I thought I would share this Fund Raising Mega Tip as it really works…

With the first business I started, I almost stumbled across investors and with each business, the same has been pretty much true – and even, when I think about how it all unraveled…even when I was consciously out to raise $5-6 million bucks from the Venture Capital community.

Now, if you are actively out there or even if you will be soon you’re probably either scratching your head in wonderment and disbelief or about ready to throw that coffee cup through the computer screen in disgust…

He almost tripped over his investors?

Crap – I don’t believe it, I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall for months or expect to be soon, and still no investors or a term sheet in sight…

So – let me tell you that mega tip I promised…and it really DOES work

…no kidding….

…

If you go out looking for cash, you will end up getting lots of free (and probably worth what you paid for it… ) advice from angels and investors about what you need to do to make your business investment ready…

…and, unless you’ve hit some really exciting milestones in your business, that’s probably all you’ve got so far or probably all you’ll get.

Depressing huh?

But there is another (easier…) way…

So – again, if you went out and asked for cash, you probably got ‘advice’…

So what do you do?

Here’s the beginning of the mega tip #2…

You flip that around…

You DON’T go out and ask for cash….

You go out and ask for ADVICE…and it will lead to cash if you are asking the right people…

Still scratching your head?

Let me explain…

Go out there and find some people who have been there and done it already – (I highly recommend a mentor or three whatever happens) – but…

We’re talking about raising cash here – so – go out and find those people that have been around the track before and, making sure they understand how you appreciate their experience, ask to spend some time with them to benefit from this experience.  They probably will – ego is involved, and they will doubtless appreciate the recognition of their accomplishments from someone who can sit at their feet and learn from one of the masters… (…tongue in cheek of course but you’re getting the pitch right?)

Now, assuming you strike up a rapport – you will probably find that they’ll want to help – and then they’ll do that magical thing…they’ll refer you to people that can help…

No lets stop here – if they want to give you names, numbers and emails – you should suggest that an email out of the blue from you will likely end up in the email junk folder. Tell them you’ll only get the time of day if that person know’s you’ve come them – so, ask them to send each of these contacts an email and either cc you or bcc you.

When that happens – reply all and away you go.

A suggestion – check back with the mentor reasonably regularly, tell them how you’re getting on, especially with their contacts, keep them engaged – you never know, you might need them when it comes time to negotiate or at any other time…

This has happened to me often…but, and this is critical…actually go and spend time with the absolute focus on learning as much from that person as you can…do NOT go there, nod a few times and wait for them to crack open their network – they’ll know in an instant and after your coffee, you’ll find yourself on the sidewalk, wondering what went wrong.

So – mega tip #2 – go out looking for advice and it will likely lead to referrals and ultimately cash…having someone who has already won their spurs, tell potential investors to take a look at you is magic!

Mega tip #3 coming soon.

Does all this stuff make sense? Any questions or suggestions?

If you liked this posting – tell a friend, hell…tell California…tell the world….

Join my mailing list and you’ll be one of the first to hear about Mega Tip #3.

And by the way – I offered help on my post below – I meant it – if you have ANY questions, I’ll either do my best to answer them in a follow on posting, or find someone that can. Thanks to those that have already sent me an email…so email or comment please…

Andrew

Related posts:

1. Having Problems Raising Money for Your Business? A Mega Tip
2. 4 Seconds to Success when Raising Money

About four years ago, I worked with a smart group of people to design and build Advisor Garage.  At the time, dating websites were growing exponentially – it seemed even my postman was about to set up his own version of match.com.  But Advisor Garage was not a dating site to help people met the partner of their dreams…

Advisor Garage was set up to help entrepreneurs ‘connect and date’ advisors and mentors.

This is how we (as tried and tested Entrepreneurs) thought about it…

No Entrepreneur is an Island…Like a great beer – Start-Ups often require a multitude of ingredients…:

A GREAT idea… A plan of execution… Motivated People… Money… A place to do business… Legal support… Marketing… Technology… Money… A Channel to market… Prospective customers with a need… Sales expertise… A Product or Service… Did I mention Money?

…and the list goes on and on.

What about bootstrapping you might ask? Sure – bootstrap – but you still need the above list…and more, you just somehow manage to get them for less. Bootstrapping doesn’t mean no resources – it means cheaper or, if you’re lucky free resources (but remember that saying – you usually ‘get’ what you pay for…).

Pulling all those (and more) elements together can take months – especially for the newbie Entrepreneur – so Advisor Garage was created. The Goal…help ‘connect’ entrepreneurs with advisors with a wide variety of expertise and contacts so they could save themselves weeks and months they would usually spend to find and pull these pieces of the Start-Up jigsaw puzzle together. 

Let me say that in a slightly different way – Advisor Garage’s goal:  Help entrepreneurs shave off months from Start to Market to CASH!

Cash is the oxygen of a new business – Again – Cash is the OXYGEN of the business. ALL Businesses. No exceptions. Private or public sector – for profit or not-for-profit.

Cash keeps the lights on – the people coming through the front door – the computers humming and the telephones ringing. Everything is about CASH. Without it, you can’t service the customer, be a Green company, employ people or yourself or whatever your own, specific, world changing goals for your Start-Up might be.

CASH IS THE START AND END OF A BUSINESS. If you don’t believe me – Go ask General Motors! 

During the three years Advisor Garage was live – over 1000 advisors joined! That’s a THOUSAND Advisors with enormous diversity of contacts, experience and access to resources to help entrepreneurs cut weeks and months off of the cost and time it takes them to start and build their businesses. 

By plugging into great advisors could mean shaving months off the time it takes to bring a business to market. So what?

Those saved months could be critical in terms of securing your first customers…getting ahead of your competition…building your brand and market – but bottom line – it gets you faster to the cash!

During those three years building Advisor Garage I was lucky enough to meet and connect with some great Advisors and entrepreneurs and about six months ago I woke up one morning and had a ‘Eureka moment’…

Advisor Garage had been growing day by day but my Eureka moment told me there was a better way to help entrepreneurs…I felt a broad smile spread across my face as it all fell into place inside my head. 

That day I took down Advisor Garage and began to focus on the Advisor Garage re-launch – a re-launch which would completely change the product /service Advisor Garage delivered but which would offer SIGNIFICANTLY MORE VALUE to entrepreneurs and multiply their chances of successfully launching and growing their young business!

So – We haven’t set a re-launch date yet as we’re still working on it and want to make sure it’s ‘just right’ but if you are interested in finding out how Advisor Garage can SIGNIFICANTLY enhance your chance of Start-Up success and shave months off your time to market and to cash then head over to Advisor Garage and sign up to our mailing list.  We’ll tell you all about our re-launch just before the BIG day!

Next post I’ll tell you a little bit about Advisor Garage’s sister sites that we are also busy developing – Angel Garage and VC Garage…by all means ‘comment’ if you have any ideas about what they may do or even better – what they could do for you and your start up.

Here’s to YOUR Start-Up Success!

Andrew

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