How Many People Do CEOs Really Rely On in an Org?

In episode #2901, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the concept of how many individuals leaders can truly count on within their organizations, the role of AI agents in ad targeting versus traditional human-focused ads, the nuances of Net Promoter Score (NPS), and recent changes to Google's algorithm. Don’t forget to help us grow by subscribing and liking on YouTube! Check out more of Eric’s content (Leveling UP YT) and Neil’s videos (Neil Patel YT) TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: (00:00) The Value of Trust in Leadership (06:09) The Future of Advertising (10:51) Understanding NPS and Customer Feedback (11:46) Critique of Google's Algorithm Changes (14:24) That’s it for today! Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe! Go to https://www.marketingschool.io to learn more! Leave Some Feedback: What should we talk about next? Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric’s ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel X @ericosiu

• 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. How many people do you think can CEOs truly count on in any organization? Okay, let's flip this a little bit. Neil's not a CEO, but you're co-founders, okay? How many people can founders truly count on in any organization?

• 0:46Speaker 01

  When you mean count on, are you talking about how many people can you work with directly to solve problems?

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Or... Let me give you an example. You know you can go to Mike Kamo for anything, right?

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  How many of those do you have?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  My organization's small compared to like some of these large corporations.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  Answer the question. How many do you have?

• 1:08Speaker 01

  10 to 20, somewhere around there?

• 1:10Speaker 00

  That's a lot. So Jason Lemkin, and I can see that number, but Jason Lemkin, who founded EchoSign, sold it to Adobe. He said, "Even in the biggest companies, CEOs often really only have two to three folks. They can utterly, totally count on 100%. Being one of those two to three can be really hard. By definition, you sort of get taken advantage of by being overloaded, but it's where career magic can happen."

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think if you're saying for any problem, I don't have 10 to 20 people that can solve any problem. I have more than two, for sure. But like, if I have a marketing problem, I know I can go to Solo and he'll solve it. If I have a sales problem, I know I can go to Nick and he'll just figure it out. I have people who can solve problems for different things. And I also have some generalists, like both my CEO and my co-founder can solve most problems that are related to anything. Same with most of our managing directors. Most of them can solve any problem within the region that we have issues with. But I do believe a lot of that comes down to good recruiting. And I think if you're like a Microsoft, or Amazon, or Adobe, or Cisco, you have way more than 10 to 20 because

• 2:17Speaker 01

  their organizations are so big. Just most people don't realize who those 10, or 20, or 30, or 50, or 100 are.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  But who are you, how many of these are you actively talking to a lot of times, like throughout the week? The 10 or 20 I'm actually talking to.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  10 or 20, okay. So for me, it's like four or so. So it's closer to Jason's number. But it's not a big number at the end of the day.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Yours will go bigger as your team size gets bigger.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  But I'm just saying it's four for me right now and it's 10 to 20 for you right now. Jason is saying three, right? And I'm just saying we're sharing different experiences.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, but let's look at it this way. How many people do you have in your organization?

• 2:51Speaker 01

  50.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  All right. So you're roughly at 8% or you are at 8%.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  I'm at, call it 1 to 2%.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  But I think what he's saying, because he's had a big org too, right? And he's worked in big orgs. I still think there's some truth to what he's saying as well. It's like the three to five, maybe that you can go to. Like to me, when I look at Mike Kamo, I'm like, you can go to him for anything, right?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Literally anything. Maybe Golikson as well, right? How many of these, how many more of, like you, you mentioned, like, for example, let's, let's break this down a little bit. So you're managing directors, right? They're good at solving like their region or their specific problems.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  They can do more than their region, though.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  But how many people do you have that are like Mike Kamo?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  10 plus.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  So your managing directors are equal to Mike Kamo?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  I don't believe that.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  They are.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  I don't believe that.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  They actually are better than him in many areas and weaker than him in other areas.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Okay, just like you have weaknesses and I have weaknesses, but I'm just saying in general, like go to.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  I tend to, like, we can agree to disagree on this one, but I tend to agree more with the Jason Lemkins of the world.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Because it's also what kind of problems do you have at the stage of company you're at?

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Well, I mean.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  The stage of the company I'm at, I don't have too many problems from Mike Kamo. Mike Kamo is great in a startup environment.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  I'm saying he's not speaking from a startup environment, Jason Lemkin. He's speaking from like a mature company.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, but what I'm getting at is when you're saying like Mike can solve all problems. In a more mature company, Mike actually can't solve as many problems as a managing director.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  But you can, let's say it's not Mike, right? But I'm just saying like Mike-ish in the early days, right?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. So like.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  I see where Jason's coming from. I see where you're coming from as well. But I think the one caveat is it's not, it's just not a lot of people.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  It's not a lot of people. And the one caveat that I'll give you is we're a very top-heavy organization. We have a very heavy payroll for senior people who are just really good at solving any problems.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  And when we look at most companies of our size, we're bloated in that area, which reduces our margins. But that also makes it easier for us to rely on people. And we set it up that way. So both Mike and I don't have to be the founder that's running the company.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. So by the way, guys, he sold his company to Adobe. And so he saw first hands. Like he stayed at Adobe for a while, like SVP level. He's speaking from Adobe level and also EchoSign level as well. So, but also keep in mind, he's a SaaS company.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  But even this, you know, here's a devil's advocate. If you want to look at the counterpoint, Jason sold to Adobe, he was in a specific division. We've worked with so many different divisions of Adobe, a lot of them operate in silos. He does not have the experience of knowing how Adobe as a whole organization runs. He's within a bubble in Adobe for the product that got, that they acquired. And I know this and I'm 100% sure, you're not dealing with global problems in Adobe in every single division.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think the thing is, we don't know how big EchoSign was. So he sold.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  EchoSign wasn't that big.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  Because they sold for 100 million.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And he got put in a division.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Like dude, I was in Adobe, I was in Brussels, dealing with a private lunch put on by Adobe. There were some amazing A players there and there were some issues during the lunch. They solved it and they made things go seamless. And some of them run specific countries. And I'm like, I can see how this person's a badass.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  I think the point is, I don't want to belabor this because we don't have that much time left. I think the point is, there's not a lot. We can agree on that.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Percentage wise, there's not a lot. You're looking at 1% at scale max.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Which is really small. So my point is like, if you can find those people, my God, do everything you can to be like, do what you can to protect them at all costs.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Yes, but if you're a startup and you have a smaller organization headcount wise like Eric, it should be a high percentage like you have. If not, that means you're doing a bad job in recruiting.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yep. So let's move over to this next one over here. What do you feel about ads? So, okay, here's the premise. Let me set this up. So there's an argument that ads will no longer be shown to humans.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  I saw that you put that in the spreadsheet. I just don't see it.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Okay, so in the short term, you don't see it. I don't see it in the short term.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Long term too, because it's also what do you consider a ad?

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Okay, we're getting into like, we're getting to, okay, let's just go into this a little bit. So Arvind Shrinivas, so he's with perplexity. Now, his argument is that instead of showing ads to humans directly, advertisements would be targeted at AI agents that work on users behalf. So like, yes, we can say humans are still going to be looking at things, right? They're going to be consuming things. But I would say the argument here is that ads, there will be agent only ads. There's still going to be human ads as well.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Totally agree.

• 7:49Speaker 00

  That I think that's, that's how we probably both see it.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  And there'll be a repository where all these agents will go to, and then you got a market in there and hopefully they pick yours. But like, I look at it as, let's take Justin Bieber, for example, if he's wearing Crocs or Champion, he made Champion popular again.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  He did?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yes, Champion started booming once Justin Bieber started wearing it. Same with Crocs.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  I didn't even know that.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  It's the Justin Bieber effect. Everyone's like, oh, my God, Justin Bieber's wearing Crocs. I gotta buy Crocs now. And it caused Crocs to just explode in sales. But I look at that as a version of ads.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  That makes sense. Yeah. So I think, by the way, perplexity just started launching the little, the little related search that they're sponsored now. You see that?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the problem with perplexity is they don't have the volume.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  No.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  And I think it's a little too early to try to be monetizing it. I think it's a big mistake that they're making. They need to wait for the Trump administration to come and someone to just buy them out.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Yep. Did you, how often, did you guys, do you guys use AppLovin at all?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  We do use AppLovin. Oh, on a random side note, going back to perplexity. You know, a lot of companies are using their stuff to train their own AI.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  That makes sense.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  I bet you it's happening everywhere.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, because they get they get good answers. Yeah. Why would you not, right? So, by the way, so this this this post from Jeremiah Prumer says that if you're looking for a reason to be skeptical about early success with AppLovin, this is it. So basically, they surveyed response for AppLovin buyers over here. And only 27% of people that clicked an AppLovin ad reported that they discovered the brand via a mobile app or game, which is where AppLovin sponsors, right? 73% of those buyers discovered the brand somewhere else, including 30% coming from Meta. So this is just, this is like the reason to be skeptical. This is the devil's advocate, right? But that's not to say like people shouldn't be using it, especially if you're trying to, especially with D to C, right? With B to B, it's not going to work.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  And and I look at marketing as first touch, middle touch, last touch, and everywhere in between. And you need to still get people to come back and buy, whether you get them back from an email or another ad or influencer campaign, you're still getting them back to buy. And just because someone discovered the product through another channel doesn't mean that they would have bought if they didn't see the ad. And it also doesn't mean that they would have not bought if they didn't see that, right? It can go both ways. But this is why I think everyone needs to start doing multi-touch attribution, and that is going to be the future.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Yep. And that goes back to what we said earlier in this podcast. Again, you can use Haas or Houz, H A U S, or Hockey Stack would be another one. What else is there for good attribution?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  Maybe just those two, because one's for B to B, one's for D to C. So we can end on this one. So Jason Cohen, who founded WP Engine. So this is why your MPS score is always lower than you think. Why do you think it is?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Because a lot of people don't give you feedback because they don't care and they're pissed off with you.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. Or also, it's always lower than you think because customers who already churned aren't answering the quiz.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  That's one. Neither are the disengaged people, to your point, right? So it's double selection bias.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  So it's always lower.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Totally agree with that. Like, people say Apple has one of the highest NPS, and I do think they have an amazing NPS score. But I do believe when people report their NPS scores, it's higher than what it really is.

• 11:11Speaker 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. So the question is, because there's double selection bias, how much do you discount your NPS score by?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I don't look at NPS as what you should discount it by. I look at it as, don't worry if that's a real number or not. But every time you're running NPS scores, you still have the selection bias issues. You still have the disengaged people that aren't really answering it. But your goal should be to improve that number each time.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  It better be going up.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  So instead of looking at it's a 40, or 50, or 30, or 60, or whatever the number is, just look at it as a baseline, and you want to keep improving from there. And that means directionally, you're going in the right direction.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  I agree with that. Yeah, it should be, it should be growing. Because, whatever, the score is the score at the end of the day.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Anything else you want to cover?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want to cover the worst change to Google's algorithm update over the years.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  Where's that one?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  It's second on my list.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  Go for it.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  You know, this is just a personal gripe. We get our clients really good rankings, but over the years as I've been using Google, a lot of their search results just aren't as good as they used to be. And I think the main reason for that is they push heavier on brands than they ever did before. And a lot of brands have mediocre responses to a lot of questions, queries, because they don't specialize in that subject. And I think it's a big mistake that they've made in their algorithm. I'm not saying that they should discount brand. I think brands are important because they're less likely to create fake news and stuff like that.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  But at the same time, they need to have a better balance of really highlighting industry content from industry specialized sites, like they do with local mom and pop SEO. Or local SEO, when you look at local SEO, a lot of mom and pops rank really well. The reason they rank really well isn't because they care about their business more than, let's say, a Starbucks or McDonald's. The board on Starbucks or McDonald's really do care about the business, so do the executives. The difference is, is the mom and pop usually has one business to deal with. The founder is there running it and they will try to delight you and go above and beyond. That's hard to do at scale when you have as many locations as Starbucks, or Subway, or Walmart, or any of them, right? And I know some of them are franchised like Subway.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  But nonetheless, the mom and pops do really well and they get tons of reviews because they care and the founder and the people there are running it and they just want to delight you. You don't get the same thing when you go into Starbucks. A lot of times you see messy floors or, you know.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  Starbucks sucks now.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. But if it was a local coffee shop, you tell them like, oh, sorry, the floor is dirty. Let me clean the chairs. Like, they try to go above and beyond to make you happy. A lot of the people at Starbucks, they don't even look at you or try to engage with you. They're just like, I'm just here for a paycheck. And those mom and pops have better ratings and they take up a lot of the local results. And I do believe that if Google implemented some of those same philosophies with their search results, you would have better results when people do searches. That's just my opinion.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  I look at the local pack as like, this is a product decision that they made, right? It's like, pretty easy to see the signals, name, address, phone number, how many reviews are you getting, right? I think it's tougher for broader.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  You know, so it's like, from a product standpoint, it's just like, okay, this is what works for us. Let's just favor the brands. And like, sure, every, every once in a while, there'll be a whistleblower that calls out like, oh, Forbes advisor or whatever, right? And then they get torched. But I think they found something that works to local pack and they just stick with it. So sometimes it's just like, hey, let's not try to rock the boat too much. Until like a chat G P T comes around, it's like, okay, code red, we gotta do something. And that's when they, they start to innovate again. So again, I think we're, we're going to see these five, six players. We're going to see a lot of healthy innovation and it'll be good for you, it'll be good for me. And we'll see what happens. But that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Go to the, go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association and we'll see you tomorrow.