Start-up specialist and successful entrepreneur Art Consoli held ten corporate positions, started or bought over twenty businesses - from patents or ideas or from others who had problems. He also performed ten workouts for lenders and owners.

"To succeed in business you have to have a vision and your business strategy is what moves that vision to action." He is a firm believer that the business plan is based on projections and the heart of the projections is the assumptions. "Predict what the business will do and state the assumptions, measure the actual results, compare the predictions against the actual, review the assumptions, predict again and keep doing it until you get it right."

He did business through out the United States, in Canada, Australia, and in many European countries. The types of businesses ranged from veterinarian drugs  and computer software - to developing a consumer product which he marketed on Home Shopping Network - to operating a steel fabrication plant - to serving as Chief Operating Officer for a $30 million precision manufacturing company which provided parts to the auto industry.

When the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was enacted, his real estate holdings in three states had an appraised value in excess of $45 million dollars.

"The first thing I did, every time I got involved in a business, was to define the business strategy. It's the common denominator that gets everybody moving the ship in the same directions."

Click below to see a chronology of his experience as taken from his book How to Evaluate and Profit from a Business Opportunity - The Entrepreneur’s Guide