How We Buy Attention, Why I Never Try To Go For Multi-Million Dollar Deals, CEOs Are Choosing More AI, Less Jobs

0:03Dude, let's talk about how we buy attention. Yeah. So I think the old way, we've both bought websites before. We've both spent a lot of money on marketing, you know, perspective-wise, not compared to like a Microsoft, but for our own brands compared to most SMBs and mid-sized corporations. and back in the day we would both buy websites for their traffic and their reach their google rankings their backlink these days i don't think you can buy attention like that because it's too fickle you buy a youtube following does it just disappear overnight does the algorithms change where you can't get as much reach in the future if you buy an instagram handle same issue if you buy a site that gets a ton of google traffic same issue almost if the rankings tank.

0:51I'm not saying they're doing anything shady, but you can't control a future algorithm update or changes they want to make with AI. It doesn't mean social media is bad or SEO is bad. I'm just saying it becomes a riskier business purchase. But on the flip side, what I've seen really consistent from a tension perspective of all the acquisitions that we've done at NP Digital, two of them were tool-based. One was Answer the Public and one was Ubersuggest. And no joke, for both those tools, almost all their traffic came from people just going directly to the site or Googling their own brand name. It wasn't for a keyword ranking for a random turn.

1:25It was all branded related. And I still think you should buy a lot of attention because you can use the attention to cross sell into other products and services. But I think you have to be more picky with the attention in which it has to be really strong brand affinity because that's the attention that's harder for an algorithm to kick out. I'll tell you how I'm thinking about it right now. um so actually sean sean kennel spoke at spoke at the the event here so he talked about youtube so he's got like four million subscribers across his two youtube channels which is a good chunk that's a lot and he has like half a billion views overall um and he was talking we both revealed our numbers so you're spending about 60 to 70 grand a month on your content that doesn't include you know maybe payroll and other things like that i'm spending around call it 20 to 25 a month or so that's the cost of us creating content right now and that's how i see us buying attention in a sense but the other thing that we're considering testing right now so i was just talking with with nick shackleford is one of those those little side conversations but have you heard of wop i haven't yeah so it's w-h-o-p so you can basically say hey you put 10 grand up and they follow the andrew tate model so the andrew tate model is you just pay a bunch of people to clip your content okay i think this will work well for both of us and so we've been talking with the WAP team, they're like, we're going to do like a$500 test, like nothing.

2:41Right. And then they're like, no, it's too small. You got to spend more. You got to spend more. I'm like, of course you're going to say we need to spend more. So then we're like going to up into$2 ,000 for a test. And I was like, Nick, how much, honestly, like if I wanted to do a small test, what does it need to be? It's like 10 grand. Okay. Okay. 10 grand sounds reasonable. So basically what happens is you determine how much you'll pay. You might say I'll pay$3 CPM and then you put 10 grand up and then people can come in and they'll start editing your content for you and clipping it and then putting onto social channels.

3:05And it's basically the Andrew Tate model where a bunch of people were clipping his content for like affiliate commissions and all that. That's the model. And that's how WAP actually was funded by Peter Thiel. Um, and, and they're, they're trying to do it like a payments arbitrage here, but, um, that's, that's the game. So I'm going to test 10 grand and then I'm now, I, it looks like you might test it too. So WAP is a community where people just pretty much do the Andrew Tate model where they'll clip up your stuff and then post it everywhere. Yeah. So it's basically a marketplace where editors can go and you can you can basically they can bid on your your project and then you can just say hey i'll pay three dollar cpm and like get me these views and then they these creators they get paid instantly to do this and they will also be posting it to like different different uh channels to try to get is it junk impressions or you don't know yet i don't know yet but the people that i've talked about like the way nick has talked about i'm like it seems legit enough for me to run a test so i will report back on this 10 grand test yeah the hard part for me is i found that most marketing methods that we've tested out really struggle on the enterprise end they're just not as effective because enterprises don't want risk i don't think that works for enterprise i think that works for you and me for personal brands yeah yes yeah yeah i can see that yeah so i'll let you know how it goes yeah yeah dude speaking of personal brands i was flying yesterday my flight was delayed so eric sends me this video that one of a big personal brand ended up doing and they say they have this business whatever the business is is related to businesses or investing or whatnot but what's funny is like i went to their site and i looked at it and everything was selling info products and courses and workshops and i was like at the end of the day, you are what you sell.

4:52If you truly made your money from investing, you would have an investment website. If you truly made your money from courses, you would have a course website. You know what the thing is? You look at Warren Buffett, you look at Charlie Munger, they teach for free, they teach for fun, and you can tell they're not looking to get anything from it. And that's an important thing because I don't know of any investor, like you know a lot of investors i know a lot of investors i don't know of any investor that needs to sell courses or you know masterminds and things like that yeah it's like peter thiel if he was to speak at your conference do you think he really cares for a speaking fee no no he would only want to do it because there's interesting people to hang out with and that's worth way more to him yeah he'll take his own jet if he's taking his own jet and that costs an arm and a leg speaking fees aren't going to make up for that well you know what they say if it smells funny then then then what it usually is yeah or it smells fishy that's what it is if it smells fishy usually it's fishy yeah something like that but it just it doesn't like the story's got to add up right like yeah you share your struggles i share my struggles and it's not like everything's rosy all the time and i i don't i don't think we try to pretend like it is rosy um and we just have a conversation and by the way we you met josh so josh today he's the guy that was like we just really enjoy it when you guys share stories um oh you know what you know what uh one of our other friends said so this is an elevator he's like you know you guys have the best marketing podcast out there i truly believe it um but you know why i think you don't get more views i was like why he's like because people are racist i was like i don't think that but like but i think it's an interesting take it's an interesting take i don't think really you know what i want to test in a couple years i want to test making ai avatars where it's perfect 10 out of 10 where you become a model and i become a model and the voice becomes like a sexy girl.

6:36We just have our marketing school at different types, different colors, different races, different genders, everything. And we just see which one performs better. I think people just want to hear from us. And I think the reason we don't get the amount of views that some other podcasts do is because we tend to focus on marketing instead of focusing on things like fashion or television or politics. That's also okay. So, you know, there are some marketing creators out there like Zoe Unlimited. So she's great. She talks a lot about the brand side of things too, right? Then you have, I think it's Alex Garcia.

7:07So Alex Garcia, he has a good Instagram channel, but it's highly produced marketing content where he's teaching a lot of the, when we started our very first episode, do you know what our most successful episode is? It's probably a tactic or strategy. Episode number one, how to learn marketing. But that's a very broad type of marketing tactic topic. The way we talk about it now relates to a lot more around business operations. And that's a much smaller group. It is, but when I saw your speech today, it hit me. I didn't say anything to you, but it hit me. We used to talk on very similar topics back in the day.

7:42And when you look at what you spoke on, it was on AI, but very specifically, it was very tactical and strategy. Would you agree with that? More so tactical, like how to get stuff done. yeah all right yours has changed mine's changed i used to be very tactical i stopped and i really mainly focus on strategy and nothing else i think that's better for enterprise correct yeah and i learned that tactical is better for smb yep and i think this group to your point is more mid-market smb level yeah yeah um i think you have to tailor your talk to whoever it is you have to know your audience that's what it is yeah yeah because when you're a part of enterprise people talk like when When they talked to us about Carrot, it's like, yeah, you know, we need air coverage.

8:23What does that even be? Air coverage means, oh, you just want a bunch of ads where you don't measure it. That's what air coverage is. Air coverage means you're spending money and you don't want to look at the ROI. Yep. That's what it is. And that's how they like to talk. And there's a lot of enterprise-y language. You just have to know who you're talking to. Yeah. Yeah. All right. One thing that we've changed on our end is we stopped trying to sell. and this has been going on for a few years because at least in the marketing realm, I think the economy has been bad for almost three years. Started around mid-2022.

8:56So that was six months there, all of 2023, all of 2024. And we're almost in mid-2025, but we're a little bit off from that. So call it a little bit shy of three years. And, you know, we've gone more upstream over those three years. But what we found is even though we're getting more inquiries and they may be for larger amounts of money. We found that even though a lot of the deals are for a lot more money, but that's mainly because we've been going more and more upstream. They're harder to close though in this environment. So what we found is getting in small to companies, like we try not to pitch, we still do pitch million plus dollar deals, but there's a lot of times where we know big brands are reaching out to us and they just don't have the budget allocation that they used to.

9:41We just start doing smaller projects that are still profitable just to get in the door. And then we expand. And I would say a large chunk of our revenue these days is expansion versus just selling someone on a big contract. And the reason being is it's tougher in this environment to close bigger contracts out of the gate. Yeah. You have to take what you can get. And so not only do you have to know your audience, you have to know your environment too. But going back to knowing the audience. So we have a speaker that's coming up right before you. He's bringing out a Trump impersonator. So the the um one of the the team members came up to me and said are you okay with that what do you think my answer was sure now my answer is sure because when you have a group of business operators where do you think they mostly lean uh this is florida so i would say right probably a middle to the right right in florida not in california these people are coming from around the world oh okay yeah so most people like we're both in the middle right yeah um so i'd say middle to the right and so in that case i don't think it was going to be offensive so i was like let's go for it right because it might be really funny we'll see what happens right um well the impersonator could be making fun of him and it could be both sides in which the left can get a kick out of it and the right can get a kick out of it and we'll see what happens there but um you know what i want to so you weren't here the other night but we had a pre-speaker's dinner so we had a debate with someone at the table um and it was actually i won't name names but everyone was like a little flabbergasted by this so do you think ai is i kind of know what your answer is gonna be but do you think ai is overhyped right now yes okay i knew that was gonna be your answer um so we had a debate so everyone at the table was like oh my god like you can do this and that and then the person couldn't couldn't justify it right why do you think ai is overhyped right now it can do a lot of cool things.

11:33It'll do even better things in the future. But when you look at how much time you have to spend to try to get a positive ROI, I'm not talking about from the efficiency standpoint of cutting costs. I'm talking about, at least in marketing, to incrementally grow your traffic, your conversions. It is extremely hard and it doesn't work the way most people think, in which it's not a magic wand that you can wave and all of a sudden your marketing's performing a lot better. I actually agree with that. 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.

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13:53Ready 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. Now let me say where I think it's not overhyped. So remember, you know when I get bit by mosquitoes, right? What happens? It becomes a giant bubble. Yeah. Right? And you have a pen. I do have a pen. It's a heat pen. but so i use chat gpt for this well so i have this thing after the covid vaccine called the skeeter syndrome what do you believe vaccine whatever let's leave that aside but i have this thing called skeeter syndrome where i get bit my mosquito it becomes a giant like pus filled ball it hurts like hell right now i went to chat gpt because i i did the pen before it didn't work right i did all these other treatments didn't work chat gpt is like no you have to take zyrtec and you have to rub like cortisone on it and then you don't rub it with a heat pen you rub it with ice cube so i did that this morning and it has prevented it from becoming a giant ball and so i'm like is ai overhyped i'm like in that case no and then my eyes hurt like hell if i i work from like i'm on the screen from like 7 a.m staring at a screen until like 5 p.m direct my eyes hurt like hell right not when i'm at home though for whatever reason but then ai helped me find a solution it's like oh you got to use this brooder thing and you got to go to the doctor and get this lippy flow and it's like i wouldn't have known any of that stuff right and so with those two things those are like personal things solving my issues and even for a loved one um right now i actually helped her find a solution that was natural yeah yeah yeah that one i took a screenshot you took a picture of it of your eye thing they took a picture of my eye thing that i posted the stories i thought it was great i was like okay if i if i have because sometimes my eyes hurt or they're dry i'm like i'll just ask eric because i didn't watch the whole video we have myobian gland syndrome meaning that our eyes when we get older do you have lasik yeah okay so after how long have you had it for Almost 10 years.

15:44Okay, exactly. Exactly at 10 years, your lipids don't work correctly. And so what happens is you have dry, your tears don't, they evaporate too quickly. So it becomes really dry eye and then it starts to hurt like hell. That's why that's a temporary solution. So the thing I found using ChatGPD is you microwave it. It's like these little eye patch things with water in it. And then it heats your eyes for eight minutes. Then you're good. But it's temporary. You still have to go to eye doctor and do a lippy flow and that will solve the problem. But that came from chat GPT. I think AI is amazing for research.

16:19It's much better than what we're used to from traditional search engines. The reason being is they truly understand what the document is talking about. And they look at a lot of documents on the web and it helps you just diagnose the problem and gives you suggestions. I don't think it always gives you accurate answers, but I think on the research end for most industries, AI is great. Where I think AI is failing that everyone overhypes is that it can do all the jobs and tasks way better than humans. And I think that is so off. Like we just did analysis of AI versus humans for lead scoring. And I'll pull up the stat on this because straight up, someone sent it to me on my end.

17:04When you look at this, AI did lead scoring of 83 % versus humans at 68%. And this was over 9 ,000. I don't know how many leads it was. Oh, 9702 leads. And it's obvious why AI can do lead scoring better because it can look at a lot of data points. But our conclusion from it wasn't that AI is better than humans. It was that you need both because where AI really fails is humans tend to lie when they fill in form fields in marketing. Like if you ask someone what your budget is, a lot of people don't really say their true budget. A lot of times they don't know either. That's correct. So when people lie, what we found is humans outperform AI way more to find those leads and qualify them than AI does.

17:53But when you use a combination of both, that is the winning combination and the reason being is just more efficient you do a better job on all your leads and the ones that are fake the humans of course outperform ai so i think we're kind of saying the same thing in different ways um the way he said it was like basically there's no benefit right now the way i see it is that i don't think it's overhyped right now the things we can do now i wasn't able to do like two three years ago and so with cursor our when i actually asked sean um in the back of the the room i was like how much faster are we now with cursor he's like 10 times faster our developers right um the fact now that if i can open up manis and i'll create a bunch of high intent long tail keyword phrases and i'll scan my blog from the writer guidelines and i'll write high quality content at 90 95 percent there within 30 minutes or for my slides and when i didn't want to wait for designers i had a stock image that was like a robot with an arm i went to chat to you images i was like make it into a robot did it right so i'm like i didn't have these superpowers two years ago and i have them now and so i think it's gonna get even crazier but to your point, it's not as good as where we think it's going to be in the future.

18:55So that's why I say we're saying the same thing, but we also have different ways of looking at things too. Yeah. And I still think in today's world, AI has been great for us and you can use it for business efficiency and you can use it to try to help you solve problems. It's hard to use it to directly create an impact on your revenue growth. You look at Klarna. Klarna backtracked on getting rid of a lot of their team and just replacing it with AI. And we've seen that with a lot of companies. It's just not there yet. Will it be then in the future? Good chance. No one knows for certain, but I think the chances are it'll be better or I'm highly certain that it'll be better than what it is today.

19:32How far it gets, time will tell. Dude, so you're going to be talking in like maybe an hour or so. Okay, so Neil's going to be on stage an hour or so. I already went today. So do we want to give a preview of what you're going to talk about? And I can talk about what I talked about as well. I think that might be a little helpful. So I mostly talked about, the premise of my talk was around how we can actually drive efficiencies with AI because I don't want this like pie in the sky thing like everyone's a business operator here so I'm like okay how do we drive more cost efficiencies or how do we drive more output using AI and that that's the premise of my talk and I look at AI right now as DIY, DWI, and DFI so do it yourself done with you and done for you and so one example I went through like a bunch of different things but I look at chat, GPD images as done, done, do it yourself.

20:19You have to go back and forth. You have to help edit it. You have to keep prompting it quite a bit. Now done with you, more towards done with you is like replet. If you want to prompt and maybe you've want to make an app, maybe if you want to copy Neil's website, I can take a screenshot of it and then show my writer, my, my, my brand guidelines. And it'll make, make the like merge it together and it'll deploy it for me. That's replet, but it still goes back and forth quite a bit. And then DWI, you can stop me wherever, but DWI is done with you where we created these agentic workflows using ClickFlow.

20:44So we'll find internal links that make sense on your site. We will create high quality content. We will consolidate, update, delete. We'll do a lot of the road SEO, traditional SEO tasks. But you still need a human in the loop there. Now, more tours done with you. I did this the other night. So for dinner, we had 11 people originally for dinner. I used GenSpark to make a phone call to that restaurant. And it changed the reservation from 11 to seven people because I was just sitting in my bed working. I didn't want to do it. Yeah. GenSpark.ai. It's a China AI again. Do you know what I do when I need a modified reservation?

21:15You go to your assistant? Yeah, exactly. And I had text. Yeah, but see, that's like, I'm just like, if a robot can just do it. And I looked at the chat transcript, I was like, oh, I did a great job. I usually don't have to go to my assistant. They just know in advance and they do it for me. Yeah, well, not everybody can read your mind, you know? So. Yeah. But isn't it? I mean, it's so anyway. Good assistants can read your mind. Yes. The greatest employees of any kind can read your mind. Yeah. Yeah. um but that i mean that's the high level of my talk i i i went through a but and i'll probably post this to my youtube too you i imagine you'll probably post your youtube you you yeah but you you missed out on the best part so when eric was giving a presentation everyone was taking a picture of a chart and he's like oh yeah this is just some random chart printed by oh so okay i generated i used manis actually to generate a chart that shows like the cost efficiency it's like 80 from seo 80 from images whatever like it looks amazing right and i shared it and i knew people were going to take pictures.

22:11So I let them take pictures. I was like, yeah, take pictures, guys. Take pictures. Yeah. It's not a real chart. And then I went to the next slide and I ended the thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm talking about my journey on how I leverage both my personal brand, built a corporate brand from it, um, and scaled up my own business and what people can learn from it. So I'm going to be discussing how I build a personal brand, my journey all the way from my very first blog that I ever created, all the way to my latest blog where I'm creating content, to the journey on how we eventually migrated to enterprise, to how we leverage that to grow our agency.

22:49We share some of our revenue numbers for the first three years, although my teams use this slide in the same over and over again. And every single time I told them, I don't know why they don't correct it. On half the side, it'll be like, you're three, 33 point something in million in revenue. And then on the other side, they'll be like 30 million. I'm like, no, it can't be 30. No one ever has even revenue numbers like that. But it's just a typo that they need to fix. But nonetheless, my personal brands never generated more than 10 million a year. And then we really started scaling up after 30 because we had a COVID bump.

23:23So the COVID bump really caused our business to just explode where we started doubling and more than doubling with really large numbers uh and i wouldn't say a lot of that is great execution i really genuinely believe a lot of that was just covid all right guys so that is it for today please don't forget to rate if you subscribe let us know what you think about this episode where we recruited recorded with the dji osmo i set this up myself we've got another camera over there so that being said we'll see you tomorrow

24:01Thank you.