Eric Siu: Building a $10m+ Marketing Agency

Ali Abdaal
By the way, in case you haven't heard, my brand new book, feel good productivity is now out. It is available everywhere books are sold, and it's actually hit the New York Times and also the Sunday Times bestseller list. So thank you to everyone who's already got a copy of the book. If you've read the book already, I would love a review on Amazon. And if you haven't yet checked it out, you may like to check it out.

It's available in physical format and also ebook and also audiobook. Everywhere books are sold. Hello and welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly ish podcast, where it's my immense pleasure to sit down with entrepreneurs, creators, authors, academics and other inspiring people. We find out how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools we can learn from them to help build a life that we love. What you're about to hear is a conversation between me and my friend Eric Seu.

Now, Eric is an investor, founder and advisor to multiple companies. He's the chairman of digital marketing agency single Grain, which has worked with absolutely enormous companies like Amazon, Uber and Salesforce. He also hosts two podcasts. Firstly, is the marketing school podcast with Neil Patel, which is one of the biggest, if not the biggest podcast in the world of marketing. And secondly, the leveling up podcast, which I've actually been a guest on.

In this conversation, we talk about Eric's entrepreneurial journey, how he got started with his business, and how he ultimately grew his marketing agency to multi million dollars in revenue. And we touched on all of the other different businesses and ventures that Eric started all the way through to his various successes. So I hope you enjoy this conversation between me and Eric. Sue. Eric, how's it going?

Eric Seu
It's going, man. It's good to hang out with you. Likewise. I would love to start by asking about your backstory. How did you get into being this guy who runs this super successful marketing agency?

Yeah, so I was first working a dead end job doing data entry, and then my friend said, hey, you should check out this Internet marketing thing. Picked up internship, long story short, got a job, and then like a year later I was leading marketing at an online education startup, right? Had no idea how to manage people, had no idea how to run a marketing team. Basically eight months after that, we had some success with that. I bet the entire company on YouTube ads, long story with that.

And we raised our series b, and that company started to take off. And then Neil, who's now my podcast co host, was an advisor to that company, and he's like, hey, you should come help save this failing company, which was a failing SEO agency. And I was like, why would I do that? I'm in tech. That's not scalable.

The multiples aren't that good. Why would I do that? Before I said no, I was like, wait a minute. I think if I can help this company turn it around, I think I can do a lot more. And this is a nice test.

It's a nice, real NBA. So you turned the SEO company around, and then what happened next? Yeah, so, I mean, with that one, actually, when I took it over, I took it over. Neil was actually one of the partners, so I bought out his shares and then his partner shares, right? And we were able to.

I actually made it go from bad to worse. I was 27 years old, had no idea how to run a company, right. And it actually got so bad to the point where my outside accounting firm called and they said, hey, it might be time to shut this thing down. And I actually accepted a job at another company. I was looking at apartments in Dallas, Texas, right.

And it would have been great paying job. And it was at that moment, I was like, you know what? No, I'd rather make, like, nothing a year and, like, still be doing entrepreneurship. Right? Like, this is the thing I'd be doing for free because it's fun.

And so then I pulled back on it. I was like, hey, I can't do it. And then luckily, I don't think I've told this part before, but the reason we were really able to turn it around was because our SEO started to kick in. So we ranked number one for the keyword digital marketing agency in the United States for, like, two or three years. And we're getting all the leads for, like, Uber, Amazon, everything, right?

And because we're all the way down to one employee, because of my screw ups, we were able to refer to leads out to other agencies, and we're collecting, like, 30% commissioners. So at that point, we're making like, maybe six, seven, $800,000 a year in profit. And that was because of all the SEO work that we were doing, and that kept us afloat, and that allowed us to bridge the gap, or that was a nice bridge to allow us to hire the people that we needed to hire to start to really turn the thing around. So starting a marketing agency feels like one of the modern day equivalents of, I don't know, doing paid surveys or something. It's like when you start researching how to make money on the Internet, start a marketing agency is weirdly high on the list.

Ali Abdaal
Why is starting a marketing agency such a seemingly common thing that people tell other people to do to make money? Yeah, well, it's a great business, right? So like, one, your capex, your capital expenditures are really low. It's not gonna cost you much money to start it up. Two, you're getting paid.

Eric Seu
It's a cash flow business out the gate, right? You're not raising money for anything and expecting to go negative for quite a while. And in today's environment, you can't do that anymore, right? You gotta be profitable. That's cool.

Again, you gotta be efficient. What most people don't know as well is that down the road you can pre 2022, you can actually sell the agency with a 15 to 20 x multiple. So let's say you're doing like $10 million a year and you might be able to sell it for 100, 5200 million dollars. Really? Most people don't know that.

Most people are like, oh, you can't sell the agency for much. That's true. Only if your agency is doing less than 5 million in profit, you can maybe sell it for three to four x. You start to go beyond that. You actually are building scale and the large holding companies will be looking at you.

So most people don't know that. Oh, wow, interesting. Yeah. I had another entrepreneur on the pod a while ago called Tim Armu who sold his social media marketing agency for like tens of millions. And I think they were doing about 10 million revenue.

So. Yeah. So wait, is this like multiple of revenue? Multiple profit? Multiple.

It's a multiple of profit, yeah. And so I think the problem is it's, you know, maybe we can get to the whole, like, me getting punched in the face and learning to focus. But if you want to build something generational, I'm not saying everyone has to do this, but if you want to build like 100 million or like, you know, multiple eight figures or whatever, it takes 10, 20, 30 years to do that. And what ends up happening is the agency people, because it seems tough in the moment, right? It's like there's so many fires you're putting out.

It's a people business. There's, people are complex, blah, blah, blah. But if you end up hiring good people to help you manage the business, you're not necessarily stressed all the time, and then you're able to continue to scale the thing. I think what happens is most people are just like, oh, I just want to, I just want to sell the thing and move on because they get burnt out too quickly. But the move to not get burnt out is to be really good with your marketing on the agency side.

So you drive leads, and then after you do that, then you just make sure you innovate, and then you hire really good people. Easier said than done, right? But if you hire really good people, especially in the agency world, they usually come with a book of business, and they usually come with people that they know. You recruit those people and you keep doing it. You want to, like, a real life pyramid scheme or multi level marketing.

Like, here it is, right? That's what it is. Nice. Okay, so let's say you have a 23 year old cousin who has just graduated university, and they've done a job for two years, but they hate it. And they're like, cool, Eric, you've got a big marketing agency.

Ali Abdaal
I want to build my own marketing agency. And this person's like, you know what? If I could get to ten k a month profit, I'll be really happy because that means I can quit my job. What are the sorts of things that, let's say, me, as this 23 year old student or, like, recent grad would have to do to set up a marketing agency? Like, what's, what's involved in the process?

Eric Seu
Yeah. So I think one, you have to get really good at just one thing first. So let's say you're really good at make clipping videos, right? For shorts and TikTok. So let's see.

Let's say I'm Ali, right? And I do these long form podcast interviews, 2 hours. So if you were to say, hey, like, I will. We're literally paying this. This person do this right now.

This guy, they used to work for, Gary V. And so he will clip videos, and every single day we get one. And then he just, like, he does it, right? Like, here's the caption, here's everything. And he's like, oh, this one, I think you should cut.

You should collab with Ali. So it's just like, it's all done for you, right? And so if you're. If you're stacking, like, ten of these clients, you're already making 20 grand a month. Okay, wait, sorry.

Ali Abdaal
So I have to get really good at one specific. So what are my options of skills? One of them is clip picking. Like, what other sorts of things could I get really good at? So one is clip making.

Eric Seu
Okay. One could be like, web design. The other one could be copywriting, for example. And we can go into, like, a sub niche of copywriting. Might be like, writing for you on LinkedIn.

Or writing for you on Twitter. So everyone needs help with marketing or design at the end of the day. Okay, so that's interesting because my initial conception of marketing agency would have been, I don't know, I'll help you run Facebook ads or I'll help you get a billboard out. But it sounds like these examples are things that wouldn't have come to, like helping people with their LinkedIn. Helping people with Twitter.

Ali Abdaal
Yeah, I guess that's what marketing is in the modern world. Well, yeah, I mean, that's what works, right? That's where the good, organic reaches and even the stuff that you have with, hey, friends believe that's kind of a. That's a service as well. Right.

Eric Seu
So it's whatever people need, I think paid to your point. SEO, CRO, all that stuff. What's your CRO? Is conversion rate optimization. Okay.

Yeah. So you take a look at a landing page and you tweak it so that the conversion rate improves. Correct. Okay, nice. So I'm a 23 year old and I'm thinking, okay, that's the first thing.

Ali Abdaal
Okay, so let's pick one of these. So let's say I am. Let's say I'm really into. I don't know, I'm really into social media. And I love the idea of taking someone's podcast and turning it into bite sized clips and editing them in, like, capcut or something so that they can post them on TikTok.

Is that a reasonable thing that I can make a business out of? Yeah, if you're 23 years old, I think this is a great solo business. You don't need much capex, right? You reach out to a couple of people, and people have done this with me. It's like, hey, they'll send me the edited video already.

Eric Seu
And it's like, hey, this is what our work looks like. And do you want more of this? It's like, oh, you've already done the work. And it's good work. And it's.

Yeah, I would love more because you just made my life easier. In fact, Brad over here reached out to me on Instagram. Right. And so it's like he reached out with a very clear call to action. It was very simple to understand.

There's a lot of these people reaching out to me. I'm sure they're reaching out to you also on YouTube, right? Or YouTube on Instagram right now, too. Yeah. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
I feel like half my Instagram feed has become these sorts of cold pitches and stuff. And we're increasingly getting more and more emails because I do talk about this in podcasts. I say that, oh, man, I wish someone would email me with having done the work and saying, hey, you know, take it on Ebit, but like, I can do more of this. And so loads of people are like, hey, you know, I saw that thing you said on the podcast with Nicholas Cole and here is a PDF that you requested and stuff, but now there's too many of them to keep on top of. So I guess people stand out even more.

Yeah. Or I guess people go to people who are maybe, I don't know, a scale below where our channel, where our YouTube channel is. And therefore those are the people probably not getting pitched. That's a good call up. They should aim lower.

Eric Seu
They shouldn't aim for the best of the best when you're reaching out to people, they should aim for someone that's maybe like, you know, maybe a level or two below. And also, maybe they can send it to the CEO but also send it to people that are working on the team, too, the people that are maybe less busy. Yeah, I think this is a place where people get it wrong when they email me in that they email me directly and there's very little chance I'm going to see the email and be able to take action on it. But the ones who have done well have also said, btw, I've also sent this email to Amber, your podcast producer, because they figured out that her email address is fairly easy to guess. And those are the conversations that get taken forward because Amber gets way fewer emails than I do.

They're being proactive. Yeah. Yeah. So let's say I'm 23 year old Johnny and I've decided, cool, I'm going to reach out. I'm going to turn podcast clips into TikTok and Instagram content.

Ali Abdaal
Now, do I just have to send cold emails? Like, how do I get my clients? In the beginning, you're the janitor, you're doing everything. So you're coming up with the creative, like the creative in the outbound sales email, right? Or sales dm, whatever you want to call it.

Eric Seu
You're coming up with, you're doing the work as well. And you're also, you're doing a little bit of marketing as well. Like maybe you're going to events and things like that, but eventually it starts to pick up because your work is so good that other people are referring you like that. Like most people think the marketing agency is all about, oh, you know, you getting more leads, but what's the best way for you to get more leads. It's to do good work.

And then when you sign a client, for example, don't just do the kickoff call, say, hey, Ali, is there anybody else you can introduce to me and not give me a referral? It's like, is there anybody you can introduce? And that will usually give you a good chunk of additional revenue. Oh, yeah. Because I guess if you're a podcaster, you know other podcasters, and you'll be like, oh, actually, yeah.

Ali Abdaal
Like, my mate Sam Parr needs clips created from his podcast, or my mate Sahil needs clips from his podcast. Yep, all that kind of thing. Nice. And how much can I be charging for my clip picking service? You can be.

Eric Seu
So let's go with the $2,000 a month, right? So you only $2,000 a month times ten clients, you're already making 20 grand a month. That 240 grand, you're already in the top. You're close to the top 1% in the United States. You can charge two k a month for podcast clip picking.

Yeah, I mean, let's say you even come down a little bit, right? 1500 a month or whatever, go get 20 clients, right? You're at 30k. Yeah. I think what's interesting about the agency stuff is that you're starting off with such a high ticket number.

Ali Abdaal
Whereas I think initially when I was thinking about making money, I was thinking, okay, what can I sell for $3? And now can I sell 200,000 copies of those things every year? And it's pretty hard to do that. But if you think, what can I sell for $2,000 or $3,000, you need a very tiny number of clients to make decent amounts of money. Yeah, you can argue this, right?

Eric Seu
Like, I have a friend right now, he makes a million and a half a year. And literally he just has a couple of 1015K clients and all he does is consult for them. And it's because he did pretty good with leading marketing teams before at startups, and people know who he is, so, yeah, and his life is chill. Like, you want to talk about feel good, like maybe he spends like 4 hours, 5 hours a week working. Nice.

Ali Abdaal
Okay, that's pretty solid. So, okay, so I'm doing this clip picking. I've been sending cold emails and DM's, and I've got a handful of clients. I'm probably going to run into the issue that I no longer have enough hours in the day. What do I do then?

Eric Seu
That's when you start to hire. And so I would say one of the first hires that is worthy of making with a services or agency model is actually your assistant, because that person can take a lot off your plate. Right. So this person, like. Cause look, you're gonna be, you're gonna be doing the work.

That means you need to be collecting all the assets. You need to be coming up with the captions and all that type of stuff. There's a lot of logistical maneuvering to be done. There's a lot of calendars. Like, you're gonna have to get on client calls to who's gonna manage all that.

So I think the best move to do is come up with your bucket of $10 an hour tasks, $100 an hour tasks, thousand dollar an hour tasks, and all the way up to like, $100,000 an hour tasks. Right. You should be thinking about every single quarter. What are the 15% of things you can be eliminating and hiring out? Because a job at the end of the day is just responsibility.

So make that list of responsibilities and go hire out for that. Hmm. That makes it sound very simple. I think a lot of people feel like, you know, I certainly felt this with my first hire. Like, oh, my God, it's such a big deal.

Ali Abdaal
I need to get it right. I need to make sure I have everything. But you're just like, I mean, a job is just a list of simple, not easy. Yeah. Yeah.

So how would I, let's say I'm Johnny, I'm 23. I've got, let's say, I don't know, four k a month coming in from clients. Yep. How would I find my first person? Well, I'm just a nobody.

Like, no one knows who I am. If Johnny four k and he has, like, no burn, you know, three k is great. Right. But. So he's going to have to continue to grind at 4k.

Eric Seu
It's not a lot of money. Right. You're asking how he gets the next clients. Right. So there's the referral piece or asking for introductions.

Ali Abdaal
There is the, I mean, so is, at what point would Johnny be thinking about hiring? Got it. Yeah. So as soon as he can afford it. So if his burns really low, let's say he's making, you know, ten grand a month.

Eric Seu
Right. And his burns like 2000 a month, he's got 8000 to play with. That's when you can. You have some margin of safety there. Right.

The thing you should be considering with, with most service businesses is you want to have a gross profit margin of at least 50%, if not a little higher, maybe 60% or so. Okay. Meaning that I charge a client, let's say two k, but it only cost me one k to deliver the service. Right. Okay, so I'm making one k gross profit, and then there's taxes and all that kind of crap.

Ali Abdaal
But that's a reasonable amount for an agency. Yep. Okay, nice. So Johnny's getting to ten k a month by cold emailing and doing referrals and stuff and doing good work for people. Yeah, I see a lot of people who cold email me with work.

Like, hey, I saw in a video you mentioned that you're looking for a thumbnail designer. Here are some thumbnails, and they're just bad. Like, we look at all of them because we're always looking for thumbnail designers. And it's just so hard to find someone who's actually good. So I guess a big part of the agency game is to actually be good at the thing.

Eric Seu
You have to go the extra mile. It's like most people just aren't willing to go the extra mile. Right? I'm trying to think. Okay, here's a good example.

One guy that used to work for me, he now works for Gary Vee as his senior brand strategist. He works side by side with him. Right. And what he did when he first applied was he applied for an internship, but everyone else did just the normal stuff. Right.

They followed the job posting. He wrote a 4000 word blog post, put it on medium, and said all the things that he would do. And like, that is a way to stand out. Yeah. And then it's no wonder why he's working side by side with Gary Veno.

Ali Abdaal
Yeah. I think there's a lot of, when it comes to jobs, there's a lot of entitlement that I sometimes get, get the impression of where people are, like, well, I shouldn't have to go the extra mile. I should be able to follow the instructions on the job America and tick the boxes and do the requirements is like, oh, it's so unfair that they didn't even reply to my email kind of thing. Yeah, please give me a $1 million raise too. Yeah.

Eric Seu
Yeah. Okay. The entitlement thing. You know what's interesting, what I've observed is entitlement is not really an issue in Latin America. It's not really an issue in Europe, not really an issue in asian countries either.

In fact, I talked to our lead developer. I was like, hey, what do you think about career pathing? And then he just, like, scoffed at me and says, let's talk about something else. Right? And it's just like.

But in America, it's like, oh, no. It's like, you know, we need, like, three days off a week. I would never like to come into the office. I would also like a raise every quarter or so. And it's like, I think we've just gotten very soft as a society.

And so this was, this isn't said usually. Like, I don't usually say this on a podcast, right. But it's like, when I'm at founders retreats with my other friends, it's like, it's becoming more and more difficult. And more and more of my founder friends, they don't want to hire from America anymore because it's like the work isn't getting done. And also, America is a very litigious place, right?

And so one of my friends has a rule. He will not hire people from California, Colorado, or New York. I'm like, why? He's like, because all they know how to do is sue, right? It's like, I'd rather just not deal with that.

It's like, that's the state's fault, right? I'm like, oh, very interesting. He's like, yeah, I just hired more from Uruguay. I'm hiring more from, like, you know, other countries, and it's working out perfectly because people are grateful to have a job there. Interesting.

Yeah, that was my little digression. Nice. I like it. Other than this medium post, can you think of any other examples of people that, you know, have known who have stood out through, like, something interesting? You mean like when they're applying for.

Ali Abdaal
When they're applying for jobs or anything else? Yeah. So let's see. So there's Raghav. That's his name.

Eric Seu
Let's see, who else? While you're thinking. We had a guy who applied for a videography position in our team, and we had, like, 400 applicants. This was the only guy who made a video. He just made a video and uploaded it as unlisted to YouTube, being like, hey, Ali and team.

Ali Abdaal
And he just sort of did it in the style of an Alibza video. And, you know, in the end, we didn't end up hiring him, but we gave him a trial task immediately because it's like, oh, he's gone the extra mile. Out of 400 people, he's the only one who's actually made a video. Yeah. So we are a developer.

Eric Seu
He actually made a video saying, hey, he was demonstrating his marketing prowess as well as his technical prowess. Right. He's like, here are all the things I change on your website. It's too slow over here. This is an issue over here.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's articulating himself. He even wrote something out afterwards. So that's like, he not only made a video, he also had a write up, and he really demonstrated his level of sophistication. Nice.

Ali Abdaal
Is running a marketing agency fun for you? It feels good. Okay. Yeah. How so?

Eric Seu
Right now, I don't know. I can't speak for most people, but I enjoy how much there is to do, and I understand all the levers I need to pull. The game is very simple to me. It's like I mentioned earlier, for marketing agencies gotta have good marketing, which drives leads. Right.

And you gotta innovate as long as you're innovating. Innovating also means that you're pushing the limits, which means you're usually gonna get good results for your clients if you're constantly pushing the limits. And so at a certain point, it's just like, okay, if our marketing is really strong, we're getting hundreds of leads a month, then we just need to continue to hire really good people, and then we need to have a really good culture and then hold people accountable to that culture. And that's no different than building any great business. And so it's just like, the reason why I like it now.

I used to hate it, but I like it now because it's like, it's what I understand most, and I spent the most amount of time in it. Right. If I just continue to do that, it's going to continue to compound like anything else. Nice. So you spend a lot of time with the kind of, with other founders and stuff at all these, these events and the masterminds that you host.

Ali Abdaal
Have you seen, like, what are the patterns that you've seen amongst the people who are rich and happy compared to the people who are rich and unhappy? Yeah. Okay, so the rich and happy people, I was first gonna say kids, but no, that's not. The kids are certainly a big piece of it. Oh, okay.

Interesting. Right? So, like, people with kids tend to be happier. Yeah. I mean, some people I know that used to be all in, like, go, go, go.

Eric Seu
The kids have taken the edge off, and now they even bug me about having kids. Right. It's like, it's such a joy for them right now. That being said, I do have friends when I go down these founders retreats, some of them don't have kids yet, right.

But everyone has tens of millions or if not, like, hundreds of millions of dollars. And I'm like, so why do you keep playing? It's like, well, because the game is fun. It's no different than the answers that you usually get when you ask this. And so what's so fun about the game?

It's like all the dynamic things. It's like the people problems, the sales challenge, the product challenges, how the macroeconomic environment is changing, or the different creative financing options you can do or different tax things that you can do. There's games within games you can play. This in itself is a game. There's the content game.

Oh, wait, the channel is changing. The algorithm's changing. How do we adapt? I think it gives you a chance to really flex your mind, and it keeps you sharp, and that's why it's fun. Okay, so it sounds like the people who are wealthy and also happy are the ones who continue to find the game of entrepreneurship actually genuinely feel good.

Ali Abdaal
Yeah. I mean, look at Warren Buffett, right? He's 99 years old. Charlie Munger's 97 years old. I mean, is there any other incentive to play other than that it feels good?

Interesting.

Is there any correlation that you've seen between people, sort of the enjoyment levels of people who have a more sort of lifestyle business compared to the enjoyment levels of people who are more full on with their work? So I used to think all I would want was, like, a lifestyle business, right? And I would see people cap their businesses, say, hey, I would not grow beyond this. And that's fine. That's what works for them.

Eric Seu
I think the way I'm wired is I just want to see how far I can push this. You know, some people enjoy that. So I used to think, like, no, this is. This should be the way. Lifestyle is the way, or, no, like, you know, going all in and building a billion dollar company is way.

It's like, no, it's like, whatever feels right to you, just go ahead and do that. And it's a boring answer, but it's like, it's true. Yeah, I'll give you another example. So when we did the founders retreat this year, one of the guys in the group, he was like, you know, I don't know what to do now because, you know, we have over a thousand employees, and there's this challenge with remote work. And another guy in the group was like, well, what have you always done with your businesses?

He's built some eight, nine figure businesses. He's like, we've always worked in the office. And then the guy that was asking the question, he's always built his companies remotely. And then the conclusion we all came across was like, wait, then why don't you just continue doing that? It's like that's what you're used to doing.

That guy's used to doing fully in the office. That guy's used to fully doing remote. I'm actually used to doing hybrid because I was already doing that three years before the pandemic. That is what feels right to you. So go ahead and do that.

Who cares about what anybody else thinks? There's no right or wrong. It's like, what works for you? That's nice. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
The thing that feels right to you. So what are your motivations at the moment for continuing to, I guess, grow the business? Is it that piece? That is just fun. I love the aspect of learning and teaching.

Eric Seu
And so if you were to ask me, it's kind of the same thing as you. I've thought about this a lot before. It's like, what if you give me a billion dollars or whatever, what would I be doing? I'd be learning and teaching still because I don't want my brain to rot. And so what I really like about the business and just doing business in general is one being able to go to USC sometimes and teach the kids.

Right. And some of the kids, by the way, these classes are doing like $2 million a year, $1 million a year in business. They're like 19 years old, by the way. I digress. But I like the coaching aspect of, like, when you hire amazing people and they're motivated, they share the same values as you, and they're down the listen and I see the light bulb moments happen.

Like, we have a guy right now, he's on the sales side. He's going to go run his parents or parents, his family's airline company in like three, four months. And I'm just giving him everything right now in leadership. Hey, you need to watch out for this. Hey, when you do this, people are going to react this way.

Right? So it feels good to mentor and, you know, I think that's why I really enjoy it. It's a puzzle to continue to solve as long as I want to continue to solve it. Yeah. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
When I was in medical school, I definitely, a lot of our tutors were retired doctors, but they retired from medicine, but they continued to teach. I think there's something about mentorship and teaching and giving back that fills a lot of people's cup. Paying it forward. You mentioned earlier this thing around getting punched in the face and recognizing the value of focus. What's the story there?

Eric Seu
Yeah, so you read a lot of books. I've read a lot of books. A lot of entrepreneurship books. Right. And you hear stories like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger.

Sorry, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. It's like they were asked, what is the secret to their success? And they both wrote down one word on separate pieces of paper. And then when they revealed the word, the word was focused. It's like, okay, great.

That sounds really good. Right? But when you're a younger entrepreneur, I'm speaking about myself. It's like, I think I can do everything. It's like, I think I can do this SaaS thing.

I can do this entrepreneurship thing. Here, let's recap what I had. Let's see. I had a senior living business. Okay.

I had a quiz SaaS company. What else? I was. Oh, wait. There was also a.

There's education stuff going on, like multiple courses as well, in addition to the agency. Right? There's just two. Oh, wait. My high school friends also wanted to do a vape flavor company as well.

It's like thing after thing after thing, right? Shiny object after shiny object. And what I've learned is that you can do anything, just not everything. And I don't care how smart you are, right? Like, there's just no way you can compete with someone that's all in on one thing.

And everyone's had to learn the hard way. Like, everyone's been punched in the face. And for me, the moment I really learned that was when we acquired these two agencies. Right. That was the moment where it's like, there's just too many things going on, and it's like, no, we really need to focus.

We need to get back to basics, and we're just going to do one thing at the time. We're doing the agencies plus other things. Right. It's just like, no, like the agency. Like, there are agencies out there that do like, $4 billion a year, right?

Ali Abdaal
4 billion. 4 billion, correct. In revenue. Yeah. And any type of business can become really big if you want it to.

Eric Seu
And, yeah, I think that's what I've learned. And it just feels right to be able to work on one thing. It feels very like when I had, like five or six different projects going at once, it felt very frantic, and it felt like I was making. It's like I was starting from scratch on all of them. But when you just keep compounding on what you know already, it's gonna continue to snowball.

Ali Abdaal
I very much vibe with that. What do you, what about the counter argument of diversification is good. So I keep going back to Warren Buffet. So Uncle Warren Buffett said this. He's like, diversity.

Eric Seu
So Mark Cuban, the billionaire, has said, diversification is for idiots. And Warren Buffett has said, look, instead of having multiple baskets, you should diversify into different baskets. No, no, no. You should have one basket and look at it. Just watch it like a hawk.

And when you think about Warren Buffett, like, back in the day, most people don't know this, but they only focused on having eight to ten investments at any given time. Now, Berkshire Hathaway is a lot bigger. They have to diversify even more, and they have so much money to deploy. But the lesson here is that there's only so much you can do at once. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
So for me, focusing on the YouTube channel was the main thing that I did for many years. And then I was like, oh, but we should probably. What if the YouTube thing doesn't work? So we should probably get an email list. We should probably just start doing SEO on the website.

We should probably start a podcast. Because Tim Ferriss diversified away from his personal brand into a podcast and is okay, we should probably do this course. And I was like, okay, cool. Now we've got this product, let's diversify to do this other product and this other product. And this other product.

Yeah. And how did that feel?

Not great when we had a lot. But I wonder, in your view, and I'm trying to figure this out right now, like, should I go back to just doing the YouTube channel, or should I continue doing the podcast? Is like a question that's in my mind. Should I think about just writing more books and making videos? Because that's already two things.

Or should I also write my weekly email newsletter, which seems sensible? Should I also be active on Instagram, which seems sensible? Should I also blah, blah, blah. So, for you, when I'm looking at you, it's like you're still focused on one business, though. If you're doing your business right now, which is larger around the feel good stuff, right?

Eric Seu
But then all of a sudden, you're doing, like, a senior living business. That wouldn't make sense, right? Like, you're starting from scratch there, but you're still compounding within the current vehicle that you have. And so that's okay because you're experimenting inside of it. Right.

I think the challenge is when people are experimenting outside too much, that's when the resources start to all fall apart, because your job as a leader is resource allocation. And then at a certain point, as the company gets bigger, it's just capital allocation. Right. And capital allocating in the wrong spots will lead you to go into very dark areas. Yeah.

So I think you're doing the right thing here. Like, you're diversifying marketing channels. That's fine. You're not diversifying businesses. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
Because fundamentally, we're doing the same thing, which is content sales. Course. This is a channel. Like, this is content. Right.

Eric Seu
And it's a channel, it's a product. And it's also a marketing channel. Okay, that's interesting. Um, any other advice for what, you know, of our content business? Yeah, I mean, I think you can definitely.

You could. I think. I just think the best model is, and I think more. More people are gonna copy it. It's just the Hormozi model where you take equity.

Um, you know, maybe you have some up and comers in your YouTube academy. Um, I don't. It's not YouTube academy. What's it called again? Part time YouTuber Academy.

Part time YouTuber Academy. Okay. So there's going to be some people in there that become superstars, and maybe you're able to track these superstars and maybe you can throw them like, 50k here and then take like ten or 20% equity in what they're doing and you coach them up, and then maybe one of them becomes the next best Mister beast. Like, who knows? I just think, you know, everyone says, I tell my chief of staff this, I'm like, you're going to get rich off a salary.

Like, the best move for you is to own equity in something, right? And I don't mind telling her that because she's very smart and she'll figure it out eventually. And so it's like, yeah, I think courses are great. I think there's nothing wrong with courses. Courses are great to get the cash flow, but I think once you get to your size and you're starting to scale, maybe in a couple years, you're just taking equity mostly and you're investing in other people.

And that's how, like, some of the, some of the richest people in the world are either investors or like, they're just like, straight business owners, right? I don't know how big. Maybe your move is not to have a really big course business, but courses can only. They'll cap out at a certain point, which is what Neil's point was. Right.

But there's nothing wrong with that. What's it like having an assistant chief of staff? What's the difference between those two? I have EA and chief of staff. So EA mostly focuses on the scheduling piece of things like the logistics if I need to book travel or things like that.

For example, when I arrive at a hotel, I'll have an Instacart groceries arrive. I really like liquid soap, so I don't like to use the hand soap. And so there's fruit and all healthy snacks. So it's like those logistics. Right.

And then the chief of staff is like, helping me with my day to day. So, hey, I need help with podcast sponsorships over here, or, hey, maybe I want to look at this. Maybe I want to buy this website over here. I think the thinking is higher level, I would say. And it's someone I know that I can trust with all my information.

Yeah, they're a smoke jumper, so, meaning they can jump into any situation. Yeah. So is your ea a full time position or is it part time? Ea. But like, arranging Instacart, Instacart to a hotel doesn't feel like a full time job.

Ali Abdaal
Like, what other stuff does your ea do? Yeah, there's a lot. I mean, it's so. Okay, for example, we had an issue with American Express fraud, right. Where someone was like, someone used up like 700,000 points.

Eric Seu
And I didn't catch that until like, you know, a couple months ago. And so she had to deal with all that. And so that's like a lot of getting on the phone. She handles invoicing for podcasts or like booking guests and scheduling this stuff, like sending invites. All the logistics around this she handled.

So. Yeah. Okay, nice. So it frees up headspace for you to focus on the thing that grows your business, correct? Yeah.

And I don't like dealing with logistics or details. You strike me as quite a sort of systems y kind of guy. Have you found any useful systems for your personal health as well? Because you seem also in pretty good shape. I'm in okay shape.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I. Okay, one, I have a chef that delivers food, so it's. And delivers twice a week, and it's like ten meals or so. So that's a big piece of it.

And it's like, it's very specific to what my nutritionist wanted before. It's like, no gluten, no dairy, no soy. Right. Because I have sensitivities to that. So I run some blood tests and so I can see all the stuff I'm sensitive to.

And then I go to, I lift like four or five times a week. And then right after that, I'll do like zone two running for like, you know, 20 minutes or so. And then I have my peloton bike, too, so I'll hop on that. Oh, wow. That's a lot of stuff that you're doing.

Yeah. Oh, that's high level. And then, like, I'm a. I'll leave it off with this. I can keep going on, but the sleep stuff is what I obsess over.

So I have, like, a silk sleep mask and buy it for $20 on Amazon. And then I wore the aura, but I also, I invested in this company called eight sleep, and so I have that. And that's super helpful because it cools my bed. Right. And then I wear sleep tape on my mouth.

Ali Abdaal
Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I started doing that, like, seven years ago, and then I used to have to, like, wake up to pee, like, three times, four times a night. And now, like, I never get up at all, so it's the best. Okay.

So it sounds like your health is pretty dulled in. Yeah. So what's your system for lifting? Do you have a personal trainer, or do you follow a workout plan? And how does it work?

Eric Seu
No, I just. I just do it to stay in shape. So it's like squat. So it's like two squats. Two times per week I'll do leg exercises, and then two times per week I'll do be like, chest, upper body, and then one time will be back and other stuff.

So that's what I do. Nice. Sick. What about you? I don't really have a system for health stuff.

Ali Abdaal
I'm trying to figure it out. I'm trying to find a way to make going to the gym actually feel good because I've yet to find something around that that feels good. I really enjoy playing tennis, squash, badminton, that sort of thing. But we should play tennis tomorrow morning. Oh, nice.

Eric Seu
I have a court. Yeah, nice. I'm down, but I'd love to find a way to make muscle building feel good. Any tips? Yeah.

Okay, well, so why doesn't it feel good right now? Ooh, okay. That's a really good question. It doesn't feel good right now because at the moment I'm traveling. I never know where the local gym is.

Ali Abdaal
If I do know where the local gym is, there's some logistical faff to get a day pass to get to the local gym, making time for it in the calendar, it's always one of those things that I'm like, oh, I don't feel like it right now. Maybe I'll go later. And then later never comes, and then once I'm there, then once I'm at the gym, at that point, it starts to feel good because I can just listen to an audiobook. And I've got a health coach, Dan, who programs my workouts. So from that point on, it works.

But it's just, I haven't really thought about this before. Just the logistical piece of actually getting to the gym feels like too much friction. Yeah. But I also have an assistant, so I could just offload that. As I'm saying this, I'm just like.

Eric Seu
Yeah, maybe you don't want to solve it. Yeah, I mean, look, when I'm traveling, it's like, I just, I usually just work out at the gym, at the hotel, and sometimes it sucks and I'm just doing body workouts. It just depends on how long I'm traveling. If I'm traveling for, like, seven to 14 days, I'll definitely find, like, a local gym and then figure out, like, the whole, like, look the past thing and just solve it, because it's like, I don't want to. I just know that if I, if I'm feeling better, then, like, I'm going to do a better job for people around me, so.

Yeah. Nice. Do you have any hobbies outside of work and health or what are, like, what are the things? I like doing brazilian jiu jitsu. Oh, really?

Yeah. But I got, like, I thought I, like, you know, slipped a disc, but then I didn't. But it's like, it's a chess match, right? It's like you're constantly figuring it out. I'm not saying I'm really pro or anything.

Like, oh, this is fun. And like, oh, I guess I'm learning how to defend myself. The tennis I find enjoyable as well. And then I think, other than that, man, I watch anime. Oh, nice.

Ali Abdaal
So, yeah, yeah. For me, it's playing video games and reading fiction. My two things. Yeah. I attended a retreat last week where I saw, like, the most incredible guitarist I've ever seen in my life.

And so that's inspired me to take up the guitar a bit more and try and get better at it. Interesting. Well, actually, that's another one I really enjoy, like, going to, like, going to these founder retreats or going to founder events or just anybody that's like minded because I get inspiration from it and I always get new ideas. And I'm naturally introverted. People think I'm extroverted, but it's like, no, this is my hack of being able to hang out with cool people.

Eric Seu
This is one of the hacks. Have a chat on the podcast, you're one of the most well connected people that I know in that it seems like you know everyone and everyone knows you. How did you do that? Yeah, that's a good question. So I'll tell you how I started, if that's helpful at all.

So, by the way, just for everyone's context here, it's like basically 12:00 a.m. ali's time right now. So I'll try to, I'll try to be, I'll give a good answer here. Okay. So when I was 26 or 27 years old, I stumbled upon this PDF called mastermind talks.

And it's this guy that throws these masterminds, Jason Gegnard. And you can find it just type in, like, mastermind talks, agenda, or whatever. You can find a PDF of this. And I was like, you know, I really want to get people together, but I can't afford $25,000 to pay for a mastermind. And also, like, what idiot would pay $25,000 for a mastermind?

And then, like, a year or two later, like, I did that. But point is, I was like, I want to get people together. I don't know how to do it. I'm super nervous. You know what?

I'm going to gather a group of marketers. So I gathered a group of marketing leaders, and they came over to my house when I was like 27, 28 years old. I had a half eaten bag of chips in the middle, and so that was the only food that we had. Right. But, you know, it was good conversation.

It's like, you know, people would go around the room. It's like, hey, tell us who you are, what you do. What's, what's one challenge you're facing right now, but also what's really crushing it for you with marketing, right. And people would share these things, and we put someone on the hot seat, too. It's like, oh, like, tell us one big issue you're facing right now.

You're going to get 20 minutes. And we all, like, you know, chime in with our experience. And I think after just getting over the first one, that gave me a lot of confidence to continue, and so I continued to do those, and I started speaking at smaller events, and that, that started to compound as well. And I started creating content, too. That started compound.

What I would say is, with my, with my network, I think I've always, who'd I learned this from? I think it might have been from Brad Feld, who's an investor. Like, it's free to make introductions and I'm always trying to make introductions, and I'm always trying to figure out how I can connect the dots. Like, if you're to ask me what my superpower is, it is connecting different people concepts and ideas. Like, that is what it is, full stop.

And so for you, it's like, oh, hey, maybe you're looking to market the book. In my mind right now, it's like, okay, who else can help Ali with this podcast tour where it's not gonna be a drag for him, right? Like, that's an immediate thing in my mind. It's like, okay, Ali wants to do this where he wants to take equity in things. Like, okay, what's a productivity software that might be helpful for him to take equity in where it's like a win win for both sides.

So that's how I'm constantly thinking of it. And then because my default mode is that it's just gonna compound, and that's how it's always been. And the other thing too is like, people say I'm like, really kind or nice or whatever I try to be, but I think because my default mode is like, how can I be helpful? That is how it's grown over the years. So nice.

And the dinners too. So in the beginning, I used to host these dinners, and it was just a mess. Like, you know, everyone have to, like, take out their credit card and pay for it. So what I do now is when I host dinners, like, if you can afford to do this, even if you go to, like, Chipotle or something, right? Just pick up the tab.

Hey, guys, I'm gonna get a group of great marketers together. We're gonna have Chipotle. I'm gonna cover the bill. All you have to do is show up. You just made it easy for everyone because they're gonna come free meal and they're gonna be able to connect with amazing people, and they're all gonna, like, love you more for it because you're the connector.

Ali Abdaal
Yeah, I think that's one way in which anyone can add value by being the connector. I heard the story about someone who, he didn't really have any skills or anything. He just knew how to connect people. And he just got ten different people to agree to hang out. And they were all paying like a million a year or one hundred k a year or something to hang out with each other.

And the guy was a nobody. But the fact that he brought them all together and did the groundwork of being like, hey, this person's coming. Will you come? Means that now this whole thing is happening by virtue of this one person being the organizer. Dude.

Eric Seu
I'll give you an example here. In 2018, I put together this group, and we went to Cabo. And so I picked out this mansion. It looks like it's Tony Stark's mansion. And we got ten people together, and we did ATV's.

We went around. People got massages and stuff. We shared the best business tactics and all that type of stuff. What's going on with our business? People are super transparent with each other.

And that was a situation where I didn't try to make a profit. Everyone just paid cost to go. And I call these founders retreats, right? And we went, and everyone loved it. And from that group, eventually, we established, like, a core group of six.

And then every year when we go to one of these, we'll add, like, four other, like, other people. Four other people that are interesting. And so on one of these trips, like, maybe a year or two later, we were on, like, a boat ride, right? And we had two separate boats. We're looking at turtles, manatees, dolphins.

We're, like, in a tropical area. And one of the guys was like, hey, Ali, you're doing really well with your business. What keyword would you like to rank number one for in Google? And you're like, I would like to rank number one for this keyword. It's very valuable to me.

And then the original person, let's call him Bob. Bob was like, okay, no problem. We'll work out a deal. Three months later, Bob was ranking number one for that keyword on Google, and Bob pulls in $1 million a year in profit from that very specific conversation. Just from that conversation.

So $4 million a year, basically, from that little conversation. Like, that's the magic that happens from these things. And who's he gonna remember for putting the event together, right? Yeah. And so it's like, it's worth it to do these things.

Ali Abdaal
Yeah. I was very inspired by that. Like, the mastermind that you ran a few. Was it last year? No, it was a few months ago.

It was this year in Miami. So I ran a sort of creator retreat in the UK. Nice. And invited, like, 1012 people. And it was great.

We just got some random ass Airbnb in the middle of nowhere. And I did this sort of mastermind format where we split out into group, and people had the hot seat for a few minutes or, like, 20 minutes, and people got so much value out of that, and it was so fun. And Bav, my assistant, took care of all of the sort of admin and logistics for that, which was amazing. It was great. And so I really want to do more of these things.

But yeah, I like that you do. This very if you do it and like, if you do it, you also have the power to define the content, the people where you're going to do it as well. And I'm like, I'm pretty picky with stuff, so I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm happy to take it on. So, yeah, nice. Eric, thank you so much.

This has been great. Yeah. Where can people find out more about you and the work that you do? Yeah, you can just go to ericosiu on the twitters or Instagram and that's the easiest way. Brilliant.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Good stuff. All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening.

All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full hd or 4k on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome.

And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye.

Eric Siu: Building a $10m+ Marketing Agency

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Turning Points

3: Strategies for Success

4: Advice for Entrepreneurs

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Companies

Books

Guest Name(s):

Content Warnings:

Transcript