Meta's New AI Agent, $100M Email With No Employees, and the AI That Made $75

All right, guys, we're going to start with Meta Muse today. This is the first time Neil in a very long time wanted to talk about AI first. We're going to talk about AI. I'm going to talk about how I've been using it, what the implications are. Neil's got some thoughts as well. Let's start with you first, Neil. Have you been using it? Has your team been using it? What are your thoughts around Meta Muse? And just so everyone knows, Meta Muse is the new autonomous agent that Meta came out with, which basically competes with agents such as Hermes. It competes with agents such as GrokBot. It competes with agents such as Instinct. And so this is their foray into autonomous agents.

Yeah, so I've been playing with it a little bit. I know my team uses it quite frequently. It helps with a lot of basic tasks that you can have Assistant do, such as like emails and filtering and sorting. And, you know, it can do much more than that, but I was just trying to break it down on a very, very basic level that can apply to anyone here. The reason I think MetaMuse will succeed and actually do better than a lot of the counterparts— this is just my personal take— is Meta has trust. Say what you want about Meta and, you know, their lawsuit regarding exploiting or showing kids addictive content. Meta is a really big company. I know that others are too, but they've been around for a long time. And people already have a lot of sensitive information on Meta, so they already trust them. And people are worried about Anthropic and OpenAI and all these hacking concerns and safety. I've done experiments with OpenAI or ChatGPT specifically where I deleted all my history and waited, you know, and deleted all the files and waited 30 days and it was still pulling stuff up that it shouldn't have been able to pull up, you know, 35, 40 days later. They could claim that they're deleting all of it, but my experience with some of these other platforms on a trust issue isn't— they're not at a place where I think people truly trust them, where I don't really worry about that from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta. I don't have those concerns, but I do have those concerns with OpenAI, Anthropic. Grok, I would put as unknown when it comes to trust factor. I'm not saying I trust it as much. I don't trust it as much as a Facebook or Google or Amazon or Microsoft, but I trust it more than OpenAI and I trust it more than Anthropic.

Yeah. So here's what I'll say. I've become buddy buddies with the GrokBot people. I've been like texting them, right? So they gave me their phone number, so I'm just texting them and then I've almost become like an official spokesperson for them, unofficial spokesperson, because they've been hooking it up with stuff, right? Here's what I'll say about Mark. So GrokBot, real quick, I trust GrokBot because when I talk to these people, they're the Cursor team, basically. So the Cursor team, the SpaceX team, when you listen to these people, I don't know if you listened to the Gwynne Shotwell and Elon Musk interview with the All-In podcast, because they had the conference earlier this week in LA, right?

Yes.

When you listen to these people talk, when you look at what they've built so far, I'm like, there's trust there. I would say with Meta, I think it's 3.5 billion people in the world use Meta products every day. So you can say whether you like them or not, you don't trust them. Like, the fact of the matter is, I think it's close to half of the world uses them every single day, right? Now, here's what I like. So Neil and I, we know this guy, Ryan Deiss, right? He's a great marketer. And I think he's doing a really good job with his Instagram right now. In fact, Neil, I think the formats that he's using, I'm like, oh, Clearly, I think you should be doing it, Neil. I think I should be doing it as well. I'm just, I'm speaking for you as well, right? And you can disagree with me. That's fine. Let me just show you what he has. Okay. So Neil, I'm sharing my phone with you right now. Those of you that can see my screen. So this is my phone. I'm in my phone right now. I'm looking at Ryan, right? And when I look at his videos, you know, he, from my understanding, and Neil, correct me if I'm wrong, but he's very focused on this scalable business, which is like helping other companies, like with operating systems and things like that, right? And so, you know, a lot of his videos over here, um, I think you have like, what, 800,000 followers or something on, on, um, Instagram? Can't be that high, but yeah, I have more than him. Yeah, so he has 115,000, right? And so he has like 20,000 views over here, 10,000 views, 16,000 views. And so when I look at these things, okay, 8,000 views. Here's the thing, if we look at this, um, you know, do not hire a COO, attribution is scam, or expansion stage tier list, this is very niche-specific content, right? He is trying to target a specific type of founder, I would say, right?

I don't think it's niche. I think he actually goes quite broad. I follow him. I've seen almost all his content.

I think he's going for $20 million plus founders when he does content like this, right? He is trying to say, hey, like different stages, because he knows people are going to grow into a certain stage. But he's just trying to show you the different— like we're talking about management here. We're talking about, do you— when do you hire a COO or not? I don't think that's a very big TAM deal.

It is. He's going after entrepreneurs. He's going after the whole market of entrepreneurs from everything that I can see.

Yeah, but what I'm saying here is that to me it's a little more specific. Would you agree that it's a little more specific than what— how Hormozi targets with his content?

How Hormozi used to target in the past or now? Hormozi actually creates very specific content in today's world around like HVAC and, uh, service-based businesses. But I get what you mean. If you go back 6 months ago or a year ago, Hormozi's was more broad. I think Ryan, to be specific on TAM, I think Ryan goes after entrepreneurs and it's a pretty big category when you look at it population-wise. But the specific type of content that he's creating from a dollar perspective may not have the biggest TAM.

Yeah, so Neil, let me show you some more examples here, right? Just to make the case from my side and then we'll go back into the Metamuse thing real quick. So if I look at this one, okay, Marketing channels at $20 million tier list. Okay, clearly that's $20— Neil even liked this one too.

Yeah.

So the $20 million tier list, right? So he's targeting $20 million plus companies. Now if you look at this one, blind ranking hires at $20 million in revenue, right? This one has— so that one, the tier one's 30,000, uh, views, 9,000 over here, and then 12,000 on this one, metrics at $20 million. My point of saying this right now is I like his channel because even though the views are less He is targeting specifically here, and I think his formats, the formats that he's targeting over here are really good, right? He's got reaction videos, tier lists, and things like that. So with my muse, let me just show you what I did, right? So my Meta Muse, Neil, I was just like, hey, so my Meta Muse is called Doodoo. And so I just asked Doodoo over here, I said, hey, I want you to look at Ryan Deiss's Instagram channel and Ryan's overlay over here. Okay, here's a degree. Here's a— Oh, yeah. A marketing degree in four books. It's like, here's your version: a revenue agent degree in four bots. I'm like, okay, not bad. I'm not going to say it's great, right? Not bad. Bad, better, best. Bad, better, and best marketing habits from 200k to 20 million. That's that's Ryan's right. My version might be bad, better, best AI agent strategy 200k to 20 million. Bad, better, best. So at least this is less thinking on my side. I already know a format that works, and I can take all the best formats that I like, all the best offers I like, or like. Whoever I think is a competitor, and we can look at all their ad libraries, they have the largest corpus of data because they own Meta, right? They own Meta ads. And so for me, I'm able to do a lot more things that I can't do necessarily with the other agents. And I also have connection to Tailscale. What Tailscale does, it's a little software that allows you to build like a private network of all the different devices that you have, right? So it could be your phone, your other computers and things like that. This allows Meta Muse to control all those other devices. And so I can do more ultimately. And so they've already got the network as well, to Neil's point, they already have the trust. And if I want to grow my Instagram, I'm going to go to them first. If I want to grow my Meta ads, I'm going to go to them first. If I want to understand who's performing really well from an ad library standpoint, they can do a deeper analysis there. And so that's why I think it's good for organic social. And I think it's also good for paid social as well.

Yeah, but to go back, and I think this is the problem with social media, if you look at the examples Eric gave, And even a lot of the content Eric creates and even the content that I create, I think all 3 of us don't get specific enough. And I'm actually having this debate with my team. I have a call with them at 2:00 PM today about this in which it's still too broad. Like if you look at like the 4 best or marketing degrees, like this is not stuff that's going to generate customers. And I think we're in a world, or not even think, I know we're in a world where People can get knowledge from anywhere. They can get general knowledge from just ChatGPT or Google or YouTube videos, but most of that stuff doesn't actually drive revenue. And I believe the more specific you get with your content, even if it drives 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 the views, at least from our own data that we see, it just drives more revenue, right? So instead of like, here's the best way to do GEO and get ChatGPT to mention you, And I have some generic videos. I know Eric liked one of them and he even sent me one where my team messed up the labeling on one of the videos. So appreciate that, Eric, in which I did a video on AEO versus SEO versus GEO. I still believe that was too generic. And I was telling my team, I'm like, we should be talking about how to do GEO in 50 different languages in 50 different countries on one domain or 5 different domains or stuff like that. Or You know, how do you get ChatGPT to pull from your regional brand instead of your international brand? And I think these are very specific problems that big companies have. They won't get tons of views, but you'll really see the revenue from that in the long run.

So 2 things I want to call out here. So I was listening to the Nick Shirley. So Nick Shirley, he's the guy that exposes fraud on YouTube. I was listening to his interview on the All-In event this week, right? This morning when I was at the gym. And what's interesting is Jason Calacanis is like, hey, why put yourself into danger when you're exposing fraud? Like, your physical body is there, like people want to like attack you and things like that. Why put yourself into danger? He's like, it gets more views, right? And so, we're in a world right now where things get more views. People need entertainment and I've seen it. Like, I've seen people just doom scroll all the time, right? And so, we kind of have to play into that. That's like just how the world works situation. But the other thing is, I saw this marketer who I think he does a great job, Alex Garcia. So, he's getting— it's interesting. He hosted a dinner with a bunch of entrepreneurs, right? And a bunch of marketers. And everyone, I think, is wearing a mic. And like everyone's getting recorded on the conversations they're having. So, I'm not sure I would do that because I'd rather have a more open conversation.

No.

Yeah. I don't— like when I host a private dinner, like I want to talk about stuff that won't get outside the room, right? So anyway, but he was just saying, look, man, Like, let's say you're a creator and then you're used to getting, you know, 2 million views a video or something like that. And when you have a video that you put out there and it gets 100,000 views, you consider it bad because you've tried to sell in that video. That's actually a really good video, right? So what I'm really trying to say here is like, okay, on one end, people have to create for other— to entertain almost the audience. That's one piece of it, which is why the formats work so well, which is why, Neil, when you and I just teach, those formats don't do well on Instagram, right? Or short form. They used to, but the algorithms have changed quite a bit because The stakes have changed in terms of what people want. But also the second piece too is like, if you have more followers, like I look at, and followers aren't the main thing, but if you have more reach, I would say in general, you can actually afford to go wider TAM sometimes, but sometimes you can go a little, you can try to sell on a video and you might get way less views instead of 2 million, you get 100,000, but that's still a pretty good video. So.

Yeah. And I also think it's the type of business that you run too, right? If you're in B2C, I totally get the view game. And in B2B, it could be as well, because if your market is broad enough in B2B, like you're selling software for $50 or $100, it's pretty broad. You may want to start going to a larger TAM. What I found, at least with my business, is our best clients are enterprise clients. The churn is less. No matter how much marketing that I do that is broad, it doesn't cause them to convert. the more specific content I create, the better off I do. And a real-life example of this is I just came back from Ecuador last night, like no joke, at midnight.

Hmm.

And when I was speaking in Ecuador, I talk about how to do marketing in the new age. There's a lot of companies there. Ecuador has roughly 80 million, not dollar, 80 million population. A lot of the banks were there. A lot of the car manufacturers were there. It was just a lot of logistics companies and you'd be like, logistics? There's money in logistics. Like some of these shipping container companies generate billions and billions of dollars every single week in revenue. So it was, and it was an expensive conference. So it was pretty much pure enterprise. A lot of telcos were there, et cetera. Even after my presentation, you want to know that when I was talking to most people, how many of them do you think knew I had an agency? If you had to take a guess, Eric?

Maybe 25%.

Eric's very nice. It was probably, if I had to guess, closer to like 2 or 3%.

Wow. 2 or 3%. That's crazy.

And they follow me. They see a lot of the broad content. Not one of them in the room hired us. Okay. Not in the past. They weren't even thinking about us current. They look at me as a personal brand. And when I talk about my ad agency, NP Digital, which is one of the reasons why I speak at all these events because it gets the name more out there, they think that it's great education and it helps them figure out where to go in the future with their other ad agencies and prospects. I even met one of the guys who runs Omnicom for Ecuador, all right, which Omnicom is one of the largest agencies out there. He's like, oh, I didn't know you had an agency. And the main point I'm making is depending on who your ideal audience is, like mine is enterprise and I'm trying to go up to larger and larger organizations because Accenture does not look at us as enterprise. They would look at us as maybe mid-market because for Accenture, a decent contract is maybe $10 million. A larger contract starts getting into the 9 figures. We're not enterprise if you compare it to how much Accenture charges. But if you look at Accenture, even though they're posting all this type of content online and you should do marketing, when you go too broad, it doesn't cause the Accentures of the world to be worth $200 billion. You have to do very specific marketing to your ideal customer to really grow if your goal is enterprise. But I would say it's different if your goal is a bigger TAM from a population perspective, like selling toilet paper or selling to SMBs. Versus going after very specific pool of people and there's a much smaller pool. And to use Ryan as an example, his population TAM of going after entrepreneurs that are doing $20 million plus in revenue is much bigger than my TAM where we're looking for companies ideally generating at least $1 billion in revenue a year or more.

So I have an idea, Neil. Do you want to hear the idea? Okay, but first you have to put your microphone in front of you.

Okay.

All right, there we go. All right, so I had a guy, his name's Ryan To, very smart social media strategist, right? And he's done really well with his Instagrams. And he's like, you know what your problem is? And I'm like, what's the problem? So he did an audit for me, right? And I think this audit applies to both you and me. And so he's like, the problem is both you and Neil, so he spoke about both of us, is you two have credibility. He's like, a young person like me, because he's in his early or mid-20s right now, We don't have credibility, so we have to do all this other stuff and formats, and we have to record in all these different ways and record like you're in the shower, maybe you're in the airplane or whatever, right? The more interesting it is, like whatever, you're on the toilet, whatever, right? He's like, but you're missing something. I'm like, what am I missing? Right? So he sends me this audit document and he's like, you can lead with a hook to get people in, but you should have a secondary hook. I'm like, what's a secondary hook? He's like, because you have credibility, it's like, hey, okay, You know, ChatGPT six Astra is amazing. You know, by the way, my name is Neil Patel, and my company MP Digital has worked with Fortune 500s or da da da da da, right? For like a quick one-liner, he's like that helps people understand who you are, and then you can go into the video. And I'm like, doesn't that drop the retention? He's like, doesn't matter because you're trying to get more sales at the end of the day, right? I'm like, huh. So I I just started doing that recently. I don't know how that's going to go, but my sense is like it's starting to feel more natural because I do see people include that sometimes. I'm like. Yeah. Why aren't we not doing that? I'm like, maybe you can do it too. So I'm just going to pass it over to you. You do it if you want.

No, I already do it. And you know where I got this idea from? You, you told me to start doing it on YouTube. I said, I've been doing it for 6 months.

Not on YouTube for, uh, for IG Reels. On YouTube, I told you to add the mid-roll. You, so I watched one of your videos recently. You put the ad at the end.

I like to put it at 25%. Well, we don't do end. We don't do mid-roll. We don't do beginning. We do wherever it fits naturally. So what we found is with YouTube, we see a massive drop-off the moment we say it, but we still say it and we say it wherever it's natural or it makes sense. But, you know, we don't do it on Reels like you're saying.

Yeah. So he said he brought that up on Reels. And so like, first I thought it was a little awkward, but I started doing it a little. I need to do it. I need— I just started testing this, right? I'm going to need to test it a lot more. But once he brought that up, I started noticing some other people that do it. I'm like, it is actually fairly natural to see it. And so once they watch like, I don't know, 7 or 14 of your reels or whatever, and they've seen that enough times, like they should remember that you have an agency. So my, my, my bet is like, that's worth testing. If we come back to this in a year, maybe that 2 to 3% number is maybe like 10%.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I think it's worth testing.

Um, so Bryan Johnson's wife, not wife, Bryan Johnson's girlfriend manages his social media. So I saw a clip yesterday on reels and I normally don't remember the clips that I'm watching. But, um, she, she basically said like, F content calendars, like F content planning, right? It's like the plan— the, the main goal of social media is just to get content out there and just iterate and test and look at the numbers and iterate, iterate, iterate. And I think, um, you know, I'm not saying I agree with her completely on F your content calendar. I think if you're like a busy operator and you're creating content, you probably still need some sense of organization. But the way— if you're a pure creator right now, you're constantly just trying to It's almost like ads. You're just trying to crank out as many ads as possible because each creative is like an ad and then you're testing rapidly and you're adjusting, right? And I think the world that we're going into today is, for example, today I was walking to the gym and I was like, I saw that one of my X articles didn't do that well, but I'm like, it's not a bad X article. I'm like, okay, I'm just dictating to my little Codex thing and I'm like, can you just change the hook on this one? And can you change the headline and change the hook? I want you to delete this post and I want you to republish again. And then by the time I arrive at the gym, it's already done. And I said, hey, I want you to delete this YouTube video that seemed to flop, but I think it's a good video. Go ahead and repost it, but I want you to change these subtle images over here and change the headlines. And then, but like, because I have all these workflows now, I feel like I'm able to test more rapidly where I wasn't able to before. So I kind of understand what she's talking about, but I think it also depends on what type of creator you're like. If you're a business creator, you probably need some type of planning. If you're like a pure content creator, more on the creator side, you probably should be rapidly testing as if every creative is an ad.

Yes. What we found is with social, the moment we have people comment to become a lead, we find that to be much more effective than mentioning the company name from all our most recent tests. Because every week on Instagram, LinkedIn, and all the social platforms, I put out 2 reels that promotes NP Digital, and I actually mention NP Digital. Okay, so I don't do it on the majority, but I do it on 2 reels every single week. So 2 out of 7. And what we find is it maybe it produces leads, but our sales teams typically ask people where they came from. We haven't seen too many, too much revenue from that. But on the flip side, we're testing this new concept. It goes against what I like doing, but my team wanted to test it. And it's a— I did one that got posted the other day. It has like 80-something thousand views. And it was really simple, 37 places AI checks before recommending your business. And I just list off the 37 places and it's pretty quick. It has 83,000 views so far. It just got published, has 600-something comments. But I say, you know, something around, you know, most people only do 3 or 4. If you want to figure out where your business is losing out and where you're going to be beat by your competition, put audit and my team at NP Digital will send you a free analysis. And in essence, we're trying to collect leads leads from it. So I don't have the data yet because it's too new, but I'm trying to get very specific because I want global fortune, not even fortune. I want like global 100 brands ideally that I want to work with because that's where I see the future of my agency. And they're just like, let's just see what gets the most amount of views. Because people in social media, when they work on a social media team, I don't know what it is. It's really hard to get people to not measure themselves based off of views, comments, likes. They just tend to, no matter how many times you talk to them or how many times you switch out different people.

Yeah, you know what I think needs to happen? It's, you know, you can have— every metric needs a pairing metric. And we've talked about this for years and years on this podcast. We've been doing this podcast for 10 years. And so sure, if someone comes into your social media, they want to join your social media team, it's like, hey, I want to optimize reviews. Like, okay, Fine, but you're going to be held on views and the pairing metric is going to be leads. So if the views that you're driving aren't driving leads and maybe it's on a ratio or something like that, then you're not performing at the end of the day. Are you okay with that, right? If you're not okay with that, you shouldn't join our company. So that should happen during the recruiting process. But I'm looking at Neil's video right now. One thing that Neil didn't mention is, sure, NP Digital works with a lot of enterprise companies, but he also has NPXL too. So there's a lot of SMB leads coming through, they will go straight to NPXL.

Yeah, but we're mainly trying to push— That's right. So we do end up generating revenue from the SMB, but we find it easier to scale and grow our business focusing on enterprise than SMB. I know there's a lot more SMBs out there, just enterprise businesses don't churn that much. SMB businesses can churn for the most randomest reasons that you can't control. Enterprise, it may take you 6 months to a year. Some of our clients like Heineken, I think it took us like 3 or 4 years. I forgot the the number, but once you get them, assuming you do good work, they expand really fast and it's just much more stickier. Yep.

But looking at, by the way, looking at Neil's post over here, so I'm going to share it real quick. So if we look at Neil's post, here it is. Okay, so this is just Neil reading stuff, right? Here's 37 places AI checks before recommending your business, right? Here's the thing. This is why I say the format's very important because this is a trending format right now. I saw some other people using it, but Neil doesn't want to spend the time figuring out formats. Okay. And now maybe his team's on top of it, but I just want to have the best formats. And so MetaMuse can just stay on top of the formats for me. And then if I'm Neil and I might come across like this format that I really like that my team might have missed, right? But I just want the thing to send the formats to my team and that way everything's taken care of and that way I can just have everything gift wrapped for me so I can just sit and record.

Yeah, and you're spot on. And I think it's great for that. My team takes care of it, but I do know they're using AI to help because they're looking at them. I think we track like around 60-something creators in the business and marketing space, and they look at the most popular videos every single week. Yeah.

And that's all you need, ideas for formats and all that stuff. You need a format library because these things change so rapidly. And the formats, guess what? All these B2B formats, they copy just the top creators out there. And so, um, MetaMuse will help you with that. All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Niels. agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organizations. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side.

Dude, you know, going back to enterprise, to give you an idea about specifics, we closed one of the biggest weight loss drugs. I can't say the name unless it's on our website, but Everyone knows what one of— there's a lot of weight loss drugs, but I'm saying one of the biggest. Everyone's been using it.

Everybody knows this one. It's bigger than AI.

Yeah, everyone's been injecting themselves for a long time. All right, so we do their work in Brazil, did a really good job, and they saw some of the specific issues that we talk about that are very specific to a global brand, right? This is a large organization. I'm not talking about $1 billion or $5 or $10 billion, much larger than that, right? We closed another contract with them. How many years do you think the contract is?

5 years?

I wish. 3. That's still good, right? 3-year contract.

It's great.

And already after we signed the first contract, because they already started working with you in one region, now you're working in another region. Within a month or 2, it's actually less than 2 months, but within a month they're like, all right, let's talk about this other contract that we have now too. How can you guys get started on it and what can you do over multi-years? That's the cool part about creating very specific content for big TAMs from a dollar perspective, but not necessarily an audience perspective. You can create stickier revenue opportunities and it just creates a more predictable way to grow. And the best part for me is it's not relying on my personal brand because I don't want our clients to know me. I want our clients to know the company and it would be really cool 5 years from now if people are like, yeah, we don't care for Neil Patel. He's useless. Like, hey, I would be very happy with that.

I have an experiment for you. Stop creating content for 90 days.

I can't. It drives too much for the SMB. It doesn't actually help much with the enterprise. Like, I know this for a fact. Most enterprises don't even care about me. The SMB division though, it feeds it. And if I stopped, it would hurt the SMB numbers a lot.

So you, do you know the, the number of leads that you're driving from social for SMB?

No, no, no, no, no. Let me rephrase this. If you had to guess what portion of enterprise revenue is driven from my personal brand and me and my content that I'm creating, if you had to guess.

Single, single digit percentages on the lower side.

It's around 6%.

Uh-huh.

Okay. And that's the leads. If you actually look at revenue, it's actually much less than that. If I had to guess on the revenue, I don't have the number, but I'm pretty certain it's somewhere around 2 or 3%.

Ah, see, I'm right.

So it's really low on the revenue perspective. If you had to guess, what percentage of the SMB leads am I driving?

At least 50 or 60%.

It's north of 70. It's less than 80, but it's north of 70.

You know why I say at least 50 to 60? Because I know the types of leads we deal with, at least 60% know who I am.

Yeah. Revenue on the SMB side, I'm driving a little bit more than 50, so it's not as high. The reason for that is our SMB division gets large contracts that are SMB and aren't SMB really. And I'll explain it and they'll find us from places like ChatGPT and places like that, or Google. It has nothing to do with my brand, but it's like, we have a dental practice that has 200 locations in the United States. We're looking to expand into more locations and also looking to expand into Canada. You know, what's a good agency that can help us with these list of services, right? So, You would look at that as it's not SMB, but if you look at how much they pay you per location, it is more SMB type, but total contract value is more enterprise type.

That makes sense. I think it'd still be a fun experiment that you can do in a couple years. We'll see, maybe 2, 3 years.

Dude, I totally agree with you, but right now I just know if I did that and I stopped producing content, we would see the hit on the The SMB side, because even with enterprise, what people don't realize is no matter how big your brand is and how well you're known, and I'm not saying I'm the biggest brand by any means, I'm not. And I'm not saying I'm well known everywhere.

I'm not.

There's more, you know, people in business like Hormozi, you know, maybe even Ryan Deiss, definitely Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, et cetera, that are more well known than me. What you end up— and Dan Martell now, right? He's getting tons and tons of views on social. I don't know if you see what he's been doing.

Mm-hmm.

But a lot of the enterprise companies, if you're ever trying to market to them, they have RFP processes, they have procurement, they just have processes in general, how they select companies and not select companies. And it doesn't matter who you are, you're either on that list or you're not. Or a lot of times people don't realize this. Did you know, at least in marketing, a lot of how the big marketing contracts are selected are through search agencies and they determine the shortlist? And then they help the whole process and then they bring it to the corporation. So the biggest marketing contracts that you're seeing, like the Publicises, WPPs, et cetera, get, they're not actually reaching out to publicists. They're reaching out to a company, usually has no more than 10 people that go and just interview the agencies on their behalf and select who they want. And then these people who run these 10-person organizations, they do seminars and trainings on how agencies should pitch and all this kind of stuff. So if you don't pay for their stuff, you're less likely to get selected in the process.

Yep. So here's the thing. Let me call something out real quick because you mentioned Dan Martell and you mentioned Hormozi, right? So I think they do a great job with their content. So for example, you look at Dan Martell, he's got 3 million followers, right? So if you look, so I guarantee, Neil, your team has Dan Martell listed as one of the format people to draw from.

They do.

Yeah. So like this is the format that Neil was doing, right? So the 30 skills that you're not using with AI, right? This one over here. And so this is wider TAM. AI tools that make $100K. Okay. That's wide TAM over here. Like 3,400 likes or 200,000 views, right? And then this tier list over here, keep cut over here. So he's doing a really good job with his content. I would say it's wider TAM. And I think what happens sometimes too is like Neil, you just mentioned that selling seminars and things like that. So you don't sell seminars. I don't sell seminars. I'm not saying Dan does, but Hormozi does actually sell seminars from my understanding still, right? If I'm not mistaken.

Dan has coaching and seminars or some similar stuff like that.

So that actually makes sense to go a little wider TAM with this stuff because you're— because if you're gonna get someone into a seminar, you might, you might get them into like some type of ascension funnel first, right? So they might buy your books first, and then eventually if they can afford it, they'll spend $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000, $20,000. And then once you get to the seminar, then you get for the privilege to pay for I think for Hormozi's seminars, it's like $50,000 or whatever, or $30,000. I don't know what it is. Then you can go, you have the privilege to then go talk to him, right? And so there's multiple levels to this. It's just that for Neil and I, we happen to sell kind of similar things. It doesn't make sense for us to go that wide TAM. And the thing is, if I went super wide TAM, dating, finance, all these things, it starts to become confusing. It's like, well, what is Eric Siu known for, right?

Well, you did it. You want to talk a little bit about your experiment? Because you went wide.

Yeah. So let me show you this real quick. So let me go to my YouTube channel over here. So let's go to Leveling Up. Let me share my screen. This is a good thing about being virtual.

So as he's pulling that up, I just went to danmartell.com, humanity's biggest cheerleader, author, entrepreneur, coach. So he is a coach.

Okay, there you go. So, okay. So Neil, if I look at my most popular videos, okay, So you can see Vivian Tu over here, which is great. Your Rich BFF, 731,000 views on that one, right? This one's Y-Tam, Ryan O'Toole. Look at the packaging here. Are women killing relationships? Modern dating is impossible. 490,000 views, right? And then we do this second one over here. The thumbnail is all men pay for sex, right? And this is not me saying this, by the way. And it's like, the truth is marriage isn't usually worth it. Of course that's going to get views. You also know what happens? People fight each other in the comments. You have the men and the women fighting each other in the comments, right? It's not going to drive leads at the end of the day. And by the way, I'll say one more thing. I've been doing podcasts, like interview podcasts, even before Tim Ferriss started doing it, right? And before, I was just interviewing CMOs. So, I tried to go wide TAM here. And even when I do the Seth Godin one over here, 159,000 views, or this one did well when we spoke in Germany. I don't know why it did well, but it did well, right? You and me here. But this Hormozi one over here, 132,000 views, right? Like these drive— these over here, Seth Godin, Hormozi, I would hear from other entrepreneurs like, oh, great interview, right? These over here, when I would go to business events, I would hear from the wives of people, of entrepreneurs. So that's the difference. None of these really drove leads.

And just to clarify here, Eric's not saying that women aren't entrepreneurs as well, but the people that were—

Oh, definitely.

The people that were— because in his YPO group, he has quite a few females who are just crushing it. But he's saying the people who typically were hitting him up were spouses of the entrepreneur, not the entrepreneurs.

And sometimes, by the way, sometimes the spouses are men too, Neil. Yeah.

So do you want to click on Shorts and then go popular? Because I'm assuming you probably have more views on some of the Shorts for some of those topics.

Oh, for sure. Look at this one. See, I'll let Neil describe it.

How rich can you get on content creation? 3.9 million views. The next one, this will change your perception around money, 2.7 million views. This one, you know, I hate.

This one pissed you off.

Yeah, it just gets me mad. And this is, never stay at a job for more than 2 years. This is from Your Rich Best Friend or whatever it's called, 2.1 million views. If you want to stay at home, if you want to stay at home wife, dot, dot, dot, 1.7 million views.

And it keeps going.

Keep going after some more of the other ones. Why net worth— I can't— what was the top one?

Why net worth explodes after you make $100K or something like that.

Yeah. So some of these just have massive amounts of views and they're super wide TAM. And Eric tried this because the whole experiment here, and I thought it was a really good experiment, was if you create wide enough content, you appeal to the masses. Some of those masses own businesses, work at large corporations, And they may think of your business when they're interested in that service or product that you sell. If I'm not mistaken, Eric, that was your overall experiment, correct?

Correct.

And, you know, what ended up happening at the end of it?

I stopped it because it didn't drive leads and it took a lot of time. And honestly, if you're, when you're doing interviews and Neil, you've done interviews for a little bit, I knew the interviews wouldn't go well for you because you have to do a lot of planning actually. You have to do, it's harder on the interviewer.

Yeah, I, luckily my team did a lot of research beforehand, but even then I'm like, dude, I don't want to end up doing this. And it goes back to our recording session. I think it was last week where I mentioned, I'm like, dude, it's just easier for me to go buy the companies that offer the services that we're not as well known for and already get the big leads and RFPs and just merge them all in.

I'm like, well, actually, Neil, on that one, it's that, that's really what Neil's saying is that's, it's a distribution game at the end of the day. And he already has a distribution because they're a global organization. And when you plug something in and you already have the customer base, that is higher leverage than having to create content from scratch. If you're starting from scratch, by the way, I would highly suggest that you create content. But when you have leverage, you have to think about what is the highest priority thing I should be doing with my limited time. And that is what Neil is doing fundamentally, right? And by the way, look, when Neil and I talked about the Laurel Piano place, 8.9 million views.

Wow.

Discount place on— you don't see it on the screen over here, but I changed these, the top 3 into marketing, the ones that I pinned. So remember when I told a story about the models? That one got 2.3 million views, right? Or this one, 8,000 people versus 1 chatbot. So maybe people call me an idiot in this one, right? And so these are good, but like, they're not necessarily going to drive views either. This is entertainment. Look, 8,000 people versus 1 chatbot. That's entertainment format. Subtle psychology of attractive marketing. That's entertainment, right? From 550 million views to 300 million 30 views. million views. I think this one's a little better, but still, they're not really leads drivers.

Yeah, no, definitely. It's all about finding out what helps you grow. Like for me, the simple marketing lesson I ended up learning, and it was through a specific acquisition that we made at NP Digital. I won't mention the company name, but we bought a company that specializes in something specific. A service that we weren't well known for. And we had their growth over many, many years. So like, let's call it the agency was growing at 10%, sometimes 5%, sometimes 15%. They had slow growth, but it wasn't slow growth because they were doing a bad job. And when I say slow growth, I'm not trying to diss the company. It's an amazing company, amazing team, amazing culture, amazing logos. It was more so, it's a niche, so you're only going to grow so fast because in that vertical, it's not like agencies make $50 million or $100 million a year or anything like that. So they were doing good considering how many years they've been around, and again, great product, and they were getting inquiries from bigger organizations. And what we found through this acquisition, and I stumbled upon this, this wasn't intentional, this was just I learned this and it was just sheer dumb luck. When we buy someone that's well known in a space that's been around for over 10 years, they already get big leads hitting them up, but they don't close as many of them and they don't close them as for big enough price points. It's usually for 2 reasons. One, it's their size. So other organizations are like, well, they're good at what they do, but we can only pay them so much because they have 40 employees or 50 employees or 30 employees or whatever it may be. And the second is, is they may not offer all the services that these big companies want, but these big companies hit them up because they do this one specific thing really well and there's not too many others that do that. So when we gobble them up, instantly a company will say, oh, you're NP Digital, you got 1,000+ people, you're in 28 countries. Sure, sounds good. We can pay you half a million bucks a year, $1 million a year, $2 million, no problem. The risk isn't that big. Like the old saying, you don't get fired for hiring IBM. I know Eric said that many times. We're not IBM by no means, but it's a version of that at a much, much, much smaller scale. And the second thing is they'll be like, oh cool, you can also do all these other services we need as well. So it causes these companies to— let's average it out to say 40 to 60% EBITDA growth in just 12 months of just buying them.

You know what I'll say to that too, Neil? I mean, as you're talking, I'm like, oh, you know what? There was someone that reached out recently and reached out for an investment to their agency, right? And they're listeners to our podcast. So thank you for listening to the podcast. Now, it doesn't necessarily look like a fit right now, but it reminds me that the fortune is in the follow-up when you come to these things. Because Neil actually mentioned this before, the deal might not make sense right now, but the deal might make sense in a year or 2 years for you. And it makes sense. And the beauty of this is I use Superhuman as my email thing. And so you just ask the AI like, hey, who was I talking about with the, with the, you know, regard in regards to this deal? But you should just make a note in 6 months, come back to this guy. And the question I always ask when I follow up, I don't know what you do, Neil, but I just say, whether it's recruiting someone amazing or whether it's an acquisition, I just say, hey, how are things going? It's always how are things going, right, Neil?

Yeah. Remember the guy you introduced me to at Inbound years ago?

Yeah, the Spanish guy. He actually texted me recently, the Spanish guy. Yeah.

So I ended up following up with him. He ended up selling his company to another one that was doing a roll-up, but if he was willing to sell and it was going to be a normal price, I would have considered it, but I always follow up with everyone. And even when he sold, I still wanted to understand how things are going. How's the market in some of these regions? What are you guys seeing? Because even if you're not trying to buy them anymore and you know they've already taken someone else's money, you can still learn from someone, right? If you've been in a space for 20 years and someone's only been in it for 5 years, it doesn't mean that they can't teach you something that you don't know. So just always follow up, always maintain the relationships, and never burn bridges.

Yep. Thank you for that, Neil. And then I'm scheduling a message Right now, how are things going? And it's going to go out in 6 months. Send later in 6 months. There we go. March 18th, 2027. If you're listening and this is you, it will come to you. Yeah. Let me show you something real quick. Let me go in a different direction. I actually want to get your reaction to this. So, there's this company called Eight Sleep, which I love. Full disclosure, I'm a tiny investor in this company and I love their products. So, I thought this was really interesting, Neil. I'm going to play the video for you too. So, here we go. So, all right. Before we had an email marketing team, now we have zero. Everything is done through AI and email marketing makes a very large amount for us and everything is run by AI.

So what happened is we were forced to that, meaning the person leading, we had a team of 2, then the person leading the team was leaving.

And at that point, my co-founder, Aleksandra, jumped in and said, okay, let me see how I can use AI to really know, make this work. And within 3 days, he was able to build multiple bots that now run all our email marketing. So now we have a team of zero and email marketing makes close to $100 million. So what's your reaction to that, Neil?

So I saw it when it came out and it started doing extremely well because everyone's like, wow, he's using AI to make email marketing generate $100 million. And what was his team size before? 2 or something like that?

2 people on email marketing.

Yeah. So let's call it he was spending $300 grand max for $100 million in revenue. The first take on this is email isn't generating him $100 million a year in revenue. He's collecting emails through Facebook ads, through organic, through, I don't know, Google ads. The list goes on and on.

So emails Part—

email is responsible for part of the revenue, but he's typically getting some of that traffic in direct, some of that traffic through other paid media channels. So other marketing channels are contributing to that $100 million in revenue. That's the first thing I want to make clear here. So anyone who thinks like, oh, email, you can just make $100 million with no employees, it's not really the full picture. The second thing is, if he's getting $100 million or similar amounts of revenue Without those 2 employees, I would say he should, I'm not saying he needs the 2 employees, maybe it's one, maybe it's a part-time, but they probably weren't doing the best of a job. And if he combines human with AI, I think you need to use both, he can probably generate more than $100 million in revenue from that channel. Of course, some of that revenue should be partially attributed to other channels as well.

Yeah, so what I'll say is that I was actually talking to a guy who runs an email marketing agency yesterday. at a conference. I'm not going to name names, but he's just like, this really pissed him off because he's like, well, you can't do really good email marketing without really good copywriters at the end of the day, right? And to Neil's point, I think what you're just saying is like, this $100 million, there are other costs associated with it for the people that are running Meta ads and things like that, right? And so they're probably spending a very healthy 8 figures on this. And I think My takeaway from this one is that I've been saying this more to my team recently. In fact, I told some of my team members this, I was like, hey, I want— how many of you are actually doing 95% of your work inside of a harness right now, which is like you're not logging into a user interface, right? I'm like, okay, great. I'm going to give you access to GPT-6 Astra because some of them have been asking for it. And it's an unlock, right? Because most of our team is using Claude Teams, but I secretly use GPT-6 Astra on my own. I was like, you know, I think we're all going to be— when I interview people, when they get over to me, I'm like, hey, like, how do you think the future of your work is going to look like? He's like, well, I think we're just going to be managing agents. I'm like, exactly. So you're going to be managing workflows. And so I think this is kind of a microcosm of humans are going to be managing agents or workflows more. I think the whole with no employees thing is a bit overblown. I think you're still going to need people, but it's just a good headline that what we're saying earlier, It will get you views.

Yes. And if you look at Harry, I follow him as well on Instagram. He's been creating, and I'm not saying it's bad, I like his content, I follow him. He's been creating sensational content that just gets massive TAM views, kind of like, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk or Dan Martell or Alex Hormozi. And he's been going down more of that path, at least on social media. But when you look at You know what Eight Sleep is doing, what I hate in business just in general, and especially in marketing, people don't call spades spades. They try to adjust the numbers or paint a different picture than reality. And I really hate that specifically when it comes to revenue or profitability or growth. And if my team did that to me, they know I'll eat them alive.

Yep. By the way, I mean, let's just look at Harry Stebbings real quick. Okay, so—

You got to do it on Instagram.

On Instagram? You want me to go to Instagram? Why not his— what's wrong with his X profile?

It's very different. Go look at his Instagram versus X.

Okay, okay, let's go to— okay, Harry Stebbings Instagram.

Uh-oh, is it this one?

I think it's this one.

I think it is.

Yeah, okay, great. Okay, let's take a look at this because I have seen one, um, get by. Okay, let's scroll a little bit. Let's— okay, so just, just— I'm— those of you that can't see the screen right now, so The first video I see has 500 views and then the next one's 24,000, 5,500. So it's not like he's getting a ton of views, but let's go find a controversial one that has more views. What do you see, Neil?

Apple's latest launch is embarrassing.

Where is it?

A little up.

This one?

Up, up. Scroll up backwards. Right there in the middle.

Oh, this one. Okay. So yeah, 40,000 views on this one. Let's see. Turn us. I thought you were meant to turn us back to Apple, but God, we saw a breakdown of Apple's latest innovative products and all I can say is, oh no. I mean, we just wanted Siri. Okay. So that's one, 40,000 views on that one. Okay.

And then this one, Sydney Sweeney, the next big tech investor, right?

Could Sydney Sweeney be about to become one of the next great tech investors? I see what he's doing. Okay. Then this one has a lot of sensation around this too. Like the people are terrified of AI.

He doesn't have tons of followers.

Keep that in mind. The last 24 hours have been wild and you cannot miss this. So first, this guy, Jacob, an AI researcher. Okay. So it's really talking about, it's, he's really just hitting on tech's most controversial stories of the day. Um, and he's getting on it quickly and I think he's going to grow this account quickly. Very fun. Huh?

Yeah. When I said he doesn't have a lot of followers, he's getting a lot of views for the followers he has. His follower account will grow extremely fast.

And by the way, Neil and I, we can play this game, right? But here's the thing. If I look at Harry as more of a pure content creator, right? Like, sure, he's an investor, but he started 20VC first. It was interviewing other investors, and that's how he got the audience, and that's how he's got his deal flow. He's investing. That's great. His job is to generate more awareness so he can potentially generate more investors. He could also generate more deal flow at the same time. That is his business, right? And so it makes sense for him to go into this world and attract a wider TAM. So that's how I look at it. More LPs for him. More investment opportunities. What do you think, Neil?

So when you look at the video in the middle, like $10 billion, uh, I think $10 billion valuation and no revenue, I believe that's what it said. It was something like that that he just posted the other day. I watched it and then he was breaking down all the previous investors like Mahmoud, Sequoia, and all that. Yeah, that one. Yeah. So, uh, and he's just breaking down a startup that Ends up integrating AI into text messaging so you can just text back and forth like iMessage and just get all your stuff done through an assistant and why it's blooming up and, or blowing up in a good way.

Bless you.

I don't know if this is the kind of content that's going to get him more deal flow. I think the stuff he was doing before when he started 20VC, going very specific and going after like the Peter Thiels or the entrepreneurs who are super successful, I believe that kind of content, it did get him known. That's how I first learned about him. That's the kind of stuff that's going to get him the right deal flow and LPs who are going to give him money. That's my opinion. I don't think this kind of stuff is going to help him as much.

So Neil, let me share my screen with you because this is actually what he's talking about. This is the startup. So he's talking about this company Instinct, and I want to show you real quick because this is a— I actually use this agent, and Neil, I'll actually give you an access code if you want one. You probably won't because you're too lazy to do these things, but whatever. I'll give you an access code because this is really easy to set up, right? I actually gave one to one of our mutual friends. And so check this out. So what it did for me this morning, it's basically just set it up as iMessage. This is the startup he's talking about, Instinct, right? So there's a $10 billion valuation on this one, which I think is way overpriced, right? But that's not to take away from the fact that this product works because you just open it up. You don't have to worry about what connectors do I need to add? What do I need to do here? what agent are we doing over here? It's just, it works, right? So Neil, let's say you have millions and millions of points hypothetically for travel. So what it's doing for me over here, I was like, hey, I have, you know, X amount of points over here through these programs over here. I want to book travel for, you know, this country over here by this date, and I want you to plan out the entire itinerary. It can do that. Not only that, um, Neil, I've been trying to get access to this, this tool called Jev, with J-E-V, which just came out. It's like one of the, uh, ex-guys that created, uh, uh, ChatGPT. It's like a real fast AI. It can do like Huge swaths of data analysis within seconds, right? Like huge. And I'm like, whoa, there's big implications there. So, I'm like, you know what? Today's Friday. I have a little more time today. Friday, I block out my afternoon. I'm like, I need access for that. And so, I go to Instinct. I'm like, hey, I need you to find a person who controls the waitlist for Jev and I need you to reach out to him. This morning, I checked. It's like I see, oh, he email replied. Done. So, I guess I'm in now, right? And so, my point is you can ask it to do all this. Hey, Neil, these are all the events I want to speak at over here. These are all the podcasts I should be going on that are actually out there, have good audiences, an enterprise audience, right? Like, you can have it figure all these things out and then just hand it over to your team. But that's why I think this thing is great. Is it worth $10 billion? I don't know about that.

And Harry's a smart guy and I get what he's doing on content and I don't hate him for it. He knows when people put money in at $10 billion in valuation and there's no revenue, there's a lot of fine print on the contract on their potential returns and what they're going to get in exchange and liquidation preference And, you know, it's, are they guaranteed 2 times their money, 3 times their money, et cetera, right? There's a lot of things like that that come into play here that are, you know, important, but he's creating the content to get the views. I just don't believe this is going to get him the right type of deal flow. And I could be wrong, but that's just my take because I've tried this enough, not in venture, but I've tried it enough in so many different industries, but it's very rare that our clients are venture capitalists.

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. Yeah, well, I think this is a situation where sometimes people just need to put their hand on a stove and it's not going to hurt them. It's not going to kill them exactly. Don't get me wrong. Like Neil started his career, he did test, Hey, I bought these clothes for X amount of dollars and then here's what I did with my Black Card over here or whatever. And he's experimented with that, right? Now on my end, I experimented with going very wide TAM with these interviews and like, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed them, but it didn't help my business.

Correct. And I look at like the biggest players in our space, like the Accentures of the world, right? They, I would say they are the biggest in the marketing space. And at least for a service provider, um, I know people look at Accenture as not a marketing organization, but they own— they have a marketing division and it's probably larger than most of the holding companies, just being quite frank. And you look at Accenture, no one thinks of, oh, look at all this sensational content Accenture put out there.

Wait, Neil, can I show you something? So remember Cluely, they raised a bunch of money from Andreessen Horowitz, right? So Cluely, a16z, I think they raised like $16 million or something like that. So yeah, $15 million Series A. Okay, so Andresen Horowitz backed them. Okay, so now the founder, I gotta show you the content that he's creating. He's like 22 years old at this point. Okay, so Neil, have you seen this content? You definitely haven't because I don't even think I shared it with you because you'd probably just laugh. So this guy is Roy Lee. He's one of the co-founders or founder of Cluey. He's the global ranked number one entrepreneur. All right, apparently. So check this out. He makes this video. The amount of times to jerk off in a week is as much as it takes before it starts to hurt because that's how much people used to jerk off back when we were all cavemen. People would not fucking worry about Demon retention or delayed gratification or any of this nonsense. This is ridiculous. This is a made-up construct. And I think people sort of tie this back to, this will teach me discipline for when I need to make money. But in reality, like, the dudes doing No Nut November to the very end be the poorest, fattest dude you know. And it's just like, dudes will do anything but do the fucking thing. You want to be disciplined and making money, then fucking go discipline yourself, make some money. Why are you doing this fucking roundabout way of disciplining yourself by fucking not nutting? You genuinely only harm yourself doing this. This is such an unnatural thing to do. Stop removing yourself from the thing that you actually want. The goal is never semen retention. The goal is always a better body. You want a better physique, you want more money, you want— Okay, so I get it. Look, he's trying to be inspirational, and that, that view— look, this one got 270,000 views on it, right? And the funny thing is, you look at the comments, this guy's like, bro, are you running out of topics? I can't imagine this brings more users to your platform. And then one guy is like, thanks to this, I have now considered becoming a user of Cluey. Like, they're literally saying this. It doesn't help.

Yes. And when Eric read the, thanks to this, I'm now considered a big user of Clue.ly, that person's being sarcastic.

Yep. But I just think it's funny. Like, this guy works at Stanford, right? And so, I get it, like what he's doing. But I think, you know, it's— I would be curious to see what the results are from this. So, if Roy, you somehow see this video, let us know how it's going. Like, how I stay skinny as a 22-year-old tech CEO. Maybe that's interesting. People might be interested in you. How I maintain perfect skin. Why I'm still ambitious after making millions. Like, I don't know, man. I like, if you're selling to a wide TAM, if you're selling like courses and coaching, sure. I don't think he's selling that though. He's selling software.

Okay, a few things. One, you saw the TechCrunch post on Cluey a while back. I know we talked about it in our podcast, in which he admitted he juiced the numbers. Yeah, he juiced the numbers. He was a little aggressive on what his Stating what his revenue was versus what it was in reality. Okay. 2, if Cluey really blew up and was doing so well, because it didn't work as well for him doing all the social viral content because their stuff was doing so well. Cheat on a job interview, ace whatever test, like Cluey can help you solve everything. If their product really did that and was blowing up in revenue, do you think he would be creating all of this content?

He wouldn't have time. It's growing too fast that you wouldn't have time.

Thank you. And you and I both know a lot of entrepreneurs. Out of the richest people we know, how many of them really focus on content creation? I'm not saying for their company, they themselves. Eric's holding up a big zero. He's so spot on. And Eric and I create content, hence we're not the richest people we know, right? So if you really have a big business, You don't care about just doing stuff that's sensational to just go and get the views. I think it's just so backwards. I don't know why people still do it. And I think the younger generation— this is where I struggle with social media— people who are younger, they really care about the reach and the likes. And I've gotten so many people pitching me, I'm going to make you rich, dude. I was at the Beverly Wilshire because I know the All-In Podcast Summit was going earlier this week, but I was there for a meeting. With the bank. And no joke, someone comes up to me, he's like, dude, huge fan. Let's do a podcast episode together. I have 1.5 million followers. I created this video for you on TikTok. Okay. And he links me to this video. Let's see if I can find it on my texts.

We got to teach you how to use phone mirroring so you can share screen when you do it.

That's too complex for me. Okay.

Uh, so Neil's showing the screen right now. Let me, let me tell you what's appearing on the screen.

Oh, that's his— oh, that's the wrong link. Oh, this is— here you go. TikTok. He created this. The head of Anthropic, one of the largest—

this guy went from cleaning toilets to building a $100 million empire.

Okay. Patel, the founder of So it was kind of like a bio on me, had 5—

How many views did it get?

How do I see the views? I can't even tell.

How many likes does it have?

Uh, uh, 569 likes. I can't tell the views. I don't know where they go.

Well, okay. Well, finish the story.

Finish the story. But either way, what ended up happening is that he created this content on me. That's cool and all. I appreciate him getting my name out there, but like, it doesn't do anything. I never saw it. He said he sent it to me, but My bad. I do appreciate you creating it. So I am grateful for that. And I did try to make his podcast work. I just couldn't make the time work because I promised my daughter I would go watch her do horseback riding. But nonetheless, this type of content doesn't just— it doesn't generate revenue. And the younger people I meet, the more they're all about getting your brand out there. You got to build a personal brand. When have personal brands been worth as much as Coca-Cola or Pepsi? And I don't think we're going to get into an age where they ever are.

Let me say something. So just to continue on your example, Neil. So when you think about Elon Musk, did he think about building a personal brand? Nope. He just thought about building things that are useful to humans. And that's why he's such a big brand now, right?

Yeah.

What about Warren Buffett? Well, it took him a very long time. He didn't really start to really compound into like, he was rich already, but becoming really rich was after age 50, just so everyone knows, right? And then because he kept doing it consistently, consistent, consistently, Now, he's looked at as the Oracle of Omaha, right? But that brand came from actually just doing things. When you think about Rockefeller, whether you love or hate Rockefeller back in the day, and now today, I think most people just don't know, but he spent time merging all these kinds, all these business practices. Like, he was winning so much that regulations had to be formed just for him, right?

Yes.

But he became a brand in his own, right? Standard& Poor's. No, no, wait, Standard Oil Company. That's what it was.

But yeah, Standard& Poor's is S&P.

Yeah, Standard& Poor's, S&P, correct. Thank you, Neil. Um, but that's my point. It's like if you just focus on Neil's point talking about Cluey, if Cluey is crushing it as a company, there wouldn't be a need for him to create so much more content, right? And that's what it really is.

Yeah, and for anyone listening, if you're getting pitched by people who are telling you how to succeed and their version of telling you how to succeed is them creating content on how to succeed, They usually haven't done anything in the past, and they usually haven't made any significant money. So you can listen to them if you want. This is why, and I know it's controversial, I don't care for coaches. I just think most coaches are a waste. On the flip side, if someone is truly really successful and they have a lot of money, I've seen almost in all cases those people willing to give advice for free. If They don't want to give the advice for free. They won't give it even if you pay them. So it's either they give it for free or they're not going to give it at all. I haven't seen really too many successful people being like, I will charge you for advice and this is what I do for a living.

I would say there's 2 types of coaches in my mind, Neil. So you have the coaches that coached like Steve Jobs, that coached like, you know, the founders of like Intuit or like, you know, like these tech coaches, like Bill Campbell was his name, I think, right? So that's like a coach that everyone knows in Silicon Valley, right? And that's someone that has kind that has kind of been there, done that, and is coaching those founders up. Then you have coaches that are selling things, right? Which you see quite a bit on like Instagram, for example, right? They put you through a funnel and all that. And actually, funny enough, I had talked to someone that yesterday worked for someone that we know in the coaching space, right? Very, very successful YouTube video. We'll just call it that, right? Back in the day.

Okay.

Has even done business with people that I know very closely and has not paid those people. So anyway, all that to say is like, that is an example of a coach, but that's like the coaching used for almost like just to try to extract maximum value from a monetary standpoint. What Neil's talking about is you do have these Silicon Valley type coaches like a Bill Campbell who didn't actually really collect money. He was just out there paying it forward, right? So, I think there's 2 types of coaches and I think some people can— anything can be weaponized for Maybe trying to extract too much money.

Yeah, and I'm just a believer that the people who are good at what they do, do what they do. They don't go coach on it. You could get people who you want to pay for something very specific and maybe it'll help you out. Majority of the coaches that I'm talking about online that I just despise are the ones who are just going to teach you how to get rich.

Yes.

Or versions of that, like, I'm going to teach you how to become popular and grow up your personal brand, or I'm going to teach you how to do marketing, get a million views on Instagram. I'm like, but that doesn't equate to revenue. It's just they're pushing hocus pocus because they don't know how to drive real revenue.

So let me talk about— so we talked about these 2 coaches, right? You have the legendary Silicon Valley coach, Bill Campbell, who actually there's a book I read called The Trillion Dollar Coach. That's a good one, right? Because he formed all these— helped form all these companies. So he actually coached, he mentored. So he used to be the CEO of Intuit and he used to coach football at Columbia University, right? So he actually ended up mentoring Steve Jobs from Apple, right? He mentored Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both of the co-founders from Google, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Twitter, now X, co-founder Jack Dorsey, right? Matt Moschari, this is the one that I talked about. This is also a great book as well, but The Great CEO Within. That's a great— he's known as a coach, but he coached the CEOs of Reddit, so Steve Huffman, Coinbase, OpenAI, and Flexport. And he, to my knowledge, he does actually charge for coaching. So these are the coaches that I think are worth their while. And so when Neil and I had talked about this a couple years ago, the coach that I had actually had founded companies before and was a VC before and had worked with some of these legendary VCs. And so to me, he was a founder and investor. That to me was worth it. But I have never really gone through kind of these other, you know, what Neil's talking about. And I We have seen more scams than not.

Dude, so I get pitched, I'm going to cover the person's name so you can't see it.

Okay.

I get pitched a lot. The message says, hey Neil, hope all is well. Love the content. I had a crazy idea if you'd be down to hear it, stay safe. And I respect this dude for his hustle. And I said, what's the idea? Okay.

So I wanted to reach out, one, because I love your content. I find it very valuable. And 2, I feel like you're leaving a lot of money on the table. To give you an example, I'm CEO of takecultivation.com. And last year alone, one single content creator You're able to cash out over $1.1 million. Now look, with the industry that you're in, the type of value you're giving to your audience, and the type of, you know, content you're making, there's no reason you can't be doing that, if not more. Would you be open to hopping on a quick 10-minute call later today or first thing tomorrow, just to see if I can even help? If not, at least give you the blueprint to scale what's there and fix that bio. Stay safe. I'll talk to you soon. Awesome. I want to reach out, brother.

So he sent that. He said, and then he responded with, you there, brother? Because I didn't respond back. And my response.

What'd you say? We aren't that kind of biz. We wouldn't care for that extra mil in revenue. Oh, he did— did he even see it?

I don't know. He didn't respond back to it.

He didn't see it. He didn't see it. Um, but—

No, but none of my other messages show read from him, so I'm guessing he did see it.

I don't know. I don't know. But, um—

Because none of the other messages say delivered or read or anything.

Let me tell you what's wrong with that, the message that he sent to you. So I don't know who that guy is, right? So Um, let me just say this. So this guy reaches out to Neil and he's like, hey, you know, hey brother, you know, first of all, like, I don't know if you say hey brother, but like when you talk like that, hey brother, and you're like, you're wearing like a tank top, like you gotta, if you're trying to do a business deal, at least look a little bit presentable, at least wear a t-shirt or something like that, right? The second thing is this, hey, you know, brother, you're leaving so much money on the table. So that kind of makes me feel like an idiot, right? The third thing is like, you know, uh, I'm gonna help you make an extra million dollars. So, so basically you did no research on me, right? So you did no research on me, you don't know how big my business is, you don't even know what I do, and you're just sending these out and you're trying to be personal, but people can see right through that, right? And so when you act like that, how you do anything is how you do everything. So if you're like that already, that's how it's going to be working with you.

Dude, you nailed it. If someone doesn't put in the time and the research before they talk to you, imagine what's going to happen once you hire that person. You're screwed. People typically try the hardest to get your money. Once they have your money, it's usually much worse. And dude, you experienced this. You recently hired someone for, I think it was content ideas, and they were so irrelevant. You gave them feedback on why they did things wrong and it's not even relevant for your business. And what did they come back to you with? Sure, but that's not included in our scope. We can fix it. We just want more money. Yep.

Which doesn't make any sense to me. Like, you're clearly early in your career and you're trying to learn, and then you're like, you're only looking at the monetary gain, which is not a good thing too. Like, sure, Neil and I talk about revenue and all that, but there's a time to learn and there's also a time to earn.

Yes. But dude, you nailed it. I think that's a very valuable lesson for anyone who's listening. If someone doesn't put in the effort before they get your check, what happens after you give them the check? It's usually much worse, not better.

So one final thing on the coaches piece, and then we have a few other things that we can cover here. But Neil, I actually did some research here with, you know, Gemini, right? So the most famous Silicon Valley coaches did not charge their core founder clients for money. Instead, they structured their compensation through equity donations or provided completely free of charge. So Bill Campbell, the most legendary one that I was talking about, so he never accepted a single dollar for his executive coaching. When coaching founders like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, He routinely refused salaries or fees. If a company insists on paying him, he would demand they donate the entire amount to his charitable foundation or local community causes. He believed that accepting a paycheck would create a conflict of interest, stating that he wanted his advice to remain entirely objective, but he was already massively wealthy, right?

Yeah.

Now, Matt Mochary is the next one, right? So he built his reputation on coaching the top tech CEOs entirely for free. Inspired by the idea from OpenAI's Sam Altman, Mochary decided he only wanted to spend time Doing things he would naturally do for free. By offering world-class guidance to elite tech founders like Naval Ravikant and Brian Armstrong at no cost, he built unparalleled trust and insider access, but he now charges people. So he does selective coaching now, but he has an agency now that does the coaching. It's $10,000 to $12,500 per month for regular executive and team-wide coaching. So he made it into a business eventually.

He made it into a business, but he has a proven track record, right? So when someone has a proven track record, has done well, That's a little bit different and he's not promising you that he's going to get rich. I'm not saying, and nor is Eric saying, that all coaches are bad. It's the coaches that are trying to charge you money to make you rich are really bad, or a version of that, like make you popular, right? Or anything ancillary that can lead to making money online.

Yeah, I'll say one more thing because this actually does tie in with marketing, right? This— because this is what actually gives marketing a bad rap. The people in the— I would say the majority of people in the coaching space, I think there are some good players in the coaching space, but the majority, right? It's a lot of short-termism. It's a lot of, hey, get rich quick. I'm going to help you make money fast. But what ends up happening is anything that comes quick ends up going away quickly, and it ends up leaving a poor taste in most people's mouths, which is why that industry is more despised than other industries. So I'll just leave it at that. I want to come to this next topic over here and get your feedback. So my conclusion now with everything around AI is that unshipping is actually more important than shipping today. So let me explain. So when you ship, you can build anything. You can build any product, you can build any CRM today, you can build any voicing, you can build any SEO tool, you can do whatever you want, right? The world is your oyster.

Yeah.

The problem with that is that when you start to ship everything, kind of similar to trying to create content for everything, you become known for nothing. And so this company over here known as Super Memory, they started doing this one thing. So let me share my screen with you real quick. So this guy, How do you pronounce this name, Neil? This is your people.

Dhruvaya, Dhruvaya Shah.

Dhruvaya Shah. Okay, thank you for that. So they launched this company brain because a lot of people are talking about these company brains, right? It's like, hey, you know, this company brain can, you know, reach attachments, read attachments. It can read Slack deep links and all this stuff. They basically put the entire company on this, right? Like, people loved it, da da da. And then they realized. that after putting in all these resources, it was taking it away from their core business, which is pushing the frontier of memory and continual learning for agents, right? It was taking away from their core business. And so even though you see companies like Coinbase shipping more than ever right now, you see Robinhood shipping more products than ever right now, right? You see Google shipping more products than ever. When you're a startup, you can't actually do that even though you can ship anything because you have very limited resources. We've talked about the concept of bullets versus You know, barrels versus ammunition, right? So ammunition, you might have a lot of ammunition, but you only have so many barrels that you can fire initiatives through. When you're a startup, you have less barrels than a large company, and so you have to be even more focused than before, and you have to focus on unshipping things and shutting things down quicker because we're in a world now where you can ship anything.

Dude, that's true. And we're also seeing people just ship too much stuff that just makes products harder to use. Um, that company that had the valuation of $10-ish billion that Eric was talking about, The reason I think they're doing well and they're getting a lot of hype is because it's just over SMS and they just kept it simple. It's you want to build more, but you want to build more without people, A, having to see it and B, having to interact with it. In essence, how can you just help people solve their problem and do more on your end versus just showcasing everything to a user and just giving them tons of interfaces that just make their life harder?

Yeah, and this resonated with me because recently we had consolidated a few of our products and our initiatives just to focus in even more. And so this is interesting because said this, like, hey, we have many, many, uh, developers, startups, and enterprises who already use our memory engine in production. So they're using their core product, right? And so what ended up happening was that, you know, this, this, uh, company brain thing that they were building ended up having a conflict of interest with large, larger companies that they work with, like Cognition or Notion, which are hot startups right now, right? And so you don't want to have conflict of interest with, with these clients, and because eventually they're going to stop paying you. Um, so he said this, shipping is important, But unshipping is even more important for us. We want to make sure that everything we do, we're doing, we're the best at doing. Using some other company brain products and agent harnesses made me realize that putting 100% of your time in something can lead to great results. And since we are not able to do that, our product was average, not out of the ordinary. So if you want to be extraordinary, you have to do extraordinary things, which means unshipping.

Yeah, dude, it's, it's, I think it's spot on. But that's the kind of content, by the way, that I think performs extremely well on X. will do really well on LinkedIn, will do terrible on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, I don't know, hit or miss. But that content would do very well on X and LinkedIn.

The best mid-market and enterprise type leads for me this year came from X, right? And it's from— it wasn't even AI content, it's content that I wrote myself, right? And the AI content, sure, it performs, it gets a lot of views. But when it's my content written by myself with a point of view on it, That's what gets people interested, right? And so speaking of X, Neil, I have one more for you to react to over here. Your brother-in-law Heaton Shaw shared this. Okay, so brand as software. So this guy— oh, I was gonna say kimchi. This guy's Paul. So his profile has kimchi in it. So I thought his name was Kimchi. But so he leads brand at Ramp. So Ramp's a pretty hot company right now. 284,000 views on this one. So he writes a very long article over here, and it talks about this concept known as brand as software. So look, it's a very long article, Neil, a very long article.

Oh, wow.

But so let me just do this, Neil. Let me just make it easy for us. Let's just hit the Grok button over here and just see what it says. Okay, so it says, I call the opportunity brand as software, software that carries a company's point of view, values, and constraints into the work itself. Highly skilled designers, spend their time reproducing decisions already made while the brand dies by a thousand paper cuts. An agent can carry audience, product truths, voice, and visual system into the work so the guideline finally answers back. Pair artists who invent the language with builders who turn those decisions into living infrastructure treated like a product, and taste remains human and reputation becomes software. The system carries a score so that people can make music, not noise. What this guy is really saying, this guy Paul Yoon, what he's saying is like, look, The way we used to work with designers, you and I as marketers, Neil, the way we used to work with designers on the branding stuff is we would almost do all the marketing work first and then say, hey designers, go ahead and step in, come for cleanup work, right? Um, which is not what a designer wants to do. This is why, at least from my experience working in startups, Neil, designers always hated working on the marketing stuff because it's always just like a throw it over the fence type of thing and they're like an afterthought, right?

Mm-hmm.

But the idea here is that this allows that type of work to be codified into software. So you might have a design.md file or multiple files that make your brand consistency there. So whenever Neil wants to crank out a landing page or I want to crank out a new ad, it's just brand consistent. And then the brand people and the designers, they can focus more on the new stuff, right? The stuff that's more strategic, and they can continue to upgrade the brand guidelines. And so they don't need to worry about any last-minute stuff. And so we're all becoming more enabled. And that's what I believe brand as software is going to be. In fact, I think most people, most stuff is going to become as software.

Yeah, I like it. I agree with it.

I mean, how are you guys working like this right now?

I don't think most people are working like this right now, but they should be. That is true.

I mean, the way we work on this right now is we use what I was just mentioning, design.md files, and then you can have workflows and things like that. But I think you need a lead designer that's super AI-pilled because someone like me or someone like Anil, We might know a little bit about this stuff, but at the end of the day, you need someone that's super on top of it, which just gave me an idea. I'm just going to go to my designers afterwards and say, hey, what are we doing about this? I'm just going to send them this article.

Not just that, if they're not AI-pilled, I already know what Eric's going to do on that one. If they don't know the right answers, it's like, oh, you don't know all the stuff that you should be knowing?

Well, dude, I'll tell you something, Neil. So we had a creative leave recently to another company, right? And he just came back. I'm like, when I talked to him, I was like, why are you considering leaving this other company? He's like, not AI-pilled enough, not fast enough, right? It doesn't give him the energy. And so when he's back, I'm like, hey, if you're going to come back, I actually want you to make a difference on these things. And so I'm going to send you stuff and I want you to move a lot faster. I want you to speak up. But I think it says a lot. Like, Neil, I'm sure you've had boomerang employees. We do as well. But when you have boomerang employees, it actually reinforces that the vision that you're driving is the one that's true to you because People want to come back to your vision, right? So a lot of times, like if you're starting out, you're listening to this right now, maybe you're 1, 2, 3 years into your business, it's about staying the course and it's not an easy thing to do. But I'm going to throw one more at you. You can react to this one. ChatGPT agent ads are coming. What are you going to do about it? What do you think about it?

So ChatGPT agent ads, we'll test it out just like every other channel and see what ends up working. We don't look at it as much of a difference to marketing to humans and agents, whether it's ads or organic. You're still marketing through platforms that are controlled by algorithms and bots and machines, and you just got to persuade people. The persuasion may be through more logic versus using emotion, but you got to persuade people to check you out.

Yep. I'll give you one more because we have a couple, a couple of minutes here. So Neil, I saw this yesterday. This one's more for entertainment. So this is another article from Ramp. So the cool thing about their company, by the way, is look, you have an engineer from Ramp, Sandra Likes Frogs. The other one was the brand person. They're all publishing content that's getting— and I think they're all amplifying the content because you have a bunch of engineers. So they're doing engineers, designers, other people at Ramp. And so I think they're all amplifying each other. And there's this product called Triordinal, which allows you to do more employee-generated content like EGC. And I think that's what they're doing right now. They're all kind of amplifying each other. And the cool thing is at the end of their post too, they all have like a— there's like a little recruiting link at the end of it so they can just continue to get more people, right? It's more awareness to get more people. So the cool thing here is that Sandra from Ramp here said, you know, we gave an AI agent a ramp card and told it to make money. Okay. So as far as they're concerned, this is the first example of an agent where you tell it to make money and it actually made money for you. Okay. So here's what they did. They gave Devin a ramp card. So I'm assuming this is Devin from Cognition, right? Or maybe they just named it Devin. Devin. So they gave this AI maybe a ramp card, which is a temporary credit card, and a phone and email. They named it Bug Basher, okay? And they told it to sell New York pest inspection referrals, okay? So the tool is called Bug Basher. So Devin is in fact from Cognition. That's the AI coding tool, okay? So they gave Devin a ramp card, phone, email, and then they told it to sell NYC pest inspection and referrals, okay? So 4 weeks and many phone calls later, I think over 10,000 phone calls, Neil, it made $75. All right, so the first publicly documented AI B2B sale from a cold start. Every 20 minutes, a heartbeat checked the inbox, Stripe, and calls, and then revised prompts and its shared brain from transcripts. It added a Spanish or Chinese ask, leaked its system prompt on 197 calls, and found our systems in Git when Slack installed. Our exterminator paid $75, a one exterminator.

Wow.

Paid $75 via Stripe. Agents hill climb well, but still struggle with long-term planning and go make money. So that's the lesson from this, but it seems like it's one of the first documented cases of an agent just making money.

That's really cool. I think we're going to see more of that. And then we're also going to see a lot of cases of agents causing you to lose a lot of money.

Yeah. I mean, we've seen that already where someone, I think last week, it overspent on their card by $5,000.

On your card?

No, on their card. Someone shared it on X and they said they only shared it for one transaction because it's tied to like a Link account, right? Which is from Stripe. And then it overspent by $5,000.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So I think that's going to happen a lot more than a lot more of this because people aren't that smart, including myself.

So. Cool.

All right. So anyway, guys, that is it for today. We hope you enjoyed it and we'll catch you tomorrow.