How To Get B2B Attribution Right The Easy Way

In this episode, Eric and Neil discuss proven B2B attribution strategies, highlighting why the obsession with perfect multi-touch tracking misses the bigger picture. They explain the benefits of blended CAC, layering conversion pixels, UTM tracking, and the value (and limits) of “How did you hear about us” forms. Also covered are surprising traffic insights around ChatGPT referrals, lessons from HubSpot Inbound 2024, and why simplifying talks beats technical deep-dives. Finally, they reflect on wealth, personal fulfillment, and how the definition of luxury shifts as your career evolves. TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Realities of B2B marketing attribution (05:00) Is ChatGPT a real traffic driver or hype? (10:00) HubSpot event lessons: simplification beats technical depth (15:00) The shifting meaning of luxury and wealth for entrepreneurs (20:00) Why money matters, but relationships matter more 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗟 Welcome 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 Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Ubersuggest: https://www.ubersuggest.com/ Answer The Public: https://www.answerthepublic.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@neilpatel Visible: 0% - 100%

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot's 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. Speaking of attribution, I have another topic here on attribution. How to get B2B attribution right. So, literally this guy, Cody Schneider tweets this.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  "Obsession with attribution in B2B is rookie, okay? Focus on blended CAC decreasing over time. Layer marketing channel pixel conversion event plus UTM's plus a required 'how did you hear about us' form. You'll have a 90% accurate picture without crazy tech." I don't know about 90%, but it's certainly more accurate. But what we're basically saying here is like, yes, okay, yes, you want to have pixels on your website measuring conversions. Yes, have UTM tracking. Okay, that helps. Looking at source, your campaign and all that. But what I really like is, "How did you hear about us?" But even that's not good enough. Because oftentimes, people, they forget. And you mentioned that your guys will interview them a lot more, and people will just kind of make something up when it's like, "How did you hear about us?" when it's required.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, no, look, I agree with you. On a side note, on your sheet, you have something here. I just clicked on it.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  I have a lot on my sheet.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. Today is a great day. I barely had to put anything in the sheet because Eric.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  That was risky, because you only had four going, and then when I came in, I like deployed it all.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  No, no, but at that moment, I was adding stuff to the sheet.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh, then I came in, oh, okay.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  And that's why I texted you. I'm like, hey, I think I erased your top one to add it back.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  But Eric has this LinkedIn message. It's from Robert DeRoe. And it says, "AI shaping retail traffic. ChatGPT is quickly becoming a major traffic, a major force in online shopping referrals. In August, it drove 20% of Walmart's referral traffic, 20-plus percent for Etsy, 15% for Target, 10% for eBay." And he's citing a blog post from modernretail.co. And keep in mind, that's not 20% of their total traffic. This is just of their referral traffic.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  I don't believe ChatGPT drove 20% of Walmart's referral traffic in one month.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Well, you have this other one over here that's related to it, talking about, um, so Google traffic's actually gone up, right? 0.22% versus ChatGPT has gone up 0.03%, but also keep in mind that when we look at search, Google's 41.35%. ChatGPT is only 0.24%, right?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  So this is from, uh,

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Tim Solo.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  It's Tim Solo, yeah, from Ahrefs.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  And they took a lot of analytics data from a lot of different sites. 60,000. And they ended up breaking down that ChatGPT is driving roughly 0.24% of traffic. Now, I get Walmart's a really big brand, but we have access to analytics for literally million-plus websites. It's actually well into the millions. I think it's like at three-ish million at this point. We don't see ChatGPT driving 1% of people's traffic. And we have everything from, you know, when we aggregate the data, we have big brands to small brands. We rarely ever see it more than 1%. So for them to say that ChatGPT is driving 20% of Walmart's referral traffic, not total traffic. What Tim and I are talking about here is percentage of total traffic.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Even referral traffic, just 20% of referral traffic? I just think that number is way too high based on the data I'm seeing.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Um, but it is a popular referral source and it converts really highly. It's just 20% is just way too high.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  I, I think, so 20% seems high to me, but I, I also think it depends. Cause when I was looking at my analytics earlier in the last seven days, cause I was curious. I was like, I do see it moving up and down. I'm like, oh, 4,000 visitors from these AI services. I was like, we, we, we, we were sure at a high point, we're getting like 400, 500,000 visitors a month, but now it's like 80,000, something like that. So that, that's a pretty sizable chunk, right? But I think it just depends. Um, so that's only one sample.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, but 20% is high.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  20% is too high.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Especially for a big brand.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Cause the bigger the brand, the more, uh, diverse their traffic sources tend to be.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  You know, their biggest channel is typically going to be brand name. Because you know, that's what happens with all multi hundred plus billion dollar companies. But outside of brand name, they're mentioned everywhere across the web.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  You know, there's no way that one traffic source is bringing in 20%.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  I'd be keen to see you do one of those like data visualization studies on the different niches. And like what percent of chat GPT is driving referral traffic?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Dude, we should actually do that.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  See, look at that.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  That's a good idea.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  This podcast is useful.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  That's a good idea.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  I'll actually have my team break something down.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Yep. Um, speaking of which, I think it's helpful for us before we pick other topics here to reflect on our HubSpot experience. Cause you and I have been texting on it. Um, is something wrong with your eyes?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  No, just itchy, but yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Okay. So, um, Neil and I spoke, Neil spoke on the main stage of HubSpot's event. I think you had a couple of thousand people on the main stage. It capped out at 7,500. I feel like you probably had like.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  There's no way there's 7,500.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  It could fit 7,500.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Oh, got it.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  But how many, how many people do you think were watching?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  I was in the middle of the stage too.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  I don't know. There was in the thousands for sure. It's a great event. I'm not trying to bash HubSpot by the way, but uh, there was quite a few people. I just don't know.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  I think you had like 3,500, 4,000, something like that. Okay.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Um, now you and I did a marketing school session together at HubSpot, great event. Um, and I think we probably had that room could fit, uh, 2,000. Let's say we had, I don't know, 1,500, something like that. And then my solo session, uh, 1,000. And then your session, if you're comfortable revealing, 4.7.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Right?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Well, if you're comfortable revealing.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, a good 4.7.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. You look like you're comfortable. So I just said it. And then our, our session together was a four and then my solo session was a four. Last year, my solo session was like a 4.5.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Was our, our solo was a 4.3 or no, the average was 4.3.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Average was like 4.4.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  I think average was 4.3, 4.3 or something like that.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  I don't remember that. Yeah. You'd have to check now, but I, we have a couple of lessons, um, to, to impart here.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  And wait, your solo session was a four or four point?

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Four. Last year was 4.5.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  This year dropped to four. And so I'll just tell you some of my lessons from the two sessions that we did, right? One is, we're never gonna do Q and A again. Q and A, at least at HubSpot, in Mount, again, great event, but we've noticed whenever we've done Q and A, the churn, the audience churn is insane.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Like, people drop.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  And we can tell from the comments, too, people don't care for the Q and A as much as just us talk.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  They don't. Yeah. Even though we love doing Q and A, I think it's like at other conferences, we do it, and then most people stick around. It's just different here. The other thing I'll say is, with my talk specifically, I rewatched it, and we just posted it to YouTube the other day. I was like, yeah, I was way too technical. Remember, we talked about how.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Wait, your talk this time?

• 6:56Speaker 00

  My solo talk this, my last year talk was simplified, and that's why it went over well, right? And then I want to come to you in a second, but my talk was about MCPs and how they work and how we're, you know, making these agentic workflows, these subagents. The thing is, my topic was too technical, but it was also covering too many subjects, so I was so excited, right? And we talked about this before. When Steve Jobs did marketing, he wanted to have five messages in his ad, and his ad person was like, no. And he threw like one paper at him and caught it. When he threw five papers, Steve like didn't catch anything. And so it's really important, this is like a mistake that I've made before, but sometimes you make the same mistake. It's just like, keep it simple to one message and simplify, which goes to Neil's session to 4.7.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  It was just about graphs and data.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  30 charts that'll show you where the marketing is going, or the future of marketing.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'll flip it to you for a second. Go ahead.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  But, see, the way you speak at conferences is the way I used to speak at conferences like five to 10 years ago, somewhere in that timeframe. And what I learned is, because I used to give technical talks, and I would like to show step by step.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  This one was too technical.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And when I used to go step by step and talk about different SEO tactics and how to change your code, or do things through JavaScript.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  What would end up happening is you would lose most of the room.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  And what I found out from a business standpoint, there was a guy who worked for us for a bit and then went off and did his own thing. Michael Graham, I'm probably butchering his last name, British dude, good guy. And when he would give talks, and we both talk, I believe it was an internal summit for Adobe or one of our customers. He would be really high level and strategy and I would be more how tos and tactical. And what I learned from that experience working with him was

• 8:52Speaker 01

  if you're trying to generate revenue and you want to win over people, give the concepts and the strategies and the data, simplify things. And then if they want more, they'll come to you.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  But when you give them the step by step, there's a lot of people in the room that you'll just lose. You'll get the people who are the implementers, but some people in the room aren't implementers. When you give data and strategies and from a high level, whether someone's an implementer or an executive, it's valuable to them because they, if they want to go and implement, they'll go and dig deeper. But everyone in the room can understand the strategies and the concepts and it's useful to them to a certain extent.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  Right. Which is why the year before I kept a high level of just data, right? Just charts and things like that. 4.5. Oh my God. Amazing. Right? Neil, I remember I was walking with Neil. He got stopped a couple of times. Oh my God, I really love the charts, right? I'm like, I bet you, I bet you did. And so I think it's, it's to Neil's point, that's exactly how I've been in the past. But this time I think I got too excited because I naturally assumed that if I know it, most people would know it, right? That's just not the case.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  But it's not just this time. It was also the YPO marketing event, but different crowd. It's, I would actually put it into something very specific. Because you're so into AI right now, and I know a lot of people are, but Eric's in the weeds, testing, playing coaches, which I think is really valuable and smart for him to do. You love talking about the stuff that you're doing yourself. And most people can't relate because

• 10:31Speaker 01

  One, they don't understand. Two, when you try to break it down for them, they're never gonna do it. That talk was interesting. So.

• 10:39Speaker 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. I know everyone's ratings from that talk and from that conference, right? And so the two that did better than me was Sharon, who now works for acquisition.com, and then Kat Cole, right?

• 11:24Speaker 00

  And they were more like strategic, high level. I know you were there too. So they scored number one, Kat was number one, Sharon was number two, I was number three overall, right?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  And so it's also, to your point that you're making too, it's also a different crowd because when you have a crowd of entrepreneurs, they're more down to like try these things, right? But I do think that your way of doing it where it's not necessarily your way, but it's more like you keep a high level of data and then like get them asking for more. That is the way to do it, and that's how I did it exactly at HubSpot last year.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've always found that to work for most audiences.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  And then when you go too specific, like the YPO event, I gave a talk specifically for agencies. You're gonna neglect half the people in the room.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Right? Because I think they wanted my talk to be focused around agencies or something like that for topic.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Well, here's the thing with that event. I think 40% of attendees are agencies.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  But you talked about global expansion and all that, so it's a.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But most of it was centered around agencies, which would be hard for most people to relate to.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know. It's just like, it's, you, like for us, like we're saying we're not gonna do Q and A as much if we're welcome back to HubSpot in the future. But it's like we learned your audience over time.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. Anything else that you want to share on that before we move on?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Also, think about what's your goal?

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  If your goal is to.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Have clipable moments for Instagram, then give a talk where you're giving some wowing stuff where people are going to be shocked so that way you have clipable moments.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  You need stories, yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, my, my purpose of a talk is, at least the HubSpot one, very specifically, I gave a talk to educate and build brand awareness for my agency to the people in that crowd, because a lot of them work at corporations and eventually they will, even though we have an SMB division, most of the people in the room aren't a fit for working with us from an agency perspective, but a lot of them will eventually go to work for a Fortune 500 company. Because when the job market gets tough or whatnot, the big corporations typically have money, I'm not saying they're always going to hire.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  So the brand awareness helps us potentially get included into future RFPs and we see that. So I'll give a talk to a lot of people that work at smaller businesses, eventually someone go to a large corporation, like, "I wanted to work with you at this other company, we didn't have the budget, but now I'm at Oracle or wherever it may be and now I can include you in a pitch."

• 13:58Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Not guaranteed to get the money, but at least, you know, it helps build up our pipe two to three years later.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  This is part of the reason why we do this, because 99% of people aren't ready to buy and like you just have to stay top of mind and this is one of those things that you can stay top of mind and plus you're going to put it on your channel too, you might clip some stuff too. And so, in my opinion, it's like, sure, you might generate some immediate leads now, but long-term, I think this is going to help the longer tail, so.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  In Brazil, I gave a speech at Web Summit Rio.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  And I've been giving speech for there for a while. Someone in the audience saw the speech years ago, they now moved to a corporation that's in the pharmaceutical industry, massively large, everyone knows who they are, you may not know the, the company name, but you know some of the drug names. And they ended up moving to a different company and at their current company, they included us in a pitch because now they had a budget while their previous company was too small.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  And that's what happens when I speak. I know that my goal is to just build a relationship with people who are in marketing. Eventually they'll grow older, get promoted, move around different companies and will get included in pitches if they like what we have to say.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  And one thing too, I mean, just to make this more relatable to everyone too, it's, you can start speaking of small things first. Eventually for the larger, you'll get invited to a bunch of things eventually. And then what you're going to have to do is to speak at a larger conference. Sometimes you're invited to like, maybe speak at these PE or VC, you know, private events. But some of these you can just apply to too. So as you get better over time, you can make a sizzle reel of you speaking. You'll probably get selected at some point. One funny thing that we saw in the comments too. So Neil, I, we tend to bicker a lot and the, the audience really didn't like to bicker this type.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  And we bicker in a loving way, like brothers, not in a, we're hating on each other. We only want to see each other succeed.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that was, that was funny, but again, you have to know your audience. Anyway, you can pick the next one.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  The 300 billion man hates the worship of wealth. I don't know who's worth 300 billion.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  That sounds good. Okay. Let me get, so Andrew Carnegie, you know, Andrew Carnegie, right? I think he did trains back in the day, right? I think, I think it was trains or steel.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  It was something like that.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  Okay. One did, one did steel, one did oil, one did trains. So here's, here's what he says. So Andrew Carnegie, at age 33, his aspiration was to retire in a year or two. With $100,000 per month passive income, at the time, $100,000, a lot of money.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  That's a lot of money.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  I think that's, that's worth like, let's just say his net worth was like 80 million or something. And he's wanted like two, five, two to five million dollars a year, something like that, right? Which is significant. So his whole thing was to study philosophy and become a poster. But instead he ended up pioneering the steel industry. That's what you said. And building a $300 billion fortune. So here's what he said in this thing. This is, this might be interesting to you. So he said, look, man must have an idol. The amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolry. No idol more debasing than the worship of money. Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately, inordinately. Therefore, should I be careful to choose that life, which will be the most elevating in its character?

• 17:03Speaker 00

  To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery. I will resign business at 35, but during the two ensuing years, I wish to spend the afternoons in receiving instruction and reading systematically. And then he builds a $300 billion fortune.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I'm assuming three hundred billion dollars in today's time.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Is what it would be worth.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I think I think this is wise, right? I mean,

• 17:33Speaker 00

  he, I I'm curious to know what changed after and maybe I'll go find a book around it. But I do believe that the worship of money and I don't know, I feel like you've changed on this too. Is probably the worst things like because the money's not going to follow you.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  I used to worship money. I love money and my only goal was to try to make money.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Big time.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  And I and Eric's right. It was all I like dreamed about, obsessed about. And I still want to make more money. I still want to build a bigger company. But as I got older, I realized that money isn't everything. Like you can't, you know,

• 18:09Speaker 01

  replace a loved one with money. And I have a, you know, I have a friend whose child is sick. And they're spending whatever they can. If someone told me what I sell my business and everything I had to make sure that my kids could live longer and not feel any pain, I would. I don't care if I'm broke or living in a shoebox. It is what it is.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Money has purposes. You need it to survive. But I think people go through different stages in life. When you don't have money, you want it. When you feel like you have enough, you realize there's other things like, you know, I have back pain. So my kids, we call it surfing every night when I'm home and I put them to bed.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Oh, they stand on you.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  They stand on my back and they surf and they think it's fun.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Although they're starting to learn they can jump on my back, which I do not like and that hurts more.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  I used to surf on my mom's back.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  It's like in Asian cultures, they do that.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  I never jumped on her, though.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  No, but my kids think it's funny. No, like they'll just jump like jump up.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And then their bottoms will hit my like lower back or upper back.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  That's painful.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  It's painful.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  And they know it's painful and they think it's funny.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. They learn from you.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  No, I never would do that to my, you know, when I would walk on my parents' back or my uncle's back, I would I would not walk on the spine, on the edges.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  But, you know, like, what I. Be willing to worth less money right now to have better help?

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  So do it in a heartbeat.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, honestly, the okay, your health is obviously really important, but the the most important thing long term is is never money and it just relational wealth.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  And and like we, I think you and I both know people that are like billions and billions and they're miserable. There's a reason for that is because they they obsess, they idolized money. And um, and I I think, remember I sent you that thing about how like it, none of this matters if like your two kids hate you at age like when they're 20 years old. Your your extra IRR of like 5, 10% doesn't matter.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Eric sent me a tweet from someone and was talking about how making extra 10, 20% a year doesn't matter. If your kids uh don't want to hang out with you. And what the tweet said is if you don't hang out with your kids now. When you get, when they get older, why would you expect them to want to hang out with you then?

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  They'll hit you up for money, but other than that, why would they want to hang out with you at all? And I think that is spot on and what I've learned is. Hang out with them now, build their relationships, you won't be worth as much. And that's a sacrifice. Some people are built for just making money like Elon Musk, but I do think he tries to spend time with his kids.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  He does, yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  And some people uh like my brother in law. He wants to be there for all moments, be there with him and he does work, but like he's a much more attentive father than I ever would be. Um, he's changed way more diapers than I have too.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  How many have you changed?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  I can I can count on one hand probably. A few maybe, no, I've done more than one, but it's not much more than that.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Um, but I I I think it depends per person and what I found is like I have a friend who's on the Forbes list. Does really, really well and he's when I say he's on the Forbes list, I'm not talking about a billion or two billion dollars, like substantially more. And his kids are off to college. Um, I think one is graduated. They don't ever want to hang out with him.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Oh, is this the guy that we talked about before?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Uh, and when you look at it, it's just like, you have all this money, what are you gonna do with it?

• 21:45Speaker 00

  Well, not to go into any details on him, but it's, it's like, it, when you talk about him, it kinda seems, uh, empty.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  There's a lot of emptiness.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  So, and, and don't get me wrong, I got a great relationship with this person, but who cares if you have all this money and no one wants to hang out with you? If, if your family doesn't care to talk to you or whatever, maybe like, what are you gonna do with the money? You can't buy relationships, the ones you buy, they're fake.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Let me ask you this. So, I never asked you this before, but ever since I first met you, I knew you were obsessed with money in the beginning, right?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  What, there's always a story to it. So, what was the reason for you? Was it just you didn't have money, you became obsessed with it? Or was there some type of chip on your shoulder, I'm gonna show you?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  No, I always wanted a better life, cuz I didn't grow up with a great life. I didn't grow up with a bad life.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  When we were, when I was really young, we were in low-income housing. But we weren't poor, poor. Yes, my parents would save up money and they were losing money, more money each month than their expenses. But we have amazing family and my dad's, uh, siblings helped us out and my mom's siblings helped us out. So, we had a lot of love and family who helped us out and get through tough times. So, I don't think we really struggled. Cuz struggling is, is when you're spending more than you make and you have no other options, like.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, struggling is like you're about to get evicted.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  My dad's brother and, and sister helped us out and my mom's brothers, uh, helped us out. So, this is like, we weren't really struggling. Yes, financially, they weren't doing well, but, you know, we had help. But the, but the point I'm getting at is, is when I was younger, my parents did well, middle-class well.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Right? Um, and when we were struggling, it wasn't because my parents didn't have any ability. It was, we were moving to the United States and starting from scratch. And we had savings to help us out. So, it wasn't too bad. Um, and when we were middle-class, uh, we had a struggle at all. Mom and dad bought us a car, they paid for food, paid for groceries. College, we had grants or scholarships, depending on if it was me or my sister. And for whatever wasn't covered, parents covered, right? We started a business.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  I think my parents gave us around two hundred and something thousand dollars.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  So it wasn't like, yeah, it wasn't like I really struggled. Like, my parents did fine.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  They don't live in the biggest house, but they saved a lot of money. They just never spent it.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  So you might actually have the same thing I have where it's like, well, if somebody else can do all this and they have all these things, I want to have it too.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted a better life. I wanted the luxuries.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And my parents weren't broke at all. For them to give me two hundred grand.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  That's a lot.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  And you're talking about twenty-four years ago?

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Two hundred grand back then is a lot. You could buy a home for five hundred grand.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Right? In Southern California.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  Was that for ACS?

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Uh, the funding was for Crazy Egg.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Okay, wow.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  So it was partly ACS, but it started adding up.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  And then between my business partner, brother-in-law, parents combined, they gave us more money between his dad and my parents. It was over a million bucks.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  You guys got initial funding. And so that's why they get dividend checks, basically.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't really give them dividend checks, but yes, they don't ever have to work again.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  We take care of them.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  That's awesome.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  It was more so I wanted to do well. And if you actually look at a lot of the entrepreneurs that have done well, there's a guy who lives in this building. Uh, his name is Michael. He works at a company called Wellington and he does private equity. And he was telling me an interesting stat. He's like, if you actually look at a lot of the successful entrepreneurs, they come from well-educated, affluent backgrounds where, you know, they had a leg up from relationships, money, whatever it may be, education. And I can kind of see it. I didn't have the education, but, um, you know, we actually did have good education. It was more so not an Ivy League education. Uh, but my sister and I did really well in school because my mom was a teacher, so she pushed.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Um, and we had money and if we didn't have money, no joke, I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today. Because not only did parents give us money for a business. I had enough to buy my own place, but they offered down payments on a home.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Okay. And they even said if things went bad, because we had a few businesses like Vision Web Hosting, which was a cloud computing company, that went under and we burned over a million bucks. They said, it's okay, you don't have to pay it back. We eventually did, but they said we didn't have to pay it back. And not only did we have a place to go, uh, home to, they would pay for food, cars, whatever bills. They would support me in any times. Dude, even like if I have a bad time in my business, my parents like, you need money? We have money. I'm like, it's okay. I don't need money.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  But they still support even to this day. Now, we don't take anything from them, but they offer to. And I just wanted a better life, but what I was getting at is, uh, I wanted to make money so I could have luxurious things. And you've known me for a while. I went through phases. I used to buy fancy watches and all that kind of stuff.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, your shirts used to be really expensive too.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything, all my clothes, my jackets. Now I just wear, uh, Yuri.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  And.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  It's still expensive, by the way. Each shirt's still fifty bucks.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Uh, no shirts I do Buck Mason.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  A buck, how much is that?

• 27:08Speaker 01

  I don't know, dude, I buy like twenty, thirty at a time.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Forty bucks.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Forty bucks?

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Forty bucks.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  No, it's telling us.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Alright.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  And, uh, and then I buy like the same pant.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  Hey, what brand is that sweater?

• 27:18Speaker 01

  The sweater's probably Loro Piana.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  I know it's Loro Piana.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for some reason sweaters, I mainly still wear them. I know like there's Brunello Cucinelli and stuff like that, that's nice. But the Loro Piana stuff is just so comfortable and I don't give a crap how it looks.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  It is what it is.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Speaking Brunello, and then I want to talk about the death of the corporate job. So, thank you for sharing that, but you talk about Brunello. So Brunello Cucinelli, so just for those that don't know, it's really expensive clothes, basically. This guy lives in Italy and he always works from nine to five. Always, he stops work at five PM, right? His philosophy, he's one of those people in the world where it's like. Huge company, he's made a lot of money, right?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  But his philosophy is to hang around, you know, at the local cafes and all that and have a really chill life, right? It's not, and Michael, Michael Dell is kind of the same with like all shucks kind of guy, right? There's not a lot of these people, like, if you look at the top 400 richest people, like, a lot of them are just killers, right? And they, they are very driven by money, right? But Brunello is a good example of a guy. If you search, um, Google Brunello schedule, you should be able to find like how his ideal day looks. It's very similar to how Benjamin Franklin has scheduled his days. That's worth taking a look at. Go ahead.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  And they're doing, uh, funny enough, I got a message from them. They're doing an opening party, I think, starting tomorrow on the 4th.

• 28:29Speaker 00

  Oh, are you going?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Oh, dude, yeah. I don't give a crap about fashion anymore.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  But that's the point of money. I wanted it for luxuries. Now I don't care for it. I want it for comfort. And if you look at Eric.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Your luxuries have changed. You're looking for different luxuries now. Your luxury is like, maybe it's time with your kids or whatever.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Sure, yes.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  It's a great place to live, right?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  I'm like, what can it change to? But yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  It's not clothes anymore.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  No, it's not clothes or it's cars. I don't care for any of that.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Luxury for me is like a nice iPhone or a nice technology.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  I think both of us splurge. My, if I, if I say one thing that I splurge on.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Every single year is if there's a new iPad, I always buy it, even if there's a slight to no change. And if there's a new phone. I tend to buy it and I only bought the new iPhone because it's like almost half the weight. And I was like, oh, cool. I've had it for a while now.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  I have a new one over here.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. Guys, I'm holding his, his iPhone Air and it feels amazing. I'm going to get this next year.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm not going to get the double fold. You know, they talk about like the double fold where you can do more. And I'm like, what am I going to do more on?

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Do you run out of battery quickly?

• 29:38Speaker 01

  No, it lasts the whole day.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Wow, okay. All right. Well, that's what we spend on. We, your luxuries change over time and also your, your wealth dollars change over time. Mine's convenience, right? Ramit made a post about this, like yours, your, your money dollars probably convenience too.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yes. But when you first started working, why did you start working hard?

• 29:58Speaker 00

  I wanted to, I'm like, other people have these things and they're able to get them. Why can't I get them? I'm like, if, if other people can build these things, why, why am I any different? Right? Yeah. And so in my, like, I learned it over time and I'm just like, oh, it's not like you need to be the smartest person. I don't think I'm the smartest person. It's just like, you just need to keep doing it for a very long time. Yeah. All right. So that's it for today, guys, and we'll see you tomorrow.