Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 24 - Strategies for Entrepreneurial Success in the Modern Market

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Ep. 24 - Strategies for Entrepreneurial Success in the Modern Market · Big Talk About Small Business

0:04
Mark Zweig: Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of big talk about small business.
0:12
Mark Zweig: I'm here with my partner, Eric Howardton.
0:16
Mark Zweig: It's always good to see you.
0:18
Mark Zweig: What are you thinking about?
0:19
Eric Howerton: this morning.
0:20
Eric Howerton: I'm just thinking about how you and I prepped for this podcast.
0:23
Eric Howerton: We did For about four minutes, maybe five, and I just think it was a really, really great idea.
0:31
Mark Zweig: Maybe it will help us be a little bit more directed, because we can't tend to go sideways sometimes.
0:36
Eric Howerton: I think this is going to be one of our better podcasts.
0:37
Eric Howerton: Now I do too.
0:40
Mark Zweig: But we'll leave that up to the audience to determine our growing audience.
0:43
Mark Zweig: It's great we're having more and more subscribers.
0:46
Eric Howerton: We are.
0:47
Eric Howerton: It's really cool to see folks just I mean because doing podcasts, I mean actually you just have opportunity to hit people from places you would never expect.
0:57
Mark Zweig: Yeah, like in the Netherlands, they could be listening to us right now right.
1:00
Eric Howerton: Yeah, we had somebody from, I think, africa or something like that.
1:02
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I saw them.
1:03
Eric Howerton: I saw them on analytics as well, so that's cool, man.
1:05
Mark Zweig: It is cool, it's very cool, and this stuff is universal and we're getting really a lot of great questions in too, which is really neat.
1:12
Eric Howerton: We're going to be doing those in the next episode.
1:15
Mark Zweig: That'll be fun Some of these questions.
1:16
Eric Howerton: We've had some interesting ones.
1:17
Eric Howerton: Oh man, no kidding, you have worked from Cincinnati.
1:20
Mark Zweig: that we were kind of talking about just before this, as we were doing our prep.
1:24
Mark Zweig: I'm not sure we can even talk about that one on the air.
1:26
Mark Zweig: We'll see.
1:27
Mark Zweig: We may have to do a little editing there, but so anyway, today I did want to talk about something that I think is very interesting, and what that is is my students in my small enterprise management class at the Walton College at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
1:53
Eric Howerton: Okay, I think I got a look In Northwest Arkansas.
1:56
Mark Zweig: Yes, the Samham Walton College of Business, wonderful but which, by the way, just keeps getting better and better.
2:02
Mark Zweig: It is it's a fantastic school.
2:04
Mark Zweig: Our ratings keep going up.
2:06
Mark Zweig: It's about every category.
2:07
Mark Zweig: It is fun working for a growing, successful organization like the Walton College.
2:15
Eric Howerton: Well, I think it's like even like business right, Like you have great leaders there.
2:18
Mark Zweig: It is Like Mr Matt Waller and Britt and is Brandis is a great guy too.
2:24
Mark Zweig: I mean we really have had some great deans, we really have, and so I'm proud to be there.
2:29
Mark Zweig: But anyway, in that class my students have to work with a small business, something privately held, doing less than 10 million a year in revenue, and then make their recommendations to the owners, identify issues that they find and then make their recommendations to the owners to increase revenue, increase profitability, increase the value of the enterprise and reduce the risk for the owner.
2:57
Mark Zweig: Nice.
2:59
Eric Howerton: And not strong for important bullet points.
3:01
Mark Zweig: They are.
3:01
Mark Zweig: That's kind of sums it all up really so.
3:04
Eric Howerton: Do they go in?
3:04
Eric Howerton: Does that have to be in person?
3:06
Eric Howerton: I mean they go in and interview the owners and different people on team or what.
3:09
Mark Zweig: Yeah, they use a variety of tactics that we talk about Certainly going to the business, observing, talking with customers or clients, talking to the employees, surveying potential customers and clients, talking to the owners, getting all the financials.
3:27
Mark Zweig: That's one of the requirements is they have to get whatever financials these companies have, which in some cases are in horrible condition, which I'll be back to here Like just the financials themselves.
3:42
Eric Howerton: not that they're losing money, but they just have terrible record keeping.
3:46
Mark Zweig: Right.
3:46
Mark Zweig: A lot of them are losing money too, by the way, right, but anyway, yeah, it's just fascinating to see.
3:52
Mark Zweig: So they can use a variety of tactics.
3:56
Mark Zweig: Sometimes they go to work there, sometimes they do it on the business that they have worked at.
4:00
Mark Zweig: How long do?
4:01
Eric Howerton: they study.
4:02
Mark Zweig: Well, it's a semester long project and then the last three weeks they all present.
4:07
Mark Zweig: They either work individually or with another student.
4:10
Mark Zweig: So I just had 30 some odd presentations in the last three weeks on these projects and I thought maybe it would be good to just talk about some of the sort of generalized findings.
4:24
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I think that's cool.
4:25
Mark Zweig: It's always surprising when you see what businesses are making money and which ones aren't.
4:31
Mark Zweig: To start, with.
4:33
Eric Howerton: So what are some common threads on that?
4:34
Eric Howerton: Who's making money?
4:37
Mark Zweig: Very simple businesses that do one thing in a mature market.
4:41
Mark Zweig: Okay, Better, good at it.
4:44
Mark Zweig: I mean, if you look at, I mean it's amazing to me when you see companies like t-shirt companies and water delivery companies and people like that and they just make a whole lot of money.
4:57
Mark Zweig: They're very simple business model.
5:00
Eric Howerton: Are they.
5:00
Eric Howerton: They make a lot of revenue or profit, or both Both.
5:03
Mark Zweig: Really yeah.
5:04
Mark Zweig: When I say making a lot of money, I'm talking profit, okay, yeah, and usually profitable like 30 to 40% of revenue.
5:12
Mark Zweig: Some of these companies and you and I both know like 10% is sort of the norm in just about every industry Across the board, you know, if I was just to say where are you going to start.
5:24
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you know, 10% To have some benchmark.
5:27
Eric Howerton: Is that like you're on your way to something, right?
5:30
Mark Zweig: Exactly, but yeah, but anyway.
5:34
Mark Zweig: So no, it's just seeing the particularly well.
5:39
Mark Zweig: You said, what are the successful ones doing?
5:41
Mark Zweig: The other thing they're doing is they're doing a lot of marketing.
5:44
Eric Howerton: Really yeah, it's.
5:46
Eric Howerton: That doesn't make any sense to me.
5:47
Eric Howerton: But if you are not making much money, you should cut marketing first.
5:52
Mark Zweig: Oh, yeah, right, I'm sure you think that, so let's talk about those.
5:56
Mark Zweig: I really wanted to focus on the people who aren't making money and what they're doing.
6:01
Mark Zweig: Okay, lots of common themes come up.
6:04
Mark Zweig: First one is absentee owners, or largely absentee owner.
6:10
Mark Zweig: That is a recipe for disaster.
6:13
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I go there once a week, I go there once a month.
6:17
Mark Zweig: I take two months and go away with my husband to the Himalayas or whenever.
6:21
Mark Zweig: Not a good way to run a business.
6:26
Mark Zweig: Okay, for the most part I can't.
6:30
Mark Zweig: There was one company where the owners had evidently come up with a really good formula and they could get out of it for six weeks or more at a time.
6:38
Mark Zweig: Of all the companies that we saw, but the rest of them all had problems from that.
6:43
Eric Howerton: So I have to admit I have a little guilt with that.
6:45
Eric Howerton: Currently, I don't think I'm, I'm not, I don't know what that gauge is.
6:50
Eric Howerton: Yeah, absenteeism, right, you know, and I think that it's going to change my.
6:54
Eric Howerton: My intention is I'm just being transparent with you so you can yell at me and I can get off my butt.
7:01
Mark Zweig: Be transparent.
7:02
Eric Howerton: I'm not going to yell at you, though, because I already think I know what you're going to say yeah, so, like right now, like I haven't been as engaged as I want to be because I got, you know, other things going on, got a lot of things going on.
7:14
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I got a lot going on, so the next year it's going to work out where I can be a lot more engaged.
7:20
Eric Howerton: But I mean, at the same time, though I you just have to be a surgeon.
7:25
Mark Zweig: Right, you know, yeah, you've got to have good managers.
7:29
Mark Zweig: I mean, you do that, yeah, you develop those people, true?
7:32
Mark Zweig: No, I do spend time with the people, yeah, and I think that's that's really the important thing.
7:36
Mark Zweig: Yeah, but you know, we try to run real businesses where we pay people decently and such, yeah, and we have companies that, you see, there's the owners and basically everybody else is treated like crap, gotcha.
7:48
Mark Zweig: There's no real.
7:50
Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's another problem.
7:51
Eric Howerton: They're not empowered, they're not led, they're not talked with, they're not, they're not got.
7:55
Mark Zweig: They have no idea how the company's performing or anything.
7:57
Eric Howerton: Gotcha.
7:58
Eric Howerton: They have no plan, no vision laid out, nope, all that kind of stuff.
8:02
Eric Howerton: So like when you say absentee, like I mean, just so the listeners can understand a little bit, and I'm also curious, like I mean, you mentioned being gone for a month, or are they like?
8:13
Mark Zweig: I looked at you.
8:14
Mark Zweig: I come here to Fayetteville once a month.
8:16
Mark Zweig: Okay, that's one, got it, got it.
8:18
Mark Zweig: The other model is I own it, but I just don't show up very often.
8:24
Eric Howerton: Because you just want.
8:25
Eric Howerton: You just want to see a ROI of your investment.
8:28
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I'm just not that interested in it.
8:30
Mark Zweig: It's the conclusion in a lot of cases.
8:32
Mark Zweig: They're not really passionate about it, gotcha, so they've sort of disengaged, like they've almost given up.
8:38
Mark Zweig: It's like what do they call it?
8:40
Mark Zweig: The people who quit but still stay?
8:43
Mark Zweig: There was some sort of a term.
8:45
Eric Howerton: Like a lame duck or whatever.
8:47
Mark Zweig: No, there was some sort of a term that was real popular quiet quitting.
8:50
Mark Zweig: It's like I'm there, I've quit mentally, though it's quiet quitting.
8:55
Mark Zweig: I think, they're doing that on their own business.
8:59
Eric Howerton: You know, Do you think?
9:01
Eric Howerton: Have they been like owners that have owned the companies for quite some time and they're just phasing out?
9:06
Mark Zweig: Some cases they inherited them.
9:07
Mark Zweig: Some cases they started them with partners who bailed out.
9:11
Mark Zweig: There's a variety of situations, but the bottom line is they're not paying attention to that business the way you have to.
9:19
Mark Zweig: Yes, if you want to keep everything going, okay.
9:22
Eric Howerton: Yeah, because you have to, if nothing else, be driving some freaking sales man.
9:27
Eric Howerton: You've got a campaign and you've got to.
9:29
Eric Howerton: There's so much to do, but I mean, if you could just be a campaigner for that business, like you're out starting up the market, you're doing something that's positive for the business.
9:38
Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, I can.
9:39
Eric Howerton: Okay, I feel a little bit better about myself.
9:42
Mark Zweig: But I've been there, like you, where I felt like I wasn't doing anything.
9:44
Mark Zweig: Well, I was trying to do too many things and in some cases, I think my thoughts were correct.
9:51
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I was trying to do too much, and that's really a very good job, but anyway.
9:58
Mark Zweig: So back on these companies, though not spending anything on marketing, the ones that are bleeding or going downhill.
10:07
Mark Zweig: It's just a universal thing Just zero dollars, zero dollars in marketing and promotion, and they're sitting around talking about how bad the climate is and whatever.
10:17
Eric Howerton: So everybody else's fault government's fault, competitors' fault.
10:20
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you're doing absolutely freaking nothing.
10:24
Mark Zweig: Wonder why you can't even do five social media posts a day.
10:28
Eric Howerton: So they don't even do like when we say nothing.
10:31
Eric Howerton: It's not only are they not advertising, they only have somebody that's out doing development, speaking whatever it might take to promote that business.
10:41
Mark Zweig: Speaking social media posting.
10:43
Mark Zweig: I don't care what it is, they're nothing.
10:45
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you can't do that.
10:46
Eric Howerton: Passive, just waiting, oh God, just waiting for something to come out.
10:50
Mark Zweig: No, we believe word of mouth is the best form of advertising, but they're not talking to anybody.
10:55
Mark Zweig: If they say word of mouth, it means we're doing absolutely nothing.
10:58
Mark Zweig: That's what code word, word of mouth.
11:01
Mark Zweig: We don't do anything for marketing.
11:03
Eric Howerton: Right, right, okay, and they probably aren't doing anything for their existing customer base either, like we're attention.
11:09
Mark Zweig: Well, customer service is bad, okay, a lot of times because again you go back to what's another common practice.
11:16
Mark Zweig: So we already discussed single person management and nobody good works there, according to the owners.
11:22
Mark Zweig: Okay, why?
11:24
Mark Zweig: Well, you don't pay anything, you have no benefits, why would anybody want to work there?
11:27
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you don't share information, you don't share power.
11:31
Mark Zweig: Yeah, so sure, then you have mediocre customer service.
11:38
Mark Zweig: What do you expect?
11:38
Eric Howerton: Okay, yeah, and all comes back around.
11:41
Eric Howerton: Man, it's a everything works together in business, it all works together.
11:45
Eric Howerton: And you know the other thing too, on the marketing side.
11:47
Eric Howerton: Yeah, like I think that anybody could testify to this If you work with a company that is highly promotional and believes in marketing like it's exhilarating for the team man.
12:00
Mark Zweig: Of course it is.
12:00
Mark Zweig: They feel like they're part of a winning team.
12:02
Mark Zweig: Everybody knows who they are and what the company is.
12:06
Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, exactly, can you make a message out there?
12:08
Eric Howerton: You know you're making new people, people are talking about you and you feel good about working there, but it costs.
12:13
Eric Howerton: You're doing activities with your fellow teammates to market.
12:16
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the things that, looking back in Spider-Land, that we did a lot well, just a lot of event marketing.
12:25
Eric Howerton: You know we put on events and our team would work that event.
12:28
Eric Howerton: You were an event in yourself the process.
12:31
Mark Zweig: He's going to a chair, you know.
12:32
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you're dressed enough.
12:34
Mark Zweig: Cornhole things, cornhole you decorated up Baggo.
12:38
Eric Howerton: I mean you did all kinds of stuff, yeah, but to get your team, but that's, I've never really thought about that.
12:43
Eric Howerton: But your team can rottery and like people do things together and they go work hard together.
12:48
Mark Zweig: Yeah.
12:49
Eric Howerton: And in Well, that's a big part of it.
12:50
Eric Howerton: Then it is, and it cycles back around.
12:53
Mark Zweig: It does.
12:53
Mark Zweig: And then the other thing now that I just wanted to mention it's just their accounting sucks.
12:59
Mark Zweig: I mean they either deliberately account poorly because they're trying to avoid paying taxes and they've got some businesses that bring in cash, or they're just completely incompetent but really bad accounting.
13:16
Mark Zweig: You just see this theme over and over again.
13:20
Eric Howerton: You know.
13:20
Eric Howerton: So I mean, my perspective is is don't play around with taxes.
13:26
Eric Howerton: Yeah, exactly, it's like I've just never been one.
13:29
Eric Howerton: That's like like you, just don't mess with that crap, man.
13:33
Mark Zweig: Like it's not gonna.
13:34
Mark Zweig: You don't want something to come bite you in the ass later.
13:36
Mark Zweig: Dude, like you got enough shit.
13:38
Mark Zweig: What do you think you're?
13:38
Eric Howerton: doing.
13:39
Eric Howerton: Well, okay, you got enough shit in business that keeps you up at night.
13:42
Eric Howerton: The last thing you want to do, I agree, is have a worry about not doing that Like you know doing that right, sure, and check it in on it, but I mean like you're playing a dangerous game and you're really not getting.
13:55
Eric Howerton: They'll shut you down.
13:56
Eric Howerton: The juice really isn't worth the squeeze at the end of the day, no On, whatever you might be skimming.
14:01
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I know, but you see this all the time and it certainly impacts the value of the business because then they've got no accurate financials.
14:09
Mark Zweig: The value reflect be like hey, don't pay attention to that, because really I take out another 50 grand a year.
14:15
Mark Zweig: Here's how I get it.
14:16
Eric Howerton: Yeah right, okay, yeah, try to match to a barrier.
14:19
Mark Zweig: Yeah, there's a lot of those conversations, but anyway, it was fascinating to see what a great job these students, yeah.
14:27
Mark Zweig: The other thing I guess I just wanted to say was the losers, the companies that were doing well, the owners resisted recommendations at a much higher rate than the successful company owners did, which you would think would be the opposite, like the successful people would think, hey, I've got everything under control, I know it all, it's doing great, but they're more open than the ones that are losing money, yeah, to other thoughts, which is probably why they're losing.
14:58
Mark Zweig: They go.
14:58
Mark Zweig: You know what?
14:59
Eric Howerton: I'm saying Tune in.
15:00
Eric Howerton: I wonder.
15:01
Eric Howerton: I have no idea.
15:02
Eric Howerton: This is all fresh.
15:03
Eric Howerton: If we did prep, we didn't talk about what you're gonna talk about here.
15:06
Eric Howerton: But I wonder if the number one response of the losers is oh, we tried, that didn't work.
15:14
Mark Zweig: Hear that all the time.
15:15
Mark Zweig: When it comes to marketing, we tried that once.
15:17
Mark Zweig: It didn't work.
15:17
Mark Zweig: We were in radio commercials for a week.
15:19
Mark Zweig: Hey, we sent out an email once and didn't sell a single thing from it.
15:25
Mark Zweig: I've heard people say that Did you, can't do that.
15:28
Mark Zweig: I know.
15:30
Eric Howerton: You have to be sustained.
15:31
Mark Zweig: Rolentless Sustained drip, drip, drip, drip, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer.
15:38
Eric Howerton: That's what I love about you.
15:39
Eric Howerton: You taught me that so well.
15:41
Eric Howerton: It works Rolentless and you still use the word relentless.
15:43
Eric Howerton: You should use the word relentless about this show that we're doing right now.
15:46
Eric Howerton: I know it's the great words, but it's so true Like you have to like that it's squeaky wheel gets the grease man.
15:55
Mark Zweig: You wanna be top of mind when they have a need Constantly.
15:59
Eric Howerton: People's needs change, but circumstances change and they need somebody else.
16:03
Mark Zweig: Whenever I suggest outbound email to a business owner client as a strategy.
16:09
Mark Zweig: What do you think?
16:11
Eric Howerton: the first response no, nobody opens that.
16:13
Eric Howerton: I get that all the time.
16:14
Eric Howerton: It's spam.
16:14
Eric Howerton: I don't wanna spam nobody Bingo.
16:17
Mark Zweig: They all say that Okay and so, and then when you do it, there's always gonna be somebody that complains.
16:24
Mark Zweig: But I always said to my people look, if 50 people bought and one person complains, who the hell are you gonna listen to?
16:32
Mark Zweig: Okay, the one who complains, you're out of your freaking mind, right?
16:38
Eric Howerton: Dude, we learned so much about email marketing back in the day together.
16:41
Eric Howerton: I'm telling you, I mean for real, like we.
16:44
Eric Howerton: So the backstory to that is, as I was working with Mark right, working with you at Zwei White, now called Zwei Group Yep, we used to send when I started working there, like we were sending out so much direct mail.
16:59
Eric Howerton: Yes, dude, it was just so expensive and it works.
17:03
Eric Howerton: Direct mail works.
17:03
Mark Zweig: It was the end of the direct mail era.
17:06
Mark Zweig: It was.
17:07
Eric Howerton: Right there and we started getting into email marketing, which was at the beginning of the email marketing era Yep, and we ended up shutting down the entire expense line of direct mail, like within nine months.
17:18
Eric Howerton: We absolutely eliminated it.
17:19
Eric Howerton: That's right.
17:20
Eric Howerton: But then we learned so freaking much, I mean we had probably one of the most rigorous, freaking email marketing, it's true.
17:27
Mark Zweig: But it's the company Dude.
17:29
Mark Zweig: It did Okay.
17:30
Mark Zweig: You realize our revenue grew 60% over a two year period there, Really, which is how we get back on the ink list.
17:36
Mark Zweig: That's great man.
17:37
Mark Zweig: Okay, and we were emailing, just emailing this shit out of a man.
17:41
Eric Howerton: I remember, like the spreadsheet, so I would be managing of our email marketing for the week.
17:45
Eric Howerton: It was intense, bro, like we were sending out two emails a day, or three, or three, yeah, and then we had a daily wire that we came up with, but it was just this constant engagement with the audience and, to your point, we'd have unsubscribers, yeah.
18:03
Mark Zweig: But you let them go.
18:04
Mark Zweig: Man Right, we sold.
18:05
Mark Zweig: We had a lot of problems with our products line at that point.
18:09
Mark Zweig: It was not all great, but we sold a lot of stuff to people and it just slaying them, we saved that thing.
18:15
Mark Zweig: But anyway, yeah, a lot of people don't understand, like probability theory and the low response rate that you need across a lot of independent events to make that kind of marketing really pay off.
18:27
Mark Zweig: But anyway, those were just some of the common sort of findings.
18:33
Mark Zweig: The resistance to suggestions, I think, is absolutely fascinating.
18:40
Eric Howerton: So what you do is it seems to me like you would have a non-engaged owner of the business who doesn't really care about growing the business, which is just detrimental.
18:50
Mark Zweig: They're always more interested in sucking money out than they are investing in, to begin a reward.
18:56
Eric Howerton: They don't care about the people, they don't care about the community, they don't care about the industry, none of that.
19:01
Eric Howerton: They have no great vision other than just sucking cash, and when they get opportunity to improve, of course they're going to be like I'm good, like I just don't have any energy.
19:13
Eric Howerton: What would you tell, if you could tell, an owner that's in that situation?
19:17
Mark Zweig: what would you say?
19:18
Mark Zweig: Sell your business, get out of it.
19:19
Mark Zweig: It's time to get out of it and do something different.
19:22
Mark Zweig: What would you say?
19:24
Eric Howerton: The same thing.
19:25
Eric Howerton: It's like you're hurting people, man, when you're hurting yourself.
19:29
Mark Zweig: You put yourself in a state of limbo.
19:31
Mark Zweig: You're not going to be happy there.
19:32
Eric Howerton: But what if they said that was a model of a source of income?
19:34
Eric Howerton: I'd say get a frigging job.
19:37
Mark Zweig: Hopefully you got some value there that's going to make it possible for you to.
19:42
Mark Zweig: I saw one company.
19:44
Mark Zweig: I thought was very interesting too when you say that it was a grocery store that was owned by a family and let's just say they did like eight or 900,000 a year in sales, just like a small sort of community grocery store, and they made so little money out of it they made like 30 grand a year or 40 grand a year out of it the family member that was running it, and they owned all their buildings and were not paying themselves rent.
20:13
Mark Zweig: I'm like, guys, why don't you just sell your buildings, put the money in a CD and get five and a quarter percent on it, and you'll do better to not even show up every day.
20:24
Mark Zweig: Ok, sell all your inventory off, sell your buildings, or just say, keep your buildings and lease them out to somebody else.
20:33
Mark Zweig: Yeah, there you go Make five grand a month and not go to work.
20:36
Mark Zweig: I eat out.
20:37
Mark Zweig: So anyway, people do sometimes have to make that choice.
20:43
Mark Zweig: It's just not rational to carry on any longer.
20:46
Eric Howerton: You know, I wonder if, like the one of the hard things about all this business stuff and I mean, it's like we're all human right, and I think that we all struggle with the same things, we're all facing the same things it's just about how you it's really about, and I know you might hate this word, but it is how you it you overcome and adapt and overcome.
21:04
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's how you respond to what's happening, because shit's gonna change man Absolutely.
21:09
Eric Howerton: It's gonna change so much and I imagine these owners like if they've been in the business and it just starts changing on them.
21:14
Eric Howerton: I mean, like I hear people talking all the time.
21:16
Eric Howerton: I've had like two conversations this week about AI and the fear, the looming fear, and it's how it's that man.
21:24
Eric Howerton: You have to freaking engage with that bro, embrace it.
21:27
Eric Howerton: You have to get on it.
21:29
Eric Howerton: It's just like the internet.
21:30
Eric Howerton: Sure, I mean, I remember you didn't need to embrace the internet.
21:34
Mark Zweig: No, when email came out, I was like I said to Fred White what do we need this for?
21:37
Mark Zweig: What do we need email for?
21:40
Mark Zweig: You know?
21:40
Mark Zweig: Yeah.
21:41
Eric Howerton: It's like we don't need it.
21:42
Mark Zweig: Yeah, god, what an idiot.
21:44
Mark Zweig: Okay, yeah, no, you gotta engage with it, there's no question about it.
21:50
Mark Zweig: You gotta be willing to learn, you gotta have an open enough mind.
21:54
Mark Zweig: I mean the same thing with marketing.
21:55
Mark Zweig: I mean you know everything's changing all the time.
21:57
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you could do something.
21:59
Mark Zweig: It works for a while and it just stops working.
22:02
Eric Howerton: Let's get into the marketing rabbit hole.
22:04
Eric Howerton: I know that we talked about before this, as we prepped, that I had a couple of things I was wanting to talk about, but one of the other things we talked about talking about was marketing, and I think this fits better for this conversation.
22:17
Eric Howerton: All right, let's talk about it.
22:19
Eric Howerton: Yeah, let's talk about marketing.
22:20
Mark Zweig: Well, I mean, I think any company that wants to grow at a faster rate than the industry it's part of, or a new company that's not known, needs to be spending two or three times with the average firm that industry spends on marketing.
22:35
Mark Zweig: That's what I think.
22:37
Mark Zweig: Two to three times.
22:39
Mark Zweig: How are you gonna eat into the market share of the other guy if you don't do a lot more than they do, much less what they do, and think that that's gonna be your ticket to success?
22:52
Mark Zweig: I love it.
22:53
Eric Howerton: I love that.
22:53
Eric Howerton: So another good.
22:54
Eric Howerton: I had another question for you, like if I looked at my top line revenue, what percentage of my top line revenue should I spend in marketing?
23:03
Eric Howerton: How do I determine my marketing budget?
23:05
Mark Zweig: Depends on the business.
23:06
Mark Zweig: That's why I say you need to look at the industry that you're part of.
23:12
Eric Howerton: They all have a norm.
23:13
Eric Howerton: So what you're saying is so where do I go to find out what that norm is?
23:16
Mark Zweig: Every industry is different.
23:17
Mark Zweig: Like if you're in the architecture and engineering business, I'd send you this Y-group.
23:21
Mark Zweig: They can tell you exactly what everybody spends.
23:23
Mark Zweig: So go find a research group or a company.
23:26
Mark Zweig: Professional societies, trade organizations.
23:30
Mark Zweig: They're out there for restaurants.
23:31
Mark Zweig: Can you check with your local chamber of commerce.
23:33
Mark Zweig: Maybe they're out there for every industry though, like car dealerships.
23:38
Mark Zweig: You can find any of that information so go there, figure out what's the industry norm.
23:43
Eric Howerton: Average marketing expenditure.
23:46
Mark Zweig: Percentage of revenue, yeah, and then spend two or three times that.
23:50
Mark Zweig: I got it.
23:50
Mark Zweig: That's cool, that's a magic number, right.
23:52
Mark Zweig: I like that.
23:53
Mark Zweig: That's cool Because I mean, you know, there's just some businesses that have inherently higher or lower marketing costs associated with them.
24:02
Mark Zweig: Like, if you look at, like, the swimming pool contracting business, it's gonna have a really high percentage of revenue that goes to marketing, cause people generally only build one swimming pool.
24:12
Eric Howerton: It's true, you're always looking for a new customer, exactly.
24:15
Mark Zweig: So your marketing costs is just higher baked in, you know, in a business like that, versus one that gets repeaters and keeps them for a really long time.
24:25
Eric Howerton: And so what do you tell somebody that's like like hey, man, I'm already running this business.
24:29
Eric Howerton: I don't have the money to invest in more marketing Like I'm cash?
24:35
Mark Zweig: type let's help you figure out where we can find that money, because it's necessary.
24:39
Mark Zweig: Okay, I mean, you're not gonna get a big fire if you don't pour starter fluid on it every once in a while, right?
24:47
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
24:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to do it.
24:49
Eric Howerton: You have to do it.
24:50
Eric Howerton: That's the point of this conversation.
24:51
Eric Howerton: Yeah With, tell the listeners you absolutely must do marketing.
24:57
Mark Zweig: You must, because you want your company to grow Right.
25:01
Mark Zweig: Okay, not only do you want it to survive, you actually want it to grow Right.
25:05
Mark Zweig: When it grows, as we were saying earlier, everybody feels optimistic.
25:10
Mark Zweig: They feel like they're part of something that's motivational for them, that increases their opportunities.
25:17
Mark Zweig: We've got to have good people.
25:19
Mark Zweig: Good people don't want to be chained to a business that's going nowhere, right, you know.
25:25
Mark Zweig: They want to see it grow.
25:26
Mark Zweig: So the growth and then that creates the value that you can cash in on at the end, because that's what buyers, in spite of what these friggin' financial jocks constantly talk about multiples of trailing EBIT Forget it.
25:44
Mark Zweig: This is a growth company.
25:45
Mark Zweig: Nobody gives a shit about that.
25:47
Mark Zweig: I swear I'd like to strangle a lot of the financial jocks that have been trained through esteemed colleges of business and the NBA programs.
26:00
Mark Zweig: You don't understand.
26:01
Mark Zweig: It's a fun.
26:03
Mark Zweig: I mean.
26:04
Mark Zweig: There's a lot of things that contribute to the value.
26:06
Mark Zweig: First off, a rapidly growing company.
26:08
Mark Zweig: You've got to do projected EBIT and then, based on that revenue growth rate and then that present value, that back, that's going to give you a completely different number than history or where they are now.
26:22
Mark Zweig: That's great for a steady state business.
26:25
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you can't value a company, a growth company, a growth company based on historical EBIT.
26:31
Mark Zweig: No, it's bullshit Anyway.
26:33
Mark Zweig: So the revenue growth rate is where all the value is, which is what all entrepreneurs are generally.
26:40
Eric Howerton: That's the and so what you're saying is is to prom that revenue growth rate pump Right, you got to freaking market.
26:48
Mark Zweig: It takes capital maybe.
26:50
Mark Zweig: Maybe you got to get outside capital.
26:52
Mark Zweig: You got to borrow on your house or yeah, you got to take less out of the business, or some non-essential part of it's got to be carved off to pay the money, and so the next question then becomes how do you do that in the best manner possible?
27:07
Eric Howerton: Well, you're the marketing consultant, yeah, so here's where I start getting a little pissed off when I get that question.
27:12
Eric Howerton: If I have a client that would you know in history that come to me and say, hey, we're doing some, we want to invest more in marketing, right, but what's the best way I can get my ROI, I would get really pissed off immediately because I don't know.
27:28
Mark Zweig: Right, and you're not going to know the ROI right away.
27:32
Mark Zweig: No, you can't.
27:33
Mark Zweig: He takes a long time of putting money into it.
27:36
Mark Zweig: Yes, and let me tell you something else.
27:39
Mark Zweig: That is exactly, though.
27:40
Mark Zweig: Again, that's what?
27:41
Mark Zweig: But listen, eric, we want to make data-driven decisions.
27:44
Eric Howerton: Then you better do some shit that gets you data.
27:47
Eric Howerton: Okay, I hear you, that's not long enough.
27:50
Eric Howerton: You can't depend on it for very long.
27:53
Eric Howerton: And let me tell you something else, because the second thing that would always piss me off is like well, you can't prove ROI if you do this porn.
28:00
Eric Howerton: Here's the deal, man, I don't care what you do, Every like.
28:09
Eric Howerton: The thing that I'm trying to insane is we're not doing that again, because, A we don't believe that gave us good ROI and, B we can't measure what that was.
28:18
Eric Howerton: And I would go absolutely insane, because there is no such thing as doing any form of marketing that did not drive some sort of result.
28:28
Eric Howerton: I can freaking go in to Hero's Coffee down the road and meet with you, and I see somebody else there that knows me.
28:38
Eric Howerton: I just did my marketing.
28:40
Eric Howerton: No, I know, and that could have more ROI on it than freaking 50,000.
28:45
Mark Zweig: Was this bigger companies that you were dealing with that always wanted to do the same thing?
28:49
Mark Zweig: No, no, no, no, not at all Okay, so this is smaller, like privately.
28:52
Eric Howerton: It's everybody.
28:52
Eric Howerton: Okay, it's a common thread, because they've been listening to way too many people that are marketing to you to sell a book or some sort of material.
29:03
Eric Howerton: Or you're listening too much in school from folks that don't understand and haven't been out there and driven a business right and marketed and faced that.
29:13
Mark Zweig: Yeah.
29:14
Eric Howerton: And all the results should be data driven.
29:16
Mark Zweig: No, they can't be, they can't be and they shouldn't be the branding and all that.
29:20
Mark Zweig: People don't really understand the value, what that does for you.
29:23
Mark Zweig: If it's done right, oh yeah, dude, it's huge, it's huge.
29:26
Eric Howerton: It's huge, absolutely huge, like I mean I get, I get criticism like back in the day.
29:34
Eric Howerton: You know what?
29:35
Eric Howerton: I'm gonna bust out the secret here White Spider, the success of that company, in my opinion, and have been there from day one was driven off of our vehicle wraps.
29:50
Mark Zweig: Dude, I don't believe it.
29:51
Mark Zweig: You had a tremendous amount of brand recognition from that.
29:54
Mark Zweig: Constantly.
29:55
Mark Zweig: Everybody knew those cars that had Spire webs on them.
29:59
Mark Zweig: Everybody did.
30:00
Eric Howerton: And number two was showing the hell up to events Right when everybody was at.
30:07
Mark Zweig: I both see.
30:08
Mark Zweig: I totally believe that You're shaking hands, kissing babies.
30:09
Mark Zweig: Man, listen, I could say much the same thing, though not that I ever got the kind of money out of it that you did White Spider in the end.
30:17
Mark Zweig: But I could say the same thing about Mark's White Ink.
30:21
Mark Zweig: We had black trucks when every single other provider drove white trucks.
30:26
Mark Zweig: We had great black signs with wooden posts that were we made it by hand and stuff like that.
30:34
Mark Zweig: You have to get your brand on, man.
30:36
Mark Zweig: It allowed us to charge more than anybody else for a half square foot Because you looked sharp, you had your brand on it.
30:43
Eric Howerton: People trust that man.
30:44
Eric Howerton: It's a trust mark man.
30:45
Eric Howerton: I mean, there's so much study behind that, and I mean, of course, the big brands know, familiarity breeds trust.
30:52
Eric Howerton: Totally.
30:53
Eric Howerton: It's just that simple and you look more polished, you look more reputable.
30:57
Mark Zweig: Right, what's that worth?
30:59
Eric Howerton: in a lot of circles right, like buying stuff or whatever and I think at the end of the day, it's all relational right.
31:05
Eric Howerton: Like you cannot like, your marketing is worth nothing if your relationship equity and vision of how important relationships are your reputation is in the market.
31:17
Eric Howerton: Like man, I probably lost more money than I ever made in my businesses by make goods Because I was held back and determined to never, ever, ever fail.
31:30
Mark Zweig: I was always the same way.
31:31
Mark Zweig: Okay, I was always the same way.
31:33
Mark Zweig: And when you find out, you got an employee who's arguing with somebody about two or 300 bucks or five or whatever.
31:41
Mark Zweig: Like, dude, that's not the way I want you to do it.
31:44
Mark Zweig: Give them what they want, give them their money back and then give them something else.
31:49
Mark Zweig: That's right.
31:49
Mark Zweig: Okay, to make them feel good.
31:51
Mark Zweig: It's like we're paying for your bill.
31:52
Mark Zweig: Also, what would you like for dessert?
31:55
Eric Howerton: That's right.
31:55
Eric Howerton: And, by the way, let's go out and have coffee next week and let me buy or have lunch Right, so I can continue to talk to you, so you can regain your trust as fast as possible.
32:04
Mark Zweig: Yeah well, you're gonna get the trust by not always having something in it for yourself from their point of view, you know that.
32:11
Mark Zweig: I mean, if you want to talk about selling, it starts out by not selling Exactly.
32:17
Eric Howerton: It's genuine and just giving a shit about somebody else's business, man Right.
32:21
Eric Howerton: You know, one of the things I've always loved is, like you know, when thinking grow rich, look, I just like that man, I just think it's just, I just remember very little of it.
32:30
Mark Zweig: Napoleon Hill, we like to read it.
32:32
Mark Zweig: My dad bought a copy for everybody in our family.
32:35
Eric Howerton: You got it.
32:35
Eric Howerton: I mean, I've reread it all the time.
32:38
Eric Howerton: I like to wrote down certain things, but what I love is is render your service first.
32:45
Eric Howerton: Decide what you're gonna do Right, demonstrate.
32:47
Eric Howerton: Render the damn service first, demonstrate.
32:50
Eric Howerton: It's like don't go out and forecast everything and then go raise capital they know and do all these different things.
32:56
Eric Howerton: Render the service first, validate it.
32:58
Eric Howerton: Yeah, render the service first.
33:00
Eric Howerton: If I'm trying to sell you something, I'm gonna provide that service and if you know, that's why I'm like money back guaranteed and all those things work, it's not because they're great gimmicks, it's because the person that's buying that product or service is getting the service first and then they shall pay Sure, if they find it valuable.
33:19
Eric Howerton: You came up with a campaign a long time ago.
33:20
Eric Howerton: You saw it like, I think Panera Bread did it.
33:22
Eric Howerton: Pay is what you think we're worth.
33:24
Mark Zweig: Yeah, that's right.
33:26
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I forgot about that, but you're right you came in, you went and got a croissant or something Panera all day Probably did.
33:36
Mark Zweig: And you saw some sign Let us bread bowls of soup.
33:38
Mark Zweig: Though it's like, would you like bread with that as a side order, I'm like I still don't understand, especially if it's like broccoli and cheese.
33:45
Mark Zweig: Yeah, that's the one I get.
33:46
Mark Zweig: That's it so bad?
33:48
Mark Zweig: Good.
33:48
Mark Zweig: My hand for me geez, I thought I was eating good when you ate that, just because it has broccoli, because it's not a steak sandwich or something.
33:55
Mark Zweig: That's probably better for me Normally what I eat.
33:58
Eric Howerton: You need a dietitian like Asa, anyway, though.
34:02
Eric Howerton: But yeah, you probably went and bought your broccoli and cheese soup bowl yeah, bread bowl Then came up with that idea.
34:09
Eric Howerton: Well, no, they said you're like, how much is it?
34:12
Eric Howerton: And they're like pay, pay is what you think we're worth with.
34:14
Eric Howerton: I forgot to say they didn't even prefer it.
34:16
Eric Howerton: And you came back in so excited, yeah, and you're like, let's do it.
34:19
Eric Howerton: And I think we tried it.
34:20
Eric Howerton: But I mean, but the thing is is like it's, that's what people, I mean that's what they want.
34:26
Eric Howerton: They don't want to be ripped off, they don't want to have to.
34:28
Eric Howerton: You take the guessing game out of that.
34:30
Eric Howerton: But anyway, I think that the going back to the whole ROI, I mean you have to go out, you have to market, you have to campaign and then you figure things out.
34:41
Eric Howerton: And another thing I believe big in on marketing, because there's two different things there's marketing and there's advertising.
34:46
Mark Zweig: Right, there's a part of it marketing Right Subs Right.
34:49
Eric Howerton: Marketing's a bigger, bigger role, bigger umbrella, right, and I don't think a lot of small business owners understand that.
34:55
Eric Howerton: They think it's just the promotion as well.
34:57
Eric Howerton: Yeah, they think it, they.
34:58
Eric Howerton: When you say marketing, they think just advertising.
35:00
Eric Howerton: Right, we tried that and it doesn't work.
35:02
Mark Zweig: Yeah yeah, that doesn't work Right.
35:03
Mark Zweig: The word of mouth is what we were like.
35:05
Mark Zweig: I'm sorry, I'll just keep coming back.
35:07
Mark Zweig: I've heard it so many times yeah.
35:09
Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah.
35:10
Eric Howerton: And so you need to invest, like if I was to advise somebody, or even with my businesses that you know and the that I got going on.
35:18
Eric Howerton: I'm investing in the people Right To to communicate to the world.
35:25
Mark Zweig: Well, that's part of the marketing expense.
35:27
Eric Howerton: Right, yeah, Right.
35:27
Eric Howerton: So I mean, I'm not really investing in advertising right now, Right?
35:30
Eric Howerton: No, I understand as much, yeah, but but I'm definitely investing in the marketing of the share, the people you know, yeah, and you know a lot of that.
35:40
Eric Howerton: Well, it's, it's fun you have to have that.
35:42
Mark Zweig: It's fundamental.
35:42
Mark Zweig: There's a lot of stuff you can do today with social media.
35:45
Mark Zweig: It doesn't cost you anything.
35:46
Mark Zweig: It doesn't cost you anything.
35:46
Mark Zweig: I mean, if you're, if you're actively involved with your business and you want to really engage with it, okay, you can do so much for no cost, so much.
35:59
Eric Howerton: As a matter of fact, we build wise, other than the vehicle wraps.
36:01
Eric Howerton: We had the zero dollar marketing budget for about 10 years, right, but the activity level was high, just crazy.
36:07
Eric Howerton: Right, it was crazy.
36:09
Mark Zweig: That's part of marketing though.
36:10
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's PR.
36:11
Eric Howerton: Pr is part of marketing.
36:12
Eric Howerton: I mean it relates to the protocol.
36:14
Mark Zweig: Well, pricing is part of marketing, absolutely.
36:16
Mark Zweig: Product itself is part of marketing.
36:18
Mark Zweig: There you go, it's all part of marketing.
36:19
Mark Zweig: Get branding Everything falls under it.
36:21
Eric Howerton: It does, man, you know, and I think that small business owners short sell marketing and they don't.
36:27
Eric Howerton: If you start up a new business and you don't have, like everybody knows, I got to have somebody that runs the shop or I got to have somebody that fixes that or does this, or got nobody in charge of marketing.
36:38
Eric Howerton: No marketing.
36:39
Eric Howerton: Yeah, best thing Whatsoever it's, you cannot do it.
36:44
Mark Zweig: Blows my mind.
36:45
Mark Zweig: It's nuts man.
36:46
Mark Zweig: I was talking with a small business owner the other day.
36:48
Mark Zweig: In fact it was the mom of one of my students who did his project on his mother's business and she wanted to talk to me afterward.
36:58
Mark Zweig: Nice lady, yeah, she's.
36:59
Mark Zweig: She owns a cleaning service and is based in St Louis and it serves realtors.
37:08
Mark Zweig: I asked her if she knew my cousin.
37:10
Mark Zweig: She goes oh yeah, she's one of my clients.
37:11
Mark Zweig: My cousin was the number one real estate agent in St Louis at one point.
37:16
Mark Zweig: She's quite a successful seller.
37:20
Mark Zweig: Her husband was a Cardinal baseball player which was a good lead in for it.
37:26
Mark Zweig: It's some good clients, but anyway, so she's got.
37:30
Mark Zweig: She's doing no marketing at all.
37:31
Mark Zweig: She's got a list.
37:33
Mark Zweig: Well, I say none at all.
37:35
Mark Zweig: She sends out an email about once every three weeks to a list of 4,000 agents, which is good that she's got that list.
37:42
Mark Zweig: I said now why don't you start trying to send out like three a week?
37:45
Mark Zweig: Ok, one every three weeks.
37:50
Mark Zweig: I mean, come on, send out three a week.
37:53
Eric Howerton: Three a week or three per month.
37:55
Mark Zweig: No three a week.
37:55
Mark Zweig: That's three different stories of good things, bad things, what happened?
38:02
Mark Zweig: Relevant content yes, all stuff.
38:05
Mark Zweig: All stories about stuff.
38:06
Eric Howerton: That's what I love about you man, like your relentlessness is tried and true, like you don't spam, because the thing is, spam is created whenever I send you an email and you have zero interest in it, right?
38:18
Eric Howerton: And then I send it to you again.
38:20
Mark Zweig: And again, and again, and again.
38:22
Eric Howerton: Yeah right, trying to get your attention, that's spam, right.
38:24
Eric Howerton: But good marketing is when I send you content that you're interested in.
38:29
Eric Howerton: That's helpful for you.
38:31
Mark Zweig: Right, you actually want to save it in some cases.
38:33
Mark Zweig: Yeah.
38:34
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's true, you want to share it, you want to save it.
38:37
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I mean, it's not that hard to do.
38:40
Mark Zweig: Again, though, I think you've got to be engaged with your business.
38:44
Mark Zweig: If you're not mentally engaged with it, you don't see the successes, the failures, the testimonials, the things that went well or things that other providers are doing poorly.
38:57
Mark Zweig: You've just got to be intimately familiar with what's going on out there, and then the content's not that hard to create If you get in the habit, I think, of doing it at certain times during the week, like I write my Swigler article every Monday morning at 6.
39:15
Eric Howerton: AM Really yeah, that's what you do Always.
39:17
Mark Zweig: It's like some people get up and I mean sure I've got to have a couple cups of coffee and some doughnut, A doughnut and some Lucky Strikes while I do it, but it's just the first thing I do.
39:34
Eric Howerton: And you think we get Lucky Strike to sponsor this podcast?
39:37
Eric Howerton: Oh no.
39:37
Mark Zweig: I think that's illegal.
39:38
Mark Zweig: Oh, that's right, that's true.
39:40
Mark Zweig: Cigarettes are cancerous and terrible for your health.
39:43
Mark Zweig: There's no question about it.
39:43
Mark Zweig: Yeah that's a bad idea yeah.
39:46
Eric Howerton: Terrible, but I mean so, like you have brought in that content, you have to be kind of back to the whole thing of a business, and not being engaged in the business Right, like I mean, it's so detrimental because you can't even understand what your customers are wanting, with the markets needing, you can't market, you can't do any of that stuff.
40:05
Eric Howerton: And I would say, though, that the good news is is that there's two things.
40:09
Eric Howerton: You could turn the corner real quick and make a huge impact on the business.
40:14
Eric Howerton: If you're a business owner and you've found yourself being passive and not interested, losing passion, you've got to flip that switch, and you have the power to do that, or be of the power to go out and actively find somebody that will buy that business and get out for learning.
40:28
Mark Zweig: Yeah, exactly it should be one of those two things Total, I think, yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that.
40:35
Eric Howerton: Yeah, because a healthy, sustained business is actually really attractive to another person that's wanting to get something off the ground and rolling.
40:45
Eric Howerton: I mean, you got such a good springboard there.
40:48
Mark Zweig: Well, that was a big theme of my class this year in small enterprise management is buying a company is a viable gateway to entrepreneurship and fixing it.
40:58
Mark Zweig: Yeah, because there's so many tired ass owner, there's so many tired baby boomer owners.
41:04
Mark Zweig: There's going to be a huge turnover in privately held companies because the baby boomers are dying off and getting out.
41:12
Eric Howerton: Dude, you can get in.
41:13
Eric Howerton: Man, if you could get in and you're just marketing minded, you could freaking blow that thing up.
41:18
Mark Zweig: I'm telling you well, we've got our buddy, richard Scott.
41:21
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know, this is what he does.
41:23
Mark Zweig: This is what he does, man.
41:24
Mark Zweig: Yeah, that's part of it.
41:26
Mark Zweig: You just buy these companies and you put better marketing in place and do some things to get the people reengaged, and it's not that hard to be successful you know, it really is a constant engagement, though.
41:41
Mark Zweig: And another thing I was just thinking when you were talking it's like this business here, this podcast videos, is a separate company, right?
41:50
Mark Zweig: That we buy services from here at Big Talk about small business, right?
41:55
Mark Zweig: So?
41:56
Mark Zweig: And this is a service that your company provides to a lot of other people doing podcasts.
42:01
Mark Zweig: Correct, by being a customer of your own business.
42:05
Mark Zweig: That's exactly the point.
42:06
Mark Zweig: Don't you learn so much.
42:07
Mark Zweig: It's like I'm buying glasses for mid-century modern glasswarecom.
42:12
Mark Zweig: Yeah, because I want to see what happens.
42:15
Mark Zweig: Yes, I can go through the process and see what's good and what's bad.
42:18
Mark Zweig: Yeah, and it's fascinating.
42:21
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know it's totally the point, man.
42:22
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean.
42:23
Eric Howerton: That's why I'm wondering.
42:23
Eric Howerton: I mean, like it all circles back around, but it keeps you engaged in understanding where the problems are Right, you know, and then being able to also understand the value of it.
42:34
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you know, and then how can we build products and services in the podcast videos business that can help minding your problems that we're having stickiness with?
42:43
Eric Howerton: Exactly, they have a better podcast we actually what was cool?
42:46
Eric Howerton: I think it's such a great tactic, yeah, and a quick testimonial to it is we have Parker, who's been on our show before that works for podcast videos, sitting down here giving us ideas about how to improve our podcast, right.
42:59
Mark Zweig: That's great.
43:00
Mark Zweig: Think about it.
43:01
Mark Zweig: He does that for clients too, Exactly Okay.
43:03
Mark Zweig: That's super valuable Because he's engaged with the business.
43:08
Mark Zweig: It provides a higher level of service.
43:10
Mark Zweig: That's right To the customer.
43:12
Mark Zweig: That's right the employee does.
43:13
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's a beautiful thing it had.
43:15
Mark Zweig: We now have a beautiful podcast and developing that relationship.
43:18
Eric Howerton: Now it breaks down the barriers and you're not.
43:20
Eric Howerton: You don't have that customer nervousness and scared to lose money, right, or a client thing, but you rather have two folks that have developed a relationship from day one so that we can flush through a lot of these inefficiencies or stumbling blocks that me and you might be having Right, and then you can plow that to all our customer base.
43:41
Mark Zweig: Exactly that's the idea.
43:42
Mark Zweig: Right there You're the test model.
43:44
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I had these clients once.
43:46
Mark Zweig: I was fascinated with this.
43:48
Mark Zweig: They were based in Boston, architects and engineers, and they did a lot of work on malls.
43:53
Mark Zweig: They did tenant build outs for new spaces for mall tenants.
43:58
Mark Zweig: They rented a space in a mall that they designed and they opened up a candy store and went through the build out process for their candy store and then they had their employees, including owners, take turns working there so they could see from the perspective of a mall tenant what issues they had.
44:22
Mark Zweig: I thought that is freaking brilliant.
44:24
Eric Howerton: It is brilliant, you know?
44:25
Eric Howerton: Yeah, instead of fighting against your clients because you don't understand the problem, the one yes, it is such an easy thing to do.
44:35
Eric Howerton: I mean like in it's so valuable, like that puts you ahead of your competition, what it helps you understand how to market the value proposition in your marketing.
44:43
Mark Zweig: Wouldn't you love to be selling work to a mall client when you know that's what your firm does and you could tell them about that?
44:49
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I'm a mall mall yeah.
44:51
Mark Zweig: Yeah tenet myself yeah.
44:54
Eric Howerton: And what I found, and we can help you avoid that.
44:56
Eric Howerton: That's how we're better than our competition.
44:58
Mark Zweig: And yeah, nobody else could make that claim.
45:01
Mark Zweig: I would be like shit.
45:02
Mark Zweig: I want to deal with this guy.
45:03
Mark Zweig: He knows what we're going through.
45:04
Eric Howerton: Exactly, okay, exactly.
45:06
Mark Zweig: And instead of like the construction industry Right, which just continuously ignores the complaints of every customer on the freaking plant, the thing you gotta realize with them is they have enjoyed a situation or demand exceed supply for so long because we have inadequately trained supply of construction workers, craftsmen, laborers, whatever.
45:33
Mark Zweig: There's just not enough of them out there, so they've always been in this excess demand which allows them to be horrible and still be in business.
45:42
Mark Zweig: You know there's no.
45:44
Mark Zweig: I mean, I was in that industry myself.
45:47
Mark Zweig: It is just absolutely.
45:49
Mark Zweig: I'm sorry people, it is a horrible business and you will almost never get what you want and what you're paying for.
45:59
Mark Zweig: Okay, let me just say, or on time, or without them screwing up six other things.
46:05
Mark Zweig: When they do whatever their chore is inside the project, they'll go over budget over time yeah.
46:11
Mark Zweig: Cut through the last guy's work, screw up the floors with their granite, whatever.
46:19
Eric Howerton: Dude, that is.
46:20
Eric Howerton: That is an area, I'm sorry to say, like I've actually been thinking about it more when we talk about AI and all that stuff.
46:25
Eric Howerton: Like that's an industry that's gonna get rocked with AI and all that type of stuff and there's gonna be a lot of casualty in that as far as, like, people being able to depend on that as a source of income and it's gonna get kind of ugly.
46:41
Eric Howerton: Man, I don't like that.
46:43
Eric Howerton: But at the same time, you can embrace it, you can evolve with it.
46:48
Eric Howerton: You have to evolve with that technology rules.
46:51
Mark Zweig: Construction companies don't invest in anything other than tools and equipment.
46:55
Mark Zweig: Okay, they don't want to do that, it's not?
46:59
Mark Zweig: I mean, I'm predicting they don't want to invest.
47:01
Mark Zweig: They're not very investment oriented, the majority of them.
47:04
Eric Howerton: I'm making a painful prediction that that's gonna be.
47:06
Eric Howerton: It's gonna be a there's gonna be a lot of folks that aren't gonna be able to rely on what you're talking about because of this new technology advancement and all that industry.
47:17
Mark Zweig: On the other hand, some no AI is gonna take the place of some carpenter out there in the field finishing out a house.
47:24
Mark Zweig: Somebody's gonna have to do that, yeah, I know, but, man, I agree.
47:28
Eric Howerton: I think that's gonna be a long time, but there will be a day that we're like because of the inadequacies, inadequacies, inadequacies.
47:36
Eric Howerton: Don't you think that you got it yeah, did I say that right?
47:38
Eric Howerton: You said it right.
47:39
Eric Howerton: Yeah, and the inefficiencies and the ineffectiveness, what that?
47:45
Eric Howerton: Those voids right there is what drives people with the technological know-how and the engineering and the robotics.
47:54
Eric Howerton: They look at that and go what?
47:57
Eric Howerton: Go mine, yeah, it's true.
47:59
Eric Howerton: And if the but if the industry doesn't start making changes, you know robots that could work 24 hours a day.
48:04
Eric Howerton: you know They'll find ways to build frames in an assembly process to get them shipped.
48:12
Eric Howerton: In a way they're gonna advance the logistics to get things there.
48:15
Mark Zweig: Sure, yeah, there's definitely ways to do stuff better, especially if you start getting into modular.
48:20
Eric Howerton: Oh dude, this is gonna.
48:21
Eric Howerton: Well, I mean, everything can be modular.
48:22
Eric Howerton: Yeah, Custom modulation.
48:24
Mark Zweig: Right, right.
48:25
Mark Zweig: That's his how to do it.
48:26
Mark Zweig: Modulation part two.
48:27
Mark Zweig: Custom modular modularization.
48:33
Eric Howerton: Great minds.
48:33
Eric Howerton: But I mean, I'm just being I've been thinking about that a lot lately Like it's just one of those areas, that where people are gonna start getting.
48:41
Mark Zweig: No, I'm sure, I'm sure, but yeah, anyway, I don't know how we ended up on that, I don't know.
48:46
Eric Howerton: I mean, they're just getting pissed off because people don't engage with their business, it's true, and stay with what's going on.
48:54
Eric Howerton: I mean, I think, another good thing on all that topic over the rest of the time.
48:59
Eric Howerton: Yeah, we are okay.
49:01
Eric Howerton: But another thing on that there was an event that happened that really demonstrated the passivity, the tiredness of a lot of small business owners.
49:12
Eric Howerton: What was that?
49:13
Mark Zweig: COVID.
49:13
Mark Zweig: Yeah, when COVID came around no kidding the ones that responded to it and the ones that didn't Dude it- was like, I mean, it was house cleaning.
49:23
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's true, so many people that were not engaged were forced to quit, whereas today it's kind of come back in.
49:33
Eric Howerton: Historically, it happens, you have so many people that are not engaged that don't quit, and it just lingers on.
49:40
Mark Zweig: Yeah, a little cleansing process.
49:42
Mark Zweig: It was Getting out the bad it was yeah.
49:47
Eric Howerton: But, the ones that survived that dude?
49:50
Eric Howerton: They freaking raked.
49:52
Mark Zweig: Yeah well, and they're better businesses today for it because of some of the practices they adopted.
49:56
Mark Zweig: You know, I mean we could talk about restaurants all day.
50:00
Mark Zweig: I'm sorry, I'll be critical of them.
50:02
Mark Zweig: A lot of them did not respond.
50:05
Mark Zweig: If you want to talk about COVID, I mean that was the best place to look.
50:10
Eric Howerton: Oh, yeah, for sure, I think.
50:11
Eric Howerton: I mean I remember during that time though, going by tropical smoothie here and I bumped into the owner and I was like you know, it's kind of like right early on I was like man.
50:22
Eric Howerton: I'm sorry that, you know.
50:23
Eric Howerton: I mean this is tough right.
50:24
Eric Howerton: I'm just sorry that you're having to deal with this.
50:26
Eric Howerton: And he looks at me and goes like dude, we are busier, I'm making you know we're doing more business right now than like act three to five acts.
50:36
Eric Howerton: God love them.
50:37
Eric Howerton: That's great to hear, I know, but he was like man, I'm just, you know, I got involved.
50:41
Eric Howerton: I mean I stayed open, figured out the way to do this and we're just killing it.
50:46
Eric Howerton: Yeah well they're smart.
50:48
Mark Zweig: We went in a new restaurant last night in Fayette, velomnucket and mentioned the name restaurant slash brew pub and the service was so bad my wife and I sat down at the bar okay, that was not completely full and it had most of the seats full In the bartenders, three never once looked our way, acknowledged us, served three different people who walked up to the bar, never cleaned up the stuff that was in front of us and said hey, we'll be with you in a minute.
51:22
Mark Zweig: We sat there for somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes and got up and left.
51:26
Mark Zweig: You just can't do it, okay, I mean, they couldn't even say hey, I'm sorry I'm slim right now, but I'll take care of that While they pick up the stuff in front of you.
51:35
Mark Zweig: They simply ignored us.
51:37
Mark Zweig: Can't do that in that business.
51:38
Mark Zweig: I mean, I will never go back there again.
51:41
Eric Howerton: There's certain businesses.
51:43
Eric Howerton: Every business has certain things that you just cannot do.
51:46
Eric Howerton: Yeah.
51:47
Eric Howerton: Like if you're an engineer, you cannot make mistakes and put your seal on that Right.
51:53
Eric Howerton: In the restaurant business you cannot cannot have fantastic, superb, excellent customer service.
52:02
Eric Howerton: I know Relentlessly.
52:04
Mark Zweig: This was so bad, it was remarkable, and my wife's ex-husband's friend is the one who opened it.
52:12
Mark Zweig: Yeah, and he told us to go there because the food is good, yeah, and she immediately told him what our experience was there.
52:19
Mark Zweig: Yeah, he relayed that to the owner, who said he was there and saw us and saw us leave, okay, and offered some excuses about new people, okay, which I don't wanna hear.
52:33
Mark Zweig: Yeah, train them.
52:34
Mark Zweig: You should be back behind the bar on yourself.
52:36
Mark Zweig: You're sweating man, okay, and anyway, and offered to give us a free meal, but we're not gonna go back.
52:42
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I'm blaming you.
52:43
Mark Zweig: You know you blew one shot.
52:45
Mark Zweig: You blew it, that's right.
52:46
Mark Zweig: You know that's the way it is today.
52:49
Mark Zweig: It's like when you go to New York or somewhere.
52:51
Mark Zweig: I was in New York last week for a board meeting there and the restaurant service quality is so high and the food quality so high.
53:00
Mark Zweig: But you know why?
53:01
Mark Zweig: Because it's like there's so much competition there and the customers are gonna be so picky, yeah, yeah, if so many choices, that if you don't do an outstanding job, that's right, you're done for.
53:16
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know that's right.
53:18
Mark Zweig: So, anyway, it's all good stuff.
53:21
Mark Zweig: The good news is, with all this, loads of room for improvement.
53:26
Mark Zweig: Absolutely Every single business that you look at there's loads of room for improvement.
53:31
Mark Zweig: So if you're listeners out there, you need to take a good hard look at yourself.
53:36
Mark Zweig: Maybe you need to pay some people to be customers of your business, or you need to be one yourself To the end.
53:44
Mark Zweig: Tune into the market and what they're telling you.
53:47
Eric Howerton: And another thing if you're a listener and you've always wanted to start your own business, if you just come in with a big bag of give a crap and engagement and attention and dive in like that I mean there's a lot of people You'll probably be successful.
54:02
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know.
54:03
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you will prevail and just do that long enough.
54:06
Mark Zweig: Exactly, yeah, don't give in to the failures great mantra that we see unlinked in every day.
54:12
Mark Zweig: I had one LinkedIn post I clipped.
54:16
Mark Zweig: I took the name of the person out of it.
54:19
Mark Zweig: But failure is great.
54:20
Mark Zweig: We should be celebrating failure.
54:22
Mark Zweig: I'm like no, I completely disagree with this guy.
54:26
Mark Zweig: Okay, let's give a participation trophy to everybody too.
54:30
Mark Zweig: That builds strong character.
54:32
Mark Zweig: Can't do that, you know?
54:35
Eric Howerton: So do that.
54:35
Eric Howerton: Yeah, so the opportunities abound, opportunities, everything.
54:38
Eric Howerton: It's actually encouraging conversation because it reminds me like, at the end of the day it's sorry about that cliche, but it's really not that hard right, it is not that complicated, it is not some sort of sophisticated in a Harvard pro forma calculation with 20,000 years of research behind it, in 2000 degrees, in a state of genius and IQ that only five people have.
55:08
Eric Howerton: That's what I think a lot of people block themselves from.
55:12
Eric Howerton: You know, if you have something inside your being that says I want to own my own business, I want to go do this, I want to solve that problem, right, you don't do it.
55:23
Mark Zweig: Go do it, do it.
55:24
Mark Zweig: That's the best way to figure out if you're gonna solve the problem or not.
55:28
Eric Howerton: Yeah, and have confidence that it doesn't require all these things.
55:30
Eric Howerton: It just requires relentless attention, focus, engagement.
55:34
Eric Howerton: I mean everything you got, yeah, but that's the hard part.
55:38
Eric Howerton: That's why a lot of people get so tired, but then a lot of times they get in business by accident.
55:43
Eric Howerton: You don't know why a lot of these people that like these owners they're like a lot of them, they inherited the businesses or they got divorced.
55:50
Mark Zweig: We had some divorced spouses who got depressed.
55:54
Eric Howerton: Right, a lot of things happen.
55:54
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's not for everybody, it's not you know, but also the horror stories of it are a lot of times have nothing to do with just being an entrepreneur Right and have been entrepreneurs, so you can't look at those case studies?
56:09
Mark Zweig: No, you can't.
56:10
Mark Zweig: It may be that they just screwed up because they never had what it took.
56:15
Eric Howerton: Right, or maybe they just didn't think that marketing was important.
56:18
Eric Howerton: Yeah, except they got into plumbing and it was just about doing good plumbing Just doing good plumbing Just doing good plumbing.
56:25
Mark Zweig: Word of mouth, word of mouth.
56:27
Mark Zweig: Yeah, whereas the dudes with the toilet seats, the raps where it looks like they're sitting on the toilet as they drive, they get all the attention.
56:37
Mark Zweig: They do get attention.
56:38
Mark Zweig: I use one of those guys no.
56:40
Mark Zweig: Yeah.
56:41
Mark Zweig: I do.
56:41
Mark Zweig: That's the way his vans look Mm-hmm, you know.
56:45
Mark Zweig: But I'll tell you what I got old plumbers I could call who don't call you back.
56:49
Mark Zweig: Yes, or spend a week before they get there.
56:51
Mark Zweig: These guys, I can call them and they show up.
56:54
Mark Zweig: It's all right, it's you know?
56:58
Mark Zweig: So who am I gonna call the owner?
57:00
Mark Zweig: I call the owner, who's probably in his 70s and still involved and owns all kinds of stuff.
57:07
Mark Zweig: Does not need to be doing this.
57:08
Mark Zweig: He loves it.
57:10
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's called life.
57:11
Mark Zweig: Yeah, exactly, it's like, well, I don't know anything else to do, I'm just gonna keep going, you know.
57:18
Mark Zweig: Yeah.
57:19
Mark Zweig: But he's got a successful business.
57:20
Mark Zweig: I'll tell you that he's got his son involved with it and they're really growing it.
57:24
Mark Zweig: I mean, it's a lot bigger than I realized when I started asking him questions, when I as he's out there digging in my yard to fix a sewer line, you know Right.
57:35
Eric Howerton: Good for him, man.
57:35
Mark Zweig: Yeah, and I mean the guy's fantastic.
57:38
Mark Zweig: Not only is he happy doing what he's doing Okay, he's built this great company that's far bigger and has tons of value in it because of the assets they own and the revenue it generates, but he's also really good at what he does.
57:54
Mark Zweig: We had this problem where the city was trying to tell us our sewer was broken on and it was our responsibility to fix it.
58:01
Mark Zweig: But it was broken in their street and he just argued with them and argued with them and got all his equipment out there and proved to him that the problem was under the street, nice, and they had to fix it.
58:11
Mark Zweig: It's great and it saved me somewhere between eight and $12,000.
58:15
Mark Zweig: It's awesome.
58:16
Mark Zweig: Okay, who am I gonna call that guy?
58:18
Mark Zweig: It's because he cares.
58:20
Mark Zweig: He cares.
58:20
Mark Zweig: If I text him at 630 on Saturday, he's gonna respond by 635.
58:25
Mark Zweig: It's fantastic.
58:26
Eric Howerton: I love it.
58:27
Eric Howerton: It's called having purpose in your work.
58:29
Eric Howerton: Yeah, and you know what I'm here to say.
58:32
Eric Howerton: It's okay to have your work as part, or even a large part, of your purpose in living and being alive.
58:40
Mark Zweig: It is, it's okay, it's okay, it's good.
58:42
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's not work versus life, no.
58:46
Eric Howerton: We've been taught way too much.
58:48
Eric Howerton: All these other things are more or so important, but really, if you can find purpose in your work Right, and that's like I love that Right.
58:58
Mark Zweig: Or it's fun.
58:58
Mark Zweig: We could talk about purpose versus passion.
59:01
Mark Zweig: Some people say it's gotta be purpose over passion, but you know what Passion goes a long way too.
59:07
Mark Zweig: It's a good sort of help If you're just interested in the subject.
59:09
Mark Zweig: I mean, I like motorcycles, you know.
59:12
Mark Zweig: I'm not necessarily saying that it's the most noble endeavor to sell motorcycles, although I do think they help a lot of people, sure, but I love them, yeah, so it's not hard for me, it's okay.
59:27
Mark Zweig: Okay, I think about it a lot.
59:28
Mark Zweig: What can I say, dude, it's passionate.
59:30
Eric Howerton: You know, yeah, it's fun to be interested, it keeps you going in life Like it's.
59:35
Eric Howerton: Like I can't imagine.
59:37
Eric Howerton: Not, I can't imagine at this point in my career doing something that like I'm not passionate about doing, and when I start getting into a space where I'm just not happy about something, time to get out.
59:47
Mark Zweig: Yeah.
59:48
Eric Howerton: Or time to change your role.
59:50
Mark Zweig: Right, yeah, well, that's what I did with the building and construction business and that eventually my wife basically abdicated and, instead of delegated a lot of stuff, that landed on her plate, yeah, and she finally got sick of it too.
1:00:05
Mark Zweig: Yeah, but yeah, when the time when you start thinking that it's time to get out, it's okay, it's okay, you don't have to do something for the rest of your life, yeah, you know.
1:00:13
Mark Zweig: Yeah, do something different.
1:00:15
Mark Zweig: Here you go.
1:00:17
Eric Howerton: All right.
1:00:17
Mark Zweig: Good man, good talk.
1:00:18
Mark Zweig: Same here, and this has been another episode of Big Talk About Small Business, so check us out at wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom.
1:00:30
Mark Zweig: Sign up for the podcast, so subscription.
1:00:36
Eric Howerton: Yep, subscribe on YouTube.
1:00:38
Mark Zweig: Yep, youtube, or those are fun things, man, it just helps, it does.
1:00:42
Mark Zweig: We need subscribers to be able to continue to do this, because at some point we're gonna have to get some sponsors.
1:00:49
Mark Zweig: But fortunately my rich uncle Eric over here, there's bankroll on this, bankroll on this operation for now.
1:00:56
Mark Zweig: No, no, no, no, it's true, no, but anyway, take care everybody, and if you do have questions, send them in to Eric or myself.
1:01:07
Mark Zweig: We like that here.
1:01:08
Mark Zweig: And what is our email address?
1:01:12
Eric Howerton: It's info at bigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom Great and you can go to the website too.
1:01:16
Eric Howerton: We have a form on there.
1:01:18
Eric Howerton: You can just submit through the form.
1:01:19
Eric Howerton: Yeah, we love that.
1:01:20
Eric Howerton: Super simple.
1:01:21
Eric Howerton: We love that we're doing this.
1:01:23
Eric Howerton: Why do we do this?
1:01:25
Eric Howerton: Why don't we spend the time every week?
1:01:26
Eric Howerton: Because we actually enjoy having these conversations, we do, and helping other people out, right, and so if you have a question, it would be really cool.
1:01:33
Eric Howerton: You know, when we got some lined up, right, but send more in because at some point we're just gonna read off questions in our podcast episodes, the tougher they are the better.
1:01:43
Mark Zweig: Love it.
1:01:43
Mark Zweig: Throw us your real hardball here.
1:01:46
Mark Zweig: That's it.
1:01:47
Eric Howerton: I like it.
1:01:47
Eric Howerton: It feels good, right.
1:01:49
Eric Howerton: That's why we're doing it.
1:01:49
Eric Howerton: Yeah, so I'm not being passionate about something.
1:01:51
Eric Howerton: No, that's why Help other people in business.
1:01:53
Mark Zweig: It's why I teach.
1:01:54
Mark Zweig: It's the most rewarding stuff ever, as you know, with the feedback we get from our listeners.
1:01:59
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it is so rewarding.
1:02:01
Mark Zweig: It is really cool Seeing them be successful, just like my students.
1:02:05
Mark Zweig: Yeah, exactly man.
1:02:07
Mark Zweig: All right, eric.
1:02:08
Mark Zweig: Thanks a lot everyone and we'll see you next week on Big Talk About Small Business.
1:02:16
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1:02:18
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1:02:20
Speaker 3: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
1:02:30
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