Why SpaceX is Not For Everyone

I'll just say one of my friends recently was hanging out at a SpaceX party with a bunch of SpaceX engineers.

Okay.

One of the engineers just had a baby recently. Okay. So she was on maternity leave. She came back and then she quit. She promptly quit. Why do you think she quit?

Because she didn't want to work the hours.

She can't take it anymore, right? It's like she thought she could come back and work the 70, 80, 90, 100 hours plus, but she couldn't. But then the thing with Elon is he has extremely high standards. He's going to work so hard, he expects you to work that hard. Which is fine, those are his standards, right? But it's very hard to sustain that, especially when it's not your own business too. And so for some people, like when your mission is so hard, like you can drag 'em for like 9 years or so, but at a certain point there's gonna be a breaking point. But I thought that was just interesting. Like this is the whole like the SpaceX is great mission and everything, but it's not for everyone all the time. And so—

I have a buddy who worked at SpaceX. Dude, his wife had a kid. Then they had a second kid and then he left and now he works at Boeing. And I said, why'd you make the move? And he said, the hours were too much for me trying to raise a family. So I picked Boeing because I could get paid well.

And work-life balance.

Work-life balance.

Yeah. Work-life balance is a thing. I got to tell you a funny story about my relative who's an agent. I'll tell you at lunch during our business lunch, but—

An agent? A real estate agent?

No, no, no. An agent for the government.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I'll tell you later. Yeah.

So anyway, on that note, let's talk about how we're going to modify our marketing in 2026 because we're getting closer.

I'm thinking about how we're revamping our marketing for 2026. But maybe let's talk about how our experiments have gone recently. So we've talked about our long-form YouTube experiments, our short-form experiments. We can talk about how our experiments have gone and then we can move into how we're revamping.

Sure, yeah, 'cause we've done a whole year worth of experiments. You want to start with long-form video or video stuff, video marketing first?

Yeah, so I actually just started this again and you and I, I think we go to the same place to record still, the studio in Century City.

No, I don't go there.

You don't go there anymore? So I still go to the same—

I don't want to spend the money.

That's good, that's good. So that's another thing we should talk about too on the spending piece. But I was reading off the teleprompter and I had multiple people scripting and all that for these long-form videos and you can just see it's so stiff. It's like I have a stick, up my butt, right? And it's like, you know, sorry for the image, guys, but like, and I'm just like, dude, this is so boring. And then like, I look like I'm so tired. I just like, I look like I don't give a shit, right?

Yeah.

And so we switched it where I went back to just riffing, right? So there's a headline first and then I'm riffing. Like yesterday we put out a video and it's actually a 1 out of 10, 1 out of 10 meaning like in the last 10 videos, it's number 1, right? And I like, I watched the video, I was like, why is this in the 1 out of 10? It's like, it's not that interesting of a subject line, right? And then I was looking at it And I was like, oh, I'm just talking like this because this is us, right?

Yes.

And like that, those videos do much better. Those videos are way more shareable. Those videos are where you and I are just like sharing stories, right? Even when I watch some of your videos and I'm like, yeah, this is kind of stiff, right? It's even the way you're talking. It's not like that anymore, right? Or like marketing has changed. And I'm just like, this is so not you, right? And so I think when we're ourselves, like the videos just do way better. And I'm excited again. I wasn't excited. I was dreading recording these videos. And that's a big change that we've made, at least on the long I'll start with that first.

Go ahead. What other changes have you made? You want to just keep going?

Yeah. On the YouTube side?

Uh-huh.

Yeah. So I would say on the YouTube long-form side, we're a lot more intentional with the thumbnails. We're using a Nano Banana for the thumbnails.

Okay.

And they look like 90% Eric Siu.

Yeah.

Like 90% Neil Patel. But like, I realize they don't care that much. No, people don't care as much, but still, it just bothers me and I hate it. Yeah. It bothers me too. I look at our Marketing School channel, which is, it's funny because when we have good, interesting packaging, like that still works, right? So I was looking at it just before we started recording. We talked about why Elon, Jeff Bezos, and US generals hate PowerPoints. Okay, that one was the outlier on our channel, right? Even though you and I just like complain about, or I complain about PowerPoints for like 23 minutes, that one did well. It did well. It did well, yeah. And so the packaging goes a long way, but I think more than anything though, you can have good packaging, but if you're not just riffing, if you're just reading off the slides, people can tell. And I'll finish off on the, short-form piece. So I've been using this agency, which I really like. They give really good scripts, but I was also reading off the script. I was like, guys, like after this, I'm like, I'm not going to keep reading off the scripts. I want to riff. And because the way they package and they structure the videos, like I have like scenes where I'm walking in, I'm like doing different actions. I'm like, this can do well. And they're like, yeah, you keep doing this. Like it's going to really compound and I can see it starting to compound. And so I'm like, okay, let's keep doing the scripts that way, but let me riff. And I've realized the biggest change I've made Is I make a video every week on Loom saying, hey, these are the topics I'm most interested in talking about right now. And they'll work around that versus just creating, you know, how to make money with your agency or like how to hit 7 figures fast. So those are some changes I made. Here's the problem with most marketing agencies. They don't understand what is happening with the world of AI. With my agency, Single Grain, we think about agentic workflows. We think about creating agents for the future. When we think about SEO, we think about creating different products such as internal linking products or content consolidation products. And on the other side of things, we think about building products that just care. We just think about making marketing easier overall. If you want to stay at the cutting edge of marketing and at the same time leverage the power of AI, go to singlegrain.com and we'll see you on the other side.

So if I look at my year, we started with that agency that a lot of people have used, right? Dragonfruit. Hermosi's used them, I've used them. Did Cody ever use them? Cody Sanchez? I'm not sure. That doctor friend of yours, a British doctor, he's used them, right? I think that's who used them.

British doctor?

British doctor.

Oh, Ali Abdaal. Yeah.

I think he used them, right?

Dan Martell used them, I think.

Dan Martell. I think Dan still uses them. Good company. We decided to just take it in-house because the content topics weren't the type of topics that we were looking to talk about. EX My Life Story, or, you know—

Something about you broke.

Yeah. I was just like, I don't want to talk about any of this stuff.

It's also really awkward. I can tell you don't enjoy those videos. I hate them. You disdain them. Yes.

And then you get a call from your kid's school, like, or I dropped my kids off to school, lady rolls in and she's like, oh, I saw one of your videos about your life's journey. I'm like, damn it.

You're hitting the wrong people.

Yeah. Like, I'm like, why did I have to produce these kinds of videos? So, uh, started doing them internally more. Picking the topics and it's gone well. We started to optimize for the views, you know, like the same thing you said, like, you know, is it 1 out of 10, 4 out of 10? Because YouTube gives you rankings and we started doing that too much and we started getting better views middle of the year. But what we found was it wasn't driving the revenue we were looking for.

Mm-hmm.

So we went back to still doing it internally. taking the topics that we like and talking to our sales reps on a weekly basis, technically marketing, because marketing gets it from sales on what topics are actually causing the most people to sign up with us. And the topics that are causing most people to reach out to us, 2 different things, right? Because one's a conversion. One is, you know, just because someone's talking to you about something doesn't mean they sign up at all.

Yeah.

And Someone could talk to you about something and you can sell them on something else.

Mm-hmm.

So we wanted to find out what are people paying for and what are they coming in the door for? We started getting that feedback from our team on a weekly basis. It helps create a backlog. We then started creating content around those topics and then we started producing video content around it. So for example, we've been getting a lot of people last few months talking about, hey, a lot of the ChatGPT results are spammy. How do you think the algorithms, like how can we adapt for the next year or 2 years or be more resistant? Because people are starting to get worried that they're doing well on ChatGPT right now, but it may not last and the algorithms change because they've seen algorithms change. Just like, you know, a lot of people have posted how referral traffic has gone up or down substantially percentage-wise, right? Not total volume because it's always been a small percentage, but percentage-wise, the numbers have gone down. And when we started talking about it, like my last video was on ChatGPT's algorithm, what I think is going to change in 2026. I think it's only gotten like 5,000 or 6,000 or 7,000 views, very little views. But that's a topic that people who are converting are interested about. And a lot of those conversions come from existing clients upselling into more services. So we're trying to be very specific with our content to make sure it has ROI, even though it's harder to measure. And the next thing that I would say that we made a big change that we're testing out is you nailed it. I don't like scripted stuff as well. You and I just like talking.

Yep.

So we started doing these roundtable talks. I don't have an example to show you, but it'll go live in a few weeks.

It's like the Gary Vee 4 Ds. Remember that one?

I haven't seen the Gary Vee 4 Ds.

So there's like a roundtable of like business owners and they're just asking him questions, kind of like that.

No, it was, Kind of the setup was a couch on the other side. 2 of my colleagues were sitting on that. I was sitting on a chair and we were having a discussion. So the discussion for that episode was on search everywhere optimization. So we're discussing like, do we think Google's going to kill ChatGPT or ChatGPT killing Google? And then another portion of the conversation was, uh, You know, search and social.

Yeah.

And how would you create content for search from a social aspect? Uh-huh. Right. Just a lot of different topics.

So they're teeing you up and then you're answering kind of.

Uh, not my team. Uh, the person filming is teeing us up.

Uh-huh.

And that won't be, their voice will not be part of the recording.

Yeah.

And then we have a discussion as a group.

Who are the people around you?

Uh, Chad, who leads up content and Nikki, who leads up search.

Okay. So people on your team. Yeah.

But we're just having a conversation and they're giving their inputs. I'm giving my inputs. We may not all agree or disagree with each other and we just have the discussion for an hour or maybe it was more, uh, probably get shortened down, you know, when it goes live, but still we're going to end up rolling out. I don't know if they're going to roll that out as one long video or one short.

I think you need both for that. Yeah.

But when I say one long is an hour version or like 15 minutes, cause they can still be considered long.

I call those mid-forms. Yeah.

But one thing I learned from that, someone was teeing us up and we were just riffing and riffing. Well, I'm like, oh, I don't want you to tee us up anymore. Just let me, let us talk for 30, 40 minutes. And they're like, well, we want to keep you on script. I'm like, who says there has to be a script? Because Chad and Nikki on my team deal with clients 24/7. I deal with clients.

You're off script the whole time.

Yeah. We already know what people are interested in. We, all 3 of us speak at events and I'm like, we could have just riffed. Just give us a, overarching topic and then go from there. But I'm thinking of doing something with them, kind of like if you look at, what's Will Smith's wife's name? Jada—

Jaden?

Jada Pinkett Smith. Is that what's his wife's name?

Jada. Yeah. I think he has Jaden's the son, Jada.

Jada Pinkett Smith, right? Something like that.

I think so. Yeah.

I could be wrong on the name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me. I apologize if I'm wrong on the name. They used to have these red table talks and they'd sit around on a table and just have discussions. But you may have like 5 or 6 topics that, you know, you want to discuss here. You may get through all of them. You may not. That's the format.

You know, it's almost like, you know how when they do like the spicy wings or whatever, and like, you almost need like a prop where it's like, people come back for that, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah. But no, I think that's interesting. And I think that's great for not only just long form, I'm talking like 30 minutes plus, but mid-form, like 5 to 15 minutes and short form too. And I think those should do well. Yeah.

But I was excited to record them. I'm like, this is fun. We should do these more often. And I'm hoping they do well enough where I no longer have to sit in front of a screen and do the—

So you don't need to be the talking head anymore?

Yeah, because I want to get away from me being the talking head altogether. And eventually it'll be, keep doing the group setting. So no more just Neil Patel. So then the people see NP Digital and then keep doing that for years and then slowly not be in all the videos and then slowly not be in any of the videos.

You know what? You know what's a good idea for both of us actually? There are a lot of popular influencer SEOs that work for these agencies, right? That are out there. I'm not going to name any names, but they share interesting data all the time. I'm like, how do you collect all of these influencers and just have them at your company?

I already thought about hiring a lot of them and paying them more.

How did that work out? Did you talk to them yet?

I've talked to a few of them.

Yeah. But you have an interesting reputation.

Yeah, no, I could have got some of them to do it. Some of them asked for upfront money for their business because they make money on the side speaking or whatnot. If I talk to 5 influencers, I can probably convince 3 out of the 5.

To join you full-time.

To join us full-time.

Okay.

I'm just giving you averages so you can see percentage-wise, right? So you're looking at roughly 60%, assuming the—

That's high. Complex.

Keep in mind, I'm not hitting up people that I know hate me. Yeah.

I would say a good chunk of these influencers don't like you.

It depends what you consider influencers. There's a lot of people who are well known in marketing. Mm-hmm. And not just, you're thinking probably just SEOs.

I'm thinking purely in this context, SEOs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm thinking of marketing.

Broader marketing. Yeah. I think marketing is a good—

Digital marketing specifically. Yeah.

I think you're generally well respected and liked in general. Correct.

Yeah. SEOs particularly—

No, you're generally hated.

I'm generally hated. And if you look at the SEOs, most of those influencers don't work for corporations. They're solo entrepreneurs.

Would you agree with that? I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the ones that actually work for significant agencies with thousands of employees.

There's not a lot of influencers that work for—

That's what I'm saying. There's like a handful of them that you can collect like Pokémon.

No, but there's a lot more that are individual influencers that don't work for companies.

Yes, I agree.

I agree. In just digital marketing, whether someone is really well known for YouTube or Facebook, And what we thought about is reaching out. We went through that process. We actually did an experiment. We hired one of them. So we started off with one years ago. It did not work. And the main reason being is they wanted to push their brand and not the corporate brand.

Oh yeah.

Okay. And then we interviewed a few more. We're going to go down this path. What we found is it helps them build their brand. You kind of are building your corporate brand. But enterprise, which we made a decision years ago to shift to, they don't give a crap about influencers. They just give a crap about who's on my account, what's your experience in my industry? Are they working for a competitor right now? If not, they can be on my account.

Cool.

They're really good. When you pitch me, I don't want you, Neil, to pitch me. I want the people pitching me at our office who are going to be working on our account. And if they're not going to be on our account, don't need them in the pitch process. Yeah.

I think the influencers I'm visualizing right now, they're very, you know how you share interesting data and graphs, right?

Yes.

So these people share very interesting data and graphs and they work for larger agencies with, you know, I would say like 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people or so, right? Like mid-size agencies, right? If you want to call it, like be a little more specific. Those are the people that I think are interesting because they kind of talk corporate too. And I'm like, those are interesting versus the ones that just are like, you know, maybe individual consultants that want to promote themselves.

So Mike and I were having a discussion. We tried one and we came up with a revelation after this.

Same one?

No, we came up with the revelation after we went through the first one, and this is why we stopped doing more. How many of those influencers that work at agencies, or the agencies that have the influencers that work for them, which ones are actually large and make a ton of money?

Let me show you this one. I, I think this one makes money.

Yeah. That are at least my size or bigger.

Yeah.

Okay. I'm curious.

Yeah. I'll show you, but, but continue, continue.

Almost all of them do not. You agree with this statement?

Yes.

Majority, almost more than 90 plus percent.

I'm really talking about like a diamond in the rough, but you know, we're always looking for diamonds in the rough.

But if that person works for a really big agency, the chances are they weren't the one who made that agency.

No, they didn't.

Yeah.

They didn't. Yeah.

So I'm talking about which person works at an agency and caused them to grow drastically.

Through their influencer work?

Yeah.

Oh, not almost none.

Correct. So that's why, and then we started looking at the agency.

But we're talking about trying to get your head, your talking head off. Yeah.

But what we came up with—

Why do you have glitter on your face?

I don't have glitter on my face.

Yeah, you do. Maybe it's from—

No, do I have glitter on my face? Yeah, you do.

You can't see, you have to like look up. There's like one little speck, but continue. Sorry.

Maybe from my kid. Yeah. Yeah. But what we came up with was we don't need a talking head. We're going to have everyone within our organization just speak and get well known.

That's fair. I mean, like the distribution's already there and your email list is very nice.

So it's not the email list. I know a lot of people think it's very—

it's not just the email list, but email list is a big part of it.

It's not—

it's a big part of it. Give me your email list.

No, I can't legally anyways. I'll get sued. But the biggest reason For our success, if you want to talk about the recent years and scaling and growing from a marketing aspect, was expanding a lot internationally, willing to stomach the burn. I'm still stomaching the burn to some extent. And then marketing to the public, we're a global agency. We have people on the ground in all these regions.

Mm-hmm.

That has probably been the Biggest driver of growth in recent—

Yeah, you've said that already, but I still think the email list is nice. So it's not the main factor, right? I would say it's still a factor.

It doesn't drive that much, that many enterprise businesses.

But how much revenue does your email drive, email list drive per year, you think?

In the millions, of course, but—

Yeah, so I'm saying it's still like a factor, you know?

Yeah, it's in the low single-digit percentile.

Yeah, so it's still like, you know, even if it's a pimple, it's still a pimple. Yeah, it all adds up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, we're going back to what were we talking about here? So we're talking about marketing experiments that we're running. One more thing on this one too, on the YouTube side. So we've been doing webinars, but I, so because we have a little more money now, we're going to start streaming this live again because we do get good engagement when we go live. And I'm just like, why don't we just go live more? And this is our way of our like engaging with the community more, but it's always gone well for us. Like, why don't we just do it more? And like last week I did, I did a live with Adam Robinson from RB2B and it was fun. We just like engaged for like an hour. We're shooting the shit. I'm finding out what he's doing. We're just going back and forth and like, you know, it did well, like a couple thousand views on it, right? For, for like a webinar. So not bad. So anyway, that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you next time.

Thank you.