EQ Journal

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Finding Bootstrap Capital Where You Least Expect It

(How one company made $800,000 from their below market office lease) Entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs work their magic every time they launch a new company/product or service with little or no funding. They’re amazingly good at finding niche opportunities and exploiting them to raise cash. Here’s one I learned from Rod Bryden who was on the [...]

BTI Gains Traction

(This article first appeared in Ottawa Business Journal: http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Bruce-Firestone-5444) BTI may be the fastest growing tech company in Ottawa you’ve never heard of—led by California-based Steve Waszak, their head count is now 270 globally with 150 of those in Ottawa. Waszak is a former Deloitte guy, former Cienna employee who is a tough competitor and [...]

IRR, Internal Rate of Return

Power of Leverage/Goal Setting Determining the Internal Rate of Return Probably the truest measure of a project’s rate of return is its Internal Rate of Return. The IRR is that interest rate that exactly balances the discounted value of future net cashflows with the investment required to develop the project or enterprise. The higher the [...]

Valuing Your Business?

Selling Your Business? Introduction Many entrepreneurs are very good at building their businesses. They know how to grow a business often with limited access to financing. They know how to persevere in difficult circumstances and how to push the right buttons in their industry to make their business profitable. However, many business owners fail to [...]

Personal Discount Rates

A U-Shaped Curve? Personal discount rates, PDRs are known to peak early in adult life and then decline with age. Over the years, I have regularly tested my students and can say with some confidence that their PDRs are around 22% at 22 years of age. Basically, what that means is that if you ask [...]

Revenue Sources for Commercial Landlords

Rooftop Solar Takes Off in Ontario Does this sound like a bad business? A business that hasn’t had a significant new revenue stream since the 1980s? Well, that would be the commercial real estate business. Here is how it breaks down: 1. In the ‘olden days’, Commercial Landlords received rent, a gross rent. 2. From [...]

What You Need to Think about Before You Purchase a Home

A young couple recently asked me what they need to think about before they purchase their first property. In their case, they are posted overseas and are thinking of buying a townhome in Ottawa, partly as an investment and partly as a backup plan for when they do return to Ottawa. Here is what I [...]

Deal Structure, Deal Flow and Bootstrapping It

Recently, I had a chance to sit down with a former student and look at the deal structure he was planning to put in place with two partners to open a new restaurant franchise in Baltimore. They needed to raise $1.8 million, part of it debt, part of it equity. They wanted to start with [...]

Why Invest in Real Estate?

Introduction I tell most of my SMEE (Small and Medium Sized Enterprise) clients (and my students) that real estate investing is usually a good idea. Homeownership and owning your own business premises makes sense to me in most cases. Why is that? Well, here are a few of my reasons: 1. Forced savings— most people [...]