How to Get AI Agents to Recommend Your Business

0:00Metamu is now recommending for our client's product as the best option on the market. Hey, I want to start a newsletter. Which platform should I use? Please just choose one for me. And it says beehive. Done deliberating. I instantly put in $300 to get the discount, right? But I'm not really thinking about it. And you have Claude

0:14Duet just came out this week. Okay. Metam Muse, you have Instinct, you have Grockbot, you have [clears throat] OpenAI dots. And this is just the next surface for AEO SEO. Most businesses don't understand the revenue loss that they're going to get by not optimizing for this. So Rob Hoffman says metamuse is now recommending for our clients product as the best option on the market. So you can see the Muse up here, right? And it's like, hey, I want to start a

0:40newsletter. Which platform should I use? Please just choose one for me. And it says beehive done deliberating. It takes 0% of your subscription. Subsc one one example. The other day, um I was using my Grockbot. I was like, hey, I want to figure this and this out over here. I'm like, what should I use as a connector? It's like you should use this connector. I went to it. No problem. Oh, it's like, oh, you for $100 you get five $5 discount, but for $300 you get $30 discount. I instantly put in $300 to get the get the discount, right? But I'm not really thinking about and even today

1:09because there's all this Black October like all these security issues happening right now. So I ran a Cloudflare security skill and I was like it's like oh it's going to cost you $100 to run this audit on all of your products right now. I'm like do it right. So it's just like it's just doing it now and and I'm just like well how do you get listed for these? You're going to have to do more AEO. You're going to have to do more SEO. It hasn't changed. Right. Um but I think getting recommended because you have Claude Duet just came out this week. Okay. MetaMuse, you have Instinct,

1:35you have Grockbot, you have OpenAI dots, and this is just the next surface for AEO SEO. It is, but most businesses don't understand the revenue loss that they're going to get by not optimizing for this. And I'll share a really recent example. My co-founder, who you know, sold his house in Las Vegas, and he's renting a house now until he figures out, you know, where he's going to build his next

2:00out here. No, no, no. He'll stay in Las Vegas. he got a really good deal. So, like sometimes you just take the money when someone offers you a lot of money for something that you built in 2 years and you lived in it only for a few months. You're like, "Yeah, that reminds me of

2:14someone else I know." Yeah. [laughter] Uh so, in his new rental, he has a really good price. The landlord will not pay for stuff like curtains or water softener in Vegas because of the weather. Water softener is a nice feature. So, he calls up a company, a company for water softener. He Googles uh quotes him $7,600. And you said he googled it. He googled

2:34it. Okay. All right. He used to use Claude a lot more, but now he's been using Grock cuz of the usability. It's just easier for him. Grock bought. Uh-huh. Okay. So then he has Grock. Just find him more companies to schedule appointment, come to his house based on when he's free as well. Uh three companies come. He got the cheapest quote of $4,000 something dollars. I think it was 4,800. So less than five grand. And he's going to go with the company and sign up with them. problem is is that company like most companies never really optimize to be shown in you know GEO or you know optimizing for

3:09these bots but the ones who are and the ones who are getting pulled and are showing up are generating revenue that you can't really track like as a business you're not really most businesses they don't have the tracking they're not asking questions they don't really know that they got that appointment because of Grock and if they optimize more for Grock, they can get more of those appointments and they can win more business or optimize for Claude or Chat GBT or Gemini or whatever it may

3:35be. But businesses miss out on that. It's just like the same thing with like the iPhone Duo. People think about, oh, the cost. I got to, you know, if you're optimizing for Grock, oh, this costs me money. Oh, uh, Grock costs money to use. Oh, uh, the iPhone duo is $2,000, at least in the United States. People forget, yes, there's costs that all these consumers pay to use this and some of them have free plans. Some of these products cost money, but what's a cost of not actually optimizing your business for these new devices or channels? So, if you don't optimize for Grock, even though it costs you money, or Claude or

4:09Chad GBT, you're losing a lot of potential revenue. Same with the iPhone Duo. How many businesses are not optimizing their web experience for the Duo? And Eric made a good point. He ordered it. he's probably going to cancel it and wait for the next generation to come uh because a lot of apps aren't compatible for it. But if you don't adapt to these devices and we already know based [clears throat] on how quickly the Duo sold out and now the shipping time is I think Jan 25th roughly you are screwed because if it's that popular and more and more people are going to purchase it and it's expensive

4:41device that is ideal customer cuz they have money at least for a lot of business owners. So if you don't optimize your experience for these devices or for these channels, you lose out on a lot of revenue as as business owners and marketers. So I I have a couple things here. So by the way, the example Neil just gave. So let's say a water softener or let's just say a plumber for easy example. Okay? So

5:02you go [clears throat] through Grockbot. Grockbot recommends a plumber. I suspect that a Grockbot or any of these other tools, these agents will notify that company that, hey, we got you this customer. Would you like more? would you like us to optimize it for you? You know why? Cuz yesterday I was sitting on my Grockbot cuz I've been using that most of the time now. I'm like, hey, cuz I have a good relationship with the Grockbot team, so they give me all the

5:23early releases, all these things, right? You're saying Grockbot will you think they'll eventually want notify people? Yeah, cuz it's not hard cuz yesterday I was using Grockbot. I was like, "Hey, like I have a good relationship with the Grockbot team, the SpaceX team, right? They they hooked me up a lot. I would like a good relationship with the Open AI team, the cloud, the partner, the the creator team, and you know, so and so, you know, insert large language model here." Um, it's like, okay, these people over here, you should email these people. I've drafted this for you. You should all DM them on X. I've drafted it

5:48for you. Do you want me to send it? Yes. Right. That's not hard to do. Similarly, on my Grobbot, I have a competitor ad thing. I just made this for fun. I was like, "Hey, whoever engages with Profound's posts on LinkedIn or their ads, I want you to if they're ICP fit, let me know." Earlier this week, it's like, "These four people engaged x amount of times over here. You should

6:05reach out with this angle over here." So, it's not going to be hard for Grockbot or any of these agents to put that together, saying, "Hey, we got you this customer. Do you want us to get you more?" Cuz more and more people are just going to use this more. I think Meta is already reporting that they're making good money from this. Elon is like, "Grockot's the biggest uses I've ever seen with anything." I think they're all just going to grow really fast. I think

6:24they're all going to grow really fast. And I think they're going to do a version of what you're saying, but a little bit different. And and you could be saying the same thing. When they reach out to people, they will say, "Would you like to advertise on Rock?" Exactly. Right? And would you would you like us to do it for you? Correct. But even if you get someone for free and someone becomes a customer and there's a way for them to close loop, they'll be like, "Hey, by the way, we filled out this form for a customer, if you would like more of these leads, you can

6:47actually advertise in our marketplace or set." Google back in the day, right? Google was already doing this like, "Hey, would you like more customers? Where are you sending this to you?" Right? So, I think that was already default like to be expected. But I think the next angle is like usually Google would never offer a SEO services to, you know, for their own system, right? I think now it's going to be cost effective enough where any of these can offer a version of AEO, GEO, whatever

7:09you want to call it for the agents. That's what I I the reason and I think you'll change your mind on this. The reason I don't think they'll do it is because they don't want they want game their algorithm. No, no, not just game their algorithm. They [clears throat] want you to know as a user that whatever you're you're that they're sending to you is the best

7:27option for you. It's pure. It's pure. And and I know you agree with that, but I do see them doing it with the advertising portion. Google's version of it was when you used to do Google searches back in the day when they had sponsored, they would like your ad to show here, right? They were using

7:41some text like that. People click it. You get into Adwords or Google uh Yeah. Google Adwords. Now it's called Google Ads. I still say AdWords even though it's chained for your Yes. And then you can sign up and then you go through the flow. But I do believe when they fill a form, they'll message you like, "Hey, we sent you four leads this this month. You can actually get more of them from advertising in our marketplace." They're not saying, "Hey,

8:04we will influence organic results." They're saying, "Hey, you could just advertise here when people ask questions." So, you're probably right on that one. I I might just agree right now on that one. Um, I will say though, you're going to see more surfaces. So, they're going to attack more surfaces aggressively. So, for example, Grothbot or ChatPT, right? They have, to your point, first mover advantage, once they have the marketplace come out, you got to get on it like immediately. Once they have the plugins come out, you got to get on it like immediately. You can't wait. The moment you wait, someone else gets ahead of you. So yesterday, I was

8:31looking at the connectors for Grockbot. It's like, oh, we have these four marketing plugins over here. I'm like, that's such a good opportunity for any marketing company to get more of their software in there fast. Now, cuz I've seen some in there where like I'm like, oh, this is like some YouTube influencers product over here. Like, why is this product in here? They're just in bed with a lot of these people right now. And and if you have a good relationship with them, you're a creator or you're like a notable company,

8:53they're happy to partner up with you. So, you should do it now

9:09just fall over there. But you okay, Noah? So, so Noah looks like he's okay. But we I was just watching a well-known internet marketer, okay? And he was talking about how he cut from like hundreds of employees down to like less than 100 right now, right? And uh what is the reason for that? You think,

9:25Neil? He he put on Instagram that he's at 300. I'm just calling on Neil because I know he's not paying attention right now. [laughter] So So I'm calling on Neil because this internet marketer had a couple hundred employees, cut down to less than 100, and says that AI is doing everything for him right now. Okay? That

9:43AI is doing like 20 to 30 times more. And don't get me wrong, I'm the biggest proponent of AI and Neil, you you'll like this. So this guy was saying like, look, you know, Open Claw, so he's talking about Open Claw, right? He's like, OpenClaw is doing the work of of like a bunch of other people right now, and it's better than him at copyrightiting. Okay, I have a lot of problems with with what's being said. So

10:02I I respect this internet marketer. Again, you know this internet marketer. In fact, you've spoken at this person's events before. Um, so let me just ask you, does it make you look good or bad as an entrepreneur when you talk about cutting hundreds of employees and talking about how AI is making you much

10:17more good or bad? Bad. It doesn't make you look good and you shouldn't do it. As much as I love talking about AI, I don't like talking about having to cut people. In fact, I think that AI is not about eliminating jobs. It's about elevating capability. And so you look at this person, okay, or being way more efficient and getting more done for the same which is elevating capabilities, is it not? And so, so if if AI is about elevating capabilities, it doesn't help you. It doesn't help you with recruiting when you say, "Hey, I we've cut this many people and then we're going to we're looking at cutting even more

10:45people and we can do this and that." But I also think this person's credibility was hurt too when they say right now this interview only happened recently. When they say they're using OpenClaw and it's replacing employees, it's like, "Bro, first of all, Open Claw sucks and it's unreliable." Okay, number one, that shows that you don't really know that much about AI. There could be some security issues that you have to worry

11:05about. And there's even more security issues as of this Black October, right? Which is which you can talk about in a moment. So, more security issues came out. Oh, major security issues in the internet. I'll update you in a moment. I hope you probably have someone on this already. But number No, I don't use it myself so I don't have to worry. I'll tell you in a second. So, anyway, all that to say is he's talking about he's talking about how he uses AI so much. He's cutting employees. That doesn't make him look good. He's talking about how OpenClaw is doing the work. OpenClaw sucks now. So,

11:28that that ruins credibility too, right? And then the other thing is um they he's talking about how it's better than him at copyrighting. Okay. So that's not good either. I don't think you can say that. Okay. So like AI is really good. You wait. Why can't you say that? Cuz if you suck at copyrightiting, it's probably

11:45better. This guy's good at copyrighting. You can't be that good at copyrighting if he says Elen Claus is better than you know this guy. He's he's a good copywriter. In fact, he's well known in the industry for solid copyrightiting. Do I know him well well? You know him decently well. Yeah. But I'm not going to name names right now.

12:00Be that good of a copyriter then. He's a good copyriter. You're telling me Open Claw is better than most. He said that but he's exaggerating. But that that ruins credibility with someone that knows AI like my my I'm not going to say I'm amazing, right? But I know that one open claw sucks. And I know that he's good at copyrightiting. And I know that if he says the open claw is better than him at copyright, AI is better than him at copyrightiting that he's full of it. That he cannot say that right now. And he's also full of it when he's he's kind of talking about cutting

12:24employees. Even if you are, you don't say that openly. So I have a lot of problems with this because I think internet marketers coming into the AI space right now. AI is trending, right? You see all these people selling courses and I nothing no problems with courses, right? But this is what makes internet marketers look bad. When you start to talk about that you don't understand and it just makes all

12:43internet marketers look bad. Yes, I went through the same thing this morning on my 10:30 call and I was just like, are you serious? It was about the 10:30 call. So my 10:30 call there was a agency in Europe that one of my team members found that said we should look at this company to potentially acquire them. When my team member says we should look at this

13:01company doesn't mean we should buy them. What someone may tell them in that organization versus what I find or someone else may find as we continually do more diligence. We may end up finding out things we don't like and then you just back away. So today we definitely backed away. So this agency has been around for a little bit less than 10 years. They focus on ecom. Thank you for

13:22the water. Uh you do provide good service for this building. Uh the and I was making a joke there cuz sometimes some of the people inside the building don't provide the best service. True. So I was talking to them about their agency. They have they had 30 something plus people. They recently did a round of layoffs. They're in the low 20s and their goal within next year is to be at

13:478 to 10. I said, "How is this possible?" They said they have low churn and they said 8 to 10 in revenue. 8 to 10 people. So next year their goal is to have 8 to 10 people. So they went from 30, they're already into the low 20s. I see. So next year if we buy this company by the time we take it over and we're running it by then and next year let's say it takes 6 months to buy. But by the end of next year they would have cut

14:08down the employees even more to 8 to 10. And I said how's this even possible? Do you guys have high churn? They said no we have really low churn which is false because they lost quite a bit of revenue. So, if you look at it from a revenue standpoint, no, they actually have quite a bit of churn, but they're figuring things out and they're just like, "We have this technology. We figured out how to use AI. Uh, they specialize in ecom marketing." They're just like, "We don't need all the people. We can scale up to infinite amount of ad spend with just two

14:34people." I'm like, "This is impossible." They're like, "Yeah, technology, AI, everything can do it for us. We don't need tons of headcount." And and I was like, and I asked this guy more detailed questions. was like, "So, what was if it was like a half a billion dollars in ad spend a year or a billion?" Like, "Yeah, we're pretty sure we can do it with two

14:50people, maybe three men." Sure. Right. And I was like, "How so?" Cuz we manage a lot in ad spend. And they're just like, and we definitely don't have two people or even 10 people on ad spend management. We have way more. I don't know what the numbers, but we have a lot in just paid ads. And they're just like, you know, the techn is really good. You barely need any people. I'm like, well, that means you're just letting the technology do everything, and the humans are just checking to make sure it doesn't screw up. So, I was just like, then why does someone need to pay agency

15:15for that? You're this is why your agency isn't growing as fast. You're providing mediocre results and this is why you're losing clients. This is my opinion at least. I didn't tell them all of this, but this is my opinion. I'm like, this is why you're losing clients. This is why you lost three of your four biggest clients in the last year. Uh, hence when they said they have barely any turn, I'm like, well, you lost three of your four biggest clients. To me, that's not very little turn. I don't need a spreadsheet to figure that out. But I took it as you're just using AI to do the work and

15:42optimize for your profitability. You're not optimizing for the client's result. If you were, you wouldn't just focus on gutting everyone in your company and only have two people and just be like, "Yeah, I can streamline it all." Well, if everyone's doing the same thing through technology, why will your campaign perform better than all the other people's? It won't. You need to do something outside the box. I'm not saying every person can do that. I'm not

16:05saying technology can or can't do that. I'm just saying if everyone's using the same tech to manage everything, you're not going to get great results. You're going to get mediocre results because you're doing what everyone else is doing. And we know this in marketing, you have to do something special. And you know, the guy wanted to sell to us

16:22and I was like, "Yeah, I'm not buying." I told my guy right away, I'm like, "This is just a waste. He's just trying to use AI to cut all his employees." And he's like, "Yeah, from the last few years, our profit was decent. It's gone down, but now next year our profit's going to be amazed." And when I asked him what your business, what the biggest struggle in your business was, he's like, "Closing new business." And I'm like, "Yeah, no crap." Because you have a terrible reputation. You're not going to get the referrals. You're not going to get tons of RFPs because all you're doing is just trying to streamline work,

16:48maximize your profit. He's like, "Human cost is my highest cost." And then just pocket all the money. I'm like, "This is not a business I want to buy." That's the worst way to look at it when when people say, "Oh, I just want to cut more humans. Cut more humans." No. Like, you want to hire. Again, AI is not about eliminating jobs. It's about elevating capabilities, right? Which means people go up or out. That's how I view it at at my company. You're either up or you're out. And people a lot of people are are meeting the challenge. Um, but when you But by the way, guys, if when you're

17:15trying to sell a company, people can can see that you weak of desperation, right? So you can smell it immediately on the call that he's just trying to offload and trying to go for an exit. And usually, by the way, if you're trying to just sell for an exit, it doesn't end up that well. If you try to build for the long term, it usually ends up better and all the people end up courting you. You might want to put it in front of you a

17:31little more. Yeah. There you go. Um, so look, that brings me to another point, Neil. So I don't believe that AI can handle marketing work alone. I'm going to give you a few examples and I'm curious to hear a few examples in your side. Okay, so even for my YouTube channel, okay, so my YouTube channel when I let the skill just do its work without me implementing my taste for 5 to 10 minutes or so, it really bad. Like I posted a few videos recently where I just let the skill do its thing and I I thought it learned from my recent videos. It didn't learn right now. Same

18:00thing with our our ad creative that we do for clients. We can't just let the AI do its thing. Same thing for our AEO SEO content. We just can't, we still need to have an editor in the loop, right? Um, same thing with our X content. So, Max, who who's actually on this call right now, he manages my my ex account from time to time. Um, or like a good chunk of the time. Um, when he was just using his ex the X skill that he forked off of mine, he can see that the reach was going down, but he starts writing again in his voice this week, boom, the reach

18:25goes back up. And then same thing with my my videos that I crossosted from YouTube. the moment I start writing again, instead of like, I don't know, 1,000 views, it's like 15 20,000 views, right? Which is pretty decent for for a video on on on YouTube, like especially for B2B. So, all that to say is you still need the human in the loop. And for anybody that goes to you right now and says, "Oh, AI's already figured it all out, you should probably run in a different direction." Cuz as much as I like it right now, and as much as I want it to be like that, it's not that right

18:49now. Yes. And I I I you know take my hats off to Eric on this one because Eric was in a very different camp a year ago uh in which when AI technology came out he saw a lot of opportunities and he believed that it can disrupt in many ways and he still believes that. But Eric isn't stubborn in which just because everyone's talking about something like AI and marketing what it can do he won't just blindly say yeah this is what's going to happen here's the end of all humans. you won't need as many of them. He'll adapt with whatever he learns or time. And Eric was, I would

19:25say, more more extreme AI a year ago, in my personal opinion, than you are now. It doesn't mean he's using the technology any less. He's quickly used it and adapted and figured out where it's weak and where it's strong. And that's the key. I know Eric's not employed, but that is the key when

19:44you're hiring marketing employees in AI. You don't want them to drink the Kool-Aid. You want them to adapt to whatever is best for the strategy, for the clients, for the results instead of just having tunnel vision and just being like, "This is how it's going to be." And it doesn't mean that AI in a year from now won't be better and be able to do a lot more stuff and Eric may go back to saying like, "Oh, wow. You don't need X, Y, and Z for this. You can just use AI." Because as technology changes, so should how you interact or do your strategy or do your marketing. Um, the

20:16interesting thing that I see with AI is it creates a lot of bias. And I'll give you a real life example of this. Eric was talking about my Instagram profile on how I'm doing like clone type videos where there'll be like two or three of me and he's like, "Oh, they're getting pretty good views." And he was looking at my stats and Eric was right. I don't look at my stats on Instagram that often. I thought I got like, you know, 100,000 or 500,000 views a month. And Eric's like, "No, you got a decent amount of views." And I looked at my Instagram analytics and I think I sent

20:46you a screenshot of it. I think I was getting like 11 million views or something like that in 30 days. Oh, actually people view my stuff on Instagram and some of the guys I work with were like, "We need to do more clone videos." I'm like, "Why do we need need to do more clone videos?" Keep in

21:00mind, they also take longer to create. I don't have an issue of putting in time, but they they were using AI and AI gives you feedback on what's working and what's not. and AI was pushing them to do more clone videos like uh this is a good CMO versus a bad CMO versus a mediocre CMO. This is a good entrepreneur versus mediocre entrepreneur versus a bad entrepreneur and Eric knows this. How much revenue am

21:26I going to generate from those videos? Exactly. So, do I care if I get a million views or zero views? No. Exactly. So, I was like AI is just telling these guys to tell me to create content on excuse my language, that won't make me a dollar in revenue and is not targeted towards my ideal customer. So, why the heck am I going to record this content? And I remember I had to create 30 videos that day cuz of my travel schedule. And it ended up being that I ended the day with 27 videos cuz I refused to create videos on stuff that is useless. And it also

21:58pisses you off when you it's like at least for me, I shouldn't speak for you, but if I see it on my list when people used to generate the topic ideas, I just get more and more pissed off as I see more and more of it. And then I just don't want to record anymore. So, yes. And I got so pissed off that I had to talk with them. And Eric knows me

22:14really well now. I know that you know this person really well too. When I get mad, I usually don't get mad, but like when people are wasting my time and it just keeps me recurring thing. I just I just go off and I don't have a temper, but I'm very direct. Oh, you just don't let up.

22:31Yeah. I don't let up. You don't yell, but you don't let up. And I was just like, why do why should I asked him like why should I keep paying? I was just very direct. And then I was like, I pay X dollars a month. This is what I'm getting. And I'm like, I don't see the value. And then it went into, you don't see the value in our work. You're belittling us. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm just telling you very direct that I pay X dollars. I expect Y. If I can't get Y, I'm going to look for other solutions. I'm not saying

23:00your time is not more valuable or less valuable. That is your decision. I'm just telling you as a consumer paying you X, I'm expecting Y. If I can't get Y, I'm going to look for other solutions. So, why should I? And it went down a track of, hey, you're a client of mine. And, and this is a lesson for anyone who's a consultant or agency owner. They're like, you're a client of mine. You don't understand all the value we create and how good we make you look and all this. That is the perception of the person providing the service. as a person paying for the service, I'm

23:32paying for X. If I can't see X, and someone else is providing me Y, but I don't care for Y, but they think I should care for Y, that means there's a disconnect, and that means usually they're not going to continually get paid, and I'm going to go find someone who can get me X. Now, their whole philosophy on creating social content for me is, you look good. This builds your brand. You know, look at what your brand can do for you. And my response, and Eric knows this, is I don't care how my brand looks. Of course, I don't want it to look bad, but uh from a

24:03perspective of I don't care how big my brand gets. My goal is not to be a Tony Robbins or a LeBron James. And those are big examples, but bigger examples in my space would be a Gary Vaynerchuk or Alex Hermoszi or or Cody. She has a big brand as well, Cody Sanchez. I'm not trying to optimize for my brand. I'm trying to optimize for revenue. I'm not saying the Gary Vaynerchuk approach does not drive revenue. I'm saying for my business, that approach doesn't work for me. It doesn't mean it can't work for Gary or someone else. I'm just saying for my business and what I'm trying to do, it

24:38doesn't fit in my playbook and it doesn't work for me. So, I rather stick to what I know that works for me and double down on that and ignore the rest. Because, as you guys all have heard Eric and I say on this podcast, there's no wrong or right way to do marketing. You

24:53have to figure out what works for you. So there's there's two ways to win as a consultant or actually two approaches to being a consultant. Okay. So we have this one consultant right now helps us with LinkedIn. 1,000 comments, 1,500 comments, 2,000 comments. Amazing, right? A lot of engagement. He's good. He's very young, too. He's 18 years old. But whenever I

25:12give him feedback, it's very direct. It's like, "Hey, man. I don't know if this is going to work because you're getting all the engagement in the world, but it's not driving us any booked meetings right now, right? And we're going to have to end engagement." So this is also one way to handle the engagement early, right? like he's just start to nip in the butt. But every single week he's like, "Hey, man. Thanks for the learnings. I'm trying to get better. I'm trying to get better. I'm like he is getting better. He's trying, right? But there's no look at all the effort that I'm putting in. You don't

25:34understand the value of this." If you have to fight like that, it's just not going to work. Right? Now, we do have another consultant that we worked with for he's probably going to listen to this, right? Hello. So, what happens with that one is like he's asking for more money, but at the same time, the results aren't getting better. In fact, the results are getting worse. And then if you look at them, if you look at the the thumbnails that are being posted, they they're more more AI generated and there's not a lot of thought that are going into them, right? So you have two different camps here. You have the

25:5718-year-old who's like, I'm going to get better and I understand if I'm going to be fired. Okay. Which is the right attitude. Attitude and I trust he's going to figure out in life no matter what. Then you have the other attitude where it's like you just don't understand. You know, we're not getting Wait, can we go back a bit?

26:10Yeah. Eric just said he believes he's going to figure out what uh he's going to figure out things in life. Mhm. I know what you mean by that, but for everyone listening, why is that the right attitude and what do you mean by that? Yep. So, when you get feedback, you should look at as a gift. 99% of people do not look at feedback as a gift. He sees it as a gift and you can see genuinely he's like, "Oh, yeah, that's good." Right? There's no like he's not getting defensive about it, right? So, he has a curious and adaptable mindset and that's exactly

26:38what you need to win as an entrepreneur. Yes. And when Eric says he'll win in life, he's not necessarily saying he's going to win in Eric's organization. He's just saying generally in life this person has the right attitude to do well. Exactly. Now the other attitude is like the example that you gave me from you know someone that we know right and it's it's defensive. When you're defensive like that you're not in the head space to want to get better. And if you don't want to get better then no matter how good your coaching is or how good my coaching is, you can't get better and you're always going to be

27:06adversarial. And if it's adversarial relationship, we might as well just not work together. Yeah. You want to hear another interesting one? So, one of the guys that helps us out, we pay him $17,000 a month. So, call it $200ish,000 a year. We've been paying them for so many years. All right. So, and they help us with content and stuff like All right. And this is for me personally, right? But it's it's through the company. They're helping the company, but you know, they're they're working with me. They're coming to my house and all this kind of stuff, which makes life somewhat easy, which is why I haven't changed as much. But $17,000 a

27:39month is a good amount of money. So I try to get more stuff done out of them for giving them more money. All right. So I was like, I need more videos. I want these kind of pieces of content. They're like, okay. And we I met the guy for breakfast. And then and then the guy's like, all right. Uh this will be another 10 grand. I said, okay, sounds good. Let me just run it by a few other people in my organization. I ran it through them right then and there. I was texting him. this was on a Saturday, but I can get a hold of my co-founder

28:09anytime or the CEO. I'm like, "Yeah, what do you guys think about this?" Cuz I was not 100% sure, so I just want to run it by people before I commit to anything. They're like, "Yeah, why not?" So, they agreed to want it. Uh, fast forward an hour, they're like, "I thought about it. I don't know if I want to do it for that amount. I think it's

28:25way too much work. I want more money. I'm providing so much." I'm like, "I didn't come up with a price. You came up with a price. You're changing on me." So, that a pisses me off, right? Yeah. [laughter] an hour later, dude. Yeah. And this is like, come on, dude. And then it goes into arguing about, hey, you need to be more grateful. Look at what we're doing. Look how make me look like you need to realize like I just ask you, don't give me a speech on why I should pay you more

28:50or why you should be grateful. Yes. I I really hate that. And I always try to tell people, you should charge whatever you want to charge. I will pay whatever makes sense for my business. If it doesn't align, that's okay. I have to do what's best for my business. And you have to do what's best for your business. And keep in mind, not everything works out for everyone. And

29:09we should just be understand that. That's the way the business world works. I wish I could charge people $10 million, you know, all day long for contracts and just make more profit. It won't work like that. Procurement comes in and be like, "No, your margins are too high. This is what you need to charge." And technically, I don't even get to quote $10 million for all these campaigns. They beat you down well in advance and, you know, get you down and down and pitch you against seven other companies. But as we're going through this, at one time I was just at my place and we were creating content and we were

29:39going over this thing that was $10,000 and they negotiated for them and I'm like, "Look, dude, if you're telling me you want 12 or 14, I can't tell you yet cuz I don't know what it looks like." So, we settled on the first month they'll do it for additional. And I remember sitting in my place as we were recording it. They did one. They came back a week later to do three more and they started discussing how, you know, it's a lot of work. I need to see the value and I don't I I don't appreciate what they're doing. I'm like, this is just a business relationship. I pay X, I

30:10get why. I like the people, but I pay X, I get why. And if it doesn't work out for me, it doesn't work out for me. If it doesn't work out for you, don't do it for me. It's it's that simple. So, I I had a clear talk with them. I said, "You guys have been doing business, right?" Like, "Yeah." Like, "How long?" And they were just like, We've been in marketing, running our own marketing company for I think it's almost 10 years. And I said, "Okay, what's your take-home?" So, they're all sitting there. They're like, " $5,000 a month. We do over a million in revenue." So, I was like, "You're

30:41telling me you do all this work and you only make $5,000 a month, sometimes $7,000 a month." They're like, "Yeah, but look at what we build. This is amazing." Why just get a job? Yeah, you nailed it. That's what I just said. So I [laughter] said to them, I'm like, "Why don't you just guys go get a job? You've been doing this for a long time. You've been making roughly all this money." And they're like, "You don't get it, dude. We put all these systems and processes within our

31:04organization. We're ready to scale now." I was like, "Well, if you didn't have the systems and processes, that means you were doing the work mainly yourself, right?" They're like, "Yes." So I was like, "So in theory, your profit margin should have been higher cuz you were doing the work without the systems and processes and giving to other people,

31:19which would have cost you more money." Yeah. And they were just like, "My I I had a Dexus scan that day." And I was joking with them because, you know, when they measure your head, they're going to bring your blood sugar up. No, no. You know, when they measure your body, it tells you like your bone density and stuff. It doesn't actually tell you like how powerful your brain is or anything like that. But I was making a joke because the the density for my head is extremely high. Like I'm in like

31:43the 98th or 99th percentile. Fit more brain in it. Is that what you're saying? No. No. [laughter] It just means it's more like tough, I think. Yeah, but doesn't mean I get what you're saying, right? But I was just joking with him. I'm like, "Dude, am I in the 1 percentile with my head?" And I was just messing around with

31:59And then they were joking around. They're like, "Does this mean you're in the uh you're not in the 1 percentile with the rest of your body?" Like, they were just joking around with me like my muscle. And I'm like, "Yeah, I am weak." No one knows this. The first thing I asked you, I'm like, "Do I look skinnier?" Cuz I'm trying to gain weight right now. And they were just like,

32:15"Look, dude, we're not as smart as you." I'm like, "Dude, first off, I'm not that smart." But they're like, "We're not as smart as you. We don't know how to just optimize business." I'm like, "This is simple. If you collect a million in revenue, you're telling me you have three main partners, which are the three guys who run the company. The rest are outsourced employees." I'm like, "How the heck are you not making money? Why don't you guys just go get a job? You can easily get a job for 10 grand a month." And then they got the main guy got pissed at me. He's like, "Dude, I'm

32:41worth way more than 10 grand a month." I'm like, "Okay, 15 grand a month. I'm just making up a number here." And he's just like, "I'm worth way more than 15 grand a month. You're belittling my marketing experience." I'm like, I'm like, "You're taking this the wrong way. I'm telling you, if you're making $5,000 a month and this is what you've been making for a long time, call it 7 max, and you times it by 12, this is less than 100,000 a year,

33:02that's below poverty." In LA, it is hard to live off of that. No, you're below poverty line in LA. I did not know that. So, I'm like, if you're making that for many years, and when I say many years, this is the max I've been making for like five, six years. I'm like, why are you continually doing this? You're better off taking a

33:19job. They're like, I'm worth way more. Well, a business making a million dollars in revenue that makes no profit is useless. At that point, move along and get a job. Yep. By the way, okay, so I'll give you the numbers here. So, low-income housing, okay, low-income housing limits uh 70,000. So you can qualify if you're like 70,000 income,

33:38you can qualify for low-income housing. So not poverty line exactly, but um poverty line would be actually like one person household 16,000 a year. So a little different. That's federal poverty line. But to qualify for low-inccome housing, but going back to your point though, at a certain point, look, I get it like you and I both support

33:53entrepreneurship, right? Like go for it. Absolutely. But if you're going for 10 years and you're still ready to scale and you it still hasn't quite happened and the traction quite isn't there, there's no shame in getting a job. There's plenty of place that would love to hire you where you can make 15 20 grand a month or so if you got the experience and then you can get insurance and all this other stuff and don't have to worry about all this other dude not just that you know there's a lot of talented marketer there's even a lot of marketing companies um I was I was talking to someone who is interested

34:21in joining the workforce and they were entrepreneur and I said you should go work for a company like high level cuz they're blowing up in the marketing space they're like why I'm like okay other than the company is is growing really fast, good product, uh doing well. I'm like, what people don't realize is if you work really hard for a company like that or Uber or Airbnb,

34:44Open AI, etc. One, you can make money by rising. Two, that helps you with whatever you want to do in the future. Three, these companies shares are worth money if they 10x 20x in size and decide to sell or go public or whatever outcome they do or they do um they can stay private like Stripe and still buy out uh employees, right, from their stock options or however that works, you can become a millionaire even as a entry job or middle job without even climbing the ranks. And people tend to forget that. And it's just like if you're really skilled at what you do, like the guys who I was giving the

35:20feedback on, they're really good at editing. And it's just like, wait, this is a great skill set. People will pay you for this. Why don't you just go get a job and make money in other ways? Imagine if they a company like an openi absorb their editing capabilities, right? Open is probably different. They already have that, right? But they would get paid a good amount. They get stock

35:38options. A6Z. A6Z has their own production team. Eric Torberg's media company. I did not know that. And that's why they're doing well in media. Yeah, exactly. So, like there's a lot of value in what he's doing. I think he just has to reposition it, I think, cuz editing's dime a dozen. How many people do you see in your DMs? You don't check your DMs

35:55much, but I see in my DMs. Hey, brother. Hey, brother. Hey, brother. [laughter] Want me to edit for you? Hey, brother. Hey, brother. Are you looking for an editor? Right. It's all the same people over and over. But anyway, that actually brings me to another point cuz yesterday I I sent you a text message. You're like, "No clue." Right? But this actually ties in with it because you know of an agency that's been around for 30, 40 years or so and you said they they've always done good work. They haven't done like a lot of acquisitions, right? Do you know who I'm talking about

36:18now? I know who you're talking about. Yes. But the number you were telling me wasn't uh that's not revenue, that's profit. Oh yeah, I sorry. So my my my mistake on that one. Yeah. Well, now you can't reveal it to me. So you have to text me afterwards. So yeah, cuz I was I was talking to a friend. Yeah, but you shouldn't have a ton of people in India. But yeah, talk about that company because that is an example of a person that just kept going, kept going, kept going. And that's a good, by the way, that's another contrast where it's like you've done acquisitions. Gary Vee does things

36:50a certain way. This person, this entrepreneur is just like grown it for a very long time. There's a there's an entrepreneur I know in YPO has an agency. I think they do two or 300 million a year, but he's just done it for a very long time with his brother. Yeah. So, you're spot on. So, there's this agency guy that I ended up learning about because they became a customer and became friends with the owner. They're a different kind of agency. They're not a marketing agency, but they also can provide marketing services, but that's not their core capabilities. They pretty much try to do everything. Think of like

37:22a mini Accenture. Okay? And I was talking with um uh the founder uh you know, they're really into Silicon Valley and all that kind of stuff. I think like a west coast entrepreneur. They've been doing this for call it 30 years if I had to guess. Something like that. Maybe more. Um almost our entire lives. Almost our entire lives. And there they barely did acquisitions. Uh I don't know how many acquisitions they did, but call it less than five. And uh when I was talking to the founder, I was just like, "How'd you grow?" They're like after 10 years you start getting more included into more larger pitches if assuming you

38:02did work good work in the first 10 years and bigger brands just get to know you more and then you just keep doing it for a long time and they do billions in revenue hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. I don't think they hit a billion yet in profit. um but close and I'm not going to reveal the agency name, but people can look them up and get some of this information because you know how like people apply for these awards like Ernston Young, you know, business of the year or Inc. Magazine or Inc. 5000 or whatever it's called. So, a

38:35lot of their financials are public. It's not like I'm revealing something someone can't just Google. They may not be orus 15%. Either way at this point, what's the difference if someone does 2 billion or 2 and 1/2 or 3 billion or four? Like, you know, they're a large company. Um, uh, I think it's still independently owned. I haven't checked, but it just

38:57spits off a ton of cash. I'm willing to bet it is independently owned because for such a large organization, very quickly the website's very AI forward. Everything's AI on the website, right? And that takes a founders's mentality to do that. Um, by the way, we should talk about this real quick. So, we just earlier, Neil and I talked about how there's no right or wrong way to do business. So, you think about this. Oh, how did McDonald's get founded? Well, Ray Croc actually stole from these two people that grew he started a burger shop in Arcadia, my

39:23hometown. I don't know if you know that. I didn't in Arcadia. It was a burger shop in Arcadia. It wasn't called McDonald's yet. No, I know that. Yeah. But then McDonald's, the spin-off of San Bernardino, and then Ray Gray Croc founds his thing and he he he makes a real estate play, right? Then you have this guy who started this business. He's been doing it for 40 plus years and sounds like he's mostly bootstrapped and gone along the whole way. Then you have uh Morris Morris um Morris Chang I think from uh TSMC. He started that company when he was 55 years old in 1987. So I

39:50was one year old at that time, right? But there's so there's no right or wrong way to do or you have Jensen who just slogged away at gaming first. Couldn't quite make it work. Almost bankrupted so many times but somehow made it work, right? So whether it's business or marketing, there's no right or wrong way to do it. Which actually then leads me to want to talk about the Gary Vee piece because I I actually um I pulled up this video Neil and I'll share it to you and then you can you can talk about what's

40:12happening on the video. When I wrote Crush It in 2000 2000 So what Gary's saying here is the trend for 2026 is the monetization of random content. Then we can react to this. It was like if you're a hard start track if you really hear us blog at the time and on time eventually you'll get get t-shirts sold sponsored star track con all that saying here is very this is about where we are now we're now we're now in a place where I Gary Mara first ever around and even though all my followers not a when I was about why this is a good surf surf chalk or

40:44whatever the hell I learn about that why is I believe for every notion passion I just chat the first video is them learning how to so not only their passion the rise you're curious you're you're on training my brother does not know how to ride I probably but if he started making content 39 about his journey [laughter] on learning here is my brand social content first line post something funny about spit one out you're like that's and you find yourself later getting 5,000 about a very why not all the time that you're not just going ramp but obviously better when all of you start putting out

41:15what do you think I I think he's spot on and the reason that works today is the algorithms of social networks are very different than they were when we first started. When we first started, you had friends. People followed you for a specific reason. You had friends and followers. Uh technically, when you first started it was friends, then it became followers, right? Because it would usually be people that you know, and they would follow you for something specific, entrepreneur content, marketing content for you and I, uh self-help, uh cooking, lifestyle, whatever it may be. Now, the way the algorithms work is if you post content, your followers and your friends don't

41:50necessarily see it. They try to figure out how the engagement is and who the video is right for and they try to show it to more of those people versus just the people that follow you. And that's what I mean when I say he's spot on in which if you're interested in surfing, the way the algorithms work, even if you don't have any followers who care about surfing, they'll go and find the people that should see it. And if they engage with it and it does well, they'll continue to show it to more people who are interested in surfing. And eventually that can lead you to make

42:18money around that topic. Um, I do agree you can make money from it, but if you want to make large sums, call it $5,000, $10,000, and you want the money to be consistent, you can't, and Gary's not saying this, uh, I I don't want to assume he's saying this, but you can't, and and he of course knows this, uh, really well, you can't just post one surfing video to get those sponsorships, to continually get those contracts around specific things like surfing. You would have to start producing more and more of that content. So then that way you get paid from a surfing company. If you posted one video on surfing and it

42:55did really well, but you stop talking about surfing. It's very rare that you're going to get companies reaching out to you offering you money for surfing related content. But just post on anything you're interested in and then from there you'll grow your reach and then you can figure out what you want to double down on. So, what I would say with Gary Vee saying post random content is it works as long as you're authentic, right? So, I had a YouTube

43:19consultant reach out to me recently. She's like, "Oh, all you need to do is just copy what all the other people are doing. Look at all these other dot." I'm like, "But I don't want to. It's not authentic to me." But, and Neil and I are a little older now, right? So, maybe younger versions of us would post, you know, random uh Neil's journey to getting bulk bulked, right? Like bulking up, for example. That could be a fun journey, right? And I bet you people would follow like people would follow along for that. um for me trying on my

43:42journey to get better at tennis, right? So, these are all interesting things and it's not to say that I don't like posting about it. But, um I think if you're younger right now, definitely do it. I think if you're older, you have a business already, you know, maybe you can just focus if you're a little more established, you can just focus on one niche. Um but by by the way, when you're younger, what do you have? You have a lot of what? Time. You don't have money, but you have time. So, you might as well just try everything, right? You don't need to try to figure out how to place

44:05yourself in the niche. Especially if you're listening to this right now and you're you're like 20 years old, you don't need to worry about that right now. You kind of need to just test a bunch of things and figure it out. And we we said this before, you throw spaghetti against the wall. And AI has never been more pro- spaghetti against the wall um versus anything else that I Dude, you're so right. I remember I was going to a conference called uh WebSummit and it was in Canada. This was a long time ago. They have different versions of it. Some of them are called Collision, although I think they're

44:32changed Collision and got rid of that name and just now they call them all webs. And I remember this was a long time ago and this is when Gary Vaynerchuk was talking about more about uh not creating content for the sake of creating content for social like consider documenting your life and just living your life and

44:48having someone follow you around. Uhhuh. And it makes it easier. And you did that for a while. I think Noah follows you around. Noah followed me. And then when he almost got ran over by a car or he almost ran to a car, I'm like I'm not doing this anymore. Yeah. So, my first time was at WebSummit and I did not know my team had sent someone to just record me. Some guy

45:07comes up, he's like, "Hey, what's up?" And uh he just kept recording. I'm like, "What the heck is this?" And I don't know if it was like a random person and he just kept doing it. And I remember people would come up to me, ask me questions, and he would just try to record it all. And then he was giving me feedback. I'm like, "What the heck is this? What's happening here?" like, "Oh yeah, we're we're trying this thing

45:26that, you know, Gary Vee talks about." And I don't think Gary Vee is actually wrong. I think he's right. That is a more efficient way to do it. But I also believe that works well for Gary Vee and it gels with his personality. For my personality, and it doesn't mean Gary's wrong, but for my personality, I personally did not like it. I like my privacy. Eric knows this. I'm I'm an introvert more than an extrovert. You would agree with that, right? I keep a lot of my life private. I did not like it at all. I told the guy very kindly to stop recording and he's like, "No, I was

45:59hired." I'm like, "I'm the owner of the company. You'll get paid for the day. You no longer have to. You'll get paid for whatever they promise you. I'm done recording." And I'm like, "I don't want to be rude. I'm just more of a private person. I do not like a camera following me around. It's just me personally." I'm like, "But you can go home, chill with your family if you have family, and you'll still get paid, and we would recommend you. You're a nice guy. I'm not trying to be rude. This is just not me. You have to figure out the type of content and the type of marketing that

46:26resonates with you. And I think a lot of brands get that wrong, especially when they're creating social content. They just try to hop on with whatever the latest trend is, and that's a great way to get views, but that's not a good way to generate revenue. So, let me show you this, Neil. So, this is from a you're talking about um being authentic to your brand, right? So, what I'm showing on my screen right now, there's this bakery called Atoria Chicago. Okay? So, what it says, it's a it's a cake, okay? It says, you know, never supporting me, but

46:57asking for my resources is crazy, right? There's a lot of people like that in life, right? So, this one got 130,000 likes. It was posted on uh likes. It was posted on uh October 14th, which is pretty recent, right? 759 comments, but 130,000 likes. You have to imagine this probably got millions of views. But it's like this is authentic to them. Atoria Cafe and Bakery, right? This is actually creative marketing. Or by the way, if you can't figure out how to be more creative, guys, goes, there's a little

47:21Shrek on this Grun right now, right? These are ogre gummies. So each one is shaped like an ogre, right? So there's creative ways to do it that are authentic to you. But don't just say, you know, all of a sudden you're like a you're a water bottle brand that became a skateboard brand. Maybe that's not so

47:34authentic. No, it's not authentic. Y reading that reminds me of dating in today's world. That is exactly a dating thing. But the funny thing is it's both both genders are commenting and saying that it they're blaming the other side. I I I have a friend, really nice guy, super successful. Uh I don't know how much he's worth, but let's call it 500 million, 10 billion. He's somewhere in that rate. He's retired. Uh kids are

47:59grown up. Uh wife got sick, passed away. Uh I don't know how many years later, let's call it 5 6 years later, decides to go on his first date. and he's just looking for a nice uh kind person around his age. How old is he? Uh I don't know if I had to guess, late 50s, okay, that he can just take care of. He he didn't date for the longest time. His his wife was like high school sweethearts. So he never went on a date

48:26outside of just dating his wife. He never really knew how to date. He never knew how to date other than dating his wife. And you know, he still wears his wedding ring because he's he's sad that he lost his uh soulmate. Yeah. So, he he goes on a date for the first time. He doesn't know how dating works. You know, I haven't been in the dating scene forever, so I don't either. And he was just like, "Did you know?" He was talking to me. He's like, "Did you know people Google you before they go on a date?" I was like, "Yeah, I could see Yeah. I was like when I was younger and

48:55I was dating, I'm like people would say stuff about me and I figured out that they Googled me, right, to know about me. And he was just like he's like the first date I went on, he's like the person asked me if I would help them out. And he's just like help them out. Wait, but that that doesn't sound like if they're around the same age gap that

49:14that person would ask for that. No, they're around the same age. He was dating people around. He went to Google and figured out his net worth and Yes. Okay. I see. He didn't show them their house or anything like that. He took him to like a normal restaurant. He met him on some dating app. They straight up asked him like, "Hey, if we keep going on dates,

49:30can you help me out and give me money? Rent in Los Angeles is expensive." Keep in mind, even people in their 50s, 60s,7s, not everyone owns a home in Los Angeles is an expensive city to live in. And he got really turned off by that. I would too. It's just like someone's just asking you for money and you barely know them. And uh he was just telling me, he's just like, "Is this what dating has turned into?" And I was like, "Dude, I don't know. I haven't dated in I don't know how many or 10 plus years or something like that." Uh so I text one

49:58of my other friends who is uh single and there's like they responded with two letters o and I'm like what is this lingo? So then I googled uh you know like text messaging lingo of f and I couldn't go to the answer and then I texted him back. I'm like dude I can't figure out what this off is. I know lol or like you know tbh you know to be honest and so they're like o means only fans of course and they're like only fans has changed and I'm like this is just terrible but like people's expectations from day one is uh just really crazy. Well, you're

50:37talking about search right now. So, this actually is a good segue to our next topic. Neil, on the next AEO, although people are worried now with all these LLMs, uh, and their AI spending, you saw Facebook stock tank this week because of their they beat up. No, they beat quarterly earnings, but I'm 110% sure. I'm sure you're right. I just want to look at it. uh it went down this week because they announced quarterly earnings but Zach also announced how he's spending more money on AI and infrastructure and uh the whole market has been uh tanking when it comes to like the core weaves and neoclouds and

51:15all of them cuz people are like you guys are overspending very debt so actually here's a good thing so not a good thing I I listened this by the way I I I did an analysis I'm going to show you in a moment but um so I listened to a podcast with Mark Zuckerberg Alexander Wang and uh I think I told you uh Patrick John Golison from the Stripe from Stripe

51:32the beer. Yeah, the cheeky pint. Cheeky pint. Right. So what Alexander I think oh no Mark Zuckerber and Alexander made a good point here. So Alexander from from scale.ai right and he's like dude in this type of situation you can't actually project this out. You can't forecast this out. So I think I told you forecast what out? The data center spending. all the heavy spending that they're applying right now. This is like a winner take all situation or like a winner or take most um where you can't actually say I'm going to wait to see how the numbers pan out. you actually just have to spend on the data center

52:02the capbacks right now for the data centers right and so what happened with Alexander Wayne is that he whenever they had executive meetings the CFO would pull him aside and say hey man like if this doesn't work this is going to be really bad for for meta right and kept pulling him aside like hey man like are you sure this is going to work da da da right and then Mark is Mark the good thing with Mark Zucker by the way that is a CFO's job by the way totally she's she's not wrong for they're both doing their job right but Mark this is when it's helpful to have the founder

52:28involved Mark is like hey we're going to do this. We're all in on this right now. Let's go for it. Which is why you see the the the capex is so high for the data center spending, which they think they still need more at this point. So, yes. And the the part that I don't have a grasp on, everyone talks about, so on the All-In podcast, you had Ben Horowitz was on I think the latest episode and he was talking about how he called

52:50Andy uh Jesse. Jesse from Amazon, the CEO. And I think it was something like, "Oh yeah, we'll get caught up by 2028." And Andy Jesse was just like, "Huh, no, we won't. There's way more demand. We will not be caught up in 2028." I believe what Andy is saying because AWS is one of the biggest providers and for him to say that they don't have enough uh there's way more demand than what they can handle by 2028. The part that I don't know when it comes to AI and even marketing, we are now marketing on chat GBT, right? We're now marketing on

53:24Claude. We're now marketing to Grockbot. We are now marketing to agents slowly like Muse and stuff like that that will go and do uh tasks for you. What happens when AI gets integrated into it's already starting with your toilet? I saw some devices on the toilet on my toilet. You use my toilet toilet? [laughter] No, no, but there's there's toilet

53:40devices that now have AI. Yeah. Uh there's fridges that are coming out that have AI enabled in them. So, you can start there'll be screens. Some fridges already have screens, but you can start ordering groceries on fridges. You can start marketing there. It can start analyzing the ingredients in your fridge and tell you what to cook.

53:57Analyze your stool. Yeah, that's for the toilets. What happens when you have the robots, right? Uh just out there like all the humanoids or whatever they end up looking like. How many more how much more compute are you going to need or data centers? Forget, how many more data centers are you going to need to just run all of it, right? And I don't think people actually know if we need a lot more or a little bit more. I yes, we need more than what we have now. But I just think it's a big unknown. But the flip side on it is I do also think it is

54:25going to change the life we market because everything offline and online is going to be purely digital and you're going to have to market to everything. You're going to have to market to that robot that when the robot goes to the grocery store and does your shopping for you that it should buy your products versus someone else's products even if yours is 10 cents more. Well, let me give you my reasoning and then we can I think this is going to be an open conversation, right? Yeah. So, we we discussed this before. So, Andre Karpathy, right? So, there's only 02% in the world, only 20 million people in the

54:56world that use AI and they're actually getting productivity. So, a lot of people using it for coding, right? Verifiable work such as coding or math for example, right? Um and only 5,000 are at the frontier. Then you have the rest of the world, right? Now, the other thing is you see this iPhone over here. Why do we need a 18th generation? Not even 18th. There's like pro and all that. So this is like 20 24 generations of this stuff, right? Why do we need so many? Cuz humans have always wanted more. Humans needs are never like Neil, you look at yourself right now. Look, go back 20, 30 years. Do you think you

55:25would have ever needed more? But yet today, you still want more. Don't you want more? Your demands are higher, right? Not not just that, dude. I used to have a iPhone before and it would go for 3 4 years and I wouldn't get another one. Now I'm like, I need one every single year. Why? So cuz we're insatiable with our demand. So our demand's just going to get higher and higher. And so if only 02% of the world's using it like this right now, I believe that we're going to need more compute. And the problem is like if you're Enthropic for example, because they didn't press hard while open kept

55:51pressing hard on more compute, they got constrained until they did the the SpaceX deal. And that would have been catastrophic for them, I think, if they didn't do that deal. Yes. Yeah. So that that's how I see it at least. And then you're you're you're Gary sat in that seat before Neil's a numbers guy, right? So I think this actually makes a lot of logical sense to Yes. Yeah. Uh, but I I do believe we haven't seen even how much compute we're

56:11or data centers we really need to run. I think a lot of us think we're idiots in the future. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I agree on Dude, here's something interesting. Hethan sent this to me. Yeah. Um, that's Neil's brother-in-law. Yeah. So, check this out. I'm going to turn it sideways so you can see. Total capital expenditure booms percentage of

56:29GDP. Canals 66%. Uh-huh. Railroads 224%. which is by the way railroads were the AI back in the day. Uh electrification.5% highways 1.13% telecom and fiber 1.1 AI buildout till 2032. Keep in mind we haven't even got there yet. It's saying side percentage of GDP only 3.63%. It's not crazy or out of whack. Yeah. Is it going to be 3.63 or 3% or whatever? Maybe it's going to be big but

57:01you need it for running everything. Think about it. When the internet first came out, you and I never knew how big the internet would be, right? And it became what it became because of Jevan's paradox, right? And so, um, and by the way, like all this other stuff is becoming possible now. Like earlier I just talked about the concept of

57:15autonomous ABM. If your ICP engages with your competitor's ads or the posts over here, you can automatically send them a cold cold outbound, right? Or if they engage with anything, like by the way, I I did this with my crockbot the other day. I'm like, "Hey, look at all my followers right now. Tell me who are M&A targets. Tell me who are uh recruit targets. tell me who are ICP fit. It's like you have 581 people that are ICP fit. There's a CMO of Dosibo, CMO of of this company over here, CMO of this company. These agencies over here seem to be like a good size over here. So, these are

57:44things that I couldn't have done before. And then I was like, "Oh, do it on Lily Ray's uh X profile. How much is that going to cost to scan all her 120,000 followers?" Well, if you remove less than 100 followers, that that will cut it down from $25 to $15. Okay, scan it. And then it started reaching out to people for recruits like and they're like I'm interested but how did you get my my information right but like that that is the world we're going into. It's going to be a world of more and more abundance just more. Yes. Yeah. By the way, Neil, did you see that Forester

58:12predicts AI agents will influence 75% of B2B buying? Yeah. I I didn't see that percentage but I agree with it. And but I would say the same thing when it comes to Google results and algorithms. It already influences so many purchases because the companies who optimize are the ones who are not chosen, but they're the ones who are included in that process. Did you buy anything yet for [snorts] through an agent? I have not

58:36bought anything through an agent. Really? Yes. Interesting. So, not one thing. I've had agents give me feedback on what I should buy and then I go and pick, but I've never had let the agent go and purchase. I have a a loved one that's having uh like a funeral for, you know, one of her um family members tomorrow and um I wanted to get flowers and you guess what Manda Muse handled the whole thing. It's like well the the funeral's happening near here so and I I was like give me the best thing. It's like well you get this easel over here looks really nice, right? Cuz remember when you came to my

59:04my mom's thing, you saw all those easels. That's the first time I'm like why does everyone have one? And then I had the smallest one, right? I didn't even know that was a thing. So anyway, you you get like a big easel. I didn't know that was a thing. Yeah, it's called an easel, right? And so, and then they called me after I was like, "Hey, like just want to make sure we're going to deliver by this time." It handled the whole thing. Now, I'm I'm doing the YPO global AI summit in two weeks, right? In Istanbul. We're going to do a speakers there. I was like,

59:25"Hey, I don't want to figure this out. You know where I'm staying for my hotel. Can you give me three locations that are close by and make sure there's a dining room?" Boom. Someone responds to me, "Yeah, you know, it's going to be $60 ahead. Cheap, right? And you get the private dining room." I'm like, "Sounds good. Let's just book that one." But I

59:40don't have to do the work. It's great. So, it's like an assistant. Mhm. Do you have assistant anymore or No, you haven't had one in a long time, right? You I was just I was say you uh me I haven't had one in a long time because I think it's very difficult to work with my speed. [laughter] So

59:55yeah. Yeah. But how about you? I've had one for a long time. I don't know when I haven't. You I know a long time ago I haven't had one, but there's a period of time where you didn't have one for a while and now you've had one for a while. For a long time. Like it has to have been over like five or six or seven or eight years easily. Um the the reason I choose to have an assistant is and it

1:00:16doesn't mean AI can't do this. My business operates in I don't know how many countries call I think it's around 28. There's just too many people, too many things going around, too many people trying to get on my schedule for different events and stuff like that. It's just easier having an assistant deal with everything versus me using AI and A is not perfect and it screws up and then I had to deal with it. Like I'm going for a conference on uh Monday and I I'll show you example of this. Okay. I

1:00:48don't tell her to do this. Never did. She just did it. Her name's Marina. I'm going to Oh yeah. Uh Dallas for event called Level Up uh by High Level. And then I'm going to Milan for event called intersections. Yeah. And she says, she gives me a flight time when it's going. Car is already booked. Uh party. She tells me, you know, what I'm going to time

1:01:12Yeah. Just everything what I need to do. She also tells me, she's like, "Hey, you're going to have some time during this event. Uh you're going to have a dead date in uh Mexico where I'm not doing anything." Yeah. And she's like, "It would be really good if we record X, Y, and Z during that time. this would be super helpful. So,

1:01:29can we please record it then? So, what I would say is this. If like Marina is Neil's assistant from because Neil travels a lot and there's a lot of logistics around that and she's reliable and she's proactive, right? You need someone that's been in that role for a while and is happy in that role. So, for I was talking to our

1:01:45mutual friend Yaniv about this, right? So, you need an assistant that's been there for a long time, knows the ins and outs of being an assistant and is happy to be an assistant, right? You don't want someone who's like maybe well one you don't want someone who's incompetent but two you don't want someone that wants to do something else because

1:01:59that's not gonna be helpful. No because then you have to switch them out. You have to find or not switch them out you have to find someone else in a year or two but like she's happy with her job. She gets paid well. Uh she's in a different country so the currency exchange is even uh better for her, more advantageous. Like she's chill. I'm happy. I don't disturb her every day. I don't actually really disturb her much at all. Maybe like two, three times a week, I'll ask her for something, but usually she just puts stuff in my calendar and pings me when I need to do

1:02:26something. And that's the thing, this job is different than the demands that you might have on your CEO, for example. And so this one's just like, "Hey, just make sure you get logistically, just make sure it happens." That's it. You you nailed it. Most my stuff is logistics related. And I do not even though AI is amazing, I do not trust Bless you. I don't trust AI with logistics yet. Cuz one mess up with that, dude, your day is done. Yeah, your day is done and it just costs so much money. And like she'll do things like she'll know if I'm going to make my connection on a flight and know if it

1:02:58needs to be changed and she'll figure it out before I land and just be like, "Here you go. You got a new ticket. Go to this counter." That's the only thing I miss about not having an assistant. It's it's that piece. It's like the little details cuz sometimes I'll actually miss it. You know what I mean? So, and and with logistics is super important because every country in my organization optimizes for their own numbers, their growth, and a lot of times they'll be like, "Oh, uh, yeah, Neil's going to fly in town. We're going to do a whole day full of meetings. So, just fly him out

1:03:26at night." And she'll be like, "No, I need to know all the meetings and the times. We're not just flying him out at night unless I have them. He's taking the quickest flight out after the speech unless you can actually show me which meetings." Cuz sometimes what will happen people like I tried booking him but I couldn't get these cuz of the

1:03:43time. Yeah. Wasting my time and she's like no he has a family he needs to get back home. So you have a month's notice and if you can't figure it out and then I'm booking them at the closest flight back after his speech or last meeting that's worth it. Yes. Yeah. So different expectations and I'm not saying EA versus no EA. I'm just saying for me right now not needed. And I'm not saying Elon Musk by the Elon doesn't have an EA, but I bet you he

1:04:06does have many Marinas helping him. Guaranteed. Yeah, cuz I would I agree with you cuz Marina is not really my EA. She does not deal with like, hey, you need laundry or you got this appointment, your kids are doing something. It's like I have none of that. Yeah. And I don't see for me, I don't think I need that, right? But either if I was traveling a lot and I had a lot of event log, if I was back to traveling 200 days a year, I would absolutely love

1:04:27to have a marri. So, yeah. Yeah. Mine is more like uh it's all logistics, all personal stuff like you know like oh I want to watch Toy Story 5 tonight with my kids cuz you're doing something at school. No, no, no. But none of that. That's just like I picked my own calendar or like uh you know you went for physical therapy, right? Uh for your tennis elbow. Hopefully it

1:04:46improved. It did. It did improve. It was really good. It was great. It's painful though, right? Yeah. I'm like I'm like, "Oh, this is like hardest massage ever, but it feels better after." Yeah. Uh like when I book physical therapy, I just text the doctor myself and book it myself. Or same with like my gym

1:05:00appointments for trainers or whatever. Like I don't use assistant for any of that. So yeah, we're on the same page. Like that type of stuff. I'm like I used to like Yeah, I'll just have my assistant do. But then you wait and there's like delays and all that. I'm like why don't I just do it myself? But

1:05:13a marina type situation with logistics. Absolutely. So we have one more thing we can go through here. This is from my my good friend Mark Andre on X. Okay. So So who lives by here? You know that, right? He does. He lives in Malibu. He has like a $200 million compound. He has many compounds. He bought more, but I he I think he had the record for the most expensive home sale or something like that. I believe it here. So, watch

1:05:33this. This is the biggest delta between I would say with the early versus what kind of everybody. Can you slow it down, please? Yeah. But it's true. Um and by the way, you know what's funny? He naturally talks at like 2x kind of like me. [laughter] So anyway, I'm going to repeat the video here, but this is Mark Andrea from Andre

1:05:51Horowits with Ben Horowitz as well. Okay, so Mark Andre, here we go. This is the biggest delta that I would say what the early adopters understand as well versus what kind of everybody you can kind of um and I think that's you know through the individual level, but it's especially um and the early the AI native early stage startups have completely different view on what they can AI than the than the than sort of you know typical incumbents in almost any industry. uh almost without exception and and I think that that gap is as wide as I've ever seen career and then it that gap seems like it's gap

1:06:18further out which is AI is just racing ahead in capability even week by week um and so the leading edge entrepreneurs and technically deal with like they're they're they're getting they're just they're they're just by the week they're getting sort of steadily more advanced um than than um so it's it's the biggest I've ever seen and if you kind of extrapolate from that like you know if if that's what happens um then there's just there are going to be a lot of industries that are really up for grabs in a fundamentally you know kind of more more profound way than maybe has been the case in the past. And then the and

1:06:45then that's going to be because the founders are going to have a level of superpowers coming from the use of these tools and these technologies that they just simply haven't had in the past. You know, had I had, you know, Astra in Netscape in '94, like oh my god, like you know, like Ben, like what would you

1:06:59and I have been able to do at Netscape? We would built the whole damn internet. The leading edge entrepreneurs now are going to have. So all that I mean it it's crazy to hear him say that cuz he just started a new fund, the Frontier Fund, right? that they're talking about but like uh no it's not a new fund they sorry it's they renamed the crypto yeah you're correct thank you for that so I I do see this happening right now and that's where my my anxiety has been coming from for for the last really since last December so it hasn't been a year yet right um the gap is widening

1:07:27every single day and so even with the new people joining the team now I'm like guys like this is why I say like we're not trying to eliminate jobs but we're trying to this elevates capabilities and because the gap's getting wider that means someone who's super enabled if you're very enabled and I'm not then you can see And that's not a good thing ultimately, right? But that's where I think there's a lot of anxiety that's

1:07:44happening in the job market right now. But dude, there's like the ability now where you can take your phone and you can scan this and you can basically make a physical version of this. Now imagine what your kids can do like legit like what do they call it? CAD CAD modeling. I forgot. Yeah.

1:07:58But you don't even have to do the model. You just take a picture of a device and we go 360 and just be like, "Okay, sounds good." And then you 3D print it, right? Why wouldn't your daughter do it? Why wouldn't your son do it? So our our kids, your kids already, I don't have kids yet, but our kids will be way smarter than us, way more capable than us, and we're just going to look like dinosaurs, right? But this is why I also think you cannot you can't afford not to hire people who are super AI native. So I had today someone from from Proctor

1:08:21and Gamble answer me all these questions. I posted to Twitter, didn't reveal the name, but I'm like, "Hey, what percentage of of uh daily tactical work is done by AI today?" 10%. How much you spend monthly out of pocket in AI spend? $20. Okay. Um and then I use this primarily for research. And this person has worked at a large company for 15 plus years, hands-on experience, and it just doesn't work. Can't keep up, right, for what you're looking for

1:08:44specifically. No. Yeah. Exactly. Can't because there's probably some roles that are a good fit for that. It's just not what you're looking for. Exactly. Right. And I think you have to understand what you're looking for. And so what we do in this situation now is like if you're looking for AI nativeness in your hiring process, you just apologize up front. So in our our thing about apologize saying, "Hey, I apologize for this. We're looking for a very specific individual. here's seven questions for you and then we'll just

1:09:06evaluate. Yeah. Yeah. And and I I I I think that's a good approach. Uh the caveat here is just know what you're looking for. Like when we interview sales people, we do not care on how AI savvy they are or they're not. Um we more so care on how good they are on the phone. relationships, yes, but we really care how good they are on the phone from, you know, how organized they are, how good they are at pitching and things like that. We believe, this is just our philosophy, we can teach them the AI

1:09:38stuff. It is for us, it's harder to go get that person who's amazing at AI and teach them sales. It's easier to get the person who's good at sales and then give them the technology and be like, "This part will make your job easier. Here you go." and we'll have people walk them through all this stuff, but we don't want to teach them sales. We want the people who are already great at sales and then we'll teach them what they need in a on how to use AI to do their job better, but the reverse for us is we

1:10:06found it to be really hard. So, I agree in so sales is actually a really good example. Sales is such a very like soft skill and and the way Neil sells is different than me, but I know we're both good at sales, right? In our own respects, but it's very it's a very hard skill to pick up, right? So, but I I still think you need both. I think you need someone who's like into

1:10:23sales and cuz here's the reason. Remember you met a sales person that we had maybe a year and a half ago, right? And that person was very used to selling deals at like a agency that productized their services, right? Yeah. Do they still with you? No. No. It didn't it didn't it didn't work because that person was really like

1:10:39I guess East Coast agency, right? Yeah. Bulldog in terms of like following up, getting on top of like pushing the pace, right? Like everything you need from a sales person. Good on the phones as well. Couldn't pick up the AI stuff. therefore did wasn't understanding where we're trying to go. The new guy we have now understands kind of both and it was is really has soft skills both on the sales side and the AI side and he's combining everything together which your deal sites end up being a lot bigger and so I believe depends on what you're selling too like if you're selling flowers different yes but for enterprise

1:11:09sales I think it's still easier to hire someone who's amazing at sales that you can teach AI to assuming you can actually teach that to them because some people just don't want to change or learn culturally bingo that's not but if they're good at AI and you had to teach them sales, I think that's a recipe for disaster cuz it's harder to get someone who's not good at sales to be good at sales versus getting someone who's good at sales. It's easier to find that person who's good at sales and is willing to learn AI and has a right attitude. Like you're 18-year-old. My point is I rather go for both and sit

1:11:39through the pain a little longer if needed. Now, it can't sit forever with the pain, but I I I do agree, right? Like I think you can't just hire someone who's good with AI and say learn sales. That that's not going to work with with with actually many different roles. not just sales. Um, and last thing we can call out here, I think this is this is a good place to close. So, this guy, uh, Thorston Ball says, don't forget you're no longer working with humans. And I I think you you you'll like this piece. So, this is not saying we're looking to eliminate

1:12:05humans, guys. It says be unreasonable. You have to constantly remind yourself that you're no longer working with humans. Things that would have seemed unreasonable or over the top or downright rude, well, you can ask for all of that now. So, I want you to test this again. End to end. Again, give me irrefutable proof that this now works. You couldn't ask a human to do that before, right? Um, give me 10 variations of this UI. That's right, 10. Explore different design approaches, different color schemes. Show me how they fix this as Apple, at Google, at Teenage Engineering. What would, you know, this this designer do? Um, fix this bug, find

1:12:35a race condition, eight times at least, try and break it. So, the whole point now to work with this stuff is you have to be unreasonable and um, it's okay because these things aren't going to get mad at you, right? So last thing I'll call out Neil remember earlier in the in this conversation you're talking about um how much how much I talked about um I think we're talking about marketing school right so in the beginning of marketing school it says uh the early evidence suggests Eric wanted AI to replace substantial amounts of work but replace all humans was never the case so I never wanted to replace humans guys I

1:13:06just want to make that clear Neil never wanted to replace humans but uh it was always about judgment accountability and retain and retraining before calling it a change But you you should go rerun the analysis. You're less you're still more bullish on AI, but you're less I I don't know what the I'm not even trying to figure out right way to put it. I'm trying to figure out how to say it. You're less about how much AI will have impact on humans compared to before. I believe before, forget replacing humans. I believe this is just you know me us doing the podcast together that you felt

1:13:39that it would take a higher percentage of the work and do more than what it currently is able to do right now a year later. So this scanned in the last 12 months using Jeff guys using a classifier here. So here's what it said. So it said the honor answer the honest answer is AI doing most of the work. Yes I explicitly said that fewer humans needed for the the same output. Yes I did say that. Um AI doing literally everything with no humans. No. Um you never believe that. You never

1:14:04believe that you wouldn't need humans. Yeah. So, this is good, by the way, cuz we can always we can always like look at look at like what we did say and what we didn't say. But it doesn't mean that what you said isn't true. I just don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Maybe 10 years from now or 5 years from now, but I still think it's a really big deal

1:14:20though. Bigger than anything. But the difference is is when we started talking about AI and marketing, call it a year ago, AI was if you look at the models, they were evolving so fast and there was big differences from the models. Now, when you look at the changes, I know they're improving, but it's not as drastic of improvements per model. I don't know if you would agree with that or disagree with that. Like, if I look at the models that would come out a year ago and a month later you would have a model and be like, "Wow, this is so much

1:14:47substantially better." Now, you look at a model and they're like, "Wow, this new model is so much better." But as an end user, for a lot of the stuff that people use AI for, there's no difference in the model for day-to-day. Yes. And so, last thing I'll say here and then then we'll we'll end. But guys, it hasn't actually So AI had a hard takeoff December 2025. It's still October 2026 right now. So it hasn't been a year yet, but that was a big deal in December and it kind of like was whatever until May and June and then Austra came out and like these other

1:15:14ones came out and then now it's kind of like waiting for the next big thing to come out. So it's not even the next big thing. I agree that it's going to change leaps and bounds, but what people are using it for, like the majority of people, the vast majority. Yeah, vast majority. And you had this

1:15:29percentage in one of the old episodes. It's already good enough for the 0.01 or whatever percentage was in there. I agree there's going to be a lot of changes even for the 1%. There's going to be some leaps and bounds. Especially for people who are building coding and stuff like that, but most of the usage that we see in marketing is people just using AI to ask questions and help it find products or do research on something. And if you want to make the most money as a marketer, it's not like, oh, you can use AI to do this and just save a lot of

1:16:00hours. It's actually the biggest ROI we see in AI in marketing right now is just getting AI to recommend your product or service. That beats everything else out more than being like, I optimize this efficiency here and I cut around 12 hours of spend and we save this on labor. It is literally the biggest ROI we see is just get AI recommending your

1:16:22company and product. For the vast majority people for businesses right now, all you should care about is does it make money for you and does it save money. Vast majority of businesses. Now that being said, as we advance toward this this 2% of people that work like this will become 1% 5% 10%. And then everyone will start to utilize more of this frontier intelligence. But right now most people are good with like a you know what we had 6 months ago. So anyway guys, token costs are also going down cuz people

1:16:46don't need the latest tokens for most. When I was doing a webinar last week, one guy was like, "Oh, I'm spending like $500 a day." I'm like, "Dude, just buy yourself a Chat TV Max account." He's like, "Oh, I didn't know that." I'm like, "So there's got to be so many people that are spending this in an unnecessary way." Cuz someone else on the webinar was like, "Yeah, I was spending like $10,000 a month on my own and then um you know, Eric watching one of your stuff helped me cut it to 3,000." I'm like, "How many people are spending like this?" So that means deflationary like the token costs are

1:17:09going to come down, but people are going to know how to spend better. Dude, the last thing before we go. When I was interviewing marketers around like six, seven months ago and I'll talk to them about their AI usage and spend. You know, when people show me big numbers, I'll be like, "Oh, this is cool. Show me what you're doing." Cuz a lot of times they were just waste, but I actually want to see. And some people are doing cool stuff. Now, if someone tells me they're only spending like $20 a month or $50 a month or whatever, I'll be like, "Cool. That doesn't mean they're not doing a lot cuz $20 a month

1:17:32these days actually goes a very long way compared to As long as they can show you." Yes. Yeah. Anyway [snorts] guys, that's it for today and we'll catch you