I first met Neil Patel at Blog World. Before then, I only know Neil through his Pronet Advertising blog. However, Neil is more than just a successful blogger. He is a very successful businessman. Neil is the CTO of Advantage Consulting Services, a company that he co-founded in 2003. ACS works with 22 of the other Top 100 Technorati blogs and made $2.5 million last year. Neil is also the co-founder of Crazy Egg, one of the best visual visitor tracking tools on the Net. And here is the kicker. Neil is only 21 years old and still going to school.
You would think with running a Technorati Top 100 blog and two companies and going to school, Neil would have no time for personal blogging. Well, you would be wrong. Quick Sprout is Neil’s personal blog about branding yourself for success. Branding is something every blogger should work on. If you were to ask me what separate me from the 100+ million bloggers out there, I would have to say, I have a brand. Neil calls it the rock star formula.
American Express Centurion Card Holder
Neil is one of only two people I know who owns a Black American Express card. However, unlike my friend Tyler Dikman, Neil got his card for free. How did he do that?
I am currently on the Board of Advisors of a handful of companies. One of them being Affiliate Programs (who is mainly known for owning a lot of the media properties in the online gambling space). Because I am on the board of advisors for that company, one of the perks that they provided me was a Centurion card. The best part about getting the card through them, is that they paid for the upfront fees to obtain the card and they pay the monthly card bill.
That’s a pretty damn good perk! The fee for getting a Black Amex is $7,500 and you have to charge a minimum of $250,000 a year to get one. And Neil doesn’t have to pay the monthly card bill? His advice must be worth a lot of money to Affiliate Programs.
If Affiliate Programs is willing to give that kind of perk for Neil’s advice, then he is definitely someone you want to keep an eye on and learn from. I’ve added the Quick Sprout RSS feed to my Google reader and I advise you to do the same if you want to achieve rock star status.
I wonder if Neil will let me borrow the card for the next John Chow Blogger Dinner?
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