Pod Insights Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips Elon vs. Zuck – $1B Compute vs. $1B Humans About this episode In this episode #3013, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss Elon Musk’s $1B bet on compute versus Zuckerberg’s $1B spend on AI talent. They explore buy vs. build strategies, ChatGPT’s evolving ranking factors, and how brand mentions, content depth, and consistency shape visibility in the AI era. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) Elon vs. Zuck: Compute vs. Talent (01:30) Tesla’s Competitive Edge (03:25) Why Elon Picks the Hard Way (06:10) Buy vs. Build Debate (08:45) ChatGPT’s Traffic Advantage (09:50) SEO Is Evolving Fast (11:00) Brand Mentions in AI Rankings (12:30) What ChatGPT Considers Valuable (14:10) How Podcasts Rank on LLMs (16:00) Why Consistency Wins To suggest a topic, go to https://www.marketingschool.io. For more content from Eric and Neil, check out Eric’s Leveling Up with Eric Siu YouTube channel and Neil’s Neil Patel YouTube channel. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric's ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel, @ericosiu Instagram @neilpatel, @ericosiu Drop Us a Review If You Enjoyed the Episode!
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0:35 Speaker 00 Speaking of trillion, because you just said the word trillion. If you think about Elon versus Zuck. Elon is spending a billion dollars on compute versus Zuck is spending a billion dollars on humans, because Zuck is poaching all these people from like OpenAI or whatever, right? The top, these top AI researchers. Whereas Elon, did you see the new Colossus? He's good like Colossus 2 that he's gonna build. It's like an order of a magnitude bigger than all of the other kind of data centers combined.
1:03 Speaker 01 And he'll do it faster too, I bet.
1:04 Speaker 00 Yeah, and then, but, but it's like he's betting more on compute. He thinks that that's real intelligence, right? Versus Zuck betting on humans. Now, who knows which one's right or wrong? This is just another reinforcement that there's no right or wrong way to do business. But it's just, it's just, it's so, you gotta have guts to make either of these bets. And these guys aren't afraid to do it. It's funny because you see Zuck over here with a Thanos.
1:30 Speaker 00 These infinity stones over here are basically AI researchers.
1:34 Speaker 01 That's all the ones he's been taking.
1:35 Speaker 00 Yep, yep, and, and you know what's funny?
1:37 Speaker 01 And he's paying me like 100 million bucks or something like that.
1:40 Speaker 00 What's funny is they're all Asian and Indian people.
1:42 Speaker 01 Are they really?
1:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's so funny.
1:46 Speaker 01 The one, the one thing to keep in mind with Elon, and I was talking to my brother-in-law Heathen about this yesterday night. What I admire about him as an entrepreneur, forget his views and what you think about that, right? If you just look at it from like an entrepreneur's standpoint, like he has a diner here. I don't know if you've been to it.
2:04 Speaker 00 I wanna go.
2:05 Speaker 01 But the lines, the lines have been ridiculously long and sometimes it takes hours and hours just to get in.
2:10 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:10 Speaker 01 But if you look at what he tends to do as an entrepreneur, he tends not to do what the status quo is. And a great example of this is when everyone's talking about software and AI, he's building that. But for years, he's been building actual robots that can do stuff, not just fill up popcorn in the diner, but actually clean your house or live in your daily life. If you look at what he did with Tesla, you already know my opinion on the Tesla car. I don't think it's a great car.
2:40 Speaker 00 I love the car.
2:41 Speaker 01 I, I, I hate the car. I think the seats are crap and he won't put in more parts because he doesn't wanna make the manufacturing more complex. But I'll give him credit for two amazing things that Tesla has done with the cars. The first is I think they have some of the best technology. And I think they're gonna end up being a technology company that's licensing out that technology to all the other car companies over time, especially with like things like self-driving. The second thing that he did is he pretty much owns all the gas stations for electric. He has the infrastructure. You wanna charge your electric car. It doesn't matter if it's a Chinese one or a German one or a US one, you're probably using the Tesla network in Europe and in America and probably in Latam as well.
3:23 Speaker 00 You know what's interesting too? So this, this retreat, so three people drove there. All three people had electric cars. None of them were Teslas. One was an Audi, actually two were Audis and then there was my, my, my car, right? But when I used to have a Tesla, it was so easy to charge everywhere and it's fast charging everywhere, right?
3:38 Speaker 01 No, it's still charged fast for Porsche. Porsche is compatible with their networks.
3:41 Speaker 00 Yeah, but the thing, no, I've tried charging it in those networks. You have to find specific places, like they're, they're only opening up specific ones. Not every charging station is open to like a, like an outsider car like mine.
3:51 Speaker 01 But eventually, I believe he'll change it.
3:53 Speaker 00 He said that years ago, but he's still not active.
3:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, but and he'll make more money from it. He'll he'll juice the revenue. I think that's.
3:59 Speaker 00 I think the most impressive thing about Elon is not even just the the tech. It's more so the manufacturing stuff, right? Like, you you look at how quickly he's built these colossus centers and but you look at the factories he's built for Tesla. He's actually proudest of that, and I actually think that's harder. I I don't I don't I think that it would take me years and years and years to learn that. And the same thing for you, too. And I I still don't even think.
4:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't know if I could actually.
4:19 Speaker 00 I don't think we'd figure it out. Yeah.
4:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, but like I look at like what he did with SpaceX is revolutionary. I think of what he's doing, not with Grok, but with the humanoids or whatever he wants to end up calling it, that'll end up being revolutionary.
4:30 Speaker 00 Robots, yeah.
4:32 Speaker 01 He ends up focusing on stuff that is innovative and really, really hard to do.
4:38 Speaker 00 He just wants to make humanity better, honestly.
4:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, similar like Neuralink. If you look at what he's doing as an entrepreneur, I don't think. And I'm not saying Zuck's done a terrible job. I don't think it's challenging to pay people a lot of money. I think it's challenging to do stuff that no one else has done.
4:57 Speaker 00 I just wish before, you know, Elon does the next thing or whatever. He someone releases a book on how he works, because that is worth studying for everybody in the world. You get what I mean?
5:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:09 Speaker 00 To work on so many different things and play Diablo and have 12 kids, like, how how does it work? And that that is worth, like, I wish one of the biographers revealed that.
5:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, but if you look at his company versus the competitors, like, if you look at Facebook, what Facebook's done really well is M and A.
5:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:25 Speaker 01 Microsoft has done M and A really well. Look at GitHub. What they bought GitHub for, I believe it has roughly that much now in revenue annually or something like that. It was crazy, the numbers I saw. Look at YouTube. They bought YouTube for what, 1. something billion?
5:38 Speaker 00 1 billion.
5:39 Speaker 01 And it did what, almost 10 billion in revenue last quarter?
5:42 Speaker 00 I think more. It does more revenue than Netflix.
5:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, so it's like if you look at Google, they've done extremely well from M and A. So has Microsoft. So has Facebook. WhatsApp, Instagram. I know people talk about like, oh, WhatsApp, they have Montezia. The user base, the amount of people that use WhatsApp is ridiculous, the majority of the world.
6:02 Speaker 01 But if you look at Elon, what has he done? Well, from an M and A standpoint.
6:08 Speaker 00 SolarCity?
6:09 Speaker 01 Exactly.
6:09 Speaker 00 Cause it's company.
6:10 Speaker 01 Alright, like, what he's done well is not M and A. What he's done well is build.
6:16 Speaker 00 He likes doing things the hard way, it seems. It's always the hard way, maximum difficult. I mean, even when he plays Diablo, like I mentioned last time, Diablo 4, he plays on hardcore mode, which means if you die, you lose it all. And I think that's how he plays life, too. Like, might as well just go for it all. Yeah. So, anyway, you guys can choose how to do it. You pay one person one billion, or buy one billion more compute. That's how you play it.
6:42 Speaker 01 Yeah. But what personality are you? I'm more of a buy it then build it.
6:49 Speaker 00 I don't, I think, I think I'm more of a build it kinda guy, but also, you know, it's, it's interesting, cause Single Grain was an acquisition, right? I think, had I just been involved with the other two acquisitions, I think they would have worked out anyway. But I, I don't think I'm, I'm like against either, but I do like building stuff from scratch, so.
7:10 Speaker 01 I would say when it comes to software, or like SaaS, I prefer building. I don't prefer buying. I've bought a few, but I just tear apart the product and I'm just buying it for its traffic or its brand. I'm not really buying it for the tech.
7:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, same with the answer to the public. So I prefer building when it comes to SaaS. I tend to buy when it comes to service-based businesses, but I don't understand service-based businesses as well as I understand software.
7:37 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I think it just depends. There's no right answer here.
7:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't think there's a right answer.
7:41 Speaker 00 Because of my experiences, I have PTSD, because I know humans are so, we're all different, right? And you add a lot of complexities each time you buy, but you have, you have a good integration team for that. I think, I do believe the future is gonna be smaller teams, and so I'm a little gun shy on looking at anything to buy right now. So that's, that's where I sit.
8:02 Speaker 01 Dude, randomly, you wanna see a change I made with my team on the homepage?
8:05 Speaker 00 What?
8:07 Speaker 01 I forgot what they had it. I think it was something like, digital marketing agencies believe Google and Meta own the attention, but L L M's is proving otherwise, right? They had something like that and the call to action was like, uh, something like, uh, let us help you be found everywhere. And I changed it. It took iterations. I was just texting my team yesterday. We were just doing it on the fly. Took four iterations of it and they all got published.
8:32 Speaker 00 Everywhere. I like it. Yeah, there you go.
8:33 Speaker 01 And then I put, marketers believe. I was like, why do you have digital marketing agencies like, oh, we get good traffic from that keyword? I'm like, we already have it on some of the other sites. We moved that from the homepage. I'm like, just put marketers because we're not pitching to digital marketers and they know that. Or, I mean, we're not pitching to agencies and they know that. And I was just like, marketers believe Google and Meta own attention. And I changed L L M's to Chat G P T. Because when we talk to most companies, like even when I was in Hong Kong and Chat G P T is banned unless you use a V P N. It's not really banned, but Chat G P T is not available there and they all use V P N's to access it. No one talks about L L M's. No one talks about Grok. No one talks about perplexity. They just assume everything is Chat G P T. So I'm like, we should just nail it head on and just focus our messaging purely around Chat G P T.
9:18 Speaker 01 And yes, we can do perplexity and all the other ones, but Chat G P T is what everyone's talking about. So we should just focus on that.
9:24 Speaker 00 That's what we call the first mover advantage. Typically, first mover, if you have a good product and you're, you're, you're known as the brand in the space, you're going to get the attention. And you know what's interesting? I was looking at our, our traffic stats, just website traffic. And whenever we talk about like, uh, A I O or Chat G P T optimization or, or like any of these L L M O or whatever, it's always five to 10 times more traffic than anything else that we publish right now. So I'm just like, guys, why don't we just keep doing that? Like, forget all the other stuff, right?
9:50 Speaker 01 Same as social content.
9:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, just forget about it. And by the way, I was, I was reading, um, reading something. A bunch of S E Os were complaining again. Ha, ha, ha, right? They're complaining again on, on X.
10:00 Speaker 01 About?
10:01 Speaker 00 They're complaining about how traditional S E O is dying, but there was a silver lining to it. The silver lining is they've never been busier than ever right now. So we have some mutual friends, um, maybe some mutual, uh, enemies as well in there. And, um, they were just saying that. They've never been busier because when things get tough with traditional SEO, people are like, they want to get that traffic back. They want the same thing back. And it's no different than this SaaS founders retreat I was at where everyone wants to get their traffic back. I'm like, guys, like, it's on its way down. I'm, I'm, don't abandon it, but it's, it's a sunk cost thing where you don't, it's okay if you spent money on it. It's time to move on.
10:35 Speaker 01 Yes, when Eric says move on, though, because I think a lot of people are gonna
10:39 Speaker 00 Not throw it away.
10:39 Speaker 01 in a wrong, a wrong context. He's not saying SEO is dead. He's not saying Google is dead. He's saying that you need to adapt with the platforms and you need to be there when people ask questions to Google in AI mode or whether it's in the AI overviews. But also you need to be there whether it's perplexity, Grok, or ChatGPT, not just for bottom of funnel, but also top of funnel, middle of funnel, and you need to adapt. What he's saying is throw away your mindset of, oh, I spent all this money on traditional SEO and I'm losing traffic. What Eric is specifically saying is that's fine. A lot of those factors are very relevant to optimizing for AI and LLMs. Adapt with it. Don't fight and go against the grain.
11:22 Speaker 00 Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders, showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts. And, you know, we talk about search everywhere optimization. It's a term you coined, but it's more so you need citations everywhere. So I had that group, that SaaS group. I was like,
12:05 Speaker 00 hey, guys, just go to ChatGPT right now. Search for what's the best marketing podcast. Seven out of eight people, marking school was at least number two, if not higher, right?
12:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:13 Speaker 00 And so, but what's the reason for that? It's because we're cited on YouTube. We've been publishing, we're over 3,000 episodes on marking school. I don't know if you know that.
12:20 Speaker 01 Wow.
12:21 Speaker 00 You publish all the time on your YouTube. I publish all the time on YouTube. We're publishing on Twitter. We're everywhere, right? It's not just links anymore. And you actually published something on X today. I don't even know if you know this. You scheduled something.
12:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was like, I don't know what I posted.
12:32 Speaker 00 But basically, it does talk about how like, yeah, you need to have like some type of brand reputation. There's sentimentality around your brand as well.
12:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, we did one on how ChatGPT evaluates brand mentions.
12:42 Speaker 00 So why don't you talk about that? Because I think this is related to this.
12:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I had a post on, a data post that my team ended up creating. I can't see the footnote. Oh, there you go. I can see the footnote in it. So I looked at over 100 sites in 14 different verticals to see why ChatGPT recommends certain brands more than others. And we wanted to really look at brand mentions. And we looked at domain authority. It doesn't really have too much of an impact on ChatGPT. So if you get mentioned on a high domain authority versus low domain authority, not too much. Context, like what is the context of that you're being mentioned in? That has a high score. The thoroughness, if someone just says like, oh, NP Digital or Singing Rain is good, but without being super thorough and giving reasons why, the thoroughness does matter.
13:30 Speaker 01 Age, the age of the business and the more people mentioning you over time, that's helped. Quantity was another one that was really high.
13:41 Speaker 01 Relevance of the site, a little bit lower than those medium-ish. And I think that's going to change over time. Sentiment had a high rating as well. Is what they're saying about your company positive or negative? So if you had to pick the main factors, you want to focus on context, thoroughness, quantity. So a lot of these brand mentions and sentiment, they want to be positive. Those are the four main factors to focus on when it comes to brand mentions to get ChatGPT to cite you more often. Yep. So.
14:11 Speaker 00 Again, it's not just based on like links still matter, but like you look at the the internet now. If you're in LLM, you're crawling a bunch of different things, you're multimodal. And you want to try to be as in as many places as possible. And by the way, a lot of this stuff now is just republishing. You're republishing short form content. And when when I think about SEO now, when our blog posts, we're we're more aggressive now with the transactional. You know, bottom of funnel content like programmatic SEO, right? Because we're just like, why not go for, why not have more shots on goal? It's it's no different than organic, uh, organic short form. Why not have more shots on goal? So I was I was kind of lighting into my brand team yesterday because I pulled up Opus. So our eighty minute conversation, there's actually a lot more moments that we miss. That my team doesn't publish, right? Whether it's you say something interesting or I like, I'm like, some of these are actually good.
14:55 Speaker 00 And some of them are like duds, they're not that good. But then when I look at this ones that we manually choose sometimes, I'm like, that's not even a good moment. Like, why is that even being published to Instagram, right? It's got to be something that you're willing to share with your friends or share with your mom or something like that. Um, and so why would you not use something like an Opus or like an overlap or something like that? Um, anyway, I did ask again, what's the best marketing pod to Grok?
15:18 Speaker 00 We're number two again. I don't know why we're constantly number two.
15:20 Speaker 01 Who's number one?
15:21 Speaker 00 Uh, Amy Porterfield. Yeah, you see, you knew that.
15:24 Speaker 01 Um, yeah.
15:24 Speaker 00 Okay.
15:25 Speaker 01 He has a good podcast.
15:25 Speaker 00 Okay, who do you think is number one for, um, ChatGPT?
15:30 Speaker 01 Amy Porterfield.
15:31 Speaker 00 No, marketing over coffee. And I don't know why this is.
15:34 Speaker 01 I don't know.
15:34 Speaker 00 Yeah, I've never heard of this one. John Wall and Chris Penn, Marketing School with Neil Patel and Eric Su is number two. Gary Vee Audio Experience is number three, but Gary's constantly still everywhere, you know?
15:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:44 Speaker 00 So, um, and then I I searched for it on Claude too, but, um.
15:47 Speaker 01 How's he adapting to the AI role? I don't hear much about him and AI stuff.
15:50 Speaker 00 You know what's interesting? I look at his YouTube channel from time to time and all of his content. You know how they've repurposed him speaking, right? It's always the uh, uh, social media is in there or AI is in there. So I think he's trying to capitalize on driving social media or AI traffic to drive more leads through his business. That's what I think.
16:06 Speaker 01 So he is talking about AI.
16:07 Speaker 00 Yeah, he is. Basically, like, if you're not using AI, you're screwed. And then he has to talk about V friends a little bit too, because he's pumping that. Um, but I think he's mostly focused on his business now.
16:17 Speaker 01 Yeah. Good for him. He's also had quite a few exits. People don't realize that about Gary. They look at him as a social media personality.
16:24 Speaker 00 Great operator.
16:25 Speaker 01 He's an amazing operator and he's done very well building companies and flipping them. And flipping them for a lot of money. And I wouldn't say flip because it sounds bad, but more so building them and exiting them to a strategic buyer like American Express or whoever it may be.
16:40 Speaker 00 Resy, yeah.
16:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. People don't talk about that.
16:43 Speaker 00 I think he's very good with people too, right? He has a, I have a guy that used to work at Single Grain Ragav that works and I talk to Ragav all the time. And he's worked there for a long time. So he treats you, like, once you're in with him, he treats you really well. But what I noticed, and like, it's not like I'm close to Gary or anything, but he'll message me every now and then and say, hey, just hope everything is well, like on Instagram, right? And I think that level, I know a couple of people from like my high school that do that just to check in. That goes a long way. I don't do that personally. I should do it more, but I'm just not like that. But on Claude, who do you think is number one?
17:14 Speaker 01 We are.
17:15 Speaker 00 Yes. Why do you think that?
17:17 Speaker 01 I just guessed because the way you asked, I was like.
17:19 Speaker 00 The way I asked, okay.
17:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:20 Speaker 00 Gary V is number two though. And then number three is like call to action from a bounce. But we're constantly number one or two. Why is that? The only solution, the thing that makes sense to me is we're cited, cited in a lot of different places.
17:31 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
17:31 Speaker 00 Yeah.
17:32 Speaker 01 For a long, long time, many, many years.
17:34 Speaker 00 Yeah. And that is a moat. If you can stay consistent for a very long time, because Gary constantly appears here too, you're gonna have an edge over other people.
17:42 Speaker 01 Yeah. I haven't checked out his social profiles lately, but I didn't realize he's pushing out AI content. I still thought he was pushing out a lot of motivational content.
17:52 Speaker 00 No, I think he's locked it in a lot more. Yeah. Anyway, that's it for today, guys, and we'll see you tomorrow.
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