Why We Fired Our Team to Grow 50x on YouTube

Eric built thumbnail, editing and posting skills, and his long-form YouTube videos went from about 500 views to 15,000 to 25,000. Some of the team wouldn't use them, so they had to let people go, and the one person who stepped up is now fixing the Marketing School channel's trends, thumbnails and 30-second retention. Neil says AI optimizes for average, which still beats a below-average team, but you need humans in the loop. They cover Bain's 94% stat, why Neil would rather hire great marketers and teach them AI, and a senior SEO candidate who read straight off a Claude template. Then Neil's Zappos story, how Uber outspent Lyft, why AI rewards whoever raises billions, and Neil's Muse outreach to M&A advisors. An honest episode on AI skills and hiring. Key takeaways ◾Skills only work when someone spends real time tuning them ◾Hire people who stay curious and put their best foot forward ◾Small touches like Zappos' overnight shoes build loyalty Chapters 00:00 We got more views by firing 00:51 Skills took Eric's videos from 500 views to 25K 02:13 Cover the trend first, fix thumbnails and retention 02:56 Neil: AI optimizes for average 04:01 You still need humans in the loop 04:46 Bain's 94% and the coming job displacement 05:30 How we hire marketers now 06:36 A senior SEO candidate read off a Claude template 08:38 Lazy before the contract means worse after 09:46 The agency hire who said they're too slow 10:31 Hire people who never stop learning 11:12 Small touches build brands 12:38 Fundamentals move metrics more than campaigns 13:48 Uber won by subsidizing more than Lyft 15:08 Why a cheap Waymo rival can't win 16:10 AI rewards whoever raises billions 17:11 Muse is taking the market 17:58 Neil's Muse outreach lands a UK call 18:51 Red flags in the deals bankers pitch Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Need marketing help? Visit: https://www.singlegrain.com/ and https://npdigital.com/

• 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. 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.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  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 gonna 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, 8,000 views. So do you want to know what happened?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  What happened?

• 1:23Speaker 00

  So because I took over my YouTube channel leveling up with Eric Su. Remember I showed you a couple of weeks ago, like 500,000 views are now getting like 20,000, 25,000 views, right? On it, on average.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  500 video views, not 500,000.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, sorry. 500, 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 chat GPT. 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 three, four people's jobs, right? Taking over. And I was showing the people on the, 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 stare 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.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  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 gotta use these skills. Otherwise, it's not gonna work. I don't think it's gonna 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 one 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?

• 3:02Speaker 00

  That we were doing it to keep the light shit on for like the last two, three 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. And if people want to embrace it, they will embrace it. If people don't want to, it won't work out for them. So that is how we have started to grow our social following, social following on our, our small YouTube channel by having to let people go.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I also believe in, I'm pretty sure you're on the same page. If the people were exceptional, they probably would have outperformed the AI or they would have used AI and the results would have been even better.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Eric said, yeah. And, uh, but yeah, there's 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.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  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, 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 five, 10, 15 minutes on it, just five, 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 the loop. You still need humans constantly tweaking these things.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  The, the, 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 in someone shitty or mediocre.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  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, I 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, 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 is gonna 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, it's reflected in numbers of it. No shit, it's 94%. Because those people aren't good with this stuff, right?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  No, they're not.

• 6:01Speaker 00

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

• 6:04Speaker 01

  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 him 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 gotta learn and play with. So it's okay hiring really amazing people and then teaching them how to use some of these tools.

• 6:49Speaker 00

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• 7:24Speaker 01

  Be even better.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host, Neil's Agency called MP Digital. And they work with a whole host of global companies or a global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as UberSuggest and Answer to Public. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com 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 this SaaS company. And I really wanted to make it work. And so what we do people, 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.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  And I'm like, she did so well in the initial interview, very personal, 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? Three doors in, only one is the way out.

• 8:18Speaker 01

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

• 8:21Speaker 00

  It was like a associate director type SEO, yeah.

• 8:24Speaker 01

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

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 01

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

• 8:29Speaker 00

  Technical.

• 8:30Speaker 01

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

• 8:36Speaker 00

  She could talk the game, right?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  And forget talk game, do you think she could actually do the work?

• 8:42Speaker 00

  I think she could do the work to an extent because the thing is.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  She had the experience, like the, the, the stuff she talked about, right? The results that she got before, right? And then she, she knew how to use like certain terms and things like that. But when I started to press her, I, I, I knew I was, she was reaching her limit.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  So she was more so, would you say, someone who was researching, writing 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?

• 9:14Speaker 00

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

• 9:25Speaker 01

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

• 9:32Speaker 00

  It was more so, I'm sending you slop grenades. So I'm taking something from Claude and I'm just reading, I'm not even, I, 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.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yes, if someone's too lazy to review the work before they send it to you, you're, 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.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  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 going to 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, uh, you know, we just had a question, is this, uh, you know, is this AI generated? 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, uh, Razor, Fish, Eye Crossing, right? All of these agencies, right? So I'm like, okay, how are you using? So my, my take on this, eh, eh, from hiring people is they do need to know the AI game.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  And he's like, oh yeah, you know, I use Jev, I'm like, I'm, I'm reading X a couple of hours a week. You know, I'm building this and building that. I'm like, why do you want to leave? You, 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, uh, we can't, you know, all the things that I want to implement, I can't implement right now. And, um, 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, um, you know, uh, technicals and things. And so he's like, I want to move where I'm, 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, they'll never stop being curious, like for you. I've never seen, once, I've known you for what, 15, 16 years? There never has been a, 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, I, I'd rather not have to, have to teach them.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Like, 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? Whatever, call my tax guy over here. Hey Eric, what do you think about this? And you call your, your other friends. It's fun.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  It's fun. Dude, on a side note, you, you mentioned, you know, 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.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  No.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  So one of my buddies, Jason, you don't know him, um, ordered shoes from Zappos. And he was trying to get them, you know, for a date. So you order some like nice fancy, not fancy, but dress shoes, because he didn't really have any dress shoes, but nice shoes. Nonetheless, but they weren't like too formal, but they were formal enough.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  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, uh, you should have it in three to four days. And he's just like, wait, that's going to be too late. I ordered these shoes for, for a date. And they're like, oh, this is the shipping you picked, and everything. But he's like, but I want to put my best foot forward. Shoe company, right?

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  And the person on the other hand 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, in those airport containers where you put your shoes?

• 13:31Speaker 00

  This was Zappos before Amazon bought them.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  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's, that caused him to continually evangelize Zappos and keep buying from it. And it's like, people forget the little things have such a huge impact on your brand and your marketing that people just like focus all their efforts on like, 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, you know, uh, our CPCs and get our CPAs down. We, we need to figure out how to rank higher on Google. I'm not saying you shouldn't think about a lot of those elements, but people forget

• 14:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Neil wouldn't have said this 15 years ago.

• 14:27Speaker 01

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

• 14:29Speaker 00

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

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yes, because I believe the fundamentals move the metrics more than fine tuning a campaign. Just like, how, 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 five times better than your competition means either winning or losing, right? Or if you, even if you look at the Uber story, what Uber did better than Lyft was subsidize more. In, in all transparency, that's what they did, they just made rides cheaper. They're 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.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  It helped win mind share 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.

• 15:26Speaker 00

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

• 15:37Speaker 01

  I've heard of Sidecar.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Sidecar was actually, I think, number one at the time, right? It was cheap, convenient to use, the, 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, the founder, like Travis Kalanick from Uber, he was just a hell of a competitor, right? 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, he eroded Sidecar away and then even Lyft away as well. So I, I think the, uh, the founder's competitiveness matters quite a bit as well. And it's all that, it's, it's all that excellence is the capacity to take pain quote. And Travis was the best competitor of the three, I think.

• 16:16Speaker 01

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

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Sales.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  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, you know, some Toyotas and Hondas and they're saying it, 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.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  You can say as a startup, you can move faster and all these kinds of things. You cannot stomach that much of a loss. It's too hard to find a company willing to give you five or 10 or $15 billion and say, it's okay if you lose this. There, there's just some markets and, and I would say AI is one of those markets. Anthropic and OpenAI, and a lot of these players are really massive. Um, and they would have never been massive if they couldn't have gotten billions of dollars. It's too expensive of an endeavor without being able to raise five, 10, $15 billion. I don't think someone who raised, if you only were able to raise one or two billion dollars, I believe you would have lost the game. It's just a question of capital.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  When you, we talked about Instinct last week, the, 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? And bless you.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Bless you.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  So i- i- if that's, 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 for, forever, right?

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Muse, yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, Muse, Meta Muse, exactly. So, um, for him, I think it's, I, I don't know how it's going to go, but he does have, he's growing 10% a day, day by day right now. But I do think he's going to have to over raise 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, it's, it's too tough, so.

• 18:19Speaker 01

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

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Which ones?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Uh, I just got a notice from high level the other day that they're integrating with Muse.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Shopify is in already?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  And dude, I, I think I, I told, talked about this in the last podcast and I had Muse send out some emails for me on M and A to reach out to like advisory companies.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  It didn't go that well initially.

• 18:51Speaker 01

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

• 19:03Speaker 00

  This is one response that you got?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, from Muse.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  And we had a video call, they're like, oh, it was really great talking to you, you know, how'd you hear about us? And I'm like, oh, I had Muse re- 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.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  So where's that call going?

• 19:31Speaker 01

  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 eight figures in revenue, a solid seven in profit. You know, uh, yeah, they'll take seven, not seven, they'll take eight X, that's in line with their thinking. I'm like, okay, I'm like, is it 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 a majority of their revenue. And I was like, uh, so there's a lot of risk here. Or they had another one for me that are like, business one in the United States? You can just pick up for very cheap upfront?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  And then the rest of the money will just, that, the company spits 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% and say, 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, uh, there goes, uh, a lot of the revenue and profit.

• 20:52Speaker 00

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