Liquidity & Liquor - Eric Siu | How to Be a Better Marketer

Welcome to success story the most useful podcasts in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network The HubSpot podcast network has other great podcasts like marketing made simple hosted by Dr. J. J. Peterson Marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly make it work now If any of these topics out interesting to you, you're going to love his show had a right and deliver captivating speeches Had to market yourself into a new job how design can help and potentially hurt your revenue and how to create a social media ad strategy That works if these topics hit home and their things that you want to learn about go listen to marketing made simple wherever you get your podcasts Today you're going to hear an episode of my new podcast liquidity and liquor I co-host liquidity and liquor with Joseph Martin a serial entrepreneur who sold his last company boxy charm for over 500 Million dollars on liquidity and liquor we have conversations about business money and life with some of the most interesting people in the world You can download and subscribe to liquidity and liquor on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts Let's kick us off sure let's do an intro so Eric soon Eric soon. I got connected on clubhouse right we did and That's how you guys met Yeah, a lot of good people get to meet on clubhouse back in the day today. That's the only value I got from that media couple great people That's what you should do. I never got into it and he was ripping on me last night for not getting in the club Well, no, no, you see a lot of hours. I mean there's days where I spent like 14 hours on this. It was bad Clubhouse was clubhouse was when everyone were at home Not able to get out. Yeah minus Miami Um, and that's what it became a thing right so I was I just you know, I broke up with makes and I was by myself at night Not sad or anything, but I was in clubhouse suddenly you get connected with friends that you've seen before Suddenly new friends and all that and one of the good people I met was Eric Sue The time he just moved to Miami. He was a COVID refugee, right? I would Miami a little bit after. Yeah a little bit after and so Eric is He's a marketer a businessman and a multi-millionaire self-made very young guy to Claim for that did but he did very very good for himself And I feel like every time we talk we I come out smarter and I wanted to bring him on a show So everyone else can come out smarter Eric Couple words about yourself. Couple words. Well, thanks. I mean a I get smarter every time I talk to you guys So you're very kind. Um, no, I mean as as Joe or Joseph says of Fodcaster marketer I love early stage investing and yeah, I just love learning and teaching I think if you're to strip away everything like what do I actually enjoy doing? I just love learning and teaching So this like I'm learning from you guys and hopefully we get to teach some things to the audience So yeah, yeah, I mean, that's what we're doing that. That's why that's why I started podcasting That's literally what you started doing too. It's a lot of fun. You get to chill with the release of our people Where where you know, I have I did a background I did a background to podcast with you when you launched your or released your book And I actually don't even remember because I don't think I did a good job of it In hindsight like actually asking where you came from yeah, because you weren't just always in agencies But I don't now I'm foggy, but where you actually came from so did you exit a company build one up work for somebody Pivoting agency. I don't know that story. I was actually telling Joe that the the story um, so I was leading marketing at a at a tech startup before and there's a host we can come back to that story a little bit Because I actually tried to buy the company a year ago. Uh, it's funny. So so um, but This startup I was at I basically um, bet the entire company I gambled the entire company on YouTube ads because I started there And the CEO was like hey like numbers aren't going I was like dude I've been here for a month and he's like yeah numbers aren't going well like if we don't hit numbers this month We're gonna have to let you go. I was like okay, so that I was like okay all in because I come from a gambling background Right. Yeah, so all it and it worked out like we were requiring like you know 500 600 users a month and it was an online education company and then we shot up to like 5,000 month and we're often races got our series being all that Then I was um my my friend Neil Patel who I do a podcast with now um He was like dude like you help this company can you help save this agency and I was like not interested because I'm like oh I'm in tech. I'm too good for agency right and so so then so then I'm like but then I reframed I was like wait wait wait if I can save this crappy company I think I can do anything and so came into um single grain long story short um, that's a name single grain The agency that I own yeah, yeah, six months into it the um founders original founders decided that they wanted out And the work that we were doing was no longer working anymore because of Google's algorithm updates And so I was like hey, you know what? I'll take it over and so I was 27 years old had no Business even trying to run a company. Um, I bought Neil shares for for I paid a dollar for 10% of his shares And I paid another dollar for his partners um shares And then the rest was seller finance. I didn't even know what the term seller financing meant and actually I promptly it's like oh what a winner if you're so smart But then I actually made the company go from bad to worse a year later the outside accounting firm was like hey It might be time to shut this thing down. I was like So I ended up taking um, I actually had accepted a job offer that was like pretty lucrative um and And you're gonna go back to like work for someone. I was gonna go work for someone And then this is a this is like Oh like 2014 by the way, and then and then like I was just like oh So we know that yeah actually what what am I talking about? I'm pretty old. Yeah, so So I was like do people cost on this show? Yeah, it's like fuck I can't do this So so and then like I was actually looking at apartments in uptown Dallas. I was like fucking dead Nothing wrong with Dallas guys, which is not for me. We love Dallas. Yeah, we love Dallas So I was like I can't do it and then um, I was like let's do it Went all in and then um on the company and we slowly were able to build it up But I just learned a lot in that year So that's how I eventually took over single grain and then Made it into what it is now and then I just don't know what it is now It's still yeah, it's it's your still your agency. It's still your baby, but that's sort of been the thing I'm gonna be pleased you have now So we have about 60 it's eight-figure business. I'll leave it at that and then Last year we bought two other agencies and I really just like the cash flow from the agency to continue to help Build out other stuff, right? It's built the podcast. It's built out the other stuff and the great thing is like I actually did a little short the other day talking about how like I know a couple people that have agencies Boots drop them up to like north of nine figures, right? One guy just goes and buys internet businesses And then obviously my podcast co-host Boots dropped it to north of a hundred million in like four years And then you have like obviously the Gary V's of the world. So it's actually a great business I used to poo poo on it because I was like oh, it's service and it's not scalable But reality is you can actually the multiples you can get on agency or not So I'll pause for a second because I've been talking for a bit now actually so I saw your Your either I think I saw it on an Instagram. Yeah, they showed that you might talking about how can you grow it Top on a hundred million in cell and and that's that's true because when you look at companies There is no knowledge everywhere what what what we do right internet marketing a social media marketing is not something that Everybody knows and when you don't know you don't know who's good, right? So there's a lot of reference of who's good and eventually when you find someone that works for you You let them run your business and agencies come in and they take a big chunk of a lot of companies money Hopefully they know what they're doing. Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully they know what they're doing a lot of them are good with promoting themselves more than the actual Company that I would argue most agencies suck at promoting those 100 percent. I would also argue the most agencies suck Yes, in general, so I hated agencies I was like why would I do this they've always been crappy whenever I've worked with them when I was like in house Why would I do this it's such a terrible business? I think you realize oh such a reality if you have an agency that is Really good day this you say well, I'll pay a lot of money, but I want exclusivity for for example for that category Don't do those competitors for instance and the ones that are but oftentimes I found that companies that do well with an agency It's because someone in agency had some of if any some new tactic might have been a strategy How to go and push some content well It has a short lifespan and then eventually they're back to square one But they keep the agency forever because they're not literate of how they did this and just They roll with that with that company forever now. They're just not doing the same job. They don't produce the same It's I always believe that companies should learn how to promote to do marketing themselves You bring an ad agency to work alongside as if you have another employee and then he said listen We can work and if you do better than then our team good our team is gonna come up tomorrow with something new But but it it makes more sense or to fill in gaps where there's gonna be a shortage of employees or so on where you can go and take on and And then I but I think I always said like you have to understand marketing I always you wouldn't even know who's a good agency I'll tell you the game with what you know the nine-figure plus agencies. It's literally It's hiring people that have been account managers at these other agencies right and they have all the relationships Because it's all relationship driven like yeah We have someone that um was with us at a publicly traded health company And then she went over to lift and then she went over to this other company She's been following us the whole time same with someone else that was like at a steel company publicly traded And then she moved over to Nasdaq right and they just like once you you're comfortable with someone you know like and trust them You just so then what happens is as you grow bigger you just keep hiring these account directors And people that have grown these agencies been there done that have anything to bring 30% of the roller dicks It's it's worth it. It's for itself. Absolutely. Yeah, and so like that's literally how they they ramp and like even You would think that a lot of the lead flow comes from the agency, but no It's like 50 plus percent referral for these nine-figure plus agencies But how do you actually find okay? So if you're a company. I just want to go back to your point um because I've had the issue of hiring an agency the sucks and hiring Repeat agencies. It just don't deliver right yeah, so um As a company, how do you find an agency that can actually market for you Act that act as that outsourced employee what do you look for in an agency? How do you audit them because that's probably a big pain point to people are like Early stage found all the way through the late stage that are just trying to tack on or both on a marketing department I don't think the three of us here would actually go find an agency I think we would go find like like an individual that's been there done that so if I were to look for like a good marketer I'd actually just use one of those sites like marketer hire.com. I love marketer people Yeah, and then that's what I would do and then and then the only agencies I would really take a look at would be like these pay for like if we're talking about media Like I have a couple of friends that have these paid media agencies. It's pay for performance only One guy does like 57 million a year and he has like 20 employees But it's literally he just focuses on the finance niche and it's all pay for performance and so aka You don't pay us into a perform that that that's a pretty damn good offer. Yeah Versus like right now like yesterday like A couple days ago like people were asking and say oh, you know We have this one client that wants to spend a couple million dollars a month like what should we be charged and should be charging Percentage like even in my mind. It's like that doesn't really compute I'm like they can just go build the team, you know, so like I just yeah again It goes back to looking at great individuals and I probably go for them first and then I go for the performance But when the when you don't know like when you don't look I hired Uh someone that was the same of carnival cruise line and uh and then I mean obviously it's a mistake because what the hell then about marketing But still still what you learn is the way they operate They're not trying to build anything themselves if it's a corporate company because if there is a failure It's on them If I hire an agency and I work for a corporation that agency fell don't blame me They like to cover so the and that's when you see lots of companies die if you want to see the morgue for companies It's the companies that just get agencies to do it that's for them. It's a ultimate CYA cover your ass weapon Yeah, yes, but like like So when I when I walked into my current company we were spending Just shy 50k a month on an agency that the row as was like insignificant on the total Between the ad spend plus the agency fees. So I mean You do have to you have to bounce that out because of course 50,000 you could hire a whole marketing team But there's a lot of cheaper agencies that you could work with now What was my point with this? Oh, it's just that as a as an early stage founder You don't know where to spend your money. So pay performances great But you also may not be able to like know who to hire either because you've never hired a marketer before You know, you're trying to build something on the ground. So well, I think it's important to define the the outcomes I think most people go for the job description first and they just like I used to like just cut them pace and they're like Went wrong many times there, but it's like like let's say I'm looking to hire CEO like maybe they've managed a hundred million dollar P&L they've built on an executive team and then I'm like grading them on those three to five outcomes And then like I think most people don't think about those outcomes And so when you start interviewing these people you're not testing for those questions You start asking a bunch of bullshit like inconsistent questions and that leads to terrible results because you ask terrible questions That goes back to your point the story that you always tell about when you hire a marketer What would you do with uh, yeah, I go I go tactical My my thing was when I hire a person and you can only do it if you actually understand if you know what if if it's marketing Then yeah, it's like a mechanic like if you have a car shop, right? You're a mechanic you ask a mechanic. Okay. What do you do if the the crankshaft on Chevy 67 is but you'll ask Tactical questions to see if he knows what what he's talking about so when I ask questions I wanted to understand was you did you actually get your hands dirty? Did you do okay? So you did on the low level with 5,000 because my question was 5,000 dollar What do you do should you run a company you run and marketing with 5,000 down? I give you a hundred thousand now I give you a million dollars. I want to see have you ever scaled so don't just tell me you're your kid that only did little Marketing by himself and that's where you stopped and then I'm gonna try to hire you as a director No, you need to know a little bit more than that right, but then don't tell me I was a manager. I was parachuted I've never actually got my hands dirty I've never actually had my my account. I never opened an account on On Google ad since I have nothing so if if I and I can you can only tell that by by tactical question So that always mine you're doing is you're testing for their strategic thinking at the end of the day And so like what we do is we have people fill out a written prompt So maybe there's there's three to five tactical questions and let's just got like you know I don't we're not like designers, right? Yeah, maybe you might be but like I'm not like I might go to one of my This is the design of Very design well. I'm just I'm just in Canva. That's it. That's the extent of my design skills So so we would go to our like are really good design friend and then say hey like what questions would you ask and could you help me evaluate these questions? Yeah, that's the easy way easier way out. That's smart Yeah, you know the toughest one for me was to hire an AI person I had no one in the company had to clue what to ask what anything right even my nothing So the first one was just a punch in your teeth. It was just horrible. Yeah And and one one one thing I did learn when you hire a person any person Right, it doesn't matter if it's AI or whatever it is sometimes you'll find people with PhD, but they'll be More intimidating because you think they're smart and they're genius and but then you said okay, go to basic Let's see if they understand the actual business Can you put it in the lamest terms? How are you gonna go and fix that problem that I have if I couldn't understand that I'm not hiring you You needed to understand my business So if if you're doing AI you have to put it later on in zeros and ones Can I actually add on a point to that though? I do believe the people don't ask for help enough What I mean by that is if there is a complicated role like an AI role and you've never hired for AI And you don't have anyone your network if you actually just reach out to people that were in AI at Google on LinkedIn and said Hey, I'm a first-time founder or I'm an early-stage founder trying to hire an AI person No one on my board knows Can you give me like five questions to ask them? Yeah, people would just give you the questions to ask them and then you can pay them too You could get one of those AI experts and have them come on the pod and then you can just ask them That's my secret Since you're already with us tell me something. Yeah, I think I think Building a network of people always makes you More more resourceful and being smart up asking for help like you said yeah, right? If you're if you're resourceful then use that resources that you have so I think resourceful Entrepreneurs are more likely to be successful because they have people to ask they have people humble on the internet It's resourceful entrepreneurs. You did the three traits man humble hungry smart. Yeah, yeah, it's good When you jumped into single grain How did you screw it up at the beginning? Oh, I can talk all day sexual arrestment losos Yes, so I okay, I We were based in SF learned Soma and I was like hey guys We're gonna we're gonna shut down the office and so and I when I wouldn't shut down the office So I was like no, we're gonna go remote. Oh, and so I made these sweeping changes I'm like okay, so SEO's not working anymore Let's do content marketing and then I hired someone that had experience doing content marketing But the the quote from Reagan is trust but verify I never verified like how the word was going right We did eventually open up another office in Santa Monica And then I actually read this book called I'll let my people go surfing So Patagonia guy just gave away the whole thing right written by the Patagonia founder and basically it's like yeah People don't want to be micromanaged, you know my people go surfing at lunch. I was like great. Let my people go surfing So I stopped showing up to the office and Verimide anything and then and then like people were just like quitting back and forth I was hearing like people were just like coming into work with pajamas You read a book that says just just don't want to book the people I feel like there was probably a lesson in there, but I think there was probably like Oh, I took it to I took it to literally and also because it felt good, right? Yeah, and so the book is great Don't get me wrong the book is great. Everyone should read that book But I was just like okay, this seems right and because I had come from remote working before at the previous start I'm like, yeah remote makes sense And then I came in biggest thing I learned was I used to think culture was a bunch of baloney right we all know that's not true It's it's everything and I came into the company. I built no report with anybody And in fact like I was interviewing each person just to see their skillset But I was like this tech prick right and so like you were bad then I was bad. I was really bad Um, and then you know look at at the end of the day like I still I still talk to a lot of the people And like we joke right about like how bad it was back then But eventually like I got lucky the only reason the company was saved ironically was because of SEO So I when I joined the company We were getting like four thousand visits a month to the site right nothing much And I just we're doing a ton of guest blocking So like what that means is like, you know, I'd write something on a hub spot And then there'll be a link on the very bottom Eric Sue runs digital marketing agency single-brain anchor text right So we shot up to number one for the word digital marketing agency And then that's how we started getting like Uber that's how we started getting Oh to go and do SEO for Uber yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, so we started getting a lot of amazing. I get asked yeah Are you guys having problem with the name Uber suggest getting sued by Uber or something? That's Niels problem, but they actually they I don't know if I can say this You can maybe ask me when you come with this podcast, but I believe it's it's it's worked itself out Oh, yeah, he paid him something and it was can't say anything, but it's it's worked itself out Yeah, we're gonna bring him bring him on a show. Yeah, well actually you will bring him on a show because the next event He's coming up. Okay, it's gonna be in January. So awesome. So we should we should do that We should let him know Neil Patel guys if you guys don't know who Neil Patel is then don't even No, if you're listening to this show and you don't know who Neil Patel is you have to widen here should be arrested Guys, we're gonna go on. I'm gonna I Demanded that Eric and Scott are gonna try colada They move to South Florida and they haven't had colada all this time. That's me What's the thing on the bottom? All right, okay, so guys you're gonna go to the colada first before he gets older all right, all right So guys this is colada. It's Cuban coffee and this is One of the Miami coffee and liquidity. We're doing this during the day. So we're not doing alcohol. We're not bunch of drunkies. Oh, yeah That's not guys pretty good. I told you wow, okay, that's very good. Yes, when anyone comes to Miami You need to try colada. Wow, make sure it's can be done by actually like that. It's really good. Yeah, that's so good It's better than the last coffee we got Yeah, well the last coffee I think they brought it from the Correctional Facility or something they wanted to kill us So it was bad, but this one. That's great. Yes. Wow. It's great. This yours. This is mine. You got a big one No, this is this is um this coffee coffee. This is latte Okay So Where were we delicious coffee? I can't remember what we're talking about to be honest. We're talking about Neil We're talking about the agency. Tell me now. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm over suggest and you said you can say anything and Which doesn't sound good. Okay, so how did you turn it around? How do you turn this agency around? So obviously this is like your first time being a founder CEO non Non-employee pivoted from tech into service correct That sounds like a nightmare, but obviously it wasn't But even like it's so funny because coming from tech even when you were talking about the companies that you buy when you're talking about buying agencies The first thing I said I don't know like what the hell would you do that? Yeah, like it was like why yeah There's this there's definitely this stigma coming from any I think not just tech I mean I come from tech and now I'm in CPG But the stigma is why would you worry about such like a labor-intensive organization? Yeah, seems like so thing of the past like yeah, you have to have people to do the work You have to have billable hours like it's just a pain and then let me come back to that one that one's really good So to finish on the question. That's a really good question So the how we turn it around so we got number one for digital marketing agency and we started getting all these leads right And we couldn't fulfill the leads because I'll have one employee left Yeah, and so we're all the way down the one and then I started referring all the leads out to this other agency in San Diego. That's actually valid at like five or six hundred million now And and we were taking like 25% of the of the lifetime commission right so they're just paying us 25% like that That held us over while I was I was like, okay, we're gonna build a culture right and so slowly But surely like we built it like one person at a time and then Hard people that have been there done that are like good at the work And then we just started compounding really quickly and I was like, oh, whoa We actually have something now and so it was because of SEO that number one ranking that that kept us afloat Where I could float it with like affiliate commissions and then really bring it all back and just plow everything back into business If you if you talk to someone that tried to do marketing for the business they're struggling And you tell them focus on one thing first. What would be that first thing? Let's just use an agency as an example right now Okay, I think it just depends on like your CPG or if you're like sass or whatever um Agency site actually know a couple people last year live examples where they have built um Seven eight figure agencies just on the backbone of LinkedIn and they just been posting on LinkedIn Actually the guy that was at the the dinner that was sitting next to me He built like a 19 20 million dollar agency Um just by really utilizing link tips. I've seen them all over LinkedIn. Yeah Oh, yeah, Chris Walker. Yeah, Chris Walker. So he built like a B2B Sales yeah, this is the hardest to promote yourself when you're a B2B when you're when you're when you're a wholesaler Yeah, you have to be very creative because if it look if if you sell you mean it's easier for B2B, right? No, not for an engine. I'm talking for B2B. Yeah, it's very hard to do promotion because you have a very small group of people Interested in your product if I sell a wholesale shoes, right? You have to have a shoe store How do I find the people with shoes store? It's just hard because and then if you found me, I'm the exact opposite No, if you found me as a supplier, yeah, you would never promote it Versus if you sell just shoes and you got my shoes and you like my shoes Then you're gonna talk. Oh, look at my shoes. You're gonna post it on Instagram, right? user-generated content. So For agencies. I mean, you just have to be creative. So SEO is great, right? But but that's just a whole different approach where you understand that that person who found out about you would never talk about Let's talk about this so so there's like the whole concept of media company So let's put a pin in that one, but I want to come back to Scott's question. Yeah, so you're Your question was really good, but I forgot it already. No, it was just um, why would you do about that? Oh, okay Yeah, yeah, cuz there's like so much labor involved So you know as I was like reviving the company. I was like oh like I'm gonna do the sasting this education because like it all grows very quickly or like Sass valuations are amazing, right? That is amazing right now and but pretty good margins are good. Yeah, you don't really have many cogs really Yeah, so agency you do have cogs. I mean you're lucky for gross profits like 50 60 percent or so But the great thing about agencies is like let's At the end of the day like you don't see like a Gary Vee running the day-to-day on the agency He's not right and it's it's very labor intensive, but if you're north of five million in EBITDA Even right now in this word recordness as of I won't give a date. We'll just keep it evergreen. Yeah, I'll keep it evergreen But like you can get a 15 to 20x multiple even right now and like it's largely private We need that are buying these agencies and they might buy a chunk You could take some chips off the table, but that's pretty damn good if you're like Let's use meals as an example. You said 15 to 20 15 to 20. It's not And so let's use let's use meals meals agency as an example, right? His setup is great because and he'll he'll be very public about this He knows he's terrible with people like I know many people he's made crying out He's not a bad person, but he just thought he's that kind of he has a different personality than yeah He's just really direct right and those people can't take that and so they're like hey, you know what? Just drive traffic. You don't have any direct reports and then you know, he just drives traffic That's what he does. Darmesh Shah like from HubSpot CTO never had any direct reports and so that's his setup and that's a pretty damn good setup. Yeah, you know So looking at the the valuations and then looking knowing that maybe you get a certain size your playbook is just hiring people that have been They're done that it's actually not that bad and then we can actually move over to this media company thing because it's like It's what you're doing. It's what you're doing. It's what I'm doing That's how ultimately you You build this massive audience right and just keep compounding on itself So like right now if I look at like the audiences I have I think monthly we're probably getting like 2.8 million impressions or so and we're not really paying for it Right like this stuff. We're all gonna chop up and throw in our Instagrams our YouTube So why not leverage that? So my question was more about like a small person that doesn't open an agency Was more about mom and pop. I'm trying to sell my new coffee out of my garage Or my my little jewelry custom jewelry line if if you kind of like I had one thing to say. This is how you start This is How what would you suggest tactically for them or think a little bit above that with like small strategy with two three things that they can do What would you recommend a person that asked you give me a tip get hook me up. What do I do for a jewelry store? Let's say you have a jewelry store, okay? I like using jewelry because jewelry in terms of a price point It's very cheap to buy but the margin is very high and it's accessible You go to any conference and you just they have you don't have to go through manufacturing It's an easy Business to launch, okay, so jewelry. I'm gonna go like creative. I'm gonna go practical So practically like right now where you can get the most leverage from the consumer side is like shorts real take talks So tack attacking those channels, but also like what can I do interesting from like an NFT standpoint? Right like if I want to get really creative if if I'm like a very small jewelry store Maybe I want to go big and maybe I want to work with these brands because like Starbucks is getting into NFTs like we work with Pete's coffee, right? Like they're all gonna do NFTs, right? So if I'm small How can I make them a no-brainer offer read the book hundred million dollar offers by Alex Ramose great book 99 cents Yeah, he didn't pay me to say this But my point is you learned how to create a no-brainer offer and then say hey like we'll do this for you and for free And then like if it goes well like let's let's negotiate something right and if you look at Tiffany's They did something with crypto punks where like I think they sold out like a couple million dollars But that's an example of like a high-level collaboration So how can you take what they did that the base idea and then work with like a brand that you like that you're interested in? A smaller brand that yeah first of all Tiffany's and crypto punks they have tons of resources But if you were a mom pop jewelry store brick and mortar even like online e-com I mean what you're saying is you just Copy that strategy to another smaller brand that obviously doesn't have resources or like The energy to start an NFT project or some sort of trending project without your help without some sort of like external Is NFT still a thing by the way? I mean do still hear people talking about NFT No, I may be the afterweight about the year. It's quite now right? It's nobody like the NFT space we can talk about this. It's such a good marketing marketing is right time right place So at at a certain point in time NFTs made a lot of sense to leverage for marketing Maybe not now maybe there's something else that you could do now, right? Yeah Well now you build while it's a down market and like you see all the builders building right now So I like I don't even think in the future will it'll be a failure in 10 years if we're still saying the word NFT Yeah, I mean, it's just another iteration of crypto d5 web 3 like what's the next thing that you want to build that has some sort of blockchain component NFT was the most recent version of that But you know, I wanted to go back to your point because I actually wanted to argue one of your points You said that you found consumer sales easier than b2b So for me, no consumer all consumer sales easier than b2b for b2b I find so easy because for b2b as a marketer like I know exactly who my buyer is I know exactly what the problems are if I want to target them with like an outbound campaign I know exactly who to reach and like the the order value or the lifetime value that customer is exceptionally higher in that case You're right because there's also a lot of noise in the market right now for any Any retail product right not wholesale But but the thing is for many people when they said okay, I have a business my point I guess was I wasn't explaining that well you see the thing is when when you have a product that's amazing right If you have an amazing product much better offered than someone else you're gonna win and it's gonna drive itself right And if you know some marketing it's can just show the awareness over that product and you're good Because then there's gonna be a lot of user-generated content. You can build community It's very hard to do it when you're doing this actually you can't really do it if you are a wholesaler I came from that world right and people would keep it kind of like in a safe box Maybe giving it to their grandkids do not tell anybody that's where I bought this stuff And that said they would never talk about you it's a different way to market it's a different way to market I think consumers way harder I mean like actually here's what's interesting I don't know you guys have seen like the Mr. Beast of the world and like all these super influential guys So there's like I don't know if it's TPG or one of these private equity firms But they're basically trying to back all these like up-and-coming creators and then just buy like e-commerce company Just plug it in yeah, because like the audience is built in already and it's it's like it's that's more valuable than like a We had we had that conversation last night where we're I said the big brands like Proctor and gamble laurel Unilever give it 40 years from now. They won't be around because Because if you look at today's world when you look at say you mentioned Mr. Beats or when you look at Kylie and okay, so he had what is it the chocolate number one chocolate in the country as soon as he came up with it Yeah, because he has a channel then he came up with a burger first burger didn't come out right came up with the second burger There's a hundred thousand people showing up just for that right and it's just people who lived in that area And then you look at Kylie all right a billion dollar make-up run. Okay, Kim clothing brand Three billion dollars. All prices are doing prime It's gonna come with time. It's gonna come with time Where they're gonna say I don't need your money for investment. I don't need it It's gonna I don't need you to invest in me because you're nobody for me, right? I can just do it because there's zero marketing behind me actually selling anything the second part is There's gonna be a time Where major conglomerates would not be able to buy anymore those brands if you look at it cosmetics were purchased by laurel They were making a hundred and sixty eight million dollar I think it was 2016 They bought them for 1.4 billion What do you think there maybe that was on 1.6 on a hundred and sixty eight billion They obviously bought them for because they thought we can keep doubling himself every time They're actually going and that was just one then I think about two hundred million in sales That was for It was for two faced they were acquired for 1.4 billion by Estee Lauder All of them dim failure long term when you look at the shadow and I'm coming from the view the industry can give you numbers they acquired bear minerals for I think seven hundred million It's a dying brand right so all those all those acquisitions Eventually it's can come to a stop because they're gonna run out of money to give them all those high multiples and the ones that are actually winning it started with With guys like like like ask Understanding marketing working with influencers launching our brands doing amazing then it continued with Influencers launching dawn brands then it continued with celebrity saying move aside everybody later So now if you walk into Sephora You will watch it watch and see you're gonna see a Kylie well Kylie's not in Sephora. I think she was in Ulta But you're gonna see Jellos brand you're gonna see Selena Gomez brand you're gonna see the major Celebrities brands first because why would I put anyone else? I have an interesting point a question on this one Because now you start seeing celebrities that have never been on social going on social because they feel they have to so Who's gonna win and I think it's a question of authenticity and connection with your audience But in my opinion between celebrities and influencers I'm just celebrity always wins and I think that's why mr. Beast has the largest launches of Yeah, this product chocolate burgers whatever So I think that even celebrities are becoming in terms of popularity and like affinity with their audience almost like a second tier Compared to influencers that have literally grown up with their audience So I think even being a celebrity is not as useful as it used to be you don't have you don't have the Like the the barrier to entry to become a celebrity is lower than ever. It's your camera You're you you typing at a newsletter you going on YouTube. That's the barrier to Andrew Andrew They said it well. I think he said on interview with Patrick but David he said their followers their followers and their What is it? Well, he said their fans and their followers, right? So some people have followers And they get a lot of views, but they don't really have actual fans exactly. Yeah, the quality of the followers. So and I think it's the relevance. So if you look at And mr. Beast he's my kids love him right and they'll buy anything he said and they know he's making money and it's okay They agreed so I think it's about the person said look I always like that chocolate and this I made my own chocolate Was it him that did the the most sour candy or someone else with someone else that came up with the Did all they do is they gave me that that That candy that citric candy because he was talking about this, right? So in what you saw In the beauty industry were they noticed all that cash coming in all those Ladies that were celebrities never did any makeup jail never did any makeup suddenly three months before the lunch abroad Oh, let me start doing my makeup routine. Well, okay, we all know now you're gonna No, no, it's not really it's not relatable. Right? Do you know that the key thing is you have to stand for something Yeah, mr. Beast is like I want to make the best videos. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna cut him to the table whatever Yeah, Logan Paul or whatever all these guys like it's like Andrew Tate stands for something too like little more hate him, right? So I Gary V stands for business, right? And that's why like there's the agency, but I'll look at all the deal flow Look at all the cool stuff that he's creating. So it's gonna be it's gonna be a point of view like it's It's hard to like Love someone I believe I think it's also because you see how they grow up into it That's really what makes the difference you see like Gary V has been talking about buying the jets for like However long when he actually buys an equity position in the jet like people are gonna lose their shit Yeah, that's all he talks about that's like the reason why he does what he does I think like there was like levels to it like I'm sure like he wanted to make wine library successful And like his dad's business successful and then like make his family come to big now. It's just like buy the jets I think I think the number one example. I think everyone can look at it would be Dave Portland with the pizza reviews has been doing this for how many years going around all over the country Giving pizza reviews. It's it's almost like if you go to 20 pizza places at least three of them would have him already walking in And trying to eat their pizza. I just every day he goes to another place doing another pizza review So he came up with his pizza and he has his own line He says one guy one bite everybody knows the rule and that's a name of his pizza. He came up with the frozen pizza So it obviously people know how well that pizza's doing right now way. I have no idea But he told he said at the time that he was number one in Walmart or something like that It's a very funny video when he wanted to score his own pizza because he always gives people eight point seven point eight This is amazing seven point eight, but apparently it's a very good score friend. Then he tried his own pizza 10 Then he goes and he said I know you guys don't believe me because you say it's my pizza So I brought some person off the street and you see this half naked cheek Super hot which once you start checking or profile apparently it's his girlfriend Did I ever see you she's not no, okay try Then you see then that was it. So yeah, it's just very likable person So this is this I don't know how reputable this new sources But it says fastest fast growing bar stool on paste. Oh, this is just bar stool. Sorry, but the pizza is gonna be in 3600 walmarts by the end of the year So the one bite pizza is gonna be in 3600 walmarts. We should talk did he sell Barstow I think he did right he did sell it to pen Gambling or something like that. Yes, that's where I bought a channel the board a media channel That's where I don't think it make I actually think when you think about all the points of leverage right There's you know capital media labor whatever Media I would argue is like number one and then I would say number two is like code right because if you have the attention at the end Like why would you sell if you're continuing to compound the thing? I just doesn't make sense to me So because gambling is gambling. I'm just giving a platform for the old gamble Maybe my UI it's a little bit better, but it doesn't matter It's about who's creating awareness better faster and cheaper than the competition exactly and they're point they're buying a media channel I'm buying right now CNN and Fox News. I can display ads all the time for free It would cost me nothing and I can own the conversation. I can all the narrative. You're saving like why would they sell you're asking why would this? Yeah, why would you sell when you have a and I talked to people like actually One guy was thinking about selling his company for a couple hundred million, right? And I was like why would you sell like it's it's like it's so like what's the revenue like when he's trying to make the decision? 100 million. He has a hundred million in rent and annual revenue. Yes, but not db dad just He does like 30 okay, yeah, and he would sell for a couple hundred couple hundred But but you know, we know this guy already. He's making like 50 60 70 million a year take home So why would you do that right? I go well, but actually we're talking about the business in that point But I'm just like if you have if you think about it what what's Google is a money printing machine met as a money printing machine. They control the attention Why if you have something that's continued to compound Unless you really need the money. Why would you why would you sell that? I hear with that like you need it so for example I don't agree with that. I think that there is there is something else to think about look If you're if you're saying well, I'm making 30 to 50 a year going into my pocket After taxes, especially living in some front you're basically left with 12 and then All right, just do the math just do the math okay do the math behind me Okay, because it's ordinary income versus Capital gain when I sell okay, I only paid the capital gain versus ordinary income, which is much more But however, all this comes down to two things one is Sometimes you Want to do something else Yeah, and you don't want to manage so many people you don't want to have the liability of having a business It's very easy to remember the sunny days and the cash everyone forget I totally agree But let's let's go back to this guy this guy has his not already. He's got a couple hundred million right Just don't need the extra crash right and he's not tired either Because this guy is like not really doing that much anyway. Yeah, so so point is like And more so it's not even about the businesses about the audience the audience is the point of leverage because like everything's going towards influencers right now Towards media companies again, what we're doing right here is we're building media companies, so I agree with that though So his point is if you have the audience if you wanted to start a business in the future You have this point of leverage that you could launch that product we were talking about this last night too So I think there's some cases where your argument has a little bit more of a stronger stance Like if it's just a product company and even if you are cash flowing and you're taking home money I don't think your charge like your taxes 70% maybe your charge like 50 your tax that's 50% But still if you're if you want a nice exit and you want to start something new The thing that you've built will never be you can't parlay that into the new thing that you could potentially build But I want to say the the second point I had The thing is before you sell you don't realize one thing okay, and it happened to me and I can tell you happen to many people You don't understand how much your image died to your business You don't realize it because you said you know what it's gonna be so nice where I don't have to worry about it Let me do that one big cashing out and I'll worry about parking the money later. It's gonna be As soon as that happens and that the business is taking away and say it's poorly Managed and so on and that was a big piece of your image It does something to you right you walk into a place everybody knows you because of that and you said okay, how much Does your image cost? Right, and that's when you said maybe it wasn't the smartest move Maybe I could have done something else maybe maybe maybe and then the second part behind this is A business is an awesome platform to launch anything else once you give away that platform and you want to launch another business Trust me. It doesn't work the same. You're already comfortable You don't have to break your back like you were when you're hungry now you have to what do you need to do? You need to have say a warehouse. You need to have office space You need to have couple employees before that you didn't have to go into all the Google research I don't know title research you had everyone doing it for you can only focus on the building the core Now you have to do everything else. Yeah, so you said okay now. I don't have that Okay, so let me build any little tiny shit business so I can have that just so it pays off and then if I want to build from there But this is something you think after the fact It's kind of like knowing there's no textbook again if business school would to teach you that But they don't teach you that that the day after the exit is very important. Yeah, everybody have to think about it I think your exit was a good timing Yeah, I think my I think your exit was exceptionally good timing I mean that's something where I don't think you would argue that I would I would never I would never change the outcome But that's the hardest part of an exit. It's timing. Yeah, yeah The momentum momentum in anything else you do right when when we're looking at when I take the company right boxy The one thing we did was we haven't executed everything to perfection, but we have Time everything not not just Opening the company at the right time and selling it at the right time It was mostly about every day of the week right there was a timing for everything because you see what happened when there is attention It's a supply and demand if I had to go out and and launch a new product because my competitor is about to launch something at the same at the Particle or month I wanted to take the attention away, but I didn't have enough time to do it So I had to create something out of nothing we had to be very very creative to launch something not as good But just as good, but we can take away the conversation So with dandies and we had some execution failures or a hiccups, but it was always worth it And it it it doesn't just coming down to the two big days launching the business and selling the business It's always within the business itself you you look for those waves that you can write consistently so you can grow all the time Momentum is everything and he's very is make a big difference in the tea. Would you ever sell would you ever sell single grade? Give me a billion dollars. Yeah Well, well, well, well, well, well, what if it's 800 million yes, okay, wait now let's go down But it fits 400 million Yes, okay 100 million No, okay, yeah 200 million Yeah, okay 150 million wait wait wait let's get the number 150 million will you sell it for 150 million? Yeah, I would okay, but here's the thing There's a caveat here single range not really tied to my audiences So it becomes a different a different type of calculus It's just it's the business is on its own single brain good thing the name single brain It's not like Eric suit digital or anything. Oh, yeah, so you can yeah, but they tell you they tell you they tell you can no longer do for the next five years Anything related you cannot work with those people you'll have to basically find something else to do because when they buy a company One thing you get it got on any any private equity person will tell you when when someone buys your company for that amount of money They make sure you don't come near because you're a top predator. You're in the top of your food chain. Oh, I'm fine with that So you're never going to go back to it. So you're okay with that no more yeah, marketing no more Well, it's not like I'm in the day-to-day anyways Yeah, so like that that key man risk is interesting because that actually when we're building up a podcast or building a media company It's all key man risk if that person isn't involved anymore that asset has no or little to no value Yeah, this thing's a cash flow machine a hundred percent. So how do you how do you manage that right if you want to get out of it? Yeah, well, that's why I mean that's the key thing I think like let's use Neil as an example. He's called MP digital right and so a lot of it's tied to him And so like if you ever want to get out it's hard. Yeah, he's the image is everything. Yeah, so yeah I saw I saw the first business and I remember that the guy told me look I need you to do a non-compete for Four years. So at that time I really want to get out of it because I was building boxing and he was paying me good Which I was surprised and I told him that's not I can do it. You can write 40 years. I don't really care I do now want to go back to my business Yeah, but then after after you sign after you move out You start seeing the opportunities that he doesn't see in the business because you've been doing it for so long And that's where it hunts you at night Fuck me. They signed for so long. I wanted to know people that actually as a second their non-compete so Over they just build it back it they just yeah, I got you business again I that's a good call. I never thought actually a lot like 80 to 90 percent of people I've seen do yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, they exit so I consulted with a company they exited they sold to a very large company And then I think it was like a three-year non-compete and they just built the exact same thing like yeah copy and paste It was insane to me that they were able to do this, but like the CEO founder knew what he was doing He just he just and basically it was kind of a situation like I don't know what's happened since you sold boxy But um basically he sold his company kind of like you sold box He saw that after he sold it deteriorated They didn't really do anything with the asset to kind of like fumble the bag on it And he's like fuck it. Why not all there's a huge market opportunity that I'll just exploit again And a lot of times they end up buying it back and they end up buying the second version Well, I'll tell you a little story. I had a small investment group in coming to boxy charm called car prily and You know they were really amazing. They they helped me be a better CEO and that all the way through until we sold and they always told me stories about companies They invested in and one of them was a furniture company this guy had this cabinet companies He was he was the number one cabinet seller for Home Depot and what he found out is that in Home Depot There are like 30 different types of cabinets But 80% of all the cabinets are only two types So he systemizes entire operation only for those two and he was able to be so efficient and cheap and fast Then anybody else and he gave them a better price to Home Depot than anyone else and he just went on those 80% right So this company bought him 500 million And then After the bottom they said look we don't like you as a person He was early was a personality and they said get out So he went and he opened the same exact business Opened the same exact business the second time one was with car prily And they were saying that He sold this to the same company who bought him the first time because what happened when the other company does Like a typical acquisition Those are mostly finance people that wanted to go operation They said oh, we know how to they go in the buy you and said look at this guy He doesn't even know how to do it right you only the two types of cabinets Imagine if you do all those 30 cabinets So when they when they bought them and they factored all up the 30 cabinets they weren't efficient the price went up blah blah blah He comes in again same scheme Building it up couple years into it with them a whole story Sell it to them for the same exact price like before Then after he sold after the non-compete he called them again said I'm gonna do it again because And it's a same exact company So this is a good point and I want to dive into this because it's something that we've never really spoken about How do you acquire a company properly because we've all been through acquisitions or purchased or sold companies and My experience. It's the company that acquired mine screwed it up I think that you've had a similar you've had my scenario my scenario The point is like how do you do it right? How do you do it? What's the best way to buy a company and to make it? You're the man you tell us I can speak for me I think you've been the only one that's actually been part of an acquisition where you actually successfully improve the companies that you acquire Well, I mean debatable, but I'll just say look um, I think for for us in the agency world typically when you're when you're acquiring company Like because it's so like founder driven you want to keep the founder, right? Which is why like when you buy an agency typically it's like a three to four year earn out And there's a lot tight like it's half maybe up front and then like the half is paid out later Um, and then the other thing is ideally they're complimentary to your skill set um, I think You know one of the things for us. I would say one of the mistakes that we made was not doing enough due diligence and in hindsight, I think what we would have done is um We one of the agencies we acquired like they were much more focused on SMB We weren't we weren't mid market to enterprise and what we should have done in hindsight is like oh, we should have just said oh Let's um we should just start like a SMB division to make that all work But because we're so like focused on the mid market to enterprise there wasn't exactly like a like sorry What is SMB small business? Yeah, thank you for the clarifying question So my point is um One, it's like keeping the founder there if it's like a people intensive business because they're all Culture wise they all look up to that founder and and then like holding them for three to four years And that's the same formula with every agency that I've seen even with other M&A transactions So the issue when you acquire a company into a larger company is there's there's almost like a negative immune response to that acquisition Because the existing the large company doesn't know how to deal with them They don't know how to deal with the types of people that work in a smaller company Don't know how to deal with the type of customer segment type of strategy. So I've spoken to a few people that have solved for this problem Um on on my show and have solved for successfully and how you do it is you isolate that acquisition and you let it operate at the same capacity It's operating at and you don't basically Change it or or or let it integrate too much with the larger company Because when you let it integrate all the big company problems screw up that successful small company So you incubate it's so much so that like if you can if it was a physical office You literally get them a separate office where they're not day-to-day interacting with the other company And you let them just grow and that's actually how Apple purchases and incubates and yeah Let them do their thing and integrate but there's there's actually two here. I'll go off of two agencies both doing north of a hundred million Both valued around the same. So one agency grew completely organically to the hundred million the other one grew through acquisition So you have organic growth versus inorganic growth and then what happened was the inorganic one so many people problems Right because it's like five or six like they had three or four acquisitions this year, right? And that private equity that was about to buy them pulled out is just like there's the turns higher And it's just like a hodgepodge of stuff, right? So and then versus you look at the other one It's like all it organically built like they're all bought in on the culture and it's like it's consistent It's not like a bunch of instability where you're trying to integrate all these things to your point Yeah, absolutely. You should let them sit on their own But you kind of like my mistake was not having the on one of them having the leader stay, right? The founder. Yeah, you can't have it run on its own without a leader Well, I think I think the It depends if you have a company that struggles and it's kind of like turnover for like a restructuring turnover acquisition That's different, but if you if you get a business that's profitable. Oh, yeah stand alone, right? The the biggest thing is that I would say if you over integrate Even if you take one department saying you know, let me just move the finance department I was like you don't need them will do will do it you you might disrupt the entire ecosystem because many times One company in my one of my acquisitions can speak to which one we we overintegrate too early And we didn't think we were because we said it's just the finance and the logistic well when you do that and I I cannot Manage the logistic as they don't answer to me or the finance But in the other business it was a process driven so if the logistic has a they will logistic would say that goes into the box The doesn't well in my company wasn't like that my company was Logistic that's coming late, but still put it in the box figure it out It was all about the product So it's just one example and then suddenly everything changes the in dynamic the second part and that probably is the killer for every business talking culture our company one corporate meeting a week for one hour That's it the other company god help us it was from 8 a.m. To 8 p.m. All day that just so you can go and dump all those and expect people to be productive at 7 p.m Start doing the stuff like no productivity starts when you wake up until you're lunchtime That's your highest productivity. Let them work until then you want to have any extra couple extra meetings to connect to Think very hard. What is the most important meeting and added but don't just change your lifestyle because I've seen how it People just quit that's actually a really important point not even just from an M&A standpoint But when it comes to hiring people people try to like let's say I just Scott I joined your company or whatever like mostly but oh Eric go ahead just start right when most it's like no You actually have to let the person just integrate and sit there and understand how things work before saying oh We're gonna change everything. Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. Yeah, I mean overall like We're not even discussing ego in between right when there was a strategic acquisition One company had their ego because they're competing with the other one if you go to the company will die Yeah, there's there's yeah, we're talking about a lot of talking about a company that has no ego They're just trying to be successful. There's always going to be something if it's it has something because you're talking human beings It's not yours and ones right so just being kind of aware of that so look now You'll have to change that you have to work together and it's not it's not for everyone not everybody gets it the same way No, that's smart. We haven't even spoken about any actual tactical marketing things. Yeah, seriously So you've gone through the gamut like over your career. I mean you've you've dabbled in pretty much every kind of marketing Yeah, what would you say is the The highest point of leverage for a marketer now is it just pure going organic social like you still see a ton of value in SEO You still have to focus on everything or as an early stage of marketer You just find one channel that just kicks ass and you just double down and exploit that channel Yeah, I think you know, it's interesting. I did um, so I have this founders community The main topic a couple of weeks ago was like everyone's how everyone's building this this These media companies, right? So you know Going hard on YouTube going hard on LinkedIn going hard everywhere where there's strong organic reach And so I have talked about this on marketing school before where If if I were to start from scratch and my background's an SEO by the way and then I branched out I would not start with SEO I would start where if I'm B2B I go LinkedIn first if I'm B2C I go the things I talked about shorts reels The TikToks and then I would nail one channel and then work on scaling because like this that we're doing right now This is SEO. Yeah, this is a this is a pillar piece of content. Yeah, we can chop this this piece can become 60 pieces of content Um every marketing school episode is a daily marketing podcast can become a long for 1500 to 2000 word post and that can go on LinkedIn as well And so I I was just mentioning early like when I title What I when I tally my my monthly reach it's about 2.8 million impressions and on our site like you know We're getting like sure like hundred fifty two hundred thousand visits a month But SEO has gotten a lot harder Especially for B2B and it's going to continue to get harder I think if you're lucky enough to have um maybe some dollar sitting around you can go buy some sites that are monetized by ad sense And you can buy their domain authority. Hopefully they have an email list and then like layered on with what you have Yeah, I think I think also when you do or social media well This is basically doing SEO. I think the and I've seen this where it's it's literally you can look at Google trend If you trend on social media you jump on Google trend and you're going to see the spike by the hour by the hour and then Google's algorithm Is now working on links anymore because they understand that all the children's on social media people don't link like before So they said well just do social media that will do your SEO when I um When I hired this guy was nice guy, but I told him look I want you to do some marketing figure out some growth hacking strategies. I don't know if you know It was good or not, but he went great SEO. So I don't need it to SEO look that's that's 2008 That's done. That's there's just something else. Yeah. What one thing I'll add to is this this podcast that we're doing right now When I look at retention rates on Apple podcasts It's like 80 to 90% on like a five minute episode But if you go to YouTube the retention rates like 40 to 50 percent So if we want to build relationships at scale like depth then like really nothing's better than this And it's like okay the hardest thing to grow is a podcast from what I've seen It's like, okay, how do you get another podcast? How do you advertise another podcast or we actually trade impressions with um Like Jordan Harbiger for example He gets six million downloads a month marking school where like two million So I'm like hey, why don't we trade you 500,000 impressions a month you trade us and then like let's swap and see how it goes I mean same thing with growing an email list or whatever. It's just whatever's native makes a lot of sense What people don't think like that. This is the difference between followers and actual Fans yes, that's gonna be the difference. Yeah, I think that's why I think that's why you're CPMs and and and your cost per mills And what you can actually charge for an advertisement on a podcast is so much more than what you could charge for uh Sponsored in feed Instagram posts that actually in current days algorithm nobody will actually see and let's do real Yeah, but um like I think that that's why if you have 60 minute why I mean you do actually I also want to figure out why you do shorter versus longer minor like 45 to 60 This is obviously longer than an hour But if you have somebody who has like an 80 percent retention on like an hour plus long podcast episode Your voice is in their ear for like an hour plus of their day. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah There's a massive amount of trust. It's built with that 60 man. They do it every single week like I wouldn't listen to myself like that much And so like if somebody does like that's very impressive and you can sell anything to that person To your point I mean um when I when I talked to the single growing team it's like anybody that's listening to the podcast The sales cycles are shorter and then the LTV of the customers a lot higher Yeah, um and so Moai white short form. Oh, so why do you do five minute shows? Well, I do both So with so I have three podcasts ones called marketing school that one's five minutes daily and then Leveling up that one's like more longer form like 45 to 60 minutes Entrepreneurial ones and like I'm like, okay, how do I open a pod? We were talking about this. How do I open a podcast? Studio or we go for two to three hours. Yeah, so that one I want to go long form and then I have one called creators of web three That one's like short form too It just I think it just depends on what Rachel you notice have you like actually looked at the numbers if you don't that's cool But if you looked at the numbers and see like between a five-minute show and a 45-minute show And I guess you haven't really launched a good Joe Rogan style three hours show But in the five-minute and the 45 to 60-minute this still a very different product you're putting out You know which one resonates more which one has customers that converted higher rate So I will say I can respond to the second one for leveling up which is a longer form one They actually say they like that one more than marketing school because for marketing school Sometimes like the way we record on that one is like Neil and I will get together. It's a one-hour recording session We crank out 10 episodes and we're just winging it Right, and so sometimes you get some gems. Sometimes it's like what are you guys talking about? And so what like that's how it's a quality of the content not necessarily the like it's depth versus I think bread How many people do you how do you do the leveling up is it's just you're Neil or lovely? Okay, so like I just get like whenever I do interviews like I just get curious and I just want to learn on those And so I get a lot more value from those and so does the odd and like if you look at Leveling up. It's like 4.9 stars and then you look at marketing school. It's at like 4.7 now and like It's slowly Yeah, but how how was growing Marketing school versus leveling up which one's easier to grow? Well, marketing school we kind of cheated because like Neil's got a big email S and my email S has like I don't know 70 80,000 or so. He's got like four 500,000 So when we started it initially he pushed the email S I pushed my email S for the first three months and then we're just off into the races Um, such eating it's just using your own audiences. Yeah, but I just hard for people to replicate that one But I will say the daily thing helped a lot Because most people just weren't doing daily That's what that's so That's entrepreneurs on fire by John Lee Dumas. He does he does daily. Mm-hmm, which is interesting to me. I don't I I don't know I don't have like a strong status to whether or not like a lower not lower produce But technically he doesn't do video like would you rather do it once a week? Video audio in my opinion that I gravitate towards that once a week video audio tons of reels tons of clips go on YouTube Second largest search engine in the world That's the way that I like to create content versus Like I think marketing school's video, but JLD's just audio. I think it's harder So like a JLD or even like I remember I used to listen to Nathan Latka's podcast. I don't know that podcast Yeah, so he he's interesting. So he basically like you can tell when you do like a 15 minute interview They're just trying to get through it. You can feel that they're just trying to get through like I was on So you're in a machine. Yeah, I was on john Lee Dumas. Well, I was like, oh, he's just like he It's great, but I can tell he's trying to get to the next one because he's doing like seven or eight or even 14 in a day That's his day, you know, yeah, wow and he has a formula and and it's and it's not not to say it's like scripted But it's like you have the confines of what he wants to bring out and they'll hit this point with every single person and the next point and To me, you know, it's funny like I always advise creators if you're gonna create something Do something you enjoy? So I actually don't believe you should you should slot yourself into a box day one I think that if you want to be a successful creator You have to do it for five to ten years So do something you enjoy create a medium that you enjoy and I almost guarantee you will find some sort of tribe along the way as long as You're listening to this feedback loop of the people that you do you can't you can't start to dread it That's the main thing that's the issue to be started The leveling up one used to be called growth everywhere I actually followed a I've been doing that for ten years So it started with the formula first and then started to podcast in years ago. Yeah, so before Tim Ferris Yeah, and so like I started with a formula and then I was like, okay Now it's evolved more into like a conversation like this. Yeah, this is more enjoyable for everyone. Yeah Yeah, that was the thing when when I decided I want to launch a podcast and I spoke about this with Scott Scott told me all the side all the reasons why he has a podcast and for me I wasn't sure why I just knew that it's it I have the time And if I'm gonna station it where I have it already Before I launch my next big thing I'll be able to actually have a podcast forever versus if I already Have a business and then go into a podcast my mind is not gonna be in it Yeah, and I figure I'm gonna do it now because I generally enjoy this and um and then everything else came back I guess when you have a media channel of your own that's when you're gonna be more successful up to there's yeah, we have the 12 for 12 30 that's when the shades are going down. Let's move those I definitely need to tell them we don't need to put those shades on the system anymore. Yeah Welcome to my studio. I mean, I don't know man. It's it's leverage at the end of the day. I um The the podcasts is the most valuable. It's again. It's the hardest thing to grow and I'm just like Nothing's more valuable than oh also like I think about YouTube So because this cover ability is so hard on podcasting and we've talked about this like pre-show I look at my YouTube now the algorithms changing so much where it favors smaller channels and the My first million podcast they get a million dollars a month on the pod But on YouTube they get 3.5 million views a month and so it's like they're at 3.5 million. Yes, damn I didn't know that it's like how do we push the hell out of this, you know They actually they've grown very quick on on YouTube as well. Yeah, they've gone from like zero to I think it's like 70 or 80,000 subs and yeah And this goes on like the whole like Everyone could do this right you go on upwork and there's a bunch of amazing people that would charge like 10 15 dollars now That are actually really good at like real shorts and all that and you just test them And you just hire an army of these people to like take your one piece of content into like 60 pieces of content Yeah, yeah, I mean like I mean, it's a content is king Back then we used to do I mean, I think you were also doing the same thing when ready to dig stumble upon And if I was never I was never into that That was I observed. Yeah, so yeah So back then before social media was a social media that we know today it was all Kind of like social bookmarks and we the idea was especially for someone that does a CO if you wanted to get a million links I'm a million like lots of them you want to hit the front page. Yeah undig already Or stumble upon because that's when the bunch of sites at how had their RSS feed Link to whatever hits the front page and also you said well, I can't make it into CNN But I can make it into the dig front page and the 30 for that page was a thing So we were going in trying to beat the algorithm all the time And now it's social and now you have to actually just do a good job Yes, now that's the biggest pain and so even then my point is I mean actually to close this The point was at first it was easy to hit the front page Then you had to actually have good content because it would be kicked out of the front page instantly And we we that's when I started using the term I am using it from someone else a content is king So if you get the right content, it's gonna work now for us if you look at what happened with bar stool with Acquisition they bought it because it's a media channel if you build a media channel Eventually it's gonna pay off right? It's gonna pay off because you have your own TV you have your own audience You can launch on a new product you can do everything you want and we had a conversation yesterday How do you get to be a hundred million dollar podcast? You probably can't Especially now the proliferation tons of but you can plug in products you can plug in other things That can reach a hundred million plus in cells through a podcast I mean, I think that if you I think the point about media channels very important you look at and it doesn't always have to be podcast either So I think that that's a take home lesson for creators You build the thing that you like to build you like to be on camera you record a video you like to write right look at morning brew Like they were required for whatever just under a hundred million. I think by ink if I'm not mistaken Axel Springer Axel Springer business insider. Oh business. I don't know. Yeah, I'm getting my outlets But yeah, so that was just people writing a lot two college kids writing and then they stopped you scale at the writing team But over time they had whatever X million subs on and they sold that for I think it was 70 70. Yeah So two hustles and par day one it was just him writing a daily newsletter and then he hired out More writers and they still did the daily newsletter than he productized it yet among the subscription product He sold two HubSpot and like obviously not public numbers, but like between 20 to 30 I think it's smart for for them because like they they wanted the nut to feel safe and then work on the next thing So I think there's no like clear answer whether you should sell or not like we're not saying that you know But the creator economy is amazing But I think that people just get caught up in like what everyone else is doing Where as you can make for example 20 to 30 million dollars writing still if you want to do that I mean look at look at sub stack publications that are monetizing sure some of the biggest ones have Several thousand if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue coming in through monthly subscriptions Did you guys know this Steven Bartlett guy? Have you heard of him? I I've died. I haven't seen yeah Yeah, yeah, I'm sort of watching him like what is he so he he's like a he's an English Podcaster he he built this huge social media company. He's on like English UK dragonstone. I think yeah, so he's he's all those and so I started following him like last week I started watching his stuff and basically in the last year or so he's grown his podcast from nothing to like 10 million Dallads a month or whatever and he just has really cool interesting people come on He just has conversations, right? Yeah, and then he has all these brand deals and all that I think a year ago He was doing like 1.2 1.5 million a year or so on just like the advertising. I'm sure it's a lot more now But I'm just saying like that reinforces what we're talking about with depth and I reckon it's gonna do to regular traditional media Well, I think that the trust value with a podcaster if you've seen like we don't have to guess You look at the the affinity and the trust factor. I don't know even how you measure that but with Joe Rogan like he's watched more and and with certain audiences Trusted more than mainstream media, but money wise. What do you think money wise? Do you think eventually all that monetization? Will flow over is gonna basically take a bigger chunk from regular TV. Oh, yeah I think it'll take a big I think it's wherever the attention is that's marketing 101 and like here's a reinforcement for you guys We're all busy. We're sitting here right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's right So so why are we doing this is we see value in it right now? I think that there's I think that there's so much money that I don't know if It would actually take money away from traditional media Yeah, because I think that unless you see media ratings dip and and eyeballs on traditional media dipping Yes, that'll correlate with lower ad not just on the deep in the right. I don't think TV dies because I have YouTube TV I still like watch TV every now and then so yeah, but YouTube is not traditional Well YouTube TV is kind of true. It's like cable TV basically. It's more like Netflix It no use so YouTube TV is just like when I watch football and all that I just go to YouTube TV and I pay 65 dollars a month or whatever interesting. Yeah, so um, you know I think wherever the attention is the money will go so there will always be more money for yeah Yeah, I think the the reason you don't see that many podcasters. It's because it takes a little bit more Execution-wise because it's an indie venture It's something that you have to start on your own more often than not. It's very difficult to scale There's no organic reach. It's highly demotivating when you put something down to the world and five people see it Versus somebody who puts a tick-tock video out and can hit a million. Yeah, you can just go viral a little of a sudden with your Podcast it doesn't really work like the thing with the tiktok is like I remember there's like these these creator conferences and like tiktokers that have like 20 million followers They can't even fill a room whereas like the podcasters they again they have that depth. So you actually have so if you look at so it's interesting if you actually Look at the quality of a subscriber or a follower on every platform. It's like podcasting and YouTube being YouTube is probably like the top and then I'm sure it's like linked in Twitter Instagram. They sort of like circle is like second tier and then like tiktok is bottom of the barrel You can have somebody with like literally millions of subscribers or followers on tiktok And they have nothing anywhere else But if you have somebody with millions of subscribers on YouTube, you'll notice all the other socials have tons of subscribers Yeah, when I when I was trying to push products Makeup products and notice that it was easier. It was before tiktok If if we wanted to push color cosmetics like an eyeshadow No problem Instagram is just great because it's instant gratification. You see the shade. You say whatever it is Watch it on the hand. It's good But if you wanted to push a skincare there's no immediate transformation right you have to use it for a while It had to be not just on YouTube It had to be the right youtubers that have actual listeners That follow them for what they buy and they would say well, you know my skincare problem It's the only thing that helped me have been using it for three months They had to really speak and explain and that was the only thing that happened and it was challenging because Because it was it was mostly that We couldn't really promote everything the way the brand wanted us They said well, can you push it on Instagram more said yeah, I can but it's ambient it's ambient work This is the channel every every channel works different Obviously if it was the same youtuber could sell anything that an Instagrammer would sell right But it could it wasn't going the other way around there was much more work for YouTube Also to your point um actually I mean I think about this I actually ran a poll like a month ago. I was like hey which for which channel has the most valuable followers Is it YouTube is it Twitter is it linked in whatever is it I think I said Forgot the other one, but by far it was YouTube like everyone just saying YouTube like what what's gonna be out there in 10 years Like what has the most I guess potential for like 100 hundred years down the road it is YouTube right because it compounds There's discoverability so I also think that there's like the psychological opponent seeing somebody Like seeing somebody like how do you build a relationship right like well the best way to do that is to sit down with somebody You know grabbed in or shake their hand But the second best way you're gonna do that remote and virtually is seeing their face on camera Which is that's like that's how you build a huge scalable Leverageable audience you can't do that obviously by shaking every fan's hand But you can do that on YouTube to an extent it's way more meaningful than even a short video on Reels you take talk way more meaningful than 240 characters on Twitter by far, right? So I think that's probably why that's probably why it has like the the most valuable audience. Yeah I think this is this is interesting because like this is what like hour or two hour conversation And then you can just again go on up work higher an army of people and then boom like you have like this becomes like 30 or 40 That's what I do so so for my podcast and we're starting to build like the infrastructure for for this show as well But for my show it's like we record for an hour hour and a half And then that is rss feed plus YouTube I use otter.ai to transcribe it then I pass it over to a copywriter So they don't have to do tons of work listening to it. They turn that into a newsletter Put that new send that newsletter to my community put that up on my website as well And I put that newsletter like five different places And then of course then you have all the video content like you said and that just goes into 50 60 different social clips and it's like a super for a solo printer This would be like a super scalable content strategy with this pillar content That's that's that's a great formula and I think the the fact that when when you When you look at Instagram, you know that people are not gonna necessarily go and listen to you for an hour and a half two hours But it does give some awareness and there's gonna be a little bit of them start following your page And then a little bit of them eventually would come in YouTube when you had a hand if they listen to you over there They'll stick around all that actually download your podcast because they're gonna be more dedicated once I listen to your And then we'll talk about the other benefits. I mean the Think about the deal flow like any company that I found interesting. I don't know if you've done this But it's like I'm gonna get them on the pot and right after we go to the 100% I feel like um can I write a check? Yeah Yeah, so it's great. Yeah, no, that's actually I mean So like I always cherry pick guests based on what I'm trying to accomplish So like if I'm like trying to raise money. I'll like I'll find somebody that's like actively investing Or trying to learn about something or just get a Anytime I bring on a guest like sometimes it's just huge guests So I want to bring them on but sometimes if they're like a business guest I'm like why do I want to bring this person to my life right now? What I want to talk to them about yeah, and it's like This is me without actually having a product to sell like I don't have an agency But imagine if you were a business leader you started B2B podcast You make sure the content in the podcast is basically answering questions that you're your ICP your ideal customer profile Is would be asking for your product or service and then Not only can you take all the derivatives of that content and use it for B2B marketing material and you again You blast it across all your social channels But also you have an hour plus with this like decision-maker decision influencer stakeholder That you're sitting down with talking about things that you're both passionate about building a relationship with like you don't usually get that access So that could be VP sales that could be CEO that could be CMO doesn't matter But you have this hour long segment that just like build rapport with that person that's way I'm Sometimes it's it's like you can have a very important guest that doesn't know how to articulate himself The question is how do you get that information because they can give Very valuable information versus someone that articulate himself very good, but he's not really saying much And it's kind of like a business world where you said well, I have a couple employees one of them is great. They can go and put out um A par rapport in presentation. They'll convince everyone But what they want to do is not the right thing versus the person that doesn't really know how to present himself They'll write it on a piece of napkin But those are the ones that you won't listen to the Mavericks. So how do you Get to find okay, he might be challenged challenging speaking to him But this is the kind of guy that knows how to get stuff that's actually on the hosts So the host has to do the research so like like let's say it's a 30 minute interview Maybe you're forexing the amount of time that you do research and you're guiding the conversation Because if you're not prepared you're not going to know the right questions to ask which means it's going to be a poor interview And Scott you know that too. Um, and it also depends on the guest So I have a very candid conversation with the guests ahead of time. I'll say like listen I don't usually script stuff like if you're gonna if you're gonna get a good interview What do you want to ask the person you want to ask the person something they're most passionate about yeah Somebody's passionate about something they're just gonna talk about it. They're gonna love talking about it So when they're like hey Scott what do you want to talk about? I'm like listen What do you care about if that's a valid point that's useful for my audience? Let's dive into that. I don't care if you've written like five different books and work for four different companies like What do you actually give a shit about right now because first of all you have these great talking points And you have this flow because you've done probably like 20 other these interviews So I know you're going to bring tons of value. You're not going to be like I'm uh like I don't you know like second guessing what you're what you're saying But also you're going to feel more comfortable because something that's just like recenting your memory And then if you want to I don't usually do this but if you really want to Depending on the personality of the person I will script out questions ahead of time if they feel that's the best way for them to bring Value to the podcast, but that's a that's a candid conversation you have with the guest So it depends on the style of the show but the show is meant to be educational and you want to bring stuff out of that person You just find a way to tap into what they're most passionate about or you give them the opportunity To sit to think through their points ahead of time and that doesn't really happen often I mean the person that's less media trained and does like less general public appearances podcasts talking segments Whatever maybe they're a little bit more apprehensive about just winging it Um, so then that's the option you get for that person But then you get an awesome show and the audience doesn't really know either way A well-spoken like media trained or just charismatic individual that just can riff off points versus somebody that had to prep 20 questions ahead of time It's the same valuable content. So ultimately it's just about Setting the you set yourself up success. So it's totally on the host. I want to come back to one thing um We talk about starting a podcast, right? So sure you can do discoverability on short's YouTube whatever But when I started 10 years ago um It was really demotivating right that the first I was spending six hours a week on this while I was trying to save single room By the way, so like I reach out to the people I I prep and then I'd write the show notes myself I publish it scheduled it to go to WordPress and all that yeah And and what I have to show for it after the first year. It's getting nine downloads a day, right? And then and then the second year we're not doing that bad Second year I keep pushing right oh 30 downloads a day and then so like But so why do you continue to go? It's like really what one of the points you were making You're passionate about that It's a rate of learning like how much are you learning from this person but also you're looking for the unsolicited response rate Meaning that Every now and then there's gonna be a comment. I don't know why this isn't getting more views This is amazing. This changed my life and that's what keeps you going But it's first the rate of learning the unsolicited response rate forget about the views because you get to kill yourself Notice not just all all all that conversation is never about money Right, it's about the views how many listen how much influence I get how much I learned Because if you want to if you want to build a business and at first we all want to do it for the money But once you actually in it for the journey is if you're about the money then you're gonna die It doesn't work yeah, I mean we're near Miami right where it's a very money driven place, right? But like it just that's not it's very like nobody wants to make money short term But like Everyone wants to make money short term. Sorry, but like long term is like always the answer Long term is always the answer and if you want to make money short term It's not gonna be with Content it's not content can be a Content can be top of funnel for a product you're serving you're selling But ultimately if you want to just monetize an audience that's the long term play But it again, it's like this hugely leverageable asset like it can there's no there's no end of life on a on an audience You can build that for the next 50 60 years if you want to and Actually, I'm curious if you have any ideas of who's who's still doing that well because I don't think we have a ten of creators that have been around for that long but I'd be curious to see who's done that over like basically the longest period of time that In modern history this built an audience maintained it and stayed relevant Tim Ferriss is probably one of the best examples. Joe Rogan actually started really early too He's like what like 15 years ago now you're talking podcasts, but think about anything Okay, so all productions 20 years relevancy. I don't know how long 20 years. How do you stay relevant so relevant? The most relevant so Tim Ferriss is a good example. Yeah, Tim Ferriss. He did like it's four hour work week or whatever any Well, Tim Ferriss started in the world when there was no one there now He's he has his first move of advantage, right? But what I'm saying is how did the Kardashians stay relevant? For over 15 years You're just following their life. Yeah, it's just entertaining. That's what it is. That is what it is. Yeah, interesting Okay, we have to um let's There was one more thing that I want to go into which is really what you wrote your book about and I don't know if you know much about Erick's book, but he wrote a book basically based on like comparing and drawing analogies from video games To leveling up in your life, which I thought was a really interesting concept Maybe just speak a little bit about that and just some lessons for the audience And why you look at life this way like a video game because like that really hits home with me Yeah, but the the concept of leveling up Why did you tie it back to like gaming and how does that apply to someone's life and how can they sort of level themselves up Very similar to how they would level themselves up if they're playing a video game. I mean, dude Business is the ultimate game. I mean this that we're playing right now. This is a game in itself We're playing the game of soul show. We're trying to you know build our audiences and all that and so for me like Everyone has their thing growing up like a lot of people understand sports to understand football But that stuff was like not a big thing maybe a hundred two hundred years ago And so this is just a modern version of sports. You have a lot of people playing the problem with with gaming or sports is that you can overtrain Right, so you can tear your ACL, you know, if you overtrain that with gaming you can totally screw your mind up Like I remember I used to go to like Carlos Jr at six in the morning eat chili cheeseburger and like chili cheese fries And get a diet coke to keep the fat off But and then go back to playing World of Warcraft for go back to playing poker. It's like really unhealthy stuff right but like I've learned how I play business better because I've learned a lot playing poker You learn how to manage your emotions You learn how to deal with people long term your bankroll management all that stuff factors in you learn how to invest for the long term and so All those traits flow into business and business is the ultimate game relationships are a game everything's a game And when you look at it that way everything's just more fun. So I mean We're doing this because we're having fun. We're trying to have fun, right? It's not because we we need it They're saying it's on my line So business is a video game and the money is just a way to keep score. Yeah It is you can start taking some of these quotes if you want no one's gonna. Yeah, you should just say, you know, you just say it's smart Yeah No, um, do you find that entrepreneurs have the wrong view when they start like you work with a whole bunch of entrepreneurs I'm sure a lot of people reach out to you. I saw you're almost the other day, but people trying to get you to go for coffee and shit Oh, yeah, so but the point is when When entrepreneurs reach out like what's the what's the biggest mistake that a young entrepreneur makes when they're starting to build anything It could be a service product could be building a brand. What's the number one thing they always screw up? I mean nobody wants to wait. Everyone wants to get rich tomorrow And so and you learn like the most important things is just like it's gonna take you decades to build something great And most people just like they can help themselves they can't to compare their chapter one to someone else is chapter 40 Yeah, and so like we've learned over and I think we're all like that younger when we're younger It's like oh no like you know, we need to get this Lambo like it's all like the wrong thinking you tend to like just it's a lot of envy Yeah, and you realize no like what it's about is again learning and then maybe teaching paying it forward And then just continue to compound um, I mean warn Buffett's the best example. He just continues to compound over time There's no like just you know easy, you know steady as she goes and That's how everybody has won and you think that it's um like a learned a learned skill set that patience and or is that just something that's ingrained in you Like it's like a personality. I think you learned it like my opinion is I think you learned it because you didn't go back You're modifying you're modifying you were you were in single grain. Yeah, it was not going well You could have said fuck this and gone and worked for somebody. Yeah But I think with single grain what you had is an evolution as an entrepreneur as a person and you needed that that early failure Right kind of like an immunization where in many cases what happened was you came into a business that perhaps was overly structured And then you needed to start all over again to figure out what you do and then learn how to restructure the business because One reason many companies failed Right one because many of them are but one of them is you over hire people for and you build too many departments When you don't have to where you can outsource tons of everything and you only focus on the core You should start focusing on the core and if you can outsource so then In if in what happened is when when you're not producing enough money you ended up overly concerning over the process and organization of the business instead of the core When you restart up you don't have that problem. You have one or two people of where multiple hats everyone's doing everything You don't have a finance department to a TD department you have any of that and you just roll with this Because you do everything at once then you start taking one more person so he can take off that that extra heart of you because you can Eventually grow that business that's what happened to you and that's how you modify yourself right you you learn okay I didn't maybe I needed those people but I poorly allocated them to do jobs Do doing what the core of the business wasn't doing the same thing But now I have all that input now. Let's start all over again I have all that input for most links I had and got me all that SEO now uber wants to get To get us to give us a quote so you you ended up restructuring all over again And you'll learn in the right way right one by one getting more employees until you get to 60 I mean everything's about leveling up up building the right trades right so like you know you learn about patience You learn about you learn about culture all these things that seem like buzzwords like people will say Things but you don't understand until you really put your hand on the stove and so I mean I think about um You know single grain over the years. It's like man It's didn't know anything about building rapport. Didn't know anything about building culture Didn't know anything about like how you actually build out a new department and so over time It's just like yeah, you learn these things and that's what I think entrepreneurship is the ultimate personal growth machine Because you actually get to see kind of what level they're at right and like people are all different like let's let's go back to my co-host He knows he's really bad with people. Okay, understanding who you are I'm gonna back out. I'm gonna focus on what I'm really good at and then let every that's like his playbook And then like I have my playbook. There's certain things I'm good at and also like the most important thing I would say that I I think most entrepreneurs in their early career even especially in their 20s They're like oh, I'm gonna do everything. I'm gonna do this and then I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna add this Oh cool Scott's doing a CPG company gonna try that and I'm gonna do another like a cosmetics company Yeah, I'm gonna try that yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna post on social Yeah, I'm gonna like how smart is that like you split your attention like five ways So you're at 20% level versus someone that's at a hundred percent level like why would you think he's gonna win? Yeah, yeah, but I do believe that actually I had an argument with lady on LinkedIn like last week Because I was saying that everybody I've actually the comment was Employers that encourage employees to have side hustles are gonna win because you're gonna Basically allow people the the ability to build themselves outside of the organization and then she was like well Employers should be paying a decent wage so that the employees shouldn't have a side hustle Which I that's fine. Okay, you definitely have to pay a good wage But the point was you shouldn't be doing the side hustle for the money in the short term You should be doing the side hustle so that you you level yourself to fuck up in ways that you could never level yourself up in an organization And she was like well, you can learn in an organization. You will never learn Yeah, you're self into a rabbit hole with the lady. Yeah No, but when you will never learn at the at the rate And you will never get the opportunity to learn the things you can learn as an entrepreneur building a business on the side Forget the money you can make zero dollars And you will level up as a person in a way that you will never be able to do But what would you want to encourage people? I mean if someone was meant to do it Would meant to do it and then we could support them We we tell we I actively tell people that they should have an entrepreneurial side hustle, right? Because yeah, I feel like not necessarily everyone should become an entrepreneur But they should have an entrepreneurial mindset, right? So if it works for you Thank God right like good for you right go to your thing like even yesterday or someone like But when you mean when you say encouraging because I had employees running their own businesses And I absolutely support them on that But I don't go out there and say listen guys By the way on your free time when you go home. Why don't you start a bit? I didn't really think of going there. Why not? Yeah No, I didn't say it's bad or good. I was just thinking well In my mind, I said well if it if you're meant to be an entrepreneur you do it But the amount of people that would be entrepreneurs are very few It's just the way it is right most people don't have to push somebody into an uncomfortable position If they have like listen if there's family stuff that they're taking care of and they have a ton of time They want to put towards their kids and they're spout like that's that's fine It's totally fine like that you're you're able to do that But it's not saying hey, I want you to allocate Eight hours of your weekend towards building a business on the side. That's an expectation It's just you allow it if that person is already allowed Yes, I mean I pushed a fuck out of them. Maybe you do maybe you do yeah, I like I'm just saying you have them ended up Building a big business that ended up quitting Because I told them if you're doing good some of them did well and said it's time for you to Actually, there's a couple so one guy was doing like he started his e-commerce thing I'm like, oh dude, how's it going right now? And it got up to like you know 80 grand amount. I was like dude You should just do it. Do you think right? Yeah, how many of them how many of them ended up I think probably like Let's say like three three okay One guy ended up going to to work for a Gary Vee as his director of brand strategy So like I think again, entrepreneurship is the ultimate personal growth machine So like the more you push yourself, you know, I think entrepreneurship is just a mindset And so I think anybody can get there if they push themselves to do so because we all come from different walks of life You know, I didn't do well in school. I don't know about you guys, but like everyone if if like the people that did well in school And didn't do well in school can do it. It's just more so like upgrading your mind to get there. Yeah Well, I think if you if you have if you go back to academics It gives you a certain comfort that you can get a job if you're out of code and then you put yourself in a certain frame It takes a little bit to get out of it And to say well actually I can do it myself. There's always those aha moments right I wasn't a guy that building Took me I was 20 something when I started my company just because I couldn't get a job legally I was allowed to work here, but it's it's not for everyone for in the sense of If you're not motivated to be an entrepreneur, just don't go there because there's so many raining days And you can make mistakes that can set you back way worse than where you started I would recommend everyone to try it, but I would say it's everyone should try it Not necessarily everyone's gonna win at it But even if you do try you're still gonna learn you're gonna have some scar tissue Yeah, we're not talking about so I want to so I want to I want people to take away from this that it doesn't have to be an all-in high-risk venture You start writing a newsletter in a niche that you know a lot about that you're super passionate about And then you throw on a five dollar a month subscription and then you figure how to market that and you figure out how to blog for yourself Now you figured it as you know to an extent like that's not high risk That's a hobby that can turn into And it helps the company and it helps the company so I have someone on my team She's she's helps me with a lot of my my brand stuff right and she's amazing And you know, she's helping her her husband grow her YouTube channel like you know She's investing on inside. She's doing all these things. I'm like good, right? Yeah, because all the learnings that you have will translate over into the company And if it works really well for you goes gangbusters then even better We I would look at those that try to build on channel And some of them was in customer service. I looked at our YouTube channel. So she's doing amazing So I moved her from customer service to be one of the companies face So she can really her own channel and now obviously she has her own She makes she does really well because she'll work for a bunch of companies She has one job somewhere else, but she has a bunch of side hustles where I told her you want to go and because you understand tic tac She would go and do content buckets for tic tac for boxing and said you know you should go and say I make companies cool on tic tac That should be on your intro and you should go and start promoting yourself And then when companies see this they said I need to be cool on tic tac who doesn't yeah, and then you start charging and learn How much you charge? I mean you can figure it out you're smart, but But that was something that She was just keeping her account as as it is and no this is the front of your tic tac and Instagram This is what you should write. Yeah, companies already reaching out so you should have yourself as a company See entrepreneurship is about paying it forward too like what you're doing there is like pushing them to become the best version Of themselves. So again, I think that's why everyone should have an entrepreneurial mindset. I love it And it's not just about like I would never recommend somebody do something risky like take on money if they're taking on money before like there's so many I mean, it's 2022 almost 2023 Even though it's a few months from now. I'm just Almost there. We just but he goes he goes nevergreen. Here goes nevergreen Well in 2024 they'll be fine. They'll be another hundred episodes But the point is there's so many like free Like low code no code tools services. You can leverage to do anything I would even even entrepreneurs unlike before you even take on outside like people that have like fully committed their life to it And our cash line is like before you take on outside investment like how do you take this? I've ever seen someone that drive himself into a bad spiral that doesn't want to get out of a failing business Putting everything they had into it most because it's very much. Have you seen people? Yeah, it's a sunk cost fallacy, right? Yeah, but to your point. I mean, there's look you can pretty It's very simple not easy to build a cash flow of business that you can do consulting I mean, there's so many people that talk about building these Shopify You know, it's not as good anymore, right? Like drop shipping through Shopify I mean, if you figure if you're good at sourcing products. Yeah, you can still make money that way And by the way, like this is why entrepreneurship is a game You don't get to go to the next level until you beat the current boss And you get you stay stuck there if you can't beat the current boss like that's that's how society I'm sorry. This is how society should be right? Yeah, yeah, not everyone can be an NBA player I can play basketball but it can do NBA. Oh, so it's not for everybody Scott can though. Yeah, I don't know I am tall. I don't think I can jump that I I was no I'm a big guy. I was more like contact sports. Oh football. Yeah, there you go football hockey rugby. That was my thing. Yeah, never basketball. I'm not I'm not that athletic I can't be running around all day. I'm at a breath pretty quick. It's okay. At least you at least you're tall I can't do that. Yeah, fair. Yeah, if you're a good shoot you can Not even good at that. Oh, yeah, all right. I think that's all I got man. That was awesome. That was amazing Yeah, I enjoyed that. Yeah, that was great. Yes, and uh, where's the people reach out to you connected to you social website? At Eric OSIU on the Twitters and the Instagrams We can also add your phone number in your personal address where you leave so they can come to your home. Yes, come on over to my aunt. Yeah All right You