Marketing spend rises; market estimates 4 rate cuts, CEO scandal, & Big money in political marketing

Did you see the number of rate cuts that the market's forecasting this year now?

5? 4?

4.

4.

It was 3, now it's 4. I saw earlier today, which is great. They say September is going to be the first cut. The Fed is signaling to it. I think this is actually going to cause marketing to become more expensive and competitive over the next, call it, few years. We're going to start seeing more of an influx because money is just going to become cheaper.

You know what? I looked, I asked ChatGPT today, I was like, hey, so whenever the Fed pivots, which is what they're doing right now, where they're cutting rates instead of raising them. So this is a pivot. How in the last 50 years, what percent of the time do we go into recession when the Fed pivots? And it said 80% of the time. So 80% of the time, by the way, that's like having pocket aces in Texas Hold'em. You have 80% chance of winning, right? So that's pretty damn high.

That is high.

Yeah.

And when they call a recession, keep in mind that it's already happened. They call a recession after it's happened. The data is in. They don't call a recession right when it's happening.

And, you know, with all the revising that they're doing with the jobs numbers and also, you know, they're revising— I think they revised some other stuff in terms of like revenues. I forgot what it was, but I know they revised something else.

So I don't know what this is. I'm not an economist. I'm not telling anyone I'm right or wrong because I probably am wrong. But whatever you want to call it, it already feels like we've been in a recession for a few years. 2 years at least.

Yeah, it feels like that.

I'm not saying it is, but it feels like that.

But you've actually lived through some recessions when you were working.

Yes.

And like, okay, compared to the other ones?

This one's in many cases worse, but I also have a bigger corporation.

Yeah, it's more painful.

It's more painful.

Yeah. Yeah.

When you're bigger, when things grow, it's much more impactful because even if it's the same percentage, the money is a lot more. But when things go down, Even if it's a small percentage, it's a much more meaningful number.

You know, I read something recently. It was basically— I'm paraphrasing here, but basically, when you go from like a boom to bust cycle, it hurts a lot, right? Which is kind of what we've been through the last couple years. But when you go from bust to boom, that's when it's the best. But when it's just like you're riding the high on the boom, it's not good, right? Which is what we experienced in like 2020, 2021. Like, that was a disaster.

Those are amazing feelings.

But like, it feels like it's out of control, right?

I just wanted to keep going. I was really happy.

It was like a drug.

It was a drug. Yeah, best drug I've ever experienced.

But I kind of like this where it feels like there's a chance we're gonna go into like a boom economy. And this is where you push through. This is when you make the big investments right now.

It is. And I'm not like— I'm—

You're gonna say funny enough.

Yeah, I was. I'm trying to stop saying that because I say it too much. You're spot on on that one. I've never really done drugs. Eric can attest to that one.

No, you haven't.

I'm a prude from that aspect, but I am addicted to business and money and growth.

He's addicted to winning in business. I'm really addicted to it.

It's my biggest drug. And I have to say, the highs just feel really good. But when things get really bad, it just hurts so bad because I double down. That's the best time to do it. And the reason being is everything's cheaper.

Dude, we're different. I'm like a masochist. I like the pain. When things are bad, that's when I'm the most active.

No, that is when I'm the most active. But it hurts the most. Because the business isn't doing as well and I'm spending the most in reinvesting. So it's costing me all my profits plus more and it just hurts.

But don't you feel like when it hurts the most, that's the part of the journey where like you come to really appreciate it at the end? It's the painful moments. Like you don't want to experience it again, but it's like, That's where you grew the most, you know?

No, I don't enjoy it. Yes, I do like how entrepreneurship is an up and down roller coaster. It makes it more like addicting for me, right? It's a drug.

If you won all the time, would that be fun? Yeah, I would take it. I would take it. Give me the wins all the time. That wouldn't be fun to me. That would be boring.

I would like it. I would feel like I'm on top of the world.

Well, we're also wired very differently. Like one day maybe guys will go through our personality test if you want us to do that. But we're, remember, Intrinsically motivational, that's me, 99%. You're 1% on that.

My problem is, is if I won all the time, I would feel like I'm not winning enough dollar-wise because there's always someone who's winning bigger than you. So you could say I'm winning all the time. Hypothetically, I'm not. But if I was, like, well, Elon's winning bigger than me when he wins than I am when I win.

Oh my God. Well, that game never ends then. Yeah.

So for me, I never feel like I'm always winning.

Got it, got it.

I always feel someone's winning more than me in any other industry.

Neil likes to compete in the game, which is fine. It is a game of competition.

Yeah, but I'm really looking forward for them to do rate cuts. And I do believe acquisitions will become harder for people to do just because when rates go down, prices go up.

I got to take a minute to tell you about the Agency Owners Association. This is a peer group for agency owners. Think YPO or EO, but for agency owners. And I just wanted to read you a couple of testimonials. So this first one comes from Carrie. And we asked her, what do you like most about the group? She said, having a group of people to discuss and bounce ideas. The leads are great too. Yes, we share leads in this group as well. This one from Aliyan, he says, the ability to really post whatever I want and need and the group responds. Great experienced members. Getting a lot of insights from conversations with other members. Getting a lot of value from sessions from Eric. Getting advice from others as well. And so if you want to grow your agency faster and you want a peer group to do so, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. This is a It's a group that both Neil and I created. And our hope here is to create a vibrant community of agency owners and do a lot more with it in the future. So again, marketingschool.io/agency, and we'll see you inside. Dude, I mean, we talked this morning and I've been listening to a couple of these, just listening to a couple things. Like people talk about the SBA loans, right? In America, you can get up to like $5 million to buy a company. The rules before were you can't, if you buy a company, the founder, you can't have the founder stay, right? They can't roll over any equity. Now you can do that. They can roll over like, you know, 5%, 10%, something like that. They've gotten a little more flexible with the payment terms. So those of you looking to acquire, you know, that's the thing. I'm not going to say I'm an expert with SBA loans, but I just found it interesting listening to these pods.

Dude, the SBA loans is a goldmine. I wish I can get SBA loans.

Neil's too big for it now.

But I never tried an SBA loan. We should have when we were smaller. I think it's an amazing way to grow. And whatever country you're in, they all have different versions of it. Canada has some really Cool programs. Yeah, I don't know about places like India or anything like that.

And why wouldn't they want to back someone that's kind of been there, done that in the space and wants to buy another company? It's good for job creation.

Yes.

Yeah.

Keep in mind though, if you try to default on an SBA loan, you are on the hook.

And it's a good thing because it forces you to figure out how you can move heaven and earth to make it happen. If there are no incentive, like you're gonna lose everything, then why not just keep doing it and just bankrupting everything on your way to something that's hopefully successful?

Dude, for sure.

His CEO slept with his wife. Here's what he learned about B2B SaaS. So I'm gonna pull this up over here. This is from Ethan Evans. And by the way, this guy's— this guy is—

Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's back up. So this, this guy's the entrepreneur?

Yeah.

And his wife worked at a company? Or his company?

No, I think so. This guy worked at Amazon. So he's one of the Amazon guys who we're trying to potentially have him like come coach us or teach us some of his ways, right? So he put this post on Twitter saying, my CEO slept with my wife. He seduced my wife or something and then I got fired or whatever. And then this is a lesson in pushing back. This is a lesson I learned from pushing back on an executive when I disagreed with him, blah, blah, blah. And so it was like a story about him losing his wife and then him getting divorced and everything falling apart, but then he tied it back to management. And then everyone in the Twitter comments, and the post has since been deleted, it got millions of reach, right? And everyone in the comments, they're just like, dude, you still have time to delete this right now. And then one girl was like, dude, some things are better just not being said for reach. Like, not all reach is worth it, right? And then it compounds to millions and millions of views. And then a lady responds. She's like, hi, wife here. It wasn't that the CEO seduced me. It's I seduced the CEO because you kept talking about him all the time. And I decided I had to meet him for myself. And then I decided to get with him. I don't know if that was the satire or not. But that post got like quadruple the views, like 9 million views or so, right? So the point of saying this is like, hey, this guy posted it to LinkedIn, he posted it to Twitter, he posted it to everything, right? The number one challenge for businesses is hiring. And more specifically, the number one thing I get asked for all the time is, Eric, where can I go find an amazing marketer? And the reality is right now, when you think about the world, we have inflation. That also means wage inflation. Right now, and it means that when it comes to hiring talent, you can't spend as much as you would have in the last couple years because it's just become too cost prohibitive. And so we've partnered with one of the best offshore recruiting firms when it comes to marketing. They've been a great asset for us, and I believe that they will be a great asset for you. All you have to do is go to marketing school dot io slash hire again. It's marketing school dot io slash hire to learn more. You can fill out the form there. And we're going to place you with the best marketing hires that we can help you find.

With all this stuff that's happening with the election, I know the election hasn't been happening yet. Have you been getting hit up for political marketing?

I get a lot of Democratic texts.

Dude, I get—

Oh, you mean for services? Yes.

But speaking of the Democratic text, I've been getting a lot of texts for Democrats and Republicans, and I've just been getting so pissed because it's clogging up my phone. Like, no joke, the other day I got more than 20 texts.

Wow.

And probably 7 or 8 phone calls.

Wow.

And I said right away on the phone to the Democrats, I'm not a Democrat, stop texting me, I don't live in your state anymore, because it was for Nevada. They go, okay. Republican texts, I'm not a Republican, don't text me, I'm not in your state anymore. And then eventually it stopped. It's— I still get some texts, some calls. I'm like, please remove me. And I would just say the opposite of whatever they are in hopes that they would just stop. And it eventually did stop. And, you know, Dude, the government really does need to follow privacy, or these people must not be following privacy laws because I didn't opt into any of this stuff and they're just blasting me. But going back to political marketing, we've been getting hit up a lot for people trying to get us to market politicians or their agenda. Eric and I were at an event yesterday and we weren't— we won't talk about it too much, but they're talking about how they're trying to raise money and it's costing them $10 a vote. Think about how much some of these PACs are making or raising. $10 a vote, that's not bad. Some of them are doing it for $30 a vote and they're more inefficient. That's a lot of money people are spending on sales and marketing when it comes to political campaigns. There's like an arm and a leg. You can make a massive agency from this or a career out of it. And people just think, oh well, the presidential elections are over. Well, no, it's not just presidential elections. There's bills and laws that pass, you know, each and every single year on state levels or city. I don't know how it works. You know, I'm not politically savvy one bit, but you can get paid to market for these initiatives or market against them. And we've gotten a lot of inbound inquiries, or if you just go to a lot of the political networking events, you'll find people who are looking for marketers and are interested in paying them.

Oh my God. Yeah. Even yesterday.

Yeah. Even yesterday they were looking for marketers.

Yeah.

And Eric and I don't really do this stuff. It doesn't matter for what side of the fence you are on. We just— neither of us like marketing political-related stuff.

And just to be clear, we're moderates.

Yeah, and the big issue with marketing these kind of campaigns is when you have an agency, you're gonna have employees on both sides of the fence. And it's kind of putting people in a weird position to make them work on something they may or may not believe in.

It causes divisiveness within your organization.

Yeah, and whether a bill is right or wrong, it's just like At least for Eric and I, we don't want to be the ones influencing people to sway one way or another. We want people to vote based on whatever they believe is best for them.

Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io/agency to join the Agency Accelerator— Agency Owners Association. All right. Talk to you later.

Bye.