Big Talk About Small Business

How to Lead When Everything is Falling Apart (Lessons from a Lt. Colonel)

• Big Talk About Small Business • Season 1 • Episode 125

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Cities don’t become great by accident, they get there when people from every corner of the built environment share a clear purpose and a practical playbook. We sit down with Wes Craiglow, executive director of ULI Northwest Arkansas and founder of Skyline AMC, to unpack how a neutral convener can transform regional momentum into measurable outcomes. Wes shares the story of launching ULI NWA just six years ago and scaling the three-day Place Summit to 400+ attendees by breaking silos and putting developers, engineers, architects, planners, and regulators in the same room with real problems to solve.

Wes reveals the operating system behind that growth: mission-first leadership, written intent, and decentralized control. Drawing on a 25-year Army career, he maps command principles: purpose, end state, and key tasks, directly onto business. The result is a team that acts fast in ambiguity because they know why they’re acting and what success looks like. We dive into practical tactics: tracking time to balance working in the business and on the business, pricing to create margin for improvement, and fixing processes instead of blaming people. Reps and sets matter, he says, but only with good form, systems before repetition, so practice makes permanent in the right direction.

This conversation is a field guide for association leaders, real estate pros, city planners, and entrepreneurs who want to scale without losing their soul. If you care about quality of place, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and building teams that can “lift heavier” missions over time, you’ll leave with a sharper lens and a clearer plan. Tune in, take notes, and then apply one idea this week, track your time, write your intent, or push a decision down with top cover, and watch your momentum build.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague who loves cities and systems, and leave a quick review to help more people find it.

Subscribe and tune in for new episodes of Big Talk About Small Business with Mark Zweig and Eric Howerton. Each week we focus on practical insights and real-world strategies to grow your business!

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Opening And Northwest Arkansas Pride

SPEAKER_02

Proud story of growth. And I want to give credit where it's due. This region cares. Okay. I think Northwest Arkansas is distinctive. We are unique, Mark, and you might be able to speak to this as well as I do. Um, I don't know that I've ever been anywhere where regionalism and a spirit of collaboration is as alive every day as it is here in Northwest Arkansas.

SPEAKER_03

This is a podcast about Wes Craigloe. But before we introduce Wes, you know, it's been another episode, or it is another episode of Big Talk about small business.

SPEAKER_04

You got to see it, Wes. I love it. Put that in your brain. Put that in your brain and let it sit there a long time.

What ULI Is And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_03

Don't let it sit too long that it festers, but long enough. Long enough that it ages properly, ripens delightfully. Don't let it fermenting. No, that's too long when it ferments. So, no, we've got Wes Craiglow here in the studio today. And um Wes and I only became acquainted with each other probably in the last, I don't know, six months or so, really. It's about right. And um, and it was through um the Urban Land Institute. Wes has a business and association management company, and ULI, Urban Land Institute, is one of his clients. What so start with what is Urban Land Institute now?

SPEAKER_02

So ULI is a 90-year-old nonprofit. We are a member association and a C3, a pure uh nonprofit dedicated to the public good, uh, headquartered out of DC, but we have over 50 chapters at ULI. We call them district councils. We they're spread all over the Americas region, serving a lot of the major metros and growing, thriving metros in the U.S., plus additional offices in Australia, Asia, and Europe. Wow. Uh simply put, the ULI mission exists to serve the professionals of every built environment discipline you can think of: public sector, private sector, academia, and nonprofiteers, but anyone who's in the business of helping cities grow in a way that achieves their fullest potential, ULI is here to empower them with research and professional networking opportunities and a lot of education. And along the way, we really try to push the envelope and help metros and cities like Northwest Arkansas grow in a way that, again, achieves our fullest potential. We we believe fundamentally that quality of place informs quality of life.

SPEAKER_04

So is it I mean, is it helpful for economic development, uh helpful for sustainability practices, probably that type of stuff as well?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's all that. But you know, ULI, I mean, I could never say it as beautifully as Wes did. That was gorgeous, actually. But um, no, it's I mean, the developers come together there with the contractors, the engineers, and the regulators.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

And it's a really good organ. It's always had a really good reputation of being a place that's got solid programming. And they're not wasting people's time.

SPEAKER_04

It's kind of like the neutral zone for everybody to get everybody on the same side.

SPEAKER_02

Or if we say we are an un an unbiased convener, got it. I think there's a lot of ways uh to help make a city great through how they consume and build atop their landscape. Uh, and the reality is that every city is going to choose a different pathway for themselves, and different metros need different things at different moments in time. And it's not ULI's business to advance a particular agenda.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But it is ULI's business to help bring leaders and uh and decision makers together around um important information and uh learn from one another and learn from what's going on in other metros so that they can head back to the office and make decisions that are in the best interest of ours, whether they're in the private sector, public sector, whether they're teaching in academia or leading other nonprofits like ours involved.

Neutral Ground For The Built Environment

SPEAKER_03

So it is. And the thing that impressed me about this guy is ULI did not have a chapter here six years ago. Oh, really? So Wes has taken this thing from zero to uh unbelievable. I mean, you had over 400 people at your event at the at the Place Summit. That's our annual conference. At the annual conference for NWA. In six years, they got 400 people to come out for a how many day. It's a three day.

SPEAKER_02

It's it's Arkansas's only multi-day multidisciplinary real estate conference. So so a lot of a lot of trade associations exist. I mean virtually every industry has a trade association. And a lot of those trade associations will do an annual conference, but it's so often discipline specific, yeah, uh, that they you'll find yourself in a room full of other architects.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, full of other big things.

SPEAKER_02

AI kind of all talk about full of other city planners that you're talking, and that's important, right? You want to go deep within your particular discipline and connect with other um folks in that same trade. Those are important. ULI is where you come up out of that discipline, Foxhole, out of that silo, and connect with the rest of the world of real estate. And so our three-day play summit conference that we host each November here in Northwest Arkansas is our defining moment for doing just that. And I'm and we and it's only four years old out of the six that we've been operating in northwest Arkansas. This was just our um our uh our fourth annual play summit. And so to see it go from a hundred and something people to now over 400 and all of the other programs that we've developed and advanced, and the staff that we've grown in the over dozen governing committees with many dozens of professionals from the real estate world advancing the mission through those through those committees. We serve the big cities and the small and every every possible trade and industry discipline you can think of. It's a proud, proud story of growth. And I I want to give credit where it's due. This region cares. Okay. I think Northwest Arkansas is is distinctive. We are unique, Mark, and you might be able to speak to this as well as I do. Um, I don't know that I've ever been anywhere where regionalism and a spirit of collaboration is as alive every day as it is here in Northwest Arkansas. There are reasons to serve your own backyard, whatever that might mean to you, but everybody seems to have a spirit of wanting to come up and out and acknowledge that what's best for everyone is best for them, and what's best for them benefits us all as a region. That rising tide lifts all boats. I love that spirit, and I think the growth of ULI corresponds to that spirit of regionalism. There was a lot of demand, latent demand, and we just happened to arrive at the right moment.

Launching And Scaling ULI In NWA

SPEAKER_04

I mean, Cameron Clark was mentioning that in our last one of our last episodes, just about that everybody on the same page, I mean, wanting to do good things. Sure.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, a lot of it is like the Northwest Arkansas Council and engineering of the whole area. But, you know, the uh we can theorize or hypothesize on why that's the case. I mean, this area has got a lot of people that kind of came together from other places. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

That's right.

SPEAKER_03

And, you know, it doesn't have an old guard that's fighting change. That's right. And so there's a lot of, you know, and we've got some great benefactors like the Waltons. Yeah. Right. I mean, that put money into the area to make it great. Yeah. Oh, yeah, 100% of it. But my, I guess going back to what I was saying about West, though, that impressed the hell out of me that he's been able to grow that like that. Right. And I said, holy cow, Wes should be doing like this Y group conference. Yeah, I was thinking about what I was doing. The answer is I gotta swear to my son. How that's how what is your secret to marketing these things? How so you you have ULI and you have other association clients? Correct. So, what's your formula? What is it you're doing for these clients of yours to help them be successful in their missions?

Place Summit And Cross-Discipline Value

SPEAKER_02

I think a lot about this, Mark. I appreciate that question because I think it is central to who we are, uh, how we how we serve, how we grow, and ultimately how we as a staff and a team are fulfilled. We wake up every day and want to keep doing this work. Uh, and it's really it's centered around our belief as a staff team, our belief that better cities are a clear path to a better world. So I come from a city planning background, right? Uh, and a military background, which we may talk about shortly and what that means to grow in the company. But but my city planning background has led me to believe that the the better cities are are very important. Yeah, they are place informs quality of life and how we build our landscapes matters. Um, I mean, cities are where we will work, it's where we will call home, it's where we'll raise families, it's where we'll build lasting relationships, it's where we entertain, it's where we find security and peace and opportunity and war. Uh it defines in many ways where we choose to call home in the city, region, state. It defines in many ways how we identify ourselves. I just think we are tied to the environment in a big way. And so how we build that environment matters. Well, I've over time began to build a team of like-minded individuals. So we have a small-scale developer on our team. We now have two architects on the team that are helping us advance the mission of our clients. Uh, and so as a team, we we one of our core values is client stewardship. We believe that if if we help our clients' mission be successful as if it were our own, then we make the world a little bit a better place through how we build our cities. And because we all believe in this work as built environment professionals uh in our past, we get fulfillment out of that. And that makes you want to wait. When you put that together, and I don't mean to make it sound um too magical, uh, it's it's fundamentally work and systems and processes, but it does. It makes me, and I think for a lot of my team, makes us want to wake up every day and get back to work and solve complex puzzles because the work that we do doesn't just matter to our city or to our client, it matters to us. And you're talking about ULI and this. I'm talking about the team. So my staff is we are my company is Skyline Management, Skyline AMC Association Management Company.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And our role is to help member association, mostly nonprofits, um, but but member associations who work uh on behalf of their members in helping shape cities somewhere in one of those trades or disciplines of the built environment. We help our members achieve their mission. And ULI is our biggest client. It was our first client. We can talk more about that. But ultimately, the team that delivers that is they work for me in schooline management. And again, I choose my staff members, I choose my employees very intentionally based on uh their commitment and their belief that better cities improve the lives of the people that call them home.

SPEAKER_04

What I'm enjoying about that statement is like we've talked about it quite a bit. Like if you're an entrepreneur wanting to start a business, like you really need to have more of a core vision purpose behind what you're doing. Because you didn't say, hey, let's make money and let's make a certain amount of profits. You know, I think all those things are important to track and look at. Right. But it's not what motivates you to start it. Trevor Burrus, Jr. But to but to have a customer-centric organization and culture, right? That where your people walk wake up and they know why what they're doing, but really importantly why they're doing it. That why to me is such a big deal. Starts with why. It really does. And having someone should write a book called that. Simon Sadak, maybe?

SPEAKER_02

I don't know.

SPEAKER_04

Start with why, right? Yeah. But it's very true. I mean, like it's but you know, you that's where the energy, you know, I heard this not too long ago. I've always heard like, you know, we've always heard time's more valuable than money. But then I heard from Napoleon Hill something that's more valuable than time. And he was a big time valued person. He's like, it's the energy of your time that's even more valuable than your time. It's true.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

What energy are you bringing with the time that you have? And that's where the tie to the mission comes in, right? Yes, it is. Yes. If you could instill that in a company culture, I mean, that's you're starting, you are starting to create the magic behind what your business is doing. Thanks.

Regionalism And Collaboration In Practice

SPEAKER_02

I I'll accept the word magic. Again, I'm I'm a systems and processes kind of guy. And I think culture is grown over time by getting those by by by describing the why. We start with that purpose. Um, why we it's it's it's a it's a common purpose. It's the first of our six fundamentals at Skyline, establishing a common purpose. We are here because we believe in this thing that cities, that better cities uh create better qualities of life. And then if we just use that as our North Star, all the systems and processes create opportunity, the built around that, create opportunities for reps and sets. And through that reps and sets, through mutual success and cohesive teams and common purpose, um, as we get through those reps and sets, the culture follows. Now, you might just put that word magic on the culture of a place and how do you achieve it? It is not magic, right? It is having a North Star, building systems and processes, getting reps and sets, and trusting that the culture will come.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, because it's not incidental, right? Or passive. Like you so to help help the listeners understand how do you activate that? Like, I mean, is the are you talking about writing down values and your purpose and then you're making that global within the company, you're reviewing it with the team, you're setting targets, all those things. You're doing that work to make sure everybody knows where that North Star is.

SPEAKER_02

100%. So we have a mission, vision, value statement at Skyline, and it corresponds to many of the same things we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_04

And it and it wasn't one that you put together for a pitch deck for an investor presentation. This is from its core, right?

SPEAKER_02

We don't pursue debt. We don't do any of the clients come to us, they say, we see what you're doing for our our sister member association down the road in this particular trade. How can you help us solve our challenges and get out of this chaos? And I describe it this way, but we don't pursue clients that come to us.

SPEAKER_04

Well, the thing is like my point, like we talk about this a lot too, is like the the idea of being an entrepreneur and going out and raising capital. Well, these folks that are doing that for that mission to raise capital will slap together a vision, mission.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and it's bullshit. Let's be honest. Exactly. There really is.

SPEAKER_04

There's no heart.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, there's not the serious uh commitment to it. So yeah, and I think that describes 90% of companies. Yeah. You want to talk about their mission, vision, values? I mean, I've been, I can't tell you how many times I've been in situations where the company president doesn't even know what their freaking mission, vision, and values are. It's like I got to call somebody back at the on the on the marketing deal. Yeah. I mean, doesn't that say something?

Marketing Associations Through Mission

SPEAKER_02

Well, again, I mean, I when when you and I first started to spend time together, I you you asked me some of these similar questions, Mark. And I I wouldn't know how to do any of this without my military career. We definitely have a a process uh that that writes orders. Yeah. Like we codify it. It is in doctrine and it is in a written order. And at the top line, uh near the top line is what we in the military call the commander's intent. And that is a the purpose why we're doing this. It's a purpose statement. It is the end state. So where is the goal line and how do we measure success? And if if the boss has a handful of very important things, key tasks, are there certain things that are critically important that are essential for the boss to do, to get done? A lot of other things, in some cases, many hundreds or thousands, a volume of work will get done. But hey, these view got to be done. So that that purpose, end state, and those key tasks are essential. And then you have that mission statement. Why, you know, again, why are we doing this? The vision statement of where are we going, and then those core values, if these are the things that we filter every decision through. If they don't achieve, if if whatever course of action we're we're taking, whatever path we're about to embark upon, if we can't filter them through these core values and validate this course of action as suitable, feasible, and acceptable through those, through those value statements, well, then we're probably heading down the wrong path. And we're going to have a little bit of mission creep and probably not perform our best. And therefore, we're not serving the needs of the client and achieving our fullest potential. And so, so that's how we evaluate right path, wrong path. And again, reps and sets, and you build a culture around it. And then and then the other key fundamental we could talk about is decentralizing control. I just give power as far down our team as I possibly can. I want to empower right down to the junior o staff member the most amount of decision-making authority possible and full resources and top cover because you know, responsibility can go down, accountability comes up. Um, I give top cover on risk assessment, but we have a process for that. Shared purpose, cohesive teams, common uh share uh common trust. Um uh and we have uh prudent risk assessment uh acceptance and discipline initiative. And again, I push control as far down the chain of command as I can and trust them to make decisions in a vacuum. And that amount of empowerment, knowing that they're backed by the boss who will be accountable. Um I'll I'll answer the mail if bad news comes. They've got the top cover they need to go out and serve the clients with the resources they have, with the clear guidance that they've been provided and make decisions even when no one's around. And that further inculcates a culture of excellence.

SPEAKER_04

What is your I mean, I'm geeking out on this a little bit.

SPEAKER_03

I know. It's like I want to hire a management consultant.

SPEAKER_04

I just want to hire them a company. I just have a lot of company. I mean, who's gonna do this stuff, right? 100%. Like what where do you find the time as? So my struggle hearsling, right, and in that accountability seed, like you're talking about. Where do you find the time? How do you prioritize the time? Because this isn't a I brought it down once, pass around the company, now we're all working. This is you have to be on this, right? And how often are you on it? How do you prior, like how do you do you lock in certain times of the week or days to work on this and making sure you're clear? Because you have to be really clear about every word that's in those statements. Correct. Okay.

Skyline AMC: Team, Values, And Clients

SPEAKER_02

Uh and so the answer is yes. Oh, I I want to start by giving you all credit. You've taught me a phrase that, again, I didn't go to business school. No one taught me how to run a business. Um, so I just gather it from the ether. I learned something for you all that about splitting time between working in the business and working on the business. I'm obligated to work in the business. I serve as the executive director of ULI Northwest Arkansas, and it gets the vast majority of my time. Uh, and I I do that on purpose, right? I'm in the business. I'm delivering the scope of work to this business. You're renovating, yeah, you're you're creating revenue. That's exactly right. But I also need to make time as you all have coached me on this podcast to make time to work on the business. And that's hard. Yeah. Be clear. It's really hard. That's hard. When your sleeves are rolled up and you're in the trenches and you're doing the work side by side with your team, with the client and their clients, uh, it's hard sometimes to come out. So, what we've begun doing this year, Eric, is we have a new tool, a new software tool that allows us to track hours more effectively than ever. And that allows us to see um across the entire staff team who is providing time for which client at what share. And it's important for leaders and managers to see that. It's important to for the client to know that they're getting what they pay for if it's a per hour rate or something similar, not always. But but nevertheless, it's important for me as the boss, especially to look at my own time and diagnose how much time am I giving to my company.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And uh, and that has allowed me to ensure that I'm carving out ample time to work on the business. And I think it's made us more effective than ever. So that's a simple one, first distinguishing there is an on-the-business and in-the-business paradigm, and then having a tool, the ability to see how much time you're giving to each. And then it's as simple as okay, if I'm no, I'm gonna carve out this much time in a given week or a given month to work on the company uh and improving all of our systems and processes. Um, then what are my priorities at work once I'm in there working on the company? And that's a myriad of things because that's never ending for a business owner.

SPEAKER_03

It's always something we've been working with. As I quote Eric all the time, business is nothing but problems. I quoted you just last night. Thanks, man. Always. Thanks, buddy.

SPEAKER_02

I love it. It's a it's a perpetual state of puzzle. I say it's solving puzzles. I get to wake up every day and solve complex puzzles with unknown partners and uh and limited resources and unknown environments. And uh I love it. I love I I I use a metaphor, use metaphors all the time with my team, but I say some days it feels like I'm crossing a stream barefoot and blindfolded. If you can follow the metaphor, you your your foot placement comes slowly because some rocks are sharp, some are slick, and you're looking for that stable footing. You want to avoid the deep pools where it gets dark and cold, but you know that barefoot and blindfolded, you can slowly cross that stream. You know, somewhere out there is the other side, it's the destination.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But I have to manage it slowly, feeling my way through this thing. Yeah, as long as I stay on this particular course, I'm gonna get across it, but I'm gonna have to figure it out step by step as I go. That's right. And I just trust, I build systems and processes and I just trust them. And I wake up every day and check off my priorities of work and take another step forward.

SPEAKER_04

What do you think is the adequate amount of time to work on the business like this?

SPEAKER_02

To I first, I don't know the answer to that. If you can answer that for me, that's why I'm asking all the years. But I think it's it's I've noticed already, Eric, that it's different at different moments in time. There's there's there's moments where I can give a lot of time to working on the company and the team. And there's moments where there's just no time, and we've got to trust that that we've got a volume of work in the near term we've got to get through to achieve outcomes for our client. And there will be something on the other side that lets us catch our breath. Uh, I don't know if that there's ever that there is ever. Way to answer a percentage share.

Purpose Before Profit And Culture

SPEAKER_03

I I yeah, I think that's you're right. But I do think that where a lot of small business owners fail, especially ones that are providing professional services, which is basically what you're talking about is, right? There's just like a million different services. Whether it's software development, lawyers, architects, whatever, right? Management consultants, they don't charge enough. If you don't charge enough, then you're forced to work all the time. You think, well, I gotta stay busy. That's the main thing. So then you do not ever have time to work on your business. If when you work, you get paid handsomely. Now I've got time to devote to the business itself. But the mistake a lot of people make is they think I gotta stay busy, I'm desperate, I don't know where my next dollar is gonna come from. Yeah. Sell it cheap. They think everything's elastic, which it's not. You know, cheaper means more demand, is the sort of conventional wisdom. And so they never get off that trap. I'm so guilty. Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I you know what I was thinking though, when he was talking about like how he captures his time and what he's doing, I can't imagine that at this point. Call it over to the story because it changes so quickly. I mean, I just I can't imagine it. It's just like driving here, you know. I'm writing stuff on my phone. I'm talking on a call. Not while you're jobing, just yeah. I am actually while I'm while I'm driving, you know, I'm on a business-related call there. The the other stuff I'm responding to is not written necessarily related to that business. I don't know where I would charge that.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I'll tell you this that it was tough on me too. Um, my my director of operations, my managing principal. Uh, she she'd said, we need we need you to start doing this too. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta join the rest of the staff and start tracking out. And it felt too complex. I work in the gray, any given five minute period. Right, exactly. Right. And so, but I will tell you this that the moment I began and I committed, it's my New Year's resolution, January 1, I committed all in after kind of tinkering with it a little bit last year. Um, and I'm thankful I did. Because it's not, it's not without its gray. It's not without a that takes an extra 10 minutes of my day to sit and log my hours, um, go back through my calendar and whatnot. Um, moderately uh more investment of my time to track those hours, but it's already providing me so much usable knowledge about where my time personally is going uh that it's worth it. And so if if if that helps anybody out there in the listening audience get in the habit of tracking their hours, if they serve, if they're in the especially in the service industry, they serve multiple clients at once during any given day. And then they're trying to also make time to be an effective leader and manager for their business and their teams. Um, I can't recommend highly enough. Start tracking your hours and it will show you uh where your priorities are and and ideally allow you to strike the balance that you need. And so 10, 15 minutes a day to track my hours, it's been worth it.

SPEAKER_03

Can we change up? I wouldn't argue with this dude on anything. I mean, he's not the answer to everything. No, I wouldn't either. I'm not going to. I mean, it is so you guys can push back. I'm literally no, no, it's cool.

SPEAKER_04

Can we can we move to the uh to the military? Yeah, that's what I wanted to do too. Okay. Well, is it if that's okay with you, Mark? I don't, I mean, you are the host of the show. So I mean, I'm just a co-host. Yeah. He is not. I'm just he's I'm the second place.

SPEAKER_03

Every time.

SPEAKER_04

I'm the I'm the loser, but you can't.

SPEAKER_03

Number two. I no, I'm number two. The number um two exceeded the number one a long time ago. Can I call you dad? But don't yeah, you can. Okay, it's getting I'm old enough to be dad. That's uh please. You see how fast that's cool. You dad? Are you getting written into the will? That's not the other five kids. There's not gonna be much between them. There'll be five scraps. Um, so yeah, let's Wes, tell us about your real now. How did you go into military? Did you go right out of school or not? No, I'm what did you do?

SPEAKER_02

Um I came in after 9-11, the week of 9-11. I'm back. So I uh was working construction and didn't really have a pathway in life. And uh really how old were you? I was 24. That's 2001 when I came in. I've been 25. Wow. 24, 24 weeks.

SPEAKER_04

Because you're about the same age. Yeah, yeah. I was I think it was like 20 or 21. Is that right? Prior service? No, no, no, no, no, no. You're saying about the same age.

SPEAKER_02

So you were working construction, like what were you doing? I was running heavy equipment, building golf courses for a living for a company called Landscapes Unlimited out of Nebraska and traveling and and uh enjoying. I've lived out west for a while and ski bummed and and lived in a van down by the river, Chris Farley. I mean, I I was a free spirit, but I didn't really know where I was going. And when 9-11 happened, I um I just something inside. I called, I was Tuesday, it was 9-11, and by Thursday I'd called a friend who was in the Army and I said, tell me what I need to know. I don't, I don't know what what's gonna happen, but something's gonna happen. And I need I need to start structuring my life. Now I'm almost 25, and and uh he introduced me to a recruiter and the rest is history. And I certainly had no reason to believe that I'd be in 25 years later, still serving the Arkansas Army National Guard as a lieutenant colonel and an engineer officer.

SPEAKER_04

So was the the the the the desire to serve the country, I guess after that event, you're okay, I'm I'm 100%. I'm contributing.

SPEAKER_02

If you I mean we all remember, yeah, like the nation all of a sudden I was flying out of Boston that day. And all of a sudden, yellow ribbons on every tree and parades in your hometown and you know uh the case.

SPEAKER_03

It was a unifying event for in spite of how bad it was.

SPEAKER_04

I was at I was at the House of Representatives building in Washington, DC. Wow, talking to Vic Snyder. Oh, wow. When I had you up there. I was up there speaking of free spirit. I was I I heard a guy in Arkansas State University come and talk about this with the Sierra Club talking about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And I've been a raft guide, whitewater raft guide in the summers, and I was all hippied out and I got all geeked out. I was like, I want to go lobby Washington DC to not drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Wildlife Refuge. So Sierra Club bought me out there to do that lobbying with Vic Snyder, you know, who's one was the Northwest Arkansas rep. But uh we went and met with him on 9-11 at like 10 a.m. Oh wow. And when I was walking in, I was walking in to the building and we passed by the ticket, and this guy came out, security guy came out and said, Hey, did y'all hear what happened? A plane flew into the one of the national trade centers. Like, no, that's crazy. And so we go in and you know, I'm sitting in Vic Snyder's office and we're talking about the oil and you know the value of it, and then another plane hit the other building. Yeah, and then we got the Pentagon. Yeah, and well, then somebody came and got Vic out of the meeting with us, and we were like, What's going on? You know, and I'm just sitting here looking at these other hippies with me, talking about the, you know, and then he goes out in his main office, and then uh so we literally sit there for 10 minutes, we're like, finally he's got up. I mean, he was watching the news in his office. And then all of a sudden, the Pentagon gets hit, and sirens start going evacuating military dogs, planes, sonic booms hitting. We could see the smoke across the river. And next thing I know, I'm like, I mean, here's this Arkansas dude hanging out in Washington, D.C.

SPEAKER_02

Knowing now we know that the Capitol was the intended target. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And then you said you were on a flight out of Boston. I was we were supposed to leave that morning. We were sitting really two close calls. Because one of the planes left out of Boston, and I know the gate that it left out of had very poor security. I'll be done. Yeah, I could tell you an interesting story about that that um happened to me maybe six or eight months before 9-11 going through that security. I got to the gate area. There were only two gates past the security there. It was a little appendage, it's off terminal C, but it's for terminal B. But anyway, so it's real early in the morning, like 5:30. I had maybe a 6:30 flight or something. So there the flight attendant is going through security before me. There's nobody else, just her and me. And there's a couple people there, the security people. And she goes through, and then I go through, and then we walk down to the to the gate, and she gets behind the computer, you know, the desk. She says, You got to give me a minute here. She picks up the phone and calls. It happened again. And clearly the person's like, What's that? She goes, Fourth time this week, I've sneaked the fake gun past security. You're wow. I kid you not. I that is exactly what the flight attendant said? That's what the flight attendant said because they test them. Yeah, they do. See, she said, fourth time this week. Okay. Yeah. Can you believe that?

SPEAKER_04

I can't.

Decentralizing Control And Empowerment

SPEAKER_03

They just said that back in those days in Boston, like most of the security people, if they spoke English, you didn't know it. Yeah. They were always talking to each other. They were very well, there's no real threat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And I remember some metal detectors, but there was obviously no TSA gates or no TSA at the time. And how far we've come.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah. But anyway, um, yeah, one of my friends, uh Mary Lee Hannel, was in the World Trade Center above the crash line and escaped. Wow. Okay. She she works for the New York, um, New Jersey Port Authority in charge of HR. She just recently retired, but that's where they were based. Anyways, a terrible thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, it changed the lives uh obviously of of countless Americans and it changed mine as well. Uh again, I didn't I didn't know talk about being a hippie kid. I was a ski bum. I had long hair and a beard. You know, and uh I would have never in a million years thought I would join the army, but there was there was um there was just something that happened in in me with that event. And uh and yeah, within a few short members or a few short months, I was a uh a clean-shaven recruit, headed off to to uh what we call OSIT, which is basic training and AIT put together, and 25 years later here I am.

SPEAKER_04

So we're I'm sorry. Well, I was just gonna say, like, you know, on that, like I may uh when I got outside the walls and things are going crazy. Like I remember going and I was like, okay, what the hell am I gonna do? Yeah, then watch DC, I don't belong here. Yeah. Dude, I'm stuck. Now at this moment, and so I rent back to the hotel, stuffed my some cash in my socks, some in my luggage, grabbed my luggage, no taxi. I mean, there was no buses, all planes were down, cell phones are cut off, and I go down in the downstairs bar, and everybody's hovered around drinking alcohol, watching the TV. And the bartender goes, Man, what do you want to drink? This crazy day. I was like, Give me a water. He goes, You don't want no give me water. And I was like, and I want about seven books of those matches sitting right there. There you go. Put those in my pocket. I was immediately in survival mode, you know, and I was like, I can't believe people are sitting around here drinking. I know. But that by that evening, I was in the middle of Shenandoah Valley, right? Did you rent a car? Yeah, well, we got a taxi and we had like a family friend pick us up across the Jersey line, and I was in the deep woods that evening. There you go. And then we rented a car and got back to Jonesboro. But uh, but just uh on the point, everything changed from that moment on. I was like, this is not a peaceful, hippie loving world that I once was dreaming, daydreaming that it was, right? It's this is some real business. So you would you actually took the right, the real step, you know.

Working In Vs On The Business

SPEAKER_02

No, I don't know that it's I appreciate I took the step that was right for me uh and didn't know at the time it would pay off in such big ways. But the uh and this is I don't want to turn this into recruiting pitch, but it yeah, it changed everything about my life, uh, mostly for the better. It's not you know, you gotta you gotta pay the tax when you work for Uncle Sam. And um it comes with some sacrifice and cost, not just impacting me, but impacting my family and others around me. But uh, but but from a balance sheet point of view, I live in the black on this relationship. And uh my my relationship with Uncle Sam in the U.S. Army, um my active duty time, my Army Reserve time, and now my Arctal Army National Guard time, it has always been a net positive to my life. And uh, and I love it. It's helped to find me and shape me, and it has prepared me for in this case, for while I'm here today, for business ownership. And I would have never, you know, you walk into a recruiter's office, you see some guys with face paint living in the woods, and you think that's what it's all about, an adventure or or serving that mission, yeah, standing on the walls of your country. And it is, but little did I know that that once I chose to become an officer and began moving through the ranks, the military was preparing me to lead and manage large organizations in uncertain conditions, in austere conditions, with limited resources and unknown partners, and go do complex things, solve complex puzzles on behalf of the United States government in faraway places, in the same fundamentals that they've inculcated in me to lead and manage large organizations effectively in faraway places is it's literally entrepreneurship. It's like, oh, I'm not, I'm totally comfortable living in a risk-laden world, not knowing what tomorrow's gonna bring, and building a culture of excellence and accountability around it and serving a common purpose, cohesive teams, shared trust, mutual shared understanding, risk acceptance, discipline initiative, all these things that I talk about around Skyline. This is all the stuff the Army taught me how to do. And uh, and there are direct parallels. And so again, I end up in this relationship. I joined to be part of that 9-11 moment moment. Um, but here I am a quarter century later, remaining, choosing deliberately every day to stay in because the army continues to provide me skills and business networks and personal relationships that translate to my life in very practical ways and effectively make me better.

SPEAKER_03

So back on hiring vets, yeah. What um obviously they don't all get what you got out of the experience. Well, everybody's experience is different.

SPEAKER_02

And so if you're a vet who if you came in like I did as a young rifle carrier, I was a 12 Bravo combat engineer, my job was to hunt IEDs and Iraq. And and um, and if you're a young troop and you do your four years and out and pretty much you didn't get a lot of reps and sets at leadership, you were just a young soldier carrying a rifle and doing your job, you might not have on display the character traits and the professional traits that I do. Uh my path took me a different way and it developed me in different ways. The long I will say this that the Army believes in training, preparing for the challenge before the challenge gets there. Be a be effective at your job, be well resourced, leverage those resources, prioritize your workload, have systems and processes that work, be comfortable accepting risk and making decisions, and absence of a leader telling you what to do. Thrive in chaos, right? If the longer you stay in, the more reps and sets you'll get at that stuff, and you will be better. You'll be a better husband and father and friend, a better neighbor, a better citizen. And for sure, if you choose to be, you'll be a better business owner. My route, uh, especially on the officer side, through those um junior intermediate and advanced uh schools that the Army has has sent me to, um, have gotten me there. Different service branches, different moments in time, different occupational specialties uh will all have a different pathway to getting there. But the more I believe fundamentally the more you invest in your military career, the more it will provide and the better it will make you holistically on your civilian side.

SPEAKER_00

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SPEAKER_04

But I love one of the things you've you've said a lot that I've I've never really thought about are the repetitions and sets. Yeah. You know, I mean, you've experienced this, Mark. I don't know what you've got to do.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'm on week seven of my personal trainer, right?

SPEAKER_02

Well, yeah, it's just yeah, you're now you're yeah, well, you're getting swelled, right? Looking more like Indiana Jones every day.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, you are. But I mean, like in the business.

SPEAKER_03

You should see my legs. Dude, are they they're like frog legs, man? I couldn't even believe it. Seriously, the other morning I was laying there, you know, on my phone like this, and I looked down at my leg and I saw my leg muscle bulging. Hell yeah. And I said to my wife, I'm like, honey, you gotta you gotta feel this. Check this man out. Okay. I'm just bounding up the steps. Yeah, it makes it difference. It does. It's uh it's all about reps and found that, man.

Time Tracking To Focus And Improve

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, well, hopefully, I can keep doing it. No, you will. I mean, uh you're like the most resilient, like you get the longest lifespan prediction of anybody I've ever met in my life. Well, you're lucky lucky at genetics, but inertia, man.

SPEAKER_02

It's all about inertia. Just get that wheel moving, let it be.

SPEAKER_03

You gotta keep it moving. I it's so true. I mean, that was the last message of my guest speaker in my class last night. Keep moving. Just keep moving.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, you know, but on these reps and sets, like like if somebody comes and says, like, young inspiring entrepreneur, you know, I get this a lot. Like, how did you do it? Yeah, how and and it's really a complicated thing because but what I've started to learn, especially as you're saying that, is like there are things that I can see so like if if I hear a client say one little thing, yeah, you're very receptive. Like, and I'm like, wait a minute. And and the team may not even under hear it, but yeah, I'm like, we've got to navigate this correctly. They said something in that meaning, and they're walking away with all these different ideas, but I'm like, we've got to navigate it this way. So therefore, we do this.

SPEAKER_02

It's an important caveat uh practice makes permanent, right? And so if you're doing reps and sets with bad form, you're you're not gonna achieve your full muscle growth potential or whatever you're trying to do. In worst case, if you have bad form, you could injure yourself. We all know that. So using this metaphor as a reference, that is a good idea. Have your system, have your plan, right? Have your systems and processes in place. And if you believe in those, if you've got the structure, if you've hired great talent, people that are smarter than you, you put them in positions of control and influence, and you you've empowered them with resources and you trust them to act, you understand your business's mission and functions and that of the clients you serve, and we've built a workflow, priorities of work, the systems, the processes, the tools, the products that we use, and we believe in them, then reps and sets start to matter because now the practice is making permanent the things that we are achieving results through. We're not we're not doing reps and sets on bad form. So important caveat, it's more than just reps and sets, it's the right reps and sets.

SPEAKER_03

Makes sense. I mean, uh the problem I find with a lot of people, and I'm not gonna generalize about generations either, is just a general lack of discipline. And they they don't have the discipline to do certain things every single day. Now you could call it reps and sets or whatever you want, but I mean, that to me is something I would think that you know the military instills in people is a is a discipline. You know, you've got to do certain things in a certain time, a certain way. And and it's it's very difficult for people.

Navigating Chaos: The Stream Metaphor

SPEAKER_02

They they um I would offer that it's it's not as rigid as you describe it, or how the movies make it sound. Okay. Here's what you gotta know. Uh, you know, the fan there's a there's a famous um famous quote attributed to Patent about how like uh the the one thing that makes you the US Army, the US or the US Army has all this doctrine. We think we know how they're gonna fight, and then they show up in combat and and they throw the doctrine out the window and they just thrive in chaos. What it's about is discipline is very true, but it's about having the the systems and processes in place that are strong enough to withstand chaos. And then it's about trusting those systems and processes and the experts that advance them in the chaos. It is not regimented uh in terms of specific inputs, outputs with expected desired outcomes. Sure. It is about having systems and processes that can stand up to success and having leaders within your organization that are courageous and are empowered and trusting that when you arrive in chaos, because again, every step is barefoot and blindfolded as we wade out into these waters. I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. So how can I be prepared for it? What I know is that we have muscle and muscle grows slow, reps and sets. You have to trust the process of growing that muscle. And over time, we believe that we will be able to lift heavier and heavier objects. In this case, it takes the form of clients that we haven't seen with challenges that we can't imagine. So, how could we prepare for those? What we do is prepare ourselves. And when the day comes to be asked to lift some lift something heavy, we know we've built the muscle to do that.

SPEAKER_04

Dang, Mark, you just got pumped, bro. Yeah. I hope that becomes one of our clips. Yeah, I said that to you. Dang Mark.

SPEAKER_02

Just it just know the army does not set us up to uh, by and large, it does not set us up to know what we're gonna be doing. Yeah, the next hour, the next day, it's about never how to react to a challenge.

SPEAKER_03

I've never had that articulated to me like that, but that makes a tremendous amount of sense.

SPEAKER_04

What it sounds like, I mean, like, and you you kind of like paint the right picture because it's about really the process. Yeah. And the discipline is following a process.

SPEAKER_02

It's building it, understanding the challenge. How do we see ourselves? How do we see the workload? How do we see the environment we're working in? How do we see the needs of the client, whatever it may be? Understanding that as the foundation, and then deciding what are the skills to Tools, resources, systems, and processes. We're gonna need to do this work at the right scale and at the right speed, and then focusing our efforts there. That's the muscle building part of it. And we we get practice by serving current clients. We realized we were really good at GlugRo in ULI Northwest Arkansas at advancing that mission. And then someone else came along and said, Can you do that for us? And I look around, I assess the muscle of the organization. Are we tooled to do this again? If the answer to that is yes, again, understanding the needs of that other client prospect. If the answer to that is yes, then we say yes and we follow that client down that path, knowing that we have the muscle to help them carry whatever their mission might entail. Uh, likewise, if the systems and processes aren't there, if the training, the professional development, the trust, the teens, all the things I've described, if it's not there and we're not ready to put that extra plate on the bar and lift it, uh, then we don't.

SPEAKER_04

Well, and and but here's what I'm I'm getting some clarity in my life, Mark. Give me a second.

SPEAKER_03

I was just gonna say, Eric, I just wanted to say, let's pool our money together. You want to let's get them out of that business. Okay. Hey, we got things for two years over there.

SPEAKER_04

Let's put two to be done here. All right, give me your credit card. Bigger. We please put 80% on my marks. All right, and I'm 20% Daniel, gladly. But I want voting stock. But no, it makes so much sense.

SPEAKER_03

No, it does definitely does.

Pricing, Capacity, And Avoiding The Trap

SPEAKER_04

Because when we talk about working on the business, I'm immediately after this conversation going. Instead of me thinking as an entrepreneur about working on the business and then in this kind of very vague thing, what I'm doing is I'm actually working on processes. Right. Refining, defining processes, looking for the holes, the gaps. What do I need to do to set up what I need to do to set up so when moments of chaos or problems that always happen in business, always what's the process that fixes that? Then the team runs through it, the muscle happens, is a broken piece, fix that. That's my working on the business, just kind of continuously refining, refining, refining, and having the courage as a leader to fix the freaking process. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Well, you say process, I say discipline. I mean, I'm not saying obviously maybe process is a better word, but there has to be Yeah. No, no, no. Certain things have to happen at a certain time. You know what I mean? I've got to have the information I need. We've got to have um the means to correct. We've got to have the accountability systems built. The gap.

SPEAKER_02

What are the things we can't do? Then how do we fill that gap?

SPEAKER_04

But I think that what you're saying that, like you, as being the experienced entrepreneur and business leader you are, you are actually your discipline is creating the process. If everybody could just get in Mark Zweig's brain and follow the Mark Zweig process with the discipline to do that, things would be solved. But I think our challenge, though, is are we really mapping out the process? We're really codifying that so it can be replicated.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. That's that's a good point. Well, Wes is such a smart guy.

SPEAKER_04

You can see I want to dig into this more because I think there's so much clarity because obviously the military is excellent at running operations and organizations, right? I mean, like that's you know, fantastic. Like you can't do the things they do without it. There's so much to learn. I'm like, I'm so intrigued and interested in this. I watched my wife who served as an in the Air Force for 15 years. She did. She did. She, dude, I'm a civilian. When my alarm goes off, I'm like, she's like, boom. Dude, she pops up in there, teeth are brushed, food's prepared for the day, out the door, working air. Some might call that discipline. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02

But it's actually a process that's just falling. And when you build that inertia, you build a culture, you get that wheel in motion, uh, it starts to just generate its own life. She won't hang out with me while we're in bed. And I just want to hug and love.

SPEAKER_04

That is, you know, yeah, man. I mean, that's my hit. You know what I'm saying? Can you not just procrastinate a little bit? Exactly. She's like, nope, gotta go. She did it to me last night, time for bed. I'm like, no, baby, just now hanging. No, no, gotta go. Some of us can't, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, damn. Yeah. But that makes me more attracted to her.

SPEAKER_02

You, your wife, uh, you and my wife would have a lot to commiser in either because it's the same exact diet. It's like, why are you such a robot?

SPEAKER_04

Uh no. I'm guilty. Did you have a soul?

SPEAKER_02

I do have a soul, but I can be a robotic. No question.

SPEAKER_03

No, what was that? There was some military officer, general, somebody who gave a commencement speech, and it started with you gotta make your bed.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, you you've you all covered General McRaven. That was at uh, I want to say University of Texas graduation, very famous commencement speech.

SPEAKER_03

That was. I mean, that's such a great speech. I mean, it just really is.

SPEAKER_04

Just says it all. But it's a process because we start getting down and depressed. But if you follow the process, you take build that inertia.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, do the little things with excellence, and then as you bite off new bigger things, you do them slowly, leverage your tools, prioritize the work, accept a little bit of risk, put forth the effort, reflect back, learn, identify what's necessary to do it again, faster, stronger, build that muscle, do it again faster and stronger, and trust that over time uh the process will pay.

SPEAKER_04

Wow. Well, hey, we're out of time, dude. But another this has been one of the most fantastic episodes. It really is.

SPEAKER_02

Appreciate that.

SPEAKER_04

We want you back, man. Yes, absolutely. Anytime. Yeah, I love, I love and thank you for your service, first of all.

SPEAKER_02

Well, you got it. You're worth it. And uh love to do it. And uh, and I want you all to know how much you mean to listeners like me. I spend a lot, I listen to every episode, spend a lot of time here in the two of you all jam and riff off each other, but also guests on occasion. And I learned so much. So you're doing God's work in here, and it means a lot to us on behalf of all your listening audience. Thank you too.

SPEAKER_04

Appreciate that. Thanks a lot. Definitely clip that out. Oh, yeah, you know it, Mike. We're gonna we're gonna use this shit.

SPEAKER_03

I'm gonna be listening to that first thing when I wake up. Yeah, that's my affirmation. Appreciate that. Really, we really do appreciate you. Wes. If somebody needs to reach out to you, how do they reach you?

Military Path And 9/11 Turning Point

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think uh most people know me as the ULI guy. So if you just come by Arkansas.ui.org, uh, you can find me there on our website. Definitely encourage people to learn more about the mission of ULI. Um, but but you can find us also at skyline-amc.com. If you are a part of a uh uh built environment trade association and you need some support, some staff support in clarifying your systems and processes, getting out of chaotic workload and streamlining your organizational and operational management. Please look to us to be your partner. We want to help make cities great by with and through you and your membership. And so swing by Skyline AMC and learn a little bit more about us and the work that we do, and then feel free to reach out anytime we're here for you.

SPEAKER_03

Wow. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02

All right.

SPEAKER_03

Well, hey, this has been another episode of Going Is Wes Big Talk About Small Business.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk About Small Business. If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, 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.