Loading summary
Transcript149 lines
- [00:00]
Ryan Dice
I was looking at the stats. I think M and A deals in general, the ecosystem has been a bit suppressed over the last couple of years, just with interest rates being higher. You know, we've had an FTC chair over the last four years that really, you know, just frankly hasn't allowed a lot of large M and A deals to go through. And you might be thinking like, well, but if, you know, if I've got a small business, then that doesn't really impact me. It does.
- [00:31]
Roland Frazier
Hey, everybody, welcome to the first episode. As far as we know. Now, our people might do this differently, but as far as we know, this is the first official episode of 2025 for business lunch. Ryan, Happy New Year.
- [00:45]
Ryan Dice
Happy New Year. And now that we've done this, they're going to definitely do it out of order just to screw with us for the power.
- [00:50]
Roland Frazier
I like that.
- [00:51]
Ryan Dice
I would, I would, I would. If I were them.
- [00:55]
Roland Frazier
Just for the power. I like it. Yeah, well, we're. Yeah, we. We had a pretty interesting last year and are very excited about what 2025 holds. And Ryan sent me a text this morning and said, hey, we need to do a predictions video. So I'm going to let you run the predictions show and then we'll see what happens.
- [01:17]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, everybody else is doing predictions, so why not us? Why not us? Dang it. And I love predictions because if you get it right, you talk about it and you get to be like, look, I predicted this and you, like, save the clips and you reference back to them and if you didn't get it right, you just never talk about it again.
- [01:35]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, that's.
- [01:36]
Ryan Dice
It's really simple, very reasonable. Yeah, exactly. So we're doing this so that we can get the clips of hopefully the things that we got right. That's the whole purpose of the show, of what we figured out.
- [01:46]
Roland Frazier
No, no, 26, we'll say, how do we do? We'll do the how'd we do? Show. And then we'll only do the ones that we got right. We'll be like 100% perfect. Perfect.
- [01:57]
Ryan Dice
And thankfully, there'll be no way to go back and verify this. No. So I thought it'd be fun to look at business. So broadly speaking, who do we think are going to be the business winners and losers going into 2025? Who do we think are going to be the technology winners and losers? Also, from a marketing standpoint, because last I checked, we know a thing or two about marketing. What do we think is going to be a winner from a marketing standpoint? The tactics and strategies that are gonna be marketing winners? What are the tactics and strategies that we think are gonna be marketing losers going in to 2025? And then kind of just the final category. What are the trends that we think are gonna be bigger in 2025 than they were in 2024? And then what are the trends that we think are gonna be, you know, smaller in 2025 than they were? Maybe they were a big deal last year, but they're not gonna be that big of a deal. So to kick things off, what do you got for, like, business winners and losers? I'm taking in whatever order, what you got for a business winner, business loser?
- [02:58]
Roland Frazier
I mean, I think that it's near and dear to my heart. So I see it. I believe that acquisitions are still doing well and that people who are growing by acquiring companies. It was good in 24. The outlook looks right for 25. And that goes towards, you know, towards being acquired as well as. As acquiring for growth. So I'd say those are, you know, that's, that's definitely. It was a winner in 24. I think it's going to continue to be a winner in 25. How about yourself? What do you got?
- [03:33]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, I, I had that as well. I was looking at the stats. I think M and A deals in general, the ecosystem has been a bit suppressed over the last, you know, couple of years, just with interest rates being higher. You know, we've had an FTC chair over the last four years that really, you know, just frankly hasn't allowed a lot of large M and A deals to go through. And you might be thinking like, well, but if, you know, if I've got a small business, then, then that doesn't really impact me. It does to a certain extent. Like, you know, because it's. If it's. If you're not seeing M and A deals happening in the public markets, then that really does impact everything down in the ecosystem. So I agree. What we've had is basically there's $4 trillion, I don't know if you realize this, sitting on the sidelines. $4 trillion of committed but unallocated capital, plus an additional 4 trillion in corporate cash that's just been sitting there because people couldn't do M and A at the big. So I think in 2025, with the new FTC chair coming in, with all this cash sitting there, I think M and A is going to have an explosion which is just going to get acquisitions going crazy again throughout the ecosystem. So, yeah, I've got that going there. I Think I'll say I think Google Gemini and I think Google overall people didn't talk a ton about Google in 2024. I think I'm looking at Gemini. I'll talk more about this later and what they're doing. I'm looking at YouTube and just. You want to talk about streaming platforms and what is everybody watching? You know, everybody talks about like Netflix and you know, Disney plus and all these things. Everybody. YouTube is actually the winner. You know, I think that Google's going to wind up beating their, you know, their, you know, the government's trying to break them up. I think they're not going to get broken up in any meaningful way. I think that's going to kind of wind up going by the wayside because they're not going to know how to do it. I think Google's going to win that. I think, I think Google's going to have like just a crazy good 2025 and then my last kind of my flyer, gambling sites. And I think as a result of that gambling addiction and recovery services. I've just, I watched, I've been watching a lot of sports and oh my God, the amount of sports betting that, that I see advertised is just terrifying. And the number of people that I know who are just getting, I mean it's getting hyper legalized all over the place and it seems like everybody is doing it and I don't think it's particularly a good thing. Just my own personal. I don't see how this is going to be good for society and I think there's going to be a lot of negative fallout from this and I think it's going to create the need for a lot of addiction, you know, recovery type stuff on the gambling side. So if I was going to look at kind of making a play for what's an industry that I think is one to maybe look at, that's what I'd look at in terms of winners. So any thoughts, feelings, emotions about those?
- [06:44]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, I think for Google, for Google it'll be interesting to see because I think that, I think I agree with you. Gemini. I think Gemini was the kind of the dark horse that came out and had all kinds of challenges and then they were able to catch up relatively quickly. I know I find that myself and our team, we use ChatGPT and Gemini for different things, but those are probably the two we use the most and then Claude and then a loser on that front for me and the people that I work with was perplexity. A lot of people still like it I didn't renew my subscription to it. I, you know, how many, how many brands do you need to work with? I find that I can get pretty much everything I need from, from those three and almost everything I need from, from just Google and Chat GPT. But I do think that that OpenAI is going to be a huge winner with Chat GPT search and I think Google's going to be a loser of market share. I think it's the first real threat to Google's search engine dominance. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
- [07:53]
Ryan Dice
So I've kind of got Google as a winner and you've kind of got a little bit as a loser. That's, that's interesting. You got it.
- [07:59]
Roland Frazier
I have it as a winner in what you said. I agree YouTube and AI Gemini. But I think search is, is, I think that Google's old school search, I use it as infrequently as I can because it's a terrible user experience because it's way too ad, you know, it's way too saturated with ads and actually poor results as a result of optimization. So like I have to scroll through an entire page of crap before I even get to start the hunt for the things I want. Whereas Gemini or OpenAI or the other AIs or chat GPT, the other AI chat bots will give me what I want right away. So paid. And I would just, you know, I do it for TV, I do it for YouTube ads, I do it for Spotify. I, I'll always pay to not listen to a fricking ad. So what's that going to do ultimately to Google's business that is still a giant part of its business, that terrible experience that is called Google Search? I, I think they're going to have a, you know, I think you're going to see fewer and fewer people, especially younger people going there and that's going to hurt that. It's going to hurt people who want to reach people through that ad platform. And the question will be how long before they destroy the user experience that's pleasant of Gemini with ads and can they do that if OpenAI is not doing it and living off of subscription fees, It'll be interesting. To me that's going to be a really probably a thing that unfolds a lot in 2025.
- [09:37]
Ryan Dice
What are your other business losers?
- [09:42]
Roland Frazier
I'll talk about a winner if I can. First, a couple more winners. I definitely think automation, that any automation business as a software platform like a make or a zapier or anyone who is an agency or is assisting people in automating businesses, particularly in verticals that are specialized. I think those people are going to be big winners. I think telehealth is going to be a big winner and put anything after tele. And it's funny because it's not really telephone, but, but I guess it is because you're doing it, you know, on the Internet over your telephone. But, but I really do believe that people don't want to go out for things that they don't need to go out for. And so I see lots and lots of people for dentists, for doctors, for professionals, for attorneys, not just, you know, not just medicine, but you know, tell a blank across the board. The people that master that, particularly in the service business, those, those guys are going to do really, really well, I think. And the people that don't, I think will be big, big losers. And I think the people that don't automate will be big losers. In the automation category, I'd also go with RPA for the win. Robotic process automation, basically just the actual automation of mindless, terrible tasks that people are doing that take humans a long time to do. Like for our tax return business, taking the information from all the crap that people send you and upload to the portal of their documents and then transferring it into the software to be able to do tax returns, you know, expense accounts, payable departments that require receipts from all the people that work for the company and then they have to somehow get all those receipts into the accounting program. I think, I think those things are going to be big winners and I think the businesses that don't keep up are going to have, have big challenges with that. Can I talk about another couple of winners?
- [11:45]
Ryan Dice
Yeah.
- [11:47]
Roland Frazier
So still, despite the fact, I mean this would sound like A prediction from 2006 maybe, but there's still, there's still so many people that own businesses that do not have their online game dialed in that, you know, like we see.
- [12:09]
Ryan Dice
When, oh my God, you say your winner is the Internet.
- [12:12]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's, it's really the fact that the loser is going to be people who do not get their act together and get themselves connected in their business that an integration across, like if you're, you know, if you're the hardware store, you've got to be able to have people go on and not just see a brochure page. It needs to be tied in with your inventory and the ability to see what's in stock and you know, and what isn't and have it actually be accurate because Google's for sure is not accurate. Google gives me all the time in stock, in stock, in stock. And then I go there and it's pre order or it's not currently in stock. I mean that, that's, that's going to irritate people and cause them to go to the people who actually get that stuff.
- [13:07]
Ryan Dice
Right.
- [13:08]
Roland Frazier
So you know that, that to me is a, is a big, big, big deal. And I think that service businesses are going to be winners as well. And I believe that. My hope, I guess it's jury's out, but my hope is that the aggregation of all these businesses like H Vac and pool cleaning and these things that we, that we need and use to make our lives run, all those services that private equity is buying up. I'm hopeful that private equity will improve the experience. I am dubious of whether that will happen because I think that, I think they're in areas they don't know that are very difficult to operate as an aggregate compared to what they refer to as truck in a truck. You know that business is going to be difficult because of labor. Right. So the winner will be the owners of those businesses who sell at giant multiples to private equity firms that pay too much with other people's money, but then ultimately never have to really be accountable for that. And the loser may very well be the consumer that uses those services as service levels decline because of cash constraints and management by people who are MBAs that don't know how this like grassroots business world actually works.
- [14:36]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, I think the winners are going to be these owners who come in and wind up buying their businesses back from the private equity companies that bought them back at the crazy high valuations of 2020, 2021. And now they've got a, you know, they've essentially run them into the ground and they've got to return, you know, their money back to their stakeholders. And the losers are going to be the, the poor LPs who are going to make any money aren't going to get any return off of, off of that. Because Yeah, I know two people who took one of them, 80 million plus another 120 something million selling a, one of them like a electrical, another H Vac. And in both cases the private equity companies that bought them have essentially run them into the ground. And it was just for that reason that you said it's because they didn't understand the labor component, they didn't understand the recruitment component. They also didn't understand the Marketing component. And so they thought that, you know, that it was all there. They thought that they could run it just on the back of spreadsheets that they could just roll all these things up. And they thought wrong. And so yeah. And now both of these people are preparing to, to buy them right back and turn them back around.
- [15:50]
Roland Frazier
So and, and, and for a lot of them, as we've seen from frank friends of ours, they get their unturnaroundable when they come back because that is the danger. Yeah, yeah. So that'll be interesting to see. I, I also put this into chat GPT A couple things that it said that, that we didn't hit yet for winners was professional services offering subscription models. So predictable revenue from accounting firm that offers monthly subscription for tax prep and advisory services. We do that currently in the accounting and bookkeeping businesses that we've got. Those are subscription based. You know that that will be interesting to see if that is accurate and that catches on to other things. I feel like, I don't know what you think. I feel like subscription businesses are good for the people who own them but the people that have to pay the subscription hate that because think about us in our meetings talking about we've got to wait for five more months for this stupid subscription to somebody's email thing that we forgot to cancel and got auto renewed for a year that's under contract. Like that's such a terrible user experience. Will there be a disruptor that comes in and says everybody hates that, let's change that. Or if not like, I mean I think we see that people generally don't like or want subscriptions. I think pay TV streaming services are seeing that, that people like they're at their limit. They don't want another 50, 100, $200 plus thing a month to do. But I do also know that in some of our businesses like Scalable and Epic, we do have monthly options. So I'd love to get your take on that because that's to me that's, it's a push me pull you like it's, there's, there's goods and bads to that.
- [17:45]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, I mean I think if you're offering a, you know, a higher ticket annual type buy in and you also offer a monthly payment type option then, then yeah that when offered side by side can be appealing. Now the monthly can be appealing. If, if it's just yet another subscription thing where you feel like I should just be able to pay for this once because it's, you know, then, then I think they are that's what people are getting sick of. Any other losers?
- [18:15]
Roland Frazier
For me, the, the converse of the things that we talked about.
- [18:22]
Ryan Dice
I, I'll make sure we hit these other categories too.
- [18:27]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, I'm looking through my notes. I, I mean I hope, I hope losers will be these people that offer those daggone contracts that are so draconian and not friendly to people just like nothing specifically new that, that I really thought of. That's not a converse of the things that I think will be winners because I think the people that don't do the things that the winners create opportunities for will suffer because they'll be out competed.
- [19:02]
Ryan Dice
I've got a couple of. You can tell me what you think because it's a bit out there. Maybe the first, I think anything selling a lot of sugar or alcohol related I think is going to potentially be a loser. As GLP1s reach broader adoption, it seems like everybody I know is drinking less because they're on some kind of a GLP1 or whatever. And then these things just seem to, you know, even if you just, I mean there's lots of people I know who just have stopped drinking completely because for whatever reason, you know, they, whatever, you know, their health guru of choice told them they should stop. But now there's just people who are on taking whatever shot or taking whatever pill and it's just causing them to not crave, have the same level of cravings. And we're seeing this with alcohol and we're seeing this with sugar. And so I think a lot of these companies are really starting to, you know, feel that now. At the same time I go and watch again college football and it seems like every single bowl is sponsored by like Twinkies or friggin, you know, Pop Tarts or something like that. So could, could be wrong. But I, you know, we're seeing it right now. Craft beer for the first time in, you know, a couple of decades just went backwards in terms of sales. Like craft beer sales went, went down. And so I think that's, I think it's kind of, it's kind of interesting. We're starting to see the price of whiskey and some of these things come down a little bit and so definitely.
- [20:32]
Roland Frazier
Time for a shakeout in the craft beer and craft whiskey business. There's like everybody and their brother with a still that is, you know, that, that's creating stuff but that, that trend. I just read an article in, I think it was food and wine or something that, that San Francisco red wine consumption was down something like 27%. And white wine was down like 11. But red wine in particular was down. But I think that, and I agree with you, there's a lot of people, I saw that they're trying to get the surgeon general to have a warning on all alcohol that alcohol causes cancer. And it'll be interesting to see because I think that some of the stuff like the San Francisco report I read, and I was like, oh, well, that trends with people that are having fewer drinks, they're not having four drinks, they're having one or two drinks, which I think is actually a good thing. But you know, a day. But, but I also believe that the price of alcohol has gone so crazy that, you know, even at a restaurant, for me, I'm, I'm looking at it and I'm just like, I'm not going to pay $1800 or $1500 to have a single bottle of red wine for five people at dinner that you're going to need two or three of for everybody just to have two glasses. And you've spent 6,000 off, you know, $4,500. It's, it makes no sense at all when, you know, the cost of the wine is so much less than that. The markups have just gone so through the roof. And then. And then also, like for San Francisco, for that study, San Francisco's in dire trouble because they mismanaged police and fort. Law enforcement and so many other things. So it's. How much of it is. Is just a right sizing, you know, and how much of it is not, I don't know. But, but definitely the zeitgeist out there is don't drink.
- [22:35]
Ryan Dice
And these, I'm telling you, man, these GLP ones, it seems like everybody's on them and they are just changing people's cravings and habits. And so I would not want to be in the junk food or the, you know, in the, in the alcohol space. My other one was, I think social media companies are about to get their, their comeuppance. Seems like every day there's another documentary coming out talking about how really dangerous these are. These are for kids. And I think that social media companies are about to. You're going to see a lot of regulations come around them, around young people. I think you're going to start to see people push, you know, push away from them a little bit. And I think that they're going to, you know, have even more negative press in 2025 than they did before. And, and that that could finally impact them at, you know, and Specifically meta. Right. But I, I think TikTok is also going to perhaps have some, you know, regulatory issues as well.
- [23:32]
Roland Frazier
Did you see that Australia, I think it was banned social media for kids under. I want to say it was either 14 or 16. I mean maybe it was 18. It was like it was. That's a. The entire country. So it'll be interesting to see how enforcement of that with, you know, VPNs and, and kids who are smart enough to get around all that stuff, which I would think would be most of them, how successful that will be. But yeah, that, that'll be interesting. That'll definitely be interesting. I, I guess also maybe importers will be losers if the tariffs go up that are, are said to be going up. That, that could create issues for companies that are dependent on global supply that would be subject to the tariffs. I definitely think that near shoring and you know, is it inshoring, you know, that, that bringing manufacturing back will, will be a thing and, and particularly with the, the challenge of the polarization of the autocratic type governments like China, Russia as pretty big, you know, like China for sure as a supplier of so much stuff. And, and with the new administration coming in, it'll be interesting to see how that works. But I would be nervous if I was counting on importing anything from anywhere right now as my primary thing.
- [24:56]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, I'm kind of, kind of glad that we're out of, out of that business. I don't think that, you know, I think the tariffs are primarily being used as a threat. You know, I'm kind of one of those people who doesn't, doesn't think that the Trump administration is going to impose them as, you know, radically as they've maybe been described because, you know, they don't want to see, they don't want to see inflation creep back up again. They don't want to see the economy dip. And I think everybody over there knows that it would and so they're going to avoid that. But yeah, if just the threat of it is enough to make people skittish. So yeah.
- [25:34]
Roland Frazier
What do you think about labor? Is this. Does labor win or lose in 25?
- [25:42]
Ryan Dice
I think that it continues to be like more of, more of 2024. I think it continues to be a fairly soft labor market. I think, I think unemployment remains low, but I don't think it goes anywhere like it was, you know, 2021, where employees had all the power and could dictate literally everything. I mean I, we know a lot of entrepreneurs and sure, there are people who are hiring, but many of them are, you know, it's like one or two jobs and they're hiring to replace somebody that they fired because they sucked. You know, that it's not like they're scaling up their organization a whole lot. I mean, we're hearing a lot more people going back to what you said before, you know, asking the question, can we automate this before they look to bring on more, more human talent. So I think that, you know, all in all, I think the labor market is going to continue to struggle and you know, that that's going to be. I don't know that it's going to be a 2025 story, but I do believe that this is definitely going to be a story going into the next couple of years. It's going to be interesting to see how it impacts the economy as a whole because a lot of people are going to be out of work because they're just not going to be needed.
- [26:54]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, I think you're right. Which would bode well for professional training services, online training, re education, upskilling, you know, all of that kind of stuff. Right.
- [27:06]
Ryan Dice
It bodes well for anybody who owns assets. It doesn't bode well for anybody who is simply a wage earner. So technology winners and losers, I got kind of some spicy ones here I think you'll probably disagree with, so I'll start with the losers. I think you'll agree with this loser. I think enterprise software is going to be a loser for all the reasons that you talked about before. The annual contracts that, you know, they make you sign.
- [27:35]
Roland Frazier
The really big sales process is.
- [27:37]
Ryan Dice
The sales process is outdated. Literally the way that they do everything just feels so old. And even for most of them, they're sold on a seat license basis. And going back to what we said before, they. They've grown because teams have grown. And so as teams have grown, the contracts would grow every year because every company just had more people than they had the year before. Well, that's not the case anymore. And so you can't just, you know, count on as an enterprise software company just growing a little bit every year. I think all they're going to do is lose logos. So they're going to, they're going to lose clients and they're not going to, they're not going to have the expansion revenue that they've had in the past. And I think that people are going to demand month to month, they're going to demand different cancellation processes. And I think as a lot of brands are empowered to build Their own. And as new upstarts come, I mean dude, look at a company like go high level, right? You got high level that's coming in here and is essentially doing everything that like keep and a lot of what like HubSpot does and they just knock off everybody's feature and they just charge like a couple hundred bucks a month. I kind of think that's what's going to happen in every single one of these markets. So I wouldn't really want to be in the enterprise software space. I think Apple products are going to continue to be, you know, losers. I bought the most recent iPhone. Incredibly disappointing Apple Intelligence. Incredibly disappointing. I don't, I still to this day don't know what it is. They just seem to have completely lost their way and I don't see him getting it back in 2025. And so I think that the Vision Quest Pro thing was a just dead on arrival. Oh my God.
- [29:26]
Roland Frazier
That, that just like they just abandoned that. Like I, I, I bought one because I had to, you know, I like to be on the front of that stuff. I don't know. Did you get one?
- [29:36]
Ryan Dice
No.
- [29:37]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, it, you know, crazy price and everything but, but I bought it based on the brand equity of Apple of being a leader and supporting and all of the hype and I feel like they just said eh, I mean I heard crap about it since then so it's, that was like very disappointing. And now I'm trying to sell it because I want to sell it before they're you know, $8 but if I hold onto it for 40 years, you know, it'll be worth something.
- [30:09]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, it'll be like the Newton.
- [30:10]
Roland Frazier
Apple Intelligence though I think is a different story because my understanding is that it's not really they're enabled but kind of like the Tesla self driving car. The devices are enabled but the true Apple Intelligence wasn't even scheduled to have any, any kind of real introduction until February of 25. So I think we're, I think it's too soon to say.
- [30:35]
Ryan Dice
Well there was, there were supposed to be some things at the end of 2024 and it just, I got it on my phone.
- [30:42]
Roland Frazier
It's like expresses regret that can't make dinner. And then I click on the thing and it says Ryan texted you and you can't make dinner. He can't make dinner. I mean it's like, it's not helpful.
- [30:53]
Ryan Dice
Stupid.
- [30:54]
Roland Frazier
Would have been better just to have said let's not share that. But helpful summaries of my texts that are already summary, you know like yeah.
- [31:06]
Ryan Dice
Not yeah, it's, it's like it literally would have been better had you done nothing at all. So I don't know, it just, all these things, it just seems like it's loser after loser after loser. And yes, maybe Apple Intelligence, when they finally roll the whole thing out. The problem is they've been talking about it now for a year and it hasn't shown up. So I think people are just losing faith in the brand and so that's going to cause them on the next cycle to maybe try something else out and you don't have to do that too many times to now you're just done with them and you just do other. Use other brands. Here's my other loser. I think chatgpt OpenAI. I think OpenAI is going to lose. I don't think they're going to like fail as a company. I think they're going to lose the top spot to Google. I think that Gemini is going to claim the top spot. I think that all the stuff that they're doing with going from nonprofit to for profit, I think that that is going to get kind of mucked up in the regulatory and this is my kind of cynical theory about this. Elon, who's got Grok, who also has Trump's ear, I think he's saying like, hey, you're not just going to let these guys because you know, he hates Altman, he freaking hates OpenAI. He's like, you're not just going to let them just convert into nonprofit, are you? So I think they're going to get locked down in so much frickin regulation and so much just scrutiny that it's going to slow down their, their, their development cycles. They've lost a lot of talent already and I think that Google, they're catching up in a big, big, big way. They have Google Search they can pull from, they've got all of your Google Docs, they've got your Gmail, they've got all the things that they can pull from in real time. I'm finding that Gemini in many cases now is better than ChatGPT. I'm finding that I'm going to it and using it more. And so I wouldn't be surprised if this time next year we're not crowning a new AI leader in Gemini over Chad GPT.
- [33:12]
Roland Frazier
It'll be interesting to see I have way more fights with Gemini to get what I want than I do with Chat GPT. Just, just yesterday, you'll, you'll appreciate this because I was looking for Information about Rand Fishkin from Lost and Founder who sold his company. And I was, I was looking for the data on the sale and you know, when it happened or whatever. And I ask, as I frequently do Gemini, I said, do you know? So anything that I'm looking for, current information on YouTube information or anything in the Google universe, I'm going to ask Gemini because it's more up to date. They're going to have to fix that with OpenAI or that will be a problem. So I use both with chat GPT. I use both because I get better answers. Generally I find from chat GPT. But the, the data, the up to date and interactivity with things like YouTube is a big advantage for, for Google still. Whether that will be an advantage that's allowed to stay or not will be interesting to see as well. But, but I'm like, give me information on Rand Fishkin sale of Moz as outlined in Lost and Founder. And it's like, I don't know who that person is. I'm like, do you know Rand Fishkin? I don't know who that person is. Rand Fishkin was the author of Lost and Founder. Are you familiar with that book? Yes, I am. Lost and Founder is a book by Rand Fishkin about. Okay, great. From that book.
- [34:54]
Ryan Dice
Good to have you back with us.
- [34:55]
Roland Frazier
Information related to the sale. I don't know any Rand Fishkin. Oh, come on. You know.
- [35:00]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, yeah. I think it's got a lot of catching up to do. I don't. Again, my prediction is not based on where they are today.
- [35:06]
Roland Frazier
Way, way bad too, to me, comparatively. The hallucinations of Gemini. I don't trust Gemini and that's a big deal.
- [35:13]
Ryan Dice
Well, and you gotta. And I've asked Gemini before, are you hallucinating? And it's like, yes.
- [35:20]
Roland Frazier
Please don't.
- [35:22]
Ryan Dice
Absolutely. Yeah.
- [35:24]
Roland Frazier
I'd almost rather fight with it with the I don't know that person than. Have you lied to me? You know, of course.
- [35:29]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, of course. Yeah. It's not based on any technical advantage they have today. It's based purely on the fact that they've just the data that they're able to pull from the, the money that they have to spend. And I think that OpenAI is going to get slowed down and locked down because. Because Elon's going to whisper in Trump's ear. That's just. Again, this is my cynical, my cynical perspective. What, what you. And in terms of winner. Yeah. So I think Gemini is going to win. What you got? Technology, winners and losers.
- [35:58]
Roland Frazier
I'm going to Go against what you know, most of media world is hoping for. I think that X and and Grok are going to be big winners. I'd put my money on Elon, you know, anytime.
- [36:08]
Ryan Dice
I agree. I didn't put him as a winner but as we were talking they will. What he spent like this big. Have you seen this big like supercomputer thing?
- [36:18]
Roland Frazier
Yeah. Did you see he did it in like 19 days? I mean. Yeah. Like they said it would take four years if anybody else had done it. That guy's a.
- [36:26]
Ryan Dice
You know, because of course he did. Right, Exactly. And so yeah, that. No, I think that's a great take. Yeah, great take. Marketing. What you got from the world of marketing, the marketing tactics and strategies that you think are going to be. You could take the winners or the losers first, whichever one you want to take.
- [36:47]
Roland Frazier
I mean to me, because they're such, you know, such the same coin. I really think that, I really think that first party data is so important and that the people who do that will be the winning. A winning tactic for sure to own your own audience and stop renting from Google and Meta and the places that have become so cluttered and such bad advertising experiences and driven the cost so high that it doesn't make sense to be on them. I look at for us even we went through an election cycle where ads were unaffordable to acquire customers profitably to Black Friday to post Black Friday sales which extend about now. Black Friday starts November 1st and goes all the way through after Christmas or after the holidays, you know, depending on what, what you subscribe to.
- [37:47]
Ryan Dice
I think it officially just ended like 12 minutes ago.
- [37:51]
Roland Frazier
It did. And so that's two months and then you've got the summer which is always terrible generally because people are out and about and not doing like unless you're selling summer based things. So does that mean that five months of the year we really have a hard time with our advertising and sales are going to slump off that. That's not acceptable for, you know, for any business. But if you have your own media that you own, if it's first party data then you can mail your email lists and it doesn't cost you whatever the rental rate is. You, you know that like I just think that if you're not an owner of multiple first party data streams that you're going to be at a giant disadvantage.
- [38:37]
Ryan Dice
Got any more?
- [38:39]
Roland Frazier
No, go ahead.
- [38:40]
Ryan Dice
So the I've got as a loser are we trading off is that we're doing okay. Cool. Any brand that has kind of leveraged traditional content marketing where it just sort of manufactured content for the purposes of appealing to search engines. I heard somebody say, you know, unwanted email is spam, unwanted content is slop. And, and so a lot of this, a lot of the content out there is slop. And with AI slop content has now just, it's increased many orders of magnitude and people are just rejecting it. And so I've seen lots of brands do this. I've seen lots of individuals do this as well. Like you can tell that what they're posting to their social media feeds is AI generated and they're losing credibility with their audiences. So I think the losers are going to be the slop content brands and the winners are going to be the people who are actually taking the time to put out well thought out original content. It's the less but better, it's the pillar content type type stuff. So I think that's, I know that's what we're focusing in doubling down on. It's not going to be about. In the past it was just a quantity game. If you just put out enough, if you flooded the space, you would win. That's not really winning the game anymore.
- [40:00]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, yeah, I agree. High quality, bespoke content that's driven around the actual data driven identified needs of the customers that you're giving it to or the prospects you're giving it to. I think is a giant, giant deal. And it's been something that's been on the list for several years now. We've talked about it for, you know, years at Traffic and Conversion Summit. But I think that hyper personalized data as well, hyper personalized ads, you know, the ones that, that already are like if you're sending something out to somebody that you know already has done business with you or engaged and interacted with your marketing in any way in your company and you're not acknowledging that or catering to the specific things that you know about them, then I think that's, that's going to be a big disadvantage to you compared to the people who are, because the technology to do it is there and the people that are embracing it, I think are going to win. And the other people, it's going to be like the slop that you said. It's going to look like they're out of touch. I get ads for all kinds of things that I've not mentioned in conversation. You know, for eavesdropping purposes of the online stuff. I've not engaged with that kind of content. It's shotgun marketing still for so many so many companies and, you know, online just to that experience too, you know, now I'm, I'm. What did I listen to? My wife told me about a podcast by Julia Louise Dreyfus, right. Who has this thing called Wiser Than Me where she interviews old people, old women in particular, and then talks to her mom about it after. So I'm like, you know, hey, I want to stay up on stuff. So we have stuff to talk about besides business and listen to it. It's got three or four ads, including back to back ads during an hour long show that have nothing to do with anything that I would be interested in at all. I know that you can personalize that experience, so why isn't it personalized? You know, those people are just wasting their ad dollars, you know, their CPM dollars on those platforms. So that, that'll be interesting to see. I think that if you're not doing that, you're missing out and you're, you know, you're just annoying the consumer. And I think the content providers too, annoy the consumer. I know we've chosen generally not to put ads on our stuff, at least on our podcast. I don't know if YouTube has it in there or not, but, but because of the user experience. And, and I think the people that, that, that are content providers that are trying to accomplish something from their media other than direct response selling need to be mindful of the experience that that media is creating for the consumers. Because it doesn't make me not like Julia Louise Dreyfus, but it makes me, I mean, I fast forward, you know, through the, through every ad on the show and so those dollars are just wasted.
- [43:03]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, I mean, yeah, for us it's, if we're going to run that, it's going to be basically for our own stuff, you know, which should be relevant to our audience. So it's like, hey, just so you know, we got this thing going.
- [43:14]
Roland Frazier
She's shilling, I mean, which I hate. You know, she's basically, you know, you know what I find when I wash my hair is that, you know, shite and brain, you know, it's. Yeah, it's inauthentic to the, you know, to the extreme.
- [43:27]
Ryan Dice
Yeah. I do think that podcasts, you know, podcasts really had a moment with the, with the election. But I think. And so a lot of people are saying like, oh, it's all about podcasts. And obviously this sounds a little bit ridiculous because we're on a podcast right now, but I think that, that podcasts are really great for the really, really big podcasts. And. And for everybody else, it's just power laws are starting to take over. And if you don't have a big podcast, then probably nobody's listening to your podcast. It is just the reality of where that is. So, you know, I don't think.
- [43:58]
Roland Frazier
I think podcasts to have a podcast, but what about to advertise on podcasts?
- [44:03]
Ryan Dice
I think, I think podcast advertising is something that is worth testing. I think it's going to be. I think it's going to be a winner. But to your point, I think it's going to be best on niche podcasts because one of the. My winners is the micro influencer.
- [44:18]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, agree with that.
- [44:19]
Ryan Dice
The micro influencers. Yeah. And losers being the celebrity influencer. If there is one thing, and I love this, the God, you know, as we're recording this, the Golden Globes were last night. And what's the woman who hosted it?
- [44:37]
Roland Frazier
I didn't say.
- [44:37]
Ryan Dice
I can't remember her name. She's a hilarious comedian. But she opened up. She's like, oh, so many famous here. So many famous people, so many important people, you know, you know, you're also influential, you know, except, you know, when it comes to telling people who to vote for, you know, and everybody laughed, but it's true, right. Like, every celebrity was telling the world to vote for Kamala Harris and yet she didn't win. Right.
- [45:02]
Roland Frazier
Glasser.
- [45:02]
Ryan Dice
Yeah. Nikki Glaser. Hilarious. One of the best, like opening monologues of any award show that I've seen. It was great. It's worth watching. But she. But yeah, I mean, I do think that the celebrity endorsement is. Could not be at its lowest point. Like, the value of a celebrity endorsement is so incredibly low right now. We are entertained by these people, but we no longer find them influential at all. Now the micro influencer is somebody who. We actually do value this person's opinion in this very narrow area. Right. Which I would consider, for example, you know, like a Kardashian type person. They're celebrities, but they're also influencers in a. In narrow areas of like, fashion and beauty and those kind of things. Still highly influential in those areas. Yeah, but plenty of these. Of these, you know, micro influencers as well. You also see these in the podcasting world. And so I do think the podcast advertising can work, but I would definitely be targeting micro influencers. I would not be going after, like the mega, you know, celebrity folks out there.
- [46:12]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, that makes sense. I like that. You have any others?
- [46:19]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, I've got. I think that direct Response advertising and kind of that immediate ROI is going to be a bit of a loser in 2025. Not saying that direct response is going to die by any stretch of the imagination, but if there's one thing that we've seen, it's that customer acquisition costs just keep going up and up and up. And everybody who, any marketer who just demands that all of their marketing be directly, perfectly attributable and that you have this immediate roi, you're just going to find that you have nowhere to advertise anymore. And you're going to find also if you're optimizing for the highest return on ad spend, you're going to find that your available audience to market to just keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller, that you have to continue recycling your ads over and over again, that you have to keep coming up with newer and newer ads. It really, it's just getting so expensive that I think by this time next year, if you're not looking at your analytics and seeing that at least 40% of your visitors are coming just from organic word of mouth people just arriving because they know, already know, like and trust you, you're just going to have a really hard time existing in the marketplace if you're just relying exclusively upon, you know, paid advertising, which many of us have, you know, for a very, very, very long time. It's just too expensive. It doesn't pencil, it doesn't math out, you know, anymore. And so.
- [47:49]
Roland Frazier
So do you think that's a return to kind of the general brand dependent advertising or that the scale is tipping back in favor of.
- [47:58]
Ryan Dice
I do, yeah, I do. And so what I think it's going to look like this year is allocating at least 20% of your advertising budget to some type of brand effort to start building that, that later audience. Because right now all of the advertising is going to basically get people who are ready to buy now to buy now. But we know that's only 3 to 6% of the audience at any given time. Right?
- [48:23]
Roland Frazier
Interesting. There was a case study I just read on the turnaround of New Balance. And I think when the CEO came into New Balance, the direct response versus brand spend was 30% brand, 70% direct response. And they turned it around and said it needs to be 70% brand, 30% response. And that changed the whole game. And they can draw a bright line of that. It took, I think it may have taken as long as 18 months. But like by that once they had made that. Because that's an investment, right? That's literally not Direct response. You're not putting a message out expecting them to come. You're putting a message out hoping that when they think of tennis shoes, they think of you and. Or sneakers and that. I thought that was really interesting. It was something I'd written down. And I'm glad you mentioned it because I think that's. I think that's true. Also. When I read it, it. I was like that it kind of sucks, but because of the uncertainty of it. But with attribution, you know, attribution dying. I just read somebody saying that they were. They didn't realize that their email, like all the email that goes through Apple that's indicated that it was opened is opened by a bot. Because every email is opened by the Apple bot at the Apple, you know, central processing center.
- [49:52]
Ryan Dice
Open rates are a gym.
- [49:53]
Roland Frazier
So you, so you can't, you can't count on any of that. You can still look at click through rates and things like that. But. But that, you know, it's, it really is. The attribution is dying a slow death. And so that being the case, you don't really have a choice because you can't measure direct response in the traditional way to tell if it made sense. You know, the. Is it the Barnum. It's like. Or who is it that said that? I know half my advertising. Maybe it was Sloan. Half my advertising works. I just don't know which half.
- [50:25]
Ryan Dice
That's back.
- [50:25]
Roland Frazier
That. We're back to that, right? Yeah, we got a breather, a reprieve from that for a couple decades, but now we're kind of back to that, which is interesting.
- [50:35]
Ryan Dice
And that's where I think, you know, I said 20%, allocating 20% to brand. Everybody should be able to do that. And the goal should be exactly what you said, to flip it by this time next year to be 8020 the other way. So that, but one of the things that, you know, Roy Williams, who's, you know, one of my marketing mentors, says anytime you do a brand campaign, it's 14 weeks, 14 weeks before you're going to notice any change at all. Period. End of story. And you've got to be running significant frequency. Like, that's not just. I ran it for a little bit. It's. You've got to be running significant frequency in the marketplace. They've got to be seeing you basically, you know, once a day, every freaking day for 14 weeks. And then maybe it'll start to show up before you'll notice anything. And he's like, that's the Chickening out, period. And if you give up before the 14 weeks and he's like, it'll be nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then at 14 weeks it'll start to be something and then it all compounds. And so I think that's the thing. Brand compounds, direct response doesn't. And you know, so if we're not doing marketing that compounds, we've got to know that it's only going to work less well tomorrow. And we're now at a point where we simply can't afford, literally we can't afford for it to work any more, any poorly than it. More poorly than it does right now. And so that's just where we are. And I think there's going to be a lot of brands, a lot of companies that they keep chasing and so they're going to always come out with new things and stuff like that. Um, but it, it is, it's gonna be, it's gonna be tough. I think it's gonna be really tough. There's gonna be a lot of companies that, that can't afford to make this transition.
- [52:22]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, I think you're right.
- [52:24]
Ryan Dice
My last winner, I think, I mean, this kind of is a bit of a joke, but like YouTube and investing in any brands that invest in YouTube, I still see this as being kind of the ultimate binge factory. If you going back to the brand conversation, if we're gonna say that brand really is making deposits of relational equity, one of the best ways to do that is through the YouTube platform. Because YouTube is really good. When somebody watches some of your content, it's good at showing people more of your content. And so it does encourage that binging. And so I think that that is definitely a channel worth investing in of all the third party. Because I agree with what you said. You want to capture first party Data. You know, YouTube is still sharecropping. You're still building an asset on somebody else's land. But of all of the other assets that you can, of all the assets that you could build on somebody else's land, YouTube to me is the one that more than any other, any of the social channels, certainly like TikTok, which, who knows what happens to that, or Instagram or any of them. To me, YouTube is the, is the one that I would be doubling down on.
- [53:31]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, the question, how do you get them off of YouTube? Because YouTube doesn't want them off of YouTube. YouTube rewards you for having them binge. You can obviously run ads on your own videos for calls to action, but you can also just embed Them, although not dynamically like you can with podcasts, at least not yet. So how do you, how do you stop being dependent on, on YouTube to get those people off? I, I see in the music world, which, which I'm an, I'm a consumer of, they basically have people who demonstrate things and then they send you to Patreon. They don't make any money. None of them do. You know, even the top people in the niches that I'm in aren't making any money from that. But it's a way that they do that. And then they try to, you know, they'll go to courses and things like that. But, but let's say you're a, I don't know, you're a. Trying to think of something we bought. You're a wrapping company that sells Christmas wrapping and, you know, or holiday wrapping and things like that. Paper, I don't know what they call it, wrapping paper. You're a wrapping paper company and you've got all the wrapping strategies and designs and what's hot and you know, how to wrap correctly and that kind of stuff. How do you pull your 1.3 million viewers off of there? So you're not dependent on that because if you got three copyright strikes, somehow within I think a 90 day period, they just delete your channel, which is like, there's no due process. All tech companies are constitutional violators. There's no due process. But what do you do to do that? Or is that just it, you're stuck there and you run your ads and hope that some of them buy?
- [55:22]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, I think you're running, you're running your ads. Most of the heavy lifting happens in the descriptions. Right. And so you, the, one of the biggest myths about YouTube is that the description should actually be a description about that video. No, the description is just a general description about who you are and what they should do next. And probably you should have the same description for all of your videos and maybe there's something relevant to that if you've got a, you know, a lead magnet or something. But, but yeah, in general it's, it should be linking off to your, to your stuff. So in that sense it's not that different from any other social property. Right. You've got your, you know, you got your bio, you know, you're about stuff and that's kind of the best that you, that you have. I mean, what you're hoping is that somebody sees you, somebody likes you and so they, they go and they, they Google you and they look for you. Or they look at the description and they go and find you. It's, it's highly imperfect. But what we found is that they do it right. They will do it. They will take that extra step to find you if they value you. And again, the nice thing is if it happened organically, you didn't pay anything for it and they're coming to you just so pre sold already. Like they consume so much of your content that they've shown up and you don't realize it, but you've gone on five or six dates with this person. So it's not like they're showing up day one. You know, having just gotten on your list, they have shown up and it's like they've been on your list for months and months. So it's definitely worth doing. But yeah, it goes back to what we were talking about before. Can't really track it. And so I think the winners are going to be the brands that are willing to do the untrackable, the people willing to do the quote unquote unscalable.
- [57:06]
Roland Frazier
I think you're right.
- [57:08]
Ryan Dice
All right, let's talk trends.
- [57:10]
Roland Frazier
Okay, what hour in now do we keep this one or do you want.
- [57:15]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, because this is the last, this is the last one. Let's just knock this out really quickly. Trends that are going to be bigger in 2025 than 2024. Rapid fire, what you got?
- [57:27]
Roland Frazier
I've got local search optimization for people because near me searches have gone through the roof. So I think that those more generalized searches instead of like if you've got a bagel shop, you're not optimizing for the same keywords that you used to. You're not optimizing for everything. Bagel, best locks, San Diego, et cetera. You're optimizing for things like near me open now.
- [57:59]
Ryan Dice
You want to just like rapid fire yours.
- [58:01]
Roland Frazier
Oh, better content for more first party data collection. Automation and RPA for small business, not just the big people anymore. Automation for small business, not just for the big guys anymore. I think that increasing differentiation, whether it's through connection, content sustainability, social, social programs or commitments, flexible payment options, buy now, pay later, for sure payment plans, things that will help people who are suffering in the economy. Customer reviews to drive leads and marketing with those because they're much more authentic than in influencers or ads. And so higher trust in a place where, in an environment where trust has basically gone out the window. Hyper personalized marketing and a focus on employee retention via not customer experience, but employee experience because good employees are so Hard to find and keep.
- [59:12]
Ryan Dice
I've got. So again, I've got YouTube, if that's even possible. Because again, these are things that I think are going to be bigger in 2025 than they were in 2024. I just think that this is a channel that's going to continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger. So it's kind of stupid because it was so big in 2024, but I think it's only going to get bigger.
- [59:30]
Roland Frazier
Prediction like mine was.
- [59:32]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, exactly.
- [59:33]
Roland Frazier
Going to be a thing.
- [59:34]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, the Internet. I do think that podcast advertising is. We're going to start to see that emerge as a far more viable. It's always been around, but it's been the larger brand advertisers doing it on the large, you know, branded podcast network.
- [59:52]
Roland Frazier
Having a moment, particularly because of like murders in the building and smarter. And I forget this is Smartless. Smartless. And the one with the show with the. Is it Kirsten Dunst and the. The Rabbi, which I can't think of the name of off the top of my head.
- [60:11]
Ryan Dice
And the president's going. Presidential candidates going on podcasts and things like that.
- [60:15]
Roland Frazier
Like it's, it's in meat. Like media is eating podcasts now because it's in the stories that are in media are about people that are doing podcasts. So it's going to come way more into the, that general knowing that zeitgeist of, you know, of stuff that's out there because it's in our faces. There's, there's shows about true crime podcasts, there's movies about true crime podcast. You know, it's like, so that alone will get more people consuming podcasts, which will mean that more people will want to access the audiences that are doing it, which means that they should be advertising more. So I couldn't agree more with you.
- [60:53]
Ryan Dice
And then I think paid communities, I mean if you look at what like Hormozi is doing to promote like the school games and stuff like that, I'm seeing more and more and more people promoting low dollar paid communities as a front end. I don't know for what it's worth, that this is the best strategy because. Because everybody is doing it. But I think you're still going to see this be a bigger thing next year than, than it was last year. Now the following year you could, you'll likely see this overreaction. But if you look at like what do I think is going to be kind of a, you know, a loser, a dud going into 2025. Facebook groups, I think are going to continue to decline. I think email newsletters, terrible experience. Yeah. And I think email newsletters, they were kind of the darling of the last couple of years. And it seems like nobody's really talking about them as much anymore because everybody had one, everybody signed up for 50 billion of them and most of them absolutely sucked.
- [61:49]
Roland Frazier
That's part of, to me, the reason that I don't agree with you about the online communities, because it's the same thing. Those were low cost, five, $10, $3 a month kinds of things or even a year. And, and many of them did suck. And so, you know, when, when that happens and everybody's creating AI newsletters and hiring agencies to do them, they're going to be terrible. If you've got a good newsletter, you can charge for it. People will still pay, just like they did back in the days when, you know, it was direct mail newsletters. But there's only so much that anybody, it's the streaming services problem. There's only so much that anybody's going to be willing to spend as an aggregate on those. So when your credit card bill comes through and you've got $5 for her mosey and $6 for Ryan and you know, 50 cents for me and you know, so on and so forth, you're just going to look at that and go, that's too much. Everybody's trying to get my dollar. Nobody wants to give me that stuff. If you want to give me the stuff, give me that stuff for lead gen on the front end and make it so good that I'll subscribe and figure out how to make it monetize on the back. I think that's what's going to happen because it's just people can only have so many things they're paying for.
- [63:01]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. This is, again, these are trends that I think are going to be big and I think it's up to you to decide do you go with the trend or do you buck the trend? Because sometimes there's money to be made in both. And then I kind of mentioned it before, I think that Chad GPT is going to be down a bit as a trend and I think Gemini is going to be up. I'm just continuing to ride that horse. What do you think is going to be down relative to 2024?
- [63:26]
Roland Frazier
I think loyalty cards are going to be down. I, I get loyalty cards everywhere I go now and it's just like I can't, I, I don't, I lose them. I don't, I Can't like, like as a, a the old school loyalty card I think dies. The online connected loyalty card that makes it seamless and easy wins. I think E Pay. The ability to use digital wallets to pay, I think is only going to get more. I, I. We have Apple pay on all of our sites now, and I don't see that changing at all. I think that one size fits all products are losers that people want to be recognized as the individuals they are and they want customizable and, or, or at least more tailored to them. We have seen traditional trade shows fall off, you know, in our world. I think those are, you know, I think that's a bad place to be and I definitely think it's bad to own a lot of office space right now. So if you're, you know, like, if you're an office space commercial building owner, can you convert that to condos or some other use? Because it doesn't seem like either from a lack of availability of the talent pool, a lack of the money to hire them, or their unwillingness boldly to even return. You've heard of coffee badging, right? Where people come in and clock in to show up, walk around the office, do a lap, and then take off not having done any work, and then work at home. They just don't want or need those offices anymore. And, and even those, those workspaces, you know, that like, like we work had that, that are those communal workspaces, I just don't. I think people want to work. They, they were taught that they could work out of their home from locations that they wanted to. And I don't see any comeback for the space that has been built and is vacant for all those people to be coming into offices.
- [65:29]
Ryan Dice
It's funny that you mentioned events in the context of that as well, because I agree with you on events. I was actually thinking about that and I forgot to write it down because events were obviously down because of COVID And then it seemed like they surged back up because everybody's like, oh, we miss it. Like, we got to get back together. And then it's like everybody went and they're like, wait, we don't need to do this anymore, right? Yeah. And like, everybody showed up for them and they were.
- [65:58]
Roland Frazier
The hotels cost twice as much as they did, and food cost twice as much as it did. And why did they come?
- [66:03]
Ryan Dice
And everybody's like, wait, all this content is available online? And the people. I mean, we could have talked. This could have been a zoom conversation. And wow, this, this is really expensive. And the exhibitors are like, God, this was a really expensive way to get, to get clients and customers. And from a legion perspective, they went back and they looked at that particular channel and they're like, this just doesn't make sense. Let's. Let's not renew again. And so I agree. It's like everybody went back to events because they could. And then everybody compared the event model to not doing events and realized, God dang, I don't know that we necessarily needed to do events. And so I think you're right. I think we're going to see events kind of go back by the wayside unless you're offering a truly, truly unique experience. It's one of those things we talked about kind of in the ashes of, of Traffic and Conversion Summit. Does it make sense to bring something, you know, back? And as we're looking at talking about, like, not yet. Like, I don't know what it looks like, but just kind of repeating what was there.
- [67:06]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, I don't launch and grow an event, but our event is not a trade show. So it's a community.
- [67:13]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, exactly, the community event. And so I think that's, that's a very, very different thing of like, these people are already gathered and once a year they would like to get together. Together in person. But no, I agree that the traditional classic trade show model of people show up, people buy a bunch of booths, they spend a bunch of money on this. It seems to be going the way of the enterprise. And maybe that's why as enterprise, the enterprise software companies were the ones paying for all these things, and now they can't afford to because their businesses are going away.
- [67:42]
Roland Frazier
One winner and two losers. Whenever you're ready for those two, go ahead.
- [67:45]
Ryan Dice
Why don't you. Let's wrap up with those.
- [67:48]
Roland Frazier
In game ads, I think that the gaming audience continues to grow and be more and more engaged with the games. And so finding opportunities to do both product placement and in game ads is going to be a big deal.
- [68:03]
Ryan Dice
Is there a network, like, if somebody wanted to buy those?
- [68:07]
Roland Frazier
I don't know. It's a good question. I know there are for podcasts, even though I might not be able to remember any of them right. Right now. And then the losers, I think, are, you're going to be surprised because I know that you're big. You're, you're, you're going really hard into this. In 25 metaverse speculation, I think that that's, that's going to be a loser. And NFTs, I think everybody's Lost any kind of faith in, in NFTs and they keep pushing.
- [68:34]
Ryan Dice
Can it be worse than it was in 2024? So even worse than it was in 2024.
- [68:39]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, I think, I think it's, it's, you know, I, I just think that's all had, it had its run. And I also think that a lot of the new crypto speculation is, is also going to continue to decline. Those, you know, the coins that people try to launch. And then there's been so many rug pulls, you know, bitcoin. Okay. I still agree with Warren Buffett. I think he, he's basically, you know, the thing about things like that is that they go on sometimes for a very long time and sometimes people make a lot of money, but they never end well. I don't think it can end well. Yeah.
- [69:18]
Ryan Dice
How do you go bankrupt very slowly and then all at once? Yeah, that's, yeah, it is interesting with like NFTs and a lot of these other like crypto projects with this most recent run up that we saw with, with bitcoin following the election and it seems to have kind of maintained dip back below 100,000 as we record this. But I mean it's still north of 90,000 so not too shabby. You haven't seen the gains in, you know, NFTs or any of the other things like it. It kind of is just basically around the, the, you know, the main, the main coins that seem like they, the brands.
- [69:57]
Roland Frazier
Let's just say I think the NFT experience is telling of the long term crypto experience. I think that when you're trying to compete with governments to take away their ability to control their economies with currency that ultimately now it's an investment. I don't know a lot of people that are spending it because like to buy a car. You know, we have a friend, a mutual friend that owns a car dealership, you know, and he's like, I wish people would, we take crypto. I wish people would pay me with crypto. You know, it's like because, you know it's probably going to go up for at least a while. Yeah, but why would you, why would you take that? To me, it would be like if suddenly instead of using Amex points to buy my Amazon groceries, I could use my stock fund.
- [70:51]
Ryan Dice
Right.
- [70:51]
Roland Frazier
And give shares of Nvidia. Why would I do that? Because Nvidia is an investment. It's not a currency. Right. So until it can become a currency, it can't be legitimate. It's not going to be allowed to become a Currency because governments will not allow that long term. And the ability to use it as a medium for payment is foolish given that it's an investment you anticipate is going to go up. You know, so what if you're, you know, what if your, your hundred, you know, what if your $400Amazon grocery bill cost you $4 million because you paid with Bitcoin? I don't see it.
- [71:34]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, well, and then there's this whole.
- [71:36]
Roland Frazier
Thing about, like, that's a, you know, you know, 2050 thing, maybe, but it won't end well.
- [71:42]
Ryan Dice
Individual investment advice from Roland Frazier.
- [71:45]
Roland Frazier
Yes. No investment advice was actually given or heard on this podcast.
- [71:50]
Ryan Dice
Yeah. Well, there you have it, folks. Those are our predictions going into 2025 gonna happen.
- [71:57]
Roland Frazier
Commitments to what the future looks like. You heard it here first.
- [72:01]
Ryan Dice
Lock it down. Invest on it. Make serious, like, business decisions based on everything that we said here today. Can't miss.
- [72:11]
Roland Frazier
Yeah, yeah. And don't do it at your peril.
- [72:15]
Ryan Dice
Exactly. It will be fun.
- [72:17]
Roland Frazier
Don't do any of that.
- [72:18]
Ryan Dice
Yeah, it will be fun to go back and look and see, see how we did on some of the, on some of these things. I think, I think it'll be fun. We'll go back and do this again next year. With that said. You want to, you want to read us out?
- [72:28]
Roland Frazier
I will. Thank you guys for visiting with us. We really appreciate you, as always. And if you found things that we talked about on this podcast, podcast to be interesting, helpful, delightful, or otherwise intriguing, share it with a friend because we'd love to have more people. If you didn't, then, you know, I don't know. I don't know. We really tried. We did. That's all I know. I am signing out Roland Frazier, my wonderful business partner, Ryan Dice. Happy New Year from what we hope our team will make the first podcast of business lunch in 2020 25.
- [73:17]
Hey, Roland Frazier here.
- [73:19]
Ryan Dice
If you're looking for a way to.
- [73:20]
Roland Frazier
Grow your business exponentially to get more customers and ultimately increase your wealth, there's no faster way to do it than to acquire other businesses that already have the customers, products, services, teams, and media that you want. If you want to double your sales, just acquire a company that has the same sales as yours. It sounds simple, but far too many people end up starting new businesses that fail and forget that they could skip all the hard stuff and just acquire one that already exists. There's a reason why private equity firms, family offices, big companies like Apple, Google, and some of the smartest entrepreneurs on the planet do not start new businesses from scratch. They acquire already successful businesses and when they do it, they instantly increase their sales, their profits. If they want market share, they increase that. They can get new products and services to offer all instantly. Hey look, 90% of new businesses fail. 90%. Why not acquire an already successful business and increase your chances of success by 900%?
- [74:24]
What most people don't realize is you.
- [74:25]
Can acquire highly profitable businesses with no money out of your own pocket in pretty much any country in the world, regardless of your credit, and without having to go find a bunch of investors or needing any experience. Look, I've been acquiring businesses for over 30 years now, and I cover the whole process in my EPIC Investing Strategy training and I want to give it to you 100% free. Just visit businesslunchpodcast.com epic to get your free access to my EPIC Investing training right now. While it's available.