Ep. #869: Neil Patel on Goal Setting, Learning From Mistakes, and More!

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 gonna 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 gonna 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.

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Hey, Neil. It’s uh, it’s funny actually to do the video because we’ve talked so much on the phone, but I haven’t, I haven’t, 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 like, interacted with, uh, uh, an actual, I I’ve interacted with a, with a voice now for, for some time, so it’s funny to do this.

We’ve 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. Uh, but, but hey, thanks for taking the time to, to come on my podcast. I appreciate it. And what, uh, what I wanted to bring you on to talk about is goals.

And so I’m gonna, I’m gonna 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, uh, goal setting is on a lot of people’s minds, and you are, One of the most successful people I know and, and certainly I would say my most successful close friend and, and I would say in business and then in other wi 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, uh, for this topic. And so where I would start the conversation is how do you go about, uh, coming up with goals, deciding on goals to pursue?

So the way I look at goals is, You know, o obviously it all starts with whatever you wanna achieve, whether it’s losing weight, building more muscle, making more money. You gotta figure out what you wanna achieve. O Once you figure out what area, and you can have goals in all aspects of life, personal, professional, it doesn’t matter.

Then you gotta 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 gonna 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 wanna 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?

Cuz if you’re outperforming others, even by a little, that’s great. You don’t have to win by you. I 10 x or five x, even if you win by 1%, winning is winning. So you just wanna 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, cuz 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, uh, Instagram on your stories, you always post before and after pictures and a lot of it actually has transformations and how long it take ’em. And it is like, oh, this is really cool.

So it gives people a realistic idea of what they can do in a certain amount of. Yeah, expectations are 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, uh, 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 outta 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 thought, what are your thoughts on, and, and I know you, I’m, I’m sure you’ve experienced this just over your, your career because you have, you have a lot of, uh, business.

Successes, uh, 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, uh, people will ask me about kind of like the Peter Teal, um, you know, that I guess it’s in his book, which I, I haven’t read. It’s it’s on my list. It’s just not a high priority book.

Uh, but it’s, 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 10 exercise your business in the next six months, how would you go about that? And, and the idea isn’t that you necessarily can do that, but it’s, it’s to try to get you to think bigger and there is some usefulness to that, but, but how do you distinguish between thinking big and just being delusional, like magical thinking, you know what I mean?

Yeah. I, I know what you mean. The, the way I look at it as similar to Peter Thiel and how do you get to 10 x 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 10 x, I already know there’s no way to get to a billion dollars in revenue. But working backwards, I now know, hey, if I wanna be a multi-billion dollar, , 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’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 10 x, which means I won’t get to 10 x, 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 10 x or something crazy is just unrealistic and you should, 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.

So you need a 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? Is, is that part of the process for you? Whe when you are deciding on, uh, the goal, do you care about your emotional response to it, so to speak? Like, does it need to excite you or, uh, do not really care how you feel about it? You’re going more with just the pragmatic approach. So I, I do care about how I feel about it.

And the reason I say that is if you don’t, 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 ripped. 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 tova workouts or hit 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. Um, and I know some of those things are debatable and if they’re healthy or not, but um, I try not to eat too many fatty foods.

You know, I, I 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. Uh, 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.

I am, funny enough, I am passionate about ice cream, but, uh, the, 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 gonna achieve when it comes to goal point of view.

I, I may, if, if someone told me, Hey, Neil, you know, you should hit a million Instagram followers, that would be so cool. And 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 asks me to post personal pictures, or they ask one of my buddies and take the personal pictures from them, and then they just post it on my profile.

Cuz 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, it’s about goals that you really wanna achieve because if you just make ones that you don’t care about, you’re not really gonna achieve them then. And what about motivation? What about staying motivated to, uh, continue working to, to hit those goals?

Because for many people it, it’s easy to be excited in the beginning, in the honeymoon phase of, of working towards something, right? Yep. And, and oftentimes, uh, in business, in fitness and basically everything. Uh, it’s, especially if you have a bigger goal, it, 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 f been able to, to stay motivated, just to keep doing what you need to do to, 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 gonna 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 what 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, . Um, and then I, 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 on what I need to do on a monthly basis. Then I break it down per week and then per day, and 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, 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 gonna say, I’m not gonna 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 it’s 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, uh, may, 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?

Uh, many people, they can make their different mistakes. You know, you can make the sun. 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, it should be clear that it’s not gonna work out right.

So that, that, that’s one kind of mistake. And then the opposite of that, right, would be giving up to easily, how have you dealt with that? Some people, I, I’ve seen them with their kids say like, oh, you’re not a quitter. Don’t quit. 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, of quitting goals. So the first for more so scenarios. So the first scenario is, let’s say your goal was to get super ripped and you wanna 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.

Um, I just don’t wanna 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.

You may want a better car, you might wanna jet, you may not care about any of that stuff. I went from everything from Careba 50 homes to selling my furniture, to having no homes, to then buying ’em all over again cuz 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. You don’t, changing ’em 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 wanna 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’d 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 ’em all the time and we tell ’em 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. Um, you all, everyone has that chance at the moment.

There’s no way for us to recuperate time. Right 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. Uh, so you wanna 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, your timeframe was unrealistic or maybe that you are getting the results.

It’s just you’re not getting ’em fast enough and you just need to give it more time. Um, 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 and it’s a 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 hate him, but the reality is, 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 cuz you can achieve more than what you actually think you can. have you ever dealt with, um, any, any issues relating to confidence or self-belief? I mean, going back maybe to your earlier days when you were just starting out, when when you might question what you’re really capable of and should you really have these big goals, was that ever Oh, did you ever have a phase like that?

I, 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. As 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 ’em were being hit.

And yeah, you miss a year, you start lower your expectations, you start missing 2, 3, 4, 5 years and then you start doubting yourself. And, uh, what I learned throughout the process is it’s normal. Life and goal setting is kind of like a rollercoaster. You know, there’s the 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 of more of what I want and have less confidence issues, and I started actually becoming more confident, is I started looking at things from a 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 ’em, 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 gonna knock off a lot of the 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, 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, all right, what went wrong here?

And, and, and I’m also curious, did that include, um, looking at your maybe ideas, your plans, your assumptions, your beliefs, as well as what you did because of those things? Yeah. 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 Goines 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 ’em. 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 a 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 ’em.

And over time you’ll learn how to sell ’em 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, 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 a 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? Um, Elon Musk says it best. What he loves doing is he loves, uh, listening to the books on tape or reading books of, um, other people that he admires over the years. And he reads their biography and learns from their mistakes, which is even embedded learning from your own mistakes, right?

If you can learn from other people’s mistakes and avoid making ’em, because a lot of the principles and concepts have been really similar over time. I wish that there were more books. Uh, 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, to have books that talk about.

Case studies that are catastrophic failures and what went wrong as opposed to only focusing on the, the unicorns, like in business and what things, what brilliant moves they made. Because you can cer certainly learn things from, um, the, the positive case studies, but for every, let’s not forget, right, in business for every, uh, successful business, there are many, many, many more unsuccessful businesses that were direct competitors.

Yeah. So, uh, 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 we’re making a back and we’re only getting to see those ones and, and where they got shot up. But we’re not getting to see all the planes that crashed and, and burned and, and, uh, it would be helpful, I think to, to.

Be able to go over, uh, that information as well, whether it’s in business or even in fitness. If, if, it could be helpful for, for someone who’s struggling to, they could read a book like mine and they could learn kind of, here are the, here are the common denominators among, uh, among fit people. Here’s how they eat, here’s how they exercise, here’s the science.

But it might also be interesting for them to, to hear about here are 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 would be fun to to, to, to create more content along those lines.

No, it, it, it would, and I’m with you on that. And, and people just don’t wanna 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, are you, uh, a Top Gun fan? Did you like the first movie? I mean, I like 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, uh, went to the flight school, they’re talking about, I think it was during one of the wars, their, uh, 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 coming better. Well, it was real or not. The point of the matter is just like the World War II example that you gave is most these people, not just businesses, but most these people have improved because they learn from failure.

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 wanna talk about, but it’s the reality of it. Elon Musk didn’t get into space by just being like, Hey, I’m gonna shoot some rockets into space and it’s gonna 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 space. I mean, remember he was on, uh, speaking of biography is the, the Ashley Vance, I believe the name, I might be getting that name wrong.

Ashley something. I think it’s Vance biography of, of Musk was fun. But he had enough money for one more Rocket launch. Yeah. 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, and then Tesla was, was behind, um, in, 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. Um, I think he’s a banker and. , uh, I think who, he was also like a professional poker player, very smart guy.

He might have went to m i t or something, uh, made a lot of money, tried to do what Elon has done, burned through a couple hundred million dollars, I believe it was, um, pursuing the, the, the, the space exploration, not the electric cars. Uh, and, and gave up and said, okay, that’s it. I’ve had enough pain. Uh, but, but Elon, that fourth launch was successful, obviously.

And, and here we are. So, so one thing that brings me up to is, it was funny, I, I was talking to one of my business partners and I always have this joke with him. I always message him. I’m like, I’m like, dude, bro, are you even working? Right? And, and I remember one day, you know, we were starting to talk on the phone and he’s just like, you know, I just wanna let you know, even though I don’t.

Work as much as I used to. I still work. And I’m like, I know you work. It doesn’t bother me. I’m like, I just love messing with you. And, uh, we’re close friends. We were friends even before we started doing business. And uh, 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 disco. 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, uh, do you remember back in the day the insanity workouts and P 90 x? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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, cuz I have kids these days. Um, 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, oh, I’m gonna risk everything.

Worst case I’ll just go live with my parents again. Right. Um, , but I’m to the extreme where it’s just like I just keep going and going and going. And uh, 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, I’ve run into that where I’m similar.

Where if I. Really pay attention to it. I will just work all of the time. And I, 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, uh, if I, if I don’t consciously stop and make time for family, for example, or anything else, then I, 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, it does create issues. So I was lucky in which my wife accepted me for who I. and I got married late in my life. Um, not too late, but I, I, uh, got married in my thirties.

My wife’s a little bit younger, not too much, uh, around six years, five years younger than me. Um, and with my wife, she knew 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 gimme 10 minutes of undivided attention today, where not distracted.

I give her 10 minutes and I give her more than that realistically. Like, 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, uh, 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 for who I am. But it definitely does create problems. Um, and you just need to find people who either A, accept you for it or b. You gotta figure out how to adapt and keep ’em happy and sacrifice some of your goals, and that’s okay too.

There’s no right or wrong answer. You just gotta figure out what’s right for you. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And, um, it’s, I think that, that it would be a different discussion, but, but in terms of picking a partner, it sounds like you also were, uh, not, 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 gonna end up marrying.

And this was, this was, uh, many years ago, uh, 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, uh, based on what you were saying. I mean, that, 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. Um, but I had all these like lists of requirements and they weren’t requirements. Like I want ’em to look a certain way. I did have requirements, like I wanted ’em 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 said 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. 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, I, I agree. What are your, what are your thoughts on This is something that I’ve thought about and I do try to, I, 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, a discussion with somebody who’s already done what I want to do, and then they would be like, oh, by the way, uh, just don’t do these things. And I maybe would’ve done those things. And I’m like, well, okay, cool, that’s great. Or I’ll read a book, uh, read a biography.

I really like biography as well, and learn that way. It’s, it’s, it’s so much, uh, less painful and expensive to learn that way. Now, of course, mistakes are inevitable, but what are, what are your thoughts on, on that? Trying to mitigate mistakes because nobody, 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 be time expensive from a time perspective. Exactly. So I ideally try to find other people or friends or network and find people who have already been through it.

Cuz the first person’s the one who always gets the bloodiest . So then you wanna try to learn from the first person and the second person and the third person. So you just avoid as much blood as possible. Doesn’t mean you’re not gonna 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 people breaking down lessons on almost anything online. And it may not always be the answer you wanna hear or it may not always be the right answer, but it’ll give you a, a good sense of some pitfalls to potentially avoid at that point of it. It might, it might not be what you want to hear, isn’t it?

It’s just, it’s tough, right? Because at least for, for me, uh, a lot of the most expensive mistakes and not necessarily financial, uh, costs, but let’s just say life in general, the most like, uh, expensive mistakes that, that I’ve made and the things that I’ve learned, um, were mistakes that, that other people clearly saw and, and, 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, uh, setbacks, enough failures to finally accept. Well, all right, fine. I mean, in, in business, uh, you’re, you’re familiar with kind of the history of, of Legion and how it, how it, uh, has evolved and I mean, there was a point some time ago when you were saying, This setup is not gonna work.

This is exa, this is what you need to do at this point. And it’s just not what I wanted to hear at the time. And, you know, not that I regret anything, but if, if I would’ve listened to you, uh, then, uh, I, Legion would be a lot further along than it is ironically. Uh, there, there an another per guy, I’d say he’s more of an acquaintance, very nice guy, but I’m not, I’m not as close with him as I am with you.

Um, billionaire guy, very smart, um, Harvard, Yale, blah, blah, blah. He had said the exact same thing and he wasn’t even as, as in tune with the business as you were. But again, it, it, it was more, I was starting to accept it, but it was not quite what I wanted to hear yet. And so that’s always something that, uh, I try to get better with is, is.

Realizing that often the, oftentimes the, the, the problem with solving problems is not so much finding the solution, it’s accepting the solution. Does that make sense to you? it, it, it, it is. What I’ve also found is I was stubborn headed when I first started with a lot of the 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 wanna 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. So, uh, 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 case’s online or ask other people for their opinions, and you’ll actually wanna 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, uh, 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. You know, um, 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 pit holes.

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, 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.

Are, are there, how do those conversations usually go? It, it’s a little bit different. I don’t have specific questions. I, I, I look for people who have been in my exact situation before and I tell ’em 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, assume 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 where they 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? Uh, maybe not always, but in some cases. And funny as some of those people ask me if I wanted steroids.

And uh, as you can tell, if you’re watching the video version, I’ve never taken them. But that’s a wrong person to get advice from, right? What you wanna do is get advice from the right person. And once you do that and you tell ’em what scenario you’re in and where you ideally wanna go, It’s not about asking the right questions, just telling ’em 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, and that’s something that, um, you’ve helped me a lot, uh, over the, especially as, as we have, uh, spent a lot of time on the phone and talking about business and other things.

But there are quite a few, uh, examples of things that, um, ideas that I thought were good ideas and I would’ve probably pursued. And, but I, 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, uh, a lot of weird, shady people, right?

Yeah. But, but, uh, I, 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 the, 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, are, um, let, let’s say mm uh, worthwhile, uh, mentors or, or people who have done what I want to do, but also people who are willing to, um, tell me things that I don’t want to hear or who look at things differently.

And so there are, there are quite a few instances where, uh, 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, and, and have it go very well.

And so, um, that, that is, again, it’s, I I think it’s just, there’s, there’s just a lot to be said for that. I, I’ve, I’ve said that I wish I had more people, uh, that I could go to who are willing to challenge me. Not in, it doesn’t have to just be in business, but just in different areas of, of life. You know, like in my relationship, it would be cool if there were some, if the, if I had somebody who they would have to know, you 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 Yeah. Uh, it’s hard, it’s hard to find it, it, 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, and, and the right person will be willing to help you out because they want to. Those are usually the best people. I, 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 to just help you out cause they wanna help you out. The second thing is, and you kind of brought this up, you’re 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’ve 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 wanna just create crap. And your customers realizing 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 business to grow. Maybe not as fast as some of the other competitors. Like, uh, I remember a company that ended up getting, uh, going out of business. I don’t know if there’s, they came back, but I’m pretty sure there’s still a business called Shreds.

Do you ever remember sh. 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 used steroids and it came out Yeah, . Yeah. Yeah. And then that, that was a real demise of shreds. And they’re just building whatever products and then their influencers like, yeah, we just take steroids.

Some of those guys too were, were true mutants and freaks. I mean, they were some weird people. Uh, I remember even the c e o, well, I forget his name, I can see his face, but he was, he was a character. Like 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 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, they’ll just be done in a mediocre way. Yep, I’ve made that mistake many, many times.

And there you, you really, it, it, 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, it’s much more satisfying to not only make progress, make, make, uh, 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, uh, making, you know, five Cs, maybe there’s a B in there instead of one or two A’s, or, or a pluses, which is just more emotionally satisfying to me.

That’s right. It’s like, do less, you 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, to grow and what that would mean for you.

But, um, what, what do you, what, what drives you to, 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 am rich and I do not consider my, I do not consider myself rich. And so people will ask me like, oh, what’s your, what’s your motivation to, 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, uh, 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, uh, addiction? So I’m a addict, , so I always try to tell people, find something that you think you’re gonna 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. 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, uh, compared to a lot of people that I know. A lot of people who are close friends, they always tell me I’m off in certain ways, and I think that’s a good thing, right?

There’s nothing wrong with that. Like I think even you, you’re off in certain ways, but I look at that as a good quality. And I, I’m not trying to mean your, I, and we’ve had a conversation about this, uh, months ago, and I believe you even asked me to name a few things, uh, and, and, and they’re all good qualities, but the, the thing I take at is if you find something that you’re passionate about, you’ll be addicted and I’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 wanna do. Like if I don’t care to be Olympic, you know, weightlifter, why would I set that as a goal for myself? I won’t. 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 ’em. 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 wanna 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, and for you was, was business, was that something you were passionate about from the beginning or marketing, or was it something you 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 wanna win. And I just have to keep going. Even if I can’t win, I have to keep going and try to win. Yeah, because how, I mean, you look at it, you go, well, how do you win then, if that’s your scorecard?

Right. Because there, there’s always somebody who’s richer. Unless, unless you, you, Elon . Yeah, exactly. Unless you’re thinking maybe, maybe I could, I could be the first, uh, trillionaire. Yeah. So for me, um, Yeah, you’re right. It keeps going. You never win. It’s a never ending scorecard. Uh, 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 ’em? So for me, I’m an ad agency. There’s other ad agencies that are similar sizes, like W PMO or Power Digital, and there’s so many more tenuity, and I think I can beat ’em. I’m growing faster than they are. I’m not private equity back or venture backed, but once I figure out how to beat ’em then, and then most of ’em, we actually already are beating ’em for the other ones.

Then what I’ll do is, and by the way, when I say we’re beating ’em, that’s opinion based as well, right? 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. Um, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment because then when you, for, in my case, beat someone or outperform ’em or win clients that were their clients previously, it is very satisfying.

And then they’ll make me wanna go to the next level. So, and, 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 cuz 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, 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 Correct. Keep working. I would wanna quit or just not quit, but I would wanna do something else.

Maybe, or, or maybe coast or just get complacent and Yeah. So, and, and, and that’s why I like comparing it. I, I agree with you. Like when you look at it from a fitness angle, yeah. You wanna improve yourself. Cause there’s, there’s benefits to it if you improve, even if you’re not better than someone else. But I’m a big believer competition’s 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 just, you were the first one to lose. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, , I get it. And, uh, what about, have, 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. Yeah. You know, and trying to prove them wrong. Like, 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. Um, others will see it as well, uh, as it progressed throughout their careers or their personal lives.

What you’ll find is if you’re not eventually doing something because you wanna do it, it’s not gonna work doing something because, um, someone else wanted you to, you know, is, or, or simply a chip on your shoulder. You know, I’m gonna prove shoulder, I’m gonna prove everyone wrong. Yeah. And like, just because someone else, other people thought you couldn’t do it, like, Definitely motivating for so long, you need to be motivated because you wanna be motivated and you’re passionate about it.

Um, a great example of this is, I, I, 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.

Um, but a kid is a responsibility. And yes, you should do whatever you can to make sure the child has 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 the first time I ever heard something like that, I thought it was crazy. But again, to each their own. And what I tried to explain to ’em, like, look, if you’re happy and content, that’s great. Remember you have the responsibility cuz you brought someone else into this world. Make sure you do whatever you can to give them 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, 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, of a motivating or driving force in my life, which is great. Uh, but I could certainly give some examples, uh, of, uh, that I’ve seen firsthand where people have made really, really bad mistakes.

Um, made decisions that, you know, the type of decisions that are not only very costly, but also irreversible, the ones that, that you really want to avoid. Costly and reversible is bad enough, but costly and irreversible, those are, those are the ones that can really screw your life up simply or, or simply refusing to make a right decision because it would then make them wrong.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Because they’ve been carrying down, they’ve been, they’ve been on this path and, and doing whatever they’re doing for, uh, and, 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.

Make them too wrong. And, uh, you know, 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, thinking about it, live life for yourself. Don’t live it for someone else. Now, if you have responsibilities like kids, you’re gonna 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, uh, in spite of what they said. You should be doing stuff for yourself or even to get approval, right? Or even get admiration. I mean, we all like to get that. Of course, we’re, we’re wired that way.

But I also think that that’s, that’s a, a bad, um, uh, goal to, to, to strive for is simply to be liked or to be approved of, or to, to get admiration. I agree. Well, hey, this was a, this was a, 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, I, Neil Neil’s, uh, world really revolves around entrepreneurship, uh, marketing. And so if anybody listening, like, I don’t think that you produce much content, like we’ve, like we’ve Yeah. Done here, right? This is, this is not, not the normal podcast that, uh, that you, that you would record.

Uh, but, but for people listening who want to learn more about how to build a business, um, how to become a good marketer, SEO in particular, that 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 . Sounds good. It. 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, uh, ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike muscle for life.com, muscle f o r life.com, and let me know what I could do better or just, uh, 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.