Nathan: Hello and welcome to the Foundr podcast. In today’s episode, we talk with Neil Patel. This guy is just an absolute weapon when it comes to marketing and generating traffic online. He’s very well known in the online marketing community. And this is actually quite an old interview that I did about a year or so ago.

When I was listening to it to record this pre-round audio, I was just like, “Wow,” I was such an amateur back then when I did my interviews.This was like you know, one of the first ones that I’d ever done. But there’s a lot of gold in there surprisingly even though I was stumbling and you know, all over the place, there was a lot of interesting stuff in this interview that Neil shares, certainly around how he believes you can build a successful business and start-up.

He runs two very successful start-ups, Kissmetrics and Crazy Egg, super cool products and yeah he’s a really cool guy and it was a really interesting conversation. It’s funny how a year ago Neil was harping on to me about content marketing and one year later, which is now, it’s just crazy how much people are using content as a strategy to drive traffic and get more sales and get more leads and grow your email list and really just grow your business.

So it’s a really good interview. The audio quality isn’t that great because I never used to record with a nice microphone. I actually used to record funnily enough, in the spare office where I was working my day job on my lunch breaks. This is the kinda hustle that it took to get where I am today and it’s only the beginning. So sit back, you’re in for a treat. This is a really interesting interview with Neil.

If you’re enjoying the podcast, please do me a favor and leave us a five-star review. If you want, check out the magazine Ton of Gold in there. It’s where I spend most of my time and it’s really like I keep saying my life’s work. So I’d love to hear what you think, get in touch with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts, feelings, any recommendations on how I can keep improving the podcast. Even people you might want me to interview, I’d love to hear from you. So that’s it from me and let’s jump into this episode, enjoy guys.

So today we are speaking with Neil Patel. Now I could go all day about running through his massive accolades, he has an extremely impressive list of accomplishments. He runs multiple software companies, he runs an extremely successful blog and he’s achieved so much at the age of 27. You will see in the interview with the article alongside this interview what Neil has actually done. So I’d like to just cut straight to the chase and thank you for joining us, Neil.

Neil: Thank you for having me.

Nathan: So let’s just go through your entrepreneurial journey and how you got started. Now I know that you started at a very young age and I understand that at one point you were selling vacuums and you’ve mentioned that it placed a big impact on your career now. Can you tell us a bit about how you got started and a little bit about that?

Neil: Sure, the way I ended up getting started was I was looking for a job when I was 16 years old and as I was looking for a job, I was on this site called Monster.com. And I realized it was a publicly traded company, clicked on the stock symbol, I was like, “What is this?” And I saw how much money they were making because when they’re a publicly traded company after reviewing their financials I was like, “Wow, if I copy this site and because I’m a copycat and I just do one percent of what they’re making, I’ll be rich.”

It didn’t end up working out that way but I tried being a copycat, I didn’t make any money but that’s how I got started. And when I put up the website I realized that you have to get traffic to a website to make it successful, people just don’t naturally come. So I had to work to try to make it successful.

Nathan: Okay, so can you tell us a little bit about how did that end up going?

Neil: Yeah, so the site failed but I got good at increasing traffic and eventually, you know, I was in a college class where I gave a speech on how search engines work. Someone hired me to do the marketing for their site. A long story short provided a great amount of results. The owner of that company has sent onto ad agency and he started providing me more and more clients and that’s how I grew.

Nathan: I see, so you just started off running your own consultancy or this is afterwards or before? Can you take us a little bit through that journey?

Neil: Yeah, I started running my own consultancy before any of my other software companies.That’s how I got started in the space and then I was able to use that consulting money to create a lot of the software companies.

Nathan: I see, so why is it that you started with the lead generation route? What is it that excited you about the internet that you thought that you could make money besides the fact that you saw that Monster.com was making a lot of money? Was it just that or….?

Neil: Yeah, for me is I couldn’t the Me Too company because Monster.com was making a lot of money and I didn’t know what else to do. So I was like, “Someone else is making money, why not just copy them and I’ll make a lot of money too?” It doesn’t work that way but that’s what I thought, I was a 16-year-old kid.

Nathan: I see, so can you run us through the next stage of what happened?

Neil: Sure, so the site was up, I didn’t get traffic, right? I had to learn how to do it myself because I I didn’t have much money. And then, from there I still didn’t make money after I got the traffic because I didn’t know that you had to take credit cards online to make money. As foolish as it may sound I didn’t know how to do that, I’m not a developer, right? So I was losing a ton of money and eventually you know, I had to close down the business. But the skill set I got from running it was I learned how to drive traffic to sites.

Nathan: I see, so then you went on to start this consultancy?

Neil: That’s correct.

Nathan: Okay, so can you tell us the key things that you learned from that business failing?

Neil: Sure, the key things that I ended up learning is one, solve a unique problem in the marketplace. And what I mean by that is don’t go out there and create another Me Too company. Solve a unique problem enough people are facing. Two, you need to learn how to market a company, right? You can’t just create a product no matter how good or bad it is and expect that people will come, you gotta learn how to do marketing. And you have to learn how to do it on a budget, you can’t compete with other people. Then you get Google Adwords or any of those expensive mediums, right?

Nathan: Yeah.

Neil: Four, I learned that you have to be really efficient at what you’re doing, right? As an entrepreneur, there’s a ton of opportunities out there you’re gonna be faced with having less capital than other people, more competitors than you can ever imagine as time goes on. you gotta be scrappy, be able to execute fast, keep moving along, right? Use content from let’s say like the minimal, viable product or lean start-up more so. Same thing pretty much but you know, you have to be very efficient and get things out. But yeah, those are some of the things I learned from the first start-up.

Nathan: Yeah, right, so let’s move to the next part of your journey because this is when things get really interesting I feel is you built this consultancy firm on pretty much lead generation, correct?

Neil: That’s correct.

nathan: Correct? So what happened then?

Neil: Sure, so the consultancy agency grew out of word of mouth and I was able to drive traffic and find good results. And as I did that, I got more and more customers. But after a while, the word of mouth started dying down and I didn’t keep having newer and new customers coming and knocking on my door.

So what I did was I created a consultancy website where I offered my services and then I did cold calling. So I called all the people who were bidding on Google for expensive terms, right? There was this eBook I bought, “Top 1000 Most Expensive Adwords Terms,” right? And I went through the list and I called every single site that was bidding on those keywords and offered them internet marketing services.

The majority said no but the first cold caller that I locked in, the dude ended up spending $15,000 a month with us every month. And then at that point, I was like, “Whoa, this cold calling thing is worth it.”

Nathan: Yeah, no, that’s interesting because everybody’s always really nervous about making that call or cold calling and I think personally sales is a really important element to becoming an entrepreneur, a successful one at that. Do you agree?

Neil: I do agree with that.

Nathan: Now that kinda leads on to the next question is tell us about how sales has shaped your career and with the vacuum selling job that you had.

Neil: Yeah, so my first jo…Well technically my second job ever, this was before I was even entrepreneurial, was selling vacuums door to door. And that taught me to be aggressive. Because when you’re going selling a $1600 vacuum or whatever it ended up costing but it was expensive, to people who were middle-class American citizens, they can’t afford a $1600 vacuum, right?

So when I was you know, I was going door to door knocking and trying to convince people to buy them, the majority by far said no. One person said yes but then she returned the vacuum later on. And what I ended up learning from it is you’ve just gotta be aggressive. Don’t let anything stop you. If you really believe in it just keep at it. And that’s what I was doing, right? I was persistent. I tried selling every single day, never gave up.

Nathan: Just from the amount of things that you’ve completed and you’re only is it 27 or 28 now?

Neil: I’m 28.

Nathan: You just hustled extremely, extremely hard. And I think that’s something that’s very, very important. Let’s shift gears and keep going through your journey. So you’ve created this software consultancy company and it’s doing well. Now did you create this with a business partner, correct?

Neil: Yes.

Nathan: Yes, now the question I wanted to ask is how do you go about finding business partners and what advice would you give to somebody about that and how do you evaluate when you actually need one?

Neil: Sure, so finding a business partner is like a marriage but even tougher. And the reason I say that is once you’re in it’s harder to get out and it’s much more messier, right? Divorce is very painful in the business world. I know that it is in personal but in business, it can be even more painful because you don’t have one or two kids, you have hundreds of kids, right, potentially if you consider all your customers, your employees. It makes it a really messy situation.

Now the way I went about finding a business partner is one, you’ve gotta know someone. So like know them for awhile. You don’t want to just get in bed and become business partners after day one. Two, you’ve gotta make sure they have complimentary skill sets. So if you’re an engineer, don’t get another engineer to be your business partner. Maybe a designer or maybe a business person, whatever it may be but someone who’s different from you skill set wise.

Then from there what you end up doing is you should test the waters before you have a business partner and you go to work with each other make sure you guys test some small stuff out with each other, make sure you jive, you get along, you’re not afraid to be open-minded with each other and stuff like that. And other than that you know, once you know what you’re really looking for just go to as many networking events as possible to try to find this perfect person. So networking events, family events, whatever it may be.

Nathan: I see, so you would say that your business partner….Would you say it’s like someone you have to get along not just professionally in complimenting each other but also, do you think you that you have to be mates, do you think, or friends?

Neil: I don’t think you have to be mates, you just have to get along professionally. But very importantly, if you have wives or girlfriends they better get along with the other person’s wives or girlfriends. I found that to be a big problem over the years with all the business partners, if the wives don’t get along it doesn’t work out.

Nathan: Oh really, interesting.

Neil: Yeah, that’s more important almost than anything else. I know as foolish as it may sound but you’ll be shocked at how many times wives can ruin a business even though it’s making millions of dollars in profit just because she’s not happy.

Nathan: Yeah, no, no, you’ve gotta keep your girlfriend or your wife happy, right? Because they keep you happy, yeah?

Neil: That’s right.

Nathan: Because there’s nothing worse than being hassled.

Neil: That’s correct.

Nathan: Awesome, so thanks for that because I think what some people struggle with when they go to start a business is you know if you have a business partner it usually is 50/50. You don’t know whether you need one. How did you work out that you needed one?

Neil: Yeah, I decided that I needed one based on the fact that I didn’t have all the skills that’s out there that I needed, right? So I found someone who did have those skill sets.

Nathan: I see, so you didn’t want to pay for a service or anything like that? Or the skill sets….

Neil: I didn’t have the money. I couldn’t pay for it and I needed help. So you can’t pay someone to hire them  so what do you do? You end up partnering up with someone because you don’t have money to pay more people and they have the skills set that you don’t have.

Nathan: Yes, yes, I see. So let’s go back to your journey. So the lead generation company was doing well. So what led on from there?

Neil: Well from there I started doing consulting for people. And you know, it was foolish, I was making good money but we were tired of doing consulting for people. You know at the end of the day what I would end up doing, I was just like, “Hey, you know what could we end up doing?” And when we’re running the agency clients wanted other stuff. Like they wanted to help better understand how this traffic that we were bringing was engaging with their site. That’s how the idea of Crazy Egg came up.

And we did a piece off all our companies before them but they were small and they didn’t work out. But what we ended up learning was we’re just like, “This consulting isn’t sustainable. We’re not having fun doing this. We’re getting all of these customers who are requesting other stuff that can’t be done without software, let’s develop it.”

We developed it, launched it, had a ton of buzz. It didn’t make a ton of money at first, it was actually losing money and we were just like, “Shit, you can make a ton of money doing software,” and we love doing this because we don’t have to deal with you know, 50 consulting clients calling you every single day saying, you know, “Why is my rankings higher on Google?” And we were just tired of dealing with that so that’s how we got into the software game.

Nathan: Okay, can you tell us a little bit about Crazy Egg just briefly?

Neil: Sure, Crazy Egg is a usability analytics tool that helps you visualize where people click on your website or where they don’t click. And then from there, you can modify your design to maximize your conversion and usability.

Nathan: So how did that business go?

Neil: That business went well. It’s still growing to this day. It’s still up and running and we still own it.

Nathan: Okay, and you don’t have much involvement now with it, do you? It purely runs by itself, is that correct?

Neil: That’s correct. Small team runs by itself and yeah, it’s all self-sufficient, so….

Nathan: Awesome, so you’ve then gone on to create Kissmetrics which is another software development company that is in terms an expansion on Crazy Egg, is that correct?

Neil: That’s correct, Kissmetrics is Crazy Egg 2.0.

Nathan: Gotcha, now this is probably a question you get a bit but why would you create another company that’s 2.0 when Crazy Egg’s doing so well? Can’t you just do that within Crazy Egg?

Neil: We never thought that….One, at that time we didn’t have enough cash because we were losing money and two, we never felt like Crazy Egg was a big enough idea like a $100 million company. So we pitched it to investors and they were like, “Yeah, you should do this Kissmetrics thing.” So we spun it out of Crazy Egg and then focused on that.

Nathan: I see and that’s where you focus mainly most of your time now?

Neil: That’s correct. I spend all my time on Kissmetrics.

Nathan: I see and now I wanted to ask you a question about whether a business idea is worth pursuing. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Neil: The way a business idea is worth pursuing is if you think it’s a big enough opportunity in the market, enough people are facing that problem and you actually think you can solve it in that, you know, a practical way in which it’s affordable, easy for the end consumer, right? That’s when you go after an idea and most importantly you also have to be passionate about it. If you’re not passionate about something you’re doing, you’re going to get burned out and eventually you’re gonna quit.

Nathan: Yeah, that’s certainly right. And I know you’re an extremely hardworking guy and you wouldn’t be doing this if you weren’t passionate about it. Like roughly how many hours a week do you work?

Neil: I don’t keep track anymore but I would say at least 70.

Nathan: Wow, and this is not a chore for you and that’s the really cool thing. And that’s something that you’ll find which is common amongst all entrepreneurs, myself included is I spend a lot of time working on the magazine but you don’t really keep track of it, do you? It’s just what you love doing.

Neil: Yeah, because then you’re so passionate when you’re not working you’re thinking about it anyway so might as well work on it, right?

Nathan: That’s right. On your blog, quicksprout.com, for those that are listening, definite, definite must check out blog. It’s a great blog. And you talked about how not to burn out. Can you tell us a little bit about that a bit more just briefly? How do you go about not burning out because you work a lot of hours?

Neil: So for me the biggest thing is I take breaks once a month and I hang out with friends and I party really hard. That’s my vice, right? So you gotta find your vice your vice that makes you happy and I go all out when I party once a month but only once a month.

Nathan: Yeah, okay, gotcha.

Neil: Person to person it really varies, right? I think it comes down to passion. If you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re gonna get burned out. That’s why most people get burned out, so….

Nathan: So can you tell us about your early influences that you think has shaped you, the path that you’re on today?

Neil: One of my earliest influencers is a guy who’s a mentor and his name is Andy Liu and Andy Liu used to live above me, he moved. I should but he’s a great guy. He actually brought me to Seattle and taught me a lot of stuff. And he taught me a lot of my business skills, sales skills, all that kinda great overall mentor.

Another person I’ve looked up to, I’ve never met him is Elon Musk. I’ve always loved what he’s done over the years, especially with Paypal and that’s when I was first of fan of his.

Nathan: I see. Now let’s switch gears a bit, I wanted to talk to you about your failures and more importantly, the key things that you’ve taken away from them because it hasn’t always been constant achievement, achievement, success, success. In everybody’s entrepreneurial journey you find that they have to fail before they do really, really well. So can you run us through some of them and some interesting things that you’ve overcome and how you’ve managed to overcome them and what you’ve taken away from them?

Neil: Sure, so the biggest failures would be that I lost a million bucks in a company in Texas. Also, that was the biggest mistake I ever made, it was a hosting company. It never got launched. But the biggest failure what I learned from that was ideas are a dime a dozen, it’s the people that really matter in the business. Without good people no matter how good the idea is it just won’t succeed, right? There’s, of course, caveats to that. There’s probably rare occasions where people have to see when they suck and the idea’s great but general, 99 plus % of the time, if you don’t have good people you’re not gonna succeed.

And I kept on pouring money into it and it was really bad.  I lost a ton of money and I was only 21 at the time. I didn’t know any better. I ended up learning by having to repay back all the money I lost. So and I did that through consulting. And I really learned hard at that point, not only is execution important but people. If you don’t have good people you’re gonna have a lot of extra problems that you shouldn’t have had.

Nathan: You know, that’s a big one. How do you goabout finding great talent?

Neil: You have to find people that not only love what they’re doing but have a skill set you don’t have and they’re just like the best at it, right? So it’s like if you want a developer you go and find the best developer you can. If you don’t know how to go find them, go find another developer that you can’t hire but you know is really good that can help you hire, right?

Same with design. Design’s a bit easy because you can look at the design work and see if they’re good.But not only do you have to look to see if people are good and look to see if they’re efficient. Just because you’re an awesome developer and have hired these kinds of people in the past, just becuase you don’t do any work like you can create the best code but if you barely do any work there’s no value in you, right? So you’ve gotta look at efficiency and output as well. And if you don’t know how to hire, go find people who know how to hire and find out their strategies and mimic. [

Nathan: One thing that just strikes me about you is you seem to get so much done. When I, you know, looked over all your accolades and how much you’ve achieved at the age of 28 and you started this you’re 16, which is fair enough. But you’ve achieved so much and you’ve got so much done. Like I shot you an email before the interview. Out of all the people that I’ve interviewed, you were the fastest to get back to me. And I read your little cool diagram before I emailed you about how many emails you get on a monthly basis and the type of email and I just want to know how are you getting so much done?

Neil: Yeah, the way I get stuff done is just I work a lot and I know this sounds bad but I also kinda have money, right? Not a ton of it but enough. Money goes a long way. You can actually get a lot done when you have a lot of cash.

Nathan: I see.

Neil: I hire people, right? The email you got is from my assistant who helped set up the meet. I haven’t had to do much other than shoot off the email to her and have her deal with it. But like I get a lot done because I have a great team and without them I wouldn’t make money, right? So it’s kinda a Catch 22 but that’s actually why I get a lot of stuff done because I surround myself with great people and people who are smarter than me. You don’t have to be the smartest but as long as you hire people that are smarter than you, you’re off to a good start. And that’s what I do because I might not be an A player, I may not be the smartest person in the room. I probably, you know, if I had to go to Harvard I probably would get Cs but I know to hire students who get As.

Nathan: That kinda leads on to my next question, is what do you think it takes to become an entrepreneur and more importantly, a successful one?

Neil: Sure, so what I think it takes to be an entrepreneur and more importantly, a successful one is that at the end of the day you just have to have persistence. In other words, you just can’t give up. You have to have a lot of passion if you don’t love what you’re gonna do you’re gonna wanna quit. You gotta hustle, you gotta figure out how to make things happen, right, when you’re hustling. You just can’t take no for an answer or say, “Oh, I don’t have enough money so I can’t do it.” Figure out ways around it, right?

And I think hustling gets into a lot of creativity, through creativity you can figure out unique solutions. Other than that, you know, I just think you have to be smart enough. You don’t have to be the smartest person but you have to be smart enough to let’s say, use logic and data to inform your decisions or emotions or whatever it may be. But I would say those are some of the key elements.

Nathan: Yeah, gotcha, so what advice would you have for someone who’s always had this business idea but they could never seem to execute it? They just don’t do anything about it. It comes down to fear personally I think but what advice would you have?

Neil: For that, I’d pretty much say that those people aren’t meant to be an entrepreneur. If you’re worried about starting a company and you haven’t done it or you got an idea, you’re not meant to be one. Entrepreneurs don’t worry about starting a company because that’s the easiest part, we just go out there and do it. The hard part is making money and turning a profit, right? So if you’re stressing out on how to, shoulda, coulda, should I not? Don’t waste your time, you’re not meant to be an entrepreneur.

Nathan: Well, just straight out like that. Okay, and what is your biggest fear as an entrepreneur?

Neil: My biggest fear is not succeeding, right? And to me, success is how big of a company you create and how big of a problem you solve. And for me, it really just comes down to not achieving it. But the fear comes down to….I have the fear when I quit, right? So I don’t really quit because I feel that if I never quit and I keep trying no matter how long it takes me, technically I haven’t failed then. That’s why I don’t give up. So it’s the fear of failing and failure is when you stop because that’s when you won’t ever achieve it. But if you’re trying and you don’t achieve it, you can always try again. But the moment you say, “Hey, I’m not gonna try again,” then you’ve failed in my eyes and that’s why I keep going.

Nathan: I can see that’s what drives you or one of the things that ddrives you, I can see it. I can feel it when you’re answering my questions. So I have another question which kinda switches gears a bit because you’re an expert in lead generation. I can see you’re a thought leader in this space, in terms of the online side of things. What would be the number one tip you would give to those that are looking to rank highly for Google Search or looking to bring traffic to their website?

Neil: Right way context. So I created this site called the “The Net’s Guide to Content Marketing,” and it breaks down how to create great content but I really think that’s the key to ranking well in Google these days. Because if you write truly good content people will tweet about it, share it oon Google Plus, like it on Facebook, you know, the link to it. All these kinda things which help your overall rankings book. Just because someone links an internal page doesn’t mean your home page won’t rank better as well, right? So that’s how you get rankings in today’s game. And most people don’t wanna do it because they don’t wanna write the content. It’s just a lot of work and it costs a lot of money.

Nathan: I see and what do you think the best way is to bring traffic to your site?

Neil: So the best way to bring traffic to your site is actually through social media, it’s the quickest way to ramp up. You can spend some money on Facebook and build up a fan page, Twitter ads and build up a following, it’s not cheap anymore but once you get to 10,000, 20,000 fans on Twitter and you know, 10,000, 20,000 fans on Facebook, more so followers on Twitter, you’ll be good whenever you feed out some content that’s relevant to what you do, more people will follow and go over that weekly and stuff like that.

Nathan: I see, so it kinda goes hand in hand to have you know, writing good content and then provdiing it to your market or your followers in a sense, right?

Neil: That’s correct.

Nathan: I see, so how do you go about providing value to your clients with your current businesses?

Neil: You make a promise. Your promise is what the company does. It could be that you’re gonna help them reduce their conversion rate or reduce their turn or provide ertain metrics that they don’t have and then you make sure that you deliver on it, no matter what, right? That’s how you provide value. You give them what you promise them and you actually do it and you do it ina timely fashion.

Then on top of that you go above and beyond. Maybe you educate them more, maybe you give them some free tips. Maybe you give, you know, process through education through education through content marketing. We give them tips about their business in ways they didn’t expect us to do for free. So it’s not only do you give them what you promised them but you give them more than what you promised them, right? In essence, yu’re under promising and over delivering and that’s how you make them happy.

Nathan: If you want to grow your client base, you keep your current clients happy or make them really, really happy because then they’re gonna spread the word, right?

Neil: That’s correct.

Nathan: I see, so what has been your biggest challenge you would say?

Neil: Getting out product as fast as possible. It’s not really my department but as a company our biggest challenge is keep on iterating our own product extremely fast, staying ahead of the market demand, right? It’s a lot of work when you’re tracking billions and billions of data calls because you’ve gotta deal wit infrastructure problems as well as providing more information and more features to customers.

nathan: I see. Well, thank you for your time, we have to start wrapping things up, Neil but I just wanted to ask you one final question and that’s what do you want to be remembered for and what are your plans for the future?

Neil: So I’m gonna answer the second one first, I don’t have any plans for the future. I try not to plan ahead, I just keep doing what I’m doing and don’t worry about the futre. What I want to be remembered for is how I’m helping other people, I feel like I haven’t helped enough people yet. But the end game is the way you wanna operate life is how people remember you when you die. And if you can get peoople to remember you for what you want, then I feel you’ve been successful in life and accomplished pretty much everything. And I want people to remember me for helping other people, making the world a better place, I haven’t even scratched the surface on doing that. Again, I have a lot of time, right? I’m only 28, so….

Nathan: Well great, great answer. I assume you plan to do some more work in the not-for-profit sector?

Neil: Definitely.

Nathan: Awesome, all right, well let’s ust wrap things up, I just wanted to say thank you for your time, Neil. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you.

Neil: No problem at all.Thank you for having me.