AI, Trust, and the Future of Marketing: A Deep-Dive Conversation

You want to know a big problem that I see with AI?

What?

I was at a corporate event, you know, the other day, and I was speaking to a whole room of marketers.

How many people?

In person? 150, 200.

That's a lot.

And they just work for one company, so you can assume this company's extremely large. And this is just their US-based marketers. They're in a lot of countries, all right? This isn't a company that generates like a billion in revenue. I'm talking about, you know, tens and tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars each year in revenue. Their profit is probably well into the billions. I don't know how much, but let's call it $5+ billion, maybe even more per year in profit.

Do they have a giant tower in San Francisco?

No comment.

It's so obvious.

No, no, no, no, no. There's a lot of large corporations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just, I'm just, I'm joking.

I'm joking. Go ahead. But I know who you're talking about. You're talking about Salesforce and I'm not saying it is them or it's not them. But I was talking to a group of marketers and my speech, I signed some documents, so there's only so much I can talk about. My speech was to talk about how they can, I can encourage their team and internal resources to leverage AI to be more efficient. And it was things like, why should they leverage AI? How can they do it for different teams like content or data and analytics? And, you know, the list goes on and on. And they have some people that I met up with that just specialize in data and I mean AI. for marketing, and their job is to help everyone else within that team adapt AI. And one of them asked me a question, and he asked the question of like, hey, how can I get a position within the organization where I just have an AI role and I just help everyone globally? Like, this would be a really cool role. I want to, you know, climb the ranks and all this kind of good stuff, which people want when they work for a company. And I was telling him about one big mistake that people lack, because even when I was talking to the audience, they were asking questions. Everyone's all about, oh, how do you think about agents? How do you think about workflow versus agents? You know, how do we help our clients, our customers succeed, right? Not just us succeeding. How can we use AI to help with that? And constantly when they're asking questions and when I'm talking to them, and this was a period over a few hours, I quickly realized Everyone's using AI because they are supposed to be using AI, and especially in Silicon Valley, it's being pushed very heavily, and you already know I was in San Francisco, so this was a tech company, of course, but when you think about it, and I was talking to them, I was like, most of you guys use AI because you need to use AI and people are telling you to, but how's this actually impacting your signups, your profitability, or reducing costs, increasing your LTV of customer? And very few people can tell me how they use AI to do any of those things. I'm not saying they aren't using AI, they just create all these use cases and busywork for themselves. And I'm not saying AI can't help make things more efficient, but it doesn't matter if you're more efficient or not. If you're just working on shit that doesn't improve the bottom line, who cares? And you had an Instagram post that I saw the other day saying, I'm looking for AI people, I'll pay you up to $4,000 if you refer. I believe that was you.

That was me.

And which I thought was really cool. And I know you and I are on the same page, dude. We want people to enable or leverage the latest technologies, but do you really give a shit if someone uses AI for all this cool stuff and you make no— get no extra leads, no extra revenue, save no extra money? Like, do you really care at the end of the day?

No. And so I think what matters to me and Neil's point, if I'm understanding this correctly too, is don't just use AI to AI or just because people are mandating it. You have to understand the why behind it. Like, why does your organization want you to do it? They want you to be more productive, not just to use it. And I think, by the way, when I've worked at larger companies before, I never really tried to understand the business or understand the bottom line. Like, to me, it was just my job was a means to an end, right? Like, I wanted to go work on projects on the side. So I think that's largely what's happening. That's the disconnect that's happening right now because you and I have been entrepreneurs for so long.

No, I disagree with this. I've seen you work for corporations like Treehouse where you helped drive sales.

That was a small startup though.

Yes, but when you worked for them, you thought about driving users and doing it profitably. You did not just say, I'm a marketer, I need to just drive signups and more usage. You did think about unit economics and making sure you weren't losing the company money.

You want to know why I cared though? Because the previous companies I worked with were big companies with hundreds, thousands of people, right? I didn't care at those companies because I felt like I was just a cog in the wheel. At Treehouse, because it was this much smaller team and a startup, I cared a lot more, and I, you know, sometimes I feel like it's cheesy when people say, oh, the mission, the startup. I actually did care about that. So I, and also like, sure, the equity, but the equity is like, who cares? It's like a fart in the wind, right? At the end of the day. But I think the key thing is that it goes back to that one word, Neil. I think it's just the why. And people are asking the wrong questions. And by the way, when I say we're hiring AI-forward people, to me, Neil, it's just like, if I'm interviewing you right now, now I just kind of start off with like, one, how did you prepare for this call? You'd be surprised at how little people prepare for a call. I might just end it right there. The second booby trap I have is, So tell me right now, like, what's the most innovative thing you're doing with AI right now? Right. And by the way, like, some people will tell me all these things that they're doing to drive traffic and conversions. And some people would just tell me something they're using for their diet, for example. Right. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for people to know how to answer a question that ties in with business results. And a lot of people fail at that still.

Yes. And I do agree with you. It goes back to the why and people don't ask the right questions. They don't understand the business and they're just like, oh, I'm in a role in marketing. So if they're in charge of community management, they're like, yeah, I got to manage a community. Why do you need to manage a community? Oh, to create goodwill so people like the brand. But why does that matter? Oh, because if people like the brand, it generates more signups, more revenue, reduces churn, whatever it may be. Like, oh, that's all right. That's correct. Okay. So what are you doing that actually moves those metrics? Responding to a comment for the sake of responding to a comment doesn't necessarily move it. There's some things that could move it, some things that won't, like someone could be really upset and then you save them and then other people on the internet end up seeing it, creates a ton of goodwill. But you got to figure out why are you doing your job and what can you do that actually has an impact on the business? And when something's publicly traded, that was the funny part about me doing a speech. I'm like, look, I know you guys are doing all this work. I know your numbers. You're publicly traded. I can just go look them up.

Yeah.

A company, if your financials aren't crushing it, you're not growing like at 30, 40% a year or 20% or whatever I think the market usually wants to 20+%? I don't know what they're really growing at, but generally the stock market's been down for the last 3 years. It's like, cool, you're doing all this stuff. What's really impacting the numbers?

Yep. And by the way, this is interesting because we're hiring more SEOs right now and basically we have people do this quick SEO assessment. It's like you're just, it's a write-up and it's 2, 3 pages or something like that. And I'm looking at, so I had ChatGPT-03 score these people. All right. I was like, okay, We're doing assessment. We want to understand how AI-forward they are, how strong they are with SEO. This one guy works at a very large company that has probably 5,000+ employees, and he scored a 9 out of 10, and everyone else scored like 7s and 5s, right? And so the one-line verdict on this guy is forward-thinking strategist who already thinks in the post-AI overview world, an A-player, right? So he clearly explains AIO, chat-based search will cannibalize clicks, blah, blah, blah, and tying it with CRO training. But he also sees a lot of this stuff is going to go down over time, right? And so that to me, Is with a quick analysis, I'm like, whoa, okay, that's better than these other people because they're not, they're scared to even talk about this stuff. And by the way, you know, want to know, you want to know something interesting that's kind of related to this? This guy was getting paid $250,000 a year as an SEO. His entire team and him, they just got cut last week.

Right.

Oh. And so I think what's going to happen to a lot of SEOs is I think a lot of SEOs are getting fired right now. And I think a lot of SEOs are scared. So we can choose when we want to talk to this and talk about this topic, but SEOs are getting fired left and right right now.

But Well, let's talk about it now, but one quick comment before we switch topics. So why SEOs are getting fired, because I didn't know about that. We're actually seeing, uh, do they work for agency or company?

Company.

Oh, okay. We're still seeing companies hire SEO. I'm assuming you are too, because you're getting leads. But going back to the event I was at, you know, they're also pushing everyone to be a vibe coder. And I know you've done a lot of vibe coding. I'm assuming you've done at least some.

Yeah, no, I'm shaking my head because I think a lot of it's baloney. And I think to your point, a lot of this is like slop and busywork and people acting like they're doing shit and they're not.

Yeah. And I'm just like, I bet you a lot of you guys are using AI. And if you measured your productivity, I bet you some of you are more productive and quite a few of you are less productive because you're just doing a lot of random shit that doesn't impact the business. Like, cool, you got more done, but you got more done that has nothing to do with moving the numbers. Who cares?

I guarantee, I do think for you and I, I'll just speak for myself. I do think I'm a lot more efficient as a strategist now. I think I'm way smarter because of AI, not because of me, right? But I'll be like walking to the office and the things I strategize on, like a tax lawyer or like I'm talking about other things, like literally like I might do it like a different partnership agreement, like these addendums and these amendments and all these things that might cost thousands of dollars and weeks. I just do them quickly now. And when I do it with other people, we just knock it out. We just sign it right there. We're done, right? Not saying you guys should do that. That's not legal advice. But even the way I go about planning for family stuff and things like that, it's basically my in-pocket strategist. And because you and I are basically sitting atop and kind of operating the business, we can drive those types of results. But I think it's important if you're also leading, you can't just dictate and say, oh yeah, you should be using AI. You're going to have to have standards and guidelines. Otherwise people are just going to do stuff like this. Dude.

And in some of our contracts, like we're going through a contract with a very, very large corporation, very old company as well. I don't mean in a bad way. They've just been around for ages. They're publicly traded. And straight up, we were about to sign the contract and last minute they had a change. And the change straight up says, and we're seeing this more and more, if you use any AI tools, you need to let us know ahead of time. And if you do use them, you are going to be responsible for any copyright infringement, right? So we would have to take on that liability.

Yeah.

Which I think that is a very reasonable request. If we want to use these tools, We ourselves as an agency need to make sure that we're not screwing over our client. But yeah, they requested that and we'll go back and forth and make sure it all looks fine before it gets signed, but it'll push it into next month. But yeah.

You know, my cousin, I saw my cousin yesterday. So she works for like a big law firm, right? And they don't allow the use of AI right now because it hallucinates, right? And so the one, I think they're going up against another firm during a case and then the other firm, they brought up like, They cited false cases that don't exist, right? And then their firm was like, hey, you cited these cases, but these cases don't actually exist, right? And they're like, oh, so they got in trouble for that. And so this kind of reinforces the need for a human in the loop. But I think going back to what I said too, if you're going to create these AI standards of excellence, there's got to be a way to hold people accountable. Otherwise, it can get out of whack pretty quickly because again, you see the Fiverr CEO doing it, you see the Box CEO, the Shopify CEO, everyone's doing all these things right now. But I think we've lost sight of the fact, and it wasn't until maybe this conversation, Neil, where I realized that you, myself, or other operators, we're incentivized to care the most about the bottom line and we can drive the most change quickly, whereas other people are never going to care as much and so they're just going to do whatever.

Dude, we're on the same page. And speaking of AI hallucinating, when I was at the event, one of the guys just specializes in AI for the organization, helping everyone adapt it. And I was telling him like, yeah, I've used ChatGPT and other LLMs and sometimes I create charts and they're just off. I'm like, I'm inputting the data correctly. Had a few people on my team. He's like, oh yeah, you need to adjust how you're doing it. You can actually create this checker thing that verifies everything and then reviews it. And in my head I'm like, but why, dude? I just inputted data. It's pretty black and white. You create a graph, it's either the output is correct or it's not correct. If we try different prompts and just messing up on it when the data's accurate, so whatever. At this point it's like, move on. He's like, no, no, you're going to end up fixing it. I'm like, Dude, I could just have a human do it faster. It doesn't mean AI is bad, but it goes back to your point where sometimes it hallucinates and it's not accurate. And going the length of having to double, triple check everything, it's very important and people tend to forget it. Just like you saw that Chicago newspaper scandal where the guy who's in charge of the column for the top books of the week or month or whatever it is, used AI.

Yeah.

And I think 3 or 4 of the top 10 Weren't even real books.

Wow. So he got in trouble for that. He get fired?

I don't know if he got fired, but if I was him, I would have resigned myself because that's a fireable offense.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, anyway, I mean, okay, going back to the SEOs are getting fired left and right. So you know what's interesting? The SEOs that I'm talking to right now, these people. So, okay, one guy, his entire staff got laid off and I'm like, hey, look, man, like I know you got, you were getting paid $250,000. Because this space is changing so quickly right now, I don't know if you're going to get paid $250,000 right now. Just, it might depend on the company too, right? Some companies will gladly shell that out. But then the other thing is I talked to an agency guy and he's like, yeah, my entire team got let go and I got repositioned into this position over here where I'm not managing people anymore. Right. I'm like, why did team get let go? He's like, oh, SEO is not working anymore. And then there's, there's a, there's a big agency that you and I know, I'm not going to name names, but I kind of mentioned that I talked to a handful of directors there. I'm like, why are you guys all looking to leave? Right. He's like, well, we haven't been closing more SEO deals, one. 2, SEO is changing, and then 3, they're making layoffs, so we're scared, right? So look, I get it. People want to have a job for safety at the end of the day, but if something's changing, you better be able to adapt. Um, because I think this is going to continue unless you prove yourself to be ahead of the game.

We're seeing SEOs are still highly in demand as long as they've adapted.

Yes.

There's a lot of SEOs that are just like, you build links, you optimize your site, you create tons of content, you try to rank number 1 on Google, and that's it. We're not seeing those SEOs do well. And even when we pitch SEO, it's not just, hey, let's rank you on Google. The ones who are like, hey, AI overviews are important. You want to make sure that you're mentioned there. AI mode is here to stay. You got to make sure that whether it's AI mode on Google or ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude or wherever it may be, you're continually being top of mind and being mentioned inside it because that not only builds trust, but that's building your brand, right? They call it rule of 7, as you know, in marketing, although it's closer to 11 now these days. Where people have to interact and see a brand 11+ times before they engage and purchase. Same with social media. If you're SEO and you're not optimizing your social content to rank, you're making a big mistake. You're posting content, but why wouldn't you want to get the traffic from everyone searching? Dude, Zuck talked about it the other day. There's over a billion users a month that are using their AI technology. A lot of their AI technology happens when you just do a search on Instagram or Facebook or any of these places.

Dude, you just, as you said that, I was like, yeah, optimizing for LLMs where you can. I had to do the search on ChatGPT again. I was like, what's the best marketing podcast? Marketing School Number 1 again. So I feel good right now. But by the way, guys, the SEO 101 game is still citations at the end of the day, right? So how many times are you getting mentioned? How many reviews are happening? To me, a link is still a citation too. Like all those things are still in place. So a trick question I like to ask people now is like, so what do you think about AEO and, you know, GEO? Like how do you optimize for these? And if they start answering me like with a bunch of things that sound complex, they're just done because it's really not that complex at the moment.

I just finished up a lunch meeting and we were talking about our podcast. Go to Avra? No, I went to the Maybourne.

Nice.

So was at the Maybourne eating lunch with someone and we were talking about marketing and podcasts and they were talking to Grok and Grok ended up mentioning our podcast and they're like, oh cool, I'm going to start listening to it. I'm like, great, thanks. It is important. And they're like, do you generate any revenue from any of these kinds of things? And because they're asking like, why do you keep doing it? I was like, I've been doing it for a long time. It keeps you top of mind. It's great for brand awareness and it can drive revenue, but it's a long-term play and it's people interact and engage with you multiple times. I've told you this, you've had direct experiences closing revenue because of marketing school.

Mm-hmm.

I've mentioned to you, I really haven't, but when I talked to Nick on my sales team, He always tells me, because I've asked him, I'm like, do we generate business from marketing? He's like, not that I can pinpoint, but he's like, when I talk to people, a lot of our customers do listen to the podcast.

I see it as a multi-touch thing. I think you can't really attribute to one thing, right? Like for example, when I bought that vacuum cleaner, it still hasn't come yet, but it was like Twitter and then I went to Wired and then like, you know what I mean? And then there's a bunch of other, like the cookies, right? The cookies I told you to buy, like you can't attribute it to anything. Did you get it?

This just came in my inbox. I ordered it when we were together, right?

Yeah, they have to like hand-make it all.

Look, literally got this at 2:12.

Amazing. Amazing. Okay, but okay, so what my point is, like, I found these cookies on Twitter and then I bought them on using the Shop app, and then I told Neil about it and he bought it. So, but you can't attribute that, right? So my point is, I think, so when I listen to podcasts, I feel like I'm building a relationship with these people. It's one-sided, right? And so people do like the fact now that we're sharing experiences and I feel like people have gotten to know us well. Because when I came out from the gym, a guy approached me and this guy's amazing. I'm going to do a podcast with him sometime soon, but he's like, dude, I love all your stuff, blah, blah, blah. And it feels like they know you on that side and it feels like at least on one side it's a very familiar friend. Yes.

Yeah.

And this is all attributable to just being out there a lot and getting your And by the way, like I do, the thing I think that's good about this podcast is it forces us to be accountable because at any given time, if we want to be lazy, we can't really be lazy. So. All right.

So we all know that, and this will be new for me as well because I've never asked Eric this. We all know that building a brand and being out there for a long period of time does wonders. All right. So let's go to Carrot for a minute, right? Carrot is Eric's ABM software, account-based marketing. And it's been out for how long now? 6 months?

It's, uh, December.

So roughly 6 months. We're in June. So call it, if you include December to now, you've, you've gone half a year. So if you've been out for 6 months, you first got traction from a LinkedIn post. I forgot what the LinkedIn post is, but you had like 1,000 or 2,000 comments. It was something crazy like that. And that was how you got your initial traction. You still push it. We push it when we naturally talk about it on this podcast. We don't push it intentionally. We're just randomly talking about it. You talk about it when you're presenting like on stage at YPO, at the marketing event in Miami. How much of the inquiries that you're getting right now from Carrot, this is just out of curiosity, are coming because of brand awareness, would you say now versus like SEO or the podcast or just running a promotion or ad? Like what do you— because you talk to a lot of the people, how much do you think is attributed because of the brand?

Neil, Neil, read this off. I'm going to share my screen over here. Okay. So column K is how did you hear about us?

Okay, so what's the green versus the non-green?

Green is just like conditional formatting for bigger companies.

Okay, so YouTube, LinkedIn, YouTube, Eric podcast, YouTube video, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, Google, Single Grain, YouTube, YouTuber, that means someone else, self, I don't know what self is, LinkedIn referral, YouTube podcast, Subscriber of email list is what it looks like.

It's kind of— Subscriber of Eric, I think. Uh, subscriber of Eric's newsletter.

Yeah. Eric's newsletter, email, same thing. Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, YouTube, YouTube, dude, Leveling Up podcast. Uh, 4 more YouTubes in a row. LinkedIn, YouTube, Leveling Up, uh, YouTube, one of your podcasts. That means they listen to more, so that's great. 3 more YouTubes in a row. Google, uh, Eric's Leveling Up. I'm assuming that means the podcast. And last one is YouTube.

But by the way, YouTube is a lot of podcasts.

You doing your own podcast or you're talking about interviewing on other people's podcasts?

No, me doing either solo episodes or— and I don't really do interviews anymore at the moment. And then sometimes they come from like, sometimes we'll have a— even though our Marketing School channel is very small right now, sometimes it does well.

Oh, so it is mainly solo videos. It's not you going on other people's podcasts? Correct.

Yeah. There's a lot of YouTube.

Yeah, but just brand awareness. I haven't watched all your YouTube videos. I started watching some of them because I know you started doing it in the same studio that we were talking about.

Do you like how my style looks like yours?

It works. Here's the interesting thing. I started using a studio. Eric copied my style. Then I copied Eric by going to the same studio that he used because it was a better deal and closer. So, my new style is a copy of his, which was a copy of mine.

Yeah, we iterate off each other and it's not like we get mad at each other for it. We're fine. Some people get like, oh, they try to hold the— it's like when you go to middle school and someone doesn't want to reveal the rock band that they listen to. We don't do that stuff, right? And by the way, we want to give a shout out to the studio we use. It's in Century City. It's called Visible Audio Studios. I think it's a great studio and I hope that they get get even more business from this.

Yeah. And I asked Eric, because Eric asked me, he's like, where do you film? And I told him like, dude, just ask AJ. It was somewhere in Hollywood. I'm like, it's far. And he found a closer, closer place. And he was just like, he filmed. I'm like, oh dude, this looks good. I was like, where'd you film? And he's just like, here's the place's name. And I sent it to AJ and then he ended up calling up and figuring it out. But yeah, that's the thing we share. And you know what? Eric and I genuinely are competitors. He has an agency called Single Grain. I have an agency called NP Digital. But the thing is, is our market's big enough. It's like just a massive punch bowl and it's big enough for everyone to get in.

There's so much business when agencies are smaller and they're scared to share information. There's no point in doing that, right? You know what's weird too, Neil? I think we've kind of talked about this with another friend, like a lot of, because you've worked in SaaS, I've worked in SaaS. For whatever reason, a lot of agency people have these huge egos. And I'm like, where does that come from? Like, where do you get like, versus like a lot of SaaS founders, you know, are most of them, I would say, are generally nice people. But for whatever reason, the agency world, the egos are so big. So if you have an agency, don't do that. You might as well be humble, share the information, and just understand that there's business available for everyone. And sometimes when you refer business out, you can get business back too. So just understand that you can each help yourselves make the pies bigger.

Yes. And that is the right way to run a business. And sharing and meeting up with other founders who are in the same space, it'll actually get you further than being like, oh, I can't reveal any of my secrets to them. They're going to copy me. And that's why Eric and I are in groups with other agency owners. They're not really formal groups, but we more so keep up to date with them. We share tactics and strategies and what's happening. Things are up or down. It just all helps us grow. Yep.

By the way, you have this one on Taco Bell because I want you to talk about the Taco Bell one because I want to talk about this water right after.

Sure. So I saw this article on Ad Age where Taco Bell is going to start advertising now that they have premium meat.

This is Neil's former favorite restaurant.

Dude, I was there with Philmon and William weeks ago.

Oh, nice. I got sick after. What'd you eat? Gordita?

No, a Crunchwrap.

See, you should have had the quality meats.

Oh, I know I had beans in mine.

There you go. There you go.

But, um, and this probably is not the Taco Bell I just got sick, but I grew up on Taco Bell. I loved it. My mom didn't give me every week, I mean every day, but I did eat it like around once a week.

It's a delicacy. Yeah.

So when, you know, what I put in a spreadsheet, which I thought would be interesting about talking about, is when marketing can go wrong. Because Taco Bell announced that they added quality meats to its creative roster. And I remember McDonald's did this a while ago too. Where they're like, our chicken nuggets are made out of real meat now. I'm like, well, what the heck were you giving me before if it wasn't real meat? To me, this— some could say, oh, this is a great form of marketing and maybe they'll see more sales. I actually think this is going to hurt the business overall. Now, for example, as I mentioned to Eric, I took my son William to Taco Bell a few weeks ago because it was close by some playdate that we had to go and we were a little early. I won't take him to Taco Bell after reading that. Yes, they added quality meats, but what was I giving to my kid before? And even though he didn't eat meat and he ate a quesadilla, I just have a bad taste in my mouth for that fast food joint because of that.

I mean, also, I don't go to Taco Bell for quality meats.

Correct. How quality is it really going to be for $5?

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, that's when marketing could go wrong. Let me talk about when marketing could go right. So, I have this water app called Oasis. Actually, I just follow them on Twitter because I'm too cheap to pay for the app. I think it's like $5 a month. I'm not going to pay for a water app, but they scored the water. So, this is a Whole Foods water that I'm holding up. It's real Italian water, right? This has an 88 out of 100, Neal. So, no microplastics, right? And wherever it's bottled up, bottled in La Galvania, I think in Italy, right? But my point is, if you're in consumer, And it's a massive TAM like water, because everyone drinks water, then why wouldn't you make an app and maybe just score your app the highest in there? Now, now you can get in trouble for that, right? You ideally would just want to have the best products, but I think that's smart. It's almost like it's not exactly the same way. It's because when you look at CoinMarketCap, for example, so Coinbase bought CoinMarketCap, right? Which shows you the price of different cryptocurrencies. And I think they grade the cryptocurrencies too. Eric Siu.

Binance bought CoinMarketCap.

Binance did? Okay. Yeah, one exchange did. Yeah. But my point is, you know, when you own kind of distribution, like crypto's a wide TAM, water's a very wide TAM too. I don't think it's very expensive to build one of these apps, but to me, I listen to whatever scores high, I just go and switch over to that water. So yes, I still have the Air One water, I still have my filtered water here, but because I was traveling this past week, I bought a ton of these and that's why I'm drinking this right now. So.

I was going through my credit card statements. Did you know we spend $600 a month on Aquaponics water?

I believe you. That's why when I look at you, I'm like, you should just buy that Korean filter that I have and save a lot of money.

So then I recently just got a Brita. You know, the Brita water filter?

That's not good enough. No, no, no. That's not good enough. See, if you bought, if you got the Oasis app, just check on Twitter. That Brita does nothing. I used to have a Brita. It tastes like, it tastes like crap, dude. No, you got to get one of these Korean ones.

What's a Korean one called?

Let me take a picture and then ChatGPT will tell you. I remember it told me last time. I'll send you, yeah, the one that I use. Oh, and I have a water guy. I have a water guy that helps you install the different filters in your home and then he tests the water out right after. You want to intro?

Yeah. So in my, in my new house that we're doing construction on, we just put in a crazy water system.

I'll, I'll, I'll intro. He's known as the water guy.

For the whole house. So if you're brushing your teeth, that way the water's clean and you don't have to worry, but it's all purified. Because I'm like, dude, we spend so much on bottled waters on a monthly basis.

Yeah.

I was like, we should probably cut this off.

I'm ensuring you right now.

Yeah. See, we help each other out.

Yep. So anyway, you pick the next one while I do this intro.

Oh, thank you. What was it called? Dude, we're testing out a new way with AI for our marketing qualified leads. So Mike had a really good idea. Uh, Mike's my co-founder and we were talking because we were starting to generate leads from our software solutions at scale. We've always generated leads, but like when I say at scale, I'm talking about like thousands and thousands and thousands a day, and it's just too many to call on. So I forgot the exact script that Mike came up with, and he's like, dude, we should just use an AI setter because some companies are having success with it. We're going to end up testing it.

One of these AI SDRs?

AI SDRs, yeah. Or setter, whatever you want to call them.

Yeah.

Problem is like, it's kind of cheesy and it's never going to be as, maybe not, I shouldn't say never, but it's most likely at this point in time, not going to be as good of a human. But we had a really unique angle and the unique angle is it's going to call someone. I don't know how it's going to start it off and it was like, hey, I'm—

I'm an AI.

I'm AI. I'm from NP Digital. We use AI in all forms of our marketing and we actually help companies do XYZ because of AI and we're calling you. And as you mentioned, this is AI. If you want help with your marketing, click here or do this and we'll schedule a call and we'll help you. Solve A, B, and C problem.

I like that.

So we're going to try that out and see how that happens or see how that works. Probably next week it rolls out where we're just manually calling all the software leads. We're going to go through as many as we can and figure out through just soft scripts what's working and what's not. And then from there, we're going to start taking that data. And then within a few weeks later, we're going to start rolling it out with AI setters or SDRs and then implementing the best working thing.

Yeah, I think there's a huge untapped opportunity when you look at all, especially when you generate a lot of inbound, people just start to get very reactionary and they forget about the ones that were not booked in a meeting maybe 12 months ago or 24 months ago or something like that, or maybe deals lost, right? People aren't, most people aren't good with the follow-ups, right? And you guys probably are, but the fortune is in the follow-up. And so this is going to plug a lot of holes ultimately, and the time to dial, you're like, you're going to be able to connect with them very quickly and book a meeting.

Yeah.

Because when you connect very quickly, your chances of booking a meeting are usually higher, right? So I think we're going to see better efficiencies across the board. And what this will allow too, by the way, the math before was, oh, if your product costs less or service costs less than $30,000 per year, you shouldn't have a sales team. But that's actually, you can have a sales team now if you can drive all the costs down, because it doesn't matter. Like you can sell things for like $10,000 a year or something like that. So.

Yeah. Didn't Jason Lemkin, the founder of, was it SaaStr, said you need a product that's like, was it like around $10,000 plus?

I think his was $3,000 a month. So $36,000 a year.

For a sales team to work, right?

Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, okay, well, if you think about first principles, like what, what actually needs to work? Well, it just means that the time to getting it done is not efficient, but now it can be more efficient. So whatever programs you might've had in the past or certificates, you might be able to just sell those like downsell, because you have a bot downsell for you. So that's where like, yes, Neil and I kind of poo-pooed on courses and stuff a couple weeks ago, but in this situation, if it's actually good and it makes sense, and because there's a lot of people that hit chat on my website and a lot of them are students and they just want to learn stuff, right? So you can just send them to that. But yeah.

Dude, and courses, even though I hate on them a lot and Eric hates on them every once in a while, probably not as hard as I do, they do make money and there are ways to do it. that can keep people satisfied. Like if you look at Grant Cardone, he sells courses or some sort of training or something. I know, you know, when I was at lunch with a buddy a while ago, his name's Albert, who also sells courses or informational coaching programs or something like that. Grant Cardone supposedly has 150 salespeople, like 150 salespeople just dialing leads. He's probably running ads too. But even Albert, Albert has 60 salespeople.

Wow.

dialing and closing deals on coaching. And the guy's making 7 figures a month just from that. Now he has other lines of businesses that make quite a bit of money, but 7 figures a month just from coaching, and you have your sales reps and setters on commission. It's a very profitable business model.

It's a good business. It's profitable. I think in my mind though, I think it's just, it's difficult to scale that. I think it's a great life, But I think if you're going for something, which is what you're trying to do, if you're going for something generational and you want something that compounds, then it's probably not going to come from courses. And again, this is like, to your point, it's just a business model decision and it's a lifestyle decision and that's okay. Yeah.

He actually asked me about you when I was hanging out with him last and he's like, dude, your co-host, does he do well? And I was like, he—

No, I do okay.

No, I said he does well like you. He just doesn't have a Ferrari. And he's like, do you mean he can't, he doesn't do well? I'm like, no, no, he does well. He just doesn't have a Ferrari. He uses the money for other stuff, like buying more businesses instead of a Ferrari. And I'm not, I told him like, I'm not trying to talk trash on your Ferrari. It's a nice $600,000 Ferrari. He just chooses to spend his money differently.

But I'm like, he's well off.

You just can't tell because he doesn't have pictures of fancy homes or Ferraris.

Nope. It's, you know, it depends on, it's interesting because Saw family this week and it's interesting after seeing a lot of my family this week because nobody actually cares about nice brands and things like that. So I think it's just like a cultural thing too. So I think most people, they care about building their— their way of showing off might be building their businesses or something like that, or working on a project. It's just different for different people.

I think it comes down to who you hang out with. And I think this is why it's very important to pick your 5 closest friends. They say that's going to be your average net worth.

That's from Jim Rohn. I did a course for Jim Rohn before. Did I tell you that?

No.

Yeah. So, okay. Jim Rohn said that you are the average of the 5 people that you hang out with most, right? So Jim Rohn mentored Tony Robbins and all these people. So when I did work for remembersuccess.com, and so the first course that we launched was a Jim Rohn course. And then you had Tony Robbins talking about how he changed his life and all of these, like John Maxwell, like all of these speakers, right? And then That got like the drum up for the hype and everything. And then you had to launch the course and then there's all this hype. And then right after you launch it, you can't even celebrate because you have to go to the next course and then the next course and the next course. It never stops. It never stops.

Never stops.

Yeah. Anyway, I digress.

But yeah, no, it's just like you look at the people around you, you end up learning more if you're around the right people. Forget money. Money's great, but money's a byproduct of solving problems. If you aren't around the right people, you just won't learn as much. Eric and I, we learned marketing by implementing, testing, and experimenting, but we also were going to a lot of conferences over the years, networking with individuals at the bar, even though we don't really drink, and we would talk shop with people and learn the latest tactics and strategies that they're using. We would share the ones that we are using, and everyone improves and gets better from that.

I will say probably one of the best marketing hacks for you and me has probably been creating content for a while because people do naturally just come up to you and they notice you, right? And then so, But then we filter. So Patrick Campbell said this about me. I have a very, very strong filter. And so he was making this comment about how there's 2 types of friends. You have transactional friends and then you have friend friends, right? And then he looked at me and he's like, you're kind of a mix between the 2. I was like, what do you mean by that? He's like, it's really difficult for you to let someone in. But so it might appear transactional first, but once you let them in, like you're in, like you'll do everything for them, right? And that's completely true with me. Maybe it's true with you too, but I don't let people in really, really easily. And so, My point of saying that is there's also, he cited somebody else who's a very popular creator right now. And I'm like, so how do you peg him? So very popular YouTuber, right? And he's like, oh, he's fully transactional. All he ever does is compare his net worth to mine. And all he ever does is talk about business or he wants something from me, right? He's like, I don't want to hang out with people like that. So I think my point of saying all this is you want to hang out with people who are humble, hungry, smart. And maybe if you're in your early 20s right now, or even in your teens, You might not know what that filter is, but you can keep optimizing that filter over time. And Neil and I, we've hung out with these people that have— they wear the nicest things in the world and they really— there's nothing wrong with loving a lot of money, but they love partying all the time and things like that. That's okay. It's just not for us.

Dude, when I went to Web Summit to speak in Vancouver a few days ago, I ended up taking your advice. Remember we were talking on the last podcast? And I was just like, yeah, I don't know if I want to wear my gray slacks anymore. Right. I'm just wearing yoga pants with a sweater.

Nobody can tell.

Yeah. And then I went, they're not as nice as my Loro Piana pants, but I just didn't give a shit. And then I went to that publicly traded company in the Bay Area and same thing. I just wore yoga pants with a gray sweater. I'm like, yeah.

And by the way, like, look at Gary Vee. He wears a t-shirt and a hat all the time and it's cool. Because that's just him, right? And so when a lot of— by the way, like, it's interesting, this week I got a lot of advice from people, right? Giving me advice on how to handle like, you know, family situation, right? But it's like, not to give unsolicited advice, not to get— it's like, no, just let people do their thing their way. And so a lot of people don't learn that even till the end of their life, that you just got to let people do it their way.

Yes. And Eric didn't get family advice because he did anything wrong or was in a predicament. He just had natural situation. That just happened in his family. So people gathered together, but it wasn't anything that he did wrong.

Speaking of wrong, you have one here on how we keep a positive mindset when things are rocky economically. Where did that come from?

I think people are just struggling right now. Inflation numbers came out today. I think—

What are they? I didn't check anything this week.

2.1. And I'm like, lower the damn rates. They won't lower the rates. But I really want them to lower the rates.

I hope they do. Do you know what? It's funny. Oh no, I have to tell you this offline. This is off topic. Anyway, keep going.

And same with the tariffs, right? The 3 people part of the international court or whatever it was called, they blocked it and then he appealed it. And right when he blocked it, I'm like, man, he's going to find a way around this. I'm not saying tariffs are here to stay or not. All I know is Right now, business is hard because a lot of stuff that just people like Eric and I can't control. But you and I always have things that happen to us. We never really mope to each other. We never really mope to others and be like, man, it sucks. We will talk about like, oh, leads are down this month, or it's tougher this month, but we don't really get depressed about it. We don't really start whining. We don't go into a corner and ball up. We look for opportunities. Because if you think about our mindset, we usually look at downturns, whether it's Google making changes or Instagram or Facebook or ads not working as well as they once were, conversion rates going down over time because people are getting used to the offer. We generally think of things as opportunities. So when shit gets bad, excuse my language, you and I think about, well, if it's bad for us and bad for a lot of other people, how can we climb out of this? Or when things When we're all able to climb out of this, how do we actually use this opportunity to get ahead of our competition? Because during bad times, most people pull back and take their foot off the gas for most things just because times are tough.

Yeah. And that's why, by the way, like those of you that are watching this, we're recording virtually, but I have this Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger statue. And so the reason I like them so much is because these philosophies stick with you. It's like, One, our favorite holding period is forever. 2, be greedy when others are fearful, right? And then be fearful when others are greedy. Like, these things all stick with you. It's like these old wise uncles, right? And so, it's when things happen that are rocky in the economy or even like personally. So, just to give a little more context, I had a death in the family, right? And so, in that example, it's like, okay, well, that sucks, but what am I going to do? Cry about it? Or what can I do to get stronger from this, right? And that's The more you start to train that muscle, the more it's just like working out. You've just become really buff over a period of time. And if you look at it that way, it's just a very healthy way of looking at it. And I'll give you another Charlie Munger thing. So Charlie Munger's over here. Charlie Munger's over here. Okay. So Charlie Munger says, you cannot let one tragedy beget another one, right? So if something bad happens to you, you can't just mope about it. No, you get yourself back up and you keep going, right? And so I remember for him, he He was blind in one eye. He's gone now, rest in peace. But he was blind in one eye and then he lost his son, one of his sons at age 29. And I was looking at this on AI, by the way. I was like, what's the most painful? The most painful loss first is either your mom or it's like losing a kid, right? But most people aren't going to lose a kid because you're not supposed to lose a kid. You're supposed to outlive them, right? But my point of saying all this is that yes, that happened to him.

You're supposed to outlive you.

Yeah, your kids will outlive you. Yeah, I said sorry, sorry, sorry. But you understand where I'm coming from. It's just like, that's what we're seeing ultimately. Like, we can— we've talked about the economy and all these things of like terrorists, all this, but like, at the end of the day, you only worry about what you can control, and that is life. Like, that's why business is one of the best trainers for you to learn life.

And you can't let things hold you back. I was talking to Eric, and he had that incident in his family 30 minutes before I called. And we're supposed to record a podcast, which we're doing today, literally the next day. And I asked him, I'm like, do you want me to figure it out? You don't have to record. And he's just like, no. He's like, life moves on. You need to be strong. And he'll deal with the situation in his own way. But he's also keeping in mind that you can't just stop. The world doesn't stop for you. It sucks, but that's the reality. When you're doing something in your business and you get kicked, whether it's marketing or sales are down or the economy's down so people don't want to buy your product as much, or there's a new competitor that's cheaper, you got to keep going and figuring out alternatives. If you don't, you're just going to have a slow, painful death, and you got to keep pushing and fighting back. It sucks, but those hard times is what really makes you strong and resilient.

Yeah. You know what? I think the way to tie this all together too is, you know, I mentioned before that the people who end up the most depressed are the ones that are most entitled. And those are often the ones who don't have any resilience. And so, each challenge, like everyone will say, oh, my life was so challenging. It's like everybody's life is challenging. Everybody's like, everyone faces adversity. It's more so, what do you do with it? And going back to Warren Buffett again, were you useful in your life? And that's what it comes down to. Were you useful? Were you productive? And so, For this loved one, my God, so many family members came over, so many friends came over, and it's because of what that person did and what that person meant to everyone, right? One person even flew in last minute from— they heard about it and then they flew in from Austin like last minute and they, it was like a quick day trip, right? But like, and by the way, on the flip side of that, there are people I know who, if something happens, they won't get any calls, they won't get any messages. It's because they haven't provided a lot of value and they weren't useful, right? And so that's all we're saying. We're not trying to make this a rah-rah thing.

Yeah.

But as long as you're useful, as long as you keep going, there's no way you're going to lose, Rocky or not, because Rocky's going to come no matter what.

And always think that when things are really good for you, there's other people who have it much better than you. And when things are really bad for you, there's always other people who have it much worse than you. And that helps keep you level-headed so that way you can just push through. I was talking with one of my colleagues yesterday who's also become a good friend over the years. And he has knee problems. And of course, it's going to affect his work and all this kind of stuff. And I don't mind. I want him to make sure that he's healing up. And I was like, dude, what are you doing? You got to take care of yourself. And he's like, Neil, this isn't a big deal. He's like, I always remember my grandmother during hard times. I'm like, what do you mean? And he's just like, he's Jewish. So, his grandmother had to deal with the Holocaust. And he's just like, she was running away from—

What do you mean to deal with the Holocaust?

Or she was a refugee at the time. She was Jewish. I don't know what happened to her at the end, but there were German fighter planes shooting napalm rounds, and she was walking with 2 kids in her hands with a bullet in the leg. And she's just like, I didn't feel the pain. I had no choice. I had to just keep going.

Yeah. See, by the way, that's real struggle. What we deal with here is like a walk in the park. Sure, it's mentally taxing, But I think having to save your family physically and all that type of stuff, I actually think that's way harder.

Dude, same. I was talking to my mother-in-law the other day and she's like, you guys had it easy. And she was talking about one of her family members and she's like, she just gave birth. And I'm like, when did she give birth? She's like, when she was walking from North Korea to South Korea, she gave birth right then and didn't have a choice but to walk with the newborn child to get out of North Korea. And I was like, That is real pain.

Yeah, that's hardcore. That's why I think resilience, like the trouble, and I think I told you this before, we did like a private dinner and a lot of these people were YPOers and they have kids, right? And they're like, I was like, so what's the biggest concern you guys have? It's like that our kids won't have any resilience. And I'm sure that's a concern for you too because you want to protect your kids, but at the same time you can't have them be unchallenged.

You can't. Because if they grow up not just lazy, but they don't want to keep trying when things go wrong, then you're going to have issues. And I was trying to teach my daughter. My daughter and son excel at different subjects. My son is really good at math. He's 3. And for a 3-year-old, you can ask him like, 18 plus 23 minus 9, and he'll give you the answer, which is pretty decent for a 3-year-old.

Pitch after you.

Right? And then with my daughter, she was reading at the age of 2. My son was reading early too, but my daughter's comprehension in reading is way better than my son's for the age when she started. But his math is much stronger than hers. They excel at different subjects. The problem that you have is when something doesn't come naturally easy to them, it's harder to get them to just push through. And I'm like, no, you don't give up. You keep fighting for it. And dude, how many times have you and I dealt with algorithm changes Where traffic's just tanked for a client or ours and we're like, oh, got to figure it out.

Yeah.

Right.

But I've never once, I don't, and I don't think you have either. I've never once been like, oh, woe is me. I'm going to, I'm going to be sad and cry about it. Like, that's what I don't understand. You've never really cried about these things either.

You can't, because in the grand scheme of things, what's the worst case that happens? We're still healthy. We have family members that love us. We have food on the table. Like, it's not that bad in the grand scheme of things. Just push on and make the best of it.

Yeah. And by the way, so at least for me, and I think probably for you too, I've learned the most important thing is honestly just family and friends. And then you work on what you work on because it's fun. It's like a video game. And then you take care of your health because it allows you to work on the things that you want to work on. It allows you to be the person you want to be for your friends and family. And life is short anyway. Like, that's all it is at the end of the day. So I wouldn't worry too much about this rocky economy. It's funny, my relatives were talking about it this week. Oh, this This and happening right now, this and this. He's a, you know, we, you know, so-and-so is evil, blah, blah, blah. I'm just like, who cares? None of that matters.

Yeah, no, it really doesn't, dude. People always tell me all the time, SEO is dead. What are you going to do? And I'm like, you think SEO is dead? I'm still generating traffic and revenue from it. My clients are generating revenue and profit and income from it. And I'm like, your way is dead. You keep stressing out about that and moping. I'm going to go figure out how to get my clients mentioned on all the LLMs, get the brand awareness, and help them generate revenue over their competition. You guys saw Eric's spreadsheet in this episode or the previous episode if you're looking on YouTube where he was sharing his screen of how the leads heard about Carrot, his ABM solution. If you look at that, a lot of them said YouTube. Where are they going on YouTube to click a link? They're not. Eric's not linking to Carrot in the description. I'm assuming you're not. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty—

I don't think we are. I actually don't know.

And what's happening is, is he's more so just mentioning it within a video. I bet you're probably screen sharing and showing some of the cool stuff you're doing in some of the videos.

Yeah, it's like a 30-second mid-roll and it shares like a quick like screen grab.

Yes, and people are seeing it and I bet you his mid-roll, I haven't seen it yet, is not a pitch. It's more so he's educating how he's using it to get better results for people. And then people are like, oh cool, this could be helpful for me. They're just going on Google searching and then boom, they're clicking. So his referral logs will probably show that they either came direct or they came from a Google search. But in fact, a lot of them heard about it from YouTube.

By the way, I do think we should also talk about, we could talk about YouTube too, but I think the fact that, okay, Tim Soulo put up this post over here and I can actually share my screen because we're on Mobile. You don't even have your mic on, huh? You don't have your mic.

Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, do you see this? Okay.

Yes.

So Tim Soulo, um, so says in the next 3 years, AI is going to kill informational content, quote unquote, as a marketing strategy. And honestly, I couldn't be happier about it because what is your typical, quote unquote, informational content strategy? 1, pick a popular keyword. 2, look up who ranks in top 10 for it. 3, pay a random copywriter to write a more in-depth, quote unquote, piece of content. 4, buy some links to trick Google into thinking that your page is better than others. But now, because a lot of people aren't getting those clicks anymore, and this just isn't going to work that well anymore, right? People, this informational content, like the how-to stuff or what is, is not getting much traffic because it's just being answered by the LLMs or AIO. I think the question here is, what should people do knowing that their traffic, their website traffic is going down?

Well, to go back, I think Tim also mentions one thing before we can go into this. He says, this is great because it's going to enter in the era of original content, which I agree with. And you and I have been talking about this a lot. Everyone's using AI to create more regurgitated content faster. Content marketing still works. People consume video content more on an hourly basis per day, if you look at the stats, than they do consuming content from Google. The question is, is who is going to create original content that people want to consume? And this doesn't mean that people aren't consuming content from Google. Because Google's also ranking video content and audio content and images, but they're also ranking text-based content, which a lot of people consume. Eric and I have proof of this. If you just look at our blogs, they still get a lot of traffic. It's more so what content can you create that's original and helpful to people that's not just regurgitated? And we're all tired of reading articles like, what is SEO? Or the beginner's guide to SEO or the advanced guide to SEO. And I was a victim of this. Moz wrote the Beginner's Guide to SEO. I wrote the Advanced Guide to SEO, but you're talking about probably like 15+ years ago where this stuff wasn't as common. In today's world, I was at lunch with someone and they were showing me their Instagram stats and like, dude, you got more followers than me. Look, I got 6.5 million views. You only got 1.4 in the last 30 days. And some of their content was things like, don't get married until you own a house. And it was random content like that. I'm like, this content's cool. It's going to get you famous. It's going to get you eyeballs, but it's hard to make money from that content. And my content, when you look at it, is very specific towards businesses trying to grow in today's environment. It's not going to get the same amount of views. No one really cares to share content around like, here's a podcast growth over the last 10 years, and I'm showing how it's declining, but it peaked a few years ago, but it's really useful For businesses, because in that same post, I break down how more people are listening to podcasts. It's not that competitive because a lot of podcasts have died down. So this is a perfect opportunity for you to go and create one. You got to pick and choose what you're optimizing for. When Eric and I create content in this new world, we don't create content that a lot of other people have already talked about the same stuff or regurgitated. We focus on creating content for ideal customer profile and we don't care about the rest.

Yeah. And by the way, what we're talking about here is the meta, right? And the meta just means the most optimized way of playing a game. So meta is basically, yes, the Facebook Meta, M-E-T-A. It's not them, but that's what it's called, right? This expression. And so the meta 15 years ago, 10 years ago was, yes, the beginner's guide, skyscraper content, all this stuff, right? And build a bunch of links, throw a bunch of links at it. But that's no longer the game. And the game has changed. And so the game that we play now, and part of the reason we do this podcast is one, we get to share stories that are unique to us that makes us stand out. 2, Neil can share to his YouTube, his unique perspectives with his YouTube stuff. I do the same thing too. Sometimes we'll even share when we're speaking at conferences, that helps from a branding perspective as well. But in order to stand out, you actually have to be out there doing things, which is what we talked about earlier. You have to be useful. You have to be doing things. Otherwise, you're just going to start saying all the things that other people are saying. And so, that's why it's interesting. I think if you are a leader in your company, if you're a business operator and you're maybe part-time creating content because you can share front— you're on the front lines of all the cool stuff that you're doing.

Yeah. And that's what people want to see. They want to see the stuff that you've experienced that no one else has, and they want to see you sharing that because that's what teaches them more than anything else. People want firsthand experience, and when they can't get firsthand experience, they want to see other people's firsthand experience. If you are creating content, think about what you can share that would be useful for others. And I know you may be thinking, hey, Neil and Eric, I'm not an expert, so I can't share content within my space. Well, it's okay if you're not an expert. You're also on a journey and sharing the process throughout your journey and what you're going through is very useful too for other people who may want to follow.

Yep. Yeah. So I think where we have gone wrong in the past, just to give you guys some examples with this podcast, is we followed a formula like that worked well for the first 1 or 2 years or so, like how to learn marketing. And then we started to regurgitate the same content over and over. And we weren't sharing our experiences, right? And so we adapted over time. Now we've been sharing more experiences. We do more in person because it's a more free-flowing conversation. Also, it looks more natural too. And so that's a good— that's what works well for us. We've adapted our YouTube game as well. I think we both kind of slacked on YouTube for a little bit. And now the fact that we're going into— we're getting outlines done for us, we're recording Looms ahead of time, we're going— we have a nice studio setup too. I think You just have to, it goes back to what we said earlier. You have to adapt into the current meta for whatever channel that you're trying to optimize for.

Yes. And when you're creating content, just keep in mind your ideal customer profile and create content for them. Don't worry about the total number of views that you're getting. I know you want that number to go up over time. It should. Don't obsess about the design quality or the editing quality of your video. What matters more than that is the quality of the content. And when I say the quality of the content is how useful is it for your ideal customer when they're listening or watching or reading, when you do those kinds of things, that's what generates revenue. And that really is the goal because when Eric and I first created our podcast, to go a little bit more specific with this or get a little bit more granular, our episodes were like the top 5 digital marketing tools that we're using to grow our SEO. Top 5 Chrome extensions, what Eric and Neil learned by being in the SEO industry for 20 years. And then we would each break down one thing and go rotate, right? So I would say a thing, then Eric would, and then we would keep going back and forth until we were done with our list. But all of this stuff, it just starts getting boring because that's what everyone started to do. And then Eric and I switched this to, hey, let's just come up with a list of topics and then we'll discuss this during our podcast. And we do that still today, but what it's shifted to again is instead of making them 5-minute episodes where Marketing School was quick, short, digestible marketing insights, it started becoming longer episodes. We have a list of topics that we can cover, but Eric and I more so riff most of the time and we just discuss stuff that's either top of mind related to business or marketing, or we just share our experiences on what we're doing during the weekend, what's helping and what's hurting.

Yeah, and it's not going to help everyone, right? But if, if You know, our bet is there's going to be a certain subset of people that fit our ICP and they get a light bulb moment from us every now and then. And that's going to be enough to keep us top of mind where they'll remember us if they want to do business with Neil, they want to do business with me, that's cool. But this whole name of the game of the business that we're in is really just staying top of mind.

Yeah. And that is the key. You look at Nike, the reason Nike's done well over all the years is because they stay top of mind with their Just Do It commercials. And I know their new CMO talked about how Nike's been struggling, and one of the reasons they think they've been struggling is they over-index in performance marketing. Think of like Google Ads when we're talking performance marketing versus just straight up doing brand campaigns like billboards or TV ads. I think the market— Nike's CMO is wrong. When you do performance marketing, you are getting brand awareness. I'm not saying the Nike CMO doesn't realize that, probably does, or she probably does. I think the reason Nike struggled isn't the marketing. I think, and it's not the brand awareness, it's if you look at their apparel products, they suck compared to Alo, Lululemon, Vuori, and a lot of those other brands. They haven't kept the product up to date. And it doesn't matter how good you are at marketing. If your product just sucks and you're not innovating and adapting, you can spend a lot of money, but the smaller companies who have better products are going to take market share.

I have a new Alo product that's sitting, a box that's sitting in my kitchen right now. It's, I think it's called Mastodon or something like that, or Mason, maybe that's the the name of the line, but it's basically non-polyester and it's like better ingredients that don't have forever chemicals and things like that. But see, this is another thing I found on Twitter. It's like, oh, I'm interested in living for a longer period of time. Oh, okay. Someone lists Levels.io, listed it, the guy that made the games that got like 77 million impressions or something like that. So it's just, I don't know, but that's him randomly talking about games sometimes. He's randomly talking about traveling sometimes. Sometimes he might, it's just Oh, I trust this guy. I'm just going to buy because he recommended it.

Yeah. And now I learned about it. So if Eric likes it, I'll end up buying it. How do you attribute that? At the same token, I read about this new brand called Aurythmics or something like that. It's a clothing brand like Lululemon. I'm pronouncing it wrong, but they say a lot of the Chinese billionaires wear it. What is it called?

It's for me to wear.

Chinese billionaires yoga. Brand, R, I'm, I'm spelling it so wrong. A-R-C-T-E-R-Y-X.

Never heard of it. Do you have one?

Arc'teryx or something like that?

I think I know what you're talking about.

Yeah. A-R-C and there's an apostrophe T-E-R-Y-X. Arc'teryx. I'm terrible with English and grammar, but I saw it somewhere online and they're talking about how that company just boomed. Because of all these Chinese rich people are wearing them. And because the billionaires are wearing them, the politicians in China are wearing them, and then a lot of the people now strive to wear those kind of clothes. They're not the most expensive clothes, but they're super popular because of that.

Well, I say this as a Chinese person, we're very driven by status.

Really?

Yeah. You didn't know that? Okay. So it's funny because we don't have a god. The only god we have is a money god. I think I told you that before.

Yeah.

So oftentimes this is why when I'm eating with my family and all that, why are they always taking pictures of their food all the time? They're showing off the food, they're showing off this, showing off that, right? And so yeah, I say this as a Chinese person, guys, if you haven't seen my face. But anyway, you know, by the way, one thing you guys don't want to do, I just have my LinkedIn pulled up on the left side and there's always this one guy that comments something negative on my posts. And I'm just like, if you're going to keep doing that, just why do you, why do you even follow me? Just don't, just shut up. Just don't talk. Like, why waste the space? And I'm just, that is not a good way to build a relationship if that's what you're trying to do.

Dude, that's a terrible way to build a relationship.

I'm sure it happens to you all the time.

It does, but some way I like some of the negative ones because—

Actually, that's funny because Neil, I actually, I actually called you out from your original blog post and that's how we established our relationship.

Yeah, dude.

I was more so asking a question.

So I got called out by this guy named Remy recently. And AI summarized it right here.

Yeah.

You can see an email says, Neil Patel announced the importance of aligning SEO with seasonal demand. Remy criticized the email's outdated content, but Neil stated that traditional SEO still performs well in certain cases. Neil announced that he would resume control of emails. The summary's a little bit off, but I sent an email talking about seasonal SEO campaigns and seasonal SEO campaigns still work. Like there is Christmas searches, there is summer searches. And the person pretty much said, this is outdated and tone deaf with all the Google updates with AI overviews and stuff like that. I responded back with, we're still seeing traditional SEO, like seasonal SEO work really well. And we have like real analytics in real time of driving results, right? And I'm like, I should have probably included the stats, but I'm like, it still works. And then I looped in my team so they can see it because my team's writing the emails. And then I emailed them back literally within an hour and I said, I thought about your email a bit more. They could be better. Even if it was seasonal, my team could have shown our internal data that showcases this. They didn't. I will work on taking back over emails and start something next week. So then he pretty much said, exactly. If I'd seen the data in this email, I would have questioned it less. With that said, showcasing seasonal data from 2024 before AI took over might not convince me that there's opportunity in 2025. And then he goes on a little bit more. I didn't respond back to it because there's some parts I disagree because there's seasonal data and things like winter when AI overviews were here for winter sales, like for snowboarding gear and stuff like that. And we see it doing really well. I don't care to combat back and forth, but when you get negative feedback, it's a great way to improve. Most people don't want to leave negative feedback. How else do you improve?

I think negative feedback is fine. Constructive criticism is fine, but when you're just trolling, it's stupid.

That's the problem with LinkedIn. Unless you're very positive on the employee, like people should have Fridays off. If you say people should have Fridays off, everyone's going to love you. If you get a hater or 2, all the people who want Friday off are going to comment and just tear that other person apart.

Dude, that's when I posted something in December saying, sorry guys, you're coming back to the office. And it got a million impressions because everyone started going like nuts. In the comments.

What do they say in the comments?

They're like, no, that's not true. That's the old way of doing it, blah, blah. And I knew those responses were all going to be like that, but I'm just like, hey guys, like, sorry, behind the scenes, a lot of people are just getting called back and this is what it's going to be like because, you know, I think we've seen both remote work and we've seen hybrid and we've seen in office. And if like, Jamie Dimon said this really well from the CEO of Chase, JP Morgan. He's like, look, I'm a fan of remote work that works, but just for us, It doesn't work, right? And I think that's the case for a lot of founders, and that's just how it is. So, but anyway, a lot of people got mad at me. So—

Are you going to have more people come back to the office in 2025 outside of your WeWork that you just had for a few months?

I think for LA, and I love that WeWork, by the way, but we don't have many people in LA. It's just my CTO and I, right? And so, but I think as we start to bring in, bring on more engineers, he wants them in the office. And I think for salespeople, we probably want them in office together as well. I think from— oh, this is going to go back to— you have a topic on this— marketers I might want to be in the office with me as well, like internal marketers.

Yeah, I can see that.

How about for you?

I'm okay with remote work. I work really well with our marketing team remotely. Sometimes they make some errors and it just pisses me off. Like, I just, I fume even if it's small. I don't know why, because it's like, if this— some of these little things are off, what else could be off? And I just want everything fixed without having to micromanage. And my team overall is really good and I don't have to deal really with too many little things, but I would say once, actually not more than once, probably like 3 times a year, I start nitpicking new things. And it's typically when we start hiring more and more people and the team grows, people don't always follow the same standards. It doesn't matter what training material you give, but then once you get them in line and you tell them what's wrong and you give them the critiques, Ends up being fixed. My problem is, as a manager, I don't like giving the critiques. I just expect people to do it the way I want from day one without any training.

Yeah, like to read your mind. So that's what AI is going to be good for.

And I know that's a lot to ask, um, but we compensate well if someone can just get what we're looking for right away because we don't have the time to train everyone up. Um, but I don't think we're gonna force the office. I just— for us, Before we had office locations and we would have people come into the office because we would hire around there. It's too hard for us at this point because once COVID hit, we started hiring so much virtually.

Like, you can't undo that. It's hard.

Too hard. And we have good people.

My philosophy is if you're exceptional, we'll hire you from wherever in the world, but not everyone is exceptional. And then with the AI, the AI bar is raising it for us, right? So we might just only hire exceptional people anyway. So that's kind of my philosophy on it. And it's changing over time too, because I believe companies aren't going to need nearly as many people as they had in the past, so we'll see.

So internally, the way we see a marketing organization currently, it's like a pyramid, right? You have your CEO on the top, then upper management, then the management below, and mid-level, then the people underneath that, and it keeps going. It's like a pyramid with your interns and junior people at the very bottom. Because of AI, we see the pyramid flipped upside down with the point being at the bottom and the base. You won't have a total— your total count of people will be smaller, but percentage-wise, you'll have a lot more leaders, strategists, People who are really amazing, like the A players, and then you're going to have B players. And then when it looks like C, D, F players, you're going to have less and less of them because AI can replace those people a lot easier than they can replace the A and B players.

Yep. Yep. So I'm excited for that. Let me show you something that I think you'll— I want to get your reaction on this one. So this is Tim Solo again, posting this tweet from Jason Fried.

From 37signals?

Yeah.

We increased Basecamp trial-to-paying conversion by 30% and we don't know how or even want to know how.

And so look at Tim, what Tim Soulo says.

Great idea, question, do it, move on. Why spend time measuring and debating how exactly that idea performed when you can spend time implementing a brand new idea?

All right, good.

Think us, people like Jason Fried. If it's up 30%, I agree, you don't have to keep stressing on it. If it goes down, You better understand that it went down and you better either revert the change or understand why it went down. So then that way you don't make that mistake again. If something did go up, I don't think you should obsess about it. You should ideally try to understand why something went up so that way you can replicate that and get more of that lift or scenario.

I just don't want people to misinterpret this to think that you don't need to measure. This is still, you need to measure everything. And if it does go wrong, you need to have the ability to ask why, because Saying we won't measure it is abdicating your responsibilities.

Yes. And I think Jason Fried, I talked to him on the phone a few times. I don't know him at all, but I have talked to him on the phone a few times over, probably like 5 to 10 years ago. It was a long time ago. He probably doesn't even remember. The guy is a smart entrepreneur. He does look at things in an analytical way. I know he put that statement out there, but I bet you his team does look at things on, What caused lifts, why, and how can we get more of it?

Yeah, for sure. Speaking of testing, I have this one over here too. This one is— here, check this out, check this out. Here, I'm gonna share and then you read what's happening on the screen over here. All right, do you see this?

I do. You want me to read it?

Yep.

Sugar is good for you. And do you want me to read the view count too or no?

Okay, so here, I'll give it to you at a high level. So this guy Chandler, Primus Pumentum says, ladies and gentlemen, I give you A/B testing at its finest. So, the first A/B test here is sugar is good for you. Okay, 16K views on Twitter. Then the other one is sugar is bad for you. Okay, 30K views. So, double the views, right? Here's the second one. Protein is the cure to cancer, 12K views. The next one right after, protein gives you cancer, 57K. Okay, so let's just say that's a 5x, right? The last A/B test here is eat less protein, 13K views. Eat more protein, 5,300 views. So, let's just call that a little less than triple.

Whoa, protein gives you cancer has 354 hearts. There's no data. He's just randomly putting out stuff on purpose for A/B tests. I don't think he's trying to create false information. I think he's just trying to run an A/B test and see what gets engagement and what doesn't. But, it's crazy how someone can just put out a statement like protein gives you cancer and 354 4 people heart it and they like it. When I'm not saying it does or it doesn't, I think you just put that out there for the sake of it.

Yep. Look, notice how negative versions get way more views in comparison than positive. And by the way, like when we do this on our YouTube sometimes, like whenever I say website traffic is dead or SEO is dead, like all the, like that, the videos start to take off way faster, right? So it's just, I think it's a human condition. Like people talk about, you know what schneidenfreude is?

No, never heard of it. Okay.

Schadenfreude is when you get pleasure into watching someone else's suffering, right? This is like a German phrase, right? But I think when you look at the headlines from CNN, right, why do they call it the Crisis News Network? Because it's a lot of negative news that gets your attention. It's not the positive stuff that gets you, it's the negative stuff. Because I think that's just how we're wired.

Yeah, my wife doesn't like watching the news because she's saying it's too negative.

It's true, it's true. But that, like, I know that that's what—

I like watching it and I want to hear all the bad stuff, not just the good stuff. I don't want to suffer, but I like hearing the bad stuff because I know reality.

Yeah. Well, you're entertained by it and most people are entertained by this stuff and most people also don't have much to do with their lives, right? And so that's why it's a— they say if it bleeds, it leads.

Yeah, I can see that.

Yeah. Anyway, we got time for one more.

All right. So let's talk about Google Lens. Did you see what they're doing with YouTube Shorts now?

No, I did not see much this week.

All right, totally understandable. So with Google Lens, everyone already knows you can take out your phone, you can take a picture of something, and, you know, Google in the app has like this little camera thing. I think it's next to URL, depends on your app or your phone. You're pretty much loading Google Lens, but they're doing something interesting with YouTube Shorts. So we all watch a lot of short format content, but they're tying in the experience together now, which I think this is going to generate companies a lot of revenue in the long run. And again, attribution is going to become harder because of this. But if you're watching a Short, you can click on like a lens icon, circle up the part of the image or the video that you want to know more about. It will show you what that is and all about it.

And then you can buy it.

You can buy it or do whatever you want. I think this is going to be a huge game-changing thing in commerce because a lot of people buy stuff that celebrities wear. You agree with this, right? They're like, they're trendsetters.

Yeah.

If Justin Bieber is wearing Crocs, and he did help blow up Crocs, I know they're already a big company, but he made it cool for, you know, people to wear Crocs. You can straight up just circle what he's— his shoes or his sweater, and then boom, it takes you to the site. You can end up buying it, be like, man, I'm wearing the same shoes that Justin Bieber is. That's going to get you a lot of sales. And then is it attributed to Justin Bieber? Is it attributed because of Google Lens and you're now allowed to easily see what shoes he's wearing? Like, who's it attributed by? But, um, or what's causing the actual conversion? And I think this is a really cool feature that'll change commerce. I bet you over time Instagram, uh, Meta, uh, TikTok, and some of the other players will copy this feature.

Yeah, I think it's a good start. I think it's a bad user experience because the fact that you have to pause it and then lens it or whatever. I think what's going to happen in the future is like you're just going to be— it's going to be able to— if you want to identify, you kind of just tap for a second and pause it, and then it would show tags and the price tag and you just buy it right there. That's going to make it a lot more seamless and it's higher conversion rates for everyone. Yeah.

In the long run, I don't think anyone wants to really circle.

All right. So that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. And that being said, we will see you tomorrow.