Neil Bell, owner of New South Outdoor, shared his thoughts on growing a business on a panel moderated by Billboard Insider at last weeks IBO Fall Conference.

Neil, share with a few details about you and your business.

I was 22 years old, just out of college, started with Lamar a week before 9/11. I was there for about 2 years, then out on my own. New South Outdoor is my fifth outdoor company.  We have billboards in the Huntsville, Alabama DMA. Right now we have about 150 statics and 40 digitals.

Neil Bell on development 

I’ve done a lot of developing in different areas of the southeast. You’ve got all these different municipalities to deal with and some of them don’t want billboards or have written codes so that billboards couldn’t be permitted in the in the market. There’s two ways to go about it. (1) Start the conversation to try to work with this city or (2) try to challenge their sign code in some way. I’ve challenged 16 municipalities over the years and been successful in all but three of them. Before we litigate, we do an assessment of the sign code. Are there first amendment issues? Are there any procedural problems.

On using the Reed Gilbert ruling as a leverage opportunity

We had sued one town in Alabama. This was 2015 and things on that suit could have gone either way …and right in the middle of that, the Reed Gilbert ruling came out and we ended up settling with the city. It was kind of a good swing for the for the industry in terms of invalidating some sign codes. After that we had some successes in other towns. We were able to be successful on four permits using the Reed Gilbert strategy.

Neil says sometimes changes in federal law can work against you

We were in the middle of a lawsuit and the Austin Reagan decision came out. We were very close to a settlement to be able to build some signs and when the decision came out the discussions were on hold. We ended up settling but it was not a good deal… We could have taken it further, but the odds weren’t good after the decision came down.

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