How Eric Siu turned a failing company into a digital marketing powerhouse

CEO @singlegrain. Speaker. Podcaster x2 (Marketing School and Growth Everywhere) – Eric Siu

Eric Siu is the CEO of Single Grain and a co-host of Marketing School Podcast with Neil Patel and Growth Everywhere Podcast, where he gets successful entrepreneurs to share their growth secrets. Eric is a content marketer and SEO strategist. He transformed Single Grain from a failing company to a successful digital marketing agency by attracting clients like Uber, Nordstrom, Salesforce, and Intuit.

Episode Highlights:

• How Eric turned Single Grain from a failing company to a digital marketing powerhouse
• Proven marketing tips for companies that work right now
• How to approach the changes in the market to grow your business
• Top marketing trends you should be paying attention to
• Tips on cultivating company culture

Links:

SingleGrain.com
GrowthEverywhere.com
MarketingSchool.io

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire, I?m Jaime Masters, and we have Eric Siu on the show. He has two podcasts, one?s called The Marketing School Podcast, which is amazing; Growth Everywhere Podcast, is the other one. He?s the agency owner of SingleGrain.com, which is an amazing agency that?s hosted companies like Uber, and Lyft, and Nordstrom; the list of companies is insane. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Eric:	Yeah. Thanks for having me, Jaime.

Jaime:	I loved seeing the list of all of the companies that you had. I was like, ?Really?? you have so many high-level people. Can you really pair it down for us, when we?re small business owners, when we?re used to working with enterprise so much? Do you feel it?s congruent? 

Eric:	It?s different. Is your question more centered around how is it working with enterprises? 

Jaime:	Well, I?m just wondering how different it is. So, when you start giving us feedback, when we don?t have budgets of, you know, $70 million for marketing, how different is it? 

Eric:	I think it?s actually easier working with the companies that do have the budgets because, they have a lot more resources than they have the money. Now, when you?re working with, literally, someone that?s just starting out of a garage, they?re a lot more ? they need a lot more help, a lot more hand-holding, and then, they?re going to pay a lot less, so it?s more headaches. Obviously, I mean, having said that, you have to start somewhere in the beginning. 

I like working with the larger companies more, and as you get bigger, and bigger, as you become, quote/unquote, more successful with it, you can start to kind of block out who you want to work with, and who you don't want to work with. I think that?s the beauty of it.

Jaime:	Well, and what I love about a company like yours is you do not just Facebook marketing, you do lots of different modalities. And knowing what that is, you can look at the scope of everything. So, one of the things that I want to really dive deeper into is how do we choose which path to go down? In marketing, there?s so many different paths, and when you don't have a huge marketing budget, trying to figure out which one is the best way to go first is difficult. So, do you have any tips on some of that stuff? 

Eric:	Yeah. So, this is ? you?re asking more around how should someone start with this, right? So, my feedback on ? because, there?s so many different subjects around marketing, my specialty was, back in the day, when I first started learning marketing was SEO and content marketing, which is why I still harp on it today. And you use one of the foundations ? so, if I?m good at SEO and content marketing, that?s my base; that?s my foundation. 

	Then, I might learn other stuff. I might become a well oil T-shaped marketer, where I know a lot of different marketing, kind of tactics and strategies, but I?m deep on one, which is SEO and content. So, I stay with that foundation, and then, I learn more, and then, I build on top of that foundation. So, it?s not like, try everything at once. And then, after that, now, I?m going good at SEO and content, now I can layer on the paid side, I can layer on the email side, and everything becomes much stronger because, I?m taking this omnichannel approach, which is something I talk a lot about on the marketing school podcast, with my buddy, Neil. 

Jaime:	Yeah, with Neil Patel, who?s also been on the show, and everybody knows him in marketing, big time. 

Eric:	Awesome. 

Jaime:	I guess that?s sort of the question then, too. So, how did you pick which one to go down? So, especially for a business owner that doesn?t have a lot of time to be going down each marketing channel, and going, ?I want to learn this piece? how do they pick which one to go after, sort of second, maybe not first? Maybe they have something that?s working pretty good. What?s Choice No. 2? 

Eric:	I think, it?s what resonates with ?. So, that?s something that ? okay, if you?re good at video, you start with video first, and ?Oh, what?s next?? That makes sense. Oh, audio is the path of least resistance because, if you could do 100 % of a video, guess what, you already have 100% of audio already. So, the next step is maybe you can repurpose it into a podcast, and people might think, ?Oh, there?s so much podcasts out there? but I think it doesn?t matter where you are, you always have something unique to say, whoever you are in the world. 

	So, A) whatever resonates with you, B) whatever is the path of least resistance. If you like writing, great. So, think about how you can convert that into audio next, right, and then, think about where your audience is, too. It?s tough. A lot of people ? like, I just came off of mentoring a group of students on a zoom call, and they?re just asking like, what channel should we go with first? It?s like, it?s easy for people to give all these blanket statement answers, but I think if you figure out what resonates with you, and then, you understand where your audience is actually hanging out, I think those are the things that matter. 

Jaime:	That?s what I want to dive into. Because, you?re right. Because, people go, ?Which channel? and then, they randomly go, ?I?m just going to pick YouTube because, it?s hot right now, even though I hate doing video? or whatever the piece ?. 

Eric:	Yeah. 

Jaime:	So, once we find when that resonates, so let?s say it is something like starting a podcast, how do you know if your audience is there or not, though? Is there metrics or tests that you can do to try and actually find out some of this information? 

Eric:	You could always look at your metrics and see if your traffic is growing. But one thing I will say is when I ? it?s been a long, hard slog with the first podcast I did with the Growth Everywhere, the podcast. I think we talked about this, we talked about this a while back. The Growth Everywhere podcast, my God, the first year, I was only getting nine downloads a day, and then, after the second year, I was only getting 30 downloads a day. So, it?s a long, hard slog. It takes time. You can look at the metrics. It?s going up. 

	But the one thing I like to call out is your ? and I learned this from someone else ? the unsolicited response rate. So, your URR. If you have people emailing you, tweeting at you, and saying how amazing it is, and you find that you?re learning from it, and you?re getting better, and it?s actually adding to your business like, I was talking to business leaders on the podcast, and you do, too. I?m going to keep doing it. And then, that?s led to it to continue to stack up, and now, it?s growing faster than it ever has. So, there?s that. 

Jaime:	So, what made you not stop after Year 1? Because, podcasting is interesting, it takes a lot of work. Also, so if you?re not seeing a lot of results. And you?re an ROI-driven marketer. I get that the URR, and you?re getting a few responses, but if you?re not getting sales, and you?re spending that much time, I?m surprised you didn?t cut it off quicker. 

Eric:	I should've cut it. The thing is, I?m ?. The thing with entrepreneurship is that you have to be persistent. And I was persistent with ? to answer your question, I was getting value because I was talking with amazing people that have had their own success, and I was selfishly asking questions, struggles that I was going through, and they were basically solving it by the experience shares. 

	So, I?m in this group ? anyone should join a peer group. So, I?m in this group called Entrepreneurs Organization, and there?s this thing called Gestalt Protocol where a lot of people will share experiences versus giving advice. So, I was like, ?I?m just going to keep doing that over, and over, and over? when I should've shut it down because, I just took over Single Grain, my agency, at the time, and it was already a failing company. Stacking on something that required 6 to 8 hours of additional time per week was not a good use of my time. I did it anyway because, I felt I was getting the things I needed to help grow and save the business, ultimately. 

Jaime:	And save the business. But it?s intangible, and that?s the thing that?s so interesting because, I love ROI-driven people ? companies, too, but people. But some stuff is intangible. And like in your head, you?re like, ?I am getting return on investment of this time, but who knows how long it?s going to take? because, we can?t directly track it. So, tell me about how you bought a failing agency, which was very interesting. You bought ? that sounds like a smart thing to do, right? Most people wouldn't be like, ?Let?s buy a failing one.? And how?d you turn it around? 

Eric:	So, Neil Patel?s cousin, Sujan Patel, he?s the original founder of Single Grain. And we all talk, by the way, like, all the original partners, we still talk. So, there?s five people: it was four Indian people, and then, myself; one Asian person. 

	Previously, I was leading marketing at a company called Treehouse, and Neil said, ?Hey, look, can you come help this company?? And it was a SEO company, and at the time, the Panda and the Penguin updates hit. So, anyone that knows SEO, it made it a lot harder to do SEO because, it was a lot easier back in the day. So, I thought it would be an interesting challenge for myself to see if I could save something that was headed in the wrong direction because of the Google algorithm updates. 

Jaime:	Wow. 

Eric:	And a year into it ? so, I joined as, basically, the No. 2, the COO of the company. Basically, everyone wanted out, and I said, ?Hey, you know what, I?m just going to ? I think I can turn it around. Let?s continue.? So, we tried changing the content marketing company. First year, I had no idea what I was doing; I completely lost my shirt. Doesn?t matter all of the podcasts you listen to, all the books that you read, it just ? it?s nothing ? nothing beats the experience. 

We dropped all the way down to one employee, and the whole thing was about to fold, and slowly but surely, all the things that we?re doing started to build up, and it started to hit at the right time. Like, our blog started to grow, it started to generate more leads. All of a sudden, we?re ranking well for a bunch of keywords. And then, we were able to save the company. And we converted it, eventually, into a company focused on paid media. And we eventually brought our SEO content marketing services back. But I?ve been at this company for 6 years, been running it for 5 years.

Jaime:	Wow. So, go you, for taking a challenge. You?re like, ?And it?s a sinking ship. Let me go down with it.? Or hopefully not. Right? That?s very, very gutsy, No. 1. What made you switch from content back then? Because, especially, if you were the content guy ? and you?re still the content guy; you still talk about that. Was it just because SEO was so crappy you had to switch to the paid side because, nobody wanted to go down that path? You couldn't get ??

Eric:	Yeah. 

Jaime:	What was the reason? 

Eric:	The work we were doing in the past ? so, a lot of our work was focused on link-building. Back in the day, it was very easy to rank for anything. I saw this from a mile away. I actually saw what the company was doing, and I actually didn?t have interest in it. I was like, ?This is going to go away.? 

Jaime:	It?s very grey hat-ty black hat-ty, at the time; you could do whatever you wanted. Right? 

Eric:	Yeah. You could do anything, and it?ll rank. So, I was like? Sorry. Your question, again, was why did I decide to come into the company?

Jaime:	Well, why?d you end up taking off the content side? Why?d you just go to paid? 

Eric:	So, the SEO work wasn?t working anymore, so the natural progression, the next step would be, we have this current staff right now that knows SEO. And it?s like, trying to switch them over to the paid media is going to be a very hard switch, so switching into content marketing might be a good thing that we can do. And it seemed like a logical play because, everything was going towards content marketing. The problem was, I tried to ? I read all these books about being hands-off, let your people go surfing, all these things, and I tried to be completely hands-off. 

	That was a mistake on my part. I made a lot of ? a couple of drastic changes, and I?ll take the blame for it. That?s how the content operation didn?t work out. But we did have really great people, and eventually, I was just like, ?Okay?? once we dropped down to one employee, I was like, ?Okay, let?s switch it to paid media.? Because, what we started to see was when we dropped down to one employee, I started to refer the leads out. And we would see the agencies continue to close paid media leads, and they just wouldn't retain them for a long time. So, that was like, ?Okay, let?s see if we can do this agency thing again.? 

Because, I was basically reserved to ? I was like, okay with letting the leads ? referred the leads out, and collect like a 25-30% commission on it. 

Jaime:	Wow, okay. So, you?ve come a long way in this, too because, you?ve not only added all the other stuff in the backend, you?re doing lots of larger scale stuff, too. So, when you look at paid media ? it?s funny because, you think of the Panda and Penguin update. I had clients in that space that was very ? it was ? I mean, it closed businesses. 

Eric:	Devastating, yeah. 

Jaime:	It was insane. And now, this whole Facebook stuff is coming up, and everybody?s freaking out. So, to me, there?s lots of marketing tactics, and I?ve sort of been a geek for so long, I see the shifts of things. But what do you tell people when they?re like freaking out about Facebook right now, and how everything?s changing, and costs are going up, and all that fun stuff?

Eric:	Going back to the omnichannel approach, it?s being in multiple places where you don?t have to ? I think once you specialize in one area of marketing, and it starts to work out well, diversify as quickly as you can, so then, you don't have all your eggs in one basket. I was just reading before we got on a call like, you talk about people getting their businesses destroyed, you know, DMV.org, and IRS.com, which are not affiliate with the government organizations, their traffic dropped by 85% to 90%. That?s a business just completely going away. And this is recent, too.

	So, completely relying on SEO is? If you rely completely on SEO, and then, you talked about how SEO is the holy grail, I know that you haven?t thought about the long-term because, you haven?t thought about like, these things can happen to you. So, if you go to SEO ? let?s use Neil as an example. He?s got SEO, he?s got the podcast with me, he?s got a YouTube channel. His Instagram, right now, is growing, too. He?s everywhere. You look at Gary B, he?s everywhere. 

So, if you can take this omnichannel approach, then you don?t need to worry about losing one channel, when you can stand on the others. 
 

Jaime:	What are you seeing as far as trends go? I loved how you said, ?Well, I saw how the SEO thing was going to take a tank.? Are you seeing other trends in marketing that we should be paying attention to?  

Eric:	Yeah. It?s interesting, Rand Fishkin wrote a post on marketing trends the other day, and he ? my thoughts on this are like, everyone talks about AI this, AI that. And yes, it is important, I think, in the next ? especially in the next 5-10 years, if you?re not a data company, I think you?re going to be left behind because, everything feeds into this engine, this ? you call it AI engine, whatever. So, I do think there?s volatility in that. I think people just need to define what it means, actually. 

	People talk about voice search. I still think it?s in its infancy. I only use it for like, the weather, right now. So, there?s that. And what else? I think there?s a lot more ? again, going back to data, a lot more automation coming. So, a lot of the work that people are doing on the paid media side, it?s very hard to beat a machine when it?s just based on patterns, and numbers, and algorithms. So, there?s that. And then, what else? 

I think, you know, you talk about pay-to-play, so these platforms, that?s their model. I think that?s an Achilles? heel, especially for Americans. Because, if you look at the Chinese, everything they do, they do a better job of monetizing consumer products. There?s actually a video from Andreessen Horowitz, a girl, named Connie Chan. She did this report. Do you know how ? Jaime, I?m sure you know the numbers. You know how big the podcast market is in the United States, in terms of dollars? 
 
Jaime:	 No, I can't remember. But it?s very large, and growing. 

Eric:	So, $314 million is the U.S. Now, here?s the thing, in China, it?s $3 billion. So, it?s 10x more. Why do the Chinese do such a better job of monetizing? Well, here?s the thing, it?s the business models. If you look at Facebook, and you look at Google, they?re advertising models. Right? Advertising-driven. Which means, their incentive is just continuing to raise the prices higher and higher, and that?s how it works. So, it?s going to be more pay-to-play unless they change their business models. 

So, I think the stuff we talk about today: content, SEO, I still think it?s relevant in the next 5-10 years. The way we?re doing it right now, I don't think much of it is going to change in the next 5-10 years.

Jaime:	So, everybody feels at least a little safer. But 5 years is still not very long, as a side note. Right? 

Eric:	It?s not. It?s not.

Jaime:	And that?s the thing, when we?re so focused on our ? on whatever we?re doing right now, to try and hit whatever the goals are currently, we sort of get in this tunnel mode, where we?re like, ?Oh, there?s stuff going on outside my little SEO bubble? or whatever the bubble is that we?re in. So, when we?re talking about, for example, I think about podcast advertising. That does not ? to me, it should be a lot bigger than it really is. The way that it ? it?s crazy. So, what do you see in terms of that? Have you guys been testing it? Is that something that you?ve seen? Can you give me some info on that?

Eric:	Yeah. I think ? so, that?s a good one to call out. I think that?s going to be a big trend in the next 5-10 years. Because, if you look at Spotify, they just spent like $300 million-plus buying Gimlet and Anchor. They?re going all in on podcasts because, Apple hasn?t taken action on it. 

Jaime:	Right? 

Eric:	Apple, still can do it right now. 

Jaime:	Apple, sucks. Wait, wait, wait, I shouldn't say that because, people are probably listening to this on Apple. But still, yes. Tell me more.

Eric:	So, Spotify, they?re No. 2 in this space right now, and I?m sure you have your podcast on Spotify, too. We?re finding that our podcast is growing pretty quickly on Spotify. So, we?re just going to ? I mean, it?s like free to publish there, anyway, so we?re going to continue to do that. And then, hopefully, they come out with a lot more monetization options aside from ads. I?m hoping there?s like some subscription stuff that will come out, too. I think podcasting is going to change quite a bit. You?ve been doing it for a while, I?ve been doing it for a while. We?ve been longing for more. 

	I think Spotify should just copy what the Chinese are doing from a podcast standpoint, where, there?s built-in patron, where you can donate, you can add subscriptions to a premium channel, too. It just becomes a lot ? the functionality is not hard to add. And I think Spotify is going to take over. Because, they know they can make a lot more money off of the podcasting versus paying big DJs, or big music artists on their ? because, the licensing deals are so expensive. There?s a lot more profit to be made for them in that space.

Jaime:	Just as a marketer, what is so annoying is Apple?s ? or any ? I mean, there?s a bazillion different third-party apps and stuff like that. But it?s just so slow to actually input anything that creates integration. So, we actually have a back-and-forth. It?s like, ?Here?s a podcast. Listen to it. Have fun.? So, we, as creators, can only do so much. Are you guys investing in ads on other people?s podcasts? What do you think about growing the podcast? I know you said you?ve been doing it, and it?s been growing, but what have you been actually doing to grow it?

Eric:	So, what we?ve been doing ?. I?ll tell you what worked for us. We did try buying some ads on Overcast, which is a third-party podcast app. I use that one. It?s a lot faster on IOS than the regular podcast app. That, we pay like $1,500. We didn?t get much results from that. I think maybe we got like, 100 clicks, or something like that. What worked for us ? and this is not going to be as helpful, obviously, Neil has a very big audience, and then, we blast it to our email list. 

And then, our mutual friend, John Lee Dumas, he does it every day. Right? That?s definitely helped us compound quite a bit. So, if you want to do a podcast every day, if you want to go in a different direction than other people, you want to zig where other people zag, or zag where they zig, try to do a daily one, 5-10 minutes. That?s what?s worked for us. Obviously, we kind of cheated because, we had a list already. We tried paid promotion, as well, in terms of Facebook ads. That doesn?t work that well because, we?re not driving them to an offer. We haven?t monetized our podcast. So, we don?t run any sponsorships or anything like that. 

	And then, the final thing I?ll say is, we set this goal of hitting a million downloads per month on our podcast, which we broke a couple of months ago. 

Jaime:	Congrats. 

Eric:	Thank you. We told our audience, we said, ?Hey, look, if you guys rate, review, subscribe and then, also, just share with everyone, once we hit a million downloads, we?re going to do this live event in downtown, L.A.? We?re going to do it June 29th now, since we broke it. And that actually helped with the growth. We didn?t think it was going to happen. But the growth actually started to spike up because, we put an offer in front of them, and we incentivized them to help grow the podcast. 

Jaime:	That?s so ? it?s just ? it?s not logical. When you think of what it should be, and when you start a podcast, you?re like, ?Oh, okay, we want to get more listeners.? And you?re saying that the URR, right. That?s more important than anything else. And yet, paid advertising doesn?t work, this doesn?t work? It?s a weird thing, so having, especially, media creators, or people that were wanting to do that. It?s like, okay, I?ll put a sponsorship first. 

Then, it goes to the podcast. Maybe they listen to it, maybe they don?t. Maybe they come to my podcast. Its? like, so many levels, and you don't even know if you have any ROI at the bottom. Like, nobody?s doing it because of those things. But I feel like it?s gotta change because, you?ve got people?s attention in a way, at the podcast side. In a way, where you?re in someone?s ear, not even just on YouTube and watching, where they really feel connected to you. I just am so surprised that it hasn?t changed better and faster. And are you using a lot more of the media in the metric side? Who are you guys using for hosting, if you don?t mind me asking?

Eric:	I?m pretty sure we use the same. Well, maybe not. We use Libsyn. Libsyn?s always been kind to us. I don't know what you use right now. No incentive for us to move as of yet. 

Jaime:	Well, it was interesting because, there was a whole change over on what counted as, on Libsyn, specifically, what counted as a view versus not. So, when people do have sponsorships, when that whole shakeup came, it was a little bit crazy, too. So, it?s cool to hear that you guys have been growing. But it?s also kind of annoying that it?s like you guys have a million downloads a month, and you can?t give me a really solid hardcore way to grow an audience. You?re like, ?Oh, I have an email list, and I have?? you know what I mean? To grow your podcast audience. 

Eric:	Yeah. I mean, the other thing that we did? Let?s see, what else did we do? Oh, we did ? this is the typical advice that you hear from everyone, though. It?s, ?Oh, ask for ratings/reviews at the end.? Once we started to actually read people?s reviews, our reviews started to go up. That?s been helpful for us. 

Jaime:	That?s so funny. It?s so old-school. And I haven?t done it in forever, but that?s a really valid point. 

Eric:	Yeah because, people always want the new tactics. Right? 

Jaime:	Yeah. 

Eric:	And it?s just like, a lot of the stuff is just business, as usual, and it?s just kind of sticking around for longer, and that?s how you reach a lot of listeners or visitors to your site. 

Jaime:	Are you seeing a lot of trends on YouTube? Do you guys do anything? I know you do content on YouTube, and everything. But are you seeing anything on the paid side for YouTube, or any of that? 

Eric:	Yeah. Paid, is great for? There?s a bunch of things that I?m trying to distill. I was just at this ? we did this mastermind in Tulum, the other day. And one guy is really good at videos. His name is Kong, he runs a company called Jumpcut. And he knows how to make ? I cringe when people say ?Viral videos? but he actually knows how to do that. So, his, is just about constantly optimizing what the hook is. So, how you say something that?s shocking. 

For example, he made ? there?s this product for women called Flex. Basically, it?s something that prevents you from ?. He made the benefit centered around mess-free period sex. Which, is something that gets people?s attention. Right? Whereas, it was a boring product before that, kind of helps you with your period, or whatever. But he?s good at making things that are controversial to get people?s attention. Now, if you add in ? there?s another guy that was in the group, too. 

His name is Walter. He does a lot of performance media for people. What he constantly looks for is the drop-off. You look at your retention in YouTube. You look where people are dropping off the most, and then, he might add in like a little videoclip here. Like, a little videoclip here. And the retention just stays a lot longer, and his ads perform much better because, he?s able to keep optimizing like that. 

	So, I think YouTube is great. The targeting is awesome. You can target keywords, specific channels. If you optimize like that, if you think about it in that way, around the numbers, I think you?re going to be successful for the long-term. 

Jaime:	It?s all about actually going in and doing it, though. Like you were talking about before, it was going to be kite-surfing and gone, and you sort of abdicated your business. And when we start going into all the potential marketing topics, and optimization, a business owner can get like, super overwhelmed. There?s too much. So, we?ll hire an agency, but agencies cost a lot of money, too, especially when you?re smaller, like low-7-figure business. It?s hard to put in a ton of cash. 

Eric:	Right. 

Jaime:	So, when we look at what somebody should do with a smaller marketing budget, should they hire an agency? Especially, on this YouTube stuff, those guys are amazing at what they do. Right? And they?ve done it before. But I?m trying to learn how to do that. It?s a pain. Because, I?ve been trying to learn more YouTube stuff, and I?m like, ?Wow, there?s a lot of nuances to it.? Right? So, what do we do?

Eric:	So, if I gave a general answer here, I think the general answer would be, if you?re starting out, you don't have the time to do it yourself, you?re generating some revenue, I would actually focus on hiring someone younger, someone that?s junior; someone that?s hungry. There?s a lot of these apprenticeship programs, like the call that I just got off of right now. It?s a marketing apprenticeship program. They have these for developers, they have them for designers, too. 

You take someone that?s humble, hungry, and smart, and you train them well, and they?ll stay with you longer, and then, your costs aren?t going to be that high, and they?re committed to your business. Agency-wise, you?re going to pay them a larger fee because, they have their hard cost. They?re not going to be focus on you. And you?re going to be put into a process, which is fine, but it?s never going to be satisfying enough to you because, you are a small business owner, and you always want things to go faster. You think you ? I?m coming from the owner side of things. 

You think they?re a part of your business, and you demand much more of them, and then, expectations are set, and it starts to get bad.

Jaime:	Yeah. Sometimes, they?re crappy clients for the ?. Exactly. No offense. I can see why at the beginning, you?re like, ?Yeah, so enterprise, they have the money, they have the time, they?re a million times more ideal clients.? That being said, the small business owners are like, ?I?m investing all this money?? it needs to make. There?s so much more risk on it. So, I love that idea of getting an apprentice. Though, what?s interesting, what are those ? can you send us a list, maybe later, of some of those programs that you were talking about? 

	Just because, people will put it on Craigslist ? I?m dating myself, oDesk, Upwork. But it?s hard to find the ones that are actually good. 

Eric:	I can give a couple right now. 

Jaime:	That?d be great.

Eric:	There?s a site called We Work Remotely.com That one?s great. And then, let?s see what else there is. There?s a job board on Growth Hackers.com. That?s where marketers go. There?s a really good slack group for SEO-content marketers. Just marketers, in general. Really well done. It?s called Traffic Think Tank. That?s about $199. A month. I think it?s worth it because, you can find people on there. There?s a job section. And so, you can also chat with people and see if they?re a fit. One thing you could do, too, is if you have ? on LinkedIn, like, I just did this today. We?re looking for a new operations person. 

	You can just say, ?Tag the best person you know in SEO. Tag the best person you know in paid media.? It?ll just start to generate engagement, and you can just cherry-pick from there. 

Jaime:	Nice. I appreciate that. And hopefully, not all of them are business owners. If they are, they suck at selling, and hate working with crappy clients, and you could steal them, too. You?d be surprised. What about ?? It?s funny because, we were chatting about YouTube, and this is the thing that is annoying to me, in general also, the vanity subscriber metrics, and how much actual engagement. So, when you?re talking about you only had a handful podcasts, people that were downloading it, but they were super, super engaged. 

	I have a friend that has 2.2 million subscribers on YouTube, but maybe gets 50,000 views a video ? ish. So, they build, and build, and build, and then, they?re like ? don?t get me wrong, 50,000 views on a video is really good, and it?s not 2.2. So, I just feel like there?s disparities in subscriber numbers and what actual engagement is. Are you seeing anything having to do with that, or a better way to work with that? 

Eric:	Yeah. We?re still kind of very nascent on the YouTube side of things. We?re at like 17 or 18 thousand subscribers, so it?s nothing. But I will say that our consistency ? we?re consistently trying to test out new headlines, new thumbnails, things like that. But it?s helpful for us. I think, for small business owners, if you?re going to do YouTube, I think it?s helpful because, the people that you have that actually view your channel, let?s say maybe it?s 10,000 people a month, or whatever. You could still re-target them, and it?s very cheap to do so. 

And it?s great because, they?ve already built a relationship with you because, they?ve seen not only your face, but they hear you, and they?ve gotten value from you. So, I like it from that perspective.

Jaime:	So, building the beginning parts of the relationship, and then, making it more of a deeper relationship, as we go along. Which, is what marketing is, in general, anyway.

Eric:	Mm-hmm. 

Jaime:	So, you?re just doing it on multiple platforms then, too. 

Eric:	Yeah. 

Jaime:	Awesome. I love this. So, when we look at what you did as an agency. Because, I have a lot of agency clients, and stuff like that, too. One of the things that I liked about your website was, ?This is what a typical agency will say. This is what we say.? Right? Where you?re distinguishing yourself. What are the best tactics and tips that you found to grow the agency so you can work with the bigger level entrepreneur ? enterprise clients. 

Eric:	Yeah. So, in the very beginning, I mean, so what we do now ?. Actually, here?s something that everyone on the consulting or agency side could do. There?s a book out there called, Win Without Pitching. And it?s a book that teaches you how to price based on value. I think the sooner you can figure out how to price based on value, and not charge based on hours, I think it will be good for yourself in the long-term. Because, if you help someone make 10 million dollars, and you can guarantee it, why can?t they just pay you a million dollars? 

	Obviously, you can work back from there, and then, there?s a lot more nuances, a lot more questions you can ask. But I think that goes a long way. So, that book is really helpful. And then, what I would say, too is, people are going to ask you why your agency is different. People talk about nitching down, and everything. Yes, it?s important to nitch down. But nitching down doesn?t just mean one. Sometimes, you can go up to two nitches, or three, or four. But don?t go beyond four. Okay? Then, it becomes too much, and you?re not really nitching down. 

	But that way, it?s not going to get crazy where you sign a bunch of clients, and all in different agencies, and your people get overwhelmed. I think that?s really important to take a look at. The other thing, too. People, pay a lot of lip service to culture, hiring, and all that. I think it?s very, very important. So, don?t just disregard it just because everyone?s saying it. Just because everyone?s saying it, doesn?t mean anything. And that?s the one advantage you can have, is if you have an amazing culture, where people want to come in to work, then, guess what? 

They?re incentivized to stay because, even though other big companies will pay more money, you have a way better working environment. And then, if you can get people to retain longer, that?s going to help your business grow faster because, they understand your business. But if you keep having turnover, and you think it?s just all about the work, and acquiring more clients, and making money, that?s not going to help you for the long-term. It?s all about people, at the end of the day. If you take care of your people first, and then, you take care of your clients, you?re going to go a long way.

Jaime:	I love this. And yes, culture is sort of like, ?Oh, have a culture.? But it?s really, really important, even in a small business. How many employees do you guys have right now? 

Eric:	34. 

Jaime:	So, what tips do you have on culture? Do you have any books, or recommendations? Because, 34 is an amazing number where people are like, ?Oh, that?s quite a few.? But you must?ve had to start with a culture at 10, or before that, so that way, you could build up the right values. 

Eric:	Yeah, sure. So, there?s a couple of books, I mean, Powerful, is from, I think, Patty McCord, from Netflix. It?s all about Netflix?s culture, so that?s a great book. There?s another one called The Culture Code, you can check that one out, too. And I also really liked Tony Hsieh?s book, this is back in the day, Delivering Happiness. It?s still a book that I remember. And then, there?s another book that he recommended, called Tribal Leadership, which talks about the different levels of how your culture is. 

Do people think they?re good? Does the team think they?re good? Is there like a worldly purpose? I think those four are a good starting point. 

Jaime:	Love it. I just recommended Tribal Leadership to my client, yesterday. Because, it is. You don?t realize that your culture kind of sucks until you?re in it, and you?re like, ?I didn?t do a good job, yet. I?m so trying to manage and mitigate.? And it?s a whole separate learning curve, as a business owner. It?s a ?. 

Eric:	Yeah. We?re constantly managing it, too. We use an employee engagement software called 15Five. So, there?s that. We just sent out an employee engagement survey. We?ll send it out every like, 6 months, or so. So, we?re constantly on top of it. And then, the happy hour, the lunches, all these little things, they add up. And I can see it happening in the employee engagement survey. All the little things that you do ? it?s the same thing as building a relationship with your spouse, too. 

Constantly dating. If you?re doing something special every week, there?s something bigger every quarter, and then, maybe there?s something every year, too. But if you think about it in that way, if you don?t think about constantly nurturing it, it?s just going to decay. 

Jaime:	Yes. And people don?t think about ? when we think about ROI, it?s like, ?Well, what am I putting in, and what am I getting out?? But some of it is kind of intangible. Like, the bonds that you actually have with your employees. I love that you do a survey, so you can actually check in on some of this stuff, too. It makes it way easier, I?m sure, for you to actually look at, and see.

Eric:	Yeah. 

Jaime:	I love this. So, how long have you been implementing 15Five? And where do we find out more? Because, I?ve definitely heard a lot about it. 

Eric:	15Five is great. Just go to 1,5 ? so, the number, 15, and then, spell out, ?Five.? 15Five.com. We?ve actually been using it, I think, the last 3-4 years, or so. And basically, what it does, you enter in how you?re feeling each week, what you got done. You can high-five other people. We can see the high-five showing up in our slack channel, too. So, it just creates this cycle, where like, this cycle of happiness, where everyone?s kind of feeling good about each other. 

Jaime:	Right? Because, especially, if you have to deal with crappy clients, nobody?s happy. Right? 

Eric:	Yeah. 

Jaime:	Move up to enterprise clients, make your employees happy, you?re doing a pretty good job. That?s what it sounds like you?ve been doing, which is awesome. I know we have to start wrapping up. What is one action, after all of this, that listeners can take this week, to help move them forward towards their goal of a million? 

Eric:	I mean, the path to a million is finding the one thing that works, and just repeating it. So, I think it?s focus. Because, actually, I looked at ? on the flight the other day, I was looking at one of my ? I was scrolling through my Apple notes, and I looked at something I said in like, 2011 or 2012, and then, my goals for the years, like, there was this income goal, and then, there?s like five separate things that I wanted to work on. Like, each one, ?Here?s the goal this month.? And it?s like completely different; it?s not in the same area. 

And in the very beginning, the luxury you have is time, but that?s also a double-edged sword. So, I think focusing on one thing, making it work, and then, letting it compound, and then, being patient with it. Obviously, be smart. If it?s a dud, it?s a dud. I know most people have a sick sense about it. But I think that would be the one thing. Because, everyone says it. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates; all these people. But not enough emphasis goes on focus. 

Jaime:	And doing it is very different than just pretending or thinking about it. Right? Makes a huge, huge difference. Thank you so much, Eric, for coming on the show today. Where can we find the podcast and all the agency info online? 

Eric:	Sure. So, you can go to Marking Score, or you can go to Growth Everywhere; those are the podcasts. And then, you can also ? agency-side, you can go to SingleGrain.com, and then, also, our software site, ClickFlow.com. Anything you want to check out, you can also just DM on Instagram. It?s @ericosiu, with an O in the middle. 

Jaime:	I love it. Thank you for all the tactics, and the tips, and the real tangible information. I really appreciate it. Have an amazing day. 

Eric:	Thanks for having me.

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Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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