Answering Year-End Questions Worth Asking

So now let's end our wrap with great end of the year questions to always ask. So what is the single best idea you have to improve your business?

This is so good. I ask people, by the way, guys, before I answer the question, we send an anonymous survey to everyone and they have to answer that question. What's— and so it's anonymous. What's the single best thing, idea that you have to improve the business, right? And then we'll go to the second one. My single best idea to improve the business This sounds cliché, but I say this almost every week to the team, right? We have to have an unreasonably high talent bar, outrageously high talent bar, right? And the quote that I like, I actually threw this up on Twitter today. I don't think— I think it's my quote actually. So basically, a low performer will cost you far more than an empty seat, right? Yeah. The problem with especially agency, because it's such a people business, is everyone's asking for more resources all the time. It never ends, right? Everyone's asking for more resources. And so my job is to make sure and that I'm involved as much as I can with hiring, right? And even Jeff Bezos has said, like, I wish I could be— I could have been more involved with hiring past the first 1,000 people or so. Or Tony Xu from DoorDash, he was involved for the first 1,000 people or so, right? I find that the more involved I am with hiring, the better we are and the better— the more aligned we are as a team, right? Whereas before I used to just delegate it all out. And this seems like a really underrated thing. But your people are everything. They're like, literally Vinod Khosla said this, right? Like, your people make up the entire organization. How can you just let someone else handle the whole thing, right? And so I've just found that whenever my hand is in it, I'm just like, there's no doubt in my mind now that we'll get everything that we want long term, as long as we're locked in there, right? That's what I would say.

I would say the single best idea I have to improve our company, I watched a Peter Thiel clip that really inspired me. And he talks about, you know, what's something that a lot of other people don't know that you believe is right? And if we look at the advertising agencies out there, they all focus on the paid strategies because that's where a lot of the money is made, managing Google Ads, Facebook Ads, et cetera. And we do that. And I believe our competitive edge, it's not as big of a market as just taking a slice of Google's revenue. And again, we still do that, but I think we're doubling down on focusing on globally is the concept that I've talked about on this podcast before of search everywhere optimization. There's 4.51 billion searches, yeah, 45.1 billion searches a day on all platforms. Google owns roughly 18% market share. When someone types in a purse on Instagram, why isn't Chanel showing up or Louis Vuitton or whatever brand that wants to show up? You can optimize for all these channels in an evergreen way Or why aren't enough agencies focusing on App Store optimization? There's so much money to be made from apps. Look at Apple's revenue from apps, not just on the paid side, but on the organic side. And we're doubling down on just helping companies be found on all channels, not just saying, hey, we're going to manage your social profiles and get you likes and engagement. I'm talking about also the search experience because online experiences, as they say, start with a search. And if you can end up doing that, I do think that's a massive market that most people are taking for granted.

And when you say search everywhere optimization, it's not just Google, you're talking ASINs, So App Store optimization, are you talking— what other channels are you talking about?

App Store, social media.

Like YouTube?

Yeah, YouTube. So all those social channels, Instagram, Amazon. So all the marketplaces. Even going after the AI platforms, like people asking ChatGPT or SearchGPT a question and it's showing up for you.

Yeah, it's probably simple for you to— so ASO is pretty straightforward. LLM optimization is more straightforward than— like, for example, if you're optimizing, a lot of these companies don't have YouTube channels, right? So YouTube is such a different game because we're talking packaging ideas, we're talking thumbnails and things like that, right? So that seems to me like a little harder to optimize versus like the other ones that are more straightforward, correct?

Yes.

Okay. Yeah, I just want that to be clear for everyone because I do think Rand Fishkin said this, right? I don't know if we covered this last time, but SEO is basically— in 2017, SEO was like, oh, that's the channel, main channel to focus on. SEO is now like traditional SEO. It's a consequence of good marketing overall.

Yeah, right.

And I think we can agree with that. We both have SEO backgrounds. I think it's like you have to do it. And I'm glad that we continue to evolve over time versus the SEOs on Twitter that just complain all the time. So don't be that, don't be a complainer, right? That's like they all stay stuck in the same place over and over. It's like 10 years, nothing has changed. So that was good.

All right, next question. What is the stupidest thing you're doing right now? Sorry for using that word, everyone.

But what's wrong with using that word?

All right, let's go for it.

Okay. So I think the stupidest thing that we're doing right now, it's a continued need to refocus over time. So, it's like, it's easy to get distracted because I love reading new stuff and I always come up with new ideas, right? So does my team. The thing is having to be that parent that brings everything back and over to, no, we got to stay focused, guys. And also to teach people to manage up to say like, oh, here comes Eric with all these ideas again, right? I'd say the stupidest thing is constantly just going back and trying to break that focus, right? And I don't think that thing ever ends with entrepreneurial ADD. For example, Neil always has new ideas to, you know, buy different companies and things like that. And sometimes his team has to reel him in, right?

Yeah.

So that's it for me.

I would say the stupidest thing I'm doing right now is too many useless meetings. Some of the meetings are just to learn. But I think it's a big distraction. And I could be using that time to Spend it with family.

Sometimes Neil would go— sometimes I don't understand this about Neil. He'll go on like these random podcasts that has like zero reach. He'll talk and then sometimes he'll call me. He's like, dude, this podcast just asked me the stupidest question, right? I'm like, why are you going on these podcasts to begin with? That's such a time suck.

I cut down on the podcast. Yeah, but I need to cut down on the in-person meetings.

Oh, oh, because a lot of people ask for your time. Yeah, you know, Neil used to sell these— Neil used to sell these courses, right? And The stupidest offer that he had before was a 30-minute call with everyone, which I never understood. By the way, we're still in our mid-20s. I just never understood that.

Yes. He's saying we were in our mid-20s when that happened. Right now we're in our 30s. And the crazy part is I remember I was talking to Timothy Sykes and he was just like—

Timothy Sykes is a, he's a, he's a well, he does well for himself. Um, he teaches people how to trade stocks.

Yeah. And he's done really well just trading stocks himself. And I remember talking to him about consulting. He's like, yeah, well, what'll it cost? You know, how much of your time? And then he was just like, why do I need to pay you for a contract? Let me just buy a lot of those 30-minute calls. And that is way cheaper and I can get the same amount of time. And I'm like, yeah, that's a good point. And then it got removed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is your current partner now, Mike.

Yeah, Mike removed the 30-minute calls. All right, so the next question is, what's one thing that scares you?

Oh, this is a question I ask in relationships. So what's one thing I'm doing that scares you? That doesn't really apply here.

No, what's one thing that you do that's— or what's one thing that you do that scares your team? How about that?

Okay, yeah, that's a good one. I'm way more intense now. And so I don't like— we actually have this, we should talk about this sometime. But we have a sheet now that shows how long it takes for us to move on from low performers. And guess what they— guess how many months it takes on average?

Less than 1?

No, no, no, it's really bad. So it's gotten better. So recently, it's basically around 2 months or so, 2, 3 months or so, which is pretty good, right? Before it was 6, 7 months. Wow, we're taking way too long, right? And so now I'm just a lot more direct, I would say. And for example, one of the assistants of my VP of Ops, she's deathly afraid of me. And I'm like, I never even talked to her before, right? But, you know, it's either, again, it's like you either apply pressure or you feel it. And I was pretty tough in a meeting yesterday with some of my leaders. And towards the end of it, I'm like, no, no. They're like, no, we actually really liked that. I was like, oh, did you? I was like, good, good.

I would say one thing that scares my team about me is I move, I believe at least, I move exceptionally fast. And people, don't like being pulled in the directions always that I want them to be pulled in. And it makes sense. And I've gotten better over time of delegating to my CEO what I want to do, get his feedback because he thinks through things much more thoroughly than me. And then he goes and executes. But if I just want something done, I still just go and do it myself right away.

Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. You know what would be helpful? I don't know if you've ever done this, but we do these like anonymous upward meetings. The last time I did this was maybe a couple years ago. But the feedback that was consistent, and I just dumped it into like a word cloud thing. And I worked on this with my coach, right? The coach that you said is useless. So we did this and then we're looking through the feedback.

It's like— Wait, wait, do you still pay that coach?

No.

They're useless. I won on that one.

But you can't pay them forever.

Yeah, 'cause they're useless.

No, it's like there's diminishing returns.

Yeah, 'cause they're useless.

Whatever. So, okay. The one thing we discovered, and this would probably be the same feedback for you, you should do this. The feedback, one of the things said, Eric moves at his own pace and it's really hard to keep up and it scares me, right? And it started being the same feedback over and over and over. So, the reason why I have this wallpaper on my phone where it says, slow down, what is the rush? And I have a turtle in front of my computer is because I talk really fast and I move really fast too and it scares people, right? So, I think another bonus here is if you can talk to your team and do like anonymous upward survey, It'll probably benefit you. I mean, you probably already know these things anyway. Yep. So the number one challenge for businesses is hiring. And more specifically, the number one thing I get asked for all the time is, Eric, where can I go find an amazing marketer? And the reality is right now, when you think about the world, we have inflation. That also means wage inflation right now. And it means that when it comes to hiring talent, you can't spend as much as you would have in the last couple of years because it's just become too cost prohibitive. And so we've partnered with one of the best offshore recruiting firms when it comes to marketing. They've been a great asset for us, and I believe that they will be a great asset for you. All you have to do is go to marketingschool.io/hire. Again, it's marketingschool.io/hire to learn more. You can fill out the form there and we're going to place you with the best marketing hires that we can help you find.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Oh yeah. No, this is like a bonus question. So Always, not always, but a lot of times people have like something else they want to add to the end of a survey, make it an optional question. But I mean, I guess in the context of this, is there anything else I'd like to add? I think there's really only 2 things that matter at the end of the day, if you want to become really successful in the long term. It's one, you focus, which we've talked about a lot in this podcast. 2 is you manage your costs, which we haven't talked a lot about on this podcast. But Neil's actually exceptionally good at managing his costs. He looks at everything down to the last penny. I do think that like you're pretty good at those two things.

I'm really good at those two things.

Yeah, but like those two things are required for business success.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io/agency if you want to learn more about our little agency community to help you grow faster. I think Neil, we're actually speaking in 10 days to the community. So that's that. And yeah, we'll see you tomorrow.