Neil and Eric's Business Predictions for 2025

The next one goes into our predictions for 2025 when it comes to business growth and marketing.

You know why I picked this one? Because in my 2024 year in review, I always do these predictions, right? And then last year I was completely off. But let me pull it up first and I'll give you my predictions from last year and then we can do these predictions. And then because I've already done it, so I kind of cheated a little bit and then you can start to think about it as we do it.

I'm curious on your 2024 ones now.

So I write this year in review. I highly— if you guys go to my Instagram, you'll see it. It's like a 5,300-worder. So I made these predictions in 2024. So it's 2024. I said the recession will happen before Q3 2024. I've always been wrong on that. So wrong, no recession still, right? The crypto bull market will start again. Correct. Bitcoin is at all-time highs now, right? This is when I did it in the end of the year.

Well, I'll give you the first one too. Technically, if you look at the Original definition of a recession, we've had a recession.

We have. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

But the government has not claimed that there's a recession.

But no, you know, I don't know what definition people are using. So, well, let's just say for the hell of it, we'll be conservative. Say I'm wrong. Okay. So crypto market, bull market will start again. I was correct on that one. I said paid media will become more and more commoditized with the help of AI. That's correct. More and more people will leverage AI to help with SEO and it'll continue to work. I said semi-correct. LLMs are growing quickly. but still minuscule compared to standard organic search, right? So I think it's continuing to grow. You and I are using a lot more of these LLMs. I said agency businesses that know how to leverage the power of data, AI, and creative will have an unfair advantage over others. I think you guys are certainly doing it, and I don't think I'm wrong on that, so.

Maybe in the future. I don't see it in the short run. I don't think they're going to have advantage over you.

Here, I'll give you one. I said a Republican president will win the US election.

Yeah.

Okay? So this is early in the year too. Attention will be even more of a moat in where AI is commoditizing more jobs.

Yeah.

And then we will start to see a rise of small startup teams of 3 to 10 people that leverage AI to build products that were previously only available to teams of 100.

Yeah, we also see people with a 1-person company doing over $10 million a year in revenue now.

Yeah, and we're going to see more of that. The gap between AI-assisted humans versus regular humans will increase. If you can be 40% more productive with the help of AI, you'll do it. There's that. And then I said, we will see a rise in not just creators, but creator operators. So creator operators are not just content creators, they're business operators. So we can look at Kevin Espiritu from Epic Gardening. You're a creator operator. I'm a creator operator. So basically, the 2 big calls I made in 2024 were a Republican president winning, and then creator— oh, and the crypto bull market arriving again.

I thought you said you were really wrong in 2024.

No. So I got 8.5 out of 10 in 2024. But, but 2023, I got 3.5 out of 7. 2022, I got 1 out of 5.

So you're getting better each year.

All right.

What's your 2025 predictions?

Okay.

Maybe you'll get 9 out of 10.

Maybe, maybe. Um, but then, but then you got— are you getting your predictions already? Are they forming in your head?

I already have predictions. I don't have 10 predictions, but I have some predictions.

I have like 5 here. Okay. Or 10. So 2025 predictions. I believe that, um, crypto will have a record year in 2025. Even though we just mentioned that it's not going to be a blow, I believe for crypto it will be pretty good. I believe that the economy will expand in 2025, but not as much as we think it will, which is what we just said. And I said, however, inflation will tick up. Okay, that's a big call, right? I said the Doge and RFK's Maha make America healthy again will turn out to be a net positive for America, even though people are really kind of dubious. A lot of people are dubious about these 2 initiatives right now. I wrote software will continue to get commoditized. The true X factor is attention. And I said return to office will continue to rise, which I've been calling, I'm calling it here. And then we've kind of already called this, but in-person communities will increasingly become more valuable. And we'll see M&A activity pick up even harder after it's been, you know, thawing in 2024. Same with IPO activity. Cool.

So some predictions that I have for 2025. I believe traditional TV media will pretty much die and it'll all become online and people will follow influencers, news sources all on the internet and not necessarily care what people have to say on some of these quote unquote news stations. I think they'll start looking for things like podcasts versus traditional news outlets to get their information. And we're already starting to see a lot of that. We saw quite a bit of that during the election. the presidential campaigns, the presidential candidates both focused on podcast interviews more than saying, hey, let me go on CNN or Fox, because that's really where the attention is going. The second prediction that I have is personal brands are going to be more important than ever. Even though I've grown my business through a personal brand, but it hasn't made up more than 10% of our revenue, I think a brand is really your only moat. And I think a personal brand and a corporate brand are really good moats. I gave someone a great example of this earlier today. I was talking to our friend John from Kajabi and we were talking about AI and what it's going to replace. And we were even talking about like corporations and people just creating copycats. And no matter what you do, I do believe the brand is the power. And the example I gave him is, If John and I partnered together and we wanted to create a company that would make shoes, I believe we can replicate the quality of Air Jordan shoes within 12 months. Maybe we had to hire some people who came from Nike or some of these other companies.

Yep.

Xenia Second Skin shoes, believe it or not, are more comfortable than Nike shoes. So there are ways to make shoes more comfortable than even Air Jordans. But if we did that, I still don't think we would generate even 1% of the revenue of Air Jordans, even if you gave us 5 years. And the main reason being is, You don't have the brand. What's Jordan? What causes Jordan shoes to sell is Jordan. It has nothing to do with the quality of the shoe. I'm not saying they're bad quality shoes. I'm saying there's tons of shoe options that are high in quality, but Jordans sell really well because they're Michael Jordan shoes, right? The third prediction that I have is corporations in B2B will really start laying off a smaller percentage of their workforce. You know, if you look at 2024, you haven't really seen too many B2B companies lay off employees because of AI. I do believe you'll start seeing that in 2025, but a small portion. And they'll start with having AI replicate really easy mundane stuff. And they'll also start requiring corporations or employees within a corporation to use the AI and they'll start seeing how they're going to become more efficient. And in 2026, I believe you'll see even more layoffs. than 2025 due to AI. But it, it's not about the technology getting there, it's about corporations adopting the technology, which takes much longer than just saying, hey, we have all this technology, it's great. The last prediction that I have is—

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Most marketing channels will turn into top of funnel. Like, you know, my team did a research piece. We'll publish it next week or this weekend. We're looking at where people are hearing about a company first versus what channels are causing the conversions. And you're starting to see channels like organic social create a ton of word-of-mouth marketing. You're starting to see SEO create tons of word-of-mouth marketing. But when you look at conversions, they're not adding up. You're starting to see that you're seeing the paid channels take a lot of the lion's share, but you're starting, you're seeing that people are finding out about corporations through a lot of these organic channels, but they're not converting right away. And I think businesses are going to shift how they think about marketing from organic social being like, we got to spend money to communicate with our audience and build the relationships to, yes, you need to do that with organic social, but it is heavy top of funnel and brand awareness. So is SEO. And so is a lot of the other channels out there like podcasting and things like that. And I think companies are going to be okay with that and start looking at a lot of marketing channels as quote unquote branding and know that they just pay off well in the long run.

Yeah, and that's why these, these products like Haus, I believe, H-A-U-S. You got HockeyStack for B2B. There's these products out there that help you at least attribute a little bit to dark social. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. So that's interesting. Well, we'll see how these play out. We'll come back to this episode next year and we'll basically go through all our predictions and see how we scored. So we get to do this live with everybody. That is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association. And we'll see you tomorrow.