Ep.90/ Neil Patel on How to Master SEO and Win on Google Search
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With Google being the #1 search engine and YouTube being the second, understanding and optimizing for organic search and having your website rank is extremely important! SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert and Forbes Top 10 marketer Neil Patel of NP Digital shares how you can grow your business through SEO - regardless of the size of your company. He also shares how to build a personal brand and consistently create content, and when to use AI and ChatGPT - and when not to!
Neil runs an 800+ person marketing company and has 2 young kids. Plus you’ll hear how Kim had a whoopsie mistake at the beginning of the interview!
In this episode you will learn:
How to build your personal brand and consistently put out content even if you are a solopreneur or have limited budget or time (3:32)
How long it takes to generate ROI and leads from SEO vs social media (11:29)
How to do SEO effectively on a budget (14:03)
At what point you should stop using AI to create content (15:11)
Working with Influencers vs micro influencers and which has the best return on investment (16:02)
How he balances 2 little kids and what his work week looks like (26:13)
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Wondering why SEO is so valuable?
With Google being the #1 search engine and YouTube being the second, understanding and optimizing for organic search and having your website rank is extremely important! SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert and Inc 5000 company winner Neil Patel of NP Digital shares how you can grow your business through SEO - regardless of the size of your company. He also shares how to build a personal brand and consistently create content, and when to use AI and ChatGPT - and when not to!
In this episode you will learn:
How to build your personal brand and consistently put out content even if you are a solopreneur or have limited budget or time
How long it takes to generate ROI and leads from SEO vs social media
How to do SEO effectively on a budget
At what point you should stop using AI to create content
Working with Influencers vs micro influencers and which has the best return on investment
How he balances 2 little kids and what his work week looks like
Quotes from our guest:
The importance of SEO
“So the number 1 search engine in the world is Google, the number 2 search engine in the world is YouTube. When young people are starting to do a search, a lot of times they're turning to TikTok and Instagram to search. These platforms are all super popular. To give you a rough idea around 8.5 billion searches happen per day on Google alone. So it just shows you the power of search - the majority of the people don't click on paid ads, less than a few percentage points. Majority of the people are clicking nowhere or they're clicking on the organic listings.”
SEO Vs Social Media Growth
“It takes years to build up your social profiles and to get it going. SEO is the same thing - it takes years. You can see results in social media in the first 3 to 6 months and you can see results in SEO in the first 3 to 6 months.”
The Most Effective Way to Build a Personal Brand
“So you do a ton of stuff to get your name out there and you do it consistently for at least 3 years all right? Speak at events, post content on social daily. And at least six point six social networks, the average person uses 6.6 social networks.
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Kim (00:02):
If you've ever wondered about SEO, social media content marketing or about growing your brand, I have the most amazing guest. Neil Patel joins us. He is going to teach you how to use SEO regardless of your budget, what the return on investment is to bring in an influencer on a project and his advice to growing consistently on social media, even if you have limited resources and bonus, I'll tell you how I embarrassed myself before we even hit record.
Kim (00:29):
Welcome to the exit interview with Kim Rittberg. Do you work for yourself and want to supercharge your business while still having fun? Well, this is your go-to podcast part MBA Part Cheer Squad. Every week I'll be joined by top business owners who share the secrets to their success. After I found myself working during childbirth true story, I quit my executive media job to bet on myself
Kim (00:52):
Fighting
Kim (00:52):
The fear and imposter syndrome to eventually earn six awards, an in-demand speaking career and features in Fast Company and Business Insider. Now, I'm here to celebrate all you rock stars betting on yourself, and I want to help you win Tune in every Wednesday to hear from remarkable founders and don't miss our Solo Friday episodes, a treasure trove of video and podcasting mini masterclasses with me. Exit the Grind, enter success on your own terms. Don't forget to subscribe today and grab my free video tips at my website, kimrittberg.com.
Kim (01:31):
Super important but quick favor, please tell two people to listen to the show and hit that follow button, and if you want to leave a rating and a review, that would be cool. I am super excited to bring in Neil Patel. You are going to learn so much about how to grow your business with SEO, content, marketing, social media, and so much more. Plus he is running an 800 person company and I want to know how he balances his time with his two kids. I'm going to ask him all of that. Here's a little more. Neil Patel is a New York Times bestselling author. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web. Forbes says he's one of the top 10 marketers and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 10 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the un.
(02:18):
Wow. I am going to also give you a little bit of behind the scenes is that Neil was supposed to be on a few minutes later he was running, he was caught in traffic in LA and I got an email from someone on his team asking to push it by 20 minutes. No problem. The schedule works for me today. I opened the web browser to start our interview and normally I'm super good about keeping it open, but I muted and I turn off the camera. I think I forgot too, so my camera and my mic were on from the moment he was supposed to come, and then I just left it open until he came so he wouldn't think I'm not online. Meanwhile, our fridge repairman is here. I go out, I'm talking to the repairman, I change my shirt, whatever. I come back, I still have 10 minutes to go.
(02:59):
I hear him. I'm like, oh God. Oh God, he's on early. I look on, I'm like, was my mic unmuted and my camera on? He's like, oh yeah, it looks like you changed your shirt. Anyway, it was kind of a funny and embarrassing beginning to the interview, but I think also it broke the ice well because Neil was very cool in addition to being super ridiculously smart. So it ended up being slightly embarrassing for me, but a really fun way to start the interview. So without further ado, let's get right into it with Neil Patel. What are your thoughts on the most effective way to build a personal brand?
Neil (03:32):
You do a ton of stuff to get your name out there, and you do it consistently for at least three years. All right, so when I say do a ton of stuff, speak at events, post content on social daily, on at least 6.6 social networks. According to demand, Sage, the average person uses 6.6 social networks. I would round down and not up. There's just too many networks, but you can repurpose the same content. We take our most popular content from Twitter. I read it word for word, turn it into a short form video, and I post it on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram. So then I already got Twitter. That was the main one, and then I take the most popular piece of content and I do five more on all the other social networks and we repurpose the same thing. So it doesn't take that much time.
(04:19):
I'm reading it word for word, just read off a teleprompter. The strategies worked out quite well. So if you take all the social media content you're posting, you speak at events, you respond to people, help 'em out when they leave a comment or a direct message, ideally create a podcast as well. I think it's a wide open playing field. There's roughly 4 million podcasts and over a billion blogs when you think about it, it's not as saturated according to a Salesforce, the average person that reads or listens to a podcast has a household income of around 70, above 70,000. I don't know the exact set, but I do know it's above 70,000 in the United States. If you start leveraging all these channels, they can help a lot to just generate a ton of business for you in the long run.
Kim (05:03):
So I teach business owners about how to make content and in the past I worked in media and I had a big team, you have a big company. The companies you work with that bring you on, get a lot of support for independent people, whether they're a solopreneur or maybe they're bringing on freelancers or they're a small team, what do you recommend for that consistency? What does that look like for smaller groups?
Neil (05:25):
So even though we have a ton of employees, we have one contractor that helps us with our social media marketing and alright, so check this out. I come up with my own content that I want to post on Twitter. I take the ones that are the most popular. I pay someone who comes a few times a month, local person, bust out their phone, record you, they'll edit the videos and then you just pop 'em up on social media. You can even have them do it. You can get it done for very little money. It shouldn't even cost more than a thousand bucks a month, or you can just record the video yourself. You don't have to edit it that much, if any. You just post it as is.
Kim (06:01):
What about engagement? I even think, let's say, because I totally agree with you in terms of batching, let's say you sit down, you film for an hour or two, you do one podcast, you do four YouTube videos, the YouTube videos can be cut into shorter content. Those can all be turned into blogs, SEO, blogs, newsletter, whatever, everything podcast. I still think there is that element. A lot of the social platforms also want you to engage and they reward engagement. So let's say you even can batch four hours one day, four hours another day filming, writing, whatever someone else is doing the other work, but there's still that element of engaging. So what about that? How do you balance that?
Neil (06:39):
I just engage whenever I have time throughout the day. So instead of watching tv, just bust up my phone and respond to people.
Kim (06:45):
You're not doing it yourself. You have a team helping with the engagement on it. It's not like you're not all doing it yourself. Oh
Neil (06:50):
No, I actually bust up my phone and I respond to comments myself.
Kim (06:53):
Wow. I'm always, when I hear that, I'm like really? Really?
Neil (06:56):
My team responds as me. It really irritates me and the main reason is not because I don't love the team, not because I don't want to save the time. The responses aren't always as helpful as if I was doing it. I'm not saying my team's not capable or they're not smart, they're smarter than me in many different aspects, but if I'm going to respond and give someone advice, I don't want crap advice and I've been doing this longer than the person I'm going to pay to respond to the comments. If I get someone who's really knowledgeable, they're not going to want to do it as a living and I want to give people really good responses, so I just do it myself.
Kim (07:35):
Wow. I'm taking that in. That's cool. Great. Now everybody respond and follow o' Neil, and that way you're getting to hear back from him asking him your questions. I need to jump into SEO. So I read your newsletter, I watch your videos. You are brilliant. I would love to know, we were just talking about social media, so businesses feel pressured and they're stretched to put time and money into social media. Every business feels that. I mean, smart businesses are also aware of the value of SEO. I come from video and tv. I wasn't as SEO expert, but I did the training classes. I focused a lot on metadata and SEO for our videos on the backend. I understood the value and importance of it, but talk to me about from your perspective on SEO, why is SEO so much more valuable than other things?
Neil (08:21):
So the number one search engine in the world is Google. The number two search in the world is YouTube. According to Google vp, when young people are starting to do a search for a place to eat or a place to go, a lot of times they're turning to TikTok and Instagram to search these social networks. These platforms are all super popular. To give you a rough idea, around 8.5 billion with the B searches happen per day on Google alone. So it just shows you the power of search. Majority of the people don't click on paid ads less than a few percentage points. Majority, the people are clicking nowhere or they're clicking on the organic listing.
Kim (08:58):
And now I'm noticing over the past however long Instagram is feeding into Google, I'm seeing, I'm getting Google alerts on my own Instagram posts and I was like, wow, that's happened over the past year. But you're saying not even all the social media comes up on it, like TikTok might not surface Depending what platform you're on, LinkedIn, your LinkedIn post might not surface. I've noticed that I keep Google alerts on my own name and I thought that's really interesting. So I love the point of SEO is like you own it, it's your own traffic, it's organic. And I had someone come in actually into Instagram, like a possible lead saying they found me through SEO. They said they were Googling What is B-roll, and they landed on my blog that I wrote and I embedded an Instagram video that I made. To your point, I do it myself and I think it's super, super important because I tell everybody I'm such an advocate of social media.
(09:46):
I think it's very authentic and engaging in the way a blog can't be, especially in service-based industries, a hundred percent someone's going to work with you because you have to be showing up with your voice on a podcast, with your face on a video. But I love that you raise the point of, I always call it squeezing all the juice out of the orange. You're already taking the time to think of something super smart to talk about in a YouTube video, turn that into Twitter, turn that into a blog, put it on TikTok so you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time. But I like the idea that SEO does a different thing almost because it surfaces you in the other way where the other ones, you're really trying to pull people. You have to be a magnet and the other ones kind of works in the background.
Neil (10:27):
It just drives so much revenue. To give you idea, when we hit the ink, 5,000 lists of the fastest growing companies in the United States, we landed on the list the first time we were on there at number 21. A lot of it was driven because of SEO.
Kim (10:40):
Wow.
Neil (10:41):
Being on the ink list didnt do crap for the business, and then I didn't know you. They start charging you if you want the awards and stuff like that. I'm like, it's okay. I don't want the awards. You guys can have it.
Kim (10:53):
No, I think you could say I put my trophies in the background when I got the bill, I was like four 50 for this trophy. It's not made of gold, but I do have it. I'm all about visual communication, so I need the trophy.
Neil (11:06):
No, I like the awards. It was just too much for us. I didn't want to spend the money on the English and it was number 21. I was like, it's not even the top 10 or top 20. I'm like 21. This number's always useful if I want to play blackjack. Other than that, what am I going to do with number 21?
Kim (11:20):
It's the opposite of what I tell my kids. I'm like, seventh place is great. It's not the last.
Neil (11:26):
Yeah, I look at that as I lost. I was like,
Kim (11:29):
What do you talk about SEO? While I really, I truly am such a believer, as you can tell, I'm really such a believer in it. SEO takes longer to farm to blossom. You plant the seeds, it takes a while to come, whereas social media is more instantaneous,
Neil (11:44):
Not necessarily. It takes years to build up your social profiles and to get it going. SEO, same thing. It takes years. You can see results in social media in the first three to six months. You can see results in SEO in the first three to six months. You're not going to like what you get when starting off from scratch in either channel, whether it's social or SEO in the first six months, but it's compounding results. You do it for a year, two years, three years, you're going to be way better off than you were in the first year because not only do you have to build up the following in social, you got to figure out how to create the right content. Once you do it and you're getting the engagement, you got to figure out how to convert those people into customers because followers that don't create any revenue, it's almost useless.
(12:24):
And the same goes with SEO. It just takes time to get the results. You get the traffic, then you got to figure out how to convert them and have all the lead capture forms and new conversion optimization. But it's the same stuff. Anything in marketing these days other than paid ads, takes a while. Even paid ads. When we go and work with companies, even if they're big and they're spending like 10 million a month or 50 million a month, which is really rare, but let's call it $10 million a month, which is a big corporation. Even if they have existing campaigns when things are wrong and you got to fix it and change it all, it takes months to really get it going and to get it more fine tuned versus where it's at. Campaigns in the first, if you want to do paid ads, they don't work out the way you want in the first day or week or even month. It takes longer than that. And even with all the AI and technology, it takes some time to learn, which also takes time. Let's say if you're using Google Performance Max,
Kim (13:17):
That's super interesting. I worked with a lawyer who I taught her how to make content and video for social media and she showing up and really teaching and showing up as herself. She then put money behind her content as a paid ad, but it's boosting her organic content. She got clients from that. And so I thought that was interesting is that it can happen sooner. It generally happens in a longer time. It can happen sooner, but I think that's a really interesting point. Thank you for sharing that about the three to six months, I do think of SEO as being a longer term, but you're right, social takes longer too. That's the truth.
Neil (13:51):
It does. And even with the lawyer, she spent money to boost the content. She spent ad money to get results quicker, which you can do. And same with SEO. You can just buy the ads on Google, you'll get results fast.
Kim (14:03):
Okay. I have one or two more SEO questions and then I want to jump into some Neil, the business person and the parent. You have kids, right? That's what Google told me. I used it. I used that Google, that thing that we're talking about. For people who don't have millions and millions of dollars to spend on SEO, what do you recommend them starting with? What are the first things they should do?
Neil (14:21):
Sure. So if you go to neil patel.com/seo-analyzer, you can put it in your URL and it'll tell you what to fix in order from first to last, and it'll prioritize it based on what's the easiest to fix and what's going to produce the best results. It looks at those two things. So that's a great way to start and it's free. And then the next thing I would do is start creating content. You can use a lot of tools out there like Uber suggests, which will give you keyword ideas or you can use Answer the public, which we own. Or you can even use chat GPT and ask some questions on keyword research and you can say like, Hey, I want to write an article about X, Y, and Z. What are some keywords that are informational and transactional? Because there's different types of keywords that you would recommend that I include within my content, and it'll also give you a lot more keyword ideas.
Kim (15:11):
I love that. And everyone's talking about AI with SEO. What do you recommend people not use AI for when doing SEO? It can get you the beginning steps and then at what point should you say, put down the chat GBT and get your hands on your keyboard.
Neil (15:25):
Stop writing a lot of the content using ai. Technically you're not writing it if you're using ai, but we find majority of marketers use AI to write their content. We found when we ran an experiment, roughly 94 point 12% of the time, human written content outranked AI content, but yet people want to create more AI content when human written content is ranking higher and driving more traffic by far.
Kim (15:48):
I love that. Thank you for sharing that. I do feel like there's a point at which people need to hear from a person, so I love that you're backing up with data. Thank you. That's why you're here because you're so smart. And now I'm done complimenting you. Back to the questions. What do you think of the word influencer?
Neil (16:02):
Sure. So I think it's a good word. At our ad agency NP Digital, we're seeing influencers drive a lot of sales for customers. And when you look at the costs a company or look at the dollars that a company has to spend to pay the influencer and the return that they're getting, assuming the influencer is a micro influencer, so their audience is more related to what the company is selling, whether it's the service or product, we're typically seeing a higher ROI than paid ads on Google or paid ads directly on meta.
Kim (16:36):
Interesting. So micro influencers get the best return on investment for companies?
Neil (16:41):
Correct. If you go after influence like Kim Kardashian, it is really hard to produce a ROI. I'm not saying Kim Kardashian's a bad influencer, I'm just saying for most businesses it's really hard to produce a ROI. And at the end of the day, yes, people are in business for a lot of things to help others out solve problems, but one of the reasons people are in businesses to make money and you want to make sure that you're making money responsibly and profitably.
Kim (17:06):
Talk to me about micro influencer. Obviously how people define micro influencer varies depending on the person. How do you define micro influencer?
Neil (17:15):
We're typically looking for people with sub million followers and they're known for something very specific. When I say sub million followers, I'm not talking about on all their platforms combined, I'm talking about on each channel. So they may have 900,000 or even a million or somewhere around their followers on Instagram or TikTok or whatever it may be. They're known for something specific as well, in which they're not known for being famous or they're not known for being a jack of all trades. They're known for, Hey, I'm known in the software category in b2b. I'm known for security, I'm known for men's fashion, business fashion. I'm known for, I don't know, organization within homes. I see a lot of those TikTok reels or Instagram reels, more so on organization in homes like pretty cool, let me like it.
Kim (18:05):
And how small does it go down to still be seeing ROI big enough so that there is ROI, but small enough that it's most effective. How little could it be a 5,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand?
Neil (18:16):
It could actually go down to someone who has a few thousand followers. And the reason I say that, in most cases, you want above 10,000 followers. But the reason I say it could go down to at least even a few thousand followers is in some industries and categories, people are in a business in which the ticket item is really high. Let's talk about B2B enterprise. You could have one contract that pays you $5 million if someone's known in your space for that specific security software issues and they're following you, well, maybe you get a massive contract from working with that influencer, even though they have 3000 followers. But the followers are all CIOs at large Fortune 500 companies.
Kim (18:58):
Yeah, I love that example. Okay, I'm going to ask you, are you an influencer
Neil (19:04):
Kind of for my own business? Sure. Some people look at it. I'm not that well known other than maybe in the marketing space. So one could say I am, but it was funny, I did a survey, I don't know if you saw the data on, I'm guessing not, but I did a survey around 30 days ago about a rude awakening for influencers, and we surveyed, I actually have the data, let's see, 5,920 influencers to find out how much influencers make on average. And the data was crazy. Have you seen it?
Kim (19:33):
No, but I need that now for my article. I'm going to site in my article,
Neil (19:38):
I put it on Twitter, I'll share the link you so you actually amazing, perfect data in the link. Love that. We survey 5,920 influencers. The average monthly income that an influencer generated from social media, their profiles was $323 and 19 cents. Alright, so then we looked at all the people who had above a hundred thousand followers, like all right, maybe they make a lot more money. So from followers from a hundred thousand to 999,000, the average income that they generated on a monthly basis was $1,727 and 29 cents. And then when you look at influencers have above a million followers, the numbers got better, but not that much. More $6,109 and 83 cents a month. So in other words, influencer marketing may seem great and all these younger people are in high school be like, I'm going to be an influencer. Again, there's nothing wrong with it, but the amount of money people make on average is way less than what you're seeing like a Mr. Beast or anyone like that. Those are very rare examples.
Kim (20:42):
So I love these numbers. Thank you for sharing that. That's super helpful. I just pulled that up. So here's my question though. So many people, whether they have 5,000, a hundred thousand, a million followers, they are not necessarily only looking to monetize through sponsorships, but they're getting clients from it. So I think those numbers probably don't include if they're also getting coaching clients or whatever, is that sponsor money or that's everything from content.
Neil (21:10):
It's everything. We ask them how much they're making and just in general from ads, selling products, your own services. Love that. It's not much.
Kim (21:21):
I love that. By the way, I got so distracted by my really embarrassing start to the interview. I forgot to tell you who I am. I'm Kim. I worked in TV for about 10 years as a news producer and writer. I launched the video unit for US weekly. So they had magazine and website and I launched their first ever digital unit. They sold for a hundred million dollars. And then I left to, I worked at Netflix and then I launched my business. And so now I focus on helping professionals be thought leaders through content. So I teach them how to message, how to show up on video, how to have a podcast specifically to grow their business. So that's my context of what we're talking about is sometimes people think about influencers like, oh, how much is Joe Coffee giving you to drink their coffee?
(22:04):
But I think of it as show up as a thought leader influence or whatever. You're going to make money. You're going to bring in clients if you're a coach, a consultant, a real estate agent, a CEO, whatever. So I do on-camera, media training, video strategy, thought leadership through content. So anyway, I meant to tell you that because my background and context for this conversation. And so for Fast Company, I always write about things kind of related to what I do. And so this I think is interesting because I work with people where I try to help them become a thought leader. And I'd love to know from your perspective, like you said, you're sort of an influencer, but you have millions of followers combined. So I would argue you're a business person first and you're very, very successful, but you're also an influencer. So I guess to you, I'll ask you, why would you say, when I said, are you an influencer? You said kind of
Neil (22:53):
Because I don't really try to monetize any of my social profiles or make money from it. So even though I have all these followers and yes, help my business make millions of dollars, I run a B2B company focused on large global 5,000 companies. And typically someone's not going to give you a multimillion dollar contract in most cases. It does happen very rarely, but in most cases, someone's not going to give you a multimillion dollar content. They saw a YouTube video or Instagram reel or a TikTok video of you talking about anything. I get my contracts because well known in the space produced results, my team is well known in the space. So there were executives that worked at a lot of the previous ad agencies and corporations are like, oh yeah, we worked with some people on your team in the past. They did great results. Here's the RFP. We're including you guys. Eight other companies are pitching. You guys got to prove to us why you guys do the best and how you're going to give us a better return on investment than anyone else. So in my sector, influencer marketing doesn't really generate much revenue.
Kim (23:57):
Okay, I'm going to push harder. So then you're a thought leader. Would you call yourself a thought leader in the industry?
Neil (24:03):
Yes. I would consider myself a thought leader. And I don't have the real definition of an influencer, but most people that I know and I talk to that say they're influencers, this may not be the correct definition. Talk about, yeah, I'm an influencer. I get paid to promote products and services. Other people's are my own and that's how they make their living. Mine is more so I make my living for my business. I push out content and I educate because I just love it. It's fun. My mom was a teacher.
Kim (24:30):
Yeah. Alright. I like that. I like that I've been talking to people about it because I do think, and maybe it's because as I started showing up on social media, someone that I knew who worked in corporate, when I worked working for myself, I was not showing up and all of a sudden I'm like, what? I want to do big corporate projects. I probably don't have to show up on social media. It's word of mouth referrals. But if I want to start working with more business owners show they need to find me. I need to show up. They don't know who Kim Rittenberg is besides the maybe thousand people in New York that I've worked with over 15 years in media. And so I realized I needed to start showing up and someone said to me, oh, are you trying to be an influencer? It had such a negative connotation.
(25:06):
I felt like that. I was like, I'm not trying to be an influencer. I'm trying to grow my business. I think that somehow the idea of being public teaching publicly using your voice, putting graphics on video, it is merged. And I do think that most people I work with, like 90%, 95% are looking to become thought leaders or just to grow their business through content. And they're not looking to get brand deals. I mean, if someone wants to pay them money, fine, but they're not looking to get brand deals. They're really looking to bring in clients and that is their priority through the content. So I like how you see it as a distinction. I found it interesting that I chafed at that idea, but then I pulled back the curtain and was like, what is wrong with trying to influence people? I am trying to influence people.
Neil (25:53):
Nothing wrong with it. It's all very similar. Whether you want to be a thought leader or influencer or build a personal brand, it's all very similar.
Kim (26:02):
Yeah, I love that. Okay. Talk to me about, you run this huge company with what, 800 900 employees?
Neil (26:09):
We're somewhere close to around 800. We'll be at a thousand before the end of the year.
Kim (26:13):
Wow. Congratulations. I know you're a leader in the industry. I want to know what gets a no from you? What always gets a no?
Neil (26:21):
Anything that is a waste of time and doesn't have an ROI. So a great example or something that takes away made for my family too long. My team pitched me, Hey, can you travel to 50 events this year? I was like, no. And I was like, I have kids. I need to see 'em. And I have a wife too. I love my wife, but you get the point, right? I need to be around my family. I can't travel for 50 weeks or 50 trips and the majority being international, like this isn't going to work out. And my wife support me. She's like, go for it. If it's best for the business and you want to do it. She's like, I don't want to ever hold you back from like, no. I'm like, my dreams involve my family.
Kim (27:00):
Yeah, no, I feel that I've been speaking more, but my goal has been very limited, like each quarter, no more than x. And last year I got this keynote offer and I was like, yes. Oh my God, yes. What's the date? Spring break. I'm like, and in the middle of spring break, I took off three days to go to Vegas, and then I spent the rest of the spring break with my kids and it was really tough because my priorities and my desires for professional growth smash right into each other.
Neil (27:26):
Yeah, I'm going to Qatar either this month or next month. And when I get back from Qatar, I'm literally driving the next day to, what is it called? Las Vegas. So I go from LA to Qatar, Qatar back to la, and then no joke, I drive all the way to Vegas
Kim (27:51):
For work. Where do you live, by the way?
Neil (27:53):
Los Angeles.
Kim (27:54):
You live in la, right?
Neil (27:55):
Yeah. More so for family and fun and just spending time there.
Kim (27:59):
I love that. What always gets a yes
Neil (28:02):
In most cases, helping people. So it's not always a yes, but we do love helping people. The next thing that typically gets a yes is anything that is cashflow positive. I know that's really black and white, but limited on time, limited resources. We literally balance the RO. I got pitched yesterday, Hey, do you want to do a marketing campaign for X, Y, and Z company? They'll pay you. That almost always gets a no. I don't even hear them out. I don't care. They'll be like, oh, they raised $300 million to, I'm like, no, don't care. They could have raised a billion dollars, don't care. And some of 'em will be like, we'll give you 150 grand to create some videos. And sometimes I'll say yes, but most of the time I will still say no. The only time I'll say a yes is if we think they can be ideal client for us, and we want to build a relationship, but even at 150 grand, we don't care for the money. We're not saying we're worth 150 grand for an influencer campaign. We just usually just say no.
Kim (28:57):
Because your time is better used in other ways.
Neil (29:00):
Yes. And it's not about how much money I can make per hour or anything like that. A lot of times I don't care for the money. I'd rather spend time with my kids. It's just like when people say It's not worth you washing your dishes or cleaning your house. I still wash my dishes. Yeah, we have help and that'll clean and stuff like that, but I still spend time multiple times a week washing dishes and I'll do it with my 4-year-old. It teaches her the concept of work. And it doesn't matter if you have money or you have no money, you still shouldn't try to make your bed clean up your own clothes, do your own laundry. And again, we have help who helps us with laundry and stuff like that, but I want to teach my kids that you got to work for. My wife grew up on a farm. She used to feed animals and pick up 50 pounds of bags of feed when she was in junior high and high school. And I want my kids to learn hard work, and I used to work at a theme park, cleaning restrooms and picking up trash. There's nothing wrong with the honest days' worth of work. It was like there's nothing wrong with doing stuff. The guy who's in a trash, what is it called? The garbage janitor?
Kim (30:06):
Garbage man. Garbage person.
Neil (30:07):
Yeah, garbage man, garbage truck, whatever. You want to end up calling it the person who drives that. It's an honest day's worth of living. There's nothing wrong with those jobs. And I just want to teach my kids that you got to work for whatever you want in life. Nothing just gets handed to you.
Kim (30:22):
Yeah, I was just thinking, I posted something on LinkedIn about one of my first jobs being a digital marketer for Hansen, but it wasn't really digital marketing. It was me creeping in a OL chat rooms telling people about Hansen's Comeback album and encouraging them to go to the website. It was like 1990, it was like 2000 or something. It was such a weird first job. But then I was telling my daughter that I had been a waitress, and she's like, you were? I'm like, yeah, mommy's a lot. To your point. I'm like, I'm proud that I used my hands and had an hourly wage. And then there was another job that I'm still workshopping how I'm going to post about it on LinkedIn. I had a job at a diner in Australia, and it was a slow day and they gave me a knife and they told me to clean the dirt out of the grates where you walk with your shoes. I was like, whew, I'm glad my parents can't see me right now. I was like, that's lower. That is tough. That was tough,
Neil (31:10):
But honest day's worth a lose.
Kim (31:12):
Honest day's work. I was like, yeah, it's alright. It's a job. And talk to me. How old are your kids?
Neil (31:18):
Four and two.
Kim (31:20):
Wow. Okay, so you're in it. I know I only have you for one more minute. You are in it. You're running a huge company. You are a thought leader in your industry. What does balance look like for you as a parent and a husband?
Neil (31:31):
I work 60 plus hours a week. I try to spend time randomly throughout the day with my children and my wife and we make it work. For example, I was a few minutes late, there was an accident along the road, but dropped my kid off to school. I said, what are you going to do today? Who are you going to play with? And all this kind of stuff. And I like asking those questions too in case someone's bullying her or whatnot. Someone the other day I was so pissed, slapped her because she looked at the other kid's lunch. I was like, I was so pissed, like so my kid gets slapped just because she randomly just looked at someone's lunch. I'm like, come on now. And then the teachers did not tell us, but I knew something was wrong and the teachers knew about it. It's like, come on, you got to tell the parents. Right?
Kim (32:13):
Kids can be brutal. Kids can be brutal. I'll tell you, my kids are eight and six and a lot of stuff happens that we don't know about
Neil (32:20):
And I'm not one to condone violence, but if my kid keeps getting hit by the same kid over and over again and they're not going to do anything, I'm going to go talk with their parent. And if my kid keeps still getting hit and hit and the parent doesn't do anything, eventually I'll tell my kid to hit back and I'll go to have 'em take some MMA lessons. I don't want to go down that route. And like I said, eventually if the school doesn't do anything, I'll talk to the parent. If the parent doesn't do anything, eventually I'll tell my kid, don't hit someone. But if they keep hitting you, you can defend yourself.
Kim (32:51):
I think we must have grown up in similar ways. I thought my son was getting picked out of the summer and then he was taking it but not taking it. And then someone picked on him and he hit him and then he got in trouble at camp and I was like, I'm sorry that you were bullied last week, but also now you're bullying, so that's not right. And I was like, it's very complicated. But I was like, if someone's being rude to you, let them know they can't do that, but try not to do it physically. It's so complicated. It's very complicated.
Neil (33:16):
Complicated. I tell them daughter scene, I'm like, talk it out. Tell 'em why it's not okay and tell the teacher and if no one does anything and they keep picking on you physically, not emotionally, physically, and no one stops and no one cares to help you out and the school won't do anything, I'm like, eventually you got to defend yourself. You shouldn't be a doormat and just get stomped on all day long. And of course if you hit the person, then they're down. Don't keep hitting 'em. Leave them alone, but at least they know they can't just pick on you. I'll gladly get my kids some boxing lessons or something. I don't want it to go down that route. I don't think violence is a key to anything, but people need to step in, be like, that kind of stuff just pisses me off.
Kim (33:58):
And as they get older, it becomes more emotional. I have a daughter and a son and I was like, if anyone's rude to you, anyone's giving you that mean girl stuff. Look 'em in the eye and let them know you are not going to be picked on. And I was like, you say whatever you want back. My daughter especially, it's so nice, huge heart. I was like, you got to be a little meaner back. I'm sorry if someone's being mean to you. Got to have a little bite. Don't let them know that you're not bothered by it. Push back a little bit and then ignore them. But it's hard. It's like don't care, care enough so that you tell them they can't pick on you, but then actually don't care. It's a lot. It's so nuanced. It's annoyingly nuanced. Actually.
Neil (34:34):
It is. And my daughter's a softie. If you ask her who she's going to play with that day, she'll be like, well, it depends which kid is by themself and no one's playing with them. So she's like, I like taking turns to make sure every kid has a breath. She's a sweetheart. She's kind of like a little teacher's pet.
Kim (34:49):
She's four.
Neil (34:50):
Yeah, she's four and she's really innocent. She's not the one who forget violence or anything. She's more like the quiet one who will take it versus giving it. So it's like you got to help make her a little bit more tougher. Right?
Kim (35:03):
A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Okay. We're going to take our parenting conversation offline. I'm going to say thank you so much. For anyone listening, what are the best ways for them to follow you and consume? I know you put out so much amazing educational content for people.
Neil (35:15):
Sure. My social profiles are all Neil Patel, N-E-I-L P-A-T-E-L. My website is neilpatel.com. My ad agency is NP Digital.
Kim (35:23):
Awesome. Thank you so much, Neil.
Neil (35:26):
Thanks for having me.
Kim (35:31):
Thank you for joining us. Don't forget to exit the grind and enter success on your own terms. This is the exit interview with Kim Rittberg. Don't forget to grab my free download, how to Grow Your Business with Amazing video at kimrittberg.com and linked out in the show notes. I love to hear your feedback. Make sure to submit to me what you learned from the show and how you are crushing it on your own terms. Connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn at Kim Rittberg, R-I-T-T-B-E-R-G. And this show is edited by Jillian Grover and produced by Henry Street Media. I'm your host and executive producer, Kim Rittberg.