Neil Patel, Business Ninja

I don’t keep many blogs on my menu bar.  Just 2.  One of which is Neil Patel’s QuickSprout.com.  I like QuickSprout because the information in the posts is quality.  Quality based on experience.

I wanted to interview Neil because he is a young entrepreneur who is energetic, intelligent and smart about how he invests his money (and he will tell you the hard knocks and failures he took to earn that wisdom).

From QuickSprout.com

“The Internet marketing company started taking off and as a kid I thought I was “rolling in dough”. With the money I made I started investing in a few other companies. I invested around a million dollars into a hosting company called Vision Web Hosting, that never worked out (sadly I lost all of the money I invested into it). After realizing investing wasn’t for me, my business partner and I took the rest of the money we made and created another company called Crazy Egg. Crazy Egg created a lot of buzz when it came out and I surely thought I would end up selling it for 10 million dollars. When I wasn’t able to get an asking price of 10 million dollars for Crazy Egg my business partner and I decided that we were going to raise venture capital because Crazy Egg wasn’t a profitable company. . . Other than the Internet marketing company I also co-founded a few more companies such as KISSmetrics, which funny enough got funded by True Ventures who I once pitched Crazy Egg to. Some of the companies I co-founded didn’t do well and made me lose a lot of money whereas others have done great. But after 23 years of living I have learned one really important thing: life isn’t fair! If you don’t like the cards you are dealt with, do something to change them. And for some ungodly reason, if you are unable to change them, keep moving forward and don’t look back. All you can do is try.”

When doing my research for the interview I found that Neil and I grew up in the same very tiny town of La Palma, Ca (1.8 square miles with a population of 16,162). We went to the same school (John F. Kennedy High School) and even had the same first employer at a local amusement park, Knott’s Berry Farm (I worked in fast food, and he as a janitor).

In this interview we have a casual chat  about:

-Local food
-Living in Seattle
-Being a millionaire
-Essentials to start your business
-Why its good to have rich friends
-Spas
-Blog comments and offers of marriage
-Taxes
-Investing
-Mistakes that entrepreneurs make
-Social media (so called “experts”)
-How to keep your focus, and
-Where to get good chai

Its a jovial discussion interwoven with great advice for the beginning and multimillionaire entrepreneur.

Grab your pen and paper.  I am sure you will want to take notes.

A Chat Neil Patel of Quicksprout.com

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