- [Neil] Hello, everyone, it's Neil Patel.
And today is a new day,
and we're going to be covering a new training course
called growth hacking unlocked,
where I teach you everything you need to know
about growth hacking.
You're going to be learning from me as well as other founders
who have created successful companies like Microsoft.
We're going to go over what companies like Microsoft did,
what worked well for them, what didn't,
and how you can take all these lessons
from all these companies
as well as all the things we've learned at my ad agency,
Neil Patel Digital, and implement them within your business.
Before we get started, a little bit about me,
I've worked with a lot of large corporations
like Microsoft, Amazon, NBC, Airbnb, Facebook.
The list goes on and on.
I have an ad agency called Neil Patel Digital.
I was a top 100 entrepreneur
under the age of 30 by President Obama.
I've helped millions of small and medium businesses,
mainly with my content tools.
I've also helped thousands of businesses
that are small and medium as well
through my ad agency, Neil Patel Digital.
I'm not showing you all of this to brag.
I don't think I know everything,
I don't think I'm the smartest person out there.
I know I'm not the smartest person out there.
I don't think I know everything in marketing.
I still have a lot to learn,
but the point I'm trying to make by showing you this
and talking about some of the companies I've worked with,
is more so that I wouldn't have worked with these companies
if the tactics that I've used didn't work.
And because they work and because they're effective,
I continually been able to build up my ad agency,
Neil Patel Digital.
So when I break down growth hacking to you,
just make sure you pay attention
because the tactics will work
and they will help you grow faster.
The big thing that I've learned over the years is,
if you're not learning from other founders,
you're missing out big time.
It's not about learning from your mistakes,
that's great and you should do that,
but what separates the amazing entrepreneurs
and the amazing marketers
for the ones who are just mediocre is,
the amazing ones are learning from other people's mistakes,
other people's journeys.
So that way they can make better informed decisions.
One of the entrepreneurs that I love to death is Bill Gates.
You guys all know Bill Gates, he's super rich.
And mainly for Microsoft.
And back in the day, Microsoft ended up going public
in the early days during the.com boom, they were massive.
And some of these companies like Microsoft
were worth more money than the oil companies
which back then were shocking.
Now it's not, companies like Microsoft are worth,
well over a trillion dollars and it's normal.
And they grew through very unique strategies
that a lot of traditional companies didn't use.
These days, they have a ton of different business units
from Windows to Office, Skype, X-Box,
Azure, Outlook, Office 365.
Google modeled after Microsoft,
and they wanted to build OS system
specifically for mobile devices and they crushed it.
They even have one for desktop, which is their Chromebooks.
Then later, Facebook modeled after Google.
And what's funny is from Snapchat to WhatsApp,
a lot of these companies are modeled after Facebook.
Funny enough, Facebook also owns WhatsApp and Instagram.
So let's go over a rough timeline.
Microsoft, it was started when Bill Gates
went to Harvard University, dropped out in 1974.
He created Microsoft with Paul Allen
who they've been good friends since they were kids.
In 1976, when he formed a contract with MITS
to develop a basic operating system
for their new microcomputers,
that's when things really started to take off.
Now, notes from the idea man himself,
shortly before labor day, Bill checked into a hotel
with three legal pads and 10 pencils.
Five days later, he came out with thousands of bytes
of assembly language and code.
He typed it into a terminal, handed the legal pads
and said, okay, you're going to have to finish debugging it.
I've got to go.
Then he was off to Harvard.
As the company grew and executive duties multiplied,
Bill would then get fewer opportunities
for such high-wire creativity.
In a way, that was too bad,
and he had a rare gift for programming.
Then he would focus at one task at a time
with total discipline.
You could see it when he program.
He was one of those guys that was just super laser focused.
And that's how he really had that big breakthrough with IBM.
When you start looking in the 1980s, IBM approached them
for a new basic operating system for its new computers.
IBM was 6% of the S and P at the time,
that made Microsoft a really rich company.
The Windows release in 1990
and Microsoft released the first version of Windows
alongside with Apple,
this was the first graphical user interface.
It soon became a bestseller
and was able to capture most of the operating system market.
When you think about the history of Microsoft,
all of Bill's blood, sweat, tears, even his ego,
it all went into Microsoft.
And then later after tirelessly working for a quarter
of a century to make Microsoft a great company,
creating one of the biggest software companies in the world
that pretty much everyone had within their home.
He was super successful.
Hence for one of the longest periods of time,
he was one of the richest people in the world.
So let's go over some business lessons, right?
The company's initial public offering in 1986.
And from there, it continually rose in price.
And eventually they had to do stock splits
to get the stock to reasonable price
so more people could afford it.
It created three billionaires, Steve Ballmer,
Paul Allen and Bill Gates, of course.
And it also created an estimated 12,000 millionaires
among the employees.
Most of Silicon Valley companies out there
are based on a lot of the concepts of Microsoft.
The big takeaway, in the tech field,
there's tremendous pressure,
even when you're doing really well.
You must run incredibly hard
just to hold your competitive position.
As Bill told Tom on an NBC special in 1995,
if you fall behind technically,
no matter how much your past success has been,
it's no guarantee
that you can keep doing well in the future.
And since then, their stock has continually grown.
If Bill Gates never sold his shares,
he would be worth over $450 billion.
That's a lot of money.
Heck I would even take a billion or a half a billion,
but just in retrospect,
he has more money than some countries, even out there.
And more than half of his fortune is held in assets
outside of holding Microsoft shares.
And his investments is in a holding company
called Cascade Investments.
One thing that I love about Bill Gates is this quote,
"Take away our 20 best employees,
"and I tell you that Microsoft
"would become an unimportant company."
In other words,
he's saying the people is what really built Microsoft.
Now, I have some action items for you.
If you go to Neilpatel.com/training,
click on growth hacking unlocked,
you'll find some worksheets in there.
I want you to download the course itinerary,
and the growth hacking worksheet.
By the end of the course,
you'll know how to growth hack your business
and drive revenue.
Keep in mind, this is a two week course.
There's five more lessons, we just covered the first one.
So you have five more, six in total.
And you can find all the documents
at Neilpatel.com/training.
And then from there, click on growth hacking unlocked.
And if you have any questions, leave a comment below.
If you enjoyed the video, like it, share it.
In the next few lessons,
we're going to really dive deep into growth hacking.
And we're going to go into not just strategy,
but also actual tactics.
And if you just want help
and want my ad agency to do everything for you,
check out NP Digital, which is short for Neil Patel Digital.
Thank you very much.