About the Book
Target market: novice to professional entrepreneurs in any country and of any magnitude.
• Aim of the book: to assist entrepreneurs in three ways:
To create the most efficient and profitable corporate structure from the outset.
To outline rules on how to immediately fix problems when they arise.
How to expand your business and raise critical capital, while not depleting current cash flows. Remember that mergers and acquisitions take time, effort, and serious cash reserves, so don’t ignore your current customers, staff, and operations. The aim of this book is definitely not to regurgitate theories and common practices outlined in thousands of business and self-help books.
As such, I aim to guide you to develop your own set of rules, which suit your personal circumstances, whatever your product or services may be and wherever in the world you may operate.
This is a book on how to structure any business to build wealth, based on a foundation of knowledge and business/corporate discipline. This book covers the basics to ultimately run a business in the global markets. It is a culmination of theory and practical application taken from my 30-year track record as economist and corporate advisor.
The aim is simple—to demystify the complexities that make up business and corporate markets around the world. It is written with some pertinent lists, observations, and comments. It is important to note that some chapters concentrate on financing the company, from start-up to established firms.
Many MBA business textbooks are great for anyone looking to build knowledge of complex theories, but there is a vast gap in such books to develop an effective business that is prepared for any eventuality, whether from staff, fellow directors, clients, suppliers, and so on.
In today’s digital world, filled with online business courses, training programs, and free workshops, there is no reason why you cannot build a solid and practical foundation of knowledge. How you apply this knowledge is up to you.
Now, let’s get to it.
At the outset, it must be noted that—according to Bloomberg—80 percent of entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months. While this statistic may be shocking and certainly true, it is, nevertheless, mostly preventable.
Many entrepreneurs cite undercapitalization at the outset of starting a business as a major reason for failure. This is truly a poor excuse. These businessmen and businesswomen should have been better prepared, with focused due diligence and required funds. In fact, there is today no need to be undercapitalized in a world where over US$1 trillion has been invested in new projects since 2016—and today almost twice that amount of funds is available since crowdfunding took off.
What is even more sad is the occasions when all prelaunch studies have been done properly, but greed and lack of a coordinated plan still see failure. I have seen entrepreneurs succeed in raising the funds that they have assessed would be required until profits kick in, only to run out of these within an extremely short time. The fact is that these entrepreneurs either didn’t follow their business and strategy plans or ignored advisors and key staff as to spending patterns. Entrepreneurial success is never merely a wish list, nor is it a desire to be free of obligation and boring routine. The idea of being your own boss is wonderful, except that your responsibilities should never be taken lightly, as you have effectively become accountable to paying, among others, staff, clients, and suppliers. Creating and running a business takes dedication, commitment, and, more importantly, focus.
And doing things right the first time.
Many entrepreneurs have too much pride to surround themselves with experts—and, as we know, pride comes before a fall. Such pride prevents entrepreneurs from all walks of life across all countries from taking pertinent and truly relevant advice from professionals, which often perpetuates the myth that the success and prosperity of the company is inextricably linked to the persona of the founder. While this may have been true in the distant past, companies today are weighed down by multiple rules, guidelines, and legislation. Without a sound understanding of all these variables, or an unwillingness to see that your corporate structure does not meet true transparency and governance, personality will be swamped by red tape and poor judgment. Consequently, failure justifies statistics.
In reality, you want your business to be perceived as both professional and effective. In addition, these are qualities that add significantly to the value of your business. In listed companies, the share price multiplied by the amount of issued shares tells you what the company is worth, but in an unlisted company the value is based on profits, competitive edge, and its effectiveness in today’s environment to achieve forecasts. So a lack of cohesive corporate, marketing, and financial strategies becomes the noose from which businesses come to an inevitable end.
These are some of the simpler and basic reasons for failure. Not knowing when you have reached your limit as an efficient and effective leader often results in loss of business—from finance to operations to marketing.
This brings us to the title and thus the focus of this book. So, what is The Rainmaker in the context of this book? The Rainmaker is an individual who can assist you to succeed past that 18-month’barrier by helping you structure and run your company to meet ultimate best-practice solutions and systems, which are realistic and competitively better than your peers’.
They do this by using three basic methods:
• First, The Rainmaker ensures that you have the proper structure with which to start your business: Do you comply with legal, government, social, and environmental guidelines and statutes?
• Second, The Rainmaker assists you to fix problems when they arise and to ensure that the company strategically meets continually and rapidly changing consumer, economic, and market conditions and trends.
• Third, The Rainmaker should ensure that you and your company do not stagnate. In other words, you should not stand still—profits should grow, productivity should improve, and the organization should become larger and more efficient. A business must continue to grow and diversify, while balancing cashflow requirements, demand and supply of goods and services, and communication between directors, staff, and customers.
I define a rainmaker as someone who is able to surround himself or herself with a small team of professionals so that they can establish a solid foundation for a start-up, quickly fix, coordinate recovery, finance, and advise on how to run a profitable business.
The Rainmaker is, in my opinion, a combination of troubleshooter, advisor, and mentor. In truth, The Rainmaker simply uses a combination of corporate knowledge, experience in turning theory into practice, and logic in comparing what is with what should be.
Despite horrendous statistics, this is an exciting journey for anyone who desires to create a business that will make a difference to employees and the environment alike. While unsubstantiated, the following facts are interesting: for every person employed, four additional people are supported in first world countries and as many as 15 people in developing countries.
My goal in writing this book is thus to make the process of running and financing your company, across as many diverse industries as I possibly can, easier and relatively pain free. It is my desire that you, no matter the size of your business, use this book and its principles to achieve your goals for your staff, directors, and yourself but also to exert a positive influence on the community, such as creating employment and thus reducing hardship.
Whatever your question, feel free to contact me via e-mail.
Jacques Magliolo
[email protected]
https://jmagliolo.blog
2019