EP 15: From A Failing Business To A Multi-Million Dollar Agency

Transcript

Building A Successful Agency From Scratch!

Single Grain From a Failing Business to a Multimillion-Dollar Agency

Alex Ivanoff

Welcome to Mission Control, where we give you step by step instructions on how to take your eCommerce store to levels only a rocket can reach each episode, we'll be interviewing an expert in the eCommerce industry that is going to give you simple actionable advice on how to attract new customers, retain them, and build a brand that you are proud of. This show is brought to you by the makers of RocketCart, an eCommerce services and solutions company. All right, welcome to the next episode of Michigan troll, I am your host, Alex Ivanoff. With a special guest today, Eric Siu from Single Grain. Eric is the Chairman and CEO of one of the most impressive agencies we've seen in the corporate marketing space and service conglomerates of all types. So super excited to have you, Eric, thank you for joining.

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Eric Siu

Yeah, thanks for having me, Alex, super excited to be here.

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Alex Ivanoff

Awesome. So you know, I really want to, I have so many things to talk about. Because you know, Single Grain has done so much and you guys have been around for a while you yourself have been in the marketing world for a long time in the podcasting world for a long time. Lots of different things. So to kind of jump into it to get into your story a little bit, you've had a few marketing roles and projects, even before Single Grain, you've been around a while. What was that? Like before we get into Single Grain, like, how did that all shape you and, you know, found you to be who you aren't now?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, I would say I mean, I literally wrote a book on how I look at life as a game. So gaming really shaped me into who I am. And so I literally look at life as a game. And I think business is the ultimate game. And I you know, I when I first started learning marketing, I was working a dead end job doing data entry. And then my friend told me about this digital marketing thing. So I ended up becoming an intern and I kind of just never looked back from there took on a free internship and just kind of studied, studied my butt off. And, you know, ended up quickly kind of rising through the ranks. I think then like a year or two, after I was an intern, I was like leading marketing at a startup. And then a year after that, I actually ended up as the number two of this, of this agency. And then I actually ended up taking over this agency, which was Single Grain. So it all happened very quickly. I would just say like, you know, the whole, like, cliche around love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life is actually true. Sometimes these cliches turn out to be true, because, you know, I guess that's what cliches are so.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, for sure. Do you ever have a moment where you I mean, obviously, you're going through moments where it's like, oh, this is work. This is kind of mentally Doxxing. But then the long term scope of things if what you're saying is like you never actually feel like you're working, you know,

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Eric Siu

All the way. Yeah, I mean, so like, my, my podcast, co host, Neil, so his cousin was running this agency, Single Grain. And, you know, it was actually in an agency, an an SEO agency where the work that we're doing just didn't wasn't working anymore. And so, initially, I wasn't interested because I had a good job in tech. And like, you know, I thought, you know, tech people typically have this air of arrogance around them, at least I'm speaking for myself. And I thought I was too good to work for an agency, right? I was like, why would I ever want to go back to work for an agency again, because it's not a scalable business, right? I have a whole bit to say about that. Maybe later. But then I kind of reframed my mindset, I was like, wait a minute, like, if I can help save this company that's dying, I think I can do anything. And so fortunately, like, you know, six months into it, the fortunate pieces, I was actually end up and I was able to take over the company. So we can talk about that in a second. But I actually made the company go from bad to worse the first year after taking it, and we actually dropped all the way down to one employee. And so a lot of lessons there. But like, ultimately, the thesis worked out where it's like, if we can hire the right people, if we can make if we can turn this company around, then I think, you know, the sky's kind of the limit. So it was kind of my testing ground for for business.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah. So let's talk about that. Because you said you went down to one employee a year into it. How many did you have when you started? Or when you got took it over I mean?

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Eric Siu

When I took it over, I think we're about like, I don't know, it had to be like, it wasn't that big was like 15 or 16. People.

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Alex Ivanoff

Okay. Yeah. And so I read that you purchase Single Grain for $2. Is that, is that actually real? And how did that happen? What's the story there?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, so what this happened was, I think I was around 26, 27. And basically, so Neil was a partner in the business, my podcast co-host. And then there's like, it was, I like to say it was like, one yellow person, which is me and for brown guys, right? It was all like, you know, Neil, Sujan. And like, you know, that the rest of the guys, right? We're all cordial. We all still talk today. We're all friends. In fact, like, you know, we, you know, whatever we get together, we just kind of reminisce the old times, but basically, I bought Neil shares for $1 for 10% of the company. And there's another guy, Neil's partner, I bought, I paid another dollar for 10%, as well. And then the rest was actually was seller finance. So at the time, I actually didn't even know what that meant. I actually just kind of created these terms like words like, I'll just pay through it and finance it through that the profits of the company. Turns out that's called seller financing. And that put a contingency saying that if the company bailed I would owe nothing, right? And so that was kind of my first one of my first forays into to m&a. Actually, I remember I bought a an eCommerce Store when I was 23. But that's a whole nother thing. But anyway, that's how we structured a deal. And yeah, that's so I actually paid $2 out of pocket, and I didn't really pay much outside of that. So.

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Alex Ivanoff

So why were they selling? And you know, what was it a very troubled business? When you took it over? Why was this such an easy transaction for you to do? It was

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Eric Siu

and I actually talked to Susan about this, the original founder, we wrote speaking at a SAS conference a couple of months ago. And we're just kind of talking like, it's like mad in hindsight, would you have done it again? I was like, hell no, like, I would not have done it again. Because it's way harder. When you think about the math. If a stock goes down, 50% You actually have to grow by 100%. And so you might as well just let it die and do something else and start something else. And so in hindsight, like no, but I don't have any regrets. Because like, we have what we have now. So yeah.

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And so that was what 2014, right?

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That was yeah, that was literally I completed this exact transaction end of 2013. So when 20 2014 hit January of 2014, hit, I was 100%. So owner of the business,

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Alex Ivanoff

Nice. I was a I think a senior in high school at the time. 2014. Wow. Yeah, it is crazy to think we're almost 2023 year olds, 10 years.

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Eric Siu

So I was eight years older than you. That's what it seems like. Yeah, that sounds right. Like that. Yeah.

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Alex Ivanoff

So eight years into it, you know, you guys have been pretty six or nine years into it really, you guys have been pretty successful working with a lot of big brands, sure, way more of a headcount than than one. Now. I, you know, my question here is we're working with teams, large and small companies of all different types, you know, companies that are just dominating the game versus companies that are kind of just small players. What's the biggest from an eCommerce marketing standpoint, the biggest difference maker between a company that's just kind of small and playing the game versus a company that's just dominating? Yeah,

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Eric Siu

I'll kind of separate it from like zero to a million or so and then 1 million to 10 million, and then kind of 10 million and above. And so when you go from zero to 1 million, I actually think that that's one of the hardest parts, because you have to kind of figure out product market fit. And that's typically used more for like actual like products, right? But I look at it in the context of service, too.

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So that's what the market is pulling you, right? I had actually talked to someone the other day where he does like video setups like these, like, this is a Okay, video setup. But this guy does, like really nice ones. And he like, he's just saying, like, everyone's reaching out to him right now, I was like, You need to like double and triple down on this business, right? Like, and so that's in the very beginning, you kind of just figured things out, you're figuring out what, you know what, how to make the offerings work.

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And then you're largely like, you're, you're a jack of all trades, you're picking up the trash, you're getting on the client calls, you're getting on sales calls, as well, and you're dealing with everything, right, and it's just a lot. And so then you break the first million, and then you know, getting to 10 million or so it's all about, you know, the people that you surround yourself with, it's the team, right? And so it's a cliche thing, but you know, everyone's like, I realize, like when I when I do my events, you know, the we just now like we've all kind of grown together like a lot of my friends, we've we've been to a lot of other events together.

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And we used to talk about all the tactics right? What tactic Do you have your What strategy do you have right now, like all we talked about, like, man who do you need to hire, who do you need to hire? And like, it's no longer about how do you do it, it's about who, and then when you think about going from 10 to 100 million or so it's just that but you're playing at a higher level, right? You're looking to hire people that have that have kind of been there done that. And you know, people that have kind of done the outcomes that you're, achieved the outcomes that you're looking for. So really, like 10 million plus, it's just all about people, and that one to 10 million, it's about you know, surround yourself with good people, but also good process, and then zero to one, you're just like, throwing a lot of stuff against the wall. At least that's how it was for me.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, and it's interesting. You mentioned all this about people, because one of the questions I wanted to ask you, you've posted a lot already about peer groups and masterminds and like the importance of maintaining strong relationships along the way. How have you personally done that maybe as you're crossing those certain thresholds of 10 million 100 million? Have you done that over the years, while also meeting so many people write maintaining the quality of the relationships while so many quantity of relationships?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, I mean, there's that whole Dunbar's number thing where it's like you can't really maintain past 150 And then you have like a really close circle right? So like really close circle of friends still kind of remains the same. Like I talked to Neil all the time. I talked to some my other buddies, like, in about like, two hours or so like we're getting together with a handful of us like one guy owns a bunch of WordPress businesses. One guy owns like a pet holding company.

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Another guy runs like a big telecom company and as a couple 100 million a year. point being that we've kind of stuck together like I started doing these, like small masterminds of 10 people where we go to like, you know, Mexico, we'd go to like, we go to like tulum and all that, we call it the tuluminati. We would just like mastermind together and I know we had, I had started it like, five, six years ago or so. And like, there's like a core group and like we, you know, we just, like know, like and trust each other. So those are the guys I always keep in touch with. And then like, I remember when I was about 27 or so I had started do these, these dinners, and I was maybe 26 or so and it's not like I had a lot of money, right? And I'd have people come over to my house. And initially, we started off these these things where I like, I bring, like, bring in like directors of marketing. And we just would mastermind like, talk about like, what's working, what isn't working, what people are struggling with, put someone on the hot seat.

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And I remember the very first meeting that came over to my, my little like two bedroom place. And all I had was a half eaten bag of chips, right? Like that's, that's, that's how we worked off of it. But that just goes to show you like when you're going to start building these mastermind type things, that you focus on the quality of the people and everything else will kind of take care of itself. So that's how it started out. And then just over the years, like I've kind of just built my rolodex that way. So I'm happy to elaborate more. But that's the high level.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, and I think one of the interesting things that I've seen a lot with with masterminds and peer groups is if there's not that genuine connection, and it almost feels like a forced manufactured type of relationship. And typically, when that's the case, it doesn't really last very long, or it doesn't do much for you anyways, so I've always wondered, like, how do you? How do you kind of avoid that? And it sounds like what you're saying is just make sure it's a it's a genuine thing first, rather than rather than just doing it for the sake of doing it? Yeah,

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Eric Siu

I mean, you're not gonna connect with everyone, right? I just is some people you just vibe with and some you don't. And it's just very magnetic, like, what am I my good friends? Sayed? You know, I remember, we're on a mastermind together. And like we had met online online a long time ago, but he just walked directly at me and we just started talking. It's almost as if we're like, we've been friends for a long time.

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Same with like, you know, you need and then like, Neil calls all the time to just like, we just get each other. And I've been in other masterminds, where it's very much focused on like, you know, how much money they make, how much money like, how can you help me make money, I want to make money to make money, I want to make money. And the problem with that is you could smell it, and it just doesn't feel good. And you're just turned off from the very beginning. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with those.

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It's just like, it's not the right, it doesn't vibe with me. And so I've just learned, like, long term, like, what works for me is, is focusing on the long term, right? So which is why like, when you look at, like the conversation I'm gonna have in a couple hours, we've been just working on the same thing for like, the last 10 plus years or so. And, you know, early in your career, like early in my career, especially like, I just have a habit of like, I just want to do everything else I wanted to do whatever is hot. And I still have a little bit of that.

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But like I've learned to like dial that back a lot. And so, anyway, point point with all this stuff is if you're going to join a group, make sure that they're they're like minded, make sure that the mission is kind of what you're looking towards. Like, there's a reason why I go to ted, there's a reason why like, I consider Ted like a mastermind I consider like YPO a mastermind EO a mastermind, right. But I don't feel like anyone's just trying to make a buck off. I feel like people are just trying to be helpful.

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Alex Ivanoff

Sure, yeah, the money comes afterwards. It makes sense. So, you know, you guys are obviously a company that gets ahead of the curve. innovates you know, with different styles or different things that you're doing Web3, marketing, AI, you guys just released a blog post about different things to make sure you're on top of in 2023. From a marketing perspective, what would you say personally, is the biggest opportunity that has your eye for let's say, a seven figure eCommerce store going into the year?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, I would say really for anybody that the fact that marketing is getting harder, I mean, this this is the thing I am excited about for for this year, it's marketing is getting harder, right like the old days of just piling money into meta and Google and just raising, you know, a bunch of VC cash and you know, putting into your DTC brand. Good luck trying that today, because it's just not that easy anymore. And so that requires you to kind of diversify your your marketing stack where you're building a media company because Bill Gates I believe it was like 95 or 96 or so he's like, every company is going to become a media company. And we're starting to see more and more of that happen.

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One of our clients Axios through like a newsletter business, they got bought out for $553 million. And you have, you know, you have the hustle you have Morning Brew, I mean, they're all kind of bought out in their own right like HubSpot bought out The Hustle, Business Insider bought out morning brew, right. And so this whole concept of media where like you own your email list, you know, you build out this podcast, YouTube channel, all these things like there go you're going where like you own the audience, but you're also going where you have strong organic reach could be on LinkedIn could be on Twitter, it could be short form video, and so I'm really excited about that.

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So this whole concept for us is like I like doing podcasts like this and I was very specific with you guys. I was like, hey, like Can I can I get the raw recording because now I know I can chop it up and you know throw it out on to everything. So my the way I do our media company is focusing the pillar piece, the foundational piece on podcasts, which are also like can be transferred over to video can be cut for short form, and then can also be repurposed into length LinkedIn. And Twitter short form.

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So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about buying media assets, too. I think we're gonna see a lot of stuff come on sale in the next year or two. So, yeah, I would say that's the opportunity for marketing for really any type of business this year.

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Alex Ivanoff

So how do you how do you, let's say you're trying to build that audience, right? Instead of just obvious? I mean, not instead, right, you're you're obviously building your audience on the social platforms? Well, I guess what you're saying is, you're not technically owning that, as a brand owner. How do you build something that you actually own? Is it through a newsletter or something more specific, you know, you could sell a product, direct consumer, but how do you sell the message direct to consumer?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, so I think it's really important to own your email lists also SMS as well, to an extent you kind of you kind of own your website. But if Google decides on their whim to change the algorithms up on you, you know, whatever. But like, my background is in SEO, right. So I pay a lot of attention to that.

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I actually think that's a nice, nice untapped opportunity, too, because a lot of people kind of, you know, kick SEO to the wayside. So the short answer to your question is, yes, email. Yes, SMS and then to an extent, yes, SEO to, and then you're basically leveraging wherever they're giving strong organic reach, and you're, you're like harvesting as much as you can, and then re putting it back onto the channels that you have a little more control over.

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Alex Ivanoff

Sure. Yeah. So all channels, you're you're owning the media, and the attention. So one thing I want to talk to you about because I know Single Grain dabbles in this, I don't know how deep it seems like you guys are on top of it. The AI space, it's gotten so much attention in the past few months, especially seems like ChatGBT is like, you know, this common buzzword that is literally used in every content post just to kind of get headlines. Yeah. What's your take on on how it's affecting marketing and sales in the real world use cases?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, I mean, I'm really excited to see what happens. I mean, I literally just, to your point, I mean, leveraging the newsjacking piece, right, today, we released a video on my YouTube channel, on Bing + ChatGPT. Right. And so I think we're gonna see a lot of forced innovation coming out of both Microsoft and Google, just because now they're going to be pushing the pace because Google has been challenged for so long. And I think, I think even you know, Bing search engine integrated Dali to so I think we're gonna see a lot of creation, like, like, for me, I'm not the designer.

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But if I can just take like an image, I like and say, you know, do these couple things to it, I think we're gonna see a lot more creativity come out. And so I think the way that we work is going to shift quite a bit. It's hard to predict the future, obviously, but I just think we're gonna be able to save a lot more time. And this means like, people might lose their jobs, but they might have to re-skill into another area. I personally think that if you are just a paid media manager today, you better learn to skill into some other areas, right? You better learn to be creative. Learn to tell better stories with the data, if you can learn to tell better stories to that's going to help with your creative tools. And then you're going to obviously have to learn maybe not to optimize as much anymore, but learn how to kind of work with the AI to, you know, get the best performance.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say like, if I'm a copywriter right now, and, you know, I'm kind of scared. But I'm also thinking, Alright, well, what's what's the opportunity here, it may be instead of selling my individual services and my individual creative nature of copywriting, maybe I'm hiring others and starting to work with the AI to sell as a copywriting company or service or agency rather than an individual and leveling up by skills to be a business owner rather than like a freelancer, you know!

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Eric Siu

I mean, you're gonna save so much time, we're already saving a lot of time with like the like chat, GBT can help you save time on like, comments on like, organic, right? Literally, like my assistant does that right? Like she responds to comments using the ChatGPT four. And there's way more that you could do like, it just, I think what we're gonna see a lot is it's going to force humans to ask better questions.

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And I've learned just by watching my own behavior and other people's behaviors, using ChatGPT that we don't know how to ask good questions. We only know how to surface level questions, and we kind of take things at face value. But this is gonna force us to think about the second, the third order to fourth order consequences behind every question that we asked at least a little more.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, know for sure. And it's interesting. You mentioned like how to ask questions, because that's part of it, too, when interacting with the AI, like, if you're not good at asking the question the way you need it to be, you know, maybe a human might answer it. Okay. But I've noticed the first maybe two times I'm looking for something, I asked it to write a job description for me.

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And it wasn't necessarily what I was looking for. It's very like template, it literally looked like it grabbed it from Google, right? And I was like, Alright, I need to be more fine tuned with how I asked this question and exactly what I'm looking for and ask in a more clear way that the eye could interpret and then spit back to me. And then it just gave me something three times better that Google would give me you know, it's like, okay, now I know how to interact with the robot.

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Eric Siu

So totally the same way for me to like, I'll ask it like, a surface level thing that's like, oh, man, I got a bad answer. Not because the AI sucks. It's because my question sucks. And then it might take like another two to three times to refine it. So yeah,

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Alex Ivanoff

yep. Cool. So talking about another futuristic thing Web3, how for Single Grain how and why as a company Did you guys go from an agency that's offering the conventional services SEO, PPC, to an agency also offering you know, Crypto, NFT, Web3 marketing?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, so one piece on the NFT marketing pieces, I just wanted to, to kind of dabble in it to just see how, how it how you can actually build it, right? Because I like build an NFT project, which we actually did from from scratch. And so if you're going to do this type of stuff, then you actually have to understand the mechanics behind all of it, like the drop, the art, all that type of stuff, right? So we tested it, I mean, it's, it's not something we really focus on. You know, even though we rank highly for NFT marketing agency. We do, I will say the main thing for us right now is still the main thing.

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So we focus mainly on paid media, SEO, CRO, you know, creative type of stuff. And the Web3 stuff. What I've noticed, at least of this, as of this recording right now is that people, a lot of these Web3 companies are kind of like dormant right now. They're kind of the the builders are building, right? But it's really the Web2 companies that are trying to integrate Web3 rails, that's where the money is, right? And so you see Starbucks, doing the whole like Starbucks Odyssey thing, MasterCard, doing that stuff, right. And so we are working with larger, like Web3 brands like ENS, or like, you know, immutable or whatever, like these types of companies, right, that are trying to build for the long term.

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And so that there's really not a lot of Web3 marketing right now. So we're doing a lot of Web2 marketing for them. But because we've kind of cultivated this Web3 angle, that's been easier for us to get, you know, this level of clientele.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah. What do you think is like the biggest opportunity that's being left on the table right now for the you know, the standard Web2 companies in which they can take that next step?

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Eric Siu

I think it depends on the company. So this seems like a seems like a cop out answer. But like, yeah, if you're, if you're like a gaming company, right, then like, you know, how do you later on blockchain and the NFT pieces, right? Like, that's kind of obvious, like that's being being done right now. But I think like the Starbucks stuff, where like, I think for Web2 companies, Starbucks is a good example, because the Odyssey thing is like, they're giving people like a bunch of NFTs but they're not calling them NFTs or like, yeah, if you're taking a Master, you're giving people NFTs.

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But you don't need to call it NFT. So I think that's actually the future where we don't need to see NFTs anymore. You just like, it just becomes like a habit. It's just like, Oh, like this thing's actually digital. And like, I can actually track all my, my digital history. And, and I think that's where the value is long term. Because what ends up happening is when you say Web3, when you say NFT. You know, people in Web3 are very, like, they try to act like very cliquey. And then same thing with NFT world, right? But they're like very, really precious about it.

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But if you want this thing to gain kind of mass adoption, you can't be precious about that stuff. Right? The internet is just the internet. And I think Web3, this NFT stuff is just the next layer of the internet. And when we stop saying this stuff, that's when we we've actually reached mass adoption, or maybe it's died.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And it's so funny you say that, because last week, literally, when we recorded, my friend Adam Andrews was on he owns a couple Bored Apes, a couple NFT projects. And he was saying the same thing with the Starbucks example. It's so important that Starbucks is not calling it an NFT or crypto project because it would not have the adoption that it has.

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It's really it takes you back to like the most, one of the most fundamental things I learned in literally marketing class in college is sell this, don't sell the steaks, Sell the sizzle, right? Because you're thinking about the benefits and the value rather than like what it actually is, or it's supposed to be interpreted as so I think, yeah, people look at you like you're going back to Web2. If you look at telecom companies selling fast internet, it's not it's not the fast and it's what it can do for you what it means to have fast internet, you know? Cool.

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You mentioned, you know, your core business is obviously still in the main services of PPC, SEO, CRO, creative. PPC specifically, it's always changing. We've seen a lot of changes with everything in the ecosystem going on, especially the past couple years. What's been for you guys, and personally, the one that I guess what has attracted you most in terms of like winning strategies for high ROI campaigns?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, great question. So this is what happens. What happens is you run a business and then you hire people and then at a certain point, you no longer do the work as much anymore. So I wouldn't be fair for me to answer this question. I don't have a good answer for you.

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Alex Ivanoff

Fair enough. Yeah, I actually when I wrote that question, I was anticipating that you might not be like on you know, as hands on with it. So I think I level I can give you the HUD fine. Yeah, I'm more interested in seeing like what are you seeing for eCommerce brands is like what's where's the focus going in their marketing to get higher or higher?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, well, I think eCommerce marketing, paid marketing, any marketing at all. The fact that marketing is getting harder is really exciting to me because now easy mode is off and basically what's being forced is that you have to be create you have to learn to be creative, and you have to learn To tell a good story with what data right, so that's the analytics piece. And so if you can combine good storytelling, or good creative with any, you can back it up and figure out how you want to act around based on data that you've seen already.

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That's going to take you to the next level, right? And I think, too many of us have gotten too complacent, like, are we testing, you know, maybe like one creative a week, like, that's not enough we got to test more creatives are now we have all these other tools, like that's gonna help us, you know, get more creatives out faster, right. So I just think those two things are the X Factor. It's really data slash analytics, and it's creative at the end of the day.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah. And it's funny, you mentioned that. We have a fitness studio marketing agency and one of the biggest pieces that has differentiated us from our competitors is that we are testing very rapidly and thoroughly. And most people, when they approach their, their clientele in that business, they kind of set one campaign a month with a couple of pieces of creative a month. And clients are like, Hey, this isn't working, like I need to change it up quicker, or the offer is not working or something. And we're like, Hey, you changes literally seven days a week.

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Eric Siu

I mean, that's the key thing, right? Like, the whole set and forget type of marketing just won't work anymore. Like you have to be very intentional about how you go about your marketing, because marketing is getting people's attention. Marketing is bringing people to the point of sale. And so if you can't do a good job of that, then like you can't get people to click then ultimately, that's on you. So

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Alex Ivanoff

yeah, no, agreed. I mean, you have to be the professional here for marketing school. That's been around a while, I think even longer than Single Grain. How did that start? And how did you guys grow it?

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Eric Siu

Yeah. So Marketing School is a daily marketing podcast I do with another marketer. And basically, we've been doing that one for about seven years, I've been podcasting for a little over 10 years now. Single Grain has actually been around since 2009. It's just that I took it over in 2014. So that's, those are the numbers there about marketing school. We get about 1.7, 1,8 million downloads a month right now. And it's a daily Marketing podcast. It's about four to five minutes or so. And yeah, it's I would say like how we started it. Initially. I was walking with my it was my partner's name on that wasn't his. He's Neil Patel. And I mentioned him a little earlier in this podcast, but we were walking on Third Street in LA, this is kind of, you know, Beverly Hills area.

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And I remember we were just like coming back from like getting like Green Juice or something. And I was just talking about how podcasting has been so beneficial to me, because at that time, I'd already been podcasting for three, four years. This was even before Tim Ferriss started to his. And then he turned to me, and I think it was just a complete misunderstanding. He turns to me and says, Yeah, let's do it. I'm like, Huh. And he's like, Yeah, let's do the podcast. And so that's how the podcast started. And he's like, let's call it B School. That was like, there's already a B School because Marie Forleo has B School, right? So I was like, let's call it Marketing School. So we already collaborated on the name. And then one thing led to another and basically, like, was it a month, I was at his place in Vegas, I had brought a microphone like a Blue Yeti. And we were doing it at his place of the, he was staying at the Mandarin Oriental at the time.

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And we just started recording, like, you know, a bunch of the first, the first episodes maybe for the first year, so each one was like 10 minutes or so they're like double the length, right? We were so like, we got to the point where like, when we're recording, we will get complaints from people like it's like, Oh, it sounds like you guys are recording from a restroom. And so what we did, because the AC was on, it was 115 degrees in Vegas, we would actually turn the AC off, we'd be sweating our butts off recording this stuff. And we went like, no matter if like he's sick, I'm sick, whatever, whether he's having a kid, he's married, whatever, like, we would just stay consistent. So we've never missed an episode for seven years. And that's how we started it, we hit our email list initially. That's what led to like a nice bump, we quickly got it to like 100, 200,000 downloads a month.

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And we really stopped promoting it to our email list after the first two, three months or so. But it just kind of continued to continue to compound because there's really nobody else using that format. So if I'm trying to be practical for the listeners here, I would say that one we did a daily show that's only 5-10 minutes, right and then so we Zig where other people are zagging. We didn't really do an interview format.

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So it was just Neil and I, you had to business operators and marketers kind of just sharing our experiences, and then not saying we're right. We're just saying hey, this is what worked for us. And then we hit our email list. And those would be the three things and you know, we've been rolling ever since and now we have a lot of things planned. We want to get this thing to about 5 million downloads a month.

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Alex Ivanoff

Seven years daily podcast nobody's ever gotten sick or like death in the family. Nothing you guys what's that grind been like?

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Eric Siu

We got I mean there are times where like he's sick with like, you know, I've been sick with COVID like my face was like half paralyzed I was still doing it I think we have some recordings for it like you can tell my face was still like kind of off. So it just doesn't matter you keep going. There'll be times where like you can see on the video he'll he'll like mute himself. He'll be coughing and all that. Like his daughter will come into like the shot as well. And like, you know, we'll just take it for what it is. Yeah, stuff will happen.

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But like, yeah, it's been good. You once you have like two committed people on this, like he's pretty neurotic about how he works. And like, you know, we just love what we do. That's I think that's what it is at the end of the day. And it's you want to be doing this stuff with someone that you you enjoy being around to. Right. And so like we have a good there's, there's good banter between us. And, you know, if you find if you find love, hopefully, you know, maybe you'll do like a partner podcast too.

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Alex Ivanoff

So sure, yeah. It reminds me of Do you follow baseball at all?

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Eric Siu

Only during the playoffs.

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Alex Ivanoff

Sure. Yeah. I mean, do you know the name Cal Ripken, Jr. The guy who had the the Iron Man streak. I think it was a 21, 30 games or something. I remember hearing that name. Yeah. Yeah. Bob Costas once did an interview with him. And I had this on my like mp3 player growing up playing high school sports. So I always listened to it. And he always talked about Bob Costas asked him like it was there ever a day where you just woke up and like, I don't feel like playing baseball today. You know, like, you're sore, late night flight, whatever it is, you're exhausted. And he's like, oh, there was a lot of those moments, like, oh, you know, several times a season.

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And usually, I just woke up and told myself, alright, let me just get through the first couple hours. Or let me just get to the field, you know, and see how I do. And a lot of the times, it just kind of went away. And you know, a lot of times I just went out there and play my best game that day. So I definitely respect the seven year grind daily. It's, it's kind of just like, force yourself into it.

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Eric Siu

I mean, so to your point, like I thank you for that. I like like the fact that, you know, people can like morning routines and all that right? And but for me, it's like, take taking those tiny habits in the morning, like, can I fill out that first letter on that little five minute journal? Can I do the first minute of meditation, right? Can I step outside in the sun go on the walk, right? Or like, you know, hit the gym and train and those things like, do I not feeling feel like doing those things? Like all the time, like, yeah, right. But like, once you do, it's like, oh, you conquered this. And like, it's just the consistency piece.

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And like, you're never, I'm never like, sad after like a workout like I've never like regretted a workout, right? And so you just got to stay consistent with this stuff. And there are times where like, we don't feel like doing it. But like, I don't know, we've just like stuck with it. So do what you love. And you'll never work a day in your life. Right? That's the cliche.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, it's an interesting segway. We got here because the next thing I wanted to talk about was just management and culture. Single Grain, specifically, you guys emphasize this mental health day policy, which is kind of wonky with what we're just talking about. It seems like it's shown to be very powerful. Can you talk about that?

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Eric Siu

Yeah. So the way we have it set up is every basically, I think it's every month or every other month or so we give a day, like a random day off on like a Friday, right. And so basically, the people get a three day weekend. And that gives them space to kind of recharge and reset, because I know when I like, for example, I spoke at a conference in Barcelona last year. And I actually hopped over to Mallorca after that, so I was out for maybe two weeks or so. And when I came back, I don't know why.

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I kind of didn't know why. But I was just super energized, right? And that energy actually carried over for like, two, three months where I was just like on it, right? But it's because I had that space to slow down to then allow me to speed up. And so that's kind of the concept here. It's like, you know, not working yourself to the bone and and taking those the taking, taking that space, right. That being said, we do tell people, it's like, hey, like, if you genuinely have work that you need to get done, then like, go ahead and do it, right? Because that's the way it is. Because one thing I'll say like there's a, there's a kind of a double edged sword, right? When I was leaving marketing at this one startup, we had actually done this four day workweek thing. And that actually stacked more work on me, I actually ended up working seven days a week, because I needed to carry the load because I had to hit numbers or else like I would be fired, right? And so it's, it can be a double edged sword, because sometimes, like, whether it's like, people don't know how to manage your time, or your staff, and they don't know, you know, how to speak up, like, it adds up.

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And so, you know, I'm like, I can see the good side, I can see the bad side, too. I told you kind of pre-show that I showed my friends, you know, kind of the schedule that we have this year that my HR proposed, and you know, my friends are just like, do you guys just like not want to work? Like, and that was pretty serious. Like, like, can you cuss on this podcast? Yeah, right. Yeah, sure. So there's just like, there's like, there's like, Dude, this is the type of shit that you need to like, this is like unacceptable, right? And so you can see both sides of the aisle like you have like the you can call like, the more like you can see the left and the right kind of going on here. Right? And so I kind of sit on the middle when it comes to like this political stuff.

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So you know, that being said, you know, we're continuing on with kind of our mental health days. And you know, we kind of tried to give people half days here and there just because like, we want to give people space and I'm well aware that it's my business and so like, I enjoy it all the time, of course, but like I also would get outsized returns from it for some other people like as much as I want them to think it's their business. Like for some other people like it's just you know, their job and like their main thing is a family and as it should be, like your main thing should be your family.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, exactly. Otherwise they'd be where you are, you know, it's funny GaryVee always talks. But I always have to remind myself that this too, as a business owner, you can never expect your employees to care as much as you can't get angry that they don't care as much as you because it's not their business. And even if they did have equal equity in their business, you should want to care more than them anyways, you know, so it's just, it's just by nature. It's literally how incentives work.

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Eric Siu

Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah. You mentioned at the beginning, earlier in the show, agencies are not scalable, we're very hard to scale. What What makes you so passionate about that? And I agree, but you know, what is your insights on that?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, so I've changed my tune on it, because I've seen my my friends over the handful of the years, I mean, they, you know, one guy, you know, they sold agency for, like, you know, one guy for $80 million, another guy for a couple 100 million dollars, or, like, you know, one guy had like a $500 million valuation and sold like a chunk of it. And so, agencies are great cash flow machines. And they are, they allow you to enable you to do things that you want to do.

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So for example, like, I might get good deal flow when it comes to tech investing, right, just because you have an audience when it comes to marketing school, or the leveling up podcast, or, you know, the events that I do. And so things happen to kind of come in front of me. And so that's how I'm able to invest in cool things. And so, you know, you can, you can make an argument that, oh, the agency's cash flows allow you to maybe invest in other things that might be like bigger moonshots, you can say that, or you can continue to build the agency. And you can build a holding company that goes out there and buys other agencies, that's another model to, or you can just take the cash flows and just go have a nice life, right. And so, I think it's really, like, you know, a lot of the glory goes to these companies that are featured on TechCrunch, like open AI, they raise a billion from, you know, Microsoft, they're doing Chachi.

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Like, that's really cool stuff. And they're solving a really big problem. But I think virtually for anybody starting like, if I were to go back in time, I would ditch College, and at age 18, I would start an agency or start learning as much marketing as I can, because there's not a lot of CapX, that's, that's tied to it. And then from there, I can decide if I want to work on the next big thing or not. But I largely looked down on agencies at the beginning, just because I had worked in agencies, I was like, that's not scalable right? Now, I'll come back to I'm like, you know, Neil, Neil has built his agency to, you know, 9 figures, and he's bootstrapped it in like 4, 5 years. And I've just seen a lot of other people do the same thing.

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And like, it's similar path for me too. So I think it's a great business. And as long as you build a great team, a great culture around it, you know, it can be really rewarding. So it's really like you get what you focus on?

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, yeah. If you're a good manager, there's always a demand. One of the things I remember Neil talking about 2016 2017, when I first got into agency space, he was like, there's a gazillion job posts looking for marketing, people just contact them and say, Hey, hire my company for cheaper, and I'll do better. You know, there's always demand. So if you can, if you if you're good manager, you can scale it.

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Eric Siu

That's how I started out like, it's Sorry to interrupt like, what I was, like, 24, 25, I was a, bear in mind, like, I'm still working full time at a company, but I literally just logged on like Upwork. And nowadays, you can use sites like marketer hire, back then Upwork was called Elance. But I was I was working for this guy doing SEO consulting on a signing speak, he was paying me $25 an hour. And then, you know, the work was was good enough where he like, he offered me like 250, 300k or so. And then at 25, I was like, that's a lot of money for salary, right, and like, 5% profit share. And then at that point, I was, oh, I'm actually doing good work. And so then I had started, reached out to people, and started writing answers on Quora, and then started reaching out to people making like 20 minute videos a day. And I'd have to upload it myself, because it wasn't like a tool like Loom, and I wait for the upload to finish, I'd send like 20 of these out a day.

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And eventually, I got a guy that was paying me 30 grand a month doing SEO consulting, right. And so that's 360 grand a year. And that's just like one consulting client. So my point is saying all this is that even if you're doing consulting, I have a friend right now that's making a million dollars a year, just doing consulting, right, and a handful of clients. And so the sky's the limit here. And again, there's not a lot of CapX, if you're gonna do consulting, just bear in mind, you need to be doing the work. But then if you want to build out a team and not do the work anymore, you can certainly do that. So you have a lot of options. And again, you're not putting up a lot of money. So it's great.

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Alex Ivanoff

This is kind of off the cuff. But do you think that's a factor of a lack of education in the digital ecosystem and skill sets out there? Like people are willing to pay so much because they didn't learn this in school?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, I mean, but that's like everything right? Everything in life is arbitrage like you pay for this microphone over here. Because you don't know how to build one. You know that the chair that you have the gaming chair that you have, right kind of the same feel so everything in life is kind of information, a cemetery, and you're just you're collecting the margin there.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah. Makes sense. Back to scaling your team fully remote, correct?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, we are. We're remote first. Yeah, I guess short answer to your question would be yes.

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Alex Ivanoff

How does how does the team stay connected? Well, let me back up, has it always been this way?

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Eric Siu

No. So we had, we had this as office in downtown LA in the AON building. It's one of the key, like, you can see, it's been there for a while. And like, it was great. I mean, we had a great office culture. There's just a lot of things that we did we go to lunch all the time. It was just like, it was good. You felt like you were part of like, there's camaraderie. Right. And I do really miss that. And so, you know, that's not to say like, once I moved back to LA, like, we might not do like another office or something like that. But like, I've, I'll be honest, like, when I worked in tech, like, we were, like, 60, 70% of the team was remote. And I was remote. The team was in like Orlando, and Portland, Oregon.

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And that worked out for us. And so now it's just a matter of, for us in order to stay connected. It's about meeting at least twice a year, getting people together. I mean, you know, I have, you know, Zapier does this, right, where they meet twice a year. And then maybe with the leadership team, you're meeting like, you know, quarterly or so and you're just kind of building that cadence, because I have a friend, he did a study, he kind of, he had like, something like a Y Combinator, but for for Europe, right was called Entrepreneurs First, and what they would do, prior to the pandemic, pandemic, they would help you, they would train you on how to build a startup, and then they would pair you with the co-founder. And it was like a 90-day boot camp, right? So you got three months.

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Now, when the pandemic hit the in person touchpoint, like touch points, they were they were no longer there. And what they figured out after the pandemic, after we started coming out of it, I mean, was there still a pandemic, right, but what happened was, they realized, you know, the key, there's a sweet spot for like fostering human connection is at least, you know, about 11-14 days, spending 11 to 14 days a year together. And so take that for what it is. But I find that to generally be true, because at that point, you've established a relationship. And it's not as transactional as like a fully remote like, never meet type of thing.

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Alex Ivanoff

So sure, now, it doesn't need to all be at one time, right? It could be couple of days a month or something.

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Eric Siu

Yeah, a couple of days, a couple of days a month. So you might do like, you know, three days, a month or three days could be three days a quarter or something like that. Or if you're going to do an annual thing, you get everyone together, and it's maybe for three to four days. Yeah.

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Alex Ivanoff

Interesting. And between those, like when you're fully remote, what do you guys have adopted, have adopted in your communication systems? Or is there anything that you guys have done to kind of streamline communication or project management obviously, from a creative standpoint, it's very hard?

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Eric Siu

It's hard. I mean, like, to your point, you can't really schedule creativity. It's not like the office where it's like, hey, let's just meet the skinny here. Let's talk to whiteboard this stuff out, right, like that I really miss. And that's why like, it's, that part is hard. And so we do have like, our kind of weekly, all hands that there's that piece, you know, I was prior to that I was kind of writing like a weekly newsletter to kind of keep everyone abreast on on my thoughts. But that's kind of the main thing. And then we have doughnuts in Slack, which basically will like kind of round robin, you know, random meetings, like, I'll have like, 15 minute meetings with people. And then people have like, their traction meetings, right? So where they kind of talk about issues and things like that. So that's the high level.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah, we've looked at doughnuts too, I mean, my implement that we've had also, like random trivia, or games pop up in Slack with just bosses, it's a good way to just make it human and make it fun, make it more fun, totally, for for the whole business for Single Grain and everything that you're working on, what's the biggest challenge that you're facing? And how are you tackling it?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, I would say, you know, it's the market that we're going into, you know, I, I hope there's no recession this year, but I believe if we're not already in a recession, that that one is going to happen. I mean, you know, as of this, as of today, I think Amazon just cut 18,000 people, and I think they're gonna cut a lot more. I mean, they grew from 800,000 employees, prior to the pandemic to about 1.6 million, I think they're gonna cut it down to like, 1.3, 1.2, something like that. And so if you see, like, tech is kind of like a leading indicator, if they're starting to cut so much, I think we're gonna see it like a lot across the board.

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So I think it's just kind of, you know, preparing, you know, holding on to building as much of a buffer as you can, and, you know, keeping your staff kind of, you know, motivated, right, because I don't care how big someone's agencies right now, or how big someone's businesses, like, almost everyone I know, is kind of like struggling and cutting back right now. Right? So I think it's being cautiously optimistic, hoping for the best preparing for the worst, and then just continue to do what, what we do, right.

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So like, you know, doing good work, and then continue to produce content, and then just staying consistent, because we come out of this stuff, like, you know, recession, like might last a year might last two years or so. But I would say, you know, for, for us, I mean, it's just like, what's the first thing that gets cut, like marketing budgets get cut, right? And so it's the good news is, this is why you have to build a media company. And I'm kind of going a little bit on a tangent here. So if you've built your company, you are going to be able to have more options available to you. So whether it's like you build them, like your podcast right now, I'd say the same becomes significantly larger, right? Then you might run ads on it, okay, that's one thing, or like you're driving a lot of leads for your agency, but maybe like you can't take on 70 80% your leads, maybe you can do like a matchmaker model and take 20 to 30%.

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Like a referral commission for the lifetime of the customer, you can certainly do that. So you get a lot more options when you build media around you. And I'd argue that that asset is probably more valuable than like, in many cases, the business itself because media kind of like Mr.Beast provides you a lot. He's building multiple businesses around him.

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Alex Ivanoff

Quickly too. It's good advice. I think there's a cliche, you know, it's not what you know, it's who you know, it's also who knows you, you know, it's, it's, it's a matter of media and brand and awareness. It's also interesting, you mentioned like, everyone's super conscious, one thing I've seen is just being more you after we're on the tail end of a 13-year bull run, where markets were just so hot, everyone seems to have spent so much money, they're overstaffed. And that's kind of what kept the economy going. Now everyone's starting to have a conversation. And we have to, like, how can we keep doing what we're doing as good, but more cost effective and quicker, you know, because the speed kills profits, you know, all these things like are super important to start to become conscious of.

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Eric Siu

Yeah, I mean, discipline's coming back, I think, you know, a year or two ago, everyone was looking for these, these really high salaries like outrageous asks, and then like, I've never seen this in my career before. But like, on multiple occasions, we make offers to people, I just hear from HR. And they'll be like, Oh, no, they found something else. Oh, no, they found something else, right. And now it's like we're coming back to Earth. It's like no, like, this is what hard work looks like, this is what good work looks like. And you actually have to earn your keep. And it seems like it's such a like foreign concept to people. But this is what life is.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah. No, you know, we're young, we haven't really gone through this before. So it's definitely a challenge. But it's interesting to go through the cycle. So Eric, thank you. Thank you so much for everything. As we begin to wrap up. One of the questions that, signature questions that we like to ask all of our guests at the end here is if you could sit in a room with a bunch of mentors, who wants every morning to help guide you, you know, help you out give you advice throughout your day. Who would be in that room? That could be alive or dead?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, so I actually you can't see it here. But over here is a statue of Warren Buffett. And then there's another statue of Charlie Munger. So those two guys for sure. The the grandpa's. I would have Bill Gates, love him or hate him. I would have to figure out those three for sure. And then I actually do kind of have like an informal board of, you know, agency directors where, you know, one guy has like, built one to a couple 100 million dollars, one guy bought like 40 agencies and took it public. And then, you know, obviously, there's there's Neil who kind of bootstrapped right, so you all have like different angles there. So that's like a separate thing. I would do that just for business. But I would say those three people. And I think to an extent Elon as well, like people think he might be like a whack job, but I think he's been a net positive and Jeff Bezos. I'm basically picking like the people that have built the biggest businesses and have been around been around for the longest and they focus. And then you know, I've just to, like I'm trying to figure out like, which, which women would be in there but none come to mind right now. So I'm not saying I have anything against it. But it's those are the first immediate ones That comes to mind.

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Alex Ivanoff

The first one that always comes to mind for me is Adele. She's just her not only your talent, but her story is just incredible. You know,

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Eric Siu

I guess I mean, as you say that I'm like, Okay, I guess Oprah, like her upbringing. Like, what she's powered through. So like anyone that's gone through like a ton of struggle, and like, has achieved amazing success, and just continues to get hate from people like those people like I respect

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Alex Ivanoff

so. Yeah. Happy birthday to Charlie Munger. By the way, I think he just turned 99 I really, yeah. Pretty impressive guy still going. It's also funny, I love that you described Elon that way, because I've, I've loved the guy for years. And then, you know, lately, I'm just like, what is what is going on here? What is he doing? But at the Grand scope of things, it's like, All right, yeah, he's definitely a net positive for the world. You know?

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Eric Siu

Yeah. Still have that positive, yeah.

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Alex Ivanoff

Yeah. Cool. Well, Eric, where can our followers you know, follow you get in touch with you, you know, keep up to date with what you're doing?

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Eric Siu

Yeah, I would say right now, I'm putting more effort into my YouTube channel. So I'm leveling up on YouTube. And then there's a leveling up podcast, and there's a Marketing School podcast too. So, you know, consume more content with us.

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Alex Ivanoff

Awesome. Yeah. Well, we'll link those those podcasts down below. We'll link your Twitter and LinkedIn as well for people to follow you. But again, thank you so much, Eric. It's been a blessing to have someone like you and so many awesome answers to these questions, a lot of cool insights from from someone of your caliber. So thank you again. And for those listening. Check us out on gorocketcart.com for this episode, and all of our socials and the rest of our episodes of this podcast, and we'll see you next time.

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