How To Deal With Slop Grenades

0:00Eric Siu:You know that feeling when the strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is you, and it's due tomorrow. Breeze Assistant can help. It works right inside HubSpot. Drafting campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice. All grounded in your actual customer data. So you don't just create content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. All right, Neil, let me tell you something that's been on my mind. So have you heard of this concept known as slop grenades?

0:37Eric Siu:Slop grenades? Yeah, okay, so you know what AI slop is, right? Yeah. Okay, so Toby Luque from Shopify has been talking about this concept known as slop grenades. And so a slop grenade is, let's say, Neil, I do a presentation deck, okay? I don't review it. I send it to you. because I didn't review it, you end up doing more work and it ends up being a piece of crap. I have then given you a grenade and it's exploded on you.

1:04Neil Patel:But why would you redo it? Why would you just tell the person you're fired or tell them to fix it themselves?

1:11Eric Siu:Well, yeah, I mean, easier said than done, right? Why do you try doing that, right? So let's say this, okay? So the thing is, people have been getting, you know, obviously a lot of these magazines like Wall Street Journal will spin it in a different way. I don't know if it's Wall Street Journal, but another magazine did this, right? They're like, you know, years ago, Toby Loke was like, everyone's gotta be using AI. And now today he's talking about slop grenades. And I'm like, dude, I commented on the Instagram post because I was so annoyed. I was like, dude, two thoughts can exist in the same world.

1:40Eric Siu:You can expect people to use AI, but expect them to use it in a smart way, right? And so my challenge has been more and more people now are using like these bots, right? They're using GrokBot and we get GrokBot and we get Claude and things like that for people. and then when what happens is when they actually uh when they leave a um they send a file to me or whatever or they want me to review something it clearly is done by ai and they haven't reviewed it and that just drives me absolutely insane so one thing we should talk about neil is how we can go about countering this because i have some thoughts on how we can counter it and i tried testing the team i threw it into the channel i was like hey guys what what's what are some things we could do about slop grenades, right?

2:20Eric Siu:And the way everyone answered was like anything but solving the problem. And so what do you think?

2:26Neil Patel:So let's actually go back a little bit. I hate how the media is twisting what Toby is saying, because when he's talking about people need to use AI, it's great. He never once said people should use AI to do mediocre work and just push it out, right that was never his intention when he was talking about or any entrepreneur or leader who says ai is great um second this is a huge problem in which and you've said this to me so many times and i really agree with this statement ai really does show you who's lazy like just doesn't want to do the work and they don't He was going to say stupid, guys.

3:12Eric Siu:He was going to say stupid.

3:15Neil Patel:No, I was going to say that for it, but I was like, no, I don't want to cuss. It really does. And then at the same time, it shows you who's really amazing. Now, your amazing people, you should already know they're amazing. The lazy people, some of them hide under the radar, especially a lot of people. If you have a lot of good middle managers, you can get rid of some of them. But still, it's impossible when you scale up to thousands of people to not have lazy people in your organization. I don't care if you're Facebook or Microsoft or Shopify, they all have some sort of lazy people, even if it's 1 % or a fraction of a percent, everyone does at scale.

3:50But it's really coming out and people are doing a lot of damage with AI.

3:56Neil Patel:Like I see it firsthand. It doesn't mean that I'm anti-AI and I know you're not anti-AI by any means. It's just people abuse it. They're just like, oh, cool. And we have a mutual friend. You know this friend. He worked for you for a little bit. the guy is just like, oh, let me just crank out all this. Look how much I can do. Look how good I'm at marketing. And I tell him this by the way, so I'm not saying it behind his back. But he's like, look how powerful I am because of AI. I'm like, no, you're having AI do your tasks that you don't know how to do and you're not good at. You don't really know if AI is doing a good job or not.

4:30Neil Patel:So then when you implement some of this stuff, what's happening is, is you're not getting the results in marketing and you're blaming other things. When the reality is, is you don't have domain expertise within this marketing strategy, like whether it's paid ads or GEO or email marketing or whatever the line item may be. And you're just producing mediocre, average or subpar work. Doesn't matter how much you're paying for Claude and open AI, the results just suck. And then you're blaming the organization and other people because you never took the time to really learn that marketing skillset and get really good at it so you can dominate.

5:06Yep.

5:06Eric Siu:So I have some thoughts on how to counteract this, right? But before we get some thoughts on this, you know, there's a reason why, I forgot what her name is, but she was one of the, she worked at OpenAI early, but she now has a company called Thinking Machines. And this is exactly what it is, guys. Not just machines. Mineral, whatever her name, she was ex-CTO. Yeah, I forgot what her name, Maria or something? No, I think she's Iranian. That doesn't sound like her name. Look up Thinking Machines CEO. Mira Muradi? There we go. Mira Maradi, right? Exactly. And thank you for that. So guys, it's not just machines, it's thinking machines.

5:42Eric Siu:And we've said this before on this podcast, right? AI is an intelligence amplifier, and that comes from our mutual friend Syed. So if you're smart already, it is revealed. If you're not so smart, it is revealed as well, right? All will be revealed. You can see everything. And Neil and I were talking about this on the phone earlier this week about this. but don't like what what reveals it even more is I got I remember I was um I was kind of taking a look at what uh people different people on the team were doing let's use sales as an example right so there's a period of time where someone on the sales team was just sending cloud design stuff right and it was all cloud design it was it clearly looked like it was cloud design but the worst part about AI when you look at Dex Neo is it's like it's like you know three ways in it's like the headline doesn't make any sense and it makes you feel like an idiot right three ways in the door.

6:29Eric Siu:The door was broken before it was even opened or something like that. Right. And I'm like, am I stupid or is this thing stupid? Right. And like it starts, you start to question your own intelligence as you're reading it. And so whenever you feel like you're kind of in the wilderness with this stuff, it actually means someone didn't review it. Right. And by the way, if someone's used a default cloud design, like remember Neil, I spoke at an event last week. I don't know if I told you this, but everyone, including myself was using cloud design. You know how I could tell there's like a little pill on this thing.

6:55Eric Siu:There's like the little italics that it has. And then it has a stupid like, you know, it's not this, it's that thing. And there's like three columns. I'm like, guys, like there's no differentiator here. And you're all looking like idiots, including if you're building an e-commerce brand, you should check out DTC pod hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas on the HubSpot podcast network. They speak with founders, marketers, creators, agencies, and platform experts about what it actually takes to grow a direct to consumer business from paid ads and influencer marketing to conversion, email, brand building, and consumer trends.

7:25Eric Siu:I particularly enjoyed their conversations around scaling a brand without losing what made customers care in the first place. Listen to DTC pod wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or a global organization. Also Neil has SEO tools such as Uber suggest and answer to public. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more and we'll see you on the other side.

7:55Neil Patel:Dude, I totally agree. And on a quick side note to go back a little bit, Mira is Albanian, she's not from Iran, so that's my bad. But dude, you bring up another good point about AI and I always talk about this when I go to conferences. Everyone these days when I ask who's using AI, everyone pretty much raises their hand. Not because they're doing GE or anything like that, They're using AI attached to get their work done. A small portion are doing GEO and AEO type of stuff. Well, I'm telling them all because, you know, like when you're in a big room and you just ask everyone to be transparent, a lot of people genuinely are transparent.

8:30Neil Patel:I'm like, come on, don't be shy. And a few people raise their hand, then more and more. I'm like, how many of you guys use AI? Almost everyone always raises their hand. Okay, the people who aren't raising their hand want to raise their hand. They're just too lazy. And now the people who are raising their hand, I always ask them, how many times do you modify this stuff? And then I ask him, how many of you guys actually modify the work? Almost everyone raises their hand when I ask him that, okay? And then I say, how many of you guys modify the work more than 10 % of the time? How many hands do you think are usually raised?

9:06Neil Patel:Should be all of them still.

9:07Eric Siu:Or less than 5%. Less than, yeah. They don't continue to modify, which you're reinforcing this point.

9:12Neil Patel:Yeah. So like they say they modify, but they modify maybe one out of 20 times. All right. That's not enough. That really isn't. So you're going to have all this me too stuff. And when I say me too, I'm not talking about the me too movement. I'm talking about lookalike stuff like where's Waldo where everyone just blends in together. And then they're like, why are my marketing campaigns working? Why are conversions going up? Well, if everyone's using the same exact marketing copy or similar marketing copy, similar conversion tactics, similar messaging, similar flows, it doesn't convert. It's because people get numb to it.

9:46Neil Patel:It's just like when the first banner ad came out, I had a massive click-through rate. It was amazing. People were like, wow, banners are effective. Why aren't they effective anymore? Everyone sees them so often that we all have banner blindness. That's what happens when you just use AI to just regurgitate and create the same stuff that everyone else is doing.

10:02Eric Siu:And guys, marketing is the act of bringing people to the point of sale, which means you actually have to stand out. And so back in the day when Facebook first came out with Facebook ads, people would do red borders around the ads and then they would get a very high click-through rate. Or people would actually have, and this wouldn't work, I mean, sex sells at the end of the day, right? But people would put a really beautiful girl or whatever and then the click-through rate would skyrocket. But let's come back to how to counteract this, Neil. And then I actually have a point on talking about a company that doesn't tolerate bozos as much, right?

10:33Eric Siu:But let's come back to how to counteract this real quick. So my thought is this. I read a book a long time ago. I had to be in my early 20s, right? And the book that stuck with me, I don't know if it was Never Eat Alone or whatever, or How to Win Friends and Influence People. I don't know which one it was, but the whole idea was this. And this story is now coming back to me. I remember there's this one story where it's like, Neil, imagine if you were my boss, right? Imagine if I turned in a piece of work. Before you would review it, you would say, Eric, and you would look at me intently, and you'd say, is this your best piece of work?

11:03Eric Siu:And if I said no, you would push it back to me and say, bring it back to me when it's your best piece of work. And then maybe I come back to you a week or two later and I bring you the work again. And you say, Eric, is this your best piece of work? And if it's no, I have to go back and do it, right? So what I'm thinking about doing now, because again, I put this out to the team. I was hoping someone would come up with a good solution here, right? But everyone's kind of going around it. And I'm like, you know what? Here's what we're gonna do. If you send me a slop grenade and I have to review it, guess what?

11:30Eric Siu:I'm not gonna review your work for another seven business days, okay? And if you miss a deadline, It is your fault at the end of the day, right? And you will also get a warning as well, right? And if you continue to keep sending sloth grenades, guess what? Those warnings are gonna add up. We're gonna have a paper trail for it and it's not gonna be a good thing for the longterm, right? And so I'm not saying this is the solution, Neil. I'm just saying, let's just brainstorm a little bit on possible solutions. Now, the easiest solution is you're just fired, right? That would be the easiest solution.

11:57Neil Patel:Yeah, because the problem is, it's like if I say, let's say you and I work together and if I said, Eric, is this your best piece of work? For me, that's a pain in the butt. I don't want to keep asking you if it's your best piece of work. I just expect your best piece of work to be turned in. I like the idea of the second part that you said in which, hey, if you're producing slop grenades, the first time you'll get a verbal warning. The second time you get written up. The third time, you know, you'll get written up again. The fourth time you'll be terminated. And we'll have a discussion through this.

12:31Neil Patel:And if you genuinely believe it wasn't a slop grenade, you can you know explain why and make your case but we don't have time for this it's slowing down the company I wouldn't expect you guys to do it to me and I would never do it to you and your colleague should not do it to you either because it just makes everyone inefficient so look don't do it check your work be thorough we're not kids here no one needs to be babysat just if you don't do it, eventually, I mean, if you don't do it, you're fine. If you keep doing it, you will be terminated. And this is just how things are going to work. And I think that's the easiest solution.

13:10Neil Patel:The reason I say the first time verbal, I know I'm not in HR, so I don't know how HR works. But the reason I say first time verbal is you have a good culture. The last thing you want to do is if someone, you know, doesn't check or they have some issue, you tell them they should learn their lesson and you shouldn't have to repeat yourself again, but they know it is serious at that point.

13:32Eric Siu:Yeah. The only thing I would modify, Neil, is because we're in such a remote environment today, the first time it happens, I'll just send an email just so there's a paper show there. And so it's like, hey, I'm just going to let you know. Yeah. And so it's not an official write up, right? But the second and third time, I agree with that. And here's the thing. I was thinking about this the other day, right? A lot of people, if you expect to do great things, it doesn't come from having a peaceful boss or like a peaceful organization, right? Growth naturally comes from being uncomfortable, whether it's lifting weights or whether it's having to wake up early and do things that normal people wouldn't do, right?

14:07Eric Siu:And so when I think about an organization that maybe doesn't have as many bozos, Neil, when I've talked to a couple of people that work at this company, it's SpaceX, right? Well, the thing with SpaceX is like, you get pushed, you push, you push. At a certain point, people can't take anymore and they leave, right? Which is why you see people that have worked there for like 10, 15 years, like they tried to come back and they can't anymore because they're in a different phase of their life. So I think SpaceX is actually a really good like counter example of an organization that just doesn't accept it.

14:31Eric Siu:And again, like it comes from high standards. You're like, you're not going to actually work at a really cool company where everything is pleasant, right? I just, nothing great comes from just sitting and chilling.

14:42Neil Patel:Dude, and I love the analogy you gave about, I think you mentioned working out there and pushing hard. You know, Lloyd, right? Lloyd's wife is a Stanford doctor, really smart. She posts quite a bit of Instagram content. And I love using that analogy when it comes to weightlifting and working out. A lot of people don't build muscle, as much muscle as they want. I'm not the buffest guy by any means. I'm underweight, sadly. I have the opposite problem where I, you know, even if I don't get hungry. So I tend not to, what is it called, gain weight. It was funny because when I was dating my wife, this was a long, long time ago before we were married.

15:20Neil Patel:Hence, I was dating her at the time. she would be like, you know, if I could package up the gene inside you that just makes you never hungry and sell it, we would be rich. And then years and years later, Ozempec came out.

15:34Eric Siu:There it is. Yeah. See, it grows faster than AI.

15:38Neil Patel:That does grow faster than AI. And I was listening to Lloyd's wife on Instagram, and she was breaking down a study, a medical study in which people who really build muscle push themselves so hard, they don't just do 10 reps or 12 reps, they're going until failure or close enough to failure in which their body can't push anymore because it tells their body, hey, you need to build stronger muscles or however it works biologically. And it's like, just think about that. To get results, you're pushing yourself to the extreme. You and I have been entrepreneurs for a long time. We've been marketers for a long time.

16:16Neil Patel:When we want things to grow, we push ourselves extremely hard and we go through a lot of ups and downs. You're not giving up and you're just mentally exhausted. Sometimes I don't think either of us really get physically exhausted from our work, but mentally you're getting exhausted. You're just pushing and pushing and pushing. And if people don't have that mentality of just going and going hard and at the same time learning from their failures and what's not working and adapting, then I just feel most of those people aren't meant to do well in a corporate world unless you want to be entry level.

16:49Eric Siu:Yeah, the saying is, go ahead, finish your thought.