Our thoughts on Alex Hormozi's content shift, Is 'giving value' overrated, & Underrated vs overrated marketers

0:28All right, everyone. The good news is that there's no long-term commitment. So you can just learn more by going to marketingschool.io slash agency. Once again, that's marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more. And we hope to see you inside. Did you see that Alex Hermosi is adjusting his content format? Did we talk about that? I think we talked a little about that last time and you mentioned he's going more long form or he texted me he's going more long form. It was one or the other. I don't think we talked about it. So the fact that he texts you is interesting. So go ahead, you can lead off with it.

0:57Why did he text you about this? That's interesting. We did a research piece and we sent out, we put a stat out on Twitter and he messaged me about it and how he sent it to his team. And then they looked at data and they found that, yes, you can generate way more views from short form videos, but the retention isn't there and the conversions to revenue and leads. That's funny. So your tweet actually got him to change his style. I don't know if it got him to change it, but he messaged me on the tweet and he's just like, yeah, we're totally seeing it. And then we're adjusting. Yeah. So look, he made a video about this.

1:28I think we kind of briefly touched upon it, but he made a video talking about how he's no longer going to go for wide audience, TAM, total addressable market type of content. He had one video where he was talking about this protein bomb where you have cereal and stuff in it. And then he had another one about relationships and things like that. And what we talked about on this pod was that that stuff might get a lot of views, but that's not going to drive customers at the end of the day. Or in his case, drive applications for people that work with him for acquisition.com. right? It looks like you're pulling up the text right now.

1:58Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He texts me April 19th, dude, you're crushing, you're crushing your X content, really great stuff. Like I forwarded to my team all the time and I put not getting the views. He said, ha ha ha. But then I said, but it's working for a B2B, uh, the shit with the charts usually gets the least views, but the best leads. And then he texted back after seeing the posts you made, I switched our strategies and serving our workshop attendees where we source deal. Right. He put that in pens. I said, ah, cool. He says 92 % comes from deep content. It's not, it's like not even close. I rolled out our new B2B strategy this week.

2:34It starts. I said, nice. And then we started talking about a Honda Odyssey and now he would drive a Dodge Caravan. He has a, he has a, he has a very manly car. It's like a truck. It's like giant truck. I don't know if you see it. He drives it really fast. One time I was on the way to the podcast last year. And he like, I was in an Uber. It's maybe be going like 40, 50 miles. He's like probably spent like 80, 90 miles, just ran right by us. And then I was talking about the thing, but anyway, I digress. So look, he's changing up his content model, right? He's going more, he's going more narrow on, and he's focusing the content more, right?

3:08You know, our good friend Pep from CXL, Conversion XL, he's changing it up too, talking about how he is no longer doing interviews, right? And that's something that's been sitting on my mind for a while. Like, sure, I enjoy doing these interviews. I enjoy learning from people, but I'm probably going to cut down my interviews to maybe 20 to 30%. I'm not going to eliminate my interviews with people. But you know, when I think about like Andrew Huberman, for example, he's always doing research. He's always experimenting. I'm doing a lot of that. And why wouldn't I be sharing these 20 to 30 minute long form videos where it's just me doing it?

3:39Um, in fact, Brad from record edit podcast.com, um, he's going to be helping me adjust my, my, my home setup, but that's, that's a side note. So point of saying all this is that when you, start to feel that your content is maybe not aligning with who you are exactly, and it's not exactly helping what you're trying to do long-term, then it's fine to completely change it, right? And I think a lot of people are warming up to this now. I think so too. And then who'd you end up talking about? There was someone that talked about a trend in podcasting where interviews aren't working as well. Was it the My First Million or was it the, there was someone who did Art of Charm or something like that?

4:18Someone was talking about how to interview podcasts? Yeah, like it's the old way. Like that content's more scale. So I remember, okay, so I think Tim Ferriss said this on my first million podcast interview and he was just saying how it's very much a red ocean now. Because when you think, remember when I first started doing it, it was like 11 years ago? Yeah. This is like right before Tim Ferriss even started his, right? And that time it was innovative. But now you have a lot of podcasters, they're all getting the same guests, they're all asking the same questions. And in that case, it's not even interesting.

4:45And here's the other thing. I think I told you this on the phone, but when I had someone reach out for a partnership on something, he was like, we got on a call. And then he was like, yeah, oh shit, you're actually a lot more legit than I thought you were. I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, oh yeah, well, you're YouTube, you just interview people. And I don't know anything about you. And I was like, something's got to change here. I see interview podcasts work the best if you leverage it to get customers. So for example, in different countries, some of our leaders interview CMOs on a podcast.

5:20So if you do a podcast, you interview CMOs, like a really big corporation that you're ideal customers, you build good relationships and you actually get business from them. You know, that's what I used to do with Growth Everywhere. It was all CMOs or it was like VCs, right? And it worked really well for that. I just got bored of doing them, right? And so now I want to satisfy my own curiosity. So I'm just going to focus on people I actually want talking to. A VC reached out to me this morning. He's like, oh, what are my portfolio companies? They're doing 15 million and they're growing really quickly.

5:5060 % year on year. I'm like, that's fantastic. Not interested. But what did they want you for? Can we get them on the Leveling Up podcast? But it's just like, if I don't want to talk to them, I don't want to talk to them. Imagine how sucky that conversation is going to be. Dude, I'm still waiting for you to post the, was it Gary Vaynerchuk? That's coming out in 12 days. Okay, so you record quite a bit in advance. Yeah. Yeah, and Brian Johnson is going to be happening later this month. So I'll be asking about how we can not die. Is Brian Johnson the guy who... Braintree. Yeah, he gets blood from his kid.

6:23He then sends blood to his dad. He sent blood to his dad first, then he got blood from his kid. Got it. And then he says he doesn't know if it worked or not, but it seems like his dad's doing well. So if you like my blood someday, I'm happy to transfuse you. I don't know if it works that well. We have to have similar blood types. Yellow and brown. No, it has to be similar blood types. Ultimate. There's different blood types. What blood type are you? I have no idea. Do you know what blood type you are? A. Okay. Yeah. It's a big deal in Japan, your blood type. But anyway, if you're looking to hire additional marketers for your team, there's no better place to look than, well, hiring nearshore, hiring offshore.

7:01And we found that we've hired amazing creative people. We've hired amazing people that can help with execution in the marketing side, whatever it is that you're looking for exactly, we are helping with that. We have recruiters from our side. All you have to do is go to marketingschool.io slash hire. Once again, it's marketingschool.io slash hire. Fill out the information in terms of what you need. And then we'll have our recruiters reach out to you to help you with the placement. And it should be great for you at the end of the day, because you're going to save a lot of money and you're going to get the help that you need.

7:30So you're going to get help from a cost standpoint and also an execution standpoint as well. So again, marketingschool.io slash hire and we'll see you inside. Neil, do you know the difference between underrated and overrated marketers? Underrated marketers are really good but not overhyped? So this is what Brian Halligan from HubSpot said. So he was the CEO of HubSpot, one of the co-founders. And he said, overrated marketers with good analytical skills. Underrated marketers with good taste. Okay. It's a good place to start. What do you think about that? I don't think good analytical skills is overrated because I see most marketers having terrible analytical skills, but I don't think having good analytical skills is enough.

8:18I think that's just a necessity in marketing. More so, I don't know if taste, in my opinion, is underrated. What I feel is underrated is creativity and thinking outside the box. See, everyone has budget constraints. Everyone has marketing constraints. How can you achieve the goals that a business needs or wants within their constraints? So my interpretation of this one is what you're saying with creativity, what you're saying with, you said thinking outside the box, right? In my opinion, taste here is that. It's creativity and thinking outside the box. And so I do think that's heavily underrated.

8:55I do believe there's a dearth of people with good analytical skills. but if I had to pick one or the other I'd probably pick the person that has more taste it's really hard to find people with taste and taste is one of those things that will always be in need at least for the next decade or so who knows what's going to happen afterwards but you're going to need people with taste that can come up with new ideas for all these models that are coming out because they need to train off of data I see taste as when someone says that they know what's good marketing and what's bad marketing and they have a taste.

9:30They can say, oh, that's good. This should work. That's bad. And I don't think it's hard to spot what's good or bad. I think it's hard to come up with what's good. Yeah. So I think we're saying the same thing, but in different ways. The vernacular might be a little different, but at the end of the day, you need people that are creative. You need people that can think outside the box. In my opinion, that's taste. And so the question is, how do we go about finding people that have taste, right? It's hard to screen for that. It's really hard to screen for that, but the easiest way to see if someone has that is to go back and look at their past work.

10:12You can ask for their portfolio. If they're a designer, they're a dev, what have you built exactly? Can you show us a portfolio? The other thing is, we've talked about this before, it's looking at their portfolio, but it's also asking them to brainstorm with you, giving them a creative problem to solve, one of the problems that you have in mind. and just seeing how they think about it, how they articulate themselves. One thing we like to do when we're interviewing people is we get them to write a written assessment on a couple of different problems. So we can see how they write too, because they're going to be typing a lot.

10:39We want to see how they format. And believe it or not, some people are terrible with grammar. They're terrible with punctuation. They're terrible with articulating their thoughts. And that is exactly how it's going to be working with that person. So you actually avoid a lot of pain by doing things like that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's on Brian Halligan. Remember Nick Shackelford? The agency. Yeah. And then he has the mushroom CBD like drink. I could be butchering that. It's called Brez. B-R-E-Z. B-R-E-Z. But anyway. Nice guy. You know, he tried giving me the drink when we met up in person or some CBD product.

11:14It was something like that. I have it. You want to try some? No, I told him I won't end up drinking it. So I gave it back. But it was nice of him. Here's what he said. And this is something we can debate on. He tweeted this and he's like, it's actually, here, I'm pulling it up right now. He said that giving value is overrated, right? And what he means by that is, and I'm pulling it up right now. This is from Nick Shackelford. So I stopped trying to quote unquote give value on here, here being X or Twitter, and speak interest and thought processes and what's top of mind. It's driven more friends, opportunities, and business than my threads and loom recordings on media buying or business talks.

11:53We get it. You're in marketing. You do something on this list. UGC, CRO, paid, email, SMS, influencer. Every piece of content is hope someone clicks on your link in bio and books a call. I respect the hustle and understand the reasoning, but what drives the connections or partnerships isn't what you think it is anymore. What's funny is speaking of giving value, I used to do a lot of my presentations as 10 ways to boost your SEO rankings or X ways to do this in digital marketing and get more traffic. And I'd be like, step one, this, step two, this. And I would give it all, you know, step by step.

12:28And even in my steps, like, let's say if I talk about Google search console and finding new keyword opportunities and updating your content and doing redirects and stuff, I would show step by step in the screenshots of like, click this, then click this, then do this. Here's how you analyze the data. And that kind of content, no kidding, got very little to no customers for us ever. You over gave. And then when I started giving quote unquote strategy trend data, and I gave value, but a different kind of value, more so strategy and just concepts, but didn't teach him actually how to do the things more so just educated them on it.

13:07and in my eyes, that's way less value. I generated way more leads and customers from that. So I would argue, I think it's more value to the human mind because here's the thing, right? If you teach them how to think about something a little differently, it's the theory. Strategy is theory at the end of the day, right? If you teach them how to think, are you still sick? Oh my God, still sick. Two weeks in almost. So my point is, if you're giving someone a strategy and it's like, oh, I didn't think about it that way, they remember you for that. People come to this podcast like, oh, I didn't think about it that way.

13:34They're looking for those little nuggets, those little dopamine hits, right? If you give them a step-by-step, they start to get bored. And like, are they really good? Guys, I'm tiring Neil right now. He's yawning right now. I'm sorry. But it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with. Yes, and calls with India continually for so many days. I know I've been waking up around 3 a.m. every day. 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.

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14:41Sign 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. 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. Animations, fast load times, responsive layouts, all without writing a single line of code.

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15:47Ready 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. That's what, he's probably, you've been sleeping at probably like 7 or 8 p.m. Yesterday I slept at almost midnight. Calls with India before I slept. Calls with India. Guys, that's how you get sicker. That's how you get sicker. But anyway, I think that's the point, right? I think it's people, what Nick is really getting at, kind of what you're getting at too is when you're sharing more of your, like a strategy, how you're thinking about things, it's more stream of consciousness on Nick's side.

16:31You're doing a little more prep, like you're sharing a lot of data and things like that, but you are teaching people how to think differently. And that's why people will remember you for what you are. Yeah. By the way, do you still have to get up early or no? I get up around 5.30, 6.30. Yeah. Oh, that's not bad. You get up at four, right? You usually get up at four. Dude, that's the one problem of having a company where you're global, you work the randomest hours and it doesn't get better. It actually gets worse. Yeah. And then every fire you have to get involved, like the big ones, the big fires and the big fires are now global.

17:07I usually don't hear about the fires until they're already put out. Yeah. But okay. When I say the big fires, it's the big fires within your purview, right? I'm talking more of strategic stuff. I'm talking more like MNA stuff, stuff like that. Not the people stuff. Not the people you totally spot on. The people stuff I don't have to deal with. I deal with the M &A stuff. Like we have a deal closing this month. So I got a wire money for the deal. Uh, and then we have another one closing in July, but I got to deal with the bank, get their approval on it, make sure they're cool with it, do the diligence.

17:37But yeah. And then you always have bull crap that comes up or something silly or, you know, people adjusting their numbers last minute and be like, yeah, we want more money. Oh, you're for a deal that you're trying to buy it. Yeah. And the deals we have right now, they're, they're pretty good, but it is, it's an operational nightmare. And dude, you know this better than anyone else. You acquired two deals in 2022, 2021, 2021. And you did two in the same year. So much months apart, two months apart. Yeah. Tons of integration work, tons of meetings, cultures that you got to deal and you did two in the same region, both in the United States.

18:16Were they both in Florida? No. One was in San Francisco. The other one was like Illinois. All right. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io slash agency if you want to grow your agency faster. And yeah. Make sure you go there. Next time you do a call, let me know. Join the call. Oh, there you go. Join it. Once we get to around 50-ish paying members or so, we're going to do the call with Neil. and yeah, it's going to be a good time. We're pretty close to that already, right? We're at 39. Yeah, so join. We'd love to do it and I can break down all the stuff that we're doing to grow and we're growing fast.

18:52To give you an idea, we'll go from start of this year, 750 employees. My guess is we'll end the year with 1 ,200. And we're going to keep, guys, we're continuing to jack up the price too. So it was$149 a month, now it's$199 a month and it's going to keep going up depending on the value that we add to it. So join now.