Midas Managers - Hardcover

Rob Slee

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0979047803 ISBN 13: 9780979047800

Publisher: Burn the Boats Press, 2007

Synopsis

Some businesspeople intuitively know how to create wealth. They are constantly increasing the value of their business holdings, regardless of industry conditions or economic cycles. It s more than good luck, since the same people strike gold again and again. These wealth-creators just seem to have the Midas touch. I call them Midas Managers. Most managers can surely use the help. Business has never been more competitive than in the 21st century. As we hear over and over, we now live in an always-on global economy powered by technology, logistics and the spread of capitalism to all corners of the world. Today, large publicly held corporations are faring well because they buy and sell in global markets and have for years, but the same cannot be said for most private companies. They might buy globally, but they sell domestically. At best, America s privately owned businesses are getting only half the benefits of globalization. So what? you might be asking yourself. Well, if our private companies aren t globally competitive, then they re in trouble. And if they re in trouble, we re all in trouble. Privately owned businesses generate more than 50 percent of America s gross domestic product and account for 80 percent of new jobs. On their own, U.S. private capital markets would rank as perhaps the world s largest economy. But we should be alarmed: Currently about 75% of owners of private businesses are not increasing the value of their firms. I ll say it again: If the private business sector fails, America fails. This book contains 18.5 stories of how Midas Managers develop and implement innovative strategies to create value for their companies and wealth for themselves. Each of their stories is followed by a Blueprint, which provides step-by-step instructions for readers who want to employ these strategies in their own businesses. And this is the key insight. It takes a Midas Manager to create a Midas strategy, but nearly anyone can exploit the strategy to create wealth for their own account.

About this title

About the Author

Rob Slee is Managing Director of Robertson & Foley, a middle market investment banking firm. Rob has published more than one hundred articles on private finance topics in a variety of legal and business journals. Rob's book, Private Capital Markets, was published in mid-2004 by John Wiley & Sons. This book is now considered the seminal work in finance for private companies. Rob is a board member of numerous professional associations and private companies. He owns equity positions in a variety of mid-sized private businesses. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Miami University, and received a Master's degree from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University. Rob can be reached at: rob@robertsonfoley.com. Rob is best known as the father of Jen and Jessie Slee, his identical twin daughters.

Review

Empowers you and your private company to successfully compete in the global world is flat economy Shows you how to implement a business model that generates $2 million in sales and more than $500,000 in profits per employee! Helps you pass the Midas challenge: in the next three years you can more than double revenues, raise profits ten-fold, with half as many employees as you have today. Teaches you a strategy that turns $1 million into more than $100 million in less than 5 years Enables you to achieve financial independence and to create a legacy for your kids and future generations --Back flap of dust jacket

Globalization is somewhat like the weather: everyone talks about it, but nobody s doing anything about it, especially as it concerns small-to-midsized business managers. A new book changes that. Midas Managers: How Every Business They Touch Turns to Gold by Rob Slee is the first book that shows managers of private companies how to win in the new economy. This book comes out none too soon. According to Slee, private companies represent most of the U.S. economy, but 75% of these are not increasing in value. Midas Managers mission is to correct this. Slee writes that some super-successful business owners called Midas Managers have figured out how to create business wealth. These value creators are made not born, and they share a number of traits, such as: an ability to see just over the horizon ; a reliance on strategy rather than tactics to achieve goals; stubborn contrarianism; and a capability of understanding and exploiting the behavior of others. It is not Slee s intent to create Midas Managers, as only the battlefields of life and business can do that. Rather, his intent is to share Midas strategies such that they can be copied and used by others. Slee explains what most business owners feel... the rules for business have changed and changed dramatically. These changes are a result of technology, and the ability to access capital and resources on a global basis. Slee claims that every so often the rules of business change, called business Ages. Recent Ages are familiar. For instance, during the Industrial Age machines became central to business models. Next came the Information Age, which caused businesses to rely on a different type of machine to compete. At the start of this decade, due to a confluence of technology, logistics, and the Internet, we entered the Conceptual Age. This Age is defined by multi-dimensional thinking; more specifically, left and right brain thinking. This Age requires business owners to conceptualize their way to success. Operational excellence is just the ante in this Age. Machines, capital and employees are no longer the main factors in creating business value. In the Conceptual Age, the biggest constraint is the manager s ability to conceptualize value-added solutions. The key element in this analysis is it opens the door for the business owner to use this knowledge to change their business to not only compete in the new environment, but also improve the value of the business. The book is organized around the last three new rules. Each of these topics Arbitrage, Conceptual Business Models, and Private Finance is covered in 6-7 story chapters. These easy-to-read case studies illustrate how a Midas Manager created and implemented a particular Midas strategy. At the end of each chapter, a Blueprint section gives step-by-step instructions which enable the reader to replicate the strategy. Arbitrage means riskless profit. These strategies are designed to take advantage of risk/return imbalances in the market. For example, one story chapter shows how to acquire companies at one acquisition multiple, then sell at another. By leveraging this consolidation math, the Midas Manager in the story was able to increase his $1 million investment more than one hundred fold. A conceptual business model organizes a company s activities around its intellectual capital. Intellectual capital is owned; everything else is outsourced. Designed and implemented correctly, a conceptual business model enables a company to achieve stunning results. A story in the book shows how a company implemented a design and deliver conceptual model that resulted in sales of $2.5 million and profits of $750,000 per employee! The Private Finance group of chapters continues Slee s work in this area. His first book, Private C --Ed Calt

Building on his extensive knowledge of private company valuation and cost of capital, Rob Slee has written a mind-expanding book on how to build worth in today s global economy. As usual with a Slee production, the book is full of ah ha! epiphanies and paradigm shifts. But he goes beyond the theoretical realm with practical advice and how-to instructions. This book is for business owners and managers (and the professionals who advise them) who want to create personal wealth through their businesses. Slee begins by explaining the new rules of business in the Conceptual Age. With data and information universally available, success is now more dependent on design, innovation, and market knowledge. Businesses compete on a global stage, so every employee must add value, and job security is based on possession of value-creating skill sets. This fierce competition requires that companies keep their overhead as low as possible by outsourcing all non-critical functions. Managers need to have a thorough knowledge of private finance and know how to exploit market opportunities. They must know that unless their business returns more than its cost of capital, it is really operating at a loss. Most of the book is full of detailed recipes on how to create value and wealth using various strategies employed by super-successful business owners. Slee calls these people Midas Managers, since they create value wherever they go. After each instructive case study, Slee recaps with a handy blueprint for putting the strategy to work. The first set of strategies are arbitrage plays. In seven chapters, Slee gives details on how to master this game, including creating a transparent business model, creating a predictable income stream, working strategically, studying market trends, and rationalizing the company s process chain. Once this groundwork is laid, owners can play the management buyout game, the equity recapitalization game, the buyin-buyout game, the consolidation math game, or the midas mentoring game. Slee explains, in a step-by-step fashion, exactly how to do this. The second set of strategies deal with business model design. In seven chapters, Slee stresses the importance of business models in the Conceptual Age. These chapters give details on how to outsource steps in the process chain that do not create value, how to establish a niche, how to deal with global competition, how to change from custom production to branded products, how to utilize market pull instead of push, and how to create the instant company. Six more chapters explain private company finance concepts. Business appraisers who value private companies every day will find this part of the book especially enlightening. As Slee says, Studying private companies is long overdue. They comprise over 99 percent of the businesses on earth yet receive barely a notice from academics. In these chapters, Slee develops his theory of value worlds. For example, fair market value is the realm of the IRS, while companies typically transfer at the value to a strategic acquirer. Slee gives examples of creating wealth by planning or buying in one value world (such as bankruptcy) and then selling in another more lucrative world (such as IPO). Chapter 21 is of particular interest to business appraisers for our own businesses. Here, Slee shows how to calculate the true cost of each employee, how to calculate the return on investment of each employee, and how to reward employees appropriately based on the wealth they create. Even though Midas Managers deals with cutting-edge theories of private company finance and global competition, I found it to be extremely useful and practical. Slee brings the theories down from the clouds with simple instructive case studies. He clearly shows how to build wealth by using knowledge of priva --Sherry Smith

About this edition

• Publisher: Burn the Boats Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0979047803
• ISBN 13: 9780979047800
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288