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Robert Wallace owns Lynchburg VA headquartered Southeastern Sign Company.  Robert represents the best of the new generation of entrepreneurs entering the out of home business.  He’s got 4 structures with 8 digital faces in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Today Insider talks with Robert about getting started in the business.

How did you enter the out of home business?

I don’t have any family in the out of home business.  I always grew up wanting to start my own business…I understood the concept of buying something and renting it out…I just happened to see some of these old, wooden, telephone style billboards out in a field and I was like – you know I could probably build one of those and rent it out…

 Was it tough getting your original permits?

The first time I went to the zoning office I bought 16 locations and all 16 of them got denied…they were being real picky.   I got turned down multiple times for the first lease but I was able to be persistent and go back and go back and finally they got tired of me going back…and gave me the permit…that was a two or three year process.

I found a spot that was on a road.  It was between two stoplights.  There was a gully there so you couldn’t build anything.  When I found out that was an industrial zoned area I went to the city zoning official…he said you can’t build here because there’s a house on the property…there was a house on it but it had boards on the windows and trees growing through the roof and needed to be bulldozed…so I took pictures of all that and went back to them…they gave me that.

On financing.

I got my first lease and I was still broke and didn’t have any money…I sold a lease and was able to us that to build my first digital billboard…Now I have a good relationship with the local bank and they are advertising with me as well.

I hear you recently picked up three structures at Selective Structures plant and installed them yourself.

Selective Structures quoted $2,400 to ship.  I borrowed a goose necked trailer.  I spent about $200 in diesel fuel…I saved over $2,000 and it took two days.  I can drive for $1000 per day.

I called four installers.  Two of them got back to me.  One of them was $28,000 to do three structures.  One of them was $36,000 to do three structures.  Both of them double sided digital…I ended up finding a tree company that had a crane and they came out for $125/hour…I think all together I was around $7,000 doing it myself.

I knew that placing an order for six digital faces at one time was a big order.  I wanted to get a really good price for buying 6 faces at one time.  I got quotes from Formetco, Daktronics, and Watchfire.  I ended up using Formetco.  They have been great to work with.

Tomorrow Robert will talk about using social media and how to find a good location.

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