Reverse Mergers & Shell Corporations

Reverse Mergers, Private Placements and Raising Money

What is a Reverse Merger?
The definition of a reverse merger is when a public shell corporation mergers with an operating private business.
A reverse merger occurs when a shell corporation acquires a private business, and changes its name to the private company. Shell corporations usually have no assets of any significance nor any employees. Reverse mergers are not as good as an IPO because you cannot raise money unless the company does a private placement. Business do private placement to raise money.

We do not advocate reverse mergers.

Most investment banks don't like reverse mergers. The best way to raise money is to do a private placement and raise some seed capital and then do an IPO an initial public offering.

There are a many places to find capital for a business instead of a reverse merger. Capital sources include loans, lines of credit, factoring, seed capital and venture. Please see our website which has information on shell corporations, raising capital, going public and more.

Why are they called public shell corporations? They are called shell corporations
because the only thing left from the old company is the corporate shell structure.

The benefits of a reverse merger in comparison to Initial Public Offering (IPO) include the following: a company will usually receive a higher valuation, it is suppose to be quicker and their will be less dilution of ownership. However it is just as easy to do a registration statement and do a self filing or direct public offering. It is superior to doing a reverse merger with a public shell corporation. This is because public shell corporations are ripe with past problems.

A reverse merger with a reporting public shell company that has a symbol maybe a little quicker but they are expensive. There can be undisclosed liabilities that one of the many reasons we do not recommend a reverse merger and suggest people avoid them and take their company public directly.

About the Author

Frank Roberson is corporate financial consultant specializing in public company information and shell corporations. Please visit Mr. Roberson's website for further resources about taking companies public.

The simple Myth of Multitasking

Recently a study by the University of Michigan revealed that the brain is not truly capable of performing many tasks at once. While it may seem like you can talk on your cell phone and drive at the same time, the authors of the study discovered the brain is actually switching from task to task. The brain puts one task down, so to speak, and takes a moment to pick up another one.

This job switching takes time. The study noted that the several tenths of a second it can take your brain to switch from one thing to another can add up to dangerous time. Take the aforementioned driving with the cell phone. During the time your brain is focused on the call, the car is still moving without it actually being under your control. That half second is enough time for an accident to occur.

The City of Austin's public safety task force recently approved a resolution that could lead to a requirement for motorist to use hands-free devices. This is a first step in a potentially long process toward a ban on text messaging in particular. Seven states--Alaska, California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey and West Virginia--all have a requirement for motorists to use hands-free devices.

The research on the effectiveness of banning text messaging for drivers is inconclusive at this point. It is difficult to provide exact statistics on wrecks related to cell phone use because drivers are reluctant to admit it. A recent article in the Austin-American Statesman cited a study in North Carolina by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that found teen drivers actually used cell phones more after a ban on them was enacted.

It is human nature to ignore inconvenient rules like banning cell phone use in the car. It is also human nature to think we can do it all. It is not just driving while talking on the cell phone or texting that puts multitasking into overdrive. A typical evening can find any parent simultaneously making dinner, unloading the dishwasher, helping with homework and thinking about the big presentation at work the next day. According to the Michigan study, the synapses in the prefrontal cortex, or executive mental control center, are sizzling under the demands.

The busy lives people weave together are not seamless. The study found that executive control involves two distinct stages called goal shifting and rule activation. So it's like the brain is saying, "I want to do this now instead of that, and I need to turn off the rules for one and turn on the rules for the other."

These stages help people unconsciously switch between tasks. For simple, familiar tasks, this is a relatively quick and seamless event. But there are days the threads of the many tasks get tangled and snarled as the brain tries to achieve more complicated goals. The more complex the commands are, the longer it takes the brain to switch from task to task.

However, more often than not, the brain is putting down one thread and picking up the next with great skill. The fragmented days lived in ten minute snippets of time are a remarkable testament to the power of the brain. You just might want to think twice before picking up the cell phone next time you're in the car.

About the Author

Jill works with inside real estate. They operate sites about San Antonio real estate and El Paso real estate. They also have a site covering the Dallas real estate market.

Building your Sales Team

You may have a brilliant product, best price, great online and offline visibility but you may not necessarily have the best sales report that you can boast about. Normally companies consider the above mentioned factors to be the crucial factors that help a company to do well however, they have been proved wrong repeatedly through their poor performance. If all these factors do not bring success, then what is the deciding factor on our sales? Most obviously, it is the effectiveness of your sales team. Often it is the sales team that makes or breaks a company success. If you have not been paying attention to building a strong sales team so far, then it is highly crucial that you start paying attention to building an effective sales team.

If you want an effective sales team then it is vital that each member of the team is highly effective. By selecting top performers we can make sure of having an effective sales team. How do we identify the top performers? We can use effective tools such as SPQ Gold. It is one of the best tools available in the market, which is capable of measuring the ability of your sales people to initiate contact and to introduce themselves to the prospective buyers. It will also help us find out their ability to manage their visibility levels in a highly competitive market. Every sales person has to fight the temptations of call reluctance and most people succumb to the temptation and employ over 12 avoidance behaviors making themselves to be unfit for the job. SPQ Gold will help us identify candidates who are more likely to exhibit such unhealthy traits and find candidates with healthy traits who can work well even under pressure.

SPQ Gold is the only tool available in the market to assess sales call reluctance. Using the tool, you can hire a strong sales team that will perform well despite all odds against them. Sales profiles are not easy profiles; it requires a high level of resilience to work under pressure and under heavy competition. They should be able to work as a team and not have their own goals and agendas. They should be able to fit in to the new environment fast and come up with their own new strategies handing the new market. Of course, there is no substitute to hard work; but their hard work should be done diligently. Above all, they should be highly optimistic people despite the gloomy financial environment.

When you use SPQ Gold sales assessment you will be able to identify both strong traits as well as the weak traits of the candidate helping you to pick the best sales team. You will also know the kind of training that should be given to your sales team. One of the advantages of SPQ Gold sales assessment is that the tests can be run online. In addition, you cannot find another effective method that is as cost-effective as SPQ Gold.

About the Author

Richard Bonn is the owner of Awesome Web Marketing. For more information on Richard please visit http://www.buildsalesteams.com

For more information you can visit http://www.buildsalesteams.com

SPQ Gold and Sales Call Reluctance are registered trademarks of Behavioral Sciences Research Press.

Managing People the Right Way

Whether you're the manager of two people at a manufacturing plant or 50 people with a Wall Street address, the rules of good management are the same. One of the most important items in Management 101 to address is:

• People work with you, not for you.

When introducing a team member in your department, kindly introduce them as: "I'd like to introduce you to Joanne. She works with me in Quality Control." This will leave a lasting impression on people above your title as they quickly realize you're a dedicated team player, recognizing the value of the great people who work with you. Additionally, it will give "Joanne" a boost, knowing that she is valuable to you and the company and promotes her feelings of self worth. No one is a "subordinate" of yours…leave that for the military!

Another critical tip which many management people forget is:

• Share your knowledge and background experiences with everyone who works with you.

Too many managers simply assign work for the people entrusted to them. Think of where you started…not at the top, I'll bet! Give everyone the benefit of the doubt that they are just as intelligent and worthy as you. More times than not, taking the time to share the whole picture of the project and where everyone fits into it will obtain the final results sooner and make you look like a bigger person. Failure to honor their questions, instead keeping everything "close to the vest", only shows a manager's insecurity. Unless you're associated with the FBI or CIA, there is no reason not to share your knowledge. Your staff will succeed and gain much under your direction, and it will filter through the grapevine that you're a fantastic person to work with which, of course, will tell upper management that you're ready for the next step up.

About the Author

Nan grew up fishing, camping, hunting, sailing, water & snow skiing, and horseback riding while spending the last 35 years in the financial world as a self-employed Portfolio Analyst. Visit her products of fun stuff like tents, boats, electronic chess sets, jumping stilts, electronic handheld games, etc. at http://www.SeriousFunStuff.com .

Listening Like a Leader

Our studies of the most effective people in corporate America show that the top 2 percent are effective not because they executed best practices well. They did not make the most phone calls or have the best processes. They simply understood the truth about trust:

People do business with people they like.
They like people they trust.
They trust people who have a detectable level of compassion and competence.

Does it take time to build trust? The truth is that you have known people for five years who still don't trust you, and you've known some for five minutes who do. Our research shows that trust is usually created by showing a detectable level of concern. When people truly believe you are concerned for them, they tend to think you possess good judgment. After all, if you care about them, you must know what you are doing.

So what is the fastest and most effective way to show people that you care and you're competent?

Make sure they feel heard, which is more than just listening. I call it listening like a leader.

You are not a leader unless you have followers; a leader without followers is called a failure. Regardless of your skills, if your staff doesn't feel heard and doesn't trust you, they will always do the minimum. They will watch the clock and be ready to leave at 4:45 every afternoon. They will do just enough each day to avoid getting fired, and they will hope the idea you came up with without their input fails. That's right”you can spend your life delegating to people who want your projects to fail. How smart is that?

OK, you have to listen; I am sure you already know that. The issue is, how well do people really listen? Most studies show that 75 percent of the world's population does not listen well.

Here is an insight that you won't find in many books, leadership speaker keynotes or training programs. As a whole, we don't listen very well and it's not our fault! That's right, I am sure you are used to hearing and reading that all of our communication problems are of our making. However, most experts agree that from birth to 5 years of age, we learn more than we will for the rest of our lives.

Even if you earn 15 doctorate degrees in your lifetime, you still acquired most of your knowledge in early childhood. In those formative years, if a child does not feel heard by the adults in its life, it does not possess good listening skills. The bottom line is that it's hard to listen when no one ever listened to you.

Listening is not hereditary.
It's an acquired skill.

Are we going to blame the parents? No! It's difficult to listen to young children when we are trying to look out for their welfare. When my stepdaughter was five, she asked me if Dracula drives a taxi cab. I said, Well¦, I guess if it's a night job. Uh, wait a minute! What kind of question is that?

She also asked me if she could have a tattoo”not a fake, stick-on tattoo from an ice cream parlor vending machine, but a real one. I said, No, because you're in kindergarten”and I'm taking the TV out of your room just for asking that question.

People are more likely to follow your example than to follow your advice. We create better listeners by being better listeners.

Unfortunately, we don't have much evidence of people returning from communication-training programs as better listeners. It doesn't take a lot of research to figure out that poor listeners get very little from seminars on listening.

So we don't listen and it prevents us from being effective leaders. If we can't do much to improve our listening skills, we have to focus on what we can do in the condition we are in.

The key, then, is to focus on making sure people feel heard. And the first step requires recognizing and recovering from distractions.

One day, as I listened to an employee talk about his wants and needs, my mind started to wander. There he was, sharing his core issues, and I'm thinking to myself, “Look at the size of this guy's head! It was hard to focus. Once I was trying to listen to a prospect on a sales call when I noticed he had red hair, blonde eyebrows and a black mustache. I remember thinking, “It's Mr. Potato Face! Something has to be a stick-on; that's not all him.

After we recover from our own distractions, we have to deal with the real issues at hand. The first of these issues is what I refer to as “the pitch in your head. It can be anything from a preconceived idea that a manager has about an employee, to a practiced presentation that you are dying to spew on your unsuspecting sales victims (prospects, I mean).

Sure, you ask a question just as you were taught to do in your sales or management training program—you know, a question like “Based on what criteria are your decisions made? As they talk and you diligently pretend to listen, the pitch in your head starts to play; and when the prospect says something that strikes a chord in you, triggering how much you know, your pitch finds the pause it was looking for and off you go.

“I know exactly what you are talking about because I have had many people just like you with this exact same situation. As a matter of fact, it was this time last year and they even looked a lot like you.

You then project your opinion, experience or spiel onto the person as a solution to his or her problem.

Instead of feeling heard, the person feels quickly judged, and communication does not take place. It was dead before the spew was finished.

The problem with this scenario is that you rob people of their uniqueness. When you tell them you know exactly what the problem is, they tend to want to show you how unique they are. You actually create your own resistance and prevent your skills and even your empathy from making their mark.

When people are talking, you are thinking about you or about what you can do to help them help you. It's a natural thing for us to do, and it forces us to pitch hard and focus on convincing rather than on gaining agreement.

So what do the most effective people do differently?

They make sure the people they are dealing with feel heard and can retain their uniqueness. If you make people feel important, you will be important to them!

But an even bigger realization comes from all of this.

When you focus on how people feel about what they are saying, you increase the level of true concern you have for others. You actually start to become the person you thought you were pretending to be: a true leader!

About the Author

Garrison Wynn is an author, motivational speaker and trainer providing business solutions for success.