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My father founded his company, ASG, 15 years ago to provide retail real estate services: helping retailers to audit landlords, manage leases, build stores, negotiate deals and develop strategy. Personally, I started working with my dad 8 years ago and built up a cloud platform called ASGedge for managing retail real estate.There are so many glamorous stories of aspiring entrepreneur's from Shark Tank or venture capital-funded companies -- it's refreshing to hear how a company was built without outside capital by building relationships and providing good service.It is a bit different from what I've written about, but I was very excited to interview my dad because it's a story of how a successful company got off the ground: how they found their first contracts, hired their first employee, faced growing pains and built a solid business in the wild ever-changing world of retail.Read Full Transcript[00:00:00] Adam: welcome to that people helping people podcast where we talk about culture, social change, and entrepreneurship. I am very excited today to be speaking with my father, Steve Morris, who started assets, strategies group or. ASG about 17 years ago. As a quick disclaimer, I do work for my dad. I manage a cloud platform called ASG edge for retail real estate management.[00:00:36] With that said, let's jump right in. Thanks that for talking to me, and maybe we could kick off with a little bit. What gave you the idea to start your own company?[00:00:44] Steve: Well, I tell you, when I had a long corporate career and I worked for a number of turnaround situations, and after my last one, which was at the limited, I just started, I had a small nest egg and I started looking around for something I could buy and run.[00:00:59] I always . Wanted to run my own business, so I ran a small.com and Baltimore for about a year and a half. That didn't pan out. I teamed up with a friend of mine, Rick Warren, and we looked at a number of businesses we invested in, one that was in bankruptcy that unfortunately stayed in bankruptcy, didn't pan out, so I'd been on about a two or a two and a half year quest on kind of startup ideas and things I could get involved in and end up running.[00:01:27] And controlling, and I was pitching an idea to the CFO of justice, a guy named Kent Berger around a credit card, a proprietary credit card idea and camp. Ask me why I wasn't doing real estate when I was COO of real estate at limited brands. He said, and justice was part of limited brands. They were getting half a million dollars a year in savings through our.[00:01:53] Various initiatives. And frankly, I was a bit burned out after leaving the limited about real estate and I, I gave them the names of some people I thought would be good for him to contact. And we scheduled a meeting about a month on and at that meeting he again, he set up, talked to all of those people.[00:02:12] They're not anywhere near. I have the capabilities you had. Think about this again. He said, I'll give you would be all in. I'm giving you a contract and doing our audit work, landlord audit work. So at that point, I've always wanted to do, I've always been a Namor, the idea of having an in business with a partner and the person who worked for me at the limited and was a good friend all and I.[00:02:36] Kick that idea around and the partnership idea goes back to, you know, Paul Allen, bill Gates, Charlie monger, Warren Buffett, and reflect, or John D Rockefeller. There are a lot of really good entrepreneurs that may be more prominent, but they had a, or have a partner that. We're pretty instrumental in beginning of the business.[00:02:57] So I kicked this idea around with all Ambien and also cautious. I had a couple of trips scheduled. I was in San Francisco. I met with gap and asked them about if we started this company, what would it look like to them? Would, would
