Serial entrepreneur Neil Patel is back on the McMethod Podcast.

And this time around he’s not here to defend content marketing against the haters...

He’s here to chat about landing high-level consulting clients (his roots).

Because before Neil was out there creating super valuable tools for marketers,

Tools like Hello Bar, KISSmetrics, and valuable content like on QuickSprout,

…Neil was landing big deals.

Recently Neil decided to do an expirement for the heck of it.

The expirement was what would happen if he spent TONS of money on new threads..

And the results are quite fascinating.

The reality is people judge you on how you dress.

The nicer you dress,

The more you’ll make.

When you’re landing half million dollar deals,

You’ve gotta dress the part.

Sometimes that’s just how the world works.

Of course there’s always outliers,

But if you want to stack all the chips on your side,

Take a look into Neil’s multiple extravagant expirements he shares in this episode.

From nice clothes,

To Ferraris, $800,000 watches, private helicopters, assistants and more…

In this episode, you’ll discover:

how to close a deal without even paying attention to what the client says
the dark side to rolling big and deep (Neil gives his solutions to handling life with lots of money)
how Neil’s helicopter has been landing him more deals than ever before (clients and social situations
why dressing like a school teacher can hurt you when landing new clients
how racing a friend’s Ferrari randomly landed Neil a very profitable new client
Neil’s strategy to leveling up from a couple thousand dollar clients… to big multi million dollar clients (what you wear really doesn’t matter, it’s something else)
how the rules of the game change when you deal with people with tons of money (perception is everything)

Email Marketing Podcast Episode 1

Mentioned:

Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO

Raw transcript:

Download PDF transcript here.

Hey, it’s John McIntyre here, the autoresponder guy. I’m here with Neil Patel from Quick Sprout. Now Neil is the co-founder of Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg and Hello Bar and yes, he was actually on podcast a while back to talk about content market, because I had a bit of an ad lib with content marketing and I need to clear it up and get some expert advice on why and what, and you know, when it doesn’t work. And, but really the reason why I brought Neil back is I’ve been reading some of his pods and it’s been some fascinating stuff about how to close big consultant deals and it’s not going to deal with putting together nice proposal or write, you know, proposing up the sales skills. It’s things like, spending a hundred and sixty two thousands three hundred and one dollars and forty two cents on clothes, and how that’s translating to bigger deals, or, you know, having a luxury apartment and different things like that. So, it got me curious. I thought:’ Man, if you find and get Neil on and have a chat about some of this stuff that no one really talked about when it comes to, that I found anyway with this kind of stuff. So, you know, we are going to have time to chat about consulting and clothes and Ferraris and all the stuff that you need to apparently, get some big deals. Neil, how are you man?

Neil Patel: I’m great. Thanks for having me.

John McIntyre: Good to have you on man. Good to have you on again. So, I’m going to…a quick little intro there. Can you give a list of podcasts for others, probably … pretty familiar with who you are. Can you give just a short background on who you are and what you’re up to at the moment?

Neil Patel: Yeah. So, I’m just a serial entrepreneur. I like creating products for marketers and I also blog on my spare time at quicksprout.com and neilpatel.com, some of ….. like, Kissmetrics or Crazy Egg or Hello Bar.

John McIntyre: Yeah, cool. Easy. So, and then select lately we have been putting at, so quicksprout that you mentioned is sort of like a spare time project, is it?

Neil Patel: Yes, like a personal blog. I just really enjoy blogging. Eventually, I’ll end up releasing a business model from quicksprout probably in the next four months, five months. And it’s all…(1:51) of being another software company. And then for

that reason, I started blogging also on neilpatel.com cause I always want a personal blog right.

John McIntyre: Yeah. Okay, very cool. I didn’t even know you have the neilpatel.com. I’ll check that out, so…

Neil Patel: It’s brand new.

John McIntyre: Brand new?

Neil Patel: Very few posts.

John McIntyre: You’ve been liking… at your, some of the, the way you’re copying works on your pages or the way it is designed. You design these pages yourself, you got someone doing that?

Neil Patel: No, I have a designer.

John McIntyre: Cause that’s very well-put together, the way you use the copy at the end of design, especially I like the consulting page, you know, you get a nice sort of graphics, and the way it’s just going through man. It’s very clean, very tight.

Neil Patel: Thank you.

John McIntyre: Yeah, and it’s neilpatel brand new and that’s, just say, you never personal blog.

Neil Patel: Exactly.

John McIntyre: Okay. So, let’s talk a bit about the clothes. When you spent a hundred and sixty two thousand dollars on clothes, you know, it was a test run to see if, you know, got you more clients right? And it turns out it did. More clothes, watches, you mentioned the Ferrari. Can you tell me a bit about your experience with that?

Neil Patel: Yes. So when I moved to Vegas, I lived across a mall. I lived on a strip in Vegas so it’s not the best mall, the reason being is it’s all luxury goods right, so everything is expensive. And you start buying something, I was like:” It’ll be fun”. What if, you know, like, I buy a clothes…, so I was already trying to buy some clothes here at…, you know, what I need, suits or tuxedos

or whatever. And I’m lazy, so I want to go to the places just like, within the complex versus driving somewhere right, I didn’t even have a car. And I thought it would be fun to just like, …… or make more money from that. Cause sincerely all other people who would like, they’re like, walk the exact…as in they dress of. I was like:” You know what, let’s give it a shot”. Cause I don’t believe that the clothes make a person, but the reality is, people do judge you based on how you dress and …… a dress the moment I started making such a funny one. I released the blog post, people actually started emailing me, like a month to two months later. And they were really like:” Hey Neil, just want to say thanks for that blog post. I decide to get like, a $2000 wardrobe, got some nice shoes and a nice outfit. And I wear to my business meetings now and boy it has made a huge difference. I continually get comments on my shoes and people… who want to work with me cause they look more successful and I was like :” This is awesome. It’s not just me that’s finding it to work, other people are as well”.

John McIntyre: Wow, okay. Now I wonder if this is… I mean like, cause a lot were thinking about … by a blog, because I personally, I don’t need clients and posts. You know, it all goes, that means living entirely, I mean, I’m in Canada right now. But it’ll easy to do something via email and then Skype. Or it’s maybe there is a video chat, which is usually rare, but let’s say there might be a video chat, I’ll put on a nice show and something but I suppose it doesn’t…it’s probably a bit hard to tell if you are wearing, you know, a $10000 shirt on Skype. But I wonder if this same principle applies to, like, if you try to charge big money, $100000 or $500000 per deal, it sounds like the whole image has to be congruent, cause the guy that is charging 500000 grand, he’s not going to wear stuff from Target.

Neil Patel: He could. I actually wear a lot of stuff from Target, Targets with Jill right. They have a lot of stuff for a good deal.

John McIntyre: Okay.

Neil Patel: But nonetheless, you’re right. People don’t believe that they’ll shop at Targets. They would not want to spend their money with them right? You’ve got to dress apart. It’s just like, if you’re going to a big law firm, usually supposedly like the best clerks at something, would you really want to pen up there in

shorts and t-shirts? Sure, they’re good wind-up but people have this image of where you should be dressing suits and that you should be well-presentable. So it’s like, the same goes with realtors. If you’re buying a home and you’re buying a five million dollars home, would you want a realtor and he’s driving around ….by to a Camry. And I myself don’t care, and I work. But most people wouldn’t. They want a realtor who has a nice car and all that cause it shows that they’re supposedly successful right? Or at least that’s the perception others have.

John McIntyre: Hmm, it’s a really interesting thing. It’s like on the one hand, it kind of makes you feel a bit annoyed that humans are just the way our brains work. On the one hand, it makes a lot of sense cause it’s the way we, you know, we’re constantly scanning for incongruencies, so if someone is trying to charge five million dollars for a house, or five hundred thousand dollars for a contract, you know, if we’re going to spend that much money, we need to know that we’re going to get a return as part of that evaluation procedure, is :”Does this guy images, does it fit with the five hundred thousand dollars? Does he dress the way a five hundred thousand dollars deal guy would dress? Or does he dress the way, you know, a school teacher would dress? Cause if he dresses like a school teacher, then, our brain probably just feels uncomfortable paying a guy like that five hundred thousand dollars.

Neil Patel: Exactly, right. Cause you are like:” Wait, if he looks like a school teacher and he’s sort of successful, why doesn’t he have the image to go with it? Hey you don’t need everything, but it all helps.

John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. Cause you mention clothes, you’ve got the image of a bunch of clothes like shoes, one thousand seven hundred ninety dollars up to five thousand dollars per shoes. You’ve also mentioned the Ferrari. So like…

Neil Patel: Yes, so I… He was racing Ferrari around the track mile(6:56), but he took a picture of me and the Ferrari and it got posted somewhere on the web. People who had seen this car and some wanted to hire me, and then made me million bucks in my commission like alegent business right? So I was like:” This is … . All right, they’re going to hire me because they think I have a Ferrari” I didn’t say I have a Ferrari. I ended up telling

them, but I got a good business deal out of there right? Cause they would say:” Oh, we saw those three cars. You have a Ferrari. You can relate with us, like, let’s do business together.”

John McIntyre: Ah. Oh okay, yeah. It makes a lot of sense you know. And it’s actually interesting as I’ve been reading this book called Richistan. Have you heard of it?

Neil Patel: I have not.

John McIntyre: Okay. So this fascinating book by a journalist from somewhere and he has written this book about… He has written a lot of books about self-help and how to make million dollars and you know, your millionaire mind, you know that stuff. And this book is more about people who are thirty million dollars net worth and up. And so people who would get into more serious wealth, where, talks about, there’s a couple of different colleges for burglars that teach you how will household managers or something the term now, where you learn how to manage your households for rich people basically. It talks about pump beaches and some of the pipes that go down there and the money that they spend on, you know, you’re going to have a hundred and fifty thousand kind of like, car and people are like, laugh at you cause it’s cheap. They think it’s a cheap, it’s a crap, cause they’re driving a Ferrari or Lamborghini or Roll-Royce or something like that. So it’s been a really interesting look into how, like, with people with a lot of money, they do think quite differently too. There are a lot of different rules that happen, rules of the game that happen when you get into an Ohio restaurants of wealth or society or money, that sorts of thing.

Neil Patel: Yeah, it totally changes right. Perception is quite a big different. And I remember as well there is a big unique in which like, in San Francisco, no one cares right. But it’s not really like that everywhere.

John McIntyre: So in San Francisco, you’ve gone, cause you mean, just because they’re styled up and that there is so much money there ready, it’s not that big of a deal?

Neil Patel: Yeah. Well, people don’t care how they dress in San Francisco right, like they don’t really judge people based on…there are tons of successful people there that wear shorts and t-shirts.

John McIntyre: That’s true.

Neil Patel: Well, even like, he doesn’t dress that nice and he doesn’t care to dress nice right. So…

John McIntyre: That’s kind of like that start-up uniform, like Mark Zuckerberg, I am reading a book about him right now. And they’ll all turn up in business meetings with investors who are going to drop in a ten million dollars investment in the company and they turn up in their jeans and t-shirts and hoodie.

Neil Patel: Exactly. That is their start-up uniform. They like it.

John McIntyre: Yeah, and his first even works, but really, can you see that I, it was funny to have this conversation with a friend a week or two. He was in LA and he wanted to go and have the experience of what it would be like to buy a really expensive watch. So we went into a store, I think the store was somewhere in LA. He goes in there and finds, I think he was looking at watches that were like, thirty or forty thousand dollars trying them on and just seeing how it felt and chatting with the salesman. But then he, when he finally came out of the store and sent me messages on Facebook, he was going on and on about this watch which was eight hundred and thirty thousand dollars. It’s more than most people spend on a house. At the time, I was like “Well, It didn’t even make sense. What’s the…Why… Who would spend eight hundred and thirty grand on watch. That’s just silly. I would rather buy a few cars or something to get going and get going , getting to Antarctic or you know, going some adventures” But then I read this post and it was like :” Ah, well maybe, buying an eight hundred thousand dollar watch and you’re going to get closer to say, a ten million dollar deal. Maybe it’s a good decision.

Neil Patel: It’s a question. Can you get it in front of the right people, right? Cause, it’s like, I have expensive watches that are in the six figures. It’s not in here that I hide. I think the most that comes to watches is probably like a hundred a fifty, a hundred and seventy grams, some of them like that. And when it comes to the expensive watches, the more expensive they are, it’s usually most people don’t even know about them. Cause expensive watches, most the brands, they’re not too flashy. So

it’s like all my expensive watches look like they’re like a thousand dollars max. You could actually, even potentially close a huge deal cause if the right person knows you have it, like oh this guy someone. Cause it’s not just the cost of the watch. Those watches are all extremely hard to get. Like I was trying to buy this… watch. which was like, I think like, six to seven hundred thousand dollars and I was trying to get it on the second-hand market cause people don’t really wear them, so when they have them, they may have worn them like ten times, and the value of the price goes down by like 50% right. So like, I was trying to get one of these on the second market cause they knew if I ended up getting one, due to the fact that I know the right people. I put myself in, you know, the right meetings whatever it may be. I can probably close really a huge deal from that.

John McIntyre: Yeah. Okay. Did you end up getting the watch?

Neil Patel: So I… No, I think I wanted five hundred thousand bucks, for, but I was trying to get it for three hundred.

John McIntyre: Oh, okay.

Neil Patel: So this negotiation, he was going through a divorce and he needed money right away. And I’m like:” Look, I’ll give you the money right now, deal for three hundred. Cause he is not be able to move from five hundred quickly right. And he needed the cash so I was just like:” I’ll bring you the cash today or lately. You don’t have any in your account”, but he wouldn’t …

John McIntyre: Oh, I wonder too, like, yeah, it’s just …. to wear like, you know, wear these watches like that, what happened when you first started doing this? Was there a weird feeling?

Neil Patel: Well, I’ve always been a watch guy. I’ve been collecting for years. So, I’ve had nice watches for a long time, I just never mention that part in the blog post right, like I have a tonne of them. But it’s funny, like, they work in all aspects, personal life or you know, business side. It’s funny. I know I have this specific gold watch. It’s tacky. But when I wear on dates, right, it makes it so much easier to do well on the date.

John McIntyre: Are you serious?

Neil Patel: I’m not dating the wrong people. Like yesterday, I met some girl that said:” This is a beautiful watch”. You know, I was like: “Yeah, this is Royal’s gold” She doesn’t know what the hell that is, like, this is an old watch, is for gay but she doesn’t know who, what it is, right. She was so excited. She was like:” Royal’s gold then must be expensive”. And the funny thing is like, the watch was decently expensive. I think it was like, twenty something or thirty thousand or something like that right. But I wore like, one of my, fancy watch is a hundred thousand bucks, that girl probably would have had no clue what it was. And either way, it doesn’t matter if I have a watch right. Usually it doesn’t make that much of durns, but depending on who you’re dating, some people are really superficial here in America right. So, it’s like, I’m just, playing off the people. For me it’s all one experiment occasion. Like recently, I haven’t done a blog post on it. I should though. I got a helicopter right. So, the helicopter has been closing me more deals than anything else. It’s kind of like crazy. People are like:” You have a helicopter?” Cause I don’t drive. And like, out of pens on the dollar on the breaking of the price in the blog post. Yeah, like, it’s really funny. It’s cheaper than a Ferrari right, and I got a way unique deal. It’s cheaper for me than it would be for others. But in general, they cost more.

John McIntyre: So is it that you’re flying to the meeting?

Neil Patel: What was that?

John McIntyre: Will you fly into the… You’ll be like:” Alright, I’ll be there in ten minutes. Let me just…Is there somewhere to park my child around there, and they…

Neil Patel: Nothing. Nope. The helicopter, other than my friends have used it. Some people have taken pictures. I have no pictures with it. But what happens is words spread really fast that I have a helicopter right. And it’s funny because people would be like:” Hey, that guy got a Ferrari, he had…, you know, I got some Begini and they don’t really say anything. But then, you keep on finding out, they were like:” I heard you have a helicopter You have a helicopter?”. Cause that’s rare, right. Who the hell has one. And they, you know how to find them like, “Ah, I got a pilot. The pilot takes me wherever I want to go”. So, I just think

it’s funny and like, more people want to work with me, like, how successful must you be if you have a helicopter right. That’s what those few people mind.

John McIntyre: That’s very cool. The next thing is going to have to be like, a private jet.

Neil Patel: Private jeters spend, may be, it’s like, you need to be worth like half a billion to billion dollars to really get one. You can get one about earlier, but you just blowing money. So, I’m just really…

John McIntyre: We’re also looking at aside that, the sales is kind of good for this kind of vehicles. You can pick up a little, I think it’s called a …, or like, it’s one of the small for see the place, you know, eighty thousand dollars. I don’t know if that would really get the image across, but, maybe it would.

Neil Patel: No, it won’t like a G5 right, like a proper…

John McIntyre: Ah, you like…

Neil Patel: Yeah, like a one buck that type of the plane, like, those are expensive, but they’re great.

John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. I remember reading actually in this Richistan book. It talked about how Goldstream… is the most expensive place in the private market, you can actually go by a 737 which is not bigger than the …., and it’s cheaper than the…. though. So you can have this big, fill like thirty or forty people on this plane, and it’s cheaper than a… So, may be that’s an option.

Neil Patel: Yes, that’s a good. So Larry and Sergey are both on 373s.

John McIntyre: Yeah, that was the story in the book. I wonder how much you can buy one for?

Neil Patel … thirty something are. In the private market, there is a tonne of small airports. You can’t land those at these small airports. That’s a big problem with them. So the reason that .. are great is because there are so many small airports, next to residential areas that most people do not know about. It’s not noisy. It’s very rare that planes take off from. Only have a small private plane like a…, you can go and …of them. You got a 737, you

have to land at a major airport, which has more traffic. You have to do roundabouts right and the air is…It’s just more headache getting in and out.

John McIntyre: That’s true. That’s a good point. That’s a good point. But just to mention that party, man. You could have people, you could have a couple of king-size beds up in there if you have a 737, and you know, board room. You have a lot of space.

Neil Patel: I actually agree with you on that one. But like, yeah, I also tried this recent experiment to my buddy and I. We were at this party at Palms Casino in Las Vegas. And one of our friends, he’s a ball of service girl at one of the night clubs. So all our friends were there as well and there were some guys. And my buddy came up with this idea. He said:” Dude”. He was like:” If it’s like, how well do you think people knowing that you have a helicopter, will it actually affect, like perception of brands”. So for the first half of the party, I just walked around, casually talked to people, just to see what would happen right. Nothing happened. They just said:” Yeah, cool. There’s another dude yada yada yada”. Then the second half, my buddy would go around, like, he said:” Ah have you met my buddy Neil?”, and the, he would do this while I’m on the other side of the room. And they were like: “ Not again!” cause when they talk, they:” Oh, we live in Vegas” ” Yeah, I live in Vegas as well. My buddy Neil lives in the same buildings”. And then they go:” Who’s Neil?” He was like:” Oh you haven’t met Neil?” And he would slip in the fact that I have a helicopter, and you would be shocked a lot of people, they all lined up and they would just be like:” Oh, I want to meet him” or ” What does he do?” or like, it’s just hilarious on how people perceive things. And it’s funny because what they don’t realize is, I would never date anyone who knew I have that kind of stuff because they’re dating you for the wrong reasons. But it’s just funny how little things affect how people perceive you and what they are willing to do.

John McIntyre: Right. I don’t know if it’s really fascinating. You actually fly this helicopter around every often, or it’s actually more, it’s the perception thing.

Neil Patel: I don’t. So I have it in LA, and it’s like, think of it like net jets right. We’re renting hours. I’m renting hours on the helicopter.

The reason that I have it is because I go to LA a lot. My dad lives on …., with traffic and everything. It’s a pain in the butt to get to him. So I use it because of my dad more often than anything else. And also from the airport, I can go directly into the helicopter and it’ll land me right on top of the hotels, so I miss traffic, which is the best part about it. The flip side is, it’s like, once people find out you have it, their judge mere, how they perceive you changes and in some aspects, it could be good but in most ways, what I found is like, it’s bad because people start wanting to be around you or be your friend just because they think you have money.

John McIntyre: Hmm. Okay. So that would fall a bit on the dark side of some of the stuff. You start playing around with more expensive clothes and cars and helicopters and jets. It starts, so you get the good side of it when you make more money, but then, yeah, it tends to attract the wrong kind of people. You’ll probably have to be a little bit strict with how you, or careful with who you spend your time with and who you bring or which people you tell about them.

Neil Patel: Yeah. I tend not to tell anyone of my person life right. So my person life, most people, they don’t know. They assume that I have money based on how I dress or how I hold myself in conversations. But they don’t know how much, or where I live in, and they tend not to ever bring that kind of stuff up. The web knows. On the Internet, there’s more about me than people know by first hand, reason being is that people read my blogs or like, internet-based people right, entrepreneurs. And they’re not going to judge you. They’re just going to be like:” Oh, cool. Awesome experiment. Thanks for sharing”.

John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. So what about, cause it seems like if … the list of people who don’t really bring this stuff out, especially when you don’t really going google your friends. But you say, I’m going to, so it sounds like they could if they want to go and find out who you are or what you do, but you just find the most in the dark.

Neil Patel: Yeah, most of them don’t. I try not to mention anything. And it’s funny, like, a helicopter, assistant says it’s his. I don’t care right. He’s taken a few girls on dates and he would be like:” Yeah, check out my heart, whatever you want”. He loves it cause it

helps him close, like, I’ve never taken a girl on the helicopter right. He’s taken them on many times. It’s funny cause it’s like, I’ll … money every time he uses it. So, at least he’s having fun with it.

John McIntyre: Right. I mean there are two aspects to it, right. You wouldn’t want to meet, like, a lack partner. You’re probably a serious partner, that kind of way. But if he just feels a little bit lonely and wants some company, why not?

Neil Patel: Yeah, like I would have never worn the gold watch to the date yesterday if I knew I were, if I weren’t doing anything serious with her right. So it’s like I’m not interested in a relationship with her. I’m not saying that I didn’t and either way, but I’m just saying all that stuff helps, right.

John McIntyre: Yeah. It’s interesting man. And one thing I wanted to ask as well, just like, it’s slightly different… clothes stuff , it’s how to go from, it’s a lot of people are getting in the consulting in some ways, and they’re doing, you know, how to image a guy that’s charging, a SEO guy may charge, say a thousand dollars a month or two thousand dollars a month. So one thing I was curious about is how do you go from charging, how does someone go from charges, say a couple of grand a month like that, to going and doing deals for five hundred thousand dollars or two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or even a million dollars. What’s the transition period like?

Neil Patel: So you’re saying how does someone go from getting small deals, so like, a multi-million dollar deal correct?

John McIntyre: Yeah, anywhere up from say, six figures deal and up, how do you go from a small one to six figures and up deals?

Neil Patel: It’s the pitch. It has nothing to do with what you’re wearing or any of that. I’ve got it nailed down, pretty works on pitch so many times, but it comes down to what are you offering. So when you tell a business like:” Hey, I can help you make extra dollars conservatively. Here’s the projection, and here’s like, I came up the numbers” and people believe them cause they hope to derive them out correct. It’s not hard to close a deal. I remember I went into a diamond company and I said:” Hey, here’s your quarterly earnings”. They were providing some

stats, so I was like:” Here is how many visitors you get on your website. Here’s how many sales you generate. Here’s your average conversion rates. Here’s the average spend per costumer. Here’s what …… customer . Exceptions I was like, I dug in conservatively increase your charge by X amount. With the current numbers, you know with your surge traffic, here’s how many more conversion you’ll get. Here’s your costs. Here’s your costs of the product. Here’s your profit. And I broke down conservative medium and aggressive estimate on what I can do. When you’re pitching someone like that, you’re pitching a million bucks. It’s not that hard because at that point though. I:” Alright, you actually think you can move my need of, for million dollars you return me, you can grab me extra 15 million dollars a quarter in revenue, right. It’s not that hard. It’s just method at that point, and that takes you closer to bigger deals.

John McIntyre: Yeah, okay. Okay. That’s actually what I, we’ve been getting the answer for a few viewers that asked this question too. Just go with the numbers. Look at what return you’re going to produce for them. And then quote them something, the percentage that, you have to always sell out the projection that you’ re saying on a conservative estimate. You’re going to do 50 million dollars this quarter, so the price is going to be one and fifty one million dollars. It’s going to be 10% of your projection. How do you work that out?

Neil Patel: Ah, so you’re saying on what I charge, or what do you mean?

John McIntyre: So it’s kind of like, when you work out right, here’s the projection, here’s the life-time value, here’s the conversion rate. Here’s what we could do, you know, conservative and aggressive estimates. And then you go, so what’s the price, how do you calculate the price based off that? Cause the prices are all mostly based on the return you’re going to get for them right.

Neil Patel: The prices of whatever I think I can end up charging them.

John McIntyre: Okay. But then that’s based on how much you think you’re going to make for them right?

Neil Patel: But also what I think I can get a proof, budget-wise.

John McIntyre: Okay. Okay. And then, so how do you figure that out?

Neil Patel: I always ask them, I’m like:” Hey, so what are you looking to spend on marketing?” And a lot of times they’ll give me vague answers. I’m like:” Well, you probably have some sorts of budget, like, is it a hundred bucks a month, or is it 10 million bucks?” right. I’m like:” What type of budget or what type of money do you think you can allocate? If… to use it for budget, I’m like:” Well, what resources do you think you can get when you put together some extra funds from the apartments or whatever. So I keep prying until I get the answers. And then I try to price it within that range. I try to actually get really close to it, and choose the bottom one.

John McIntyre: That’s very smart, man.

Neil Patel: That’s what … Now I’m much more to it.

John McIntyre: So, how did you even get into this? Cause you’ve been doing, when you got to Hello Bar and Kissmetrics and that, so the consulting just come off the back of that, people would see the success of the company and just say:” Hey can you do what you did for those kinds of schemes, can you do that for me too?”. Is that how this all started?

Neil Patel: No. It’s the opposite. I was in a consulting agency before I created any of the software companies. I’ve been doing consulting for over ten years. And I have to do much consulting, so it actually makes it very easy for me to pitch people, cause I’m like:” Look, I don’t really take on too many clients”. And I’m like:” Well, you want to work together? You don’t” And I get over 5000 consulting lease a month. That’s a lot. So, it’s like, it’s not hard for me to tell me, at this point, I was like:” Hey here’s my price. If I like your company, maybe I’ll work with you”. And I said:” Easy, I don’t have to charge”.

John McIntyre: Okay. It’s funny that I thought exactly it was the other way around. It was the software and then the consulting, but then it was just the consulting and then the software. Interesting.

Neil Patel: Well, and I try the games and I get bored too right. So, I had a pitch earlier today. I told my buddy, he was on the phone with me. He’s one of my employees. And I was just like:” Hey, how

funny would it be if I close this call without even paying attention, right?”. We tried to make it a game out of that, like, all right, we’re chatting on GChat and I was like:” I bet you I can close this deal even without paying attention to what they’re saying”.

John McIntyre: And so what happened?

Neil Patel: So, I’ll find out tomorrow but I’m pretty sure I closed them. But that guy sent us the proposal. We’ll sign it today. So, until signed, that money is ….

John McIntyre: Right. Okay. So what do you mean you weren’t paying attention? Were you just sitting there, chatting away on GChat?

Neil Patel: Yeah, we were just chatting away on GChat. But keep in mind that I already knew their business and did all my research, so pretty much whatever they said, I would not pay attention to, and I would tell them what they should be doing to their business to grow it right. So think of it as though, almost a one-way conversation and I would still make it up well right. So, there, there were a lot of things that…

John McIntyre: There were a lot of…

Neil Patel: But I get bored, things, like, for fun, I’m like:” Ah, let’s try a new challenge”

John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. Okay. What’s the next challenge?

Neil Patel: I don’t know. Oh I’m trying to make money out of the bus ads.

John McIntyre: Bus ads? You mean like, say, you put ads on the side of a bus.

Neil Patel: Yeah, well, on a bus stop that has like, “Stop sitting on my face”, neilpatel.com, and…casual buses, I think I can. I’m kind of creative.

John McIntyre: What does a bus ad cost, to get one of the “Stop sitting on my face”?

Neil Patel: I remember I spent forty thousand bucks for one month, for the bus ads, a lot of them.

John McIntyre: Yeah. Okay. How do you track when you have a lot of something like that?

Neil Patel: I’ll given them the unique … page or see if I can get any increased revenue or people say it like:” Yes, saw your bus ads” or whatever. It’ll be funny. Worse, they say, it’s only two thousand bucks.

John McIntyre: That’ll be good man. You’ve been having a lot of good blog posts.

Neil Patel: Yeah, but I think I’m a bit uncreative sometimes.

John McIntyre: I like it, man. And then I say, it’s only been recent when I see so many of these posts came out, like, how you spent all this money on clothes, maybe this and how you bought a Ferrari. They’re interesting posts. Cause it’s not your classic marketing blogs, it just can be “7 ways to do this” and “11 tips here and 15 mistakes here”. It gets very repetitive. So, not everyone is going around and spending a hundred and sixty grand on clothes and then write a blog post about it. That’s a little bit trickier. You kind of just sit down and write that you spent an hour finding a blog post to do that. So, it’s cool, man. I think a lot of people will like it too, when you put another, so…

Neil Patel: Yeah, no, a lot of people don’t. They like it, so…

John McIntyre: Cool. All right man, and we’re right on time. So, before we go, if someone wants to look you up and read some of your blog posts, maybe hire you for consulting. Where the best place for them to go to, quicksprout.com or…

Neil Patel: Yep, quicksprout.com and just go to the contact page.

John McIntyre: Cool. And then you also go to neilpatel.com. I think there’s a consulting tab as well, you get the blog and oh, that’s so, that’s so very cool, tonnes of great postings man. I’ll get the link up on the show note’s page on the mcmethod.com to this, “How spending on a hundred and sixty two grand on clothes makes me six hundred nine two thousand dollars” “I’ll be a good person in caps”. So Neil, thanks for coming on the show man.

Neil Patel: Thanks for having me.

The post Episode #111 – Neil Patel on How Spending 162K on Clothes Made Him $692,000 appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

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