Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Neil Patel on Goal Setting, Learning From Mistakes, and More!

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

In this podcast, I interview my good friend Neil Patel about his approach to goal setting. You may not know Neil, especially because he doesn’t appear on many podcasts, but he’s a true expert in the field of entrepreneurship and business. He’s a real marketing “guru” and the most successful of my close friends in business (and other aspects of life). Beyond his ad agency and SEO expertise, Neil is a New York Times Bestselling author, and he’s been called a top influencer by The Wall Street Journal, as well as a top 10 marketer by Forbes. He was even recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations. The bottom line is Neil knows how to get results and help businesses grow, so he’s the ideal person to discuss the right ways to set big, yet achievable, goals. In our chat, we discuss . . . How to set big goals while staying realistic How to stay on track with long-term goals Staying motivated through passion and strategic rewards How to learn from mistakes and when to give up on a goal How to increase self-confidence And a lot more . . . So, if you’re at all interested in entrepreneurship, becoming good at marketing, or building a business, and you want to learn how to properly set goals and achieve success, listen to this podcast! Timestamps: 0:00 - Our (new and improved) protein bars are back! Try them risk-free today! Go to buylegion.com/bar and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points 5:58 - How do you decide on which goals to pursue? 8:45 - How do you distinguish between thinking big or being delusional? 11:44 - Does excitement matter when setting goals or should you stay pragmatic? 14:41 - How do you stay motivated when you’re trying to reach your goals? 17:18 - What about giving up on goals when they aren’t feasible? 21:43 - Did you ever have a time where you questioned yourself in business? 24:00 - What are the big lessons you learned from your mistakes? 32:46 - Does your love of working interfere with your personal life? 36:40 - What are your thoughts on mitigating mistakes? 42:26 - When seeking advice, are there specific questions that you like to ask? 51:25 - What drives you to keep going? 54:31 - What is it about business that does it for you? Mentioned on the Show: Our (new and improved) protein bars are back! Try them risk-free today! Go to buylegion.com/bar and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points Neil’s website: https://neilpatel.com/

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for an interview I did with my good friend, Neil Patel, who is one of the most hardworking and successful people I know. He is a New York Times bestselling author. He's been called a top influencer by the Wall Street Journal, as well as a top 10 marketer by Forbes. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations. And Neil is 36 now, I think, and wants to be a billionaire by the time he's 40. That's one of his business goals. And I think there's a very good chance he's going to do it. That's how successful Neil Patel is. Now, why am I interviewing my rich entrepreneur friend on

my health and fitness podcast? Well, I wanted to talk to Neil about goal setting because he has been setting and achieving goals for a long time now. He started on his path at 16, I believe, is when he started working in the digital marketing space. And so for the last 20 years, he has been systematically growing his net worth, growing his influence, growing his businesses, growing his investments. And I should also mention growing outside of business too. Neil is married, he has two kids, and I remember years ago before he was married and he was talking about the goal that he was setting for that. And he was describing the type of woman he's going to get and the type of family he is going to have and how it's going to work. And fast forward to today and he has done just that.

So if you want to hear about some of the mindsets and some of the habits that help with setting and achieving big goals, like how to stay realistic, how to stay on track when it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of work, how to stay motivated, how to learn from mistakes, when to give up on a goal or when to reformulate a goal, how to improve your self-confidence and more, then this interview is for you. Before we wade into it, question, gentle listener, what would a perfect protein bar look like to you? How about plenty of high quality protein, look like to you? How about plenty of high quality protein, nutritious plant-based carbs, fiber, and fats, non-GMO, gluten-free, no artificial sweeteners, flavors, dyes, or other chemical junk, fresh, soft, and delicious. You know, an all-natural protein bar that's an ideal

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you want to try my protein bars today. Head over to www.buylegion.com slash bar. That is B-U-I, legion.com slash bar. And if you use the coupon code muscle at checkout, you will save 20% if it is your first order with us. And if it is not your first order over at Legion, you will get double reward points on that order, which is 10% cash back. And know that if you don't absolutely love my protein bars, just let us know and we will give you a full refund on the spot. No forms, no return is even necessary. So you can't lose. Go to buylegion.com slash bar. Now place your order, use the coupon code muscle, save 20%, try the bars risk-free and see what you think.

is risk-free and see what you think. Hey, Neil. It's funny actually to do the video because we've talked so much on the phone, but I haven't seen you. I mean, it was years ago. Remember when you visited, but since then, I mean, I've seen you on social media and whatever, but I haven't interacted with an actual... I've interacted with a voice now for some time. So it's funny to do this. We probably talked on the phone. I don't know how many hours, but my guess is over 50 hours by now. Right. Yeah.

Might be more actually. Yeah, that's true. But hey, thanks for taking the time to come on my podcast. I appreciate it. And what I wanted to bring you on to talk about is goals. And so I'm going to rush this episode out. I want to get it out in January because this is obviously a hot topic. It's the new year and goal setting is on a lot of people's minds. of people's minds and you are one of the most successful people I know. And certainly I would say my most successful close friend and, and I would say in business and then in other, in,

in other areas of your life too. It's, it's very clear to me that, um, you are good at coming up with goals that you can achieve and then going about achieving them. And so I thought you'd be a great guest for this topic. And so where I would start the conversation is, how do you go about coming up with goals, deciding on goals to pursue? So the way I look at goals is, you know, obviously it all starts with whatever you want to achieve, whether it's losing weight, building more muscle, make more money. You got to figure out what you want to achieve. Once you figure out what area, and you can have goals in all aspects of life, personal, professional, it doesn't matter. Then you got to look at what's realistic. So for example, if I weighed 400 pounds, it would be unrealistic and unhealthy to say in the next six months, I'm going to lose 200 pounds,

right? It's just unrealistic. You can maybe do some research online, see what's realistic, how much weight people lose on a regular basis. Or if you're in business for me, I look at where are you at? What did I grow last year? And where do I want to grow this year? And what do I need to achieve to hit those? And do I actually think it's realistic? Or if I'm starting out in business or in my career, what is the trajectory of most people? Do I think I can not just match it, but do I think I can beat it by a little? Because if you're outperforming others, even by a little, that's great. You don't have to win by a 10X or 5X. Even if you win by 1%, winning is winning. So you just want to make sure that you're doing better than the norm.

And that's how I start with my goals in which you work backwards. You see what's realistic, what other people are doing, because everyone has case studies online for everything, whether it's business growth in your industry or career growth, salary growth based on how many years you've been working, or even weight loss and fitness goals. People have videos on YouTube of what they did all day long over 60 days, 90 days, 120 days. Even with your stuff, I've seen it all over Instagram on your stories. You always post before and after pictures. And a lot of it actually has transformations and how long it take them. And it was like, oh, this is really cool. So it gives people a realistic idea of what they can do in a certain amount of time.

Yeah. Expectations are huge, certainly in fitness. Like you mentioned, a lot of people, they have the wrong expectations often because they've seen misleading stuff on the internet. And so then they're already starting out with failure kind of baked into the cake because they saw some misleading stuff on the Internet. And then they thought that they could go from totally out of shape to jacked in six months. And then six months go by and they don't realize it, but they've actually done very well for six months. But they had the wrong expectations. And so then they're, they're very disappointed. Now, what are your thoughts, what are your thoughts on, and I know I'm sure you've experienced this

just over your career because you have, you have a lot of business successes under your belt. And I'm sure, I'm sure a lot of stuff that didn't quite go the way that you wanted it to go. What are your thoughts on, people will ask me about kind of like the Peter Thiel, you know, that I guess it's in his book, which I haven't read. It's on my list. It's just not a high priority book, but I think it's from zero to one, this idea of, okay, if you had to, it's like a thought exercise. If you had to, I think it's, if you had to 10X the size of your business in the next six months, how would you go about that? And the idea isn't that you necessarily can do that, but it's to try to get you to think bigger.

And there is some usefulness to that. But how do you distinguish between thinking big and just being delusional, like magical thinking? You know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean. The way I look at it as similar to Peter Thiel and how do you get to 10X? I also think about that in every aspect of my life. And I'll plan out.

So for even 2021 with my ad agency, NP Digital, I started planning out what do we need to do to generate a billion dollars a year in revenue. Funny enough, that's roughly 10 times more than what we'll do this year in revenue, call it. Okay. And when you think about that, that is 10x. I already know there's no way to get to a billion dollars in revenue, but working backwards, I now know, hey, if I want to be a multi-billion dollar company, here's some of the things that people are doing. A lot of partnerships, a lot of outbound, a lot of awards, being in business just long enough. It tells you how people are doing things.

So what I'll do is I know that's unrealistic. I also can look and see what's normal in growth. I know that's unrealistic. I also can look and see what's normal in growth. I'll plan for a little bit more than normal, but I'll have my team execute on what needs to be done to get to 10x, which means I won't get to 10x. I shouldn't hit what's normal. I should hit something that's better than that.

And that's the model that I use. And it's really good to have both because you should know that the 10x or something crazy is just unrealistic. But you should try to figure out what you need to do to get there because if you don't ever plan to be big, if you don't ever plan to be ripped, you won't take the steps necessary to get there. So you need to plan on taking the steps, but you need to have realistic expectations knowing that companies or people just don't accomplish those certain goals in that short period of time. So you need to have realistic expectations and you should try to aim to beat the realistic version.

But to beat the realistic version, you need to have the crazy mentality and execute as if you're actually trying to optimize for something that's much larger. And what about excitement? and execute as if you're actually trying to optimize for something that's much larger. And what about excitement? Is that part of the process for you when you are deciding on the goal? Do you care about your emotional response to it, so to speak? Like, does it need to excite you or do you not really care how you feel about it? You're going more with just the pragmatic approach. So I do care about how I feel about it. And the reason I say that is, if you're not in love with what you're focusing on and what you're trying to achieve,

you're not gonna achieve it in most cases because you're not gonna put in the time and effort. When you're really excited about a goal or objective, that means you're probably in love with it. You're passionate about it. So you'll put in the time and energy needed to actually achieve the goal. A great example of this. I always wanted to be more fit. If I could be more fit like you, that'd be great. It doesn't excite me enough to put in the hours though. I'm not super passionate about, about being buff and rip. I am excited about being healthy. And we've talked about this a lot over the years with you and I, I always work out not

every day, but close enough to it. You know, I'll do Tabata workouts or HIIT workouts. I'll do a lot of cardio. I eat super clean and healthy organic food. I won't touch like fries or mayo or cheese or anything that's like unhealthy. And I know some of those things are debatable on if they're healthy or not, but I try not to eat too many fatty foods. You know, I just try to keep it clean, like have your vegetables and well-balanced diet. And every once in a while, I do eat unhealthy. You sent me a box of ice cream once. It was delicious. It was good, right? Yeah, it was good. I probably ate too much of it, but it was good. And every once in a while, that's fine. And funny enough, I am passionate about ice cream. But the point I was trying to

make is if you're not passionate enough, you won't put in the time and energy. So you need to think about what you are passionate about, what you're emotional about, what you love, because that is what you're most likely going to achieve when it comes to a goal point of view. I may, if someone told me, Hey, Neil, you know, you should hit a million Instagram followers. That would be so cool. I'm like, okay, I can figure out how to do it. I'm a marketer. That's my background. I just don't care about it. I rarely post personal pictures on social media. The only time I post personal pictures is when my team asked me to post personal pictures or they asked one of my buddies

and take the personal pictures from them. And then they just post it on my profile because I don't, I'm not too personal on social media. I get the concept of it. I just don't care for people to know my life. So it's about goals that you really want to achieve because if you just make ones that you don't care about, you're not really going to achieve them then. And what about motivation? What about staying motivated to continue working to hit those goals? Because for many people, it's easy to be excited in the beginning, in the honeymoon phase of working towards something, right? And oftentimes in business and fitness and basically everything, And oftentimes in business and fitness and basically everything, especially if you have a bigger goal, it usually turns out to be harder than you thought, right? It usually requires more time, more energy, more aggravation, blah, blah, blah.

And so how have you been able to stay motivated just to keep doing what you need to do to get as far as you've gotten? Yeah. So the way I look at motivation is if you're passionate about something, you're much more likely going to be motivated. But even if you're passionate about something, you don't always have the motivation carrying you through, especially if you're trying to make a resolution for a whole year or a goal for a whole year. So I like doing is two things. One, I think about all the things I need to do within that year to achieve that goal. Assuming you're doing a goal based on a yearly basis. And then I figure out, all right, what do I need to do on a quarterly basis to achieve those goals? Then I need to, then I break it down to what I need to do on a quarterly basis to achieve those goals? Then I break it down to what I need to do on a monthly basis. Then I break it down per week and then per day.

I know that sounds kind of extreme, but once you have it down to what I need to do per day, or even in tasks that you need to do each day to achieve it, now you know what you have to do every day and you just don't go to sleep until it's achieved, right? For all the times that you can actually control it. Sometimes you can't, but in most cases you can. And then what I do is on top of that, give yourself a reward every week or every month. You can pick the timeframe or once a quarter for staying on track. So for example, I love ice cream. If my goals relate to fitness, and even if I was motivated to be super healthy, I know I love ice cream so much. And I'm going to say, I'm not going to eat ice cream at all. I only get ice cream when I do X, Y, and Z for the week

or the month that, and those tasks should be related to your goal. And that helps me stay on track. So those two things, one is rewarding yourself and two is breaking it down to figure out what you need to do on a quarterly, monthly, weekly, and then ideally daily basis. So then that way you actually have a chance of achieving what you're trying to achieve. And what about giving up on goals?

What about goals where maybe it's something that you are passionate about and then you get going and there's a point where you start to question, is this actually something that I want to do? Many people, they can make their different mistakes. You can make the sunk cost mistake where simply putting time and energy and money into something makes you want to keep putting more time and energy and money into it, even though it should be clear that it's not going to work out. So that's one kind of mistake. And then the opposite of that would be giving up too easily. How have you dealt with that? Some people I've seen them with their kids say like, Oh, you're not a quitter. Don't quit. And,

and my viewpoint is, is there's nothing wrong with quitting if it's not right for you. And I'll give you two examples of quitting goals. So the first for more so scenarios. So the first scenario is let's. So the first scenario is, let's say your goal was to get super ripped and you want to gain 60 pounds of muscle. And you realize as you're going through the process that, hey, I don't want that many pounds of muscle. I want to be a little bit more lean, have more cardio going.

I just don't want to be too bulky like those guys competing in the Olympics or whatever it may be. And I look at that kind of goal when you start changing it. That's not really quitting. That's more so adjusting. And as you learn, we adjust. We adjust throughout our whole life. Taste change. You may not want that big house anymore. We adjust throughout our whole life. Taste change.

You may not want that big house anymore. You may want a better car. You might want a jet. You may not care about any of that stuff. I went from everything from caring about fancy homes to selling my furniture to having no homes to then buying them all over again because I had a family. And then I'm like, oh, you can't just live in a box or be a nomad when you have kids and they have to go to school and all this kind of stuff. So goals can change over time. And changing them doesn't necessarily mean you quit. It's just a learning

process. Now, on the flip side, there could be some goals that you just do and you just find that they're not right for you and you quit because you want to focus on other things that you feel are more important to you. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But what you should take from that is what did you learn from it? Why wasn't it right from you? Why did you need to quit? And how can you avoid making this mistake again? And the reason I call it a mistake, and there's nothing wrong with mistakes, kids make them all the time. And we tell them it's okay, is you wasted time. And if you learn from it, you can avoid wasting time in the future because time's valuable. You can make more money,

you can lose money, you can't get back time, right? You can always get back your winnings, you can make tons more money, you can become a billionaire in theory. Everyone has that chance. At the moment, there's no way for us to recuperate time in this lifetime. Sure, some people may believe in time travel or whatever, but right now, none of us know how to do any of that crap. So you want to learn. And then the second one is you just quit because you're not getting the results you want. And what I try to tell people is, well, maybe your timeframe was unrealistic, or maybe that you are getting the results. It's just, you're not getting them fast enough and you just need to give it more time.

There was an entrepreneur, Bill Gates, once said, it's shocking, and I'm butchering the quote, it's shocking what people think they can accomplish in one or three years, but they underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years. Now, it doesn't matter what you think about Bill Gates, whether you like him or you hate him, but the reality is, I believe that is true. Most people I talk to have crazy aspirations for the first year, two years, three years, and they undershoot themselves for the next 10 years. They don't believe in themselves in the long run and you need to switch it, have realistic goals in the short run, have crazy goals in the long run because you can achieve more than what you actually think you can. you can achieve more than what you actually think you can. Have you ever dealt with any issues relating to confidence or self-belief? I mean, going back maybe to your earlier days when you were just starting out, when you might question what you're really capable of and should you really have these big goals? Did you ever, did you ever have a phase like that?

I did. For the first few years, I was losing money. I remember I was a million dollars in debt. I was like, should I just go get a job? I don't think I can cut it. I was an entrepreneur. Everything I keep doing is not working out. My revenue goals are never being hit.

My growth goals, my profitability goals, none of them were being hit. And yeah, you miss a year. You start lowering your expectations. You start missing two, three, four, five years, and then you start doubting yourself. And what I learned throughout the process is it's normal. Life and goal setting is kind of like a roller coaster. There's ups and downs and scary moments and happy moments. And sometimes things go the way you want. A lot of times they don't. But what I learned from it, and this helped me achieve more of what I want and have less confidence issues. And I started actually becoming more confident is I started looking at

things from the perspective of why didn't I hit all those goals that I was trying to achieve? What went wrong? And when you start thinking about consciously start thinking about every time what went wrong, and more importantly, what you can learn from it and how you can avoid making that mistake again, you'll actually increase your chances of getting what you want. See, I'm no Elon Musk. I'm no Bill Gates. I'm not a Jeff Bezos. I'm not one of these smart people that went to Harvard or Princeton or whatever these schools are. I was just an average kid.

What I did really well with, because I didn't always know the right moves, but I made so many wrong moves that eventually I learned from them and I created the habit of avoiding to make the same mistake over and over again, which led me down a path of doing the right things unintentionally, right? Because over time, you're just going to knock off a lot of stuff you shouldn't be doing, which leads you down the right path. And that's how I get to where I am today. And that's what's helped me build up a lot of my confidence. What are some of the bigger lessons you've learned over the years?

Some of the bigger mistakes that you realized maybe afterward when you're looking back saying, what went wrong here? And I'm also curious, did that include looking at your maybe ideas, your plans, your assumptions, your beliefs, as well as what you did because of those things? assumptions, your beliefs, as well as what you did because of those things? Yeah. So I remember as an entrepreneur for many, many years, I believed that the best thing was SEO or paid advertising or advertising on Google or Facebook. I'm in the B2B industry. And I remember I had an investor named Mark Goins years and years ago with one of my previous companies that failed. And he said, all you need to do is make a list of all your potential customers that you want to go after and start calling them.

And I was like, okay, sounds good. Whatever. I took it for granted. And I'm like, yeah, look at Google, their massive company and Facebook advertising on them. It's the way to go. He's like, all you need to do is pick a sector, create a list of all the companies that are ideal fit within that sector and just start calling them and selling them.

And over time, you'll learn how to sell them and what works and what doesn't. And fast forward seven, eight years after he told me that, maybe 10 years. And if I look at today, I do what he was telling me. And that drives a lot of the revenue. I do what he was telling me. And that drives a lot of the revenue. My misconceptions of who is rich, what is rich, how to grow businesses, how to get fit. A lot of these things have changed over time. And what I've learned is you need to have an open mind because there's many ways to

do things. And maybe your way isn't always the best way, but people historically have done really well and they've accomplished goals in almost every single industry, not for the last one or two years, not even five or 10 years, but literally for decades and decades. So how can you just go and learn from others? Elon Musk says it best. What he loves doing is he loves listening to the books on tape or reading books of other people that he admires over the years. And he reads their biography and learns from their mistakes, which is even embedded in learning from your own mistakes, right? You can learn from other people's mistakes and avoid making them because a lot of the principles and concepts have been really similar over time. have been really similar over time. I wish that there were more books. I mean, I guess I'm thinking specifically related to business, but it'd be interesting just in general, if it were more common to have books that talk about case studies that are catastrophic failures and what went wrong, as opposed to only focusing on the unicorns like in business and what

things, what brilliant moves they made, because you can certainly learn things from the positive case studies, but for every, let's not forget, right? In business for every successful business, there are many, many, many more unsuccessful businesses that were direct competitors. So it's almost like a survivorship bias issue where we're only getting to see those planes that, you know, the famous World War II story, the planes that were making it back. And we're only getting to see those ones and where they got shot up, but we're not getting to see all the planes that crashed and burned. And it would be helpful, I think, to be able to go over that information as well, whether it's in business or even in fitness.

It could be helpful for someone who's struggling. They could read a book like mine and they could learn, kind of, here are the common denominators among fit people. Here's how they eat. Here's that exercise. Here's the science, but it might also be interesting for them to, to hear about here, the commonalities among, uh, you know, the, all the people out there who try to get fit and fail here, here are some common mistakes that they make. And so, you know, I've, I've thought about that, that, um, if I, if I had a clone, maybe it'd be fun to, to, to, to create more content along those lines. No, it would. And I'm with you on that. And people just don't want to talk about their, their failures. And they think it's a bad thing. And I don't really

look at it as a, as a bad thing. Are you a Top Gun fan? Did you like the first movie? I mean, I liked the first movie. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I don't know how good the second one will be, but I remember in the first movie at the beginning when he went to the flight school, they were talking about, I think it was during one of the wars, their average kill ratio with one of the jets was really terrible. And then after Top Gun in the Vietnam War, something, it got back and it started to get better. Whether it was real or not, the point of the matter is, just like the World War II example that you gave, is most of these people, not just businesses, but most of these people have improved because they learned from failures. People don't just naturally get better. Some do, but the majority of people get better because

they learn from their mistakes. And it's something that people don't want to talk about, but it's the reality of it. Elon Musk didn't get into space by just being like, hey, I'm going to shoot some rockets into space and it's going to work. He tried that. He failed a few times. And eventually he got there. But he only got there because he learned from the failures. If he didn't, he just kept doing the same thing over and over again. There would be no SpaceX. I mean, remember, he was on, speaking of biographies, the Ashley Vance, I believe the name.

I might be getting that name wrong. Ashley something. I think it's Vance. Biography of Musk was fun. But he had enough money for one more rocket launch. I think he had already failed three and they cost like $30 million per launch or something. And this was his fourth. And if this one failed, that's it. He had no more money. This was his last $30 million, basically. And then Tesla was behind in developing their first car. And that was a big problem as well. They talk about in the book, it was kind of a dark period for him.

And there was a guy, what's his name? Andy Beal. I think he's a banker. And he was also a professional poker player, very smart guy. He might have went to MIT or something, made a lot of money, tried to do what Elon has done, burned through a couple hundred million dollars. I believe it was pursuing the space exploration, not the electric cars, and gave up and said, okay, that's it. I've had enough pain. But Elon, that fourth launch was successful, obviously, and here we are. So one thing that brings me up to is, it was funny. I was talking to one of my business partners and I always have this joke with him. I always message him. I'm like, dude, bro, are you even working? Right? And I remember one day, you know, we were starting to talk on the phone.

And he's just like, you know, I just want to let you know, even though I don't work as much as I used to, I still work. I'm like, I know you work. It doesn't bother me. I'm like, I just love messing with you. And we're close friends. We were friends even before we started doing business. And he was telling me, he's like, I'm not like you. And I'm like, in what way? And he's just like, for fun, I like playing ping pong. I like going hiking or play disc golf. He's like, for fun, you just keep working. He's like, you just don't stop. He's like,

there's something about you. And he was giving the example of when we were doing, do you remember back in the day, the insanity workouts and P90X? I would do those. And he's like, you just don't get tired. And I'm like, no, I get tired, but my brain tells me to keep going and just never stop. And I'm like, that's just my personality. So I don't stop. And I'm kind of crazy. I'm not on Elon's level by any means, but I just keep going and going and I'll risk everything. Not as much as I used to, because I have kids these days. And my wife will tell me like, you can't just put everything back into these ideas or whatever you want. You have to actually have enough money for a home, for kids to go to school, for transportation,

for food. Before I'd be like, I'm going to risk everything. Worst case, I'll just go live with my parents again. Right. But I'm to the extreme where it's just like, I just keep going and going and going. And I think having that mindset, and I believe a lot of people can have it, helps them achieve their goals. Does that also cause issues for you though? Like for example, in your relationship with your wife, or I've run into that where I'm similar, where if I don't really pay attention to it, I will just work all of the time. And I don't, it's not for me at least, it's not like some And I don't, it's not for me, at least it's not like some, um, wild compulsion. That's just what I like to do.

And so I'm just drawn to kind of do what I like to do. But if I, if I don't consciously stop and make time for family, for example, or anything else, then I tend to, to not make much time for it. And that can cause issues. And then also if I try to go do fun stuff, fun stuff, sometimes, you know, half of the time I'm like, eh, I'd rather be working. I think it'd be more fun. Yeah, it does create issues. So I was lucky in which my wife accepts me for who I am. create issues. So I was lucky in which my wife accepts me for who I am. And I got married late in my life. Not too late, but I got married in my thirties. My wife's a little bit younger, not too much around six years, five years younger than me. And with my wife, she knew

getting into relationship with me that I'm married to work and she could accept that. getting into relationship with me that I'm married to work and she could accept that. And she has this thing where she says, just give me 10 minutes of undivided attention a day. We're not distracted. I gave her 10 minutes and I give her more than that. Realistically, we'll go pick up our daughter from school together, or we'll go on a walk and talk and we'll eat dinner together. But I make a point to give her enough time. Nowhere near probably what the average couple would give each other on a daily basis. I'm probably a fraction of that, like a 10th of that, but she accepted me for who I am, but it definitely does create problems. And you just need to find people who either A,

accept you for it, or B, you got to figure out how to adapt and keep them happy and sacrifice some of your goals. And that's okay, too. There's no right or wrong answer. You just got to figure out what's right for you. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. discussion, but, but in terms of picking a partner, it sounds like you also were, uh, not there there's, there's the emotional component, but then, then there's also the more analytical component where I'm sure that you knew. And I remember talking to you some time ago

where you were telling me the type of woman that you're going to end up marrying. And this was, this was, uh, many years ago when maybe you were dating, but I don't even think you had like a steady girlfriend at the time. And it sounds like that's very much your wife based on what you were saying. I mean, that was, that was many years ago. That's right. I had like this list. I was like, I don't want someone who works as much. I want them to, they're scheduled to revolve around me. I know that's selfish. But I had all these like lists of requirements and they weren't requirements. Like I want them to look a certain way. I did have requirements. Like I wanted them to be a good family person, but you'll eventually figure out what's right for you. I've also learned that

when you're younger, it's easier to adapt. When you're older, it's really hard to adapt. You get stuck in your place. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. You had mentioned earlier about making mistakes and it's okay to make mistakes and failures. It's okay to fail and learning from mistakes. And, and I agree. What are your, what are your thoughts on this is something that I've thought about. And I do try to, I try to in my work and really just in my life in general, I try to learn as little from experience and mistakes as possible because those are often expensive lessons to learn.

Like ideally, I would just have a discussion with somebody who's already done what I want to do. And then they would be like, Oh, by the way, just don't do these things. And I maybe would have done those things. And I'm like, well, okay, cool. That's great. Or I'll read a book, read a biography. I really like biography as well and learn that way. It's so much less painful and expensive to learn that way. Now, of course, mistakes are inevitable, but what are your thoughts on that? Trying to mitigate mistakes because nobody likes making mistakes. Nobody likes failing and having to learn that way. Nobody likes making mistakes. Nobody likes failing and having to learn that way.

Yeah. So you and I are on the same page in which I do learn from my own mistakes. It's always painful and it's expensive. Not always expensive from a dollar perspective, but it's usually expensive from a time perspective. Exactly. So ideally try to find other people or friends or network and find people who have already been through it because the first person is the one who always gets the bloodiest. So then you want to try to learn from the first person and the second person and the third person.

So you just avoid as much blood as possible. It doesn't mean you're not going to get your hands bloody. You'll just be a lot less bloody. And then if you can't do that, go research online case studies or read books or watch YouTube videos. And I kid you not, you can literally find that, go research online case studies or read books or watch YouTube videos. And I kid you not, you can literally find people breaking down lessons on almost anything online. And it may not always be the answer you want to hear or may not always be the right answer,

but it'll give you a good sense of some pitfalls to potentially avoid. And that point of it might not be what you want to hear, isn't it? It's tough, right? Because at least for me, a lot of the most expensive mistakes and not necessarily financial costs, but let's just say life in general, the most expensive mistakes that I've made and the things that I've learned were mistakes that other people clearly saw and told me, hey, you should not do that. Or here's what you should do instead of what you're doing. And it's just not what I wanted to hear. And I had to experience enough setbacks, enough failures to finally accept, well, all right, fine. I mean, in business, you're familiar with kind of the history of Legion and how it has evolved. And I mean, there was a point some time ago when you were saying, this setup is not going to work.

This is what you need to do at this point. And it's just not what I wanted to hear at the time. And not that I regret anything, but if I would have listened to you, then Legion would be a lot further along than it is. Ironically, another guy, I'd say he's more of an acquaintance, very nice guy, but I'm not as close with him as I am with you. Billionaire guy, very smart, Harvard, Yale, blah, blah, blah. He had said the exact same thing. And he wasn't even as in tune with the business as you were. But again, I was starting to accept it,

but it was not quite what I wanted to hear yet. And so that's always something that I try to get better with is realizing that oftentimes the problem with solving problems is not so much finding the solution, it's accepting the solution. Does that make sense to you? It is. What I've also found is I was stubborn headed when I first started with a lot of things, especially in business.

My parents would even tell me, hey, you're losing a lot of money. This isn't working. You're getting ripped off. And like, oh, you don't know what you're talking about. My parents didn't have tons of business experience. They were right though. Didn't want to hear it. Other people told me too, still didn't want to hear it. But what you'll find is when you go through some of these tough lessons, it's a good thing. You'll realize how painful it was, even though you don't want to hear it from other people and you still did whatever you wanted. But what will happen is it gives you a better sense of the future when

you're dealing with new problems or potential problems. And you'll start getting feedback from other people in advance. Like what we were talking about just a little bit ago in which, Hey, you can go look at cases online or ask other people for their opinions. And you'll actually want to seek that out for future related goals or projects or milestones, because it'll save you a lot of time and you'll realize how painful it was to get advice and not take it. And it doesn't mean that you'll always take other people's advice, but you'll be a little bit better or a lot better in which you'll keep those thoughts in the back of your head and proceed with caution.

If you decide to proceed, even though you got the advice telling you that you shouldn't, and it'll still save you some time and help you avoid some pitfalls. But what you'll find is most people tend to adapt and they start listening to other people who have more experience than them in certain areas. When you're seeking out advice, are there specific questions that you like to ask? So you have a goal, you have somebody who has done what you want to do, and you want to get their feedback. How do those conversations usually go? It's a little bit different. I don't have specific questions. I look for people who have been in my exact situation before and I tell them the scenario and then they give me the feedback.

But the key to this is asking the right person. What I mean by that is, let's say if I have a business question and I see this guy driving a Ferrari who's a dentist. He's never had a business, created a business or anything, but because he has a Ferrari, he's successful. Well, just because he has a Ferrari and he's a dentist and he works for someone else and he's been working for him for 20 years or something like that, doesn't mean he's the right person to give me advice on a business for that question when he has no experience. So don't just look for the person who has money or who may be super ripped. Like I've been to a gym before and I've seen people really ripped and I could just tell they take steroids.

Like it's quite obvious, right? Maybe not always, but in some cases. And funny as some of those people ask me if I wanted roids. And as you can tell, if you're watching the video version, I've never taken them, but that's the wrong person to get advice from. Right. What you want to do is get advice from the right person. And once you do that and you tell what scenario you're in and where you ideally want to go, it's not about asking the right questions, just telling them where you are and where you want to go. They'll be able to guide you. And that's the most important part is telling the right person where you are and where you want to go because they'll be able to give you the right advice versus telling the wrong person the information.

I totally agree. And that's something that you've helped me a lot over, especially as we have spent a lot of time on the phone and talking about business and other things, but there are quite a few examples of things that ideas that I thought were good ideas and I would have probably pursued. And, but I've tried to make more of a habit in my life of having people i don't really like the term mentor because i think it has it's been kind of co-opted by a lot of weird shady people right yeah but uh i i've been been more in in the past it's not that I didn't want advice. I would just make my own analyses and just go and act on that, on, on my own ideas. And that's good. Uh, and I, and I'm still that way,

but now I do before, before I make any important decisions, I do generally now try to seek out people who not only are, let's say, worthwhile mentors or people who have done what I want to do, but also people who are willing to tell me things that I don't want to hear or who look at things differently. And so there are quite a few instances where I've asked you about something. Hey, Neil, what do you think about this? I'm thinking about doing this. And you're like, nah, I wouldn't do that. I would just do this. And I agree with you. I'm like, yeah, that's a good point, actually. And just do what you would do and have it go very well. So that is, again, I think it's just, there's just a lot to be said for that. I've said that I wish I had more people that I could go to who are willing to challenge me. It doesn't have to just be in business, but just in different areas of life. of life. In my relationship, it would be cool if I had somebody who they would have to know as much maybe about my relationship with my wife and my kids as you maybe know about my business, but where they could just tell me quickly, simply, this is what you're doing wrong.

You should just do this differently. You should look at this differently. Trust me, I've made these mistakes. It would be good for you. You know what I mean? But it's hard to find. It is really hard to find. And it brings me to two things. The first is you ideally don't want just mentors. And I hate that word too.

You want friends. Because a friend will just help you out. And it's not about the money or what's in it for them. They'll just help you out. The second is, and the right person will be willing to help you out and it's not about the money or what's in it for them. They'll just help you out. The second is, and the right person will be willing to help you out because they want to. Those are usually the best people. I had a buddy, AJ, who would just pay all these business coaches and personal coaches.

And I'm not saying coaches are a bad thing and you shouldn't spend money. But next thing you know, he was spending like 15 grand a month paying like four or five people. And I'm like, dude, you're just spending money on all these people who have no clue what you're really doing. They're just in it for the money and the wrong reasons. So ideally try to find people who just help you out because they want to help you out. The second thing is, and you kind of brought this up, you were talking about, you know,

hey, you want to do some of these things and I would tell you no or yes, and just give feedback. I believe a lot of people can hit their goals by doing less. And what I mean by that is people try to overcomplicate things. They try to do too many things at once or try to do too many things to try to achieve their goals. Like even with Legion, we've talked about different ways you can grow. And if I look at Legion, the main way that you've grown is by creating and focusing on the customers. You create a good product. You even told me about sometimes your costs have gone through the roof and you don't care and you want to do what's best for people taking the product and you don't want to just create crap. the product and you don't want to just create crap. And your customers realize and you have amazing reviews and ratings and you don't have to game or manipulate them and you don't have to try to skew it. You just say, hey, I want to do what's best for my customer. And that's worked out really well. And that's caused the business to grow. Maybe not as fast as some of the other competitors. I remember a company that

ended up going out of business. I don't know if they came back, but I'm pretty sure there's still a business called Shreds. Do you ever remember Shreds? Yeah, of course. They were, they were, I think they were the first to lean very heavily on influencer marketing. And a lot of them use steroids and it came out. Yeah. Yeah. And then that was a real demise of Shreds. And they're just building whatever products. And then their influencers were like, yeah, we just take steroids. Some of those guys too were true mutants and freaks. I mean, they were some weird people. I remember even the CEO, I forget his name, I can see his face, but he was a character.

It was clear that, that this business was, was not going to last. Yeah. So, and, and, and that's a prime example, right? It's like care for your customers, but going back to it, you don't really have to do much to actually achieve your goals. Just doing a few things really well is better than trying to do too many things. Cause if you do too many things, I'll just be done in a mediocre way. Yeah, I've made that mistake many, many times. And really, it cuts you in two ways, because then you make less progress towards your goal, and you are doing a lot of mediocre work, which isn't satisfying either. So it's much more satisfying

to not only make progress, make, make a significant progress toward a goal, but also to do fewer things, but do them really well. At least for me, like I, in, in my work, I, I like to, I like everything to be really as high quality. I like to challenge myself to do better. And so when I've taken on too many projects, I feel like I am making five Cs. Maybe there's a B in there instead of one or two As or A pluses, which is just more emotionally satisfying to me. That's right.

It's like do less, do know, do it better and you'll accomplish more and you'll just be happier, um, in all aspects of your life. All right. Last question for you is just a personal question. This is something we've talked about, uh, and, and it's related to your goals and, and work is a major focus, obviously for you. Um, like you said, you're, you have, you have two marriages, you have the one with your wife and you have, you have the one with your, your business or your businesses and, and you have some big goals for yourself in, in terms of how big you want your business to ultimately to grow and what that would mean for you. But, um, what, what do you, what, what drives you to keep going? And, and I mean, I'll get, I'll get people asking me that because

they, they think maybe that I have more money than I do or to, to them, uh, they, I'm rich and I do not consider my, I do not consider myself rich. And so people ask me like, oh, what's your motivation to keep going, to keep working? Because you don't have to work just to pay your bills. You could just chill. And that's certainly true of you. You don't have to, if you didn't make another dollar of income aside from passive income from investments, let's say you could continue your lifestyle, but, but you have very big goals. Why? Addiction. So I always try to tell people, find something that you think you're going to get hooked on and not something bad for you. Like drugs, getting addicted to drugs is never a good thing. Right.

Um, but I'm, I'm, I'm in love with my business so much. I'm addicted to it that I can't stop. I also think there's something a little bit off with me. I'm not normal compared to a lot of people that I know. A lot of people who are close friends always tell me I'm off in certain ways. And I think that's a good thing, right? There's nothing wrong with that. I think even you, you're off in certain ways, but I look at that as a good quality. And I'm not trying to mean you're... And we've had a conversation about this months ago. And I believe you even asked me to name a few things. And they're all good qualities. But the thing I take out is if you find something that you're passionate about, you'll be addicted and they'll just keep pushing you and pushing you to make

yourself better. And that's why early on on this podcast, we were talking about, hey, you need to find something that you really want to do. If I don't care to be an Olympic weightlifter, why would I set that as a goal for myself? I would quit right away. I would quit within the first week. I'm just not addicted enough to it and I don't care about it. But when you truly find something that you're passionate about, you'll keep going and you won't have to even set goals, really. You'll have them. But what I mean, set goals is a lot of people are like, oh, it's a new year. Let me set goals. And that's not a bad or that's not a good thing, right? There's nothing wrong with it. But when you find something that you're truly passionate about and you love, you'll constantly

set goals for yourself. It doesn't have to be a new year for that. You just keep wanting to get better. You'll keep wanting to improve. When things don't go the way you want, you'll keep trying to focus on getting to where you want to go to, whether that's by asking other people for advice or learning from other people's mistakes or learning from your own mistakes, but you'll keep pushing yourself. And from what I've seen over the years is the people who tend to do that to themselves are ones who are typically addicted to something. And it usually is something they're passionate about. And for you, was business, was that something you were passionate about from the beginning or marketing or was it something, and what about business? What about it

does it for you? It's a never ending game. There's always someone else who's doing better than me and I want to win. And I just have to keep going. Even if I can't win, I had to keep going and trying to win. Because I mean, you look at it, you go, well, how do you win then? If that's your scorecard, right? Because there's always somebody who's richer unless you're thinking, maybe I could be

the first trillionaire. Yeah. So for me, yeah, you're right. It keeps going. You never win. It's a never ending scorecard, but I usually do it in buckets. So I'll go find competitors who are similar to me and I'll be like, how do I beat them? So for me, I'm an ad agency. There's other ad agencies that are similar sizes like W Promote or Power Digital, and there's so many more, Tenuity. And I think I can beat them. I'm growing faster than they are. I'm not private equity backed or venture backed. I'm growing faster than they are. I'm not private equity back or venture back. But once I figure out how to beat them, and in most of them, we actually already are beating them. For the other ones, then what I'll do is... And by the way, when I say we're beating them,

that's opinion-based as well. Other people can say no or yes. I may value it based on, well, they've been around for 20 years and I'm almost their size and I've been around for four years or five years, right? So from a time perspective, I'll look at it that way. But then I also look at once you achieve those goals, who are the next players at another level? And then how can you beat them? And you just keep going that way. And it gives you a sense of accomplishment because then when you, for in my case, beat someone or outperform them, or when clients that were their clients previously, it is very satisfying. And then they'll make me want to go to the next level. So, and you know, it's funny because in, in, in the fitness space, at least a lot of people will say, well, don't compare yourself to anybody else only compete with yourself. It's, it's, it's a cliche basically in the, in the fitness space. And, and there is, there is, um, some utility, I think in that

message, because in fitness, if you're just scrolling around on Instagram, for example, there, if you get, if you get too wrapped up in comparing yourself to somebody else, it, it can ruin motivation because there's always somebody who's fitter. Um, and there's always somebody who simply looks better and who can perform better. Um, but, but similarly, if we're talking about business, there's always somebody, there's always a bigger business. If we're talking about income or wealth, there's always somebody who's richer. So maybe, maybe it just depends on how you respond to it because you with you, it's clear that when you look at somebody in business doing better than you, that motivates you to work harder.

It sounds like if you were to not do that, if you were to not compare and not try to compete with anyone but yourself, just try to, just try to make your business a little bit better every day. It sounds like you would be less motivated to keep working. I would want to quit or just not quit, but I would want to do something else. Maybe, or maybe coast or just get complacent. So, and that's why I like comparing. I agree with you. When you look at it from a fitness angle, yeah, you want to improve yourself because there's benefits to it if you improve, even if you're not better than someone else.

But I'm a big believer, competition is competition. You're always competing with someone and there's always a winner and a loser. And second place is a loss to me. It's not a win. You were the first one to me. It's not a win. You just, you were the first one to lose. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I get it. And, uh, what about, have you ever derived motivation from maybe people who they put you down in the past or they didn't believe in you or they expressed doubt. I know

for some people that's also a motivating factor, haters, so to speak, and trying to prove them wrong. This person said, I couldn't do it and here I am. That used to motivate me, but over time that stopped motivating me. And I haven't had too many haters in my life. Others will see it as well as they progress throughout their careers or their personal lives. What you'll find is if you're not eventually doing something because you want to do it, it's not going to work doing something because someone else wanted you to, you know, is simply a chip on your shoulder. You know, I'm going to prove everyone wrong. And like, just because someone else, other people thought you couldn't do it.

Like that's only motivating for so long. You need to be motivated because you want to be motivated and you're passionate about it. Um, a great example of this is, I know this may sound bad, but I met a person one time who had a kid and raised a kid, not because they wanted to, because they wanted to prove other people wrong and true story. And I'm like, if that's your choice, it's your choice, your body, you should do whatever you want. But a kid is a responsibility and yes, you should do whatever you can to make sure the child has an amazing life, but just doing it to prove other people wrong and then not caring for the child is bad. Right. And I was trying to explain to them, I didn't, I only had one conversation with them

and they were just telling me why they ended up having a kid. And first time I ever heard something like that, I thought it was crazy. But again, to each their own. And what I try to explain to them, like, look, if you're happy and content, that's great. Remember, you have the responsibility because you brought someone else into this world. Make sure you do whatever you can to give them an amazing life as well. And don't forget that. It's not about proving other people wrong. It's about what's doing best for you and that child that you brought into this world.

Proving people wrong. That's, that's something that I myself try to avoid as much as I can because, um, uh, that, that hasn't been my personality. Uh, I've not been that type of person, fortunately. Um, so I wouldn't have too many great examples of like, here is a catastrophic decision I made simply to prove somebody wrong. I could surely think of some things, but that has not been much of a motivating or driving force in my life, which is great.

But I could certainly give some examples that I've seen firsthand where people have made really, really bad mistakes, made decisions that, you know, the type of decisions that are not only very costly, but also irreversible. to avoid. Costly and reversible is bad enough, but costly and irreversible, those are the ones that can really screw your life up. Or simply refusing to make a right decision because it would then make them wrong. You know what I mean? Because they've been carrying down, they've been on this path and doing whatever they're doing. And other people have told them, you shouldn't, you should stop. Maybe you should do it differently. Nope, nope, nope, nope. And now they just keep going because stopping would make them too wrong. And again, I've seen people really mess their lives up simply to prove other people wrong. That's it., again, I've seen, I've seen people really mess their lives up simply to prove other people wrong. That's it. That's the only reason.

What I like telling people who are in that scenario or thinking about it, live life for yourself. Don't live it for someone else. You know, if you have responsibilities like kids, you're going to have to live it for other people as well. But generally speaking, you shouldn't be living life for someone else to prove them wrong or to do something in spite of what they said. You should be doing stuff for yourself. Or even to get approval, right? Or even get admiration. And we all like to get that, of course. We're wired that way. But I also think that that's, that's a bad, um, uh, goal to, to, to strive for is simply to be light or to be approved of, or to, to get admiration. I agree. Well, Hey, this was, this was a fun discussion and I'm sure we could, we could keep going, but, uh, I think that was a, I think, I think that's,

I think we can, we can, we can wrap it up there. And for people listening who are interested, Neil, Neil's world really revolves around entrepreneurship, marketing. And so if anybody listening, like, I don't think that you produce much content like we've, like we've done here, right? This is not the normal podcast that you would record. But for people listening who want to learn more about how to build a business, how to become a good marketer, SEO in particular, that's obviously been your bread and butter for a long time. Where should people go? What should they check out of yours? Neil Patel.com easiest place to go. Easy, easy. All right, man. Well, uh, thanks again for doing this. And I look forward to

our next, uh, impromptu chat about whatever we end up talking about. I'm good. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com,

and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.