As Microsoft Turns 50, Nadella Sees Future Success Built On The Ability To ‘Win The New’, This Is The Best Time To Double Down, Generate MrBeast $10K Thumbnails for YouTube With This Prompt

0:00Microsoft turns 50 and Satya, the CEO sees a future of success on the ability to win the new. and this is a really interesting article because he talks about how corporations want to protect the past right they have all these revenue streams but things are changing so fast with technology he's like it's no longer about protecting the past and you're going to lose some of your existing revenue streams you got to be okay with it you shouldn't be focusing on preserving if you can sure great your focus should be on what are the new markets that are emerging that technology is going to change. How can you dominate those and gobble up as much revenue as possible?

0:37It's interesting. A lot of people like to talk about, you know, Microsoft's one of the biggest companies in the world. People like to talk about wealth preservation. I think what he's saying is there's no wealth preservation. You got to go for it. It's wealth generation right now. And I think for us, it's if you're a founder or a leader listening to this, you have to constantly apply pressure to your team. And so we have this we have these AI guidelines and expectations, standards of excellence coming out where I'm just, it's like a long document. I'm probably gonna make a long YouTube video on it too.

1:06And anybody that joins, I'm hopefully I'll scare the crap out of them or they'll either embrace it. And it's interesting because I have my team looking through it. Some of the leaders reading it, right? It's like, okay, here are the different levels of AI, basic proficient and power user. And then someone put in the comments, it's like, so, you know, people that are less than associate director, they should be proficient. And then people that are associate director plus should be power user. And I was like, fuck that. Why did you even put that comment like fuck that like double fuck that right and I'm like we are only good We're gonna get everyone the power user if you don't want to be a power user just get out of here, right?

1:38So but this alliance with how we have to innovate for the future because it's gonna get more competitive and I love it You love competition. I love competition, but my tolerance for bullshit has just gone down so much so And and look you've been growing in a terrible economy because your tolerance for bullshit has gone down Yeah. Yeah. But by the way, it's, it's, uh, you've always been like this. Yeah. Why, why have you always, because it's not a natural human thing to just be like this. You know what I mean? I've been burned too many times, uh, not getting the results. And what ends up happening is, is cause I've been through multiple bad economies.

2:18Yeah. Right. Um, I started as an entrepreneur roughly in 2021 you've been an entrepreneur for 25 years yeah and 2021 wasn't a great uh not 20 2001 2001 was not a great year yeah because it was a crap economy and we had the dot-com boom in 2000 that's when i started dot-com bust dot-com oh yeah bust sorry you're right uh thanks for correcting me and at that time things were really hard for me and they started getting better. And then we had the crash of 2008. And during that period, I was paying people. And even after 2008, I was paying people, taking care of them. And I always had this mentality.

2:59My coworkers are like family. When times are bad, I will take licks for them. I will suffer for them so they can have a better life. And to some extent, I still believe in that today. But what ended up happening after 2008, there was a lot of people who didn't give a crap about me and the business and like, we're family, you got to keep taking care of me. And I took care of a lot of these people. And some of them were just lazy and did not want to work or put in whatever was required to help the business grow. Considering they were getting paid, I was living off of savings and I was living in my parents' house to try to make everyone else okay.

3:39And I was taking the licks personally. So then I started switching my mindset and the way I was thinking, I was like, you know what, screw this. If you put in all you have for the business and you try to do what's best for the business, I will gladly sacrifice my life for you as well and try to help you out. But if you're someone who doesn't wanna put all in and you don't care about the company, why should I put all in for you? And instead of having the mentality of, oh, if you don't put in tons of energy, I'm not gonna put in tons of energy for you. I decided that i'm gonna hire people who live breathe and sleep the business and will die for the business And I will die for them.

4:21And if they don't have that mentality cool I will go find people who have the same type of culture and belief and i'll hire them instead Yeah, and this is important. So I met neil, I think probably 2012 or 2013 or something like that So you had already gone through all that. So the only version of you I know is that the version that's evolved So Neil, I think everyone, most people will start off really nice and very accommodating. And then you realize that that doesn't really pay the bills at the end of the day. And actually what Neil's talking about is the ones that we treat like family are usually the partners because they have the same values and they'll work as hard, if not harder.

4:54Those are the ones that we treat like family. I think for the rest of the team, this is a high performance sports team and not everyone's going to make it. And by the way, just because we got here with you doesn't mean you're going to get to the next level. And that's OK. um someone that's done well like i'll still try to help them find something else but um trying to keep these people because it's quote unquote a family actually ends up hurting the business and it hurts everyone else and to give you an idea of how backwards i've gone i don't know if we met backwards or forwards uh how back we've gone like oh yeah since we've known each other but did you know me when i was doing a hosting company no okay so when i was doing a hosting company this was in rockwell texas close to dallas texas the whole concept was shared servers kind of like the cloud like dream host back no like the cloud like aws all right that's what i was trying to do before everyone was talking about aws i'm not saying i was the first one to come up with idea i picked a bad team but i had the concept because it's getting a lot of traffic to my website i was like this is silly when i get tons of traffic from social media my set would just crash why don't i have shared resources versus i'm renting out a server why can't it just be all combined and everyone just uses resources yeah and the partners i was working with i believe they own 30 of the company they couldn't make their bills for their home and we had servers running in their home instead of co-location places i don't know why i would do this really stupid this is you and heaton by the way partnered on this yeah and i was pushing him to do a lot of these things yeah so i don't blame him it was more so my fault yeah and we went as far as buying the house that the people lived in so that way they were okay why would i go that far for people when they didn't care and you know what happened at the end of that business the company because we switched names from uh vision web hosting to surf s-e-r-p-h we switched names and there was a company we bought a lot of cisco gear from sent a check to rockwell texas and they sent it to the wrong corporate name oh they took it they took the money they cashed out they trashed the house and they left with the cash yeah and this is not to say this is the case with everybody but i've seen more often than not you might bend over backwards for people you're not going to get that back like vast majority of the time you've been over backwards and then to your point you feel like you've been screwed so many times you've helped so many people now and you have.

7:17Right. Um, and you would hope that you get it back, but it's just like, it honestly, like, I hate to sound like a, like a wuss, but it, it, it sucks. Right. It, it, it hurts. Right. Um, but once you get burnt enough and you know, nobody's going to, nobody else is going to come save you. You just harden up and then you just push forward. Yeah. Yeah. That's all you can do. Yep. But, um, you have this one here on why now is the best time to double down. yeah um so i'm doubling down i know you are as well when things hurt it's okay for them to hurt more it's never a good feeling but that's typically when you get the best deals great example of this is i close on a deal literally this morning in the uk right before their taxes went up for uh long-term gains oh nice so i close on a uk company i have another one closing in May, end of May, I have another one closing at the end of June.

8:12We're getting pretty far along with a company in the Middle East that I'm trying to acquire. And then we're looking one at South Korea for aqua hire right now. And some of our team members just got back from Japan vetting, I think six or so agencies, and we've been talking to a lot of them for four or five months. but yes does it hurt to buy and spend more money when you do not making as much yes and do i tend to do this every single cycle yes and when i look back every time i've done this i've done better i'm not saying that this will be the case but you're typically buying when there's very little competition private equity is not buying right now because there's too much yeah too much uncertainty corporations typically aren't buying because they're getting hurt and they're just like dude i'm already struggling already laying off why spend more and dip into savings and then you have um you have the corporate corporations you have private equity you have vc and yes venture capital dollars are drying up right now they have access to funds they're just not investing because there's too much uncertainty and large corporations their stock prices are getting hit like crazy so the last thing they want to do is spend a ton of money during uncertain times so here's the thing what we're also saying here too is when you're when When you're part of a VC fund or you're part of private equity or you're part of a corporation, there's a lot of players and there's a lot of opinions and there's a board and everything.

9:37Neil, in this situation, you can just call the shots and move a lot faster. And this is one of the benefits for being bootstrapped and not having all these other opinions. Because these other opinions slow you down oftentimes and they might cause you to hesitate on what otherwise you would have just made a call on for better or worse. Right. And then we have enough experience at this point where like we're okay making mistakes. But our experience, the wisdom comes from experience at the end of the day, which is why you like you just said earlier, every single cycle you've done really well. And that's what Warren Buffett has said.

10:08Right. You want to be greedy when others are fearful. And this is a situation where people are fearful. And for whatever reason, I mean, I think we've seen enough where it's like, oh, yeah, when people are fearful, you feel excited. Yeah, that's how I feel now. Yeah. 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. Framer 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.

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12:17Sign 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. A few years ago, I had an offer for NP Digital and there was this private equity shop called Mountain Gate that gave us a written offer or a bid, whatever you want to end up calling it. And I'm not saying they would have went through with the deal or not. We had quite a few other bidders as well. They could have decided to back out on their end as well. And I remember I got on the phone with one of the guys from Mountain Gate.

12:52And it's an amazing firm. They did Tenuity. They did Bounties and they did W2O. So they had a lot of, and this was during COVID. This was during COVID. So they had a lot of amazing hits in the marketing era. I believe Tenuity sold for like 18X or something crazy like that. um bounty has i believe got 20 plus x i don't know w2o got but they had a lot of amazing hits they recently just sold uh mars the agency uh for a high premium supposedly like 19 or 20 or something like that and i was talking multiples here guys yeah and i was so i was talking to the guy on the phone and he was telling me they only can do 51 ownership i was like okay so what does this mean and how can i run the company i was running through scenarios so when they buy a corporation they also add debt onto the books and at this time i don't know the exact year i believe it was around 2022 2021 somewhere around there yep and i was like you know what's if i want to expand internationally because that was on top of mine and we were starting to push really hard he's like well you know would it make money right away i'm like no it'd lose money would bleed for many many years and the bleeding of international it's bled more money than we expected and it's bled longer than we expected just as a FYI.

14:10And he's just like, well, we would have to just look at the numbers because we would have debt. So we had to pay debt payments each and every single month or year. I don't know how it works. I'm assuming monthly. So he's like, we just got to make sure you don't blow covenants because banks have requirements on profitability. So if you're investing overseas, that's an expense. And you got to just make sure you're in line so you can make debt payments. the moment he said that i was not interested in the deal because in a bad economy or even if the economy wasn't going bad because i didn't assume it was going to crash i was like wait so i am restricted on how much i can grow my company because i got to focus on debt payments instead of focusing on whatever's best for the business so we talked about this on the phone at the time and in my mind, just knowing you, I'm just like, you will no longer get to do things your way and that no longer makes it fun.

15:06And that's probably the biggest piece. And like, yes, the debt covenants and all this stuff, you have all these other things that you shouldn't be worrying about attacking you when it's already hard enough to run a business, when it's already hard enough to expand and do what you're doing right now. And yeah, okay, now we have terrorists and now I'll just call it a recession, right? That's already a lot. So there's, why stack on all these other things? I think it's, by the way, we're not saying this is bad for other people. I think it's the thing is you're good too. Like you don't need to do this deal.

15:32Yeah. And it is the company's profitable and growing. Why do I need to take money and I'll get chips off the table and don't get me wrong. The valuation from a multiple standpoint was better than, than the multiples in today's market. And I don't know if the multiples will ever go back to what they were, but I was happy running business my own way and not having anyone to answer to, which I think is the most important and B I don't like anything that can handicap growth. because you and I love growth and running a business and it's fun for us. Someone telling you like, Hey, you can't grow as fast because we got to do this thing to optimize for our own returns.

16:06This is like, Oh, so you're doing what's best for you and not the corporation. Cool. And so it's like, you start a business to do things largely your own way. And again, nothing wrong with private equity or VC or anything like that. It's interesting because my, my, my CTO, like he raised money. They raised a good chunk of money. I think this is public. Like they raised tens of millions of dollars, right? But the main challenge was he didn't get to do things the way he wanted to do them. And that's why he's just not interested in it anymore. Not to say we can't raise a bunch. We can, right? But let me rewind a second.

16:36This is kind of similar because we're talking about being excited during recessionary periods. I remember I kind of got some flack in 2020 when COVID first started. We did a podcast where I said, I'm actually excited, right? And I think you had said the same thing too. but you've had to scar tissue from it, right? Like that was my first recession technically going through. And so I think you kind of have to rewire your brain to look at it that way. And most entrepreneurs, they have something off in their brain a little bit. Like you have to be kind of crazy to want to take the pain that you take as an entrepreneur.

17:09So I just wanted to put that in. These are times to be excited if you can rewire your brain to do that. And it is going to be painful and you don't know how long it's going to end up being painful. and a lot of people out there will tell you, oh, if you look at the last 30 years or 50 years, recessions happen every X period of years and then the housing cycle goes up and down in this frame and recessions only last X time, the government does this. You can't assume ever what happens in the past is gonna happen again in today's world. Instead, you have to keep willing to bear the pain and if you're gonna make the bet, always assume it's gonna be painful for much longer than you expected and cost you way more money.

17:51And if you can't have that in mind when you're making the decisions, don't do it. One final thing I'll say before we move on here. I was having lunch yesterday and then there was a guy. So CTO was there and this guy was like a Japanese engineer, right? And it's funny because we're talking about how compliments do nothing for us and we'd rather take the beating. And it's like an Asian thing, right? It's a beat down growing up. It's like you criticize us, that's a compliment. And then Sean, CTO, brought up this show called American Factory, I think. American Factory, right? So it's about this story where this Chinese company, they buy this American company, and then they try to merge in the Chinese people and the United States people, right?

18:35And then on one end, they're doing like an HR meeting, the Chinese people, right? And then the Chinese HR person is like, just make sure with the Americans, they need a lot of compliments. They need a lot of compliments. And I think the Chinese workers just kind of laugh. My point of saying all this is that I'm not saying you should be Chinese or you should be, you know, American or whatever. Right. Like we're American. Point is, if you if you learn how to deal with the pain and you battle hard in yourself, I don't care if entrepreneur like whatever, like you will be way further ahead than 99.99 % of people.

19:04That's all I'm trying to say. Yeah, but it's tough to do. It is tough to do, but like life is tough. So toughen up. Yeah, I agree with that. On a side note, you have an interesting topic here. generate Mr. Beast$10 ,000 thumbnails. Thumbnails. Yeah. So here. So here's how you can generate a Mr. Beast$10 ,000 thumbnail. And so this image that we're going to pull up over here, you can see this guy. He drew a picture of the thumbnail. Okay. That's all he drew. And he said, make it into that. Come on. That's pretty good, man. That's really good. That's pretty good. So the level, oh my God. Like yesterday I was editing slides or I was going through slides.

19:41So team put together our slides and they're using these stock images. And I just took that stock image. It was like a, the slide was talking about done with you, AI plus humans, right? So you should, you should a human being with like an AI arm. And I was like, we can do better. So I took that picture and I said, make the AI into an actual robot. It made it into an actual robot. And I was able to design a lot of the things I wanted to design in my slides. And now you'll be able to do that too. and so my point of saying all this is that um mr b spends like ten thousand dollars um per thumbnail plus and you can now do that in fact you can take one of his thumbnails and put your picture next to it like and it will integrate your picture into it you know what i mean and that's how good it's gotten this is chat gpd images by the way guys i was just looking at getty images dude their stock has been so terrible in the last 12 months it went from four dollars to all of a sudden a dollar 35 but it just hit me with something like Getty Images.

20:38Why the heck do people even need stock images anymore? And I'm looking at the revenue. It's pretty stable. They do around 939 million a year. 2024 was similar, but I'm like, why do people need stock images? Yeah, here's the other thing again. Remember OpenAI got called out before. Their CTO at the time, I think the reporter was like, so did you train your video data on YouTube? And she couldn't answer, right? These images, by the way, who gets credit for these images at the end of the day, right? Yeah, I don't know. And Getty right now, they're selling other people's images and they're, I'm assuming people get paid out a chunk for their images.

21:16And they have an AI generator on their homepage and they're charging, I think,$49 for 25 generations. I'm actually looking at right now,$149 for 100 generations. but it's like do you even need to spend that much is there technology even as good as open as technology or adobe's technology when it comes to generating images yep dude check this out real quick before we move on so you see this is the original image over here you see the ai arm right yeah okay so look it's the same human beings over here i said make the ai into a robot right and so it does it over here that's cool come on yeah right and then at my point now i'm just like guys guys um there's no excuse that we're not and this is why we have to set ai standards of excellence and we have a slide where we're talking about um how we need a human operator to operate these ai agents right so it made this for me come on come on man that's good and i was like that's not enough i need more i need more agents right give me more agents more agents yeah right took me two minutes to do that and then you can even put a prompt in there to tell them to make it realistic like humans in the real world instead of a drawing and they can adjust yeah and you can put a logo there too because people are going to copy your stuff right so you put some logos in there so all that to say guys is um chat chpd images is amazing i think even with a 20 version um you get a good amount i think with the free version you only get three images per day but you pay 200 i almost canceled the 200 a month because we weren't using it internally right i'm like now our designers are yeah we need it i was like okay good yeah yeah yeah but anyway that is it for today guys Please don't forget to rate, resubscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.