I had been dreading to make the call for almost a week.  I knew I needed to do it, but just didn’t have the courage.

For seven years I worked my ass off in my company, raised over $1MM and grew my green retail stores into probably the largest in the country at that time.

We had become an international sensation with media from all over the world picking us up: the New York Times, CBS Evening News, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg TV, to name a few.

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This week I started facilitating another FastTrac NYC class of about 30 entrepreneurs.

I like starting this intense seven days of training with a powerful guest speaker.  A good friend, David Kistner, was kind enough to visit the class.

What was supposed to be about 60 minute presentation ended up with me having to kick him out after 2 ½ hours.

The participants just wouldn’t let David leave.

Mainly because David was telling them the real skinny on what is going on out there on how best to grow their businesses.

And he would know.  David has raised millions of dollars for his chain of green dry cleaners, Green Apple Cleaners, one of the greenest and cost effective dry cleaners in the US.

On the topic of raising capital, in addition to the millions in outside capital David has raised, he also has put in a very large chunk of his own money.

But most entrepreneurs don’t realize the difficulty in getting funded.

We have all heard how some banks are lending, SBA loans are available, investors are investing and so on.  What these guys don’t tell you, though, is how difficult it is to actually get the money from them.

Now that I have helped four green businesses raise over $3MM for their businesses in the past 10 months, here’s my checklist to get you ready:

Top 10 Checklist for the Road Show (in order of importance):

1. Passion— #1 thing investors look for is your passion for what you do.  Because they know entrepreneurs with passion will work hard at doing what they love.  You cannot fake this.  It’ll be obvious.  Stay real.
2. Conviction— small business owners who know they will ultimately be successful are less likely to run for the hills and when things get tough.  You are more likely to keep at it until you figure it out.  And less likely to lose your investors money. (Read more…)