Marcus Lemonis on Capitalism, Community, and Camping

So this is the final session of the first annual Scalable Impact Live. As we come to the end, I gotta ask how we do. How we do, how we do.

Yeah.

This has been so much frickin fun, y'.

All.

Seriously, this has been so great. I was saying to my. To my wife last night, we were having. We were having dinner and she said, you seem really happy. And I was like, the way you.

Said that makes me feel weird.

And she said, no, just, you know, like, I haven't, I haven't seen you like this. She's like, I can tell that you're exhausted. Like, you've got that look on your face where, like, one eye is starting to go a weird direction, which tells me that you're tired. But she said, you just seem really happy. And I said, yeah. I said, I think it's because I've just spent an entire day with my people.

Right?

You feeling that?

Because I got to spend an entire.

Day with my people.

I think she was leading you to ask her if she was happy.

You know what?

Because I don't think she really gave a shit about how you felt.

Now that you say this.

Yeah.

I instantly regret the entire conversation I have last night.

Yeah. You should know your audience.

And I'm gonna.

Yeah.

I need to make a phone call, you guys.

Hey, let me know how it works.

No, I'm just kidding. Not even screwing around, man.

You're probably right.

That being said, the answer that I gave her was, you know, was sincere. I meant it. Being able to spend the last couple days here with, with, with, with all of you and, you know, we're weird. We're weird. We're weird in the best possible way. We're not normal.

We're.

We're extraordinary. And I. And I love that. And, and I love that the session that we're finishing with and the entrepreneur that's about to come up here is, I think, just the perfect definition of the entrepreneur. I mean, you're talking about somebody who started from nothing the ground up, got the right help along the way, but also took advantage of every single opportunity that came, had the struggles, and frankly, just built an empire that's worth, you know, billions. That doesn't suck. That's pretty cool, right? But you spend, I started to say five minutes. You spend five seconds with this person and you realize that it is somebody who is absolutely living their level seven life. Somebody who is absolutely living the dream. So there's some people who need an introduction. I don't believe this is one person who does this is somebody who is an amazing entrepreneur, an actual, like literal TV celebrity, not just the weirdos that are showing up on your TV screen in your hotel room at night. Which, sorry again for that, I didn't know they were freaking doing that.

Y' all weirded me out. Stop. Stop.

With that said.

No, hold on a second, please. Welcome to Stop.

Stop.

I want to just recap. I want to just recap your. No, no, no.

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Okay, I know there's, like, formal process. I wanna recap his introduction here. He went from having dinner with his wife and her asking him why he's happy to ending the conversation with, he's seeing weird things on your hotel tv. I, I just want you to know how we feel.

Yep.

I, I, I, I think you need help. Yeah, I do.

I will tell you this.

Tell him about your dream.

Is there anybody?

I don't want to hear about his dream. I don't want to hear about it.

Do you want to. Will you tell him about what my.

Dream was broken Q tip in his ear while he was watching TV in his hotel room. That was.

That was my dream.

I think you're done. Thank you.

Boy, you are not lying.

Thank you so much for coming. Appreciate you.

Hey, seriously. Marcus Samados, ladies and gentlemen. Be upstanding.

All right? Happy to be here. Before you sit down. Before you sit down, which is code for if you're sitting, stand up. I think the most exciting thing that's happening today is that we can all be together. And you never want to have a weird opening. But I do think we all need to be super grateful for the fact that we can be here and that we're here. We're as healthy as we can be. We know we lost a lot of people in the last 15 months for the right or wrong reasons, whatever it may be. But the fact that we can be here together and share ideas and share experiences and really, more importantly, talk about what we learned. And I don't mean what we learned about other people, but I think what I hope we can talk a little bit about today is what we learned about ourselves. Cause that really, I feel more energized today as a business person. And like six hours ago, I was doing my earnings call for Camping World and taking analyst calls and vomiting in the garbage can with dumb questions. But it is important that we do remind ourselves how grateful we are. We have a lot of loving family members, kids at home, spouses at home, family members that have supported us to get to this point. So I think that's something to stand and clap about for yourself and your families.

Well, that said, let's start with. With what you said. What did you learn about yourself during the pandemic?

I think more than anything else, I learned that I needed people in my organizations, plural, more than I thought.

Really?

Yeah. I mean, I always believe that. And I always realized that people were sort of at the backbone of everything. But when you're not connected physically and you're trying to communicate and you're trying to anticipate and you're trying to hope that they're anticipating as well, well, you see that the good people that you knew were good were actually better than you thought. Because in that moment, for 15, 18 months, you had to trust that they were making the right decisions with your folks, making the right decisions with. With the money in the business, making the right decisions about how to grow the business. And, you know, I was super blessed. I am super blessed in a lot of the business that I have at the one business, my primary business is the camping business. And it's been, you know, not fortunately, but it's been as a byproduct of COVID a huge winner. We reported earnings today, and our LTM for. For 12 months is 902 million.

Nice.

Which we were super pissed that it wasn't 903 million, but really happy about that.

And how was that year over year?

We did 565 last year. So we're happy about that. And I think the biggest challenge is really understanding how we got there. And I think when you. When you look at your business and you think about the revenue that you're generating, and more importantly, more importantly, the profit that you're generating off of that revenue, it, it was good to take a step back. There were businesses that I had been hanging on to for a long time that Covid helped me just say the people are a problem and there's nothing I can do to fix it and I'm going to take my lumps and move on. It was like a cleansing period. But what I learned more about myself than anything is that I needed to not take on as much as I was taking on. You know, when you, when you're in this momentum environment where everything's just rolling and rolling and rolling, you start to convince yourself that you can do anything. And I had to really recognize what I was good at and more importantly, what I wasn't good at. And, and then take those, take that learning and supercharge the things that I was good at. I consider myself a good deal maker, but I don't consider myself a good detail follower.

Sure.

And so I had to really understand all of that, but I feel like I matured a lot.

Do you think because you came from nothing that you have a tendency to not want to say no to opportunities because you're not sure if they're going to come again or because you didn't have them when you started and so you treasure them more?

No. It's really interesting that you say that. I used to think that. I think the reason that I used to chase things unnecessarily is part time deal junkie, part time insecure person trying to prove something to nobody.

Okay.

And you end up making decisions and doing things that are like, why am I doing all this? Who am I trying to satisfy? Or who am I trying to impress? And I think once I was able to cleanse myself of that and really focus on things that I was good at, things supercharged. And the business went from 400 million to 565 to 900. But more importantly, the smaller businesses, the ones that are sort of my passion projects, they started to really. They either accelerated or died. There was no in between. No business that I had investments in before stayed the same. I think they had to learn how to pivot. And technology was a big part of that, for sure.

So one of the things that you've done well that a lot of people here are trying to do is to exit the various levels of your business. We talk about five exits. Going from exiting working as a employee basically for yourself in the business, to working as a manager, to working as the CEO to the board, to an investor, and ultimately selling the company. You have a lot of people and You've scaled through all of that. What would you say are some of the key points to getting those people that are the right people and moving up to where you can pursue your passion projects like you're doing now?

I think I understand the question. I'm gonna try to reframe it for myself. So I apologize. I'm talking out loud. But my personal advancement in everything that I've done has either succeeded or failed based on my willingness to promote other people to the front of the line, to shine the light on them and to do my best to understand that I am their shepherd, not their keeper. Real big difference. I used to think about it like I was responsible for them, but I would put them in, like, a cocoon, and I would think, okay, don't expose them to certain things and answer the questions for them so they don't look bad. And the big change for me was putting them out on the stage, hoping that they struggled, hoping that they experienced success and failure and understanding how that all works. And I've become like a proud parent. I'm not a. I'm not a parent today. I probably won't ever be. And that's an unfortunate choice that I made. But I do look at people that are in my organization as my kid equivalents.

Okay.

It's the wrong way to think about it because I'm young, but my kid equivalent and what I mean by that is taking some sort of pride over their success more than my own, and then watching how they become big cheerleaders of myself and our company. And then, wow. I was like, I think we're actually more successful when I promote them and push them than I am if I push my own agenda.

If you promote somebody like that and they initially have challenges or don't perform as well as you would have, because that's a concern for a lot of.

People or how I would have wanted.

Them to, then how do you deal with that?

In certain cases, I double down because I realize that there may have been an error in my tutelage of them. And so their failure, I think, is really more my failure than it is theirs.

Okay.

But there are other instances where people fail themselves and they make bad choices. There's a number of people, and I found this over the course of my life. There's a number of people, when you have a fallout with them, if you can keep it professional.

Fallout. Yes.

That they'll learn from it, and that if you stay in contact with them, as. As painful as it feels, you'll find that they'll come back to you. And I've had this happen multiple times where they come back and be like, wow, I was really wrong. You were wrong a little, too, which I probably was. But we both learned and we both grew, and you taught me a lot, and I learned a lot about myself, and I fixed my life on a personal level. I fix my life on a professional level, and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for what you exposed. And I think ultimately, that is probably a bigger payoff for me than anything is to see that person evolve and grow. And we all have these people in our lives. Either they work for us or they used to work for us, or we had some fallout with them where you don't want any ill will for anybody. And I think that was the other thing that I learned during COVID is that as mad as I would get and people would stay steal and lie and cheat if I could just refresh my brain and be like, look, they have to live with that. They have to live with that. I don't have any ill will. And. And over time, they come back, do.

The trailer making people fit into it.

It's funny that you say that. I do talk to the trailer making people.

Do you.

That's great.

Okay.

In fact, when Covid hit and the supply chain broke, and this was an episode from two of the. It's the craziest. Literally the craziest episode I've ever been a part of. I did not make a deal with them.

It's the only one. I saw somebody blow up and then kind of hit on you at the end.

Yeah.

Was actually. Yeah, it was odd, but. But what's interesting about it is to show you the importance of relationships, and you're a big relationship guy. When Covid hit, the supply chain broke for all of us. All kinds of businesses broke. And they called me out of the blue after not hearing from. From hearing from them for a year and said, we have all these trailers that we're trying to deliver, and we're missing parts and pieces. We're missing air conditioners. Can you help us? And it was one of those moments in time where I was like, which side of my personality is going to answer the call? And I did. And to this day, they said to me, while meeting you and making the show wasn't exactly awesome, the fact that when we weren't on TV and there was nothing for you to gain from it and you had no reason to help us, and you did, it changed our perspective about ourselves and other people.

Interesting.

So I thought that was kind of cool.

Do you find that the cameras make a big difference in how people behave? Like, do they put on an alter ego of what they think the world should see them as or anything like that?

Let's take the cameras and put them aside.

Okay.

When you meet somebody for the first time, camera or no camera, they're not sure how they're supposed to behave with you. They're not sure if they're supposed to impress you. They're not sure if they're supposed to. They're just not sure.

Yeah.

By the way I'm talking about myself. When I meet people for the first time, I'm not sure what am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to behave? The cameras add a small element in the first five minutes. But I think the first impressions are usually the right impression. And I always tell people the camera doesn't lie. They'll see the episode and be like, that's not how I was. I was like, yeah, actually, because it's on video. Well, we actually edited to make you look better. And if you tell people honestly you were like that, and I think it's hard to see yourself that way because it would be hard for me, too. Be reflective about it, learn from it. And that would really apply. And the one thing that I would encourage people to do, when you meet people for the first time and you have some sort of relationship with them that that develops over time, ask them, what was your first impression of me? I always think it's amazing to ask people what their first impression is, because people will say to me all the time, oh, my God, you're way different than I thought you were going to be. I was like, whoa. Well, where did you get this idea from that I was the way you thought? Where did that come from? I read stuff. I saw you do interviews. I saw this, I saw that. I heard what people said. I read what people said. And the reality of it is, is that we're all faced with that, especially as entrepreneurs. Our employees think a certain way about us, our customers think a certain way about us. And until we truly reveal ourselves to them in our most authentic way, that's what they're going to think.

Right.

And if they say to you, you're different than I thought, I used to think that was a compliment. I did. And then I started to realize there was something broken in me that was creating some disconnect between how I really was and the impression that they got.

Were you able to identify what you think that might have been?

Yeah, I think so. I think it was the awkwardness and the anxiety and the social fear that I have. Like, it's hard for me to be in a room like this.

Is it?

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. It's easy when it's controlled in an environment like this. But if any of you invited me to your Christmas party, it would be. I would go to be polite, but I would be terrorized inside. And I've started to learn how to deal with that. And everybody in the room, no matter how confident you are, no matter how good looking you are, No matter how rich you are, we all are the same. We all suffer from the same insecurities. We just mask it differently. And I think if we can learn to just work through that.

So how do you deal with that?

I own it.

Do you have any like thoughts or tools when you find yourself in that situation that helps you to kind of self correct?

I just tell people this is how I'm feeling.

Yeah.

Like for me to tell you guys that I had this weird uncomfortableness, I now feel more relaxed as I'm like, I told you, I'm like really frightened. And people will say to me, well, how could that be if you're on television? I'm like, yeah, but I'm not on television with you. I'm on television with myself and one dude. Like, it's just us. And I don't think about it and I've gotten used to it. But in an environment like this, which is really, really important as a business person, to be able to break that fear. If you're talking to three people, five people, 100 people, and to do what you do is actually a lot harder than making television. So as you were. And getting married changed that for me.

Yeah. How is that now? Because that was late in life decision. Right.

Married like three or four years ago. And she was a really good calming effect me. She made me a better business person.

Yeah, yeah.

Because she, she listened your spouses or your significant others listen to your calls, even though they say they're not and they won't give you your, your opinion. Well, they don't always give you their opinion, but she would call me on stuff and she would say like, your self awareness sucks today.

Interesting. Yeah, that's great.

She'd be like, you're you. Like I said to him jokingly, if you don't know your audience, she would say to me, like, that seemed, that seemed odd. And so she was really good at doing that. And a lot of people in my Life other than maybe my mother was never really comfortable telling me what they really thought.

Okay.

And so when you get into a relationship with a really good business partner or a really good life partner, regardless of whether you choose to get married or not, it's always good to have people that'll tell you exactly what the. Exactly what's really happening.

So valuable. Absolutely. My wife does the same thing. She listens to my calls, and I do most of my calls on a speakerphone. So she hears the whole. The whole thing. And. And she'll say everything from you said, you know, too many times. Thank you.

I mean, I'm looking for a speech class.

Thank you. I do.

Yeah.

To.

Hey, did you.

Could you tell that, you know, in their voice, that person was nervous, and I don't know if they were telling you the truth about that or something like that. It's very, very valuable. And as you said, to call you on your stuff because I also write emails. And so I'll read an email to her before I send it, and she'll be like, that's a little strong.

And when you're responsible for a business like all of you are, you're responsible to grow. It is really important to find a time where you can communicate something that's really important with absolute clarity.

Right.

And I think so often, Covid also helped us with that because we had this isolation. We had chance to be alone with our thoughts that as you move forward, you gotta find time to communicate your message to your employees or to your customers that isn't flippant. In the middle of the day, finding whatever sort of mechanism allows you to detach from reality, turn the TV off, not be dictaphoning it while you're in your car, not trying to cook with your baby. And sending a message is to find 30 minutes a day, which I've done pretty successfully, and communicate all the things that you think other people need to hear with clarity. A change in pay plan, a promotion, a council session, which is the same as saying, like, what's a discipline session? In that moment, you'll find that your communication can be clear and your thoughts are clear. And you'll move your business so much faster and so much further in that moment of clarity than multitasking.

What else do you do to find that clarity? Because there are a million things going on in everybody's heads. And some people do meditation, some people do other things.

I make television.

Yeah. Is that.

That is my coping mechanism.

Really interesting.

And I said to my wife today on the way here, here Because I've been so engrossed in my business for a while now and I'm going to start shooting again tomorrow, intensely. I was like, I'm really looking forward to a break. But she said to me jokingly, she's like, yeah, and the people that work for you, they're more excited than you are. And so I think I try to find activities where you can create space between what your responsibilities are and what your fun things are. And it'll allow you to see more clear. And when you come back to reality, when you come back to your normal life, I think a, you have fresh thoughts, fresh ideas, you've learned more, you've listened more, you've seen more, and you can be more effective, at least for me.

When, when you were going through the early stages of camping world and making that balance between profits and reinvestment and distributions to yourself and such, did you find any kind of formula or method for balancing out that?

Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that. In the early years, I was very hyper focused on what the business was going to do for me. I was very focused. I'd be lying to you. I didn't tell people that. And I was kind of COVID about it. But in the back of my mind I was being a little self ingratiating. Today I take no pay out of the business. No options, no RSU is, no stock, no, no travel expense, nothing. Because I want to use whatever I would take to put it back into the system. Not for reinvestment, but for advancement of other people. And I noticed that the business just started to move faster. I haven't really sold any shares out of the business. And so people are like, well, how do you, how do you pay for stuff? I don't. I try not to. At least I changed the way I used to live. I used to live a very lavish lifestyle. And I realized that that wasn't really working for me either because I think I was trying to make myself feel better for whatever frailties I had as a child. And just a Cliff Notes version of it, I was a lot younger. I was adopted from a foreign country. Unbelievably blessed. So, no, no, nothing weird there. I'm an only child. So for the moms in the room, you should have probably recognized it 27 minutes ago. I'm an only child. My, my mother unfortunately has passed. And so through that journey I had a terrible eating disorder. I still suffer from it today pretty intensely. I have terrible anxiety. It's hard, hard thing to explain to people if you have anxiety. It's not like a. I don't know how to describe it to people. It just kind of happens. My attempted suicide twice, you know, And I don't say that to make people, like, feel odd or bad, but the reason I tell you that story is because in my. The latter part of my life, I started to think that if I achieved financial success, it would mitigate this awkwardness that I felt as a kid. And then if I use that financial success to ingratiate myself with, like, lots of things that it would really, like, make me feel better and make everybody else feel better. And it really was just a bunch of nonsense. It was a bunch of nonsense. I found that what makes me feel the best about myself is this projection onto other people. And it took me a long time to figure that out. And the business suffered when I didn't do it. I would make decisions that were impulsive. They weren't collaborative. I would make decisions that were for my benefit and not for everybody else's. And I was like, why is the business only making X and not Y? And why isn't it growing this way? And why is the retention not that good? And why are these things happening? And I would sort of do this instead of doing this. And as I started to take responsibility for it, I correct it. The business just took off. And so did I. Yeah. Yeah, so did I. I think that was what changed him.

What place were you at when you were thinking about those two suicide attempts? Was that a business thing that was overwhelming you or a personal situation?

I. I was 13 and 12 and 13. I had already owned my first business. I had on a bunch of businesses when I was a kid. And when I tell you that I own businesses, this isn't like your kid saying they had a lemonade stand, right? I had a big lawn business where I was making. This was 37 years ago, or whatever the math is. 36 years ago, I was making, like, a grand a week. I mean, I thought. And I was the baller in the neighborhood. I was like, you need ice cream? I got you ice cream. Truck would come around, and I was making good money, But I was finding myself. I got into business because it was. Was the one thing. And this is if we. If we learn anything today about ourselves. I got into business because it was the one thing that allowed me to neutralize everything else in the world. So I wasn't athletic. I was awkward. I didn't. Didn't have any friends. All those weird things that all kids go through. Business was the one Thing that I was able to. To separate myself from everybody. And everybody in this room that started a business started it for a reason. They didn't start it just to make money. It's a wonderful byproduct, and it's a huge motivator. And you can do a lot of good things for your family and for other people with it. But it wasn't the reason that I got in business. I got in business because I'm really good at math, which is what I told my teacher when I was in second grade. Really good at math with my Coke bottle glasses. And it was the one thing that made me not feel awkward. It was like, business is a very safe place for me. And it's a place where I can control my own destiny and I can make my own friends, and nobody's judging me other than my results get judged, which is fair. But it was the one thing. And if you really asked yourself, every single person in the room ask yourself, why did I want to be somebody and grow it? Why did I want to scale my life in a way that could change my life and other people's? And in most cases, it's because you felt like you needed. What. What'd you need? What did you need?

For me?

Yeah.

I just love the challenge of puzzles. And so to me, business is a puzzle. And I like people. So people and puzzles at the same time, those are my two P's. And then profit. I like that. People, puzzles, and profit.

Okay. But it's.

As I said to you in the hallway, if you get close to anything with a 3P, you're gonna pay royalty.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, you're gonna pay. On the side note, I. I own the trademark for Trust the Process. And if anybody from Philadelphia, Okay, I know you guys think you own that. I know the Philadelphia 76ers thought they owned that. I know that Joe Embiid, or whatever his name is, thought he owned it. And everybody started making T shirts and putting banners up and selling stuff. And I was like, just keep doing it. We're good. And then I sent him a letter, and I said to them, this is no joke. I said, listen, I will let you use the mark as long as you're doing something for people in the community. Like four front row seats every game for, like, some kids in the Nice.

Oh, that's cool.

And they wouldn't do it, so they don't use it anymore. So you should trust my process.

I was going to say, yeah.

Along.

Along the way, a lot of us deal with bringing People in to help with the company as we try to not have to have it all be us. Maybe it's a CEO, maybe it's somebody else that's high level, or maybe we're going for financing or something else. And inevitably people will ask for equity in the company. As that happened to you, how did you deal with that before you were in the process of doing the public thing?

I was really offended by it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was offended by it. If I want to give you equity because I think you'll make an unbelievable partner because you'll bring something to the table that I cannot. And that isn't just your brains, but it's your brains plus your resources, plus your connections, plus your ability to grow my business, plus you have different funnels that I don't have, then I'll talk to you about that. But I think too often you find people that see what you're building and they want to grab some. Now I'm a huge giver outer of equity, but it has to be at the right time for the right people with the right motivations. And I tend to want to give equity out to frontline folks, to folks that are actually the ones making the magic happen.

Was it a pie shop that you had the lady that was kind of running everything behind and you gave her, you gave her like 25% equity in it and she just blew her mind. She was like a single parent.

Yeah, I do that because I look at somebody like that as a frontline person. But when we as business owners need to raise capital or we need an executive in a position, equity should be a part of the conversation. But what, what usually has bothered me is when money is the leading point in the conversation.

Yeah. Hey, business lunch listeners. We're going to get right back to the show, but Roland wanted me to invite you to a brand new training that he's doing on acquiring businesses with no money out of pocket. It's something that he's talked quite a bit about on the show, but he's doing a free training where he's going to walk through the entire process. So if you want to get access to that, go to businesslunchpodcast.com EPIC. That's businesslunchpodcast.com Epic. And you can get signed up.

And so like, what is the job pay? It's like, well, is that really the right question to ask first? I like when people want to join the organization because they feel like they can add value. They recognize that they bring a skill set that you don't have, but they don't rub it in your face. They really are focused on the growth of the business and wanting to ride the elevator with everybody else, not disproportionate to everybody else. And I do think it's important to have some portion of the business be for folks on the team with the proper vesting schedule, with the right understanding of what the deliverables are, and with people that you believe lives, their lives will change materially because of that equity. And it's. I get, you know, I get arguments from people. I have a job gentleman that I've been friends with for 25 years, who runs a big part of the business, who's the highest paid person in my company, and I always consider people you make more than I do. The highest paid person in the company. And he feels entitled to more. Instead of focusing on the people that are single moms with three kids that are answering phones, that we want to push their lives forward, and instead of focusing on them and knowing that that person will ultimately push everybody forward, people have their priorities a little whacked out.

Yeah.

I haven't heard anyone respond offended with that. And I kind of like it because I agree. And you're offended because of the entitlement, right? That's the thing that I'm offended because.

Of the entitlement, but I'm also offended because the organization's health depends on the most important workers being the healthiest.

Right.

Not the people in the ivory tower being the healthiest. I live in the ivory tower. I try not to park myself there. But the reality of it is, is that I'm not talking to customers and I'm not dealing with heat on a daily basis. And I'm not the one selling the product or service that we have. That's where the magic happens, and it's it. I think if you forget that a little bit, you get in trouble.

Hey, business lunch listeners. We've been talking about Roland's process for buying a business with no money out of pocket for a while now. But what if you could actually have him walk you through it step by step, and he can give you the exact strategy that he's used to acquire dozens of businesses. Now, if that sounds intriguing to you, listen up, because it may already be too late. Roland is starting a challenge on March 16th where he's going to help people use the same growth lever that the top 1% of business owners in the world use. But the challenge starts on March 16th. So if you're interested, go to businesslunchpodcast.com epic that's businesslunchpodcast.com epic to sign up.

Hey guys, Roland Frazier here from Business Lunch. If you don't have CRO or conversion optimization, you're not going to scale to the next level. It's that simple. And our sponsor, Conversion Fanatics can help you with that. Conversion Fanatics runs thousands of marketing experiments every year for clients like Clorox, Burt's Bees and a whole bunch of other people. If you want to get the secrets on how you can optimize any site, go to conversion fanatics.com freebook that's conversionfanatics.com freebook and download their free guide so you can double your customers sales and profits with AB testing.

How, how have you worked over the years and now with advisors and mentors to you because you're an advisor and mentor to many? How about, how about your experience with that?

I have a little bit of a backward philosophy about that. I'm a big feedback person. I like feedback but I don't like it from my peers and I don't like it from my immediate direct reports.

Okay.

I like it from people that I'm removed from pretty significantly.

Why do you think that is?

Why do I like it?

Why?

No, why, why do you think that the closer people like the peers and the director?

Because I think that they, I think sometimes they tell you what you want to hear.

Okay. So it's just, is it honest and.

Is it, is it driven by reality?

Okay.

And so the further you get towards the front line and the further you that it is away from you, the more honest the feedback is going to be if you give them permission to do it. Because then a lot of times if you have a business where you have a ton of people, they're going to be nervous. They meet you. Oh my God. I don't want to say anything. I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want my supervisor to get mad that I said and you give people permission by self deprecating first. And once you self deprecate and laugh like I kind of, I really suck at this particular part of my job and I think you can give me good feedback on how I could be a better leader for you if you give people permission like look, nobody's going to know that you gave me this feedback. I'm going to get better from it. I'm not going to give you any feedback about your yourself. You already do a great job. I'm the one that's not doing a good job in this area. And I'm coming to you asking to give me feedback on me or the company and what we can do better. And it's. It's like no strings attached. Like, I just need it. I tend to have those people mentor me more.

Okay, interesting.

And what's funny is I started my career at a very young age, and there was. I was always the youngest person in the room, and I worked hard to keep those older folks with me along the way as long as they possibly would stay, because they'll give you a better snapshot of your own growth than you can give yourself. Particularly like the women in accounting. I have really people that have been with me for 20, 30 years, they're like, yeah, I remember when you used to. And I remember this. And I'm really. And you'll get comments like, I'm really proud of how you've matured as a business person, or I'm really proud of how you've developed as a professional. Or I'm really disappointed with what you said or what you did. The longer people are with you, the more honest they'll be if you give them permission.

Right. What about outside advisors?

I struggle with it. Yeah, I struggle with it because I. I probably still need to work on that. In believing that they understand the context.

Okay.

I think every decision in our own respective businesses have context. You can give somebody a scenario, but they got to understand the context of everything and why the situation exists. And I'm fortunate where I have, you know, 15,000 people that I can tap into. And for me, an outside person is a person that I'm not with every day, but they understand the context of the situation. When I decide to exit the public company environment, which I hate, because I think it's a bit contrived. When I decide to exit it, I want my mission to be to really close the gap between the CEO and the real person that works. I want to close that gap. And it's not about income. I'm not like a CEO income hater.

Right.

But I don't like the disparity that exists in perspective. And so I. I really, really want to make sure that all of us in the room never lose sight of where we were five and 10 years ago, how we got there, and. And who helped us get there. That, I think happens a lot. And I want to go crack that. That thing and shatter.

Have you thought about ways to do that?

Yeah, it's easy for me. So I used to do a lot of anchoring on the dayside programming on cnbc. I Used to do a lot of it. And. And I would get really inquisitive. I would say inquisitive. The producers would say combative.

Either one sells. That's good.

Yeah, but I'm not the kind of person that asks a question and lets you give me a softball answer.

Right.

If you're running a big business and you're accountable to people and I'm accountable to people, and we're all accountable to somebody, we need to be forthright. We need to. We need to be transparent. We need to acknowledge mistakes. We need to give credit to the people that did the work and take the blame when things don't go well. When that doesn't happen, I enjoy doing it. And so I can envision myself getting back into that arena because I understand the TV side of it and really holding people accountable and highlighting good leadership and bad leadership. Good leadership is people like the folks in this room who are investing in their thought process, who are invest. You guys are investing in ways to make yourself better. And being here singularly points out that you understand that you don't have all the answers. Being here points out that you are relying on other people, whoever it may be, to learn best practices, to pick up a tip or two to make a contact. That is the key to leadership is the acknowledgment of, I don't know.

Absolutely.

There's an elk of community that believes they have all the answers. And that is to me, like, I. I think my. What I want to do when I grow up.

That sounds fun. Have you ever thought of who taking that for you and for everybody. It sounds really.

Not for everybody, but fun for me.

Oh, wow.

And for the people that. That see that disparity, have you ever.

Thought of taking the company Camping World private?

When a business trades at a multiple that is less than you think, that's usually your first reaction.

Right.

But the reason that I wouldn't follow through on it is because I know what the public vehicle does for the other people that work there.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

Founders are always frustrated by value, but the value is driven by your messaging and your performance and something. Right. The market recognizes something or it doesn't recognize something, but a public vehicle provides a great platform for the next generation and the legacy of the business because the transfer of wealth and power can happen. And I like the transfer of a lot of wealth and the transfer of a lot of power generation to generation to generation. And if you don't have kids, a public company essentially becomes that vehicle.

Right.

For everybody in this Room as you build your businesses and grow. And somebody said to me, we were doing 5,000, thousand we met, or 50,000. Now we're doing a million a month. The public companies provide a good vehicle, but so does private investment. So it is bringing on private investors. And public companies aren't for everybody. Definitely not. They're not great for people that like to give their opinion a lot.

Without having to at all.

Well, I mean, I said to an analyst, that was a dumb write up, right? Like you have your head up your ass and people in the room like, you can't say that. I'm like, but it was dumb.

You acquired the rights to let's Make a Deal?

I did. I didn't think that would come up. So the Monty hall family. I've always been fascinated by the Monty hall problem. If you Google it, the Monty hall problem is essentially what you see the game show born out of, which is if individuals are given choices, multiple choices, which one will they make? And if you narrow that down to two and then you reverse it, which one will they make?

And then Marilyn Vos Savant did an amazing thing on probability, talking about the which door would you choose and which one should you choose? To not get the goat, Right?

So I like the game show of it all and I like the cash flow that the intellectual property came with. So I bought the rights from the Monty hall family about six months ago. I can't disclose what I paid, but it wasn't a great return. But it has these worldwide rights to it and so trying to exploit. In fact, today we just announced that we sold the rights in Germany and we're working on Brazil. But for me, it was really, it was the one thing my wife was totally against me buying.

Really?

Yeah. She was like, I could think of ways to invest $18 million to that are better than a stupid game show. And I was like, no, but it's not about the game show. It's about the fact that I'm the guy that likes to make deals. And to own something that says let's make a deal seems cool. And she's like, she's like, but you.

Can make deals if you don't own them.

So you could buy it and it's not cool. I was like, no, I get it. What I really. The primary reason I bought it is because I, I like the challenge of figuring out how to monetize the asset. So whether it's a live show on a cruise ship or a scratch off a card or whatever, it became a game of itself. I Ultimately want to build it up and, you know, have my wife not think it's a dumb idea. But I do own it and I love it. And we're launching another game show called Split Second, which was another Monty hall property that we're going to bring back.

And so are you going to do a let's make a deal with you as Monty?

I am not.

Okay.

I'm not qualified to do that. Wayne Brady does a perfectly wonderful job today. He's actually really, really great at it. But I will support him as I collect more fees.

I like that.

And just before capitalists, don't forget.

I love that about you.

People get confused because they try to predict what political party I'm from. Because I talk a lot about giving money away, and I give a lot of money away, and I'm like, yes, I'm a capitalist. And then what I choose to do with the rewards of being a capitalist is being conscious about it.

Kind of a republic.

You don't have that trademark.

My assistant just bought the domain, so.

No, but I'm dad, seriously, like, I, I, I'm gonna work that in somewhere.

I like that.

I'm gonna work it into an episode.

I will license that to you.

I, I don't know if people know this, but you can't license. You don't know. In, in 1996, fresh out of college at 20. Can we keep going? Even though the times. Yeah, okay. In 1996, fresh out of college, I ran for office. Yeah, I ran as a house republic rat.

Yeah, I like it. Yeah. Now you owe me 50 bucks.

I ran for the house. I was 20 something years old. I'm just out of college, had no experience. I would go to these debates and people would be like, what is your position? I'm like, I'm for education. Well, can you give us some specifics? I cannot, but neither can he. And it was the greatest experience of my life, in all truth, because I didn't really have a political perspective. When you're 20 years old, like, what perspective could you possibly have? You don't pay taxes, you don't have a family, you don't own a home, you don't have a mortgage. Like, you just think that everything's cool. I'm just going to give free away. But what I learned through that process is I learned how to lose. I learned how to panhandle legitimately, where you're essentially begging for something. You're begging for approval, and the approval is the vote.

Right.

And you lose and you go through public and embarrassment it was really hard for me because I had experienced it early on in life and I was trying not to regurgitate it. And I did. But what I did realize is I realized that I can be more impactful as a business person. I can change public policy more through example, through behavior, through actions. And I really did like that. And then I realized that I can take that and then I can become even more of a public, public policy changer through television.

Yes.

And so those two things were good byproducts of it. I also met the most popular, most important person in my business career ever through that, which was I. I did an event. Bob Graham, who was the senator from Florida for a number of years, threw a party for me and on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. I thought I was really cool. I was 20 and like the senator was throwing me a party at an art campaign gallery. I was, that's pretty good. And he brought a good friend of his name, Wayne Huizenga. And Wayne Heising at the time was the founder of Republic Industries, founded Blockbuster Video, owned the Coke bottling company and he was starting a new company that at the time wasn't called this, but it was autonomous automation.

Yeah.

And that's where I got my first job, away from my family. And I was making huge money. I was making like $50,000 a year. Wow. But at 21 years old, you were rich, right? I mean you had an eleven hundred dollar mortgage payment, a $375 car payment. But you. But it was yours, it was mine and I achieved it. And it was a big accomplishment for me. And Wayne was instrumental in pushing my career along inside of that company and then ultimately introducing me to the RV business.

Business.

And because of Wayne Huizenga, I met Lee Iacocca.

Right.

And because of Lee Iacocca, he was on the board of this defunct public company that I didn't know was defunct when I took the job. And I was, I did that for a while. And so I do, I do. I am grateful about how every door opens another opportunity, including the ones that.

Even the ones that you don't.

That you got smashed in your face.

Yeah, yeah.

Even the ones you don't want to close, that are closing are going to open up better. The last thing I want to ask because you, I think, rearrange your schedule a little bit because tomorrow you're shooting on this new show.

Yeah.

The Renovator. Will you tell us just a little bit about. Give us a preview.

So people have asked, is the profit over or not? I think it's over. NBC has a different opinion.

Right.

And they have a lot of lawyers.

Yeah.

So we'll tell them that you'd like an episode where there's a shark going and you're skiing and you jump over.

Well, I wouldn't use a shark as an example, but I'll use a dolphin.

I like it because it has so many meanings.

But aside from that, I think what happened to me during COVID is I started to realize that the home with this place that we were trapped in for a long time, was actually the most important business in our life. And I was watching how people were losing homes and. And trying to deal with each other in their home and decided that I wanted to take the profit concept and take it to people's homes. And so we're making a show right now for HGTV that'll air in, I think, probably April Ish, called the Renovator, where we're renovating the way people think about their home, and we're changing the way they think about money, about the value of their home, about the relationship with their home, about the relationship with the people in their home. And much like a business.

Right.

If you just think about your house, cash comes in, that's your income, cash goes out, those are your expenses, and your P and L at the end of the month is either plus or minus. The difference is that you can keep it alive by taking on more debt and taking on more mortgages and taking on more credit cards and doing all these different things. So we're there to renovate. The way people think about each other, the way they think about their home, home, the way they think about their asset, the way they think about money. And we use a renovation as a vehicle to deliver messages. And really, if you take a step back from the profit, which has been a huge part of my life, it's almost 25% of my life I've done. Wasn't really a show about business. It was a show that I used business as a vehicle, as the canvas to talk about relationships.

Absolutely.

With partnerships with spouses, with kids, with your neighbor, with your vendors, with your creditors, with whatever it may be. And I think the reason it resonated so well is because it wasn't so transactional. It had a transaction in it, but it was really more about the people behind the business. And I can come do it with anybody in this room. And you'll find that you'll learn a lot about your yourself, and you'll learn a lot about your business. And so I Decided just to take that to homes.

That's awesome. Let's give Marcus a big hand. Thank you so much for coming out.

Really appreciate it. One more thing before, one more thing that I would like you guys to think about. You come to these events for a reason, and these events are put on to provide a platform for people to learn. And what you take from here and what you implement from here is up to you. These events are always going to exist. And the reason that I've done a lot with these guys is because I truly, honestly, wholeheartedly believe that if you invest in yourself first and you put the time and the effort into getting more out of your brain and out of your heart and out of the people that are around you, your business will do this. And ultimately, if you peel back everything that they teach you, it really is about getting the most out of yourself. Yeah, there's other techniques and there's other things that you could teach people how to buy a business without. You can do all those things, but it really is mostly about getting the best out of yourself. So for those of you that have made the decision to invest in yourself, I promise you, maybe not tomorrow morning and maybe not tomorrow afternoon, but at some point, the dividends that you'll get will be monstrous. So thank you to you guys and your organization for giving people like us a place to come, share ideas and learn about ourselves. I don't think enough is done this way, and it's done in a very professional and ethical manner that a lot of people don't do. And so I'm grateful to you guys for putting this on for all of us.

Thank you.

You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Frazier. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information, go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening.

Hey, quick question. Do you know someone who's looking to grow as a leader? Maybe their team is growing a little faster than they expected. Or maybe their new role requires them to work a little bit more through people. If the answer is yes, I want to recommend a new podcast by the Scalable Media Network called Ready to Lead. It's hosted by Richard Lindner, one of Roland and Ryan's business partners, and Jeff Mask, who's one of the top executive coaches in the world. They cover tactical strategies on how to improve as a leader and also their biggest failures they've had throughout their career. You can find the show@readytolead.com or search for it wherever you listen to podcasts.

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