Neil Patel explains why he runs his company without direct reports, preferring to stay focused on marketing and strategy instead of managing people. He intervenes only on decisions that hit the bottom line, like ad spend and sales, and delegates the rest because he lacks full visibility into people issues. Early meddling taught him the model only works with strong delegation and a capable ops team.
Because you have a structure that's similar to Dharmesh from HubSpot, where he has no direct reports, you started your company with no direct reports as well. Is there anything special you did to have that setup? My point is, you look at Dharmesh Shah, his thing when he told Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot at the time, he said, look, we're going to start this company. I'm going to have no direct reports. That's my rule. I'm going to work on what I want to work on, and then you're going to give me resources when I want them, but I want no direct reports. And I think that's worked out because even now he's working on the forward-thinking things like and things like that, right? And same for you, you get to work more on strategy, you get to work on marketing. Those are the things that you enjoy. So I think it's not like you consciously did it, but it just kind of happened. I think for Dharmesh, it was a lot more intentional. But I think again, this comes down to whatever works for you. And I've seen it work beautifully for Neil.
Well, no, I've always never really had direct reports at any of the organizations. I've always chose not to.
Kissmetrics, same thing?
Yeah.
So there's a video of Neil once, Kissmetrics did like a meeting. This is one of his analytics companies. They raised some venture funding. I think you guys did like a, you guys did like a retreat with employees, right? And you're just sitting in the corner with your laptop working. So yeah, yeah, that's just how Neil rolls, I guess.
I'm— I love being an individual contributor. I love getting stuff done. I don't like managing people, so I never have people underneath me. And I don't know what title they give me at NP Digital.
I don't have— It says CMO in your email.
Does it? Yeah.
No.
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Dude, he doesn't even know his own title.
Yeah, you're right. It says Chief Marketing Officer. I don't read my email signature. But I'm not really the CMO of the company.
No.
It's just a title I have. And Solid is not core into me.
It's for looks.
Yeah.
You will reach out to the top people to get things done. That's how you roll.
In any department. I don't care if I'm supposed to be in that department. I will meddle wherever I want to get shit done.
I bet you a majority of the time, even 51% of the time, people try to talk to you and try to stop you from doing it. Uh, hey, Neil, you need to let us do our work. You know, this is what you hired us for.
So when we started the organization, I would jump in, do whatever I want when I wanted, and over— and people didn't like it. They still don't like it today, even if they won't say it to my face, but I know they don't like it. But if you look at—
No one will like it.
Yeah. But if you look at today versus when we started the organization, call it 7 years ago in the United States, I know what to meddle with and I know what not to meddle with much more than I did when we started off. So for example, we want to make some changes in a specific region. And I was talking about this with my co-founder a year and a half ago. I right away started meddling and I created chaos because Because I don't have direct reports, I also don't know the full picture every single time. So it can actually be really detrimental for me.
Very disruptive.
Yes, very disruptive. So now I tend to go to the person who would know the full story, and I'll give them my take on it. And I'm like, if it's very important, I want it figured out right now. If it's not important, I'll be like, here's this information, you can do whatever you want whenever you want, because it doesn't affect our bottom line that much. So don't care. I don't want to waste any more time, but here are my thoughts. If it's something like marketing or sales or something that's a problem, I will just go metal directly and I will not get anyone's permission. But if it's related to people and moving them around or terminating or any of that—
You don't touch it.
I go through others and I don't mess around because I usually don't know the full story. But if it's just getting something done, like revamping an ad campaign or sales close ratios aren't good enough, Or something's off and like those kind of things. I will just get involved in the business, listen to recorded calls and try to figure out what people are doing wrong. And with AI now, like my co-founder Mike, he's very similar to me. There's AI tools that will show us a sales call or we can listen to it. If it's in Italian, it, you know, puts it out as English and it's not perfect, but it's good enough. So that way we can critique what's wrong with the sales pitch and how people can fix it.
All right, so I wanted to take a second to tell you about my ad agency, Single Grain. We're a performance digital marketing agency and we focus primarily on working with B2B companies and e-commerce. So performance marketing, that's SEO, that's paid media, that's CRO, that's ad creative. And there are a whole host of other things that we're doing with AI that's really cool. You can go to singlegrain.com to learn more. Again, that's singlegrain.com to learn more and we'll see you on the other side. Dude, so one important thing you said I think people can take away here is you basically, let's say for example, if I find an article I really like, sometimes I'll just drop a link. I'll just say FYI, right? That means read it if you want. Sometimes I'll say like, highly recommended that you do something about this, right? Or sometimes I'll say like, hey, I need you to do this. And so this is interesting because the things that Neil really understands, like sales and marketing, plus it also affects his bottom line, he's gonna get involved, right? And say, hey, like, this is what I want you to do. But when it comes to people, like, you probably defer more than anything. And you're probably not gonna make any recommendations on people. And so one, Neil's playing to his strengths here.
I will if the people suck.
Yeah, yeah. Neil has a big problem, especially if it's sales or marketing related to your bottom line, right?
Anywhere in the organization, if someone's just terrible at their job, I don't care. Yeah. But I'll have someone else deal with it.
Yeah. So I think a lot of operators listening to this, like, I don't say everyone can, you can just magically have no direct reports, right? A lot of people listening, especially founders, you're going to have direct reports and you're gonna be operating. But if you can free up your time and just focus on the highest leverage things, I actually think that's better for your business.
It could be. I think it depends on the person. I think some people are amazing at managing, building culture, and leading. That's not me.
Yeah, I think what I'm saying is for someone like you, or someone like a Dharmesh, for example, or even Elon, for example, where he jumps around solving things, I'm actually best for that, which is why I'm looking for someone that can take on more of the day-to-day stuff.
So you just need a CEO?
Yeah, yeah. It's funny. I'll tell you a story after this, after we finish recording, but continue.
I have someone for you. I don't, I'm messing. I wish I did.
Dude, you're just getting my hopes up, man. So that's what it is, guys. If you guys have any other questions, let us know. And that being said, we'll see you tomorrow.
