The MARKETING Expert's Guide to Making More Money | Neil Patel 💵 EP108

What this episode is about

The main topic discusses the importance of targeting a large total addressable market (TAM) in business ventures to maximize revenue potential, emphasizing that even a small percentage of a substantial market can yield significant profits. Neil Patel, a seasoned entrepreneur and co-founder of NP Digital, shares insights on making money, investing, and charitable giving, highlighting his expertise in helping companies grow through effective marketing strategies.

Key takeaways

• Chasing a big TAM is like fishing in the ocean; catch 1% and you're reeling in billions.
• Hiring agencies isn't about lack of skills; it's about supercharging internal teams for faster, better results.
• Want to be an entrepreneur? First, work where the growth is — avoid rookie mistakes on your own dime.
• Invest in yourself first; a skill set is the ultimate capital that can yield lifelong dividends.
• Before you invest, if everyone loves it, so might you; passion can signal potential profits in the market.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Neil Patel (Guest) · 17 min speaking
• Unknown Host (Host) · 7 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: NP Digital, Ty Lopez, Adobe, Crazy Egg
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Amazon
3. 10:00 – 15:00: NP Digital
4. 15:00 – 20:00: NP Digital, Miami Heat

Notable quotes from "The MARKETING Expert's Guide to Making More Money | Neil Patel 💵 EP108"

• To charity without further Ado Mr Neil Patel give us a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money my name is Neil Patel I am the co-founder of NP digital we're a…

  about NP Digital · at 1:13

• You can hire one at any stage I don't necessarily know if everyone needs one but like for example if you're at a million2 million there could be a contractor that you know that…

  about Facebook · at 2:48

• Companies that you use on a daily basis that you're super passionate about so for example if you know all you and your friends are addicted to buying on Amazon instead of going…

  about Amazon · at 4:54

• That's one of the other no joke I actually think you fill up like Arena or something like that yeah Sofi Stadium oh the NBA arena the Miami Heat arena we did both yeah it was…

  about Miami Heat · at 16:28

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Ty Lopez — Person · Referenced host/location anchor (episode setting) · 1 mention · first at 0:42
  The recording is described as taking place outside Tai Lopez’s house during an event, establishing the setting and social context for the interview.
  Very special edition of the money Mondays we are here inside of the RV motor home parked right outside of Ty Lopez's house cuz there's an event going on inside so we pulled up…

Companies & orgs

• NP Digital — Company · Business focus · 7 mentions · first at 1:19
  Neil Patel's global ad agency discussed as a case study in business growth and acquisitions
• Amazon — Company · Case study · 1 mention · first at 5:00
  Mentioned as an example of a company worth investing in due to its widespread use and growth
• Adobe — Company · Client example · 1 mention · first at 1:59
  Mentioned as a client of NP Digital, illustrating the agency's work with large brands
  Think 20ish countries 19 or 20 something like that or 21 we have people all around the world and let's say if you're a company like L'Oreal which we work with or adobe or pick…
• Kissmetrics — Company · Referenced company · 2 mentions
  One of Neil Patel's previous ventures mentioned in his career overview
  And so I was super excited to get him over here because he's a very busy character he's built some amazing companies over his career from Kiss metrics to Crazy egg and…
• Crazy Egg — Company · Referenced company · 1 mention · first at 1:04
  One of Neil Patel's previous ventures mentioned in his career overview
  And so I was super excited to get him over here because he's a very busy character he's built some amazing companies over his career from Kiss metrics to Crazy egg and…
• Facebook — Company · Referenced company · 1 mention · first at 3:00
  Mentioned in the context of digital marketing and advertising strategies

Places & events

• Miami Heat — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 16:33
  Mentioned as a venue for a large charity event organized by Neil Patel

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 when I used to invest in companies I would look at things like first off is it a big Tam Tam stands for total addressable Market it doesn't matter how good you are execution if you go after a really tiny Market if you capture 100% of it you're only going to make so much money so you want to go after big markets where people are spending hundreds of billions a year if someone captures 1% of it they're generating a billion in Revenue a year that's a lot of money Larry Ellison calls from Oracle he wants to buy MP digital he's going to offer you a billion dollars would you sell it no love what I'm doing ladies and gentlemen welcome to a very special edition of the money Mondays we are here inside of the RV motor home parked right outside of Ty Lopez's house cuz there's an event going on inside so we pulled up the RV right into his driveway and I've been doing back to back to backto back podcasts

0:52 with local friends luckily Neil Patel happens to live nearby in Beverly Hills and so I was super excited to get him over here because he's a very very busy character he's built some amazing companies over his career from Kiss metrics to Crazy egg and everything in between been acquiring companies left and right so we're going to ask him three core topics how to make money how to invest money and how to give it away to charity without further Ado Mr Neil Patel give us a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money my name is Neil Patel I am the co-founder of NP digital we're a global Ad Agency have a few software companies and we spend our time just helping companies grow drive more traffic lead sales and pretty much it the fastest intro in money Mondays history in 109 episodes on like 2 minutes like uh I already dragged it out I'm like I got like two seconds but all right okay walk us through what is NP

1:44 digital when you say a global Ad Agency what does that mean yeah so we are in I think 20ish countries um 19 or 20 something like that or 21 uh we have people all around the world and let's say if you're a company like L'Oreal which we work with or adobe or pick a name you know where they say we need to do marketing to sell more cosmetic products or software or Enterprise security whatever it may be we Market to companies and people within all the countries that they're targeting so why do for 500 companies that have zillions and zillions of dollars why don't they work in-house why do they hire ad agencies or why do they hire firms like yours they typically have people in house and then they hire companies that specialize in certain things that they can uh help their internal team just get faster results and better results so when a company is first getting going they're doing their first million 5 million 10 million

2:42 they're really getting their bearings about them when do you think it's time to start to consider to hire an agency you can hire one at any stage I don't necessarily know if everyone needs one but like for example if you're at a million2 million there could be a contractor that you know that will charge you $2,500 a month and can do really well and just drive a ton of Facebook ads and drive you more revenue and that's great if you hire someone full-time internally it may cost you a 100 Grand a year why not pay the person 2500 bucks a month which ends up being $30,000 a year which is way cheaper than hiring that full-time person for 100 grand a year so someone's fresh out of college and they're making a decision yeah they want to go get a job working for NP digital or they're going to go start their company start their business be an entrepreneur how does someone make a decision for themselves should I get a

3:31 job should I become an entrepreneur should I sit home and do nothing should I travel the world like what would you say to someone that's first trying to figure out their life do whatever you're passionate about if you already know you love something like cooking or making necklaces or hats go do that if you're like one day I want to start a business in this space instead of just going off and starting a business I highly recommend working for someone for a little bit ideally a grow fast growing growth stage startup not an early uh startup but a growth stage one so you can learn from a lot of their mistakes and also build up your Rolodex and gain connections from working there for a little bit and then go Venture off on your own because you'll avoid making a lot of the common mistakes so that's on the making money side let's talk about the investing side someone they went out there they got

4:19 their career they started making six figures a year their their value in their house went up a couple hundred grand and boom they got some Capital now they got a couple hundred grand to work with how do you start to think about when is the first time I should be investing my money whether it's into my brain or into Investments if you have a few hundred grand I would recommend investing in yourself you're going to be the best investment hands down uh whether it's leveling up your skill set your knowledge your Rolodex your connections whatever it may be invest in yourself if you want to park money somewhere else stock market startups or whatever it may be I would actually start off with the companies that you use on a daily basis that you're super passionate about so for example if you know all you and your friends are addicted to buying on Amazon instead of going to Walmart then just buy a little bit of Amazon stock for

5:05 sure it's a really simple model but if you're the only friend that's really into something let's say like this energy drink and you're the only one really consuming it and no one else is you may want to be careful putting your money in that but if it's a established company that you know everyone uses and loves and they're continually growing Park some of your money there not a lot if you have 100 Grand you can park 3 4% 5% Max into something fun fact since you just mentioned it do you know what the number one performing stock in human history is uh I think it's Monster Energy Monster Energy drink that's right you just it's real life when you see something like Monster Energy drink when you go to a store you see Red Bull monster and Rockstar you've seen those same brands for over two decades yeah it's just math and time compounds they're in hundreds of thousands of stores in America millions of stores

5:55 around the world math and time compounds okay so on the investing side you must get bombarded over the years because you're one of the most famous you're top five most famous on social media from the business category you get hit up non-stop left and right how do you decide if you're going to invest into a company when you get pitched by someone online or in real life I haven't invested in a company in ages uh I stopped because it was too much work and I don't have the time but what I started doing was just investing in funds and then let them pick and choose um I'll started dealing with all the k1s for tax time but uh um when I used to invest in companies I would look at things like first off is it a big Tam Tam stands for total addressable Market it doesn't matter how good you are at execution if you go after a really tiny Market if you capture 100% of it you're really going to make so much money so

6:44 you want to go after big markets where people are spending hundreds of billions a year if someone captures 1% of it they're generating a billion in Revenue a year that's a lot of money you got a business that can sell for a crap ton of cash for that so first is a big Tam second is a team the team needs to complement each other and they need to have ideally experience within that category um and the third thing I look for is traction if someone can't build something or create something and get it out there without money they're not going to usually do well with money cuz most businesses unless you're trying to create like an open AI where you need tons of data centers and computing power you can just get something out there and figure out ways to get the money for example don't eat out as much for a few months and use some of that money to start your idea up if someone's not willing to go above and beyond to just

7:32 get something out there and get traction they're not going to do well with someone else's money they're more likely just burn it so you've also been buying companies yeah how do you decide there because obviously you can you have the pick of the lit right you could spend 2 million 5 million 10 million 50 million 20 million whatever the amount is you're buying these companies for how do you decide on the acquisition side when you could pick from any company in the category so let's say there's 700 companies in the category are you picking the top 10 top 20 top 30 top 50 like how are you making these decisions in your mind yeah so first off you got to hit up companies and a lot of them don't want to sell sure the ones you want to buy a lot of them will not want to sell and the way we look at it is it's math and in private Equity they have the saying 1 plus 1 equals three so how can you combine what someone else

8:18 has and what you have and make more money than the combined entities so a great example of this is we're in call it 20 countries if we get a lot of customer demand for let's say um the Middle East which we're not big in yet and we find an agency that we like in the Middle East if you're listening we are actually looking for agency in the Middle East we would be like all right if they're at call it 10 million in Revenue to keep the M simple and let's assume we're at 90 million to keep the math simple cuz 90 + 10 equals 100 our goal would be to go from 100 to 110 with the acquisition and I'm making up numbers that are just random numbers but let's say we have a lot of customers but and they want Middle East marketing but we don't offer that what we would do is we would say hey we're going to take all our customers and sell them now on the middle east region and that company offers it so we predict we can make

9:16 extra four five 6 7 8 10 million in extra Revenue we then also look at their customers and say huh if we can generate 5 million revenue from sending our customers to the Middle East and take their customers and we look to see if demand for their customers to want Marketing in America or other parts of Europe or uh Latin America or Asia and we like okay if we can estimate we can bring 5 million there you combine both you're generating more Revenue then we start looking saying oh you have a CFO we don't need a CFO we already have one oh you have a head of HR we don't need a head of HR we already have one so you start figuring out cost synergies and savings too so you're adding more Revenue you're becoming more efficient and saving money on the cost end that's how we decide what to buy that other type of company we look to buy is not necess Regional based it is um let's call it industry specific so let's say

10:09 we only offered SEO and we offer more than that but for this example let's just go with that and let's go back with let's hypothetically say we make 90 million a year and let's say someone else offers um paid advertising services and we don't and let's say they also generate 10 million a year in Revenue if we know we can take all our customers paying this 90 million year for one product and say hey what's the demand for paid and let's say it's 30 more million bucks we close that business we get another 30 million we're now at 130 we take their customers that are paying 10 million maybe we get 5 million in revenue from selling M SEO now we're at 135 million and that's the model with m&a that we really optimize for so your acquisition is almost free because you're kind of choosing your own adventure right you're build yeah but sadly you still have to pay money for it up front sadly yes but if you use Bank

10:58 thatt a bank usually can lend you if you have no investors two and a half to three and a half times profit assuming you're at scale um scale being call it 20ish million dollar minimum a year in profit uh and if you're buying a company for call it six seven times eight times profit and you can double triple and cut cut the cost down well maybe at the end of the day that six times turns into three times because of the growth and the cost savings the bank will float at all so in that example like a $10 million business let's say they're netting around $2 million right Y what what's the ballpark obviously there's a wides scale depending on the industry what's a ballpark you would pay for that Company 2 million assuming they're growing at a good Pace gross 10 million Ned 2 million bucks and if they're growing on an annual basis and they have low turn they're probably going to get 12 million bucks for that business and so in that

11:54 example and you brought in around $30 million in new business but you paid 12 million right correct I like that this model this is fun okay but the 30 million in Revenue may only equate out to call it 6 million in profit sure so it takes a couple years correct so it takes some time takes a year to two years usually two years to really integrate and ramp up but at the end of the day you're at six you bought it for 12 all right you only paid two times right you just got to figure out how to float the money whether it's you're using your own cash up front or Bank you just got to make sure you have the cash up front where you're getting investors to help you out so let's say that company out there in the Middle East they're the agency they just heard you they're like wow Neil Patel might buy us that's interesting NP digital could buy us and they're doing $10 million in Revenue how does someone as a Founder

12:41 make that emotional decision along their Journey when they get from 2 million to 5 million or 10 million 20 million how do they know like how do you know when it's time to sell or it's or it's a good time to sell whenever you're happy and content so people are like oh I can go from 100 to 200 or 20 to 30 or 40 if someone's offering you enough money where you don't ever have to work again and you're happy and you genuinely want to retire or do something else go and sell and move on if you're getting enjoyment from continually growing the business and you don't care for the money don't sell if you want to ideally plan the perfect exit the perfect exit is selling right at the top which is too hard to plan but when you're growing really fast and you know it's going to slow down that's ideally when you want to do a transaction um it's very hard to time that but my rule DB with people is if you love what you're doing and you

13:31 don't care for money don't sell if it's enough money and you just want the cash you never have to worry again sell all right Pop Quiz Larry Ellison calls from Oracle he wants to buy NP digital he's going to offer you a billion dollars would you sell it no I love what I'm doing and I don't don't get me wrong I would love a billion dollars in my pocket but I wouldn't take it all right so let's talk about it on the charity side of the world why do you think it's important for some corporations to involve charity for their employees their morale and their culture I think it's just a good thing to give back it's like why do you do a toy drive each year I don't think you do a toy drive because you need to do a toy drive I think you just genuinely enjoy it and if people are part of something that is a bigger cause I think it creates amazing culture it brings people together and it truly gives enjoyment like you look at the

14:29 Smiles on the faces that you're creating by giving them something whether it's toys or money or helping them out from the fires um it's a nice feeling to help others you go buy something that you may think is cool like a fancy car you'll have enjoyment for a week or a month but after that it goes away mhm you become numb to it yeah and then you're just like I need another car like okay when's this ever ending never ends yeah so you quietly do a lot of Charity stuff how do you decide what charities you donate to uh I'm married so the wife picks so I don't really um some Charities I get text messag like I think you texted me I don't know when a few months ago you're like I need money for something toys was it toys it toy drive yeah it was toy drive and you just sent me a link and I just donated because you sent me a link I didn't really read it I just said cool Dan's doing a toy drive it's not like

15:21 you're making money by giving away toys defin all right sounds good it's Christmas someone needs toys click a button but um usually we look at the efficiencies of these campaigns so when you donate to Charities a lot of the large ones have a lot of Staff where the yeah and a lot of the money goes towards that versus actually the causes and there's nothing wrong with that because you do need staff to run these Charities I don't have Bill Gates money so I want my money this is just my own selfish desire to go to the people who are in need not the people who are running the organizations even though they do need compensation but let the Bill Gates figure that kind of stuff stuff out um so a lot of what we pick is children's education uh Children's Health um anything related to Poverty with children so but we mainly focus on kids um and your toy drive was a good fit because it fit within children needing

16:16 toys yes they did we did over 200,000 toys in December wow uh 11 cities it was 3 weeks of my life every year now it's just dedicated to to that dude I see like a video or image on Instagram that's one of the other no joke I actually think you fill up like Arena or something like that yeah Sofi Stadium oh the NBA arena the Miami Heat arena we did both yeah it was like crazy I was like is this an arena yeah Miami Heat arena yes I was like that was wild we had 1,000 kids there come on to the court so they got full they got a full experience see that's a good feeling it was wild and why do you do that every year honestly why do you do that I just didn't have much toys when I was a kid like I still remember the one or two toys that I got I was like a Spider-Man that you stick your thumb in side of like a little rubber doll like I can remember I can remember the few toys that I had and so when the toy drive

17:04 became a thing there was eight of us wrapping toys the first year and then there was 30 of us and then there was 60 of us and now it just became such a big thing wait how many people even helped rap toys well at first it was only eight of us now there's hundreds yeah yeah and now I'm just I can't stop now I'm just in it I'm so far like the 10 year anniversary was the first time we did a bunch of other cities before we just did Two Cities a year LA and Salt Lake and then we did 10 cities for the 10 year annivers and we're like okay we're not doing that again and then last year was year 11 and we just we did 11 cities and now hopefully I don't do 12 Cities next year but I'm probably going to do 12 studies next year and it's just when when you go there and see it in real life and there's a thousand kids in an NBA arena they're going to remember that for many years the same way I remember that one little toy when I was a kid

17:48 imagine being on the NBA court you know that's cool it's just stuck in my head but see that's the point A lot of people do charity because of some personal feeling and it's it's great and I think a lot of people pick a charity from their heart my wife picks them from the heart I pick them more logically right execution of it looking at dollars wise and I'm not saying her Way's better or my way is better you need both because charity does need to involve the heart and it needs some logic as well because you need to make sure that you're not getting ripped off mhm so on the recruiting side as you build NP digital you've got offices around the planet you got you're you said 19 or 20 countries how do you recruit people to come work for your company at this point the leaders in the country and the recruiting staff is in charge for it but when we started off what we did was we would go on LinkedIn

18:41 look for all the people that worked for multiple competitors got promoted many times because everyone says when you interview them oh I'm amazing look what I did you don't really know if they did that but if they worked at a company IDE a competitor they got promoted multiple times it means a company usually found them valuable now if they did that two of your competitors got promoted multiple times it's usually not dumb luck it's usually they're good at what they are doing or claiming so hiring those people and paying them more is a great way to get great talent and we would message them on LinkedIn like hey Mike uh love what you did in your career I'm actually looking for someone like you for my company if you know of anyone let me know it's indirect it's not as um forceful when you're reaching out to them it's casual and most of the time they'll be like hey I'm actually interested and we found that to be very

19:29 successful then when you get good people they don't like working with shitty people so then they just keep bringing more and more good people all right you've heard a couple of the episodes so you know my final question and I've never gotten the same answer before NP digital becomes worth billions and billions of it might already be but becomes billions of billions of dollars and many many years from now it's finally time you've exited the company you've got all these billions of dollars and you got these beautiful children what percentage of the billions of dollars goes to the Neil Patel children so I was actually asked this question earlier today a little bit different and I want my kids to do whatever makes them happy I do business and it genuinely makes me happy um I did an irrevocable trust ages ago and I probably shouldn't have given them as much but I didn't know as much back then

20:21 and I didn't know the shares would have been worth as much as well um and they don't know about it so when they get older we'll see but the way I look at it as if my kids do whatever makes them happy I'm happy and if they want to live in New York if they cool figure out life on your own if they want to live in Beverly Hills next door to me I will buy them the home and I'll make sure they have food and basic necessities covered but if they want to live on their own they got to figure it out now granted they have an irrevocable trust but they're young kids they're three and five so they don't know um and yeah I would just want to make sure that their basic necessities are covered um we have a committee that looks over the trust and the kids will always have their basic necessities covered even if they want to be in New York like I don't ever want them on the street but if they're just like I want to buy a car

21:10 and I want a Toyota Camry no problem I want a Ferrari or Mercedes figure it out on your own oh I want to go to Italy figure it out on your own so I'm happy to provide basic necessities because they so they can focus on what they love I'm not okay providing more than basic necessities and I think the basic necessity that I'm talking about is even more than what most people would consider like you want to buy food no problem I'll pay for organic food you want to buy alcohol from Whole Foods figure it out on your own right but I just want to make sure they're okay and healthy um something's happening to planet Earth and you need a crop load of money to live on Mars no problem I'll give you the money right so situations like that no worries you have a health scare uh medical bills won't be covered by Insurance I'll gladly pay for it but I don't want to give them the luxuries that they don't need that they should

21:57 earn just like every everyone else so you create more content than pretty much any other person in the business world where can people find you on social media why do you care so much about the content Neil Patel is my social handles and I care because if you just give a lot of information away it helps others um I didn't know this when I originally started doing it but it comes back in full and you gain customers and revenue from it brand recognition um the brand recognition may be important to you I mainly care about the revenue um and also I create a lot of content cuz it's just fun yeah you meet cool people doing things like this I was walking into Tai's house earlier some lady got me and she's like oh miss come in in and I was watching Sugar Ray Leonard and he kind of hit someone in the rib cage softly but it hurt them it was entertaining for me I was like oh this is cool they should have never set up I

22:53 would have never let a 68-year-old professional boxer hit me anywhere he looks great sugar gr yeah he's in Better shapes than I Victor orz in there there's another professional boxing champion in there too just sitting there watching like it's it's a lot of action going on inside of Tai's house right now all right so check him out on social media it's all neop Patel across all major social media platforms you'll especially like his content on LinkedIn and YouTube uh he does some long form content there a lot of that same content will also be on Instagram in short form versions uh but it is very useful for yourself and it could also be useful for friends family co-workers Etc the whole concept of the money Mondays is to have real life discussions with your friends family and followers we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money I think it's ridiculous we have to talk about accounting taxes loans banking

23:35 payroll what do I do if someone borrows money from me how do I like there's just so many things that happen in real life yeah we we don't talk about salaries we think it's rude to talk about salary how are you supposed to know what to ask for if you don't talk about it we have to be able to have these discussions and so that's why you guys have been so supportive for the money Mondays we've stayed in the top 10 for 109 weeks in a row because of you guys liking commenting supporting sharing all those things really help us if you can leave a review check out theel check us out on the money mondays.com and we'll see you guys next Monday

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "The MARKETING Expert's Guide to Making More Money | Neil Patel 💵 EP108"?

Neil Patel (Guest), Unknown Host (Host).

What is "The MARKETING Expert's Guide to Making More Money | Neil Patel 💵 EP108" about?

The main topic discusses the importance of targeting a large total addressable market (TAM) in business ventures to maximize revenue potential, emphasizing that even a small percentage of a substantial market can yield significant profits. Neil Patel, a seasoned entrepreneur and co-founder of NP Digital, shares insights on making money, investing, and charitable giving, highlighting his…

What is mentioned in this The Money Mondays Podcast episode?

8 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including NP Digital, Ty Lopez, Amazon, Adobe, Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The MARKETING Expert's Guide to Making More Money | Neil Patel 💵 EP108"?

The episode runs 24 min; the transcript is about 5,186 words in 29 timestamped sections.

More from The Money Mondays Podcast

• All analyzed episodes
• Books mentioned on The Money Mondays Podcast
• People mentioned on The Money Mondays Podcast
• Sponsors mentioned on The Money Mondays Podcast
• Topics mentioned on The Money Mondays Podcast