$100M in Email With No Employees? Neil Isn't Buying It

Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Need marketing help? Visit: https://www.singlegrain.com/ and https://npdigital.com/Want to recruit great marketers? Find them here: https://marketingschool.io/hire Eight Sleep's co-founder says the company does close to $100 million in email marketing with a team of zero after his co-founder built the bots in three days. Neil calls spades spades: email is harvesting demand that other channels paid for, and one person plus AI would beat both. Eric's version is the agent manager, the job he now interviews for. They scroll Harry Stebbings' Instagram, built on tech's most controversial stories, and debate whether that brings a VC the right deal flow. Eric demos Instinct, the $10 billion iMessage agent that planned his travel and got him onto a waitlist that morning, and the pair take apart Roy Lee's Cluely content and the cold TikTok bio a fan made of Neil. The close: Elon, Buffett and Rockefeller became brands by doing the work. A candid episode on headlines, hype and what content is actually for. Key takeaways◾'No employees' is a headline; the channel mix and the humans behind it are the real story◾Sensational content grows an account fast and rarely brings the right customer◾If the product were crushing it, the founder wouldn't have time for viral content Chapters00:00 $100M in email with no employees00:54 Neil: email isn't doing that alone02:29 The agent manager: everyone's next job03:51 Harry Stebbings' Instagram04:46 500 views to 40K: scrolling Harry's reels06:38 Will controversial content bring the right deal flow?07:09 The $10B iMessage startup08:11 Instinct: booking travel and skipping a waitlist10:03 Deal flow vs views: Neil's take10:50 Put your hand on the stove11:14 Accenture doesn't do sensational11:43 Roy Lee (Cluely): 'global rank #1 entrepreneur'14:02 Juiced numbers, and content as a tell15:22 The rich people Neil knows don't make content15:49 A fan's TikTok bio of Neil17:22 Elon, Buffett, Rockefeller: brands from the work

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot Starter Plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the Starter Plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com. Yeah, let me, um, let me show you something real quick. Let me go in a different direction. I actually want to get your reaction to this. So there's a, this company called Eight Sleep, which I love. A full disclosure, I'm a, I'm a tiny investor in this company and I, I love their products.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  So I thought this was really interesting, Neil. I'm gonna play the video for you too. So here we go. So, alright.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Before we had an email marketing team, now we have zero. Everything is done through AI and email marketing makes, you know, a very large amount for us. And everything is run by AI. So what happened is we were, we were forced to that, meaning the person leading, um, we had a team of two, uh, then the, the person leading the team, uh, was leaving. At that point, my co-founder Alexandra jumped in and said, okay, let me see how I can use AI to really, you know, uh, make this work. And within three days, he was able to build multiple bots that now run all our email marketing. So now we have a team of zero and email marketing makes a close to a hundred million.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  So what's, what's your reaction to that, Neil?

• 1:30Speaker 02

  So I saw it when it came out and it started doing extremely well because everyone's like, wow, he's using AI to make email marketing generate a hundred million dollars. And what was his team size before? Two or something like that?

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Two people on email marketing.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so let's call it he was spending three hundred grand max for a hundred in revenue. Uh, the, the first take on this is email isn't generating him a hundred million dollars a year in revenue. He's collecting emails through Facebook ads, through organic, through, you know, um, I don't know. Google Ads, the list goes on and on. So emails part, email is responsible for part of the revenue, but he's typically getting some of that traffic in direct, some of that traffic through other paid media channels. So other marketing channels are contributing to that a hundred million in revenue. That's the first thing I want to make clear here.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  So anyone who thinks like, oh, email, you can just make a hundred million with no employees. It's not really the full picture. The second thing is if he's getting a hundred million or similar amounts of revenue without those two employees, I would say he should, I'm not saying he needs the two employees, maybe it's one, maybe it's a part-time, but they probably weren't doing the best of a job. And if he combines human with AI, I think you need to use both, he can probably generate more than a hundred million in revenue from that channel. Of course, some of that revenue should be partially attributed to other channels as well.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what else is, I was actually talking to a, a guy who runs an email marketing agency yesterday, um, at a conference. Um, I'm not gonna name names, but he, he's just like, this like really pissed him off. Cause he's like, well, you, you can't do really good email marketing, you know, without really good, uh, copywriters at the end of the day, right? And to Neil's point, I think what you're just saying is like, this hundred million, like there are other costs associated with it. For the people that are running meta ads and things like that, right? And so they're, they're probably spending a health, a very healthy eight figures on, on this. And I, I think my takeaway from this one is that I, I've been saying this more to my team recently. In fact, I, I told some of my team members this, I was like, hey, um, I want, you know, how many of you are actually doing 95% of your work inside of a harness right now, which is like, you're not logging into like a user interface, right?

• 3:46Speaker 00

  I'm like, okay, great. I'm gonna give you access to GPT-6 Ostra, because some of them have been asking for it. And like, it's unlock, right? Because Claude Teams, like, most of our team is using Claude Teams, but I, I secretly use GPT-6 Ostra on my own. So I was like, you know, I think we're all going to be, when I interview people, when, when they get over to me, I'm like, hey, like, how do you think the future of your work is gonna look like? He's like, well, I think we're just gonna be managing agents. I'm like, exactly. So you're gonna be managing workflows. And so I think this is kind of a microcosm of humans are gonna be managing agents or workflows more. I think the whole with no employees thing is a bit overblown. I think you're still gonna need people. But it's just a good headline that what we're saying to earlier, it will get you views.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Yes, and if you look at Harry, I follow him as well on Instagram. He's been creating, and I'm not saying it's bad, I like his content, hence I follow him. He's been creating sensational content that just gets massive TAM views, kind of like, you know, uh, Gary Vaynerchuk, or Dan Martel, or Alex Ramosi, and he's been going down more of that path, at least on social media. But when you look at, you know, what Eight Sleep is doing, what I hate in business, just in general, and especially in marketing, people don't call spades spades. They try to adjust the numbers or paint a different picture than reality. And I really hate that specifically when it comes to revenue

• 5:07Speaker 02

  or profitability or growth. And if my team did that to me, they know I'll eat them alive.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Yep. By the way, I mean, let's just look at Harry Stebbings real quick, okay? So,

• 5:17Speaker 02

  You gotta do it on Instagram.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  On Instagram? You want me to go to Instagram? Why not his, why, what's wrong with his X profile?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  It's very different. Go look at his Instagram versus X.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Okay, okay, let's go to, okay. Harry Stebbings Instagram.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Uh-oh. Is it this one? I think it's this one.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  I think it is.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay, great. Okay, let's take a look at this. Cause I, I have seen one, um, get by. Okay, let's scroll a little bit. Let's, okay, so just, just, I'm, those of you that can't see the screen right now, so the first video I see has five hundred views, and then the next one's 24,055, so it's not like he's getting a ton of views. But let's go find a controversial one that has more views. What do you see, Neil?

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Apple's, Apple's latest launch is embarrassing.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Where is it?

• 6:01Speaker 02

  A little up.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  This one?

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Up, up. Scroll up, backwards, right there in the middle.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Oh, this one, okay. So yeah, forty thousand views on this one, let's see.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  Turnus, I thought you were meant to turn us back to Apple. But god, we saw a breakdown of Apple's latest innovative products, and all I can say is, oh no. I mean, we just wanted serious.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Okay, so that's one, forty thousand views on that one, okay?

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Look at the next one, Sydney Sweeney, the next big tech investor, right?

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Could Sydney Sweeney be about to become one of the next great tech investors?

• 6:37Speaker 00

  I see what he's doing. Okay, then, this one has a lot of sensation around this too, like the people are terrified of AI.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  He doesn't have tons of followers, keep that in mind.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  At Anthropic, the last twenty-four hours have been wild, and you cannot miss this. So first, this guy Jacob, an AI researcher.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  Okay, so it's really talking about, it's, he's really just hitting on tech's most controversial stories of the day. Um, he's getting on it quickly, and I think he's gonna grow this account quickly.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Very fast.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Huh?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, when I said he doesn't have a lot of followers, he's getting a lot of views for the followers he has. His follower account will grow extremely fast.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Yep. And by the way, Neil and I, we can play this game, right? But here's the thing, if I look at Harry as more of a pure content creator, right? Like, sure, he's an investor, but he started 20VC first, he was interviewing other investors, and that's how he got the audience, and that's how he's got his deal flow, he's investing, that's great. His job is to generate more awareness, so he can potentially generate more investors, he could also generate more deal flow at the same time. That is his business, right? And so it makes sense for him to go into this world and attract the wider TAM. So that's how I look at it. More LPs for him, um, more investment opportunities. What do you think, Neil?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  So when you look at the video in the middle, like ten billion, uh, I think ten billion valuation and no revenue, I believe that's what it said, it was something like that, that he just posted the other day. I watched it, and then he was breaking down all the previous investors like Mahmoud, Sequoia, and all that. Yeah, that one.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  So, uh, and he's just breaking down a startup that ends up integrating AI into text messaging, so you can just text back and forth like iMessage and just get all your stuff done through an assistant. And why it's ballooning up and, or blowing up in a good way.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Bless you.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  I don't know if this is the kind of content that's gonna get him more deal flow. I think the stuff he was doing before, when he started 20VC, going very specific and going after like the Peter Thiel's or the entrepreneurial super successful, I believe that kind of content, it did get him known, that's how I first learned about him. That's the kind of stuff that's gonna get him the right deal flow and LPs who are gonna give him money. That's my opinion. I don't think this kind of stuff is gonna help him as much.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  So Neil, let me share my screen with you, because this is actually what, um, this is actually what he's talking about. This is the startup. So he's talking about this company, Instinct, and I, I wanna show you real quick, because this is, I actually use this agent, and Neil, I'll actually give you an access code if you want one. You probably won't, because you're too lazy to do these things, but whatever. I'll give you an access code, because this is really easy to set up, right? I actually gave one to one of our mutual friends, and so check this out. So what it did for me this morning, it's, it's basically just set it up as iMessage. This is the startup he's talking about, Instinct, right? So there's a ten billion dollar valuation on this one, which I think is way overpriced, right? But that's not to take away from the fact that this product works, because you just open it up, Neil, you don't have to worry about, what connectors do I need to add? What do I need to do here? What agent are we doing over here? It's just, it works, right?

• 9:28Speaker 00

  So Neil, let's say you have millions and millions of points hypothetically for travel. So what it's doing for me over here, I was like, hey, I have, you know, X amount of points over here through these programs over here. I wanna book travel for, you know, this country over here by this date, and I want you to plan out the entire itinerary. It can do that. Not only that, um, Neil, I've been trying to get access to this, this, this tool called Jev, with J-E-V, which just came out, it's like, one of the, uh, ex guys that created, uh, ChatGPT, it's like a real fast AI. It can do like huge swaths of data analysis within seconds, right? Like huge. And I'm like, whoa, there's big implications there. So I'm like, you know what? Today's Friday, I have a little more time today, Friday, I, I block out my afternoon, I'm like, I need access for that. And so I go to Instinct, I'm like, hey, I need you to find a person who controls the waitlist for Jev,

• 10:10Speaker 00

  and I need you to reach out to him. This morning I checked, it's like, I, I see, oh, he email replied, done. So I guess I'm in now, right? And so my point is, you can ask it to all to say, hey, Neil, these are all the events I wanna speak at over here. These are all the podcasts I should be going on that are actually, you know, out there, have a good audience, it's an enterprise audience, right? Like, you can have it figure all these things out, and then just hand it over to your team. But that's why I think this thing is great. I don't, is it worth ten billion dollars? I don't know about that.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  And Harry is a smart guy, and I get what he's doing on content, and I don't hate him for it.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  He knows when people put money in at 10 billion in valuation and there's no, there's no revenue. There's a lot of fine print on the contract, on their potential returns and what they're going to get in exchange and liquidation preferences. And you know, it's, are they guaranteed two times their money, three times their money, et cetera, right? There's a lot of things like that that come into play here. Um, that are, you know, important, but he's creating the content to get the views. I just don't believe this is going to get him the right type of deal flow. And I could be wrong, but that's just my take because I've tried this enough, not in venture, but I've tried it enough in so many different industries. But it's very rare that our clients are.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Frictionless growth marketing hosted by Sonia Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless growth marketing hosted by Sonia Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples and conversations with marketing leaders, showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to frictionless growth marketing wherever you get your podcasts.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Your capitalist.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  Real quick, if you want to acquire customers faster and more efficiently this year with the latest strategies and tactics, then check out singlegrain.com. That is my ad agency again, www dot singlegrain.com. Check it out. And if it seems like a fit, we'll get in touch and help you with a free marketing plan. Yeah, well, I, I think this is a situation where sometimes people just need to put their hand on a stove and it's not going to hurt them. It's not going to kill them exactly. I mean, don't get me wrong, like Neil started, he's, he, he did test. Hey, I bought these clothes for X amount of dollars and then here's what I did with my black card over here or whatever. And he's experimented with that, right? Um, now on my end, I experimented with going very wide TAM with these interviews. Um, and like, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed them, but it didn't help my business. So.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Correct. And I look at like the biggest players in our space, like the Accentures of the world, right? They, I would say they are the biggest in the marketing space and at, at, at least for a service provider. I know people look at Accenture as not a marketing organization, but they, they have a marketing division and it's probably larger than most of the holding companies, just being quite frank. And you look at Accenture, no one thinks of, oh, look at all this sensational content Accenture put out there.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Wait, Neil, can I show you something? So remember Cluley, they raised, raised a bunch of money from Andreessen Horowitz, right? So Cluley, A16Z, I think they raised like $16 million or something like that. So yeah, $15 million Series A. Okay. So, uh, Andreessen Horowitz backed them. Okay. So now the founder, I, I gotta, I gotta show you the content that he's creating. He's like 22 years old at this point. Okay. So Neil, have you seen this content? You definitely haven't because I don't even think I shared it with you because you'd probably just laugh. So this guy is Roy Lee. He's one of the co-founder or founder of, uh, uh, Cluley. He's the global ranked number one entrepreneur. All right. Apparently. So, um, check this out. He makes this video.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  The amount of times to jerk off in a week is as much as it takes before it starts to hurt. Because that's how much people used to jerk off back when we were all cavemen. People would not fucking worry about semen retention or delayed gratification or any of this nonsense. This is ridiculous. This is a made up construct. And I think people sort of tie this back to this will teach me discipline for when I need to make money. Well, in reality, like the dude's doing no nut November to the very end, be the poorest, fattest dude you know. And it's just like dudes will do anything but do the fucking thing. You want to be disciplined and making money, then fucking go discipline yourself, make some money. Why are you doing this fucking roundabout way of disciplining yourself by fucking not nutting? You genuinely only harm yourself doing this. This is such an unnatural thing to do. Stop removing yourself from the thing that you actually want. The goal is never semen retention. The goal is always a better body. You want a better physique. You want more money. You want.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Okay. So I, I get it. Look, he's trying to be inspirational and that, that view, that look, this, this one got 270,000 views on it, right? And the funny thing is you look at the comments and this guy's like, bro, are you already out of topics? I can't imagine this brings more users to your platform. And then one guy is like, thanks to this, I'm now considering becoming a user of Cluley. Like they're literally saying this, it doesn't help.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yes. And when, when Eric read the thanks to this, I'm now considering being user of Cluley, that person's being sarcastic.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Yep. But I just think it's funny. Like this guy works at Stanford, right? And so I get it, like what he's doing, but, um, I think, you know, it's, I would be curious to see what the results are from this. So if Roy, you somehow see this video, let us know how it's going, like how I stay skinny as a 22-year-old tech CEO. Maybe that's interesting. People might be interested in you. Um, how I maintain perfect skin, um, why I'm still ambitious after making millions. Like, I don't know, man. I, I like, if you're selling to a wide TAM, if you're selling like courses and coaching, sure. Uh, I, I don't think he's selling that though. He's selling software.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Okay. A few things. One, you saw the TechCrunch post on Cluley a while back. I know we talked about it in our podcast in which he admitted he, uh, uh.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Juice the numbers?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, he juiced the numbers. He was a little aggressive on what his, stating what his revenue was versus what it was in reality. Okay. Two, if Cluley really blew up and was doing so well, because it didn't work as well for him doing all the social viral content. Cause their stuff was doing so well. Cheat on a job interview, ace whatever test, like clearly can help you solve everything. If their product really did that and was blowing up in revenue, do you think he would be creating all of this?

• 16:02Speaker 00

  He wouldn't have time. It's, it's growing too fast. He wouldn't have time.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Thank you. And you and I both know a lot of entrepreneurs. Out of the richest people we know, how many of them really focus on content creation? I'm not saying for their company, they themselves. Eric's holding up a big zero. He's so spot on. And Eric and I create content, hence we're not the richest people we know. Right? So if you really have a big business, you don't care about just doing stuff that's sensational to just go and get the views. I think it's just so backwards. I don't know why people still do it. And I think the younger generation, this is where I struggle with social media, people who are younger. They really care about the reach and the likes. And I've gotten so many people pitching me, I'm going to make you rich.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Dude, um, I was at the Beverly Wilshire because I know the All In Podcast Summit was going earlier this week, but I was there for a meeting with the, with, with the bank and no joke, someone comes up to me, he's like, dude, huge fan, let's do a podcast episode together. I have, uh, 1.5 million followers. I created this video for you on TikTok. Okay. And he links me to this video. Let's see if I can find it on my texts.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  We gotta teach you how to use phone mirroring so you can share a screen when you do it.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's too complex for me. Okay.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  So Neil's showing the screen right now. Let me, let me tell you what's appearing on the screen.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Oh, that's his, oh, that's the wrong link. Oh, this is, here you go. TikTok. He created this. Head of Anthropic, one of the largest. This guy went from cleaning toilets to building a $100 million empire. Okay. Patel, the founder of. So it was kind of like a bio on me, had.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  How many, how many views did it get?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  How do I see the views? I can't even tell.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  How many likes does it have?

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Uh, uh, 569 likes. I can't tell the views. I don't know.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Well, okay. Well, finish this story. Finish this story.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  But either, either way, what ended up happening is that he created this content on me. That's cool and all, I appreciate him getting my name out there, but like, it doesn't do anything. I never saw it. He said he sent it to me, but my bad. I do appreciate you creating it. So I am grateful for that. And I did try to make his podcast work. I just couldn't make the time work because I, I promised my, uh, daughter, I would go watch her do horseback riding. But nonetheless, this, this type of content doesn't just, it doesn't generate revenue. And the younger people I meet, the more they're all about getting your brand out there. You've got to build a personal brand. When have personal brands been worth as much as Coca-Cola or Pepsi? And I don't think we're going to get into age where they ever are.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  Let me say something. So just to continue on your, your example, Neil. So when you think about Elon Musk, did he think about building a personal brand? Nope. He just think, he just thought about building things that are useful to humans. And that's why he's such a big brand now, right? What about Warp Buffett? Well, it took him a very long time. He didn't really start to really compound into like, he was rich already, but becoming really rich was after age 50, just so everyone knows, right? And then because he kept doing it consistently, consistent, consistently, now he's looking, he's looked at as the Oracle of Omaha, right? But that brand came from actually just doing things. When you think about Rockefeller, whether you love or hate Rockefeller back in the day, and now today, I think most people just don't know. But he spent time merging all these, all these business practices, like he got, he, he was winning so much that regulations had to be formed just for him, right?

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Um, but he was, he became a brand in his own, right? Standards and standard and poor. Um, I, no, no, wait. Standard Oil Company, that's what it was. But yeah.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Standard and pores is S and P.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Standards and porters, S and P. Correct. Thank you, Neil. Um, but that's my point. It's like, if you just focus on Neil's point, talking about Cluley, if Cluley is crushing it as a company, there wouldn't be a need for him to create so much more content, right? And that's what it really is. All right. So anyway, guys, that is it for today. We hope you enjoyed it and we'll catch you tomorrow.