How We Keep A Positive Mindset When Things Are Rocky Economically, AI Has Killed Informational Content For SEO

In this episode #2982, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss maintaining a positive mindset during economic challenges, emphasizing resilience, perspective, and adding value to others. They explore the shift in content marketing strategies driven by AI, stressing the need for original, value-driven content that resonates with the ideal customer. The conversation also highlights the importance of staying top of mind in business and the role of status in consumer behavior. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) Navigating Economic Challenges with a Positive Mindset (03:36) Resilience in the Face of Adversity (07:13) The Importance of Perspective and Value (10:01) Adapting to Change in Business and Life (11:01) The Shift in Content Marketing Strategies (12:36) The Era of Original Content (15:00) Adapting to the New Meta in Content Creation (17:10) Creating Value-Driven Content (19:08) Staying Top of Mind in Business (21:40) The Influence of Status on Consumer Behavior 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!

• 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.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  You have, speaking of wrong, you have one here on how we keep a positive mindset when things are rocky economically. Where did that come from?

• 0:44Speaker 01

  I think people are just struggling right now. Inflation numbers came out today.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  What are they? I didn't check anything this week.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  2.1. And I'm like, lower the damn rates. They won't lower the rates, though, but I really want them to lower the rates.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  I hope they do. Do you know, it's funny. Oh, no, I have to tell you this offline. This is a, this is a off topic. Anyway, keep, keep going.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  And same with the tariffs, right? The three people, part of the International Court, or whatever it was called, they like blocked it, and then he appealed it. And right when he blocked it, I'm like, man, he's gonna find a way around this. I'm not saying tariffs are here to stay or not. All I know is, right now, business is hard because a lot of stuff that just people like Eric and I can't control. But you and I always have things that happen to us. We never really mope to each other. We never really mope to others and be like, man, it sucks. We will talk about like, oh, leads are down this month, or it's tougher this month. But we don't really get depressed about it. We don't really start whining. We don't go into a corner and ball up. We look for opportunities. Because if you think about

• 1:50Speaker 01

  our mindset, we usually look at downturns, whether it's Google making changes, or Instagram, or Facebook, or ads not working as well as they once were, conversion rates going down over time because people are getting used to the offer. We generally think of things as opportunities. So when shit gets bad, excuse my language, you and I think about, well, if it's bad for us and bad for a lot of other people. How can we climb out of this? Or when things, when we're all able to climb out of this? How do we actually use this opportunity to get ahead of our competition? Because during bad times, most people pull back and take their foot off the gas for most things, just because times are tough.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's why, by the way, like those of you that are watching, we're recording virtually, but I have this Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger statue. And so the, the reason I like them so much is because these philosophies stick with you. It's like, one, our favorite holding period is forever. Two, you know, be greedy when others are fearful, right? And then be fearful when others are greedy. Like, these things all stick with you. It's like these, these, uh, these, these old wise uncles, right? And so it's when things happen that are rocky in the economy or even like personally. So like for, just to give a little more context, I had a death in the family, right? And so in that, in that example, it's like, okay, well, that sucks, but what am I going to do? Cry about it? Or what can I do to get stronger from this? Right? And that's, the more you start to train that muscle, the more it's just like working

• 3:16Speaker 00

  out, you've just become really buff over a period of time. And if you look at it that way, it's just a very healthy way of looking at it. And I'll give you another Charlie Munger thing. So Charlie Munger is over here. Charlie Munger's over here. Okay. So Charlie Munger says, you cannot let one tragedy beget another one, right? So if something bad happens to you, you can't just mope about it. No, you get yourself back up and you keep going, right? And so I remember for him, he, he's, he was blind in one eye. He's gone now, rest in peace, but he was blind in one eye and then he lost his son, one of his sons at age 29. And I was looking at this on AI, by the way, I was like, what's the most painful? The most painful loss first is either your mom or it's like losing a kid, right? And but most people aren't going to lose a kid because you're not supposed to lose a kid. You're, you're supposed to outlive them, right?

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Well, my point of saying all this is that, yes, that happened to him.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  You're supposed to outlive you.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, your kid was outlive you. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. But you, you understand where I'm coming from. It's just like, that's what we're saying ultimately. Like, we can, we've talked about the economy and all these things of the terrorists, all this, but like, at the end of the day, you only worry about what you can control and that is life. Like, that's why business is one of the best trainers for you to, to, to learn life.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  And you can't let things hold you back. I was talking to Eric and he had that incident in his family 30 minutes before I called and we're supposed to be part of a podcast which we're doing today, literally the next day. And I asked him, I'm like, do you want me to figure it out? You know, you don't have to record. And he's just like, no, he's like, life moves on. You need to be strong. And, you know, he'll deal with the situation in his own way. But he's also keeping in mind that you can't just stop. The world doesn't stop for you. It sucks, but that's the reality. When you're doing something in your business and you get kicked, whether it's marketing, or, you know, sales are down, or the economy's down, so the people don't want to buy

• 5:07Speaker 01

  your product as much, or there's a new competitor that's cheaper, you gotta keep going and figuring out alternatives. If you don't, you're just gonna have a slow, painful death. And you gotta keep pushing and fighting back. It sucks. But those hard times is what really makes you strong and resilient.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know what? I think the way to tie this all together too, is, you know, I mentioned before that the people who end up the most depressed are the ones that are most entitled. And those are often the ones who don't have any resilience. And so each challenge, like everyone will say, oh, my life was so challenging. It's like, everybody's life is challenging. Everybody's like, everyone faces adversity. It's more so, what do you do with it? And going back to Warren Buffett again, were you useful in your life? And that's what it comes down to. Were you useful? Were you productive? And so for this loved one, my God, so many family members came over, so many friends came over, and it's because of what that person did and what that person meant to everyone, right? One person even flew in last minute from, they heard about it, and then they flew in from Austin, like last minute, and it was like a quick day trip, right? But like, and by the way, on the

• 6:09Speaker 00

  flip side of that, there are people I know who, if something happens, they won't get any calls, they won't get any messages. It's because they haven't provided a lot of value, and they weren't useful, right? And so that's what we're saying. We're not trying to make this a rah rah thing, but as long as you're useful, as long as you keep going, there's no way you're going to lose Rocky or not, because Rocky's gonna come no matter what.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And always think that when things are really good for you, there's other people have it much better than you. And when things are really bad for you, there's always other people have it much worse than you. And that helps keep you level headed. So that way you can just push through. I was talking with one of my colleagues yesterday, who's also become a good friend over the years. And he has knee problems. And of course, it's gonna affect his work and all this kind of stuff. And I don't mind. I want him to, you know, make sure that he's healing up. And I was like, dude, what are you doing? You gotta take care of yourself. And he's like, Neil, this isn't a big deal. He's like, I always remember my grandmother during hard times. I was like, what do you mean? And he's just like, he's Jewish. So his grandmother had to deal with the Holocaust. And he's just like, she was running away.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  What do you mean to deal with the Holocaust?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Or she was, she was around.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Prosecuted.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Time. She was Jewish.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  I don't know what happened to her at the end, but there were German fighter planes shooting.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Napalm?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  And she was walking with two kids in her hands with bullet in the leg. And she's just like, I didn't feel the pain. I had no choice. I had to just keep going.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. See, that, by the way, that's real, that's real struggle. What we deal with here is like a walk in the park, you know? Like, sure, it's meant, it's mentally taxing, but I think having to save your family physically and all that type of stuff. I actually think that's way harder. So.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Dude, same. I was talking to my mother in law the other day and she said, you guys had it easy. And she was talking about one of her family members and she's like, she just gave birth. And I'm like, when she give birth? She's like, when she was walking from North Korea to South Korea, she gave birth right then and didn't have a choice but to walk with the newborn child to get out of North Korea. And I was like, that is a real pain.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's hardcore. That's why I think resilience, like the trouble. And I think I told you this before, I'd, we did like a private dinner and a lot of these people were white piers and they have kids, right? And they're like, I was like, so what's the biggest concern you guys have? It's like that our kids won't have any resilience. And I'm sure that's a concern for you too, because you want to protect your kids, but at the same time, you can't have them be, you know, unchallenged.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  You can't, because if they grow up. Not just lazy, but they don't want to keep trying when things go go wrong. Then you're gonna have issues. And I was trying to teach my daughter. My daughter and son excel at different subjects. My my son is really good at math. He's three. And for three year old, you can ask him like eighteen plus twenty three minus nine, and he'll give you the answer, which is pretty decent for a three year old. Right? And then with my daughter, she was reading at the age of two. My son was reading early too, but my daughter's comprehension and reading is way better than my son's for the age when she started. And but his math is much stronger than hers. They excel at different subjects.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  The problem that you have is when something doesn't come naturally easy to them, it's harder to get them to just push through. And I'm like, no, you don't give up. You keep fighting for it. And dude, how many times have you and I dealt with algorithm changes? Where graphics just taint for a client or ours and we're like, oh, gotta figure it out.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Right?

• 9:35Speaker 00

  But but I've never once, I don't, and I don't think you have either. I've never once been like, oh, woe is me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be sad and cry about it. Like, that's what I, I don't understand. I'm not, you've never really cried about these things either.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Uh uh. You can't. Because in in the grand scheme of things, what's the worst case that happens? We're still healthy. We have family members that love us. We have food on the table. Like, it's not that bad in the grand scheme of things. Just push on and make the best of it.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. And by the way, so at least for me, and I think probably for you too, I've learned, you know, the most important thing is is honestly just family and friends. And then, you know, you work on what you work on because it's fun. It's like a video game. And then, you know, you take care of your health because it allows you to work on the things that you want to work on. It allows you to be the person you want to be for your friends and family. And life is short anyway. Like, that's all it is at the end of the day. So I wouldn't worry too much about this rocky econo- economy. It's funny, my relatives were talking about it this week. Oh, this and this and happening right now, this and this, he's a, you know, we, you know, so and so is evil, blah, blah, blah. I'm just like, who cares? None of that matters.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it really doesn't. Dude, people always tell me all the time, SEO is dead. What are you gonna do? And I'm like, you think SEO is dead? I'm still generating traffic and revenue from it. My clients are generating revenue and profit and income from it. And I'm like, your way is dead. You keep stressing out about that and moping. I'm gonna go figure out how to get my clients mentioned on all the LLMs, get the brand awareness, and help them generate revenue over their competition. You guys saw Eric's spreadsheet in this episode or the previous episode if you're looking on YouTube, where he was sharing his screen of how the leads heard about Carrot, his ABM solution. If you look at that, a lot of them said YouTube. Where are they going on YouTube to click a link?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  They're not. Eric's not linking to Carrot in the description. I'm assuming you're not. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  I don't think we are. I actually don't know.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  And what's happening is, is he's more so just mentioning it within a video. I bet you're probably screen sharing and showing some of the cool stuff you're doing in some of the videos.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like a 30-second mid-roll and it shares like a quick like screen grab.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yes, and people are seeing it. And I bet you his mid-roll, I haven't seen it yet, is not a pitch. It's more so he's educating how he's using it to get better results for people. And then people are like, oh, cool, this could be helpful for me. They're just going on Google, searching, and then boom, they're clicking. So his referral logs will probably show that they either came direct or they came from a Google search. But in fact, a lot of them heard about it from YouTube.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  By the way, I do think we should also talk about, we could talk about YouTube too, but I think the fact that, okay, Tim Solo put up this post over here. And I can actually share my screen because we're on mobile. You don't even have your mic on, huh? You don't have your mic. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, do you see this? Okay, so it's Tim Solo, so it says, "In the next three years, AI is going to kill informational content", quote unquote, "as a marketing strategy." And honestly, I couldn't be happier about it. Because what is your typical, quote unquote, "informational content strategy"? One, pick a popular keyword. Two, look up who ranks in top 10 for it. Three, pay a random copywriter to write a "more in-depth", quote unquote, "piece of content." Four, buy some links to trick Google into thinking that your page is better than others. But now.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Because a lot of people aren't getting those clicks anymore. And this just isn't going to work that well anymore, right? People, this informational content, like the how to stuff or what is, is not getting much traffic because it's just being answered by the L L Ms or A I O. I think the question here is, what should people do knowing that their traffic, their website traffic is going down?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Well, to go back, I think Tim also mentions one thing before we can go into this. He says, this is great because it's going to enter in the era of original content, which I agree with, and you and I have been talking about this a lot. Everyone's using A I to create more regurgitated content faster. Content marketing still works. People consume video content more on an hourly basis per day. If you look at the stats, than they do consuming content from Google. The question is, is who is going to create original content that people want to consume? And this doesn't mean that people aren't consuming content from Google because Google is also ranking video content and audio content and images. But they're also ranking text based content, which a lot of people consume. Eric and I have proofs of this.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  If you just look at our blog, they still get a lot of traffic. It's more so what content can you create that's original and helpful to people? That's not just regurgitated. And we're all tired of reading articles like what is S E O? Or the beginner's guide to S E O or the advanced guide to S E O? And I was a victim of this. Maz wrote the beginner's guide to S E O. I wrote the advanced guide to S E O. But you're talking about probably like 15 plus years ago where this stuff wasn't as common. In today's world, I was at lunch with someone and they were showing me their Instagram stats. Like dude, you got more followers than me. Look, I got 6.5 million views. You only got 1.4 in the last 30 days. And some of their content was things like, um, don't get married until you own a house.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  And it was random content like that. I'm like, this content's cool. It's going to get you famous. It's going to get you eyeballs, but it's hard to make money from that content. And my content, when you look at it, is very specific towards businesses trying to grow in today's environment. It's not going to get the same amount of views.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Owen really cares to share content around like here's a podcast growth over the last 10 years and I'm showing how it's declining, but it peaked a few years ago. But it's really useful for businesses because in that same post, I break down how more people are listening to podcasts. It's not that competitive because a lot of podcasts have died down. So this is a perfect opportunity for you to go and create one. You gotta pick and choose what you're optimizing for. When Eric and I create content in this new world, we don't create content that a lot of other people have already talked about the same stuff or regurgitated. We focus on creating content for our ideal customer profile and we don't care about the rest. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  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. Yeah. And by the way, what we're talking about here is the meta, right? And the meta just means the most optimized way of playing a game. So meta is basically, yes, the Facebook meta, M E T A.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  It's not them, but that's what it's called, right? This expression. And so the meta 15 years ago, 10 years ago was yes, the beginner's guide, skyscraper content, all this stuff, right? And build a bunch of links, throw a bunch of links at it, but that's no longer the game. And that the game has changed. And so the game that we play now, and part of the reason we do this podcast is one, we get to share stories that are unique to us. That makes us stand out. Two, you know, Neil can share to his YouTube, his unique perspectives with his YouTube stuff. I do the same to the same thing too. Sometimes we'll even share when we're speaking at conferences, that helps from a branding perspective as well. But In order to stand out, you actually have to be out there doing things, which is what we talked about earlier. You have to be useful. You have to be doing things. Otherwise, you just start saying all the things that other people are saying. And so that's why it's interesting.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  I think if you are a leader in your company, if you're a business operator and you're maybe part-time creating content, because you can share front, you're on the front lines of all the cool stuff that you're doing.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's what people want to see. They want to see the stuff that you've experienced that no one else has, and they want to see you sharing that. Because that's what teaches them more than anything else. People want firsthand experience. Or, and when they can't get firsthand experience, they want to see other people's firsthand experience. If you are creating content, think about what you can share that would be useful for others. And I know you may be thinking, hey, Neil and Eric, I'm not an expert, so I can't share content within my space. Well, it's okay if you're not an expert. You're also on a journey. And sharing the process throughout your journey and what you're going through is very useful too for other people who may want to follow.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Yep. Yeah, so I think where we have gone wrong in the past, just to give you guys some examples with this podcast is we followed a formula like that worked well for the first one or two years or so, like how to learn marketing. And then we started regurgitate the same content over and over. And we weren't sharing our experiences, right? And so we adapted over time. Now we've been sharing more experiences. We do more in-person because it's a more free-flowing conversation. It also looks more natural too. And so that's a good, that's what works well for us. We've adapted our YouTube game as well. I think we both kind of slacked on YouTube for a little bit. And now the fact that we're going into, we're getting outlines done for us, we're recording looms ahead of time. We're going, we have a nice studio setup too. I think you just have to, it goes back to what we said earlier.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  You have to adapt into the current meta for whatever channel that you're trying to optimize for.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Yes, and when you're creating content, just keep in mind your ideal customer profile and create content for them. Don't worry about the total number of views that you're getting. I know you want that number to go up. Over time, it should. Don't obsess about the design quality or the editing quality of your video. What matters more than that is a quality of the content. And when I say the quality of the content is how useful is it for your ideal customer when they're listening or watching or reading? When you do those kinds of things, that's what generates revenue. And that really is the goal because when Eric and I first created our podcast to go a little bit more specific with this or get a little bit more granular. Our episodes were like the top five digital marketing tools that we're using to grow our

• 19:24Speaker 01

  SEO, top five Chrome extensions. What Eric and Neil learned by being in the SEO industry for 20 years. And then we would each break down one thing and go rotate, right? So I would say a thing, then Eric would, and then we would keep going back and forth until we're done with our list. But all of this stuff, it just starts getting boring because that's what everyone started to do. And then Eric and I switched this to, hey, let's just come up with a list of topics and then we'll discuss this during our podcast. And we do that still today, but what it shifted to again is instead of making them five minute episodes where marketing school was quick, short, digestible marketing insights, it started becoming longer episodes. We have a list of topics that we can cover, but Eric and I more so riff most of the time

• 20:08Speaker 01

  and we just discuss stuff that's either top of mind related to business or marketing, or we just share our experiences on what we're doing during the weekend, what's helping and what's hurting.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's not going to help everyone, right? But if, you know, our bet is there's going to be a certain subset of people that fit our ICP and they get a lightbulb moment from us every now and then. And that's going to be enough to keep us top of mind where they'll remember us if they want to do business with Neil, they want to do business with me, that's cool. But this whole name of the game of the business that we're in is really just staying top of mind.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that is the key. You look at Nike, the reason Nike has done well over all the years is because they stay top of mind with their just do it commercials. And I know their new CMO talked about how Nike's been struggling and one of the reasons they think they've been struggling is they over index in performance marketing. Think of like Google ads when we're talking performance marketing versus just straight up doing brand campaigns like billboards or TV ads. I think the market Nike CMO is wrong. When you do performance marketing, you are getting brand awareness. I'm not saying the Nike CMO doesn't realize that, probably does, or she probably does. I think the reason Nike struggled isn't the marketing. I think, and it's not the brand awareness. It's if you look at their apparel products.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  They suck compared to ALO, Lululemon, Viore, and a lot of those other brands. They haven't kept the product up to date. And it doesn't matter how good you are at marketing. If your product just sucks and you're not innovating and adapting, you can spend a lot of money, but the smaller companies who have better products are gonna take market share.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  I have a new ALO product that's sitting, a box that's sitting in my kitchen right now. It's, I think it's called Mastodon or something like that, or Mason. Maybe that's the, the name of the line. But it's basically non-polyester and it's like better ingredients that don't have forever chemicals and things like that. So, but, but see, this is another thing I found on Twitter. It's like, oh, I'm interested in living for a longer period of time. Oh, okay, someone lists, Levels IO listed, the guy that made the games, um, that got like 77 million impressions or something like that. So it's just, I don't know, it's, but that's him randomly talking about games sometimes. He's randomly talking about traveling sometimes. Sometimes he might, it's just like, oh, I trust this guy. I'm just gonna buy it because he recommended it, so.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and now I learned about it. So if Eric likes it, I'll end up buying it. How do you attribute that? At the same token, I read about this new brand called, uh, Arithnic or something like that. It's a clothing brand like Lululemon. I'm pronouncing it wrong, but they say a lot of the Chinese billionaires wear it.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Uh, what is it called? For me to wear?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Chinese billionaires, uh, yoga brand are...

• 22:46Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm spelling it so wrong. A R C T E R Y X.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Never heard of it. Do you have one?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Arcitryx or something like that?

• 22:56Speaker 00

  I think I know what you're talking about.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, A R C and there's a apostrophe T R Y X. Arc, tricks? I'm terrible with English and grammar, but I, I saw it somewhere online and they're talking about how that company just boom because of all these Chinese rich people are wearing them. Because the billionaires are wearing them, the politicians in China are wearing them. And then a lot of the people now strive to wear those kinds of clothes. They're not the most expensive clothes, but, um, they're super popular because of that.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Well, I, I see this as a Chinese person. We're, we're, we're very driven by status, uh, so, so. Yeah, you didn't know that? Okay, so it's, it's funny because, um, so. We don't have a god. The only god we have is a money god. I think I told you that before. Yeah. And so oftentimes, this is why when I'm eating with my family and all that, why are they always taking pictures of their food all the time? They're showing off the food. They're showing off this, showing off that, right? And so, yeah, I say this as a Chinese person, guys, if you haven't seen my face. But that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. And that being said, we will see you tomorrow.