Coming up next on PassionStruck.

Think of soap operas and the emotional roller coaster that they take you through. That's an example of really good storytelling. And what you got to do is think about the moments in your story, the scary ones, the happy ones, the good ones, the bad ones, the exciting ones, and how to integrate them and take people throughout the journey. And make sure you share the details because the devil's in the details of storytelling.

Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turned their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEO EOS, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to episode 446 of Passion struck, consistently ranked as The Number One Alternative Health Podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every single week, eager to listen, to learn, and to discover new ways to live better, to be better, and to make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that.

We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to spotify or passion struck. Com/starterpacks to get started. Are you curious to find out where you stand on the path to becoming passion struck? Dive into our engaging passion struck quiz. Craft it to reflect the core principles shared in my latest book. This quiz offers you a dynamic way to gage your progress on the passion struck continuum. Just head over to passion struck. Com to embark on this insightful journey. And with just 20 questions in roughly 10 minutes of your time, don't miss this chance to gain valuable insights into your passion struck journey. Take the quiz today. In case you missed it, earlier this week, I interviewed psychologist Emma Sapella. We discuss her roadmap to becoming psychologically sovereign, empowering you to break free from self-destructive beliefs and live life to the fullest, as well as her role the science director of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism, Research and Education, where she spearheads research on fostering compassion and altruism throughout society.

If you like that previous episode or today's, we would so appreciate you giving it a five-star rating and review. They go such a long way in strengthening the passion-struct community where we can help more people to create lives of significance. I know we and our guests love to hear your feedback. Today, we are doing a different type of episode, and we are diving deep into the realm of digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and personal branding, with none other than Neil Patel, a New York Times bestselling author recognized by Forbes as one of the top 10 marketers and held by the Wall Street Journal as a top influencer on the web. Neil's journey from a teenage entrepreneur to being honored by President Obama as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30. And his recognition by the United Nations showcases not just his brilliance in digital marketing, but also his profound impact on global business practices. In today's episode, Neil shares invaluable insights into the power of personal branding, the essence of understanding your audience, and the magic of storytelling in building a brand that resonates and endures. We'll explore Neil's unique perspective on leveraging failures as stepping stones for success, his methodical approach to creating massive personal brand influence, and how he views the future of content creation and digital marketing.

I learned so much in this episode. Whether you're an inspiring entrepreneur, a digital marketing enthusiast, or someone passionate about creating Creating a life of intention and purpose, Neil's journey and expert advice offer a roadmap to success. So join us as we uncover the strategies that have propelled Neil to the forefront of industry and how you can apply these lessons to skyrocket your own personal and professional growth. Thank you for choosing PassionStrux and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. If you're aged 80 or over or have a weak immune system, it's time to get your COVID-19 spring booster vaccine. Your spring booster will top up your immunity against COVID-19 and help protect you from serious illness for the months ahead. It's recommended you get your booster before the end of May. Talk to a participating GP or pharmacist today. I'll call our HSC Live team on 1800 700 700. Visit hsc. Ie for more information from the HSC.

I am absolutely thrilled today to have Neil Patel on PassionStruck. Welcome, Neil.

Thanks for having me.

Well, I am so excited to have you here. And as I told you before we started, I feel like I've been following you now for over a decade. I wanted to start out with your earlier journey into entrepreneurship, which started unusually early for you with various business ventures during your teenage years. Can you share how some of those experiences helped shape your perspective on business and innovation?

Sure. I grew up in middle class America. My mom was a teacher. My dad was a loan processor. People wanting mortgages for their house. He worked for the banks. I wanted to live better than the lower middle class lifestyle, or maybe we were just plain middle class lifestyle. I wanted something better than that. I was too young to actually get a job, Microsoft or Oracle, because they're not hiring high school students. Maybe they are today, but I doubt it. Back then, they definitely weren't. What I wanted to do was make money. The only way to make money was at that time, start your own business. That's how I really got into entrepreneurship. That's how I started my journey. When I was searching for jobs online like Microsoft, Oracle, and I quickly realized they weren't hiring people at my age, and they weren't hiring without college degrees back then. I realized, What? I can't find a job. Let me just create a job board to help other people start a job. Bad idea, but that's what I did. And that was my first dip into entrepreneurship.

Well, I love it. I started working myself when I was younger. I wish I would have explored more entrepreneurship in my teens as well. But I think any type of work sets a good baseline for trying to figure it out and understanding yourself and understanding where you want to take your career. It was also good for me because there were some failures that I had in an early age as well. That's where I wanted to go next. I think sometimes we all have defining events in our life, whether those are great defining events or pivotal failures. Can you describe a defining event for you that set your stage for your future success?

There wasn't one defining stage, and I tell most people this. People think they have a long stages. In most cases, they have many things that got them to the path of where they're at today. It wasn't necessarily one thing and one aha moment or light bulb that just turned on. What I tell people is you're going to make a lot of mistakes, and I made tons. I tried to create a cloud computing company before it was hot and it failed miserably. Right time, wrong people, poor execution. I tried to create a web analytics company before Google Analytics came out for free. Again, did a lot of things right time or wrong time. The thing that I learned from my mistakes was, I'm going to make mistakes. Most entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Bill Gates, all make mistakes. What separates the winners from the losers is the winners continually learn from their mistakes, and they avoid making the same one over and over again. Because if you don't make the same mistakes over and over again, eventually, you'll be down a path doing the right stuff and you'll accomplish a lot of your goals.

I appreciate everything that you're saying. I love how you say that there's not one defining thing, but it was a series, because for everyone, it really differs. And for me, I've had a number of defining events that have influenced me, not just one. So I truly appreciate that. So I want to really talk about personal branding today, marketing yourself, and going through some different elements of that. But I'm going to start out with this. I was reading your blog and you wrote an interesting blog titled, I Wish I Never Built a Personal Brand. Can you talk about that and explain why?

Personal branding is great. We've analysis on our revenue at our ad agency, NPA Digital. The first year of business, we did around 5 million in revenue. Almost all of it came from my personal brand. The second year, I believe it was around 18 million in revenue, and around 10 million came from my personal brand. Then the year after, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but I know it was in the '30s, at least. Still, only 10 million came from my personal brand. As the company kept growing and doubling in size and kept growing year after year, we still never I drove more than 10 million in revenue from my personal brand. Still to this day, maybe around 10 million comes from my personal brand, but that's less than 10% of our revenue. It just goes to show personal branding is great, but you're only going to make so much money from your personal brand. Jordans have done really well for Nike. Michael Jordan made good money. Lebron James asked, so has Kobe Bryant from selling shoes. But the person who really made the most money is Nike. Kylie Cosmetics did really well selling beauty products because leveraging the Kylie Jenner name.

But who's done better in beauty is Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, and all these big corporate brands. Personal branding is fine. I do think a corporate brand is better. I'm not saying you should ignore a personal brand. Personal brand helps you get things started. But you really need to build a corporate brand to do well in the long run. You just can't rely on a personal brand.

Yeah, it's an interesting discussion because even for myself, I have my personal brand, but I have a corporate brand But I have a corporate brand, which is passion struck. And even though I equate myself to passion struck, it's still a team environment. And you're right, I make the majority of my money through passion struck versus my personal brand. So if you're someone who's starting out on this journey, I have been told oftentimes by people that, initially, that I should have gotten rid of passion struck or gotten rid of my personal website and not kept both. But I think they both serve different purposes. What are your thoughts on that?

I think they serve different purposes. I'm a fan of having to. I still think majority of the time needs to be spent on the corporate side, but there's nothing wrong with having to. There's nothing wrong with having a personal social profile in a corporate one. It can't hurt. It just helps.

I think a lot of individuals struggle to market themselves, and it comes down to whether they think they're marketable. Maybe they lack creativity or some other excuse they might have. What are people doing to shoot themselves in the collective foot when it comes to building successful personal brands and presence and the SEO around them when they're not marketing themselves?

There's a few things people do wrong. Number one, they produce crap content. People want you to produce good content and consistently in a lot of it. This content needs to be about new stuff people haven't heard about. They don't want regurgitated old information. The second thing is they're not persistent. You're not going to build over a personal brand in a month or six months or a year. It takes a solid three plus years for it to kick in. It doesn't mean that your personal brand will peak out in three years. It can grow much more after three years. It doesn't mean that you're going to get no results in the first three years. You can slowly see a trajectory. If you had to be persistent enough and be willing to push forward for at least three years to see some meaningful results. If you don't post content every single day on all those social platforms, you're not consistent, you're not creating amazing content. If you make some of those mistakes, even if you do it for three years, it's not going to work out. So not only does the content have to be amazing and great and you have to be posting on a regular basis, you need to be doing it for a minimum of three years.

Yeah. Speaking of content, I've seen some of LinkedIn posts. There was one that had a great interview of you where you put emphasis on video content and the need to distribute video content four times daily across multiple platforms, which if you don't have a podcast or something like that, it could be difficult. Why does this four times daily matter so much? And what advice do you give to people on how they even get a hold of this content or create it?

You can use ChatGPT for ideas. You can read articles on the web. You can browse social. The formula we typically use is post on X three, four times a day, see what hits, use the winners, create videos. You can just bust at your phone, record yourself. You don't need fancy editing, and put those short form videos on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, and you're off into the races, and then create at least one blog article a week based on the content that performed the best.

Okay, so what I heard there is you go to X Twitter, try out three to four pieces of content, seeing if any of them resonate. From there, you then take the piece that's resonating the most, start doing some short videos around different aspects of that content, which you could put into ChatGPT to get ideas on what to talk about, and then utilize this to create a blog post. And I have seen different bloggers use different approaches. For instance, my friend Seth Godin blogs almost every single day and has been doing so for a long time. What do you think is the best frequency for your blog?

Ideally, 2-3 times a week. If you can't do that, no less than once a week.

Okay. And then how do you suggest utilizing other platforms like Medium as compared to your blog? Do you post similar content or do you recommend not doing at all?

You don't need a Medium. You just need the content on your own website.

Okay. And I saw your interview with our mutual friend, Rory Vaden. And you guys talked a lot about creating a personal brand, and I really love brand builders' formula. One of the things that they always start with is discovering your uniqueness. So I think finding your uniqueness and then actually utilizing it as that core pitch point are two different things. How would you suggest to someone that they go about one finding their uniqueness? And then once they do, what are some of your suggestions on then how do they properly articulate that? Because that's really the lens for which they should showcase their expertise, as I understand some of your past talks.

I wouldn't worry too much about how you find your uniqueness or showcase it. I would look at it from a different approach. Post a ton of content see what sticks, and then you'll figure out what people like that you're posting and what resonates with them. Then you know what to double down on because that's your uniqueness, that's your angle, that's how you want to convey yourself. But Instead of worrying about it at the beginning, what you should just do is test a ton of different content, ton of different content types, and see what sticks because that's what's going to give you ideas.

We're really on this show about personal development. How do you see is digital marketing and personal development intersecting?

Yeah. Personal development is just about improving yourself, always trying to be better each and every single day. If you can do that, great. I know it's tough. But digital marketing is really important to get yourself out there. Improving isn't just about learning something new. It can also be about getting more notoriety and Fame out there, whether you like it or not, because that can do wonders for your career. Whether you want to be an entrepreneur or whether you want to work nine to five. Having a brand doesn't hurt. And the way you get that brand is you're going to have to use a lot of digital marketing.

Yeah, maybe we could talk through some of the different ways you can do that. So what is your thought now on podcast like we're doing right now? Do you think the whole area is saturated right now and people should shy away from it? Or do you think that this is something that is still a great medium for people to explore?

So check this out. I put this on X the other day, and it's called, You're Creating the wrong type of Content. The average person spends 556 minutes a day consuming content. I got that number from a breakdown of a few different sources. So TV 294 minutes, according to marketing charts. Seems high, but that's what they're saying. Videos, 154 minutes a day. That came from SocialPilot. Text, 48 minutes a day. Economist. Podcast, 60 minutes a day. That came from Backlinko. Now, going after the TV vertical, even though it has the highest consumption, it's competitive, it's hard. A few people control, really, the channels. When you think about videos, according to Micro Focus, YouTube alone gets 4 million hours of videos uploaded each day, with the average web video being 76 seconds. According to Binder, that means roughly 189,473,682 videos are being uploaded each day to day, and that's just YouTube. It's really competitive. As for text, 7 1.5 million blog posts a day. Now with AI, you're going to see those numbers going even higher. On the flip side with podcasts, there are roughly 5 million of them, but only 720 of them have more than 10 or so episodes.

The average podcast has roughly 50 episodes, according to Yagura. According to podcast pages, there are roughly 82,191 new podcast episodes that are released each day. If you look at our podcast, Marketing School, it generates roughly a million listens a month, and we don't spend much at all. Now, we started doing this stuff where my co-host was like, Oh, let's get someone to help record and make it all fancy and set it up. I was like, Okay, whatever. That cost us thousands of dollars. But before that, we were getting the same amount of views for just recording over Zoom calls, and our cost was a few hundred bucks, maybe 600 bucks a month. We don't do much to market our podcast. But on the flip side, if I look at all my other social channels and channels like SEO, et cetera, I spend more than 140 grand a month. Podcasts? I could get it done in less than a thousand. It's just not that competitive.

I love it. Listeners, if you haven't started a podcast, look into it. But I would definitely tell you that before you do really research, different people who are doing it understand how people put on different shows, the formats they use, interviews, non-interviews, individual episodes, non-individual episodes, length of time you want to do it. But more importantly than anything, what I had to get in my mind, Neil, is that I was going to do this for the long haul because as you were saying, so many people start after 10, 15 episodes. They don't see the traction that they're hoping for. I certainly didn't either. But I kept going with it, just setting a goal to myself that I was going to do at least a year before I even started reconsidering what I was doing. I think the same thing goes with any posting that you're doing. It's not as if you're going to start using X and overnight you're going to start having your post take off. Same thing with LinkedIn, et cetera. So no matter what you're doing, I think it comes down to consistency, which is something that you talk about quite frequently.

But most people are too lazy to be consistent. Just being honest, they really are.

It does take work. But I think what people get wrong is they think they have to be overly creative or they think that they have to package these things in the right way. What I found works for me the most is whenever you're putting out there is authentic. People, I think, can sense that in the person who's delivering it. What are your thoughts on that?

Authenticity is huge. If you're not authentic, people see right through it, it doesn't work out. You just got to be yourself. You got to be careful, too. Being yourself can cause issues as well. For example, some people are politically opinionated or religiously opinionated, and you can turn off a lot of people from that, or some people are very opinionated on things like what's happening with the war or the world. You just got to be careful because you've seen... I've seen people not buy Teslas anymore because of what Elon Musk puts out. I'm not here to tell you what he puts out is bad or good. That's his life and it's his prerogative. But it affects business, whether you like it or not. You just have to be careful in what you put out and just be cautious about it. The internet stores stuff. It's out there forever. Clicking a delete button doesn't mean it's gone. A lot of people screen capture all this stuff.

Yes, I know this firsthand because as I've approached this, I've just decided to go right down the middle and not take any sides at all, because what I'm trying to do is help people from all walks of life. And I don't really care what their political affiliation is, what their religious affiliation is, what their sexual orientation is. I just want to help. And I always feel I feel if you come down even slightly on one side or another, you're alienating a certain component of your audience. So I feel it's just more beneficial, at least for what I'm doing, to not try to take any sides at all. But you're right, there are a ton of people. Sean Ryan is a great example, another podcaster and veteran who I know who does take a very strong angle. But in so doing, he has also attracted a very big crowd who follows that that angle. So it just becomes a personal choice in what you're doing.

At the end of the day, the way I'm looking at marketing just in general is there's going to be a lot of ups and downs. There's going to be a lot of things that you like or don't like or that you see or people judging or people putting comments that can hurt your feelings or can hurt business. You got to not just think things through, but you also have to have pretty tough skin, especially as your personal brand grows.

Man, I have seen that firsthand. The more it grows, and I think the more people see it out there, the more you start getting attacks. And sometimes what I've seen is they come from the closest people that you have in your life. And it's really an interesting dynamic how that happens. But unless you're doing it, you're not going to be able to get yourself out there. So to me, you just have to have that thick skin and realize that you're talking about your own success, your own journey, your values, and that's really what matters. And speaking of people who are authentic, I just wanted to talk about two, and maybe we could explore, since they're both very successful at what they're doing, maybe what has caused them to have this distinctively successful niches that they've each inserted themselves into. The first is Tim Farris, and the second is Jay Shetty, and both have really exploded. I look at what Jay has done over the past three or four years, and he is just like a rocket ship. And the same thing with Tim Ferrace, who you could say is very authentically who he is and how he presents themselves.

So I was hoping you might be able to use those two as case studies on what are they doing right and what is causing their content to take off in the way it is.

Well, first off, they're not in niches. People say the riches are in the niches. That's far from true. The riches are in big, massive terms that appeal to everyone. The biggest companies in the world create stuff that appeals to everyone, not niches. The second thing is they've been doing it for a very long time. The third is they focus on trying to creating amazing content that really resonates with others. Look how many experiments Tim has run with his own life, own body, for some of his books to really gain traction. It's not like you just crank something on be like, Yeah, here you go. He puts in a lot of time and energy.

Yeah, I like his new series that he's doing where he is partnering, if people haven't seen this, he's partnering with professionals doing things that he has never done before. For instance, he had never played drums before, and he did a whole learning segment with Stuart Copeland, the drummer for the police, and basically is on camera being vulnerable, showing himself learning how to play drums as well as other things. And I think that approach is really ingenious because it really puts him out there and it makes him vulnerable in a way that other people can see basically his screw-ups and also his progress. And I think the point he's trying to make with it is that if you look at the people who are making gains in any area of their life, it's because they're investing time in it. And if If you just simply invest 10 to 15 minutes of your time every single day and you do that for a year, you're going to be better in that field than probably 95% of the other people on the planet. I'm just using that as an example, but it's probably not far from the truth.

I think the same thing goes with what you're talking about here with content. Can you put those two thoughts together?

Well, yes. And funny enough, Google talks about something called E, and it's E-A-T. It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. When your content has that, it's much more likely to do better. For example, if you're playing the drums, you can share your own personal experiences if you're brand new to it. But on the flip side, if you're the lead drummer for the Police, which is one of the most famous bands from back in the day, you can talk about your own experiences and techniques and things like that that others don't teach you at school to get really good at playing the drums. What people want is they want that personal touch in your content, stuff that you're just not going to find on YouTube in a normal how-to video.

For the person who's listening to this, who feels that internet marketing is a moving target, meaning the tools and platforms are constantly changing. We now have AI. Social media platforms are making changes. Google puts out new algorithms all the time. I think a lot of people are thinking, How do you keep up with all this and keep your head above the water in such a rapidly changing climate? What would be your advice to them?

Yeah, so my advice to them is continually read and stay up to date, go to their current conferences, and you'll know how to stay ahead. For example, today, Google released an algorithm update or announcement about it, and they confirmed it. They're trying to get rid of 40% of the unhelpful content out on the web, and that's great. They broke down what they're changing, reading it and staying up to date. There was a few key takeaways. They want original content, not duplicate content or regurgitated. Non-helpful content isn't going to do as well. They may not even index it in their web. You got to look at it as, Oh, if you create AI content or content through AI, a lot of it's just going to be regurgitated. It won't be as helpful. It's focusing on the signals that people are putting out there, the platforms are so you can adapt and do better.

Did I just hear you say that they're going to get rid of 40 % of content that they find not valuable?

Unhelpful content, yes, but it's probably a really tiny percentage. You get what I mean, right? Because it's like what is talked about as unhelpful, but they think they can get rid of 40 % of the junk.

So Neil, I wanted to ask you, knowing your audience is critical, how do you stay connected with your audience's evolving needs and preferences, and how do you choose when you need to adapt what you're doing?

The way I stay in touch with my audience is you continually communicate with them, direct message them, help them out whenever they have questions, respond to comments. And was the second part of your question? One was the staying connected and the other was?

The second one is, how do you stay evolved with knowing what their preferences are and how they are changing and then changing your approach to their evolution?

Sure. Well, you get feedback when you stay connected, and then you can test new things out and you can see how it works. Either it's going to work out well or it won't. But the way you adapt is a simpler approach. You just test new things based on the feedback you get. If it resonates, it'll do well. If it doesn't resonate, it won't do well. And then you need to move on and try something else.

Okay. One of the things I've put some time into is understanding storytelling, because I think storytelling has been very critical in me trying to explain my brand and also the content that I tried to put on the channel. Even when I was getting ready for your interview, I was trying to look back at your story and stories that you put out there. What tips can you offer for listeners and how they can craft compelling narratives and better utilize storytelling Think of soap operas.

If you haven't watched one in a while like me, you can always just turn on the TV and you can find one pretty much in any country, or you can just find one on YouTube. And think about the emotional roller coaster that they take you to. That's an example of really good storytelling. What you got to do is think about the moments in your story, the scary ones, the happy ones, the good ones, the bad ones, the exciting ones. You got to figure out how to integrate them and take people throughout the journey. And make sure you share the details because the devil's in the details of storytelling. That's how you get a story to do really well. It's when you lack the details, the stories tend not to do well.

I love that. So details matter. And I guess not only the details, but how you portray them, the emotion that you're using to talk through them. And I I know for me, when I was starting this podcast, it was hard for me at first to be vulnerable because some of the things that you end up sharing are really painful. But once you start sharing them, you realize that this sabre-tooth tiger that you've been worried about jumping out at you, it doesn't do that. In fact, I think it makes people just tune in more because they see that you are sharing. And if someone is at that point now where they do have some great stories, but they don't feel the confidence or maybe they're worried about self-criticism or criticism that they might get from it, what would be your recommendations for them?

So you're saying someone ends up posting it and they're getting criticism for it or they're not doing well?

No, I'm saying that they are afraid to put themselves out there. And how do you break through that mindset, that feeling that it's unsafe to realizing that you're going to need to share if you want to grow?

It's really simple. If you don't put anything out there, nothing will happen. If you put something out there and it sucks and people don't like it, no one's going to see it and nothing's going to happen anyways. If it's good, people will see it and they'll get traction and you'll feel great.

So basically, you might as well experiment with it. And if it doesn't do what you're thinking it's going to do, it's probably not touching that many people anyhow. And therefore, what is the loss and giving it a try.

Exactly.

Yeah. I guess when you grow and now you're talking to millions of people a month, what you say has more meaning. But I still think that people who have been tuning into you this long probably understand parts of your story. And the more that you can share parts that they don't know, I think it makes you more enduring.

Yeah. And people know not everything is going to be perfect or accurate or everyone's going to like That's okay. Adapt as time goes on. That's why I said earlier in the interview, people need to learn to have thick skin.

There are a lot of things changing when it comes to social media. I think the biggest one is probably AI and our use of it. But what do you suggest for the audience to invest their time in? What trends, what new technologies that you think are going to shape personal branding in the near future?

Chatgpt, amazing for doing research and helping you come up with ideas for content. So is Gemini. There's a lot of image tools out there like Midjourney, which are amazing. Sora is going to be amazing in the video creation. But I think these AI tools, you should use them, play with them. They're not at the point where they drastically help with personal branding or marketing in general. A lot of the data analysis that they do, the tools are off. A lot of the information they spit out is inaccurate and off. There's a lot of work that these tools need to do.

Yeah, I like using them just to get an idea. Let's say I'm working on a solo episode just to help me think about the structure that I'm going to use for it. But what I have found when I've used these is there is a ton of inaccuracies in the data that they pull. Plus, it reflects a completely different personality than who you are and your typical writing style. So I I have not found anything that comes close to the way I like to write, nor is it going to know your personal stories and how to weave them into the content, which makes it unique.

Yeah. And when you think about AI, too, Serguida Brin, the co founder of Google, who came out of retirement to work on AI, even said Gemini leans left, and so does ChatGPT and Grok and a lot of the others out there. We're talking about from a political stance. I don't really have any views on any of that stuff. But It doesn't matter where you stand politically. Just to show you how much work is involved, the way these platforms succeed is not to be biased, it's to be neutral and just share everything. That's how far they are from being perfect. They know these things. It's hard to get these tools and these technologies to be perfect. It takes so many hours and so much time. Everyone's like, Look how fast ChatGPT is evolving. It is evolving fast, but they haven't been working on it for a year or anything. This company is more than five or six years old. I agree it's progressing at a really rapid pace, and it'll continue to, but people just have to be patient because you're not going to get... People, in essence, are overestimating what AI can do for them in a short run, but they're underestimating what it can do for them in the long run.

It'll be able to do way more than you can imagine in the long run. But in the short run, it's not a magic wand that you can wave in. It solves all problems.

Yes, I think you just use it as an augmentation to what you're doing already. And what I is the trick is just knowing what input to put into it to get the type of content you want out of it, because the questions you ask, the tone that you ask it to set, the audience you ask it to deliver it for really matter when you're looking at the output of what it's delivering back to you. Those are some things that I've seen when I've been trying to play around with it, because my thought is instead of just ignoring it, the more I can learn about it and how to best utilize it on top of everything else I'm doing, it's just going to make everything I'm doing much easier. So one of the things I've heard you talk about in the past is the power of collaborations and networking. How have collaborations accelerated your brand's growth? And how do you select your collaborators and recommend others select theirs?

Yeah, collaborations is a great way to just grow your brand. And the way you select it is who has similar size as audiences or bigger audiences or slightly smaller, but their audience are related to yours and their audience should love to learn about you and vice versa.

Yeah, I think that's good. I see some collaborators are closer to my niche than others, and there are some who want to pull in someone of equivalent size. So it would be me trying to say I'm going to collaborate with Jay Shetty when we're at two completely different marketing levels. But how could you go about attracting influencers, even influencers or collaborators, even if you're smaller than them who might want to partner with you?

Yeah, you would first build a relationship. Reach out to them, comment on their post, get to know them, direct message them. It actually starts with the relationship. You could also try the cold outreach. We find the cold outreach to work quite well on LinkedIn. We found it to work better on LinkedIn than, say, Instagram or some of the other networks, but just cold outreach and building relationships.

What's your thoughts on LinkedIn? Do you think it's important to sign up for one of their pay-to-play programs, or do you shy against that?

You can sign up for it. There's nothing wrong with it, but we just use a lot of the free features. I know that our company, people do have pay-to-play accounts, too. And at our company, we probably have many paid accounts. I'm not saying they're good or they're bad. You can use either one.

Well, you have been really successful with your content on LinkedIn, and I've been talking to Tim Denning a lot about it as well, whose content moves. And I found some things that were pretty interesting. At first, I really thought that the newsletters were going to take off, but several people I've been talking to are saying they're not really benefiting people as much as they thought, and LinkedIn is really pushing them down a couple pegs as far as them really trying to promote the newsletters. What have you heard and found?

I've seen people do really well I don't know how much they're downplaying them or not. I just don't spend too much time on them because they don't necessarily produce the results that one may be looking for. It doesn't mean that they're downplaying them. I don't think the community cares too much for them more than anything else. Everyone adapts and loves newsletters. Linkedin would push it more. I think the problem is a lot of people don't care for the feature.

Got you. If that's not what is attracting people, what are some of your recommendations, specifically on LinkedIn, on what type of content does work?

The type of content that works is the stuff that you posted on X earlier. Remember we talked about posting multiple times a day, take your hits and then post it on LinkedIn? That model works.

Sometimes what I'm posting on Twitter might be more personal mastery type of things.

Well on LinkedIn, too. It doesn't have to be professional just because it's a professional network. I see people posting B2C content on LinkedIn and doing well, too.

What's What are your thoughts about the use of hashtags or tagging people or putting links into the post, those types of things?

They're all great. There's nothing wrong with that, but we do see a hashtag is not working as well as it used to. It's better than nothing.

Okay. I had always been told that not to put links in the actual post themselves and to put it in the comments because LinkedIn doesn't want to promote something that's going to take someone away from their platform.

That's most social networks. The moment you link out to a competitor at any site, they don't like it as much. They rather keep people on their own platform.

Okay. So how has... Another topic that I wanted to talk about is customer feedback over the long term. How much has that shaped your company and your brands? Or is it something you listen to, but you stick to your strategy and maybe use this to do slight adjustments?

We stick with our strategy, we then get feedback, or not even stick. We start our strategy, we get feedback. If enough people give us a similar feedback, we then adjust the strategy. It can shape it by a little or drastically, depending on what percentage give us the feedback. If everyone says you're doing something wrong and we don't like this, we change. If one out of thousands says we don't like this, we probably ignore it and move on and keep doing what we're doing.

Okay. One of the things that I think is extremely important in anything you do is to measure the performance of what you're doing. What metrics do you consider the most important for measuring your social performance and how it's impacting your brand, whether that's your personal brand or if you're running a small company, your company brand?

Yeah. So funny enough, I just gave a talk about this morning with the metrics that most people don't measure on social media. And it was quite interesting. So interesting stat for you. 62.3% of the world uses social media, but less than 1% actually knows how to measure their social media success or failure. So the 11 KPIs that we look at is conversions, impressions. So conversions Just sticking with that one first. Conversions is are you getting leads or direct sales? Impressions is how many views is your content getting? Geography, are you targeting the right region or country that is your ideal buyer? Follow or count, if it's going up into the right, that's good. Engagement, What's your % engagement rate when you post a video or an image or text? Your audience growth, like how fast are you growing on a monthly basis? How many direct messages are you getting? And what's the sentiment of those direct messages? Are they asking for help or business or they're saying great content? Post timing, if you post during the wrong time, you may not do as well. Brand mentions, the more people mentioning your brand, the better off you are.

Comment sentiment, if a lot of the comments are negative, then If you're not doing something good, if they're positive, you're doing something right. And retention. If people are watching a video or engaging with your content, how many of them stick to the end? Those are the 11 KPIs that a lot of people need to track but don't with their social.

Man, that is a great list. I'm going to have to put those in the show notes because that's a great starting point, I think, for anyone. And speaking of marketing, a lot of people now are writing more books. What are some of your best tips for someone who's written a to keep getting the message about the book out there and to drive not only sales of the book, but more the messaging that you're trying to bring from the book so that you can get things such as keynotes and other leads into your main business from it.

Sure. Continue to try to sell the book from your website, talk about it, get it mentioned articles, promote it when you're on podcast. All these things help with book sales, which then gets you more speaking gigs. Two, There are a lot of speaker bureaus out there. Submit yourself to them, talk about your book, and that will also help you get way more speaking gigs. You may have to start by speaking at some conferences for free, and you can talk and plug in your book. As you do well and you get more better ratings and reviews, then hopefully you'll get more speaking gigs, and hopefully they'll be paid.

Okay, and I have just a couple more questions for you. The first one would be advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. What is your top piece of advice for those who are to build a massive brand in the future? Where would you start? What are the first one, two, three things that you would do?

You can do it in any different way. You can post content on Facebook or Instagram or social or create it. It's not about the one, two, or three. That part's really easy because most people already know how to use social media. The hardest part is you got to pick a topic that's a big market and be that you're passionate about. If you're not passionate it, you won't create good content and you won't create enough of it consistently.

I love that you bring up passion given the name of this podcast is Passion Struct, so appreciate that. And then lastly, I've heard you talk a lot about fundamentals, and you've mentioned that success is about mastering the basics. Can you share an instance when maybe you or you've seen another influencer who's returning to the fundamentals, significantly impacted where they were and helped to take their brand to the next level?

Yeah, I haven't seen it too much with individuals because I don't track a ton. I've seen it with corporations where a lot of these big corporations stick with the fundamentals and they've done wonders with their growth rate and their revenue. But just think about what's working, and it may not always be sexy, and just keep doubling down on it, even if it's not sexy.

Okay. And then, Neil, for those who might not be familiar with your work, Where are some of the best places for them to go to learn more about you, but more importantly, some of the services that you offer?

I have an ad agency called NPDigital, where we help companies grow, and they can just go to npdigital. Com, blog neilpatel. Com. All my social handles are pretty much Neil Patel.

Okay. Well, Neil, thank you so much for being here, and it was such an honor to have you on the show.

Thanks for having me.

What an incredible honor that was to interview Neil Patel, and I wanted to thank Neil for joining us on today's show.

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This isn't just any podcast episode. It's a comprehensive guide to aging gracefully, packed with evidence-based strategies to enhance your health and well-being. In these countries, our most common and major diseases were universally rare, like heart disease. In the African population of Uganda, for example, coronary heart disease was almost nonexistent. If you look at age-matched heart attack rates in Uganda versus St. Louis, out of 632 autopsies in Uganda, one mild cognitive infarction, and it was evidence of a healed mild cognitive infarction, so it wasn't even the cause of death. Yet out of 632 autopsies in Missouri, same age and gender distribution, 6 myocardium infarction, so 100 times the rate of our leading killer. In fact, they were so blown away, went back to another 800 autopsies in Uganda, still just that one small field infarct. Out of 1,427 patients, less than one in a thousand. Whereas here in the United States, heart disease is an epidemic.

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