Ep. 3015: What Partnering Can Be A Better Form of Marketing?

You have this one over here, which I think is interesting on why partner marketing can be a better form of marketing. Because I was just thinking about this. We're both speaking at HubSpot's Inbound, right? I'm like, huh, for Carrot, I want to talk to more of these integration partners at HubSpot's Inbound. So I'm like, I'm going to set up a dinner, right?

Yeah, so dude, I got this idea from our last recording session. It was either the last one or the one before. And we were talking about getting customers from these LLMs.

Uh-huh.

And I was telling you, you're like, yeah, you're seeing it too, but we're talking about 2 different things. I was talking about people working at like a Perplexity recommending our agency. You were talking about getting mentioned in like a ChatGPT or Perplexity when someone's doing a search and then ChatGPT recommending you through their website, not actually an employee referring you. And then you were talking about, we were talking about Scrunge, Profound, and others, and I was like, Let me hit some of these guys up. So I started emailing the founders of these solutions and I was like, I should find one and just partner with them.

Yeah.

Because even though we ourselves have been developing AI products and we've been doing AI products since, I don't know, maybe 2 years ago, 3 max. I don't know when we first came out with our AI writer. I know February of 2025, we had a big meeting in Brazil and we were discussing all the AI stuff that we were creating, including like tracking on LLMs.

Mm-hmm.

And stuff like that. And just because we have some of these features, our product isn't based on a Profound or a Scrunched or a lot of these other solutions. We're basing it off of what our customers want, and it's a very different customer segment. I'm assuming you agree with this, right?

Mm-hmm.

What we're doing with Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic, you've seen some of the designs, we're not trying to do what they do. We're trying to help SMB and a roadmap. I don't know what their roadmap is and I don't even have like a login myself to Scrunched or Profound or any of those solutions. I don't think our dev team does either, but more so we're building stuff for how can we help SMB from soup to nuts, not just learn what's happening on the LLMs and all the channels out there, 'cause we're big on the search everywhere optimization like you and I have talked about with YouTube traditional.

Yeah.

But also help them execute actually get results in a way that's as automated as possible. And a small chunk, a fraction of a percent, but our user base is high. I think we have over 5 million users on our software tools, will be an ideal user for a Scrunched or Profound or something like that. I was like, wait, we should partner with them and send them revenue and we should try to work with them and get revenue from their end. And I was like, why not?

So how many deals have you done?

I have calls set up this week and next week.

Yeah, see, see, sometimes when you talk about this stuff, idea babies spawn.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

And I was like, let me just email. And I just start Googling these people's email addresses like at 9 o'clock at night while I'm in bed and I'm just shooting off emails.

Dude, you know what I do now? So I run Perplexity Labs, which does 9-minute research. I was like, tell me who are all the people Carrot should partner up with at HubSpot and then find me the contact information too. And then You can probably set up with ChatGPT agents now where it'll find the contacts and then it's connected with your Gmail because you can do the connection, right? And you can email these people and just set it up and just do like a private dinner because I'm going to arrive on the 2nd and then stay there till the 6th. So yeah. I like that. Yeah. So, and that's the move too. I'm going to throw a dinner. Neil will probably be there. I usually throw dinners when I speak at HubSpot. So that's what we'll do.

Yeah, why not?

Yeah.

I don't know if I'll be there at the dinner. I'll probably be spending time with my niece and nephew.

Oh, that's right. Because this time it's local for you. Yeah. Local-ish.

Local-ish.

Yeah. All right.

Yeah. My team's like, how long do you want there? And they'll be like, what do you want to do with the hotel? I'm like, none.

You're usually in and out. Yeah. So you're just going to arrive. Are you packing all your speaking into one day and just going to—

I'm trying to, and then spend more time at my sister's place.

Got it. Cool. So maybe guys, maybe dinner. We'll see. Yeah. All right. Pick the next one.

Eric will still do a dinner though.

I will for sure do a dinner. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm bad with the dinners. Even at the Miami event, you're like, do you want to come? Just leave to the airport from there. I'm like, it's okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dinners aren't your thing, so yeah.

No. Yeah.

All right, pick one. We got 2 more to do.

All right, let's talk about—

Oh, can we, can we? Okay, go ahead. You pick, you pick.

Go for it.

Okay. So, I mean, this one's interesting. So here's the quote, and I don't think you're going to agree with this. If you're not spending 90% of your time teaching, you're not doing your job. Do you know who this quote comes from? Comes from Jim Sinegal, the founder of Costco, and also Leonardo DiVecchio, who is the Luxottica founder. What's Luxottica? Luxottica owns like Ray-Ban and all these companies. So Mark Zuckerberg paid $3 billion, I think, for 3% or maybe a billion, something like that to buy. He's passed away since, but like phenomenal with M&A. He bought all these glasses companies like, and, you know, based in Italy and then Jim Sinegal, Costco, obviously huge, right? So again, they're both, if you're not spending 90% of your time teaching, you're not doing your job. So they're very hands-on, very involved, and they're teaching people how to do things in their organization. So I thought it was an interesting quote.

Yeah, I don't know if that's right. I know a lot of people, like if you actually look at like Mark Zuckerberg, they say he himself like will actually just do work and focuses on not just operating but actually doing. And then you have different management styles. Like if you look at Elon, he gets his hands dirty instead of teaching. I think he's just going in there and actually doing it himself. Does it mean that Jim from Costco or the founder of Costco or Elon or Mark or, you know, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates is right or wrong? I think it goes back to what we discussed earlier. When you're meeting up with these SaaS companies, there's many ways to get the same outcome and people just have to choose what's right for them. And even though like you and I teach, I don't think we spend 90% of our time teaching. It may look that way from the content that we push out and that's helped us build an audience, but—

Yeah.

I think we spend majority of our time doing.

I think also to your point about people having different ways of being successful in business, there's also different ways of teaching too. Sometimes you do things and then I more often than not now will record a lot of the stuff and then just teach by doing sometimes. Sometimes I'll just get on a call with someone, I'll screen record with them because I want to pass the knowledge on because that's much more scalable. And so in my mind, you know, what do I enjoy doing? Because people ask me, it's like, what are my life goals? I just love learning, I love doing, and I love love teaching, right? And that's like a self-reinforcing thing. So I think people can have different definitions, and I don't even know if Jim and Leonardo DiVecchio are talking about the same thing here, but they both kind of ascribe to like, just ultimately I think what it comes down to is being involved and you're teaching in some way, shape, or form. Maybe you're doing, maybe you're actually mentoring someone, but I do think maybe this comes down to involvement.

Yes. And that's why when at my organization, it doesn't matter if it's a CMO or anyone in marketing or any division, even sales, I expect people to be a player coach, especially executives. You not only have to go and do work yourself, but you got to teach others and level them up and get them to perform better.

Yep. If you're in B2B, here's the deal. LinkedIn account-based marketing sucks, but it doesn't have to. With Karat, it allows you to create personalized ads towards your customers and also personalized landing pages that align with the ads. So you're going to have higher conversions and influence pipeline reporting to prove that your ABM works. So if you want to learn more, just go to karrot.ai and you can join the waitlist. Again, it's karrot.ai, and we'll see you on the other side. Have you seen that this one business podcast charges $450,000 per episode?

So you can't listen to an episode for free?

Sorry, sponsorships cost $450,000 to sponsor this podcast.

I've never heard of that kind of sponsorship unless, because you said business podcasts, unless it would be like a Joe Rogan or something like that.

So click on the link. It's row 5754 here. I'm going to, I'm pulling it up right now, but this is the Acquired podcast. So I'm looking at their media kit right now. And basically when you look at the founders, this audience, it is, they have mostly entrepreneurs that listen to it, mostly CEOs, mostly entrepreneurs that listen to this, right? And, you know, you have the CEO of LinkedIn. CEO said, I love your podcast. I'm probably in for 80 hours. You have the Chief Product Officer from Meta. I recommend you guys to friends and colleagues all the time. 20% of the audience is founders, executives 35%, technical operators 26%, capital ecosystem 21%, right? And when you scroll down, you look at the sponsorship cost, Neil, it shows you the packages, right? If you're looking for a Presenting sponsorship in spring 2026, you're going to pay $1.875 million for 4 episodes. And then a mid-roll is going to be $1.25 million. And then the costs continue to jack up. Fall 2026, mid-roll is going to be $1.5 million, presenting sponsors $2.2 million.

Wait, so how much for— so for 4 episodes, it's a million bucks. That's what it shows here.

So 4 episodes—

That's in— it depends what season.

Yeah.

But like if you go into 2026, it's $1.5 million. Presenting is $2.2 million.

Yeah. Right now, if you and I wanted to go for fall, assuming this is a really good audience for us, right? We'd be paying $1 million. So $250 grand an episode, and then it just, it continues to jack up. But this is like the pinnacle, I think, of podcast ads that does well. And this is nice, but I still like our businesses more.

Yes. I'm, I don't like running a media company.

Yeah, it's tough. And I think Acquired has done a really good job. I think what I would do, is try to look for episodes. Like if we're trying to podcast, do podcast ads, I know for a fact a ton of founders listen to Founders, but you can't buy ads on that one. Okay. I know a ton of founders, executives listen to Invest Like the Best. I know they listen to Acquired. And so this is one of those situations where it's like, oh, the attention is there, but try to buy the underpriced attentions for maybe the up-and-comers. Unfortunately, Founders and Invest Like the Best are not up-and-comers.

Yeah.

Maybe you need to find some others that are up-and-comers, but $450 grand an episode. Good job to them.

Yep. On a sad note, did you just see Hulk Hogan just passed away?

He did?

Yeah.

No way.

Cardiac arrest. Oh, that sucks.

What?

Yeah. 71 years old.

Hulk Hogan was a great marketer.

Great marketer.

Or was it the WWE?

Uh, probably a combination of both. I think it was also his personality. I remember watching his show when I was a kid or much younger.

Southern Paradise?

No.

The one where he's on the boat?

With his family.

No, I didn't see that.

He had like a reality TV show.

Oh, it was like a Kardashians but Hulk Hogan.

And then he regrets passing up on the grill, like the George Foreman grill. I think they reached out to him earlier and that was one of his regrets in life.

Dude, Hulk Hogan was The Rock and Stone Cold before The Rock and Stone Cold. So that's sad. Okay, pick one more before we—

All right, last one. Let's go with— The Coldplay affair, CEO daughter did something diabolical.

Ah, okay, this is a good one. This is a good one. Okay, so do you want to explain what happened with the Coldplay? Just to set— anybody, if anybody's been living under a rock, this happened like maybe a week ago.

But— So the Astronomer, I believe it was Astronomer CEO, was at a Coldplay event. I believe it was in Australia.

I don't know.

Or wherever it was, somewhere like that. He had a picture of his head of HR or something, human resources. I forgot what department. I'm pretty sure it was HR.

Not a picture, but you know the kiss cams when you're at sports events? Yeah, kiss cam.

And they were like hugging or, uh, You know, like a Titanic pose. Yeah. And they turned away because they realized they were on camera. And Chris Martin, I believe his name is, Coldplay, right? The singer. He said, either they're shy or they're having an affair.

And turns out he was joking, right? Yeah, he was joking, but it was an affair and they both have family.

Although the CEO, I saw an Instagram account with his daughter, but I'm like, he doesn't have a daughter. He only has 2 sons, if I'm not mistaken.

So here's the deal. The daughter of the Astronomer CEO racked up 100,000 followers and over 15 million views on TikTok overnight, right? But to your point, the only problem is the Astronomer CEO doesn't have a daughter, right? So someone stole some girl's photos on Instagram and then told stories and made them go viral. And what happened was, this was really smart. They plugged all the stories, everything eventually went towards a meditation app, right? Yeah, that's solid. So this is diabolical marketing. So it's just like some random girl here, it says, Reconnecting with life after your dad's affair makes national news, right? And look, like 3.5 million likes, 1,158 comments, right? And then this one over here, 127K followers, 4.4 million likes. Mariana is her name. And then look, it links to this, I think—

App.

Download Copia. I guess Copia is the meditation thing. And you can see, I bet you're sobbing about this on a yacht or a PJ. I don't feel bad for rich people, right? She's like, #true. But this person doesn't exist. And so, everything's gonna be okay. Breathwork, please. I got the Copia app. It's letting me log every time I freak out. Right? And manifesting so cute. So basically it was all made up and this person capitalized on the attention because everyone on the internet was talking about it. And sometimes you just have to be very fast on these things and creative.

Yeah. Not the type of marketing that probably either of you or I would want to do, but—

I'm just not that fast, so.

It's not even about that fast. It's just, I think it's too deceitful.

It is, it is. But you know, that's, I think if you're in your 20s, you're down to try stuff like this. I think in our 20s we probably would've tried things like this, but it's just, We're just, um, we're a little older now, so it's not for us.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's it for today, guys, and, uh, we'll see you tomorrow.