What Eric and Neil Did for the Holidays

All right, so we're gonna talk about what Eric and Neil did for the holidays. And it's funny because we just talked to Brad from recordeditpodcast.com.

Yeah.

About how the holidays are a challenge sometimes. So let me go first. You know Jordan Peterson, right?

No.

Okay, he's the guy that wears a suit, talks philosophy all the time. But he said the mark of a successful man is if you drop him in the middle of a forest, he can't help himself but to take out an axe and start chopping trees, right? And that is like me right now. I try to relax, I try to sit around do nothing, I can't do it, right? I just like, read a book. Okay, no, that's not enough. I have to actually be doing stuff, right? So we, you, your company, my company, we both give this week off. We're off until the 2nd. So basically Christmas week is off and then we're off till the 2nd, right? Um, and so I think we should take this time to talk about how we're spending that time and how we're being productive with that time. Because I think for you and I, and even Brad here too, we can't stop thinking about work.

It is hard. For me, my biggest struggle has been I have very few people to talk to on a daily basis, more so to bug. Hey, how are the sales numbers? What are we going to end the year at? What's our pipe looking like for January? It's just like, all right, I need to give people their time and their space. I have increased my texting to those people because I'm not trying to bug them on the phone, but—

That's still bugging them.

Yeah, not as bad.

They can text me back. The good thing about Neil is he will keep doing it, right? I schedule my messages to hit I even take into account like what time zone they're in and everything. And I'm like, okay, I should send this one on the 2nd. I should send the next one on the 3rd. But Neil's just like, let's do it. And I actually think that's probably the better way to do it.

I keep into account the time zone.

Yeah.

But I have people—

You know, you can schedule the message, right? Send later with iMessage. You know that?

I did not know that.

See, I just saved your life.

No, but I don't want to schedule it later.

I want to sass right now.

And you know, WhatsApp, iMessage, if they don't want to be disturbed, they can put on do not disturb and answer it when, you know, later on. And then I'll go check I can check back and be like, I sent the text, are they still on Do Not Disturb?

So you're constantly thinking about work. You're not calling like you would normally call. You're changing it to text. What else are you doing?

Random dinners and lunches. I did a lunch meeting yesterday. I put air quotes in meeting because they're not really meetings. I met up with one of my buddies, Yaron. He owns a— what is it called? Breakfast joint called Fratelli's. He has 2 locations.

Why does that sound familiar?

He's thinking about franchising. And I was like, oh, that's a Pretty good idea. Really amazing breakfast.

Is that nearby?

On Melrose. And then there's one in Marina del Rey. Dude, their Uber Eats always has buy one breakfast burrito, get one for free, which I love. Oh, very good. And then I also, I did a dinner meeting, met up with Dan Fleshman, Albert, and you know AJ as well. I don't think you know Albert, but yeah. And then Today I'm doing this.

Yeah, this counts as a meeting.

Yeah, this counts as a meeting. And then I'll take the kids to Century City.

Oh, the mall?

Yeah.

I might go there after this. Yeah.

So I'll take them to Century City. I was telling my kid, I was like, Dad needs a pair of white shoes. Because my favorite white shoe brand is actually Common Projects. They don't make half size, so they always hurt my feet. So then I was like, okay, Cole Haan has very similar looking shoes, half the cost. They're usually comfortable because Cole Haan is Nike. Probably won't look as good, don't really care. I'm just not willing to have my feet hurt when I walk. I don't like care how bad something will look.

So, okay. For me, okay, I mentioned earlier, like I'm reading a couple books right now. I was telling— do you use your nose to breathe or your mouth to breathe?

My nose. Okay.

So, there's a book called Breath that I'm reading right now. It's mind-blowing, right? So, I'm just reading a couple books right now. There's another one, oh, on Napoleon and he wrote— because basically how he conquered, how he thinks about business, how he thinks about dating, how he thinks about all these things, right? So, I'm reading that book. So, I'm just reading a couple books simultaneously. spontaneously right now. And then I'm watching a lot of videos on YouTube and we're spending time making content as well. But I think more than anything, I'm spending time planning for the next year. And so, I'll just sit and think about, okay, like what's a bottleneck, right? A big problem with me, this problem with you too probably, I have a lot of ideas. You have a lot of ideas too, right? And so, I'm like, okay, but the problem with these ideas is I push a lot of these ideas through but you can't do all the ideas, right? And I'm just like, okay, so what can we do to stop Stop this. Stop this madness from happening. That's largely coming from me, right? And so I'll think about things like that. Like, what are the bottlenecks that are holding us back right now? What's stopping us from reaching? Like, what are all the things we need to do to fail? And this is a Charlie Munger exercise. He talks about invert, always invert. And by the way, I finished reading this book called Worldly Wisdom. I paid $83 for it. It's a Charlie Munger book. It's only 80 pages or so. But in that book, he talks about how, and just in life in general, you should always think about not how you will succeed, but how you would fail, right? So let's say we have revenue targets for next year. Okay, what do I What do I need to do to absolutely fail at doing this? And I list everything, right? So it's a lot of strategic thinking.

Wait, go back. You have revenue targets. What do you have to do to fail to hit the number?

What do I need to do to completely fail at meeting these metrics? Got it.

Okay. Right?

So it's instead of saying, what are all the things I need to do to be successful? What are just all the things I need to do to fail? And then I'll just avoid those things.

And when you mean by fail, are you talking about mistakes? Are you talking about like, if I don't do marketing, I won't get enough leads?

Like— It's basically what do I need to do to miss the number? That's all it is. And he does this exercise all the time. It's way easier to think about all what I need to avoid and I just won't go there. If you're an agency owner and you want to grow faster, check out the Agency Owners Association that's hosted by my podcast co-host Neil Patel and myself. And we have other agency owners that are doing 8 figures a year. They were doing 9 figures a year. They sold their business for hundreds of millions of dollars and they're going to share their experiences with you. There's a whole host of other benefits. And the cool thing is that Is that there's a 7-day free trial and you should check it out now because we're going to take the prices up. So just go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more and we'll see you inside. And so it's things like, it's so like, that's one example, but there's a lot of other examples because we're just sitting with our thoughts the whole time. And like I mentioned earlier, like again, if you dropped into a forest, all you can, you're just going to pick up an axe and start chopping, right?

Yeah.

So we just kind of changed the type of tree that we're chopping during the break. That's all. Got it. Yep. So that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and don't forget to check out marketingschool.io/agency if you want to grow your agency faster, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.