It Really Does Take 10 Years To Build A Brand, Are Most CEOs On A Rampage Right Now?, Shopify Is Making E-Commerce Sites A Relic?

0:03You asked me last time, why do I do this event for free? And I kind of mentioned that whenever I do these things, everything comes back to me 10 or 100 fold. And but it just on a different timeline. But I also know there's level there's levels to these events, too. So the event that I told you about the business summit, they actually hit me up because I did this event. And this event actually this is the record for number of attendees. And they're up 50 percent. Yeah. Wow. So they're like, how did you do that? Right. And they're like, OK, can you help with this event over here, which is that event?

0:34And then what's going to happen is I'm going to get you involved because you're my friend. Right. I'm going to get involved with that one too and hopefully help and see where it goes. But if you do something and it's clear that you're competent, other people are going to come ask you, especially if it's groups like this. There's level ups to everything. I agree with that. I think doing events is worth it. I go to a lot of events. Next year, I'll pick back up. This year was slowed down because I decided towards the end of last year, I'm going to slow it down. This changes mine very quickly. Well, the economy also started getting bad.

1:10And dude, when craft gets bad, I need to generate revenue. So I have to hit the road. Sure, man. I don't really have a choice. Technically, I could just sit at home and decide to make less money. But I can't mentally. So how many days do you think you're going to be gone this year and then next year? This year, I don't think I'll be on the road for more than 150 days. Okay. Next year, I think I'll take it back up to call it like 200 and something. Oh, my God. Okay. So get this. So there's an amazing guy. His name's Vin. He was on the Diary of a CEO podcast. He's a great conversationalist, just a great speaker overall.

1:46Very well-spoken, probably the best that I've seen. So he listens to this podcast, Hello, Vin. And he was just talking about when he used to be a professional speaker, he was out 200 days a year. And his kids, I think it's just something about the kids where it felt wrong and it felt like maybe there's resentment building with the kids, right? and um you know he's dialed it back quite a bit now he doesn't really do a lot of podcasts or speaking um but he has a much better relationship with the kids so i almost feel like i need to keep sending you in the irr thing the i sent neil like this picture of of this guy that said it doesn't matter how much additional internal rate of return that you make um if your kids hate you at 20 i feel like i need to keep sending that to you yes but what i've changed is i now take my kids with me on some of the trips okay okay that's so i'm trying to find a balance that's good that's so like, uh, I'm doing an event in Vegas.

2:34They're coming with me there. Um, my team was trying to see if I can do an event in Arizona and like, uh, yeah, she would come as well. Oh, that's cool. So then I'm trying to see if, uh, the kids would be okay. Taking out of school during that time. Yeah. Dude, we have a lot of friends that would just rip their kids out of school. Like whenever a trip's happening. Yeah. You can just do that. Right. That's what I want to do. I just have to make sure wife is okay with it. I mean, the school is probably okay because you you know you hook up the school right yeah right yeah we donated yeah yeah so you know what happens with these schools it's a racket you know if you donate too much to the school they don't want you to leave the school to go to a different school because you need letters because you're a whale you need a they you require letters of recommendations to go to the next school so if you're a good donor it's really hard to get them to push to try to fight for you to leave to another school because they want the money from you wow see there's a whole there's a there's like another podcast we can do on all this stuff um but okay that's interesting so you figured out a way around it and of the 200 days that you're going to travel next year how many of those days are you going to include your family uh i would say at least like 30 40 that's actually good 34 days okay 30 40 percent oh no no no no that's that's less because you're doing 200 days um so 10 20 percent uh 15 20 Anyway, because the thing for Neil is when Neil travels, the same thing for me.

4:01I usually just stay in my room and I work. And I don't really like I might go sightseeing if it's somewhere I haven't been before. But then usually I'm just comfortable ordering room service and working and watching TV. Like it's a pretty good like I'm actually very happy doing that. Yeah. So. So yesterday when I come into Miami, some guy messages me. OK. And this is a little non PG. So this guy's messaging me. uh this guy has a business in los angeles uh he does really well he's like oh you're going to miami i'm like yeah i'm like i just landed and keep in mind i landed late so it's pretty much close to midnight at this how did he know you're going to miami he asked me he's like where are you and because i was texting he was texting me and i'm like dude i can't answer your business question over the phone he's trying to facet me i'm like in a flight text me your business problem i'll answer it so then he's like are you going to ocean 11 i think it was called or a ocean 11 i don't know whatever whatever it was that's a movie that's what i thought too and i was like the movie with uh george clooney and brad pitt he's like no it's a i think he said a club or gentleman's club or something like that and i'm like i'm going to a different club and he's like what club are you going to and i was like the saint regis he's like you mean the saint regis hotel i'm like yeah i'm gonna go to sleep and i'm gonna sleep in club saint regis and this is the best partying ever because when i travel oh 11 11 is it 11 so 11 is owned by y pure i didn't know that yeah there you go i thought it was oceans 11 he's joking it's just 11 okay so for me when i go to a different country i'm traveling my favorite thing to do isn't to go out it's straight up binge watch my netflix shows that i couldn't watch you know because a lot of random times i was in jet lag stay in order room service i still try to work out although i pull my back so i skip today and then um sleep in because when you have young kids you do not get to sleep in to me that is better than partying going out and it energizes me and then i actually work way better because i'm like just like recharged dude speaking of which okay we like traveling and all that okay did you watch white lotus season two i've seen all three seasons okay so but season two is the best one right i like season one better i've only seen season two so far so i'm like four episodes in but the way that four seasons marketed everything like it basically is marketing for four seasons that's how i see it right and but like and over like it's not even just it's over three seasons too so i i think it's like the impressions that you get the number of times people are watching this where it's like ingrained in their head that you i want to go back to italy now and i want to go to stay at a nice place like that sticks with you but i don't think they're all in four seasons i don't think season one was four seasons i don't know about season one i know season two and three are i think the hotel is called white lotus no of the first one i think all of them no no it's actually they for they filmed it i looked at i looked this up on chat gpt uh i i think all of them are actually four seasons and then season three they actually picked a couple of uh other nice five-star hotels in thailand no but i don't during the show i don't know if they call it four seasons no no it's it's actually white lotus yeah they just rebranded it but it's like but then once you start to look it's like what is this hotel like i want to be at the white It literally starts out.

7:09It's like, oh, it's a Four Seasons. Yeah, I can see that. And then you spending the extra amount of time, like you're even more invested because you spent time researching it. Dude, so I was at a Four Seasons recently in Vegas, okay? Check this out. So when I was at the Four Seasons in - Oh, that one on the side. Yeah, we always go there. It's connected to the Mandalay Bay because there's no smoking. And with kids, I just don't like smoke. I just refuse to do anything that is smoke-oriented because I don't like the second hand. So they give my kid a teddy bear. She's sleeping in the car in her uh car seat she hides in there a teddy bear into her buckle which isn't the safest thing because you don't want there to be a gap but she was sleeping peacefully and we were in like a residential area driving um so i'm like i let it be because it wasn't dangerous um but yeah dude they like they gave a teddy bear because they knew my kids were like teddy bears when they arrived it was close to easter they created a art piece cookie with different edible chocolate colors and they got to paint their own canvas um they did an easter egg hunt with them they did all these extra things to make the event memorable and also when i go down there no joke if i if i arrive the valet they almost everyone knows my wife and my name uh they know our kids at could be because we tip them well but yeah you know we don't go there that often but call it three times a year they just create really good experiences and the thing is they know if they give your kids a good experience they're going to want to go back there and they will bother you to do it not bother you but they will ask you if you can go back there love it so we keep going back there and we spend the money just because and it's it's expensive it would be cheaper to stay at a hotel with the casino because they make casino revenue from you yep so the question i have for you is are you seeing with most of your ceo and founder friends right now would you say more ceos are on a rampage right now or less what do you mean by rampage meaning that these people are on a tear to uncover any areas of inefficiency and ruthlessly cut if needed i'm gonna rephrase it a little bit when i describe what they are they're on a rampage but a little bit of a different type of rampage some of it could be cost cutting some of it could be trying to drum up new business and revenue.

9:30Some of it could be trying to get strategic and figure out how to partner with other people and generate more revenue through cross-selling products from competitors or people who are in complementary businesses. They're trying to do whatever because the sentiment of the economy is so bad, they're afraid that they're just going all in. And going back to AI and cost cutting, the reason some of them are trying to figure out ways to reduce expenses is they're planning out contingencies for when things get worse because they don't know how bad it's going to get. It's been almost three years and they think it's going to continue for a little bit.

10:08Fed's not reducing really rates at any moment right now. And tariff problems haven't been solved. So they're just trying to figure out, well, if we can create efficiencies, maybe I don't have to do layoffs in a few months. Yeah. 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. The best part about it, it has everything you could need.

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12:48I just let go my head of product. Oh, we just fired an agency over here. I was like, dude. He's like, yeah, I'm on a rampage right now. And interestingly enough, I have someone I know. She runs like a large like food company. That's global. And she is a very nice global CEO. And she's like, yeah, I'm finding a bunch of dead bodies everywhere right now. And I am just, I want to cut everywhere. And yesterday I met someone for the first time. Oh, I'm going to fire my entire marketing team. And so you have a lot of these really kind looking people that it just seems like they are maybe because to your point we've been sitting in this this crap for the last three years or so i think people are becoming more battle-hardened more battle-hardened and i think people are willing to take less crap and you can probably argue i've become more battle-hardened too and i think you have too in the last three years or so more hardcore more rampagey um and that's not to say hey we're here to just want to cut people i think our tolerance for bs is lower now our tolerance for pain is probably higher but our tolerance for BS is lower.

13:41And I think it's because a lot of us don't have choices. Growth has slowed down. And when growth slows down, valuations naturally decline as well. In a bad economy, valuations decline naturally as well. So when you have a declining in valuation because of lower growth or negative growth, and because of a bad economy, you're getting hit twice on the valuation end. So they have no choice but for ways to figure it out. And what I've noticed with a lot of these people, including myself, when times are good, we're much more chill. I actually travel less in a good economy than a bad economy because things are growing without me having to push hard.

14:18And I don't focus as much on meddling in the business when things are good versus when the economy is bad because it's like, ah, it's working even if it's done in a different way than I think is best. Whatever, it's working, let them go and do it. Dude, like I said, tough times create strong people and then it just goes on and on until we go back to we have people good times create weak people and that that's what happens so we get one more to do um now and going back to the weak and strong people i think the same person can get weak during good times but then turn strong again during bad times and so forth so on i think people can also go in cycles as well where they get comfortable when times are really good yeah It's true.

15:01Like, yeah, you're right. People go in cycles. There's times where you want to work. You have a season of work. And there's times where you don't want to work. Maybe you have kids or whatever. And then there's times like, oh, maybe you feel like working again. And actually yesterday, someone said to me, so they had a CEO took over their company. And this guy hadn't worked for like 20 years. He was a publicly traded CEO like 20 years ago. But he hasn't worked since like, you know, sailed off into the sunset. Right. So they weren't sure about this guy. But it turns out this guy comes in. He's a badass.

15:27It's just he didn't want to work for a while. and now he's back working again and he's driving results. And this is a publicly traded company and it's that company we're talking about that you're trying to do, potentially deal with. Oh, cool. Yeah. Oh, that guy took a sabbatical for a long time. Yeah, this incoming CEO, this is a hired gun CEO, but he took a sabbatical for like 20 years or something like that. Call it 10, 20 years. Maybe he was investing, maybe he was like on boards and things like that, but he already had everything he needed. But I think he felt the need to go to battle again and maybe he's back.

15:58No, I didn't know that. That's what it is. All right. There's going to be a Shopify chat GPT integration. Did you see that? Yeah. Okay. So someone commented that Shopify is basically making e-commerce sites a relic. What do we think about that? Do we think that's true or false? I think that's false. I think it's short-term false, long-term true. It depends on how good chat. How long-term? Yeah, and how well chat GPT evolves. How does it integration? not just not not just that because if you look at gpt i think they've done really well for image creation and i think they've improved their research um they even do stuff like videos but if you look at how much they've evolved like the differences in versions i actually think yes they're still good improvements but they're not as drastic as a previous versions from one to another.

16:53I think it's slowing down on the innovation end. Yeah. We'll see. I think just we can agree that website traffic is going to go down over time. I think it's still important for websites to have a traffic. I think if you're a brand or a company, you need to have a website, but I don't know if a lot of the business is going to be done on your website long-term. I think it's going to decrease over time. I think it'll still be important. I wouldn't go as far as a relic, but I think it'll become less important over time. And I would rephrase it. And I'm pretty sure Eric and I, or I'm not pretty sure.

17:19I know we're saying the same thing. When Eric says it's not as important in the future, he's not saying that you don't need a website. He's saying that it won't drive as much of your sales from a revenue perspective. He's saying that you still need a website because if you don't have a website, it's probably gonna hurt your social media presence. It's gonna hurt that omni-channel approach. And what you'll find is sales are gonna happen natively within different platforms. Just like how you can purchase on Instagram right now, you'll start being able to purchase on all the other social platforms like YouTube, et cetera.

17:51So it doesn't mean that having a website isn't as important. It's more so more important to meet your customer wherever they want to be. But you need to have a website. It's super important for your brand. If you don't have one, I bet you'll see less results from all the other channels. And the reason you have to have a website is you can control the experience. You're limited on what experience you provide on other people's platforms based on what they allow you to do. Yeah, I think the big thing there, so you're right. The big thing there is you get to tell your own story on your website. And that's why it's important.

18:21Yes. And it's still important from a revenue perspective, but it'll just drive a lower percentage of your overall revenue compared to, like, if you're running Instagram ads, why would you want to send them to your website when your convert rate's going to drop versus just having them buy right then and there on Instagram? All right, guys. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe. Let us know what you think about this episode where we 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. Jacob's