Eric Siu ✓’s Post

"You're allowed to make less money for more joy." - Gary Vee I sat down with Gary and we talked about the long-term game in business. Sure, he could've gone into SaaS or PE, but he decided that it'd be more fun to build 'the greatest marketing death star of all time'. His version of happiness isn't necessarily backpacking in Peru. It's what he's doing right now. Everyone has their own definitions of happiness and it's on you to figure out what yours is. We also briefly touched upon how we both know many people who are worth billions that are completely miserable. Too many. Money is not the variable for happiness. He could've raised a good chunk of money to start Vayner, but he knew that it would create bad behavior. Instead, he chose to eat 💩 for a decade to understand himself better as a businessman. And he's glad that he patiently waited. Because now he's ready.

Mark Cuban has said that diversification is for idiots and Warren Buffett has said to put all your eggs into one basket and watch it like a hawk. This obviously assumes that you know what you're doing... Most founders end up starting too many businesses and get distracted by shiny object syndrome. I've been guilty of this multiple times. Let's do a software company, then another one, then let's do an affiliate site, then let's also do an education thing, etc. etc... But over the years, I've gotten a little wiser and I've learned that the biggest businesses come from decades of intense focus. When you try to force or control the outcome, the outcome ironically gets further away from you. Just think about it... ANY time you've tried to control something, has it worked out for you? The bottom line is this: As long as your main business can stay alive and you can stay focused, your business will snowball.

We're hiring :)

Sure, Google has 91.04% of the search engine market share. But the future of SEO will be much more than just Google. Some predictions: 1. You'll have to evolve beyond Google 🚀 Just look at TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Amazon, or even ChatGPT. Attention is so fragmented nowadays that you need to think a little harder on where your audience is hanging out. You'll have to learn how to rank for those platforms. Marketing 101 is bringing people to the point of sale. It's no longer just a 'Google or Facebook' thing anymore. 2. You'll have to go omnichannel Neil and I both cut our teeth in SEO, but we've adapted to podcasts, YouTube, live events, and more over the years. But the key thing is to optimize for a channel when it actually becomes popular. NOT when it first starts out. For example, Threads is probably not going to die because it has 200M monthly active users. So it's worth it to take whatever you post from X and port it over to Threads.

A few weeks back, Jason M. Lemkin mentioned how nearly 100% of sales and marketing executives who frequently post on LinkedIn are failing at their roles. Neil Patel and I debated the merits of Jason's post and here are some of the takeaways: 1. The people doing this typically aren't building 9-figure businesses off LinkedIn posting We haven't seen anyone build a 9-figure business off of their LinkedIn brand only. Adam Robinson does well and they're in the mid $20M ARR range though. Definitely worth watching him. 2. When your brand starts to grow, you're incentivized to compound it And rightfully so! It's your potential ticket to freedom and not having to work for anyone anymore. And also... it's incredibly addicting to watch the numbers go up and to the right. The problem is you lose focus on the main thing. The main thing that pays you your salary. The main thing that puts food on the table for your family. You lose sight of the priority and you find justifications to allow you to 'grow your brand' more. But companies are hiring you to grow their revenue, not your brand. And the more you focus on that, I can tell you the more you're going to be scrutinized by leadership. In general, I think it's a great idea to build a brand. But I think it's distasteful to build it on someone else's dime and try to justify that you're doing it for the good of the company. Just be honest and do it on your own time.

I found out the dirty truth about our food supply after sitting down with Bryan Johnson. It's shocking. There are no guardrails around our food supply. When he went to his food suppliers to tell them that they were testing their foods for heavy metals and microplastics, they responded with confusion because no one else was doing it. No one is testing. None of our food is 100% clean. And there are way too many contaminants to test for. Food is your fuel and if you're putting crap fuel into your body, your performance is going to be crap at work. Yes, you can eat whole foods, exercise frequently, hit the sauna (bonus for cold plunge), get early morning sunlight, etc. etc... But the most important thing is to keep yourself educated by following people like Bryan Johnson, Andrew Huberman, Dr. Peter Attia, etc. Having a high-performing body means you'll be high-performing for not just your work life, but your personal life. #longevity

Hiring for the following and will give you $2.5k if we hire them: - paid media (ecomm a plus) - SEO - CRO - agency talent acquisition - analytics tag them below. 👇

WPEngine does over $400M ARR today. I asked Founder Jason Cohen when he thought the timing was right to raise money. His previous company, A Smart Bear, was completely bootstrapped before he sold it in 2007 (it sold again for $450M in 2017 and then $2B in 2020). Initially, he built WP Engine to only serve bloggers. But the reality was WordPress was growing like a weed. The total addressable market (TAM) was much larger than just the blogger world (it was 10% of the internet at the time). They raised an initial round of $1M, which isn't much by today's standards. Along the way, they always raised at 'fair valuations' where they weren't getting diluted too much and the investors were getting their fair share. Because of that, there wasn't unreasonable pressure placed on them. Even when they were raised hundreds of millions of dollars, their ARR was already in the 9 figures. Jason's take is there are good sides and bad sides to both bootstrapping and raising. You just have to choose what makes the most sense to you. #fundraising #bootstrapping