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Lesson #3: “Integrity is how I do business. That’s my main asset.”
Article Overview: Foreman might be one of the most well-known celebrities thanks to his seemingly endless string of product endorsements. Indeed, he now readily admits to being more well-known for his George Foreman Grills than he ever was for his champion boxing career. Still, Foreman did not approach the idea of lending his name to a product lightly. No matter how small the product, Foreman cross-checked the product with his own personal beliefs, and refused to attach himself to anything that did not meet his standards.
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Lesson #3: “Integrity is how I do business. That’s my main asset.”
Foreman might be one of the most well-known celebrities thanks to his seemingly endless string of product endorsements. Indeed, he now readily admits to being more well-known for his George Foreman Grills than he ever was for his champion boxing career. Still, Foreman did not approach the idea of lending his name to a product lightly. No matter how small the product, Foreman cross-checked the product with his own personal beliefs, and refused to attach himself to anything that did not meet his standards.
"The greatest asset, even in this country, is not oil and gas," says Foreman. "It's integrity. Everyone is searching for it, asking, ‘Who can I do business with that I can trust?'"
To this day, Foreman remains one of the few celebrities to have gone so far as to include an ethics clause in his company's contract, prohibiting it from being sold in the future to anyone involved in alcohol, tobacco, pornography, or gambling. He refuses to let his business come into conflict with his traditional religious values, values that he regularly preaches about at his church in Houston, Texas. It is not just about preserving his image in front of his congregation or his fans; it is about refusing to go against something he believes in strongly.
"A contract can easily break," he says. "I've found in business, everyone signs a contract to make a business deal, and they always leave a loophole so they can break them." This was a lesson Foreman learned especially during his boxing days, when he began to rely on no one but himself to protect the George Foreman brand.
"Now I understand you must preserve the quality of your name, your integrity," he says. "You don't want to lie about anything. And it's something that people will be happy about once they get to know you. Because people count on you."
Without holding on to his integrity, Foreman says he risks losing everything almost as quickly as he gained it. "There are a lot of guys who are successful, they make a lot of big money, I mean millions overnight with a contract, and they don't understand the evaporation. It evaporates. You're always back to square one. I found that out, so integrity is how I do business. That's my main asset."
Maintaining his integrity did not always make him popular with colleagues. "I had the opportunity to go into the restaurant business. A chain of restaurants, the George Foreman restaurants. And it was an opportunity right out to make lots of money," he recalls. The problem was that Foreman, as a Muslim, is against selling alcohol in any of his establishments.
"They said, ‘Well, this is what will make more profits. You can just donate them to charity,'" says Foreman. "I said, ‘No, I can't do that.' And my sons, who were in business with me, watching me put this deal together, they could not understand it. They just couldn't understand."
Foreman does not insist on his children carrying on his same standards, "but at least have something you believe in and you cannot be talked out of by dollars and cents. And that's what I try to pass on."
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I was in business for many years and have decided to buy another. Retirement isn't what it was cracked up to be. BITD if I needed a piece of equipment or bought another business I just put up 20 percent and the bank did the rest. I have been reading about another way however and hope some of you can fill in some blanks for me.
What I am reading about is the double closing which uses a swing loan and an asset lender to purchase the assets of a business to use as the down payment. As below:
1.You arrange a swing loan for the down payment amount from the bank and give this to the seller. Supposedly after the paperwork this transfers title of the business and its assets to you.
2. In another room you have a second closing set up with a asset lender who loans you the amount of the swing loan which you use to pay off the swing loan. Now the asset based lender owns the assets as collateral for his loan and the seller is owner -financing the remaining balance.
Now , I get a double escrow close in real estate circles but there are a couple of things about this business purchase situation that I don't understand. If the seller of the business is owner financing it and has the first lien what is his motivation to allow his assets to be used for collateral to the asset lender? Does the asset lender take a second lien on the asset loan he has just made( the down payment)? Or does it truly mean that during the first closing where the seller received the down payment that the right to do whatever I wanted with the assets was truly transferred to me and I can now give the asset lender a first lien position? This seems very strange to me but I continue to read about it in numerous places and the methodology never varies.
Again, its been awhile since I did all this and we were much simpler back then. However, even then it took an act of God and Congress for any first lien holder to give up that position. Even for a very large down payment.
Any help you guys and gals could give me would be greatly appreciated.
All the Best!
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welcome to the forums, I'm sure you'll be a valuable asset here with your business and web design knowledge.
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