Entrepreneurs are being turned onto Regulation D in droves. Regulation D Rule 504, 505 and 506 allow companies a more lenient fund raising process than those who choose to go public by other means. In the past year I’ve seen more PPM consultants pop up on the internet than ever before and I have to admit I’m concerned. As a veteran in this field I’ve seen it all, now we have a legion of self proclaimed Reg. D gurus who buy templates, add some text and tell their clients that they are delivering a customized offering memorandum; here’s where things go bad and a difficult situation gets even worse. You have this worthless document, now what?

You need to gain the confidence and capital of accredited investors without soliciting as dictated in Regulation D Rule 502c. Now you have a worthless document that you can’t solicit investment capital for (which your guru consultant never told you but took your cash anyway) so how are you suppose to raise funds for your company? First, you’ll find that you’ll eventually need to make your way to an actual PPM author, not a broker so that you can get a PPM that protects you from lawsuits and gives the investor a real breakdown of the upside and downside of your business.

Next you’ll need to find a “Investor Finder”, yes this is an actual term for an individual or corporate entity that is completely submerged in the accredited investor realm and is able to match your opportunity with friends that he/she has in their database of real, accredited investors. This is the second half of the PPM equation.

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There is a misconception that the process of taking your company public has to be costly and stressful. The truth is that it’s the ‘learning curve’ that makes it stressful. By learning curve, I mean dealing with industry sharks that will con your company and take every dime you have while simultaneously never having the ability to take you public in the first place.

On a daily basis I hear one tragic story after another about how a pink sheets facilitator took them public and then dropped them without passing them to a broker dealer or market maker or someone to sell their stock to the public so they were left to fend for themselves. Another reoccurring story I hear is how a company sold a small start-up a shell company for a reverse merger but the shell had liens and shareholders that were ready to dump the stock as soon as the transaction was completed.

All this said, after the sharks and the scumbags there are many good consulting firms that love the industry and take joy out of helping a corporation fulfill the ultimate dream of a public offering through IPO or OTCBB or legitimate reverse merger (oh, the money is a nice benefit as well haha). The boutique firm is your best bet, if you can’t find one then find a small securities lawyer.

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As the banking crisis worsens it’s getting more and more difficult to fund business ventures. After you’ve gone through the basics of a well written business plans and a private placement memorandum, where do you go from there? One issue that entrepreneurs come into is that they will get stuck on a link wheel that keeps them bouncing from one scam site to the next and they can waste months chasing after investment capital and at the end of the day have nothing but an empty bank account to show for it.

The latest and greatest scams are the omnipresent ‘shelf corp.’ or ‘aged corp.’ scam which claims to be able to get you hundreds of thousands of dollars of credit based off of a phony D and B rating and a credit score based off of bogus trade lines. This is an expensive scam, with most of these shelf corporations running anywhere from $8,000 to $20,000. The reality is, you can’t get funding with a shelf corp. No one has or ever will get funding from this fraudulent concept. Another scam is the ‘forgivable loan’ program that is supposedly based in some offshore platform trading process where it allows a company to loan millions of dollars to an individual based off of the humanitarian aspects of their business model, oh, I forgot to mention, they usually require a mandatory cash deposit equal to 20% of the amount of the forgivable loan.

It sounds crazy but professionals that become desperate for funding fall into this trap all the time. The truth is, there are ways to get funding with a credit check using a private placement memorandum and there are companies out there that will make a loan to a company based mostly in the strength of their business process. Actually, if you have a good business model and a solid executive staff there are many companies that will give you money such as accredited investors, private investors, private equity firms, hard money lenders, SBLC collateralize lenders among others.

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Why throw gobs of cash at a publicist with outrageous fees to get you a tiny insignificant article in a newspaper or magazine rag when you can literally become an industry niche sensation overnight using a carefully constructed video and a handful of long tail industry specific keywords?

Traditional publicists have become that’72 bowling ally loitering, disco dancing reject while a new breed of publicists have stepped in and transformed the industry from paper, to cyberspace in only a few short years. Why traditional publicists have been adjusting that pathetic comb over hairstyle, young and aggressive publicists have been creating publicity techniques that deliver results in 24 to 48 hours as opposed to 6 to 8 weeks and as far as results, there is no comparison.

Web marketing and publicity marketing tactics such as creative video submission, if done properly can transform the direction of a failing company to “THE” industry powerhouse almost instantly by loading the video with solid, well thought out descriptions and targeted long tail keyword tags. A publicist who understand the concept of pure video publicity can tailor a campaign that can outperform any traditional publicity technique ever devised by the good ole’ boy networks who overcharge and under deliver for their clients.

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Gaining genuine, long lasting publicity for your business, book, musical group or any other type of entity can be an expensive proposition when you have a firm doing it on your behalf. It can be time consuming and a technical nightmare as you have to be well rounded with the various high pr websites in the countless genres of online media so that your efforts reap true rewards.

Most people have seen that It’s just too difficult to take on the vast process of publicity marketing themselves and have decided to simply hire a company to take on this laborious task for them, but what if there was a way to do this on your own that made the process easier? Here are a few techniques that will get your publicity marketing campaign moving easily and quickly

First you need to use video, you can create a video with Camtasia, powerpoint or even the video camera you have on your phone. Make the video informative, solve problems for your clients, then upload it to YouTube. YouTube is the largest video traffic site online and will give you solid results. When you upload, use targeted, industry specific keywords to help target your viewers.

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Raising funds has become quite a chore in this depressing economic state so entrepreneurs are thinking outside the box when it comes to obtaining funds for their start-up corporations or businesses in expansion. Institutional lenders are a thing of the past, liberal hedge fund lenders are a mere cast skin of what they once were and with the massive infiltration of scams like shelf corporations and public shells leave the minds of individuals trying to raise funds in perpetual skeptic mode. Though the banks have brought small and medium size business lending to a screeching halt, there are still various turnkey methods that one can facilitate in order to raise the optimal amount of funds needed to pursue their venture.

Have you ever considered taking your company public? Don’t be scared off by the nightmare stories of needing millions in financial backing or the critical and ultra costly SOX 404 audits that can make or break your efforts. There are several ways to raise public capital in a cost effective and rapid turnaround process. If you are considering a public offering in the United States, your options are OTCBB, Pink Sheets, Reverse Merger (not recommended), IPO and Private Placement Memorandum. Obviously the IPO is the most sought after method of raising public funds but it is the most expensive and longest route to funding. OTCBB and Pink Sheets are a great way to raise capital without the expense of an IPO but be prepared to battle investor skepticism and ‘pump ‘em and dump ‘em’ securities scrappers who can have you on cloud nine and swimming in a surplus of cash one day and broke as a joke the next.

The next method that one will run into on their trek to raise capital is the mysterious reverse merger into a public shell. You’ll hear many entrepreneurs talk about this method but few actually understand the intricacies of this process and sadly don’t realize it’s high failure rate until they are sitting alone at their office at 2 am holding their head in their hands when faced with the reality that 99.9% of reverse mergers into shell companies don’t work and they just threw away $300k.

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Why do we rent movies or strap into rattling roller-coasters rides or watch, with teary eyes, romantic films or comedies? Why do people seek out the temporary release of alcohol or pharmaceutical and illegal barbiturates? People long for the long lost and ancient connection with their emotions.

People need to ‘feel’ something, anything and as publicists and hype creators it’s our mission to toy with that emotion to trigger a response. We are trying to activate a reaction from a willing candidate. Man has proven over and over again that they will purchase anything so long as it touches on those emotional pressure points.

We make our decision to buy cars, houses and cloths all based on emotion. How does the ad or article make you feel when your emotions become entwined with this content? What elements are missing in the target consumer psyche and how can we fill that void while simultaneously branding our client’s product and calling the candidate to action?

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Many entrepreneurs dream of taking their company public and expanding their venture into an international enterprise that begins to hemorrhage investment capital and profits from the get-go but then reality sets in as one begins to navigate the dingy, shark infested waters of the ‘go public’ market place.

There are consultants and boiler room penny stock misfits just waiting for you to stumble onto their site and in only a few minutes on the phone you’re reeled in and signing contracts and making wire transfers and equity disbursements and at the end of the grueling 3 to 6 month process, you’re broke, your company is in shambles and you just stand their staring off into space feeling like the boogeyman just slapped you around. Welcome to an industry where the weak are preyed upon like wolves on an injured lamb tangled in a fence.

If you are serious about going public there are some structures to stay away from because 99.9% of the time they fail. Pink Sheets and Reverse Mergers into a public shell are two formations to be very weary of. Pink Sheets are almost a completely unregulated trading platform and known by any savvy investor as the ‘red light district’ of the public trading industry. Pump ‘em and dump ‘em is the name of the game with Pink Sheets. Stock Price manipulation is as common with pink sheets as gross stench is to 5 day old road kill on a desert highway. If you are going to get involved with Pink Sheets find an attorney or consultant that can guide you around the scammers, it’s difficult to make in on the Pinks but I have heard of a few companies making it.

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Business Publicity marketing has evolved tenfold over the past 3 years. The good ole’ boy publicity firms have found themselves left in the dust by the newer, cutting edge publicists that use the internet as their publicity marketing canvas. TV, radio and newspaper articles have become pass while online viral marketing concepts have completely taken over.

Online publicity marketing offers the instantaneous results that that are in demand by a fast paced public and with the economy in the state it’s currently in, clients are able to achieve massive results for a fraction of the cost of traditional publicity mediums. Traditional publicists will argue that a radio interview will create a ton of exposure for the client during the airtime, but they forget to mention that a solid online campaign delivers 24/7 and the exposure will deliver staggering results like clockwork if performed by seasoned publicity marketing experts.

Traditional publicity firms will argue that publicity is just one part of an overall marketing strategy but the reality is Publicity and Marketing are intertwined and interdependent and must be done by the same organization or the momentum is lost in a sea of bureaucratic blur. The truth is, publicity and marketing have merged into one single area of expertise now coined ‘publicity marketing’.

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OK, you’re ready to take your company to the next level and your CFO and legal counsel have advised you to go public to raise capital as well as to retain some of those prize employees with stock options and to bait that new sales executive with a signing bonus made up of stock options. You’ve looked into everything from pink sheets to reverse mergers to OTCBB to IPO and you have come to the conclusion you’re going to need to take on investors so that you can afford to follow through with your plan. If you’re lacking the funds to dive right in and start creating your public structure, here is a way that just about any business can afford to go public.

First, get a real business plan. Your business plan needs to sizzle and reel in the investor and clearly paint a picture of your vision to the investor and their advisors. Next, you’ll want to raise an initial round of cash quickly so that you can afford to take your company public without hindering your current company structure with additional ancillary costs. You’re going to need something fast and affective; you should consider having a professionally authored private placement memorandum put together for your company.

If you are trying to go public via OTCBB a Regulation D Rule 504 exemption will suffice, if you are trying to achieve an IPO you’ll need to go with a Regulation D Rule 505 exemption (pink sheets and reverse mergers into shell corps are not very successful in immediate and long term success so I would suggest you stay away from these structures). Build into the PPM verbiage that you are raising an initial round of capital that will be used to take your company public. When savvy investors see that they are investing in a real, viable pre-IPO or pre-OTCBB formation you will see investors climbing out of the woodwork to give you cash if your business concept is sound.

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The important element to increasing awareness for your athlete client is to take full advantage of huge, targeted internet traffic available to benefit the athlete. The solution to the big challenge of targeting exposure is to corner the websites that are common information sites for the major decision makers that hold the key to that next step in the evolution of your client. Make your client’s expertise relevant to the needs of the decision maker.

Show empirically how the client’s ability can correct the ailments of the coaches or personnel directors who are in a position of need. Corner, the decision makers and hook them with catchy titles that will embed themselves in their memory.

It’s important to add that you must translate the role of your client for a singular position while leaving the ultimate decision of their athletic qualities to the imagination of the coach or individual assigned to recruitment. This same process can be used for a high school athlete with ambitions to gain entry into a top tier university program or a university student on the verge of graduating with an eye toward a career as a professional competitor.

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If you are going to start raising capital for your start-up or established business you’ve most likely been advised to have a Private Placement Memorandum written for your company so you don’t get in trouble with the SEC for selling securities without the proper structure.

The Offering Circular section of your document is crucial. Most likely you won’t be authoring this document on your own as it is wise to outsource this necessity to a trained consultant or attorney who specializes in PPM docs but you should be familiar with the basic anatomy of an Offering Circular so you can understand the PPM as a whole.

Here is a general breakdown of the sections of your Offering Circular, they are as follows (there are a few technical sections left out to streamline and simplify this explanation):

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