Can you actually get big business deals from YouTube?

Can you actually get big business deals from YouTube?

Uh, so you have a note of George Gammon.

Yeah, you had said before, we had talked about this on a podcast, and I believe you had said no, you can't get big business deals from, from YouTube. Correct or incorrect?

I don't think you can get large enterprise deals from YouTube.

Yeah. So then I got these text messages from George. And first I thought I did something wrong. George, just for context, George Gammon, he's amazing. He's got a great YouTube channel. And you've seen his stuff. Remember at the Beverly Hills event. He spoke on macroeconomics and all that.

But what is he doing a YouTube channel for? To raise investor dollars?

He's got a YouTube channel. I don't know if it's to raise investor dollars. But let me just, let me just, I'm gonna say some of his points over here. So he's got, he's got 2 significant YouTube channels, he gets millions of views a month. He's like, listen to your last podcast, lol. And George is a friend, guys. So he says, number one, usually the RC channels, Rebel Capitalist and George Gammon combined get 3 to 4 million views a month. You guys are looking at the last 28 days when I was traveling and doing very few vids. So I guess we had looked into his views. Notice, he's like, number 2, notice average number of views per video on George Gammon channel. 3, Kenny, who's the guy we talked about, the YPR that has $3.2 billion in real estate. He's like, Kenny has a massive uptick in accredited investors due to his increased views, which is what he's after. 4, the majority of people we have in our $50K a year mastermind have come from my clickbait videos, quote unquote. And he, number 5, this is probably the most relevant one. I get a lot of calls from billion-dollar hedge fund managers all the time who watch my whiteboard manager, whiteboard videos. Although the big money pension funds aren't watching, the guys managing their money are. And then he mentioned like a couple other things. He's like, point is what matters most is the quality of the content. The idea serious people aren't going to watch videos if the title thumbnail doesn't sound like a lecture at Harvard is simply wrong. And then he sent me a bunch of stats.

But where's his enterprise deals? Getting calls from hedge fund managers doesn't mean you're generating a lot of revenue from hedge fund managers.

Fair point. Fair point.

Yeah. $50 grand masterminds is not enterprise deals.

We should leave the $50 grand masterminds out. But if the billion-dollar hedge funds are leading the big money for him, which I don't think is the case, that would be something. I do think it's— I do think it's relevant for Kenny on the massive uptick in accredited investors. I think that one—

That's not enterprise either. That's just getting like— that's like Grant Cardone getting people to put in $250 grand.

I didn't say enterprise though. This title says big business deals. So big is very subjective.

None of those are big business deals. Accredited investors is not a business deal.

If he's getting volume of accredited investors, I think in aggregate that's significant for his business.

All right. Would you agree that when you want to raise $100 million, you don't want it from 100 or 1,000 people? You're just trying to get a few checks?

Yes, that's fair.

And I doubt he is getting majority of his money if he's getting accredited investors from 1 or 2 people.

I can't say that because the guy that works on his YouTube channel, Josh, he does tell me that some of these people are heavy hitters when it comes to the checks. So what is a heavy hitter?

That's all relative.

Hundreds of millions.

So they're giving him hundreds of millions of dollars?

No, these guys are worth hundreds of millions.

Yeah, I'm talking about what is he getting?

I don't know. I don't know.

Like, there's this— I just don't believe it.

This is like when my dad says like, well, you know, the information in politics is like, it's incomplete. I'm like, yeah, but that's like anything. Like, we have incomplete information and we're calling this out, right? So George says here, Neil sounded very skeptical that the content strategies on my channels, Kenny channels, or Jeff's channel would yield leads from anyone qualified to write a big check. I think that's what I can agree with them there. Occasionally you might get it, but it's not as predictable as like, um, you know, some of the other stuff we've talked about.

Well, I look at it this way. Can they end up raising money from this?

Yes.

Can they become millionaires from this? And they probably already are millionaires or maybe even more. Sure. But if you look at the majority of the people who raise money and have made a killing, they do it traditional ways in which they're going after pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, uh, institutional investors, big corporations. has nothing to do with creating content. Look at the KKR's, look at the Carlyle's, look at the Blackstone's. They all make more money than these guys. They make more money than me too. And none of them create YouTube content.

Dude, should we talk about, since we're talking about YouTube, should we talk about how if YouTube and Instagram are playing political favorites? Let's talk about it.

Sure, go for it.

So Farouk tweets this. He says, since the Donald Trump announcement and interview, IG shut down the Rug Radio and FOMO Hour accounts without the right to appeal. So those are his accounts. Those are his media accounts.

Wait, I'm lost. You just said Donald Trump announcement. Can you give some context here?

Let me slow down. So I don't— this was September 28th, 2024. So he must have had some announcement around— I don't know if it was crypto or something, but let's just say he had some type of announcement, right? So since the Donald Trump announcement and interview, IG shut down the Rug Radio and FOMO Hour accounts without the right to appeal. YouTube shut down my personal account for spam, scam, and deceptive content given the crypto nature of it. Say what you want about Elon Musk's X, but at least I'm not getting shut down for conducting an interview as independent media. So I don't know what the context is of this, but, um, you know, I think, I think it's interesting that this is happening. Um, this isn't the first time I've seen something like this where IG or YouTube would shut something down. They might have a point that maybe there's something that's, that's scammy or deceptive, um, What do you think?

I do think platforms lean one way or another. They can lean to the left or the right. It's very rare to find a platform that's in the middle. Does it mean they're going to shut a lot of people down? I'm not saying that, but does that mean every once in a while things get shut down? Sure. Great example of this is Zuck said, hey, the government put pressure during COVID and he adjusted a lot of the content or censored. I'm paraphrasing here. And he regrets his decision.

Mm-hmm. Now, look, I think X is more right-leaning. Um, IG, YouTube are more left-leaning. And you also have to look at the employee base too, kind of how things are structured. Um, Elon like eliminated a lot of people. Um, and, and then he kind of like said, hey, this is how we're going to do things. And then, you know, that's that. But, um, you know, I think, I don't think there's necessarily like good or bad. I think you just have to understand the game that you're playing.

Yeah, and you got to know the platforms you're targeting and the people on those platforms. Although I do think things are adjusting in which, uh, when we see— when you looked at this election cycle, a lot of people previously were afraid to say that they are willing to back Trump. Now more people are vocal, and I think you have a much more divided world than we used to before, and it's not just the US, it's a lot of countries. I think the platforms will adjust. The reason I say that is when you have more of a divide, they got to adapt to the people. The last thing the platforms want to do is alienate— doesn't matter what they think politically, but they're not going to want to alienate 50% of the world and lose a ton of revenue.

Agency owners, if you want to grow faster, my partner Neil Patel and I, we are hosting live agency owner workshops In Beverly Hills, and you're going to learn how to get more clients. You're going to learn how to take yourself out of the day-to-day. You're going to learn how to recruit the right people, and you're going to be hanging out with like-minded people such as yourself. So if you want to learn more, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. Again, it's marketingschool.io/agency, and we'll see you on the other side. Now I want to move over to this one. This guy Jacob Greenfield says, this is, this is the tweet that got 1.2 million views and drove how many conversions? Zero conversions, right? So he said 1.2 million people saw my tweet, 37K people liked it, 1,700 people visited my profile, 557 people followed me, 8 subscribed to my newsletter, first link in his profile, 51 people visited my company's website, second link in the profile, zero scheduled a call on the company's website, zero reached out via emails or DMs, right? So it's like, it's great that you're getting all these impressions, right? Sure, it's great that like maybe one of these Shorts rips, right? But at the end of the day, what do we actually get from it? Most of the time it's not that much, right?

I was doing a podcast interview the other day that I think you indirectly set up with Ahrefs, Tim Soulo.

Yep.

And Tim was interviewing me. He's like, dude, Elon tweeted, you know, one of your old tweets. Did you bait him? I was like, no. He's like, what did it do for your business? I was like, nothing. I'm like, got tons of text messages being like, Elon Musk tweeted you. But I was like, I'm like, who cares? And I'm not saying who cares. I'm not saying I hate Elon Musk or love him or anything like that. I think the guy's an amazing entrepreneur. But it's more so it didn't drive any business, so I don't really care.

Yep. And so this, this is, uh, this is funny. Rob Walling, I think who founded Drip, um, he says, build an audience, they said. It'll bring customers, they said. Right. And so, um, we're just saying, I mean, proceed with caution. Sure, you might produce something that gets a lot of reach, but ultimately what matters at the end of the day is are you reaching the right people?

So I was talking to my team a few days ago because I've been jet-lagged for a while now. Because I do.

You don't listen to me. You don't take Time Shifter. You don't sleep at the right times.

Too hard because I go through too many countries at once.

Where did you go?

Boston.

Then Boston was with me.

Boston was with you. Then Hong Kong. Okay. Malaysia, Singapore, Atlanta.

Okay, that's a lot.

Yeah. And then I'm back. I got a week break. Then Dubai, Hong Kong. Atlanta.

Okay, that's tough. No, not Atlanta.

After Hong Kong, I go to Park City.

And then we go to Germany.

Although I have a few days of break, but yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So dude, I totally blanked on what I was talking about.

That's okay. That's okay.

No, I had a good— oh yeah, okay. So I was talking to one of my marketing guys about our plan for next year. And he focuses on some ads. He focuses on maintaining and building our community. And I was speaking in Hong— not Hong Kong, I was speaking at— well, I spoke there too, but I was speaking in— the last leg of my trip was in Singapore. And I was like, dude, I had a better idea. He's like, what? I was like, how much do you spend on paid ads a month? And I don't know what the number was, but I believe it was somewhere around $20,000. I'm rounding because I know it wasn't exactly $20,000, but plus or minus a few thousand dollars. And this is specifically for ads, all right? And I don't know what the ROI that we generate from ads. I know he tracks it, but I was like, dude, I got a better way to generate our ROI. I'll just take 10 grand more. And he's just like, what? So when I look at our corporation, forget how many offices we have, the main regions for us are Americas, EMEA, right? EMEA and APAC. So we split it up into 3 territories because there's people who handle all of them. So a guy named Dan handles APAC, a guy named Mark handles EMEA, and Mike handles Americas, and everyone else also rolls up into Mike. So I was just like, I get paid to speak at events. A lot of them that we've been choosing over the last few years, I don't get paid to speak at, and some of them actually cost us money. Well, We had to pay for our own flight and own hotel. Sometimes we're even paying the event, but they're bringing our ideal customer and we're closing businesses. We're finally seeing the fruits of our labor. Like it's a 1 to 2 year payoff period. So the moment you're speaking at some of these events with enterprise brands, because they have cycles, a lot of the contracts have to go through procurement.

Hmm.

So you're talking about, you know, they have to release RFPs. It just takes a while. I was like, Once a month, why don't I speak in a conference from one of these regions with our ideal customers? Who cares if they don't pay? And I spoke at the one in Singapore, 500 people in the audience, majority of them were publicly traded companies that were in multiple countries and languages. So I was like, it's fishing, you know, what is it called? Shooting fish in a barrel.

Shooting fish in a barrel, or you like to use fishing with dynamite. So you don't even have your phrase like programmed right now.

Dude, like I'm so off right now. This morning I was getting my daughter ready. I started putting on my son's—

Oh, I saw them. They're looking at, like, they kept trying, they kept looking at my car 'cause I hadn't gotten out yet.

Yeah. And I started putting my son's clothes on my daughter 'cause I was like just that messed up from jet lag. But either way, going back, I was just like, you know what? If you look at the cost for a flight, business class and hotel, it's around, let's round and say 10 grand per event. If I did that once a month, per region, so APAC, EMEA, and Americas, that's 3 a month. Do that 12 times a year for each region. So now I'm at 36, right? You're looking at around $360,000 in expenses. And I bet you within 2 years, we'll get a crap ton of global RFPs from large corporations. Yeah.

So it makes it worth it.

I think it's going to make it worth it. I don't know. if it's going to actually pan out that way because A, my team has to get me one a month, but they're working on it. And I spoke at the Singapore event. It went well. My APAC leader, Dan, he brought together the guy who's throwing their Hong Kong event in literally a few weeks from now, which I'll go back for. And he's like, oh, they're throwing an event in Hong Kong. I was like, dude, I would love to go. He's like, yeah, we'd love to have you. I'm like, yeah, can I get a speaking spot? He's like, oh no, we would just get you a ticket and attend. I'm like, I can't. I can't go just for that because—

Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

It's too expensive for me, right? Flight-wise and everything.

So your team sources all these speaking things for you, or most of them for you?

Most of them.

Yeah.

So then he's like, oh, okay. And then he talked to his boss. She came back and she's like, oh my God, I heard you'd be willing to speak in Hong Kong. I was like, yeah, but there's no speaking spots. You know, I'm like, but I appreciate you guys, you know, offering me a free ticket and stuff. She's like, no, no, we'll make you the opening keynote. We'll move things around. I was like, great. She's like, Can you really make it or are you just pulling my chain? I'm like, no, I can really make it. So confirmed on the spot. The next day she sent an email confirming again and I'll end up going. Cost to go, probably 10 grand including hotel.

All right, quick note. This is about my company. It's called Single Grain and Single Grain is an ad agency where we're focused on driving innovation. Want to talk about a couple of new strategies and if you need help with marketing, great. If not, here are a couple of new strategies that you should try out. One is programmatic search. So we are doing programmatic conversion rate optimization on our site. So it's building products that will automatically optimize your site to increase conversion rates. We're also auto-optimizing, auto-updating from an SEO standpoint, and we're constantly thinking about what else we can do in terms of enriching the visitors that are hitting your website and also tailoring custom messages for them using AI. And so there's a handful of things that we're doing from a marketing standpoint, and our mission is just to drive more innovation. So if you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com, grain like rice. So singlegrain.com to learn more and we'll see you inside. So in this case, sometimes, what percent of the time are you coming out of pocket for these events?

The good events with enterprise?

Uh-huh.

Most of the time.

You're coming out of pocket. So they're like, okay, you can come speak, but you got to pay for your flight, you got to pay for your accommodations. You might even have to pay to speak in some cases.

We usually don't ever have to pay to speak. Sometimes we have to pay to get it organized. So in some of these regions, there's marketing associations. Think of like the American Marketing Association, but for Asia or whatever it may be.

Yeah.

So sometimes they'll be like, hey, you're doing an event in Brazil or Canada or Singapore or UK. We're going to bring together all of our VPs and CMOs of these kinds of companies. And we'd be like, yes, these are ideal customers. They're like, cool, we'll do this event. It's exclusively your event partnered with us. You guys speak, we'll have food and everything. This will cost you $20,000, $30,000, plus you're paying for your own travel.

Yeah. And they'll put it together. They're like, we'll organize it, but you got to pay for everything. Correct.

But that is more like our own event. It's very rare that I'm paying to speak at a conference that's going for 2, 3 days and anyone can come.

I think it's good for everyone to understand because that's the same case for me, at least for speaking at events. Usually they'll cover things and pay. But if you're like doing your own event, yeah, it makes sense that you should pay.

Yeah, but you're going right now to somewhere in Thailand, okay? You're getting paid. Honestly, do you think you're going to pick up business from it?

Don't know. I honestly haven't, dude, I haven't even like, and this is not good for me to say because those of you that are going to see me, I don't even like, I haven't even looked through the notes and everything on like what I was supposed to do.

But chances are it's more SMBs than it is enterprise corporations.

Yeah, they're like 8-figure businesses. They're not, enterprise. They're not mid-market enterprise businesses.

Yeah, because it's also in a really random location.

Yeah, it's, um, the reason I'll tell you strategically why I'm doing it is because the people I'm gonna be hanging out with there, some of them, some of them buy businesses, right? And there's like different angles and things. And plus, our mutual friend Patrick Campbell is going to be hanging out there too. So it's always good to see him. You know, and then there's more that we talked about offline, but we'll leave that alone. Yeah, that was the primary thing.

Eric is single.

No, you actually can't say that.

That's true.

You're not single. Yeah.

But Eric was—

You should stop. We should just continue to the next one before you dig a deeper ditch. All right. That's a good place to end. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. And go to marketingschool.io/agency if you want to learn more about the Agency Owners Association, where Neil and I will help you get more clients and grow your agency. Goodbye.