Eric Siu, CEO of Single Grain, Author of Leveling Up | How To Master The Game Of Life

Thanks again for joining me today. I'm very excited. I'm sitting down with Eric Sue. He is the author of leveling up how to master the game of life. If you are in marketing, if you are in sales, you've probably seen him somewhere. He is the CEO of the digital marketing agency single grain. They've worked with companies like Amazon, Uber, Salesforce. He works with Neil Patel. He hosts the podcast marketing school and growth everywhere where he dissects business at scale. A successful entrepreneur, a successful marketer earlier on in his life. And that's something we're going to touch on. He was also into eSports and poker, which I didn't know until I looked into your book. Eric, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate you giving us a little bit of your day. I know you're in the middle of a book launch on recording this, so it's probably pretty hectic. But I really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Scott. No, it's my pleasure. So like all of these, I want to chat about the book, but as we're just teeing this up, we were talking about how your life played a big part of this book. So walk me through quickly, you know, you have a really long career, a really extensive career, but walk me through quickly what your story is, how you got to where you are today. And then I think that's really going to tee up why you wrote the book and some of the content in the book as well. Yeah, so, you know, my story is I grew up kind of, you know, let's say, you know, wasn't didn't really excel at school and didn't really excel socially. And the thing that I was good at was games. It was really my escape. And it was where I was acknowledged. It was where I was part of a, you know, got to participate and be a part of elite teams and felt like I was contributing to something bigger than myself. And so, you know, a lot of the habits I learned from gaming, whether it's, you know, resilience, kind of, you know, more so, like communication, teamwork, that type of stuff, you know, carries over into real life. And, you know, very much every single day now, I feel like I'm playing a game. Really, life is a game. Business is a game. It's just puzzles that you have to solve every single day. And if you just think of it as, hey, you just have to level up 1% every single day, it just becomes a lot easier and understand that you're just going to continue to play until the day that you pass away. And it's just, it's a very liberating feeling to feel that way. I think it, I think it says some framework when you're looking at, at your life, which can be very daunting and very stressful to figure out where you're going to be, where you're going to end up, what you're going to do. Now, like throughout your career, like you've had multiple successes now, you're sort of a name like in marketing. I think that people, if they, if they've researched any sort of marketing, if they tried to look into, I guess the most prolific individuals who are, who have like, you know, who are doing things now, who are on the bleeding edge of strategy, technology, tools, whatever, like your name comes up. But that didn't, it didn't start like that, obviously. So how did you, how did you come to, like, how did you come to figure this out over your life, where you started to understand how to level up, how to sort of build that plan and use the mindset or the framework of leveling up of gamifying your life so that you could be successful. Is there a point in your life when you, you just got it clicked. Yeah, I think, you know, when it comes to, you know, when I was 10 or 11 years old, I was just like, if I could just find something that recaptures this feeling of waking up every day, feeling like I'm playing a game, then I would be set. And fortunately, you know, I was working a dead end job when I graduated college, because this was after the financial crisis, you know, my friend told me about this whole digital marketing thing. And from that point on, you know, first I started learning about, you know, SEO, paid media, email, all this different stuff. I just realized I was just playing a game. It's, it's very, I can kind of jump around if I want and just keep playing like I'm going to play whatever's interesting to me very much how, you know, it was for me growing up. And so that was kind of the aha moment. It's like, oh, this feels like a game. Okay, I'm just going to find other stuff that that's like that, right? Whether, you know, it could be business, right? It could be investing in another company. It's just there's different dynamics and there's different puzzles with each within everything. But I think at that moment with digital marketing, I just realized, oh, I can just reframe everything into a game. And it becomes a lot more fun. If I don't want to play anymore, I'm just going to stop, right? And if I don't like, you know, working with this particular particular person, I'm just going to stop as well. So, you know, that's what it is. And do you think that your, you said your background sort of led you to understand how to, how to game a file life? And I actually, I love the concept. I think it's something like you mentioned is very liberating. But when you, let's talk about the book because I think the book will give over some lessons that you've learned in your life. And, you know, obviously, people are going to get the book links in the show notes and whatnot and below the YouTube video and all that. But I still think that as you go through some of the lessons, just looking at the titles of the different chapters in the book. And I think it's out now. So, you know, you can go check it out. But that can really uncover some lessons. So, what? When you wrote this book, what this book seems to have been meant for a particular individual. Can you walk me through who you're writing this book for when you, when you decided to put this out there? Yeah. And by the way, you know, some of the things you said earlier, like I do feel like, you know, thanks for the kind words. I feel like I'm very much getting started right now. You know, obviously, you know, there's a lot of people that have been then, you know, kind of the, you can call them business or marketing influencers. Whatever it is exactly, it just a lot of this stuff just takes time, right? And so I'm 34 years old right now. And I still think that there's like, it's the very beginning for me. So this book is to me still feels like the very beginning. And part of the thing I talk about is this apprentice mentality. I'm happy to elaborate on it later. But in terms of who the book is for, it's really geared towards people that have played a game in their life. There's over three billion people in the world that have played at least one game. And especially the hardcore gamers, right? Because I was a hardcore gamer. It's understanding that hey, like, you know, you know, it's just kind of a reframe and understanding that, you know, all the time you spent doing this actually has a lot of value. You just can't over train in this virtual world. You have to bring it back to real life. So it's geared towards the gamers. That's one, but it's also geared towards their parents as well. Because I used to get in big fights with my parents all the time. This is a recurring story that's happening to all the gamers. They're their parents don't understand. And the kids want to do what they want to do. But I'm saying there's a happy medium. You can't over train too much in that world. And the parents, you know, should be, you know, curious about what they're what their kids are doing versus trying to fight them all the time, you know, which is what my parents and I did. So the other thing too is it is geared towards like a there's an overarching thing about, yeah, again, leveling up 1% better, you know, every single day, right? And I'm thinking every day of like just it's a gift. And you know, you're trying to, you know, go around life collecting power ups and habits and mental models. I love it. And you know, you like you mentioned this is for gamers, but the framework that you lay it out. So understanding that everything you achieve in life, like you said, that 1% better. And you have all these frameworks to sort of help you succeed because when you set your life up as a game, now each milestone no longer seems so far away. Everything seems very tangible. It seems like it's very simple to accomplish those things as long as you keep moving in the right direction. The audience that could benefit from this, you know, seriously without blowing smoke is much is much larger than just gamers. I think this is just really, really, really great business advice. Now perhaps it's because of your experience in your background, you understand it through the lens of a gamer, but this is just a smart way to approach life and business in general. And actually what I really like about the book is it just breaks down so it's really simple and succinct. So it's not complex. It's not confusing because when you look at life like a game, all of a sudden, life seems like something you can actually, you know, success, whatever that definition of success is. It's something you can now achieve. It's no longer, it's no longer stressful or something that seems just to be like this like far away goal, right. Anyways, I want to I want to hear more from from you. I'm just I'm sorry I'm getting psyched about this topic because it's something that I find very interesting. Yeah, so so let's let's break it down. Let's break down some of the lessons that you've learned over your career that you speak about in this book and there's there's a few that like there's I can't remember there's a what there's 15 different chapters and there's a whole and there's like a lesson per chapter. So let's, you know, for the value of people listening, pick your favorite ones that you want to that you want to speak on. I don't know which ones you'd like to touch on, but I'm sure there's a few favorites that you love and we can go into those and unpack what those are and how those can help you succeed. Yeah, totally. So there's 15 powerups in the book and powerups to me are again, like I mentioned, they're either habits that you cultivate or mental models such as understanding things like second order consequences and things like that. There are different tools that you can go around collecting just like you would in the gaming world. Now, I talk about 15 in the book, it's just a very beginning. There's a lot more than 15 powerups in the world and you have to there's positive powerups and there's negative powerups, right? Too much fast food than you end up, you know, your body goes in a different direction, right? And so one of the chapters is titled Thevery and I think there's a cog there's a lot of cognitive dissonance around it because us as human beings, we like to think I'm original, right? We hold this thing to be very sacred and I think it's important to understand that even Apple, the most valuable company in the world, you know, when Steve Jobs came out with the mouse and the graphical user interface gets we stole it from stole from Xerox, right? And so even him, he said in life, everything is just a remix. And when you think about SpaceX and Elon Musk's rockets coming back to earth, the rocket design is still fundamentally the same foundational design as from the 50s or the 60s, right? The big difference is they come back to earth. And so, you know, Picasso himself has said that, you know, everything in life, I mean, great artist steel, right? And so it's like, oh, my God, I don't want to steal. I don't want to be a thief, but like reality is those of you listening to this podcast right now, you're trying to get at least one nugget from it and you're trying to apply it to your life. And so life is just you're going around collecting all these nuggets. And then maybe you're making a 10 to 30% iteration, right? Like that iteration for bringing the rocket back to earth, that's a massive iteration, right? It's not easy to do by any means, but he had to combine, you know, Elon and his entire team had to think about, okay, you know, how, what are all the dynamics that are at play and how can we make this work, right? So there's a game within itself there. So my point is, you know, I think the sooner people let go of the pressure of having it be completely original, the easier it's going to be for people to kind of move on and make the best version of themselves, which is in itself, you know, very original. We're all original, we're all kind of one of one. Yeah, and I would say that to constantly think that the things that we have to do in life or take to market or like let's, let's look at it from an entrepreneurship lens. If you want to, if you want to do something that's slightly outside of whatever your nine to five is, or if you already are trying to take a product to market. There's sort of two ways you can go about it, right? You can go for that blue ocean where you're taking something to market that's never ever been done before. Or you can just iterate in an existing market and be wildly successful. So there's something to be said for not making life harder than it has to be for you either, right? And you'll still be successful. You'll still be revered and you'll still be like you're not, you're not, like you said, not thieving in a bad way, but just iterating on what people have already done. And I think that's something that also probably lends a little bit of insight to your apprentice mentality, learning from others as well. It's not obviously in the same context, not thieving, but it's not like just learning and iterating, but it's also making sure that you don't have to go through all the failures. And that other people have already learned from, right? Yep, totally. I mean, so it's, you know, the apprentice mentality is really just, you know, understanding that you're never going to be too high on yourself or never going to be too low on yourself. It's, it's understanding that, you know, you can have strong views, but you should just hold them very weekly. And if you present it with new data, new information to be ready to adjust on the fly, because the more ego that you, that you develop, the more, the more you're going to be stuck in your ways, but the world's evolving so quickly, especially with all the stuff we see with technology. So it's, so apprentice, apprentice mentality, I don't want to get it twisted. So it's not, it's not just you going out towards and going, finding mentors and getting people to help you out. It's truly, I understand what you're saying now. So it's, it's just having this, this humble, this humble persona that allows you to accept learning from other people, right? It's more than just finding mentors, okay? I mean, like, you know, when I, so for example, I've been hanging out a lot in clubhouse, but when I, when I go into the rooms, you know, I try to listen and I try to be the, the idiot in the room, right? So when I approach things from an idiot, kind of a, or apprentice, I'm not gonna say, you know, apprentice or idiots, but like I'll take it even further, right? I'll use an extreme word to say, oh, look, I'm not so smart. I have a lot to learn. But, you know, sometimes I'll see people join the room and there's a lot of bravado, there's a lot of ego, and you can tell they're closed off to listening. They're closed off to learning. It's, it's my way or the highway. In some cases, they might be large influencers. And, you know, but, you know, they haven't learned to kind of maybe they might have had the apprentice mentality at one point, but they haven't dialed it back and, and kept that habit going right. They haven't cultivated or, or more so refreshed that habit over and over. Yeah. And, and that, I think that the most successful people, at least the people that I've found in my life that are the most successful that could be worth multi millions or billion dollar plus in total net worth. Those are the people like when you do speak to them when they constantly have successes and wins, you can see that the second they, they implant themselves into into a group that they immediately just like they just want as much information as possible. And I think that the people you're speaking about, I think it's probably a little bit more prolific on clubhouse just because if clubhouse in some of the rooms, not all of them, on some of them. And I know you're like, I watch all your stuff. I follow you on social. You're always on clubhouse, always speaking about clubhouse. I think that there's a lot of people that kind of flex on clubhouse. A little bit more than they should. And that doesn't help anybody, right? It's not going to, it's not going to help them. But I think they put a ceiling on their success 100% because. Yeah, I love sharing the numbers, right? You know what, when I make clubhouse, but I don't do it to flex and I always try to preface that like this is not to brag. It's just saying, hey, this is what's possible, but it also takes this amount of time to get there. So I come from position of trying to be transparent, but teaching as well. But I think to your point, when you're just flexing about, oh, you have, you know, you bought this company, this public brand over here. And then you, you, you took this company public or whatever, you know, how helpful is that really? Are you just, is that more ego than anything? Like how helpful is that generally? It's not going to help many people who want to do something more with their life or, you know, start a sidehouse. So like they're not, most people are not trying to take a company public. Most people are just trying to do better at what they're doing, right? They, you know, maybe IPO is a plan for some, but I think the majority of people would learn more from a chat with you than somebody who just lists off the company to take in public. You know, the success they've achieved is great. It provides credibility, but it doesn't actually offer tactical or tangible insight or lessons that somebody can take away, right? Like you mentioned that nugget. People list no podcasts. They want to nugget. They want something they can take away and they can do tomorrow, really. If you just keep flexing, it's not going to help anybody. And I think that that's something that. You know, it's almost like those are the people, even if they have had success, I prefer not to learn from them just because I know that where their heads at where their minds at is not in the place where they're going to accept other points of view, accept other opinions. And actually, it's funny because you see people that were wildly, wildly successful, you know, the monetarily successful or what otherwise. And over the past 20 years, they become irrelevant, right? Those are the people that just they they had success and they became completely irrelevant because I think they never had this. I've never heard of frame this way, but apprentice mentality. That's a very, very, very smart point. Now these these these level ups, these these power ups are these mindsets or are some of them actual behavioral items or like daily routine items that you can that you can do to sort of accomplish that 1% day over day. Yeah, some of it is is mindset. So we have one on endurance, right? So that's really, you know, how much pain can you take because any level of success you're hoping to achieve, you know, pain is a prerequisite, right? I think people tend to run away from the pain, but reframing your mind into running towards it and getting through it, right? You know, there's a lot of people like when you're thinking about starting a new business or whatever. You know, you go through imposter syndrome. That's part of you have to endure that. There's the startup the startup kind of, you know, that that one or two or three years that it takes to get things going, right? Just things don't work out the right way. Initially things don't go as planned. Maybe some type of pandemic hits like just things don't work out, right? But it's you have to learn to endure. And so I learned a lot of that from from poker, having to endure like sometimes you have swings where you lose for could be three, six, 12 months at a time and you just have to learn to deal with it and then be patient and choose how you how you react to that, right? So some of its mindset, some of it would be, you know, habits, but you know, it's what they say the cliche you hear over and over is, you know, oh, it's all about mindset at the end of the day. You hear it from a lot of kind of self-development people. And it's actually true. It's how you're programmed at the end of the day. That's how I like to think of it. You know, what type of information are you consuming? And that's really going to program you. That's going to guide you who are you hanging out with, right? That is your programming and that's going to say how you take you decide to do things in the future. And I'm curious for for yourself, where do you where what do you use to dictate what you're going to look at or what you're going to spend your time or effort or energy in in the future? What's your what's what guides you there? Yeah, I mean, my overall life missions to level up the world. And so I'll never accomplish that mission. And it's a very broad thing. And I can wake up every day and just feel like I'm working towards it, right? Like even doing this podcast right now, A, it spreads the message around the book, but I also know I'm educating people as well. And I'm also articulating my thoughts. So I'm educating myself around the message. Like after doing a hundred podcasts for the podcast tour, like I would say it's very important because it's it's helped me kind of level up, you know, how I want to tell the story because I've done the repetition so many times. So, you know, for me in terms of how I'm thinking about things long term, it's to me, it's a it's a game that will never end. And I'm just going to keep playing and I want to keep thinking about things long term. I just want to buy and hold businesses that are related to marketing as I build the marketing audience, but as I build this leveling up audience that thesis is I'll be able to address a larger total addressable market. And you know, we'll be able to serve that audience that way. So that's the thesis. I think it's going to take a while to build the movement up, but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far with the book being out for the last couple of days. Yeah, no, it's I was following you on on Instagram. And I think there's there's already pretty pretty significant success. So it's it's resonating with people obviously. Now, obviously, people are if you're getting this book, it's coming from you. I you know, I don't want to get it twisted. This is not a marketing book. This is not a book that's going to teach you what's happening next to marketing. Where to spend your time? Where to spend your energy? This is like this is in my opinion, much more valuable than that because it's a mindset and it's a way to accomplish things in life. Right. Let's you know, I want to I think that we went through some good stuff. Is there any other items in the book any other pieces or or like lessons, you know, like I said, there's 15 different 15 different chapters or power ups in it. So you're going to go get the book and you're going to go read through each one. But is there anything that you know you wanted to bring out before we move on past the book? Yeah, I mean, it's the whole concept of the, you know, CEO of a company called convert kid. I put his concept in the book. It's called the wealth ladder. Right. It's understanding that, hey, like in the very beginning of of life, like you have to go to school, you learn, right. And then after that, you start to build great habits. You know, that's part of this book is is helping build great habits and great mental models. But after that, maybe you go get a job and then maybe you decide to start a side hustle while you're having the job support your, your kind of your day to day expenses, right. But then after that, you can maybe, you know, you start to start the side hustle, maybe it becomes like a full-blown agency and then or you can have a drop shipping business. You're full on holding inventory. And you take the cash flows, you can keep leveling up if you want. You can go reinvest it in other types of businesses by other businesses, right. Or you can build a platform company or a network effects business, right. So you can keep leveling up if you want. And you don't have to go to the next level if you don't want to, right. There's a lot of pressure to keep, you know, comparing ourselves to someone else, but also keep in mind, even though you don't have to get to the next level, you also don't, you can't complain too. Like a lot of people complain about, oh, it's, it's unfair or whatever. The only reason you're not at the next level that you want to be at is because you haven't defeated the boss at the current level. You don't deserve to go to the next level until you beat the current one. I love that. That's a, that's a, it's a modern way of saying enjoy the journey. Because I think the people try and get, they get, try and get there too quick. And like, I love, you know, that's something I've never heard. It's so refreshing. You said you have your goal, you have your goal, but you know it's unachievable. You know it's unattainable. People will be like, why would you ever have that goal? Because it's now a vision. It's, it's steering everything you do in life towards something that's meaningful to you. And wherever you end up, at least you've, you've moved in that right direction. So moving that direction constantly. I love that. That's very, very smart, very, very smart. Okay. So I'm just going to, so we'll, so go get the book. It's, it's, I don't, when I do these podcasts, a lot of people who talk on them have books. And I don't say go get the book as often as I think I said in this podcast. It's because I've actually enjoyed, I've, no, I've read some of the beast. It's just, it just really resonates with me because I think that that's without knowing how I try and look at my career and my life. And when you read something like that, it's sort of is when it just lays out and puts pen to paper about how you think about life. It's a very, it's a very impactful thing. Appreciate it. Yeah. No, very, very well, very, like, very well written and I love the, I love the thoughts that go into this. Okay. So let's, you know, mindful of the time. I want to make sure that we tedious up with just a few quick, almost like rapid fire questions that will give our audience a little bit more insight into you and your career and sort of your thoughts on a few different life lessons and insights. So the first thing I'm just curious about for yourself, where is your focus in the world of marketing right now? What's your interest? And I know clubhouse is probably one of them, but at a higher level, what are you looking at? Yeah. I mean, for me, it's just where can I, where can I buy kind of, you know, other types of businesses, where I think it's a one plus one equals five type of output, meaning that I'm looking for points of leverage. So there's a, there's like a, there's an agency that I'm looking to buy. They're doing, you know, you know, close to $8 million a year or something like that. And I'm looking at, okay, if I buy this company, do they have a strong website? Can I use it for SEO purposes? Their team? Can we use it to grow all the other projects that we have internally to, do they have a strong executive team? You know, I'm looking for, you know, not just, hey, what are the cash flows of business? It's a very strategic type of buy. And so I'm constantly looking at what opportunities are out there, whether it's a software company or an agency type of business, and just continuing to add it to the marketing audiences that we continue to build. So clubhouse, like you just mentioned, that's for me to continue to build my audiences. Like we're trying to compound our audiences on YouTube, on clubhouse, on Twitter, on Instagram, all these channels, right. We're doing an okay job of it right now. I think I'm probably doing the best on clubhouse because it's, it's literally me. And so the whole thesis here again is, look, you know, as long as we can continue to build the audience, we can continue to serve them. Like if you look at the biggest brands out there, it's the kind of lead with the brand first, and then they build the business around it afterwards. So. So points of leverage is, that's something that's smart as well for anybody who is trying to maybe has already sort of gone down a route of building something themselves or trying to figure where to spend their time. It's a topic that's discussed frequently with people that have seen some level of success. You can work very hard, but if you're not working very hard towards the right thing, or if you're not investing, either your time or money or otherwise, and the right thing, it's going to be difficult to get to where you want to go. So points of leverage is definitely a smart one. If somebody wants to, I asked this question, but it's tough to ask you because the question is, if somebody wants to pursue a career similar to yours, what should they do? But your career is so multifaceted. I would say if somebody wants to venture and take the first step towards and emulate the first step that you took in your career when you moved from, I guess, the Eric before that was working in dead and jobs or wasn't happy to what you're doing now. What was the first step that you would recommend they take? Yeah, I think it's, if I were to go back and talk to my younger self, it's just at home right now I'm traveling, but I have this turtle in front of my monitor and it reminds me to slow down. And so understanding that things take a long time, they take decades to get there, but also understanding to operate with a short term urgency type of mindset, meaning that you work really hard, but you understand that things will take time to compound that you don't need to stress over it. That's what I would tell myself, but the earlier the younger self, I would also say, hey, like, you know, try to focus on, you know, the one area that you're building leverage around. So for me, it's marketing obviously, but at the time in the very beginning, I had a, I bought a magic website, right, a magic e-commerce website. I had an IT training website, I had a senior living business, right, I was trying every single new opportunity that popped in under the sun and I wasn't focused. Now we have a lot of things going on, but at least it's around marketing. So, you know, we can kind of build it all together and one thing affects the other one. So I would just say if you're going to try a bunch of different things, which I don't recommend in hindsight, but I think some people just want to do that. Just try to keep it related so you can kind of help it everything. So I don't regret kind of, you know, all the things that have built up to now. And like I said, I still feel like I'm getting started, but I would just say like had I just focused on one thing in the very beginning, it would be a different story. So yeah. Yeah, no, that's a good idea. Very, very, very smart. And I think that that shiny object syndrome is real, right, when you, when you first start venturing out and doing things, because you realize that you can literally do anything you want. And if you're a hard worker, like, go ahead, sorry. I'll tell you what, I mean, in the books got like, you know, I have this, this diagram. So those of you that are watching the video right now, I'm drawing a circle. So the success is on all the edges of the circle. And you start in the middle of it. If you just stay focused on one thing, you're going to hit success very quickly. But if you keep going in all these different directions, you're pulling all these different directions, you're just going to stay within the circle and you're never reach one of the edges. That's a good analogy. I like that. What is a resource or a person that has helped you along the way that you would recommend people go check it could be book podcasts, mentor, something. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think my podcast co-host, Neil Patel, I think he's always worth looking into. Some people, you know, love him more, hate him. But what you can respect is his work ethic. And, you know, once you get to understanding more, he's all about giving, right? And fundamentally, what you see, the reason a lot of people know him, he's been doing business 11 years longer than I have. But he's always given first and people might say, oh, you shouldn't be giving out so much. Most of what he does is just give, give, give. And I've learned a lot from that. And that's largely how my businesses are structured. And by the way, that's also a very smart business strategy. If you're ever in doubt, if you just give a lot, it tends to pay back in any industry. A very, very, very good person to go check out as well. What else? Okay, you kind of answered less than you tell your younger self, which is always important. For the podcast, what does success mean to you? Yeah, success to me is being able to work on whatever I want to work on each day, right? So whether it's on family or whether it's on work, I think it's having to free them to do what I want. That to me is success. Very good answer. And most importantly, where can people connect with you? Social, where can I get the book? I'm assuming Amazon and some other retailers, but let me know where we can go connect with you online. Yeah, I mean, you can go to your favorite online retailer or you can go to levelingup.com. So there's a whole game to acquire that domain. And you can hit me on social on Instagram or Twitter at Eric OSIU, Eric OSU. You