Peer Groups Will Make You Rich (With A Caveat)

In this episode #3018, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the value of surrounding yourself with the right peers and being intentional with networking to drive growth. They dive into continuous learning, crypto and credit rewards, and cultural views on obesity—ending with thoughts on health, genetics, and lifestyle habits. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) The Power of Peer Groups (02:07) Intentional Networking for Growth (04:07) The Importance of Learning Loops (06:40) Crypto and Credit Card Points (09:15) Cultural Perspectives on Obesity (12:54) Genetics vs. Lifestyle Choices (15:42) Conclusion and Reflections To suggest a topic, go to https://www.marketingschool.io. For more content from Eric and Neil, check out Eric’s Leveling Up with Eric Siu YouTube channel and Neil’s Neil Patel YouTube channel. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric's ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel, @ericosiu Instagram @neilpatel, @ericosiu Drop Us a Review If You Enjoyed the Episode!

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:35Speaker 00

  Dude, so I saw you last week randomly at a coffee shop. And basically, I had met with like a, someone who was in a YPO group that I'm in, right? Like a YPO forum. And she runs like a, like a fruit company, right? And so I was just thinking about this a little bit, and you know how I like to talk about peer groups quite a bit, right? And so my whole statement here is peer groups will make you rich, but there's a caveat here, right? And you know, whether it's, I'm in a lot of these different groups, right? And you, and I think this ties in well with you too, because you're very specific about what you're looking for. So peer groups work for you, but you have to understand what it is that you're looking to get out of the group, right?

• 1:14Speaker 00

  So for you, you want people at your level, ideally at the very least at your level or levels above you, right? Because you're looking to grow. And I think if you join these groups without having a specific objective or goal, you're, it's just gonna be like, you're just kind of walking around and there's no purpose to it, right? So you have to be very intentional. Like, we have a mutual friend, he's in a group, the group is all investors. And one of the people in that group, he's like a chairman of one of the largest automotive companies in the world, right? And I think if you're not intentional about these things, and so sure, you might listen to someone like me and say, oh yeah, peer groups will make you rich, because I certainly listened to that when I was starting out. But if you're not intentional, and if you set a goal and you're not getting that from a group and you don't quit, that's on you at the end of the day, right?

• 1:57Speaker 00

  And so there's different groups that I'm in right now. Most of them, like every time we're talking about business, how we're gonna grow. I'm in a SaaS group, I'm in the group with, with, you know, Sayed, right? And I'm in these other groups, but one of the groups, there's not a lot of structure. And when we go on these retreats, like it would be mostly like partying, right? And so I'm at the age where like I got that out of my system and like, don't get me wrong, I'll enjoy a party every now and then. But that's not necessarily for me, right? So, but like it took me a year of kind of sitting through it to realize that, hey, maybe if there's no objectives established with this group, that maybe it's time for me to go, right? And you, to your credit, decided very quickly what peer group makes sense for you. And I think eventually you'll get into that group.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  You're not that age where you can be accepted to that group yet.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a peer group Eric's talking about. I wanted to get into YPO Gold.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  And-

• 2:48Speaker 00

  But Gold is for 50 plus people.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yes, and I relate more to the businesses in YPO Gold and the owners. And we're more in a similar place in life, at least from an entrepreneur's standpoint. But because of my age, I was not accepted. And I tried so hard. And then I was a little irritated because they told me I'm good to go. I renewed my membership for Gold or what, I mean, Global One or whatever it's called. And then they told me after I paid like the six grand or four grand or whatever it costs.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry, you're not old enough. And I'm like, we spent three months having this conversation and you guys said it was okay. So like-

• 3:24Speaker 00

  I still think you can get in. I still think you can.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  I need to network with more members in there.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  But I would love to because the businesses are-

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. Dude, the easy way is just talking to my friend and just getting a couple more of those meetings. I mean, you know, our mutual friend is married to one of the Gold members in that chapter.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Oh, that's right.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  The Helicopter.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I know who you're talking about. They raise over a billion dollars.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  For a business.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  That would be a good meeting for you regardless.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'd be a good meeting either way.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  They live nearby.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they live nearby.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  You looked at that home.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good home.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  It's too high up. You gotta drive up the hill and down. It's a beautiful home. Great view.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  Dude, you want to know what Google's CEO said here? So there's two things. I have one around how product is no longer a moat. But if you were to think about Eric Schmidt, ex-Google CEO, on the only business moat that's available today, what do you think it is?

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Your brand.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  This is interesting. So I thought he would say distribution or brand. He didn't, because you and I would say that, right? And naturally, we're marketers. We would say that. He said learning loops. The ability for you to pick something up very quickly. And if you have a team that moves very quickly, like a startup, you're gonna- Learn a lot faster because things are changing so quickly with all these new innovations. So his argument right now, the only business mode is learning loops. It's how fast you can move. So I don't know if I completely agree. I think I'm more biased towards distribution, but I can see the angle for that.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I can see the angle. I think you need people who can adapt and learn super fast. If you don't, it crushes your business. If you do, you can do much better, but still you need a brand. And it's really hard to build a brand like Air Jordan. You know, like you look at what Michael Jordan's done with shoes and Nike. That product's really popular. Most people who I see with Nike, Nike's struggling right now as an organization. People still buy the Air Jordan shoes. Very strong brand. I think Nike has a strong brand too, but they're getting their butts kicked by Viori and Lululemon or ALO. I don't know which one of those brands, but a handful of them. And why? Because they've innovated more on athleisure wear than Nike has, which Nike should have done because that's their category.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  By the way, do you buy, do you still buy Nikes? I don't buy Nikes anymore.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Dude, the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Zegna, I believe they're called Second Skin.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Do you buy that from the mall?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  You can get it from mall. I just go to Zegna.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  It's the Z E G N A, right?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm probably saying the name wrong, but it's on Rodeo Drive.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I didn't even know how to pronounce it. But did you see that Hal's dropped the report? So the attribution software, so they dropped the report. They did 640 incrementally incrementality tests over 18 months, $14 million in spend analyzed. So their findings here is that Meta's advantage plus shopping campaigns is wrong. So they're saying that advantage shopping campaigns. So these are the AI driven campaigns on Meta. They win early, 9% better at midpoint, but manual campaigns destroy them long term, right? So manual campaigns deliver $12 more revenue per $100 spent by the end, right? So basically as of right now, it's saying that based on the test that they've ran, manual wins over the long term. But even though Meta tries to push advantage plus, it's not the case.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  So this is actually an example of right now, at least AI losing in a situation like this.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  We've seen AI lose quite a bit because AI also hallucinates. I was talking to a friend that is in a research company. And they do a lot of marketing research, specifically just marketing research for organizations. When I say AI hallucinates, they use Claude, Perplexity, ChatGPT. They pretty much use all the main solutions out there. I forgot which one it was. They're using it to help them do research for a specific category related to marketing. And straight up, the AI made up data. And then when I asked him about it, it hallucinated and would not admit that it actually made it up.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  It wouldn't want to admit that it was just wrong. And I was like, oh, that sucks.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, makes sense. But by the way, because we're kind of talking about brand and partnerships here. Did you know that you can transfer your, you can transfer your, you can transform, sorry. You can transform your credit card points into crypto now?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Really?

• 7:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So Chase has done a partnership with Coinbase. So now you can take your Chase points and then just move it over and transfer it over into crypto.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  I wish Amex had, like, bless you.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  Bless you. Wow.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  I have like millions of Amex points.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  Oh, too bad you can't transfer it over to Chase. But I think eventually this will become more of a common thing. And then why would I not just move it over to crypto?

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, we liked, I don't care for the points, but my wife likes using it for like GIFs.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Oh, that's a bad use of points.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  It is, but it makes her happy. We don't really use it for travel because the problem with using points for travel is like they restrict when you transfer to airline, which is the best, one of the better uses of points. A lot of times, the main routes that I had to fly for speaking or meetings. It's just not as convenient because they want me to take connections or versus a direct flight. Or they'll give me different days and times that will make me miss the meeting. And then also when I travel over to work, it's hugely expensive. No, my assistant books it.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. The thing is, you need someone that's a points expert. So I had a points expert I talked to. So he's just, he's just doing it all for me. It's like you have all these points. Okay, I'll just do it all for you, blah, blah, blah. And you pay him like $200. So, yeah. But he's a good, he's an expert with points. Yeah, there's a lot of these people out there like this. But here's what it says. The JP Morgan and Coinbase deal is wild, especially the credit card point redemption. So I'll start with the credit card points here. So transfers Chase ultimate reward points. You get a one to one redemption ratio, meaning that 100 points equals $1 redemption value. Right? So if I can move that into Solana, Ethereum, whatever, great. You have a direct bank to wallet connection through JP Morgan Secure API. Chase customers will be able to seamlessly link their bank accounts to Coinbase wallets. Meaning that people are going to gamble more. Beginning this fall, the ability to use Chase credit cards on Coinbase.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Eric's not saying cryptos gambling or not, though.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Some people like will look at it as a casino. I look at BTC and ETH as long-term investments. But beginning this fall, you can take your Chase credit cards on Coinbase for the first time. Customers, I was gonna say bless you, but that was a cough. Customers will have the ability to fund their Coinbase accounts using Chase credit cards. So we'll see what happens here. But I am glad to see how a lot of this, by the way, you look at this administration, it's like, okay, very crypto forward. All of a sudden, Triple H is this fitness guy, right? This administration is very good at marketing. Like, I have to hand it to them. Like, I haven't seen this much fanfare, I don't think, ever.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  What is Triple H doing in the White House?

• 9:53Speaker 00

  He's the, he's the lead fitness guy now.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  I thought it was the Kennedy guy.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  RFK?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  No, no, but he's, there's, he, Trump created a new title for, for Triple H.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Did Triple H take steroids?

• 10:07Speaker 00

  For sure he took steroids.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Triple H.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  For sure he took steroids, for sure. Like, they, like, I, there's no way he didn't, like.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I'm googling it right now, let's see. Triple H steroids, allegations.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  No, you gotta watch the Vince McMahon documentary on Netflix. It basically said everyone took it back in the day and then, but Vince never told people to take it. But everyone was taking it back.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  So Triple H probably took it.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  For sure. Like, that's, that's at least what I think, right? But.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  You know I've tried steroids, right?

• 10:36Speaker 00

  You have?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  No, I'm joking. Actually, that's false. The only time, I think actually most humans have, if you look at me dude, I weigh 129 pounds and my arms are skinny.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Maybe you might have taken it before, I don't know.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  No, and if someone's taken it, I'm not judging or anything like that.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  I actually got steroids injected into me recently. I had swelling in my head.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Well, that's right.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  And I couldn't sleep and it was going on for months and my head would just hurt. I would have, I had a big lump on my head. And they, I didn't know that you can use steroids for this because I always thought steroids make you like jacked. I didn't realize there's different kinds of steroids, but they put steroids in my head like they injected it to get the swelling down.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Did it come down?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  It took a few times, but over a month I was able to sleep again and no more headaches.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  How many injections?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Uh, two injections.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  Oh, that's not bad.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  They had to space it out.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Okay, dude, check this, dude, I'm so motivated because I used to watch, like I get so excited about it. Look, the President's Council on Physical Fitness is a vehicle to get young people active and healthy. How can you not like that?

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  And, and like, it's triple H. Like, he's the chief content officer of WWE. I used to watch WWE growing up all the time and I think you did too.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I used to watch The Rock. I think The Rock also takes steroids.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  For sure they all did. Yeah. Did The Rock's body now? He, he probably takes it now too.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  You think so?

• 11:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine, dude, what is the obesity rate in America? Like 50%? Something like that?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good marketing.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  How are we not trying to help people?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  People don't want them to walk and exercise and stuff like that.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  People want the upside. They don't want the volatility. Yeah. Everything.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Just like dude, when I was flying from Colombia to the US, a lady was complaining on how they need to make seats bigger. And I'm not judging here because some people have weight issues due to medical reasons that they can't control. And her kid, straight up like a 13, 14 year old fit, said to the mother, Mom, we need to control your diet and you need to work out more. Instead of like just sitting and watching TV or being lazy. I couldn't hear everything, right? And it's just like, I'm not saying that's the reason she's obese or not. That was just a conversation between her and her kid.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  And I was just walking by him while we were boarding the plane. It was more so that I agree, people just need to be more fit or try to be more fit and we need to encourage Americans to exercise.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm just going to say this. I mean, there's a tweet recently about what's something that's controversial. You believe that people would have all these knives pointing at you, right? And I basically responded it and I said, this is just my belief, guys. This has nothing to do with Neil. I do believe that for the most part, majority of cases, if you are obese, it is self inflicted. And I do think like the fact that the White House, the administration is trying to push this forward, it's going to help people, right? I do think it's going to help them cultivate the right habits to eat right, to move and things like that. And I think this can be fixed, right? It's okay to admit that it's some, you know, you probably have bad habits, right? It's okay, right? Bad habits can be turned around.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Have you seen that Instagram video of a mother encouraging her son who is overweight? And he's overweight, she's making breakfast and she's just like, yeah, do you want syrup on it? Do you want this? Do you want that? You sure you want butter? And she's, you want whipped cream? Like she's adding more and more stuff. And this person's overweight by probably like 150, 200 pounds.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  And this is like, to me, I look at that as, I understand there could be medical reasons why someone could be overweight. But that is just bad parenting. And the US should just use that in a marketing video. I know they probably can't legally and just be like, don't do this.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  I'll tell you what, okay, let's just do this for fun and we can move on to the next topic. So in Japan, what do you think the obesity rate is?

• 15:06Speaker 00

  4.4% for men, 2.3% for women, okay? Now, what do you think the global average obesity rate is?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  15, 20%?

• 15:14Speaker 00

  13%, you're pretty close. Now, in the United States, the obesity rate is around 40% and it's going up.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  40%?

• 15:19Speaker 00

  40%, yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  So you look at this, it's like, it's 10 times more on men. And so, don't tell me this is not self-inflicted. And like, it's here, right? And by the way, why does this happen? It's all culturally and this is not like a health podcast, guys. By the way, I just want to talk about this for a second. But my mom, growing up, anytime I started to gain weight, getting too fat. You're getting too fat. You're getting too fat. Hey, it looks like you need to go to Jenny Cracker's. I'm not saying that's a good way to parent, but that's how I grew up. And it's, that's how Asian cultures grow up. But by the way, so going back to it real quick, The Rock. He did admit to taking steroids briefly in his late teens, but denies any ongoing use. And I think, by the way, like if you, if you take it right now, you probably should deny any ongoing use. So.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  And I'm a huge Rock fan, by the way, but we should go back to Mark.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  I'm a huge, yeah. But really quickly, before we go back to marketing, the reason I somewhat understand the weight, I'm not talking about the obesity. My family, we experienced the opposite. So when I was growing up, my mom would say, oh, you're eating ice cream? No problem. You want to eat cereal for dinner and Lucky Charms and all this stuff, which I'm not saying is healthy. But me and my sister were in the 1% category on weight.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  What does that mean?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  We were like the skinniest.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  So, and even when my sister had kids, her kids were in the 1 percentile. And wait, you don't want to be in the 1 percentile, it means you're too skinny. So my sister would like sit there and feed her kids to try to get them to eat. And literally each meal, like an hour.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  She'd be like, you want in an hour french fries? All right, they would eat like four french fries.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  Lots of calories.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like, I'm done.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  But genetically, we have the opposite issue in which we tend not to eat a lot. I don't know what it is.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, you never eat, yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's my, it's the whole family. And it's not like we try not to eat or anything, it's just never really hungry.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Look, and by the way, so I think there's edge cases, right? I think for genetically for you, it's like you're not going to gain much weight. And genetically for some people, they're just going to have to be overweight, right? But I am talking about the majority of people. And if, if America's 40% and Japan's like 3%, come on. Anyway, that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.