MI REWIND: OWNING YOUR DREAM THROUGH SIDE HUSTLES AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

‌W/‌ ‌NEIL‌ ‌PATEL‌

08 March 2024

On today’s Millennial Investing Rewind Episode, Robert sits down with Neil Patel to talk about how he got his start as an entrepreneur, his thoughts on side hustles, and how everyone should own their dream. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and successful entrepreneur. He is also recognized as one of the Top 10 marketers by Forbes, and one of President Obama’s Top 100 entrepreneurs under 30.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Why Neil decided to become a digital marketing entrepreneur.
  • How Neil funded his business.
  • Should a new entrepreneur raise venture capital for their business?
  • What it means to “own your dream.”
  • How you can make your own luck. 
  • What are the four major side hustles?
  • Some recommendations for side hustles.
  • Some thoughts on entrepreneurship.
  • And much, much more!

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

Robert Leonard  0:02  

On today’s show, I sit down with Neil Patel to talk about entrepreneurship, his thoughts on side hustles, and how everyone should own their dream. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and successful entrepreneur. He is also recognized as one of the Top 10 marketers by Forbes, and one of President Obama’s Top 100 entrepreneurs under 30. 

It’s easy to see just how successful Neil has become as a digital marketer and entrepreneur. He has over 750,000 subscribers on YouTube and nearly a million Facebook fans. 

Neil definitely knows his stuff and generously shares his information about the best digital marketing practices on his blog and podcast. I’m excited to share a conversation about his journey as an entrepreneur and the advice he would give to millennials who would like to become successful in their own ways. Hope you guys enjoy this episode. Let’s get started.

Neil Patel  0:53  

You’re listening to Millennial Investing by The Investor’s Podcast Network, where your host Robert Leonard interviews successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors to help educate and inspire the millennial generation.

Robert Leonard  1:15  

Hey, everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of Millennial Investing. I’m super excited to have Neil Patel with me today. Welcome to the show, Neil.

Neil Patel  1:21  

Thanks for having me.

Robert Leonard  1:23  

Let’s start the show by talking a bit about you. You’re a New York Times bestselling author. You were coined a Top 100 entrepreneur by Obama and a Top 100 marketer by Forbes. How did you get here?

Neil Patel  1:35  

Honestly, just grinding it out. It’s funny because a lot of people ask me what’s the secret, what’s the trick, and what’s the silver bullet. There really isn’t any of that. You do something long enough and you do it well enough. Eventually, things work out. 

I’m not the smartest person in the world by any means or any stretch. However, I’ve learned one simple concept over the years. You’re going to make mistakes as an entrepreneur no matter how smart you are, but the ones who succeed are the ones who continually learn from their mistakes and avoid making the same ones over and over again.

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Robert Leonard  2:04  

A few specific things I want to cover in the episode today are entrepreneurship, side hustles, and digital marketing. Let’s first talk about entrepreneurship. What made you want to even become an entrepreneur in the first place? Why a digital marketing business specifically?

Neil Patel  2:21  

When I was 15 and a half, I was picking up trash at a local theme park called Knott’s Berry Farm. It’s like a Disneyland but just not as well known and not as big. I didn’t like picking up trash, cleaning restrooms, and sweeping up vomit. 

One day I decided to look for a better job. I went to a site called monster.com. I know back in the day, a lot of people haven’t heard of monster.com. They’re old, but back in the day, they’re a publicly-traded company. They still may be. I couldn’t find any high-paying jobs that paid well. I saw one trend, you need a college degree. I was 15 and a half, what college degree did I have? I was still in high school. 

Through that whole process, I saw that I wasn’t qualified for any of the jobs. Monster was a publicly-traded company and I saw their financials, I was like, “Holy crap, these guys make a lot of money. I can’t find a job. Let me create a job board to help other people find a job. If I make 1% of what Monster makes, I’m going to be a rich kid.”  That’s how I started out. 

What I quickly learned and realized from that whole process is you set up a job website, you go and you try to make money. It’s not that simple. When I first started my job website, I made no money. The reason being is no one came to my website. I had to learn marketing. I paid some people to help me out. I got burned, ripped off, and I lost all my money. I had no choice but to learn it on my own. I got good at it. 

I started getting a ton of people on my job website. Then all of a sudden, I still wasn’t making money. However, I was good at the aspect of getting traffic to websites and I love that aspect. I then decided to focus there.

Robert Leonard  3:52  

What ended up happening with the job board website or business that you had started?

Neil Patel  3:56  

We shut down and focused purely on helping companies grow their traffic and eventually started printing software companies to help with that.

Robert Leonard  4:04  

Throughout this whole time, was there a moment where it hit you that you knew that you were going to be an entrepreneur and you were never going to go to a typical job? Or has it just kind of really evolved organically over time?

Neil Patel  4:16  

It just evolved organically over time. I didn’t know if I was going to go for a job or work somewhere or anything like that. I was just constantly grinding it out, and whatever happened, happened. Keep in mind when you’re like 15 and a half, 16 years old, you have nothing to lose. If it works, great. You’re doing better than when you were. If you fail, great. You’re still living with your parents and nothing’s really changed.

Robert Leonard  4:39  

When you were 15, and even your next business after that since your first business didn’t really make any money and you didn’t sell it. When you were just starting out, how did you start? It doesn’t sound like you raised any venture capital or anything like that. It sounds like you just bootstrapped it. Is that the process or the route that you went?

Neil Patel  4:54  

Well, as I mentioned, the job board didn’t work out. My mom’s a teacher and I grew up somewhat book smart. Not that book smart but smart enough. I also decided to take college classes while I was in high school. I was going to community college when I was around 16. 

My first class was speech 101 to give a speech on how Google works, how to rank your website, and get more traffic. Someone in there said, “Hey, my company is looking for someone like you. We didn’t know what it’s called, but we want to hire someone like you.” 

My first gig was around $5,000 a month. That’s how I started off. Then I did well through them. I thought it was rolling in the dough, but I didn’t realize I drove them roughly around $20 million in additional revenue. The owner of the company, he had a son. His son in the ad agency back then, he got me clients like Blue Cross, Blue Shield countrywide, which is now owned by Bank of America. From there, I just kept expanding and growing.

Robert Leonard  5:47  

What were you doing exactly for them to generate the $5,000 a month?

Neil Patel  5:52  

For $5000 they were paying me and I was getting some higher rankings on Google. So I would rank it in terms of power supply manufacturer. Now this company was called ELPAC. They got bought out eventually by someone else. What they did was produce power supplies for large corporations like Boeing planes and stuff like that.

Robert Leonard  6:14  

I think it’s going to vary from situation to situation, and everybody’s going to be different. However, in general, do you think it’s unwise for a new entrepreneur to try and raise venture capital for their business? Should more people be just trying to focus on their business itself and start bootstrapping rather than worrying about raising money?

Neil Patel  6:32  

Not all businesses are venture backable. A lot of people want to raise money but if you can’t figure out how to go after a big TAM, a total addressable market, not like a $500 million market, probably not even a billion-dollar market, but something that’s like a $10-50 billion market, usually, in most cases, raising venture capital doesn’t make sense. You should try to bootstrap it or raise some friends and family money. Just pick out dividend checks.

Robert Leonard  7:01  

Yeah, I think that’s the component that a lot of millennials who are listening to the show that might want to start their own startup miss is that they think they need venture capital. Then when they’re not able to raise it, they think that their idea is not good, when maybe it’s just not like you said venture capital is backable. Maybe they have a good idea. It’s just not going to grow into an addressable market that is big enough to be backed by them.

Neil Patel  7:22  

Bingo, you got it right. There are so many times where I’ve tried raising venture capital and I failed. Funny enough, some of those businesses did well. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to be the next Uber or anything. They still didn’t do that well, but they did well enough. I was really happy with the outcome. 

I could tell that VCs wouldn’t because it wasn’t a business that could make hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year in profit or anything like that.

Robert Leonard  7:45  

For a normal person who has a regular career, say making $50,000-100,000 a year, a business can be successful if it brings in an extra $5,000 a month or $10,000 a month, or even a little bit more.

However, for a venture capital firm, that’s not going to be nearly enough because they’re spreading their bets across all these different companies. They need a company that is 10X or 100X for them to make up for all of their losses. So there’s really just a missing alignment of incentives, if you will, for companies that can be successful, but small and venture capital.

Neil Patel  8:16  

That’s right. I think entrepreneurs make that mistake in which $10,000, $5,000, even $3,000 a month could be great, and it can change your life. That additional income is amazing. 

However, for venture capitalists, they’re raising funds of hundreds of millions, sometimes even billions of dollars. They don’t want to manage 100-200 deals. They want to manage fewer deals, put bigger checks in and go big. They want to find the next Uber, the next Airbnb, the next Peloton. You can’t be massive like that. It’s just not a good fit. 

Though that doesn’t mean you have a bad business. It just means that maybe you should raise some money from friends and family. If you create a business that pays off 200 grand a year in profit, and your friends and family who own 50% of the company gave you a 150 grand to start with, but they now get a check each year for 100 grand, they’re happy. That’s a great return for them.

Robert Leonard  9:05  

I talk about that a lot on the show. I really think that that’s such a powerful idea because I’m all about having big goals. I’m sure you are as well. But setting out thinking that you have to build a billion-dollar business, I feel like it almost sets you up for failure. 

Whereas you could have a business that does $3,000 to $10,000 a month in profit. Like you said, that’s life-changing.  I think that that’s a lot more achievable for a lot of people than a billion-dollar company. You just have to set your expectations appropriately.  

Now I want to talk about your book “Hustle.” In that book, you talk about why people must own their dreams, not rent them from others. What does this mean and why is it so important?

Neil Patel  9:43  

Let’s back up actually a little bit. So in life, let’s say most people are lost and they don’t even know what they want to do. A lot of people believe that when you’re growing up, you know you want to be: a doctor, a policeman, or a firefighter. When you’re growing up, did you have an idea of what you wanted to be? 

Robert Leonard  10:00  

Yes, I was going to be a professional motocross racer.

Neil Patel  10:04  

Alright, did you end up doing that?

Robert Leonard  10:07  

Very closely, but no.

Neil Patel  10:09  

Most people similar to you don’t end up doing what they thought they were going to do when they were a kid. Most people believe that others know what they want to do when they’re kids. That’s actually not the case in life. 

In reality, as you grow up, a lot of us don’t know what we want to do. Majority don’t. Some people go their whole life not knowing what they want to do. What ends up happening is that if you have this dream of, “Oh, I want to do this or do that,” by all means go for it. However, most of us don’t even have that dream so we don’t know what we want to do.

What I would do, if I were you is [to] start testing new things out. Don’t go just copy what someone else is doing. Don’t copy your friend, because they’re a firefighter, a doctor, or entrepreneur, and they’re doing well. You need to experiment and try a handful of things. You’ll quickly realize what you don’t like, what you like, and what you’re naturally good at. 

Typically, what you’re naturally good at is usually what you become more passionate about, what you’re going to enjoy, and what you’re going to excel at in life. You need to double down on that and focus on that. What you’ll find is you’ll thrive and do much better in life than if you just tried copying someone else. That’s a huge mistake we see. 

I see that day in and day out. It’s just that people believe that when you grow up, you know what you want to do. That’s what people do when they’re older. It’s like that very rarely happens. I don’t really know anyone who said they wanted to do X when they were a kid, and they ended up doing that same thing when they grew up. 

Robert Leonard  11:32  

How do millennials deal with the dynamic of wanting it now, versus putting in the work and the time that it takes to actually get what they want? 

Neil Patel  11:42  

You just got into putting in hours. If you expect the results without getting there, it’s just not gonna happen. If the world was that easy, we would all be successful. We would all be happy in life and rich. That’s not the case. 

There’s not a ton of entrepreneurs. Most of us were going out there and we’re working for someone. The ones who are doing stuff on their own aren’t doing as well as they want right away. It’s because things take time in life. It’s the reality.  I wish it wasn’t the case, but it really is.

Robert Leonard  12:12  

I forget who it was that told me this but they said they wish that there was a shortcut or a secret that they could tell them and if there was, they would. However, there isn’t. You just have to put in the work.

Neil Patel  12:21  

Exactly. It’s not just about putting in the work. You have to put it in and you have to focus on it. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are sitting down in the room and someone asked him in an interview, ‘What was one of the biggest things that led to your success?”

They both wrote down, without talking to each other right then and there, that it was focus. A lot of people when they want to do something, they put in hours and they also start getting scatterbrained, especially with millennials. I don’t know why, but I’ve seen them more and more scatterbrained versus just sitting down, focusing, hunkering down, just doing that one thing, and trying to do it really well for 5, 10, or 15 years.

Robert Leonard  12:57  

Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to say is millennials specifically, but just even entrepreneurs in general, they tend to get distracted by what a lot of people will call the shiny object syndrome where everything looks like [the] “next idea is going to be the idea” or they got to go try something else because this didn’t work quick enough. 

I think that’s where a lot of people run into issues. I mean, I even fall into it myself. For a while, I was bouncing from idea to idea to idea until I finally found one that I was passionate about. It did get a little traction early on. I’ve been able to stick with it but I think that’s where a lot of people fail.

Neil Patel  13:28  

A lot of people are just like, look, jumping around and not putting in enough time because things that we all want to happen and see usually just don’t work right away. 

Robert Leonard  13:38  

If they did, I mean, everybody would do it, right? If it was just you had to put in a week, a time or two weeks, even a month, if that’s all it took, then everybody would just do that. 

Neil Patel  13:46  

Exactly. 

Robert Leonard  13:47  

Also in your book, you wrote about how millennials can create their own luck and “pop”. How is that? 

Neil Patel  13:55  

One of my co-authors, Patrick, has a son. I’m going to butcher the story because I don’t know the type of fish but let’s call it koi fish, right? 

Patrick and his son one day we’re in a little creek. He said, “Dad, let’s go find some fish. Let’s go see.” Patrick said, “Son, there’s no fish in there. Let’s just go.” His son just jumps in there, shuffles his feet, and then boom, he starts seeing some fish pop up and appear.

If you don’t end up trying to create that momentum, that energy of trying to do something, nothing is going to happen. It’s so funny. I meet so many people these days that are like, “How did you get lucky? How did this happen for you?” I say, “A lot of it’s hard work.” 

Sure, there is some luck there when it comes to entrepreneurship and succeeding in life and even things like right timing, but if you don’t take the time and effort to try or do anything, it’s very rare that you’re going to get that luck. 

You got to just go out there and try even when the odds are stacked against you. If you’re not going to try and make the effort, you’re not going to end up doing well. These days, there’s a lot of things going against us, from COVID to the economy struggling, what I always tell people is, no matter when things are good or bad, if you put in some creativity and you try to think outside the box, you’re much more likely to succeed.

Robert Leonard  15:14  

There’s another interesting concept from the book that I really liked. It was this idea on how someone can betray themselves to stay true to themselves and develop their potential. Explain to us a bit more about that.

Neil Patel  15:28  

When you end up wanting to do whatever you want in life… For example, right now, what is your goal? What do you want to do right now?

Robert Leonard  15:35  

Right now, I would say that my biggest goal is just time freedom.

Neil Patel  15:40  

If your goal is time freedom, funny enough, so many people have that goal, which is a great goal. Even I have that goal, too, because sometimes it just gets burned out. Slog it out for 50-70 hours a week. 

I’m going to actually break down three actionable tips that can help you achieve that. The first thing is to look at what you’re doing right now that’s generating your income. I would try to figure out what are the quickest ways you can expand it, increase it, and grow it in whatever way. Is it getting more ads? Is it selling more? Is it marketing more? Is it closing some more deals? 

Whatever it may be, there are ways to grow whatever you have. You don’t necessarily have to do anything new. 

A lot of times, whatever you’re doing is already working. You just have to do more of it. 

The second thing I want you to do is create processes on your framework of what’s everything that you’re doing that lets you be successful. Then break it down literally step by step. 

Then the third thing I want you to do is you go and you hire someone who is somewhat qualified, that you can end up training that can follow the processes and procedures. So you can save some time and you can automate your life. Not necessarily automate from AI and machine learning, but automated in which you don’t have to be there day by day, and you’ll start doing better. You’ll get back some of your time, your freedom, and you’ll be better off. 

I look at a lot of things in life that are just problem-solving. You don’t have to do something new. You don’t have to do something out of the box. 

The other thing that’s interesting too is I was talking to someone the other day. It’s my neighbor. They’re chefs, pastry chefs. They create cakes, breads, croissants, and brownies, and whatever else a pastry chef would end up creating. They’re telling me how they’re trying to achieve all these things. They want to live a better life. 

I said, “You know what, you love what you’re doing. You’re trying to find other solutions so you can meet all these goals. How about you just cut back on your life? Like, yes, investing is great and doubling down is great. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that. But at the same time, do you need that new car? Do you need that fancy watch? Do you need these extra things in life? Probably not.”

If you cut back some of those things, you can win back so much more time, be so much more successful to have that freedom you want, and not be beholden to the “man or these large corporations” or whoever it may be that you’re paying your bills to.

Robert Leonard  18:01  

When you think about getting a lot of your time back, for you, you think a good resource for learning more about that would be the Four-Hour Workweek because when you’re talking about hiring someone, training them to do some of the lower-level tasks that you may have, the first thing that popped in my head was Tim Ferriss’ book, “The Four Hour Workweek.”

Neil Patel  18:17  

It is a great book and people should definitely check it out. What’s funny is when I was telling you that story, the book popped in my head as well.

Robert Leonard  18:25  

Yeah, I recently read it probably beginning of this year, maybe late last year for the first time. When I was working on the podcast, it’s one of those things that is really helpful. There’s a lot that goes into developing high-quality podcasts a lot more than people think so you need to really take those concepts that you just mentioned. 

Also what Tim talks about in his book, and really try to automate as much as you can otherwise it’s going to take over your life.

Neil Patel  18:46  

Exactly.

Robert Leonard  18:48  

What are the four major career hustles? What is the best path for those listening to the show today?

Neil Patel  18:55  

It’s funny. So I gave this speech a few years ago and I used to give it multiple times because at that time, we were selling books like a hotcake when it first came out. 

I was breaking down the different types of hustles from what you can do inside a company, outside a company, and multiple variations of it. What I realized, though, is when I broke them down, and I started following up with some of the people, most people never ended up choosing any of those hustles. 

If I had to rewrite the book with my co-authors, I would adjust something in which instead of breaking down the different types of hustles,  I would actually tell people, “If you’re trying to succeed in life, look at what’s already working for you and double down on that.” 

A lot of people out there try to replicate what others are doing and copy them instead of just focusing on what’s working for them. The grass is always greener. I remember my dad first moved to America or we first moved to America. I was young. 

My parents told me the grass is always greener, we moved to America, and they moved from the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom’s not bad at all. I can always say the grass is greener. You go back to the UK or I can say the grass is greener in Brazil. I met an entrepreneur in Brazil, who’s a billionaire, literally a billionaire. He was on the Forbes list. He still may be. 

Andres was telling me how Brazil is amazing. It’s like the Wild Wild West. It’s like America years and years ago, where everything is booming, and there’s so much opportunity to make money, but the big mistake that so many of us make is we look for other opportunities and other hustles when you have something that you have some passion for. Double down on that. Don’t try to copy and emulate others. 

If you’re an employee, you can still do well, within an organization. If you’re an entrepreneur, you can still do well on your own. You don’t necessarily have to change what you’re doing to succeed, what you just need to do is double down on what you like, and then you enjoy. 

The key is on what you like and what you enjoy. Because if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you’re not going to put in the hours, the time, the energy, like I know, we talked about a four-hour workweek. But you’re not going to be able to work for hours and get to where you want in life at the early stages. 

Sure, over time, you can cut down the amount of hours that you’re working, but at the beginning, you got to grind it out. It sucks, but that’s the reality.

Robert Leonard  21:11  

Yeah, it’s funny, you mentioned the title of the book because there are actually a couple of books that are like this, but Tim’s book, “The Four Hour Workweek” is one of them for me. 

I put off reading it for a long time because of the title. I heard a lot of people talk about it, rant, and rave about how good of a book it was. But for me, I just didn’t like the title. It sounded cheesy. It sounded gimmicky. It almost sounded like it was, I don’t want to say a scam, but it sounded almost kind of like a scam. It’s like one of those books that just was going to kind of be bait me.

Then I read it and everything you just said is what Tim talks about in the book. He helps you get to a place where you can automate your business, but he talks about how you have to put in the work first, and you have to set up the system.

Neil Patel  21:48  

It’s so funny. I know, a young family member, and he’s just like, “Yeah, I’m going to read “The Four-hour Work Week” and figure out how to work four hours. I don’t have to go to college and don’t work.”

I said,  “Yeah, go read it. The book isn’t going to tell you to only work four hours at the very beginning and that’s how you’re going to succeed but go ahead and read it. It is a great book.”

It’s funny how people assume the title means you only have to work four hours then that’s it, you’re done, that he has a secret to working only four hours from the beginning. That’s not the case.  Tim’s not trying to say you can get rich and do whatever you want in just four hours a week from day one.

Robert Leonard  22:26  

Yeah, there’s a personal finance book called, “I Will Teach You to be Rich,” and it’s kind of the same idea where it was a book I kind of put off for a long time because I thought it was a gimmicky title. However, when you read the book, it’s actually a pretty good book. He doesn’t talk about taking easy paths or anything like that, you have to actually put in the work. This is one of those books titles that kind of the same type of thing.

Neil Patel  22:45  

If you look at “I Will Teach You to be Rich”  I will teach you rich, which is by Ramit Sethi, he also breaks down a lot of his advice and knowledge that it’s easier to save money than it is to make it. He’s had a lot of different programs and blog posts from the *inaudible* mentality to earn 1K and stuff like that. 

What’s funny is that a lot of people in life believe that when it comes to money, like my mom also taught me this, it’s easier to save money than it is to make it so think about your decision before you spend it.

On top of that, he does break down ways to grow, try to persevere, and succeed in life as well because you need to enjoy life too. You don’t want to go living lif penny pinching every little thing. Of course, that’s not Ramit’s goal of telling you to save every single penny or anything like that.

Robert Leonard  23:31  

Some of the things that you do as part of your business, such as your YouTube channel, blog, or podcasts are often popular side hustles that people consider if someone is going to start a brand new side hustle today, which of those three options would you recommend they start with? Or maybe it’s too late to start any of those three and now it’s something else.

Neil Patel  23:50  

It’s not too late to start any of them. I know there are over a billion blogs on the web, but there’s still room to create more and get more traffic. Podcasting is just blowing up and starting, especially in regions like the United States. YouTube isn’t saturated yet and social networks aren’t either. 

However, I don’t recommend someone create a podcast over a blog or a blog over a video or vice versa. What I recommend you do is you figure out what you’re naturally better at and double down on that. 

For example, Gary Vaynerchuk does videos first, because he’s better on videos. I’m not saying you can’t write text, but he likes it. It’s the format that he prefers. He thrives with it. 

On the flip side, I do better with text than I do on videos so I spend more time writing than I do creating video content. You got to figure out what’s right for you and double down on that. Then you’ll find more success doing that versus just copying someone else.

Robert Leonard  24:38  

If this is someone’s first side hustle, they’ve never tried anything like this. How do they know what is right for them? Do they just kind of work on it? Try all the different things and see what is best for them or how do they go about that?

Neil Patel  24:50  

You go and you test. It’s all about experimentation. Try things out. Try all of them out. See when you naturally like you’re getting more traction on and then double down on that

Robert Leonard  24:59  

Is there a point where they run the test and you have enough data that you can say, “Okay, this is enough of a sample size. This is enough of a test that this just isn’t working. This isn’t the right strategy for me, can I move on to something else?” Or do they need to do it for a certain period of time? How do you approach that?

Neil Patel  25:16  

Typically, within a week, or a month, you’ll know if something’s working out, or you can get traction and may not produce results, you can see if you’re getting traction, or you’ll find out if you like it or don’t, because if you don’t like it, then there’s no point in doing it. You’re not going to excel if you really hate something.

Robert Leonard  25:30  

What are some of the other most common or biggest mistakes that you see people making when they’re starting a new side hustle or new business even?

Neil Patel  25:38  

One, focus, we mentioned focus.  If you don’t focus and double down, you’re not going to do well. Two, you got to solve a problem. You just don’t want to do whatever you want. If you’re not solving a real problem, you won’t succeed in life because people don’t pay for random crap. Sometimes they do for like, fidget spinners, but if they don’t solve a problem, they go in as fads then they stop doing well. Then the other thing is, your solution ideally, needs to be easy to use and ideally affordable as well.

Robert Leonard  26:03  

We have talked a lot about focus. I actually agree, I think you do need to focus. It’s something I’m working on but you’ve also mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk a couple of times. I’m sure you follow him being in the space that you are. I follow him as well.

One of the things he talks about is how he loves juggling seven or eight different balls in the air at once. How does somebody manage the dynamic of working on a bunch of different things at once kind of like Gary does or focusing on one specific thing at a time?

Neil Patel  26:29  

What you need to do is focus on one thing at a time for now. Then once you build up a team, and you get bigger and bigger, then you can expand. Though at first, you need to focus. If you want to juggle multiple balls and do multiple things at once, you need a team of amazing players that can help you and succeed. 

I was once giving a speech at a conference. I got lucky enough to speak right before Richard Branson and I got to talk to him for a minute. He probably still doesn’t remember me. Nice guy. I don’t know him personally or anything like that. 

I remember he gave me a piece of advice because I was talking to him for a bit. He said an amazing team is one of the keys to success. If you look at most successful entrepreneurs that didn’t get through on their own, they got through with an amazing team. You then got to have amazing players working for you. Without them, you won’t get to where you want.

Robert Leonard  27:15  

To get that team you need to focus on something and make that one thing work yourself so that you can then hire a team or bring a team that believes in the mission and be able to go into different things. 

To wrap up the show, what is an opinion that you have, or a piece of advice even that you give about entrepreneurship, or side hustles that not everyone agrees with, but you think it is sound advice?

Neil Patel  27:39  

I always tell people don’t try to make the most money. Don’t try to do anything crazy. Just be happy and content with what you’re doing and cut your expenses because a lot of people go out there and strive to be really wealthy or rich. But in reality, making tons of money won’t always make you happy, versus doing what you love and you’re passionate about. 

If what you love or are passionate about doesn’t make the most money, that’s okay, just cut back your lifestyle. I really tell a lot of people that they should do that but most people wouldn’t agree with me and they say, “No, you should go after the biggest market, you should try to make the most money.” But if that’s not your passion, what’s the point of doing something that you hate for life?

Robert Leonard  28:17  

Yeah, there’s no point in doing something and putting in all your time and effort if it’s not something that’s going to make you happy.

Neil, thanks so much for coming on the show today and talking all about entrepreneurship and side hustles. For those listening that want to learn more about you these topics and just all the different things that you have going on, where’s the best place for them to reach you?

Neil Patel  28:37  

NeilPatel.com.

Robert Leonard  28:39  

Neil has all kinds of great resources, information, and all kinds of different things to check out on his website. Like he just said at NeilPatel.com. I’ll be sure to put a link to it in the show notes below so anybody listening that wants to connect with him. You can do that there. 

Neil, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Neil Patel  28:54  

Thanks for having me.

Robert Leonard  28:55  

Alright, guys, that’s all I had for this week’s episode of Millennial Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro  29:01  

Thank you for listening to TIP. To access our show notes, courses, or forums, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permissions must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

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