About Neil Patel
Neil Patel is the co-founder of 2 Internet companies: Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics. Through these 2 companies he has helped large corporations such as AOL, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard and Viacom make more money from the web. By the age of 21 not only was Neil named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, but he was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. read more
We recently asked Neil “What is the best peice of advice you have ever got?” and he responded with this post he wrote back in July of 2008 – enjoy!
How Many Veins Have You Tapped Into?
Just like the human body, there are tons of veins in the business world. Each vein symbolizes a small group of people and all of these groups can be eventually be tracked back to one main source, similar to a human heart. The more veins you tap into, the quicker you will get to the heart, which in the business world symbolizes power and money.
For example, 2 years ago I noticed that TechCrunch was not optimized for search engines. I decided to email Michael Arrington, on how he could make TechCrunch search engine friendly. For a few months he didn’t respond, but sooner or later he did.
Once Michael responded to me, he asked me how much it would cost for my help and I told him that I would do it for free. Within 2 weeks I doubled his search traffic and he was pleased. He then asked me if there was anything he could do for me and I told him that if he knew anyone that needed marketing help, it would be great if he mentioned my name.
Within minutes Michael emailed a few of his friends that ran Venture Capital funds and told them how I doubled his search traffic. But instead of his friends contacting me, they mass emailed all of the companies they funded, telling them to hire me. This led me to build relationships with many of the people insides Michael’s network, which has done wonders for my business.
So how can you tap into a vein?
- Network, network, network – the more time you spend being social, the more people you will meet. Your goal shouldn’t be to meet as many people as possible, but you want to get to know a few key individuals. You can do this through sending emails, attending conferences, commenting on someone’s blog, or just by joining a social network.
- Give FREE advice – the more advice you give the people you meet, the more likely they’ll introduce you to others in their network. Keep in mind that the advice you give can’t be useless, it should be valuable; so valuable that they want more.
- Don’t ask and you will receive – once you show value to one person, he or she will naturally introduce you to others that can benefit from your advice. Just be patient because it can take months if not years before you penetrate their network.
Hopefully this encourages you to start tapping into some veins.
PS: Try and stay away from the needles. 
