- Have you ever heard people tell you that you need
to be passionate and love what you're doing
to be successful?
Bullshit.
Just because you're passionate doesn't mean
you're gonna make money and do well in business.
Hey everyone, I'm Neil Patel and today
I'm gonna share with you four business concepts
and advice that I would have given my younger self.
(gentle music)
The first one is focus.
Yes, you may be passionate about what you're doing,
but just because you're passionate,
it doesn't mean you're gonna make money.
Passion just means you're gonna put in the time and energy
into whatever your idea is.
It means that you're not gonna give up.
And should you have passion?
Yes, but if you're not focusing on a big idea,
you're not gonna make a ton of money.
My first business, Crazy Egg, and that was more so
my first real business, it's not a billion dollar company.
It does extremely well.
It makes millions and millions of dollars in profit,
but why isn't it a billion dollar company?
Because the total addressable market isn't big enough.
I'm passionate about Crazy Egg,
I love it to death,
our customers love the product,
we have hundreds and thousands of companies
paying us a shit load of money,
but it's not a billion dollar company and it never will be.
And it's not anything due to passion,
it's more so it's not big enough.
You need to focus on a big idea.
If you're focusing on self-driving cars,
focusing on disrupting the taxi industry like Uber,
or focusing on sending people into outer space
and living on Mars, those are big, gigantic ideas.
You may not have to go that big,
but you can go to Google Finance and you can
go to Google Trends, type in words and phrases
or stock symbols, you can see how big other people are.
Even if you're a fraction of them, like 1% of them,
it they're a $300 billion company,
you'll still be a multiple billion dollar company.
So focus on a big idea.
The second thing I'll tell my young self
is you need to move as fast as possible.
As a little kid, I treated my business like a baby.
You know, with your baby and your child
you don't want to get hurt, you want to be perfect,
everything is precious; that's not the reality
of the business world.
If you don't move fast, people are gonna trample
all over you.
It's like a bull.
You know, those people are going like, "Toro, toro,"
with their little, red cape?
Well, you know what?
Most of them get trampled and you're gonna get trampled on
too by your competitors if you don't move fast.
So execute as quick as possible.
It's okay not to be perfect.
It's more important to move fast.
The third thing I would tell my young self is
you're gonna make mistakes and that's okay,
but avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.
Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet,
do you know what all four of them have in common?
They've all made big mistakes,
but they're still billionaires.
How could that be?
Well, they learned from their mistakes.
Look at Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.
He tried buying Snapchat.
Didn't go through.
He tried creating something that killed Snapchat.
Didn't work out at the beginning.
But eventually Instagram, which they own,
overtook Snapchat in usage.
Why?
Because Mark learned from his mistakes.
You're gonna make mistakes too.
But just because you make mistakes,
it doesn't mean that you won't do well.
Learn from them, avoid making the same ones
over and over again, and eventually you'll learn
what not to do.
And if you learn what not to do,
you'll start doing the right things.
The last tip I have for my younger self
is the 80/20 rule.
A lot of people are like,
Oh, I went to a really good college.
I'm a lawyer.
I work so hard.
Why am I not doing well?
I don't give a shit that you're a lawyer
or that you went to Harvard or Stanford.
Working hard and having a good education
doesn't guarantee success.
I've gotten job applications for people
who came from Stanford who are willing to work
for 10, 15 bucks an hour.
It does not mean success at all.
It just means you're book smart.
If you want to be successful,
you gotta realize and focus on the 80/20 rule,
and what that is is you want to take 80% of your energy
and focus on that 20% or what's important.
Everyone believes that putting a lot of time and energy
is what makes you successful.
No.
Putting a lot of time and energy on the right thing
is what will make you successful.
So find out those little, few things
that will move your business and focus on them.
For me, have you noticed, a lot of my advice
is on traffic generation?
That's all I focus on.
I focus on brand building, traffic generation
because that drives leads to my businesses.
Have you ever seen me being like,
"Hey everyone, check out my day in my life in my office"?
No, I'm a terrible manager.
People hate working under me.
I'm one of the worst boss ever.
I pay well, but management-wise, I just suck.
So I'm not a manager and other people manage
everyone else in the company.
But I realized that if I focus on traffic generation,
what I'm best at, what really helps build the business
and drive more revenue, it helps the business
explode, grow, and it makes it a win-win situation
for everyone.
So take all your energy and focus on the right thing.
Now at first, you may be focusing on what you think
is the right thing, but you may not be seeing results,
and if that keeps happening week after week
even if there are not even small results,
then that means that you should be shifting your energy
onto something else.
If you're not sure what you should be spending
your energy on, leave a comment below and I'll be there,
I'll respond, and I'll tell you if you're doing
the right thing or the wrong thing.
I hope these tips help.
They would have helped a younger me.
And if I followed them, I probably would have been worth
over ten times what I'm worth now,
and that's a lot of money.
So make sure you subscribe to the channel.
I'll see you in the next video,
and I really look forward to helping you.
So if you're not sure on what you should be doing
or spending your time on, leave a comment.
I'll be here to help and I really want to see you succeed.
You succeeding makes me happy.