Pixar lays off 14% of its workforce, Liquid Death's $400k fighter jet or $250k cash giveaway, & more

There's too much content that's being created and there's too much crap content. And that's also why Disney laid off 14% of its workforce from Pixar, right? It's just, people are just getting way too much content these days. I don't think people want all this content. Instead, they just want quality content. The same goes whether it's streaming TV or social content. People are just tired of seeing crap and crap doesn't do well anymore.

Speaking of not crap, what about this Liquid Death thing you have over here?

Dude, Liquid Death, do you see the competition that they're doing, the giveaway?

Nope.

They're giving away a functional $400,000 fighter jet or a briefcase full of $250,000. First off, I feel that it should be a $400,000 fighter jet or $400,000 in cash, not $250,000. Maybe the fighter jet was cheaper and then they're saying it's valued at $400,000.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

But the problem with the fighter jet, and they have this in disclaimer, you have to pay for your own fuel, parking, maintenance, pilot, et cetera.

Yep.

So the fighter jet isn't practical because A, most people can't fly. B, no one knows where to park that thing because you got to pay for parking at an airport, which adds up. And C, it's just another additional monthly expense that most people can't afford in this economy. So everyone's going to take the $250,000. I bet you whoever wins this is going to take the $250,000 in cash and no one's going to want to take the fighter jet and they're going to be left with it or they're going to have to figure out how to give it away. But it's an expensive gift to give away because it's like me saying to you, Eric, hey Eric, Here's a free fighter jet. You're going to be like, dude, this costs me $5,000 to $10,000 a month to, you know, house and pay for fuel and pilot.

It's no different than having a yacht, in my opinion. I actually saw a 50 Cent short the other day. And he's like, why would I want a yacht? Because like, it's just like a floating expense. It just keeps sucking away from you. And even like the jet's more practical than a yacht. Because at least if you're doing a bunch of like in-person deals, you can fly to these people and get— you can justify it kind of, right?

But not a fighter jet.

No, no. The fighter jet is just like, what are you doing? Because how are you even supposed to get up and pee? You can't because you're flying it. So you have to pee in your pants.

Yeah. And it goes pretty fast. But I think that that stunt will bring them a lot of press. I think they picked the wrong thing to give away. They should have gave away like a Bugatti. If they give away a Bugatti, people are like, oh my God, a cool Bugatti. And we'll pay for the taxes that you incur on this thing as well.

It's also like, what are they trying to get out of that? You know? So like, what are they trying to get out of that? What's the terms?

I have no idea. I haven't looked into it. I just know if the campaign was for a Bugatti, it would be a much bigger success because who wouldn't want a Bugatti, especially if you pay the taxes someone incurs on the car? I'm not a Bugatti fan, but a Bugatti, a Ferrari, or whatever, but pick something that's flashier because I think Ferrari's been played out. You go Bugatti style, you'll get a lot of people who apply, and then all of a sudden, people will be willing to pay for the gas. Yep.

So for the last 10, maybe we should talk about— We should talk about what's working. We should also talk about how we're continuing to build this community and how you're getting involved eventually.

So, am I going to be on the next call? Because I want to be on the next call of the community.

No, we need to get to 50 people. We're at 36 people right now, 37 people that are paying.

We passed 5,000 in MRR.

Yes, we did.

Right?

Yes.

Is the retention good or is it churning?

We haven't churned anything yet.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah. We got a good product, guys.

So, give us an update on it. How does it work?

So, this is— so, the community we have— so, the backstory on this one is Neil and I had a call a couple months ago and, you know, it's like, okay, we should build a community of agency owners, right? My thing on it was like, okay, we should have an online community first and then of the 7 and 8-figure people in there, we should do like a mastermind probably twice a year or something like that, right? And we have something that— someone that can run that for us. But, you know, Neil and I both being in groups like YPO or EO, we've realized the power of community. And Sam Altman himself said this. He said, community in the next 5 to 10 years are going to be so much more valuable, right? Like people like in-person stuff as much as I'm an introvert, you're an extrovert, but you still like staying at home. Like, it's good to be out with people that are like-minded, right? So we built this school group, and in the school group, basically what happens is we do these weekly calls, right? And people are asking questions, people are sharing templates. It's actually very engaging right now. And we did a really good— we hired this guy from Mindvalley as a community manager. His name's Ezra. He's fantastic, and he's helping kind of push the thing right now. And he's meeting with me once a week just to talk about the vision of the group, right? The group's been growing organically, all organically. Or we do run ads in this podcast, right? We talk about this, the group in there, but that's what it looks like. So let me tell you what you get in the group. You get— there's the weekly calls, there's a community in there. We're trying to get software discounts that we include for people. And then, you know, Neil and I will bring in like outside speakers every now and then. Neil will show up every now and then. I show up to these calls every now and then. But you look like you want to say something.

Go ahead.

No. Okay, so our plan to grow this thing is just to continue to push these podcast ads. So we have mid-roll ads, right? But on Saturdays, we actually do like a— oh, you're going to yawn again. So we do like 15-minute preview calls of the weekly calls that we do. And that itself serves as an ad because they get a little preview of it and say, if you want to learn more, just go to marketingschool.io/agency, right? I've also started just a little ad test this week because you and I have so many pictures together. So we had our designer Put up a couple ads and then we're just seeing how those go, right? And we'll see how they go after a small spend. But that's how we intend on growing this thing. And we see a lot of school groups out there. It doesn't have to be school. It could be like another group too. But a lot of these groups are doing like $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 a month. And most of that's free cash flow. So it's pretty good. So yeah.

Well, I signed the iHeart cancellation agreement.

You did? I thought I was supposed to sign it today too.

Yeah, I know. We both have to sign it. It's in your inbox.

Oh.

Okay. So all you have to do is sign it. Get rid of all the ads that are in there, start doing ads for our own thing, and I bet you it'd grow way faster.

It'll grow way faster. And honestly, this is something we should have done years ago.

Yeah.

But it takes time for Neil to warm up to things. So, so yeah.

Well, no, at first you did it and I didn't even know about it. Yeah.

Well, yeah, no, I did it, but I did it in a style because remember, the good way to do this in the beginning is you let me roll and then once it starts rolling, then it's like, okay, you come in. Yeah.

If I just send an email blast out, it'll probably hit like 50,000 to 100,000.

It would, but that'd be cheating too. So, So yeah, we don't— I haven't even hit my email list with this yet. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's that.

And— Where can people join?

People can go to marketingschool.io/agency. School, unfortunately, Sam Ovens, there's no free trial for it or we otherwise would enable it, but you basically have to just pay. The good thing is there's no like, there's no long-term commitment to it. So you guys will see us build this community, whether you join the community or not. Don't join if you're not an agency owner, but I'm going to be sharing in public kind of what we're doing to grow it. And you guys will see us compound this thing. I have no doubt we can get it to like, you know, 100, 200, 300, So you guys, like Neil and I, like, you know, we both have our separate businesses, but to be able to build something in public with each other, that's something we haven't really done before aside from building this podcast. So.

Yeah, but technically it's you more so building it, not me.

It's fine. It's, you know, Batman and Robin. Remember? That's what Heaton said. Batman and Robin. All right, everyone, quick message from the Agency Owners Association. So this is the peer group for agency owners that Neil and I both put together. This is for people that are doing 6 figures, 7 figures, 8 figures, even 9 figures as well. And we're all here to help you grow your agency faster.

In this group, we share leads.

We share learnings with each other. It's a community where people can ask questions, their most burning questions personally, professionally. We'll share templates, reports, things like that. We're constantly adding more value to the group. I will tell you that the price is continuing to increase. The good news is that there's no long-term commitment, so you can just learn more by going to marketingschool.io/agency. Once again, that's marketingschool.io/agency to learn more, and we hope to see you inside.

The Barbie movie cost me $10,000.

Why?

Kids' birthday party. How does a 4-year-old know what the Barbie movie is all about when they've never seen it and want a Barbie-themed birthday party at the Mandarin Oriental?

When did this happen?

Weekend, Sunday. Oh, wow.

That cost you $10,000? Break it down.

Probably more. DJ, people who came in and made fresh pizzas based on whatever people wanted.

You didn't invite me?

No, it was a kids' party.

That's messed up, man.

Catered food as well. That came from California Pizza Kitchen. It was convenient. What else? Catered desserts. Birthday cake made that looked like a Barbie in a Barbie dress that came out. I didn't even realize it was a cake.

That's expensive.

What else? A lot of decorations stuff, tables, balloons, Barbie-like kiosks, like a phone booth, but it was Barbie decorated.

Did you have a Barbie person too?

Many Barbie people walking around.

Oh my God, you hired multiple ones.

Lifeguard, because it was also a pool party. Even the DJ booth that they're DJing out of was all decked out in Barbie. There was a Barbie stand and table and stuff like that.

Who planned all this?

Not me. I don't know who planned it out though.

Your wife?

I don't know. I never asked. What else? There was someone who was drawing pictures of people. Face painting, body painting. There's people who are doing other things like balloon art or whatever it is.

So your point behind this is that the marketing behind Barbie cost you 10 grand.

More. And then the hair, there was someone out there who was just doing hair extensions and stuff for people, little kids who want to look like Barbie. There was even like a big foam pit that was a ball pit like Chuck E. Cheese, bigger than this room.

Dude, I'd like to be Neil's kid. But so your point here is, look, you know, by the way, I think we ranked number 1 for the term Barbie marketing. But that's what happened to you. That's the power of it. Like eventually you're going to have like a Sanrio theme too, like with Hello Kitty.

Yeah, but how the heck does Barbie— like how does a 4-year-old know what— they know what Barbie toys are, but like, I need a Barbie party like the movie. I'm like, you never saw the movie.

You know, that's called word of mouth marketing.

Yes, but they found word of mouth from other 4-year-olds or 5-year-olds at that point.

All right, so I wanted to take a second to tell you about leveling up Founders. This is an event/mastermind for people doing 7, 8, 9 figures. These are founders that are doing that amount, and we've been doing this event for a couple years now. We've had amazing speakers, but more than anything, it's about the people. What I mean by that is like-minded people want to hang out with like-minded people, and this is the best spot to connect with people of a certain caliber. And we vet every single person that comes through. So if people are— even though they make a lot of money, but their character, we don't really align with that, we're not necessarily necessarily going to let them in. We did this event in Beverly Hills and it's happening in the beginning of August. All you have to do to learn more about it is just go to levelingup.com/founders. Again, it's levelingup.com/founders if you want to hang out with amazing people. Neil, my podcast co-host, is going to be there. I'm going to be there. People like Syed Balkhi, he will be there as well. And again, it's going to be a great time. levelingup.com/founders to learn more and we'll see you inside. Dude, one last thing before we get out of here. This is, this is interesting to everyone. So I've pulled this up on my screen, but this tweet is from Justin Taylor. And there's basically these ads where people are pretending to be in a podcast. They look so awkward. Do you see it?

Yeah.

Neil, describe what you're seeing right now.

I'm seeing people act like they're in a podcast and they're just talking, but it seems fake.

You can tell it seems fake.

Yes, it seems off.

Yeah. So point is, A couple months ago, I talked about how my friend Walter shared this concept of eavesdrop marketing, right? So if you and I are talking about something that's interesting, like the Shake Shack thing that took off, I think it has over 600,000 views now.

That deal doesn't work anymore.

Whatever. But so, so, um, when I shared like, oh, how this one, um, this one company's charging $35,000 to $45,000 a month and they're driving 100 million views, that got like 300,000, 400,000 views or so, right? That's an example of eavesdrop marketing where like you're sharing a tactic or strategy with me. And then people are just, whoa, what is that? Right? But this is done in such an inorganic way that it's just not going to work because you can tell it's fake. But if it's like you and I actually having a conversation and we actually know, like, and trust each other, this ad would perform a lot better. And you don't know what's going to go viral too. You never know.

You don't. But the, but the eavesdrop marketing, when you're talking about the burger, whatever the burger place is called—

Shake Shack.

Shake Shack. The reason it also worked well is you knew when you were telling me the story that I would genuinely be curious about free food.

I actually didn't know. I think what helped a lot for that one was your genuine Like curiosity and your excitement by it, and then me just. And then you kept acting like I work for Shake Shack, and I had to keep reminding you that I don't know. And that that worked really well.

But but you knew going into it I like free stuff.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So anyway, that's it for today, everyone. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe. Marketing school dot io slash agency. We're going to show you all how we build this community, and if you have an agency, we're going to help you build your agency faster. So that being said, we'll see you tomorrow.