#183 Eric Siu – How to Level Up Your Business, Content & Life

Leveling Up is an entrepreneurial podcast where he dissects grow levers that help businesses to scale . Entrepreneurship content business life . There's always someone ahead of you , which is good in many ways . It doesn't mean that I'm you know depth by comparison , but it's always given me a good barometer .

So , for context , for people , in your first year of podcasting , you had 270 downloads a month . Year two , you had 900 downloads a month . Year three , you had 100,000 downloads a month . You're going on to do 100 million downloads in total . Marketing School has 2,000 episodes . Leveling Up has 1,021 episodes .

I have 181 and I would think that is pretty good at that stage , right ? So what has made you stay in the arena for this long in this game ?

It's not to get the downloads , it's not to try to become famous or anything like that , like the downloads come afterwards , the leads come afterwards , all that stuff right . And because when you cited my initial , my first year , 270 downloads a month and then 900 downloads a month , it's really not that much at all .

And I told myself in the beginning I was really discouraged and I was like man , I'm spending all this time and effort on it and really I don't have much to show for it . But then I refrained my mindset into thinking you know , I'm really talking to these amazing people and these conversations are happening for free .

Usually I have to pay a lot of money for these conversations to happen and at the time I was trying to save my failing agency that I acquired when so doing these podcasts acquired . An agency didn't know how to run a business . So I was getting on these podcasts , asking a lot of questions selfishly and I was learning a lot .

So to me my rate of learning was much more important than the rate of downloads .

So I was young , dumb , 24 years old , had no idea what I was doing and I was getting conversations like yourself , like Chris , you know , just insane entrepreneurs , basically for free and people spend $10,000 to do this right .

You made a very good point about the student and this is very important to me the playing the student or playing the guru , basically , and for you , I can see you as that lifetime , lifetime learner and someone who's always willing to learn more and be the student .

That's obviously been a huge part of your business single-gray , as well as your podcast , and most people denounce the student and take on the title of guru at 21 years old . So , like , how important , how have you seen that even benefit you from being that student ?

And so you know , for me , a lot of people ask me like these books back here , are they real , right ? Yes , they're real , but also , how many of them have I read ? It's like that's the wrong question . The right question is how are you looking at your library ?

And for me , the library like my physical books that I have , like I have physical books over here too . At the end of the day , it's just they're all reference points , right ? So I'm just constantly trying to figure out any angle I can to get better . And I'll leave you with one more thing here .

I used to think wealth was all about how much money you have or the things you have , right . When you're younger , in your early 20s , and you know , as I get older , I realized that wealth is not really tied in with any physical thing .

It's more so knowledge , because knowledge lives beyond you , it lives beyond me , it lives beyond Bitcoin , it lives beyond cash , it lives beyond any physical , tangible asset , right , and so for me , knowledge continues to compound , and so the most important thing to do is to just try to continue to learn and then teach and then continue that cycle 100%

.

You've been able to develop that and it was exact same for me , right , exact same Same for you . Know people like Danny Miranda , which I know you know quite well as well . He was developing his top process through his podcast , which I think people are more afraid of doing , and we can get into why . That is as well at times to put yourself out there .

But I just want to go back to the connection between your podcast slash content and your business . How have you seen the principles that you've applied to your content affect or impact your business too , in terms of the discipline you've had , the consistency you've had through the years ?

And we hold people accountable to these values . And you know , I used to think core values were a bunch of baloney , but they do matter , and one of the things I would say that that maybe it's important .

It's one thing to have core values , it's one thing to live them as the leader of the visionary , but it's also another thing to hold people accountable to them , and that's probably the one thing I would say would make the biggest impact .

If you are a creator and you're looking to start a business , you can have all the things you can lead by example and all that , but if you aren't able to hold people accountable to those values , your business isn't going to grow as quickly as you do .

And a lot of people say the business's personal growth is really dependent on the founder's personal growth , but it's also dependent on the team members and personal growth as well .

So even our company is an agency slash media company and I've seen that develop in terms of when I've got a bit more mature , just as a person , our principles and the way we apply business is completely different . Right , it's less like anxious , it's less like rushing , just trying to get like something . Quick wins were thinking longer term .

Now you've had single grounds since you're 27 . The story is pretty remarkable how you , like you , took over this agency . You acquired a 27 . I am 27 right now . So there's , a lot of similarities in the story . But I didn't acquire a company , I built the company . So I think acquiring is probably more difficult .

Especially we don't know how to buy companies right . I'm so far as afford , but you know agencies get a lot of shit . You would have backern and tech similar myself as well and like , how have you seen some of the better agencies rise at the top over time ? Because they get a lot of bad rep right .

And even when I work with agencies , you know I find sometimes they can be slower , they can be less focused on the individual . They're always looking at kind of bigger accounts and client acquisition . But you've had this agency running for years and it's obviously super successful working with NASDAQ sales force and so on and so forth .

So what has it been for you to be able to get to the top and stay there ?

And I also thought that , because I worked in tech , I worked in SaaS , I worked in education , that my poo poo didn't stink and that agency businesses are unscalable , they're not sexy , the valuations are low , the multiples aren't that great , blah , blah , blah . Right , all of that's untrue . Now I look at it and I'll come back to answering your question .

But now that I look at it , it's like agencies are a fantastic business and in a down economy like we are in right now , they're cash flowing assets . Most people don't know that when your agency has over 5 million in profit , your multiples can actually be fairly high . Now , this is pre-2022 .

All that being said , it's like agencies are a fantastic business , and any business is really a fantastic business when it's able to scale and you're able to hire more people . That's the thing , right ? Some of the largest agencies in the world , they're doing billions in revenue .

Some of the largest companies in the world , I mean they're like trash companies , for example , right , you just never know that they're doing a couple hundred million dollars a year , and so it's really the grass is greener where you water it . And so , in terms of going back to answering your question around scaling it , it's a lot of compounding around our SEO .

It's a lot of compounding around the podcast . It's a lot of compounding around hey , doing really small speaking gigs in the beginning and then leveling up to do bigger ones , and everything ties back to just compounding . It's the same thing with the relationships , right , whether it's your friendships or your spouse or whatever .

You get what you water , and then you see how it looks in 10 years , 20 years or so , and then you'll be amazed at the growth 100% man .

And Hormozio always says this right it doesn't matter what vehicle you pick to some degree , whether you just go all in on it and you really improve on it . And this really stood out to me when I was listening to my First Million with Neil Patel .

A lot of young entrepreneurs will stumble up on this and say which vehicle should I be in ? And I came from a $33 billion company that grew incredibly well over five or six years to building an agency , a business agency , and I've really enjoyed the process and it's done pretty well in the meantime .

So what would be your lesson to entrepreneurs who are literally stuck in the weeds trying to find their thing ? Basically , yeah .

It's like one thing I have like a quiz SaaS company , then I'm doing this education thing . That is just a senior living thing . And then there's like then I was going to go into helping my friends with like their vape flavor thing . Right , there's just too much stuff . And so at the end of the day you realize that all the stories you hear around focus .

It's like here's the quote If you want to become rich , you focus on one business , and if you want to maintain your richness , you diversify , but you have to focus on one business first .

And the story Neil and I like to share on the podcast quite a bit is that you know you can't quite see here , but Bill Gates sorry , not Bill Gates , warren Buffett , I believe is over here in the statue . You can't quite see it , but you know he has said this , it's when .

Well , the story here is when people ask Warren Buffett and Bill Gates what's the secret to their success . They both wrote one word on a piece of paper separately and when they flipped it over , it just said focus , right . And it's a very unsexy thing to say . Like , most people don't want to focus .

And when it comes to investing , most people don't want to wait right . But if you focus , you wait on one thing If you want to build something generational , you wait 10 years , 20 years , 30 years or so . You work hard and then you will have you should have , you know tens of millions of dollars . Like I don't see any world where you don't .

I wasted many years doing this , making it all up as a lot as I go , so I put everything together in a very seamless and easy to follow course for you guys to follow and just learn exactly how to do it .

So if you want to bypass a lot of the mess with your podcast , check out the links down below the podcast university and we'll show you exactly how to launch and scale your own podcast 100% . Have you ever read um , um pre-suasion by Robert Chaldini ?

But if you've like four different things going on , you don't really focus into anything . And he broke it down from an interrogation perspective that if I just focus on one particular thing , that scientifically I can focus on two at the same time .

So you might think you can multitask and do all this stuff and be a productivity guru , but at the end of the day , for every nanosecond , there's one piece of focus . So I always extrapolate that back into the business , back into anything . It's all about focus .

And I even feel that between sorry , I didn't mean to drop to but between key-bottom sessions , I would argue this go ahead .

And so I'll give you an example with my YouTube channel , we used to get you know , um , in some cases , three , four or 500,000 views per video , and in a lot of cases , at least 20 to 50,000 or so , and this was five or six years ago . And what happened ?

Well , I stopped being consistent on YouTube and I started talking about other things on YouTube and the channel . It didn't do as well anymore , right , and it's because I started to not focus . That's a microcosm there . But also , on the business side , I started doing other things too , right , and so sorry to cut you off , but I just wanted to add that in .

So if that's too much with two things that are ball podcast related they're ball in the podcast industry then what good do I have if I'm doing a cleaning agency and then a SaaS company , and then this right , and of course , there's exceptions to the cause Someone like Alex Ramosy .

He has an incredible level of discipline , no matter what he does , but for the vast majority of us imbeciles , we are not in that category . So we need to be much more conservative about how we use our energy .

Right , and just bringing this back to your work and this is why someone like yourself who publishes content it's so valuable because we can bring it back to the original date . In May of 2015 , you wrote a medium article about the two most important traits as an entrepreneur . One of them was what you work on and the second was who you hire .

So , first , focusing back on what you choose to work on , how important has that been over the past eight years , right Since you wrote that article ?

He had like six or nine different businesses going at once , and I think you know this as well . And so I think it's like entrepreneurs need to eat poo poo first before you really learn your lesson . Like you kind of need to get punched in the face and get humbled . And I'm glad you know we're going into this recession .

It sounds like a nasty thing to say , but I think the markets just need to crash so people will become a lot more disciplined and people will not be so entitled anymore as well . So I mean to answer your question around the focus aspect how has that gone in the last eight years ?

I'll just say this right , I think you know the last couple of years we were doing a lot of different things .

Now we've really narrowed it down , like you know , even though the SaaS company was doing you know fairly well , we're like no , like you know that it's we're splitting our resources , right , because at the end of the day , when you think about yourself as an entrepreneur , it's your resource allocator .

You know , eventually you become a capital allocator , which is just resources again .

But we're splitting resources engineering efforts , you know people like really talented people and also spending a lot of money on software , and then we're doing this education thing as well , and then , oh , at the same time , you know , I was in the middle of launching a book too , and then we bought two , two agencies at the same time .

Right , and so , with two agencies , you have to integrate them at the same time . They're just a lot of work . And , you know , I think I , like I , even though I say a lot of these things , like sometimes I'm not immune . Like you know , sometimes you end up making making similar mistakes 100%

.

You know , when I have traction on something , not look at the next shiny object and go to the next shiny object and entrepreneurs have that problem . That's why they call it the entrepreneurial ADD .

He runs a business on the back end so he does the events , he does the products , the services .

The software Genius guy GenFlow is company is doing to do 200 million this year and I asked him about this and he said the best way to think about when people jump between niches is like , let's say , you were an American football player and tomorrow you wake up and play baseball . You're going to be one shit of baseball and two get worse .

At American football . You were already good at it , you could have got to the NFL , but instead you just jumped and started playing baseball . Right , and he said it's the exact same entrepreneurship . But no one sees it that way . They think , oh , web 3.0 , the next AI platform , let me just get off what I'm doing right now and go build that .

And I just think , if you think of it in terms of sport , of course it's not going to work right . You might see there's exceptions , you might get right timing and so on and so forth , but from a practical perspective , or just like fundamentals . If we look at the fundamentals , that's what you're playing with right ? It's like sport .

But if you keep changing directions all the time , you'll never hit success . However you define it , and you have to go back , right .

Because you've put in the hair and wore yeah , it's in comparison to nearly everyone else ?

That that is the hope , right , I think I've seen it like over the years .

A lot of the internet marketers or digital marketers over the years , the ones that weren't doing things above water , they've been humbled and they've kind of disappeared , whereas the ones that have been consistent , they've focused , they've been good people , they've been humble , they've just continued to just do good work .

And those are the ones that rise over time and eventually you just want to look at the people that have been around for 10 , 20 , 30 years or so . I mean again , you look at Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger . Charlie Munger is 97 , sorry , 99 years old , warren Buffett's 97 years old . I've just been doing the same damn thing over and over and over .

So they're going to pretend like they have the authority without the results , and that's , I think , how Hormozzi describes it as like confidence without results is delusion . So that's a big thing , because people want to be respected , they want to have the authority and they want to show that they've done the results .

But they've been in the game six months , so there is an element of being humble . My first tree clients paid me $0 and it was the best experience ever . I learned more , I would say , than the people that have paid us a lot more .

Right , because , as a result , we followed the student , become the student and keep on going from there , which is really important , right ? I want to ask you about the wall of resistance . So your podcast Toff is Hell . In the Beginning , the business was declining your content . You're jumping between different things on YouTube .

How did you kind of break through between the years of tree and beyond Years of three ? Is that what you said ? Yeah , so you ? know your third year into podcasting , or the threshold , basically when , like when and how did you break through ?

So that's fine . With the podcast , with YouTube , I knew if I kept going and I was looking at the comments and YouTube , people are really liking it . I kept talking about marketing . I was like , oh , this is pretty easy , I'll just keep going . That started to compound , right , and then we can come back to why I stopped the compounding .

You know in a little bit . But with the business with single brain actually went . So when I took it over when I was 27 years old again , I made it go from bad to worse . So we dropped all the way down to one employee and my outside accounting firm actually called and said , hey , it might be time to shut it down and I was like , oh damn .

So I actually interviewed for a job and this was a job that was paying . Like you know , we're talking seven figures , right , multiple seven figures if I hit numbers . And I had accepted the job and I was about to move into an apartment in Dallas , texas , and I was actually looking at apartments there and at that moment I realized he called me the next day .

I was like man , I don't think I can do it , because I'd rather make no money and do things on my own terms than to make seven figures . Right , like once you get a taste of it , you're just like no . And then , so what happened there was I was like you know what ? I'm going to give it my all and see what happens . And we were , fortunate enough .

Our SEO started to kick in , and so we ranked number one for digital marketing agency in America for like two to three years .

So we start , the leads started coming in , but we couldn't fulfill the leads , and so what we started to do is we started to sell the leads and we would take 25 to 30% commissions when we referred the leads out , and that led us to , you know , get enough profit to hire people .

And then we started to build everything in house and , fortunately , we're able to hire some amazing people , and then we're able to build the thing back up from scratch . And so for me , it was all about one betting on myself and seeing what would ultimately happen , because that was the whole reason to take over single grain in the first place .

And then , once I started to feel the momentum , the trajectory , I was like you know what ? I think we have something here , let's just continue to build it . And then you know , happy to talk about where . I get distracted along the way

too .

So I learned a lot there and a month into the job the CEO I paused all the marketing because I wanted to understand what was happening . And then the CEO pulled me aside and said hey , like I noticed you paused marketing . If we don't hit numbers this month , we're going to have to let you go .

And I was like that's like , not on me , it's like my predecessor like , but no excuses , right ? So I bet the entire company on YouTube ads and then you know , we basically had four months of cash left in the bank .

It worked out and we were able to raise our series B and boom off to the races , right , and so at that point I was like man , I think I can do a lot more than I give myself credit for , and my entire thing with coming into single grain and taking it over was if I can help blow up a startup that had the right product , the right people , just bad

marketing . I wonder if I can turn around a crappy company . And so that was the challenge . That was the entire . You know , theory like that was the thesis right when I do it , um , and we're able to turn it around , so that that that's why I decided to do it .

So myself , as a call of duty , dude , so like , and there's a lot of similarities between like game , game terrier and entrepreneurship , right . And then you're going back to you mentioned there about you know how you scale up to like multiple seven figures . How does that work in your business ? Is it more like rough shares , is it more retainers Like ?

How do you approach that ? All right , guys , one short little update for Vox . I want to give a short overview about my own company , my media company called Vox . So if you are a company or you are an enterprise looking to grow your brand and looking to grow your podcast , feel free to reach out to work with us at Vox .

What we do is a fully fledged end to end management of your podcast . We take care of the strategy , the consulting , we take care of the growth , the management .

We take care of all the editing , all the boring stuff that you can focus on creating good podcast and create and growing your brand , If you want to grow your podcast and get to new users , if you want to grow your business , generate more revenue and all that good stuff . Check out the links down below to Vox .

You can follow through to schedule a call with our team , or else you can fill out the application form to see if you qualify to work with us . Thank you .

So those agency owners that are listing so I used to think , man , if you're going to do an agency , it's about pay for performance , it's about CPA basis , because it can scale really well , and I have some friends where their CPA agencies are doing like $800 million a year . Some are doing like $25 million , $50 million a year or so .

And I was like you know , that's the way to do it . But , based on how my business is set up , we get a lot of leads .

We get a lot of leads and a lot of them are super qualified and they're used to doing it in a traditional manner , and so for us it was just like let's just do what works and let's not try to get too cute and just standard blocking and tackling , and just do it good for a long period of time and you will build something great 100% .

end up just losing the contract . Right , you can just lose it as a result . Talk to me about your experience from agency compared to like SaaS or agency compared to tech Like from your perspective , like what is better .

That's how you scale it , and then you take yourself out of the day to day if you need to , if you want to go work on other stuff . Oh my God , you know the multiples are so bad . What are you talking about ? In an upmarket is 15 to 20X , and so I just think it's a very . Again , the grass is greener where you water it .

It's where you decide to focus . Again , there's many boring business . I'm looking outside . There's a golf course over here . What about the people that have to manage the whole entire property ? Like that's a business in itself .

I bet you there's a lot out there that are doing hundreds of millions , if not billions , of year in revenue , right , and so you just got to think about your total address for market , what you're actually good at , what you're actually interested in , and if you want to take it one step further , go find your Iki guy , right , like everyone talks about that , go

do that 100% .

have to get out of your money with this stuff and just look at business . Just be much more logical in saying like , look , this is what I'm busy building , this is the total address for American and you can go chase that as a result .

Well then , uh , what's the next level ? Maybe you're looking for international expansion , okay , well , what happens after that ? Well , now , with the with , with marketing getting harder , well , you should probably think about data , you should probably think about creative as well , with the AI stuff that's happening . What about ?

How do you integrate AI plus marketing to right ? And so there's a lot of different dynamics and you get to play the more complicated games because you beat the bosses at the at the lower levels , 100%

.

And so you know we're let's look at this podcast , for example my selfish reason for doing this , besides meeting you . The other reason is , like I have content and now I can chop it up and I don't . Maybe I don't need to go do another session For you .

It's like , okay , maybe there's an angle where it helps you grow your podcast , right , and maybe you get to learn a thing or two , right . So like we're all looking to get something from each other , right , and so there's a game to everything . And same thing with business . It's like how do you rise into , like , a VP ? How do you become a CEO ?

Like , well , you have to like , if you , by the way , if you don't gain the necessary experience and you become a VP , there will be a . There will be a moment where you get knocked down again and you'll get exposed because you just didn't have . You didn't have the requisite experience right . So like what with games ? You get XP , you get experience points .

So I like to take sure that right , because you know even sport , even training , as I come from , like you know , an endurance well , a bodybuilding background , but I'm not a professional and it all comes out in numbers and theory and metrics right , and the more you get granular with it , the better it becomes Right .

What were the biggest levers you pulled ? Do you think or were able for you to get into these situations ?

What I'm really good at is connecting different people , concepts and ideas , and so you know , even these books over here , different concepts you would apply them to different businesses or like different conversations . Or let's say , darren , you needed something like you're like , oh , I need this , oh , you should talk to this person over here , right ?

And so that's what I've always naturally been good at , and what I would say is , let's say , I'm trying to make this practical for everyone too . When I started networking quote , unquote I was always coming from a place of , hey , what can I do for me ?

Like , what do you need and how can I make that connection , and I never wanted anything back , and that takes a long time to compound . And then , when you combine that with your creating content , you're doing podcasts and at the very end you're asking how can I help here ? And then you're actually starting to build some friendships here and there .

All these things start to compound slowly and it's to me , it's for the most part , a lot of doing favors . A lot of it's for free , right , just making an intro or , or you know , trying to be helpful , maybe passing on some research or something like that , and so I've never really .

I know that the zig-ziggler quote here is if you help people , help others get what they want , you'll get whatever you want . And I've been doing that pretty consistently for maybe the last call it 13 years or so . So it's 13 years of compounding .

And the other thing I'll give you a practical hack that you can do is I really like getting people together for dinners , right , like that's one of the things .

And in the very beginning , let's say when I was 27 years old , when I took over a single grain , I was , I was broke , I didn't really have money , and so what I did was I hosted a little Dinner mastermind at my place and those people around my level because I was , I was looking for marketers , either executives or like VP is a marketing , or CEOs , and I

had to come over to my house and I didn't even have food , like I had a half-eaten bag of chips . I just threw into the , the middle of the table , right , and you know people are like , okay , what the hell right .

But the thing is like , I just love to bring people together and I know that as long as I play the connector , things will come back to me and I don't have that expectation .

You understand like what's true , what's bullshit , like what's your reality and there's . It's just part of like human nature to people try like absorb stuff , right , so the fact that I always to your point , I'm always like how can I help you ? Can I give you clips ? We are , can our editors create content for you ? Can we do anything ?

And the only other person that I heard ever say watch your superpower was Dan go . That was on my podcast and I was like dude , like what can help you with ? He was like watch your superpower . And I was the first time when we think being like okay , there is something that I can basically package and be of value to other people and serve other people .

Right , because when you serve other people , you ultimately serve yourself . And I think it's just like when you're thinking long-term , like you have 13 years , I've been three years at this , yeah , you , you think in decades , or you don't think in terms of weeks , but it just seems weird that this is not the common thing , though .

Do you find that too , like the fact that most people don't think like this ?

I was like that's a very perceptive thing to say at your age and I was like what do you mean by employee mindset ?

It's like well , they just don't seem to think long-term , right , and that is this is why , like , by the way , like if you offer equity or profit sharing , most people don't seem to understand it Because they have more of a short-term mindset , right ?

I think to develop that mindset , you have to just be a sponge , you have to go talk to people , you have to go listen to podcasts , go read books , and you'll find , through pattern recognition , that the most successful people are the ones that are always trying to learn , they're always trying to get better and they're all they're very long-term focused .

Because then what happens ? You study their results . And Warm Buffett didn't become really really rich until he was like 50 years old , like he was . He was rich , sure , but really really rich , like billionaire status .

He's like eight . He would be thinking he would discuss something to do with health , like it could be like longevity or wearables , and he would like , yeah , you know , if you connect to this with this and then we solve that problem , then you would be at this problem . But he's like it probably took 40 years .

But he's like I've already invested in four companies that did it and I remember I just I was just like dude , you are so far ahead . And I was like what age he was , a guy , I'm like 34 . I was like you have , you have a 90 year old investor perspective . And he's a guy it'll come true in like 20 years .

Like he was taught me something like it really niche , like biomedical thing . I was like I have no idea what you're on about , but I imagine that you have pretty much thought about this really clearly and I think it's very interesting because he still has his short-term stuff , which is his books .

He bought a Very CEO of a publishing company now and so on and so forth , but I thought it's very interesting to observe right , huge success . So , thinking long-term , go ahead .

So I'm just like , hey , want to do , anyway , I'll just read it . You want to do a pod to promote the book ? Right , it would be an honor and a privilege , right ? So let's just like Taking advantage , or like you just gave me , you inspired , an idea and it's , I'm just gonna pick up my phone and text him . Right , that's what it takes .

Right , I'm not trying to pretend I know anyone , I never tried . Pretend that I'm friends who I record with either . That's like that's a good or worse or virtue signal . You do , but I mess with me , like being like hey , like I'd love to record . And I was like can you send me the book ? I'll pay for it , but can you send it to me ?

And he's a guy , you send me a PDF and on PDF , I read the 300 pages in a weekend on my laptop , like this , because you know he was coming out of my show . I obviously wanted to do the work to make sure that , like everything worked really well and I remember this is new book , this is new read the whole thing on PDF . Wow , on a PDF , my laptop .

I was like this . I was like I was like scrolling , like this , and I just thought on my head I was like you know , from going from like a you know level to podcaster to the level five , like this is what Chris Williamson is doing on a daily basis . You know , this is what people have to do and even though I'm building the company , I had to .

I had to set aside like two days and my girlfriend was like you're literally insane . And I was like I know I actually need to do this .

Like I have um , I have this I guess I will virtue signal here so I have Ali Abdaal and Sahil bloom live in person on Friday we're doing two separate podcasts and it's a lot of time to research , like it's probably at least four hours , if not more , per person .

And so my coach is just saying this like you're a lot more focused now , but I worry about your podcast stuff and that's a very legitimate concern , right . But the good news is the podcast drives more awareness and it drives more leads at the end of day . So I can make that argument and , plus , I get to have great conversations .

So there's that hundred percent similar myself .

When you're around , like these types of people , what are some things you've observed and how they execute , how they act , how they think on ideas .

He's always company for a good amount of money , and so we meet and everyone thinks differently , but everyone's a deep thinker and what I'll say is we're all , we're all in our mid 30s , basically , some maybe early 40s or so , and One is this , so I mentioned earlier , like be helpful , be humble but also be hungry , right .

Everyone has has the three H's we'll call them triple H right , like the wrestler . So so , and everyone has a long-term focus too , and what I will say is the WordPress holding guy , like all , like Syed , right , that's his name , syed bulky . A lot of you know my first million . They like to talk about him .

So he's been laser focused on WordPress probably since he was like 21 years old , and the guy is like 32 years old now or so , and so that's a very long time now . When you look at the telecoms company , he's been doing it since I don't know , maybe 13 years ago , right .

And then I look at the pet holding company , it's it's a little earlier , little sooner , but still like nine , ten years or so . And so he by the way , like you know , one of our mutual friends in the group I'm not gonna name names here , but like he wanted that , he brought up the idea .

It's like , oh my god , I can work on this new opportunity , porn dot AI and I was like , yeah , that's a huge opportunity , but isn't your , your other business going pretty well right now ? He's like , yeah , and so he's about to start working on porn dot AI with his friend , which is huge opportunity , right . But he's like you know what ?

I already have something really good here the grass is greener where we water it . Let's just focus on that . That's a great . So it goes Boring stuff that I'm saying yeah , of course .

So he started with a supplement company for the gym and then he was like you know , this is very difficult . He pivoted into pet like pet supplements , pet food , and I was like how long you doing that ? He was like nine years . First couple years was doing like five figures and six figures and I was up like nine , ten and I was like how long ?

Nine years been at this as a result , right ? So when you have that cash and you're able to extend your time horizon , that's when it all comes back around . I want to ask you about , maybe , the future of like Marketing for you . So , of course , you mentioned AI does lots of other things going on .

Where do you position you know yourself right now in terms of marketing and what do you focus on for the next couple years ?

, you should look at a group called EO . You can even look at Sam Parr's group , hampton , right , or like , if you're a little larger , you can join groups like YPO , and then there's a ton of these groups that are worldwide , and what ends up happening is you meet people from all walks of life . They all have different businesses .

For example , I was talking to a guy I was at like an event in Nashville , tennessee , and we're just talking . I was like so what's your business ? Right , and you would never guess . Like , this is , you know , tall guy , really nice guy . He's like he has the second largest adult films business in Canada , right , and .

But he's like a totally like normal , legit guy , super smart , he's tactical , and you just never know who you're gonna meet . And these people are also connected too , because high performers wanna hang out with high performers , so I would say the peer group piece .

You can call them masterminds , whatever you wanna do Like , I would just say , make sure that you have your peer group , your group of friends , because they will take you a long way and you guys will all carry each other 100% .

I don't mean that in a derogatory way , it's just like a fact of life , right , that's why you need to be exposing yourself to podcasts , you need to be exposing yourself to these groups and paying to get in there . Right , they're not cheap , but I always think that , like , obviously , price what you pay , value is what you get , right .

So , if these are people that can help you with a business problem or just a life problem , they're gonna be the same level with relationships , fitness , health as well , that you're at right In the same priorities . So back to the future . Totally perspective yeah , go ahead Back to the future .

So I wanna lean into the marketing side and the brand side , because for you , of course , you've been working really well On marketing , even when you're a company . What are you thinking about ? How are you looking at the future ?

You can create hundreds or thousands of pages , and this is how a lot of these sites have . They drive millions of visits , right , and so we've been experimenting with that ourselves and also for clients as well .

We have a meditation client that we're doing this programmatic SEO stuff with , but we're also doing this thing called we call AI enhanced content , and so , with marketing school , it's a daily marketing podcast five to 10 minutes and we publish every day , right , and the great thing with it is or the great thing with it now is that we can actually take every

single episode and convert it into a long form blog post , and so that would manage maybe 60 to 70% of the work , and then a human being will come in fact , check it , add in internal links , all that type of stuff , right .

So all this to say is we're doing this internally right now , but then what we're looking to do is we're looking to build out products that we can give away for free , so we can bring in even more leads .

And for the most part , that's not much of an issue , because you're taking a real transcript and you're making into a blog post and then we're just adding on to it , so that part's not so much of an issue . Plus , we have a human that's already QA'ing it .

The broader issue would be around programmatic SEO , for example , because if you're creating hundreds and thousands of pages , there will be some gibberish right , and you can't QA all of them . So we're actually we're actively working on a solution right now where we can QA these at scale , because the cool thing is , we're creating these pages at scale .

On the SEO side , we're also able to optimize these from a conversion rate optimization standpoint at scale , and now we just need to make sure we can QA these at scale .

So it's to me , I think this opportunity is probably something that will last for the next year or two , because everyone's just gonna start doing it and I think the ones that take advantage early are gonna have a nice leg up , and that to me , this type of service is a nice gateway into all the other services that we have , and then we can just land and

expand from there .

I would say , if I were starting from scratch today , I would go with podcast , like you are right now , and then you're probably doing this already , but you would chop up the content , put it on shorts and all that aim for discoverability and want them to watch the whole thing . That's what I would do Then .

I would spend a lot of time also posting to LinkedIn and Twitter as well and just spend maybe an hour or two hours each morning if I'm starting out right , because it's free to put in the sweat equity and I would just do that and just understand that it's going to take at least three years to build something great , both on the audience and the business side .

That's just not me as a person . You might know Ken Yamash . He's a really , really fantastic solopreneur . He's been a big advisor to our company as well . He always says focus on one platform but have one warming up . What would be your process on going deep before going wide ?

It's like okay , what's my zone of genius where I actually enjoy doing it ? For me , it's like talking to my team is like your energy is so much more in the long form ones I'm like okay , I'll just do that , then I'll also do these long form ones too , because then we can have it's an example of me teaching versus me being taught .

I think that's a good balance . For me , it's focused on podcasts , which means I'm basically focused on YouTube as well . The secondaries would be LinkedIn , for example , or Twitter .

There's not many people that are doing specifically Twitter content , that's native video , versus . Most people are linking out even me at times because it's being a bit lazy , right , but that's actually the reality and that's what makes it more difficult . I want to speak to you about branding .

You have a very reputable brand , well-respected from younger entrepreneurs as well people amongst your peers . How do you think about brand and how do you kind of not tarnish your brand , like as you're trying to grow rapidly ?

Right , because if you want to get everything that you want , just be a nice person consistently . You will get almost everything that you want . Right , be kind , but also be firm as well . That's what I would say . It's over the years . I don't think there's any one tactic or whatever I've used to preserve my reputation .

But as long as I'm kind and as long as I'm firm , as long as I'm doing the right thing , I don't think I really need to worry .

So , to me , as I'm building my brand , I'm trying to acquire more share of voice and , ultimately , if I can go from reaching 100,000 people a month to 200,000 people a month , to 300,000 , that's what matters . I don't care about the followers . At the end of the day , I care about how many people I'm reaching , and that , to me , is leveling up my equity .

And two , I want to be doing cool stuff , too , and being able to talk about it and adding my own point of view . Because here's the thing when you think about the content that works nowadays . One , it's original content , so that means your original thought , or it might be original data that you have too . That's how you create something that stands out .

I think that there's a lot of people are looking the same and Neil talked about this as it relates to AI actually how there's a worse Waldo effect , and what that means is , when you think about Waldo , it's like you have to use to do like a . Are you familiar with Waldo ? Yeah , yeah , okay . So you look at the book . You have to find him .

Right Now , everyone's starting to look like Waldo because everyone's producing the same stuff , especially with all the generative AI stuff , right , and so . Well then , how do you stand out ? Well , you have to actually have a point of view and you actually maybe have to have some unique data .

I always say this about if people want information , they'd Google it , whereas they come to you for the stories , for the transformations , for your challenges , for your vulnerabilities in many regards and they stick to that story . And someone who's a master of that is Dakota Robertson .

So Dakota , and he was working with this on the future with Chris Doe he was saying that , like , fundamentally , people attached to him , not for his genius or not for his intelligence , but for his story and the fact that he can do this not in like a bullshit way , right , he's very much telling it organically . I want to ask you about that .

Some people are just naturals and they can just command the table at dinner . Those are the people you gravitate towards at the end of the day , right ? So anyway , go ahead .

If you were trying to sell , like , a get your first 10K agency course , well then that's valuable , but you're not exactly doing that , right ? So then there's obviously the spectrum where people are just like making up anything , and I actually heard Jordan Belford say this to you on the Wolf Dead .

He was saying that , like every 21-year-old these days has , you know this tragic story , and they went against the grain and now they're here , and now they have a Rolex and they're in the boy , right ?

So , obviously , like this happy medium to be , to be , to be fine between you mentioned about in-person podcasts , and that's a huge thing that I'm focused on as well . Just because I'm based in Asia , I can't always get that access , so then I'm trying to work towards more . How do you think about that from your own podcast perspective ?

Because , like for us , like we have some content that does like millions and millions of views , but it's all in person . It's not remote anymore . What's your top process on that ?

So the one where they , they , they used the meta quest and they basically did it , you know , through the goggles , right , and it looks really real . And this is just the very beginning right now . So I think that's what the future is , like you and I will look like we're in person doing it , and I think that's just going to perform a lot better .

So I don't think we're that far away from it maybe a couple of years or so and I'm like I would love just to sit here and do it and not have to go to an like I use my friend's office over here in LA , you know , and it's it's just like we need to get the videographers in and you know we , we have to , like you know , coordinate everything .

It's a pain in the butt , but I don't . I think , even though we're going to have this new technology , I still think I'm going to do in person because , like , for example , this Friday , the podcast that we're doing . So I have Sahil Bloom in the morning at 10am and then we're going to go to lunch together .

Ali's going to join for lunch along with his um , his girlfriend , who's also a YouTube creator as well , and we're going to be able to break bread , like that . I'm going to have great conversations and then , hopefully , sahil and Ali and Ali's girlfriend will become good friends and there will be that connection , right .

And then in the afternoon I'm going to do an hour and a half with Ali and then he's going to spend an hour and a half interviewing me and that's going to be a great day of content right . Like that is like friendship plus content creation . That's cool .

And our next tour is um is coming up , it's going to be we're doing one next week but then another one in December and it's all about in person and it's costing a cost of the bomb but , like , it's part of the long term , part of the long game , and it's better because I can meet these people , these seven , eight and maybe nine figure entrepreneurs , actually

in person . Before we finish up , I want to ask you one last question how can someone get ahead in marketing today ?

So if you want to become an expert storyteller , one thing I would recommend doing is just creating a story bank , which means that every single thing you're going to have a story . Just call out the most notable thing and then tell that story right , and you're going to get better over time . Spend time , you know writing just for . Sometimes I do this .

I just write into like a Apple doc and I just write for like 10 , 15 minutes and then I'm going to have some threads in there that can become stories , right . So it's just like playing tennis , it's just like practicing jiu-jitsu or whatever .

It takes time to compound it and like takes time to compound the business , takes time to also compound your storytelling too . So that's what I would say because people gravitate towards that and your storytelling goes , you create it , it goes into everything . If you want to lead people , if you want to convince people .

If you want to convince people to join your team , it's going to take a really good story to get them to come over 100% .

I want to say a big thank you and always extend my help . Appreciate it .