Riding the Waves of Disruption: Trends to Watch in 2025

28:36You got a high level that's coming in here and is essentially doing everything that like keep and a lot of what like HubSpot does, and they just knock off everybody's feature and they just charge like a couple hundred bucks a month. I kind of think that's what's going to happen in every single one of these markets. So I wouldn't really want to be in the enterprise software space. I think Apple products are going to continue to be losers. I bought the most recent iPhone, incredibly disappointing. Apple intelligence, incredibly disappointing. I don't, I still to this day don't know what it is. They just seem to have completely lost their way and I don't see him getting it back in 2025.

29:18Um, and so I think that the vision quest pro thing was just dead on arrival. Um, that, that just like, they just abandoned that. Like I, I, uh, I bought one cause I had to, you know, I like to be on the front of that stuff i don't know did you get one no yeah it uh you know crazy price and everything but but i bought it based on the brand equity of apple of being a leader and supporting and all of the hype and i feel like they just said yeah i mean i heard crap about it since then so it's that was like very disappointing and now i'm trying to sell it because i want to sell it before they're you know eight dollars uh but if i hold on to it for 40 years you know it'll be worth something yeah it'll be like the newton apple intelligence though i think is a different story because my understanding is that it's not really they're enabled but kind of like the tesla uh self-driving car the devices are enabled but the true apple intelligence wasn't even scheduled to have any any kind of real introduction until february of 25 so i i think we're i think it's too soon to say on well there was there were supposed to be some things at the end of 2024 and it just i got it on my phone it's like expresses regret that can't make dinner and then i click on the thing and it says ryan texted you and you can't make that he can't make dinner i mean it's like it's yeah not helpful stupid it would have been better just to have said let's not share that, but like, I'm like, those helpful summaries of my texts that are already summary, you know, like, yeah, not, yeah, it's, it's like, it literally would have been better had you done nothing at all.

31:10So I don't know. It just, all these things, it just seems like it's loser after loser after loser. And yes, maybe Apple intelligence, when they finally roll the whole thing out, the problem is they've been talking about it now for a year and it hasn't shown up. So I think people are just losing faith in the brand. And so that's going to cause them on the next cycle to maybe try something else out. And you don't have to do that too many times to now you're just done with them and you just do other use other brands. Um, here's my other loser. I think chat GPT, open AI, I think open AI is going to, is going to lose.

31:44I don't think, I don't think they're going to like fail as a company. I think they're going to lose the top spot, um, to Google. I think that Gemini is going to claim the top spot. Uh, I think that all the stuff that they're doing with going from non-profit to for-profit, I think that that is going to get kind of mucked up in the regulatory. And this is my kind of cynical theory about this. Elon, who's got Grok, who also has Trump's ear, I think he's saying like, hey, you're not just going to let these guys, because you know, he hates Altman. He freaking hates OpenAI. He's like, you're not just going to let them just convert into nonprofit, are you?

32:24So I think they're going to get locked down in so much freaking regulation and so much just scrutiny that it's going to slow down their development cycles. They've lost a lot of talent already. And I think that Google, they're catching up in a big, big, big way. They have Google search that they can pull from. They've got all of your Google docs. They've got your Gmail. They've got all the things that they can pull from in real time. I'm finding that Gemini in many cases now is better than, than Chad GPT. I'm finding that I'm going to it and using it more. And so I wouldn't be surprised if this time next year, we're not crowning a new AI leader in, in Gemini over, over Chad GPT.

33:11It'll be interesting to see. I, I have way more fights with Gemini to get what I want than I do. with chat GPT. Um, I just, just yesterday, uh, you you'll, you'll appreciate this because I was looking for information about Rand Fishkin from lost and founder who sold his company. And I, I was, I was looking for the data on the sale and you know, when it happened or whatever. And I ask, uh, as I frequently do, um, Gemini, I said, do you know, so anything that I'm looking for current information on YouTube information or anything in the Google universe, I'm going to ask Gemini because it's more up to date.

33:55They're going to have to fix that with OpenAI or that will be a problem. So I use both with ChatGPT. I use both because I get better answers generally I find from chat GPT, but the, the data, the up-to-date and interactivity with things like YouTube is a big advantage for, for Google still, whether that will be an advantage that's allowed to stay or not will be interesting to see as well. But, um, but I'm like, uh, give me information on Rand Fishkin's sale of Moz as outlined in Lost and Founder. And it's like, I don't know who that person is. I'm like, do you know, Rand Fishkin? I don't know who that person is.

34:41Rand Fishkin was the author of Lost and Founder. Are you familiar with that book? Yes, I am. Lost and Founder is a book by Rand Fishkin about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, great. From that book, good to have you back with us. Information related to the sale. I don't know any Rand Fishkin. Oh, come on. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's got a lot of catching up to do. I don't, again, my prediction is not based on where they are today. Way, way bad too, to me comparatively. The hallucinations of Gemini, I don't trust Gemini. And that's a big deal. When you gotta, and I've asked Gemini before, are you hallucinating?

35:16And it's like, yes. Please don't. Absolutely. I'd almost rather fight with it with the I don't know that person than have you lied to me, you know? Of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's not based on any technical advantage they have today. It's based purely on the fact that just the data that they're able to pull from, the money that they have to spend. And I think that OpenAI is going to get slowed down and locked down because Elon's going to whisper in Trump's ear. Again, this is my cynical perspective. And in terms of winner, yeah, so I think Gemini is going to win. What you got, technology winners and losers?

35:58I'm going to go against what most of the media world is hoping for. I think that X and Grok are going to be big winners. I'd put my money on Elon, you know, anytime. I agree. I didn't put him as a winner, but as we were talking, what he spent, like this big, have you seen this big like supercomputer thing? Yeah, did you see he did it in like 19 days? I mean, they said it would take four years if anybody else had done it. That guy's a, you know. Because of course he did. Right, exactly. And so, yeah, no, I think that's a great take. Yeah. Great take. Marketing. What you got from the world of marketing, the marketing tactics and strategies that you think are going to be, you can take the winners or the losers first, whichever one you want to take.

36:46I mean, to me, because they're such the same coin, I really think that first party data is so important. And the people who do that will be the winning, a winning tactic for sure to own your own audience and stop renting from Google and Meta and the places that have become so cluttered and such bad advertising experiences and driven the costs so high that it doesn't make sense to be on them. I look at, for us even, we went through an election cycle where ads were unaffordable to acquire customers profitably, to Black Friday, to post-Black Friday sales, which extend, now Black Friday starts November 1st and goes all the way through after Christmas or after the holidays, depending on what you subscribe to.

37:47I think it officially just ended like 12 minutes ago. It did. And so that's two months. And then you've got the summer, which is always terrible generally because people are out and about and not doing it like unless you're selling summer based things. So does that mean that five months of the year we really have a hard time with our advertising and sales are going to slump off? That's not acceptable for, you know, for any business. But if you have your own media that you own, if it's first party data, then you can mail your email list and it doesn't cost you whatever the rental rate is. You know that like I just think that if you're not an owner of multiple first party data streams, that you're going to be at a giant disadvantage.

38:36Got any more? Yeah, go ahead. So I've got as a loser. Are we trading off? Is that what we're doing? Okay, cool. Any brand that has kind of leveraged traditional content marketing where it's just sort of manufactured content for the purposes of appealing to search engines. I heard somebody say, you know, unwanted email is spam, unwanted content is slop. And so a lot of this, a lot of the content out there is slop. And with AI, slop content has now just increased many orders of magnitude and people are just rejecting it. And so I've seen lots of brands do this. I've seen lots of individuals do this as well.

39:24Like you can tell that what they're posting to their social media feeds is AI generated and they're losing credibility with their audiences. So I think, you know, the losers are going to be the slop content brands and the winners are going to be the people who are actually taking the time to put out well thought out original content. It's the less but better. It's the pillar content type stuff. So I think that's I know that's what we're focusing in doubling down on. It's not going to be about in the past. It was just a quantity game. if you just put out enough, if you flooded the space, you would win.

39:57That's not really winning the game anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. High quality, bespoke content that's driven around the actual data driven, identified needs of the customers that you're giving it to, or the prospects you're giving it to, I think is a giant, giant deal. And it's been something that's been on the list for several years now we've talked about it for you know years at at traffic and conversion summit um but i think that the that hyper personalized data as well hyper personalized ads you know the ones that that already are that if like if you're sending something out to somebody that you know already has done business with you or engaged and interacted with your marketing in any way in your company and you're not acknowledging that or catering to the specific things that you know about them, then I think that's, that's going to be a big disadvantage to you compared to the people who are, because the technology to do it is there.

40:57And the people that are embracing it, I think are going to win. And the other people, it's going to be like the slop that you said, it's going to look like they're out of touch. I get ads for all kinds of things that I've not mentioned in conversation, you know, for For eavesdropping purposes of the online stuff, I've not engaged with that kind of content. It's shotgun marketing still for so many, so many companies. And online, just to that experience too, now I'm, what did I listen to? My wife told me about a podcast by Julia Louise Dreyfus, right? Who has this thing called Wiser Than Me, where she interviews old people, old women in particular.

41:42And then talks to her mom about it after. So I'm like, you know, hey, I want to stay up on stuff. So we have stuff to talk about besides business and listen to it. It's got three or four ads, including back-to-back ads during an hour-long show that have nothing to do with anything that I would be interested in at all. I know that you can personalize that experience. So why isn't it personalized? you know, those people are just wasting their ad dollars, you know, their CPM dollars on those platforms. So that, that'll be interesting to see. I think that if you're not doing that, you're missing out and you're, you know, you're just annoying the consumer.

42:21And I think the content providers do annoy the consumer. I know we've chosen generally not to put ads on our stuff, at least on our podcast. I don't know if YouTube has it in there or not, but, but because of the user experience. And, um, and I think the people that, that, uh, that are content providers that are trying to accomplish something from their media, other than direct response selling need to be mindful of the experience that that media is creating for the consumers, because it doesn't make me not like Julia Louise Dreyfus. Um, but it makes me, I mean, I fast forward, you know, through the, through every ad on the show.

43:00And so those dollars are just wasted. yeah i i mean yeah for us it's if we're gonna run that it's gonna be basically for our own stuff you know which should be relevant to our audience so it's like hey just so you know we got this thing going on she's shilling i mean which i hate you know she's basically you know you know what i find when i wash my hair is that you know shite and brain you know it's yeah it's inauthentic to the you know to the extreme yeah i do think that podcasts um you know podcasts really had a moment with the election. But I think, and so a lot of people are saying like, oh, it's all about podcasts.

43:35And obviously this sounds a little bit ridiculous because we're on a podcast right now. But I think that podcasts are really great for the really, really big podcasts. And for everybody else, it's just power laws are starting to take over. And if you don't have a big podcast, then probably nobody's listening to your podcast. It's just the reality of where that is. So, you know, I don't think, I think podcasts - have a podcast, but what about to advertise on podcasts? I think, I think podcast advertising is something that is worth testing. I think it's going to be, um, I think it's going to be a winner, but to your point, I think it's going to be best on niche podcasts because one of the, the, my winners is the micro influencer.

44:18Yeah. I agree with that. The micro influencers. Yeah. And, and losers being the celebrity influencer. If there is one thing, um, and I, I love this. The God, you know, as we're recording this, the Golden Globes were last night. And what's the woman who hosted it? I can't remember her name. She's a hilarious comedian, but she opened up. She's like, oh, so many famous here. So many famous people, so many important people. You know, you know, you're also influential, you know, except, you know, when it comes to telling people who to vote for, you know, and everybody laughed, but it's true, right like every celebrity was telling the world to vote for Kamala Harris and yet she didn't win right and Glaser yeah Nikki Glaser hilarious one of the best like opening monologues um of any award show that I've seen it was great it's worth watching um but she um but yeah I mean I do think that the celebrity endorsement is could not be at its lowest point like the the value of the celebrity endorsement is so incredibly low right now.

45:25We are entertained by these people, but we no longer find them influential at all. Now, the micro-influencer, somebody who we actually do value this person's opinion in this very narrow area, right? Which I would consider, for example, you know, like a Kardashian-type person. They're celebrities, but they're also influencers in a, in, in, you know, narrow areas of like fashion and beauty and those kinds of things still highly influential in those areas, but plenty of these, of these, you know, micro influencers as well. You also see these in the podcasting world. And so I do think that podcast advertising can work, but I would definitely be targeting, um, micro influencers.

46:08I would not be going after like the mega, you know, celebrity folks out there. Yeah. That makes sense. I like that. You have any others? Yeah, I've got, I think that direct response advertising and kind of that immediate ROI is going to be a bit of a loser in 2025. Not saying that direct response is going to die by any stretch of the imagination, but if there's one thing that we've seen, it's the customer acquisition costs just keep going up and up and up. And everybody who, any marketer who just demands that all of their marketing be directly perfectly attributable and that you have this immediate ROI, you're just going to find that you have nowhere to advertise anymore.

46:52And you're going to find also if you're optimizing for the highest return on ad spend, you're going to find that your available audience to market to just keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller, that you have to continue recycling your ads over and over again, that you have to keep coming up with newer and newer ads. It's just getting so expensive that I think by this time next year, if you're not looking at your analytics and seeing that at least 40 % of your visitors are coming just from organic, word of mouth, people just arriving because they already know, like, and trust you, you're just going to have a really hard time existing in the marketplace.

47:36If you're just reliant exclusively upon, you know, paid advertising, which many of us have, you know, for a very, very, very long time, it's just too expensive. It doesn't pencil. It doesn't math out, you know, anymore. And so, so do you think that's a return to kind of the general brand dependent advertising or that the scale is tipping back in favor of, I do. Yeah, I do. And so what I think it's going to look like this year is allocating at least 20 % of your advertising budget to some type of brand effort to start building that later audience. Because right now, all of the advertising is going to basically get people who are ready to buy now to buy now.

48:18But we know that's only three to 6 % of the audience at any given time. Right? Interesting. There was a case study I just read on the turnaround of New Balance. And I think when the ceo came into new balance the direct response versus brand spend was 30 brand 70 direct response and they turned it around and said it needs to be 70 brand 30 response and that changed the whole game and they can draw a bright line of that it took i think it may have taken as long as 18 months um but like by that once they had made that because that's an investment right that's it's literally not direct response you're not putting a message out expecting them to come you're putting a message out hoping that when they think of tennis shoes they think of you and um or sneakers and um that so i thought that was really interesting it was something i'd written down and i'm glad you mentioned it because i think that's i i think that's true also when i read it it.

49:23I was like that, it kind of sucks, but, um, because of the uncertainty of it, but with attribution, you know, attribution dying. I just read, um, somebody saying that they were, they didn't realize that their email, like all the email that goes through Apple that's indicated that it was opened is opened by a bot because every email is opened by the Apple bot at the apple you know central processing yeah open rates are a gym so you so you can't you can't count on any of that you can still look at click-through rates and things like that but but that you know it's it really is the attribution is dying a slow death and so that being the case you don't really have a choice because you can't measure direct response in the traditional way to tell if it made sense.

50:15You know, the, is it the Barnum? It's like, or who is it that said that I know half my advertising, maybe it was Sloan, but half my advertising works. I just don't know which half. That's back that we're back to that. Right. We got a breather, a reprieve from that for a couple of decades, but now we're kind of back to that, which is interesting. And that's where I think, you know, I said 20 % allocating 20 % to brand, everybody should be able to do that. And the goal should be exactly what you said to flip it. by this time next year to be 80-20 the other way. But one of the things that Roy Williams, who's one of my marketing mentors, says anytime you do a brand campaign, it's 14 weeks.

51:0014 weeks before you're going to notice any change at all, period, end of story. And you've got to be running significant frequency. That's not just I ran it for a little bit. It's you've got to be running significant frequency in the marketplace. They've got to be seeing you basically, you know, once a day, every freaking day for 14 weeks. And then maybe it'll start to show up before you'll notice anything. And he's like, that's the chickening out period. And if you give up before the 14 weeks and he's like, it'll be nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then at 14 weeks, it'll start to be something.

51:36And then it all compounds. And so I think that's the thing. brand compounds, direct response doesn't. And, you know, so if we're not doing marketing that compounds, we've got to know that it's only going to work less well tomorrow. And we're now at a point where we simply can't afford, literally, we can't afford for it to work any more, any poorly than it more poorly than it does right now. And so that's just where we are. And I think there's going to be a lot of brands, a lot of companies that they keep chasing. And so they're going to always come out with new things and stuff like that. But it is, it's going to be, it's going to be tough.

52:17I think it's going to be really tough. There's gonna be a lot of companies that can't afford to make this transition. Yeah, I think you're right. My last winner, I think, I mean, this kind of is a bit of a joke, but like YouTube and investing in any brands that invest in YouTube, I still see this as being kind of the ultimate binge factory. If you going back to the brand conversation, if we're going to say that that brand really is making deposits of relational equity. One of the best ways to do that is through the YouTube platform, because YouTube is really good when somebody watches some of your content.

52:52It's good at showing people more of your content. And so it does encourage that that binging. And so I think that that is definitely a channel worth investing in of all the third part, because I agree with what you said, you want to capture first party data. You know, YouTube is still sharecropping. You're still building an asset on somebody else's land. But of all of the other assets that you can of all the assets that you could build on somebody else's land, YouTube to me is the one that more than any other any of the social channels, certainly like TikTok, which who knows what happens to that or Instagram or any of them.

53:26to me, YouTube is the, is the one that I would be doubling down on. Yeah. The question, how do you get them off of YouTube? Cause YouTube doesn't want them off of YouTube. You YouTube rewards you for having them binge. Um, you can obviously run ads on your own videos for calls to action, but you can also just embed them. Um, although not dynamically like you can with podcasts, at least not yet. So, um, how do you, how do you stop being dependent on YouTube to get those people off? I see in the music world, which I'm an, I'm a consumer of, um, they basically have people who demonstrate things and then they send you to Patreon.

54:12Um, they don't make any money. None of them do, you know, even the top people in the niches that I'm in aren't making any money from that, but it's a way that they do that. And then they try to, you know, they'll go to courses and things like that. But, um, let's say you're a, uh, I don't know, you're, uh, um, I'm trying to think of something we bought. You're a, uh, wrapping company that sells Christmas wrapping and, you know, or holiday wrapping and things like that paper. I don't know what they call it. Wrapping paper. You're a wrapping paper company. Um, And you've got all the wrapping strategies and designs and what's hot and how to wrap correctly and that kind of stuff.

54:52How do you pull your 1.3 million viewers off of there so you're not dependent on that? Because if you've got three copyright strikes somehow within, I think, a 90-day period, they just delete your channel, which is like there's no due process. All tech companies are constitutional violators. There's no due process. But what do you do to do that? Or is that just it? You're stuck there and you run your ads and hope that some of them buy? Yeah, I think you're running your ads. Most of the heavy lifting happens in the descriptions, right? And so one of the biggest myths about YouTube is that the description should actually be a description about that video.

55:33No, the description is just a general description about who you are and what they should do next. and probably you should have the same description for all of your videos. And maybe there's something relevant to that if you've got a lead magnet or something. But yeah, in general, it should be linking off to your stuff. So in that sense, it's not that different from any other social property, right? You've got your bio, your about stuff. And that's kind of the best that you have. I mean, what you're hoping is that somebody sees you, somebody likes you. And so they go in they Google you and they look for you or they look at the description and they go and find you.

56:13It's highly imperfect. But what we found is that they do it, right? They will do it. They will take that extra step to find you if they value you. And the nice thing is, if it happened organically, you didn't pay anything for it and they're coming to you just so pre-sold already. Like they consume so much of your content that they've shown up and you don't realize it, but you've gone on five or six dates with this person. So it's not like they're showing up day one, you know, having just gotten on your list, they, they, they have shown up and it's like, they've been on your list for months and months.

56:50So it's, it's definitely worth doing, but yeah, it goes back to what we were talking about before. Can't really track it. And so I think the winners are going to be the brands that are willing to do the untrackable, uh, the people willing to do the quote unquote unscalable. I think you're right. All right. Let's talk trends. Okay. What is now? Do we keep this one or do you want to? Yeah. Cause this is the last, this is the last one. Let's just knock this out really quickly. Trends that are going to be bigger in 2025 than 2024. Rapid fire. What you got?

57:27I've got local search optimization for people because near me searches have gone through the roof. So I think that those more generalized searches instead of like, if you've got a bagel shop, it's, it's not, uh, you're not optimizing for the same keywords that you used to. You're not optimizing for everything, bagel, best locks, San Diego, et cetera. You're optimizing for things like near me open now. you want to just like rapid fire yours oh uh better content for more first party data collection automation and rpa uh for for small business not just the big people anymore automation for small business not just for the big guys anymore

58:21I think that increasing differentiation, whether it's through connection, content, sustainability, social programs or commitments, flexible payment options, buy now, pay later, for sure, payment plans, things that will help people who are suffering in the economy. customer reviews to drive leads and marketing with those because they're much more authentic than influencers or ads. And so higher trust in a place where in an environment where trust has basically gone out the window, hyper-personalized marketing and a focus on employee retention via not customer experience, but employee experience because good employees are so hard to find and keep?

59:12I've got, so again, I've got YouTube, if that's even possible. Because again, these are things that I think are going to be bigger in 2025 than they were in 2024. I just think that this is a channel that's going to continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger. So it's kind of stupid because it was so big in 2024, but I think it's only going to get bigger. Projection like mine was. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's going to be a thing. Yeah, the internet. I do think that podcast advertising is, we're going to start to see that emerge as a far more viable, it's always been around, but it's been the larger brand advertisers doing it on the large, you know, branded podcast network.

59:51It's having a moment, particularly because of like murders in the building and smarter. And I forget. Smartless. Smartless. And the one with the show with the, is it Kirsten Dunst and the rabbi, which I can't think of the name of off the top of my head. And the presidential candidates going on podcasts and things like that. My point is that media is eating podcasts now because the stories that are in media are about people that are doing podcasts. So it's going to come way more into that general knowing, that zeitgeist of stuff that's out there because it's in our faces. There's shows about true crime podcasts.

1:00:37There's movies about true crime podcasts. You know, it's like, so that alone will get more people consuming podcasts, which will mean that more people will want to access the audiences that are doing it, which means that they should be advertising more. So I couldn't agree more with you. And then I think paid communities. I mean, if you look at what like Hormozy is doing to promote like the school games and stuff like that, I'm seeing more and more and more people promoting low dollar paid communities as a front end. I don't know for what it's worth that this is the best strategy because everybody is doing it.

1:01:11But I think you're still going to see this be a bigger thing next year than it was last year. Now, the following year, you'll likely see this overreaction. But if you look at like what do I think is going to be kind of a loser, a dud going into 2025, Facebook groups, I think are going to continue to decline. um i think email newsletters terrible experience yeah and i think email newsletters they were kind of the darling of the last couple of years and it seems like nobody's really talking about them as much anymore because everybody had one everybody signed up for 50 billion of them and most of them absolutely sucked that's part of to me the reason that i don't agree with you about the online communities because it's the same thing.

1:01:55Those were low cost,$5,$10,$3 a month kinds of things, or even a year. And many of them did suck. And so when that happens and everybody's creating AI newsletters and hiring agencies to do them, they're going to be terrible. If you've got a good newsletter, you can charge for it. People will still pay just like they did back in the days when, you know, it was direct mail newsletters. But there's only so much that anybody, it's the streaming services problem. There's only so much that anybody's going to be willing to spend as an aggregate on those. So when your credit card bill comes through and you've got$5 for Hermosi and $6 for Ryan and, you know, 50 cents for me and, you know, so on and so forth, you're just going to look at that and go, that's too much.

1:02:42Everybody's trying to get my dollar. Nobody wants to give me that stuff. If you want to give me the stuff, give me that stuff for lead gen on the front end and make it so good that I'll subscribe and figure out how to make it monetize on the back. I think that's what's going to happen because it's just, people can only have so many things they're paying for. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. This is, again, these are trends that I think are going to be big. And I think it's up to you to decide, do you go with the trend or do you buck the trend? Because sometimes there's money to be made in both. And then I kind of mentioned it before.

1:03:14I think that ChadGBT is going to be down a bit as a trend. And I think Gemini is going to be up. I'm just continuing to ride that horse. What do you think is going to be down relative to 2024? I think loyalty cards are going to be down. I get loyalty cards everywhere I go now. And it's just like, I can't, I don't, I lose them. I can't – like, as a – the old-school loyalty card, I think, dies. The online connected loyalty card that makes it seamless and easy wins. I think ePay, the ability to use digital wallets to pay, I think is only going to get more. We have Apple Pay on all of our sites now, and I don't see that changing at all.

1:04:02I think that one size fits all products are losers, that people want to be recognized as the individuals they are and they want customizable or at least more tailored to them. We have seen traditional trade shows fall off in our world. I think that's a bad place to be. And I definitely think it's bad to own a lot of office space right now. So if you're, you know, like if you're an office space commercial building owner, can you convert that to condos or some other use? Because it doesn't seem like either from a lack of availability of the talent pool, a lack of the money to hire them, or their unwillingness boldly to even return.

1:04:48You've heard of coffee badging, right? Where people come in and clock in to show up, walk around the office, do a lap, and then take off, not having done any work, and then work at home. They just don't want or need those offices anymore. And even those workspaces, you know, that like WeWork had that are those communal workspaces, I just don't, I think people want to work. They were taught that they could work out of their home from locations that they wanted to. And I don't see any comeback for the space that has been built and is vacant for all those people to be coming into offices. It's funny that you mentioned events in the context of that as well, because I agree with you on events.

1:05:37I was actually thinking about that and I forgot to write it down because events were obviously down because of COVID. And then it seemed like they surged back up because everybody's like, oh, we miss it. Like, we got to get back together. And then it's like everybody went and they're like, wait, we don't need to do this anymore. Right. Yeah. It's like everybody showed up for them. And by the way, the hotels cost twice as much as they did and food cost twice as much as it did. And why did they come? And everybody's like, wait, all this content is available online. And the people, I mean, we could have talked, this could have been a Zoom conversation.

1:06:10And wow, this is really expensive. And the exhibitors are like, God, this was a really expensive way to get clients and customers. And from a lead gen perspective, they went back and they looked at that particular channel. And they're like, this just doesn't make sense. Let's not renew again. And so I agree. It's like everybody went back to events because they could. And then everybody compared the event model to not doing events and realized, God dang, I don't know that we necessarily needed to do events. And so I think you're right. I think we're going to see events kind of go back by the wayside unless you're offering a truly, truly unique experience.

1:06:51It's one of those things we talked about kind of in the ashes of, of traffic and conversion summit. Does it make sense to bring something, you know, back? And as we're looking at talking about like, not yet, like, I don't know what it looks like, but just kind of repeating what was there. I don't launch and grow an event. But our, our event is not a trade show. So it's a community. Yeah, exactly. It's a community event. And so I think that's, that's a very, very different thing of like, these people are already gathered. And once a year, they would like to get together in person. But no, I agree that the traditional classic trade show model of people show up, people buy a bunch of booths, they spend a bunch of money on this.

1:07:30It seems to be going the way of the enterprise. And maybe that's why as enterprise, the enterprise software companies were the ones paying for all these things. And now they can't afford to because their businesses are going away. One winner and two losers whenever you're ready for those two. Go ahead. Why don't you let's wrap up with those. uh in-game ads i think that the gaming audiences continues to grow and be more and more engaged with the games and so finding opportunities to do both product placement and in-game ads is going to be a big deal uh is there a network like if somebody wanted to buy those i don't know it's a good question i i know there are for podcasts even though i might not remember any of them right And then the losers, I think, are, you're going to be surprised because I know that you're big.

1:08:17You're going really hard into this in 25. Metaverse speculation. I think that's going to be a loser. And NFTs. I think everybody's lost any kind of faith in NFTs. And what would they keep pushing? Can it be worse than it was in 2024? So even worse than it was in 2024. before. Yeah, I think I think it's it's you know, I just think that's all had it had its run. And I also think that a lot of the new crypto speculation is is also going to continue to decline those, you know, the coins that people try to launch. And then there's been so many rug pulls that, you know, Bitcoin. OK, I still agree with Warren Buffett.

1:09:01I think he's basically, you know, The thing about things like that is that they go on sometimes for a very long time and sometimes people make a lot of money, but they never end well. I don't think it can end well. Yeah. How do you go bankrupt very slowly and then all at once? Yeah, it is interesting with NFTs and a lot of these other crypto projects with this most recent run up that we saw with Bitcoin following the election. And it seems to have kind of maintained, it's dipped back below$100 ,000 as we record this, but I mean, it's still north of$90 ,000, so not too shabby. You haven't seen the gains in, you know, NFTs or any of the other things.

1:09:47Like, it kind of is just basically around the, you know, the main coins that seem like they, the brands, let's just say. I think the NFT experience is telling of the long-term crypto experience. I think that when you're trying to compete with governments to take away their ability to control their economies with currency, that ultimately, now it's an investment. I don't know a lot of people that are spending it because, like, to buy a car. you know we have a friend a mutual friend that owns a car dealership you know and he's like i wish people would we take crypto i wish people would pay me with crypto you know it's like because you know it's probably going to go up for at least a while um but why would you why would you take that to me it would be like if suddenly instead of using amex points to buy my amazon groceries i could use my stock fund right and give shares of nvidia yeah why would i do that because nvidia is an investment it's not a currency right so until it can become a currency it can't be legitimate it's not going to be allowed to become a currency because governments will not allow that long term and the ability to use it as a medium for payment is foolish given that it's an investment you anticipate is going to go up.

1:11:19So what if your$400 Amazon grocery bill cost you$4 million because you paid with Bitcoin? I don't see it. Yeah. Well, and then there's this whole thing about - That's a 25 thing. That's a 2050 thing maybe, but it won't end well. Individual investment advice from Roland Frazier. Yes. No investment advice was actually given or heard on this conference. Yeah. Well, there you go, folks. Those are our predictions. Ironclad is going to happen commitments to what the future looks like. You heard it here first. Lock it down. Invest on it. Make serious business decisions based on everything that we said here today.

1:12:09Can't miss. Yeah. Yeah. And don't do it at your peril. Exactly. It will be fun. Please don't do any of that. Yeah, it will be fun to go back and look and see how we did on some of these things. I think it'll be fun. We'll go back and do this again next year. With that said, you want to read us out? I will. Thank you guys for visiting with us. We really appreciate you as always. And if you found things that we talked about on this podcast to be interesting, helpful, delightful, or otherwise intriguing, share it with a friend because we'd love to have more people. If you didn't, then, you know, I don't know.

1:12:46I don't know. We tried. We really tried. We did. That's all I know. I am signing out. Roland Frazier, my wonderful business partner, Ryan Dice. Happy New Year from what we hope our team will make the first podcast of Business Lunch in 2025.

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