2025 Will Not Be a Blockbuster Year for Most Companies

0:002025 will not be a blockbuster year for most companies. Why? Everyone believes that, hey, things are going to be great. New election. Things are going to boom like they did. People forget a few things. We're used to rates being extremely low. They're not going to go that low. The Fed is predicting that we're going to have two cuts in 2025. So the SOFR rate is going to go from roughly 4.4 to 4.5, roughly where it's at right now, to roughly 3.9 to 4.0. During the Obama years and for a lot of the Trump years, we're used to interest rates at zero or close to zero, which made everything cheap. And when people look at what's booming right now, if you exclude the S &P, if you exclude the top seven companies in the S &P 500, I think what they make around roughly what, 30, 40 % of the market cap is something ridiculous like that.

0:56By the way, did you see the other graph? The last time this has happened was right before the Great Depression hit. Yeah, and you look at most of the companies that are booming right now, it's purely a lot of AI companies. If you look at the value of the S &P 500, a lot of companies' earnings are down, but the multiples on some of these companies are up, which is making up for earnings not being as great. You look at Tesla, they delivered less cars for the first time in history. So not only having businesses not perform, if you exclude a lot of the AI companies, What caused a lot of companies to boom during the COVID days wasn't that interest rates were pretty much zero.

1:38We had low interest rates during the Obama administration. What really caused things to boom during the COVID time was the government printing tons of money. And when I say printing tons of money, I'm not talking about, hey, let's send money to this country and help them out here. I'm talking about they printed money with programs like PPP for businesses to help stimulate them, which caused businesses to have tons of surplus of cash. And they had quite a few different programs. Like they even had the Main Street Lending Program. There were so many. They had the, there was one for if you keep employees, you can get reimbursement.

2:12There you go. And they also started printing money in the form in which they deposited money into a lot of people's bank accounts, the majority of the US population. The stimulus, the stimulus checks, yeah. So you start combining all of it. It caused people to have a surplus of cash. So they started going out and spending it. Businesses had tons of money. All this combined caused corporations to grow. If businesses have more money, they also spend it, not just on employees, but there's a lot of B2B companies. They're spending it on software. They're spending on ads. They're spending it on growth.

2:43All this caused a ton of things to happen at the right time from money being really cheap. So private equity companies can just go buy up a lot of businesses because they're looking for high growth companies. People believing that everything was going to shift to the internet. So they started buying up all these internet companies. People spending and investing a lot because money was being printed. Do I think the economy is going to improve? Yes. Is inflation coming down as fast as we would like? No. I think 2025 is going to be better than 2024. Just like for us, we saw a better 2024 than 2023.

3:17but it's not all of a sudden a light switch, you know, gets switch flipped and then the economy just starts roaring. I just don't see that happening. So I don't think 2025 will be a blockbuster year. I think it's going to be a good year. And the reason for that is because a lot of stuff is priced in already. And then the other thing that people need to consider too. Let's define, what do you consider a good year? So a good, okay, let's say this year, okay, even though the S &P isn't exactly the economy, but the S &P was what, up 25 % this year, 28 %? I don't know, but it was up a good chunk. So that's a good year for the stock market at least.

3:52I think a good year, instead of growing 20%, 30%, we're talking maybe we're growing S &P. Maybe it's more modest, which is still a good number. Maybe it's 7 % to 10 % or something like that. S &P gained 23.3 % in 2024. Which is extremely high. And 2023 was 24.2%. I think it's got to come down. It's got to adjust to the mean. And the other thing too is I think interest rates are going to stay higher like this for a little, for a while, right? And the reason I say that is because you know Howard Marks, the Oak Tree guy, the distressed debt dude. So he always writes these memos, right? And I always read his memos.

4:29And then his most recent long memo says that he believes there's a sea change that happened. This was like when the rates started coming up. And this was like maybe a couple years ago or so. And I do believe we're probably going to hover around it. It's not going to fall back to zero. I think it might be a couple percent or so, right? So I think there are going to be some rate decreases. But if rates are higher, that also means borrowing costs are higher too. So people aren't going to borrow as much, right? Now, if we start to see inflation tick up again, then all bets are off, right? Then it's like, okay, maybe the printer turns on again, right?

5:02Because the Fed can't have inflation. The worst is if you have stagflation, right? Where there's very little productivity and also inflation's going up. Then there will be hell to pay. that's when you start to see really bad stuff going on. Yeah, so I think it's going to be modest growth next year, knock on wood. But I think a lot of stuff is pricing. I think a lot of people got excited for the Trump victory and everything. But everything's already gone up quite a bit. At least a lot of the AI companies have gone up and crypto's gone up quite a bit. Crypto's gone up. But if you look at a lot of just traditional businesses, they're not roaring and performing well from a financial standpoint.

5:38Same with job growth. If you look at job growth, if you exclude government employment or indirect government employment. It's not like people are hiring like crazy. They're actually laying off workers. Yeah. Look, I think it's going to be a good year. And I really like what Jeff Bezos said about the long term. I think, so what he said is like, look, this is going to hopefully give us enough time over the years where the productivity from robotics, from AI and everything, the growth outpaces any bit of bad stuff that we have going on. And I'm hoping that will be, I believe that will be the case.

6:07But him saying that leaves me a little more comfortable. Yes. And people look at the debt globally, not just the United States, but a lot of countries like China, US, UK, France, Germany, etc. are just in tons and tons of debt. People are like, oh, yeah, if you look at the US, the solution is to cut costs and to be in a surplus and pay back all the debt that we've borrowed over the years. that's very unrealistic. I'm not talking about cutting costs. I'm talking about more so paying back all the debt and not adding more, at least in the short run. What's more realistic is the way you get yourself out of this is just GDP growth is stimulating the economy.

6:49And this is what I think is unique. When you look at the past, when you look at the Roman Empire or the Dutch Empire or the British Empire, they all printed too much money and they all kind of got over their skis, right? And they're all the reserve currencies, by the way. We are the reserve currency of the world right now. but we're in a weird spot right now where we're all building technology that's gonna completely change. Like this technology is gonna shift everything, right? And I think there's a chance. Like again, robotics, AI, all the health stuff that's going on, it's exciting. And I believe that the progress, not even the progress that US is making, the world is making with this is going to hopefully set us up to grow out of this.

7:26So I don't think 2025 will be a blockbuster year but hopefully 2026, 2027. Yeah, and Eric and I both believe that the economy is improving. So 2025 will be better than 2024 overall for businesses. We think the next few years are going to start improving. Will it go back to the heydays of when the government was printing tons of cash and giving out free money to businesses and people in their bank accounts during COVID? No, not as much. They might print, but not as much. Yeah, and if they do print, they're not just going to give away the money for free to individuals and corporations. Yeah. I mean, I'm just looking at the M2 money supply graph.

8:06How often do you look at that? Maybe once a quarter. Okay. So it was coming down, the money supply. You can see the graph like slightly went down. It's going back up again. So it has begun. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, dude, come on, man. This is insane. This is COVID right here. It went parabolic. Yes. Yeah. So I'm showing Neil a graph right now, But it was basically since, I don't know, call it 1980s, maybe even 1975, the government started printing more and more. I think 1975 is when we came off the gold standard, right? I think so. I don't know. Right. 1975, that's when it starts to go up, up, up, up, up, up, up.

8:42When did the U.S. come off of? The U.S. came off of gold standard in 1971. Oh my, okay. Look, 1970 right here. So it's not, it's nothing, right? And then it starts to slightly move up, 1975. And then it starts to keep going up, up, up, up, up. And then 2020, it goes crazy. And then, oh, sorry, this is 2020 over here. 2020 is when it goes crazy. But you can see we've been printing for a long time. But my point is, if you said 1971, it starts to maybe beg the question, maybe there should be a Bitcoin standard. And that's a whole other conversation. And I don't know if they will or will not, but I'll bet you$100 they will.

9:25The US will adopt the Bitcoin standard? Yeah. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. No, no, no. That's a strategic reserve. I think they'll do a strategic reserve. I don't know about Bitcoin standard. Totally agree. I don't think they'll do Bitcoin standard. I think the US will buy a Bitcoin, but do I think it'll be the gold standard? No. No. China has tons of Bitcoin, supposedly. Yeah. I mean, but you can make the argument here that there should be some type of - I agree. Yeah. But anyway, it is favorable for us to be the reserve currency of the world. Yes. But we can move on to the next one. What is the next one?

9:53Well, the next one goes into our predictions for 2025 when it comes to business growth and marketing. You know why I picked this one? Because in my 2024 year in review, I always do these predictions, right? And then last year, I was completely off. And so I'm trying to pull it up right now because it logged me out for whatever reason. But let me pull it up first and I'll give you my predictions from last year and we can do these predictions. because I've already done it, so I kind of cheated a little bit and then you can start to think about it as we do it. Are you going to give us your 2024 ones?

10:29Yeah, I'm going to give both. I'm curious on your 2024 ones now. Yeah. What the hell? Okay, here it is. Sorry, guys. Annual reflection 2020. Okay, I got it. Here we go. So I write this year in review. If you guys go to my Instagram, you'll see it. It's like a 5 ,300-worder. So I made these predictions in 2024. So January, in essence. This is last year. Yeah, this is for 2024 as a heads up. And then I'll give you my 2025 predictions. And then this is what we'll talk about. So 2024, I said a recession will happen before Q3 2024. I've always been wrong on that. So wrong, no recession still, right?

11:11The crypto bull market will start again. Correct. Bitcoin is at all-time highs now, right? This is what I did in the end of the year. Well, I'll give you the first one too. Technically, if you look at the original definition of a recession, we've had a recession. We have, yeah. Right? Yeah. But the government has not claimed that there's a recession, but I don't know what definition people are using. So let's just say for the hell of it, we'll be conservative. Say I'm wrong. Okay. So crypto market, bull market will start again. I was correct on that one. I said paid media will become more and more commoditized with the help of AI.

11:42That's correct. More and more people will leverage AI to help with SEO and it'll continue to work. I said semi-correct. LLMs are growing quickly, but still minuscule compared to standard organic search, right? So I think it's continuing to grow. You and I are using a lot more of these LLMs. I said agency businesses that know how to leverage the power of data, AI, and creative will have an unfair advantage over others. I think you guys are certainly doing it. And I don't think I'm wrong on that. Maybe in the future, I don't see it in the short run. I don't think they're going to have advantage.

12:14Here, I'll give you one. I said a Republican president will win the US election. Yeah. Okay. So this is early in the year too. Attention will be even more of a moat in where AI is commoditizing more jobs. Yeah. And then we will start to see a rise of small startup teams of three to 10 people that leverage AI to build products that were previously only available to teams of 100. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started.

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14:25Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at framer.com and use code MS to get your first month of pro on the house. That's Framer.com, promo code MS. Framer.com, promo code MS. Rules and restrictions may apply. Yeah, we also see people with a one-person company doing over 10 million a year in revenue now. And we're going to see more of that. The gap between AI-assisted humans versus regular humans will increase if you can be 40 % more productive with the help of AI, you'll do it. So there's that. And then I said we will see a rise in not just creators, but creator-operators.

14:59So creator-operators are not just content creators. they're business operators. So we can look at Kevin Esprit from Epic Gardening. You're a creator operator. I'm a creator operator. So basically, the two big calls I made in 2024 were a big Republican president winning and the crypto bull market arriving again. I thought you said you were really wrong in 2024. No, so I got 8.5 out of 10 in 2024. But 2023, I got 3.5 out of 7. 2022, I got 1 out of 5. So you're getting better each year. All right, what's your 2025 predictions? Okay. Maybe you'll get nine out of 10. Maybe, maybe. But then you got, are you getting your predictions already?

15:38Are they forming in your head? I already have predictions. I don't have 10 predictions, but I have some predictions. I have like five here, okay, or 10. So 2025 predictions. I believe that crypto will have a record year in 2025, even though we just mentioned that it's not going to be a blow. I believe for crypto, it will be pretty good. I believe that the economy will expand. in 2025, but not as much as we think it will, which is what we just said. And I said, however, inflation will tick up. That's a big call, right? I said, the Doge and RFK's Maha make America healthy again will turn out to be net positive for America, even though people are really kind of dubious.

16:19A lot of people are dubious about these two initiatives right now. I wrote, software will continue to get commoditized, the true X factor is attention. And I said return to office will continue to rise, which I've been calling. I'm calling it here. And then we've kind of already called this, but in-person communities will increasingly become more valuable. And we'll see M &A activity pick up even harder after it's been thawing in 2024. Same with IPO activity. Cool. So some predictions that I have for 2025, I believe traditional TV media will pretty much die. and it all become online and people will follow influencers, news sources all on the internet and not necessarily care what people have to say on some of these quote unquote news stations.

17:05I think they'll start looking for things like podcasts versus traditional news outlets to get their information. And we're already starting to see a lot of that. We saw quite a bit of that during the election. The presidential candidates both focus on podcast interviews more than saying, hey, let me go on CNN or Fox because that's really where the attention is going. The second prediction that I have is personal brands are going to be more important than ever. Even though I've grown my business through a personal brand, but it hasn't made up more than 10 % of our revenue. I think a brand is really your only moat.

17:42And I think a personal brand and a corporate brand are really good modes. I gave someone a great example of this. Earlier today, I was talking to our friend John from Kajabi. And we were talking about AI and what it's going to replace. And we were even talking about like corporations, people just creating copycats. And no matter what you do, I do believe the brand is the power. And the example I gave him is if John and I partnered together and we wanted to create a company that would make shoes, I believe we can replicate the quality of Air Jordan shoes within 12 months. Maybe we had to hire some people who came from Nike or some of these other companies.

18:24Xenia second skin shoes, believe it or not, are more comfortable than Nike shoes. So there are ways to make shoes more comfortable than even Air Jordans. But if we did that, I still don't think we would generate even 1 % of the revenue of Air Jordans, even if you gave us five years. And the main reason being is you don't have the brand. What causes Jordan shoes to sell is Jordan. It has nothing to do with the quality of the shoe. I'm not saying they're bad quality shoes. I'm saying there's tons of shoe options that are high in quality, but Jordans sell really well because they're Michael Jordan shoes, right?

18:59The third prediction that I have, is corporations in B2B will really start laying off a smaller percentage of their workforce. If you look at 2024, you haven't really seen too many B2B companies lay off employees because of AI. I do believe you'll start seeing that in 2025, but a small portion. And they'll start with having AI replicate really easy, mundane stuff. And they'll also start requiring corporations or employees within a corporation to use the AI, and they'll start seeing how they're going to become more efficient. And in 2026, I believe they'll see even more layoffs than 2025 due to AI.

19:40But it's not about the technology getting there. It's about corporations adopting the technology, which takes much longer than just saying, hey, we have all this technology. It's great. The last prediction that I have is most marketing channels will turn into top of funnel. like you know my team did a research piece we'll publish it next week or this weekend we're looking at where people are hearing about a company first versus what channels are causing the conversions and you're starting to see channels like organic social create a ton of word-of-mouth marketing you're starting to see seo create tons of word-of-mouth marketing but when you look at conversions they're not adding up you're starting to see that you're seeing the pay channels take a lot of the lion's share, but you're starting, you're seeing that people are finding out about corporations through a lot of these organic channels, but they're not converting right away.

20:36And I think businesses are going to shift how they think about marketing from organic social being like, we got to spend money to communicate with our audience and build the relationships to yes, you need to do that with organic social, but it is heavy top of funnel and brand awareness. So is SEO. Um, and so it was a lot of the other channels out there, like podcasting and things like that. And I think companies are going to be okay with that and start looking at a lot of marketing channels as quote unquote branding and know that they just pay off well in the long run. Yeah. And that's why these, these, these products like house, I believe H-A-U-S, uh, you got hockey stack for B2B.

21:14There's these products out there that help you at least attribute a little bit to dark social. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. So that's, that's, that's interesting. We'll see how these play out. We'll come back to this episode next year and we'll, we'll basically go through all our predictions and see how we scored. So we get to do this live with everybody. That is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Go to the, go to marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association. And we'll see you tomorrow.

21:46Thank you.