EQ Journal Archive 38

By Bruce Firestone | Uncategorized

May 15

https://www.eqjournal.org/?paged=38


         Why Entrepreneurs Worry        

       
   Posted on
       Saturday 13 October 2007  
     
   
       

I have told many entrepreneurs over the years that there
should be a special communications net linking them at 3 am; that is
when, many, many entrepreneurs are awake writing notes about what they
have to get done the next day and when they are most alone and most
worried about things. It also when they can do the least in terms of
fixing current problems. I can’t tell you how many CEOs and
entrepreneurs are writing emails at 3 am. It is their only way to
relieve stress by at least giving themselves the illusion of activity
and progress.

Recently, I was watching the film, Seven Years in Tibet ,
when there was this exchange between Austrian climber Heinrich Harrer
(played by silver screen idol, Brad Pitt with a terrible Austrian
accent) and the Dalai Lama:

“Henirich, we have a saying in Tibet: ‘If the problem can be solved, why worry? If the problem can’t be solved, why worry?’”

This is a comforting thought for often lonely entrepreneurs who
typically think the challenges they face are uniquely their’s. But I
thought a bit further about the Dalai Lama’s words and, with respect, I
felt there was something missing.

The reason entrepreneurs worry is because they don’t know if
the problem can be solved or not! Entrepreneurs are constantly making
decisions based on insufficient information and weighing the
probabilities of success and failure.

Is the client going to sign that big contract?

Is the financing going to come through?

Can we meet our next payroll?

Can we collect our receivables?

Is our supplier going to keep his or her promises?

As long as things hang in the balance, it seems to me, entrepreneurs are going to worry.

Think about it this way: remember when you were going to ask the
prettiest girl in the neighborhood out? Now that can be worrisome. I
remember when I was 13 and I decided (foolishly) to ask 15 year old
Suzanne Langford out on a date. Suzanne was not only 15 and beautiful
but smart and classy. She was so classy that she couldn’t have been any
nicer on the phone in how she turned me down: “It is so nice of you to
think of me, Bruce, but I am afraid I am terribly busy Saturday…”

(Suzanne is the mother of Matthew (Langford) Perry and married to
newsman Keith Morrison and lives in Hell A so she did just fine without
me.)

Now after being turned down by Suzanne or by a client or by a Bank,
there is naturally some disappointment but, heck, it’s over, you get
over it and you get on with your life. You STOP worrying about it. So
the Dalai Lama is right; once something is decided, one way or the
other, forget about it. It’s the uncertainty that is stressful.

I wish I could offer more but the fact is that worry plays a big part
in the life of an entrepreneur (and a CEO) and it may even be a
positive factor in achieving success. When you worry about a problem,
you tend to focus on it both when you are awake and, when you are
asleep, your subconcious is working on it too. As long as you don’t let
the worry overwhelm you, you become more creative and more likely to
find a solution. So worry can be a beneficial thing, but it sure is
stressful.

Dr. Bruce

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 12:19 pm

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25 Steps to Business Success

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Rules? There are no rules in entrepreneurship.

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         Why Google is Eating the Universe        

       
   Posted on
       Sunday 7 October 2007  
     
   
       

My wife and I have become recent converts to watching HBO’s
“Big Love”, a series about a polygamist family living ‘under cover’ in
suburban Utah. (The series isn’t just about polygamy; it’s about power,
politics, business and relationships so it is quite compelling viewing
and (for men out there) if you ever thought having more than one wife
would be cool, you won’t after watching Bill Paxton run rugged trying to
be all things to three women and three families.)

We just finished watching Year 2 of the series using our digital set
top box to catch up with everyone else who has been watching the series’
live broadcasts. Naturally, when we completed Year 2, we wanted to know
if HBO would renew the series for another 12 episodes.

So I typed in a natural language question into Yahoo Search,
Microsoft’s search engine and lastly Google to see what results they
would give me.

My questions was (obviously enough):

“is big love hbo’s mini series coming back for a third season?”

Here is what Yahoo returned first:

Amazon.ca: Deadwood: The Complete Second Season: DVD
… in so we can get back to you) This is item 2 in The Deadwood Series. …
a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for
Television ”
…www.amazon.ca/Deadwood-The-Complete-Second-Season/dp/B000EULSR0 – 100k –
Cached – More from this site

Microsoft found this:

amalah . com: I am Utterly Obsessed with HBO’s New Series Big Love …
I am Utterly Obsessed with HBO’s New Series Big Love But Was Unable to Seamlessly Weave That Into This Mess of an Entry …

https://www.amalah.com/amalah/2006/03/i_am_utterly_ob.html

And Google found this:

HBO stays in ‘Love’ – Entertainment News – Variety.com In HBO’s first
major programming move since it changed regimes, the pay net has
renewed “Big Love” for a third season. Net has picked up 12 episodes of
the …
www.variety.com/article/VR1117969037.html?categoryid=14 – Similar pages

Hmmm, I wonder who has the better algorithm?

I used to think that maybe the South Korean search engine, Naver.com,
had found the right way to match or out-compete Google using the wisdom
of crowds (https://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/04/business/naver.php)
to answer these types of questions. Naver.com has been successful with
its business model in Korea, seizing a larger market share there than
Google but now I am not so sure that this could be replicated elsewhere
if Google’s algorithm is getting so much better at answering these types
of natural language questions. I am frankly amazed.

There are some things that humans do better than computers, such as
recognizing and categorizing images (which led Amazon to create its
newish Mechanical Turk service
which outsources these types of tasks to thousands of netizens who
perform the work for cents per transaction. The system was used recently
to try to find adventurer Steve Fossett’s plane wreckage from satellite
images of Nevada. Unfortunately, Mr. Fossett’s plane and Mr. Fossett
have not been found and the world may have lost a great pioneer. (No
payment was involved, pople did this for free to try to help find
Steve.)) And I would have thought that Naver.com’s model would work well
in answering questions better than Google’s algorithm because I assumed
that humans would be better at this than computers.

If I am wrong, and it may not be long before computers will do a
better job at image recognition too, then there is nothing to stop
Google from eating the Universe.

Dr. Bruce

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 9:30 am

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        Filed under:

Business Models

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Creativity and Value

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Future Vision and Technology

and

Internet– the Internet is Eating a Hole in the Global

and

Value Differentiation and ‘Pixie Dust’

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         Leave No One Stranded        

       
   Posted on
       Sunday 30 September 2007  
     
   
       

I have new-found respect for the Ottawa bus service run by OC Transpo. Their online travel planner
is terrific: on a Sunday with a reduced schedule, it got me from our
home in Kanata Lakes in the West End of Ottawa to my (now former) office
at Carleton University by bus and by light rail in 40 minutes with one
transfer where my wait time was less than three minutes. Pretty darn
good since when I take my van, it takes about 30 minutes anyway plus 4
litres of fuel (each way). So it is cheaper too than the car and better
(I assume) for the environment.

Now, given what has transpired in Ottawa in the last couple of years
with respect to adding to our puncy (a word my daughter Jessica taught
me: a combination of puny and teensy) light rail system (i.e., I don’t
expect any additions to our system for at least ten years as the City
engages in fierce legal combat with its erstwhile builders of the
proposed system and endless debate on Council on what to do next), I
think we ought to give a LOT of thought to making our existing bus
system better since that is all we are likley to have for the forseeable
future.

Now in one of my day jobs, I sell a lot of real estate and I noticed
that bus service plays a role in where companies, especially industrial
ones, locate. A lot of their workers come to their place of business by
bus. So far, so good. But I also work in a south end business ‘park’ (I
love that term. I have no idea why they call these office or industrial
sub-divisions ‘parks’. There ain’t no parks there; just a lot of asphalt
and concrete and brick and mostly functional buildings, outdoor storage
and endless parking lots.) But last winter, I did notice another thing
about the ‘park’ where I work: THEY DON’T HAVE ANY SIDEWALKS.

So the working folks who come there by bus are often let out of their
buses at bus ‘stations’ that are completely cut off from any safe way
for these people to walk to work from there. There is one bus stop I
like the best on Colonnade Road South; it actually has a little shelter
but anyone who gets off at this stop is putting their lives at risk. The
shelter is on the north side of the road but all the industrial
buildings are on the south side. There is no pedestrain cross walk, no
intersection or signal lights to help getting across this busy street
and cars go by at more than 80 kph. (There actually is a little bit of
sidewalk (a few metres really) that ends up … nowhere.)

If you know Ottawa in winter, it is bitterly cold, snow and ice tend
to narrow the streets and there is often a nice salt/snow/mush mixture
that sits on the roadside just waiting for a vehicle to pass by at high
speed and drench unlucky pedestrians. Now I am guessing that most City
of Ottawa Councillors and most owners of businesses in the area (based
on the empirical evidence presented by parking lots full of Audis, BMWs,
Escalades, Saabs, Lexus’, etc.) drive cars and probably don’t pay much
attention to workers snaking along narrowed streets in single file with
zero protection from one or two tonnes of speeding hunks of metal as
well as semis, buses and pickups passing inches from them. But they
should because, heck, these are their workers.

So here is what I suggest: “Let no one be left stranded.” How about a few simple things like:

a) putting sidewalks with curbs into these industrial parks;
b) making sure every bus shelter connects to one;
c) make sure that bus riders can actually get to an intersection to cross;
d) making sure that these intersections are signalized.

And maybe we could do some other things like put infrared heaters
into every bus shelter in the City so folks don’t have to freeze six
months of the year. And while we are at it, let’s find a way to power
those heaters that is based on solar power or windpower or something
that is more green than relying on Ontario’s hugely dirty coal fired
plants that still produce (and will continue for many, many years) a
significant percentage of this Province’s electricity.

Gosh, the leaders in these industrial and office parks need to show … leadership*!

Dr. Bruce

* This could be an example of a type of guerrilla marketing or
‘smart’ marketing. If a real estate firm headquartered in the park, say,
were to lead the charge to form a BIA (Business Improvement Area) to
lobby for things like better bus service, sidewalks, etc., who would
building owners in the area think of first when making a decision to
lease vacant space or sell one of their buildings?

Sure, it would take some management time but no actual cash outlay
would be involved. Guerrilla marketing is all about substituting brains
for money when it comes to marketing.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 11:07 am

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        Filed under:

Affordable Housing

and

City Planning

and

Ethics

and

Future Vision and Technology

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Guerrilla Marketing

and

Home Building

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Livable Cities and Neo-Urbanism

and

Political Economy

and

Urban Design

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         When is a Lien Useless?        

       
   Posted on
       Thursday 2 August 2007  
     
   
       

An architect friend of mine told me that he has found liens
to be quite useless in his profession. This kind of surprised me since
construction liens tend to be the ‘nuclear bomb’ of the business.

Essentially, if an architect or contractor puts a lien on a property,
there can be no further construction advances from the project’s funder
without first dealing with the lien(s). This can be done (in Ontario)
in two ways: a) you can pay off the contractor for the amount he or she
has claimed or b) you can pay the amount into court (plus 25% of the
amount for court costs) and thereby remove the lien. The latter allows
you to fight about the lien amount in court. This transfers leverage
from the trade contractor or architect to the developer, who can now
delay payment for six months, a year or more.

An unscrupulous contractor can over bill you and unless you get the
lien off, you are in trouble on your whole project. One lien can also
cause a crisis in confidence amongst the remaining trades on a job site
and a whole cascade of further liens can appear.

So by paying a premium of 25%, the developer can live to fight
another day and not be held to ransom by a contractor that may have
over-billed you or performed shoddy work…

But what if you can’t afford to pay the 25% premium over what might
already be an inflated bill? You are in trouble and, basically, you have
to make a deal. No bank or other lender will advance any moneys on your
project if there are any liens in place since liens rank in front of
their mortgage security.

But there is one condition that makes liens less effective: if you
can fund your project with your own cash, liens don’t matter a whole
lot.

I remember having an interesting conversation with Irving Greenberg,
the now deceased head of Minto Construction, some years ago when he was
building Minto Place, a large office tower and suite hotel in downtown
Ottawa. I asked who was doing his construction lending and he looked at
me quizzically, like he didn’t understand the question. He told me:
“Look Bruce, my GC gives me a bill every month, I look it over and then,
if it seems OK to me, I cut him a cheque…”

I realized that Minto with its robust operations in Ottawa, Toronto
and Florida had such strong cashflow that they could simply build a
$150,000,000 project out of their cashflow. So if Mr. Greenberg had a
dispute with a sub trade, well too bad for the sub-trade, they could
lien until the cows come home; Irving would just pay the bills for the
other contractors and motor on. Eventually, the contractor with the lien
would have to deal with Minto or they would practically never get paid.

The only other time that Minto would have to worry about any liens
was if they were to sell any of their buildings, which they seldom do.

So here is another example where ‘CASH IS KING’.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 5:12 pm

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        Filed under:

25 Steps to Business Success

and

Affordable Housing

and

Build and Hold

and

Business Models

and

Ethics

and

Home Building

and

No Money Down Real Estate Investing

and

Rules? There are no rules in entrepreneurship.

and

Value Differentiation and ‘Pixie Dust’

and

Why Businesses Fail

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         A Good Reason to Retire        

       
   Posted on
       Saturday 28 July 2007  
     
   
       

“I wanted to retire before I wanted to retire.”

Dr. Bruce M. Fiestone on why he stopped teaching at Carleton University’s School of Architecture in 2007 at age 55.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 8:48 am

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25 Steps to Business Success

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Political Economy

and

Rules? There are no rules in entrepreneurship.

and

Work/Life Balance

and

Writing, Research and Experimentation

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         Why is Ottawa in 12th Place?        

       
   Posted on
       Sunday 8 July 2007  
     
   
       

It was amazing to me to read last month that the TD Bank had
ranked Ottawa in 12th place in Canada in terms of economic momentum.
Not only are we behind the usual suspects (Toronto (!), Calgary,
Edmonton and Vancouver) but also behind Sherbrooke, Montreal, Saskatoon,
Halifax and Regina amongst others.

With all the advantages Ottawa has (seat of national government,
technology centre, solid post-secondary education institutions, low
crime rate, excellent access to recreation, terrific museums, little air
pollution, affordable housing and low cost of living, highly educated
population, etc.), how come we are doing so poorly?

There are seven main engines that power Ottawa’s growth:

1. GOC (Government of Canada);
2. Technology;
3. Tourism;
4. Health;
5. Education;
6. Real Estate;
7. Entrepreneurship.

Of these seven, four are holding their own and three are not
performing as well as they might: Tourism, Real Estate and
Entrepreneurship.

US visitors to Canada’s Capital City are much lower than they have
been, in part, because of new US rules requiring that their citizens
have passports for air travel (and soon for border crossings by car).
Most Americans do not have passports and this is certain to become a
larger problem for the Canadian tourist industry in the coming years.
Probably not much can be done to change this.

The high Canadian dollar is also a deterrent to US visitors. Many of
the hotel operators I have spoken with have noticed that they have been
able to replace, at least in part, US visitors with Canadian tourists by
doing some cool things like bundling a hotel room with a ticket to see a
show at the NAC (National Arts Centre) or a room plus an Ottawa
Senators game etc. This trend suggests that we should possibly redirect
some of OCRI’s marketing budget to go after a Canadian audience.

But I think there could be a deeper reason why tourism and real
estate are not doing as well as they might: we need leadership at the
municipal level to recognize the large impact that they can have on
Ottawa’s development.

With an annual budget problem, Ottawa’s City Council is forced to
make some hard choices. Typically, community groups and arts groups and
festival organizers get five minutes each to plead their case before
City Council each year. It is hard for city councillors to sit through
two long days of this type of thing and they can be forgiven if they nod
off from time to time or work on their Blackberry’s. But for festival
organizers, the seed money that comes from the City of Ottawa can be
crucial to their survival. In my view, they need long term (three to
five year) commitments from Council so they know what they can count on
from year to year and so Council only has to listen to them 1/3 to 1/5
as often.

Festivals are a huge part of creating a livable city, attracting
highly educated people to your city plus boosting city-wide morale and
tourism as well. With an annual budget shortfall of anywhere from $80 to
$95 million, you have to laugh when a community group’s funding gets
cut from $15,000 per year to $10,000.

The fiscal problem that cities in Ontario face is no joke but you
don’t make the situation any better by reducing support for what makes
your town or city a viable, exciting place to live.

It reminds me of the case of Ford Motor Company in the 1980s; their
CFO said they could save money by selling this factory and that factory
at one of the many BOD meetings they had in the face of tough Japanese
competition that was eating their lunch. An engineer on their Board
said: “Imagine how much we could save if we closed ALL of our factories!”

I sometimes think that debate on our City Council resembles this
whenever we talk about expansion of anything. Everything is a ‘cost’
today. In my view, support for festivals and the arts is an investment.

Look at the decision to terminate the north-south rail contract with
Siemens. If this investment had gone ahead, Ottawa would RIGHT NOW be
enjoying the benefits that flow from a nearly $1 billion project that
would have been funded largely by upper tier governments and sources of
capital not related to realty taxes.

In addition to this, many of my clients had purchased lands in and
around the new rail stations that were to be built. Developments were
being planned at unprecedented (for Ottawa) densities with much lower
parking ratios than are usual for such a car-centric community as this
is. None of this planned investment is going to happen.

Now, I am sympathetic to the folks who feel that east-west rail makes
more sense than a north-south route. I am sure if we could go back
seven or eight years, we would perhaps have done east-west first. But
having acquired all the rights-of-way and all the funding for a
north-south route, it seems likely that Ottawa will end up spending $70
to $80 million on this plus the EAs the City did for the north-south
route and anything up to $180 million in penalties to Siemens for
terminating the contract and the City of Ottawa will have NOTHING to
show for all this effort.

The City of Ottawa seems to have taken the position that ‘growth’ is
bad and that every new project has to go through incredibly complex
planning hurdles. This is like Ford’s CFO, just imagine if no one lived
here; think of the money we could save by not having a city at all!

When I started out in Ottawa as a developer in 1982, it took 9 to 12
months to do an Official Plan Amendment, a rezoning, a sub-division
agreement, a site plan and get a building permit. In the last few years,
this process has tended to take more than 60 months as City staff put
developers through study after study and delay after delay.

Speaking with Dan Anderson, the developer behind Sunset Lakes, he is
now spending over $500,000 on each new phase of his project in terms of
legal fees, planning fees, OMB costs, hydro-geology consultants, etc.
And City staff take each phase of Sunset Lakes to the OMB on THE SAME
ISSUES. They have gone to the Board 11 (!) times. Now this costs Dan a
lot of money but it also delays each phase by a couple of years. It also
costs the City a tremendous amount in terms of staff time and outside
consultants to fight Mr. Anderson.

Dan wins each time by the way. So why does the City do it?

The City also loses (or postpones) the investment in new roads, new services and new assessment that comes from growth.

Now if you multiply what happens to Mr. Anderson 100s or even 1,000s
of times, you can see why people don’t want to develop new projects in
Ottawa and why real estate in Ottawa is a slow growth industry. From
2001 to 2006, City staff expected Ottawa’s population to grow by 11.5%.
Statistics Canada showed Ottawa’s growth to be just 4.9%. That is a huge
gap and I believe that City staff have to take some responsibility for
it.

The number of companies that are willing to take a sub-division
through Ottawa’s regulatory maze has been reduced to a handful of
well-capitalized, savvy developers. Because institutional barriers to
entry are now so high that few new entrants will participate, there is
very little new blood coming into the development industry in Ottawa.
This is bad for consumer choice and bad for urban design.

(Here is a comment from long-time, Ottawa-based urban planner, Ray Essiambre: “This
is an excellent article and ‘on the mark’. It reminds me of my
experience during the Kanata West Expansion planning exercise. I
represented the Staubach Company from Dallas who purchased 65 aces west
of the Walter Baker Centre (the former Bradley family farm). It was the
Staubach Company’s first acquisition in Canada. After their experience
dealing with the City of Ottawa, they vowed never again
to do business in Ottawa or Canada. Imagine losing the largest
commercial rental company in the US and imagine the stories they tell
other US investors about doing business in Canada!“)

If you are a young person starting out in this industry, where would
you prefer to go: Calgary where they still can process approvals in a
timely way or Ottawa?

The number of discouraged projects that never get submitted is
probably large as well. If Ottawa ever does get its light rail act
together (which I highly doubt will be any time soon), if you were
Siemens or Bombardier, where would you put your next business
development dollar? Into slow growing Ottawa with a significant business
risk or any of the 11 municipalities in Canada that have stronger
economic momentum and perhaps a more stable political situation as well?
That’s just in Canada. Imagine where Ottawa ranks internationally when
compared to faster growing Europe and much faster growth in India, China
and elsewhere in the developing world.

City staff used to use common sense when reviewing and approving
projects. John Harkness, Chief Engineer in Kanata in the 1980s was able
to open up Kanata North (where Alcatel, the Brookstreet hotel, Morgan’s
Grant and Briarbrook are) by approving the East March Trunk Sewer (EMTS)
using a special assessment zone (SAZ). The Kanata North Business Park
is a crucial technology centre not only for Ottawa but internationally
as well. Without Mr. Harkness’ leadership, the development that we see
taking place there would not be happening today. I also doubt whether
anyone at the City today would do what John did.

Today, the City of Ottawa spends something like $160,000,000 a year
(!) on consultants. No one on City staff seems to want to take
responsibility for making a decision so the standard response to any
question from a developer is to hire a consultant to study the matter.
And there is a well known consuting group in Ottawa that does a
significant amount of work with the City that tends to end each of its
reports with “This issue requires further study.” This is not a good way to run a City.

The way a SAZ works is simple- the City front ends the INVESTMENT and
benefiting land owners pay it back to the City (with interest) through a
special levy on their realty taxes (typically over 10 years). The City
of Ottawa should be doing a heck of a lot more with SAZs and they should
be leading the parade not blocking it as they so often do.

Calgary, a bigger City than Ottawa by about 100,000 persons and
growing much faster, gets by with around 9,000 FTEs (Full Time
Equivalents). Ottawa seems to need 13,500 FTEs. Now in my experience
when you have more people in the mix, decisions tend to take longer.
This certainly seems to be true at the City of Ottawa today. A building
project 25 years ago in the City of Nepean, for example, needed the
approval of someone in the buildings’ branch to make sure it met the OBC
(Ontario Building Code) and was safe for occupancy, and one person in
the planning branch to make sure it was consistent with the zoning
bylaw. In Carleton Place today (a small town 20 minutes west of Ottawa),
you can submit your building permit on a Thursday and you will get a
call the following Monday (or maybe Tuesday) to come pick up your
permit. Good luck trying that in Ottawa.

God only helps those that help themselves; it would be easy to blame
the fiscal imbalance and upper tiers of government for strangling
Ontario municipalities. There is no doubt that local government is
probably more important to most people’s lives than any other level of
government. But Ottawa can’t wait for the cavalry to ride over the hill
and rescue us. It ain’t coming. We have to look after ourselves and one
way to do this is to make better, quicker decisions over the things we
can control and then stick to them. Another way is to bring more
innovation to the way we do things and make sure we are using best
practices in everything we do as a city.

Lastly, as an educator and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the
University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, I have noticed
anecdotally in my fourteen years of teaching, a remarkable shift on the
part of young people in Ottawa away from a career as an entrepeneur
towards a preference for a ‘safe’ job. Now I have argued for a long time
that a JOB isn’t necessarily safer than a career in entrepeneurship;
you can get laid off in a JOB and you can probably make more money as an
entrepeneur. Real security comes from what you have between your ears:
the experiences you have collected over a lifetime and the new learning
you have committed to even after you leave school. These experiences are
often richer and more varied if you are an entrepeneur.

But folks are attracted to the idea of a paycheque every two weeks
and will often choose a (sometimes much) lower salary rather than a
commission-based remuneration scheme which is less predictable but more
lucrative.

What would Ottawa look like if you removed just a handful of
entrepreneurs: Mike Potter, John Doran, Kris Singhal, Irving Greenberg,
Terry Matthews, Mike Cowpland, Tracey Clark and Bruce Firestone (to name
just a few)? Ottawa would not have: Cognos, Domicile, Richcraft, Minto,
Newbridge (now part of Alcatel Lucent), Mitel, Corel, Bridgehead, the
Ottawa Senators and Scotiabank Place.

Yes, entrepeneurship is the seventh engine of growth and we need to
be grooming and encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs right
now (!) or we are going to be in even bigger trouble soon.

Copyright. Dr. Bruce Firestone, Ottawa, Canada. August 15, 2007.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 9:53 am

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        Filed under:

Affordable Housing

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City Planning

and

Design Economics

and

Development Economics and Entrepreneurship

and

Livable Cities and Neo-Urbanism

and

Political Economy

and

Sprawl

and

Urban Design

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         The team that helped build a city        

       
   Posted on
       Thursday 7 June 2007  
     
   
       

At the Civic Centre on opening night in 1992, Ottawa’s fans
saluted a new team and a community that had come together. This season
the Senators made us all feel like part of something bigger.

(Bruce Firestone, Citizen Special, First published: Thursday, June 07, 2007)

Back in 1991, the fight to bring the Senators back to Ottawa brought
me before the Ontario Municipal Board against my own provincial
government, in an effort to rezone the Palladium lands for a hockey
arena. I was on the stand for 3 ½ days.

I was joined during my testimony by Doug Logan, a representative of
Ogden Corp. (prospective arena managers for the Palladium, now
Scotiabank Place) and there is a story that I have never told before
that I am going to tell you now: During our days on the stand, Doug got
increasingly frustrated with the aggressive cross-examination by the
province’s lawyer. During the second day, he turned to me during a break
in the hearing and sotto voce, he said: “Bruce, Ogden is prepared to
offer you a $20-million relocation fee to play in our new stadium in
Anaheim.”

Ogden had backed the construction of a new building in Anaheim
without a primary tenant and was desperate to find one. Doug continued:
“Let’s just get up and walk out. To hell with this bull—. Let’s put the
team in Orange County!”

I told him: “Doug, I didn’t bring back the Ottawa Senators to play in Anaheim.”

Just imagine, the Senators might have played in this year’s Stanley
Cup finals against themselves in a parallel universe somewhere. Instead,
despite the advice of our lawyer and my management team, I made a
compromise offer to the OMB and the government of Ontario to freeze
development on most of the surrounding 500 acres my firm, Terrace
Investments, owned that I had once envisioned for development. The
province’s lawyer is reported to have told the Rae government:
“Firestone is desperate. He wouldn’t have made the offer if he wasn’t.
We’re winning — turn him down.”

Of course, he was right … and wrong. I was desperate, but by turning
us down, the province caused the hearing to go on for 13 and ½ weeks,
with more than $2 million in legal and professional fees spent by us and
much more by Ontario. The OMB panel members realized that this was
about hockey first; it was a turning point for us and the team.

In August 1991, the OMB granted permission for the redesignation of
100 acres for the construction of the Palladium, reduced our seat count
from 22,500 to 18,500 and imposed the condition that we build the
Huntmar Road interchange with Highway 417 at our cost. I knew that day
that the Sens would return to the National Hockey League after a 58-year
absence, and I also knew that my days as owner were numbered — our
company took an $80-million write-down on our land inventory and the
cost of a $30-million interchange.

Unconditional membership for the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club was awarded by the NHL board of governors on Dec. 19, 1991.

Well, it came down to Ducks versus Senators on the biggest stage the
city of Ottawa has experienced, maybe ever. The Senators had an
incredible run and even though they came up a bit short, everyone will
remember this remarkable season.

The first regular season game of the modern era was at the Civic
Centre on Oct. 8, 1992. I remember the standing ovation the fans gave
our team that night — it went on and on. I was standing at ice level and
I realized something — the fans weren’t just saluting the team, they
were congratulating themselves for coming together as a community to
make this happen. Ottawa was coming of age.

I saw that spirit again this spring on Elgin Street, at Scotiabank
Place, at Festival Plaza at City Hall. The fans were marvelous. I have
always believed that sports teams are never really owned by any one
person — they are held in trust for their communities and they should
not be moved because another city offers a better lease deal or
what-have-you.

Ottawa is a very new city, with amalgamation just six years ago. What
is there to bind us together and break down barriers between
neighbours? The NCC gives us Canada Day and Winterlude. OC Transpo takes
us efficiently through the city. But what else is there? We don’t even
have a football team anymore. Sheesh.

Many people have told me over the years that the best days of their
lives were when they felt they were part of something bigger than
themselves. Often, those days are a distant (high school or university)
memory when they played on some type of team. It’s always the same: “I
remember when we were down two sets to none and we came back to win!”

Now I think everyone feels that they are part of Team Ottawa.

And you know what? If you live in Ottawa, you had to cheer for the
Sens. It would have been unnatural to do anything else. Because if you
cheer for another team, you are cheering against all those people who
benefit when the home team wins: the bars, the restaurants, the hotels,
the taxi drivers, the stores. The effects are far-reaching. When the
home team wins, people are happier, and happier people make positive
decisions and positive people build cities.

But there is more — a prominent venture capitalist told me something
last year that surprised me. He said that when we got an NHL team in
Ottawa, that put us on the radar as a top-tier city. VCs want to invest
in Tier 1 cities. More than $2 billion in investment capital has poured
into Ottawa since the return of the Sens and, in part, because of the
return of the Sens.

Urbanist Richard Florida said successful cities in the 21st century
would have: tolerance for diversity, strong arts communities, powerful
education systems, an innovative culture, good quality of life and
respect for the environment. I would add to Richard’s list strong civic
leadership, and support for entrepreneurship.

Where would Ottawa be today without our entrepreneur class? Just take
out three people, Terry Matthews, Michael Cowpland and Mike Potter, and
Ottawa is a much less interesting place.

Where is the next generation of Ottawa entrepreneurs going to come
from? We need them. This newspaper published a list on June 1 that
showed Ottawa is falling behind — we ranked 12th in economic momentum in
Canada.

In a few short years, you are going to see a new “technopolis”
finally come to fruition around Scotiabank Place — it will be a
mixed-use kind of place and something that will put the building in a
context that we first dreamed about back in 1987. It will be something
that Ottawans will be proud of, I am sure.

But we need to do a heck of a lot more — at LeBreton Flats, at the former Rockcliffe airbase and elsewhere.

I have confidence that the Sens will be here for a long time. We have
solid ownership, solid management and a wonderful group of players who
are not only part of a great hockey team but great people too — Alfie,
Alfie, Alfie, …

If, one day, God willing, we are fortunate enough to win the Stanley
Cup, I hope employers in Ottawa will heed former Australian prime
minister Bob Hawke’s advice after Alan Bond’s sailing team finally
wrested the America’s Cup away from the Yankees: “Any bloke who won’t
give his employees a day off and make this a national holiday is a
bludger (someone who lives off the efforts of others).”

And Aussies are almost as insane about sailing as Canucks are about hockey.

Bruce Firestone is founder of the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club,
entrepreneur-in-residence at the Telfer school of management at the
University of Ottawa, adjunct research professor at the School of
Architecture at Carleton University, and a commercial real estate broker
at Century 21 Explorer Realty in Ottawa.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 12:14 pm

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         Why Use Mortgage Brokers?        

       
   Posted on
       Tuesday 22 May 2007  
     
   
       

In an email exchange with one of my former students, I
summarized some of the advantages that Mortgage Brokers bring to the
table:

1. They can source mortgages from 8, 10, 12 or more lenders and get
the most competitive interest rates and terms for you to choose from.
2. It saves you a lot of time: how long would it take you to get in front of and apply to, say, a dozen lenders?
3. Banks sometimes try to sell tied products: property insurance,
mortgage insurance, life insurance, car insurance, RRSPs, TFSAs, other
banking services, credit cards and more, ‘forcing’ you to buy things
along with your new mortgage that: a) you don’t need and b) at higher
prices than you can get elsewhere. Mortgage insurance is one of those:
you are almost always better off buying life or term insurance from an
independent provider than taking the Bank’s mortgage insurance.
4. Mortgage Brokers can source multiple lenders with ONE credit report
on you and your partner. If you apply to multiple lenders yourself, each
one will ‘ping’ your credit rating and each ping on your credit rating
lowers your Beacon Score (your credit rating) by 2.7 points. Thus, if
you apply separately to 12 lenders, you would lower your credit score by
32.4 points. If your Beacon Score was just above 700 (a good score)
before, it would now be below 700 and this could affect your loan rate
(i.e., the interest rate goes up; your mortgage just got more
expensive.) The theory is that your credit score goes down since, as far
as the credit bureau is concerned, you are applying ‘all over town’ for
more and more credit. This is, of course, unfair because you are only
applying for one mortgage of, say, $200,000, but it appears to be
multiple applications for $2.4 million in financing and, hence, your
Beacon Score drops.
5. It doesn’t cost you a thing: Mortgage Lenders pay the mortgage broker
a fee for sourcing the loan (at least in the case of residential
mortgages. In commercial mortgages, the Borrowers often pays a fee as
well.) These fees are fairly small (anywhere between .75% and .85%,
occasionally rising to as much as 1% of the loan amount. If these
lenders didn’t pay it to the independent mortgage broker, they would
have paid it anyway to their internal people who source mortgages for
them. So it really does cost you nothing extra.
6. It isn’t just the interest rate that you need to be concerned about.
Many people are doing debt consolidations and need higher loan amounts
and better terms and amortization schedules. Your mortgage broker can
get you that because the lenders know they are competing for the
business. Any Bank that tells you that, because you are a loyal customer
and have been with them a long time, you don’t need to shop around and
they will give you the best deal anyway is not being straightforward
with you.

Here is a spreadsheet I created in .xls format that tries to quantify the merits of using a residential mortgage broker: https://www.ottawarealestatenews.com/ValuePropositionOfAResidentialMortgageBroker.xls.

More than 75% of all mortgage loans in the US are now sourced through
mortgage brokers. The rate in Canada is about 30% but I expect it will
increase a lot in the next decade.

Prof Bruce

Postscript 1

Dilys Hagerman, Mortgage Agent:

Running short of cash?  Paying a lot out every month and feeling like you’re never getting ahead?

Take a look at your mortgage situation and your debt to see if you can do what three of my clients did  last week:

1. Income of $48,000.  Mortgage of $155,000.  Credit card debt of
$13,000.  We paid off their existing mortgage and all their cc debt by
putting in place a new mortgage so that now their monthly payment is
$1,050 LESS than it was.
2. Income of $77,000.  Mortgage of $165,000.  Credit card debt of
$41,000.  Same deal.  Their monthly mortgage payment now is $865 LESS
and all their credit card debt is gone.
3. Income of $133,000. Mortgage of $198,000.  Line of credit of
$105,000.  All of it was renegotiated so that these folks are paying
$675 LESS than they were before with exactly the same debt.

Don’t be “scared” away by your current mortgage lender (probably your
Bank) who says you have to pay a penalty.  In many cases, with the
interest rates now so low, it is worth it to pay the penalty to close
out early.

A renewal offer from your current mortgage holder often comes quite
close to the renewal date so it makes it difficult for you to then
price-shop. It isn’t just interest rates you need to be concerned
about—you need some flexibility on loan amount and terms too.

Dilys Hagerman
hagerman@travel-net.com  

Postscript 2

John Walsh, Mortgage Agent:

I like what you say, however, using an actual numerical number for a credit hit can be misleading.

As an example, I had one client who tried to get a new car lease. He
was consistent. He hit one car lease company every 3-4 weeks. His credit
score after 18 months of trying was down to 500 from probably over 700!

He had clean credit otherwise. So he went down roughly 200 points from just 18 hits (approximately).

In this case, he was seen as ‘seeking credit’. Someone should have
told him what was happening (I did and told him he wouldn’t be eligible
for a home mortgage for 12 months). He, like so many, had no clue what
was happening to his credit.

A credit score is more of a ‘ranking over time’.

JRW
jwalsh@MortgageAlliance.com

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 7:39 am

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         Why the Sparks Street Pedestrain Mall in Ottawa Sucks        

       
   Posted on
       Wednesday 24 January 2007  
     
   
       

I am not a fan of the Sparks Street Pedestrian only Mall in
Ottawa. The National Capital Commission has tried to fix it for more
than two decades and it still, basically, sucks from an urban design
POV. They have tried to rent space to upscale retailers and encourage
more restaurants and bars so that there would be some life on the Mall
after all the civil servants go home at 3 pm. They spent a few million
dollars of taxpayer money putting sculpture on the street and adding
on-street kiosks. None of it worked at all.

But there is no secret to making urban streets work—you need a significant residential population that lives within a five or ten minute walk or nothing is going to work. People like to be where other people are—we are social animals and we feel (and are) safer too.

If it were up to me, I would fix it by:

1. Giving every developer a density bonus within 1,000 metres of the
Mall for residential, hotel, apt. development above CO or CC;

2. Putting cars back on the Mall with two lanes for through traffic
(one in each direction) and two lanes for on-street parking at all
times. I am not sure if I would allow buses or not… Probably not. Maybe
if Ottawa ever gets LRT, then let Light Rail cars trundle down the
street maybe.

3. Putting street-fronting uses on Sparks that are busy evenings and
weekends but only after establishing a residential population of a
minimum of 3,500 people within a 10 minute (1 km. walk of the street).

Look at the section of Elgin Street in Ottawa that works. Same thing.

Dr. Bruce

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 9:08 am

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         What makes a person a “Professional”?        

       
   Posted on
       Saturday 20 January 2007  
     
   
       

As I get older, I have come to have more respect for the
word “Professional”. A professional entertainer, for example, knows the
‘show must go on’. A professional football or hockey player knows that
they have to play some of the time with injury.

I knew the words but I really didn’t get their meaning in terms of
the context of what it means in my working life. If I don’t feel well, I
feel sorry for myself. If I am not 100%, I’ll say that to a client and
expect some sympathy. A true professional would say: ‘to heck with
that!”

If you want to be a professional (architect, engineer, constructor,
teacher, lawyer, doctor, electrician, what have you), here is what I
think you have to do:

1. Get up every day, day after day, and produce consistently excellent work.
2. Don’t do anything, like drink too much, take drugs, not get enough
exercise, eat too much, not get enough sleep, etc. that would take away
from your ability to do 1. You need discipline and focus.
3. Don’t wing it; if someone asks for your professional opinion, you
know they are asking for a carefully thought out view based on years of
education, training, focus  and collected wisdom. If you are going into a
meeting where your professional knowledge is needed, prepare
beforehand. Think through the possibilities.
4. To be a professional is to be able to resist the seven deadly sins:
lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. If you think you
know everything, you are not open to new ideas and you don’t engage in
lifetime learning, then you are old before your time (you start getting
old the day you think you know everything) and a fool. If you are
getting divorced every few years, you won’t have time for anything else.
If you’re greedy and lazy, no will want to do business with you; if you
are envious, you will be small minded and if you tend to lose your
temper a lot, you will act against your own best interests (which people
do surprisingly often). None of this is the behaviour of a
professional.
5. You must be able to shut out problems in other areas of your life and
deliver great results even when everything else feels like it is
falling apart.
6. You need to be able to learn from your mistakes and those of others.
You need to be able to admit when you are wrong and fix it. If someone
else is doing something better than you, stop doing what you are doing
and adopt the new way of doing things. Don’t let yourself suffer from
the NOT-INVENTED-HERE syndrome.
7. You need the ability to accept crticsm and the wisdom to know when
not to accept criticsm because in your professional opinion, you are
right.
8. You need to deliver a consistent high level of care for your clients and put their interests truly first.
9. You need to understand that you will be held to a higher standard of
behaviour and knowledge than an amateur. This is true in both legal
terms and in society as a whole. There is no use whining that you didn’t
know such and such if, within your industry, you, as a professional, should have known.
10. Everything changes and you must be able to adapt. The US Marine
Corps unofficial motto is “Show some adaptability” and you should too.

Dr. Bruce

Jan. 20, 2007

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 8:19 am

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         Count Down To .500 Lifetime for the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club        

       
   Posted on
       Friday 1 December 2006  
     
   
       

By Matthew Firestone, Age 17

I have been a fan of the Ottawa Senators since the team played its
first game in the new era (when I was two). I don’t really remember much
about those first years except that Spartacat was a lot bigger then
than he is now.

As a fan, I can’t wait until the team gets to the .500 mark lifetime.
Since it was 60 games below .500 in its first year, that means it will
take a long time and has taken a long time to get close to the .500
lifetime mark. The team is close now and may get there if the Sens can
play well this year and next. The whole concept of what .500 hockey
actually means these days is complicated because there are so many three
point games in the NHL but anyway, I did an analysis below and if I
made any mistakes let me know. Here it is.

Calculations for points:

In 1992-93 and 1993-94 there were 84 games. That meant that .500 was
84 points. During these games the Sens got 61 points (24 in the 92-93
season and 37 in the 93-94 season). They needed 168 points. This puts
them 107 points behind .500 at that point in time.

In the 94-95 season only 48 games were played (this is because of the
103 day lock out) and the team got 23 points. This puts them 25 points
behind .500 for that season. This means that they are (at the end of
that season) 132 points behind .500.

For the next 11 seasons they got 955 points and needed 845 points to
be at .500 (this means for those 11 seasons they were 110 points above
.500). So, because the first 3 seasons they were 132 points behind .500
and the next 11 seasons they were 110 points above .500 so overall they
were 22 points below .500. 22 points = 11 wins.

Season breakdown:

Season GP W L T OTL PTS GF GA PIM
1992-93 84 10 70 4 N/A 24 202 395 1716
1993-94 84 14 61 9 N/A 37 201 397 1710
1994-95 48 9 34 5 N/A 23 117 174 749
1995-96 82 18 59 5 N/A 41 191 291 1553
1996-97 82 31 36 15 N/A 77 226 234 1087
1997-98 82 34 33 15 N/A 83 193 200 1091
1998-99 82 44 23 15 N/A 103 239 239 892
1999-00 82 41 28 11 2 95 210 210 850
2000-01 82 48 21 9 4 109 205 205 1062
2001-02 82 39 27 9 7 94 243 208 1347
2002-03 82 52 21 8 1 113 263 182 1135
2003-04 82 43 23 10 6 102 262 189 1270
2004-05 Lock Out Lock Out Lock Out Lock Out Lock Out Lock Out Lock Out Lock Out Lock Out
2005-06 82 52 21 0 9 113 314 211 1443
2006-07 24 12 12 0 1 25 81 70 332
Totals 1060 447 469 115 30 1039 2947 3205 16237

Calculations for games:

Basically a win is +1 and a loss is -1, and if you do it this way you
come out with -22, which means they are -22 games below .500 as of
December 1, 2006. (Remember if the Sens are 22 points below .500, they
have to be 22 GAMES over .500 just to get to .500. Look at it this way.
Say they had a total of 40 points out of a possible 100 points, so they
are at .400 winning percentage. You might think they need to win 5 more
games to get the ten points they need to be at .500 but this doesn’t
work. If they going on a winning streak and win five games in a row, now
they do have 50 points but out of a total possible of 110 so their
winning percentage has gone from .400 to .454 not to .500. They have to
win another 5 games in a row. Then they would have 60 points out of a
possible 120 and, obviously, they would be at .500 then.

Since in reality, the Sens have 447 wins and 469 losses, they are 21
games and 21 points below .500. This is weird because one would think
that 21 games below .500 is 42 points, but that isn’t the case. The
reason for this is ties and overtime losses, your theory works in the
new NHL where you have a point awarded for an OTL, but in the old NHL it
has no basis because a loss in overtime didn’t give you a point. These
points given in the overtime allows for this theory to work.)

.500 derived by games:

Season GP W L Games Below .500
1992-93 84 10 70 -60
1993-94 84 14 61 -47
1994-95 48 9 34 -25
1995-96 82 18 59 -41
1996-97 82 31 36 -5
1997-98 82 34 33 1
1998-99 82 44 23 21
1999-00 82 41 28 13
2000-01 82 48 21 27
2001-02 82 39 27 12
2002-03 82 52 21 31
2003-04 82 43 23 20
2004-05 Lock Out Lock Out Lock Out Lock Out
2005-06 82 52 21 31
2006-07 24 12 12 0
Totals 1060 447 469 -22

You are probably going to have some questions, so feel free to ask me. I think I know what I did… at least I hope so,

Matt

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 5:44 pm

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         The Best Partnership is No Partnership        

       
   Posted on
       Saturday 18 November 2006  
     
   
       

I tell many of the start-ups I coach that the best
partnership you can have is no partnership. The real reason so many of
us end up in partnerships is that we lack the confidence to try it on
our own, not that we need our partner’s money or expertise.
Entrepreneurs can not have one foot on the shore and one foot
in the boat. They have to get in the boat and row like hell and get to
the other side of the ocean. There is no Plan B. There shouldn’t be a
Plan B.

As soon as you put a net under an entrepreneur and they know they
have something to fall back on (like a JOB to go back to), they are way
more likely to fail. The same is true for partnerships.

In most partnerships, ‘there is no there, there’. No one makes
decisions, no one has the final say and no one has overall
responsibility for the success (or failure) of the enterprise. It is a
recipe for delay- delay in decision-making, delay in changing strategy
when something isn’t working. It is also easy to spare your ego if the
thing fails. “It wasn’t my fault. My partner was an anchor; it’s all his
fault…” That’s pretty weak but it happens all the time.

Seth Godin recommends
against 50/50 partnerships and I certainly agree with that. If you are
going to have a partner, at least make sure someone has 51% and everyone
knows, going in, who makes the  final decisions.

A start-up I coached a few years ago had four equal partners. Now
that is really a recipe for failure. I recommended that, at a minimum,
they have a voting trust agreement amongst themselves. They should
decide on one of their founders as CEO or President and give him voting
control over all the shares in the Company for the first five
years. That is when most businesses fail and when you need fast decision
making. They agreed and went on to build a strong enterprise.

Most entrepreneurs don’t realize that equity is way more expensive
than debt. VCs and Angel investors are looking for at least a 30% per
annum return on their investment. Equity isn’t free. Debt, even
expensive junk debt, isn’t usually more than 15%.

Well, you say, with debt you have to service it or bad things happen
to your company like the lender calls your loan or tries to put your
firm into receivership. But, trust me, if you accept VC money, you have
just become a rent-a-CEO; you are not long for your job. If the Company
is successful, they will want to bring in someone with more experience
to run it and, you’re out of the company you founded. If it isn’t
successful, they will either replace you with someone else who can turn
it around (and you’re out again) or shut it down altogether and you’re
gone anyway.

If you can afford to pay someone cash to help you with
something you are not good at, like say, you need $5,000 worth of tech
support, you are usually much better off paying them the cash (even if
it is $500 a month for 10 months) than giving them, say, 5% of your
company.

If you give a techie 5% of your company and even if your business is
just a modest success, say doing $500,000 in sales in its fifth year,
that equity is going to cost you 35% per annum under certain
assumptions, like, you are going to want that techie out of the business
within five years and you are going to have to redeem his or her shares
at the then FMV (Fair Market Value). In the spreadsheet I
did for this example, I assumed that your business is worth a multiple
of 0.9 times sales. If you click on the above link, you can download it
in .xls and fool around with it yourself and make other assumptions.

But the point is, equity is very valuable and you should be careful
what you do with it. And, don’t forget, take responsibility for the
success of your business. Don’t for a minute think you can delegate
that, you can’t.

Dr. Bruce

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 9:07 am

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About the Author

Bruce is an entrepreneur/real estate broker/developer/coach/urban guru/keynote speaker/Sens founder/novelist/columnist/peerless husband/dad.

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