The Rock SAVES the WWE, Trump Media shares surge, MKHB destroys AI company, and more

Did you know that The Rock resurrected the WWE?

I did not know that.

Let me tell you, I've been watching these on YouTube. Go for it. Okay, so Rock, those of you that follow WWE, formerly WWF, The Rock's always been the biggest star. Back, you know, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, like The Undertaker. And so The Rock calls up Triple H, who was another wrestler, but now he's like president of the WWE. And he's like, yo, like I have an idea. I want to become the biggest heel in WWE. Do you know what a heel is?

No.

Heel is a bad guy, right? So babyface is a good guy.

Um, I think it's babyface is a good guy, bad guy, right? Babyface?

Babyface is a good guy.

That means good guy?

Yeah, I think it's babyface.

Or is that a character?

No, babyface is like good. Like heel is bad, bad guy. Babyface is a good person, right? And The Rock is used to like playing both. And so he's like, look, if I can become the biggest bad guy, like we're gonna, we're gonna drive a lot of sales, right? Um, I don't know if you know this, but TKO, the group that owns, I think, both UFC and WWE now, I'm pretty sure The Rock is a shareholder. And so he's well incentivized to do this. This is a little side note, right?

You're talking about Endeavor?

I don't think it's Endeavor. I think the group's called TKO. You can search it up.

I think Endeavor owns TKO.

You could be right. I think you're right. So as you search for it, basically what happened— are you right?

Uh-huh.

Okay. So Endeavor owns TKO. TKO owns WWE and UFC, among other things, right? And so pretty sure, again, Rock's a shareholder. So he changes up the storyline. First, The Rock was supposed to face someone else, but he's like, no, no, it should be this person versus this person. Then he's just this bad guy now, but the ratings are through the roof. WrestleMania completely sold out. Now they're transitioning over to doing this Netflix deal. So they're coming off of cable. So the WWE is well positioned to win for the long term. I haven't followed WWE for a while, but everyone's saying that WrestleMania was the best one ever for such a long time. The Attitude Era is back, which is when Stone Cold and The Rock were going at each other. I feel the excitement. And he's like playing into his character. Like, you can't even tell it's fake or not. Like, he's like blurring the line. Like, that's how good he is. But it just shows a couple things. Like, incentives drive everything, which is like, he's a shareholder, so he cares.

Is he a shareholder though? Because Endeavor now went private.

Search for it.

I think it is—

Dude, if you have The Rock, come on, you have to give him something.

Uh, let's see. Rock. Sure, he could be. It may not be public.

How much you want to bet?

I don't know. You could be right.

Dude, I am like 99% sure.

I just know Silver Lake took it public. I mean, private.

Why put so much time and effort into this if you're not a shareholder?

Either he's a shareholder or either he's just getting paid in compensation based on performance. One or the other. Either one is the same thing. Money is money.

Well, I mean, it's a little different if you have equity versus like profit share.

Not really, because at the end of the day, if you have equity and it goes up and then you're able to sell it somehow, because remember, it's not publicly traded anymore. It's a private company. Versus someone just saying, hey, here's $100 million. If they pay you enough, it doesn't matter.

It's the same thing. If they pay you enough is a big caveat, right? But the profit share could be like a one-off, right? But if it's ongoing profit share, okay, that's the same thing. He's The Rock.

It has to be a really good deal for him.

I would hope so.

Yeah, there's no way he did this deal unless he's getting paid an arm and a leg. But speaking of influencers and the power of them, remember last week we were talking about shorting D.J.T. Donald Trump's stock. Yeah, and we both said like, "Yeah, it's too risky," because I was like, "Man, this stock is not a five billion dollar stock." What is it at right now? I don't know. It started going down, but today it popped fifteen percent.

That's right. And in that video, by the way, I was like, "You can't short it." Nope, you can't.

And I think overall, if I shorted it, I still would have been up because it's gone down more than it's gone up. But it doesn't matter because Trump could say something. His crazy You know, uh, loyal fan base. And when I say crazy, I meant, uh, you know, to talk about how loyal they are, right? Not that they're actually crazy people, but more so he has a crazy loyal fan base where like they're super loyal and they'll do anything for him. And when you think about that, it's just like, dude, they could pump up the stock. Just look at GameStop. Look at, you know, um, what was the other one?

AMC is another one.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And this is like, it's just too risky. How much am I going to make? There's only a certain amount of money I'm going to put towards it, but there is a risk that I can just lose everything and people just pump it.

Yep. Did you see what MKHB did to Humane?

No.

Oh, you haven't heard about this? Okay. So do you know, you know who that is, right? MKHB on YouTube?

Okay.

So he's basically the biggest tech reviewer. And he basically made a video. So this product, Humane AI, like it's supposed to help you There's like supposed to be a projector. It's supposed to do all these AI features and all that, right? Maybe translations. I don't know enough about it. But MKHB makes this video. He's like, this— the title is, this may be the worst product I've ever reviewed till now, right? And then I think it's got millions and millions of views and it's completely like everyone's ripping on Humane. It's like basically destroyed their reputation. But it just again goes to show you, I mean, look, he destroyed an AI company in about 41 seconds. That's what it takes.

Or he helped him generate more sales because some of the people liked him and never knew about them.

Could be. I mean, I like this, this product. Like, if it works, like, it's pretty game-changing. But I think eventually they'll get there. But it just goes to show you like, hey, you know, an influencer can make or break you sometimes.

You know what's funny?

What?

So I don't know this MKT, whatever his guy's name is, but I've seen the terrible Humane reviews and I bet you it probably came out after his.

Yeah, because they were trying to trend jack it.

Yeah. And then I'm like, yeah, this thing looks like it sucks. Everyone's talking crap about it. So I just moved on and I didn't even try to pay attention to it.

All right, real quick, I need to tell you about the group that Neil and I created called the Agency Owners Association. And this is a group that's similar to entrepreneurial organizations such as YPO or EO. By the way, Neil and I are both in YPO, but we thought it'd be really cool if we're able to create a group that's dedicated to agency owners to helping them scale. So you could be at 6 figures, 7 figures, 8 figures, we have different groups for different levels. All you have to do is go to marketingschool.io/agency. Again, that's marketingschool.io/agency, and you can go there to apply. And I will tell you right now, what we're doing is there's an online community. We do calls every now and then. There's stuff that we share in there that we don't share publicly. And you can, at least the online community, you can cancel at any time. So you can go there to learn more about it. And that being said, back to the video. Do you want to know the difference between companies that acquire versus companies that don't? What the Okay, companies that were frequent acquirers earned X% higher shareholder returns versus those that stayed out of the market.

You're asking me to take a guess on that percentage? 112%?

Very close. 130% higher. So sitting on the M&A sideline generally is a losing strategy. So this is a study done from Bain on M&A. And it shows these graphs over here over time.

It's in—

you can see the red graph over here, you can just see it's bigger, right? That those are the people that acquire. You know, we've been talking about this. I mean, it's— we're cautiously optimistic about the economy. You know, you've bought some stuff this year. You're still actively looking. I actually had someone reach out to a mutual friend of ours. She's looking to sell her PR agency, by the way. We can talk about that afterwards.

Oh, cool. Is it big?

Define big.

Like 50, 100 people at least?

I'll just tell you the revenue.

What's the revenue?

4.

Eh. Yeah.

But you're buying stuff in other countries.

Yes, but that's different. If I buy a PR agency, there's only so many customers I can sell PR to because most people don't come to us for PR. But on the flip side, if I buy a company, I'm going to make up a number that does $4 million revenue in, call it Singapore or Hong Kong. Okay. And let's say they even do $500,000 in profit or $1 million. It doesn't matter. But let's say their clients are You know, like Google, Apple, Domino's. Cross-sell, upsell.

Bingo.

So let's say they have a lot of enterprise brands like Aquapana. The decision maker for Hong Kong, the person who runs it, a lot of times, at least in that region, is the decision maker for most of APAC. You know, a lot of the decision makers come from Hong Kong or Singapore. But let's say either one. So then if I buy that company and they sell them 1 or 2 services, I can sell them 4 or 5 more services like we offer.

Yep. PR is tough.

Yes. And then I'll sell them into the rest of APAC. India, Australia, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore—you name it, right? And then once you do well, then I sell those clients across the rest of Europe and Latin America and America. And now I'm really talking because I've just taken them from a really small market like Hong Kong, and I've expanded that account globally. From $100 grand to paying $4 or $5 million.

So the lesson here is there should be some type of connection. Um, sometimes if it's like so far off, like for example, if you had a service like a plumbing company, right? It wouldn't make any sense at all. Right. So there's gotta be some sense of, um, tie-in here. Let me, so just to finish the tie to point on this one. So it's not as if M&A isn't still risky. The landscape is littered with failures yet while some companies made difficult missteps, Others learned deal after deal how they could substantially boost the odds of success in their favor. To put some data behind this assertion, from 2000 to 2010, companies that were frequent acquirers earned 57% higher shareholder returns versus those that stayed out of the market.

I'm a big believer in M&A. I know you are too. You've done a few deals as well.

Yeah, I'm looking, I'm looking, and we're both looking. By the way, our little agency group, guess what the MRR is now? Don't go too high.

$2,000.

$2,700. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Oh, great. Yay.

Hey guys, we're on our way. But I think it's helpful. This is, this is a good way for us to update people every month or so on how you can build a community from scratch. Because, um, you know, we're not full-assing it quite yet, but, uh, it's getting better and better.

What does that mean, full-assing?

So, okay, you could half-ass something or you could full-ass something. Right. So if we're like, you're full ass on your business right now, I'm full ass on my business.

I've never heard that saying before. I've heard half ass. Or I've heard like, you know, yeah, you're doing a good job and you're all in.

Yeah, it's an Ericism. Okay, full ass. But, but I think it will be helpful for us to share like how community is extremely powerful and what we're doing to continue to keep people engaged because there's a— there's an objective that we have with this group.

But anyway, what's the objective?

To help agency owners grow.

That's true.

Exactly. But for $2,700 a month, it will compound. How long did it take for Crazy Egg to hit your first million in ARR?

Within 2 years.

That's a long time. How long did it take to get the first $10,000 in MRR?

$10,000?

In MRR.

I don't know, like a month?

A month, right when you launched?

Month or two, yeah. That was fast.

Yeah.

It didn't take that long.

But you full-assed it.

Yeah.

Yeah, see, this is us growing a community organically. We're not putting any resources into growing it.

No, it's more so you're putting in the effort.

Yeah, I am. Because you're not interested until the numbers become significant. But this is good learnings to share with people.

I don't think the numbers will be significant. But I look at it as you have fun with it, you keep the money, I'll show up and I'd love to learn because I think I can always learn from others. And I'll try to provide value wherever I can.

numbers become $500 grand a month?

I don't think they will, but enjoy.

Hey, he said it on this podcast. All right, so I wanted to take a second to tell you about Leveling Up Founders. This is an event/mastermind for people doing 7, 8, 9 figures. These are founders that are doing that amount. And we've been doing this event for a couple years now. We've had amazing speakers. But more than anything, it's about What I mean by that is like-minded people want to hang out with like-minded people, and this is the best spot to connect with people of a certain caliber. And we vet every single person that comes through. So if people are— even though they make a lot of money, but their character, we don't really align with that, we're not necessarily going to let them in. We do this event in Beverly Hills, and it's happening in the beginning of August. All you have to do to learn more about it is just go to levelingup.com/founders. Again, it's levelingup.com/founders. If you want to hang out with amazing people, Neil, my podcast co-host, is going to be there. I'm going to be there. People like Syed Balkhi, he will be there as well. And again, it's going to be a great time. levelingup.com/founders to learn more, and we'll see you inside.

This is a little bit interesting. I have 3 topics, but it's on pretty much the same thing. First off, it looks like the marketing industry is picking up. We talked a little about that, um, last week or the week before.

We've been talking about that.

Yeah, and I ended up talking about what we're seeing at our agency because we get a lot of But a lot of people are now reporting their Q1 earnings. Omnicom is off to a good start with 4% Q1 growth. And for everyone listening, 4% growth means they grew 4% in January, February, March versus—

Organic?

January, February, March of last year. It wasn't defined in there. And the problem with these ad agencies, they buy so much, it's actually hard to tell what's organic and inorganic.

Do you want to define what that means first?

Organic means that you're just naturally growing, right? Let's say I have a company called Crazy Egg. Crazy Egg has never done an acquisition. It just naturally grows. That's organic. At NP Digital, we organically grow, but we started buying companies. So if I buy a company that does $10 million in revenue, and let's just keep the math simple, let's say if my company was doing $100 million in revenue and if I buy a company that's doing $10 million in revenue, I now just have roughly a 10% growth right there. Inorganic growth. That's inorganic. And then if I had a natural $10 million growth as well, you combine both of them, I could say, oh, look at my growth rate. It's 20%. I'm at $20 million.

That's how most holding companies do it. Just FYI for everyone. Yeah.

And a lot of them have negative organic growth, but the inorganic growth makes up for it. Yeah. Okay. So IAB, their revenue report reveals that the back half started increasing when it comes to ad dollars. So in what, Could be a leading indicator of the digital ad spending expansion. The second half of 2023 grew at more than twice the rate of the first half, according to just-released figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC's Full Year 2023 Interactive Advertising Revenue Report. And on top of that, US search ads— and I saw this on Search Engine Land— US search ads revenue Hit a record of 88.8 billion in 2023. It's a lucky Asian number. 888. That's right, dude. Asians will pay a lot of money for things like 888, like a house with the number 888.

Yeah, like the way the house faces as well.

All these things. I'm a big believer in all that too. You do? Not the 888, but the facing and all that. I follow it even though I'm not Chinese.

Oh. See, everyone's got a little Chinese in them.

Like the stairs going out the front door. None of my homes ever had the stairs going out the front door.

What does that mean?

Your money goes out the door. Oh. And there was, there was some homes that I could have bought that were at a steal, and I would have made like a million to a million and a half in like less than 3 months. And I refused to buy them because the staircase was going out the front door. And I'm like, no, no, I cannot risk everything.

Oh, you can't risk everything. Yeah. Yeah. But by the way, going to like both Neil and I, I'm speaking for you right now. We're still cautiously optimistic about the economy, but I don't know about you, this is probably the first time in my life where this is the most instability I've seen from a geopolitical standpoint. Inflation's still holding, right? And then you have escalations, geopolitical escalations everywhere, or tensions everywhere. And so, who knows what's going to happen? It's also election year too, so we can't guess any of these things. So all we can do is just continue to march forward. But anything can change. Um, but that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io/agency if you want to join the Agency Owners Association. That's a group Neil and I have to help agency owners grow. And yeah, we'll catch you later.

Bye.