Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 13 - Surviving and Thriving in the Small Business Landscape

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Ep. 13 - Surviving and Thriving in the Small Business Landscape · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  Mark Zweig: All right, everybody, we're back again.
• 0:02
  Mark Zweig: My buddy, Eric Howardton.
• 0:05
  Mark Zweig: What's up?
• 0:06
  Mark Zweig: Mark Got a smile on his face.
• 0:08
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, because I know that the pre-talk, the pre-show talk that we've had.
• 0:14
  Eric Howerton: Ah, you're in a mood, bro.
• 0:16
  Eric Howerton: You are in a mood.
• 0:20
  Mark Zweig: Listen after four-hour Zoom meetings it just makes you want to explode.
• 0:24
  Mark Zweig: Ok Well, you're freaking out, You're in a mood.
• 0:26
  Mark Zweig: I have no tolerance for it anymore.
• 0:29
  Mark Zweig: I just don't.
• 0:30
  Mark Zweig: So we said it at the last podcast we're probably unemployable.
• 0:37
  Mark Zweig: Ok, that's so true.
• 0:42
  Eric Howerton: That's the reason we were able to do a podcast without fear.
• 0:44
  Eric Howerton: Exactly, thank God, the U of A employs me and pays for benefits and all, but that's an environment that allows you to have a good environment that allows you to have you can express yourself.
• 0:58
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you've freed, it's the academic freedom that we have.
• 1:02
  Mark Zweig: But no, I am fired up today, and this is another episode of Big Talk About Small.
• 1:11
  Eric Howerton: Business.
• 1:11
  Eric Howerton: Hey, we had the last show.
• 1:14
  Eric Howerton: We just released it, yeah, with our wives.
• 1:16
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I thought that was pretty awesome.
• 1:19
  Mark Zweig: I did too.
• 1:19
  Mark Zweig: It was really good.
• 1:20
  Mark Zweig: I thought we came up with a lot of really good stuff.
• 1:23
  Mark Zweig: We tackled a lot of we did.
• 1:25
  Eric Howerton: And what are the most important issues?
• 1:26
  Eric Howerton: The most important thing I felt like I learned, which was when I watched the video yeah, I was like my wife is so much better looking than I am.
• 1:34
  Eric Howerton: She is good looking.
• 1:35
  Eric Howerton: I mean, she sounds good.
• 1:37
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, she does.
• 1:38
  Eric Howerton: She's better than me.
• 1:40
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I thought the same thing.
• 1:42
  Mark Zweig: Yeah your wife is definitely better than you too.
• 1:43
  Mark Zweig: I look like Carl Maldon.
• 1:45
  Mark Zweig: Ok, my nose is so big that it freaking blew me away.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: You know it's like.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: I think it's the angle of the camera man Over time.
• 1:55
  Mark Zweig: Your nose just grows Does it get bigger your nose gets bigger, your ears get bigger, everything else gets smaller.
• 2:01
  Mark Zweig: Well, the male species we're just not, we don't age that well.
• 2:07
  Mark Zweig: I mean, honestly I think, do you take care of yourself, though?
• 2:11
  Mark Zweig: Oh, absolutely, what do you think?
• 2:13
  Mark Zweig: I mean, of course I do, do you?
• 2:15
  Eric Howerton: Like I don't think I take not nearly as much as my wife, though I'm kidding.
• 2:19
  Eric Howerton: I know what did you eat for lunch today.
• 2:23
  Mark Zweig: I had steak and shake cheeseburger with fries.
• 2:25
  Mark Zweig: I had a McDonald's sausage McMuffin with hash browns and two donuts during my zoom eating, and tonight maybe I'll have some ribs or something.
• 2:35
  Mark Zweig: Maybe you know.
• 2:40
  Eric Howerton: Maybe, Maybe, Do you think our wives are eating like that?
• 2:43
  Mark Zweig: Oh god, no, there's no way.
• 2:45
  Mark Zweig: I think Sonya starts out with, like kombucha, you know, have a salad at lunch, you know, she'll eat like half of her dinner.
• 2:55
  Eric Howerton: Right.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: It's like eating from that steak and not eating it.
• 3:00
  Eric Howerton: We went out last With these lotions and stuff, like my wife, like sometimes the skin care wreck.
• 3:05
  Mark Zweig: My wife will.
• 3:06
  Eric Howerton: We're going to get ready for bed and she's over there and she puts on chapstick, right.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: And I look over and I go, I'm like this is what happens in museums.
• 3:14
  Eric Howerton: Like please, bertie, can I have some of that, because my lips have been chapped for like three weeks and I haven't put anything on.
• 3:22
  Eric Howerton: Now that's what.
• 3:23
  Mark Zweig: I'll do you know man?
• 3:25
  Eric Howerton: And then she'll put some.
• 3:26
  Eric Howerton: I'm like, well, you put it on for me because it feels so much better it does when you do that, yeah.
• 3:32
  Eric Howerton: And then she puts it on and I'm like it's a freaking god dang miracle, like I feel like a new person again.
• 3:38
  Eric Howerton: I know.
• 3:39
  Eric Howerton: But, I hadn't put on the chapstick.
• 3:40
  Eric Howerton: But there they are, lathering themselves up all the time, just staying Oil of au lait and all that stuff.
• 3:46
  Mark Zweig: I don't know what the hell it all is, either, but it's great, yeah, it is, and we're lucky.
• 3:50
  Mark Zweig: But I will say this though one thing, no, honestly, I do think keeps me going is I move a lot.
• 3:58
  Mark Zweig: I don't spend a lot of time sitting in one place, right, which is part of the reason why I'm unemployable in corporate America.
• 4:06
  Eric Howerton: But you know, I just don't.
• 4:07
  Eric Howerton: You could sit my desk.
• 4:09
  Mark Zweig: No way.
• 4:10
  Mark Zweig: No, if you know that if you move a lot, that actually you know you're less likely to be overweight, and all that, although I could shed a few?
• 4:17
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, undoubtedly, but I just move a lot.
• 4:21
  Eric Howerton: But if you, if you didn't, you have to give a feels real.
• 4:27
  Mark Zweig: I don't want to do that.
• 4:28
  Mark Zweig: I know you don't.
• 4:28
  Mark Zweig: I love my, those chilies, baby back ribs.
• 4:31
  Mark Zweig: I don't care what anybody says, oh, I haven't had them in forever, they're good, they're good.
• 4:36
  Mark Zweig: You get them dry, ok, which they have a variety of, and then you get that chipotle honey, chipotle barbecue sauce and they're just fantastic.
• 4:47
  Mark Zweig: It's the one thing chilies does really well, really.
• 4:49
  Mark Zweig: They have a good they have a good cheese dip though?
• 4:52
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, they do.
• 4:53
  Eric Howerton: That sounds pretty cool.
• 4:55
  Mark Zweig: Well, you know, while we're talking about restaurants, I did want to talk today a little bit about some of the mistakes that small business owners seem to be making over and over and over and over and over and over again.
• 5:10
  Mark Zweig: Ok, I don't know about you, but I can't go in any business or do business with any business or get involved with any business that I don't see 27 things that could be done better.
• 5:26
  Mark Zweig: I mean true, you know, and some people would say I'm just super critical, but it's not that I just that things could be done better there within the business owners and managers control.
• 5:40
  Eric Howerton: So you talk about when you get involved in a business or when you go, just like you went to.
• 5:44
  Eric Howerton: You went to Steak and Shake today.
• 5:46
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I did, I went to Steak and Shake today.
• 5:48
  Eric Howerton: Did you notice things?
• 5:50
  Eric Howerton: Yeah as a customer.
• 5:52
  Mark Zweig: Look, the guy who owns the Steak and Shakes around here is a good friend of mine and I really like him and I think he's a good operator.
• 5:58
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, generally his Steak and Shakes are more profitable than the typical Steak and Shake and he gets a lot of attention by their board of directors as sort of an owner's representative.
• 6:11
  Mark Zweig: He's a really smart guy.
• 6:12
  Mark Zweig: But yeah, I mean, it's the typical thing.
• 6:16
  Mark Zweig: You go through the the line, you order OK, what do you want?
• 6:20
  Mark Zweig: I want a hamburger, no cheese, mustard and onions only on it.
• 6:26
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, the guy's like, ok, you want a cheeseburger with ketchup?
• 6:29
  Mark Zweig: I'm like, no, ok, I didn't say a damn thing about ketchup.
• 6:34
  Mark Zweig: Right, all right, right.
• 6:36
  Mark Zweig: And I said and I want some salt in the package for my fries, just throw a salt in the bag.
• 6:41
  Mark Zweig: Ok, we'll take care of you.
• 6:42
  Mark Zweig: I go through, I get my stuff, I leave Of course there's no salt in there and I get a friggin' cheeseburger.
• 6:48
  Mark Zweig: All right, right.
• 6:49
  Mark Zweig: And it's just like an everyday occurrence.
• 6:52
  Mark Zweig: I think we all go through this and it's maddening yeah.
• 6:57
  Eric Howerton: It really is.
• 6:57
  Eric Howerton: It's because they have they have the.
• 7:00
  Eric Howerton: The owner has the control to do something about that.
• 7:07
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, and, like I said, I don't want to be critical of my friend.
• 7:10
  Eric Howerton: You see all that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 7:12
  Mark Zweig: And I've been like a secret shopper for him before.
• 7:15
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah, like I go and steak and shake and he'll.
• 7:18
  Mark Zweig: He'll say, ok, what's going on, how many people are in there, how long did it take them to see?
• 7:21
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah, and if there's any problem man, he jumps on, he's on, he's on, he's going to be on this one.
• 7:26
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, well, he is, if I inform him of it.
• 7:29
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, but no, I think you know and again, you know, I used to be a Vistage chair.
• 7:36
  Mark Zweig: You know what Vistage is?
• 7:37
  Mark Zweig: I do.
• 7:38
  Mark Zweig: It's a.
• 7:39
  Mark Zweig: It's a CEO support group, yeah, and, and I think they do a lot of good for a lot of business owners who basically have nobody else to talk to.
• 7:48
  Mark Zweig: Right, and you can put a board together of their peer, of your peers, who are other business owners and, you know, share issues and problems and opportunities and get some input.
• 8:01
  Mark Zweig: That's the good part about it.
• 8:03
  Mark Zweig: The bad part about it is that certain sort of philosophies or or buzzwords get used routinely in tons of communication in you know whether it's the speakers or whether it's what you see online and all.
• 8:25
  Mark Zweig: And I'm not just, I'm not saying this is unique to Vistage, but one of those axioms that people have, yeah, is work on your business, not in your business.
• 8:36
  Mark Zweig: You think of that.
• 8:38
  Mark Zweig: I hate that.
• 8:40
  Eric Howerton: I do too.
• 8:40
  Eric Howerton: I mean there's zero way.
• 8:42
  Eric Howerton: Zero way.
• 8:45
  Eric Howerton: In fact, that's usually the crux of every problem in any business that I'm ever involved in.
• 8:49
  Eric Howerton: Here it doesn't matter big, small, medium.
• 8:52
  Eric Howerton: You're right, you're absolutely right, people that are working on it and not in it are.
• 8:57
  Eric Howerton: They don't?
• 8:57
  Eric Howerton: They don't understand what the real problems are?
• 9:00
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, and then therefore, they can't solve it.
• 9:02
  Eric Howerton: And that causes the bureaucracy, that causes the politics, that's caused the alienation, that causes the turnover of the staff.
• 9:10
  Eric Howerton: Right, I mean, how many times have I seen staff turnover because their problems are solved.
• 9:16
  Mark Zweig: They can't be yeah Right, and they just get frustrated.
• 9:19
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean.
• 9:20
  Eric Howerton: And then, of course, the new, these clients.
• 9:22
  Eric Howerton: That's why your business degrades.
• 9:24
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's also another reason why companies can't be innovative.
• 9:28
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, and I've seen that happen a thousand times.
• 9:31
  Eric Howerton: I deal with that a lot.
• 9:32
  Eric Howerton: Right, I mean, like you, if you're not working in the business, understanding what the market needs and what the clients need and the customers need, you're, you're, you're not going to have a, you're dead, you're dead.
• 9:44
  Mark Zweig: And you know you're, I never really thought about that, but you're right what you said about innovation, because what happens is the bureaucracy tries to take over for sort of common sense from the top, yeah, yeah, and and then, once you have the bureaucracy, then innovation just grinds to a friggin halt.
• 10:02
  Mark Zweig: It just gets so slow.
• 10:05
  Eric Howerton: Well, you know, what they're doing is they're they're they're going kind of to like a visage group, whether that be the board or that be a group of other people that are involved, that have different reasons of being involved in your company, and they're taking the attention of the leaders to where it becomes a different reason as to what the products and services are that you're providing, because you're not talking to your customers anymore.
• 10:29
  Eric Howerton: Right, you're not talking to your team, you're not.
• 10:33
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean, that's a good point you know you're over here figuring out what the what's the Strategizing?
• 10:39
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yes, what the what the investors want to see?
• 10:42
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, right.
• 10:43
  Mark Zweig: And well, that's another issue all together right there.
• 10:45
  Mark Zweig: But the investors, are they working in the business?
• 10:48
  Eric Howerton: No, they don't know.
• 10:48
  Eric Howerton: No, they care about one thing Money, Money.
• 10:52
  Eric Howerton: Yes, you know, and so it's true.
• 10:54
  Eric Howerton: You get your consultants, they care about their monies.
• 10:57
  Eric Howerton: You know everybody's Well they're all their consultants.
• 11:01
  Mark Zweig: Too often they want to con you.
• 11:03
  Mark Zweig: They want to tell you what you want to hear, because most of them can't afford to lose you as a client.
• 11:09
  Mark Zweig: It's true, I like to be an insultant myself.
• 11:11
  Mark Zweig: That's very nice, okay, because I'm going to tell the emperor he's got no clothes because I don't need that client.
• 11:16
  Mark Zweig: I got lots of other ones waiting to hire me.
• 11:19
  Mark Zweig: That was my attitude at least.
• 11:21
  Mark Zweig: Now I'm not doing that.
• 11:23
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know you get the idea, but let's go back to something again.
• 11:27
  Mark Zweig: Let's just talk a little bit about this whole idea of working in your business.
• 11:32
  Mark Zweig: I have seen so many small business owners back out of their businesses too early.
• 11:39
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, whether they're buying the mandate of work on your business instead of in it, or they're just frigging lazy and overly optimistic, or in love with their company such that they don't think that they need to do what they really need to do to keep it all going.
• 11:56
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, right, yeah, whatever the reason is, they're not involved enough.
• 12:02
  Eric Howerton: What do you think?
• 12:02
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean, you got to be like so I like to think of, so you just fight spider, right, right.
• 12:08
  Eric Howerton: It's been a company I've been part of for a long time and, as it's growing and we you know, we, our business grew, what I realized was that, like I never got out of the business, I never worked on the business, right, right.
• 12:25
  Mark Zweig: You're a working manager slash owner, absolutely yeah, like I mean, and I work or slash manager, slash owner what yeah, I've?
• 12:34
  Eric Howerton: been I'm.
• 12:34
  Eric Howerton: I tell you what I am is.
• 12:35
  Eric Howerton: I'm a freaking dog.
• 12:36
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I'm going out and getting the business Right and I know for the business sake, because it's because of the there's a problem to fix.
• 12:46
  Eric Howerton: You're relentlessly focused on that problem, yep, and what I've realized is that over time and as a business group, you have to be able to release Like I agree, I think that there's there's a sure you can't be do everything like that's like new.
• 13:00
  Mark Zweig: I mean, that's another problem.
• 13:01
  Mark Zweig: Some people go fall into.
• 13:03
  Mark Zweig: Oh yeah, they can't grow beyond 20, 25 people, because they can't let go.
• 13:07
  Eric Howerton: They can't let go.
• 13:09
  Eric Howerton: So there's, there's, there's a maximum span of control, perfect navigation of that, and you can't do one way or the other, and so how you play that middle line.
• 13:16
  Eric Howerton: What I learned was is that, like, as things developed out, there's definitely a lot of things that other people are good at, and that's finance and all these other types of things, hr, legal, whatever it might be allowing them to take that over without feeling insecure or that I was not valuable anymore to the company.
• 13:37
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, but then, at the same time, staying in the business and knowing what I was really good at.
• 13:43
  Eric Howerton: And so I think, as in my experience was and it still is today, what I'm really good at is working in the business in a very specific area that's provided incredible value back to the company.
• 13:56
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, everybody in this company needs to be working in the business.
• 13:59
  Eric Howerton: I think we actually developed a culture like that.
• 14:01
  Eric Howerton: White Spider, I don't disagree.
• 14:03
  Mark Zweig: I mean you got to do what you do best, yeah, but it does take a team.
• 14:07
  Mark Zweig: You can't do everything, so you've got to be willing to delegate with certain aspects and trust that Right.
• 14:14
  Eric Howerton: What you need is other people that are working in the business, and so I have as fortunate.
• 14:18
  Eric Howerton: You know, like both my co-owners were all 100% in the business.
• 14:24
  Eric Howerton: We were never working on the business, right, you know.
• 14:28
  Mark Zweig: What's that?
• 14:28
  Mark Zweig: You're working on the business.
• 14:30
  Mark Zweig: I think, oh, you're playing at business.
• 14:31
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you're playing at it.
• 14:34
  Mark Zweig: It's like a game to you.
• 14:36
  Eric Howerton: Well, I think a lot of people like that have a serious endeavor.
• 14:39
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean like they think that business can become a.
• 14:44
  Eric Howerton: It's like a homework assignment or sort of side project, especially if you've worked and you've been employed somewhere.
• 14:52
  Eric Howerton: Yes, I've seen this happen.
• 14:54
  Eric Howerton: A lot of these folks that have been employed and they've been done really well, made good money, sure, and they go out and then they invest into a company and then they don't.
• 15:03
  Eric Howerton: But they don't want to be a manager, they don't want to read all the day to day.
• 15:06
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I want to be an investor, Right.
• 15:12
  Mark Zweig: And they can't do it Right.
• 15:13
  Mark Zweig: I mean, it sort of came up in our discussion with our spouses.
• 15:17
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know we talk about work-life integration, this whole idea that you never really totally shut down that you know there are times you're going to do personal stuff during the workday, but then there are times you're going to be responding to calls, emails, texts, crises after work, right, yep?
• 15:33
  Mark Zweig: If you think you can just divide it up and say this is when I work and this is when I don't work, and you're the quote owner of the business, because maybe that's the way you did it in corporate America, I don't know.
• 15:45
  Eric Howerton: It ain't gonna work.
• 15:46
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, the reality is is that business is absolutely crazy and chaotic, and complex?
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Yes, it is.
• 15:50
  Eric Howerton: And full of all kinds.
• 15:51
  Eric Howerton: Nothing but a big ball of freaking problems and every you get left out and opportunities?
• 15:57
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, absolutely, because the problems are in all this Right, right.
• 16:01
  Eric Howerton: But I mean like you can't, it's not something that can be compartmentalized.
• 16:07
  Eric Howerton: Yes, Business cannot be, and I think that that's, and when I said investors earlier, like this, there's this the problem with that thinking is, is that if you do invest in something and you put your money in it and you're not in the business, you just made a very potentially bad investment.
• 16:24
  Mark Zweig: It's possible it's gonna bite you in the butt, it could work out.
• 16:27
  Mark Zweig: Maybe there's other people that are doing it all and you're just a minor player in the providing capital.
• 16:34
  Mark Zweig: I mean it can work out, it can.
• 16:35
  Mark Zweig: I mean I'd still rather invest in those companies than I would.
• 16:39
  Mark Zweig: The public stock market, that's where I don't know a damn thing about what's going on and somebody always knows more than us.
• 16:45
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, always, three, okay, but yeah, I hear what you're saying.
• 16:50
  Mark Zweig: I mean, I think I just want to go back to what you're saying.
• 16:55
  Mark Zweig: So you got to be good at doing something in the business, right, and you got to part with some of the things that you do that maybe you're not the best at or don't want to do, and get other people doing those well.
• 17:05
  Mark Zweig: But I also think, as a business owner, every so often, on no specific schedule or particular, you know I'm not going to say now, once every two weeks, blah, blah, blah, no, but you do need to just like periodically, inject yourself into some areas of the business that maybe you don't normally work in just to see what's going on.
• 17:29
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know that's a good point.
• 17:31
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, were you at Swig Group or Swig White?
• 17:35
  Mark Zweig: It was at the time when you worked there with me.
• 17:37
  Mark Zweig: After we got the company back and we found out that the customer service inbox was not being monitored, I had to you.
• 17:45
  Mark Zweig: Remember that, absolutely, there were like hundreds of leads for consultant jobs.
• 17:50
  Eric Howerton: I heard, actually I remember specifically you sit there listening to it Over all these messages and just watching you get more and more fired up.
• 18:00
  Mark Zweig: It just like the minute millions of dollars lost.
• 18:03
  Mark Zweig: It was due to the absolutely stupid and completely avoidable thing like somebody leaves or gets fired or whatever and nobody bothers to find out where that's going Right, and it just is maddening, I mean.
• 18:19
  Mark Zweig: So, yeah, I hooked myself up to the customer service inbox and we had a system so I could, if it was dealt, if I dealt with it, it was out of there.
• 18:27
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, and it was just an eye opener.
• 18:29
  Mark Zweig: I saw so many different problems and complaints.
• 18:33
  Eric Howerton: Why do you think that happens, though?
• 18:34
  Eric Howerton: Like, how does something like that happen?
• 18:37
  Eric Howerton: You know, I think that because I remember you doing that right, and then you actually taught me about jumping into nooks and crannies of the business and, specifically like very important things, and that's a hard thing as an entrepreneur.
• 18:53
  Eric Howerton: Right, you got a million things to be focused on, but what are the ones that you need to go probe into?
• 18:58
  Eric Howerton: Make sure that there's not a fail going on right there?
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:01
  Eric Howerton: And you taught me through that that day, like how can there be such a fail and it's such an epic one, but it's when you turn around and there's not anybody that was responsible for it.
• 19:12
  Eric Howerton: Right, no they left the company Right, so therefore it fail at falls and no one, and it's no one's fault All of a sudden.
• 19:20
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, but it's your problem.
• 19:21
  Mark Zweig: Right, it's your fault.
• 19:22
  Mark Zweig: If you're the owner or the mail chair, okay, it's your 100% your fault, but that's scary to think.
• 19:28
  Eric Howerton: So how do you?
• 19:29
  Eric Howerton: So?
• 19:29
  Eric Howerton: Why don't you educate us?
• 19:31
  Eric Howerton: Because I think that this is the one of the lessons I learned from you.
• 19:33
  Eric Howerton: Where do you look for those Like where are the important things to look for?
• 19:38
  Mark Zweig: I'm not sure I mean where they're all over.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, things to deal with customers.
• 19:44
  Eric Howerton: Yes.
• 19:45
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I mean, that's probably the number one.
• 19:47
  Mark Zweig: That's it, anything.
• 19:48
  Mark Zweig: You know the whole idea, one of the things you know.
• 19:51
  Mark Zweig: People are like I didn't learn anything and got my business degree.
• 19:56
  Mark Zweig: That helps me as an entrepreneur.
• 19:57
  Mark Zweig: I want to say bullshit to that.
• 19:59
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, okay, because I remember I had a textbook, a small business management textbook, and one of the ideas in that book was all about customer touch points.
• 20:11
  Mark Zweig: Now, they never talked about that.
• 20:13
  Mark Zweig: When I went through marketing education in the 70s and my MBA in the late 70s, I never heard this term touch points.
• 20:22
  Mark Zweig: But it was a beautiful concept.
• 20:24
  Mark Zweig: It's every single way your customer interacts with your business.
• 20:29
  Mark Zweig: It could be hitting your website.
• 20:32
  Mark Zweig: What happens?
• 20:32
  Mark Zweig: Make enough phone call to it.
• 20:34
  Mark Zweig: It's Google.
• 20:36
  Mark Zweig: It gives me directions to go there.
• 20:38
  Mark Zweig: They're wrong.
• 20:38
  Mark Zweig: Yes, okay, yeah To you know the actual contract or a proposal, or the product delivery or customer service after the sale.
• 20:49
  Mark Zweig: All of that is a touch point and you can go wrong in any one of those.
• 20:54
  Mark Zweig: And if you look at the whole process from A to Z and you start getting involved in those touch points, that's where the rubber meets the road baby.
• 21:04
  Mark Zweig: That's what she's like oh, I love it, dude.
• 21:07
  Eric Howerton: It's so true.
• 21:07
  Eric Howerton: No, I'm glad you shared that because it's that is like like I didn't really understand like where you were coming from on that.
• 21:16
  Eric Howerton: But that's what you're doing is like you're looking at these customer touch points like you're.
• 21:19
  Eric Howerton: I think you're subconsciously doing that and you'll like you'll, and that's why you'll actually go check the phone messages.
• 21:27
  Eric Howerton: You're like one day all of a sudden, hey, there's a touch point, oh that, and you just check it, and then you're like I'm not going to check it every day, oh, okay, but then you discover the speed.
• 21:37
  Eric Howerton: You bring up this hornet's nest.
• 21:39
  Eric Howerton: It's like you go into this tree and you grab the, the, the beehive and bring it in.
• 21:43
  Eric Howerton: All these freaking bees are swerving all over the place.
• 21:47
  Mark Zweig: You're like a honey bear, but you are your business problem, honey bear, or it's like you you buy an old house that's a wreck and you start gutting it and you find out it looks pretty good.
• 21:58
  Mark Zweig: I mean I've had some of them that like you could go in there, we could live in it and be totally comfortable.
• 22:02
  Mark Zweig: And then you open up the wall and you find out everything inside is completely rotten.
• 22:07
  Mark Zweig: I did this rock house.
• 22:09
  Mark Zweig: It was supposed to be Fulbright's first house.
• 22:12
  Mark Zweig: It looked pretty good when I bought it.
• 22:15
  Mark Zweig: So we start gutting it in the entire, under the windows in the front of the rock house.
• 22:20
  Mark Zweig: We peel the plaster off and there's no studs.
• 22:25
  Mark Zweig: It looks like a fire.
• 22:28
  Mark Zweig: They're gone completely.
• 22:29
  Mark Zweig: They rotted away from years of water leaking in there.
• 22:33
  Mark Zweig: There's no insulation, there's no studs, there's no.
• 22:36
  Mark Zweig: You're looking at the back of rock that the sheathing on the outside of the house even rotted away, okay, and you're like, oh my God, yeah, but it looked good on surface.
• 22:47
  Mark Zweig: You know we're doing okay, you know and yeah, you're right.
• 22:52
  Mark Zweig: I mean you got to get into these things, but I just thought that touch points thing is just such genius.
• 22:57
  Eric Howerton: Does you get me?
• 22:58
  Eric Howerton: The voicemail is one that gets often overlooked.
• 23:01
  Eric Howerton: Like I'm sitting here as we're talking thinking about God, I wonder what the voicemail is like back at White Spotter.
• 23:08
  Eric Howerton: It's on a cell phone right that I'd set up, like years ago Cause I was working in the business.
• 23:13
  Mark Zweig: Sure, like I set up the phone, You're doing everything, yeah, well, it starts out at you, yeah.
• 23:17
  Eric Howerton: But I mean, but even after, like, this was like only two years ago.
• 23:20
  Eric Howerton: I mean, started like a decade but yeah, two or three years ago I got the phone connected to a cell phone because we were moving offices and I was going to be damned if we did not have a way for a customer to get a hold of it During that time.
• 23:34
  Mark Zweig: That was what was going on in my brain, looking back on it now, trying to give really good customer service.
• 23:39
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, and then I set up the voicemail, uh huh, cause I'm going to make sure that the damn thing was working in case somebody would get a hold of this.
• 23:46
  Eric Howerton: And then I held onto that for like months, yeah, and then I gave it to somebody, right.
• 23:53
  Mark Zweig: And I'm scared to death to find out what happened.
• 23:55
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I know, See how many unanswered voicemails or miscalls there are, and you know you got a pretty well managed company.
• 24:06
  Mark Zweig: Obviously it's growing like crazy, right, yeah, and you've been very successful and you can still have these things.
• 24:11
  Mark Zweig: I mean another company I work with.
• 24:13
  Mark Zweig: I just one of the the what a few weeks ago I just get this email that said you're now the Facebook administrator for our owners group and I get in there and the first thing.
• 24:26
  Mark Zweig: I see that was the first mistake that they got it's like it's like 90 inquiries from people trying to get on the group and some of them go back to January three or January four and some of them are direct leads from people who want to buy stuff from us.
• 24:42
  Mark Zweig: I was just like blown away by that.
• 24:45
  Eric Howerton: You know what I mean.
• 24:46
  Eric Howerton: How did you?
• 24:46
  Mark Zweig: react.
• 24:47
  Mark Zweig: Well, the first thing is, I, of course, reported it to one of the owners of the business, who, in turn, informed me that he's the one who assigned me to be an administrator, because I know I'm keeping an eye on things.
• 25:02
  Eric Howerton: Okay, and so that was the first thing.
• 25:05
  Eric Howerton: I think that's a beautiful bar.
• 25:06
  Mark Zweig: And then when he told me he was supposed to be responsible for it, then I contacted that person directly and said, hey, you know, this is what I found.
• 25:13
  Mark Zweig: And when I found out is he's like yeah.
• 25:16
  Mark Zweig: I try to help out there when I can.
• 25:18
  Mark Zweig: No ownership, no ownership of it.
• 25:20
  Mark Zweig: Okay, now, when I reported that back to the owner, of course he redirected the guy and said, well, now take care of all those, you know.
• 25:28
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, and I went in there and it's clear.
• 25:31
  Mark Zweig: I mean they did deal with it quickly yeah.
• 25:35
  Mark Zweig: But I mean, I think it's a very typical problem, don't you?
• 25:37
  Mark Zweig: You need small businesses.
• 25:39
  Eric Howerton: It is I think it's like that in big businesses, in big businesses.
• 25:42
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you're right, yeah, big businesses.
• 25:44
  Mark Zweig: Sometimes nobody bothers to look into this stuff.
• 25:47
  Eric Howerton: What I thought was neat too, that you were talking about is like even the Google Maps.
• 25:55
  Mark Zweig: Drives me mad.
• 25:56
  Mark Zweig: Like who, like who's responsible for that?
• 26:00
  Eric Howerton: Who's responsible for that?
• 26:01
  Eric Howerton: You know what I mean.
• 26:03
  Eric Howerton: You got to like and just as an entrepreneur you like.
• 26:06
  Eric Howerton: I love the discussion, though, about these touchpoints in anywhere the customer can be touching in the contracts.
• 26:13
  Eric Howerton: What does that say?
• 26:14
  Eric Howerton: You know, I got a contract the other day, just like two days ago, about something.
• 26:17
  Eric Howerton: There's misspellings and Right.
• 26:20
  Mark Zweig: It reflects really poorly.
• 26:21
  Mark Zweig: It does, man, I'm just like I'm done, yeah.
• 26:25
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, it was terrible, like you, just totally like and that's a customer touchpoint, judge them.
• 26:29
  Mark Zweig: I've done that.
• 26:30
  Eric Howerton: Judge them heavily yes.
• 26:32
  Mark Zweig: And you, as you should, because your thought is they're not careful, they don't care, they're not yeah.
• 26:37
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's like, and that means that I don't care as a customer Right.
• 26:41
  Mark Zweig: It's every single thing, like there's a particular Mexican restaurant in East Fayetteville Okay yeah, you used to live over there.
• 26:49
  Eric Howerton: Yeah.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: You might have been to that Mexican restaurant.
• 26:52
  Mark Zweig: Do you know where I'm talking about?
• 26:53
  Mark Zweig: when you want to sit on the patio in the back and you walk through the bar to get there and the bar is elevated and it's going to see it's in it and you walk back through there and then you go down a long hall it's about 25 feet long, yeah, and there's bus carts with dirty dishes lined up all the way down that damn hall.
• 27:15
  Mark Zweig: So it's like I'm going over there.
• 27:16
  Mark Zweig: I went have a nice meal, yeah, and you know, enjoy myself, and instead I get to look at all this shit from all the previous customer.
• 27:24
  Mark Zweig: By the time I get to the door to go outside I've lost my appetite.
• 27:28
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:29
  Mark Zweig: I mean, doesn't anybody see that?
• 27:31
  Mark Zweig: If I was the owner of that business and I came there and I saw that, I'd be like what the hell is this?
• 27:38
  Mark Zweig: Get this crap out of here.
• 27:40
  Mark Zweig: No, clean this up.
• 27:42
  Mark Zweig: I don't want to ever see this.
• 27:44
  Mark Zweig: Our customers should never see this, you know?
• 27:47
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:48
  Mark Zweig: Why isn't somebody saying that?
• 27:50
  Eric Howerton: I don't know, because it's disgusting, like in your restaurant, like your whole, like it's all about the experience.
• 27:56
  Mark Zweig: We're not trying to be nitpicky yeah, we're not, but you're in business.
• 27:59
  Mark Zweig: It's a basic thing.
• 28:00
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, you're in business, mm-hmm, and you got to understand.
• 28:03
  Eric Howerton: When you get in business, you got to put your best foot forward every single day.
• 28:06
  Eric Howerton: Amen, brother, you know what I'm saying.
• 28:08
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, like you don't half-ass a business, it's like a baseball team or something.
• 28:12
  Mark Zweig: You don't go out there Right Not going to give it your best?
• 28:15
  Eric Howerton: that night you don't show up for the game not to win.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:19
  Eric Howerton: That's one of those that's thinking okay, just as long as you played your best, then that's all that matters to me.
• 28:24
  Mark Zweig: You did not even play in your best, yeah right.
• 28:26
  Mark Zweig: Tell me you're playing your best, yeah right.
• 28:27
  Mark Zweig: Oh, I'm sorry.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter if you win or lose.
• 28:30
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, have fun.
• 28:30
  Eric Howerton: That's the mentality of that type of that's bull crap.
• 28:34
  Mark Zweig: Hey, losing money ain't fun.
• 28:36
  Mark Zweig: No, I know, and that's what happens in business if you don't win the game, you know what?
• 28:40
  Eric Howerton: drives me crazy.
• 28:40
  Eric Howerton: You know what drives me crazy?
• 28:41
  Eric Howerton: Absolutely insane.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: I'm just probably going to piss somebody off for restaurant business.
• 28:45
  Eric Howerton: Okay, I absolutely refuse to go to restaurants when they're closed on Monday.
• 28:51
  Mark Zweig: Dude, I am with you, Are you, of course?
• 28:55
  Mark Zweig: Why would everybody close on Monday?
• 28:58
  Mark Zweig: I mean Eric in Fayetteville, 70% of the good restaurants close on.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: Monday Close on Monday.
• 29:07
  Mark Zweig: What I mean I'm like you don't have to be a brain surgeon to go.
• 29:10
  Mark Zweig: You know what?
• 29:11
  Mark Zweig: I bet if we're open on Monday, we'll get a lot of business from everybody else being closed.
• 29:17
  Mark Zweig: What do you think?
• 29:18
  Mark Zweig: Wow, it's the worst thing.
• 29:22
  Mark Zweig: You're a genius.
• 29:23
  Eric Howerton: It's the worst thing ever, man.
• 29:25
  Eric Howerton: It's so ridiculous.
• 29:27
  Mark Zweig: Hey, it's so bad in Fayetteville it is.
• 29:29
  Mark Zweig: While our workers want to have time off too, get some different workers, then have a different team.
• 29:37
  Eric Howerton: Okay, come with a different player.
• 29:39
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, because that's a customer touch point.
• 29:42
  Eric Howerton: I pull into your business.
• 29:44
  Mark Zweig: Let some people be off on Monday and some people be off on Friday, but we're open Monday and Friday.
• 29:49
  Mark Zweig: Jesus, I didn't know that was going to, but you're really so Of course it's a great frustration and it's idiocy, and if you want to make money in the business, you start thinking about doing things that your competitors are not doing.
• 30:05
  Mark Zweig: If they're not open, you'd be open.
• 30:08
  Eric Howerton: So another thing about being an entrepreneur and getting into the business, yeah, is you have to watch out for your team, right?
• 30:17
  Eric Howerton: And so sometimes the team may not be thinking the right the way in order to grow Sure, grow in the business.
• 30:27
  Eric Howerton: So I have one person who's actually right above us I know he can totally hear us.
• 30:31
  Eric Howerton: Okay, on our team that that's been struggling with his capacity.
• 30:34
  Eric Howerton: Okay, it's because he's he's working on something like a specific thing, but he needs to be able to to graduate past that, right, and so he he stayed, he remained stressed out.
• 30:47
  Eric Howerton: We just had lunch about this.
• 30:48
  Eric Howerton: So what I had him do was it's like so basically, okay, we're in the, we're in this video room right now, right, and so I need him to figure out the process and the workflow to quickly and efficiently get the video production and all the stuff put together and out the door.
• 31:05
  Eric Howerton: Right, right Point of this business.
• 31:07
  Mark Zweig: It's a job.
• 31:08
  Mark Zweig: You got to turn all this stuff out.
• 31:09
  Mark Zweig: It's complicated.
• 31:10
  Mark Zweig: You got to.
• 31:11
  Mark Zweig: You got to process.
• 31:12
  Eric Howerton: And we know that, like, in order for video pie casting business to win, it's got to be the I mean, there's got to be value to it.
• 31:19
  Eric Howerton: Sure, so you as a customer, if you're paying me, I need to be one of the least expensive, competitively priced, with the highest value, fastest turnaround.
• 31:28
  Eric Howerton: You'll be able to do this at scale.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 31:31
  Eric Howerton: But I.
• 31:31
  Eric Howerton: So we got, we got this guy Parker's his name.
• 31:34
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, so we're totally in.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: Great guy yeah, yeah.
• 31:36
  Eric Howerton: He's great, yeah, but he's.
• 31:39
  Eric Howerton: He's too busy editing the podcast instead of building the process.
• 31:45
  Mark Zweig: So he's got to figure out how to edit podcasts faster or get somebody else doing it.
• 31:49
  Eric Howerton: The second one yeah, but he's so busy editing the podcast he can't work on the process, right?
• 31:55
  Mark Zweig: Well, he's quality conscious, he's conscientious, he's thinking like a craftsman.
• 31:59
  Mark Zweig: He is, is what it is, but he needs to be thinking like he's got a craftsman.
• 32:02
  Mark Zweig: He needs to be thinking like what though?
• 32:03
  Mark Zweig: The superintendent maybe Like it?
• 32:05
  Mark Zweig: Okay, the business yeah, no, I mean, I get that.
• 32:09
  Eric Howerton: So you know what?
• 32:09
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, so my engineers, designers, architects, creative people.
• 32:13
  Mark Zweig: There are a lot of people who have that sort of wiring.
• 32:16
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, Don't you?
• 32:17
  Mark Zweig: Oh, totally.
• 32:18
  Eric Howerton: I'm sure I was.
• 32:18
  Eric Howerton: I was actually that way.
• 32:20
  Mark Zweig: Software developers there's some of them like that Right.
• 32:23
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean like so.
• 32:23
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, but I think it's important, though.
• 32:25
  Eric Howerton: What I'm happy about what I did in this is that I see Parker.
• 32:29
  Eric Howerton: He seems stressed out and overwhelmed, and you can see it on somebody's face.
• 32:35
  Eric Howerton: So, as an entrepreneur, you gotta be, you gotta be.
• 32:36
  Eric Howerton: You don't want them to be feeling that no, you care about them, exactly, yeah, and and so I started figuring out what's going on.
• 32:43
  Eric Howerton: I'm like, well, why are you?
• 32:45
  Eric Howerton: Why are you still editing?
• 32:46
  Eric Howerton: Like in my mind, I'm like I would have found somebody else a day a long ago, right, because we're thinking like as an entrepreneur.
• 32:52
  Eric Howerton: Right, sometimes you got to go touch base with your team.
• 32:55
  Mark Zweig: We might think well, you don't.
• 32:56
  Mark Zweig: You know, I don't want to spend the money.
• 32:58
  Mark Zweig: I'm trying to keep the overhead down here.
• 33:01
  Mark Zweig: We're trying to grow this business and not just burn through cash blog etc etc.
• 33:07
  Mark Zweig: Right, yeah, that's right.
• 33:08
  Mark Zweig: So you got to let them know.
• 33:09
  Mark Zweig: That's okay, because, in order for us to get to where it, it has the volume that it needs to pay the overhead.
• 33:15
  Mark Zweig: We got to grow.
• 33:16
  Mark Zweig: Therefore, we need to expand what you're doing through other people.
• 33:21
  Mark Zweig: That's right.
• 33:21
  Mark Zweig: It's the bottom line, yeah, and so you're educating them.
• 33:24
  Mark Zweig: You say you gotta.
• 33:26
  Eric Howerton: But see, I think the point is like you got to be able to look into your company and find the like, because otherwise they're going to be just problems, that brood.
• 33:33
  Eric Howerton: And as soon as that you can go into that and help make that change, the better and the more the company will grow.
• 33:38
  Eric Howerton: And so what I did was I grabbed and I was like listen, I was like I talked to him about it, figured out what was going on that was keeping him stressed out, Uh huh, you know.
• 33:47
  Eric Howerton: And then he helps me identify.
• 33:49
  Eric Howerton: And then, when I did, though, I was like listen, okay, in two days, the next two days, I want you to spend an hour every morning coming into the office and I want you to write down this process for video editing.
• 34:01
  Eric Howerton: So that's the beginning of being able to get somebody else to do it, and then I'm gonna be with you three days later, and we just got to have lunch today, right, and he sat down and he showed me this document is a simple document, but I'll on every process and I was like, okay, go back, make these notes.
• 34:14
  Eric Howerton: We made these notes.
• 34:15
  Eric Howerton: You refine that process, don't create more processes the things that need to happen, right?
• 34:20
  Eric Howerton: What is it doing today?
• 34:22
  Eric Howerton: Right?
• 34:22
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's a good point, right, and so the goal, though, is this next week he's not going to be doing anything, he's not going to be doing anything more, and so we've been able to get through that, and now he's got an outline of a process for somebody else to come in, start doing the work while he's building the new process that's to allow him to move up in the terms of what he's doing and make the business advance.
• 34:41
  Mark Zweig: There you go, yeah, yeah, it's coming soon.
• 34:43
  Mark Zweig: I mean, I know, I totally understand that is yeah, it makes, it makes total sense.
• 34:48
  Mark Zweig: But I think it's very typical of the problems that one can encounter.
• 34:51
  Mark Zweig: I'm not.
• 34:54
  Mark Zweig: I'm not trying to go off this subject because I think it's a great example, but there's another one that I got out of a textbook I was just thinking about the other day.
• 35:02
  Mark Zweig: That's really, really a good idea.
• 35:04
  Mark Zweig: You may have be familiar with this.
• 35:06
  Mark Zweig: Well, there's two.
• 35:08
  Mark Zweig: There's two other concepts that I learned from a small business textbook.
• 35:12
  Mark Zweig: One of them is the lifetime value of a customer.
• 35:17
  Mark Zweig: Oh, yeah, so you know, they go into the fast.
• 35:20
  Mark Zweig: Let's go back to the fast food restaurant.
• 35:22
  Mark Zweig: They go in there, they order their fries.
• 35:24
  Mark Zweig: Their fries taste like shit.
• 35:25
  Mark Zweig: They're cold, they're like, eh, lousy fries, I'm not going back to Burger King, or whatever it is right.
• 35:31
  Mark Zweig: And then if you went back to the employee that served up those cold and mediocre fries, they'd probably be like, ah, so what?
• 35:41
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah, you know.
• 35:42
  Mark Zweig: So the guy doesn't.
• 35:43
  Mark Zweig: You know he didn't buy it.
• 35:44
  Mark Zweig: We lost.
• 35:46
  Mark Zweig: We would have made a $1.32 profit on that guy's meal.
• 35:50
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, big deal, big deal.
• 35:53
  Mark Zweig: Okay.
• 35:53
  Mark Zweig: But the problem is when you start looking at the lifetime value.
• 35:56
  Mark Zweig: What if that guy comes in every week for 52 weeks out of the year for 10 years?
• 36:01
  Mark Zweig: What's the real value of that customer?
• 36:03
  Mark Zweig: If you look at all the revenue, forget the profitability of it, because that's going to be impacted by the volume of the business, right, because that overhead is going to be spread out over a bigger number, right.
• 36:15
  Mark Zweig: But if you said they spend 10 bucks a day, they come in once a week, they do that for 10 years, that's 5,200 bucks.
• 36:23
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, from serving up a lousy order of fries that you lost, yeah, I think that's a really important thing.
• 36:30
  Mark Zweig: When you start talking about trying to get the people in the business to understand the significance of what we're doing, yeah, you know.
• 36:38
  Eric Howerton: That's a hard thing to communicate.
• 36:40
  Eric Howerton: It is, but I think it goes back to your original point.
• 36:43
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, if you're working on the business, you're never going to see any of that.
• 36:48
  Eric Howerton: Number one, you're not going to see it.
• 36:50
  Mark Zweig: Number two what you said you might think it's a marketing problem.
• 36:52
  Mark Zweig: Your revenue is declining.
• 36:53
  Mark Zweig: Maybe it's a marketing problem.
• 36:54
  Mark Zweig: We need to kick up the advertising right.
• 36:57
  Mark Zweig: I mean.
• 36:58
  Eric Howerton: No, that's still true.
• 36:58
  Eric Howerton: But, the biggest reason, though that's a problem if you're working on the business.
• 37:02
  Eric Howerton: Why would I ever if I was the person making the bad fries?
• 37:09
  Eric Howerton: You have two flying crabs about it If I don't ever see you as the owner caring about it.
• 37:15
  Eric Howerton: You're right.
• 37:17
  Mark Zweig: The leadership.
• 37:17
  Mark Zweig: Of course, you've got to set the example yourself.
• 37:20
  Mark Zweig: I think that's such an important part of why you have to do some of these mundane tasks occasionally, right yeah?
• 37:29
  Eric Howerton: That's part that's so in a big talk about small business, right, the?
• 37:33
  Eric Howerton: In order to be successful in the small business people and because you're the entrepreneur and the owner that's around and working in the business, people will respect that.
• 37:45
  Eric Howerton: Yes, they will have confidence to follow that.
• 37:48
  Eric Howerton: Yes, they will not allow things to slip by as often.
• 37:52
  Eric Howerton: Right, because they know it'll impact you.
• 37:54
  Eric Howerton: And if you're a good leader like that and not even trying to be a good leader like something that used to upset me a lot is like like trying to learn to be a good leader.
• 38:04
  Eric Howerton: You know, I know that you've learned.
• 38:05
  Eric Howerton: We're always trying to be better at everything.
• 38:07
  Eric Howerton: I know you Totally.
• 38:08
  Mark Zweig: You're so conscientious, oh, totally Just dedicated to self-improvement, like I think you said that's an after-think.
• 38:15
  Eric Howerton: That happens Like you.
• 38:16
  Eric Howerton: Just you drive to perfection in conquering what you're setting out to do and then you're just there for just a lot of times by chance, being a good leader that people will follow, right, because you're doing the right thing and you're, and you're doing it.
• 38:31
  Mark Zweig: You're demonstrating, yeah, you're demonstrating, leading by example.
• 38:33
  Mark Zweig: It's the most powerful form of leadership.
• 38:35
  Mark Zweig: Always is Exactly so, that's a big problem.
• 38:37
  Eric Howerton: If you're not willing to work in the business as a small business owner, then you're going to be suffering.
• 38:45
  Mark Zweig: Yes, quite a bit To your point.
• 38:47
  Mark Zweig: I really think that's a big, big problem.
• 38:49
  Mark Zweig: Here's another concept that I think is really great, out of a textbook for small business, and Lord knows you've been a marketer for however long, you have long time right, and you know this is a problem Identifying your ideal and target customer and clearly communicating that to everybody in the company.
• 39:12
  Mark Zweig: One of the tactics we used to have people do as students in their new venture business plans is make up a graphic, you know, of the ideal target customer.
• 39:26
  Mark Zweig: So, yeah, you're going to stereotype, okay, but it's going to be a certain type of person, a certain age, a certain sex, wearing certain clothes, listening to certain music, driving a certain vehicle, living in a certain kind of home Okay, and the more you can have that absolutely burned into your brain, clearly, visualization For everybody in the place, then everything that the business does is going to line up with that and be consistent with that expectation.
• 39:55
  Mark Zweig: It's true, and that's a thing of beauty.
• 39:57
  Mark Zweig: When you do that, man, the business is going to explode.
• 40:00
  Mark Zweig: It's very true.
• 40:01
  Mark Zweig: It's so, so true.
• 40:04
  Eric Howerton: You know, I'll have to admit like so I have a very clear picture here's this is my problem Like I'll have a very clear, very, very clear picture of our target audience Not a deal one, but I don't know that I'm doing a good job painting that and sharing that visualization.
• 40:23
  Eric Howerton: What you just said kind of reminds me of what I need to do.
• 40:25
  Eric Howerton: I think I mean like to paint that graph, because I don't think that everybody understands that.
• 40:31
  Eric Howerton: I know.
• 40:32
  Mark Zweig: I listen, I, when you say that, I'm thinking back to myself and all the ways I failed there, yeah, in that regard.
• 40:38
  Mark Zweig: So I used to build a lot of houses, as you know.
• 40:41
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah, yeah, these specular have total gut to the studs.
• 40:45
  Mark Zweig: All new cell, you know, or new houses.
• 40:48
  Mark Zweig: We built some new ones and I always had in mind the specific type of buyer I was going to sell that to Like divorce woman in her 40s.
• 40:56
  Mark Zweig: He's got a small dog, you know, and likes to cook, and I mean I'm telling you I'd have a dog washing station.
• 41:03
  Mark Zweig: I got a one car garage because she's only got one car, really.
• 41:06
  Mark Zweig: I've got a craft room for where the other garage bay maybe would be, because she likes to do, you know, really, yeah, and I'm going to put a kitchen in it.
• 41:16
  Mark Zweig: That's going to be fantastic, where friends can come and sit and talk with her, and I'm going to have colors that are going to appeal to a woman and not a man.
• 41:25
  Mark Zweig: I could go on and on, but I don't know that I ever articulated that to the workers.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that's a problem, it is, it really is.
• 41:37
  Eric Howerton: People in there like painting and trimming out.
• 41:39
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, they're making minor design.
• 41:42
  Mark Zweig: They're making them decisions on a daily basis for small things that could impact that Right.
• 41:49
  Eric Howerton: And you had to be the you like.
• 41:51
  Mark Zweig: why am I guarding that Like it's some freaking secret?
• 41:58
  Eric Howerton: You know, or is it because you mean, in my case I'm like I don't really think about that.
• 42:02
  Eric Howerton: That's needed to be discussed.
• 42:04
  Eric Howerton: I know what's like to me.
• 42:05
  Mark Zweig: It's just.
• 42:05
  Mark Zweig: No, it's obvious.
• 42:05
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, but it's not.
• 42:10
  Eric Howerton: You know, and I've been finding out lately, on in spider land I went, I went.
• 42:15
  Eric Howerton: Well, I just kind of went a little bit goofy.
• 42:19
  Eric Howerton: The other day Got on a big soapbox oh, what a tangled web you weave in spider land.
• 42:24
  Eric Howerton: That's, that's good.
• 42:26
  Eric Howerton: That's good.
• 42:27
  Eric Howerton: And I and I was sitting with folks and like and we're just we're getting ready for this meeting the very next day and we had some presentations and some stuff that we're going to show the client when we got there and in a dawn dummy in the middle of that meeting this isn't about what you are going to be presenting.
• 42:48
  Eric Howerton: These folks in this room don't even understand why it's important to present any certain things.
• 42:56
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, so I go off for literally 45 minutes recasting fundamental vision and what I've noticed was is, when I got done, the look of relief and confidence that I had from those folks in the room and in gratitude because I've explained something to them that's never been explained before by anybody in the business.
• 43:18
  Eric Howerton: They've been there for a long time.
• 43:21
  Eric Howerton: That's a great point and they were like literally like this has been so helpful.
• 43:23
  Eric Howerton: Yes, and you know that was a perspective.
• 43:30
  Mark Zweig: They've been very much perspective.
• 43:32
  Eric Howerton: What's funny, Mark, is that like two years ago or three years ago, like I had it, like that wasn't appreciated because I was just, it was smaller than it was.
• 43:44
  Eric Howerton: You know, there were more.
• 43:45
  Eric Howerton: I was more involved with all the different people.
• 43:48
  Eric Howerton: Right, they all hear you.
• 43:50
  Mark Zweig: They all hear me all the time doing that shit.
• 43:52
  Mark Zweig: You know, right, right.
• 43:54
  Eric Howerton: But now that it's gotten bigger and everybody has different direct portion apartments and stuff, that's that's that was so much needed.
• 44:02
  Eric Howerton: Now I think that that's something that's important for businesses the bigger they get, you know it's different when you you know as an entrepreneur like if you have a very startup, small business, versus whatever you do for a business, like things change on you.
• 44:16
  Mark Zweig: Absolutely.
• 44:16
  Mark Zweig: You know what that brings up.
• 44:18
  Mark Zweig: Another subject that I that's related.
• 44:21
  Mark Zweig: You know I used to work with architects and engineers, right, and what I would find is commonly they're out there giving presentations, sometimes for massive projects, like it's got a $25 million fee, not construction costs.
• 44:37
  Mark Zweig: You know Right.
• 44:38
  Eric Howerton: Just design fee.
• 44:39
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, Just design fee.
• 44:40
  Mark Zweig: These are big, big jobs or 50 million or 10 million or whatever.
• 44:44
  Mark Zweig: And nobody ever sat down with the presentation team and said this is the single most important thing to the client here.
• 44:53
  Mark Zweig: Okay, yeah, that this thing be done on the schedule that they have, or that this meet the certain standards yeah, Performance standards or that you know this gets designed awards, whatever the criteria.
• 45:10
  Mark Zweig: I always ask the client, like what's the single most important thing that you accomplish with this project?
• 45:18
  Mark Zweig: And you better design everything around that, yeah.
• 45:22
  Eric Howerton: It better be commented theme throughout the presentation and you better highlight it.
• 45:26
  Mark Zweig: But they don't do that.
• 45:26
  Mark Zweig: They do not think.
• 45:28
  Mark Zweig: The typical architects and engineers never do that.
• 45:30
  Mark Zweig: So you get the structural engineer up there and he drowns on about lateral forces and frigging.
• 45:37
  Mark Zweig: You know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 45:40
  Mark Zweig: And the HVAC engineer is up blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 45:44
  Mark Zweig: Nobody really has defined like the lowest initial cost, the lowest operating cost, the schedule.
• 45:52
  Mark Zweig: No one bothers to do that.
• 45:55
  Mark Zweig: Right, it just blows me away, you know.
• 45:59
  Mark Zweig: So it's just, it's along the lines of what you're saying Now.
• 46:02
  Mark Zweig: People don't understand why, the why behind it, you know, and even like, why is this the customer we're focusing on?
• 46:12
  Mark Zweig: I'll tell you another one.
• 46:13
  Mark Zweig: You know, I'm sure you've been.
• 46:16
  Mark Zweig: There's a certain seafood excuse me, cajun restaurant in our town and if you remember it, it's in a two-story building.
• 46:26
  Mark Zweig: It's very small.
• 46:28
  Mark Zweig: It usually does a pretty good business.
• 46:30
  Mark Zweig: Okay, it's got the restaurant upstairs and it's got the bar on the first floor and they're not connected.
• 46:38
  Mark Zweig: So I go in there one time with my ex-wife, and this is years ago.
• 46:43
  Mark Zweig: Okay, we're going out for Saturday night or whatever it is.
• 46:48
  Mark Zweig: We go over there.
• 46:50
  Mark Zweig: I swear to you, eric, 75% of the people in that place were college professors that I knew.
• 46:57
  Mark Zweig: They all got their tweed sport coats with the suede patches.
• 47:01
  Mark Zweig: Okay, yeah, they're gotten down shirts and the brown loafers and khakis or whatever, and they're sitting around sipping white wine Okay, listening to Chade on the CD playing in there, or whatever.
• 47:20
  Mark Zweig: You know, Am I painting a picture for you?
• 47:23
  Mark Zweig: Oh yeah, they're 40 to 70 years old, highly educated, sipping their wine, listening to Chade planning to get their Cajun dinner, or whatever.
• 47:34
  Mark Zweig: So we get in there.
• 47:35
  Mark Zweig: It's like I'm sorry we don't have a seat for you now, but if you want to go down to the bar and wait, we'll let you know when we've got a table.
• 47:44
  Mark Zweig: I'm like, okay, where do I go to that?
• 47:46
  Mark Zweig: You got to go outside.
• 47:47
  Mark Zweig: I'm like what?
• 47:48
  Mark Zweig: Okay, the wife had her heels on.
• 47:53
  Mark Zweig: It's winter, it's slippery, yeah, yeah.
• 47:55
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, she wasn't that graceful in heels in the first place.
• 47:59
  Mark Zweig: But we get down, you know, we slide on down the hill because there aren't even any good stairs to get down there, and we go in and we open the door of this bar.
• 48:09
  Mark Zweig: What do I expect to see when I go in there?
• 48:11
  Eric Howerton: you think I think you, from your previous experience upstairs, you'd expect to see more of the same.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 48:19
  Eric Howerton: Same atmosphere Right Chade.
• 48:22
  Mark Zweig: Chade.
• 48:23
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, chamour Chade, chamour Chade, chamour Chade.
• 48:27
  Mark Zweig: And something nice, right, and you know what I find when I open the door?
• 48:31
  Mark Zweig: No, and I walked into another world.
• 48:34
  Mark Zweig: The place is empty.
• 48:36
  Mark Zweig: There's about a 25 year old bartender back there smoking a Marlboro.
• 48:40
  Mark Zweig: Hell yeah, there are crushed Budweiser cans on tables and ashtrays full of cigarette butts.
• 48:48
  Mark Zweig: That actually sounds great.
• 48:49
  Mark Zweig: And there's a game playing somewhere.
• 48:53
  Mark Zweig: Okay, and I'm like the dude's wearing shorts and friggin.
• 48:58
  Mark Zweig: You know?
• 48:59
  Mark Zweig: Fayette Chill t-shirt, or?
• 49:00
  Mark Zweig: something like that I was like what happened here?
• 49:05
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, don't.
• 49:07
  Mark Zweig: Why would those people send the type of customer that we are down there to that bar, which is clearly aimed at college students?
• 49:17
  Eric Howerton: Totally like.
• 49:18
  Eric Howerton: Stick it on the target yeah.
• 49:20
  Mark Zweig: Who is your customer?
• 49:22
  Eric Howerton: Who is?
• 49:23
  Mark Zweig: your customer Right and are you doing everything to appeal to them?
• 49:27
  Mark Zweig: You've got daughters, okay, so your daughter now is probably old enough, well, I don't know.
• 49:33
  Mark Zweig: She's not old enough to remember whenever crumby was what every friggin teenage girl wanted, right, okay.
• 49:41
  Mark Zweig: So I mean I got a, I got an older crop and I go over there to the mall.
• 49:45
  Mark Zweig: She were going that ever crumby.
• 49:48
  Eric Howerton: Oh yeah.
• 49:48
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it smelled like cologne.
• 49:50
  Mark Zweig: The smell Exactly.
• 49:51
  Mark Zweig: It would knock you out when you came in.
• 49:54
  Mark Zweig: The music was always really loud in there.
• 49:57
  Eric Howerton: The lights were dim but yet freaking spotlight.
• 50:00
  Eric Howerton: Look like you're walking into a concert, Exactly.
• 50:03
  Mark Zweig: Okay, now me, I'm an old guy.
• 50:05
  Mark Zweig: I would be like, okay, you kids go in there, yeah.
• 50:07
  Mark Zweig: You find what you want.
• 50:08
  Mark Zweig: Come out, get my credit card.
• 50:10
  Mark Zweig: You can go back in and pay for it.
• 50:11
  Mark Zweig: They knew their audience though.
• 50:13
  Mark Zweig: They knew their audience.
• 50:13
  Mark Zweig: They knew exactly who their audience was and boy did they go after them and they were very successful at that time, absolutely, doing it Absolutely.
• 50:22
  Mark Zweig: And you got every business has got to know what's on it the touch points that they had too Right, you can't please everybody.
• 50:30
  Mark Zweig: No, I think a lot of small business owners think that yeah, yeah, you know, it's like you see these stores and I mean I've seen the financials on a lot of them, because my students have to work with a small business in my small business class and one of the requirements is you get the financials, cause I'm not going to sit there and come up with some BS program to increase revenue and profits and value when we don't know anything about them.
• 50:58
  Mark Zweig: That's just dumb.
• 50:59
  Mark Zweig: I want these guys to have specifics and be able to really talk about what the changes that they're suggesting these business owners make, what they would do for the business.
• 51:10
  Mark Zweig: But in any case, I've seen some of these businesses where they make no money year after year after year, or the owner works 50 hours a week and they make 15,000 a year or some other stuff like that.
• 51:21
  Mark Zweig: And then you look and you talk with the owners and ask them who their target customer is and they're so far afield their offerings that it blows your mind.
• 51:34
  Mark Zweig: I had one.
• 51:36
  Mark Zweig: I had students work with this retail business three years or four years, you know, in a row, and the owner of the business said, when they asked her like, who's your target customer, she said it's women, young women from the ages to 18 to 25.
• 51:53
  Mark Zweig: Now when you go in the store you know what she was selling in there Expensive gourmet pasta, no cards, expensive dish towels.
• 52:08
  Mark Zweig: Am I painting a picture for?
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: you.
• 52:13
  Mark Zweig: Is that what?
• 52:14
  Mark Zweig: 18 to 25 year old women are buying.
• 52:17
  Mark Zweig: No, it's what friggin 65 year old women are buying.
• 52:20
  Mark Zweig: Okay, and that's what she was the owner.
• 52:24
  Mark Zweig: And so then it was even better.
• 52:27
  Mark Zweig: So I told my students I go okay, now you've got to prove your point to the owner, because the owner will still argue with you about, oh, I've got whatever he friggin 18 to 25 year old woman wants, when you know they don't okay.
• 52:42
  Mark Zweig: And so I said okay, now put yourself out a little survey, monkey study online and say you got to be a woman, 18 to 25 to respond All right.
• 52:53
  Mark Zweig: And then ask them have they ever heard of this store, yes or no?
• 52:57
  Mark Zweig: If so, if yes, have they ever been in it, yes or no?
• 53:00
  Mark Zweig: And then, if so, have they ever bought anything there?
• 53:02
  Mark Zweig: It was fascinating.
• 53:04
  Mark Zweig: There were like 200 and some odd respondents.
• 53:07
  Mark Zweig: There were like two or three that had heard of it, Maybe one had been in there and nobody bought anything.
• 53:14
  Mark Zweig: So now you can go back to the owner and go look, if this is your target audience, you're missing the boat.
• 53:22
  Eric Howerton: You completely missed the boat.
• 53:24
  Eric Howerton: And you can fix that.
• 53:27
  Eric Howerton: Yes, you can.
• 53:28
  Eric Howerton: You know you can't be an entrepreneur or a small business owner, so you have to be confident.
• 53:35
  Eric Howerton: But you can't be overly confident.
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: Overly confident, I know Like you have to be paranoid, but not overly paranoid.
• 53:47
  Mark Zweig: You have to be organized, but not overly Right.
• 53:49
  Eric Howerton: You know, but I mean like for real, like you've got to be able to like, look at things in the face and know when to like.
• 53:55
  Eric Howerton: You know it's funny.
• 53:56
  Eric Howerton: It's been a paradox of pushing and pushing, going past the word no and no and no to get a business somewhere it needs to go, because you're so confident about it but not so ignorant that you shut down a business that doesn't work.
• 54:13
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, or you can't change.
• 54:15
  Mark Zweig: You can't adjust your target.
• 54:16
  Mark Zweig: You just cannot adjust.
• 54:17
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean it's true, it's a crazy world, but just while we're doing the show right, I mean like, because this isn't something that you can just, you know do it explain, like you know, if you ever have people sit down and want to take you out to coffee and get your advice about it.
• 54:36
  Mark Zweig: I go to people, I go to coffee with people and I am not exaggerating.
• 54:40
  Mark Zweig: Three or four times a week, right, ok, with people.
• 54:43
  Mark Zweig: I don't know what people I know.
• 54:45
  Mark Zweig: And they want they're hoping from you to give them some great.
• 54:49
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, if within hours worth of coffee after they spent 40 minutes telling you about the business.
• 54:54
  Mark Zweig: Right and 20 minutes telling me about their background, because I always want to know that, because it helps me understand them.
• 54:59
  Eric Howerton: Yeah.
• 55:00
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 55:01
  Eric Howerton: So that's why I mean this, but that's a good point of this podcast, so right.
• 55:04
  Eric Howerton: So hopefully, like you literally need to have hundreds of episodes with all kinds of different scenarios yes, to start to get understanding about what you're about to walk into with business, right?
• 55:17
  Mark Zweig: And yeah it's.
• 55:18
  Mark Zweig: You're not going to get it all from a seminar.
• 55:20
  Mark Zweig: It's not all going to be a catchy program.
• 55:22
  Mark Zweig: We don't have any great buzzwords to define all this.
• 55:26
  Eric Howerton: There's no pro forma templates that we have lined up for different industry.
• 55:30
  Mark Zweig: Yes, no kidding For you to download and launch your new business off of Right.
• 55:35
  Mark Zweig: It's you know, I think that's you know.
• 55:38
  Mark Zweig: This whole idea I mean a planning versus responding to the market.
• 55:44
  Mark Zweig: I think it's a really interesting one too.
• 55:46
  Mark Zweig: Maybe we need to tackle that on a future Episode here, yeah, like, are you an opportunist or are you like a big planner who's going to make something out of nothing?
• 55:58
  Mark Zweig: You know the opportunists like sees these opportunities and just jumps on them Boom, boom, boom.
• 56:03
  Mark Zweig: They cast sort of a wide net of options, but then they select the ones that they think are best.
• 56:09
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, as opposed to, let's plan every single detail out on this thing.
• 56:16
  Eric Howerton: And, and you know I mean I'll answer you on my side, I'm definitely the opportunist, I am too.
• 56:20
  Mark Zweig: Well, you totally are because you totally change your business, absolutely.
• 56:24
  Eric Howerton: Like multiple 180.
• 56:25
  Mark Zweig: Just boom, yeah, that's that's responding.
• 56:29
  Eric Howerton: Have we not done that?
• 56:30
  Eric Howerton: I mean I mean, look, there was a.
• 56:31
  Eric Howerton: You know like you gotta go for it.
• 56:34
  Eric Howerton: Man, right, I mean carpet deal, bro, like, like, if you have something in your face, you have to go get it.
• 56:42
  Mark Zweig: I thought it was interesting, though, like your wife was talking, yeah, in that last podcast.
• 56:46
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, about how you know she's perfectly happy Now.
• 56:51
  Mark Zweig: She's got a good job.
• 56:52
  Mark Zweig: Okay, she's a nurse practitioner.
• 56:55
  Mark Zweig: They're highly in demand.
• 56:56
  Mark Zweig: There's a huge shortage.
• 56:58
  Mark Zweig: There's not enough doctors.
• 56:59
  Mark Zweig: She's always going to be able to.
• 57:01
  Mark Zweig: She's got a master's degree.
• 57:02
  Mark Zweig: She's always going to be able to make a living, right, yeah?
• 57:04
  Mark Zweig: So maybe she's not as paranoid as like a middle manager working for Megacorp who could get fired in any minute due to no fault of their own, sure.
• 57:13
  Mark Zweig: But she also said, like I know, if I make this much money for the rest of my life and I can have a nice house and provide for my children, I'm totally happy with that.
• 57:23
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:24
  Mark Zweig: Why do you need more than that?
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: Oh, I'm falling.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: Did she say that she?
• 57:28
  Mark Zweig: did dude.
• 57:29
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's definitely.
• 57:30
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's, it's not even a matter.
• 57:33
  Mark Zweig: This is what I can't totally explain it, yeah, and maybe you can, but it's it's like why?
• 57:42
  Mark Zweig: Because I can have it, because I can do it, why, because I can do that?
• 57:47
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, okay, this needs to be done, dammit, because that probably needs to be solved, and they don't.
• 57:50
  Eric Howerton: Body else doing it Exactly and nobody.
• 57:53
  Mark Zweig: I mean, it's not a have to do necessary.
• 57:55
  Mark Zweig: You don't need like a bigger, you've got a.
• 57:58
  Mark Zweig: Was that a 3500 duly?
• 58:00
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you don't need like a 4500 duly, or whatever.
• 58:05
  Mark Zweig: Oh, be cool, no, but you know you're not thinking like that though.
• 58:09
  Mark Zweig: But you see this problem, or you see this opportunity, or you see God, I could fix that, or yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's what motivates us, oh yeah, so I just to have more.
• 58:17
  Mark Zweig: No, no, no.
• 58:18
  Eric Howerton: Actually I'm motivated by money.
• 58:20
  Eric Howerton: I'm not really really whatsoever, yeah, I mean, I'm really not, and I never have been, and I think that that's.
• 58:26
  Eric Howerton: I was actually talking that.
• 58:27
  Eric Howerton: I'm not really either, so to my other day like I wasn't even motivated about being a business owner or an entrepreneur or all that stuff it was about.
• 58:36
  Eric Howerton: There's this problem at Walmart.
• 58:39
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, that, to me, is so blatantly stupid, obvious.
• 58:44
  Eric Howerton: That needs to be fixed Right.
• 58:45
  Eric Howerton: And it's such a big problem, it's such a big damn problem.
• 58:48
  Eric Howerton: It's not ever going to go away.
• 58:50
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, they got to win the war against.
• 58:52
  Eric Howerton: Amazon.
• 58:52
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's right.
• 58:53
  Mark Zweig: That's it.
• 58:54
  Mark Zweig: I hear what you think that's shut the elephant in the room.
• 58:57
  Mark Zweig: Yes, amazon, and it's so simple.
• 58:59
  Eric Howerton: It's content.
• 59:00
  Eric Howerton: Content can go away.
• 59:02
  Eric Howerton: Nothing else can create it.
• 59:03
  Eric Howerton: Someone's got to fix this.
• 59:04
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean it makes total sense and in.
• 59:08
  Mark Zweig: And I will die roads in a really big problem like that, there's a really big opportunity.
• 59:12
  Eric Howerton: And it's not even about like calculating, like how much money's behind that opportunity.
• 59:16
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's about the freaking problem has to be fixed and why is no one solving it?
• 59:22
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, and I know how to.
• 59:24
  Eric Howerton: I have an idea on how to solve it.
• 59:26
  Mark Zweig: I don't know a hundredth of what you know about this issue.
• 59:30
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, online marketing, walmart, all that yeah, I don't know a hundredth of it, but I do know this.
• 59:38
  Mark Zweig: Ok, and look, I love Walmart.
• 59:41
  Mark Zweig: I got a tremendous respect for the company.
• 59:43
  Mark Zweig: I'm not anti-Walmart at all, I mean it is, they are innovative.
• 59:48
  Mark Zweig: They are constantly reaching out, pushing the bounds to do things better and better, and they're shown that they're very flexible and very adaptable.
• 59:56
  Mark Zweig: Oh yeah, as a big company biggest company in the world, I guess, yeah, but that said with a but is I still think Amazon's easier to buy shit?
• 1:00:08
  Mark Zweig: Oh yeah, totally right now.
• 1:00:09
  Eric Howerton: And why right now?
• 1:00:11
  Mark Zweig: But I've said that for as long as Walmartcom is content.
• 1:00:16
  Mark Zweig: They're either reason why I can't Walmart with all their resources.
• 1:00:21
  Mark Zweig: I'll tell you what be as good as Amazon, because the just destroy them.
• 1:00:27
  Eric Howerton: It's the difference of how they started their business.
• 1:00:29
  Eric Howerton: So Amazon has the same exact problem and barrier as having a brick and mortar stored infrastructure.
• 1:00:37
  Eric Howerton: That's why they can't get.
• 1:00:38
  Eric Howerton: They can't do brick and mortar, because it's a whole different ball game.
• 1:00:41
  Eric Howerton: They're missing the fundamentals there.
• 1:00:43
  Eric Howerton: Walmart's missing the fundamentals, or has been, with a digital catalog that's chock full of good content, with suppliers and sellers that get into that catalog and fix those product detail pages so that they can gosh dang, sell with a touch point to the end customer who's trying to buy it online and in digital environment.
• 1:01:02
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's the whole missing component.
• 1:01:04
  Mark Zweig: I believe you.
• 1:01:05
  Mark Zweig: So they just they've been.
• 1:01:06
  Mark Zweig: So that's what you're working on, obviously that's.
• 1:01:09
  Eric Howerton: Yeah.
• 1:01:09
  Mark Zweig: And that's why you're successful.
• 1:01:11
  Eric Howerton: But the problem that Walmart has had is is that none of their, none of the suppliers and sellers think of Walmart in that capacity.
• 1:01:21
  Mark Zweig: Right, they just think I can sell 800 million of those through their stores.
• 1:01:25
  Eric Howerton: That's and that's it.
• 1:01:26
  Mark Zweig: That's all the contracts this year, they're going to pay me 82 cents for each one.
• 1:01:32
  Mark Zweig: Right, that's it.
• 1:01:33
  Mark Zweig: That's the correct, that's the right there.
• 1:01:35
  Mark Zweig: And I know a lot of those people.
• 1:01:38
  Eric Howerton: I know people that even if the suppliers and sellers stay.
• 1:01:41
  Eric Howerton: Point yeah, like it's there's, the mind is blocked off of.
• 1:01:45
  Eric Howerton: There are people that are dedicated to this brick and mortar type business versus this digital business is.
• 1:01:51
  Eric Howerton: So you have a dividing of that house.
• 1:01:54
  Mark Zweig: Well, teams that focus on a dot com pure While we're talking about big problems and big companies, which this is obviously right, and opportunities, right.
• 1:02:04
  Mark Zweig: I understand the same things going on at Ford right now.
• 1:02:07
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, the electric vehicle division versus the internal combustion.
• 1:02:12
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's like a war inside Ford.
• 1:02:15
  Mark Zweig: Ford's thrown all these resources into electric.
• 1:02:18
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's not making any money.
• 1:02:19
  Mark Zweig: The internal combustion guys are saying we make all the money for this place.
• 1:02:23
  Mark Zweig: Ok, yeah, but obviously at the top a decision was made We've got to be viable as an electric vehicle maker, right, ok, it means that maybe they don't make as much money over there.
• 1:02:36
  Mark Zweig: Maybe we do have to throw extra resources over there, blah, blah, blah, and but they can't seem to get that like in through the organization.
• 1:02:46
  Eric Howerton: It's a hard one, mm.
• 1:02:47
  Eric Howerton: Hmm, I mean it's just, I mean it's but it's, I think it's, could it be?
• 1:02:53
  Mark Zweig: We're not saying the internal combustion, people aren't important.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:02:56
  Mark Zweig: That's the thing.
• 1:02:57
  Eric Howerton: As soon as you do that, it's like, well, what we're not important, we make all the money in this place divide starts dividing the house, which I think to you what you said about Walmart earlier and I've watched it over the last few years it's been painful, you know there's been some, there's been a lot of decisions that have been painful, that one more time to make.
• 1:03:15
  Eric Howerton: But give them credit on their acceleration and making those decisions and getting the shit in the right of the.
• 1:03:23
  Mark Zweig: It's how big they are.
• 1:03:25
  Eric Howerton: Dude.
• 1:03:25
  Eric Howerton: It's going to go down in history is one of the greatest triumphs ever.
• 1:03:29
  Mark Zweig: They impressed me every step of the way.
• 1:03:31
  Mark Zweig: I mean, they got a lot of bad press when they had their salaried workers work in 39 hours and not getting benefits or whatever.
• 1:03:38
  Mark Zweig: They responded to that instantly.
• 1:03:41
  Mark Zweig: Now they pay for their friggin college educations.
• 1:03:44
  Mark Zweig: Ok, their starting pay is better, you know, significantly better than you'd get working for anybody else in a similar job.
• 1:03:51
  Mark Zweig: I mean ethical practices or sustainability.
• 1:03:54
  Mark Zweig: They are the number one provider of organic food in this country.
• 1:03:58
  Mark Zweig: People don't realize that.
• 1:03:59
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah, so it is possible.
• 1:04:03
  Mark Zweig: But yeah, so if Megacorp can do it, why the hell can't you with your shitty little million dollar a year business?
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: right.
• 1:04:10
  Eric Howerton: Right, or two million or five million or whatever it's about getting in it, man, yeah, and I think that the you know kind of goes back to the point.
• 1:04:16
  Eric Howerton: Like that's the, that problem has been my driving, motivating factor and then any other opportunity that comes up that I see that I feel like needs to be fixed Right.
• 1:04:29
  Eric Howerton: And so, like to your point earlier, for Tara, like she's comfortable, Sure, and you know to to, to have those, that kind of lifestyle.
• 1:04:37
  Eric Howerton: There's zero chance that I could ever do that because it will drive me absolutely insane to see something that needs to be fixed.
• 1:04:44
  Mark Zweig: But see, from her point of view, though and this is why we had that conversation with the spouses she thinks I grew up in this chaotic environment.
• 1:04:52
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, sure, I provide a rock solid environment for my kids.
• 1:04:56
  Mark Zweig: Look at how they're thriving, you know.
• 1:04:58
  Mark Zweig: See, look at what we've been able to do.
• 1:05:00
  Mark Zweig: Man, I have that's low stress for me.
• 1:05:02
  Mark Zweig: Meaning her yeah Is the way she yeah.
• 1:05:05
  Eric Howerton: Man and I, you know I've got a lot of.
• 1:05:06
  Eric Howerton: I've had a, you know, and, as you know, I've grown a lot in appreciating that perspective because it does help me like you know, I'm not I'm.
• 1:05:16
  Eric Howerton: I'm probably half as crazy about that stuff as I could be.
• 1:05:21
  Mark Zweig: Mm, hmm.
• 1:05:22
  Eric Howerton: You know, and it does, it does help you to stop and and and smell the roses a little bit.
• 1:05:28
  Mark Zweig: It's good to get a different perspective.
• 1:05:29
  Mark Zweig: Oh, 100% and as your partner on this stuff, absolutely.
• 1:05:33
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, Absolutely so.
• 1:05:34
  Eric Howerton: All right, I know we went to a lot of places that you're in.
• 1:05:37
  Eric Howerton: We did.
• 1:05:38
  Mark Zweig: But I mean, the point of all this stuff is, if you are a small business owner, better be in it, or you're an entrepreneur, you better get in it.
• 1:05:46
  Mark Zweig: Better be in it.
• 1:05:47
  Mark Zweig: You better be able to communicate the why to your people.
• 1:05:50
  Mark Zweig: You better be able to figure out how you can innovate faster and reduce bureaucracy.
• 1:05:55
  Mark Zweig: You better know who your customer you're targeting is, where the touch points are.
• 1:06:00
  Mark Zweig: Where the touch points are and making them good making them all.
• 1:06:03
  Eric Howerton: Good, yes, okay, and you better be fixing a bigger problem than what if you?
• 1:06:09
  Eric Howerton: I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs getting the business to make money the wrong idea.
• 1:06:14
  Eric Howerton: Love the fact.
• 1:06:15
  Eric Howerton: I love the fact that you agree with that and we've been listening that message out because it's a byproduct, it's all.
• 1:06:21
  Mark Zweig: Yes, yes.
• 1:06:22
  Eric Howerton: And it will drive me insane if you try to just go out and make money, like you will be.
• 1:06:26
  Eric Howerton: I absolutely insist.
• 1:06:28
  Mark Zweig: I had a friend of mine.
• 1:06:29
  Mark Zweig: He's the CEO of a successful company.
• 1:06:31
  Mark Zweig: I used to be on his board.
• 1:06:32
  Mark Zweig: We sold his company to a Middle Eastern company that I sold other companies to.
• 1:06:38
  Mark Zweig: Very successful, very smart guy.
• 1:06:41
  Mark Zweig: Okay, his son graduating from the MBA program.
• 1:06:45
  Mark Zweig: Like 10 years ago.
• 1:06:46
  Mark Zweig: He goes I want you to go out to dinner with us and just help him.
• 1:06:49
  Mark Zweig: You know, get some direction.
• 1:06:51
  Mark Zweig: The son, the son.
• 1:06:52
  Mark Zweig: So I sit down and I, by the way, I've known this guy, the CEO, since I was born.
• 1:06:58
  Mark Zweig: He was my brother's friend, my older brother's friend, and he knew, remember, when I was born, yeah, which is really kind of cool that you end up as a director in his company.
• 1:07:09
  Mark Zweig: Okay, yeah, but anyway.
• 1:07:11
  Mark Zweig: So I sit down with the son, like, what do you want to do?
• 1:07:14
  Mark Zweig: I just want to make a lot of money.
• 1:07:17
  Mark Zweig: What do you?
• 1:07:18
  Mark Zweig: What's your passion?
• 1:07:19
  Mark Zweig: My passion is for making a lot of money.
• 1:07:21
  Mark Zweig: I'm like dude I, I basically I don't even know what to tell you.
• 1:07:25
  Mark Zweig: I can't help you, okay.
• 1:07:27
  Mark Zweig: It's a billion ways for that.
• 1:07:28
  Mark Zweig: By the way, he's now in politics.
• 1:07:31
  Eric Howerton: Oh, what does that tell you?
• 1:07:33
  Eric Howerton: A bad way to make money.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 1:07:36
  Mark Zweig: Maybe it's a midway.
• 1:07:37
  Mark Zweig: I don't know how they all get as rich as they do when they make like 120 grand a year and yet they all have like net worths of 10, 20, 30 million dollars.
• 1:07:47
  Mark Zweig: That's pretty good.
• 1:07:47
  Mark Zweig: Well, that works out, but it seems like it does.
• 1:07:51
  Eric Howerton: There's another table, money mention there's something going on?
• 1:07:54
  Mark Zweig: Oh, totally yeah, there's something.
• 1:07:55
  Mark Zweig: But anyway but you're right, it's.
• 1:07:57
  Mark Zweig: The money is a byproduct.
• 1:07:59
  Mark Zweig: You got to solve a problem, you got to fix something.
• 1:08:02
  Mark Zweig: You got to do something people want.
• 1:08:03
  Mark Zweig: It doesn't always have to be a big problem, though I will.
• 1:08:07
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 1:08:07
  Eric Howerton: I mean, I realize you know that's true, I agree, I agree Okay.
• 1:08:10
  Eric Howerton: I love that.
• 1:08:12
  Mark Zweig: Maybe the problem is simply that just to go through the drive up line takes too damn long.
• 1:08:16
  Mark Zweig: I can suffer through the same bird Starbucks, coffee and overpriced food items, but I just want to do it faster.
• 1:08:25
  Mark Zweig: Maybe that's fine.
• 1:08:27
  Mark Zweig: And you know what?
• 1:08:27
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know, I agree, and if I can do that, then I'll steal a lot of business from Starbucks or whatever.
• 1:08:34
  Eric Howerton: I mean, which is a fun opportunity to go kill?
• 1:08:36
  Mark Zweig: It is, it is like they're.
• 1:08:39
  Eric Howerton: one last thing Not only and I think you might feel this way too Not only is about solving a big problem, but it's kind of about.
• 1:08:47
  Eric Howerton: It's kind of about being, you know, yeah.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:53
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 1:08:54
  Eric Howerton: I'll show you, yeah, I'll show you a song.
• 1:08:55
  Eric Howerton: You think you're good, I'm better, yeah.
• 1:08:58
  Mark Zweig: I can be one.
• 1:08:58
  Mark Zweig: I once had a woman who was a real estate agent in Fayetteville, been there for a million years, grew up in the area Well known.
• 1:09:05
  Mark Zweig: She says to me what are you going to do when you run out of houses to redo in Fayetteville, like it'll never happen?
• 1:09:13
  Mark Zweig: There's an unlimited supply of crap.
• 1:09:15
  Mark Zweig: We make your house better to be re, yeah, her house.
• 1:09:18
  Mark Zweig: So I could have done a lot with it.
• 1:09:20
  Mark Zweig: It looked like a hell, honestly.
• 1:09:22
  Mark Zweig: Um, but uh, yeah, I mean these opportunities are out there.
• 1:09:29
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, and when somebody tells you you can't do something for us youngest kids in the family, right, yeah, we're, we're a show and we can do it.
• 1:09:40
  Eric Howerton: That's a good point.
• 1:09:40
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I keep forgetting.
• 1:09:41
  Eric Howerton: You do, you do.
• 1:09:42
  Eric Howerton: Hey, by the way, your houses were awesome.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: Oh thanks.
• 1:09:45
  Mark Zweig: No, they were freaking beautiful.
• 1:09:46
  Eric Howerton: Well done, wish I had me a Mark's Wack home.
• 1:09:49
  Mark Zweig: Dude, I, I don't even live in a Mark's Wack home.
• 1:09:51
  Mark Zweig: No, I live in an old 1900 house that needs like a million things.
• 1:09:55
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I mean it's like the.
• 1:09:58
  Mark Zweig: You know, it is the irony of that, after all the houses I owned and redid, and then what do I end up in?
• 1:10:05
  Mark Zweig: When it's like super energy efficient, built 1900, the floors are sagging and bagging.
• 1:10:11
  Mark Zweig: I just got a $700 electric bill, you know.
• 1:10:14
  Mark Zweig: I mean, it's like the doors.
• 1:10:18
  Mark Zweig: You know, some of them, like the door knobs, are falling off.
• 1:10:21
  Eric Howerton: It's you know are you serious?
• 1:10:22
  Mark Zweig: This is dude.
• 1:10:23
  Mark Zweig: I am dead serious.
• 1:10:24
  Mark Zweig: I you know.
• 1:10:25
  Mark Zweig: I mean it's a cool.
• 1:10:27
  Mark Zweig: No, it's a really cool house it's.
• 1:10:29
  Mark Zweig: It's got a great law, it's a great location Looks great on the outside.
• 1:10:32
  Mark Zweig: We did a lot of work.
• 1:10:33
  Mark Zweig: It looks fine on the inside, it's comfortable.
• 1:10:35
  Mark Zweig: It's just not important to me at this point to make everything perfect anymore, yeah, but I will say and even in my houses I used to design everything I did learn over time that Sonya is actually better than me.
• 1:10:46
  Mark Zweig: She just doesn't fall into the ruts that I fell into, yeah, and that makes it more interesting and, I think, more enduring from a design standpoint over time, in a way, not to get so thematic, yeah, sure, you know cause things come and go like right now it's mid-century modern.
• 1:11:07
  Mark Zweig: I did a few mid-century modern houses.
• 1:11:09
  Eric Howerton: If I was going to be redoing houses now.
• 1:11:11
  Mark Zweig: they would all be from the 50s, 60s and 70s.
• 1:11:13
  Mark Zweig: Really, that's what people your age and younger aspire to.
• 1:11:18
  Mark Zweig: They want that because their grandparents had houses like that.
• 1:11:23
  Mark Zweig: Okay, my grandparents lived in 1900, 1920 houses.
• 1:11:28
  Mark Zweig: We all want to harken back to what our grandparents said.
• 1:11:33
  Mark Zweig: I just want to live in a boker.
• 1:11:34
  Mark Zweig: Well, you're building yourself a freaking palace on a hill right now.
• 1:11:38
  Mark Zweig: It's like a complete compound of development.
• 1:11:44
  Mark Zweig: You know I mean that's going to be wild.
• 1:11:47
  Mark Zweig: When you get that thing done, it'll just sit there, and every time I go to the airport I'll be, I'll be driving past your property and I'll look up on the hill.
• 1:11:54
  Mark Zweig: They'll try to come up on the hill, though, and I'll see that thing and see that that road you put in the way it like winds its way up it's going to be fantastic.
• 1:12:02
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, it is.
• 1:12:03
  Mark Zweig: And then you'll be up there like a lord.
• 1:12:05
  Mark Zweig: Okay, the breeze would be blowing through.
• 1:12:08
  Mark Zweig: It's like you know, just like when we're in second grade, you know, like king of the hill.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, don't try to come up on the hill, don't come up on the hill, ah, but no, it'll be fantastic.
• 1:12:20
  Eric Howerton: Or at least let me know your, your argument.
• 1:12:23
  Mark Zweig: Hey man, this has been fun.
• 1:12:24
  Mark Zweig: It has been, and I hope our listeners got something out of it and I will look forward to seeing you.
• 1:12:30
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, speaking of if you're listening to this episode.
• 1:12:33
  Eric Howerton: Right, don't forget to subscribe.
• 1:12:38
  Mark Zweig: Yes, thank you for saying that.
• 1:12:40
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, subscribe to the newsletter, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and hell, I mean actually sending questions, yes, or topic ideas like hey, have you ever?
• 1:12:49
  Eric Howerton: Experienced this, it'd be fun.
• 1:12:50
  Eric Howerton: Or if you, even even one, goes far as like saying, hey, I'd like to be a guest on the show.
• 1:12:56
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, we're not saying for sure, we're going to take a guest, but we might.
• 1:12:59
  Eric Howerton: Right, absolutely, we'll look into it.
• 1:13:01
  Eric Howerton: I mean, it'd be fun.
• 1:13:02
  Mark Zweig: No, I think that's a great point.
• 1:13:03
  Mark Zweig: We're not saying that because we don't have a guest today.
• 1:13:05
  Mark Zweig: We wanted this Right.
• 1:13:07
  Mark Zweig: I think it's fun for us sometimes we can be more, in a way, more liberated, absolutely, absolutely, and it's fun to do and hopefully it's educational.
• 1:13:16
  Mark Zweig: But, yeah, subscribe, tell your friends, yeah, yeah, um, and we look?
• 1:13:23
  Eric Howerton: Well, I think, because the reality is, is we honestly talk about solving bigger problems?
• 1:13:27
  Eric Howerton: Right, I mean, of course, we would like to have more folks attending to this, you know, and it's pretty cool, right, it's pretty cool to know that your voice is getting on there, but that doesn't really matter.
• 1:13:36
  Eric Howerton: But I mean, the whole point of us starting this thing up was because we know that, as small business owners, I mean I would have loved to have something I could listen to, that has real practical advice.
• 1:13:47
  Eric Howerton: Yes, exactly it's not a bunch of theory and proformas and all that kind of stuff and buzzwords, buzzwords, yeah, you know.
• 1:13:55
  Mark Zweig: And and especially with a lot of the false promises Of being a panacea for all your woes, rolled into one Exactly.
• 1:14:03
  Eric Howerton: You know, or that business is a pitch deck because it's not a pitch deck, you know, or the whole point of what we were talking about today, which is work on your business not in it, cause that is can be some terrible advice because, at the end of the day, if you I mean I know that what I've gone through, but I've seen a bit with Mark when he's gone through to like it's not easy, no, not an easy lifestyle, and I'm when I hear people say, hey, I want to quit my job.
• 1:14:29
  Eric Howerton: They've been working for 30, 40 years in a professional setting.
• 1:14:33
  Eric Howerton: They're making good money.
• 1:14:35
  Eric Howerton: See a lot of people go wrong there.
• 1:14:38
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, and they want to go start their own business, because they always want to.
• 1:14:41
  Eric Howerton: I have seen very, very, very very very succeed, dude, I'm telling you.
• 1:14:47
  Mark Zweig: Oh, yes, that's why like the franchise business model, which is a gateway to entrepreneurship, right?
• 1:14:54
  Mark Zweig: They sell a lot of franchises to people like that.
• 1:14:57
  Mark Zweig: When you look at the UPS stores or FedEx whatever they are now you see the Dickies barbecues or whatever it is.
• 1:15:07
  Mark Zweig: They sell a lot of those to corporate executives that want to be self-employed and be entrepreneurs.
• 1:15:13
  Mark Zweig: I don't see anything wrong with that.
• 1:15:14
  Mark Zweig: No, I think it's a doorway, but they're not all successful, as you said.
• 1:15:18
  Mark Zweig: Right, the right orientation.
• 1:15:20
  Eric Howerton: No, they don't, we can help those people.
• 1:15:21
  Eric Howerton: We can Just by listening.
• 1:15:24
  Eric Howerton: Yes, and if you do all the subscribing and stuff that, make sure you get notified when those things happen, yep, all right, hey man.
• 1:15:32
  Mark Zweig: Hey, thanks, been great being with you and Let me show We'll see you all again on another episode of big talk about small business.
• 1:15:43
  Eric Howerton: See how much you go completely solo, then you did.
• 1:15:45
  Eric Howerton: I just wanted to hear how you sound, you dog Okay.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: Thanks for tuning into this episode of big talk about small business.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to 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.
• 1:16:14
  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.