Neil Patel and Eric Siu's Biggest Business Wins and Mistakes of 2026

It's Q4, so Eric and Neil run through their business and marketing highlights and lowlights for the year. Eric's win was hiring AI-native people after learning he couldn't train everyone, and Neil's was the lowest churn in a long time. Neil explains bankruptcy clawbacks, where the lawyers always win, with FTX legal fees near $700M, and how tariffs and war cut client budgets. Eric's team now makes and manages bots, including one that shortlists recruits every day. On marketing, YouTube is bringing enterprise leads, Neil found out he did 12.7M views in 30 days, and Gavin Baker reports 80% of token spend has flipped to open-weight models. Eric covers outbound, wedges and Higgsfield's weekly launches, and Neil explains why he wants the chill life. A candid look back at the year. Key takeaways ◾Hire adaptable, AI-native people instead of trying to train everyone ◾Let bots handle evaluation work like recruiting shortlists ◾Test lots of ideas cheaply, then back the ones with traction Chapters 00:00 Q4 business highlights 00:44 Eric's lowlight: thinking he could train people 01:28 Neil's lowest churn in years 02:32 Bankruptcy clawbacks and legal drama 03:29 Lawyers always win: FTX's $700M in fees 04:43 Tariffs, war and budgets 06:20 Optimistic about 2027? 07:05 Payment plans for groceries 08:31 We make and manage bots 09:13 Recruiters who say they can't build it 10:00 Marketing highlights 10:47 Enterprise leads who found us on YouTube 11:32 Ad Age's performance marketing agency of the year 13:33 Neil's 12.7M views in 30 days 14:38 A slow speaking summer, two months at home 15:37 Neil only buys companies at a good deal 16:21 Best returns with the least stress 17:14 Outbound, wedges and 15-minute standups 18:39 Skillsdojo: pair engineers with marketers 19:43 Crank out 100 ideas, double down on winners 20:48 Gavin Baker: 80% of token spend flipped 21:46 Higgsfield ships a new feature every week 22:28 Neil does better in services than tech 23:42 Think like a capital allocator 25:08 Neil just wants the chill life Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Need marketing help? Visit: https://www.singlegrain.com/ and https://npdigital.com/

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:43Speaker 01

  We're in Q4.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  The year has gone by really quickly again. So what are the highlights and lowlights from a marketing standpoint? Or we can also do the highlights and lowlights from a business standpoint, too.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  You're gonna start off with the business and then go with the marketing later? Or you're gonna do marketing first?

• 0:57Speaker 00

  I'll go business highlights and lowlights. Let's start there first. So for me personally, one of the biggest business highlights this year has been pushing, and you know I'm gonna say this, but hiring more AI native people, and which immediately factors in with people who are adaptable and curious. I thought that one of the lowlights this year was actually starting the year thinking I could train people, right? Where it was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna do all these hackathons. We're gonna do all these group trains. We're gonna do all these things. The smart people kept building smart things. The maybe not so AI native people kept building dumb things, right? And at a certain point, like my CTO is just like, dude, stop thinking you can train them, right?

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Like, he said at the very beginning, to his credit, but as soon as I realized that, like, things just started to move a lot faster. And every day I can tell that people are having a lot more fun at work and it does actually feel like a video game now. And by the way, I can tell during interviews now, the people that feel like works a video game versus the ones that don't. It's just easier when it feels like a game.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  So we're doing highlights first or?

• 1:59Speaker 00

  Highlights and lowlights are up to you. Yeah.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Okay, so I would do, my first highlight is, even though the economy has been really bad, I know that doesn't represent the S and P 500, but if you remove all the AI, you know, companies or ancillary companies, most businesses are not doing well. And this year, our churn is one of the lowest it has been in a very long time. So that was a huge win for us. Another business highlight is, is we've gotten a lot more of our international divisions in order. I would say by next year, we'll have no international regions losing money, which is a huge.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  That's a first, right?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  It's a first.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  We thought this year was gonna be that year. It did not work out that way. But we're so close. I do believe it'll happen pretty quickly next year. I don't think it'll take till the end of next year, but I would say it would happen worst case, maybe middle of next year. And at this point, there's not that many regions that are losing money, so the losses aren't that bad. Another business highlight is, I had legal drama over the last few years. Silly stuff, like companies pay you, they go bankrupt, they try to claw back the money. People then try to badmouth you online and saying something it actually really isn't. When they sued, maybe call it 74 more companies to try to reclaim money as well.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  And if you're a big enough company, I'm not saying we're large, but we're large enough at scale. If you look at our headcount and our revenue. When you get sued for stuff, they throw the kitchen sink at everything. They'll make whatever claims, even if they can't prove it. Because, and then your job is to get them knocked out. Because the more things that they can throw in there, whether they're real or false, the more doors they have to try to reclaim the money. And then your job is to shut those doors, which then makes it harder for them to reclaim the money. And that's how you get to settlement, because they know that they're bleeding you for legal fees. They know that they're making money, because a lot of the lawyers on these bankruptcy cases make thousands and thousands of dollars an hour. Literally two to $2,500 an hour.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Like the FTX case, did you know the lawyers have billed, I think it's getting close to around $700 million in legal fees to deal with the bankruptcy?

• 4:18Speaker 00

  The lawyers always win.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  The lawyers are always winning on this, right? So I'm not saying what they're doing with us or not, but a lawyer, if you're making that much money, you get paid no matter what. Why would you be incentivized to close things up fast when you get paid first? You would just drag it up.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Show me incentive and I'll show you the outcome.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Correct. And with these bankruptcy cases, we had a really good law firm representative that was like, we'll try settling as early as possible, having discussions, but he's like, people don't want them. And we've dealt with these types of cases, not just once this year, but multiple times. There was a few, there was a big decent sized pharmacy company that, you know, we have a mutual friend who has a pharmacy, who had a pharmacy company. We had to deal with bankruptcy there, in which they shut down and they wanted money back. But when you try to ask for settlement early on, they're just like, no, no, we want all the money, just keep going. And the reason being is they need to bill some hours. If they don't bill some hours, they don't make any money from you. So that was a huge business relief.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  And if I had to say business cons, the economy didn't recover the way I thought. Globally, I think tariffs and war has hurt us. I'm not trying to be political here. I'm not trying to say some, a president or a nation should or should not have done this.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  People can decide their own opinions, but I'm just saying from a business aspect, those two things did not help marketing, right? With tariffs, companies like, well, if our customers had to pay 10, 20% more, it's gonna be harder for us to sell cars or whatever. They cut marketing budgets first. That really hurt us last year and that trickled into this year. The other thing that hurt us is war, inflation, things are just more expensive. Like, if we work with a company that is a logistics company, like we have a logistics client, everything costs more if they're paying more for fuel prices, right? Like shipping, etc. That means that e-commerce companies have a harder time selling and offering free shipping, because it's more expensive for them to ship now.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Like, all these things impact businesses at different, it all trickles, it all trickles up. And whatever happens to the end consumer, eventually hits the businesses and it impacts their bottom line, which then impacts us and everyone else in the, in the food chain, right?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  So I would say those two things really hurt us, and that hurt us globally. Because we do a lot of business in Europe and in Asia, and with things like uncertainty, it causes a lot of companies to just pull back on budgets.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yep. That being said, we're still very optimistic about 2027, so. I am.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not as optimistic. I'm not saying that 2027 won't be a better year.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  I think it's gonna be better. That's why I say, I'm very optimistic about it being better.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  I think, I'm hoping that war and all this kind of stuff is over by 2027, which will help. But I'm not optimistic that normal, non-AI businesses will flourish like they used to. I think it'll take time before normal businesses are growing at a nice clip. I think we just gotta figure out a lot of things, not just in the United States, but globally, there's just a lot of problems. And we're seeing, at least with a lot of the companies we work with, because some of them are just massive and deal with everyday consumers. They're seeing people try to do payment terms on basic essentials like toilet paper and groceries.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  Oh, that's the worst. That's basically credit card debt.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's a really bad sign if you're doing that, because you can't add it to credit card or you can't get credit card. Like, there's something wrong if people have to get payment plans for groceries. And I'm not saying the individual's good at saving or bad at saving, or they're doing something right or wrong. But when you hear more and more of those stories, when you work with some of these large corporations or sharing this data, it's, it's kind of, for me, it feels like doom and gloom and kind of sad. It's not about how I'm living my life, how Eric's living his life. It just sucks to hear about people struggling. And I don't see that getting better for the very bottom, unless governments across the world are just like, hey, if you make under a hundred grand, just don't pay taxes.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. Again, I'm optimistic about next year being better. I'm not, we're still gonna have a lot of problems. I think to Neil's point, that this K-shaped economy is gonna get worse, I think. And I'm, I'm concerned about not just the wealth gap, but the cognitive wealth gap, right? And so that's, that's for politics, but let me just talk about one other thing from a business highlights and lowlights standpoint. Then we'll move over to marketing and highlights and lowlights, and then we're gonna eat at half years. But, so, our change has been this year is that us, as a marketing services, a software company, is that we are makers and managers of bots, right? So we make these bots, we manage them, we optimize them, we upgrade them, we maintain them, right? So, and a big bot that we made this year, that has helped a lot with our recruiting, because recruiting is just, it's an evaluation game, right?

• 9:19Speaker 00

  You're evaluating if people have like the promotions and the tenure initially, then if they respond, you send them the questions, right? And then if they pass that, then people get shortlisted. Now, what's been amazing to me is, we talk to these recruiters right now, right? Almost none of them are AI native, no problem, because we just have these running the whole time. And it's just shortlisting people every day. And it's shortlisting to the point where it's like, oh, okay, it asks them six questions, they answer it well, then they'll make it over to my team and they'll get over to me quickly, right? And so that has been, that has allowed us to move a lot faster on the recruiting side. And the funny thing is, when we show recruiters that were workflow, they're like, oh, this is exactly what I wanted to do at my company. And then when they get to me, I'm like, so why haven't you done it right now? Right? What's stopping you from doing it? Oh, you know, they're just, you know, they don't let me do it. And I'm like, why do they need to let you do it? You can just build it, right? But, but it's just amazing to me that it's not allowed.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  So talent to me is downstream of everything, and Vinod Khosla, who now owns Seattle Seahawks, has said.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, good for him.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Has said that, you know, you, your people are the company. Your people make up the company, right? And I've seen both sides of this before. You've seen it too. You have an amazing executive team, right? But I've seen it where, when I let up on the talent, things fall apart, but when I don't let up. And the good thing is, these workflows allow me to never let up on talent. It allows me to continue to tweak it more and more.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  So yeah, that's been good for us.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  So now let's talk about marketing highlights and lowlights.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  I can go first if you want.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, go first.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  So um, what's we can just go back and forth here. So what's been nice is um, the YouTube channel, because I started adding those skills now, it's actually driving leads. I think I told you a couple of weeks ago, someone reached out and then someone left a comment, right? And then for one weird reason, I was looking at the comment, I'm like, there's a weird aura around this comment. And I just looked at the name, right? And it's like, oh, this person is like a VP of AI who has been at this company for 11 years. They just raised a hundred million dollar round, right? And then not only that, my team, the sales team is like, hey, there's a lot of people that are actually seeing your AI content now. So my C two and I hopped on a call this week for for Single Brain. And there's our sales guy was on the call too. And I was like, hey, just just tell me like, where did you find us? It says you came through like a webinar email. I said,

• 11:26Speaker 00

  oh, I just watch your YouTube videos, right? And so I'm like, the YouTube videos work now because YouTube is more fun now because the skills are taking care of it. And YouTube is actually driving, we're talking mid-market to enterprise level pipeline. And that that to me is a highlight, more so not just for the YouTube thing, but because I am unencumbered to do whatever the F I want. And I will not be held back anymore.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Same for you, right?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yes, it has helped a lot. Uh, I would say marketing highlights for me is I've really streamlined content production where it takes the least amount of my time for filming, which was a huge aspect. And they come to my house, which makes it easier.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, because your house finished and you have so many different scenes you can shoot.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that helps. Um, I would say another huge highlight from marketing aspect is we've won a lot of awards this year, like we won performance marketing agency of the year by ad age. That was hard to win. Went to awards ceremony. I was the first one to probably bounce.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  For sure. You probably left like, when did you leave?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  I left after we got it. We had to go on stage. I was like, all right, I'm out. Peace.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  That's great. I love it.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Because it's like going for a few hours. I'm like,

• 12:36Speaker 00

  Because then you have to schmooze and network and all that. Which I don't think you mind.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  No, I don't mind that. Um,

• 12:45Speaker 01

  it was really interesting going to an advertising event. Good amount of the people uh were not from the not from the advertising industry. Like, a lot of them were just random people there that just got tickets. And I think some of them were just trying to meet other people to date or marry. It was in New York. There's a lot of single women. I know this because I got hit up by a lot of single women. They go, we should change numbers. I don't wear uh, I don't I don't wear wedding ring. I don't like jewelry, but I am married. And I would tell them, I'm like, oh, I'm married. I'm good. And and I was like, I'm flattered. I said it in a much nicer way than that. But I I forgot how many single people New York has.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders, showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts. Real quick, if you want to acquire customers faster and more efficiently this year with the latest strategies and tactics,

• 14:11Speaker 00

  then check out singlegrain.com. That is my ad agency again, www dot singlegrain dot com. Check it out. And if it seems like a fit, we'll get in touch and help you with a free marketing plan.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  And then what else was a big marketing hat?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  We're getting more and more enterprise leads. So that's been great for us. We're getting more global pitches than we've ever had before. That's been a huge win. A downfall, I think most people have this problem. They're seeing less traffic. That has been definitely a downfall. We're getting more social views in general.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  I took a screenshot of one of my Instagram views for 30 days. I don't know if I sent it to you or I saw.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  Couple million, five point five, six?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  It was something like that because remember we were talking about it? And I was like, yeah, I don't get that many views. I got maybe like a million views.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  And you're like, oh, no, you have five point five million.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I saw it the other day. I think it was it was uh, where is it? Uh, professional dashboard. Let's see. Yeah, views 12.7 in the last three days. I'm like, I get a lot more views than I actually realize in 30 day period.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  And I produce pretty specific content, just didn't realize that I get views. I don't pay attention to my social media. But Eric knew something was wrong because Eric's like, you get millions of views. I'm like, no, I think I get maybe like 500,000. He's like, no, you get millions. And then I actually checked. So that was a win, but not really a win. I just didn't actually know how many views that I get. The other huge win that I would say on the marketing side was my team is speaking at more events, so I'm not speaking on as many. And I would say the last downfall, but it was a personal win, is my summer was extremely slow this year for speaking, but that allowed me to do a lot of family stuff.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And I I've I've I can't remember the last time I was home for like two months straight with no travel. It was really refreshing. I was like, wow, I kind of dig this life. I don't think it's going to be permanent. But I've been really pushing my team because the economy is bad. I'm like, we should acquire in all the regions that were the weakest, where I had to travel to more, so I can cut back on the trap.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  So not slow it downwards zero, but make it somewhere more manageable. Because I really enjoy things and I learned this one from Eric because he keeps sending me a quote uh that came from X.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  I don't keep sending it to you. I send it to you once a year to remind you.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yes, he reminds me of it though, but he reminds me more than once a year, but he sends it to me. Let's call it once a year. And uh, dude, someone was asking me a question earlier today on my team. They're like, do you want to buy a company for X dollars? And it would be a really big acquisition. They're like, but you would have to put in Y more dollars and we can create a bigger company and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, if I I I told him, I was very direct. I was like, if we can get a good deal, I love deals. Eric knows this. I will put in the Y dollars. I'm like, if we can't get in a a good deal and we're paying normal market rate, why the heck do I want this company when I can find other ones that are at better deals?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  And they're just like, but you could create a bigger company. And I was just like, you know? And I I admitted to them on the phone. I'm like, I'm not that person who's like an Elon Musk where I'm built to just keep going after a mission. I'm like, I'm pretty content in life. My life's not that bad. I don't have any stress. The money is not going to change anything, really. I'm like, yeah. Whatever makes the best returns with the least amount of stress is what I optimize for, not what makes the best returns and causes the most amount of headaches. You know, like someone the other day pitched me a company that we can turn around and we can make a killing from, but it would be a headache. And I'm like, I don't want a headache though. But you would miss out on making all this money. I'm like, I'd rather pay more for a deal that has no headache

• 18:03Speaker 01

  than one that is going to create a headache for me because my life is chill.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  It's it's that Eskimo story from Alaska, right? They asked the fishermen, say, oh, dude, the private equity guy comes in, oh, yeah, we can catch way more fish. And then it's like, well, then what will I do with all this money? It's like, well, I would just go back and fish. He's already doing it right now. So you're you're already doing it right now, right? And so um, a couple of things on my side. So outbound has been working for us, right? Outbound's been great for us. Like, it's I think this week already it's booked like five, five good calls. That's significant because these are more enterprise companies, right? And people want, we talked about this early in this podcast, but people want more help now. I I think part of it is because some of these people consume the content. So they're like, hey, we know you're helping with marketing. And that's led to another thing that's kind of related to marketing. We're just creating a bunch of wedges now. So Neil might have Uber suggest, he might have uh Answer to Public, right?

• 18:51Speaker 00

  These are just different wedges to find us, right? So Single Grain, people know us for marketing there, right? Single Brain, so oh, AI implementation. But then it's like, people are coming to us for carrot now. It's like, oh.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Eric said two different companies, Single Grain, his marketing one, and the second one, Single Brain.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  With a B, yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  And so my whole thing is like, we were talking about chat G P T plugins earlier. It's like, dude, at this point now, because you can just build these wedges so quickly, you just build as many wedges in. So they might come from one thing, but to Neil's point earlier, the the problem set is expanding. They want you to solve a problem. And so you get people and they're, oh, you can do that. Oh, you can do that. Okay, we want that. So people want more now, right? I think the expectation is getting higher. Um, that's another thing and that's been good for us. I will also say that Gary Vee like to talk about, you know, it's all about having 15 minute meetings, right? I will tell you in a remote environment, it's all about having, when you have a problem, it's all about having 15 minute standups. And you just keep hammering away at the issue until the problem is solved. And you just inject a bunch of intensity and then you just disband the standoff. And that that's been good for us.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  You also did release like a website with a ton of skills or.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  Skills Dojo.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, how'd that go?

• 19:56Speaker 00

  That went that went well, but you need, what I learned from that experience is you need, what I'm learning from our four deployed engineers and our four deployed marketers, what we're calling them, is that the engineers don't have the distribution know-how or the skill. So you need to pair them with the marketers because the marketers actually understand funnel drop off rates and they understand distribution. They understand churn a lot more. The engineers are so used to building. So we're trying to train the engineers up, but they'll never get to the level of a marketer. And also, we're trying to train the marketers up in terms of being builders, but they'll also never be at the level of engineer too. But I do believe that being like deep in one area and T-shaped is is helpful. So um, that's how that's gone. So it's a good thing, but we need a like a marketer that's on it. So.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the hard part. It's like,

• 20:42Speaker 01

  we all have tons of ideas. AI makes it easier for these ideas to come out, but unless you have people really focus on these projects, they they rarely ever produce the results that you expect. But another approach or philosophy that

• 20:56Speaker 01

  I I know people have taken and I've taken this too in the past is. Because AI makes it easier to crank out products. It's okay if you don't have someone to focus on it. You can just do ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred of these ideas and just crank them out. And the ones I get that naturally have legs and are gaining traction. Double down on those and just ignore the rest. It it just makes it cheaper to figure out. It it just makes testing cheaper and to figure out what actually gets traction.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  And spent by uh spending the least amount of time.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  But the issue that you're seeing, and Eric talked about this at the very beginning of the podcast, is all these things cost money. It takes someone's time to release these experiments. If you're using AI, you're still spending money because AI has token costs. Although token costs are getting relatively cheaper.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Um, and I think you're gonna start seeing better economics because a lot of these players want to go public. Although none of them have really said when they're gonna go public. I think there's maybe some issues or security concerns or whatever it may be, but.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  Actually, in a few weeks, Neil, uh, I think Gavin Baker reported this, but it was like, it used to be eighty percent of tokens were frontier. And now it's actually flipped to eighty percent of token spend. It's actually um more of the the open source ones or the open. It's called the open ways, not necessarily open source. But what Neil's saying is like, back in the day, you couldn't really throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. Today, you can kind of do that more. But the focus elements, actually, I'll say a low light is because I talk about AI within my company. People, you you sometimes you have some slop cannons coming out, right? Where they're just like, yeah, Eric's talking about do do do do do everything, right? And I'm like, no, no, no, like, it's got to tie in with like a business result. Forget traffic for a second. How are you driving pipeline and how are you driving revenue, right? And it's just because I I sat in on a meeting um the other day and um

• 22:39Speaker 00

  literally four other people that had five different ideas each. And then the the leader of that meeting was like, no, no, guys, we're gonna focus on one thing. One, one funnel, one offer, and that's it for this one thing, not twenty different things, right?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  So that part's important, but um you you brought up a good point because one of our creators said, uh, I didn't know Higgs Field launches uh their requirement with an organization is you launch one new feature a week. So that's fifty new features uh a year, right? And you see a lot of these companies doing it. But I think they are doing the throw spaghetti against the wall. Because then you can just look at the engagement metrics and you have a large user base, you have distribution. So you just bet harder on it.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you cut the ones that suck.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  So but you you you do you do need to have like a good technical person for that, so. Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  You do. I've learned over the last few years. I prefer creating service-based businesses over tech-based businesses. I perform way better in services than tech. It's not that uh and I spent the majority of my career in software over services. I I although I did spend a good chunk in in services overall.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Partner with your brother-in-law was a good partnership too, because he was very tech-oriented.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  He's very tech-oriented. My tech chops are nowhere near what it takes to to thrive and succeed in today's world. You know, and uh I was telling my brother-in-law this and he's just like, dude. He's like, this happens every generation, like, what do you mean? He's like, when you started, you were like, dot com boom, like, this is great. And he's like, there was a lot of entrepreneurs who were like, man, I don't know how people adapt to this dot com world. I prefer my old school way. Life was great.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And he's like, you adapted really well to the dot com boom. He's like, you have the capital now to adapt to this whole new AI world and you can just buy companies. But he's like, he's like, you personally are struggling to keep up with all the changes. He's like, it's so fast and there's so many. So he's like, how do you do it? And he's, I'm like, I just hire people. I try not to keep up with it. Like, I'm like, I just don't have the time. I'm like, I got a family now and kids and I know these are just excuses.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  But I rather choose some of those things.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Versus working seventy, eighty-hour weeks constantly and trying to keep up with everything. It's like, is this too much?

• 24:50Speaker 00

  And and it actually makes more sense for you to think from a capital allocator standpoint now, because you've already put in the work and then like, there's different seasons of life too, right? Now, what we're just mentioning earlier, if you're an Elon Musk, of course, you want to continue to grind yourself. And by the way, we really respect Elon, but I would never want to live his life. Because the level of problems that he's working on is so tough that and and some four or five different things and you're flying all the time. I wouldn't want to do it.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Same with Target, like, he talks about like going to grocery, he's like, I can't. He's like, there's too many threats on my life after Charlie Kirk and stuff. He's like, this is too risky. I love going to Whole Foods or Bristol Farms or whatever it may be and doing grocery shopping with my kids. We think it's fun and it's a treat.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Like, so much so, I stopped doing a lot of Uber Eats because we find it fun to just hop in the car and be like, hey, you want ice cream? It's, yes, I can get Chinese ice cream and get Uber Eats to me and delivered. But the kids have a better experience when I park the car, we walk into the store, like, that experience, the environment, the smell of the the ice cream cones that they're making. It just makes them happier and I was like, oh, I like living the normal life.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, your your priorities change over time in your life.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  But by the way, like, if I if I'm in Neil's shoes right now, like, like, you've been in business uh like fourteen years longer, right? It's like, you've been through the grind already, you've worked extra hard already, right? It's like, okay, well, now now I have this machine. And if I just focus on capital allocation, I can continue to optimize my my machine and continue to live the life that I want to live instead of having to travel all the time and all that, so things change.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and uh my co-founder was talking to me today and uh it it really hit him. He's just like, hypothetically, you know, if the business went to zero tomorrow, what would you do? And I was like, I'll just stay home and play stocks. And he's like, that's it. He's like, would you start this? Like, no, I'm over. I don't want to start another business. I'm not doing it right. And he's just like, he's like, he's like, you really do like the chill life. And I'm like, yeah, I'm like, could I go and create something else? I'm not saying I'll be successful or not, but I think because I have enough capital, I can figure out how to buy my way into some sort of success. Maybe not as big of a success, but some sort.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  But I'm like, I'm just at a point in life where I'm just like, man, I just could keep reinvesting my money and just chill and yeah, I'd rather have that life.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'm sure you've run the numbers ten thousand times already.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, as long as they control my expenses and I don't get crazy, I'm like, I don't need a ton of money. I'm like, life is chill.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. So anyway, guys, that's it for today and we will see you tomorrow.