Welcome to the Friday edition of Leveling Up, your weekly summary of the latest content by Neil Patel and Eric Siu on how to improve your business.

This week you’ll discover:

• 9 Travel Hacks for Busy Founders

• The New Way to Grow 300% on Facebook

• Why You’ve Been Thinking About AI the Wrong Way

• Plus more!

🎓 9 Travel Hacks for Busy Founders

1. Neil’s Method for Beating Jet Lag

When Neil travels, he just sticks to his home time zone (PST).

To make this even easier, he tries to travel for the shortest possible days and always packs his meetings.

For example, if he’s going to Germany for a Thursday conference:

He’s going to leave on Tuesday night, he’ll get there Wednesday night their time, he’ll speak Thursday morning their time, then bounce and return to the US or home by Friday night.

Now, of course, there’s a 12-hour difference from PST to Central European time, so Neil also takes frequent naps to avoid constant fatigue.

He won’t get 4-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, but the naps oftentimes add up to that amount.

2. Eric’s Method for Beating Jet Lag

Unlike Neil, Eric uses apps like Timeshifter to calculate when he should go to sleep to beat the time difference.

He noticed Neil was taking a lot of naps, but he could still wake up at 6 or 7 am in the new time zone, hit the gym, and live unaffected. He would often come back at 10 or 11 am, and Neil would still be asleep.

That’s the beauty of using an app like Timeshifter, plus a supplement like melatonin — it just requires more planning to pull off.

3. Whatever You Do, Don’t Eat on the Plane

The worst thing you could do for your sleep is drink on the plane.

But it’s bad if you eat on the plane too.

The food sits in your stomach, and your body is focused on digestion rather than putting you to sleep.

4. Do a Leg Workout Before the Flight

Sitting for hours in an airplane seat constricts your blood flow.

Not only can this make it harder to fall asleep, but it’s also unhealthy for your body as a whole.

You can solve this problem by doing a leg workout before your flight.

Even just a few sets of bodyweight squats and lunges will do — that will get your muscles activated and keep the blood flowing better.

5. Wear Sleep Tape

When Neil looked over at Eric sleeping, he couldn’t believe a piece of tape was stuck to his mouth — his first thought was this must be a prank.

However, it’s one of the easiest ways to encourage nose breathing during sleep. AKA: a simple piece of tape can help stop you from snoring, give you more energy, deepen your sleep, and boost your immunity.

Before starting this practice, you should talk to your doctor.

6. Continue Working Out

Don’t let travel be your excuse for skipping workouts.

Not only will keeping up with your workout routine keep you more energized during the day, but it will also make falling asleep easier at night.

Neil likes to bring a pair of TRX cables with him that can easily attach to any hotel room door.

That way, he doesn’t have to worry if the hotel doesn’t have a gym.

7. Keep Your Outfits Simple

White T-shirts, grey pants, and a jacket.

That’s all Neil brings with him.

It keeps his bag weight down and makes it easier to stay focused on the day ahead without worrying about putting together an outfit.

Plus, it makes it easy only to pack a carry-on making traveling a breeze.

8. Take a Nap on Long Layovers

One time Neil was flying to Germany but got stuck in London on an extra-long layover.

Rather than wasting time on his phone at the airport, he checked in to a nearby hotel and napped for a few hours.

The time flew by, and he boarded his next flight well-rested.

If you don’t have the time to check into a hotel before the next flight, see if the airport you’re in offers a sleeping area.

9. Get TSA Pre-Check

This one is a given.

If you want to save time and you’re a frequent US traveler, go through the simple steps of getting TSA pre-checked and Clear.

This has saved Neil and Eric countless hours of waiting in lines.

🎓 How to Grow 300% on Facebook

In this episode, Neil and Eric discuss how short-form content is single-handedly reviving Facebook.

Get this:

92.7% of Facebook posts are now short-form content!

It’s basically another version of TikTok.

Which is why — if you haven’t tapped into this traffic source, the sooner you get on it, the better. Eric’s reach is up 300% since cross-posting on Facebook.

To hear their full thoughts, check out the podcast episode here. 

🎓 Why You’ve Been Thinking About AI the Wrong Way (The Bigger Picture)

Chances are you’re already using AI in your business processes.

But Neil and Eric are willing to bet that your use case for AI right now is centered around content creation.

That’s not bad… but it’s not great, either.

Human modification is essential for AI-generated content, so there’s still a bottleneck.

Instead:

The best opportunity for AI right now is to analyze data in real time to help you make better decisions.

To learn how to look outside the box with AI and improve your process automation, click here to watch the full episode.

🧠 Mindset Shift: You Don’t Need High Production Quality to Post Great Content

This is a little secret nobody on social media talks about.

You don’t need amazingly edited videos.

You don’t need high-quality productions or any of that sort of thing.

All that really matters?

Your knowledge.

Just take your phone, start talking into the camera, and post it online.

If you do that and give amazing knowledge, you’ll do extremely well.

Neil gets thousands of views on his YouTube Shorts, and his setup is barebones and messy.

But you know what?

The only thing people care about is the knowledge that you’re giving.

Not where you’re filming or how you look.

Until next week,

The Leveling Up Team

P.S.

Here are more ways we can help your business grow:

• Listen to our Marketing School podcast for daily marketing tips

• Subscribe to the Leveling Up YouTube channel

• Read the Single Grain blog for actionable marketing playbooks