By guest blogger John Scarano a.k.a. Johnny Scannns

Thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts with you via posts to Dan’s blog. This is the third of 5 parts. Thus far in this short series I’ve offered thoughts leading up to the presentation to Investor #6 and their key shareholders. So how did I prepare and what did I learn?

The format for the overall presentation was for two of what are currently a dozen or so ‘portfolio companies’ to be featured with 20 minute presentations. The 100+ sized group in attendance included the entire Investor #6 partnership and support team members (about 20 people) as well as the representatives of most of the firms who have invested their money with Investor #6.

As an aside, the night before the presentation I and the CEO of the other featured business and several of the specific team members of Investor #6 had a dinner together. The CEO of the other featured business had presented many times to this same audience previously. He is a very accomplished and trusted business leader. He did not hesitate one moment when I asked his advice for the key message to deliver – “tell them how you’re going to make them money” he said. He followed up with, “what else matters?”

With prior guidance from our sponsors, I knew that it was important to present background about our industry before presenting the focused Zayo Bandwidth Infrastructure oriented business plan and status. This way there was context before diving in. And, to be sure (for those of you who know me), it was very tempting to talk in great detail about all that has transpired in our industry over the last 100 years and at Zayo in just the last two years.

Of course, the preparation objective, which was confirmed by the experienced CEO, was simple: tell them how you’re going to make them money. After all, isn’t that what really matters to shareholders and to the shareholders of shareholders?

This was the cold shower. What cash investors of any sort care about is that we make them money. How we get there is interesting but not entirely relevant (to them). Crass? Calous? Perhaps. But what else matters? Think about the stocks you yourself have sold for a loss, do you care why there is a loss? You care that you trusted someone (or some entity) to deliver a benefit to you, and this benefit was not delivered. Pretty simple.

Having taken to date nearly $260M of our shareholders’ money to manage on their behalf is the burden we at Zayo bear at this time.

So Now What?

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Related posts:

Introduction
Closing Thoughts: What Did I Learn? (part 5 of 5)
Remembering Who We Work For (part 2 of 5)
Key Messages (part 4 of 5)
High Stock Price = Bad (sometimes)