The Team Management Strategy Behind Neil Patel’s Success

When I say pushing, like calling someone and be like, did we get this done? Why not? What do you need to get it done faster? Or like, what are you working on? Remove these 3 things. I only want you to focus on this one thing. You had 4, just focus on this one thing. When is it going to get done? That is the majority of my day.

Do you check in with them to see if they got it done?

How many times a day do I check in with them?

Yeah. By the way, Neil's not just— That's the real question. So you can't— pushing, just pushing is not enough. You actually have to check back in with them.

You agree with that, right? Yeah, dude, I drive people crazy so much. Like, I check in with people so often that some people will tell me, hey, just as a heads up, Neil, when you respond back to me, I'm traveling in Europe right now, so I won't be able to get back to you when you respond back. Because they know I'm going to bug them within an hour being like, is it done yet?

Yeah.

Dude, I have a guy on vacation right now. He's amazing. I love him to death. He hasn't taken a vacation in 4 years. So he's at home right now, but he's still focusing on a lot of our AI stuff because he's finding it so fascinating that he loves it. So we called him during his vacation and—

Who's we?

Me and my co-founder, and we didn't know he was on vacation until we called him. And he's like, dude, I love it. So I'm still working on some of it. I'm like, okay, we still want you to have your vacation. And during it, we still talking for like 30 minutes. So like, so when's it going to go live? And he's just like, I don't know yet. I'm missing X, Y, and Z. I'm like, Don't worry about it. You'll get that today. He's like, you sure? I'm like, yeah, yeah. So then Mike and I just go call the other people right there. Like, I need it in the next hour. So we ended up getting it within like 2 or 3 hours. We didn't get it right away, but close enough. Get it to him. And then he's like, I'm going to take my vacation, but tomorrow I'll have timelines for everything. So then Mike pings him. We both are actual pushers. And it was funny, dude. What was the message? I got to actually— let me— I got to reread this. Dude, we have so many text threads. It's just so hard to go through all of them. Oh. He says his name, and then because the guy's on vacation, it's ETA day, smiley face. And then he has a smiley face. Wait, Mike said that? Yeah.

It's ETA day.

So we're like, and then I'm messaging him too. So once we got the ETA, and then I'm like, cool, that's for Ubersuggest, but what's the ETA for ATP or Answer the Public, right? And I know he doesn't have everything for it, but you still got to ask. And then they're telling you why they don't have an ETA. And it's like, cool, I will go and fix that stuff. And then I'll tell all the other people. I'm like, next day, tell me the ETA at the latest for that part.

This is underrated and I don't want to miss the details here. So one, absolutely you need to have pushers, right? But you also have very exceptional memory. So you, you have like a, like a project management tool in your brain. So I think you do actually remember when people say things or you're like at least close to it. So you'll know when to follow up. My problem is I have bad short-term memory, right? And so I had to make an Asana board called Delegated by Eric board, and I'll just assign all these things. But even that gets annoying, right? So I hope there's a, I just gave myself an idea. There's going to be AI listening to it all the time and it's going to be the remember pusher and it's going to keep pushing because guys, this might seem like it's annoying and it's micromanagement or whatever, but if you don't push, you're not going to get the important things done because people just don't care as much as you do. It's just the reality.

Dude, and I straight up said, and the launch of V1 of ATP, the new version with AI, end of July too, wink. You know, that's when we started getting to ETA about that. But when he told us the ETA was end of August, The first thing I did was I called our project— product manager, not project manager, but product manager, and I told her straight up, I was just like, you know the feature that they're launching? I don't want to derail things or any— move anything around. That feature's not going to be that used. The most used feature in Ubersuggest is the keyword research. Why not add it to there first? And they're like, I don't have the designs for that, so I can't get an ETA. And I was like, will the ETA of that affect the ETA of the other thing? Because if so, I can reshift. It's moving the days. And then The first thing I ended up saying was, hey, why don't we do both and take the people who are working on maintaining the old product, which won't be in existence forever, shift them over and do them both simultaneously so I can have one of them done sometime in the next few weeks if possible.

Yeah.

But you just got to push and you got to follow up and you can't forget and you got to follow up multiple times a day, 7 days a week, and I know that drives people crazy, But it works.

It's true, it's true. And look, Neil's not trying to be a bad guy or anything, it's just this is what's required to build something great. And let me ask you this, does Mike have a good memory? Does he remember to keep pushing? I don't think he pushes as— you push pretty frequently, so.

No, he pushes a lot too.

We both push.

So he remembers? We both remember.

Yeah.

I don't know how he remembers. I don't make notes of it.

I think it's just in your head, right?

For me, everything's in my head. He is much more organized and he'll like write things down and have all his notes and stuff. I just store it in my head And I just know to follow up with people and I know like, you know, when it's going to be due, when they're going to say, and I'll know to even follow up a few weeks ahead to make sure that they're on track. And if they're saying they're not on track, why? And what do I need to cut to make sure they're on track? It's just all compromises and pushing. And if you don't have people who can handle that pressure, if that's your personality like mine, then you're working with the wrong people. And when I interview people, I make sure they're okay with that before I hire them so that way they know what to expect.

Do you?

Okay.

So we call this anti-sell, right? So we told them what they're going to get into. So how do you tell them that about your level of pushing?

Oh, I'll give them examples right then and there. So I'll say, okay, we want to release LLM features of tracking how many times you're recommended on different keywords or prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini, you know, Meta, the list goes on and on. And I'll be like, how would you go about building it? So asking all the questions, making sure they're on the same page or thinking about it. So like, oh, I'd build it all at once. I'd be like, okay, that's overwhelming. It's going to take too long to get something out. I would've been like, you're looking for logic. Like, oh, I would first do research on Google Trends to see which is the most popular platform and has the highest usage. I think it's ChatGPT because that's what everyone's talking about, but I would verify. Based on that, I'll roll that out first, then I'll roll out the second, then I'll roll out third. I want them to even think about like, oh, and then I'd research which startup programs these have, and then I would get the credits for them. Yeah, the discount. So that way we would save money. So I'm expecting people to start going down that track. Sometimes I guide them like with the credits or stuff because some of that stuff's not the biggest thing, but I want people to be money conscious in my organization. And then, you know, assuming everything's running, I'm like, how do you deal with pressure? And most times people will be like, okay, I'm great. I'm like, how do you deal with being a player and coach if it's a manager role? Because I'll tell them, I'm like, I expect all my managers to get their hands dirty. It doesn't matter if you're a CMO or product manager, you need to get your hands dirty and actually do the work. And then I'll go into examples. I'm like, how would you react or how would you feel if I messaged you 3 times a day asking about this deadline. Okay. And then I would say, if I message you about the deadline and you don't respond, what do you think that's going to make me feel like? Okay. And then on the flip side, I'll be like, what happens if I message you at 6 at night or 7 at night and you're 4 hours ahead in time zone? So for you, it's at 10 at night. How would that make you feel? Would that irritate you? I'm like, you can just be transparent because I'm just telling you my personality. The last thing we want to do—

These are execs mostly.

Mid-level and execs. Well, if people—

Superstar, yeah, people you're going to work with.

People I'm going to work with. That's a better qualification than their job title because they could be a person just writing emails. When I work with someone, this is what I expect from people. And if they can't do it 7 days a week, and I'll even go with like, I'm like, there's an emergency. This is what happened. It's Christmas. You're with your family. You have kids. They want your time. I understand that. What would you do in this scenario? And I just want to hear what they have to say. Yeah. And I know it sounds crazy. I'm looking forward, and I know people are going to hate me for this. I'm looking forward to the people who would be like, I would tell you I'm with my family. I would find out how urgent it is and how much money we're losing. I would respond. If we're losing a ton, I would drop and spend like 10, 20 minutes or 30 minutes fixing it or trying to stop the bleeding at least. And then I'll get back with my family. Or they're like, if it's not that much of an emergency and it's only costing us $100 or $1,000 a day, I would ask you, are you okay with this loss or do you want me to fix it right now? Yeah, and I'll tell them, yeah, I'm okay with a $1,000 loss.

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15, 20%. Okay. Churn. So yeah, the rest stay. But keep in mind, we have my co-founder, HR, other people on my team who have interviewed those people in advance before I've got to them. So they've already weeded out a lot of stuff.

You're the final one.

Uh-huh. And they've already set the expectations on how demanding I am.

Yeah.

And they show them examples of emails, text messages. Yeah. So they— and Slack messages.

They're like priming them through that whole thing.

They'll even show like call logs of how many times I'm FaceTiming, audioing them. And when they don't answer, I just keep going and going and going.

Yeah, you do.

So they know what to expect working with me. And I know that's— I'm not, you know, let me just say this. I'm not an easy person to work with. This is why I'm not the CEO of my organization. And I focus on the areas I believe I can have the highest lift. And I work with the people that can help me get there. And in advance, we know if those people will have the personality to be adaptable to work with me and will be okay mentally to work with me.

There's 2 things here. One, you're setting expectations up front, which is super important, right? And the second one I forgot. So we're going to end the episode here. See you guys later. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe.