Gentleman Jim:
CFG Legend is back in the Game
During the past 35 years, some very colorful people have worked for Commercial Finance Group (CFG). One of the more interesting is Jim O'Keefe, currently a Business Development Officer providing factoring and cash flow financing solutions to small business owners in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.
With over 23 years of direct experience in the factoring industry, Jim has watched first-hand as CFG and the factoring industry have grown and evolved. In between, he has taken a very interesting career route.An Athletic Prodigy
Growing up in Cincinnati, Jim excelled in both baseball and basketball, and at 6 feet, 4 inches tall, he became a MVP pitcher and basketball star. He was so talented that at just 18 years of age he found himself pitching batting practice for the Cincinnati Reds. He was offered an athletic scholarship to Loyola University in California and left the Midwest for good.
At Loyola, Jim nurtured his lifelong loves of basketball and education. At this time, he began the tradition of attending every NCAA Final Four basketball tournament. While at Loyola, a chance meeting resulted in an offer of a teaching and coaching position at Santa Monica High School. He readily agreed and thought he had died and gone to heaven.
Jim taught and coached in Southern California for more than 10 years and he developed a reputation as a hard-driving and intense basketball coach. Once again during the Final Four, he met the owner of a Swedish professional basketball team and was soon offered a head coaching position there. Never one to say no to a challenge Jim readily accepted.
In his first year of Swedish basketball, Jim won 60 games with a perennially losing team. He became one of the most popular coaches in the league, and for a time his team held the record for the most spectators to view a basketball game in Europe (7,000). He took his team to the league finals in his second year and won the championship in his third. To top things off, Jim was invited to build and coach the Swedish National team.
But Jim wasn't content with his fame in Europe and longed to return to the United States. By 1979, he had married a Swede and his family had grown to include six children. With a few phone calls he was soon offered a partnership with CFG by an old friend and was given the challenge of opening his own factoring company. Without hesitation Jim retired from coaching professional basketball and moved his large family to Boulder, Colorado.
The 1980s were a good time to be in the factoring industry. Interest rates were at about 18 percent and it was difficult to qualify for traditional bank financing if you owned a small business. It didn't take long for Jim to establish himself and the Commercial Finance Group as a leader in the working capital financing industry in Colorado. Back then, factoring was a bit simpler and consisted mainly of non-recourse receivables purchasing and little else. One of Jim's first clients was the fellow who invented and produced the popular Rebounder (remember this mini-trampoline?). Jim was soon asked to replicate his Colorado success in St Louis, Philadelphia and New York.A Short-Term Retirement
During his 23 very successful years in the factoring business, Jim O'Keefe helped finance thousands of small businesses. In 2002 Jim's athletic injuries finally drove him to retire and he began to travel the world (China, Africa and Asia). Eventually he moved and settled in the dry air of Southern Arizona.
Not surprisingly, though, Jim was soon bored with retirement and he contacted his old partners at CFG last year to see how things were going. Things had changed dramatically since the old days and CFG was not only factoring receivables but was providing accounts receivable lines of credit, non-notification factoring, full recourse factoring and purchase order financing solutions. CFG was also working with bankers under intercreditor agreements and in conjunction with SBA lenders. That was enough to bring Jim out of retirement and today, he is back with CFG.
Jim now gets to travel throughout Arizona and Nevada, meeting with entrepreneurs and fellow business lenders and sharing his knowledge and experience with them. It may not be as exciting as playing or coaching in a championship basketball game, but Jim says he loves being back in the game.You can reach Jim O'Keefe at (602 768-7364 or JOKeefe@CFGroup.net or through the CFG website at http://www.CFGroup.net. If you have ever met Jim in the past, he would love to hear from you again. If you've never met Jim before, he'd love to meet you now, so feel free to call him directly. And if you have questions about factoring and cash flow financing solutions, be sure to give him a call. If there is any way at all to get a deal done, Jim will know it.
To learn more about CFGs accounts receivable management programs, please visit www.cfgroup.net or contact us at (800) 757-5195.
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