ChatGPT makes links more prominent, NYT is now a gaming company, Erewhon marketing lessons, and more

You see ChatGPT is making links more prominent in the paid version at least. So if you're talking, let's say if you're asking ChatGPT a question in the paid version, there's a higher chance now that they end up showing you the source of where they got that information.

Well, that's good. I think they should be doing it. I think Perplexity does a good job of doing this. Gemini does.

I haven't seen it in Gemini yet.

Have you? I don't know. Yeah.

It could be there. I just haven't seen it. But dude, this shouldn't just be, hey, pay and you can get the source. This should be wherever we give you information, we should tell you what the source is. And I think this is super important because this will help us as marketers know— you should, yes, always double-check, but you should know the sources because you'd be like, wait, what's this site? This is a random site. I definitely got to double-check this.

Yep, 100%. And look, we're moving into a world where a lot— we're going to see a lot more AI content. So the original source matters a lot. And if you can be— if you can't— you remember the, the whole Google, like, if you're cited in Google News, you just get an avalanche of traffic. Like, if you can be that trusted authority, you're going to get benefits. And, and I think we're going to see more of that actually in a more AI-enhanced world. Did you see this? The, the New York Times shared How the global time spent for New York Times-owned apps. Okay, so they have The Athletic, which is one of their properties, New York Times Games, New York Times Cooking, and New York Times News. What do you think is the fastest-growing segment for them in terms of time spent?

Okay, repeat them again. New York Times News?

So New York Times News, New York Times Cooking, New York Times Games, or The Athletic, which is It's either going to be games or cooking. Games. So you can see over time this graph over here. Hopefully we'll pull it up on YouTube. But Matthew Ball tweeted this. He said, the New York Times is now a gaming company on the basis of customer time spent. That's where the majority of time is being spent. And when you think about Netflix, they've added games. A lot of people are adding games. Yeah, it's a retention play at the end of the day. Why wouldn't you do that if you can keep people in your apps longer? Because if you keep them longer, you can serve more ads, or you can drive— maybe they'll purchase something else from you, like one of your affiliate links, because that's what the New York Times does.

Dude, did you know Netflix games do not work on an airplane?

I didn't even know. I've never attempted to play a Netflix game because I just assume it's all crap.

So I was stuck at the airport for a really long time. And I was bored. And I was like, alright, I'm gonna— hopping on a flight. And the flight was from Colombia to Bolivia. So it was late at night, there wasn't much to do. And I was with some people. And I was like, you know what, you know, got on the plane, boarded. I'm like, Let me just try one of these Netflix games out. So, I downloaded them while I was in the airport, all right? And then, when I downloaded them, I was like, all right, let me try this. Or I actually downloaded a little bit before I was at the airport, but either way, I downloaded them. And then, I tried logging on and playing them on the plane, and it didn't work. It says you need to be connected to Wi-Fi. And I'm like, screw this. So, I've never got to play a Netflix game yet.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm sure it's all crap. Like, for right now, I'm sure it'll get better over time. But I think, look, if you can find something that has a lot of engagement, that's the name of the game. We talked about earlier in this episode, views on social, views on anything now is about how good your content is. Games is another way to get high engagement. Look, think about this. Elon still plays Diablo 4. I think so. Lex Fridman plays Diablo 4. There's a lot of people that play Diablo 4. Why do they do that? Because it's addictive.

Dude, I still play Monopoly every like few months and then I play it for hours.

Monopoly?

It's amazing.

What are you even talking about? Diablo 4 and Monopoly?

I don't know what Diablo 4 is, but I know what Monopoly is.

Like in-person Monopoly?

No, no, no, on my cell phone.

Oh, you know, I have Monopoly. I have, uh, the socialist edition. I'm not even joking. It's so— when you watch my videos, there's a Monopoly in the back and so it says the socialist edition. Everyone, everybody loses. And, and I've never played it. I wanna play it one of these days. I'm gonna open it up. We're gonna, we're gonna play it. All right, real quick. I need to tell you about the group that Neil and I created called the Agency Owners Association. And this is a group that's similar to entrepreneurial organizations such as YPO or EO. By the way, Neil and I are both in YPO, but we thought it'd be really cool if we're able to create a group that's dedicated to agency owners to helping them scale. So you could be at 6 figures, 7 figures, 8 figures. We have different groups for different levels. All you have to do is go to marketingschool.io/agency. Again, That's marketingschool.io/agency. And you can go there to apply. And I will tell you right now what we're doing is there's an online community. We do calls every now and then. There's stuff that we share in there that we don't share publicly. And you can, at least with the online community, you can cancel at any time. So, you can go there to learn more about it. And that being said, back to the video. Kareem Shu tweeted this. And funny enough, right after this, I'm going to this location. So, I wrote this blog post about Erewhon in 2020. And it's wild to see that in 4 years, Erewhon's Instagram has gone from 94,000 followers to 372,000 followers. Erewhon smoothie collabs have become so hot and culturally relevant. The Hailey Bieber smoothie, as an example. That one's a really good smoothie, by the way. Also, fun fact, the name of Erewhon is derived from the 1872 satirical novel Erewhon by Samuel Butler, which actually explores AI and describes a utopia In which individuals are responsible for their own health and prosecuted for the crime of being ill. I think this is interesting because I don't know how often you go to Erewhon but their stuff is just so high quality.

So, I don't think most people can relate because I don't think there's Erewhon everywhere.

Oh yeah, Erewhon is like Whole Foods but next level. Yeah, it's like all organic food. It is more expensive but the quality of the food I would say compared to other places is pretty high.

Yeah. And there's one here in Beverly Hills. I think there's one in West Hollywood.

Everywhere. West Hollywood, Pasadena has one.

Oh, there's that many?

Yeah.

Studio City has one.

Santa Monica has one. No, it's everywhere now in the LA area.

Yeah. I've been to the one in West Hollywood years and years ago, but we order Uber Eats from Erewhon a lot.

It's expensive when you order it. It's already expensive. When you add delivery, it's like adding another like 20%, 30%, 40% to it.

Yeah.

Yeah. But anyway, my point of saying all this is that They do a good job with their marketing and they stay in their lane. They only focus on organic. And the smoothie collabs, I think, are really smart too. It's, again, it's like, how do you do influencer collabs? They do it with smoothies. So, what can you do with your products?

Dude, and, you know, before we wrap up, I think one topic that's— or to go back to Erewhon, what they did really well in marketing is they said, a lot of people complain about Whole Foods. They call it Whole Paycheck, right? You've heard that?

This is actually a whole paycheck.

Yeah, they're like, what we're gonna do is we're gonna go target the super rich or people who don't care. And they just want the best quality and they'll pay for it. And ergo, you have Erewhon.

Yep.

And you have it close to Rodeo Drive or on one of those streets in Beverly Hills. We've, you know, I've walked to it with my wife and kids. It's expensive, but we eat it. It's a small store. And it's still expensive.

And, you know, That's why I pay for it the way I do it now, Neil, is I buy 2 combo plates, but I add in 3 taquitos. So then I can eat, I can eat 3 meals instead of just 2. Yeah, because when you add in the 3, 3 taquitos, it dampens it. Yeah, it dampens the cost. All right, so I wanted to take a second to tell you about Leveling Up Founders. This is an event/mastermind for people doing 7, 8, 9 figures. These are founders that are doing that amount. And we've been doing this event for a couple years now. We've had amazing speakers, but more than anything, it's about the people. What I mean by that is like-minded people want to hang out with like-minded people, and this is the best spot to connect with people of a certain caliber. And we vet every single person that comes through. So if people are— even though they make a lot of money, but their character, we don't really align with that, we're not necessarily going to let them in. We did this event in Beverly Hills, and it's happening in the beginning of August. All you have to do to learn more about it is just go to levelingup.com/founders. Again, it's levelingup.com/founders. If you want to hang out with amazing people, Neil, my podcast co-host, is going to be there. I'm going to be there. People like Syed Balkhi, he will be there as well. And again, it's going to be a great time. levelingup.com/founders to learn more, and we'll see you inside. Did you know there are more, more and more people starting AI podcasts? So the Darvis CEO, Stephen Bartlett, he started doing this, and this is a test that he's running right now. Where he tried to make a podcast, where he did make a podcast, an AI podcast on Manchester United, the soccer team, the football team. Basically, it just shares news from Manchester United. What they're trying to do right now with this is if the retention could get to at least 50% minimum, then they're happy with it and they'll just continue to roll out these podcasts, these AI podcasts. I'm like, I think we're going to see a proliferation of a lot of these news AI podcasts.

Yeah.

Where you can even dub our voice in and change it into different languages. We'll see what happens, but if the retention is high, then why not just do a bunch of them?

Yeah, and what Eric is talking about isn't creating a podcast about AI. He's talking about using AI to create a podcast on any topic and it just cranks out tons and tons of episodes. I do think that's smart. Have you seen all the people who are posting AI social profiles? I bet you people are going to start having quote-unquote AI-generated OnlyFans accounts.

There are already.

Oh, there are?

Yeah, I subscribed you to one.

Seriously?

No, I didn't subscribe you to one.

No, no, but like there really are AI. Dude, I bet you it's a killer business model.

Yeah, it is.

You can keep 100% of the profits.

I told you about my— well, my friend was trying to start like a porn AI business, and it was kind of similar to that. It's like OnlyFans and they charge on a monthly model. And then also what they're planning to do is like skin whatever your preferences are and then just change up the videos or whatever. And so he ended up not doing it, but someone else took it on and I think they're doing really well right now, which is crazy, right?

It is. So you remember your friend from— is it Jump Cut?

Kong.

Kong. Yeah, he's a good guy. I was at not really a meetup. Someone invited me to meet up and he was there as well. And it was in Vegas and it was just like 4 or 5 of us sitting in a circle. One of his friends or one of their friends from the group, I didn't really know too many people in the group other than Kong. And I knew him from your event, was an OnlyFans manager. And she did accounting and I think some marketing for some of these accounts and she was making a killing. And I was like, holy crap, I didn't realize there was that much money in OnlyFans. And it hit me at that time, you know, I was like, huh, if you know how to do all of this, if you can somehow create the character in OnlyFans that people are subscribing to, you can keep all the profits and your income would really go up. Yeah, right. And now you can do that with AI.

Yeah. So I think we're gonna see more and more of this. But I don't know how that's like— I've seen some of this AI content and it feels AI right now. It's just like, what do you do in the world? Like, how can you tell what's real and what isn't anymore? And, you know, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Here's, here's the last thing we can talk about. So I saw this tweet. This is from, uh, Joe Wang, Jeremiah Ouyang, and he has this picture over here. So, I've been a professional speaker for over a decade. These rates seem accurate for today's market. And And so we can share kind of what our experience is as it relates to this rate card. But this picture, hopefully we pull it up on YouTube, says how to decide your speaker fees. And so $0, if you're a new part-time speaker with little experience, usually have no official brand. I think you and I can agree with that. That's true. $1,000, speakers with growing experience and branding, usually part-time but have an up-and-coming speaking business. So that's anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000. True or false?

I, I haven't looked at speaking fees in a long time.

So, well, people that want to make money from speaking.

Okay.

All right.

I think that could be true.

Now, $7,500 to $10,000 is intermediate speakers who have a growing brand and business, usually full-time speakers or close to it. I would say this is true. Actually, this is anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000. And I would say when I started to get offered, it's—

yeah, that sounds around that range.

Yep. And then $10,000 to $15,000 intermediate full-time speakers who have solid brand business, usually just working to expand their client list and reputation. Okay, that's fair. Now let's talk about $15,000 to $30,000 plus advanced full-time speakers with extensive experience, products, and services. I'll say that's not true because you and I have charged around that range. You've charged way more actually, and we're not full-time speakers.

Yes. And what's funny is the most well-known or most highest-paid speakers typically don't care for income from speaking. They have something else that makes them money.

Remember Hillary Clinton charges like $500 grand for a talk, right?

Yeah. So I can see it for politicians. There's some industries where politicians use donations. So yeah.

Yeah.

But on a side note, you know, with speaking, the key isn't to make money from speaking. The key is to make money from something that's bigger. Someone does something else.

Same thing with your newsletter. Ideally, you're selling them into a higher ticket item.

Yes. And on one last thing before we go, because we had to talk about this. You see how Google considers buying HubSpot?

I saw that.

Yeah, stock jumped up 7%.

Yeah, but like what happened? Was that later? That was later in the week, right? Wednesday?

It was a few days ago.

Yeah, it was like Wednesday or something. So this will be a week before this comes out, but yes.

Well, see, I think it's a smart thing.

I mean, they can buy many HubSpots.

I don't know. We'll end up finding out when we go to Inbound if it was going to actually happen or not.

Oh, then we get Google to sponsor the podcast.

Yeah, there you go. I don't think Google will buy HubSpot.

I don't think so either. Why don't you think so?

If you look at Google, it's like saying they're going to go buy an ad agency. Why would you want to buy an ad agency? There's a lot of ad agencies out there. You don't want to cling to one. Let them all promote your ad ecosystem. There's a lot of marketing systems out there, marketing cloud. Salesforce has a marketing cloud, Adobe has a marketing cloud, HubSpot, right? Why would you want to own one? Because a lot of the other ones, they do drive revenue to you as well. I'm not saying that they're going to lose the revenue if they buy HubSpot, but you got this golden goose. Why rock the boat or mess with it? Just let it be. And yes, HubSpot could potentially help, you know, their SMBs get onboarded and grow faster. But dude, they can already, they already partner with HubSpot and they partner with a lot of other marketing clouds. What's the difference from them partnering with these solutions versus owning them? Owning them just means it creates more of an issue for other platforms to send potential advertisers to Google versus just partnering with all of them.

How many HubSpot customers are there?

Hundreds of thousands. If you want to include the free ones, must be millions.

Yeah. And so look, you— okay, you know, let's think about what— why do they actually want to buy them? The cross-sell, upsell a bunch of things could be something. Do they want to buy all the data from all these B2B?

But Google's not a software company. They don't own tons of software like Microsoft, at least that I can think of.

I mean, they have— they have, what do they call it? Google Cloud, right? They have Workspace. But you look at— They're trying to upsell Gemini, right?

But you look at like Salesforce and Adobe, they have tons of SaaS products. HubSpot is a SaaS product. Google doesn't own tons of SaaS products out there. They do software, but they don't own tons of SaaS.

There's probably an angle we don't know about. I don't think the deal is going to go through because of like, there's going to be a lot of pushback that's similar to the reasons that you give that I agree with. But there's probably some angle that we haven't considered.

Plus antitrust. So many people are going to slap this and say, hey, you already own a lot of the marketing ecosystem.

Really bad regulatory environment right now where nothing goes through. Didn't the Figma thing get canceled?

It did, and then they had to pay him a cancellation fee of like some billion dollars.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, that's it for today. Let us know what you think about this longer episode. We'll probably chop it up a little bit for for YouTube, and that is it for today. And also don't forget, go to marketing school dot io slash agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association. That's where we help agency owners grow, and. Hopefully we get it to a place where we don't need to have ads on this podcast anymore. So yeah, there's that for you. Goodbye. Goodbye.