Today we’re going to be talking about a very important part of your sales pitch to your investors. It’s called the plan. So there’s two parts of the plan and three sections to each part. So today will be part one. First of all, you really have to have a fantastic knowledge of your history in the business, an investor needs to be comfortable to know that you know all about your industry, and that you’ve had a great track record of success, not only success, but your ability to come back from failure, it’s really important for them to know that you’ve been in the industry for long enough, or your team have to be able to bounce back from any potential disasters that can happen in a business.
I’ve been in the hospitality industry for the best part of 30 years now. And during that time, we’ve had many, many changes to smoking legislation, Government changes, and Government changing laws to do with gaming taxes, there’s been a list of many, many different things. And finally, as we’re all living through at the moment, COVID. So many plans we’ve had to adapt to. So my investors now comfortable that we’ve worked through that, and they know that I’ve got a long track record of success, and not only coming through those disasters, or those business interruptions, but actually thriving, every cloud has a silver lining, so you have to look for that silver lining. So even though you’re in the heat of the battle, you still need to be able to find what is good coming from this. So it’s really important in your particular industry, that you have that history and that knowledge, whether it’s yourself personally, or your team, because you’re not just selling yourself, you’re selling your team.
The second part that is really important component of your plan is the assets, the physical assets. So for instance, again, mean in pub land, and if I’m actually getting investors to invest in my company, or my trust, they’re actually investing in a hotel. So they want to know about the hotels, they want to know about its physical assets, they want to know it’s got car parking, they want to know how many accommodation rooms there are, how many gaming machines, there are, how many bars, how many tables for food, etc. So they want to know the physical assets and the location. If you’re in financial services or another industry, they want to know where you’re located. But they’ll also want to know actually what they’re buying into.
So you need to be able to be prepared to express and explain to them what they’re actually buy. Thirdly, and finally, and this is where your good accountant and good lawyers come in your financials, it is so important to be all over your financials, because investors will be looking through this they’ll sit with you in a meeting, or they will receive your prospectus or your IM and they will read through it. And they will be looking at the financials to see how much fat there is in it. What I mean by fat, how much profit, how much are you making from it, and how much will they make from it. And it’s really, really, really important, I can’t stress it enough to under promise and over perform be very, very park your optimism and be very cautious about being too optimistic with your financials, because there’s always interruptions, all the interruptions I spoke about previously, a lot of those were unforeseen. So you need to allow for a bit of a variable with with your financials. So I would always suggest to under promise and over perform.
Thanks very much for your time today. My contact details are available. I look forward to hearing from you.
