Something Is Happening To Marketing Teams That's Never Happened Before

I've learned one thing about the toughest part about AI transformation, and I'd actually be curious to hear from your side too. So when I say AI transformation, I mean within your organization, the people that you're working with, you know, what are you doing to help people adopt, right? I think we should share some lessons on what we've learned. What I've learned is we just did our second hackathon last Friday, okay? And there are some teams that are shooting past the other teams, like the things we— the SEO team built something called Tiger Claw. So it's basically Open Claw, but it's for SEO. And they're like, that's how they're going to work now, right? And then we have like the creative team, like they're pumping out creatives like really quickly. Yeah. And so what I've learned is that this will be very painful and it's necessary pain, right? And we kind of use the joke internally now where, you know, going to work now is like drinking this cocktail of excitement and fear at the same time. And you have to be this very exciting, motivating person at the same time, but you also have to be this person that kind of shows people what's happening in the market. So my point of saying all this is that some people are going to self-select themselves out, which is to be expected. And you're also going to attract some really impressive people in, right? But I think my key point here is for us, at least, molting is a very delicate process. So, you know, when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it's a very painful process and it's very delicate. But when it becomes a butterfly, it's very beautiful, right? It just, it takes time. So what have you guys been doing with that? Have you been paying attention to it or not so much on your side?

We have, we actually haven't found the transformation to be painful at all. We figured out the solution that works for us. It doesn't mean that it'll work for other organizations. And the solution has been very pleasant for almost most of the people in our organization.

Go on.

So instead of, we used to have the approach of trying to originally of just trying to train people when it comes to AI and get them fluent. And we found that solution did not work too well. Then we started setting up teams whose job was to help get others in the organization ready and prepared. And we also found that it worked better, but that also struggled. And then we ended up moving the solutions team to doing something a little bit different. They would work with different people within the organization, different departments. So I'm not talking just SEO, I'm talking about someone who just focuses on on-page, someone who focuses on digital PR, someone who focuses on, you know, content creation.

And imagine this for all aspects of SEO.

Yeah.

Imagine the same thing for conversion rate optimization. Imagine the same thing for paid management. Imagine the same thing for email.

You get the point here.

And what they started doing was listening to the people who are day-to-day doing the job and then creating solutions leveraging AI that helps them do their job better and in a more automated way. Not so we can charge a client more money or make more profits. We actually haven't seen our margins increase because there's all these costs for using AI. What we found was It allows our team to spend more time on the high-level strategy stuff that is harder for AI to do. So then we're able to do more for customers, which in theory, it's too early to tell, should help reduce our churn and create better satisfaction because we haven't found most organizations in marketing yet when they're paying an agency to say, I want you to do more for less. We really haven't seen that conversation much at all. Yes, for many years, companies want agencies to do a lot for very little money, but AI hasn't changed that. What we've found is the companies who are making profit and are growing are like, how do we do more and do it more efficiently with AI? They don't care about the spending less money. For example, if you have a company that's doing $9, $10, $11 billion a year in profit, cost cutting isn't really an issue.

Mm-hmm.

What they care more about is growing their top line. What we found is, and this is not the majority of the companies that hit us up, The ones who want to save money are the ones who their growth has declined and they're going backwards. So they can't figure out how to grow. So they're just like, help us cut costs.

Because that's their way of surviving. Why would you go to an agency to cut costs? Correct.

Yeah. We don't get that that much.

Yeah.

Right?

But we do deal with them because I see them at conferences all the time. So when the companies are like, yeah, we're going to use all these solutions to replace SEMrush and Ahrefs and all these things that we spend money on and Salesforce and all this.

Usually the companies that tell us this are growing like 1% a year or negative.

So they do need to save cost because they can't figure out how to grow their business. But for agency perspective, going back to your question, the reason at this point our team has adapted really well with AI, imagine you, I know you once worked for many companies or a few companies.

Mm-hmm. You were in charge of SEO or marketing or paid.

Imagine someone being like, Here's a suite of tools that makes your life easier and let me show you how to use them. And they follow up with you every week to make sure you've implemented them, you've onboarded and you're using them. And then they check in with you every week to get feedback on how they can continually make it better to improve your experience as someone working for us. And we found that to be the best way to integrate AI in our organization because here's the kicker. The moment you tell someone, hey, you need to use AI, go and use it. Well, if we just take content as an example, someone who's never written content using AI to write content is going to do different than someone who's been writing content manually for 3 years versus someone who's also been writing content for 10 years and is an industry expert on that subject. All 3 of those people will use AI to write content differently. Who's going to produce the best output? It really ranges. Because of their experience, not only with AI, but because of their experience within that field. So what we're doing is creating the AI that adapts to the person and just say, here's how you use it, here's the technology, and here's how you deal with the agents that'll help do your tasks. So then that way it's standardized and the quality of the output that we get is at a level where we're happy for our customers because the moment we— didn't just give it to them, like the tech, and we just let 'em go on their own, the output quality ranged drastically. And we realized that a lot of people were doing the work, but it was shit work and we couldn't ever show it to a customer. And what just happened internally, we just wasted a lot of time and money for them to create slop that we can't use. So then you're spending double the amount of time and money.

Hey, quick break. If you're looking to work at an AI-forward company, we are hiring at Single Grain. So Single Grain, we are tech-enabled, marketing services company, and our mission is to be the marketing partner that B2B companies never outgrow. The way we're looking at things right now is we are going hard on tools like Claude Code, and we have different products, Carrot and ClickFlow. And our mission is to hire the best possible people who are very AI-forward, who love to nerd out on marketing, and who want to go into this future. And so it's not going to be an easy thing, but you can check out our careers page by clicking this button over here, or just go to singlebrain.com/careers. And we'll see you on the other side. So let me tell people specifically what we do here. So what we do at Single Grain is we make sure that we have this, we have these standups with the leaders. So we had the standups with the leaders. So we have people that are really good with AI and we also have the leaders that are supposed to also pass things around. So we basically have a mix of people, right? And we're asking them every day, it's like a daily standup. It's like, okay, what are your blockers? What have you done yesterday? You know, and also like, what are you, what are you working on today from an AI standpoint? So that's where the leaders will disseminate that information. And then every Friday what we do now is there's a, there's like, I think it's like 3, 4 hours or so where people get together and we have this thing called Gather Town. Um, Noah, do you remember Gather Town where we like, it's like these little video games where you're walking around in a conference?

Yes.

Yeah, we do that. You do that?

It, it's like the cartoon version. You can go up to a person, there's a text bubble and you start talking, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So we have that and oh, we did that for the event, remember the— Yes. 6 years ago.

Okay.

So GatherTown is, is the software that we use. And so everyone goes into GatherTown and everyone's like sitting at a desk or you can go into like an auditorium. But the whole point is you can interact more and we don't, we want people to, to talk more, right? So same thing as Neil, we've realized that you can't just say, okay, here's a tool, go use it. That, that, that doesn't work, right? So what we do now is when we do the hackathons, it used to be per team, but we realized like if I'm part of a team and you're, you're running the SEO team, Neil, I can just hide, right? So now what we're doing with the hackathons is we're doing every person has to present something, they might go to the team first, work on the planning, and then they'll do the hackathon, right? So the hackathon's still there, we're just constantly adjusting it. But we also have an AI fluency prep standup that's happening. So it's constantly top of mind. And then I have an agent every Friday that will go to you, Neil, and say, Neil, what did you get done with AI this week? What have you automated this week? It's basically like, it's the Elon question.

Yes.

Okay, so, but it's public, it's in our AI public channel and everyone's responding to it. And then I was looking at it, it's like, by the way, if you don't respond, by like 12:00 PM noon, it'll be like, Neil, how come you didn't respond?

Right?

So then, and then all of it is recorded into a document. And this is not necessarily to police, it's more so to say, hey, we can see over time where we're getting better and who needs help. And the agent itself can uncover who needs more help and then we can go and help that person, right? That being said, not everyone's going to come along for the ride still, okay?

Yeah.

You can set all, you can build the bridge, we can build a bridge, not everyone's going to cross the bridge, right? And that's where it's like, I think you and I both want everyone to grow, But that's unrealistic because I asked my dad this question Sunday. So, he used to work as an engineer, a COBOL programmer, okay? I said, hey, Dad, when the internet first came out, how quickly did it take for people to adopt to getting like an email address, for example? Because you and I, I started using internet when I was 8 years old. I'm assuming you were pretty early too. But we were on it, right? He's like, oh, it's very slow, very slow. I was like, Dad, what's very slow? He's like, oh, very, very slow, very slow. And I'm like, what does that mean? He's like probably like 4 or 5 years at least to adopt to getting email addresses, right? So inertia is a very real thing. And that gives like, when I talk to people on the team now, the people that have kids, I'm like, man, you should be so excited right now because all your kids need to do is just to be above average a little bit, right? Because human inertia is very real. So anyway, that's the struggle because my struggle is like, I really want to see everyone do it, but it's unrealistic to expect that everyone could get there.

So. Yeah. And this is why I believe the, Pyramid in marketing is going to be flipped instead of a CMO at the top. And then you have, you know, a team underneath him and then you have some C players and then a big group of D and F players.

That's the old way, right?

That's the old way. I think the new way is going to be you're going to have rock stars at the top, not just a CMO, but you're going to have a bigger A base, bigger B base, and the rest will almost be nonexistent. And, you know, a company who could end up looking at and being like, oh, we're going to end up saving money, we cut all these headcounts. You're going to have to spend money on tokens, which is going to be a cost. And then you're going to have to pay more for the A and B players, in my opinion. I don't have data for this, but I'm pretty sure you're going to have to pay more for them. I agree.

Because if they can do more, if I automated my job away and imagine I work for you, you would pay me more because I can automate myself many times over.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then I would have you go do it for other stuff.

Yes. And you'd go teach other people or just run around the organization. So I'm not just like a 5 or 10x, I'm probably like If I'm really good, like 100x.

Correct.

Better.

So I believe organizations aren't going to save that much on cost in marketing at least. I think you're going to end up paying more money for the good people and the crappy people, you're not going to pay as much. And I've seen a similar trend that you've seen. When we give rockstar marketers technology to be better, they work harder and they go do even more and they'll spend even some of their weekend hours doing whatever they need to learn and adapt. And like, this is cool and exciting. When we give C players and below technology, not always, but the majority of the time, they're like, oh wow, cool.

I can—

I can be lazy.

I can get a lot of this done and I can spend more time going to the Galápagos or wherever.

Dude, you know, someone today on an interview for an executive interview literally used AI completely. I was like, it's cool that you use AI here. Now show me your workflows. And he like pooped his pants, right? Like it didn't work. So that's a good example of someone being a slop cannon. You used it purely. I'm like, okay, I'm going to ask you to explain your Did you just accept everything without thinking? And that's clearly what happened. So I ended the interview early.

Dude, I'm having the same problem with interviews, a little bit different. I'll ask people if they use AI and most people lie to me and say, nope, didn't use any AI for this, did it all manually. And I can tell it is 110% written by AI because like they'll give me examples like, oh, you know, we should do a webinar and this is a topic. And I'm like, and they're like, with this influencer. And I'll ask them like, who's this influencer? And I can tell they're Googling right now. And I was like, So you know them? And they're like, no. I'm like, where have you heard from them before? You're like, oh, Forbes. And I'm like, so you're telling me they're not anywhere else on the web? It was just one article on Forbes that they wrote related to marketing and you're telling me they're an influencer? I'm like, AI pulled this from you and recommended this person. And I'm like, they're in a different country like Japan and English isn't their first language. I'm like, how the heck did you come up with them? Like, this is pure AI.

We talked to someone and I want to get back to your story that you're sharing, but we talked to another executive. Okay, this is for like, let's say like a, a people role, okay? And this person was like, yeah, you know, I do the vibe coding on the ChatGPT. And I was like, dude, you can't vibe code on ChatGPT. He's like, well, you know, I do the ADK on the MCP. And I'm like, dude, you're just like saying it to say it, man. Like, and I had to end that interview early too, and he got so pissed.

So I'm just— What does that mean he spent $80K on the MCP?

No, ADK is like Agent Development Kit from Google. And when my CTO was like, so what did you do with that? He was like, oh, well, I didn't do it. I had someone else build it. I'm like, okay, well, with the MCP thing, tell us more about that. Well, you know, exactly. I didn't do that. I was collaborating with other people. It's like you just ask one level deeper and everything crumbles. I'm just— the point of saying this, guys, is like, if you're interviewing for a job, please just come a little more prepared and I think you're going to do fine.

My favorite is a buddy of mine owns a franchise and they sell pizza. Oh, so another—

the what?

Do I know of it?

No, it's not here in LA. And they're mainly— they're in the West Coast, but they haven't really done much in California. When I was talking to them about pizzas and they're like, yeah, we know another friend of yours, we're going to use them to do some marketing. I was like, how's it going? Like, the person just gives us AI stuff. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, well, when we tell them to get us more customers coming to our pizza store, they just give us reports on what we need to fix and it's purely written by AI.

Yeah.

And I'm like, you sure? They're like, yes. They're like, we've used AI and it actually recommends almost the same exact thing that they're recommending and is written very similar. You know, different words, but they're like, they're using ChatGPT and Claude for a lot of this stuff.

Yeah.

I was like, okay. And they're like, the person doesn't get it. We've tried a lot of this stuff. It's not working getting more people into our pizza stores. We're looking to pay someone to solve the problem.

We're not looking to pay someone to just ask AI what to fix and then give it to us and tell us and pay them to go and use AI when we could have just done it ourselves. Like, we're looking to pay a specialist who has experience in this space that can help us fix a problem and have fixed this problem for other restaurants that are franchises and they're just like, we're giving them tests, but they're like, it ain't going well. And it's just like, yeah.

It goes back to the high horsepower thing. If you have high horsepower and high agency, meaning that you're curious and then you're willing to push, you're going to be fine, right? Versus like the slop cannons. Sorry, did you want to finish something before we go to the next topic?

Okay.

So this is related here. So recently we've heard Travis Kalanick, former or founder of Uber, right? He said that there's going to be an influx of more jobs, right? And then recently Robinhood CEO said that there's going to be way more software engineers and engineers.

Wait, can we go back to Travis Kalanick first? You know his startup, right?

Atoms?

Yeah, Atoms. Like he moved from Cloud Kitchens to Atoms. Go ahead.

Yeah, but similar concept. Cloud Kitchens is part of Atoms from my understanding.

Is Atoms his robotics company?

Robotics company. So helping with kitchens, helping with mining, like actually physical mining when you're mining for like, Copper or gold or iron or whatever it may be, right? And he is creating a robotic company and he believes more jobs. And we're seeing the same thing. We're just seeing jobs transform. It's just like people are like, oh yeah, this is going to displace so many jobs. You're not going to need someone to cook French fries anymore at McDonald's. Well, back in the day, everyone was doing things like farming and manufacturing, and now a lot of it's automated.

92% of people.

Yes. And then we've switched into new jobs. And, you know, the example I was giving on a podcast interview literally before I came here.

Oh.

And they were talking about how people are going to lose jobs. I'm like, well, if you use a French fry example, you need a company who's going to hire people to build the humanoid robots to flip the French fry or to cook the French fries and flip the burgers. And that requires humans for a job. It's just jobs are moving to different sectors.

So here's what I think is going to happen.

I think when you look at the industrial age, when you look at—

or moving from agriculture, right? So farming, where it's like 90% to 95% of people. You know how long it took for the world to adapt to the industrial age?

15 years?

I think it was closer to 30 years.

Wow.

Yeah, whether it's 15 or 30, I think it's closer to 30, but it took a very long time, right? Just like, you know, people getting email, you know, after using the internet, like 4 or 5 years for corporate. So what Travis says here is that when you think about, okay, if robots can build way more buildings, we're going to need what? We're going to need a lot more engineers. We're going to need a lot more people to manage this stuff, right? Or if people, you and I are now officially coders, we're officially programmers, whether we like it or not, okay? Now we're not as good as the best engineers in the world, but it's going to be much easier to start a company and run it autonomously, right? And so that means that there's going to be more businesses, which means that the legal profession, as an example, the legal profession actually scales with business activity. So you're going to need a lot more lawyers. And so—

Yes.

This thing is called Jevons' paradox, right? Like once the internet came out, a lot more people started using it. Once electricity came out, a lot more people started using it, right? So, but I do think, and I think you agree with this, I think there's going to be some short-term job displacement just like there was when people transitioned from the agriculture to the industrial age. So that's what I think is going to happen because it's been time and time again.

Dude, we work with quite a few law firms. One of the law firms we work with is global. I think they have more than 2,000 lawyers globally. Then you have paralegals underneath the lawyers and all that. So their staff is quite large and they pay for, I believe it's called Harvey globally.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, so how is AI? And this guy's a partner and he sits on the global steering board and he, you know, helps. everyone throughout every country, you know, just grow. And he's also a lawyer himself and he's a friend. And he's just like, dude, he's like, it sucks. He's like, it's so inaccurate most of the time. We pay for it so that way our clients know we're up to date. But he's like, if the amount of times it's off, he's like, it causes us to spend more time doing the job and paralegals than us just doing it by scratch without using Harvey. I'm not saying Harvey won't get better, but sometimes a lot of these solutions, People are like, oh, they're going to replace law firms. You won't end up needing them. And it's like—

Bless you.

Bless you. Are you going to really— if you're going through a big case that can cost you millions of dollars, you're really going to just trust AI to just go wild on its own?

And if it makes one mistake, it costs you millions of dollars.

Dude, the way to use this stuff is supervised, at least for right now. And I think, look, I hope Harvey does kind of what Intercom did where they pull a lot of the data that they have and they make their own LLM. But even then, you still need It's too high stakes to just let a machine do it, at least for right now.

Well, the problem with law is it's not— and with a lot of things, including marketing, it's not black and white.

Oh my God. And there's so much interpretation for the state that you're in, the country that you're in.

There's too much gray areas.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's like as a company, you know, we're global. We've had our— it's actually not a lot, but we've worked with customers, some of them being friends, like one of our friends who lives in New York, you know him, where their company goes bankrupt and he raised venture capital, right? I don't know how much he raised, maybe like $300, $400 million or something like that. Good guy. He wasn't a co-founder, but honorary co-founder because he was early and I think they made him the CMO.

Yep.

We had a contract with him. You know who I'm talking about.

Yep.

His company ended up going bankrupt. Again, nice guy. So the lawyers end up taking it over. The lawyers end up suing you saying clawback. Now, even if you're not in that clawback window, they can go back even further and say fraud. Fraud not being you stole money, fraud being we paid you money, we don't feel we got enough value for the money we gave you. And what I'm getting at here is there's many ways for lawyers to try to get money back when the law states that, oh, if it wasn't within 90 days or something like that, you can't claw back money. Well, you can claw back money for other reasons. So legally you could be like, well, we have a good case, we did all this kind of stuff. Our end, we just look at it because we also have in-house counsel as well as we use outside counsel. Well, if we want to keep fighting them, our legal bills are more money than just giving back a portion of the money that they're just requesting. Just give back that portion of the money and move on. Again, this is not black and white.

This is human judgment.

Human judgment. And it's just, you're just looking at things as a formula and a math equation. It's just like, I want to fight and be right because we did a lot of work. So you want to spend $200 grand in legal fees Instead of just giving them back $50 grand and making them happy. Give them back the damn $50 grand. Yep.

Anyway, guys, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.