Cutting Interest Rates in 2024, How the 'All-In' Podcast Dominated Silicon Valley, The Risks of Becoming a Full-time Creator (Reactions Dec 2023 Week 3)

Published Jan 3, 2024, 12:00 PM

In episode #2650, we share our thoughts on the impact of interest rates on the economy and marketing, the growth of the "All In" podcast, and its potential as a media company. Additionally, we discuss the advantages of having operating experience as a writer. We emphasize the importance of experience in creating valuable content and provide insights into current trends in the tech and business industries.

 

Don’t forget to help us grow by subscribing and liking on YouTube!

 

Check out more of Eric’s content (Leveling UP YT) and Neil’s videos (Neil Patel YT

 

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

  • (00:00) Today’s topic: Cutting Interest Rates in 2024, How the 'All-In' Podcast Dominated Silicon Valley, The Risks of Becoming a Full-time Creator (Reactions Dec 2023 Week 3)
  • (00:26) Uncertainty on whether interest rates will be cut three times
  • (03:00) Debate on whether the economy is already in a recession
  • (03:57) Discussion on the success of the "All In" podcast
  • (05:46) Appreciation for the authenticity and entertainment value of the podcast
  • (07:29) Importance of creating content as a creator or operator
  • (08:27) Benefits of being an operator when evaluating and writing
  • (09:31) Agreement that experience enhances the quality of content
  • (10:40) Invalidation events in tech and business due to changing interest rates
  • (11:30) Importance of being an operator to understand industry changes
  • (11:55) Why you should start creating content
  • (12:05) That’s it for today! Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe!

Go to https://www.marketingschool.io to learn more!

 

Leave Some Feedback:


  • What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below
  • Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.

 

Connect with Us: 

 

All right, so this is our reaction section, and we're gon we're gonna start off with if we believe that interest rates will get cut. So the FED basically said, there's a Jerome Powell basically indicated that for twenty twenty four he sees three rate cuts coming. And here's why we want to talk about it, Like, we should talk about this because interest rates affect the entire economy, and they directly affect indirectly affect marketing at the end of the day because it's spending, right, So what are your thoughts first, Neil, Like, you know, do we think it's going to be cut three times? I think that's a little that's a little optimistic.

But it's an election year next year. They say, economy typically booms in the election year, and you know historically it has. The Fed has also come out and said, hey, it's potential. We never said we are cutting three times. To be clear, they never said they are going to cut three times. They indicated that they may or may not cut, but that's what it's leaning towards. And they said very clearly it's too early to decide how many times. They got to look at a lot of other signals and the way I look at it is, I think it's going to be something where they cut either very little, you know, one two times, maybe even three, or they're gonna cut deep. And it's not about how many times they cut, Like cutting zero point two five each time is only point seventy five percent, which seems like a lot, but based on where our interest rates are right now, it's actually not that much, especially if you're doing things like buying businesses, you know, and using that capital to grow, Like zero point seventy five doesn't have that big of a difference if you're paying the bank eight and a half nine percent interest, It going down from eight and a half to eight or from nine and a half to eight and a half not that big a difference compared to what we're used to and what we were making a lot of our financial decisions based off of. But if the data starts coming in good on the inflation side and much worse on the economy side, I think they can they'll cut much deeper. And I don't think we'll know until, you know, we start the new year and we start getting really into it. I'm hoping they cut more than zero point.

Seventy five percent. So here's what Jerome Powell said. So the Federal Reserve is willing to cut rates even that the US economy doesn't dip it into recession. And he also says that Powell, so he says, now the Fed is seeing progress on inflation across the three main core areas. Right. And here's the thing, Like, I think people are celebrating a little prematurely right now. I think my base case is still recession next year. And I think people are like, oh that the markets are ripping, you know, everything's good again. It's time for a bull market again. So you know, I think that being said, it's like I think it's for me. I'm just like being vigilant at the end of the day. And that's how I feel about it. I don't know how you're looking at it, dude.

I look at it already in a recession. I don't care what they classify as recession or not. We've had some quarters with slower growth, you know, And I don't know the economic definition of a session.

No, it's just two quarters in a row. And we did. They just didn't want to declare it.

Yeah, But the way I look at it, as if they don't see things slowing down, Harder to sell a home, harder to buy a home, harder to buy food, harder to spend more money, Harder to grow your business and maintain customers and revenue. You know, if this is in recession, I don't know what is a recession?

Yep? All right, So I want to move over to there's this nice so Neil, I subscribe to this thing called this publication called The Information. I don't know if you subscribe to them, but I love it. Look at this picture of the besties over here. So you've got Jason Calacanis, David Freiberg, David Zach's Chamaladi can see like a star a starship from SpaceX floating up there. But this piece is basically like it's it's kind of congratulating the besties but also kind of talking down a little bit to them as well, like kind of a mini hit piece that the besties we've and how they all in podcast captures Silicon Valley. So the reason why I wanted to call this out is because one, I think it's it's interesting because what these guys have built over here. So a couple episodes ago, we talked about how Jason Calacanis over here and Chama started all in podcasts during the pandemic, and then Freeberg came on as a guest, and then David Sacks eventually joined and they started making it a really entertaining podcast. And now it's become such a thing where they just had they had two conferences. I went to both conferences. They you know, I met a lot of great people there and they had, you know, people like Vanilla Costla, Elon Musk speaking, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mister Bash was speaking as well, CEO of Coinbased. So a lot of amazing people, right, And they built this media empire around this now and they're looking to now hire a CEO, and they believe it can be a media company that generates over a billion dollars a year, right, and not only that, it brings them a lot of deal flow at the end of the day. So I want to I wanted to give us a chance to react to this one because I think it's really impressive what they've done.

I think it's super impressive what they've done. I don't think it will generate a billion dollars a year in revenue, at least from the media side. Maybe they'll invest in a company that I'll generate them over a billion dollars. I wouldn't pass that, you know, past any of them. Well, I look at the all In podcast for what's funny is years and years ago, I used to retech Crunch a lot. Now I don't really retech Crunch often at all. I'll get my news from what's happening in Silicon Valley from all In podcasts or Twitter or x whatever you want to call it, versus going to tech Crunch now. And I think it's a better form of you know, one of those journalistic websites. I call it tech Crunch because the all In podcast crew they don't really hold back, whether you like them or hate them. They say what's on their mind, and they don't care what other people have to or what other people think. And I respect them and that's one of the reasons I like the podcast.

Yeah, look, I think it's it's so Also we called it in a couple of episodes ago it's they change their format. The initial format is really boring because it was just j Cal and Jamath talking about hey, they're tech investments and everything. And when they joined it like and and like, you know, it's it's interesting listening to that. But now they bring on people like presidential candidate Vivek Ramswami and then RFK they bring They brought in Tucker Carlson as well, and like, these episodes are very entertaining and they ask good questions too, and it's also funny to see them needle each other. Like that is entertainment at the end of the day. Right, it's people like controversy and the other thing too, like this this hit piece by the way, like, yeah, I like to do.

The example of this is of them messing with each other. Uh, some of them were messing with Chamoth for not being an entrepreneur, right, I think one of Jake And you know he says on the podcast, he's like, well, I'm the richest one on the podcast who here has more money than.

Yeah, you're not an entrepreneur.

But when do you like it or hate it? You didn't speak the truth?

Yep, he you know what he said. So so j Cal is like, Jacob got really upsited. He's like, you know, I built a ten million dollar business blah blah blah, and you know what have you built? Jamaths? Right? And then Jamath was like you know, guys like it must be so tilting that the one that didn't start anything has the most money. And then then it just got quiet. So so you know, it is what it is. But I look, it goes back like here's the key takeaway for everyone here. It's like, okay, going back to our predictions, what's going to be a big Podcasting will continue to be big, YouTube will continue to be big. And I think if you have you're doing something interesting in the world. That means you have something interesting to say. So why aren't you going out there and why aren't you going out there to create content? Which actually leads to our next topic over here? Are you ready, Neil? Yeah, okay, So I read this over the weekend. So this got me to think about creator operators. Right. But this guy over here, I believe he's a developer, and he wrote this piece over here called writers who Operate, and I highly recommend reading it. So this guy's name is Will aka Lathaine, and so he says, Look, occasionally folks tell me that I should write full time quote unquote. I've thought about this a lot and have rejected that option because I believe that writers who operate, for example, write concurrently with holding a non writing industry role, our best position to keep writing valuable work that advances the industry. This is a lightly controversial view, so I wanted to pull together my full set of thoughts on this topic. I'm gonna read some of the bullet points here and we can react to it. I recommend reading the whole thing, but here's the themes that I want to work through. So he says, evaluating believability for operators is much easier than for non operators. Right. Second bullet point, the pursuit of distribution changes about what changes what and how authors write, for example, pulls towards topics that are trending. So let's sit on these two for a moment. The bulletpoint that I just read is like when you start to become a creator, eventually what happens is you start to create based on trends because you want to get the most views at the end of the day. Right now, the first bullet point here is like, you know, when you are talking about you're trying to evaluate something, well, an operator is going to have they have actual experience, so they can evaluate something more to the truth than the non operator can. Does that make sense Neil yep. Okay, So look we can continue down here, but.

You guys can end up reading it. But the big thing is, you know he believes or she believes is a he he's he believes that writing helps him become a better operator and gives them a better perspective of what's really happened.

Well, no, no, no, it's yes that, but more so he believes an operator having operating experience as a writer is better than just being a pure creator.

I agree with that. I think no matter what content you're creating or what you're doing, if you have experience in it, you're going to be better off. I think the people reason people read a lot of my content, at least with marketing, isn't because of my writing skills. Because I know I don't have the best grammar spelling in almost everything. I have errors, even though I use grammarly that's helped a law, but still out of there. And it's because of the experience, the data, the stuff I can share that other people can't because they haven't experienced it. I think that's what makes content amazing. It's not about how skillful you are using the pen or you know, typing up some hitting some keypads on your keyboard. It's about what you have to share, like the you know, like the meat of it, and that really comes down from having a lot of experience in whatever you are writing about. I think without that experience, yes, you can share based on other people's experience or interviewing them or surveying them or talking to them, whatever you want to do. But it's still not the same as if experiencing something yourself.

You know what I'll say. I mean, some people obviously write very beautifully, they're very good with their words, right, And that's neither you or me. But two other bullet points I want to call it here and then we can we can continue on here is you know, in tech or business, for example, you have invalidation events that happen in the industry. And so what this means is that, for example, we just came out of a zero interest rate environment for like fifty ten years or so, where interest rates were very low and money was basically free. Right, It's very easy to borrow money as well, and people got very sloppy, people got very lazy. Right. You saw people funding a lot of companies that shouldn't have gotten money. But now we're in a post ZERP environment, so post zero interest rate environment, and it's actually difficult for non operators to understand what's actually happening. Because for Neil and I we both have businesses, right, we know exactly how it feels, and we can see what's going on with friends that we have or customers that we have, whatever it is exactly. And the other thing is like when you operate, Neil and I have so many topics we can pull from. There's so like I spend ninety percent of my time on the business, same thing with Neil as well, and we can just keep pulling and pulling and pulling, and so that goes all the way back to the whole creator operator thing. I think there's gonna be a lot more of those, and I think if you're operating, you now is like a really good time for you to start creating. And I really recommend reading this piece, Like there's really good examples like it. You have Hunter Walk that does this, and it doesn't matter which we just go out there and create because your experience is valuable anything else.

Neil, that's it. Make sure you give this podcast a five star rating. We really appreciate it and look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

All right, that's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, subscribe, check out this video over here and let us know what you think about this format, and we'll see you tomorrow.