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Survival Comes First: Flipping the Script on Business · Big Talk About Small Business

0:00
SPEAKER_00: The first goal has to be survival.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: You're never going to achieve your lofty vision or fulfill your mission if you don't first survive.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: So it's always survival first.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and family, I am banglepodcastvideos.com, and you are watching Big Talk about SmallBit Business.com.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: We still need a sponsor.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: We do need a sponsor.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of people out here.
0:41
SPEAKER_02: A lot of great work going on.
0:43
SPEAKER_02: Please align yourself with the show that's going to impact thousands and millions of people.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: At Big Talk About Small Business, I am an unfamiliar face to the show, not to the company.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm Bang again of podcastvideos.com.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: I have a show called Story Scaling, and I'm filling in for none other than the Eric Howarton.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: It's impossible to fill in.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: That's true.
1:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if there was somebody who could do it, it's you.
1:05
SPEAKER_02: Touche.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: It's impossible.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: Touche.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Touche.
1:09
SPEAKER_02: Man, Mark, I'm excited about this.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for allowing me to join the show.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: Um, as you know, on my show, Story Scaling, I like to start every episode with a bio that I read, you know, for the guests.
1:21
SPEAKER_02: And so for this show, I wanted to put you in the different seat.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: I know you're usually asking the questions, and you're usually the one that's that's diving in, but I wanted to flip the script.
1:30
SPEAKER_02: And so if you will allow me, then we're gonna interview you today.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: How do you feel about it?
1:35
SPEAKER_00: I hope it's not a boring subject.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: It's boring to me, but I think it's I think it's gonna be good.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, I trust you.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: You'll make it good if it is.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so this is I'm I'm diving in here first.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: This is what this is what the streets are saying about Marcus White.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
1:52
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: You tell me when when I finish, you get an opportunity to say, hey, that's spot on, or you get to say what I forgot.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: Like you can critique this in real time, all right?
2:01
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: So it says, today on Big Talk About Small Business, we are completely flipping the script.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: Usually I'd be tuning in to hear the man sitting across from me drop business wisdom.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: But today, I'm taking over the host chair to interview this man on his own show.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: Mark Zwag is the definition of a real builder.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: He is a seasoned entrepreneur, real estate developer, and author of 13 books, a board member for Janice Motorcycles as well.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: But long before he was scaling companies and topping business lists, he was a nine-year-old in Kirkwood, Mississippi, hustling bikes on a street corner.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: He built Zwig Group from the ground up into a massive powerhouse.
2:39
SPEAKER_02: And today he is shaping the minds of future founders at Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas.
2:46
SPEAKER_02: Just to put his impact into perspective, he boasts a whopping 98% on Rate My Professor.
2:52
SPEAKER_02: If you know how brutally honest college students are on the internet, you know that score is basically unheard of.
2:59
SPEAKER_02: But for me, the single most compelling thing about Mark isn't the massive resume or accolades.
3:04
SPEAKER_02: It's who he is off the clock.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: An insanely business and successful man, Mark is still one of the most approachable, grounded, and present people that I know.
3:12
SPEAKER_02: I've personally stopped him multiple times for impromptu conversations, and he never brushed me off, looked at his watch, or rushed the interaction.
3:19
SPEAKER_02: To operate at this level and still give people that kind of time and respect is a very rare trait.
3:25
SPEAKER_02: But as we know, building an empire is never a straight line.
3:28
SPEAKER_02: Mark has lived the entrepreneurial hard truth in real time.
3:33
SPEAKER_02: He's built a company, sold it, watched it falter under new ownership, and then made the heavy personal decision to step back into the chaos, buy it back, and save the legacy he built.
3:43
SPEAKER_02: Today we're bringing the story scaling DNA right here to Big Talk About Small Business.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: We are going to dive into the unglamorous reality of buying back your own life's work and the raw mechanics of what it actually takes to survive the entrepreneurial grind.
3:56
SPEAKER_02: And for the end, we're going to get to know Mark the person a little bit better.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: Mark, welcome to the other side of the mic.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks, Bang.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: That's a big uh long intro there.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: That's you.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh just a couple minor corrections.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: One, Kirkwood, Missouri, I'd be uh is where I'm from, not Mississippi.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: If I was from Mississippi, I'd call it Mississippi because that's how they pronounce it down there.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Actually.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh but no, the the other thing um is that um I don't even know if you're aware of this.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: I am currently on six boards as either a voting member or advisory member.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh for the that's six of uh for-profit companies and two nonprofits, so total of eight.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: No, right currently.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's pretty crazy, pretty crazy schedule.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, it's great to be here with you.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: You said I didn't look at my watch.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: I probably looked at my phone, but fair enough.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm No, I I try not to.
4:56
SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm I'm serious, though.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: I I think let's dive, let's dive straight into it because I think even as we're talking right now, you're like, yeah, I'm reading this bio, all the stuff you got going on.
5:05
SPEAKER_02: Not to mention, I got more stuff going on, but but in light of everything that you have going on, you still sit down, make time, look people in the eye, have conversations.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, sure.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: That's the best part of life.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Why would I not want to do that?
5:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's all about the relationships that you have with people.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what else is more valuable than that?
5:26
SPEAKER_00: It's not all your crap, I'll tell you that.
5:28
SPEAKER_02: How long did it take to learn that?
5:30
SPEAKER_02: Because I'm still in grind mode.
5:31
SPEAKER_02: My generation is like, you know, people get out the way.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: I got a goal that I'm trying to get to.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: And so, how do you learn to balance or navigate the tension between I do have things that I have to do, I have a family, I'm responsible for eight businesses that I'm involved in, but I know people is the best part.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: Did you have to learn that the hard way?
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think I learned it when I was first off, it helps to be successful enough to where you have everything you really need.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: That's a that I mean, because until then, you're, you know, you gotta have a decent place to live, decent vehicles, feel like you can feed your kids and send them to a decent school and all that.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: So certainly that helps, but for me, it was really when my first wife melted down from uh alcoholism and and prescription drug addiction.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I was in my late 30s at the time, uh, and and it just I had to completely reevaluate everything in my life.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: And so then, you know, just on the ever the never-ending quest to have more material success, that that immediately stopped.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: It's like running into a brick ball.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: Because you got to take care of your kids and you gotta take care of your wife, you know, and all.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, that was for me, that was kind of when I first came into that awareness.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: I'd say probably late 30s.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: And then I repeated some of the same mistakes once again.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, after my life was stable, I got remarried and and went on the quest once again.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: And and uh, so sometimes it takes more than one experience for us to learn those lessons.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: I had a thought last night.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: I was washing dishes.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: I said, What what good is all the money if you aren't happy?
7:21
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: And that's that's cliche, right?
7:23
SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of people, they might not have a high achieving hundred grand, five hundred grand over seven figures a year.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, but but you know someone as a highly successful businessman, man, if you have all of these things, but you don't have the peace or the joy, it's it's worth nothing, right?
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Would you attest to that?
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely true.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And you know, and then the other thing is that over time your needs expand.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: And you're you're, you know, you can still, I mean, I think it's a trap a lot of successful people fall into is you you just end up with so much overhead that you have to continue to earn the big bucks at some, you know, some point.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, what really matters is definitely the relationships with your with your family, with your friends, you know, with I mean, and for me, my friends, most of those are people I do business with.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: Or did business with.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's that's where the real action is.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: That's what really matters.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, I have uh a friend of mine, he's a concrete subcontractor, and he just did a slab and a foundation for a edition we're putting on for my mother-in-law at our new house.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, he invited us to his 15-year-old's Kincanera.
8:41
unknown: Uh-huh.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: And it was my first experience to go to one of those.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: And here this guy is, Omar's his name.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Great guy.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, he's just a guy who always does what he says he's gonna do.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: He's he's a man of high integrity, stands behind his work.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: If he makes a mistake, he fixes it with no excuses.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: Really hard-working guy, came over here with absolutely nothing.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: And he's spending$40,000 on this party for his 15-year-old daughter while he's driving a$2,500 at most value truck.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And he said, you know, and I was talking with him about that.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: I said, Wow, man, that is something else, you know.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: He said, Yeah, he goes, What what else matters?
9:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, in the end, it's just my family.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: There's I don't care about any of this other stuff.
9:30
unknown: Uh-huh.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, to me, that was a real statement.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, and then you see how close the family is.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: They're just a great family.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we become friends with some of his siblings, and and uh it's just it's it's you know, they're they show you, they demonstrate what's important, the love that they have for each other.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: I heard you say something and it struck me, but you were telling me we were talking about overhead.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: I don't even know if you remember this conversation.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: And you said, man, it cost me X amount of dollars.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: I won't disclose it unless you unless you disclose it.
10:03
SPEAKER_02: But you said, man, it cost me X amount of dollars to breathe every month.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:07
SPEAKER_02: And I was thinking, there's no way.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: Like these are your expenses before you take anything home.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:13
SPEAKER_02: And and people oftentimes like to glemorize the life of an entrepreneur, sure, the life of somebody that's a high earner, high achiever.
10:22
SPEAKER_02: But man, talk about that other side.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: Talk about the fact that it costs this much just to me you.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, any overhead I have, I there's nobody to blame but myself.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: But no, I think a big part of it is, I mean, obviously, you know, I was divorced twice, and the first time around, I had to do it to protect my children.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: And I still take care of my first wife forever for the rest of her life.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
10:49
SPEAKER_02: You have to do that, or that's a that's a my decision.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, it was my decision when I divorced her.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, and I and I've stood by that, you know, and that's been twenty, twenty, three years.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: And she's not in great health, and she's in a in a facility here in in northwest Arkansas.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: But um, but anyway, you know, and and the second time around, it wasn't necessarily my idea, but it did turn out to be a good thing.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: So that's part of the overhead obligation.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: But I think the other part of it, though, is more as opposed to just consumption.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's two elements to the other part of my overhead.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: One is always trying to do for my kids what I didn't have as a child.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, I pay for all their college education, all their living expenses, give them cars, money.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's that's just part of what I do.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: So they get a you got one or two kids, or how I got five, okay.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Five if you count my stepdaughter, who I treat like a daughter, yeah.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: Because she is like a daughter to me, and I've known her since she was a little kid.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that that's part of it.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And the other part of it is just the fact that I take chances other people won't take.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think uh, you know, many people don't understand that.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Explain that.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by that?
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's all part of the the risk.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so for example, right now I've got two houses that are two million dollar houses.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, I bought another house before we even put our old house on the market, which is typically the way we do it.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: Right.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: Because that way we can move into the new one at our leisure, get everything.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, first we can buy the new one, get it fixed up before we move in, then move in at our leisure, and then really clean up and make the old house perfect, then put it on the market to maximize the value.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: But that's a big risk, okay?
12:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: So currently I'm paying for two houses that are, you know, very expensive houses combined with my new house that we just spent a whole lot of money on, totally renovating it, put a swimming pool in, putting an addition on now, spending more money for my mother-in-law.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: So that's a chance, though.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, you you could say, now, why would you do that?
13:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, if and when I sell the other house, which I'm sure I will eventually, I'll make a good chunk of money on that.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: And people will be like, oh, you're so lucky.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: No, I buy distressed houses or houses that need work in really great locations, and I spend a whole lot of money.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: I know exactly what to do to improve them.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: And I get plenty of help from my wife, believe me, she's got really good instincts on all this stuff.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: But that's a big risk.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people wouldn't do.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: It would be like my like my sister, she's well off financially.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine her ever, she would think it's insane to buy another house until your house is sold.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: She would never do that.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: But that's just one example of, you know, and then there's many others with the businesses that I get involved with.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not beyond um going and borrowing uh money from a bank and putting it into a company really as equity.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: I have no problem with that.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now sometimes it's gonna pay off and sometimes it may not.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Talk about a pretty good history though.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, eventually it pays off.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: I would say because I don't do anything stupid, yeah, but it's still at risk.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, that adds to your overhead, though.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: I guess that's that's what I'm saying.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, in some cases, I get paid with stock, sure, and then you have to pay taxes on that, and you got no cash for it, you just have to pay the tax.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:28
SPEAKER_02: What I got two questions.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
14:31
SPEAKER_02: Because I want to know about your relationship to risk.
14:34
SPEAKER_02: I know that being a risk taker and being an entrepreneur in some worlds are synonymous.
14:39
SPEAKER_02: Like a lot of people would say you can't be an entrepreneur and be risk adverse.
14:43
SPEAKER_02: Or if you are, then you likely might not have the same level of success as somebody.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: So I want to hear from you.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: Where did that risk, uh, that risk reward concept come from?
14:54
SPEAKER_02: But is that something that you had to develop?
14:56
SPEAKER_02: Was it ingrained in you as a child?
14:57
SPEAKER_02: Because some people are afraid to take risk.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it was ingrained.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: It for me, it just started out buying bikes and selling them on my mom and dad's street corner.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: I I mean, I remember once I bought a bike for$2.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: And I took it apart and I painted it and I threw it out there on the street corner, and I think I got like$29 for it or something.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: That to me was fantastic.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Then I was off.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: And then I started buying bikes and people that feeling.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I would I would put and then, you know, later on I did it with motorcycles at a really young age.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: I'd I'd buy old bike.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I bought one for five bucks that I found in a garage a couple doors away.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: That was literally five dollars.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: Five dollars.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: I still have the bill of sale for it, too.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: And and and sold that.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: And then I did it with cars, you know, and a lot of people would be like, Oh, I got a nice car.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: So isn't that great?
15:52
SPEAKER_00: I've got a nice car.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: To me, anytime I could buy something, make money on it, have something to drive, I was willing to take a shot.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'll never forget.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: And I had a friend of mine, he and I, we used to have a deal that no matter which one of us bought the vehicle, we'd split the profits on it.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: That's just the way we did it.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: And so that taught me like how to be partners with somebody.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: There were times it felt unfair.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: If I bought something for$2,500 and we sold it for$3,800, it's uh, you know, and he bought something for$500 and we sold it for$750.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: You could go, wow, that's unfair.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: He only risked$500, you risk$2,500.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: But then maybe the next time you would do that.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, we just never violated that deal.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, so but I was always willing to part with money if I thought I had a chance to make more on it.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Now I never did anything I thought was stupid.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, and I'm not gonna say with all the cars I own that uh everything I've bought since then I thought I'd make money on.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've had like over 400 cars and I probably had 150 or 200 new ones.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: I bought three new cars last week.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Stop right there.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: You don't make money on new cars, usually, although you can.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you actually can.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to buy the right one.
17:12
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to gloss over what you just said.
17:14
SPEAKER_02: The office has been arguing with me because I say, you know, Mark has owned 400 cars, and even in the show notes, the number was 40.
17:24
unknown: Yeah.
17:24
SPEAKER_02: And I'm thinking in my head, nah, he's he's owned hundreds with an S.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Like I think I had 17 cars my senior year in high school.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: So I just like cars.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: What can I say?
17:35
SPEAKER_00: It's an addiction.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: It's a you could call it a disease if you want, but wow, I like cars, I enjoy them.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: I I like new ones and I like old ones.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: I like them all.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: I have no particular affinity toward any brand or type of vehicle.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: Really?
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:51
SPEAKER_02: Do you have or have you ever had your dream car?
17:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man, of course.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: I've I've had four 911 Porsches, which to me is probably the best sports car ever.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: I probably had 20 Mustangs.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: I just got a new Mustang um GT convertible, 480 horsepower with a six-speed manual.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: You just can't find them with that manual transmission.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: It's like that's the end of an era, though.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: I said to myself, I better get one now because they're not gonna have them very long.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: There's no other vehicle you can buy like that.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: And it sort of combines the, you know, I feel like I'm back 18 years old in a 1970 car, except this one handles good, doesn't rattle, and is like ridiculously fast and has great brakes.
18:37
SPEAKER_02: The 400 cars, it it it doesn't include your bikes, right?
18:42
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: Bikes I've had like 300 plus bikes too.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: I again, I mean, I I just like them.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know what else to say.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: I like them, I enjoy them.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: I've I've I've uh played with them my whole life.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm attracted to things of beauty and functionality, and you know, I think all of them bring back certain feelings in one way or another from my past.
19:12
SPEAKER_02: I I think this is a good segue.
19:15
SPEAKER_02: I was reading your your LinkedIn caption, and that's almost become like literature to me.
19:22
SPEAKER_02: So don't stop posting on your social media.
19:25
SPEAKER_02: But what you've been able to do is encapsulate a feeling and uh a presence and an emotion that is inescapable for the reader.
19:35
SPEAKER_02: There was one where you talked about riding a motorcycle and the need to be all in on what you were doing.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: There was one where you discussed, you know, hey, I I I have this and I deal with this and I experienced this.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: And so the pressure is there, but I don't succumb to it.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: I I continue to move forward, you know what I mean?
19:52
SPEAKER_02: And so what I want to know from you in this world that's fast-paced and things constantly need to be done, where do you find the the grounding or the stillness to be able to be present enough to put into words?
20:05
SPEAKER_02: Because there's two things that are happening.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's hard to articulate what's happening, and then there's sometimes it's hard to even know what's happening because you're still in, you know, what I say internal clock mode, like that clock is ticking.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: So how are you still present, grounded enough to be able to assess what's going on and then convey it like you do?
20:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's two things.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: One is old age helps.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I there just is no substitute for the experience of facing a million problems and surviving.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's just like being a battle-tested veteran.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: If you're out there in the field and you've had you've been in 30 skirmishes, you're probably gonna be a lot less scared and stressed than the guy who's in his first one.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's just the way it is.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: So that's part of it.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: And and I think, you know, the other part of it is as far as the writing goes, it's it's it's it's a discipline.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just every chance I get, I write.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: I do get up early in the morning, that's when I do a lot of it.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: And that's when you don't have a lot of interruptions.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't have to be, it could be at night.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: I could be sitting there watching a TV show and writing.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Um it's just a discipline of constantly refining your thinking.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: By writing, it helps you refine your thinking.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what else I can say.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's just a discipline like anything else, you know.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: You want to get strong and be fast, work out.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
21:38
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: You can't, you gotta do it every day.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: And and it's just like that with the with the writing and the and the constant refinement of your thought process.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: How long have you been doing that?
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh, dude.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I started I was on my junior high newspaper.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Really?
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I actually got an award when I was 13 for the best beginning editorial at University of McCain.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Missouri, Columbia journalism camp.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: But that's where I started.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: Spinning.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was uh, you know, high school um in and you know, I've just always written.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know what to say.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: I started this weig letter really as a free publication when I first went in business in 1988.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Once a month, um, no, excuse me, yeah, once a month I would start I would write, or twice a month, I would write a two-page typewritten letter of just whatever I was thinking about at the time.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: It was sort of spontaneous.
22:34
SPEAKER_02: This was before Chat GPT and Jim got correct.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: There was no Chat GPT out there.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, and then I turned that into a subscription-based um publication.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: I started with 250 people in my Rolodex, got up to 2300.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: I had a three-year non-compete on paid newsletters because I was the editor of another newsletter before that for pay.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: And once that was out, we turned that into a subscription-based vehicle, and eventually that was a seven-figure business in itself.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: The newsletter.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: The newsletter, yeah.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: The newsletter.
23:10
unknown: Wow.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: So now it's free.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: But it's got a huge number of readers, and you know, I'm I'm just one minor element in the writing of it.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: It's expanded far beyond my writing.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: But I do write an editorial every single week for this wide cutter.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: When I hear you talk about some of the things that you've achieved, a lot of them feel very unobtainable to the everyday person.
23:34
SPEAKER_02: Like, for example, a newsletter that gross to seven figures.
23:38
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if people understand how difficult that is.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, today it would really be difficult with all the free information.
23:44
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
23:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: So it's free now, so I can't claim can't claim it's doing that now.
23:49
SPEAKER_02: But but I mean, but at one point, yeah, from from nothing.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: From independent thoughts that you had, you compile them and then, you know, but so when I hear you give advice though, it's always so practical.
24:01
SPEAKER_02: Talk about, yeah.
24:03
SPEAKER_02: I ask you, I said, man, what's the one bit of advice that you would give somebody that wants to be successful?
24:10
SPEAKER_02: Do you do you remember what you told me?
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Probably return phone calls and emails.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: That was a property that was the second thing you said.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: The first thing was do the hard thing first.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: On your do list, always do the worst thing, the one that you're procrastinating on.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: Talk about that.
24:25
SPEAKER_02: Because if because if if you're telling me from where you sit, again, somebody that's uber successful, I'm not expecting that to be the first thing that comes, like really?
24:33
SPEAKER_02: No, I wouldn't expect that to be the first thing that comes out.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: So so Well, I'm just speaking from my own perspective.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: When I think about what causes me stress, it's things that I procrastinate on that need to be done.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if I do those things, then I'm gonna feel good for that at the end of that day.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, like right now, I got to go to the DMV and register six vehicles, the three new ones we bought last week and three other ones that I bought that I procrastinated on.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I know, and I just haven't had the time to get over there yet.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I know when I do that, I'm gonna feel good.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna feel like, ah, got that out of the way.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: It there's always something like that.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm using that as an example.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's not a great one, but there's others that are big.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: And those are the ones I try to deal with first.
25:24
SPEAKER_02: When you were 13 years old and you sold that first bike, you got some money in your pocket, you I was probably eight or nine when I sold my first bike, but 13 when I started doing my bike.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's right.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: So when when you're let's go, let's go that age group.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: When you're a child, yeah.
25:42
SPEAKER_02: If if I were to tell you that you grew up to do this, start your own companies and do X, Y, and Z, and now you're on the board of a motorcycle company that's highly successful, by the way, and all of these different things.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: What do you think you would have said?
25:57
SPEAKER_02: Would you have believed it?
25:58
SPEAKER_02: Did you did you think you would be doing something different?
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think originally I thought I wanted to be an architect, but then when I started making money, I like that.
26:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: I probably, you know, I don't think I had goals like that.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: I I, you know, I think it at that age I probably thought, you know, gee, I could be, maybe I could own a little bike shop.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'd be a really good bike mechanic.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Which I was pretty good and and made a lot of money as a kid.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: I always had more than any of my friends because I did have that skill.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: But um, no, I don't think I had any tremendous goals at that point in time or predicted I would be involved in so many different things.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: What did your parents do?
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Oh, my my my upbringing, I mean, yeah, my dad, if you ever saw the show Mad Men, my father was Don Draper.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, with everything that went along with that, he was in the advertising business, he was the number two guy in an ad agency, he was the creative guy, he was the big seller.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: He survived World War II in hand-to-hand combat in trenches.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: It was at the Battle of the Bulge and Really?
27:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: Got his silver star and his bronze star, was a first lieutenant from enlisted man, survived all that.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Before World War II, he was a blue collar worker.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: He was a shop steward in a factory that made ranges in St.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Louis.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: After that, he swore he'd never do blue collar work again.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: He started selling advertising in the back of magazines, and then ended up by 1949, they built a new house that was designed by an architect.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: He was a clotheshorse, he got a new Jaguar in 1956.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: It was the first car I remember as a kid.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Was his white jag, he'd he'd pull in the driveway and honk the horn.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: And so it was a very unstable existence, though.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: He was very unstable.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, he would, you know, in the 60s, he went through a midlife crisis, he got out of the ad business, became, you know, a uh a management consultant for several different religious orders, the Catholic Church.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: He did several studies, went and reported on them to the Vatican, you know, helped um, I can't remember, Seventh-day Adventists grow their flocks.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, he had so many different things.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: He really kind of went, he was very unstable.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: And then he would get a job.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget, he got a job as the marketing head of marketing for a firm that made contraceptives uh products and uh was owned by a crazy guy, Joe Sunnan, who had a business that made honing machines.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: And he discovered this product in Europe and set up a company to do it.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: My dad was the head of marketing for like six months, and then Sunnan wanted him to um take psychological tests.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: My father refused to do that, okay.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Got fired, and then got rehired by them as an outsider for more money, but it was always like, I don't know.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're gonna make, you know, up and down.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: My mom, though, was the rock.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: She was always there, always picking up the pieces, always doing whatever needed to be done.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: And in spite of the incredible instability, but you know, nevertheless, we always had a roof over our heads, we always ate well, we never ate out, they never wasted their money, they never had a house payment more than a hundred bucks a month.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, they were depression near a survivors, after all.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: But it felt very unstable.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: So that was sort of part of what motivated me not to um go through that.
29:50
SPEAKER_02: Siblings in the house with you or anything?
29:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there I had uh two brothers and a sister.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: They're all very successful.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: My sister, she ran a radiology practice as the business manager.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: She was a history teacher, two advanced degrees.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, my oldest brother, he became the chairman of the largest group of ad agencies in the world.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, WPP group.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: And he had a hundred and some odd companies under his wing.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: They had like two or three different divisions inside that.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: He was the chairman of one of them and CEO.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: He was very successful, still is.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: And then my other brother, Steve, he was a dean of University of Missouri Medical School, Harvard graduate, doctor.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: So they all did well, they're all different.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: If you had to start over today, you the only thing you can retain is your your knowledge and experience.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: But you lose you lose the assets, connections are gone, like all you have is, like you said, that experience that you've built over the years.
30:55
SPEAKER_02: How would you build a business, a fortune?
31:01
SPEAKER_02: Uh you got everything else that you still have.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: You got your expenses, right?
31:05
SPEAKER_02: You got your overhead, but you're just starting from ground zero today.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: What what would you what would you go into?
31:10
SPEAKER_02: What would you build?
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Well, first off, the most important thing that you have is your reputation.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: So if you go out there and you rob people one way or another or mistreat people, then you're gonna have problems no matter how much you have in the way of resources.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: So your reputation is the most valuable thing.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: Then you can recruit people, you can find clients or customers, you can get support uh from lenders or whatever.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's all about your reputation.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: So even if you don't have anything, if you get a reputation intact, you'll be able to make it.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: But for me, I would start a service-oriented business today.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: There's so many opportunities out there for such simple businesses that take so little capital to grow and build.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: It just blows me away.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Very simple service businesses, whether it's cleaning gutters like this guy we had on the show a couple weeks ago, or you know, paint, junk removal, junk removal.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: I had a guy out that pumped my septic tank the other day.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: It was like 450 bucks.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: I bet he did eight of them at least that day, based on how long it took.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: That's 3,600 bucks a day.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: That probably made the payment on his pumper truck.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And after that, it's all profit, and he probably pays 200 bucks a day to dump the stuff that he pumps out.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying, there's so many business opportunities.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Pink's window washing.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: I love what they're doing.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: There's so many of these service businesses that the competitors are so bad.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: It's just so easy to be successful when people don't return your phone calls.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, when they don't show up when they say they're going to, when they have zero quality control, when they have zero communication with you, the customer, who would it's not that hard.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought that returning a phone call would be a competitive edge nowadays?
33:09
SPEAKER_00: I I know.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: It just blows me away.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: I I tell every student and anybody who asks me, they're like, what, you know, what what should I do in my first job?
33:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, just be the quickest to respond to emails and phone calls and you will move up.
33:25
unknown: Wow.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: You know?
33:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: I also tell them if you're gonna go buy a new car, don't go buy the best used Porsche 911 you can afford, even if it's a$25,000 one for two reasons.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: One is when you show up in that at work and it's in the parking lot, they're automatically gonna assume that you're classy and you have high expectations for yourself.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: You're not looking flashy, you're not looking trashy, you're looking classy.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: And the second reason is it's the best car you can buy for uh appreciation.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, practically every 9-11 I've ever ever owned is worth more when I get done with it than when I bought it.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Really?
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the last one I just got rid of here, I had it for a little over two years.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: I put 12,000 miles on it, and I sold it for 10,500 more than I paid for it.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: How can you argue with that?
34:18
SPEAKER_00: You can't.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's a tough case to beat.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: You know?
34:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: So return your phone calls and emails and texts, get yourself a 9-11.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: But don't, seriously, don't shut down at the end of the day.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: The clock watchers, the ones who are at five o'clock, this is my time.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: I believe in work-life balance, and then you hear from them only after eight o'clock on Monday, not on the fast track.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: Whether you own your business or you work for somebody.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: If you work for somebody, you own your own business.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: You just have one client or one customer.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: You're still self employed, you're still trying to build the best thing that you can.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.