'Nice' Leaders Are Fed Up, Why Wide TAM Content Dilutes Your Focus, Your SEO Site Impressions Are Going Up BUT...

0:00I don't know if you've seen this Neil, but I am getting the sense that a lot of leaders are just fed up. So the past couple of weeks I've been meeting with other founders. You talked to a lot of founders too. And I have one founder. This person runs a global company. And this person is one of the nicest people in the world. And this person is just like, I am sick and tired. I am finding many, many dead bodies in my organization. We paid this consulting firm tens of millions of dollars. Okay. And they generated nothing. Okay. This is consulting from anybody would know. And they want to fire everybody.

0:34Okay, so that's one. I'll give you another one. The other one is a friend I mentioned. The first thing he said when he saw me was like, we just fired our agency, right? That guy. And he's like, because I'm like, why'd you fire the agency? Because they're not on top of AI. And also they're not passing AI efficiencies over to us, right? And I'm like, so what about your team? He's like, I'm also fed up with that too, because I feel like I've been taken advantage of. and two weeks ago we did an episode or a week ago we did an episode where we've done so many nice things for people and um it doesn't come back to us right so i think where i'm going with this is people are i think the meta now the optimized way of playing business is i'm getting a lot bigger sense of people are harder core now or more hardcore and um people the tolerance for bs has decreased a lot especially now that we're in a very unstable environment um it's decreased a lot so yeah i haven't seen too many founders fed up over employees or contractors the biggest thing that i see on my end is founders fed up with the economy like that makes two of us here yeah it just the economy sucks and i'm not saying it's anyone's fault this is not red versus blue you know politically this is more so the economy just sucks not just in the united states but globally and this has nothing to do with tariffs for years globally the economy hasn't been great and it just impacts business and as we say in our business it's like you're getting kicked in the balls excuse my language every single day and we have beaten dog syndrome that we now expect to be kicked you know in the balls and again excuse my language because it's happened so many times over the last three years so as good things start happening we expect something bad to happen to make up for all or to counteract all the good stuff that's happened you know what i mean i don't know about you i am okay being kicked in the balls i don't know if you've seen the the tiktok or the one of the these chinese movies where the kid just keeps kicking the guy in the balls over he just takes it right just like balls of steel right so so my point of all this is when you talk about being kicked in the balls as a founder this is interesting because I talked to another friend he has employees in the U.S.

2:52and he has employees in China and this is interesting this is kind of a side note when you incentivize he's like when I incentivize my American workers okay pay matters a lot sure but you also have to worry about promotions to career pathing and compliments right and so i'm like okay so how's it with their chinese in place what do you think it is none of that chinese employees it's money okay they don't care about any of the other stuff but they do care about status right this is why you see like really oh my god chinese people like guys i'm saying this as a chinese person status is insane i think just asian people in general status is a massive thing so for example this is why you see them posting pictures of their food all the time or maybe if they're in a really nice car or whatever and you see that happen sure in la in some cases right but i i would say status is status is is a much bigger thing i think in my opinion based on seeing both sides being an american and being uh you know i guess a taiwanese or chinese-american so so all the wealthy chinese people that i know that i'm close with none of them show any sort of wealth maybe it's a different form of status i don't know but they don't want anyone to know who they are and they act like that they still need to do well things are bad they never say like i'm doing okay your things are great there's i think there's different tiers to it though i think there's there's tiers where that stuff all matters to you and then when you get a certain tier you learn that that stuff doesn't matter anymore like for one you've never actually flaunted much right but i i think as you've gotten you know older or quote unquote more successful you care about that stuff less right and so because i actually used to care about this stuff maybe my my mid-20s or so um or early 20s because i was i was taught to care about these things right um but i really don't care about these things at least i think i don't but yeah you and i are on the same page i used to wear like loro piano pants everywhere when i speak yeah but nobody knows what loro no no but because they're comfortable yeah and now i'm at a point where i'm like can i just wear viore joggers on stage when i speak and that's pushing it See, that's pushing it, guys.

4:57I'm really debating. I'm like, can I do this? So that way I don't have to do even dress up anymore. I'm like, why not? It would just make things easier and better. Yep. This is interesting. So let's talk about this real quick. So Noah in here is bringing in a Ninja Creamy. And we've been talking about this, how Ninja Creamy has been blowing up. So Ninja Creamy has been blowing. A lot of people have been talking about it recently, right, on socials. and I even bought one. So my friend Billy, you know, Billy, right? So yeah, I he's like, oh, I make my protein ice cream using Ninja Creamy. So it's interesting because Ninja and Vitamix competed quite a bit.

5:37So it's over here, guys. Ninja and Vitamix competed quite a bit for the in the blender space. Right. But in my mind, I'm like, oh, Ninja created more mind share around the creamy thing. And they just released a new one recently. And we both have old versions over here. And I think the new one has a soft serve, right? Yeah. But I think my point here is positioning matters. And so Ninja to me now, it's like occupying Mindshare when it comes to ice cream and not so much the blender space anymore. And then when I think about, like, there's a customer that we have and then they sell homes, right? And they had one loan that was branded a certain way.

6:13I'm like, okay, well, what's on people's minds right now? Tariffs. I'm like, how about tariff-resistant loans or tariff-protected loans, right? Like, if you just rebrand it a little bit or even the dude wipes, right? You just have these wet wipes, but they do$200 million a year. Sometimes you just reposition something a little bit and you might end up doing better. Dude wipes is a prime example. There's nothing that dude wipes does that's different than a normal wipe. And yet I pay for it. Really? I do. I've never bought a dude wipe. I used to have other wipes, but I'm like, I don't know. It just attracted me.

6:42Dude wipes. I'm like, I'm a dude. I'm just like, done deal. I have tons of wet wipes in my house. What brand do you use? I think it's called wet wipes or water wipes or something like that. Yeah, you have like the traditional brand, but I don't know. I have the one for kids. But it occupies mindshare in my head. I'm like, dude wipes. There's nothing else like it. Dude wipes. And so why not? Yeah. So anyway, you have one over here. Actually, no, here, I want to go to another spicy one. You and I have been talking about this a little bit, but I've been noticing more and more that these business creators, okay, people that you and I know, they continue to go for wide TAM content.

7:17and my feeling is okay if i'm getting millions tens of millions or hundreds of millions of views a month that makes my ego feel good right yeah and so but if i have my business like i am being tricked into playing a game of more views and i feel like if you go wide tam content if you're a content creator great but if you have a main business i feel like it dilutes your focus because it tricks you into playing a game into inserting quarters into this slot machine to try to just continue to get more views, right? How do you feel about that? Because we're both on this YouTube journey or re-journey right now, and we'll continue to share our journey with you guys, but I just noticed that.

7:56I'm like, this is not good for your business. It's not, and it's not effective. I record videos in batches of four for long form. I'm starting to do video recordings of batches of eight starting next week, so it'll take me double the amount of time and I'm publishing instead of one long form video a week I'm going to start publishing two long form videos a week. So I work with a team and one of the guys on the team is like you know if you look at all the players on YouTube some of the people that we know like the Hermoses, the Cody Sanchez, etc. Like if you go more broad it just opens you up to the YouTube algorithm and like it's not going to work and I keep telling him it's not going to work.

8:38So every month when they give me ideas and they usually give me four ideas and then i give them uh i help script the four ideas so those give me a topic i give them the outline and i even give them not just the outline when i'm giving them concepts i'm usually recording uh on my computer screen sharing and i'm showing them like let's say if it's on seo i'm going into the tools like uber suggests typing stuff in showing them the volume showing them how i do things showing them step by step so then that way not only it helps create a better script the people who organize the script understand what I'm talking about versus if I was just rattling stuff off they can't see it dude in that video by the way do your does that footage make it into your video because I feel like it should just go into your video it does not what they'll do is they'll take clean sharper screenshots and then put that within the video versus my version of it because it's compressed uploaded they don't want end up using it because it's the qualities off yeah but every once in a while call it half the topics are quote-unquote biz op entrepreneurship lifestyle and i was like guys we can't keep doing this and one month so i would say the next 30 days because the new batch starts coming out they're all more consumer facing than what i typically produce for and the last one that i went live on youtube was really consumer facing it was like 12 habits of billionaires one of the worst videos i've ever published from a view perspective i think it was like 4 000 views or 3 000 views in the first 24 hours it was something pathetic wow which keep in mind that's really low for your channel because you're 1.2 million so anyone listening if you get three four thousand views it may not be bad but if you have over a million subscribers and you get you know 4 000 views that's really terrible and it's not the content like they're really good habits in there that are true the problem is no one cares to hear that stuff from me and i know that and now they're finally at a place where they're just like hey yeah we should just focus more marketing content it does way better but i've been pitching this narrative for a long time so the next batch of eight even though the next four that are coming out are more quote-unquote lifestyle entrepreneurship kind of like the habits one the next eight after that six of them are marketing two of them are um white tamp and then the batch after that you watch i'll do all eight very specific related to marketing and i'm just cutting off all types of content that aren't related to marketing i'm trying to pull up your channel right now on view stats but it's not working on my phone but um what i would say is they're like and i know who you're working with obviously we've talked about this but um there's no excuses because i do follow other marketing channels out there that are getting two, three, 400 ,000 views per video.

11:33And all they focus on is marketing. One guy just focuses on Facebook. He might get a hundred thousand views. That's extremely good for a Facebook video. That's really good. Um, and then one guy kind of goes a little broader and then obviously you have like AI marketing and things like that. Um, but I'm telling you when you and I focus on just marketing, we did really well. And no one knows this. Like it, when I was just marketing, it crushed every video crushed and that you're in the YouTube algorithms, good graces. The other thing I'll say too, is when I've been focusing more of my content on marketing, anything marketing related, it actually does drive leads, whether it's to the software or agency or things like that.

12:09So I do think, look, if you're a content creator, you can go wide-time content. I think if you are a business owner, I think the trap of going wide-time content is it starts to make you feel really good about it and you get distracted and you go further and further down that road. And I think that takes up a lot of your time and that time should be spent on your business. 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.

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14:23Sign 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, totally agree. Even like with my SEO, I started getting involved and took over my blog at the beginning of the year. So we're four months in now. And I told my team, I'm like, SEO is not a keyword game. It's a topic game. And the way I described it to them, you know, the people that were working on my blog, I was just like, most people think of SEO as you do keyword research, I'm going to write an article on digital marketing, another one on online marketing, another one on enterprise link building, another one on how to to get more Instagram followers.

15:08And they look at things as keywords. And what I was explaining to them was, I'm like, think of SEO as like a library. You walk into a library, and if you want to learn on SEO, would you be happy if some of the books were in one section, some of the other books are in a different section, and some of the other books are even in a sister library? And I'm like, you got to think about it from a topic perspective, and how do you help the user learn all about that subject in the easiest, cleanest fashion? And when you're creating content, how do you put search intent at the core of that article versus keywords?

15:45Like, because algorithms are so much more sophisticated these days, they truly understand what the content is about, excluding keywords, just literally, they're able to decipher what the content is. If you look at some of the old Google court hearings, they would say, Google fakes understanding a document. They're looking at a lot of other factors like keywords to kind of figure out what an article is on. But Google is in the position in today's world that they can read an article and they can know that the article is about dog food without you actually using the word dog food next to each other.

16:23Because if you're talking about a puppy, which I know is a dog, but a puppy eating, how often should a puppy eat? what's the healthiest food for a puppy and variations of this and you're talking about how much bowel movement they need to have do they keep eating it fast does that tell you that you should be giving them more based on the weight they'll understand that you're talking about dog food even if you don't mention that word exactly next each other word for word don't get me wrong it does help to include the keywords but I was telling my team that and we've been taking the topical strategy we do this for our customers all day long but for my own website for some reason uh i would say the d team comes to me not the c team wow not even the a team no we don't use the a team for my own stuff well well i mean it makes sense yeah because revenue wise we make the most from clients so clients always get the a team i'm always left with whatever we have time for so i took it over i'm fixing everything and we're at close to 40 articles that are either rewrites or new content and no joke for almost every single one there's been some misses but call it like 85 of the time the articles are shooting back up to page one getting tons of traffic within less than a week because you've adjusted the topical focus uh-huh yeah here's the thing when you think about youtube for example youtube what we just talked about is topical authority on youtube like you should be known for something but that actually applies to your website now too like you could argue maybe 10 years ago yes it was much more of a keyword game but now algorithms have gotten much smarter and when you think about ai for example i won't go too much into it but ai looks at vectors right this is how they come up with answers so quickly they're looking at clusters of of content and they're they're just quickly figuring out what's related and how to make a generated answer for you.

18:16And so anyway, the point of seeing all this is things are a lot faster, but I don't want to digress here. Okay. So SEO site impressions, at least for me, when I'm looking at mine, it might be the same for you too. My site impressions are actually going up, but traffic is slowly going down because AI overviews, right? But to your point earlier, it's okay. Because at least for us, we take the search everywhere optimization and approach. And my take on website traffic is again, same for you. That's why I think it's worth investing in website traffic. It's going to slowly slow down over a long period of time, but it's still worth investing in right now.

18:51And as long as you're diversified, there's not much to worry about, in my opinion. The only ones that are worried are the ones that put all their eggs into one basket. I agree with you. And marketing is all about diversification. And if you put all your eggs in one basket, you're screwed. If you look at, and I have this topic in there as well. If you look at what's happening right now with Google AI Overviews, Google is mentioning Google in AI Overviews. I don't know if you saw that, in which you can do a search and you can click and it'll take you to more Google results and keep you in their ecosystem longer.

19:22And I believe Google is going to push harder on AI Overviews within the next 12 months. This can affect more your top of funnel traffic, but I still think it's worth doing because it's branding i look at my business as an ad agency and i've talked about i shared some of the stats if i just look at my us rfps uh we've gone from 16 in 2023 to 25 in 2024 to we're in april as of this recording and when i would say almost mid-april and we're at 17 for 2025 yeah you're pacing ahead we're pacing ahead by a lot we should double so the rate is actually increasing while 2023 to 2024 we grew a little bit more than 50 but on you know the goal for 2025 is to double up at least this point yeah you're gonna grow 36 at this point how 36 higher right you're 25 last year you're 34 this year no i'm at 17 in april yeah but last year you're at 25 right yeah so oh we're not even halfway into the year i thought we're not halfway into the year yeah we're on track to double yeah so 50 yeah yeah 100 yeah so and and like i said i'm at 17 and we're only four months in so how many more are going to come before the end of the month right hopefully more i'm not going what i know it's real wood but um all i'm getting at is it's like what i when i look at our corporate website it's not like our traffic's gone up four or five times like really it hasn't gone up that much more from 2023 to 2025 but the big difference is is our brand has gone out there and i look at seo as a game of branding just like people buy air one because they've heard of air one it's not like they're googling for air one are you gonna take a shot take the shot no i'm not gonna take a shot we have this wellness shot that noah bought for us from air one here and i'm sure like branding guys i'm sure this is very expensive how much was this ten dollars each oh my god it's her shot it's expensive guys um but everyone knows they can charge a higher premium i pay seven dollars for their popcorn for each bag of popcorn is it good it's amazing oh my god it's it's amazing and it's cooked in coconut oil yeah it's great you should you should buy it i don't really eat popcorn the candied walnuts are great too i'll buy the popcorn from my movie theater once this is done oh that's great that's great we'll be we'll be recording from neil's place but anyway um going back to what we're talking about did you finish because I have some stuff.

21:48Yeah, go for it. Okay. I do need to do a quick correction on our tariffs episode. So I had a misunderstanding of it. So I thought the 96%, someone sent me a tweet. I was like, oh, we'll correct it on the podcast. So these tariff prices, originally when Trump posted this picture, right? It's like Vietnam, 96%, they charge us, right? I thought that was what it was, but no. Turns out that the way we're charging these other countries is based on the trade deficit that we have with them. and they're using some calculation based on the trade deficit. They're using a random formula. Yeah, and I realized that like last week.

22:23I realized it already, but someone came back and corrected. I was like, okay, that's right. So when we're wrong on this podcast, we will correct it. This person was like, her name's Kim. Thank you, Kim. Usually you guys are on point, but this one you missed the mark. I was like, yeah, we did miss the mark. Well, please don't forget to rate, mute, subscribe, guys, and we'll see you tomorrow.

22:45Thank you.