Rumor is he is being courted to have the new B-school named after him. He sat next to Lovell at the Bucky game last December.==================
Age: 41. Born in Beirut, where he was adopted from an orphanage.
Grew up in: Miami
Marital status: Single, no children
First job: A lawn-mowing service at age 12; he employed 10.
Politicial aspirations:
Ran for student body president at Marquette University three times. Lost. Ran for state representative in Miami. Lost.
Profession he briefly contemplated: Priest
Main gig: Chairman and CEO of Camping World and Good Sam Enterprises in Lincolnshire
Other gigs: Host of CNBC's "The Profit"; serial investor
First turnaround: Holiday RV Superstores, a struggling publicly traded company based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when he was 26.
Estimated net worth:
North of $300 millionTotal investments: More than 100 companies
==================
Marcus Lemonis has fans. Why doesn't he have friends?September 17, 2015
By: Meribah Knight
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150917/ISSUE03/150919859/marcus-lemonis-has-fans-why-doesnt-he-have-friends#utm_medium=email&utm_source=ccb-dailyalert&utm_campaign=ccb-dailyalert-20150918
Marcus Lemonis is fretting over subpar kettle corn. “Here is the key to popcorn,” he says, leaning across his desk and plucking a kernel from a box of samples. “The kernels have to be big.” He holds up a specimen, inspecting it before tossing it into his mouth.
Responsible for this kettle corn flop is Sweet Pete's, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based confectionery featured on the second season of Lemonis' CNBC reality show, “The Profit.” In exchange for half the company, Lemonis invested $5 million in Sweet Pete's, giving its owners capital to expand their operation and distribution. Thanks to his deep pockets and expertise, Lemonis says, the company's revenue has jumped tenfold, to $4 million.
“The Profit,” which debuted in 2013, gave Lemonis a bona fide TV career in addition to his day job as CEO of Camping World, a Lincolnshire-based national chain of RV dealerships, and Good Sam, an RV travel club under the same holding company.
The recreational vehicle business is far less glamorous than holding court on a network show, but Lemonis considers it his main gig. Since taking the helm of Camping World in 2005, he has grown the company from 29 stores and $100 million in revenue to 139 stores pulling in $3.8 billion annually.
“The Profit,” in its third season with strong ratings, falls somewhere between “Shark Tank” and “Bar Rescue.” With his own money, Lemonis revives small businesses by investing in them and coaching them, guided by his trademarked motto of the three P's: “People, process and product.”
It's a narrative that plays out on and off TV. Sweet Pete's is just one of more than 100 companies, from bakeries to hair salons to used-car dealerships, in which Lemonis invests. (His investments can range from taking a percentage of ownership to acting as lender or being the landlord to a company. Most are partnerships, though he has been known to buy out an owner's stake.)
In the summer of 2014 he stepped in to save New York-based Crumbs Bake Shop, acquiring it for $6.5 million in a joint venture with Fischer Enterprises. He announced this month that he had sold his stake, retaining the Crumbs name for baked goods he plans to sell at retail.
One morning in early July, I head to a drab office park in Lincolnshire where Camping World, Good Sam and Marcus Lemonis (his namesake business) occupy a suite. On one side sit 100 Camping World employees. On the other, 15 staffers manage Lemonis' ever-multiplying portfolio of investments.
In his office, mounds of popcorn are piled high on his desk. The office is small, sparse and nondescript, filled with Nascar knickknacks, a few business and history books and a magazine with a smiling Lemonis on the cover. Between his shooting schedule and overseeing Camping World's 139 locations, he's on the road 80 percent of the year, flying commercial or using his private jet if efficiency warrants it.
“I am not a big believer in managing from the office,” he says.
Dressed head-to-toe in blue—jeans, sweater, dress shirt and Valentino sneakers—he greets me with a warm smile and a sturdy handshake.
At 41, Lemonis still has his boyish looks despite a thinning hairline.
“Where do you want me to sit?” he asks. “I hate sitting across from people.” He proceeds to sink into the large leather chair behind his desk anyway. “You can ask me anything,” he says.
“I am driven really by this odd fulfillment that I get from helping people,” Lemonis says of his mission to help foundering companies. Though not in a philanthropic way, to be clear. Charity for charity's sake does not give him that same fuzzy feeling. But funneling $30 million of his estimated fortune of more than $300 million into small businesses in exchange for equity boosts his mood and his balance sheet—though he declines to say by how much. “It's my version of giving back. But,” he adds, “I expect to get something back as well.”
Lemonis' contradictory nature is an ever-present dynamic. He wants to help, to be the savior. But he also wants to make a profit and call the shots, which can put him into the role of a foe all too quickly. He is either beloved or loathed by the businesses he tries to assist. “I am still a giant pretty boy,” he says of his working style. “But I am also the same person that will comfort and support.”
Amplifying this dichotomy is Lemonis' distant and elusive nature. “I am not typically a trusting person,” he says. “I always think about what people want from me.” He is a self-proclaimed loner, without many close friends, single, childless and, he says, devoted to his work.
Yet he speaks frequently about a youth spent seeking acceptance and trying desperately to form close relationships. “My greatest fear in life is not losing money, not being poor,” he says. “The greatest fear in life is dying alone.”
In the end, his proclivity to isolate wins out. “It's hard to be in a relationship with me,” he admits. Recently, though, rumors surfaced that he has been dating Bethenny Frankel, founder of Skinnygirl Cocktails and a cast member of Bravo's “The Real Housewives of New York City.” He declines to comment.
It's this default detachment that gives the people Lemonis meets and the businesses he tries to help just enough to form an opinion of one extreme or the other.
“He's amazing to work for and amazing to know. He's brilliant,” says Carolyn DeVito, a salon owner on New York's Long Island featured on Season 2 of “The Profit.” Lemonis initially gave her more than $200,000 in working capital in exchange for 20 percent of the business and 51 percent of her hair-product line. “He's an extremely caring and compassionate human being,” she adds.
A business owner featured on Season 1, however, struggles to keep his composure when asked about Lemonis. “His word is worthless,” says the owner, asking to remain anonymous, citing the confidentiality agreement he had signed. “He's an arrogant, self-centered egomaniac narcissist who has no regard for what he does to people.”
“Marcus is a great guy,” says Kathleen Kamouyero-Ference, co-founder of My Big Fat Greek Gyro, a McMurray, Pa.-based restaurant expanding into Highland Park under its new name, the Simple Greek, thanks to Lemonis' help. “He has been so hands-on,” she says of Lemonis, who tastes every new dish before it goes on the menu and pushes the company to revamp with healthier options.
Allison Behringer, co-owner of Sweet Pete's, says the partnership with Lemonis has been terrific. He is accessible when you want him, yet because his hands are in so many different investments, she says, “he is able to look at it more long term.”
Sharla McBride says being on the show nearly killed her business. “They told me they were going to build my company,” says McBride, owner of Planet Popcorn, a popcorn maker in Newport Beach, Calif., from Season 1 of “The Profit.” “But it was the complete opposite. . . . Financially they assassinated my company.”
After the show aired, McBride lost a lucrative vendor deal with Disneyland because her episode featured mentions of Disney, a violation of her verbal agreement with the company. Despite written protests from her and her lawyer, CNBC refused to edit out mentions of Disney before airing. Their counsel said such a stipulation was not communicated when she signed the release form. (Later, Lemonis gave McBride $50,000 to help her web business.)
It's a harsh reminder that a business relationship failing behind closed doors is far different from one failing on national television. And as the face of the show, Lemonis inevitably has a target on his back when businesses feel slighted. “Not every deal goes well,” he concedes.
And that includes some local ventures, such as Rose's Wheat Free Bakery & Cafe in Evanston and Little Miss Muffin, a Chicago-based commercial baker. Lemonis says he lost $2 million and $1.5 million in the respective deals. “That was just a flat-out mistake on my part. I was too busy doing too many things. Spreading myself too thin,” he says. “I let the emotion and the sympathy for somebody's problem get the best of me.”
Lemonis was adopted from an orphanage in war-torn Beirut when he was 9 months old. He has no idea whether his parents died in the war or chose to give him up. And he has no interest in knowing. “I always felt like questioning that would almost be like saying . . . I am not satisfied with what I have,” he says.
He grew up in Miami, the only child of loving adoptive parents. His father, now retired, worked for the family's Chevy dealership and his mother, whom he was closest to and who died two years ago at 76, managed an office building. A latchkey kid and self-characterized “lone ranger,” he describes his childhood as “terrible.” He struggled to make friends, was molested by a relative, became quite overweight and subsequently developed an eating disorder. “I always saw myself as the underdog, and I still do today,” he says.
At 12, Lemonis started his first business, a lawn-mowing service. He had 10 kids working for him. A year later he saved enough from the venture to open a candy business. “I was young but I knew I liked money, enjoyed making a profit and it was apparent that I was great at math,” he writes in an email.
After diving into Catholicism and briefly contemplating becoming a priest—“That was one place where there was general acceptance,” he says—Lemonis went to Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he majored in political science and minored in criminology and economics. It was a far cry from Miami. “I thought I could reinvent myself. I could be something different.”
Turns out he still couldn't find his niche. He ran for student body president three times and lost. He became a bartender, not because he liked to drink but because he wanted to be in the social scene and “work on my skills” since he still had a hard time making close friends.
Post-graduation he returned to Miami to work in the family business. That didn't last, and soon he ran for state representative as a Democrat, a digression from his family's politics. He lost—adding yet another rejection to the heap. During the campaign he met Chicago-bred billionaire Wayne Huizenga, founder of Blockbuster Video, Waste Management and AutoNation, among other ventures. It led to a job at AutoNation, where Lemonis cut his teeth for the next four years. In 1999 he moved to Chicago with the auto retailer.
When he arrived at AutoNation, legendary auto man and family friend Lee Iacocca suggested that Lemonis go into RVs since it was less competitive. At 26, Lemonis became CEO of Holiday RV Superstores, a struggling publicly traded company based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He spent 18 months turning around Holiday—flying back and forth between his home in Chicago and Florida, where he stayed at his parents' house. In 2003 he founded the RV business Freedom Roads and began expanding the company by buying mom-and-pop dealerships across the country. In 2006 Freedom Roads merged with Camping World.
Lemonis' personal wealth comes not from a salary or some massive cash-out, but rather from the success of his businesses and RV dealerships. “I profit from the profitability,” he says. It helps, too, that he lives modestly for a multimillionaire. He has two homes, in Lake Forest and in Manhattan. He owns one car, a used Mercedes sport utility from Morton Grove-based AutoMatch USA, a pre-owned-car business in which he has invested $7 million.
In 2012, Lemonis was featured on an episode of “Secret Millionaire,” a reality show on ABC. In early 2013 he met with Jim Ackerman, CNBC's senior vice president of prime-time alternative programming. Ackerman was looking for ideas, and Lemonis pitched him on a show about saving struggling small businesses. “Shark Tank,” following a similar model except with startups, had been on the air for years, buoying the cable network with its high ratings. Lemonis, who says he avoids investing in startups, believed he had an idea that was different. “People want to see the truth and see inside the businesses. They don't want to see an elevator pitch,” he says. And coming out of a major recession, he knew there were companies that needed his help.
CNBC was hooked. “We felt that was a great formula for rethinking how you do the traditional business makeover show,” Ackerman says. With Lemonis willing to make real investments, the show could go beyond the paltry production budget and “do something that had real impact,” he adds. The only requirement for Lemonis, he says, was that it couldn't come across as faked. “Whatever we did, it had to be super authentic,” he says. “Good news, bad news, pretty, ugly, it didn't matter.”
The fault in this concept is that reality TV is never quite real. Small dramas are amped up. Storylines are manufactured, if not sped up with the help of editing, all for the sake of the perfect 42-minute arc. One business owner, who, like many others interviewed, asked for anonymity for fear of breaching the nondisclosure, remembers shooting her episode and one of the producers saying, “ 'I'll get the talent together.' I thought, what talent?” she recalls. “We are employees. This is a business. That's when it kind of clicked.”
One might chalk it up to bitterness and denial, the beast of reality TV, fast and loose editing, or deals gone badly.
Those still in business with Lemonis and the richer for it admit it's difficult to be portrayed on reality TV. “Does it bring out the dirty laundry in your business? Yes, it does,” says DeVito, the Long Island salon owner. “But to help you.”
For Lemonis, the lines are clear: He wants to help. But if you lie to him, hide things from him, don't pull your weight, the deal is off. And the stakes are all the higher, because as someone with few friends, he considers business deals his way of forming relationships. (He compares doing a business deal to going out for margaritas with friends. For him they share the same pleasure space.) So if a relationship goes south, it feels like yet another rejection or betrayal. “I draw a parallel to how I felt as a child,” he says.
And if businesses suffer as a result, well, they should think of that before coming on TV and speaking untruths, he says. Clearly the show resonates, he adds, citing the more than 40,000 applications it has received in its three seasons on the air. Clearly businesses want his help.
As of mid-September, Lemonis has invested in 17 of the 30 companies featured on “The Profit.”
After two hours of talking, he's getting a bit antsy. Tapping his feet, he stares out the window and picks at the kettle corn. His media director pops her head in; we are due downstairs for photos.
Lemonis extends his dealmaking hand for a parting shake. “You can call me for follow-ups!” he says as we walk out. “Call me anytime.”
