Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 41 - Cultivating a Resilient Business Heart Through Disciplined Actions

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Ep. 41 - Cultivating a Resilient Business Heart Through Disciplined Actions · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:04
  Mark Zweig: we are back yeah, yeah, we are ready to freaking, tackle more business problems absolutely, because this is, after all, big talk about small business, and I'm here with my buddy, eric Howerton.
• 0:25
  Mark Zweig: Hello, mark Zweig.
• 0:26
  Mark Zweig: How are you today, sir?
• 0:27
  Mark Zweig: I'm doing pretty good for an old man.
• 0:29
  Mark Zweig: You know, bro, you just get going Sometimes I feel like it, but today I'm feeling pretty good, you're feeling strong, I'm fired up.
• 0:37
  Mark Zweig: I spent a couple hours on the phone with some of my partners in one of our ventures that we're involved in, and I'm fired up.
• 0:46
  Eric Howerton: So what are you fired up about?
• 0:47
  Eric Howerton: What's going on, man?
• 0:48
  Eric Howerton: What's going on in the business world today?
• 0:50
  Mark Zweig: I tell you what's going on.
• 0:51
  Mark Zweig: It's becoming very clear to me.
• 0:53
  Mark Zweig: Okay, and I just had all my presentations from my students on their small business consulting projects, which is like 60, some odd presentations and it just I swear you could hit people over the head with a fricking anvil and they still won't understand that it is discipline, discipline, doing what you need to do every single day without fail, that leads to success.
• 1:23
  Mark Zweig: Okay, if you just have the discipline to do what you need to do, it's all going to probably work out fine sounds like you may not even have to be really that smart or edumacated I whoever said this stuff is that hard, or you got to be a brain surgeon to do it, because you don't you really don't.
• 1:43
  Eric Howerton: I totally, I totally agree Like I'm not.
• 1:45
  Eric Howerton: I'm not.
• 1:46
  Eric Howerton: I wouldn't even classify myself as a really smart guy.
• 1:49
  Eric Howerton: I mean I'm not looking, I'm not like looking for the response, but I'm being genuine with myself.
• 1:57
  Eric Howerton: I would classify Well, I appreciate that, I appreciate that.
• 2:00
  Eric Howerton: But I mean like I don't like feel educated.
• 2:03
  Eric Howerton: I don't feel like I'm that, but I mean like I don't like feel educated.
• 2:05
  Eric Howerton: I don't feel like I'm intelligent, like I meet people that are really intelligent.
• 2:08
  Mark Zweig: You're intelligent.
• 2:09
  Mark Zweig: We don't sit around.
• 2:10
  Eric Howerton: Neither of us sits around and reads quantum physics, though that's my point, right, and so there's this aura that you have to be like super financially astute, right To start a business where you have to be so capital backed, or you got to be.
• 2:27
  Eric Howerton: You know all these things but you don't.
• 2:28
  Eric Howerton: But what?
• 2:28
  Eric Howerton: What the reality to it is is you have to be what disciplined do what you got to do every single day.
• 2:36
  Mark Zweig: and you know, by the way, when you start talking about um, have all this capital, that's the other.
• 2:42
  Mark Zweig: You know, it's conventional wisdom that businesses fail because of inadequate capital.
• 2:48
  Mark Zweig: I say businesses fail because of inadequate discipline.
• 2:50
  Mark Zweig: I mean, it's beautiful.
• 2:52
  Mark Zweig: Look at all the companies that make big splashes with one thing or another and raise 70 million, 200 million, 500 million, 200 million, 500 million.
• 3:04
  Mark Zweig: We had canoe here, the electric vehicle manufacturer, you know where.
• 3:07
  Mark Zweig: They just burn through hundreds of millions of dollars worth of startup capital.
• 3:11
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, okay, they don't develop the discipline they need to, in my opinion, in part because they have too much money.
• 3:19
  Mark Zweig: Who needs to do a daily cash flow forecast when you've got tons of cash sitting there in the bank?
• 3:26
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's not even important for quite some time.
• 3:29
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, we can burn.
• 3:30
  Mark Zweig: Our burn rate is X thousand dollars a minute.
• 3:34
  Mark Zweig: We ought to be able to stay in business for three years and not make any money.
• 3:38
  Mark Zweig: Okay, well, that's not going to create a company that's going to be successful in the end.
• 3:43
  Mark Zweig: Ultimately, it's a danger zone, man.
• 3:44
  Mark Zweig: It is.
• 3:44
  Eric Howerton: It's a going to create a company that's going to be successful in the end, ultimately.
• 3:47
  Eric Howerton: It's a danger zone, man it is.
• 3:48
  Eric Howerton: It's a danger zone.
• 3:55
  Mark Zweig: It's like being superbly healthy and fit, and so, therefore, you don't need to be disciplined in taking care of yourself.
• 3:58
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, just eat.
• 3:58
  Eric Howerton: Burger.
• 3:58
  Mark Zweig: King Whoppers every single day.
• 3:59
  Mark Zweig: Six meals a day and supersize it Smoking cigs getting crunk, wait a minute.
• 4:07
  Mark Zweig: You're striking a little close to home.
• 4:08
  Mark Zweig: Sorry, I think I ate at mcdonald's five times.
• 4:10
  Mark Zweig: Last week I'm sure he did uh, but no, um, it's.
• 4:13
  Mark Zweig: No, it's true it is.
• 4:14
  Mark Zweig: It is very analogous to that, but but let me just give you one example, though.
• 4:18
  Mark Zweig: So one company I'm associated with, we have an owners um uh group site on facebook, okay, and we get requests from owners, like business owners or no owners of the product product yeah, and it's and it's really just for the people who are the owners of the product.
• 4:36
  Mark Zweig: Okay, so we get constant requests from people to join.
• 4:40
  Mark Zweig: Some of them are owners and some of them are not.
• 4:42
  Mark Zweig: They have to answer a few questions.
• 4:44
  Mark Zweig: If they're not, we don't let them in as of right now.
• 4:46
  Mark Zweig: But some of them are there just because they want to check us out.
• 4:51
  Mark Zweig: They want to see what owners are saying, because they're interested, right?
• 4:56
  Eric Howerton: They're trying to review the quality of the product before they make an investment decision Exactly.
• 5:01
  Mark Zweig: So my point is that for a year or more I have been harping on clean out the owner's group requests, clean out the.
• 5:12
  Mark Zweig: You know every month, clean out the owner's group requests and I go back there the other.
• 5:17
  Mark Zweig: This past weekend we've got requests going back to March 15.
• 5:21
  Mark Zweig: West going back to March 15.
• 5:23
  Mark Zweig: Okay, you know how long that is.
• 5:25
  Mark Zweig: That's 45 days ago.
• 5:27
  Mark Zweig: Okay, that people have not been.
• 5:34
  Mark Zweig: They've either have to be rejected and told why, or they've got to be accepted.
• 5:36
  Mark Zweig: That doesn't seem too hard to do.
• 5:36
  Mark Zweig: No, it's not Okay.
• 5:37
  Mark Zweig: And there were 20, some out of them in there, all right, and I just I keep bringing it up and bringing it up, and bringing it up, and bringing it up, and bringing it up.
• 5:47
  Mark Zweig: And it seems to me like one of the salespeople would realize that these are potential prospects and claim every one would step up and say I will take that.
• 5:59
  Mark Zweig: I will do that every single time.
• 6:01
  Mark Zweig: You will never go on there and see anybody who's been on there even a day, because I am on top of it.
• 6:07
  Mark Zweig: I'm going to reach out to every single one of them that's not a member and try to sell them our product.
• 6:13
  Mark Zweig: Okay, yeah, but I can't get that done.
• 6:16
  Mark Zweig: I cannot get that done and it's maddening.
• 6:19
  Eric Howerton: You can't find the owner, the enthusiastic sales owner that sees the opportunity in that group, which I mean you know.
• 6:30
  Eric Howerton: When you talk about discipline, I mean there's also this drive to understanding the value of whatever it is that you're doing, right, because if I'm in sales and I'm looking for leads, I'm looking for business and I got an opportunity to earn more money, to create more of a career.
• 6:47
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, the salespeople are all commissioned.
• 6:49
  Mark Zweig: They make money when they sell product.
• 6:51
  Mark Zweig: They don't make money when they don't sell product.
• 6:54
  Eric Howerton: So yeah, yeah, so get in there, so they don't have the.
• 6:57
  Eric Howerton: And then you keep requesting this and nobody wants to take ownership and gets it done.
• 7:02
  Eric Howerton: How long do you think it would take Mark Zwag to get in that group and improve and reject?
• 7:07
  Mark Zweig: How long would it take?
• 7:07
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, five minutes, five seconds.
• 7:10
  Mark Zweig: How long do you think it would take?
• 7:12
  Mark Zweig: I think five minutes, probably.
• 7:15
  Mark Zweig: But the thing is, every time you and this is just one of a hundred things companies need to do yeah, okay, and I'm not, and I you know it's a good company I shouldn't be picking on him, but I'm just using it as an example, because if you can't get simple things like that done every time, what things that are even more important are not getting done on time?
• 7:33
  Mark Zweig: Okay, and you know, I've got to get my bills out.
• 7:37
  Mark Zweig: It's like I deal with a, an electrical contractor, and uh, or an HVAC contractor, and when they leave my house, I will get a bill within 30 minutes.
• 7:48
  Mark Zweig: All right, this is owned by a friend of mine, it's the second time he's owned the business.
• 7:54
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 7:54
  Mark Zweig: The first time he sold it, they ruined it.
• 7:57
  Mark Zweig: Okay, yep, so he started all.
• 8:00
  Mark Zweig: After his non-compete was up, he started a new company.
• 8:02
  Mark Zweig: He's already bigger In two years.
• 8:03
  Mark Zweig: He was bigger than he was when he sold it the last time.
• 8:06
  Mark Zweig: Okay, and his cash flow is so good because he's on top of things.
• 8:12
  Eric Howerton: Just with relentless discipline.
• 8:14
  Mark Zweig: Total discipline.
• 8:15
  Mark Zweig: Okay, no fooling around, but it's always these excuses people make.
• 8:19
  Mark Zweig: Like you know, I don't have enough time.
• 8:21
  Mark Zweig: Um, I had something else I had to do that day and you know I don't have enough time I had something else I had to do that day and you know and I could go on and on about it because you know.
• 8:29
  Mark Zweig: Another example of this is a friend of mine who's in the car business and you know they take a picture of everybody when they pick up their car and they put it on Facebook and they tag them.
• 8:41
  Mark Zweig: They said what that does.
• 8:43
  Mark Zweig: Not only does it, you know, you jump on their social media network by doing that.
• 8:48
  Mark Zweig: It also reminds you in a year that to call them and ask them how their car's doing, and year two to call them and ask them how the car doing, cause you get this automatically on Facebook.
• 8:58
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, okay.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: A year ago today.
• 9:01
  Mark Zweig: And so it instills a discipline in their follow-up process that makes it more effective.
• 9:08
  Mark Zweig: Now this guy sells a shitload of cars.
• 9:10
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I mean he's always sold you know 250, 300 cars a year, or more.
• 9:15
  Mark Zweig: Um, because he does these things, it's not like I do that.
• 9:21
  Mark Zweig: If I feel like it this time, maybe.
• 9:27
  Eric Howerton: It's like setting so as a business owner, setting certain discipline, like no questions asked, always doing it, finding the order for it, and then you have to get then managing that and the company has to take over the discipline of it, because you can't have the business owner in that case with the cars, that's every single person that's buying a car.
• 9:52
  Eric Howerton: They're the one that executes that.
• 9:54
  Eric Howerton: No, they've got to get their people doing it.
• 9:56
  Mark Zweig: It's got to be yeah.
• 9:59
  Eric Howerton: So how do you like?
• 10:00
  Eric Howerton: How would you start that out as a business owner?
• 10:01
  Eric Howerton: What would be your advice to the people that are listening?
• 10:03
  Eric Howerton: How would you start that out as a business owner?
• 10:04
  Eric Howerton: What would be your advice to the people that are listening?
• 10:05
  Eric Howerton: Okay, you have this like even in the back of the case with your, your forum.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 10:09
  Eric Howerton: That you're talking about Right, like how do you start?
• 10:12
  Eric Howerton: I guess are you at step one because you're trying to find the owner for it.
• 10:16
  Mark Zweig: Well, yeah, but if I mean, honestly, was my business entirely.
• 10:27
  Mark Zweig: Let's say, I was there working in the business, I would do it myself, I would show people what I would, I would do it myself, even if it's for two or three weeks, and then I'd make a sale from that.
• 10:34
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, and then I tell every freaking buddy you know what I just made a sale from this guy?
• 10:39
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, okay, yeah, that's how I do it.
• 10:42
  Eric Howerton: That's.
• 10:42
  Eric Howerton: That's actually really good advice, man.
• 10:44
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's really good advice because it's like you're, as a business owner, like you can't get into business and not have a full reality, that the the relentless discipline that you have to, you have to do yourself.
• 11:00
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean, it is a freaking like, it is a chiseling of discipline and the winners in business have this discipline to just get shit done.
• 11:10
  Eric Howerton: Yep, and it's funny you say that because, like I don't really consciously think, you know, when I look back over my entrepreneurial career, like like when we started the bagel tournaments back in the day, I can't.
• 11:24
  Eric Howerton: I, I know I did try to assign that in the beginning, right, and it never didn't ever got done, and so I just did it myself.
• 11:32
  Eric Howerton: Yep, and I went the whole way through it figured out google crap, talked to people, figured it out, built whatever it needed to be done and just drove that to an actual event.
• 11:43
  Eric Howerton: And when that showed up, then I had people that are like, oh man, this is actually kind of cool.
• 11:48
  Mark Zweig: This has some value.
• 11:49
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, make believers out of it.
• 11:50
  Eric Howerton: Make believers.
• 11:51
  Eric Howerton: But then I've done that a hundred times in all different scenarios and I'm actually facing that right now with some strategy stuff for a business that I have and I've come to realize and it's funny because my hope is that other people see what needs to be done and then they'll have the discipline to get that done Right.
• 12:12
  Eric Howerton: But this conversation is making me realize this Because I keep going in this circle.
• 12:18
  Eric Howerton: It's almost like anything that we start anew a new process, new procedure or something that needs to be done.
• 12:26
  Eric Howerton: I have to go do it.
• 12:27
  Mark Zweig: It's true, it's just like CRMs.
• 12:29
  Mark Zweig: Okay, you're a marketing guy, you know how important the CRM is to a business, right?
• 12:34
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, if management doesn't interact and use the CRM continuously, what makes you think?
• 12:40
  Mark Zweig: I mean, you know like only 20% of CRM implementations succeed?
• 12:44
  Mark Zweig: Oh yeah, I'm convinced the big part of it is management doesn't do it.
• 12:50
  Eric Howerton: No, you're totally right.
• 12:51
  Eric Howerton: You know, you're totally right.
• 12:53
  Mark Zweig: You got to set the pace yourself.
• 12:55
  Mark Zweig: You got to show the benefits of what it is that you're doing.
• 12:58
  Mark Zweig: You got to emerge victorious and then sell the shit out of that, and then you just move on to the next thing.
• 13:04
  Eric Howerton: that's broken Right.
• 13:05
  Eric Howerton: You know, this is actually really.
• 13:07
  Eric Howerton: I appreciate this conversation.
• 13:09
  Eric Howerton: I mean I mean it's probably where I'm at right now, but I mean, you know, as a business owner, you have so many things going on and there's a lot of I mean, it's just turmoil, it's a turmoil.
• 13:19
  Eric Howerton: Problem solving, changing priorities yeah and you can get tired and then you get out of like you think that you can not pay attention to that.
• 13:28
  Eric Howerton: But you have to be that.
• 13:33
  Eric Howerton: I mean, if you're just relentlessly disciplined and you know, if I could keep in my freaking brains right every time that there's a new problem, that I actually write out the strategy and the way to do this and do it myself one time, I can demonstrate and then I can head it off and then manage yeah, I keep.
• 13:51
  Eric Howerton: Why do I keep forgetting about that shit?
• 13:53
  Eric Howerton: I don't know.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: As a business owner man.
• 13:55
  Mark Zweig: I, I, we had this thing so, um, you know, at Janice Motorcycles.
• 13:59
  Mark Zweig: Um, it's a good example.
• 14:00
  Mark Zweig: Um, so I found myself midweek always looking at the sales, yeah, and saying like where are we?
• 14:06
  Mark Zweig: How are we going to finish up this week, okay?
• 14:09
  Mark Zweig: Or it's wednesday and we've only sold so many and we really need to sell this many.
• 14:13
  Mark Zweig: What are we going to do on thursday and friday and saturday and sunday?
• 14:16
  Mark Zweig: So we hit our goal for the week, okay, but so we just institutionalize that process.
• 14:23
  Mark Zweig: Now the president sends, and then we look at cash the same way, like where's our cash?
• 14:28
  Eric Howerton: You start all those things.
• 14:30
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, we've got daily sales reporting, we've got daily cash reporting.
• 14:33
  Mark Zweig: But then the question is okay, we've got it, but here we are on Wednesday, how are we going to make the numbers that we need for the rest of the week to make sure we don't fall behind?
• 14:43
  Mark Zweig: So now we just institutionalize and process it.
• 14:46
  Mark Zweig: I don't know what time it is like four o'clock on Wednesday, whatever the president puts out on the company's shared communication platform to the salespeople Okay, where are we on sales this week?
• 14:59
  Mark Zweig: What have you got going for the rest of the week?
• 15:01
  Mark Zweig: Okay, where are we on cash this week?
• 15:04
  Mark Zweig: What are we going to do to collect the money we need for the rest of this week?
• 15:06
  Mark Zweig: So now it's institutionalized and people have to respond to that.
• 15:10
  Mark Zweig: If they don't respond, they get asked what?
• 15:12
  Mark Zweig: What is the situation again?
• 15:14
  Mark Zweig: Okay, that creates the discipline that it takes.
• 15:18
  Mark Zweig: Instead of just saying like, hey, we got to hit our sales goals, we should look at where we are midweek, but not doing anything specific to make sure that happens.
• 15:29
  Mark Zweig: You know that's what most companies do.
• 15:33
  Mark Zweig: They they could say, well, we need to do that.
• 15:35
  Mark Zweig: That's management's job to look at that, you know midweek and see where we are.
• 15:39
  Mark Zweig: But what's the process that actually makes it happen?
• 15:42
  Mark Zweig: You can to create that discipline yeah to create that discipline.
• 15:47
  Eric Howerton: You know, you know, I mean I don't know surely there's a listener out there that's a business owner, that that's probably in the same realm that I am that you hope that you don't have to, I know, do as much as you used to have to do, like even if you're, if you have a business that's really successful.
• 16:08
  Eric Howerton: I was talking to a guy this morning.
• 16:09
  Eric Howerton: He's got a really great business going on, but I mean, you know what?
• 16:13
  Eric Howerton: And you've been dogging it, man, and I mean, but dude, it's just not over.
• 16:16
  Eric Howerton: I mean, here's the reality about entrepreneurism and being a business owner.
• 16:21
  Eric Howerton: And I think that if we can be real with ourselves and saying, okay, okay, you're so right about this Because it actually gives me comfort to know that my answer to everything in business is initiating discipline, is having discipline daily, freaking, conquering.
• 16:38
  Eric Howerton: When new stuff comes up, new problems, I outline it and I do it myself, and then that gets passed over.
• 16:45
  Eric Howerton: And then there's a new thing, there's there's actually 30 things right now that I need to probably do.
• 16:50
  Eric Howerton: Yes, I had, I wish that, I hoped, wished or passed off to somebody else, yes, but what we're talking about today is is you can't effing do that?
• 17:00
  Mark Zweig: you can't, and you're right, you can never totally let go okay of these things.
• 17:04
  Mark Zweig: Now sure it does get easier, we all know.
• 17:08
  Mark Zweig: I mean, you know that process gets easier yeah, and and and mean and you know, your business can get easier.
• 17:15
  Mark Zweig: I mean, I think back when zweig group, formerly zweig white, was a 16 year old company before we sold it to private equity, I mean things worked pretty well.
• 17:25
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, okay, you had a system process?
• 17:27
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, but you built.
• 17:29
  Eric Howerton: What you did was is you?
• 17:30
  Eric Howerton: You constantly you had the discipline to build those processes and that and, but that was probably driven by the owners.
• 17:37
  Eric Howerton: Of course it was Build it goes in the system, build it goes in the system, build it goes in the system.
• 17:42
  Eric Howerton: And you look back 16 years later and you basically almost have come through 99 of all the typical crap that's going to happen in the business.
• 17:49
  Eric Howerton: And now it's gelling and jiving right and there's company has discipline.
• 17:53
  Mark Zweig: there are still unpredictables that occur, you know, obviously.
• 17:56
  Mark Zweig: But yeah, but the whole thing basically works better because people understand it's part of the culture that there are certain things that have to occur on a certain schedule all the time.
• 18:06
  Mark Zweig: I mean, it's just like how many companies do you talk to and their marketing sucks?
• 18:13
  Mark Zweig: Okay, you get them to do something for a little.
• 18:16
  Mark Zweig: It's like send out one email a day and they do that and they're like holy cow, our sales doubled this week.
• 18:22
  Mark Zweig: And then what about next week?
• 18:23
  Mark Zweig: Well, we didn't get the.
• 18:24
  Mark Zweig: You know, did you send out one email a day the next week?
• 18:27
  Mark Zweig: Well, no, we didn't.
• 18:28
  Mark Zweig: I'm like are you fucking excuse me?
• 18:30
  Mark Zweig: Are you kidding me?
• 18:32
  Mark Zweig: You just saw it worked and now you're not doing it again.
• 18:36
  Mark Zweig: What is wrong with you?
• 18:38
  Mark Zweig: That's so true.
• 18:40
  Eric Howerton: Okay, what I love about you saying about marketing, because, like it's like all my any kind of strategic advice I might give about marketing, it's it's really related to discipline, of course, like that's the problem.
• 18:53
  Eric Howerton: Like it's not about being more creative, establishing a brand, you know all these beautiful things which are hey, I have a lot of respect for those, of course, very creative, talented people out there.
• 19:03
  Eric Howerton: But you can have the best crap in the world, but if you don't have the discipline to show up to push it.
• 19:09
  Eric Howerton: I often say this about marketing the number one thing that you can do, the number one uh, victory marketing is distribution.
• 19:19
  Eric Howerton: Of course it is.
• 19:21
  Eric Howerton: It's not, it's not anything else Like or how are you distributing your content?
• 19:26
  Eric Howerton: How are you?
• 19:27
  Eric Howerton: What's your discipline, what's your relentless strategy?
• 19:30
  Mark Zweig: And let me tell you To get it in front of the right people often enough.
• 19:34
  Mark Zweig: Yes, yes.
• 19:34
  Mark Zweig: And then the other thing is well, we did that once.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: Do you?
• 19:38
  Mark Zweig: what makes you think everybody remembered you did it.
• 19:41
  Mark Zweig: No, okay, we say it's's like.
• 19:46
  Mark Zweig: Why do you watch tv and in the same 30 minute program you'll see the same ad three times over repetition.
• 19:50
  Mark Zweig: Because it works, it works, is it?
• 19:53
  Mark Zweig: Only a half a percent of the time did people even notice it?
• 19:56
  Eric Howerton: okay, my statement has always been with marketing like, like that, like I, I love this, like you, go through this big product.
• 20:02
  Eric Howerton: Like, take that bagel tournament, go through that whole process.
• 20:04
  Eric Howerton: Take that bagel tournament, go through that whole process.
• 20:05
  Eric Howerton: It took a lot of time.
• 20:05
  Eric Howerton: Then you have some naysayer man that's like oh man, that didn't work, we didn't close the deal.
• 20:10
  Eric Howerton: I'm like I'm going to blow my freaking brains out when that statement's made.
• 20:13
  Eric Howerton: Oh I know, because there is no such thing on planet Earth as non-ROY marketing.
• 20:20
  Eric Howerton: You can't do it.
• 20:27
  Eric Howerton: It's like it's, it's it's.
• 20:27
  Eric Howerton: It's impossible to to say something or to do some effort and not have any roi to it.
• 20:30
  Eric Howerton: There's no such thing as a zero or negative percent.
• 20:33
  Mark Zweig: I agree it doesn't matter, like you don't always know what that is, but it doesn't mean that it didn't occur, right?
• 20:39
  Eric Howerton: exactly, yeah and then.
• 20:40
  Eric Howerton: So you don't ever stop with marketing, you don't?
• 20:43
  Mark Zweig: you have to have that here if you'd have seen all the small businesses that my students reported on.
• 20:49
  Mark Zweig: Okay, now I'm just giving a rough number.
• 20:51
  Mark Zweig: Let's say it's 60 for this semester.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:54
  Mark Zweig: All different.
• 20:54
  Mark Zweig: Okay, if I said to you that 5% that's three of them had any kind of meaningful marketing program or investment, I'm not sure it was that many.
• 21:08
  Mark Zweig: Are you serious?
• 21:10
  Mark Zweig: I'm serious.
• 21:11
  Mark Zweig: Three out of 60, okay, they do nothing.
• 21:15
  Mark Zweig: They do absolutely nothing, and I see it over and over and over again.
• 21:22
  Mark Zweig: Why don't business?
• 21:24
  Eric Howerton: owners get that like, what, like?
• 21:26
  Eric Howerton: That's basically the I don't know.
• 21:28
  Mark Zweig: When I look at like take podcast videos, for example, I put more time and attention in this business on just about how do we expose ourselves to the market, like everything's thought about from that standpoint and you get attention and you've taken something from absolutely zero to where it is right now, to where in Northwest Arkansas, if I was looking for a place to do a podcast, who the heck am I going to think of?
• 21:56
  Mark Zweig: But you Podcast business, I mean, because you've had events, you've got social media, you've got content.
• 22:03
  Mark Zweig: I mean it just goes, just it just goes freaking vehicle wrapped, got people hired silence.
• 22:09
  Eric Howerton: Looks good uh swag, swag.
• 22:12
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I know and you know what it, just, it works it does.
• 22:18
  Eric Howerton: It just works at every meeting I'm in.
• 22:20
  Eric Howerton: I would talk about it.
• 22:21
  Eric Howerton: What are you doing?
• 22:23
  Eric Howerton: I talk about it.
• 22:23
  Eric Howerton: I talk about it.
• 22:24
  Eric Howerton: Right, it's the circular, it's just.
• 22:26
  Eric Howerton: I saw you at the uh.
• 22:28
  Mark Zweig: At the uh cancer challenge uh luncheon, you were the mc.
• 22:32
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, instead of identifying yourself with your old company, you identified yourself with the new company.
• 22:37
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying all that stuff adds up?
• 22:40
  Eric Howerton: of course it does, and I mean, like, did we get a big sale?
• 22:44
  Mark Zweig: no, no, it's not about what's your roi for every effort but look at the inquiries that you get, look at the traffic you're getting now.
• 22:52
  Mark Zweig: Every day there's five or ten new potential clients coming to this business.
• 22:57
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, they talk okay, they talk to each other.
• 22:59
  Eric Howerton: People talk, they're humans, it's not rocket science right.
• 23:03
  Eric Howerton: I mean people love stories.
• 23:04
  Eric Howerton: They talk to each other.
• 23:06
  Eric Howerton: That's how stuff happens.
• 23:07
  Eric Howerton: It's not 100% one channel versus another channel.
• 23:11
  Eric Howerton: It's all of it, all the time, every day, constantly, never off.
• 23:15
  Eric Howerton: That's your marketing strategy.
• 23:17
  Eric Howerton: Relentlessness, it's kind of a discipline strategy that we're talking about too.
• 23:21
  Mark Zweig: Well, it's also my delegation strategy.
• 23:24
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, my delegation strategy is one of two things.
• 23:27
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I either completely abdicate yeah, I give you the job and I'm done.
• 23:32
  Mark Zweig: Okay, it's your job.
• 23:33
  Mark Zweig: Now I'm doing something else.
• 23:34
  Mark Zweig: Right, if you get the right person, that can work right.
• 23:39
  Mark Zweig: And then my second strategy is I'm going to make a pain in the ass out of myself.
• 23:44
  Mark Zweig: I'm going to bug you, bug you, bug you, bug you, bug you, bug you, bug you until it is done.
• 23:53
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I'm going to hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer and hopefully you're going to learn something from that process and I won't need to do that the next time.
• 24:00
  Mark Zweig: But I think a lot of people go well, that's not good delegation.
• 24:03
  Mark Zweig: If you do that doesn't mean I'm going to do it for the rest of my life with that person, but I'm going to get them used to the idea of doing the steps and order on time you know what you're doing when you're bugging them?
• 24:17
  Eric Howerton: is you're emphasizing discipline, right?
• 24:20
  Eric Howerton: Is it done?
• 24:21
  Eric Howerton: Is it done?
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: is it done?
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: Is it done?
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Is it done?
• 24:28
  Eric Howerton: and that if I'm the receiving party on that, here's what happens.
• 24:32
  Eric Howerton: Okay, you gave me the project and I worked with you.
• 24:34
  Eric Howerton: I reported to you back in the day, I remember it, but you were doing it to me then too, right, but I mean, I'd be like.
• 24:39
  Eric Howerton: What I learned really quickly was is when you ask for something to get done, I better go get it done, because I'm never going to hear like every time I hear.
• 24:49
  Eric Howerton: See, you.
• 24:50
  Mark Zweig: I drive my wife crazy with that.
• 24:51
  Mark Zweig: Sometimes I'm just like honey.
• 25:03
  Mark Zweig: What I want to say to her is why don't you just say you can do it yourself, because then I'll never ask you yes, it will be done.
• 25:06
  Mark Zweig: Okay, it will be done.
• 25:06
  Eric Howerton: I will stop bugging you, but if it's not, I can't help it, I'm gonna keep bugging.
• 25:08
  Eric Howerton: You say you're gonna do it, and do it.
• 25:10
  Eric Howerton: If you say you can't do it, okay, I'll do'll do it.
• 25:13
  Mark Zweig: That's so true, but all this stuff you know when you really get down to it.
• 25:18
  Mark Zweig: This is why you don't have to be a genius to succeed.
• 25:22
  Mark Zweig: You started out by saying that to be in business, you do have to do certain things.
• 25:26
  Mark Zweig: If you do these certain things with discipline, then the odds of success go way up and the odds of failure, of abject failure, decrease dramatically.
• 25:39
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, okay, they really do it's.
• 25:41
  Mark Zweig: It's all about what can we do to create the probabilities of success?
• 25:47
  Mark Zweig: This is what I try to get my students to understand too.
• 25:50
  Mark Zweig: It's all about probabilities of success.
• 25:53
  Mark Zweig: Okay, and you know, we know it.
• 25:57
  Mark Zweig: Just like you said, if you're going to be healthy I mean it's pro you will probably be healthier if you eat right.
• 26:03
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, if you exercise, if you do all the things that you need to do right.
• 26:07
  Mark Zweig: That doesn't mean you don't know somebody that ran 10 miles a day for 20 years and heals over a heart attack at age 35.
• 26:14
  Mark Zweig: It doesn't happen.
• 26:16
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah, okay, there are freak, there are outliers, there are, you know, things that are at the far end of the distribution curve.
• 26:23
  Mark Zweig: That could happen, but the odds are that's not going to happen.
• 26:28
  Mark Zweig: Just go with the odds, go with the probabilities Do.
• 26:32
  Mark Zweig: What has the greatest probability of success?
• 26:34
  Eric Howerton: That person that is taking care of themselves, exercise and eating right.
• 26:38
  Eric Howerton: They're, they're, they're not.
• 26:40
  Eric Howerton: They don't have to be a freaking genius, an exercise science expert.
• 26:44
  Eric Howerton: They don't have to read every physiology expert.
• 26:47
  Eric Howerton: Yeah they don't have.
• 26:48
  Eric Howerton: They don't have to be all that, they just got to do it.
• 26:52
  Eric Howerton: Discipline every day.
• 26:54
  Eric Howerton: I mean, the reality is, if you ran or walked a mile every day, it's going to benefit you but.
• 26:59
  Eric Howerton: If you, but do you do it or don't do it?
• 27:02
  Eric Howerton: That's the, that's the reality, that's the same thing, for business, and I mean it is.
• 27:05
  Eric Howerton: We can get so clouded up with a bunch of other, a bunch of other fancy stuff, like there's all books.
• 27:10
  Eric Howerton: That's part of our analysis.
• 27:12
  Eric Howerton: Paralysis in business today and I think that's the point of our entire show is that folks are just like they get confused, that there's something that they're missing.
• 27:23
  Eric Howerton: It's overload, it's overload, but the reality is you just get at it, fix the problem, demonstrate the problem by yourself, demonstrate discipline and then be relentless about bugging the hell when somebody says they're going to own something.
• 27:35
  Eric Howerton: Where's it at?
• 27:41
  Eric Howerton: Where's it at?
• 27:41
  Eric Howerton: Where's it at where's it at right?
• 27:42
  Eric Howerton: Just constantly.
• 27:42
  Eric Howerton: Your presence as a business owner when you walk in the room should be like yours is like oh shit, I didn't get that done yet yeah, we don't want people to be in fear of us, we want to want to do it because they want to make us happy, because they know we care about them.
• 27:55
  Mark Zweig: Right, and that's the other side of it?
• 27:57
  Eric Howerton: No, it is, and I think no, yeah, and it's got to be real.
• 28:00
  Eric Howerton: That's the thing, though.
• 28:01
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 28:03
  Eric Howerton: There's a difference between running around making people having some fear that you're going to walk in the room because you're just this ass of a manager, right, and you're constantly degrading, yeah, but when you walk in the room, I know that I said I'd own it.
• 28:19
  Eric Howerton: You're gonna ask me about it, but you could do it.
• 28:21
  Eric Howerton: You would do it yourself and you're actually doing a lot yourself.
• 28:24
  Eric Howerton: That's leadership.
• 28:25
  Eric Howerton: It's just practical leadership, exactly.
• 28:27
  Mark Zweig: Well, that's you know, that's why these absentee owners, when I see that in these businesses, that that we, my students, present on yeah I'm like, oh god, that's not gonna make it yeah you know what I mean, because they're not leading the discipline.
• 28:41
  Eric Howerton: No, that's what it is.
• 28:42
  Eric Howerton: This is a great conversation.
• 28:44
  Eric Howerton: It's almost like we capsulize what leadership is in small business.
• 28:48
  Mark Zweig: We are philosophers no, we're small business philosophers, but it's it's discipline, I know it.
• 28:55
  Mark Zweig: It's just.
• 28:55
  Mark Zweig: It's the daily, I know it.
• 28:56
  Mark Zweig: It's just.
• 28:56
  Mark Zweig: It's the daily cash, okay, and constantly looking at it and making sure you got enough cash coming in to pay your bills.
• 29:02
  Mark Zweig: It's the daily sales making sure you got the sales coming in instead of waiting until the end of the month.
• 29:08
  Mark Zweig: And then, oh, we're slow to get the numbers out.
• 29:10
  Mark Zweig: And then we get our numbers out for the prior month on the 28th of the month that follows, and gee, our sales sucked.
• 29:16
  Mark Zweig: Okay, now we're 60 days behind.
• 29:18
  Mark Zweig: You know what I mean?
• 29:19
  Mark Zweig: It's just all that Okay.
• 29:21
  Mark Zweig: Let's go down, let's give some bullet points here.
• 29:25
  Eric Howerton: Give some bullet points for the business owner.
• 29:27
  Eric Howerton: Discipline, yeah, as a business owner, you mentioned cash flow, right, all right.
• 29:32
  Eric Howerton: So in cash flow, what are you?
• 29:34
  Eric Howerton: What's the discipline with that?
• 29:36
  Eric Howerton: Like what?
• 29:36
  Eric Howerton: What is the discipline strategy?
• 29:38
  Eric Howerton: How often am I looking at?
• 29:39
  Eric Howerton: What am I looking at?
• 29:40
  Eric Howerton: Why am I looking at it?
• 29:41
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I mean to me on cash flow you'd have daily cash reporting.
• 29:45
  Mark Zweig: Okay, that shows how much has come in for the day, for the week and for the month today.
• 29:49
  Mark Zweig: Okay, Cash cash, what's gone out for the day, the week and and the month to date, what the difference is okay and how much cash we have in all accounts.
• 29:58
  Mark Zweig: So I'm going to know that on a daily.
• 30:01
  Mark Zweig: I want to see that every single day, without fail.
• 30:04
  Eric Howerton: So let's reword.
• 30:05
  Eric Howerton: So cash out, well, cash in, cash out.
• 30:08
  Eric Howerton: And you said difference.
• 30:09
  Eric Howerton: What do you mean?
• 30:11
  Mark Zweig: The difference, meaning cash in versus cash out, is it going up or down?
• 30:14
  Mark Zweig: Is it a negative number?
• 30:15
  Mark Zweig: Is it a positive number?
• 30:16
  Eric Howerton: You have more going out versus you have going in, or do you have more coming in than you have going?
• 30:19
  Mark Zweig: in Bingo.
• 30:20
  Mark Zweig: Yes, it's just a simple equation.
• 30:22
  Mark Zweig: Exactly, it's that simple, it's very, very simple and it's daily.
• 30:24
  Eric Howerton: It's daily You're getting that report.
• 30:31
  Mark Zweig: Cash in all, in in all accounts.
• 30:33
  Mark Zweig: I want to know how much cash is on hand.
• 30:35
  Mark Zweig: Okay, what is all accounts?
• 30:36
  Mark Zweig: What do you mean?
• 30:37
  Eric Howerton: all bank accounts, all your business bank account right of this business.
• 30:41
  Mark Zweig: I mean sometimes a single business has multiple accounts that money comes into okay okay, like give an example of that what do you mean?
• 30:48
  Mark Zweig: I could have three different bank.
• 30:50
  Mark Zweig: I could have some money that sits in savings over here.
• 30:53
  Mark Zweig: Okay for the For the business, yeah, I could have money.
• 30:55
  Mark Zweig: That's that's petty cash yeah.
• 30:58
  Eric Howerton: All of that.
• 30:59
  Mark Zweig: Okay, Cash in my regular working uh account, my operating.
• 31:05
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 31:06
  Eric Howerton: Marketing.
• 31:07
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, whatever.
• 31:09
  Eric Howerton: Whatever you're storing, whatever bank accounts you have, how much cash is sitting in there?
• 31:14
  Mark Zweig: Yes, I just, and then and then you need to do a cash flow forecast.
• 31:18
  Mark Zweig: That ought to be done at least every week and constantly revised, looking out 8, 10, 12 weeks, however long.
• 31:24
  Mark Zweig: It has to be based on the cycle of your business.
• 31:26
  Mark Zweig: Some businesses have a real short cycle where they convert sales into cash.
• 31:33
  Mark Zweig: Other businesses have very long cycles.
• 31:35
  Mark Zweig: I mean you know that I mean if you long cycles.
• 31:37
  Mark Zweig: I mean you know that I mean if you work with big companies.
• 31:39
  Mark Zweig: A lot of times they're slow, pay 60, 90 days.
• 31:42
  Mark Zweig: So I'm going to be looking way out in those cases that way, you know well this daily report is really giving you.
• 31:49
  Eric Howerton: It's the input, it's the, it's the visibility to know when you need to start having conversations, what you need to do, and to enact that discipline of how to bridge whatever cash scenario you have.
• 32:02
  Mark Zweig: Let's go back to some other aspects of the cash flow discipline Billing quick, quick billing, not sitting on work in process.
• 32:09
  Mark Zweig: That means work that's already done or inventory that's sitting there being unused.
• 32:17
  Mark Zweig: You want to convert that as fast as possible into cash, so you need to be doing everything you can do to make that happen.
• 32:24
  Mark Zweig: One of my students I was really proud of these two women who did a project for a company that was in a particular construction subcontractor discipline.
• 32:37
  Mark Zweig: Okay, what they found was the guy had over $600,000 in unbilled work in progress that he was not aware of.
• 32:47
  Mark Zweig: The owner of the business was not aware of meaning work that they had done and never build people for, and it just sat out there.
• 32:57
  Mark Zweig: Okay, you got to clean out your whip every single period, every week or every day.
• 33:04
  Mark Zweig: Okay, so you speed up your billing so you get paid faster.
• 33:09
  Mark Zweig: Then you know let's talk about Helps your cashflow, helps your cashflow.
• 33:14
  Mark Zweig: Then let's talk about your invoicing.
• 33:15
  Mark Zweig: I mean, you know, in the industry I come out of, architecture and engineering typically they get paid 60, 70, 80 days, depending on the kind of firm and the kind of clients it serves.
• 33:26
  Mark Zweig: Okay, so you'd see these companies and they send out statements, meaning they send a bill to a company they don't get paid.
• 33:34
  Mark Zweig: They send another bill to a company company they don't get paid.
• 33:45
  Mark Zweig: They send another bill to a company they don't get paid 60 days.
• 33:45
  Mark Zweig: They send them a statement that shows zero to 30, 31 to 60, 61 to 90 and how much money is owed, and they think somebody's going to pay their bills based on that.
• 33:49
  Mark Zweig: No, people don't pay based on a statement no.
• 33:51
  Mark Zweig: And then it goes 91 to 120.
• 33:53
  Mark Zweig: I'm always always like well, hell, I'm only at 61 to 90.
• 33:56
  Mark Zweig: Okay, there's obviously another category out here that we can go into and not pay these people again, because they've got it right there on their statement.
• 34:06
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, people don't pay statements.
• 34:08
  Mark Zweig: Okay, they need to get bills.
• 34:10
  Mark Zweig: And then when they don't get, they don't pay their bill, they need to get another one that says past due on it.
• 34:16
  Mark Zweig: I would get people mad at me for that and I'd go.
• 34:19
  Mark Zweig: You know what very simple problem to solve.
• 34:22
  Mark Zweig: Okay, we can take care, it never happened again.
• 34:25
  Mark Zweig: All you have to do is pay with the terms that you agreed to.
• 34:28
  Mark Zweig: Okay, you won't get an envelope in the mail that's got past due on the outside of it.
• 34:33
  Mark Zweig: Do this was?
• 34:34
  Eric Howerton: all right, this, this is so great.
• 34:36
  Eric Howerton: I'm loving this man because when we talked about your cash flow like a report, that's a discipline that you would enact.
• 34:45
  Eric Howerton: That discipline of seeing that daily cash flow report then helps to identify the next bucket like deeper buckets of other disciplines that need to be enacted, correct.
• 34:57
  Eric Howerton: So what we're talking about are, like, what are these top line discipline things that you would enact in a small business?
• 35:05
  Eric Howerton: It would be this cash flow report as a discipline, because that's going to identify other things that need to have disciplines to them.
• 35:11
  Eric Howerton: And if you're a good business owner, you're going to establish discipline number one of the cash flow report.
• 35:16
  Eric Howerton: And then when you see the problems of billing and not getting cash in you yourself unless you have somebody that will own it right you yourself will establish this billing process to get your cash flow in, exactly Like you write the freaking letter yourself.
• 35:34
  Eric Howerton: You get the address yourself.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: You send it.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: You lick the freaking letter yourself.
• 35:36
  Mark Zweig: You get the address yourself, you send it.
• 35:37
  Eric Howerton: You lick the goddamn envelope yourself and you send it.
• 35:41
  Eric Howerton: And then you get the phone.
• 35:42
  Eric Howerton: It's on your cell phone and you take care of it.
• 35:45
  Mark Zweig: And when you can't get them to respond, you stop by their office and you wait in the waiting room for them, it's you man, you're the business of it, bro.
• 35:53
  Eric Howerton: You're showing up.
• 35:54
  Eric Howerton: We used to do that.
• 35:56
  Eric Howerton: But what I like about this conversation is because, like you and I have been, you know, having our history of being a business owner for a long time I forget, I forget the, and I might do things on myself, but I forget what that looks and feels like for somebody else within the company.
• 36:14
  Eric Howerton: I'm just doing it because I'm doing it Right, you know.
• 36:18
  Eric Howerton: But but the reality is is when you do that yourself as a business owner, that is true genuine leadership, Exactly, and if people see that demonstration modeling.
• 36:30
  Mark Zweig: They walk right in the behavioral modeling.
• 36:32
  Eric Howerton: Guess what, when they do, when, when they're taught that way, they are able to confidently walk through that, and then they see it works, and then now that's in their right, now they're a believer, and now they can do that for somebody else it's so simple it is.
• 36:46
  Mark Zweig: I mean, it really is so.
• 36:48
  Mark Zweig: So I I like how you you work from the from.
• 36:51
  Mark Zweig: This just like the starting step, though.
• 36:53
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, to sort of explain like how that could be applied in a typical small business.
• 36:59
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, and that's just one of many examples, because we could take sales and marketing and all those things.
• 37:04
  Mark Zweig: We could break them down the exact same way, because I mean I got daily sales reporting.
• 37:08
  Mark Zweig: It's the same thing, okay.
• 37:10
  Eric Howerton: So cash flow is number one Right.
• 37:12
  Eric Howerton: I want to talk these what I would call the marx wog pillars of discipline.
• 37:17
  Mark Zweig: Well, sales is actually going to be the first one, then I'm going to go to cash flow.
• 37:20
  Mark Zweig: Okay, nothing happens without sales, all right great, that's a great statement.
• 37:25
  Eric Howerton: That's where I was trying to get at all right, so first let's wipe it clean.
• 37:28
  Eric Howerton: You're a business owner.
• 37:29
  Eric Howerton: You got your existing business, you have a new one.
• 37:31
  Eric Howerton: There's marx, wog pillars of discipline that are coming down that you're learning today.
• 37:36
  Eric Howerton: Number one uno is not the one that we just talked about cash flow discipline.
• 37:42
  Eric Howerton: It's a big one, but it's a big one.
• 37:44
  Eric Howerton: But number one is sales.
• 37:46
  Eric Howerton: What's yeah?
• 37:49
  Mark Zweig: what?
• 37:49
  Mark Zweig: Yes, so what's in these?
• 37:51
  Mark Zweig: What is the sales?
• 37:53
  Eric Howerton: discipline report that you expect.
• 37:56
  Eric Howerton: Is it daily?
• 37:56
  Eric Howerton: What's it look like?
• 37:58
  Mark Zweig: Again, it's going to be a daily sales report.
• 38:00
  Mark Zweig: It would show all the categories of the products or services that we're selling and how much sold that day, how much for the week to date, how much for the month.
• 38:07
  Mark Zweig: I may even have the goal on there too, by the way.
• 38:12
  Eric Howerton: That's broken down the month day week.
• 38:16
  Mark Zweig: If there's a goal goal it's going to be for the month.
• 38:18
  Mark Zweig: But I can do the math in my head pretty quickly if I you know what I mean.
• 38:22
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I can say if I gotta do a hundred thousand a month, I better be doing 33, 33 a day or I've got a problem, right.
• 38:27
  Mark Zweig: I mean it's just well, I know that, all right.
• 38:31
  Mark Zweig: Anything else in our sales pillar, so the different categories of what we're selling, it's got to be in there.
• 38:38
  Mark Zweig: Okay to as a starter.
• 38:40
  Mark Zweig: And there could be dollar sales.
• 38:43
  Mark Zweig: There could be unit sales too.
• 38:44
  Mark Zweig: I mean, you know it's not always dollars, it could be certain units so 30, 30 of this product 20 of that product.
• 38:52
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah and then you can translate that into dollars as well, so you can actually look at both of them, right, different categories and buckets, and so is that your sales not just going to me, by the way, it's going to go to everybody.
• 39:03
  Mark Zweig: But yeah, everybody in the firm's going to see that, everybody.
• 39:06
  Eric Howerton: So is there anything else in your sales report?
• 39:09
  Mark Zweig: no, that's basically this is daily.
• 39:11
  Eric Howerton: This is daily, all right.
• 39:12
  Eric Howerton: So we got our sales report.
• 39:13
  Mark Zweig: Right, it could be.
• 39:14
  Mark Zweig: If you wanted to put a story in there of somebody that pulled off some great sale, you could do that too.
• 39:20
  Eric Howerton: There's nothing wrong with that?
• 39:21
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, put a little recognition in there.
• 39:24
  Eric Howerton: So, before we move on to the next pillar, what does this look like?
• 39:31
  Eric Howerton: Like, I mean, is this in a spreadsheet?
• 39:33
  Eric Howerton: Is this just an?
• 39:33
  Mark Zweig: email.
• 39:34
  Mark Zweig: It would just be an email that's maintained in a spreadsheet.
• 39:39
  Mark Zweig: The data is kept in a spreadsheet and then it's captured and put into a simple email.
• 39:41
  Mark Zweig: Okay, with the link to it.
• 39:43
  Eric Howerton: You go look at it.
• 39:43
  Mark Zweig: Or it could be on whatever your internal communication system is.
• 39:47
  Mark Zweig: You know what I don't like about that, though.
• 39:49
  Mark Zweig: I don't know that everybody looks at it.
• 39:51
  Mark Zweig: No, no, whereas I send them an email, I know they're going to look at it.
• 39:54
  Mark Zweig: That's right.
• 39:55
  Mark Zweig: You know we can post that to whatever.
• 39:57
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 39:57
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, no one goes.
• 39:58
  Mark Zweig: and put it on Slack or whatever?
• 40:00
  Mark Zweig: No God.
• 40:01
  Mark Zweig: Then I got to look at Slack.
• 40:03
  Mark Zweig: What if they don't look at Slack?
• 40:04
  Mark Zweig: Put it on the intranet.
• 40:05
  Mark Zweig: What if they don't ever go to that Right?
• 40:09
  Eric Howerton: That's the problem.
• 40:11
  Eric Howerton: Send a freaking email and give a summary and then link drive to the spreadsheet.
• 40:17
  Eric Howerton: You could do that.
• 40:18
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
• 40:20
  Eric Howerton: Pillar one sales report.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: It's a daily yeah.
• 40:24
  Eric Howerton: Pillar two cashflow.
• 40:26
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 40:27
  Eric Howerton: Okay so cashflow is your second priority.
• 40:29
  Mark Zweig: Yes.
• 40:29
  Eric Howerton: Like if I was starting out as a business owner, you'd say, eric, first thing you do, don't worry about all these pillars, just go get sales, get down on that daily basis.
• 40:34
  Eric Howerton: Don't worry about all these pillars, just go get sales, get down on that daily basis.
• 40:37
  Eric Howerton: Right, make it sure it looks like this.
• 40:38
  Eric Howerton: Then, once I accomplish that, then my next discipline of pillar is the cash flow statement.
• 40:43
  Eric Howerton: That's correct, and that in itself is also a spreadsheet with that information.
• 40:49
  Eric Howerton: Okay, yeah, what's is there?
• 40:51
  Eric Howerton: Was there a third Revenue reporting?
• 40:52
  Mark Zweig: Revenue reporting Was there a third Revenue reporting.
• 40:55
  Mark Zweig: Revenue reporting Revenue is not the same because you don't know.
• 40:58
  Mark Zweig: It depends on what the kind of business is as to when it captures the revenue.
• 41:03
  Mark Zweig: So if we're in a consulting business, we sell a job, but we get the revenue when we do the job and send the bill out.
• 41:09
  Mark Zweig: Or in the motorcycle business, we can sell a motorcycle but we don't get any revenue until it's done.
• 41:19
  Mark Zweig: And here you go, buyer.
• 41:20
  Mark Zweig: Okay, that's when the revenue is recognized.
• 41:23
  Mark Zweig: So that's another thing.
• 41:25
  Mark Zweig: Okay, obviously, sales precede revenue.
• 41:29
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, but revenue has to do with the activity.
• 41:32
  Mark Zweig: So there's going to be.
• 41:34
  Mark Zweig: It varies based on the kind of business it is.
• 41:36
  Mark Zweig: I mean, if we're in the consulting business, we could be tracking hours.
• 41:40
  Mark Zweig: We could be looking at percentage of time that's spent on billable projects versus non-billable.
• 41:45
  Mark Zweig: Okay, if it's motorcycles, we're going to be looking at motorcycles that were certified, meaning that they're completed and they've been through the certification process which says we can deliver it as an OEM to the buyer.
• 41:58
  Mark Zweig: That's when we count it as revenue.
• 42:00
  Mark Zweig: So we can look at the motorcycle certified in any given day, week or month.
• 42:05
  Mark Zweig: Okay, that's what's going to drive the revenue.
• 42:08
  Mark Zweig: But we can also track the revenue dollars, because we capture the dollars there.
• 42:12
  Mark Zweig: So I'm going to be looking at revenue.
• 42:15
  Mark Zweig: All right, I got to have sales, I got to have cash, I got to have revenue.
• 42:18
  Mark Zweig: And then, of course, tied to revenue is the expenses.
• 42:22
  Mark Zweig: So that's the fourth, that's the fourth pillar yeah, that's, the fourth pillar is in the expenses better be tied to the revenue categories instead of obfuscated and bundled up and confused.
• 42:35
  Mark Zweig: Okay, the closer we can tie the revenue or the expenses to the revenue, the associated expenses to that revenue, the better off we're going to be, because then we get a sense over time as to whether we're making any money on that or not.
• 42:53
  Mark Zweig: Activity okay, that still doesn't tell you everything, though, because, as we both know, businesses do have certain things that they sell, that they don't make money on, that lead to sales of bigger things or relationships that are worth a lot more to the company.
• 43:15
  Mark Zweig: So that doesn't tell you everything.
• 43:18
  Mark Zweig: That's where I think a lot more to the company.
• 43:20
  Mark Zweig: So that doesn't tell you everything.
• 43:21
  Mark Zweig: That's where I think a lot of companies break down.
• 43:22
  Mark Zweig: You look at bigger companies in particular, with lots and lots of analytic, data-driven decision makers.
• 43:27
  Mark Zweig: All our decision making here is data-driven.
• 43:31
  Mark Zweig: Okay, that's when they look and they go oh, now wait a minute.
• 43:34
  Mark Zweig: We sold $10,000 worth of these last week, but they cost us $10,800.
• 43:40
  Mark Zweig: We should stop that.
• 43:42
  Mark Zweig: Get this out of there.
• 43:43
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, boom, but it takes somebody with a greater perspective to look at that and go now wait a minute.
• 43:51
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, how many of these $10,000 things did we sell that led to much bigger sales, much bigger relationships?
• 43:59
  Mark Zweig: Let's take a look at our biggest customers.
• 44:02
  Mark Zweig: How many of them started with one of these $10,000 worth of products over here or services?
• 44:10
  Eric Howerton: I agree, dude.
• 44:10
  Eric Howerton: Break down right there, there's very few things in business.
• 44:17
  Eric Howerton: Or when I'm working with people in business, like when they cancel things because they don't have the vision as to why they're building blocks to bigger things.
• 44:28
  Eric Howerton: Yes, yeah, I honestly, mark, I think that could be one of the biggest disconnects between an entrepreneur and a manager.
• 44:37
  Eric Howerton: It's such a frustrating disconnect and I can say from my own experience that I wish that I could be more patient with that.
• 44:52
  Mark Zweig: You deal with a lot of big companies.
• 44:53
  Mark Zweig: You know whether it's tangentially or directly through your old business, right?
• 44:59
  Mark Zweig: I mean consumer product companies, big ones.
• 45:03
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I think that's where that male ice is.
• 45:05
  Mark Zweig: Is is most evident, yeah.
• 45:09
  Mark Zweig: I think they're the ones who are the guiltiest of that, of not seeing the big picture of how these things necessarily relate, although you know, obviously hp understands we give our printers away.
• 45:21
  Mark Zweig: They probably lose money on every single one, but that person's going to buy five times whatever they paid for the printer.
• 45:27
  Eric Howerton: In ink cartridges that we've got a 95 margin on, or whatever it is over the next four, how many managers you think have come through hp and go let's quit selling printers, let's only sell ink?
• 45:38
  Eric Howerton: And then there's somebody there it's like I've heard that said a thousand times.
• 45:43
  Eric Howerton: I bet they're even getting coached with their peers.
• 45:46
  Eric Howerton: Don't you ever say that to Mark Zweig?
• 45:48
  Eric Howerton: He will lose his shit in the next board meeting if you don't sell printers up Because you can't see it.
• 46:00
  Eric Howerton: You know all right.
• 46:01
  Eric Howerton: So we're on.
• 46:01
  Eric Howerton: We got to recap.
• 46:02
  Eric Howerton: We got sales number one.
• 46:03
  Eric Howerton: Second is cash flow yeah, uh.
• 46:06
  Eric Howerton: Third is revenue yeah.
• 46:07
  Eric Howerton: Fourth is expense report all dailies it could be.
• 46:12
  Mark Zweig: I mean the revenue and expense report.
• 46:14
  Eric Howerton: Maybe that's a weekly thing, I'm not saying that the pattern depends on how you do your accounting and how current it is, it's up to the minute, right, and you try to tie the expenses associated with the revenue buckets.
• 46:29
  Mark Zweig: So you're constantly aware of.
• 46:31
  Mark Zweig: If you're making the trade-off meaning expenses exceed the revenue then you at least need to be doing that consciously, right?
• 46:40
  Mark Zweig: Yes, yes, not all things do lead to something else.
• 46:43
  Eric Howerton: Some things do need to be cut out right, but if you're looking at it on a daily, weekly basis, so definitely on the daily side, sales cash flow, yep, potentially weekly revenue expenses, yep.
• 46:56
  Eric Howerton: So that's four pillars.
• 46:58
  Eric Howerton: What's the fifth?
• 47:00
  Mark Zweig: Well, another one.
• 47:01
  Mark Zweig: That's not all of it.
• 47:03
  Mark Zweig: I mean other ones that I might be looking at, of course, are some of the things that go into the sales.
• 47:11
  Mark Zweig: Okay, that's going to take us down all the marketing data, tracking of, like inquiries, web hits, all the stuff that you know better, so that could be in the sales report itself right so you.
• 47:24
  Eric Howerton: You have your sales dollars units, but in there.
• 47:26
  Eric Howerton: What was the total number of inquiries we had?
• 47:30
  Mark Zweig: what were the total of these, these sales, right and if, then, we start tracking those things graphically and see if they're trending up or down, yeah, okay, that's really critical so we can spot the trends.
• 47:41
  Mark Zweig: But there's other data that I would be looking at too Like one of them that I really am a big, big believer in, especially for small businesses, is to know what their working capital position is.
• 47:54
  Mark Zweig: I look at that constantly.
• 47:56
  Mark Zweig: Okay, working capital position yeah, that's current assets minus current liabilities, and when that number is going down, down, down, I am getting very scared.
• 48:07
  Mark Zweig: Okay, when that number's going up, I'm feeling good.
• 48:10
  Mark Zweig: But the working capital position so current assets would be things like cash and accounts receivable, and then current li assets would be things like cash and accounts receivable, and then, you know, current liabilities would be things like accounts payable, accrued payroll payments on short-term payments on debt obligations and things like that.
• 48:28
  Mark Zweig: Okay, and I got to subtract those, you know the the current liabilities from the current assets, and it gives me a number.
• 48:36
  Mark Zweig: It's either going up or down.
• 48:38
  Mark Zweig: If it's going up, that says, hey, things are good, we're selling stuff, we're making money, our cash flow is good, okay, if that number is going down, down, down, I'm gonna be like what is going wrong here?
• 48:50
  Eric Howerton: okay, yeah, we better figure, we better get a new discipline, procedure in place.
• 48:56
  Mark Zweig: We better figure it out real, real fast, Because the working capital position is our.
• 49:01
  Mark Zweig: It really is going to determine our ability to stay in business at all.
• 49:06
  Eric Howerton: Is that a?
• 49:06
  Mark Zweig: daily.
• 49:07
  Mark Zweig: For me it's not necessarily daily.
• 49:10
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I certainly look at it at least once a month.
• 49:13
  Mark Zweig: I mean I look at it a lot.
• 49:15
  Mark Zweig: I would report on it at least once a month.
• 49:16
  Mark Zweig: I mean I look at it a lot, I would report on it at least once a month.
• 49:17
  Mark Zweig: To everybody I can say that.
• 49:19
  Mark Zweig: So, really, the working capital, I'm going to be looking at it.
• 49:21
  Mark Zweig: I mean, honestly, eric, in any business I have, I look at the bank accounts constantly, all day long, and I look at the QuickBooks if I have a QuickBooks online and I'm constantly running the P&L and the cash flow and everything else so I can see where it stands.
• 49:35
  Mark Zweig: So you said P&L?
• 49:37
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, that's going to be my revenue minus my expenses Accrual basis.
• 49:44
  Mark Zweig: Again, it depends on the company and how current they keep their books.
• 49:48
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, if it's my business and I'm 100% in control of it, you're keeping them books tight.
• 49:54
  Mark Zweig: Bro, books are going to be kept super, super tight.
• 49:58
  Mark Zweig: Nothing's going to languish.
• 49:59
  Mark Zweig: The day an invoice comes in, it's going to be logged into the system to show up as a payable because it's a debt that we have and it's going to impact our working capital.
• 50:09
  Mark Zweig: I mean, I'm not going to be like oh, once a week, sue down there enters all the bills that we got as payables.
• 50:17
  Mark Zweig: Okay, once a week, are you shitting me?
• 50:20
  Mark Zweig: A week's a really long time to go by before I know I've got a problem, isn't it?
• 50:26
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, wouldn't you really rather have those five, six, seven working days to work on that?
• 50:36
  Eric Howerton: yeah, yeah, okay is there.
• 50:38
  Eric Howerton: So what's another pillar?
• 50:39
  Eric Howerton: The discipline pillar, reporting is there one what's another discipline?
• 50:44
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, like if you, if you could advise our listeners, like I mean I think it depends on the company.
• 50:51
  Mark Zweig: You know.
• 50:51
  Mark Zweig: I mean you could be looking at things and and again, you know you're used to some businesses that have lots and lots of transactions and some of them have, you know, tens of thousands of transactions at relatively low numbers throughout the day.
• 51:04
  Mark Zweig: There's all kinds of other data that one can track.
• 51:08
  Mark Zweig: I mean customer service.
• 51:10
  Eric Howerton: Um metrics, I think, are really important so you know to, to see, like, like, when we're trying to say, okay, audience, there's, there's, there's, there's five reports that you like, right, mark's, wide pillars of freaking that will identify good discipline with the organization and show you where more discipline needs to happen.
• 51:30
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, those five, I would say that's true.
• 51:32
  Eric Howerton: Okay, I would add one.
• 51:34
  Eric Howerton: Okay, what's that like a marketing?
• 51:36
  Mark Zweig: we brought up marketing earlier well, that's part of what I'm saying.
• 51:39
  Mark Zweig: That's going to go the data, that's got to go into the sales.
• 51:41
  Mark Zweig: But yeah, the marketing, yeah, all the stuff.
• 51:43
  Eric Howerton: That's kind of like how many social posts that we've made, what's the total number of kind of reactions do we?
• 51:48
  Mark Zweig: get?
• 51:49
  Mark Zweig: How many members do we have?
• 51:50
  Mark Zweig: How many likes do we get?
• 51:50
  Mark Zweig: Yes, how many shares do we get that?
• 51:52
  Mark Zweig: Yes, how many shares do we get?
• 51:54
  Mark Zweig: That's right?
• 51:54
  Mark Zweig: Absolutely.
• 51:55
  Mark Zweig: All those things, I think are that's a.
• 51:57
  Mark Zweig: That's another good one.
• 51:58
  Eric Howerton: Well, not everybody's using social media effectively at all, but I mean like, even like direct mail campaigns, like how many, what?
• 52:05
  Eric Howerton: What's been our marketing activity?
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: Right, Kind of going back on what you're talking about with your students 3% of all these businesses that were interviewed had a marketing plan.
• 52:14
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, three out of 60 were doing any kind of marketing.
• 52:17
  Eric Howerton: That's, that's it's ferociously bad I know it is, so I want to get all right.
• 52:21
  Eric Howerton: So those are our five pillars.
• 52:23
  Eric Howerton: It's five, maybe six right?
• 52:25
  Eric Howerton: Oh yeah, but that's really good.
• 52:27
  Eric Howerton: So I'm going to say something right this is very vulnerable, okay, and humble, okay and humble, you've always said it that way.
• 52:35
  Eric Howerton: Thank you.
• 52:36
  Eric Howerton: Here's the thing is like what our listeners need to understand.
• 52:41
  Eric Howerton: Those are five pillars, but I don't have that discipline as a business owner.
• 52:48
  Eric Howerton: So I think it's comforting to know, because if I was listening to this I would be a little intimidated as a business owner.
• 52:54
  Eric Howerton: Either I already have a business and I'm not doing these things, and I know I should, or, B I'm starting a business and I'm like, oh my gosh, my mind just got blown.
• 53:02
  Eric Howerton: This is a lot of foreign talk, but I don't know that it necessarily is.
• 53:09
  Mark Zweig: It doesn't all have to happen at once.
• 53:11
  Mark Zweig: A lot of this evolves Totally.
• 53:13
  Eric Howerton: But also if you're not, if you're not like myself, right.
• 53:16
  Eric Howerton: So this is, this is yours.
• 53:18
  Eric Howerton: It, in my personality, is not like yours, right?
• 53:21
  Eric Howerton: I don't have that great attention like, but I do.
• 53:23
  Eric Howerton: I did learn a lot today and I'm going to start implementing.
• 53:27
  Eric Howerton: So I think that what I'm trying to convey is is like this conversation should not block you from doing your business, or that you have detriment on the horizon because you're not doing it, because I'm kind of a living testimony where I've made it through business without being that type of discipline.
• 53:47
  Eric Howerton: Now I can.
• 53:49
  Eric Howerton: But here's what I like about it, though, as myself if I started but here's what I like about it, though, as myself If I started the gosh dang discipline in doing one of those reports or two of them like you just talked about, I would grow substantially as a business owner, like really quickly.
• 54:07
  Eric Howerton: But I think that maybe this is also a good explanation of why partnerships, true, can be, good Can be fantastic, yeah, because you get people with different skill sets and orientations.
• 54:24
  Eric Howerton: Absolutely.
• 54:25
  Eric Howerton: That is absolutely true, absolutely.
• 54:27
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, partners aren't always bad or to be avoided no.
• 54:29
  Mark Zweig: God, no man.
• 54:30
  Mark Zweig: Good partners compliment each other.
• 54:32
  Mark Zweig: One plus one equals three.
• 54:33
  Eric Howerton: Bro, it does I totally agree with that it does, because I've been blessed in my past to have partners that were really, that were definitely more in line with, yeah, what your pillars are and then what my pillars are.
• 54:46
  Eric Howerton: Right, I was too.
• 54:47
  Mark Zweig: I learned a lot from the people like that, like a fred white or somebody, yeah, who just when I came to marketing, it was done, it was scheduled, it was always done, it was never forgotten, it was never put off.
• 54:59
  Mark Zweig: That's right.
• 54:59
  Mark Zweig: When you got somebody like that, yeah, back there, yeah, making that happen, they're making your job easy.
• 55:06
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, okay, no, it's huge because any business order that's out there.
• 55:10
  Eric Howerton: We know how overwhelmed we are.
• 55:12
  Eric Howerton: There's too much to do.
• 55:12
  Eric Howerton: We'll never be able to get everything done.
• 55:14
  Eric Howerton: We've been talking about discipline.
• 55:15
  Eric Howerton: I'm a shit man.
• 55:16
  Mark Zweig: I'm already working right, my freaking rear off you know, working half time, 84 hours a week, right, yeah, exactly half the time only half time and it's like now you're talking about freaking, being disciplined.
• 55:27
  Eric Howerton: I'm like you know, but here's the reality is like I mean, like here's my discipline from this conversation, here's my decision.
• 55:34
  Eric Howerton: I need to go back and make, okay, if I own this podcast videos thing myself, right, which you do, which I do I'm lacking the discipline that I think that my previous co-owners have had.
• 55:50
  Eric Howerton: Like this is kind of checking me a little bit to go okay, like I should probably exercise more time and discipline.
• 55:57
  Eric Howerton: What we talked about today, in addition to other things, and I need to really consider about, like you know what my, my setup is, you know, or how?
• 56:07
  Eric Howerton: So that, how do you make that?
• 56:09
  Eric Howerton: How do I make that happen?
• 56:10
  Eric Howerton: And like, what's the best route?
• 56:12
  Eric Howerton: Um, you know, or do I do?
• 56:15
  Eric Howerton: I do I become?
• 56:17
  Eric Howerton: I mean honestly, like none of those things are like confusing to me and I think they're possible to do, sure, but it's less like I need to get my freaking discipline shit straightened out well, you've been more well.
• 56:28
  Mark Zweig: You've been trying to launch this thing.
• 56:29
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you're focused on marketing you're focused on getting attention.
• 56:33
  Eric Howerton: You're focused on getting business that's been your great products creating services sure packaging pricing yeah, man, what's the market?
• 56:41
  Eric Howerton: Freaking neat baby.
• 56:42
  Eric Howerton: I love this and I felt like I haven't.
• 56:45
  Eric Howerton: I have a few strategies, but I know I could sniff a freaking opportunity like a crocodile in the freaking river.
• 56:50
  Eric Howerton: Smells blood down the river, but I mean that that's.
• 56:54
  Mark Zweig: I love that Right.
• 56:55
  Mark Zweig: We all gravitate to the stuff we like the best, I mean that's another part of it, and I certainly fail on this one a lot of the time.
• 57:02
  Mark Zweig: But I think when I'm most successful and, truthfully, when I'm the happiest in business, it's when I start out every day and go what's the one thing I don't want to do today?
• 57:13
  Mark Zweig: And that's what I do first.
• 57:15
  Mark Zweig: I get the ugly stuff out of the way first.
• 57:18
  Mark Zweig: Then I feel good, then I'm liberated, then I'm guilt-free to pursue the things that I want to do that day in the business, instead of procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate.
• 57:31
  Mark Zweig: Do what I want to do oh it was fun.
• 57:32
  Mark Zweig: Do what I want to do, that was fun.
• 57:33
  Mark Zweig: Do what I want to do oh it was fun.
• 57:34
  Mark Zweig: Do what I want to do, that was fun.
• 57:35
  Mark Zweig: Do what I want to do, that was fun.
• 57:36
  Mark Zweig: Procrastinate, procrastinate on what I don't want to do.
• 57:40
  Eric Howerton: back to the whole point of this entire episode the discipline to get up, take care of the shit you don't want to do, like if we could all do that and spend.
• 57:49
  Eric Howerton: Like how long does that take you every morning?
• 57:52
  Mark Zweig: I said I wish I was consistent in that.
• 57:54
  Mark Zweig: I'm not as good as I would like to be Most of the time.
• 57:57
  Mark Zweig: It's not that big a deal though right.
• 57:59
  Mark Zweig: I agree with you.
• 58:00
  Mark Zweig: You know it's a difficult call.
• 58:02
  Mark Zweig: It's dealing with somebody you don't want to deal with.
• 58:06
  Eric Howerton: It's doing filling out forms that you don't want to fill out.
• 58:09
  Eric Howerton: Having to terminate somebody or having to give a plan of improvement yes, exactly.
• 58:11
  Eric Howerton: Or having to give a plan of improvement.
• 58:12
  Eric Howerton: Yes, all that shit like calling the insurance company.
• 58:16
  Eric Howerton: Calling the client is pissed off Talking to your freaking attorney about some shit.
• 58:20
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, where it's easy to avoid those things.
• 58:23
  Eric Howerton: Oh, dude it's fun to avoid them.
• 58:24
  Eric Howerton: Are you kidding me?
• 58:25
  Eric Howerton: But that is what discipline is.
• 58:27
  Eric Howerton: That's exactly what discipline is.
• 58:29
  Eric Howerton: That's really good man.
• 58:32
  Eric Howerton: I think that people will get some value out of this, hopefully, I know, I hope so.
• 58:35
  Eric Howerton: I know I have a lot.
• 58:38
  Mark Zweig: It's all about maximizing your chances for success, minimizing your chances of failure.
• 58:45
  Mark Zweig: Everything comes down to that.
• 58:48
  Mark Zweig: I'm so glad I could say I was blessed, as some people say, that I taught stat and worked as a grad student for a guy who was really good and understood statistics and probability theory.
• 59:06
  Eric Howerton: Oh yeah, that's good Such a good basic grounding in everything, everything, everything, everything.
• 59:17
  Eric Howerton: I like that.
• 59:18
  Eric Howerton: I'd like to shoot off in that combo a little bit because, going back, like formal education which, by the way, we talked about, you don't have to be a genius and well-learned to start a business.
• 59:26
  Eric Howerton: In fact, you just have to be disciplined.
• 59:29
  Eric Howerton: But there are things in formal education settings when you do run across this one teacher or this one class, it makes a huge difference and it compounds for the rest of your life.
• 59:41
  Mark Zweig: It's really true.
• 59:41
  Mark Zweig: I mean this guy, in fact, he's still a friend of mine today.
• 59:44
  Mark Zweig: He's still alive, thankfully.
• 59:46
  Mark Zweig: That's cool.
• 59:47
  Mark Zweig: But you know the other thing again, and I hate to just take it back to the examples of discipline, but here's another one.
• 59:55
  Mark Zweig: It's conventional wisdom, right now, that you can't get a good deal in the real estate market in Northwest Arkansas, right, sure For anything.
• 1:00:02
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, there's so many buyers out there.
• 1:00:04
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, okay, prices are high, even though interest rates are high.
• 1:00:09
  Mark Zweig: Prices are just stratospherically high compared to what we were used to even two or three years ago.
• 1:00:14
  Mark Zweig: Right, everything's stratospherically high compared to what we were used to even two or three years ago.
• 1:00:21
  Mark Zweig: Right, everything's gone up so much there's no good deals, right, that's what people would think.
• 1:00:23
  Mark Zweig: If you do like I do, I get up every single day and I look at zillow every single day.
• 1:00:27
  Mark Zweig: I look at it multiple times a day.
• 1:00:30
  Mark Zweig: I'll be honest with you.
• 1:00:31
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I'm constantly looking.
• 1:00:31
  Mark Zweig: I see what goes on the market.
• 1:00:32
  Mark Zweig: I see when price reductions are there.
• 1:00:33
  Mark Zweig: I I see what goes on the market.
• 1:00:34
  Mark Zweig: I see when price reductions are there.
• 1:00:36
  Mark Zweig: I see how long it's on the market.
• 1:00:38
  Mark Zweig: I see what it sells.
• 1:00:39
  Mark Zweig: I see what it sells for, Whether I find that on Zillow or I go to the courthouse records, the county records.
• 1:00:46
  Mark Zweig: You go to courthouse records every day too.
• 1:00:48
  Mark Zweig: Sonia does it for me If I want to know what something sells and I can't find it on Zillow, because they do report the sales most of the time.
• 1:01:02
  Mark Zweig: But so just think now, if you did that every day, like I have for, let's say, at least the last 10 or 15 years, whenever Zillow was created and started putting that data out, do you think you'd see a good deal?
• 1:01:08
  Mark Zweig: When it comes up the year of the last house I bought, appraised for 30% more than we paid for it as is, which never happens, never happens.
• 1:01:24
  Eric Howerton: Okay, and now you have equity.
• 1:01:27
  Mark Zweig: I got instant and I got far more than that Because I knew what to do to improve it, but I'm just saying no that's so true, but it takes discipline every day.
• 1:01:38
  Mark Zweig: You would not know.
• 1:01:39
  Mark Zweig: That's the deal that it was.
• 1:01:41
  Mark Zweig: Lots of people could have had that deal, lots and lots of them.
• 1:01:45
  Mark Zweig: They passed on it.
• 1:01:46
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I saw it because I know what the price per square foot equivalent is where I live in Mount Sequoia and I saw how much cheaper this was than that and I also knew how long it was on the market and eventually the buyer is going to take a low ball offer.
• 1:02:03
  Eric Howerton: Absolutely so.
• 1:02:05
  Eric Howerton: Tying this back to the business owner.
• 1:02:07
  Eric Howerton: Here's the reality.
• 1:02:09
  Eric Howerton: There's no.
• 1:02:10
  Eric Howerton: If you're wanting to start a new business, there's no way you're going to prepare yourself to be ready to start a business completely and be successful.
• 1:02:18
  Eric Howerton: No, you've got to get into it and learn.
• 1:02:20
  Eric Howerton: Got to get into it and learn, jump in and just start practicing that discipline and eventually, over time, as I've experienced, I can sense when, because I've been a practitioner for so long now, I can see when something's going to be, has a great market opportunity, it might be worth getting involved in right or or starting up myself, whatever it might be sure, and that just takes time to build, just like your real estate thing, like you just.
• 1:02:48
  Mark Zweig: but you have to be practicing, you have to have the discipline to do that even if you buy into an existing business, yeah, you think you're going to know everything about how to fix that and what numbers need to be what right away.
• 1:02:59
  Mark Zweig: It takes a while, it does, to develop that sense.
• 1:03:02
  Mark Zweig: It really takes a while, yep, even if you're like totally committed to it I'm just you know, and it doesn't have to be a big business either it still takes a while to develop that feel.
• 1:03:13
  Mark Zweig: But having the discipline to produce the numbers and look at the numbers and take action based on the numbers on a daily basis is a good way to start to get that feel for what's really happening out there and to help you figure out what you need to do to fix it.
• 1:03:29
  Mark Zweig: Love it.
• 1:03:30
  Eric Howerton: All right Time is up, ain't it?
• 1:03:34
  Eric Howerton: I think so awesome, it's been fun, it has been fun always is I love it.
• 1:03:42
  Eric Howerton: I look forward to this.
• 1:03:43
  Eric Howerton: I do too.
• 1:03:44
  Eric Howerton: I mean I'm not, look, man.
• 1:03:45
  Eric Howerton: I mean real quick on the podcasting thing, like obviously I have a business that's trying to make that easy for planet earth.
• 1:03:53
  Eric Howerton: Yes, and scale, but the reality is is when we first started doing this.
• 1:04:00
  Mark Zweig: We've been doing this for about nine months straight I think we got 37, 38 episodes somewhere around that here's been my genuine experience as somebody that's just been a co-host.
• 1:04:09
  Eric Howerton: Right at first it was.
• 1:04:11
  Eric Howerton: It was exciting for the first few episodes and then it's like, okay, this is taking some work and some discipline, like I really wanted to bounce out a few of them and I think I remember I did a couple, but that was because I just you know, I mean I had conflicts, schedule stuff over a lot of things going, but I'll allow those conflicts to happen right, because it but man after you know, I mean for the last six months I think this is actually this Friday talk has become one of my more favorite things about the week.
• 1:04:39
  Eric Howerton: That's happening.
• 1:04:40
  Eric Howerton: It's a stress reliever, you know.
• 1:04:43
  Eric Howerton: I mean I feel like that I'm contributing.
• 1:04:45
  Eric Howerton: I can put an end cap on the freaking week.
• 1:04:48
  Mark Zweig: It's therapeutic for both of us.
• 1:04:49
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it really is.
• 1:04:50
  Mark Zweig: It helps us refine our thinking to talk about these things, because we learn from each other, yep, and then hopefully our audience can benefit from this as well.
• 1:05:00
  Eric Howerton: I agree, because I mean what I get out of it is there's another business owner.
• 1:05:06
  Eric Howerton: I mean all the things you talked about today.
• 1:05:08
  Eric Howerton: I'm inspired and I'm excited to try to get that going.
• 1:05:11
  Eric Howerton: I mean, every business owner is in a whirlwind, like there's.
• 1:05:17
  Eric Howerton: But the the point is is grind, grind, pick it up, keep going like it's.
• 1:05:22
  Eric Howerton: It's all little bitty pieces, little bitty pieces.
• 1:05:25
  Eric Howerton: I'll appreciate it too.
• 1:05:26
  Eric Howerton: Hopefully you listeners appreciate this as much as what we do well.
• 1:05:30
  Mark Zweig: Thanks a lot, everybody.
• 1:05:31
  Mark Zweig: We're glad you tuned in.
• 1:05:33
  Mark Zweig: We're always interested if you have guest suggestions or topic suggestions for us.
• 1:05:38
  Mark Zweig: If you want to be a sponsor of our program, we would love to have a primary sponsor for this show.
• 1:05:47
  Mark Zweig: In what you're doing, we would well.
• 1:05:53
  Mark Zweig: We're not going to take you on if we don't believe in what you're doing.
• 1:05:55
  Mark Zweig: No, Let me just say that that's true, Dad.
• 1:05:57
  Mark Zweig: If you've got a product or service that helps small business owners, we'd love to talk with you about it.
• 1:06:03
  Mark Zweig: Yep.
• 1:06:05
  Eric Howerton: Absolutely.
• 1:06:07
  Mark Zweig: Otherwise, this has been another episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:06:13
  Mark Zweig: We'll see you all next week.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: Thank you, people head over to our website, wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom and click on the ask the host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business and be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes and ask questions about upcoming shows.