Neil Patel and Eric Siu are live on the main stage at the Marketing School Live event answering the question, "If you were starting in the digital marketing space from an unrelated career,...
Full Transcript of The Video
Eric Siu: If you were coming out college right now or wanting to make a move to digital marketing from an unrelated career, what advice would you have or where to begin? Episode 10 of our podcast talks about this, what you need to do exactly, but, you know, I actually just talked to somebody early that came from our Meetup page.
I think if you're looking to start, you don't necessarily have to go to college or anything like that, and Neil and I are actually pretty against that. Work for someone for free, right? I mean, when I first started of you, you know, I offered to ... You know, I learned first, and then I went to somebody else, offered to work for free. Started getting my feet wet. Got an internship. Learned a lot. They gave me a lot of training, lot of courses.
There's a bunch of those people out there. I mean, even for us right now, we're always looking to hire more talented marketers. Especially paid advertising people. We're realizing, now, that we actually need to set training up, where people can go into Digital Marketer and their training course. They have a really strong library. Even the ad-word certification, I think, just to prove that you've done it. When you haven't established any credibility, it shows that you've done something, right? Or, the same thing with Facebook Blueprint.
So, I think those things are important, and then also getting them to prove, show that they're scrappy, right? We had one guy from our team wrote an 8,000 word post on Medium before joining our team. That's the kind of hustle that we expect.
Neil Patel: You pretty much answered it. Just go out there and go test shit out and learn, and then go get a job.
Eric Siu: Oh, Neil, you're going to like this one. Is there a better between personal branding or business branding? E.G., NeilPatel.com versus SingleGrain.com.
Neil Patel: You want to go first or me?
Eric Siu: Well, I already know your answer, so you go.
Neil Patel: What are you going to say?
Eric Siu: You're going to go with the company.
Neil Patel: Yeah. He knows me quite well. We've known each other for, I think, six, seven years?
Eric Siu: Yeah.
Neil Patel: So, Eric's brand is Single Grain, my brand is Neil Patel. Okay, let me ask you guys a question. If you guys were at Google here, and you were acquiring a company, would you rather buy a person or would you rather buy another company? Company. Why would you not want to buy a person? That's right.
This is why Tony Robbins has a hard time selling his business. Tony Robbins can make cash, and his brand can be a cash cow, and hopefully Tony stays around for a very long time, but once Tony passes away, what happens to the business? Yeah, there still may be some money coming it but it pretty much dies with him. That's what happens with personal brands. You want to have a corporate brand. Don't brand yourself personally like I did. Oops.
Eric Siu: All right.
Neil Patel: I didn't try, just had a site and it got traffic, so ...
Eric Siu: And plus it's a bigger multiple, right?
Neil Patel: It's what?
Eric Siu: It's a bigger multiple, when you're selling a corporation versus a personal brand.
Neil Patel: That's correct. I'm worth as much as revenue I drive from NeilPatel, versus, a company can sell for three, four X profit or revenue. Do not focus on a personal brand. I don't know why everyone wants to be popular and famous. I'm not saying I am.
Eric Siu: This is coming from a guy that has a company called ImKindOfABigDeal.llc.
Neil Patel: Yeah, that's true. Touche. The only reason I have it is it's supposed to be the name of a book on personal branding, and it would start off being like, "Hey, you know the person who's kind of a big deal, is it me? It's actually you." I was going to motivate people into building their brand, because the best way to get a promotion in the corporate world, from what I've seen from the outside, is being well-known. People pay a lot for brands.
Eric Siu: We're doing Marketing School live here in the CROss Campus building in downtown L.A., and it's a chance for us to get to meet our fans. Over six million downloads after, what, a little over a year?
I think if you're looking to start, you don't necessarily have to go to college or anything like that, and Neil and I are actually pretty against that. Work for someone for free, right? I mean, when I first started of you, you know, I offered to ... You know, I learned first, and then I went to somebody else, offered to work for free. Started getting my feet wet. Got an internship. Learned a lot. They gave me a lot of training, lot of courses.
There's a bunch of those people out there. I mean, even for us right now, we're always looking to hire more talented marketers. Especially paid advertising people. We're realizing, now, that we actually need to set training up, where people can go into Digital Marketer and their training course. They have a really strong library. Even the ad-word certification, I think, just to prove that you've done it. When you haven't established any credibility, it shows that you've done something, right? Or, the same thing with Facebook Blueprint.
So, I think those things are important, and then also getting them to prove, show that they're scrappy, right? We had one guy from our team wrote an 8,000 word post on Medium before joining our team. That's the kind of hustle that we expect.
Neil Patel: You pretty much answered it. Just go out there and go test shit out and learn, and then go get a job.
Eric Siu: Oh, Neil, you're going to like this one. Is there a better between personal branding or business branding? E.G., NeilPatel.com versus SingleGrain.com.
Neil Patel: You want to go first or me?
Eric Siu: Well, I already know your answer, so you go.
Neil Patel: What are you going to say?
Eric Siu: You're going to go with the company.
Neil Patel: Yeah. He knows me quite well. We've known each other for, I think, six, seven years?
Eric Siu: Yeah.
Neil Patel: So, Eric's brand is Single Grain, my brand is Neil Patel. Okay, let me ask you guys a question. If you guys were at Google here, and you were acquiring a company, would you rather buy a person or would you rather buy another company? Company. Why would you not want to buy a person? That's right.
This is why Tony Robbins has a hard time selling his business. Tony Robbins can make cash, and his brand can be a cash cow, and hopefully Tony stays around for a very long time, but once Tony passes away, what happens to the business? Yeah, there still may be some money coming it but it pretty much dies with him. That's what happens with personal brands. You want to have a corporate brand. Don't brand yourself personally like I did. Oops.
Eric Siu: All right.
Neil Patel: I didn't try, just had a site and it got traffic, so ...
Eric Siu: And plus it's a bigger multiple, right?
Neil Patel: It's what?
Eric Siu: It's a bigger multiple, when you're selling a corporation versus a personal brand.
Neil Patel: That's correct. I'm worth as much as revenue I drive from NeilPatel, versus, a company can sell for three, four X profit or revenue. Do not focus on a personal brand. I don't know why everyone wants to be popular and famous. I'm not saying I am.
Eric Siu: This is coming from a guy that has a company called ImKindOfABigDeal.llc.
Neil Patel: Yeah, that's true. Touche. The only reason I have it is it's supposed to be the name of a book on personal branding, and it would start off being like, "Hey, you know the person who's kind of a big deal, is it me? It's actually you." I was going to motivate people into building their brand, because the best way to get a promotion in the corporate world, from what I've seen from the outside, is being well-known. People pay a lot for brands.
Eric Siu: We're doing Marketing School live here in the CROss Campus building in downtown L.A., and it's a chance for us to get to meet our fans. Over six million downloads after, what, a little over a year?
