PROMISES KEPT

Check out what I created!

For those of you who work with me, you know that NAKOMA GROUP is a private investment firm that I formed with my family.  Our goal is to network and patiently look for the right business opportunities.  Then we go to work, supporting the management of each company to help realize its maximum potential.  Our name NAKOMA is derived from the Native American Chippewa tribe and means: "I do as I promise."

My position outside the day-to-day operations allows me to identify untapped opportunities in the marketplace.  So I created a Group on Linkedin.com called: Business Buying and Selling Network

Business Buying and Selling Network has over 30 high level professional with over 30 years of experience in Buying and Selling Businesses.  Hence, the quiet strength that this group can build from.

Business Buying and Selling Network

Created: March 04, 2009 | Corporate Group |

Buying or Selling a Business: An Overview: Here is our forum you'll want to participate in when you're considering selling or buying a business. Each year, some 700,000 U.S. businesses change ownership - and tens times that across the world. Selling a Business No matter what kind of business you own -- a professional services company, a third party manufacturer, or a product brand marketer -- there’s likely to be an interested buyer (US based or globally based) or strategic fund out there that would be very interested. But finding the right buyer and selling the business on favorable terms will require both planning, patience and networking. Your first step is considering how to start the process of selling. The next steps will include understanding the sales process, preparing your company for sale, setting a minimum multiple price point and where to start, seeking potential buyers, negotiating and preparing a sales agreement and other documents, and closing the deal. Positioning to Buy When planning to buy a business, you have many factors to consider. These include how to start, who to talk to, where to look, and how to approach the seller. Risks involved in due diligence can be extremely difficult when buying into another company so additional resources are needed. Other things to consider include how to work with brokers, investment bankers and attorneys. etc. Start your discussions today and begin your network of buying and selling professionals in the business world.

Come join me in creating a dynamic network.

Sammy Averbuch

To save yourself, save your company - Help the world!!

By HarvardBusiness.org

A lot of CEOs are feeling pretty unsafe these days, and for good reason. Joe and Jane Public have their long knives drawn, and they're on the hunt for any executive whose company takes bailout money, or who pockets a multimillion dollar salary and bonus while his company's stock price tanks.

That may explain why attendance doubled at this year's "Board of Boards" CEO conference, which focuses on corporate philanthropy. Attendees were the captains of industry: Jeff Immelt (G.E.), Carlos Goshn (Nissan), Alan Hassenfeld (Hasbro), Carol Lavin Bernick (Alberto Culver), Angela Braly (Wellpoint), Ivan Seidenberg (Verizon), E. Nevill Isdell (Coca-Cola), among many others.

These gold-star CEOs already knew that supporting social causes makes good business sense. No news there: Doing so makes companies look good. Employees and customers feel warm and fuzzy. The brand gets a boost. It's easier to recruit. But this year, there's a new, more urgent focus at the proceedings. CEOs "really see philanthropy as central to their companies' business strategy," says Charles Moore, executive director of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP), which sponsors the conference.

As evidence, Moore points to an interesting statistic. Even as cash dries up and stock prices nosedive, the CEOs want their firms to keep donating. A year ago, only 17% of attendees said that the economy was important in determining cash contributions. This year, 72% said that it was important or very important--but they don't want to cut back on giving. So they brainstormed about all kinds of other ways to contribute--donating products and services, raising volunteers, and providing facilities and resources.

Companies are also reassessing recipients, Moore says. Big, inefficient organizations like United Way are out. Smaller, effective non-profits that address specific social ills are in. For example, this year, G.E. is investing a lot more in helping the homeless (this certainly makes sense as more and more people lose their jobs and homes).

Small is beautiful for another good reason. The work of social entrepreneurs is drawing more and more attention. (Witness the massive popularity of the TED conference.) I've written before about an example I love: City-Year, an organization founded by "two bright guys," Michael Brown and Alan Khazei. City Year enlists young people between 17 and 24 to commit to a year of work helping their communities. (My stepson, who was a Romanian orphan, is getting a lot out of it.) Social entrepreneurship is a real win-win, argues Bill Drayton, CEO of Ashoka, an organization that helps fund groundbreaking solutions to problems of education, health, poverty, and so on.

When he visited my company yesterday, Drayton made an impassioned and compelling argument that social entrepreneurs--whom he calls "change makers"--are the best innovators money can buy. He says companies would do very well identify and promote the creative ideas of such folks, some of whom may be quietly hiding in their employee ranks. In doing this, firms will be helping themselves to breakthrough ideas--and in the end doing more for their customers and society than more traditional forms of do-gooding can achieve.

By leveraging the ideas of social entrepreneurs, Drayton argues, companies might even save themselves from extinction.

(To find out more about identifying and promoting change makers, see "Radical Change, the Quiet Way" and "Your Company's Secret Change Agents").

What are you--or your company--doing to help others in this time of crisis?