Neil Patel Risked His Parents’ Life Savings… Then Built a $100M Marketing Empire. Here’s How He Did It

Summary

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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin

Episode: Neil Patel Risked His Parents’ Life Savings… Then Built a $100M Marketing Empire. Here’s How He Did It
Date: February 11, 2026
Guest: Neil Patel, co-founder of NP Digital, SEO and marketing expert

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Main Theme

This episode dives into the unfiltered entrepreneurial journey of Neil Patel, a globally renowned digital marketer. Nicole Lapin and Neil discuss high-stakes financial risks, lessons from bootstrapping and scaling multiple companies, why traditional ideas around money and success often change with experience, and actionable marketing advice for anyone building a business in the age of AI. The tone is candid, practical, and interspersed with both serious wisdom and playful banter.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Neil’s “Unhinged” Early Money Moves

[04:52-09:39]

• Funding Crazy Egg with Family Savings:
  Neil and his cofounder maxed out personal connections – his cofounder’s father gave a $200K home equity line; Neil and his sister took $250K in life savings from their own parents without direct permission (“ask forgiveness, not permission”).
• Anxiety and Responsibility:
  Neil claims using family money wasn’t anxiety-inducing because both families had solid fallback options: “When you’re young and you don’t have much, there’s nothing to really lose.”
• Repayment:
  The company paid everyone back in a year, but didn’t add extra returns: “But we've taken care of them for life… they just don't ask for much.”
• Life After Repayment:
  His parents invested the repaid funds in Apple and Google stock, doing well as a result.

Notable Quote

“We kind of didn’t ask. It’s more like, you know, they say ask for forgiveness, not permission. So we started taking it.” – Neil Patel [07:14]

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2. Bootstrapping vs. Venture Capital

[09:39-12:32]

• Failed VC Raising and Lessons:
  Failed to get VC for Crazy Egg, was instead forced to get profitable quickly—a blessing as later ventures faced legal and perception pitfalls.
• Company Split:
  When launching an offshoot (KISSmetrics), they raised VC, but it eventually failed due to reputation hits from a lawsuit.

Notable Quote

“One, because KISSmetrics didn’t work out, I don’t have a hundred percent success rate… but because Crazy Egg was separate, that company was still spitting off millions of dollars and growing.” – Neil Patel [12:06]

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3. The Power and Pitfalls of Naming

[12:32-18:22]

• Domain Names and Branding:
  Both favor .com domains, short and memorable names, and warn against cutesy or misspelled (Flickr/Tumblr/Lyft) names.
• Literal vs. Abstract Names:
  Neil admits his own early use of “Crazy Egg” was just saving costs on domain reg, not SEO strategy.
• Brand Perception:
  A lack of .com can hurt perception and marketing; ease of recall is crucial, especially audio-first.

  “If you want to be a serious company but you don’t have a serious domain name, people will take you as a joke as well.” – Neil Patel [17:56]

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4. Scaling NP Digital and Acquisition Strategy

[19:08-24:46]

• Growth:
  NP Digital is now far beyond $100M revenue, with strong cash flow and no outside capital.
• Acquisition Approach:
  They regularly acquire companies in the $5M–$30M range, with streamlined processes—Neil sometimes only meets founders right before deals close.

Notable Quote

“For Nvidia, the CEO probably doesn’t get on the phone for someone when they buy a company for $500 million… If it’s $100 million, he probably doesn’t even know about the deal.”
– Neil Patel [24:07]

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5. Defining Wealth and Success

[24:55-29:22]

• Never “Arrived”: Despite 8-figure cash flow, Neil views true financial success as being ultra-wealthy—enough to buy and lose multiple sports teams.
• Lifestyle vs. Wealth:
  Despite great wealth, Neil and his family drive a Honda Odyssey out of practicality, not for show.
• Three Buckets of Personal Success:
  Family relationships, health (including working out, healthy eating), and enough money for comfort—true well-being requires all three.

Notable Quotes

“If you have great relationships with your family, but you can’t feed them and put food on the table… you need to have all three in my eyes to be successful.”
– Neil Patel [31:29]

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6. Raising Kids with (and Despite) Wealth

[33:25-45:49]

• Teaching Taxes:
  Neil uses ice cream to teach tax: he “taxes” a third of his daughter’s dessert to drive the lesson home.
• Earning and Negotiation:
  His kids get paid for chores, and are encouraged to negotiate (“If he asked me for $3, … your sister will do it for $2, why should I pay you 3?”).
• Privilege and Trusts:
  Neil regrets putting too much company stock into an irrevocable trust for his kids (“I want my kids to still have the hunger…”).
• Balancing Privilege and Hunger:
  They teach giving (“just because you have the money doesn’t mean you should keep it for yourself”) and want their kids to work for what they want.

Memorable Moment

“My son hates [the minivan]. He always tells me, ‘our neighbors have a Bugatti, why don’t we have a Bugatti?’”
– Neil Patel [36:53]

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7. Digital Marketing in the Age of AI

[45:49-55:25]

• Where Should Small Businesses Invest?
  Platforms now want users to stay within their ecosystem (e.g., Insta, Amazon, ChatGPT)—thus, “you need to leverage multiple platforms.”
• Traditional Search is Dead:
  Search/discovery happens everywhere: Google (13.7B searches/day), Instagram (6.5B), YouTube, Amazon, ChatGPT, etc. Optimizing across many platforms is key.
• SEO vs. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization):
  SEO for Google is similar to AEO for LLMs (like ChatGPT), but AEO values mentions and sentiment, not just backlinks.
• AEO Action Step:
  To rank in LLMs, get authoritative third-party mentions (“You get people to mention your podcast… then Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity will take the hint”).

Notable Quotes

“You shouldn’t buy Google Ads anymore—only if you make profit. But people had the notion before that you just only need Google Ads. It doesn’t work well anymore.” – Neil Patel [50:05]
“The biggest myth [in AEO] is you just need to create a lot of content on your own blog... It works in the short run. But as the algorithms adapt and get smarter, [it] won’t last.” – Neil Patel [53:37]

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8. Quick Wins for Side Hustlers

[59:08-61:05]

• Low-Cost Content Approach:
  Use Neil’s free tool (Answer the Public) to find trending questions, then use ChatGPT to write articles answering those. Publish on free platforms (LinkedIn, Medium, etc.) for broader reach.
• Growing Organically Before Ads:
  Build up organic traffic, refine your messaging/product via customer feedback, then reinvest and scale up (don’t “light money on fire” by jumping into ads too soon).

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9. Money Advice to Take to the Bank

[64:46-67:54]

• Don’t Rush to Pay Off Cheap Debt:
  If you have a mortgage or debt with a low interest rate (e.g., 2%), don’t pay it off early—the money’s almost always better invested elsewhere (like the S&P 500).
• Focus on Higher Interest Debts:
  Prioritize higher-interest debt (like car loans or personal loans, even “veneers”).
• Neil’s own financial moves:
  Despite wealth, keeps a mortgage due to favorable rates, utilizes interest-only options, and would rather invest extra cash for a higher return.

Notable Quote

“If you have an interest rate that’s dirt cheap, do not pay off your home first. That should be the last thing.” – Neil Patel [64:45]
“A lot of people want to be debt free, and they believe that’s freedom, and they’re trying to pay off really cheap debt. That’s one of the worst things you can do financially.” – Neil Patel [66:42]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Segment | Start Time | |------------------------------------------------------|------------| | Neil's High-Risk Bootstrapping Stories | 04:52 | | Lessons in Profits vs. Venture Capital | 09:39 | | Naming and Branding: .com vs. Cutesy | 12:32 | | Buying and Scaling: Neil’s Approach to Acquisition | 19:08 | | Definitions of Wealth, Success, and Lifestyle | 24:55 | | Parenting and Money: Teaching Privilege/Hunger | 33:25 | | Digital Marketing in the AI Era | 45:49 | | Quick Marketing Wins for Small Businesses | 59:08 | | Neil’s Signature Money Tip about Debt | 64:46 |

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Notable Quotes

“We kind of didn’t ask. It’s more like, you know, they say ask for forgiveness, not permission. So we started taking it.” – Neil Patel [07:14]
“If you want to be a serious company but you don’t have a serious domain name, people will take you as a joke as well.” – Neil Patel [17:56]
“Traditional search is dead.” – Neil Patel [48:43]
“You can’t market your way out of a product.” – Nicole Lapin [55:25]
“A lot of people want to be debt free, and they believe that’s freedom, and they’re trying to pay off really cheap debt. That’s one of the worst things you can do financially.” – Neil Patel [66:42]

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Memorable Moments

• Neil’s parents investing their repayments in Apple and Google—doing better than if they’d demanded equity in his business.
• Neil “taxing” his children’s ice cream to teach them about government taxation.
• The story of his young son negotiating for $2 extra because Neil “saves” him a trip to the bank—at just age four!
• Neil showing up in a Honda Odyssey at the Waldorf Astoria, only to be mistaken for an Uber driver.

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Actionable Marketing Advice (Neil’s Cheat Sheet)

• Choosing a Name: Get the .com, make it short, memorable, and easy to spell.
• Organic Growth First: Use tools like Answer the Public + ChatGPT to quickly create content on trending questions.
• Mentions > Links for AEO: To rank in LLMs (ChatGPT, Gemini), get mentioned (not just linked) as an authority by credible third-party sites.
• Diversify Channels: Don’t rely on one digital platform—leverage at least several (social, website, email, etc.).
• Don’t Light Money on Fire: Build traffic and optimize the customer journey before pouring money into ads.

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This episode is a witty, wisdom-packed masterclass from someone who risked everything, learned from high-stakes mistakes, and now helps others scale—without losing their sanity, family values, or a sense of humor about the whole game.

Transcript

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[Nicole Lapvin]

I'm Nicole Lapvin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand it's time for some money.

[Neil Patel]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host]

If you want your work to.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Be discovered on the Internet, Neil Patel is the person to tell you how to do it. Neil has worked with giant companies on just that. Amazon, Microsoft, Airbnb, Google, and his Digital marketing company, NP Digital does more than $100 million in revenue. He 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. So, in other words, Neil is an SEO magician and he is here to share his secrets and how ChatGPT is changing the way we discover things online. But that's not all we talk about. Neil also shares some hot money takes like why he wants to tax his kids, and he tells us some crazy stories from his early days of trying to make it as an entrepreneur. So whether you're trying to get more eyeballs on the Internet or just want some spicy money stories, this episode is for you. Neil Patel, welcome to Money Rehab.

[Neil Patel]

Thanks for having me.

[Nicole Lapvin]

It's so cool to talk to you. You are like the ultimate scrappy entrepreneur. So I want to go back and talk about some unhinged money things because we're on money rehab that you did early out. So when you were starting your first company that you're known for, Crazy Egg, what's some of the crazy financial stuff that you got yourself into?

[Neil Patel]

Debt or profitability?

[Nicole Lapvin]

Let's talk about that.

[Neil Patel]

So when we first created Crazy Egg, the whole premise behind is we worked with large corporations at that time and they were spending money on Google Ads, but a lot of their money was being wasted, so they didn't know what was driving ro, what wasn't. And a lot of these companies were spending like 5 million bucks a month, whatever it was. Right. Because some of these big companies will spend like 100 million a year. Now it's much more. But back then you're talking about roughly 20 years ago. So we want to show them a visual way to see where people are interacting with their webpage and where they're not, so that way they can generate a better ROI from their marketing spend so they can see what's where the wastage is and fine tune their landing pages to generate more revenue. And as we were building that, we had an ad agency at the same time. The ad agency did not work out. Eventually it ended up closing shop because we started going upstream, only focusing on big customers. And as the recession happened in 2008, the real estate housing crash, we saw a lot of people pull back on budgets and we started getting hit a lot. But right before that happened, we created Crazy Egg. The ad agency was funding Crazy Egg. There was a moment in time where the ad agency could not fund Crazy Egg anymore and we didn't have enough capital. My co founder, Heathen Shah, his dad is an anesthesiologist. He lived in a normal house, saved up tons of money from being an anesthesiologist over the years, probably bought a home for like 400 grand. I don't know what the price is, but let's call it four or five hundred grand in, you know, somewhere in LA or Orange County. It adds up over time. You build up equity, you don't spend much money. You drive a Toyota. Like, you'll save up a lot of cash over the years. Uh, he ended up giving us the line of credit on his house of, I believe it was $200,000 at the time. And we used that to get crazy going and get it into a place that was working out.

[Nicole Lapvin]

But I thought you were going to say he put you under anesthesia until times Were better.

[Neil Patel]

But we got the 200 grand and. And we had to turn around the business. We used the 200 grand. It still wasn't enough though. But that's really all we had. But that was his only son and he married my sister. I only have one sibling. My parents also had around two hundred and something thousand dollars in their life savings. I think it was around 250. We started pulling like tranches of like 50 grand at a time because my sister and I were on their bank accounts. So we kind of didn't ask. It's more like, you know, they say ask for forgiveness, not permission. So we started taking it. And then my dad, you know, pulled me aside and he's like, you know, if things don't work out, that's okay. Just make sure you take care of mom and I when we get older. And that was our deal. So we took care of our parents eventually with the money his dad gave us and the money my parents gave us, we were able to make it work.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So you use their life savings, you used your co founders, parents, home equity line of credit, I hope and cash it paid them back really nicely. Like I hope they got a good payback from you guys eventually.

[Neil Patel]

So business turned around within 12 months. We were able to pay them back all back because we had to make the money, pay taxes on the profits and then pay them back. Right?

[Nicole Lapvin]

And then some. I hope a little bit for the parents.

[Neil Patel]

No, we did not give him and then some. But we've taken care of them for life. So then my parents have been retired. His dad is retired, doesn't need money. As an anesthesiologist. My parents ended up doing okay in life not because of us giving back the money. They took all that money back in the day and put it into like Apple and Google stock. So then it went up and they did well from that. But we always buy the cars whenever they need new cars. My parents use my credit card every month. So they don't actually spend their own money. Anytime they're going somewhere like they're just like, Neil, we want to go to India. So I book them like business class airfare. I don't go first class, but I'll book them business class airfare on Emirates, you know, going to India from la, it's like we take care of them. Whatever they want, we end up getting them. They just don't ask for much.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Holy cow though. I'm sure that was so anxiety provoking.

[Neil Patel]

Not really. Because when you're, when you're young and you don't have much, there's nothing to really lose.

[Nicole Lapvin]

But you're talking about somebody else's money and their home and their life savings. You weren't nervous about using that for capital.

[Neil Patel]

They both had good enough jobs on both sides of the family where they can keep paying the payments for mortgage or whatever it may be. So no one was really worried. There was a floor where we knew we couldn't take every single penny. They needed enough savings to just survive. But they were okay with it. And we believed in ourselves and we're like, well, worst case scenario, we'll go get a job like at Microsoft or somewhere and then pay you back because we believe that we could get a high paying job.

[Nicole Lapvin]

That's a good worst case scenario for sure. And at the time you were trying to raise VC right? And then you couldn't get any venture capital. And ultimately you were like, forget this, let's try to get profitable instead. Was that a blessing in disguise?

[Neil Patel]

It was. So the route we went is we tried raising money for Crazy Egg. We got it profitable, we got it to profit in the millions. And then we had a new version of Crazy Egg. At that time the company was going to be called KISS Metrics, but it was just Crazy Egg 2.0, like an evolution of the company. And we pitched this venture fund called True Ventures and like, why don't you spin out this company and do it separate and do something and name it something else. And we raised venture capital for that company. I don't know how much we raised in total it was more than 10, I think less than 20. It was a long time ago and it was a Blessing in disguise. One, because KissMetrics didn't work out, I don't have a hundred percent success rate. We went through some lawsuits on that and for data privacy, which is why it didn't work out. We didn't do anything shady. It was just Wired magazine published an article saying we are sharing data. Like if you're Nordstrom's we would share it with Macy's, which we didn't. But when you get an investigation from the FTC and stuff like that, a lot of your customers like bye bye, we don't want to deal with this. And we had a few players who wanted to buy us at the time. I remember us doing interviews at Facebook's offices and talking to Microsoft's team about potential deal as well. And it got pretty far where like we were even having our employees go into like Facebook's office and doing tests, right, to like evaluate their Skill level and stuff to see if it was like a cultural fit. But the lawsuit really screwed that one up.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So it's not guilty until proven innocent.

[Neil Patel]

In the business world, that's correct. But with the lawsuit, no publicly traded company wanted to take on the liability. So a chance of acquisition was dead in the water. And because Crazy was separate, that company was still spitting off millions of dollars and growing each and every single year. So it's a blessing in disguise that we didn't take venture capital for Crazy because then we wouldn't have that cash cow.

[Nicole Lapvin]

What's up with these names? So Kiss, like Kiss Capital, I'm assuming.

[Neil Patel]

Keep it simple, Silly or stupid. I was trying to be nice. But yes, internally we would say Stupid. Externally we would say Silly.

[Nicole Lapvin]

That was like in the zeitgeist at the time.

[Neil Patel]

Yeah.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay.

[Neil Patel]

And then Crazy Egg. Back in the day When I was 16, I started my first business. It was a job board failed. I registered a few domain names. One of them, one of the students that I went to high school with, gave me the idea of Crazy Egg. I'm Indian, I don't mean to stereotype, but the place I'm from in India were known to be penny pinchers. And I was like, well, I don't want to buy a new domain name. I already have one that I'm paying for. Let's save the money. And that's how we ended up using Crazy Egg. Stupid reason that that's how it ended up happening.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Silly reason. Yeah, I should say. And so what are those names as far as SEO friendly or not?

[Neil Patel]

They're not SEO friendly. Yeah. So it's better to have these days. I don't think it matters as much. It actually doesn't matter at all. Back in the days it did matter more.

[Nicole Lapvin]

And did that affect you guys?

[Neil Patel]

No.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Which is ironic.

[Neil Patel]

It didn't because I would say out of everything that we did, I've always been pretty decent at marketing my co founder at that time in that company and still today he is really good at product.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So you can market your way out of.

[Neil Patel]

I can use market my exact. I can market my way to most things and my brother in law can build products that solve most problems.

[Nicole Lapvin]

What do you think about. I love a literal naming convention as you can see. Money News Network, you know exactly what we do here. Money rehab. You get it right away. I think money is really complicated. Complicated. And so I like to keep it simple, silly and. And really lean into the literal naming conventions. But there's some crazy obviously names out there. What do you think about the disembowelment like the Flickr and the Tumblr forgetting their vowels?

[Neil Patel]

Yes.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Or lift using a Y. I. I don't like that.

[Neil Patel]

I think that's out there. And what I mean by out there is you're going to have too many people typing in the wrong domain name and going to the wrong site. And unless you own all those variations of it, which the likelihood is very unlikely in today's world, you're going to lose potential customers. Even if it's 1, 2, 3%. Still adds up.

[Nicole Lapvin]

I just. Yes. I dislike the lack of vowels in a name. I think that just confuses me, especially being audio forward. And in the podcast world, when you hear it, you're like, wait a minute. You know, when we even work with brands, sometimes I'm like, well, we need to clarify this when we're saying it in audio so people can really understand where they're supposed to be going. So if somebody's starting to name a company for the first time, obviously it's easier now than ever before to be an entrepreneur. What would you tell them in terms of coming up with a name that will be digital marketing friendly?

[Neil Patel]

Don't. You don't need your keyword in there like money? It does help, but thank you so much because. And the reason I say that is a lot of those keyword name domains are already taken, so it's okay if you don't get that. But short, to the point, memorable. And you need a dot com, not a dot. I agree. Net. You know, like, you know the app Lovable.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Yes. I love loveable and replit.

[Neil Patel]

Yeah. So when I went to Lovable the first time, I did not go to the actual lovable site. And then I had a Google lovable. And then I'm like, man, like, it's dot AI or something like that or dot or I forgot what the extension was spelled differently or whatever it was. But I know it was in dot com and I'm pretty sure it was AI. And I'm like, these people just make it complicated.

[Nicole Lapvin]

I cannot wait to go to that side and see what he saw. I can only imagine. Yeah, I so agree with the dot com. I felt like maybe I was just being OCD in making sure that we always had a dot com. Like I paid a premium for our dot com. You know, if I'm looking for a new website, I'm always about the dot com life. So I'm not crazy. I mean, I'm crazy for other reasons, but not for this.

[Neil Patel]

No, you're not crazy.

[Nicole Lapvin]

I feel so vindicated right now.

[Neil Patel]

You need a dot com, any big corporation. I was talking to someone earlier today and they're planning on going public on the stock exchange. And you know how some people have like, hey in front of their domain name or like go or hey or random words like that. I was just like, you can't go public with this random word in your domain. Like, well, we couldn't get the other one. I'm like, if you look at the main root domain, the name of your company, it's available and you know, they're just like, oh, it could be a million bucks. And I'm like, if you're worth billions and billions and billions of dollars, spend the million dollars to have your proper domain name.

[Nicole Lapvin]

You can also lease them.

[Neil Patel]

Now, I did not know that. Yeah, but at that point, I wouldn't lease it. Like, if you're telling me you spit off tons of cash and you're worth billions of dollars, just go spend the million bucks.

[Nicole Lapvin]

And so why do you say that that's necessary? Is. Is there like a real connection between the digital marketing and the dot com, or is it just the brand confusion? Or are you also equally OCD like I am?

[Neil Patel]

It helps with marketing because a lot of times when people link to you, they're going to link to the wrong domain name. And not everyone checks it. You probably check it each and every single time. And your team does, but not everyone really does. People make mistakes. The second thing is, if you want to be a serious company but you don't have a serious domain name, people will take you as a joke as well. And they're like, is this company even grown up? Should we buy this stock? Should we invest in this company? It creates a bad perception.

[Podcast Host]

Still?

[Neil Patel]

Still? Yes.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay, so if you're going to start a company, make sure you get the dot com. What else for name?

[Neil Patel]

Dot com. Short, memorable, and easy to spell. Those three things, or technically four other than the dot com. But yes.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So don't get cute or don't make up a word.

[Neil Patel]

You can get cute if you're in a cutesy type of industry.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Like what?

[Neil Patel]

My daughter has that toy. It looks like a little gnome or little creature that buys it. You put it on a purse. I don't know what it's called. There you go. But you can get cute if you're doing stuff like that.

[Nicole Lapvin]

But not if you're selling chips.

[Neil Patel]

Not if you're selling chips. You know, for data centers. No.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay, so Fast forward beyond KissMetrics and you started NP Digital, which now makes. Is it still 100 million in revenue?

[Neil Patel]

Yeah, we surpassed that a long time ago.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Oh.

[Neil Patel]

So we've been growing and we've been doing well pretty much every single year.

[Nicole Lapvin]

You said that you're gonna run this company until you die. You're not taking on think so outside capital. You're not going public.

[Neil Patel]

We have not taken on outside capital. I wouldn't say we won't ever take on outside capital. We keep getting offers. So I think one day we may.

[Nicole Lapvin]

End up biting, but not public.

[Neil Patel]

No, that's not my vibe.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Does it sound terrible? It sounds terrible to me to run a public company.

[Neil Patel]

I had a. I. I have a really close friend who took his company public during the dot com boom, and he was mentioned by all the popular business magazines that you know about. Took it public. The company didn't do as well. He still did well with the money that he made. Well enough where he's pretty high up on the Forbes list. And he always tells me, I hang out with him probably like once every two months when he flies in. And he always tells me, he's like, don't take your company public. He's like, it was biggest pain in the butt in my life. And if I already have a cash flow system going, I already have the management team, I can make decisions on what I think is best for the company, not what's best for a shareholder, but really what's best for the company, which usually you would think is best for the shareholder, but because of quarterly earnings. Right. And I know they're thinking about revamping that. I know Trump made that announcement months ago, but I don't know what's happening with it. You can't just do whatever you want. Like, for example, my business spits off cash flow. We have no outside holders. In good economies, it's hard for me to buy more companies. You want to guess why? Because everything is expensive.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Everything.

[Neil Patel]

So I'm spitting off a good. A good amount of profit in a good economy, and everything's expensive. So it's hard for me to deploy the money in a bad economy. Valuations, everything goes down. Companies, growth rates go down. It's the easiest time for me to pick up companies, and I can pick it up for cheap. But if I start spending all my money and more money than I should be spending if I was public, people like, whoa, you're going a little too crazy there. Slow down. You got to watch out for quarterly earnings. Your business growth rate slowing down, and you want to spend more Money, the markets would crush you. But that's what I do during this time. I've been doing that for three years. I've been investing so much into the business. It's been painful because my growth has slowed down and I'm spending more money than ever. But during a good economy, I'll see the fruits of all my investments or the flowers will start blooming. Whatever analogy you want to end up using, and it's worth it. But it's hard to do that kind of stuff when you have investors or outside shareholders and you're public.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So you guys have been doing a bunch of M and A.

[Neil Patel]

Yes, we buy a lot. So much so that I. A lot of times now I tend to meet the entrepreneurs after we buy the company, not before. Because there's two deals you're looking at. I'll talk to them before we close a transaction. But usually my M and A team comes to me and says, hey, we're going to buy this company. It's in UK or Germany or wherever. And these are the numbers. We just need you to approve that we're going to spend X dollars. You cool with it? I'm like, sounds good. Just can you at least put me on the phone with them for 30 minutes before we send them the money or sign the contract? Like, sounds good.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Like, how much are we talking? Like 10 million bucks.

[Neil Patel]

So ideal sweet spot to buy a company is 5 million on the low end. Call it 20 to 30 on the high end. So that's our sweet spot.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So if you're buying a company for 20 million bucks, you don't even talk to the person before you wire the money?

[Neil Patel]

No, I talked to them before. Not right before. Like maybe a month before.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay. Okay.

[Neil Patel]

Because then the rest is, you know, they're still going through legal and all that of kind of stuff.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay.

[Neil Patel]

It takes at least six months to buy a company for sure. So for the first five months, I don't really talk to them. And then month five, I usually talk to them on six. We tend to do the transaction if it's small. Like let's say it's like $5 million. I may just talk to them kind of after.

[Nicole Lapvin]

It's a really cool thing to be able to say.

[Neil Patel]

It's perspective. Right. I look at us as a really tiny company. I don't think we do that well. I look at Nvidia as someone who does extremely well. So for Nvidia, the CEO probably doesn't get on the phone for someone when they buy a company for $500 million. Right. Maybe I'm wrong here, but you get the point. If it's $100 million, he probably doesn't even know about the deal and someone did it without his knowledge.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So you're comparing. Those are your comps.

[Neil Patel]

Those are my comps. And I don't think in my lifetime I'll ever build a successful company like that. I don't think I'll be able to get there.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So you don't think you're successful?

[Neil Patel]

No, I don't think I'll ever be.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Successful at more than 100 million. It sounds like maybe close to 2 at this point.

[Neil Patel]

Yeah, we do really well on the revenue. From a SMB standpoint, we're bigger than most startups and we're bootstrapped and we cash flow extremely well.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So eight figures of cash flow?

[Neil Patel]

Yeah, easily. Yeah.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Not maybe nine and you're not successful?

[Neil Patel]

No, we don't cash flow nine yet. That's the goal. And I. And I know we'll get to 9 in cash flow. It's just time. I don't think it's going to actually take too much time, but I think we'll eventually get there.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So at what point would you say you're successful?

[Neil Patel]

I don't think I'll ever get there. It's like, do I ever think I can make a company that generates a billion a year in profit? No. If I got to a billion a year, I would say I did. Well, I measure success. I was talking to one of my buddies and he was breaking down, what's the difference of being wealthy and rich? So he calls me. He breaks it down as little R. Big R, little W, big W. Okay, so he's a big W. And I said, what's the difference between a big W and a little W? And he puts me as a capital R. So he's like, neil, you're a capital R. And I'm like, what does that mean? He's like, you can't buy the Los Angeles Lakers if you want to buy the Los Angeles. I'm like, yeah, I can't afford it. He's like, yeah. He's like, a lowercase W is. I can buy a sports team like the Lakers or a NFL team like the Rams or whatever it may be. You get the point. And he's a capital W. I'm like, what's the difference between a capital W and a lowercase W? He's like, I can buy the Lakers and I can buy the Rams, and if they both don't work out, I still have enough money to keep buying sports teams, and that is like capital W. I look at that as like, you made it. I can't say I've made it. Can I get a boat or a plane? Yeah, but still hurts to buy, you know, $100 million yacht. That's expensive. Plus, I get seasick, so I wouldn't ever want to do that. But I can't go buy the Los Angeles Lakers. I can buy a nice home, but how big of a home do you need?

[Nicole Lapvin]

So what's Little R?

[Neil Patel]

We didn't get to Little R. I think Little R is like, we kind of discuss it, but not really. I think it's like you have less than, like, $100 million cash, which is still a lot of money. I'm not trying to say it's not a lot of money, like, but we're looking at it like a sports game. We're not looking at, like, judgmental as you've done well or you've not. It's more like a sports game and you just want to win. And it's not to buy something. Like, I drove here today, and most people think I have, like, fancy cars. They would never guess what car I drive.

[Nicole Lapvin]

I have a Honda Odyssey.

[Neil Patel]

I have a Honda Odyssey.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Why?

[Neil Patel]

It's very practical, and it works well. You push a button, the kids can jump in and out of the car. They can eat chicken nuggets and spill it, and you can vacuum it up like it's practical. I don't want my kids eating chicken nuggets, but you get the point. And I look at that car as practical. I go to the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills for meetings a lot. No joke. A lot of times when I pull up, the valet will tell me to keep moving forward. They'll take all the cars behind me, and every once in a while, they'll tell me to roll down my window because I'm still there. They're like, can we help you with anything? They're like, are you here to pick up anyone? I'm like, oh, I'm here to valet. And they'll be like, oh, no way. Yeah. And they're like, oh, it's 20 something dollars. You okay with that? And I'm like, yeah, I'm okay with it. And I don't say anything. And I still tip them well because I know it's a hard job. They think you're an Uber or sometimes Uber or sometimes. Usually they're just like, are you lost? Like, what are you doing here? Like, are you trying to pick up someone in the hotel and take them. Not like as an Uber, but like meeting a friend or something like that. And they're just like, valet is expensive.

[Nicole Lapvin]

How does that make you feel?

[Neil Patel]

Doesn't bother me one bit, but I don't care what people think from that. I started my life picking up trash and cleaning restrooms at Knott's Berry Farm in Orange County. Like, I don't think money defines you. The reason I look at numbers the way I do is I want to beat my friends. Has nothing to do with if one of my. I have a lot of friends who are worth more money than me and I'll never beat them. And when they do, well, it's not like, damn it, you're doing better than me. I still want to root them on and have them win, but I still want to win as well. And why can't I get to their level? I just don't think I'll actually get to a lot of my friends level in my lifetime because I picked too small of a tam, which is total addressable market. It's like if you look at the ad agency space, the WPPS of the world, the publicist of the world, they've been around for a long time. Most of them are worth. The big ones are lucky if they're worth 10 to 20 billion dollars. It requires a lot of capital to get there. It's not efficient like software companies or some of these tech companies, which have much better margins.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So who do you think is successful.

[Neil Patel]

In a business aspect or in just general life aspect? In a business aspect, people have really hit the home runs where you can do whatever you want. And what I mean do whatever you want is you can buy a sports team, you can buy multiple sports teams, you can buy, you know, you have enough money to buy your own private islands. That to me is successful from a business aspect.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So it sounds like you look at business success kind of like a fantasy football league.

[Neil Patel]

Yes. That's spot on. Very spot on. I used to play fantasy football, but yeah, I haven't in years, but I love it.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Do you consider yourself successful personally?

[Neil Patel]

Personally, I look at success as very different. I look at success in different buckets. How's your relationships with your family and your children? Okay. Which I think I have pretty good relationships. I try to be the one when I'm here, not traveling because we have offices, I think in 20 something countries. When I'm here, I try to be the one picking up my kids and bringing them home from school. So dropping and picking up. I Try to do puzzles with them. I read books with them about space and black holes and stuff like that.

[Nicole Lapvin]

By the way, they're like four and.

[Neil Patel]

Six, which I think is really fun. My four year old really loves that. My daughter, not as much, she likes reading like princess books, literally. The book she read is called like the Princess in Black and she'll read it to me at nighttime. I also think another success of success is health, how healthier you are. I'm not talking about you have to be jacked with the six pack or anything like that, but like how are your body scans? How is your muscle? Not like muscle percentage? Because they say one of the things that impacts how long you'll live and be healthy is your muscles. And over time, as you get older, they slowly and slowly deplete. So I try to maintain my health and be healthy and eat healthy and feel energized. I work out four or five times a week at least, so. And then the third aspect is wealth. Do you have enough to be content in life? You're never going to be happy. Most people want more, they say that, but then when they make more, they want more. And there's always new shiny objects that you can buy and invest in. So do you have enough for a decent home to not worry about putting food on the table? And a lot of people struggle, sadly, right? Life is not affordable for most people. And hopefully one day, which I don't think it'll happen, but hopefully one day that kind of stuff gets into a better place. And when you look at success, you can have all the money in the world. But if you're sitting on a hospital bed and you can't move and no one wants to visit you, what use is that money? Or if you have great relationships with your family, but you can't feed them and put food on the table and people in your family are sick kind of sucks, right? You need to have all three in my eyes to be successful. On a personal level. Now, that doesn't mean if you have cancer you're not successful. It means, you know, you got cancer, you got bad luck, and hopefully there's a cure one day, or hopefully you can fight it and do some of the things that people have talked about, like someone won, I think it was like a Nobel Prize. I think it was a Japanese person. If you fast more than 24 hours, I forgot the state that it is, but it kills a lot of your bad cells. It's like for me, every Thursday, I don't eat, so I'll fast For the whole day.

[Nicole Lapvin]

What day is it? Oh, tomorrow.

[Neil Patel]

Okay. And even on a normal day, I'll eat between 12 and 6. So then I do intermittent fasting in between.

[Nicole Lapvin]

They say that sick people have one wish, healthy people have many. Healthy people have many wishes, and sick people have just one. Yeah, that's to be healthy. You have said on different interviews some really interesting things about work and money that I would love to double click on. And starting with your kids, you've said that you told your wife you want to tax your kids savings.

[Neil Patel]

Uhhuh.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Tell me more.

[Neil Patel]

So when my daughter was young, her name's Emma, I first started teaching about taxes by eating a portion of her ice cream.

[Nicole Lapvin]

That's what Warren Buffett says.

[Neil Patel]

So she would have like those yaso bars, Popsicle, like a yogurt.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Yogurt bars, yeah.

[Neil Patel]

And I would take a bite and I would tell them, and I still take bites. And I'm like, you got to pay taxes 30%. Daddy takes. The government takes. You know, people take. Right now I say daddy takes because they don't understand the government. So I believe in teaching them that whatever money you make, it doesn't all go to you. There's other expenses. So I think taxing them is really important because it teaches them that they don't actually have everything they have. It's mirage. You actually have less than what you're told you have. And that's reality. And you need to cope with that and understand how to live within your means.

[Nicole Lapvin]

My daughter's one, and I'm. I'm thinking about doing that because I've heard Warren Buffett say to eat 30 of their ice cream. How did they react when you started doing that?

[Neil Patel]

Then my daughter was pissed at first, and then she cried. And like, you owe me a whole new ice cream bar. But now they accept it.

[Nicole Lapvin]

They pay their taxes.

[Neil Patel]

They pay their taxes.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay.

[Neil Patel]

And now I've gone to a point where I don't really eat it. I'll take the bite and I spit it out in the trash. Or like, you know, I'll take a spoon and take it and throw it in the trash. Okay. I'm not trying to be wasteful, but I'm trying to teach them the concept.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Do you have your kids. Do they get allowance? And would you have them negotiate when they do?

[Neil Patel]

They don't get allowance. They only make. They get money for doing stuff, chores, working and stuff like that. And we had around the clock help. What? I mean, around the clock help. We had nannies at one point from 6 or 7am all the way to, like, when they go to bed around 7pm so it shifts seven days a week. And we had cleaners seven days a week, eight hours a day, and cooks and all that kind of stuff. And drivers got rid of driver. We only have a nanny that helps us out for a few hours in the morning when they had to get to school because the school's quite a bit far away from where we live. Cleaners are part time and not every single day. Still close enough to seven days a week. I think we're at six days, no cook. And mom and dad drives him to school, picks them up. Got rid of a lot of our fancy cars. They mainly drive in a Honda Odyssey. My son hates it. He always tells me, you know, our neighbors have a Bugatti. Why don't we have a Bugatti? And I'm like, they make more money. Daddy needs to work and save up, right? And then the other thing we do now is they do their own chores. So, hey, you take a shower. You spilled water on the floor. Because you walk around, mop it up, you know, take your clothes, put it in the hamper. That kind of stuff you don't get paid for. Hey, Dad's vacuuming. You know, I know we have cleaners, but I still try to, like, pick up a little stuff after they eat. You want to help dad vacuum and clean the table and stuff and. And help with dishes, like drying. They don't wash. Like, you'll make money from it. Two bucks. That's typically what we give him for each task. My son right now in his piggy bank, we counted last night, 517. So he's saving up. And if you ask him what he's saving up for, he's like, bugatti. If I can't afford a Bugatti, a Ferrari, okay?

[Nicole Lapvin]

It's so la that he's six years old and knows what a Bugatti.

[Neil Patel]

Four. Four. He's four. And he knows what a Bugatti.

[Nicole Lapvin]

My God. So how do you feel about that?

[Neil Patel]

I don't mind if he wants a Bugatti. I tell him, good for you. You should have goals. Go and earn it.

[Nicole Lapvin]

You can have anything you want as long as you earn it.

[Neil Patel]

Not, you can have anything you want as long as you earn it. We're right now trying to teach the concept of you should. If you want something, go and work hard for it. My wife, at the same time, spends all her time on philanthropy. She's trying to teach our kids, just because you have the Money doesn't mean you should keep it for yourself. So like at Christmas, birthdays, she teaches the concept of giving presents to other people. Like for Christmas, you don't need all these presents. How many people don't have toys and couldn't celebrate? So my wife will take them to volunteer, wrap presents, give them to kids. And we're trying to teach them the concept of just because you have the money doesn't mean you should have everything you want. And people who don't have everything or even the basic necessities shouldn't have it for reasons that they can't control. So if you look at the United States, a lot of the families that struggle are single parent families and they struggle in many aspects. Not just money, but education when they grow up. There's a lot, lot of things that have put them at a disadvantage because they don't have some of the aspects that you get from dual earning income households. Right. So my wife looks at that and she loves helping out single mothers because she sees their pain and it's hard. Things like diapers are very expensive. They're not affordable.

[Nicole Lapvin]

You don't have to tell me, right?

[Neil Patel]

So we're trying to get our kids to understand that you could buy the Bugatti and we haven't pushed this on our son yet. Our daughter more so because she's a little bit older. You can buy the item you really want, but. But do you really need it? What is it going to do your life? And after you get it, what's next? Are you really going to be satisfied? Are you going to keep wanting more? But what about that person who can't afford diapers, who couldn't afford that private school tuition that you go to, but they have the IQ and the ability, but they just weren't given the opportunity. If you don't need all this stuff, do you need five vacation homes? No. You could just rent whenever you need it. And how can you give back? I'm not saying you have to give everything away, but there's a balance. What is that balance? I think it's gonna be different for each person, but I don't think people need. There are circumstances, but if you're not like an Elon Musk or Bill Gates, like you don't. Most people don't need a private plane or to buy one. You can charter one if you really want to fly private, right? You don't have to spend 60 million for a plane that's sitting there and barely used. If you're Elon Musk, I get It. But if you're a standard rich person or wealthy person, whatever you want to call it, capital R, little W, you could just charter and you can use some of the other money for good.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So because you're such an entrepreneur, if they said to you, not $2, it's going to be $3 to dry the dishes, what would you say?

[Neil Patel]

I would say, why? Why should I give you $3 when I can give someone else $2? So I would say to my son, if he asked me for $3, you say you want $3, but if I can convince your sister to give it to me for $2, I have someone else who's willing to do it for the same amount. So why should I pay you 3? So then he would have to make a pitch. And he makes pitches all the time. So, for example, yesterday, my son, when we were counting his money, wanted to turn in $50 of quarters for a $50 bill. Ali had a $100 bill. I started exchanging them for smaller bills because I use them for valet. I'm not the best at parallel parking, the minivan. And as you know, in la, there's a lot of parallel parking. So I just tend to valet most times. So I don't hit cars. And when I. When I was exchanging the money, he said, hey, you took more. And I'm like, no, I didn't steal any money from you. It's even. We went through. We counted a few times just to double check. And then he said, I'm doing you a favor. Because I picked his small bills, he wanted to give me some of the bigger ones, like 20s. I wanted more of like the fives and tens and ones. And he said, because I'm doing you a favor, I want two extra dollars. And I'm like, no, I can go to the bank. And he's like, but you would have to walk to the bank. This is. You get the money now. So then I was like, all right. And the bank is so close, I could have walked. But because he's four, and that's a good enough argument for four year old, in my opinion, I said, sure. I gave him the $2 difference. So then I got 98 bucks back for 100 bucks, and 50 of it was in quarters.

[Nicole Lapvin]

This is interesting because it reminds me of something else that you've said. This is the idea that in business you have to understand what the other party wants in order to get a good deal. So you said that you would buy your kids a house if they live next door, but not somewhere else.

[Neil Patel]

Correct. If they want to live next door to me in la, same street, I will buy him a house.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Same street. That's so aggressive.

[Neil Patel]

I'm already looking for the homes on the same street.

[Nicole Lapvin]

They're four and six.

[Neil Patel]

Yeah, but it's going to cost more. Ten years for me.

[Podcast Host]

You're gonna buy them a house for.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Their future now on your street?

[Neil Patel]

No, I'll have them buy the house with their own money in their trust.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay, talk to me about that.

[Neil Patel]

Because you've assumed the trustees allow it, but yes.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Who are the trustees?

[Neil Patel]

Three people, but yeah.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay. It's an irrevocable trust.

[Neil Patel]

Irrevocable trust. It's a dynasty trust.

[Nicole Lapvin]

And you said you regret that.

[Neil Patel]

I regret that.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Why?

[Neil Patel]

The reason I regret that is when I put in the shares of the business, the business was much smaller and it's cash flow, so they A, make cash, but B, the shares are worth a good amount. And I want my kids to still have the hunger where they want to work. Now. I won't ever tell them that they have money coming from a trust or anything like that. We'll tell them years.

[Nicole Lapvin]

They won't listen to this podcast.

[Neil Patel]

They won't listen to this podcast because by the time they understand this podcast, you're talking about, like 15 years from now, Right? So I just want them to earn it, have that drive and hunger. And that's a really hard thing to give to kids because they grew up with privilege. Am I gonna cut back on my lifestyle and be like, I don't want a theater in my house. I don't need a theater in my house. But one of my passions as a kid, and I always wanted to be in the movie industry. I always loved movies and films and television shows. I don't really get to watch any of them, but I always wanted that. That was like a dream as a kid. And I worked so hard. I just want it. And when I was on a trip and my wife found a house and she wanted to buy it, she's like, hey, this is a perfect house. It checks the boxes. I forgot where I was at Brazil or something like that. I was like, if you want it, go for it. And when we were going through that process, like, why should I not have some of the things that I've worked so hard for so I could have? But then it makes my kids less hungry because they think it's normal. It really does. So then they don't have the hunger that I had. Because when I was growing up, I had no choice but to figure it out and figure out how to make money because no one was going to give it to it give it to me. And I'm not saying I struggled. I did not struggle. Yes, I grew up in low income housing and we used to get free lunch from schools and stuff. I forgot what the benefits were called. I appreciate the government for giving free food to my sister and I and then we also had, I had college grants because of low income from parents. So I really do appreciate the state and the government for helping me out. But where I was getting with this is I had that hunger and drive. I didn't have it really tough because eventually my parents saved enough and they were able to give us a leg up because I was able to borrow some of that money for your company.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Neil Patel]

But I still had enough hunger and I don't think my kids will have the drive that I did because they don't really have a good sense of reality. So I'm just trying to teach them. A win for me would be if my kids give back and try to help others. I would be very happy with that.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So if you could go back, you would have done a revocable instead of irrevocable trust?

[Neil Patel]

No, I just would have given zero and then give it to him as he got older. And then I wouldn't have been able to put as much in the trust because the shares would have been worth more. The money would have been, you know, dollar for dollar. Usually what people do is they put shares in a company, you get valuations, but if you know a company's having good growth rate, you're like, well, 10 years from now it'll be worth a crapload. It's great. But the problem with that is is I didn't expect the growth rate to keep going and Covid to happen. And Covid really caused the business to boom and I felt I just gave them too much where they won't be as hungry.

[Nicole Lapvin]

I would love to get into your expertise and give our listeners some advice about digital marketing. Down?

[Neil Patel]

I'm down.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay, so let's talk to you small business owners, solopreneurs, creators out there. It's a crazy world right now with AI. If you're, let's say selling a CPG product and you can only pick one area to realistically invest in, an email list, a website or Instagram. What are you picking?

[Neil Patel]

Email list, Instagram and what was the other one? Or you're saying pick any in email.

[Nicole Lapvin]

List, Instagram or your website if you. Because I think a lot of advice around digital marketing assumes that you have unlimited time and unlimited budget.

[Neil Patel]

Yeah, here's the problem. So if you asked me this question 10 years ago, I would say just pick a website and then build your email list over time and then add the other channels. But even back then, if you couldn't do the other channels, a website was enough. The problem in today's world is Instagram tries to keep you in their ecosystem and gets like a CPG company. They try to get you to sell the products within Instagram so that way the person's still on Instagram and they can monetize it again. Right. So that way meta can keep making money from the same user without them leaving. If you look at TikTok, same if you look at ChatGPT partnership with Stripe, I believe it is, or Shopify. If not both, Etsy. Etsy stock went up the moment the partnership was announced. And they want to make it where you can just buy within ChatGPT.

[Nicole Lapvin]

If you look at complexity and PayPal.

[Neil Patel]

Yes. And they're all doing that. And if you're doing Amazon, Amazon wants you to be in their ecosystem. Get people to keep buying so they can add multiple products and stay there and buy more and more instead of going to your website. And because of that, the sad reality is, is you can't build a business, a large business, just off of Amazon or just off of Instagram or just off of TikTok or just off of your website, because platforms try to keep you on their platform. So the reality is, is you need to leverage multiple platforms. Now going back to CPG company, is it CPG or we're doing D2C?

[Nicole Lapvin]

Let's start with CPG.

[Neil Patel]

If you're doing CPG, most of them sell through grocery stores. Right. I would push harder on social media at the beginning. And whether you want to choose Instagram over TikTok, because your ideal audience is on Instagram or Facebook, pick whatever one and you can repurpose the content because they all accept the same format. Now, that content won't do as well because it's not natively built for each platform. But that's okay. Something is better than nothing. And that's where I would start.

[Nicole Lapvin]

And D2C direct to consumer same.

[Neil Patel]

I would do the social platforms.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay.

[Neil Patel]

And you say D2C their social platforms. Or I would do Amazon one or the other to start off with.

[Nicole Lapvin]

And you say traditional search is dead.

[Neil Patel]

Traditional search is dead.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So what's alive?

[Neil Patel]

Yeah. So to give you guys a perspective, there's over 50 billion searches that happen a day. Google owns roughly 27% of the market share with 13.7 billion searches a day. Instagram is at 6.5 billion searches a day. YouTube's over 3 billion. Chat GPT is roughly a billion. Apple App Store for people watching apps or downloading apps. 500 million searches a day.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So Google is at the top 13.7.

[Neil Patel]

Uh huh. Instagram is number two, almost half of that. Uh huh. Amazon is over 3 billion. Okay, or it's over. Yeah, over 3 billion. Search on Amazon of course is worth more than Instagram because people are looking for a product to buy versus friends. Now people on Instagram do look for inspirations and products as well, but it's just a much smaller percentage of the searches. The point I'm getting at is searches everywhere. If you think that someone just goes to Google, does a search and buys, you're not wrong. But that's not the only way people search. Now they also discover products on Instagram through search and also seeing content they discover through searching and asking ChatGPT questions. They discover products through searching on the App Store or on Twitter or or on Pinterest. It's everywhere. And you now have to optimize for all the platforms.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So you shouldn't buy Google Ads anymore.

[Neil Patel]

You should still buy Google Ads. You should look at Google Ads as if you spend a dollar and you can make profit, not revenue profit. You should keep doing it. But people had the notion before that you just only need Google Ads. It doesn't work well anymore to only do Google Ads or only optimize for ChatGPT, or only do Instagram. If trying to build a business that does a few million bucks or even 10, $20 million or 50 million a year, sure you can only do Google Ads or you could only do Instagram. But if you want to build a big business, you can't just focus on one channel.

[Nicole Lapvin]

You mentioned ChatGPT. How do you think about AEO versus SEO?

[Neil Patel]

It's very similar. So we have a diagram on this. There's a lot of similarities. If you look at Google, they care more about content quality than let's say a ChatGPT. But on the flip side, a ChatGPT cares more about your structure and your clarity on how quickly they can understand the content than let's say a Google will. They both care about freshness. How fresh is the content? Because no one wants to see outdated information. Google cares more about links like other websites linking to you, while ChatGPT and LLMs care about mentions. How often are people mentioning you and what is the sentiment around that mention? Is it positive, is it negative? Right. So they're looking at a lot of similar factors. In essence, SEO on Google is very similar to SEO or aeo, whatever you want to call it. Answer engine optimization on ChatGPT, there's just some slight nuances, so you have to adapt.

[Nicole Lapvin]

I've been pitched a bunch of companies to help me with aeo. I'm so confused, which are legit, how should I put my money into it? Like if I want somebody to ask their favorite, you know, ChatGPT, perplexity, Gemini, whoever, what's the best financial podcast out there? And I want us to show up first, obviously. How should I do that? How can I do that?

[Neil Patel]

You get people to mention your podcast. So if a lot of bloggers write articles on how you're the number one financial podcast, all these answer engines like LLMs like chat, GPT and perplexity and Gemini will say that you're the number one financial podcast.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So what about these companies that are pitching me AEO services?

[Neil Patel]

Do you.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Do small businesses need help that way? By hiring a agency or a company?

[Neil Patel]

They could, or they could try to do it on their own. The question is, is do they have access to a lot of publishers who would be open to hearing about a story on why that company has amazing product service or podcast, whatever it may be, and talking about them all over the web? And that is a big part of answer engine optimization that a lot of people struggle with. Because imagine trying to convince a hundred publishers per country, assuming you're going multi language or if you're just going English, you would have to do us, Canada, UK, Australia, like it adds up. And trying to convince 100 publishers in each region, you're going to quickly have 500 articles that you have to convince people to write about on how you're the number one podcast for financial news or financial advice.

[Nicole Lapvin]

I mean, all of this stuff is changing so quickly. So if you want to be relevant in aeo, what would be the best course of action now and what's the biggest myth that you see out there?

[Neil Patel]

Yeah, so the biggest myth is you just need to create a lot of content on your own blog, talking about how you're amazing, that works in the short run. But as the algorithms adapt and get smarter, and they do adapt, like Reddit used to get a lot more traffic from Chat GPT than they do now. When people announce that Reddit gets less traffic, their stock price went down. Right? That's example of algorithm updating. So people believe you can just publish a lot of content on your own site talking about how you're amazing and you'll do well. That kind of is the case, but it won't last. That's the biggest myth. The first truth to what you had to do really well with AEO is you have to get other people on other sites to mention you. Just like the example I gave you of getting.

[Nicole Lapvin]

That's for SEO too.

[Neil Patel]

That's for SEO too. But SEO, you want the links, not the mention. Mention and a link are two different things. I can talk about how money rehabilitation is amazing, but if I didn't link, that doesn't really help that much with SEO. If I link, that helps with SEO. Now if I mention you and link, that helps with SEO and aeo, but I can link to you without mentioning your company name. That helps with SEO, because I can link to financial advice and link to you, but not mention money rehab. Are you following me?

[Nicole Lapvin]

Yeah. And that's not going to show up.

[Neil Patel]

On chat GPT because that's not going to help really Chat GPT, but that's going to help with search. Okay, so you got to get dimensions. You can either do outreach yourself to a lot of people in your space and build relationships or hire someone who has those relationships. The next thing that you have to do is publish really good content. The reason you do well isn't just the promotion side. The real honest truth is your podcast does well because the information is good. That's the most important part. If the information sucked, you can do all the promotion in the world. You may climb to the top of the charts, but then you're gonna fall down. It's just a question of what. I'm assuming you agree with this totally.

[Nicole Lapvin]

You can't market your way out of a product.

[Neil Patel]

You can't. So you got to create good content and content that makes you look like an authority. These LLMs know that there's a lot of fake information out there. How do they know who's good and who's bad? The only really way is based on their authority. And the reason I say that is there's too many variables that show the good stuff is good and the bad stuff is bad. And I'm going to use politics as an example. Or actually I'll use a COVID vaccine. Kind of political, but I don't mean to be political, and I'm not going to give you my opinion on the vaccine. But when the vaccine first came out, would you agree there was a lot of people saying you can't Be an anti vaxxer. This is great for you. This is what it's going to do. Pfizer's doing this and doctors all saying you need it. I'm assuming you agree with that for sure. Right. But at this flip side, you also saw a lot of people saying, you can't take the vaccine. There's not enough data on it. It hasn't been research enough.

[Nicole Lapvin]

You're going to get disease, your fertility is going to go down, all sorts of stuff.

[Neil Patel]

Yep. There was enough people on both sides that had the signals of people linking to each viewpoint. That's a signal. There's also a lot of people social sharing each viewpoint as well. The good or not, the four backs and pro and the con. Yeah, that's easier to put it. Thank you. And you also had people on television talking about both sides. But if you're just looking from the aspect of time on page, because they have the data from the browsers. If you look at social shares and links, the pro and the cons had both of them. So how do these platforms know which ones to choose? Assuming there's no interference from a third party, like a government or something like that, saying, hey, we want you to force your hand and choose that. Which Zuckerberg came out and said that. I don't know if you saw that. In which the government kind of pushed him to go a certain way with all the COVID stuff. And what I'm getting at is these LLMs, if they're using algorithms and signals, which is what they do, it's hard for them to know what is right or wrong because you have signals on both ends. But if President Trump or Biden or Obama, I'm not trying to, you know, skew left or right, say something about marketing. Most people will say, that's a president, whether left or right. A president doesn't specialize in marketing. Right. But if they say, look at Neil, he's really good at, he's a marketer and he's saying something about marketing. The LLMs know my background is marketing. I've been doing this for 20 years. So when I talk about SEO, I should know more than President Trump or President Obama or Biden. But on the flip side, if Neil wants to talk about politics, they'll say, hey, Neil's not a politician. What the heck does he know about this? President Trump or President Biden or Obama, they know more about politics than Neil does. We should take his opinions. Right. And the same goes with politicians who aren't them. I don't know much about politics. I know there's levels underneath them. You know, just like there's marketers who are above me and have more experience and are better than me, but whoever that person is, these platforms will look at trust and you gotta really put out good content to build that trust and build that authority. So that way you're respected by the platforms and they keep pushing you and you can get that trust by follows. Continue pushing out good information, having people say good things about you, speaking at events, getting pressed for your name. This all helps you build up authority. You can do this for an individual and you can do that for a company as well. But they hope they both help you get sided by the LLMs because it creates what's called E E A T experience, expertise, authority and trust by creating a lot of good information, putting it out there, that's what you're building up that these platforms love.

[Nicole Lapvin]

And let's bring it back to earth. If somebody side hustle is bringing in like 2k a month, what's an SEO or a change that they could make to try and double that money and if they don't have a huge budget, where would you start?

[Neil Patel]

You can go to ChatGPT and use their free app and have them help you write content on things that you think you should educate your potential customer on related to questions they may face. So I'll actually break it down step by step to make it super simple. We have a free tool called Answer the Public. You can type in any keyword related to your industry. Shows you all the questions people are typing in and answering. You can take those keywords put into ChatGPT and ask them to write your article solving that question. Answer the Public will show you what's up and coming and trending on the questions people are asking right now. Not from a year ago, not from five years ago, literally from right now today. You create content on that by asking ChatGPT to write your article on it. You review it to make sure it's accurate and then you just upload it to your WordPress and click a publish button and ask your friends, no joke, to share it on LinkedIn and you can share it yourself on LinkedIn and X in some of the social profiles. You may not get the play that you're looking for. But a lot of these LLMs like chat GPT have data deals with these players. So then it'll start feeding their system and you will start getting mentioned more. And you can do this for like 10, 20 articles and it doesn't cost any Money.

[Nicole Lapvin]

And it doesn't matter what website like. It could be your own WordPress. It could be.

[Neil Patel]

Yeah, you own WordPress. You can publish it on Tumblr or what's that people still doing? I don't think people use Tumblr, but there's another one that one of the Twitter founders created, EV Williams. I forgot what it was called.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Oh, Medium.

[Neil Patel]

Medium. You can publish on Medium, right? You can pick whatever you want. You can even publish it on LinkedIn straight up that article because a lot of these alums and Google are pulling from LinkedIn.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Okay.

[Neil Patel]

And that'll help you get mentioned more because you're talking about your products and your services.

[Nicole Lapvin]

I mean, I, as a business owner worry when I think about investing in SEO or ao, buying ads, that I'm lighting money on fire. What's a surefire way to light your money on fire when you're trying to optimize for digital marketing?

[Neil Patel]

The surefire way is to start by spending money on ads. Ads are great, but the problem that most people have is they haven't figured out their funnel. So you want to build your traffic organically, you want to go on Instagram, you want to go on LinkedIn, build an audience, then promote your two grand a month business. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that's amazing that you're at two grand a month, whoever it may be that's listening, and try to get it to three or four grand. You then want to get feedback from your customers. How can I make my product better? What's wrong with my messaging? How can I make it more clear? How can I put in more reviews and ratings to build trust? You'll notice as time as you start talking to customers, you'll get feedback. You take that feedback and you improve your business. When I say improve your business, not just your product and service, but also your messaging, your images. Because they'll tell you what issues they have with your product or your company or why they chose to buy from you. And if you can make the changes that they're talking about, assuming you get enough feedback so you're making changes based on the majority, not just based on one person. What you'll find is your conversion numbers will go up. When I say conversion numbers, if 100 people visit your website and only a hundred one buy, that's a 1% conversion. Now, if on average two buy, you're at 2%. When you're able to convince more people who saw your, you know, your storefront to actually go through the door, and make a purchase. It's much more easier to make your ads profitable because you have a higher conversion rate. Because before if you're spending $10 for a customer, now two people are actually buying. So if you spent $10 and got 100 visitors and only one bot, you spent $10 for a customer. Now because you've optimized your site, two out of a hundred buy now you spent $10 for two customers, which is five bucks a customer, which make your unit economics better.

[Nicole Lapvin]

What if I want to hire you? How much? Is it.

[Neil Patel]

Me directly or my company?

[Nicole Lapvin]

Your company, sure.

[Neil Patel]

So we have an SB division and people can pay us all the way in the low thousands of dollars a month all the way up to we have packages well into the millions of dollars.

[Nicole Lapvin]

What if I want to hire you?

[Neil Patel]

I've had really good offers well into the eight figures a year including stock comp from well known companies that everyone uses every single day. And you said no, no, because then it takes away the freedom and flexibility in life. Also, what am I going to do with the money? My wife's good.

[Nicole Lapvin]

But what if I ask you so nicely and put you on a show?

[Neil Patel]

And usually when people ask me really nicely, I'd be like, I don't want to work for anyone but I'll help you out for free. And then I just give them advice and then they learn and then, you know, it also gives me things to do throughout the day.

[Nicole Lapvin]

And you do give advice on your social. So if somebody wants to ask you a question like you're answering stuff all the time.

[Neil Patel]

Usually my team is just to be very transparent. But yeah, someone is answering the questions.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Well, thank you for all this free advice. I feel like if we were on the clock I would get a bill that I would not want. So Neil, we end all of our episodes by asking our guests for a tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. It can be anything. A final tip on saving, Investing.

[Neil Patel]

Yeah, I have digital marketing. Growth marketing, sure. I'm going to give you guys a money tip if that's okay.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Into the right place.

[Neil Patel]

Yes. I had a conversation with my trainer the other day and he's telling me how he's paying off his home faster. And I'm meeting a lot of people in the last few months of like, you know, we think things are going to start picking up. I'm going to start trying to pay off my home faster. I'm like, you got a 2% interest rate that you had from years ago. Do not pay off your home. Drag it out as long as you can. If you have an interest rate that's dirt cheap, do not pay off your home first. That should be the last thing. Because you'll make more money just keeping your money in a bank account if you want, no risk and paying off high yield account. Sure. Than you would from paying off your home. Or you make more money if you're just willing to put in the s and P500 and just hold it for five, 10 years. Not a year, not two years. Because things can go down. But you know, and I'm not saying I'm guaranteeing this, I just want to give that asterisk. But typically, if you look at history, education. Education, the S and P produces better returns than 2%. If you just look at historically, you're better off putting your money in there from a historical standpoint than paying off cheap debt. And I don't know why a lot of people want to be debt free and they believe that's freedom and they're trying to pay off really cheap debt. And that's like one of the worst things you can do financially. Even me, I have a mortgage, believe it or not. Because I get really killer deals on mortgages. Like my mortgage did you know there's banks have programs. I use cibc. I can change my mortgage rate anytime I want by just calling them for $1,500. They will change the rate to whatever new market rate is. And they're aggressive on rates. Right. But it could be more on their private banking side that they do that.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So you're borrowing against, I'm assuming securities to get your mortgage home.

[Neil Patel]

Yeah. So like assets. I have a traditional mortgage, but a lot of banks will just do interest only for me, so I never have to pay down the principal. And the rate is so cheap because I'm not paying like 6% or whatever most people are paying well.

[Nicole Lapvin]

So what you're talking about is the 6% rule. So if your debt is lower than 6%, it's more advantageous to invest in the historic 7 to 10% return that you would get in the stock market. So It's a simple so.

[Neil Patel]

Or let me rephrase right now based on today's 10 year. Right, because mortgages are based off a 10 year. I can probably get a mortgage rate of around 4.7 something percent interest only on a mortgage. If I believe I can make more than 4.75%, why wouldn't I just keep reinvesting my money somewhere else?

[Nicole Lapvin]

Right. But we're telling your trainer would be like the 6% or 5% threshold. Like, anything below that.

[Neil Patel]

Yes. Don't. And. And they have debt on other things. Like, they got new veneers, and they're paying higher rates on their veneers. And I'm like, pay them money off on the veneer. And they're trying to train me and get me to lift more weights. And I'm just getting really bothered that they're paying off a home at 2% instead of their veneers, which much higher interest rate. Now.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Now we're.

[Neil Patel]

And I'm like, I'm just getting really irritated. I'm like, pay off your car loan first. I'm like, this is backwards.

[Nicole Lapvin]

Some money rehab right there.