You Can't Be Rich Without Volatility

In this episode #3016, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss how wealth often follows volatility, and why embracing risk is key to growth. They cover how debt can fuel business expansion, the shifting perception of agencies, and how AI is transforming marketing by increasing speed and efficiency. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) The Volatility of Wealth (02:58) Risk and Reward in Business (05:54) The Role of Debt in Business Growth (08:56) Agency Status in the Business World (11:53) The Shift in Marketing Dynamics (15:00) AI's Impact on Marketing and Employment (20:03) Leveraging AI for Marketing Efficiency 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

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• 0:35Speaker 00

  My thoughts here, Neil. Everyone wants to get rich. We agree on that, right? Yeah. But you can't get rich without volatility. So recently this happened. We were, I was negotiating a deal with an executive to join the team, right? And it was like, you know, this person wanted equity, this person was complaining about having to make the trip up to drive to meet in person, right, was doing the math on that. And was basically starting to nickel and dime a lot of things. And you should ask for what you think you deserve, right? And so what had happened was, we spent weeks, and I had spent thousands on legal fees, right, to get this deal done. And come, you know, let's say recently, last minute, this is an individual, this is an individual. And then basically what happened was, this person was still wavering at the end, right?

• 1:19Speaker 00

  It's like, well, I feel like the job's not done here. I went to put in my notice today, blah, blah, blah. I was like, you know what? First, I was like trying to convince this person to stay, and then I slept on it. The next day, I text this person, I was like, you know what? We're gonna go in a different direction. I think you should stay there. And the whole thing here is like, you know, people, it's like, yes, I get that you want to be rich, but you can't get rich without volatility, right? This person was talking about stability, safety, and all that. It's like, okay, well, you know, if you want stability and safety when you invest in the S and P 500, like, the reason it grows consistently like that is you're not taking a lot of risk, right? Correct. And same thing with bonds, right? But if you want to take a lot, like, a lot of risk, right, would be like betting on altcoins, right, which is insane risk, right? But you get insane returns at the end of the day.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  And so I think in a lot of situations, people want to be rich, but it's like, everyone wants to win, but nobody wants to put in The work. They don't want to put in the effort.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  And they don't want downside.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  They they they want downside protection in which there are no losses. And I was talking to entrepreneur who took crazy risk and put all his money. He was at JP Morgan, I believe, and he now has an AI startup that's backed by Sequoia, if I'm not mistaken. He ended up putting all his money into Nvidia and Tesla before both of them boomed.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  And a lot of people are like, oh, yeah, that's great. He made a ton of money. You know, uh, those are obvious choices. Of course, Nvidia is going to keep going up. I'm like, no, he made the Nvidia bet before the AI boom and the Tesla bet before it was booming. And at that point, people were saying that he was crazy for putting all his money into two stocks. And they're like, you should put it in the S and P. You can get great returns. Look at Nvidia over the years and Tesla. It's electric car manufacturer. Other players are going to enter. He took the risk and now he has a startup. He doesn't need a salary. He doesn't care for one. But when I meet a lot of potential employees and entrepreneurs,

• 3:17Speaker 01

  a lot of them want the gains, but they they want to mitigate the downside. And in essence, they understand that there's downside, but they all say like, oh, yeah. They're they're just trying to protect themselves in structured deal where there's no downside for them. And it's just like, cool. So I take all the risks. You make all the money, whether I do bad or good. And if I do really good, you want even more money. But when I'm doing really bad, you still want to get paid market rate or above market rate.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  What's in it for me?

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Exactly. And think about it this way, the time, the years, the decades we put into business, the millions of dollars when times don't go well in the business that we have to put back into the business. When it's time, when when you might have even have to bankrupt the business or whatever, right? When like, people don't see that type of stuff.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  And they and I just, I don't under and this is why most people, they want to be rich, but they will never get rich because you can't handle volatility. I'm just telling you, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. We just talked about in business, you're you're getting used to getting kicked in the nuts or punched in the face all the time, right? That is the volatility. And if you can handle that, if you can be resilient, for sure, you will become rich.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yes, I agree. You'll become really rich. And this is just one of those things where it's just like, if you're interviewing someone and they're complaining about downside and they want tons of upside and they're not sure, I'm with you. Why hire those people? Move on.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  By the way, the team saw this earlier too. The team's like, dude, this person's great, right? Very AI forward and all that. But it's like, one of my people on the team said, like, but is this person willing to put in the work? And the moment that person, if someone else is asking that question, other people are asking that question, that person, like, one of our core values is to be unreasonably resilient. Meaning that you don't just get punched in the face. I mean, you get punched in the face, knocked out, and then you get back up, right?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Over and over.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  And you're willing to get punched in the face again and again, and you're okay with it.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Yep. Anyway, that was top of mind for me. I know we just had a pre-conversation that kind of triggered the thought around volatility, so.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dude, and the earlier conversation Eric and I were having is, one way to grow your business or even your marketing is debt. So there's a lot of, I don't know, is it ClearBank is one of the lenders for advertising? Is it ClearBank?

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, with a C at the end. Bank with a C, right? B A N C.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  It's something like that. It was like a husband-wife couple where they'll float your advertising. There's revenue-based financing companies too that look at your just overall accounts receivable.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Nathan Latkos company.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And in marketing, a lot of companies go that route. And Eric and I were talking before this call. I've talked to a lot of banks over the years. And some of the banks that we've talked to that can help float us and let us grow faster. Because in the marketing world that people don't realize with ad agencies, rarely, but when this happens, it costs a lot of money. Some accounts you won't win unless you're floating their media. Media is very expensive to float. And sometimes you get paid interest on it, sometimes you don't. And it's just funny on some banks will be like, We'll make your personal guarantor.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  You guys can float the media, we'll float a little bit of it. And we'll cut off all your distributions and you can't take any of the profits. And I'm like, so what's the downside for the bank? The downside for the bank is nothing because based off of our cash flow and everything, they get their money back no matter what. What's the downside for us? Oh, they just restricted the business even more and we can't grow anymore. And it's just a business now run by a bank.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  You know what's crazy too? But in this situation, I bet you they can get this deal done sometimes because the bank has leverage, right? Meaning that in the negotiating situation, if someone desperately needs the cash, they might be able to get it through, but you don't desperately need the cash, right?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  No, and I don't need it and our cash flows are fine. And I was talking to Eric right before this and I told him, I'm like, dude, if I ever want to cheat money, I would just take a mortgage out on my house. I have a small mortgage, but for the value of my house, you know, for what my mortgage is, you know, I think I'm seven on, I don't know what the value that appraisal will come in, but let's call it 30. Maybe appraisal comes in lower, but I think the market rate is at least 30.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  You know, I can probably go up to 50% leverage and amortize over 30 years, way cheaper.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Guys, again, this is volatility. You gotta be able to stomach volatility and that's what the game of business is.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yes, and you had to be willing to do stuff that others aren't. And I look at this in marketing too. If you look at a reason why a lot of startups are so successful with their marketing is because they're doing stuff that large corporations won't do, or they're just playing the risk game where they don't want to take on any risk and the legal stopping them. And a great example of this is when you look at a lot of the AI tools for marketing, a lot of the workflow tools, not just creating creatives and running ads, but also leveraging AI to do some of the work. So you're passing in data, maybe some corporations don't want to pass in the data, then having AI systems or software call your leads and then following up with them, all the ones that humans can't get a hold of. We're starting to do a lot of things like that.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  That's how you see growth, but a lot of larger organizations see that as risky. But that's the advantage of a startup.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. By the way, speaking about volatility when it comes to content creation, going back to Cluley again, I was watching some of their videos, right? So they're very good at being more, causing controversy with their videos, right? But their CMO, who's a 21-year-old guy, so they basically all live in a house, right? And so imagine you and I-

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Like the whole Cluley team lives in a house?

• 8:57Speaker 00

  I think the executives all live in a house and then they wake up and the office is right there and then people are there working, right? They'll sleep at like 2, 3 a.m. or whatever, wake up at like 11 a.m. And then you'll see the CEOs sleeping and they'll like vlog the things like, "I just woke up right now, I'm gonna go find the CEO." Right? So it's like, the whole thing is like a spectacle. And then you see the engineer sleeping on the couch and everything. And then maybe at like 8 a.m. only one person is working. And so it's this, it's like entertainment to me at the end of the day.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is entertainment.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  You have to have guts to do that. I would be super irritated at this age now. I probably would be okay with it at age 21, but I don't think I can stomach this at this age now.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  I think you would have done it at age 21.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, 21 for sure.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  But you and I, you know, I'm 40, you're 39?

• 9:35Speaker 00

  39, yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Eric and I just won't do it. We're too old. I have a family.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  I like my life, though.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like my space.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  My life is fine, yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, I can't do all this stuff.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. By the way, so I don't know if you want to pick another one here, but I had a thought here on, talking about, we talked about someone selling, you know, people selling their agencies, right? So let me ask you a question. Let me have a quick discussion here. Do you think agencies are a low-status business in the business world, right? So for example, you have agency, you have like e-commerce, you have SaaS, right? Like you have crypto. Where do you think-

• 10:07Speaker 01

  You have all these AI companies.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, AI companies. Where do you think agencies fall in that stack?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Probably close to the bottom.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  I think it's at the bottom.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  There's a lot of other businesses, but yeah, I would say like, when people look at furniture-selling businesses, that's not that ugly or sexy. I think people look at agencies like selling couches, like as in a really ugly-

• 10:28Speaker 00

  I actually look up to selling couches. You know, like Nebraska Furniture Company, that one gal that, I think she lived to like 100 or so and she sold the business to Warren Buffett. So yeah, I respect that.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  You and I look up to it, but I don't think most people look at furniture companies as sexy.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  You know, I told you I've tested this before. I've gone to conferences where I'll lead with- With agency and then sometimes I'll lead with software. Whenever I say agency, the wind gets sucked out of their sails and they look to have another conversation somewhere else. This is a long time ago. And then whenever I say, oh yeah, you know, we do software, I'll test it, right? Like, oh yeah, tell me what you do, right? And so I think a younger version of us, maybe I'm speaking about myself right now. It is low status, but I don't care now that I'm older. And also at the same time, I know it's not just agency. I know it's like you have software, I have software too.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it is a little sad. I see it people all the time. They look down and they think what I'm doing is just a waste of time.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  I don't think you've ever cared. I used to care a lot more when I was younger.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  What's interesting is if I have a conversation with people and they ask like, wow, what do you do? I'm like, ah, if I tell them like I have a boring company, which I usually tell them, not boring like Elon's company, but like a boring business. Like, oh, okay, what do you do? I'm like, dude, it's boring. We're in like 20 something countries. We have a thousand plus people.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, if you do that.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  And then, and then I say, and like, what is it? I'm like, oh, it's a marketing services company, like an agency, and we have some software solutions. They don't look down upon me as much.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Well, of course.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  As much, they still a little bit.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you're smart about that. If you go global and we're in 20 different countries and then we got some software solution and you're very humble about it. Yeah, but if you lead with ad agency, it's like, oh, okay, I'm off to the next conversation. But most people know who you are too.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  It depends what country and region, but yes, or what category. Uh, I'm talking to people like it's entrepreneurs, sure. And I tend not to do that, but if I'm talking to someone that could be a potential customer or know someone. I will usually go with that spiel first because it makes them more likely to refer business and think of us in a better light than if I just started off with ad agency. Cause they don't want to hear anything more after I say that.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  I think one thing that's underrated about Neil is Neil used to go to, like Neil, I think, I think you've been very intentional about the way you speak. Like you used to go to Toastmasters when you're younger, but I do, I do think you think about how you say things. It's like, you don't say I, it's like we do things a certain way, right? And it's like, we're a global, like, I do think you think about it and I think it's important that you think through how you pitch yourself to people. One thing before, before we choose one of yours, because we're talking about agencies right now. Remember we talked about that one company that spent 12? $12 million on a domain. They raised a lot of money from founders funds. So Peter Thiel, they raised from Saquon Barkley, the, the running back from Philadelphia Eagles. They just became an agency. No, they became an agency. So this is Icon. This is that, um, the AI ads company, right?

• 13:12Speaker 00

  So recently someone just published what they said in Slack. It's like, hey, like we were hiring a lot of internal creatives and you don't have to use a SaaS anymore. We're just going to help you create the creatives. And everyone's like, dude, Peter Thiel and all these people invest in this money. They spent $12 billion on the Icon domain and now they just became an agency. What do you think?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  They're, did they raise more money?

• 13:30Speaker 00

  No, but I, I, they raised a lot already. I don't, I don't think they raised more money.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  How much did they raise in the first place?

• 13:36Speaker 00

  I was looking at it yesterday, but I think they raised 25 and they spent 12 of it on a domain.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  It was just crazy.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, but like, imagine if you spent that 12 on really smart people to help develop your product.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  It would have made way more money.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, but now you have to kind of make this pivot.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I think that's, uh, that means something they're doing isn't working out in my opinion. Um, because I don't see founders fund investing in an agency that's goals to automate. Maybe I'm wrong, but they try to invest in revolutionary stuff. They don't try to invest in agency type of stuff. The only time I've, I see spending that much of your cash on a domain name is worth it is if you're rich like Dharma Shah. He bought the domain name, I believe it's chat.com.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Chat.com.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  And he sold it to OpenAI for equity, made a killing. I don't know what he made.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  I think he got 16 on it. That's what I heard.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  16X?

• 14:30Speaker 00

  No, so he, I think, I think he bought that domain for like, call it 10, and then I think he sold it for like 16 in equity. I could be wrong.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  At a much lower valuation. So he's probably up at least three, four X.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  They just told me I just raised another 300.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Uh, at 300. I think they did seven or eight billion that they just closed at 300.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then they're at 13 billion ARR now.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, they were 12. New York Times said they're closer to, uh, 13 and New York Times estimated that they'll, or they mentioned how they'll be probably close to 20 by the end of the year. Which is ridiculous. Now the valuation of 300 is all starting to make sense. At first I was like, man, a few billion in revenue, giving them 100, 200. I'm like, ah, this is crazy. Little do I know.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  I always thought they could grow into it. I just, it, it wouldn't make sense for like, still our business is a better bet. So, yeah.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  For us, no, but we also are investing in what we know because it's lower risk. Speaking of marketing in general and agencies.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Forget stock prices of Google, Meta, Amazon. I know Amazon just tanked. But when you look at their revenue, Amazon's ad business jumps 22% year over year in a bad market to 15.7 billion. I'm assuming that's quarterly. If you look at Facebook and Google, they're doing extremely well on the ad side.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  And the search volume on Google is up. I know they're not the talk of the town these days. But what's interesting is most agencies have actually, the ones at scale are either declining or they're flat. So if you look at where marketing dollars are being spent, there's a restriction or contraction on services. There is more being spent on ad dollars for the platforms. And I will post this on in the next few days. We're not really seeing startups to midsize companies really spending a ton on AI marketing.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  And what I mean AI marketing, I'm not talking about optimizing for chat GPT or anything like that. I'm talking about you spending a ton of money on tools to automate and cut staff. We're not seeing that transition yet.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  But we are seeing companies just be more restrictive in this environment because people are just very pessimistic. And it just shows that you don't have a choice but to spend on the platforms because they control their attention.

• 16:56Speaker 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. Dude, unemployment data, I think today it came out, it's constantly being revised negative. And so things aren't looking as, and then people are saying in Vegas tourism is like 11% down.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  So I think starting to see some cracks.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  And dude, the employment numbers were so bad. So just to give people some context here. The June previously stated numbers were 147,000 and they ended up revising it to, what was it, 14,000? And May, they just revised that as well. They originally said it was 125,000. They revised it to 19,000. So if you look here, this is a 90 plus percent correction. June was 90 plus percent. May was not as, you know, high percentage wise, but it was still a big difference. They're both, the numbers were 100 plus thousand. And it's just like, how the heck is your data so off?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  And it's just, because ADP released numbers beforehand, before the government ended up releasing the numbers. And ADP's numbers were doom and gloom. And then the market's like, oh, this could cause them to cut. And the Fed's like, no, our numbers are great. And then this is.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  Dude, they're two dissenters. They really, now it's up to the day, today it's 75% chance they're gonna cut it September. The other day it was 45% chance, right? They got a cut. That's my opinion. It's not a political podcast, guys. But I'll tell you what's good in the political realm. Triple H is in the White House. That's what's good.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  That's cool. The reason I think the government's gonna have no choice is because of AI.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  You mean the Fed?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, the Fed. Yeah, the Fed will have no choice is because with AI, I think jobs are gonna get even worse. Because if you look at like the IBM, I was looking at your story on Instagram.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  You see it blew up?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  It blew up. I was looking at all the comments on people in HR getting fired and replaced with AI. So many of the comments were so heavy and they're like, screw HR.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  I didn't expect that, that the comments would be so anti HR.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yes. And I'm not anti HR.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  I think we see utility with HR.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  There is utility with HR. It just has to be run right, just like any other organization.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  I think if you're coming from an employee standpoint, if you think about HR, you're like, HR is neck, because HR is holding the line. They're usually there to fire people or put you on a PIP or whatever. So most people, I think if you work for a company, you're not looking favorably upon HR. But if you run a company, you're, there is utility with HR.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  But this is where I really see jobs being impacted. Like, when you look at marketing, we have an enterprise division, which allows us to offer almost anything a corporation wants, because they usually have budgets. Like, when you're dealing with large corporations, they'll all say they don't have money, and yes, you gotta fight for that money. But if they want to create a Super Bowl commercial and spend six or 10 million dollars just on the creative side, they can afford to do it when they're making 10 billion a year in profit. They may say, again, they don't have the budget, but when you have 10 billion a year in profit, you do have money, it's a question of do you want to end up spending it? On our SMB side of our agency, it's really hard to do things like really full-blown

• 20:34Speaker 01

  custom creatives, because when someone's spending 10, 20 grand a month on ads, they don't have, you know, another 10, 20 grand to just go spend on creatives every few months. But with AI, there's a lot of solutions out there. Google has amazing solutions. Some people are leveraging their technologies like Arc.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Arc Ads.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  Arc Ads is pretty good.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  It is pretty good.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  And I think it's like 100 and something bucks a month for like 10 creatives. I forgot the exact pricing on how it is. Don't quote me on it. But you can now offer a lot of stuff to smaller businesses that you weren't able to before, and you don't necessarily need to add headcount for it.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, when you look at marketing, people are like, oh, there's gonna be a ton of jobs being cut. I don't know if there's gonna be a ton of jobs being cut. I think we're gonna actually see a shift in which people are just getting more done with the amount of people they have and the budgets they have. I think that's what we're seeing more of than actually the cuts. But that's leading to less people being hired in the future still.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  So here's a good setup for you. If you talk about the Anthropic, the, the, the, how much they raised, it can lead next into my next topic, which actually covers what we're talking about right here.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Anthropic, and most people don't talk about Anthropic, because there's this Claude.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  Their LLM is Claude.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Yes. But people don't really talk about Claude that much. They talk more about ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and you got Gemini, and you got a few others. But I don't really hear too many people talk about Claude. I'm assuming you agree with this statement.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  My entire week has been Claude, so it's a little different. Yeah, but most people are not talking about Claude, correct? It's ChatGPT.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yes, and very few people also talk about Grok unless you're really heavily on Twitter.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  If you're super Team Elon, you'd talk about Grok a little bit, but even perplexity is not even an LLM, like from what I see, so.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you can use perplexity for a lot of similar things you can use ChatGPT for.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  It's good for research, yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  But even then, a lot of people don't talk about it and their usage is lower.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  But here's what's interesting. They're raising money and their revenue is growing fast at a hundred plus billion dollar valuation, potentially led by Iconic. I believe the amount was five-ish billion.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Raised five billion for one on one seventy?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Uh, it was something like that. I have it written down. I just don't have the number in front of me. Oh, five billion, yeah, one seventy, you're right. And when you look at that, a lot of marketers tend to forget or assume attention equals valuation. So as marketers, we look at a lot of these LLM platforms as like, oh, this is where we should focus. These are the ones that are worth the most and this is what's getting mentioned. But for marketers, there's a lot more use and you can do a lot of cool things with Claude that can actually help you become much more efficient as a marketer. But it may not be sexy from the standpoint that you can drive a lot of revenue from the aspect of generating visitors from Claude and a lot of revenue versus ChatGPT.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  But there's a lot of use cases that can help you with that are still worth a lot of money that marketers tend to forget about.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Dude, so it's, I think Claude right now is making a ton of money from developers because Claude's on it. Uh, four is actually used in Cursor, Windsurf, for any of these IDEs, these coding tools. That is, I think, where they're making a lot of their money. And that's why when I think about Anthropic, I think about coding. But now I'm like, oh man, marketers really need to jump on Claude agents today because they came out with Claude code a couple of weeks ago, but they have Claude subagents now, and I'll explain that in a second. But they also have Claude MCPs. If you have the MCPs, which allow you to talk to different applications like your HubSpot, Ahrefs MCP. Dude, once I hired this, um, this Claude tutor, um, I say, hey, let's focus on Claude code. Cause it's a pain in the butt to set up. It's like terminals. You have to figure out how to like, you, I forgot how to use like DOS and all that, right?

• 24:23Speaker 00

  And terminal. So anyway. We spent some time setting it up this week and I got it set up like two, three days ago. And to your point earlier, now as a marketer, it's not like I'm gonna work less. I'm able to do way more. I'm like, hey, you're connected to my GA, my GSC. Show me all the pages that are cannibalizing each other that I should be combining. Boom, it's done. It's like, oh, hey, here's where you're actually seeing a bunch of drop off Google Analytics. Um, with their model over here, you should optimize it here and we estimate you're gonna make this much money. But, but, and it understands my, my conversion rates and understands my, my LTV and everything. And here's like the top five things. I didn't ask it to do this, but it's like, here are the top five CRO things you should do right now based on impact confidence ease. I never asked it to score it on impact confidence. I'm like, oh, you're a CRO scientist. Okay.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  Boom, we have something over here that's gonna create an email nurture sequence, whether it's to upsell, cross-sell, or remind people, or churn, save, and all these things, right? Or you have an ABM orchestrator, and I have these things all working in tandem. And I'm like, holy crap, not only can I do these analysis really quick now, but then now the next, the next lesson I'm gonna do with my Claude tutor is, hey, how do we deploy these things to at least 90% there where I have it sitting in my WordPress drafts? I had it sitting up like, I'm just gonna work a lot faster. Oh, if I wanna get these, uh, these creatives, more similar creatives connected to my ads MCPs, I can have it look at the top creatives and then make similar ones using Sigma, right? You know what I did yesterday too? I used Appify, which scrapes all, I was like, hey, scrape MP Digital, scrape all these other agencies over here, see how much they're spending on ads, right?

• 25:50Speaker 00

  Um, or no, see where they're running ads and then it quickly did it. Here's what they're doing on Google, here's what they're doing on Facebook, here's how many ads they have right now, here's what their strategy is. I'm like,

• 25:59Speaker 01

  But does it tell you roughly how much we're spending?

• 26:02Speaker 00

  It's, it's pulled from Ahrefs, like it's, it's not ever, yeah, it's off. But I do think the number of ads is probably more accurate. And like Power Digital, for example, right? It, they like to bid on the 99% of their keywords are more like the digital marketing agency near me type of stuff, right? Which makes sense. Um, but I'm like, okay, like what do you do with that? Well, now I wanted to make ads. If I say, I can drag in my landing pages, I want you to follow these brand guidelines and use Versal to make a version of it, I can do that. So what am I, what's my point? I can do a lot of things faster. Whoever tells me to wait, I'm not gonna wait.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, but that's the world that we're going into. And I'm saying like every marketer I think needs to jump on Claude agents. Doesn't matter if you're technical or not, you can set this up pretty quickly. And now all of a sudden I have all my friends, hey, who's the tutor that you use? Who's the tutor that you use? Right? Dude, the 50 bucks each time?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  No brainer. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I I I'm with you. I I think this technology has just allowed us to do so much more as marketers than we were able to do before. It's not even about, you know, everyone thinks about like AIs, like how do you cut costs and save money? You and I look at it very similarly, but different to most people. It's not about cost cuts. It's about how do we move faster and execute and take more market share faster? Because of these tools and technology versus our competition. How do you do more? How do you stay focused? How do you take on more risk? And that's how you become, that's how you do well in life, guys. Anyway, that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.