Marcus Lemonis is the Chairman and CEO of Camping World Holdings (NYSE:CWH), and ranks as one of the most well-known business executives in the country, in large part due to his hit TV show and broad social media reach.
As the star of The Profit on CNBC, the investor and philanthropist showcases his investment and leadership style. He also featured in a season of The Partner, in which he searches for a business manager who takes a percentage of his own holdings. (He ended up hiring Juliana Reed for the position, giving her an estimated $300,000 of his net worth as payment).
Lemonis has enjoyed enormous financial success, which gave him the deep pockets to buy the rights to the game show Let’s Make a Deal.
However, there’s often a dark side behind the cameras and set lighting – court dockets filed in the U.S. District Court show over 50 family businesses from the show accusing Lemonis of racketeering activity by harming them.
All this begs the question: what is the Marcus Lemonis leadership style? How did he become famous and how rich is he?
Who Is Marcus Lemonis?
Lemonis was born in 1973, and he unsuccessfully ran for the Florida House of Representatives shortly after graduating from college. He then worked for his grandfather’s car dealership before shifting gears into RV sales thanks to coaxing from Lee Iaccoca, a family friend.
By 2006, the company he co-founded merged with Camping World, which in turn merged with Good Sam Enterprises. Lemonis was named CEO of both mergers, which put him at the helm of an empire.
In the 2010s, Lemonis kickstarted his television career as he slowly built his social accounts to over a million followers. He’s a public figure and executive who’s also interested in philanthropy and politics, and he invests as much in his own enterprise as he does other peoples’ businesses on TV.
Does Lemonis Own Camping World?
Camping World (CWH) is a public company, so there’s no one owner. But Lemonis owns over 550,000 shares of the company, which would puts his net worth at $20 million from this business alone.
Remarkably, about 45.6 percent of Camping World is owned by company insiders. Their faith in the company seems justified as it appears to have a lot of upside potential based on a discounted cash flow forecast analysis.
Lemonis accumulated more shares over the past few years. He made several large purchases in 2020 and 2021, showing just how confident he is in the company’s future. It’s a positive sign for CWH investors. But what they may be worried about is the growing concern surrounding his on-screen business dealings.
Lemonis Does Real Business on TV
The Profit is one of the highest-rated shows on CNBC, and around 40,000 small business owners apply each year to be featured. Over 70 businesses have been selected over the course of eight seasons since 2013, and the rules are pretty simple.
Lemonis gives the business a cash offer in exchange for a percentage of their business. Regardless of whether he’s the majority shareholder, he insists he is fully in charge. And the preview for each episode shows him being confrontational and aggressive while verbally demolishing these business owners.
Some businesses report great success with his help – Bentley’s Pet Stuff, for example, earns a reported $100 million annual revenue. these days, after Lemonis invested $40 million in the chain to grow it from seven stores in 2016 to over 60 locations today.
Successful owners fulfill what Lemonis calls the “three Ps.”
What Are Marcus Lemonis’s Three Ps?
Lemonis doesn’t believe in luck. Instead, he preaches the three Ps in all episodes of his show. When analyzing any business, he checks these three Ps:
People
The people running the business and working for it are important to its success. If you have the right people in the right positions, you can work as a team to accomplish anything. And you need to treat these people right.
Sometimes Lemonis analyzes a business on the show that has the wrong people. ASL Sign Sales & Service, for example, was allegedly run by “a bully”. His domineering temper was so bad in Marcus’ view that he claimed he was afraid he would be hit, and he ultimately declined to invest in the business.
Process
The process is a foundational core of any successful business. Lemonis often tours businesses to understand their entire process. He holds business owners accountable to ensure they understand where their money is allocated, whether that’s labor or material costs, or simply tracking waste.
Mr. Green Tea was a business with broken processes according to Marcus because it depended on a copacker. By expanding the warehouse, Lemonis ensured the business could scale up and bring in more customers.
Product
With people and processes in place, the product is what your end users ultimately see and use. Whether your customers are consumers (B2C) or businesses (B2B), these products (or services) should be high quality.
Lemonis invested in Sweet Pete’s because he loved the product enough to embrace a complicated deal with an ex-partner in the business. The business would soon become a staple in the show and one of the crown jewels of his successful businesses.
Marcus Lemonis Net Worth: How He Got So Rich
Lemonis has demonstrated an authoritative leadership style on his show, The Profit. He does have autocratic leanings, and has been known to operate with a “my way or the highway” attitude. Every episode, he reminds the business owners that he is fully in charge.
In fact, if you watch the full series, you’ll notice that he never strays from this. When he decides a change needs to be made, Lemonis does not give in. He continues harping on it until the owners concede and follow his recommendations, even if reluctantly.
His dogged determination to run the show because he knows best is at the root of his successes. But arguably it’s also a contributing factor as to why 52 unsuccessful businesses on his show filed a lawsuit. These businesses claim that Lemonis saddled them with debt. Whether that claim is true is yet to be determined, but it’s clear that Lemonis is a force to be reckoned with.
His net worth from Camping World alone is estimated to be worth north of $20 million, and that doesn’t account for his empire of private holdings from businesses he selected on The Profit, nor his income streams from featuring as the host on the hit show or opportunities garnered from social media.
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