Four Hundred Jumps

John Haag, in addition to being a high-powered business executive and consultant with decades of experience and skill behind him, is also a skydiver. The passion started for Haag after he took his first skydiving lesson and knew instantly that he had to have more. Haag somehow finds time to jump out of airplanes on a regular basis to practice his skydiving skills and style.

Skydiving definitely qualifies as an extreme sport, but is a little unusual in the sense that it is an activity that was born of necessity: it developed because people had to abandon planes that were about to crash. As extreme as that is, however, skydiving is relatively safe, as extreme sports go.

What draws a lot of skydivers is the thrill of free falling. There is an incredible rush that many say is hard to put into words, and is incomparable to anything else. Free-falling out of control like that provides a huge adrenaline rush, and skydivers often say they feel totally free as they plummet toward earth. The standard altitude for skydiving is about 12,500 feet above ground level. From that altitude, a skydiver’s terminal velocity in the standard free-fall position, and with a closed parachute, is about 120 miles an hour. “Terminal velocity” is the highest speed reached as you fall through the air.

John Haag still calls himself a beginner, even after some four hundred jumps. He is currently the Managing Partner with CallisterHaag, a business consulting and management firm that has helped many businesses get back on their feet and through difficult transitions such as leadership changes and capital investment deals. Haag maintains both his skill jumping out of planes and his skill helping businesses survive in San Francisco.
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Three Basic Investment Banking Concepts

John Haag has been a financial advisor, a turnaround manager, and a business leader for almost 30 years. He is a Managing Partner for the firm CallisterHaag, which works with companies to help them through difficult transitions, invest wisely, and secure investments themselves. Haag has many connections in the financial sector and has worked with a great many clients to help them find the best solutions to their problems and stay on track and abreast of their goals. He has extensive experience in investment banking. Here are three basic concepts he has learned over his long career:

• Corporate valuation. There are three ways to value a company for a potential investment. One of the most common ways investment bankers do this is discounted cash flows, which, as John Haag has done many times, involves creating a free cash flows forecast of a company and discounting them with the weighted average cost of capital.
• Balance sheet. This is one of the main ways that investment bankers value a company. They get their information from this sheet as well as the income statement and cash flow statement. John Haag has worked with investors to weigh the figures on these statements many times.
• Multiples. Another way to value a company before an investment, multiples involves metrics very similar to profits and earnings ratios. This is used to determine stock prices and other indicators of corporate worth.

John Haag has been working in investment banking and venture capital investments for many years and knows how to value companies and corporations.
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