Adam J. Epstein, founder of Third Creek Advisors, has lived the experience of helping small-cap companies succeed.

We all know how important small companies are to the economy: Small companies are the engine of growth, the creator of jobs.  In fact, the majority of public companies are small, not the behemoths that make the headlines. Many small companies fail because of the difficulty of finding financing.  The odds are stacked against small companies.

Epstein is a corporate director and capital markets expert with extensive finance, legal and operating experience as well as an expert in corporate governance, which he has applied to understanding and therefore helping smaller companies.  His book, “The Perfect Corporate Board:  A Handbook for Mastering the Unique Challenges of Small-Cap Companies.”

The book begins with Finance because he has seen the way small cap company directors can be their own worst enemy by not facing up to the hard realities that small companies confront in order to stay in business. He prescribes a three-step process to start every financing along with the common mistakes to avoid.  Small-cap companies have to be smart about hiring the right help with the right expertise.  Directors can be enormously helpful in this process by asking the right questions.

Oh, and by the way, these directors are not getting rich in the process.  As Epstein notes, the compensation for an entire small-cap board is often less than fees that an individual director at a Fortune 500 board might be paid..  In the end, he says, being a small-cap director “is an exercise in entrepreneurial governance—being nimble, doing more with less and shepherding an asset against long odds for risk-embracing shareholders.”

If you are a director of a small-cap company, you need this book. For those who are not, this is a guided tour of just how tough it is to create success.  And just how hard so many small companies and their managers and directors are working to beat the odds.