The New Rules of Marketing: AI, SEO, Sales & Branding

So Eric and I were just talking. I got back from Web Summit Rio and I was asking him about his conference sales cycle. Do you know your conference sales cycle roughly?

I don't. Like, maybe if you talk and I think about it, maybe that will work. Go.

All right, so we do something that's— I wouldn't say that's that unique, but I would consider it somewhat unique, uh, in which when I give a speech We have a QR code on my slides where people scan and then we collect leads from that. Then I typically, depending on the event, because I only try to speak at events that have our ideal customer, typically 1 or 2 people from the organization will also be there. And then we do that to collect leads as well. So then we map it out all in a CRM and we see how long it takes to close a lead from it. On average, If we go to a conference, I'm going to break it down for both immediate deals and enterprise, okay? Immediate deals are usually smaller because typically if you're a large organization, you have a large sales cycle. I'm assuming you see this with Care all the time, right?

Yep. You just can't do a deal that quickly.

No. How long does it take with Care? Like the moment lead comes in?

Call it anywhere. It's like enterprises, like it could be a couple months. Yeah.

At least. And that's for software, right? At least.

But usually we're talking 9 to 12 months if it's like agency.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what we're finding is anyone who's interested in working with us right then and there, whether it's a big company or enterprise, I mean a big company which is enterprise or SMB, it tends to be more of the SMB that actually converts because they're more flexible with their budgets while the enterprise usually have budgets and then they've already allocated before the year started.

Procurement.

Procurement and all this kind of stuff.

Yep.

So typically from an event, if we collect a lead, even if it's an SMB, you're looking at 3 months at the earliest for a close, 5 months at the latest. And if it doesn't close in 5 months, usually we're not going to close that SMB. We pretty much just consider it dead. We still do follow up, but we consider it dead. Enterprise, even if they want to work with us or they scan a QR code from our presentation, fill it out, they're not, They may say they want to work with us. We usually get a lead from them. No joke. Like when I say a lead, because to clarify on this, when someone scans a QR code, fills out a form field, we then follow up and they can say they're interested in working with us or they may even tick a box, but we're typically not able to close them because of their sales cycle. But usually when I give a speech, a month, a year, I mean a year and 4 months later, We'll get a lead. And a little bit less than 2 years, we'll close the lead.

Yep.

So our sales cycle is actually on that, is closer to a year and 10 months.

That's why the fortune is in the follow-up.

Yes. But that's a long sales cycle. So it's just like we're going to all these events because we're mapping out how many RFPs we're getting and enterprise leads. And we map out exactly where they first touched us in the CRM, how they got to know us, et cetera. And what we're finding is, no joke, it takes roughly a year and 10 months from me speaking to getting someone who's actually working with us.

But it's worth it because you're actually applying. You're, you're going to be speaking at more events now. Now that you've ramped it down, you're going to ramp it back up.

Yeah.

And so you're going to have a lot more of these. And so we were just talking about how we're going to be speaking at, um, the HubSpot Inbound Conference and we're figuring out logistics there. And, um, how many, let's say you have, um, 100 scans, right? How many people are in the audience? It's roughly 18%. Okay.

So, you know, if I have 100 people in the audience—

Call 500.

Yeah, 18 will end up scanning it. So 18 times 5 is 90. So I'd have 90 scans if there's 500 people. That's my average is around 18%. And that's from all industries, conferences throughout the world. We average around 18%.

That's pretty good. That's a, that's a lot of scans. And so what happens on the scan? They're, they're on your email list.

They're on the email list, but we collect all their information, employee size, revenue, or employee count, revenue, all the stuff we need to qualify if it's a lead and see if they're interested in working with us.

But, but going back to the fortune is in the follow-up. So John Maxwell said this, right? So the, so the way you think about it is they're on your email list and you're constantly not asking them to buy, but you're constantly following up with content. You're constantly following up with more value over time. And it's funny because after I did this, this global marketing summit, I actually got shit from someone for, so I shared the presenter slides, right? And then at the end of it, I copied my friend who shared his slides. It says, um, you can follow me on LinkedIn or on X. And then by the way, you subscribe to my newsletter here for free. And this person called me out. This person called me out and said I was soliciting for business.

Really?

And then, and I was like, what the hell? And then I ran that through ChatGPT. I was like, hey, ChatGPT, was I soliciting here? It was like, chat, no, you were not. But my point is you try to get people onto your list because you can constantly add more value over time. That's the whole idea. I'm not trying to get them to buy because I know they won't buy immediately. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So yeah, the interesting thing when you talk about follow-up, the biggest trend that we've seen in our growth is a person moving from company to company. A great example of this is I gave a talk at LinkedIn at one of their offices in Latin America. So they brought in a lot of their top advertisers. We also invited people to the event. It was a free event, but it was invite only. There was this lady, amazing marketer. She worked at Deezer at the time. We weren't able to work with her at Deezer. She wasn't able to get us in. She wanted to work with us though. She then moved to Oracle and then she got us an RFP from Oracle. We didn't win the RFP, but she wanted to work with us. And now she's the CMO of a company where— I think it's called I think the founder is worth $20 to $50 billion. I know he's worth less than $50 billion. I'm pretty sure he's worth more than $20 billion. You know, of course he's on the Forbes list. And we were able to get a contract from the newest venture that she's part of, and they have tons of divisions.

Yeah.

And then from there you just land and expand. But it was quite interesting in which if you follow up with people, we see it being really rewarding, not for them just being at that company.

Yeah.

It's whatever company they move to. You're continually building a relationship with them.

So there's actually 2 parts here. One, you want to continue to be helpful over time, and that requires you to be consistent with content, and it requires you to be on top of things if you're going to be consistent. But the second thing is you also have to be kind too. If you're kind and consistent over a long period of time, people will remember you. And that's how these things are. People will generally, like, eventually they'll figure something out where they'll work with you. But even if they like you, you've seen this happen, they'll follow you from company to company to company. And then the business grows, right? But I've also seen it at times where they follow you from company to company and then the, the, if you put the B team in there, the B team screws it up and then they will never follow you again.

Yeah.

So you have to be very consistently good over a long period of time.

Yes. You have to be really consistently good over a long period of time. And I think you nailed it. And this is why I'm going to mention it again. You got to be helpful and you got to keep adding value without worrying about pitching 24/7.

Yep. And, and so you talked about diversifying on marketing. And I, I think this is a good one because I actually just got off the phone with, um, with Jim Yu from BrightEdge and, um, he was just, I was like, so what interesting data do you have? And we, we kind of know this already, but we're seeing a world now where AI overviews, I don't know, you're probably looking at your traffic, maybe not, but impressions are skyrocketing and then clicks are going out. So it's going like this, like this jaw, this direction like this, right? The graph's going like this. Yeah.

'Cause people are searching more frequently now because of AI overviews.

Yeah. And so like you, you have to earn the click more, but your impressions are becoming like, are a hot commodity right now. So you do have to diversify your marketing. And we've, we've constantly talked about this. So where do you want to start with this one?

Well, let's first go back to BrightEdge. What is BrightEdge doing? They've been around for ages now.

So I actually asked them, and I don't know if Jim will kill me for saying this, I was like, so how are things going right now with all this AI overviews confusion and all this AI stuff? Are you guys still growing right now or are you guys starting to, you know, sense a little wobble, wobble, wobbliness out of your customers? He's like, no, we're still growing right now. And he's been around, he's been doing this for a long time. So I just caught up with him. I showed him kind of what we're doing with Carrot, and then I just You know, I asked him some questions. Um, what's interesting about BrightEdge, so they are an enterprise SEO product, whereas Ahrefs and Semrush are more, um, SMB. Same with your product, Ubersuggest. Um, and they've always committed to that. The, the one thing I, I've learned from him is like, you can't really do both. You have to just commit to one. Um, you know, there, there are edge cases like a HubSpot, for example. But the one thing that he said stuck with me today was, um, I was like, how long did it take you to get to product market fit? 18 months, which is what I usually hear.

Wow.

12 to 18 months. And he is like, another 12 months to figure out the, the customer lifecycle. So it seems like they're doing well right now. Now, but, um, it's very sales, it's, it's very much sales-led. And let me give you one more thing before we move on. He had a CEO and he's back as the CEO. I was like, isn't that funny how it works, Jim? Isn't that funny how it works? I, I've tried this, this thing a bunch of times and it's just like, you just have to be involved. I'm not saying don't hire a CEO. Yeah. But you have to be involved. And he's like, yep, I learned it the hard way.

So they've raised a lot of money. $61 million today. I just looked it up. Their last round was in 2013. Uh, $40-ish million, $42.8. That means they must be profitable if he's gone 12 years without raising any money.

They've done well. And, uh, you know, when you have a Taiwanese guy running things, uh, you know, he's a good steward of capital. Yeah, I'm Taiwanese, I'm saying that. Yeah.

Uh, so he's seeing the, the SERP data more looking like a jaw in which impressions are going up, clicks are going down percentage-wise. Did he talk about What he's seeing total clicks?

He's going to give me data that I'm going to share in our next recording. So I didn't get it yet before this one. It was right before this.

Right, because I think Datto's, was it called Datto's, the SEMrush company? They talked about or ran fish and talked about how searches are going up. We're seeing a little bit of that as well. But, you know, I'm curious on what BrightEdge is seeing. And the reason I ask that is if you look at like Ubersuggest or Datto's or BrightEdge, The reality is, is even if we have millions of data points or billions of data points, it's actually not a large sample size because Google itself has 13 point— is it 8, 13.6, or 13.8 billion searches a day on average? So we all make up such a small percentage where the data can still be really skewed.

I'll give you one more thing. So I had talked to a handful of these SEO softwares, right? And everyone's moving into this one-click future. And what I've been saying, and maybe this is something I'll sit on for a little bit, but I think a lot of the marketing in the future is going to be one-click, the one-click future of marketing, meaning that, so you might have a tool tell you, okay, these are the changes you should make on your site. This is like an SEO audit, right? Yeah. But what if it just says, let me just do it all for you. Boom, one click, it just does it all, right? Same thing with creative. I think we're going to see that same thing with landing pages. Same thing. I think we're going to get to a point where offers are even going to be one-click as well. So you see suggestions and then do you just want us to do it for you? And then you can one-click do it all, or you can select what you want and just one-click do it. And then you can evaluate if the, the changes are good or not. I think that's where the future of this is going because we want it to move, we want to move into a future of a lot more done-for-you marketing.

I also think the future of marketing is going to be more in-platform marketing where you market and you try to get people to take that action and that conversion in one click without leaving. And most people think of social shopping, but I don't really see it as social shopping because this has been going on for a while. With Facebook, what is it called? Informs? Facebook Informs? Infield? What is it called? Dude, I'm blanking on the name. I just got off a 16-hour flight though.

Oh, you just got back?

I just got back literally right now.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Even when I came down for this recording, Noah was like, you're here at the wrong time.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

I'm really off right now.

Yeah.

And jet lag's not bad because it's only 4-hour time difference, but I'm just off. But either way, if you look at Facebook, you can run an ad and you can collect a lead within Facebook. It keeps them on the platform.

It's way— Isn't it just Facebook Forms?

Yeah, but it's way cheaper than sending them to your website and getting the conversion.

Yeah.

Because it benefits Facebook. They're still on the platform. But you know this, everyone who's run Facebook ads know this. I guarantee you for every lead that you get on a Facebook form field, the conversion rate when you average it out through thousands of conversions, when you sell them on trying to close whatever you're trying to close, the conversion rate on a landing page on your website is much better. As in, it costs more for a lead when you're sending them to your website.

But the quality's better.

But the quality is better. Yeah, that's a better way to put it. And then you just got to run the numbers on does a conversion difference make up for the cost difference for the quality? And then you can figure out what works for you. But they've been doing this for a long time. And there's other players that have tested things within app, right? Google's ran ad experiments for mortgages and other verticals where it could just be within Google. And they're already doing that with social shopping. You're seeing that on TikTok, you're seeing that on Instagram, and you're going to start seeing that for other things like being able to purchase a service or food all within, Google. And if Google doesn't do it, ChatGPT will, and eventually Google will have no choice but to copy.

Yep. People just, it, it's always been like this since the beginning of not even the internet, but the, the beginning of everything. Technology just makes things easier at the end of the day. So what did farming do? It made, it made consuming food easier, made getting good food to you easier, right? What did, what did, uh, the industrial age do? It made building products and services a lot faster, right? And then now you have AI, you, you have, synthetic intelligence, which allows you to do things a lot faster and more efficiently. And we're just gonna continue to see that. So the one-click future of marketing is coming. Um, but before I move into something else, it looks like you searched for something. What do you have?

It's called Facebook Lead Forms.

Oh yeah.

Facebook, close enough.

Close enough.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, did you, you know what's interesting? Remember at the beginning of Google where everyone tried to game it? Even the beginning of search engines where it's just like you use, use keyword stuff and things like that. So, Black hat SEO. The question is, is black hat SEO back for AI? So I, I, I found this post over here and, um, it's, it says this guy's name is Zach Notes. So his last name is Notes. Um, so here's their pitch. LLM optimization agency for 15 grand a month. They will, they'll get you ranked. They'll keep you ranked for one keyword in ChatGPT. If you don't rank, you don't pay. And so for example, you might wanna rank for like, what's the best CRM?

Yeah.

And so 15 grand for that. And basically they win rankings by manipulating LLM's reinforcement learning nature, giving feedback to the LLMs to change their output. So you know how you can give a thumbs up and down? So they're basically gaming that, right? And so whenever there's a new channel, if it really starts to take off, people will figure out how to game it. And that's actually what led Google to become successful cuz they figured out a way where it's very, it was more difficult to game. Eventually people, people figured it out for a little bit. I mean, then now it's, and now it's still more difficult to game. Um, you just have to be ahead of these people. So if ChatGPT can't figure out how to block these people, um, and, and stay ahead of them, eventually they're going to lose to someone that figures out how to block them.

I totally agree. This reminds me of like the SEOs that hit me up, uh, every once in a while. I get a few of these a year. Um, I probably get more than a few, but my team probably ignores most of them. Uh, there was a guy recently, I won't say his last name, but his, his name's Andrew and he's just like, Man, I got this better way of ranking and this hack will rank you at the top of Google for any keyword. And then he's breaking down and he's trying to explain this complex thing. And then what he pretty much says at the very end is he has tons of IP addresses that look like humans with Gmail accounts and they're just doing a search and clicking through to make sure your listing has a higher click-through rate.

Really?

And I'm like, this is nothing new and novel. And he's like, it'll work. Give me a client, I'll rank them at the top. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do this. And 2, even if it's working for you, eventually it'll stop working for you and you just spent all this time and resources doing something shortsighted instead of just focusing on long-term providing value.

The one thing we've learned, you and I, over the years is that the black hat, the gray hat stuff, it might work for a little bit, but it never, it never ever works long-term. And I think the worst part about it is it forces you to think short-term and it doesn't cause you to think more like an investor that thinks about the long-term, right? And so you're actually better off thinking long-term and, and think about providing value. 'Cause that forces your mindset into a better place anyway. And you come from a place of not trying to manipulate something for your will, but you come from a place of giving. And that sounds maybe cheesy, but that just is the way it is. Um, and while we're on the topic of, of SEO, so, um, Kevin Indig, remember Kevin Indig?

Uh, no.

Shopify SEO. Yeah. Yeah. So he's basically, he wrote a memo over here. He has a, he has a newsletter called Growth Memo, but basically it's how is answer engine optimization, AEO, How's it different from SEO? And the high level is he pulled a bunch of data from SimilarWeb and he basically reviewed organic search traffic versus AI chatbots across credit cards, earbuds, CRM, handbags. So finance, tech, software, and fashion. And he basically, here's, here's the key takeaway and we can just talk about this cuz I'm not gonna read all these graphs over here. Um, I'm looking at this credit cards graph over here so you can see. Credit cards, right? Chase.com, Reddit, Capital One, Citibank, whatever. And then this is by ChatGPT visibility. It's actually Google, PayPal, American Express, Visa, Chase.com. So it doesn't actually show the, like a Chase, which should be number 1 arguably. Actually, no, I didn't even know it should be number 1, but you see how it's different?

Wait, so credit cards, top 5 branded searches.

This is by Google. This, the black graph is Google over here.

Okay. And they're saying Chase is number 1. I get, I get why Chase is number 1.

Yeah. Reddit. Reddit.

what they're pulling in there. They're probably putting in reviews.

A lot of UGC. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Capital One.

Okay, that makes sense. Citibank makes sense.

I don't know what, uh, Common Community— I don't know. I don't know. It's probably a review site. Yeah. So, okay, GEO and SEO were the same. The same sites are getting organic traffic would also get the same citations, mentions, and LLMs. That's only true in a few cases, but not for the overall picture. Now, when we see the ChatGPT visibility, number one is I guess Google's getting cited.

I don't know how the heck they're citing Google for that. They shouldn't be. That doesn't make sense.

Yeah, I don't know, but it says Google and then PayPal and then American Express and then Visa, then Chase.

So I— the ChatGPT one isn't bad. I just don't think Google should be at the top.

Yeah, it's interesting because then you look at handbags and we're not going to go through all of this, but Reddit's number one for handbags because of UGC, like reviews. YouTube. YouTube is more reviews. Amazon reviews.

Nordstrom.

Nordstrom is like, okay. And then coach.com.

Yeah, they get all of those.

Okay. Now for ChatGPT for handbags, you have Target, Instagram, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Amazon. Isn't it interesting?

If you look at both of the ChatGPT, and this is only 2 queries, the first result for both of them don't make sense to me.

For both of them, right?

Yeah, because for ChatGPT, the credit cards one was Google at the top, which wouldn't make sense. Target is not a place known for selling handbags.

No.

So I don't see why that would be number 1 for ChatGPT.

What—

we'll go down one more.

You want— okay, earbuds. So Reddit's number 1, YouTube's number 2 right now.

This is for Google, by the way.

This is Google. Yep. CNET's number 3. Yeah. Amazon's number 4. And then Bose is number 5.

That all makes sense.

And then, okay, so ChatGPT for earbuds, you have Apple number 1, Amazon 2, Bose 3, wired.com, and then google.com.

They all make sense to me other than number 5.

Yeah. Google. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't understand. I mean, cuz Google's kind of their competitor too, but maybe they just, that's the data that they pull from. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't, I, I just think, look, my, my key takeaway here, and I'll pass it back to you, is I think a lot of this stuff is just too early right now. Optimizing for any AEO or like doing black hat for this stuff, it's going to change very rapidly. So I'd rather just sit back and wait. And this, this goes back to our analogy again. You're the one that flies in on a plane later. I might be the 4th or 5th wave, but we're not the 1st wave right now.

No. So, and I've, I have 2 things to really comment on this. The reason I say it doesn't make sense for me that they're listing Google, cuz Google In most cases is scraping the web, getting data, and then showing it on Google. So ChatGPT in this case is showcasing Google. Google doesn't have tons of articles on earbuds. I'm taking a guess here, I haven't searched, but I'm pretty sure because they're a search engine, they're scraping the web. Instead, ChatGPT should be pulling from the sources. The second thing is, is if people are really thinking about black hat techniques for GEO or AEO or whatever you want to call it.

LLMO or whatever O. Yeah.

It's just like doing SEO back in the day. If you do black hat stuff and you do some dodgy stuff, it may hurt you in the future where your domain and brand is tainted and it's just too hard to rank in the future. So don't do it. Think long-term because it is a channel that's here to stay. You don't want to screw up your chance of succeeding in the future by being shortsighted.

I'll name one more thing here. Did you see this research from Bain?

From who?

Bain Cap— not Bain Capital, but Bain, the consulting firm.

I have not.

So, okay. So this guy, Tanay, interesting research from Bain. So 80% of consumers now rely on zero-click results in at least 40% of their searches. On traditional search engines, 60% of searches end without the user progressing to another destination.

Wait, can you repeat again? Sorry.

So I'll just give you the second part 'cause I know you're a little tired. I'm actually pretty impressed.

No, the first part is where I lost.

Oh, 80% of consumers now rely on zero-click results in at least 40% of their searches.

Okay.

Okay. Second part, you understand. So traditional engine, 60% of searches end without the user progressing. Okay. Um, we're going to continue to see this. I mean, I earlier, I just mentioned like this jaw, right? But I mean, Bain's doing this research. You have this research. Um, Jim from BrightEdge has this research. So we're going to continue to see that. And that, that goes back all the way to what we talked about quite a bit, the search everywhere optimization thing where you have to optimize for other channels because you can't just rely on one basket.

Yeah, and you got to look at this as a branding play. If you're not there, your competitors are, and it's going to screw you up. If you think there's no value in branding, just look at companies like Apple. Look at companies like Nike. Look at companies like Visa, Mastercard, Range Rover, like the largest brands, legacy brands like Louis Vuitton, Hermès. It really does come down to a brand play. If people continually see you, they're much more likely to purchase from you in the future. If you're not there, you better bet your competitors are, and that's going to eat up some of your revenue in the long run.

But so I just finished this, this event, right, that, that, that you were at and Noah was at too. Um, but the one common thing that I've noticed with some of the best marketers in the world is that they are usually good, exceptional, world-class at one channel. And so for example, we had Sean Cannell talk about YouTube. He's really good at YouTube, 500 million views. Yeah. And he's 4.3 million subs, right? And then you have Charron who spoke about email. He focused on email specifically and, and he's exceptional at that. Um, usually most people are good at really one channel and then they start to diversify. Now, Greg Eisenberg, he's pretty good at, at multiple channels, but you, you typically don't see that often. Yeah.

But even when someone's good at multiple channels, they usually excel more at one channel over others. Yeah. What's your strongest channel?

That's, see, I wanted to ask you that too. I, I, I don't know what it is right now. Well, I would say, you know what, what's interesting? SEO's still my strongest channel from a lead standpoint. Um, but what I think is, is my, my up-and-comer right now is YouTube. YouTube's finally starting to give me credit, uh, for the videos. I'm like, oh, they're not just like getting hundreds of views anymore. Now it's like, here's a 50,000 one, which is pretty decent for a long-form one. Yeah. Here's 100,000 over here. Okay. Now the, the average is like, okay, a couple thousand or so. I'm like, huh, this YouTube thing's getting better now. That's what I would say.

I'm going to rephrase the question. What is the channel that you're the strongest at? Forget where you generate most your business from or leads from.

What is the channel that you're the strongest at?

at today? And what would you say the strongest channel you were when you started?

Strongest channel when I first started, and I want to hear your answer too. It's hands down SEO.

Yeah.

I think today the one that I enjoy the most and I think I'm the strongest at right now is probably video content like this.

All right.

Yeah. You?

When I started off, it was definitely SEO. Um, and then shortly after it became social media, but not social media like most people think. It was more like Digg. StyleDig, Reddit, those kind of channels back then. I've never used those back then. And if I had to say the last 5 years, my strongest channel hands down is probably conversion rate optimization.

Interesting. You call that a channel? I didn't even call that a channel.

I consider it a channel because you can take all the other channels and just generate more revenue.

I feel like that's just—

Or marketing skills, probably not a channel.

I feel like CRO is like a philosophy.

Like, yeah, some people, some people understand the concept of CRO, or a lot of people do. Some people actually run split tests, but very few people are really good at taking existing traffic and just knowing without running A/B tests. Like, I can go to almost any type of website and I usually can improve the conversions without an A/B test.

But you've always been good at CRO.

Correct.

Yeah. And you've always spent a lot of time on it.

Yeah.

So, so to me, I don't see it as a channel. I, I just, I think it's more of a, A way of doing things, a way of thinking. It's a philosophy.

If I had to pick a channel, then I would say conferences.

Conferences. Interesting. Yeah. And you know what? So, so, um, I was talking to, to one of the, the speakers and he was like, yeah, I'm, I'm speaking 200 days a year. I'm like, it has not been good for my family. I'm like, so what are you gonna do? He's like, I'm gonna keep doing it. Um, and I'm not talking about you. Yeah. Um, but I was like, I was like, oh, you know, Neil has a way now. He's just gonna bring his kids. That's the hack. He's gonna bring his family with him. And then I think that, that will at least cover what, 30, 40% of the travel?

Correct.

So then you can still build a relationship that way.

Yes. Although my kids are starting to go to quote unquote real school now. So that's going to create a problem. What does that mean? Like when they're 3 years old and you pull them out of school, it doesn't matter. When they start getting to like first grade, second grade, it starts creating problems if you pull them out too much. But I look at it as like, oh, my daughter's ahead a lot in almost all subjects.

Yeah.

So if I pull her out, she'll be more normal.

Yeah.

How, how much she's ahead. I'm like, I'm okay with that. She could miss more days of school for now.

You know, I think, you know, this too, you probably know a lot of parents that do this, but a lot of parents do pull their kids out like just whenever they want.

And yeah, why not?

It's probably gonna be you too. Yeah. Um, cool. Where do you wanna go next?

Oh, uh, interesting thing, you know, uh, do you wanna end up breaking down how you get the most outta speaking at a conference?

Yeah, let's do it.

So what's your formula?

To get the most out of it?

To get the most revenue.

To get the most revenue. So I remember there was an event that I, that I spoke at and I invited a bunch of VPs of marketing to a, a dinner. And the dinner things have always worked out well for me. Um, and from that one dinner alone, we got 3 deals done. Um, and this was in SF, so these are, these are tech companies that raised a bunch of money at the time. Um, and Of those companies, 2 of those kept following us from company to company afterwards. So I, I think that that works out really well. Um, when we sponsored SaaStr, the booth, and no, no knock on SaaStr, I think it's a great conference, but spending $75 grand on a booth, bad idea.

$75 grand.

$75 grand. It was a very, and we brought, we brought like a couple people with us.

Wait, you spent $75 grand?

$75 grand. Yeah. We, and we brought like 4 or 5 people with us. Yeah. And which is ironic because the year before I didn't spend anything and I was just by myself for SaaStr. We got 3 deals. And, and then the SaaStr one where I sponsored, I got nothing. Right? And again, no knock on SaaStr. I'm just saying we didn't do a good job there. Um, but I would say the dinners always do well. I'd rather spend on the dinners.

Wait, so how do you get people to attend the dinners?

So what I did was I would find, sometimes I look for the speakers, but in that case I wasn't looking for the speakers. I just knew that there were a handful of people that would be at this marketing conference. Um, and it's not like they shared the attendee list, but people would share it on social, whatever. And I, I just have a lot of connections on, on LinkedIn. And, um, I said, who else would you know? Like I knew a couple people going, maybe 3 or 4 people. I was like, okay, bring someone else that you know that's at your level. Right. And they'll bring 1 or 2 people with them. So usually that works out well. Um, so that's one thing, but we can turn it over to you and we can keep going back and forth.

Uh, just keep going and then I'll, I'll go through my playbook after.

Well, I, I need to think.

I was like, you wanna go through my whole thing? Yeah.

Well, you can go if you have the whole thing, go and then I'll go.

Uh, so first, Before we go to an event, we see all the PR and journalist people that are there. Usually the conference has a list of that. Some of the conferences help you even connect with them. So we'll hit them up to try to set up interviews so that way we get more press for our agency. The second thing is, is we look for our existing clients that are going to be there. If there are any, we try to meet with them, you know, build deeper relationships. Building deeper relationships always can potentially create upsell opportunities in the future. Or not always, but sometimes can create upsell opportunities in the future. The next thing I do of course is speak. When I speak at an event, have a QR code on my slides. Roughly 18% of the people in the audience scan it, turn into leads.

What do you have for the QR code? What's the offer?

Download the deck.

That's always the best because they just want the slides.

Yeah. Yeah. And then the next thing that we do is we try to set up meetings with potential companies that are going to be there. You can see other speakers, companies, we just reach out. A lot of them say no, some will say yes. Building relationships doesn't necessarily create direct revenue right then and there. The next thing that we do is we look to see who else has a booth there that's spending a lot of money. So like, for example, when I was at Web Summit recently, Vibra spent a ton of money on a booth. Vibra is their version of like, ExxonMobil, right? It used to be government-owned and then independent. So like 8,000 gas stations get gas from them, right?

Yeah.

It's a massive corporation. And, you know, when we connect with them, we'll typically do something at their booth. So with Vibra, I spoke, uh, one of their team members, you know, asked me questions. It was pretty much a panel. It was their head of innovation and me just talking. And that builds relationships with a potentially large company who's also spending an arm and a leg on sponsoring. So, you know, they have money and usually we only do this with large publicly traded organizations, but 2, they're bringing people to their booth. You're generating more leads from that as well. And then we have our team around and they're networking with those people as well. But that's pretty much it that we do for conferences and that model's worked out. It's just a pure numbers game. And then we always stay for Q&A. We always try to stay for Q&A. What I mean by staying for Q&A, after I'm done speaking, I don't try to rush off unless I have another meeting like this time I did, which sucks. But we genuinely try to stay there and let people come up and ask questions and answer every single one. Builds deeper relationships and you don't know what leads you're going to get from that.

So speaking for sure, obviously. And then just to double down, usually what happens is Neil and I will just go off to the side Um, and if we're both speaking at the same time, maybe Neil might go in one corner. I might go in another one. Usually, do you remember what I've seen? So I, I've made this observation. Neil's line is always 4 times longer than mine. It's always 4 times like longer.

Dude, your, your line could be 4 times longer than mine.

No, no, no. Your, your line is 4 times longer. But, um, so, um, anyway, so that, that part goes a long way. I think, um, I always do look for, if I'm going to speak in Barcelona, for example, I do look for who I'm connected to in Barcelona. Um, and just to meet up with them, right? And then we set up a separate dinner where like, hey, invite some other badasses, right? And usually they bring badasses, right? Like, cuz I say bring badasses, um, sometimes they like, very rarely do they bring someone that maybe is like, huh, what happened? Um, I think Neil's way, I haven't done Neil's way, but, um, I do like Neil's way of Neil. I got this idea from you, but going to the conference organizers and trying to barter a deal if they're not gonna pay like a certain fee or something like that, saying, Okay, can we get a booth or can you make intros for us or something like that? But I think what it is, what's important for us to talk about also is when those intros are made, how do we approach this? So mine, and I'm sure yours is the same, is always coming from a position of, okay, what is it that you do exactly? What are you excited about right now? But most importantly, what can I do to help? Not, hey, come buy my stuff, come buy my stuff. It's always, how can I help? Give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, overgive, and then maybe I'll get something back. That's always how I've played it, and I think you've played it the same way too.

But I've found that getting the conference organizer to give us a booth never really pays off.

It does nothing. Yeah.

At least for us. And I'm not saying it doesn't work for other companies, but it hasn't for me. And clearly from Eric's $75,000 investment, hasn't worked out for you. Although you had a booth at the YPO event. Did that work out?

That worked, but also cuz I'm the event organizer. Yeah, that's true. And then also I think there's a big halo effect because I, I, the comments that we've gotten so far, it's like, I've been to a lot of conferences. This is a top 3 event. And then a lot of people were like, hey, came up to me. I was like, hey, I had very high expectations for this and you exceeded them like by a lot. Um, so I think there's a giant halo effect with that. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's a little bit off to see if that—

I think I cheated on that one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because you're, it's also partly your event.

Yeah.

We have, we have found the boots to work. We used to do something where we would have the event organizer throw another private session. Or a private lunch. And we would then go and I would speak while people are eating and you're inviting the people in there. We stopped doing that as much because it's just getting so chaotic. Because like after a while, just being at these events, you have mental fatigue, not physical fatigue, but mentally, at least with me, I just get worn out.

Yeah.

So the new thing that we've been doing that's working well is when we go to an event, we know a lot of people are going to be there. A day before or a day after. We usually do it a day after, and that after is during the event because events are usually 3, 4 days, but I'm speaking one day. So the next day we'll do it where we'll do our own private event, uh, co-chaired with someone else. We usually pick someone else who will pay for all the expenses, uh, and then we'll invite— you call it 20, 30 people, uh, meet with them. And we'll do a speech that's maybe like 30 minutes max. Then we put the rest of the people on tables. So call it groups of like 4 or 5 per table. And they, each table discusses their biggest problem and they had to pick one problem. And then I go around to table to table. Uh, we usually do 5-minute timers, uh, 10 max, but usually 5 minutes. And then I end up giving the table a solution that could work for 'em. And you do it for each table. Uh, and they'll give 'em a few solutions and then sometimes they'll have 2 or 3 questions cuz I can do 'em pretty quickly, uh, within the 5 minutes we have time. And then people stand up and then talk about the best solutions that they learn and, you know, teaching each other. And we found that to build really good relationships over time.

Well, I'll give 2 more and then we can move on here. Um, so if I have the attendee list, and sometimes I might get it, especially in America, whoever watched the talk. I will send them, I'll email them saying, hey, um, you know, glad you attended. Or if you missed my talk, here are my slides, right? That always generates conversations. And it actually generated for, for this conversa— this, this event. Um, I had one more, but I forgot it. So it is what it— oh, oh, one more. So Neil and I are both gonna be at Inbound this year. So if you're going to Inbound, uh, September 3rd to 5th, um, we'll, we'll, we'll be there. And last year we had, so we had a marketing school session. I think 700 people came.

Wow.

But you and I also did a mini session where it was a private one where 200 people came, and that was one where we had everyone like did their own tables and then we did like a competition at the end and then someone won, right? Um, it's always good to do intimate things like that cuz it, it builds a deeper relationship and people feel more connected with you versus like 700 people or 3,000 people or whatever it is. Um, it's harder to do that. So I think there's, there's trade-offs for every level. We were fortunate enough where HubSpot allowed us to capture, um, different levels of relationships. Yep.

Yeah. No, I, I, I think that can, uh, end up working out really well. And look, Eric and I have tried different things. I don't think there's a right way to slice and dice it. You just gotta experiment just like you would with any other marketing channel and just double down on what keeps working for you.

Yep. All right. So I want to talk a little bit about the event because it's over now and it took me 2 years to do that thing.

2 years? 2 years.

Yeah. Well, I was voluntold to do it 2 years ago and then basically a year and a half ago.

You were what? Voluntold?

So it's like volunteering, but someone told you to do it. Because it's not like I get paid to do this event, right? I was, so I, I, I volunteered, but I was told to volunteer.

Oh, I never heard of the term voluntold.

Yeah. Voluntold. Yeah. But because it was in Miami, I was like, okay, I know Miami well and I have a certain way to that I want to do it. Um, so I want to talk about, this one's interesting. So the first one part I want to talk about, a little story here is how you can manifest 7-figure deals from thin air. So I was standing in line with one of my friends, you know who he is, but We're just talking and then I saw one of the other speakers walk by. I was like, oh, hey, so-and-so, meet so-and-so over here. That's like, and then the, the speaker actually knew who my friend was. And then my friend looked at me afterwards, she's like, Eric, that's a 7-figure deal right there. And I was like, wow. And then I immediately connected them on text afterwards. But that just goes to show you, cuz a lot of people came up to me from the event and they're like, how do you get all these speakers? Right? I'm like, it took years, decades to get these relationships and for that intro to happen. That took a long time to do that, right? And you make intros all the time. But my point is, that's how these deals happen from constantly helping these people and making connections over time and not expecting anything back. You've always been good about introductions as well. And it's, it's, it's just the same thing again. You give without trying to get something because the moment you try to get something, people can sense it. But if you're just a natural born giver, it's, you just end up getting everything that you want in the long term.

Plus more. We were at the same event. Eric and I were eating lunch, and we ate lunch outside of the food hall at the YPO event.

We did?

Yeah.

I don't remember eating with you.

I was eating the free ice cream.

Oh yeah, the gelato.

Yeah, because it's free. I went 3 times.

Oh nice, good cookies and cream.

I technically only went twice. The first time I got one. The second time I'm like just getting give me a double scoop and they only did one per hand. I was like, oh, it's free. Give me whatever.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I, when we were sitting down for lunch and a few people joined us and we were just sitting outside on the couch area and we were all talking and then one of Eric's buddies who I know as well, 'cause Eric introduced us from one of his past events. Nice guy, did lunch with him. We were talking about his new company that's crushing it and his agency is doing well. But not growing like—

Not near that growth.

Yeah, not near that growth. Then it's a distraction. And I was talking about the numbers and Eric said right away, he's like, oh, maybe Neil's trying to buy it. And he said this out loud. And I was like, no, no, no, I'm not trying to buy it. I think you guys should merge or do a deal. And then I don't know if he ever follows up with that.

We'll probably follow up. I think my thinking on it is it's probably a little too early for both sides right now. I want to see how it develops a little more, but I think it's a great idea and I think it actually might it would work out way. Yeah. Like in a positive way. Yeah. And that, like, but again, that was Neil's idea and we're just sitting there. That's what you get from these events. You get these random ideas, which actually like, oh, that's actually a really good idea. Um, so he has a revenue.

He, he's not spending enough time operating.

Not very high profit.

Not very high profit. You can fix profitability. You already know that.

Yeah.

And you can help with operations.

And it's a good team. Yeah.

And it's a good team.

Yeah.

Your agency would really scale at that point if you use merch.

Yeah, it would.

Um, you'd have to change it all into one brand cuz he has too many brands. I think he has 3 or 4.

Yeah, 3.

He has 3 agency brands.

But, um, but that actually leads me to the next point. How do you get these best speakers for free? And so had you charged, had all these other speakers charged their normal rates, this event would've probably lost money. Um, but because these are all friendships that I built over a lot, like I've known you for 14 years, I've known a lot of these people for a very long time, for just from the internet, right? And then a lot of these people were just like mind, mind boggled. Like, how do you do it? I'm like, by doing the internet for a very long time and building relationships. And we've, we've done it for, for both sides. Like sometimes, like I'll speak for free at their events too. Um, and, and that's how you get it to, to happen. But my thing is, if you want to have a, a, a very high quality event, you're gonna have to bring in world-class speakers. And, um, if you want to have, like, I remember Ali Abdaal, he is doing a podcast with me. He's like, how do you build these relationships? By giving for a very long time, by being the connector. That's what— that's one thing I'm very good at, um, throwing these dinners, connecting people together, making intros, not expecting anything back. And that's how you get the best speakers in the world for your events for free. But it's gonna take you a while. Yeah.

Didn't Ali Abdaal move here?

No. Santa Monica? He said he was gonna move to Santa Monica. I didn't check in on that. Did you check in with him?

No, I didn't check in.

Yeah. I don't, I don't know. He, he's, he's having a baby.

Ah, congratulations if you're listening. I'm assuming he's not, but congratulations. He might be.

Dude, there's a lot of interesting people that listen to this podcast, like people with millions and millions of followers that I'm like, oh shit. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, you do something long enough, you're going to get people from all ends of the spectrum listening, people with tons of followers and some people with no followers, but they could be the CEO of a large corporation.

Dude, let me give you some marketing secrets from the event and then we can move on here. All right. Let's do it. These are marketing secrets learned from a private marketing summit.

So number one, wait, before you go into it, everyone at the summit makes at least $10 million a year to give you guys an idea.

Average revenue's $41 million.

Average revenue's $41 million.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. So back to my clip again, guys. Marketing secrets learned from a private marketing summit. So number one, an email alliance network. So Neil, how many email subscribers do you have right now? 2 million, right?

Let's go with that number.

I have no idea, but yes. Okay. 2 million. Let's say I only had like 10,000 subscribers or something like that. If I said, Neil, why don't you promote for me? You'd be like, no, that doesn't make sense. I have 2 million people on my list. Why would I promote for you? But if I say, Neil, if I have 10,000 people on my list, you have 10,000, you're more likely to do it. You definitely won't do it. But I'm just saying that, yeah, it has to be an equal trade, right? Quid pro quo. And so Sharron, who spoke, he had this idea. He is like, all of you have email lists over here. Why don't you guys collab? And then I didn't really think about it until the very end of the event. I was like, and I had the microphone at the very end because I was doing closing remarks. I was like, hey guys, I have an idea. Let's do an email alliance network. Put in your contact information, the niche that you're in and how many subs you have. And then people just started listing in the WhatsApp. I have a million over here. I have 750,000 over here. I have 75,000 over here. And then the different industries. And, um, now people, we're just gonna have a sheet where people can collaborate with each other. I don't think a lot of this, enough of this is done.

Yeah.

Um, it should be done more because worst case scenario, someone from that might just say no to you. But the Email Alliance Network is idea number 1. Okay. Number 2 is the 9-word email. Do you remember that? No. Okay. So 9-word emails. Let's say that I pitched you on buying like, uh, a Rolls-Royce, right? And you decided you didn't wanna buy one, but 3 months later I might say, hey Neil, are you still in the market for a Rolls-Royce? And that's like, uh, less than 9 words in that email, right? It's like, just want to check in back with you. Like, are you still in the market for one? And more often than not, you're going to get someone to respond to you because sometimes people just, 99% of people just aren't ready to buy. Right. And the guy that popularized this was Dean Jackson. He helped his client sell a $100 million yacht with this email. Um, because people weren't ready to buy at the time, but it's like, hey, are you ready to buy that yacht? And I was like, yeah, actually I am. So the fortune is in the follow-up. Now the third thing I'll give you That was also from Dean Jackson, but Russell Brunson talks about it quite a bit. You don't do this. I brought this back, but the super signature, remember that?

No.

So super signature is like, you might send whatever email you're gonna send. You can talk about whatever story you had. Maybe you, you fell and like, you know, ice cream, like you dropped your ice cream or something, right? Yeah. And that's why you have to be careful about how you walk. I don't know. Um, but at the very end of it, it's like, by the way, we have this over here. By the way, we have this over here. So you just have a bunch of stuff at the bottom. Like these are the different offers you have. Russell's done it for a very long time. Um, but Charron does that. I'm like, I'm like, why did we, we, why did we remove our super signature? So we just brought it back.

We do it. We don't call 'em super signatures. We just add PSs at the bottom.

Yeah. But it's just one thing. You keep it focused, right?

One, sometimes 2, but it's usually just one.

Yeah. So the super signature, Russell's has like 9 links in there, which I think is too many. Um, but I think if you keep it focused at maybe 2 or 3 or so, you're probably in a good spot.

We, we've tried. More than 2. We found that 1 produces, for us at least, better results.

Yep.

Cool.

So yeah, that was my little machine gun of stuff from the event. I have more, but we can keep going.

Oh dude, I got hit up by someone today. I thought it was the funniest thing ever. So someone, someone I know is running ads and he's paying this ad manager. All right. And he asked me a question. He's just like, yo, Should I run TikTok ads? Also, even if my ad guy told me that TikTokers are broke? And I said, if your ad person's performing, then you may want to listen to him.

Yeah.

I've never actually heard someone say don't run ads on TikTok because they're broke.

I mean, I don't, I don't really know any TikTokers. Do you? No. Yeah.

Wait, people who use the app?

No, I just like actual TikTokers, like, you know, famous people from TikTok.

Aren't they the same people from Instagram because they post their content everywhere?

I guess. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I didn't like— are most TikTokers broke? That I feel like they are, but, uh, because you just don't make enough.

So we run a lot of ads for our customers on TikTok. We find that it works really well depending on the industry. Like if you're selling product, like let's say, uh, oh, let's say you're selling the Ninja Creami.

Oh yeah. Ninja Creami.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So good. You use your Ninja Creami yet?

Dude, I use mine.

You really did? You used it?

Oh, you didn't. Did you use it?

Did you wash it? I washed it. Ah, that's good.

Yeah. I've done so many smoothies. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you washed it even though we never used it. I don't think we washed it. It was just open from the box. Did it still have the stickers on there? Yeah. All right. Um, but yeah, so if it's like the Ninja Creami, we're seeing things like that do really well on TikTok. You want to sell like, and then they came out with a new one, Ninja Soft Serve. It was a soft serve. Ninja Soft Serve.

What's the difference? It's actually more expensive. That's $300.

It's because you can put a cone in it, creates a soft serve versus just like a frozen ice cream.

That's it?

I think so, right?

And it's double the price?

Well, that converts really well. Like things like that convert really well on TikTok. So like, you know, when the guy was messaging me, I'm assuming he's running it for mortgage ads and I'm like, dude, I don't know if mortgage ads are going to convert. That's why I told him to just listen to his guy because his guy runs ads for him specifically for mortgages. But for, Me, I don't really look at TikTokers as quote unquote broke. I look at TikTok as you can do really well depending on what you're selling. And if you want to talk about, I'm not saying this means anyone's broke or not. I was watching an Instagram reel while I was in Rio, call it sometime today. And when I was on the plane and I was just going through before we took off, I was watching some of like the, Instagram Reels. One guy went in a mall and he started asking everyone, how much is in your bank account? And they shared. And once he shared, he said, do you think that's a lot or a little? And then they would respond. And then he said, do you mind if I share your number with the next person? So then he goes to the next person, shows what the previous person has, like, hey, how much do you have? And then same thing. And he rinses and repeats. Most people that he went around to didn't even have $1,000.

Wow. And this was in America.

This is in America. It's actually in California.

Most people, yeah. Most people can't even afford $1,000.

You're right. In America, in the USA, I actually think people have less than like $2,000, $3,000.

I think it's less than 60% of people, more than 60% of people, right?

Uh, yes. This data is a little bit skewed, but because this is the, the mean bank account, which I don't think is worth looking at, $62,000. The median bank balance in the United States is $8,000.

Wow. Yeah, but the median gets skewed up by the people that actually have a lot of money.

No, the mean is, mean is the average. The mean is, I thought you said the median. The median is $8,000.

Okay.

And I think that's a better representation. Dude, a lot of people don't have tons of money where they can just go buy a car or a home. And to me, that doesn't mean they're broke. That's reality of the economic situation that most people are in throughout the whole world. 'Cause we're seeing a bigger disparity between the super rich and the super poor. And hopefully one day someone can fix it.

I don't know how. Yeah, I don't know. Jobs report's down right now too.

Yeah, and GDP too. But going back to this, when people are like, oh, I don't know if people on TikTok have money. I don't think people on any channel really have tons and tons of money. Like the average bank balance isn't that high.

Look, I think, um, that's why you listen to this podcast so you can make sure that you're above average. Um, so I, I do wanna do one more thing here. That's just my lessons from hosting this private summit with 185 business operators. I think the high level here is, I mentioned earlier, I got voluntold to do this, so I volunteered to do this and it's not like I got paid or anything, but I know whenever I do these things, like a year and a half of planning for this, like biweekly calls, talking with different logistics, like planning out, you know, the, the first night, the opening, you know, we, we had like a DJ. And then we had a singer, and then we had these dine-arounds where people volunteered their homes and all that. And then I had to make reservations for people that were staying on Friday. All this stuff, right? A lot of stuff. It's like another job, right? Um, but this goes back to what we were talking about earlier recording. I know I'll get whatever I want tenfold back, hundredfold back in the next 10 years or so, because right now I built all these relationships. Plus this led to me also helping with the Global Business Summit for YPO, which has 1,500 people.

Wow.

And this is where you can actually do deals and you can actually pitch openly, which isn't typically allowed at, at these YPO events, right? Non-solicitation. Um, and plus from there, I'm also gonna meet more people, right? Why are you laughing?

When you said non-solicitation, I just remember our conversations at the booth. You were telling one of the speakers like, hey, you're not allowed to pitch like that.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

And then I was telling the speaker, I'm like, you sponsored this event, right? He's like, yeah. I'm like, pitch away. Who cares what they have to say? You spent money.

So it's funny because he came up to me before. He, he was like, he's like, dude, the, the, the, one of the speakers, like they were pitching the whole time. I'm like, yeah, do what you need to do. And so when he went up on stage, he would pause, check out my booth over there. And then he'd talk a little more and like, check out my booth over there. And then, and then like, I'm just like, whatever, man. Um, but anyway, so, okay. One, I know I'm gonna get a lot more back long-term, and that's why I'm okay doing these things pro bono. And two, it's what you're doing.

Before cut cut you off, Eric and I are not making fun of the speaker that pitched his own business.

Not at all.

We actually don't mind it. And in business, we actually admire how he's pitching and trying to generate his own.

And he's done very well for himself. Yeah, good for him.

Very successful. And he is an amazing speaker, by the way. But just want to clarify, Eric and I are not picking on him or making fun of him.

Yep. The other thing I learned too is the way these events have done gone in the past, and people would always do these. Oh, let's go visit. Let's go drive these nice cars, or let's go to like visit this event over here. I didn't do any of that. In fact, the board called me over the day before the event started. Like, what, um, what special events do you have planned for us? And I looked at them, I was like, absolutely nothing. I was like, you're gonna learn and then you're gonna have great connections and that's all you're gonna do. And then they came up to me afterwards. They're like, yeah, I, I like the way you did it. You, you, you, this is the way to do it, right? So what I've learned is you have to do, uh, there's no right or wrong way to do an event, but I did what is authentic to me and I just love learning. I like, like meeting great people and then I just wanna go home. Right. Um, and then the other thing I'll say too is, and then we can move on from this, but I, we talked about earlier, if you're gonna try to get the best speakers, you're gonna have to build relationships. Otherwise you're gonna have to pay good money to do it. But it is the speakers that, that end up drawing people in. And we actually broke a record here. So this broke the record by 50% or so. Um, in terms of attendees for this event. And, um, I would say the speakers are a big piece of it. The location was important. And, um, originally the events team came over to me. They're like, they showed me all these 4-star hotels. I'm like, for this group, you can't do 4-star hotel. So I was like, St. Regis, Bell Harbor.

It was very nice.

Free ice cream.

It was very nice.

Yeah. And then you left, you, you left immediately. I didn't even know why you didn't even enjoy it.

Dude, I had another event. I had to go to Web Summit.

Right after?

Yeah.

Oh, you flew from Miami to Brazil?

No, I flew back to the US and then the next day, I mean, I flew back to California, LA. And then the next day I flew to Web Summit.

Why didn't you just stay and then fly from Miami? Why would you go through that pain?

Because my kids wanted to see me.

Oh my God. Okay. Yeah, fine. That, that's, that's worth it. Yeah. But those are just a couple things. And then I, I think other than that, I, it's, um, the way I saw, like I mentioned earlier, manifesting 7-figure deals from, from thin air. You honestly just need to put a bunch of great people in one area and that's all you really need to do at the end of the day. All this other stuff, the fanfare, it, it, Most people don't care about that stuff.

So yeah. Someone raised $25 million and they spent $12 million on a domain name.

Ah, yes. Let me tell you about this. So you know that one company that spits out a bunch of ads for you very quickly? Um, hey, these are the ads your competitors are doing. Here are the ads that perform well for you. And a bunch, it cranks out a bunch of AI ads at once. Okay. It's called Icon. Remember icon.me, right? So they bought icon.com, they raised $25 million bucks and they spent $12 million on a domain. So, What are our thoughts on this overall?

They just wasted $12 million.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so Sam, Sam had an interesting take on this one and, and you've been on the, the Sam podcast, remember? Yeah. Um, so Sam said, no idea about the product or team, but I bet a lot this site converts super well. No shade to Brett. Uh, Brett, who was kind of poo-pooing on the $12 million spend, but he's just saying that this website Which has a lot going on. Do you want to describe the page for Icon?

It says the headline is the AI ad maker. It shows examples of ads and it shows logos, and they talk about how they can help you create thousands of winning variations really fast.

My point is, I think this page probably converts well. There's a lot going on, but I like the different examples and because their whole thing is just showing these creatives at the end of the day, right? Um, so the site alone is fine. I think the $12 million, he should have held off on that a little bit. And use it to hire an amazing team or build out some type of amazing tech. Um, I think spending half of your money that you raise like that, you're either gonna— I hope he's a legend. I, I just, I don't think I'm good enough to do that.

He would've been better off spending the $12 million on ads. Yeah.

But any, anything other than a domain.

The domain's expensive.

Yeah.

I'm assuming his investors knew about it or else he, they wouldn't have approved him raising the money.

I don't know. I hope it works out for him.

I do too.

Yeah. But I mean, you know what I mean? If it proves anything, he's got guts. I just don't have those guts.

But sometimes paying a lot for a domain works out. Look at Dharmesh. He spent an arm and a leg on an AI domain.

And he flipped it and he got AI, OpenAI stock.

Yeah. At a much cheaper valuation than $300 and something billion.

Yep.

Uh, what was the domain name? Something AI?

Chat.com.

Oh, chat.com.

Yeah. AI.com's $100 million for that one right now.

AA.com.

Yeah.

Someone bought it for $100 million?

I don't know. I saw some headline around how it's selling for $100 million or something. Yeah, I don't know.

But he bought Chat.com and how much did he pay for it?

I think he paid $10 million for it and then maybe he flipped it for $19 or something. I don't know. I don't know why he did it. He didn't flip it for money. He didn't need money. No, for stock. Yeah, he flipped it in stock. Yeah.

And he got a lower valuation than what it's worth right now. So my guess is he probably at least 8x his money or something like that.

Yep. Yeah.

Good for him. By the way, um, maybe 10x, you know, maybe some dilution cuz of investors, but yeah.

Yes. Yes. Um, so you know how Shopify had their AI-first company manifesto and then Duolingo just came out with one recently. Um, and then Zapier today just released, uh, Wade from Zapier's like, oh, here's how we actually made that transition for AI excellence. Um, but Duolingo, so their CEO laid it out in an all-hands call, 3 big ones for becoming AI-first company for Duolingo. Number one, AI usage is now part of their hiring process. 2, AI usage is part of their performance reviews. And then 3, teams will only get headcount if they've proven they can't automate more of their work. And this is just the very beginning. Um, we already have our AI standards of excellence. I might make it public, but it's 12 pages. But these, I think these manifestos are a lot easier cuz they're just one page and you either get it or you don't.

Um, I agree with that.

Uh, yeah.

Uh, my big thing is if you can't fit it in a few paragraphs, most people will not read it.

True, true. And most people still might not even read it.

Correct.

Yeah.

If, if you have a few paragraphs, you're lucky. And when I say lucky, you really are lucky if you get half your employees to read it.

Yep. So he said, we'll be rolling out a few constructive constraints to help guide this shift. We'll gradually stop using contractors to do the work that AI can handle. 2, AI will be— AI use will be part of what we look for in hiring. AI will be part of what we evaluate in performance reviews, which we do as well. Headcount will be only given if a team cannot automate more of the work. Um, and then most functions will have specific initiatives to fundamentally change how they work.

Yeah, I'm, I'm with you on this. Uh, there's another one that you were talking here. Agency is eating the world.

Yeah. So this one comes from this guy, Pirate Wires. And so here's what it says. Here's a big headline over here. You have, uh, Morpheus, right? Agency is eating the world. Um, so the headline here is, Replit founding data scientist and engineer said, I've begun to see product managers developing financial business models, designers writing commercial ads, barbershops building custom booking systems, and restaurant owners creating advanced pricing tools. And so you see me create, oh, you didn't see my talk, but my talk had me making a Mario game with Minecraft abilities so you can like mine blocks and place 'em. Um, you and I, we can prototype things now. We can design things out. I, I can make, you know, a, a quick podcast art of us. So, What that's basically implying now, he's like saying any, a lot more things are becoming possible for people like you and me, or even just, just anybody in general. Right? Um, and what that really means is that agency is the ability to just get things done and, and work on your own. High agency people. Yeah. And that's what he's saying. Agency's eating the world. If you have high agency, you are going to be ahead of 99.99% of people given all these products and services that are becoming available now. Um, and for us, At, at Single Grain, we say, hey, it's not even just write a memo. It's how about you create a prototype for that? Use v0, make a prototype for that. You can make a screen, you can make a landing page, whatever it is exactly. We expect you to go a little further now, and that's going to continue to get deeper and deeper.

Dude, I'm seeing the same thing. I get a lot of these text messages every week now. So this person links, uh, sends me a text saying, let's schedule, uh, next week. What works for you, uh, for lunch or coffee? Uh, technically they said, do you have time this week for lunch or coffee? I said, I'm good. I'm in Brazil right now. Web Summit. Sorry. They said, cool, let's schedule for next week.

Question mark.

When works for you? They was like, I created this platform, AI digital employees for businesses in the web. We're glad to discuss potential collaboration and the implementation of a white label solution.

Glad to discuss collaboration.

Yeah. And for you and your clients. So then I just told 'em straight up, I'm like, next week I'm in Canada and then Miami, but back after that, 'cause I'm, I'm traveling a lot. He's like, okay, thank you. I'll text you then. Or we can do a Zoom with, I don't want to mention the person's name because they have a co-founder. I said, best person to talk to on my team is Kaio. He handles all this kind of stuff. I have no clue if we can sell it, white label, et cetera. I haven't checked out the business. He deals with all the sales teams globally. So he knows what's a fit and what's not. I send his email. I'm like, tell him you know me. And then there you go. But this person, was a business owner that developed some AI thing that helps make people more efficient. And we're seeing that in mass scale. Like the other day someone asked me, hey, is your customers looking for AI booking agent? I was like, I don't know. I'm like, some probably are, but they maybe use them. They're like, oh, I built one. And this person has a physical store, just one shop. And they're like, yeah, I built it for ourselves. So now I want to sell it for, to other people who want it. And they're looking to partner up. But, um, we usually don't partner up on that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

But get hit up a lot for it.

Yep. Yeah. I, I mean, that's why I'm so excited about this stuff. I, I kind of mentioned during my talk, um, I was like, guys, I am a loser on Saturdays. All I do is I spend time on AI on the weekends. I see my friends, I see my family on Sunday, but Saturday is my day to just work on AI. Um, because I just, I'm so, I'm having so much fun building this stuff and even if it goes nowhere, I still feel It's fun because I'm just learning.

So, dude, I forgot the girl's name and I don't want to mention it. I was at one of your events. I think it was Miami. This—

This was like 2 years ago. Yeah.

She raised money from one of the largest VCs.

Oh, I know.

Like a16z or Sequoia or one of them, right? You know which one I'm talking about. AI-ish startup.

Yes.

Personalization.

Yes.

Or A/B testing. I forgot what it was. I think AI, whatever. I was, I told her congrats on the raise.

Good for her.

And I mean that in a really positive way. And I remember she reached out at the end and said, oh, maybe we could work together. There could be a way to collab. I don't know what's happening with the startup, but I wish her success, knocking on wood for her luck. And, and I wasn't trying to be a prick, but I said right then and there, and I was like, but if the model works, why partner? I'm like, I, I'm not trying to be rude. I would just build it and sell to my audience and keep the majority of it.

Uh-huh.

Right? Because tech like that, it's not like OpenAI where it's hard to build. I'm not saying their tech is easy to build, but with money, if I spend $1 million, $2 million, you agree I could just build it, correct?

Yep.

It probably a lot less than that. But at that point—

Now.

Now it's probably a few hundred, but back then call it a few million bucks max.

Yeah.

If I can take my audience and sell a lot of something and it would make someone else money, at that point, Wouldn't it just be better for me to make it myself and sell it to my own audience and keep the majority of the revenue and the profit? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Distribution is the moat now. Data is the second moat. Distribution and data.

I totally agree with you. I think distribution is taken for granted, and I think people really get that wrong. Like, I built something amazing, but if you can't sell it and you don't have the audience to it, doesn't matter.

And most engineers don't want to learn marketing. Um, it's— most people don't. But God, it's so fun. I don't know. I don't know what else to say. But, but like, speaking of marketing, we should talk about the new startup playbook. So Greg Eisenberg, who spoke at, um, my, my, my event, thank you Greg. He tweeted that the new startup playbook looks nothing like the old one. I'm just gonna read off a couple things here and then we can kind of have a discussion. So most of your team will be part-time contractors, creators, and AI agents. Don't know about that. But then your first $1 million will come from niching down. Your next $10 million will come from tastefully scaling out. Another one would be one agent spins out 50 long-tail SEO pages from transcripts, support tickets, or user reviews, and onboarding will feel like texting a friend. Static forms are dead. So he's basically saying like a lot of these things like outbound or agent scraping, qualifying, writing personalized intros 24/7. A lot of this stuff is happening. He's saying venture capital is optional. We'll see more tiny empires, one founder, one audience, and a constellation of tools that they own. He's basically talking about the future. So what do we think about this?

So let's go. Some of them I totally agree with, and I'm not saying I'm right. Uh, the venture capital, I think for most businesses they don't need it. I think venture capital should be used for scale, not for creation, unless you're creating something that's just crazy expensive. You know, you want to create a nuclear power plant, you need a lot of money. Sorry, there's just a lot of CapEx in that kind of business. You want to create a SaaS app that helps you analyze keywords? Don't think you need venture capital for that kind of stuff. Like BrightEdge, good business. If you're creating a BrightEdge in today's world, you do not need the capital that they raised back then. Keep in mind, his last round was 2013. That was the last round, not the first round. The world is very different, not just 2, 3 years ago, very different 12 years ago, right? You needed a lot more capital back then.

If you're high agency, you can figure this stuff out and you can, if you, if you needed to raise money, you can raise it later. If you've really nailed something, if you've got something like you, you're going for calling a, call it a land grab, right? Like a Facebook back in the day or Instagram back in the day or YouTube. Like absolutely you need to raise money, but 99% of things out there you don't need to raise money for. And you can just kind of vibe code these things now or vibe market these things now.

Yes.

Right? Um, he put in one that's interesting here that, that I really like. IRL, in real life, matters. Founders become event planners. Oh, oh, you did that. Yeah, I, I've done that subconsciously, right? Like in my mind I'm like, it's, it's always been an important thing.

I think in real life is really important. I don't know if you have to actually be an event planner. I think that's going further than required, but I agree with the in-person. I, some of the ones I don't agree with, I'll, I'll start off with the most obvious one and you already know. I'm going to disagree with this. I don't think people are going to be using AI to create 50,000 long-tail pages.

Maybe I got the number wrong. 50.

50 long-tail pages? 50? Yeah, I actually agree with that. I thought for some reason I thought you said 50,000.

No. Yeah, but 50, I mean, we're kind of doing that already and I'm sure you're doing the same thing. But a lot of these SEO products, again, we talk about one-click marketing. We're just going to see a lot of that happen very quickly. Oh, we found these issues on your site. Why don't you just fix it? Okay, boom. Fixed, right? Same thing with, oh, we found these long-tail opportunities over here and we can write it based on your writer guidelines and we'll make sure it's ultra high quality. Okay, boom, done.

Yeah, generally speaking, I agree with Greg in which there is adjustment to the startup playbook, but, and this is a big but, there's a lot of edge cases and there's edge cases for a lot of different industries. So for example, we've done outbound many times, we still do outbound, Doing outbound to close an enterprise deal that pays 7 figures, I would not have AI in today's world write that outbound email. I'm not saying that won't be the future a year or 2 from now, but in today's world, I would not have AI craft an email to send to someone that I'm trying to close a 7-figure deal. But I would have AI help me do research faster and then review the research and then craft an email and maybe have AI help me adjust the email if the tone, if someone sucks at writing or copywriting. But other than that, I, I do see a world where AI's involved in most aspects of running a startup or a business.

Let me tell you something about one of my AI Saturdays. So I used Lindy.ai.

Okay.

And, um, I used that to, it basically like you can make these workflows, right? And it, um, I said, hey, help me find SEO managers that have a history of at least 2 promotions. Um, and companies have to be larger than 200 employees, right? 200 to 1,000, call it that. Um, it made an entire list of these people and it showed the number of promotions that they had and everything. Um, and it actually handled the outreach. So it's like, it'll, it'll take a look at their LinkedIn and their latest post or whatever, and like it personalizes it. Um, that's lower stakes. And so I'm willing to risk it there. If it's a higher stakes one, you wanna make a good impression. Um, you probably, maybe not right now, but, um, I think the fact that it can find exactly what I'm looking for and then send the email outreach out. And then I have it doing a lot of these autonomous things like enriching the leads that we have coming in. You know, those are all things that can be done by developer, but now that I have Lindy, I can just within it just ask an LLM and then repeat all these loops and it does a good job.

I think you nailed it by saying it was lower stakes. So we use like AI to do outreach to buy businesses and sending even the first email.

And it works like a charm.

It works like a charm. But there's a lot of people that get off-putted and the emails don't work well because of the quality. quality of the email and we've tested out many, many different versions and prompts and all this kind of stuff. But again, we're emailing out so many agencies, we're okay if some people just want to ignore us. If it's something that was really important to us, we'll take the time to do it manually.

Yeah.

Because you don't want to burn a relationship over AI messing up an email and they do mess up. And the easiest way for everyone to understand how they mess up When you see a company on LinkedIn, what it says it's in size, like employee count, people know it can be really off or really accurate. It's actually somewhat accurate or really off. It's usually not like perfectly accurate. Example in the marketing world is an agency may show, LinkedIn may show 300 employees, but it could be owned by a holding company that has 100,000 employees.

Oh, we've seen that. We've seen that.

Yeah, right.

And they're one of your clients right now. Yeah.

So then you just have to be really careful because the last thing you want to do is have the AI reach out to someone based on the data it's getting. But in many cases, there's edge cases where it's analyzing the data in a wrong way where a human would be, well, it shows 300 employees, but it's not really 300 employees. It's a subdivision of a 100,000-employee company. You can't just email them up. And this is an example of my buddy wanting to buy a domain name. And he's like, oh, I think I'm just message them. They look like they barely have any employees. I'm like, dude, it's a subdivision of this publicly traded company that has a market cap of almost $20 billion. And they bought that company and that domain was part of that acquisition. And they spent, call it $400 or $500 million on it. They're not just going to give you that domain name for $1 million.

Yeah.

It's not gonna happen.

That's like a fart in the wind. Um, there's a couple other things here and, and we can work towards wrapping, but I like some of these other points. So you won't sell software, you'll sell outcomes, transformations, identity up— identity upgrades. Um, I think that's the world that we're going into and I, I think I like that because that's more accountability and most people don't like accountability.

I think that's the world we've been in for a long time, even when we're selling KISSmetrics and we're getting sales trainings from our VCs. 'Cause like True Ventures at the time would have people come in. they would always tell you, don't sell software, don't sell whatever you're selling, you're selling outcomes.

And I think we're going to see more of it. Not even just with software, but I think just the work. A lot of agencies, they sell deliverables, right? We're going to continue to come out of that world. So the more and more of the world, it's going to be based on outcomes. Go ahead.

Even agencies, most don't sell deliverables, they sell outcomes. Deliverables are part of the contract so that way people can back out to make sure you're doing work to pay you.

I would say in your world, I see, I'm really talking about smaller agencies, people starting out, right? So, um, and more people, so he says the default alive is low burn, small team owned audience, high leverage systems. And I, I think that that's the key thing at the very end. High leverage systems.

Yeah.

So if you have a data advantage, you have, you have a data advantage. If you have a distribution advantage, you have one. Um, that's gonna be, you're not gonna necessarily need to raise a bunch of capital in the future. Um, and I do believe what he said about tiny empires, one founder. I think we are gonna see one founder doing a billion in revenue. in the next decade or so.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think we'll see at least one within the next, you know, I don't know.

You say 5 years or 10 years?

I would say 10 years.

Okay. And I don't think around 10 years.

I wouldn't say 5.

Yeah. But I think, I think in 5 years we're going to see teams of maybe 10 doing a billion in revenue. Right. So maybe, maybe, maybe. Yeah.

I have no idea.

But that's my guess.

Yeah. But Greg overall with his playbook, I think he's spot on with startups having to adapt and change to this new world. And if they don't, you're not going to succeed. And in the startup world right now, what we're seeing is people are still getting venture funding at the early stages.

It's—

but they're expecting you to scale. Where it's really dried up is the later stages because there's not much, there's not many IPOs and there's not that much M&A activity that's happening.

Yep. By the way, one final thing here. So this actually dovetails well into this LinkedIn post. So Paul Roetzer from, um, he has the AI podcast, AI Institute. Um, he says, my belief is that quiet AI layoffs have been happening for the last 6 to 12 months, masked under a return to work policy, and they are accelerating. Companies have been replacing staff with AI, or at a minimum, not hiring new staff due to AI, but they don't want to admit it because it's bad PR. This article from The Information confirms that executives at more than half a dozen companies said AI is affecting their hiring plans, though were more careful to avoid saying AI was effectively replacing 60 employees. I think the key takeaway in my mind here is you have to learn this stuff on your own. And if you're gonna let this wave pass you by, then you're gonna be way behind as a founder, right? And even as an employee too, I can tell who on my team is really into this stuff and it's constantly testing new things all the time. You can bet your butt that whoever your manager is or whoever your boss is, they're noticing this too. And so I think just to get ahead, like this is, is in fact happening cuz you and I know a lot of founder friends where they're talking about, hey, how can I replace this doing AI? I'm on a rampage right now. You hear that? I'm on a rampage right now. I wanna fire this entire team. In fact, when the marketing event started, I sat next to this gal. She's like, Eric, my marketing team sucks. Can I replace all of them with AI? So this is happening behind the scenes and most people won't talk about it cuz it's not, you don't wanna talk about this stuff. It is bad PR.

Yeah.

But we are here to tell you that this stuff is actually happening. But the way in front of it is just to be a lifelong learner. And if you're improvement obsessed, then you are gonna be fine. That's all.

But that's the crazy part. I don't understand why people just don't say, hey, technology's here. I'm gonna leverage it. I'm gonna learn and I'm gonna do the best in this new environment instead of just shying away and just being against it.

Because most people don't wanna learn. Most people just want life to happen to them. Yeah. They, they, no, no, it's not even that. They let life happen to them. And then at the very end, they're just like, what happened? So don't be an NPC, guys. But that is it for today.

Wait, what's an NPC?

An NPC is a non-player character. Did I explain this to you last week? Oh no, I explained it to Yaniv. So he's like, what's an NPC? So, okay. An NPC is like a, a character in a game that stays static. They, they never move.

Wait, why would you have a player in a game that's static? That means they're not gonna do anything.

No. So a, a player character is like you and me. You can move around, your, your character gets stronger over time. It rises in levels, you get new gear and things like that right now. You play Diablo? No, you didn't. So Diablo—

I play Monopoly.

Okay. No, Monopoly doesn't count. Okay. So, so in Diablo, you know, you have these people in the town that you can talk to, whatever, but they're always there the whole time. They, they never advance or anything. They're the same character the whole time. That's an NPC. So gamers have carried that over into real life. And an NPC is someone that just doesn't get better.

But then why play the game in the first place?

NPCs are characters that you engage with. They're just computers, right?

Oh, it's not like you being a character.

They're static characters. Yeah. Your character can advance, can get stronger over time, but there's static computer characters that just stay like that.

Oh, it's like the game Diablo puts in a fake character for you to communicate to being like— Yeah.

You communicate. Oh, oh, let's go on a quest. Right?

Like, yeah.

Like you can do it.

This is how you buy candy or buy a hotel.

You can go to a blacksmith and then buy gear and sell gear to the blacksmith. You can identify items, right? That Deckard Cain, you don't know who that is either. But my point is, um, you wanna make sure that in life you're constantly advancing your player character. But most people in life, you and I know, we've seen this over and over, non-player characters, right? People very close to us, they got to the very end of life. And the phrase I hear from one of my, my close loved ones is, you know, Eric, um, I, uh, I just couldn't overcome life. And, uh, you know, life, life overcame me.

Yeah.

And you don't want to do that.

No.

So anyway, that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.