Using Grok for Infinite Interns, and Who Will Really Win in an AI World?

In episode #2923, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss how AI tools like Grok can function as infinite interns. They explore the effectiveness of influencer marketing compared to traditional paid ads, the value of systems thinking in business, and the ROI of speaking engagements. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: (00:00) The Concept of Infinite Interns (03:09) Influencer Marketing vs. Paid Ads (06:06) The Importance of Systems Thinking (09:08) The ROI of Speaking Engagements Prefer 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 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'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. Okay, I'm gonna talk about infinite interns. So Grok, this is what Elon said about Grok. He said, "It should really save you a lot of time."

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Something that might take half an hour or half hour of web searching or scrolling social media, just ask Grok to do it. 10 minutes later, it's done an hour's worth of work, and maybe even better than the work you could have done yourself. So he's basically saying Grok will be like having an infinite amount of interns. And, you know, we've been saying this with agents and stuff, but Elon's confirming it himself. It's gonna improve daily voice interactions coming, all these things. They're gonna have an app for all that. So I think this is good for everybody, because there's all these apps that you can try. I like that Perplexity has deep research. I've been using that a lot. Have you been using it? No, definitely not.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  No, not as much as you. I use it at least once or twice a week.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Perplexity deep research?

• 1:16Speaker 01

  No, no, I thought you said plexity. I didn't hear the deep research part.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  What's plexity?

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Oh, perplexity, yes. Because I'm reading at the same time the Grok answer, and everyone says pretty much OpenAI doesn't discuss too much about their infrastructure, so they can't compare.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, look, just so everyone knows too, okay, so Grok will be like having an infinite amount of interns. Perplexity deep research, you don't need to pay $200 a month for this thing for OpenAI. They both have good deep researches, but what I wanted to do research, I had to also do research on the account-based marketing

• 1:48Speaker 00

  industry. I also had to do research on how I can stop nasal breathing. And it gave me deep research on how to do that, right? It was like a full-on like doctor case study and things like that. What I'm gonna do next is I'm gonna take my mouth x-rays, and I'm gonna dump it into deep research for OpenAI. And perplexity, you know why? Because my dentists keep bugging me to take out my wisdom teeth, but then my other dentist friends and like family people, they're like, "If it hasn't bugged you up to this age, you don't need to take it out." So they've been, this dental office, they've been hesitating to give me the x-rays, and I bugged them like five times. They're finally sending it to me.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  I have amazing dentists here.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  I don't want to pay money, though.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Okay, he's really expensive, but they're probably one of the best dentists shops I've ever been to.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Why don't I'm just saying I don't want to get my wisdom teeth pulled out and I just need my x-rays to verify.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Dude, when you when I go in for a cleaning, you lay down on a chair, there's a TV on the ceiling.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  I have a TV on the wall when I go to my dentist and there's Hello Kitty characters.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, but when you're laying down for the cleaning, you can look straight up and you can watch whatever you want.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  And mine has a view of the whole LA.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Is that worth the extra money?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  No, but what's worth the extra money is they have like the latest machines. So when they're cleaning your teeth, they're just using something that doesn't even hurt.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Hmm. Well, my Asian place doesn't hurt me either.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  But there goes a thousand bucks.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, see, that's a lot of money. I can't take that. I can't take that ride.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  I would do it without the TV. I I do it for it doesn't hurt.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Let's talk about um, and maybe we can save this one, but we have like um, probably two, three more episodes, but.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  He he here's one, we we've been running a lot of experiments uh, on corporations with influencer marketing. And we all know that micro influencers, you know, convert better, have a higher ROI. When I say they convert better, they convert better for the amount of visitors they drive and what portion of those visitors convert into revenue. Uh, and it's much more profitable. But what we're seeing a lot of companies not do because they're just like, man, is influencer marketing better or just running paid ads on that platform? And the way I look at it is is you shouldn't do one or the other. You should go find all the influencer deals that you can do that are really popular.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  And then or that are profitable and then go run ads with that influencer video. And we find that to drive the best results.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  Let me ask you a question. So you're speaking at my event in Miami in a couple of months.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  The closing keynote can be Kevin O'Leary or it can be, imagine it's like a like a music artist, like uh, 50 Cent or something like that. Who would you prefer? Which influencer would you prefer?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Kevin O'Leary, because it's related more towards business.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  It's funny, because we were on a planning call yesterday, because we're talking about influencers, right? You have to pay these influencers, right? And then some people are like, hey, I just want to play devil's advocate here. If we get someone, it's not going to be 50 Cent, but if it's 50 Cent, like, it will be like totally different. And it's a change up and people will be talking about it, right? Now, I personally would rather prefer Kevin O'Leary, because I think I'd have a great conversation with him. But I just thought it's interesting that some people just, maybe they want entertainment sometimes, so.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Well, Kevin O'Leary can talk about the TikTok deal and everything that's happened.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Everything. He can talk about crypto, he can talk about TikTok, Shark Tank, everything, but yeah.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  I think he would be good. David Sacks would be good, because he now works for the government.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  I will email him. I told you, right? I ate sushi once and his wife was very kind to me. He didn't talk to me after I told you. I thought Freeberg was the smartest guy on the podcast. Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Great way to build a relationship.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  But his wife, his wife was really nice to me, yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he lives somewhere around here, right? Or is it SF? I think it's SF. I think he probably has a place here. I'm sure he has a lot of places.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  So this guy tweeted this. I thought this was interesting and we can talk about it. Maybe we can talk about how it's affecting our business and then this will be the last episode. But the quote here is, "People who are good at coming up with ideas, who will enjoy great leverage in the age of AI." And

• 5:46Speaker 00

  you have no shortage of ideas. I have no shortage of ideas. We have a shortage of what?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Of time.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Time, AKA talent, too. Because talent gives you time leverage, right? And so and then this guy kind of said under it, and we can react to this. Particularly systems thinkers who are good at designing the solution to a problem, not so much people who can blurt out one-liners like Uber for cats.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, have you? No, you definitely haven't read this book, right? Because Thinking in Systems. Okay, everyone should read this book. That's interested in systems. Because it talks about how like, well, we talked about this, like, how a dam is built, right? The systems, or how your thermostat works and all that. The more you understand about the world. And I do think, like, yeah, if you do understand like physics and other things like that, and math and things like that, you'll come up with really good ideas. Because now, you don't need to learn how to code anymore. You just need to learn how to ask really good questions and then just keep refining the questions and you can build whatever you want to build.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Have you ever done a tour of Hoover Dam?

• 6:43Speaker 00

  No, why would I do that? Have you?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  What? Huh?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Just interesting to see how these things were built.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  When did you go to Hoover Dam?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  I used to live in Vegas.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  Oh, that's right. Okay.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, just like seeing how some of these things are built and how they did it. It's kind of crazy thing about how they did it back then, even in today's world. It's not easy to do. Um, but yeah, just digging in and understanding how things get done. It could be mind blowing and it can actually reveal quite a bit on your business on how to think about things or how to accomplish things when they may not seem, um, you know, realistic to accomplish and motivate you. The other thing that I've seen, and this is a little bit of a tangent, speaking of like seeing how a thermostat is built or seeing how, uh, a dam is built. Dude, a lot of the businesses that hit us up

• 7:33Speaker 01

  and I've learned over the years that have money are in the businesses that no one ever talks about. Like, oh, I got introduced to a company that makes doorknobs. Who would ever guess? They make billions of dollars a year selling doorknobs where there's doors everywhere. They need knobs. Right? Like we forget about little, they're not little. We forget about unsexy, more so boring businesses, but they just print cash and there's so many of them and we tend to neglect them.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  It goes back to focus again. It's really hard to focus.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  It is.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  There's just too many opportunities.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I, I think again, like, um, people, I think really any entrepreneur that's a lifelong learner, there's going to be a lot more leverage and a lot of things. Like you look at it like maybe again, 14 years ago, the things you wanted to create, you had multiple things going on. There's a good heat, heat mapping thing. There is a, there's a, there's a survey thing that you had. There was your blog that you had. Okay. What else did you have?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  eBooks.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  You had eBooks and then you had an online poker website too. Yeah, you sold courses for a little bit. Um,

• 8:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, cuz I worked, I was working online education. I was talking about the numbers with you. Like, oh, I want to do it, right?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  And so all over the place.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  All over the place. It does, it, I don't think it works and people always talk about how Elon Musk does it. Or how Richard Branson is in many different divisions, right? Virgin Music, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America. Uh, I don't know what other Virgin company, Virgin Cruises, Virgin Hotels. Right?

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Virgin Records. Oh, and then Virgin, um, I think they're gonna plaster the Virgin thing for the new Sonic planes.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Um, no, cool.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  But most of us are not Richard Branson or Elon Musk. And Elon Musk, I would say, is very rare on how he's been able to do it. Uh, at the same time, if you look at most businesses like Virgin, they tend to do one after another. Uh, and it's just divisions within an organization. But if you look at Elon Musk, it's completely separate businesses. You know, Neuralink, Boring Company, uh, Doge is almost like a business. It's not really a business, but it's like a full-time job, if not more.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  He's a good example of a systems thinker because he only thinks about the leverage points and the highest leverage thing. And I, I read on a tweet earlier, it's like, he's only doing Doge because it helps him clear the path for SpaceX. So I don't really believe that. I think he's doing it because he cares. Um, but we'll see.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Just in general, a- any country, any organization, any business, you can't keep living in a world where you're just losing money. Eventually you gotta figure out how to turn things around.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Whether people like it or not.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Yep. 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. All right. You want to pick another one or we can wrap it?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Let's do one more. Let's talk about the ROI from speaking.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  And then we can wrap it up after that.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  I was thinking about this. And when we say the ROI, Neil and I have spoken at a lot of events internationally. Neil actually traveled a lot last year, 200 days. I was only at 87. Usually I'm at like 130 or so. I'm actually still at zero this year so far. What are you at?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  I'm at zero, but Monday I leave.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Okay, I leave, I leave Friday.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  This Friday?

• 11:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, this Friday. And then I come back Sunday and I leave again Tuesday.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. So how long are you gone for?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  I leave Monday, come back Tuesday.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Oh, okay, fast. Okay. So, look, Neil and I had talked about how, yes, we are focusing more on speaking less at in-person conferences. But I think we should still talk about some of the ROI that we've gone. So I'll give you one example that I don't think I've talked about a lot. But there's a period of time where I spoke at SAS stock, the SAS conference in Europe for a couple of years. And after the event, there'll always be this thing called SAS Society. The founder Alex would throw it. And we go to these castles in Ireland. So you get to do these

• 11:53Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Once in a lifetime things. You're like shooting like clay pigeons and all that.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  I saw you're throwing axes or something.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're fishing and stuff. And so you actually do get to meet lifelong friends from that. So that's how I became really good friends with Patrick Campbell, right? And so there's just some people that you really vibe with and some people that are like, okay, like, you know, cool hanging out with you. And then there's other, like, there's a couple of Indians that live in London. Like, I'm good friends with them. Like, I would hang out with them in London, right? And so my point of this is saying, okay, that's not directly monetary ROI, but I think the friendships to have friends around the world, that's worth a lot to me. And I don't think I got direct ROI. Like, it's not like we got any clients from that one. But I do remember someone came up to me at the event and I ended up, probably a couple of people, I ended up hiring some of these people too. So there is ROI in different ways, shapes or forms. And Marvin Leal, remember the venture capitalist?

• 12:43Speaker 00

  I met him at a SAS stock event. He was in Miami. Yeah. And so it's cool. And then some people that I haven't seen for a long time, like David Henzel, he would, we'd always like pick like a European event to hang out in. You get to catch up with people. And then that's also where I met Tim Solo for the first time too. And we argued about Bitcoin. So that's one example of getting ROI.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Sometimes it's not monetary, so.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  No, I agree with you. I think speaking is great. I don't know how much I was on the road last year.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  200 days.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  I think more.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Okay, that's a lot.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  There's some months, dude, that I was gone like 27 days for the whole month. It was ridiculous. But yeah, when you when you look at it, the ROI is huge, hence I did it so much. I think the issue with continually doing it long term is it puts strain on a family. And my I noticed it with my children in which, you know, they felt that I didn't love them because I was always gone. And Eric sent me this thing because I was a big believer of work hard when they're young. And then when they're older, spend time with them because they're older. And Eric sent me this thing on how a lot of rich people say, when you work hard when they're young, when they're older, they're used to not having you around and they want to hang out with their friends. They just want your money and they don't want to hang out with you anymore.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Yep. Basically, so to paraphrase it, the the thing I sent to Neil was talking about internal rate of return or IRR. So it was like, okay, you can either choose to jack up your internal rate of return to maybe 30% or so, or you can sacrifice it, maybe let it drop down to 21% or so, which is still an amazing return. And you can have 30%, but have your two daughters hate you when you're when they're 20 years old, or you can have them love you when you're 20 years when they're 20 years old.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yes, and I chose, I don't know how much the business will suffer by me not speaking as much. Time will tell because it's only been, I think, I know I was not traveling for, I think, over 60 days. Because if you spill in from December, I don't know what is going to do the business, but I chose to have spend more time with family than have business growth.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Do you feel better?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  I feel a lot better.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  I feel healthier.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, you feel healthier. Neil actually sent me the stuff about like when you're flying, it's like there's like solar radiation coming in and all that. I love traveling. I think it's fun still and like, you know, when we'd go travel to speak at Germany last year or we went to Boston, like when we'd like, we'd speak in marketing school and like that stuff's fun and we get to hang out with a lot of cool people and we throw dinners and all that. But it does take you away from the things that matter most.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Yes, and Eric is right, there is radiation when you continually fly. And this is why flight attendants are limited on how many times they fly on a monthly basis. But I was flying so much, a lot of the flight attendants nearly knew me. They would tell me that I fly more than them.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  And like, I would do quick trips and you're getting a lot of cosmic radiation because I would go from LA to Hong Kong land Tuesday night their time. I would speak in the morning on Wednesday and fly back. And you know, I would see some of the same people like, how often do you fly? And then I would come back for a day and then I'd be off to India. And in theory, I could have went from Hong Kong to India, but I wanted to see kids for a day or two days and then off to another flight. Usually if it was a day, I would have went direct. But if I have like a two, three day gap, see the family and then I would be flying off all over again. But it's just too much airtime.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  Dude, you probably don't listen, you don't listen to a lot of podcasts, but this will be the last thing. I listened to the founders podcast, which I think you would love. Have you listened to it?

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Uh uh, never heard of it.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  It's basically all this guy does is read biographies about the most successful people in the world. So I think you would love it. Because it's so, it was talking about this oil baron, something Hess. And no matter what, like he worked hard as hell. He built one of the most successful oil empires, like the last one. And no matter what, he would still make it to dinner and he'd go back to the office afterwards. Or he'd go, he'd make it to a kid's like ballgame or whatever, and then he'd leave. And so he'd make it to everything. And his kids, like even when he died, like they loved him so much. And they're just like, he was like the model of like a father. Because he was always there and he preached family first. And then, you know, nothing mattered more than that. So yeah, everyone check out the founders podcast. It's great. That's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. It helps us grow.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  And check out marketing school.io slash agency if you want to grow your agency faster and goodbye.