ASiQ Solves Business Problems

ASiQ’s crisis managers are experienced, tough, perceptive, and effective. Our company culture is based on professionalism, confidence, and urgency. We are united in a zest for business and an insistence on excellence.

About John Rice

John Rice is President & CEO of ASiQ, a 26 year-old firm specializing in operations management services ranging from launching successful startups and executing business turnarounds to financings, crisis management and the repositioning of enterprises for sale at optimum market prices.

Interim Management

As Board Chair, interim CEO, Director as Chair of the Audit Committee, and in other similar capacities, Rice has been instrumental in building as well as negotiating investor exits for a number of companies from (re)startup into enterprises yielding up to $160 million in investor returns. First trained in turnarounds and then in venture capital investment, Rice is expert in creating an atmosphere of confident urgency based on financial plans that keep the fundamentals fundamental, upon sales and marketing strategies that rapidly accomplish goals, and upon operations strategies that lead/drive companies to perform.

Strategic Problem Solver

As a strategic thinker and problem solver, Rice is often brought into companies on special assignment in order to help resolve crises and sensitive conflict issues as well as to develop new business strategies and initiatives.

Crisis Resolution Negotiator

In his capacity as a discreet negotiator/facilitator for crisis resolution, Rice has served clientele ranging from the Fortune 500 to startups, and handled problems ranging from executive succession and terminations, to litigation settlement, to formulation and execution of growth 'breakout strategies', to negotiations of company sales, divestitures, and acquisitions.

Business Turnaround Expert

Rice has worked on diverse short-term turnaround and special business-target assignments a few of which include: guiding operational startup of Connection Cablevision in Newark New Jersey, managing the troubled company divestiture of cable TV properties in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas; mediating disputed business elements of the re-acquisition by Pizza Hut of its then largest multi-state, multi-national franchisee, the sale of Pueblo Broadcasting in Houston, Texas; and as CEO, repairing emerging technology companies in New Jersey, in San Antonio, TX, and Albuquerque NM. He has had a Top Secret security clearance in the course of some of his work.

Financial Restructuring and Transaction Advisor

Rice lectures frequently on breakout growth strategies, crisis management, corporate turnarounds, venture capital, and financial structuring and strategies. He serves on diverse corporate and nonprofit Boards of Directors. He is an honors graduate of Harvard College and lives with his family of four in Albuquerque, NM. He is a voracious reader, expert skier, avid bicyclist, and a pathetic golfer.

ASiQ Provides Experienced Specialists as Required

• Accounting and bookkeeping for specialty businesses including manufacturing, broadcast, software development and sales, and government contracting
 
• Estate planning
 
• ESOP structuring and development
 
• Sales : direct, channel, business to business, distributor-based, Independent representative-based
 
• Marketing, national
 
• High quality manufacturing systems and procedures
 
• Product Procurement: US, Europe, and Asia

Cost of Crisis Management and Turnaround Services

We negotiate terms and timing of engagements across a spectrum of terms ranging from straight fee-for-service payments, to equity compensation, to combinations of cash and equity, to negotiated commissions, and from time to time, hybrids of the two or more elements of the preceding. Upon signing of an engagement letter, our customers pay us a reasonable advance against which our actual billings are then charged. We normally include incentive performance bonuses that the customer knows will keep us striving to the maximum.

Cost of Retooling a Company in anticipation of an optimum sales price

We are paid for what we accomplish only when we accomplish it. Typically, we negotiate a commission based on the principle that most of our compensation will be paid out of the difference in price between what a company would actually sell for the day we arrive, compared to the final sales price. We do require current reimbursement for reasonable out-of-pocket expenses incurred.

Process for Hiring ASiQ

Initial consultation is free of charge. When appropriate, we make initial site visits, also free of charge, provided you reimburse our reasonable actual out-of-pocket expense for the visit. If we mutually agree that ASiQ can be of service to your company, we negotiate services to be rendered, our fees and terms. Then we enter an Engagement Agreement that specifies the assignment’s goals, fees, advance, and terms.