Content vs Ads: Experts Debate Which Is Better in 2026
A timed, poolside debate where Cole Gordon pits his own CMO against an organic-agency founder over one question: which $10M business is worth more?
Posted
3 days ago
Duration
Format
Interview
educational
Views
5.1K
161 likes
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Paid ads win when the goal is a sellable, person-independent asset with predictable scale; organic wins on profit margin, warm-lead close rates, and an un-copyable personal moat, so the right traffic source is decided by whether you optimize for an exit or for cash flow and lifestyle.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A founder doing high six or seven figures who is choosing whether to pour the next dollar into paid ads or into building a personal brand.
A coach, consultant, or agency owner deciding whether an eventual exit or ongoing cash flow is the real objective, because that choice changes the answer.
A media buyer or content lead who wants the honest tradeoffs on margin, CAC, refund rates, and close rates rather than a one-sided pitch.
Anyone who keeps hearing 'we're in the creator economy' and wants both the strongest case for it and the strongest case that it is a meaningless buzzword.
SKIP IF…
You want a definitive verdict; the debate is deliberately unresolved and hands the vote to the audience.
You run a physical-product or local-service business where the personal-brand-vs-ad-account framing barely applies.
You already have a working acquisition channel and are looking for tactical execution steps rather than a strategic which-channel argument.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Cole Gordon stages a timed debate: Spencer Vaughn argues a paid-ads business is worth more because it is durable, sellable, repositionable, and person-independent, while a personal brand loses relevance in about two years and has near-zero enterprise value. Jeremy Moser argues organic wins because margins run higher (he claims 64% vs 45%), CAC falls as the audience compounds, warm leads close far better, and your story is a moat a funnel can be copied in 48 hours but a persona cannot. The unifying insight is that they are answering different objectives: ads optimize for a saleable exit and predictable scale, organic optimizes for profit margin, lower operational load, and lifestyle, so the winner depends entirely on which outcome you actually want.
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Cole frames the debate: which $10M business is worth more, one built on ads or one built on organic? Introduces Spencer (ads) and Jeremy (organic).
01:58 – 09:21
02 · Spencer's case for ads
Five claims: durability, profit, ban/cancel risk, flexibility, and enterprise value all favor a paid-ads business.
09:21 – 16:53
03 · Jeremy's case for organic
Three reasons: higher profit margin, lower operational complexity, and a personal-brand moat in the rising creator economy.
16:53 – 22:52
04 · Is personal brand a scam or a moat?
Spencer calls personal brand the biggest scam in the industry; brand is your reputation, content is just you talking about yourself.
22:52 – 27:52
05 · Rebuttal: views don't equal cash
Jeremy demystifies durability and profit claims; both eventually agree reach matters only if it is the right audience.
27:52 – 32:08
06 · Can you actually sell an organic business?
Jeremy concedes ads win for a sale due to key-man risk, but argues almost no one at $10M actually exits.
32:08 – 38:56
07 · The hidden cost of 'free' organic traffic
Spencer argues organic hides the CEO's time, team, and reinvestment costs; the traffic is never actually free.
38:56 – 43:37
08 · Is charisma born or built?
Spencer's 20-year-skill-gap argument vs Jeremy's Richard Garcia and Andrew Tate examples of learned persona.
43:37 – 52:36
09 · Which scales to $25M faster?
Jeremy's Disney-model avatars (Cardone, Ramsey) vs Spencer's point that only media companies scale that way.
52:36 – 1:06:44
10 · Lead quality showdown
Cole's 25% paid vs 40% organic close-rate stat; Spencer argues warm-lead close rates regress once the small warm pool is exhausted.
1:06:44 – 1:15:38
11 · Start cold or start warm? The Hormozi fight
Spencer's start-cold-then-warm sequencing vs Jeremy's reverse-effect argument that ex-ads gurus now lead with content.
1:15:38 – 1:22:29
12 · Which model gives the better lifestyle?
Spencer: a personal brand is a job you can't leave; Jeremy: paid's larger sales org eats the time you save on filming.
1:22:29 – 1:31:36
13 · The conviction test
Spencer's 'are you a psychopath' argument that you can't phone in content vs Jeremy's point that ads need conviction too.
1:31:36 – 1:47:20
14 · Does building a brand even require content?
Spencer says brand comes from results and flagship testimonials (Tony Robbins, closers.io); Jeremy says consumption has moved to social first.
1:47:20 – 1:49:54
15 · The micro-niche escape and the vote
You can't beat a category king head-on, so pick a defensible micro-niche. Cole hands the verdict to the comments.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
The right question is not ads vs organic but exit vs cash flow: ads build a sellable asset, organic builds higher-margin income you cannot easily sell.
A funnel, ad set, and email flow can be copied in 24 to 48 hours; your story, background, and lived experience cannot, which is the only real moat in organic.
Views do not equal cash, but zero views also equal zero cash, so the skill is targeting the right viewers, not maximizing reach.
A high organic close rate only holds while you have a warm audience; a mediocre creator burns through their small warm pool and then sells cold-equivalent leads anyway.
Organic CAC tends to fall as the audience compounds while paid CAC rises as you scale, which is the core of the margin-gap argument.
A personal brand is by definition a job, because unless you are a psychopath you cannot fake conviction on camera, so you cannot fully outsource being the face.
You cannot out-compete a category king like Hormozi head-on, so a newcomer's only organic play is a defensible micro-niche.
The Instagram algorithm now targets by what you say in a post, functioning like a free pixel that shows content to the right buyers even at low view counts.
Modern platforms optimize for the best content, not for who you subscribed to, so an audience is a weaker moat than it looks once the For You page dominates delivery.
The strongest ad accounts run on the creator's own best-performing organic content, so stripping the content out collapses the ad performance.
Repositioning a brand known for one thing is one of the most fatal moves a business can make, which is why a locked-in personal brand struggles to pivot.
For every one person who sells their organic business for millions, roughly a hundred never exit, so optimizing for a rare exit is the wrong default objective.
Takeaway
Choose the channel by the outcome you actually want.
WHAT TO LEARN
Ads and organic are not competing answers to one question; they answer different objectives, so decide whether you want a sellable exit or high-margin cash flow before you pick a traffic source.
Before choosing ads or organic, decide whether your real goal is a sellable exit or ongoing cash flow, because that objective changes which channel is correct.
A person-dependent brand carries key-man risk, so if selling the business is the plan, ads produce a more sellable, transferable asset than organic.
Treat any organic close-rate advantage as fragile; it holds only while a warm audience exists and regresses once a small following is exhausted.
Your only durable moat in organic is story and persona, since funnels, ads, and email flows can be copied by a competitor within 24 to 48 hours.
Judge content by whether it reaches the right buyers, not by raw views, because targeted low-view content can outproduce viral reach to the wrong audience.
Do not treat organic traffic as free; the CEO's time, the editing and content team, and constant reinvestment are real costs that erode the margin advantage.
You cannot fully outsource being the face of a personal brand, because faked conviction reads as flat on camera and undermines the content that drives sales.
When you cannot beat a category king head-on, compete by owning a defensible micro-niche rather than fighting for the same broad audience.
Source your best paid ads from your best-performing organic content, since the two reinforce each other rather than being an either-or choice.
Expect to eventually need cold acquisition; a warm audience runs dry, so building the ability to convert cold traffic protects you long term.
Resources
Things they pointed at.
08:06linkPatreon creator study (>50% find views harder than 5 years ago)
09:27linkDeloitte study (60% of consumers decide based on creators they follow)
00:00 – 01:58steadyDebate setup and the $10M valuation question
01:58 – 09:21denseSpencer's five-point case for paid ads
09:21 – 16:53denseJeremy's three-point case for organic
16:53 – 27:52densePersonal brand: scam or moat
27:52 – 32:08denseSellability and enterprise value
32:08 – 38:56steadyThe true cost of organic traffic
38:56 – 43:37denseCharisma and the skill-gap debate
43:37 – 52:36steadyScalability to $25M
52:36 – 1:06:44denseLead quality and close rates
1:06:44 – 1:15:38denseCold vs warm sequencing
1:15:38 – 1:22:29steadyLifestyle and time cost
1:22:29 – 1:31:36steadyConviction and being the face
1:31:36 – 1:47:20denseDoes brand require content, and the creator economy definition
1:47:20 – 1:49:54steadyMicro-niche closing and audience vote
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00:00What's better to grow your business? Paid ads or organic? The phrase personal brand is the single biggest scam ever conducted in this industry.
00:08We're entering deep into the creator economy. In the next few years, if you don't have a brand, if you don't have content backing your stuff up, you're actually gonna be What the does that actually mean? I have been hearing we're in the creator economy,
00:18and ads costs are rising, and all this stuff for the last ten years. And every year, people have made more and more and more money from ads. So today, I have Spencer Vaughn.
00:27He's the CMO of my company. He spent well over $10,000,000 on ads. He also runs a multiple 7 figure SaaS company called SalesKick.
00:33So he's gonna be arguing that paid ads is better, whereas Jeremy Moser runs an organic content agency and has been able to generate tons, if not millions of dollars purely through organic for himself and his clients, people like Jeremy Minor. He's helped me also with my organic content and tons of other big industry names that you would know.
00:50So he's gonna debate the organic side. So we're gonna kick off this debate starting with Spencer's opening argument. Yeah.
00:58Thank you, Cole. I'm very excited to be here. And I wanna start by just saying, I want you to throw out everything you've ever heard from online gurus,
01:05from courses, from people like Jeremy here who have the best intentions but candidly are leaving out some very key points that prove that ads is a far more valuable business than organic. And today I have five main points that I'm gonna share with y'all.
01:19So to start, number one is the durableness of a business runoff of ads is far greater than a business runoff of organic. And this is just easily provable. I mean case in point, when was the last time you watched a video from Dan Lok?
01:34Probably not anytime recently. Well, it's the last time you watched a video that was not about, uh, you know, his SCC loss.
01:40It was a training video from Tai Lopez. Probably not anytime recently. Same thing with folks like Grant Cardone who is obviously world famous now, but in terms of his actual content, he gets you know, a tiny amount of views that he used to get way back in the day.
01:55And so the truth is, you know, with organic content, if you do it well which that begs that question as well. But if you do it well, yes, you can get hot for a little while and you can ride the wave off of that for a little bit.
02:05But inevitably over time, you lose relevancy. And that brings me to a very important stat that I found when researching for this from Patreon.
02:15Patreon did a survey and a study across all of their clients and found that more than half of their content creators actually are having significantly harder time getting views now than they did five years ago.
02:28Which further proves a point that there is no durableness to your business if it's reliant on organic, if it's reliant on those views and traffic. Okay? And all that brings me to my second point which is that ads surprisingly are far more profitable than organic.
02:44And I know that's very radical to say because a lot of people like Jeremy will tell you that, oh, you know, organic is way more profitable than paid ads. And all of that is just completely nonsense if you want to stay relevant. You know, case in point, people like MrBeast, the number one content creator in the world have said very specifically that he invests all of his money from all of his you know, businesses, his you know, ad revenue, etcetera back into his content to further grow his brand.
03:11And I understand that's okay obviously the number one example. But even somebody like Hermozzi has publicly said he he spends tens of millions of dollars on organic content.
03:22And here's the here's the reality. Because of the lack of durableness of these, uh, channels, of these followings, uh, of building a company off of that, you you're forced to reinvest a significant amount of your money into content to outdo yourself every single year.
03:37That's why they call it the content hamster wheel. And so many people get stuck on this and then what do they do? They get burned out.
03:43Or they just accept that they lose relevancy and they kind of fade off into obscurity. I mean a great example of this, you know, ten years ago there was Evan Carmichael who I love Evan Carmichael's videos. When I was starting out, I used to watch his stuff all the time.
03:56He'd break down you know, key quotes and success habits from you know, some of the most famous people who've ever lived. And yet nobody watches him anymore. And it's no offense to Evan if you're watching this.
04:05But you know, his his viewership is way down. It's just hard to maintain relevancy over any you know period of time greater than like twenty four months.
04:14Okay? And that brings me to my third point. Even if magically for some inexplicable reason you're able to maintain relevancy, what's often and basically guaranteed to happen over a long enough time period is that you're gonna have some sort of account ban issue or you're gonna get canceled in the court of public opinion.
04:31And the reality is is yes. I wanna address this head on. You can get your ad account banned too.
04:36It's happened. Anybody who's run ads will, you know, obviously that's a reality. But the reality is is that when you get your ads account banned, what do you do?
04:45You just make a new ad account and you bring over the stuff that's already working. Okay? It's not that difficult.
04:50When you get your, you know, 1,000,000 subscriber channel banned, what do you do at that point? Uh, you hope you can get it back. And if you can't get back, you start from ground one.
04:59And good luck getting all of your followers back who now, you know, can't even see your channel and have to start from square one. And that brings me to point number four. Point number four is that paid ads create far more flexibility.
05:14Uh, this is studied by some of the greatest institutions and just you know, generally known in business that when you build a brand known for one thing and that one thing is no longer in style today, it's no longer in trend today, you basically can't switch.
05:31Like it's extraordinarily difficult. And so case in point, I was actually recently watching some content funny enough about the burger chain Five Guys.
05:41And Five Guys is way down in revenue and value recently.
05:47And the reason why is because they built their whole brand around being the highest quality burger. Well, guess what? The economy's changed.
05:54Now people are looking to save more money. Right? We're not in the, you know, basically free money, 0% interest rates, you know, government's handing out stimulus checks like in 2020.
06:03Like, we're not in that, know, economic environment anymore. And so that means people are are being a lot more, you know, for lack of better words, uh, choosy about where they spend their money. And spending 25 to $30 on a hamburger and fries, even if it is better, it's just not in the budget for most people.
06:18Well, what? Five Guys' entire brand is built off of quality. So what do they do?
06:23Well, they could no longer be quality, but then they lose all their brand positioning. So they have no choice other than just accept less revenue, right? Which is obviously critical.
06:32And so all of that brings me to the point that fundamentally for all of the reasons I listed above and I'm sure more we'll talk about today. And just again to recap, number one is a lack of durability.
06:42Alright. People fall off all the time. It's not surprising.
06:45In fact, that's the norm. Okay. I'm sure Jeremy will bring up some examples, uh, where people magically stay forever but 99% of the time they fall off.
06:53Number two is profit. It costs a tremendous amount to stay relevant even if you, you know, magically can figure out how to. Uh, number three is you can get your account banned.
07:02You can get shut down. You can get canceled at any time and you're basically screwed. Uh, number four is, uh, it's impossible to switch offers or switch brands.
07:11In fact, Harvard Business Study actually put out a quote that said that the one of the single most challenging things is changing your branding positioning and is often noted as the last fatal mistake of a dying business. Okay?
07:24And the last thing is all of that equals essentially no enterprise value. So when we're here to answer Cole's question today of, hey, what is a more valuable business?
07:34Is it 10 million based off of organic or 10,000,000 based off of ads? Well, if we can scientifically and logically prove that there is effectively zero enterprise value in a business that is purely based off of organic traffic and we know for a fact that that's because it's likely that that business won't exist in the future.
07:52And even if it does, no one can buy it from you because they can't buy the trust from your audience. They're not you. They will never be you.
07:59Okay? Unless your plan is to sell your business and have them impersonate you with AI, which I don't know about you. That doesn't sound very ethical to me.
08:05So my whole argument is, factually speaking, there is zero enterprise value in these businesses. And again, that's for the reasons I listed above.
08:15Alright. That's Spencer's opening case. Jeremy, you take the floor.
08:21Well, as you just heard Spencer say, gave you a bunch of reasons. Well, I'm here to go and tell you the exact opposite because my whole point to you, telling you why organic should be the only way you build your business as opposed to running a bunch of paid ads is this. We're entering deep into the creator economy.
08:34And so in the next few years, if you don't have a brand, if you don't have content backing yourself up, you're actually gonna be fucked. Okay? There's a study right now by Deloitte as well as other research platforms that give out that 60% of consumers are making their decisions right now based on what creators or influence they follow promote.
08:53Meaning that it's no longer about I saw this ad or I saw this billboard that leads to making decision. It's the actual fact that, hey. This person that I follow and resonate with actually told me about x y zed product or service, and that's why I actually wanna go and buy it.
09:06And so instead of you trying to go and play this losing game of trying to stay relevant when customer acquisition costs on paid media are up by 60% over the last five years alone, Instead of that, you wanna piggyback into the one vehicle that's actually becoming more and more relevant in society as a whole making decisions.
09:24There's a reason why even in presidential elections, presidential candidates are going to creators trying to tap into the actual organic side because they know that's where the attention lies and where decisions are being made. Now there's three backing up reasons that I'm going provide you with, which is number one, the profitability.
09:40Number two, the operational complexity. And number three, longevity. Now a lot of it's gonna comp is gonna contradict what Spencer says, and that's because, quite frankly, there's just two different sides of opinions to it.
09:51Now let me start off first things first with profitability. Right? On average, having worked with a bunch of clients ourselves that do both paid and organic, I can tell you this.
10:00The average client that does a million plus a month off of paid ads has roughly a profit margin of 45%, whereas clients do 1,000,000 a month off of organic have an average profit margin of 64%. That that drastic difference is super simple.
10:14Number one, the customer acquisition cost is significantly higher. Okay? As I mentioned, it's drastically rising.
10:19But on paid organic, when you when you scale paid, your customer acquisition cost drastically increases over time, whereas with organic, it actually, like, decreases because you're actually building an asset. So your customer acquisition cost goes lower as you scale, which gives you outsized returns. Number two, with with organic, you have a significantly lower refund rate, something that people don't really discuss, but a lot of businesses struggle with refunds, chargebacks, all of that good stuff.
10:44Our clients based on stats that we've kinda gathered have a three times lower refund rate of organic because people don't just buy to into an offer. They buy into you as a person, which means they, in some way, shape, or form, feel less likely or less strong towards actually going and charging back and pressing you on that.
11:00And last but not least, the one thing you can do is as a personal brand, you have a certain level of status, which means you're actually able to charge a premium for your offer. Every single personal brand that you might imagine right now, they're able to charge a premium for what they're doing because they actually have that form of leverage and status, which as a result allows you to have a higher profit per unit and just makes organic as a whole significantly more profitable.
11:22Now reason number two, and I think this is the most pressing one as a as a matter, is operational complexity. Right? Now it's all great to talk about the scalability of ads and how awesome it is and how it's so predictable, but at the end of the day, the operational complexity is one thing that really screws you, especially in the long time with, as I mentioned, client acquisition costs rising.
11:40As an example, we have clients that do a mill amount of paid versus organic. On average, the paid guys, they have a 500 to 2,000 sales calls that they book in order to achieve that million dollar a month mark. For our organic clients, that's been anywhere between six hundred and eight hundred calls, give or take the offer, which as a result, it means you have literally double the amount of calls.
11:58Now that means you need double the amount of sales teams, means you need significantly more management and just resources being put into the entire sales process. And so you have, you know, a bunch of, like, dead leads and a bunch of clothes that you need to churn, recruit for, and replace. And on the flip side, you have significantly higher show up rates as well as close rates because people from organic, they're sold on who you are, they're sold on what you do, and they're sold on sort them actually being able to get the result, which stems from them consuming significant amounts of content.
12:24And as a side note, right now, every single person spends a fortune on actually getting people to consume content, which is kind of pointing proven point in case. Now last but not least, on the whole premise of, like, operational complexity, the biggest thing that I would say is right now, a lot of people, they rely on back end offers as well as, like, the offer enough itself to be able to drive sales and revenue.
12:45Again, as even Cole outlines in a lot of, like, his trainings, right, the offer is a pivotal part in order to stand out with paid ads. And so instead of coming up with more fancy guarantees, you know, making up some some really cool offer and having to, you know, build a fulfillment system that now costs more and more as you scale, right, you actually, with organic, are able to have similar offers that have significantly longer timelines.
13:06One One of our clients, for example, he's had the same offer, no additions made since five years, and he's still gradually growing and scaling his company. Not because his offer is not cooked, know, he's in one of the more most sophisticated markets, but because people buy the transformation that he desires and they buy into him as a person as opposed to just, oh, this is a fancy offer.
13:24I wanna go buy into this. Now third reason that I'm gonna make here is the longevity of things. Okay?
13:28Personal brand right now and building an organic platform is really the big moat in a weird way, because the one thing that you have on the paid ad worlds that nobody wants to address is the fact that you can get copied overnight. I can seal your entire funnel. I can seal all your ads.
13:42I can seal your entire email flows. I can seal your entire business within twenty four to forty eight hours. And this is the thing with organic that people don't understand.
13:49You have a moat. You look at the biggest personal brands, Cody Sanchez, Iman Gaji, Shelby Schap, all of the big industry titans. The one thing that they have that nobody else can replicate is their personality, their story, their expertise, and their unique experiences.
14:02And that is why when you build a brand, that's your moat. You can leverage your experience, your story, all of that stuff that you have that makes you you in a way to relate to your ICP, which nobody else can go and do. Sure.
14:14People go and copy your content, but as a result off of that, they can't copy your persona, your background, and all of that good stuff. And that gives you actual leverage. And on top of that, with, you know, a personal brand, you can gradually grow your audience, which means your leverage and the impact that you get significantly grows.
14:31Even today, you probably, as a big personal brand, have people that follow you six months, twelve months, even twenty four months ago that will actually go and convert. You don't have to go and spend a ton of money to actually go and sort of, like, you know, argue with them or like essentially go like convince them. They just consume your content, which means as a whole, the efficiency of the dollars you spend is significantly higher.
14:51And last but not least, the biggest thing is this. Right? With personal brands, people buy you and what you do, which means which contrary to what we're probably gonna discuss, you actually can have multiple offers.
15:03You look at some people like Ryan Pineda, even some of our clients or Iman Gazzi, they have dozens of different offers that they push under the same umbrella. Not because they they build a purse around around their expertise. They build a personal brand around their persona, which means if they promote something, people stand for it.
15:19That's why a lot of the streamers are capable to provide different, you know, gambling platforms, like different clothing companies, and people buy it because there's just an affiliation with that. And so, again, to round this out to you, the reason why I'd always go with the personal brand, which is very simply put, is because one, it fits into the economical and societal trend that we're running into right now with the creator economy taking over.
15:38Number two, it's significantly more profitable. Right? It's operationally less complex.
15:43And last but not least, in the long run, especially with what's going on right now, having a personal brand is really what's gonna set you up for long term success. If you ever wanted to get my one on one help in terms scaling your business, then listen up really fast. So we're taking on a few clients where I can personally one on one audit their business across marketing, sales, operations, fulfillment, finance to be able to tell you what your constraint actually is and ultimately what are the one to three things you need to do next to be able to scale working entirely one on one with me.
16:10So if that's interesting, there's a link in the description that'll say Cole one on one that you can go book. But essentially, not only will you get my personal advice, but we'll also be opening up our entire playbooks of my $36,000,000
16:21a year company across marketing sales, operation, fulfill finance. So you can basically model the best practices of what we've done right into your business, and it'll include the opportunity to meet in person up at an event with me. So if that's interesting, click the link in the description and mount back to the video.
16:36Alright. We'll go to Spencer's rebuttal. Yeah.
16:40The phrase personal brand is the single biggest scam, uh, ever conducted in this industry.
16:46It is completely ridiculous, and I have very clear proof of this. So who is the number one personal brand in this industry?
16:55Well, it's none other than Tony Robbins himself. Right? The guy is an absolute goat.
16:59I think everybody here agrees that he is the number one personal brand that's like an info coaching guy. He's been doing it for thirty years. Okay?
17:07Well, funny enough, isn't it funny how wait a minute. His content doesn't actually do that well. Like, doesn't get that many views.
17:15Like, he doesn't have a personal brand because of content. And see, what's happened is as people like Jeremy, who, again, I very intelligent. I'm sure he has the best intentions.
17:23Folks like that have, uh, contorted the meaning of brand to fit a narrative that is completely untrue. So the idea of brand is, uh, very simple.
17:33It's your reputation as a company. Okay? That's what brand is.
17:38What content is, to put very simply, is you saying things about yourself. So we all know just logically as human beings that what I say about myself has the lowest impact on my reputation.
17:50And things that have much greater, uh, impact on my reputation are what? Are what other people say about me. And candidly, unless your entire full time focus isn't to being a content creator, which we talked about, if you don't do that, it's not durable at all.
18:05Okay? Hence why we've seen so many people come and go as the number one person on YouTube both in our niche, in business, etcetera, and just in general on YouTube. Many people have come and gone.
18:16And in the future, I'm sure someone will overtake mister beast as well. But beyond that, it's because unless you do that, then guess what? People when they talk about you and your reputation, your brand, they're gonna be talking about their experience with your product and service.
18:30So we live in a world now where magically, uh, and this is something that Jeremy said earlier, we live in the creator economy. And I have a very, uh, good question.
18:38What the fuck does that actually mean? Can somebody please define it for me? Because I have been hearing we're in the creator economy and, uh, ads costs are rising and all this stuff for the last ten years.
18:49And every year, uh, people have made more and more and more money from ads. Like I don't know. And same thing with the creator economy.
18:56Like I I that's just a fancy buzzword. It doesn't actually mean anything.
19:00It just sounds smart. Okay? And so my point being this, is number one, there is no or I I wanna say no.
19:07There's very very little correlation between content and building an actual brand. And so the whole phrase of personal brand is a is basically a facade that's saying like, oh yeah, like if you post some things and you know be you know, become popular on YouTube for a couple months, you'll make some money.
19:26That doesn't mean you actually built a real durable brand that's gonna be around for a long time like Tony. Okay. Number one.
19:33Number two is, um, something that Jeremy mentioned is that, oh, with your personal brand that doesn't exist, you get to charge a premium, uh, premium price. Right? Well, here's the thing.
19:44There's plenty of examples of you get to charge a premium price with ads too. I mean case in point, Cole just interviewed John Madsen from Superhuman and he's a weight loss guy that his front end is $10,000 and his back end is $40,000.
19:58And guess how he drives almost all of his traffic is on ads. So clearly there is literally zero connection between having a personal brand and being able to charge premium prices.
20:09Uh, or at a bare minimum, you have to admit that you can do it with both. And then Jeremy said some other things that I'd like to call out.
20:15He mentioned building an asset. Well, again, I mean, tell that to Dan Lok. Like Dan Lok doesn't have much of an asset if he didn't get any views anymore.
20:23Nobody wants to buy anything from him. Okay? And, you know, I think there's a a lot of the organic guys.
20:29They they like to say a lot of things that sound really, really, you know, powerful and good. But a lot of them are just buzzwords and they're meant to scare you. Like I mentioned this earlier, but I have been told every single year, and I've been in this industry for ten years, that ads costs are rising and you have to you have to get on organic.
20:47And yet somehow we make more and more money from ads every year. I don't know how that's possible, but it is.
20:54And so my final point is and I'd like I think this is important. You know, Jeremy's one one of his biggest points was building a moat.
21:05And hey, if you have an audience, you have a moat. But if you have a funnel, you don't have a moat. And I think that's just so disingenuous.
21:12Because the reality is, and I'm sure Jeremy's gonna bring this up, running ads at scale, as he mentioned, is complex. It is challenging.
21:20Now it's not as complex nearly as Jeremy makes it seem. I mean, case in point, I'll tell you straight up.
21:26We, you know, we do multiple 8 figures a year with one media buyer, uh, who is hybrid media buyer, hybrid marketing tech, and, like, one marketing ops guy and me, you know, as well as some video editors, which you would need for organic anyways, and a creative director, which you would need for organic anyways. So there's no difference.
21:43But on the note of emote, I don't think you can call having an audience emote when in today's world, all of the social platforms are moving away from audience based suggestions. I mean, case in point, a few years ago when TikTok really started to boom and the For You page became the main delivery vehicle of content on socials, you know, people started noticing a decrease in returning viewership from their subscribers, from their followers.
22:10And that's because, know, at the end of the day, these platforms are incentivized to do what? Collect money from the advertisers. Okay?
22:16Like me. And by doing that, they just want the best content possible. And And so they don't care if you subscribe to somebody for five years or not.
22:25If it's not the best content possible, they're not going to show your video. And we've seen this over and over and over again.
22:31So that mode is once again a facade. It doesn't even exist.
22:34Alright. That was four minutes and well, it's about five minutes and thirty seconds. So your rebuttal, you have the same time.
22:40So Spencer told you, like, a lot of stuff. Right? Durability, how profitable ads are, how it's easier to go in reverse bands, as well as flexibility.
22:46So I'm just going quickly demystify a lot of this for Number one, the whole point of, like, durability and, like, decreasing views, absolute nonsense. Right? Let's take a guy like Iman Gazzi as an example, right, who, by by means of our industry, is probably one of the biggest leaders.
22:59If you look at his views right now, no disrespect, Iman, but, like, they've kinda gone down the gutter. Right? But the thing is, if you look at his actual performances, he makes more money than ever.
23:07Because the thing is, with someone like Spencer, no disrespect, he obviously really understands ad, but what he simply doesn't understand is that views don't equal cash. It's not about how many people you actually go and reach and, like, how big of an influencer you are, It's about who actually sees your stuff. And this is the thing that most of paid ads guys don't understand is that just it's not about just creating content.
23:26Content can be equally as much of a marketing strategy as much it is to go and run paid ads. Right? So, again, I just said that views don't really mean mean cash as a whole.
23:35Right? And so, essentially, like, at the end of the day, you mentioned how, like, Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, all these fossils who have been around for, like, twenty plus years are not relevant anymore. Right?
23:44I would like to go and ask, were any of these big guys who are running paid ads, like, while ten, fifteen years ago? I don't even know who they were, because quite frankly, they're not relevant anymore. Right?
23:53Whereas with content, especially the newer gens, they're the ones who actually stay relevant for the significantly longer, Not because they go and maintain millions of views, because their core audience maintains engage with them. Point in case, someone like Iman Gazzi, I've been watching for the, like, a part of six plus years, right, and still watch.
24:09Is it still as popular? Does he get millions of views? No.
24:12But the core audience has been engaged with him for years up and years. We'll stay engaged and we'll continuously buy stuff. The second thing on the paid ad stuff being more profitable, to me is, like, absolute nonsensical.
24:22Right? You're talking about you you maintain ad scale probably, like, a three to five x ROAS, right, which probably, you know, is is probably the standard. And means if you need to reinvest into content, right, that means you need to go and invest like a three to five x ROAS.
24:36There's no chance most people invest, you know, anywhere between 200 and, like, you know, 300 k plus every single month into their content. That's just like nonsense. Someone like mister beast, who doesn't really have, like, a clear structure monetization model, is probably gonna invest quite a bunch, but that's just because he doesn't have a monetization model.
24:53That's not a content problem. When you look at the biggest personal brands, again, you take your Iman Gazi's, Alex Hermosy's, they probably invest a 100 k, 200 k plus every single month. Yes.
25:02But the outsized returns that they're getting is ten, twenty x that. And so as a result off of that, that's pretty much what I think is not make sense. The second thing that Spencer mentioned with all the, you know, ads being better and all of that stuff is is cute, but a lot of the big names, you know, that are spending a lot of money on ads, they literally use their best performing content as ads.
25:20So if you deduct the content, their ads pretty much go down the gutter, which makes the profit statement pretty much irresponsible. Now one of the points that Spencer made, which actually I thought was a really good point, right, is how to go and run paid ads at a high level, you need to have, like, a really high skill set, which is kinda, according to his words, a little mini mode.
25:38And I think that's true, but at the same time, the complexity that comes with it allows you a very small margin for error, which means you need your ads, your funnel, your media buying, all of that stuff dialed in. Right? Whereas with content, you just need to have decent content, and you have your sales stuff dialed in.
25:51And so with that being said, I think on the profit side, that complexity quickly goes and eats into your margins, which makes that that argument, in my sense, nonsensical. Now in terms of bans and cancel, simply put, like, yes, can you go and get get banned on Instagram? Yes.
26:06Same as your ad account. The one thing I would go and say is a lot of ad media buyers say this, oh, the pixel data is so valuable. You literally just target your ICP, which is lovely until I go and spoof you your your pixel with, like, a bunch of plus nine one offers, and then all of a sudden, just get shown out in Mumbai and Nigeria, which probably is not where your ideal client audience is at if you wanna sell a $10,000 product.
26:25And so as much as that is as much in Instagram as it is on Facebook, you can go and ruin someone's pixel consistently, but it's next to impossible to go and take someone's brand down on every single platform, which again, with with content based businesses, you're allowed to go and have decent diversification, which in of itself kinda makes the banned argument very nonsensical.
26:44Last but not least, the flexibility. I think I pretty much diffused that in my opening statement, but a personal brand isn't just like an expertise, it's a person, which means as you kinda evolve, you have multiple things. Think of someone like Iman who I've mentioned a few times.
26:57Right? He's had the crypto thing. He's had, like, basically, like, SMA and info and all these different ways to go and kinda make money.
27:03Right? Which kinda shows you can go and have a lot of flexibility. Because, again, you sell through your story and through who you are as a person, not a vehicle.
27:12Alright. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna go to the open section now. That was both rebuttals,
27:16both opening cases. I'm gonna tee you up guys up with some questions because, again, what we really wanna talk about is if somebody magically was just gonna give you a business, it was $10,000,000 a year run completely through ads or completely through organic, which would you rather have?
27:30What do you think is more valuable? I wanna hit on a couple very key points, and we'll start with Jeremy since you went first. But this is gonna be a conversation, so there can be a back and forth here.
27:40So if I wanna sell my business, though, why would organic
27:46be better? I don't think organic would be better if you wanna sell your business, to be quite frank with you. But I think the point point in case is a very small percentage of companies would go and sell.
27:57And, you know, tell me if I'm wrong, but from the statistics that I've recently read, especially businesses doing around, like, 10,000,000 a year, that's actually the one that private equity is the least interested in. And so as a result, why would you wanna go and sell a business if the interest in that is particularly low?
28:11Well, I I think that's first of all, that's not even true. But beyond that point,
28:19as the value of the thing, how are you defining value? To me, that could be how I wanna live my life. That could be one way to define value.
28:26It means how much money I net in profit every single year. Those are just two ways I can go and define value. I don't think if you wanna go and build a not every person in this industry wants to go and sell a company, because if you do, you probably wouldn't start an info coaching business if you wanna sell a company, would you?
28:39Well, I you to I want you to address his point about he says most people in the industry can't sell. There's not private equity interest.
28:49It you know? Do you think that's true? And do you think ads allows you to sell have more actual sellable asset if you wanted to exit your business because you wanna retire someday?
28:57Yeah. Yes. And and I'll answer that question by actually responding to a point you made just a minute ago,
29:02which at the very end of your rebuttal section, uh, you mentioned that you're not building a personal brand around your expertise. You're building a personal brand around a person.
29:10And your followers follow this person and it's like some beautiful cult like thing going on there and it's it's it's amazing. Um, but that that's actually exactly the problem, right? Is, um, you know, to to Cole's point in asking you this question, you can't sell a company based off of a person.
29:29Now that is irrelevant to, kind of to your point, whether that's ads or that's organic. It's just that if you've built a brand off of you're the person and like good luck switching that.
29:41That's pretty hard to do. And you basically can't do it. Now the whole notion that like most people don't wanna sell a company, I don't think that's actually true.
29:48I think most people don't take it in as an actual reality that they can do. When in reality, there has definitely been people sell I mean, in point, the biggest organic person right now in in our space, least, you know, biggest, I would say we all agree aside from Tony Robbins, uh, is Hermozy. And Hermozy got his platform from selling his info company.
30:04Right? So clearly, there's an opportunity to sell, not just sell for a little bit.
30:08Sell for tens of millions of dollars. Um, but that info company was not based on organic. That info company was based on ads and diversified with cold outbound.
30:18Okay? And that's nothing negative to say about us. It's just that, hey, you know, when you sell a business to that asset, you wanna have multiple streams of traffic.
30:25And, uh, obviously, cold outbound is very attractive to investors. So, yeah, in terms of people wanting to sell, I mean, I can't speak for you. I think if people realize the opportunity that was available, if they structure their business the right way to sell, I think they'd be much more interested.
30:37I think we're in a market that is, um, you know, a lot of people, this is their first successful business or they're early on in their career. And so you know, you're starting out, you're focused on income, and that's totally fine. I was in the same place.
30:47Um, but eventually, you know, you get you get to a point where you're like, man, I wanna build some real enterprise value and exit. And you can totally do that in this industry if your entire business isn't based on your personal brand. I I actually agree with what you're saying, to be fair with you.
30:59My my rebuttal to this would be, yes. I think you can definitely go and sell. And if you wanna go and sell, you should probably do it through ads because, obviously, you're gonna have key man risk.
31:07Now I would go and say, if all your revenue comes through ads and it comes through Facebook ads, you kinda, to an extent, have the same key man risk because you're basically one ad account or one ad freeze away from getting your shit shut down. But at the end of the day, right, you mentioned obviously Hermozy being, like, very successful.
31:21Right? Obviously, with basically, like, no organic whatsoever. To me, the point would be for every one Hormozi, there's gonna be, like, a 100 plus other people that don't go and actually achieve the dream of selling.
31:32And so in my eyes, I'm like, why would I wanna go and optimize for, like, an outcome that's such a small percentage of people, you know, kind of realize and leaves a lot of people on the shitter instead of actually having a business that provides me with, you know, the cash flow and all of that stuff that I could actually go and have.
31:49And so we'll start with Spencer. Why is paid ads more profitable?
31:53Is it more profitable? Because most people would probably take Jeremy's stance maybe that, okay, you're not having to spend the money on ads, obviously. So because you're not spending the money on ads and the traffic is free,
32:04that running an organic 8 figure business would be more profitable. Yeah. I mean, look, if you're a full time content creator, like, that's your entire job, sure.
32:14That's gonna be more profitable. But we're not talking about being a content creator that makes $10,000,000 a year. We're talking about owning a business that makes $10,000,000 a year.
32:22And, uh, owning a business, an actual business, requires systems and it requires people. And those people are expensive. And, uh, to my further my earlier point about durability and relevance, you know, uh, Jeremy mentioned like, hey, you know, Iman Gazzi is still making money and, you know, I'm sure he is obviously.
32:39Um, but his viewership is down. Uh, and yeah. Okay.
32:43Cool. Like, I don't know. I don't I'm not Iman.
32:45I've never talked to him. I don't know. You know?
32:46I'll just take that at face value. But based on that, I think that brings up an important point, is like he's clearly not investing the same time, energy, resources, and capital into producing the best content anymore, and he's losing relevance.
32:59And in the short term, sure. He's got a big enough following that he's built up to where he can make some money just like if you ran ads and you stopped running ads, you have a huge email list that you can kind of milk it and make money from for a while. But eventually that email list dries up and you have to feed the beast.
33:14You have to, you know, give give it new blood. And if you're gonna make your entire business off of organic, you can't afford to not reinvest a ton of money into organic.
33:24And so when people say organic is less expensive, what they're really saying is, uh, I'm not gonna factor in all of my organic costs and my team and all of my time and energy making these videos, which is extremely high. Okay? Especially if you're the CEO of a $10,000,000 a year company, every hour of your time is worth a tremendous amount of money.
33:42I'm not gonna count all of that, and I'm gonna say the traffic is free. So what do you think about Spencer's point, which to recap is essentially, okay, you're not factoring in the opportunity cost time of, let's say, you as the CEO actually spending all this time on the content hamster reel, uh, and then overall, just your thoughts on ads versus organic in terms of profitability.
34:04I actually think Spencer brought up one really good point that I personally, like, really agree with. Right? It's the fact that, again, everyone thinks that organic is free.
34:11I don't believe organic is just free. Right? There's a lot of, like, people that do organic, whether that's, like, you know, one you've mentioned the time you invest into creating content, but also some stuff like, you know, you do podcast tours.
34:21You do you know, you basically, like, get other people to collaborate with you. Those are, like, you know, in a sense, like, paid opportunities that you're gonna take. However, here's the thing.
34:30The return off of those, like, you know, opportunities is significantly higher. Right? First things first.
34:35As an example, you take a podcast like Fresh and Fit. Right? Technically, you know, an appearance fee there can be, like, $20.30 k.
34:41You know? And one of our clients gone there multiple times. But every single time he's come out of a podcast like that, he's driven literally ten, twenty x that in sales as a direct result off of that newly gained brand awareness.
34:51Now at the same point, right, you're talk about, you know, you're basically being a full time content creator. The issue with that is most people think that content creators just sit there.
35:00They they walk around their house. They go, oh, content. Right?
35:02The point is over time with especially with AI, you can have very simple systems and people that you bring on that, you know, aren't as expensive as as Dear Spencer tries to make it out to be, right, that actually can have a tremendous impact. So for example, some of our clients, right, they actually run businesses or have multiple businesses.
35:20Right? But they their core focus is their personal brand, their content systems. They spend one or two hours every single week on creating content.
35:28They don't go and do the whole due diligence and all of that rubbish. They just sit down. They create the content, and they essentially have, like, you know, whether that's low cost editors in The Philippines, whether that's, you know, copywriters, someone who actually manages everything, and actually go and produce the content.
35:40Yes. There's costs attached to it, but the returns of that is significantly bigger. And you're still actually building a growing engine where as your audience grows bigger, you have outsized returns.
35:50So I think a good way to summarize his point is he did acknowledge that there is an opportunity cost as you as the CEO even if your hourly rate might be $30,000 an hour
35:59and doing going on somebody's podcast or filming a piece of content, etcetera. I think his point is maybe you look at somebody like Daniel Priestley who went on the Diary of CEO and basically
36:10that podcast launched his entire business. So what would your response be to that as well as his, you know, you can systematize it and all that stuff with your content. Yeah.
36:20I I I love, like, the organic gurus. It's all about, like, we systematize the content, and you, like, don't ever spend any time on it. And then, like, the people who are actually, like, doing really big content numbers like Hermozy are, like, constantly making fun of people who say that.
36:31Like, it's just kinda contradictory to me, which is pretty funny. Even the content guys can't agree. Okay?
36:36Um, but one thing that I I think is kind of quite interesting is, uh, you know, earlier and this plays into this point, you know, you mentioned like, hey. You just throw together some decent content, you start making money.
36:47And like, boy, I wish it was that easy, man. Like, I would be the biggest YouTuber ever, man. I posted a lot of decent content.
36:52You know? Um, but the reality is, like, especially in 2026, you can't just post decent content.
36:59And I don't know, you know, if you're watching this video, you know, I I I challenge you for the next twenty four hours. Go out and just meet some random people on the street. Even better yet, go out to a business conference, meet some entrepreneurs.
37:11And I want you to like legitimately in your head evaluate, man. Could this person be a good content creator? Because the answer almost always is no.
37:19Okay? It's like I rarely meet someone. Go, man, this guy's got such an amazing personality and way of communicating.
37:24He's gonna crush content. And so the reality is is like for those people, the 99% of us that are just like, you know, wanna have a business and are regular people and don't wanna be a content creator. Okay.
37:35Yes. You know, you could make the argument, hey, we could learn content and we could get good enough. But, you know, that's like saying I can learn basketball and go to the NBA.
37:45Like, okay. You know, that's that's like a twenty year skill gap, so thank you. You know?
37:49I I think, you know, on the example of this gentleman, uh, going on the podcast, You know, to use Jeremy's own argument against him, for every one of those, there's a bunch of people who spend a bunch of money on on podcast agencies and never made anything with it.
38:01By the way, you're looking at one of them. Right? And so, you know, just because you get on a podcast, it's not just about being in front of people.
38:10It's about conveying your message in a way that you know, creates a little bit of emotion in them, gets them interested in you, builds a story. And that is you know, debatably a skill. I'm not even I'm not even confident to say that is a skill.
38:21But, uh, even if it is one, it's an extremely challenging skill that just most people don't have the time and bandwidth to learn. And so therefore, like, all of these stats about it being more profitable and the durability and all that, like, whether or not you agree with me or Jeremy, at the end of the day, none of that matters if you're not a great content creator because you're gonna be able to sustain the revenue that you got to.
38:41So his point is some people don't have the innate personality,
38:47to be successful with content. How would you respond to that? I think that whole thing basically goes in, like, you're being a natural, which I just so truly disagree with.
38:55Right? You look at again, what you're saying is, hey. Not everyone's a good content creator.
38:59You know? I kinda agree with that. But with that being said, not everyone's naturally born thing.
39:03I don't think Cole here, right, obviously runs ads really well or, you know, Hormozie woke up. He's like, ads and is great at advertising right off the bat.
39:10It's a skill. Same thing with content. You know?
39:13The great the beautiful thing about content is you actually, to an extent, can take control of the persona you inhibit. As an example, we take, you know, Andrew Tate as an example. If you if you see him on in online, he's a persona, whereas behind closed doors is completely different.
39:28He learned the skill of becoming a persona. Just as, for example, you have to go and learn ads. I myself am a content guy.
39:35I'm fairly confident in my ability to create content. I restart to run some ads, and, you know, my ad skills are horrific, which again, it kinda like just kinda throws your argument back at you where it's like, well, just because I run ads doesn't mean I'm gonna be awesome at it. Right?
39:48There's a learning curve involved with it. And so if you don't you you basically just pick your poison, what do wanna invest it in. One, you essentially just go and run into the same issues over and over again.
39:57But the other one, if you actually learn content, you have the skills. Right? You essentially, over time, build, like, actually compounding effects.
40:04The second thing that you keep mentioning is the fact that, like, the views and, like, the virality, like, you just create some content, which is the exact nuance that I think a lot of, like, paid ads guys, you know, just like Spencer kinda oversee, is that content isn't just like, I just talk on camera or I say some controversial thing, and I just make, like, a gender or, like, a politics statement, and now I go viral and I get a bunch of sales.
40:22It's it's strategic. Right? The reason why a lot of creators right now have lower views because they've noticed that at first, they go and play the views game.
40:30Right? They go and do all of this, like, crazy stuff of going viral, and then they realize that virality is cool, but actually what really works is speaking to specific people. And, if you look at even what the Instagram CEO says, they're being more and more specific, similar to a pixel, where they show based on what you say.
40:46They go and show your content to specific people. And so now, it's actually not even as fancy to go and get millions of views. It's more about speaking to a specific person through your content, which, again, it's it's learning it as a skill.
40:57I agree with that, but so is Paydads. I just personally think the one I will wanna go play is the more profitable one. But let me give you an opportunity to to answer this because his point was
41:07you gotta have a personality to or and a charisma or some sort of kinda natural predisposition to make content.
41:15Then you you mentioned, like, Andrew Tate has two different personalities, etcetera. So I think what I wanna ask you is, is it possible to be an introvert or not? I mean, Andrew Tate's insanely charismatic.
41:25I think we can all agree. Is it possible to not be maybe a charismatic person and be more logical, engineering, mining, etcetera, and be good at content? 100%.
41:34Can you give an example? Who who's a good example? Have a good example.
41:36There's this one gentleman online. His name is Richard Garcia. So he has 1,500,000 followers.
41:41When you look at his content, he's extremely charismatic, extremely confident. Now one of my friends was actually the person who built that, you know, particular gentleman up. And when you look at his first videos, he's extremely shy.
41:51He honestly looks like the worst creator ever, and he doesn't have the skill set whatsoever.
41:55But because he's put in the reps, right, and he's basically done the consistency with it, you can essentially go and see how the confidence on camera and the awareness of what does and doesn't work is actually going and and coming across much better. So what would you say? Do you have any response to him?
42:09Or you wanna be on the He next really answered the he really answered the question. Like, he asked you like, oh, do you need to be charismatic? And then you gave an example of a guy that then you just said is very charismatic.
42:18So like, is your argument that like you can learn charisma over a long enough time period? Because like, sure. But like, I I a 100% guarantee you can start making a significant amount of money with ads in a short period of time.
42:29We're kinda getting off the topic here of the $10,000,000 valuable business. Right? We're like we're like we're like going into this world of like how long does it take to learn charisma?
42:37And, like, the question is, what's the like, what's a more valuable business? And, I mean, you in your own words said that, like, uh, yeah. You can't sell a company based on ads.
42:46I think or excuse me, a company based on organic. See? That was a Freudian slip for you.
42:49So I I mean, that that that kinda answers the question. You know? It's like, if you can't sell it, then what value does it impose?
42:56Now maybe it provides value to you in the short run, but maybe you end up like Dan Lok, and you end up not making any money. You know? Well, what would you say, though, to somebody who says,
43:04well, you know, sure, you gotta be charisma to do organic, but that's because it's recording videos and the best performing videos
43:12or sorry. The best performing ads are videos. Well, that's not I mean, that's not even necessarily true.
43:16Right? Some of our best performing ads are in our images. But even aside from that point, you know, I mean, there's so many there's so many rebuttals to that.
43:23It's like, number one, don't have to run video ads. Number two is it's much easier. You know, Jeremy mentioned AI and using that content, which I thought was a bit contradictory because on one hand, you said like, hey.
43:34It's super easy to systematize. And, you know, it's it's you can do it in one, two hours. And then on the other hand, his last thing was like, oh, you know, content is not just about your personality.
43:43It's like super strategic. And it's like, well, if it's not strategic, how do you like, are you hiring some VAs to, like, build the strategy of your million subscriber channel? Like, probably not.
43:52You know? Um, but furthermore, uh, using AI in your ads is far easier, far easier.
43:59Like, good luck making an AI Cole Gordon YouTube video. You know? Like, you gotta replicate him and his speaking tone and everything like that.
44:06That's maybe we'll get there at some point, but we're not there today. Um, but with that being said, there's plenty of platforms like Arcadz is one example of them where you just copy and paste your proven, uh, ad script and you get a bunch of AI version of that and And a lot of them crush it. I mean, I've seen that firsthand.
44:20So moving on, what is more scalable? So if you think about maybe you're already at 10,000,000 and you wanna go to 25,000,000
44:27in terms of revenue. Right? Is organic more scalable, or is paid ads more scalable?
44:33We'll start with you. I will actually go say very controversial. I know everyone's like, that's more scalable.
44:37I'll actually go and say content is just equally, if not more scalable. Now, the biggest thing most people don't underestimate is when it comes to, you know, the scalability of contests. They think, well, you just post more.
44:47You just need to go more viral. Well, actually, you know, to an extent, yes. But more importantly, the one thing that most people don't understand is, like, very similar to ads where if you have a winner, you just spend as much money as possible on it.
44:58Something very similar is possible with the concept of organic. As an example, I will take Luke Belmar as an example. He had this one particular video of, like, oh, like, I studied, bro, like, know, a few other clips where it's gone extremely viral.
45:09Well, he's actually not just posted that once and just eventually, like, reposted it. What he actually has done is, like, like, know, he's had a bunch of clipping pages that clipped up his content and obviously create almost, like, multiple pages, which is just another way of also diversifying some of that risk because he scales his his persona.
45:23But also, number two, what you can do is you can obviously scale through buying into distribution, whether that's podcast appearances, whether that's, like, you know, Instagram shout outs where you basically, like, buy into theme page networks.
45:33Right? Whether that's doing different collaborations with peer members, all that does. And last but not least, what most people don't really understand is, like, a lot of organic companies, what they eventually go into again, you look like Patrick McDavid.
45:44You look at Grant Cardone. Even to an extent, in a Slyer's, they look at like Iman. It's their scale through, like, avatars.
45:50Right? So, essentially, like, obviously, with with Patrick McDavid, you have, like, multiple avatars there. They have their own little segments.
45:56It's basically like a media company. You look at Grant Cardone who has, for every single division, he has, like, a different avatar. And so I think the scalability on there is extremely high.
46:04You look at someone like TJR who has, like, 20 plus sub pages that all drive, like, millions of views every single month. You know? Not saying those are all the best millions of views, but that whole ecosystem that you're building over time is actually gonna be significantly more scalable than most people think.
46:18So to to summarize his point, you know, he's thinking about it more of like a Disney model. So if you look at Dave Ramsey, there's multiple faces. In Armozzi, there's now gonna be multiple faces.
46:28And, uh, even Grant Cardone, there's multiple brand faces. So that makes it more scalable and potentially maybe to his point, more exitable for the main person at least to get out. So how would you respond to that?
46:40Yeah. So I I think we're, like, cherry picking a few examples that, you know, candidly are not relevant for 99.9%
46:47of businesses and or content creators in the creator economy. So, um, you know, you mentioned Hermozzi.
46:54You mentioned Ramsey. You've mentioned some people that have added in faces to, um, their viewership. That only works if you have conquered an entire category.
47:04What I mean by that is if you're making content, for example, on, you know, PCOS, which is a very specific women's health issue, can you then start making content on maybe one one step to the right of that with some other, you know, popular women's issue?
47:23Maybe. But if you're like, man, you know what we need to do to scale the business? Right now testosterone clinics are going crazy.
47:29We need to launch testosterone. Like, good luck. You're starting from scratch.
47:33So there's no advantage to that. And one thing that I brought up earlier was how difficult it is to reposition the brand. Um, Harvard Business Study again says that it's often one of the most fatal things an existing brand can do is to try to reposition.
47:48And so unless and I think we need to actually separate this out. If we're talking about a $10,000,000 a year business that's a media company, that's different than 99% of $10,000,000 a year businesses, which are not media companies.
48:01And you can't scale a non media company in the way that you would scale a media company. For example, let's say you're doing $10,000,000 a year in you know, HVAC or some sort of home service niche. And you know, you've become a really popular person all over the country on, you know, I don't know, HVAC and home services.
48:18Well, you can't do what he's saying. You can't be like, well I'm gonna add another face to this and, uh, you know, roll out another product line. Like it doesn't that that doesn't work.
48:26That doesn't make sense. So, uh, the last point I'll I'll make on this is operational complexity, which one of his main arguments that organic is better is that, oh, it's so simple, uh, compared to ads.
48:38You know? Ads are so operationally complex. Well, I've already explained the only thing we need for ads to run at our scale, which is much more than $10,000,000 a year, is one media buyer who's also a marketing tech, one marketing ops guy, me, and some good systems.
48:53But meanwhile, he just mentioned in about a sixty second time period, you need clipping pages. Nobody talks about that. It's not just, oh, I post some videos.
49:00It's like, no. You actually have to do all you have to have like 55 accounts. Oh, uh, guess what?
49:05He also invested in buying distribution. So are we talking about paid or are we talking about organic? Like, are we talking about?
49:11Right? And then, obviously, I already addressed his, you know, talking about a media company with multiple avatars. That just doesn't work for most businesses.
49:18But before I let you respond, how would you respond then to maybe somebody who says, okay. Well, we're talking about scalability. Ryan Serhant, Hermozzi, Dave Ramsey, uh, Cardan.
49:29I mean, they're all the biggest in their industry. Is that not more scalable?
49:34First of all, I disagree with that point, which is, uh, Ryan Serhan is not the biggest industry. Keller Williams is.
49:41Uh, so I think that's just a false testimonial. False social proof. Shout out to Ryan.
49:46I love you, Ryan, but, you know, Keller Williams. Uh, number two is, um, there are plenty of people who scaled with paid ads and or even if they haven't used paid ads are the biggest in the industry without organic content at all.
49:58So like I think we're drawing a false connection, false correlation. I mean case in point, you just interviewed Dean Graziosi. He's not mister organic and he's generated hundreds of millions of dollars online and you know, his net worth is in the multiple 9 figures.
50:10And actually, think I understand. He's generated billions online. I think it's probably a fair way to say.
50:16And so there are plenty of examples of companies who have scaled not using organic content. And, um, sure, there's famous examples of people who have, but it doesn't mean that they're number one.
50:27It just means that they're, you know, top of mind because they're how they got there was by becoming famous. How would you respond to all his points of what I just asked, but also even what he said before?
50:35Could you wanna go with something specific? Because you said a bunch of stuff and nothing to Well, well, okay. So specifically,
50:41I mean, recap your points. Yes. So number one is most companies that, uh, you know, if we're assuming they're doing $10,000,000 a year are not media companies.
50:49So if your, uh, process for scaling them is by rolling out multiple avatars going to that just doesn't work for a nonmedia company. Right? Number two is, um, in order for them to scale, they would need to reposition the brand.
51:01Reposition the brand according to Harvard Business Study or school, excuse me, is one of the most fatal things that a business can do. Most businesses that try to do it die.
51:11Alright? There are some few that obviously have survived, but most die. Um, and and then the last point I I just mentioned, which is as you scale, operational complexity of organic not only meets ads but actually far surpasses it.
51:24Because in order to get more content, uh, to, you know, bring in more viewership, feed the beast as we talked about, you have to start doing stuff like buying distribution,
51:32clipping a bunch of, you know, doing a bunch of clipping pages and posting like a 100 pieces of content a day, which requires a lot of infrastructure. If you're a business owner who has appointment setters or an outbound sales team, you're gonna wanna hear what I have to say for a second. So a multiple 8 figure business owner texted me the other day.
51:46And when he started using diala.ao for the first time, his pickup rates went from 9%
51:51to 20%. So imagine doubling your pickup rates and ultimately the throughput of what your outbound salespeople and centers are gonna get. How does that impact your business?
52:00The answer is a lot. So if you wanna check out Dialogue for a phone sales outbound system, just click the link in the description or just go to Dialogue. Now back to the podcast.
52:10So to go on to go and face on the the stuff that you've said, right, which is obviously like the, oh, you know, the media company at, like, 10 mil a year. I think at this point, we're arcing over what what's the definition of a media company, when do you become a media company or not. At the end of the day, it's it's very simple.
52:23If you get to $10,000,000 a year off of, like, a personal brand content, whatever you wanna call it. Right?
52:28You just bring it on and basically replicating that process for different avatars is not gonna go and add a a fuck ton of complexity into it so that you do more of what's already working. Right? And number two, you're not really going creating an entire complex structure around it.
52:41Again, you mentioned clipping pages, for example. A lot of clipping pages, the complexity behind this, you start a content rewards campaign.
52:48That's the extent to which a clipping page goes. There's next to no complexity in that whole spiel. So what would you say about lead quality then?
52:56Is organic or paid better in terms of lead quality as it pertains to making the sales team easier, uh, or their their sales process easier for that matter, client's access rate, refund rate, etcetera? Now
53:07lead lead quality, right, as an example. I think the it's the age old comparison where, like, a lot of paid guys says, oh, actually, our lead quality is better because you have pixel conditioning and all of that stuff.
53:15And, like, Instagram guys will say, like, oh, it's better because they're organic. Right? I think it's it comes down to the same premise that, like, if you understand marketing as a whole, your lead quality is gonna be good.
53:24So for example, somebody who just goes and tries mister beast, for example, will probably have the worst lead quality ever because, like, half his audience might be based in in, you know, non buyer demographic countries. Right? But with the flip side, you have creators who understand how marketing works, which means the lead quality is gonna be extremely strong.
53:40I'll take myself and our clients as an example. We are very good at attracting high net worth individuals, which every paid ads guy will say, wow. You only find poor people on Instagram.
53:48We we're extremely good at attracting that because we understand how to create content for said demographic. And so I would go and argue that, overarchingly, the lead quality off of organic done correctly is better than paid ads.
54:01Because in my in my perspective, in my understanding,
54:03people come in, they already consumed a bunch of content, they make decision to reach out as opposed to being pulled in by, like, an offer or, like, something that sounds extremely sexy. How would you respond to that? Well, I I think it's convenient that, like, you add on the qualifier, you know, content when done correctly brings in great lead quality.
54:19Like, sure, you can make the same argument with ads. You know what I mean? So like, yeah, I I don't I don't if if your argument that is if you do something well, you get good lead quality, yeah, I agree with you.
54:28Right? Like, but that's true of any marketing process. But I think that's the point.
54:31Right? If you go and say, oh, well, if you if if I run ads good,
54:35right, then you get really good leads. Correct? Sure.
54:38Exactly. Same thing with content. So it's like, I I run ads and my ad skills are really shit, so right now I get crappy leads.
54:44That doesn't mean that, like you know, it doesn't mean that I go and say, oh, you know, ads are bad or, like, organic's bad just because I suck at it. But I would go and say on average, if you have a skill set of, like, three or five out of 10, the likelihood of you attracting quality leads is higher with organic than it is with paid ads.
55:01I think that is true to a certain extent, which is if you have a three out of 10 or five out of 10 to to use your own words, skill set with organic, yeah, like your first big batch of sales that you're gonna get or leads that come through your pipeline, yeah, they're gonna be people who've watched all of your content or super bought in.
55:19And, yeah, those are gonna be pretty good leads. I agree. However, if you only have a three out of 10 or five out of 10 skill set with organic, that means your following probably isn't that big.
55:28And you probably don't actually have that many people who've watched a lot of your content, and you're gonna burn out of the good quality leads quickly. And so what you end up with is two things. Either basically no leads, right, or, uh, leads who are not actually people who've watched a bunch of your content because it's not good enough to have garnered a ton of views to warm people up.
55:49Whereas if you have a three out of 10 or five out of 10 skill set with ads, you have two advantages. Number one, as we mentioned earlier, it's much easier for the CEO to step out of that role and work tandem with somebody because he has an understanding of how it works, but it's not dependent on him being the face. Whereas with organic, it is.
56:06And so that allows you to quickly level up your skill set to increase the quality of leads. But also, again, you know, I think paid ads sometimes this is I'm saying this is a paid ads guy and you've brought this up and I completely agree at this point.
56:20That a lot of paid ads people, they go like down this crazy ass rabbit hole of some of like these media buying and like crazy technical stuff about lead quality. At the end of the day, like improving your lead call with ads, it 99% of the time ain't that hard. There's a few things that you do.
56:35Don't need to overcomplicate it. It's all about who you call out in your audience and, you know, how you communicate your offer. How would you just to give you a hard question, though, and then I'll let you respond.
56:45How would you then reconcile that again, what what we're asking what gives better lead quality? And a lot of times, if you look at and you segment segment organic versus paid in a sales team, you might see something like 25% close rate on paid, 40% close rate on organic.
57:04So how could you make the argument that lead quality is better with paid
57:09when you see statistics like that? Yeah. Because, uh, I think when you're looking at one period in time, one can be better than the other anytime.
57:16And so, again, my my my first point was, yeah, like if, you know, again, you're a three out of 10 or five out of 10 with content, you've built up a little bit of a following and now you start selling some of them. Those people are warmed up.
57:27Are gonna be better lead quality. You're exactly right. But if you're only that level of skill set with your content, you're gonna quickly run out of those people And it's gonna force your sales team to effectively sell people who are way less bought.
57:37Because your content kind of sucks if it's three out of ten, five out 10, especially in 2026. It's like you know, in this world, and we talked about the creator economy. Everybody wants to talk about how you got to post content.
57:48It's got to be great and all this stuff. Or you know, in your words, you got to post decent content.
57:52Well posting decent content doesn't really help you that much. Like if the whole idea of content creating better lead quality is people watch your content, they get super bought into you. Your content's not very good.
58:03That same process doesn't happen. The same thing like if someone buys a product and the product's not very good, they're not gonna be like, man, that was amazing. I'm super excited to buy something else.
58:10Right? So it's just your reputation over time. So anyways, my hopefully that that makes sense.
58:14Yeah. So you mentioned, obviously, the skill set. Right?
58:15If you have, like, a five out of 10 on content or three out of five, right, as I've mentioned, it's easier on ads to go and go and replace yourself. Right? And then essentially, it is with content.
58:24And then if you have, like if you have a five out of 10 skill set, your content kinda sucks, you're not really gonna get people in. Right? We keep coming back to the same notion that, like, you need to have, like, a shit ton of views.
58:33Right? As an example, you know, obviously, we we work with, like, a lot of different info business. We have a client right now who has, like, 8,000 followers.
58:39His content is okay, not great. Right? But he makes, like, you know, significant amounts of revenue every single month, whereas someone who has, like, 10 x's following is struggling to go and crack those numbers.
58:49He gets more leads, but he he doesn't get the right kind of leads. My point behind this is, I think right now, especially this is underlined by what the Instagram CEO said in the public statement is, they're pushing creators. They're very specific in terms of what you say within your content determines who we get shown to.
59:05So as an example, we had a real estate client where you mentioned randomly the words, you know, Zillow in, like, a pontoon three times, and the comment section was full of bloody realtors. Now, again, I would go and argue on the front, and that content piece wasn't even that great. But because of how nuanced the algorithm is getting these days on organic, it still gets shown to the right people.
59:23And I would go and argue that, you know, if you're an expert, you kinda know your your way around what it is you're doing. As long as you can somewhat communicate that, which really isn't like the craziest skill set on Earth to go and have, right, if you can just communicate a point, Instagram actually naturally helps you as an example, just as a platform example, to go and reach those people as well.
59:40And so I think the whole set of, like, oh, you can't really go and, like, get any any people in because you they're not now just just not existing is a bit wrong. Right? Vice versa, you mentioned you can obviously outsell.
59:49You can outsource, sales. You can outsource, like, ads to, obviously, someone someone that's, like, really good.
59:54You could go and make the same argument with, you know, organic where, oh, if you go and have
1:00:00A hard time getting really good at, you could go and and hire someone that's gonna be like your head of content or is gonna be that. Those people, one, aren't actually, like, that expensive as people make it out to be cheaper than than the than the paid ads guys for sure. And two, they can then help you actually level up your skill set quite significantly.
1:00:16Yeah. I mean, look. Uh, you know, I know I know you mentioned, like, we go back to the views doesn't equal money thing.
1:00:21And, yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, you're right. But also, like, I think what's happening now and we have to understand the the meta deception of the current environment that we're in.
1:00:32Hermozzi put out a post what maybe a year ago and he's followed it up saying the same thing that like, hey, I'm not gonna focus on views because views don't equal money. That makes sense. But to a certain point, we can't look at it as black and white.
1:00:46Like if he had zero views, he wouldn't be making any money either. So like views do equal money to a certain point. It's just about getting the right people to view.
1:00:52And as you mentioned, the content you make determines the people who are gonna watch it. So I bring that up to say, well same thing with ads.
1:01:01We go back to lead quality. Right? Like the ad you make determines who's gonna see it.
1:01:06Uh, and one thing that I think is, um, you know, uh, relevant in this point that Jeremy has brought up, uh, you know, a couple of times is that, hey, you know, it's not hard to, you know, learn how to make a clear point. I don't know what world you're living in, dude, but there's a lot of people who can't make clear points in a concise entertaining way.
1:01:25Like I would say that's normal. Right? Like because normal human beings, we just have normal conversation.
1:01:29Hey, how's your day going? You know, good. Okay.
1:01:31Cool. And they move on. And so like yeah, again, if somebody wants to you know dedicate a huge percentage of their time to becoming really really good at this craft, yeah absolutely they can become good at it over time.
1:01:43But in terms of hey, if you plopped us in to a business today that's doing $10,000,000 a year in revenue and we needed to scale it and it was either organic or it was paid ads.
1:01:54And I would be looking and being like, oh shit dude. Like am I an expert in what and what you know, this company is selling? Because if I'm not, I'm screwed for organic.
1:02:02I can't keep posting about something I don't understand. I think the the notion that you're saying, right, is like, oh, it's so difficult to learn and all of that stuff. Actually, would kinda go and say, like, yes.
1:02:12Does it is there a certain crafting getting millions of views, right, being really appealing, charismatic? Yes. But at the same time, right now, when you're looking through the timeline, it's no longer about being super, like, straight to the point and, like, super efficient with your words and, like, super charismatic.
1:02:25A lot of the bigger creators right now, they're literally just talking to the camera and having a conversation. Right? Which I know if you do that on ads, that's gonna leave your shit right down the gutter, because, obviously, nobody has an attention span this high.
1:02:36And so, basically, like, on socials, you have this notion where you actually have the grace right now of the platforms of actually having a bit of a skill deficiency not being the end of you. Whereas on paid ads, I think we can go and very much agree that if you're not concise with your opening and, like, your whole your whole flow, you're gonna be down the gutter.
1:02:52And I know you can use AI platforms like Arcats or all that stuff, but you could do the exact same thing on organic. Right? I can go and take a reel from a competitor, go and download the structure.
1:03:01I'm gonna say, okay. Cool. Where do I slightly go and have it where do I have a different opinion?
1:03:05Switch those words. And then I have, like, a decent a decent template to go off. But I think as a whole, the platforms that like, on Instagram is less punishing on you not being the most, you know, consistent or, like, you know, charismatic on camera as opposed to ads where you need to be a lot more concise.
1:03:21Well, I guess I mean, how do you explain, like, there's billions of hours of content being uploaded to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok every single day,
1:03:30of it never gets more than 50 views. So, like, how do you explain that? I think it's a simple supply and demand.
1:03:35It's the same thing on the paid ad side. Right? If you look at how many ads are being live and which ones actually never crack a ROAS on it.
1:03:40Right? I've had video, for example, like, like, 300 views that actually led with two high ticket sales. So, like and obviously, that's, like, the reality of it.
1:03:48And so it's like, yeah, you your first piece of content will probably suck just as you prefer your first ad will suck. But if you actually do some of the time and you basically just commit to thirty, ninety days of just posting once a day, I would go and argue that's gonna go lead you to a higher ROI or a faster skill progression than it does with ninety days of running ads.
1:04:05Because, obviously, with ads, you have a testing phase where you can't go and flip around and and, you know, test stuff. So I think the skill progression there will be significantly higher. So let me ask you this.
1:04:14So, Spencer, basically, what we just kinda talked about is, okay. If you take somebody, let's say, John Matson, who does fitness coaching, but he only works with high net worth individuals.
1:04:23So if you take somebody like that, he has great messaging, and therefore, he might get better lead quality than somebody who's making generic weight loss content, who gets a lot of views on YouTube, but obviously, those people are broke.
1:04:37But his argument, of course, and I think there's validity to this, is okay, great. Well, yeah, John Madsen can do that. You can also do the same thing.
1:04:43You might not as get as many views, but you're still going to get really high quality clients. So let's just say those things are equal for a second. How would you say, you know, his argument earlier was you get less refund rate, better client success rate, your customers already get value before they're actually coming in and working with you.
1:05:02Therefore, you have better client experience overall, and you gotta do less stuff.
1:05:06How would you debate that point? Yeah. I mean, think logically if we could sit here and say like, hey, if every single person, um, that buys your thing watches 75 YouTube videos and 400 reels and like writes you an email about how much your content has changed their life before they buy, like your reference is be pretty low.
1:05:23Like I agree with that point. Right? But I also think like a lot of times organic folks like to live in this world where like they believe that every single person that buys their thing is watching all of this, like, a ton of content.
1:05:36And, you know, I think you bring up a point about the the the high net worth folks, which is I watch content. Um, but, you know, to be fair, like, a lot of times I'm half listening, not really paying attention, or I'm watching an interview with like Elon Musk or something.
1:05:53It's not like I'm watching, you know and shout out to John. Like, if John had a big channel he was pushing content to, uh, you know, I'm not like sitting there watching fitness tutorials from, you know, a high net worth fitness trainer.
1:06:03Right? Like, that's just not normal behavior for most people who are super busy. Um, especially, like, we're talking about better lead quality, high net worth folks.
1:06:11So I think that's a bit of a mute point. And I think fundamentally, again, like, we live in the world where, like, we just assume every single bar of an organic, you know, customers or excuse me, organic businesses, uh, product is, you know, that they've gone through and watched a bunch of YouTube videos.
1:06:25Like, Okay. The the the refund rate might be lower. I'm happy to concede that point to you.
1:06:29But I also think that's a bit of a stretch because at the end of the day, you're gonna get to a certain point if we go back to scalability with growth where, hey, we're posting 50 times a day. Well, shoot. You know what we should do?
1:06:38We should do like Hermosy did. We should start running ads. Right?
1:06:43uh, you know, his his his his his company. Right? So, you know, at some point, you run out of your really qualified people and then you have to go cold anyway.
1:06:51So you might as well learn how to do that upfront, which will then compound. Your skill set will compound over time, uh, not just you, but your company's skill set as well. And you'll be able to maintain a sustained lead quality for a long time.
1:07:01Now let me let me go into this because I what you just brought up is like, oh, if you just do, like, you know, if you just do, like, uh, if you if you have to do eventually, you consider, in your words, right, you have to do cold, might as well start out with it. Right? Well, if I if I can go and reference, right, obviously, this gentleman in the podcast mentioned how every single person who has an organic following, if they actually run paid ads, they have a significantly easier time to go and actually get conversions because, obviously, people already like them.
1:07:29So so the very point in case is like, yeah, why would you go and do something? You know? Say you're a 10 mil a month.
1:07:36Sorry. If you're a 10 mil a year, right, why would you go and try to get there the hard way if eventually if you're running out of options, you go and do the one that's actually gonna be a super easy lever? So for example, why would I go and try the hard game of, like, cracking cold, do all that stuff when I can get there through organic?
1:07:50And then if eventually, right, god forgive, one, they have to go and run pay that. That's just gonna be an easy lever that helps me capitalize because I've laid the hard groundwork.
1:08:00Right now, there's this whole reverse effect. Right? Where, like, for example, someone like Ryan Dice, who publicly says that he shut down all of his ad spend because he's realized posting content has a much higher ROI and is actually helping him scale significantly harder.
1:08:12Actually doing the reverse. So people who actually literally sold courses on Facebook ads, right, who are literally running this whole, oh, I was used to do paid ads. Now I run cold ads.
1:08:20Right? Every single paid ads guru, to some extent, on their strategy that's talking about how lucrative has some form of like, oh, I run a content first ad strategy. Right?
1:08:29You know, people like Jeremy Haynes, shout out Jeremy, talks about publicly how important it is that content is to be posted. And so, again, to me, it's like, why would I go and do something that's really hard and that even by industry experts is deemed as like, yeah, it's really much more difficult than it used to be a few years ago as opposed to doing the thing that everyone's doing now.
1:08:47Even again, even Hormozi. Right? Once he's blowing up, now he's he's publicly saying that his best ads are his organic pieces of content.
1:08:54So I think that point's just a bit nullified. Yeah. Well, which point are you addressing about the lead quality, or what what which point are you addressing?
1:09:00Your your point essentially that you need to go and, like, why would you not go and do cold from the start as instead of once you're more advanced? What? To throw Hermosy back in the face.
1:09:10I feel like this is just a debate about Hermosy. Yeah. Most things are.
1:09:16that, that's so funny, that, uh, you know, you start with cold and then you go to hot because starting with cold prepares you. It makes it makes going warm after that way easier.
1:09:26Right? And so to your point, I I I don't think any of that's true. Um, you know, in terms of there's this reverse effect.
1:09:33Like sure, if you have a massive brand, a massive following, running retargeting as that brand is gonna work, of course. Right? But that doesn't mean you should start with that.
1:09:42Right? Those things have no connection, you know?
1:09:45Um, I mean, case in point, why didn't Hermosy start with it? He started with paid. Now he's still saying that, hey, you wanna start cold and then go warm.
1:09:52So I I think that's a bit of a of a, uh, red herring in that, um, you know, oh, you shouldn't start with something hard and then and then go easy. Um, and I also think it's a red herring to say that ads is necessarily harder than organic too. Like it depends on how you define hard.
1:10:07You know, like to me hard is having to wake up every day and run on the content hamster wheel and post a freaking video and go like, hope Instagram pushes out my content and I get a sale, you know, versus just being like, no. Like, this is my offer. It's good.
1:10:21I know people like it, and I spent $2 yesterday. I'm a spend $2 today, and I know I'm gonna book somewhere in this range of calls. So I will go and say to this.
1:10:27Right? It's it's exact same thing. It's like if I just wake up and I go, oh, let me just toss-up a new ad.
1:10:33Let's hope the Roas go works this time. It's the exact same premise.
1:10:36But what I will go and say is with paid ads, right, yes, there's probably some softwares you can roughly go and track what is and isn't working, but you don't really see, like, oh, this ad gets, like, five x ROAS or, like, a seven x ROAS. Right? I don't think that's available unless you have some black hat tools here.
1:10:50But on content, I can literally go and see, oh, if I look at, like, you know, what people in my industry are doing and saying, oh, this content topic is actually performing. And so now I already have, like, a starting point around the saying, hey. This is actually something that people resonate with.
1:11:03So if I make something around that, my chances or likelihood of actually succeeding with it is significantly higher. And so I think as a result of of that, you know, as a complete newbie, that is as easier process to go and follow and have a higher likelihood of success as opposed to, oh, let me just this this ad's been running long.
1:11:20I don't know if it actually works and how it works, but let me just go and copy that. So I think on there, I think organic is significantly simpler. Yeah.
1:11:26Well, I I think you know, look. There's plenty of people who've copied our ads and who have made more money. Right?
1:11:32I I don't know. If your argument is you can't copy other people's ads effectively, I mean, I think everyone watched this who's ever ran an ad is gonna tell you that that's not true. What would your argument be to the main YouTube strategy being copying other people's outliers?
1:11:44Say again? Well, the main YouTube strategy is copying other people's outliers and
1:11:49I think to an extent, I think that's like as a starting point, I think that's not the dumbest thing to go and do. Because again, at the end of the day, you wanna go model after success, especially if you're new. Instead of you trying to come up with, like, a new strategy from the get go and, like, reinvent the wheel, you wanna go piggyback of what's already working.
1:12:06But I think especially as you kinda get some baseline skill, the point is how can you go and differentiate. Right? We spoke earlier about, like, the importance of, like, charisma and all of that to Jigisel.
1:12:15I think, you know, to go from zero to one, you go and figure out what's already working, how can I go and tweak it to what I do? And then over time, it's like, how can you go make something your own? And so I think I think off of that, you know, off a strategy of copying, I think to go as a start, it's okay, but it's not gonna work at scale.
1:12:32Stop. One of your main points was that you build an audience, you build a moat and people can't just copy you. And then now you just said, you should start by copying other people.
1:12:39So which one is it? It is. It comes over time.
1:12:41But for example, if you start out, right, you have zero clue of like what to go and do. Right? You you don't really have like a clear cut strategy.
1:12:47The easiest lever that you can go and pull is to go and see, hey, what formats, what topics are already working in the marketplace and replicate that. But then again, by using your own in story, your own expertise, your own experience Do you have a mode or do you not?
1:13:00Yeah. Yeah. If it's this easy to copy, then how do you have a moat?
1:13:03No. For example, right, when you look at when you look at the biggest personal brands in the space, the biggest content creators, the biggest moat that they have is the fact that, you know, their story, their experiences, their sort of, like, outcomes and all of that stuff is their moat. For example, we use a trading space, right, which is probably, like, one of my least favorite spaces.
1:13:20If someone like TJR, who I I don't know what what his, like, entire thing is. I don't even know whether he trades or not, but he's probably one of the best earning people because his personality and, like, his sort of persona on how he's kinda built himself, right, is actually significantly
1:13:35different and standing out and harder to replicate for 99 of p percent of people out there. Okay. But this is a whole contrary to your whole argument.
1:13:41So you're saying, like, it's hard to copy TGR because he's super charismatic and he's Okay. Cool. I don't know TGR, but agree.
1:13:48It's probably great. Shout out to TGR. Okay.
1:13:50But so if it's harder to replicate because he's super charismatic, then a beginner who's not super charismatic can't do that. Yeah. But that's the point.
1:13:56Right? You in in the beginning, I doubt somebody just there's a few people that come in and they're just, like, charismatic off of the rift. But the point is, as you kinda work into it, you kinda go and and use, you know, the copy strategy in the beginning.
1:14:08You then, over time, gain sort of the baseline that allows you to go and really dive into who you are, which actually allows you to build charisma. I don't think personal brand experts or, like, personal brands are born, oh, I'm charismatic day one. You grow into it.
1:14:20It's the same thing on paid ads. I reckon the first time, you know, if I would go if if Cole goes back through all of his ads that he's ever recorded, I don't think on the first ad that he's ever recorded, he was, like, you know, charismatic or, like, as, like, confident as he's on ad, I don't know, like, 30,700. Listen.
1:14:35Cole's always been charismatic, man. Alright. That's number one.
1:14:38But number two is, I get I just think there's a bit of contradiction because if you're like, well, when you're not charismatic, you copy other people who are charismatic and who are winning, and that's how you build success. But then the other argument is like, well, by being charismatic, people can't copy you. It's like just this doesn't really make sense at the end of the day.
1:14:52It's an evolution thing at the end of the day. Again, just as mentioned, it's the same thing with the paid ads thing. In the beginning, you gotta go and build your baseline.
1:14:59If you come in, you're already charismatic, and you can just go as an example, you can just go and say, hey, I'm gonna just go and riff off of stuff. You can go and do well right off the riff. If you come in, you're, you know, maybe a bit of an introvert.
1:15:09Right? Number one, you can go and maybe just use the modeling principle to go and get baseline stuff. Then once you actually understand it works, that's when you kinda build on top of it.
1:15:17So I don't think that's a contradiction in of itself. It just shows that there's, like, skill progressions. Just as, for example, with with Atas, you could go and argue.
1:15:24Right, I'm gonna make that argument for you. If you suck on camera or, like, you have, like, a massive, like you know, you're, from a different country, so you have, like, a massive accent, you will potentially start with, like, you know, static ads or something like that so you don't have to get on fucking camera. Same thing for content.
1:15:38You know, if you're if you're not like you wouldn't say you're the most charismatic, you know, for some of our clients, for example, that that's the case. We just go and do b roll plus text ads, or we do, like, you know, carousel based ads. You know?
1:15:48And so, essentially, I think it's it's just a place of you start out with it, and then over time, you evolve. One of the biggest points that he made earlier was
1:15:56organic might lead to a better lifestyle, and that's why it's more valuable to him. So, you know, he mentioned ads are complex. There's also a content hamster wheel.
1:16:05So if somebody maybe doesn't want an exit, but they want a business that can cash flow them a lot, that's the typical lifestyle business, why would ads be better? Yes. Uh, very, very simple reason.
1:16:18when you're building a personal brand, by definition, you are building a job. Regardless of how valuable that job is, how much revenue or income that job brings you, you're building a job. And, uh, I did not wake up going back to my earlier point, I didn't wake up this morning and be like, man, I'm so excited to be a content creator.
1:16:36You know? Like, let's go make some videos. And you know, Cole Cole dragged me here.
1:16:41Okay. So here I am, guys. Um, but my point is is, you know, when we talk about lifestyle business, what do we mean?
1:16:46It means like, hey, you get to make a ton of money and you get to do what you want. And inevitably, we've seen with even with people who do wake up to be great content creators. At some point, they have to take a break because it's demanding.
1:16:58It's a job. And, you know, as much as Jeremy might say, like, you can outsource all of it, and it's super easy. The truth is it's way easier to outsource paid ads.
1:17:06I mean, a ton of companies have done that successfully, um, and or at a minimum, even build an internal system to do it where it doesn't involve you. I mean, candidly, just to use our own example, Cole I mean, how often do you even film ads for us?
1:17:18Like, not very often. We have Martinez. We use AI.
1:17:21Like, he's not even in you know, he films bigger stuff for us. But, honestly, he doesn't film very much for us on the ad side. But for all of his content, he films way more content now, and he he can't stop doing that if he wants to continue to grow his brand.
1:17:33Like, I'm not gonna, you know, put on my Cole Gordon
1:17:36watch and my Cole Gordon polo and become Cole Gordon. Right? It's gotta be him.
1:17:40Yeah. That that might be true. But then guess what?
1:17:42For every single minute you save on the ad front, you know, as I've mentioned, you're gonna spend equally as much time just being in the back end, you know, like, doing all of the stuff that you need to go and do. Whether that is all you need to go and spin up another back end offer and, like, do all of that stuff because your your front end CAC sucks, and I need an upsell to go and actually be profitable.
1:17:59What it is you now need to go and, like, manage teams or manage your managers so they can manage your, like, massive bloody sales team. I think there's equally as much time spent on the back end working, whereas I just personally believe with a content based business, right, yes, you have probably your shooting day, right, which is like honestly, like, I know Hormozi says he spends he spends one day filming.
1:18:17Some people say, hey, I spend one half, a half a half an afternoon filming. Right? You spend one fraction of your day filming, you know, maybe it's content.
1:18:25For you, it's a hamster wheel. To others, it's like, I just do my thing. Right?
1:18:28But at at the end of the day, the time that you might Cole might save, you know, doing the the ads or the content, you equally go and get back by being essentially, like, employed, right, in your business and running the actual business. And if you say it's not, then that very much takes away because you need to hire people that do it for you at a high level, which then destroys the profitability argument that you've made earlier on.
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1:19:33Okay. So you're saying, hey, you have ton of profitability
1:19:36and it's only a little bit of time because you just have to film. Okay. Well then, who edits the video?
1:19:40Who who creates the strategy? Who does all the you still have pay for those people. You still gotta manage them.
1:19:44In fact, oftentimes, uh, with organic based businesses, you need more people than with ads because ads is much more scalable. Right?
1:19:51As as I mentioned, we have one media buyer spending tens of thousands of dollars a day in ads across, you know, at one point, multiple, like a handful of different offers. Right? And so with organic, yeah, no.
1:20:02You you sure, he can If he had a really dialed in system, he can have someone else build the content, someone else film it, someone else edit it, and a lot of that he does. But two things. Number one is for you to make really, really good content, guess what?
1:20:13You have to be involved cause you have to know the subject matter. You have to be passionate about it, etcetera. And number two is even if you found a way to circumvent that somehow, uh, guess what?
1:20:23He still has to employ those people which also takes away the profitability that you're talking about. So I think either way, as you scale, if you want to have a lifestyle business, you have to build a team under you that can self manage and self regulate. Yes and no.
1:20:35So I think to to an extent what you're saying, yes. Will you have to go and hire people? You keep mentioning the media buyer example.
1:20:40Yes. Maybe like a media buying or like marketing department or like a paid ads business isn't gonna be massive. I don't think I I think it's a misconception that like a content department has to be like massive.
1:20:50Right? For example, I just know how we run stuff internally and how some of our clients do, which is like extremely lean. But the biggest thing, especially on like, you know, a paid ads business, is, like, the the bigness of, like, you know, the sales department with, like, sales leads, sales SDRs, like, sales reps, and all of that stuff.
1:21:06And so I think that is the where the real complexity kinda comes in. Because now on the back end, you need someone that manages all the data for those people. You need to manage calendars.
1:21:13There's a bunch of stuff that goes into that. That's where I think it takes away. Now to what you're saying is I don't think that you go and really, you know, remove yourself completely from content ever.
1:21:23Right? I think there's always an element where you're gonna be involved, but don't think it's anywhere near as in-depth as, like, the, you know, sort of, like, involvement that you're articulating it out. But overall, I would say the whole debate is, like, whether, you know, the organic thing is true.
1:21:35We haven't really touched on it where some of the paid ad stuff is actually as glorious as as it's been made out to you. But what I really wanna know is, okay. But if I'm somebody who's doing 10,000,000 a year and I just wanna work as little as possible and have as much cash flow as possible, why would content be better?
1:21:51So as I mentioned, right, you say you do half an afternoon work worth worth of filming. Right? You you record your YouTube video.
1:22:00From there, you record it. You obviously have, like, you know, an editor, which is, like, what, $5,001,000 dollars a month. And, again, right now, with with stuff not being as high production base as possible, you actually get away with, like, a lot more simpler edits.
1:22:12And especially if you do 10 mil a year with an info business or a coaching business off organic, the editing doesn't matter anywhere near as much as as people think. Right? So that's one thing.
1:22:21Two, again, the profits are just gonna be naturally higher, you know, especially if you don't invest much into what I've mentioned, like, which distribution. If you do, maybe that takes a small hit on it. But, again, even for us, lifestyle lifestyle ROAS of us, lifetime wise, it's been like a 30 x, right, off of content and content distribution as a whole.
1:22:38And so off of that, the profitability is gonna be massively higher. So if I just have less people to go and manage overall, right, across sales and marketing as a whole, and I go and have a higher ROAS, I will, as a whole, have a lot higher, you know, profit margins and pretax profits that I take in, which to me allows me to live a better life.
1:22:57The second thing, which is kinda underrated, like a lot of people that make a lot of money, they might wanna go and be able to, like, travel or, like, do stuff. A lot of times, you can actually combine the two, and you can go and actually, like, make travel and actually use that for content. And so, essentially, you actually like, as an example, we we come back to, you know, the same bloody people here.
1:23:13But let's go and say, you know, someone the somebody like Eman goes and travels somewhere for for pleasure. He can go and turn that into a vlog, which then again feeds his content engine and makes him more money. So I think as a whole, you kinda get a better a better lifestyle
1:23:26as a result. How would you respond to that? Yeah.
1:23:28I think the crux of your argument is that you can kinda, like, phone in content and do well. And I just think that's been proven untrue over and over and over again. Uh, I mean, case in point, you brought up Iman.
1:23:39You also brought up Iman saying his viewership's way down. So, like, yeah, it's probably because he's traveling and phoning in his content, dude. Like But to be fair, he also said his revenue's gone up.
1:23:48Okay. I'll take that at face like I don't know Iman's business. But the point I'm making is, at the end of the day, content is a you know, very simple.
1:23:58Ads is a a monetary based scaling engine. Content is a, you know, a time based engine.
1:24:07In my opinion, what is more scarce if you're making $10,000,000 a year? It definitely ain't money.
1:24:12It's time. So why would I wanna sign up for something that, you know, if we get out of the perfect world that Jeremy has has described where I just like show up for thirty minutes, I throw on my pants, I throw on my shirt, I say some stuff with a microphone, I leave and I cash my $10,000,000 check. Like if we get out of like that false reality, that fantasy world, we say like, what does that actually take to do well?
1:24:32Like first of all, everyone who's good at YouTube will tell you like the editing is like actually extraordinarily important. You can't just get some crappy editor. You need a really really good editor who knows about retention editing, who understands that at the end of the day, there's two key metrics and content.
1:24:48There's your click through rate of the people who are gonna watch your video and then there's your watch time. Right? And if one of those two is not optimized, guess what?
1:24:57It's not gonna work. And my final point is this, Jeremy, I I've just met you. You're a very intelligent guy, and I have a lot of good things to say about you.
1:25:05But I do have one question, and then I have something to say afterwards. Are you a psychopath? No.
1:25:11I'm gonna assume no. Right? Well, we're all not, you know, psychopaths here either.
1:25:15And so in order to make really, really good content and have that really sharp charisma and certainty in your voice, you have to believe what you're saying because you're not a psychopath. We've confirmed. Okay?
1:25:26And so my point of saying this is if you phone in the content, go, oh, he's gonna make the the script. He's gonna do this. He's gonna And then you just show up and just try to read it like monotone.
1:25:34It's not gonna perform because you don't believe what you're saying. So you have to be involved. There's no circumnavigating that of like, oh, you know, I'm not gonna be involved and just show up and and do my best and hope it goes well because you're not a psychopath.
1:25:45So if you're watching this, you're a psychopath, organic might be better. Are you a psychopath? No.
1:25:50So so to go and kinda go through a few things that you've just said, right? You said like, oh, you just need to like you need to, like, this one content piece and whatever. I think one of the things that just kinda gone unnoticed is, like, a lot of times, if you have one content piece that we just call, like, a winning piece of content, say it's gone viral, you can track back a lot of revenue to it.
1:26:04Right? You can actually go and scale said content pieces. So it's not like you need to go and have these billions of of content pieces.
1:26:10That is definitely and, again, I said in the context of going from 10 to 25,000,000. Right? If you wanna get to 25,000,000 a year, yes, stuff like clipping extra distribution becomes invaluable.
1:26:20Right? Just as with paid ads, you'd have to go into multiple funnels, like different sort of, like, acquisition methods, whether that's webinar plus VSL, webinar plus low ticket funnel, like, you name the beast. Right?
1:26:29It's the exact same thing. But if I just take certain content pieces that have been winner for us, we now can go and say, without crazy work, I know you think that's incredibly complex, you're take a winning piece of content, put it on trial as you get multiple juice out of it. We out of a Realize, let's say, gets a million views, we can squeeze that out and almost triple the entire view count we get out of it.
1:26:50And essentially, like, even if you factor in some saturation, we can double the revenue we get out of it. Right?
1:26:55And so as a result, I don't think that fallacy of, like, oh, you need to constantly go and create stuff. Right? And last but and last but not least, one of the important things is you've mentioned you need to have conviction when you speak about stuff.
1:27:05I agree. You need to have conviction. Right?
1:27:06Just as I'm convinced in inorganic, you're convinced in paid ads. The point is you cannot go and show up on a paid ad and not be convinced of the same thing. It's the exact same argument.
1:27:15If culture is obvious, like, I will get you to a million month guaranteed or I go and finance your next IRS audit. Like, whatever that might be. Right?
1:27:23Like, you know, like, the yeah. Crazy offer. But, like, he wouldn't have conviction in that unless he has, like, the craziest fulfillment of, like, you know, guarantee on planet Earth.
1:27:32But, like, it's the same fallacy. So you can't go and say, oh, on content, you need this crazy conviction. You don't need it on paid ads because you do.
1:27:48If the whole idea of content is like we put out stuff into the into the universe and people watch our stuff and they like me and they're educated by me and now they're more likely to buy and all the other benefits we talked about. Uh, that's different than saying you need to have conviction in an ad talking about your product that you sell.
1:28:08Like the the level of conviction there like Cole has conviction in his company because he's built a great company. He's got a good service. He's got a good product.
1:28:15And if I write an ad for him and just show it to him, it's talking about the same company, same product. It's written in a slightly different way. Maybe he tweaks it real quick or whatever, but bang, then he films it.
1:28:24Okay? Whereas if we write a organic piece of content, a long form YouTube video for Cole and that's about, you know, for example, he just had a recent one about the like the how economics, uh, translates to business.
1:28:37Like without him doing a tremendous amount of research, he's not gonna have confidence and certainty in that because it's not about something he's already familiar And on the on the note of like, oh, well you just find one piece of content and then you just blast that forever. You just multiply on the one piece of content 6,000,000
1:28:53times. I mean, that's not true. I mean, why do you think people like Ramosy talk about, hey.
1:28:57I post 60 times a day. Do you really think they're posting the same video 60 times a day? Probably not.
1:29:02He he's definitely not posting 60 times on one singular platform. That means the same content piece that he mentioned within the 60 goes from Instagram over to LinkedIn over to Twitter. So there is there is a multiplication factor.
1:29:14What's where where was it a No. But if he posts three times a day on on Instagram, right, we're already, like, at nine. And then, obviously, he has, like, multiple channels where, like, clips up, So it's not like he's creating 60 unique pieces of content every single day.
1:29:25Again, you wanna go and run that argument? That's very much in case. He now has multiple channels that he's scaling.
1:29:30Right? Talking talking about his scaling strategy, which are literally clip ups from previous sessions, live calls, the YouTube videos he's made. So he's actually not going and creating, you know, the whole 60 pieces of content a day.
1:29:42Now to go and to go and counter your point on, you know, the argument and conviction that you need, sure. If I go and and script the YouTube video on what you've mentioned, right, economics, yes, I need to go and have some form of familiarity and, like, you know, competent. But vice versa, if I, as a face of the company, go make a claim or, like, a promise on what I'm gonna guarantee someone.
1:30:02Right? And somebody just comes, here are the ads. I need to go and have utmost confidence in what I'm actually gonna go and say, which means, as of at the very least, I need to be honest and heavily backtrack that, which you don't just go and shop me like, oh, yeah.
1:30:16This sounds good. Like, you know, kinda I think we can fulfill on that. That that confidence needs to be deep rooted, which means you actually need to be like deeply in the trenches to be able to have that confidence.
1:30:27don't think that argument is relevant because two things. Number one is, you know, mister content himself, Gary V. Jab, jab, jab, right hook.
1:30:34Right? Like what's this, you know, if you don't know, jab, jab, jab is like your content. Right hook is your offer.
1:30:39Okay? Well, whether you make an offer on an ad or you make an offer with content, you have to have a certainty in an offer. Mean, what you're saying is you need certainty in your business.
1:30:46Yes. I agree. But that's irrelevant of the traffic source.
1:30:59Yeah. So so the same thing is true. You need to have conviction when you're creating content, and what you're saying is same as you as with your
1:31:04Yeah. I don't I don't know if you're quite getting what I'm saying. The the certainty in your offer is having certainty in your existing business Yeah.
1:31:13Which is irrelevant to how they get to the offer. Ads, organic, cold out, doesn't matter.
1:31:18You have to have certainty in you're making a bold offer. Right? Okay.
1:31:21Well, when you put out content, you can't like your content can't just be the same offer and over. Like you're making valuable content people want.
1:31:27You have to have certainty in every single one of those things And which require in order to have certainty, unless you're a psychopath, it requires you to do a lot of research, be well read, and and have, you know, extreme confidence that what you're saying is accurate. Unless you, you know, you're just like, just wanna scam people.
1:31:40I don't care. But I don't I don't think so. Because again, what you're saying is you wanna make valuable content.
1:31:44Right? Which means you make content about stuff that your business does or stuff that you're teaching people. Right?
1:31:49Which means you need to, again, in your words, have confidence in your business.
1:31:53If I make content, for example, on con on, like, organic organic distribution, I can't go and, like, just go and, like, randomly say it. Right?
1:32:01But I think naturally, because I'm confident in my business and in the offer, if somebody tells me, hey. Talk about distribution. I'm confident in the topic.
1:32:08Right? Now the the the comp the the comparison that you're making is you compare it in ads to, like, a YouTube video, which I think is, like, a bit wrong. If you wanna compare it, you would compare a VSL to, like, a YouTube video.
1:32:18I would say an ad is more similar to, like, an Instagram reel as an example. But on a on a VSL, right, you obviously would introduce, like, facts, statistics, and stuff like that. Again, if you're reviewing that, which which goes back to your point, you probably need to have, like, some form of research and involvement in yourself as well because otherwise, you wouldn't be confident in in making those statements.
1:32:35So I wanna move on to a really interesting question.
1:32:38And the question is is does building a brand even require content?
1:32:44Now from a binary perspective, there's probably a lot of examples of people who they build a brand through commercials and stuff like that. So that's not what I'm talking about because obviously, okay, that's possible. You know, Coca Cola, Pepsi, whatever they build a brand without having to actually produce.
1:32:57Nobody's doing them on YouTube. Okay? But here's a better way to think about it.
1:33:01Is if you look at, let's say, some of the biggest brands in the industry, you know, Tony Robbins or Grant Cardone, they do spend a lot of money on ads. They don't get a lot of views, and they're very known.
1:33:15Okay? So they do have a brand in the sense that they're very known, but being known is different than views.
1:33:22Right? So this is really the question I wanna ask. It's not necessarily does a brand require content because, you know, Pepsi, Coca Cola, boom.
1:33:29Okay. There you go. But if I wanted to build a brand and I wanted to become known,
1:33:33would it be more effective or just as effective to do paid ads than it would be to do content? Yeah. Well, I think it depends on the time horizon.
1:33:41Right? And, you know, brand is, uh, often associated as it should be with long term thinking. Right?
1:33:47Like, if you're just here to do a quick cash grab, you don't care about having a brand. It's irrelevant to you. Right?
1:33:51So if we look at brand in its purest form of like, I wanna have a long term durable thing, then in the long term, no. It's completely, uh, you know, irrelevant. Uh, and it goes back to the point I made in my opening argument, which is, you know, brand in a nutshell is your reputation in the market.
1:34:08Right? So it's a it's a sum it's a the collective sum of what you know, the average person thinks about you that is a that has brand awareness. Right?
1:34:17And what you say about yourself is much less relevant on that note than what obviously the people who make up your brand, the sum, right, say about you. And, um, people make their judgments, uh, far less on things that they don't pay for versus things that they do pay for.
1:34:34Right? You know, we all this is basic simplistic stuff. If I pay you something, the more I pay, the more I care about how good it was.
1:34:42Right? If I just watch some YouTube video like half ass listening on two x speed while I go for a run, that doesn't really build your brand.
1:34:49Okay? So with that being said, the two final points are.
1:34:53Number one is, how do you actually build brand? How did Tony Robbins do it? He did it from having amazing services, amazing events, uh, working with some flagship people, literally presidents.
1:35:04Okay? And case in point, to further to further that point, closers.io, Cole's business, we have a brand and we're just kinda getting into content for the first time seriously now.
1:35:16I'm making a serious effort at it. And how do we have our brand? Guess what?
1:35:19Same thing. Great results. Great, uh, you know, customers that really enjoy working with us and flagship testimonials.
1:35:25Right? It's the same pattern. So that's point number one.
1:35:28And point number two is to your counterpoint, you're gonna say, well, there's plenty of people who built a brand with organic. Sure. But the only way that they've done that is by the Alex Remozy method being extremely compelling on camera.
1:35:41And so if his whole point is like, oh, I could just be decent at,
1:35:45uh, you know, decent at content and build a brand, that's not true. Right? And furthermore, you can't be decent at anything and build a great brand.
1:35:51Obviously, you have to be really good at whatever you do. But fundamentally, the only way to build you know, make significant progress with the brand with organic content is to actually make extremely compelling content. People go, why?
1:36:03I haven't heard that before. I haven't I haven't thought that way before. I think the the one to to me is a bit comparing apples to oranges to an extent where essentially you keep mentioning, like, Tony Robbins, you know, all of those guys, even, like, Colt as an example.
1:36:13Right? And that's, like, kinda like saying, you know, back in the day, obviously, if you want to launch a business, you do, like, a research study. You do, like, all these complex things to go and, like, set up the company, and then you would start selling.
1:36:22Right? Whereas today, because, obviously, we've been just been proven there's there's faster ways. You would just go and, like, make an offer.
1:36:27Right? The point is very much, like, when you look at, like, Tony Robbins, you know, back in the day, content in terms of distribution, the accessibility, the consumption rate, right, has not been anywhere near as high as it is today. And so, yeah, that's great to go and say, right, what you're saying in terms of how Tony Robbins became known, know, like, how Cole built a lot of his poorly brand equity.
1:36:46But the point in case is right now, right, most of the business owners actually growing up, they they understand that the consumption happens on social platforms first. But I don't think there's have any been any, like, notable brands that we can go recollect in the last three years that were built through ad first platforms, which is obviously your point.
1:37:04And so I think especially as we're seeing more and more people, every single person that we kinda watch, they've they've blown up through content. And then once they kinda, like, you know, have the content thing done, they eventually realize, like, oh, maybe if I wanna go and add another layer to it, I'll I'll add ads. So I think it's the point is you can't go and say, oh, back in the day, all these big people now, they they spend their way into it.
1:37:23I just think that's, like, kinda being, you know, oblivious to the fact where it's going, which is tied into my original statement where I said that the future is kind of going, what you belittle as the creator economy, where people discover and learn stuff through social media platforms. And so why would you not wanna go build your platform first on those very on those very places?
1:37:42Now I'll let you respond to that as well as any other points that he's made previously you wanna drill down on, and you guys can just freestyle.
1:37:51Yeah. So zooming out, in my opening argument, I made five claims about why paid ads is a significantly more valuable business than organic.
1:38:01Uh, and the five points I made are number one, enterprise value. You've already agreed with me that I won that point. Uh, number two is durability.
1:38:10Now you've brought up people like Iman and, you know, uh, we don't need to go through names again. We've done that a million times. But you've brought up people who are still making money even though their views have gone down.
1:38:18But you haven't addressed the point of like, well, you agree. I mean, I'm sure you don't disagree with this. That at some point, every business needs new blood into their ecosystem.
1:38:27And whether you generate that with paid ads or organic is relevant to the point that you need new people. You can't just keep selling the same people over and over and over again, especially in our industry where revenue retention is extremely low. Right?
1:38:37So I guess my question for you is like, uh, for somebody like Iman, uh, or not even take Iman.
1:38:44Let's just take kick him out of it for a second. But somebody like that who did build a following but now has, you know, not getting the same views or whatever that they used to. And sure they're making some money now, but I mean, what should that person do over the long term?
1:38:55I think the one thing you've kinda like because I I actually addressed that in my opening statement, is the fact that a lot of a lot part of the durability
1:39:02is like the conversion cycles. Right? So for example, with direct response, right, to the degree I understand it, somebody opts in.
1:39:08Right? They go through, like, the sales cycle, let's say, sixty days. If they don't convert, they're pretty much like a churning bird.
1:39:13Right? Maybe occasionally someone gets reactivated. With content on the other side, right, which is why I actually so much like it, we actually we have data on this that someone who might follow us today, they might not buy immediately today even though they might send an inbound DM or they might book a call, but they might reach back out after three, six, twelve, as much as, like, twenty four months, and they actually go and buy.
1:39:31And so, yes, while eventually that you can go and see a dip in Vuzhou, like, you know what? You're not always gonna buy ride like that hot streak. Right?
1:39:38By consistently bringing in even a small fraction of people, you're not only gonna bring in new blood as you've mentioned it, but also people that have followed you for, like, you know, some time ago, they're always gonna lock back in terms of the conversion event, which is why I actually, like, made made that point. It's like, not only do you have the durability of it, if you as long as you stay consistent on, like, the posting stuff, but you also have longevity of it.
1:39:58Because again, people who have might have followed you, like, six, twelve months ago, right, as long as they see some of your content or, like, they stay in touch with, like, what it is you're doing, right, you actually go and have some form of touch points, which means right place, right time, they actually will still go and convert, which is why I believe durability argument isn't really valid.
1:40:15Well, wouldn't you agree as it relates to that final point that, like, oh, if people fell in love with you, you know, two years ago and then they stopped watching your content, you know, and then they see something from you later on, they're they're more likely to, you know, whatever, repurchase or something like that. Sure.
1:40:30That's true. But also for 99% of people doing content, that's not true because they're not big enough to have established that many connection points. Yes and no.
1:40:38I mean, it's the say it's it's the very same concept we can go into comparing. It's this very same concept of like, if your content isn't awesome, you cannot you're not gonna go and reach tons and tons of people over and over again.
1:40:49It's the same point as, like, if your ads aren't profitable on the front, then you're not gonna go and reach, like, millions of people or be able to consistently get in front of other people because you probably don't have the money to go and actually, like, reach those people. And so, yes, to an extent. Right?
1:41:03Yes. If you suck at it, you're not gonna go get in front of tons of people. Say same thing on ads really at the end of the day.
1:41:08But if you do it over a long enough time horizon, one, your skill set in front of the camera, what what you called conviction, you know, it might improve. On the flip side as well, if you if you make those micro improvements, you consistently go and reach new people.
1:41:21Again, you go that across multiple platforms. May maybe someone who watched you on YouTube is now gonna follow you on Instagram. Maybe someone who watched you on Twitter is following you now on LinkedIn.
1:41:29So you have multiple platforms, multiple touch points, ways to go and reach people. And so I don't think that unless you're really shit, at which point you probably should just quit, you know, if you post for ninety plus days, you're gonna consistently reach new people. Yeah.
1:41:42And to and to kinda underline this too, because I think that's important, we have one of our clients been with us for, like, five plus years. Right? And ever since I kinda mentioned this in, the longevity part of it.
1:41:50Ever since he's crossed, let's say, you know, 200 k per month once, he hasn't fallen below that ever since, regardless how well content performed, like, even if it was, like, a slower month, which kinda to the durability point, if your ads are shitting the bed for, like, a month straight, right, you're probably not gonna have a profitable month.
1:42:06Like, we we can probably agree on that. And that's what I would say on on the content format. Right?
1:42:10You're actually capable of because you have people that, you know, follow you extensively and, like, even if your content isn't performing well, they see it. They'll convert and you'll have some form of consistency within your business. Well, I mean, you could make the same argument with that you build up an email list and a pipeline of sales through ads.
1:42:24Right? So, like, you know, at the end of the day, like a list of people who are aware of you is a list of people who are aware of you. Whether,
1:42:31you know, whether you get them from purchasing media or from posting content is kind of irrelevant to that point. There's just different vehicles to to to talk to those people. But I did wanna ask you because I I brought this up earlier, and, you know, I said it as, a joke, kinda, like, funny, but I actually do want a definition.
1:42:45What is please tell me. What is the creator economy? Creator economy, simply put, where people actually make decisions or, like, actually consume, you know, content, whatever format that is on organic platforms.
1:42:55Right? And within the creator economy, essentially,
1:42:57creating stuff, whether that's content, whether that's products, and people buy into that. So for example, I would say very elusively, like, you see some big influence who originally started that where people, I guess, I would say, like, the female demographic, they wanted to go and wear certain clothes, like, you know, look a certain way because of, you know, let's say, the Kardashians.
1:43:14Right? Right now, like, people, they wanna become streamers or, like, wanna do, like, certain sports because of the people that they watch. So And that will be the definition of the creator economy, which obviously, like, you know, you you look through it.
1:43:26That's where obviously a lot of people started using media as a go as a go on platform in in the organic sense to go and actually drive purchases for their companies. Yeah. And and I wanna address this point because obviously, you know, you you come up with a creator economy thing.
1:43:38So this is not really a a rebuttal to to you specifically. But to your point,
1:43:44you you know, what you just described is how the economy has always worked. Like, yeah, people want to associate with people that are famous. Like in 1985,
1:43:52or 1984, excuse me, Nike launched the Jordan one and took their company from $3,000,000 a year to like 180. Okay? Were we in the creator economy then?
1:43:59You know what I mean? Like what like the creator economy is just a fancy word to give people to make content. Right?
1:44:04Yes. But I think there's one big distinction. Right?
1:44:06Because what you're saying is is accurate, but what I believe is is different is you mentioned the word influencers. Right? Back in the day, it used to be like, oh, the Michael Jordans.
1:44:14Right? The LeBron James, you know, like Serena Williams. Like, that's who everyone gravitated to.
1:44:19I think now it's a lot more like the everyday person. You don't have to go and be an influencer, right, in order to go and have people wanting to be like you.
1:44:28A lot of a lot of people that, you know, over time might blow up, but a lot of the people that have a big impact on a smaller scale are the people that feel relatable to the everyday person. You know? So for example, if you go and if you go and look at, I'm gonna just use, like, an influencer as a as a term here, you know, like Alex Earle.
1:44:44If you look at, like, at the impact that she's had when she actually was smaller, right, and less, like, fully blown out in in the media outside, her impact probably was significantly bigger, and she had, like, a lot of a bigger cult because people were like, oh, this person is literally me just two steps ahead. And I think that's where a lot of stuff seeing people that aren't, like, at the pinnacle of their job, but they're actually just, like, a few steps ahead of you, that's when they actually wanna go and and kind of be like you, which is where I believe the creator economy is coming from.
1:45:09Who who I'm sorry. Who's who's out there? Big influencer.
1:45:12Like like a like college j Do you know who you Uh, I do, but just Okay. Very Basically barely. Alright.
1:45:19But college j Sorry. So out of the world of being a content creator, back in the Um, so I didn't know who you're talking about.
1:45:24You're talking about people I don't know. My my point is fundamentally is, uh, you in order for people you like what I did there?
1:45:34I'm glad I'm glad that you liked that one. That was good. In order to do well with content over the long term, you have to continually provide value to your audience.
1:45:48What's the extent? I think you can you can define the word providing value. Right?
1:45:52It's I think it's it's if you're going, it's like giving value entertaining. Yeah. Of course.
1:45:56So there's no difference. Like, creator company is not real. Because, like, Michael Jordan provided value to his audience by being really entertaining, being amazing.
1:46:02Now people can provide value to their audience by being an expert in their thing. But the only difference is, like, the TAM of that is much smaller. And, like, are we here to say, like, there weren't micro influencers in the seventies, eighties, sixties, fifties, forties with radio
1:46:16Even before that, like, micro influencers have existed since, you know, mass media has has existed. What would you say the barrier of entry was back then to become, like, again, as you said, like, in the creator economy, like, a massive influencer? Like, to go and beat Michael Jordan, you literally had, like, one in, like, a bloody billion.
1:46:31Oh, yeah. I think nowadays Look. To be mister Beats, you had to one in a billion too.
1:46:35Right? So, like, I know. That's that's not what about, like yeah.
1:46:37But back then, you'd only make substantial income or, like, you'd actually make substantial money out of what you call the creator economy back in the days, right, when you were, like, a Michael Jordan type. I think nowadays, you can drive significant amounts of revenue by being, like, just I don't wanna say, like, an average Joe, but, like, someone who's, like, you know, not even incredibly, like, well known again.
1:46:57I'm gonna go into, like, you know, one of the business coach example who had this, like, physical practitioner who has, like who makes, like, a million dollars a year and just speaks to, like, that specific person on content. Content gets, like, a thousand views makes and a million dollars out of it.
1:47:10So I think that's where really where if you wanna talk about the creator economy, where, like, even small people on a small scale can drive significant results. Yeah. I mean, look.
1:47:17If you're comparing the barrier to entry of, you know, becoming a micro influencer pre social media
1:47:23to today, I mean, yeah, it's it's a different it's a different, uh, you know, opportunity. Sure. Um, you know, at the same time, I actually would disagree with you about making money because, you know, anytime there's a barrier to entry, to use your point of emote, it typically protects your earnings over a long term, uh, you know, long long long enough time frame and allows you to have diff differentiated returns.
1:47:46Right? And so previous to social media, when, uh, before everybody could just make content and become famous, You know, people, yeah, they had to work for that distribution, but that distribution was worth a lot more even on a micro level.
1:47:57And I think this is really important as as one of the final points I'm making this debate. I said this earlier, but again, why the hell does everybody need to be a content creator today?
1:48:06Like, I how many business coaches do we need? You know? Like, Hermozy has crushed it with business content.
1:48:13And you can look at a few people names that have crushed it in their categories. How many of those people do we need? You know, like, at the end of the day.
1:48:20And if you're an aspiring business coach, for example, how are you gonna compete with Hermosy? Well, you're not. You're gonna become a micro influencer, a sub niche guy.
1:48:32So you can get there much faster. It's it's much more effective. Why would you go and say that, oh, you can be a micro influencer?
1:48:37I'm not gonna go if I start running ads today. Right? And I say, I'm I'm gonna be a business coach.
1:48:42You know? How on earth am I gonna go and say, oh, I'm just gonna go and run the same ads as Cole, and I'm gonna be, like, the next Cole. It's, the very same same point in case.
1:48:51Not that it's just better. My point is very much, like, as you've mentioned. Right?
1:48:54Hormozi is is is done crushed it, you know, done really well. The big thing what you're what you're articulating here with the moat stuff is, yes, he's built a moat where, like, people eventually will buy from him.
1:49:03But with that being said, you know, if we we use the example of, like, Nike, right, people buy, like, Nike running shoes. Eventually, they'll go and buy some, like, Adidas or, like, you know, some ASIC ones, which translating that to our example, eventually, people buy, like, business coaching. They might want some, like, niche expertise coaching.
1:49:20Right? Which is why they might go with, like, a niche influencer. So why would you not wanna be known for a specific thing in your industry?
1:49:27Okay. So we gotta finish the debate. We've gotten almost two hours now.
1:49:33you get to vote on who won the debate. So Spencer, give him a three if you think he's won, and Jeremy, a seven if you think he's won.
1:49:43And let us know in the comments, and we'll see you in the next video. If you enjoyed this podcast, you're also probably gonna like this podcast I also did recently that you can check out by clicking the screen right here.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Cole Gordon does something most marketing debates avoid: he sits his own CMO across from an organic-agency founder and makes them defend opposite sides of a single question, which $10M business is worth more, the one built on ads or the one built on a personal brand. What follows is nearly two hours of the specific tradeoffs most one-sided pitches leave out.
Two operators who've collected over $150M from cold ads run a live S-through-F tier list of every high-ticket funnel, then break down the offers, creatives, and show-rate systems actually working now.
Jason Fladlien has done $250M in webinar sales. Here is every framework, in order, from the $7 ebook that started it to the $100M launch that broke the record.
Cole Gordon and Daniel Fazio break down 8 high-revenue service offers — from beginner cold email to 8-figure sales floors — and the structural principles that make each one work.
Cole Gordon and Brian Ostermiller reconstruct how they built four eight-figure sales teams, covering hiring, leadership, live objection handling, and the financial close framework that changed everything.
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