B Corp certification usually provides built-in customer loyalty and attracts high-quality employees, but how are its benefits different for rural businesses?
February 28, 2023 | By Mitchell Simpson, D. Scott Borden, Taryn Mead
We excel at growing rice, our water’s mineral content is perfect for sake brewing. Origami Sake hopes to use Arkansas's strengths as it ramps up distribution.
January 4, 2023 | By Mitchell Simpson
Building a successful business requires the perfect business partner. But what if the relationship sours? Learn about managing office interpersonal dynamics.
August 30, 2022 | By Mitchell Simpson, Oleg Petrenko
Buying an existing business is a good way to get into entrepreneurship. These tips will help you avoid common pitfalls as well as position yourself for success.
May 5, 2022 | By Mark Zweig
It's often said that art and business are like oil and water: they don't mix. Find out what Walton scholars are doing to correct this misperception..
March 29, 2022 | By Abbi Ross, Adrienne Callander, Michael Cummings
A good company culture is key to success in business, life, and leadership. Find out what steps you can take to ensure that you and your employees thrive.
January 5, 2022 | By Stephen Caldwell
It's confession time - here are some mistakes I've made in my career. Acknowledging them, learning from them, and moving on have developed my leadership skills.
November 17, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
My 1999 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur takes a lot of maintenance. So have my businesses. Doing these six things over the years have improved profits and operations.
October 28, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to realize there's no roadmap to follow. That said, Collin Jones has some timely advice for future entrepreneurs.
October 25, 2021 | By Stephen Caldwell
Failure and entrepreneurship don't have to be synonyms. Finding the right doorway to entrepreneurship (startup, buying a business, franchise) reduces your risk.
October 20, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
From mentoring to maker spaces, the University of Arkansas has created a vibrant startup network to support student entrepreneurs like MORE Technologies.
October 11, 2021 | By Stephen Caldwell
We can all talk about various methods to develop our business plans or test the market acceptance for a new product idea, but how about we spend a little time in the weeds going over some stuff that startup founders should really be thinking about and doing?
September 22, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Few things are as dangerous - and as avoidable - to an entrepreneur than a lack of realism. Avoiding these 6 pitfalls will help you stay focused and succeed.
September 8, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Cash flow problems aren't uncommon for entrepreneurs. Check out these seven tips on how to navigate having to ask friends and family for a bailout.
September 1, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Since so many people ask him for advice on their startups, entrepreneur Mark Zweig provides his insights on hiring, legal setup, debt, marketing, and more.
July 1, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Our program is not only practical, but it can provide some potentially life-changing experiences for our students.
May 14, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
More times than not, failure is based on internal mistakes businesses owners make, not external conditions.
April 23, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
I thought it might be interesting to review what happens when you, as a business owner or owners, embark on an external sale and the deal falls apart in the 11th hour.
April 13, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Whichever way you go, you need to thoroughly understand the pros and cons as to how they relate to you.
April 6, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Entrepreneurs are kind of like artists. Every 7-year-old is an artist. But few 22-year-olds are. And most every 7-year-old is an entrepreneur too—selling lemonade or girl scout cookies. But few adults are. Somehow, along the path of life, we lose that entrepreneurial spirit.
March 23, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Whether you are considering starting a new business, or already own your own business and want to supercharge your growth, buying a business that is already up and going is always an option that should be considered.
March 16, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
You need to educate your people on why making a profit is essential and where that money goes.
March 9, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Creativity and innovation won’t happen if you do things the way you always have done them. It starts at the top and takes more than just talk.
February 23, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Anyone who knows me or who has read anything I have ever written knows I am a big fan of bootstrapping — i.e., avoiding any outside equity funding for a new startup.
February 9, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
My contention has always been that allowing yourself to abandon that preconceived notion opens up a whole range of new opportunities.
February 2, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Pick your business partners carefully! It will either make you or break you.
January 26, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
At some point, the need to find some inner peace may be greater than the need to keep proving oneself. And the truth is when you find that inner peace is when you gain real insight.
January 19, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Each semester, there are a handful of students who really “get it.” These people fully engage and are going to get the most they can from their college experience. The standouts are especially noticeable now during COVID-19.
January 12, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
Sure, there were all kinds of problems we (and I) had to overcome along the way, but in the end, we had accomplished everything we set out to do.
January 5, 2021 | By Mark Zweig
It has always baffled me how so many entrepreneurs and small business owners won’t use or don’t use marketing.
December 15, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Business travel is way down. I don’t think it will be back for 10 years or more — that is if it ever comes back to where it was.
December 8, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
I would encourage those creating new ventures to not pursue outside equity if there is any way to avoid it. I would say more “real” entrepreneurs — people who actually plan on committing themselves wholly to their new ventures — are very leery of it, and for good cause.
December 1, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Being real entrepreneurs who earn a living from the businesses they create is a lot different from being coffee shop 'wantrepreneurs.'
November 17, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
If you own a business, the time flies and someday you will find yourself my age (or older). Things won’t be the same as they were when you started your business at 22 or 25 or 30 or 40.
November 10, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
If you are creating a business plan and want to be in the former category versus the latter, please allow me to make some observations about where some of the common deficiencies are in these plans.
November 3, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
If you feel like you are due for a spate of good luck, here are some things you can do that might increase your odds of experiencing it.
October 27, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
What’s going on inside your head will determine your success or failure.
October 20, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
You may not be the next Elon Musk or Steve Jobs and that’s OK. You could actually be more “successful” than them — successful in life.
October 13, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
The bottom line, however, is that an owner who is conscious of and working on the drivers of value for their business will do better at exit than those who aren’t!
October 6, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
There may be some qualities these successful entrepreneurs have that bond them together — qualities not everyone possesses. Here are some I have observed in the preponderance of successful entrepreneurs I have met and/or worked with over the years.
September 29, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
One of the principle tenets of the American economy is the idea of competition — the notion that each business or firm has equal chance to compete in the U.S. market.
September 25, 2020 | By Michael Adkison, Jake B. Grady
When things are going well, business ownership can be incredibly rewarding. But when things aren’t going well, it can feel like you have a Titanic-size boat anchor chained around your neck.
September 24, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
No one has a crystal ball that tells them the future. But by being smart and using every single resource at your disposal, you can — most likely — weather this storm.
September 16, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
I want my students — I want everyone, really — to understand that they all have the option of creating their own job. But too many of my students come into the class with the belief that starting a business would be nearly impossible for them.
September 9, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
For those of us who teach at the university level, how we can increase student engagement when we may never even physically see our students is something we are all thinking about.
September 2, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
There is a lot of interest in startups. Where people got their idea, how they raised the capital, what their elevator pitch was, and so on.
August 26, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
I wanted to put out one more post on my best advice for dealing with the various professional service providers one has to deal with in the course of this business as well.
August 19, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Here are some potential issues you may face related to your family and your business that you may have already experienced but if not, ones you need to be prepared for when they do crop up.
August 12, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
You have to be careful or you can easily waste your money and do things that you won’t be happy with, nor help you to recover and earn a return on your investment.
August 5, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
All of our students deserve an opportunity to be scholars and entrepreneurs, explorers and changemakers, and the evidence shows that this is not only possible, but good for everyone.
July 31, 2020 | By Sarah Goforth
The announcement of a $194.7 million grant to the University of Arkansas from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation is notable for its amount, but far more significant because of its potential for making a positive, lasting impact on our campus, our state, and the future of higher education.
July 30, 2020 | By Matt Waller
We never had a huge operation compared to some, but for most of each of the last 10 years or so we probably sold $5-10 million worth of properties annually through our design/build/development/property management company, Mark Zweig, Inc., and were pretty well-known in the area for doing high quality projects.
July 29, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
You talk with as many business owners as I have over the last 40 years and you will hear them quite often speak disparagingly about their employees and how engaged and committed they are.
July 22, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
As someone who has started a half-dozen or more business, mostly on my own but sometimes with one or more partners, I know there are steps one can take before taking the plunge to start that new venture. Sometimes the information you can learn will actually keep you from starting the business.
July 15, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Internships are a rite of passage for most college students, providing a bridge between what they learn on campus and what they will experience in the professional world.
July 8, 2020 | By Deb Williams
As someone who has started, owned, run and sold several high-growth businesses, I have plenty of experience with debt.
July 1, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Young, old or middle-aged people each have the opportunity to start or buy a business that they can nurture and grow to create value that they can harvest upon exit — one of the primary distinctions of an entrepreneurial venture versus something that is just a small business.
June 17, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Not all business ideas are good. Not all of them can be used in every business. But here are a few simple strategies and tactics that I have employed over the years in my own businesses (as well as others) that I can say without question I would use again were I to start or acquire another business.
June 10, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Never is there a better time to start your own business than now. You will need every bit of energy, enthusiasm and willingness to sacrifice to succeed. Do it while you are young.
June 3, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
It’s hard to know where we go from here. Yet, the ability to accurately predict the future is essential to our ability to first survive, and second, succeed.
May 27, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
When you examine those who accomplish a great deal over their lifetimes, one thing is apparent. They get things done even when they don’t have to.
May 20, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Following up on my last blogpost where I provided my best advice for graduating seniors, I thought it might be good to share axioms I have lived by that would benefit anyone who plans on owning a business.
May 13, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
The first thing I want to say is, “Congratulations!” You should be proud of yourself. You have accomplished something important. It shows you can set a goal and do the work necessary to achieve it.
May 6, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
You might not learn new painting techniques in business school or how to escape from a tar pit. But you will learn – if you do your part – the theories and best practices about business that will set you up for success.
April 30, 2020 | By Stephen Caldwell
While I realize that none of us has been through a pandemic like the one we are currently experiencing with COVID-19 and the resulting worldwide economic slowdown, as entrepreneurs and small business owners, we have to look ahead.
April 29, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Now is the time to work harder than ever and do everything we can to not go down.
April 22, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Times like the present – when so much of the economy is shutting down – will test all of us working in organizations, large and small.
April 15, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
It’s popular these days to bash higher education. All you hear about is the high cost of it and the excessive debt that students take on to get “useless” degrees. And then there is plenty of criticism for how we teach it. Some say the system is completely broken.
April 8, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
It’s time for some real honesty now. As a business owner, creditor and debtor with the COVID-19 virus threat in full swing, I can admit that I’m scared. The business I own has ground to a halt.
March 19, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Really understanding marketing and using that knowledge every day is essential to growth and continued success.
March 18, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
The journey toward becoming a more innovative organization (or individual) requires opening yourself up to a deep understanding of the people you identify as users or customers.
March 13, 2020 | By Jessica Salmon
It takes a lot to keep a business running past the startup phase. Here are nine factors that help to keep businesses growing.
March 11, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
One thing that any company of any age, size, or type can do to help make them more successful is to either add outside directors to their board or add outside advisory (non-voting) board members to their board.
March 4, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Recently I’ve come to appreciate something new – the story of the family that built this business and the value of the business that goes well beyond a good price on a well-made shirt.
February 27, 2020 | By Stephen Caldwell
One of the most frustrating people problems to have as a business owner is when two employees, both of whom are productive ones, don’t get along.
February 26, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
How effectively your organization handles these critical transitions will greatly determine its long-term success.
February 19, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Defining your strategies is not just an academic exercise, but it is something that can be crucial to your success..
February 12, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
I must admit that I have always admired the businesses with a strategy of doing things “the old way” – changing little to nothing with the times – that actually thrive because of that.
February 5, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Through my work as a small business and entrepreneurship teacher at the Walton College, I have witnessed the owners of many of these businesses struggle to survive and make a profit.
January 29, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
There are things you can do to build valuable relationships with your bosses, clients, customers, suppliers, regulators, teammates and subordinates, both inside and outside of your organization.
January 22, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
The McMillon Innovation Studio...has a brief but interesting history at the University of Arkansas that in some ways runs counter to traditional higher education norms but in every way is beholden to the fundamental concepts of innovation.
January 16, 2020 | By Stephen Caldwell
Buying a business – one of the “doorways to entrepreneurship” – is too often not considered by those seeking self-employment.
January 15, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Pricing of whatever you sell is so crucial to your success, yet rarely given the attention or scrutiny that it deserves. Here are a few of my thoughts and observations on this subject.
January 8, 2020 | By Mark Zweig
Every business owner better be concerned with the quality of what their firm does and how they service their clients and customers.
December 18, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
I really learned about selling when I got my first job out of grad school at 22 and went to work as the youngest employee of a small executive search and management consulting firm based in St. Louis.
December 11, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
I still believe nearly everyone — no matter their background, interests or future profession or vocation — would be better off with a business degree.
December 4, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
Leadership — the quality of it — is the special sauce that makes everything in the organization come together.
November 20, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
What is important to remember — especially if and when a recession is underway — is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that your business will decline.
November 13, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
Instead of resorting to cost-cutting to increase business profits, make sure to explore all available options.
November 6, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
Starting a new job is an exciting time. Increase your chances of success by following this new job guide.
October 30, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
It may not always be easy or fun to work for an entrepreneur. But you can learn something from them!
October 23, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
When a company grows beyond your ability to be personally involved in everything.
October 16, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
Most people starting businesses don’t come up with something entirely new, so they should be looking for a niche or gap in the market that they can fill..
October 9, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
It happens to many of us at some point—our business, our “baby,” the machine that feeds us—is struggling financially...
October 1, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
There are important causes to why small businesses run out of capital.
September 25, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
Overcommitment may be the way to make a lot of money but it is not necessarily the way to be happy.
September 17, 2019 | By Mark Zweig
Being an entrepreneur is a mindset, one that is not limited to business.
August 12, 2019 | By Matthew Waller
From business execution to enhancing opportunities, these are nine areas where a business degree will sharpen your entrepreneurial tools.
July 24, 2019 | By Matthew Waller
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