The YouTube Algorithm Update No One Is Talking About

Neil, so this is the first time my YouTube got filtered. It really didn't like one of my titles. I had a video come out on Monday. I'm like, dude, the click-through rate's 9% and it's not getting any traffic. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? What is it? So the title was, can OpenCLAW and Claude code actually replace humans, right? And it really— because there's an algorithm update that happened, I think this month, where YouTube hates sensationalist headlines. And I'm like, what's going on? 9% click-through rate. And then I'm like, oh, I got filtered. Just a flag for everyone. If you're doing YouTube, they're really cracking down on the sensationalist headlines and the packaging now.

Speaking of sensational headlines, another big marketing lesson that I learned back in the day is I used to be really active on social media. And when I say social media, back then it was very different for marketers. It was mainly Digg and Reddit. There was StumbleUpon that was driving a lot of traffic to websites that was created by Garrett Camp, who's one of the Uber—

Yeah, then he founded Uber.

Yeah.

And there was also Delicious. I believe Yahoo ended up buying Delicious for $30 million or something like that.

Went nowhere.

Uh-huh. So when you look at those type of websites and they were driving a lot of traffic to webmasters, those kind of websites did really well with sensational headlines. And in marketing, they would call it, what was it, clickbait? Right? A lot of it was like clickbait back then. And what I ended up finding out is the clickbait is really great to get eyeballs and sensational headlines is really great to get eyeballs and attention, but very rarely does it ever convert to revenue. And as a marketer, I remember I used to believe that the most important thing that I could do was drive traffic. And I was sitting in a board meeting with investor back in the day. His name is Phil Black. Phil Black worked at Summit Partners, which is a massive private equity venture fund. I don't know how much money they manage. Call it $30, $40 billion. I'm guessing it's somewhere around there. I can actually Google it. Summit Partners AUM, $46 billion. Oh, I was close. And he also worked at Deutsche Bank, went to Stanford. Probably went to Stanford first, and then eventually he created his own venture fund called True Ventures with, I believe, a guy named John Callahan and had massive success throughout his whole career. And I remember in a board meeting, Phil's like, who's working on what? So, you know, my co-founder, Heathen, my brother-in-law was CEO. I was working on marketing. We had a guy named Ben Sardella working on sales. And I remember him telling me something that was interesting. Because he was just giving us feedback because every quarter you would have board meetings or every other month. And you would think like as a marketer, your job is to get more leads and more traffic. And I remember him telling me one thing. He's just like, your number one job, no matter what role you're in, because he's seen a lot of companies, is just hire the best people. If you just hire those people, it doesn't matter if we're in an AI revolution, if we're in a manufacturing revolution, agriculture, it doesn't matter. He's like, your number one job is to hire the best people. If you hire the best people who are really good at solving your problems and they're smart, sometimes they could be young, sometimes they could be gray-haired people who have done it before within your space. Sometimes it could be people who are just really creative and scrappy and they're engineers and they can solve problems in very different verticals like Elon Musk, right? He's like, your number one job is just to hire amazing talent. And he's like, if you look at all the companies I've invested in over his career, and he's invested in a lot, he's quite a bit older than I am, but he still looks young. He was just like, the companies that tend to do the best are the ones who just crush hiring. And I never forgot that lesson. And right now I'm interviewing people in marketing right now for NP Digital to do our marketing internally. And when we look at that role, I have very specific questions for them. And if people don't have good responses, I just X them out right away.

Well, ask the questions.

So questions would be, let's say you work for a random company, whatever it may be, you do marketing. I say, okay, have you seen our business? Yes. Have we given you a lot of stats and data? The answer should be yes, because we give them information. I'll be like, okay, we generate a lot of revenue from webinars. What would be the webinars that you would end up creating? All right. And what are the topics and why?

Now keep in mind— This is for your internal marketing team, right?

This is our internal marketing team. These are people I'm interviewing. These aren't things that they have to give me on the spot. We actually gave them homework. So they're presenting the webinar topics that they would do to us. They're presenting how they would modify our Facebook ads to make them perform better, right? And they're actually showcasing everything to us. And I'll ask some questions about AI. Did they use it? You know, I can, because I can tell a lot of times when they use AI or not, especially on the copywriting. I've gotten actually really good at figuring out who's using AI to write their copy. And there, it's very similar on how AI writes copy. A lot of it is, as Ramit Sethi used to say, bombtastic. Do you remember him talking about that term?

Yeah, but to be specific, I mean, some examples would be like, you know, Neil, it's not this, it's this. Like, you see that a lot? And the em dashes.

Yes, tons of em dashes. And they go, AI creates a lot of polarizing content. So the example is like, if everyone's investing in AI, it'll be like, you better not invest in AI unless you do this. Right. And, you know, so I get to ask people those questions like what they're using AI for and whatnot. Some people are honest, some people are like, I didn't use AI for anything. Then you see a lot of em dashes, you're like, yes. I remember I interviewed one person who's like, I didn't use AI for anything. And they're citing examples of webinar topics to include specific people. I'm like, oh, you know so-and-so? And you can tell they don't know them and no one in marketing would know them. And then you Google them and there's the person who wrote a Forbes article, which, you know, AI loves pulling from.

Mm-hmm.

So I'll get specific on that, or I'll get specific on questions like, if you start, what would you do in the first 30 days, 60 days, 90 days? If someone says in the first week, I'm going to make all these changes, right? One, they better be 100% sure they should make those changes. But usually, if someone has been doing marketing for a long time, they're not making a lot of changes in the first week. The reality is, is if you're coming into a new role in an established business, You're getting to know and understand the culture, the people, all that kind of stuff, what's been done, what has worked, what hasn't worked. You're looking out for all the data, hopefully using AI to understand all of it and compute it much faster so the onboarding is quicker. And then you're going to make more informed decisions versus going out the gate and making changes from day one without knowing what's been tested, what hasn't been tested. But yeah, you know, what I learned from Phil Black, and it has been true, is hiring. And it took me a long time. I would say I genuinely understood the concept because he taught me that maybe 14, 15 years ago. I probably truly understood it 8 years ago or somewhere around there. And that was when I created NP Digital.

I think it's 8 years ago. Let me tell you why. So I was going to ask you the question, when did you take that on? Because I've known you for 15 years or so, right? And I know before the way you hired was pretty like whatever. But I would say maybe 8 years ago when you first started MP Digital, because when you first started, the first hire you made to be your CEO, I was like, that's not the right hire. And then you, I think after that, once Mike was, and you were focused on it, I think you guys locked it down like really quickly. Yeah.

You're talking about the mustache man.

Yeah. Yeah. I was like, you did not think through that one.

No. So Eric, me, and my co-founder Mike were at a conference and there were some other friends that were at that conference. I think it was a growth conference in San Francisco.

Yeah, it was Vasil's conference, which is rest in peace. It was his Growth Hackers conference or growth marketing conference.

Yeah, he's a good guy. I miss him. So when you look at that event, there was a guy, we call him the mustache man because he had a really amazing cool stache. And Mike and I were like, yeah, you can do the agency stuff. And he's really smart the way he talks. And I don't know how long he lasted, Eric. I don't know if you remember, but what, maybe a month?

2 weeks.

With us? I think we fired him pretty fast.

2 weeks.

2 weeks. Yeah. So, but we got really picky at hiring and yeah, we very quickly learned that you need the right people. It doesn't matter how many leads you have or how good at sales you are. But if you just have the wrong team, you're not going to do well. And we see that in every division. Like, I don't care if it's marketing, I don't care if it's sales, I don't care if it's operations, I don't care if it's someone doing AI initiative stuff for you. If you don't hire the right people, you really are screwed.

Quick break. One of our ClickFlow users just told me that they're saving 90+ hours a month on content alone. ClickFlow is our AI SEO product that actually does the work, not just Here's what you should do. It does it. It creates content in your voice. It helps you with other areas such as finding the right internal links and creating FAQs. We spent years making it, perfecting it with our clients so it doesn't just sound like AI slop. You can get a 14-day free trial at clickflow.com. If you're serious about AI SEO, you should check it out. Back to the show.

Yeah. You know what's interesting? I'll share another lesson and then I have some things tied to kind of what we're talking about. I have some charts to show. But there's a period of time, I don't think we've really talked about this on the podcast, where it was actually going to be Neil, Mike, and myself partnering up for NP Digital. And I think we would have done well together, we would have worked well together, but I don't regret how things are set up now because you get to do things your way and I get to do things my way. I think Mike would have largely just gone with whatever, but I think we're both largely happy. Like, I am very happy with how things have turned out, and I trust that you're happy too.

So I am. And I remember Mike and I pitching Eric and Eric just straight up being like, he wanted to do his own thing. And I respect that.

Well, I said yes until I said no.

So. Yes. Or he didn't say yes. He said he needs to think about it. And then eventually he decided that he wanted to do his own thing, which I respect. I've had people offer me amazing jobs and roles. And I know Eric too. Because I remember Eric interviewed with Ray Dalio's team. You didn't take it. You weren't interested. You passed it over to me. I interviewed with them and I said I wasn't interested either. This is before Ray Dalio created his book Principles, right? Or before he was launching, he wanted in-house margin.

It paid well too.

I remember it was like a million bucks.

Bridgewater Group.

Bridgewater Group. Yeah. Yeah. This is like, it was like a million plus dollars, a million, $2 million, somewhere around there back in the day. But going back at it, it's just like, It doesn't matter if someone is willing to pay you a lot. I had someone offer me a $6 million job offer. I was telling Eric about it as well back in the day. It's like none of us really wanted to work for someone. And it doesn't matter if you can make more money or less money. If you're truly not happy and passionate about what you're doing, life is short. Cut back on your expenses. Don't buy all the stuff that you may want or dream about. You'll be happier just doing what you love every day. than owning that fancy watch or car or house that loses its glam after a week.

Yeah, it's, uh, so you've gotten 6, you've gotten bigger offers than that, and you've, you, but we don't need to talk about that. And then I've, you, I think you actually passed one over to me where it's like a $10 million signing bonus or something like that. Um, so it isn't about the money. And then, by the way, in this situation, um, I think you, you and Mike were asking me to be CEO, and we would have been partners here in this situation, but I think You know, I— there's still a lot of, especially on the focus side, there's a lot for me to learn there. So I'm happy with how things turned out. And there's a lot that you guys learned too. And we will see you.

We'll see you next week.

Goodbye.