Eric Siu bought a struggling marketing agency for $2 and rebuilt it over 14 years. He learned that focus matters more than chasing every opportunity, and that leaders need to step into weak areas themselves, whether that's sales, delivery, or product.
14 years ago, I decided to rebuild a struggling marketing agency. But when I started, I had no idea how I'd pull this off. I'd work hard, I tried to hire consultants, and I would talk to a lot of experts. But the reality is revenue didn't increase. We were losing customers left and right, and I was stressed all the time. And not only that, I would read all the business books in the world. I'd read all the management books in the world. I found the 2 most important things that mattered are one, your focus. Too many entrepreneurs try to do too many different things. I remember there's a point in time where I had 8 different businesses and I would brag to people that I had 8 different businesses. When you're an entrepreneur saying that you're working on a bunch of different things, You're actually showing that you're a newbie when you have 8 different businesses. That's the first part. You want to make sure you focus. Number 2 is you want to make sure that you're involved. This is not to say that you are necessarily micromanaging people all the time, but you have a level of involvement in the details. So if sales is kind of wobbly, you got to step in there. If client delivery is wobbly, you got to step in there. If product is wobbly, you have to step in there. And so when I say focused and I say involved, when you combine the 2 words, it really means focused involvement. If you're able to do this for a long period of time, there are no doubts that you're going to build something that is bigger than you ever would have dreamt of. If you want to compound your business business faster, especially using AI, just follow for more lessons from my journey.
