Nike's $223B Mistake, Tesla's 64-Click Fix, and a $500M AI Ad Machine (Full Episode)

So Will Reynolds is saying that running a business is lonely because we are so often dishonest about how our businesses are doing. Agency owners, instead of asking how's business, lead with things like things are tough and be honest about why. That's funny. Neil likes asking how's business a lot. This will give the person on the other side the ability to be real with you too, instead of the fake game of good. You and they say good, even though both of you are struggling to make payroll. I'm saying this because I have had a lot of tough conversations with agency owners under $2 million And they are looking for a place for their people, but they are oftentimes kind of over it. COVID took a lot out of us. Then AI is a tsunami that they can't swim through, that many can't swim through. Be brave enough to be honest. When people say Siu must be killing it, I'm like, my popularity on LinkedIn ain't correlated to my bank account, dog. And we're fine, but definitely not killing it. Definitely not killing it. Been flat for 3, 4 years. I'll take flat given the environment. But just when one thing starts taking off, another takes a hit. Okay, now it's your turn. You won't want to post about it publicly, but if you do, you are allowing hundreds of other small business owners to not feel alone. I know it can be hard to post it publicly, but honestly, a lot of people need to see the reality of businesses right now, or business right now, not just the loudest voices on these internet streets. If you can't do that, promise me this: in private, when people ask you how your business is doing, be honest, and you'll be surprised. After saying that to a few people, you'll feel a lot less alone. And when you stop telling people everything is great, which is not true, they are less incentivized to help you because you told them you're doing great. Being honest keeps more eyes and ears on the streets to send you leads and opportunities.

Yeah, I think the environment's been tough and I think he nailed it. It's been roughly 3 to 4 years where it's been tough. I would say somewhere around 2022 is when things started to turn and become harder and harder. We've experienced it. We haven't seen a downturn like this for a long time. I've been in business for quite a while. I've never seen a downturn this long. I know there's many more people who have been in business longer than me and they may have seen longer downturns. We're seeing it in a lot of different sectors, but not every sector. And when I look at marketing in specific, we used to grow at some cases 100+% a year, literally 100%+ a year at scale, right? I'm not talking about $1 million in revenue or $10 million in revenue. I'm talking about more than that. And we were growing over 100% a year. We're still growing organically. We're also growing by M&A as well, which helps, but organically we're growing. We're growing even faster because we do M&A, but growth definitely has slowed down. And if I had to give the reason on why we're growing in this market, I would say it comes down to one big reason. For us, it's been international expansion. If You're really tiny in a lot of countries like, I don't know, India or United Kingdom or Germany, whatever it may be. And I'm talking about us roughly, call it 4 years ago. When we were starting off in a lot of these countries, we were starting from a base of zero. In a good economy or bad economy, it's easier to grow when you're at zero because growth can only go up. You can't go more down. So for us, by being global, we are able to add revenue And we started expanding when the market was bad or the economy was bad, which created opportunities for us because a lot of people were pulling out or laying people off. So we were able to recruit really good people that would've been harder for us to recruit during good times. And I would say that's probably the number one reason we've grown is just international expansion. That's helped on the organic side combined with, you know, M&A.

I have some thoughts here and you'll probably disagree with them, maybe. And then we can talk about another topic because I met up with— we should talk about something next. It's one of the best parts of being a founder and it's not what really people think. And I think you're going to have some stories that you can share with this too, which we'll get to in a second. But my take on this one, because here's the thing, Neil, everything you just said, Remember, Will said he's been flat for the last 4 or 5 years. You have not been flat even organically. Just so everyone knows too, organic growth means that you're not growing through mergers and acquisitions. You're growing through on your own terms as, you know, you're the current business that you have, right? Um, inorganic means that, you know, you're buying other businesses and you're kind of stacking revenue on. Uh, that's, that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing too, right? There's just different, uh, terms here. So just to be clear, Neil, the last 4 or 5 years, you have grown both Organically and inorganically, correct? You haven't been flat at all.

Correct.

Okay, great. So one thing I'll say is, you know, obviously I've shared, you know, maybe in 2021 or so when there was a— there's a lot going on, it's a very hot environment. That's when I kind of stepped away from the business and things didn't go well, right? Things actually went downwards, right? For, I would say, the next 2 years or so, right? Until I stepped back into the business. Now, I'm not going to say I'm amazing. I would just say that Founders do have— Jason Cohen from WP Engine likes to say that the founders, Neil's a founder, I'm a founder, we have this invisible hammer where you can just make things happen and move very quickly. And so, you know, I would say that we, since I stepped back into the business, we have not been flat, right? We have been growing. The thing that I have noticed, and Neil, I think you can maybe share some stories as well, is that the other agencies that seem to be like last year, I think we had talked about an agency where we You know, we're looking at just acquiring them for free, basically, right? Recently, you told me about another one where it would not have been like a big cash outlay, but it would have been a lot of work. So I think we're seeing more and more of that happen right now. Now, on the flip side of this, I'm also seeing this happen with larger agencies. It's like, from a recruiting standpoint, like, I'm like, why do all these executives want to leave these large agencies? Because after this, Neil, I'm going to go to lunch. And then at the mall, with a guy that we're trying to recruit, right? And he's like, he understands a lot of things, not just from an agency standpoint, but from an AI standpoint too. And so I would just say, forget the AI piece for a moment. As long as you're adaptable and as long as you move quickly, I don't think, like, sure, we can say it's been a tough environment and I do think it is. It's been a tougher environment for sure, but I believe that tough times create strong people and I'm not trying to dismiss that, right? And I'm saying, yes, it is hard. Agencies are doing more poorly than before right now, But this is a time for you to be able to step up and stand out versus the rest, right? Because when Neil's up versus the holding companies, I believe that he wins deals because they're more creative, they're more adaptable, and they stand out. And people hire agencies to be creative, to be proactive, right? To be someone that you can lean on. And so most agencies don't do that. Remember a few weeks ago, Neil, I talked about how much I hate some of these agencies that are just like, they put more work on your plate and they expect you to just pay them. And so As long as you're someone that takes things off people's plate, then I think you're going to be okay as an agency because I'll tell you, like, we haven't been flat since 2023. It's been strong organic growth.

It's, but I'm assuming some things on your end you've declined. You're probably making up organic growth in other sectors.

Correct.

But the original core business, I would say maybe growing a little bit, maybe flat, maybe declining a little bit, but the growth isn't there from the original business. If you look at what Will Reynolds is talking about, a lot of people are still doing the same thing that they're doing 4 or 5 years ago. And I believe that's why a lot of these people are seeing decline in addition to the economy, right? Because—

Remember what Albert Einstein said?

What? I have no idea what he said.

Okay, so expecting change from doing the same thing over and over is the definition of insanity. I'm paraphrasing. Yeah.

Yeah, I believe you. And people, you know, are like, oh, it's not growing, things are bad. And I agree, things are bad, but people need to adapt and try to figure out how to make them better during bad times. And we typically don't see that.

You know what I'll say, Neil? I saw a video. I don't know if you saw this video, but there's this guy on YouTube. So this video got 5.1 million views and it somehow came across me, right? So his face is disfigured, right? Like, I think some fire happened and like he doesn't have like— his fingers are gone too. Did you see that video?

Like, it's stumbled across me.

Like, I felt so compelled to, to actually switch over my account and comment. And what do you think my comment was? My comment was like, dude, this is amazing, you should keep posting, right? Because the way he started the video was like, I don't want to do this anymore, I'm done with life, blah blah blah, right? And he starts the video off like, I'm tired of this, I don't want to do this anymore. And like, dude, it burns everywhere, like very disfigured, like you can barely see his eyes, right? And he's like, look, I don't even have my hand anymore, right? And he's like, but you know what, F that, I'm going to keep going. And that is the same thing I would tell anybody that is struggling right now. It is these moments that actually shape you into a much stronger character and you have good stories to tell. Because I remember when Neil, when I was going through these tough times in 2021, Neil was the first one to call me as a friend to say, hey, I think you should bankrupt it, right? And that was the logical thing to do. But I told Neil at the time, remember, I was like, hey dude, if I keep going and it turns out well in the long term, like that's going to be a good story to tell and I'm going to be much stronger, right? And I never told my dad the story until recently. He's like, why didn't you tell mom and dad— mom and me? I'm like, why the hell would I tell you guys? Like, you guys are just stressed. It's better to tell you guys now. And he's like, so are you stronger now? You're stronger now. I'm like, fuck yeah, I'm stronger, right? Um, so I think this is a good moment. Like, if you're struggling right now, like, how do you double down? How do you cut costs? How do you become a lot more resilient? How do you become more adaptable? How do you go out and get business on your own, right? This is the chance for you to show how good you are as a founder, as a leader.

Dude, I'm with you. Um, you know, and I think What we're seeing right now is there's no one way to skin a cat. You can do things different ways. You just got to figure out what works for you. But most importantly, you need to try to be creative and try to actually solve your problems and be proactive instead. And I'm not saying this is what people are doing on LinkedIn, but you can vent and that's fine. And you can talk to people how things are hard, but at the same time, And I wouldn't say these people are complaining, just to be clear here. But continually talking about how things are bad doesn't solve the problem. You need to actually focus on figuring out a solution and spend the majority of your time there. And I'm not saying it's easy, and sometimes you won't be able to, but that's where you need to be focusing most of your efforts on.

Yeah, and I think the last thing I'll say about this is like, you know, if it is hard, what a blessing for you to be able to go through this crucible, right? You might think, F that right now, but when I look back on it, I look at all the struggles that Neil's gone through, all the struggles that I've gone through, it's shaped us into who we are today. And think about it, like the reason how companies go from, you know, $0 to $100K to $1 million to $10 million to $100 million to $1 billion, you know, or even beyond that is because these people continue to sit through the mud and they continue to wade through the mud. And one of my favorite quotes is from Winston Churchill. If you're going through hell, keep going, right? And we're not saying you're going to war or anything like that right now. There's much worse situations, but trust me, this situation that you're in right now, it has been conquered before and we believe that you can conquer it as well. So we'll just leave it at that.

Yep.

Okay. So on a more positive note, Neil, so I want you to share some stories around this too, but I met with an ex-employee yesterday. So he started an agency and it's doing like, let's just call it, $1 million, $1.5 million, something like that, right? And, you know, my whole thing is this is one of the best parts of being a founder. And this is not what most people think. It's like when you see people that have worked with you before and they've gone on and they're doing their own things, like we have another guy that I think his agency is doing like maybe $4 million a year right now. And we still keep in touch. I love keeping in touch with these people. And then, you know, they're like to see them blossom on their own and to see the work The hard work, the challenge that they've had to go through to get there. It doesn't matter if they're like an executive of another company right now. Like, I still keep in touch with these people. But I think that's our way and your way of— and I'm saying you to the listener right now, it's your way of paying it forward, right? Because the guy yesterday, like, he gave me a lot of credit. He was like, you know, you did all these things, you set up the culture. Like, I realized like everything that I might have disagreed with at the moment, like, I understand why you did it. And it's a very lonely thing, right? To Will Reynolds' point.

Yeah.

And so, but I'm like, dude, don't even give me the credit. It was you. Look at you now, right? And so, I don't know, that's like one of those fuzzy things, but it's like these benefits people don't really talk about. So, I'm curious to hear about some from your side.

I don't know, dude. For me, most of the people I hang around with, including you and us, I think a lot of this, When I was younger, I thought it was kind of weak, but I changed my tune on that over the years. I just think a lot of the people don't have the right mindset, and I think mindset has a lot to do with a lot of this stuff and succeeding in life and progressing and pushing forward and getting through tough times and figuring things out. But for some reason, I don't know what it is, I think mindset is Really challenging for a lot of people. People know how to deal with the ups. They don't know how to deal with the downs.

Yep. And actually the guy I was with yesterday, he's like, dude, I've learned that business is actually the best personal growth machine. So Neil has his own way of learning. I have my own way of learning as well. But one thing we can agree upon when it comes to personal growth is business is the best because if you can't beat this level, you don't get to go to the next level. It's just what it is.

Yeah. And for someone else, it could be business, it could be something else, but—

Something creative.

Yeah, something creative. Just challenge yourself and don't give up. And I think that is really tough. I know people don't like showing kids Instagram. They say social media is really bad. My daughter's in gymnastics and cheer. So there's this video clip of this father-daughter duo, and I think they own a cheer company. Kid is really young, maybe around my daughter's age, maybe a little bit younger. She does stuff that maybe people who are 6, 7 years older are doing when it comes to cheer. And you can see her crying and being fed up and the dad motivating her. And I show a lot of those clips from that specific family to my daughter. And I was just like, you see, not everything's easy. It doesn't matter if you think it's easy from the outside and that they're great. Look at the challenges they went through. Look at how they keep pushing through. And having that mentality of just don't expect everything to go your way. Don't expect things to go easy. You just got to keep pushing because when you push and people have to experience this, when you actually solve the problem or get to where you want to be, or even partially there, it feels really good. You get a real strong sense of accomplishment and that feeling. You know, I don't do drugs. I've never really done drugs or anything like that other than, you know, your Tylenols or whatever that you take when you have a headache. But I think, and I don't know for certain, but I believe it's like a high of someone being on a drug, right? And I feel that way when I accomplish things or close some big business deals or hit new milestones. That hit that you get, I think, is a really amazing feeling. And by no means, I'm not trying to tell people to go do drugs or anything like that, but I'm just trying to relate it like, you know how people say they get high?

Yeah.

I don't know what high is like, but for me, when I accomplish something in business, it's a version of high, or at least I believe it is.

So when I was younger, I did try some different drugs and I will tell you what it feels like, Neil. So, so you're correct. Okay. A business win is like hitting a 3-pointer when you're playing basketball, right? Or like you hit a nice shot when you're playing tennis. It's also the same thing as like, you know, the high from a drug, right? They're all kind of the same thing at the end of the day. And you want to continue to get that high over and over and over, right? And so you should chase the right highs, not the wrong highs, is part of what I'm interpreting from this as well, Neil.

Yes.

Yes. Yeah. So Nike's market cap hit a peak of $280 billion in November 2021. It's now down $57 billion to $257 billion. So a $223 billion drop. What's the market cap today, Neil? I feel like you're looking at it.

$54.91. Stock's at $37. Close.

It went lower. Okay, it will be delisted from the S&P 500. Okay, so former Nike branding exec Massimo Yunko wrote a viral post in 2024 laying it all out. I don't know if you remember seeing this on X. I kind of remember it. He was basically blaming all the effort they were putting into direct-to-consumer. Remember he was talking about how everything's too trackable? And I think we did a Marketing School episode on this. So he blamed the CEO at the time, John Donahoe, 2020 to 2024, for going all in on direct-to-consumer. Um, with a cameo from McKinsey. So I think he worked at McKinsey before, the consulting company.

Oh, great.

So, so handful of things over here, right? Like McKinsey advised Nike to get rid of categories, running, basketball, soccer, and reclassify everything into women, men, and kids. And so I think we should— we can react to each bullet point, um, but let me finish off this point. Okay, so the logic was that Nike was duplicating resources and a pivot to D2C would provide enough customer data to inform product decisions instead of relying on category experts. Category experts, a basketball vet that spent 20+ years at Nike. A lot of these experts were fired and then Nike lost their insights. This was a clear L because Nike quietly brought back categories at the end of 2023. So what do we think about this part, Neil?

So they eliminated categories, they brought them back, and yeah, I think that's a smart move. My recommendation to them is just revert all the stuff that didn't work and just go back to the ways that were working. Nike got a little too creative with some of their campaigns as well, in just my personal opinion. And they got away with— they got away from a lot of the motivation and, you know, the Just Do It and pushing on the stuff that was doing really well for them for years. And a lot of these experts were helping them innovate the product line. It went from Nike was continually doing new stuff, pushing out new stuff, to, oh, Nike's not really making any changes other than a new shoe design. Their apparel was very similar and they weren't adapting to the times. And it's like, all right, sounds good. Not going to buy Nike anymore.

Yeah. And by the way, like I haven't bought Nike for a long time and I was a big Nike fan growing up. I think you were as well. And so I think they didn't do enough. Like if you're going to make a big change like this, sometimes you might want to think about one, talking to people, but second thing, maybe you roll it out in phases. Maybe you didn't roll it out all at once. So I don't know if they did this all at once. It sounds like maybe they did because keep in mind like 2023. So this is towards the end of this, you know, John Donahoe's tenure.

Well, here's a big issue here. In general, in business, if a consultant is trying to tell you how to run something and what you should do, especially McKinsey or, you know, Bain and Company or Boston Consulting Group, I usually would recommend doing something else because a lot of these people have never operated a business and they'll tell you how you should run your business. And then if you look at their track record, when they put a lot of these execs from McKinsey to be a CEO in a lot of these organizations, they tend not to do well. And then they got to go back to operators who are on the ground, who know how to run things and who are actually talking to the consumers. Versus a McKinsey person who's just looking at spreadsheets and be like, yeah, if you do this and move this around here, you know, you can go from there. And I'm— I've dealt with it. We've done M&A a lot, and I've seen people do spreadsheets like, you should just buy this company. Look at this. If we combine it, look at the numbers and how great that would be. I'm like, cool, you— how about you do this with your money and you go try doing that? Because it usually doesn't work out the way it is in your spreadsheet or anywhere like that.

And it's like, hey, have you done any integrations? Oh, you haven't? Okay, would you like to try it? Go try it with your own money.

Yes. Oh no, but we've seen it work. Look at these case studies from a Harvard Business Review and it works. Just follow that. Like, it doesn't work like that in real life.

And that's a lesson, like going back to what we were saying earlier, when you're in the trenches and you're locked in there, you're going to do just fine if you keep going, right? I think a lot of situations people kind of tap out or they get unfocused or they kind of go to do something else. That's when things start to fall apart. And by the way, again, like going back to what we were saying earlier, like adapt or die, that's kind of what it is. So hopefully Nike can bring it back because Nike was a great story kind of growing up. I'm going to move to the 3rd point and come back to the 2nd point over here. Okay, so the 3rd point here was they prioritize digital marketing. So Nike changed its marketing budget to focus on driving users to Nike digital properties and membership platforms. For decades, Nike spent 10% of sales on brand advertising to create an aspirational halo. Which is what Neil was just talking about, right? The prioritization of programmatic ad spend meant Nike went from create demand, new customers, to serve and retain demand, retargeting existing ones. The result was a slowdown in sales. Because of that, writes Massimo, who spent 21 years at the company, right? Long time. Nike invested a material amount, billions, into something that was less effective, less effective, but easier to be measured versus something that was more effective but less easy to be measured. In conclusion, An impressive waste of money. The quality advertising was not so great. So without going into details, like I can show you the creatives because some of my other friends this week were showing me the creatives. We're not going to talk about that. One thing I'll say here is going back to what Neil said, once you start to get away from what you were before and what you were known for, and you start going into whatever's trending at the time, people start to lose trust in your brand. And a brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. And so for me, Nike before growing up, like Neil and I would share these commercials with each other. It's like you see Lendalien Tomlinson, the running back, right? At the time running into Troy Polamalu, right? That's inspirational, right? Or you see like a World Cup thing or something like that, right? Doesn't matter if it's like women's sports, men's sports, whatever. I always looked at, I'm like, man, I want to be like that, right? But when you see stuff that doesn't make sense anymore, it's like, well, I don't want to be like that and I don't want to be associated with that brand. Therefore, I cannot buy that brand's products. And therefore, whatever I'm saying behind the closed doors now is a negative thing. And that word of mouth travels very quickly, which is kind of what's related to this brand piece over here. So again, like, I think Neil and I, we're big fans of digital marketing. It's what we do for people. But I think sometimes, you know, again, you want to make sure that you're like, if something's working for you, like, why would you eliminate it?

Yep. No. And this is what I was saying. It's like, Nike created a lot of people who love their products from their commercials. I remember my nephew Jaden would tell my sister when he was younger, I need Nike shoes. And she's like, why do you need Nike shoes? You have these Skechers. And he's like, I want Nike shoes. They make you run faster. Right? I'm not saying the shoe actually makes you run faster. And my sister did teach her son that some shoes may make you run faster, But a lot of running faster has to do with dedication, training harder, and other aspects, eating right, getting enough protein, getting the right amount of sleep than just purely the shoe. Of course, a really heavy shoe that weighs 10 pounds is going to make you run slower than a shoe that is a pound. I'm making up the weight because I don't know actually how much shoes weigh, but you guys get the point. Running with a 10-pound weight in both your feet, you're not going to run as fast. She did buy him the Nike shoes. He did end up learning the lesson, but that's a cool part about the campaign. And when I dug into why he wanted Nike shoes, it wasn't just because he believed they help you run faster. It was the TV commercials and how they push people, and people were successful and athletic and doing well wearing Nike products, and he wanted to be like one of those people. To me, that's Good brand advertising.

By the way, when Neil buys a Tesla, it's because he just wants to be like Elon Musk. It's no different. I'm just kidding. Just kidding, guys. That's me being facetious.

It took Eric so long to convince me to get a Tesla. And then eventually—

Dude, I didn't convince you anything, man. You just kept talking about it. And like, Noah was in the room too.

No, no, no, no. But years before, when you had a Tesla, you told me I should get one. And I'm like, no, it's a crap car. And I would give all these reasons. And then I was telling Eric, I don't know when this was, call it like 6 months ago to a year ago, maybe a year ago. I kept talking on and off about buying a Tesla and they didn't say I should do it or not. They didn't really care. I eventually ended up doing it. And the reason I bought the Tesla was for one reason only, the self-driving technology. I do have to say, compared to a Mercedes, The car's not that comfortable and you miss a lot of the perks that you would get in a luxury car over a Tesla Model Y, even a Tesla Model X or S or whatever they're called. I still believe like the Mercedes build better cars, but that technology of self-driving, for me, it makes up the lack of the other comforts.

Yep. Well, it's like in life, there's no solutions, only trade-offs. So the last point over here. So they ended wholesale leadership. Okay, so Nike ended hundreds of relationships with wholesale partners and prioritized Nike's website over retail. The change looked genius during COVID but as customers returned to brick and mortar, Nike's products were nowhere to be found. It had burnt bridges with partners who were happy to give shelf space to upstarts. This wasn't covered, but I think On and HOKA, These are yoga brands or athletic brands. Athleisure took advantage of this for running. Okay, so there was a lack of feedback from retailers, which led to inventory issues. The quote unquote data-driven insights from online sales proved not to be a panacea. And so this is a situation, again, it seems like they kind of just ripped everything and tried to make these drastic changes. And when you do these changes with a big company, these drastic changes, it's hard to kind of unwind these changes. Yep.

On a side note, you have a topic in here. I think a lot of people have seen it. It's related to this because it's related to sports and marketing. Why LeBron James's Polymark partnership is a brand eroding move.

All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such 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. Yep. So here, let me pull this up. So this is a guy I know named Bryson. So shout out to Bryson over here. So check this out. So by the way, I'm a big fan of LeBron, right? I'm based in LA and I'm a Laker fan. Oh, guess what? They deleted it. Oh, look at this. Okay, so unless they paid Bron $100 million and gave him equity, I see no world where it even makes sense to partner with the prediction market. So what was the original post that LeBron put up? Was him doing a commercial with Polymarket, him walking into Polymarket, right? Just so everyone knows, Polymarket is— they call it prediction markets, guys. It's just gambling, right? You're just gambling on what the score is going to be. You're gambling on— by the way, I've tried it, right? Uh, I, I bet on the, the, the Spurs to beat the Knicks when they're down 3-1. And I was like, I was so confident, right? Lost the money. Clearly gambling, right? So anyway, I think he probably got a lot of blowback here. And so he was doing DraftKings commercials before, and then the Polymarket one, I think a lot of people started talking about it, but let's see what happened. The post is gone, Neil.

I believe I also am not a LeBron fan, so if he's eroding his brand, I don't really care.

Yeah, but let's talk about why we think it's a brand eroding move. So you go first.

So I haven't seen too much of it other than he partnered with Polymart or created a hint. I didn't actually see the commercial or anything like that. I saw a message go out or people talking about it. Polymart is just gambling straight up.

Oh, here, here it is, Neil. You see the commercial there?

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, I did see that part where he's getting off the elevator.

Yeah.

But I look at Polymart as just straight up gambling. There's nothing wrong with gambling businesses. But if I was LeBron James, I would not partner with a gambling business when there's other opportunities.

The way I see it, I'm like, man, you're already a billionaire, right? What more money do you need? And you're at the stage in your career now where you don't need to be doing this, right? Maybe you play with the Sixers for 1, 2 years, maybe you win a championship and you kind of ride off into the sunset and you go do more business deals. The money that you get from this is not worth it because as Warren Buffett says, It takes you decades to build a brand. You can erode it within 5 minutes. You can lose it within 5 minutes, right? And so gambling is not— by the way, like me, I played a lot of poker growing up. I love gambling, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's something like I would want to be known for, right? Because I've seen it going to the casinos. I see the people that bet their entire paychecks. I've seen people that lose their relationships over it. They lose their family over it. This is not the type of stuff that you want to be promoting. You want to be promoting healthy stuff, right? That's just my opinion. I'm not LeBron James. You can do whatever you want, but I do think it's a brand eroding move.

Yeah. I didn't know you're a LeBron James fan. I never liked him.

Why didn't you like him?

I know too many personal stories.

Well, I do too, because you told me. So that's fine. But I will say he brought a championship to LA, right? You know, he's, uh, he's, you know, I'm okay with that, right? He's done his job. So That's what I'll say. By the way, this is kind of related. So do you remember Sam Sulek, the really buff guy on YouTube that makes videos?

Yeah, we used to talk about him like a year ago and you would share your screen.

Okay, check this out. So I found, Neil, I found the Sam Sulek of e-commerce. Have you seen this guy? Here, check this out. Let me share my screen with you.

So here, check this out.

Let me share my screen.

That Sam Sulek guy must have been taking steroids or something. Maybe I'm wrong though.

I would bet that he probably is. I'm trying to pull this up for you real quick.

So yeah, let's just do this. That's my assumption. I have no proof, by the way, if anyone's listening.

Sam Sulik YouTube. Let's just go to Sam Sulik's YouTube first. Okay. First, let's look at this guy because YouTube's taking forever to load. Do you see my screen?

Yeah. He has 4.5 million followers, tons of videos, tons of views on his videos, but yeah. Yep.

And look, like 21 hours ago, he's uploading every day, right? The Bulk Rebirth. Look at, look how huge this guy is, right? And like he's just making long videos of him like working out. Basically, that's how it is. And I think he's just talking about life. So this is how it is, right? So bulking, the last pump, all these things. Okay, so that's the context. This guy's buff. Okay, so Mark Builds Brands YouTube. I found the Sam Sulek of e-commerce. Okay, so it won't necessarily load right now, but if you can see this, this guy is basically— he's recording like screencast videos of him talking about dropshipping or funnels and things like that. And His shirt is off. So he's like a buff guy with his shirt off and he's just saying, here's how I made money, this and that. So, so here, check this out. All right, Neil, do you see this?

These are something that's messed up. Uh, let's see. Okay. Yeah. He even has a picture. You can tell he's buff. Yeah.

So how to make FU money with branded dropshipping. So that got 430K views. So let's just look at this guy, right? Because Neil, I would say, to be fair, you and I, like, if we're getting, you know, I'll just speak for myself.

I don't think he posts that often, but he still gets a ton of views.

If I'm getting 15,000, 20,000 views per video for the type of content I'm making now, I'm actually happy with that, Neil. I don't know how you feel. Like, what are you happy with on YouTube?

I don't care about the view count. I look at how many customers or leads we generated per the video. So if we do a video and we get like 3 to 4 leads from ideal customers, I'm very happy with that.

I think it's harder for me. The reason I'm saying, let me give you some context here. So the reason I'm talking about 15,000 to 20,000 views is because I know the content I make today and the content Neil makes today. is much more focused on our target audience. So like if I make an AI thing, it's like for business or for work, right? The content Neil makes is like maybe he has some enterprise topics that he's covering. And so I know by default, we're going to get more of those people coming in. I also know it's harder to track because the funny thing is someone came in the other day and it was like a startup that raised like, I don't know, like $100 million recently. So like decent funding. And they had like left a comment on a YouTube video. I watch your stuff. How do we work with you? Right? And then I'm like, okay. But like, you can have things like, you can have things find these people or, you know, also keep in mind, sometimes when they find you on YouTube, they'll go through like another channel and then come through your website or something like that. So you never quite know, at least for me. So anyway, going to this guy, he's getting, you know, 59,000 views, 36,000 views. And he has this one over here, copy my landing page template and maybe $1.4 million in 30 days. So Here's a template, here's the result over a time-bounded period. And so his shirt's off, right? His shirt's off over here. And so my whole thing with the shirt-off thing, Neil, is it's a pattern interrupt. It's just marketing. And you look at this enough, I'm like, this guy seems like he knows what he's talking about. And 2, he's buff. Maybe I should listen to this guy, right?

Yep. Isn't this interesting though? It works. It's interesting. I'm curious to see how he makes money from it.

He's kind of like, I wouldn't say he's like Alex Becker, but Alex Becker's pretty funny, right? Like when he makes his videos, but it's kind of like a similar style where they're just like screen sharing and going through stuff, which is actually what I really enjoy. All the other stuff bugs the hell outta me, so.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about how our marketing week has been so far, okay? So what I mean is this, you and I, you're busy doing your thing and then there's obviously some interesting marketing things that has happened for you this week, also on the business side as well. So I figured we should talk about our weeks as well because those are some of the more interesting stories.

All right, go for it. You start it off.

Well, I'll tell you what was interesting to me. We had— so I'm currently looking for brand creative strategists on the long-form and short-form side, right? So there's this one person that came in and I think they're very smart, And they have a lot of followers, right? They've clearly kind of been there, done that. And I'm like, okay, this person clearly understands how the game is played. And so we started with like a test assignment. And so here's the thing. Remember I talked about how agencies shouldn't work a few weeks ago. I'm going to give you this example and you tell me what you think. Okay, Neil, you ready?

Yeah.

So this person did 4 content briefs, right? So when you're doing like a content brief, it's like an outline for you to create content, right? And Neil, you've seen that with your content, right? So Neil, assuming I do 4 content briefs for you, assuming you don't like them, um, with this test assignment, what should be the order of operations next? Should I be redoing it for you? Should I be charging you again to do it? Or what should I be doing?

If it was me and someone sent me 4 content briefs and I didn't like it, I would just fire them and move on.

Yeah. But what should be the expectations with this, um, with this test?

That the briefs are actually good and the person likes them and you understand them and understand their business and take the time to figure out what kind of brief you're making. And then if they tell you they don't like them, you should explain why they're good for them, assuming you did all your research on their ideal customer profile and their business. And if you have good data and reasoning behind it, someone may end up creating it.

So my take is I should be, let's say I didn't do enough research and you're giving me feedback on it because you like me, right? Because I do like that person, I should be revising it, right? I should be revising, at minimum, I should be revising it.

Wait, they didn't revise it when you gave them feedback?

I gave them the feedback and they said, so instead of revising it, so it was, keep in mind, this is a very small test, right? It's a very, very small test. It was like $250 for like 4 briefs, right? And she, and this person was like, oh, okay, well, that's not included in this one. It's going to be $2,000 for 10 briefs. I'm like, wait, What? And I'm like, hey, this is not— it's just not going to be a good fit, right? And I said, look, I wish you the best. I think you're a really smart person, but this person's going to learn eventually that this is not how you do business because you want to play for the long term. And not only that, there's so much that you can— that we can learn from each other, right? And so, like, again, this is a situation where it's like agencies having a bad rap where it's like, you're actually putting more on my plate and you're not making it easier for me. So this is one of the things that, that like, This week this happened, and obviously there's more. I'll share a cool thing with you and then I'm going to flip it over to you. All right, Neil, here, check this out. So I've been working on this speed— oh, you know what? Here, I'm going to show you another one. So Neil, I made a Grok bot that made a massage appointment for me tomorrow. Okay?

Okay.

And so I also made another one. Okay, check this out.

Check this out.

So this shows that it made a phone call yesterday. So I was like, hey, So I was tweaking the bot. It's called the Call Bot over here, right? And I was using Twilio, all these things. And by the way, I was just telling it to set it up. And so it calls this massage place that I like called Tomoko. And it's like, okay, reach out to Jamie tomorrow at Tomoko Spa, ask for Saturday, September 12th, couples massage with 2 female therapists. What she said, you're already booked. Meaning they've had this conversation, right? I just wanted to call to see if it'll work and it worked. So imagine, Neil, all the things that you would be put on hold for You can just run it through this bot, right? All the things that you never want to deal with. All, by the way, a lot of people, just, just a pro tip for you, you can actually search how much money is owed to you by the state, and you can have these bots kind of look and make the phone calls for you and, and just stay on hold. Um, and then maybe it can transfer over to you, right? But the most—

That's cool. Those state calls are such a pain when you call them.

Oh my God. Yeah, I never thought about that.

That's such a great idea.

There you go. And by the way, Neil, you'll like this one too. I have a Haggle Bot. The Haggle Bot, Actually, it's been sending emails to all the softwares that we pay for. And the funny thing is, like, everyone from all these softwares, like Asana or our applicant tracking system, they're all responding, right? And it's like, hey, you know, this rate's not going to work for us. Like, what's the best that you could do? Blah, blah, blah. So instead of, like, you can just have your finance person running the Haggle Bot. So my whole thing with these things is I'm just making these Grok Bots and I'm just handing it over to my team to run. But the best one, Neil, is I have the Speed to Lead Bot. So anybody that fills out a lead form on the site gets a call within 60 seconds now. And it, the voice sounds good. Like I had a few people on my team testing it and they're like, dude, this sounds really good. Right? And so I'm like, oh, well, like we can probably run this for, you know, deals that are like stalled or deals that we need to revive. But the cool thing with GrokBot is it's fairly simple to spin these things up. You just need to spend some time with it. That's another cool thing that I've been messing around with in my free time this week.

So when I look at this week, Eric mentioned something on speed to, what was it? Speed to follow-up or something like that? Speed to lead?

Speed to lead. Speed to lead.

I've been actually focusing a lot this week on speed to learning. And what I mean speed to learning is imagine this, you do work for, you do work for your company. You see something that's working really well on Instagram. How often is that knowledge transferred to the other social profiles? Sometimes it's the same person, so it gets transferred pretty quickly and they actually go and execute on it. Sometimes that knowledge needs to be transferred to people who are running email because they're figuring out what copy's working well, or they need to send it to people who are on paid strategy or conversion optimization, whatever it may be. And one of the biggest bottlenecks that I see in organizations is the speed to learning. And what I mean by that is something happens, you make a change on one of these platforms and you get this result that is very advantageous for you. Sometimes you got that result deliberately because you intended to run that experiment and you knew something would happen, but a lot of times it actually happens by accident and it's just pure luck. But that's okay. That happens with all marketers in many cases, but you take what you got lucky on and you need to implement it on the rest of the organization. Now imagine this for an agency. You have hundreds of clients, maybe even thousands of clients. You could have them in one country, you could have them globally. You may be running multiple channels. You're quickly— you're not only implementing what you already know what's working, hence companies hire agencies, But you should also be running a lot of tests and experiments to figure out how you can get even better and better results. But what I find in almost every organization, when people learn something that's working, that knowledge sometimes gets transferred over to people, but even when it does get transferred, people are very slow to execute on that. And these are easy wins and low-hanging fruit. And that's one thing I'm trying to tackle more in marketing, and I believe a lot of organizations face this issue, especially once you start scaling above 100, 200 people, you start seeing more of these issues. The other thing that I've been working on this week is how do you find businesses or what's the best way to search for businesses that haven't adapted? So what's really cool about ChatGPT or even a lot of companies out there, forget ChatGPT, it could be any AI system. A lot of people post their revenue numbers and you can look at their headcount numbers over time. So imagine you can end up finding players in your space, semi-competitors or competitors that may be specializing in an area that you're not as good at, and they've been doing it for a very long time. Call it 10, 15 years, maybe even 20 years. And if you can see that their headcount's roughly flat, they're not growing. Why are they not growing? So what we've been doing is, or what I've been doing, and I've been doing this for a bit now, but I've been spending a lot of this week doing calls around that, is talking to companies who haven't been growing and looking for the ones who are telling me, we're losing clients, we're getting included in the right pitches, and I ask them to prove it to me. Because you can look at their leads, their CRM, and all that kind of stuff, especially after you sign NDAs and you're going through diligence. You can see if they're getting the right type of accounts hitting them up that you would love as customers, but then you look to see why they're losing it. Are they terrible at pitching? All right, that's fixable. That's not the ideal thing I want to fix, but it's fixable. The thing I really look for is the people who are great at almost every aspect of the business, But they lose the revenue because the companies feel they're too big for the agency that they reach out to. And the reason I like that is, is if I can acquire those agencies, I instantly solve that problem due to our headcount and our scale. So now they go from having a good product, good service, but losing business because they didn't expand their services over the years to enough that what people want, and B, they don't have the headcount to win those bigger deals, even though they're getting the inbound RFPs or requests. And I found that to be a potential goldmine. It's just hard to find those right ones.

I know.

And then a lot of people may end up claiming some of those things, but you got to get them to prove it and really dig in and talk to some of their old customers or old pitches that didn't go through. and figure out why they didn't actually choose that company. And then from there, you know, if you can work out a deal, you can end up growing much faster.

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. So I'm going to pull something up real quick that's kind of related to this. So basically, okay, here we go. I'm going to pull this up. So I had put, I made a 2 by 2 in relation to what Neil's talking about. I made a 2 by 2 chart because I was workshopping something with someone on the team this week. Okay, cool. So what I have up on the screen right now, those of you that can't see it, is a 2 by 2, right? This is how I'm thinking about agency services or marketing services software in general. So right now we have, you think about it this way, if you have a 2 by 2 here, on the x-axis, you have your customer usefulness. So left going to right, the more you go to the right, it's more useful. Okay. And then on the y-axis, you have the ongoing delivery effort of something.

Okay.

So you have low to high going up south to north, basically on the x-axis. What I'm really calling out here is a lot of the stuff that we should be trying to build more of, at least for me, is reusable workflows, right? So these are, you know, these are high usefulness, but over time, it's going to be less work over time, right? You might need to customize it every now and then for a customer, right? Now, I think a lot of agencies right now, they do custom and premium work, which are— this is— it's obviously useful to the client, but it's high ongoing delivery effort, right? Which is why a lot of people that I'm talking to right now are trying to leave the agencies in droves, right? And I'm in some of these AI executive chats and These are not even agencies, but tech companies, right? They're just like, dude, you know, like, things are just too slow right now. And like, you know, these companies aren't adapting quickly enough. And so, you know, they all want to move from this world where you're still doing maybe 10-20% of your work, maybe like this, maybe 80% is like this, where it's reusable and scalable. And then anything that is like low effort, low usefulness, you probably deprioritize it, not probably, definitely. And then anything that's high effort, low usefulness, you probably need to think about stopping and then refocusing the company, right? Because In today's day and age, you can do anything, you just can't do everything, just more and more of. So that focus muscle is even more important today. So this is something like I'm constantly recommunicating the vision to the company in terms of like, hey, we have this 3-layer cake, like this is how things are going to go, this is how everything connects. And I have to kind of be the chief repeater, the chief reminder officer over and over. And just so people know where we're going, right? more important than ever. And then some of the things that Neil's talking about in terms of what we're doing is we're constantly again thinking about reusable workflows. Like how do we skillify things? What repos do we put them in? How do people— how do we continue to repeat that over and over? These— how do we make sure that these things are secure? How do we make sure that there's a gateway for it? So that way becomes a lot more scalable. And then we can look at similar to Neil, like what's out there that where we can acquire the great talent and the logos as well, and then figure out how to grow from there. So anyway, that's, that's part of how we think about this from like more of a business angle, I'd say.

Yeah. What have you been changing up on your, or have you been doing any changes on your social media? We actually started doing some tests this week.

Yeah, you go first.

Yeah. So we've been starting to crank out more content, more longer form content. And we've been finding, and when I say more long form content, we've been trying a new format where I can be screen sharing. So it's recording me in my office, which is where I am right now. Laptop tilted to the side, camera head-on directly to me, and then it goes in between me talking and screen sharing. Technically, I'm not really screen sharing. The team is doing the screen sharing. What's happening is there's a teleprompter with the script that I'm supposed to read, and then when I go to my computer, It's the same script on my screen, so I can go back and forth and keep talking. And then on their end, through post-production, they do all that stuff. That way we don't need a camera behind me recording the screen or anything like that. I don't always follow the script. Probably a large chunk of the time I'm just ad-libbing and just talking away because then they'll tell me what they're trying to say. And then sometimes the script is just too wordy and long and I just want to freely speak. I would probably say I do that 60% of the time. But those videos seem to be working out really well on all the social platforms. So in essence, not only am I recording more videos and more longer form videos, but I'm trying screen sharing formats, which people like. The whole thesis behind it is even though a lot of our customers, our ideal customer profile is a large global company, they have a lot of people internally in marketing. And we want to give them a lot of the tips and the strategies so that way they can be more effective at their job. And then when they have a brief that they want to put out or RFP, hopefully some of those people think about us. But the longer-term play here is we're just getting our brand out there and a lot of these junior people will eventually get promoted. They'll eventually be the ones pushing out RFPs and being more decision makers, and hopefully they keep thinking of us as well. The other strategy that I've been doing is we've been scraping all the people that have been engaging with our content on social, specifically LinkedIn, then looking at their job profiles, what's their position, what company they work at. We try to estimate the size and then we craft really personalized emails to them based on their business. And if we honestly think we can help, we do it. If we don't, then we don't waste our time crafting email. But we're putting them in buckets. So let's say Eric hypothetically worked at Microsoft and he was a CMO. Let's just go with this example now. If Eric interacted with 5 of my posts in the last 6 months, I would more likely reach out to Eric than if someone was a CMO of Apple and they only engaged with my content 1 time in the last 6 months. So I'm looking for people who continually engage Roughly at least once a month for a consistent period of time. And our period is usually 3 months because we're finding those people are more likely to engage in conversations. And even if they don't give us any business, they know the next time they go out, they're much more likely to include us in a brief.

Yep. So a couple things here. So what Neil's talking about, I don't know what tool you're using, but I do know that Gojiberry can help find the people that are engaging on X and LinkedIn at the same time. So if you're attacking both of those, it makes sense. I think Lead Shark is something that we use. So I'll go ahead and share my screen right now and talk about the 2 things that we've been doing. So if you can see my LinkedIn over here, so this is what we've been doing. We've been creating these, you know, comment to get access on this guide type of thing. We add them to the newsletter. And then if you combine that with a GojiBerry and you see who's engaged with this. So for example, 900 comments on this one, 115, you know, likes. So the idea should be, okay, they get an automatic DM and then you add them to your list. But the other thing is, to Neil's point, you should be looking at the people that have maybe engaged 3 to 5 times in the last 90 days or so, and you should be hitting them up. And you should, I think you should have a human in the loop there. And I like something, I watched a Gary Vee clip the other day. He's like, you know, I'm big on this one thing right now, 15-85-5. I'm like, what's that? So 15% of the time. So in the beginning of doing a new project, he's involved for the first 15% so he can set the tone, right? And then you let the team work on the rest of it, and then he comes in for the last 5% or so. And that's kind of how I'm thinking about tweaking a lot of these things right now. So I'll let the team— I'll set the direction, look at how the team does it, come in and tweak it a little more, and then go from there, right? So like, you know, that Goji Berry Lead Shark thing is a thing that we've added recently. But the other thing I'll call out too is looking at—

Go back really quickly to that image. When people comment CMO on LinkedIn, I'm assuming you manually message them.

Nope. Automatic.

Automatic. What are you using for the automatic messaging?

I think it's called Lead Shark.

Lead Shark. Good to know. There you go.

See, look at this. See, screen sharing is good, man. Lead Shark, Goji Berry. So the other thing, Neil, you kind of called this out, but like I'm looking at my YouTube channel and I'm starting to become more proud of it because if you look at the views recently and there's a big thing with GPT-6 Astra. So last Saturday I decided to record a video. Literally, I got the video out myself with the thumbnail and with the editing, right? I think it was, it might be one of this one. It might be either. Yeah, I think it's this one. How I use GPT-6 Astra to run my business, 7 real examples, right? So I'm attacking the latest marketing trend.

Yeah.

Sorry, latest AI trend, and then layering it on with marketing stuff, right? And so how I use GPT-6 to run my marketing for a day, how Grofbot runs a market. I'm good with 3,000, 5,000. I'm good with 12,000 views, 13,000. Like, I don't need, you know, rich BFF. Like, I love Vivian, right? But I don't need 731,000 views because it ain't going to drive no leads, right? And sure, I can talk about dating over here, 488,000, 485,000 over here, but that's not the most exciting piece. The most exciting piece is getting the relevant views.

Yes. And just be careful for the Vivian though. I know, I think with you, one of her most popular things was you should be quitting your job every few years, or was that a clip outside of your channel?

Yeah. Every 2 years you should be quitting your job.

The current CEO of Apple would not have gotten that position if he kept quitting his job every 2 years. And same with Satya from Microsoft. I'm not saying you shouldn't or you should. I'm just saying figure out what works for you.

You should always do, to Neil's point, what's right for you and what's right for Neil or me might not be right for you. So just keep that in mind. But one thing I'll call out, Neil, is in the past, like we do have editors on the team and they're great. We do have thumbnail people on the team. Neil, like for me to cover these types of topics, whenever the inspiration strikes, I used to not want to do it because I knew I'd have to wait for the editor. I knew I'd have to wait for the thumbnail. And by the time the video came out, it would've been like a week later, right? Now I have a GPT-6 Astra skill called Leveling Up Content Engine, and it'll cut out the short forms. It literally edited this video and it came up with the thumbnails. Like this video, Neil, is completely AI edited. So here.

All right.

So ChatGPT 4.0 is out and everyone's going crazy about it. You know, everyone's talking about all these games that they're making, Call of Duty this, you know, Mario this, and like, you know, all these like world games and all that. And don't get me wrong, that's cool. You see that, Neil? Like the first 30 seconds, like all these things that it added, it added on its own, right? So like even these pieces.

The only thing I don't like is the thumbnail because it's not your real image and I feel it's bad for branding.

So I added to the skill, like I just messing with it. You and I can create these things where it's like, man, I can even share the skill with you if you want. But it's like the first 30 seconds is very important. Keep the editing tight. You know, don't, don't have a bunch of dead space, have captions at the bottom. Neil, to your point, I improved. Look, this thumbnail clearly doesn't look like me, right? It looks like somebody else. This one over here, right? But this one, hey, how's this one over here?

No, that one's good. I assumed that was not. Done by AI.

No, this one was done by AI too, but I just improved it. I said, hey, here's what I actually look like. You get what I mean? So I'm just like, dude, I get it, right? Like, I, so one of the editors this week, I was like, look, man, I'm like, you want this, but then you can't hit deadlines. And then at the same time, I'm doing this right now. So like, you know, at the same, you're going to have to catch up, right? And so, cause I interact with my brand team like once a week and I'm very direct with the feedback. Um, so he's like, he's stepping it up now and I'm hoping I could just hand him these skills. But the whole idea is like someone like a Neil who's pushing his company, the founder, right? And same thing, founder for my company. I think it is your job to figure out how you can constantly mess around with these things. And if you can make a cool reusable workflow, hand it off to your team and then let them take it from there. Got it.

So yeah, dude. And when it comes to AI and thumbnails. The other thing you can end up doing— Eric's spot on, this is how I actually look. Like, Eric and I probably have, no joke, 1,000+ images of us that are not recent but recent enough that you can actually put into AI and be like, this is how I actually look like, make sure I look similar.

By the way, Neil, I want to tell you a story here. I've been reading this book, um, from the guy that was a president of Tesla. I think his name is John McNeil. The book's called The Algorithm. Okay, it talks about the Elon algorithm. But there's a chapter I went through where he talks about how Tesla 20x sales on their site. So here's how they did it. Basically, it took 64 clicks to buy a vehicle on the Tesla site. 30 of those clicks were just signing loan documents, Neil, like going through a bunch of different things, right? And so what they did with this algorithm, there's 5 steps to the algorithm. Question, Delete, simplify, speed up, and automate. I'll say it again. Question. So question all the requirements, delete whatever seems to be stupid. You probably should be over-deleting and then you should be adding back later, right? Simplify what the process is, then you speed it up and then you automate it. Right now, too many people go for automate first, and that's how you screw up a lot. Elon has even said that himself, and this is his algorithm. But they start to question everything. It's like, wait, with a loan document, why do you actually need to have like 30 or 60 pages or whatever? So they question it and they challenge You know, how it should be done. And the loan docs, I think, take like 3 clicks or something like that now. But they optimized the site, they optimized the whole manufacturing process. Like, hey, instead of having like, you know, 20 different colors or 60 different colors, why don't we just have like 3 or 4 different colors? And that way you simplify the process and that simplified their entire manufacturing. So that way they actually started to get a lot more throughput out there in terms of shipping more cars. But people were able to buy a lot more cars on the website. And that's how they actually 20x sales on their site.

It's crazy how people buy a car like a Tesla on a website, right? I would've never imagined that like 10 years ago. I'm like, ah, no one's going to buy a car on a website. Times have changed and people are actually getting used to making very large transactions digitally.

It's just, but I love the whole thing around the first part of the, like questioning everything, right? Like why does it have to be done this way? And the cool thing is, You've seen this, Neil, like when we, when you or I hire new people that are coming out of college or even people that are in high school right now, they naturally have that built in. They do, because they don't have any preconceived notions on how to work. They just naturally question everything and they just work in a new way. So it's kind of built in already with younger folk.

Yes. The Elon thing specifically, I believe it was Domino's Pizza that he was comparing it to. And he wanted it to be very simple, like Domino's Pizza. He's just like, why can't it be like this? I also think what makes it easy to buy a Tesla is they don't have too many options. If you want to go buy a Mercedes, and I use Mercedes example because it's the most common car I tend to buy, or manufacturing brand for automotive, Mercedes has tons of options. Like, you can pick like 50 options for a car or something ridiculous like that, which just makes things much more work.

Yeah.

Tesla, you may not like some of the options, but you just pick from whatever they have and it is what it is.

Yep. By the way, this is funny. Okay, so Neil, I wanted to share this with you. So there's basically this study right now that shows how AI ads are beating human creative on completion. Okay, so let's talk about what that means. So let me share this with you. And here's a little hack for you all that are, that are watching right now. So this site, how dare they put a paywall up? Well, I just go to this other site over here called removepaywall.com and you just put the URL right after and the paywall is gone. I'll just leave it at that. I got that tip from Elon, by the way, on X. So with AI becoming a common part of the creative process in advertising, brands and content makers assessing its effectiveness against non-AI content have a reason to cheer. According to data from global advertising technology platform VDO.ai, never heard of it, on connected TV, AI-generated ads recorded a 92% Video completion rate, VCR, okay, slightly higher than the 90% seen for non-AI creatives. A similar trend appeared in online video where AI-led ads achieved a 71% VCR compared to 70% for non-AI ads.

It's crazy.

Are you— what are you guys seeing?

I don't know the exact numbers. Well, that's something we're going to have to report back on in the—

we'll report back on this in the next few weeks. I just think it's interesting.

I know we've tested it. I just don't have the exact numbers off the top of my head.

Yeah, that's fine. It's okay because we're going to come back to that in a few weeks or so. But here's another one for you, Neil. So if we look at Shopify's Q2 2026 earnings transcript, so we can see here, okay, that, so what they basically said was that I think it's in terms of online purchases. So through Universal Commerce Protocol, which is something they developed through Google and the Shopify catalog, I think they're saying that agentic purchases have gone up by 3.6x year over year, or their sales have gone up 3.6x, contributing to faster onboarding and smarter decision-making for merchants, right? So Shopify reported a 32% year-on-year increase in GMV to $116 billion and 34% increase in revenue to $3. $3.6 billion for the second quarter of 2026. The company emphasized its strategic focus on expanding its addressable market by providing a unified platform for merchants of all sizes, leveraging its open ecosystem model and partnerships with major tech companies like OpenAI and Google. And so its infrastructure advancements, this is basically, this is enabling commerce that makes it easier not just for people but for agents as well. And that's gone up 3.6x year over year. And I think we're going to see a lot more of this. I think this is going to grow faster. Yeah.

So, you know, on a side note, let's actually talk a little bit about SEO. We haven't talked about SEO for a while on this podcast. I was having a conversation with an entrepreneur earlier on this— earlier this week, I believe it was Monday, and they were breaking down how SEO no longer drives any traffic. People don't use Google anymore. If you're not doing GEO, you're going to end up losing a lot of business because now everyone's using AI. And you can call one GEO, you can call one SEO. I know there's some nuances and differences, but in reality, what I'm seeing, and I don't know what you're seeing, you may disagree with me on this or not, the platforms are becoming merged. What I mean merged is Google's experience is looking more like ChatGPT. And ChatGPT is starting to integrate some of Google's experiences within ChatGPT. In essence, I believe if you fast forward a year or 2, they'll look much more similar to each other than what they do now. And whether you want to call it GEO or SEO, depending on the query type that you are going after, you're going to have to optimize for whether it's an answer or whether it's 10 blue links or 6 blue links or video to be included. You're going to have to just be— you're going to have to show up. And what marketing is turning into, in my opinion, even though it's digital and a lot of it is performance-based where you can track the ads, it really comes down in the long run to a brand game. I believe, yes, you need a good product or service. That's always been true. But the person who builds a stronger brand is the one more likely to win in the long run. Maybe you're not the biggest, but you'll be big enough where you're happy. And a lot of marketing dollars are going to be shifted towards things related towards branding, even if it's digital, because paid Google Ads really do help build your brand, right? YouTube ads, Instagram ads, they all do help build your brand even though they're really trackable. And it's more so showing the right type of campaigns to the right type of people on the right channel. And in the long run, I think that's going to drive the majority of sales and every big company we work with, the majority of their revenue comes from their brand, but ranking on Google, being in GEO, being on Instagram, it all helps with the brand. Yeah.

So what I would say is this, Neil had this saying called search everywhere optimization. It applies even more today, even though he, we haven't heard him use it on this podcast in a while, but it is search everywhere optimization again, right? Just a little different. But same, right? And so the way I see it is, the good news now is you see a lot of kids, they're actually starting to create content. I actually saw a 7-year-old create an Instagram thing yesterday. I was going to send it to you.

Wait, 7 or 70?

7 years old.

Oh, cool. Yeah.

She was talking about something that I think is funny that I would've sent you, but I didn't send it to you on Instagram. But anyway, so the whole, Back in the day, by the way, just so everyone knows, like, the SEO game was the game in town, right? Everything, you optimize it and it was pretty like, it was pretty like you kind of knew what you get back. Like if you produce more content, you get more links, um, and maybe you acquire some websites and then you, you make sure you're updating your content, you're deleting their content. Like everything that people were sharing, it's like, it mostly worked, right? Today, a lot of different things work, which means attention is spread. And remember we talked about in marketing, It used to be the rule of 7 for people to get your attention and take an action. Today, we think that's probably more— we went up to rule of 14. It's probably more rule of 21, rule of 28 today because attention is so fragmented. But to Neil's point, even if you're a niche creator, let's say you are creating something around like interior design for Amish people or something like that, right? Very niche. Guess what? The people who buy from you when they can use— are they allowed to use technology? Neil?

I don't think they are because we have them at the ranch and they typically don't use technology when they're taking the logs off and stuff like that.

Okay. Well, just if we entertain it for a moment, let's assume they can use technology. You would have a very niche audience, right? But again, like using the example, looking at Neil's YouTube channel, looking at my YouTube channel, for my YouTube channel, just speak for myself, when I used to go wide, it didn't drive conversions. But now when I go lower, when I go more niche with like, not just marketing, but talking about the latest AI marketing and business trends as it relates to my business, that is very niche, right? And that's going to get the right attention that I'm looking for at the end of the day. So what we're really saying is that you're going to, you have to work even harder today than you did before. And, you know, whether you want to use the word omnichannel or search everywhere optimization or whatever it is exactly, Just know that it goes back to what we first started with, with this episode, is that you have to be not just adaptable as an entrepreneur, if you're an entrepreneur listening to this, but you have to be very adaptable as a marketer. Those are the ones that are going to thrive in this new world. And I think everyone's going to realize in the next few years that they have to become more adaptable. It's just the most adaptable ones today are already winning.

Yep. Dude, a lot of life just comes down to adapting. I was watching an earnings call for a SaaS company And we're not at earnings call, they're at the Goldman Sachs event and they're talking about how they're working on other channels to diversify away from the SEO hit that they ended up taking. And they were talking about how GEO isn't driving the amount of traffic, but they're focused on YouTube and other things like that. But yeah, no, it's, you know, it's—

What's the company? Can you name the company? Is there anything dangerous if you name the company?

No, no, there's nothing dangerous. It's, it's, uh, I, yeah, I don't want to name the company. Um, people can look up their own analyst reports and stuff like that, but they need to adjust and they are adjusting. And if they don't adjust, you're pretty much gonna struggle and not do as well.

Yeah. A few more things, uh, to talk about before we, before we get out of here. So I wanted to share this Mark Pincus thing, and then I wanted to share a bit on Meta's Muse, which I want to share some takeaways from that. I've also been using this new bot called Instinct, Neil. Neil, you know how you have a lot of points, right? I think you still have a lot of points, yeah?

Yeah.

So, okay, Instinct, I'm like, hey, I want you to find all the events I should be speaking at in the next 12 months. I want you to also— I have X amount of points over here. I want you to— and I want to go to Japan, for example, on these dates. I want you to find the reward flights. It found me all the reward flights and how much they would cost. It found me all the events I should be speaking at. And all the different angles and how it reached out for me. I said, oh, by the way, I'm doing this global AI summit in November. We're looking for maybe one more speaker or so. And I want you to find the people who are nearby in that area because it's in Europe. And because this organization doesn't have budget to necessarily fly all the Americans over. And it did that, right? And so Instinct is pretty interesting. I think a lot of these bots are going to become interesting. But Because I'm talking about Meta Muse already, let me just talk about that real quick. Meta Muse is the autonomous agent that Meta released earlier this week. Neil, you know why I like it? Because it's connected to your Instagram. So I can say this, I can say, hey, I would like to go to Italy with my girlfriend in the next May. Okay? And I want you to create an itinerary for me, a visual itinerary based on who I follow on Instagram and also all of my saves. And it has all your bookmarks, all those useless bookmarks that I was bookmarking over the years, they're now useful now, right? And so I was like, hey, that's cool. But I'm like, I want to use it for business. So I was like, hey, can you actually handle all of my Meta ads and you can see everything? And then like, you know, like, is that going to be more useful with you? Because you have, you're connected to everything on Meta. It's like, yes, well, absolutely, right? So it can do that. But the other thing that was more practical was I was like, hey, I want you to audit my social media, right? And it was like, yeah, you're posting too much, right? It's like, you're posting too much. And then it's like, the funny thing about you, Eric, is like you're posting so much and I look at all your bookmarks and you are not following all the things that you love in your bookmarks, right? And when I hosted a poker game the other day, Mark Manson was like, yeah, your stuff is really good. You're just posting too much now, right? And so I'm like, okay, that's pretty good. Like both Meta, because Meta has all the data in the world and it has my bookmark because that's all my behaviors and everything. I'm like, that's pretty good. So I'm going to be using that more. Now, the last thing, the grand finale now, Neil, is this piece. So Mark Pincus, our friend Mark Pincus from Zynga. So he posted this, check this out.

And when Eric says our friend, he's joking.

Yeah, I'm joking. We don't really know him, but we did talk to Zynga about doing a poker deal a long time ago. That was like 15 years ago. But anyway, so amazing story, must read for breakout consumer AI. So this guy Rohan Nayak here, he shares this. He's co-founder of a company called Pocket FM. I don't even know what they do, but they grew from $0 to $500 million in ARR, annual recurring revenue, adding $250 million last year while being EBITDA profitable, okay? 1,300-word post on every growth tactic that worked for us. I'm not going to go through everything here, but I think we should talk about maybe like the first 2 or 3, okay? So what got us from $0 to $400 million ARR in the US works in every country. Number 2 is retention monetization hacks. Number 3 is localization is greater than translation, all right? So Pocket FM is like Netflix for audio-only dramas with our own pool of one-person studios. Fascinating. All right, so acquisition playbook for $0 to $10 million ARR in any country in 6 months. We run a 90-second video trailer of an audio drama as an ad and ask users to download the app if they're interested in the rest of the story. So they hook them in and download this to continue. One core insight after spending $100 million on acquisition is If the click-through rate, CTR, for an ad goes from 2% to 2.25%, our customer acquisition cost, our CAC, decreases by 30%. Fascinating. We remodeled our system around this insight and built an AI-first 2.25% CTR ad manufacturing machine that works in every country. For every new country, we take our hit shows, use LLMs to extract the most intriguing moments, write a 5-minute script combining all the best parts, The first 60 seconds has to have a hook every 5 seconds and needs to end with a crazy cliffhanger to force a download mid-scroll. If a marketing video is not hitting our benchmarks, 2.5% CTR and 55% 3-second through, uh, through play, a creative director gets involved to change the hook or cliffhanger to get the numbers out there. It allows us to make 1,000 ads per show, and in total we do 17,500 ads per month. When a business, uh, creating scales from 1,000 to 10,000 ads, the normal thing is for CAC to skyrocket. But with what I just shared, we 7 to 8x our user acquisition budget without increasing our CAC materially. It took us 8 months to figure this out, but the timeline from 0 to $10 million in every country got shorter and shorter. US revenue to $25 million in 19 months. US is now 78% of total. Germany to $21 million in 11 months. France to $10 million in 3 months. We can just leave it on that. That's fascinating.

Yeah, that's really cool. By the way, it works really well for a lot of consumer-based businesses that have mass content that you can just adapt. And if it's stuff that's really popular, it's easier to click create ads that can be more appealing.

Yeah. And I think maybe to apply this to agencies for a moment before we get out of here, it's how can you create an ad system, an ad machine that's like this, and how can you have, how can you model it for every customer, right? So how can you make this a reusable system? And by the way, I would also say this, everything that we've talked about on this podcast, when you go on YouTube, when you download the full thing, just take it to YouTube to transcript or take it to any of your other harnesses. And there are some good ideas here that you should figure out how to make into a skill or something that's reusable, and then you'll do a lot better. So that is it for today, and we will see you tomorrow.