How To Grow Fast On X

Neil and Eric break down why posting less but better is the fastest way to grow on X, reacting to a deleted Nikita Beer take on wasted reach and low quality engagement. They dive into finding your authentic content style, why over-preparation kills performance, how audiences perceive AI generated content, and why being yourself matters more than polish. The conversation also explores AI commerce, Shopify and Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, cloud coding productivity, and how Amazon-style fulfillment will shape the future of shopping. Key Takeaways • Quality beats volume on X and social media • Authenticity outperforms over-polished content • AI will change commerce, but habits change slowly Chapters (00:00) Growing fast on X (01:14) Quality vs volume posting (02:09) Finding your content style (03:15) Speaking without over-preparation (06:22) AI content perception study (09:17) Design vs conversions (12:13) Shopify UCP and AI commerce (15:41) Amazon, AI, and shopping behavior

• 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. Nikita Beer, who's the head of product at X. So he actually tweeted something, he deleted it, but this is how to grow fast on X. And this actually ties in with...

• 0:44Speaker 00

  This ties in with content in general, so let me read this out to you. So Nikita says, "CT, crypto Twitter, is dying from suicide, not from the algorithm." "CT," again, "crypto Twitter," ends up wasting all their reach on replying "good morning." So GM, right? So crypto Twitter would be GM, "we all gonna make it," all these things, right? Hundreds of times, and when they finally post real content, like a project announcement, it only gets shown to three people.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Let's go back. What's CT?

• 1:09Speaker 00

  Crypto Twitter.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  So...

• 1:12Speaker 01

  I don't know what that is.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  Three, four years ago, everyone was like, there are all these acronyms. So if you say GM, like "good morning," everyone responds "GM, GM, GM, GM," right? Or it's like, you know, "crypto's going down. It's okay, guys. We all gonna make it," right? So everyone's using these acronyms. But his point is, crypto Twitter kills itself because they are wasting their reach. So the point is, the average Twitter user only views 20 to 30 posts per day, okay? So crypto Twitter ends up wasting all their reach on replying "good morning" hundreds of times. And when they finally want to post real content, like a project announcement, it only gets shown to three people. So the point is, don't try to post in volume. Try to post something with a point of view, something that's high quality. And then do it only a couple of times. Don't just try to spam Twitter. Because people are like, "oh, we can spam Twitter."

• 1:58Speaker 00

  You actually can't. That's his point.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  Same with LinkedIn.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  I figured it's just like most social networks. If you go on Instagram and you post 20 times a day, your reach gets really compressed. And then in the future, when you want to post, the algorithms also are like, hey, your followers don't like engaging with you. We shouldn't show your new stuff, even if it's good that often. So you got to start rebuilding your trust with these platforms and your followers.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  You know, at least with this podcast, our best content is when we have a story and we're just being ourselves. And so I realized yesterday, I was telling you this pre-show, but I was, you're speaking at the summit today. I was speaking at the summit yesterday. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to go in with no deck, no preparation, nothing. Okay, I called it something else. But anyway, that's not the point. So the point is, I'm going to go in and I just came in with a ton of energy. And then I did some screen shares going back and forth. And everyone in the chat's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone's going crazy, right? And then I, because Granola was recording that, I took that transcript. I also took a transcript of us just, you know, riffing on this, right? Like 120 minutes or so, or yeah, 120 minutes, 80 minutes, 80 minutes. And then I compared it to me talking at a conference, like the HubSpot conference, okay?

• 3:07Speaker 00

  And I was like, okay, which one? You are the best, you know, speaker in the world. Evaluate me. It's like by far, when I'm just no slides, no preparation, it's way better, right? And it's like, but the problem is the content that you present is technical. So you still need to have some slides, but do it differently. Because when it watched me speak at the HubSpot one, this is, I'm using Gemini here, by the way, because Gemini can see the YouTube, right? It's like, yeah, you're getting, I can tell that you're getting held back by the slides. And so I'm not saying this style is for everyone. I'm just saying you have to understand what style works for you. And then, once your style comes out, that's going to become higher quality content, at least for videos.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with that. I think people should just be themselves and not try to prepare too much.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  You know, when I go and speak, a lot of people have asked me over the years, hey, you've done a decent job speaking. We like hearing you. What's your secret? And I'm like, I'm not really speaking at the audience. I'm just having a conversation. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, I just go up and I just talk. I don't prepare. You know, I'll look at my slides when I'm on stage. Sometimes I do look at them like 5, 10 minutes before I go on stage. My team makes them for me. I tell them what to put in the slides or how I want the outline. So, you know, that makes it easier to not have to look at them. And I just have a conversation with people and just talk. And when you're just being yourself and you're not putting pressure, it tends to work out pretty well.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  You know what's funny, Neil? I was reading one of the comments with us talking and then one of the comments was like Neil's like chamomile tea and then Eric's like he took three shots of espresso before he started.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Dude, like four or five people sent that to me.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Oh, you saw that too?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I thought, I don't think I sent it to you, but I've realized something because I'm so excited about these things because even at the HubSpot talk, I was, I was going really fast, but I'm like, no, this is me when I'm excited about it and some people be like, usually for most channels, I have to speed it up. But when I land on your channel, Eric, I feel like I have to, I have to slow it down and I love it, right? And then one guy posted yesterday, he's like, I like this guy and I don't even need to speed up the video. So I'm not saying that's for everybody, like Neil has a very calm, you know, collected, it's, it's a slower pacing, which is good. But I realized over the years, I'm like, wait, this is just me and it's not going to be for everyone. But you look, when you listen to Mark Andreessen, I heard Mark Andreessen talk today from Andreessen Horowitz. I'm like, oh my God, it's on 1.5X and he's like on 3X and I'm like, but that's him, he's not going to change. And I'm like, that works for me.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Wait, it's on 1.5X?

• 5:25Speaker 00

  I had it on 1.5X and it sounded like 3X because he talks so fast and I can't understand him.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Oh, so you went back to normal.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  I had to go back to normal. So my point is you have, again, you're not going to develop your style immediately, especially if you're starting out right now. It might take you a couple of years, but once you find something that works for you and, and it feels good, double down on it.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yes, and when Eric talks, sometimes I'll tell him to slow it down because it's, if he talks too fast, I think people will miss the point he's trying to make and it's, it's valuable and I want people to hear. But majority of the time, I never tell him to slow down. Why? Because when he's talking fast, it usually means he's passionate and he loves what he's talking about right then and there. It comes off differently than if I told you to slow down. And that's why I only tell you to slow down if I'm trying to miss things because that means people may be missing.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  And to be fair, when Neil does that, it's, it's to help the audience, right? More than anything, it's to help the audience and that's helpful. So that's why I don't get offended by it. So.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Correct. And when Eric wants to talk fast and he's passionate and people are going to get it no matter what, I let him go because the passion he has, it just comes off better, in my opinion, when you're just yourself. And I don't think, you know, like back in the day, people like, oh yeah, you know, Zuck, he's media trained.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Oh, look at him now. If you look at Zuck today, I don't think this is the media trained Zuck. Would you agree with this?

• 6:40Speaker 00

  No.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  This is Zuck wearing a chain and just being himself.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, he wants to do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, go do it. You would break your, I think he tore his ACL. Cool, but he's being him.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yes, and people relate more in today's world, especially with that, than these robotic trained people. And the reason I say that is in this AI world, it's really screwing people up. For example, I'm posting something tomorrow, this episode doesn't get posted tomorrow. Check this out.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Right? So I got this chart. Do people know when they're viewing AI-generated social media content? We did this with a hundred people. We showed them AI content and non-AI content.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  So the first batch, only human-generated content. How many times or what percentage of times do you think people thought it was AI-generated?

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Zero?

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Twenty-four percent. So they thought when they, we showed them human-generated content.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  This was only human-generated content. Twenty-four percent of the time, they thought it was AI-generated.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  That's interesting.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Okay, then we showed them AI-generated content. We didn't tell them it was AI, right? We're just showing them content and we're classifying it on. When we showed them AI-generated content, what percentage of the time do you think they thought it was AI?

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Twenty-four percent.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Thirty-six percent.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  So majority of the time, sixty-four for AI-generated, seventy-six for non-AI-generated. Majority of the time, humans believe content is human-created. Whether it's AI or not, and if you actually think about it, a percentage of the time, roughly twenty-five percent of the time, they think content is AI-generated.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Dude, we're not gonna be able to tell anymore.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's getting harder and harder.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Did you see that? Have you seen that monk? The, there's a monk in a temple and he's always spewing wisdom and then it eventually goes to like a course. He's like, you know, it's not about money, blah, blah, blah. It's like an AI-generated monk, right? And there's like a link to go buy his course.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  I did not see that, but I saw one video of a guy sitting on a chair and he's just talking and moving his head. And it constantly changes from a woman to a kid, to adult, to a guru, like

• 8:40Speaker 00

  That's weird.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  He changes to all these different characters and spewing different stuff. Just to show you the power of AI, it's crazy.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  There's some on Twitter now, you can see there's like guys that are moving around, but the avatar is a woman and you actually can't tell anymore. And so I think what's gonna happen is you're gonna see a lot of virtual, you know, OnlyFans, and it's just, you know, guys behind the scenes playing it.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  That's what we're gonna see. Yeah. By the way, okay, but I do think you just kind of mentioned this and you have this highlighted. So I was talking to my team about this. So we mentioned, okay, brands is differentiator. Live events are like in-person is a differentiator, having taste is a differentiator. But it's like, okay, well, if people can code, we can build all these things. What is the ultimate differentiator when it comes to building things? It's design. And I'm like, holy crap, we need to get really good designers because they have tastes. And they already, they can build whatever they want now too. But you and I both know, like, I wouldn't say, you know, I have the best design taste. I don't think we've had, historically, we've had the best designers for your company or mine.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  But I do think we're gonna be looking for some of the best designers in the next year or two. That's what I think.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  I have some designers that I'm really happy with on the product end.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  I always really struggle with website design.

• 9:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Because what my executives want versus what I want are two different things.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  And then I let them go and do a muck with the website. And then they look at conversions and we're optimizing. Then I go and change stuff and then Sala goes and changes stuff. And what we found is-

• 10:13Speaker 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.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  For enterprise-based leads and business, like trying to close like seven, eight-figure accounts? A lot of the design does not matter one bit.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Yep, yep. I mean, oftentimes I just want to get to the point, so.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what I've learned through this, I'm like, well, if revenue is growing and my team can constantly hit numbers, do I really want to have the fight with my management team on what design looks better versus worse? When we A B test this and something may look more pretty, but it doesn't really impact revenue? It's just like, alright, I'm not gonna have this battle, go do whatever you want.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  But you, I would say, so I agree with that piece. I would also say that the best designers are typically very, very opinionated and they push back a lot. And we did this with, so we just launched a ClickFunnels site today, right? If you look at the landing page, and we were talking, we're like, oh, we don't have a new logo. I was like, okay, that's what my C D, I was like, hey, just put the original logo we had on the site and see, and it's gonna piss off the designer. It pissed off the designer, he redesigned it, and like, it, problem solved.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  The new design's good.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's pretty good. And it's better than a single grid website, so.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, the only problem you're gonna have is your C T As. A lot of them blend in because of the coloring.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, don't worry, we'll change it. Yeah.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  But other than that, the design is great.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  But see, that logo used to be, it said ClickFunnels orange before. And it pissed him off so much. And then that, the lines, the funnel lines on it, like, that wasn't there before.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  My problem with design is I tend to optimize for conversions more than anything else.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  So like.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  So you'll be at odds with designers all the time.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  I'm odds with designers and I tend to control what gets shown for, let's call it half the homepage or majority of the homepage, and then I just don't care. So like, I'll optimize for the areas that I know that are driving conversions, and then they can do whatever they want with the rest.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  That's what happens when you're very focused. So, we'll leave it at that. So,

• 12:39Speaker 00

  you had the death of rollups highlighted, or did you want to go with the distribution channels? Actually, no, hold on.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  I didn't highlight any of them, my mouse is just moving.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Well, let's, I want to continue. So we were talking about design, but Shopify, you saw Shopify, Google, Walmart, all of these people have partnered on basically Asian Commerce with U C P. You want to talk about that?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Let's go for it. What's this tweet?

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  There's a tweet by, oh, this is Toby from Shopify.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Go for it.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Uh, I'll let you read it.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Okay. So Toby, CEO Shopify, by the way, hey, before we go into the Shopify one, Toby tweeted this recently. He said that in the past three weeks, this is a week ago, in the past three weeks, he's shipped more code than he has in the past 10 years using Claude Code. Yeah, so that's high leverage for him.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Dude, I haven't heard too many people talk about Cursor. Everyone's been talking about Claude Code.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  I use Cursor within Claude Code. Oh, sorry, I use Claude Code within Cursor all day.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  And that's what Yaniv does as well.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  So yeah, I do, and you have a lot more options.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  So you're just using both?

• 13:34Speaker 00

  I'm using, on one, on the far end, I use it as a data analyst with all my MCPs. I'm just asking, querying my data's questions. On one end, I'm using it to build stuff and I have multiple tabs to build things. Think of it as a browser.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Can't Claude Code do a lot of the stuff that Cursor does?

• 13:46Speaker 00

  It, but in Claude Code, you know MS-DOS, right? Like a terminal? Yeah, you're, you're, you're using terminal. You, you have one window open, but I have that and then I have the output, the .md files, which I can basically edit if I want, like the email copy and then save it in there. It's not that easy to do inside of Terminal. So it's actually better to have it live within like a ID, like a Cursor.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  So they'll eventually fix that and then you won't need Cursor.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  It's just a question of when.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  Yes. And they did talk about that on the 20 VC. It was Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin and another guy they're talking about. It's like, what happens? And I think their whole stance on it is like, everyone's gonna have, they're gonna be able to survive. We'll see what happens. I'm just glad I'm not in the business. It's tough. Okay, so back to this, this UCP thing. So guys, MCP is Model Context Protocol. It's like APIs where you can talk to your products. You could have the LLMs talk to your products, like have ChatGPT talk to your HubSpot, for example, and ask it questions. UCP is Universal Commerce Protocol, which they developed, they co-developed with Google. So Google and Shopify partnership. It will make, UCP will make it faster for agents and retailers to integrate.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  It's open by default, so platforms and agents can use UCP to start transacting with any merchant, any merchant, yeah. Major retailers are already using it. Finally. Agents can handle everything from discovery to fulfillment and support things like discount subscriptions and loyalty programs. We've accounted for all types of commerce. So imagine this, if you're using AI mode and you're searching for best luggage, you're going to be able to buy it directly from within AI mode. That's one example.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  I think this is going to be huge. We're going to see this as, you know, more and more adoption comes and I think it's going to end up happening really soon and it's going to affect the way that people are shopping, but not fully affect it because I think people are also going to shop the way that they're used to right now. I think it's going to be a combination of both. What I'm really waiting for when it comes to shopping is you're able to put in a specific requirement into Amazon because we are trained to just go buy on Amazon. You agree with this, right? For like most products, you still buy on Amazon.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Just one click and add, one click add to order.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yes. The problem with Amazon, and let's go with the example of a jacket because we're both wearing sweaters or jackets, whatever you want to call it. Let's say we're going to, or this is a perfect example. I got my son ready for school this morning. The weather during this morning was in the 50 degrees. It gets into the high 70s in the afternoon.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  It'll be 80 today.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it, it becomes a little tricky on how you want to dress the child. You don't want to be cold in the morning. You don't want to be hot later on. And this happens a lot in Los Angeles. I wish I could just go on Amazon and type in looking for kid pants or need kids pants, needs to keep you warm when it's cold, but the same pant needs to keep you cool when it's hot, needs to adapt in temperature. What's the best pants for kids? Plays in dirt, gets run dirty, goes on slides. And then it just says, here are the best pants for this scenario. I'm waiting for that to happen. I think that's more useful than all this agentic commerce stuff that people are showcasing right now with the technology because

• 16:56Speaker 01

  we buy right now by doing research and typing instead of just saying, hey, go scour not just the web, but all of Amazon, all the reviews and tell me what is the best product for my needs.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  I wonder, as you say this, I actually want to pull up a graph to see how fast, how quickly it took for people to adopt to mobile, like smartphones, right? When the iPhone came out, um, let's just say 2010 and by what, what is it like 2015, 2017? Maybe the whole world changed. Do you think it's maybe seven years of a mass adoption? That sound about right?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Sure, that sounds about right. But but it's for me, it's not just even like these devices. If you go on chat GPT or you know, you're in AI mode and it tells you the product to buy and shows you, would you buy right then and there? Would you go to Amazon? Honestly?

• 17:47Speaker 00

  No, right now I would still have our default behavior, but I'm just wondering, the reason I asked that pose like that question is, how long does it take for a human behavior to change en masse? And you can see iPhone actually launched in two thousand seven. It exploded into mainstream twenty twelve to twenty thirteen. So let's call it six years or so. Over eighty percent penetration by twenty sixteen. So let's just call it nine years or so. So my point is, it is validating what you're saying. It's human behavior takes a while to change.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  It does take time to change. Now, would I be open to purchasing in AI mode? Or would I be willing to purchase through chat GPT? I would, but I want the luxury that Amazon has to offer. And with a lot of Shopify stores, there you don't get that luxury. I order from Amazon, dude. Sometimes the same day I'm getting the product, right? I order from Shopify, I'll get a product in a week.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  I think Amazon's gonna copy this. That's it.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  I agree. And then I'll be down to do it within Amazon. That's what I'm getting at. Because the concept of AI mode, you're asking the specific questions that I would be asking, like on my son's pants. But I want to do that in Amazon because we're ingrained to go to Amazon because of their fulfillment network. Their logistics is better than anyone else and you get products right away. I don't want to wait a week or two. So I want Amazon to implement this. That will change shopping drastically more than I think most.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  I bet you they're doing it already because all this cloud code stuff, because every like, by the way, the cloud, this cloud for cowork thing, there's like, oh, it's built a hundred percent on cloud code. And then the cloud, the creator of cloud code is like, yeah, all my code's written by by cloud code, right? So there's no way they're not doing this because if if our engineers are, you know, five, ten, fifteen times faster, they already have a bunch of people working on it, guaranteed.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  All right, guys. We'll catch you later. Goodbye.