Change Your Company’s Trajectory

An A+ team of operationally-oriented advisory companies

• Changes the trajectory of a company’s earnings and growth.
• Reduces its risk.
• Significant improvements in:
  + Leadership quality
  + Innovation and creativity
  + Operational performance
  + Intellectual property assets
  + Predictive accuracy

The Process

We work with the CEO and his/her team to:

• Guide the process and integrate the deliverables of the respective advisors.
• Develop a strategy to leverage the new competitive advantages of the company.
• Design the optimal capital structure and raise the required capital, if necessary.
• Compensation: Cash and predominantly equity to assure alignment.
• The following sequence is illustrative, since the program is tailored to the specific requirements of the company.

ZEUSTHINK

Team A: Obtains the best executive coach for the CEO

Every elite athlete has a coach, so should every CEO to significantly improve performance.

McKinsey: “Organizations whose leaders successfully empower others through coaching are nearly four times more likely to make good decisions than those whose leaders don’t and to outperform industry peers financially.”

Every CEO needs someone he/she can confide in whose sole allegiance is to the CEO. By definition that individual isn’t the Chairman of the Board or his/her PE/VC executive superior.

Team A: Over 100 of the world’s best coaches otherwise only available by word of mouth.

• Interviews the CEO and suggests three different coaches.

• The coach chosen works with the CEO for approximately an hour each week for one year.

• I have known the founder for 25+ years, acknowledged as “the best executive coach in the world”.

Team B: Starts the management thinking creatively with new approaches and high-impact ideas

• Team B is the leader in the design thinking space: a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.
• Guides the company on how to leverage a multi-disciplinary team with diverse perspectives to achieve unique solutions.

• The company’s executives learn collaborative, multi-disciplinary approaches to achieve high-impact, breakthrough solutions resulting from the synergies of diverse experiences, competencies, and perspectives.

• New areas to consider:
  + The Metaverse: a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users: brand marketing/consumer engagement; digital twins; training
  + The Permissionless Corporation: Uses digital technologies to unleash the creative and collaborative potential of people rather than trapping them in endless reporting and coordination loops.

Team C: Applies War Gaming to Test Design Thinking Hypotheses

• Team C: Senior US Navy officers (ret.) who have used war gaming as a management tool throughout their careers for logistics, supply chain, battle plans, etc.

• A wargame is a role-played simulation of a business situation.

• Wargaming does not predict the future: it identifies potential futures.

Team D: Implements an operating plan that will improve earnings by 25%+

• Most of this is achieved by combining and editing the insights and ideas of that company’s employees.
• Team D provides confidentiality, so employees can be candid with their observations.
• Team D only has senior people with operating experience.
• 50+% of the compensation is contingent on successful implementation.
• Earnings gains achieved each year as a % of the stated goal:
  + 25% in year 1
  + 75% in year 2
  + 100% in year 3

Selected clients: KKR, Blackstone, Humana, Panasonic

Case studies: Summarized in the Appendix of the attached PDF

Team E: Outsources indirect procurement to increase PBT by 2 to 4 points

• Indirect procurement purchases can amount to 20%+ of a company’s revenues.
• Risk-free:
  + Estimate of the savings is provided at no charge.
  + Fixed price contracts with decrements if targeted savings aren’t achieved and increments if the targets are exceeded.
  + No markup. Client receives all invoices and is the contracting party.
• Improved flexibility: Can access supplementary suppliers on a timely basis if needed.

Selected clients: Dish, Gap, Hasbro, Ocean Spray, Prudential, Rite Aid, Titleist

Team F: Can give your company a commanding IP position in its industry

• Designs patent portfolios from a top-down perspective leading to the ability to identify emerging and converging market categories the control of which can be obtained through a strategic patent portfolio. (e.g., the Industrial Internet of Things)

• Can expand a company’s existing patent portfolio to enhance its competitive advantage.

• Can extend the company’s patent portfolio to new industries to improve the strength of the patent claims and provide incremental revenues.
• Can license/sell Team E’s IP to the client, providing the client with a potentially controlling IP position.

Team G: Significantly minimizes risk

• 90+% accurate in predicting results as per verification by the US Government.
• Applications: M&A, Negotiations, Contracts, Due Diligence, Regulatory Risk, Business Process Engineering, Marketshare Analytics

Selected clients: Accenture, BAE, De Beers, Raytheon, US and foreign governments

Team H: Provides a superior result in any negotiation of significance

• The premier firm for negotiation strategy and execution—the recognized leaders in this field.
• Outcomes of these situations are too important to be led by executives who don’t do this full-time.
• Key axiom: The CEO or principal should “never be in the room”.
  + Avoids the principal being “put on the spot” as in “so do we have a deal”? since agents can’t commit, which provides time to evaluate and to consider potential alternatives.
  + Permits differing strategies such as “good cop/bad cop”.
  + Allows for disavowal of an aggressive strategy: Principal: “I never authorized that approach”.

jeffrey.balash@comstockinvestors.com

+1 310 486-6550

1901 AVENUE OF THE STARS

2nd FLOOR

LOS ANGELES, CA 90067

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