Equity Value Enhancement. Sheeler Carl L.

resulting in value creation.

      • Navigating risk well reduces obstacles, saves time, and increases opportunities – a huge differentiator.

      • Tools and language can provide transparency and clarity. It's what we all want.

      • Value can be extracted from and/or offered to others beyond technical know-how.

      • Value creation occurs with a strategy that is executed to rethink and recombine all assets.

Questions for Consideration

      • What is the company's free cash flow? Is revenue/profit more important than value?

      • What is the company's return on equity/assets/invested capital and what changes can have the greatest impact on value?

      • How will strategy be communicated, executed, and governed to achieve scalability (growth)?

      • What assets and measures are relied upon to weigh risk/opportunity and value?

      • What is the articulated and aligned strategy of founders, families, and their advisors?

      • What is the vision of the this ecosystem and its constituents?

      • What are the resources needed to get from here to there? What are the gaps?

      • How will differentiation and measurement be used to leverage assets?

      • How will success, wealth, and risk be defined and by who (spiritual, emotional, intellectual)?

      • What are the top three issues and how will decisions be made and guidance be sought and offered?

      • How can founder, family, and advisors be proactive in a dynamic/uncertain environment?

      • Where are the governance, relationship, risk, and knowledge gaps?

      • Why is optimal debt to equity mix so relevant?

      • What are critical decisions for better planned and unplanned transition event outcomes?

      • Which is more important: the strategy or the ability to execute it? Why?

      • Where is there clarity and transparency? Where is there not? Why?

      • How is legacy and vision established and communicated? What are the disruptions?

      • What are the liquidity options and needs? What and who influences these decisions?

      • How do founder, family, and advisors see capital (human versus financial)?

      • Is leverage achieved from governance, relationships, and knowledge?

      • Sharing this journey differentiates you from the 90 percent who simply are part of the herd, choosing to remain with the familiar. There are abundant opportunities out there to create concentrated wealth – as long as value creation is GRRK to you. Read on.

      Acknowledgments

      After I finished my doctoral dissertation on private capital illiquidity over a decade ago, I thought I'd be done. I have since gone on to be a prolific writer, presenter, and panelist. However, my words would be meaningless without those numerous valuation legends and investment bankers upon whose shoulders I stand and whom I may join.

      My bread-and-butter work primarily has been from the legal community, whether it is a trust and estate or transaction matter or some business dispute. It has morphed into more risk management and mitigation advisory services dealing with the 6Ts, where strategy, facilitation, operational savvy, communication, and stewardship skills all have application. I am indebted to these professionals who make the work interesting and are often underappreciated for their ability to shift risk and assist clients in making better decisions.

      Often hailed as the most trusted advisor to business owners are accountants who have accepted my work and me despite my not being a CPA. Rather, I have been honored to train more than a thousand such professionals to perform client-taxpayer valuation work or represent the position of the IRS on matters of business enterprise and equity values and discounts. I am grateful for the many, many CPAs who have trusted me with their affluent business owners, C-suite clients, and their families' issues in 6T engagements.

      Recognitions are deserved for the many bankers, trust officers, wealth-insurance professionals, private equity groups, family business advisors, family offices, family businesses, and private and public companies' founders/families, owners, and executives. I'm humbled by your trust and commerce, which has served my passions. You put a roof over my family's head. You gave me the voice to share how your interests can best be served and how together we can leverage both human and financial capital to create new value.

      Finally, to Keith Hald. Keith was 75 years old when I hired him as a real estate appraiser and then secondarily as a personal property appraiser. He was well into his late 80s when he “retired”. Keith passed in August 2015. He was a WWII veteran survived by a loving wife, Betty, and two adult children. From the bread basket of the United States, Keith was as reliable as a watch and inspired me by example that honest hard work, a good heart, and the love of a good woman are often all the abundance you need.

      Thank you all!

      About the Author

      By no means a natural athlete (or a Mensa member), Carl's journey has been as much the path of a weightlifter as it has been marathoner literally and figuratively. He has taken his successes and failures (both personal and business) in stride and fashioned a lump of coal into diamond-like brilliance. He brings character, color, and clarity to a profession in need of doers and thinkers, not tinkerers.

      Combine a doctoral focus in entrepreneurial finance with a veteran USMC combat officer/strategist and corporate operational audit professional and you produce a dynamic valuation advisor who is as much a litigation support (warrior) expert in governance, business, partnership, class, tax, and fiduciary duty disputes/damages as he is a statesman and spokesman for advanced valuation, strategy, and advisory services addressing both private and public company equity and operational risk issues. In short, he is a strategic value architect.

      For 25+ years, Carl has performed and reviewed thousands of valuation reports, operating agreements, financial documents, business plans, corporate records, and industry and market data reports as part of the intellectual rigor he applies to each of his engagements. While a formidable IRS and court qualified expert witness with 170+ matters under his anodized brass belt, his passion lies in the elevation of the valuation industry and company values themselves. His contribution is felt with 300+ presentations and authoritative treatises addressing enterprise and equity value and discounting issues as well as his due diligence associated with identifying, measuring, managing, and mitigating concentrated risk.

      He is a board member, a certified valuation analyst (CVA), and an Instructor of Great Distinction as recognized by the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (NACVA). He is also a board member and a certified business appraiser (CBA) certified by the Institute of Business Appraisers (IBA) as well as an accredited senior appraiser (ASA) certified by the American Society of Appraisers. He is an active board and/or committee member of for-profit and nonprofit organizations.

      While industry agnostic, Carl's knack is unique in identifying and quantifying operational risks associated with intangible assets, such as human capital areas of governance, relationships, risks, and knowledge (GRRK), the premise of this book. More importantly, he is a connector and concierge, where possessing the humility to recommend the right advice by the right person in the right way holds the greatest impact.

      Whereas most valuation work product applies a somewhat check-the-box, cookbook recipe approach, Carl is a master chef (more of a meat-and-potatoes guy) who understands and can address why a certain risk factor/value driver exists and what their impact is to the finished dish (valuation work product result).

      While the profession is often limited by abiding to more of a technical and transactional mindset, Carl has challenged the profession specifically and the business community generally by raising what seems like simple questions:

      If we are purported to know what relevant factors influence company specific risk and their influence