Dive into the riveting journey of digital marketing maven Neil Patel on the Productive Insights podcast, expertly guided by the dynamic host Ash Roy. From toilet scrubber at an amusement park to the architect of NP Digital's $100 million annual revenue, Neil shares gripping stories, challenges, and golden insights in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing. This lively conversation spans the realms of business growth, scaling strategies, and leadership, peppered with Neil's practical tips for content creators. Buckle up for a rollercoaster of inspiration as Neil's narrative unfolds, offering entrepreneurs a thrilling ride.

Key points:

00:00:42 Neil's Humble Beginnings

• Neil recounts starting his first job at 15 and a half, cleaning restrooms and picking up trash at an amusement park.
• Share the challenges and motivation behind the job.
• Set the stage for Neil's journey towards success.

00:01:27:05 Building NP Digital

• Neil discusses his entrepreneurial journey, from starting KISSmetrics and selling it to transforming his consulting business into NP Digital.
• Talk about a failed attempt at a cloud computing company, burning $1 million of borrowed money, and the valuable lessons learned.

00:02:03:08 Neil's Expertise in Digital Marketing

• Highlights Neil's expertise in search engine optimization, content creation, pay-per-click advertising, and more.
• Emphasizes the importance of long-term strategies over short-term gains.

00:02:29:08 Dealing with Growth Slowdown

• Neil provides advice on what to do when growth starts to slow down.
• Encourages businesses to explore new avenues during slowdowns.

00:02:41:19 Leveraging Technology and Staying on the Cutting Edge

• Discusses the relevance of staying updated in the age of AI.
• Talks about building amazing products, creating great user experiences, and staying ahead in the industry.

00:03:23:22Scaling Internationally

• Neil shares insights into scaling a business internationally.
• Emphasizes the importance of tapping into new markets for sustained growth.

00:15:52Starting Out and Scaling

• Neil shares his experience of combining consulting with overcoming financial challenges.
• Discussion on scalability and the importance of making money initially.

00:18:43 The Challenge of Saying "No" and Focus

• Insights into overcoming perfectionism, avoiding overanalysis, and the need for faster revenue generation.

00:19:33 Saying "No" and Focus on Profitability

• Discussion on Neil's biggest mistake, the importance of focus, and hiring strategies.

00:21:34 International Expansion and Growth

• Insights into NP Digital's international growth strategy and overcoming economic challenges.

00:23:31 Balancing Revenue and Profit

• Neil emphasizes the shift from revenue to profit, maintaining profitability, and challenges in reinvesting.

00:26:26 Hiring Strategies for Success

• Neil's approach to hiring is based on experience, loyalty, and success with previous competitors.

00:30:57 Generosity, Empathy, and Content Creation

• Neil's perspective on generosity in content creation, the dual-sided nature of content, and the importance of empathy.

00:35:15 Choosing to Stay Private

• Neil's decision to keep NP Digital private despite offers to go public.
• Brand-building

Links mentioned:

www.productiveinsights.com/1

www.productiveinsights.com/147

www.productiveinsights.com/200

www.productiveinsights.com/222

Quotes:

• Ash Roy: "I don't really see being able to have six months to a year ahead where they're integrating stories that are so amazing that people want to read."
• Neil Patel: "You create content, you educate, you build relationships, you learn more, you become wiser."
• Neil Patel: "Figure out what people are paying for in your industry that you can make for free and give it away for free, and you'll naturally just get traffic without doing any marketing over time."
• Neil Patel: "If your company is growing at a nice pace, just tell these folks and keep doing what you're doing. The moment here, growth slows down. Start looking at other things to do to speed it up."
• Neil Patel: "I'm doing it because I love helping people. But I'm also learning a lot, too."

Introduction

00:00:00:02 - 00:00:25:10

Ash Roy

If you're looking to build your brand using digital marketing strategies, then you're in for a treat. Today's episode on the Productive Insights podcast features the legendary Neil Patel. Neil is someone I'm proud to call a friend. He's received multiple awards over the last 20 years and has also been recognized by President Barack Obama for his incredible contributions in the field of digital marketing and entrepreneurship.

Neil happened to be the first guest on the Productive Insights podcast. You can go back and check it out on episode one and you can listen to how green I was back then. And in this episode, Neil shares his story, which starts from a very humble beginning, where he was picking up trash at an amusement park.

00:00:42:04 - 00:01:10:14

Neil Patel

I'm 38. That was when I was 15 and a half. I was able to get my first job and it was from minimum wage at that time was $5.75 an hour. Technically, they're able to pay me a little bit under minimum wage. I don't know why. Maybe because I was at 16 and it was clean restrooms and picking up trash at a theme park.

And I loved cleaning the restrooms because when I clean the Russians leave, they're paying extra $0.25 or $0.50 an hour to clean the toilets was a really messy job because of the theme park.

00:01:10:16 - 00:01:27:04

Ash Roy

He worked his way through some very challenging situations. He started KISSmetrics, he sold it, and then he built his own consulting business, which later on turned into an agency now known as NP Digital, and it currently makes around about $100 million a year in revenue.

00:01:27:05 - 00:01:44:20

Neil Patel

It tried to create a cloud computing company before that was really popular. Before there's Amazon Web Services. From my understanding, maybe I'm getting my timing off, but I'm pretty sure before this was big, we're trying to do cloud computing and it didn't work out and burn $1,000,000 of borrowed money and eventually had to pay it back. So it's like NAYLOR.

00:01:44:20 - 00:02:03:07

Ash Roy

Shared his entire story from his very humble beginnings all the way through to where he is today. He shares what he's done to become a dominant force in his chosen industry, which is digital marketing. Neil is an expert in search engine optimization, content creation, pay per click advertising and lots more.

00:02:03:08 - 00:02:15:14

Neil Patel

I don't really see being able to have six months to year ahead where they're integrating stories that are so amazing that people want to read. I think people under or overestimate what I can do in the short run and they underestimate what it can do in the long run.

00:02:15:18 - 00:02:29:07

Ash Roy

In this episode, we also talk about what you can do when growth starts to slow down and how you can stay on the cutting edge of your field while still producing results and leveraging technology efficiently.

00:02:29:08 - 00:02:41:18

Neil Patel

I learned this great piece of advice. I'm going to use it. If your company is growing at a nice pace, just tell these folks and keep doing what you're doing. The moment here, growth slows down. Start looking at other things to do to speed it up.

00:02:41:19 - 00:03:02:07

Ash Roy

In today's world of AI. This is particularly important and relevant. And finally, we talk about how to build amazing products, create great user experiences, and build services that your customers continue to come back for and enable you to build a brand that prevails and succeeds against all the odds.

00:03:02:08 - 00:03:23:16

Neil Patel

Let's give you a hypothetical right here. If someone's established business, you make over $100 million a year in a market like the United States. When you have a bad market, it most likely your numbers are going to start getting hurt your growth. Then suddenly number three and start going backwards. But on the flip side, if you're in a new market, let's say you could just expand to the United Kingdom, which has a good GDP and you're at $0 in revenue.

00:03:23:22 - 00:03:42:01

Neil Patel

Good market, bad market doesn't matter. You're going to close something you shouldn't be. So you're going to be better off than where you were before. And in a good market, close more in a bad market cause that'll be slower. And that's why we're growing still at a decent clip is because we're adding a ton internationally.

00:03:42:01 - 00:04:20:02

Ash Roy

So tune in and enjoy. Before we go, there's one more thing I wanted to share with you. Only about 10% of you that are watching this video have actually subscribed to our YouTube channel. So please go ahead and subscribe. Because the more you see these videos, the more you like them and the more you leave comments under the videos on YouTube, the more likely they are to be seen by more people.

The bigger our audience gets and the better quality guess we can get you. You've got some great guests lined up for 2024. Please do like and subscribe and share this with other people who might benefit so we can get you more content just like this. Thanks again. Thanks again. I appreciate your support and I look forward to seeing you in the comments.

00:04:20:04 - 00:05:20:23

Ash Roy

Welcome back. Today, I am delighted to welcome the oldest friend of the Productive Insights podcast, our very first guest from episode number one, and that's Neil Patel, the founder of NPR Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him the top influencer of the Web. He's a New York Times best selling author and 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.

He's received congressional recognition from the United States House of Representatives, most recently AMP Digital. That's Neil's company was awarded Best Workplace in 2023. For the second year in a row, they were chosen out of 591 applicants as an MP digital partner. We add productive insights are delighted and proud to welcome back Neil Patel from NPR Digital dot com.

And today we're going to talk about profitable scaling, artificial intelligence, content marketing, and lots more. So welcome back, Neil, to the Productive Insights Podcast.

00:05:21:03 - 00:05:28:04

Neil Patel

Thank you for having me. And if I can keep in mind, it's not you, it's me. I have jetlag. So I just got back from the UK.

00:05:28:06 - 00:05:37:18

Ash Roy

Wow. So you've been traveling a lot and actually I was watching a conversation you had with Matt Gray and you were saying you travel 35 weeks of the year, which is a lot. How do you manage that?

00:05:37:18 - 00:06:32:06

Neil Patel

You get used to it over time, but right now it's a little hectic because I'm traveling every single week internationally. So it was funny because one of my buddies has a private jet and he's just like, Do you know the average person? It takes flights that are under 3 hours. And I'm looking at my most recent flights over the last like ten flights.

And I think my average is a little bit above 10 hours. Wow. So it's very heavily international in London and a few days off to go to Germany. Then I think after going to Dubai after that, then Romania, then Dubai again. And when I do these trips, keep in mind, I go there, I fly back to the States, I go there, fly back to the States.

Well, when I was single, without children is easier because I just go from location to location, which saved a lot of time. But I miss my kids and my wife and my family also misses me. So I can go back for a few days and then I'm back on the road.

00:06:32:08 - 00:06:45:03

Ash Roy

I was going to ask a really young family that must be hard. And just to give our listeners some context, I want to put some clarity around the private jet remark because a lot of people would take the wrong idea from it.

00:06:45:04 - 00:06:52:09

Neil Patel

I'm flying commercial, by the way. I was saying, my friend as a private jet was telling me the average flight that someone takes is under 3 hours.

00:06:52:13 - 00:07:05:08

Ash Roy

Thank you for clarifying that. And that's something that I really like and admire about you, which I don't think you do a lot of justice in your content because focused on technical value driven.

00:07:05:10 - 00:08:00:20

Neil Patel

I've thought about a private jet. So I go to India. India is roughly, call it 40 hours total roundtrip. I'm around me, it's roughly 40. If I get a deal on a plane, that can take me far enough. You're roughly looking at $10,000 an hour because keep in mind, there's cost for landing and fuel and plane maintenance putting up the pilots and the crew.

You need multiple pilots. When you go to India, you need a massive plane because it's such a far journey. But when you just think about that just for a minute, you're talking about the musical cost me $400,000 for a round trip. I'm not saying I do this, but if I wanted to splurging on first class on Emirates, which has a shower and everything, 20 grand, they're better off donating.

The $380,000 is someone who needs the money. Then you're waste 400 grand on a flight that long. Now, if I was Elon Musk or Bill Gates, it probably doesn't matter at that point in life, but I'm not them. For me, I'd rather donate the.

00:08:00:20 - 00:08:15:21

Ash Roy

Money, and that's what I want to talk about a little bit. You donate a lot of your money and your wife specializes in this and I really like that you guys have this sort of combination, right? You're the guy who makes the money and your wife gives the money away a little bit like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

00:08:16:02 - 00:08:54:18

Neil Patel

So talk to us and then clarify. I does not specialize in it. That's what she focuses on. She's been learning quite a bit over the years, but she loves it. It makes her happy. It also makes her cry a lot. So we joke is my wife's donation varies a lot based on the tier factor that my friend and I joke with my wife about this.

The more she cries, the more she does. She don't. It's from her heart. I donate based on logic. I'm like, you want the money? Okay, you're trying to solve poverty. How much more? Our kids were less hungry in the last 12 months because of your efforts. Like I look at the stats in the data and my wife who genuinely donates from the heart, I'm not saying my approach is right or my wife's approach is right, but a combo of both them is genuinely pretty good.

00:08:54:22 - 00:08:59:14

Ash Roy

So at what point did you start donating money like go?

00:08:59:16 - 00:09:04:04

Neil Patel

When we first started this interview, I was donated. Back then I wasn't donating as much.

00:09:04:04 - 00:09:07:13

Ash Roy

Right? Approximately what proportion of your wealth you give away?

00:09:07:19 - 00:10:02:13

Neil Patel

Not that much. Right now. Presented to the world that single digit for percentiles really, really tiny on an annual basis. And it's actually very, very low single digit percentile just be super clear. Even when I look at portion of income I generate on an annual basis, I'm donating less than 10% of my income on an annual basis. By the time my wife and I pass away, we will end up donating close to 100%.

Right. But I do hold most my cash. I'm not the most generous person. I'm not trying to paint myself out to be a saint. I'm not that I'm capitalist, just being transparent. I love making money for the sport of it and I don't know why, but I can't stop. And sometimes I wish I could just stop and just be that dad because it plays soccer football with my kids and go to the park.

That's honestly not me. I just love business and making more money. I'll spend time with my kids. I read puzzles with my kids or random stuff.

00:10:02:13 - 00:10:04:18

Ash Roy

You're a good driver, is that correct?

00:10:04:20 - 00:10:05:05

Neil Patel

I'm good.

00:10:05:06 - 00:10:06:20

Ash Roy

Off the blood, man.

00:10:06:22 - 00:10:36:02

Neil Patel

Yeah. I should donate more. I'll donate more before we pass. I keep majority of the cash for more business to grow and make more money. And again, I should change that. But it's hard right now in my prime when I love what I'm doing. And I hope that by me investing more into business, it compounds faster. We still give some every year, but maybe at the end when we give it all away, it'll have a much greater impact.

My wife is on the flip side. She's like, People need it now. We should give more of it now. So just to try to find a balance.

00:10:36:04 - 00:10:51:10

Ash Roy

Well, I just want to thank you for your transparency and your honesty. I really appreciate that. I know you also said in the first million podcast that you don't want to just give money away to your kids, which I deeply admire and respect.

00:10:51:15 - 00:11:27:05

Neil Patel

The biggest mistake I made was I put one of my businesses shares in a trust for my children. As my children are walking around in Elizabeth, they're too young to understand. I put some shares of a company in a trust and I ended up giving them too much. You know, at this point, I don't know what happened, but in theory, my kids will walk away with nine figures each at the age of one and three right now.

So I wish I had that as much in a trust. So when I say I don't want to give them anything, some of it's already too late. Legally, I can't just break the trust. It's irrevocable. That was the biggest mistake.

00:11:27:07 - 00:11:31:01

Ash Roy

Your view is to give away the money where it's needed most. Is that right?

00:11:31:06 - 00:11:36:12

Neil Patel

That's right. And when I made those changes, I was much younger and it was a big mistake. But living life.

00:11:36:17 - 00:11:37:16

Ash Roy

Yeah, well.

00:11:37:19 - 00:13:12:02

Neil Patel

So my goal is to give it away. And for the people running the trust to also use it for nonprofit and donation purposes and instilling that in my children, I'm not going to be a co-parent. And what I mean by that, and that's actually a bad way to put it. I don't think that if someone doesn't give their kids anything that's not called, that's actually a very incorrect statement to me to say I will give my kids something if they need it.

And here's what I mean. If my kids are on the street with no food and they're sick, you better bet I'm going to give them a house. I'm going to give them a house in Beverly Hills, but I give them a normal house and food and shelter. Or like if my kids are cancer and they can't afford a treatment, I will gladly pay for that treatment.

So, like, there is nothing and more importantly, what they don't even understand the amount of relationships and business connections that they've already met at their young age is quite ridiculous. Imagine a three year old and a one year old doing dinner with your friends, and your friends are billionaires and they've done this multiple times with different people who have billions of dollars.

And I'm not saying having those dollars makes you great or not having it makes you bad or good. Those who have lost sight. But if you look at it from a neutral perspective, typically people for that wealth are usually business owners of the people I know who are that wealthy are business owners. And if my kids want to do anything in their life, they're getting to know these parents for willing.

Well-off parents are getting to know the kids. The kids are getting to know their kids, and their kids are getting like they're building amazing network and Rolodex at such a young age.

00:13:12:04 - 00:13:14:05

Ash Roy

And hopefully they'll use it for good.

00:13:14:07 - 00:14:08:21

Neil Patel

That's correct. You never know. The time will tell. And I'm still bad. Like the other day, I was at a jewelry store and as expensive when I was called Harry Winston and they had a mother's Day present for my wife. They give mothers a present like a gold plated plate or whatever it was, cookies and stuff. My little three year old love story and her birthday's coming up soon.

I was like, What's the cheapest jewelry you have in here? And there's like, this pendant for 30 $500. I show it to my trailer and she's like, I love it. And she's turning four tomorrow. And I'm like, You want my honey? And then she's like, She looks like a princess. And then, here you go. So I'm like, not again.

I'm not a saint. I shouldn't be buying a little kid that 30 $500 a jewelry piece and a butter, many pieces of jewelry to probably break it up for a month and that's it. But like the see the smile on my little kids face? And she's like, I'm going to be a princess for my birthday. And I was like, You go get it, honey.

00:14:08:23 - 00:14:49:08

Ash Roy

Fair enough. So let's switch back to when you started. You started from very humble beginnings, and I want to sort of undo this million dollar this and million dollar that. And everyone's talking about revenue and not talking enough about profit or cash flow, which we'll touch on a little bit later. But you started cleaning toilets at an amusement park.

So talk to our viewers about that. And at one point, if I'm not mistaken, you were $1,000,000 in debt. So let's talk about the really difficult side of business. You're doing $100 million a year now, but that's not how it always was. And I want people to hear and understand that it doesn't happen overnight. So can you talk to us a bit about that?

00:14:49:12 - 00:15:52:11

Neil Patel

I'm 38. That was when I was 15 and a half. I was able to get my first job and it was from minimum wage at that time was $5.75 an hour. Technically, they're able to pay me a little bit under minimum wage. I don't know why. Maybe because I was at 16 and it was cleaning restrooms and picking up trash at a theme park.

And I love cleaning the restrooms because when I clean the restrooms, the paying extra $0.25 or $0.50 an hour to clean the toilets was a really messy job because of the theme park. You can imagine a theme park with roller coasters and kid roller, not the little kids. So I did it to make more money. I wanted a better life.

So you do whatever for the cash and eventually I tried starting some businesses. My first one was the job board failed miserably. Eventually, I tried to create a cloud computing company. Before that was really popular. Before there's Amazon Web Services for my understanding, Maybe I'm getting my timing off, but I'm pretty sure before this was big, we were trying to do cloud computing and it didn't work out and burning million dollars of borrowed money and eventually had to pay it back.

So it's like.

00:15:52:13 - 00:15:54:00

Ash Roy

How did you get yourself out of that hole?

00:15:54:05 - 00:15:58:20

Neil Patel

I was doing consulting at the same time and helping people grow their traffic on the Internet, so that helped a lot.

00:15:58:22 - 00:16:14:10

Ash Roy

So that brings up another question, and this is about scaling. I have found that there's a lot of talk about blitz scaling and scaling, but before you scale, you have to own scalable stuff. Would you agree or you don't agree? And why or why not?

00:16:14:12 - 00:16:48:11

Neil Patel

Depends on the business. If I'm trying to start a software company from day one and it's a meta software company, I'm creating a CRM. Let's take a deal with Salesforce and HubSpot and the list goes on and on. Zoho Sugar CRM, you may not need to do as much manual stuff because you're in a older industry that's established that already has a lot of systems and processes built.

So you may not have to worry too much about scalability because you can get that early on. On the flip side, if you're doing something new, a lot of times you're going to have to grind it out and things aren't as scalable as they should be.

00:16:48:11 - 00:16:54:01

Ash Roy

So when you started, did you start off with scalability in mind or did you start off with.

00:16:54:07 - 00:17:15:03

Neil Patel

Wanting to wrap up by just thinking about making money? And how has it there is no like, I need to make it scalable or I need to make it super efficient. And so my marginal profit, I'm just like, how much revenue can I make and how much of that drops to the bottom line and goes in my pocket?

That was it. When you're starting off, it's for most people it's much more basic.

00:17:15:08 - 00:17:39:18

Ash Roy

Yeah. And in your conversation with Matt Gray, I noticed you said one of your pet peeves is people don't make revenue fast enough and they don't ship fast enough. They sort of sit in paralysis for a long time. And I have to confess, I was guilty of this and I'm still sometimes guilty of it. How do you bring yourself to get too done and not get caught up in the whole perfection thing?

00:17:39:20 - 00:18:43:19

Neil Patel

That's a tough one. And I don't know the honest answer for that. And here's why I'll say that when you're going out there and just trying to get things done, you just have to have the mentality that it's okay not to be perfect and just ship stuff and get feedback. I don't know the real secret or solution. I think it's more the mentality than anything about putting a rocket into space that falls.

There's not that many repercussions. First rocket into space. Sure, people could die, but you know, when you're talking about building a software company, you have no paying customers. Who cares? Just get it out there and give feedback. What do you have to lose? And I think that's where people make the mistake because they overanalyze. They genuinely just overanalyze.

And I don't know why. Instead of just trying to get it out there, get no secret shit out there, you do. Okay? You don't get other you don't do those, okay? Like not rocket science. If it's not perfect, you got it out there. You're dead. You learn from your mistakes if it's great. lucky you, because most people don't experience that right away.

Right? Like it's more of a mental thing. Can you get over it?

00:18:43:21 - 00:19:14:13

Ash Roy

I really like how honest and open you're being in this conversation, So thank you. Something you also said was one of your biggest mistakes was not being focused enough when you were younger and you are more focused now. In episode 147, I spoke to Noah Kagan about this as well, and he said, you know, being able to say no is an important skill.

How do you say no? And more importantly, what things do you say yes to? What sort of filters do you have in business when picking projects?

00:19:14:17 - 00:19:33:11

Neil Patel

I say no to most things and I'll say yes. So my main business and that's it. So I was at dinner one time and this guy does not remember there was a guy named Brian Leder, Brian Lee, critic. She does a lot with Kim Kardashian, legalism and honest company and a few other companies. Honest companies with Jessica Alba.

00:19:33:15 - 00:19:34:09

Ash Roy

That's right.

00:19:34:11 - 00:21:34:18

Neil Patel

Brian taught me something and I didn't understand it back then. And they took their advice for granted. And when I say I took it for granted, I was like, yeah, I learned this great piece of advice. I'm going to use it. And I didn't take it from Brian from a mental note standpoint, but like bullshit on me for not using it, right?

I did not use it and I was super arrogant. I was going, Do you know, I know what I'm doing. But Brian once said, If your company is growing at a nice pace, just tell these folks and keep doing what you're doing. The moment your growth slows down, start looking at other things to do to speed it up.

So. NP Digital. All right, you're based in Australia, right? We have Australia Division. I don't know if you knew that we have anti digital in Australia as well. I do because there you go. And Dan ends up running it. That's right. So now and we have a lot of different divisions economy is bad. I'm not here to tell you we're booming when a lot of people in marketing are struggling animals, competitors and they know a lot of their numbers because they share.

Did you know our internation when you look at year to date numbers and you compare the year to year has grown roughly 74%. Wow. In this economy. So what are we doing to create more growth? We started the year with Australia, the UK, Brazil, India, Canada, the US would make it six. We also had Germany, but the Germany guy didn't work out and he didn't want to do any work.

We both decided to part ways, not try and talk trash is the reality. Yeah, so he just wants something else alive. So those are the five regions right now. We're in roughly May 19, May 28 that in a year timezone is May 20th while recording this. So you got those by region six if you include the United States.

We've already added Italy, Spain, Singapore, Mexico, Colombia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan. We're about to add France. So now you're looking at nine regions that we've topped up in roughly five months.

00:21:34:18 - 00:21:35:18

Ash Roy

Wow.

00:21:35:20 - 00:22:12:01

Neil Patel

Because we're seeing growth and the growth isn't coming from these new nine that we've popped up. It's coming from the existing five and we're like a half the revenue really is international, which we knew, but we need to see the data because it's expensive to spend all this money to expand overseas. It cost millions of dollars per region.

Our original projections are nothing for region, but that's not the case, sadly. It's much more by the end of this year, including the United States will probably be somewhere around 23 to 25 regions that will be in countries. When I say regions like we're pushing hard for future growth and international expansion.

00:22:12:04 - 00:22:17:07

Ash Roy

So what's driving this growth? How are you having this success when the rest of the market is shrinking?

00:22:17:09 - 00:23:12:07

Neil Patel

We're not just focused on the US. If you're established business, let's give you a hypothetical right here. If some of the established business you make over $100 million a year in a market like the United States, when you have a bad market, most likely your numbers are going to start getting hurt. Your growth is going to suddenly start going backwards.

But on the flip side, if you're in a new market, let's say you could just expand to the United Kingdom, which has a good GDP and you at $0 in revenue, good market, bad market, it doesn't matter. You're going to close something you shouldn't be, so you're going to be better off than where you were before. And in a good market.

Close more in a bad market, close a little, be slower and that's why we're growing still at a decent clip is because we're adding a ton internationally. You are not seeing the revenues from all these international regions yet because we've been adding so many. I think not next year, 2025 will be our year is not done with, but.

00:23:12:13 - 00:23:31:04

Ash Roy

Okay, let's talk about revenue versus profit. You know, I put on my CPA or my MBA hat and I can tell you that if you're doing and I'm not talking about you, I'm saying if a business is doing 10 million, 100 million, whatever a year, but if they're spending 11 million or 111 million to make that revenue, you're worse off than the guy on the side of the street in the cardboard box.

Ash Roy

Right?

00:23:31:04 - 00:24:16:15

Neil Patel

Because you're broke in theory, yes. Unless your company is valued on revenue, which some are like a lot of SAS are. But the public markets now want profit and investors now want profit unless you're growing like 40, 50% year over year. They're a little flexible. But if you don't have the growth numbers, which most people don't have the profit.

And then the other problem that's changed is before there were okay with no profit, we have 40, 50% growth. But if you keep having 40, 50% growth and your losses just keep compounding each year faster than your growth, there is a problem. So that's why yeah, I'm a good draw. The end you're familiar with with my kind that we were to a young age that a business is someone that makes profit, not revenue irrelevant number.

00:24:16:19 - 00:24:42:04

Ash Roy

So let's talk about that. I want to just drill down to that. How do you ensure profitability? Because I'm sick and tired of hearing people talking about revenue numbers. Revenue is not important and it doesn't impress me. What impresses me is profit. And I know you're profitable, but my question is how do you focus on profitable revenue, as it were, and as importantly, if not more importantly, how do you ensure cash flow is always healthy.

00:24:42:09 - 00:25:59:06

Neil Patel

Good financial team? They do going to economics and they make sure everything we do is profitable and good leadership. See, my CEO was president of I Prospect, which is an agency global agency. He managed I don't know how many thousands of people, but a lot and he works at a publicly traded company and one of them was one of their best divisions.

So he had to run things based on a quarterly basis. Now, we don't run things on a quarterly basis, but you got to optimize for revenue and profit and things like that. So that's important. The other one to think about for us is in this economy, our profit is going down drastically, not because we can't maintain it and grow it.

It's going down because we're investing so heavily internationally and technically that's not considered profit. When you look at accounting rules, we still have great profit, but we're taking the cash flow, we're looking at the profit, we're paying taxes on it, and then we're reinvesting it for international growth based on our auditors. RSM and BDO. That's the correct way we need to do it.

So technically we still have great profit, we have terrible cash flow because we're taking all the profits and reinvesting them for international expansion and growth, which is going to make us suffer from an income standpoint for the next two years, which I'm okay with.

00:25:59:06 - 00:26:12:19

Ash Roy

And you know, I've got to say that I double revenue for a few years in a row, which was great, but I was reinvesting all of my profits back into the business. And that is what I've found. If you want to drive growth, you've got to reinvest. Would you agree?

00:26:12:21 - 00:26:26:18

Neil Patel

You do. It's painful. Hey, you got it. I wish that wasn't the case. I'll be much happier with my pocketbook if that wasn't the case. But it's like. And you know what? If you love what you're doing and you believe it, then go for it.

00:26:26:18 - 00:27:02:23

Ash Roy

As you say, if you love what you're doing and you don't work a day in your life, which is the case for me. I used to hate working in the corporate world as an analyst, but ever since I started Productive Insights, I've never been happier, so I couldn't agree more with that. You mentioned you have hired good quality financial people.

Tell me a little bit about your approach to hiring, because I think hiring is one of the most important skills when it comes to building a great company with a great culture, which also your press release said that one of the reasons you were voted for the INC workplace thing for the second year in a row is because you have a good culture.

So talk to us about hiring and culture.

00:27:03:02 - 00:28:35:19

Neil Patel

I'm not the right person to talk to about culture. I don't want to bullshit you and tell you this are critical to good culture. My co-founder does all that hiring. We use one simple strategy. We look to see who's worked for multiple of our competitors because if they worked for multiple competitors, they know your space. We look for people who stay there for a while because that means they're loyal and we look for people who got promoted consistently at our competitors.

So if you're hiring someone for a role that they've done in the past and they worked at your competitors and they've continually got promoted, that means other people found them valuable. See, when you interview people, people tend to bullshit. I did really well and I dropped this revenue and I'm the boss and this is why this company was successful.

The truth is usually somewhere in between of what they're saying, what the company says and when you hire someone who's worked at your competition or multiple competitors, they've gone continually promoted at both places. It means other people found them to be valuable. Those are the people you typically want because when they say they can do something, usually they can or else they want to be continually promoted.

That's the strategy to hire, hit them up on LinkedIn, and we don't ever say, Hey, Ash, love what you're doing. We want to hire you. That we found that doesn't work. We'll be like, Hey, Ash, love what you done in Australia. This ad agency, assuming we're hiring you to run an ad agency in Australia, we're actually looking for someone just like you because your skill set.

Do you know anyone who would be a great fit? And that's it. And then a lot of times you ask, we'll be like, Actually, I'm interested, but that's a job to people.

00:28:35:19 - 00:28:37:19

Ash Roy

And it's also a great way to actually.

00:28:37:19 - 00:28:44:15

Neil Patel

Sort of go directly and say, Come work for us. We found that to be too direct and not reference. Well, that.

00:28:44:15 - 00:29:20:15

Ash Roy

Also applies very well to sales, right? Because when you say to somebody, I'm looking for some I have a membership program, for example, I often reach out and say, I'm looking to get other members just like you because similar to a company, I think if you want to build a great membership and I've got some really great members in my membership program, you got to hand-pick the people and you got to build a good culture.

You've got to bring the right members in because one crappy member can just poison the well. So that's a great way to ask them if they know other people like them. And it's a very nice, noninvasive way to recruit members, as it were.

00:29:20:17 - 00:29:21:06

Neil Patel

Yes.

00:29:21:06 - 00:29:25:13

Ash Roy

I didn't know you had a co-founder. I assumed you were the only founder of NP Digital.

00:29:25:14 - 00:29:38:03

Neil Patel

I owned the majority of the company by far, and I have a co-founder. His name is Mike. Amazing Guy has done an extremely well in operations, great background for recruiting and sales. And then funny enough, my CEO is also named Mike.

00:29:38:07 - 00:29:45:08

Ash Roy

Okay, right now tell me about NP Digital's mission and how did you arrive at that mission?

00:29:45:11 - 00:30:32:09

Neil Patel

When we started, our overall goal was to do marketing. I'm a marketer and I was tired of paying marketing people to help us out and they just weren't doing it right. And when I say right, it was just to my standards, whatever they may be. And I'm not saying my standards are great or bad or good, you know, people can judge them on their own.

And I was just looking for people who are scrappy. I was tired of hearing like, you need more budget, you need to spend more. I'm like, okay, how about you get creative, You need budget. Your competitors spend way more than you. So then I want to build a team that was creative and and who were willing to try cutting edge experiments and tactics.

Not unethical because I know a lot of marketing stuff can be unethical, but more cutting edge and try to produce results for people and be super creative while doing it and leverage technology to be more efficient. That's how we ended up starting.

00:30:32:13 - 00:30:57:11

Ash Roy

On the ethical point, I spoke to Seth Godin about this in episode 200, and we talked a lot about empathy and he talked about generosity. Now, I noticed that you are very generous, not just in terms of, say, donations. You're more generous than most people I know, but also in terms of your content and in terms of the value you're trying to give to your audience.

So can you talk a little bit about that? It's not spoken about enough generosity and empathy in business.&