ChatGPT Plugins Added $500K ARR in Days

Someone added $500K in ARR in a week by putting their app in ChatGPT plugins, and Eric wants Carrot, Answer the Public and Ubersuggest in there too. Neil says that at scale, plugins help retention more than revenue. He's also seeing clients arrive with business problems instead of asks, like revenue down 6% and leads down 32%, and Eric says that grows the market for agencies. Then customer service as marketing: a SpaceX growth lead fixing Grokbot before a webinar, On refunding an order without telling Eric, and Neil's Marriott check-in. They compare the Ritz-Carlton's budget to go beyond policy with Airbnb's 9-star idea, then trade travel tips on room service, compression bags and Sterling Pacific luggage. A practical episode on plugins and service. Key takeaways ◾ChatGPT plugins are a distribution channel worth building for ◾Pitch the fix for the client's business problem, whatever the channel ◾Bending policy to fix a mistake earns word of mouth Chapters 00:00 Plugins add $500K in ARR 01:13 Neil: plugins help retention more than revenue 02:05 Clients bring problems now 03:10 Revenue down 6%, leads down 32% 04:17 Solving the whole problem set grows the TAM 04:58 Customer service is marketing 06:06 On.com's surprise refund and split order 08:03 Neil's Marriott check-in 09:22 Charged for the night before, told to wait 10:11 A room appeared once it was their fault 10:58 Grokbot support hid behind policy 11:55 Ritz-Carlton and Airbnb's 9-star experience 12:39 Four Seasons prices, Disney cruise experience 13:56 Room service, laundry and one carry-on 14:48 Compression bags and Sterling Pacific luggage Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Need marketing help? Visit: https://www.singlegrain.com/ and https://npdigital.com/

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:44Speaker 00

  just by adding their app to ChatGPT plugins, because ChatGPT plugins is making a comeback, right?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  So what I'm doing right now, I'm taking our repo from Carrot, because Carrot, um, believe it or not, Carrot is, it drives a good amount of leads coming in for us, right? It's the LinkedIn account-based marketing, uh, personalization, um, and the landing pages. So I'm like, dude, you, you take, you take Answer to Public, you take, uh, you take, uh, what does Uber suggest, right? Why don't they just, why don't they become ChatGPT plugins? Because those are, it's a great distribution channel. He's like, I've never seen anything like this. We added 500K in ARR this week. We haven't stopped growing since we launched our new ChatGPT plugin since last Tuesday. So the way I see it, like I mentioned last week, um, ChatGPT plugins, ChatGPT marketplace, um, these are all going to be gold mines.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  And the ability for you to take what you built on ChatGPT, make it into a website, make an MCP as well from it, and then make it a, make it a plugin. I think it's just gonna, we're gonna see an explosion in apps, in plugins. And I think we're gonna, we're gonna see an explosion in entrepreneurship as well.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we will. What we're finding with the plugin ecosystem when it comes to ChatGPT is it can drive some revenue. Well, depending what you consider some, but if you're at scale, uh, what we're finding is it helps more with retention than it actually does with

• 2:02Speaker 00

  I believe it.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  revenue, which for us, the retention number generates us a higher LTV and more profit than the 500K that you add in MR.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. I, I, I find, I mean, I don't know how it's going for you guys right now, but the conversations are starting to shift. It's beyond just marketing now. They're like, hey, we're, we're spending like 15 grand a day on tokens. Can you help us with that? Can you help us with this? So my thinking is that because we can do more now, right? The, our TAM kind of starts to expand a little more. Um, but what are you seeing?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  We don't see any of that. We very rarely ever see corporations ask us to help them save on, uh, tokens.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  We are seeing a shift in the market in which customers are coming to us with problems instead of what they're looking for. So before we would say, I'll, I'll use a random example. A company would say,

• 2:57Speaker 01

  I lost some Google traffic. I need to gain back my rankings. Or they would say, hey, we're getting all this traffic. My conversion rate is really terrible. Can you help us increase our conversion rate? It'd be very specific. We're, we're spending $5 million a month on Google Ads and our ROAS keeps reducing each year. Um, so can you help us fine tune our campaigns and get our ROAS back to what it was three years ago? So people would come to us with very specific ask. Now people are coming to us with very specific problems, right? And I know the first group, I kind of identified the ask and the problem. But now it's more like

• 3:44Speaker 01

  our leads, our, our, our, our revenue is down 6% and our leads are down 32%. We lost a lot of leads. Majority weren't qualified. Our close rates have gone up because, you know, we've lost a lot of bad leads, but it seems like we're still getting good leads. What would you do if you were trying to reverse this company and, and grow it? What would you change in our marketing? What would you adjust? And they're, they're not coming to us with, we lost this traffic from Google, or we lost it from organic Instagram or Facebook. They're coming to us starting with the business problem. And they're saying, as marketers, what can you do to help us solve it?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  And they don't necessarily care how we solve it. They just want it solved. It doesn't mean if we just say, oh, we can solve it and we're going to do X, Y, and Z, they're going to give us the contract. They're more so going to us and maybe another five or six or seven or eight other competitors. And they're asking us all the same questions and they're comparing what people say.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  And they're going with the solution they feel is the best for their business.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  So, so here, here's my point. I think we're kind of saying the same thing. It's like, it used to be very specific. Hey, we just want you to help with SEO. We just want you to help with paid media. Now what it is, is, hey, we just want you to help with this problem set over here. So with this problem set, you might have multiple ideas. You might say, hey, we'll help optimize your paid media here, your CRO over here. But we also see an opportunity to fix the funnel over here from like, oh, your, your chat's broken over here, right? But that, that is value that's happening because we're all able to do more now. And that's why I'm saying the TAM is like, I'm not just saying it's token optimization, but it's more so like, just solve our problem here. We're spending too much on AI over here.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  We want to see more value from it, right? The other thing I, I want to bring it back to Neil, if you want to, do you have any point you want to finish off there? Because I want to come back to one thing. Okay. So I want to come back to customer service being the best form of marketing or one of the best forms. Because, uh, Neil just mentioned, Zappos is amazing because back in the day, they wanted to deliver, they want to make happiness happen.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Delivering happiness.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  Delivering happiness. Yeah, Tony Hsieh, great book, by the way. I read it and rest in peace, Tony Hsieh. So, um, Nordstrom, right? If you've returned a tire, they don't sell tires, right? If you, back in the day, when you return a tire, they would still refund you or give you something for the tire, right? Because they were like, no questions asked, basically, on the refunds, right? So they want to create delightful experiences. Now, when I think about delightful experiences, I think about Grokbot, for example. So SpaceX, right? Their team is hooking me up with accounts or say, hey, here's your, here's more credits for you. Here's credits for your team as well. Guess what? I'm telling everybody about it. In fact, I started paying for it. I just got Grokbot teams for the team this entire week. We had an issue with it. The entire thing went down, the uproar, right? That's when you know the team is like using it heavily. And so, so then I reached out, hey, can you fix this for me? Hey, I'm about to do this webinar.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Literally in about 30 minutes, this guy from Josh, this guy named Josh Kim from SpaceX, like their growth leader, he said, hey, I solved it for you. I was like, hey, I'm about to do a webinar in one hour right now. This shit's not working for me. Can you help me, right? He's like, don't worry, I got you. 30 minutes, done, right? That is delightful experience. Let me tell you a 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,

• 7:04Speaker 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. Delightful experience. 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 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've been buying these tennis, uh, like shirts from on.com, right? Remember I told you I had an issue with on.com?

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  They're like refunding my thing without giving anything back, but my, my Muse got 40% off and like replaced the order, right? There's an order issue again, right? With one of the orders, because it split it into three orders. And so now it's

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Why did it split into three orders? Your Muse did that or on split it into

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Muse did it because it wanted to, um, you can't, on does this thing where it's like, oh, if we give you 40% off, it only applies up to $500. So then Muse is like, okay, we'll apply the 40% for the biggest order over here and then we'll split the other 22, 20% coupons you have. So it's going around it. So this is bad customer service, because one, if you give me a discount, don't do that to me where I have to split it up like that. Number two, don't refund my stuff without telling me. Number three, don't say we can't do anything else because of policy, because I'm telling you right now, I'm going to talk about you in a negative way, which I'm doing right now, right? So that's negative, because if other people listen, it's about to buy on, they might buy something else now, right? So maybe don't do that to me. Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  And that's the place you play tennis, your hat, right?

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Oh, this is, no, this is Sunset Tennis Club. This is different. This is like a, this is like a little tennis membership thing.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Oh, got it. By the Beverly Hills Hotel.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's one of the courts. They use multiple courts. Like, by the way, Sunset Tennis is great marketing. You know why? Like, hey, Eric, um, how's it been going for you? Can we hook you up with this? Can we do this for you? What else can we do better? Hey, how was that session with your coach over there, right? These are things that are memorable and it's like, oh, these people care. Well, I just bit everywhere, but these people care, right? Or you can share some experience. I'm sure you have amazing experience when it comes to traveling, for example, right? So.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Some, sometimes very negative experiences.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  My, I would say my worst experiences is I tend to stay at Marriott's a lot. Because of the memberships and the status and, uh, the, the rooms are pretty affordable and nice enough. Like when I'm traveling for work.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just a Ritz Carlton, you know, it's just St. Regis.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  No, I usually don't stay at Ritz Carlton's or St. Regis.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  But those are, those are Marriott, by the way, guys.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are Marriott.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Uh, I'll stay like at a normal Marriott, uh, not a Motel 6 version. Sometimes I will. The last hotel I stayed at was a Holiday Inn.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Uh, when I was in Sao Paulo, which it was delightful. I had to clean the floor, like I had hair and stuff like that. So I was like cleaning it up myself. I was kind of gross.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  That's, that's a one star or two star?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know what they call it, but I was cleaning up stuff.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  And, uh, I had to figure out how to turn on the AC and eventually I found the remote and it was like a portable one that was in the wall.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  But whatever maybe, normally I say a normal Marriott, like average, like a three-star hotel, sometimes four-star. And when I'm staying at a Marriott, my travel internationally is at random awkward times. So sometimes I'll arrive really early in the morning. And if I have meetings early in the morning, even if I don't, I want to check in early in the morning. I don't want to check in at 3:00 PM or anything like that. So typically my team, not typically, they will, they'll book the night before. So then that way I get, uh, the next day I can check in early, because in theory I, I checked in, I paid for the night before. And I was in Canada at the, I think it was called the Pinnacle Marriott.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  And the lady at the front desk is like, oh, sorry, we can't give you a check until 3:00 PM. I was like, why? I'm like, I paid for yesterday. And she's just like, no one notified us that you weren't going to actually check in that day in the morning of. So, you know, you got to wait for 3:00 PM. So I'm like, so you charged me for the day before. And I have to wait and I was like, and I know my assistant notified them because I do this often and I and then I message them, I get the email that she sent to them and she's like, yeah, we sent it. She's like, oh, sorry about that. I guess it was our fault. They're like, we'll get you a room right now. And what irritated me about that is you had a room right now

• 11:24Speaker 01

  and you wouldn't give it to me, but when you found out that you screwed up, you're willing to give me a room right now and it was the same room type, not an upgrade or anything. And I don't care for the upgrade. I'm not asking for that. But you had a room available and you said no to me when you messed up, but the moment you found out that it is your fault, you're willing to give me a room, but other than that, you wanted me to wait till three P M. And I still get charged for the previous night. To me, that's a terrible experience. I still use Marriott though. And the reason being is is status and depending on the corporate plan you work on, you can get some cheaper rates. So the money savings is where it's sometimes the inconvenience or the pain, but we just track all the those kinds of things. So then that way, when they mess up, they have to make it right.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  You know who does a good job with this? So people like you just mentioned a scenario where Marriott chalked it up to policy, right? I actually had a situation with Grokbot support where they chalked up to policy because someone on my team paid for something. I'm like, hey, can you just refund that? I'm gonna, I'm about to pay for the entire team's account, right? Can you just pay for that? Right? Can you just refund this? No, I understand, you know, but on policy I can't, I'm like, dude, like, I'm literally about to pay for like the entire like company here and why won't you just give us that money back, right? Cause they had a billing issue, right? They weren't willing to do it. It's on the policy thing. Now, on the flip side, when you go to an amazing hotel, right? Like a Four Seasons or something like that, right? They won't chalk it up to policy. I think in fact, like the Ritz Carlton will say like, hey, they have a budget for each person where you can go above and beyond the policy, right?

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Or they'll go shop for you. It's oh, you know, maybe you want to eat a certain thing, right? Maybe they'll, maybe it's not on property, but maybe they'll go get it for you, right? That's a delightful experience. That's what we call like a seven star experience. I remember the Airbnb founders, like, here's a nine star experience. It's like when you show up to a hotel and your favorite rock band is playing for you there, right? Like that's a nine star experience. And so the reason these are so important, the reason why Ritz Carlton does this or Four Seasons does is because people talk about it ultimately. And they're going to talk about it to their other friends who are probably ideal clientele too.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yes, I just don't want to pay for the Ritz and the Four Seasons cost when I'm traveling for work because it adds up so fast. And I know people are like, what's the difference between spending five hundred dollars versus a thousand dollars? Well, if you have that philosophy with money after 10 years, you know how much you burned? You could just put that money in the market or somewhere else and done some good with it, especially when you're only there to sleep and you're not even in the hotel room. But on the flip side, when I travel with family, I'm willing to pay for the Four Seasons, but it never ends up being that way. We always pay for the Disney version, like a Disney cruise or whatever. You pay Four Seasons pricing, but you get Motel Six type of experience.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  But you still liked it.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  I still like it because my family's happy. So I don't look at the expense from that aspect as, man, I didn't get luxury, but I pay luxury prices. I look at it as my family's really happy with me. If I had to, I would have paid double to keep the the happiness and the family unit strong.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  I guarantee you, you weren't irritated when you had Motel Six experience with Disney, but you were very pissed off when you had the Marriott experience.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yes. Because when I have the Disney experience, you know, I'm forewarned that it is not going to be the food I want to eat. I'm forewarned that it's not going to be a room that I like and it's extremely tiny.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. And all of you are in there.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  All of them in there. We have to share one bathroom instead of multiple bathrooms and she, and you know, I'm forewarned on all this kind of stuff. The wife notifies me, but it's not that she knows I'm still not going to like it. But when I see the room and I don't like it, but I see how happy my children are and my wife, my wife is, it makes it worth it. But when I'm traveling for work, you know, I, I just want enough comfort. I, uh, room service is ideally preferable if I don't have a hotel that doesn't do room service or cleaning. I usually don't stay there. Uh, and the reason being is if I'm flying for long trips, I would want to carry on suitcase. So I don't want to,

• 15:27Speaker 01

  what is it called? I don't want to like have to check in. So I just want it where I can just give it to the hotel. They do laundry and I can still travel light. Although I did recently get one of those suction bags.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, me too, me too.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Air compressor?

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Inoka?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  No, it's not that. It was that, that guy, that really popular interviewer, podcast interviewer.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  There's a lot of those.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Business podcasts, African American, British accent.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Stephen Bartlett.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yes. And he was talking about how he uses, um, one of them and I bought it. And then I saw the reviews after, like about air compression bags, not that brand. And what they said is it wrinkles your clothes a lot more, which creates a whole new problem that I did not.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Oh, did it actually do that?

• 16:16Speaker 01

  I haven't tried it out yet, but I know it's going to wrinkle.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  Mine says, so I read the Amazon reviews for mine and it said there wasn't a wrinkle problem. In fact, it was straighter. Like.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  It depends how you do it. There's a way to fold the clothes in air compression bags, but forget the product you buy. They all make your creases harder because you're compressing the air. So if it's folded, right? You'll see creases on your shirt, wherever they are, it'll just be stronger creases. But if you do the rolling method, the creases aren't there. So I had, uh,

• 16:45Speaker 00

  I don't want to do the roll method.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yes, we have, we have a lady who works for us, Ellen, every day or five days a week and she cleans and stuff like that. So I was like, Ellen, test this out. And she put my clothes in there, compressed it. We left it in a day. And she's like, it creates more wrinkles.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Oh, that's.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  And then we tried the roll method and she's like, your clothes aren't as crisp. Cause the way like she packs my clothes is just very nice. And I'm like, okay, I'm not going to use the air compressor unless I really have to.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  I haven't tried it yet. It's just, it's just sitting there. In fact, a lot of the nice luggage I have, like the, by the way, the Sterling Pacific, they hooked it up again. Thank you, thank you guys so much. The Rolls Royce, it's so nice. And like, I'm, I'm, I'm almost like, it's, they have this like titanium version of it now where it's like even, even nicer. And then these, these like, again, they're, they're better than the Ramoas for sure, but sometimes I'm like, man, this is so nice that I, I, I don't even.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  You don't want to scratch it.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  I don't want to scratch it. It's too nice to use, you know?

• 17:39Speaker 01

  And then they give you a bag to put over it. But then I don't want to use the bag because I'm too lazy. Cause then you got to undo it.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  But I, I, it's still the best, it's still the best bag. So anyway, guys, that's it for today and we will see you tomorrow.