2023 Year In Review: AI Doubled Our Leads?!

All right, so we're going to do something. We're going to do a year in review marketing breakthroughs and lessons, and we're going to carry this over into 2024. But these are a couple of things that Neil and I picked up over the year. We're going to share some experiences. We're going to share some things that we've seen as well. Hopefully we'll share some numbers with you as well. And let us know what you think in the comments. Again, please give us feedback on this new format because we are spending more time per episode and trying to spend more time pre— So I'll start off with the first lesson. I think my number one lesson here is I'll give you something tactical to get the dopamine going, but then there's a key lesson behind it. So let me give you the dopamine hit first. So the first one is, yes, AI was great. We probably doubled our lead flow, maybe even, yeah, doubled our lead flow. We hit our lead flow goals for the year. Yeah. And we leverage a lot of programmatic SEO. So just to recap for everyone, when you think about searching for things to do in Japan, things to do in Rome, TripAdvisor shows up all the time. A lot of people don't know this, but TripAdvisor actually has about 122 million organic visitors per month. They rank for about 19 million keywords. And if they're paying Google for that traffic each month, they'd be paying about $71 million a month. That being said, they still spend a lot of money on Google Ads. Let's not take that away. This programmatic SEO thing is available to people like you and me now. And so, you know, that means you can be ranking for things like Pilates studio in Miami, Pilates studio near me, all that type of stuff, right? And there's a lot of permutations. It just depends on the business that you're in. Doesn't work for everyone, but it is a thing that most people can start to consider. And so that was very much a breakthrough for us. We would start doing it for clients as well. And what I will say is, you know, everyone talks about AI, but also there's a double-edged sword when it comes to AI too. If you're going to be pumping out hundreds, if not thousands of pages, you also need to be QCing these pages at scale, meaning that you need to have quality control for these pages. Because if you just pump out a bunch of crap, that's going to make it bad for your website. You're not going to rank for that traffic either. And that's just one of those things. And also overhyping AI too. So we've talked about everyone talking about, oh, all these new tools. I got this new tool over here, this new tool over here. We're trying this new tool, but okay, great. Like what outcomes have you gotten from these tools? And I think that's a key thing here. It's like AI is going to be great for the long term, but in the short term, I believe that we've overhyped it quite a bit. And, you know, we're just using to enhance what we're doing right now. But I would still say like, look, that's been a breakthrough for us, but we're tempering those expectations.

Dude, I have a big problem with the tools thing too. It's like so many people talk about tools. I'm like, cool, well, what did it do for your business? I sell tools. You have tools, like, great, use them. But if you just keep using tools and you don't do anything with the data that you're getting from the tools, or you're not seeing any revenue growth, what matters? Like, nothing matters. Like, that's the goal as a marketer. Your job's to drive more revenue profitably. And if your tools can't help you doing that, all you're doing is just wasting tons of time. One lesson on my end. That was a big one is, and, you know, the first part isn't really a lesson. I already knew this, but if you look at most social platforms, if you keep posting too much content that's crap, it actually hurts your organic reach for any of the content you post in the future, even if the future content is really amazing. This is for most social networks. In essence, they're like, well, if Neil keeps cranking out crap content and then he wants to switch to good content, his good content is not going to get reached because we have a bad taste in our mouth from Neil. So you want to ideally only post good content and in quantity because it takes a lot of time to fix or repair your reputation with these social platforms. One of the platforms that doesn't care about this as much is X. So on X, if you post multiple times a day and if it's crap or good, it doesn't matter too much. The good stuff does well, the crap stuff doesn't, versus other social networks where you can't post a lot on a daily basis because if it's crap, it really hurts you. So we've been taking X, posting on there multiple times a day, taking our best stuff. And then from there, we then go and convert those best performing X posts into videos. And then I use it for Shorts, Reels, whatever you want to end up calling it and putting it out there everywhere. And when we ended up doing this, we ended up seeing a 46.7% increase in LinkedIn views, 31.4% more YouTube views and 29.5% more Instagram views, which isn't bad. You know, we've been doing this for a few months now and it's been a super effective strategy. We're going to be doing this more in 2024 and we think the results are going to get even better. We're going to switch up some of the strategies to not just basing it on what's getting the most views on Twitter, to also looking at what's getting liked the most or commented the most because some social networks, Like YouTube really value comments while others may not value comments as much. Like on X, they value people clicking the see more to see more of the content while on YouTube they value comments a lot. So we're going to see, all right, maybe we should take the most commented posts on X and use them for YouTube content while we take the ones that are clicking see more and then use that for LinkedIn because that's very similar to their algorithm. So we're going to start adjusting which ones we pick for which social networks, but we think that's going to actually cause us to get way more views and reach in 2024.

Dude, Neil, speaking of the YouTube comments thing real quick. So do you remember Jeffrey Woo? You met him at the Miami event?

Uh-huh.

Okay. So—

Logan Paul?

No. Jeff's a good friend. He's partnered with Jake Paul on a VC fund called Anti Fund, right? And so he started a new channel recently. So I'm like, I'm like observing and I'm like very curious about how he's been growing because his Instagram went from probably a couple thousand followers to now he's at 220,000, 230,000 or so and it's growing, right? And then his YouTube, I'm going to share my screen real quick. He doesn't necessarily have a lot of subs, right? And don't get me wrong, the content's definitely interesting. But here's the thing. I looked at this a couple months ago. Look, you can see here's a video. He has 136 views on it, right? Big Business in San Francisco vlog, 1,700 views or so. So not a lot. But then when you look at the recent ones from a relative standpoint, 36,000 views over here, 21,000 views, 27,000 views. And the interesting thing you mentioned, Neil, was the comments thing. And so I noticed on his Instagram, because now he has a larger following, 220,000 followers on Instagram, what he does is he'll say, hey guys, I posted a new video, comment big business on this video and I'll give you $200, right? For like a random winner. And I'm like, okay, I wonder how well this is going to work, right? And so if you look over here, where is it? Great interviews.

Salute both of you.

Another Johnny. Okay, maybe not this one, or maybe this one over here. Okay. Okay, look over here. Big business. That's what I'm saying. Big business, right? I really appreciate you giving back. Big business, right? Everyone's saying big. Everyone's trying to get the money over here, and that's why this has 535 comments.

And look at the views. YouTube loves comments. So it's just like you know. But that's why we're adjusting our strategy based on the channel.

Dude, look at it. Big business, big business, big business. It's like hey, tell me what you think. Big business.

Yeah, but but here's the issue. If you just tell people to put the comment yes. It doesn't work anymore, or big business. It has to be them leaving sentences. If you look at the ones at the top, people are leaving like sentences and then big business at the end. But what you need people to do is actually engage with real comments.

You know what's interesting? He said this. He said, hey, leave, leave, uh, tell me what you thought about this plus put big business. So some people are doing it, some people aren't, to your point.

Yeah. And if they don't put, you know, if they don't leave that Long comment or detailed, it just doesn't work.

Yep. Yeah. I mean, think about it, right? If you're writing a program, if you're doing this algorithmically, it's pretty easy to spot people that are trying to game it. Now, here's one thing I'll call out from my side. So to Neil's point, like what we're trying to do with this podcast as an example is we're trying to focus more on quality versus quantity. So for example, my YouTube has switched back to just doing long-form podcast interviews. 90 minutes to 2 hours or so. And that's my happy medium. That's what I'm really good at because I've done hundreds of these interviews. And I'm like, okay, I'm just going to keep doing that, right? And so, quality is greater than quantity, but you also have to add in the time equation. So, I know if we keep doing what we're doing for this podcast, it's just going to compound. It's just unfortunately, our podcast got disconnected 4 years ago. The compounding stopped and then YouTube didn't like that, right? But now, we're starting it up again. My Clips channel is doing really well with the podcast stuff. And then I just see with all these long-form podcast interviews I'm doing, it's just, I'm looking at the graph, it's like they're all going up into the right. And YouTube will do whatever it takes to help you grow. Same thing with the other social channels if you have a really good piece of content. The other thing I'll say here is us combining it with Reels now and our editors getting a lot better at finding the right moments. Now we're just like, okay, how do we 3, 4x, 5x the number of Reels Instagram Instagram Reels, the TikToks, the Shorts that we're doing. And maybe we might take a page, maybe we might even work with this guy that help people like Iman Gadzhi. And Neil, did I tell you this? He basically, he said, I guarantee that for Marketing School, we'll get you 10 million views that are legit in 90 days or else it's like performance guaranteed. Like, you don't pay or something like that.

What kind of views? I don't need irrelevant people listening to our stuff or watching our stuff.

It doesn't— Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, I'm going back and forth with him right now, right? The fact that he got Iman Gadzhi like 150 million views in a month or so, and they're like legit and it's growing his business, I'm interested in learning more. I'm not sure if we're going to work with him yet, but I'm interested in learning more. Back to you.

Yeah, so another lesson that I ended up having, and this one was a simple dumb moment for me. I'm actually trying to pull it up right now so that way you guys can end up seeing it. There you go. Dude, do you know how many views he's getting on his podcast?

No, how many?

On the videos and stuff like that? He was breaking down. I was just in San Diego. He's getting somewhere around 100,000, 200,000 views per episode.

Oh, that's a lot.

Power of partnering up with Entrepreneur Magazine or someone who else has an audience. Eric and I used to do this a lot in the past. We stopped doing it altogether.

We actually did this with Marketing School on Entrepreneur.

Back in the day, but we stopped.

Back in the day. Yeah, we did.

And we should have just kept doing it. We would have just got way more subs and views. That's one of the big lessons that I got from Jeff. And it's not like it was a brand new lesson, but still, sometimes the old stuff works. And speaking of the old stuff, it used to be like Eric and I back in the day would do all our own marketing. That's what we were great at. And I would still say, not to be arrogant, but I think we're still pretty good at it, right? And what's funny is both of us in 2024 started getting back, I mean, 2023, started getting back into the weeds in areas that We didn't want to. And the main reason being is 2021 was a boom year. 2022, kind of a boom year. Like we grew roughly 40% in 2022, a little bit under. I think it was like 39 and change, or maybe it was 36 and change, but either way it was a decent growth year. But during the COVID years, some of them we were growing like almost 100% a year, which was amazing. It was ridiculous growth. Some years was even faster than that. But what's happened is in a bad economy with interest rates rising, things have slowed down. We started getting back into the weeds on a lot of our marketing tactics. I'm spending a lot more time creating social content. I'm spending a lot more time doing diligence on businesses when we're trying to buy them, more than I was spending before. And the results are already starting to pay off. But one of the big lessons that, you know, we both experienced in 2023 is Sometimes you want to outsource things, whether it's marketing or operations as entrepreneurs, and you don't want to do it yourself. And you're like, let me just hire a really amazing operator. Sometimes you just got to suck it up and do it yourself and keep doing it yourself, whether you like it or not, because you can produce better results until you can figure out a way to train up people underneath you that can maintain the same level of quality or that can perform better. And sometimes it's just not a quick solution of hiring someone who's really smart or brilliant or went to Stanford or whatever it may be. You know, a lot of times you just got to suck it up and do it yourself.

You know what's interesting? This was the point I wanted to make here on founder mentality. What Neil and I are both talking about is founder mentality. And actually one of my developers said this to me earlier last week. He's like, yeah, you know, it's very clear that when sometimes when you disappear, Things just don't move, right? But when you're back, like things things move and nobody cares as much as you do. And it's the founder mentality because sometimes people be like, oh, you know, I'm going to wait a week to get it done. Oh, let's meet next week. And then like they they need to meet someone else for in two weeks. And then like then before you know it, it takes you twelve weeks to get something done where it might have taken you like a couple days or so, right? Like maximum. And so the concept of founder mentality, like when you look at Ryan Peterson from Flexport, he's back in it. Our mutual friend, he's back in it as well. And we're all in it right now and things are moving a lot faster. Like I got a message from someone else on the team. He's like, I haven't grown this much this year. And thanks to you, right? Like you've pushed me really hard. It's like the founder's going to push the hardest because they care the most. That's just how it's set up because the founders are also incentivized to care the most as well.

Yep.

And I think it's nice, the things that you're seeing on Twitter, it's like, yes, go hire operator, go hire. Like, yes, that's all important. Go delegate. Absolutely. But I think people took that delegation, and I made this mistake, to mean abdication. And when you abdicate, that's when everything starts to really take a dump.

Dude, like I was doing lunch yesterday with a guy named Albert, and they know him as the mortgage guy. He drives a yellow Ferrari. And Albert was talking about hiring operators. He's like, yeah, you know, I'm working like some days like 18-hour days and stuff like that. And I was like, Forget Albert's skills, just the mortgage industry as a whole has gotten beat so hard because mortgage rates are so high. And this isn't something that's just been like this for the last— this is rare if you look at the last 10, 15 years. If you look at the last 30, 40 years, not so rare. But if you're just looking at the last 10+ years, it's extremely rare. So he's taken a beating, but he's still doing really well financially. And he was talking about hiring an operator and I was like, dude, you don't need to hire an operator. The economy's bad. Keep doing what you're doing because culturally you're able to build up, you know, your team, they resonate with you, they like you leading the ship. And on top of that, your business is holding water better than most people in your space. When other people are seeing 70% declines and stuff like that, some sectors of his businesses are still growing. I'm like, keep doing what you're doing. Go hire the operator when times are really good. And you have way more free cash flow right now. Take the money that you're spitting out as excess cash and reinvest it in other areas that you can't do yourself so that way you can grow faster.

You know what's interesting before I get out of here, Neil? The pattern, I saw, over the last week or two, I've been doing some reflecting. I'm like, what are the times that the business has performed the best and what are the times the business has performed the worst? And the pattern is the business has performed the best whenever I've been fully engaged and fully in it. The business has performed the worst Yeah. When it's like we— when I abdicated to outside help and hoped that they could figure it out. Because the problem with that is hope is not a strategy. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, view, and subscribe. Check out this next video over here, and we'll see you tomorrow.