Eric Siu shares how to break into marketing: read classic books like Breakthrough Advertising and Boron Letters, follow leaders on Nuzzel and Feedly, listen to Marketing School podcast, then build projects yourself. He worked for free early on and hired cheap help to learn fast through iteration.
In this clip, we are going to talk about the ultimate advice for getting started in, well, with your marketing career. But before we talk about this, if you like clips on marketing, on productivity, on entrepreneurship, all that cool stuff, just don't forget to subscribe at whatever platform you're on because we're gonna help you grow and you're gonna help us grow as well. It's gonna be great for everyone. When you think about starting a career in anything, this is general advice, you work for someone for free for a month or so. You know, I actually have a guy right now that, that helps me out. He's my marketing assistant. His name is Manav, and Manav will probably watch this video. Hello, Manav. Hello. He basically helped us for a month for free. By the way, I don't know if this is like a, like a, like an Asian thing, but it's— I've had a guy from Pakistan, from India, from like even like other Asian people to offer to work for free initially. I think other countries maybe are like not used to that, but they offer to work for free first and then eventually it becomes a more ongoing type of gig. So that's the first thing, right? Obviously what you have to do when it comes to if you want to get started with marketing, you got to learn marketing. And the problem with learning marketing is marketing changes so quickly. So you know what I would do is, You know, I focus on following a couple of marketing leaders on Twitter, and then I use an app called Nuzzel, that's N-U-Z-Z-E-L, and then Nuzzel will help me surface up the content that all these marketing leaders are sharing, right? If I find like 10 of 20 of the people that I'm following are sharing it, it's probably something that I should be checking out, so I use Nuzzel. I also use Feedly, and I follow the top marketing blogs in there, and I just save stuff to Pocket, my read-it-later app, and then I can, you know, go out there and read the stuff later, and then Pocket can even narrate the content for me when I'm on the go. And always, like, I like reading marketing books too. I like reading the old school stuff. I like reading Breakthrough Advertising, like reading the Boron Letters. You know, these people have since passed away, but human psychology really hasn't changed that much. So when you're marketing to someone, you're, you're, you're doing human psychology. So, you know, you can listen to podcasts like Marketing School. You can listen to podcasts like Leveling Up, which is my podcast, and there's a bunch of other marketing podcasts out there. And I like listening to the entrepreneurial podcasts too because they share about how they grew in the early days, which is the Leveling Up podcast. There's just a lot that goes into that. Um, and you know, the, the, the struggles, the hustle that they had to pull through to get there. And there's just a bunch of other blogs out there. So there's a couple blogs that you should be reading. You can just use Feedly to discover those blogs. You can use Nuzzle as well. That's the second one. I like reading the Wall Street Journal as well. I like listening to podcasts. You can listen to my podcasts. They're free. And then YouTube as well. But the problem with just learning is if you don't execute, it won't matter. When I first got started with marketing, what happened was I was, you know, I'm still into EDM. I used to go to music festivals a lot and I was like, oh, you know what? Keyword research, SEO. How about I make a site called Light Show Videos? And then in like a month or 2, I was ranking number 1 for it. And, you know, I learned a lot from that because I got number 1 for light show videos, but the volume for that keyword was only like 140 visits a month. So I wasn't really getting much. I tried to sell the site to a guy that actually was on Shark Tank. I think it was called Amazing Lights. So he sells like the light show gloves. He offered me $50 and I was like so like defeated. I was like, oh man, like, you know, I worked so hard on this and this guy's only offering me— I was offended. I took it personally. So lesson here is Learn, go implement on your own. I also started a site called howtogeriddepimples.net and also another one called Portal 2 Walkthrough. Um, I made like this game, like, you know, guide and I just, you know, hired someone for $50. So I learned all these things. You gotta have volume for the thing that you're searching for. There's gotta be demand. I gotta be interested in it. Um, I can't just, you know, try to hustle things and I, you know, I built a bunch of crappy links. Um, I paid like almost nothing for like the, um, the articles. I paid like, you know, nothing for the design. So I learned I get what I pay for. There's a lot of lessons that come from, Me just implementing, and then I was able to carry that over into, you know, into another job and into another job, into another job, and eventually able to, you know, parlay that into having a business. Okay? You can play at whatever level you want to play at, but you just know that, you know, first level is learn, right? Next step is, you know, implement a little bit on your own and then maybe work for free for a little bit. Uplevel, get a really cool job, and then uplevel, uplevel, uplevel. Just keep looking for the right opportunity for yourself, and then you are going to be completely fine. So, You know, hopefully, like, if you're looking to hire someone, um, if someone is new and they don't have experience, maybe you can send this video to them. Let us know what you think in the comments in terms of, uh, how you plan on getting, well, getting started with your marketing career and let it, let me know if you disagree or not. And by the way, don't forget to check out the next video if you like stuff on marketing, business, entrepreneurship, and also, also don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe whatever platform you're on because it helps us grow and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.
