How Neil and Eric Would Go About Building Their Personal Brand in Today's World

In episode #2912, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss personal branding, strategies for leveraging platforms like LinkedIn for growth, and the balance between agency work and product development. Don’t forget to help us grow by subscribing and liking on YouTube! Check out more of Eric’s content (Leveling UP YT) and Neil’s videos (Neil Patel YT) TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: (00:00) Building a Personal Brand in Today's World (02:56) The Power of Video Content (06:00) Leveraging LinkedIn for Growth (08:58) Balancing Agency and Product Development (11:58) Navigating Team Dynamics and Expectations (18:17) That’s it for today! Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe! Go to https://www.marketingschool.io to learn more! Leave Some Feedback: What should we talk about next? Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric’s ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel X @ericosiu

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:34Speaker 01

  Do you want to talk about how you and I, uh, how we would build a personal brand for ourselves in today's world if we had to start over?

• 0:40Speaker 00

  Yes, you can start. It's your idea.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  All right, so I think in today's world, I would have picked a niche. And what I mean a niche is you and I are in marketing, but I wouldn't start in marketing because it's already competitive and saturated. And I think building a personal brand in today's world is harder than it was when we started.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Technically, we're known for SEO.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yes, that's true. I would have started in a vertical like B2B SaaS or AI, or you know, you can go after marketing just for one specific industry, and then expand. Because when you think about marketing and B2B SaaS, it may seem like a niche, but it's not really a niche. It's actually a massive TAM. B2B companies like Microsoft spend an arm and a leg on marketing, right? So if you pick a big enough market, but you are specializing, eventually you can end up saying, all right, even though I do B2B SaaS, now I'm going to go to B2B next. Now I'm going to go into AI next. Now I'm just going to go into software next, right? Because you're expanding in similar verticals. And what's going to, that's going to do is open up the market.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  And you're not going to get the followers you want, but that would end up causing you to generate a lot more revenue because you're known for something very specific.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  And I wouldn't start with blogging in today's world. I would start with creating social content, video-based specifically. And then I would chop that up. You know, you can end up doing audio version into a podcast by repurposing. You can then repurpose that. Uh, audio and turn it into a blog post and have someone modify it. But I would start with video and I would repurpose my content on all the social platforms.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. And by the way, when we say we wouldn't start with blogging today, it's only because organic reach isn't quite there anymore. Because when you think about blogging 10, 15 years ago, that was organic social. Like that's, that's where all the reach was, right? So what we're really talking about here is like you want to go to where the reach is and maybe in five, 10 years, it's probably not going to be what we're talking about right now. You gotta think about where the attention is and marketing one-on-one is thinking about where is your audience hanging out? And it could be different depending on the type of business that you're in. But I do agree with, um, we have a, we have a mutual friend. He is focused specifically in one marketing niche and he gets paid like 200, 300 grand a month just as a consultant. Because all he published on LinkedIn was stuff around that over the years and he was consistent with it. Yeah, go ahead.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I have no idea who you're talking about, but good for him.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  I will tell you.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Or good for her.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Do you want to say something?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when you also end up doing this, keep in mind, Google indexes video content, both short and long. So you're still getting search traffic. YouTube, people type in a lot of queries onto YouTube. Even Instagram, 6.5 billion searches a day. So you can rank on Instagram when someone types in your content. Just like if they type in handbags, I know you use this example so many times. If you're Louis Vuitton, you'd want to show up when someone types in handbag on Instagram. And you would still do blogging, you do the other channels, but you would start with the video because it's easier to repurpose. If you start with text based and then you have to repurpose, it is much more work to turn that into videos and audio files and stuff like that. Well, if you do videos first, it's easier to repurpose to all the other social channels.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Cause most of them prefer videos as their main form of content. And it's easier to create audio and text based information from the video clips.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think one of the most underrated ways to build your personal brand today is let's say you're starting from scratch. You have no experience, right? Well, you can go on YouTube, which I think is still the best social opportunity for the next decade. And vlogs are actually back on YouTube. I don't like, if you look at it, there's evidence, there's vlogs. I see people starting out. I see people more experienced and people like following people, right? They like following the story. So maybe you can document your journey as you go along, right? You don't have to be an. Expert at everything. Now, let's say you have a little more experience, maybe, you know, we've kind of been in the space for a while with marketing, Neil and I. Well, I would do what we're doing right now, which is why we spend time doing this, which is why we're even together in person, right? I think being able to talk about what you find interesting, you can record so much from you. First, we have the long form right here and what Neil just mentioned.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  You cut up the short form and everything, and then you can also publish it on LinkedIn too. And we're going to actually, the next topic will be the fallacy of LinkedIn. We'll get to that in a second. But I think that's one of the biggest arbitrages right now, because this 90 minutes that we're spending together becomes much more, and we never know what's going to take off. Neil could be talking about his jacket, oh my, 5 million views, right? I can be talking about discounts at Shake Shack, 6 million views, right? You just never know what you're going to get there. And this allows us to attack the long form game and the short form game. And if we choose to hit on LinkedIn X, this allows it to hit everything. And the beauty of this too, is this also sharpens how we're thinking about things too, which will then affect whatever else you're writing about.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  No, I totally agree. But also, if you're going to do this, you got to put in years. And when we say years, if you put in three years and you're consistent, you're going to start seeing results, but you're not going to do well in the first year or two. You may see some traction, but it's not going to equate into much revenue. And if it does, you're lucky.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Yep. So, and this kind of translates into where else there's good organic reach right now, which would be LinkedIn. So, there is kind of a fallacy with LinkedIn organic. And Neil, we talked about this on the phone yesterday. But the common advice with LinkedIn is that you should only post one per day, or else your reach will get throttled. And there's a caveat to it. We're not saying everyone should post multiple times per day, but I found with experimenting, when I jack it up, it actually just, it does in fact triple or quadruple the reach. But Neil brought up a good caveat to that.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we were on the phone yesterday and Eric's just like, dude, you know, people have LinkedIn all wrong. You can post as much as you want. And I was like, no, I think the numbers are actually correct. And he's like, no dude, my reach, I'm posting 3X of content. I'm getting 3X of views on average. And he's looking at his stats. And I'm like, yes, but the difference is, is Eric's a marketer, and he's a good marketer who understands how to craft content for LinkedIn. Will take as much content as you have, assuming it's great and it hits hard and people love it. The algorithms don't penalize or push you down for that. But if you just keep releasing content on LinkedIn each and every single day and multiple times a day, but the content's just crap and no one wants to engage with it, it will hurt you. And that's why you should be careful on how much you post.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  And instead of trying to post three, four or five times a day, you should just post once a day and try to make that content piece amazing. And if you got it down and it is amazing, then post two times a day. And if you can get two with great engagement and both the content pieces are engaging, then try to go for three and then so forth, so on.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  And you're jacking yours up from what to what?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  I was out one last year sometime, then last year we increased it to two. This year being January, we're recording this podcast, it's the last day of January. I'm still at two sometime in February, call it mid-February, I will ramp up to three a day.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  Yep, great. So you have this one over here on how we spend our days.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is interesting because I was looking at my calendar. And yesterday Eric and I had a podcast interview and it got rescheduled. And I don't mean this in a bad way, I'm assuming it got rescheduled because something on your end. Because you were the decline on the calendar.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  I was the decline because I had an overlap where it was a recurring meeting with my team.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Which isn't a big deal, my schedule's much more flexible than Eric's.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  And I was telling him like my day's pretty chill, like I look at today, it's a Friday. Drop the kids off to the school in the morning, alright? I worked out really early in the morning, so 4:30 was my workout time. Finished by, call it five, you know, 20-ish.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Ate breakfast, showered, did some work, dropped the kids off to school. And chilled at home, watched some TV while working. I always watch TV while I work, Eric knows that about me. I actually don't work as efficiently if I don't have a TV on, which is counterintuitive. But for some reason, I need the television to be in the optimal mindset to just crank workout. And then we're recording this podcast, then Eric and I are gonna do lunch after. And then I'll pick my kids up from school. I'm gonna surprise them with the Girl Scout cookies that Eric gave them. I'll let them know that Uncle Eric gave them, they're gonna be happy. I'll see if I can get them to record a video for him.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  And that's pretty much my day. I don't really have tons of

• 9:04Speaker 01

  set scheduled stuff. What I mainly have is I spend most of my days either on content production, so marketing, or business strategy, or just following up people within the organization and helping them tackle and solve problems, or just checking in and putting pressure.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  I think the way to look at this for everyone is there's no right or wrong way to do this. It's what are the highest leverage activities you can do today? So if you're starting a business right now, you probably have to do everything, to be honest.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yes, your schedule's not gonna be my schedule.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  If you have good, if you have good scale like Neil does, okay, the highest leverage thing, yeah, it is marketing. Because for one hour of input here, it might be millions and millions of views, right? Or if he's pushing someone on a really big thing, it's important. Or if it's a huge strategic thing where he might need to correct a strategy, that's huge because it affects the entire company, right? So leverage points is just, you think about, oh, if I put in, again, one minute of effort, and if I get like thousands and thousands of dollars back, you should probably keep doing that thing, right? But in the beginning, you probably have to do everything. Now, we'll bring it to me. So my response to him, I was like, well, you know, single grain side, you know, there's, there's, there's good people helping with the agency side. But the challenge right now is building a startup on the side with the software, right?

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Where the CTO and I, like, that startup culture, where he's on 24/7, I'm on 24/7, and we've really jacked the intensity up. And I actually mentioned in passing in December, I, I, I told someone on my team, I was like, this is a different company now. And I didn't realize that I didn't think about that, right?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Well, let's go back. And I have two questions for you before you carry on. The first is, what percentage of your time do you spend on your software versus the agency? And the second question would be, when you say it's a different company now, what do you mean by that?

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, great question. So I, I don't know, it's, it's, to me, it's 50/50 because I'm always working now, right? It's, and then like in afternoon or at night, maybe I'm watching Netflix or something. But like, it's just every day, and you, you know how this is. Like when you're starting, it's like you wake up, oh, here I go. And then all of a sudden, you're like in bed again, right? So that, that's me right now. And it's not going to go on forever like this. And my my CTO is built to work like this, I am too. When I say it's a different company, and this has been brought up on the single range site because people are seeing it. It's like the way we're behaving in L A versus the way the agency is behaving. They're two completely different companies because our working styles are completely different. So we addressed it yesterday in that meeting. And we basically talked about, okay, so what are we building here, right?

• 11:29Speaker 00

  And the conclusion is basically we're going to keep pushing how we are in L A. We're probably going to hire more out of L A. But agency side is just going to keep moving, right? Because I I believe even if we build software, whatever software we build, whatever products we build, we're still going to need what we mentioned earlier. We're still going to need great people managing this stuff, right? And so I think the the agency of the future, and you're you already have the products, right? We're going to see more and more of this. I think you guys are going to build more as well. I don't think the agencies from like the 60s, 70s, 80s or so, like you're going to have hundreds of thousands of employees. I think those will still be around. I think we're going to see less of it is what I'm saying, so. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

• 12:11Speaker 00

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• 12:40Speaker 01

  Totally agree with you on that. Like every Wednesdays, we do our, I do my software call where I talk with my team for 15 to 30 minutes just on everything that we're doing on technology side for the week.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  And I go over problems, solutions, and design changes that I want in the product and what they should fix, and they showcase, they show everything to me before they make the changes.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Most my day is not really scheduled. I think your day is very heavily scheduled.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  It is scheduled now because even today I was not going to have a scheduled afternoon. And then like a couple of these sales calls where my CTO and I get on the call. They're important. Like, these are like enterprise-level companies, right? So, like, we're doing these sales calls, and this is maybe any of you that are building products right now. If you're building a SaaS product and you're talking mid-market to enterprise, you want to use these sales calls. They almost become customer development calls, because they help guide the product roadmap, because a lot of them start saying the same things over and over. And we're like, and we have this product roadmap, we'll start to shift things based on like what people are saying more and less of. So it's like, sales calls doubling down as customer development calls. And then there's also customer success, right, with the customers. And we have, we have people, other people helping too. But it's just a lot that you have to juggle when you're starting up.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  And that's how my days look right now. So.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  But, you know, here's what's changed. Do you want to say something before I go into here's what changed?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Go, go to what changed. I have a few follow-up questions for you.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  So, this actually does go into, maybe you should go follow-up questions first, because I'm going to talk about the unusual way in which we give feedback at our companies, and if you should criticize in public. So you go first.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  So, the first follow-up question I have for you is, I've seen more passion in you recently than I have in the last few years. I think you, you've always loved single grain. I think at the same time, though, you love product more than running an agency. And I think most people would agree with that. If you run an agency, it is very, very tough. And I'm not saying you're not cut out for it. It's just more so, building product, I think for most people is more fun than running an agency and dealing with all the customers at once. And I can see this spark in you when you talk about it, right? Especially when we're on the phone. Do you think your agency is going to suffer by you not spending 100% of the time

• 14:57Speaker 01

  on the agency by spending 50% of your time on the software? And I know your agency is still growing to caveat this, and it's doing well, and it's doing better now than it has been in the past few years. Market's also been bad for all agencies over the past few years. But if you are spending 100% of the time on the agency, my belief is, and I could be wrong on this, the agency would grow faster. Just my take, knowing you for so many years. But on the flip side, spending time on the software, I get they're the same company, right? Or even if they're two separate companies, they're still owned by you. And if the software grows, you can say, hey, the total pie is growing anyway. So everything is growing. So you're still good.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  But the service-based revenue may not grow as much because you're spending so much time on the software.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Yep. Great question. Fair point. And I would say you're probably right. And I would say the thing is, I don't, I still attend all the important agency meetings. I'm still doing the one-on-ones, all the things, right? All hands, everything.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  I, I think where you're seeing the energy from is because I've had to jack up the energy for both single grain and the product at the same time. And so I think my natural, like, normal is like higher now, right? And I did mention to you, like, yeah, it's more work, it's more stress, but it's like, you know, I wouldn't have it any other way. And so what, what I, we actually talked about this in the team meeting yesterday. It's like, okay, you know, single grain is still very much the first focus, right? But at any given time, I told everyone, I was like, so they're like, what's the plan for next three to five? Other guys, like, if, if I can say I know what the next three to five years is going to look like, I'm lying to you because everything is so unknown now. It's like fog, like everything's like a stepping stone. Like you have to like closely like look at where you're going next, right?

• 16:45Speaker 00

  And that's where we're going. I'm like, if carrot all of a sudden just overtakes single grain and like, you know, we talk about triple, triple, triple, double, double, right? Getting to 108 million in revenue or so, like that could very well happen. Or carrot maybe just flatlines and then maybe it's just a thing that we fold into single grain. Because the thing is, what happens with these leads for carrot is, I told you this already, but any lead that comes in, single grain sales team will then reach out afterwards and it actually books meetings for single grain, right? So I look at it as it's building a lead engine and it's actually, it's focusing us more on B2B ABM. And I think it's, it's, it's a net positive. So, but to, to kind of wrap up this answer over here, how is it going to affect single grain? It is affecting single grain, right? So what do we do?

• 17:30Speaker 00

  We hire a great person, which I don't let them do their own thing. I'm, I'm going to be heavily involved and we just make sure that they're doing what we need them to do to run the agency.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  The reason I think you're doing better on all fronts is not your energy being stepped up because you have to. I think it's because you're getting traction on it. Anytime you're starting a business and you're starting to see early traction and you're talking to customers, you're in the weeds and they're saying wonderful things and you're getting quick wins of closing new accounts or people showing interest of it, it just lights a fire under most entrepreneurs and they just push harder. And I believe the validation you're getting from the external market is causing you to fire on all cylinders.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  That, you're definitely right on that, but I'm also pissed off. The reason I'm so pissed off is because this is what's caused one of my people to quit, right? The reason I'm so, and we can go into that in a moment, but I'm so pissed off because I'm just like my, when my CTO and I were just sitting there working all the time and like the amount of effort we're putting into it, and then I'll hear from people, like here's my thing, right? Like I'm not only the investor in my company, I'm also a player, I'm also a coach, I'm also marketing too. And so I don't expect-

• 18:50Speaker 01

  And sales.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  You're doing everything.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  I don't expect-

• 18:52Speaker 01

  And product.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't expect people to work as hard as I do, right? That's unfair. But I do expect that if I'm going to be putting everything into this company and I'm in the trenches with you, I'm not just watching from the sidelines, I expect you to fight hard too, right? And so when I don't see people pushing, that's the change in the company where on one side it's like full throttle, right? On the other side, it's like, okay, we can't quite push them to do that too. I mean, and I understand that. And you know, the single green team understands that too. And so there's like a balance here. And I said, hey, guys, like for real, we're just going to keep balancing this and see where it goes. So, yeah. All right. That's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. Go to marketing school.io slash agency to learn more about the agency owners association to grow faster. And we'll see you tomorrow.