Lemons Into Lemonade

Keep your focus. Stay disciplined, know your numbers and work hard. 

These actions are key to any entrepreneur’s success, says Marcus Lemonis. And, if anyone should know, it’s Lemonis, a self-made multimillionaire and star of CNBC’s primetime reality TV series “The Profit.”

The chairman and CEO of Camping World – the nation’s largest recreational vehicle retailer, with a market value of $3 billion – didn’t have a typical Hollywood rise to stardom. Lemonis, 46, was abandoned mere days after his birth in an orphanage in war-torn Beirut, Lebanon. 

“I always saw myself as the underdog, and I still do today,” he told Chicago Business. 

Growing up in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood as the only child of Lebanese and Greek adoptive parents, Lemonis struggled with bulimia after being sexually molested by a relative and had difficulty making friends. He has described his childhood as “terrible” and “lonely,” yet it taught him a tenacity that has served him well in the years since.

At the age of 12, Lemonis started his first business: a lawn-mowing service that earned him $700 a week and allowed him to hire 10 other children to work for him. After a year, he had saved enough money to open a second business, selling candy. While he wasn’t the most popular kid in school, it became clear early on that he not only enjoyed making a profit in business but was also incredibly good at it.

He also learned that he would have to earn his way through life. Although his grandfather, a prominent multimillionaire businessman who owned two of the largest Chevrolet dealerships in the country, told him he would receive a Corvette when he turned 16, his parents had a different idea. Instead, his father took him to a local body shop and pointed out the car he was actually getting: a makeshift vehicle that had been welded together from the wrecks of two different cars.

The message was clear, Lemonis recalled during an interview with radio host Alan Taylor: “If you want something, you’re not entitled to it. You didn’t buy it. You didn’t pay for it. You want it? Go buy it yourself.”

After graduating from Miami’s Christopher Columbus High School, an all-boys Catholic school, Lemonis briefly flirted with the idea of entering the priesthood. Instead, he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to study political science, criminology and economics at Marquette University.

Armed with a degree in political science, he returned to Miami to work for the family business. At the Chevy dealership, he learned the fine art of negotiation as a car salesman – only to be fired by his grandfather when he announced bigger ambitions: to run for the Florida House of Representatives as a Democrat.

While he didn’t win, he made an integral connection during his campaign. A lobbyist he met introduced him to legendary South Florida billionaire Wayne Huizenga, whose business strategy involved aggressive acquisitions of smaller operators in the sanitation, video rental and car industries.

Lemonis soon went to work for Huizenga at the Fort Lauderdale-based AutoNation, eventually moving up the corporate ladder to become its director of regional operations. After several years, Lee Iacocca – a family friend, mentor and Chrysler CEO – advised Lemonis to leave the car industry and get into the less competitive camping and RV business instead.

He took Iacocca’s advice. And, at 26, Lemonis became the CEO of a struggling publicly traded company, Holiday RV Superstores. He co-founded the RV business FreedomRoads in 2003 and quickly expanded it by purchasing mom-and-pop dealerships across the country. He then merged it with Camping World in 2006 and Good Sam Enterprises in 2010.

Today, he has virtually streamlined the RV industry, leading thousands of employees in 36 states and recording billions in sales every year. Along with his wife, fellow entrepreneur Roberta Raffel, 67, he also owns the Marcus Lemonis Fashion Group, with boutiques across the country.

On “The Profit,” which debuted in 2013, he shares a lifetime’s worth of hard-won lessons with small business owners trying to turn around their struggling operations. In addition to investing his own money in them – so far, $50 million and counting – Lemonis stresses the three Ps of business success in his approach: people, process and product.

“What are the people like who work there and own the place, and are they committed to the business, are they about team or are they about them? What kind of process does the business have – is it customer-friendly, is it dynamic?” he told Fortune. “Is the product they’re selling relevant to the consumer, and is it priced properly? Too often, small businesses try to make a profit by creating a margin that the marketplace isn’t going to sell.”

Lemonis’s often tough-love approach can be polarizing. Some business partners love him, and others hate him.

“I am still a giant asshole,” he told Chicago Business. “But I am also the same person that will comfort and support.”

Over the years, “The Profit” has focused on four South Florida businesses: Fuelfood in West Palm Beach, in 2015; Grafton Furniture in Miami, in 2015; Swim by Chuck Handy in North Miami Beach, in 2017; and Hip Pops in Fort Lauderdale, in 2017.

As the show approaches its eighth season, Lemonis wants viewers to see beyond small business processes to the bigger picture.

“I want to take the show in a direction that will continue to ask the hard questions, deal with the hard issues,” he told Reality Blurred. “I think it’s important for people to ask more philosophical questions about society and business and how human interest and commerce intersect.”

Lemonis, in a guest column for Variety, urged entrepreneurs to view the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity: “There’s never been a better time to look inside yourself and think about what you want, who you need around you and what your priorities are. How will you answer the questions I pose to every small business owner I meet? Will you have done the work to change your personal habits and put others ahead of yourself? Will you have adapted the processes that you operate by? Will you have evolved the product or service you offer the world? 

“It’s time to stand up, dust off and move forward. The world needs what you have to give.” O