How We Approach A Rocky Economy , The Death Of SEO Content

You have one here on how we keep a positive mindset when things are rocky economically. Where did that come from?

I think people are just struggling right now. Inflation numbers came out today. I think—

What are they? I didn't check anything this week.

2.1. And I'm like, lower the damn rates. They won't lower the rates though, but I really want them to lower the rates.

I hope they do. Do you know what? It's funny. Oh no, I have to tell you this offline. This is a, this is a Off topic. Anyway, keep going.

And same with the tariffs, right? The 3 people part of the international court or whatever it was called, they like blocked it and then he appealed it. And right when he blocked it, I'm like, man, he's going to find a way around this. I'm not saying tariffs are here to stay or not. All I know is right now business is hard because a lot of stuff that just people like Eric and I can't control, but you and I always have things that happen to us We never really mope to each other. We never really mope to others and be like, man, it sucks. We will talk about like, oh, leads are down this month, or it's tougher this month, but we don't really get depressed about it. We don't really start whining. We don't go into a corner and ball up. We look for opportunities because if you think about our mindset, we usually look at downturns, whether it's Google making changes or Instagram or Facebook or ads not working as well as they once were, conversion rates going down over time because people are getting used to the offer. We genuinely think of things as opportunities. So when shit gets bad, excuse my language, you and I think about, well, if it's bad for us and bad for a lot of other people, how can we climb out of this? Or when things— when we're all able to climb out of this, how do we actually use this opportunity to get ahead of our competition? Because during bad times, most people pull back and take their foot off the gas for most things just because—

Yeah.

Times are tough.

Yeah. And that's why, by the way, like those of you that are watching this, we're recording virtually, but I have this Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger statue. And so the reason I like them so much is because these philosophies stick with you. It's like, one, our favorite holding period is forever. 2, you know, be greedy when others are fearful, right? And then be fearful when others are greedy. Like these things all stick with you. It's like these old wise uncles, right? And so it's when things happen that are rocky in the economy or even like personally. So like for just to give a little more context, I had a death in the family, right? And so in that example, it's like, okay, well that sucks, but what am I going to do? Cry about it? Or what can I do to get stronger from this, right? And the more you start to train that muscle, the more it's just like working out. You've just become really buff over a period of time. And if you look at it that way, it's just a very healthy way of looking at it. And I'll give you another Charlie Munger thing. So Charlie Munger's over here. Charlie Munger's over here. Okay. So Charlie Munger says you cannot let one tragedy beget another one, right? So if something bad happens to you, You can't just mope about it. No, you get yourself back up and you keep going, right? And so I remember for him, he was blind in one eye. He's gone now, rest in peace. But he was blind in one eye and then he lost his son, one of his sons at age 29. And I was looking at this on AI, by the way. I was like, what's the most painful? The most painful loss first is either your mom or it's like losing a kid, right? And but most people aren't going to lose a kid because you're not supposed to lose a kid. You're supposed to outlive them, right? Well, my point of saying all this is that Yes, that happened to him.

You're supposed to outlive you.

Yeah, your kid's supposed to outlive you. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. But you understand where I'm coming from. It's just like, that's what we're saying ultimately. Like, we can— we've talked about the economy and all these things of like terrorists, all this, but like, at the end of the day, you only worry about what you can control, and that is life. Like, that's why business is one of the best trainers for you to learn life.

And you can't let things hold you back. I was talking to Eric and he had that incident in his family. 30 minutes before I call. And we are supposed to record a podcast, which we're doing today, literally the next day. And I asked him, I'm like, do you want me to figure it out? You don't have to record. And he's just like, no. He's like, life moves on. You need to be strong. And he'll deal with the situation in his own way. But he's also keeping in mind that you can't just stop. The world doesn't stop for you. It sucks, but that's the reality. When you're doing something in your business and you get kicked, whether it's marketing or sales are down or the economy's down so that people don't want to buy your product as much, or there's a new competitor that's cheaper, you got to keep going and figuring out alternatives. If you don't, you're just going to have a slow, painful death, and you got to keep pushing and fighting back. It sucks, but those hard times is what really makes you strong and resilient.

Yeah. You know what? I think the way to tie this all together too is, you know, I mentioned before that the people who end up the most depressed are the ones that are most entitled. And those are often the ones who don't have any resilience. And so, each challenge, like everyone will say, oh, my life was so challenging. It's like everybody's life is challenging. Everybody's like, everyone faces adversity. It's more so, what do you do with it? And going back to Warren Buffett again, were you useful in your life? And that's what it comes down to. Were you useful? Were you productive? And so, for this loved one, my God, So many family members came over, so many friends came over, and it's because of what that person did and what that person meant to everyone, right? One person even flew in last minute from— they heard about it and then they flew in from Austin like last minute and they, it was like a quick day trip, right? But like, and by the way, on the flip side of that, there are people I know who, if something happens, they won't get any calls, they won't get any messages. It's because they haven't provided a lot of value and they weren't useful, right? And so that's all we're saying. We're not trying to make this a rah-rah thing. But as long as you're useful, as long as you keep going, there's no way you're going to lose, Rocky or not, because Rocky is going to come no matter what.

And always think that when things are really good for you, there's other people who have it much better than you. And when things are really bad for you, there's always other people who have it much worse than you. And that helps keep you level-headed so that way you can just push through. I was talking with one of my colleagues yesterday who's also become a good friend over the years. And he has knee problems and of course it's going to affect his work and all this kind of stuff. And I don't mind. I want him to make sure that he's healing up. And I was like, dude, what are you doing? You got to take care of yourself. And he's like, Neil, this isn't a big deal. He's like, I always remember my grandmother during hard times. I'm like, what do you mean? And he's just like, he's Jewish. So his grandmother had to deal with the Holocaust and he's just like, she was running away.

What do you mean to deal with the Holocaust?

Or she was around at the time. She was Jewish. I don't know what happened to her at the end, but there were German fighter planes shooting napalm rounds and she was walking with 2 kids in her hands with a bullet in the leg. And she's just like, I didn't feel the pain. I had no choice. I had to just keep going.

Yeah. See, by the way, that's real struggle. What we deal with here is like a walk in the park. Sure, it's mentally taxing, but I think having to save your family physically and all that type of stuff, I actually think that's way harder.

Dude, same. I was talking to my mother-in-law the other day and she's like, you guys had it easy. And she was talking about one of her family members and she's like, she just gave birth. And I'm like, when did she give birth? She's like, when she was walking from North Korea to South Korea, she gave birth right then and didn't have a choice but to walk with the newborn child to get out of North Korea. And I was like, that is real pain.

Yeah, that's hardcore. That's why I think resilience, like the trouble, and I think I told you this before, we did like a private dinner and a lot of these people were YPOers and They have kids, right? And they're like— I was like, so what's the biggest concern you guys have? It's like that our kids won't have any resilience. And I'm sure that's a concern for you too, because you want to protect your kids, but at the same time, you can't have them be unchallenged.

You can't, because if they grow up not just lazy, but they don't want to keep trying when things go wrong, then you're going to have issues. And I was trying to teach My daughter and son excel at different subjects. My son is really good at math. He's 3. And for a 3-year-old, you can ask him like 18 plus 23 minus 9, and he'll give you the answer, which is pretty decent for a 3-year-old.

Teach after you.

Right? And then with my daughter, she was reading at the age of 2. My son was reading early too, but my daughter's comprehension in reading is way better than my son's for the age when she started. But his math is much stronger than hers. They excel at different subjects. The problem that you have is when something doesn't come naturally easy to them, it's harder to get them to just push through. And I'm like, no, you don't give up. You keep fighting for it. And dude, how many times have you and I dealt with algorithm changes where traffic's just tanked for a client or ours and we're like, oh, got to figure it out.

Yeah.

Right?

But I've never once, I don't, and I don't think you have either. I've never once been like, oh, woe is me. I'm going to, I'm going to be sad and cry about it. That's what I don't understand. You've never really cried about these things either.

Uh-uh. You can't. Because in the grand scheme of things, what's the worst case that happens? We're still healthy. We have family members that love us. We have food on the table. It's not that bad in the grand scheme of things. Just push on and make the best of it.

Yeah. And by the way, so at least for me, and I think probably for you too, I've learned the most important thing is honestly just family and friends. And then, You work on what you work on because it's fun. It's like a video game. And then you take care of your health because it allows you to work on the things that you want to work on. It allows you to be the person you want to be for your friends and family. And life is short anyway. That's all it is at the end of the day. So, I wouldn't worry too much about this rocky economy. It's funny, my relatives were talking about it this week. Oh, this and this is happening right now. This and this. So-and-so is evil, blah, blah, blah. I'm just like, who cares? None of that matters.

Yeah, no, it really doesn't. Dude, people always tell me all the time, SEO is dead, what are you going to do? And I'm like, you think SEO is dead? I'm still generating traffic and revenue from it. My clients are generating revenue and profit and income from it. And I'm like, your way is dead. You keep stressing out about that and moping. I'm going to go figure out how to get my clients mentioned on all the LLMs, get the brand awareness, and help them generate revenue over their competition. You guys saw Eric's spreadsheet in this episode or the previous episode if you're looking on YouTube where he was sharing his screen of how the leads heard about Karat, his ABM solution. If you look at that, a lot of them said YouTube. Where are they going on YouTube to click a link? They're not. Eric's not linking to Karat in the description. I'm assuming you're not. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty— you shouldn't be.

I don't think we are. I actually don't know.

And what's happening is, is he's more so just mentioning it within a video. I bet you're probably screen sharing and showing some of the cool stuff you're doing in some of the videos. Yeah.

30-second mid-roll and it shares like a quick like screen grab. Here's the problem with most marketing agencies. They don't understand what is happening with the world of AI. With my agency, Single Grain, we think about agentic workflows. We think about creating agents for the future. When we think about SEO, we think about creating different products such as internal linking products or content consolidation products. And on the other side of things, we think about building products such as Care. We just think about making marketing easier. Overall, if you want to stay at the cutting edge of marketing and at the same time leverage the power of AI, go to singlegrain.com and we'll see you on the other side.

Yes, and people are seeing it and I bet you his mid-roll, I haven't seen it yet, is not a pitch. It's more so he's educating how he's using it to get better results for people. And then people are like, oh cool, this could be helpful for me. They're just going on Google searching and then boom, they're clicking. So his referral logs will probably show that they either came direct or they came from a Google search. But in fact, a lot of them heard about it from YouTube.

By the way, I do think we should also talk about— we could talk about YouTube too, but I think the fact that, okay, Tim Soulo put up this post over here and I can actually share my screen because we're on mobile. You don't even have your mic on, huh? You don't have your mic.

Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, do you see this? Okay.

Yes.

So Tim Soulo says, in the next 3 years, AI is going to kill informational content, quote unquote, as a marketing strategy. And honestly, I couldn't be happier about it because what is your typical quote unquote informational content strategy? 1, pick a popular keyword. 2, look up who ranks in top 10 for it. 3, pay a random copywriter to write a more in-depth quote unquote piece of content. 4, buy some links to trick Google into thinking that your page is better than others. But now, because a lot of people aren't getting those clicks anymore, and this just isn't going to work that well anymore, right? People, this informational content, like the how-to stuff or what is, is not getting much traffic because it's just being answered by the LLMs or AIO. I think the question here is what should people do knowing that their traffic, their website traffic is going down?

Well, to go back, I think Tim also mentions one thing before we can go into this. He says this is great because it's going to enter in the era of original content, which I agree with. And you and I have been talking about this a lot. Everyone's using AI to create more regurgitated content faster. Content marketing still works. People consume video content more on an hourly basis per day, if you look at the stats, than they do consuming content from Google. The question is, is who is going to create original content that people want to consume? And this doesn't mean that people aren't consuming content from Google because Google's also ranking video content and audio content and images, but they're also ranking text-based content, which a lot of people consume. Eric and I have proof of this. If you just look at our blogs, they still get a lot of traffic. It's more so what content can you create that's original and helpful to people that's not just regurgitated? And we're all tired of reading articles like, what is SEO? Or the beginner's guide to SEO or the advanced guide to SEO. And I was a victim of this. Moz wrote the beginner's guide to SEO. I wrote the advanced guide to SEO. But you're talking about probably like 15+ years ago where this stuff wasn't as common. In today's world, I was at lunch with someone and they were showing me their Instagram stats and like, dude, you got more followers than me. Look, I got 6.5 million views. You only got 1.4 in the last 30 days. And some of their content was things like, don't get married until you own a house. And it was random content like that. I'm like, this content's cool. It's going to get you famous. It's going to get you eyeballs, but it's hard to make money from that content. And my content, when you look at it, is very specific towards businesses trying to grow. in today's environment. It's not going to get the same amount of views. No one really cares to share content around like, here's a podcast growth over the last 10 years and I'm showing how it's declining, but it peaked a few years ago. But it's really useful for businesses because in that same post, I break down how more people are listening to podcasts. It's not that competitive because a lot of podcasts have died down. So this is a perfect opportunity for you to go and create one. You got to pick and choose what you're optimizing for. When Eric and I create content in this new world, We don't create content that a lot of other people have already talked about the same stuff or regurgitated. We focus on creating content for ideal customer profile and we don't care about the rest.

Yeah. And by the way, what we're talking about here is the meta, right? And the meta just means the most optimized way of playing a game. So meta is basically, yes, the Facebook Meta, M-E-T-A. It's not them, but that's what it's called, right? This expression. And so the meta 15 years ago, 10 years ago was yes, The beginner's guide, skyscraper content, all this stuff, right? And build a bunch of links, throw a bunch of links at it. But that's no longer the game and the game has changed. And so, the game that we play now, and part of the reason we do this podcast is one, we get to share stories that are unique to us that makes us stand out. 2, Neil can share to his YouTube, his unique perspectives with his YouTube stuff. I do the same thing too. Sometimes we'll even share when we're speaking at conferences that helps from a branding perspective as well. But In order to stand out, you actually have to be out there doing things, which is what we talked about earlier. You have to be useful. You have to be doing things. Otherwise, you're just going to start saying all the things that other people are saying. And so that's why it's interesting, I think, if you are a leader in your company, if you're a business operator and you're maybe part-time creating content, because you can share front— you're on the front lines of all the cool stuff that you're doing.

Yeah. And that's what people want to see. They want to see the stuff that you've experienced, that no one else has and they want to see you sharing that because that's what teaches them more than anything else. People want firsthand experience and when they can't get firsthand experience, they want to see other people's firsthand experience. If you are creating content, think about what you can share that would be useful for others. And I know you may be thinking, hey, Neil and Eric, I'm not an expert, so I can't share content within my space. Well, it's okay if you're not an expert. You're also on a journey. And sharing the process throughout your journey and what you're going through is very useful too for other people who may want to follow.

Yep. Yeah. So I think where we have gone wrong in the past, just to give you guys some examples with this podcast, is we followed a formula like that worked well for the first 1 or 2 years or so, like how to learn marketing. And then we started to regurgitate the same content over and over and we weren't sharing our experiences. Right. And so we adapted over time. We now we've been sharing more experiences. We do more in person because it's a more free-flowing conversation. Also, it looks more natural too. And so that's a good— that's what works well for us. We've adapted our YouTube game as well. I think we both kind of slacked on YouTube for a little bit. And now the fact that we're going into— we're getting outlines done for us, we're recording Looms ahead of time, we're going— like, we have a nice studio setup too. I think you just have to— it goes back to what we said earlier. You have to adapt into the current meta for whatever channel that you're trying to optimize for.

Yes. And when you're creating content, just keep in mind your ideal customer profile and create content for them. Don't worry about the total number of views that you're getting. I know you want that number to go up over time. It should. Don't obsess about the design quality or the editing quality of your video. What matters more than that is the quality of the content. And when I say the quality of the content is how useful is it for your ideal customer when they're listening or watching or reading? When you do those kinds of things, that's what generates revenue. And that really is the goal because when Eric and I first created our podcast, to go a little bit more specific with this or get a little bit more granular, our episodes were like the top 5 digital marketing tools that we're using to grow our SEO, top 5 Chrome extensions, what Eric and Neil learned by being in the SEO industry for 20 years, and then we would each break down one thing and go rotate, right? So I would say a thing, then Eric would, and then we would keep going back and forth until we're done with our list. But all of this stuff, it just starts getting boring because that's what everyone started to do. And then Eric and I switched this to, hey, let's just come up with a list of topics and then we'll discuss this during our podcast. And we do that still today. But what it shifted to again is instead of making them 5-minute episodes where Marketing School was quick, short, digestible marketing insights. It started becoming longer episodes. We have a list of topics that we can cover, but Eric and I more so riff most of the time and we just discuss stuff that's either top of mind related to business or marketing, or we just share our experiences on what we're doing during the weekend, what's helping and what's hurting.

Yeah. And it's not going to help everyone, right? But if, if you know, our bet is there's going to be a certain subset of people that fit our ICP and they get a light bulb moment from us every now and then. And that's going to be enough to keep us top of mind where they'll remember us. If they want to do business with Neil, they want to do business with me, that's cool. But this whole name of the game of the business that we're in is really just staying top of mind.

Yeah. And that is the key. You look at Nike, the reason Nike's done well over all the years is because they stay top of mind with their Just Do It commercials. And I know their new CMO talked about how Nike's been struggling. And one of the reasons they think they've been struggling is they over-index in performance marketing. Think of like Google Ads when we're talking performance marketing versus just straight up doing brand campaigns like billboards or TV ads. I think the market— Nike CMO is wrong. When you do performance marketing, you are getting brand awareness. I'm not saying the Nike CMO doesn't realize that, probably does, or she probably does. I think the reason Nike struggled isn't the marketing, I think, and it's not the brand awareness. It's if you look at their apparel products, they suck compared to Alo, Lululemon, Vuori, and a lot of those other brands, they haven't kept the product up to date. And it doesn't matter how good you are at marketing, if your product just sucks and you're not innovating and adapting, you can spend a lot of money, but the smaller companies who have better products are going to take market share.

I have a new Alo product that's sitting, a box that's sitting in my kitchen right now. It's, I think it's called Mastodon or something like that, or Mason, maybe that's the name of the line. But it's basically non-polyester and it's like better ingredients that don't have forever chemicals and things like that. So, but see, this is another thing I found on Twitter. It's like, oh, I'm interested in living for a longer period of time. Oh, okay. Someone lists Levels.io, listed it, the guy that made the games that got like 77 million impressions or something like that. So it's just, I don't know, it's, but that's him randomly talking about games sometimes. He's randomly talking about traveling sometimes. Sometimes he might, it's just like, Oh, I trust this guy. I'm just going to buy because he recommended it. So.

Yeah. And now I learned about it. So if Eric likes it, I'll end up buying it. How do you attribute that? At the same token, I read about this new brand called, uh, Aurythmics or something like that. It's a clothing brand like Lululemon. I'm pronouncing it wrong, but they say a lot of the Chinese billionaires wear it. Uh, what is it called?

It's for me to wear.

Chinese billionaires, uh, yoga. Brand are— I'm, I'm spelling it so wrong. A-R-C-T-E-R-Y-X.

Never heard of it. Do you have one?

Arc'teryx or something like that?

I think I know what you're talking about.

Yeah. A-R-C and there's an apostrophe T-E-R-Y-X. Arc'teryx. I'm terrible with English and grammar, but I saw it somewhere online and they're talking about how that company just boomed. Because of all these Chinese rich people are wearing them. And because the billionaires are wearing them, the politicians in China are wearing them, and then a lot of the people now strive to wear those kind of clothes. They're not the most expensive clothes, but they're super popular because of that.

Well, I say this as a Chinese person, we're very driven by status.

Really?

Yeah. You didn't know that? Okay. So it's funny because we don't have a god. The only god we have is a money god. I think I told you that before.

Yeah.

So oftentimes, this is why when I'm eating with my family and all that, they're— why are they always taking pictures of their food all the time? They're showing off the food, they're showing off this, showing off that, right? And so yeah, I say this as a Chinese person, guys, if you haven't seen my face. But that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. And that being said, we will see you tomorrow. Thank you.