I remember the day like it was yesterday. Shawn Burst (CEO of DirectMail.io) called me to tell me that Marcus just asked us to be on The Profit. Marcus believed we could help one of the businesses that he was currently working with. Two weeks later, he flew us up to New Jersey to shoot footage for the opener of Season 7 (Episode 701).
Why us? The answer is quite simple, but the story starts a few months prior to the invite.
It started when we were asked to create a marketing strategy for Camping World. This is one of the companies that Marcus owns and the brands he associates himself with, but like a good owner, he's put talented people in charge and he lets them run the business.
We jumped right in and did a few test campaigns for different locations. We had a tremendous amount of success, so more Camping World dealerships requested to use our services. Essentially we worked with 16 dealerships in the RV franchise generating over $9 million in gross revenue in just a very short period of time. (You can review the case study here.)
At this point, we were just grateful for the opportunity to work with a big brand and show off our marketing skills. We weren't introduced to Marcus until a little later, when he was in New Orleans for a conference...a mere 30 miles from our office. We had a mutual friend introduce us and new conversations started.
Now that Marcus knew who we were, and what we were able to accomplish with his biggest brand, he wanted to test our skills with something a little smaller, his personal restaurant in Chicago. This is a high-end restaurant, so the clientele and strategy would be completely different from Camping World. This time we worked directly with Marcus and his team, designing the marketing and establishing the strategy. Again, we hit another home run. (See the MLG case study here).
If you follow The Profit, you know Marcus is not short on businesses. With the success we were having he was interested in learning more about what strategies we would create for some of his other businesses. Over the next few months, we worked with several different teams and created strategies that fit all kinds of different budgets. We worked with Good Sam, The Simple Greek, Bentley's Pets, Key Lime Pie Company, and Shop Marcus, his high-end fashion boutique that he runs with his wife Bobbi.
Our relationship with Marcus was strictly an agency/client. The fact that he had a hit show on CNBC wasn't even factored into our day-to-day with him, so that's why the call came as such a big surprise. Our ability to analyze the markets and define strategies for so many of his businesses, created a perfect fit to help a struggling family-owned Italian restaurant that he was working with in New Jersey. When Marcus called us, we didn't even know what business we were going to help.
If you're passionate about what you do, eventually you become pretty good at it and people will notice. The entire experience on The Profit was amazing. Marcus and his crew couldn't have been a nicer group of people, and the people at Dante's Italian are incredibly amazing.
If you're interested in letting us consult you on your business, and how we can help you with your marketing strategy, check out what we do here. Sign up to learn more and we'll have a quick discovery call to see if we have a solution to help your business.