How Losing Someone Can Completely Reshape You In Business, Chaos Is Always Present In Business. You Choose Who Absorbs It

0:01You know what I want to talk about, Neil? I want to talk about how losing someone can actually completely reshape you in business. And so this is a tribute to my mom, because I lost my mom last week on a Thursday. The moment she went, there's two main things that happened. One, you can probably imagine, I was like, okay, fine. It's probably, it's probably time to start dating someone seriously in honor of my mom. Right. Cause she's always wanted me to get married and have, you know, grandkids and all that for her. But two, the moment she passed, I was like, whoa, like the way she's covered for everybody, like, you know, how a parent like will do the overdue the things that for their kids, right?

0:36Meaning that they'll take care of things that they shouldn't be taking care of. They'll shield you from everything. They'll protect you to the very end, right? I realized that in the past, not so much anymore now, I've gotten a little better over the past few years, but I've always done that almost as if people in my company were my friends or my family, right? And I would shield them from these things. And what's interesting is we have this leadership meeting each week. I didn't join these last two weeks, right? Because of all the things that were going on. And I kind of wanted to see how the team would deal with these things.

1:03And so what happened was I have a call recorder that joins those to look for compelling content ideas. And I saw a line in there that was actually very compelling. It said that chaos is always present in the business, but it's usually the leaders that absorb it. And I was like, oh, whoa, that like, that stuck with me. It's like props to my team for, for, for observing that. But also in my mind now, I'm like, you know, I'm just, I've gotten better over the years, but I'm even more after she passed, I was just like, yeah, I'm not going to treat people the same way that I treat friends and family where I'm going to protect them and coddle them at all costs.

1:36Sure, I'm going to protect them as if they're part of, we're part of the same team, but we're all here to perform at the end of the day. And so I think what instantly clicked for me was, or reinforced for me is like, yes, I'm going to do everything it takes to grow this business, but I'm not going to do everything I can to just be at all places at once. Cause at the end of the day, I'm just one person. Yeah. I learned something interesting from your mom's passing as well. Cause she did something that I've never seen before. I'm not saying it's not common or uncommon. I don't have any data on this.

2:05But your mom prepares. And she prepares for the worst case, which I thought was a very interesting concept. In business and in marketing, we have so much chaos. We don't know what's going to work, what's not. Some things are bad, some things are good. Without getting into details, because it's your personal life, your mom prepared for her passing. She was also in a unique circumstance where she knew eventually her time was going to come. She planned everything out for you, your father, her husband, right? And herself to not burden anyone in your family with anything. Yep. And she prepared for even things like funeral arrangements.

2:48She even prepared, and you can edit this out, Noah, if you don't want to say it. No, we can leave it. Yep. She even prepared for the eventual passing of your dad. Yes. Yes. And the way that funeral was planned too. Yes. Which is really admirable and amazing for someone to think. And she didn't want to not only burden you, her son. And the note you shared, I won't get into it, was truly heartfelt. But she also didn't want to burden her own husband. Yeah. You know, the thing is, that's actually very common in Eastern Asian cultures. So if you grew up Japanese, Chinese, or even Korean, like any of these, right?

3:26Like you just don't want to burden other people. But there's a point where, and so you can do that when you run a company too. You don't want to burden your team, but at the same time you hired your team. So you shouldn't think about it the same way. And so I've always looked at it as I don't want to burden, like if there's no extra work I need to add for Noah or yourself, like I don't want to burden you, right? Even you, when you said last week, like, hey, yo, like you being a friend, I'll take care of the podcast. I'm like, no, I can't burden him, right? I can't burden you in being alone. So I did literally the day after she passed, like we did a podcast together, right?

3:55And so that is a thing, but I think that's great for family. I think that can be very detrimental in running a business because at the end of the day, you're hiring people to perform. And if you're just going to be there helping all the time, then people are going to be over-reliant on you. And they would love for you to do the job because they're just here to make money anyway, for the most part, right? Some people are really bought into your mission, but a lot of people, it's a paycheck, which is fine. So I don't look at it from a burden aspect. I look at it more for the point of mind is she thinks worst case scenario and she plans for worst case scenario.

4:28Right. Throughout the whole process, you know, there's exciting, good moments that give you hope. There's sad moments. And she planned for the worst case and she tried to think, all right, well, if this is the worst case, anything better than that is a cherry on top. when you look at a company, the employees within an organization, or even entrepreneurs, most of them tend to be super optimistic. And you kind of need some optimism as an entrepreneur because the chances of succeeding are slim to none. But how many entrepreneurs do you meet and business owners and executives that are running companies that plan for things not going the way they want?

5:10I don't really see it. I usually see them saying, here's what our goal for the year. This is what we're going to hit or try to achieve. And let's plan for that. But they don't really have any contingencies on if the Fed doesn't reduce rates or there's tariffs or things get worse in the economy. This is how we're going to adapt and adjust and ready for, you know, a nuclear disaster, whatever that may be in business or marketing. I think it depends. So the reason when we did that personality test, your practicality is very high. We're like high 90s, basically, right? You're like 97. I'm like 97, 98 or something like that.

5:44I got that from my mom. And I'm realizing the number of people coming to this funeral, the first time you asked to come to the funeral, I'm like, why? Right. That was so weird to me. I didn't understand it. Right. So I went to a Thomas, who, you know, as well, I'm like, why? Right. And he's like, no, that's like comment. And then like all these other people are starting. I'm like, this is not even a testament to me. This is a testament to my mom, which reinforces that a lot of how you are and how I am is really just looking at our parents. Yeah. It's pattern recognition. Right. So I think our practicality probably comes from my, your parents, my parents.

6:10And so I would just say for my mom, she does tend to think about what are the second and third order consequences. I know for a fact for you, you've thought about the contingencies with your business. You're very protective about making sure that you don't lose your assets, right? Or lose your ass in general. I'm the same way too. I might be a little more reckless sometimes, but I do think about the second and third order consequences. I would say a lot of people I look at with that personality test, when they're low on practical, They don't think about these things. And there's a lot of, there's crazy entrepreneurs.

6:40We know when we say, when I say crazy, I mean that they don't think about these things and they're high flying. They like, you know, they like the, they like the things more than the actual, like producing things for customers. And they're a little different. That's okay. It's just not how we are. So yeah. Yeah. I also talked to my CEO quite often at NP digital and he taught me something similar a while ago, because when you're in the agency game, sometimes you get customers, sometimes you don't, uh, you got to hire. Sometimes economy is bad. And us being in 20 something countries, we're impacted by laws and regulations and governments from all over the world.

7:15And we can't control what people do or don't do. And he tells me probably once a quarter that when we're in some sort of situation and he's planning for it, he always assumes the worst. And it's usually never the outcome. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is so extreme. This is very unlikely. He's like, I run the ship. I have to assume the ship is always going to crash or hit something or engine's gonna break. And I have to be ready for whatever. And when it doesn't happen, great. hey, that's a cherry on top, but I need to be prepared in case something bad happens like an iceberg comes in our way and we don't see it.

7:54Yep, and that is why CEO is the worst job. Yes. Everything rolls up to you that you don't want to roll up to you and that's just what it is, right? So like I mentioned earlier, just to kind of tie the bow around this, the quote I mentioned, so chaos is always present in business. I think it's not even the leaders absorb it. You get to choose, if you're one of the owners of the business, you get to choose who absorbs the chaos and you have to choose wisely. And if those people can't absorb the chaos, and they try to kick the chaos back to you, those people unfortunately aren't the right fit and you have to move on from them quickly.

8:23I tend to hire executives who stress and are good at handling stress. They stress about what's happening. They stress about what isn't happening or what may happen. And they're really good at handling stress. The reason I hire people who are like that, I've noticed a trait or a trend in which those kinds of people in my organization are really good at dealing with problems and they don't put it on other people. They tend to be a little high strung, but I like working with executives who are kind of like that because like when things go wrong, like your mom passing away and then the organization has to pick up without you.

9:04When you have people who are high strung and worry about everything, they just deal with it and they tend not to come to you with problems. They tend to come to you with solutions and they come to you with the solutions after the problem happened and they tell you, oh, this problem happened, here was a solution, already implemented, and this is what happened. And they bring it to you after everything is pretty much done. And it's like, those are the type of people that really help an organization. There's levels to that, right? So there's people that don't point out the problem. Then you have people who just point out the problem.

9:32Then you have people who point out the problem, the solution, that's it. And then you have the problem, the solution, and then they just do it. And then it's just like, oh, it's done, Neil. What else would you like? I plan on doing this next. Is this okay, right? It's just one step after another. they're proactive. But to your point, the question I like asking people now to test their resilience, and you can't test resilience that well during the interview process, but I'll be like, hey, Neil, tell me about a time when you worked your absolute hardest, right? And you might have someone that says, okay, yeah, I woke up at 5 a.m.

10:00and I'd work until probably 1 a.m. when we're doing these acquisitions. And well, why did you work so hard? Well, because I really cared and I was really involved in integration, blah, blah, blah. How hard was it really? How stressed were you? Oh, on a scale of 1 to 10. Okay, maybe like a 10 out of 10. Why was it so stressful? Why did you work so hard again, right? And then I get to the question, I'm like, okay, well, how many hours were you working per week? And I'll be like, oh, yeah, you know, like, in this case, it's like, they're working 80, 90, 100 hours. Okay, that's hard work, right? And then the other question I'll ask right after is like, what season of work are you in right now?

10:29Right? So like, are you still looking to work 80, 90, 100 hour weeks? Yeah, they might, sometimes they might say, like, look, I just want to work 40, 50 hours a week, which is fine. But the worst is when I asked someone, what's the hardest you've ever worked? And they said, you know, probably 40 to 45 hours. And And it's not going to cut it. It doesn't cut it. Right. And so my point is resilience is everything in business. And the more resilient people you can hire, the more resilient the company will be. But then it's like, how do you test for these things? I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

10:55Yeah. I don't know how to test because I haven't been too involved in the interview process in my organization or actually any of the organization. Like high level execs? I tend to interview them later on. I make sure they're player coaches. That's the big one. I make sure they're willing to work seven days a week. Because you're not a player coach. No, but I know my weaknesses is I can't coach. Yeah. So I tend to not hire people like me. I try to hire people who are better. To cover your weaknesses. Uh-huh. Yeah. And the reason I look for executives who are player and coaches, most executives are coaches, no problem.

11:29I don't want executives who don't want to get their hands dirty. Yes. It sets a bad example for the rest of this company. Yeah. Because they think they can do the same thing. Yep. Yep. When I interview them, I talk about problems that we're facing and I ask them on the spot. how they would overcome it. And I would also give them real life scenarios of issues we've dealt with and how they would have solved it in the past. And I compare it to our decision-making because we then learned of what worked, what didn't work. And we kind of see their thought process. You're looking for light bulb moments.

11:56Like that reaction, right? I'm looking for experience. And people, when they can give really granular details on how they actually solve something, usually they're involved in it. when they tell me more high-level stuff and they can't get granular, that means they may have been the manager, but they don't know how to actually get it done without a good team. You know, we've been interviewing these COO candidates and the difference between the ones that are really good versus the ones that aren't, the ones that are good, they can whiteboard in real time. Like they can break down their thought process and go into the details, right?

12:30When we give them like a hypothetical campaign or like a scenario that we're dealing with, right? So it's similar to you. Now, the ones that struggle with the whiteboarding and then they tend to try to dance around it. It's like, man, they've had like so much experience, but when push came to shove, it just wasn't there. And you have to trust your gut in that situation. It's like on paper, they look really good, but you got to trust your gut and just say, it ain't going to fly. Yes. But one mistake that I've made with this whole interviewing and hiring process and even telling my team how I want them to work, a great example of this is, you know this, people in an organization tend to come with problems.

13:07They very rarely come with solutions. So in marketing, when AI overviews first came out, I remember it came out, rolled out to a lot of traffic, then they rolled it back and it was barely any keywords that had it and then it started creeping up. It eventually really impacted the health industry. AI overviews were showing up all over for health-related keywords. And I remember we have a client specifically with the AI overviews in health, they didn't adapt and they weren't adapting fast enough, a lot of pages. We were helping them execute. They just couldn't put enough internal resources. So when I was talking to my team and they were coming with the problem, eventually, you know, some of them started coming with solutions, but I learned something in which I used to push people, hey, when you have a problem, you better come with a solution as well.

14:01It slowed down how many people came to me with problems, which was a bad thing because people were afraid to tell me a problem when they couldn't think of a solution. So then I wasn't always aware of the solutions, which is bad as well. I mean, I wasn't aware of the problems, which is bad as well. If I ideally want people to come with a solution, but I rather know a problem than not know the problem. And some people were just afraid. So eventually I made it where people just come to me with the problems. They try to come up with the solution if they can if they can't i tell them it's okay but just try i always want to know the solution no matter what i won't get mad if you don't have a potential solution just tell me the problem and then eventually together we brainstorm solution then i'm like well if you look at the reviews they're telling me they summarize but i'm like it's hard and i was like you know what why not have ai help summarize the articles we have and come up with three bullet points for every single article and then have humans review and then we went in good way mass changes with a lot of keywords within 24 hours.

15:02We were noticing the AIO reviews were starting to pull us in because we were already ranking on Patreon for a lot of keywords. They just weren't pulling us in as much the AIO reviews. And then we started seeing our traffic change to that site. But the point I'm getting at is when I was going through this learning, yeah, it's ideally great for people who plan and are player coaches and will just get things done. If you force that culture, there's always people within an organization that can't keep up. and you're going to have people on the lower levels and it's okay, but you want them to still come to you with problems because if they don't come to you with problems, you won't solve them.

15:37They'll just be hidden and then you won't see as much growth. Yeah. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started. The best part about it, it has everything you could need. Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style. Or if you need help with content creation, Shopify has got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos.

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17:56Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because the one thing that we do on our end is we, everyone has at least, most people have one KPI they're tied to, right? Like to indicate if they're successful or not. And it's every week it's your red, yellow or green on its traffic lights, right? Yeah. And so for us, it's like, okay, if someone's consistently red or yellow, but then they say things are going well, but they're not bringing any problems, then it's very easy for us to just call them out and be like, well, these documents are public to everyone. So everyone can see if you're red or yellow, right? And it's just like, yeah, well, it seems like you've been red or yellow for a while.

18:31Like what's going on, right? And so how do you build in these mechanisms to just make sure that people are on track or off track? And here's a funny thing. I replied to a tweet from this guy, Peter Yang, earlier. He's like, I think he's just talking about agents not being there right now, right? And I'm like, you know, autonomous agents aren't there yet. So I replied. My reply got like 100 ,000 views on X. And like there's a bunch of sub replies to it. So I was just saying, oh, we use AI to help coach people, right? Like if you're not working on the right priority, it's going to coach in the right direction.

18:59If you're red or yellow on your thing, it's going to coach. It's basically an accountability coach, right? Same thing for sales, client service, whatever. So we deployed this and it's working well. Like people have like, they're moving in the right direction now. My point of saying all this is that, and we can move into this AI conversation too. A lot of the replies in there is like, who would want that? Who would want that? But the interesting thing is I had a lot of DMs from entrepreneurs like, dude, I want to implement this, right? How do we do this? I just had a call today with a guy who I think he has like a couple hundred employees.

19:24He DMed me. He's like, we want to do this, right? My point of saying all this is that I think we're going to move into a world where it's like everyone's held accountable to one or two things. And I think they're going to be forced to bring their problems and solutions, especially because they have AI as a partner now. because for me, I'm just like, it's constantly my thought partner. I can't like not have an answer now. Yeah. So, and I hope it's just going to make life easier for everybody, not even just the founders. So, but I also think some people have the wrong mentality when it comes to mindset as an employee, because as an employee, you should want to improve.

19:57Yeah. And you should want to become better. You would think so. Oh, you've never been an employee before. Okay, you say your piece and then let me tell you me as an employee. Go ahead. Yeah. So technically I have been an employee a few years ago. Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. That doesn't really count. That doesn't count. But seriously, did you work anywhere in high school? Yeah. Not very far. Okay. That counts. And clean restrooms and vomit. Okay. That actually counts. Okay. Go, go, go, go. I did door-to-door sales for vacuum. Okay. That counts too. I was a cashier. Okay. Okay. Give your thought.

20:30And then like, I want to hear your opinion too. Yeah, but I had an interesting question and I can tell where this person was going. I was at an event, I was talking about marketing. And I always get, every once in a while, I get really like oddball questions from left field. You know, like one time I got a question like, so with AI, how are you guys going to work on emissions and what it's going to do to the environment? And I was talking at a really big corporation, like what should we be doing? was not related anything to my talk. They're like - Emissions as in like ESG stuff, right? Yes, like pollution and all that kind of stuff, right?

21:07But it was like left field. One of the other recent left field ones I got was, how do you deal with promoting people specifically in DEI, right? And this is just random. I was talking about growing traffic and AI. This is a random question. And I don't want to get into people's preferences, but I know one employee that I work with for a long time he's one of our long-standing team members lgbtq plus q plus I forgot the acronym sorry about that and he's been promoted a lot right uh or I don't know what a lot is but he's been promoted a few times and he's done really well and I was talking to him this morning about it and he's just like he was telling me thank you And I was like, dude, why are you thanking me?

21:56And I was talking about everything from when I saw him to now he's owning a home. And I'm like, look what you did by yourself financially. Look at where you got in this company by yourself. You learned, you improved. He continually tries to improve himself with AI, learning, just getting better, reading books. I'm like, this is the individual, right? And when I was getting that question, I was just like, people shouldn't say, hey, the AI is coaching me so I have less yellows and reds in your scenario. This should be like, the AI is making me better so I can do my job better, perform better, learn more, get raises and promotions, make the company happy, make myself happy, have progress in my life.

22:38That's the attitude they should have. When I was talking about this individual, when I got the question, I'm like, I promoted him because he's good and he's learning and he's doing better. And I'm like, his personal life or preferences than that is none of my business. He's an amazing rock star in our organization. He deserves to be promoted because he's a rock star. On merit. On merit. I don't judge him. I didn't hire him because of DEI. I hired him because he looked amazing on paper, interviewed really well, was amazing cultural fit. And I'm like, this guy has amazing personality to also be on sales calls as well.