Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 2 - The Life of an Entrepreneur

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Ep. 2 - The Life of an Entrepreneur · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, welcome back everybody to another episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here with my buddy Eric Howerton.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, Mart.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh all kinds of stuff.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Doing fantastic.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Doing fantastic.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's gray and it's ugly outside, but we're here in the beautiful studio today, and that's it doesn't matter to us.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, Eric, tell me, what have you got going now?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: You've got so many things happening.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I can't even keep up with all of them.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: You have quite a bit going on.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was uh still 100% of my 90% of my time, which is 100% of the working day, mind you, is devoted to uh still the company White Spider that I'm at and that I uh was a founder of, co-founder of, and built along with my CEO at at the company today, who came in and really helped take us that second stage growth.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: He's a fantastic leader, by the way.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: And what's his name again?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: J.S.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Bull.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: So now you guys basically took a marketing consulting firm and turned it into a software company.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say we were yes, that's a good way to put it.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: We were doing a lot of services too.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: So we would have consult, but we internalized like a lot of the content creation, web development, e-commerce, and all that.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then we just basically could see a really nice niche market.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Did I say niche correctly?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because sometimes I can say things that you don't know you said that approved.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Beautifully.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Pass that test.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Always nervous about that.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: So we took, you know, we found that niche market, which was uh Walmart product detail pages on Walmart.com.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you have the brands that update their content on those product detail pages.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: And as Walmart accelerated its digital merchandising, digital commerce side of its business, um, you know, we were a little bit ahead of that compared to a lot of other agencies and other providers out there.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so the software development came in as we started to help clients and brands in Walmart in that scenario.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we needed to legitimately needed a software to help us be more efficient in our work and recognize the use of that tool and the value of that tool that it could be for a uh you know subscription-based audience like the brands themselves to do self-help work.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it makes it easier for people to load their products onto Walmart.com, right?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: You can syndicate the content, you can, you know, do kind of fancier little design with it.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the reporting, the information it spits back at you, alerts.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: I see.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh all that type of stuff, which is, you know, I mean, really set the end of the day's software is just supposed to help accelerate your time, right?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: Or deal with mass amounts of m of information.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we set out to design for it to do.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you solve your own problem and then you go, hey, wait a minute, there's other people out there that have the same problem.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Great way to go.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: And the funny thing is, is like, you know, I'd say with most things that's go on goes on in the software world, is that okay, you can use the software to solve your problem, but we end up finding out that you're too busy to even use the software to solve your own problem.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: So you hire us to use our own software to solve your problems.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, makes sense.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and I mean, that's a good cliche for you.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: I know you love it.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: At the end of the day.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: But what about the beginning of the next day?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I always wondered.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's an interesting.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: So the beginning of the next day, uh-huh, you know, I mean, that's what a lot of things are, right?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're just trying to I mean, we're just inundated with information and opportunities and everything's so much faster and so much easier, so much better that I would like to just pay you to do the job for me.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of like business 101, I think is why businesses have always been around.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: You do this every day, you're really good at it.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Why am I even gonna bother trying to get up to speed?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna walk over here, make more money in the way that I know how to make money.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna pay you somebody else.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, everything is like that, as you said.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's you get the specialists involved to do what they do best, and then you move on and and do your thing.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So now you guys sold that business, isn't that right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: And who did you sell it to?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: We sold it to a company called Essential.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: They're out of they're a public company out of the UK.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: And they have over the last few years, they've bought some excellent digital commerce brands like ourselves.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one being Flywheel, uh, who has really kind of did what we did, but on the Amazon side.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: I they were highly successful, a lot, a lot larger than what White Spider uh was or is when we sold.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then they had Edgewise Essential, which kind of looked at shelves across multiple retailers.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then they had another company called OneSpace that was really great at like creating content for those product detail pages and for the other things and analyzing media and advertising, et cetera.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so they found us along the way in our Walmart expertise.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: So speaking of the niche, right?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: So we we were encouraged like so many times a few years ago, you know, by investors, right?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, you won't be successful unless you do Amazon and eBay and Kroger and everybody else under the sign.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's already like 20 or 30 companies trying to do that.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we hooked, we stuck to our guns.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Number one, we just uh, you know, we legitimately wanted to help Walmart.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: They needed help Walmart.com.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, to me that was that was always my driver.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Is like I could see a market need and I legitimately wanted to help.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it gave me a sense of purpose as an entrepreneur, right?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Money just happens.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, really the money is to support the business, the new entity, the new identity, personality that's becoming.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we just kept driving down that way.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you didn't make a sell, you weren't frushed and disappointed, or if your books weren't looking really good that month, then you didn't get demotivated and quit because you still had a freaking purpose.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: You kind of have that long-term view of trying to do something.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: You do, man.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, you lose your motivation.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm still motivated because the problem's still not fixed, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so sure.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: But so we just kept doing that, and plus helping our community out, uh, you know, solve a lot of big problems.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we ended up being a mile deep with Walmart and an inch wide, and they're the only ones that we're really specialized in.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, there was plenty of market opportunity too.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we could clearly see that uh with Walmart and his brands.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so when Essential found us, you know, it had kind of caught up in a macro environment that Walmart's a serious contender in the digital conference space.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so when that started becoming really obvious, we got approached, especially after COVID.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: COVID hit, like we were already talking with, we've been talking with companies over the years, you know, but when COVID hit, like the internet's like real, and so is bio, you know, every pickup store.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, everything did.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Every sure, right?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like, and I mean, everybody's like, oh my gosh, you know, like I do need to have content for this banana that I have online.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know kidding.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because nobody can see it.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Is this a banana or not?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's an ugly banana.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want that banana, right?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so and uh so anyway, yeah, it worked out well.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: And they were uh they're a great company with some really incredible growth strategies and and and they're actually legitimately trying to solve a massive problem that's out there, right?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I mean uh it sounds like it was a great thing in every way.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: So what does this mean for you?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: So how you're still there, yeah.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: How what are your plans or what are you doing?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: You've I know you've got other ventures that you're involved in, either directly or peripherally.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the the other, you know, it's funny, I don't know, like I've always, as much as I've studied other things in life, older I get, and you probably are like this too, but the more I discover about myself, that's just kind of subconsciously and innately in me.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so I did notice though that whenever, you know, when the acquisition happened, it me took like a lot of those those kind of heavier responsibilities from a business that I've been carrying around for years.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, sure.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Finance, HR, legal, right, et cetera.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: Problems, people, yeah, yeah.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: People and money and payroll.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: Those things do tend to keep you awake.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's so and so when those guys, I mean that that you know, then we have all these resources too.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I wasn't like pushing it to try to get more resources all the time.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: And being part of a bigger and just a greater family was awesome.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but what I did notice is that immediately when that happened, like to me, subconsciously, like I'm like, man, I uh I got capacity.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: Gotta fill my time up with something.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, and then so right back into that overloaded mode.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: Or or was it time or was it just like maybe that pressure?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like, you know, that pressure got released, and so, but I'm not used to feeling like something's kind of on edge a little bit, and I'm wanting some more risk in some things, and it's just fun, you know.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's like it's kind of like you know, like you in business as well.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you can relate to it, but like you in your houses, like it's canvas.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like you're painting something with this, you know, and yeah, and there have been a lot of ideas that I haven't had the capacity, I think eventually.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you've always had a lot of different interests and different things that you're involved in.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Playing your music, yeah, your photography, yeah, magazines, your outdoor stunts.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: All things that were themes that seem to like come back around.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was one way or another.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: To me, it's just fun.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like life, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and I I just see it like the hourglass that you know just keeps getting like I don't how much more time do I have?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like hey, you should be my age, bud.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Come on.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Dude, but I don't know that I could ever be as awesome and energetic and beautiful as you are.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh God, please spare me.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: The only hope I have, and I haven't killed myself yet, with all the bad things I've done and my horrible diet and all that.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: You like yeah, you have the genetics like where everybody lives to like 150 in smoke, too.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's all you want.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to see my mom uh here tomorrow, and uh she's gonna be 103 in September.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Freaking kidding me.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, she still lives in her house, man.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, that is awesome.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: If she still gets around fine and yeah, she moves around.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: We have to tell her to use her walker because we're afraid she'll fall down if she wouldn't be good.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: But she did, she fell when she was 100 and fractured her pelvis and then recovered from it.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And a hundred years ago?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't happen.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, you know, the odds are different.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, anyway, so yeah, I understand.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've all got a limited time.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: You don't know exactly what it is.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, you don't, and you need to spend it.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's funny, like it kind of helps me at even at White Spider.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've spend more than full time, like a you know, normal 40-hour week at White Spider doing what I'm doing there for the company.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: But these other things actually, funny enough, kind of help me be focused on what I'm doing at White Spider, what I need to get accomplished for the greater value of the organization.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh just I believe that every time I ever branched out and did something different, I could bring that back to my original thing.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a lesson that was valuable.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think when you just work in one industry and one business, you can you can develop tunnel vision.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's uh you need that outside to branch out, whether it's your hobbies or it's travel or it's what you read or it's other business things that you get involved in.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think it benefits the whole.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Man, you told me something a long time ago, about I guess it's been 12 years now that it has stuck with me.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember we were talking about something, or I was you know, about to do something else within Ed Zwike White, but you're and I was like, I'm gonna quit, you know, doing the marketing or something to that effect.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, don't ever quit what you're good at.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and I mean, but that stuck with me, and I actually have found myself not like I keep on it's been such a good lesson because those things that you're really good at, uh-huh, you know, strengthen just keeps getting stronger and helping you out with your business.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's nice to have that support of the thing that you do well that makes money too.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's always helpful, right?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: You want to do other stuff, yeah.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: So what are some of the other sort of peripheral things that you're involved in?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, we've got this beautiful studio here that's yours.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: So podcastvideos.com, which we're sitting in the studio portion of that right now.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of the physical what you call brick and mortar part of the business.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then it'll have an online element to it as well to help people, you know, advance their podcasting ambitions.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: And video.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: And video, yeah.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: Podcast and video.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, we really do see like, I mean, video is like the strongest medium, a medium form, right?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's what they say.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, in short video, short video, you know, and I'd say like it's you know, you know, just great relevant content type video, yeah, like what we're doing.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: If we you know, we might be surprised even on this podcast that we're doing, that like people might we if we did like, for example, a 15-minute slice, yep, people might like that, but there's also going to be an audience out there that wants the hour, an hour and a half, because they're in drive time.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so it could be annoying to only have a 15-minute episode and have eight of them that are getting jumbled up.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like right now when I watch Ted Lasso and we're only getting one episode at a time after I binge watch the first two seasons.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, dang, it's only uh it's ridiculous.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna wait another week for that.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Becomes disappointing and annoying.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's a good thing, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that I think that that's just like when we look at the really the um the larger size, just the the bigger events that are happening with technology and availability to basically be your own mass communicator.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um the barriers are coming down.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's easier than all down.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's all down.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so our goal is to make this where it's really efficient.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: So somebody like yourself and myself can focus on the topic and the subject matter, but it takes a lot of time to do, right?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um, and then we have you know, podcast videos that's able to quickly edit, produce it, edit, turn it, and then distribute it.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then even go full-fledged with like with this particular podcast that we're doing, like right now, as we're talking, you know, we're using podcast videos, what we call our diamond package, that is full A to Z from LLC formation to brand creation all the way to the microsite and distribution analytics and even sales of the podcast.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: I know, I love that.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: The vertical integration that actually includes everything people really need.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: They don't I nobody seems to do that.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't either, but nobody does the John D.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Rockefeller approach.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is is that what you call that?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, like how you found crude oil and everybody else was just barreling up crude oil, but he was like, Oh, I can do this, I can do that, I can do this.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I it's interesting you mentioned him because I I've heard a lot about him in the recently or read a lot and just the whole way they named oil fossil fuel.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: When they I was listening to this one scientist that said um it's really not made of fossil, it's a natural element in uh that there's no organic anything below 15,000 feet of depth, and yet oil is 30,000, 40,000 feet deep.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really an element.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, he created the image that it was scarce.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Are you serious?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, by saying it's fossil fuel, it has a limited lifespan, therefore it's scarce, therefore, you can sustain a higher price.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's very interesting, the psychology behind that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't want to get sidetracked.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's very limited amount of podcast videos that anybody can do.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: So you need a book as up for that.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we got that, and I got a couple other podcasts like this one, yeah, just on different subject matters.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: And what I'll, you know, honestly, I got I I wanted to do this kind of selfishly because I love doing what we're doing right now.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I just like talking and having commentary.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: I love listening to other people's perspectives.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: I just learn, you know, in like in if you go online and you try to search for a lot of these topics or whatever, it may not be there.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then why don't we create it or at least create a second perspective about it?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: What I what I like about what we're doing here is you and I have both been in multiple businesses, okay, and we had some success in business.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't just read books and are sitting out there telling people, oh, you know, you're a level five leader.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a book to read, swim with the sharks, of your cheese.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: People get so tired of that.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so tired of experts who always have a new program with an acronym involved in it.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Have you noticed that?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, well, give us an example.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I hate I don't want to slam anybody.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: But like one that's really popular right now is EOS.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Have you heard of that?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Entrepreneurial operating system.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: We have EOS implementers all over now.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they charge.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they charge a lot of money.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: They help you set up a system.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And like all these things, there's some good fundamentals to it.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you've got your rocks, your, you know, all these terms.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Have these leaders started their own business enough?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they've some of them are EOS implementers and they're making a business out of EOS implementation and making a good living.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good movie.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: But but it's like, you know, um, a lot of these things, they just result in a flurry of meetings and lots of new terminology, and then the sustained effect of what they do for you is is just not there.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, well, yeah, and because the funny thing is, is like at least this in my experience, and I think Mike Tyson actually has the best business advice.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, oh gosh, well, Mike Tyson.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: But the best, he's like, everybody's everybody's good at botting until they get punched in the face or something to that effect.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no, he said everybody has a good plan until they get punched in the face.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: But that to me resonates as their ear bitten of the case.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's another way to go about it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you gotta bot someone's ear.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes, sometimes you do, man.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you're getting if you're getting beat up.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's what my dad always told me.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: He used to say, Yeah, you're gonna fight with somebody and they're beating you.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, just grab them by the ear and start running.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: But he goes, don't um stop.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just keep going.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: But uh because I mean, like like but well these theoretical business moves, right?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's goods I think there's great learnings in theory.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: There's some good good things with that.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: I've learned a lot of them, and uh, you know, I I still study a lot of them.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: But but the reality is is when you're in the streets and you're fighting like a dog, yeah, baby.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and you can't yeah.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, yeah, you're right.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and the other, the other one that drives, you know, well, it's just it it there's so many purveyors of this stuff and they just don't have credibility with me.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be honest with you.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: That that's my big problem.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: They just don't have credibility.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, I was involved talking, going back and forth on LinkedIn earlier today with one of the problems of architectural in architectural education.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, why don't why is professional practice not um more emphasized in architectural school?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I don't know that it's a matter of emphasis, but the people teaching it have never really run a significant practice.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then somebody's like, what difference does that make?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, believe me, if you got a firm that's got you and two peons that you tell what to do versus one that's got 200 employees, there's a hell of a lot of difference.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, everything's different, okay?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, if you want to learn how to manage a business, I think it helps to have somebody who's actually managed a business teaching it, you know, in the in the architectural school.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: But that's just one of many examples, you know.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's, and I don't want to just sit here and bash everybody, but there's so many coaches out there.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like I'm a life coach, I've been married three times, you know, I've gone bankrupt a couple times, I was, you know, treated for substance addiction.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: But now I'm a life coach.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe that's good.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe all those things were good learning lessons.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I would rather have somebody who has modeled what I would consider to be more successful behaviors over an extended period of time giving me advice.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm not given marital advice.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on marriage number three.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, this is not a marital advice podcast.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Although I will say I did learn a lot or you know, from that experience.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: We can tell you a lot things not to do.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, I mean, I think that's a good thing.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I think we're one of the things I've always often been intrigued with when it comes to business advice is just read history.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like get down into the weeds of of previous entrepreneurs.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like politics, it's just like anything.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly, man.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: Be familiar with what happened before.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it's amazing because it'll actually give you comfort as an entrepreneur.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you decide to be an entrepreneur, you are literally becoming you're going into a land of isolation in a lot of ways.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's true.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Because no like you are accountable and responsible for everything.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you find yourself there, they say it's lonely at the top.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's not many better, there's not many more top places than being an entrepreneur of a small business when all things are going to run up to you and you're you're the one that's going to get blamed for it.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: But if you can read history, just read about any business history.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's not been one that's been theoretically perfectly designed that it would just went up like this.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: All the graphs that everybody wants that VC firms.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: We just want to see see your numbers doing this year over year, month after month.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: No kidding.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I did see there's a new movie out that's coming out on Blackberries, and you know how I love the Blackberry.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about their story.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're the best Blackberry user I've ever seen.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: They were so good, man.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: You could you could uh you could type you could type 2,500 words on that.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen you type so many all the times on that.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I do it with an iPhone now, but it makes so damn many mistakes.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Does it?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the autocorrect is, you know.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why didn't BlackBerry just sell their keyboard to somebody?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: They blew it.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, that'll be an interesting movie.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, there are many trials and tribulations along the way.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: But it, you know, I guess my my thing is I I still want to see somebody who emerged victorious at the end of the trials and tribulations.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and um, you know, I I'm I'm hoping that's what we can bring to this discussion.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's more than money.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's having control over your time.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's controlling who you spend spend time with and doing the things that you want to do.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it is multifaceted.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's helping other people, it's creating good jobs, it's solving a problem that somebody else hasn't solved.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: All that is super rewarding stuff, and I think it's very valuable in teaching, you know, teaching others.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, some people will say, well, why do you teach if you're so good at it?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you just keep doing it?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now I can understand that logic.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, one reason is it gets boring, you know.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's one other, you know, teaching it gives you a chance to do something different.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully you keep learning from all those experiences.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe just doing the same thing over and over because you make a lot of money at it's not smart.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, make sure that doesn't make you grow.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that doesn't make you learn.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a big part of what we're all about in uh in life is learning.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you got this this studio cradle to grave, total vertical, integrated model of video and audio content.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: What else um are you into now?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: We got this uh this logo, get out, right?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's for get out fitters, and it's an out, it's an executive ecotourism.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: You had Get Out magazine, wasn't it?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Man, I resurrected it, man.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: Get Out Magazine.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that was my first business I ever did about 23 years ago.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: And my and uh right out of money.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know what I was doing.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: I could I produced a hell of a good looking magazine.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: You did.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, graphically has been tested.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I just didn't have the ad sales or the business acumen, I guess, or the knowledge of cash flow and how bad that would be.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, you couldn't have been the world's egg m expert in magazines and still bomb disorders.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Media business just out of dying.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just off the yeah, the rails.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I've resurrected that in the form of um where we're going to take high profile, high, you know, very time crunched people out on private, secure, concierge, white glove type of outdoor experiences around our area.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Very cool.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: And just so we got really nice boats, best fishing rods and equipment, and you know, white glove it.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, that's kind of more of an identity business.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's one of those that like where I don't even think like we everybody always talks about exit strategy.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even really want one with that.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to be surrounded with that life.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, not every business is an entrepreneurial venture that builds value that you can cash in on at the end.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: You can have a small business that does something that you enjoy doing.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing wrong with that.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's what I think this one is about.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: I get it totally.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then we're there another one that we're doing, we're creating a media um that's about omni-channel retail.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so there's a market need for people to understand what omni-channel retail really means.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so we want to be the source to give people information, educate, inspire to domestify and advance omni-channel retail.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: That one's pretty exciting.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's kind of you know you have like you're gonna have conferences or publications.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: So a little bit, a little bit all above, plus a lot of podcasts and videos, right?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're gonna use this, this setup, uh, and then a lot of articles, surveys, right, uh, things of that nature, and just in the mostly digital media form, and then hopefully have some trade shows and seminars and things like that.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the things that you and I both know a lot about, all that stuff, because you it's why quite motorcycles, cars.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know much more than motorcycles.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: Ex-wives, those are things I know.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you do know about that.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: What uh so so that's exciting.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, tell any, I mean, are you worried you're gonna spread yourself too thin with too many different things?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: Or sometimes I do, but then like you know, but then that kind of quickly goes away when I start getting back to the point of what how they're all coming together.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe in the beginning, you know, we can get a little bit uh concerning because, you know, we have the tendency, I think at least I do to you know get caught up in the what if scenarios, you know, if take a 30-minute time span, and I might go in that world, but then I'm quickly I start thinking about how it's gonna come together in that and what that end reproduct's gonna be and how it's gonna solve the problem, and then it becomes crystal clear again, and I'm good for another seven days, you know.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then you've got this, I hate to use the term, it's sort of the synergistic relationship of these different entities coming back to you know, tying into other entities.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're all helping and compounding each other.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: And what I've kind of figured out when, you know, I've noticed again, like studying myself, and like we talked about earlier, is like there's a there's a single target audience.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: To me, that's like one of the central themes that kind of glues everything together.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that way, if you're building well in one, well, then that can help understand the value for this other product with that target audience.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then you, you know, you have a little bit of share resources that are surrounding that.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And and to me, that seems to be one of the safer ways to approach it.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that and uh that sort of is uh oh uh analogous to how we built this white white ZY Group.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you got one audience, what else do they need?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: You can do one type of consulting, you can do another type of consulting, do another type of consulting, you can do research, you can have seminars, you can have online education, you have uh books, you can have newsletters, you can have uh insurance products, you could sell software to them.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: All these things tie into helping that one audience be more successful.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 29:35
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, all these help white the my job at White Spider, too.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean it's you know, I don't waste any time.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: I believe that.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: Don't uh for any the any any any new form of audience that that I have to get to know or not that I have to understand what their daily life is like.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: Just like you did with architectural and engineering firms, right?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like you knew you knew what that audience life was like.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I did.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: I worked in several firms, was an owner in multiple ones.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it definitely helps, that's for sure.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I always tell people if you're gonna create a business, uh design one around yourself as the target customer because you understand yourself.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there there's a lot of truth to that.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is when you do a business at age 20 and then you wake up one day and you're age 40, you're not the same person.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you may not understand that audience that you were serving when you were 20.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen a lot of examples of that.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Very true.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the business morphs along with the owner and and changes its target market.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but anyway, so a lot of different things.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: You got to manage your time well.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you don't overcommit.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I was having this discussion with my two youngest daughters today on the way to lunch.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: They're soon to be 17 and soon to be 12.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, they were like, why are you doing so many different things, Dad?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, it's always I've always tried to keep my fingers in a whole lot of pies because something good always comes out of that.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: If I just had one thing though, it's it's like a binary situation.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: It either succeeds or it fails.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: But if you got 10 things going, yeah, then something's gonna make it.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I agree with that.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: I I like that.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's more exciting, right?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's days that some things don't like some things don't seem like they're working as well as where you want to be, but then you got this other thing that's jelly and jacking.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you know, and then that thing starts not doing well like it was doing yesterday, but now this thing's yes, exciting.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it just kind of keeps this like balance.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it keeps you up enough to deal with all the things that you gotta deal with.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's you know, that's right.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: My wife is the complete opposite of me.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just like in there, the thing, okay, can I say this?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, not everybody should be an entrepreneur.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, I don't like uh you know, I've I've I have a concern like with um some of the some of the trends that are going out in the market about um you know really pushing people to become entrepreneurs.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: And if you push the wrong person to be an entrepreneur and they become one, it could be one of the most devastating career.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: I don't disagree.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: If you call it a career, but decisions that they ever made in their life.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: Because like there's like it I could totally see it wrecking my wife's life if she decided just one day you got caught up in that frenzy.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh huh.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then you can find yourself in some pretty bad situations really quick.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because the excitement of the idea goes away pretty quick when you start shelling out some dough.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and figuring out how it's all gonna work.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what work you have to do to make that happen.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of work, right?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a lot of work.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of work.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I just wrote an article on this in the business journal.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know if you read it in the current issue, but yeah, a lot of it just comes down to are you willing to do the hard work consistently over time that it takes to make your business successful?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: And some people, you know, I think entrepreneurship is available to a lot more people than actually do it.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, I agree with what you're saying because a lot of people do not have the discipline that it takes.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, you know, that's part of the problem with the way it's sold today to people.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is come up with a great idea and then raise all this money.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: Start a startup.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's it's so much different than that.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: In reality, most of the time, it's not that great of an idea.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's an idea, maybe, or maybe it's something that's already been done.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: You just do it better.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: You you do what it takes to really make it work.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: You do all the hard work that it takes to make that thing work so it's viable and people will actually pay you for it.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I just think a lot of people don't have the discipline to do it, you know.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I wanted to talk about today to change the subject briefly, um, was this concept of overmarketing, you know, and that is um basically that you outspend and outwork your competitors in whatever business you're in, and uh in terms of marketing, yeah.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you see it as an investment in your company instead of a cost that's overhead.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if you do that in damn near any business, it will do well.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Even if the industry's not growing, it'll do well at the expense of the other businesses out there.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I think that's a I think that's something that um you know, i i if a company is going to apply that, that takes a lot of discipline and dedication, and most people don't have it.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: They just don't.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I you may totally disagree with this.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I will.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: Probably won't.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: So that can't so I can't tell you the amount of times.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: Where it, you know, I played a marketing function a lot in the businesses, right?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: You're a marketing guy, I would say.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: And say we're we were uh going to this event by we're gonna go to a trade show, we're gonna go to some sort of speaking event, we're a sponsor for it.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: And we get there and it doesn't pan out the way that salespeople or other people in the company think that it should.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody leaves hanging their head and disappointed in the marketing, like that wasn't that wasn't a good use of our time.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: Use of our time and money.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just I I'm inside I have this boiling thermometer that starts coming rising up in me because I'm like, I there is no such thing as marketing that does not work.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: It always works.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it may not work the way that we want it to, or the way that we would like to calculate or as quickly, or as quickly, right or as favorably, or it's like some land.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: No, you're you're right about that.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, man.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like always any single minute bit of effort you do in marketing does work.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: It does work.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that to your point, like that discipline invests.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: Are you willing to take that perspective?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, because if you take that perspective, it, you know, you obviously you use caution and reason on what you're doing, right?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: And you try to find the thing that works the best.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, for your for your audience, but you cannot be afraid to invest.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's the fear of the investment.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: This guy I talked to today, it was very interesting.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: He has an engineering and surveying company in Alaska, and he's bought three companies already.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now he's a very unusual guy.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: He went to school at Brown, he got a degree in economics.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: His dad was a surveyor, though.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so when he got out of school, he worked in private equity and venture capital.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: So his dad had his survey business in Alaska, and he decided he was going to take that over.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: And he did with no real knowledge other than you know what he gained from his talk around the dinner table and his his dad.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: He bought out his dad's business and he bought three other companies.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to grow this business dramatically.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so he was responding to an recent article I wrote on over marketing.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I really like that.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: I can buy it.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that it works.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: How am I going to actually implement this in this business?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what I said to him, it's the same thing I tell anybody in any business that wants to do this.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Figure out who the organizations are that could buy your services or buy your product, if we're talking business to business, which we are here, right?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um identify all the people in those organizations who could hire you or influence the decision to hire you, put them in a database, and then figure out 50 different ways you can attack them.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, connect with them on LinkedIn, uh, survey them, spit the data back of the research that you did a little bit at a time.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Give them helpful information.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's no real magic to it, but send out press releases to the publications that they're going to read or the sites that they're on.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, there's go to the events they're going to.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Shake hands with them.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's so many different ways to get in front of that audience.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do a podcast, do a video series, whatever.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's we could come up right now, I'm sure, with 30 different things that you can do in five minutes, right?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: Map out your friggin' schedule and then just do it.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Just do it every time.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do it.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get distracted.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Don't say, well, we're doing so well, we don't need it, so we're not gonna do it.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, keep doing it.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Don't say we've got this crisis over here, so we can't do it now.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can't operate like that.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: You really have to be relentlessly marketing all the time.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: It it never turns off.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: It never shuts down.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: If they would just do that, it's like I had another one of my former students come visit me this past weekend.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: He lives in Austin now.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: He's a very entrepreneurial guy.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: He comes and sees us every couple months.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he had this little marketing consulting firm, and they worked for a he helped several years ago this guy that he knew with his working visibility for his landscaping business.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so he did the signage, the graphic, you know, logo, the uniforms, the vehicles that are all um, you know, branded.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: This guy's got more business than he can possibly do.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: He just exploded.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so now he's living in a different city and trying to manage the business remotely, which I predict will result in failure with that type of a business.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a lot of close supervision and quality.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: My wife and I have commented that we've seen a lot of their signs in front of very poorly maintained lawns and and thought before we ever even knew this guy was involved with it.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: We thought, why in the world would they put their sign in front of that yard?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: It looks terrible.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: They'd be the last damn people, but it works.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the point is that they do that and it works.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they've got more, and so there's a zillion other landscapers driving around with their shitty trucks and not marketing, unmarked trailers, no job site signage, and no branding, no uniforms, no nothing.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when this economy slows down, which it will at some point, even though we're in probably the greatest place to live in the country, and that from that standpoint here in northwest Arkansas, they'll be sitting around bitching.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, we got how could we have known?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, who predicted uh we didn't know we were gonna have this recession.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: We can't help it, the market shrunk.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: Bullshit.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is our bullshit.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: No, it is.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: It is because an entrepreneur should be.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the entrepreneur will claw and fight their way in market their way out of almost any circumstance.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: I call that shooting my way out of it.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Shooting out.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's yeah, that's a good way to put it.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can hole up back there, but sooner or later you're gonna run out of food and water and bullets.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh, and it's gonna end, okay?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or we can shoot our way out of it.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you can't be a landscaper and put some door hangers up one weekend and expect your business to blossom and blow.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: We tried that once and it didn't work.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, dude, it's my favorite.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is what small businesses say all the time.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's the reason it didn't work is you just tried it once.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you tried about a thousand times.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: And just because it didn't work yesterday doesn't mean it won't work today.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: And just because it worked yet today, it doesn't mean it will work today.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's the that is so true.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to constantly be innovating and experimenting.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I would I I've always like what do you what's a good number percentage, maybe, Mark, do you think?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like if would you look at a gross revenue of a company and say I have a certain percentage I'm gonna spend on marketing, and as that gross revenue continues to build, like you maintain X percent?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: I that's always been my strategy, but I don't know what that number needs to be because it varies based on the industry.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: But my my thing is I think you probably if you want to have a company that grows rapidly, right, which of course is where all the excitement is, it's that's what's good for your employees and that's what's good for your ultimate value.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in your soul.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's a reinforced that's reinforcing that the market likes what you're doing, because they won't buy it if they don't like it.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: So all those things.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: But if you um if you want that, um, you're gonna have to spend, in my opinion, generally somewhere around two to three times of whatever the industry norm is.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's more in some cases, because some industries spend nothing.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, five times zero is zero or three times zero is zero.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like law firms or accounting.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, but you know, in most of these mature industries, I just think, you know, if if they're out there spending three percent and you're spending six or eight or nine.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: That means you're gonna be getting more attention, exactly, more opportunities, more business, and faster growth.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: Outspend your competition in marketing.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing people don't realize if they're growing at a rapid rate, they think, well, I've got to be concerned about my price.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Profitability, you'll be making money because your overhead doesn't grow as fast as your revenue grows, right?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: But we need to watch profitability.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: My three-person accounting firm told me profitability is most important.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: What do you know?
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: You got a three-person accounting firm.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean we're gonna sell this damn thing when I'm done for eight figures.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna sell your three-person accounting firm for?
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna buy you because, not because of your profitability.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna be buying you because of your audience.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: Who you gonner you garnish off of your fantastic, intense, disciplined marketing, relentless marketing that you get.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's about that audience.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: This overmarketing, it's so true.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: It just works so well.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: But then again, you know, then you'll see people that say, well, we'll take that approach, and then they just constantly hammer on things like sale, sale, sell, sell, sell, sale, sale.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, discounting doesn't always bring more business.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's the can be the worst thing you can do, okay, is is discounting because then the market expects you to be giving your stuff away forever.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that's another thing I see companies.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, we'll commit to marketing, but the way we're gonna market is everything's always gonna be on sale.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then it's never on sale.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you killed your margin.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's dumb.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or the other one is we don't provide any helpful information with our marketing.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's just sales information, sales information, sales information.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: We are constantly selling you.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that'll lose your audience too.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you gotta give people something, you gotta give people something that's worth them paying attention to.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's one of the uh one of the golden rules that I read not too long ago.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was just a couple two or three years, is that you if you if you want to set a goal and you want to get like say is say is a hundred thousand bucks, well, what's you know, put that as your goal, but what service do you render first?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then you render that service first in order to get to your goal.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: You have to be able to provide that value right out the gate.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and in in the marketing, I mean that's that's what I love about content marketing, not to get any sort of get down too much into the the different lingo, but I love content marketing because that's what you're doing.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: You're actually providing advice and direction for folks, the things that people actually want.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then every once in a while you drop a little sales, isn't there?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's not much.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's very discreet.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: You've been one of the best content marketers of all time.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously, like with well, but you wrote those neat you wrote those newsletters every week consistently.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: People love frequent frequency at consistency, and as you build that over those years, you wrote that uh Ada's wig.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, is that right?
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, is that the name of the book?
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, there's multiple volumes of the value.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: Is there?
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like a thousand pages, man.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's a big, fat, nasty book, but that demonstrates like how much value you've given to the market through that.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: But it was that's just every every word in every one of those newsletters is a form of marketing.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's just one example of like 30 things we were doing.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and yeah, I mean, give helpful information to people.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you can do it with almost anything, any product, anything.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can here are people using it, here's people using it in places you wouldn't expect them to be using it.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the proper way to use it.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could just go down the line.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Here we are compared to other products that are similar.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's what I love about I mean, not I'm not tootin' the podcast videos horn, but I guess I kind of am, right?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: But this business, the value that you can have by sitting here with four people within a company, yeah, just talking about your business and the things that you're overcoming or the products you're developing, the RD that you have for your products, why these things are important, that conversation is exactly what your audience is wanting to know.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it builds credibility, has a long shelf life to it.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: If it's in video form, it's engaging.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then you have the optimization value of the Google bots who are trying to find the most credible place in the world for it, and they can find it through this description, this written content.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: All these tags that pulls in, and then you got something to engage people, and then guess what?
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: They believe in your business.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then they'll buy anything from you.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you just did that, if you just taught, I know.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's you know, that's another part of the problem, I think, with business owners in general.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I just had to give this lecture to some people here recently that have a business I was trying to help out.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they get focused on all the problems and all the things that are wrong.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's always a zillion freaking problems, but you need to spend some time on the opportunities.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just like you said, I mean, if you don't have that quality, creative time to actually think about what you can do.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: How can you capitalize on this situation?
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: How can you do something better?
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: How can you sell more of whatever it is you're selling?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: And instead, you just think about so-and-so's not getting along.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, our bank interest debt interest rates are going up so high.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: How the hell are we gonna pay for that?
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're losing an owner and we're gonna have to buy that person out.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we got machines we need over here that are shit and we need to replace them.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, this guy thinks he should be promoted and clearly does not have what it takes.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, it's like it's constant.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's constant.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can always spend your time on that, rationalize why that's the most important thing.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: You better be thinking about all the good stuff that you could be doing.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you focus on that, you'll find those other problems kind of go away.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: They do.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: They do.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that one good way to do that, back to the marketing side, is if you are marketing and you're speaking to your audience and you're getting back ideas.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's basically the more you can communicate with them and get that feedback, yes, the more excited you become and the opportunities that you're feeling.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, I can't tell you many times at White Spider over the years that you would be in a business, a software business with this crazy, all this information overload, all this dynamics that are happening.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's we're we're doing our business is based on nothing but one massive problem with a million little problems in it.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like sure.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: Just the service we provide.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: But if I would be out in the market tarking to clients or going to an event or shaking hands or meeting at coffee shops or whatever I'm doing, yeah, or speaking in an event, I would be infused and I could come back to that company inspire opportunity.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: But it's because I was out marketing, campaigning.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's speaking of that.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I if I mentioned this before to you, forgive me.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: But so I was talking with this one guy, he was getting his PhD in I don't even some kind of science.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know what the hell it was.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: He emails me and said, Hey, I'd like to buy you coffee.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing this experiment where I'm having coffee with 50 people that I've never would not in my field that I never would talk to otherwise.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I and you'd be one of them I'd like to talk to.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I did it with this guy, and I thought, this guy is freaking brilliant.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's out there, he's gonna be mark, he's basically marketing himself by having those 50 conversations with people in all these different walks of life that he wouldn't talk to normally.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: So true.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Think about how that's gonna impact his opportunities, yeah, his network, yeah, his perception of things in the world.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: Just that one thing.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna start doing it.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna start doing it immediately.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: I I it it's it's so good.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, hey, you know, there's another topic I wanted to talk about, and I'm I'm only bringing this up because um we had some discussion over there at uh in my department, the strategy entrepreneurship and venture innovation department inside the Walton College where I teach with one of my peers, and then we brought it up in a department meeting.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: But and that is family business.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's unbelievable how many businesses in this country are family businesses.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's like 70 or 80 percent in some ways.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: Are you serious?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, even 30 percent of the Fortune 500 are family businesses.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean, I really did, I mean, I I had no idea there's that many.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then I asked my students how many of them have a family business, you know, and it's like i I'd say like half of them said they did in my small enterprise management class.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's very interesting to me.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: That is, yeah.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: One of my, you know, so it's obviously super common.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: It also creates like tons and tons of problems.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you ever had any family businesses in your family.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: We did.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: My my dad had his ad agency, and he employed at one point both my mom and my brother, who uh went on to become very, very successful in the ad business, as you know.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, just all the drama and all, you know, of course, everybody now pop culture is interested in it because we have succession, right?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: Which is like modeled after Fox or whatever.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think it's partly modeled after Rupert Murdoch and his kids.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it it's these family businesses have a lot of problems.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, for example, well, I mean, the of the relationships of the family members, about being able to shut down at work and go home, it never shuts down.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, do you pr bring one kid into the business but not another kid?
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of your kids is bright and works hard, the other one's lazy and is an idiot.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, do they both work there?
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: How do you say no to this to the one that's not supposed to work there?
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or it's not the right business for them.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is that fair?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Can you give your business to one and not another when that's a lot of your net worth?
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to me, like a really big problem that I see in the family businesses that I've worked with over the years is how do you get anybody who's any good to want to work in that business when they feel like, oh, it doesn't really matter what I do.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: So-and-so, the kid is always gonna be treated differently and get, you know, special treatment that I don't get.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times good people just won't work in those environments or they won't stay if they do go to work there.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: They find that out.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because no matter how much they're I mean, like that ceiling's gonna always be as low as that other family person that's yeah with that position.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: It it so I d I just think there's a lot of issues related to family business.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: What are the reasons you think that people are doing like what's the benefits to it?
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: You think it's just a control thing that some of these entrepreneurs are keeping the family?
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do think there's control issues.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's ego issues of you know, the name, the involvement of the family, the identity, the identity of the family with the business.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all factors, but those are not all b family businesses have anywhere near that level of scale, you know, right that that's even an issue.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of times it's just a matter of we don't really want to pay anybody any good, and we got family members that'll work there for cheap.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how it starts out.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then if it gets successful, uh then those family members are so embedded in key roles that you can't like get past that.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine?
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so if you and I are brothers, we had this family business.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: Let's say that I did not want to do it anymore.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, as brothers, we're close, but I can't leave.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: I would feel absolutely trapped.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: And if I left, I'd disappoint you.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it would break up the family ties, and so I stay with the job for the rest of my life that I don't want to do.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe don't do a great job, but I resolve.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I'm miserable.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a that's not an uncommon scenario.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of situations like that.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea that it's a good thing.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it was that much.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, one or more family members working there by definition is a family business.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I wonder, like, and especially in today's time, like I mean, I could see it back, you know, historically when that was probably significantly important, right?
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, you know, because that's what you had to do to survive.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody was just working the business and just like.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sorry, like your family farm model.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like or the general store, right?
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, it's like the only business in town.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so we all have to chip in and we're just working for food.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: But in today's time, you know, there's just so much more opportunity.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would I would uh five percent of startups worldwide are fueled with family money, according to this uh survey here from the Family Business Institute.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh family-owned businesses, 90% of American businesses are family owned or controlled.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, think about that.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: 90% how many US businesses are family owned?
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: It says they're 2020 a 2003 study.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, 2021, 32.4 million businesses.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this just blows me away.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: Here's another one that says 75% of entrepreneurs and 81% of established business owners co-own and or co-manage their businesses with family members.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean and think about a divorce where you got two yeah, husband and wife both work in the business in critical roles.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: Which one gets the business?
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: Which one gets to stay with the business?
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: Do they stay, but they're divorced and work together?
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's so stressful.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's I can I mean, like the stress in that is just not even close to being worth it.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I just I'll never forget years ago I was at this company in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it was kind of a famous little company in the niche that it served.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it was owned by a husband and wife, and they were both successful in their own right.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: They could not stand each other.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: And every, I mean, it was mind-boggling.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: The the the wife was a little carried away with herself, and the husband was kind of a more introverted guy.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't say much, but was very capable at what he did.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'll never forget, we were in the conference room one day, and I'm there with like 10 or 12 of their key people, and the wife is going on and on about something, and I'm watching the husband.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's getting madder and madder and madder and madder.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: His face turns red.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: At one point, he gets up, throws his papers down on the floor, doesn't say a word, and slams the door and leaves.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, oh my God, you know, we're we're at like a without saying a word.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's it.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, here we are, you know, we went over to dinner at some people's house and they just had a huge blow up in front of us.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, uncomfortable, uncomfortable.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: Think about what those employees feel like there.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, would you want to be a good, highly, you know, you're highly motivated, you're capable at what you do.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: Would you want to subject yourself to that?
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's terrible.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: I never would have had a family member in my business except you hired my daughter originally as a part-time writer.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: And she ended up, she did end up going back getting her MBA and eventually became one of the owners of the business and was in charge of marketing.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: She's not there now.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: She recently left and went to another business, and she was worried that I would be upset with her.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, not at all.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't uh and you weren't really an associate.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like, I remember when we bid hire, like, you didn't have any Well, I was letting you do your thing.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let me be a boss and let her be a employee, right?
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I'm a big believer and I I I I not only believe in delegation of responsibilities, in some cases abdication.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, I should it I shouldn't say that, truthfully.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I do believe in letting managers.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: She's just associated with her with her.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like even when she was she was concerned about your reaction about a decision she was gonna make it.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm out of the company at this point for four over four years.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like, you know, I hate to think that I would hate to think that she felt like that.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she's got to look out and do what makes her the happiest and what works for her best life situation.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, you know, she's got this horse farm, she's very successful as a rider and a trainer and smart as a successful business and all.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, yeah, sometimes I think it's really unfair to the children.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to just say it's all a matter of the children are incompetent and the employees are bad.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it the children are really competent, but the owners of the business don't want to look like they're treating them special, and they actually hold them back as a result of that.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's terrible too.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: Can we think of one good reason to do this?
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: I in today's time.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I I think it's fraught with peril.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I just do.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's really fraught with peril.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I would be very, very concerned.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've seen a lot of people go down that path.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I've seen the second generation do a lot better than the first.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's not always the other way around by any means.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're gonna do it, you really, really need to think about these things and work out sort of what your rules of engagement are and what the family charter is, and do other family members get involved?
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we decide if they get involved?
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we resolve disputes and what happens in the event of divorce?
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like prenuptial.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: It really wrote down a prenuptial, how you'll handle things.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a constitution or some damn thing, right?
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but i it's just it's a huge problem.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't think everybody's cognizant of it.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even here in northwest Arkansas, you know, we've got Tyson, which is the largest meat producer, I think, in the country, maybe one of them and largest in the world.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, they've got family members in there.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, it's so like John Tyson's son was made the CFO recently, and people are like, well, what is he, you know, is that good?
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: What's he know?
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: I maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: I hate to be you know start with baggage with it.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would hate to be the kid and and be under the eye of scrutiny that he's under, and also be the subject of all the criticism and ridicule at the same time if he's not equipped to do the job.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that's that's certainly would be demotivational to other people, perhaps, who are already in the organization.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: And even if they do well, they're just riding in the coattails of the predecessor.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: Some people would say that, so then they don't even get the satisfaction or the reward out of feeling like they did a good job.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that's true.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, it's a big problem with small business today, and this is, after all, big talk about small business.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: Indeed.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: Mark enjoyed it again, man.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's always good being with you, brother.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: All right, bro.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:04:34
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• 1:04:48
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• 1:04:52
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