a business achieve specific results, we recover our
investment by sharing in those results. Here's a really simple example of how one imaginary organization
might fare after 12 months in our program:
| |
Before Program Start |
End of Program |
$ Change |
% Change |
| Annual Revenue |
$ 500,000 |
$ 600,000 |
$ 100,000 |
20.00% |
| Operating Profit Margin |
10.00% |
13.00% |
- |
30.00% |
| Operating Profits |
$ 50,000 |
$ 78,000 |
$ 28,000 |
56.00% |
| MSV Fixed Cost |
$ 0 |
$ 9,000 |
$ 9,000 |
- |
| MSV Performance Cost |
$ 0 |
$ 11,000 |
$ 11,000 |
- |
If our relationship ended after 12 months, this client would have $8,000 more in their bank account and
be positioned to repeat (or improve upon) these results without having to make any further payments to our firm.
Because the successful achievement of results often hinges on factors outside of everyone's control, here's what happens if
we don't achieve our agreed upon objectives :: nothing. If the economy goes bust and your net profits remain flat or
actually decrease, we take it on the chin right along with you. Easy. Simple. Clean.
Risk and reward. That's what business is about. If you're not open to sharing in both, then we're not the right partner
for you. So that's it, the bottom-line, the whole enchilada. To shamelessly borrow from an advertising slogan of old --
"try us, you'll like us."