The marketing genius of the Kardashians, and What Eric gets out of YPO retreats

Let's talk about how you spent 3 hours watching the Kardashians.

Dude, so I spent 3 hours watching the Kardashians. Big waste of time, by the way. But it is addicting. I didn't watch it for the reason most people think. I wasn't going to be like, oh, what are the Kardashians up to? It was funny. So recently purchased—

Better be funny.

Yeah, it's actually not funny. But we recently purchased a home. And when we purchased a home, we're looking for inspiration and ideas. And I was Googling images of homes that are similar style. And one of the Kardashian homes came up, another one of their kitchens came up. And I didn't realize how many pictures of their home is online, like in Architectural Digest and all these types of places. So I was like, oh, let me turn on The Kardashians because I keep seeing not ads for it, but promos for it on Hulu being like, check out The Kardashians because they changed the name of the show. Used to be Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Now they changed it to The Kardashians.

Yeah.

And the reason I ended up Turning on the show was I was like, oh, let's see if I can see home inspiration ideas. And saw quite a bit of inspiration on their minimalistic designs and stuff like that. Some of it was really cool. And I didn't realize how many homes they have. Like Kim Kardashian owns a Malibu home that looks really sick that she was going to renovate. But she— they go all out to deck out and renovate their homes. Got some good ideas from it. But it's addicting. And the thing I ended up learning from it is, dude, they're a marketing powerhouse. Like on one of the episodes, they were complaining that one of the sisters was not happy that Kim Kardashian was doing a show with Dolce Gabbana when Dolce Gabbana decked her out for her wedding. So she wouldn't post something related to a new clothing line or something that Kim was releasing with Dolce Gabbana. Literally, the mom is texting everyone being like, like, at this day, this time, please post this on your social media. Like, they're all, you know, she's rounding them all up and controlling the messaging that they put out on all their social platforms. She's a true genius.

She's always been the one pulling the strings.

Yes.

What's her name again?

Uh, Kris Jenner, I think. Kris Jenner?

Yeah, I think so.

Kris Jenner? I think Kris Jenner. I could be wrong.

Keep going.

But yeah, so when you look at a lot of the stuff that they do marketing-wise, the mom is controlling it and she's trying to tell the different sisters what to post when, what to showcase.

Um, you know, she's 68 now and she still looks the same as the past. Like when they first started the show, she still looks the same.

I should have known that because on one of the episodes, it was one of the girls' birthdays and she was like 40-something years old, but the mom looks like she's in her 50s. I was like, all right.

Done a good job.

But yeah, it's a really well-organized marketing machine. Like everything, when they talk about the show, the drama, you can tell that they kind of poke and they encourage the drama. Yeah, there's a lot of emotions of them crying and stuff like that, but it really hooks you in. It gets you to see all sides of these celebrities and it makes you build a deeper bond with them, which is more likely to get you to buy their products because you're more likely to connect with them.

Dude, so Keeping Up with the Kardashians, that was 20 seasons. And then The Kardashians is 4 seasons. And then there's a Khloe and Lamar, see, I think that was 2 years, Lamar Odom. Life of Kylie was 1 season. Kourtney and Kim Take Miami, 3 seasons.

Wow.

They have a lot of different spinoffs. But to your point, people like to do business with people. And if they like who you are, then they're going to buy products from you. Just plain and simple.

Yes.

And they have a wide audience to have content. It's just lifestyle.

And it also showcases how they're normal too, which makes it easier for people to relate.

Relatable.

Yeah. Yes. Like they'll all go into In-N-Out with a big group and just order food and stuff like that. That sounds great. In-N-Out is delicious.

Yeah. You liar. You didn't even eat In-N-Out.

I do eat In-N-Out.

You don't eat beef.

Yeah, but they have a grilled cheese and veggie burger.

That's right. Right. That's right.

You can just get it without the patty.

That's right. And then the fries covered and smothered, well done. You don't even know what that is?

No.

Yeah. Did you know they also have a hot chocolate too?

They have a hot chocolate?

When it's rainy days, you can ask for the hot chocolate, get it for your kids. It's free on rainy days.

What about the fries smothered? What are you talking about?

The fries covered and smothered. So that means they put the spread on it, the cheese on it, the grilled onions, and then the fries well done. The fries are extra crispy. And then you get that with the hot chocolate free, by the way, again, on rainy days.

Do I have to order anything else or can I just get the hot chocolate for free?

You're just gonna have to try that out. That clip's gonna do well.

No, I'm curious because if it's raining—

I've actually— no, I heard about the hot chocolate because I was drinking hot chocolate during this YPO retreat. And we're drinking hot chocolate and they're like, did you know that you can get that at In-N-Out? I was like, oh, I didn't know that. And it's like, it's free on rainy days. I was like, oh, I gotta tell Neil.

So during other days you can get it, but it costs money?

Yeah, but it's not on the menu. It's a secret thing.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

I wouldn't order it, but I would order it on rainy days.

Yeah. And there's like the Flying Dutchman, which I think is what you want, the cheese one. That's what it's called.

The Flying Dutchman?

Yeah, that's— they have all these like different names for—

A grilled cheese is just tomatoes, lettuce, and cheese.

Oh no, the Flying Dutchman just is like a double meat or like a hamburger with no meat.

Hamburger with no meat?

Yeah.

So a veggie burger?

Yeah, basically. Yeah, but Flying Dutchman anyway. Yeah, that's that. All right, everyone, quick message from the Agency Owners Association. So this is the peer group for agency owners that Neil and I both put together. This is for people that are doing 6 figures, 7 figures, 8 figures, even 9 figures as well. And we're all here to help you grow your agency faster. In this group, we share leads, we share learnings with each other. It's a community where people can ask questions, their most burning questions personally, professionally. We'll share templates, reports, things like that. We're constantly adding more value to the group. I will tell you that the price is continuing to increase. The good news And the good news is that there's no long-term commitment. So, you can just learn more by going to marketingschool.io/agency. Once again, that's marketingschool.io/agency to learn more and we hope to see you inside.

How was your YPO retreat?

The one that you didn't go to?

Yeah.

You know, a lot of people are asking about you in a good or a bad way. It was like, dude, we got to get Neil this year. I was like, oh, Neil and I were texting and then we took to Twitter on it. It was really good actually. It was a lot. It exceeded my expectations. So just so everyone knows, YPO is a group that Neil and I are in. It's like a peer group. And I've always been a big proponent of peer groups. Neil's heard my Kool-Aid for the last year, couple years. In fact, I bothered him to join YPO Beverly Hills. It was me that did it.

And I went to— I probably have the record for the least meetings ever attended.

I don't know if you have the record, but you're definitely on the lower side.

But— I think I've only been to like one meeting.

No, you've been to— you had to go to a couple meetings No, no, I know.

But after I became a member, I've only been to one meeting.

But, but, but, but, um, Neil's thing is, so, okay, here's my thing with these things. I, when I first joined EO, which is Entrepreneurs Organization, so I was in EO for 7 years, very similar type of group, right? Um, my initial thing was like, oh, I need to, before I became an entrepreneur, I asked another entrepreneur, I was like, what's the biggest thing that changed your life? He's like, EO, right? I was like, oh shit, I need to join EO so I can get business, right? And when I joined EO, I realized very quickly, this isn't, I'm not going to be able to get business if that's my first thing. Um, But then I quickly realized that the relationships I was building were extremely valuable. And this trip, there's only like 60 people there. 30 people are members, 30 people are spouses, roughly give or take. And, um—

Did you take someone?

No, I didn't. Because they want you to bring someone that's like close to like wife level because people are gonna ask about like, oh, so when are you guys gonna get married, right? And then once they asked me that, I was like, oh, you know. But, but, but, but, but The guy that basically, he was one of the champions at the event. He owns a ton of real estate in Vancouver. Super nice guy, super connected. We stayed at his hotel.

The Rosewood?

Yeah.

It's a nice hotel.

It's the best hotel in Vancouver. Like I've stayed at a couple of hotels for TED. And then everything was just really well done. Like we got these boats. It wasn't just like one boat, but we got like 6 or 7 different boats. And then he coordinated the whole thing. And then we like got to like go between the boats, right? And this all sounds like fancy schmancy and everything. It's like, okay, well, Eric, what's the ROI of this? To me, being able to go deep with multiple people, like you know I might go 15 minutes here. I was I was probably talking to this guy for 30 minutes. This one guy, YPO member, he crossed Antarctica by himself, by himself. Nobody's ever done that before, right? He also went through South America to Antarctica. That's the most dangerous sea area. He rode, he rode that with like two other people, right? And he's like super popular. And his campaign, that whole campaign got like two billion views earned media, right? And so it's like you can learn something from everyone. Everyone's got like different walks in life, and then they're all really deep in their. own businesses. One guy had the largest like pharmaceutical company, he sold it. Now he's like an architecture guy. And so you— but everyone, what's really interesting is they don't lead with their business. They lead with kind of, it's more personal first, and then eventually just gets to business. And I know that these people will be friends for a long time. And we know, we both know this, right? That business is based on people at the end of the day and relationships.

Yes.

So I think once I flipped it to think about, hey, YPO is more so about, or EO is more so about relationships than business, all the business stuff will come later. But it was good.

I agree with you. If you want to join YPO or EO or any of these organizations, don't do it for the purpose of trying to generate revenue. And you're better off doing it for the relationships and the knowledge that you end up getting. My problem with YPO and all of these is it's hard for me to make the time work. And it could just be because I travel too much. But like, no joke, almost every single event that they have, I'm in some other country and it's hard for me to make this the time work.

Well, to be fair, let me push back on what Neil's saying. Everyone's busy, right? So everyone is busy. And I think it's, we make time where we think it's important. And so I remember my first forum for EO, like there are people that just want to show, oh, I'm too busy, right? I got all the— I got to do all this stuff, right? And then those people get kicked out of the group. And we realized later very quickly, it was like, you know what? Like if it's important, we're going to make time for it. And yeah, you're right. It is a big commitment to show up to these things because it's like, it's a lot of events, right? Yes. But I do want to say too, Neil and I have talked about this offline. There are YPO communities where it's like, it's so based on like revenue. And I think I introduced you to one. You can join that one where it's like $100 million plus or so, and they are much more about go, go, go business. So there's like different chapters for like different wants.

Introduce me to that one.

I will introduce you to that. I did. I introduced you to Carrie, didn't I?

Ah.

I'm going to do it right now. I want to take a second to tell you about my podcast co-host's agency. So NP Digital. So Neil Patel Digital. What they do is they do a whole host of marketing services and they are global. They're worldwide. They have SMB services as well. They have mid-market to enterprise services as well. They cover the entire gamut. So you can just go to npdigital.com to learn more about it. And now back to the episode. Okay, continue, continue. You finished the thought.

I agree with you that everyone's busy, but if you look at most of the people in YPO Beverly Hills, their business isn't in tons of different countries where they actually have to travel everywhere around. Some are. Some are, but majority aren't.

For example, there's a guy that owns a jewelry business in Beverly Hills. It's a family business. It's been around since like late 1800s or so. It's big. It's worldwide. They're based in Saudi Arabia.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

But majority of the members I've met, their businesses, they may do business globally, but it's not like they have offices in tons of countries where they're required to travel.

Majority aren't like you in this chapter, but there are chapters where there's a lot of people like you.

Dude, I've met some people and not actually YPO, but I know they're in YPO and they're executives at publicly traded companies where they have like 50,000 employees or something crazy like that. I'm like, those people must have really bad schedules. Yep.

I'm making the introduction so you can pick the next topic.

All right. Well, okay, going back to YPO. What were the— if you had to pick the 3 main things that you learned from YPO, the Vancouver retreat, what were the main 3 things?

Okay.

New things that you learned.

New things that I learned.

So— Eric's thinking.

I am thinking.

How much did you spend on the trip?

Oh dude, the trip was the best deal. So okay, $3,000. Okay, and the hotel's included. That hotel usually is $900, $1,000 plus per night.

Plus flight?

Flight, I lugged it on economy. So $300 because it's less than 3 hours.

I was like, oh, let's take economy. Yeah, it's not a long flight.

But I got upgraded to first class anyway. So anyway, I spent like $3,500 or so. All the food, the best food you can have. The boats, like the yachts and all that, all taken care of. The hotel, all taken care of. It was really based— actually, if you want a good lesson here, a lot of that had to come from relationships to get the price down to that level, $3,000. It's all relationship-based at the end of the day.

Did Sonny end up going?

He didn't go, but Darshan went. You know Darshan?

Yeah, I've talked to him.

You did work for him like 20 years ago.

I don't think I worked for him.

No, your last agency, ACS. You guys did work for his surgical company. He told me at dinner, he's like, 20 years ago. Yeah. He's like, I know Neil.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah. Yeah.

He's doing some really cool stuff in the health space.

Yeah. A lot of cool stuff. Um, okay. Here's the other thing I learned. Second thing is, um, most people are very focused. Some people are, um, some people have like a lot of different businesses. I met this one guy, you would love talking to him. He's like, he's white people Beverly Hills. Um, he's got a lot of different businesses. And he's just a deal junkie, and he's like a really bad operator. He says it himself, but he's really sharp. He knows like all the the deal players. He knows like what's going on. He's just super on top of it. I did also learn this. So we have a we have a lawyer in the chapter, and he was talking a lot about distressed assets, and he's just not seeing anything good right now. You know this already, but he's he's like saying like it's just gonna get it's gonna become a bloodbath in the next couple years or so. And you know he's just in the in the meantime he's kind of focusing on his startups, and then you know he's kind of waiting. Waiting for, for things to, to pick up.

Cool. So majority of the people who generate— because I think the average YPO Beverly Hills chapter company, I don't know what they generate, but I think it's like $50+ million or something large like that. Um, so one of the big lessons that you got was majority of the people make their money by focusing on one business.

The majority of people, yes. But then you do have people, and this is why Neil and I say we don't necessarily judge people that don't focus, Because I've— you've had that issue before. I've had that issue. But there are people that don't focus and they somehow make it work. I'm like, how do you make all the operators work for all these different things? And they're so like, the businesses are so disparate. He's like, I don't know, man. He's just— and he just seems like a really chill guy, but it all works for him. So.

He also knows that he's not— I'm assuming you're talking about the same guy who says he has a lot of businesses, but he also says that he's not the best operator. So he knows his weakness, which is amazing thing. Instead of trying to fix it by becoming a better operator, he just Probably hires amazing operators.

But what's interesting to me is he doesn't seem like the most— if you're not a good operator, I would assume that you're probably not the greatest recruiter too, which I'm probably wrong. But I was like, I'm just like, man, you must have like really good luck. But yeah. Also, I learned from someone else and there's like side lessons when you talk to people, you learn their life story. And one guy had his daughter when he was only like 20 years old or so. And he was still struggling and he still made his business happen. His business does like, let's just call it like $50, $60 million a year. And, you know, he has a great relationship with his daughter and he's not necessarily married right now, but it's just what works for him. So that just reinforced to me there's no right or wrong way to have a relationship or a right or wrong way to do a business. It's whatever works for you, just like your kids are over there.

Yeah, you can hear them screaming already. I'm like, they're home. I don't think in this building anyone else has kids other than me. Actually, there's a lot of people with kids in this building, but they're probably my age. Dude, funny enough, I tweeted—

The kids are your age, you mean?

Yeah, their kids. The people who live in this building, their kids are my age.

So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and also go to marketingschool.io/agency if you're an agency owner and you want to grow faster. So that being said, we'll catch you later.