AI Companies Are Taking a Lot of The Good Marketers

0:00You have one here around how AI companies are taking a lot of the good marketers. Dude, I've been getting a lot of requests from venture-funded startups that raise between 10 and$50 million. Like, hey, we're in growth mode right now. Do you know any amazing marketers we can hire? And they're usually asking me for people who will work in office, typically in San Francisco. That's the most common city request that I get. I do get every once in a while LA, but it's mainly San Francisco. Every once in a while, I'll also get Seattle, Washington because I used to live there. but it really is mainly SF.

0:36And I know a lot of great growth marketers, but almost all of them work for the AI companies. And I've asked a few of them if they're interested in jumping ship. And they're like, dude, they're like, my comp is so high. The comp is so good. Yeah. And then I'm like, oh, is it because shares? I'm like, oh, there's probably liquidation preferences when some of these companies raise, you know, like 10 billion, 2 billion, whatever it may be. and they're like yes it's shares but they'll and they once they told me their salary i'm like oh okay it's but they're like yeah they're paying extremely competitive salaries if not more than market rate yeah and i'm getting shares so they're like it's hard to find a job that pays as much cash plus the shares could be worth a crap load of money when this company goes public yeah and a lot of them work for ai related companies that are worth well over a billion bucks yeah what can to do.

1:29Yeah, they can pay more. I would say if I were starting from scratch today in our mid-20s, I'd probably just go work for one of them. Dude, me too. If I was starting from scratch again, I would not be an entrepreneur. I would just go work for a company and make it grow. In this very moment, because AI is so hot right now and they've raised so much money. And I know it's a good deal. Yeah, in this moment, but even at my age, if I was starting from scratch again, assuming I had my knowledge and my pedigree, I would just go be a CMO at a corporation. And just keep in mind that these AI companies, just like the one AI company I mentioned, Lindy, they're working 996.

2:05So just expect to work a lot. Did Lindy raise a lot of money? I don't know. You can look it up. I suspect - How do you spell Lindy? L-I-N-D-Y. He did say on the podcast that their investors are like, you guys are one of the most efficient companies because they just keep building more and more agents. $50 million was their last round. Okay. From who? Funding raise is about$50 million with Series B and J. It doesn't show me. Yeah. Dude, speaking of people real quick. Oh, notable investors. Menlo Ventures, KOTU, and Battery. Okay. Those are serious companies. Yeah. Yeah. Serious firms. Dude, speaking of people real quick.

2:47So I was reading on X, but what do you think about the concept of hiring fast and firing fast? So this comes from a private equity owner. Hiring fast and firing fast? Yeah, so here's what he said. Let me give you the background and we can react to this. So he said private equity, obviously you're hiring a lot of CEOs, right? So his biggest insight was hiring a long-term CEO is a crapshoot. Year one and year 10 data was exactly the same. After testing everything, there was no difference. This is why he says hire fast, fire fast, because even with 10 years of data, you can't predict if someone will scale with the company.

3:20Humans are too wild. And I was thinking about yesterday, when you think about the NFL draft, Like how often did they get it right? They get it wrong pretty like - A lot. Yeah. And you have all these scouts, you have all these analytics, all these things like humans are too unpredictable. I was reading an article from yesterday. I just pulled it up from the AI Overviews. It was an article on Sequoia Capital and I don't want to go through it because it was long, but Google summarizes it. And Brian, so Brian Halligan, the HubSpot guy, he joined Sequoia. I think he's like a coach there or something for executives helping him scale.

3:49Yeah. And I'm pretty sure Brian doesn't need any more money. So I think he's just doing this for fun or to keep him busy or something, or this may be his passion. But he had a really good article on Sequoia Capital from a lot of the stuff that he's learned at HubSpot. And we've hired a lot of executives. You know my hiring process. It's pretty thorough. And we hire slow. We fire fast. If we know the person or people in our network know them, we hire pretty quickly. But we generally are pretty careful. And our executive rate is not that high. Like you would think that we're hoping for like a 90 % success rate.

4:29You mean your executive success rate? Yes. We're above 50, but we're definitely below like 80%. We're somewhere in between. And I don't know the exact percentage, but I know we're above 50 and I know we're definitely below 80%. And Brian talks about this at HubSpot because I know they have a crazy hiring process. and he talked about how 40 % of executive hires did not work out for him. No matter how good you are, he's like the problem with it and he's spot on. When you're recruiting executives, especially like VP of marketings or CMOs, people interview really, really well and they've been around the block.

5:08So they're much more polished. It's harder to sniff out bad executives. What we've done that's helped increase our odds of recruiting amazing executives, especially in marketing, we will tell them how we expect them to be player coaches. So they got to teach the team and help them improve, but they got to get their hands dirty. We also tell them how we expect tons of hours of work. I'll call them and other people will call them at random hours. We expect things to get done. And if this is not the environment that they want to end up working in, cool, this isn't for them. I think that's really important because you're just setting expectations.

5:45There's no right or wrong. It's just that's how you guys do things. and a lot of people, by the way, the reason Neil's doing that too is a lot of executives, they've gotten used to having a lot of resource and being very cushy, right? It's like, hey, if you're gonna come here, you're not only gonna be managing, you're gonna be in the trenches as well and you're gonna be working a lot. So don't expect to go into a situation where you're very comfortable. That's the expectation you're trying to set. And I think it's really important that what we do with our hiring process is at the very end, I'll say, hey, I'm gonna anti-sell you.

6:09I'm gonna tell you why you shouldn't join us, right? And then I tell them and they still say they want it, right? So, but I think your way of doing it is all your people in the hiring process anti-sell them at every single stage. Yes. And we do it from day one because we don't want to waste the next person's time in the interview process if we already know they're not going to be interested, if they're not going to be down with our culture and the way we operate. Yep. Yep. All right. So I got one here on, do you want to see the true state of the economy or do you want to say something? One thing, to give you an idea, you know Nick on my end, right?

6:40Yeah. Dude, when we were in San Francisco, I won't mention the company name. So I met up with a really large corporation. I told Nick that day when we were in San Francisco, I need you to create a deck in less than 24 hours to send to a potential customer and hear their requirements. He ended up creating almost a 90 page deck. It was 80 something pages. From scratch. From scratch. And he had to turn it into me and do it. and i remember him telling our ceo because our ceo was in cuba at the time and i was not i was trying to not talk to him and have people not talk to him because he needed to spend time with his family he was still working yeah he would just act like he wasn't working so i wouldn't know yeah um but nick was telling me he's like oh i'm glad that you're back mike and i probably called nick during that week 20 something time wow it was that deal and two other deals so three total i made him scramble last minute and do stuff i usually send it to mike and then mike rounds up who he wants and doing it and nick makes commission so it's in his best interest but like he's a trooper he doesn't complain he knew what he was expecting from day one he's one of our oldest employees i think he's our second longest standing employee chad is number one yeah um but yeah no this is the this is what executives of my organization have to deal with nick reports to mike right i have no idea who he reports to but probably yeah so so he handled it for a week but for a long period of time he'd probably be like it's hard yeah yeah but uh but mike wasn't here from the beginning.

8:29So years before that, he dealt with Mike Camo or me. And you. Yeah, or technically both of us. Yeah. And we would give him stuff. Yeah. But dude, he's like jam-packed and busy. A great example of this is I was talking to a firm yesterday that needed marketing help in Brazil and the rest of Latin America. Javi leads up LATAM and they had questions for our US team, but they're not interested in working with us in the United States. I sent it to Nick to help him out for free and then deal with helping them in Latin America including Portuguese and Spanish. So you would have to coordinate with Javi and Maring and their teams internally to help him out in the US when he's not going to get any contracts or anything like that from the US and he's not going to make any money for the line.

9:18It's a long game. It's a long game. But Nick doesn't complain and he's a team player and doesn't have any issues. No problem. Send whatever you want to me. I'll figure it out. Dude, 90 pages, 24-hour turnaround is a lot. I'm sure he had other templates he could pull from. He like floated some stuff in. He did. But my guess is the deck probably took him... At least a couple hours. No. How long? Seven to eight hours. Seven to eight hours? Yeah. That's a lot. It was all custom based on what the customer wanted. That's a lot. And he's doing all the analysis on his own. No, the team helps. Okay. But Nick's time that he spent, seven to eight hours.

9:53Yeah. Well, hey, shall we... And he didn't turn it around in 24 hours. He turned around a draft to me in 24 hours and it needed a lot of changes. We turned it over to the potential customer within 48 hours. This is when we were on the way to go record, right? Yeah. Yeah. Dude, speaking of sales real quick, because we're talking about Nick on the sales side. So this is interesting to me. You and I kind of know this already, but obviously the fortune is in the follow-up, right? So 2 % of all sales are made on the first contact. 3 % of sales are made on the second contact. 5 % of sales are made on the third contact.

10:2410 % of sales are made on the fourth contact. 80 % of sales are made on the fifth to 12th contact. Can you repeat it all for me a little bit slower? Yeah. Here, let's start from the 2 % of all sales are made on the first contact. Then 3 % on the second contact. Then 5 % on the third contact. Wait, is this total like 2 %? So on the second contact, when it's 3%, that means you're adding one more percent? Mm-hmm. or is it three more percent? No, I think you're adding 1%. Okay, so 2 % of your total sales on your first contact. Your second sale is 3%, but that means you're only getting 1 % extra in sales.

11:04Your third contact is 5%, which means you're getting two more percent from the second contact. 10 % on the fourth. Yep, and then 80%, sorry, this is of all sales. 80 % of all sales are made on the fifth to 12th contact. But the key thing here is no matter what you're selling, obviously this was very little bit if you're selling b2b or consumer or whatever um the fortune is in the follow-up yeah so it doesn't actually add up so it is two percent on the first all sales yes but no uh second on the three percent of all sales made on the second so now you got five the third is five percent goes on the third contact so now you're at 10 you're following me the fourth contact is another 10 you're at 20 fifth to 12 is the other 80 so that's this is all Yeah.

11:48Yeah. Yeah. So, but, but this is not necessarily new to you or me. It just, the, and John Maxwell says it's the fortune is in the follow-up. Right. And people tend to think when you're early in sales, like you're worried about getting rejected. Nobody likes getting rejected. Right. But getting rejected is also the key to winning. And if you look at the most successful people in the world, they've been the most rejected people in the world. Yes. And this is why I tell people when they're doing email campaigns, you got to send more emails and people like, no, I'll really want to send one. every few weeks or one a week.

12:19And I'm like, but if you don't send emails, you're not going to make as many sales. And they're like, yeah, but people are going to unsubscribe. They're going to hate us. I'm like, well, figure out how to make your emails more valuable. So you're willing to send more. Cause if you're not, that means there's probably something wrong with the type of emails you're sending. Dude, for our outbound. So we hit our entire time. And then the outbound agency was like, um, you know, let's, let's, let's, you know, cool it down. Let's try it like another group. I'm like, no, let's hit the same group, different offer.

12:43We've been doing something that's, uh, unique or looking into it, I had to actually check if our sales team's doing it or not. But I know it's set up. I don't know what we're doing it for or not doing it for, just to clarify on that. But I know we have something set up where it scrapes all the home service businesses from yellow pages. And you can do it for different categories. Then you get the phone numbers and then it has it go to their website. Then you're having them verify the information because sometimes the information is a little bit off in the yellow pages. And then you're figuring out what's working out for them, what the business is doing on the marketing, it's analyzing stuff, it's all done through AI.

13:20Then what we'll do is we'll look at their social media, come up with a content calendar for them, send them actual, the content calendar and images and texts and stuff that they could be posting. And we do it for free to try to get calls scheduled. And then be like, look what we did for free. Now imagine if you were actually working with us, how much more we can do and how much more revenue we can end up generating. Oftentimes, by the way, This reminds me of when people are like, hey, can we create content? When you just go the extra mile and you've actually done the work ahead of time, that gets much more response rate.

13:51Why? Because it's like, oh, this person's a hustler. This person stands out from the rest because they're willing to do the work. And most people, the reason they don't get what they want is they're not willing to go the extra mile. Yes. And then on our end, I know we built it. I've seen it. I don't know if we're actually sending out emails because we got to get approval from legal. That's the shitty part. Yep. If you've ever built a website, you know how tough it can be to keep a strong design while ensuring site performance is fast. That's where Framer comes in, and it totally changes the game.

14:20Framer is the design-first, no-code website builder that lets anyone ship a production-ready site in minutes. I recently built a custom landing page in just a few hours. Animations, fast load times, responsive layouts, all without writing a single line of code. It was easy to use, and the end result was polished enough to look like a developer spent days on it. One of my favorite things is that Framer's AI handles translations with a single click. So your site can be up and running in multiple languages almost instantly. And with real-time collaboration, your whole team can jump in and work together.

14:50No issues with versions or miscommunication. Whether you're starting from scratch or using one of their templates, Framer lets you focus on design while handling the technical side for you. Animations, responsive layouts, search optimization, and all the things that matter. Ready 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 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.

15:36The best part about it, it has everything you could need. Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style. Or if you need help with content creation, Shopify's got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos. Shopify lets you easily create email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they are, whether they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into... with Shopify on your side.

16:06Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash marketing school. Go to shopify.com slash marketing school. Shopify.com slash marketing school. Dude, speaking, okay, I'm assuming, this is all manual. You guys aren't using AI for any of this. No, this is all automatic through AI. Oh, so you're using, okay, good, good, good. Because this leads in over into these two AI topics we have here to close out. But did you see that AI artist that signed a$3 million record deal? No. Are you talking about like a music artist? Check this out. So an AI artist just signed a$3 million record deal and her songs are charting on Billboard.

16:50Zania Monet is an R &B singer and the AI persona of a poet named Talisha Jones. So this is all AI over here. So this person will write all the lyrics and stuff. So she writes the lyrics herself and uses Suno, which is the AI music generator, to turn them into songs and also uses AI for videos and her socials. So her socials, this is all AI over here. That's not her image. No. She looks totally different. Yeah. I think this person's anonymous. This person just writes the lyrics. That's it. Good for them. Yeah. But$3 million record deal. And I don't think this is going to stop anytime soon. This is just the very beginning.

17:25And so this is kind of like done with you, AI working with the human. But I think same deal, AI influencers, if you remember that guy we met in Germany that managed like, you know, a little different, like OnlyFans people, right? But in my mind, this person can now just manage AI influencers and it's going to be a similar type of outcome. And then on the other side of this, did you see the podcast farm that spawns 3 ,000 episodes per week? No. Check this out. So there's an AI startup called Inception Point AI and it's flooding podcast apps. It launched 5 ,000 podcasts. It makes 3 ,000 episodes a week.

17:59and spends$1 to create an episode and monetize it by getting programmatic ads and basically breaks even on most episodes if only 20 people listen. So if you do the math, if they just start to hit some, they clear above 20, they're gonna make money, right? So types of podcasts go from low effort like weather reports, simple biographies to higher effort like 50 AI personalities, including food experts, right? So this company has 184 custom AI agents using various LLM models. and the CEO is a former exec at Podcast Studio Wondery and says she wants to make thousands more AI personalities, including AI Oprah.

18:34I think there's gonna be a lot of trash added to the podcast. You know, I guess networks. This just goes to show, I think in my mind, that human like this is gonna become even more valuable. Yes, it is, but it's also tough. How do you know when you're listening to podcasts that it's AI generated or not, if the audio is really good? I don't know. I don't know right now. I don't really listen to AI podcasts at the moment, but I think what makes the human touch really good is people can meet you and they can relate more. I'm not saying they can't do that with AI. I just don't know how they can do that with AI right now.

19:09Time will tell. But from our experiences, when we go in person and go to events, people like the fact that we're humans, they can interact with us, take pictures. I'm not saying I'm popular or anything like that, or Eric's popular or anything like that. it's more so people like how they can interact and share stories and we can relate to them. I think events are going to become even more valuable and communities are. I mean, even you look at the last 12 months or so. So this year I didn't do my annual event that I do, right? And when's the event happening? What annual event? Remember I would do at the Beverly Wilshire or like, you know, we do like the little, the little mastermind thing.

19:45Oh yeah. Yeah. And like this year, a lot of people were texting me saying, Hey, when's it happening? I was like, oh no, I had to handle the YPO Global Marketing Summit this year. And so I think these types of communities are going to become more and more valuable because it's just all this stuff that you're seeing right now, there's going to be a proliferation of all this AI content, which is fine. But the unique part, to your point, is the human connection, whether you are an introvert or not. Yeah. You're actually better off doing more of the YPO Marketing Summits each year if they let you. They won't let me.

20:15Them doing your own thing. Yeah. They won't let me because there's a board that they have and they like to cycle through different people. The problem is every person they cycle a lot. The event experience varies. Whereas I've done a lot of these and so I know how I want it to go. And so the quality changes every year. And you picked a legit hotel, right Noah? Yeah. What do they have that we love? The Juwato. Ice cream. Yeah, St. Regis Bell Harbor. Shout out to St. Regis Bell Harbor, which I was going to say is owned by YPR, but it's not. So yeah. Cool. Yeah. Anyway, that is it for today, guys.

20:50Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe, and we will see you tomorrow.