Neil Patel Founder of KISSmetrics: My Top 3 Business Mistakes

TOP 3 MISTAKES4 Neil Patel Founder of KISSmetrics: My Top 3 Business Mistakes

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Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics, he helps companies like Amazon, AOL, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web and Entrepreneur Magazine says he is one of the top entrepreneurs in the world.

You can read more about Niel from his world famous blog QuickSprout. We recently connected with Neil and asked him to share the top 3 mistakes he made launching his company and this is what he had to say:

Q: What were the top 3 mistakes you made starting out with your business and if you could start over what would you do differently?

1 – Not having enough focus

When I started my first business I kept on trying to do too many things and expand the business even before we had a bit of revenue. This caused me to output mediocre work instead of great work. Eventually clients suffered from it and we lost revenue.

My advice: If I had to do it all over again, I would just focus on one model within my business. As the revenue growth declines, I would then expand, but not until then.

2 – Hire B players

Just like most entrepreneurs I didn’t have a lot of cash when I was starting out. So I hired B and C employees because that is all I could afford.

Sadly the results from these employees weren’t great, which meant that they needed to be micromanaged. Not only did this take a lot of my time, but it caused customers to be unhappy again.

My advice: If I had to do it over again I would have given up equity in the business to hire A players. This would have made the business a lot larger.

3 – Letting the foot off the pedal

Once things started to look up and I was making a decent amount of money, I slowly started taking my foot off the pedal because I was enjoying life. I should have never done this because I eventually was losing customers faster than I was adding them.

My advice: Always keep pushing hard and never slow down when things are good. You can lose everything much faster than it took you to build the business.

Neil Patel | Founder | KISSmetrics

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