Many Entrepreneur books will give you the basics to finding investment capital such as asking friends and family, or building a great business plan, or joining Angel investor groups. None of these options applies to 99% of startup companies! In fact, venture capitalists might look at you and maybe invest but be ready to lose control of your dream immediately.

Angel’s won’t take as much sometimes, but you really have to be excellent at networking to find one and it still is a numbers game. Lastly, friends and family is the worst way possible for two reasons. One, most people don’t have a wealthy family member, and two, if you lose their money in the investment your relationship may be destroyed and even worse, you may end up with a heavy guilt complex. I have been there.

Now let’s get to an option that usually results in almost a 95% success rate! Really look at the overall picture before judging this method. When selecting your team to build and manage your new company, make sure all skill sets are covered in the team. Each member of your team could be a partner, future employee, advisor with or without compensation, or a professional you contract too such as an attorney. You see building your team is more important than a great business plan.

The most successful technique requires recruiting for a new partner or employee. Placing ads on various employment websites such as Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com for a Financial Officer is not the first step. The first step is to contact Executive Recruiters and set interviews for your Financial Officer. The important part of this requires you to filter your prospects by how well they are connected.

For example, I had an online insurance information company some years back and I needed investment capital to grow the company. I called many Executive Recruiters and gave them my criteria. The person to be hired needed extensive experience in the Small Business financing industry. This translated to a person highly connected who could bring in money when needed. Once I hired this person, I waited a month before calling my management team in for a strategy session. I told them the new strategy I wanted to direct the company towards and asked for all of their input. As the meeting went on, we discovered the need for investment capital to implement the strategy. The Financial Officer I hired said he had the solution and the following week we were financed.

This technique applies to startup companies as well. The only twist is you must recruit said Financial Officer from the start which is harder, but not impossible. I have seen this work many times. Just remember, your most important job as the Entrepreneur is to share your vision like a viral infection.