Answering Year-End Questions Worth Asking

0:00So now let's end our wrap up with great end of the year questions to always ask. And I found this on Instagram for this guy named Eric Osu. So I'm going to read them to you. You can answer them and then I'll answer them after as well. Or we can actually do one by one. So what is the single best idea you have to improve your business? This is so good. I asked people, by the way, guys, before I answer the question, we send an anonymous survey to everyone and they have to answer that question. 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.

0:34My single best idea to improve the business, this sounds cliche, but I say this almost every week to the team, right? We have to have an unreasonably high talent bar or 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? Right. And the problem with age, especially agency, because it's such a people business, everyone's asking for more resources all the time. It never ends. Right. Everyone's asking for more resources.

1:07And 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 thousand people or so, or Tony Hsu from DoorDash. He was involved for the first 1000 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. Um, and this seems like a really underrated thing, but your people are everything there. Like literally Vinod Kostla said this, right?

1:39Like your people make up the entire organization. How can you just let someone else handle the whole thing? Right. Um, and so I've just found that whenever my hand is in it, um, 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. And that's what I would say. Yeah. 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 you know that you believe a lot of other people or that a lot of people, a lot of other people don't know that you believe is right.

2:16And 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 for 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 apps for optimization there's so much money to be made from apps.

3:12Look 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 ASO, App Store Optimization. Are you talking, what other channels are you talking?

3:42App 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, Chad, GPT or search GPT 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 so that seems to me a little harder to optimize versus the other ones that are more straightforward correct?

4:17I just want that to be clear for everyone because I do think Ranfishkin said this I don't know if we covered this last time but SEO is basically in 2017 SEO was like that's the main channel to focus on SEO is now 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. 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? They all stay stuck in the same place over and over. It's like 10 years, nothing has changed.

4:52So that was good. All right, next question. What is the stupidest thing you're doing right now? Sorry for using that word, everyone. What's wrong with using that word? All right, let's go for it. Okay, so this is the second question we ask. We send everyone these, you don't want to send too many questions in this anonymous survey, but it's like, first thing again, is what is the single best idea you have to grow the company? Second one is what's the stupidest thing that we're doing right now? 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, because I love reading new stuff and I always come up with new ideas, right?

5:29So does my team. The thing is having to be that parent that brings everything back and over. 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 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.

6:06Some 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 this podcast to begin with? That's such a time suck. I cut down on the podcast, but I need to cut down on the in-person meetings. Oh, because a lot of people ask for your time. Neil used to sell these courses, right?

6:41And 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. 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, he does well for himself he teaches people how to trade stocks and he's done really well just trading stocks himself and I remember talking to him about consulting he's like, yeah, what will it cost? how much of your time? and then he was just like, why do I need to pay you for a contract?

7:18let me just buy a lot of those 30 minute calls and that is way cheaper and I can get the same amount of time. That's a good point. And then it got removed. Which is your current partner now, Mike. Yeah, Mike removed the 30-minute calls. What are the other questions I had in there? All right, so the next question is, what's one thing that scares you?

7:44Oh, this is a question I ask in relationships. So what's one thing I'm doing that scares you? so yeah that doesn't really apply here that's one thing I do that's 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 guess how many months it takes on average Less than one? No, no, no. It's really bad. So it's gotten better.

8:24So recently, it's basically around two months or so, two, three months or so, which is pretty good, right? Before it was six, seven 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, they're like, no, we actually really like that.

8:55I was like, oh, did you? 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 gone 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. Do you know what would be helpful? I don't know if you've ever done this, but we do these anonymous upward meetings.

9:37The last time I did this was maybe a couple of years ago, but the feedback that was consistent and I just dumped it into 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. Wait, do you still pay that coach? No. They're useless. I won on that one. We can't pay them forever. Yeah, because they're useless. No, it's like there's diminishing returns. Yeah, because 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.

10:09But 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 an anonymous upward survey, it'll probably benefit you. I mean, you probably already know these things anyway. Yep, so.

10:41Yeah, the... What are we on? The fourth one. Fourth one, which is, 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 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 two 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. Two is you manage your costs, which we haven't talked a lot about on this podcast.

11:17But Neil's actually exceptionally good at managing his costs. He looks at everything down to the last penny. I do think that you're pretty good at those two things. I'm really good at those two things. Yeah, but those two things are required for business success. Yeah, yeah. It was funny because Eric and I are recording this podcast and before I came late, I'm actually late quite a bit, even though it's in the building I live in. and uh we were talking i was like yeah dude i'm like i just got charged 13 000 from this company called eleventy which is a coding company i didn't even go into the store no joke they had my card on file they just randomly charged me 13 000 something dollars for clothes and then i'm trying to get a refund and i'm going through a pain and i got this text with them yeah and i'm like this is just a bunch of bull you're admitting that you charged the wrong neil patel yeah and i want to speak to manager.

12:07No one wants to put me in touch with the manager. They keep saying that managers aren't in the store. They're on vacation. There's no such thing as assistant manager at this place. I'm like, all right, you got a store on Rodeo drive and you guys do millions of dollars in revenue. You're telling me there's no managers I can end up talking to. No one's even willing to give me a call. They have multiple locations. I'm like, screw this stuff. I'm like, give me a charge back. I'm like, Oh, what? They think I don't go through my credit card statements. I'm not going to notice each and every single bill.

12:34And I have quite a bit of charges on my credit card statement. So most people think like, oh, 13 grand easily is spot out. It doesn't matter if it's$13 ,000 or$2. I go through it like this morning I spent, and I haven't figured it out yet. I got charged $2 and something cents from Amazon. And I still haven't figured out what my$2 charges for. And I'll figure it out because it's like every penny adds up. So you're looking at your, your statements every day. Uh, not every day. Yeah. Every other day. Wow. So Neil used to check his analytics all the time. This is like your way. Oh, yeah, you check your company bank account.

13:09That's not your... I don't have access to all my company bank accounts, believe it or not. Yeah, but you check the main ones. I don't even have access to the main ones. What? Yeah, I learned this lesson from someone else. I was talking to him banking. So we bank with this bank out of Canada. We bank with quite a few banks, but one of them is called CIBC. They've been really helpful to us and they've been great. And I was asking a question the other day because I was, you know, I got, I get a report from my team roughly daily. I say roughly daily because there's weekends. How much money we have in all of our bank accounts.

13:44And then I get an email at least once a week of how much money do we have in all our global bank accounts? And we have a lot of bank accounts. I can't even count. Like I'm not talking about 10 or 20 bank accounts. Like we have substantially more than that because all our bank accounts for each country we're in, then you have different currencies, and then you have all the companies that we've bought as well, right? So of course, over time, you try to merge them and clean up. But I was talking to a treasury person at CIBC, and we're talking about the most efficient ways to manage treasury because the US dollar is doing better than a lot of the currencies that we hold money in.

14:20So you don't want to lose money by holding it in the wrong currency. But you don't want to just keep changing back and forth because it also costs money to convert the currency. And I was like, what do big corporations do? And they were really nice to like, look, your corporation's a good size and they're trying to be nice. You know, I'm like, no, no. What are the big corporations like Apple do? Right. Forget my size. And we were just going down and we were talking about different things and they're saying how there's no real clear solution for this. A lot of big corporations have the same problem.

14:50They just have teams to help manage it and mitigate and they have treasury policies. And I was like, and we were talking about money in different accounts. I'm like, you know, it's funny. Like we have so many accounts. It's just so hard for me to keep track. And I feel a little off because I'm used to having logins to every single account. And they're like, no, this is normally like, if you're the CEO of a big corporation, which I'm not, and our company is still small in comparison to like Nvidia or a Facebook where like, uh, you know, a spec, um, compared to them. And they're just like, Yeah, even at companies at your size, it's very common for founders and CEOs to not have access to every single account because there's just too much.

15:26Not every single, but the main ones. I have enough. That's what I mean. But I don't have every single. There's just too many accounts. By the way, speaking of which, Microsoft shareholders voted on the Bitcoin reserves proposal. Do you know what happened? Yeah, they voted no. But I think Amazon's up next. So we'll see what happens there. But hey, if they start doing it, then you'll probably hold some Bitcoin in your reserves as well.

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18:25I believe for them, that's better for the future. I totally agree with that. That's better for everyone. But if you have some cash reserves, they're just saying take the 5 % of the cash reserves and put it in there. Yes, I agree with that. But if you have to choose between investing and the future of your business versus putting in Bitcoin, I'm not saying you'll make more by investing in the future. In theory, people sign up to buy your stock for you to continue investing in the future. But if you're one of those companies that's sitting on like$200,$300 billion in cash reserves, should you put$100 billion into Bitcoin?

18:54Probably not. But should you put 5%, 10 % or something nominal? Sure, go for it. Unless you're micro strategy. Like micro strategy, his only move now is to just keep marketing Bitcoin. That's his only move now. No one even cares about his company. It's just a Bitcoin play. That's really all it is. He should divest the rest of the company and just have Bitcoin. And fire everyone or sell off to private equity and just keep the Bitcoin for it. He'll probably do that. So that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, view, and subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io slash agency see if you want to learn more about our little agency community to help you grow faster.

19:27I think Neil, we're actually speaking in 10 days to the community. So that's that. And yeah, we'll see you tomorrow.