B
uild credibility
The SEC nightmare may have ended, but by the end of 2006 Marcille was having another one of those moments: The company factor unexpectedly let him know USG&E bumped up against its borrowing limit. Though the company would turn in nearly $53 million in sales in 2007, survival only came because Marcille hit the pavement and met an interested New York Stock Exchange-graded business development fund that became a controlling shareholder.
Marcille says there’s a lesson he learned along the way that will help you during a crunch: Create reliable relationships with employees, clients and creditors by keeping close tabs on what you say you’ll do and reminding them of whether you did it or not and why.
Marcille had leveraged his relationship with the vendor to build a relationship with the factor, so this time around he asked the factor to be his resource. The factor became his top recommendation based on the company’s follow through on promises. To this day, he keeps close tabs with that factor and makes him a part of company events.
The effort to build credibility also means documenting and keeping promises to your employees.
“I have to do everything in my power to keep those promises so that people know when I’m telling them other things about what the future possibilities are that I have credibility,” he says.
Marcille used that strategy with employees throughout the process of rebuilding. It wasn’t easy asking former co-workers to jump on a nearly deserted ship, but he came bearing employment contracts.
“One of the ways that I would prove our worth is I’ll put the money on the table in the form of employment contracts,” he says. “All the executives here have really favorable employment contracts. And what that does is it creates a reciprocal commitment and that’s key, so employment contracts have been a very big part of giving people comfort that their efforts are going to be respected and that the company has loyalty to them and that generates loyalty to the company.”
He brought people in on the promise of enjoying the potential fruits of their labor, giving employees an ownership percentage.
“I don’t think you can argue against the formula that, as the senior executive, I would rather have a much lower percentage ownership of a much larger company than own 100 percent of a smaller, less profitable company,” he says. “So spread it around; share the wealth so people know there’s an upside.”
Marcille also keeps track of everything he told people coming in about the company and their role. Whenever he makes a new plan, he puts it next to previous plans so things on the agenda don’t disappear. He never deletes any e-mail, and he uses any downtime to sort them by person to make sure he’s either delivered on every promise he’s made or both parties know where they stand.
“I’ll go back to the earliest e-mails for them, which sometimes goes back to the hiring process, the initial job descriptions, or even just some of the back and forth on issues that you forget you’ve either conquered or you’ve embedded into your business model or you’ve forgotten about,” he says. “So you can say, ‘Jeez, I remember saying this to Joe and, yeah, we did it’ — or, if we haven’t done it, ‘We’re working toward it.’”
When the 2008 numbers came in at USG&E, Marcille no doubt had a good, long look through those e-mails. The company had grown to 75 employees and the days of 48 percent interest and SEC queries were just story fodder. The happy ending is 2008’s financials: The company reached more than $106 million in sales, more than doubling the previous year’s numbers.
Marcille isn’t ready to concede victory, but he can admit now that those near-death days make for a pretty good tale.
“It’s a good story,” he says. “But the day the shareholders get a return on investment, it will be an amazing story. Right now, I think it’s just a very good story.”
How to reach: U.S. Gas & Electric Inc. (888) 947-7880 or www.usgande.com
