even though i love seo and social media
marketing and content marketing
you can't do one or the other one is
better than the other you now have to
take an omni channel approach to do well
without that you won't do well in the
market
before we get started make sure you
subscribe to this channel and if you're
on youtube click the alert notification
welcome to my channel how we doing good
thanks for having me
pleasure neil uh neil um taking you to
the format so i'll ask a few
personal questions and then some
questions with respect to the industry
and then we'll have a quick round of
rapid fire so are you game
i'm game perfect so let's get started my
first question to you is
how did you manage to build your empire
and what were those first five steps
that you took to get this thing rolling
ah i don't know if i have an empire but
i
built my business not overnight it's
been 17 years now
wow and the key is you just lay
brick by brick there's no simple
solution
you just really got to do you know each
and every single task the way i look at
it is you'll have goals in your business
think about what your goals are over the
year now break them down into 12 months
so what do you need to do each month to
hit those goals now break that down
into each week then break it down to
each day
and then break down the task into things
that could be get done in an
hour and have a daily checklist so if
you accomplish them you're much more
likely to hit your
annual goal and that's how you just
continually grow which
you keep creating those checklists each
day and you make sure you don't go to
sleep until it's all done
and if the task is too big to finish in
one day then you need to break it down
to being smaller and smaller
fantastic that's interesting tips up
there
so how do you manage to stay fit what's
your daily schedule like uh how's your
morning routine like
sure so there's this guy on youtube
called the body coach his name is
joe so i do a 15 minute hit workout
high intensity interval training or
something like that
every day some days i get lazy but
around at least five days a week
uh that's that helps me quite a bit i
also do intermittent fasting
i'll only eat between 11 a.m and 6 p.m
and then the rest of the time i don't
eat so between those two things
stay pretty healthy and i also don't eat
unhealthy foods so like
no fried food so no samosas you know
i try to keep low on the carbs a lot of
vegetables
no unhealthy food like mayonnaise or
cheese
or fried food or any of that fantastic i
think that's quite a lot of learning
because a lot of digital marketers
do have a lot of i mean unhealed
unhealthy eating habits so i think
that's some good
advice up there uh at least i would want
to change my healthy
my lifestyle with respect to that uh so
what's been the most difficult period of
your
career or life so while you were
building your business
uh there might have been a lot of
obstacles so so
uh if you would like to share some tips
up there
yeah i've had a lot of ups and downs um
you know
when things get going they don't always
work the way you want so
i've made money i've lost money you know
it was funny when i was
16. i tend not to talk too much about
how much money i make i talk more about
my failures
and i'm not saying i make good money or
anything like that either i'm not trying
to imply anything
but i'll give you revenue figures when i
was 16 i started consulting i got lucky
i was doing around 20 000 a month in
revenue
but as time was 21 i lost it all
plus i was in debt another million
dollars
and i tried creating a cloud computing
company
uh back in the day before it was popular
uh if it worked i would have been rich
but it didn't you know
to luck of the draw
and what i learned is you're going to go
through ups and downs as an entrepreneur
not everything is the way you want and
that's okay
just stay focused then over time you'll
do well there's not much you can end up
doing in the short run to
solve your problems or uh
you know avoid some of these things it's
just more so you're gonna have to go
through the ups and downs and
know that entrepreneurship is like a
roller coaster and
be okay with it there's good moments bad
moments scary moments happy moments
you just gotta accept it all fantastic
and most importantly learn from all your
mistakes
so when do you plan to visit india and
host training programs here any plans
for 2019
i i thought about it my problem is i
don't have a business partner in
india to handle it all if i had a
business partner in india i would do it
but
it's too hard to find someone that's the
part i struggle with
lovely so i'll pitch you for that
perfect how
indian are you neil i mean i'm sure you
are a gujarati person so
i'm 100 indian
indian food a lot it's my favorite food
uh i speak fluent gujarati
um my blog i started translating a lot
of the content in hindi it's doing well
wow i don't have enough hindi writers if
i had more hindi writers i'll translate
it at all
uh but yeah i i love india you know it's
just
it's my heritage i want my kids to be
gujarati
oh wow that's good so uh so you believe
that vernacular language has
uh played a very important role right
now of because i heard that you have
started translating your blog in hindi
language
so how did it make a difference uh it
helped with traffic but i did it not
necessarily for traffic
i don't make money from india um i lose
money in india
more than anything else because for me
to put cost into translating
none of my customers are from india so
it's just
it's a it's a cost sink but i don't look
at it that way i'm indian so might as
well help on my own people i don't care
if i make money from india or not i'm
from there so why not help them i wasn't
born there but
nonetheless why not help out my own
people fantastic you know uh
i have in on my youtube channel a lot of
my videos are absolutely free
and you have inspired me a lot because i
heard one of your videos where you say
that why
have you started uploading videos on
youtube and why you do not run
advertisements on them
so that's a very inspiring meal there's
a lot of content which is available
for free and i think you inspire the
entire world so congratulations on doing
great
work so i'm moving on to the next phase
where i'm asking you some questions with
respect to the industry
uh social media marketing versus su
what's your personal favorite and why
when i first started it was all about
seo okay
and then dig came around which isn't
that popular i don't even know if it
exists anymore and then read it
and when you look at all these social
sites i used to do very well because i'm
like oh it's a great way to get traffic
and links
now when i was building a business
when i was starting off you can build it
just through one channel just like how
facebook grew through the referral
system
do you remember all you would invite all
your friends in your address book to
facebook
and that's how they grew but now if a
new company came out and leveraged that
tactic they wouldn't do that well
because everyone would look at it as
spam
same with seo the algorithms are harder
same with social media marketing the
algorithms are hotter
so even though i love seo and social
media marketing and content marketing
you can't do one or the other one is
better than the other you now have to
take an omni channel approach to do well
without that you won't do well in the
market
fantastic the question is neil how
important
it is to invest in good visuals in
content marketing
uh it's it's very important the more
images and the visuals and infographics
you can invest in the better off you are
whether it's video
uh or infographics or images as they say
uh
image or in some cases even a video will
say a thousand words if not more
okay so we all know for the fact that
you know um facebook's organic reach is
slowly dying
um so where would you invest in 2019
instagram or facebook what would you
recommend to your followers
they're both okay you should be on both
channels but i would pick youtube
youtube will do better than all of them
so you know you say that
2020 is all about youtubing uh that's
not
2019 2019 all about youtube 2019 is all
about youtubing fantastic
so i watch you can get the search
traffic
and it drives a lot of traffic and it
can give you consistent traffic over
time
absolutely
yeah go ahead yeah yeah but the
beautiful part is if you already create
a youtube video you can take the same
video and upload it to
facebook and linkedin and then just
include srt files because not everyone
has their speakers turned on
right and it also creates a lot of face
value because people hear you
uh talking so um okay
why should someone post four times a day
on instagram stories because i've
watched one of your videos
and you've shared that tip so why should
someone do that because many people just
post one story a day and you have
recommended four stories and they
are why is that so the more stories you
do the better off you are even doing 12
or 24
just helps because the more people see
your content you just start showing up
so this should be uploaded together or
we need to break this
into different intervals break it into
different intervals different times
of the day break it up like doing one
every hour is right here
okay uh youtubing versus
blogging what's the best for 2020
the best for 2020 is
i i think youtube will still be more
popular uh we'll have not be more
popular content marketing will be more
popular
but youtube will have easier traction
it'll be easier to gain momentum in 2020
on video than it will on text
see there's over a billion blogs right
now so the numbers gonna get worse
that's one blog for every seven people
it's saturated
video marketing right now isn't
saturated yet so whoever adopts early is
gonna win
superb um so one last question
from the uh industries perspective what
are those five crucial content marketing
trend you see
in uh 2019 that someone should follow
in 2019 so i'll pick five one podcasting
and video is picking up they're easier
uh to optimize for so do podcast seo do
youtube seo that would be my first tip
second is even all these forms of
marketing voice video
audio tech space it's eventually going
to get saturated
as well so start creating freemium
products or services
like tools my friend has a company
called smackney which is a acne cream
he does free trial just pay for shipping
so you can you got to get creative to
get more traffic
the third tip is voice search 50 of the
people will be using voice search by
2020 according to comscore
so optimize for voice search the fourth
tip i would have for you is
ads are going to continually go up in
expenses during the last recession
google still generated more revenue
so assume that that's going to happen
all over again
so you need to optimize for conversions
uh things like a b
testing split test all those kind of
things will help
the fifth tip i have for you is build a
brand
brands convert better than non-brands
really truly genuinely try to help
people
fantastic sounds good so uh moving to
the last part of the
uh session uh neil and it's a quick
rapid fire question so are you game for
this one
because this is not fun yeah okay so you
wake up to realize neil
is hacked and how would you react i
would be upset and tell my developer to
fix it
fantastic simple stuff since you're from
india and i understand that you know
gujarati or hindi uh would you mind if i
say something in english and you need to
translate that in the language
uh that you're more comfortable with
either hindi or gujarati
sure i'm a bit rusty but let's go for it
let's do it now
i don't speak it that often in america
right there's not too many people here
but let's try
okay so so it is uh i love digital
marketing and i cannot live without it
ah that's tough uh mana digital
marketing
and i don't know how to say and i can't
live without it
i got the first part but see i used to
speak in gujarati a lot more with my
grandparents they're no longer around
but i've been rusty for
four or five years okay but i i
understand it better than i speak it so
when my parents speak it
my parents actually don't even talk to
girathi but when they do talk i
understand it okay
so if mark ever ask you mark zuckerberg
ever ask you what is that one change
that you would like to bring
on their platform what would you
recommend him
you know facebook's gonna do whatever
makes them more money they're a business
whether we like it or not when it comes
to fake news privacy
or any of this the one thing i would
love is uh
and he won't do it it would be you know
if people follow you organically
don't cram down the reach actually let
my content be seen but he's not going to
make a thing
if i had to give him one piece of advice
that he's more likely to follow
although he probably won't do it either
it would be turn facebook into a
subscription option
you know they got to show ads whether
you like it or not they're not going to
always stop all the political stuff or
whatever it may be
but i would pay 10 a month not to see
any of it and i bet you a lot of other
people would as well
right so um so rate this platform
and you have to rate them and you have
to place them in order
on their popularity or what you would
believe
is the most popular of all uh the tools
are twitter
linkedin facebook instagram quora
snapchat
and youtube i repeat twitter linkedin
let me know if i miss any i'm gonna go
based off of their mass potential
not their popularity because that's more
useful okay youtube number one
linkedin number two uh
uh twitter number three for
instagram five facebook
uh six quora quora does
it quora's easy to get views but not too
many people will click through and go
back to your site
and then the last one is snapchat
because i believe facebook is going to
keep crushing them
right um did i miss any no no you you
got it you got it all so that's that's
good one so name three digital marketers
you admire the most
brian dean from backlinko i think he's
awesome and amazing
um andrew chen he's awesome good growth
marketer
he's now andreessen horowitz uh sean
ellis
another good growth marketer i know
these aren't all common names
i'll even give you a fourth one that i
really admire larry kim
he's an amazing marketer and he's an
engineer so when you combine both of
them
he does really well i would put larry in
the top three for sure
he's good fantastic three tools that you
think
every digital marketer must use uber
suggests
because it's my tool and it's free so
enjoy it
it's pretty popular in india it's the
most popular region for the tool
right um another one that i love is
google analytics without tracking your
data
you don't know what's happening and if i
had to pick a
third tool that everyone should end up
using
it would be any survey tool you want
whether it's surveymonkey
uh you can pick whatever survey tool you
want they have a free version
because most digital marketing people
look at the numbers but they never
analyze what their users want by
actually talking to them
and you're probably people are lazy to
talk to them over the phone so survey
them
really get to know your customers do
customer development that'll make your
marketing change by leaps and bounds and
get way better
fantastic so if you have to give a shout
out to someone
at your office today because you think
he or she is your backbone
who would it be uh nick roshan
uh he's my vp of sales
and also partner in the company and nick
does more than just sales he's awesome
superb
and one last question to you what's the
biggest life
lie you have ever told to a client of
yours
biggest what biggest lie
[Music]
i remember when i was younger it was a
potential customer
and to get the deal they're like do you
have experience managing other similar
accounts i think it was like 19 or 20 at
the time
and i should have never done it but i
told them i've worked with other bigger
companies
and i didn't mention any names but i
just told them i worked with other
bigger
companies so i can get the contract i
should have never done it though
that's how most of the guys enter
companies up there
all right uh thank you so much neil it
was wonderful hosting you
um you had patiently answered all my
questions and i look forward to host you
in india too so let's stay connected
for sure