Marcus and the ASL Sign Company

This was a total dud of an episode, in my humble opinion, due to the lack of any business lessons. It feels as if they remembered just last weekend that there was one more Tuesday night episode to do and used scenes from the cutting room floor. I can’t think of any other reason for airing something so incomplete and devoid of content.

Background

ASL Sign Company of Surfside Beach, SC, is owned by a recent transplant from Long Island, NY, Anthony Leggio. He launched the company just two years ago with substantial help from his girlfriend Kirsten Christian and father. His dad basically bankrolled the entire business to the tune of $225K and continues to help out because of his career in the signage industry.

Anthony has big ambitions that involve blowing off all the small accounts and replacing them with national ones. You see, he’s tired of chump change and wants the big money flowing in asap.

Anthony is stunned to hear that his Megadeth logo design should not be shown to the client.

The Company

What separates ASL from most local sign businesses is that it does everything including the manufacturing of a wide range of sign types. It currently has about $300K in sales with a profit of $45K, which is pretty decent for a such a young business. There’s certainly no cash flow crisis threatening to kill it within 60 days as we have become accustomed to over two seasons.

Oddly enough, Anthony holds 100% of the company stock. His dad who has provided both the capital and signage industry expertise doesn’t have any equity. Nor does Kirsten who works full time for ASL. She doesn’t even get paid and has to ask Anthony for cash to buy groceries and other necessities. This is a bad sign in my book. I have seen more than a few startups implode because the founder couldn’t bring him or herself to issue any shares to their team.

So why did Anthony really contact Marcus if he’s doing okay at the moment?

Unlike most of The Profit’s businesses to date, it wasn’t about getting a big check from Marcus. Rather Anthony used the show as a rouge to have Marcus fly down to SC so that he could pitch the idea of becoming the exclusive sign supplier for the latter’s rapidly growing empire. This begs the question why not just use the normal sales approach and contact head office about doing a presentation? Maybe Anthony is on the No Fly List due to all the tatts? All I know is that I would have been very annoyed at being tricked like this.

The Growth Strategy

There is none. As I said above this was a dud episode. I give it a C-. Hear that, Marcus? Standards are slipping.

The Episode in a Nutshell

It turns out that Anthony has 1) a huge ego, 2) is a control freak, and 3) and is a devotee of the Death Metal School of Design. As a result he quickly starts butting heads with Marcus in between micromanaging his employees and contradicting them in front of customers. When a fed up Marcus announces that he’s leaving, Anthony reveals the real reason why he applied to the show. Strangely enough Marcus decides to stay in order to hear more. (It was probably because of the thought of making signs for $45 and selling them for $450.) However, it’s not too long before he leaves again after concluding for a second time that Anthony would be impossible to work with.

Business Lessons

Here is one I will share despite it not being addressed by the episode. There are different levels of self-employed business-people.

Tycoons

These are the top of the food chain types. Marcus is one high profile example. They make their money by accumulating businesses. Hence the use of the word “empire” when referring to their portfolios. Most billionaires fall into this category.

Entrepreneurs

These are the next level. Entrepreneurs are motivated to run with a particular product or service idea and grow it as big and fast as possible. To use baseball parlance, they swing for a home run.

Small Business Owners

Small business owners tend to be more motivated by a desire to create a steady income and accumulate wealth gradually. Their preferred strategy is to go for singles rather than the home run.

Be Your Own Bossers

Then at the very bottom you have these guys. They are very good at talking the talk about being entrepreneurs while in reality they are the exact opposite. They are basically pretenders. Most of them started a business for negative reasons. Due to various personality quirks they become unemployable. As a result they eventually start their own business so that no one can fire them again. They then build it up to a few hundred thousand in revenues and stall out. The reason for this is that they are insecure control freaks incapable of taking the next steps to grow further. These steps mostly revolve around having the confidence to hire managers and delegate to them. Be Your Own Bossers (“BYOBers”) also tend to be miserly and unwilling to invest in their businesses to help them grow. A dead dead giveaway that a business is run by a BYOBer is obsolete equipment held together by duct tape, a total lack of systems and organization, and a lack of growth.

Judging by all the times that Anthony interfered with his designer’s decisions and how he treats everyone in general, including customers, I’d wager that he’s a classic BYOBer. Kirsten and his father still have no equity? Really? He even chastises Marcus for being late one morning and doesn’t back off when told to shut it. Classic BYOBer.

BYOBers don’t win national accounts. They end up servicing the worst local customers because no one else wants to do business with them.

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