5 Things You Don't Know About Neil Patel

Andy Beal recently tagged me to share 5 things that most people don't know about me. So here goes...

  1. I got my first job at the age of 15 1/2 which was picking up trash, cleaning restrooms and taking care of vomit at Knotts Berry Farm. After a few jobs later (selling $1800 Kirby vacuums door to door, stocking items at Party City and renting videos at Hollywood Video) I decided to make sure I never have to work for someone else again.
  2. When I was a little kid I got in trouble for impersonating AOL members. To this day, my address and a few others that I used to use are permanently flagged and not allowed to be AOL members.
  3. I first learned I was an entrepreneur when I started to sell burned movies and CDs to people for 2 to 5 dollars each during my freshman year in high school. After that I started to sell black boxes and hacked satellite TV cards.
  4. At the moment I work full time and go to college full time. I am 21 and currently a senior at Cal State Fullerton, majoring in marketing. Some think that all this is too much but I think it is great because this way, you can have your employees do your school essays and projects for you.
  5. I first got into the SEO industry when I was in high school because I started a job board to compete with monster.com. I saved up 5,000 dollars from selling all those black boxes to pay for the website, but then found out that I had no money left for advertising. I then had to learn how to do it myself.

Hopefully this gives you some insight about me and how I became an Internet Marketer. I'm tagging Andy Hagans, Paul Stamatiou, Brian Clark, Loren Baker, and David Naylor (not sure if he has been tagged...).

**Update: Andy Hagans wanted me to add a 6th thing about myself...

Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.

SES

Trackbacks (1)

David "Dsquared" Dalka - Creating Revenue and Retention - Chicago GSB, December 16, 2006

“My friend Neil Patel” — Neil responded to Andy Beal’s call out to learn about “5 things you don’t know”. I’ll add a something you don’t know about Neil Patel. Since I think we are up to number 6, I get to do #7!!! 7) Neil drank while undera...

Reader Comments (10)

jf.sellsius, December 17, 2006

You have yet to leave your mark Neil. Look forward to your great future adventures. PS I think I got sick at Knotts :)

Chuck Lai, December 17, 2006

I'm glad I found another person who sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door. How funny!?! The margins on Kirby’s are a complete boondoggle.

Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work.

Neil Patel, December 17, 2006

jf.sellsius, it was probably me who cleaned it up. :(

Chuck, happy to hear from someone else who also sold them. I had a great experience selling them, it taught me a lot about sales.

Sujan Patel, December 17, 2006

Neil I remember selling vacuums door to door with you. A wise man once said if you can sell a 1800 dollar vacuum, you can sell anything

Neil Patel, December 18, 2006

We had good times. :) Made very little money, but it was a great learning experience.

Abhilash, December 18, 2006

Kirby vacuums? who knew that would be the secret thread of several seo's. I've seen it on a few other posts too (not to mention writing it in my own).

"I've got that /
old Kirby spirit / Deep in my heart, Deep in my heart, deep in my heart...'

Neil Patel, December 18, 2006

We all owe our success to Kirby. :)

Cameron Olthuis, December 18, 2006

Sujan - the wise man told me something similar, except he said religion instead of Kirby vacuums. Unfortunately for me I've never sold either.

Imran, December 19, 2006

Nice, now I kinda know something about the person who writes articles each week. I used to do that on AOL too, my account has been canceled so many times that they blocked all my credit cards that I used to create accounts.

Thilak, December 20, 2006

Good to see people play the blog tagging game. I think, you, me and Sujan have one thing in common... that is selling CDs in high school.

Even I used to do that same, until my blog started paying me off.