Stop Selling SEO: The New Way to Win $6M Deals

All right, you can pick something, Neil, because you just came back. Where did you come back from?

I came back from Brazil and I had some— That's a long flight. Yeah, a long flight. I had some good meetings and I was talking to one of my team members when I was in Brazil and I think marketers have something that's really wrong. So one of my team members had experience pitching a really large company. All right, it's everyone in the United States at least knows this company and they won a contract for SEO, call it for a few million bucks, multi-year contract, let's say 3 years. So call it $6 million total over 3 years. And do you know what was in their SEO presentation? You want to know what they focused on?

Regular SEO?

They focused on almost nothing related to SEO. They focus on the business problem. You're this company, you need to move these metrics for your stock price. This is what the board wants, this is what's been happening, this is your budget, you need to produce ROI. We're going to produce the ROI and here's the overall strategy. It wasn't about rankings or clicks, it was, this is how we're going to achieve these numbers. It wasn't, we're going to build X amount of links, look at these on-page errors. And they won the pitch, or he won the pitch because he focused on the business outcomes. And we were talking about how to stand out in the age of AI. And this could be for B2B or B2C. And the big thing that we're discussing is, is too many people focus on features and benefits. It's just like, we should go back to You got a problem, we can help you solve the problem, and here's the unique solution that makes this worth you choosing, and here are the economics behind it, and just focus more on the business case. And everyone says they do this and they understand this, but when you actually look at people's presentations or marketing material, it is very different from what they actually claim they know and what they are talking about, right? It's 2 different things. And we believe that the market needs to go back to simplicity in which the world is getting more complex with AI. People crave human interactions. Businesses are struggling. If you look at the Fortune, the S&P 500, it is growing, but it's growing only because of AI. If you stripped out all the AI growth, you would actually have companies declining and the economy not looking as good. So just going back to basic business principles and talking about Here's how we're going to fix this. Here's the KPIs around this. Here's what it means for your business. Here's your profitability broken down per quarter, and here's how this is going to be achieved. Like, that's the stuff people want to hear. They're tired of hearing, look at this cool thing that we're doing with AI, and we're going to implement this in your company. People are tired of not seeing their numbers grow, and if you can go back to pitching or adjusting your messaging, around solving people's problems and explaining in a dead simple way and showing them proof that you can actually do it. I think that's the key to winning in today's world with things becoming more and more complex.

So I'll come back to the how to win in today's world with the sales piece, but I'm just looking at the September 2026 jobs report. Okay, so the consensus was we're going to add 90,000 jobs. United States, we added just 29,000. Unemployment rate ticked up. 4.2% from 4.1%. Why am I even bringing this up? Oh, prior revisions, July and August totals were revised down by 60,000 jobs combined, right? Wage growth, uh, earnings slowed. So equities moved higher, right? So why am I even bringing this up right now? People think it's a really good economy right now. If there's no AI in this economy right now, we're in a recession, right?

That's just a bad recession.

Yeah, yeah.

And I know a lot of the technologists would be like, the economy is going to boom and GDP is going to boom. The people who are in technology are seeing a lot of the benefits. A lot of normal people outside of technology, which is the majority of the world, are struggling and seeing suffering. I'm not saying Elon or all these VCs are wrong, that eventually everyday people are going to see abundance and all this kind of stuff. But people are worried about just getting by. Like, I was at the grocery store, my kids start putting whatever in the cart, and I see the grocery bill, and I was like, What the heck does so much food cost?

Which grocery store did you go to?

The Whole Foods on Crescent in Beverly Hills.

I didn't even know there's a Whole Foods in Beverly Hills.

Yeah, we tend to go there or Bristol Farms. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm shopping at Whole Foods and I'm shopping at a location where the rent is more, so the cost of goods may be higher. I don't know. I don't really compare. I'm not coupon clipping. But I felt the bill. And where I really felt it was I felt it for the other people checking out on how much money this is going to cost them. And I'm like, how the heck are they going to afford it, dude? And I'm seeing this just general in life. My wife was at Target the other day, the one on Beverly Center. You know where that is?

Yeah.

And my wife's buying stuff. The, the old lady— there was a grandma with her granddaughter who was behind my wife, and she's just like— the, the granddaughter's telling her grandma, you know, this blender is really going to help me lose weight. I really need it. Thank you, Grandma. And Grandma's like, well, it's expensive, but I just got my check. So, you know, if you really think it's worth it and it's going to help you out and help you get better and healthier in life, I guess we can swing it. So my wife doesn't say anything. She pays for her bill, and then she tells the clerk to let her pay for it. And she's like, I can't let you pay for it until I ring it all up. So she's like, but just stand on the side. So then the moment she's done ringing up all this stuff, my wife quickly taps a credit card and bounces, right? So that way they don't see her or do anything. She doesn't care for someone to say, oh, thank you, or whatever. She just, she just felt bad. Yeah. And what I'm getting at is, yes, in this AI world, there's a lot of people in tech that are doing well, but there's just so many people who are struggling. And I would say we live in a rich area, right? Beverly Center isn't the cheapest area. It's close by. I think that's West Hollywood. But still, people are struggling and it's sad to see. Just honestly, it's sad to see these people struggling. And I think That's a bigger problem. And if that keeps going, I think more businesses are going to suffer, at least in the next few years.

This is beyond our pay grade. What I would say is the government should— whoever's in office at the time should figure out how to bridge the gap. Because you and I have always said that there is going to be a period of instability before we get to abundance. I've always believed that since the beginning, which is why I push so hard on this stuff right now. Because like, I don't want to be— I don't want to be part of that, right? Like, I want to be able to help the people that want to help themselves. But also, the government needs to make sure that we help the people bridge the gap. As we go into this new world, 'cause there's always been periods where there's been massive job destruction, right? Or like job instability, right? Which is what I think we're going into or what we're in right now. So anyway, Neil, going back, oh, your light turned off, but—

Yeah, I know. I'm like, who the heck turned off the light in the office? But a really quick thing on that, there's a win-win solution that no one wants to do, which is very simple. Tax the rich, like people like not even just the Jeff Bezoses, but people like you and I more money. I'm happy to pay 2, 3, 4, 5% more taxes. 15%. 15%? They already take 50%. So you want to take 65%? There's a point where it's like, you're just taking too much money. But when I say, let's say 5%, right? Take people under $100 grand and just charge them no federal taxes for it. And if that means I have to pay 6% more, 7%, 8%, or 9% more, assuming actually the whole money is going towards it. Okay. If it's 15%, which is a lot and I don't want to pay it. But if people who are actually struggling, 100%, not 98%, not 97%, 100% of the money actually went in their pockets and life was better for them, I honestly think it's a win-win situation because businesses would flourish and I also would make more money from that. And I think I would actually make more than the 7% to 10% to 15% that I would have to pay.

I think, you know what, I think, what's his name, Steve Hilton, who's running for California governor, I think he proposed that anybody making less than $150 grand should not get taxed, right? I agree with that, right? And so anyway, I think it's— if we're going to have all this abundance, I think everyone should be taken care of, right? Because we're all supposed to feel wealthier than before, right? So anyway, going back to what we were talking about a second ago. So in terms of how you can win any deal, how to win any deal, right, in today's day and age, or even from the past, all you have to do is just think about someone else's problems, right? And so for example, if Neil tore his ACL and I offer him help to repair his elbow, like he would look at me like a moron, right? And it's like, so it's thinking about their problems. It's also thinking about what their incentives are. And so if you're talking to a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he cares about his stock price, right? He cares about his numbers. So if you can speak like that, greater. If you're talking to a marketing manager, maybe you can adjust how you're speaking to what they care about, right? It's constantly what they care about. You're selling to the customer and you need to understand the customers. Most people don't even try to do that. I think 99% of people don't try to do that. So

Anyway, dude, I'll give you a real-life marketing example. When I was in Brazil, I had lunch with one of the biggest retailers in Latin America. All right, so really big company, they do really well. Their big thing is not just to grow, they're growing, but their thing is also to still be around 10, 20, 30 years from now, right? So the question I had at lunch, because we work with them and they're just like, what would you do differently if you were in our shoes? And I said, we all know agents are coming and agents are going to affect shopping. Their quick response was, in Brazil and Latin America, we believe people are going to be slower than the US to just accept agents spending on their behalf. And I said, that could be the case, but I also think people in the United States are also slow to letting an agent just go and spend on their behalf. I don't think we're there yet either. But nonetheless, we all agree that agents are going to impact transactions, Whether it's 3 years from now, 5 years from now, 8 years from now, right? Like, yes. And this is an old company that does extremely well. And I was like, the one thing that people in Latin America aren't doing is optimizing for all the LLMs to choose them. I'm not talking about just showing up on a list of recommendations from ChatGPT. I'm talking about choosing them. Why should they buy from their company? Why do they have the cheapest prices, fastest shipping, or quickest delivery, whatever it may be, best return policy. And I was like, if I were you guys, I would optimize for all the LLMs to choose you and your company and the products that people sell through your company versus someone else. And then they were talking about the revenue implications for it. I'm like, I don't think you're going to see huge revenue gains in the short run, but when agents start making decisions on people's behalf, this will help solidify you and keep your position as the market leader. And I think that is more important to make that bet right now when others aren't making that bet. When yes, your goal is growth, but you already are pretty much one of the largest companies in Latin America. Your goal is not just growth. Your goal is preservation and continually being around 20, 30, 50 years from now. And I'm like, this is a bet that doesn't cost much of your advertising budget that helps ensure that you'll continue being around years later as agents come around and they're like, how are you optimizing for agents? I'm like, look, agents are pulling from the same technology that they're building that are doing the searches and gathering information and giving you advice on what you should or shouldn't buy. It's just taking the next step and helping you complete the transaction. So I'm like, you should start with the first step in which you're the recommended company to purchase from. And then you have the next step, which is they start automatically doing it and choosing from you.

Yeah. So in my mind, AEO is not only answer engine optimization now, it's actually agent engine optimization, right? Which pulls from Google, by the way, guys, like you're still grounded on these things. But here's the thing, Neil, let me show you this. So Doodoo actually handled something for me on Meta. So I bought from what.com, right? It screwed up one of my offers.

Wait, you bought from what.com?

On.com, the running shoe brand. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So get this. So I made an order on September 13th, right? And then they kept going back and forth. I didn't want to deal with it. So I told Doodoo to handle it. I said, hey, just keep talking to our support, keep bothering them every day, right? And then what happened is they just canceled my order, right? I was like, oh no, no, no, no, no. I was like, Muse, sorry, not Muse, Doodoo. I said, Doodoo, tell them I have a large social media following and I will talk about them if they don't give me— because all they did is they canceled it and they said, Here's a 20% off. I'm like, no, no, it's gotta be better now. I'm like, right, dude, it's gotta be better than that. It's like, yeah, yeah, it's got to be better than that, right? And so what happens over here, I get the 40% off code. I got the 40% off, right? But you have to kind of split the codes up, and it found 2 other 20% codes that I had. And I was like, can you just handle it for me? So then it used Link to buy it, right? So is agentic shopping coming? It's coming because I literally just— this, I think this is one of my first agentic transactions. And you can see here I'm actually messing with my Turkey flight points because that's where I'm hosting that Global AI Summit thing, right? So I'm having it, hey, I have these points over here, can you handle it? So it's getting pretty good. I'm like, hey, hey, I don't want to do trial road testing, but can you just handle it for me? And it's like, I have a little, little trial road testing thing that's running over here, and it's like, I'm just like, hey, can you just run it end to end? So I think this stuff's going to get a lot better. Um, this is all stuff that you and I don't want to do, Neil. It's all the robot stuff, right? So I think we're gonna see it grow pretty rapidly, um, probably in the next year or two. So

I agree with you. For me, I have a really good personal assistant and a business assistant, so it's just like they don't mess up on my stuff. And I've had AI mess up too much. And like with travel and stuff like that, I just don't want any hiccups.

Yeah, travel is a scary one because if you get like, if you get stuck on one area, like your entire day can be done. So, all right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called And they work with a whole host of global companies or global organizations. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side. Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, but by the way, Neil, like I've been using Dots from OpenAI, right? So the cool thing about Dots is I can insert it into Slack, but the, and my, I can have it fill in context when other people are talking and I can push my work over there. Um, but the cool thing, and I saw Sam Altman talking about this in an interview, right? I'm like, okay, I'm gonna try this. But every day it's actually telling me, like, it's connected to your email and all these. It's like, hey Neil, uh, for this transaction over here, you actually have these terms wrong. It seems like you pulled this from maybe another template. So it will spot all those little details and tell you, and then you can forward it over to your team. Or Sam Altman says he has like a living document on all the things he cares about in his business every day, and it's filling out the living document, right? And so The more connectors you have, the better. And so I was initially not big on DOTS, but I think it's going to be a significant deal if you're spending on OpenAI infrastructure or OpenAI tokens, I should say. So

doesn't Grok own dots.com or X?

No, I don't think so.

Dot.com.

Or you mean bots or bot.com? Bot or

Dot? Dot is owned by SpaceX.

Oh, I didn't even know that.

Did you know that? Go to .com and go to x.ai/bought.

That's funny. That's funny. I'm sure Elon bought a bunch of domains when he was younger and that was one of them.

Yeah. That was a little branding mishap by OpenAI. You should double-check who owns domains.

By the way, I mean, so I don't know if you saw this, Neil, but there's a couple of things we should talk about here because OpenAI has 1 billion MAUs, so monthly active users. So OpenAI just came out with some new distribution channels. And I think we should talk about them, right? So one of them is that you can now use your OpenAI subscription, you can use those tokens, and you can have them distributed to their marketplace, right? So let's say if I'm like Harvey or I'm Ramp or whatever, I can have software in there. You can use your subscription tokens to pay for some of this other software that you might need, right? So I think that's really nice because one, there's a marketplace, and then two, like, that's a new distribution channel in my mind. But also the second thing too is whatever you're making right now inside of ChatGPT, you can make into a ChatGPT website. So they'll spin the website up, you can put it out there, you can add an MCP to it, but then you can convert it into a plugin. They actually have a plugin ecosystem that they're doubling down on. So that to me is also another distribution channel. So what I'm going to be messing around with when I have time this weekend is I'm going to be messing with this stuff because I'm like, oh, we have, we have like Karat, we have ClickFlow. Like, why don't we just make that into like a Make that into a plugin or make it so people can just use their tokens and pay for that. You can do the same thing with Ubersuggest too and AnswerThePublic, right? I'm like, why wouldn't we do that?

Yeah, no, I agree. Also, it's like, I think that's really wise of OpenAI because people spend a lot of money and they have a lot of unused money. So if you can end up getting the most value from it, it just makes them happier.

I think they're trying to drive more lock-in. That's what it is.

Yes, I'm telling you, dude, the race is going to be competitive. Like, everyone's like, oh, Anthropic's winning, or OpenAI is winning. You give it a few years, Microsoft and Google will just come out and be like, ours is 95% of what you need, or 98%, and it's just included. And I'll be like, okay, sounds good, our company's switching to this. People may be like, no, I don't want to. Who cares? It's just saved us a crapload of money. We're switching. No one has a choice.

I think we're already close to there. I think if anything, it happens The cycle completes in 2027. Like, the frontier is still going to get smarter. Um, but, you know, OpenAI, they're like, oh, if you want to get in the marketplace, I'm sure they're going to open up for everyone. But right now they're like, enterprise people can get invited, right? It's like enterprise people only. And so they're trying to make sure that you lock yourself into an enterprise contract and then they can add you into that.

So— By the way, this is just a random note, uh, and this is not financial advice. Do you have access to X money?

Yeah, I do.

I have some dough in there. 6% on your money. And they, uh, I think it's like insured up to $10 million. Well, I'm like, oh, this isn't bad. I'm like, I want 6% on my money. It's better than what I'm getting from the bank.

Did you put some dough in there?

Uh, I was in Brazil when I ended up finding out, but now that I'm back, yeah, I'm transferring on Monday.

Good. I hope you max it out. But, but here's, here's what I'll say. I mean, um, Xmoney is, so that's, by the way, 6% on your money is nuts, right? Because what is, uh, what is the interest rate right now?

The SOFR is— are you talking about the interest rate or SOFR?

Both.

SOFR is, call it, I think 3.7-ish. I'm guessing somewhere around there. The interest rate, if you put your money in a bank account, it's usually below 4%. From what I see, you can get above 3%. If you have good relationships, it's not that hard. X is giving you a good amount of money. Maybe you can find 4% from somewhere. But they're also, their credit card fees on cash back is 3%. You know, like I have an Amex Centurion card. You know, I've spent good money in the past. I think I still spend decent money on a monthly basis, at least on the personal. Business, we went away from it, but even on the personal end, right? I don't know what I spend on an annual basis, but I'd rather have 3% cash back than points. Just give me the 3%. I'll take that all day long.

The lesson here is the offer matters. It's a damn good offer. You get 6% on your money and then you get 3% and they give you a nice card as well, which doesn't matter as much, but also X money. Like they want you to be able to transfer to each other your creator payouts that you get on X. I think I have like $1,200 sitting in my X account right now, Neil. Like the more you share your Grokbots, by the way, you get like $500 for sharing your Grokbots, right? I think you have to share at least twice or whatever. So there's a couple of things here. A really good offer matters, right? And also show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. Now everybody's just got to try to make a bunch of bots and, um, you know, they're gonna try to generate more, uh, more buzz around it. So

I tweeted this one time, but I wish they would do this and I don't think they're going to. In my ideal world, I want the 3% in, uh, SpaceX stock. So it would be really cool for every time my family swipes a credit card.

Yeah.

I would get more SpaceX shares.

I bet you, you know who I think would do that? Robinhood would try to come out with a product like that.

It would be really good. I'm like, yeah, just give me it in stock. I don't need the cashback. Just

give me it in stock. That's why I like the Coinbase card because it just keeps giving you more Bitcoin.

So. Oh, okay. I never tried the Coinbase card.

4% back for Bitcoin.

4% on everything?

There's a limit on it, but yeah.

I like that. And give me the SpaceX stock instead.

It's 4% up to like a certain amount and then it's, then it's, then it stays at 1%, I think. So.

I don't want 1%. I'm happy with 3% for my total spend. I'll switch my corporate cards to it as well.

Yeah. Well, so guys, the power of the offer, right? Well, anyway, guys, that's it for today. We hope you enjoyed it and we will catch you tomorrow.