The One Trait That Determines If You'll Be Rich

Oh, you're getting sued. Okay, got it. Oh, AI's coming. Oh, the, the, the economy sucks or whatever. Yep. Yep. Doesn't matter, right? Because you don't deserve to become very successful if you can't take it. By the way, one thing I think we should talk about too, um, is how to react. Really the most important trait of business. What are the most important traits of business when you're getting attacked on all sides? Let's say it's a bad economy or like maybe one of your employees is getting sued for something.

Yeah.

Or like maybe you're getting sued for something, like whatever it is exactly. Right. And how, how you react to it in general. And so, Um, we can both speak to it. What do you think? What do you think is the one word that comes to mind here?

For how to react or what do, what do we really—

How to behave if you want long-term success in these situations?

Logical.

Okay. In my mind, the keyword is resilience. And so, but I, I think they kind of go hand in hand because the logical move is resilience because there's no other thing like you're, you're, you're built— businesses are problem-solving machines and If you can't solve it and you lose your, your, your poo-poo right now when things are hitting you, then you deserve to not get to the next level, right? You should be able to tolerate these things no matter how, like you only need to worry about what you can control. Like only worry about controlling the variables and resilience goes a long way. This is why most people can't take it when it comes to business. So when things come my way, I'm just like, yeah, okay. Lawsuit over. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. Oh, you, uh, okay. Got it. Oh, you're getting sued. Okay. Got it. Okay. Doesn't matter, right? Oh, AI is coming. Oh, the economy sucks or whatever. Yep. Just keep going. Just keep taking it because you don't deserve to become very successful if you can't take it.

I agree with that. I was on a phone call right before we started recording, and I was talking to someone about loans in general. I had a buddy of mine who is— their business is doing okay. Um, they got this big, call it, they have monthly expenses because they put a lot of money into, uh, a home project. And, you know, I don't know what they put in, but let's call it around $5 million, but the home is worth conservatively $15 million. So they're just like, oh, maybe I can pull a few more million. So, you know, I was talking to a buddy who knows a lot of hard money lenders. And, you know, after he's like, yeah, I'll make a few introductions to one of my buddies. And we were all talking, and we were talking about just how life, life is. And I'm like, dude, life right now really sucks. And he's like, why? And I'm like, business is going okay. The economy's not great. We're getting kicked from a lot of different sides. Just being quite frankly, yeah, you know, you and I have been nuts. Yes.

Yeah.

And you and I have both dealt with silly legal issues that we shouldn't have. But sometimes you just got to deal with them in business, and you got to fight them, but then you're paying legal costs, which sucks. And I was telling him, you know, at least in my situation, I'm dealing with construction on a home right now, which is eating up a ton of cash. The fires— I feel really bad for the people who lost their homes. Um, but the fires combined with the tariffs have created a new situation in construction in the city of Los Angeles. You have a lack of construction people, so now they're charging more money.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. So I gotta pay more than was budgeted. The second thing that I gotta deal with is not only do I gotta pay more than what was budgeted, but I'm paying more because of tariffs as well.

Hmm.

Tariffs aren't zero, or they weren't— I'm not saying they were always zero, but they're higher than what they were before, whether he's working at least 10% more, at least 10% more. And realistically, for a lot of other stuff, I'm paying 20 to 30% more. At least right now. And I can't get the cost down. I'm trying to prepay and not pay any overages. And I'm like, look, I'll just send the money right now. So I'm getting hurt on all ends. And I was telling him, I'm the brokest rich person, you know, right now. And he laughed. And he's just like, you know, I've heard that a lot recently. And I'm like, I have money, but I'm tying up a lot. I'm investing a lot. I'm not taking distributions. So I'm like, I'm going to—

Does it feel like you're cash poor?

I am cash poor right now. Like just being very transparent.

Yeah.

Because I'm dealing with construction, expanding business and buying companies. Uh-huh. Uh, and I'm not taking distributions. The company is healthy and we're profitable, but I'm using the money to grow the business even more. So I'm getting hit on all sides. I'm living off of savings. I'm investing into construction and I'm also dumping personal money into the business to make it grow faster and buy more companies. So I'm really getting hit.

Yeah.

On all sides.

Yeah.

And then I'm cash flowing things as well. Like, you know, we deal with companies and ad spend, and very rarely do we float media. But sometimes we got to float $4 or $5 million, $6 million at a time, $7, $8 million. And then if you start doing it for a handful of clients, it's not $4 or $5 million at a time, it starts getting to $10, $15, $20 million. So a lot of my cash Because we can't go to a bank and collect, use bank money and pay interest. You know, our interest rate right now is call it 3.25% plus SOFR. So you're looking at call it around 8%, which isn't bad, but getting paid a percentage of ad spend and then paying 8% to float someone's money means you don't make any money.

Yeah.

The economics don't work out. This is just a loss.

Yeah.

So I'm floating it, which means I'm not getting the, call it the 4.6% or whatever interest rate I get from my own bank account. And I'm floating it for the clients just to make sure we have the client. And then that means I have less cash as well. So I'm getting hit on all sides, floating money, spending more on a home and construction, uh, buying corporations and not taking distributions.

Yeah. But the thing is, the real question is why do we do all these things? Right. It's like, okay, if someone's in trouble, like, Yep. Gotta pay the legal fees. Um, you know, oh, do we need to, do we need to overhire right now? Yeah, we need to overhire. 'Cause like, it seems like, oh, the economy's starting to pick up again. It's, it's, we're, we're making bets. You're, you're making a bet on the home long-term for your family. Okay. For the businesses, why are you buying on the— 'cause you're expanding for the long-term, right? Um, why are you like, everything you're doing is, is an investment at the end of the day. Most things you would, you would agree with that, right? Almost everything's an investment.

Yes. And without getting into too many details. It's not just everything is investment, but some of the things we do and we take is because of ethics. Like when you're talking about, let's say if someone on your team is dealing with a legal battle and they shouldn't have to deal with that, but it's partly related to you, but it has nothing to do with you and it's not your fault. Um, and we had an example of this in which, um, you know, we had a falling out of someone that was working with us and the new person that's managing That division, they're in a country where the laws are murky. When I say they're in a country where the laws are murky, I'm talking about people like bribing and stuff. We won't do that. Uh, it hurts us because, you know, cops don't necessarily go to someone's house and do what they're supposed to, even if there may be hypothetically a court order, because, you know, there is things like bribery that you have to potentially deal with, right? So the person's like, oh, they're probably gonna go after me. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm like, what do you mean? The company will take care of it. And she's like, or they're like, are you sure? I'm like, yeah, wouldn't all companies like— no, you would have to get approval. Um, and most companies wouldn't do it and they just say you're on your own. I'm like, oh, that's just unethical.

Yeah.

Uh, if you're getting dragged into something because of me and you're just, uh, Uh, a bystander, it should be my problem, not your problem.

But I also think it's a long-term thing too, cuz you're building a lot of goodwill with that person, assuming that person's really good as well. Like on the ethics side, definitely you should protect them. But on the other side too, you are building a lot of goodwill.

I am.

Yeah.

And I, I know you've been in similar situations in the past and you always tell your employees you have their back.

Yep.

But even if that person isn't a rockstar, you still have their back.

Yeah.

Goodwill is a great bonus. Just ethically, you have to do what's right.

Yeah. And I would say the majority of business people would not— I'm talking like 51% maybe— are probably not thinking in this way because they're thinking about what's the quickest way, the, the, the way to the quickest buck. But the way to the quickest buck is actually the slowest way by doing the ethical thing, which takes longer.

Yes. And too many people are black and white. Like, we have to do this. If we don't do it this way, then we're, you know, uh, then we're just putting company money at risk or whatever. And I look at a lot of these situations. in business and marketing, it's not black and white. You know, like I was talking to someone the other day about branding. Um, and I know Gary Vaynerchuk's big on branding. He has that book, right? Something about the purple or the, uh, the Day Trading Attention. Day Trading Attention.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so purple's in the middle. Red is like, I think one's, one's branding, one's performance. Yes. Yeah.

And I totally agree with him on that. He's, he's done really well as a marketer. You know, like, I've been investing a lot in marketing lately. And you have too. And a lot of people, you know, in a bad time will tell me, dude, why should even people on my team and we're marketing agencies, like, we've been doing this for 3 to 6 months, Neil, there's no ROI. You sure you want to keep doing this? You haven't just kept doing this, you've actually increased the spend, Neil. You sure you want to do this? And I'm like, Yeah, why wouldn't I want to keep doing this? This is how you grow a business 5, 10 years from now, but like it's burning a lot of cash. And I just think you can't, you know, with 80% of your marketing efforts and your money, you have to be long-term. And when you take those bets in a crappy time, like we're both getting kicked and we're feeling it, that's typically when it pays off the most, but you really feel the pain when you do that.

Growth is uncomfortable in any way. And so it, It naturally, like if we're investing, yes, that's uncomfortable. If we're getting attacked on all ends, like yes, it's uncomfortable. But you learn as an entrepreneur that that's the price of admission and you have to keep paying that price every single day. It's just like going to the gym. You're just getting, when you're going to the gym, yep. When you work out, yeah, that's inflammation, right? You're, you're just going for inflammation every day. You're running into it. Um, yeah. And so that's what I would say. Here's the problem with most marketing agencies. They don't understand what is happening with the world of AI. With my agency, Single Grain, we think about agentic workflows. We think about creating agents for the future. When we think about SEO, we think about creating different products such as internal linking products or content consolidation products. And on the other side of things, we think about building products such as Kare. We just think about making marketing easier overall. If you want to stay at the cutting edge of marketing and at the same time leverage the power of AI, go to singlegrain.com and we'll see you on the other side. By the way, one thing real quick. What do you think it is? If there's one thing that's worth micromanaging on forever, what do you think it is?

I don't know. Um, I myself am not a micromanager, but I'm a, a person who heavily checks in. Maybe someone would consider that micromanaging. And I typically only check in for very specific tasks that I know move— really move the needle for the business or potentially could. And I check in every day and sometimes multiple times a day. to make sure shit's getting done on time. Excuse the language.

Oh, I like that. But my opinion on this one, the one thing that's worth micromanaging on forever, and I, I, I, I listened to this, I am paraphrasing from Steve Jobs. The one thing the founder has full control over is continuing to raise the bar on talent and ruthlessly deciding who to let in. Because one, one really good engineer is not 10x, is we're talking 50x and 100x. Yeah. Maybe even 1,000x now with things like Cursor, right? And I, I think if there's one thing that we can control, for example, like your executive team, for example, that, that's the thing that's worth micromanaging on.

Yeah.

And making sure you got the best of the best, right? Um, because then you don't have to worry about all these things. Like you only checking in on the things that maybe you can drive the most impact on. And I do think that the second thing would be the enforcer mentality, right? Like if you can be like Neil, or actually a lot of my Indian friends are very good enforcers. I don't know why it's like that. It's just like that. Um, they're like, some are really good about checking in a very kind way. It's like, hey, how's this going? Right?

And Neil's just like, hey, you just get a phone call.

I get a call from Neil at random times of the day.

Yes. And then I text when they don't answer the phone. And then I try—

You even hit the notify button when they're on sleep mode.

Yes, I do that with you too.

Have you noticed that? You've never hit— no, because mine's on. I just— it doesn't hit me. I have no notifications on.

Yeah, but yours says sometimes do not disturb and I click notify.

Yeah, but it doesn't hit me because—

Oh, it still doesn't hit you?

No, nothing hits me. Yeah. Phone calls won't even hit me. That's why sometimes I don't pick up your call. I don't get any ring. It doesn't— it doesn't like— it's always on silent. Yeah. So when I get it, I'm just like staring at my phone. So yeah. Oh, got it.

That's a good way to deal with phone calls.

Unwanted calls.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, so the way I see it is like, if someone doesn't answer my phone call, I assume that they're on a business call. And I know the business calls usually last every 30 minutes or an hour. So I'll call every 30 minutes. I'm like, you free? You free? Hey, did I catch you at a bad time? If you're busy with a customer, don't answer my phone call. But then I call again in 30 minutes.

You know, I think it's important too because you don't— there's a lot of people, myself included in the past. I've actually gotten better about this, but you don't wait to call. Most people are, hey, you got time? Hey, are you free? When are you free? Oh, when can we schedule a call? You're just like, now in Slack, I just hit huddle. Like, I just hit huddle. Like, I don't even pick up my phone. I just hit like, Because when you go into Slack, you use Teams, right? So there's a little headphone button, just hit that. Like, I don't, I don't need to wait anymore. And then they'll call me back.

Dude, but I do that in everything in life. So for example, I was texting a realtor. All right. And I kind of know the realtor and I kind of don't. And this is Tuesday night.

What does that even mean? You kind of know and you kind of don't?

I've never met them, but they're known for selling the most expensive homes in Beverly Hills.

Yeah.

So I text this person, 8:26 PM Tuesday night. Hey, I'm thinking of listing my home in Beverly Hills. Hi. Okay, let me know where it is and we can discuss. Okay. And then he's like, I'm like, yeah, what's a good time? I was ready to call him right then and there. But he said too quickly, can we have a call in the AM? I was like, man, this blows.

Yeah.

And he's like, what time's good? I'm like, 10 AM. He's like, great, talk then. So then I sent him all the design, the renderings. I'm like, for context, the house gets done in November. That's what it's supposed to look like. He's like, got it.

Thanks. Wait, wait, you're selling the new one?

Potentially, if the economy keeps going bad. Yeah, I'm going to sell the new one. Right? So I'm doing it as a contingency. I'm not, I'm not actually planning on listing it or selling it. But I don't know how bad things are going to get with the economy, tariffs. And all of that. And I want a worst-case backup option. Keep in mind too, at the same time, just being fully transparent, this is probably too many details. My construction on my home, a remodel, you're talking about, you know, I don't want to give too many deals, but let's just say, you know, a good amount of money, right? Not a million or 2 or not even 5, like substantially.

More. You just gave all the details, right?

I didn't say the real amount though. Um, and, and I paid a decent amount for the home. So what I was trying to find out is, uh, will the economics make sense? So for him, actually, I'll just tell the numbers and the data, you know, live. I don't think it's going to really hurt me. I bought the home for $18 million. Uh, the construction estimate is around $10 million. I haven't paid $10 million yet. So call it, I'll be in $28 million. That's a lot of money. I have debt on the house of $7 million. So will— what I'm trying to find out is if I actually put that much money in, will the home sell for $28, $30, $35, or will it actually only sell for $20 and people won't value it? And the thing I ended up getting back from the realtor was he's just like, he's like, dude, did you end up checking out Selena Gomez's home? She just ended up spending $35 million for a 9,000 square foot, really old home, bigger lot than yours. And he's just like, if it's done right, he's like, you can get $4,000 to $5,000 a square foot. I have 7,000 square feet. So $4,000 is not break-even because then there's realtor fees and taxes to sell a home and all this kind of stuff. But when I start getting into the $5,000 or $4,500, etc., I start inking out profit. The only reason I was, I was considering it, and I had a conversation with my significant other, is if I look at business right now, the This is the shittiest time for us. This is also the shittiest time for anyone in the marketing world or typically business world. Would you agree with this statement? For most businesses, minus like the Carvanhas where used cars are actually more valuable because less quote unquote potential tariffs. So I was like, honey, sold the house, worst case, we may have to, I want to use the money to buy more businesses. That way I don't have to rely on the bank or anyone else.

She's gone through this so many times with you.

And she's just like, if you think it's best for the family, I support you. A home is a home. It doesn't matter where we live. Um, and we don't live in a bad place right now. I live in a hotel condo in a 5-star hotel where you can get room service and stuff like that. So it's not like I'm not putting them in a terrible situation.

Did they open that restaurant here?

Is it what?

Did they open that restaurant here? Not yet, right?

It's almost done.

Okay.

But they do things where they cook for you and they have chefs that can cook upstairs and stuff like that. But the restaurant's almost open. 2, 3 more months, I think. Um, but going back to it, she's like, do whatever it takes. Uh, and the interesting part about my life at this point, cuz I'm 40.

Uh, you're 40 now?

Yeah, I turned 40 at the YPO event.

Oh, you did?

I was speaking.

Yeah. Neil never talks about his birthday.

Yeah, I don't. Cuz I know if I told you at that day, you would've been like, oh, hey everyone, it's Neil's birthday. That's why ice cream for free. Cuz it was my birthday. Oh, that was my version of a cake.

Okay. Okay.

Well, right. And it was free.

That's really nice. 40.

Damn, you hit the big 4-0.

Yeah.

So at 40, I'm at a point in life where I can sell my home, and I have quite a few homes that I probably have one too many. Some of them are down in value, so I can't sell those. But the latest one I'm doing construction on, probably not. I can sell the homes and buy more businesses. But when you have a kid and kids, you know, my kids are like, Daddy, Daddy, we can't wait to move into the new home. We want a yard.

Yeah.

Like they straight up say like, we want a yard. We can't wait till like—

Those core memories are worth a lot more.

Yeah. So no joke, dude. For once in my life, I was telling my wife, I'm like, I don't know if I actually want to sell the home to go buy more businesses, even when we make more. She's like, why? And I was like, dude, like I've been to a chiropractor 3 times this week because my neck's been hurting. My back's been hurting. It's been hurting for a few weeks. It's finally starting to get better. Uh, I have, Elbow, I think they call it tendonitis now where it hurts when I stretch my elbows or, you know, walk around.

Yeah, we're getting old.

I have a problem with my foot that came back. It's on my heel that hurts every time I step. And sometimes I just keep limping.

Gotta build more muscle.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

So it's like, there's just things that are getting wrong. And I was just like, you know what, I actually want the memories of living in a home with our children. And I'm kind of okay not to buy as many businesses and not grow as fast. Because I'm not going to remember how much money I made or didn't make. I'm going to remember the moments that I really enjoyed with my kids.

Dude. So yes, I agree. And I think that's worth infinitely more money. And I took, so I took my, my, my mom and dad to, to Tenerife over, Tenerife over the weekend, which is like a resort place in the Palos Verdes. Right. And that was good. Cause I don't regret that. Like, sure, it was tough getting them there and everything. I had to like call them a car and like, you know, had to order like all this stuff, right. To just make sure everything was comfortable for them. Um, But I just look at it and it's like, I also did this. I, I, I bought this up from Reddit. It's like, what's the one thing you regret not doing with your parents? The thing to do for sure is always to bring the, the vlog camera and then have them talk about their lives, right? Because then you can share it with the kids in the future. Um, so my point of saying all this is that I'm like, man, I don't regret this at all because I get all these core memories and they'll remember it to the, to the, the last day. Um, and the cool thing is this, this is a customer service thing. This ties in with marketing as well. Terranea screwed up on so many things. They dropped one of my parents on the ground, right?

Wait, what's— oh, Terranea is the resort.

Yeah, the resort.

They dropped, like, when they're picking them up?

Yeah, yeah. And so, like, basically putting them into, like, uh, like a wheelchair, for example, dropped them, right? Okay, that's a lawsuit right there. That's a lawsuit right there. Um, and then they, they screwed up, like, many times on, like, coming to pick us up. Like, um, you know, one of my parents needs a golf cart, not, not an actual car because it's hard to get into it, right? So there's just a lot of things that were just gone wrong. And what ended up happening was they basically discounted like 95% of the whole thing. I'm like, that's good on you guys, right? Because, um, you know, one of my, my parents didn't wanna press charges or anything cuz the fall wasn't that bad at the end of the day, but they knew they could have applied pressure, right? My point of saying all this is that, um, one, core memories are worth paying for. Second thing is, um, you know, good on the hotel. Like as, as long as you complain, like what can you do for me? Cuz they weren't gonna do anything initially, but I walked up to them. I was like, what can you do for us? And boom, 95% off.

Dude, I love that. And I'm sorry they dropped one of your parents. What did you take the vlog and start recording stuff?

I did. So I asked like a lot of core questions around like, what was the happiest moment of your life? What is, what is like the one big decision you made in your life to like just a lot of questions like, and like what's just a lot of it came from ChatGPT. Um, but I just know that I'll come back to these. Like, I, I was like 20 minutes of interviewing. It's like a podcast, right? And then like another 5 minutes interviewing again. And I know I'll come back to this in the future and bawl my eyes out when I watch those videos again. So worth it, dude.

And I, I know this is a little, uh, creepy, but I'm gonna end up doing this. You just gave me an idea. I'm gonna start recording my parents and my in-laws.

Uh-huh.

Um, and then what I'm gonna do is upload it into AI.

That's what I'm going to do too.

And then create avatars. And then when they're gone, I want to still be able to have like actual hologram voice conversations with them and interact with them.

Dude, you know what I did too? So I had both my parents, they filled— if you go to Amazon, you can buy this book where it basically has them tell their life story and everything. And they wrote it all out, right? So I have it both from my mom and my dad. And so now I have the full videos of them plus their voice, all the patterns, their mannerisms and everything. And I think 20 minutes of data is, is a lot and I'm gonna keep recording more. And I record when they're like, when we're eating and stuff too, right? Just like B-roll camera. Um, and so that is going to make exactly what we're looking for. And I'm gonna look for other data to pull too, cuz they have like a lot of like videos and stuff from the past.

So, yeah, but th— this is cool cuz it's like, uh, my team, you know, at one point they were just like, man, this is NP Digital or Neil Patel Digital. And then it got transferred to NP Digital.

Mm-hmm.

They're like, what happens if something happens to you? And that's why we also transferred it to NP Digital. I'm like, look, the team makes up the business. It's not me. Um, I'm no Ogilvy, but Ogilvy has done well without, uh, Ogilvy. Uh, again, I'm not an Ogilvy and I'm not saying I'm going to have the same success. Uh, and there's other people like Alan Rim Kaufman, right? He had a good agency. Uh, he sadly passed away years ago. He was really, uh, widely respected in the marketing realm, especially when it came to things like paid ads. Um, he got— he was sick, he passed away, um, and the company lived on. And I'm telling my team these days, I'm like, dude, if a company is very reliant on a personal brand, with AI, technology will be good enough. Maybe not in 6 months, maybe in a year or 2 though, where you could actually record and you can interact with the AI and still make that person part of the company and seem very real without people knowing. I'm not saying you lie to people that they passed away or not, but seem very real where people can interact with their personal brands. It's like someone passes away, their Instagram page is done. Why does their Instagram page have to be done? If especially like, let's say it's Bill Gates and he, uh, or actually he's a bad example. I would say a better example is Steve Jobs and Apple. I know timing didn't work out because of technology, But if Steve Jobs, hypothetically, and I'm not trying to, you know, poke anything or say anything that can hurt anyone's feelings, but if he passed away today or 5 years from now, and technically there's enough video information of him in the past, you can in theory create a virtual Steve Jobs that can still interact and do the keynote breaking down, here's the next Apple product launch.

Yeah.

As Steve Jobs doing it with all the info there.

Yeah, of the data. That's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.