My Biggest Takeaway From Spending 8 Hours With Neil Patel

So as you guys noticed in my last blog post, I was fortunate enough to spend a day with Neil Patel with the team at ClickFunnels working on our content marketing strategy.

Neil’s one of the most ‘switched on’ marketers that I’ve worked with and it’s no wonder why.

Throughout the day working together with the team, we covered a lot of content (which I won’t go into too much detail here) but there was one specific conversation which stuck out to me during the entire day which I believe attributes a lot to his success, not only online but offline too.

It’s a massive undertaking to write thousands of words of blog posts day-in day-out for 7 years (I think) straight.

I mean when you add it all up, that’s a pretty crazy number right?

But over lunch, we went and grabbed a bite to eat at an amazing hamburger joint in Boise Idaho.

It was delicious to say the least.

But as we got chatting before our meals arrived, I was speaking with Neil about his travels and where he’s living at the moment.

He mentioned that he’s currently living in Las Vegas (which from someone who has now been to Vegas, knows it gets pretty crazy on holidays there, so I can’t imagine what it’s like to live there everyday).

I asked him if he was partying everyday he was there and he told me that obviously that wasn’t the case.

But as the conversation went on, what he had to say next was really eye opening.

It went something along the lines of him explaining that Vegas can get pretty crazy and it was very easy to spend $5,000-$10,000 at a nightclub in a single night out.

But he explained that one of the reasons he’s been so successful is because of his connections and network he’s built.

One thing that I’m really good at doing is adjusting my character to different social groups. For example, I find it just as easy to make conversation with internet marketers as I do with politicians or hedge-fund VCs

When I heard this, it actually surprised me.

He went on saying

…so no matter which social surroundings I’m in, I’m quite comfortable and find it easy to join the conversation and blend in. Because of this, it allows me to become a really great matchmaker when I want to connect people in different circles..

This was really interesting (this isn’t word for word, but as accurately as I can remember).

Being a matchmaker at some of the highest levels in business to grow your network.

As some of you may know, I write goals out every year on areas of my life (business and personal) which I’d like to improve on and strive towards and one of them this year was becoming more open with whom I connect people with.

One of my weaknesses early on in business was if I found an awesome resource or team member I would be very private and greedy not to share them with my friends or associates who I knew could benefit from their expertise.

Not because I wanted my friends to fail, but because I thought it would remove their focus away from any projects I’d give them.

Over time I realised that the more open I am, the more I’m willing to share my valuable resources with others, the further ahead we’ll all get in business as a group.

That was one of the main reasons I put together my incredible resources list on my website.

And as a side note, in the time I’ve started working toward this, this year, I’ve already seen a massive shift with the quality of people around me and recommendations I’ve been getting from others.

Anyway, back to the conversation I was having with Neil.

After he talked about match making and how that’s helped him connect with such a wide variety of people (not just marketers) but real estate agents, models, politicians etc. it clicked in my head that if you want to be successful beyond a specific industry, to be successful in business at the highest level, you need to continue to nurture your network.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, “Your network, is your net worth”.

This little tip from a 30 second conversation over a burger at lunch, reinforced one idea which will probably bring me in millions of dollars of extra revenue down the track.

So what I want you to take away from this article is two things.

1. Successful marketers and entrepreneurs are like icebergs. If you see them crushing it above board, you can be confident that the hard work and insights they hold are at least 10X what you’re seeing on the outside.
2. Sometimes it’s the fine details that give you the most value. Never switch off when you’re spending time around success.

If you want to check out more of Neil’s work, you can see his websites and businesses: Crazy Egg, QuickSprout, NeilPatel, KissMetrics and HelloBar

If you want to hear Neil on my podcast that we recorded a few months back you can find that here too (it’s poor audio quality as it was done on the fly and via international phone call, so forgive the delay in replies back and forth but the content’s ace).

It was great have the opportunity to