The End of Big Agency Teams? AI Agents for Founders

All right, so we have a little treat for you. So this is a coaching call from the Agency Owners Association. This is a group that Neil and I have for agency owners to help you grow faster. So if you're in the agency space, you are a services business, this is applicable to you. It's a little preview of a call. It's probably 10, 15 minutes or so, and you get a sense for what it looks like to be in the group. If you want to learn more about the group, you can go to marketingschool.io/agency. Again, it's marketingschool.io/agency.

Hi, everyone.

Hope you enjoy the episode.

Neil, I don't know if you, like, so Neil used to have this other computer where he would follow people on Twitter. This was like 10 years ago or 13, 14 years ago actually. And I'd go and then he had this other computer that just follows people on Twitter. Now here's the thing, my other computer right now, I'm in office, my desktop is sourcing for hires right now using the ChatGPT's operator and everyone just go pay the $200 a month for this if you're not paying for it already, but it's actually working.

I'm like, holy shit.

And then the thing is, after this, 'cause that's my first instance, I'm gonna open like multiple instances and start doing all this stuff. So you can, Neil can reorder groceries for his family or you can say like, oh, my favorite food is Italian food. Go to Instacart and order me like, you know, order me all the ingredients for a fettuccine Alfredo or something like that. And so I'm just gonna figure, like, this is my weekend, ChatGPT operator, 'cause it just came out yesterday and that's all I'm gonna do. And just think about all the shit I don't wanna do and all the shit my team's getting bottlenecked by. I'm just gonna, here you go, right? And the other thing, I don't know if you guys saw this, but DeepSeek, which is the China version, go China, sorry, I could talk some Chinese, but that is 97% off versus all the other models. So if you're technical at all, go check it out. And then actually my CTO's working on that right now. He's looking at it. So we're like, dude, if we can bring our costs down instead of having to pay ChatGPT, like OpenAI for O1 tokens and all this stuff, we save way more money. That's fantastic. So it's gonna get way more competitive now. So I kind of started this off with some AI stuff, but do you guys have any questions or comments?

Are you worried about the data at all with regards to DeepSeek?

I mean, we're all giving our data up. You know what I mean? And I get it. It makes a lot of sense for the US to make China to be this big adversary. And then the same thing with China looking at the US that way. But honestly, when I talk to people in China, they don't make it a big deal. In fact, the US isn't really talked about that much. They just worry about their own lives. It's only here you hear about China being talked about all the time. They really don't give a shit about us. Like, at least the people don't, right? And so they're just off there building their own thing. And when I talk to them, they're like, my life is good. I get to do whatever. Our kids are, our kids at age 5 or 6, they know how to program. They know how to do all these things. So I don't, I just don't think they have a lot of time to worry about us and whatever they've wanted to infiltrate, they've probably infiltrated already anyway.

Yeah.

So it is what it is. That's my opinion. What do you think, Neil?

I'm on a similar boat to you. From everyone I know in Asia, they don't really care about us. They just worry about themselves and focus on their own growth. It's similar to here in the US when it comes to business. We just focus on ourselves. And yeah, you have competition, you may pay attention to the competition, but in reality, what the competition does doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to make you more or less. I was with a private equity guy called Michael Delaney years ago, and we were at dinner and we were talking about the agency space. And this is just to give you a context of how some people think about it. And he was just like, the agency space is just like a big punch bowl at the party. It's so big, everyone, it's so big that there's enough to go around where everyone can get drunk and have a good time. And in essence, he's just trying to say like, yes, competition is important to pay attention to, but really the space is big enough for a lot of people to do well and make money and just focus on what you're doing.

Yep.

Anybody else? I saw Kevin, you unmuted. David Peck, anybody before we—

Yeah. Hey guys. Yeah, I'm really curious on this operator thing. I mean, I just heard about it this morning, so I'm not as— you're already doing it. Did you have the $200 account already?

Yeah.

And then, um, so operators, agent, where we're talking about agentic AI.

They're actually, they're true agents, not just agentic workflows.

That's, that's what I mean. So this is like true, like everybody's saying agent, agent, agent, and then.

Yeah, this is real. Um, and it's about 58% of like, I think I saw the video yesterday. I don't know if anybody saw it, but like a human being is usually when, when, when someone does a task on average, it's like, I don't know. 72% efficient, 75% efficient. I don't know how they're scoring that, but this first version of their agent is about 58%. So it's not quite there, but it's the first version. So it's only going to get better. And so that's why I'm going to spend my weekend doing this because I mean, I have nothing better to do. So.

I will join you. I'm going to go down the rabbit hole. Oh my gosh. Quick question, Neil and Eric, where are your offices at? Like your core, I know Neil, you're all over the world, but like where's, I know you're living in LA, but like where's headquarters for NP Digital and for Single Grain?

Neil actually does have offices. I'll speak for you first, Neil. When I say office, by the way, it's like 3 of us here. And so the rest of us are remote and there's going to be a 4th that joins us soon. And so Neil's actually got a lot of people in office around the world. He just likes, I mean, he actually works from home. So go ahead, Neil.

Yeah, I don't know what headquarters would be. We used to have a San Diego office and that was our headquarters, but we no longer have a San Diego office. I don't know what is considered headquarters anymore, but we have offices in a lot of different countries. I don't know the extent, to be quite frank. I haven't been in all of them and I haven't seen all of them. I know in certain countries we have people like going into work, like in India, people go into the office. In Brazil, I believe some people go into office and places like Southeast Asia, like Malaysia, You know, we have people going into the office each and every single day, and same with some of the other regions like Hong Kong or Singapore or whatever ones we're in. Some of them I've seen, like the Hong Kong one, I just don't know what would be considered headquarters anymore because we got rid of our headquarters.

Got it. So you're not, I mean, you're not going into the office kind of thing that often. And would you say, Eric, you guys are pretty much remote?

Yeah, we're remote first. Um, my, and I told the team this, I was like, the rule for me is going to be agency people can be remote. We're just going to keep the talent bar very high, but software people, you're all coming into the office. Um, and so, um, you know, that's what it'll look like for now, obviously subject to change.

Yeah. Now I know you did, I know you talked about this, I think in one of your episodes or on, you know, on YouTube about bringing people back into the office. Kind of thing, and you know I I see like my son he's 27 graduated Notre Dame he was there almost done sorry almost one but not really oh my gosh and that was so painful it's like that's my life with Notre Dame almost but he is like he was COVID he was kind of in the professional world a little bit. And so he's never really been in an office. Like he's dying to go into an office, right? So there's this whole generation of young professionals that are really craving and desiring that. But a lot of, like, he works for a law, legal software SaaS company out of San Francisco. They got amazing offices, but there's like 3 people in the office, you know, kind of thing. But yeah, I just was curious. Because I know you talked about bringing people back in, or that seems to be the movement.

Yeah. So I, I do think that is the movement because the people that are here in the office with me, they're in their mid-20s and they're just like, we don't believe that in your 20s you can just go straight to remote because you don't know how to work. You don't have the tendencies built up that, that we all have built up. Um, and they're like, honestly, it's also way more fun. Um, and so it does start to create a divide because Even yesterday on a leadership call, I was just talking about how I went to lunch with my CTO and he was observing other people on the call and he could tell some people got irked whenever we would talk about, oh, going to lunch or doing these things, right? So there's something to be mindful of.

If you're an agency owner looking to break high 7 figures, 8 figures, or even 9 figures, the Agency Owners Association is for you. It's ran by my partner, Neil Patel, and myself. And we've been there, done that from an agency standpoint. And if you want to learn more about it, if you want to grow faster, get more clients, take yourself out of the day-to-day, just go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more.

Yeah, I wanted to bring up something when it comes to AI. This was on a previous call and I can't remember who said it, but we were talking about the adoption of new AI tools. And with your team, do you guys have like some sort of a protocol of how to get everybody up to speed? Or what's your expectations on adopting a new AI tool to enhance efficiency with your team?

I'll let Eric take this one because I have no clue what we do.

I was going to let you take it. So I was going to answer for you, Neil. Can I answer for you and see if I'm right? Uh, Neil just lets his team do whatever and then if it sticks, it sticks. Um, I'm kind of the same way too, where, um, if they start, like, for example, they'll test certain AI tools and it'll start to grow within the organization. You'll see more and more people using it. Um, but we do have an AI working group. an AI corner during our weekly all-hands where we talk about things that we're experimenting with. And I've been kind of sounding the doom. I guess I've been kind of a doomer. I'm like, guys, like, and I talked to one of our bloggers. I'm like, hey man, is your plan to be a blogger for the next couple years? He's like, yeah. I'm like, no, you can't do that. You're fucked. And he's like, he just stared at me blankly. I'm like, no, no, no, you're fucked, right? And so I'm like, you need to adapt like right now. And I'm telling everyone, I'm almost like the annoying parent. I'm like, guys, like, over and over, I'm like, look at all these things that are happening right now. Monday's gonna be, look at all these operators, look at all these things right now. You might think I'm dooming, but, you know, if you adapt, you protect yourself. And the worst case scenario, it was all bullshit, right? But sorry, worst case scenario is you lose your job. Best case scenario is you don't lose your job and you're insulated and then you get paid more because What we've been talking about on the podcast, obviously, is smaller team, big businesses. Um, even yesterday when Neil and I recorded, I think you're going to have 10-people companies that can do $100 million or a billion in revenue, or 1-person companies doing a billion in revenue. Like, I think that's all coming.

Um, I don't know about a 1-person company doing a billion.

I'll bet you.

Hey, I'll bet you. I bet you in 10 years we'll see that. I'll bet you another lunch. We bet at lunch yesterday. Neil owes me lunch. I'll bet you another lunch.

All right.

Sounds good.

I'll take that.

Yeah. Sorry. In fact, I don't even know that answers your question. So, yeah.

Um, another thing that we were talking about on a previous question, if, if nobody has anything else for the, uh, for the moment is—

I think Rebecca had something.

Yeah.

Rebecca, go ahead.

Oh, I don't mean to interrupt you though. It's, it's, oh, go ahead. It's one of your guys' favorite topics. Um, well, it's something people ask you a lot about, so There's a lot of, there's a lot of LinkedIn posts about HubSpot losing all of its traffic in the last week or so. And then there's people are speculating why. So one reason why is the obvious, and Neil's talked about this, we all know this, they post a lot of irrelevant crap and they're being punished for it. One theory. The other theory, it's just sort of an AI thing going on. And I was just curious if you guys had a take on it because it is really interesting. When you see— I don't know, I'll try to at least share this real quick so people understand. If I was at HubSpot, I'd be having a heart attack, but it's public information. So anyways, just curious. Yeah, and I'm a, you know, how to spot person, so that's why I'm watching everything HubSpot all the time.

If HubSpot uses AI for any of their content, maybe they do, right? That could be.

I don't know. I mean, not in the last, you know, 12 years, maybe. Yeah.

It's a big drop. It's a lot of content.

And I don't know why. And it, right, singled out, you know, like in this space, there's probably others who lost traffic as well, but that was a massive loss for a big channel.

Yeah, I'll just, I'll share it one more time for anyone who didn't, couldn't absorb it. Like it's insanity and it was overnight.

Yeah, like I look at that as like, I wouldn't say manual action, but close enough where it's like, that's too much of a drop. I haven't really seen too many drops.

There's quite a bit like that. If you look on Twitter, they talk about it.

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Yeah, so Ryan Law, I think that posted that thread originally. I think if you look at it, there's actually a couple of patterns, but it's not like a widespread pattern, which is— so Neil and I talked about it on the podcast yesterday.

Okay.

Um, but it, to me, it seems like more of a, um, they lost traffic for like famous quotes, for example. So it's a lot of irrelevant stuff. And I think—

Right.

By the way, David worked at HubSpot. He was on the content team. David, you go.

I just want to hear what people have to say about it.

I saw you start smirking right away and I should have emailed you or LinkedIn or something to you.

I mean, I was there. I saw that the irrelevant content being produced and I was like, why the fuck are they writing about this stuff?

Yeah, interviews.

Yeah, but like the fact of the matter is the business model worked. Like we had amazing CAC to LTV and we had a money printing machine and we were like, if we can grow traffic X amount, we're going to get this many leads. We're going to get this much revenue because we had like a great product and great sales team. And so it was dialed in. Now I think a lot of it was irrelevant and I do disagree with what they produce, but you You can't really argue with the business results.

But did those actually pieces drive content? Drive leads? Are you sure those drive leads?

No, not those pages, but like there was the percentage of pages that did, like they're still ranking for a lot of money keywords. And I, I mean, I'm sure they're, they're concerned and they have a really amazing SEO team that'll figure this out. But I think people are kind of focused a little too much on the traffic and not like, wait, are they losing revenue though?

No, they're not.

I would imagine they have a chart internally that, I mean, I've noticed that most of the SEOs at HubSpot have not responded, only the ones who have left.

Hello, upside down child. It's just, it's just interesting. And then if you're, if you're in the HubSpot business, it's a crack up, you know, trying organic search is a hilarious thing to try to do if you're not, if you're a HubSpot agency, because, you know, you're battling HubSpot. So you're always trying to find some little niche that they don't talk about.

William, give me all your money. Where's your money? William, William, give me all your money. William, don't be shy. Give me all your money.

He comes to me when I'm on calls like this, and then he's like, give me chocolate and I'll go.

Do you have chocolate?

I do, but—

Oh, I have good chocolate. Hey, William, I'll give you chocolate next time. It's going to be white truffle apple pie. Yeah. Let's grill him to death. Yeah.

All right. That's Sea's Candy, Eric.

Yes, that's Sea's Candy right there.

Yeah.

I also look at like—

I like that flavor a lot.

Yeah.

I also look at the HubSpot stuff and what happened. Irrelevant content is definitely some of it, but I started looking through some of the data.

They did lose some traffic for relevant keywords as well, but it was a lot of irrelevant ones. And I genuinely Can they believe how Clark's wings won't be impacted that hard?