This is the last in a series of columns by Arthur Outdoor’s James Douglas about starting, running and selling an out of home company.  Today James talks about “the mom test” for restricting ads and selling the company.

The mom test for restricting ads

Did we refuse ads?  Yes.  There were ads from certain companies within certain industries that were offering to pay double.  However, my brother and I realized that our mom was going to be driving past our billboards. So we wanted to make sure that our signs were advertising something that she was going to be proud of.  We stuck to that. Easy rule of thumb there. 

Bootstrapping the company

When you’re looking at your first business it’s risky and quite scary. Our seed capital was money pooled from our time mowing lawns and summer jobs growing up. You can do a lot with a little if you add a bit of creativity.  The limited capital we started with gave us great power on finding ways to save.  To cut construction costs we constantly asked “do we really need to outsource this?”  Doing the work yourself took a bit more time, but we cut costs dramatically – and learned a ton on the job. 

No debt.

We never took on outside investment or debt up to the sale.  We approached a bank once about lending us money and were going to have to go through a one or two month process explaining the billboard industry.  A bank bank is a bit wary of investing in land leases as they wants to invest in land that they know is not going anywhere. 

The sale

I got a call from Trent, Chase, and Hunter Horton at Main Street Outdoor in early September.  They have been rapidly growing and expressed an interest.   How do you make a decision to sell something that you’ve built?  It’s bittersweet.  The mission of Arthur Outdoor was to provide affordable advertising space to our local businesses. Main Street has that same mentality.  Ultimately the decision was made that Arthur Outdoor’s story is going to be better told in their hands.  They are building an awesome company.  I’m really excited to watch them grow and cheer them on from the sidelines. 

[wpforms id=”9787″]

Paid Advertisement