#433 Eric Siu on Hacking Revenue on the Internet

Eric Siu is the CEO of digital marketing agency Single Grain. Single Grain has worked with companies such as Amazon, Uber and Salesforce to help them acquire more customers. He is also the author of a new book called Leveling Up: How To Master The Game Of Life. In this conversation, we discuss marketing, SEO optimization, relationship banks, how to become IG famous, turning distractions into productive skills, book funnels, and launchpad businesses. ======================= OKCoin.com is the leading crypto exchange for both beginners and experienced users. You can fund your account in under 2 minutes, and get access to the most advanced trading engine, all while paying the lowest trading fees in the industry (0.1%). Visit www.okcoin.com/pomp and open your account today. ======================= Smart investors know being early is critical to success in crypto. CoinList is where early adopters invest in, earn, and trade the best new crypto assets before they list on other exchanges. Try CoinList Pro and be first to trade on network launch. Sign up via coinlist.co/pomp and earn $10 in BTC after you trade $100. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 80,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Eric Su is the CEO of digital marketing agency Single Grain. Single Grain has worked with companies such as Amazon, Uber, and Salesforce to help them acquire more customers. He is also the author of a new book called "Leveling Up: How to Master the Game of Life." In this conversation, we discuss marketing, SEO optimization, relationship banks, how to become IG famous, turning distractions into productive skills, book funnels, and Launchpad businesses. I really enjoyed this conversation with Eric, and I hope you do

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:05Anthony Pompliano?

  today with coinlist.co/pomp. Again, coinlist.co/pomp, and you can earn $10 in Bitcoin after you trade 100. So on Coinlist, you'll never be late to the party. Head on over to coinlist.co/pomp. Coinlist.co/pomp. Last up, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 80,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. I break down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get in this episode with

• 3:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Eric. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:23Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Eric here. Thank you so much for doing this, sir.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

• 4:30Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. We're going to try to make this one of the most action-packed, actionable, and information-filled episodes that we've done. Eric is a wealth of knowledge. So let's get into it. Maybe let's just start with your background and kind of what you've done up until today.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So I'll try to keep it brief. So name is Eric Su, and I mainly kind of hover in the marketing world. So I got a podcast called Marketing School, another one called Leveling Up. And then there have a couple of businesses. One's an ad agency, and then one is a software company called Click Flow. I have operators running those businesses. And then other than that, I just, you know, I've got a book coming out called Leveling Up. I just try to try to play the game of life. And honestly, like, you know, it used to come from esports background. I was just like, man, like, I actually need to find something where I feel like I'm playing a game every day. Honestly, it's just like, it's just business and like creating stuff. So, um, yeah, that's my background.

• 5:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. That's a great way to live life. As I was thinking through, what could we possibly talk about? Because there is so much stuff. I ultimately settled on you shared a million ideas publicly, and I figured I would just throw them out there at you, and we can kind of riff on them. The first one I want to go through is SEO. You have created probably more content than almost anyone I know on this topic. And you have a recent tweet thread that says, "Over 1 million blog posts are published daily. Google is shrinking organic results. SEO is harder, but that's fine, because you're strong. Here are a few creative things you can do to drive your organic traffic up." And the first kind of suggestion is to buy other websites. Talk through why that's such a good idea.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so maybe I'll rewind real quick, just to just give paint the some context for people around SEO. So I think, you know, a lot of people right now, especially in tech, you know, they do demand generation, all that. And it's like demand generation is just running Facebook ads or Google ads. And like, there's actually a lot more than that when it comes to marketing. And so I think SEO is one of the most unfair advantages you can establish. Because what happens is if you have a lot of traffic coming to your website, let's say 100,000 or so, you can retarget those people later. You follow them around with those ads. You can, you can do a lot more, right? And then you can plug in, you know, other stuff like customer data platforms, email, like all these tools, you know, that you have access to. And you don't have to keep, you know, paying these big app platforms. And, you know, you're kind of at

• 6:43Speaker 02

  their, their, their whim, right? If they decide to ban you, they ban you. So. Anyway, SEO, you know, the two most important things still to this day are content and links, right? You still have to have a lot of great content, a lot of links. And some people that, you know, they make so much money. Some of my buddies, they make so much money, they don't know what to do. They don't want to pay taxes on it. So they just deploy the money back into content and links and they just make even more money, right? That's the game of SEO. You just keep compounding. It's just like investing in stocks. It's just like putting money into crypto. It's the same deal. So when I talk about buying websites, the problem with SEO is that it takes too long. People aren't patient, right? It's like 18 to 24 month, probably 36 month journey to start to see some good stuff happen.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  When I took over my company, Single Rain, the ad agency, we were doing maybe 4,000 visits a month, which was nothing. Now, you know, we're up to 320,000, which is pretty decent for a marketing website. But we took those tactics and I started another blog with a friend. We went from zero to 4 million visits a month, right? And so it's the same stuff. And so, but instead of waiting 0 to 36 months or so, or 36 months, we'll just call it that. Go and look at other websites that have a good, in SEO, it's called a domain authority. So you know, you're scored on a scale of 1 to 100, 0 to 100. You want to buy a site with, you know, maybe 80 plus domain authority. And ideally, you might, you could check out some of these brokerage websites like flippa.com or Fe International.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  There's a lot of these brokerage websites and you can say, you know what? I don't want to wait. I'm just going to go buy a website. And, you know, when I buy the website, I'm just going to go, you know, create a bunch of new content. It's going to rank and then I'm going to be making a boatload more money. And I can use this website as an acquisition system that will pay me in perpetuity and get me more leads. Instead of saying, I'm just going to go to LinkedIn, Facebook or Google and try to buy more leads.

• 8:35Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you see people monetizing with, right? So they go and they buy a website. They've already got great domain authority. Is this, they're monetizing through ads on the website? They're selling products, a mixture? How do you see that working?

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're looking to arbitrage here, right? Because you're looking for websites that have good traffic that are not monetizing the right way, in my opinion. Like, if you have a lot of traffic and you're just monetizing off of ads, you're probably not thinking it through, and you're probably just bored of the website. So what I would do is I would reach out to these people and ask if they're interested in partnering up, right? So you might hit them up on LinkedIn, you might go find their email addresses, you'll find their contact information, and then just hit up a bunch of them and say, "A certain person is going to respond to you." And then, instead of saying, "I'm going to invest in your company," people get kind of like, they don't really want to talk to you if you say that, "But I'm going to invest," different story, or, sorry, "I want to partner with you," different story, and then that's how you get the conversation going.

• 9:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Another suggestion in this thread was to monitor your decaying content and then update it. Explain that.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what tends to happen over time is if you don't tend to your garden, right? Things start to get unruly, right? You know, the kale starts to go everywhere, the carrots, and I don't have a garden, I'm just making things up. But, you know, the point is, content tends to decay over time if you're not upgrading it. So one example of this is Wikipedia. So Wikipedia, they had this page on Abraham Lincoln. Over the years, like, it first started out with 5,000 words, then it was 8,000 words. And now it's like, you know, 15,000 or 20,000 words or so. Point is, people are constantly updating the content over time, and Google likes freshness, right? You know, we just use Google as the main search engine. But also, like, if you take a look at Yelp, or you take a look at TripAdvisor,

• 10:18Speaker 02

  you have a lot of UGC, user-generated content, and they're constantly, you know, updating it for the website. That's how they get stronger and stronger. It just kind of defends their kind of organic search moat. So what you could do is you can use whatever analytics tool platform you have, and just look at your top posts over time and see if they're losing traffic, right? We actually have a tool that's out there for free. If you just Google "Clickflow content decay," it's totally free, and it'll actually monitor, like, when you're losing, like, you know, 20%, 80% of your traffic. The whole idea here is that if you have, like, a top 10 or top 20 list of posts, because 80/20 rule, the top 20 would drive the 80%.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Percent of traffic, you don't want to lose that traffic. So what you're doing ideally is maybe you're adding, you know, maybe a paragraph or even more content to these, you know, every couple of months and you're tending to your garden. People just like create content. The problem right now with SEO is like created, you know, million plus blog posts a day and we're just going to leave it, right? It's like you don't buy a car and then, you know, you're driving for two weeks and you're done, right? It's just like you want to make the most of it.

• 11:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. The next suggestion is to test titles, tags, meta descriptions to drive a higher click through.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Yep. So, you know, when you think about those of you that run ads or like you're testing email subject lines, you're, when you're running ads, right? You're testing like on Google, for example, your, your A B testing titles and a description. Or if you're testing, you know, email subject lines, you want to see which one gets a higher open rate, right? So same deal when it comes to, to SEO, what you want to think about is, you know, if I have a title, you know, marketing blog versus like best marketing blog, you know, updated for 2020 and beyond or whatever. The second one is probably going to get a higher click through rate. And so what you want to be doing is, you know, you can use a tool like Google Search Console, which is completely free. And then you look at your content that has a, this is getting a little into the weeds, but hot, you know,

• 12:11Speaker 02

  it has a high impression count, but a low click the rate. So, you know, Google's showing your post a lot, but you as a marketer, whoever you are, the site owner, you're not doing a good job from a marketing perspective because marketing's job is to bring people to the point of sale, to get people to click, right? So it's the same deal. Like if you're doing title testing for ads or emails, like why aren't you doing it for SU if you're getting good traffic? And so same deal with click flow, we created a solution to make it easier. I'm not here to pump that. I mean, just, you know, Google Search Console, you can do it completely for free. So.

• 12:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. What about using frequently asked questions, that schema as a way to a better rank?

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's actually, so what's happening right now with Google is, you know, they're, they have to please their shareholders, right? So they actually removed that whole, you know, don't be evil thing. So they're making, you know, they're making the ads look like search results and, you know, they're making on certain search engine result pages, like, it's hard to see the organic results period. There's like all these snippets and stuff. So what you want to be doing when it comes to FAQ schema, so FAQ schema is like, you know, if I type in, you know, Anthony Pompliano, or, you know, I don't know, wardrobe or something like that, right? So people might have an FAQ, like, you know, what, what does, you know, what does Pom put in his hair or whatever, right? There's like a bunch of other questions.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  So that pops up as a box. And that box, imagine if you're seeing a box on a search engine result page, you're higher, you're, you're, you're going to be more likely to click that because it's taking up so much real estate. So if you want to implement FAQ schema, talk to your web developer, I would just type in FAQ schema plugin for whatever, you know, CMS or content management system that you're using. And then boom, you have FAQ schema for your website. You're going to get a higher click through rate, hopefully. And there's a lot of different ways to do it, but I would just hand it off to, you know, whoever your, your developer, your engineer is. And then if you have a WordPress site, there's a lot of WordPress plugins for it.

• 14:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. So switching gears, you had this tweet about, don't ask people for coffee or to pick their brain until you've deposited in the relationship bank. And I found that concept of a relationship bank really interesting. Explain that.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think, I mean, and I've done this in the past. I mean, I'm sure, you know, you have a lot of people that reach out to you, asking you to just get coffee or talk to you for five to 10 minutes. And, you know, I actually put this on LinkedIn to like, I kind of exaggerated, I was like, it's downright offensive, right? Because you want to, you know, stir people up a little bit. But I found what's worked best for me, because like, instead of asking people, you know, I'm going to pay $5 for like, your most valuable asset, your time, that it's not an equal trade off, right? But if I am looking at your tweets, for example, looking at what you're interested in, and I offer to help you, maybe I make, you're like, oh, I'm looking to hire some engineers or whatever. It's like, hey, here are three engineers that I know I have. happen to have a recruiting agency boom I've actually helped you I've looked at your stuff

• 15:00Speaker 02

  that's a little bit that's that's saying something and I've actually gone out and done the work I'm not making you think about anything and I'm just gonna you know the concept of I'm gonna make little deposits every day maybe I want to get on your radar whatever it is exactly um and then at some point I'm gonna make a withdrawal right I'm not gonna make a big withdrawal but my whole thing is like I I just like you know making more deposits more than anything so I have a margin of safety so when I make an ask it's like not that big of a thing um and I'll give you some examples I mean the there's two people I'm thinking of right now one guy actually works for VaynerMedia now when he wanted to work for me he wrote an eight thousand word blog post right guy went to Michigan and he was like yeah here's what I would do here's what I'll do here's what I do and I'll tell you what I'll do it for you for free for a month right and I'm just like dude this guy gets me

• 15:44Speaker 02

  and you know guy turns out to be an all-star and then he's working for for VaynerMedia now um and another guy he um he's like hey look I I follow your podcast I'm gonna I'll write some emails for you to help you get more conversions and I'll do it for you completely for free for a month like not only are you not only have you looked at my stuff you've volun you you put together a strategy and then you said you'll do the work and then you said you'll do it for free for a month and you have no ask like that's the dream so that's way better than like asking for coffee especially if you're like trying to ask Warren Buffett for his time right which you probably won't get so

• 16:18Anthony Pompliano?

  absolutely another idea is this idea of you don't actually have to talk to the end customer in order to get the customer insights in every situation sometimes you do have to talk to him but other times you don't what are some of the hacks there

• 16:30Speaker 02

  yeah so I did um this is I I did two podcast episodes one was with um the Levels CEO um Sam Korkos and what was fascinating to me was when I opted into so it's like a patch you use to kind of monitor your metabolic state but um he he was like hey let's get on a forty five minute call I was like oh damn this guy's doing customer development and when I when I got on the call with him I was like hey tell me like how many calls have you done he's like over a thousand I was like holy crap right I was like I would I don't think I could ever do that that's that's a lot of patience right and that's like you know that's Great. But anyway, I can't do it. So I talked to the CEO of Superhuman, Raul. And he was like, look, man, like, I met up with like, maybe thirty people, forty people or so in San Francisco. We had coffee, whatever. And then there's the coffee thing. And then, um,

• 17:15Speaker 02

  I guess it's equal trade. But then he was like, you know what? Um, I just made a simple landing page, um, using like Wix. And then, you know, whoever wanted to sign up for the tool could sign up. But then, right after they signed up, they would ask them, um, hey, like, you know, what's your, what's the worst, like, your biggest frustration with email? Like, what would you like to see, right? And then he'll get a ton of responses and he'll just cherry pick the ones he likes. And so he was basically doing customer development at scale because he was getting automated responses. He was cherry picking, but he was just responding really quick to people. And that helped guide his customer development. So there's two ways to do it. You can do it the, I, I, I love what Sam Korko did with levels. And then I would actually prefer Raul's because I'm lazy. So.

• 17:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Well, and this feeds into the next idea, which is basically a kind of like creating the ideal client profile, right? So whether it's more of like a retail consumer, uh, or it's a agency based client. It feels like knowing who you want to work with is almost as important as knowing who you don't want to work with.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's actually a lot of good, um, ideal client profile templates out there. But I mean, so for our SaaS, uh, company, as an example, we might have people that are, um, you know, you have people that are mid-market companies, you have enterprise, and then we try to stay away from small business. But, you know, maybe for mid-market, they're doing maybe ten million annual recurring revenue. Enterprise, you know, probably, let's just say, you know, hundreds of millions or billions plus. And then they have very specific things they're looking for. Maybe enterprise levels, you know, maybe they're looking for business intelligence more so than like, you know, different features for, for the, the mid-market, right? So I'm just saying that you really have to understand kind of who you're going after. And I actually, here's the thing, I literally just got off a podcast with, uh, Justin Khan from Twitch. And I asked him about his failures. And here's what he said.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  So Twitch sold to Amazon for a billion dollars. Um, great exit. So he was like, you know, the, the common thing with all my, my failures was that, um, I didn't do enough, um, I didn't do enough customer development. I didn't try to focus on one segment. I tried to do maybe two, three, like, that's too many segments, right? And that led to, you know, trying to go all over the place and serve everyone. So if you're starting out, focus on one. And then if you're gonna, um, you know, At a certain point, you know, you're doing this for six to 12 months, you understand who your ideal client profile is. I think what we did as an agency a couple of years ago was helpful because we looked at, you know, the lifetime value of each customer. And then we just saw that like, oh, it turns out that we serve SaaS companies the best. They stay the

• 19:44Speaker 02

  longest and they pay the most and they're like not a pain in the ass. So we decided to focus on being a SaaS marketing agency versus everything else, which is kind of all over the place on the map.

• 19:54Anthony Pompliano?

  It also creates this level of like, I want to be in the exclusive club. I want to be accepted into your customer base, right? Which is like a weird dynamic, but it definitely creates this FOMO feeling a little bit.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, I mean, you got the power. I mean, it's, I think you're creating the right incentives because it's like people want people that specialize. You don't want to go to, you want to go to like an orthopedic surgeon for like, you know, very specific things or like, like an eye doctor, right? You don't want to go to like a general doctor. So.

• 20:20Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. You mentioned a couple of really great entrepreneurs and one of the things that almost every entrepreneur has that is successful is an advisory board. I've seen you talk quite a bit about the importance of a really strong, successful advisory board. How do you think about that?

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think earlier in my career, like I would read a lot of books and then people will be talking about, you know, peer groups and advisory boards. So one thing I did, I'm trying to make this practical for everyone. If you Google mastermind talks, dinner PDF, you'll be able to find a PDF. And what I did was I gathered like-minded marketers because I didn't have a business at the time. And, you know, I would have them come over to my place, I'd buy dinner and then, you know, we put people in the hot seat. I put together like an agenda and everything. So people will talk about the latest marketing tactics and strategies, hot seat, one thing they're struggling with, and we all kind of just help each other, right? You have a little mini community there. And then as you level up through your career, then, you know, as you get stronger, then I would say, you know,

• 21:17Speaker 02

  there's a lot of different peer groups, right? There's entrepreneurs organization, there's YPO and part of both. I love both of those. And you get, you get to basically have like A mini board of directors, right? So I remember when I first joined EO, Entrepreneurs Organization. I was, you know, 27 at the time. Everyone else was like 35 plus and they had a way more experience than I did. And what you realize is that you don't know what you don't know, right? And so this group, what they do is they'll like, one guy shared like his cash flow forecast with me like 10 weeks. I was like, what, what is, what is that, right? And then, um, you know, they're just, what happens is I'll share a struggle and then everyone else will share an experience. They won't give direct advice and that to me is a little advisory board there because I'm kind of, I'll know what to do next

• 22:02Speaker 02

  based on what I think I should do. I'm not taking any advice. So that's one example of advisory boards. And obviously I think, you know, when it comes to, um, you know, I, right now I'm on a couple of advisory boards for like some, some, um, some companies out there. And, you know, in some cases they're just asking me for advice, maybe once a month, like we'll get on a call for like an hour. Um, in other cases I might be a little more involved. But that's another example. You might, you know, give a person maybe like, you know, half a percent, 1%, 2% equity. And, um, you know, you're on their advisory board or you, you have them join yours.

• 22:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Now, the reason why everyone is obviously listening to this is the next question, which is how to become famous on Instagram. Everyone wants to be famous on Instagram. Uh, I saw that you guys did a podcast episode on this that was, uh, really, really interesting based on kind of all the different hacks and, and tips. Uh, maybe walk us through kind of how you guys think about that strategy.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is, um, you know, we have a podcast called Marketing School and Do It with another marketer named Neil Patel. Um, to be fair, um, my Instagram isn't super huge. It's like 24K. He's at like a 200K or so. So neither of us are Instagram famous, but we know a lot of people that are and we know what they do. So, you know, the, the one thing that we found to work really well is just siphoning off of someone else's audience. Um, so it's like, if, if I am, let's say I'm at 24K, what I would do is I might reach out to someone that's at 50K or 75 or 100K. I don't want to go too big because it's too far up, right? I like ideally what, what you might want to do is, you know, if you're at 24K, but you have some other assets that you think might be able to help that person. Again, you want to make it an equal.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Cool trade. So I might say, hey, look, I have 24K here, but I might have a podcast over here. That's the angle. And then, um, you know, let's go ahead and do a live on Instagram. And boom, all the people coming that's seen the live, now they know, they now know you by association. And you get bigger faster. Um, giveaways always work well. I think there, you're going to get a lot of spam and a lot of kind of, um, people that are just there to be tire kickers though. Um, but you, you can use a tool like King Sumo giveaways for that. Um, but we haven't been super big on trying to grow our IG fast, just because it's not, you know, both of us, we serve kind of B2B audiences. So, you know, we'll let it grow organically and then see where it goes. But, you know, if you do have other assets, um, like an email list, that is like an unfair advantage.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  So, you know, leverage that when you can, especially for growing a podcast, by the way, if you have an email list, do it unbeatable.

• 24:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And one of the things you do in emails, obviously, is you write copy. Um, I've seen you talk about maybe more landing page copy, but it applies to emails as well. Most people write copy trying to be interesting or trying to kind of catch people's attention. Uh, kind of clickbait, right? Is the, uh, is the terminology. Uh, you're much more focused on writing copy that, uh, highlights, you can solve somebody's prop.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:48Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the nuance or what's the difference?

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think for me, I just realized that, um, you know, whenever I try to sound interesting, I end up sounding like an idiot. Uh, so, so what I try to do instead is I just try to be helpful. Like that's the only thing that's been, um, that's the one thing that's been super helpful to me throughout the years. It's just, um, you know, if someone needs something, I'll be out there like, if I find an interesting insight, I'm going to try to share it with people. Um, and like, I'll always ask people like, you know, what do you need exactly? What's the number one thing, right? And I've, I've natural, like, that wasn't natural to me, but I've learned to make it more of a natural habit. So, um, when I think about like, oh, like what's something I can, um, what's something of value I can post out there? That lens is a lot more helpful than, hey, I want to create some content and I want to be famous.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  I think chasing status more so than trying to be helpful is not the best game. So.

• 25:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And I guess when you're writing that, how do you kind of make sure that you're actually articulating that you can solve the problem? Are there certain frameworks or tests that you run or anything that you'd say like, I know that I'm hitting on the right spot? Rather than just, hey, I just wrote an email to a bunch of people. I sent it and you know, cross my fingers and hope it works.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll talk about this in the context of maybe like a Facebook ad. Um, just so I think it covers more. So if you want more tactical stuff, I think, um, you know, there's a book called Breakthrough Advertising, which is now you can buy for 125 bucks or so. I bought it for 600 because it was out of print at the time. Highly recommended. It really taps into human psychology. And the whole skill of copywriting has not changed. We're all, we all still have the same needs. There's another book called a 16 word sales letter written by this guy who's a copywriter for Agora, which is they do over a billion a year. And they're primarily like a financial newsletter. So that's kind of tactical on that side.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  For me, what I do is from Breakthrough Advertising, there's this framework that I use. So it's upside. So it's U.P.S.Y.D. And I got this from these digital marketer, digital marketer podcast. And it's basically from the book. So basically you're taking a prospect from unaware to problem aware to solution aware to aware of your solution. So that's the why. And then you give them a deal, right? So a video ad can do that, but also a long form Facebook ad can do that too. Right? And what I'm looking to do when I do that is, um, you know, what can I do? What kind of story can I tell exactly? And also I'll run the copy through a sentiment analysis tool as well. You can use Grammarly. It'll tell you if your, your, your content's positive or not.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  But I use a sentiment analysis tool as, as long as it's positive. Um, because generally you want your content to be positive, then, um, you know, we're, we're good to go. But for me, I'm, you know, I'm just looking to say like, you know, one, one, like, here's how you do modern day SEO. And then boom, boom, boom. Here's like a tweet storm. Um, and I'll give a bunch of tactics, right? Like that's what's worked best for me. Um, and yeah, I think that's the framework I use.

• 27:42Anthony Pompliano?

  You also have talked a bunch about kind of people who are building companies being vision-driven. I think a lot of people say in a pitch deck or something like, hey, here's our vision for the company, but it's not so much a measurable vision. In the tweet, you talked about Microsoft saying, we want a computer on everyone's desk, right? Or SpaceX saying, we want to get to Mars and something that you can kind of tangibly measure against. Talk a little bit about how you've seen people do this well.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think when it comes to, you know, for me, vision, mission, values, like that stuff used to be like, oh, like, that's so intangible. Like, what are you supposed to do with that? And then you realize the the vision is what ultimately what matters is the people, right? But if you want to keep the people together at the company, you got to have a great culture. And how do you have a great culture? We need to have a unifying vision, right? And so, you know, whether it's, you know, we want to put a PC on everyone's desk, or we want to organize the world's information, that's something that's motivating and something something that people can wake up for every day, right? And I remember Howard Marks from from Activision. So he's got an interesting story, but he's like, look, you know, we want to, his vision is, we're gonna, we're gonna help all entrepreneurs, right?

• 28:53Speaker 02

  And he's like, well, you say it's broad, but like, that's what a vision is. Like, it's not supposed to be attainable, but it's supposed to be motivating and inspiring. So I used to have like, very specific numbers, like, before I learned all this, I was like, oh, the goal is to make it $100 million company. Like, that's not motivating at all. So now, you know, I got the book coming out, I'm like, oh, dude, you know what's easier? Like, my mission is to level up the world because I just like learning and I like teaching. And because I do that, that's led to all these other opportunities, right? And it just feels right. And so when you tell your, like, when people are trying to join your company, like, what's the vision? Well, the vision is to level up the world. Like, you can wake up and say, let's do that. Let's do it, right? Versus like, oh, it's to be a billion-dollar company, right? That's like, not as motivating.

• 29:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. You've talked a lot about this idea that people get distracted in today's digital internet-based world. There's notifications, there's sounds, there's flashing lights. You know, you go to a website and literally it's covered with ads, like, everything is distracting. But you don't necessarily think that that's the worst thing in the world. There's an opportunity to turn that distraction into a productive skill. Explain what you mean by that.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think when, okay, so as an example, one of the, like, I don't have many notifications on my phone, but one notification I have on, or I had on, was Twitter, right? So let's say someone like, let's say, James Clear or Naval Ravikant, they tweet. And one of the things you do if you want to grow on Twitter is you respond immediately as the first one, right? As you know. And so that, to me, is a helpful distraction because that's helping me, you know, build relationships, perhaps. And, you know, the other notifications I get, let's see, what else do I get? It's, so there's that one. I don't have my message notifications on. I'm trying to think what else. It's kind of escaping my mind right now.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Maybe we can come back to this one. Maybe it just hit me.

• 30:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. The other thing that I think is really interesting is you've been running Twitter ads. And when I came on and talked to you last time, it was kind of this idea like, nobody's really running Twitter ads. So like, maybe there's a mispricing there. How have you thought about that kind of experiment? And what have you learned?

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll just talk about mispricing in general. I think, so Twitter, I think, is very underpriced attention because it's, we're running, we're spending like a hundred dollars a day. We should probably be spending more, but we're just promoting certain blog posts. And so there's, there's a very big stock exchange that's one of the, my ad agency's clients. And they saw a Twitter ad that I had out that was mainly targeting SaaS people. And the email thread read was like, it was like, why aren't we getting this fire? Like, we want this, right? And that led to a whole, you know, upsell conversation and led to the contract getting bigger. And not only that, you know, we got a ton of qualified SaaS leads from that.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  And so it just makes a lot of sense because some of the smartest people in the world are hanging out on Twitter, right? And so whether I want to target e-commerce or SaaS or other, like, or even like, you got, you had Andrew Wilkinson on this podcast. He targets VCs on there to get them to sell, you know, you know, dead zombie companies to him, right? So I think the attention's heavily underpriced and he doesn't spend that much either, you know, talking to him. And so I think. That's a great example, but I think, you know, with upcoming book too, I'm like, okay, what's underpriced? You know what? The gaming influencers out there that have couple hundred thousands or millions of subscribers, I'm like, dude, I'm talking to all these agencies right now, like the CPMs or the cost per thousand impressions to try this, like, I'm like, man, I should just, if it works, I'll do this all day. Because if you look at the

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Tim Ferriss book, he really targeted mommy bloggers, a lot of bloggers in the early days, and I think it was underpriced attention, got them to help promote. That's, that's what I think happened. But same deal here, right? So I think if you can, if you think you have a good, if you're good at sniffing out the underpriced attention, go all in on it, right? So.

• 32:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. You've got a book that's coming out called leveling up. Talk a little bit about why write a book. You've got all these great skills in terms of reaching people on digital platforms. Some people would say, hey, a book's pretty antiquated. What was the thought process there?

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, wow, there's a lot in there. So, um, the reason I decided to do the book is not to try to make money. And by the way, like, I could have gotten an advance from it. We, we went through this hybrid publishing model where I have control of the rights, and yet it's going to be going through a publisher. I can do all the marketing stuff I want to do, like book funnels and things like that. Happy to talk about it. And I was like, look, I think this message needs to get out there because, you know, there's three billion gamers in the world. And, you know, me growing up, I used, I spent so much of my time playing, you know, poker, first person shooter games, you know, a lot of MMORPGs. And I'm like, look, my parents used to look down on me, like, my friends used to look at me saying it's a waste of time and all that. But I'm like, the time I spent,

• 33:51Speaker 02

  all those skills are actually, just like sports, they're a gateway into the real world. Yes, you are like, when you're playing a game, it is kind of a shadow world, but take those skills, translate it into the real world. And honestly, every day right now, Pom, like, I feel like I'm playing a game. Like, I can do podcasts, I can work on this, I can work on that. I'm just jumping around. It's just so fun. And so that's why I decided to do it. Hopefully, if you can, you know, change a few people's lives, that's great. But I think it's the message that's more important to me than anything. So hopefully, you know, we're able to spread the message. And again, it's not to try to make money, not to try to, you know, didn't make any money off of it out the gate. And then what I would say too is, You know, if you want to talk about promotion, happy to talk about it, but

• 34:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I do. What is, what's a book funnel?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  So a book funnel is, and I'm sure you've seen this, there's a lot of people running Facebook ads right now.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Or maybe even Google ads to, they'll be like, hey, pump, like, I'll give you my book free, but all you have to do is pay shipping. What happens when you do that is you put your credit card information in, though, the next page, you know what? I got some other stuff to sell you and usually the conversion rate on the next page is around 10%. And so if I, if I have a book, maybe my say, oh my God, you're Eric, you're losing money because you're, you're, you're just like, you're giving the book away for free and you're shipping it and all that. But my next page might have an offer that's maybe $30 or a hundred dollars or so. Let's say it's a hundred dollars converts at 10%. There's your $10 right there. You're basically self, you have a, when you have a book funnel, you have more control, you can actually make money on that initial campaign and then you can sell whatever you want.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  In the backend when they're on your email list, that's the entire play. That's what these all, a lot of these internet marketers have been doing. And if you want to start a book funnel, there's software called ClickFunnels and they literally have a template that you can use to build a book funnel. So that's why we went hybrid because after we make this initial push, we're probably going to switch and really use our marketing prowess.

• 35:46Anthony Pompliano?

  If you guys are so good at doing this, which obviously you are, why even mess around with any of the book publishers? You know, you didn't get an advance and it sounds like you have a ton of flexibility. What was the advantage to working with them?

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's, um, there's this book I really love called The Coaching Habit and, um, you know, my publisher is called Page Two and I just wanted to work with them. And, um, you know, the, the guy that wrote, uh, The Coaching Habit, uh, Michael, he was like, yeah, they're a pleasure to work with. They know exactly what to do. So they were basically telling me what I needed to do. Like I got all this stuff done with the book. They did, they handled the cover. Like I have these badges in the book. It just looks good, right? Like the process was iron tight. Cause I just want to deal with like, you know, all this other stuff. So, um, the process was locked in and they told, like they have their sales team working on it right now. They're like, and so for winter, they're like, um, the book is going to be our Lead book. I was like, what does that mean? And they're like, oh, it's going to be the main thing we focus on.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Um, so I was like, okay, that's exciting. So there's this element of the book, you know, this pre-COVID, I was like, okay, this book's going to appear in the airplane bookstores. Oh, not airplane bookstores, the airport bookstores. Um, they're like, yeah, we're going to sell to Barnes and Noble and all that. All that's gone now. So, but the problem is I signed the contract already. So that additional benefit of, you know, their sales team helping with all these physical locations has kind of diminished, but that was one of the major benefits in addition to the process.

• 37:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so what else are you guys doing kind of under your own control? For somebody who's listening, who wants to launch a book, you've got the book funnel idea, which is fantastic. Anything else that you guys are doing that you think will be very valuable?

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, in terms of promoting a book?

• 37:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the things I honed in on, so, um, we talked about the gaming influencer. So, you know, we're using, um, we use a tool called Follower Wonk, which can, can search people's Twitter bios. And a lot of these gaming people, they put their email, their emails in the bio and they always use like a dot GG. Um, you know, at the end of the email. So we, we found a bunch of emails through that. And then, um, just kind of sorted by number of followers. And then we use another tool called Tensor Social to find a bunch of gaming influencers. Um, you can, you can basically search for the industry and then sort by engagement rates. And then you can actually find their emails as well and export it. Um, so there's that. And then we, um, we're going to be using Facebook ads and then, you know, driving them to a contest as well.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  So for gamers, we have a contest where it's like, you can win a new Alienware computer, a new gaming chair, new headphones and all that. And, you know, um, for the main entry, it is to basically, uh, maybe it's subscribe to our YouTube channel or get on our email list or whatever. You can give like three points here, two points here, whatever. And so hopefully that, the contests tend to work really well, but we're also giving away, um, you know, the first chapter of the book away for free. And then the final thing I'll say is, um, Podcast tour, that's the biggest thing, right? So that's, that's part of the reason why I'm, I'm getting on a bunch of podcasts right now. That pushes books because naturally, you know, people are listening to this podcast for you. But also like whatever the, the guest tends to say, um, if they align with that message, then great.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  So.

• 38:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. If people buy the book, what are they going to learn in it?

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think, I mean, the book is basically, it talks about, it compares the world of gaming versus business, right? So there's an anecdote about gaming and then there's a business comparison to how it's exactly the same thing. And then there's a quest, like something to do at the end, right? Where you can kind of build up, you know, those habits for yourself. Essentially, the entire book is about creating the right habits and leveling up from that perspective. Because in life, I mean, there's, um, there's a wealth ladder concept that, um, you know, another entrepreneur, his name's Nathan Berry. He, he created it. And so, you know, I, I, I would argue that the first thing you want to do is you want to build the right habits. Um, obviously you want to learn the right skills and then you, maybe you start working for someone, right? That's, you know, what your parents want you to do.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  And eventually you get, the next step is, you know, you might freelance somewhere. And then the next step after that is you might build an agency, right? Or, you know, rewinding this step, you might, uh, build a drop shipping business. And then you might build an e-commerce business where you have the inventory. And then you can move on to the next step, right? Where eventually you have like a platform business, um, you have a network effects business. Um, or you even have like a SpaceX or something like that. But the whole idea here is you're, you're continuing leveling up to level up. Um, and it's all, it's all rooted within your habits first. Cause if you don't have the good, if you don't have good habits, like you're not going to be able, you don't have the right foundation to level up to where you want to go.

• 40:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. How much of kind of the leveling up and, and going from the platform business strategy is, uh, you're just practicing? Like you're literally acquiring the skills and getting better and better. And you can go bigger and bigger from that versus something else is at play?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think it's, it's, you're just, you constantly, and one of the things, so one of our core values for the agency is growth, right? So you're constantly seeking growth and you're constantly seeking how to improve and then also improve, you know, the world around you, right? And ultimately, at the end of the day, you know, whatever's going on politically, like, you know, that's, that's how you add value to the world and that's how you become successful. And so I think that's what it is. I mean, you create your own luck that way. I think it's, you know, as long as you make sure that, you know, you're constantly optimizing yourself and you're iterating. No way you can't level, I just think there's no, like, if you have the right habits and you have, you're hanging out with the right people, there's no way in my mind that you can't become, you know, the success that you want to become, right?

• 41:12Speaker 02

  So I just think, you know, everything I was told, you know, growing up in Asian family, like, you know, your fate's kind of determined and all that. I'm just like, none of that makes sense. So a lot of the messaging, the way you were programmed growing up, I'm trying to unwind that programming.

• 41:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. You are one of the best marketers in the world. How would you say people who want to get better at marketing can go do that? Is it finding other people? Are there specific books, courses? Like, what would your recommendations be?

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess I'll just share a cut of my story around that.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  So I was working a dead-end job coming out of school. So this is when the financial crisis hit. And I was doing data entry and my friend who was working at American Apparel at the time now works at Airbnb. She was like, you should check out this, this digital marketing thing. Got an internship. And what happened with the internship was a free internship. And then what I found out afterwards is hilarious. But they hired a cohort of 12 interns and they had us writing all these articles, right? And by the same time, they gave us all these digital marketing courses. So what I did was I would come back from work every day and I would basically come back at like, you know, 3:00 or 4:00 PM. I'd come to work early and I'd study till 12:00 AM, right? So I'd go through all these courses and I'd just go, whatever I picked up on, like, oh, SEO, I'd just go deeper on it, go to Google.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  And anyway, what happened was for that internship, they were basically using us as content writers for free, right? And they had a bunch of content created and they started ranking for all this stuff. So, but anyway. I kept going deeper. I went deeper on like SEO, for example, and I actually ended up going to this blog called Quicksprout, which is, at the time, it was my podcast co-host Neil's, it was his blog. And you know what I did was, I would try to email these people all the time, because I'd have follow-up questions, right? I'd learn something. So I was not only learning, I was asking follow-up questions. And eventually, it got to the point where people like Neil or other people, whether it's me pestering them or whatever, they're like, dude, let's just get on the phone. So we got on the phone, and eventually with Neil,

• 43:09Speaker 02

  we ended up meeting at a Taco Bell in Orange County down in California. And that's how we became friends. But that same process, that template where I was just learning, and then I was also asking questions, or I was learning and trying to add value to people, kind of like how we talked about earlier. That's how I built my network around marketing, where I could continue to ask questions. Because the stuff you learn online, maybe it's like 90 to 95% of the stuff people are willing to share. The problem with marketing is if you talk about it, everyone starts to do it, and then your tactic becomes invalid, or your strategy. So you typically, just like with business and like these business or marketing, you want to hold 5 to 10% of the things and not share it.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  So ideally, that's why you build your network of, you know, smart business people or smart marketers.

• 43:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Where can people go find the book?

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they can go to their favorite online retailer, just type in leveling up Eric Su. Or, I mean, you can get a free chapter of the book, you know, at levelingup.com.

• 44:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Where can people find you on the internet?

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's me on Instagram at Eric O S I U. Same thing with Twitter at Eric O S I U. Those are probably the best two spots.

• 44:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Before we wrap up, I ask everyone the same two questions, and then you'll get a chance to ask me one. The first question is, what is the most important book you've ever read? And you can't say your own.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Most important book, I thought about this a while back, but I would say the most, the one that comes to mind first right now is The Hard Thing About Hard Things, just because the entire book is about struggle, and that's basically what life is, so.

• 44:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a fantastic book, Ben Horowitz, from Andreessen Horowitz, highly recommend that one as well. Second question's more fun, aliens, are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Believer for sure. Wasn't there just something that just came out about how there's like 300 million galaxies or something?

• 45:01Anthony Pompliano?

  300 million planets supposedly exist. I always joke and say, when I was in middle school and high school, there was only nine, and we were, and the big debate was this Pluto planet or not. Now we're at 300 million, so I don't know how we went from nine to 300 million, but that's where we are.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Well, how do we know anything? That's my whole thing, right? I would say still as human beings, we're fairly primitive right now. Like, how do we know? You know?

• 45:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, we probably don't, right? It's probably some estimated guess of like, oh, we could see, you know, X number of square miles, here's how many planets are in those square miles. So like, you know, if you multiply that by the number of square miles we think are out there, like, this is what it could be, right? Some math like that, I'm sure.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:39Anthony Pompliano?

  What question you got for me to wrap up?

• 45:42Speaker 02

  I would say, what do you think, so, you know, Wink of Lost Twins are like, it's gonna go to 500K. Where do you think Bitcoin's going?

• 45:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, like over a long period of time? Because their whole thing was the 500K over time, right? I don't think they put like a timeframe on it. I tend to think that they will look very, very bearish with only a 500K number on it over a long period of time. You know, I'm talking 20, 30 years, I think for sure we'll see a million plus dollars Bitcoin. The big question is, because I think you'd get to like about a million if you got to 2X the gold market cap, right? So like, you know, not unreasonable over a really long period of time. The number that I've put out publicly, more short term, is 100K by the end of next year. We'll see, right? So far, so good. We're trending in

• 46:34Anthony Pompliano?

  the right direction, but as we know, this thing has a mind of its own, and super volatile, and will rip people's faces off in both directions. So, you know, we'll just wait till the end of December 2021 to see what happened.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 46:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, Eric. Listen, thank you so much for doing this. I think people are really gonna enjoy this. Highly recommend the book, highly recommend them following you on social media, and we'll have to do it again in the future.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.