Rich or King?

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

Eric Siu and Neil Patel

Careers, Business, Marketing

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Need marketing help? Visit: https://www.singlegrain.com/ and https://npdigital.com/ Want to recruit great marketers? Find them here: https://marketingschool.io/hire In this episode, Neil and Eric break down the concept of "Rich vs King" AKA Money Vs Power, using Microsoft vs SAS Institute to explore wealth vs control, equity, and generational businesses. They talk ambition after kids, compounding, TAM, IQ, focus, and why learning beats raw talent in entrepreneurship. You’ll hear how to think about billion dollar goals, picking the right niche (like HVAC), improving your focus over decades, and why B2B marketers misuse LinkedIn account-based marketing, plus how karrot.ai helps fix it. Key takeaways: -Rich vs king: choosing control or maximum upside as your company scales. -Compounding, focus and the right niche beat raw IQ in business. -Ambition, kids and balance reshape your path to billion dollar outcomes. Chapters: (00:00) Rich vs King for founders (02:10) Microsoft vs SAS Institute example (04:20) Rich, king, and life balance (06:15) Compounding, TAM, and ambition (08:10) IQ, learning and market niches (10:30) HVAC edge and simple businesses (12:30) Learning M&A, AI and recruiting (14:20) Focus over decades as founders (16:10) Money, distraction, and side projects (18:00) Hiring experts, SEO roots, wrap 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗟 Welcome to Marketing School, one of the top business podcasts with over 61 million downloads. Each episode delivers actionable marketing tips and strategies from two entrepreneurs who truly practice what they preach. The show is hosted by Eric Siu, founder of Leveling Up and Single Grain, and Neil Patel, co-founder of Neil Patel Digital and recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 Marketer. 🎙️ Learn More About the Hosts Eric Siu – Leveling Up: https://www.youtube.com/@LevelingUpOfficial Neil Patel: https://www.youtube.com/@neilpatel 📩 Free Resources Ubersuggest: https://www.ubersuggest.com/ Answer The Public: https://www.answerthepublic.com/ ✅ Subscribe for Daily Marketing Insights!

Transcript

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0:00.0	I got a question for you because you're talking about generational businesses.
0:02.7	Would you rather be rich or king?
0:05.2	Do you want me to define this?
0:06.5	Yes.
0:06.9	Okay.
0:07.5	So would you rather be Microsoft or SAS Institute, SAS Institute?
0:14.4	Do you know what SAS Institute?
0:15.3	I do not know SAS Institute.
0:16.8	So I'll break it down for you.
0:18.6	So the founders, so they started around the same time. Actually, this, let's call it Sass Institute. They started a year before Microsoft started. I think before you go into it, I don't want to cut you off, but I am. Before you even go, just for shits and giggles, I'm going to go with Rich. Okay. Because almost always, if you ask you don't want to be rich or something else, unless it's unhealthy or something like that, I'm going to pick rich.
0:40.1	Okay. I'm going to tell you why you're going to pick the other one eventually. So like, we'll just go with that. And I think I might actually rather be rich than King. I think you actually might want to be King. So let me break this down for you. So SAS Institute was a data software company founded a year before Microsoft was founded.
0:59.0	As you know, Microsoft, when they were founded in I think late 70s or so, they went public
1:03.8	quickly.
1:04.8	So they started participating in public markets.
1:08.0	Obviously they had to, you know, you have shareholders, things like that and Bill's equity, Bill Bill Gates equity came down quite a bit, right? And Paul Allen, the co-founders. Now, the co-founders
1:15.8	of SaaS Institute, they actually held on to the equity. They didn't raise outside funding or anything
1:20.0	like that. They didn't go public. So I think going up to their very high points, I think Microsoft,
1:26.8	I forgot what year this was, Microsoft got up to like $143 billion in revenue, okay? And SaaS Institute was $3 billion. Now, the difference is the founders kept, they were the cap table very much, right? There wasn't anyone else. Microsoft, obviously, there's way more people on the cap table. But the difference is you have a multi-trillion dollar company versus a company doing three billion a year in revenue. So in this case,
1:47.5	the king is Microsoft at 143 billion. Okay. And then you have three billion for the rich. Which
1:53.4	one you rather be? I'd rather be the $143 billion company. The king. You'd rather be the king.
1:58.7	No, I consider that rich because you have more money.
2:01.1	No, no, no, but king is like you own, you're like, you are better than rich.
	...

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