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FROM THE FOUNDER
Everyone has to get stuff done
M y editorial writing for The Zweig Letter has always reflected my own experience, much of it current. I usually don’t write about what someone else has experienced or written about. I think many writers share my approach to it, and hopefully it has kept my work relevant and topical over the years. We all need new challenges, variety in our daily routines, and to see tangible results from our efforts to be fulfilled.
Mark Zweig
My own experience in the last seven weeks or so has been one of high productivity, but not in all of the “jobs” I have (my teaching, my board service, and the companies I have ownership in or am most involved with). I am back to working on houses, using my physical labor every day. And I have to admit, if not for the guilt about how well I am doing my other work these last few weeks, it has been incredibly gratifying. Nineteen years ago, I started a business – Mark Zweig, Inc., a design-build contracting and development company. We started out by doing total gut-to-the-studs renovations of 80- to 120-year-old houses we owned in “walk to everything” locations. Ten years later, we had an unlimited license to build any commercial or residential project; 60-plus houses, apartments, and condos as well as 44,000
square feet of commercial space in a rental portfolio, and a business that got on the Inc. 5,000 fastest- growing privately-held company list as well as named “Developers of the Year” by our local chamber of commerce. In any case, sometime around 2018, I and my best friend (who worked in the business and became my wife in 2019) decided we were sick of it. The risk/ reward ratio got completely out of control. We had way too much overhead and debt in the business, and in 2018 had a bunch of big projects under construction with nothing to sell all year. Our working capital got almost completely drained and it wasn’t fun any longer. Our construction crews and our subs
See MARK ZWEIG, page 6
THE ZWEIG LETTER APRIL 1, 2024, ISSUE 1531
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