Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / From the Vault: Ep. 1 - Welcome to Big Talk About Small Business

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From the Vault: Ep. 1 - Welcome to Big Talk About Small Business · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's great to be here with you today, and I want to welcome you to our very first episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm here with my co-host, Eric Howerton.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Mark Zweig, and we're going to have some talk today.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing, Eric?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Mark, I'm fantastic.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually super excited about today.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've been looking for this, looking forward to this moment for, I don't know, years, maybe a decade or so to hang out with you in a studio, put some mics on, record the things that you have to say and all your brilliance and expertise.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't know about that, but we we did have some fun in the past.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Remember when we all worked in one room when we first got uh Zwag White back from the lender?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that in that time.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you look back at that and uh just having people in a room that are just having fun and working hard.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's kind of I mean, honestly, it's like that's what life is about.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of energy with that.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of doubt about it.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, made for a lot of fun times, good relationships.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: So let's kick off uh talking about you a little bit.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll I'm gonna introduce the audience to who Mark Zwag is, and then you can fill it in a little bit.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Are you ready for this?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's not spend too much time on that.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: We won't.
• 1:26
  unknown: We won't.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I've met Mark Zwig around 2010, I believe.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it was actually you had the year before or a year and a half before, you had sold your interest in Zwag White.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Correction.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: In 2004, I sold my interest.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: So we got it back.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: You were there when we f when I first got drafted back.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Got it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: After the lender took the company over.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: But we had sold it in 2004.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: 2004, yeah.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then you but then you moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, or Northwest Arkansas.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: In 04.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: In 04.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you started you started building houses.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And like it was awesome because you had this canvas that you'd paint with your properties.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, like the going square footage for selling a piece of property was I don't know, probably like$100,$120 a square foot, something.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's about right.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, normal in the market.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: But then if you went and looked at a Mark Zwag house, that puppy was selling for$350 a square foot.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: You would pay dearly for that.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, you would.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the reason why, which is something I really appreciated as I got to know you and see your properties, was is that you took ultra care in every minute detail.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Everything had a way to do it, it has used high quality materials, you had good craftsmanship, good people on your team.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I really appreciate that.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically like your art canvas.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there were some houses I did where not only did we design then and build the house, we did all the furniture and even um did things like did the paintings on the walls.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Now my painting is not quite as good as what I can do with.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: You're a painter, too?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: I've never seen one of your paintings.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it they're not great, but um well, we need to promote them on the show.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like have an ad, Mark's flag paintings.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh, it's been a it don't rush into that decision.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: I know you're an entrepreneur and you're always looking for something else to do.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: But okay, that may not be the best one, huh?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: No, that may not be the best one.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: But no, we did.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: We we really took a lot of care and um, you know, it always bugged me when somebody'd say, Oh, yeah, you flip houses.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, if I bought that for 200 and we sold it for a million one, that's not a flip.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's not flipping.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's a complete reconstruction.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's you know that's what you did because you take historical homes in historical districts and turn them into works of art.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was fantastic.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that was what you're doing from 04 to about 2010, and then you got approached by the new owners of Zwag White, which you had sold in 2004, to come back in as CEO, turn the ship around and get it back on a on the on the Mark Zwag track.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then a couple months later, you you found me.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was uh out there looking for a position, and that's when we got introduced, and you and you and that's when you and I started building our relationship.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I remember you did some um you you you did some kind of a of a marketing plan for a single product.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: It was very impressive.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And uh beyond that, you're just super fun to hang out with.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: So you too, man.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it just all worked out really well, and and um it was a great um a great little team we had there.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was you and me and Sonya, my future wife.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, and uh well, who she was your future wife then.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, today she's your wife.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Today she is my wife.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: So she's still not future wife.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: No, okay.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, she was she was my future wife.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: She was, but um, and uh I can't remember.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: We had uh Alex Ahmad joined us, he was your friend, and you two had worked together before.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we got a lot done.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I just remember the, you know, we were in such bad financial condition.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was nothing like when we sold the company, it was always profitable, it had no debt, it had great cash flow, it had the best DB credit worthiness rating you could have.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: We'd been on the Inc.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: 500 two years in a row.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: We sell to the private equity firm.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: They basically throw every single thing out that we did, which made us a good company, borrowed six million bucks from a mezzanine lender, didn't pay any of it back, and then got taken back by the lender.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you and I were on the scene there, if you remember, I think the year before the company did around 3.1 million and lost like a million four and had a six million dollar negative net worth.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I just wanted to send out a excuse me for saying this word, but shitload of emails.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I got a lot of resistance from the uh lender and from the other guy that the lender had dragged in.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: If you remember, I won't mention his name.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he just got out of the federal penitentiary.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Or did he?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um for trying to bribe the North Carolina insurance commissioner.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he was a bit unethical, and I'm glad that we were finally able to separate from him not too much longer after that.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: But um, but yeah, they all said you'll ruin the list, you can't do it, you know, you'll you'll have too many opt-outs, you can't be a spammer.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely saved us.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: It totally did.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, email marketing at that time.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I remember, I mean, we put together a rigorous email marketing schedule.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I have since that time, I have yet to see a company that my companies had serviced or any other ones that just had a such a fine-tuned machine of email marketing, segmentation of lists to relevancies.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even back in that time in 2010 and 11, which you know, there wasn't all the automation that there is today.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like we were, I mean, we were digging in, doing some really cool stuff and making dollars.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: We had to.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was, you know, they they say necessity is the mother of invention.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one of the reasons why I like um, you know, undercapitalized, bootstrapped companies.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: I just think they build a better discipline that serves them well later in life as businesses, because you know, you can't afford to blow anything.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, it kind of goes back to like so you had the black white, yeah, it got bought by private equity.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And PE firms are typically, they already have quite a bit of resources, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and they'll they'll blend in business.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they combined us with two companies and they put the CEO in.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and all the administrative work.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I think something you said that you it lost its luster in the way that it's running business.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there's economies of scale, all that type of stuff, but there's also an essential character of a business, the way things operate from day one.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't start a business on day one and then 10 years down the road and and you have a successful business like you had without going through a lot of learning curves and you filter through all these mistakes according to the market and the industry, the people that are paying bills, the people that are reading the content, all the stuff that goes with the business mechanics, and just trash that.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or or replace it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why they I I you know, I've wondered sometimes.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: New CEOs do the same thing.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, the company doesn't have to be sold for that to happen.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like they want to put their stamp on it, yeah, or they just think they're smarter than you are.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, sometimes maybe they are, but um, other times maybe they're not.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's part of the art of management, you know, is knowing what you have to change over time and what you need to keep that made you great.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Not everything needs to change most of the time.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, I agree.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, I want to tell one quick story when I'm first when I was actually interviewing with you, which I think is very applicable to our our podcast here.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I come in, I I I I come in, I meet you, right, and after I submitted my stuff, you invited me in for interview.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: I come in and interview.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: We met for like an hour and a half, and what I loved about the interview was is that like you took me on a walk and we walked around, we kept talking about business.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that like really dropped the you know, the whole you know, professional side of things, like where it's all uptight.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so you really I think your tactic there was to kind of get to know me as I was gonna come in as a key, you know, key key personnel in the in the company.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then but what I love and I'll never forget is I remember leaving the interview, and it wasn't five minutes later you're texting me and you were asking me a question.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, what about this?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then I I remember I'm I was pulled over in my car so I could sit there and think and contemplate this text that you know this this guy that I just met with is asking me, and so I've responded to you, and then I started driving again, and then two or three minutes later you texted me again.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had to pull back up, pop back over on the side of the road.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because what I knew though, here's what was cool though.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: I recognized later that day, I was like, this guy's testing me to see my response time.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And my response in my mind was I'm gonna show him that I'm engaged, that I'm ready to rock and roll.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know it.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, terribly is super important because you know, when you're really in the throes of it, I mean, there's no boundaries.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're just going at it and you're thinking about it 24 hours a day.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you want to work with other people who are the same, who are engaged.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're you were you're an entrepreneur, and I was too at that time.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, like you were testing to see what kind of okay, is this guy really an entrepreneur?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I didn't have to have that question.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, because you're gonna be the one paying me, but like you bringing somebody into a business that you're trying to rebuild, right?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Which is actually might be as challenging and what's different than starting one from ground up, like there's a lot of things to fix, man.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was tough.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so you needed to know is this quote unquote entrepreneur?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because anybody can call themselves an entrepreneur, right?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Which is kind of the point of the show.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: But you wanted to see that engagement level if it matched up with so I think I think that you know it was just really important at that time that that that those text messages, as simple as it was, was really important to you.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was very important on how I responded, and that built a really cool partnership between you and I, not that I was an equity partner, but I was definitely you know hanging out with you for a lot of stuff, right?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, absolutely.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're a critical player, yeah.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, that is super important.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we we had that early experience together and it was great.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: And um, when you and and uh Alex decided to go up out on your own and and sort of reconstitute White Spider, which you already had the concept for that business, from what I recall when you came to work there.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, actually, when I when I was interviewing with you, that was, you know, you said I wrote that marketing plan.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was already in, we already formed White Spider, um, and we're trying to get it going.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Then that opportunity with you came in.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was, you know, at that time, it was a really smart move on my end to come and basically learn from somebody like that.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm not, I'm not, hey, I don't know about that.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to but I mean, but for real, though, I mean, at my my you know, I mean, looking when I researched you, was like, I need to learn from this guy, you know.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and and I I did tremendously, like you're a huge mentor of mine.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then and so when we did have, you know, the opportunity for White Spider, we were actually able to, you know, uh, by your approval, you know, we're able to take on contract as white white as a client of White Spider.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was a very easy move.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was good for both of us.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was, yeah, it was definitely it was a win-win deal, I thought.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was absolutely painless.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Great way to to go our different directions at that point in time.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I think um the moral of the story is if if I was the teacher and you were the student, now the student has has uh definitely uh flown higher than the teacher.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: No way.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so what you have done with White Spider and uh I think is pretty amazing.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, you built yourself a nice little marketing consulting business and you had that going for some time, but then you you somehow, and I don't know exactly what happened in your mind, but you you must have gotten up one day and just said, you know what, we're going in the software business.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna totally change this business.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: I won't say pivot because you know I hate that.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's a cliche.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna do a pivot and then we'll do a deep dive into the software business.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't pivot.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: We had can we say adapted?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: I you could say adapted, although there's a zillion marketing consulting companies out there, you could still be in business doing the same things, I'm sure.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe you'd be, you know, larger than you were.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: But but the fact uh of what you did was um absolutely transformational and it gave you a completely different trajectory.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I just think it was brilliant.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Most people would not do that though, because you had to make a conscious effort to basically say, I'm gonna throw away what I have that pays my bills every single month, and I'm gonna go in this new direction.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: That takes guts.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I appreciate it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I remember making that decision, it was you know, at that time we had, you know, we had 15 or so people on the team.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that's the heart one of the harder parts is like getting the team to get behind that effort without I mean, there's so much that can go wrong, you know.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: If if people don't get aligned in a company and they're not part of that vision, they don't know where they're going, or even if they can't believe in the leader that's that's seeing something, uh I mean, you can have a you can have a team that just just kind of basically drags everything down.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not what the the people did.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was fantastic.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: I give a lot of credit to those people, man.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the ability for them to have trust, but also stay together as a team while we went through that period was was pretty impeccable.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's a testament to you, and um they they had faith in you and um and you know they felt like you were gonna bring them along.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's like any good entrepreneurial venture, you know.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I hate to say I did this or I did that because I really didn't do anything entirely on my own ever.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: There were always other people involved.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I think one of the most important skills to have as an entrepreneur is to be able to put a team of people together and you know, get them all working together and toward a common goal.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And can I can I take it to a level with that real quick?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: So on that point, like what was funny, you know, there was a um, you know, we recently got or White Spider got acquired.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I don't know if you felt this through your acquisition, but I'm curious if you did.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like what you just said was so beaten into just the way that I was thinking, you know, it was never me.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was about the company.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: The company literally had its own life to it in my brain.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it had it was its own person, and I was one contributor to drive that person to success.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and in my mind, I was always thinking everybody else that was involved is building up the is creating this this human that's taking care of all of us, right?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we got acquired, man, it took it's still like to this day, I don't know that it's really hit me on what my level of engagement really was with with with the white spider becoming what it became, because like I don't take cred, I don't like it.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, I don't have the ability to consciously take credit in a lot of sense.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I'm making sense.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like they're well, you're a modest guy, you know, and and and you want to give credit to other people, and that's that's an admirable quality.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's a necessary quality, I think, to truly build any kind of organization.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I do, I understand exactly what you're saying.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: It I think that's a great way to look at it.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: I never really use the human body as a uh, you know, as a as a as a metaphor for a business, but it's it's true.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and um, you know, it's it it's it does have a life of its own.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's what was so sad for me after the first time I sold my company, is you could just see everything going wrong.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, you know.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Did you stay on while after No?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: I was lucky, you know, we had great depth in our ranks.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: And again, it wasn't by accident.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean we had multiple people who could have taken my job or any of our partners' jobs, and then those people had people that could take their jobs.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so we really had two or three layers of depth in there.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of the reasons why the buyers wanted our company, and that allowed me to get out completely.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: I needed to get completely out.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: I was offered the chance to stay.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: I could have stayed and run it at that point.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it would have gone better if I had.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Probably would have, you know.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: But but I mean, so you call that and I learned this as why quite you call that transitional planning, right?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, transition planning, sure.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Transition planning, yeah.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Leadership transition.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think a lot of times, like you know, in the entrepreneurial space, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like you that that's like there that's like kind of a the an in a finish line in a way for an entrepreneur, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's the first time that you've ever started a business, transition planning, you know, is kind of like an accounting term to the right.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: That seems rather unobscure and way out there.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: But right, but when but I would say that your advice, I mean, I want not to put words in your mouth, but and in your experience, like to start planning for that is actually about step five.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because before, because to your point, the reason why the buyer was so interested in you guys because you had developed, like you actually had this unique capability of transition planning, and they could literally buy it, and the business continues to operate.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, one of the things that you and I need to talk about on the show is the difference in entrepreneurship and small business.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a perfect springboard into that.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because entrepreneurs build value in their business.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: Small business people who stay small, they design the business so they can extract as much of it as possible along the way and live a particular lifestyle.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, and so if you're an entrepreneur, you're gonna build value.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to have value, you sure as hell better have other people there who can function without you being there.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, it kind of comes back to what my four first real business partner, Fred White, used to say.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Say smart people are inherently lazy.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: So anything you can get anybody else doing um is good.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And anything you can get other people doing that's better than the way you would do it is good.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, hopefully you're gonna sort of set the stage in that process for an eventual exit.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: So to drill down on that a little bit, this is good.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is I mean, but this is so it's true though.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's so much uh to this, but uh what's good about this is that what you're saying is okay, let's make sure we define entrepreneur here because an entrepreneur is actually if they're gonna create a business, the entrepreneur is creating it to fit a market need that's going to that wants to see that business grow should and develop and blossom and and and become an entity.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas the the small business owner may not even have that ambition, but they're literally like, hey, I just want I want to be a plumber and I and I don't want to work for somebody else.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be able to manage my time.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I have my own ideas about how things should work, and I want to make$150,000 a year.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to take on additional people because I don't want to deal with people.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can do that, but it is a different animal.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not that they're not an entrepreneur.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is it you're inch entrepreneurial enterprise is kind of what you're there's a difference between entrepreneurial enterprise and a small business.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's the way I look at it.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, not everybody's gonna agree with me.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you get out there on social media and you read the business stuff, and right people are talking about solopreneurs.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: What's so what the heck is a solopreneur, Mark?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's one that's a somebody who's self employed.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: But see, I don't consider that an entrepreneur because they're not gonna build any value in that as a business.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because building a value in a business.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well like what what is this value you're talking about?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like what's like if you looked at an entrepreneur versus a solopreneur, what does the entrepreneur have that's value in comparison to solo?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: They have a business that they can sell and they can they can capture um the the uh you know what they put into it over time and harvest it.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: There's a check.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you can harvest it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, yeah that that gigantic dodge dually monster truck of yours out there is a great example, you know.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: You mean you you know you sold your business, you you you could then go buy this this enormous truck.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean I'm just saying it's just one example, but yeah, it's it's um you you have to be able to capture the value because entrepreneurs generally they don't consider themselves done then.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: Then it's like that's true.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: What else am I gonna do?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna move on to the next thing.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: That that's true.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we uh that's like it's funny because I would say that in my experience, entrepreneur, I wouldn't, I didn't even know what that word meant.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I just had stuff that I was going out to go do, right?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I mean kind of go down that a little bit.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like you got a lot of folks that are wanting to be an entrepreneur.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yes, pop culture has created a a false image of what that's about, both good and bad.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, you know what, man?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you this like I could not think of a more dangerous thing to play with from a vanity standpoint than to guide somebody down the road of entrepreneurism who is not an entrepreneur.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Bro, you talk about I mean, well, I'm let's bring in some of the negative things.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: If if I'm an not an entrepreneur, but you convince me that I should be or or market to me that I should be.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, massive debt.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, massive financial stress.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, no retirement on the plans.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Number four, no time.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say number five, my relationships with my friends and my spouse or my kids sacrifice.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's let's go with Am I going too far?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: No, number six, high potential for failure because you didn't have the right orientation to succeed, which will create great shame and embarrassment.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: But it's okay to fail, Mark.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: I know failure's wonderful.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Fail early, fail often, fail a lot.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: Go forward.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: Bullshit.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we need to learn from the mistakes of other people.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying you should be so afraid of failure that you don't try anything new.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: We all make tons of experiments that don't work out, but don't bet the whole farm, you know, when you do.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's that's but yeah, I think failure is is a is a high probability if you have somebody who doesn't have the right orientation to do that stuff.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can't, if you can't sleep with that a little bit, yeah, because I can tell you like I love this, I have an idea for a presentation one day about entrepreneurship.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be it's about 4 a.m.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it has double meaning to it.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's about 4 a.m.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: and I wake up in a sweat because I got some stuff I need to do or I'm worried about something.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Can I handle that?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's also about 4 a.m.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: to when do I get my butt out of bed and start working because I can't sleep instead of floundering around.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: You taught me that actually, man.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: You taught me that back in the day.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's like white, like you would pop up, man.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'd get emails from you at 3:30 a.m.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: and I'd be like, This dude, I love them.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and so it really like if you can't sleep, get up and get start working.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, you can get so much done before 8 30 or so.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's mind-butting, it's quiet, you're not having all these distractions that you normally have of the phone ringing, people coming in, gazillion emails, bing, bing, bing, bing.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you ain't sleeping anyway.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: You might as well get it.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Watch something else if you start watching TV or you eat that's all degraded, that's all degradation.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, none of it's positive in helping you out.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: No, not at all.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Face face the world, man.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Start popping out some emails.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now that said, I will have like a couple cups of coffee and maybe a few lucky strikes in the morning, but uh that's my little guilty pleasure.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, that's all right, you know.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, if I drove by your house at 3:30 in the morning and it was dark outside and you're out smoking cigarettes and having a cup of coffee, I'd be like, I want to hang out that day.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, fortunately these days, most of the time I don't get up any uh any earlier than like five or six.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: But I am gonna get up and get going.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: But but no, I I want to come back to that topic though about misconceptions about entrepreneurship because I it's many people who go into it or think they are going into it who shouldn't be.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think there are many more who could be entrepreneurs and don't do it.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that's sort of my concern, you know, as somebody who teaches entrepreneurship here at the Sam Walton College of Business, is I want my students to realize that they do have an alternative to selling their soul to the corporate devil.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Now, that alternative might be becoming an entrepreneur, it might just be being self-employed and having a small business uh or being, you know, uh one of many owners in an enterprise, but um, they do have an alternative.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, uh what's most disturbing to me is the way entrepreneurship is often portrayed.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: You have to come up with a new idea that's never been done before.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's false.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's false.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: And not everybody's gonna be able to do that, okay?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: There are so many successful entrepreneurs that do things in proven mature industries.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's no need to figure out what your MVP is, minimum viable product to use a term that's bandied about constantly these days.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: When you're selling pizza, you know, everybody freaking likes pizza.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: Is that not obvious?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have to go out and do a psychographic profile on pizza eaters?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how many billions of dollars of pizza are sold every year.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: But we know it's a really, really big market.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're just a little bit better than the next guy, yeah, you know, you're probably gonna do really, really well.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I like, you know, I I I that I like mature industries, and I think the notion that you have to invent something new is a barrier and it's a false barrier.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: And and then the next thing, and you've seen this, I'm sure, because you're like me, you're kind of a junkie on this stuff.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you sit there and you watch like Shark Tank or one of these others, right?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, the next thing you're supposed to do after you come up with your new ideas, then go out and raise equity capital.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Such a that is such that it I'll be like, I don't know the exact time period, but that's like a 20 to 30 year old way of doing business when we've been doing business for a couple centuries.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, it is a relatively new phenomenon.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: It is yeah, like to go out and pitch in order to raise capital to start a business is not true.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and I would say it's not even true, like so.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Most people would probably argue, you know, which I can can see why they would, but like, okay, well, if you're in technology or software or whatever, you have to do that because yeah, there's there's but we actually did that at White Spider.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: We built our own technology without borrowing a single penny from an investor.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can do it.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, I mean, it's some businesses, like if I want to be in the pharmaceutical business and there's a five-year approval process with the FDA or something, yeah, it's gonna take capital that you're not gonna have, probably, right?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: But most businesses can be bootstrapped.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing I I think that, you know, it's like I you see this, you see people talking on Twitter and or um LinkedIn.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, I'm gonna start a startup.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, why don't you start a business?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Starting a startup is I come up with an idea, then I do a business plan, then I raise outside equity capital.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now I'm done.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: What happens after that?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're just a you're a good presenter, is what you are.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you've mastered the art of presenting.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Which you know, honestly, like if that's your business, then build then build it like to be a good pitch deck presenter.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds great.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the way to build an enduring enterprise.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's not necessarily the way to build real value as an entrepreneur either, because the what people don't realize is when someone else puts the money in, I call that the golden rule.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's he or she who brings the gold to the table rules.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: So suddenly you want to be self, you want to be self-employed, you want to do your own thing.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: But now we come up with our idea, we go pitch it, we get outside equity, we're now working for somebody else.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's game over.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: Game over before it even started.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: A good analogy that I heard a few years ago on that, I can't remember who said it, but uh the the the analogy was is entrepreneurs are like wolves and investors are like horses.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Investors have eyes on both sides of their head like a horse and they're always watching to get what's gonna hurt them.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas an entrepreneur is a wolf with two eyes in front going out and attacking, you try to bring a wolf and a horse together, it's a hard thing to do.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so if you're a young entrepreneur or you're a first entrepreneur and you're going out to raise capital and you think and you've been taught or you believe that that's the right way to go, and you don't even consider being a wolf is who you are, and then you get caught up with a bunch of horses, sounds like you might get trampled to death.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like you might get trampled to death, and which happens a lot.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like if you raise capital, you're losing all and you've you've said this, I love this too, is like equity is a lot more expensive than debt.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is if you're successful.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: What does that what does that mean exactly?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what that means is debt's got a fixed interest rate and you pay that, okay?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: You want to go get equity, early stage equity, they expect a 20, 30, 40, 50 times their initial investment return.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: You'd have to be paying a beyond a staggering interest rate for that to be the case.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're successful, and let's face it, that's the best outcome, right?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right, is you are successful.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: The next thing you got to understand about these equity investors is the majority of them are not in it for the long haul.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: They don't want to operate that business over time.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: They want to cash in and move on to the next thing, which means they then will sell your business.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: So you're working for them.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: They're going to distort the idea because they brought the money to the table.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: And they can.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: And they can.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then then if it work, if it all works, then they want to sell it.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then where are you?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, a lot of these folks, I think a lot of folks don't understand that that's it's actually a business within the business is the series A, B, C, exit rounds, going public, all that stuff.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's people that are what they are, they're not highly trained into helping a lot of times.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're not highly trained into helping your business succeed.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're highly trained in how to flip it and flip it.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how they get paid out.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: That is right.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Which I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but don't misunderstand what the intentions of people are because on entrepreneurship, right?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: What I've learned is ain't nobody really out there to help me in my and you know, like legitimately looking out for me and what I'm trying to accomplish as an entrepreneur.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's actually a lot of people trying to get, you know, trying to get paid.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's that's absolutely right.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, if you really want to do your own thing and you want it to be the vision that you have, again, you know, another misconception that pop culture has provided us with is that people start businesses because they want to make a lot of money.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: Usually that's like that that's that's the outcome of doing something.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's not why you're doing it necessarily.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: Usually you're doing it because you want to solve a problem or the other providers out there stink and you know you can do a better job than them, or somebody said you can't do something and you want to prove them wrong.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you like to create good jobs for people because you like see helping people and you like seeing people be successful.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: You want to help your clients or customers because that feels good, right?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so there's all these other things.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: The money's just an outgrowth of that.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly right.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've had I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I've actually have come across in my in my career that like have met with me, and I didn't know that what they were up to at first, but they're like working at a company, peel ideas, and their ambition is to go out and try to make a whole bunch of money.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: And they typically do not survive that.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: They don't do well with that.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because what happens is in year one and two, maybe to five, there's no money.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're actually spending a lot of money.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you want to take the least amount out that you have to so you can put it into the machine to grow the machine that feeds you and takes care of everybody.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, your goal, I mean, and again, speaking of you personally, you did such a good job of that.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: You lived reinvesting.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, totally.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: You always lived cheap.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: You never took anything out of your business that you didn't absolutely need to take out, just to live, I think, a relatively modest lifestyle.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the result of that was you built something that had unbelievable value.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and on that too, was like, so I wasn't a check kiter because I understand that that's not that's illegal, but what I was was a good floater.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I knew the exact hour in which the bank's rules were to when I could pay for something over the weekend.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was like seven o'clock, seven oh one on a Friday afternoon.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I could actually spend about 300 more bucks to get through the weekend so that I knew I was getting a check in on Monday.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then on Monday morning, first, and I had from Monday till 7 p.m.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: on Monday to go chase down whatever money I could to make deal to make it happen.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I did that for 10 years.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I also my wife gets on to me, Mark.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so she she's only known me for about seven years now.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: But when I met her, I've I had all these credit cards.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then even today, like if you look at my wallet, it's about that thick, full of cards.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm the same.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I only use one, MX.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: But I still have all those other ones for security, bro.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: And there were times in the past, 20 years, 30 years ago, I had, you know, your accountant calls up, it's like, hey, we need you to send over like a hundred thousand dollars.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, what?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't have that right now.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and you could go get you could go get credit card cash advances or or live on the credit cards if you had to and use your other money.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know how many times I was able to eat lunch because my Walmart credit card, I go in the grocery store and just buy about$500 in groceries.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's so funny you say that because I was just cognizant of that the other day.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I only use this one card, and I'm sure I have at least six more in my wallet right now, bulging away out there.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know why I have them.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: I just found out the other day that I had a money market account I'd completely forgotten about.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: The reason you have all those cars is because subconsciously, like you have a backup plan to a backup plan to a backup plan.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's what you're doing.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you always here here's what it is.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of an interesting thing.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you what it is is you you have capital options because you've been you found yourself as an entrepreneur at some point in time when you didn't have any capital options.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that is not a good place to be because you savings and loan crisis, it was either 89 or 90, and all the banks were failing.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: I it was with Bank in New England, and they got taken over by the feds on a Saturday.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: There was a bank run on Friday.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I could see that it was gonna get ugly.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: I drew my line of credit up to the max on Friday afternoon.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: Smart man.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then Monday my banker called and said, uh, everything's gonna be okay.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: We'll honor all that.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then later he's four o'clock, he's like, Well, I don't know, maybe um we could have a problem.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, dude, I just sent out all these checks, you know, based on thinking I had the money there.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's that the being scared definitely makes you come up with these backups on backups.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you want to talk about why we're entrepreneurs, I mean, we could get into the psychology of it.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, I I think I told you before, my dad was literally Don Draper off Mad Men.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: So it was kind of crazy at our house.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, he and another guy had the biggest ad agency in St.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: Louis and they grew it and everything.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: But then in the 60s, you know, he started to have a midlife crisis, and and you know, he he quit that and and uh then he got into management consulting and it was like up and down and up and down.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, you know, I didn't like that feeling.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: I never wanted to be in that position.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, maybe that does uh is sort of a motivator.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's some fear, there's some fear behind that, right?
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but but anyway, it's uh so yeah, I think more people can do this stuff than they think.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you don't you will make some mistakes and you will have some slips and falls along the way, but you can't bet the whole farm on any of them.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: True.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, your goal should be to avoid failure because it hurts people, people don't get paid, it's incredibly embarrassing.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you and I both know people in this town who went belly up and people still talk about it and are still scared of them.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and like to your point about the shame part, right?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, your reputation your reputation is really about everything in business.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's it, but it's not a good one.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: You can always recover.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you go belly up, yeah, but you paid everybody.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like you taught me something huge back in the day, like when I was at Zwike White.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, even though we were struggling, you know, we were still paying people as fast as we could.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as we got in a payment in from somebody, we paid out.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you in in like it's it was it was you know really tight, but we did the best we could, but you just keep that integrity because you're our name and our reputation's on the line.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can't you can't owe people money and survive in business.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: I I tell you, in the or not pay people money in the construction and development world, they're terrible about paying people.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so I could get really great subs who would perform and jump.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: I because uh you know, when I was just doing everything myself, especially early on, you know, um man, somebody give me a bill, I just pay it right then and there.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to pay it later, I'm gonna pay you right now.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, when you pay people like that, they do respond.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, that's so true.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: I liked watching that.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you're I remember uh you doing that, like and you had people that were loyal to you.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the other thing they would show up for work, they would get the work done and get it done with quality, and then therefore you're able to charge$350 a square foot.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh yeah.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's why that's why you could, but you had but you I think that a lot of times and they worked well together.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: It was a nicer job site.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: When people are cooperating and having fun.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they were do they I remember talking to some of your contractors then that uh like they were uniquely loyal to you.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was the only guy who paid him every single week, whether there was rain or whatever.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: That was the other thing.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: You never can send anybody home.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: If you want them to show up all the time, never send them home.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: The biggest mistake is I don't have anything for you to do.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: You got to find something for them to do so you can pay them.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: Gotcha.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because once I mean it's it's just humanity, right?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of folks will they'll go home, and I mean, passivity is the biggest killer.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: But back on on paying people, you know, when we first got Zwag White back, and Sonia was the first person I hired, my wife.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she wasn't my wife then, she was my friend.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: But um, you know, we had so many people we owed money to.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was a nightmare.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was like one of the worst periods.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, I threw that on to her, you know, which God knows why she stuck around as an employee or, you know, as my friend during that time.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: But uh that's hell.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, just getting called from people all the time that you owe money to, it was just awful.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: It is awful.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: I it's it's another one of those bad feelings that neither of us ever wants to experience again, right?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you I think that going through that though, it it it gives you some it teaches you some resilience, right?
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because like there's an emotional part about that about everybody would like in most cases would want the best for other people and they feel bad if they can't provide that best.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can go through the periods like that to where, okay, I'm doing the best I can to provide the best, the rest I'm out of, it's out of my control.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you just have to keep stepping forward.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs that if they hit that line, they quit.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you have got to step up that step, that ladder.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to face it, man.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad you said that because you know, I think one of the messages that we need to get out to our audience here is.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, we haven't talked about everything we've all done.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've had multiple businesses.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: I've started companies, I bought companies, I sold companies, you know, I work with a lot of companies and and saw them, I was on the boards of lots of companies.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's always something you can do.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's true.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: Always.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's true.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and if you choose to throw the tall in, well, then it's game over.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: But it you'll never fail if you never quit.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: So true.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have to that is such that is such a big a big point because I can recall, you know, even when we were together and even in my own in my own businesses, some very dire circumstances.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, to where like there doesn't seem like like a way out.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there's not any and I remember even times like where I was very, very much alone and no one could even give me advice.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you ask for advice as an entrepreneur at certain times, this was my experience.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was crazy.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: If I asked advice, that would just cause more problems.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I went to say, Mark, man, I'm about to go belly up, what should I do?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: You'd be like, Whoa, bro, you're about to go belly up.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna literally that reputation, like not that you would do that, but somebody like a lot of people would, they'd start distancing themselves to get away from the the damage.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: The failure shame, man.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: But they but the other thing is if people ask you for advice and then they never follow it, then they don't want to have anything to do with it either.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's a big part of mentoring.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that I expect everybody I mentor to do everything I would suggest to them at all, right?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: But you want them to listen sometimes, you know, and if they don't do it, you know, you want to hear their logic of why they didn't, and and you know, and sure, you can learn a hell of a lot from them too.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: But if they never listen to you or they don't even bother to explain to you why they did something different, I don't you don't want to give them advice.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's not worth it.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like Eric goes belly up and doesn't pay anybody, and his mentor is Martin's like but that's but I mean, but that's that's up to your point, like wrong mentorship though.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean yeah, but like in those in those moments, there was every reason in the world to to to not go forward.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: But there's something in you as an entrepreneur like where you you get in that space and you find a way to your point, there is always a way, and and you're always and and then even if you choose a way, and a lot of people cannot see that, which I think is a big difference between entrepreneur and and and a lot of other folks, right?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: A manager or whoever in life is the ability to see a solution despite the circumstances that are externally shown.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, you know, I think part of the reason why you can see that solution, though, too, is because you don't bank on any one thing.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like I'm gonna go to Las Vegas and put all my cash on 21 and then roll the roulette wheel.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it an entrepreneur typically has is making all kinds of small bets all over the place.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so something is gonna pay off.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: So there's something you can work on, there's something you can extract something out of.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: And and so, you know, that that's a huge part.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, for me at my advanced age, and I now have my Medicare card.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: Which is Congratulations, man.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: But it's also depressing.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but fortunately, I'm still an employee of the U of A and I have good medical insurance over there.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, your your family genetics allows you to live till you're 150.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's it is crazy how old they live.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: But um, but you know, um as I as I wind down all the stuff that I was involved in and sell off all that real estate and and get out of all these businesses and and engagements and and ownerships and boards and everything else, at some point I'm gonna run out of, oh gee, we need something extra money here.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's just go sell this.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, at some point, that's all gonna be, you know, you'll run out of those things unless you just keep planting those seeds.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you can just keep planting those seeds, though, and then lo and behold, aren't you lucky that you just uh made a million five on that piece of property?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: Is that luck or is that because you planted the seed to that's right, you know?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's you know, it's funny because uh I don't really realize that I do it, but you're right.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, anytime that that there's been an opportunity in business, you know, you t you take a level of risk because you have to go after something, right?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because big rewards come with with risk.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: But you don't, but you always have this foundation, you know where the roots are and where the where the concrete is at the foundation and where you can fall back to.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right, exactly.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't take any risk you think is stupid either.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: And other people may think it is.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what I was gonna say.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: How many times have people been like, there's no way?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's he's crazy, he's out of his mind, but they don't realize like all I told them was the one idea that I'm taking the risk on.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't tell you about my 1520 fallback plans.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't have them mapped out in a spreadsheet either, but I know I'm confident that they're gonna be fine because I got five of them.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: If they drop out, then I got these other ones that I can drop into.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's so true.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I once had this woman who's kind of a known figure around Fayetteville.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: She's she's pretty nutty, frankly.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but she's in the real estate business, and she was very critical of the um renovations that we did because we made places that in her mind were too nice.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: And she said to me one time, she's like, uh, or asked me, she goes, What are you gonna do when you run out of houses to redo in Fayetteville?
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, It'll never happen.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: We have like an unlimited supply of crappy houses, you know?
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, but she honestly thought that would be the case.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'd run out of houses to redo.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, come on.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, you're never gonna run out.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's always something.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know so, Mark, on this show that that that that we're we're doing here, what do you what do you see, like what can you give the listeners an idea about what's what's to come down the road?
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like what kind of discussions are there gonna be had?
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who are you gonna be bringing people in?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: What are you I mean, like what are some of the top headlines that you would like to talk about?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we will be bringing people in.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna be bringing people in who are successful and maybe wired a little differently than the sort of conventional idea of what an entrepreneur is supposed to be.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: And this area we live in is absolutely rich with people like that.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I know plenty of them outside of this area, as I'm sure you do.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that is definitely one thing we're gonna do.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: But again, I think we're gonna be talking about um matters such as you know, we can all talk bootstrapping's great versus raising outside equity.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: What specific things can you do to actually bootstrap a business that are real?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: What does it really mean and what actions do you take?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're gonna talk about, you know, what are some real gorilla marketing tactics that you can apply?
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, I both of us are passionate about that.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: And if you look at small businesses, I think one of the primary reasons for failure is no marketing.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: I I see it over and over again.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, you know, it's like, do you guys do any promotion?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I saw this one business recently and they spent like$36 on marketing last year.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm like, well, and you talk to the owners, like, oh, we tried that once and it didn't work.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: So not only do they only spend$36, but they had zero resources that were focused in on marketing internally.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like you can spend zero dollars, in my opinion, but if you have four people on staff that that's all they're doing all day, yeah, is marketing.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's you well, you're not spending zero dollars, right?
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: But right, you're you you might be at 20k, right?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, but but a lot of people don't think about that.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: They they mix up the marketing versus advertising, you know, and the in in in but I've seen so many companies that don't have any marketing.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: They got nothing, and then the owners will tell you, well, we think word of mouth is the best marketing.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there won't be any friggin' word of mouth if nobody ever goes there or buys from you.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and you and you can't even do that in today's world either because it's so crowded.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's so crowded.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like shooting fish in a barrel, Eric, finding ways to improve the marketing of the average small business.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: I want to talk about branding and how you can apply that to a small business because that means you'll be able to charge more and you're gonna get customers coming in to you.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we need to talk about pricing and the fact that small businesses often, not always, do better with a lower volume, high price strategy because you can never compete with the biggest on price, especially if you're selling a product or making a product.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: Whoever's bigger is going to be cheaper.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you got to be better.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Even if that high volume, low price worked for you, you aren't ready to for the scale.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I think we need to talk about pricing.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think we need to talk about um people.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, one of the and you know this very well.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, you know, it I sit there, you know, and I'm sure you have looked at a million business plans, and rarely is there anything in the plan at all about how they will attract and retain a highly motivated and competent workforce.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's like it labor's an afterthought.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just a number down there on the spreadsheet.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not like that.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_02: We'll find them, we'll train them, they'll be fine.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not like that.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: So your your whole strategies on on people and how are we going to get good people?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_02: How are we gonna keep them engaged?
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, I think that's important.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think um I think we need to be talking about things like the sort of panacea buzzword-laden programs that tend to dominate the airwaves and how they are dangerous and and you know, maybe don't work as well as those selling them would lead you to believe.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I think there's just a whole lot of things.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: We need to talk about accounting and the importance of numbers.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: Accounts payable.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: Accounts receivable.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how to cash flow.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: Cash flow.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: How to uh how to build a business model for if you're an entrepreneurial uh enterprise, if you're trying to build something of value, there's different ways to approach on how you set up your sales, your pricing, everything to get higher valuations at the end.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because it sure would suck to work for a long time at something and find out that no one in the market thinks it's valuable.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's only so much you can extract out of any business through its operation.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's limited, but there's no limit to what the value could be.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, that's good.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's good.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, honestly, I don't think we will run out of stuff to talk about at all.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think so.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that so the the perfect person to listen to this this podcast show is like who?
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is it a brand, somebody like to your point that doesn't know if they want to be an entrepreneur, who people that do know?
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a are they just starting?
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: Are they midway through?
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are they sold and exited and starting something new?
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, cool.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's a really good thing I mean, I think there's a wide-ranging audience for what we're talking about.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um current entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, small business owners, people who think they'll be small business owners, um, people who sold their sm their business um and want to maybe do something else.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think there's uh there's just such a huge audience, and they need the truth, at least from our perspective.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, uh I guess, you know, and and I don't want to brag when I say this, but I think it's important to consider the credibility of the people whose advice or business stuff you consume.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, both of us have started, owned, sold businesses, okay, that were successful.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're not just coaches out there, we're not one-man coaches, we weren't middle managers that got fired when we turned 55 and now we're coaches or advisors, okay.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I I think it's really important for people to understand that we have lived our lives in this stuff in the trenches, you know, for a long time, going back to when we were actually little kids.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: And we want to share that with people.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: We want to we want to share it with people.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, some people be like, Well, why do you want to share it?
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't you just keep doing it?
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: One is we actually want to help people.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's important.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's that's our legacy more than anything else.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then secondly, just because you can make a lot of money doing something doesn't mean you got to do the same thing forever.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_02: It gets boring.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would agree.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: I would agree, man.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that um, you know, the other part about it is that I really hate and it hurts my heart to see people consuming advice that's just not that that seems to be taking the masses because the media loves big numbers, they love hot news.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole while is that you have a lot of folks out there that are scrapping, that are building genuine businesses that which that are that are that are satisfying the needs of a market, like genuinely figuring it out on a daily basis, and then they keep stepping and stepping and building and great creating this value, but it's not the thing that hit Wall Street today.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: But it's the it's the thousands and thousands of businesses that are building legitimately our economy, that are creating wealth, that are creating opportunities for kids and for people come in.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's employment, paying taxes, so that we can have roadways, all that kind of stuff, right?
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: These small business, these entrepreneurials, entrepreneurs that are out there dogfighting to make it work.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're so right.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_02: They don't get the attention they deserve.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's you know, it's like 70% of businesses um are small businesses, and and um they create the majority of jobs, yep, new jobs.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: They're the most innovative because they don't have this investment, sunk cost investment.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_02: And they are doing a lot, and and we do need to make heroes, um, I think of those people.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: I agree, because they are.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're they're they're fighting a fight that many other people cannot.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one last thing I'd love for us to talk about, not before we go today, but in general, okay, that I think is really key.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: We hit on it a little bit earlier because you're like, if we get into the psychology of it, the reason why.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is the emotional intelligence the psych the the uh the the mental part of this of being an entrepreneur?
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not talking about balance life, right?
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because we can talk about that.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like to say integrated life.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because it is, yeah, it is like it's every nook and cranny of your entire being, yes, right, as an entrepreneur.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: But how you know what are some of the things that you can give to a an entrepreneur, especially if they're in the thick of stuff, to give them to to reiterate that confidence that yes, I am I'm stepping forward, or to give them some perspective to say I need to back out of whatever that is that I'm about to do.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like you mentioned, like I put too many eggs in this basket, yeah, and I've I've got too much on the line there.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: How do you how do you emotionally handle that?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and then because at the end of the day, you have to be the person that's driving the positivity within the entity.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: As the entrepreneur, you cannot be an entrepreneur and be negative.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen those before and they are destructive as hell.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_02: You've always got to be the one that says there's something we can do and this is it.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's positivity.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_02: If nobody else has it, you got to figure out what it is.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_02: You got to state it.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and you're absolutely right about that.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_02: Optimism is crucial.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you're the entrepreneur coming to the office that day with a team of 10 and you're hoping that somebody else is going to lift you up, you've got a big problem.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: You do.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: You might not want to go to the office that day.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's when you just disappear.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_02: Which is one of the best aspects of entrepreneurship.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: Which you should do and what you can do, right?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I have done.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, man, I don't even want to show my face because I'm not in the game.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: But take that break, which is the integrated life.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a balanced.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because I push myself to the limit because I'm supposed to, because I'm an entrepreneur.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I push myself to the ceiling and I need to back up for a little bit.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: Get myself get my head.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: Just like the trash truck, right?
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just like the trash truck.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the sirens are going off, something's about to malfunction.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Back up, go, whatever you gotta do.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: Go, you know, go go swim in a river, which is something I would do.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: Get some sunlight and then come back at it, man.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: Reinvigorate yourself.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: But don't, you know, but how do you handle those moments, right?
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a big deal.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: Lots to talk about.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: We won't run out.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, we won't.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: Mark, it's an honor and pleasure to hang out with you here.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: Man, same here, buddy.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have fun and hopefully we're gonna help a lot of people.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: I hope so.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and have some cool people in to talk to.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because we don't talk much.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: No, we don't.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: We have nothing to talk about.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing to say.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, brother.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:02:11
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