Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
NWA Founders is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
'NWA Founders' is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
To recommend a guest or ask questions, reach out at nwafounders@gmail.com and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn for video content.
Mark Zweig: [00:00:00] We grew and grew and grew by 30% a year for 13 years in a row, and the recession hit. We did really well during that time. Why do you think that was? You don't have to start a business from scratch. All entrepreneurship education is based on startups, startups, startups. It's so much less risky to go buy an existing business and turn it around.
We say work life integration. It's not balanced. You will not hear from me until 8:00 AM Monday. That is totally unrealistic. Doesn't work.
Cameron Clark: It just ain't gonna happen. What do you say to someone who's going through something similar right now? Hey, payroll's tomorrow. Can't meet it. We're in deep.
Mark Zweig: I don't know.
What do I say to 'em? Um,
Cameron Clark: mark, thanks for coming on. You've got so many different layers to your story, but kind of before you dive in mm-hmm. I wanted to ask you, so in [00:01:00] this, in this season, what keeps you so motivated to, I mean, it feels like you're just going all gas still.
Mark Zweig: I really am.
Cameron Clark: I mean, content business, just like you've had a lot of layers of success.
I mean, there's been other things in there too, I'm sure, which I wanna talk about, but like Sure. What keeps you going at the speed you're going right now?
Mark Zweig: I don't know. I, I just, I don't know any other way is the bottom line. It's just you have to, at some point you just have to come to grips with who you are and you just do your thing.
And that's the way it is. And I'm wired to work, I'm wired to create opportunities for myself and others, and it's just, I just can't help it.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: You know, and I like solving problems. Um, it's not all fun. I mean, honestly, I've been. I was just saying to one of my partners in one of the businesses I'm involved with today, I said, I think the last six months have aged me five years.
But, you know, we always prevail though. We, we always prevail in the end. Do you still take risk? [00:02:00] Oh God, yes. Are you kidding? Hmm. I mean, right now I just had to commit. I mean, I'll, I'll just say it. I mean, just had to commit yesterday to put a hundred thousand dollars into a business that's already lost over 2 million this year and has a negative net worth.
Cameron Clark: Hmm.
Mark Zweig: Okay. And it's, I sent 50,000 in two weeks ago. Hmm. I mean, you, you know, you might say, well, that's not a huge amount of money, but I mean, that's just, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm also a guarantor along with another guy in all the bank loans for that, which I, yeah. We take risk.
Hmm. Absolutely. I'm not afraid of risk though. Why? Because I feel a, I don't take any risks that I think are stupid. BI have confidence that we'll do what we need to do to overcome any problems. Yeah. Yeah. Believe yourself. Yeah. I just don't give up. I I not just myself, I mean, I, I only work with people that I feel like I [00:03:00] trust and have the same work ethic and commitment to get it done.
Yeah. Yeah. To get it done. Yeah. And it just, you just don't give up. You just keep working at it and you'll eventually figure it out as long as you can survive. My goal in any business is survive long enough till something good happens. Yeah. To get lucky. Yeah. That's what everybody,
Cameron Clark: you know what a what, what do you love about the business community in Northwest Arkansas?
Hmm. You're so involved
Mark Zweig: in it. So much. So much. I mean, we just have really good people here that are really nice and very accepting of other people, and it's not an old guard versus a new guard kind of thing. Hmm. And I think that's really refreshing. Um, I. We welcome, we welcome outsiders into the business community here.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: You know, it was explained to me once that, you know, the difference in here in Little Rock. I mean, years ago I was with a firm, it was a owner and a firm based in Memphis, and we had an office in Little [00:04:00] Rock.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: We also had one in, in Greenwood, Mississippi, in Huntsville, Alabama. But it was explained to me once that the difference between here and Little Rock, it's like, it's like night and day, but Little Rock.
That area was settled by slave owning plantation owner British. Hmm. And Northwest Arkansas was just a bunch of, you know, Irish and Scottish immigrants running to grab their 160 acres and then claw their, their way out of the dirt. Mm. And just everybody, nobody had anything here.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: You know, and that two class society culture still exists, you know, in other parts of the state.
Yeah. And, and to me it's the, a lot of it is sort of the difference in the culture of being the south versus the wild west. We are at the gateway of the Wild West here.
Cameron Clark: I've never heard anyone say it like that. That is, it does kind of feel wild west. Guess it's just like, you wanna do something, go do it.
Yeah. Yeah. It's,
Mark Zweig: [00:05:00] it, it's a welcome. It, it, the people are great. Um, I mean, I always say Northwest Arkansas, we're not the best for any one thing, but we're the best overall place to live. Hmm. When you come right down to it, I mean, air quality's pretty good. It's, you know, we don't have like big, dirty industries.
We've got, you know, good water. We've got, uh, reasonably affordable cost of living, of course. Going up a lot.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. You know,
Mark Zweig: everywhere else is though too. It is, it's true. Uh, traffic could be a lot worse than it is. Schools are pretty good. I mean, like, I've been super happy with Fayetteville High for my last two kids that go there.
Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, they went to private school up till 14 and now they're in, in public and, well, one of them's gone through the system. Well, four of 'em have gone through the system, but one's still in it. Um, but you know, it's surprising people would be like, you got a good high school in Arkansas. It's, it's like, yeah,
Cameron Clark: yeah.
Mark Zweig: I'm a Fable High grad. I loved it. I loved it. You can do [00:06:00] anything there. I mean, between the sports, the music, the theater, the art, it's all there. Ap everything. It's all there.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: So
Cameron Clark: talk, talk about what, what brought you to, uh, to Northwest Arkansas? Let's get, I mean, I wanna get, you know, you've, you've done so many different things.
I like a lot of what we're trying to do is get people's stories, hopefully encouraged folks by d by people's stories. And so what Sure. What, where'd you, you grew up in Missouri?
Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah. I grew up outside St. Louis in Kirkwood. Yeah, it's right off Highway 44 Uhhuh, this side. Um, what motivated me to come here?
Um. It was multifaceted. I had sold my business, well, I knew I was going to sell it. Mm-hmm. You know, it's a long process. Let's face it. Um, the company that's Y group today was white. White, started it in 88 in the Boston area. Mm-hmm. And, um, lived there, um, in, and, and we sold it in, in, uh, 2004, fall of 2004.
And the core of the business consulting 60% consulting, [00:07:00] 40% products, um, products. In our case, it was all, all of our clients and customers were architects, engineers, planners, surveyors, mm-hmm. Et cetera. Um, so those are all our customers. Consulting. We did m and a, we did business planning, and the firm still does all these things.
Marketing, consulting, appraisal. Uh, financial turnarounds, you know, wide executive search, retained wide variety of services, all business related. We sold software to the industry. We were resellers of a, a package that was sort of an integrated software package for architects and engineers. Okay. Dell Tech, largest provider to the industry.
And then the product side for us was really, um, newsletters, books. The survey reports that the firm still does today, although they've expanded those offerings quite a bit, um, on things like valuation of [00:08:00] privately held architecture and engineering firms. We had that data. Nobody else had it. Okay. Um, seminars, online education, uh, events.
And you're creating this all, all our stuff. Yeah. We only sold stuff that we owned a hundred percent.
Cameron Clark: And what, what, so would, were you like a, a content creator kind of from, from mm-hmm. From birth? I mean, was that all kinda always, always on you? Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Yeah. I think so. Probably. I mean, I wanted to be an architect as a kid.
I got seduced away by the world of business when I went to work for bike shops. But I was the editor of my school paper at one point. And then, you know, um, I, I was always, I always wrote a lot, um, when I got out of grad school, um. I, I went to work in a, in a firm that served the architecture and engineering industry, just like y
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Group does today. And I started writing for a newsletter in that, uh, that served that industry. And that's really how I got started. I [00:09:00] got known from, from that. Today, this y letter is, it's, I think we have well over 20,000 subscribers and God knows what the pass around is. Geez. Wow. So it's been out there a long time and, um, but yeah, I like, I, I did create a lot of content.
Yeah. What do you
Cameron Clark: think, I mean, what do you think the secret to content creation is right now and in today's, today's world? To not get, I don't know, just not, not get buried or, or noticed or,
Mark Zweig: I mean, I, if I can say it, I'd say keep the bullshit to a minimum. I mean, it, there's so much, yeah. So, so many cliches and so little original thought out there.
I just think if you're really honest and really direct and you can relate, I don't wanna say storytelling 'cause I hate that cliche too. Okay. I'm a storyteller. If you get on LinkedIn, just plug in storyteller, see what comes down, and you'll get like [00:10:00] 10 jillion profiles. Everybody's a storyteller now. But I, you know, having experience and being able to reflect that and, and being honest.
I mean, I think if you wanna be a good content creator, it's just like working out. You gotta do it every day. Yeah. You know, you gotta have a schedule, you've gotta have certain discipline in your writing, but it, it really does help you organize your thinking to do it. Um, but just being honest, being direct sharing.
Not, not, um, not necessarily. And, and I'm not saying you gotta be crude or you gotta be. Um, you know, uh, uh, but, uh, it does help sometimes I think, to be contrarian. Yeah. And did you, you know, don't, don't be somebody else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I mean, when people give talks and all they do is quote some other author's book, I'm like, gee, I can read that.
Yeah. If I wanna talk to that dude, I'm gonna call him up.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: You know, why are, why do I care what this guy says? I wanna hear what you [00:11:00] have to say.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: I, that was always my approach. I never quoted the other guy unless I was trying to poke fun at him.
Cameron Clark: That's interesting. So, so, so go back to mm-hmm. Mm.
Late, late eighties, you start as y group.
Mark Zweig: Yeah. Late eighties I started as Y group. Our goal was always build it up and sell it. We did build, you know, we were on the Inc 500 list twice when it was only 500 companies. We grew and grew and grew by 30% a year. For 13 years in a row, we had it sold. Geez. And right.
We had it sold, um, in 2001, and we were in the final throws of the purchase and sale agreement negotiation when nine 11 happened.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. I
Mark Zweig: was also flying out of Boston that morning, by the way, with another one of my partners, but we didn't go, um, after the plane started crashing. Yeah. But the, um, so yeah, they bailed though, and they just completely pulled out and said, we're not buying [00:12:00] anybody.
Hmm. And so we were all mentally shifting out, you know, at, at that point. And then we had to go back and slog it out for three more years till 2004, and which we did. And then we sold the company to a private equity firm, which I knew was gonna happen. It was a long process, you know, so started thinking about where did I want to go?
I mean, I could have stayed up there. I like living in the Boston area. I was in a beautiful town. You know, um, Dover, Massachusetts and my office was in Natick. And um, it was the first time I remember distinctly thinking to myself, this is the first time in my life that I don't pass anything ugly between my house and the office.
No metal buildings. No chain restaurants, no anything. Real culture. Yeah. Gorgeous. Two lane country roads old, picturesque, everything. It was fantastic. I had a house on the Charles River. My next door neighbor was Beer DuPont the fifth. And, you [00:13:00] know, had six acres. We had horses. I mean, it was a beautiful area, but, you know, two things.
One is, um, you know, I traveled all the time. It's gone, gone, gone. And it suddenly, um, you know, I dawned on me, I'm gonna be here in the winter and this place is really grim.
Cameron Clark: Yeah, yeah.
Mark Zweig: I mean, it starts getting cold in September and it's not gonna be nice till April, may, you know? Right. It's like, God, the winter is depressing and long.
That was one thing. And the other thing was just the cost of living. You know, it's high, um, up there. I mean, it's great if you're making a million dollars plus a year, but it's not when you're not.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Yeah. And um, and then, you know, my parents were aging at, they lived in Kirkwood, still in the same house I grew up in, and, um, wanted to be able to see them more.
Mm-hmm. And, and so also at that time I got married to a woman who grew up around here.
Cameron Clark: Okay. [00:14:00]
Mark Zweig: Um, she was born in Miami, but they, they moved to Pine, I guess they were in, in Jane or somewhere like that, up there, right across the border. And then they moved to Bentonville and Rogers and Bella Vista, and she went to school at the U of A.
Cameron Clark: Okay.
Mark Zweig: Yeah. And so, you know, that was nice. And then the last thing was I got an opportunity to teach entrepreneurship here. So I, I started, um, I was introduced to the then dean of the, the College of Business, um, by a mutual friend of mine who did not live here at the time, but he does now. Um, he was also the successor dean of this particular individual.
But, um, did you know you wanted to teach? Was absolutely, that was a really important thing to me. I wanted to go somewhere to teach. So I looked at, um, I had opportunities to go to, you know, potential to Georgia Tech, uh, university of Wisconsin, university of Missouri, Columbia, [00:15:00] and, um, ku. Okay. Those were all places that I could potentially go.
Yeah. And anyway, so I got the, the opportunity to, um, come here at Doyle Williams. Met Doyle Williams, he was the dean at the time. And, uh, you know, my buddy arranged a meeting. He, he hired me on the spot. Wow. And, uh, so I had to, I, I only had one class and I just flew down one night a week from Boston to teach it.
And, and then we bought a house down here and it was a good excuse to come down and work on that too. Sure. You know, and we bought the, the house of the guy who started Wilson Park. It was Al Trent's house. It's at the top of Prospect.
Cameron Clark: Okay.
Mark Zweig: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's the, uh. The CEO of Acre trader lives in it now.
Cameron Clark: Yep. I exactly what you're talking about. Mm-hmm. The uh, and so, I mean, so the stars all aligned and was that the, the, the kickoff to the re remodel development?
Mark Zweig: No, I always redid houses. I [00:16:00] clawed my way up the property ladder. The first house I built new and it was horrible. Yeah. Okay. I said, I'm never gonna do that again.
I mean, I can't even tell you all the problems, Cameron. It was crazy. You know, like I go away for the weekend, I come back and it was a tree lot, and they just took a bulldozer and just shoved all the trees to the back of the lot. It was about a 40 foot high pile uhhuh. I was horrified. I'm like, what?
Cameron Clark: Oh gosh.
I
Mark Zweig: didn't even anticipate that though. I was 23 years old. I didn't know anything about building, you know what I mean? Anyway, so after that all I did is buy old houses and redo 'em. I spent too much money on that new one. We're dirt poor, house poor. I was doing body work on the weekends and working in the bike shop just to pay for it.
Yeah, yeah. And I said, I'm never doing that again. I'm gonna buy cheap houses that I in good neighborhoods that need a lot of work that I won't be broke living in.
Cameron Clark: One of the things I read, you kind of call yourself a fixer, just like Yeah. Business houses, [00:17:00] like, um, you talk about that a little bit.
Mark Zweig: I just like to improve things.
I like leaving it better than when I got there. It's red. It's really gratifying. I mean, you know, you're in the redevelopment business, um, yourself. I mean, you can look at your buildings over here, you know, I think about that dry cleaner building and what a dump that was and the pool hall that was in there.
And my God, I don't know how you got that place. Not smelling like a cigarette, but I commend you. And now you've got these beautiful businesses in there and it looks great. You know, there's not like, you know, kind of rough looking women sitting out on the curb smoking like there used to be at the, in front of the dry cleaner.
Cameron Clark: No more
Mark Zweig: dollar beers though.
Cameron Clark: No more dollar beers. The pool
Mark Zweig: hall was such a classy place. But I mean, you've transformed that. You've made value where there was none previously, or certainly less one could say. Yeah. And you know, it's just very gratifying. I mean, to me, I look at it as like a 3D art project.
The, the [00:18:00] houses and the buildings. It's public art. Yeah. You know, it's like you show people what you can really do with this. Um, but you know, other than that, I mean, it's, I've restored motorcycles, I've restored cars, I've, I've, um, been involved in a lot of turnarounds. My, my personal preference and one of my sort of.
You know, crosses that I bear in the college of business, working in the Department of Entrepreneurship is that you don't have to start a business from scratch.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: This, this is what drives, it's like all entrepreneurship. Education is based on startups, startups, startups. Let's measure the number of startups.
How much capital did the startups raise? It's so much less risky to go buy an existing business
Cameron Clark: mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: And turn it around. Okay. Even, even if it's not profitable, even if it's not profitable. Exactly. It's got a history, it's got a location, it's got employees, it's got customers, it's got some business.
Right. Yeah. It's got [00:19:00] assets, equipment. Yep. Suppliers. So it, it, you know, I just, I like, I like that. I like doing renovations better than a new building too.
Cameron Clark: Mm.
Mark Zweig: Yeah. I mean, you've done both. I'm, you can't, I mean, you know.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. I mean, especially in today's market, like Yeah. Unless you've got the business you're putting in the building, it's like you're, you're probably not going out and building a new building.
I mean, and I mean, or, or have the tenants already in hand. It's like,
Mark Zweig: oh yeah, it, it, it is great if you do have your own business to put in the building. Yes. Yeah. That's, that's like, that sure makes a lot of sense, but it's like, yeah, I don't even like having a clean sheet of paper. I if it's like, I enjoy the inspiration of, of trying, or the
Cameron Clark: problem of trying to
Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah.
The
Cameron Clark: constraints.
Mark Zweig: Yeah. I don't know why I, I think people are either geared one of those two ways though.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. I think I'm the same as you, you know? Um, well, so talk, so when you, when you moved here mm-hmm. You bought the house here and it was like, okay. Then you started teaching more full-time and Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I bought that house. I mean, we weren't even, you know, I can't [00:20:00] say I was a hundred percent committed to move here even when we bought that house, but we did and, and we did end up moving here. Um, and um, so yeah, I started, I was teaching and over time that expanded to where I'm now a full-time faculty, but, um, that was great.
But in oh five, um. We decided we were gonna start doing these, these businesses, you know, these, um, these, uh, do the house thing as a business. Sure. And, uh, and so that's, I incorporated that as Mark Inc in January of 2005. And we started buying up houses down here, um, you know, in close in walk the town locations.
Mm-hmm. Um, Wilson Park, Washington, Willow Skyline Drive, uh, you know, uh, uh, Dixon Square area.
Cameron Clark: Yep.
Mark Zweig: And redoing them. And, um, and it was, it was good. You know, it was really funny. I mean, I know it's probably hard for you to imagine at this point in time, [00:21:00] the way things are here now, but back then people thought I was crazy.
They're like, you think you're gonna redo these houses and sell 'em for 300 bucks a square foot? Who in the world is gonna buy that? I can buy this for 110 bucks a foot. I can go to Candlewood and get a really nice house for 120 bucks. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, not everybody wants to live in fricking Candlewood.
Yeah. People wanna walk to town. And I knew there was a target audience. You know, I think with a lot of businesses, if you think about yourself as a potential customer and what you like, there's probably other people out there like you. Yeah. So in my case, like I wanna live in town, I wanna be able to walk to stuff.
I want a more, um, interesting, uh, you know, streetscape. Surely I'm not the only one that likes the stuff. Exactly. Yeah. I'm an older guy. Yeah. You know, I, I, I mean, I'm, I'm sort of, I'm independent. I don't work for corporate America. Yep. I can live where I wanna live. Um, you know, and it turns out there's a lot of [00:22:00] people out there like that.
I mean, we started selling houses. It was always. Early retirement, got a bunch of money, uh, you know, went to school here, wanna relive my youth. My kids are outta the house now. Yeah. Been living somewhere. I don't like, want to go somewhere where I do like and start my own small law medical practice or whatever.
Mm-hmm. And there was just this whole group of people who were like, highly educated, had some money, didn't need to worry about financing. They either paid cash or at least half in cash. So appraisals weren't an issue. Mm-hmm. And it just, like, it started, started catching fire, you know.
Cameron Clark: Well, you built a brand.
I mean, talk, talk, talk about that. I mean like,
Mark Zweig: yeah.
Cameron Clark: When did it feel like. Oh, people were like, oh, this was his W house. Or like, this is the brand, you know, the, the brand was there. And were you, were you doing the design, like a lot of the design inspiration? I was. And then were you running the crew, like sub crew?
I think it started
Mark Zweig: out with me and my, my [00:23:00] one full-time carpenter and a couple guys that worked, um, you know, that he trained as a full-time carpenters. Mm. That's how it started out. Um, and then eventually I brought in non, um, licensed degreed architects.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: To do draw up. What? Um, you know, basically I designed everything.
That was the answer. I, I always, you know, I've, I've always enjoyed that. Um. The brand was based on, I think, trying to be more authentic with what we did. Um, one could say it's not exactly what it was when it was built. I always had people look, oh, that didn't look like, yeah, it started as a two room shack, then it was a four room shack.
Then it got, you know, two more rooms put on it, and a, and some, a craftsman front porch. I mean, what era do you want me to take this back to? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we made things that were authentic. I mean, we, we believed in like using, you know, natural materials, real rock, not, never fake, not, [00:24:00] um, we used copper plumbing.
We used a lot of cedar shingles. People didn't like that. But the reality was it was in, uh, natural material used here.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: When these houses were built, we used wood siding. We used wood trim wood floors, uh, made our cabinets, um, you know, proper munton pattern on the windows. It didn't do anything modern at all.
And just getting that right. Um, I, you know, and, and, and paying a lot of attention to the details of the fence designs, the landscaping, the hardscaping, and we, and, you know, and then. All our vehicles were black instead of white. Always drives me crazy. These construction companies and, and contractors or whatever, white trucks, dirty white trucks.
Why do you all drive these freaking ugly, dirty white trucks? We had all black trucks. Okay. I always had an old truck. I had, my first one I drove was [00:25:00] a black 35 Ford pickup with a 3 83 stroker in it. Mm-hmm. All labeled up. Then I got a, you know, I got a a a 59 Ford, then I had a 64 Ford Wow. Pickups. Um, we had everything lettered the same.
We used kind of a Led Zeppelin font.
Cameron Clark: Yep.
Mark Zweig: I know we had, um, we used wooden signposts. We used wooden signs instead of, you know, some crappy stuff that blows over in the wind. Yeah. And, and all my guys had matching shirts, which I bought from your dad's company. Um, one of my former students used to be the sales guy there.
I can't remember his name right now. Yeah. Will, will, will, will Smith. Yep. Yep. Yeah, he's got his insurance agency now. Yep. Yeah. He's a real good buddy. Yeah. Will, will, was, will sold me some shirts and um, and so we had, you know, it's just like nobody was doing that sort of working visibility branding at the time.
Yeah. And there wasn't a lot going on. And then, you know, and then the recession [00:26:00] hit of like oh 8, 0 9, whatever, and, you know, all these other developers and builders were tanking around here. I mean, you, you, you probably remember that. And, um, and so we, we just plowed along. We did really well during that time because you kept getting bigger and bigger.
Why do you think that was unique offering? It was the audience that we served in large part. I mean, it's like if you're trying to build new houses in aspirational developments where. You need two career, uh, people living together to buy one. To buy one. Yeah. And one loses their job. That's not a very good combo.
Yeah. You're gonna end up with a lot of houses for sale in those places. They're not gonna go up in value. Mm. Uh, people, uh, you know, the new developers of that stuff at that time, it all looked the same. Everything is the same brick in my mind. Phony neo French country house. Look. Yeah. And that [00:27:00] was it. It didn't matter what it was.
Aluminum, soffits, bad windows, brick. Uh, ranch with crazy roof lines and gables on it
Cameron Clark: mid nineties to like 2010. Uh, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: You know, there's just so much of that product. And the problem with that product is it's like people who want that, they buy that. Well, then if they sell it or have to lose their job or whatever, well then nobody's gonna buy the new ones that are being built next door to that.
I mean, they're not gonna buy the, the, you know, uh, there's just, there's too much to choose from.
Cameron Clark: Yeah,
Mark Zweig: yeah,
Cameron Clark: yeah. Nothing's different. Yeah,
Mark Zweig: yeah, yeah. I can go get my, I can go get this one cheap, I can get this one for less than what they paid for it. Why am I gonna buy that new one over there?
Cameron Clark: Hmm. So talk, so you kind of, you grow, you grow this business.
Yeah. And you, uh, I mean, when does, uh, and then you, correct me if I'm wrong, then you, and you kind of take back your old consulting, consulting firm, right?
Mark Zweig: [00:28:00] Yeah. That happened too along the way. I mean, of course, the. The, the construction and development thing that expanded from, you know, doing old houses to where we started building new houses on lots, we cut off.
Then we got into subdivisions, we got into rental properties 'cause the banks had a lot of them. Yeah. And so that guy, you know, so we ended up with a lot of rent. Then we got into commercial too small. Mm-hmm. Yep. But yeah, that was growing along and that business got on the ink list in, in, uh, 2014 as well.
But, uh, and were you
Cameron Clark: raising money at all for that or No,
Mark Zweig: that was all just you b
Cameron Clark: grassroots ground,
Mark Zweig: ground up. Did my own thing there. Yeah. Never had any outside investors at all. Did borrow money. Yeah. Yeah. Had really good relationships with the banks here. Great banks. Mm-hmm. I mean, I, I gotta, you know, send a shout out to, to Signature Bank and Gary Head and, and First Western and, and Landon Taylor and, and, uh, you know, some of the others, even Bank of Fayetteville.
Um, but, uh, but [00:29:00] anyway, um, so yeah, in 2010. Well, 2009, the company that we sold in oh four mm-hmm. In private equity was in terrible shape. Um, they had borrowed a bunch of money, um, from a mezzanine lender not to buy other companies. Yeah. Didn't pay any of that back. And then the Mez foreclosed on 'em,
Cameron Clark: oh gosh.
Mark Zweig: In oh nine. And by 2010, they called me up and asked me if I'd come back. Mm-hmm. My first thought was, no, why do I wanna do that? I got this three quarter time teaching job here at U of A at the time, and I've got this other business. Yeah. I don't need this. And then, you know, I said something to my then wife, she's like, well, you know, maybe you should look at that.
And anyway, so I did end up going back to work. I said I would only work 25% and I wanted to relocate the HQ to Fayetteville mm-hmm. And hire some of my friends. They're like, yeah, do whatever you want. Well, within two months I did that and we had [00:30:00] no money. And I'm like, uh, I had to give myself a huge pay cut.
Mm-hmm. Like 60% pay cut over what they paid me, geez. To start. Um, threw some of my money in there and, um, ended up getting things turned around. I hired a friend of mine to be my CFO, um, who, um, eventually became my wife, um, um, after several years of being divorced from my, my wife that I was married to prior to her.
But, um, but anyway, um, so yeah, she, she was instrumental really in helping me turn this thing around. Mm-hmm. Um, we owed money to everybody. Yeah. It was, I'd never experienced that in my life. When we sold the company, it was profitable. I had no debt. Never went down. I mean, it was growing, you know, and you get it back rocketship and it's like, holy cow.
It's like a sixth of its size. Uh, it's losing I think [00:31:00] 1,000,004, um, in oh nine. Wow. And, um, is, it had a negative net worth of, of minus $6 million. Okay. So we slogged it out, we get all that turned around. We got, um, we did well enough. Our goal was to get back on the ink list. Yep. You gotta have three years of history to do that.
We got on the ink list in 2013. We grew by, I think 60% over that time period. Got the financial stuff together, got it straightened out. And then, um, I, I, the, the mezzanine lender that owned the company, it's a fund. They, they only had a six year life, these funds. Yeah. Where they get all their money, they deploy it.
Yeah. They'd return to capital. Yeah. And then, and then they gotta give it all back. Yeah. Um, to the investors. And so they didn't want this company and I knew, you know, they were gonna have to get rid of it. And, um, so I sent out an email to a guy [00:32:00] that I had only met once, who was the, uh, founder of the largest software company for the architecture and engineering industry.
And I told him, I said, you know, I think I need about 2 million bucks
Cameron Clark: mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: To buy the company from the lender and, um, put some, um, a little bit of money into working capital. He responded to me right away. He goes, oh, Mr. Sweig, I remember you, you have a good name and I like your company. He came down and saw me within two or three days on his little private jet.
Wow. With his CFO and his attorney. They negotiated with the, the, um, the lender the deal, which is about within 50 grand of what I thought we could buy the company for. Geez. And um, they lent me the money. They did not want to have any ownership. They lent us the money at 20% interest. They just said, we want no personal guarantee though.
Yeah. They said, we just want to get our 20% interest payments and we'll be happy. [00:33:00] So 20% on 2 million was 400,000 a year. We paid that for 30 months and we paid down the debt by a hundred K. So that was, we paid off 1.1 million to them in 30 months. And then refinanced that with the SBA.
Cameron Clark: Okay. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Um, on a, on a much lower interest rate.
And eventually the company paid that down and then, and then paid that off. But it was at that time, 20, uh, the end of 2012, um, uh, 2013 when we were buying the company back, that's when, um, Chad Kleins came on the scene. Um, I had met him at a seminar that we gave and recruited him to come here. He grew up here.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: And, and to eventually be the successor. And, um, so that worked out, uh, that worked out well over a period of five years, you know, um, company got stronger and in 2018 I sold back. Um. My ownership [00:34:00] interest to him and a couple other partners that we brought in on a long-term deal, 15 year deal.
Cameron Clark: And what, talk about the, not maybe the lowest or a, a low moment during that period of like, what have I done?
What have I done? Why did I jump back in this? Oh, a low moment. Wow. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: There were so many of 'em. I mean, when you're getting 30 calls a day from bill collectors Wow. Or my CFO says to me, Hey, by the way, you know, uh, we're not gonna be able to meet payroll. I need $167,000 or whatever by Friday. And it's Thursday.
You know, those kinds of moments are like, uh, those are really low. I think the, the, you know, we, we had judgments against us where mm-hmm. The company never even appeared in court to defend itself. You know, fortunately my wife, who also, uh, wasn't my wife at that time, but, you know, my CFO, she had worked for lawyers.
She would get on the phone and call these [00:35:00] New York attorneys and strike deals with them, even though they didn't need to give us deals. Wow. She got some, some, you know, some extended payments with, with agreements. Like, if we miss this by one hour, then the whole thing comes, you know? Yeah. She worked out a lot of deals with a lot of people.
It was very, very helpful. Um, so yeah, that, that was low. I think probably some of the most discouraging was before they called me, they brought in another guy, um, to, uh, who owned a lot of companies and he was supposed to be their turnaround expert. Mm-hmm. And so we would get a bunch of money, you know, do whatever we had to do and then it would be swept out of our account in the middle of the night.
He had control of the books of the accounts initially. Oh gosh. So he had to fight the lender to get control of the bank accounts? Yeah, because he would just sweep our money out and he had a really great scam going where he had these offshore companies, oh gosh. That provided it accounting, marketing support.[00:36:00]
So they overcharged Zweig group, then Zweig White. Okay. And sucked all the money out of it, and he never planned to turn it around. His deal with them was, if you can pay us back, I think it was $3.4 million by this date, we'll give you the company for a penny. Oh wow. But he never planned to pay it back.
Yeah. Instead he planned to suck all the money out of it more. Yeah.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Okay. And get even more out of it. It was really interesting. I mean, in the end, by the way, this guy's in the federal pen now. Um, he had a business, um, he owned 20 some odd businesses, but he was, um, convicted of bribing the North Carolina Insurance commissioner at some point.
Um, very unethical guy. Goy, Yale graduate. Um, brilliant guy, but totally not no, knew Steven. Yeah. Uh, so we had to get him out. That was probably the lowest point. It's like, oh, we're gonna meet payroll. Oh no, we're not. [00:37:00] It's the money's
Cameron Clark: gone. So what do you, I mean, I'm sure you've had so many people who've come to you and like been in similar situations or like, well, I mean, what would, what do you say to someone who's going through something similar right now?
Whether, hey, payroll's tomorrow can't meet it, or like, Hey, we're, we're, we're in some, we're in deep.
Mark Zweig: I don't know. What do I say to him? Um, don't give up. Just, you gotta work your way out of it. It's just, it's one day at a time, you know, it's, we gotta get through this day, then we gotta get through this week, then we gotta get through this month.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: And it's normally when businesses have problems, it's normally not one thing. It's like 25 things. You know, there's all these things that you can do that are incre that represent incremental improvements. Mm. You know, we can pick up the cash flow if we bill everybody earlier. Yeah. Why are we doing this the way we're doing?
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: We can collect our money faster if we change our collection process. If we don't send out statements and [00:38:00] instead we send out invoices and they reflect everything that was billed prior to the current invoice. In the total due and payable. Yeah. There's just like 10 million things we can do. Mm-hmm.
Okay. Is there anybody on the payroll? He is not cutting it. What can we do to get people to work harder? How can we create some kind of a system where it makes them. Care more. Yeah. More motivated. Open book management. People need to know how the place is performing. Mm. You know, better business planning.
What are we doing new? Why are we not getting any new clients or customers? What are we doing to get, I, you know, my favorite one I hear from people is, we believe word of mouth, the best marketing. I'm like, okay, so you do nothing. Okay. That's what word of mouth means. I see. We're gonna sit back. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, I had this, I I, I'll never forget we had this one tenant in a commercial building. We have this guy was suffering, you know, he is, but I mean, [00:39:00] he can't even put like two social media posts a day out with the food that he makes at his restaurant.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: I don't have time for that. I'm like, no bullshit.
I mean, I'm sorry. They're just not getting
Cameron Clark: it done. Yeah. There's just so
Mark Zweig: many things you can do. I mean, it's really interesting to me. One of the companies I'm with now, we, we've had a bunch of turmoil and change in the, in the marketing area and just doubling up our posts every day on Facebook and Instagram.
Not paid, has doubled the leads. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I mean, just go from two to four posts a day, double the leads. I mean Yeah. Where's the effort? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's just a million things you can do if you stop
Cameron Clark: ringing your hands and just, and just, yeah. Yeah. Just go down the list, start knocking 'em out.
Yeah. And so, so you business, you, you get outta that now? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, and, and you say you kind of, you sold your share your, your shares, right? Some the employees. Right. Um. [00:40:00] Maybe talk about the team at that time. What did that look like? What was the, how many employee you have or?
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I mean, the, the, the, the team, um, this, this last time around, I told you I had clients there.
He'd been there for five years at that point and has worked in all areas of the business. Mm-hmm. Okay. And I knew the guy could sell and could please clients.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: That's the most important thing. Yeah. You know, and then we had some other really sharp people, you know, um, that were there. Um, Jamie Kaiser, she's now working for a private equity firm that was a client of ours, but she was brilliant.
She's from Fayetteville attorney, MBA, my oldest daughter. Um, a, a guy named Will Swearingen all, um, MBA graduates, Walton College. Um, so we had some, some good people that were revenue generators.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: And responsible, you know, that's the most important thing. I mean, they're responsible. Um, and, and it's, you know, um.
It's [00:41:00] worked out well. I mean, they've, they've made their payments on time and everybody's happy. And I still write my newsletter article.
Cameron Clark: Yep.
Mark Zweig: The company's doing well. It's growing. Um, so, you know, I think it, a lot of people struggle with transition in small businesses. I mean, that's part of the consulting we provide to our clients, so we better be able to demonstrate we can do it ourselves on our own.
Yeah. I mean, it was always fundamental to me. I mean, there was another guy in our industry that did what we did and, and basically he never practiced anything that he preached. And you can tell. Yeah, yeah. It just ne nothing. I mean, he was, he, you know, so our strategy was like, do the opposite of him and we'll probably be successful.
Figure it out.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: And we, and we were, and, and it's, to me it's fundamental. If you wanna provide management advice, you have to manage your own business. Um, well, so talk about, so since you, since you kind of sold your shares,
Cameron Clark: what, what's,
Mark Zweig: yeah.
Cameron Clark: Talk about this, that chapter up, up until now.
Mark Zweig: Yeah, well, of [00:42:00] course I expanded my, my, my, um, work at, uh, the Walton College.
Yep. Um, and, you know, we, we got involved, I mean, I, I'm on a bunch of boards, um, of other companies. Um, I'm on the board of a, of an architecture firm in New York City. That's probably the best, certainly one of the most expensive and well recognized, um, uh, you know, uh, traditional slash classical, uh, ar residential architecture firms in the nation.
Hmm. Um, and then I'm also, um. I was on this company with this company when it had eight or nine people up to a couple hundred, and I got off of their board and was an owner and um, now I've rejoined a Miyamoto International. The end of 2023, I came back to that company, which is an earthquake engineering and structural engineering firm.
Cameron Clark: Okay.
Mark Zweig: It's got offices around the globe. Um, [00:43:00] so, um, I'm working with them on their board and, and, um, and I'm a minor, uh, shareholder in the enterprise. Very interesting company. It's got a real sense of purpose. I've been on the board of Miyamoto Relief, which is the nonprofit arm that was created the whole time.
Cameron Clark: Okay. I
Mark Zweig: went back on the board of Southern Illinois University, um, Carbondale College of Business
Cameron Clark: Oh wow.
Mark Zweig: Where I went to school. Um, that's great. They're going through a bit of a renaissance with a new dean and a working on a new strategic plan. Hopefully, you know, help that school. I mean, when I went to SIU Carbondale, over 25,000 students now it's got 11,000.
So it's really gone through, you know, it's kinda like in Arkansas, like we get all the resources here.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: That University of Arkansas, I mean go, you've been to any of the other state schools here?
Cameron Clark: Yeah. It's not, it's not the same.
Mark Zweig: It's not the same, right? No, no, it's like that in Illinois. It's like go [00:44:00] to U of I Okay.
And then go to Carbondale and you're like, whoa. You know, they get all the good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody else doesn't, I mean, most all these schools get less and less state support though. Yeah. I mean it's just, it's just the reality of it. Hmm. So
Cameron Clark: what would you, I mean, as far as what's, what's going on in the University of Arkansas right now that you're, um, what's keeping you, I mean, you're, how much are you teaching right now
Mark Zweig: and.
Well, I've got, I've got three classes coming up this next semester on, uh, all small enterprise management. But, you know, I'm part of a department. We, we were carved off the, it's a department called Strategy, entrepreneurship, and Venture Innovation.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: It was carved out of the management department.
That's where we used to be. Okay. So really when I started, you know, I was like the only undergrad teacher there. Entrepreneurship we had, um, John Johnson's always been instrumental in our program, and Carol Reeves, you know, they focused, um, she was in the grad school and he created the [00:45:00] sustainability consortium.
And John's been, has been amazing. He's been there longer than me. He may be the only guy that's been there longer than me now in, in our department. I, I, I can't think of anybody else. But in any case, um, we were carved off like probably four years ago and we got this department of 20 some odd people now.
Cameron Clark: Oh wow.
Mark Zweig: From nothing. Um, Walton College is just great. I, I cannot say enough good about it. We've been really fortunate to have such great deans. Mm-hmm. Um, from Dan Whirl, you know, who succeeded? Doyle Williams. Um, um, we had another guy for a couple years. He didn't last long. Then we got, um. Matt Waller, who's a great guy, you probably know.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Him or some of his kids. Mm-hmm. You know, Matt is like, he's just, he's inspirationally knows how to walk this line between dealing with the bureaucracy and then the private sector.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Better than anybody I know. [00:46:00] Okay. How he can do it. It's like an art. And then Brent Williams now, who Matt really mentored for over 20 years.
Brent is a brilliant guy too. He's a very, he's very, very good communicator and just honest, sincere guy. And, you know, we're, we've got, we just keep getting a better and better people Yeah. And offering more and more choices to our students and it just gets better.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Talk, talk about like what's maybe some student success stories or like, things you're, things you're proud of there or kind of what the status of these.
Students who are coming outta school now. Like what?
Mark Zweig: That's a big part of what motivates me, really, is seeing my students succeed over time. You know? Um, it's, it's kind of funny. Um, like one of my, my first earliest students ended up as my next door. I've had two of my students is next door neighbors. Um, Alex bla you probably know.
[00:47:00] Yeah. He's a developer.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Um, Alex
Mark Zweig: was my next door neighbor. Um, and then, um, uh, you know, um, Denton Kilpatrick, um. His family owns the, um, winery here. Yeah. Um, he was my next door neighbor. Denton's probably the best next door neighbor I ever had. Former student. I gave the guy a b in my class when he had a 89.6.
He's never let me forget about that, but I tell him it's 89.99, you know? Yeah. There's gotta be a cutoff somewhere. Yeah. I go, it really hurt you. Right. Um, you know, you're doing fine. Um, nobody, it just, it really didn't matter. But no, I've, you know, I like working with my students. I spend every week in meetings with students.
I've probably had four of 'em this week already. Just hired one of my current, uh, or one of my students from last semester, not this semester, he is gonna go to work, um, at Janice Motorcycles.
Cameron Clark: Wow. Yeah. Which
Mark Zweig: is a big [00:48:00] part of what I do now is, is working with that company. Mm-hmm. Um, didn't even get into that, but, um.
But yeah, that's been a, been a very, very, um, fun experience in a lot of ways. Um, independent motorcycle manufacturer based in Goshen, Indiana with a really unique product offering. It's a hard business though. The capital requirements of manufacturing are just very intensive. Yeah. Intense. And then supply chain interruptions this year really, really hurt us this year.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: Um, and you know, between the tariffs and then people just saying, we're just not gonna supply you with stuff, it's too much trouble. Yeah. Um, that, that, that, but that business is great. Just hired one of my former students though to be, um, to move to Goshen's, gonna be an accountant and cool. Uh, for us.
And he's this really bright guy. Okay. I know this guy. Yeah. Super bright, super entrepreneurial. Actually learned to ride a motorcycle on a Janus, which is super weird 'cause we've only [00:49:00] sold like 1800 of 'em ever.
Cameron Clark: And somehow he, yeah, he ended up on one of 'em. Yeah. His
Mark Zweig: grandpa had one. Wow. But no, I think, you know, I look at some of my students, um, the ones that are going in business on their own.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: I helped, uh, one of my students and his brother, um, get into the car business. Um. And I, I brought an opportunity to 'em and they jumped on it. Um, another one of my friends helped finance it.
Cameron Clark: Oh,
Mark Zweig: cool. Um, uh, one of my students, um, you know, bought the, uh, this, the s um, uncle Sam's Safari Outfitters. You probably know about that.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Um, it was great working with him and, and seeing him do that. And there's just, there's people, oh, I got another, one of my former students, a woman who's, who's got a company called Asset Panda, which is incredibly successful. She's, you know, a real functioning CEO of a growth tech based company. [00:50:00] Wow. Um, so there's just, you know, I think working with these people, staying in touch with them.
Helping 'em where I can, I'm, I, I'm working with two of 'em right now, helping 'em try to buy their first houses. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, that's the most rewarding thing for me, probably that I do. I mean, is that a lot of what keeps you going right now? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, seeing them and seeing them be successful Yeah.
And not have to sell their soul to the corporate devil. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, and not to say it's bad for everybody. I mean, there are some people that are cut out to work in corporate America. Yeah. But you, like
Cameron Clark: senior students create is like, is is the best, I imagine.
Mark Zweig: Yeah. Strike their own path and then suddenly they're employing other people and then you see 'em doing really well and you're like, wow, that's amazing.
Yeah. You know.
Cameron Clark: So what's, I mean, what's on the horizon for you? What's, as you're looking kind of what's next? I mean, is it just where, hey, this is, we [00:51:00] mean, you know, this. Just keep, just keep teaching and, and keep loving, loving Fayetteville here. Is there, that's
Mark Zweig: that's what it is. I mean, honestly, I, if I had like 10 times as much cash as I have right now, I wouldn't change a single thing.
Cameron Clark: Hmm.
Mark Zweig: I mean, I, I'm totally happy with, I mean, my, all my daughters live here. Five daughters. They all live in town. How can you beat that? That's pretty cool. Okay. Yeah. So I don't, you know, we don't have to travel on holidays. Everybody's doing well, you know, all of them are thriving. That's, that's fantastic.
You know, I got a house that's twice the size of what we need. Truthfully, we got nice vehicles. If we want to go out to eat every single night this month, we will. I mean, what more do I need? I don't need to go to Europe like five times a year. Yeah. You know, I just, I don't really have any desire to do anything other than what I do.
Yeah. I don't [00:52:00] wanna just sit around all day and watch TV or watch the news and get depressed. You know? I mean, it's not that I'm not informed, but I mean, let's face it, it's bad.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Most of the news, you know, so it's like if I get to, like, I get to have coffee with all these different people that I meet.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: Every single, I mean, yesterday I had one with a new guy just moving here from Cincinnati. He's in the real estate business. You know, the day before it was somebody else who's got, you know, it's like I meet all these interesting people. And you have control over my time. I'm healthy, reasonably, I've gotta change my diet because who doesn't?
Dude, for 67 years I ate like ribs three times a week and steak every single night and fries twice a day. I mean, there's s totally out control Yeah. Boxes of cookies at night. I mean, I should be a lot bigger than I am [00:53:00] if I didn't have the, the, you know, the constant burn of the energy, the walking around Yeah.
That it takes. But no, I'm trying to, you know, I need to be healthier. It's not good. You get to be my age, it's gonna catch up with you. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm, I am super happy. I, I got asked that the other night by, it was the last class in my new venture development class, and, and I told them, I said, look, you know.
I wanna make sure you guys got any, what you wanted out of this class. So tonight, ask me any question that you want on anything.
Cameron Clark: Hmm.
Mark Zweig: I don't want to get my review and say, well, you didn't cover A, B, or C. Yeah. And one of them said, well, you happy? And I said, yeah, actually I am. Okay. I thought that was an interesting question, though.
Good job for that student to just, to ask. Yeah. Because I think a lot of people, you know, there's so many, I mean, we talk about this all the time. Um, Eric Howton and I on our podcast, and a lot of misconceptions about [00:54:00] business. You know, people think they can have their, their business that they operate from afar.
That usually doesn't work out. You gotta be really, really mature and have really good second tier that's worked for you for a long time. Mm-hmm. You gotta be in it. Yeah. You, you gotta be in it. Right. And just the whole idea, you know, of. Balancing work and life. Uh, we say work life integration. Mm-hmm. It's like it's not balanced, not like now I'm at five 30 on Friday, I shut down and you will not hear from me until 8:00 AM Monday.
Yeah. That is totally unrealistic. Yeah. If you own a business,
Cameron Clark: it's not how you grow. It's not how people rely on you. It's like, sorry. Just doesn't work.
Mark Zweig: It just ain't gonna happen. Yeah. Okay. So you, I mean, so you better be equipped for that if you're gonna get married or, or, or have a serious relationship with somebody.
They need to understand that that's [00:55:00] part of the package. Yeah. It's part of your life. That's, that's, that's, yeah, that's the way it is and mm-hmm. You know, there's good things that come from having your own business. You know, you don't have to miss your kids' birthdays most of the time, or Yeah. Things, no, nobody's get, you know, no boss is gonna demand you come in on Saturday when you planned on going golf.
You may have to go in on Saturday.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. But it's because like you're, you're self motivated and you gotta go make it happen. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so do you, do you want to, do you wanna write anymore, write any more books? I mean, you've, you've written a bunch.
Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah. I've written a lot of books. Uh, you know, nobody reads anymore.
Um, unless it's like 30 seconds long. I mean, this attention span is, is so short. It's almost zero now. It is. It, it, it's just amazing. It, it, it, you know, you can sit there and, and, and just watch short videos all the time. Do nothing else. But, uh, no, my fantasy, and I guess, well, I'm doing two things right now.
One is, um, one of my older [00:56:00] daughters, um. Got me this thing for, I can't remember if it was Christmas or my birthday. It's called StoryWorth. They send you a question every single week.
Cameron Clark: Oh yeah, yeah. About your life. Yes. And you write
Mark Zweig: it. Okay. Yep. I think I've written 22 chapters in that so far. Wow. So I'm, I'm a little bit behind, but I mean, it is kind of interesting 'cause it forces you to dig into your past.
Some of the questions I think are interesting.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: And, and it sort of documents your, your life that, you know, I asked one of my younger kids if she wanted a 14-year-old, if she wanted to read any of that. She's like, no, I don't wanna read any of that. Uh, you know, but, uh, but no, my, my fantasy, and I've, and I've had an idea for a long time, and I, and I started on it, but I haven't made, I haven't devoted any time to it at all in some time, is to write a novel.
Cameron Clark: Okay. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Um, I like fiction and I like inspirational novels.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: And, you know, sort of the, along the [00:57:00] lines of the Horatio Alger stories, you know, where the, the person overcomes the obstacles to great success. Yeah. I, that's, that's my, my my, um, uh, basic plot line for that is about an engineer. And, um, he, he, you know, it starts out where he is packing up his office and he's in this big high rise.
He's at the top. He's, he's the boss. He's a CEO and you don't know if he's packing it up 'cause he just got fired because he quit, um, to do something else because he retired or what the story is. And then it flashes back to when he is 12 years old or younger. Mm-hmm. And it starts out with little stories about his life and it'll work all the way back up to that point.
That's where he is at right
Cameron Clark: then.
Mark Zweig: Yeah. Yeah. I like, that's the basic, basic device I'm using, but I gotta do it, you know, it, it's, it's like everything else I, um. I feel like a lot of [00:58:00] us are just so distracted that it's very hard to work on these longer term
Cameron Clark: projects. It's almost impossible not to be distracted right now.
It's like the people who are winning are, are not getting distracted. I know. I mean the That's what I mean. That's what, that's what I think. But anyways, your story's incredible. Yeah. Thanks. Couple, couple more questions I want to ask you kind of here. Sure. Here at the end, that sitting down talking with somebody and you know, why, why build a business in northwest Arkansas?
You know, on this podcast really trying to focus on northwest Arkansas business. Sure. What goes on here, if someone's thinking about coming to the area, if you have a student who's trying to start something, what do you tell them to that?
Mark Zweig: It's a great entrepreneurial area. There's lots of resources. There are a lot of people here who will help you.
Mm-hmm. Um. It's full of opportunity. I mean, I'd rather be in a place that's [00:59:00] growing that's on the upswing than one that's declining. Yeah. I just think it impacts everybody's sort of state of mind. You know, possibilities are getting better and better versus, God, there's nothing but bad news. I live in Flint, Michigan.
Everybody's moving out and our water's polluted.
Cameron Clark: You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, what you believe about yourself or your community probably becomes your reality. Yeah, it does. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Yes. You manifest it. And so you're in this place where everything's growing. You know, we're growing by 50,000 a year, whatever it is.
Everybody's sort of optimistic. It's like, yeah, there's bad stuff happening in the world, but not here. Okay, here's good. Alright. Um, that's a great place to be. Why not be part of something like that? Um, where you have a chance to be one of the movers and shakers. Yeah. It's a lot harder to establish yourself.
Let's face it in New York or LA or, you know what I mean?
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Or even Dallas. I mean,
Mark Zweig: or Dallas is just so big. Yeah. It's so big. You stand out here a little [01:00:00] faster and Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Come on, join the party over here. Help make it, help make it happen. I mean, I think if you really look, you know, some of the other things about Northwest Arkansas that I think are really unusual.
I do give the Northwest Arkansas a lot of credit. Uh, council. Yeah. Northwest Arkansas Council. What they doing? I think they've sort of, you know, I could be wrong, but my impression is that they have engineered the entire area in it, in its totality. Instead of each town sort of fighting with each other, they've created this scenario where each town has a unique identity.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: And a unique, a unique place in this overall metro area of. 600,000 or whatever we are now.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: You know, if you look at like Bentonville and then you look at like Rogers and you got downtown Rogers and Pinnacle and the Lake and all the arts in Bentonville. And then now we got [01:01:00] Springdale downtown, which, you know, 20 years ago, my God, it's
Cameron Clark: nothing,
Mark Zweig: nothing.
I mean, I could have bought, I had a friend of mine said we should go down there and buy whole blocks of properties for a hundred grand. Yeah. Because you'll, you know, I, I said we could do that, but it's gonna be 20 years for it's worth anything. Yeah. And I was right. It is worth a lot now, but I'm just saying it's like, it's got its new thing with all these restaurants and young people going down there.
Mm-hmm. And then Fayetteville's got the university and we've got, you know, um, this, this sort of older, um, you know, uh, independent thinking, um, group of people along with younger.
Cameron Clark: Yep.
Mark Zweig: Um, you know, so there's just all these areas have their, their sort of position in this, in this thing that's just getting better and better.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. But a consciousness, a consciousness about the whole, the collective Yes. The family or whatever you call it. The, about the region. Yes. Um, [01:02:00] in, at the same time
Mark Zweig: Yes. And great businesses here. I mean, let's face it, we got Fortune One.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Everybody that supports those companies, people don't realize it.
But if you came, like the guy I just had coffee with yesterday, his wife works for Procter and Gamble.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: They just moved here from Cincinnati. Yep. And you know, they don't send their bad people to Fayetteville. They send their best people.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. They're a
Mark Zweig: players, they're a players to northwest Arkansas to serve their biggest client.
Yeah. And you know, he was just like, he said to me though, he, I just can't tell he's so much nicer here than it was living in Cincinnati. He goes, I just can't believe it. It's everybody's nicer here. It. Everything's nicer. Everybody's nicer. People
Cameron Clark: come here not knowing what they're gonna get, and they get surprised and Oh, they always do.
They're like,
Mark Zweig: oh, you had no idea Arkansas was this nice, you know? Yeah. My dad hated Arkansas with a passion.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: He, you know, he's, he grew up there in, in [01:03:00] Missouri, and he had a uncle who was a pig farmer somewhere in northwest Arkansas. I can't tell you where. Yeah. But this guy, he was an oil man in Oklahoma, and then during the depression, lost everything.
He ends up a pig farmer living in a 300 square foot log cabin with a dirt floor. And my, his, my dad's mom sent him here in the summer to live with him, to live with him and help out. And he hated Arkansas because of that. And anyway, when I bought that house here, you know, we're gone 20 plus years ago, he came down here to visit.
He's like. This can't be. He goes, it's just too nice around here. Yeah. It's this ist Arkansas. He goes, he kept saying to me, show me something crappy. Okay, so I'm serious. My oldest brother was flying in from New Jersey mm-hmm. To XNA and we drive through Cave Springs to get there and what downtown Cave Springs looked like 20 years ago.
My [01:04:00] dad's like, oh, you guys, thank God. He goes, this is now, this is what Arkansas is supposed to be. Yeah, yeah. But no, it's just everybody says that to us. Mm-hmm. We bring clients down here, we bring people we're trying to hire down here, and they're all like, holy cow. I, I'm involved, like, when we recruit people in our department mm-hmm.
They, they let me take 'em around and show 'em the area now. Yeah. That's probably pretty fun. Yeah. It, it's fun and, and it, they're always impressed. Yeah. They're always so surprised. I had no idea. I mean, you're not all hillbillies with, you know, outhouses and, and, and bad teeth. I mean, no, we're not. No,
Cameron Clark: no.
That's great. I mean, we can go on this forever. Forever. The, uh, last question for you, um, is how do you define
Mark Zweig: success? Oh, that's easy. Spending your time the way you want with the people you wanna spend it with. That, that, the more you can say you do that, [01:05:00] that's success. Hmm. Yeah. I, I can't think of anything other than, I mean, that's, I mean, of course it's important to have your family be healthy and happy and
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: And all those things, but I mean, that's part of it, you know?
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: Um, but, but being able to spend your time the way you want with people you wanna be with, that's pretty special. Yeah, it is.
Cameron Clark: Well, mark, thanks a bunch for coming on with it. Usually Nick does this, but he is not here today, but usually kind of talk about, hey, what stood out on as far as, um, so I'm talk about like, what I really learned from this conversation being number one, persevere, no matter what season you're in, in your business.
Um, I'm gonna take that and just, and continue to keep that top of my head, my head with everything I'm, I'm doing. Um, and then number two, you've gotta be active in your business. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: You really do. There's,
Cameron Clark: there's no like, set it and forget it and see it in five years. It's like,
Mark Zweig: yeah. There's no passive investments.
There's no, that's my favorite in real estate. It's passive. No, it's not passive. [01:06:00] It's not anything close to passive. There's no businesses you're gonna start up and, and a year later run from afar.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. It
Mark Zweig: just ain't gonna happen, dude. Get in there, get in with it. Get in, do the work. Work alongside your people.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zweig: Deal with your clients or customers directly.
Cameron Clark: Experience the hard stuff. Yeah. Live in it. Be in it.
Mark Zweig: And it's rewarding though, you know, the, the, I just think people need to understand you'll never fail if you don't give up.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: And it's the, I hate that, that mantra about fail early, fail off and fail a lot.
Failure's, great. Learn from failure. We can do all those things and we got to if we fail. But I see a distinction between failing in business and experimentation. You can experiment. Yeah. Experiments will fail, but you're not failing as a business or as a person.
Cameron Clark: No. Does this work, Matt? Maybe not. Shut it down.
Try [01:07:00] this, does this work? Ah, yeah, this worked great. Exactly. Yeah.
Mark Zweig: But that gets confused by this pop culture and, and you know, out there of failure's. Great. So if I start a business and I fail, that's no problem. No. It's gonna be a big problem for you, dude. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Big problem. You'll ruin your credit, your reputation.
People get hurt. Yeah. Don't do
Cameron Clark: it. No. Well. This has been fa absolutely fantastic. Morgan, if people want to get to know you more, learn more about you, what's the, what's the best way to
Mark Zweig: connect with me on LinkedIn? I think I, I am very active on LinkedIn. It seems to me to be one of the best social media platforms.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Mark Zweig: At least I keep the politics and, and, and goof cat videos out of it, you know. Um, yeah. That's a good place. Um, tune in to our podcast, uh, www big talk about small business.com and, uh, I don't know. I don't know what else. Gimme a, that's call. Yeah.
Cameron Clark: That's great. Well, thanks Mark. [01:08:00] Appreciate it. Thanks, Cameron.
It, it's been an awesome, uh, awesome morning here. Well, what's been fun spending time with you. Thank you for listening to this episode of NWA Founders, where we sit down with founders, owners and builders driving growth here in northwest Arkansas. For recommendations are to connect with us, reach out at nwa, founders@gmail.com.
Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, then please consider leaving a rating, a review, and sending it to someone who you think would benefit from it. We'll see you in the next episode.