How John Keply Grew Solved Healthcare and Aspera Life Through Synergies of Holistic Self-care and Unwavering Perseverance

[00:00:00] I've seen the same things for years. I mean, I started in management consulting in 1980, so that's 45 years. Same problems over and over. Family, businesses, nepotism, husbands and wives who don't get along. Unclear roles for family members, inability to have good employees because they feel that family members will get ahead and they won't.

[00:00:23] That's one problem.

[00:00:24] Mark: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the How to Scale a Business Podcast. My name is Hector Santi Esteban, and our special guest today is Mr. Mark Zweig. He is a self-proclaimed old fart, but in his, spare time, he also runs, and is a multiple Inc 5,000, nominee, an author and also find time to teach students at the, business school, the Walton Business School.

[00:00:45] Mark: Uh,

[00:00:45] Mark: mark, thanks for hanging out with us today. Hey, it's my pleasure, Hector.

[00:00:49] Hector: I gotta imagine it be a hard question to ask, but I'll throw it to you. So when people ask Mark, what do you do?

[00:00:55] Mark: it's so multifaceted. I do a lot of different things. I generally, I would say I'm an entrepreneur and a teacher.

[00:01:03] Hector: it's, amazing that, you know, more and more people are waking up to. the benefits of, entrepreneurship and business. I remember growing up, you know, I grew up in the nineties and being like a businessman was not like at the top there. that wasn't one of the options, it was, well actually, I think about it. It was like sort of what like the losers did. Like, if you were a loser, you got into business, you know, and, and I'm sure when I told my mom coming home that I was gonna, you know, start my own business, she was like, oh God, we lost, you know, we. Squat. But you know, over the last couple of decades with the opportunities and the internet and all that sort of stuff, it's really become, the popular sort of thing.

[00:01:40] Hector: And, and more and more kids are wanting to do it and obviously, everybody seeing the possibilities. And so for you, was it always something that you thought you were going to do? were you, were you always sort of the person starting businesses or, or how did that come to be?

[00:01:54] Mark: I really was, I mean, I started as a little kid.

[00:01:57] Mark: I was buying and selling bikes on my mom and dad's street corner by eight or nine. Then I started working at the bike shop by 12 or 13. Made a lot of money. Worked for three different bike shop owners. of them had multiple stores. Then I got into. Buying and selling motorcycles. Buying and selling cars.

[00:02:16] Mark: Went off to school. At college, I was selling bikes outta my dorm room. I made a deal with the guy that owned the local junkyard to fix up certain wrecks and sell 'em on the student union board. You know, I had a million things when I was a, a senior, and then going through the MBA program in the late seventies at Southern Illinois University where I went to school.

[00:02:39] Mark: Myself and another guy, we had an Indian moped franchise and sold used motorcycles. It was all financed by a finance professor there. so yeah, I mean, I did a lot of different things. I was always the guy that had more money than my friends. I like that. I was a hustler. I was a worker.

[00:02:58] Mark: I had the money I needed to go to school when I graduated high school. Go on. I mean, yeah, it was a lot cheaper back then, no doubt.

[00:03:05] Hector: well, it seems like a lot of it is about like buying and selling things. and a lot of different things, or maybe it was all about bikes and motorcycles, but is there any commonalities or sort of threads that are woven through all of the business that you've been a part of?

[00:03:18] Mark: Yeah, I mean that was, those were my early years. I mean, when I got outta grad school, I went to work in management consulting and, you know, that was my, my field working for architecture and engineering firm clients. And, I ended up getting recruited to two of those companies, that were clients of mine, became an owner and one, and then when I was 30, I started my own business.

[00:03:41] Mark: consulting, publishing, training, media company. the company that is called YG Group today started it as Marks Wegen Associates in 88 and then, as WG White. so no the, common theme, and it's still in business today. In fact, it was on the in list last year. it's in its third ownership iteration at this point.

[00:04:03] Mark: so the common theme that runs through all of it is improvement. I like to buy things. I didn't just buy and sell. I bought redid and sold. did the same with real estate. I've had, over a hundred houses. We had a development business here. We were named developers of the year. I did a lot of houses in the historic districts of, Fayetteville and in the downtown area and surrounding area, and it was always the same story.

[00:04:29] Mark: It's, seeing something that you can improve and making it better and creating value. I like to buy businesses, I like to get involved with other companies. As an outside director, you know, it's the same thing there. How can we improve these? How can we make these businesses more valuable? And as a teacher, it's like that too in a way. You get these students who are raw materials, some of them have more potential than others, but how can you help them be the best they can be? What can you do that's going to make them more valuable? that's my theme. If there is a theme, I mean, it's just making things hopefully better than when I got there.

[00:05:07] Hector: Yeah, I remember, you know, my uncle was a, he flipped houses for a number of years and he still does it. But he always talked about, you know, the benefits or the value of sort of redoing the kitchen. He was like always about the kitchen or, or whatever. And it seems like there's, there's always a, an opportunity to improve and thus increase the value of something.

[00:05:27] Hector: Man, it's so true. It's

[00:05:29] Mark: small businesses. It's just, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. There's always ways to improve them. One of the things I have my students do is a consulting project where they work with a small business, somebody doing less than 10 million a year, the criteria privately held and they help them increase revenue, increase profitability, increase the value of the enterprise and reduce risk.

[00:05:54] Mark: And it's very wide ranging. And I tell you, Hector. The stuff that we see. I mean, just think about that. I've been doing that now for over 20 years and you know, I had 90 students this semester. Think of all the companies that I have seen the numbers on and the way they're run and thorough investigative reports into those businesses.

[00:06:17] Mark: And on the one hand you could say it's appalling how poorly the majority are run. On the other hand, you could say. Wow. What a great opportunities out there, you know, for anybody who wants to seize it.

[00:06:31] Hector: Are there any common mistakes that you're seeing and, to nuance the question, are they the same mistakes that people have been making, or have those mistakes sort of evolved and changed over the years?

[00:06:41] Mark: to answer the last question first, I've seen the same things for years. Okay. you know, I mean, I started in management consulting in 1980, so that's 45 years. same problems over and over. family businesses, nepotism, husbands and wives who don't get along. Unclear roles for family members, inability to have good employees because, they feel that, family members will get ahead and they won't.

[00:07:09] Mark: That's one problem. Marketing generally, no marketing whatsoever. I can't tell you the majority of small businesses, you talk to 'em, you ask 'em what are they doing marketing wise, and you'll get this line. We believe word of mouth marketing's the best marketing. So my response to that is, so you do nothing.

[00:07:27] Mark: so their marketing is horrible. their roles aren't defined. The owners are not open to. Change. their accounting is terrible. they're running personal stuff through the business, you know, they're not really committed to growth. I mean, one of the things that I think is an important distinction between an entrepreneurial business and a just a small business is the entrepreneurial venture is gonna build, uh, builds value that can be realized on exit.

[00:07:56] Mark: Small business is just all about what can I suck out of it now, what does it produce for me now to make a living? And that is a, major distinction. if you want to create value, you've got to be committed to growth. And a lot of small business owners, they're not.

[00:08:12] Hector: is that simply a perspective shift or are there tactical things that people can do to.

[00:08:17] Hector: I, I guess, create that value as opposed to extracting it?

[00:08:21] Mark: Oh yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do. I mean, it is a mind shift. There's no doubt about that. I mean, you've gotta believe it's possible. I had a client years ago that they were a client of our firm.

[00:08:33] Mark: It wasn't my personal client. It was, you know, our firm had worked for 'em. We had a big company, And so I get a request from the CEO to come and help them, give them some input on setting up a board of directors that has outsiders on it instead of just insiders. So I ask 'em for all their stuff and I get their financials, I get their business plan, and basically, you know, I get this,

[00:08:59] Mark: The numbers on the company, it's doing about $27 million a year. And the first thing it says on the business plan is we would rather be a $50 million company making a $10 million profit than we would be a hundred million dollars company making a $10 million profit. And I asked the guy, well, why do you say that?

[00:09:18] Mark: I'm just curious. And he said, well, you know, it means we're, we're more efficient, we're more profitable. We're able to get better fees or whatever. And at the time, businesses in this industry were trading for about 70% of revenue. and by the way, in this case, revenue was really a better number than multiples of EBIT or any of the other stuff.

[00:09:42] Mark: The, you know, finance jocks wanna throw around. If you looked at consistency, there was really less variability in multiples of revenue. It's one of the things Y group does is it tracks valuations of privately held firms in this industry. So they were trading for about 70% of revenue. So I asked the guy, I said, oh, you don't mind leaving like $35 million of value on the table.

[00:10:03] Mark: Then he's like, well, how's that? I go, the difference in 50 million and a hundred million is 50 and 70% of that's 35 million. That totally changed his perspective. Okay. The company today is doing over 400 million in revenue. They've had two major investments from private equity firms. I mean, the guy was a fantastic leader.

[00:10:28] Mark: He grew the company by 19 old in 11 years through a very aggressive plan and became fabulously wealthy in the process. Okay. It, it really was just a mind shift in that case. Yeah, there's a lot of things firms can do if they want to be more valuable. The first thing though, in my mind is embrace the idea.

[00:10:51] Mark: You've gotta grow. Your value is directly related to your revenue growth rate. Anybody can tell you anything they want. I don't even care what they say. Okay. I've seen tons of companies that made no money, but had high revenue growth rates that were incredibly valuable. Multiples of ebit, they're fine for.

[00:11:10] Mark: Stale old line companies and mature industries that are not growing. Okay, you wanna talk there? Okay, four or five times ebit, whatever. Great. When you start talking about entrepreneurial ventures, it's all about growth rate. And you better be keyed into that. And you know, the only way companies are gonna grow is spending money on marketing.

[00:11:30] Mark: My favorite one is we're gonna have a hockey stick growth trajectory, but we're gonna spend, A quarter of what the average firm in our industry spends on marketing. I mean, it's like, how logical is that?

[00:11:42] Hector: I think a lot of entrepreneurs are very illogical about their business.

[00:11:45] Hector:

[00:11:45] Mark: you know, you gotta invest in people and you gotta invest in technology and new, product development. I mean, those are the things that propel the growth.

[00:11:53] Hector: I think you, you were hinted at the answer to my next question, which is when you come in and you've had the privilege of advising on lots of companies sitting on the boards, lots of companies, are there sort of a, key order of operations or is there sort of a diagnostic that you like to take in order to make sure that all of the right boxes are being checked or all of the right systems are being ran?

[00:12:14] Mark: That's a good question. Yeah. I mean, early on in our. Management consulting business, we would get asked to help companies do their strategic plans. and typical at that time in the industry I was part of, there were lots of providers of that. They were tended to be one or two person or companies.

[00:12:33] Mark: Sometimes it was a group of people who marketed together. And then if you got the job, you got 80% of the fee and 20% went back to the overhead. But they weren't real companies. But in any case, they all have basically the same thing. They're gonna charge you three, four, $5,000 a day or whatever to moderate your business planning retreat.

[00:12:54] Mark: So they're not doing any homework. We came up with this thing we called the management audit. And in the management audit we looked at everything. We would ask them for all their financials, their policies, examples of their bills. All the management reports that they ran, all the pay rates, billing rates, contracts, marketing materials.

[00:13:15] Mark: And then we would do things like, interview all the owners face-to-face, go visit all offices, interview a wide range of employees, plus have some other diagnostic, you know, like online surveys and things of that sort. did the same thing with clients. Get their client lists, interview their current clients, interview their past clients, interview people that they want to have as clients about the company, and then put all that into a giant report where we benchmark their financial performance against the industry.

[00:13:47] Mark: You've got tons and tons of quotes from people, and then you identify all the issues that they face, and that sort of sets the stage. Then it's hard for people to. Deny the reality of their situation. Okay? 10 people over here said, Joe is a shitty boss. Okay? And he treats him like crap. Joe's probably a shitty boss.

[00:14:11] Mark: Yeah. You wanna tell me how great Joe is? Okay. No. Alright. I mean, I'm just saying here's the performance of the groups. Here's how it stacks up compared to the industry norms. You know, you guys think you're so wildly profitable, but in reality. You know, your key managers make are paid less than everybody else, and that's why you look like you're more profitable.

[00:14:32] Mark: We adjust your salaries to where they should be for a firmer size. Actually, you make less money than the rest of the people in this business. definitely, there's a diagnostic that you can use. and there's so many other things you can do today. You know, there's online reviews of businesses.

[00:14:49] Mark: Glassdoor and a million other places you can gather information. but yeah, I do. What seems though, it's like

[00:14:54] Hector: you're getting both qualitative and quantitative data. Yes. Because you're getting the story and the numbers and I think when you add both of them, it seems like you're able to get a more holistic,

[00:15:04] Mark: that is it.

[00:15:05] Mark: Neither one of 'em tells the whole story. I mean, you're absolutely right on with that. You know, and I think if you look at a lot of small businesses too. The financials are so jacked up. I mean, I tell my students, I don't care what you're looking at. It's probably not the reality. I mean, there's so many ways they can be distorted.

[00:15:24] Mark: I hear it all the time. It's like, I got a $2 million business. I made a 30% profit last year. Okay, so you made six, 600,000. What'd you pay yourself? Nothing. No, you didn't really make a $600,000 profit. You probably should have paid yourself 200. Now you made a $400,000 profit, not six. and that would be a simple example.

[00:15:45] Mark: I mean, a lot of the times there's so much other stuff. I'm paying my mom, who's doesn't ever show up to work and my kids are on the payroll and I'm buying my Razorback season tickets through the company and I got an airplane that I've never once used for work, but I charge it off to the business. or I've got the, the business pays rent to me and I've got own the building in a separate corporation, and I overcharge the business rent such that it doesn't pay any taxes.

[00:16:14] Mark: You know, and it jacks up the value of my building because I've got this lease on it for myself at a higher rate than it's really worth. And all commercial properties are valued based on the income they generate. I mean, you gotta really dig into this stuff. Okay. to see what's there. So yeah, the numbers alone, do not tell the story.

[00:16:35] Mark: 'cause they're usually wrong.

[00:16:36] Hector: that's for sure. and I, I'm speaking for some experience and, and, part of the problem was I was trying to do it all of my, my own as opposed to having someone who, who actually knew what they're doing coming and, professionally, when we get back from break.

[00:16:47] Hector: Mark, I'm curious, we've talked a lot about sort of timeless strategies, if you will, that mm-hmm. One of my. The things that I've been on is that you could listen to this show the first half of our show in 2025 or 2035 or 2045, and it'd be totally applicable when we get back from break. I wanna hear about some of the, more timely adjustments that you find businesses are having to make because of the economy or technology or policies or whatever it is, because I'm sure you're having to do some of that too.

[00:17:13] Hector: And so we're gonna get into that, right after this quick break.

[00:17:16] Hector: Hey, y'all, today's episode is brought to you by Amplify Media, and we are a podcast and content production. Well, we'd actually like to think of ourselves as like the fractional media part. Chances are if you're listening to this, you probably have a product, a passion, a mission, a message, some sort of service you're trying to get out to the world, but you might not have the time, the team or the tech skills to be able to do it.

[00:17:32] Hector: If that's the case, we can help go to amplify media.com. That's A-M-P-L-A-F-Y media.com. Also check the show note for the link. And with that, let's get back to Mark. Mark. This has become one of my favorite questions recently, and that is what are the, timely adjustments that people are having to make, whether it comes to technology and AI or policies and tariffs or the economy, all these sorts of things.

[00:17:53] Hector: Yeah. I think that, being in business is about being nimble and making adjustments. Are there themes or are there commonalities that you see, a lot of the successful businesses needing to make right now?

[00:18:05] Mark: I mean, I can only tell you what I have seen, and I by no means is that representative of all industries or business types.

[00:18:13] Mark: So I mean, you can appreciate that. But yeah, I mean, there's some simple things like, Having the right keywords on your website to maximize your, Google search numbers or whatever. I mean, today you've gotta do whatever you have to do so AI can find you. I mean, that's, you brought up ai, that's definitely something that is a concern and a lot of people are going to AI now instead of the internet to find whatever it is that they need help with.

[00:18:44] Mark: So that's one thing, but yeah, I mean, you talk about tariffs. I'm in the motorcycle manufacturing business. I'm a partner in a firm based in Indiana, Janis Motorcycles, where we make a very, highly customizable, direct to consumer, small displacement, super cool motorcycles. And we have been absolutely hammered by these tariffs.

[00:19:08] Mark: 2025 was a terrible year. not just the tariffs, raising costs beyond anything that you can make money on in certain cases, because, you know, you can't just pass all that on to the consumer. the other element of it is just suppliers just pulling out of the market saying, it's just not worth supplying you guys anymore.

[00:19:30] Mark: You're too unpredictable. You're. you're too volatile. It's just not, worth our trouble. you know, in that case, I mean, we are actively scrambling to find suppliers from countries that, where the tariffs are lower. You know, for example, our engines, we would be much better off if we can switch, from mainland China to Taiwan or, one of the engines that we need.

[00:19:54] Mark: But even to do that is extremely difficult because it all has to go back through the EPA, even if it's essentially the same thing. EPA testing and the cost of that and the time that takes doesn't make it possible. So yeah, supply, big deal. Brought more stuff in-house, more vertical integration, than, you know, instead of buying parts, it, makes sense too.

[00:20:17] Mark: Make things in the us, if we can make 'em ourselves. so that's been some, some retooling. I think the other thing, when you start talking about timeliness out there today, Hector, there's just such a great opportunity right now where the baby boomers are getting out of their small meat and potatoes businesses and.

[00:20:39] Mark: You can buy those at very affordable prices. And if you're good at turning things around and good at consolidating, man, the opportunity's never been better. you got all these boomers out there and Gen Xers that have companies that need to exit, want to exit and have no real options for doing so. So.

[00:21:01] Mark: I'm a really big believer in buying companies and fixing them, as opposed to cold starts. And, you know, even like I, you mentioned, I mean, I teach at the Walton College of Business and I'm in a department of 20 some odd people now called strategy entrepreneurship and venture Innovation. And it's a great group of people and you know.

[00:21:25] Mark: But if you look at our curriculum, the majority of it is all around startups and nobody talks about buying existing companies, which to me is a lot lower risk. it's got a history, it's got employees, it's got clients or customers, it's got suppliers, it's got a location, I think that's, where such a great opportunity exists today.

[00:21:49] Mark: Not just for people who want to get into business on their own, but also companies that want to grow to pick up these other businesses. And you know, the other thing is I think there's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about the fact that many of these businesses, the owners will finance 'em to you because they have no other choice.

[00:22:08] Mark: And so I always tell my students and anybody else who wants to listen. I don't care how much money you have, don't use your money. If you're gonna buy another business, you use the least amount of it possible. You want the owner to finance it to you because then they're gonna be bound to help you so they can get paid.

[00:22:27] Mark: You know, that's a really big deal.

[00:22:29] Hector: it really is interesting. One of my, I'd call her a friend. She's probably, you know, think less so, Cody Sanchez is someone who's really, popularized this sort of main street over Wall Street kind of idea. Mm-hmm. And that's exactly that, that there is, I struggle with it 'cause I'm, I'm sort of this innovative, you know, crazy person that wants to do my own thing.

[00:22:47] Hector: But, but for someone who just wants the easier route, Starting with something that is already built and established seems to be way, way faster of a, of a route to success.

[00:22:57] Mark: No, it is. I mean, sure. There's the, the benefits of doing what you're doing is you start with a clean sheet of paper and you don't inherit any problems or reputational problems or.

[00:23:07] Mark: Problem employees or anything, you know? there is an attraction to that too, undoubtedly, and benefits to that. But you know, I think the other thing, if you talk about what's different today than let's say 20 or 30 years ago, maybe not 10, but 20 or 30, yes. Is the fact that we are all potentially available 24 hours a day.

[00:23:30] Mark: You can either embrace that and go, you know what? I'm answering my fricking emails at 11 o'clock tonight and I'm gonna be texting people and sending orders out at 2:00 AM if I have to. Or you can say no, I believe in, work life balance, and I shut down Friday at five o'clock, and I pick up the phone at eight 30 on Monday morning or whatever.

[00:23:53] Mark: Good luck in today's world. Everybody wants everything now. Okay. It's all about speed, speed, speed. The whoever's the fastest to respond, the fastest to act. I was buying a new trailer hitch a couple years ago for my wife's Audi she had at the time, and you know, I contact two companies. I had a question about whether it would work on her specific car or not.

[00:24:19] Mark: One of 'em responded to me in about five minutes. The other one took about three hours. I bought the pitch from the guys who responded in five minutes, you know, by the time the other guys came along, I'm like, Hey, sorry, too late guys. You just missed out on a $800 sale or whatever it was. it's all about speed and responsiveness, and anybody can do it if they want or they can fight that, but good luck if you do.

[00:24:46] Hector: that's great advice. I have two questions left for you, mark. Sure. My first is if people wanna get, more or just find out about you, get more connected, follow up, things like that, where's the best place for people to go?

[00:24:57] Mark: Probably just go to LinkedIn, connect with me there. Mark's why Z-W-E-I-G and

[00:25:02] Mark: You can always send me a LinkedIn message. you can email me if you want as well. M-Z-W-E-I-G at zweig Group ZW ei, G-G-R-O-U p.com.

[00:25:12] Hector: And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, you have your own show as well that people can tune into.

[00:25:17] Mark: Yes. myself and my partner Eric Howerton, who's a very, very successful entrepreneur in, in many different areas, we have a show called.

[00:25:27] Mark: Big talk about small business, so www dot big talk about small business.com. I think we're on our hundred and 20th episode or thereabouts on that, Hector, and we, congratulations. Talk about all this stuff

[00:25:42] Hector: that is, no small feat there. and a achievement of my own heart, for sure. my last question, mark, in your opinion, what is the secret to scaling a business?

[00:25:52] Mark: Marketing? it really is. I, you know, I can say this to people, they just don't believe that marketing actually works. you know, it's wide group, it's 37 going on, 38 years old. They don't make any sales calls. We never made any sales calls on anybody. We positioned the firm, the phone rings. originally we did it with direct mail.

[00:26:13] Mark: We spent 30% more annually on direct mail. Our business grew by 30% a year for 13 years in a row. I mean, I don't know what else to say. I'm a big, big believer in marketing. I think it takes constant experimentation. It's not just about the money, but it is in part about the money. Okay. just like your business, you do, podcasts and, probably other, types of media for your clients.

[00:26:39] Mark: Okay? They can either say, that's a cost I'm gonna spend money on because it's an investment in the company. It's an off balance sheet investment. We build up these assets, we get that out there in the media, the channels and or you can say, no, I don't wanna spend that. I'm not gonna spend X dollars to make X times 10.

[00:27:01] Mark: Why would I want to do that? I just think scaling as much as anything else. I mean, yes, you have to want to do it, but then the next thing is you gotta take resources and devote 'em to things, especially marketing, which means less consumption for you as the small business owner.

[00:27:19] Mark: Okay, because you're, you're throwing gas on this fire. and it, means you can't take all the money out of the business, but commit to growth, spend money on marketing, and then team building key people that are gonna be difference makers. That's the big deal.