Digital Social Hour - Scaling to 8 Figures: Eric Siu's Unconventional Method | Eric Siu DSH #1095

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

🚀 Scaling to 8 Figures: Eric Siu's Unconventional Method 💰 Join Sean Kelly as he sits down with marketing guru Eric Siu to uncover the secrets behind scaling a business to 8 figures! 🔥 Eric shares his journey from esports gamer to successful entrepreneur, revealing unconventional strategies that propelled his agency to new heights. In this eye-opening conversation, you'll discover: • Why business is the ultimate game for former gamers 🎮 • The power of focus and long-term thinking in entrepreneurship 💼 • Eric's insights on crypto, AI, and the future of marketing 📈 • The truth about agency valuations and exit strategies 💸 Don't miss out on Eric's game-changing advice on building a sustainable business and achieving financial freedom. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, this episode is packed with valuable insights you can't afford to miss! 🎧 Listen to Eric's podcasts: • Marketing School • Leveling Up 👉 Follow Eric: @ericosiu on Twitter and Instagram Hit that subscribe button and join the Digital Social Hour community for more insider secrets from top entrepreneurs! 🚀 #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #EricSiu #Entrepreneurship #MarketingTips #BusinessGrowth #aiautomationagency #aiautomation #googletrends #aitools #aiagency CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:57 - How Eric Made His Money 02:26 - Eric's AI Innovations 04:32 - Dangers of AI Technology 06:37 - AI Saving Eric Money 08:44 - Acquiring Business Agencies 12:09 - Future Trends in Podcasting 17:29 - Your YPO Networking Event 18:33 - Importance of In-Person Performances 19:56 - Recent Podcast Valuation Trends 21:33 - Consistency in Business Success 23:00 - Poker Strategies and Business 24:05 - Business as a 24/7 Sport 26:40 - Success Without a Degree 29:04 - Upcoming Podcast Guests 30:11 - Utility Friends vs. Personal Friends 32:44 - US Fertility Rate Insights 34:45 - Financial Requirements for Success 36:11 - Agency Space Saturation Analysis 37:45 - What's Next for Eric APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Eric Siu https://www.instagram.com/ericosiu SPONSORS: SPECIALIZED RECRUITING GROUP: https://www.srgpros.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/

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BED-MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You give up gaming too, I know you used to play eSports. I can't play games anymore because anytime I start playing a game, like I started playing Diablo 3 maybe like when I was 27 or 28. Yeah. Now it's and I'm just like, I just kept thinking about business. I just like business is the ultimate game. Yeah. And I think any kid that grows up playing games, like all I was just like, dude,

what am I going to do? What if I can't find a game to play in real life? All right, guys, we got Eric on the show today. One of the top marketing podcasts, right? Yeah, thanks for having me, Sean. Absolutely, man. I've been following you for a bit now. So it's cool to finally meet in person. We crossed back and forth, I think, during all the crypto stuff, but it's great to finally meet you.

Yeah, crypto markets been... It looks like it might come back. I think hopefully it rips next year. We'll see. Yeah, Bitcoin's already at 68, right? So, and people are upset about that. Yeah, I don't know why. It's like it's close to all time highs.

Yeah. So yeah. I guess cause ETH is a little low, but yeah, we'll see. Next bull run might be a good one. I think it will rip. Is that how you made a lot of your money in crypto? Yeah. I mean, I'd say the vast majority of my net worths in business.

Um, but I think, you know, crypto, I don't know if you played a lot, you're Asian, you probably played a lot of games growing up. So did I, right? So it's just a way of gaming as an entrepreneur now. So yeah. I remember buying crypto in like high school and I just kept that. Oh man. What year was that?

I was a junior. So 2014. Okay. So yeah, I bought my first Bitcoin when I was 2013. Damn. Yeah. And one Bitcoin and I sold it when I was 2000. So yeah.

Paper hands. Yeah. Paper hands. Paper hands. Oh man. You went the full route, academic route, right? College degree and everything. I did for my parents, not for me though.

Same, yeah. I didn't make it all the way. Oh, you didn't? Good for you. Well, here's how I justified, because of Asian mother, I had to provide some revenue first. So I started a business freshman year.

I think it got to like 150K, and then I dropped out. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, so you proved yourself. Yeah, but a lot of people want to drop out with nothing. So it's like the risk to reward. Yeah.

They're not thinking it through. Yeah. What did you major in? History and econ. Whoa. Yeah. I did that because I wanted to play poker longer. So I stayed one more year extra in high school to play poker longer.

Oh, so you were a poker player. Yeah. Damn. History. I've never heard that major. Yeah. It's a total BS major because all I did was go to Wikipedia the day before I needed to turn something in.

I just like read it and I wrote something and that was it. Oh, that's hilarious. That was before AI where you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you just use AI. Yeah. I remember those five page essays in college. Oh my gosh.

Now people are writing it in minutes or using AI every day. Every day. Yeah. I mean, even earlier this week, and you've probably heard about it already, but Bolt.new, we're just using it to build like front ends and giving it to developers and moving it forward that way. There's some cool things we like, I have an SEO background, but we're building, we're building these AI agents that will automatically just do a lot of the SEO

tasks, like internal linking, fighting content to update and all that stuff, right? Just the thankless work. And we actually had a conversation with the guy that's leading that charge at Microsoft today on the AI, the AI agent side. And yeah, there's some exciting stuff happening and we can't wait to see what happens in the next, I don't know, two, three years or so. What is bolt on you?

Do I haven't heard of that one? So you've heard of replet and cursor cursor. I might've. Okay. So cursor is like auto complete for developers. And so? Cursor, I might have. Okay, so Cursor is like autocomplete for developers. And so when they're coding, they just move a lot faster. Replet is like it's a more complex version of Bolt where you can just say, hey, like yesterday I built something.

I was like, hey, help me build an app that allows me to upload audio files and video files and then also allow me to post in a YouTube link. And I want you to come up with five viral headlines and thumbnails for my YouTube. Right. So come up with the best best concepts for higher click through rates. Wow. And it coded it all up. I was watching it code it and then it showed me the front end for it and it looked

exactly like I'd want it to look. And then I might say, hey, change this over here or like there might be some bugs and it'll just automatically fix the bugs. Damn. So you get like 60, 70 percent there. You're basically prompting an app and it pops out an app. So I got to step up my AI game. I'm only using ChachiBit.

Yeah. I feel like that's grade level. Right? ChachiBit is great though. I mean, it's like, it can be like a therapist. You can ask questions. Like I ask it to like rate my workouts and everything. It's great.

And I like, I use this thing called my body tutor where I have to put in like my workouts and like my, my diet every day. So I take a picture of the food. It's like, Hey, tell me what this is and how many calories are in it. And I just cut and paste and I throw it into my body tutor. And then my my tutor will be like, oh, this is great. This is whatever. Right.

So yeah, that's actually insane. So you could just take a picture of your food and you'll know how many calories. Yep. Yep. And it estimates what it is. It's like 95% accurate with guessing what it is. And sometimes I just post like a blob of stuff and it still guesses it correctly. No way. Yeah. Wow. I need to look into that one.

Did you see the AI chat bots? The Game of Thrones one? No. What's that? So there's one that can pretend to be the different characters and there was one Daenerys Targaryen one I guess. Oh yeah. Some teenager fell in love with it. Oh that's nuts. And then he committed suicide. I didn't know that one. How long ago was this? Yesterday or two days ago ago. That's crazy. Yeah, that's setting precedent. It's so I mean, I think there's going to be bad stuff that happens, but also that I think the good will outweigh the bad because when you look at

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And what that allows you to do is it's basically a human that can help you research like travel plans or Michelin restaurants or whatever. And you see it clicking around. It's basically a very nascent version of an AI agent that will actually act like a human and do work for you. Whoa. Yeah. That's cool.

And so like you now have free AI employees, like very basic versions of that. So I'll save business owners a lot of money. Yeah. You think you'll get an Elon Musk robot? Definitely. But I won't be the first wave.

I think for that you should probably be like the second wave. You don't want to be the earliest adopter, maybe just the second because like who knows what all the issues are going to be. So that's why I didn't get the first Tesla.

I waited like five years. Yeah, same here. Same here like 2017 or something. Yeah, yeah, around there. Yeah. I had Robbie J. Lu on here yesterday. I waited like five years. Yeah, same here. Same here. Like 2017 or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Around there. Yeah. I had Robbie J. Luan here yesterday. She's a poker player and she invests in AI companies and she said there's one company that's providing legal representation to AI because these bots are going to start getting in trouble and need to be represented. Isn't that crazy? That's smart. I have someone in my YPO forum. He actually built something that will help you like take care of small claims and stuff.

So I think there's gonna be a lot of like earlier this week, ChatGPT, the chief product officer was saying that now you can get a $1,000 an hour brief written for $3 using ChatGPT. And you can use the 01 version for that. And so I think we're just gonna see the cost for a lot of things come down. And that also the same thing goes for marketing to that that computer use thing I was talking about. You can now use it to, you know, just automatically port things over from your spreadsheets over to your CRM and have it do a bunch of like manual work and that you can do with Zappi or something like that. But I just think the possibilities are just going to open up quite a bit.

Yeah, I've saved a ton of legal recently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Legal. I mean, just contracts and NDA and all the because you got to pay for the Yeah, I've saved a ton on legal recently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, legal, I mean, just contracts and NDAs and all the, because you got to pay for the contracts like hourly or. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You just upload and say, hey, like what seems off with this? And I actually use it for contracts too. It's like, hey, what, what could, what could be strengthened about this contract? Oh, that's smart. Yeah. No one can screw you over. Yeah. Wow.

I need to start doing that. Yeah, there's all sorts, even like on a personal use, just like finding good restaurants. I find podcasts guests on it. Like there's so many ways to use it. I'm a fan. I'm optimistic. I know some people are like, oh, it's going to take out jobs and stuff,

but same with the internet. Yeah. I, people will re-skill and people will figure it out. I think it'll be fine. Yeah. Are you implementing it heavily with your agencies? Yeah. So we are on one side. I mean, the thing I mentioned with SEO, we're just looking at all the jobs to be done for like paid media SEO, all the work we do for clients. And then we're just figuring out how we could bring efficiencies or add more

efficiencies and we're just building tools and some will give away for free to generate more leads and then some will just, you know, will manage it for our clients and things like that. So I think for us, it's AI first. And like right now, our CTO, he's just building so many products right now. And I'm having more fun than I've had in a long time. Nice. I love that. And you're at the stage of business where you're actually acquiring others now. Right. Correct.

So that's a whole new part of the business. Yeah, actually. So Single Grain, which is my agency, I bought it when I was 26 years old. And, you know, I broke a deal that way. And then, you know, I brokered a deal that way. And then, you know, three years ago or so, we bought two other agencies. And then right now we're in L.O.I. with another one. So we're Letter of Intent trying to buy one in Asia right now. And what's the thought process behind acquiring these?

Yeah. So most people don't know that agencies are actually like I can't I come from tech, right. And I like I used to poop on agencies because it's not scalable. Like, you know, it's such a people focused business, whatever. You can't sell it for much money. But most people don't know this. If you get an agency, let's say to five million dollars in profit, you can actually sell it for maybe 10 X on the profit or a 15 X or 20 X. In some cases, right.

I've actually seen some sell for 20 X. So let's say simple numbers. Five million in profit times 10 is 50 million dollars. Right. That's a good exit. That's not like a small exit. It could be 100 million dollars or so. Right. And so what you might do is you can either sell it at that point or you might take

your five million profit agency and then build a platform. And what that means is you're going to go out there and acquire other agencies and maybe buy one million in profit here, one million profit. People call like to call EBITDA, whatever. Right. And then build a platform. And what that means is you're going to go out there and acquire other agencies and maybe buy one million in profit here, one million profit. People call like to call EBITDA, whatever. Right. And then maybe you get it to 20 million in EBITDA and maybe you can sell it for 20 X on that or maybe like a higher multiple.

Right. But you're now selling it for like four or $500 million or so. So it's like an arbitrage game that you're playing. And you can play that game if you want, or it doesn't cost you a lot of money to start up an agency. Maybe you get it to 500k a year in profit. That's a great business for you. Maybe a million a year in profit.

That's great for you, right? There's nothing wrong with that. And so you can decide to play this game for 10, 20, 30 years or so, or you can play it just to cash flow and have a nice life. But there's not a lot of capex upfront. And you know, at the end of the day, it can become something really big because the total addressable market is very big for agencies. That's cool. Yeah, because there's some huge agencies, right?

Yeah. I mean, there's Dentsu, there's WPP, there's OmniCom. These are multi-billion dollar companies. And then like you have the essentials of the world that have done like, I think this year they've done maybe a couple billion dollars or maybe 900 million. That's pretty significant difference, but a lot of money they've done in generative AI, right? And they're like a consulting company. And so I think you know at the end of the day if these companies can figure it out then they've outlined a blueprint for people to follow. Wow, almost a billion just in AI. That's crazy. Yeah. So that market's growing fast. You think it's a bubble though? I think short term it's probably a bubble and in long term, it won't be a bubble.

It's just like the Internet back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I feel, too. I feel like there was so much hype. Yeah. But I think there's going to be a few big players like obviously OpenAI is going to be crushing it. Yeah. We'll see what happens. And Evo started one, two. XAI with Twitter's data or X's data.

You have Anthropic, which I just talked about. Yeah, there's a lot of play. I mean, Google is obviously a player, too.. So yeah, I don't think there's going to be any. I mean, obviously Lama with Facebook. I don't think there's going to be any like one winner. I think there's going to be a lot of different players. Yeah, I'm starting to see that Lama one on Instagram DMs when I message someone it's like their AI talking to me. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You see that yet? Yeah. Yeah. There's that little search bar. I don't think, I mean,

I think they're kind of cheating there and calling that active users because they're just taking all the users from their apps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen that yet? Yeah. Yeah. There's that little search bar. I don't think I mean, I think they're kind of cheating there and calling that active users because they're just taking all the users from their apps that sometimes like accidentally search in that bar. But I think, you know, I think we'll see much more sophisticated versions of like many chat. People have been using many chat and chat bots and things like that. Yeah. So, yeah. Where are you at with podcasts? How do you feel about the podcast market? There's networks right now starting off. Yeah, I think podcasts. I mean, I've been doing it for like,

holy crap, 13 years, I think I've been podcasting for 13 years and I had, so I have two, I have marketing school and I have leveling up and it's just a gift that keeps on giving. I mean, you've been doing it, you've seen the benefits, the people that you meet, the relationships that you create from it. I've made lifelong friends from it. I've gotten deals from it. It's just been good across the board. And now the cool thing you meet, the relationships that you create from it. I've made lifelong friends from it. I've gotten deals from it. It's just been good across the board. And now the cool thing is, like, oh, a short form came on the last couple of years. And so I don't know about you, but most people now when they like when I'm

like talking at a conference, if someone comes up to me, it's usually like, oh, I watch your shorts or I watch your YouTube or whatever. It's not like I used to blog a lot. It's not, oh, I came from your blog. Agreed. So I think, to me, the biggest opportunity in next 10 years with social is YouTube. But like, what do you see mostly on YouTube and the shorts and things like that? It's podcasts. And so this to me, like this is why Mr. B said this is OP like two years ago, right?

Because we can just have a conversation and there will be bites where we have something that goes viral and great. Like, I don't know if that's going to go away because people like hearing interesting things. Yeah. And people's attention spans are so short these days. But I do think there's just I think it's getting a little saturated now because you have you have like and there's nothing wrong with these people, right? But you have like NFL players starting podcasts, ex-MBA players starting podcasts. You have like the Hawk to a girl starting a podcast, right?

And don't get me wrong, they're probably good. They probably all have an angle. But at a certain point, it's like if everyone has a podcast, right? And don't get me wrong, they're probably good. They probably all have an angle. But at a certain point, it's like if everyone has a podcast, then what do we do? Almost everyone I know does, to be honest. Yeah. Or if they don't, they go on a lot of shows. Yeah. You're already seeing them. But yeah, it's definitely saturated. It's it's been saturated, though.

Even when I started, I was late. When did you start two years ago? Yeah. So I had to make up for it with repetitions and good editors for the clips. Yeah you grew very quickly. Yeah well everyone else like you and Rogan had a 10 year start so I had to catch up. Yeah but it's I think it's like the hardest thing to grow but the most rewarding thing. It is hard I was losing tons of money at first most people probably couldn't stomach those losses the first year or two you know. Yeah good it's uh we can we Asians know how to take pain. Oh, yeah. Not that other.

We specifically. Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to my Asian mom. A lot of pain growing up. Yeah. Yeah. Are you full Asian? Yeah. Chinese? Yeah. Taiwanese, Cantonese, but whatever. Same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I just found out I'm not just half Chinese.

I'm Thai, Filipino and Chinese. Oh, wow. I took a 23 and me. I don't know if I believe it, though. So you're full Asian? Half. My mom said she was full Chinese, but I guess she wasn't. though. So you're full Asian. Half. My mom said she was full Chinese. But I guess she wasn't. So I'm half Asian. OK, got it.

Half white. Yeah, I was like, I'm pretty sure you have some white in you. Yeah, I wouldn't be this tall. Yeah, I was like, how are you so tall? Yeah, I like it out there. I've been in China. Yeah, been to Thailand. It's a different vibe, man.

It's good. It's interesting because I met someone when I was in Italy this summer and then she lives in China. And then I was like, you know, because like America likes to talk about China all the time. I'm like, so like, what do you guys do in China? She's like, we don't really talk about America. We don't care. Like, like our lives are good. Our costs are low and our technology is so forward. And like she's a teacher. Right. And she's like, yeah, you know, I teach my kids, you know, they're five, six years old and they know about, you know, they know about engineering,

they know about computer science and like they're pushing hard. Right. And it's no wonder why they're, they're growing so quickly. But they don't really talk about America that much as much as we talk about them. Right. Cause they just want to worry about themselves. I can definitely see it. We paint certain countries in a bad light and then you actually go there and talk to people. They're like, we don't care about you. Yeah. And it makes sense. I understand why we would do that and understand why they wouldn't care too.

So what do you think about their social system? How they're going to start rewarding and punishing people for certain activities? Yeah. So some things I think here's the thing. Like when you look at Singapore, for example, I think I could be wrong here, but if you're if you bring in drugs or something like that, like you get you get beat or I think they cut your hand off or like something extreme, right? In some cases, they might like maybe they'll even kill you, right?

But how much crime do you have going on there or like in Dubai? Like if you do something off, they'll just kick you out, right? Like we don't really have that here. Like, but so if we set up the incentive structures correctly, then people will behave properly. And so I think maybe that will be helpful. Maybe it won't. So I can't really say I have an opinion either way. Yeah, I think maybe that will be helpful, maybe it won't. So I can't really say I have an opinion either way. Yeah, I think it's also person-based. Like

some parents are strict, obviously, like a lot of Asian parents are, and the kids end up either like amazing or like the complete opposite. Or sometimes you might have like one kid that turns out amazing, the other one turns out like terrible, but they just had different life experiences and they look at life differently, even though they had the same parents. Yeah, that's why I liked my my parents because I had the strict Asian mother. But my dad was completely opposite. So I thought to experiment both and I wouldn't want either end for my kid. I would want some middle ground.

Yeah, same same here. I mean, there should always be like one tiger parent and then one that's super nice. Yeah. Yeah. You need both because if you're just a hard ass. Yeah. If you're too nice, then like what happens is you end up having a kid that has no emotional resilience and then they break whenever pressure comes. Yeah. And but if you're too hard, then like they have like no flexibility. And you see that with our friends that are having kids because they're pretty wealthy

and then they're hands off with their kids and they're too nice. They let them do whatever. But their kids end up like. The wealthy ones. Yeah. A lot of them, the kids end up being screw ups. And like I see this in the group that I'm in, YPO is like an entrepreneur group and you often will see the kids. And some kids turn out amazing because the parents are so involved. And the other kids, like it's like black or white. It's either they're amazing or they're complete screw ups. Yeah. Right.

There's no in between that I've seen. Yeah, same. I agree. You're having an event for YPO coming up. Yeah, that's it's going to be in Miami. It's the global marketing summit. So that's exciting. And that's another thing for me to do., that's going to be in Miami. It's the global marketing summit. So that's exciting. And that's another thing for me to do.

But that's happening in April. It's on my bucket list to join that one day. Yeah. I'll meet the qualifications yet, but you will 10 million a year, right? It's 13 million a year or like 20 million valuation. Wow. Or like if you have assets under management, it's like a different, different qualification. I could probably meet Steve valuation one

and maybe a year or two. Great. With the podcast. Yeah. Then you should join. Yeah. No, I definitely or two. Great. With the podcast. Yeah then you should join. Yeah no I definitely want to I've heard great things. Yeah it's good I think whether it's YPO or Hampton or EO like any of these these groups it's very like as you climb higher the air gets thinner and it gets lonely. Yeah. So they have people you can talk to especially when they're from different walks and different businesses you know these are your people and then the cool thing like YPO is really good about involving your family as well. So I don't have kids or anything like that, but they're good about, you know,

not just making it about the entrepreneur, because the family, like, if you don't take care of your spouse first, you don't. And then you don't take care of your family, then like your business falls apart. Yeah, I think everything kind of coincides with each other. Right. So you're in Hampton, Sampars also? No, I'm not. I wasn't EO before for seven years and then YPO I think I've been in for four or five

years or so. I think Hampton's great. Yeah, I've heard good things about Hampton. I love that podcast. Great podcast. One of the shows I studied before launching mine. It's I mean, they put a lot of time and effort into it. And not many shows can pull off virtual.

They're one of the few that can. So that's something to be studied. I, I just like this because like that just there's different dynamics. Like we can go deeper and then the shots look better, too. So but also this takes more work. So props to you. Yeah, that's why I travel to New City every month because virtual doesn't hit the same dude. Yeah, like it's harder to read. How much better do you see the performance virtual versus live?

I've only done one virtual. I'm really strict on it. And it's because he was banned from the US. But just from what I've studied, because I've studied all the top shows, most of them are in person, like Rogan, Lex Friedman. Yeah, people just like it.

It feels like, oh, you put more time and effort into it. Yeah. And I'm excited about the future, though. These these podcasts are getting a lot of good valuations lately, actually. I don't know if you've been following the market. Well, there's Call Me Daddy. Call Her Daddy. Call Her Daddy, right? Call Me actually. I don't know if you've been following the market. Well, there's call me daddy. Call her daddy. Call her daddy, right? Call me daddy. I don't know why I got that.

But like, so how much was that one worth? She sold for 60 million for 10 years or was it 60 or something like that? 20 million a year. And then Rogan, I think, renewed or something for 200, 250. For 10 years. SmartList, 100 million. Yeah. Travis Kelce, 100 million.

Yeah. There's been five above 100 million this year. That's amazing. Yeah. I think you just keep going. Yeah, because the margins are good. Yeah. Travis Kelsey, 100 million. Yeah. There's been five above 100 million this year. That's amazing. Yeah. I think you just keep going. Yeah. Because the margins are good. Yeah.

I mean, we love our podcast. It's been great for us. So yeah. You got to. So yeah. You ever think about starting a network like other shows? No, it's just like I've learned that so younger me would try to start all these different businesses and because I think I can because like, wow, look at all these other people with multiple businesses.

But then as you get older, you realize when you start to meet people that are like, oh, I have seven businesses, you realize that's actually not a flex. It's actually a red flag, right? Because the businesses and maybe they enjoy it. That's fine. Right. But if you want a really big business, you're ideally focusing on one for a very long time. And I'm not just saying like five, ten years. I'm talking like 20, 30 years or so. Yeah. Because it just keeps compounding.

Right. Like I met a guy, actually one of our clients, also YPO guy, they do north of nine figures a year in in revenue. And he's just been doing it for 30 years. They build like these homes. Right. And I'm like, that's all it is. Right. And he's like, I'm not like a genius or anything like that. I just kept doing it. And then I'm reading this other book right now. I paid one hundred twelve dollars, I think, for this book.

It's called Keep It Going from Les Schwab, right? It's the most expensive book I've ever heard. So this guy wrote, he founded Les Schwab Tires, right? And that used to be one of the biggest tire companies in the US. And I think they're doing like $180 million a year in like 1986 or so. So it's like way more money now. And then he's just like an all-shucks guy, like a cowboy. And then he's just like an all shucks guy, like a cowboy. And then he's just like, I don't know what's going on.

And he just like kept building one store after another and just kept compounding it for a long time. And that's all he did. And then you find out like a lot of these people that have built big businesses, it's just, they focused on one thing over 30 plus years. And that's how they build it into multi hundred million or multi billion. Yeah. Just as being consistent.

I learned that from Fleishman. He said he got some advice when he was 20 years old. Buy one house a year and see where you're at in like 20-30 years and look at the appreciation on real estate in that time. Yeah, yeah. I mean houses are solid. Yeah, just from simply buying a house. I mean out here a house is like five million. Yeah, I mean it used to be like you know four or five hundred K when I was growing up. Crazy. Now it's like five, ten times more, right? So you're happy right now with your place. Well, no, I'm renting.

So like, yeah, I kind of fall into the Ramit Sethi category for that. That is so he's good at personal finance. But I just believe that I'm only going to buy a place like when I'm like married with kids, you know what I mean? And so right now I'm just like, it's just another thing. And I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs that have multiple homes. They actually regret it. Right.

Because each home takes up headspace and it's like a job. Even if you have property managers managing it, because there's problems with it. Right. There's upkeep with it. What if you just put all that headspace into your business and just focus on one? Right. And so like I used to be a big proponent of I'm going to do all these things like, you know, look at me and now I've I've gotten hit so hard so many times over the years that I'm just like, no, just this simplicity, man. Elon Musk has no, no home, no cars.

Yeah. Yeah. And even with him, by the way, he's a good example, like, sure. He has a lot of things going on, but he has really good operators running each one, like space X, right? He's got Gwyneth there. And then, you know, he's got Linda over there at X and so he might jump around a lot and like push things, but he's not in there operating all the time, you know, he's got Linda over there at X. And so he might jump around a lot and like push things, but he's not in there operating all the time, you know, so he's still playing poker.

Not as much. I play occasionally, like with a group of entrepreneurs here. But no, it's like when we throw poker things like it's like an hour to get there and all that pain in the butt with the traffic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it for networking. Yeah, it's great for networking. Like invite only stuff.

But yeah, just casually. I don't see it all the time. What's the buy-in typically for you? What's up? What's the buy-in typically? I've done like a couple, like a thousand. Nothing crazy. I never do it for money.

Like it's just to me. A thousand's great. Yeah. So I'm not like some of these like Nick Aero Ball is coming on. I think he buys into like a million. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, dude, that's crazy. Yeah. You give up gaming too. I I'm like, dude, that's crazy.

You give up gaming too. I know you used to play e-sports. I can't play games anymore because anytime I start playing a game, like I tried playing Diablo 3 maybe like when I was 27 or 28. Yeah. Now it's, and I'm just like, I just kept thinking about business. I just like, business is the ultimate game. Yeah.

And I think any kid that grows up playing games, like I was just like, dude, what am I going to do? What if I can't find a game to play in real life? Turns out business is the best game. It is a game. Yeah, I play a little for night. Everything's a game. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Business is 24 seven sport. But like you're keeping your keeping healthy is a game to like managing relationships is a game to like we're playing a game right here right now, too. Absolutely. Yeah, I play a little for tonight, but no, like yourself while I'm playing, I'm like, wow, I could be making money. I could be doing vodka. Because when you're playing, you're like, I want to get better.

Like I played a couple of rounds of Fortnite and I'm sure like I felt like I played a lot of Counter-Strike growing up. Right. So like I was in a flow, but I'm just like, but like, I'm going to want to get good at this and I'm going to get addicted. But like, but you know, people talk about business being, you know, you got to allocate resources, right? What you really need to allocate is actually your attention. It's actually more about attention allocation than it is about resource allocation because

your attention controls your resources at the end of the day. And so the more you can shut things out from your life and the more you can hone in, the better you're going to do. 100%. I've actually heard VCs are focusing more on the founders these days. Yeah. Whether they could lock in or not. They should.

And then the ironic thing is VCs don't focus, right? Because they have they need to find a bunch of different bets to go for that multi-billion dollar outcome. Yeah. You ever dabble with rates money in that whole space? Yeah, we raised money for one software company, raised a couple hundred grand, and then we got it to like a couple hundred grand a year in ARR but like again coming down to focus again we're like we need to cut it because as even though it we can see it growing to

probably a couple million plus a year we're just like this is not where the opportunity is so we needed to shut it down and then we made a tough call there because the thing is we could have let that stick around it's like oh I have the software I this education thing over here I have this thing over here I have the software, I have this education thing over here, I have this thing over here, I have seven different things, I have this senior living business over here, whatever, right? But what ends up happening is like I'm now in eight different places. Right. It's cool that you're able to pivot like that, though, because a lot of I think that's the demise of a lot of business owners, right? Yeah, especially agency owners. A lot of agency owners try to do too many things. And that was me

in the beginning. I was like, well, you have this agency that's growing, but like, oh, look at this person doing courses over here. Oh, look at this person doing software over here. Like the grass is always greener, right? But the real reality is the grass is greener where you water it. I love that man. The one game I won't give up is chess. Yeah, I play every day.

Well, chess is like I think that's a little different, though, because it like it hones like this is why I'll play poker with friends, because like it's it's very strategic. And to me, poker is very much very much like real life right like chess is like you're kind of how do you think about it it's all skill based so if you lose a game of chess there's no luck involved you lost because you messed up somewhere yeah so I like that cool I like I've never played chess so I know wow yeah it's poker there's some luck but there's still a lot of term, it's skill. But it seems like chess, there's no it's like short term and long term. It's all skill, all skill, unless your opponent, like, luckily messes up. But that's like a rare thing. Oh, wow. No one's really messing up. It's like little things. Yeah. Even playing for a while.

I've been playing for two years, but it doesn't have to be like mental either. I do it in basketball. I do it in sports. You're tall, but it's just hard work and I pay for access. Cool. Well, chess.com. Like, what do you do? And you pay for like a coach? Yeah, got a coach. I studied YouTube. YouTube University.

Oh, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, these days you don't even need degrees, in my opinion, for most things. I'm with you on that. Yeah. I mean, YouTube is phenomenal in podcasting. I mean, why would you get pay 40k for degree in marketing when they could listen to your show? Because your parents tell you to. Yeah. Well, that's what worked for them. Yeah. That was before alternative media.

Totally. But now my mom's like the biggest listener of the show. Oh, well, even though we used to fight every day about academics, too. I'm sure you dealt with that too. Oh, all the time. How old are you right now? Twenty seven. Okay. Twenty seven.

Yeah. So she's probably loosening up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I had to loosen her up to. We found some middle ground now. Great. But I got a lot of Asian listeners, so I hope if they're listening to, you know, kind of follow this path. Yeah.

Tiger mom is good. Yeah, it's good in some ways, but just academic. A lot of trauma, man, because I was friends with Asian kids in school and they were. Oh, yeah, we have our trauma, but it's like the traumas were never good enough. Yeah. That's the trauma. Even an A grade wasn't good enough. Oh yeah, nothing's good enough.

But it's good in a way, right? Yeah. No, I love it now. Like there's that chip on my shoulder that will always stay there. It's like no matter what. And then if someone tries to reinforce that, like you're never good enough, all the trauma comes back and then you just push really hard. Facts, yeah.

Or you can be weak about it and then like cry about it. Yeah. Did you get bullied too growing up? Not really. I always found a way to kind of sneak into like whatever the popular group was. Or you could be weak about it and then like cry about it. Did you get bullied too growing up? Not really. I always found a way to kind of sneak into like whatever the popular group was. Like, because I was good at games and games were cool or I was like at least semi-decent. So I somehow found my way like around.

Like it wasn't always like I was top dog or anything, but I always found a way into these groups. Impressive. That's tough as an Asian. Well done. Yeah. Well, I mean, there were Asian popular groups or white popular groups, but I got along with everybody, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. And my school is mainly whites and yeah, no Asians in the popular group. Yeah. But I mean, you're like a tall Asian, right? Half white, they let you in? No. No? No.

That's unfortunate. I'm sorry. I was pretty weird, to be honest, but. We're all weird. Yeah. Yeah. I learned now that if you're normal, it's like a red flag, man. Yeah.

Because then you're going to get normal results. Yeah. Yeah. Better to be weird. If you're just acting like're normal, it's like a red flag. Yeah. Yeah. Because then you're going to get normal results. Yeah. Yeah. Better to be weird. If you're just acting like an NPC, I'm like, all right, this is weird to me. 100 percent. Yeah. Who you got coming on the show next? So we just had Seth Godin. And so he just went out like yesterday or the day before. Today's Friday, right? Yeah. Wednesday.

And then we have Anthony Pompeliano that should come out next week. Nice. And then we have, I'm going to be talking to my friend Jess Ma. So she's worth about $500 million. She's also a YPO member. She has two jets. She flies around. She actually lives in LA. Her main driver is like a Lambo. She's talked about all this stuff.

And like, yeah, she invests in a lot of different things. She's like realized, you know, that she likes doing that. And I think it'll be a great conversation. Like, I don't like the fact that, okay, she's a woman and she's a person of color. Like, that doesn't matter to me. Like, what matters is like she gets shit done. Right. Right. I think a lot of people get caught up with like, oh, you know, we need to meet like these

like quotas and things like that. Like, yeah, it's just that's just not what matters. Right. What matters is like, yes, it does matter. Like, sure, you should have some diversity of thought and opinion. But ideally, you're looking for people based on their immutable characteristics, right? Like what their character is and what they've done on their merit. Yeah. And that's why I like business because skin color, race doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

Height doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. If you're good at business, like let's hang out. Exactly. One of the tweets I liked about you, you said there's two type of friends, utility friends and friend friends. Yeah. I agree with that. You said there's two type of friends utility friends and friend friends Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah

so like this is interesting because I was speaking at a mastermind with my friend who so we were both speaking and and He sold his company for 250 million dollars and we're just talking about it and he's like, yeah, you know, there's one guy That's well-known I'm not gonna name any names, but but he's well known on YouTube, right? And he is all about like money, money, money. And he will he looks up to people that have a lot of money. Right. And he'll like he basically worships them. Right. But if you have less money than him, he treats you like you clearly have less money than him.

Right. So that's an example of utility for like he treats my friend pretty well because like he sold his company for 250. But he's constantly asking me, like, hey, so how are things going right now? You're making revenue on that thing right now? Like it's a competition, right? So it's like he wants something from someone. Now that's a utility friend, but a friend friend is like, you love them no matter what you love them for their character, right?

Like I had a friend recently, you know, reach out to me like regarding personal stuff. It's like, hey, how are you doing? Like, how are you holding up? Like blah, blah, blah. Right? And I was like, dude, I'm good, right? But, but like the concern that's there, like it's not about, hey, how are you doing? Like, how are you holding up? Like, blah, blah, blah, right? And I was like, dude, I'm good, right? But like the concern that's there, like, it's not about, hey, can I get something from this guy? It's like, hey, how is my friend doing right now? I love this person no matter what. And it's really hard to come across friend friends and we're talking about it.

And it was interesting because he looked at me, he's like, he's like, you're kind of a mix between the two, Eric. He's like, you're actually like a utility person until you trust someone. And then once I trust someone, they're like a friend friend. Like, I love them forever. Right. And so I think, yeah, more friend friends, but utility friends. They also have their uses, too. Yeah, I have both. I think it's important to have both.

Some people get offended if you kind of box them in as a certain type of friend. But, you know, I have friends that are broke. I'm not going to go to them for business advice. No, but like, by the way, like I still keep in touch with my high school friends, my elementary school friends. I don't know about you, but like I love them for who they are. It doesn't matter how much money they make and like we've grown together and like there's a role for everybody in your life.

You know what I mean? But you were probably growing at a quicker pace than most of them, I assume. Financially, at least. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it picked up and it picked up eventually. And, eventually and you know again I wasn't the top dog right so like you know it's sometimes it's tough to see that because like you have your high school friends see it and they're just like how is this happening? It puts up a mirror against them right?

And then what happens is like some of them won't talk to you anymore and that's fine like you know Charlie Munger says that the world is driven by it's not driven by by necessarily greed. It's driven by envy. Yeah. And so, um, but the real friends of real friend friends will stick with you. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, you also retweeted this graph. It was about the U S fertility rates. So it's at one point six four right now. So right now at the current pace, we're going to depopulate. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, everybody talks about this. Like Elon talks about this quite a bit. It's like if we continue to go down that rate, like there's gonna be way less humans and we could even go extinct.

Right. So we're not doing our job right now in terms of, you know, everyone should at least have two kids. Right. That's what it should be. We're at 1.64 right now. Korea is like even lower than that. Japan's pretty low too. And by the way, like Charlie Munger again, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. Well, why did this happen? Like, well, what happened in the last, I don't know, 30, 40 years or so, 50 years or so, contraception was invented, right? So now there's an incentive to keep hooking up.

But like, you know, the kids don't pop out. So that might be one of the reasons, right? But I just think I don't have much of an opinion here besides the fact that like we should be having more kids and I'm not an expert on this by any means, but that's why I retweeted it. I've changed my stance on it. I used to not want kids. I used to just be all about making money.

Yeah. But now I want kids. Yeah, it changes over time, right? It's like first it's all about money because like we came from nothing, right? Then it's like, okay, well now how can I add more to the world? Right? And you want some purpose maybe with the kids, right? Not that you don't have any purpose, but then even Neil, like we were both recording yesterday for marketing school,

and you know, he was just saying like he was all about money in the 20s. Like I, when I was like 24, I met him, like he was 25, right? All about money. All he talked about was money. I remember I had like a heartbreak with a girl and he'd be like, you just stare at me. And then he'd be like, so anyway, he'd go right back to business. And then like it's it's but now that he has two kids, he's just like, it's much more about family, it's much more about friends. And you realize that's all that matters at the end of the day. I love it. Yeah, because once you got a certain amount of money, how much more is going to change your life dramatically?

Yeah, it used to. Yeah, like 100 million is not going to be that different than a billion. And then the stories that you see is like the people that are billionaires, they're constantly looking at the next person that goes back to Envy again. Oh, he has that jet over here. He has that yacht over here. He has three more billion than me. Right. It's a never ending game and it's the wrong game to play.

Yeah, that's the wrong game. Do you have a set number or you kind of just go with the flow? I think 100 million liquid would be nice. But like reality is you don't really need much more than in my opinion, 50, right? 50 is pretty good. Like 50 is really good, right? Because if you're living on on five percent a year, like that's pretty damn good. Right.

A million. That's two point five, two point five. Yeah, that's two point five. Right. And so hopefully you can get a better return than that. But two point five is more enough to provide for your family. Yeah. And I think it's very possible like people might might think, oh, my God, 50 million.

Yes, you're in the you're in the one percent. Right. Probably higher than that for net worth. But let's go back to the agency again. You can start an agency for almost nothing. Right. And you can grow it and then maybe get it to you. Keep doing it for 10, 20 years or so.

Get it to five million in profit. Sell it for 10 X or so. OK, there's your there's your 50. Right. Maybe you get taxed on it. Maybe it ends up being like 25, 30 or so. Or you know what else you can do? I'll give a little more here. You can buy an agency.

You can, sorry, you can build an agency, build it to 5 million profit, private equity, partner up with them. Okay. And then private equity will go to you and say, okay, your company is worth $50 million, we'll give you 25 million. So 50%, you pocket that. And then the other 50%, you roll over. Okay. And we're going to, okay, and we're going

to build a platform and we're going to buy all these other companies. Sometimes the second exit might be like three, 400 million or so, you still own 50%. Maybe you're diluted a little bit, right? But let's just call it round numbers. That's another 200 plus the 25. That's 225, right? And so I think getting this knowledge out there, hopefully it helps more people understand that, hey, you see regular human beings doing this stuff, you can do it too. Yeah, you probably see it every day. Did the agency space get saturated when Aman Ghadi launched that course? I don't think there's any effect there.

I think it was good. Like my take on the courses is like, it's good. It's funny because I helped launch a course for this one company. And this is a guy that mentored people like the course was a guy that mentored Tony Robbins, for example. And one of the executives in the room, he's like, you know what education is about? He's like, what courses are all about? It's about perceived progress. And the entire room went silent.

And then the CEO started laughing. Right. And so it's like a lot of people like I hate using the word, but it's like mental masturbation. Right. Like I used to download a lot of courses and buy a lot of courses, but like it felt good. I got the dopamine hit, right? But did I really do anything about it? Sometimes I did, but most of the times I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could say that with books too, but yeah, it's all, I guess, if you take action on the information. Yeah. And to Iman's point, like I think he probably made a lot of

money off of that, right? Because he sold a lot, but how many people are going to actually take action? It's probably like 1%. Yeah. And that's still a good amount of people. Yeah. Well, Ty launched one too, right? Ty Lopez.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think a lot of people that launch these courses, like, I think it's like a short term grab and then what you realize is that courses are like a fine business, but you're probably going to get your course business to maybe like, you know, 15, 20 million a year max. And that's great. Right.

But, you know, if you really want to scale and anything, if you want to really build something that has enterprise value, then you probably need to build something more sustainable. I'm not saying build an agency, but, um, that's what it is. So like a community, right? Yeah. And like we were talking about Ty beforehand, like I think he's great, but like, you know, for example, we heard that, um, he's charging, you know, to,

to, if you want him to be on your podcast, he'll charge you like a significant amount of money. Right. And so that's like a nice, in marketing, we like to call it biz op, right? Business opportunity. And so maybe that's not the right application there, but anyway, I'm using that in this case. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, he's always thinking of creative ways. Yeah. You can't argue that he has a trendsetter. Yeah. He, he does great. So, I mean, he's the first course I remember. Maybe there were people before him, but that course just, I feel like it set the tone for the courses.

The courses are great. There's a guy, you know, I think so he did a dating course. He's like a marketer. His name was Eben Pagan, but he had like a David D'Angelo was just like he sold these dating courses, right? He made like a lot of money on that. There's another marketer named Frank Kern. He had like a lot of courses too, right?

And these courses generate millions. But the problem is you have to keep relaunching them. You have to keep updating the information, right? And now information is becoming so much more democratized. So what are you going to do long term? Yeah, I don't know if they're going to stick long term because now there's so much good information in books and on YouTube. Yeah.

I don't see. I mean, if you're a good marketer, you'll probably still get some revenue from it. Yeah. Yeah. I see masterminds of communities. I feel like those are going to do better. Yeah. I think Sam Altman has said this, right?

Communities, especially in-person communities, will be worth even more money in the next five to 10 years or so. Absolutely. YPO is probably worth a ton. I mean, they got so much good resources there. Exactly. Dude, what are you doing next? And where can people come up and meet you and pick up the podcast?

Just hit me at Eric O. SiU and then marketing school and leveling up would be the two podcasts, but on Twitter, on Instagram, those will be the spots. Perfect. We'll link below. Thanks for watching, guys. And thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for having me. Boom. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BedMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous

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