AI vs Internet Transformation

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Today,

2:01

Cutting your sales cycle in half sounds pretty impossible, but that's exactly what Sandler training did with HubSpot. They used Breeze HubSpot's AI tools to tailor every customer interaction without losing their personal touch. And? And the results were pretty incredible. Click through. Rates jumped 25%, qualified leads quadrupled, and people spent three times longer on their landing pages. Go to HubSpot.com to see how Breeze can help your business grow. Neil, when the Internet first came out. Okay, do you remember how long it took for Corporations to adopt the Internet like to use, to get an email address and you know, learn how to use the web.

2:07

Yeah, it was a long time. It took many, many, many years.

2:45

How many years? Just guess.

2:47

Five plus years. No, maybe ten plus years.

2:49

Five to ten. Exactly. Five to ten years. Five to ten years. So Perplexity said this, right? So I had to do a deep research and I was like, okay, well, well, if that's the case, like, isn't that probably going to be the case for AI? And it was like, yeah. And I'm like, but hypothetically there, there's no time for people to adopt this time, right? Because it's, it's. Things are changing so quickly this time. You don't have like a five to ten year window. That's like, this time you can actually, you know, we're talking about job loss and things like that. So I, I ran that idea by Perplexity. I was like, is that true or false? And it's like, this is largely true because, you know, the, the, the world's changing so quickly. You see, layoff, 17 year record, right? You see, tech companies aren't hiring that much anymore. You see, like it's, it's, it's not the same world that we're used to two, three years ago. That's the point I'm trying to get at. And I saw a post earlier, I don't know if I shared this with you, but you need you. Yaniv shared this with me, actually. How like people think they can still work like the COVID years, like three, five years, they think they could just coast. But the reality is it just isn't that anymore. And I'd rather kind of strike some motivation into people because this is not Internet transformation where you're okay after. I think this is a situation where it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have. Not knowing how to use this is akin to not knowing how to use the Internet. But you don't get the time buffer that you got before.

2:51

So I want everyone to think about it from a little bit of a different perspective. And you can take Eric's perspective or my perspective, I'm not saying I'm right or anything like that. The reason the Internet took a long time to adapt, technology wasn't in our fingertips, it wasn't in our hand. Back then, a lot of shitty, not just shitty connections people were dialing up. Like Eric and I. Our first Internet connection was you plug it into a phone line and if someone called it, disconnected your Internet. Yeah, like stop Using the phone, right? And it was really slow. On top of that, not everyone had computers. There wasn't these cell phone devices like you see right now. There weren't even really cell phones back then. Now we're in a place where people already have the technology and AI, or let me rephrase, not the technology, people already have the hardware, AI, the software layer is plugging into the hardware that you're already using on a daily basis and you don't need new hardware. So you're seeing adoption much quicker. Just like when Facebook first came out, it took them a long time to get to a billion users. When threads came out, they were able to get to users much faster. Same with ChatGPT or same with Slack, because people already have the hardware in their hands and they can adapt this technology much faster. So it's just like if you look back in the day from all the technology changes and the eras, you know, I don't know who broke this down, but it was some billionaire, you know, like from the printing press to the manufacturing, you know, space and agriculture, they're breaking down like all the major changes in life they used to. Those windows were very long. And if you look at the Internet and what happened, it wasn't as long. And if you look at what AI is doing, it's going to make it even shorter is because we already have a lot of the foundation. So it makes it easier and quicker for people to adapt. So if you think you have a long time to adapt, which is what Eric's getting at, you're very wrong. And the reason being is people are already adapting because it's not hard for them to.

4:07

Dude, I just ran this through perplexity again on top of the chart. And so here's what it says, guys, we're not, by the way, when we say this, guys, we're not trying to be doomers. In fact, this podcast is meant to be inspirational, but sometimes when you try to inspire and it just doesn't work, sometimes a nice beat down works too. So that's where I'm coming from. At least Neil's not much, not really giving a beat down.

5:59

But no, I think that's more Eric than me.

6:18

I'm more positive, definitely coming more from my side. So where parabolic loss is most likely, so job loss can look, can still look parabolic, highly automated, maable, routine cognitive work, AI first companies. And so so at the edge of your org chart, some roles can go from safe to mostly automated over 12 to 14 months, which feels parabolic if you're in that band even if macro employment is high. So I do agree, like, I do think there's going to be net new jobs. I think everyone's going to be okay. But I think there's going to be a period of time for a couple years where there's going to be job displacement. And that's where you know, people are going to be might like, you know, rise up and be unhappy or whatever. Please don't do that. And then the other piece, it says here why there is some time to adapt. Okay. Three structural frictions show slow, a true systemic cliff, enterprise inertia and integration costs. So this is actually saying that you have time to adapt. Right. So enterprises. Neil refers to enterprises quite a bit. Even if 78% of organizations use AI somewhere, most are still in pilots and pockets. And Niels has talked about that quite a bit. Not full stack redesign, process change compliance and systems, all this stuff. System integration takes years. I agree with that. Second piece is skill and change management gaps. Especially when it's an enterprise, that stuff is really slow. We're talking large ship slow. Okay. Most employees report only moderate AI support and capability building. Right. And then. Yeah, I think those are the two main things. So food for thought. You guys take it for what it is.

6:21

And to give you guys perspective, if I had to put Eric and I, you know, and talk about our differences so you guys can get an understanding of our viewpoints and how we think about things, I would say Eric is a very, very early adopter. If something comes out that day, he's probably going to test it that day or the next day or close enough within the week. Would you agree, Eric? You tend to adapt really early.

7:46

Yeah. So we gave an analogy for this, remember Neil, the D day analogy, where I'm probably not on the first boat, but I'm probably like the third boat. Whereas you're coming in on like a plane and parachuting it, like once the invasion's done.

8:09

Yeah, And I wouldn't say Eric's on a third boat. I think he's close to the second boat. Maybe at the back of the first boat. Right.

8:20

He'll let me on the first boat.

8:27

I'm not saying you want to die, but there is no death in this. Right? There is early adopters. And I would probably say you're most likely on the first boat. You're just not the first person off the boat. You're probably waiting for everyone to get shot first and run through the mines and then you'll go through after all the Mines have been already run over. Right. But I would say Eric's pretty much on the first boat. Eric's spot on. I'm big on technology, but the way my brain works is I'm very numbers oriented. And unless someone can show me roi, revenue, profitability, or a path there, it's a harder time for me to be an early adopter because I believe, and I can be wrong on this. I. I believe I can buy my way in even if I'm flying in off of a plane and parachuting down. And I think money solves a lot of problems. I know that's a bad way to think, but I just believe that, hey, I don't have to be the first. I can hire some of the people who are going to be the first. And once I know something's going to work, I'll parachute down and I'll just pour a shitload of money at it and I won't care about my return in the short run.

8:30

Yeah. So what I'll say that's good about Neil, since I've known him for, I guess close to 15, 16 years now. Oh my God, we're coming on 16 years. So I've known him for 16 years. It feels like just yesterday that met, but. So Neil is. He'll wait and wait and wait and wait. And once he sees it, he will press. And not only press, he'll press hard. Now, he won't go to the blackjack table and press.

9:37

He.

9:59

But once he sees a bet that's worth making, it's all in. It's like all the chips and no need to get a return immediately. He's always been like that. Right. So the, the reason I'm calling this out and Neil kind of brought this up is you have to understand your own yourself. You have to understand your demeanor. You have to understand your own risk tolerance. Anything Neil says or I say, it's not exactly gospel. It's just what we think based on our life experiences. So you take it for what it's will and then you do your own research. Because none of this is financial advice.

9:59

No. And you also have to keep in mind we're also different places in our career. It doesn't mean I'm doing better than Eric or worse than Eric. I've been an entrepreneur longer than he has. Right. It's just fact.

10:26

24 years.

10:36

Yeah, 24 years. So. And I think you're on what, 10, 11, 12.

10:37

I think all I know is your gap. You've had 14 years in business longer than I Have. That's. That's what I know.

10:43

Got it. So if I'm at 24, he's at 10.

10:48

Yeah.

10:51

When I was starting out as an entrepreneur, I would be very early on, kind of like that first boat analogy that we're talking about. And I got shot a few times. Not really shot, but, you know, I went through some landmines. Yes. I got shot of business version of it. And when you're in a startup mode and grinding it out, and I wouldn't say Eric is fully in startup mode, but you have to do that, and you have to be scrappy. And when you have a more established company, it doesn't mean mine's bigger or smaller than him. I'm just giving context. If you have a more established company and you have a lot of people and revenue, and Eric does have revenue as well, but you also have to think about wealth preservation at the same time. And when you have a bigger organization, at least in headcount, you know, no matter what size you are, there's political bullcrap that you have to deal with and people deal with in your organization, no matter who it is. I don't care if you're a founder or not. Just like the Sergey Brin example where he told Sundar when he was working on Gemini, he's like, you deal with these people, they're getting in my way. Right. And he's at a much bigger scale. But it just goes to show, no matter who you are, what size company, especially at the larger scale, there are politics to deal with. And sometimes the shortcut at larger scale is you just go and spend the money. And your cost of business to get the result is you have to pay more to get the end result versus Eric can be scrappier and get the results without having to spend the capital.

10:53

All right, so moving on, I want to show you something. Going back to openclaw. So did you see the Vibe Coded Epstein Files podcast? So we want to talk about distribution with OpenClaw. Okay, so going back to the topic of this one. Let. Let me show this to you, Neil. So check this out. So when you look at. Can you see this? Yeah. So, okay, Levy Eth texted this or tweeted this. So vibe coded the Epstein Files podcast was clawed in a weekend and just crossed 100,000 downloads in the first week. To put that in perspective, the top 1% of all podcasts globally get around 5000 downloads in their first 7 days. This did 100k has 20 times the top 1% threshold. The average podcast gets 141 downloads in the first 30 days. The most spend 18 months trying to crack 1000 per episode. A lot never get there. And there are 4.5 million podcasts out there now. No fancy studio, no production team, just Claude, a Mac Mini. This is Open Claw, basically. And a weekend of focused work curating the right approach to this series. Still processing this one. Honestly, that's kind of crazy to me because you can find any trending topic and this thing can just crank out a new podcast whenever it wants. And it can rip. Right. It's kind of similar to the. The GitHub repo of this guy, Corey Haynes, who I talked about in one of my videos. He's got this GitHub repo with 7,500 stars on it. And I just think there's going to be new ways of marketing that are coming out because, like when you have. Excuse me, you have an open claw, it's able to do these things on its whim.

12:24

Look, I know some people think this is cool. I look at this as whatever, it's a trending topic Epstein, that everyone's talking about. I personally feel bad for a lot of the people or what happened to a lot of the girls and stuff like that. Um, and I don't care to read just me personally, about these dudes who went to the island and did inappropriate stuff or listen to it because it's just like, it's just sad to hear what happened and. Or imagine what's happening. Um, and I look at using technology for things like this to go off of trending topics. Um, Eric's seen this playbook before. Remember all those sites like the buzzfeeds of the world that were just hijacking Google Trends and getting tons of traffic? My big thing on this, I've seen this playbook before. It's really hard to monetize. Yeah, people can say this is really cool, but it's going to be really hard to make money from it.

13:48

Yeah. So the way I see this, I think it just depends on the business model that you have, is it's a media business model, then by all means, you go for it. So I don't think this really applies to Neil's business or my business necessarily,

14:37

or the majority of businesses.

14:47

Well, it depends on your business. Right. I think, again, if you are a media company, this applies to you. I think I do think, like, for example, my, my, my Open claw, I have a. I have a bot that's called Flash that will tell me trending topics and then it tries to tie it in with whatever I'm talking about. It's nice. But I don't try to newsjack that much because to Neil's point, newsjacking has never. You might get the views, but you don't necessarily get the conversions from it. But I will say that when I the, the trend that I'm really surfing right now is openclaw and Claude code. But I tied in with marketing and business that actually, if you find the intersection, it might work for you, but you're not always going to have that with trending topics. So.

14:49

Yeah, yeah.

15:29

So we still got, we still got 10 minutes left. Yeah.

15:31

All right, let's go for two.

15:35

Do you see this? Do you have it open?

15:37

I have it open now.

15:38

Well, you pick one.

15:40

Let's see. You have something here that's. Humans are no longer the moat. And we talked about this. I want to talk about how brands. It's not really in here, but I still really do believe brands are the moat. And I was using this example earlier today. So someone asked me, you know, like, hey, in Latin America, you know, what's example of a retail company that is using AI and how are they not worried about like some new brand just knocking them off and, and crushing it? And, and before I went into that, I, I asked the person a question because they had a Louis Vuitton purse. All right. So they're holding up the handbag and I don't know how old Louis Vuitton is, but I'm pretty sure it's 100 plus years old. I could be wrong, but I think it's 100 years old.

15:43

Do you know, Eric, I'm looking it up right now. 172 years.

16:28

Yeah. So it's a, it's an amazing brand. They have a really strong brand loyalty. If you go to China where they sell a lot of knockoffs, and I don't mean this in a bad way, it's just reality. I'm not saying Chinese people are the only ones knocking off. There's people in India, and I'm Indian that knock other off products and there's people all over the world that knock them off in the US etc. But majority of the people don't want a knockoff. They actually want the real thing. Why? Because they love the brand so much and it's a goal and it's prestigious and they really want it. And I think one thing that's hard to replace in today's world is emote. Eric hasn't adapted yet. One day he will. Once I figure out his shoe size in this brand. You know, like a lot of business people all around the world now, I always see him wearing Zenya second skin shoes.

16:31

I have four of them doing that.

17:27

I've been doing it for two years now. Yeah, I have four pairs of the same exact color. They're more pairs.

17:29

But you usually wear the common projects.

17:34

No, I don't wear common products as often. I wear common products maybe a tenth of the time.

17:37

Yeah. Anyway, continue. Go ahead.

17:40

But they're. They're one of the most comfortable business dress sneakers or whatever you want to end up calling them ever made. They're more comfortable in the Nikes for almost anyone who asks, because most guys have Nikes.

17:42

When I go to Miami next week, I'll buy a pair.

17:54

All right. But it has to be second skin. If it's not second skin, it's not the same thing. Like, the comfort's not the same because Zinnia has different kinds of sneakers.

17:56

But the.

18:03

But the point I'm getting at is, like, it's that brand. It's that cachet. When you look at Michael Jordan shoes, if Eric and I spent all our money, I'm pretty sure we can build a shoe that's just as comfortable as a Michael Jordan shoe. And we can copy the design and it can look identical, but people won't buy it because ours won't have that Jumpman logo. And that Jumpman logo is. Goes a long way. And I know this because before COVID I used to go to the Michael Jordan golf tournament. And I met Jordan and a lot of his team and business managers. And Jordan's cool, but it was really fun to talk to his business team. And he actually has a small team that communicates to Nike on his behalf. And they were telling me about their Derek Jeter deal. Derek Jeter, for anyone who doesn't know, is an old baseball player, really good at baseball. And they're not even that old. He's not that old, but he's retired. That's probably a better way to put it. Like, no longer plays. Yeah, but did you know they sold more Derek Jeter shoes when they started doing things, like with a lot of their brand endorsement deals because they would go under Jordan when they started removing the name and just having the Jumpman logo. The Jumpman logo helped produce more sales if they removed the other stuff from the same design shoe. And the point I'm getting at, what they were explaining to me is that brand affinity is so strong and people want it clean and just that not other names with it. It could be Steph Curry rocking his version of Jordan shoes. And people love that as well. But they don't want the name Steph Curry. They just wanted the Jordan logo that sells a ton of shoes. And that's the power of brand. And I think that is really hard to replace. But at the same time, I think that's really hard to create as well.

18:03

Yeah, I really think there's. There's two modes. Right. So Bran is a brand, tells a story at the end of the day. And I forgot who I heard that from. But when you think about the Jumpman, it is when you watch Jordan, for example, and how he made you feel. Right. Or when you think about Coca Cola, you don't think about Coca Cola. You think about the time you enjoyed that Coke, maybe with your mom when you're a kid or something like that. Or maybe when you're at McDonald's. Right. When you're a kid. And so. So I think one talent is a moat. And still. Yes, even with AI. And the second thing is brand is a moat. And this, this actually carries over into this tweet I'm looking at here. Sandra. Sandra Jackic. Jack tweeted this. So the highest paying job in tech will soon be marketing. What do you think about that? Because this one got 1.7 million views on it. 8,500 likes. What's your take on this?

19:47

I don't think it'll be the highest paying job in organization.

20:33

I think a lot of marketers liked it.

20:36

Yeah, the CMO is one of the highest churning roles in a C suite. I think it is actually the highest churning role in a C suite. And I think a cfo, coo, CEO will always get paid more in an organization than a cmo. But that's just my personal take, and I could be wrong. I'm in marketing. I've seen so many of these large organizations and a lot of my buddies.

20:39

But you're CMO at your company.

21:01

Yeah, And a lot of My buddies are CEOs of publicly traded companies. So. And a lot of these numbers are public. But going back to brand, here's an interesting one for you, and I think we'll agree on this. Okay. A lot of people used to talk about cursor, Right? I know a lot of people still use cursor and it's integrated with cloud code. But do you hear as many people talking about cursor now? And do you think their brand is really that strong of a brand, like a Jordan brand?

21:03

Never.

21:34

Yes, I Think Cursor built their brand because they're like, oh, this makes coding easier. People didn't have strong brand affinity to Cursor, in my opinion. They just looked at it as a tool that make their lives easier. I think ChatGPT has a strong brand.

21:34

Right?

21:51

I think you would agree with that. It has extremely strong brand. Yeah.

21:52

Right. So you know what's interesting? Go ahead, finish your thought. Go ahead.

21:56

And would you agree that Claude has a very strong brand, at least in the B2B world, specifically to organizations, not just SaaS, companies, but for organizations?

21:58

Yeah. You know what? Actually, okay, so this is actually interesting that you bring it up this way. So I think about Claude. You and I pay for Claude. We pay for Chat GPT, right? We pay for all the other ones. Okay, now chatgpt, strong brand, Claude, strong brand. They're all great. It kind of doesn't matter. So like a couple, last couple weeks I was talking about Claude code and then you know, talk about, you know, Opus 4:6. But now I see all the engineers talking about using Codex, which is owned by, by OpenAI. They have Codex 5.3, which is a very strong model as well, which you can use for open call. So anytime something new comes out, it's not, it's not. Earlier you were saying it's like month, like the news cycles are monthly for AI. It's like every day. Like I'm, I am very promiscuous with my models. I don't care about the brand. So when the utility is higher and there's something new, I will gladly switch over to something. And that's when the switching costs just quite, aren't. It's just not quite there right now, which is sometimes, you know, the brand itself is not strong enough.

22:08

And I don't think it's Eric. I think it's actually the majority of the market that thinks that way. I know, I think that way. I think majority of corporations think that way.

23:05

And he nailed it.

23:12

It's because switching costs aren't high yet. I think that'll change over time. You want to hear an interesting side note? I was at that conference and that company does, you know, more than a billion a quarter. So over four a year. They were paying for ChatGPT. They wanted a change on ChatGPT. Okay. And ChatGPT was just like, yeah, we don't do custom stuff for companies unless they're spending $10 million minimum with us a year. And Google was pitching them like, you guys are already on the Google suite. You guys should just switch to Gemini. Like, what's it cost? Like, nothing. It's included, it's free. Google can of course do that because they make 116 billion a year in profit, so they don't really have to make the money. Like Chad GPT. And they're like, yeah, but we were wanting this custom stuff, and we're trying to get ChatGPT to do. Google's like, yeah, we'll do it for you. And they're like, what's the cost? They're like, nothing, we'll just do it for you. And they're like, all right, that's a good offer. That's a great offer. Now, when Google first started working with them and OpenAI thought they were going to renew the deal, and they did not renew with OpenAI, they were crushed. Like, you're not going to renew with us. Because when they first had open AI, Gemini wasn't as good. Now they're like, wait, Gemini is really good. And in some cases, that is for our main use cases, it's better. So it just shows you how companies aren't that loyal. You tell big organizations they're gonna save a lot of money. They do my team through a fit when we switch from Google G Suite to Microsoft Outlook, right? And so many people emailed me, like, neil, we don't want to switch. And then the same with teams. We don't want to use teams. We prefer Slack, we prefer Zoom, and we didn't give a crap.

23:13

You just ignored them, right?

24:50

Yeah, we were saving so much money, we don't care. And you know what? Most companies we work with, keep in mind we mainly work with enterprise companies. We do team calls with them, even if they're sending the invites or Cisco or a lot of these platforms. Why? Because we choose the platforms that save us money, and we don't care if people don't like one over another.

24:51

That's reality. And it tied us all together, like, tying it back to AI. And this will be the closing point here, I suppose. Like, look, today we're talking about open Claw. Tomorrow we might talk about closed claw, and then. Then I might be talking about whatever claw we don't even know, right? And so this thing, this. This stuff shifts quickly. You can take, you know, the. It's. It's up to you on. On how fast you want to go. But hopefully you guys learned a thing or two. Anything else you want to say before we hop off?

25:10

No, that's it.

25:36

Thanks for paying attention today. All right, see you guys. Goodbye.

25:37

One.

25:44