Transcribe your podcast
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Think in terms of humans first. Versus technology first, the technology will always change, but what won't change are basic human behavior and human psychology principles. So if you can start there, start with why people make decisions. Basically read some of the best copywriters and you can handwrite their stuff that will give you a leg up over everyone who is a technical person. First, like anyone can figure out Facebook. If all you did was just say, I'm going to learn Facebook ads, you can learn it, you can learn Google, as you can learn SEO, like anyone could do that if you devote enough time to it.

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But what not everyone gets to do is understanding psychology and how it all fits together. But if you can do that, I mean, if you can be at least competent at psychology and direct response principles and you can apply technology to it, like if you become an email marketer or if you're in SEO or if you're a media buyer, if you understand psychology, you're going to be 10x better than all of your peers. But you've got to go deep on one thing.

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Boss Uncaged is a bi weekly podcast that releases the origin stories of business owners as they become uncage trailblazers, unconventional thinkers, untethered trendsetters and unstoppable tycoons. We always hear about overnight success stories, never knowing that it took 20 years to become a reality. Our host s.A. Grant Conduct's narrative accounts through the voices and stories behind uncaged bosses in each episode guest from a wide range of backgrounds sharing diverse business insights. Learn how to release your primal success through words of wisdom from inspirational entrepreneurs and industry experts as they depict who they are, how they juggle their work life with family life, their successful habits, business expertise, tools and tips of their trade release.

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The Uncaged Boss Beast in you welcome our host s.A. Grande. Welcome welcome back to Boss Uncage podcast. On today's show, we have a special guest. Well, his name is Andrew, but you just told me what your nickname was. So let's go ahead and just jump right into that story right off the bat. Tell people a little bit about your nickname and who you are. Got it. Yeah, nickname is Uncle Drew, so some people know Uncle Drew, Kyrie Irving, the Pepsi commercials, and that was my first nickname in the company and it just stuck.

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People are like, why are you nickname Uncle Drew? It's because I'm a white guy that can dunk. My name is Andrew, but I go by Drew, so that's where it started. But that started when there were only a handful of us in the company, like Neil, his co-founder, two other people. And then now when we have two hundred plus people worldwide, most people don't know that the origin story. Got you.

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So this is diverter you brought up Neil. So I mean, which company do you work?

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So I work with Neil Patel Digital, which is owned by Neil Patel. When we're a global digital marketing agency and it spans a couple of different websites. Most people would know him through Neil Patel dot com, which is our main marketing website. Then we also have two agency websites, NPR, Digital Dotcom and NPR Excel dot com.

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So let's dive into them a little bit about you and your background and who are you? Me personally, I've.

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Come from a few different industries. I'm a California native, but I've been in a variety of businesses throughout my life, spanning from managing the Cheesecake Factory, some big, big, giant corporate restaurants to trucking and logistics. I had my own agency, so managed a lot of freight for some big, big global companies. And in that process, I realized I needed to be good at marketing to continue to grow my company versus the old school approach of cold calling.

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And that's how I got into direct response and marketing in general and then eventually crossed paths with Neil and its co-founder and and some mutual friends. And then we started the agency together. I mean, I'm not a founder, but I was here from the beginning, essentially.

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So, yeah, just even today, just a little bit. I mean, I was I know who Neil is. Right. So for our audience, who is Neil and what is it that you guys exactly do? Yeah, Neal is recognizable around the globe in the marketing world. I mean, if you ask anyone on the street who Neil Patel is, maybe one out of 20 people would know who he is. But if you ask anyone in marketing or business world, most people know who Neil is or if they don't, as soon as they stumble across him, then they won't be able to get rid of him because he'll be everywhere in their searches or in their scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn.

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Neil started actually as a 16 year old picking trash at Knott's Berry Farm, and that was one of his first jobs. And one day he just realized I was made for something greater than this. So he just took off his vest and his garbage picker in the bag and just threw it in the dumpster and went home and said, I'm going to start a company. At that moment, he created a monster dotcom competitor, which is a job board Web site, hired a couple of agencies to help him get that built and build out marketing.

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And he took all of his savings, borrowed money, and he ended up basically lighting that money on fire within I think it was within a year, essentially, of launching that project. It was all gone. And he realized, I can't rely on anyone but myself. I need to know this and get good at it, which is marketing and SEO. So he just went headfirst into the industry to learn himself. And then he started helping companies.

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He helped some companies grow really fast. A manufacturer grew from like a million in revenue to twenty five million and one year. Just the CEO. That was his first contract, essentially as a 17 or 18 year old. And the rest is history. He helped a lot of companies grow. He got a lot of attention early on from some big brands where he was helping companies like Airbnb from the very beginning, laid their foundation, Warby Parker, and then they created some software companies.

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And the rest is history. Everyone came after then. And that's really how the agency started for Neil because he had so much visibility with his blog, Quick Sprout and Neil Patel Dotcom and everyone asking for help that he realized I need to actually be able to help other companies. And that's how the agency was formed. He said, I'm going to develop a super team and we'll build it as slow as it takes to do the right thing. And that's where we are today.

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Yes.

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I mean, you brought up a good point about the super team. And obviously there's a lot of guys that's on that team that are superstars, including yourself.

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So, I mean, how did you even come to be part of the team?

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I wouldn't call myself a superstar. Maybe it's just luck that we kind of came together at the right time. My skill set is in business development and strategy. So, I mean, ever since the beginning, I've been helping us just match with the right companies and putting together the right plans and then helping people execute on that. But we've been hiring at the highest level ever since the beginning. So we tend to kind of poach from the other big agencies or we get people from in-house positions that other prominent companies.

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And Neil's a really good recruiter who can pick up the phone and persuade people to come work with us where most companies like people will want to work with me just because of his brand name and his own work ethic and his own reputation.

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Got you to your point. He's a really good recruiter and you guys have built this hell of a team, but you've also created partnerships as well. And I think that's how you and I got connected. Is the business partnership between your brand and my brand? Could you just tell us a little bit more about that?

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Yeah, it's something that partnerships have been slow, slow to roll out for our company for a long time. Companies have wanted to partner with us, and we've always been hesitant to do that. We've always been so busy with our own inbound traffic. Like Neil's website. It's essentially the one of the top three marketing websites on planet Earth outside of HubSpot and maybe search engine land. So we've got a lot of traffic or tens of millions of visitors per month and sessions per month.

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So a lot of people want us to help that. Like we have a good lead capture machine essentially, and people get into our funnel and we've never had a problem with being busy, essentially. So we've never been able to devote time to a partnership program. But a lot of companies are good fits for us to partner. So we finally rolled that out within the last few months to where complementary companies can come alongside us, we can come alongside them and we can provide our services to them and they can bring in their audience or their existing clients who might need help with that, specifically content marketing, paid media, whatever that piece is that might be missing or might just need to level up.

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That's how our partnership develops. So we're being very selective with who we work with, you being one of them, to where you can start to introduce your audience to Neil and our team. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so. Even with that journey, I mean, I think I've been partners with dozens of different companies over the years, and I think you guys like to your point, I mean, you have the credibility to kind of really prescreen.

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So I think the part of the requirements was we had to do like a phone call. We had to do a bunch of pre screening just to kind of build up and even get to the point to where the partnership even existed. It's kind of crazy when you think about it, but I mean, you guys have the clout to be able to do that. So, I mean, it's definitely one of those things that in business, partnering with somebody, a lot of times people just want to partner.

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But you guys are doing your due diligence beforehand. So just staying on the partnerships, I mean, how is your partnership structured like you've done businesses before, you're working with Neal. How are your partnerships structured?

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Well, it has to be mutual benefit one and it has to be a good complementary fit. So we're not going to partner with every single company that comes to us in the same way that we don't work with every single company that comes to us. So just to take a step back, when we get I don't know, we get tens of thousands of companies that reach out to us every single month that they want our help. And we end up working with less than one half of one percent of those companies.

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So our criteria to work with us is very strict, very stringent. And people have to go through a lot of hoops, not because we're artificially creating hoops, it's just that our company was built with integrity. Neil's whole vision for it was, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it right. And that means we're not going to be able to work with everyone. It's just a fact of life, essentially, that the people that we have.

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So we take that same approach with our partners and we're going to be very selective with who we partner with, meaning we want to know, do you have the audience that is a good fit and do we like you and you have a good message and do you operate with integrity? Then we can have a conversation. So that's why it took so long for us to actually make it work. And then we take that same approach with the partnerships and now we treat your audience and your existing clients and whoever you're bringing to us and really treat them with kind of a VIP approach because you already have the credibility.

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You're essentially saying, hey, these are my friends, I want them to come meet you. So we're going to kind of bypass a few steps, but we're still not going to shortchange the process and we're still going to go through this custom evaluation and scoping process to make sure it will actually make sense for them and not just put them through some packages, package A, B or C. That's how a lot of the agency world operates. It's all about scale and kind of this Lego block mentality of everyone's just going to fit in the same bucket or fit in the same package or they're going to choose a package.

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We can't do that or a company doesn't. It doesn't work that way. So we have to build everything in a custom manner, depending on the business type and competitiveness and things like that.

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So you mean staying on the credibility track? Right. So, I mean, we always hear about the twenty years it takes someone to become a success story and it always perceived as an overnight success. How long did it take you to climb up the ladder and to get to where you are currently? You mean us as a company? You and me both. It's two part question. So you first and then the company second.

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Good question. I mean, for Neil, it's been about a 20 year journey for him to get to where he is now. And Neil had a lot of early success, too. It's not like he was a twenty year success story. He might be the exception to where he did hit it big, maybe with a few different businesses early on. Like Crazy Egg is his first software company that he co-founded. And that was very successful and it still is.

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But the agency itself. Well, let's just take Neil Patel Dotcom, his website. When Neil pivoted to his personal brand in twenty fifteen, he went all in his former website was Quick Sprout. If people are familiar with it, if you Google online marketing, you're going to see two websites at the top. There will be Quick Sprout and Neil Patel and they flip flops sometimes. Those are both Neil's websites. But when Neil shifted to his personal brand, he went all in and he spent a lot of his own money and a ton of his own time to build up content and really make it the premier digital marketing outlet for the world that's taken us five years to get to where we are now.

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That's with a pedal to the metal spending. I can't even say the amount, but it's a lot of money to get to this point and a lot of people, a lot of resources to become that. And most companies, it would take twenty years if they even ever get there. For Neil, it's taken five years. So that's how long it took us to get here. Hopefully that answers the question.

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Yeah, definitely. Definitely. When you really think about it being five years is a really short period of time to get to the level currently where you guys are. So, I mean, not just a national supercell. You guys are international. I mean, you got like seven locations worldwide or six locations worldwide. So certainly. Yeah, it's crazy. Crazy. So, I mean, you personally, do you come from an entrepreneurial background? Like where do you get your your business savvy?

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Yeah, I definitely do. I'm not an employee type. I mean, I have a unique role here where I have given a lot of flexibility to kind of be entrepreneurial and essentially a deal maker. My job is to make deals. And do it right, so we can grow as a company and grow the right way. And that's really how I'm evaluated. But I have a lot of input into the process of how we grow the company, the agency, how we develop partnerships, how we are perceived in the marketplace.

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But I do come from an entrepreneurial background. I mean, my father's I mean, he owns his own chiropractic practice. It's kind of an entrepreneur. But I've always been the the rebel, the free spirit. And I have created multiple service companies over the years. I've had a juice business like a healthy organic produce delivery company. I had a trucking logistics company that did many millions of dollars and dealt with big national and international contracts. So I've touched it all and seen it all.

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That's kind of my background.

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Do you think any of that was a factor to your current success? One hundred percent. And part of the reason why is that I've dabbled in so many industries and my friends are all entrepreneurs, like I don't come from the agency world. So I don't really know people from other agencies, a lot of people in agencies, they kind of like just run in the same circles and they my job hop. So they just go from agency to agency, the agency.

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I've never done that. All my friends are either like really prominent entrepreneurs or local entrepreneurs. And and that's just how I've always I've always operated. So I get to see how a lot of companies operate. And I know the nuances of maybe a SAS company, how they market and sell to a local company, to totally different businesses. They don't have nothing to do with each other. So it definitely helps when I'm on the phone with someone who owns an H HVAC company or or I'm on the phone with, let's say, a large manufacturer or a defense contractor, like they all have their own lingo.

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They'll have their own buying process is a criteria evaluation, like everything is different. So you have to be able to adjust. And that certainly helps me.

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That's definitely interesting. I mean, obviously, you're a byproduct of your environment and obviously you keep in your circles pretty tight. But to your point, you're saying that all your circles are pretty much high level executives or high level entrepreneurs. I mean, that's definitely a win win situation. Right. How do you juggle your work life with your family life?

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I guess it's a little easier now that you don't have to leave the house or not as much. I've always been a family man, so the two kind of blend together and my kids are always involved in what I do. And I want them to be involved. I want them to see how business works, like how deals get put together, how marketing works, how podcasts work, how content is developed. So I love it, especially with what I do because I get to show my kids my wife doesn't care.

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She's like, I hate marketers because all they want to do is extract money from me. She's joking, but she always says everything is my fault for being up sold on a deal, on a purse or on a dress or something. But I just try to keep things fluid and open with my family and especially my kids. I don't have to cut off. At the end of the day. It's like work stops here. Sometimes it's a teaching moment.

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So I allow things to keep rolling. But there are definitely times when I have to shut everything off and say it's family time.

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So what does your morning habits, your morning routines look like lately as a roll out of bed and open up the laptop and get on a Zoome call with people in Sweden or I don't know, some other part of the world, but I usually try to jump out of bed and hit, get a walk in or get some type of exercise. My father taught me this, that there's a response called the Cortisol Awakening response. If you can get out of bed and get like some basically heavy breathing, either run some hills or do jump rope or something to where your body is dressed right.

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When you wake up, that will kind of trigger your body's momentum to keep it. What do you call that, like proper circadian rhythms and decreases your blood pressure and all these other things?

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So does that run parallel with, like, working out and getting your endorphins up? Exactly.

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Exactly. Yeah. And some people do it later in the day. But I guess there are studies that show doing it right when you wake up has a huge benefit. So some people say you have their morning routine, which is read a book or do your meditation or journaling. And but I guess if you can get exercise and before that, it's really beneficial.

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Yeah. I mean, I think you just brought up a good Segway to like books. Are you reading any particular books right now that you would like to recommend time?

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Yeah, I kind of think of what the fact that your eyes went like straight to the ceiling because I was sitting on the floor, you know, my library and I have other ones elsewhere.

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But actually a really phenomenal book that I'm in love with right now is a story worthy. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. I haven't checked this book out. I mean, it's kind of a workbook to this guy is an amazing writer and. Storyteller, but if you want to learn how to be a better, more persuasive storyteller or just communicator, that's the book also reading this one. When the wolves bite, this one's a little more obscure.

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But it's about the hedge funds that were battling over Herbalife, which is the MLM company out of Utah. Gotcha. And then another book that is required reading for any entrepreneur or any deal maker is pitch anything. If you heard of that, I have pitch anything or flip the script from or is a buddy of mine. Those two are phenomena.

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I reread them quite often, but Goku is always great because like everybody I've interviewed on his podcast with the current theme that I've realized is that if they're not reading books, they're listening to audio books, which is a continuing education thing, you have to kind of stay on the ground around the clock to keep the information fresh and stay updated and stay in tune to your environment. So it's definitely like I said to me, it was hilarious that you looked over and you looked up.

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It was like as he sat on the floor like a hot toilet.

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OK, here's another one. I have so many I can keep sending you. But this one verbal advantage is another workbook type. That is an amazing book. If you want to expand your vocabulary and understand the words you're using as time goes on. And I'm listening to David Goggins right now, that can't hurt me. Audiobook nice. I don't know if you heard that one, but it is brutal. I mean.

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Yeah, yeah. I mean I follow him on Facebook and his whole Facebook account is kind of like he's a good example of what marketing looks like when your audience is doing all the marketing for you. Right. It's exactly. Everybody on his page is just showing how they went from being bigger to smaller, how they went for it being handicapped to working it out. So, I mean, he definitely has a solid brand for sure. He's an inspiration.

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Yeah, definitely. So what do you see yourself in 20 years?

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Who? Probably that's a tough question, be on a beach surfing every day, probably not working as much as I do now with some passive income moving forward, but never stopping. I mean, this is what I love to do. Like, I live to get better and to be a better communicator and to put together bigger and better deals with my friends and with our company. So I'll probably be doing some form of what I'm doing now, which is either leveraged buyouts or continuing to grow our agency and the magnitude of it.

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Hmm, which is working left with that, I mean, what tools do you guys use that you would not be able to do what you do without?

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We have a lot structurally. We run through sales force. That happened as of about a year and a half ago. We made the switch from HubSpot to sales us, and now we've got a lot of integrations with that. We use things like work front for project management, but then we've got a lot of like the tools of the trade are endless and we pretty much license everything there is in existence from a like a marketing stack because we want to be able to have the right data for our clients so we can be informed by that, not driven by.

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I like to use the phrase data informed versus data driven because you want to just take information, then make decisions off of it, not having numbers tell you what to do. We license a lot of tools. I mean, we have our own tool, which is Uber suggest, and that's getting better and better and better. So we definitely use our own our own dog food and Crazy Egg and Yellow Bar is one of our softwares as well. And then we also have some proprietary internal tools that we use only for our clients.

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But when you talk about marketing stack like it runs the gamut, we pretty much license everything there is.

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Yes. I mean, I think the fact that you brought up Uber suggests it's kind of like a really solid. That's how I found you guys to begin with. It was like I was going through some online training stuff and I was working with Tikhon, which is a big kind of guy. He was making a recommendation for Jess. So I started using suggestions like this is probably comparable, if not better, than using Google keyword planner and is a little bit friendlier, streamlined.

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Let me talk about that a little bit more to me. Obviously, if you're familiar with marketing, you're familiar with keywords, you're familiar with SEO by default. Everybody thinks Google keyword plan, right? Probably Google Trends to a certain extent. So just dive into Google suggest a little bit.

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Yeah. Google keyword planner has been kind of the default tool for a lot of CIOs for many years. But then other tools, we're getting better like a Trev's or it's a draft, but I address CRM Rush Majestic Maw's. Those are basically like the four major tools for ASIO. And then Neil bought Google suggest a couple of years ago. It was purely a corporate research tool and he acquired it with the idea that we would make it into what it is today.

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It's barely a fraction of what Neil's vision is for it. But the idea behind it is simplicity. And you'll notice that. And that's what people love about Ebisu, just as it strips away all the complexity of those big tools and just gives you what you need right now, which is I need to make decisions off of my content or my competitors content. How do I go from research to action as fast as possible? And that's how Neil really designed it.

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And I've been in the room since we acquired the software and with our product managers building the tool into what it is today and had some input on the development of it. But the whole goal is to just make it easy to use to where you can see where your website currently ranks versus your competitors or just ranks for your ideal terms and then also running audits of your site. Like how well is your site performing from a user experience, site speed experience perspective.

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And that's just go down that one real quick. This is an important piece for your whole audience, is that Google came out in March or March or May of this year and said in a year from now, we're going to roll out a core update. And Google never does that. Google always rolls out a core update and then everyone has to react to it. There was Pande, there's Penguin, there was the Google Medek update of twenty eighteen where you saw a bunch of websites just like disappear off the face of the earth because they didn't have the right authoritative content.

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So now in May of twenty twenty one, write that down and do everything in your power to make sure that your website provides a great user experience. And that's basically evaluated by the core web titles. If you go in Google's Lighthouse Tool or Google's page speed tool that you can Google at Google, page the tool and you can go in there and just search for your website, or you can use a tool called G.T. Metrics. GTE met r.i X.com run your site through that to see what it's showing or scoring for page speed.

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It's also going to show you the core web vitals and how you stack up for that. What that means is how fast is the page load and then how much JavaScript or anything is blocking that from being viewed the page from being viewed and then how much information is moving around on the screen. It's called the cumulative layout shift. If any of those are slow or there's too much movement, you're going to get a bad score. And essentially Google will potentially prioritize your website or that particular page.

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So just to kind of recap to what you're saying, because I think some of what you said, I think some of these guys. Right, you kind of just hand over the right. So just. Meaning what you're saying is that essentially that Google is dropping a new update and in that update is not going to be as lenient to certain things, for example, like keyword metadata as it used to be, is more so speed loading of the page.

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How long, how large images, how much information you have, how much JavaScript, meaning like the stuff behind the scenes that controls the objects on the page. How much of that is slowing down the page? So with that being said, that's crazy in itself because I would think but 80 percent of all websites in today's market are probably WordPress and we all know that we're press on the front end is heavily driven by all the red flags that you just listed, right?

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Yeah. So, I mean, what's the game plan for something like that?

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Well, I think WordPress is fifty five percent of the Internet, which is still huge. That's the majority of websites are WordPress. So, yeah, it is an issue and there's a lot of a legacy, WordPress themes that are not really compatible or they're not fast. And then you have like Hosteen issues. So you definitely want to have a fast host and you want to have a theme that will allow you to make adjustments to solve for this essentially.

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Yeah. So I mean, WordPress is not the problem in and of itself because Neil's website, Neil Patel dot com, all of our agency websites, everything is built on WordPress and we're like steller on all of these metrics. Essentially the core web titles, page speed, it's really a case by case basis. And you just have to look at and say, can we use this particular theme? Is content an issue? What's the issue? If there is an issue, can it be solved with WordPress or does it have to be reframed sometimes or do you need a faster host?

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A plethora of factors that come into it, but it has to just be evaluated by people. But just real quickly, recap so your audience knows what is important. Mobile first, think mobile only don't even worry about desktop. Everything should be mobile. Only your website should be geared towards how your page interacts with someone with a Samsung device or an Apple device or whatever. Has to be mobile first, not just friendly, but really designed for that.

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The major ranking factors are content like you're on page content, your links like the actual inbound links from other websites. Those used to make up 80 percent of the algorithm. Now with this core web vital shift that's happening and that's going to be more evenly distributed. So it's still content is important, links are still important. But now the user experience kind of gets on equal footing with those other factors. So you've got to really build all of those.

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And that's from an organic standpoint. That's for search engine optimization. From an organic standpoint, some of that still applies to paid search and paid social, like if you're sending ads to your website or just sending ads to a page and that page is slow to load and it's not showing information clearly or things are moving too much, then people are going to bounce. Right. You're going to have a low quality score. You're not going to convert people.

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So it still applies to everything. But really what we're talking about now is about ranking factors within organic search. I mean, I think you made a good point about just conversions and in today's world and everybody wants to get into like Facebook ads, Google ads. So a lot of times I do it. A lot of clients that they're paying for ads, they're seeing traffic. We've been doing like heat maps to kind of track to see what are they doing on the website.

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But some of them are seeing conversions, some are not seeing conversions, and they're wondering why they're not seeing conversions. And to your point, that's the reason why they're not seeing conversions. Right. Because potentially. Yeah. I mean, there again, there's a multitude of factors. Congruency is one of them. Like, does your ad does what you're calling out in the ad, the actual headline, who you're calling it out for, what the image or creative looks like?

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Does that match the landing page? Does that experience match? That's often where big disconnect is for advertisers. They're sending ads to basically a garbage page and then people are just going to balance. You know, they don't have time. I mean, people are making decisions with their thumbs in milliseconds, definitely. So you have to think like that.

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Yeah, definitely. I mean, to your point, I think a lot of the landing pages and the quick phone was a great platform, but the younger version of click funnel pages that are still in existence, that are still running and just sending traffic to it, you can kind of see the old versus the new. You'll land on a page. And it's like John Belyaev, if you're trying to sort through it five seconds later, you're going to leave because you can't even scroll.

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You can't do anything because it's frozen at that point. So definitely. Definitely so.

[00:31:19]

I mean, what final words of wisdom would you have for an entrepreneur that wants to get into, like the web development or marketing just in general space that you're in, like someone to be kind of doing what we do, essentially some form of agency consultant work to say I'm twenty two years old, I'm kind of in college, out of college.

[00:31:41]

I understand a little bit of development. I understand like what words would you give to me to inspire me to follow in your footsteps.

[00:31:48]

I would say. I think in terms of humans first. Versus technology first, the technology will always change, but what won't change are basic human behavior and human psychology principles. So if you can start there, start with why people make decisions. Basically read some of the best copywriters and you can handwrite their stuff that will give you a leg up over everyone who is a technical person. First, like anyone can figure out Facebook. And if all you did was just say, I'm going to learn Facebook ads, you can learn it, you can learn Google ads, you can learn like anyone could do that if you devote enough time to it.

[00:32:30]

But what not everyone gets to do is understanding psychology and how it all fits together. But if you can do that, I mean, if you can be at least competent at psychology and direct response principles and you can apply technology to it, like if you become an email marketer or if you're an NGO or if you're a media buyer, if you understand psychology, you're going to be 10x better than all of your peers. But you've got to go deep on one thing, deep on maybe one technical piece, deep on the psychology, and then you can add things down the road.

[00:33:05]

Right. But don't try to be all things to all people. I think that would be my advice. Solid gold, the nuggets.

[00:33:11]

I mean, to your point, the riches are in the niches. So, I mean. Right. You gave them a solid roadmap to get to that level of achievement. What Facebook, Instagram like, to your point, I mean, you have so many different platforms out there. How could people get in contact? You guys, if it's your audience, I'd say go through you, because I think I just got a text today that we were going to do something special for our partners and their audience, their clients this month and December.

[00:33:37]

So some type of special deal. I don't know what that is, but whether it's some additional work from our team or potentially a discount just in good faith that's happening this month of December. So if anyone is interested in working with us through you, then definitely reach out through the boss. But otherwise they can find us just on Neil Patel, Dotcom or Excel dot com or NPE, digital dot com, probably too many websites to mention, but you can't go wrong with Neil Patel.

[00:34:07]

Dotcom. Got it. Got it.

[00:34:09]

So just going into some bonus questions, right? If you could be a superhero, who would it be and why?

[00:34:14]

I didn't prepare for that one. Who would I be? I don't know. Probably Heman. Do you remember Heman? I do remember him. And just because it was wild and funky, you know, but I guess that would be.

[00:34:28]

Yeah, I mean, he meant is definitely when I think about him, he's like a cult classic for sure. Right.

[00:34:33]

And the reason why I say that is because I saw a blip of a documentary on the making of human. And apparently these guys were like on LSD and stuff and they were just making stuff up as they went along, like, oh yeah, he needs to write a tiger and he's got to have some just crazy stuff. That's interesting. And it's not your typical Superman or a Batman or anything.

[00:34:56]

I mean, yeah. I mean, he's kind of like the weird Superman that says the whole alter ego and and then he calls it a power Grayskull. And then he ripped off his shirt.

[00:35:05]

Sort of got me in a nutshell, a little bit of me.

[00:35:12]

Great.

[00:35:13]

So if you could spend twenty four hours with anybody dead or alive, uninterrupted, who would it be and why?

[00:35:21]

This is always like the stumper question that people have to stop and think about. I've been around a lot of celebrities in my life, built around some really powerful people I've experienced. I mean, like from generals of Delta Force to James HETFIELD of Metallica to NBA NFL superstars, I took a nap in Jordan's locker one time and in Chicago hung out with those guys. I've been around a lot of great people. If I had to spend twenty four hours, it would still be with my wife and my kids.

[00:35:54]

And this is a realization I've had recently as my kids grow, is that I only have so much time left with them. So I don't know. It's probably a corny answer, but I wouldn't change anything. I would just be here as I am now.

[00:36:06]

I mean, I think it's a testament to once you I think you reach a level of success and then you kind of understand that what really matters is it the money, is it the fame? Is it the glory is a success. And then you really stop and think about the only thing I really have is my family. So to your point, you've reached a particular level to where your family is, your pride and joy, which I definitely commend.

[00:36:28]

So this is the time when I kind of just give you the microphone and you can ask me any question you like if you have any. I guess I'm just curious what it seems like. You've been an entrepreneur for a while, been involved in different things like what caused you to make the leap and when did that happen for you?

[00:36:45]

So for me, I think it was always there. And then in college, it was always trying to figure out things. And through that work journey, I kind of had opportunities here and there. So I went full time, Ind., about 10, 11 years ago. Got it. And then that journey was more so I pretty much got primary custody of my son. And it was an opportunity for me to say, you know what, I could work for somebody where I can kind of create my own system, create my own business, and then leave behind a legacy for my son.

[00:37:14]

And he was young enough. I want to have to grow up in that environment. I want him to understand that you shouldn't have to if you don't want to work for anybody. And there may be highs and lows, but in that opportunity, you can see how you can come out on top in the end, right?

[00:37:29]

That's awesome. Share similar vision. Like I say, 20 years. But where do you see yourself in two years? In two years?

[00:37:38]

It was just kind of crazy because like just recently, I came across this crossroads of kind of building up this podcast and getting into like YouTube development and all this other stuff. But I'm thinking that. Again, I'm always hungry for more information and more education, so I'm starting to dip more into real estate now. So I haven't really, like made a large announcement, but I'm starting to get into real estate investment and on a different scale. So, I mean, obviously, there's real estate investment where you can look at buildings, you could look at vertical deals.

[00:38:05]

But I'm more into the space of kind of like land and understanding the land opportunities and the resources on the land and how you can monetize all that three, four or five times and make a legacy of monetizing that land, not necessarily farming, but just like lumber, for example, like just understanding the value of lumber and is a renewable resource that you want some money, you cut down some trees and plant some new ones. And in five, 10, 20 years later, you still have more money, you have more trees.

[00:38:30]

So just getting in more space of two years from now, I'll have everything that I'm going on right now. But I'm probably more into the real estate space to a certain extent.

[00:38:38]

That's interesting. Have you ever read a book written by Nelson Nash? I think he was from Georgia, too, maybe. But he was a forester like a for a forest resource planner. And he wrote the book called Be Your Own Banker. I believe. I'm trying to think I mean, just look up his name, Nelson Nash, and it's either be your own banker or something like that, but it's about creating your own bank off of whole life insurance policies is pretty interesting.

[00:39:05]

I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a renewable. So it's interesting because I was actually an insurance agent at one time. So I definitely understand that model and how that works. So it's kind of like going into wealth management. Exactly. Through insurances. So right before yourself, you know, giving anyone a percentage of your money. Another question for you. When you're not working, what do you do for fun?

[00:39:29]

I say I'm kind of a wild card to some extent. I love rock climbing. I actually just picked up sailing earlier this year. Like, maybe. May this year, so got a sailboat, and so every time I get opportunity, I'm out on a boat just sailing. And it's one of those life skills is kind of one of those things that a sailboat is not a powerboat. You just turn on and crank it up. There's checks and balances.

[00:39:50]

So I'm trying to harness that skill to I'm a sailor. And any time I have opportunity to go, like, you know, to some ninja warrior stuff, climb some trees, do some cartwheels, I'm always game for that. That's awesome. Well, if you ever make to San Diego, this is a nautical paradise. So want to go sailing? Yeah, definitely.

[00:40:08]

Definitely. I definitely appreciate your time. And I think you definitely gave my audience, like a lot of things to think about, a lot of insight. So I definitely appreciate everything you've brought to the table. Appreciate you having me. Definitely. Definitely. Thank you. See Grant over and out. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Boston College, I hope you got some helpful insight and clarity to the diverse approach on your journey to becoming a trailblazer at this podcast.

[00:40:34]

Helped you please email me about it. Submit additional questions.

[00:40:38]

You would love to hear me ask our guests and or drop me your thoughts at an essay. Grant dotcom post comments, share hit subscribe and remember to become a boss uncage you have to release your Antibes essay.

[00:40:52]

Grant signing off listeners Abaza Uncaged are invited to download a free copy of our host essay. Grant's insightful book, Become an Uncage Trailblazer. Learn how to release your primal success in 15 minutes a day. Download now at W-W Dot S.A.G. R.A. Dotcom Slash Boss Uncaged.