How Marcus Lemonis Deals With Work-Life Balance (and Becoming Financially Literate)

If you’re going to be a business owner, you have to accept the fact that your life is going to be very different. 

And business owners have literally everything at stake. You have everything at stake, right? 

It’s tough if you choose to be a business owner. It is a very different world. You make sacrifices and you miss out on certain things. 

I think you have to really be comfortable with that. If you’re not comfortable having a different life and giving 100% of your time, unfortunately to all of those people it may not be the thing for you for. 

I made the choice years ago that that was going to be my purpose. I was going to commit myself to really being invested in people. 

It’s a tough balance for me because I give up other things and that’s not something that’s a bad thing. 

I think people need to understand that I’m not a huge believer, and I need to work on it. 

I’m not a huge believer that as a business owner, you can perfect the work-life balance. 

I just don’t know how it’s possible because at 3:00 in the morning when you get a call that your building’s burning down, or that a job went bad, or there’s an employee issue, it just happens when you can’t make payroll on Friday or Thursday night. 

You’re not out at the movies. You’re just not. But your employees are. 

And I think that’s just the choice you have to make. 

To become a professional athlete, you live a certain lifestyle. If you become a priest, you live a certain lifestyle. If you become a small business owner, you live a certain lifestyle. 

So, I don’t have the answer, I don’t have a secret. It’s tough. 

…

There is this amazing machine called the Google machine. 

We laugh about it, but if you think about it, when most of us were educated, we had a textbook that we would get at school and put in our backpack and we had to learn basic things there. 

If we didn’t do well, we would get a tutor. 

If the tutor didn’t work out, our mothers would park us in the library for a week. 

That was the way we learned. 

In today’s day and age, whether you are a child or whether you’re an adult, the internet is a very powerful place and more importantly, a very private place. 

I think a lot of us are slightly embarrassed to admit that we don’t know certain definitions. 

We don’t know the difference between debit and credit. It’s counterintuitive. 

We don’t know what a balance sheet is. We don’t know how to manage our cash flow. We don’t even know what that means. 

Rather than being embarrassed about it, you can go on to the Internet and literally type in “explain what a balance sheet is.” 

There are a number of courses and every day that you have a question, either ask somebody and be comfortable with not knowing the answer or write it down on a piece of paper, and at night go study. 

Once a day, go online and find some financial term that you don’t know that will help you. 

The Internet really gives you the ability to do that. 

If you want to take it a step further, there are online courses that you can take even on your phone. You can literally go onto your phone or your tablet and take a lot of different classes. 

For those of you who commute by train or ride the bus, or have a job that gives you some breaks, what a great chance to learn. 

I really want small businesses to focus all of their marketing on calls to action in the early stages of things. 

I think branding is important, but I think there are creative ways to do it. 

I would rather take those branding dollars and drive in-store activation or in-service activation. 

I like things that are going to get people to raise their hand and buy the service or buy the product or engage with my company. 

My favorite form of marketing – I still like good old-fashioned direct mail. 

Believe it or not, that’s my favorite because it brings a call to action. 

I like active social media that involves behind-the-scenes looks into the business. If you own party planning business, I would take little video clips with permission from the party thrower and show people how it works. 

You know, because ultimately the people and what happens behind the scenes, it engages people and brings them closer to your business. 

Do you think there’s a higher chance of someone paying attention to your direct mail flyer if there’s a remotely famous, let’s say, NBA player on the front? 

I think it really depends on the product. 

I think the product or service that you’re offering and the endorsement that you’re connecting them to have to be relevant. 

Here’s a good example: if I owned a local physical therapy clinic, then yes. Having a professional athlete would make sense. 

To me, if I owned a cigar bar, then maybe having a professional athlete would make sense to me. If I owned a flower shop… maybe not so much. 

It would really matter to me what the business was and how I was going to bring that recognizable image. 

That celebrity has to add value to the business and has to really use the product, be familiar with it, be engaged in it, and people have to really see that too. 

It has to be obvious to the consumer why there’s a connection.

Typically, what I see a lot is professional athletes and automobile dealerships. 

To me, that doesn’t make me want to buy the car there. 

What makes me want to buy the car is, am I getting a good monthly payment? 

Am I getting a good deal? 

The endorsement may separate me from everybody else, but it doesn’t give me the ability. It doesn’t take away my requirement to do the basic fundamentals. 

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