LONNIE “The Entrepreneur’s Yoda,” is Managing Director and CEO of Small Business Force, LLC (www.thesmallbusinessforce.com) and author of the best-selling book, “Secrets to Entrepreneurial Success.” For entrepreneurs and small business owners, he brings a unique viewpoint to help them avoid many of the pitfalls that they, invariably, face, through mentoring, providing assistance with strategic alternatives for growth or under-performing operations, strategic exit guidance or just a valuable blog post. As an entrepreneur, he founded, grew and sold two of his own companies (although he did start several others – so he understands both success...and failure), advised more than a hundred companies at various stages of their growth and invested in more than a dozen (some successfully, some not so). Lonnie’s experience also includes fixing "broken" companies, having completed a series of successful turnarounds for eight small companies (all under $25 million) in disparate markets. He also been involved in raising more than $350 million in capital, as an investment banker and senior executive, and had primary responsibility for nearly forty merger and acquisition transactions, more than a dozen of those, entrepreneurial exits. Lonnie also has some large company experience, earlier in his career, that includes senior management positions with EDS and Citicorp. He is a frequent speaker on all areas of entrepreneurship, from start-up through exit. He began in business with IBM and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University.
