Why People Are Melting Down Over DOGE

0:00All right, let's talk about why people are melting down on Doge, which you have in the sheet. And then we can go into one of my topics on does your company need a Doge? Yeah, I was talking to Brad about this. So this is interesting. So Brad's from Record Edit Podcast. And you saw what's happening on X. You see everything that's being revealed. There's 20K. No, sorry, 20K. 20 million spent on Iraqi Sesame Street. 200 grand on like, you know, this play. I thought it was 4 million on Sesame Street. No, 20 million. And then it was$100 ,000 for like this – I think it was like a DEI book for Somalia or something like that.

0:39And then there's a lot of waste that's being uncovered right now. Now, you would think – let me just ask you this. And to clarify, when Eric says waste, he's saying that it's not money going towards the United States of America. He's not saying that some of the money that they're spending for some of these countries is needed or not needed. Yes, correct. And so, look, I think what I really mean by all this is that the American taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going. And forever, basically, it's been opaque to us. In our lifetime, we've actually never known. Until now, we're starting to see all these things.

1:15And by the way, if you think about this, if someone was stealing from your bank account, okay, and you would want to know who it is, right? And so – Know who it is or have them thrown in jail or – Both. But first you want to know who it is, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Maybe you start to see on camera who's stealing it. Okay. So now you know who it is. And now you have the ability to take them to trial and put them in jail potentially and get your money back too. Right. You would want to know about this. Right. But what's happening right now is you actually have the people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

1:44They're like an uproar about this. They're melting down over Doge. Cause they're like, Oh my God, Elon, you know, he's a billionaire. He's destroying our democracy. He's doing all these things. There's like an entire uproar about it. But the analogy I just gave you is like, guys, if someone is taking from our like bank account, we should know what's going on and they should be brought to justice. Right. But that's not what's happening. You see how much money they said they supposedly sent to Al Qaeda. I don't know if this is true or not. No, no. They're saying they send billions a year to Al Qaeda.

2:11It's every week they're sending money. You know, they sent$260 million to George Soros. I saw that too. I don't know what's true or not because I can't see the files. Yeah. But, And they may have reasons on why they're doing some of this kind of stuff, but we all know Al-Qaeda hasn't treated women kindly at all without getting into it. I think if the American taxpayers agree to spend on these things, it's just like how America voted. So 60%, what, 60 % of people voted for Trump, and Trump said he was going to do this Doge thing, and he said Elon was going to run it. So this thing is all above water, and now there's like this uproar about it.

2:48And then I was just telling, like politics aside, I think if Democrats want to win the next time, they need to keep they need to come back to the center because they're just going more and more like crazier and crazier. And this is not a political show, but I'm just saying this doesn't help when you melt down on TV and you melt down on X because what is it? It's actually I think it's 67 percent of people now look at the Democratic Party as unfavorable. Huge. Have you seen that? I have not seen that. Andrew Yang posted it. And it also depends who they're surveying and the sample size and all that, right?

3:21Which can skew the results. But the most interesting thing that I saw about Doge was, we all get the concept, right? It's the Department of Government Efficiency. And their overall job is to cut the fat. And whether that's fat or not, I don't know who decides that. But whatever fat is and whoever wants to decide. But the most interesting thing that I saw was not necessarily the expenditures, because after you see a few of them that are ridiculous, like, okay, you already know more ridiculous stuff is going to come out. And some of this stuff, there must be a reason. What is the reason? I don't know.

3:59But what's interesting for me is you're getting a lot of people arguing over the fact that a team of people are able to go in and look at the expenses. What I haven't seen one argument online yet is of the expenses and if they're valid or invalid. What I mean by that is you have a politician saying this is crazy. Someone's going in there, checking it. and at the same time they're releasing all this information sesame street al-qaeda george soros whatever's true or not i don't know but i've never once seen a politician say i agree this spending is wasteful or this is good spending and we should i wonder why they're not willing to put their neck on the line for that but yet they want to argue and it could be both sides you know that hey we shouldn't have people digging in why don't they want people digging in yet they won't say anything about the actual expenses that usually means there's something wrong right when they're fired there's smoke and when you are when you're telling people there's nothing to dig and you're saying they're lying you're usually the one that's lying and here's the thing they're actually to to congress's credit i mean there are a couple of um senators that are just like wait we spent this guy spent like five minutes talking about wait we're spending here we're spending here we're spending here he's like guys i don't know why we're so upset about this we should be giving elon a medal and i do believe he should be getting a medal he doesn't need to do this what he's already the richest man in the world he's already got all these companies he has time to play diablo too he's got 12 kids right he doesn't need to do this and yet he's doing it for the american people and the most ironic thing the deep irony here is that the world's richest man is ironically going to put money back into the average American's pockets.

5:43Or in essence, what he's doing is he's just reducing our deficit each year, trying to help reduce our deficit each year, which hopefully will help things like inflation or not cost taxes to rise as much or whatnot. You have a good one here. Let's add, let's, let's your topic here. And do you need a doge in your company? And I think that's a great one. Go ahead. Yeah. But before we go into, do you need a doge in your company? uh one thing to know about this whole concept is he's having really talented people go in and analyze some of these engineers are 19 20 20 their kids they're out of college or not even graduated this just goes to show you can hire people from any spectrum any color any race um if they're talented, they're talented.

6:32If they're not talented, then you can't get as much done. But he's having people from anywhere and everywhere that are just really good at what they do. It's also very stupid to sit on the line and say, oh my God, these kids, they're interns. They shouldn't be looking at our stuff. First of all, it's read-only access. They can't do anything else aside from that. They're just making things more efficient. Second, you blame it on the fact that they're 19, 20 years old. But you know what? Did you see the memes on the average age of our founding fathers, 19, 20, 21 years old. We're talking like George Washington was the oldest one at the time.

7:05He's like 44 years old, but everyone else was like 19, 20, 21 years old. Those were our founding fathers. And so I never thought that it was an age thing. And you and I, we've both hired people in their teens. In fact, you started your business in teens. Like I was selling like in-game items when I was a teen too. Like I don't think age should be a thing. If you're good, you're just good. Yep. And going to the Doge concept, what they're looking for is just wastage. And do you need someone in your company to really monitor your pennies and your cents? And I actually think this is important at all stages of an organization, whether you're a startup bootstrapping it, or whether you have raised a little bit of money, or you're in growth mode, or you're publicly traded.

7:46I think there's wastage in all types of companies. And if you don't have someone watching the pennies and the cents, you're just going to be misallocating your money and it's going to cause your growth to slow down versus spending it wisely. Do I think you're ever going to have a company that never has any wastage? No, I think you're always going to have some wastage or some leakage and that's okay, but you want to minimize it as much as possible. I think the mindset with this is really important. It's a mindset thing at the end of the day, because if you're loose and you and I both know founders that are very loosey goosey with their cash and they end up spending on really things that they can't afford, a really nice house, like all these supercars, all these things, right?

8:27The problem with that is if you're like that, you're like that in your business. You actually can't turn it off and on. I don't believe you can. I maybe, maybe there's some edge cases. I think it's hard to find those though. Like, okay, you, you, for example, right? Let's use Neil. I'm loose on my business. I mean, on my personal, you're very loose on your personal, but not exactly. You're not loose. You're, you're, you're very loose on your family, but even with yourself an aquapana if it's not fully like completed if you have leftovers you're still gonna drink it that's that's still being frugal right and i think percentage wise i'm very cautious you look at every little penny and that's a good thing like i do yeah but on my personal i look at total income in versus out and assuming it's under a certain bad yeah you're good like how much are you gonna cost cut to just reduce your convenience of your life like it's better to focus on bigger problems.

9:17I think it's important to look at that when you're starting out earlier in your life. I think once you get to a certain point, you don't need to, the inflows are way bigger than the outflows. So you're good to go. Yeah. Otherwise you'd be panicky. I know how you are. Yeah, I would panic. But one more thing before we move on from Doge, I think the marketing behind Doge is amazing because every single thing is a headline and that's press secretary. It's like, and then they have a Twitter account and they just keep talking about it. And then you have the Democrats on the other side, yeah, Elon Musk, Elon Musk.

9:44So it's just uproar on uproar and uproar and um you can't even blame him because i'm like you're trying to blame him he this organization is only around for two more years and that's it and so i don't know what you can blame at this point i think they should figure out how to keep this organization i would love for life i would love for them to keep it yeah worldwide 2 ,000 present the amount of people that are searching for elon musk on google i'm just like typing it in as a hockey stick yeah That's hockey sick. Look at this graph here. Oh, wow. That means people are pissed off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

10:21You know what? I actually put up a survey and we can move on from this, but I just think this is fascinating. We'll probably continue to talk about it. But I put a survey saying, hey, do you guys think this is a good or bad thing for Doge to make these cuts, right? On my followers, what percent do you think said it was a good thing? For Doge to make these cuts? 95, 98? 65%. Really? Sorry. No, no, no. 55 55 it's it's like in it's right in the middle and then yeah and then people started um leaving comments for me and saying well um one person what does my high school friend she was like um she's like elon um i think the tax cuts or cutting costs are really good but the fact that it's elon i'm like well we should separate those two things right like he's he like knows how to run business and like he's done some good work already he's already cut a billion a day and if he cuts the 3 billion a day that's a trillion a year that's already brings our deficit down a lot and i'm like tax taxpayer like i don't know what like i'm just gonna leave that alone but let's just put one issue next like he's doing a good job right now so i think but a lot of people have a problem that it's him yeah and i me personally i don't care who does it uh you saw how ontario cut his hundred million dollar startling project no because canada u.s imposed tariffs on canada Canada retaliated they eventually came to agreement really fast but they also cut Elon Musk's $100 million startling contract is that back?

11:47I don't know if it's back but he doesn't care he's just like oh well and he posted it on X all this stuff is not making him more money I only think this can actually hurt his income that's just my personal viewpoint maybe I'm rying on it but I believe the way he thinks as an entrepreneur is if you have the best product let's go with satellite internet. And if a country wants to cut off your contract, well, eventually they'll try to figure out another alternative. And if the alternatives aren't as good, they'll be back and they have no choice. You just have the best products. What are you going to do?

12:21Do you have the best rockets? Do you have the best internet? You have the best, arguably you have the best, are the safest cars maybe. I don't know if they're the safest car. I wouldn't say they were the best car. They were rated safe. Neil doesn't like Teslas, but they were rated high before, I think, from a safety standpoint. But he does have full, he does have the best full self-driving. So that's one thing. Dude, there was just an article on how Mercedes self-driving, someone ranked it better than Tesla. I don't know if this is true or not. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real.

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15:04Because everyone's like, oh my God, Twitter's a bad purchase. When he was about to buy it, he tried to back out and the Supreme Court was like, they forced him to buy it for$44 billion. So very overvalued, right? But since buying X, Elon Musk has improved its EBITDA margin from 13%, plus 13 % to 46 % while revenue has nearly halved. So basically, 2024 adjusted earnings before interest taxes, depreciation, amortization, that's EBITDA, of about$1.25 billion, an annual revenue of$2.7 billion. In 2021, it was$682 million on$5 billion in revenue. So he's dozing Twitter as well. Yes. Now the question is, can he get the revenue back up?

15:42And I think he'll get the revenue back up, but it's going to take many years. I think so. I think from a revenue standpoint, it's it's good to take time but i think what he's done for society in my opinion this was good for society was twitter a good purchase from a business standpoint no that's my opinion uh for his personal mission sure yeah actually no from a business standpoint i think it's always going to be a bad purchase yeah we actually talked about that how we we passed on investing because we didn't think it would be a great return i didn't get offered to invest in uh x but what was that Yeah, you did.

16:16I don't think I did. You did. We talked about this. Did I? You got like three different funds you could have gone through and I could have gone through like two. But then we both said it just wouldn't make sense because it's our return. The return was really terrible. Like we love what he's doing, but it's just not for us. Yeah. But even for him, the reason I say it's a bad use of his capital, assuming just from a financial standpoint, he could have put that money into projects like Neuralink, which in theory could have a much better return. Yeah. Or SpaceX or Tesla. Yeah. And he would have more focus than something else to distract him.

16:49And I do think he is spread. He's becoming more and more spread thin. And this is when a lot of the competition is going to heat up. Another one is he's also working on Grok, right? His XAI project. And the giga cluster that he has. And there's a certain point where no matter how smart you are, I would never bet against him. That's my caveat here. No matter how smart you are, I do believe he's chewing off a lot. I'm not saying he can't do it. I just think it's a lot for one person to chew off. I actually have a topic here and then you can pick the next one. This one is how Elon breaks the rule of focus.

17:23So if you think about it, SpaceX, he's got an operator running it. I believe her name is Gwyn. You have Linda Iaccarino, the CEO of X. And then you have Tesla. So for the vast majority of them, he has an operator in there. And I think we've talked about this before, where all he does for each week is he focuses on the major problem for each one. it's not even like 80 it is 80 20 where it's like 20 it's like i'm just going to focus on that 20 that drives the 80 and that's it and he just goes around his jet fixing these things right and i don't i think that's how he works i don't think i could ever work like that i don't think you could either um but i think actually mine's not like his but i actually work similar i only work on problems yeah you work on the biggest problems right correct and i don't do anything else in the organization so it's similar i think um you're way more focused i mean he he's just like I'm just going to work on humanity's biggest problems and I'm going to spread myself like that.

18:13And it works for him. I think he has figured out like an algorithm. It's funny because the thing I told you about is, is X like a good purchase or not. The, the, they were talking about how like the EBITDA is like, you know, good now. Right. He responded to that tweet. He's like, it's almost as like, it's almost as if I'm good with money or something. Right. And so he said that kind of tongue in cheek, but I think if I don't recommend this for 99.9999 % of entrepreneurs, but if you want to do it, this is how he does it. Yeah. And I look at his model as a really smart model. When I said I do a similar approach to him of fixing problems, it doesn't mean that I'm anywhere near as good as him.

18:49He's more than like 10 ,000 or a hundred thousand times better than I am and smarter, but that model works really well. And the reason I do it that way is I'm actually a terrible manager. And Eric knows this about me. I'm extremely bad at managing tons of people. So I'm a really, I would say I'm a really solid individual contributor when it comes to at least marketing and business strategy. And I just focus on that and nothing else. You know, that's actually a gift. I think both you and Elon probably aren't great people managers, but it's a gift because whatever you're good at, you're exceptional at.

19:21And that's that because you just know to go over there. The problem is if you're pretty decent in a lot of things, you tend to dabble more. He's just much, much, much, much, much better than I am. But yes. Yeah. I mean, Elon. on you know how you kind of mentioned like i don't think there's anything wrong with people being on the spectrum like a little bit on the spectrum and you said maybe you're a little bit on the spectrum right he's definitely like he's on the spectrum i don't think there's i don't think it's a bad thing i think it's just like if you're on the spectrum more i've seen people just generally perform better yeah yeah i have two a lot of my friends who are extremely wealthy there are majority of my friends are actually extremely wealthy are on the spectrum yeah it's fine i don't think it's a bad thing i think it's a positive signal all right you pick one i picked about rank tracking do you think rank tracking is dead do you actually even track rankings anymore no i still track them but not as often as i used to but it's like what are you based it on now like you click the rates are so different now like you know the problem also with the rank tracking too is there's so much on a page and when you focus on optimizing rankings for multiple countries and let's say they're english speaking because this is the easiest example if you rank for the term marketing ranking in the United States and ranking in Brazil is in England, not Brazil.

20:40And funny enough, in Brazil, they use the term marketing as well. But Brazil or England or United States or India, your rankings are actually going to be drastically different, which can skew the results. So then you got to do the rank tracking per country. But yeah, what I really look for is what are the keywords and the topics more so that are driving revenue and conversions? and then I focus on creating more content around those topics more than anything else. Yeah, same way. I think it's almost like you look at the clusters or the pillars that are converting well and you just keep doing that.

21:12It's just 10, 15 years ago, SEO, you could actually see the keywords that were converting for you before Google took that out. That was like easy mode. Now it's just changed quite a bit. And I think we're going to need to continue to talk about search everywhere optimization because when I talk to experience, so I'm pretty involved with the interview process, like I'll get towards the end. And I talked to someone that's at Accenture yesterday, and she's very skilled with SEO and AI stuff. I was like, hey, so where do you think website traffic's going? She's like, you know what I think it's going to be like?

21:40I think it's going to be like when you go to your grandma's house and then she has this shelf of encyclopedias. It's like, okay, that's cool to look at, but it won't be as relevant anymore. So I'm like— What does she think it's going to be relevant? So she thinks it might be like headsets or something else, right? She thinks the form factor is going to change because we use websites all the time. It might be looking at LLMs or other things, right? And I agree with that. I don't think it's going to happen overnight, but I think you have to think about this stuff if you're thinking about the future.

22:07Because by the way, when you interview people now, I'm sure you guys are doing the same thing, but it's like, if you're only talking to people like, oh, what are you doing with AI? I'm just, oh, just, you know, maybe some chat GPT. I don't think that's enough anymore. I'm seeing more, you just see more and more crazy stuff come out every week. So is Ring tracking dead? I mean, short answers, I don't think so. I think it is dying though. Yeah. All right, guys, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe. Go to markingschool.io slash agency if you want to grow your agency faster.

22:32And we'll see you tomorrow.