How to Grow Your Agency By Constantly Leveling Up

True to his gambler style when it comes to making business decisions, entrepreneur Eric Siu bought a failing marketing agency for $2 back in 2014. By refocusing the agency's vision from an SEO agency to a full-service digital marketing agency, Single Grain has grown into a full team of expert marketers who share Eric's vision and passion for constant growth. Now he joins us today to talk about how you can use a game mentality to grow your agency by constantly leveling up.

3 Golden Nuggets

1. Lack of vision leads to making mistakes. Eric talks about the time when he almost lost everything. He says that, at the time, he had no notion of culture and no vision, and it almost cost him everything. Luckily, he was able to turn it around.
2. The game of life. The philosophy he shares in his book and has implemented in his agency is to look at it as a game. You need to be constantly leveling up. There are always new challenges and, if you’re not where you wanted to be yet is because you haven’t beat the current level. It’s a game of resources, he says, you decide how you want to use your resources.
3. Going back to the basics. Sometimes we need to go back to the basics. Some of the smartest agency owners are really good at SEO and use these tools to find websites in their niche that's ranking for all the keywords they want, buy it, and then have that advantage. And let’s not forget that these tools can also help grow your agency on a small budget.

 

 

 

Sponsors and Resources

Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free.

Subscribe

Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM

How to Grow Your Agency By Constantly Leveling Up

Jason: [00:00:00] On this show, I bring on a past client where we talk about how he's grown his agency and he has a great book called “Leveling Up” and going through the stages and talks about e-sports, and we talk about sports and how you can use this in order to really grow your agency. We talked about Clubhouse, all kinds of stuff.

It's a really cool episode. We jump all around and we talk about a $75,000 Pokemon card. Crazy stuff. So, you're going to love this episode. Let's get into it.

Hey Eric. Welcome to the show.

Eric: [00:00:36] Good to see you, Jason. It's been a while.

Jason: [00:00:38] Yeah, man. It's been a while since we worked together. So tell us, uh, for the people that haven't heard of, you tell us who you are and what do you do?

Eric: [00:00:45] Yeah, thanks. So my name's Eric Siu. I helped level up the world through marketing. I have a couple of marketing businesses. I have an agency called Single Grain, a software company called Click Flow. And then, uh, we got a whole, you know, marketing education stuff and marketing school and the events tied to it.

So a bunch of stuff. And I also invest in different MarTech SAS companies, which is my background. And then, um, other than that, I have a podcast called Leveling Up. I have a book called Leveling Up right here, coming out, and then I have a podcast called Marketing School and that's basically it.

Jason: [00:01:12] Very cool. And so how'd, you get started in all this? You haven't been in the agency world too long. And so how did you kind of jump into it?

Eric: [00:01:21] Yeah, so it's pretty unconventional. So the agency that I took over and, you know, the story already, I bought the company for $2 out of pocket because it was a failing SEO agency at the time, because the Google algorithm updates basically made the business model invalid overnight.

And I was brought in as a number two to help save the company. Because I'd previously had helped turn another company around, which is a startup. And so this was a different challenge, you know, different service, like the plane's going down, right? Like, can you put the plane back together while flying it?

I was like, okay, this will be an interesting challenge. About six months into it, the four other co-founders said they wanted out. And Neil Patel was my podcast co-host he was like, hey Eric, you should get out as a friend. There's no brand equity. There's nothing here.

And I was like, okay, why don't we do this? I'll give it a shot. I'll buy it. I'll pay $1 for 10% of your shares and another dollar for another 10% of another partner's shares. The rest through the profits of the company, with contingency that the company failed and owned nothing. So asymmetric bet, you know, I'd have unlimited upside with my downside would be it's basically an MBA, right?

And so fortunately it worked out, but I almost lost everything. I'm happy to go in that direction, but that's how I got started. First year, had no idea what I was doing dropped all the way down to one employee.

Jason: [00:02:28] And so, you know, a lot of people are listening. They're like, what was the point where you almost lost everything? Let's go to that story a little bit.

Eric: [00:02:36] Yeah. So two thousand... what was it? Thirteen or so, something like that. New year, I'm like, okay, look at me. I'm the CEO. Now I own a hundred percent of the company. Look at me. And I ended up reading this book called “Let My People Go Surfing” from the Patagonia co-founder. And I was like, yeah, let my people go surfing.

Nobody wants to be micromanaged, whatever, stop showing up to the office. So I'm like, you know, I hired some senior people I'm like, yeah, let them do their thing. Whole thing implodes. And then I have people calling me saying, you know, people are showing up to the office and like just wearing like, almost like pajamas and eating like chips while watching Family Guy. Whole thing is just blowing up in front of me.

And then my outside accounting firm calls me and they're just like, hey, it might be time to shut it down. Basically I went from bad to worse just because I didn't build a rapport with anybody. I let them do their thing. I had no vision. I had no sense of what culture meant and the whole thing just fell apart.

And I almost took another job. So I was at a crossroads. I had said yes. And then I basically, the next day I was like, I can't do it. And I continued on with Single Grain.

Jason: [00:03:31] And so that's the all-time low and your accounting firm says, you know, let's throw in the towel, Eric, what did you do to turn it around?

Eric: [00:03:40] Yeah, when I first started at Single Grain, because my background's in SEO, we were getting about 4,000 visits a month, which is okay for a blog. I had started to focus on a lot of guest blog posting, a lot of, um, you know, building more relationships. And we started publishing a lot more content. We had good domain authority on our website, which is just how strong our website is.

And throughout that first year it started to increase rapidly. So we went from about 4,000 to about 50,000 visits a month. And then we got that number one ranking for the agency keyword that you know about digital marketing agency, right. I have nothing to hide. And so that's how we started getting all these leads, and unfortunately I couldn't fulfill the leads anymore.

So what we started to do was we started to refer the leads out and I would take 25 to 30% commission for the lifetime of the customer. That kept us afloat. And then I realized that these other agencies were, they couldn't retain the client. And so from that point on, I was like, okay, let's take on some contractors. We have some more money to play with.

We took on some contractors and then from there we're like, okay, the contractors are good, but they're not, they're mercenaries throughout fully embedded with the culture. So then we started hiring full-time people. It really started to take off again, once we hired that integrator and I'm sure people have talked about it on this podcast, visionary integrator concept, rocket fuel.

And that's when things started to blow up. And my thesis has always been with the agency. If I were able to make it work, the services business is not super interesting to me, but the cash flows to be able to take that and go reinvest in more exponential or durable sources of income. That's more interesting.

And fortunately, that worked out and then now, you know, combined with everything, we’re at about eight-figures. We’re over eight-figures. Yeah.

Jason: [00:05:08] And so what's kind of the percentage that you would reinvest and did that number go down over time? Like, you know, in the very beginning sometimes, or did it go up over time, but everybody's probably listening are like, well, how much should I reinvest in the company? Or should I rate the company?

Eric: [00:05:26] Yeah, that's a great question. I would put an asterisk by this because I come from a gambling background. So all in, you know, if I'm betting on myself, best investment ever, right? Warren Buffet. I don't recommend this for everyone because your mileage may vary. You might have a mortgage, you might have a family to take care of. Who knows? Like there's a lot of other commitments.

I was fortunate enough where I didn't have any of that to worry about at the time. So I continued to press every single year. I put everything back into the business. I think it's fine to pay taxes. Absolutely. But if you have a good sense of what you can do with the business and you can create more jobs from it and you don't have a lot of other overhead to worry about, then, you know, for me, I kept pressing.

And so for me, it was a hundred percent and I didn't necessarily want to raise money because, you know, I've seen that game before. Right. And there's nothing wrong with that. And in some cases I might raise money for other stuff and we have, but at the time I just wanted to bootstrap my way up to, to prove that I could do it before, you know, thinking about anything else.

Jason: [00:06:17] So let's talk about, you know, Leveling Up. Why did you write it?

Eric: [00:06:21] Yeah, that's a good question. Uh, I remember on another podcast, this guy, uh, Anthony Pompliano was asking me, why are you doing a book? Nobody reads books. And I'm like, well, I read books. So I started writing this book, and I don't recommend this, while I was trying to save the agency. Stupid.

And people are like, yeah, it's going to take you probably five to six years to do it. It took me six years, probably seven drafts. I was like, it probably will probably take me two. Took me seven. And so, I come from an e-sports background. All I was really good at growing up was games. And you know, there's a stigma towards games, right?

Parents always looked down on me, friends, maybe didn't respect it. And then it was just like, I wasn't seen, and now you see e-sports taking off, but you have 3 billion people in the world that are playing games and then feel like they have a stigma. They feel unseen, but in sports and I'm sure you've played sports. Right.

But just understanding that look, sports foster teamwork, communication, resilience, all that, all that I got from games. And my point is, you know, I think business is the ultimate game. Life is a game and I wake up every day and it's the same feeling I've had growing up. It's fun. Right. I'm just going to keep playing until I die, which is why I have a fundamental kind of buy and hold model where I just want to go buy other businesses.

And so. That's what it is. I just do this, have fun. I've treat life as a game there's level-ups, right? In the book I talk about, you know, one of the chapters is thievery. If you think about Apple, you know, Apple, as an example, by the way they stole this from Xerox, this mouse, they stole from Xerox, Steve Jobs himself said everything in life is a remix.

And so if we think about Elon Musk, the rockets, they look fundamentally the same, you know, you just add on the 10 to 20%, that's unique. They come back to earth. And so I think encouraging people that like. That chapter talks about where I ethically learned to steal, right? And people have a there's cognitive dissonance there because we all like to think that we're original.

And so the book is about treating life as a game and going out throughout life and collecting power-ups and from a business perspective, just understanding that there's levels to the game. Right? So, Jason used an example, you had the agency, you sold it and you started doing the training. And then now you're back in the agency game, but you're buying other businesses you're investing.

And so you’re consistently leveling up and that's what it is. And you don't have to get to the next level. But if you want to get to it and you don't get to it, it's just because you didn't beat the current one.

Jason: [00:08:23] Have you ever played the game Age Of Empires?

Eric: [00:08:25] I haven't, but I played a lot of StarCraft and Warcraft.

Jason: [00:08:29] Okay. So there was a game in college that I would play with a bunch of my buddies where the kind of start off in the stone age and you have to acquire wood, gold, and I think food, and as you acquire so much, you actually start moving up to the next stage and then your weapons get better. Your houses get better. Your technology gets better.

And that's kind of how I have always looked at, and that's one of the reasons why we created the agency playbook and that framework of kind of like you're talking about you're going, all right, once you get to the next level, you have to kind of reset a lot of, you know, the gold, the water, the food, and you have to kind of almost start over.

Is that kind of what you're talking about with leveling up?

Eric: [00:09:10] It's exactly that. So StarCraft, Command and Conquer, you know, Warcraft and I'm not familiar with Age Of Empires. It's, it's a strategy game, right? We're all, what we're playing is it's a resource game, right? You decide how you want to use your resources and you can go get more resources than those that do the best job they get the most.

Right. And that's not saying, we, you need to go get the most necessarily, but that's how you do it. That's how the game is played.

Jason: [00:09:29] So, you talk about is the first level kind of a, I don't like to use steal. I like to kind of like reenergize it, like you were saying, you know, Apple wasn't the first that came out with MP3 player, they were the ones that made it better.

Right? They kind of took something, you know, and the mouse you just showed me, I'm surprised he's still using a mouse. Like, who are you? Like he's still using them.

But they made it out of like a soap thing if, uh, from the story that I heard, uh, which is kind of cool. So is that the first level of the 15 that you're talking about is kind of like.

Eric: [00:10:04] No, it's not, I mean, you know, it starts out with, uh, you know, newbie mindset, right? So whether you want to call it newbie mindset or beginner mindset, understanding that let's say you, Jason, you're continually learning, you're getting better and you have an open mindset.

I think, as you become more and more successful as you, you gain levels. Sometimes it's easy to get cocky and let your ego get in the way. And so, you know, there's just those types of concepts. And again, if you compare it to a game, if you get a sword, for example, you keep using it, you're gonna lose durability. Some, some you have to keep sharpening, right?

So on the spot, just because you wrote yesterday, it doesn't mean you don't have to write again. It's to keep training your mind, you know, your physical body. All that stuff. And your life is like just going around, collecting power-ups to make you more efficient as a person.

And, you know, it might be a very kind of, you know, neurotic way of looking at it. But at the end of the day, life is just a lot of, “if this, then that” statements. So we're, we're in essence robots.

Jason: [00:10:57] When you're an agency partner with Wix, you wanna lock entire digital ecosystem for creating, managing, and growing your agency. Get the full coding and design freedom to create anything your clients need along with the tools to manage and collaborate with your team seamlessly from anywhere. And when it comes to growing your agency, you can get matched with new leads every day and earn revenue share for every website you guys create.

They’re backed by the Wix industry, leading security and site performance. You'll also have a dedicated account manager on standby 24/7. So you can reach your goals and start setting new ones. See for yourself, head over to wix.com/partners. And re-imagine what your agency can accomplish.

Yeah. I'd see a lot of people trying to over-complicate things, you know, like when I work with someone or when they come into the mastermind, they're trying to think so far ahead. And I'm like, you sometimes just got to go back to the basics. I grew up playing tennis and I played in college. I remember one time, and I tell this story I think a couple of times on the show, where I was getting crushed by this one kid that I was so much better.

And my coaches yelled at me go back to the basic stupid like I was trying to overthink this complicated thing of going. I was like, ah, just, hit the ball over the net and wound up beating them. And I think we do a lot of that in business. We just overcomplicate it. And if we just went back to the basics.

That's kind of why, you know, with technology and you see this all the time, it's a great responsibility and we have all this power. But you can really send people away. If you don't just kind of go back. And I think what Gary Vaynerchuk talks about, you know, the Jetsons going back to the Flintstones and then you can separate yourself from everybody else.

Eric: [00:12:54] Totally. Yeah. That's well said.

Jason: [00:12:56] What are some other levels in the book that you talk about?

Eric: [00:12:59] Yeah. So one of them is about thinking long-term. So I'm just looking at this Pokemon card. You just mentioned Gary V. So one of the guys that used to work for me is now on his brand team. He actually just told me this Pokemon card over here. So it's like, okay, I'm looking at this piece of cardboard. I paid, there's like $75,000 Charizard cards. I paid like two grand for this one.

Jason: [00:13:16] What? So wait, wait, wait. There's a $75,000 Pokemon card.

Eric: [00:13:21] Yeah. So I'll tell you how this all relates. Right? So you're in business. I mean, you can definitely, you know, take a look at trends. What's trending, but also thinking about the long term. So when I, when I buy this thing, if I think about the markets a little bit, if I think about what's going on in the world.  Where should I be putting my money?

Okay. I'm not trying to get a return on this immediately. I'm just going to store it. Right. You know, this thinking about art, think about collectibles, so A I'm looking at trends, but also I'm thinking long-term like, I'm totally okay with losing money on this. So. What type of long-term decisions can you make? Right?

So for example, you mentioned profit a little earlier. Can I defer profits for as long as possible so I can build enterprise value in my company, right? And this applies directly to agencies as well. Can I think long term where, you know, maybe I want to work with people. Can I build the right culture?

Cause a lot of agencies that you might talk to, maybe you don't wanna work with these people because they're too short term focused and there's a lot of ego and they just want to make money, right? That's not long-term thinking. So that applies directly into life, and in business in general, you want to work with long-term people and play long-term games with them.

Jason: [00:14:19] Love it. What else? So I'm still blown away by, uh, you know, I look back at all the baseball cards I collected over the years. I mean, I have, Hank Aaron, Mark McGwire, all these amazing ones. I don't think there was anything close to that.

Eric: [00:14:32] One just sold, that's the record, 5.2 million bucks baseball card. A couple, I think a couple of weeks ago.

Jason: [00:14:37] Babe Ruth?

Eric: [00:14:38] I don't think it was a Babe Ruth. I think there was a Mike Trout card that sold for like over a million.

Jason: [00:14:42] Who's Mike Trout

Eric: [00:14:44] You, you, Angels Slugger.

Jason: [00:14:47] Oh, I've been out of the baseball card games since '91.

Eric: [00:14:52] Yeah. Well, but let's see, like now it's like, okay. Maybe it makes sense to get that hooked. The Rock has a U of Miami card. It's worth 45 grand right now. When he, when he was playing in college, right.

Jason: [00:15:02] It's crazy. Well, I'm Florida State. I would burn it even though I do like The Rock. I still like you, Dwayne, but I would burn anything with Miami on it. Yeah. I was listening to something with Gary Vaynerchuk and he was talking about collecting business cards as baseball cards.

Of going, if you could get the original Steve Jobs business card or Jeff Bezos card, that would be interesting, right. And thinking about that. So we're totally off track. I just got so screwed up by the $75,000 Pokemon card, but that's my ADD, what are some other levels that you talk about in the book?

Eric: [00:15:41] Yeah. So, you know, one thing I want to touch upon is the concept of the wealth ladder. And this actually comes from the CEO of ConvertKit, Nathan Barry. And so, you know, when you start out in life, you go to school and then you try to build great habits, right? Whether it's playing sports or games or whatever, and then it's like, you go get a job.

And then the next level after that is maybe you start freelancing on the side, right? Maybe you kind of hold the job to kind of keep you safe a little bit. And then it starts going well, maybe you start the agency, right? Or you can start with dropshipping first. It's not the best e-commerce business model, but then it starts going while you start to hold inventory.

So you're constantly leveling up in your career. And the next thing is maybe have productized services for your agency who knows, right? Or maybe you do go on a pay-for-performance model. You can do that too. It scales really well. Right. Revenue per employee, is super high. Then it's like, Oh, you know what? I got out all this extra cash now.

Why don't I go build a network of X business, right? Or why don't I go build like a platform business? Or why don't I go build less space X? Or why don't I just become an investor. And not all of these are mutually exclusive, but you can see there's levels to everything. And so that's what we were talking about earlier about, that's the concept of the wealth ladder.

So I think those that are listening right now that maybe might be starting out, or maybe doing a couple million bucks a year, just understanding that there's levels to everything. And, you know, I think Jason, I can both attest to this stuff takes a lot of time. So that's another concept.

Jason: [00:16:54] When do you know you've reached the top of the level that you should be? Because I see sometimes people get to a certain level and then they go. Man, I liked it back in the day with like the typical situation with a lot of people, like they're an accidental agency owner. They got kind of thrown into this because they knew how to do something well. They were like a freelancer and then they were like, well, I don't want to do everything myself. So let me hire people.

They hire people. And then they realized that the business is making more money, but they're making less. And they're like, I just want to go back to where it was. And so some people go back to freelancing, which is perfectly fine, and it's just, you've reached that level of where you want to be, or you go find a different level or some people implement the right systems and then they can kind of break through and figure out what's the next step.

So how do you know when you're at the right level or. Should we move?

Eric: [00:17:51] Totally. Yeah. So I think there's two things. There's contentment. And then there's congruency. I think when you're waking up in the morning consistently, maybe three days in a row, and then you're realizing that Holy crap, this agency behemoth that I built, that's maybe doing 20 to 30 million bucks a year.

And maybe I'm not making as much as before. Maybe this is a pain in the butt and this is not congruent, but you still keep finding yourself doing it consistently. So there's no congruency there. Right. So asking yourself, okay, there's something off there. But then also asking yourself to like, am I content?

Forget about the future. Forget about the past. Like, am I happy right now? Am I content with what I have right now? Right. So we're getting philosophical here, but ultimately that's what matters right? In life. Like your operating system up here. If it's not content, then why are you doing what you're doing? So I think taking the time to reflect, I used to just work the entire time, seven days a week.

Now I block out my Fridays and those Fridays are typically just reserved for thinking. I might have conversations with a couple of friends or whatever, but. Block out that time, like, what should I start doing? Stop doing, keep doing what, what really pisses me off right now. And it's just constantly like, you know, kind of updating my operating system, my brain, you know, that's at least what so.

Jason: [00:18:56] Very cool. Let's talk about what are some key strategies that every agency owner needs to know about?

Eric: [00:19:03] You know, I, I think still, like we want to talk about mergers and acquisitions. I think unfair advantage agency owners have, you know, people are like, oh, SEO's dying, whatever, but like, okay, Google, YouTube, hello. Like, they're still one of the biggest companies in the world. As long as there’s search, there'll be SEO.

And, um, the fact that some of the smartest founders I know are really, really good at SEO because it's the compounding effect is so strong. So, let's say you don't really understand SEO right now. That's fine. Can you go use a tool like Ubersuggest or Ahrefs these SEO tools, go find a website in your niche that's ranking for all the keywords you want. Go buy it, right?

And then all of a sudden you have the advantage. You're going to collect all these leads and you can retarget all these people hitting your website. And you can buy these websites for, you know, I wouldn't say pennies on the dollar, maybe dimes on the dollar, but a lot of these websites are, are under-monetized, right?.

So I just think it's people going back to long-term thinking again, if you start with SEO, it forces you into long-term thinking because all the short-term stuff I tried in the beginning, it gets torn up, but the hit, the long-term stuff, it just keeps compounding and it forces you to think like an investor.

So how can you take the MMA mindset that maybe Jason's been talking about on this podcast or in his mastermind, and then using it from a marketing perspective? That's one thing.

Jason: [00:20:13] Yeah. You know, I, I love that you brought that up cause, uh, a mastermind member we've been talking about that quite a bit about buying certain assets that rank really well, and he's been crushing it, you know, on it.

So it's, uh, it's not necessarily just buying the whole company it's buying, you know, assets in order to fit into, you know, those things that you're missing out on, rather than just trying to build it up from scratch.

Eric: [00:20:44] Well, by the way, like, I think that's what you and I are. We're kind of nerding out on before. It's not now it's just buy versus bill and there's a book called “Buy Then Build”, right. And there's another one called “Buying a Small Business”. It's a lot more complicated than it seems. And not saying it's easy, but it's, um. Look, I think if I can do it at least I think anybody can do it. So.

Jason: [00:21:02] I agree with that. No, I'm just kidding.

Eric: [00:21:05] But the other thing too, by the way, I don't know if you've been hanging out, hanging out in the Clubhouse. I've been spending quite a bit of time there. So I I'm investing 20 hours of my time a week in it, but like I'm meeting like two or three amazing people every single day.

So I just think the organic reach on that is super strong. And, um, you know, obviously with these social channels, the bigger they get, the less organic reach there is. So.

Jason: [00:21:26] On Clubhouse, I have been, I like it. You know, my thing is I'm at this stage of my life right now, where I don't have 20 hours a week to invest, or I don't want to invest 20 hours a week in it.

And you don't have to invest that much, but like Eric's saying is you can get that much more back. So how are you utilizing it? Are you just utilizing it to build, you know, relationships? That's what I've been seeing on Clubhouse. What are some strategies around that?

Eric: [00:21:56] So, for those that haven't tried it, I mean, you know, audio-based social network. So for me, it's networking at scale. It's building relationships at scale right now. We're not able to kind of, you know, meet in person as of this recording, but that's what it is. And so you see a lot of these people, like let's use Grant Cardone or Ty Lopez love them or hate them, they're spending a lot, a lot, probably more time than I am on these apps.

Like there's one guy that I'm friends with, um, he was part of this rap group called Pretty Ricky. You know, he's on the app all the time, but it's some of these people, I were, I was just like acquaintances, what's in the past, but we've interacted quite a bit and we start interacting afterward.

So it's reinforcing or building new relationships. Like I never interacted with Grant Cardone before the app, uh, Ty Lopez, same thing. Now I do, right? And then a lot of other influential people. But what I'll say is this too, what kind of came full circle for me was when I was about 24, 25 years old, I reached out to this guy, Dave Capernaum, he runs this agency called Likeable.

And, um, yesterday he was in room. And he introduced himself and I just came. I tried to and I said, hey, like, you know, you actually got on the phone with me when I was 25 for 30 minutes. And you'd talked about this organization, entrepreneurs organization. And I, I owe that all to you because you brought it up and, you know, thank you for that, right?.

And then all of a sudden he's like, oh, by the way, like with your upcoming book, I have 700,000 followers on LinkedIn. Let's do a Live. Okay. And let's also get you an article on ink as well. But that just came from me, like talking about him for like 15 seconds. So it's a lot of serendipity and it's a lot of relationships at scale. You get what you put in.

Jason: [00:23:16] Totally agree. Yeah. I mean, I, uh, I love obviously the audio and I love that it's not recorded and you have to attend live. What I find working really well on Clubhouse is getting in a room with a bunch of people. I mean, if it's just two people talking, not good, might as well listen to a podcast.

I mean, if you can get a ton of people and they're just having a conversation, it's kind of like it amplifies it where it's like you're listening in to someone's dinner conversation around something you're really interested in whether it be growing an agency or whatever it is.

Eric: [00:23:51] Some these conversations like, you know, legit people would be paying 10 to 20, $30,000 for a mastermind to learn. And I hate using that word because it's become kind of this, not saying yours is, but it's dirty and in a lot of different ways, but, um, you know, it's.

So let's say, peer group. Right. But being able to listen to this advice and some of the stuff I listen to, I'm like, oh crap. You know, I'm going to try it. So I have gotten some really good stuff on it, by the way, like the peer group that I do with, you know, Neil, my podcast co-host, we had a live event.

And through Clubhouse, I learned about this thing called a shuttered venue type of grant coming out as part of the coronavirus relief. I didn't know about that. But some guy talked to about, he's like, yeah, you can get this. And like, yeah, we had a shut to our event last year. It's going to come back. But you know, that's what it is. So just little micro-moments like that.

Jason: [00:24:31] Very cool. Awesome. Where can people go and get the book?

Eric: [00:24:35] Yeah, you can go to levelingup.com or you can just go to your favorite online retailer. It's Leveling Up Eric Siu and you'll find it. And yeah, that's basically it.

Jason: [00:24:43] Awesome. Well, everyone go check out the book.

Uh, Eric's a really cool guy. And if you guys enjoyed this episode and you guys want to be surrounded by amazing agency owners on a consistent basis where. We have a ton of fun. We're able to see the shit that you're not able to see right in front of you. And a lot of times we'll talk about strategies that we don't talk about anywhere else. And it's pretty amazing.

So if you want to scale your agency faster, be surrounded by amazing people and have a lot of fun doing it. Make sure you guys go to digitalagencyelite.com and until next time have a Swenk day.