Authorpreneur Dashboard – Domenic Aversa
Corporate Undertaker
Business & Investing
"Not since first reading Stephen Covey...have I read such a life-changing, inspiring business book....A brilliant book and one I recommend to every single business owner and entrepreneur." —N.N. Light, Top 500 Amazon Reviewer
For more than 25 years, Domenic Aversa has worked as a crisis manager and corporate restructuring professional. He has advised and operated small and middle-market companies in 45 different industries and worked through every possible extreme with his clients, including coup attempts in developing countries, the dot.com bust, 9/11, Ponzi schemes, corrupt bankers, and the Great Recession. In Corporate Undertaker: Business Lessons from the Dead and Dying, he shares his best advice for dealing with adversity and crisis.
There are 50 practical lessons in this book; all designed to help you take immediate action. You’ll learn how to:
- dramatically improve cash-flow through a period of crisis
- preserve the most value in your company while restructuring
- create emotional stability in and around your company
- effectively communicate with your bank and investors
- retain key employees and critical customers
- manage and restructure current debt with all creditors
- address potential and existing lawsuits
- prepare for a bankruptcy filing
- effectively manage a partial liquidation or sale of a business
- recover from a “corporate death”
If you’re looking for answers in today’s tumultuous business environment, Corporate Undertaker has them.
Book Bubbles from Corporate Undertaker
Moscow, 1996
At the age of 24, I was enrolled in a school program at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). Prior to enrolling, I knew nothing about the Soviet Union other than what I had seen in Top Gun and Rocky IV. Despite that, I decided to start a business while in school, This emerging Wild East was a hotbed of potential for anything in commerce. I had been a college student for five years at this point and had essentially dust and spare change in my bank account. Moreover, the only thing I really understood about life was pizza and beer. Everything else was just something in a textbook. Armed with this knowledge, I took the next logical step, I started a food importing company in Moscow. Beer, meat and cheese were our primary products. I was lucky to partner with two Russians and together we built several companies in the next several years as capitalism replaced communism. We started a commercial real estate division. We then started a finance company and eventually became licensed to own a bank in Moscow. It was fun, exciting, liberating. It was all the things entrepreneurs seek. I thought "I had arrived." A lot of dreams were coming true. But, right then and there, that one day in Moscow, 1996, everything changed. Violence came to our front door. This excerpt is how it began.
I Didn't Ask To Be Jimmy Hoffa
What would you do if you discovered fraud and corruption at your company? Confronting an injustice is not easy. Most people fear repercussions from the confrontation or "whistle-blowing." Very few are in the position to take on that fight. This excerpt is from the first time I was Chief Restructuring Officer. I oversaw a Tier One manufacturer that supplied an automotive company (OEM = "original equipment manufacturer"). We supplied parts to 50% of all of their factories in N. America. This story is about how I confronted one of the largest corporations in the world when I discovered that they were going to steal healthcare insurance and worker's compensation from a non-union shop. I gave them a lesson they would not forget.
Why I Wrote This Book
It would have been much easier to write a book about my happy, sunny days in the world of business. There were many of them. They were rewarding and fun. Who doesn't like succeeding? I instead chose to write a book that focused on all of the adversity I faced along the journey. I felt that the world was filled with many great success stories of entrepreneurs becoming fabulously wealthy but, there weren't many stories about the pain involved in starting, owning and managing a business. This is a book filled with countless mistakes, surprises and struggle. It is also a book that is filled with hope, clarity and lessons learned from all that I witnessed. My intent is to give you tools, guidance and inspiration that will help you manage through any adversity or crisis. I hope you enjoy the journey. Buckle up, because it's not for the timid. Best of fortune to you. Domenic
Thank Goliath
Biographies & Memoirs
Thank Goliath by Domenic Aversa is both fun and tragic, emotional and entertaining. With cutting intelligence and the wisdom acquired with age, Aversa sews together memories and experiences about the power of forgiveness, love and adversity.
A memoir at its core. Written with impeccable free-flowing prose, especially brilliant in dialogue, reading at times like a novel.
A personal yet universal tale that is canny, engrossing and distinctly inspiring. Self-Publishing Review
--------------------------------------------------
A fast-paced, intense, and colorful read detailing transformative adventures and experiences.
The larger-than-life narrative is punctuated with mother-son dialogue that’s penetrating, satirical, and at times provides comic relief to the serious tone.
Readers will find his story compelling and instructive in the way it redefines life’s challenges as boundless opportunities for growth. Blue Ink Reviews
--------------------------------------------------
Thank Goliath introduces us to one of the better memoir characters in recent years: his mother, Benedetta.
The book’s best moments are his conversations with her, which make Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sound as staid as city council meetings.
Witty and poignant…readers should devour this memoir. Aversa tells the page-turning story of his complicated relationship with his indomitable mother. Indie Reader
--------------------------------------------------
Thank Goliath is the compelling memoir of a first-generation Canadian and his immigrant mother.
The book’s memoir elements fold into moving celebrations of his mother, Benedetta. It shares stories about how she overcame massive challenges in her own life; these are made to parallel and inform Aversa’s own responses to struggles.
Their twinned tales function as an accessible parable of personal success, with standout scenes showing the ways in which Aversa and Benedetta worked through and overcame their obstacles. Forward Reviews
--------------------------------------------------
A skillfully written account of a complicated life.
Tightly constructed, moving along at a pleasant clip with lots of brisk dialogue. Kirkus Reviews
"Rather than run from adversity, we developed a relationship with it. As Goliath grew, we grew."
Born to impoverished, Italian immigrants in 1960s Canada, Domenic Aversa is creative and restless. He shares a busy but happy home with his hardworking father and doting, strict, traditional mother.
When his childhood reputation as a troublemaker drives him to juvenile delinquency and his mother to uncontrollable anger, Domenic decides the best way to overcome adversity is not to rebel but to stare it down. Determined to prove himself, he is drawn toward increasingly difficult and dangerous challenges around the world. He supervises abandoned and abused children, trains delinquent military cadets, starts a business in the violent underbelly of the Soviet Union, takes down white-collar criminals across America, and even joins the war on HIV/AIDS. He faces each giant, stone in hand, determined to overcome adversity and help those in need.
Closer to home, his mother, Benedetta, puts on a cheerful façade as a pillar of the community. But with increasingly severe health problems, she is facing a Goliath of her own within a healthcare system unequipped or perhaps unwilling to help. As Domenic’s compass slowly points him back home, he realizes saving his mother might be his toughest challenge yet.
Benedetta and Domenic’s close, complex mother-son relationship is the backdrop for this poignant and inspiring memoir that reminds us that there is more than one way to slay a giant. More importantly, each challenge offers an opportunity for growth, resolution, and acceptance.
Book Bubbles from Thank Goliath
28 Years For A High School Diploma
In her late 30's, doctors discovered a ten pound cyst attached to my mother's pancreas. They were uncertain how long she had to live. My mother always found a way to shrink obstacles in front of her. To her, regardless of the diagnosis, she was going to keep moving forward. With this in mind, she decided to go back to high school to finish her studies and get her diploma. At the same time, I was accepted into law school. After four years of being away, I decided to move back in with my parents. My dad and I built an office in the basement. We installed a phone line and a lock on the door so I could try to focus...because their home was constantly filled with friends and relatives...and, of course, my mother who kept asking me for help with her math homework. Three years later, she received her high school diploma and wore it with a big smile for her doctors and all of the naysayers. The same month, my sister graduated from university and I from law school. My mother was over-joyed. It was a brief period in time however, my mom built upon this, her confidence grew. Despite facing a terminal prognosis, her ear was always ready for someone that needed a word or a hand of encouragement. It took her 28 years to get a high school diploma, she was not about to stop now.
Outer Mongolia
I was 34 years old. My life was turned upside down. I discovered that the senior partner in my firm had been stealing money from clients for ten years. My wife, whom I had known since high school, confessed that her mental health issues were beyond her control and she could not remember if she had one or more affairs with other men. To complete the picture, I lost most of my eyesight in one eye to a disease. Four separate doctors told me that I would go blind in both eyes. I spent months alternating between depression and anger. Finally, I decided I needed a change and needed to go somewhere to start over. Where would I go? The farthest from where I was and with people that lived completely different from me. I left my firm, got divorced, threw my computer into the garbage...and got on a plane to Outer Mongolia. This excerpt is the beginning of the journey when I tell my mom my plans.
The Ransom Note
As children, my cousin Pete and I were close friends. We were curious, creative and somewhere between courageous and dumb. This is a story the took place on a long, hot day in 1980. Our moms were strict but we definitely did not give them a moment of rest. Find out what happens to us after my mother discovers the ransom note left for her.
Why I Wrote This Book
After publishing my first book, Corporate Undertaker, I received many letters and calls from readers that said my stories gave them hope. Many were astounded at my resiliency in the face of adversity. They asked "how did you do it? how did you survive?" The answer is: it took a lifetime of building that sense of courage and perseverance. It came from my surroundings, my family, friends, and work. But, mostly, it came from my mom. Her and I seemed to be inextricably bound to each other in a race to see who could cheat death the most often. Thank Goliath is our story. It's a story that I'm certain many of you have experienced in your own way. In my travels around the world, I have discovered that the struggle and desire to live is real and ever present. I hope our story speaks and provides solace to you and those around you.
