0:00

Neil and I have an agency owners group called

0:02

the Agency Owners Association. All

0:04

you have to do just go to marketing school dot io

0:06

slash Agency. Once again, it's marketing school

0:08

dot ioslash Agency to learn

0:11

more.

0:11

And now back to the show.

0:13

It's funny you have a topic here on

0:15

Express. You know the funny story I used. I applied

0:17

for a job at Express, and then in college,

0:20

my friends all had edibles the night before and

0:22

then so basically I didn't make

0:24

it to my job interview. And then when you have edibles,

0:27

you're like lagging, and so I was lagging for

0:29

like twenty four hours. I was trying to drive

0:31

an interview, but I didn't make it. But go on with the

0:33

story. What do you mean by edibles? Like edible

0:36

like weat brownies, I didn't

0:38

want to eat it and dead, like you know, first time eating

0:40

it, and then like my world you

0:42

never had edibles? Right? No, Okay, have

0:44

you played like first person shooters where you're like lagging

0:46

and like you know, the bullets aren't like you

0:49

know, your weapon's not firing, and then like everything's slow.

0:51

I've played Monopoly, Oh my god. All

0:53

right, anyway, the point is when

0:55

your world is like there's like a

0:58

five millisecond lag time to everything.

1:01

It's annoying. So when you smoke weed, there's

1:03

a five second mill lag

1:05

and if you like, if you do too much

1:07

and you like have a bad trip or whatever, that's what

1:10

happens. See, this is why I don't do drugs or alcohol.

1:12

It makes my peace here. First of all, we were

1:14

like twenty years old. And I

1:16

don't like weed, by the way, But anyway, go on with the

1:18

express story. You know, it's funny. I haven't seen you

1:20

do. I

1:23

don't do a wead or even drink alcohol.

1:25

I don't like you don't drink alcohol either. Yeah, I

1:27

stopped a long ng.

1:28

Why let's tell everyone the reason. What's

1:31

good?

1:31

The real reason, Yeah, the real reason.

1:34

I'm allergic of me too. Yeah,

1:36

but like I had really bad reactions after

1:38

COVID, after COVID, Yeah,

1:41

after code, not getting COVID. But something

1:43

happened during the time of COVID where I

1:45

never drank. Even before that, I would

1:47

drink, but not really drink. It would be like more

1:50

like i'ld get one drink in a business meeting

1:52

and I would sit on the whole drink over three hours,

1:54

and I may finish it.

1:55

It's not enjoyable.

1:56

Yeah. So I was never getting drunk anyways. Yeah,

1:58

but the problem that I ended having is during COVID,

2:01

never cared for alcohol. Stop

2:03

drinking it when you're in lockdowns year plus and

2:05

a home I think it was a year plus. I don't know how long the

2:07

COVID lockdowns were, but it was longly in two years,

2:09

yeah, and then all of a sudden

2:12

things started opening up. Drink

2:14

my first ship at alcohol like a year and a half or two years

2:16

later, and one

2:18

little, tiny, teeny sip like you

2:20

wouldn't even notice a glass going down much

2:23

within five minutes, I had a headache like it was

2:25

a hangover. And then I

2:27

just didn't drink anymore. I got a headache. Tried

2:29

a few more times, doesn't matter what kind of alcohol

2:31

I drank, I just had a massive headache. So

2:34

then I'm like, all right, cool, don't need to drink this

2:36

anymore. I'm good. I'm done with it exactly.

2:38

It's for me.

2:39

I turn red when I drink it, right, So that automatically

2:41

means you're allergic, and that's not good

2:44

because if you turn red from

2:46

it, I mean they can cause cancer later, like everything causes

2:48

cancer, right, But that's

2:50

what it is. But anyway, talk about this Express story. Yeah,

2:53

so Express file chapter eleven bankruptcy.

2:56

Investor group called w HP

2:59

Global is going to acquire most of assets

3:01

I'm assuming including the brand name and stuff like that

3:04

they also own. I didn't know this Bonabos

3:06

Up West and a few others. No, it's like, uh,

3:10

ninety five Express stores and all

3:12

up West stores will close. So they're closing

3:14

quite a bit of stores. And I

3:16

forgot what the what

3:19

these guys paid for it. I think I really

3:21

like something like thirty million.

3:22

Bucks or something nothing.

3:24

But yeah, dude,

3:26

last Spring Expressed acquired Bonnabos operating

3:29

assets and really liabilities for twenty five

3:31

million dollars from wat Bonobos used

3:33

to be like I used to buy stuff from there and it was

3:35

popular. Didn't work out for

3:38

Walmart, and I'm guessing it didn't work out for

3:40

Express either, But dude, these guys,

3:42

no joke, paid pennies on the

3:44

dollar. Look at this Express

3:47

bank.

3:47

Weren't they public before?

3:52

Let's see? Uh oh, they got a commitment

3:54

of thirty five million dollars, So that's

3:56

what it costs to buy that massive

3:59

brand. I would take more than thirty five

4:01

million dollars to build up those brands from scratch.

4:04

Just mismanagement of the business. Yep, we're

4:07

seeing a lot of that. Yeah, you're seeing

4:09

a lot of that. I'm seeing a lot of it. It's the best time

4:11

to buy. But you know what's crazy, dude, We're

4:13

getting people coming to us being like, Neil,

4:16

we're doing five million in revenue one in

4:18

profit. We want to sell

4:20

to you for ten to twenty million dollars.

4:23

I'm like, who's going to give you ten to

4:25

twenty million dollars? So walk us through

4:27

how they react when you when you say that,

4:30

So I first don't actually say it.

4:32

So usually typically someone comes to me and says, like, may

4:34

you should check out our business. It's amazing we do X,

4:36

Y and Z that you don't do. Usually, have a

4:38

business making a million in profit, we don't look

4:40

at it or try to buy it. But if someone's doing

4:42

a million in profit and something we don't

4:45

do, and we know do really well with

4:47

our customer base, why wouldn't

4:49

we look at it, especially if they're doing amazing job. So

4:52

before we even get into valuation, we ask them questions,

4:55

you know, questions like what

4:57

are you looking for from the business financially,

4:59

are you looking to stay on We're not talking about

5:01

what valuation we would pay. We're also asking

5:03

questions like how long have you been in business,

5:05

how do you generate your leads? Do you have you

5:07

have a built out management team? Are you the CEO

5:10

running it? Are you looking to stay on board? What's

5:12

your client concentration, what's your

5:14

churn rate? And you want them to stay We

5:17

want them to say we tend not to do deals where founders don't.

5:19

That's a key lesson for everyone. Agencies

5:21

are so driven by the founder and they add so

5:24

much you can't have them. They're like a star

5:26

player there. Yes, yeah, you would hope

5:28

that they're a star player. If not, you shouldn't buy that agency.

5:31

So then when we're looking looking at all these deals,

5:33

like one of these deals, they're like, all right, so

5:36

you have two clients that make up a bit more than forty

5:38

percent of your revenue. Oh, you

5:40

said your revenue is recurring. They said

5:42

no, we didn't say our revenue is recurring. We said, mrr

5:45

no. They said it's reoccurring, which

5:47

means it's happening often. That was a misunderstanding

5:50

on my end when I heard them on the phone. Yeah,

5:53

all right, that's fine. Reoccurring,

5:56

Like the same clients pay you how often? Well,

5:58

this one company has paid us three times over

6:00

the last seven years. That's not that

6:02

reoccurring. How long do your projects last with them?

6:04

Two to three months? And I'm like, oh, that's not that helpful,

6:07

so you can't predict that the next year. What are you looking

6:09

for? We're really unique. We've been

6:11

around for more than twenty years. What are you looking for?

6:14

Oh, we want at least ten to

6:16

twelve million dollars. That is very unique. Yeah,

6:18

And I was like, uh, no, one's going to give

6:20

you that. Your slow growing business has been around for

6:22

twenty plus years. Oh and by

6:24

the way, you have high churn, you don't have a built out management

6:27

team. And your profit

6:30

of Marecurtacy of a million dollars isn't

6:32

really a million dollars. You showed in your books two

6:34

hundred and something thousand dollars. Oh well, I'm running

6:36

a lot of my personal expenses through the business.

6:39

So you're running around eight hundred thousand dollars in

6:41

personal expenses after you take out your

6:43

rent and car. How

6:45

are you running all these expenses you can't even have this

6:47

person on your team because they have such high expectations.

6:50

For her two high expectations, it won't work

6:52

out. There was another lady I met amazing

6:55

company. I wanted to buy it, and

6:58

my team hit her up. She's like, we're not ready

7:00

to sell it road to numbers. Okay, I don't

7:02

know the numbers yet, but I would buy the company.

7:05

They're really good at data and analytics.

7:07

So then I have my corpordav

7:10

guy hit her up, and then I see her

7:12

in Canada and then I was like, hey,

7:14

what's up. I'm like, you should talk

7:16

to Alex. And then she's like, who's

7:18

Alex. I'm like, oh, we bought Alex's company. She'll

7:21

make more on the earnout than

7:23

she would have done just from running the company on her own

7:25

because of all our customer base and up selling and

7:27

cross selling, et cetera. And we have data

7:29

and analytics, but there's this they're way more

7:31

built out because that's all they do. And

7:34

then she's just like, Neil, did

7:36

you guys not get the hint? I don't

7:38

care for money. I don't want to sell to you. I

7:41

was like why not. She's like, we can just work

7:43

together without you selling, I can still build

7:45

it. I don't want I don't care for

7:47

the money. And she's like, my team

7:50

we get I think she said two months

7:52

off every single year something like

7:54

that. I'm like, well, technically we have unlimited

7:56

PTO and she's like,

7:59

she's like, I'm interested in selling unless you give

8:01

me twenty million dollars cash and you let

8:03

all our team members have like two months off. And

8:05

the first thing that scratched my head was, I'm like, I thought,

8:08

you just said you don't care for the money.

8:09

But I don't care for the money.

8:10

But I care for the money. Yeah, I don't care for the money,

8:12

but you need to give me twenty million dollars two

8:15

months. It's very different than unlimited PTO.

8:17

That's because that's two months guaranteed versus

8:19

unlimited if they take two months, probably

8:21

in trouble. You

8:24

and I are thinking very similar on this, right.

8:26

I don't think unlimited PTO is like two

8:28

months. And a lot of

8:30

the people in our companies they just work remotely

8:33

and they get their work done and we're really flexible

8:35

with them. But you know, I was just like,

8:37

but you just said you don't care for the money, and on our

8:39

earlier calls when my team originally talked to you,

8:41

does like, oh, I can build it a little bit more, make a bit

8:43

more money before I sell it. And

8:46

you know what she doesn't realize

8:48

is talented entrepreneur, great

8:51

at the product, struggles with closing

8:53

tons of revenue based on what we can just estimate

8:55

from headcount and logos and stuff like that. A

8:58

dangerous thing in businessiness is

9:01

believing and I had more conversation with

9:03

it, but believing that you

9:05

know everything and you can just get whatever you want done,

9:07

and you can do everything on your own, and

9:10

you're doing an amazing job. There's always

9:12

two sides to his story. And I'll give you a great example

9:14

of this. There's agencies we know and mutual friends

9:16

that we know that's sold for crazy high

9:19

multiples like eighteen nineteen x And

9:21

some of the buyers of these companies paid half

9:23

a billion dollars, and then they bought on

9:26

another two three hundred million dollars worth of businesses

9:28

and combined them made them bigger and bigger,

9:30

and then some of these guys now do seventy eighty million

9:32

a year in profit, not revenue

9:35

profit. That's a lot of money. But

9:38

their growth has fined out and they're not growing anymore,

9:41

and some of them are shrinking a little bit. And

9:43

I can say, wow, these guys are idiots. They don't

9:45

know how to run it. Dude. They're

9:47

doing seventy eighty ninety million dollars a year

9:49

in profit. They did something right and they know something

9:52

instead of looking at something like, oh, I know

9:54

everything that I'm doing. Well, what

9:56

can I learn from them that's made them successful

9:59

and grow this fast even though they're flat now?

10:01

But what did they do to get that growth that I

10:03

have not been doing? And when you start

10:05

thinking like that, you'll get more

10:07

growth. There's something to learn from everyone, exactly.

10:11

And you and I have always had that belief. We don't even

10:13

from fools, Yes, even

10:15

from a flight attendant, even from a taxi

10:17

driver. Someone's can always pleas no,

10:20

no, no, no, I don't I'm not saying flight attendants

10:22

are fools, but I'm saying they don't even have to be in

10:24

your profession, and you can learn something from

10:26

them. Like people look down on taxi

10:28

drivers, what's wrong with it? It's an honest day's living,

10:31

and they hear so much stuff in

10:33

the car they pick up a lot of stuff

10:35

and they can actually teach you a lot about life. You want a

10:37

good interview question, Well, I stole this from Jamath

10:40

folly Helftia. We started trying it right, and

10:43

so here's an interview question. So, Neil,

10:45

what's something you're an expert at? So it could be like playing the

10:47

French horn or a poker, but

10:50

not business related, correct anything?

10:52

Okay, I believe I'm an expert at marketing.

10:54

Okay, tell me how

10:57

do you become an expert in marketing?

11:00

You become an expert in marketing by doing it

11:02

for a long long time and having

11:04

hours of trial and error, failing tons

11:07

of time, and figuring out how to fix all the problems

11:09

that you created by doing things the wrong way. That's the best

11:11

answer I got this week, right. So, so

11:15

because now I have a lot of threads, I can go that. Oh,

11:17

tell me about the experiments you failed and tell me about these

11:19

things. Right. There's a logical progression

11:22

in terms of how you're communicating this, and

11:24

that shows you can communicate clearly and you're

11:26

giving me a lot of threads to pull on to continue the conversation.

11:29

I tried this yesterday on someone

11:31

right, they made it to me. We

11:33

hadn't we hadn't deployed this question yet, and

11:35

so usually, like when they get to me, I just tried to brainstorm

11:38

with them. I just want to see how they think on their feet. So

11:40

they got to me and then I was like, oh, so tell

11:42

me what you're you're good at. I'm really good at English.

11:44

I was like, oh, interesting, so you're you're

11:46

a good writer. So yeah, I'm a great writer. So how do you

11:48

become a great writer? It's like, well, you know,

11:50

I went to college for journalism

11:53

and English. And the answer

11:55

stopped and I was like, so, like,

11:57

how do you become a great writers? Like? Well, like I said,

12:00

I went to college for journalism and English,

12:03

and I learned ap like this that

12:05

the MLA formats and all this shit.

12:07

And then I was like fuck.

12:10

And so at that point I was just like I got to end the interview.

12:13

But this is a chamath bus. He's like, this question

12:16

shows how people think critically. So now

12:18

we have that question in the very first part of the HR.

12:20

And when they get to me, now I'll just ask the questions about

12:22

marketing, like hey, like show me what you do with the website

12:25

or like stuff like that, Yeah,

12:27

we had a gentleman who worked with us

12:31

for a long time. His name was David Shapiro. He

12:33

eventually went client side and worked Dave

12:36

David Shapiro, and you

12:39

know, he gave me a call before he left and we talked,

12:41

and I always told him like, hey, appreciate everything you've

12:43

done for us. If you know, you ever

12:45

need anything from me for that company or anything. I'm

12:47

not talking about like income wise, but like just need any

12:49

free help him me up. And he's

12:52

like, do you remember my first interview with you? And

12:54

I was like, yeah, I remember

12:57

it. And he's worked with us for a very long

12:59

time, and back when he started

13:02

links are they're still important, but they were much

13:04

more important in the algorithm, and it was the leading

13:06

factor that everyone was saying that,

13:09

you know, improves rankings. So

13:12

he's just like, yeah, I gave him a really random

13:14

example. My interview question with him is you

13:16

know, and keep in mind other people in the team already

13:18

interviewed him at this point. My interview

13:21

example was like, you got this website,

13:23

you're in the life insurance space, you're

13:25

ranking on page two, You're

13:27

at the top of page two. You've already done everything

13:30

for optimizing click raids, code,

13:32

et cetera. The thing you lack is links. No

13:34

one wants to link out to life insurance. You can't buy

13:36

it. You can't break Google's policies in terms

13:38

of service. How would you go about building

13:40

links for this site? And he

13:43

answered it on the spot and it was a really good answer. And

13:45

then I was like, cool, you're hired. That was it.

13:47

Did you okay that question? Did you ask

13:49

it consistently or did you come up

13:51

with it on the spot? No? I came up with it on the spot.

13:54

Okay, So what I learned, so it's

13:58

over time, it has to be consistent and you

14:00

have like, you know, apples to apples comparison, because

14:02

if we keep changing the question all the time, then how we're going

14:04

to know how to compare. But that's a great question because

14:07

that is very specific and it sounds

14:09

like he gave you a very specific answer. But this

14:11

just goes to show. I don't know if this was with Airbnb or

14:14

maybe another tech company. But once they got to

14:16

the CEO, they're like, it wasn't even interview.

14:18

It's like, hey, let's brainstorm, Okay, here's the problem set

14:20

over here. Blah, blah blah, and if you

14:23

just learn a lot more about the person and

14:25

how they respond to adversity and how they

14:27

how they think, and that's really important if you want to hire

14:30

the best people. Yes, And when I did interview

14:32

other people, I did ask them a similar question.

14:34

It was about link building and how do you build links?

14:37

But it wasn't like Life Insurance. I would just pick a random

14:39

vertical Davis was Life Insurance.

14:41

What I should have done is use the same exact

14:43

example every once. I could have compared

14:46

the apples helps, but already knew

14:48

what was a good answer, because I know how to do it myself.

14:50

And I was like, oh, this guy's spot on. So

14:53

our key takeaway for this one is if

14:55

you're going to try to get the best people.

14:57

Brainstorm with them, dude,

14:59

that's so true.

15:00

You know, if I look at some of the best people

15:02

I hired, By the time I've

15:05

gotten to the candidate, it's more

15:07

so been talking about the problems we're facing

15:09

and discussing how we can solve these problems and

15:11

whether the potential solutions that they think about,

15:13

and not all of their ideas are good and not all of mine

15:16

are good, and some of theirs are bad and some of mine are bad.

15:18

But the people that you can actually work through to try

15:20

to solve problems like on an hour call or

15:22

zoom, those are the leaders that I tend

15:25

to end up hiring. Yep. And by

15:27

the way, if you're at the end, the good thing

15:29

about Meal is he's not afraid to have tough conversations.

15:31

Sometimes I've gotten better at it, but I tend

15:33

to you know, normal human beings. I'm

15:35

not saying you're not normal, but typical human beings

15:38

tend to shy away from tough conversations. And I

15:40

actually believe that the altitude of

15:42

an organization is really dependent on a number of

15:44

tough conversations you're willing to have, because it's

15:46

like a bunch of problems in an organization right now,

15:49

we've changed it where because at the end, after

15:51

they've been through with so many people, I feel bad, right if

15:53

I say no, I feel bad, you don't have that problem, right.

15:56

But now I'm just a lot earlier in the process,

15:58

and so when they get to me, I just cut it out and then we

16:01

move on a lot faster. Yeah, yeah,

16:03

yeah, And I do think that is the

16:07

you know, correct approach because It's like if you're interviewing

16:09

someone you know it's not the right pit. Like I've

16:11

told people on the interview, like, hey,

16:14

you got some great skills. Love what you're doing. It's

16:17

not what we're looking for. And I don't want to be that

16:19

person who waste your time. But if I

16:21

do run into someone who is looking

16:23

for someone like you is a good pit? Can I pass your resume

16:25

along? Like, I'll ask them that because

16:27

I don't want to send the resume. So what percent of people

16:30

made it to you that you said no or

16:33

you said no? Ten percent?

16:37

Maybe ten to twenty percent max.

16:40

Do you think if you're a little early in the process

16:43

you would have said no more? What

16:46

do you mean? There's a lot of nose before no.

16:49

You're meaning that the people who come to me if I'm

16:51

interviewing, like, there's an eighty ninety percent chance

16:54

we're hiring them.

16:54

Yeah, so they're.

16:55

Already pretty sure, right, they're pretty sure.

16:58

Yeah, But do you think if you were earlier

17:00

in the process you would reject more people of

17:03

these people that I'm approving. No, we

17:05

have a pretty good success rate of the people we hire

17:08

that have worked out.

17:10

What's that success rate.

17:12

If I had to give it for executives,

17:14

I don't know too much about mid level or executives.

17:17

Executives ninety

17:20

plus percent. That's great. So usual

17:23

hires, like, let's just say normal

17:25

hires, you're lucky if you can bat fifty percent or

17:28

five hundred, right. But

17:30

executive hiring there's just a lot more diligence

17:32

that happens as well, and so you better make

17:34

sure you get the right person because it's a huge bet too,

17:37

dude. We meet them in person, we fly to them,

17:39

or they fly to us. We do reference checks,

17:41

we try to see who we know in our network. But

17:43

the other thing that's helped us hire really good executives.

17:46

We tend to hire people who have worked for

17:48

competitors, who have gone promoted multiple times,

17:50

that you know that you know someone found them

17:52

valuable. And we usually hire executives

17:55

that someone on our team has worked with directly

17:57

on the past, that we trust and is producing

18:00

well for us, because then they know what our

18:02

culture is and if that person is going to be a good fit.

18:04

Almost all our executives, literally

18:07

majority of them, have come from referrals.

18:10

This message is brought to you by leveling up founders

18:12

and Leveling Up Founders is an invite

18:14

only event for founders. It happens

18:16

once a year, usually during August and

18:19

Pass.

18:19

The tendies include.

18:20

People such as Ali Abdahl, Cody Sanchez,

18:22

Neil Patel, Vanessa Lao on. The list goes

18:25

on and on, and ultimately it comes

18:27

down to the quality of the group of the

18:29

people we try to create. Keep the group high caliber.

18:31

That's why it's invite only. So if you are a

18:33

founder at the top of your game, you can go to leveling up

18:35

dot com slash Founders to learn more about it, and

18:38

then you can apply and we'll see you

18:40

on the other side. All right, what's the next topic,

18:42

Eric? The next topic is what

18:44

do you think about? So let me just set the tone

18:47

here. So Mark Zuckerberg has rebranded

18:49

himself basically right with the chain that he's

18:51

got the chain, he's got the mustache. Now he's got

18:53

the lama. Like he's writing a lama. He's

18:55

like out there doing podcast, He's writing a

18:58

lama. Yeah, lama. That's the that's their l that's

19:00

what it's called a lama. Three you know, Like I know that

19:02

a real lama. I think it was generated by AI. Like

19:04

he's like writing like a colorful lam right,

19:07

and so like I just his personal

19:09

brand transformation. He's sharing a lot about features,

19:11

he's he's out there a lot more now he's doing jiu

19:13

jitsu right, And I

19:16

think it's interesting. We should talk we should talk about that. I

19:18

think it's good because people,

19:20

when you think about Elon, love him or hate him. Elon's

19:23

very much the face of space X. He's very much the

19:25

face of Tesla, and he's very much

19:27

the face of X right. Even though there's multiple

19:29

operator CEOs or or people

19:31

people helping with these companies. Now, Zuck

19:34

is out there and I'm all for it. Like

19:36

he's out there walking out there with m MMA

19:39

fighters. He's at the fights, right, He's

19:42

I like it. Okay. So I got to

19:44

read this text from Mark Zackberg to Priscilla Chan.

19:47

He posted this on threads a while ago.

19:51

Mark says to his wife, did you see

19:53

the octagon I put in the backyard. She

19:55

responds with yes, I saw, Mark

19:57

then says it looks awesome. Her

20:00

response Mark. Then

20:03

Mark responds with we have plenty of yard space

20:05

exclamation mark, and then she responds

20:07

with I've been working on that grasp for two

20:10

years. That's

20:12

when it first came out and he was promoting threads,

20:15

right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look

20:17

I think it's I mean, what's your take on.

20:19

I think it's more and more people are going to do

20:21

this because we're moving more into a world

20:23

where brand is the thing that's going to stand the test

20:25

of time because you have all these AI

20:27

agents and all these ai jen ai things being

20:29

created. I like the new

20:31

Mark Zuckerberk. Forget the chain and the

20:33

style and whatever. Okay, first off, his haircut

20:36

is way better. His old haircut look

20:38

like a bull's not the same. Now it's like

20:41

curly, yeah, but his old one was just more like a

20:43

straight line and it was flat, like you

20:45

know, like when I was a kid, they would do a bowl cut, like

20:47

my parents would bull cuts, different bull cuts, like

20:50

you know, like like a mushroom

20:52

almost no, no, but like what my parents

20:55

would take. Because my dad used to cut my hair. He's like,

20:57

I just put a bowl over your head and just cut a line

20:59

and it would be all even. Maybe my dad had

21:01

it wrong, yeah, and you know,

21:03

but either way, I like the new Mark

21:05

Zuckberg. You see his personality. The old

21:07

ones seem more robotic. But I'm not saying he's

21:10

a robot, but it was just really cold.

21:12

The new mark Zuckerberg has like it's

21:15

not personality but warmed to it, which

21:17

like you can more so relate, Like when he posts

21:20

that thing on like threads about his wife

21:22

getting mad, dude, most guys can relate to

21:24

that. A girlfriend getting mad at you, a spouse getting

21:26

mad at you. He's like, we have tons of

21:28

backyard space. And Zuck doesn't just

21:30

own his house, he owns all the neighboring houses

21:32

in the community, so you can pretty much combine all the yards.

21:35

It's not like he's struggling with yard

21:37

space or anything like that, but

21:39

it just shows like it's much more relatable

21:41

and I think, you know, like you're saying with AI,

21:44

that is the future. It really does separate a

21:46

brand. It's why Kylie Cosmetics does well.

21:49

How is Kylie Cosmetics doing, though.

21:51

Not as well as it probably used to do from

21:54

a growth perspective, growth

21:56

has to have died down. But

21:59

the problem I would say with Kylie

22:01

Cosmetics is when

22:03

you think about that brand, you know, Kylie

22:06

Jenner just cranked it out, sold

22:08

it, and you don't see

22:10

the push going towards a brand that like he used

22:12

to you see a ton of kios in the airports.

22:15

It was a flip. It was a flip. I

22:17

believe it too. And what's funny is

22:19

I was at the kios the other day.

22:21

When I was at the airport, I was like, all right, let me order something

22:23

from Kylie Cosmetics for what I was

22:25

at the Las Vegas airport and it

22:28

was dry. I wanted chapstick. Oh okay,

22:30

I could not find chapstick in this thing. It's

22:32

like lipstick. I'm like, is there chapstick in here? I

22:34

don't care if it was pink. I just wanted chapstick because

22:37

it was dry in Vegas and my lips were

22:39

kind of I'm like, give me some chapstick. Couldn't

22:41

find it. So I went into Hudson and I found chapstick.

22:43

There you go. I don't know why you thought you would have gotten

22:46

chopstick from her thing in there. I

22:48

always thought it was like cool marketing to have these

22:50

Kiosks in the in the

22:53

airports. I was like, oh, they probably

22:55

have chapstick. But I was very

22:57

mistaken on what Kylie Cosmetics said

23:00

versus what they have. But they do have makeup

23:02

stuff and lip six stuff.

23:04

I don't know what else, but yeah, you know, all the stuff

23:06

for people that want to look like Kylie. Speaking

23:09

on Zuck, just hanging on him for a second. He did

23:12

a this guy.

23:13

I don't know if you heard of this guy? Uh, how

23:15

do you? This is an Indian name. I think Dwarkesh?

23:18

Is that right? I have no idea did

23:21

You could be right? But I

23:23

wasn't born in India. And uh

23:26

no, but when I asked, you had to pronounced surrob. You

23:28

pronounce it correctly. I haven't heard of that Indian

23:30

name. Excuse me? So

23:32

okay, this person at

23:35

API. So this this was

23:37

taken from Zuck on Dorkash podcast. So t

23:39

ldr Ai Winter is here. Zuck is a realist

23:42

and believes progress will be incremental from here on.

23:44

No agi for you in twenty twenty five. So

23:46

this is again Zuck branding himself. But I like some

23:49

of the takeaways from this podcast. It was really interesting.

23:51

So this guy's like a technical guy interviewing like

23:53

technical CEOs. So number

23:55

one, Zuck is essentially a

23:58

real world growth pessimist. He thinks

24:00

the bottlenecks start appearing soon for energy and they

24:02

will take decades to resolve. AI growth

24:04

will thus be gated on real world constraints.

24:07

That's the first thing. Second thing, Zuck would stop

24:09

open sourcing if the model is the product. Maybe

24:11

the model ends up being more of.

24:13

The product itself.

24:14

I think it's trickier economic calculation than

24:16

whether you want to open source that. And then number three, he

24:19

believes they will be able to move from Nvidio's

24:21

GPUs to customs Silicon soon. So we're

24:23

not tactical here, so we don't want to go too deep. But

24:26

he seems to believe no AGI coming quickly.

24:28

Elon seems to believe AGI is coming quickly. Sam

24:30

Moltan thinks it's going to come.

24:32

I don't know.

24:33

I think sooner

24:35

than twenty twenty nine, because I remember Ray Kurzweil,

24:37

the futurist. He thinks AGI is going to hit by twenty

24:39

twenty nine. So I do think

24:42

AGI is going to hit within ten years

24:44

for sure. I don't know for certain. I'm not as smart

24:46

as these guys. The thing I question

24:48

is how good is AGI? Because

24:51

I look at AI and what SG is producing

24:53

right now, A lot of it is crap. I

24:56

get this early stages, but when

24:58

you have this that comes out within five years

25:01

or nine years. I don't think it's going to

25:03

be perfect from day one, and I think it's going to go

25:05

through a lot of iterations, just like everything else, you

25:07

know. I think one thing we'll both appreciate

25:10

Zuck saying this towards the end of the interview. So I heard the last

25:12

part today. So the question

25:15

was, Hey, Mark, Mark Zuckerberg,

25:17

what would you do if you were to see

25:19

you.

25:19

Of Google Plus? And he's like, I

25:22

don't know.

25:22

I think he starts to think about it, and

25:24

so Mark Zuckerberg is like, you know, the

25:27

most underrated thing with organizations,

25:29

especially when you have a large organization.

25:31

Is the power of focus.

25:33

And the thing with Google Plus was they never

25:35

had a CEO, they never had a head that was running

25:37

it. And you know, early on in

25:39

a company you can focus more, but when you're a lot bigger,

25:41

you have to figure out how to channel the resources. And

25:43

it just goes back to the same thing we've been talking about for years

25:45

and years. It's it's focus. Was

25:48

it recently that he had? This was very recent, like

25:50

last week. It's a good podcast. Google Plus

25:52

hasn't existed, and I don't even know how No, so I think

25:54

he just asked that question for fun because Google Plus was such

25:56

a flame out. Yeah, it was a flame out. Yeah,

25:58

but like you look at YouTube, they have a CEO

26:01

for that and yes, so, and

26:03

YouTube's revenue is massive. Instagram generates

26:05

more ad revenue than YouTube, though, But both YouTube and

26:07

Instagram are bigger than Netflix. Yes,

26:09

yeah, in

26:12

revenue or in viewership

26:14

revenue. I didn't know that.

26:16

No, now you know? Yeah, seriously,

26:20

I'll bet you another air one.

26:22

No, it's okay, Netflix

26:24

stock. Let's see how much revenue they generate. So

26:27

Netflix is generating thirty

26:30

ish billion, thirty three billion a year. Yeah,

26:32

YouTube is bigger than them in revenue. Yep,

26:35

YouTube revenue. So

26:37

while you got thirty one point five in

26:39

twenty twenty three, Netflix

26:42

in twenty twenty three was thirty three, Netflix

26:45

is bigger. Okay, slightly,

26:47

right, I get the air. It's crazy.

26:50

It's crazy that YouTube could

26:52

be what was Instagram's revenue forty

26:54

one? I think it's forty something

26:56

the last time I looked it up. Okay, anyway,

26:59

it's pretty crazy that the social platforms are bigger

27:01

than like a Netflix. By the way,

27:03

going back to Amazon for a second Prime. When

27:05

they were first competing, they realized

27:08

that they because they had to keep they didn't have they didn't

27:10

have distribution, nor did they have content

27:12

back in the day. And then we used to be called Amazon unboxed,

27:15

right, and they had to pay like Sony

27:17

for the distribution rights and all that. This is

27:19

when they realized they're

27:21

offering Sony for these these titles,

27:24

and then all of a sudden the price doubled. It's like, why

27:26

did the price double. It's because Netflix came in and started

27:28

competing, and then everyone realized they had to

27:30

start making their own content to have that piece

27:32

of it, and they had to create their own distribution. So Amazon

27:34

Prime was a distribution to content. So

27:36

sometimes it's like a chicken and egg thing. That's

27:39

why, you know, to digress a little

27:41

bit, Neil and I, we don't really do marketplace

27:43

businesses because when you don't have to fight two sides,

27:45

it's kind of hard not saying that's a marketplace, but

27:47

you get what I mean. So that is it for today. Go

27:49

to marketing school on the iiO Slash Agency to

27:51

learn more about the Agency Owners Association. Please

27:54

don't forget to rate review, subscribe.

27:57

You know, we meet in person. For this, we've got

27:59

Brad from record edit podcast dot

28:01

com and uh yeah, we'll

28:03

catch you in the next episode.