How Meta AI got 400M monthly active users, and The $1 trillion dollar business with a crappy website

Did you see how Meta has 400 million monthly active users for their AI?

I did not.

Okay.

And then it's—

so it's 400 million monthly active users and it's about, I think, 40 million daily active users or DAUs, which is a lot, right? But here's the thing. So The Information reported this, but I don't know about you, Neil, but have you sometimes accidentally, like when you're using WhatsApp or let's say you're using Instagram, you accidentally use the AI?

Well, when you search, if I'm not mistaken, it's using the AI.

Correct.

And I don't care for the AI. I'm just searching for an account or username, but they're probably counting it as Neil used Meta's AI where I didn't use it. And I've tried using it and it's crap. Yeah.

So the way daily active users or DAUs or MAUs are measured, it's very contingent on the criteria, right? And so one usage might count as like, oh, you're a monthly active user right there. That's a You know, and wow, 400 million users, that sounds like a lot. And, you know, Facebook or Meta in general has billions of users. So I think they're kind of like, they're PRing the numbers really high to show that they're still competing with OpenAI or even growing faster than OpenAI, right? Because sometimes it's all about perception.

Yeah, it was just like when Meta at the time was called Facebook and they wanted to compete with YouTube. So they made it where you can start putting in videos within Facebook. And when you scrolled, it would automatically play. So they would count that as a play. And they were touting how many video plays they're getting on their platform, but it's a really skewed number because when I'm scrolling, I'm not really watching a video. They're just automatically playing it and I may have gone through 10 videos before I found one, but yet it counted as 10 instead of 1.

Yep. So take it for what it is. A lot of everything in front of you is marketing at the end of the day because everything's human psychology and the way you get people to buy stuff is through psychology, right? I got to take a minute to tell you about the Agency Owners Association. This is a peer group for agency owners. Think YPO or EO but for agency owners. And I just wanted to read you a couple of testimonials. So this first one comes from Carrie and we asked her, what do you like most about the group? She said, having a group of people to discuss and bounce ideas. The leads are great too. Yes, we share leads in this group as well. This one from Aliyan. He says, the ability to really post whatever I want and need and the group responds. Great experienced members. Getting a lot of insights from conversations with other members. Getting a lot of value from sessions from Eric. Getting advice from others as well. And so if you want to grow your agency faster and you want a peer group to do so, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. This is a group that both Neil and I created, and our hope here is to create a vibrant community of agency owners and do a lot more with it in the future. So again, marketingschool.io/agency. And we'll see you inside. All right, so we're going to talk about the $1 trillion business with a crappy website. Neil, do you know what that is?

No. Yahoo? You said billion or trillion?

I said trillion. I said trillion. So basically, I'm going to share my screen over here. We're recording remotely, everyone. So Neil's in Brazil. I'm in Dallas, Texas right now. So check this out. So I'm going to read this to you. You guys can see this on screen too. You can't make this up. Berkshire Hathaway just hit one trillion in market cap, and this is a screenshot of their website. The company has bullets with links attached to them on a single page website. And then so let's just click this. Can you see this, Neil? Yep. This is their website.

What's their beeping noise on your background?

It's the computer can't charge because I'm my mic plug in. I just unplugged it. But you can look at the footer over here. So the footer says, if you have any questions or if you have any comments about our web page, you can write to us. In the address shown above. However, due to a limited amount of personnel in our corporate office, we are unable to provide a direct response. Basically selling you F off.

If you need help, email us, but we can't provide you a direct response.

Yep. Yep. So it just goes to show you, like, you and I, you know, we talk about CRO all the time and all these things, but it just depends on the business that you're in. So you can build a trillion-dollar company with a crappy website. Very possible in 2024.

Scroll up, or was that it?

That was it, that was it.

Just that little piece. There's not even above or below the fold. It's just one little piece of website.

Above the fold's the entire website.

Wow.

Yep, yep.

I had the same point that I released, like, I think an Instagram post on this. And I was like, if you look at some of the biggest businesses, people don't know them, like Sensora, Danaher, Fortive. Like, these are all massive companies, multi, multi, multi-billions. Not just in market cap, in revenue. I think Sensora does over $200 billion a year in revenue. They're a pharmaceutical distributor for all like the drugs that we take just in the United States. Low margins, high revenue, but they still make an arm and a leg in profit. Like you can make what they make in a day or a week and never have to work again a day in your life, probably a day.

You know, I think we can kind of go in a different direction here. So just so you all know, like Neil and I, we're reacting to the news cycle a little bit, but we're also kind of talking about the, Like our stories and also talking about some of the classic marketing school episodes where we share how-tos. I think we're in a unique situation right now because you and I are both traveling. I'm in Dallas speaking at a conference and you're in Brazil. I'm assuming you have client stuff. You've spoken to a couple people. You've spoken at a couple events, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

No, but you're spot on about, you know, us talking about the news cycle and the Berkshire Hathaway. It's still mind-boggling. I just can't believe that's their website.

So, okay, what I wanted to talk about, I'm with you on that. What I wanted to talk about is like what we're getting out of the events, right? So like, for example, sure, I'm speaking at this thing. It's run by my friend Ken McElroy, who's also a YPO guy. They have people like Robert Kiyosaki, oh, RFK speaking here. So, it's like a very, like, you know, it's an investor-focused conference, right? And, you know, I'm doing 2 podcasts live, one with Ken, one with Robert Kiyosaki, and then I'm speaking at my own thing. And then I'm also on a panel this afternoon on like buying businesses. And, you know, for me, like yesterday, like I put a little dinner together, right? And I always talk about the beauty of these dinners. And just from that dinner, I'm going to have a guy helping me with my YouTube. And he's helped a couple of people get their YouTube to like a couple million long-form views per month, which are way more valuable. So, we're going to try to do something, right? And then there's another company. They're like, hey, you guys want to do like a joint webinar? They have like 1,200 companies or so that are, let's just say they're doing like $10, $15 million plus. Minimum a year. And like, you want to do a webinar, right? So you just, you kind of don't know what's going to happen. And you meet a lot of interesting people. I think the good thing about conferences is there's a lot of serendipity, but we've always talked about how you have to make the most of them, right? So, you know, doing little dinners or like when Neil and I are speaking at a conference together in Germany called This Is Marketing, like we're setting up a dinner there, you know, we're doing marketing school, but we'll probably try to do some other things, but you just don't know what's going to happen. And I kind of want to get your take, like Neil, what has happened to you on this trip?

Yeah, so I'll break down a few things, but going back to your trip, I'm assuming you didn't know Robert Kiyosaki before the event and you got a podcast episode with him because of the conference you went to, correct?

That's correct, yeah. And I— there was a potential angle to even get RFK on, which would have been really cool, but couldn't make the schedule work on that one. And then there's actually a Republican congressman here. He has like an eyepatch, Dan Crenshaw. But, you know, couldn't make that work either. So anyway, the point is like, if you can speak and plus you have a podcast, you can probably get a couple of these people that you want. Yeah.

And you didn't have to give them a dollar for them to be on your podcast.

I've never had to pay for any guest before. Yeah.

No, it's amazing. So here in Brazil, I've done, I don't know how many events. I think 4 events. I'm losing count. This week, 4 speeches. So 4 speeches, 4 events. One of them was a corporate event. That's why I was a little fuzzy on the number, but they had everyone from their marketing team join. The company is so big, they also have an internal agency separate from their marketing, but just their own internal agency has over 100 people. And then each product has their own small marketing team that helps with the product, and then they can outsource work to their quote unquote in-house agency. But I got quite a few things from this event. One thing is I've met some great investors, not looking to raise money or anything like that, but I met some great investors that have done some really cool deals and they're just like, hey, do you want intros to some of the companies? Maybe they could be clients. Do you want to invest in any of the rounds? I passed on investing in the rounds. I realized I make better returns just investing in my stuff. You know, one could say I'm a terrible investor because of that, but I've just done better putting money into my own stuff than, you know, giving it to others. And I've done a lot of venture funds as an LP, which I find to be much easier than just writing a startup a check because it's a ton of paperwork at the end, at least when it comes to tax time. And then you don't have to deal with anything. You just write someone a check and they go find the investments. But going back to the point, Some of the things I got was potential clients. I got more engagement on social media. There's people who have million-plus followers who are sharing my speech and taking pictures. 3, I got a lot of raw footage that I can use for social content. I'm starting to repurpose more versus spending all the time tweeting. I just don't have as much time and it's really exhausting versus just repurposing this content that you and I are doing here. And you know, you've been pushing me on this for probably a year.

Yeah, I've been pushing you for a while. Yeah, I've been pushing you on. I've been— I'm just telling you, you should do it.

No, that's what I'm saying. You've been pushing me for over a year that I should be using the podcast content.

Yeah.

The other thing that I got is I met this lady. Her dad created a company and it's publicly traded. She's on the board. It's a multi-billion dollar company. Her dad's on the Forbes list. She's on the board for her father, pretty much the executive chairman. And she gave me business advice, even though she herself hasn't done much as an entrepreneur, but she's watched her dad and her grandfather. And she says, you know, a lot of people want to build businesses and make them big. And she's just like, I have seen my family build generational wealth and I've seen multiple people build multi-billion dollar businesses in my family. And all their, a lot of their friends are billionaires, not all, but a lot of their friends are billionaires. And the one most common thing that they all have is they've all been doing this for more than 30 years in the same business. And she's like, just think about it. Majority of the people who are billionaires, she's like, go look it up, go find. She's like, they've been doing it for 30+ years in that business, not 30+ years as an entrepreneur, but a lot of wealth is just built from people doing the same thing for a very, very long time. And it just made me think, I think in 10-year cycles, 5 on the low end, but 10 on the high end. And I was like, huh, maybe I should start also planning for 20 years, 30 years, and even further out.

I want to take a second to tell you about my podcast co-host's agency. So NP Digital, so Neil Patel Digital. What they do is they do a whole host of marketing services and they are global. They're worldwide. They have SMB services as well. They have mid-market to enterprise services as well. They cover the entire gamut. So you could just go to mpdigital.com to learn more about it. And now back to the episode. We've been saying that on this podcast. I don't know if you remember. I've been saying like, it's not 10 years, it's 20, 30 years or so. And it just reinforced it. And let me give you a good one over here. So Ken, my buddy Ken that's running this event, so he's got the $1.6 billion in real estate. So, there's a period of time, this was maybe 15 years ago, and this is— he met a YPO friend, right? They went to like a YPO event. And so, Ken, the way— imagine this, like let's say you're in a group of entrepreneurs, right, Neil? And let's say everyone's successful. What do you think on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy the men are usually?

If everyone's successful, maybe a 4 or 5 max.

Out of 10?

Yeah, out of 10.

Okay.

I think a lot of rich people are not happy.

You—

it's—

so this event in particular, they ran a survey, right? It was 9 out of 10. So they're really happy, right? But the spouses were 6 out of 10, right? So they weren't that happy. It's like, okay, well, why is that? So the way Ken had prioritized 15 years ago was like, I'm focused on the business first because it brings the bacon home for the family. Then I'm focused on the kids. Then I'm focused on the spouse. And he's like, his friend was like, no, no, no, you got that all wrong. His friend's like way more experienced than he is, you know, older, right? His friend's like, no, it's not even the kids first. It's the spouse first, then the kids, and then the business. Once— and that clicked for him immediately. And when he said that, I was like, oh, it clicked for me immediately too. And I was looking at my friend who came up with the question, Steve, who runs pray.com, because he's worried about it too. It's like we spend so much time on the business, but if you take care of the spouse first, then that's a good relationship for the kids to look at. It brings stability to the kids and then it brings stability to the business too, right? And so for me, at least, I can't speak for you, but I'm like, I've always been, and I'm not married or anything, but I'm like, yeah, that does make a lot of sense because I'm very business right now. There are no kids, there is no spouse, you know what I mean? So I'm keen to get your take on it.

Yeah, I would say you and I are in a really different situation than most people. I think you and I are in the same situation because we were entrepreneurs really young. I don't think most people in their late teens, early 20s are creating businesses. So I am a big believer. I agree with you, spouse first, because spouse takes care of the household. And if you have stability, it's easier to focus on a business. But more so, I would actually rephrase it and tell people, if you're young, it's one of the best times to start a business because you don't have a lot of responsibilities and you can focus and build up a solid foundation.

Yeah.

Then when you want to get married, you don't have to worry about a lot of the other stuff that people have to worry about, and your life is much more stress-free.

Yeah.

Like for you, I know you're single and you date, but the way I look at it is you've been doing this long enough and I know your profit fluctuates quite a bit per year, but it fluctuates quite a bit per year due to your own choice. You decide to either reinvest heavily in a year or you decide that you want more profit. And overall you're seeing good growth. But the day you get married, you can have a very stable, functional, Not just relationship, but business life balance with the relationship. And I don't think it would be too chaotic.

You know, so it's interesting because I was in an Uber ride today and then this dude's the same age as us, right? And he's like, he has 2 daughters and, you know, he's like, he's like, I'm starting my entrepreneurial journey. I want to do coaching and all that. And then we kind of both settled on like, man, it's a little tough to start something now because at that age, right? He's like, yeah, I'm trying to get it. I'm like, He's like, yeah, I'm very much like kids and spouse first, right? But the problem with that is you can't put all your energy into it. So in your 20s, pre-marriage, ideally you're all in on your business for as long as you can do it. And then you can switch over. So I think that's a fair statement because I saw the pain in his eyes. Dude.

Okay. Imagine you're not married and you're in your 30s, which funny enough you are. But imagine you starting your business today with no other external responsibilities. It's still really tough because then you're just like, man, I'm in my 30s. I still got to eventually save up for a home and I got to do all these other things and get married.

Yeah.

But even if you don't own a home and you spent all your money in your business and your business is growing and it's spitting off cash, everything else is solvable with money. I'm not talking about the relationship side, but the rest of the stuff that we need to live, food, transportation, homes, which is a lot of the issues that cause tensions within a marriage. So if you can just focus on being an entrepreneur as young as possible and learn from your mistakes, and it took Eric and I a long time to learn from our mistakes, but eventually we, I think both of us, we learned from our mistakes in our 30s versus our 20s. We thought we learned from our mistakes in our 20s, but we really learned from them in our 30s. And we may end up saying the same thing in our 40s, but that's what will really cause you to start doing better and better.

And we're still going to make more mistakes. at the end of the day.

Exactly.

That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and visit marketingschool.io/agency to apply for the Agency Owners Association. So we're changing it to application only now, and if you're qualified, we'll give you a call. And yeah, we will go from there. We will see you guys tomorrow.