So many connections with just one meeting...

The next day's round of meetings started with a young man named Martin Levine, one of the principals of Brickhouse Capital, an equipment leasing company. He and two friends, with years of experience working in another equipment leasing firm, decided to go into their own company five years ago. Apparently, Martin had been trying to get together with me or members of my team (phone tag with Sonia???) for some time and when he received my email invitation to meet one-on-one, he immediately set up his appointment. A great deal of business resulted from our session and I will give a snapshot of that here...

1) I paired Martin up with Sue Malone (www.strategiesforsmallbusiness.com), who has loaned over 26,000 small businesses from $5k to $25k for start up and expansion capital. So many times, small businesses have used these loans to buy equipment, now that Martin is in the mix, her loans can be used strictly for operating capital, and an off balance sheet entry for an equipment lease from Martin can literally double the borrowing power for the entrepreneur.

2) One of my earlier meetings was with Vikki Green, a CEO tenant and graphics whiz who had wanted to upgrade her Mac but wasn't able to lease one from Apple because of their requirements of leasing no less than five Macs to a business client. We had coined the term, "LeaseMac" as a case study of a branding example for Vikki to explain her branding business specialty and I took the opportunity with Martin to explain Vikki's (and all other small graphics entrepreneurs') plight of not being able to lease just a single Mac..and he immediately solved the problem by offering to create a program to close the gap on this challenge. Vikki will get her Mac and Martin will have an entire new vertical of business...which can actually become the "LeaseMac" business. (Don't tell my IT guy Andrew from Mandroo Technologies, but I'm hoping I can get a Mac from this deal as well.)

3) A very powerful opportunity for my Club E members was revealed in further discussions with Martin. Apparently, his company's "sweet spot" is phone companies, where the telecommunication company use Martin's company to lease a new client's phones to them, rather than face the "sticker shock" from the client that want their phone systems and service. The leasing alternative is powerful in its own right but when I learned that Martin could bundle 2-3 years of the actual contracted
phone service upfront and in the lease, paying the vendor in full for their services for the next 2-3 years...my brain clicked into high gear (scary). I suggested that other Club E members with ongoing subscription payments that could be tied to an equipment lease might become Martin's customers and he agreed. There are so many possibilities for this very creative financial solution that I predict that many Club E members will flock to this unique form of alternate financing. To illustrate the one phone company deal that can be cut immediately with Martin by one of our CEO tenants...

Our tenant has a 50 seat (telephone and service) proposal for a 3 year contract. The phones are $100 each, which is a pure pass through and the telephone service is $50 per month of $2500 per month x 36 months = $90,000 plus $5,000 for the phones. Like all phone companies, there is always a collection challenge on the monthly reoccurring charges. With the proverbial "waving the magic wand," Martin can close the deal for my tenant with much less upfront costs to the client because they'd be leasing the phones and my tenant gets a whopping $90,000 ($95,000 less $5,000 phone cost pass through )upfront on the phone contract. What do you think this will do for my tenant's cash flow needs????

4) There were even more innovations to report on this one session but you get the point what can happen when you actually spend the time to get to know someone and their business (I love my job.)


Peter J. Burns, III
Founder:
Club Entrepreneur (Club E)
Club E Office (CEO)
Institute For Entrepreneurship (IfE)
602 725 1584