Why AI Can't Replace Marketers, Gary Vee's Random Content and Meta Muse AEO

An internet marketer cut his team from a couple hundred people to under 100 and credits AI and OpenClaw. Eric Siu and Neil Patel explain why AI cannot handle marketing work alone, and why clients pay for results, not effort. They cover a $17K a month content agency, Gary Vee on the monetization of random content, and how Meta Muse recommended a client's product, which is why getting recommended by AI is the new AEO. They also get into paid marketplaces inside AI platforms, Zuckerberg's all-in data center bet, marketing to robots and agents, Forrester's prediction that agents will influence 75% of B2B buying, and Marc Andreessen on the AI-native gap. They close on hiring people who are AI native and why the biggest AI ROI is getting recommended. 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 Key takeaways◾AI cannot handle marketing work alone, human judgment still matters◾Getting recommended by AI is the new AEO and the biggest ROI◾Hire for AI fluency, and spend on AI where it makes money Chapters00:00 Internet marketer says AI replaced his staff01:46 OpenClaw is unreliable03:45 Neil's call about acquiring an agency06:22 Why the agency is losing clients08:47 AI cannot handle marketing work alone11:21 AI feedback creates a bias toward views13:57 Clients pay for results, not effort16:23 Two types of consultants18:38 A $17K a month helper asks for more21:56 What the helper's team takes home24:32 Under $100K a year for years25:59 Equity upside at fast-growing companies28:16 An agency that kept growing for decades31:25 No right or wrong way to build a business32:24 Gary Vee: the monetization of random content35:11 How algorithms find interested viewers38:25 Being filmed at Web Summit40:58 A bakery's authentic viral post41:53 Meta Muse recommends a client's product43:38 A water softener search story45:30 The cost of not optimizing for new channels47:59 Paid marketplaces inside AI platforms50:07 Get into new marketplaces and plugins early51:24 Zuckerberg's all-in data center bet54:41 Marketing to robots and agents56:46 AI build-out as a share of GDP58:33 Forrester: agents will influence 75% of B2B buying1:00:06 Do you still need an assistant?1:02:00 What makes a good assistant1:05:48 Marc Andreessen on the AI-native gap1:09:03 Hiring people who are AI native1:10:57 Eric wants both skills in one hire1:13:36 Did Eric ever want to replace all humans?1:16:52 The biggest AI ROI is getting recommended1:18:13 What a low AI spend can still mean 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗟Welcome to Marketing School, one of the top business podcasts with over 61 million downloads. Each episode delivers actionable marketing tips and strategies from two entrepreneurs who truly practice what they preach. The show is hosted by Eric Siu, founder of Leveling Up and Single Grain, and Neil Patel, co-founder of Neil Patel Digital and recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 Marketer. 🎙️ Learn More About the Hosts Eric Siu – Leveling Up: https://www.youtube.com/@LevelingUpOfficial Neil Patel: https://www.youtube.com/@neilpatel 📩 Free Resources Ubersuggest: https://www.ubersuggest.com/ Answer The Public: https://www.answerthepublic.com/ ✅ Subscribe for Daily Marketing Insights!

• 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. I was just watching a well-known internet marketer, okay? And he was talking about how he cut from like hundreds of employees down to like less than a hundred right now, right? And what is the reason for that, you think, Neil?

• 0:46Speaker 01

  He put on Instagram that he's at 300.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  I'm just calling on Neil because I know he's not paying attention right now.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  I'm not paying attention.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  So I'm calling on Neil because this internet marketer had a couple hundred employees, cut down to less than 100 and says that AI is doing everything for him right now, okay? That AI is doing like 20 to 30 times more. And don't get me wrong, I'm the biggest proponent of AI. And Neil, you'll like this. So this guy was saying like, look, you know, OpenClaw. So he's talking about OpenClaw right now. He's like, OpenClaw is doing the work of like a bunch of other people right now. And it's better than him at copywriting, okay? I have a lot of problems with what's being said, so I respect this internet marketer. Again, you know this internet marketer. In fact, you've spoken at this person's events before. So let me just ask you, does it make you look good or bad as an entrepreneur when you talk about cutting hundreds of employees?

• 1:37Speaker 00

  And talking about how AI is making you much more efficient?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  It makes you look bad.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  It doesn't make you look good. And you shouldn't do it. As much as I love talking about AI, I don't like talking about having to cut people. In fact, I think that AI is not about eliminating jobs, it's about elevating capabilities. And so you look at this person, okay?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Or being way more efficient and getting more done for the same.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  Which is elevating capabilities, is it not? And so if AI is about elevating capabilities, it doesn't help you, it doesn't help you with recruiting when you say, hey, we've cut this many people and then we're gonna, we're looking at cutting even more people and we can do this and that. But I also think this person's credibility was hurt too. When they say right now, this interview only happened recently, when they say they're using OpenClaw and it's replacing employees. It's like, bro, first of all, OpenClaw sucks and it's unreliable, okay? Number one, that shows that you don't really know that much about AI.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  And there could be some security issues that you have to worry about.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  And there's even more security issues as of this Black October, right? Which is, which you can talk about in a moment.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  So more security issues came out?

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Oh, major security issues in internet. I'll update you in a moment. I hope, you probably have someone on this already, but number two.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Well, no, I don't use it myself, so I don't have to worry.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  I'll tell you in a second. So anyway, all that to say is, he's talking about, he's talking about how he uses AI so much, he's cutting employees, that doesn't make him look good. He's talking about how OpenClaw is doing the work. OpenClaw sucks now, so that ruins credibility too, right? And then the other thing is, um, the, he's talking about how it's better than him at copywriting, okay? So I don't, I don't think you can say that, okay? So like, AI is really good.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Wait, why can't you say that? Because if you suck at copywriting, it's probably better than.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  But this guy's good at copywriting.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  You can't be that good at copywriting if he says OpenClaw is better than.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  You know this guy. He's, he's a good copywriter. In fact, he's well-known in the industry for solid copywriting.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Do I know him well, well?

• 3:24Speaker 00

  You know him decently well. Yeah, but I'm not gonna name names right now.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  He can't be that good of a copywriter then.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  He's a good copywriter.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  You're telling me OpenClaw is better than most?

• 3:31Speaker 00

  He said that, but he's exaggerating. But that, that ruins credibility with someone that knows AI, like my, my, I'm not gonna say I'm amazing, right? But I know that one, OpenClaw sucks, and I know that he's good at copywriting, and I know that if he says, if OpenClaw is better than him at copyright, or AI is better than him at copyrighting, that he's full of it, that he cannot say that right now. And he's also full of it when he's, he's kind of talking about cutting employees. Even if you are, you don't say that openly. So I have a lot of problems with this because I think internet marketers coming into the AI space right now, AI is trending, right? You see all these people selling courses and I have nothing, no problems with courses, right? But this is what makes internet marketers look bad. When you start to talk about shit that you don't understand, and it just makes all internet marketers look bad.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yes, I went through the same thing this morning on my 10:30 call. And I was just like, are you serious?

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Tell us about the 10:30 call.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  So my 10:30 call, there was a agency in Europe that one of my team members found that said, we should look at this company to potentially acquire them. When my team member says we should look at this company, it doesn't mean we should buy them. What someone may tell them in that organization versus what I find or someone else may find as we continually do more diligence, we may end up finding out things we don't like and then you just back away. So today, we definitely backed away. So this agency has been around for a little bit less than 10 years. They focus on e-comm. Thank you for the waters.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  You do provide good service for this building.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  The, and I was making a joke there because sometimes some of the people inside the building don't provide the best service.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  True.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  So I was talking to them about their agency. They have, they had 30-something plus people. They recently did a round of layoffs. They're in the low twenties. And their goal within next year is to be at eight to 10. I said, how is this possible? They said they have low churn. And they said.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Eight to 10 in revenue?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Eight to 10 people. So next year, their goal is to have eight to 10 people. So they went from 30, 30 into the low twenties.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  I see.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  So next year, if we buy this company, by the time we take it over and we're running it, by then and next year, let's say it takes six months to buy, but by then and next year, they would have cut down the employees even more to eight to 10. And I said, how is this even possible? Do you guys have high churn? They said, no, we have really low churn. Which is false because they lost quite a bit of revenue. So if you look at it from a revenue standpoint, no, they actually have quite a bit of churn, but they're figuring things out. And they're just like, we have this technology, we've figured out how to use AI. They specialize in e-comm marketing. They're just like, we don't need all the people. We can scale up to infinite amount of ad spend with just two people. I'm like, this is impossible.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  They're like, yeah, technology, AI, everything can do it for us. We don't need tons of headcount.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  And I was like, and I asked this guy more detailed questions. I was like, so once it feels like a half a billion dollars in ad spend a year or a billion, like, yeah, we're pretty sure we can do it with two people, maybe three.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Pretty sure.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Right? And I was like, how so? Because we manage a lot in ad spend. And they're just like, and we definitely don't have two people or even 10 people on ad spend management. We have way more. I don't know what the number is, but we have a lot in just paid ads. And they're just like, you know, the technology is really good, you barely need any people. I'm like, well, that means you're just letting the technology do everything and the humans are just checking to make sure it doesn't screw up. So I was just like, then why does someone need to pay agency for that? This is why your agency isn't growing as fast, you're providing mediocre results, and this is why you're losing clients. This is my opinion, at least. I didn't tell them all of this, but this is my opinion. I'm like, this is why you're losing clients. This is why you lost three of your four biggest clients in the last year.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Hence, when they said there are barely any churn, I'm like, well, you lost three of your four biggest clients. To me, that's not very little churn. I don't need a spreadsheet to figure that out. But I took it as, you're just using AI to do the work and optimize for your profitability? You're not optimizing for the client's results. If you were, you wouldn't just focus on gutting everyone in your company and only have two people and just be like, yeah, I can streamline it all. Well, if everyone's doing the same thing through technology, why will your campaign perform better than all the other people's? It won't. You need to do something outside the box. I'm not saying every person can do that. I'm not saying technology can or can't do that. I'm just saying if everyone's using the same tech to manage everything,

• 8:00Speaker 01

  you're not gonna get great results. You're gonna get mediocre results because you're doing what everyone else is doing. And we know this in marketing, you have to do something special. And you know, the guy wanted to sell to us and I was like, yeah, I'm not buying this company. I told my guy right away, I'm like, this is just a waste. He's just trying to use AI to cut all his employees. And he's like, yeah, from the last few years, our profit was decent, it's gone down, but now, next year, our profit's gonna be amazing. And when I asked him what your business, what the biggest struggle in your business was, he's like, closing your business. And I'm like, yeah, no crap, because you have a terrible reputation. You're not gonna get the referrals, you're not gonna get tons of RFPs, because all you're doing is just trying to streamline work, maximize your profit. He's like, human cost is my highest cost, and then just pocket all the money. I'm like, this is not a business I wanna buy.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  That's the worst way to look at it. When, when people say, oh, I just wanna cut more humans, cut more humans, no. Like, you want to hire, again, AI is not about eliminating jobs, it's about elevating capabilities, right? Which means people go up or out. That's how I view it at, at my company, you're either up or you're out. And people, a lot of people are, are meeting the challenge. But when you, by the way, guys, if, when you're trying to sell a company, people can, can see that you reek of desperation, right? So you can smell it immediately on the call, that he's just trying to offload and trying to go for an exit. And usually, by the way, if you're trying to just sell for an exit, it doesn't end up that well. If you try to build for the long term, it usually ends up better. And all the people end up courting you. You might wanna put it in front of you a little more. Yeah, there you go. So that brings me to another point, Neil.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  So I don't believe that AI can handle marketing work alone. I'm gonna give you a few examples, and I'm curious to hear a few examples on your side, okay? So even for my YouTube channel, okay? So my YouTube channel, when I let the skill just do its work without me implementing my taste for five to 10 minutes or so, it's really bad. Like, I posted a few videos recently where I just let the skill do its thing, and I, I thought it learned from my recent videos, it didn't learn, right? No. Same thing with our, our ad creative that we do for clients. We can't just let the AI do its thing. Same thing for our AEO, SEO content. We just can't. We still need to have an editor in the loop, right? Same thing with our X content. So Max, who is actually on this call right now, he manages my, my X account from time to time. Or like, a good chunk at a time.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  When he was just using his X, the X skill that he forked off of mine, he can see that the reach was going down. But he starts writing again in his voice this week, boom, the reach goes back up. And then same thing with my, my videos that I cross-posted from YouTube. The moment I start writing again, instead of like, I don't know, 1,000 views, it's like 15, 20,000 views, right? Which is pretty decent for, for a video on, on YouTube, like especially for B2B. So all that to say is, you still need the human in the loop. And for anybody that goes to you right now and says, oh, AI's already figured it all out, you should probably run in a different direction. Because as much as I like it right now, and as much as I want it to be like that, it's not that right now.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Yes, and I, I, you know, take my hats off to Eric on this one because Eric was in a very different camp a year ago. In which when AI technology. He came out, he saw a lot of opportunities and he believed that it can disrupt in many ways and he still believes that. But Eric isn't stubborn in which just because everyone's talking about something like AI and marketing, what it can do. He won't just blindly say, yeah, this is what's gonna happen. Here's the end of all humans. You won't need as many of them. He'll adapt with whatever he learns or time and Eric was, I would say, more

• 11:20Speaker 01

  more extreme AI a year ago, in my personal opinion than you are now. It doesn't mean he's using the technology any less. He's quickly used it and adapted and figured out where it's weak and where it's strong. And that's the key. I know Eric's not employed, but that is the key. When you're hiring marketing employees in AI. You don't want them to drink the Kool-Aid. You want them to adapt to whatever is best for the strategy, for the clients, for the results. Instead of just having a tunnel vision and just being like, this is how it's gonna be. And it doesn't mean that AI in a year from now won't be better and be able to do a lot more stuff. And Eric may go back to saying like, oh, wow, you don't need X, Y, and Z for this. You can just use AI.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Because as technology changes, show should how you interact or do your strategy or do your marketing. The interesting thing that I see with AI is it creates a lot of bias. And I'll give you a real life example of this. Eric was talking about my Instagram profile on how I'm doing like clone type videos. Where there'll be like two or three of me and he's like, oh, they're getting pretty good views. And he was looking at my stats and Eric was right. I don't look at my stats on Instagram that often. I thought I got like, you know, a hundred thousand or five hundred thousand views a month. And Eric's like, no, you got a decent amount of views. And I looked at my Instagram analytics and I think I sent you a screenshot of it.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  I think I was getting like 11 million views or something like that in 30 days. I go, actually, people view my stuff on Instagram. And some of the guys I work with were like, we need to do more clone videos. I'm like, why do we need to do more clone videos? Keep in mind, they also take longer to create.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  I don't have an issue of putting in time, but they were using AI and AI gives you feedback on what's working and what's not. And AI was pushing them to do more clone videos like uh, this is a good CMO versus a bad CMO versus a mediocre CMO.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  This is a good entrepreneur versus mediocre entrepreneur versus a bad entrepreneur. And Eric knows this, how much revenue am I gonna generate from those videos? Exactly. So do I care if I get a million views or zero views?

• 13:29Speaker 00

  No.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  So I was like, AI is just telling these guys to tell me to create content on shit, excuse my language. That won't make me a dollar in revenue and is not targeted towards my ideal customer. So why the heck am I gonna record this content? And I remember I had to create 30 videos that day because of my travel schedule. And it ended up being that I ended the day with 27 videos. Cause I refuse to create videos on stuff that is useless.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  And it also pisses you off when you, it's like, at least for me, I shouldn't speak for you. But if I see it on my list, when people use to generate the topic ideas, I just get more and more pissed off as I see more and more of it. And then I just don't wanna record anymore. So, yeah.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yes. And I got so pissed off that I had a talk with them and Eric knows me really well now.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  And I know that you know this person really well too.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  When I get mad, I usually don't get mad, but like when people are wasting my time and it just keeps me a recurring thing. I just, I just go off and I don't have a temper, but I'm very direct.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Oh, you just don't let up.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't let up.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  You don't yell, but you don't let up.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  And I was just like, why do, why should, I asked him like, why should I keep paying you? Like, this is very direct. And then I was like, I pay X dollars a month. This is what I'm getting. And I'm like, I don't see the value. And then it went into, you don't see the value in our work. You're belittling us. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm just telling you very direct that I pay X dollars. I expect Y. If I can't get Y, I'm gonna look for other solutions. I'm not saying your time is not more valuable or less valuable. That is your decision. I'm just telling you as a consumer, paying you X dollars, I'm expecting Y. If I can't get Y, I'm gonna look for other solutions.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  So why should I? And it went down a track of, hey, you're a client of mine. And this is a lesson for anyone who's a consultant or an agency owner. There's like, you're a client of mine. You don't understand all the value we create and how good we make you look and all this. That is the perception of the person providing the service. As a person paying for the service, I'm paying for X. If I can't see X and someone else is providing me Y, but I don't care for Y, but they think I should care for Y. That means there's a disconnect and that means usually they're not gonna continually get paid. And I'm gonna go find someone who can get me X. Now, their whole philosophy on creating social content for me is you look good.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  This builds your brand. You know, look at what your brand can do for you. And my response, and Eric knows this, is I don't care how my brand looks. Of course, I don't want it to look bad, but uh, from a perspective of, I don't care how big my brand gets. Uh, my goal is not to be a Tony Robbins or LeBron James and those are big examples, but bigger examples. In my space would be a Gary Vaynerchuk or Alex Hermosy or Cody. She has a big brand as well, Cody Sanchez. I'm not trying to optimize for my brand. I'm trying to optimize for revenue. I'm not saying the Gary Vaynerchuk approach does not drive revenue. I'm saying for my business, that approach doesn't work for me. It doesn't mean it can't work for Gary or someone else.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  I'm just saying for my business and what I'm trying to do, it doesn't fit in my playbook and it doesn't work for me. So I'd rather stick to what I know that works for me and double down on that and ignore the rest. Because as you guys all have heard Eric and I say on this podcast, there's no wrong or right way to do marketing. You have to figure out what works for you.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  So there's, there's two ways to win as a consultant or actually two approaches to being a consultant. Okay? So we have this one consultant right now, helps us with LinkedIn. Thousand comments, fifteen hundred comments, two thousand comments. Amazing, right? Lot of engagement. He's good. He's very young too. He's 18 years old. But whenever I give him feedback, it's very direct. I was like, hey man, I don't know if this is gonna work because you're getting all the engagement in the world. But it's not driving us any book meetings right now, right? And we're gonna have to end the engagement. So this is also one way to handle the engagement early, right? Like he's just started to nip in the bud. But every single week, he's like, hey man, thanks for the learnings. I'm trying to get better. I'm trying to get better. I'm like, he is getting better. He's trying, right? But there's no, look at all the effort that I'm putting in. You don't understand the value of this. If you have to fight like that, it's just not gonna work, right?

• 17:40Speaker 00

  No, we do have another consultant that we worked with and he's probably gonna listen to this, right? Hello? So what happens with that one is like, he's asking for more money, but at the same time, the results aren't getting better. In fact, the results are getting worse. And then if you look at them, if you look at the thumbnails that are being posted, they're more and more AI generated. And there's not a lot of thought that are going into them, right? So you have two different camps here. You have the 18 year old who's like, I'm gonna get better and I understand if I'm gonna be fired. Okay?

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Which is the right attitude, by the way.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Right attitude.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  And I trust he's gonna figure out in life, no matter what. Then you have the other attitude where it's like, you just don't understand, you know, we're not getting.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Wait, can we go back a bit?

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Eric just said, he believes he's gonna figure out what, uh, he's gonna figure out things in life. I know what you mean by that, but for everyone listening, why is that the right attitude and what do you mean by that?

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Yep. So when you get feedback, you should look at as a gift. Ninety-nine percent of people do not look at feedback as a gift. He sees it as a gift. And you can see genuinely, he's like, oh yeah, that's good, right? There's no like, he's not getting defensive about it, right? So he has a curious and adaptable mindset and that's exactly what you need to win as an entrepreneur.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Yes. And when Eric says he'll win in life, he's not necessarily saying he's gonna win in Eric's organization. He's just saying generally in life, this person has the right attitude to do well.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Exactly. Now, the other attitude is like the example that you gave me from, you know, someone that we know, right? And it's, it's defensive. When you're defensive like that, you're not in the headspace to wanna get better. And if you don't wanna get better, then no matter how good your coaching is or how good my coaching is, you can't get better and you're always gonna be adversarial. And if it's an adversary relationship, we might as well just not work together.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  So one of the guys that helps us out, we pay him seventeen thousand dollars a month. So call it two hundred ish thousand dollars here.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  We've been paying them for so many years.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  All right. So, and they help us with content and stuff like that. All right? And this is for me personally, right? But it's through the company. They're helping the company, but you know, they're, they're working with me. They're coming to my house and all this kind of stuff, which makes life somewhat easy, which is why I haven't changed as much. But seventeen thousand dollars a month is a good amount of money.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  So I try to get more stuff done out of them for giving them more money. All right. So I was like, I need more videos. I want these kind of pieces of content. They're like, okay. And we, I met the guy for breakfast and then, and then the guy's like, all right. Uh, this will be another 10 grand a month. I said, okay, sounds good. Let me just run it by a few other people in my organization. I ran it through them right then and there. I was texting them. This was on a Saturday, but I can get ahold of my co-founder anytime or the CEO. I'm like, yeah, what do you guys think about this? Cause I was not a hundred percent sure. So I just want to run it by people before I commit to anything. They're like, yeah, why not? So they agreed to want it.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Uh, fast forward an hour. They're like, I thought about it. I don't know if I want to do it for that amount. I think it's way too much work. I want more money. I'm providing so much. I'm like, I didn't come up with a price. You came up with a price. You're changing on me. So that A pisses me off, right?

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. An hour later, dude.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this is like, come on, dude. And then it goes into arguing about, hey, you need to be more grateful. Look at what we're doing. Look how we make me look like you need to realize. And I'm like, I just asked you, don't give me a speech on why I should pay you more.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  Or why you should be grateful.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yes. I, I really hate that. And I always try to tell people, you should charge whatever you want to charge. I will pay whatever makes sense for my business. If it doesn't align, that's okay. I have to do what's best for my business and you have to do what's best for your business. And keep in mind, not everything works out for everyone and we should just be understanding. That's the way the business world works. I wish I could charge people $10 million.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  You know, all day long for contracts and just make more profit. Won't work like that. Procurement comes in and be like, no, your margins are too high. This is what you need to charge. And technically I don't even get to quote $10 million for all these campaigns. They beat you down well in advance and you know, get you down and down and pitch you against seven other companies. But as we're going through this, at one time I was just at my place and we were creating content. And we were going over this thing that was $10,000 and they negotiated for them. And I'm like, look dude, if you're telling me you want 12 or 14, I can't tell you yet. Cause I don't know what it looks like. So we settled on the first month, they'll do it for additional 10.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  And I remember sitting in my place as we were recording it. They did one. They came back a week later to do three more. And they started discussing how, you know, it's a lot of work. I need to see the value and I don't, I don't appreciate what they're doing. I'm like, uh, this is just a business relationship. I pay X, I get Y. I like the people, but I pay X, I get Y. And if it doesn't work out for me, it doesn't work out for me. If it doesn't work out for you, don't do it for me. It's, it's that simple. So I, I had a clear talk with them. I said, you guys have been doing business, right? Like, yeah. Like how long? And they were just like, we've been in marketing, running our own marketing company for, I think it's almost 10 years at this point. And I said, okay, what's your take home?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  So they're all sitting there. They're like $5,000 a month each. We do over a million in revenue. So I was like, you're telling me you do all this work and you only make $5,000 a month, sometimes $7,000 a month. They're like, yeah, but look at what we build. This is amazing.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Why not just get a job?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. You nailed it. That's what I just said. So I said to them, I'm like, why don't you just guys go get a job? You've been doing this for a long time. You've been making roughly all this money. And they're like, you don't get it, dude. We put all these systems and processes within our organization. We're ready to scale now. I was like, well, if you didn't have the systems and processes, that means you were doing the work mainly yourself, right? They're like, yes. So I was like, though. So in theory, your profit margin should have been higher because you were doing the work without the systems and processes and giving to other people, which would have cost you more money.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  And they're just like, my, I, I had a DEXA scan that day. And I was joking with them because you know, when they measure your head.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  They're gonna bring your blood sugar up.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  No, no. You know, when they measure your body, it's like your bone density and stuff. It doesn't actually tell you like how powerful your brain is or anything like that. But I was making a joke because the, the density for my head is extremely high. Like I'm in like the 98th or 99th percentile.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  More brain in it? Is that what you're saying?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  No, no, no. It just means it's more like tough, I think.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  But doesn't mean my brain is bigger.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  I get what you're saying. Yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Right? But I was just joking with them. I'm like, dude, am I in a one percentile with my head?

• 24:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  And I was just messing around with them, right? And then they were joking around. They're like, does this mean you're in the, uh, you're not in the one percentile with the rest of your body? Like they're just joking around with me, like my muscle. And I'm like, yeah, I am weak. No, no one knows. This is the first thing I asked you. I'm like, do I look skinnier? Cause I'm trying to gain weight right now. Uh, and they were just like, look dude, we're not as smart as you. I'm like, dude, first off, I'm not that smart. But they're like, we're not as smart as you. We don't know how to just optimize business. I'm like, this is simple. If you collect a million in revenue, you're telling me you have three main partners, which are the three guys who run the company. The rest are outsourced employees. I'm like, how the heck are you not making money? Why don't you guys just go get a job?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  You can easily get a job for 10 grand a month. And then they got, or the main guy got pissed at me. He's like, dude, I'm worth way more than 10 grand a month. I'm like, okay, 15 grand a month. I'm just making up a number here. And he's just like, I'm worth way more than 15 grand a month. You're belittling my marketing experience. I'm like, I'm like, you're taking this the wrong way. I'm telling you, if you're making $5,000 a month and this is what you've been making for a long time, call it seven max. And you times it by 12, this is less than a hundred thousand a year.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  That's pop below poverty.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  In LA, it is hard to live off of that.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  No, you're below poverty line in LA.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  I did not know that.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  So I'm like, if you're making that for many years, and when I say many years, this is the max I've been making for like five, six years. I'm like, why are you continually doing this? You're better off taking a job. They're like, I'm worth way more. Well, a business making a million dollars in revenue that makes no profit is useless. At that point, move along and get a job.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  Yep. By the way, okay. So I'll give you the numbers here. So low income housing, okay. Low income housing limits, uh, 70,000. So you can qualify if you're like a 70,000 income, you can qualify for low income housing. So not poverty line exactly, but, poverty line would be actually like one person household, 16,000 a year. So a little different. That's federal poverty line. But to qualify for low income housing, but going back to your point though, and at some point, look, I get it. Like you and I both support entrepreneurship, right? Like go for it. Absolutely. But if you're going for 10 years and you're still ready to scale and you, it still hasn't quite happened and the traction quite isn't there. There's no shame in getting a job. There's plenty of places that would love to hire you where you can make 15, 20 grand a month or so, if you've got the experience. And then you can get insurance and all this other stuff and don't have to worry about all this other stuff.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Dude, not just that, you know, there's a lot of talented marketers. There's even a lot of marketing companies. I was, I was talking to someone who is interested in joining the workforce and they were entrepreneur. And I said, you should go work for a company like high level, because they're blowing up in the marketing space. They're like, why? I'm like, okay. Other than the company is, is growing really fast, good product, uh, doing well. I'm like, what people don't realize is if you work really hard for a company like that, or Uber, or Airbnb, OpenAI, et cetera.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  One, you can make money by rising. Two, that helps you with whatever you want to do in the future. Three, these company shares are worth money. If they 10X, 20X in size and decide to sell or go public or whatever outcome they do, or they do, um, they can say private like Stripe and still buy out, uh, employees, right? From their stock options or however that works. You can become a millionaire even as a entry job or a middle job without even climbing the ranks. And people tend to forget that. And it's just like, if you're really skilled at what you do, like the guys who I was giving the feedback on, they're really good at editing.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  And it's just like, wait, this is a great skillset. People will pay you for this. Why don't you just go get a job and make money in other ways?

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Imagine if they, a company like an OpenAI absorbed their editing capabilities, right? OpenAI is probably different. They already have that, right? But they would get paid a good amount. They get stock options as well.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  16Z. 16Z has their own production team.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  Eric Tornberg's media company.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  I did not know that.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  And that's why they're doing well in media.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So like, there's a lot of value in what he's doing. I think he just has to reposition it. I think, cause editing's dime a dozen. How many people do you see in your DMs? You don't check your DMs much, but I see my DMs, hey, brother, hey, brother, hey, brother. Want me to edit for you? Hey, brother, hey, brother. You're looking for editor, right? It's all the same people over. 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,

• 28:53Speaker 00

  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. Over.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 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. Anyway, that actually brings me to another point. Cause yesterday I, I sent you a text message. You're like, no clue, right? But this actually ties in with it. Cause you know of an agency that's been around for 30, 40 years or so. And you said they've, they've always done good work. They haven't done like a lot of acquisitions, right? Do you know who I'm talking about now?

• 29:42Speaker 01

  I know who you're talking about.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  But the number you are telling me wasn't, uh, that's not revenue, that's profit.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. So my, my, my mistake on that one.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's not, let's not.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  Now you can't reveal it to me, so you have to text me afterwards. So, yeah. Cause I was, I was talking to a friend.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  They're US-based.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you should talk about.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  They have a ton of people in India, but yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  You should talk about that company because that is an example of a person that just kept going, kept going, kept going. And that's a good, the, the, by the way, that's another contrast where it's like, you've done acquisitions, Gary V does things a certain way. This person, this entrepreneur is just like growing it for a very long time. There's a, there's an entrepreneur I know in YPO has an agency. I think they do two or 300 million a year, but he's just done it for a very long time with his brother.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you're spot on. So there's an agency guy that I ended up learning about because they became a customer. And became friends with the owner. They're a different kind of agency. They're not a marketing agency, but they also can provide marketing services, but that's not their core capabilities. They pretty much try to do everything. Think of like a mini Accenture, okay? And I was talking with, um, uh, the founder, uh, you know, they're really into Silicon Valley and all that kind of stuff. Think like a West Coast entrepreneur. They've been doing this for, call it 30 years, if I had to guess, something like that, maybe more.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Almost our entire lives.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Almost our entire lives. And they're, they barely did acquisitions.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  I don't know how many acquisitions they did, but call it less than five. And when I was talking to the founder, I was just like, how'd you grow? They're like, after 10 years, you start getting more included into more larger pitches, assuming you did work, good work in the first 10 years. And bigger brands just get to know you more. And then you just keep doing it for a long time. And they do billions in revenue, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. I don't think they hit a billion yet in profit.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  But close.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  But close. And I'm not gonna reveal the agency name, but people can look them up and get some of this information because you know how like people apply for these awards like Ernst & Young, you know, Business of the Year, or Inc. Magazine, or Inc. 5000, or whatever it's called. So a lot of their financials are public. It's not like I'm revealing something someone can't just Google. It may not be up to date, but plus or minus 10, 15, 20%. Either way, at this point, what's the difference if someone does 2 billion, or 2 and a half, or 3 billion, or 4, like you know they're a large company?

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  I think it's still independently owned. I haven't checked, but it just spits off a ton of cash.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  I'm willing to bet it is independently owned because for such a large organization, very quickly, the website's very AI for it. Everything's AI on the website, right? And that takes a founder's mentality to do that. By the way, we should talk about this real quick. So we just earlier, Neil and I talked about how there's no right or wrong way to do business. So you think about this. Oh, how did McDonald's get founded? Well, Ray Kroc actually stole from these two people that grew, they started a burger shop in Arcadia, my hometown. I don't know if you know that.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  I didn't know it was in Arcadia.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  It was a burger shop in Arcadia. It wasn't called McDonald's yet.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  No, I know that.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. But then McDonald's, the spinoff of San Bernardino, and then Ray Kroc found this thing and he, he makes a real estate play, right? Then you have this guy who started this business. He's been doing it for 40 plus years and it sounds like he's mostly bootstrapped it and gone along the whole ways. Then you have, uh, Morris, Morris, um, Morris Chang, I think, from, uh, TSMC. He started that company when he's 55 years old, in 1987. So I was one year old at that time, right? But there's, so there's no right or wrong way to do, or you have Jensen, who just slogged the way at gaming first, couldn't quite make it work, almost bankrupted so many times, but somehow made it work, right? So whether it's business or marketing, there's no right or wrong way to do it. Which actually then leads me to wanna talk about the Gary V piece because I, I actually, um, I pulled up this video, Neil, and I'll share it to you.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  And then you can, you can talk about what's happening on the video.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  So what Gary's saying here is the trend for 2026 is the monetization of random content. And then we can react to this.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  1909, it was like you can cash your inner passion. So if you're a hardcore Star Trek collector, if you really go crazy for two years on your blog at the time, and on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube at the time, eventually you'll get to a place where you can get T-shirts sold, sponsorship, you can go speak at Star Trek Con and all that stuff. What I'm saying here is very different. This is about where we are now in overall marketing and overall communication, which is we're now in the interest graph, not the social graph. We're now in a place where I, Gary, could tomorrow make my first ever piece of content around surfing ever.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  And even though all my followers do not follow me for surfing, the way the AI algorithms now work is when I post about surfing and why surfboards are good, and why you should buy a surfboard for me, or why this is a good surfboard, or surf chalk, or whatever the hell I learned about surfboards, that content is going to reach people that are in a high propensity interest of surfboards. Why is this important? I believe for everybody who's watching right now, if they started posting content of everything that they are interested in, everything, not passion, but passions, posted everything that's random to them. I just took up checkers and the first video is them learning how to play checkers. So not only their passions, but their curiosities, the rise of curiosity content.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  You're curious, you're exploring, you're on training wheels, but you're learning. My brother AJ does not know how to ride a bike. I probably said that because I think it's funny. But if he started making content as a 39-year-old man about his journey on learning how to ride a bike, here is my belief of the world we now live in. For many of you, these random pieces of social content become the first indicator to a massive financial and happiness opportunity. The monetization of random content. You post something funny about sunflower seeds because you spit one out on your friend and you're like, that's funny, let's make another one. And you find yourself six months later, getting $5,000 from a sunflower seed brand to do content. It's about a very simple concept, which is why not?

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Why not post something random all the time that you're genuinely interested in? You're not watching this video and you're just going random for the sake of random because you believe I'm right. Though honestly, that's probably not a bad idea either, but obviously if it's grounded in truth and authenticity, it's gonna work better. When all of you start putting out more.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  What do you think?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  I, I think he's spot on. And the reason that works today is the algorithms of social networks are very different than they were when we first started. When we first started, you had friends. People followed you for a specific reason. You had friends and followers. Technically, when you first started, it was friends. Then it became followers, right? Because it would usually be people that you know. And they would follow you for something specific, entrepreneur content, marketing content for you and I, uh, self-help, uh, cooking, lifestyle, whatever it may be. Now, the way that algorithms work is if you post content, your followers and your friends don't necessarily see it. They try to figure out how the engagement is and who the video is right for, and they try to show it to more of those people versus just the people that follow you.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  And that's what I mean when I say he's spot on in which if you're interested in surfing, the way the algorithms work, even if you don't have any followers who care about surfing, they'll go and find the people that should see it. And if they engage with it and it does well, they'll continually just show it to more people who are interested in surfing. And eventually that can lead you to make money around that topic. I do agree you can make money from it, but if you wanna make large sums, call it 5,000, $10,000, and you want the money to be consistent, you can't, and Gary's not saying this, uh, I don't wanna assume he's saying this, but you can't, and, and he of course knows this, uh, really well.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  You can't just post one surfing video to get those sponsorships, to continually get those contracts around specific things like surfing, you would have to start producing more and more of that content. So then that way, you get paid from a surfing company. If you posted one video on surfing and it did really well, but you stopped talking about surfing, it's very rare that you're going to get companies reaching out to you, offering you money for surfing-related content. But just post on anything you're interested in, and then from there, you'll grow your reach and then you can figure out what you wanna double down on.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  So what I would say with Gary V saying post random content is it works as long as you're authentic, right? So I had a YouTube consultant reach out to me recently. She said, oh, all you need to do is just copy what all the other people are doing. Look at all these other, I'm like, but I don't wanna, it's not authentic to me. But Neil and I are a little older now, right? So maybe younger versions of us would post, you know, random, Neil's journey to getting bulked, right? Like bulking up, for example. That can be a fun journey, right? And I bet you people would follow, like, people would follow along for that. Or me trying on my journey to get better at tennis, right? So these are all interesting things and it's not to say that I don't like posting about it, but, um, I think if you're younger right now, definitely do it. I think if you're older, you have a business already, you know, maybe you can just focus. If you're a little more established, you can just focus on one niche.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  But, but by the way, when you're younger, what do you have? You have a lot of what? Time. You don't have money, but you have time. So you might as well just try everything, right? You don't need to try to figure out how to place yourself in the niche, especially if you're listening to this right now and you're, you're like 20 years old. You don't need to worry about that right now. You kinda need to just test a bunch of things and figure it out. And we, we said this before, you throw spaghetti against the wall. And AI has never been more pro spaghetti against the wall, um, versus anything else that I've seen, so.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Dude, you're so right. I remember I was going to a conference called. Uh, Web Summit. And it was in Canada. This is a long time ago. They have different versions of it. Some of them are called Collision, although I think they're changed Collision and got rid of that name and just now they call them all Web Summit. And I remember this was a long time ago and this is when Gary Vaynerchuk was talking about more about not creating content for the sake of creating content for social, like consider documenting your life and just living your life.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Having someone follow you around.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Uh huh. And it makes it easier. And you did that for a while. I think Noah followed you around.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Noah followed me and then when he almost got ran over by a car or he almost ran into a car, I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my first time was at Web Summit and I did not know my team had sent someone to just record me. Some guy comes up, he's like, hey, what's up? And uh, he just kept recording. I'm like, what the heck is this? And I didn't know if it was like a random person and he just kept doing it. And I remember people would come up to me, ask me questions and he would just try to record it all. And then he was giving me fever. I'm like, what the heck is this? What's happening here? They're like, oh yeah, we're, we're, we're trying this thing that, you know, Gary V talks about. And I don't think Gary V is actually wrong. I think he's right. That is a more efficient way to do it. But I also believe that works well for Gary V and it jives with his personality.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  For my personality, and it doesn't mean Gary's wrong, but for my personality, I personally did not like it. I like my privacy. Eric knows this. I'm, I'm an introvert more than extrovert. You would agree with that, right? I keep a lot of my life private. I did not like it at all. I told the guy very kindly to stop recording. And he's like, no, I was hired. I'm like, I'm the owner of the company. You'll get paid for the day. You no longer have to record. You'll get paid for whatever they promise you. I'm done recording. And I'm like, I don't want to be rude. I'm just more of a private person. I do not like a camera following me around. It's just me personally. I'm like, but you can go home, chill with your family if you have family and you'll still get paid. And we would recommend you, you're a nice guy. I'm not trying to be rude. This is just not me.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  You have to figure out the type of content and the type of marketing that resonates with you. And I think a lot of brands get that wrong, especially when they're creating social content. They just try to hop on with whatever the latest trend is. And that's a great way to get views, but that's not a good way to generate revenue.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  So let me show you this, Neil. So this is from a, you, you're talking about um, being authentic to your brand, right? So what I'm showing on my screen right now, there's this bakery called Astoria Chicago. Okay? So what it says, it's a, it's a cake. Okay. It says, you know, never supporting me, but asking for my resources is crazy, right? There's a lot of people like that in life, right? So this one got a hundred thirty thousand likes. It was posted on uh, likes. It was posted on uh, October fourteenth, which is pretty recent, right? Seven hundred fifty nine comments, but a hundred thirty thousand likes. You have to imagine it's probably got millions of views. But it's like, this is authentic to them. Astoria Cafe and Bakery, right? This is actually creative marketing. Or by the way, if you can't figure out how to be more creative, guys, grooms, there's a little Shrek on this groom right now, right? These are ogre gummies. So each one is shaped like an ogre, right?

• 42:53Speaker 00

  So there's creative ways to do it that are authentic to you, but don't just say, you know, all of a sudden you're like a, you're a water bottle brand that became a skateboard brand. Maybe that's not so authentic. Hey, Rob Hoffman says Meta Muse now recommending for uh, our client's product as the best option on the market. So you can see the muse up here, right? And it's like, hey, I want to start a newsletter. Which platform should I use? Please just choose one for me. And this has Beehive, done deliberating. It takes zero percent your subscription. Substack takes ten percent, dah dah dah dah dah. But to get listed number one, I'll tell you what, one example. The other day, um, I was using my Grok bot. I was like, hey, I want to figure this and this out over here. I'm like, what should I use as a connector? It's like, you should use this connector. I went to it, no problem. Oh, it's like, oh, you, for one hundred dollars, you get five, five dollar discount. But for three hundred dollars, you get thirty dollar discount. I instantly put in three hundred dollars to get the, get the discount, right?

• 43:38Speaker 00

  But I'm not really thinking about it. And even today, because there's all this Black October, like all these security issues happening right now. So I ran a CloudFlare security skill and I was like, it's like, oh, it's going to cost you a hundred dollars to run this audit on all of your products right now. I'm like, do it, right? So it's just like, it's just doing it now. And, and I'm just like, well, how do you get listed for these? You're going to have to do more AEO, you're going to have to do more SEO. It hasn't changed, right? Um, but I think getting recommended because you, you have Claude Duette just came out this week. Okay. Meta Muse, you have Instinct, you have Grok Bot, you have OpenAI Dots. And this is just the next surface for AEO SEO.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  It is, but most businesses don't understand the revenue loss that they're going to get by not optimizing for this. And I'll share a really recent example. My co-founder, who you know, sold his house in Las Vegas and he's renting a house now until he figures out, you know, where he's going to build his next house.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  He's gonna move here?

• 44:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no. He'll stay in Las Vegas. He got a really good deal. So like, sometimes you just take the money when someone offers you a lot of money for something that you built in two years and you lived in it only for a few months. You're like.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, that reminds me of someone else I know.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, so in his new rental, he has a really good price. The landlord will not pay for stuff like curtains or water softener in Vegas because of the weather. Water softener is a nice feature. So he calls up a company, a company for water softener. He Googles, uh, quotes him seventy six hundred dollars.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  And you said he Googled it?

• 45:10Speaker 01

  He Googled, okay. All right. He used to use Claude a lot more, but now he's been using Grok because of the usability. It's just easier for him.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Grok Bot?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Okay. So then he has Grok, just find him more companies to schedule appointment, come to his house, based on when he's free as well. Uh, three companies come. He got the cheapest quote of four thousand something dollars. I think it was forty eight hundred, so less than five grand. And he's going to go with the company and sign up with them. The problem is, is that company, like most companies, never really optimized to be shown in, you know, G E O or, you know, optimizing for these bots. But the ones who are and the ones who are getting pulled and are showing up are generating revenue that you can't really track.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Like as a business, you're not really, most businesses, they don't have the tracking, they're not asking questions. They don't really know that they got that appointment because of Grok. And if they optimize more for Grok, they can get more of those appointments and they can win more business or optimize for Claude or Chat G P T or Gemini or whatever it may be. But businesses miss out on that. It's just like the same thing with like the iPhone Duo. People think about, oh, the cost. I gotta, you know, if you're optimizing for Grok, oh, this costs me money. Oh, uh, Grok costs money to use. Oh, uh, the iPhone Duo is two thousand dollars, at least in the United States. People forget, yes, there's costs that all these consumers pay to use this and some of them have free plans. Some of these products cost money.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  But what's a cost of not actually optimizing your business for these new devices or channels? So if you don't optimize for Grok, even though it costs you money or Claude or Chat G P T, you're losing a lot of potential revenue. Same with the iPhone Duo. How many businesses are not optimizing their web experience for the Duo? And Eric made a good point. He ordered it. He's probably going to cancel it and wait for the next generation to come. Uh, because a lot of apps aren't compatible for it, but if you don't adapt to these devices and we already know based on how quickly the Duo sold out and now the shipping time is, I think, Jan twenty fifth roughly. You are screwed because if it's that popular and more and more people are going to purchase it.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  And it's expensive device, that is ideal customer because they have money, at least for a lot of business owners. So if you don't optimize your experience for these devices or for these channels, you lose out on a lot of revenue as, as business owners and marketers.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  So I, I have a couple of things here. So by the way, the example Neil just gave, so let's say a uh, water softener or let's just say a plumber for easy example. Okay. So you go through Grok, Grok Bot, Grok Bot recommends a plumber. I suspect that a Grok Bot or any of these other tools, these agents will notify that company that, hey, we got you this customer. Would you like more? Would you like us to optimize it for you? You know why? Because yesterday I was sitting on my Grok Bot because I, I've been using that most of the time now. I'm like, hey, because I have a good relationship with the Grok Bot team. So they give me all the early releases, all these things, right?

• 48:10Speaker 01

  You're saying Grok Bot will, you think they'll eventually notify people?

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, because it's not hard. Because yesterday I was using Grok Bot. I was like, hey, like I have a good relationship with the Grok Bot, the SpaceX team, right? They, they hooked me up a lot. I would like a good relationship with the OpenAI team, the Claude, the partner, the, the, the creator team and you know, so and so, you know, insert large language model here. Um, it's like, okay, these people over here, you should email these people. I've drafted this for you. You should also DM them on X. I've drafted it for you. Do you want me to send it? Yes, right? That's not hard to do. Similarly, on my Grok Bot, I have a competitor ad thing. I've just made this for fun. I was like, hey, whoever engages with profound posts on LinkedIn or their ads. I want you to, if they're I C P fit, let me know. Earlier this week is like, these four people engaged X amount of times over here. You should reach out with this angle over here. So it's not going to be hard for Grok Bot or any of these agents to put that together saying, hey, we got you this customer.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  Do you want us to get you more? Because more and more people are just going to use this more. I think Meta is already reporting that they're making good money from this. Elon is like, Grok Bot's the biggest uses I've ever seen with anything. I think they're all just going to grow really fast.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  I think they're all going to grow really fast and I think they're going to do a version of what you're saying, but a little bit different. And, and you could be saying the same thing. When they reach out to people, they will say, would you like to advertise on Grok Bot?

• 49:21Speaker 00

  Exactly. Right. Would you, would you like us to do it for you?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Correct. But even if you get someone for free and someone becomes a customer and there's a way for them to close loop, they'll be like, hey, by the way, we filled out this form for a customer. If you would like more of these leads, you can actually advertise in our marketplace or.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  It used to be Google back in the day, right? Google was already doing this. Like, hey, would you like more customers? We're already sending this to you, right? So I think that was already default, like to be expected, but I think the next angle is like, usually Google will never offer AEO SEO services to, you know, for their own system, right? But I think now it's going to be cost effective enough where any of these can offer a version of AEO, G E O, whatever you want to call it for the agents. That's what I.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  The, the reason, and I think you'll change your mind on this, the reason I don't think they'll do it is because they don't want. They want

• 50:05Speaker 00

  Game their algorithm?

• 50:06Speaker 01

  No, not just game their algorithm. They want you to know as a user that whatever you're that they're sending to you is the best option.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Is pure.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Is pure.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  And I know you agree with that, but I do see them doing it with the advertising portion. Google's version of it was when you used to do Google searches back in the day when they had sponsored errors, they would like, want your ad to show here, right? They were using some text like that. People would click it. You get into AdWords or Google. Yeah, Google AdWords now is called Google Ads. I still say AdWords.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too. That's how old we are.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  And then you can sign up and then you go through the flow. But I do believe when they fill out a form, the message is like, hey, we sent you four leads this this month. You can actually get more of them from advertising in our marketplace. They're not saying, hey, we will influence organic results. They're saying, hey, you could just advertise here when people ask questions.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  So you're probably right on that one. I might just agree right now on that one. 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. I will say, though, you're going to see more surfaces. They're going to attack more surfaces aggressively. So for example, Grokbot or ChatGPT, right? They have, to your point, first mover advantage. Once they have the marketplace come out, you got to get on it like immediately. Once they have the plugins come out, you got to get on it like immediately. You can't wait. The moment you wait, someone else gets ahead of you. So yesterday I was looking at the connectors for Grokbot. It's like, oh, we have these four marketing plugins over here.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  I'm like, that's such a good opportunity for any marketing company to get more of their software in there fast now. Cause I've seen some in there where like, I'm like, oh, this is like some YouTube influencers product over here. Like, why is this product in here? They're just in bed with a lot of these people right now. And if you have a good relationship with them, you're a creator or you're like a notable company, they're happy to partner up with you. So you should do it now.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Although people are worried now with all these L L Ms. And their AI spending. You saw Facebook's stock tank this week because of their.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  I thought it went up.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  No, they beat quarterly earnings, but I'm a hundred and ten percent sure.

• 52:14Speaker 00

  I'm sure you're right. I just want to look at it.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  It went down this week because they announced quarterly earnings, but Zach also announced how he's spending more money on AI and infrastructure. And the whole market has been tanking when it comes to like the CoreWeaves and NeoClouds and all of them. Cause people are like, you guys are overspending.

• 52:34Speaker 00

  It's very debt field. So actually, here's the good thing. So not a good thing. I listened to this. By the way, I did analysis. I'm going to show you in a moment, but. So I listened to a podcast with Mark Zuckerberg, Alexander Wang, and I think I told you, Patrick John Golison from the Stripe.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Guinness, the beer.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, the cheeky pint, cheeky pint, right? So what Alexander, I think, oh no, Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Alexander made a good point here. So Alexander from Scale.ai, right? And he's like, dude, in this type of situation, you can't actually project this out. You can't forecast this out. So I think I told you.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Forecast what out?

• 53:08Speaker 00

  The data center spending, all the heavy spending that they're applying right now. This is like a winner take all situation or like a winner take most. Where you can't actually say, I'm going to wait to see how the numbers pan out. You actually just have to spend on the data, the capex right now for the data centers. Right? And so what happened with Alexander Wang is that he, whenever they had executive meetings, the CFO would pull him aside and say, hey, man, like, if this doesn't work, this is going to be really bad for Meta, right? And kept pulling him aside like, hey, man, like, are you sure this is going to work? Da, da, da, right? And then Mark is, Mark, the good thing with Mark Zuckerberg.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  By the way, that is a CFO's job, by the way.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 00

  She's, she's not wrong for it. They're both doing their job, right?

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  But Mark, this is when it's helpful to have the founder involved. Mark is like, hey, we're going to do this. We're all in on this right now. Let's go for it. Which is why you see the the capex is so high for the data center spending, which they think they still need more at this point. So.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yes, and the the part of that I don't have a grasp on. Everyone talks about, so on the All In Podcast, you had Ben Horowitz, who was on, I think, the latest episode. And he was talking about how he called Andy Jesse.

• 54:13Speaker 00

  Jesse from Amazon.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Uh huh, the CEO. And I think it was something like, oh yeah, we'll get caught up by twenty twenty eight. And Andy Jesse was just like, no, we won't. There's way more demand. We will not be caught up in twenty twenty eight. I believe what Andy is saying, because AWS is one of the biggest providers, and for him to say that they don't have enough. There's way more demand than what they can handle by twenty twenty eight. The the part that I don't know, when it comes to AI and even marketing, we are now marketing on ChatGPT, right? We're now marketing on Claude. We're now marketing to Grokbot. We are now marketing to agents slowly, like Muse and stuff like that that will go and do tasks for you.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  What happens when AI gets integrated into, it's already starting with your toilet. I saw some devices on the toilet.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  On my toilet?

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Not your toilet. No, no, but there's, there's toilet devices that now have AI.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  There's fridges that are coming out that have AI enabled in them. So you can start, there'll be screens. Some fridges already have screens, but you can start ordering groceries on fridges. You can start marketing there. It can start analyzing the ingredients in your fridge and tell you what to cook.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Analyze your stool.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's for the toilets. What happens when you have the robots, right?

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Just out there like all the humanoids or whatever they end up looking like. How many more, how much more compute are you going to need or data centers? Forget compute, how many more data centers are you going to need to just run all of this stuff, right? And I don't think people actually know if we need a lot more or a little bit more. Yes, we need more than what we have now, but I just think it's a big unknown. But the flip side on it is, I do also think it is going to change the life we market because everything offline and online is going to be purely digital. And you're going to have to market to everything. You're going to have to market to that robot that when the robot goes to the grocery store and does your shopping for you, that it should

• 56:10Speaker 01

  buy your products versus someone else's products, even if yours is ten cents more.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Well, let me give you my reasoning and then we can, I think this could be an open conversation, right?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  So we discussed this before. So Andre Karpathy, right? So there's only point two percent in the world, only twenty million people in the world that use AI and they're actually getting productivity. So a lot of people using it for coding, right? Verifiable work such as coding or math, for example, right? And only five thousand are at the frontier. Then you have the rest of the world, right? Now, the other thing is, you see this iPhone over here. Why do we need an eighteenth generation? Not even eighteenth. There's like Pro and all this. So this is like the twenty twenty four generations of this stuff, right? Why do we need so many? Cause humans have always wanted more. Humans' needs are never like, Neil, you look at yourself right now, look, go back twenty, thirty years. Do you think you would have ever needed more? But yet today you still want more. Don't you want more? Your demands are higher, right?

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Not just that, dude, I used to have an iPhone before and it would go for three, four years and I wouldn't get another one. Now I'm like, I need one every single year. Why?

• 57:09Speaker 00

  So, cause we're insatiable with our demands. So our demand is just going to get higher and higher. And so if only point two percent of the world is using it like this right now, I believe that we're going to need more compute. And the problem is like, if you're Anthropic, for example, because they didn't press hard while OpenAI kept pressing hard on more compute, they got constrained until they did the SpaceX deal. And that would have been catastrophic for them, I think, if they didn't do that deal.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's how I see it at least. And then you're, you're, Gary sat in that seat before I said, Neil's a numbers guy, right? So I think this actually makes a lot of logical sense to you.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  But I do believe we haven't seen even how much compute we're, or data centers we really need to run.

• 57:46Speaker 00

  I think our kids are going to think we're idiots in the future.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  That, that for sure. I agree on. Dude, here's something interesting. Heathen sent this to me.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's Neil's brother-in-law.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So check this out. I'm going to turn it sideways so you can see. Total capital expenditure boom percentage of GDP canals, point six six percent. Railroads, two point two four percent.

• 58:10Speaker 00

  Which is, by the way, railroads are the AI back in the day.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 58:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Electrification, point five percent. Highways, one point one three percent. Telecom and fiber, one point one. AI build out till twenty thirty two. Keep in mind, we haven't even got there yet. It's saying side percentage of GDP only three point six three percent. It's not crazy or out of whack.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  It's worth it.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 00

  Worth it.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Is it going to be three point six three or three percent or whatever? Maybe it's going to be big, but you need it for running everything.

• 58:39Speaker 00

  Think about it. When the internet first came out, you and I never knew how big the internet would be.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  Right? And it became what it became because of Jevon's paradox, right? And so and by the way, like all this other stuff is becoming possible now. Like earlier, I just talked about the concept of autonomous ABM. If your ICP engages with your competitors, ads or the posts over here, you can automatically send them a cold outbound, right? Or if they engage with anything. Like, by the way, I did this with my Grokbot the other day. I'm like, hey, look at all my followers right now. Tell me who are M and A targets. Tell me who are recruit targets. Tell me who are ICP fit. It's like, you have five hundred eighty one people that are ICP fit. There's a CMO of Dosipov, CMO of this company over here, CMO of this company. These agencies over here seem to be like a good size over here. So these are things that I couldn't have done before. And then I was like, oh, do it on Lily Ray's X profile. How much is that going to cost to scan all her hundred twenty thousand followers?

• 59:25Speaker 00

  Well, if you remove less than one hundred followers, that that will cut it down from twenty five dollars to fifteen dollars. Okay, scan it. And then it started reaching out to people for recruits, like, and they're like, I'm interested, but how did you get my, my information, right? But like, that, that is the world we're going into. It's going to be a world of more and more abundance, just more. Neil, did you see that Forrester predicts AI agents will influence seventy five percent of B two B buying?

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I didn't see that percentage, but I agree with it. And but I would say the same thing when it comes to Google results and algorithms. It already influences so many purchases because the companies who optimize are the ones who are not chosen, but they're the ones who are included in that process.

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  Did you buy anything yet through an agent?

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  I have not bought anything through an agent.

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  Interesting. So.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Not one thing. I've had agents give me feedback on what I should buy.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  And then I go and pick, but I've never let the agent go and purchase for me.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  So I have a loved one that's having like a funeral for, you know, one of her family members tomorrow. And I wanted to get flowers. And you know, guess what? Amanda Muse handled the whole thing. It's like, well, the funeral is happening near here. So and I was like, give me the best thing. It's like, well, you get this easel over here. It looks really nice, right? Cause I remember when you came to my, my, my mom's thing, you saw all those easels. That's the first time like, why does everyone have one? And then I had the smallest one. I didn't even know that was a thing. So anyway, you, you get like a big easel.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  I didn't know that was a thing.

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's called an easel, right? And so, and then they called me after. I was like, hey, like, just want to make sure we're good. But this time it handled the whole thing. Now, I'm, I'm doing the YPO Global AI Summit in two weeks, right in Istanbul. We're going to do a speakers there. I was like, hey, I don't want to figure this out. You know where I'm staying for my hotel. Can you give me three locations that are close by and make sure there's a dining room? Boom. Someone responds to me, yeah, you know, it's going to be sixty dollars a head, cheap, right? And you get the private dining room. I'm like, sounds good. Let's just book that one. But I don't have to do the work. It's great. So.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  It, it, it's like assistant. Do you have assistant anymore or no? You haven't had one in a long time, right?

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  You, I was just, I was, I shouldn't say you, me, I haven't had one in a long time because I think it's very difficult to work with my speed. So.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, but how about you?

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  I've had one for a long time. I don't know when I haven't had one.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  You.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  I know a long time ago I haven't had one, but it's been so long.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  There's a period of time where you didn't have one for a while.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  Now you've had one for a while.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  For a long time, like it has to have been over like five or six or seven or eight years easily.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  The, the reason I choose to have assistant is and, and it doesn't mean AI can't do this. My business operates in, I don't know how many countries call it. I think it's around 28. There's just too many people, too many things going around, too many people trying to get on my schedule for different events and stuff like that. It's just easier having assistant deal with everything versus me using AI and A is not perfect and it screws up and then I had to deal with it. Like I'm going for a conference on Monday and I'll, I'll show you example of this. Okay. I don't tell her to do this, never did. She just does it. Her name's Marina. I'm going to

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Uh, Dallas for event called Level Up uh by High Level and then I'm going to Milan for event called Intersections.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  And she says, she gives me a flight time, when it's going, car's already booked.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Uh, party. She tells me, you know, what I'm going to.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  She's your event manager.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, just everything, what I need to do. She also tells me, she's like, hey, you're going to have some time during this event. Uh, you're going to have a dead date in uh Mexico where I'm not doing anything.

• 1:03:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  And she's like, it would be really good if we record X, Y, and Z during that time. This would be super helpful. So can we please record it then?

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  So what I would say is this, if like Marina is Neil's assistant from, because Neil travels a lot and there's a lot of logistics around that. And she's reliable and she's proactive, right? Uh, you need someone that's been in that role for a while and is happy in that role. So I was talking to our mutual friend Yaniv about this, right? So you need an assistant that's been there for a long time, knows the ins and outs of being an assistant and is happy to be an assistant, right? You don't want someone who's like, maybe, well, one, you don't want someone who's incompetent, but two, you don't want someone that wants to do something else. Cause that's not gonna be helpful.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  No, cause then you have to switch him out. You have to find, or not switch him out, you have to find someone else in a year or two. But like, she's happy with her job. She gets paid well. Uh, she's in a different country, so the currency exchange is even uh better for her, more advantageous. Like she's chill, I'm happy. I don't disturb her every day.

• 1:03:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  I don't actually really disturb her much at all.

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Maybe like two, three times a week I'll ask her for something, but usually she just puts stuff in my calendar and pings me when I need to do something.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  And, and that's the thing, this job is different than the demands that you might have on your CEO, for example. And so this one's just like, hey, just make sure you get logistically, just make sure it happens. That's it.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  You, you nailed it.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Most my stuff is logistics related and I do not, even though A is amazing, I do not trust, bless you. I don't trust AI with logistics yet. Cause one mess up with that.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  I agree. Your day's done.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, your day is done and it just costs so much money. And like, she'll do things, like she'll know if I'm going to make my connection on a flight and know if it needs to be changed and to figure it out before I land and just be like, here you go.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  That always gives me anxiety. That's the only thing I miss about not having an assistant. It's, it's that piece. It's like the little details.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  Cause sometimes I'll actually miss it. You know what I mean? So.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  And, and with logistics is super important because every country in my organization optimizes for their own numbers, their growth. And a lot of times they'll be like, oh, uh, yeah, Neil's gonna fly in town. We're gonna do a whole day full of meetings. So just fly him out at night. And she'll be like, no, I need to know all the meetings and the times. We're not just flying him out at night. Unless I have him, he's taking the quickest flight out after the speech unless you can actually show me which meetings.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Cause sometimes it will happen, people like, oh, I tried booking him, but I couldn't get these because of the time.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  Waste your time.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  Yes, wasting my time. And she's like, no, he has a family. He needs to get back home. So you have a month's notice. And if you can't figure it out and then I'm booking him at the closest flight back after his speech.

• 1:05:36Speaker 00

  See, that, that's worth it. That's worth it.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. So different expectations and I'm not saying EA versus no EA. I'm just saying for me right now, not needed. And I'm not saying like Elon Musk, by the way, Elon doesn't have an EA, but I bet you he does have many Marinas helping him guaranteed.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause I would, I, I agree with you. Cause Marina is not really my EA. She does not deal with like, hey, you need laundry or you got this appointment, your kids are doing something. It's like, I have none of that.

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I don't, see for me, I don't think I need that, right?

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Me neither.

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  If I was traveling a lot and I had a lot of event logistics, if I was back to traveling 200 days a year, I would absolutely love to have a Marina. So, yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Mine is more like, uh, it's all logistics, all personal stuff. Like, you know, like, oh, I want to watch Toy Story five tonight with my kids. Cause they're doing something.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  She helps you with that too?

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  No, no, no. But none of that. That's just like, I pick my own calendar or like, uh, you know, you went for physical therapy.

• 1:06:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Right? Uh, for your tennis elbow, hopefully it improved.

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  It did. It did improve. It was really good.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  It was great.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  It's painful though, right?

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'm like, I'm like, oh, this is like the hardest massage ever, but then it feels better after.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Uh, like when I booked physical therapy, I just checked the doctor myself and book it myself for something like my gym appointments for trainers or whatever. Like I don't use uh, assistant for any of that.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  So yeah, we're on the same page. Like that type of stuff. I'm like, I used to like, yeah, I would just have my assistant do, but then you get wait and there's like delays and all that. I'm like, why don't I just do it myself? But a Marina type situation with logistics, absolutely. So we have one more thing we can go through here. This is from my, my good friend Mark Andreessen on X. Okay.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Who lives by here. You know that, right?

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  He does?

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  He lives in Malibu.

• 1:07:08Speaker 00

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  He has like a $200 million compound.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  He has many compounds.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  He bought more, but I, he, I think he had the record for the most expensive home sale or something like that.

• 1:07:16Speaker 00

  I believe it. Here. So watch this.

• 1:07:18Speaker 03

  This is the biggest delta between, I would say what the early adopters understand is possible now uh versus what kind of everybody.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Can you slow it down please?

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Sorry.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  By the way, you know what's funny? He naturally talks at like 2X, kind of like me. So anyway, I'm going to repeat the video here, but this is Mark Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz with Ben Horowitz as well. Okay. So Mark Andreessen, here we go.

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  This is the biggest delta between, I would say what the early adopters understand is possible now uh versus what kind of everybody, you can kind of wrong what people understand. Um, and I, I think that's, you know, true to the individual level, but it's especially true to the company level. Um, and the early, the AI native early stage startups have just a completely different view on what they can do with AI than the, than the, than sort of, you know, typical incumbents in almost any industry, uh, almost without exception. And, and I think that, that gap is as wide as I've ever seen it in my career. And then it, that, that gap seems like it's gapping further and further out, which is AI is just racing ahead in capability, even a week by week. Um, and so the leading edge entrepreneurs and technical people we deal with, like they're, they're, they're getting, they're just, they're, they're just, by the week, they're getting sort of steadily more advanced um than, than, than, than a typical incumbent.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  Um, and so it's, it's, it's the biggest delta I've ever seen. And if you kind of extrapolate from that, like, you know, if, if, if, if that's what happens, um, then there's just, there are going to be a lot of industries that are really up for grabs in a fundamentally, you know, kind of more, more profound way than maybe has been the case in the past. And then the, and that, and that's going to be because the founders are going to have a level of superpowers coming from the use of these tools and these technologies that they just simply haven't had in the past. I mean, you know, had I had, you know, Astron and escaped in 1994, like, oh my God. Like, you know, he said like, Ben, like what would you and I have been able to do? He had escaped.

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  We would have built the whole damn internet. The leading edge entrepreneurs now are going to have like capabilities. Yeah.

• 1:09:04Speaker 00

  So all of that, I mean, it, it's crazy to hear him say that because they just started a new fund, the frontier fund, right? So they're talking about, but like.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Uh, no, it's not a new fund.

• 1:09:13Speaker 00

  Sorry. It's, they renamed the crypto. Yeah. You're correct. Thank you for that. So I, I do see this happening right now and that's where my, my anxiety has been coming from for, for the last, really since last December. So how has it been a year yet, right? Um, the gap is widening every single day. And so even with the new people joining the team now, I'm like, guys, like, this is why I say like, we're not trying to eliminate jobs, but we're trying to, this elevates capabilities. And because the gap's getting wider, that means some who's super enabled. If you're very enabled and I'm not, then you can see it. And that's not a good thing ultimately, right? But that's where I think there's a lot of anxiety that's happening in the job market right now. But dude, there's like the ability now where you can take your phone and you can scan this and you can basically make a physical version of this now. Imagine what your, your

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  I believe it.

• 1:09:53Speaker 00

  Your kids can do, like legit, like what do they call it? CAD? CAD modeling?

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  I forgot. Yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  But you didn't have to do the mind. You just take a picture of a device and we go 360 and just be like, okay, sounds good.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  And then you 3D print it, right? Why wouldn't your daughter do it? Why wouldn't your son do it? So our, our, our kids, your kids already, I don't have kids yet, but our kids will be way smarter than us, way more capable than us and we're just going to look like dinosaurs, right? But this is why I also think you cannot, you can't afford not to hire people who are super AI native. So I had today, someone from, from Proctor and Gamble answer me all these questions. I posted it to Twitter, didn't reveal the name. But I'm like, hey, what percentage of, of uh daily tactical work is done by AI today? 10%. How much you spend monthly out of pocket? AI spend $20. Okay. Um, and then I use this primarily for research and this person has worked at a large company for 15 plus years, hands-on experience and it just doesn't work. Can't keep up, right?

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  For what you're looking for specifically?

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  No, yeah, exactly.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Right, because there's probably some roles that are a good fit for that.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  It's just not what you're looking for.

• 1:10:52Speaker 00

  Exactly, right? And I think you have to understand what you're looking for. And so what we do in this situation now is like, if you're looking for AI native this in your hiring process, you just apologize upfront. So in our thing of apologizing, saying, hey, I apologize for this. We're looking for a very specific individual. Here's seven questions for you and then we'll just evaluate.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I, I, I think that's a good approach. The caveat here is just know what you're looking for. Like when we interview salespeople, we do not care on how AI savvy they are or they're not. We more so care on how good they are on the phone. Relationships, yes, but we really care how good they are on the phone. From, you know, how organized they are, how good they are at pitching and things like that. We believe, this is just our philosophy, we can teach them the AI stuff. It is, for us, it's harder to go get that person who's amazing at AI and teach them sales. It's easier to get the person who's good at sales and then give them the technology and be like, this part will make your job easier. Here you go.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  And we'll have people walk them through all this stuff, but we don't want to teach them sales. We want the people who are already great at sales and then we'll teach them what they needed and how to use AI to do their job better. But the reverse for us is we found it to be really hard.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  So I agree. So sales is actually a really good example. Sales is such a very like soft skill. And, and the way Neil sells is different than me, but I know we're both good at sales, right? In, in our own respects. But it's very, it's a very hard skill to pick up, right?

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  But I, I still think you need both. I think you need someone who's like into sales and, and because here's a reason. Remember you, you met a salesperson that we had maybe a year and a half ago, right? And that person was very used to selling deals at like a agency that productized their services, right?

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Do they still with you?

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  No, no. It didn't work because that person was really good.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  I'll let you guess, East Coast agency, right?

• 1:12:40Speaker 00

  Bulldog in terms of like following up, getting on top of the state, like pushing the pace, right? Like everything you need from a salesperson, good on the phones as well. Couldn't pick up the AI stuff, therefore wasn't understanding where we're trying to go. The new guy we have now understands kind of both. And it was, it's really had soft skills both on the sales side and the AI side. And he's combining everything together, which your deal sites end up being a lot bigger. And so I believe, it depends on what you're selling too. Like if you're selling flowers, it's different.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  Yes, but for enterprise sales, I think it's still easier to hire someone who's amazing at sales that you can teach AI to, assuming you can actually teach that to them because some people just don't want to change or learn culturally.

• 1:13:20Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  But if they're good at AI and you had to teach them sales, I think that's a recipe for disaster because it's harder to get someone who's not good at sales to be good at sales versus getting someone who's good at sales. It's easier to find that person who's good at sales and is willing to learn AI and has a right attitude. Like your 18 year old.

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  My point is I'd rather go for both and sit through the pain a little longer if needed. Now, you can't sit forever with the pain, but I, I, I do agree, right? Like I, I think you can't just hire someone who's good with AI and say, learn sales. That, that's not going to work.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  With, with actually many different roles, not just sales. And last thing we can call out here, I, I think this is, this is a good place to close. So this guy, Thorsten Ball says, don't forget, you're no longer working with humans. And I, I think you'll, you'll like this piece. So this is not saying we're looking to eliminate humans, guys. It says, be unreasonable. You have to constantly remind yourself that you're no longer working with humans. Things that would have seemed unreasonable or over the top or downright rude. Well, you can ask for all of that now. So I want you to test this again, end to end. Again, give me irrefutable proof that this now works. You couldn't ask a human to do that before, right? Give me 10 variations of this UI. That's right, 10. Explore different design approaches, different color schemes. Show me how they fix this as Apple, at Google, at teenage engineering. What would, you know, this, this designer do?

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  Fix this bug, find the race condition, eight times at least, try and break it. So the whole point now to work with this stuff is you have to be unreasonable. And it's okay because these things aren't going to get mad at you, right? So last thing I'll call out, Neil, remember earlier in the, in this conversation, you're talking about

• 1:14:52Speaker 00

  how much, how much I talked about, I think we're talking about marketing school, right? So in the beginning of marketing school, it says, the early evidence suggests Eric wanted AI to replace substantial amounts of work, but replace all humans was never the case. So I never want to replace humans, guys. I just want to make that clear. Neil, Neil never wanted to replace humans. But it was always about judgment, accountability and retain and retraining before calling it a change.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  But you, you should go rerun the analysis. You're less, you're still more bullish on AI, but you're less.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  I don't know what the, I'm not even trying to figure out the right way to put it. I'm just trying to figure out how to say it. You're less about how much AI will have an impact on humans compared to before. I believe before, forget replacing humans. I believe this is just, you know, me, us doing the podcast together, that you felt that it would take a higher percentage of the work and do more than what it currently is able to do right now, a year later.

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  So this scanned in the last 12 months using Jeff, guys, using a classifier here. So here's what it said. So it said the honest answer, the honest answer is AI doing most of the work. Yes, I explicitly said that. Fewer humans needed for the, the same output. Yes, I did say that. AI doing literally everything with no humans, no.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  No, yeah. You never believed that. You never believed that you wouldn't need humans at all.

• 1:16:16Speaker 00

  So this is good, by the way, because we can always, we can always like look at, look at like what we did say and what we didn't say.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  But it doesn't mean that what you said isn't true. I just don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Maybe 10 years from now or five years from now, but.

• 1:16:30Speaker 00

  I still think it's a really big deal, though.

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  It is a big deal, but the difference is, is when we started talking about AI and marketing, call it a year ago. AI was, if you look at the models, they were evolving so fast and there was big differences from the models. Now, when you look at the changes, I know they're improving, but it's not as drastic of improvements per model. I don't know if you would agree with that or disagree with that. Like, if I look at the models that would come out a year ago and a month later, you would have a model and be like, wow, this is so much substantially better. Now you look at a model and they're like, wow, this new model is so much better. But as an end user, for a lot of the stuff that people use AI for, there's no difference in the model.

• 1:17:08Speaker 00

  For day to day, yes. And so last thing I'll say here and then, then we'll, we'll end. But guys, it has actually, so AI had a hard take off December 2025. It's still October 2026 right now, so it hasn't been a year yet. But that was a big deal in December and it kind of like was whatever until May and June. And then Astra came out and like these other ones came out. And then now it's kind of like waiting for the next big thing to come out, so.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  But it's not even the next big thing. I agree that it's going to change leaps and bounds, but what people are using it for, like the majority of people.

• 1:17:38Speaker 00

  The vast majority.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, vast majority. And you had this percentage in one of the old episodes. It's already good enough for the point oh one or whatever percentage was in there. I agree, there's going to be a lot of changes, even for the 1%. There's going to be some leaps and bounds, especially for the people who are building coding and stuff like that. But most of the usage that we see in, in marketing is people just using AI to ask questions and help it find products or do research on something. And if you want to make the most money as a marketer, it's not like, oh, you can use AI to do this and just save a lot of hours. It's actually the biggest ROI we see in AI in marketing right now is just getting AI to recommend your product or service.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  That beats everything else out, more than being like, I optimized this efficiency here and I cut around 12 hours of spend and we save this on labor. It is literally the biggest ROI we see is just get AI recommending your company and products.

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  For the vast majority of people, for businesses right now, all you should care about is, does it make money for you? And does it save money? Vast majority of businesses. Now, that being said, as we advance to, this, this point 2% of people that work like this will become 1%, 5%, 10%. And then everyone will start to utilize more of this frontier intelligence. But right now, most people are good with like, you know, what we had six months ago.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Anyway, guys, token costs are also going down because people don't need the latest tokens for most things.

• 1:18:58Speaker 00

  Also, when I was doing a webinar last week, one guy was like, oh, I'm spending like $500 a day. I'm like, dude, just buy yourself a ChatGPT Max account. He's like, oh, I didn't know that. I'm like, so there's got to be so many people that are spending this in an unnecessary way. Because someone else on the webinar was like, yeah, I was spending like $10,000 a month on my own. And then, you know, Eric, watching one of your stuff helped me cut it to $3,000. I'm like, how many people are spending like this? So that means deflationary, like the token costs are going to come down, but people are going to know how to spend better too.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Dude, last thing before we go, when I was interviewing marketers around like six, seven months ago and I'll talk to them about their AI usage and spend. You know, when people show me big numbers, I'll be like, oh, this is cool. Show me what you're doing. Because a lot of times they were just waste, but I actually want to see. And some people were doing cool stuff. Now, if someone tells me they're only spending like $20 a month or $50 a month or whatever, I'd be like, cool. That doesn't mean they're not doing a lot because $20 a month these days actually goes a very long way compared to before.

• 1:19:47Speaker 00

  As long as they can show you.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:19:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Anyway, guys, that's it for today and we'll catch you later.