The AI-Native Marketer Looks Like This

So one thing I saw, so I did a webinar with this guy, um, Cody Schneider, who's a great marketer. So as we're doing the webinar, Neil, and we should talk about some of these tactics, right? This is how I believe the AI native marketer is going to look in the future. And so one thing he did during the podcast, and this is nothing new to you and me, Neil, but he basically ranked a term number 1 within 38 minutes on Google, right? So he started the workflow on that one. So he starts the workflow there, right? And the second one was like, okay, I'm going to show you how, you know, we do 11,000 ads. For a month for our clients, and it's actually quality ads and it's performing well. You know, the cost per meeting is like $200 that he's booking, which seems good, right? And he's only got 6 people on his team. And so he's going through it, it's like, okay, he starts running that workflow, like the SEO workflow, then he starts running the ad workflow, then he starts running like a LinkedIn DM workflow, right? And the thing that I mentioned earlier was like, okay, you know, people log into Grokbot, people logging into MetaMuse, people log into all their agents, they're just going to be managing agents all day. And I think the default expectation for a marketer is you're just going to be running multiple of these workflows and you're just kind of checking in. You're spinning all these plates and you're just checking if the plate's still spinning, right? And that's ultimately what you're going to be doing. It's the people that don't know how to adapt to start to work like this. Those people are going to be in trouble because right now when people get to me on the interview side, when I ask them, hey, like as an SEO, how do you think your job's going to look in the next 5 years? Like one guy's like, oh, I'm just going to be an agent manager in the next 5 years, right? Probably even sooner than that. And so, I think people need to understand. And the part of the reason I'm saying this too is because I know my team listens to this. Like, guys, if you're working like this already, you're in a good spot. If you're not working like this, you got to step it up, right? Because I can't keep saying this over and over. It's becoming a broken record.

Dude, totally. Speaking of doing podcast interviews, I did one the other day with a guy named Cole Gordon. Have you ever heard of him?

I actually saw that yesterday. I saw a piece of it yesterday. I was like, oh, but I don't know. Did you do it in LA?

I didn't know. So they flew to Beverly Hills, they got a house somewhere on Trousdale that they're renting out, and then we ended up filming. So he hit me up, he texted me, he's like, hey, can you be a collab? And I didn't listen to the interview before I accepted it or not, but I saw the screenshot and I was like, right away, the first thing I said is, the thumbnail said how Neil or something grew an agency to $150 million plus. And then I was like—

It says $100 million, not $150 million.

No, no, I know, no, I'll give you the whole story, but $150 million. And I was like, where'd you get the $150 million number from? I'm like, we don't talk about our revenue. And I was like, we don't really want to, you know, I don't want to end up going into it. And he was just like— I'm like, can you remove that? So then he comes back and he's like, can I put $100 million? I'm like, yeah, I don't want to say. He's like, but you said you do over $100 million in all these other areas from years ago, so can I at least do that? I was like, sure. And then I ended up accepting it. And then I listened, it went live and I listened to it. And then he does the intro, he's like, Neil's doing over 150. I'm like, where did they get the number from? But I have to say, I like Cole and it was probably one of the better interviews I've ever done on a podcast. This guy came in so well prepared and doing research on my whole life and business and all this kind of stuff. I was like, wow, this was really— it was fun. Like, I genuinely enjoyed it. The only part I did not enjoy I was supposed to go to— I did the marketing school at 10,000 the last time we recorded. I came from there first.

Oh, okay. So that's where you came from. Okay. When you said I was doing a podcast. Got it.

Got it. Yeah. So that's where I came from. And the only part— I thought I was going to go to Brazil that day, but I didn't end up going to Brazil that day. So I was pushing everything forward or else my podcast with him would have been in the afternoon. The only part I did not like about it is Doing a podcast interview like at 8 AM in the morning in Truesdale, it's cold outside.

Yeah, and you weren't wearing a jacket. That's what I remember.

I wasn't wearing a jacket. It was a long sleeve, but it was good. I genuinely enjoyed it and it made me realize you used to do a lot of podcast interviews, which I do think is a very effective way to build a bigger, bigger audience because you can do collabs and I don't think enough people do it in marketing. But for it to do well and perform well, you have to spend so much time doing research or pay people who are really good at it. And I don't know how good the team's going to be versus you doing it yourself, even if you use AI. Like, it's just very time-consuming to be an interviewer.

You're better off just doing the research on your own. And to your point, Neil, I think it is a full-time job. But then if you go down that route, you become like a media personality, right? And so, and by the way, I would say that Cole's been doing good interviews with business people. And he's clearly done his research. And that's what makes a piece of content good, when you actually put the time into whether it's the research, if it's a podcast interview, or the packaging, or thinking about the idea itself. And that's why MrBeast has always said that he spends way more time on the idea than he, than he does on the actual video itself.

Yeah. On a side note, I was at Social Next yesterday in Vancouver, and before that I was in Quito, Ecuador. You know, I'm noticing a trend. My brand's dying. My personal brand is dying.

How, how can you tell?

The more events I go to, the less people are asking me for pictures. I'm just basing it off of that.

This is anecdotal, which is fine.

Uh-huh. And the less people are hitting me up for questions at these events. I still think the presentations are really good because I see the rating numbers, right? And typically, I'm not trying to say I'm the best speaker or whatever, but I usually have really high speaker ratings. But I would actually say my personal brand is slow. I wouldn't say it's disappearing. It's definitely not where it was when I peaked out years ago. But this— I'm not trying to like use a scapegoat or a cop-out. I'm actually really happy and excited.

And I was going to say— I was going to say that.

Yeah. For years, I've always wanted the corporate brand to be bigger, and I don't think it's bigger yet, but we've been pushing more of my team members to speak instead of me, right? And we're getting them to create a lot more content. And we haven't noticed any negative effect in business. And I used to dream about owning a private jet and flying around. And, you know, I even wasted time going to aviation shows and looking at private jets and almost bought one 2 times, and I backed out 2 times. And now my dream has changed all the way from, I want to own a private jet and fly all around the world, to, I just want to stay at home with my family and watch the kids grow up. Still want to run a business very hard and work hard. I just don't want to be on a plane all the time.

Yep. But I mean, by the way, like there's different seasons in life, right? There's a lot to talk about here. There's the concept known as the 4 burners theory, right? So you can only have 2 burners at any given time, right? Your family, your friends, your health, or work, right? You can only really have 2 at a time. So if you think about it, Neil, your work was all the way up before, right before you had kids, right? It was work and what else? What was the second burner?

What are they? Friends?

So you have work, family, friends, and your fitness, your health.

Definitely has never been fitness. I think I work out, but I don't think I work out hard enough for that to be a strong burner. Would you agree with that?

Yeah.

Like Noah, I don't work out like Noah. Family, I've always been somewhat close, but it's not like I spend all the time with them. I would say friends and work.

Friends and work. Yeah, cool. So anyway, like that was a little thing, but there's a couple things here, right? So also I noticed one thing, and this is not talking about you, but I'm just saying in general, once social media changed from social media to interest media, which is where it was much more follower-based before, where whatever you post is going to get a lot of views, right? Things change to now it's like whoever does the greatest hook, the greatest storytelling, that's going to get a lot more views. Neil and I, we're at a point in our lives, I'll just speak for myself actually. I'm at a point in my life where I don't want to do all the research for like these hooks and these stories. And I enjoy using the AI to kind of figure these things out because it feels like a video game to me. But I don't particularly enjoy that. What I'll say is this, I think the type of content you should be making as an experienced operator should be based off of your credibility, right? Because the thing that Neil and I have that most people don't have here, if you're in your early 20s right now, I think it's just an age thing, is credibility. It's experience, right? So if you're sharing stories around that, that's going to do better. And I was— shout out to Caleb Ralston, all that. So he used to work with Gary Vee and the Hormozis. So he has a channel where he's doing really well, helps people grow their brands and stuff. He actually put out a video, Neil, where the type of content you should make as a $30 million plus operator. And I thought it was good. I knew he was going to talk about credibility, so I watched a little bit of the video. And the reason I'm even saying credibility is because Ryan To, so shout out to Ryan To, he did an audit on my channel. He's like, dude, you need to stop just like You don't even need to compete with these people at like, you know, my age or whatever, right? Don't even worry about that. You should just focus in on your credibility and the storytelling there. And so I think if you're an experienced operator and you're more operator first than creator, I think it's worth it to focus more on the credibility piece and then mostly just focus your time on operating your business.

So what I found is I used to go, and Eric knows this, I used to create a ton of content. I still do. I used to spend way more time doing research on the content that I want to create. Now my team does more of the research. I used to go and travel and speak everywhere. I still do, but I did slow down a lot this summer. Like how much often do we see each other for recording sessions in person? A lot. Yeah. And when I used to go and travel to speak and build the corporate— the corporation's brand, we were hoping that eventually it'll lead us into bigger RFPs. Okay, RFP is a request for proposal. So another company saying, hey, we want NP Digital, your ad agency, to do marketing for us, and we may compete against 10 or 15 or 20 other companies. And what I found was I would travel— let's use Latin America for example. I traveled there so many times to Brazil and Mexico and speaking, and then you look at how many years it's taking to get all these leads, and I still think it is worth it. But then I'm like, man, this is just so time draining. And then I look at some of our competitors who have been in business for 10+ years, and they're getting a lot of the demand from the clients we want. And I was like, why don't we just go buy them? And then you start making offers and eventually some people come to senses and you can negotiate a deal that works for both parties, but both parties aren't smiling. That's how I think you have a good deal. If both people— Yeah. you know, gave a little in and they didn't get exactly what they want, you usually have a pretty decent deal that works for both people. And I was like, wait, this just gives us 5 times more of the scale. And then I'll just go speak there in Latin America. But instead of going there 8 times a year, I'll just go 2 times a year and pick the 2 biggest events and then skip the rest and just not go anymore. Because, hey, we just bought something that's already at scale. We're good to go. Just spend the money on the press and so forth and so on. And I started really taking that approach because right now, I don't know what will close, but we have a deal in Latin America. You know, the LOI is already out, so we just have to work on closing it. We have another one in the United States, same thing, and another one in Canada where the LOI— that one LOI is not out, but it'll go out next week and I'm pretty sure they'll end up signing it. We already discussed most things, so already have 3 there. And then I'm trying to tuck in a lot in Europe because I've flown a lot to Europe over the years and I'm like, Why not just buy in Germany and France and Italy and Spain and wherever else you guys need? And then I just don't have to fly as much. And it just gets us market reach and leads and all of this stuff without me having to do a lot of content. Yes, you still have to do marketing and integration and build a brand and combine and do all the synergy. So there still is a lot of marketing work, but Eric's right on the burners in life. And the way I look at it is I think I'm in a place in life where I don't mind working. I'd rather have my money work more for me and not have to do a lot of the manual grinding stuff like getting on planes all the time. It doesn't mean I'm not willing to put in the hours when I'm at home. I'm still grinding it out and putting the hours. I just rather be more by family than be on a plane. And I appreciate all the people following me, but I'd rather— if I could redo it all, Because times are different 20 years ago versus now. Now I do believe personal brands are super effective. 20 years ago, it wasn't needed as much. I started one accidentally, but I would've focused more on a corporate brand than a personal brand. And in today's world, because I've been doing this long enough, I've built up enough money where I can just use the money to deploy it so that way I don't have to do some of the other things I don't want to do.

Well, technically you could just do that today.

What do you mean?

You could technically stop what you're doing today and do exactly what you just said.

Of just buying companies?

No, you could just live off the money.

Yeah, but I can't because I'm addicted to money. I'm the one person that remembers.

Exactly. Exactly. So technically you can, but because you like the game, you're going to keep playing.

Correct. It's just how to modify the game to work in the new stage in life. that I've slowly transitioned into. And Eric called this— Eric even told me, I think it was like 3, 4 years ago, he's like, eventually you're going to get tired of doing a lot of this kind of stuff. You're like, what's the point? And then I'm slowly adapting.

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. By the way, one thing, and I'm going to show you my travel stats in a second. There's a correlation, not causation thing. I'm going to show you my travel stats over time. But one thing that we've been trying to do, and Neil, I think it's probably worth, if you guys aren't doing this already, I'm sure someone on your team is covering this, but it's not just UGC, user-generated content anymore. It's ECG, it's employee-generated content. So there's companies like Clay, for example, that do a good job of, I think they use Orbital. So everyone's kind of posting on LinkedIn and you see like a box of like 9 of them in Brady Bunch mode. It's like, look at all the people posting, right? They have this. And then, you know who does a good job of this? Goji Berry on X. There are people always talking about, yeah, you know, Muse comes like, you know, Muse plus sales equals Goji Berry. So they're capitalizing on every single trend and each one of their employees is posting. And so you kind of just hear them being talked about everywhere. And there's a nice branding effect from that, right? And so I think because organic social is so strong right now, whether it's on LinkedIn or X, From a B2B standpoint, you see a lot more ECG happening. We haven't used this tool yet, Neil. It's called Orbital, which is tryorbital.com. I've heard good things. I think I talked to the founder once. I don't think we're ready for it yet. But as I get lazier with my content over time, I'm not speaking for Neil, but as I get lazier with it, I want— I'm down for my people to create their own brands. Like, I have no issue with it. And if they go on to do amazing things in their careers, I've always supported that, right? And I've always kept in touch with those people. Yeah. And Neil's the same way too. So, let me show you my travel stats, Neil, over the years. So, this is when destruction almost happened with my business. So, this is 2022, okay? So, 136 days gone, right? 120,000 miles flown, 28 total trips, countries, regions, 5, cities visited, 35, okay? Then in 2023, this is very near destruction, right? 150,000 miles, right? I traveled more miles, but 107 days gone. Wow. Roughly a little less than a third of the year.

Less days, right?

Less days, less days. Correct. Yeah. And then 2024, 87 days. Okay. Uh, 2025, 46 days.

And then we're in 2025. It went down to 18,000 miles traveled, way less, like one-fourth.

Yep. And then look, this year so far it's 38. So, but business has gotten better each time I've traveled less. This is correlation, not causation. I just think it's interesting to look at the data, um, because I've been able to, to, to, to lock in more, right? I'm not saying I don't. enjoy travel. I really do enjoy it because it gives me a lot of perspective, but it sucks up a lot of time. And also we're at different stages, right? Neil and I— Neil's at a different stage where there's operationally, there's a lot of stuff that he can just, you know, hand off and he can just focus on that piece. For me, I kind of need to be much more involved at this point in time. So anyway, that's a piece.

I think your 2026 stats are off or misrepresented here because even though you traveled more in 2026 than 2025, 2026, you've done more leisure trips, if I recall correctly. I could be off. I think you did Milan, you did Cabo, right? These are just personal trips for Eric. And some of these personal trips, you were working really hard and it wasn't like you were actually going for a conference or something and being distracted. You were working US hours and then you were enjoying Italy with whoever you were with.

And by the way, like, I'll call it one more thing, right? So Neil's correct. I get offered to speak at these events. It's like, hey, do you want to speak at this affiliate event in Romania or something like that, right? Or like some cool place in Spain or like not Spain, Europe. And before I'd be like, oh yeah, I've never been there before. I would do it. Like, you speak in Ukraine? Yeah, hell yeah, right? But it doesn't drive business, right? And sure, I enjoy the— like Ukraine's in war right now, but before that, you get there, it's like $1 for Ubers and like $3 for like a world-class meal. Don't get me wrong, really enjoyed that, but not good for business because what What happens is you start to take the intensity away from the business, right? You want to be able to drive all the time. And so, you know, that's what I found.

You nailed it. I still take some of them, like I'm going to Romania soon, but I'll go because I have a few other meetings in Europe and they're close enough. And I'm like, someone pay for the travel, get some brand building. And my team will set up some meetings for companies that maybe we could buy 3 years from now. I always make the joke that it's 3 years from now, because I'll meet them, I'll find ones that I like, I pitch them. They all say no. And then usually 2 to 3 years later, some of them will be open to selling it

again. Yeah. And by the way, notice that many things take 3 years. It takes 3 years to build a brand. It takes 3 years to build a business. Maybe it takes 3 years to get the deal done that you want to get done. So it's always 3 years.

Yeah, it's never quick. And I would actually say for branding, it takes 10+ years. It can happen quicker, like Claude just blowing out of nowhere. But it didn't really actually come out of nowhere. They spent many, many years building it. And then eventually what you saw, Muse has created a really good brand really quickly. Although when I was speaking at Social Next and asked people to raise their hand on how many people use Muse, it was less than like 1% of the room, dude. Like,

what else did you ask them in terms of what they use?

Everyone uses OpenAI and Claude. Most people use OpenAI or ChatGPT specifically to search. They do not use Most people do not use Claude to actually search. A lot of people believe Google's still dying, even though the stats show otherwise. A lot of people use ChatGPT to search. When I ask them, they say they use ChatGPT over Google. But then when I actually ask them, think about it, how many of you have logged into Google and done a search in the last 24 hours? Almost everyone raises their hand. So it's like you say you don't use Google, but you use it and you don't realize you're using it. You know what I mean? Right?

And by the way, YouTube's becoming more of a search engine too. They're changing up the UI. So

yeah. And the other big thing that people are now starting to realize, but they didn't realize before, people look at ChatGPT search as different than Google search and they're like, Google's traditional search, ChatGPT is very different. And I'm like, guys, how many of you have ever seen a map, like, you know, image within ChatGPT? And people raise their hand. I'm like, just wait a few more years. Google is going to look more like ChatGPT and ChatGPT is going to look more like Google. You're not going to look at search as traditional search or AI search. It's going to just be a search and it adapts based on what you type and it shows you the interface that's more applicable to you. Google has AI overviews because it works. You don't always need something thinking for a long time and then giving a drawn-out answer for something simple. On the flip side, sometimes 10 blue links is actually what you're looking for and sometimes no links and just details is what you're looking for. And the ideal interface is just one interface and it adapts to what you type in and it shows you the best style that fits what you're looking for that solves your problem.

Search has always just evolved. The good thing about SEO is SEO has always evolved. So to us, it's nothing new, but it's funny that people kind of invent these stories in their head, right? And so last thing, actually, Neil, we should talk about the big changes that YouTube has coming. So I actually have 2 more things left before we get out of here. So this will be a quick one. So if you take a look at YouTube over here, This is from Patty Galloway. Okay, so, uh, what's happening now? So video A/B testing is coming out for YouTube, right? So YouTube is going to allow you to upload 3 different versions of a video now, starting with Shorts and then rolling out to more, and test them over a period of time to see which gets the best watch time. So this is a form of doing trial reels, basically. That's how I see it. But also trial long-form videos too, so you can have different versions because AI can help you edit these very quickly, right? Um, and so I think we're gonna see different, uh, different Probably better performance because the cool thing now is that you can also do dynamic thumbnail testing for different audiences. So I might make a video on Muse for marketers, Muse for business people, or Muse for, I don't know, uh, for personal, right? And I can, I can probably integrate my video to have different thumbnails there. Um, but—

So wait, one video, 3 different thumbnails. So you can keep the same video, but you can have, uh, if you're talking about how to use Muse, your thumbnail will be like how to use Muse in business, how to use Muse in marketing, how to use Muse, uh, uh, in your personal life. It'll be the same video, you're just changing up the thumbnail based on who sees it.

Yeah, and the biggest thing here is like you can kind of do that already, Neil, but the big take is, um, for current A/B testing essentially helps you find the best thumbnails for the big— the biggest majority of your viewers, but it isn't the best thumbnail for every segment. So imagine that you can segment out your videos now to, to attract different areas, right? And I think that's a big thing because a lot of my videos oftentimes I make packaging for different segments, um, and you know one does better than the other, but it also eliminates the other segment, which is not so good. Um, thumbnail generation, YouTube Studio. Okay, like that's all cool. My whole thing is like, these are all AI changes that are coming. So, you know, this, you know, here's the winner that we have. Um, and then I guess you can see how these have performed for different audiences. So I think that's cool. I think it's, it's, we're going to see a lot more innovations like this, but what do you think?

Yeah, no, I think it's great. They're just adding the stuff they should have added a while ago.

All right, last thing over here. So this is, uh, Varun from, uh, Clay. So I think Clay's doing what, $200 million ARR now, something like that. So the CEO from Clay says brand has to start with the founders, not the CMO. A lot of people ask how Clay built its brand and how they should be thinking about their own company's brand, which we just talked about a moment ago. The advice I always give comes back to this: brand starts at the top and has to be authentic to the founders. There's a lot of data that shows CMOs are most likely executive to get fired, and because of that, no matter how much they do, they're not incentivized to take huge bets on something that won't show returns for a long time, if ever, which is what brand is. And so we've been investing in brand ever since we had revenue. That's when we bought clay.com, hired a claymation artist. People ask me why, and I wish I could say it's because I'm a marketing savant, but the truth is just because I wanted to. We wanted the brand to feel a certain way to capture the beauty of a product that exuded flexibility and creativity, and it felt right to invest in it from the start. Brand only works if it is authentic, and that only happens and actually gets prioritized when it comes from the top. So when you think about it, You know, when you look at a company like a Tesla, for example, it is very much that the culture of that company comes from Elon. The culture of a SpaceX comes from Elon, right? When you think about an NVIDIA, the culture comes from an NVIDIA— sorry, a Jensen Huang, for example. So it is, I do agree, because the founder's with the company for a very long time, whereas oftentimes right now the CMO is kind of, you know, in and out. So yeah, what do you think?

Yeah, no, I'm I agree with that on the culture end. So that all makes sense.

Yeah. And even though Neil doesn't technically have a title, he is a founder, right? So I do think the culture from MP Digital comes from you.

I would say the culture actually comes from our CEO now. It is very much his people, but it has adapted. But the culture of him is actually very similar to me. I would say on certain things, I move faster than him, just being blunt. I'm not trying to badmouth him. Other things, he is much more methodical than me, and I think it's actually a very good balance because sometimes I move too fast and sometimes he needs a push.

And I'm sure this is the same situation Elon probably has with a lot of, like, you know, Gwynne Shotwell, for example, right? You still are the driver. You're the— you're still the ultimate driver at the end of the day.

Yeah. Like, you know, one of my executives was like, Neil, we're sending out too many LOIs. This is going to be a lot of integration. I'm like, deal with it.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean,

but that's just how you're going to deal with it. I'm like, that's just how you want to excuse.

Yeah. All right. Well, anyway, guys, that's it for today and we will see you tomorrow.