Jev is INSANE, Shopify's Slop Grenades, and Nvidia's $7B Hedge (Full Episode)

Have you heard about Jev yet or no?

Yeah, you told me about it.

Oh, I did? I don't even remember. Okay, so here, let me show you some Jev use cases here. All right, you see my screen?

Uh-huh.

Okay, just, just so you guys can see the screenshot here, this is Doodoo. Okay, so Doodoo is working, and then it, uh—

Do you want to explain what Doodoo is? Because people, if they didn't listen to the last episode, they won't know.

Yeah, Doodoo is my MetaMuse bot. Okay, and it looks like this, and this is just the MetaMuse icon actually that I wanted to classify. So I have about 116,000 followers on Instagram And so I was like, hey, I want you to do a call and see who's actually influential and who's a founder, who's an investor, who's an entrepreneur, just like who's in travel, who's in hospitality and all this stuff, right? To see if we can somehow collab or whatever. So Jev said, hey, this would cost 116,000 stage 1 calls at $2.34. And they would do another run, which total would be $3.35, right? So what am I showing you here? What Jev is, just to back up a second, is Jev is a classifier, okay? So when you have, let's say, Neil, you have like 1,000 people apply to work at NP Digital. Do you want to sort through all those people? And even if you had a human sort through all those people, it wouldn't be that accurate, right? It would just, one, it would take forever. Two, it wouldn't be that accurate because at a certain point as a human, like I would just start to try to game it, right? Because I don't want to review all of them. What Jev can do is it can say, oh, oh, you know, let's only talk to people, let's only shortlist people that have 2 promotions at 2 different companies. And have an average 3-year tenure for mid-senior level people. Or you can just say what I said earlier, like, hey, have Jeff scan all the people who follow you on Instagram, founders, investors, influencers, recruits. Hell, even use it for people that you want to date, right? Maybe there's someone really interesting that follows you, right? Based on the values that you have, you could have Jeff classify that for you, right? You could have it scan all the stuff that you bookmark on Instagram and scrape all the hooks, the offers, and creatives that they use. You can use Jeff to scan all of your external content to determine your best content spikes, then draft the best, then have Jeff evaluate the content quality, enforce content guidelines, and avoid duplicate content. So to me, this is a major unlock from a quality AEU SEO scaling standpoint, right? Because the problem with AI is like, if you're just creating a bunch of slop, you're not actually comparing it to what you've already published and what your quality guidelines are, right? So that's a big deal to me, especially considering, Neil, We spend all this time creating this content, right? We already did this before. Hours and hours a week we spend time creating this content, but we're not maximizing this. This can help us maximize it, right? Scan all your customer calls for case studies, objections, churn risks, et cetera, right? And I mentioned this earlier, just scan all inbound and outbound recruits, run them through your talent evals to shortlist people at lightning-fast speed. So anyway, that's the power of this.

Have you ever used Muse to connect to your email and start sending out emails for you?

Yeah.

So I've been doing it with all of our M&A deals, because if I look at almost every single M&A deal that we've done, it tends to be deals that we've talked to 2, 3 years ago. We couldn't get a valuation that made sense for us back then. And then 2, 3 years later, they accept the valuation terms that we're willing to offer. And I don't blame people for this. Every entrepreneur believes in their company, and if they have a bad year, they can fix it, and the next year is going to be super amazing, and they did all these things. As an entrepreneur, if you don't drink your own Kool-Aid, I don't know if you're meant to be an entrepreneur. I hate to say that, but it is true. You really need to have some sort of delusion.

It's called naive optimism, Neil.

There you go. And I like people who have naive optimism. So I had an issue in which— this is just me, I'm not saying I'm right or wrong— I never really trusted Anthropic and OpenAI. I still don't, like I trust a Facebook, a Microsoft, a Google. I'm not saying some companies do evil things and others don't. Just for me, like Meta was in a lawsuit for child stuff. I know the settlement was in 11 digits, so over $10 billion or something like that. I think it was, I know it was under $20, it was $16, $18, $14 something. And I know there was some caveat if they can get some of the other platforms to join along and make the changes, the settlement's cheaper for them, whatever it may be. Either way, it was a lot of money. I trust Facebook more with my data and Google more with my data and Microsoft more with my data and even Amazon. than I do with a lot of these up-and-coming startups, even though OpenAI and Anthropic aren't really startups from a valuation perspective. I just don't trust them with data. This is just me personally, like I trust Facebook. Facebook being a publicly traded company, there's more regulation, it's global, they're going to get their butts sued if they do some funny business. And I'm okay willing to take that risk with Facebook, but I'm not willing to take that risk with OpenAI or Anthropic. Definitely not like a deep seek or anything like that, but I will for Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Amazon. But this is just my personal 2 cents. I don't know how you feel with that.

So wait, were we talking about trust? I'm trying to figure out where you're trying to go with that.

No, like I'm now having it do a lot of my follow-up emails and I'm getting a lot of responses from it. So it's actually working out well, but I'm able to do so much more with AI these days than I was months ago. Due to the fact that I trust Facebook and I'm allowing it more access than I would with the other, you know, AI platforms out there. But that's just me.

That's fair.

I trust Nvidia. If Nvidia wants to do something and get access to my data, I don't have an issue with that. But for some reason, with Anthropic and OpenAI, I can't. On the flip side, if Grok wanted access, I also trust him for some reason. And I'm not saying Elon's better or worse than any of those people, has nothing to do with it. It's just For me, corporate trust, Apple's another one. I would actually put Apple at the top of the list. If Apple had a Muse, I would let it have access to my bank account, straight up. I wouldn't be worried about it if it was Apple. I wouldn't trust Facebook with my bank account though.

So let me make a prediction here, okay? So all of these, Google, Apple, they will all have their own version of Muse because remember back in the day, Neil, when I was talking about earlier this year when I was talking about OpenCLaw and Hermes, this is just OpenCLaw and Hermes. In fact, The Muse architecture is built off of the OpenClaw architecture, right? Like a lot of the ideas, like they call it like a soul.md file and all that. So here's the thing, and there's no right or wrong here, right? Like remember guys, early days, I was like January, I was on OpenClaw already, right? And then Hermes came out and I was on Hermes, right? And so it's not saying that there's a right or wrong here because there are no solutions, only trade-offs, right? So the trade-off here is if you use Hermes and OpenClaw early, you're taking a lot more risk because you're setting it up yourself. And you don't know what's going to happen. It could delete all your stuff, right? And I've seen that happen, but that was a risk that I was willing to accept, right? It was the uncertainty piece that we were talking about a little earlier, right? Now with Muse and GrokBot, you have a lot more certainty. And I think people should certainly be using both Muse and GrokBot because I'm just using both those now and just getting stuff done. And the funny thing is, Neil, we had a conversation earlier this week talking about M&A, right? Almost a lot of the stuff that we talked about, I built it in and I'm having Jev just classify, you know, M&A deals that I might be potentially looking for. But keep in mind, Neil has some different patterns that he's talking about here where he's like, hey, what he typically sees is like for his deal sizes, usually he's not going to get a deal done for 2 to 3 years. So he can observe and he can probably make lookalikes off of that using Jev. And so the world is his oyster now by having a GrokBot and a Muse plus a Jev to classify everything. And you know, all I do, Neil, when I wake up, I have anxiety. You know why? Because I don't want to talk to anybody yet. I need to get the agents going first and then I'm good for the rest of the day. I just need to make sure they get everything they need. 'Cause I know they're reliable and they just get shit done now. Um, pardon my language. I still use Hermes, just not as much anymore, but GrokBot and Muse, man, and, and, and like once Google comes online, Apple comes online, I'm just gonna be on those things all day. And you're probably gonna need like a super meta agent managing all of those.

Dude, I didn't tell you, I didn't tell you this. So if I'm not mistaken, Open Cloud did a deal with OpenAI, right? And I actually forgot about Open Cloud. Like literally I forgot about it until you just mentioned it. But yeah, Muse is pretty much alternative to it. Right? Like when I thought about Muse, it never hit me about OpenClaw. But there was something interesting that I interacted with yesterday. So I was at Social Next, which was a conference in Vancouver yesterday. Okay. And you saw a lot of startups, you saw a lot of mid-sized businesses, even some enterprise businesses. Someone came up to me and they were complaining about their— someone on their marketing team. Someone on their marketing team was selling— this company is a large company. They're also based out of San Francisco, but they have offices throughout most of the parts of the world. And they were complaining to me how they were using AI to help them manage their ads. Okay. And the AI spent $100,000, I think they said $112,000 Canadian. So I don't know what that is in USD, call it like $75,000, $78,000. Okay. USD. I'm rounding here. And it only brought in $3,000 to $4,000 Canadian dollars in revenue. So call it, let's just call it $3,000 USD. Okay. I know it's probably a little bit less than that, $2,000 something, but either way, you know, they were blaming the AI for this. Like, no joke. They were blaming AI for their failed ad campaign and they were pissed and they had an internal meeting. They told me he met up with his boss and And they're discussing what AI solutions they should use instead because it messed up. And he said, what would you do? And I said, do you want my honest answer? I don't want to come off as rude. Or do you want me to just sugarcoat it? I'm like, what do you want? He's like, no, I want the real answer. I'm like, I would've written you up and potentially fired you. And he's like, why? I didn't mess up, the AI messed up. I'm like, no, you're the one who told the AI to to manage the campaigns. You set it up, it's your responsibility. No one held a gun to your head and said you have to use AI to help you do this. You could have done it manually. And no one said you shouldn't use AI, but if you're in charge of it and you didn't keep track of it— because I said, in reality, when did you check the campaign to see if it was performing? He's like, after we spent over $100,000. I'm like, that's the problem. You could have checked the first day, The second day, third day. I'm like, how many days did it go? And he said, it went for roughly 40 days. I'm like, this is your problem. You didn't supervise it. You didn't check. I'm not saying AI is good or bad. You could have caught it early on enough and realized there's something wrong, but you decided not to pay attention. This is your fault. It's not, hey, how do we, uh, what AI system should we use instead in the future? It's how'd you use the AI and why did it do it wrong? What inputs did you give? What instructions did you give? And I'm like, this is all the person who's behind the technology. And I'm like, this is the problem. I'm like, you either need to learn how to use it right, or you need to go into a different role, or don't use the technology at all and do it manually.

I'm actually curious, how did they react to that?

They went from, they first asked me for advice in a picture, to they got my advice and they walked away.

Yeah. So it went from, they were so excited to meet you, get a picture, to, hey, I would fire you. Yeah.

Well, I told them the truth. Like, I'm just being honest. I wasn't trying to be mean to them. Like, I know I sounded mean at that moment, but if I tell them a bullshit answer, like, yeah, dude, the AI is wrong, I hate to say they're not going to learn and improve in their life. I think I gave them the right response for them to improve as an individual and do better in the workforce. I think it would be a disservice if I lied to them and be like, Give them a pat on the back. It's all right, dude. Next time. You know, I'm like, no. And this is a billion-plus-dollar organization, not in market cap. I'm talking about in revenue. They're much more than a billion dollars. But of course their boss is pissed off and I would be pissed off too and I would fire the person.

Yep. Because you know what? It's the boss's fault now.

It is the boss's fault. The boss looks bad.

Yep. And then guess what? It rolls all the way up to the CEO for permitting the boss to make a hire like that and to tolerate. So everything kind of goes up, right? And

so Eric is right. Normally, yes, but at this size organization, when someone does like $6, $7 billion in revenue, it's too small to roll up to the CEO, but either way, they're looking bad.

Yeah, well, I'm just saying that everything that happens is because of the CEO's decisions downstream, is what I'm—

Yes, you're totally right. So even though it doesn't roll up to the CEO, the CEO put this mindset in the organization, use AI, and this is why they were all AI forward and AI pill, like, yeah, use it, we're all AI pill, look how much we do with AI. Being AI-pilled does not mean you're actually creating good outputs. It just means you're using AI heavily and you're all about AI, but it doesn't actually mean you're effective and productive with AI. There's a lot of people who use AI and actually get less done, or sorry, they get more done in a day, but they produce less results because they're working on crap that has nothing to do with their main KPIs. Yeah. But it does start with the top because that came from there. But I still don't blame the top. The top never said, Don't check your work until 40 days later.

So this goes back to the same thing I was mentioning earlier in this podcast, right? This, like, even though I pushed the AI nativeness at my company, I'm finding I'm spending more time today talking about things like slop cannons and slop grenades, right? And having to create workflows to kind of fix that. And the good thing is, by the way, I can have Jev again, here comes Jev again, I can evaluate all these things before I have to review it. And by the way, if it keeps calling out the same people over and over, That's not a good thing, right? And so the one thing— the other thing I've been saying, Neal, is think about this. Let me ask you a question here, right? If you apply leverage to a poor real estate investment, what happens?

You owe the bank money and then you're screwed.

Yeah. But if you apply leverage to a good real estate investment, what happens?

You make more money because you can keep leverage, taking your money, reinvesting it and compounding.

And Neal knows where I'm going with this. AI is ultimately just leverage, right? Leverage is something that you apply to something, whether it's like a good investment or you apply— if something's good, it amplifies, it makes it bigger, right? Just like we talk about intelligence. But if you apply to something where it's not that good, it gets even bigger, right? And so that's why it's— Neil and I have been talking on the phone about this, but it does put a spotlight on people. And so here's what I'll say. I've been like going back to my YouTube channel as an example, right? My click-through rates before were like 3.5%, 4% on a YouTube video. Not good, right? Now they're like 7-8%, which is double the click-through rate, which is like 100 people see it, you know, 4 people might click. Now it's up to like 7 or 8 people, right? Which is great. But going back to what Neil said, it's applying, you know, spending the time. Like when I have my little AI skills create these thumbnails, the first pass doesn't work, the second pass doesn't work. Sometimes I need to go to the third or fourth pass. Well, I might spend 5 to 10 minutes, but the performance is a lot better. And I'd rather spend that time than kind of just like waiting for the work to be done, right? So my point of saying all this is that sure, use AI, but at the same time, you can't just sit and not do anything, right? Which is kind of what happens, is happening right now when I look at my brand team and they're kind of like, they're kind of trying to figure out what to do. But also, if your boss comes in and kind of does it for you and then hands it over to you and you're still not doing anything with it, that's also not good too. So.

Dude, someone pitched me on an interesting real estate deal 2 weeks ago. I met him up with them on the rooftop, Waldorf, which is actually right across the street from you, I believe. And this person had $80 million worth of real estate that they bought back in the day. It was all office buildings. They paid quite a bit of it down, then they did a refinance, and they're in cities where people are starting to go more virtual and not show up. So maybe they paid a little bit more than $80 or a little bit less. I forgot what the exact number is, but I know they were trying to sell it to me for exactly $80 million. Wow. Because that was a loan amount, right? And they're like, hey, will you just take over the paper? And I knew I could refinance some stuff and I can get some cheaper rates than what they were getting. And this person—

Wait, where is it?

Quite a bit was in Cleveland, Ohio. There was some in Cincinnati, there were some in Philadelphia. So they were scattered more on the East Coast, but it was just commercial office buildings and their occupancy rate was just terrible. But the buildings were in really good condition and they didn't need to be renovated or anything like that. So they would just be like, hey, You know, you want tax deductions, we can get you bonus depreciation. You should just take over this property. And I'm like, you guys just pulled out a ton of money in less than 12 months. Your occupancy rate keeps going lower. I'm like, I'll buy it from you for the price before you pulled out all the money and just, you know, you have to put it in. They're like, no, why would we do that? I'm like, okay, then you keep it. And I can see now I got hit up again. They're like, hey, are you a little bit more flexible on the deal? The buyer's willing to, Are the sellers willing to make some concessions? And I'm like, no crap. I'm like, you put leverage on something that's terrible, you still got a turd. It doesn't matter. And I'm like, who wants to end up dealing with that?

Yeah. And what Neil was saying is that if it's a turd and you polish it and you put leverage, you make it a more powerful turd. It's still a powerful turd, right?

Yeah.

It's a turd that's on fire. Yeah. It just smells even more now. Right. So that's what it is. And by the way, the reason I asked Neil where the location was, because look, If it was, the terms were good and it was like in Florida, for example, maybe Florida's not a good example, but let's say New York, for example, right? New York, like their real estate's going to be good. Uh, Florida, like most of the people are coming into the office, I believe, but you know, it's a little more chill vibe, but you have hurricanes coming in and out. So, um, you know, I think it just depends on the location too. So, but like a lot of the terms that like location is part of the, I see it as part of the deal.

So. Dude, spot on. But yeah, it's, you know, when you're creating a business or you're marketing, location, location, location.

Yep.

Hard to fake, hard to mess with.

All right, Neil, let me tell you something that's been on my mind. So have you heard of this concept known as slop grenades?

Slop grenades?

Yeah. Okay, so you know what AI slop is, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so Tobi Lütke from Shopify has been talking about this concept known as slop grenades. And so a slop grenade is, let's say, Neil, I do a presentation deck, okay? I don't review it. I send it to you. Because I didn't review it, you end up doing more work and it ends up being a piece of crap. I have then given you a grenade and it's exploded on you.

But why would you redo it? Why wouldn't you just tell the person you're fired or tell them to fix it themselves?

Well, yeah, I mean, easier said than done, right? Why don't you try doing that, right? So let's say this, okay? So the thing is, people have been getting, you know, obviously a lot of these magazines like Wall Street Journal will spin it in a different way. I don't know if it's Wall Street Journal, but another magazine did this, right? They're like, you know, years ago, Toby Lutke was like, everyone's got to be using AI, and now today he's talking about slop grenades. And I'm like, dude, I commented on the Instagram post because I was so annoyed. I was like, dude, 2 thoughts can exist in the same world. You can expect people to use AI, but expect them to use it in a smart way, right? And so my challenge has been more and more people now are using like these, these bots, right? They're using GrokBot, and you know, we get GrokBot and we get Claude and like that for people. And then what happens is when they actually leave a— they send a file to me or whatever, or they want me to review something, it clearly is done by AI and they haven't reviewed it. And that just drives me absolutely insane. So one thing we should talk about, Neil, is how we can go about countering this, because I have some thoughts on how we can counter it. And I tried testing the team too. I threw it into the channel. I was like, hey guys, what are some things we can do about slop grenades, right? Yeah. And the way everyone answered was like anything but solving the problem. And so what do you think?

So let's actually go back a little bit. I hate how the media is twisting what Toby is saying because when he's talking about people need to use AI, it's great. He never once said people should use AI to do mediocre work and just push it out. That was never his intention when he was talking about, or any entrepreneur or leader who says AI is great. Second, this is a huge problem in which, and you've said this to me so many times and I really agree with this statement, AI really does show you who's lazy, just doesn't want to do the work. And He was going to say stupid,

guys. He was going to say stupid.

No, I was going to say that word, but I was like, no, I don't want to cuss. It really does. And then at the same time, it shows you who's really amazing. Now, your amazing people, you should already know they're amazing. The lazy people, some of them hide under the radar, especially if you have a lot of people. If you have a lot of good middle managers, you can get rid of some of them. But still, it's impossible when you scale up to thousands of people to not have lazy people in your organization. I don't care if you're Facebook or Microsoft or Shopify. They all have some sort of lazy people, even if it's 1% or a fraction of a percent. Everyone does at scale. But it's really coming out and people are doing a lot of damage with AI. Like, I see it firsthand. It doesn't mean that I'm anti-AI, and I know you're not anti-AI by any means. It's just people abuse it. They're just like, oh cool. And we have a mutual friend. You know this friend, he worked for you for a little bit. The guy is just like, oh, let me just crank out all this. Look how much I can do. Look how good I'm at marketing. And I tell him this, by the way, so I'm not saying it behind his back, but he's like, look how powerful I am because of AI. I'm like, no, you're having AI do your tasks that you don't know how to do and you're not good at. You don't really know if AI is doing a good job or not. So then when you implement some of this stuff, what's happening is, is you're not getting the results in marketing and you're blaming other things. When the reality is, is you don't have domain expertise within this marketing strategy, like whether it's paid ads or geo or email marketing or whatever the line item may be, and you're just producing mediocre, average, or subpar work. Doesn't matter how much you're paying for Claude and OpenAI, the results just suck. And then you're blaming the organization and other people because you never took the time to really learn that marketing skill set and get really good at it so you can dominate.

Yep. So I have some thoughts on how to counteract this, right? But before we give some thoughts on this, there's a reason why— I forgot what her name is, but she worked at OpenAI early, but she now has a company called Thinking Machines. And this is exactly what it is, guys. Not just machines.

Oh, whatever her name is. She was ex-CTO.

Yeah, I forgot what her name— Maria or something?

No, I think she's Iranian. That doesn't sound like—

Look up thinking machine CEO.

Mira Murati?

There we go. Mira Murati. Right, exactly. And thank you for that. So guys, it's not just machines, it's thinking machines. And we've said this before on this podcast, right? AI is an intelligence amplifier, and that comes from our mutual friend Syed. So if you're smart already, it is revealed. If you're not so smart, it is revealed as well, right? All will be revealed. You can see everything. And Neil and I were talking about this on the phone earlier this week about this. But what reveals it even more is, I remember I was kind of taking a look at what different people on the team were doing. Let's use sales as an example, right? So there's a period of time where someone on the sales team was just sending Claude-designed stuff, right? And it was all Claude-designed. It clearly looked like it was Claude-designed. But the worst part about AI, when you look at decks, Neo, is it's like 3 ways in. It's like the headline doesn't make any sense and it makes you feel like an idiot, right? 3 ways in the door. The door was broken before it was even opened or something like that, right? And I'm like, am I stupid or is this thing stupid, right? And like, it starts— you start to question your own intelligence as you're reading it. Um, and so whenever you feel like you're kind of in the wilderness with this stuff, it actually means someone didn't review it, right? And by the way, if someone's using default Claude design, like, remember, uh, Neil, I spoke at an event last week. I don't know if I told you this, but everyone, including myself, was using Claude design. You know how I could tell? Yeah. There's like a little pill on this thing. There's like the little italics that it has, and then it has a stupid, like, you know, it's not this, it's that thing. And there's like 3 columns. I'm like, guys, like, there's no differentiator here and you're all looking like idiots, including myself.

Dude, I totally agree. And on a quick side note, to go back a little bit, Mira is Albanian, not— she's not from Iran. So that's my bad. But dude, you bring up another good point about AI and always talk about this when I go to conferences. Everyone these days, when I ask who's using AI, everyone pretty much raises their hand, not because they're doing GEO or anything like that. They're using AI to actually get their work done. Small portion are doing GEO and AEO type of stuff. What I'm telling them all, because, you know, like when you're in a big room and you just ask everyone to be transparent, a lot of people genuinely are transparent. I'm like, come on, don't be shy. And few people raise their hand, then more and more. I'm like, how many of you guys use AI? Almost everyone always raises their hand. Okay, the people who aren't raising their hand want to raise their hand, they're just too lazy. And now the people who are raising their hand, I always ask them, how many times do you modify this stuff? And then I ask them, how many of you guys actually modify the work? Almost everyone raises their hand when I ask them that. Okay. And then I say, how many of you guys modify the work More than 10% of the time. How many hands do you think are usually raised?

Should be all of them still, or zero.

Less than 5%.

Less than— yeah, they don't continue to modify, which you're reinforcing this point.

Yeah, so like they say they modify, but they modify maybe 1 out of 20 times. All right, that, that's not enough. That really isn't. So you're gonna have all this me too stuff, and when I say me too, I'm not talking about the Me Too movement. I'm talking about lookalike stuff like Where's Waldo, where everyone just blends in together. And then they're like, why aren't my marketing campaigns working? Why aren't our conversions going up? Well, if everyone's using the same exact marketing copy or similar marketing copy, similar conversion tactics, similar messaging, similar flows, it doesn't convert. It's because people get numb to it. It's just like when the first banner ad came out, it had a massive click-through rate. It was amazing. People were like, wow, banners are effective. Why aren't they effective anymore? Everyone sees them so often that we all have banner blindness. That's what happens when you just use AI to just regurgitate and create the same stuff that everyone else is doing.

And guys, marketing is the act of bringing people to the point of sale, right? Which means you actually have to stand out. And so back in the day when Facebook first came out with Facebook ads, people would do like red borders around the ads and then they would get a very high click-through rate or people would actually have like— and this wouldn't work. I mean, sex sells at the end of the day, right? But people put like a really beautiful girl or whatever and then the click-through rate would skyrocket. But let's come back to how to counteract this, Neil. So, and then I actually have a point on talking about a company that doesn't have, you know, that doesn't tolerate bozos as much, right? So, but let's come back to how to counteract this real quick. So my thought is this, I read a book a long time ago, I had to be in my early 20s, right? And the book that stuck with me, I don't know if it was Never Eat Alone or whatever, or How to Win Friends and Influence People. I don't know which one it was, but the whole idea was this, and this story is now coming back to me. I remember there's this one story where it's like, Neil, imagine if you were my boss, right? Imagine if I turned in a piece of work. Before you would review it, you would say, Eric, and you would look at me intently and you'd say, is this your best piece of work? And if I said no, you would push it back to me and say, bring it back to me when it's your best piece of work. And then maybe I come back to you a week or two later and I bring you the work again and you say, Eric, is this your best piece of work? And if it's no, I have to go back and do it, right? So what I'm thinking about doing now, because again, I put this out to the team, I was hoping someone would come up with a good solution here, right? But everyone's kind of going around it. I'm like, you know what? Here's what we're going to do. If you send me a slop grenade and I have to review it, guess what? I'm not going to review your work for another 7 business days. Okay? And if you miss a deadline, it is your fault at the end of the day, right? And you will also get a warning as well, right? And if you continue to keep sending slop grenades, guess what? Those warnings are going to add up. We're going to have a paper trail for it, and it's not going to be a good thing for the long term, right? And so I'm not saying this is the solution, Neil. I'm just saying let's just brainstorm a little bit on possible solutions. Now, the easiest solution is you're just fired, right? That would be the easiest solution.

Yeah, because the problem is, it's like, if I say, let's say you and I work together, and if I said, Eric, is this your best piece of work? For me, that's a pain in the butt. I don't want to keep asking you if it's your best piece of work. I just expect your best piece of work to be turned in. I like the idea of the second part that you said, in which, hey, if you're producing slop grenades, the first time, You'll get a verbal warning. The second time you get written up. The third time, you know, you'll get written up again. The fourth time you'll be terminated. And we'll have a discussion through this. And if you genuinely believe it wasn't a SOP grenade, you can, you know, explain why and make your case. But we don't have time for this. It's slowing down the company. I wouldn't expect you guys to do it to me, and I would never do it to you, and your colleagues should not do it to you either, because it just makes everyone inefficient. So look, don't do it. Check your work. Be thorough. We're not kids here. No one needs to be babysat. Just if you don't do it, eventually— I mean, if you don't do it, you're fine. If you keep doing it, you will be terminated. And this is just how things are going to work. Yeah. And I think that's the easiest solution. The reason I say the first time verbal— now, I'm not in HR, so I don't know how HR works. But the reason I say first time verbal is you have a good culture. The last thing you want to do is if someone, you know, doesn't check or they have some issue, you tell them they should learn their lesson and you shouldn't have to repeat yourself again. But they know it is serious at that point.

Yeah. The only thing I would modify, Neil, is because we're in such a remote environment today, the first time it happens, I'll just send an email just so there's a paper trail there. And so it's like, hey, I just want to let you know. Yeah. And so it's not an official write-up, right? But the second and third time, I agree with that. And here's the thing, like I was thinking about this the other day, right? A lot of people, like, if you expect to do great things, it doesn't come from having a peaceful boss or like a peaceful organization, right? Growth naturally comes from being uncomfortable, whether it's lifting weights or whether it's, you know, having to wake up early and do things that normal people wouldn't do, right? And so when I think about an organization that maybe doesn't have as many bozos, Neil, when I've talked to a couple people that work at this company, It's SpaceX, right? Well, the thing with SpaceX is like, you get pushed, you push, you push. At a certain point, people can't take it anymore and they leave, right? Which is why you see people that have worked there for like 10, 15 years, like they tried to come back and they can't anymore because they're in a different phase of their life. So I think SpaceX is actually a really good counterexample of an organization that just doesn't accept it. And again, like it comes from high standards. You're like, you're not going to actually work at a really cool company where everything is pleasant, right? Nothing great comes from just sitting and chilling.

Dude, and I love the analogy you gave about— I think you mentioned working out there and pushing hard. You know Lloyd, right? Lloyd's wife is a Stanford doctor, really smart. She posts quite a bit of Instagram content. And I love using that analogy when it comes to weightlifting and working out. A lot of people don't build muscle, as much muscle as they want. I'm not the buffest guy by any means. I'm underweight, sadly. I have the opposite problem where I, you know, even if I don't get hungry, so I tend not to— what is it called— gain weight. It was funny because when I was dating my wife, this was a long, long time ago before we were married, hence I was dating her at the time. She would be like, you know, if I could package up the gene inside you that just makes you never hungry and sell it, we would be rich. And then years and years later, Ozempic came out.

There it is. Yeah. See, if you read, if you— it grows faster than AI.

That does grow faster than AI. And I was listening to Lloyd's wife on Instagram and she was breaking down a study, a medical study in which people who really build muscle push themselves so hard. They don't just do 10 reps or 12 reps. They're going until failure or close enough to failure in which their body can't push anymore because it, it tells their body, hey, you need to build stronger muscles or however it works biologically. And it's like, just think about that. To get results, you're pushing yourself to the extreme. You and I have been entrepreneurs for a long time. We've been marketers for a long time. When we want things to grow, we push ourselves extremely hard and we go through a lot of ups and downs. You're not giving up and you're just mentally exhausted sometimes. I don't think either of us really get physically exhausted from our work, but mentally you're getting exhausted and you're just pushing and pushing and pushing. And if people don't have that mentality of just going and going hard and at the same time learning from their failures and what's not working and adapting, then I just feel most of those people aren't meant to do well in a corporate world unless you want to be entry level.

Yeah, the saying is— go ahead, finish your thought.

And I was just saying entry level, a lot of them are going to be replaced by AI, in my opinion.

Yeah. And here's what I'll say. I would say this. I mean, if you're entry level and you've got the drive and you've got the good relationship with curiosity and you love learning, you're going to be just fine, right? Because remember, I've talked about the 15-year-olds, the 17-year-olds and all that. I think again, it's a mindset thing. Like earlier this week, Neil, I talked to a 64-year-old to potentially join the team. And this guy spent $40 grand. Keep in mind, he's an SEO, okay? And he makes probably $130 grand a year or something like that. So, it's like a good salary, right? But here's the thing, Neil. He spent $40,000 on his own racks, right? For AI. I'm like, why did you spend $40,000? He's like, because you got to. And I'm like, but who told you to buy it? He's like, I just told myself to buy it, right? So, it doesn't matter if you're 64, it doesn't matter if you're 15, it doesn't matter if you're 17. It's a mindset thing. And I've mentioned this on this podcast before. You have to go on this journey on your own. Your boss cannot push you to want to go work out, right? That motivation thing is something that you build on your own. And then, by the way, once you start to build the gene to work out, like physically work out, then you actually have the gene to build anything that you want, right? Most people just that work out a lot that are ripped all the time, they actually don't take that and then use it to build something that can be even greater than themselves. So I want to— because we're kind of talking about SpaceX a little bit, another good company that probably has a little more bozos than Nvidia but doesn't have a lot of bozos would be Nvidia, right? And so Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world, but Jensen has maintained this amazing culture throughout his career, right? So I wanted to bring something up. This is from Peter Diamandis over here. So do you see my screen?

No. Yeah, now I do.

Okay, great. So right now, Nvidia's greatest moat is CUDA, right? CUDA is their— it's one of their programming layers, right? Basically what it does is it translates the code into instructions that Nvidia's chips can run at blazing speed. But the problem with that moat now, Neil, is it's being eroded because now you can just go to an AI and say, hey, take my AI code and compile it to run fast on this AMD chip. Hence, you see AMD is rising up, Intel's rising up, you see Cerebras coming out of nowhere, right? And then there's like jalapeños coming out from OpenAI. You have the tensor processing chips, tensor processing units from Google, freaking training is coming out from Amazon. So all these things, right? Yeah. So chips are becoming, you know, have always been competitive, but CUDA was really Nvidia's moat. What am I saying right now? The most valuable moat on earth is leaking, right? So it's like, okay, well, CUDA as this inference time moat is dead. Okay, so here's the thing. Nvidia, Jensen already knew this, right? So that's why he bought this company Mellanox for $7 billion in 2019 to own high-speed interconnect. So if you want to run 100,000 or a million GPUs as one coherent machine, You still have to buy Nvidia at the end of the day, right? So the quote here is, your moat is only good until the next moat. And Jensen is moving Nvidia's moat very intelligently, right? So here's my point with all this. The durable advantage is the metabolic rate of the organization, and AI is the fastest way to raise it. So this is from Peter Diamandis, and he says there's only 3 moats left. Okay. So the 3 moats left today, Neil, would be, it is It's your rate of being able to change. That's one of them. Brand, he's arguing, is another one. And then capital velocity is another one. Okay, I'm going to repeat that. So really, number one is speed of reinvention, right? So the question is no longer who has the best moat, it's really how fast you can reinvent yourself. Number 2 is capital velocity, so which shows up on the balance sheet. So the hyperscalers, the way they're spending right now. And then number 3, he's saying to a lesser extent actually would be brand, right? So we can agree or disagree with this. We can actually react to this.

I think brand is definitely in there. Capital velocity, like how much money can you spend and how much money do you have? I don't know how much of a moat that is because there's so much money out there. I listened to Harry Stebbings, you know, the 20VC.

Yeah, yeah.

And he's telling me how crazy the venture world is. He's like, let's see if I can actually play the clip I saw this morning, or was it yesterday? It was actually, it was really crazy. And I don't know Harry personally. I messaged him a few times and he's messaged me, but I don't think he's full of crap. Just being honest. Watch, listen to this.

Put it closer to the mic.

Time to call BS on what is happening in venture right now. Every venture investor knows the truth, which is this game has completely been ruined by 3 rounds in 3 weeks. One company I met this morning raised at $150 million price. Then a week later, it raised at a $500 million price. Then a week later, it raised at a $1.5 billion price. It is still 3 people with an idea. By the way, there's another company that I met today. First round was at $3.5 billion. Then because of the oversubscriptions, too many people wanting to invest in it at that ridiculous first price, it's now raising at a $5.5 billion price. This is very standard. I sat down with my team yesterday, and you know what they say? They say, hey, trouble is, we just can't find a company that is raising under $100 million. That is not the price. That is the round. This is absolutely ludicrous. That's not a new normal. That's not healthy. That's not cool. That's just froth. It's hype, and it's bad for the ecosystem. Now, the question is, what do you do in this time? You have to play the game on the field.

So, but, um, but yeah, dude, you just— I think there's access to tons of capital. I do think it's brand. I do think it's speed to adaption. And if I had to pick a third one, and it's kind of related to speed to adoption, it is actually talent. Like how good of a talent pool you have, because your talent pool affects if you have capital, what you do with your products, do they learn from the mistakes? Do they leverage the latest technology? And I was listening to one of the guys who created some sort of semiconductor company. He's retired. He was on CNBC the other day and he was talking about the Fortune 10. Do you know how many companies from the Fortune 10 are from San Francisco, Eric? If you had a guess.

Almost all of them.

Let's see if I can pull it up. Can you see my screen?

Yep, there you go. So, okay, Nvidia, Apple, Silicon Valley,

Google's number 3,

Microsoft, Amazon are Seattle.

Uh-huh. Uh, I don't know, Taiwan Semiconductor, I'm assuming that's Taiwan. Meta is 4, Broadcom is, uh, 5, Tesla's number 6, right? Did I count it right? 3, 4, 5, 6.

Yep.

Yeah, 6 out of 10 come from the Bay. I'm not talking about the United States, I'm talking about— well, technically it's Fortune 10, so the They're all familiar, but I'm not talking about California. I'm talking about the Bay Area, right? Like, you know, everyone's just like, oh, Tesla's moving out of California. They're going to Texas. Did you know since Tesla has moved out of California into Texas as their headquarters, they actually employ more people in California now than they did prior to them leaving California as a state, quote unquote, right? And a lot of this headquarters stuff is just more tax and political stuff. And I'm not saying they're right or wrong. This is not the conversation for that. It's just more so the talent pool in Northern California is amazing. And a lot of it has to do with that's where a lot of tech was originally set up. They have a lot of amazing universities and people there have a massive risk, massive appetite for risk. And you also have a very high concentration of amazing engineers, product people, And yeah, the ecosystem has just built. Like, I just don't see the Bay going anywhere no matter what happens to the state of California. Just look at Chamath. I'm moving to Nevada all the way to, hey, I'm staying in San Francisco and not going to Texas or Nevada. I'm staying in San Francisco and I just raised some money from Salesforce.

Real quick, if you want to acquire customers faster and more efficiently this year with the latest strategies and tactics, then check out singlegrain.com. That is my ad agency. Again, www.singlegrain.com. Check it out, and if it seems like a fit, we'll get in touch and help you with a free marketing plan. Yep. Well, there's 2 of the 4 from the All-In podcast that are in Texas now, but the other 2 look like they're staying. We'll see what happens. I mean, we have this election coming up, right? By the way, have still never voted in my life. But anyway, so let me add this real quick. So let me come back to this moat piece. Do you see my screen?

Yeah. One, speed of reinvention. Is that what you're highlighting?

Yeah. So the 3 moats that survive. Okay, so speed of reinvention, right? So I just want to read this part. So the question is no longer who has the best moat. It's those who are reinventing themselves faster than anybody else. Jensen is moving from CUDA to interconnect, which is what we just talked about. Elon is shifting Tesla from manufacturing cars to offering robo-taxi services and robots as well, while SpaceX goes from rockets to Starlink to orbital compute. The durable advantage is the organization's metabolic rate, and AI is the fastest way to raise it. So again, the durable advantage is metabolic rate of an organization, and AI is the fastest way to raise it. So what I would say here is I kind of The speed of reinvention is one piece, and I think that does tie in with the talent density piece that you're talking about because you can find great talent in North Cal, but the type of culture that you build, the talent density within your own company, that's something that you can drive on your own, right? Because Tesla and SpaceX are very much driven from Elon's intensity at the top, right? Same thing with Jensen's intensity at the top as well. So I think those 2 in my mind kind of go hand in hand. Now, to your point, capital velocity over here. So We're not talking about access to compute. Anyone can rent an H100, which is an NVIDIA chip, not scaling ability. The moat is that Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta can pay for hundreds of billions of dollars of GPUs immediately out of cash flow and already have customers to fill them. So they have distribution and they have the capital velocity from their cash flows. That's true. And the hyperscaler is just a financing system. It's a real estate game. The oil analogy is exact, a liquid global oil market didn't hurt OPEC because the moat was having the oil in the first place, right? And so, um, I think a little different than the, the ecosystem that we were just talking about. And then he thinks that brand is a third smaller moat, right? So brand still holds up. Like if you're buying an Hermès bag, um, like, you know, Louis Vuitton, Dior, or whatever, those things stand out certainly. Um, but the future of AI, and maybe we should talk about this, is automatically transacting your purchases of toothpaste or paper towels. And it doesn't care about your brand. It cares about the cost, the ingredients, and the thousands of online reviews that it consumes. I don't know if I completely agree with that, because if you're so smart as an AI machine, you should be able to infer what people see as status and brand just by seeing what people talk about on like Reddit, for example, or even through the reviews.

Yeah. So the reason I disagree with his part on the brand side is consumers actually care for brand names. We work with a lot of the luxury brands out there, like we work with LVMH. And we work with a lot of other popular, like, handbag companies that, you know, everyone dreams to have. And what I'll tell you is if AI just goes and purchases purses for people, I'm just going to use that as an example. I know he did carve out luxury handbags there. You're going to have people being like, I don't want to wear this Coach bag. I prefer a Chanel bag. It makes me look better. The same goes with toothpaste. I know he gave an example of it's just toothpaste is just toothpaste. It meets the requirements. Some people like me have sensitive teeth. I know I'm a small example, but I use Sensodyne and I've been using Sensodyne for ages. If it's not Sensodyne, I would just be pissed off. What I believe is going to happen with AI and agentic commerce, it's going to understand the patterns that you as an individual make and learn from it. And then from there, adapt and do more of the things it knows you like, because then you would just be Pissed off. But on the flip side, when you're looking at agentic commerce, it's about how much data can these guys gather from you before they go and start transacting. And this is why I believe Amazon cut off Muse. I don't know if you saw that, but this is a perfect example. Facebook paid, what, $13, $14 billion for that MIT kid?

Scale.

Scale, there you go. I forgot his name.

Alexander Wang. Alexander Wang.

And then people were making fun of them being like they overpaid. I'll be honest, I was like, how the heck would you spend that much money paying this kid for a company and you're not really generating the revenue or anything like that? But look at what they did with Muse. I would— I'll be the first to say I was wrong. If they actually can keep going with Muse, I think that's going to change Facebook's business. And I think that's a bigger business than what they're doing with the social network. I don't think Muse would be as successful if they didn't have that distribution channel. But now, because Alexander Wang, I don't know if you knew, he's the one who's in charge of it all. And they're making fun of him that he was wearing a deer t-shirt with deer Crocs. Who the heck cares what he's wearing? The stock price went up.

He can wear whatever he wants.

Yes. The stock price went up by a market cap of $200 billion. Would you pay $13, $14 billion for a $200 billion gain? I'm pretty sure everyone would. And that is what happened.

I always thought it was going to work because he's one of my people. So I actually genuinely thought it would work. Now, I thought it was like, it was going to be tough, but it worked, right? Because they actually have a very strong model. Now you look at the products that they're releasing now because they're in physical game. To Neil's point with Muse, the one thing that they have is distribution. I'm going to show you something on my screen right now. I don't know if I showed you this last week, Neil, but to your point, they have the data, right? And so if I pull up my screen over here, so Neil, did I show you this the other day? It's coming up right here. So, okay, so here's what I did with MetaMuse, right? And I'm doing this inside of WhatsApp. So this is my bot called Doodoo, right? You can see up here. So anyway, I asked Doodoo. Is that you? Yeah, I don't have cats, but like, it basically was like, hey, I was like, hey, I want you to look at my Instagram. I want you to understand my style, and I want you to understand how we can— what other pieces we can add to the wardrobe right now. Am I dressed like this? No, but I'm glad it looks like this guy's pretty good looking, you know what I'm saying? So like this, right?

The coloring actually works for you, but if you go to the first picture, that one— no, no, go back to the first one, that reminds me of the Twitch founder. Do you know who I'm talking about? That's right.

Justin Kan.

Justin Kan, the very first picture. You should wear all black, it looks good.

Yeah, so like this actually looks good on me, right? And I'm like, this is actually a pretty good look. And you know, it mostly resembles me, you know. And like, this is not bad either, right?

I don't like the blue. I like the all black look. You should do all the black look. And either green's not bad, the gray's not bad.

These aren't bad. Like, this is good style, right? I'm just saying, if you have it, it's connected to your Instagram. And you know what I did yesterday, Neil? And this is why Muse plus Jev is insane. Right? I was like, hey, you know what? I want you to look at all 116,000 of my followers. Tell me all the influential and powerful people that follow me, right? I was like, tell me all the people that are in travel service, luxury service. Tell me all the people that own an agency at these employee sizes over here and use Jeb to classify, right? And it's literally classifying right now. I was like, hey, how much is it going to cost to classify 116,000 of these? $3.30, right? How long is it going to take? 20 minutes, right? I'm like, sounds good. And then, you know, I tried to take it one step further because remember there's like these other These people that have paid like Marriott and like United for these employee plans and all, I'm like, hey, can you email all the people that work at United and Marriott? And can you classify only the people that are at this level? Can I reach out to see if I can buy like a plan, right? You can't do that, but it won't let you do that. So I just want to see how far I can push it, but I'm just saying that it has all the data. I was like, by the way, one more deal. I'll say, hey, look at all these people over here that we follow on from a marketing standpoint. I want to see all their offers. I want to see all their hooks. and then you use Jev to classify it, $2.15, right? That is the power of having something like Meta and then combining it with something like a Jev, which we can talk about. But to Neil's point again, like, I do care about the brand because I did ask Muse to buy me a bunch of tennis stuff from on.com. So I do care about the brand because other people talk about it.

So dude, so my team had— they did something similar for my followers, okay? They were just like, you know, you have quite a few influential business people that follow you. I'm like, I don't think so. They're like, dude, They're like, how often do you actually log on to social media? And I was like, yeah, good point. I don't log on that often. So my team ended up using AI. They spun out a report. I don't have it in front of me, but they're telling me like people like Mr. Wonderful, you know, from like Shark Tank follow me. And I'm like, I didn't know. And they were going on and on. And there's a lot of successful rich people and quite a few billionaires who are following me. I'm like, ah, I would've never guessed. Yeah. But you know, you could do so much with AI and because Meta is connected to their own ecosystem, it's much easier because you have access to the data. But I had a question for you, actually 2 things. Well, first one is you should actually buy some of those clothes. They actually look good. I like them. I will. And then the second one is going back to their purchase of the $13 billion, right? Or $14, whatever it was, of the Alexander Wang company, Scale. You know me, all right? You already know I wouldn't do it, right? Why don't you think I would place big bets like that on my business?

My opinion here is your personality, the way it is, is once you see it working, you're all in. That's how I've always seen you. Like, for example, there's a microcosm. I'll share some stories here, right? In an unsure environment, right? When I go to the blackjack table and Neil was sitting, he was only watching me play. He didn't want to play because there's nothing sure there. It was pure gambling, right? And here's the thing, but once he saw something working from like a marketing standpoint, right, instantly he takes the bet from, let's say, you know, $5,000 a month to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, right? Once he's in and he sees the pattern working, he's all in and he bets hard.

Eric's right on that. The other thing about my personality that's a little bit different than Eric's personality, and neither is right or wrong, because if you look at Mark Zuckerberg, I don't think he has my personality by any means. And he's way more successful. And look at what he did with Scale and turned that into Muse. I am a very— would you agree with the statement, Eric? I'm a very value buyer, a value spender. I look at— I'm very financially motivated. If I was born again and put in a different role, I think I would fit in really well with private equity, the hedge fund space, anything financials with numbers like that, because that's just how my brain works. I can't get out of this rat trap of I put in a dollar, I need to know economically how I'm going to make more money right away on the arbitrage. With scale, Mark may have had the vision for Muse, but to me, and Eric knows me well, I would look at that as too uncertain. I like testing the water like he said, or seeing someone else test it, and then when I know it works, I will go all in, but I'm not the one who's willing to test it with a $13 billion sum. Now granted, $13 billion for Mark isn't as much money, but it is still a significant portion of Facebook's market cap because it's just a lot amount of cash and stock, right, um, for anyone to make that size of a bet.

Well, let me give you a thought on that, and then I'll talk about kind of, um, the microcosm of this podcast that AI spotted, right, which actually relates to your demeanor overall. But, you know, at the time when he did his transaction, it was a year ago. I mean, Facebook was a, you know, Let's say $1.5, I don't know, even $2 trillion company. So still, the argument that I read from a writer, like a tech writer, was like, look, if this works out, they need to go into AI. And if this bet works out, it's a drop in the bucket. But if they don't make this bet and they're behind on AI right now, because remember, keep in mind, he sacked a bunch of people where it wasn't working on the AI side, right? It was an existential thing. And good for him that it worked out. But let me bring us back to this podcast real quick. So A while back, I had asked one of the agents to identify what the patterns were from this podcast. And I was looking at you, Neil, and I was looking at me, and it's like, there's 2 reasons why this podcast really works. One is Neil's personality. One is because Neil talks about what will persist, right? I talk about what will change. So, those are 2 fundamentally different things. And then also, when Neil took that personality test, I still remember, Neil, when it comes to internally motivated, meaning that I'm like intrinsically motivated, right? To just grow, I'm 99%. Neil's is 1%, right? Which means he's money motivated, right? Which is not a bad thing. I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing. Like, there's no— by the way, guys, there's no right or wrong way to make money as long as you're not—

Repeat, repeat, go back. I was curious because I didn't look at either of our test results. I think I just sent you my link and didn't even read mine.

Let me tell you why yours was so perfect. Okay. And I still remember this. Okay. So let's start first. I'm going to slow down my pace a little bit here. Okay. So on my personality test, there's this trait known as internally motivated. Okay, so this is someone that just wants to get better, right? And isn't motivated by outside forces such as money. I'm 99% on that. Okay, when you look at Neil's, which his test doesn't exist anymore, so it's only in my head now, but his is 1%, right? And I actually— we actually have a mutual friend that's also 1% as well, which means that he's Actually money-driven, right?

And there's no— Is that what 1% means? 1% means you're money-driven?

Yeah. 1% is like, you're not internally— like, if you talk about like personal growth and all these things, like you'll just like glaze over, right? But if I talk to you about money, you're like, oh, tell me more, right? So yeah, but here's the thing, Neil, on toughness, 99%, okay? And I know Neil to be a very tough person with like just the way he works with people in general. He's not trying to be tough just to be tough. It's just, he's just trying to get things done, right? Neil's also very detail-oriented. I think it's got to be like 90, 99% plus. And so those are— and also Neil and I get along really well because our practicality is both 95% plus, right? Now, when it comes to like things like nurturing and empathy, neither of us are high on that, right? But I'll say this one thing, Neil. The good thing about both of us is we're both very helpful people. Yeah. So like if you start crying, I'll give you a box of tissues, right? That's about it though.

So yeah, it's tough. I do think we do have some sympathy and empathy if there's really bad things that happen, like people getting sick or whatnot. But outside of that, in work, I don't think I— at least I can't say it for you, but I don't have too much empathy, sadly.

Well, some— someone— I mean, mine's just not that high, but someone— here's what I'll say, right? Like, Just because you score low on empathy, and we can move on to the next topic after this, but someone died recently, right? For, let's say, a loved one. And I just found myself naturally doing all these things, right? And I think you're the same way too. So, it's not to say that— I think in work, if you have too much empathy, I think that's probably for a different role. I think as an executive, you probably can't have too much because you're moving so quickly and you're just trying to get things done, right? Yeah. I think it's, uh, some people can disagree with that, but that's what I think at least. 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 a global organization. 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. So one thing I saw, so I did a webinar with this guy, um, Cody Schneider, who's a great marketer. So as we're doing the webinar, Neil, and we should talk about some of these tactics, right? This is how I believe the AI-native marketer is going to look in the future. And so one thing he did during the podcast, and this is nothing new to you and me, Neil, but he basically ranked a term number 1 within 38 minutes on Google, right? So he started the workflow on that one. So he starts the workflow there, right? And the second one was like, okay, I'm going to show you how, you know, we do 11,000 ads for a month for our clients. And it's actually quality ads and it's performing well. You know, the cost per meeting is like $200 that he's booking, which seems good. Yeah. Good, right? And he's only got 6 people on his team. And so he's going through, it's like, okay, he starts running that workflow, like the SEO workflow, then he starts running the ad workflow, then he starts running like a LinkedIn DM workflow, right? And the thing that I mentioned earlier was like, okay, you know, people log into Grokbot, people logging into MetaMuse, people log into all their agents, they're just going to be managing agents all day. And I think the default expectation for a marketer is you're just going to be running multiple of these workflows and you're just kind of checking in, you're spinning all these plates and you're just checking if the plate's still spinning, right? And that's ultimately what you're going to be doing. It's the people that don't know how to adapt to start to work like this. Those people are going to be in trouble because right now when people get to me on the interview side, when I ask them, hey, like as an SEO, how do you think your job's going to look in the next 5 years? Like one guy's like, oh, I'm just going to be an agent manager in the next 5 years, right? Probably even sooner than that. And so I think people need to understand. And the part of the reason I'm saying this too is because I know my team listens to this. Like guys, like if you're working like this already, you're in a good spot. If you're not working like this, You got to step it up, right? Um, because I can't keep saying this over and over. It's becoming a broken record.

Dude, totally. Uh, speaking of doing podcast interviews, I did one the other day with a guy named Cole Gordon. Have you ever heard of him?

I actually saw that yesterday. I, I, I saw, I saw a piece of it yesterday. I was like, oh, but I don't— did you do it in LA?

I did in LA. So they flew to Beverly Hills, uh, they got a house somewhere on Trousdale that they're renting out, and then we ended up filming. So he hit me up, he texted me, he's like, hey, can you be a collab? And I didn't listen to the interview before I accepted it or not, but I saw the screenshot and I was like, right away, the first thing I said is the thumbnail said how Neil or something grew agency to $150 million plus. And then I was like—

This is $100 million, not $150 million.

No, no, I know, no, I'll give you the whole story, but $150 million. And I was like, where'd you get the $150 million number from? I'm like, we don't talk about our revenue. And I was like, I'm like, we don't really want to, you know, I don't want to end up going into it. And he was just like, I'm like, can you remove that? So then he comes back and he's like, can I put $100 million? I'm like, yeah, I don't want to say. He's like, but you said you put, you said you do over $100 million in all these other areas from years ago. So can I at least do that? I was like, sure. And then I ended up accepting it. And then I listened, it went live and I listened to it. And then he does the intro. He's like, Neil's doing over 150. I'm like, where do they get the number from? But I have to say, I like Cole, and it was probably one of the better interviews I've ever done on a podcast. This guy came in so well prepared and doing research on my whole life and business and all this kind of stuff. I was like, wow, this is really— it was fun. Like, I genuinely enjoyed it. The only part I did not enjoy, I was supposed to go to— I did the marketing school At, uh, 10,000, the last time we recorded, I came from there first.

Oh, okay. So that's, that's where you came from. Okay. Well, you said I was doing a podcast. Got it.

Got it. Yeah. So that's where I came from. And the only part I thought I was going to go to Brazil that day, but I didn't end up going to Brazil that day. So I was pushing everything forward or else my podcast with him would have been in the afternoon. The only part I did not like about it is doing a podcast interview like at 8:00 AM in the morning in Truesdale. It's cold outside.

Yeah. And you weren't wearing a jacket. That's what I remember.

I wasn't wearing a jacket. It was a long sleeve, but it was good. I genuinely enjoyed it. And it made me realize you used to do a lot of podcast interviews, which I do think is a very effective way to build a bigger and bigger audience because you can do collabs. And I don't think enough people do it in marketing, but for it to do well and perform well, you have to spend so much time doing research or pay people who are really good at it. And I don't know how good the team's going to be versus you doing it yourself, even if you use AI, like it's just very time-consuming to be an interviewer.

You're better off just doing the research on your own. And to your point, Neil, I think it is a full-time job. But then if you go down that route, you become like a media personality, right? And so, and by the way, I would say that Cole's been doing good interviews with business people and he's clearly done his research. And that's what makes a piece of content good when you actually put the time into whether it's the research, if it's a podcast interview or the packaging or thinking about the idea itself. And that's why MrBeast has always said that he spends way more time on the idea than he, than he does on the actual video itself.

Yeah. On a side note, I was at Social Next yesterday in Vancouver, and before that I was in Quito, Ecuador. You know, I'm noticing a trend. My brand's dying. My personal brand is dying.

How, how can you tell?

The more events I go to, the less people are asking me for pictures. I'm just basing it off of that.

This is anecdotal, which is fine.

And the less people are hitting me up for questions at these events. I still think the presentations are really good because I see the rating numbers, right? And typically, I'm not trying to say I'm the best speaker or whatever, but I usually have really high speaker ratings. But I would actually say my personal brand is slow. I wouldn't say it's disappearing. It's definitely not where it was when I peaked out years ago. But this— I'm not trying to like use a scapegoat or a cop-out. I'm actually really happy and excited.

And I was gonna say that.

Yeah, for years I've always wanted the corporate brand to be bigger, and I don't think it's bigger yet. But we've been pushing more of my team members to speak instead of me, right? And we're getting them to create a lot more content. And we haven't noticed any negative effect in business. And I used to dream about owning a private jet and flying around. And, you know, I even wasted time going to aviation shows and looking at private jets and almost bought one 2 times, and I backed out 2 times. And now my dream has changed all the way from, I want to own a private jet and fly all around the world, to I just want to stay at home with my family and watch the kids grow up. Still want to run a business very hard and work hard. I just don't want to be on a plane all the time.

Yep. But I mean, by the way, like there's different seasons in life, right? There's a lot to talk about here. There's the concept known as the 4 burners theory, right? So you can only have 2 burners at any given time, right? Your family, your friends, your health, or work, right? You can only really have 2 at a time. So if you think about it, Neil, your work was all the way up before, right? Before you had kids, right? It was work and what else? What was the second burner?

What are they? Friends?

You have work, family, friends, and your fitness, your health.

Definitely has never been fitness. I think I work out, but I don't think I work out hard enough for that to be a strong burner. Would you agree with that?

Yeah.

Like Noah, I don't work out like Noah. Family, I've always been somewhat close, but it's not like I spend all the time. I would say friends and work.

Friends and work. Yeah, cool. So anyway, like that was a little thing, but there's a couple things here, right? Also, I noticed one thing, and this is not talking about you, but I'm just saying in general, once social media changed from social media to interest media, which is where it was much more follower-based before, where whatever you post is going to get a lot of views, right? Things change to now it's like whoever does the greatest hook, the greatest storytelling, that's going to get a lot more views. Neil and I, we're at a point in our lives, I'll just speak for myself actually. I'm at a point in my life where I don't want to do all the research for like these hooks and these stories. And I enjoy using the AI to kind of figure these things out because it feels like a video game to me. But I don't particularly enjoy that. What I'll say is this, I think the type of content you should be making as an experienced operator should be based off of your credibility, right? Because the thing that Neil and I have that most people don't have here, if you're in your early 20s right now, I think it's just an age thing, is credibility. It's experience, right? So if you're sharing stories around that, that's going to do better. And shout out to Caleb Ralston on this. So he used to work with Gary Vee and the Hormozis. So he has a channel where he's doing really well. He helps people grow their brands. and stuff. He actually put out a video, Neil, where the type of content you should make as a $30 million plus operator. And I thought it was good. I knew he was going to talk about credibility, so I watched a little bit of the video. And the reason I'm even saying credibility is because Ryan To, so shout out to Ryan To, he did an audit on my channel. He's like, dude, you need to stop just like— you don't even need to compete with these people at my age or whatever, right? Don't even worry about that. You should just focus in on your credibility and the storytelling there. And so I think if you're an experienced operator and you're more operator first than creator, I think it's worth it to focus more on the credibility piece and then mostly just focus your time on operating your business.

So what I found is I used to go, and Eric knows this, I used to create a ton of content. I still do. I used to spend way more time doing research on the content that I want to create. Now my team does more of the research. I used to go and travel and speak everywhere. I still do, but I did slow down a lot this summer. Like how much often do we see each other for recording sessions in person? Yeah. And when I used to go and travel to speak and build the corporate— the corporation's brand, we were hoping that eventually it'll lead us into bigger RFPs. Okay. RFP is a request for proposal. So another company saying, hey, we want NP Digital, your ad agency, to do marketing for us. And we may compete against 10 or 15 or 20 other companies. And what I found was I would travel— let's use Latin America for example. I traveled there so many times to Brazil and Mexico and speaking. And then you look at how many years it's taking to get all these leads. And I still think it is worth it, but then I'm like, man, this is just so time draining. And then I look at some of our competitors who have been in business for 10+ years, and they're getting a lot of the demand from the clients we want. And I was like, why don't we just go buy them? And then you start making offers and eventually some people come to senses and you can negotiate a deal that works for both parties, but both parties aren't smiling. That's how I think you have a good deal. If both people, you know, gave a little in and they didn't get exactly what they want, you usually have a pretty decent deal that works for both people. And I was like, wait, this just gives us 5 times more of the scale. And then I'll just go speak there in Latin America. But instead of going there 8 times a year, I'll just go 2 times a year and pick the 2 biggest events and then skip the rest and just not go anymore because, hey, we just bought something that's already at scale. We're good to go. Just spend the money on the press and so forth and so on. And I started really taking that approach because right now I don't know what will close, but we have a deal in Latin America. You know, the LOI is already out, so we just have to work on closing it. We have another one in the United States, same thing. And another one in Canada where the LOI— that one LOI is not out, but it'll go out next week and I'm pretty sure they'll end up signing it. We already discussed most things, so already have 3 there. And then I'm trying to tuck in a lot in Europe because I've flown a lot to Europe over the years and I'm like, why not just buy in Germany and France and Italy and Spain and wherever else you guys need? And then I just don't have to fly as much and it just gets us market reach. And leads and all of this stuff without me having to do a lot of content. Yes, you still have to do marketing and integration and build a brand and combine and do all the synergy. So there still is a lot of marketing work, but Eric's right on the burners in life. And the way I look at it is I think I'm in a place in life where I don't mind working. I'd rather have my money work more for me and not have to do a lot of the manual grinding stuff like getting on planes all the time. It doesn't mean I'm not willing to put in the hours when I'm at home. I'm still grinding it out and putting the hours. I just rather be more by family than be on a plane. And I appreciate all the people following me, but I rather— if I could redo it all, because times are different 20 years ago versus now. Now I do believe personal brands are super effective. 20 years ago, it wasn't needed as much. I started one accidentally, but I would've focused more on a corporate brand than a personal brand. And in today's world, because I've been doing this long enough, I've built up enough money where I can just use the money to deploy it so that way I don't have to do some of the other things I don't want to do.

Well, technically you could just do that today.

What do you mean?

You could technically stop what you're doing today and do exactly what you just said.

Of just buying companies?

No, you could just live off the money.

Yeah, but I can't because I'm addicted to money. I'm the 1%— Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. So technically you can, but because you like the game, you're going to keep playing.

Correct. It's just how to modify the game to work in the new stage in life that I've slowly transitioned into. And Eric called this. Eric even told me, I think it was like 3, 4 years ago. He's like, eventually you're going to get tired of doing a lot of this kind of stuff. You're like, what's the point? And then I'm slowly adapting.

Yeah. By the way, one thing, I'm going to show you my travel stats in a second. There's a correlation, not causation thing that I'm going to show you my travel stats over time. But one thing that we've been trying to do, and Neil, I think it's probably worth, if you guys aren't doing this already, I'm sure someone on your team's covering this, but it's not just UGC, user-generated content anymore. It's ECG, it's employee-generated content. So there's companies like Clay, for example, that do a good job of, I think they use Orbital. So everyone's kind of posting on LinkedIn and you see like a box of like, 9 of them in Brady Bunch mode. It's like, look at all the people posting, right? They have this. And then, you know who does a good job of this? Goji Berry on X. Their people are always talking about, yeah, you know, Muse comes like, you know, Muse plus sales equals Goji Berry. So they're capitalizing on every single trend and each one of their employees is posting. And so you kind of just hear them being talked about everywhere. And there's a nice branding effect from that, right? And so I think because organic social is so strong right now, whether it's on LinkedIn or X, From a B2B standpoint, you see a lot more ECG happening. We haven't used this tool yet, Neil. It's called Orbital, which is tryorbital.com. I've heard good things. I think I talked to the founder once. I don't think we're ready for it yet. But as I get lazier with my content over time, I'm not speaking for Neil, but as I get lazier with it, I want— I'm down for my people to create their own brands. Like, I have no issue with it. And if they go on to do amazing things in their careers, I've always supported that, right? And I've always kept in touch with those people. And Neil's the same way too. So, let me show you my travel stats, Neil, over the years. So, this is when destruction almost happened with my business. So, this is 2022, okay? So, 136 days gone, right? 120,000 miles flown, 28 total trips, countries, regions, 5, cities visited, 35, okay? Then in 2023, this was very near destruction, right? 150,000 miles, right? I traveled more miles, but 107 days gone. So, Roughly a little less than a third of the year.

Less days, right?

Less days, less days. Correct. Yeah. And then 2024, 87 days. Okay. Uh, 2025, 46 days.

And then we're in 2025. It went down to 18,000 miles traveled, way less, like one-fourth.

Yep. And then look, this year so far it's 38. So, but business has gotten better each time I've traveled less. This is correlation, not causation. I just think it's interesting to look at the data, um, because I've been able to, to, to lock in more, right? I'm not saying I don't enjoy travel. I really do enjoy it because it gives me a lot of perspective, but it sucks up a lot of time. And also, we're at different stages, right? Neil and I— Neil's at a different stage where there's operationally, there's a lot of stuff that he can just, you know, hand off and he can just focus on that piece. For me, I kind of need to be much more involved at this point in time.

So anyway, I think your 2026 stats are off or misrepresented here because even though you traveled more in 2026 than 2025, 2026, you've done more leisure trips if I recall correctly. I could be off. I think you did Milan, you did Cabo, right? These are just personal trips for Eric. And some of these personal trips, you were working really hard and it wasn't like you were actually going for a conference or something and being distracted. You were working US hours and then you were enjoying Italy with whoever you were with.

And by the way, like, I'll call out one more thing, right? So Neil's correct. I get offered to speak at these events. It's like, hey, do you want to speak at this affiliate event in Romania or something like that, right? Or like some cool place in Spain or like not Spain, Europe. And before I'd be like, oh yeah, I've never been there before. I would do it. Like, you speak in Ukraine? Yeah, hell yeah, right? But it doesn't drive business, right? And sure, I enjoy the— like Ukraine's in war right now, but before that, you get there, it's like $1 for Ubers and like $3 for like a world-class meal. Um, don't get me wrong, really enjoyed that, but not good for business because what happens is you start to take the intensity away from the business, right? Um, you want to be able to drive all the time. And so, you know, that's what I found.

You nailed it. I still take some of them, like I'm going to Romania soon, but I'll go because I have a few other meetings in Europe and they're close enough. And I'm like, uh, someone pay for the travel, get some brand building, and my team will set up some meetings for companies that maybe we could buy 3 years from now. I always make the joke that it's 3 years from now because I'll meet them, I'll find ones that I like, I pitch them, they all say no. And then usually 2 to 3 years later, some of them will be open to selling again.

Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, like, by the way, notice that many things take 3 years. It takes 3 years to build a brand. It takes 3 years to build a business. Maybe it takes 3 years to get the deal done that you want to get done. So it's always 3 years.

Yeah, it's never quick. And I would actually say for branding, it takes 10+ years. It can happen quicker. Like, you know, Claude just blowing out of nowhere, but it didn't really actually come out of nowhere. They spent many, many years building it. And then eventually what you saw, Muse has created a really good brand really quickly. Although when I was speaking at Social Next and asked people to raise their hand on how many people use Muse, it was less than like 1% of the room, dude. Like,

what else did you ask them in terms of what they use?

Everyone uses OpenAI and Claude. Most people use OpenAI or ChatGPT specifically to search. They do not use— most people do not use Claude to actually search. A lot of people believe Google's still dying, even though the stats show otherwise. People, a lot of people use ChatGPT to search. When I ask them, they say they use ChatGPT over Google. But then when I actually ask them, if you like, think about it, how many of you have logged into Google and done a search in the last 24 hours? Almost everyone raises their hand. So it's like, You say you don't use Google, but you use it and you don't realize you're using it. You know what I mean? Right.

And by the way, YouTube's becoming more of a search engine too. They're changing up the UI. So

yeah. And the other big thing that people are now starting to realize, but they didn't realize before, people look at ChatGPT search as different than Google search and they're like, Google's traditional search, ChatGPT is very different. And I'm like, guys, how many of you have ever seen a map? Like, you know, image within ChatGPT, and people are like, just wait a few more years. Google is going to look more like ChatGPT, and ChatGPT is going to look more like Google. You're not going to look at search as traditional search or AI search. It's going to just be a search, and it adapts based on what you type, and it shows you the interface that's more applicable to you. Google has AI overviews because it works. You don't always need something thinking for a long time and then giving a drawn-out answer for something simple. On the flip side, sometimes 10 blue links is actually what you're looking for, and sometimes no links and just details is what you're looking for. And the ideal interface is just one interface and adapts to what you type in, and it shows you the best style that fits what you're looking for that solves your problem.

Search has always just evolved. The good thing about SEO is SEO has always evolved. So to us, it's nothing new, but it's funny that people kind of invent these stories in their head, right? And so Last thing, actually, Neil, we should, we should talk about the big changes that YouTube has coming. So I actually have 2 more things left before we, before we get out of here. So this will be a quick one. So if you take a look at YouTube over here, this is from Patty Galloway. Okay, so, uh, what's happening now? So video A/B testing is coming out for YouTube, right? So YouTube is going to allow you to upload 3 different versions of a video now, starting with Shorts and then rolling out to more, and test them over a period of time to see which gets the best watch time. So this is a form of doing trial reels, basically. That's how I see it. But also trial long-form videos too, so you can have different versions because AI can help you edit these very quickly, right? And so I think we're going to see different, different, probably better performance because the cool thing now is that you can also do dynamic thumbnail testing for different audiences. So I might make a video on Muse for marketers, Muse for business people, or Muse for, I don't know, for personal, right? And I can't— I can probably integrate my video to have different thumbnails there.

But so wait, one video, 3 different thumbnails. So you can keep the same video, but you can have, uh, if you're talking about how to use Muse, your thumbnail will be like, how to use Muse in business, how to use Muse in marketing, how to use Muse, uh, uh, in your personal life. It'll be the same video. You're just changing up the thumbnail based on who sees it.

Yeah. And the biggest thing here is like, you can kind of do that already, Neil, but the big take is, um, for current A/B testing essentially helps you find the best thumbnails for the big, the biggest majority of your viewers, but it isn't the best thumbnail for every segment. So imagine that you can segment out your videos now. To, to attract different areas, right? And I think that's a big thing because a lot of my videos, oftentimes I make packaging for different segments, um, and, you know, one does better than the other, but it also eliminates the other segment, which is not so good. Um, thumbnail generation, YouTube Studio. Okay, like, that's all cool. My whole thing is like, these are all AI changes that are coming. So, you know, this, you know, here's the winner that we have. Um, and then I guess you can see how these have performed for different audiences. So I think that's cool. I think it's, it's, we're gonna see a lot more innovations like this, but what do you think?

Yeah, no, I think it's great. They're just adding the stuff they should have added a while ago.

All right, last thing over here. So this is Varun from Clay. So I think Clay's doing what, $200 million ARR now, something like that?

Something like that.

So the CEO from Clay says, brand has to start with the founders, not the CMO. A lot of people ask how Clay built its brand and how they should be thinking about their own company's brand, which we just talked about a moment ago. The advice I always give comes back to this, brand starts at the top and has to be authentic to the founders. There's a lot of data that shows CMOs are most likely executive to get fired. And because of that, no matter how much they do, they're not incentivized to take huge bets on something that won't show returns for a long time, if ever, which is what brand is. And so we've been investing in brand ever since we had revenue. That's when we bought clay.com, hired a claymation artist. People ask me why, and I wish I could say it's because I'm a marketing savant, but the truth is just because I wanted to. We wanted the brand to feel a certain way to capture the beauty of a product that exuded flexibility and creativity, and it felt right to invest in it from the start. Brand only works if it is authentic, and that only happens and actually gets prioritized when it comes from the top. So when you think about it, when you look at a company like a Tesla, for example, it is very much that the culture of that company comes from Elon. The culture of a SpaceX comes from Elon, right? When you think about an NVIDIA, the culture comes from an NVIDIA— sorry, a Jensen Huang, for example. So it is, I do agree, because the founder's with the company for a very long time. Whereas oftentimes right now the CMO is kind of, you know, in and out. So yeah, what do you think?

Yeah, no, I agree with that on the culture end. So that all makes sense.

Yeah. And even though Neil doesn't technically have a title, he is a founder, right? So I do think the culture from MP Digital comes from you.

I would say the culture actually comes from our CEO now. It is very much his people, but it has adapted. But the culture of him, is actually very similar to me. I would say on certain things I move faster than him, just being blunt. I'm not trying to badmouth him. Other things, he is much more methodical than me. And I think it's actually a very good balance because sometimes I move too fast and sometimes he needs a push.

And I'm sure this is the same situation Elon probably has with a lot of, like, you know, Gwynne Shotwell, for example, right? You still are the driver. You're the— you're still the ultimate driver at the end of the day.

Yeah. Like, you know, one of my executives was like, Neil, we're sending out too many LOIs. This is going to be a lot of integration. I'm like, deal with it. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean,

but that's just how you're going to deal with it. I'm like, that's just how you want to excuse.

Yeah. All right. Well, anyway, guys, that's it for today and we will see you tomorrow.