Eric Siu got fired from Break Media and struggled through failed ventures before finding a pattern: his successful projects took roughly three years to gain traction. The first two years are grinding. Year three is when compounding kicks in.
Today we are going to talk about how long it actually takes to be successful in business. But before we do, don't forget to hit subscribe, whatever channel you're coming from, if you want to predictably, predictably grow faster in life and in business. All right. People are like, God, it's so risky to start a business. I remember talking to a buddy recently and, um, you know, he just kept telling me he really wanted to start a business and I was like, okay, so why don't you start a business? And he's like, I can't, it's too risky. And then he came back to me like, like 5 minutes later. He's like, Eric, I really want to start a business. Okay, why don't you start a business? I can't, it's too risky right now. 10 minutes later, Eric, I really want to start a business. Okay, so start a business. Well, I can't, it's too risky to start a business. So that kept going on, but also bear in mind this guy was kind of drunk too. My point is it's scary to start a business. It's scary to take the leap because you don't know, you're leaping into the unknown, right? In the beginning it's like you're putting everything on the line. Literally. Here, let me tell you how I started my first business. Actually though, I'll tell you about a couple of failures that happened. I remember I got fired from Break Media. And, um, as their SEO person. And I got fired and I was like, oh man, what am I going to do now? That's like, it's like you kind of have to make it happen for yourself. Like immediately there's like, there's no job that you're walking in, there's no security, there's no security blanket. Insurance is not going to cover you much for much longer, um, depending on where you live. It's scary, right? Because how are you going to pay your bills? It translates into everything that you do in life. I'm like, God, what am I going to do? Right? You know, I started doing all these reach-outs through, I started making videos for, you know, people that I wanted to work with. Like, hey, you should do this with your marketing. I started writing on Quora all the time. I started trying all these different things, right? It took some time to get going and eventually I ended up taking another job at another company to lead their marketing. But that's, um, it took probably 6 months to at least get some semblance of traction, right? I remember I had this magic website called MagicWiz.com. I don't think it's around anymore, but it was a Yahoo website. We couldn't really get it going. Like I think 3 months into it, we bought the website for cheap and, um, we had 2 other partners with it. I'm gonna save you the story behind like you gotta be mindful of who you work with. From there, business failed in 3 months, right? So it's, it's, you hear all these failure stories, it's like, oh, 90% of businesses don't work out in the first 5 years. And that's very scary, but you only need to make it work once. So what I've learned over the years is looking at the Leveling Up podcast, you know, success for that podcast is maybe getting leads from it. Also maybe growing the downloads, right? Um, for me initially it was just learning, right? So the first 2 years, I was only getting minimal downloads, right? I was working a lot on it. I was only getting 9 downloads a day after the first year, then only 30 downloads a day after the second year. And then the third year it really started to get going because it started generating leads. I kept learning and the traffic started to go up. It started to grow a lot faster, right? And then if I think about the Marketing School Podcast, that podcast gets a million downloads a month right now, but it took time to get there and success for that one. We didn't really start monetizing that podcast until 3 years into it. Now we monetize it, right? But it took a long time to get there. Like initially, sure, like, you know, we started growing very fast and we started doing it every single day and it got to where it is now. And when I think about the Single Grain blog, the marketing blog that we have for the agency, that blog was only about 4,000 visits a month when I first joined the company. And then it took about 3, 4 years or so to get it to grow a lot faster, to compound. And you know, now it compounds, right? You know, when I talk— when I spoke about this with my podcast co-host Neil, when we think about all of the things that we've done in the past, Usually the sweet spot is about 3 years. The first 2 years are going to be hell and then year 3 you kind of start to see it going. And when I took over Single Grain, the agency, the first 2 years were hell. The 3rd year I really started to kind of figure it out and then, um, you know, it continues to grow, right? Just keep that in mind. When I think about even the software company ClickFlow right now, the software, we've been working on that since its first release about a year and a half, but we've been working together, my partner and I, for about 2 years and now, you know, we're coming into it and we're starting to hit our stride. But again, It takes time to get there. You know, nobody said it was going to be easy, right? Like business is fundamentally not easy. But, um, as Mark Cuban would say, in business you only need to be right once to figure it out. And then from there you can continue to take more risks. When I spoke to Neil about this, I asked him the question and I didn't have to hint or anything, but he said 3 years as well. So, and then I agreed with him, it's 3 years. For whatever reason, it tends to be 3 years, right? So anyway, these are, uh, these are just a couple of stories I wanted to share with you, but that's the magic number, um, in terms of what I've seen. And, um, also other people on the web talk about this as well. So, Let me know in the comments what kind of business you plan to start, how long you've been doing your business for, and don't forget to check out the next video over there if you're coming from YouTube. And don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe whatever platform you're coming from. It helps us grow and we'll see you tomorrow.
