The $100M Marketing Strategy In An AI World

All right guys, we got Eric on the show today, one of the top marketing podcasts, right?

Yeah, thanks for having me, Sean.

Absolutely, man. I've been following you for a bit now.

Appreciate it.

And you're at the stage of business where you're actually acquiring others now, right?

Correct.

So that's a whole new part of the business.

Yeah, actually, so Single Grain, which is my agency, I bought it when I was 26 years old. And, you know, I brokered a deal that way. And then, you know, 3 years ago or so, we bought 2 other agencies. And then right now we're in LOI with another one. So, we're letter of intent, trying to buy one in Asia right now.

And what's the thought process behind acquiring these?

Yeah. So, most people don't know that agencies are actually like— I come from tech, right? And I like, I used to poop on agencies because it's not scalable. Like, you know, it's such a people-focused business, whatever. You can't sell it for much money. But most people don't know this. If you get an agency, let's say to $5 million in profit, you can actually sell it for maybe 10x on the profit or a 15x or 20x in some cases, right?

Whoa.

I've actually seen some sell for 20x. So, let's say you, simple numbers, $5 million in profit times 10 is $50 million, right? That's a good exit. That's not like a small exit. It could be $100 million or so, right? And so, what you might do is you can either sell it at that point or you might take your $5 million profit agency and then build a platform. And what that means is you're going to go out there and acquire other agencies and maybe buy $1 million in profit here, $1 million profit, People like to call it EBITDA, whatever, right? And then maybe you get it to $20 million in EBITDA, and maybe you can sell it for 20x on that, or maybe like a higher multiple, right? But you're now selling it for like $400 or $500 million or so. So, it's like an arbitrage game that you're playing.

Interesting.

And you know, you can play that game if you want, or you can, it doesn't cost you a lot of money to start up an agency. Maybe you get it to $500K a year in profit. That's a great business for you. Maybe $1 million a year in profit. That's great for you, right? There's nothing wrong with that. And so you can decide to play this game for 10, 20, 30 years or so, or you can play it just to cash flow and have a nice life. But, you know, there's not a lot of CapEx upfront. And, you know, at the end of the day, it can become something really big because the total addressable market is very big for agencies.

That's cool. Yeah. Because there's some huge agencies, right?

Yeah. I mean, there's Dentsu, there's WPP, there's Omnicom. These, these are multibillion-dollar companies. And then like you have the Accentures of the world that have done like I think this year they've done, is it maybe a couple billion dollars or maybe $900 million? That's a pretty significant difference, but a lot of money they've done in generative AI, right? And they're like a consulting company. And so, I think, you know, at the end of the day, if these companies can figure it out, then they've outlined a blueprint for people to follow.

Wow, almost a billion just in AI. That's crazy.

Yep.

So, that market's growing fast. You think it's a bubble though?

I think short-term it's probably a bubble and then long-term it won't be a bubble. It's like the internet back in the day.

Yeah. That's how I feel too. I feel like there was so much hype.

Yeah.

But I think there's gonna be a few big players. Like obviously OpenAI is gonna be crushing it.

Yeah.

And Elon started one too, right?

xAI with Twitter's data or X's data. You have Anthropic, which I just talked about. Yeah, there's a lot of players. I mean, Google's obviously a player too. So yeah, I don't think there's gonna be any, I mean, obviously Llama with Facebook. I don't think there's gonna be any like one winner. I think there's gonna be a lot of different players.

Yeah, I'm starting to see that Llama one on Instagram DMs. When I message someone, it's like their AI talking to me.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you seen that yet?

Yeah, yeah, there's that little search bar. I don't think— I mean, I think they're kind of cheating there and calling that active users because they're just taking all the users from their apps that sometimes like accidentally search in that bar. But I think, you know, I think we'll see much more sophisticated versions of like ManyChat. People have been using ManyChat and chatbots and things like that.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Are you using AI every day?

Every day, yeah. I mean, even earlier this week, and you've probably heard about it already, but Bolt.new, we're just using it to build like front ends and giving it to developers and moving it forward that way. There's some cool things we, like, I have an SEO background, but we're building, we're building these AI agents that will automatically just do a lot of the SEO tasks like internal linking, finding content to update and all that stuff, right? Just the thankless work. And we actually had a conversation with the, the guy that's leading that charge at Microsoft today on the AI, the AI agent side. And yeah, there's some exciting stuff happening and we can't wait to see what happens in the next, I don't know, 2, 3 years.

Nice. What does Bolt on you do? I haven't heard of that one.

So you've heard of Replit and Cursor?

Cursor? I might have.

Okay, so Cursor is like autocomplete for developers. And so when they're coding, they just move a lot faster. Replit is like, it's a more complex version of both where you can just say, hey, like yesterday I built something. I was like, hey, help me build an app that allows me to upload audio files and video files and then also allow me to post in a YouTube link. And I want you to come up with 5 viral headlines and thumbnails for my YouTube, right? So come up with the best. best concepts for higher click-through rates.

Wow.

And it coded it all up. I was watching it code it, and then it showed me the front end for it, and it looked exactly like I'd want it to look. And then I might say, hey, change this over here, or like there might be some bugs, and it'll just automatically fix the bugs.

Damn.

So you get like 60, 70% there. You're basically prompting an app and it pops out an app.

So I got to step up my AI game. I'm only using ChatGPT.

Yeah.

I feel like that's grade level, right?

ChatGPT is great though. I mean, it's like it can be like a therapist. You can ask questions. Like I ask it to like rate my workouts and everything.

Really? It's great.

And I like, I use this thing called My Body Tutor where I have to put in like my workouts and like my diet every day. So I take a picture of the food, it's like, hey, tell me what this is and how many calories are in it. And I just cut and paste and I throw it into My Body Tutor. And then my tutor would be like, oh, this is great, this is whatever, right? So yeah.

That's actually insane. So you could just take a picture of your food and it'll know how many calories?

Yep, yep. And it estimates what it is. It's like 95% accurate with guessing what it is. And sometimes I just post like a blob of stuff and it still guesses it correctly.

No way.

Yeah.

Wow, I need to look into that one. Did you see the AI chatbots? the Game of Thrones one?

No. What's that?

So there's one that can pretend to be the different characters. And there was one Daenerys Targaryen one, I guess. And some teenager fell in love with it.

Oh, that's nuts.

And then he committed suicide.

I didn't know that one. How long ago was this?

Yesterday or 2 days ago.

That's crazy. Yeah, that's setting precedent. It's so— I mean, I think there's going to be bad stuff that happens, but also I think the good will outweigh the bad. Because when you look at Anthropic this week, they just launched a A thing called computer use, and what that allows you to do is it's basically a human that can help you research like travel plans or Michelin restaurants or whatever, and you see it clicking around. It's basically a very nascent version of an AI agent that will actually act like a human and do work for you.

Whoa! Yeah, that's cool.

And so, like you now have free AI employees, like very basic versions of it.

Nice. I'll save business owners a lot of money.

Yep. All right. So I wanted to take a second to tell you about my ad agency, Single Grain. We're a performance. We're a performance digital marketing agency and we focus primarily on working with B2B companies and e-commerce. So performance marketing, that's SEO, that's paid media, that's CRO, that's ad creative. And there are a whole host of other things that we're doing with AI that's really cool. You can go to singlegrain.com to learn more. Again, that's singlegrain.com to learn more and we'll see you on the other side.

Crypto market's been, uh, it looks like it might come back.

I think hopefully it rips next year.

We'll see. Yeah, Bitcoin's already at $68, right? So, and people are upset about that.

Yeah, I don't know why. Close to all-time highs.

Yeah, I guess because ETH is a little low. But yeah, we'll see. Next bull run might be a good one.

I think it will rip.

Is that how you made a lot of your money in crypto?

Uh, yeah, I mean, I'd say the vast majority of my net worth's in business. Um, but I think, you know, crypto— I don't know if you played a lot. You're Asian, you probably played a lot of games growing up. Yeah, so did I, right? So it's just a way of, uh, gaming as an entrepreneur now.

So yeah, yeah, I remember buying crypto in like high school, and if I just kept that—

oh man, what year was that?

I was a junior, so 2014.

Okay, so yeah, I bought my first Bitcoin when I was 2013. Damn. Yeah, and but but but one Bitcoin, and I sold it when it was 2,000.

Oh yeah, paper hands. Yeah, paper hands, paper hands. Oh man, you went the full route, academic route, right? College degree and everything.

I did for my parents, not for me though.

Same. Yeah, I didn't make it all the way. Oh, you didn't?

Yeah, good for you.

Well, here's how I justified because Asian mother. Yeah, I had to provide some revenue first, so I started a business freshman year. I think it got to like $150K and then I dropped out.

That's great.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you proved yourself.

Yeah. But a lot of people want to drop out with nothing. So it's like the risk to reward.

Yeah. They're not thinking it through.

Yeah. What did you major in?

History and econ.

Whoa. Yeah.

But I did that because I wanted to play poker longer. So I stayed one more year extra in high school to play poker longer.

Oh, so you were a poker player back then?

Yeah.

Damn. History. I've never heard that major.

Yeah. No, it's a total BS major because all I did was go to Wikipedia the day before I needed to turn something in. I just like read it and I wrote something and that was it.

That's hilarious. That was before AI where you could just—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now you just use AI.

Yeah.

I remember those 5-page essays in college. Oh my gosh. Now people are writing it in minutes. You think you'll get an Elon Musk robot?

Definitely.

Yeah.

But I won't be the first wave. I think for that you should probably be like the second wave. You don't want to be the earliest adopter. Maybe just the second. Because like, who knows what all the issues are going to be?

That's why I didn't get the first Tesla. I waited like 5 years.

Yeah, same here. Same here. Like 2017 or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Around there. Yeah. I had Robbie Jade Liu on here yesterday. She's a poker player and she invests in AI companies. And she said there's one company that's providing legal representation to AI because these bots are going to start getting in trouble and need to be represented. Isn't that crazy?

That's smart. I have someone in my YPO forum. He actually built something that will help you like take care of small claims and stuff. So I think there's going to be a lot of— like earlier this week, ChatGPT, the chief product officer, was saying that Now you can get a $1,000 an hour brief written for $3 using ChatGPT.

Whoa.

And you can use the, the O1 version for that. And so I think we're just gonna see the cost for a lot of things come down. And that also, the same thing goes for marketing too, that, that computer use thing I was talking about. You can now use it to, you know, just automatically port things over from your spreadsheets over to your CRM and, and have it do a bunch of like manual work. And that you can do with Zapier or something like that. But I just think the possibilities are just going to open up quite a bit.

Yeah, I've saved a ton on legal recently because of AI.

Yeah? Yeah. How so?

Legal, I mean, just contracts and NDAs and all the— because you got to pay for the contracts, like hourly or set price.

That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just upload and say, hey, like, what seems off with this? And I actually use it for contracts too. It's like, hey, what could be strengthened about this contract?

Oh, that's smart. So no one can screw you over?

Yeah.

Wow, I need to start doing that. Yeah, there's all sorts, even like on a personal use, just like finding good restaurants. I find podcast guests on it. Like, there's so many ways to use it.

Yep.

I'm a fan. I'm optimistic. I know some people are like, oh, it's going to take out jobs and stuff, but same with the internet.

Yeah, I, I— people will reskill and people will figure it out. I think it'll be fine.

Yeah. Are you implementing it heavily with your agencies?

Yeah, so we are, um, on one side, I mean, the thing I mentioned with SEO, we're just looking into all the jobs to be done for like paid media, SEO, all the work we do for clients, and then we're just figuring out how we can bring efficiencies Or add more efficiencies. And we're just building tools and some we'll give away for free to generate more leads. And then some we'll just, you know, we'll manage it for our clients and things like that. So I think for us it's AI first. And like right now our CTO, he's just building so many products right now and I'm having more fun than I've had in a long time.

Nice. I love that. Where are you at with podcasts? How do you feel about the podcast market? There's networks right now starting up.

Yeah, I think podcasts, I mean, I've been doing it for like, holy crap, 13 years. I think I've been podcasting for 13 years. And I had— so I have 2. I have Marketing School and I have Leveling Up. And it's just the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, you've been doing it. You've seen the benefits.

Yeah.

The people that you meet, the relationships that you create from it. I've made lifelong friends from it. I've gotten deals from it. It's just been good across the board. And now the cool thing is like, oh, short form came on the last couple of years. And so I don't know about you, but most people Now when they like, when I'm like talking at a conference, if someone comes up to me, it's usually like, oh, I watch your Shorts or I watch your YouTube or whatever. It's not like I used to blog a lot. It's not, oh, I came from your blog.

Agreed.

Yeah. So I think like to me, the biggest opportunity in the next 10 years with social is YouTube. But like, what do you see mostly on YouTube and Shorts and things like that? It's podcasts.

Yeah.

And so this to me, like this is why MrBeast said this is OP like 2 years ago, right? Because we can just have a conversation. And there will be bites where we have something that goes viral and great. Like, I don't know if that's gonna go away because people like hearing interesting things.

Yeah, and people's attention spans are so short these days.

But I do think there's just— I think it's getting a little saturated now because you have, you have like— and there's nothing wrong with these people, right? But you have like NFL players starting podcasts, ex-NBA players starting podcasts. You have like the Hot Tua girl starting a podcast, right? And don't get me wrong, they're probably good. They probably all have an angle. But at a certain point, it's like, if everyone has a podcast, then what do we do?

Almost everyone I know does, to be honest.

Yeah.

Or if they don't, they go on a lot of shows.

Yeah.

So you're already seeing them. But yeah, it's definitely saturated. It's been saturated, though. Even when I started, I was late.

When did you start?

2 years ago.

Yeah.

So I had to make up for it with repetitions and good editors for the clips.

Yeah, you grew very quickly.

Yeah, well, everyone else like you and Rogan had a 10-year start, so I had to catch up.

Yeah, but it's— I think it's like the hardest thing to grow, but the most rewarding thing.

It is hard. I was losing tons of money at first. Most people probably couldn't stomach those losses the first year or two, you know? Yeah.

Good. It's— Asians know how to take pain.

Oh yeah.

Not that other— we specifically.

Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to my Asian squad.

A lot of pain growing up.

Yeah. Are you full Asian? Yeah. Chinese?

Yeah. Taiwanese, Cantonese, but whatever.

Same thing, right? Yeah. I just found out I'm not just half Chinese. I'm Thai, Filipino, and Chinese.

Oh wow.

I took a 23andMe. I don't know if I believe it though.

So you're full Asian?

Half. My mom said she was full Chinese, but I guess she wasn't.

Yeah.

So I'm half Asian.

Okay.

Got it. Half white.

Yeah. I was like, I'm pretty sure you have some white in you.

Yeah. I wouldn't be this tall. Yeah.

I was like, how are you so tall?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like it out there. I've been in China. Yeah. Been in Thailand. It's a different vibe, man.

It's good. It's interesting because I met someone when I was in Italy this summer and then she lives in China. And then I was like, you know, because like America likes to talk about China all the time. I'm like, so like, what do you guys do in China? She's like, we don't really talk about America. We don't care. Like, like, our lives are good, our costs are low, and our technology is so forward. And like, she's a teacher, right? And she's like, yeah, you know, I teach my kids, you know, they're 5, 6 years old, and they know about, you know, they know about engineering, they know about computer science, and like, they're pushing hard, right?

Yeah.

And, um, it's no wonder why they're, they're growing so quickly. Um, and but they don't really talk about America that much, as much as we talk about them, right? Because they just want to worry about themselves.

I could definitely see it. We paint certain countries in a bad light and then you actually go there and talk to people. They're like, we don't care about you.

Yeah. And it makes sense. I understand why we would do that and understand why they wouldn't care too. Yeah.

So what do you think of their social system, how they're going to start rewarding and punishing people for certain activities?

Yeah. So some things I think— here's the thing, like when you look at Singapore, for example, I think I could be wrong here, but if you're— if you bring in drugs or something like that, like you get— you get beaten or I think they cut your hand off or like something extreme, right? In some cases they might like Maybe they'll even kill you. Right. But how much crime do you have going on there? Or like in Dubai, like if you do something off, they'll just kick you out.

Right.

Like we don't really have that here. Like, but so if we set up the incentive structures correctly, then people will behave properly. And so I think maybe that will be helpful. Maybe it won't. So I can't really say I have an opinion either way.

Yeah, I think it's also person-based. Like some parents are strict, obviously, like a lot of Asian parents are, and the kids end up either like amazing or like the complete Or sometimes you might have like one kid that turns out amazing.

The other one turns out like terrible, but they just had different life experiences and they look at life differently, even though they had the same parents.

Yeah, that's why I liked my, my parents, because I had the strict Asian mother, but my dad was complete opposite. So I got to experiment both and I wouldn't want either end for my kid. I would want some middle ground.

Yeah, same, same here. I mean, there should always be like one tiger parent and then one that's super nice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you need both because if you're just a hard-ass—

Yeah, if you're too nice, then like what happens is you end up having a kid that has no emotional resilience and then they break whenever pressure comes.

Yeah.

And but if you're too hard, then like they have like no flexibility.

And you see that with our friends that are having kids because they're pretty wealthy and then they're hands-off with their kids and they're too nice. They let them do whatever. Oh yeah. But their kids end up like—

The wealthy ones. Yeah. A lot of them, the kids end up being screw-ups. And like I see this in the group that I'm in, YPO, is like an entrepreneur group. And you often will see the kids. And some kids turn out amazing because the parents are so involved. And the other— like, it's like black or white. It's either they're amazing or they're complete screw-ups. Yeah, right. There's no in-between that I've seen.

Yeah, same. I can agree. You're having an event for YPO coming up.

Yeah, that's— it's going to be in Miami. It's the Global Marketing Summit. So that's exciting. And that's another thing for me to do. But that's happening in April.

It's on my bucket list to join that one day. Yeah, I don't meet the qualifications yet, but you will. $10 million a year, right?

It's $13 million a year or like $20 million valuation. Or like if you have assets under management, it's like a different qualification.

I could probably meet the valuation one in maybe a year or two.

Great.

With the podcast.

Yeah, then you should join.

Yeah, no, I definitely want to. I've heard great things.

Yeah, it's good. I think whether it's YPO or Hampton or EO, like any of these groups, it's very like as you climb higher, the air gets thinner and it gets lonely. And so to have people you can talk to, especially when they're from different walks and different businesses. You know, these are your people. And then the cool thing, like YPO is really good about involving your family as well. So I don't have kids or anything like that, but they're good about, you know, not just making it about the entrepreneur. Because the family, like if you don't take care of your spouse first, and then you don't take care of your family, then like your business falls apart.

Yeah, I think everything kind of coincides with each other, right? So you're in Hampton, Sam Pars also?

No, I'm not. I was in EO before for 7 years and then YPO I think I've been in for 4 or 5 years or so. But I think Hampton's great.

Yeah, I've heard good things about Hampton. I love that podcast.

Great podcast.

One of the shows I studied before launching mine.

Yeah, it's— I mean, they put a lot of time and effort into it.

Yeah. And not many shows can pull off virtual. They're one of the few that can. So that's something to be studied.

Yeah. I just like this because like, just there's different dynamics. Like we can go deeper and then the shots look better too. So, but also this takes more work. So props to you.

Yeah, that's why I travel to a new city every month because virtual doesn't hit the same. Same, dude. Yeah, like it's harder to read the person.

How much better do you see the performance virtual versus live?

I've only done one virtual. I'm really strict on it and it's because he was banned from the US. But just from what I've studied, because I study all the top shows, most of them are in person, like Rogan. Yeah, Lex Fridman.

So people just like it. It feels like, oh, you put more time and effort into it.

Yeah. And I'm excited about the future though. These, these podcasts are getting a lot of good valuations lately, actually. I don't know if you've been following the market.

Well, there's Call Me Daddy.

Call Her Daddy.

Call Her Daddy, right? Call Me Daddy. I don't know where I got that. But like, so how much was that one worth?

She sold for $60 million for 10 years, or was it 6 years? Something like that. $20 million a year.

And then Rogan, I think, renewed or something for $200 million for 10 years.

Smartless, $100 million. Travis Kelce, $100 million. There's been 5 above $100 million this year.

That's amazing. Yeah, I think you just keep going.

Yeah, because the margins are good.

Yeah. I mean, we love our podcast. It's been Great for us, so.

Yeah, and you got 2, so.

Yeah.

Do you ever think about starting a network, like other shows?

No, it's just like I've learned that, so younger me would try to start all these different businesses, and because I think I can, because like, wow, look at all these other people with multiple businesses. But then as you get older, you realize when you start to meet people that are like, oh, I have 7 businesses, you realize that's actually not a flex, it's actually a red flag, right? Because the businesses, and maybe they enjoy it, that's fine, right? But if you want a really big business, you're ideally focusing on one for a very long time. And I'm not just saying like 5, 10 years. I'm talking like 20, 30 years or so.

Yeah.

Because it just keeps compounding, right? Like, I met a guy, actually one of our clients, also a YPO guy. They do north of 9 figures a year in revenue. And he's just been doing it for 30 years. They build like these homes, right? And I'm like, that's all it is, right? And he's like, I'm not like a genius or anything like that. I just kept doing it. And then I'm reading this other book right now. I paid $112, I think, for this book.

What?

It's called Keep It Going from Les Schwab, right?

That's the most expensive book I've ever heard. So, this guy wrote—

he founded Les Schwab Tires, right? And that used to be one of the biggest like tire companies in the US. And I think they're doing like $180 million a year in like 1986 or so. So, it's like way more money right now. And then he's just like an aw shucks guy, like a cowboy. And then he's just like, I don't know what's going on. And he just like kept building one store after another and just kept compounding it for a long time. And that's all he did. And then you find out like a lot of these people that have built big businesses, it's just they focused on one thing over 30+ years and that's how they build it into multi-hundred million or multi-billion.

Yeah, just being consistent. I learned that from Fleischman. He said he got some advice when he was 20 years old. Buy one house a year and see where you're at in like 20, 30 years and look at the appreciation on real estate in that time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, houses are solid.

Yeah. Just from simply buying a house. I mean, out here, a house is like $5 million.

But I mean, it used to be like, you know, $400,000 or $500,000 when I was growing up. Crazy. Now it's like 5, 10 times more.

Right. So you're happy right now with your place?

Well, no, I'm renting. So like, yeah, I kind of fall into the Ramit Sethi category for that. So, he's good at personal finance. But I just believe that I'm only going to buy a place like when I'm like married with kids. You know what I mean? And so, right now, I'm just like, it's just another thing. And I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs that have multiple homes. They actually regret it, right?

Really?

Because each home takes up headspace and it's like a job, even if you have property managers managing it, because there's problems with it, right? There's upkeep with it. What if you just put all that headspace into your business and just focused on one, right? And so, like, I used to be a big proponent of I'm going to do all these things like, You know, look at me, and now I've I've gotten hit so hard so many times over the years that I'm just like, oh, just this.

Yeah. Simplicity, man. Elon Musk has no no home, no cars.

Yeah, yeah. And even with him, by the way, he he's a good example. Like sure, he has a lot of things going on, but he has really good operators running each one. Like SpaceX, right? He's got Gwyneth there. Yeah. And then you know, he's got Linda over there at X. And so he might jump around a lot and like. Push things, but he's not in there operating all the time. Yeah, that's true. So LinkedIn ads are great, but let me give you the bad news first. The bad news is that you can't personalize the ads and you can't scale up the ads as quickly. The good news is if you're in a B2B space, you're doing account-based marketing, we have a solution for you called Karrot. That's K-A-R-R-O-T. And the good news is that you can create a lot of these campaigns with the click of a button. You can personalize the ads and there's a whole host of new things that are coming. If you want to get on the waitlist, just go to karrot.ai. Again, it's karrot.ai and we'll see you on the other side.

Are you still playing poker?

Not as much. I play occasionally, like with a group of entrepreneurs here. But no, it's like when we throw poker things, like it's like an hour to get there and all that. It's like a pain in the butt with the LA traffic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it for networking. Yeah, it's great for networking, like invite-only stuff. But yeah, just casually, I don't see it a lot.

What's the buy-in typically for you?

What's up?

What's the buy-in typically?

I've done like a couple, like $1,000. Nothing crazy. I never do it for money. Like, it's just to me.

$1,000 is great.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm not like some of these, like Nick Arbol is coming on. I think he buys into like a million sometimes.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm like, dude, that's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah. You give up gaming too? I know you used to play esports.

I can't. I can't play games anymore because anytime I start playing a game, like I tried playing Diablo 3, maybe like when I was 27 or 28.

Yeah.

Now it's— and I'm just like, I just kept thinking about business. I just like, business is the ultimate game.

Yeah.

And I think any kid that grows up playing games, like, oh, I was just like, dude, what am I going to do? What if I can't find a game to play in real life? Turns out business is the best game.

It is a game.

Yeah.

I play a little Fortnite. Everything's a game. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Business is 24/7 sport.

But like, you're keeping your— keeping healthy is a game too. Like managing relationships is a game too. Like, yeah, we're playing a game right here, right now too.

Absolutely. Yeah. I play a little Fortnite, but no, like yourself, while I'm playing, I'm like, wow, I could be making money. I could be doing podcasts.

Because when you're playing, you're like, I want to get better. Like I played a couple rounds of Fortnite and sure, like I felt like I played a lot of Counter-Strike growing up. Right. So like I was in a flow. But I'm just like, but like, I'm gonna want to get good at this, I don't want to get addicted, but like, but you know, people talk about business being, you know, you got to allocate resources, right? What you really need to allocate is actually your attention. It's actually more about attention allocation than it is about resource allocation because your attention controls your resources at the end of the day. And so, the more you can shut things out from your life and the more you can hone in, the better you're gonna do. Yeah.

100%. I've actually heard VCs are focusing more on the founders these days.

Yeah.

And whether they could lock in or not.

They should. And then the ironic thing is VCs don't focus, right? Because they have— they need to find a bunch of different bets to go for that multi-billion dollar outcome.

Yeah. You ever dabble with raising money in that whole space?

Yeah, we raised money for one software company, raised a couple hundred grand, and then we got it to like a couple hundred grand a year in ARR. But like, again, coming down to focus again, we're like, We need to cut it because as even though we can see it growing to probably a couple of million plus a year, we're just like, this is not where the opportunity is. So, we needed to shut it down. And then we made a tough call there. Because the thing is, we could have let that stick around. It's like, oh, I have the software, I have this education thing over here, I have this thing over here, I have 7 different things, I have this senior living business over here, whatever, right? But what ends up happening is like, I'm now in 8 different places. Right.

It's cool that you're able to pivot like that though, because a lot of— I think that's the demise of a lot of business owners, right?

Yeah. Especially agency owners. A lot of agency owners try to do too many things. And that was me in the beginning. I was like, well, you have this agency that's growing, but like, oh, look at this person doing courses over here. Oh, look at this person doing software over here. Like, the grass is always greener, right? But the real reality is the grass is greener where you water it. Hmm.

I love that, man. The one game I won't give up is chess.

Yeah.

I play every day.

Well, chess is like, I think that's a little different though, because it like, it hones like, this is why I'll play poker with friends because like, it's It's very strategic. And to me, poker is very much like real life, right? Like chess is like you're kind of— how do you think about it?

It's all skill-based. So if you lose a game of chess, there's no luck involved. You lost because you messed up somewhere.

Yeah.

So I like that.

Cool. I like— I've never played chess, so I don't know.

Oh, you never played?

No.

Wow. No. Yeah, it's poker. There's some luck, but there's still a lot of skill.

Yeah. Long term, it's skill. But it seems like chess, there's no— it's like short term and long term. It's all skill.

All skill unless your opponent like luckily messes up. But that's like a rare thing.

Yeah.

At my level.

Yeah.

Because I'm top 1%.

Oh, wow.

No one's really messing up. It's like little things. Yeah.

You've been playing for a while.

I've been playing for 2 years, but I'm able to get top 1% in any industry within 2 years. I've done it in 10 different industries.

Yeah.

And it doesn't have to be like mental either. I do it in basketball. I do it in sports.

You're tall.

But it's just hard work and I pay for access.

Cool. Well, Chess.com, like what do you—

Yeah, Chess.com.

You pay for like a coach?

Yeah. Got a coach. Studied YouTube. YouTube University, baby. Yeah. These days you don't even need degrees, in my opinion, for most things.

I'm with you on that.

Yeah. I mean, YouTube is phenomenal in podcasting. Yeah. I mean, why would you get pay forty k for a degree in marketing when they could listen to your show?

Because your parents tell you to.

Yeah. Well, that's what worked for them. Yeah. That was before alternative media.

Yep.

Totally. But now my mom's like the biggest listener of the show. Oh wow! Even though we used to fight every day about academics, dude. I'm sure you dealt with that too.

Oh, all the time. But how old are you right now?

Twenty seven.

Okay. Twenty seven. Okay. Yeah. So she's probably loosening up a little bit.

Yeah. Well, I had to loosen her up too. We found some middle ground now.

Great.

But I got a lot of Asian listeners, so I hope if they're listening to, you know, kind of follow this path.

Yeah. Tiger mom is good.

Yeah, it's good in some ways, but just academic— a lot of trauma, man, because I was friends with Asian kids in school and they were—

Oh yeah, we have our trauma, but it's like the trauma is we're never good enough.

That's the trauma. Even an A grade wasn't good enough.

Oh yeah, nothing's good enough.

It's good in a way, right? Yeah.

No, I love it now. Like, there's that chip on my shoulder that will always stay there. It's like no matter what. And then if someone tries to reinforce that, like you're never good enough, all the trauma comes back and then you just push really hard.

Facts, right? Yeah.

Or you could be weak about it and then like cry about it.

Yeah. Did you get bullied too growing up?

Not really. I always found a way to kind of sneak into like whatever the popular group was because I was good at games and games were cool or I was like at least semi-decent. So I somehow found my way like around. Like it wasn't always like it wasn't like I was top dog or anything, but I always found a way into these groups.

Impressive. That's tough as an Asian. Well done.

Yeah.

Yes.

Well, I mean, there were Asian popular groups or white popular groups, but I got along with everybody. I think.

Yeah. Yeah. My school is mainly whites and yeah, no Asians in the popular group.

Yeah. But I mean, you're like a tall Asian, right? Half white. They let you in?

Nah. No.

Nah. That's unfortunate, man. Sorry.

I was pretty weird, to be honest.

But we're all weird.

Yeah. Yeah. I learned now that if you're normal, it's like a red flag to me.

Yeah. Yeah. Because that's because then you're going to get normal results.

Yeah.

Yeah. Better to be weird if you're just Acting like an NPC.

I'm like, all right.

Yeah.

Weird to me.

Hundred percent.

Yeah. Who you got coming on the show next?

Um, so we just had Seth Godin, and so he just went out like yesterday or the day before. Today's Friday, right? Yeah. Wednesday. And then we have Anthony Pompliano that should come out next week.

Nice.

And then we have. I'm gonna talk be talking to my friend Jess Ma. So she's worth about five hundred million dollars. She's also a YPO member. She flies. She has two jets. Damn, she flies around. She actually lives in LA. Her main driver is like a Lambo. She's talked about all this stuff, and like yeah, she invests in a lot of different things. She's like realized you know that she likes doing that, and I think it'll be a great conversation. Like I don't like the fact that okay, she's a woman and she's a person of color. Like that doesn't matter to me. Like what matters is like she gets shit done, right? Right. I think a lot of people get caught up with like oh, you know, we need to meet like these like quotas and things like that. Like yeah, it's just. That's just not what matters, right? What matters is like, like, yes, it does matter. Like, sure, you should have some diversity of thought and opinion, but ideally you're looking for people based on their immutable characteristics, right? Like what their character is and like what they've done on their merit. Yeah.

And that's why I like business, because skin color, race doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

Height doesn't matter.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you're good at business, like, let's, let's hang out.

Exactly.

One of the tweets I liked about you, you said there's 2 types of friends, utility friends and friend friends. I agree with that.

Yeah. So like, this is interesting because I was speaking at a mastermind with my friend who So we were both speaking and he sold his company for $250 million and we're just talking about it and he's like, yeah, you know, there's one guy that's well known. I'm not going to name any names, but he's well known on YouTube, right? And he is all about like money, money, money. And he will— he looks up to people that have a lot of money, right? And he'll like— he basically worships them, right? But if you have less money than him, he treats you like you clearly have less money than him, right? So that's an example of utility, friend. Like he treats my friend pretty well because like he sold his company for $250, but he's constantly asking me, it's like, hey, so how are things going right now? Are you making revenue on that thing right now? Like, it's a competition, right? So, it's like he wants something from someone. Now, that's a utility friend. But a friend friend is like, you love them no matter what. You love them for their character, right? Like, I had a friend recently, you know, reach out to me like regarding personal stuff. It's like, hey, how are you doing? Like, how are you holding up? Like blah, blah, blah, right? And I was like, dude, I'm good, right? But like the concern that's there, like it's not about, hey, can I get something from this guy?

Yeah.

It's like, hey, how is my friend doing right now? I love this person no matter what. And it's really hard to come across friend friends. And we're talking about it. And it was interesting because he looked at me, he's like, he's like, you're kind of a mix between the two, Eric. He's like, you're actually like a utility person until you trust someone. And then once I trust someone, they're like a friend friend. Like, I love them forever. Right. And so I think, yeah, more friend friends, but utility friends, they also have their uses too.

Yeah, I have both. I think it's important to have both. Some people get offended if you kind of box them in. As a certain type of friend. But, you know, I have friends that are broke. I'm not going to go to them for business advice.

No. But like, by the way, like, I still keep in touch with my high school friends, my elementary school friends. I don't know about you, but like, I love them for who they are. It doesn't matter how much money they make. And like, we've grown together and like, there's a role for everybody in your life.

Yeah. I mean, but you were probably growing at a quicker pace than most of them, I assume. Financially, at least.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it picked up and it picked up eventually. And, you know, again, I wasn't the top dog. Right. So like, You know, it's sometimes it's tough to see that because like you have your high school friends see it and they're just like, how is this happening? It puts up a mirror against them, right? And then what happens is like some of them won't talk to you anymore. And that's fine. Like, you know, Charlie Munger says that the world is driven by— it's not driven by necessarily greed. It's driven by envy.

Yeah.

And so, but the real friends, the real friend friends will stick with you.

Yeah, absolutely. You also retweeted this graph. It was about the US fertility rate. So it's at 1.64 right now. So, right now at the current pace, we're going to depopulate.

Yep. Yeah. And so, I mean, everybody talks about this. Like Elon talks about this quite a bit. It's like if we continue to go down that rate, like there's going to be way less humans and we could even go extinct, right? So, we're not doing our job right now in terms of, you know, everyone should at least have 2 kids, right? That's what it should be. We're at 1.64 right now. Korea is like even lower than that. Japan's pretty low too. And by the way, like Charlie Munger again, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. Well, why did this happen? Like, well, what happened in the last, I don't know, 30, 40 years or so, 50 years or so? Contraception was invented, right? So now there's an incentive to keep hooking up. But like, you know, the kids don't pop out.

Yeah.

So that might be one of the reasons, right? But I just think I don't have much of an opinion here besides the fact that like we should be having more kids. And I'm not an expert on this by any means, but that's why I retweeted it.

I've changed my stance on it. I used to not want kids. I used to just be all about making money. Yeah, but now I want kids.

Yeah, it changes over time, right? It's like, first it's all about money because like we came from nothing, right? Then it's like, okay, well, now how can I add more to the world? Right? And you want some purpose, maybe with the kids, right? Not that you don't have any purpose. But then even Neil, like we were both recording yesterday for Marketing School. And, you know, he was just saying like he was all about money in the 20s. Like when I was like 24, I met him like he was 25, right?

Yeah.

All about money. All he talked about was money. I remember I had like a heartbreak with a girl and he'd be like, he'd just stare at me. And then he'd be like, so anyway, he'd go right back to business. And then like, it's— but now that he has 2 kids, he's just like, it's much more about family. It's much more about friends. And you realize that's all that matters at the end of the day.

I love it. Yeah, because once you got a certain amount of money, how much more is going to change your life dramatically like it used to?

Yeah, like $100 million is not going to be that different than a billion. And then the stories that you see is like the people that are billionaires, they're constantly looking at the next person. It goes back to envy again. Oh, he has that jet over here. He has that yacht over here. He has $3 more billion than me, right? It's a never-ending game and it's the wrong game to play.

Yeah, that's the wrong game. Do you have a set number or you kind of just go with the flow?

I think $100 million liquid would be nice. But like, reality is you don't really need much more than, in my opinion, $50 million, right? $50 million is pretty good.

Yeah.

Like, $50 million is really good, right? Because if you're living on 5% a year, like, that's pretty damn good.

That's about $1 million.

That's $2.5 million.

$2.5 million a year. Yeah.

That's $2.5 million, right? And so, hopefully you can get a better return than that, but $2.5 million is more than enough to provide for your family.

Yeah.

And I think it's very possible. Like, people might think, oh my God, $50 million. Yes, you're in the 1%, right? Probably higher than that for net worth. But let's go back to the agency again. You can start an agency for almost nothing, right? And you can grow it and then maybe get it to— you keep doing it for 10, 20 years or so, get it to $5 million in profit, sell it for 10x or so. Okay, there's your $50 million, right? Maybe you get taxed on it. Maybe it ends up being like $25 million, $30 million or so. Or you know what else you can do? I'll give a little more here. You can buy an agency. You can— sorry. You can build an agency, build it to $5 million profit, private equity, partner up with them. OK? And then private equity will go to you and say, OK, your company is worth $50 million. We'll give you $25 million. So, 50%, you pocket that.

Yeah.

And then the other 50%, you roll over. OK? And we're going to build a platform and we're going to buy all these other companies. Sometimes, the second exit might be like $300, $400 million or so. You still own 50%. Maybe you're diluted a little bit. Right? But let's just call it round numbers. That's another $200 plus the $25, that's $225, right? And so, I think getting this knowledge out there, hopefully it helps more people understand that, hey, you see regular human beings doing this stuff, you can do it too.

Yeah, you probably see it every day. Did the agency space get saturated when Iman Gadzhi launched that course?

I don't think there was any effect there.

I think it was good.

Like, my take on the courses is like, it's good. It's funny because I helped launch a course for this one company. And this is a guy that mentored people, like the course was a guy that mentored Tony Robbins, for example. And one of the executives in the room, he's like, you know what education is about? He's like, what courses are all about? It's about perceived progress. And the entire room went silent. And then the CEO started laughing, right? And so, it's like a lot of people like— I hate using the word, but it's like mental masturbation, right? Like I used to download a lot of courses and buy a lot of courses.

Same.

But like, it felt good. I got the dopamine hit, right? But did I really do anything about it? Sometimes I did, but most of the times I didn't.

Yeah. I mean, you could say that with books too. But yeah, it's all, I guess, if you take action on the information.

Yeah. And to Iman's point, like, I think he probably made a lot of money off of that, right? Because he sold a lot. But how many people are going to actually take action? It's probably like 1%.

Yeah.

And that's still a good amount of people.

Yeah. Well, Tai launched one too, right? Tai Lopez.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people that launch these courses, like, I think it's like a short-term grab. And then what you realize is that courses are like a fine business. But you're probably going to get your course business to maybe like, you know, $15, $20 million a year max. And that's great, right? But, you know, if you really want to scale and I think if you want to really build something that has enterprise value, then you probably need to build something more sustainable. I'm not saying build an agency.

Yeah.

But that's what it is.

So, like a community, right? Yeah.

And like we were talking about Tai beforehand, like I think he's great. But like, you know, for example, we heard that he's charging, you know, to— if you want him to be on your podcast, he'll charge you like a significant amount of money, right? And so, that's like a nice— In marketing, we like to call it biz op, right? Business opportunity. And so maybe that's not the right application there. But anyway, I'm using that in this case. Yeah.

I mean, he's always thinking of creative ways. You can't argue that he is a trendsetter.

Yeah, he does great.

So I mean, he's the first course I remember. Maybe there were people before him, but that course just— I feel like it set the tone for the courses.

The courses are great. There's a guy, you know, I think his name— so he did a dating course. He's like a marketer. His name was Eben Pagan. But he had like a David DeAngelo was just like he. He sold these dating courses, right? He made like a lot of money on that. There's another marketer named Frank Kern. Yeah, he had like a lot of courses too, right? And these courses generate millions. But the problem is you have to keep relaunching them. You have to keep updating the information, right? And now information is becoming so much more democratized. So what are you going to do long term?

Yeah, I don't know if they're going to stick long term because now there's so much good information in books and on YouTube. Yeah, I don't see—

I mean, if you're a good marketer, you'll probably still get like some revenue from it.

But yeah. Yeah, I see like masterminds and communities, I feel like those are gonna do better.

Yeah, I think Sam Altman has said this, right? Communities, especially in-person communities, will be worth even more money in the next 5 to 10 years or so.

Absolutely. YPO is probably worth a ton. I mean, they got so much good resources there.

Exactly.

Dude, what are you doing next and where can people come up and meet you and check out the podcast?

Just hit me @EricOSIU and then Marketing School and Leveling Up would be the 2 podcasts. But on Twitter, On Instagram, those will be the spots.

Perfect. We'll link it below. Thanks for, thanks for watching, guys, and thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me.