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