Tesla 20x'd Sales by Cutting 64 Clicks to 3

By the way, Neil, I want to tell you a story here. I've been reading this book from the guy that was the 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?

Yeah.

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. Um, but they started 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 questioned it and they, they challenged, um, you know, how it should be done. And the loan docs, I think, take like 3 clicks or something like that now. But they optimize the site, they optimize 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'd be 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. Yeah.

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. With 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 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 gonna 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 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 we look at Shopify's, you know, 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 $3.6 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 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're 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.

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. 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? Um, just a little different, but same, right? And so the way I see it is, um, you know, the good news now is like, you see a lot of kids, they're actually starting to create content. I actually saw like a 7-year-old create a, uh, like a, like 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, you know, it's not 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. And maybe you acquire some websites and then 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. 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— or not an earnings call, they were at the Goldman Sachs event and they were 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— yeah, I don't want to name the company. 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 going to struggle and not do as well.

Yeah. A few more things to talk about 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 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 would reach 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 we, you know, 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, you know, 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, 'cause Meta has all the data in the world and it has my bookmarks, that's all my behaviors and everything. I'm like, that's pretty good. So I'm gonna 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. So—

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 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 in 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 throughplay, 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 creating scales from 1 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.