What's the Real Value of a Personal Brand?

0:00You have a topic here on what's the real value of a personal brand? because you kind of talked about it. Should we go on that one? Yeah, you and I have both done quite a bit through personal branding. I just got off the phone with Marina who handles all my speaking stuff. We ended 2024 exactly with 125 inquiries. December was 11, shockingly. We thought it was going to be lower. We're averaging around 10.4 a month, somewhere around there. But I thought December would have been lower because it's a holiday season. And I'm not saying all of those inquiries were really amazing where people were willing to offer me a lot of money.

0:35Some expected to speak. These are RIPs? Oh, these are speaking. Speaking engagements, right? And she asked, what's the goal for 2025? And I said, I want a 40 to 50 % increase. I don't know if we'll get that. And keep in mind, you and I already discussed it. I'm speaking less this year. You are too, right? Drastically. Wait, how does that work? We're switching them to online. Oh, okay. Got it. So a lot of people are accepting it. So I will go - Also you appear at the conference online? Yeah, on a screen and I'm not going to go and travel there. Yeah. And some of them are paying. I think actually all the ones we have accepted are paying.

1:11And I'm turning some down too. Like one, I think it was in Vietnam, offered me 20 or$25 ,000 for virtual. That's a good chunk, but it's four hours. Four hours. And then I was like, is this two hours or four hours? And I was like, no, this is too many hours. I'm not willing to do it. And she's like, what would you do? I'm like, I'll do 10 grand for one hour. She's like, well, they want more hours. They'll pay more. And I'm like, I don't want to do the more hours. I don't care if they're willing to pay. I just don't want to be in front of a computer that long. They're like, oh, they'll split it over two days.

1:44I'm like, I don't care. I don't want to do it for the money. That's like, it becomes a job. Yeah. And then I'm like, where's the fun? Then I'm just speaking for speaking and it's not going to be. That's not your job to be a speaker. It's not enjoyment. it. But I do believe the real value of personal branding is you can kick off a corporation and it helps create a moat. And with AI, I don't have any proof of this yet. Corporate brands, of course, are really important, but I think personal brands will become even more valuable in the world of AI due to things being more faceless. You know, it's interesting.

2:19So we should talk about Hey Jen in a second, because I have this really interesting one that ties in with this topic, but I was watching Kieran, the VP of marketing from HubSpot today. He posted some, these two HayGen avatars, and then they were basically talking to each other, but these avatars seemed like they weren't looking at each other and it seems like they hated each other, right? There's no emotion with it. And I think Kieran's argument here is that AI is going to take a very long time. We have personality here. Like you can hear it coming out. There's different and there's also like a vibe that we have, right?

2:47It's very hard for AI to do that right now. It could be a couple years out, but it doesn't seem like anything's cracked the personalities yet. And so to your point, that's what makes the human interaction worth more. And the other thing too is we talk about, now because AI is so polished, I was reading some articles. This is from the Behance founder, right? He sold his company to Adobe. He's just like, people actually want to see human artifacts in things. They want to see, an artifact could be like a misspelling, for example, right? They want to see the human in things. and I think we're going to see a huge pivot into like, let's do more offline things.

3:23Let's do more human things because humans like to see that, right? I think we're getting a little tired, a little AI, like maybe a little burnt out from it. Yeah, but let's go with what Kieran's saying about AI and emotions. If AI was able to create really amazing content and you knew it was AI. I don't care, I'd watch it. You would watch it. Yeah, I wouldn't. I want to watch humans. How do you? What if they just don't tell you? I think most of these platforms will cause disclosures in the future. Let me give you an example right here. So this ties up with the next one. So this AI Instagram gained 7 million views and 90 ,000 followers in a week.

4:01And I was like, there's no way. This is impossible. So this guy, Rowan, he posts a lot of AI stuff. I think it's called the rundown to Twitter, right? Or X. And so basically what he's doing now, he's taking Heijen. He made a Heijen avatar of himself. and then he's using 11 labs to take his voice. And then he's using a combination of other products, but he's making these AI videos on Instagram. It takes from like his newsletter or his blog or his tweets and it just makes it into AI video. And these videos, I mean, literally in a week, 7 million views, 90 ,000 followers. When he made that post, he was like, oh yeah, I gained 45 ,000 followers.

4:36You mean he gained another 45 ,000, right? And then, so I started talking to him today over DMs. And I was like, so what's the next thing? Like, are you gonna translate? He's like, oh, translation is the easy part. He's like, what I'm going to do is I'm going to target robotics next. Like he's targeting all these other topics, right? I'm like, holy crap. Like you're going to collect a ton of emails at scale for basically free, right? So I think that's really interesting. But like the point is, the point he was trying to make was like, look, this AI seems like it's better than me on camera. Alluding to the fact that maybe he's just not good at camera.

5:09But he's like, what matters at the end of the day is humans find it useful. That's it. I agree with the humans finding it useful, but just me particularly, I'd rather have the content from a human than AI because I just feel you can develop a deeper connection. I'm not saying AI can't fake that. That's just what I prefer today. I haven't seen a case of AI where it's just real and authentic. I'm with you on today, I prefer a human, but I think in the near future, we're just not going to know anymore. You know who wrote a really interesting post? This is why I disagree on that. One moment on the not knowing, some of the platforms are already starting to disclose if it's AI content when you're doing a search or whatnot, and they're just letting you know.

5:51And I think regulation will come into a lot of countries and they'll force these platforms to label if it's AI or not. And when we did a study, I think it was 1.8 million visitors. It was all human written content. The moment we put it was AI written, even though it was human written, the read time drastically went down. I believe it was somewhere around 50%. Maybe. We'll see what happens. I do agree on the disclosure piece, but Aaron Levy said this. So he's the CEO of Box. He made a good point. He's like, look, you know, when crypto or Bitcoin first came out, everyone's laughing at it for the longest time, right?

6:23People are still laughing at it, right? When Waymo or like these self-driving cars came out, that's never going to work, right? So his whole point was like, there's always these cycles in tech where people are just like, this will never work. This will never work. And they're looking at how it's now versus how it might be later. my point to everyone here is that even with the AI stuff that we're looking at right now, it might suck right now, but in the next couple of years or so, it might be completely different, right? Like Waymo's now, have you sat in a Waymo? No, still haven't. Still haven't, right?

6:50But it's pretty like, it's interesting. Like you would have never, like all the other people are like, it will never work. It's just too confusing. Cars will never work. And then all of a sudden it just works, right? So I think we're going to see, you're probably right on disclosure piece, but I think in the future, I think in 10 years, Neil, we can come back to this episode. I think you and I won't care. And I think people may be okay with it. The problem that I have is when it comes to brands, I've noticed that people have connections with people, especially in person. When it's AI-based and you're following someone, I don't know how you complete the loop of in-person and then really bonding with someone.

7:24I don't disagree with you. I think 20, 30 years or so, oh my God, the robots might be so good, but it's just like a human and it's really hard to tell. But by that time, we'll be what, like 70 years old or 80? Yeah, it doesn't matter. So yeah. Anyway, so let's pick this one. This one is, okay, what do you think is a$10 trillion industry that AI will disrupt? This is the new SaaS. The new SaaS? I would say physical work as a service. Very close. Okay, so it's service industry. So the SaaS industry, software as a service, is a$350 billion industry, right? Right now, Sequoia wrote this piece a couple of months ago.

8:07So Sequoia Capital. And they're like, no, the next big piece, it shows this big circle. It's a$10 trillion industry. It's the services industry, meaning that everything in SaaS now, it's no longer software as a service. It's services as a software. So like we're going to be charging on outcomes with software now. Right. Yes. We're seeing it happen with sales bots, customer service bots and things like that. So that's why Sequoia is very excited about the future. They're like, look, if you try to invest at the LLM layer, they're like, everyone's covered there, right? Or the hardware layer, everyone's covered there, like NVIDIA, TSMZ, like all these things, right?

8:42But where they're very excited about, where there's opportunity for everyone like you and me, is the application layer. And that is building services as a software. I totally agree with that. And I think the Sequoias of the world, they've already done some investments in this, is how do you treat services also in a more software-like automated way. And they invested in pilot accounting, I believe it's called. Baseless Expedition also did too. They have over a billion dollar valuation. They're trying to optimize accounting to not be as labor intensive as it should be. And they did that investment maybe three-ish years ago.

9:20Yep. Dude, all these things are going to be disrupted. Like I was just talking with my CTO today, we're in the office and I was like, Like, you know, someone really needs to solve this problem because there's going to be a lot of deep fakes. Someone needs to solve identification, like verification, right? And that will all be, that's when you combine AI with crypto and then you have these smart contracts that can settle these micropayments, right? Like that will happen. I'm like, unfortunately, we can't work on that right now. So yeah, but it's exciting. By the way, let's move completely away from AI for a second.

9:50This is entertaining. Watch. So what do you think the Hyundai founder learned from bedbugs? From bed bugs? Yeah. People still need beds even if there's bed bugs. Okay, so not exactly. Okay, so the Hyundai founder was dirt poor before. This guy grew up like a farmer's son, right? He used to eat tree bark, literally tree bark. So as he was coming up, he was poor. He was living in a house with all these other people that were poor as well, right? So here's the thing. Imagine this is a bed over here, okay? So let's say you're sleeping on the bed. The bed bugs will come up off the legs, right? And the table legs and then find you, okay?

10:30So what they decided to do was they put on all the legs, right? They put like, they fill the water up and then in a pan. And then they put each leg, you know, there's a pan surrounding each lake with water. You get what I mean? So there's like a moat around each lake. Yeah. So they thought they would get away with it. They thought the bed bugs would stop. Okay. Two days later, the bed bugs are back. They're like, what the hell is going on, right? It's like they're supposed to stop at the water. No, the bedbugs found a way to climb up to the ceiling and fall down and start eating away at the people.

11:03So the lesson for bedbugs is that they're extremely resourceful and relentless. That's what you learn from bedbugs. So the Hyundai founder learned don't give up and keep pushing forward. Dude, his life, you want to talk about us having a hard life or what? Like constant beatdown, governments taking, like the government takes over. Or the Japanese come in during World War II. Or like it's a coup de toss. And then it's like everything, like he has to restart over and over and over again. And that's the lesson that he learned from bedbugs. Huh, yeah. Well, it's worked out well for Hyundai. Yeah, I mean - The cars are good.

11:37Do you have a Hyundai? No, but the cars you know they're good. I've sat in Hyundais before many times, yeah. Actually, it's funny. We're at a founder's retreat last year. I was with Yaniv, right? And I walked by a car. I was like, that's a really nice car. He's like, it's a Hyundai, dude. And I'm like, it's still a really nice car. So yeah. Anyway, they've changed. The last 10 years, Hyundai has really changed their cars. You want, okay, I'll tell you, that's one thing you can learn from the guy. But one thing you don't want to learn maybe from the Hyundai founder, unless you guys think you can do a bunch of things like Elon Musk.

12:06Neil and I aren't Elon Musk. He did too many things. So he got into cars. He got into building boats as well. He got to building like all these random things. So, but it still worked out for him. So it is what it is. 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.

12:39Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style. Or if you need help with content creation, Shopify's got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos. Shopify lets you easily create email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they are, whether they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into a game with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash marketing school.

13:12Go 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. It was easy to use and the end result was polished enough to look like a developer spent days on it.

13:47One of my favorite things is that Framer's AI handles translations with a single click. So your site can be up and running in multiple languages almost instantly. And with real-time collaboration, your whole team can jump in and work together. No issues with versions or miscommunication. Whether you're starting from scratch or using one of their templates, Framer lets you focus on design while handling the technical side for you. Animations, responsive layouts, search optimization, and all the things that matter. Ready 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.

14:22That's framer.com, promo code MS. Framer.com, promo code MS. Rules and restrictions may apply. Yep. All right, you pick the next one. Did you see how the Google CEO warns warns that chat GPT may become synonymous with AI the way Google is with search? Why do you say he warrants? That's really what he put out. He's warning. And I'm like, that's just him sounding the alarm bell, worried that they're taking away the market share. People will just look at that as the default. Yeah. I mean, it could happen. But here's the thing. Gemini is getting so good. It's getting really good. My mix now, I don't know how you're using it.

14:58Like this week, I was using a lot of Anthropic. Anthropic is probably the best when you want to make projects like the little CFO project I told you about. That's good for that. I was using Gemini to come up with, Gemini, it has these agents. You can make music with it as well. There's a lot that you can do with it. And so the Gemini 2.0 version, I said, hey, tell me the red hot jobs versus the ice cold jobs in digital marketing. And it listed all the jobs. I'm going to show this to my team on Monday. It listed a lot of jobs that my team has right now. I'm like, guys, we're going to have to do something about this.

15:31And all the red hot jobs, it shows how they're all AI enhanced. I'm like, guys, we either do something about it, AI is going to enhance us, and it's really only the ones that choose to not be enhanced. Those are the ones that are going to lose their jobs. When I use search, I actually don't use chat GPT anymore for answering questions. When I say anymore, we'll call it less than 10 % of the time. I now just go to Google directly for asking questions and getting the answer. So you're looking for the AI overviews? Yes. Well, before I would use ChatGPT more often, but the AI overviews have improved so much for the last few months.

16:05Dude, that's crazy because I've been doing that too. I just go to Google now. Yeah, it's easier. Because the problem I have right now with ChatGPT is it's great for finding an answer, but that's it. Well, Google does all the other stuff decently well. And now they have the AI answers. I'm like, huh, this is just like old school where they have the knowledge graph or whatever version you want to talk about. But the benefit you get from ChatGPT, if you're paying the 200 a month, and I know not everyone can pay the 200 a month, but you're getting something that reasons. And here's the biggest analogy I got from this.

16:34I'm like, why is it important for the thing to think? Because if you're using like chat GPT, like 4.0, the answers, they spit out the quickest answer, right? But if it reasons, it thinks for a minute or two, what's actually going on is it's calculating what is going to have the biggest expected value, right? It looks like you need to drink some water. I'm good. So I'm like, that makes a lot of sense because when you think about AI, when they played AlphaGo in 2016, when they're like, AlphaGo has so many things that you have to consider, right? There's a lot of moves in there. It's like a chess game, right?

17:06Well, when it actually got to think, that's how they beat the world champion, right? But when it's only trying to like, it's like frantically trying to pick like the closest answer, it's not going to do the best job. I bet you Google will eventually offer that for free. Yes. Because they can afford it. Yes. If you look at the revenue numbers, it's through the roof. Yep. They needed$3 billion last year. They don't need the revenue. They need to bring that market share back. Yeah, OpenAI needs revenue. Google doesn't. They just need people to click on ads. That's actually a good point. Because, okay, you think about our high school years when people started using Google.

17:37It was far and away better than everyone else. The thing is, everyone else is catching up so quickly right now. Back in the day, Lycos excite all these other search engines. It's like, if they caught up, we probably would have stuck with them. In today's world. No, no, it wasn't that. What caused Google to do well? Yes, search results were better, but there were some decent alternatives. Google was a simple search. People were tired of searching and seeing a shitload of random crap on the page. To me, that's still better. That's still better. The user experience was better. It's a better product.

18:03Yes. The results were better too, but the big change that caused a lot of high school students to join was, oh, I don't have to see 50 things on a page. So I think, look, again, my point is still the same. It's this product, ChatGPT, was ahead two years ago. It was far and away the best. The thing is, they didn't innovate quickly enough and everyone else might just catch up and then it just might be a couple big players. Which brings me to my CNBC article. Microsoft expects to spend$80 billion this year to enable AI data centers in physical. Physical. Fiscal, yeah. So billion on AI-enabled data centers.

18:40That's a ridiculous amount of money. It's not slowing down. The point is, you guys want to buy some NVIDIA stock, it's still a good time. But here's the crazy part. OpenAI can't afford to spend this kind of money. Microsoft can. Amazon can. Elon can. Elon can. Facebook can. But there's not too many people. And if you look at Elon, X can't afford to do it. Elon personally, people are just willing to throw tons of money. And people always forget, Elon was a co-founder of OpenAI. He brought over Ilya, who coded all the stuff in the early days and was leading the team. And by the way, it took him 19 days to build that mega cluster.

19:19Everyone else thought it was impossible. Even the NVIDIA CEO was like, that's impossible. But at that point, NVIDIA is like, oh my God, he's one of one. Yeah. I think a lot of investors are saying this. I really recommend everyone listen to the, have you listened to the BG Squared podcast? Which one? Brad Gerstner. I know, but which episode? Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley have this podcast, but they basically, they've been saying on a lot of podcasts that like, is this going to slow down? Is this just going to be like, you know, Cisco in the 1990s or so, right? Where everyone's building on networking infrastructure.

19:49And his argument that is like, this still has another five years, maybe 10 years to roll. And this has been being reinforced right here by this$80 billion in spend. And that's roughly their annual profit. Like, just think about that. $80 billion. That kind of money, if you're just like, hey, I want to do this. Let me raise$80 billion. That's hard to do. But if you're one of the big players, and speaking of LLMs, I don't think there's going to be tons of options. I think it's going to be Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, and OpenAI. And I think you're going to see a few alternatives from Asia. Maybe XAI.

20:25Maybe X. Yeah, I'll throw that in there. And I think you're going to see a few alternatives from Asia. But that's really it. And I think that's more, I'm grateful that it's those five people that are competing with each other, right? Competition breeds more innovation. And I think what you're seeing coming out of China, by the way, I saw someone building these, he built like an app in an hour. I was watching this video. I was bored, right? Because we had nothing to do this break. So anyway, it's like 10 times less than paying a chat GPT's tokens. And it's like, you know, we Chinese, we know how to undercut.

20:57So yeah.

21:01I really do see it that way. Yeah. That is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Go to the, go to markingschool.io slash agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association. And we'll see you tomorrow. Thank you.