Grey Outdoor has become a significant part of the OOH community in the Carolinas. Grey Vick and I met to discuss potential lending options back in 2014 and we spent some time last week talking about the development of Grey Outdoor.
Grey, I went back through my records and saw that when we first met, you had around 20 structures with 40 vinyl faces. Fast forward about 10 years—how large is Grey Outdoor now?
We now have 756 faces, 49 of which are digital. We’ve grown steadily through new builds, small acquisitions, and new digitals.
In the old days, you did most everything yourself. Talk a little about how the growth has impacted the way you run your business?
I believe that’s what it took to grow the company into what it is today. I also wouldn’t say I did everything by myself. So many people were involved—our contractors, our advertisers, and our landowners all worked together. It has taken a lot of hard work, sacrifice, diligence, and a laser-sharp focus on growth. One great thing about this business is that if you have solid business skills, you can operate a fairly significant company without a ton of labor by relying on technology to fill the gaps.
We’ve been working diligently to create policies and procedures and to build our company manual. This makes it easier to delegate responsibilities within the organization. We still maintain a very lean structure. We’ve also been able to stay at very low leverage. This has allowed us to build significant capacity and liquidity to grow.
To continue—and perhaps accelerate—growth, what do you see as the key drivers for Grey Outdoor?
Digital will be a major driver over the next few years. We’re also putting pressure on sales. We are also looking to expand the team with people who are aggressive, motivated, and focused on helping customers grow. Sales reps who truly care about making campaigns special and memorable are always the most successful.
I’d like to continue doubling down on technology and creating better systems to make it easier for customers to buy from us directly from our website. AI has been extremely helpful in organizing ideas and quickly creating design renderings and mock-ups.
If I’m out looking for a sales job, why should I take a serious look at Grey Outdoor or any well run growing family operation?
It would be more to become part of a community and a family owned company. We have a lot of accounts and we are looking for the best account managers we can find to take over these accounts and grow them. We are offering aggressive salaries, commissions, and benefits. We spent a lot of time implementing HubSpot to streamline sales workflows and create a consistent flow of inbound leads within our markets.
If interested email amber@greyoutdoor.com or call her at 984-289-0524.
