Book tackles small-business finance.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: Small Biz

ROBERT WALTER HAS SPENT 22 YEARS representing small businesses seeking financing, going public or trying to stay on the right side of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His career spans the days before, during and after the IPO mania in the late '90s, through today's stiff regulation ushered in by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. You can tell that, through it all, he's gained a deep appreciation for the small-business owner and entrepreneur.

"The entrepreneurs I get a chance to meet are fun to work with and stimulating because they have some very definite ideas," says Walter, who attended Cherry Creek High School, Colorado State University and Duke University's School of Law. "They're what fuel the employment growth of this country. It's not the Fortune 500 companies that are hiring more people, it's the smaller businesses that are hiring more folks."

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Walter, 48, shares his knowledge in a book that hit stores in March, "Financing your Small Business."

Published by Barron's, it's Walter's fourth book. The previous three are similar in subject but are geared for either accountants or lawyers. This one by the Holland & Hart attorney is for the small-business owner or entrepreneur, and it reads accordingly, packed with dozens of "Real World Examples," sample contracts and other forms a company will encounter when seeking financing. Altogether it is 236 pages, thankfully light on legal jargon.

This book is meant to teach, not entertain, so there are no rich anecdotes of the roaring '90s, even though in talking to Walter it becomes apparent that he's accumulated many such stories. The "Real World Examples" in the book are "99.9 percent" from Walter's actual experiences, but they are written in a hypothetical style and no real names of individuals or companies are used.

For real stories, you have to talk to Walter himself. Like the early '90s when he represented a company in Wilmington, Calif., called Vector Aeromotive Corp., launched by a brilliant but eccentric man named Jerry Wiegert. "Jerry had invented the next 'super car,'" recalls Walter. "It was called the Vector W2, and it looked like a cross between a Ferrari F40 and maybe a Lamborghini Gallardo. It was quite an automobile, and he's a very talented guy. We went through a series of private...