From Hormozi’s Funnel to Liquid Death: Business Lessons That Matter

We're going to start first. The first episode is for a podcast episode. Neil, how important is it to have a microphone?

I don't think it's that important. I think—

That's a lie.

Whatever works. That's the lie.

That's the only thing that matters.

I don't know about that.

Neil doesn't have his microphone, guys, but we're going to— don't worry, guys, we're going to record in person next time. The sound will get better. So, Neil, I mean, today, so Chair Powell. So we'll start a little bit with kind of interest rates and how it affects marketing. So he just spoke at the Jackson Hole event, and I think there's actually a crypto event going on over there as well. And so Neil had this topic here on if we will see a bull run in marketing with lower rates. I think that's a good place to start. So Neil, what do you think? Because I'll tell you what, Neil, I was actually holding to deploy a little bit. Because I thought he was going to come in a little more on the pessimistic side, right? Because everyone's monitoring to see what he's going to say. But I opened up CoinMarketCap and everything jumped. I was like, oh, and then I looked at his language. I was looking at Twitter. I asked Grok what he said. And it looks like he's saying that, hey, it looks like we're in a good place. We're going to stop maybe looking at that 2% inflation target. And it looks like we're going to have some cuts coming, right? At least he said September. So What did you hear?

Yeah, so the summary is they gotta look at the data, but based on the data, they're open to cutting if it needs to be cutting. And he was more positive about that versus the past. And September's job data should end up coming out before they make their decision on whether to hold the rates steady or cut. And when I say the September jobs data is technically jobs data for August that you end up getting in September because there's a little bit of a lag before you can get the jobs data. Now here's what's interesting because we work with both enterprises and SMBs, and I know you do too. The rates don't have as big of an impact on the enterprise corporations as they do for SMBs. What we've really seen in this market because rates are high, And borrowing is tougher. And I know Besant said in Q3 or Q4, we're going to start seeing more deregulation, whatever that may be. You know, we'll have to just wait to see it. We think this is going to cause marketing to grow for agencies who are focusing on SMBs more than enterprise because borrowing is cheaper. Credit card rates will hopefully become cheaper. And then people spend more on ads like Meta and stuff like that. It causes people to make more revenue and, you know, it all goes in a circle.

Have you heard of Bessent's 333 plan? By the way, guys, don't I sound amazing? Send me a DM if you think I sound amazing and Neil sounds like crap. So Neil, have you heard of the Bessent 333 plan?

I have not heard of the 333 plan, but I'm guessing it's related to like how they're making money, like cutting tariffs and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, you're on the right track. So it's— Bessent's target is 3% real GDP growth. That's number one. The second one is 3% budget deficit-to-GDP ratio. Right now, our budget deficit-to-GDP ratio is not good. And also, he wants 3 million barrels per day increase in US oil production. So I don't know about the last one because this is an AI overview on the 333, but I do think if we can get 3% real GDP growth and get the budget deficit in a better spot, he's saying he's really counting on the AI boom cycle. So That remains to be seen. And I think he's counting on a lot more business productivity. But what I will say is, you know, those of you that— going back to the interest rates real quick, there's a difference between dovish versus hawkish stance when it comes to interest rates. So dovish means— a dovish stance means favoring lower interest rates, right? Whereas a hawkish stance means you're favoring higher interest rates. And actually, Powell has been pretty hawkish for the last few years or so, and rightfully so. Maybe a little too long, but what does he get called? He gets called Too Late Powell sometimes, right? But dovish stance, he's kind of moved into this dovish mode, and that is grounds for— this is why crypto jumped this morning, right? So I was just looking at Bitcoin. It was down to $112,000 or so. And then after he spoke, it went up to $116,000. And then I think Ethereum jumped like 8%, 9% or so. from 4,100, 4,200 to 4,600 or so. So I don't know, like the economy seems shaky to me still, but the markets don't speak for the economy.

Yeah, but that's— I know we're on a marketing podcast. That's the most entertaining thing I hear from crypto people. A lot of them are saying, oh, it's not correlated to the economy or anything like that. Crypto's different than the US dollar and markets and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, yes, but a lot of the crypto holders institutions. And when the market's great, crypto's great. When things start going really bad, it affects crypto prices negatively as well.

Yep. So look, when interest rates come down, that means borrowing is easier, and that means people are more aggressive with their spending habits, right? And you look at the— by the way, I've never seen the real estate market, I don't know if you have, locked up like it has been for the last couple years. And it's because of interest rates. Everything is driven by interest rates. It's a cycle. It comes up, comes down, comes up, comes down. The economy is supposed to be like that. It's supposed to be driven in cycles. We just haven't had one in a while because we've created this— we had this money printing—

Artificial boom period for a very long time.

Yeah.

But no, going into this, and this is another similar topic that I have on the sheet, talking about how marketing is growing for SMBs because of the rate cuts, I genuinely believe it'll start helping. Enterprise companies are starting to, um, agency, independent agencies are starting to do better, but I think it has nothing to do with the economy when it comes to enterprise. Why is that? Because we're seeing 2 trends right now. Did you see the Dentsu earnings call?

No.

Right. Their CEO in Japan, he didn't explicitly say it, but is hinting Dentsu is one of the big ad, uh, agency holdcos out there. They own like Merkle, iProspect, uh, uh, Kara, and the list goes on and on. And they're talking about how, um, in essence, they're, you know, I've known this for a while because I got hit up by Dentsu for, um, you know, they ended up selling Mute6, but they hit us up for that. Uh, but the, but the reason I, I know the Dentsu side is, you know, there's rumor mills. You just know some people working. And Dentsu, the rumor mill, is looking to divest everything outside of Japan. So the whole Dentsu Aegis network, if you want to talk about Americas or Europe or APAC excluding Japan, they're looking to divest the whole business. And then the other rumor is WPP, which their stock has been in the shitter for a while, is looking to divest WPP or GroupM. And the rumor is potentially Accenture may end up buying it. So when you're seeing this turmoil with these holdcos and these ad agencies, And there's a few big ones like Omnicom, Dentsu, WPP, Publicis, right? IPG, although IPG is merging, right? Supposedly the merger will go through. But when you look at these and these, some of these players are doing $15, $20-ish billion. And these companies like Dentsu and stuff make announcements, we're cutting 8% of staff or 10% or whatever it may be, right? I don't have the top number off the top of my head, but I think it was 8%. It starts, you know, creating alarm signals for the clients. So what we're seeing in the enterprise end is people worried about the holding companies. A lot of them have a ton of debt or they have other issues and they're starting to shift the budget to independent agencies. Now that doesn't mean the marketing industry's picking up. That just means money is shifting from one pot to another, but the pots that they're shifting away from are really massive.

Yeah. So, I mean, what's the key takeaway here for the audience?

If you're an independent agency and you do good work and you're focusing on enterprise, you should see things pick up, but it's not necessarily the economy. Don't think of it as like a false signal. Maybe some of it will be, but it's more so because the holding companies are having issues and we're hearing it from customers left and right. They're starting to migrate away from the holding companies or look for alternatives.

Yeah, I don't— so my take on this, I mean, putting a long-term view on it. And so short-term, yeah, I agree. I don't think there's much more I have to add there, but I don't know if this holding company model works out in the long term where you're gobbling up other— because they're throwing people at the problem, right? And I just think in the world that we're moving to, it's just you and I know a lot of people that are, that have been net cutting people, unfortunately, but they're getting a lot more efficiencies from other areas in the business, right? And so that's just how it's going to be. And I think Long, long term, by the way, I don't know if you and I talked about this yesterday, but people are worried about jobs and everything. But when you think about it, the jobs that happened before when most people were farmers, eventually those jobs got taken away. Everyone's freaking out about that, right? Or even back in the day when the printing press came out, everyone's freaking out about that. It's like, oh my God, like we can't read newspapers, right? And then people started freaking out about, oh, they're going to lose their factory jobs. But these are jobs that people actually don't really want to do. And that's going to allow people to work on more creative things over time. So sure, there might be some short-term job displacement, but in the long term, I think everyone's going to be okay. They're going want to work on things that they want to work on. That's long, long-term. And I think long-term, the holding company model, I think it's worked out well for these companies in the past. I just don't think that's a game that is worth playing for the long-term based on how much more efficiencies we're going to gain. So the thing I want to call out too, you called out the economy for a second. Remember we talked about the Restaurant Performance Index?

You mentioned that. I forgot what the Restaurant Performance Index is, but I'm assuming that's related to How well restaurants are performing.

Exactly. So here, I'll just share this with you real quick. So Restaurant Performance Index, can you see this?

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

So whenever the Restaurant Performance Index edges downward, so it was -0.1%, and when it's negative like this, you can see here in 2020, those of you that can't see this right now, it dropped a lot, right? Where it dropped down 4% or so. And this is during COVID And then when there's a recession over here, it drops quite a bit, right? So whenever it drops quite a bit, when it starts edging down consistently, this is something you want to pay attention to because people just aren't going to restaurants as much anymore. Now, in this case, it's not that bad. Look, it edges down here and there in 2016, you know, 2013 and all that. But if it starts really going down consistently, then we know there's an issue. Like, look, look, in 2023, this looks like maybe 2023 going into 2024, it came down a little bit too. And this is when you and I felt the B2B recession. Yeah.

So yeah, but it started going up based on that chart, and then it went down a little bit, and now it's starting to go back up. So hopefully it keeps going up.

Yep. Warren Buffett likes looking at railroad data. So what I have on the screen right here is this Association of American Railroads. And so you can look at rail traffic data, and you can see 2025 is in the darker blue line, and then you have 2024 in the lighter blue one. And right now it's still kind of trending above 2024. So if it starts to look really bad and trends downwards, these are things that you can look at. So you can look at the Restaurant Performance Index and then you can look at railroad data. Neil and I, this is not financial advice. This is just what I like looking at because I hear it from the pros. Anything you want to add?

Look, eventually things have to start turning around. The question is when, and it's too hard to time a market. Just the way Eric and I look at business and marketing is Double down and invest in the things that you know are great for the long term. And in the short run, you're going to take a lot of licks and it's going to be very painful, but that's how you come ahead of your competition. And this is why Eric and I are really happy none of us are private equity backed because a lot of the private equity companies have done very little acquisitions. They haven't really invested much in growth. All they've done is cut, cut, cut. And the reasons they— the main reason they've done the cut, cut, cut model is because they put a lot of debt on the business when the private equity firms bought it. So you got these debt payments and you got to be in a certain range when it comes to profitability or else the banks get pissed off at you and you have other consequences. So that makes them be very conservative with their investments and their future outlook because the last thing they want to do is miss any of their debt payments. Think of it like a mortgage payment, right? You can only default for so long. But on the flip side, Eric and I, the last few years, I don't know your numbers, but I can speak for myself and I'm going to ask you, our profit has gone down because we've reinvested so much. I'm assuming you're in a similar camp.

Oh, bless you. We've had to because we were in trouble a while back.

Yeah, but your revenue overall is larger, correct? And our revenue has been growing overall. You know, some years, you know, it's a little bit choppy or growth slowed down, but still we're pretty much growing overall. But our profit is down even though our revenues are much higher than they were years ago. And the reason being is we reinvested and we invested in things like international expansion. And I always get the number wrong because I always tell people we're like in 20-something countries, but I was on a—

Yeah.

presentation with Nick the other day and he's like, yeah, we have offices in 28 countries and people on the ground in 35. It was something like that that he said. I could be a little bit off, but that was expensive. That wasn't millions of dollars. It was tens and tens of millions of dollars, right? And that's just money outta my pocket. And you look at Eric, he built Carrot and Carrot wasn't cheap. I don't know how much he spent on that, but it must be an arm and a leg by now. Yep.

Arm and a leg on carrot, arm and a leg on talent, especially right now. So, you know what Jeff Bezos said? Remember what he said? He's like, whatever you see with Amazon right now, it took us 3 years to get here. And whatever we're building right now, we're already onto the next 3 years. And that's how we're looking at it. And you bring up private equity too. There's a quote that sticks with me. I think it was Naval Ravikant that said this, but if someone can tell you what to do, you don't own it, right? So if you're private equity backed and they own 51% or something, they're telling you what to do and they're telling you, you need to make these cuts over here and you need to do this stuff over here and you need to play our playbook. You're not getting— and it's fine if you're okay with that. But I think in general, for you and me, it's not the way.

Yeah, our personalities don't work with someone telling us what to do like that.

By the way, there's one more quote I want to leave people with too, kind of going back to investing for a second, and we'll jump back to marketing. But Howard Marks, remember Howard Marks, the investor, Oaktree Capital? So he— I'm paraphrasing here, but the best time to invest is when you don't want to. So when the news cycle is terrible, when all the numbers are looking bad, when everyone is pessimistic, right? That is the best time to invest. And most people, 99% of people won't do that, right? So you can apply that to business as well. You can apply that to not just financial investments that you make, but time investments that you make and things like that. So just wanted to throw that in there.

But you know, he lives right by you, right?

Does he? Where does he live?

Holmby Hills.

Oh, I didn't know that. I just know they have an office in downtown LA and I have some friends.

I thought it was Century City. No?

Maybe both. I don't know. Yeah.

But I know he has a home in Holmby Hills and his partner did as well, but his partner sold the home maybe to him or someone else. But yeah, they're right there by Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and all that area.

Yeah, dude, I got a good one here. So why people hate course sellers. So here, let me just start this off. I was reading this on Twitter the other day. So this guy Chris Hoffman, he was actually a YPR and he was at the YPO Miami event, the marketing summit. So this guy Lee McCabe works in private equity. He posted this on LinkedIn. So Lee McCabe says, it's not private equity, it's a Ponzi scheme of aspiration. Okay, so it's not private equity, it's a Ponzi scheme of aspiration. There's a whole ecosystem now built on one promise: you can buy a business with no money down and become financially free in 12 months. It sounds like M&A, it sounds like private equity, but it behaves like a multi-level marketing scheme because here's what's really happening. The people selling you the dream aren't acquiring HVAC companies or running $5 million revenue businesses. They're running content businesses and you are the product. The playbook is painfully predictable. Number 1, record a podcast episode explaining how anyone can buy a business, quote unquote. Number 2, show a staged screenshot of an LOI or closing dinner. Number 3, offer a $10,000 mastermind or cohort-based course. Number 4, rinse and repeat until someone asks for audited results. It's not illegal, it's just clever marketing, and it works because the audience wants it to be true. And these are liars lying to people who want to be lied to. They're not targeting operators, They're targeting dreamers, people who don't actually want to run a business. They want to escape their job. They want the feeling of momentum, the illusion of progress. And the $3,000 course is the price of hope. They're selling dreams and dopamine hits to 99% of people who will never take action but will spend $3,000 to feel like they're closer to the life they'll never build. I'll just end it with this piece real quick. So one of our mutual friends said this. I remember I was sitting in a room with some executives. We're talking about we're launching a course, right, for Jim Rohn, right? And the guy said it in front of the room. He's like, guys, guys, we are not selling progress. We are selling perceived progress. And I was like, man, I don't want to sell perceived progress. But when he said it, everyone started laughing. I was like, yeah, that doesn't feel good, right? And this is what Lee is saying here. And I just remember I've talked to this guy before. But anyway, what do you think about this?

I'm with it. I totally agree. I do think a small percentage of the people who take courses get tons of value and it improves their lives. I think 97, 98, 99+ percent of people who take the courses get very little value and it really hurts them because they just spent all this money and they got nothing. And I think some of these course providers have gone above and beyond. I've heard of people that, no joke, will tell you, go here to sign up for a credit card. They'll give you a $10,000 limit. What's your credit? And all this kind of stuff. They help them sign up. And then they go charge their card for 10 grand when they can't afford it. And I look at that and I was like, this is just terrible business. And I know someone who went through that model and I told them, you shouldn't end up going in. This is a terrible business. And they got tons of chargebacks and they were like, oh, because of this. And I'm like, no, you're only selling a crap ton of courses because you're promising people they will become rich. And the reality is, is you can't guarantee someone's going to be rich. You can't guarantee job placement. You can't guarantee, you know, you're going to make 6 figures. Let's say your course is on teaching sales because I see a lot of those online. If you went and you ran ads and you said, I'm going to teach you sales for 3 years, you need to stop going to clubs and partying. You need to stop having fun. You need to focus on everything that I'm teaching you. Your first few jobs are going to suck, and I'm going to teach you how to get better at sales. And you also need to have a natural personality to do well in sales, where if you don't, you can still do well, but maybe you won't do as well selling most things. Maybe you need to sell technical products or whatever it may be. And if you meet these requirements and you do this for 3 years and you put in a lot of work, you're not going to make a lot of cash, but year 4, 5, 6, you'll start seeing the light at the tunnel, and then you can start making $200,000, $300,000, $400,000. I'm going to teach you management skills and all this. Your sales are going to suck because no one wants to put in all that work and lose money for years. And that's a true, real reality, even in marketing. Eric, how long have you been doing this for?

16 years.

Yeah, I'm on 24.

Yeah.

So we've both been doing this a long time. And I would say the biggest reason that both you and I are doing decently well, I'm not saying Eric's doing poorly or I'm doing poorly. I'm not saying either of us are doing great, but let's just call us average. We're not creating these lovable type companies. where we're getting to $100 million in revenue in less than a year, right? We're not that successful. Not trying to talk trash, Eric, but you know, I'm assuming you agree that's the reality.

Yeah, I agree.

The only reason we do decently well is because we've been persistent for so many years and we've taken so many licks and it's painful, but that's the true reality of entrepreneurship and being a marketer. Like you got ups and downs and dealing with algorithms and stuff that goes great for you some periods and Stuff that goes terrible for you and you don't remember the great moments, you just complain about the moments that suck. Yeah.

So here's my take on it. So I do find value in courses. I know Neil's probably never paid for a course in his life, but early in my career, even when I was broke, I don't know if this site is still active anymore, but I used to go to this website called thevault.bz and I used to download like these $2,000, $3,000 courses, right? And in some cases, I would even shell out my own money. As a couple years went by, I would pay for courses, And I would even pay for masterminds back in the day. I remember there's the War Room Mastermind, right? And I would pay for peer groups and things like that. I got value from them, but the reason why people hate course sellers, in my opinion, is I think 99% of course sellers, they are selling the dream and they're not actually selling something that's going to give you the outcome that they're promising. And that's why people hate them, right? And so I think, look, if it's legit, And it's adding value. Again, I certainly got a lot of value from the courses that I've been through. You just got to make sure that you filter correctly, right? And I think someone we can call out here in a good way is when you look at Alex Hormozi, he did his $105.5 million webinar about a week ago or so, right? So over the weekend, Guinness World Record, congratulations to him. I think he sold 3 million books over the weekend. So I think I saw somewhere it was reported that he basically said, you know, when it's when it's all said and done, he made $105.5 million on on the webinar, right? And a lot of people were poo-pooing him on on Twitter, just saying, "Oh, turns out he's a course grifter. Turns out he's this and that." But the reality is, I've I've I've read Alex's books. I've seen his stuff before. He's actually he's been there, done that on the business side. Both him and Layla, right? Amazing job. And the courses that he has are he largely gives away for free, and then he has an educational component too, right? And then you know he has the the other stuff with with private equity. And all that. So I think in that scenario, that's like, okay, that's someone that you can go to. Plus a lot of his good stuff is available for free. Now, I actually wanted to spend some time, Neil, for us talking about just unpacking his webinar and then talking about his upsell funnel. So I actually looked at a couple of things and then you maybe can react to it because I'm assuming you're occupied with other things.

You sent me the YouTube video link when it was live, but I watched a little bit about it and that was it. Yeah. 'Cause I'm not, and it's nothing that, I'm not saying his content's bad or anything. His content's probably amazing for the webinar. It's just more so I'm not the target audience. Correct.

I just, in my opinion, I'm watching it, one, 'cause I'm bored. Two, I want to see how he's marketed it, right? 'Cause sometimes it'll give me ideas. So sometimes if I watch you do something, you might do something a certain way, I'll try to spin it in a certain way on my side and vice versa, right? You do the same thing. So we're always trying to learn from each other. That's a lesson for everyone. not just from each other, but from other people too. So I was observing this and he was live. I would go on YouTube, like I'd be eating lunch in the morning, right? And I'd be like, oh man, okay, his webinar's live. And then I might open my YouTube app. I'm like, oh damn, it's like 3:00 PM. He's still going. And then I opened it again. It's like 6:00 PM. He's still going on the webinar, right? So it was like a 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM or 8:00 PM webinar. And he kept going. He brought on a lot of guests. I think he flew in Alex Becker. So Alex Becker's got a good following from like a crypto standpoint and Hyros guy, right? And 3 million books sold. He made it a— it was almost like, um, kind of like a spectacle. So there's a lot of learnings, but it was entertaining too. He had like a Hormozi hotline too where people can call and he answer questions, kind of like how Dave Ramsey does it. Um, and he had the Guinness, um, World Record people dressed up there to present the award to him. So they're standing there like in the middle of the presentation, they walk up and say, okay, here's the record, like congratulations, you hit it, right? Um, but what I thought was really smart, Neil, was that he sold a $6,000 book bundle. So you get 200 books, right? And the whole idea behind a $6,000 bundle was, hey, if you're an entrepreneur and if you can afford it, I would like you to pay it forward and give these codes out, right? So imagine, Neil, if I sold $6,000 of books to you, 200 books, what are you going to do? You'd be like, okay, I have 200 books now. What am I supposed to do? All these people start tweeting about it. All these people start talking about it, right? And then everyone starts claiming these books. And so, That creates more of a spectacle or fanfare around what he's doing. But the $6,000 bundle—

Let's go back. I'm a little confused on this. So let's say you, Eric, buy a $6,000 book bundle, right? So you got 200 books.

Yep.

All right. And the books don't get shipped to you. You're saying you're going to— you get a code, you get one of the 600 books. I mean, one of the, one of the 200 books, correct? I'm assuming you get it shipped to you.

So here's what I know. So I tested it and I didn't buy the 6,000 package. I bought 15 books and I just gave them away. So I got a code for that, right? And then I just shared it with a bunch of people and I just gave the codes away. So it doesn't, to your point, it doesn't automatically ship. You have to claim each code and you just keep sharing with people.

So you get 15 separate unique codes and you say, hey, people go buy.

It was just one code.

Oh, but it's only valid for 15 books.

Yeah.

So people just use it until it's done. Now, if someone claims the code, do they have to pay for shipping or it's all free?

They have to pay for shipping, $10.

Yeah. Okay. So they're buying the book.

Free plus shipping. Yeah, it's free.

They just got to pay for shipping.

Which means that, by the way, he has your credit card information.

Yeah. And then does he sell anything else or was he just selling books?

I'm glad you asked that. I'm going to get to that in a second. So the $6,000 is just the beginning. So obviously you can buy one book and then you can buy bundles. So what he has done here is he's used the Russell Brunson formula of the ascension ladder, right? So Everything he's done here, so Neil and I have seen a lot of this growing up. I think he's done direct marketing at a very high level, probably the highest level that I've seen. And so before I jump into the upsells here, Neil, I just want to call out that there's scarcity. So the first day that he did this webinar, he's like, hey, this $6,000, here's a countdown. This is going to go away, blah, blah, blah, right? So he's closing the cart. So when you do a launch, you got to close the cart because there's got to be urgency, right? Oh my God, this is going to be gone. Now get this, he doesn't actually— so you would think that Saturday he's done. He's not done. Sunday, there's an encore. Of course he planned this encore, right? So there's an encore and he goes for like, I think he goes for like 7, 8 hours again. And of course you're going to get another round of sales. And then I think he goes for another, like he goes for next day Monday as well. I think there's another encore too, right? And by the way, leading up to this, he, I think he spent a good amount of money on Meta. He had a bunch of people dressed in green suits running around Vegas and all that. I think he bought like an ad. on one of the hotels promoting his book as well. So there's a lot of upfront work he put into this. I want to call that out, but scarcity works. The pre-marketing worked out really well. I think he chose a good date too. He chose a Saturday where there's not a lot of— there's not anything big in the news cycle happening, so he can own the news for that weekend. And so I think he was very thoughtful across the board. So now let me tell you about the upsell funnel. Are you ready?

Okay.

So the core offer is One book, $30. Okay, that's number one. The first upsell is, well, this is beyond the first upsell. So the first upsell, you can buy like 15, 30 books, whatever, right? I think one of the core upsells, the core first upsell, $6,000, 200 books.

Okay?

Second upsell, $18,000 offer, 800 books.

Okay?

Third upsell, $100,000, 4,000 books. I actually saw someone on YouTube, he spent $225,000 on books. Okay? And so Matt Paulson tweeted this, people are buying it. Alex is the greatest info marketer of all time, right? And then he puts his code, you can redeem my 200+ free plus shipping books if you want. So we can go ahead and react to this, but there are people that bought these. What?

Why would you buy a book for $6,000 or 200 books versus buying 500 books or 1,000 books? Like, I don't understand the benefit.

I don't either. I'm sure there's other stuff included with this. Oh, when you do the $6,000 upsell or the $18,000, there's like, you can go hang out with Alex. There's like, you get access to, I think there's like a private VIP webinar. And anybody that's paid the $6,000, $18,000 plus, they can all hang out in Vegas. And I'm assuming that anybody that's paid $18,000 plus, you want to hang out with those people. It's that type of thing, if that makes sense.

So they're getting extra benefits the more books they buy? Because I'm like, if you only need one book, why do you spend more?

Yeah, a lot of people want access and a lot of people want to hang out with people that are— it's a status thing at the end of the day, right? And so One guy asked here, so Helpful Landlord asked, how's the $100K offer presented over the phone? So Matt Paulson says you get an email from Layla to people who bought the $18K option. So I'm assuming $6K, you get an email, $18K, you get another email. And so, okay, but what's the $100K offer? Surely it's not just more books to your point, right? So you get to hang out with them for a VIP day in Vegas. And yeah, that's what it is.

For $100 grand?

Yeah, $100 grand.

And they sell a lot of them. Good for them.

I have no idea. But if he made $105.5 million over the weekend, fantastic job. I think the other thing that I think is worth calling out too is he built up a lot of goodwill over the years with his first book, the second book, a lot of the— so you think about Gary Vaynerchuk, jab, jab, jab, right hook. I think he threw a really big right hook here. It's not like he can do this every year. I think if he wants to do this again, he's probably gonna have to wait like like a while to do this again. Um, that's my take on it. What's your take?

Uh, I think you can only do this once a year, once every few years, because if you keep doing it too often, then it loses its pizzazz, right? You can't just do launches over and over again, or else what you'll find is—

You and I have done launches and they are so tiring.

Yeah, and this is why we don't do any of them. You and I like sticking to boring B2B businesses because you get consistent recurring revenue.

Yeah. Yeah. I prefer to just stack it like that. Not that he's not stacking it with his other businesses, but a launch, the amount of work he put into, I think he did way more than anybody that I've seen. But you and I did it for, what's Agora, right? Agora was big on courses back in the day. You and I recorded a course. You've done a couple for them. And then we've done our own too. But the problem I think with launches is if you're not going to do $105 million or so, is once you do a launch, you're getting ready for the next launch and the next launch after that and the next launch after that. It never stops. And it, you're just constantly in a state of being frantic, in my opinion. Whereas with B2B, you can boringly stack it over time and that's how it works. So look, I think this is great. I think this is a model for people to follow if they want to continue to do launches over time. And congratulations. If you're in B2B, here's the deal. LinkedIn account-based marketing sucks, but it doesn't have to. With Karrot, 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, K-A-R-R-O-T.ai, and we'll see you on the other side.

Dude, did you end up seeing, uh, what was it called, uh, Mario Kart and Is it Dalit Vietnam?

No.

Dude, I have a YouTube clip of it. It's on the list somewhere. I don't know if I ended up putting— where is it? There you go. How tying your product or service to something well-known is a great way to get more success. Click on the link and share your screen.

Yeah, let me share my screen. Okay, hold on. This is funny. Oh, I have seen this. Okay, I'm going to share my screen and then do I need the audio on or no audio?

You could or not, doesn't make a difference, so people can see.

Okay, I'm gonna share it. I'm gonna turn the audio on too, guys. Okay, here we go. Okay, so those that you—

You get hurt like Mario Kart.

Those of you that didn't see this, basically it's like a real-life Mario Kart where they're going down a track, um, and it looks, it looks fun, but it looks pretty dangerous. So do you wanna— this is in Vietnam, right?

This is in Vietnam. And what's interesting on this is It's like if you do something that's tied to something that's really popular, like Mario Kart, you can do well. And the reason I put this in here is yesterday I was eating dinner with my kids and my wife and kids made this chicken fajita wrap or something like that. And I was like—

Who made it? Emma made it?

My kids and wife. Yeah, Emma, Michelle. And I was like, what the heck is this? And they're like, it's a Peppa Pig. Have you heard of Peppa Pig?

It's like a cartoon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a Peppa Pig. Dinner. And, you know, it comes 2 times a week to your house and you cook together. And I'm like, what does this have to do with Peppa Pig? It's just fajitas. But they tied it in to something that kids love or family loves, and it becomes popular. And then all of a sudden they're doing tons of revenue.

Do you know how many people got injured? Because this seems like a liability, man.

So if you scroll up, uh, one of the first clips I saw, everyone was getting injured. Some of them are going off the side of the hill. And I'm like, uh, watch, share your screen, play that, it's hilarious.

But I hope no one got hurt. Oh my God, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. All right, here we go, here we go. Dude, oh, he fell.

Oh, oh, wait, yeah, they're just getting hurt.

Like, but the, the other thing too is when you, when people share these clips, they go viral because it's, it's so funny, dude.

The one on X that I saw, I think it was of people getting hurt, like 16 million views or something crazy like that. By the way, go, okay, if we go back to Hormoza.

So, the fact that he had the Guinness World Record and he had a $6,000 bundle, so there's people that are praising him on one side and there's people giving away the books or giving away the code, right? But then you also spawn a ton of haters too because all of a sudden they're like, people— because he used to make in his videos like, I have nothing to sell you, right? And then someone put like, Alex Hormozi, I have nothing to sell you. And then Alex Hormozi, like a screenshot of a $6,000 bundle, like also Alex Hormozi, right? For sure, you're going to get hate and then you're going to get people praising you and then you're going to get people sharing the codes. And so, it has a viral effect to it. And I think he was pretty thoughtful about that too. He kind of knew what he was going to get. But yeah, anyway, and this is the same thing too. It's exciting to share this. People like controversy. People like sharing things that make them look good too in some way, shape, or form, whether it's funny or something like that. Yeah.

Yeah. And you're always going to get hate. It doesn't matter what kind of business you're in. You could be OpenAI. He gets— Sam Altman gets hate from Elon Musk. Elon Musk gets hate from Sam Altman, and they'll throw jabs at each other on X or whatever platform, right? But this is just normal. This is what happens in business. And it doesn't matter what kind of marketing campaigns you're doing. Some people are going to love you, some people are going to hate you, but it actually causes your name and messaging to get out there even more.

Dude, speaking of brand, let's talk about brand for a second. We just talked about Mario Kart. Mario Kart, to me, Mario is a brand, right? But this is interesting because we can kind of— I can weave this in with Nintendo too. So do you know what type of company Nintendo was when it first started?

No, but I know they ended up owning the Seattle Mariners. They bought a baseball team.

Okay, but we're talking about the beginning. So the beginning was they were a trading card company. So they were a long time— like, sure, they started in gaming, but a very long time ago, they were a trading card company and they just continued to change over time, right? And they evolved their brand. Okay, now Liquid Death, which I believe has sold $500 million or something like that. So Liquid Death, just so everyone doesn't know, for people that don't know, it's like an edgy water brand. It's like a can of water basically, right? And so Nick Shackelford—

Or let's go a little bit more in depth. It's a can of water that Eric is saying, but they have some cool graphics like, oh, Liquid Death. I don't know what messaging they're trying to convey. I've never drank a can. But it tastes just like any other water. The only difference is the marketing on how it's like cool or crazy. You know, it's Eric showing an image right here as well of it.

Yeah, so it's basically a character. The head is Liquid Death and it's like a buff character with an axe. And then the, I guess the chest is like eyeballs. But it's like different marketing, right? And so here's the thing. To what Neil said, Liquid Death, the idea came in 2009, came from a Warped Tour. 2017, trademark filed. 2019, they came out as the anti-water. And then 2020, they came out as sparkling water. Okay, so that's fine. Okay, it's still water, right? 2021, flavored water.

Okay.

2022, hydration package. It's like, okay, well, they're kind of expanding out a little more. And then 2023, energy drinks, right? And so, Nick Shackelford's argument is this is textbook dilution because when they're doing $100 million, there's like, we need to expand our TAM, right? And then $500 million, let's hire that CPG exec from Pepsi. So meanwhile, his argument is Red Bull, same product for 40 years, same message, same positioning, $11 billion in revenue. So Liquid Death had authenticity in a sea of sameness. They traded it for shelf space, which is also interesting because yesterday, We have a mutual friend, Kat Cole, CEO of AG1. So, they just came out with like, they do vitamin packets, right, basically, and you can put in your water. It's like green juice-ish, right? But, they just came out with a sleep packet or a sleep powder yesterday too. And so, what is your take on this overall?

My take overall is I think liquid Liquid Death's water market was big enough and they should have just stayed with water. That doesn't mean that the business would've made more money by just staying in water. Red Bull energy drink, you know, a lot of it is luck, timing, things that aren't as controllable. Liquid Death is a little bit different because they're going into a very saturated market. When Red Bull came out with their energy drink, it wasn't a very saturated market or anything like that. It was a much smaller market, of course, Water is a massive market, and the reason I would've just stuck with water, it was a great brand, great product. I get you can introduce sparkling water a little bit here and there, but I would've never expanded a water company into energy drinks. Again, I'm not saying what my recommendation would've made them more money. I think my recommendation would've made them less money, but I think you would've had a company with a much more loyal following. Fast forward 10, 15 years if you just stuck with one product.

You look at, let's use Ferrari as an example. All they stuck with was just cars, amazing cars. You look at Nintendo, all they stuck with was gaming. Sure, they started with trading cards, but they stuck with gaming the whole time.

Okay.

Just making fun games for people.

Okay.

And you look at Red Bull. Yeah. All he stuck with was Red Bull. And you look at Steve Ballmer, Steve Ballmer stuck with Microsoft stock the whole time. Right. So, and Microsoft has stuck with software, right? And so in a lot of these cases, if you kind of just stick with it and stay in your area, there's a lot to expand into. I think they're expanding into areas that maybe don't make as much sense with the original mission. So I think sparkling water is fine. I think hydration packets are probably fine too, but I think energy drinks, that's probably getting a little out of it and you're going to be out of your element.

Yeah. And then you're competing against Red Bull and Monster and all these other players. I'm not saying Liquid Death can't do well. Again, they probably will make more money doing all this stuff, but if I own the company and I didn't have investors, I think that's the key here. Liquid Death has to do a lot of this stuff because they're owned largely— I think they've raised a lot of money, right? Do you know how much they raised?

Liquid Death funding. I'm looking at it.

I know Science, the incubator in LA, Mike Jones and Peter Pham, are part owners in it.

So it looks like they've closed multiple rounds. One of the latest rounds was $70 million, valuing the brand at $700 million. This was in 2022. Yeah.

So they've closed a lot of rounds and they have investors. So when you have investors, you have to have growth at all costs. Eric and I don't have investors. And I was talking to someone who works at a massive financial organization where they manage over a trillion dollars, not a million, not a billion, literally over a trillion dollars. And this person writes checks into startups. They're a division, they're in private equity of that trillion-plus dollar asset management. And this person writes checks in the hundreds of millions, sometimes more. They can write half a billion, they can write a billion. They have a lot of cash, right? So money's not the issue. And when I was talking with them and we were talking about my own company, I was like, my growth slowed down a lot. We've expanded internationally, but I think we've made the right moves. And I was chilling at the pool at that time and my kids were swimming. So we were talking and he's just like, yeah, you're lucky you have no investors or else you would have the pressure for a minimum of 20%, 30%, 40% growth a year. With good margins and good unit economics. I'm like, yeah, we're profitable. We have good unit economics. I'm like, yeah, I'm here chilling out at the pool because I don't have investors and I can do whatever I want when I want. Now, of course, every one of my customers is in theory a boss of mine, but we of course try to satisfy our customers and go above and beyond. But Liquid Web has outside shareholders, so they have pressure to grow and they've got to pay their employees. Liquid debt.

Liquid Death, not Liquid Web. Liquid Web's a different company. Yeah. Yeah. But Liquid Death, just to give a sense for how much they raised. So they raised $1.6 million in seed funding. So I guess Peter did well and his co-founder, and then $9 million in Series A, that was February 2020, and then $23 million in Series B, and then another Series C that was for $75 million. And then they raised another $70 million or so, and then another $67 million.

Wow. So they raised more than a few hundred million bucks.

Yeah. Valuation is $1.4 billion as of 2024. Liquid Death also reported $263 million in retail sales for 2023. Wow.

Yeah. Never drank a bottle of it. I tend to stick with aquaponics.

I have, by the way, I bought I don't ever told you, I went on Amazon. You should buy this too. So, I bought a water tester. So, I just stick it in everything. I'll have a cup and I'll just go around, I'll fill it up with shower water, I'll stick it in there, I'll stick it in the sink water, I'll stick it in there. And then, the Korean filter I have is— so, you want your water, I think I told you this, but you want the water to be under 50. It was 17. But when I put it under a sink, it's like 250. And when I put it under the shower, it's like 200 or so. And I have a filter for my shower too. So, good for you to know. You should try it too.

What does a filter look like? Is it a small device?

Um, you mean the, the tester?

Uh-huh.

Yeah, it's a small device. It's like a little— like, it's like almost like a thermometer that you put in your mouth. Yeah, you just put it in the water and you test it.

Remember when we went to Erewhon? You were going to take that bottle home and do a test on the air?

I did, I did. It was 200. It was high.

So Erewhon water is not as good as they're saying.

Um, it was a different brand of water. It was a different— we brought a different brand. We didn't buy the Erewhon one, remember? Because Erewhon was out. Um, and so Erewhon I'll test it next time and I actually have Air One water coming at 11:30, so I'll, I'll, I'll let you know.

Or how about like Aquapana? Have you tested Aquapana in it?

I don't have Aquapana at home, but I'll, I'll test it next time. I'll, I'll bring it when we record next time in person when you have a microphone.

I don't have, yeah, I actually have Aquapana, but in my house right now.

200 is actually okay to drink, I think. Um, but there's particles and stuff in there, but 17 is like amazing. So yeah, this is why guys, you need a reverse osmosis filter and then have some nutrients being piped back into it. And then you're good. Yeah.

I'm the opposite, man. I take a shower, I just open my mouth if I'm thirsty and just drink out of the shower.

Do you really?

Yeah.

I've never done that in my life.

Um, or he's McDonald's hamburgers and he's probably going to live longer than that. Who's that guy with the biomarkers?

The Brian Johnson?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Johnson does not look healthy, by the way.

By the way, I'll, I'll, you know what I'll say? Um, I think for Brian Johnson, it's hard to keep the marketing up because I think he had a lot of reach like a year or two ago. I don't think he has as much reach anymore. And now that he's kind of moved into selling stuff, I think it's— I don't know, this is a reinforcement that to be in the spotlight today, if you wanted to be like Oprah back in the '80s or so, you can be a celebrity for a long time. Now, because the algorithms are— it's so merit-based that people are very up and down, up and down, up and down, right? You might appear for a little bit and then you become irrelevant like the next day. So it's hard to be a celebrity today, I think.

Dude, you know, I know someone who interviewed with him.

Who?

I can't— I'm not gonna say their name.

Oh yeah, sorry, not who, but what happened is more of what I asked.

Okay, so the interview was for, uh, a role of a chief of staff. Okay, but it was more like a personal assistant slash housekeeper, but they called it a chief of staff.

A housekeeper?

Yeah, you would have to do dishes and clean and all this, right? And it was really weird. The person needed a job. They chose not to take a job when they could have accepted it because it was stuff like, you can't sue me. You know, I'm gonna talk about stuff that you, you can't talk about. I'm gonna be naked sometimes. You're gonna see me with erections out and you have to be okay with it. And it was just starting getting really awkward like that. And they were just like, peace, I'm out. You know, like, I don't need more of the interview. I'm not here to go get a job with you. And I thought that was awkward, like someone saying, hey, you're gonna work for me, but you're gonna see me naked and with erections and all this kind of stuff. And I was just like, I don't care how much they're paying, I would never want my kid to work in that kind of environment.

You know, I actually referred, um, someone to, to, to work over there too. And same, same— not— I don't think it was the same situation as this, but this person got offered a job and decided not to take it. I didn't ask why, but maybe this is why. Um, but I met him, I did a pod with him, but I just think my perspective is it's very hard to stay relevant forever. And the thing is, it's funny because he posts his biomarkers a lot, but then there's like people competing with him on his biomarkers now. And people say, hey, look, these are my biomarkers and they crush yours. And I don't think I have the best biomarkers in the world. So, it's like if you're going to say you're the best, you better be able to kind of back it up. And when I look at his biomarkers, a lot of mine are better than his too. And so, I don't think you can use that as good marketing because those people that kind of know a little bit more, um, they're gonna come out and disprove you, and then all of a sudden you just look bad, right? And so again, I, um, I respect what he's built and what he's done, but I just think it's, it's hard to stay relevant, especially with the health and fitness stuff. Um, and so, you know, that's what it is.

But here's some crazy stuff from the interview, right? Hey, I drink this kind of olive oil, right? I'm, I'm acting like if I'm Brian, and I wasn't there, so maybe I'm getting some misinformation. Uh, that's my disclaimer. But he's just like, I drink this kind of olive oil Can't travel with it. So you need to figure out how to get it to wherever I am, right? And I need this olive oil and it has to be done this way and it has to go wherever I'm traveling. You need to figure out how to get it for me. But it was just like a lot of random stuff like that. And then another one was, oh, you need to organize all my pills and all this kind of stuff. You know, it takes like roughly 250 supplements and pills a day.

Yeah, he didn't. That's a lot more than when I first asked him.

So when you look at like 250, and again, I could be getting bad secondhand information, um, but that must be hard on your kidneys or liver or whatever it is. And like, when you look at him, like, I respect live your life, but I actually don't think what he's doing, like no sun and all this, is like a great way to live. But you know, to each their own.

The sun is actually really important. So this is not a health podcast, guys, but like this, you need the sun to reset your circadian rhythm and you need the sun for vitamin D and a whole host of other things. So he does something that Asian moms do. They walk out in the middle of the day with umbrellas because Asian moms like to protect their skin and everything.

Or the visors. Or the visors.

The Asian mom visors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw this post from Matt Diggity and I thought this was interesting. So when you think about doing SEO, how to rank highly on SEO forever, What are the things that you're supposed to do? Okay, you build content that is maybe content that stands out from what everyone else is doing. So maybe instead of publishing 20 pieces of crap, you publish one thing that's really good and one thing that stands out. So I think an example is, Neil, that the charts that you have are actually things that stand out that are worth retweeting. And then the brand mentions too, not just the backlinks anymore. So you think about the brand mentions, okay, how we get a lot of reachouts, and I'm sure you do too. A lot of people are looking for Reddit now. A lot of people are looking for YouTube now. Because they're looking for citations, they're looking for brand sentiment overall. They want to be able to control the narrative. They also know that if you're trying to rank on AI overviews, you're trying to make an AI mode, guess what? Google is going to favor their own properties, YouTube, right? Reddit is number one when you think about what the LLMs are citing. So that's the game that you're trying to play. You're not just trying to game anything anymore. You're trying to understand that you have to— if you're trying to rank on Perplexity, which you did a video on, Perplexity loves fresh citations, right? cares more about clean structure. They all care about how much you update your content. So SEO, I think 15, 20 years ago when you and I first started doing SEO, it was a lot more gameable. But now if you take a more long-tail or a long-term approach to it and do the things that are hard to do, but most people aren't willing to do, that's how you're going to rank on SEO forever. It doesn't matter how much this stuff shifts because quality is what moves to the top at the end of the day. And The quote that, Neil, you've liked to use quite a bit in the past is that the Eric Schmidt quote, right? How brands are— brands will rise to the top because the internet is just, it's a cesspool of crap, right? And brands, usually the reason they're a brand is because they try to approach things from a quality standpoint.

Yeah. And you saw the article that Search Engine Land posted, Profound ended up releasing data that there was a 52% drop in ChatGPT referral traffic Since July.

Yeah, you and I both put this in here. Yeah, yeah.

Based on 100 million keywords that they were looking at on ChatGPT. But what's interesting here is ChatGPT traffic will go up and down. Not too many people are talking about it, but the real question is, is how are people, you know, is it going to be another Google? And I think it's going to be another Google in which sometimes you get more traffic, sometimes you get less. You can't necessarily rely and focus on the algorithms. You got to just do what's best for your audience and create the best information out there. And sometimes you'll win and sometimes you'll lose, but over time you should grow. And that's the true reality.

Yep. By the way, I mean, on the screen right now, I'm sharing the Profound graph. And this is the cool thing about when Profound— Profound is a good example of sharing data that's interesting that other people are interested in resharing. So look, 1,100 likes on this, 138 comments, 120 reposts. But you can see based on their data, 52% decrease in ChatGPT referral traffic, whereas you can see with Reddit, 87% increase, Wikipedia, 62% increase, top 3 sources combined, 53% increase. So yeah, this guy Josh Blaiskal, worth following. Check him out.

Yeah, no, that's definitely worth following. But I look at all this kind of traffic because it's like, this is why Eric and I have been pushing for so many years to take an omnichannel approach. You have no choice. It's the only way to do really well on the web and in today's world because you can't control what a platform does.

Dude, we've been doing this podcast for like 7, 8 years or so. And I remember back in the day, I think I was probably shouting at you to say YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, right? And then you started doing YouTube and then I was like, what else should we do? Right? And you've always evolved. A lot of times you've tried different things that other people wouldn't try. And then if I find something new, I'm always going to bring it up, right? And some stuff's going to work, some stuff isn't. Like when I remember I was like, hey, Neil, check out Clubhouse. Okay, that was a waste of time. And I was like, Neil, check out AirChat. Also a waste of time, right? But some stuff like—

Did I ever check out AirChat?

Yeah, you did. You checked it out for like a second and you quit, right?

What was AirChat?

I think it was the Naval— the Naval—

Oh, Brian Norgaard and— Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But okay, we started the podcast. Okay, we saw that start to get movement and we just continued doing that. We saw YouTube, like even though you and I, I wouldn't say we love making videos, We started quite a while back and we just continue to do it, right? It's because this stuff works. And we try to do what works and we try to play the game to at least an optimized level. And if we don't think we can play the game well, we'll quit. Like Neil and I, we're not making satire shorts, right? Whereas other people are. So I found this last night, this girl, I think it's Travel by Livvy or something. I don't know if you see this account, but Does content here? Actually, let me let me show this to you right now. This is kind of similar to what I'm talking about. So check this out. Do you see this?

Okay, I can see it.

Okay.

Travel with Evie. Yeah.

Yep. So check this out. Let's go here.

See. I'm good.

I'm good.

I just wanted to say thank you again for the house. It's it's been spectacular. I know I gave you shit about the price, but I'm just so grateful you found something for the entire. Family so last minute. Of course, you're welcome. Thank you. I'll ever need a favor from you. Okay. I didn't want to call and be difficult because you know I'm not difficult to put time for. I probably consider myself one of your easiest clients actually, but I do need something. Okay, what is it? How can I help? So I'm not sleeping and I have a feeling it's because I don't have my pillow. So I'm gonna need you to get my pillow. Just go into my home, get my pillow, and then just ship it to me. Oh, those wind pillows you have. Yeah, I'm not in LA. I can't, um, I can't do that. Well, just send someone to do it then. I also don't think I can send somebody into your home. I could order a pillow from there and have it shipped to you, potentially. Uh, yeah, uh, that's, that's fine.

So anyway, this, this, the reason I'm calling this out is she's doing— this is all satire, right?

So she— This is all staged, right?

Yeah, it's all staged. And so, but here's what she sells. So Travel with Livvy with 2 I's at the end. So she helps with booking 5-star accommodations, so like villas, private suites, and things like that. So when you do satire like this where she's playing out a moment where— I was watching a video yesterday where one person's daughter, this is a stage, right? She's talking to the father and then she's like, yeah, your daughter spent about $410,000 this past weekend and we booked her this villa. She's going to spend this. And he's like, $410,000? Are you effing kidding me? Right? So The type of people that end up watching this, you're gonna— because it's, it's, it's kind of tied in with the first world problems of luxury travel, um, she's getting the attention that's required, and it's the right viewers to get her to, um, not only get views but get bookers for her, uh, to get people booking her 5-star hotels, villas, and whatever. So I think she's a travel concierge.

There's another guy who does this with jets. Um, I forgot his name, but I watch his clips every once in a while.

Yeah.

And he has crazy stories. And the guy would be like, there's a girl named Mackenzie, like, hey, does your dad know about this? Can I book it? Then he calls the dad, hey, your dad. And he's like, how much does she want to spend to go from New York to Nice? And he's just like, oh, $300 grand. He's like, tell Mackenzie I'll only pay for this much. You got to figure out a trip for her and her friends at this price, you know? And I'm like, Dude, this just has to be made up because he even has employees walking into his office like, hey, I just saw on our corporate card you had dinner the other day and you charged 10 grand. I'm like, man, this isn't realistic.

Yeah, but look at this one over here. Client demands Poppy Steak from Miami in her $150,000 Dubai penthouse, right? A caviar baked potato from Poppy Steak. So again, this is just first world travel, luxury travel problems, and it's in satire, right? And you and I, we make fun of marketing quite a bit, and whoever does this in marketing will probably succeed as well. But my point of calling this out too is, is you and I, we're, um, as much as I would like to do this, and as much as I think I would actually be pretty good at doing this, um, it's not what we do. And we just focus on what we're good at, and we focus on, um, if it converts, great, we'll continue. And, um, you know, going back to it, this is why you have to take the omnichannel approach, because organic is spread everywhere now.

So this is not hate, but this kind of marketing is great if you want to create a lifestyle business. If you're trying to create something that's much larger, that kind of marketing isn't too effective.

Yeah. And by the way, so no hate on, on Livvy. She probably does really well for herself.

Yeah, good for her.

It's not like, I don't think she's trying to build like a massive company. Um, I think it's just for her business and I'm sure she's crushing it on her own.

Yep. No, I'm with you and good for her. She's making good money from it. I hope it grows. I hope she has to hire more people and makes more. And it is clever marketing and it takes her time. The big thing that Libby does that most people don't do is they don't put in the time to create content. And it starts with that.

Dude, I mean, but to do that, you have to script it. You have to have someone on the other side and it's like different voices all the time. And it's really hard to do actually. To do one video like that, she's probably spending hours.

Yeah. And it doesn't sound like it's AI. It sounds like it is another—

It sounds like it's another person on the other side. Whereas you and I, we're just First, you and I are just chatting and we get lucky every now and then. It's like a slot machine. Sometimes something takes off, sometimes it doesn't.

So dude, like, I'm recording content after this, right? So we'll be done recording, call it in another 20-ish minutes, and then I'll drive to record more content. And as I record the content, no joke, show up, teleprompter, super detailed. I reviewed— I helped create the scripts, reviewed, etc. I reviewed the last one this morning because I was making tweaks to the intro and the hook. Yesterday I was making tweaks to the copy as well when I was on the plane flying back. I'll go, I'll read, in and out, less than an hour, 2 videos cranked out. I'll do 4 a month, you know, pretty much 1 a week. So sometimes it's, you know, 5 a month, sometimes it's 4. And I'm trying not to spend more than 2 hours a month on creating the content, move on with my life.

Dude, you know what I'm— I find myself enjoying more now with YouTube? It's doing screen shares because on a screen share, like, it's like when you're doing a webinar, the time goes by really quickly. 30, 45, 60 minutes or so, and your retention's higher. And then people do like the walkthroughs and I'm just nerding out on what I enjoy versus I hate it when I, so I'll go and record the teleprompter's there, but then the outline is based on like a Loom video I made, but there's like bullet points and open loops that I don't like. And when there's things I read in the script or the teleprompter that I don't like, it throws me off.

Right.

And I start to get more and more annoyed. And so I'm finding that I enjoy making the walkthroughs more and I'll probably do more of those. And one pro tip for everyone. I've been using ytjobs.co more to find pro YouTubers, pro YouTube talent, right? And these people are freaking amazing, Neil. Like the people that are applying, you can see which channels they worked on, how big those channels were, what videos they actually worked on, and the channel that they worked on, they have to verify that this person in fact worked on that channel. And so you're getting legit vetted people. And so if you want a scriptwriter, if you want someone that's a strategist, a producer, you want someone that can handle thumbnails, all these things. It's all there. And we've been testing some other editors and some of these editors are far and above kind of what we have on the current team. And what I would say is we want our editors to learn from these people. So we're probably going to bring on a couple of them and then they're going to learn from these editors because again, like if they've been there, done that, then we don't need to tell them what to do.

But we won't do screen shares and that kind of content for YouTube. We found it doesn't work for us. For generating enterprise leads. So I think the screen share content does extremely well to generate views and you get a lot of SMB leads. We found that when we go too detailed and too much in the weeds, it doesn't do as well for enterprise.

But don't you go, you go pretty deep on your webinars, don't you?

Yeah, but we don't go deep where we show them how to do it step by step.

Ah, okay. You're showing them just like high level.

The concept, the strategy. So by sticking high level, what we find is we get less webinar attendees, but we get more leads that we can pitch versus when we go step by step, we have more webinar attendees, right? When we do top high level, we get less signups. But if we go step by step, we get more signups and we get more total leads. But out of the leads, the total number of enterprise leads is much smaller, like by more than like 40%. Yeah.

That's interesting. And by the way, when Neil says webinar attendees, he expects at least 5,000 per webinar. So it's a good amount of people. That's not normal for most people. But I will say, to your point, Neil, when I do the screen shares now, I don't actually show them how to do it. I don't really explain as much. I'm just like, here's what I'm doing right now. Here's what I'm building. Here's what I'm building. So I am keeping it high level and that's what gets them interested, right? So to your point, I would just say, Double-click on that one. All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organizations. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side. Why don't we move over to how to rank highly, how ChatGPT search algorithm works? You want to know how ChatGPT's algorithm works?

I kind of already know, but yes, let's talk about that. But before we go into that, I started integrating ads into my YouTube based on your feedback.

How's that going?

Remember we were talking about our podcast a few weeks ago or a month ago and you're just like, dude, we get a lot of leads for Single Grain and Carrot by me just mentioning, you know, in the middle of the recording, hey, if you want us to do this for you or you want us to do X, Y, and Z, just go to Single Grain. So we started doing it I have no data yet from it because only one video, I believe the Perplexity one has it.

That was doing well.

Yeah, it's doing well. Um, and then the next one that comes out next week has it, of course, as well, because all of them have it now. But, um, by the time we record next week, I should have more data for you.

Yeah, that's— that I guarantee it'll be a good outcome. And plus, like, even if it's— even, even if it's a small lift, it doesn't matter because you're making the content anyway.

Yeah, it's free. Small lift is better than no lift.

Yeah, yeah. I'm curious to see what the data looks like. Okay, so guys, let's— I want to talk about how ChatGPT's ranking model works. And then this— I'm going to share screen here. So Chris Long shared this. He's actually a pretty good curator. So how ChatGPT's re-ranking model works. And so I think what's worth calling out here is it says at the heart of ChatGPT's retrieval system is a re-ranking model with the cryptic name RET-RR-SkySite. And it's a sophisticated post-processing layer that takes initial search results and completely reorders them based on quality signals. So The number one quality signal here is freshness is king. So perhaps the most significant finding for content creators is this setting, use freshness scoring profile equals true, right? And so there's a bunch of other findings, but we've kind of been talking about this where I think Ahrefs cited that 95% of ChatGPT results have been refreshed in the last 12 months or so. This is, it's still a kind of traditional SEO, right? And then this guy shared it over here. So you can see this use freshness scoring profile is true. And then he cites some other stuff and then you have all this other stuff here down here. Configuration reveals a sophisticated filtering pipeline with multiple checkpoints, enable query intent, source filtering. Um, but I think probably the thing that's worth calling out— I'm not going to go through all this other stuff— is the freshness piece. Um, what's your take?

Yeah, the freshness piece, we've seen it as well. Freshness is very important and people miss that. Um, with ChatGPT and even Google, we're seeing freshness be a super important metric, but the problem that we're seeing with freshness is Marketers are looking at it as, oh, let me just change one sentence and update the timestamp and I'm good to go. That's not what they consider fresh. What they consider fresh is you updating it and making it valuable to what a consumer would ideally want to see in today's world. But on the flip side, if you have a piece of content that's performing well and you want to update it 2 months later to keep it fresh, But you're just going to change a sentence because there's nothing really that you need changed and it's already good to go and as up to date as it can be. You don't need to update it for the sake of it just to change the timestamp.

Yep. So speaking of ChatGPT, by the way, remember Brian Belfort from Reforge? So he did a podcast on Lenny's podcast. I was listening to it when I was, I think, at the gym last week. But the question is, is the new distribution channel ChatGPT? And before we even answer that question, when you think about Facebook back in the day, organic, anything you posted on Facebook would get a lot of views, right? And then eventually you'd have to pay for it. LinkedIn, now it's kind of trending in that direction. Strong organic reach, it's kind of moving into paid, right? So you always get really strong organic distribution in the beginning and eventually you have to pay for it. And I remember talking to an executive at Microsoft and he even said that, hey, we're actually considering being able to pay for some results inside of like an LLM, right? Now, For the moment with ChatGPT, sure, you know, with all searches, Google's still 42% and ChatGPT or LLMs, I think is only like 0.19%, but it's growing quickly. The question is, is the new distribution channel ChatGPT? And I would argue that I think it's a strong new distribution channel for people to consider. And there probably is good organic reach to think about right now. But eventually, you're going to have to— it's going to become more pay to play. And same thing with Snap in the very beginning, or when Stories launched on Instagram, they tend to favor these new features. And so I think that it's definitely worth paying attention to, and eventually it's going to kind of whittle down, but it's in the early stages of growing really quickly. It's still small, but it's growing quickly. Go ahead, Neil.

Yeah, I'm just curious to see what will happen over time. But yeah, and then I think everything, just like you you and I have seen, it all becomes pay-for-play models. These guys all try to push you because it monetizes that way. It's just like Google AI mode. They're just pushing, their whole goal is to push ads through it. It's launched recently in 180 countries, but anything that's good in marketing, if it keeps, or anything that's good from an engagement usage perspective, all these platforms will eventually figure out how to push you towards a model where it monetizes and that makes, does really well for them. It doesn't mean organic's dead, it just means you got to pay for to play.

Yeah. Organic eventually becomes paid.

That's just funny. Yeah, because even SEO, you know, so many people hit us up and be like, yeah, I want to do SEO because I'm not paying for it. It's free. And it's in my best benefit to be like, yeah, it's free, but I don't want to lie to people. And I'm like, technically yes, from a perspective of not paying Google per click, but you are paying people, whether it's in-house or an agency to help you get rankings. And not going to lie, you got to maintain it and keep doing more or else people outrank you. And that does cost money. So even though you're not paying the platform directly, you are spending money on it.

Anything good has a price. Okay. So by the way, remember we talked about the 8,000 bots versus 8,000 people versus 1 chatbot. So there's a study here on how AI recruiters crush human recruiters, and this is from an AI researcher, I believe. And so AI in HR, in an experiment with 70,000 applicants in the Philippines, an LLM voice recruiter— so this is the AI recruiter— beat humans in hiring customer service reps with 12% more offers and 18% more starts.

Wow.

Also better matches. So 17% higher 1-month retention, less gender discrimination, and equal satisfaction. And then it says down here, the break-even point, including all software and inference costs, was 8,500 interviews. And you can see over here, we're looking at the graph right now, the AI interviewer in the blue bar graph versus the human one in the gold, let's call it that. Fraction receiving job offer, it was higher for the AI interviewer. And then fraction started job, higher for the AI interviewer. And then fraction meeting 1-month retention rate, higher for the AI interviewer. And, um, Look, this part is the most interesting to me. So when offered the choice, 78% of applicants chose— they choose the AI recruiter, and we find evidence that applicants with lower test scores are more likely to choose AI. What do you think about that, William?

Yeah. Yeah?

That's right. Which one do you prefer?

Do you prefer the AI or the human?

Human.

No, you're supposed to prefer the AI. That's okay.

Why? That's okay.

It's fine.

William has a, William has a heart.

Yeah, Bugatti. Daddy's working right now to try to get you the Bugatti.

Bugatti.

I need 10 more years, but can Daddy finish this? Okay. 7. You can finish 7 calls. Okay. That's how I get to work. He says I can work for a Bugatti.

Yeah. Neil's working hard for a Bugatti. There's always a purpose, guys. So yeah. What's your, what's your, what's your take on this? Because we remember we did the one on the HR bot, the 8,000 people versus 1 HR bot. And in this case, AI recruiter, and 78% of people, the applicants, preferred the AI recruiter.

You're talking about the IBM story, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In the past, that did really well on your Instagram, by the way.

It did. It's funny how—

Um, I, I'm with you on this. I, I think AI can do a lot of this stuff better than humans. I think in some cases AI is better, and in some cases humans, but in this case, yeah, I see the value in it. Although on your, um, HR one with IBM, People started leaving comments about the long-term effects and how the company's not looking at that and they're being more short-sighted. I'm not saying that's true.

I mean, people are always going to say stuff like that, so I don't know. Like, yeah.

Yeah. I take it with a grain of salt.

Yeah. All right. So that's that. We got one more to do and then we'll be on our way.

So let's see. Oh, here's one. You know, I know we were talking about the profound traffic. increase or decrease. And I know people have had similar issues for Google over time and whether there's increases or decreases. Everyone's talking about their traffic increases or decreases, but I don't know about you, very few people start correlating it with their revenue going up or down. Like you see all these posts online, oh, look at my Google traffic, look at my ChatGPT traffic. Oh, it's—

I don't even look at my traffic anymore.

Do you?

I don't look at it.

No, I, I technically my team does, so I don't have to, and I get a weekly report.

Yeah.

But it's all correlated on our end. Our data analytics team correlates it to revenue because I'm just like, who cares if your traffic went up double, but you didn't make any more money? And who cares if it went down half and you didn't lose any more money? I care on what traffic and what visibility is actually causing revenue to go up. And I want more of that. And if it starts going down, I want to fix it. Right. But I'm not talking about the traffic part. I'm talking about the revenue part. And I think marketers got it all wrong. For some reason, none of them really focus on revenue. They all want to look at traffic and that's cool. But if traffic in most cases, and you and I know this when it comes to content, that it's not a one-to-one going up doesn't mean you're going to make more money and going down doesn't mean you're going to lose money.

Do you want to know what is super irritating to me? That's kind of like somewhat related to this is because I've been spending a lot more time on recruiting. So when people make it over to me and I'll talk to them, I'll just, one of the questions I ask is, What are 2 of the hardest problems that you've solved? Please share numbers, right? And I don't know why, maybe this is an agency world thing, but it's always like, oh, Neil, I increased the traffic by 400%, or I increased this by 200%, I increased revenue. Even if you increase revenue by 100% or whatever, but on what? Like on $1? So is it $2 now? Like, I don't know what it is.

I get so mad. Oh, I created 364% growth. Okay, what was your baseline? Oh, we were doing $10,000 a month in MR. All right, that's not much of a growth for me.

I'll tell you what, guys, like you listening to this right now, the hiring bar is going to continue to get higher. Like if you're a founder, you have to continue to raise the bar more and more. And so when you're asking these people these questions, they have to report on a baseline and they have to have some type of numerical fluency. And we're constantly talking about traffic and how much percent they increase things by. You cannot afford to hire these people because They're not putting enough time to invest in themselves. And another question we asked Neil is, hey Neil, how much are you investing out of pocket in AI right now? Even if someone tells me $20 a month for ChatGPT Pro, amazing, right? But if you say $0 a month, we cannot hire you, right? Some people, by the way, remember I told you some people in Brazil, $500 a month is a lot of money in Brazil, right?

Yes.

They're spending $500 a month out of pocket, their money on AI stuff, right? And that's how serious they are because they're looking to enhance themselves and just do better.

Dude, I'm with you. But yeah, you and I have the same pet peeve when it comes to interviewing and talking to candidates. And I don't care where you are, you know, like whether it's Brazil or India, if you're not investing to improve yourself, then why would you try to improve the business that you get hired by? You probably won't care.

You know, you can't have 2 types of cultures in your company. Someone's either AI-forwarded or not. So if you hire a set of people and they're kind of anchors and they're not for it, and you have one group that are, they're going to fight each other the whole time. You're not going to be able to move in the right direction. Whereas if everyone's pointing in one direction, you're going to move in that direction, right? I was listening to Brian Armstrong from Coinbase. I think he was talking on the Stripe podcast. So that's actually a pretty good podcast, Cheeky Pint. So you had the Stripe founders interviewing the Coinbase founder, right? And he's like, dude, he was like, yeah, we were very serious. We said, if you're not into AI and we don't see your usage, we're going to fire you, right? And there's a group of people that didn't use it. So I think he had them come in on like a Friday or Saturday or something like that. And some people had legit excuses, like some people were coming back from a vacation, but then he fired the rest. And so he was just saying that that was very heavy-handed, but he's like, that's what's required. And keep in mind, Brian Armstrong back in 2020, he had the guts to say, hey guys, we have one mission and we're focused on doing— we're focused on pushing crypto forward. Like whatever politics you have, whatever you have on the outside, it's already hard enough to have one mission. We cannot afford to have this other stuff. And everyone was pushing back against it. It was like, oh my God, we're going to lose like half the company. 5% of people quit, right?

So I think sometimes you kind of— His stock did better. His stock's done well over the years. I know right now it's down a little bit compared to what it was a month ago, but who cares? Overall, it's growing in the right or going in the right direction.

Yeah. But I think where we're landing the plane here is you have to have the guts to make a call when it's unpopular. And Brian Armstrong was okay doing it because it's funny, you had Google make a call like maybe a year ago or so saying we're not a political company. But that's already like years and years after Brian Armstrong did that, right?

And it's years and years after Google has had videos where they laugh about political stuff and the videos get leaked.

But think about how hard is it to already have one mission? It's— but to fight on all sides, it means like the people are getting distracted and maybe they don't have enough to work on or whatever. But if you're running a company or if you're a leader, that's what you got to focus on, right, William?

Yeah.

That's right.

That's right. You know, Uncle Eric's the one who gives you those cookies. The last time you ate cookies, it was from Uncle Eric. What do you say to him? Thank you.

You're welcome. I got more cookies coming for you, but, um, Neil will decide. Your father will decide how many you get, so it depends on how good you are.

And Emma too.

All right. Yeah, too. Hey, I don't control—

When you say Emma too, Emma too. Yeah, of course.

Emma too. Oh yeah, Emma too. Emma too.

Of course. Hey, thank you. Thank you!

Talk to you later, William.

Take care, everyone.

We're done.

Bye.