Read time: 4 min, 54 secs

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

A few weeks ago, a business owner vented his frustration to me.

They spent $30k on an agency to get them marketing ideas. But the agency’s ideas didn’t make much sense.

It’s not the business owner’s fault. He’s not a marketer. But it’s frustrating when you don’t know if marketing work is good or not.

So he asked how to I know if the work is good.

I think I’m able to cut through the fluff because of how intense my consulting experience was.

But it’s hard to explain the intensity to people who haven’t lived it.

So today I wanted to share my story (and the lessons I learned to tell if a marketing idea is any good).

This one is a personal transformation story.

If you want more like this, vote at the end.

I’ll start the story a few years ago, when I packed up at the office in Philly.

It’s 4am.

I finally see the notification from my girlfriend.

And I hope she hasn’t caught me automating my texts…

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

It’s 4am

“Aw I miss you too.”

I open the message and see the text my phone sent. It was the automated text I set up last weekend to keep my relationship alive.

She never understood why I couldn’t text her in the middle of the day.

But I had to work fast or I’d get a bad review.

I imagined myself as a consulting partner advising big executives in boardrooms.

And a bad review would knock me off the partner track.

I wanted the money and prestige that came with the title.

But it would take a few years before I learn how wrong my motivations were.

Every consultant competed for the best review

I was joining consulting from a banking program. I prided myself in being the top of my class.

The problem?

So was everyone else.

Every consultant was a cookie-cutter personality. Top of their class and wildly competitive.

So just to keep up with your peers you have to:

• Work 3x as fast as clients

• Think of everything the clients didn’t

• Work twice as many hours

It created a performance bar that I didn’t think was possible.

And when just a passing grade is to work 3x as fast and work twice as long…

It’s hard to text back.

But if my peers can perform at that level, I can too.

So I study for 2 hours before work every day and on weekends. Just to catch up.

Consulting turns into my life.

I start to lose touch with people who don’t live the fast-paced consulting lifestyle:

• My friends become consultants.

• My new girlfriend is a consultant.

• I connect with all the top consulting partners.

I lived and breathed consulting.

And…

The new focus works. I become a top performer.

And I’m hooked. I love it.

Most people make it through 2 years. I stay for 6.

My life is on track for that “prestige” the younger Brian craved.

Until COVID hits.

COVID.

My friends get stuck at home. We can’t fly to meet each other on weekends.

And for the first time in years, I reach out to my non-consultant friends.

It’s 10pm on a Thursday. My local friends are at a Boston bar.

I head downstairs to meet them. They’re all laughing together. I’m at the end of the table with my headphones in, working on a PowerPoint.

One friend asks me what I’m doing.

Turns out he owns a business and he’s struggling with a problem I’d seen a hundred times.

As I explain the answer to his problem, his eyes light up.

He asks if I’m free to talk tomorrow.

It feels like a basic solution to me. But his mind is blown.

He gets ecstatic, but at the same time so grateful and in that moment asks that we talk again the next day.

I’ve never seen that level of gratitude in a client. I’m genuinely helping him change his life.

To him? That concept means his business gets enough customers to pay his rent.

When I see the genuine gratitude on his face - I realize I’ve worked so hard to pack YEARS worth of experience into that 5-min conversation. And that was more value than he’s heard in months.

Small business owners just don’t have access to that level of experience. It’s unfair.

So I’m on a mission to give people that access and level the playing field.

Now, were those 6 years worth it?

4am nights. Auto-texts. High-pressure.

If I could advise that younger Brian to take that first step onto the client site, would I?

1,000%

You hear all the time to “work smarter, not harder,” but that misses a critical point..

You have to work REALLY hard to get smart.

My favorite example of this is comes from Pablo Picasso.

A woman asks him to paint for her:

Woman: Scribble on this napkin and I'll pay what you ask

Pablo Picasso: That will be $10,000

Woman: But you did that in 30 seconds

Picasso: It took me 40 years to create that in 30 seconds.

Pablo had to work hard for 40 years before he could “work smart.”

If I didn’t work hard in consulting, I wouldn’t be able to deliver the growth advice I give founders today.

But you don’t have to automate your texts to learn the growth lessons I did.

We’re trained to look at your businesses’ growth problem in ways most people don’t.

So here’s a 3 big ideas that we use to guide business executives around icebergs:

1) Every decision you make has impacts

Don’t miss the impacts of the impacts when you make decisions.

Most people make a decision based on the first impact. It gets them in trouble.

Consider the 2nd and 3rd level when you make decisions.

We’d model out the impacts in Excel but you can map them out visually in Figma.

2) Think in systems (interactions, not actions)

Nothing happens in isolation.

But everyone tries to oversimplify decisions and say there’s ONE thing that affects everything.

We use proven frameworks to structure our thinking in ways that help us make sure we don’t miss the big variables in decision-making.

If you want the frameworks we used:
• Use these frameworks for quick decisions.
• And these frameworks for big decisions.

I have plenty more frameworks, let me know if you need any.

3) See signals (when others see noise)

Take learnings from places that your peers ignore (typically other industries).

If you can look at a different industry and see the parts that relate to yours, you can find solutions that others don’t see.

Before we make any recommendation we’ll do heavy research on how other industries solved the problem.

Charlie Munger was obsessed with this idea. So he’d study biology, philosophy, and physics to solve his business problems.

Here’s a list of 20 books Charlie recommended. You’ll see they’re in every genre.

So work hard to get smart.

Because knowledge is the only thing standing between you and bending reality to your will.

If you liked this post, and don’t want to miss future issues, sign up for free:

If you found this helpful, please forward this email to 1 friend or colleague. They'll appreciate you and you'll help grow the community.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
Twitter
LinkedIn

P.S. Now you know why I don’t trust most agencies.

I look at their suggestions and they don’t look thought through.

But founders aren’t marketers so they don’t know the ideas are useless!

I want to help. I’m interviewing agencies and I share the ones I actually trust.

I’m excited about this Google Ads agency. They’ve had over 200 clients and spent $85M in ads.

So if you want an expert running your Google Ads for you, check them out with this link and you’ll get a free landing page review.

🙋 Vote: Next Week’s Topic

Choose the topic that 13,753 readers receive next week (vote below):