Why We Fired Our Team to Grow 50x on YouTube

So let's talk about how our social media viewers have started to grow because we've started to let go of people, AKA have to unfortunately fire some people. So the story here is Neil and I, we have this YouTube channel together. Most people don't know that we have this YouTube together. In fact, most people don't even know that we have a podcast together, right? And so we have Marketing School and our Marketing School YouTube channel has been in the funks for a very long time. You look at these long-form views, these videos that we're doing. So Neil and I, we're in person right now. Right? We're recording this and Noah's here, you know, making things awesome. We're going to have lunch afterwards. It's great right now. What is the issue? Well, our long-form videos on YouTube are only getting like 100 views, 300 views or whatever. And I looked at it this morning. I was like, one of the videos is taking off. It's like 6,000 views, right? 7,000, 8,000 views. So do you want to know what happened? What happened? So because I took over my YouTube channel, Leveling Up with Eric Siu, remember I showed you a couple of weeks ago, like 500,000 views are now getting like 20,000, 25,000 views, right? On average.

500 video views, not 500,000.

Yeah, sorry. 500 video views on average per video, right? Now it's like, you know, go up to like 15, 20, 25,000 views, right? That was just me making skills with my ChatGPT. I said, hey, I want a thumbnail skill and then I want an editing skill. I want a posting skill. I just want you to do it all. So that was 3, 4 people's jobs, right? Taken over. And I was showing the people on the team and these people were, some of these people were offshore, right? I was like, look, just use these skills, take it. I'm not gatekeeping anything. Here's the repo for it. Just go and do it, right? And they're just staring into the screen, right? Now, unfortunately, we had to move on from those people, right? Now, at the same time, one person who is handling our Marketing School channel, he has actually started to step up. And so, because the skills have now given me the ability to do whatever I want, The ones that are embracing this stuff, they're taking these skills and they're applying it to our marketing school channel. I said, hey man, if you want to make it work, you got to use these skills. Otherwise it's not going to work. I don't think it's going to work out for you either. I'm just being very honest with you, right? Because there's no reason why I should just be able to on my whim record whatever and just say, hey, go do it. And it just does it all. It publishes everything, it schedules everything, it handles all the editing, right? So he has started to do it. And what we have started to change with this YouTube channel, Neil, is he's like, hey, you know what we should do? He's like, you know, for these 1-hour 20-minute podcasts that we do, 80 minutes, right? He's like, I think we should cover the first trend first, and then I think we should improve the thumbnails, and I think we should level up the 30-second retention. I'm like, there we go, right? We were doing this keep the light shit on for like the last 2, 3 years or so where we were just posting, posting, posting. I'm like, guys, you don't get better by doing that, right? So my point of saying this all is that the skills are enabling us to be more direct, be more upfront. If people want to embrace it, they will embrace it. If people don't don't want to, it won't work out for them. So that is how we have started to grow our social following on our small YouTube channel by having to let people go.

Yeah. I also believe, and I'm pretty sure you're on the same page, if the people were exceptional, they probably would've outperformed the AI or they would've used AI and the results would've been even better. Eric said, yeah. And, but yeah, there's just a lot of people don't perform and it's like, Sometimes you're not hiring average people, you're hiring below average people, and AI optimizes for average, in my opinion, for a lot of stuff. And average in many cases is better than the people you have. And that's a huge lesson because if you feel your people are below average, the chances are AI will do a better job than them, especially in marketing where there's a lot of data, a lot of examples that they can just pull from, regurgitate and copy similar principles and strategies and roll it out. If you want exceptional, it's hard for AI to replicate, but it is very easy for it to replicate average. And I think this is a big thing for a lot of SMBs because most SMBs aren't doing their marketing in an average way. I would say they're actually doing it in a below subpar way. And this is an easy solution if you don't have a budget.

Yeah, to Neil's point, you can't just use these skills on their own because whenever I try to use the skills on their own, it just It doesn't feel right, right? And then the video, the numbers also reflect on it. But when you actually spend 5, 10, 15 minutes on it, just 5, 10, 15 minutes, it becomes 10,000 times better, right? And it doesn't take that long to insert it. So you still need humans in a loop. You still need humans constantly tweaking these things.

The problem here, and I wouldn't say this is unfair to the people who were working on the channel before, but it is really kind of unfair comparison. Eric's skill level is much higher than the people that were working on the channel. So when you take AI with someone who's good, the results are much better than when you take AI and someone shitty or mediocre.

Yeah, but also, I mean, that's another lesson, right? What's happening for anybody that makes hiring decisions now is you can actually afford to wait for someone who's good. You don't need to just throw people at the problem anymore, right? And that is, I don't think many people have realized that yet. And like, that is actually my big concern for society as we make this transition. Like, I think everything's gonna be okay long-term, but there's gonna be a period of job displacement. And Where do you think the job displacement's going to come from? Because we talked about this. Oh, Bain says, you know, 94% of people don't find value in AI. And then it's like only 2% of consumers pay for AI. Well, what do you think? Why do you think most people are most people? It's reflected in numbers over there. No shit, it's 94% because those people aren't good with this stuff, right?

No, they're not.

So don't be like that. Be like the top 5%.

Yeah, and the way I look at marketing hiring is if someone doesn't understand AI fully in their role, I'm okay with it. I'd rather have an amazing person and teach them how to use AI than have someone who's amazing at AI but lacks the experience and the strategy and a lot of the fundamental concepts that are required to actually make the AI perform better. I actually see the reverse being easier in which you hire amazing people and you teach them what they need to know. And that's not a big deal because when you think about it, AI changes so fast in marketing, even if someone's really good at using it, well, they're good at using what's out right now. A month later, there's something new out there that they got to learn and play with. So it's okay hiring really amazing people and then teaching them how to use some of these tools to be even better.

All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com/neil to learn more and we'll see you on the other side. My take on it is we just interviewed a senior SEO person this week, right? And she has heavy promotions at the SaaS company and I really wanted to make it work. And so what we do with people now is like we have them send a video, right? On, hey, just show us how you're working with AI in general. We want to see how you're talking about it. You know what she did? She literally sent a clearly Claude-designed template and just read off of it. And I'm like, she did so well in the initial interview, very personable. But when she did that, I'm like, bro, you're just like reading off the template and you're just, you'd even put effort to try to change what it looks like, right? 3 doors in, only one is the way out.

Wait, what role did you, were you interviewing for?

It was like an associate director type SEO. Yeah.

Okay. So their, their job was to do SEO.

Yeah.

Uh, on-page or link building or a bit of both?

Technical.

Okay. So technical, so more on-page. When you interview them, do you, do you feel they were really good at technical SEO?

She could talk the game.

Right. And forget talking to him, do you think she could actually do the work?

I think she could do the work to an extent because the thing is she had the experience, like the stuff she talked about, right? The results that she got before, right? And then she knew how to use like certain terms and things like that. But when I started to press her, I knew I was— she was reaching her limit.

So she was more so, would you say, someone who was researching, riding the coattails of other people in the organization and understood the vocabulary when it is able to talk it, but was probably not the one who actually drove a lot of the results.

I don't think she was riding off the coattails because she was like the only, she's the only SEO at this SaaS company, right? And it's been around for a while. So I don't think she's riding the coattails. I just don't think there's anybody else for her to look up to.

So the problem with her is, is you think she's good at technical SEO. You didn't like how she uses AI.

It was more so, I'm sending you slop grenades. So I am taking something from Claude and I'm just reading. I'm not even— it's clear that I haven't even thought through what I'm about to present to you. And so I'm just reading off of it. Right. And that is how it's going to be working with her.

Yes. If someone's too lazy to review the work before they send it to

you,

you're in for a nightmare because you look at this as like a partnership or a marriage, as people say. People typically put their best foot forward before a contract is signed, right? Like when someone's making a sales pitch, they'll tell you everything that you ideally want to

hear.

But then the moment it's signed, you may find out that it doesn't work the way that they said, and then you may have some buyer's remorse. But if they're lazy when they should be putting their best foot forward, you got a problem because that's just the start of laziness and it's much worse than what you're really seeing.

That's a good point. So what Neil's saying, best foot forward, when you're doing an interview, you're going to bring, you're going to be wearing a suit, you're going to be very well Presented, right? You're gonna be well prepared, and this person was not well prepared, right? And this person was a fan of his podcast, so probably no longer a fan of me, right? But I had my AI reach because because she used AI on me, I had my AI reach back out to her, and I said, "Hey, this is Eric's AI assistant." You know, Eric and I took a look at the work, and you know, we just had a question: Is this you know, is this AI generated? Da da da. I started asking all these questions, right? And then basically, it was like that was the end of it. Now let me give you the flip side of this. I just talked to a guy right before this, right? This guy worked Razorfish, Eye Crossing, right? All these agent. agencies, right? So I'm like, okay, how are you using it? So my take on this from hiring people is they do need to know the AI game. And he's like, oh yeah, you know, I use Jev. I'm reading X a couple hours a week. You know, I'm building this and building that. I'm like, why do you want to leave? You've been playing the agency game your whole life. Why do you want to leave? We're too slow. I'm like, what do you mean you're too slow? Oh, we can't, you know, all the things that I want to implement, I can't implement right now. And, you know, it's, we're just, I'm like, there's, he's like, there's too much inertia, right? There's too many, you know, tentacles and things. And so he's like, I want to move where I'm unencumbered, right? I'm like, well, and so, My take on it is I want to hire the AI people because they're naturally looking for these things first and foremost. They'll never stop being curious. Like for you, I've never seen once in your— I've known you for what, 15, 16 years? There never has been a case where you and I have stopped learning. These people never stop learning. So I believe if they aren't teaching themselves this stuff right now, I'd rather not have to teach them, right? We can teach them the new stuff, but they have to be naturally curious on their own. So this guy was like going toe to toe with me and all that, right? And you can see like, it's just like, When we're brainstorming on stuff, when you're brainstorming on deals, for example, the structure of a deal, what do you think about this? What about this? Right? Call my tax guy over here. Hey Eric, what do you think about this? And you call your other friends. It's fun.

It's fun. Dude, on a side note, you mentioned the lady putting her best foot forward. I have, I don't know if I ever told you this, I have an interesting Zappos story. No. So one of my buddies, Jason, you don't know him, ordered shoes from Zappos and he was trying to get them, For a date. So, he ordered some like nice fancy, not fancy, but dress shoes, 'cause he didn't really have any dress shoes, but nice shoes nonetheless. But they weren't like too formal, but they were formal enough. So, he calls Zappos and he's like, hey, I placed this order a week ago. It hasn't even shipped. What's up? And they're like, oh, we're going to get it shipped soon. You know, you should have it in 3 to 4 days. And he's just like, wait, that's going to be too late. I ordered these shoes for—

A date?

For a date. And they're like, oh, well, this is the shipping you picked and everything. But he's like, but I want to put my best foot forward. It's a shoe company, right? And the person on the other end on Zappos started cracking up and like, all right. They're like, we're going to overnight it to you. And they sent him the shoes the next day. He got them. This was before things like Prime and all that kind of stuff happened. This is when Zappos used to advertise, you know, those airport containers where you put your This is

Zappos before Amazon bought them.

Correct. Yeah, this is Zappos before Amazon bought them. But I just thought that was a really entertaining story. He told me this years and years ago because that caused him to continually evangelize Zappos and keep buying from them. And it's like, people forget the little things have such a huge impact on your brand and your marketing that people just focus all their efforts on We need a rebranding campaign. How should we redesign our logo and our website? We need to focus more on pay-per-click and optimize our CPCs and get our CPAs down. We need to figure out how to rank higher on Google. And I'm not saying you shouldn't think about a lot of those elements, but people forget some of the core fundamentals in business and how some of those core fundamentals actually have a bigger impact on your overall marketing than just how you're running your Google ad campaigns.

And you wouldn't have said this 15 years ago.

No, I wouldn't have said 15 years ago.

Neil is very— he's still very metric-driven, but he was almost all metric-driven before, but now he sees the fundamentals.

Yes, because I believe the fundamentals move the metrics more than fine-tuning a campaign. Just like, how do you put a price on a really good product? You eventually can because you can see the ROI in the numbers, but early on, a product that is 5 times better than your competition means either winning or losing. Or even if you look at the Uber story, what Uber did better than Lyft was subsidize more. In all transparency, that's what they did. They just made rides cheaper. They were willing to stomach subsidies more than their competitors, and they got that formula down where they're willing to lose more per ride than anyone else. They were more capitalized for it. It helped win mindshare and market share. And then once they had it, They started fixing the economics so that way they could be profitable, but they gobbled up the market first.

You know what's interesting? So back then in 2010, when I was going up to SF all the time, I was using, I wasn't using Lyft or Uber, I was using Sidecar. So I think Sidecar actually, so you've—

I've heard of Sidecar.

Yeah. So Sidecar was actually, I think, number one at the time, right? It was cheap, convenient to use. The app was probably the best experience at the time. Now the difference is Lyft, I mean, they have like their, I think their own like cultural stuff, right? But the founder, like Travis Kalanick from Uber, he was just a hell of a competitor. Yes. He's just, I'm going to subsidize, I'm going to raise the most money, I'm going to do whatever it takes, and I'm just going to outwork the other person, right? And so I think slowly he eroded Sidecar away and then even Lyft away as well. And so I think the founder's competitiveness matters quite a bit as well. And it's all that excellence is the capacity to take pain, quote. And Travis was the best competitor of the 3, I think.

Yes. And he was really good at raising money. And I think that's a huge aspect of it.

Sales.

Yes. Because if you don't have big enough coffers to compete, you're screwed. It's just like, I've had people tell me how they can build a better Waymo alternative. This was a long time ago when Waymo started, and I'm like, this is going to be a hard business for you to ever win. And this person was pitching technology that can turn any normal car into a self-driving car and how it could be done really cheap. Forget how well the tech works. They were showcasing how it worked on some Toyotas and Hondas, and they're saying it worked really well. But forget how well the tech works or doesn't work. The real issue here is Waymo can lose $5 billion, $10 billion. You can say as a startup, you can move faster and all these kind of things. You cannot stomach that much of a loss. It's too hard to find a company willing to give you $5 or $10 or $15 billion and say, it's okay if you lose this. There's just some markets, and I would say AI is one of those markets. Anthropic and OpenAI and a lot of these players are really massive and they would've never been massive if they couldn't have gotten billions of dollars.

Yep.

It's too expensive of an endeavor without being able to raise $5, $10, $15 billion. I don't think someone who raised— if you only were able to raise $1 or $2 billion, I believe you would've lost the game. It just costs too much capital.

When we talked about Instinct last week, the reason why he has to look at raising billions of dollars is because he has to subsidize all these free users and he doesn't want to monetize for a while, right? Bless

you. Bless

you. So if that's the case, he's like, he's competing with the biggest players in the world like Meta. They can subsidize their agent forever, right?

Muse,

yeah. Yeah, Muse, Meta Muse, exactly. So for him, I think it's— I don't know how it's going to go, but he does have— he's growing 10% day by day right now. But I do think he's going to have to overraise a lot of money right now. And it's a very competitive space. And I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now. I think it's too tough, so.

Yeah, have you seen a lot of marketing platforms are already starting to integrate with Muse now?

Which ones?

I just got a notice from HighLevel the other day that they're integrating with Muse.

Shopify's in already.

Uh-huh.

Yep.

There's a few more. There's a few bigger publicly traded companies that are integrating with them. I'm blanking on their names, but I've been seeing announcements for a week or two because Muse is just catching the market by storm. Yeah. And dude, I think I talked about this in the last podcast and I had Muse send out some emails for me on M&A to reach out to advisory companies.

You told me it didn't go that well initially.

It didn't go well initially. So I had a call with someone this week and I didn't get too many responses back, but I had a call with someone in the UK.

This is one response that you got?

Yeah, from Muse.

Okay.

And we had a video call. They're like, oh, it was really great talking to you. How'd you hear about us? And I'm like, oh, I had Muse reach out to a lot of people and you were one of the few that responded. And they're like, what a great way to make us feel special. And I'm like, you should feel special because you responded. That sets your company apart from the others. And they're like, oh, that's a really good perspective.

So where's that call going?

They'll send us some opportunities. I don't know if we'll buy any of the opportunities. It's like, you know, when you deal with bankers and they try to pitch you stuff, they're just like, we got this company. It does 8 figures in revenue, a solid 7 in profit. You know, yeah, they'll take 7, not 7, they'll take 8x. That's in line with their thinking. I'm like, okay. I'm like, is it a business? Yeah, they have no churn. They're growing really good. I was like, what's issues with it if they're growing like 25, 30% a year? They're just like, well, one client makes up majority of their revenue. And I was like, so there's a lot of risk here. Yep. Or they had another one for me. They're like, business won in the United States. you can just pick up for very cheap upfront and then the rest of the money will just, that the company splits off will pay for the rest. So it'll be a really good deal for you. And they work with all these amazing brands. I'm like, yeah, let me take a look at it. And I see the fine print notes. Yeah, they grew 70% in revenue over the last 12 months. This is an old company, but all of a sudden one or two contracts made them grow 70%. It's like, cool, so you're trying to sell at your really real peak and this is not sustainable and you're probably going to go back down. And oh, by the way, some of the revenue you're getting is from other agencies, the moment we buy you, we are going to lose this revenue and there goes a lot of the revenue and profit.

Yep. So anyway, guys, that's it for today and we will see you tomorrow.