'Nice' Leaders Are Fed Up, Why Wide TAM Content Dilutes Your Focus, Your SEO Site Impressions Are Going Up BUT...

In episode #2953, Eric Siu and Neil Patel talk about founder frustrations in today’s economy, from employee motivation to cultural differences. They cover branding, positioning, SEO changes, and the risks of broad content strategies, ending with tariff clarifications. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES00:00 Founders' Frustrations in Today's Economy02:57 Cultural Differences in Employee Motivation05:53 The Power of Positioning and Branding08:54 The Trap of Wide-TAM Content12:10 SEO and Content Strategy Evolution15:00 Branding and Market Perception18:06 Clarifications and Corrections on TariffsPrefer single topic episodes? Head over to our YouTube channel. 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 agencyNP Digital << Neil’s ad agencyX @neilpatel, @ericosiuInstagram @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'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. I don't know if you've seen this, Neil, but I am getting the sense that a lot of leaders are just fed up. So, the past couple of weeks, I've been meeting with other founders. You talked to a lot of founders too.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  And I have one founder, this person runs a global company. And this person is one of the nicest people in the world. And this person is just like, "I am sick and tired. I am finding many, many dead bodies in my organization." We paid this consulting firm tens of millions of dollars, okay? And they generated nothing, okay? This is consulting from anybody would know. And they want to fire everybody, okay? So that's one. I'll give you another one. The other one is a friend I mentioned. The first thing he said when he saw me was like, "We just fired our agency," right? That guy. And he's like, "Because..." I'm like, "Why'd you fire the agency?" "Because they're not on top of AI, and also they're not passing AI efficiencies over to us, right?" And I'm like, "So what about your team?" He's like, "I'm also fed up with that too, because I feel like I've been taken advantage of."

• 1:28Speaker 00

  And two weeks ago, we did an episode, or a week ago, we did an episode where we've done so many nice things for people, and it doesn't come back to us, right? So, I think where I'm going with this is, people are... I think the meta now, the optimized way of playing business, is I'm getting a lot bigger sense of people are harder core now, or more hardcore. And the tolerance for BS has decreased a lot, especially now that we're in a very unstable environment. It's decreased a lot. So, yeah.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  I haven't seen too many founders fed up over employees or contractors. The biggest thing that I see on my end is founders fed up with the economy.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Well, that makes two of us here.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just, the economy sucks and I'm not saying it's anyone's fault. This is not red versus blue, you know, politically, this is more so, the economy just sucks. Not just in the United States, but globally. And this has nothing to do with tariffs. For years globally, the economy hasn't been great and it just impacts business. And as we say in our business, it's like you're getting kicked in the balls, excuse my language, every single day. And we have beaten dog syndrome that we now expect to be kicked, you know, in the balls. And again, excuse my language, because it's happened so many times over the last three years.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  So as good things start happening, we expect something bad to happen to make up for all or to counteract all the good stuff that has happened.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  You know what? I mean, I don't know about you, I am okay being kicked in the balls. I don't know if you've seen the TikTok or the, one of these Chinese movies where the kid just keeps kicking the guy in the balls over, he just takes it, right? He's just like balls of steel, right? Uh, so, so my point of all this is, um, when you talk about being kicked in the balls as a founder, this is interesting because I talked to another friend. He has employees in the US and he has employees in China. And this is interesting, this is kind of a side note. Um, when you incentivize, he's like, when I incentivize my American workers, okay? Uh, pay matters a lot, sure, but you also have to worry about promotions to career pathing and compliments, right? And so I'm like, okay, so how's it with your Chinese employees? What do you think it is?

• 3:45Speaker 01

  None of that.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Chinese employees, it's money, okay? And they don't, they don't care about any of the other stuff, but they do care about status, right? This is why you see like, oh, oh my God, Chinese people, like, guys, I'm saying this as a Chinese person. Status is insane. I think it just, Asian people in general, status is a massive thing. So for example, this is why you see them posting pictures of their food all the time. Or maybe if they're in a really nice car, whatever. And you see that happen, sure, in LA in some cases, right? But I, I would say status is.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Status is is a much bigger thing, I think, in my opinion, based on seeing both sides, being an American and being a, you know, I guess a Taiwanese or Chinese American, so.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  So all the wealthy Chinese people that I know that I'm close with, none of them shows any sort of wealth. Maybe it's a different form of status, I don't know, but they don't want anyone to know who they are and they act like that. They still need to do well, things are bad. They never say like, I'm doing okay, or things are great. There's always.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  I think there's different tiers to it, though. I think there's there's tiers where that stuff all matters to you. And then when you get to a certain tier, you learn that that that's that's that stuff doesn't matter anymore. Like, for one, you've never actually flaunted much, right? But I I think as you've gotten, you know, older or quote unquote more successful, you care about that stuff less, right? And so, because I actually used to care about this stuff, maybe my my mid twenties or so, or early twenties, because I was I was taught to care about these things, right? But I really don't care about these things. At least I think I don't. But yeah.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  You and I are on the same page. I used to wear like Loro Piana pants everywhere when I speak.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, but nobody knows what Loro Piana pants are.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  But because they're comfortable.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  And now I'm at a point where I'm like, can I just wear Viori joggers on stage when I speak?

• 5:28Speaker 00

  And that's pushing it. See, that's pushing it, guys.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  I'm really debating. I'm like,

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  can I do this? So that way I don't have to do, even dress up anymore. I'm like, why not? You know, it would it would just make things easier and better.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Yep. This is this is interesting. So let's talk about this real quick. So Noah in here is bringing in a Ninja creamy. And we've been talking about this, how Ninja creamy has been blowing up. So Ninja creamy has been blowing, a lot of people have been talking about it recently, right, on socials. And I even bought one. So my friend Billy, you know Billy, right?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  So yeah.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  I, he's like, oh, I make my my protein ice cream using Ninja creamy. So it's interesting because Ninja and Vitamix competed quite a bit. So it's over here, guys. Ninja and Vitamix competed quite a bit for the in the blender space, right? But in my mind, I'm like, oh, Ninja created more mind share around the creamy thing. And they just released a new one recently. And we both have old versions over here. And I think.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  And the new one has a soft serve, right?

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I think my point here is is positioning matters. And so Ninja to me now, it's like occupying mind share. Um, when it comes to ice cream and not so much the blender space anymore. So, and then when you, when I think about, um, like there, there's a customer that we have and then they do, they, they, they sell homes, right? And they had, they had one loan that was branded a certain way. I'm like, okay, well, what's on people's minds right now? Tariffs, I'm like, how about tariff resistant loans or tariff protected loans, right? Like if you just rebranded a little bit, or even the dude wipes, right? You just have these wet wipes, but they do $200 million a year. It's sometimes you just reposition something a little bit and you might end up doing better.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Dude wipes is a prime example. There's nothing that dude wipes does that's different than a normal wipe.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  And yet I pay for it.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Really?

• 7:11Speaker 00

  I do.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  I've never bought a dude wipe.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  I used to have other wipes, but I'm like, I don't know, it just attracted me dude wipes. I'm like, I'm a dude, is that, I'm just like, done deal.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  I have, I have tons of wet wipes in my house.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  What brand do you use?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  I think it's called wet wipes or water wipes or something like that.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, you have, you have like the, the traditional brand, but I don't know.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  I had the one for kids.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  But it occupies mind share in my head. I'm like dude wipes, there's nothing else like it, dude wipes. And so why not? Yeah, yeah. So anyway, you have one over here, actually, no, here, I want to go to another spicy one. You and I have been talking about this a little bit, but I've been noticing more and more that these business creators, okay? People that you and I know, they continue to go for wide TAM content. And my feeling is, okay, i- if I'm getting million, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of views a month, that makes my ego feel good, right?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  And so, but if I have my business, like, uh, I am being tricked into playing a game of more views. And I feel like if you go wide TAM content, if you're a content creator, great. But if you have a main business, I feel like it dilutes your focus because it tricks you into playing a game, into inserting quarters into this slot machine to try to just continue to get more views, right? How do you feel about that? Because we're both on this YouTube journey or re-journey right now. And we'll continue to share our journey with you guys, but, um, I just noticed that I'm like, this is not good for your business.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  It's not, and it's not effective. Um, I record videos in batches of four for long form. I'm starting to do video recordings of batches of eight starting next week. So it'll take me double the amount of time. And I'm publishing instead of one long form video a week, I'm going to start publishing two long form videos a week. So I work with a team and one of the guys on the teams is like, you know, if you look at all the players on YouTube, some of the people that we know, like the Hermosies, the Cody Sanchez's, etc. Like, if you go more broad, it just opens you up to the YouTube algorithm. I'm like, it's not gonna work. And I keep telling him, it's not gonna work. So every month, when they give me ideas, and they usually give me four ideas,

• 9:17Speaker 01

  and then I give them, uh, I help script the four ideas. So those give me a topic, I give them the outline, and I even give them not just the outline, when I'm giving them concepts, I'm usually recording, uh, on my computer, screen sharing, and I'm showing them like, let's say if it's on SEO, I'm going into the tools, like Uber suggests, typing stuff in, showing them the volume, showing them how I do things, showing them step by step. So then that way, not only it helps create a better script, the people who organize this script, understand what I'm talking about. Versus if I was just rattling stuff off, they can't see it.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Dude, in that video, by the way, do your, does that footage make it into your video? Cause I feel like it should just go into your video.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  It does not. What they'll do is they'll take clean, sharper screenshots, and then put that within the video, versus my version of it, cause it's compressed, uploaded. They don't wanna end up using it, cause it's the quality's off.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Got it, yep.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  But every once in a while, call it, half the topics are quote unquote, biz op, entrepreneurship, lifestyle. And I was like, guys, we can't keep doing this. And one month, so I would say the next thirty days, cause the new batch starts coming out, they're all more consumer facing than what I typically produce for. And the last one that I went live on YouTube was really consumer facing. It was like twelve habits of billionaires. One of the worst videos I've ever published from a view perspective. I think it was like four thousand views or three thousand views in the first twenty four hours. It was something pathetic.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Which, keep in mind.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  That's really low for your channel because you're one point two million.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  So, anyone listening, if you get three, four thousand views, it may not be bad, but if you have over a million subscribers and you get, you know, four thousand views, that's really terrible. And it's not the content. Like, there are really good habits in there that are true. The problem is, is no one cares to hear that stuff from me, and I know that. And now they're finally at a place where they're just like, "Hey, yeah, we should just focus more marketing content. It does way better." But I've been pitching this narrative for a long time. So, the next batch of eight, even though the next four that are coming out are more quote-unquote, "lifestyle entrepreneurship," kinda like the habits one. The next eight after that, six of them are marketing, two of them are, um,

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Wide Tam.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Wide Tam. And then, the batch after that, you watch, I'll do all eight, very specific, related to marketing, and I'm just cutting off all types of content that aren't related to marketing.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  I'm trying to pull up your channel right now on View Stats, but it's not working on my phone, but, what I would say is, they're like, and I know who you're working with, obviously, we've talked about this, but, there's no excuses, because I do follow other marketing channels out there that are getting two, three, four hundred thousand views per video. And all they focus on is marketing. One guy just focuses on Facebook, he might get a hundred thousand views, that's extremely good for a Facebook video.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  That's really good.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Um, and then one guy kinda goes a little broader, and then, obviously, you have like AI marketing and things like that. Um, but I'm telling you, when you and I focus on just marketing, we did really well. And no one knows this, like, when I was just marketing, it crushed. Every video crushed. And you're in the good, the YouTube algorithm's good graces. The other thing I'll say too, is, when, when I've been focusing more of my content on marketing, anything marketing-related, it actually does drive leads, whether it's to the software, or, or agency, or, or things like that. So, I do think, look, if you're a content creator, you can go wide Tam content. I think if you are a business owner, I think the trap of going wide Tam content is it starts to make you feel really good about it, and you get distracted, and you, you go further and further down that road. And, I think,

• 12:59Speaker 00

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• 13:37Speaker 01

  Dude, totally agree. Even like with my SEO, I started getting involved and took over my blog at the beginning of the year. So we're four months in now. And I told my team, I'm like, SEO is not a keyword game. It's a topic game. And the way I described it to them, you know, the people that were working on my blog, I was just like, most people think of SEO as you do keyword research. I'm going to write an article on uh, digital marketing, another one on online marketing, another one on enterprise link building, another one on how to get more Instagram followers. And they look at things as keywords. And what I was explaining to them was, I'm like, think of SEO as like a library. You walk into a library and if you want to learn on SEO,

• 14:21Speaker 01

  would you be happy if some of the books were in one section, some of the other books are in different section, and some of the other books are even in a sister library? And I'm like, you gotta think about it from a topic perspective. And how do you help the user learn all about that subject in the easiest, cleanest fashion? And when you're creating content, how do you put search intent at the core of that article versus keywords? Like, because algorithms are so much more sophisticated these days, they truly understand what the content is about. Excluding keywords, just literally, they're able to decipher what the content is. If you look at some of the old Google um, court hearings, they would say, Google fakes uh, uh, understanding a document.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  They're looking at a lot of other factors like keywords to kind of figure out what a article is on. But Google is in the position in today's world that they can read an article and they can know that the article is about dog food without you actually using the word dog. Dog food next to each other. Because if you're talking about a puppy, which I know is a dog, but a puppy. Eating, how often should a puppy eat? What's the healthiest food for a puppy? And variations of this and you're talking about um. How much bowel movement they need to have? Do they keep eating it fast? Does that tell you that you should be giving them more based on the weight? They'll understand that you're talking about dog food, even if you don't mention that word.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Exactly uh next to each other, word for word, don't get me wrong, it does help to include the keywords. But I was telling my team that and we've been taking the topical strategy. We do this for our customers all day long, but for my own website, for some reason.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  I would say the D team comes to me, not the C team.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Wow, not even the A team.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  No, we don't use the A team for my own stuff.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  Wow, well, I mean, it makes sense.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz revenue wise, we make the most from clients, so clients always get the A team. I'm always left with whatever we have time for. So I took it over, I'm fixing everything. And we're at close to forty articles that are either rewrites or new content. And no joke, for almost every single one, there's been some misses. But call it like eighty-five percent of the time. The articles are shooting back up to page one, getting tons of traffic within less than a week of.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Cause you've adjusted the topical focus.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, here's the thing. When you think about YouTube, for example. YouTube, what we just talked about is topical authority on YouTube, like you should be known for something. But that actually applies to your website now too, like you could argue maybe ten years ago, yes, it was much more of a keyword game. But now algorithms have gotten much smarter. And when you think about AI, for example, I won't go too much into it. But AI looks at vectors, right? This is how they come up with answers so quickly, they're looking at clusters of of content. And they're they're just quickly figuring out what's related and and how to make a generated answer for you. Um, and so anyway, the point of saying all this is things are a lot faster, but I don't wanna digress here. Um, okay, so as you site impressions, at least for me, when I'm looking at mine, might be the same for you too. My site impressions are actually going up.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  But traffic is slowly going down because AI overviews, right? But to your point earlier, it's okay, uh, because at least for us, we take the search everywhere optimization.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  Um, and approach and my, my take on website traffic is again, same for you. That's why I think it's worth investing in website traffic. It's gonna slowly slow down over a long period of time, but it's still worth investing in right now. And um, as long as you're diversified, there, there's not much to worry about in my opinion. The only ones that are worried are the ones that put all their eggs into one basket.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I agree with you and marketing is all about diversification and if you put all your eggs in one basket, you're screwed. If you look at, uh, and I have this topic in there as well. If you look at what, what's happening right now with Google AI overviews. Google is mentioning Google in AI overviews. I don't know if you saw that in which you can do a search and you can click and it'll take you to more Google results. Uh, and keep you in their ecosystem longer. And I believe Google's gonna push harder on AI overviews within the next 12 months. This can affect more your top of funnel traffic, but I still think it's worth doing because it's branding. I look at my business as an ad agency. And I've talked about, I've shared some of the stats.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  If I just look at my US RFPs, uh, we've gone from 16 in 2023 to 25 in 2024. To we're in April as of this recording and when I would say almost mid April and we're at 17 for 2025.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're pacing ahead.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  We're pacing ahead by a lot. We should double. Uh, so the rate is actually increasing while 2023 to 2024. We grew a little bit more than 50%, but on, you know, the goal for 2025 is a, a double up at least this point.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're gonna grow 36% at this point.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  How?

• 19:19Speaker 00

  36% higher, right? You're 25 last year, you're 34 this year.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  No, I'm at seventeen in April.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, but last year you're at twenty-five, right?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  So, oh, we're not even halfway into the year.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're not halfway into the year. We're on track to double.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. So fifty, yeah, yeah, hundred percent.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, and, and like I said, I'm at seventeen and we're only four months in. So how many more are going to come before the end of the month, right? Uh, hopefully more. I'm knock on wood, I know it's real wood. But, um, a- a- all I'm getting at is, is like, what I, when I look at our corporate website, it's not like our traffic's gone up four or five times. Like, really, it hasn't gone up that much more from twenty twenty-three to twenty twenty-five. But the big difference is, is our brand has gone out there. And I look at SEO as a game of branding, just like people buy Air One because they've heard of Air One. It's not like they're Googling for Air One.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  Are you gonna take a shot? Take the shot.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  No, I'm not gonna take a shot.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Guys, we have this wellness shot that Noah bought for us from Air One here. And I'm sure, like branding guys, I'm sure this is very expensive. How much was this? Ten dollars each? Oh, my God, it's expensive.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Her shot?

• 20:22Speaker 00

  It's expensive, guys. Um, but see, everyone, everyone knows they can charge a higher premium. I, I pay seven dollars for their popcorn. For each bag of popcorn.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Is it good?

• 20:32Speaker 00

  It's amazing. Oh, my God, it's, it's amazing. And it's cooked in coconut oil. Yeah, it's great. You should, you should buy it.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  I don't really eat popcorn.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  The caddied walnuts are great, too.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  I'll buy the popcorn from my movie theater once this stuff.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Oh, that's great. That's great. We'll be, we'll be recording from Neil's place. But anyway, um, going back to what we're talking about, did you finish? Cause I, I have some stuff.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, go for it.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  Okay. I do need to do a quick correction on our tariffs episode. So I had a misunderstanding of it. So I thought the ninety-six percent, someone, someone sent me a tweet. I was like, oh, I will correct it on the podcast. So it, at the, these tariff prices, originally when, when Trump posted this picture, right? It's like, um, Vietnam, ninety-six percent, they charge us, right? I thought that was what it was, but no. Turns out that the way we're charging these other countries is based on the trade deficit that we have with them. And they're using some calculation based on the trade deficit.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Random formula.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so, and I, I realized that like last week. I rea- I realized it already, but someone came back and corrected. I was like, okay, that, that's right. So when we're wrong on this podcast, we will correct it. This person was like, uh, her name's Kim. Thank you, Kim. Like, usually you guys are on, on point. Um, but this one you missed the mark. I was like, yeah, we did miss the mark. Well, please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe, guys, and we'll see you tomorrow.