All right, so welcome to the Agency Owners Association. My name is Eric Sue. I do this group alongside my podcast co host Neil Pottel. We do a podcast called Marketing School, and both Neil and I we've been in a handful of groups. We're actually both in a group called YPO. I've been in a group called EO before, so Young President's Organization, Entrepreneurs Organization, and we thought it would be helpful to have a group, a peer group for agency owners where people can connect and they can all help each other elevate. Right, And we know a lot of agency owners. They're struggling to grow faster, they're struggling to get more clients, they're struggling with operational issues, hiring issues, and both Neil and I have been throughout all that, right, So in terms of covering getting an agency to six figures, seven figures, eight figures, Neil in his case got his agency to nine figures, right, maybe even ten figures one day. But we wanted to share those experiences with you to help you grow faster. And there's a lot of value in this group. You'll see below all the bullet points on the things that we currently have and we're going to continue to add value to this group over time. And the cool thing about this group is you can cancel on any time, so there's no commitment. You can sign up right now for whatever price it says down there. It's going to continue to grow up, grow and grow. I will tell you that this group initially started at one hundred and forty nine and it's going to continue to rise right so now is going to be the best price to get in on it. You can cancel on any time, just known that when you come back, it's going to be at the elevated price. And that's what we thought we'd do. And those of you that are doing seven to eight figures, once you join the group where actually you can even see it, there's an application to join a live mastermind. So this is a live Mastermind that where you'll be able to hang out with Neil and myself and we'll have other agency owners at your level. But that's for agencies that are doing seven figures and above. I think once we have enough demand for maybe the six figure groups, we'll figure something out there. But for right now, seven and eight figures for an in person mastermind and then online community a bunch of other benefits. If you're doing six figures and below, you'll see that right below, and then we'll continue to figure out and grow to sing as we as we continue on. So without further ado, go ahead and sign up below. If it's not for you, that solely, fine too, but no commitment. Why not if it helps you, If you think it can even help you ten x the price that you're paying for one month, then why not just give it a shot. Right, So that's it for this little intro over here, and just go sign up somewhere over here and we'll catch you inside. You know. I was listening to a podcast with Tim Ferris, I think he did it with Kevin Rose, and he said this a couple of times, but he said that there will never be another Oprah because the half life of fame is going to come down so much, meaning that you know, because of because of TikTok, because of Instagram, because of YouTube. There's there's a quick rise of people, but then there's always gonna be someone else that rises up quick, up and down, up and down, up and down. And so like Oprah, a lot of these people back in the day it was just a couple of channels, right, and then you have cable that came out, but like they monopolize the attention and that's how you became someone like an Oprah. And so you know that that reinforces that the need to work with these influencers as they come up and down because you just don't know. So you're almost going to need to have someone on your team that's a good talent spot for these influencers that knows who's coming up and then what kind of deal to negotiate with them. Well, back in the day, it would take a while for Oprah to build up her brand with the adoption of technology, just like you discussed earlier on how long it took for electricity to get around the world and for everyone to really adopt it. It took what did you say, forty fifty years? Forty five fifty years for electricity and then color TV is like twenty thirty years, I think, yeah, And the smartphone was very I don't know, smartphone was maybe you got to seventy five percent penetration in maybe like tennis years or so. AI penetration in like a year or two. AI penetration in the US it's already reached one hundred and thirty one hundred and twenty five million people or something, So that's a third of the population. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of crazy. And I also think there's more people who are leveraging AI, but they're just not counted because they're using platforms that have AI, like Google, and they just don't know. Yeah, but if you look at influencers now, right, because of technology and mass distribution, they're actually growing way faster than OPRAH growing. They're growing way faster. But the problem is because it's more democratized, nobody can hold all the attention for that long anymore, which I think is good. It's a good thing because all the keep in mind, everyone like all the attention with media like Fox do, CNBC, I don't care where you lean politically. They had distribution and they could actually, like my parents used to say, when they're watching the news all the time, as it was the most important thing in the world. But now because of all the democratization of news of information, we can all make decisions for ourselves, right, and we're not trying to get political here, and you can get the news whenever you want on demand. Yeah, yeah, i'd definitely say it. And then The other thing that you end up seeing is it's not only that these brands grow and they can fade really quickly. They're also not the hot thing anymore. And I'll give you an example. Remember when Uber came about, it was a hot thing for a while. Same with Warby Parker, same with Pinterest. But now Pindrist is still a legitimate, big company. And this happens with both personal and corporate brands. No one talks about a lot of these companies as much as they did in the past. You know what the key is, you have to keep reventing yourself. So like when you look at the rock, right, the rock even in w w E Rock, there's so many versions of the rock. I don't know if you watch this, but like you know, there's there was the Nation Rock, then there was then there was a Hollywood Rock, right, please explain these. I don't know what the Nation the Rock I mean. He had an evolution in WWE, right, like first he started out nobody liked him, and then he joined a group called the Nation, right, and then later he became like the Corporate Rock where he joined like Vince McMahon and Stephanie McMahon and anyway, My point is he kept reinventing himself and then he went to Hollywood. Did he actually went to Hollywood? He became an actor, he owns like tequila brands now and then now he's back in a WWE turning it around. He's he's the owner of what was it called again, the group t K O uh group, part owner of Endeavor. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah right because WWE is owned by Yeah, so t K which my endeavor owns WWE and UFC. Yes, and they bought a they bought a slapping Championship too, Dude, I've seen that on Instagram. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, And so Dana, I think it's data white right, He's like, oh no, everyone makes fun of it. If it's the best thing ever, we're gonna make it so big. And anyway, point is, so someone like the Rock, He's constantly reinventing himself. That's why he stays relevant, right, mister Bees like he's going. He's gone from spectacle videos like short videos, quick cuts and everything, to not as many quick cuts. Now there's storytelling, Now there's emotion, there's different formats. He's constantly reinventing himself. Even in this podcast, we've reinvented it. We're having longer conversations now, we're talking about news, and we're gonna have to continue to reinvent otherwise people aren't going to listen anymore. So that's right, but that's the only way to end up doing it. But it is, it does get harder. Just look at single grain. Okay, you guys, try to reinvent yourself this year as AI forward agency where you're folks. Really, I'm We're doing a lot of things behind the scenes that I'm doing, but forward wise I haven't really all right, but either way, you've been running the business for how many years? I've had the business for six seven? No, like nine nine years after Sujin? Yeah, like fully, so you had nine years, nine ten years? Yeah? All right. You guys are decent size. You have a good amount of employees. I was out, Yeah, yeah, go on. How easy is it for you to continue to reinmit yourself to the public each year? It's hard? Yeah, it's hard. Yeah. How do you how do you stay relevant? I think the difference now is if you ask me, okay, how long have you had MP Digital four? This will be our seventh year. How many years would you say those seven years, you were completely focused on Empy Digital all seven years, Okay, So I would say I was probably focused on single grain for this year. Now I'm completely focused maybe the last two three years or so, So I've probably been really focused on single grain for four out of the nine years. I would give you hardcore focus for like two or three of the years. I'll take it. I'll take it because even the other If you're saying four, maybe you were, but you were also spending a lot of time on like that ammunition side gaming style, old people's homes. And I'm not saying you weren't more focused on single ring, but if you look at your last two three years, you've really cut down on everything and you're just like, no, no, this is getting one hundred and ten percent of my focus. Well before you were getting more and more focused on single rain, but you still had distractions and you slowly cut them down, so instead of being you know, thirty percent to start going forty fifty, sixty seventy. Although I would say year one, you're probably really focus on it because you were table rained. Yes, No, so year one that's when I was probably No, That's when I made it go from bad's worse. We dropped all the way down to one person really in the first year of single grain. Yeah, I thought you had to clean it all up. No, no, no, I was trying to. But I remember I told you I read a book called Let My People Go Surfing, and I took it too literally because the Patagonia co founder is like, oh, yeah, I let my people go surfing at work. So I was like, oh, okay, well, I'm just not going to show up to the office anymore. And then everything started going downhill. So my fault at the end of the day. But that's what happened, all right. So the two three years is actually pretty sound. Yeah, two three years I would say. But going back to your question again about about reinventing yourself, Yeah, I think if you're locked in on it to the outside, you look like you're focused. If you're doing too many things and you're trying to revent yourself, you actually look like you're sloppy at the end of the day. And I heard his quote somewhere recently, but it's like, if you want to and this is from from God, that does really well. I forgot his day. But if you want to operate, you can only operate one or two things max. If you want to manage, you can manage like up to six things. And that's it unless you're Elon Musk. Yeah, he's operating many things. Yeah, there's always an exception to the rule. Yeah, you know, I got rid of my tesla, right, Yeah, you told me that for the third time. Alty, And then I saw I saw your driver this morning, and I saw your new car. I was like, film, how many new cars does he need? Right? Yeah? Yeah, he just laughed at me. I go through like their tic TACs. Yeah. Yeah, So you know, it's interesting, by the way, it's you got to know your strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day. One of Neil's weaknesses you just can't drive, which is a fair It's it's a fair weakness. I'm a I'm a terrible driver. Eric is a really good driver. You know what it's because, interestingly enough, Neil can't focus when he drives. I focus when I drive. I can't. I just think about work. Yeah, but your life is on a line. It doesn't make any a neurological person. It doesn't make any logical sense. No, I can't turn off work. That's the problem. Yeah. Well, by the way, if you guys haven't seen Eric's car, he has one of the most beautiful cars that I've ever seen, the colors of me, except you haven't seen Neil's cars, which I will not even talk about his cars right now. So Neil has a few very nice cars. We'll just put it that way. They're very nice. Let's move on to a different time. Yeah. Oh here, I got a good one here. So you know, you know Frame dot io. Have you used it? Dude? I've been using the frame do io before it was even part of Adobe. Yep, we'll same here. When when did you start using it? Like probably in the first week that it came out? When was this long time ago? We've been using a frame I've been using it since like twenty seventeen. Yeah, when we were an early customer Frame Yeah. Anyway, So they sold for a one point three billion dollars so Adobe, this guy Emery Wells, he tweeted this. So I built and sold Frame dot io for one point three billion dollars to Adobe, and along the way I received plenty of advice that turned out to be entirely off the mark. Here's a look at some of the most glaring misdirections. So we're going to go through each one and react to each one. Okay, so number one, we're gonna start with number one. As CEO, focus on executive business tasks, right, That was the quote, So he says, this couldn't be further from the truth. The core purpose of any company is the product it offers. As CEO, your primary role is to ensure that this product is the most valuable it can be for your customers. It's not just about overseeing, it's about being integrally involved in delivering quality. Agree or disagree with that, I totally agree. I don't think CEOs should be focusing on executive tasks. We always tell our executives we expect them to be player coaches. If they're not willing to get their hands dirty, they're not a fit for our business as CEO, though, as a CEO we tell everyone executives and CEO, I think, really, what this says to me is and I think you so I would say we're both on the same page here because I used to not get involved in the details around the product and the service. I call it the product. It's the service, right that we deliver services for our respective agencies. But at the end of the day, though, whatever you're selling, whatever you guys are servicing, it's a reflection of you, and you have to be somewhat involved in You have to be involved in details, like somewhat at the very least. My mistake in the past was not being involved with them. So that's the first one, right, So we agree on that. All right, welcome to the Marketing School school group. Okay, so Marketing school skool group, right, And so this is a free group that Neil and I are doing. And what I want to do with the free marketing community is I want to build a very strong group of people that are sharing the latest knowledge, the latest trends, the latest topics, and we'll share our content as well, and we just want people to engage with each other and build a strong community, right because people ultimately stay for community at the end of the day, people are longing for community. And we thought, with all the free content that we do, what's been missing a free community where we can continue to help people level up in terms of their marketing and hopefully we can help people find jobs. In the group, we can even maybe even create a job board, but even offer a lot of our other content package it up for you just to help you get better at whatever it is that you do in the world of marketing and whatever it is that you do in the world of business. Right. So, Neil and myself, you know, we thought that you know, from a retention standpoint, we do a lot, we do very well with the acquisition on all the channels that we have, all the audiences that we have. But from a retention standpoint, building something that's that we think we can be proud of for a very long time, why not do a free group, right, So we have a paid group obviously called the Agency Owners Associations for Agency Owners and if you want to go to that, there'll be a link somewhere over over here to that. But this group will always be free and as long as people are continuing to engage, this group's continuing to grow, then we'll continue to invest more resources into it. But we thought this was a long time coming. So you can sign up for free. You might have to fill out some information or not. You might you will have to fill out some information so we get a sense for where you are and then we can start to help segment the group two right, based on whatever it is that you're looking for, because we want to continue to add value and hopefully we'll have a very strong database of people and you just tell us what you're looking for, what you need, and hopefully we can make those connections. So go ahead and sign up somewhere over here and we'll see you inside. Number two. To scale, you need to decentralized decision making. Do you know what that means? You can't have all decisions go to you. Yeah, so, he says, Actually the opposite is often more effective. As organizations grow more complex, Centralized decision making can slice through red tape and foster quicker action. Even environments that champion decentralized processes, top down leadership often proves to be the fastest route, which is what Jensen Wang does right. He cuts out the direct the middle managers, sixty direct reports. Let's just get to it. Yeah, we have it set up the same way. It's all centralized for us. Yep. So what does it look like for you guys? It's me and Mike, and Mike make all the decisions in the company, got it? And what level ortant decisions? If something is like five grand, we're not making a decision on or even ten grand. Okay, so this is like buying another company. This is like making an executive higher, right, expanding into a country. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, that makes sense. And you guys are how often are you guys talking daily? Daily? Like a couple of times a day, right, yes, not always together, but we're pretty in synct got it. And by the way, everyone, these calls aren't scheduled. You guys are just calling. Yeah, we do ad hoc yep, all right. Number three CEOs shouldn't get caught up in the details. This is a myth. Consider leaders like Steve jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Brian Cheske, and the Collison brothers all are slash. We're deeply involved in intricacies of their business, of their businesses. Emulating their approach is not misguided. It's a blueprint for hands on leadership. Remember a couple weeks ago we talked about how Mark Zuckerberg is like, no, I actually don't really believe in delegation, Like you have to be very involved. I mean here, I'll start first, Hey, I drank the whole co kool aid. Right, It's like, yeah, you know, you want to hire an operator and CEO, get out of their way as quickly as possible, and I'll tell you what didn't really work out, And if you want to eat glass for a couple of years, be my guest, right, So I will say being involved, like absolutely, be caught up in the details, because nobody's gonna want to move it as quickly as you want to move it, and nobody's as incentivized as you are to move it forward. Go ahead. You already know what I'm gonna answer with this one, So yeah, you're just seeing. And by the way, Neil's a very detail oranged verson. We both took a personality test. His detail oriented is like ninety nine percent out of one hundred, mine six percent. Just so everyone knows. Yeah, yeah, Okay, we're gonna finish this off and we're gonna do four and five and then we're gonna wrap it up here really quickly. All my executives and my co founders are all very detail oriented as well. But you didn't design it that way. No. But I tend to remember, you're talking to me about your Gary Vee interview and you're talking about brands versus creator, data versus creativity. Huh. Most my leadership is very similar to me. Where they're detail oriented. They're very data driven, so they're like you in many ways. Interesting, so the other way where I try to plug my weaknesses, but I think it's good to have a mix of both. I do focus on plugging the weaknesses, but culturally if they're not like data driven, it's a hard fit where I know I'm not going to agree with them in the future. You're gonna hate talking to them exactly. Yeah. Yeah, So, but that's actually plugging your weakness because you realize you can't deal with it correct. So like, for example, our CEO is amazing at managing I'm not right, So that's plugging my weakness. And he knows the product and service better than me because he's been doing it for more than twenty years at an agency. And he gets in the in the weeds if a client is training, even if it's three hundred grand, which is a very tiny percentage of revenue, he gets pissed off and wants to figure out why and how to fix it so it doesn't happen. I guess yeah. I think the key thing here is you have to understand yourself. If you're trying to take something away from this, you really have to do the work. Like if you need to go talk to your team and figure out your zone of genius, all these things, you need to actually go put in the work and be open to feedback at the end of the day. So number four tenext engineers are a myth and believe in them is harmful. Quite the contrary, In many teams, a small practice, a small fraction on the workforce often generates the majority of outcomes. Recognizing and nurturing high performing individuals isn't just realistic, it's crucial. Yeah, we don't have big engineering teams. We feel that when you add people just like what star players you kind of with with Mike and Mike, right, those are your star players, Like they're driving more than a ten X outcome than a regular burst. Sure, yeah, but they're not engineers. But we also do have amazing engineers, but we don't have tons of them. We should just say the tenex's employee sure is a myth. Yeah, so in that case, like, yeah, we agree with this guy. Dude. Right before we started recording this podcast, all right, I was talking to my co founder Mike. My CEO is also named Mike, but my co founder is named Mike as well. Yeah, I was talking to my co founder and I was telling him how, you know, we're talking about the CEO and how he spends a lot of time generating new business right and working with clients and making sure clients are happy. And we both said we wish we could buy ten of them, like higher ten of them, not buy but higher. Yeah, wait to hire my AI agents. Remember you said this, but I remember you said this sound was like twenty four to twenty five years old. And then you're like, man, it'd be nice if we could have like half an Eric or something. This is way back in the day when we first met each other. But I think, what we're just to reinforce this facts. So there are definitely ten EX employees that are out there. I would argue that you finding your co founder Mike, like, I know, for a while you're looking for that ten X partner, and I think once you found Mike, like that was it right there, and then that was the that was a big inflection point. Would you agree or disagree with that he was able to solve a lot of this stuff I was weak at, Like, he's really good at operations and managing sales, teams. Not only does he like learning, which I do too, but he likes getting in the weeds and he pays attention to all the details. But he does it for the stuff I'm weak at. He's also pretty empathetic too. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's good at that. Okay, last one, last one, not least everyone. So the quote here is you must validate every decision with customer research. Contrary to popular belief, not all successful decisions from extensive customer research. Many of my pivotal choices were guided by my own instincts and preferences for the product. Trusting your vision and building a product that you would use yourself can lead to creating something that resonates deeply with your customers. Personal intuition can be a potent tool in product development. I would say that's absolutely true, because your gut comes from all the experiences that you've developed over years, and you have your own taste, just like you have your taste, I have mine. You have a certain working style, I have mine. I think one of my biggest mistakes was offloading that to somebody else and thinking that they could figure it out for me, and then on my end, I would say, we do a combo of both. We use our gut, but we also look at data and what other people are saying, and that also guides our decisions. But we do a combination of both. You can't just rely on what other people are doing and the data out there. And the main reason being is you're only going to be just as good as them if you try to copy all the same stuff. Sometimes when you just look at stuff like my team will sim me a problem like this is not usable, fix this and that, And I don't care what the stats of the data shows. You just know, like why do you need to take ten clicks when you could have gave it to them in two clicks. Yeah. It's just like when you don't give one of your kids a fork and think you go put it in a little socket, right. Yeah, It's just one of those things that are that that's intuitive. And so look, I think these were good lessons from the frame dot O Frame dot Io founder. And like any advice that you get, always take it with a grain of salt. And he just proved five different things over here. And I think if you take advice to literally, like when I read that book, let my people go surfing it tends to hurt sometimes because anybody's advice comes from their experiences, and that's their experiences. Yes, but you've also learned too. When I first met you, you would read books and you'd usually, depending on the book you read, you would take what you learned and you would implement it and you would take it to heart. And now as you progress, and we've all made mistakes and we've all learned from experiences, you will now read a book and you'll take concepts you like and implement and ignore the rest or evaluate or maybe discuss them with other people. But you don't just go out there and be like, oh, everyone said this book, let me just go and implement everything in it. Yep. It changes over time, right, you gain more experience from it. But what I'll say about Neil before we get out of here, it's going back to mic really quick. Over the years, Neil was looking for that ten X partner. It took some time to get there, but I think Neil was always reaching out to see who who that could be. And I would say, those of you that can find that partner, it gets it gets more manageable once you have it. You've always had co founders around you, That's what I would say, and they take a big load off your shoulders because it does get lowly. It's also hard to do it by yourself like Eric's doing. And I've never been a CEO. I think that's the crappiest job out there. It's hard, a lot of ups and downs. And don't get me wrong, as a co founder you still have to deal with a lot of the crap and the ups and downs. But being the CEO is the hardest job. I'm just not good at it, so I try not to do it. It's the hardest show. And plus, like the other thing is you've seen We've talked about this before on the podcast. But you look at a Darmashaw, you look at you look at some other people. They're just focused on what they're good at and they're like, I never want to touch I'd rather Darmash that day, He's like, I'd rather not be average at something when I can be good at something else, Right, I could be a world class at something else. And to wrap this up on the ceopiece, we've talked about this, but I can go a little deeper here. It's nobody's ever going to pat you on the back. Right, you're always eating crap. By the way, you're the last one to eat too. Right, if things are going bad at the company, you're funding the company. You're not making any money. Right, you're dealing with all the people problems. Anything people don't want to do, you're going to do it. You're making the ultimate sacrifice. And I think still though, you're going to learn a lot at the end of the day, Right, you're gonna come out if you can come out of it, you're gonna come out of it stronger. But a lot of people tend to give up, and a lot that's why a lot of people just aren't cut out for it. So, as a CEO or as a founder CEO, what do you spend majority of your day on If you had to pick one thing, Like, what's the biggest thing? You spend majority of your time on problems? So just solving different problems, yeah, whatever, Like a lot of by the way, a lot of stuff gets dropped off. Even though we have this called we if they bring a problem, they have to come up with like three four solutions or so, and then they need to pick the best one. Even in that situation, sometimes I need to still need to sit back and figure out how to coach them and say, well, no, this thinking, this thinking isn't right here. Oh I'm all over recruiting, all over recruiting, and then I'm all over marketing as well. I have to help with sales sometimes. So everything right, it's all the things that people don't want to do. But hey, makes sense. It is what it is, So I'm not complaining by the way, It's just it is what it is. So yeah, no, it's tough when it is rewarding, I will say that. So, yeah, it's tough when you get pulled into tons of directions. Luckily for me, I don't have to do that. I you know it' spending. I don't even spend that much time even on marketing. I spend almost all my time on just strategy. Yeah, yeah, I'm an a strategy Yeah. All right, So that is it for today, and go to Marketing School the iOS Slash Agency to sign up for our Agency Owners Association. The group has continue to grow and by the way, we're upping the price every now and then as we continue to increase value there, so go check it out if you want to grow your agency faster. Marketing School and the Ioslash Agency. Don't forget the rate of for you subscribe. It helps us grow and thank you for your attention. Check us out on YouTube as well.

All right, so welcome to the Agency Owners Association. My name is Eric Sue. I do this group alongside my podcast co host Neil Pottel. We do a podcast called Marketing School, and both Neil and I we've been in a handful of groups. We're actually both in a group called YPO. I've been in a group called EO before, so Young President's Organization, Entrepreneurs Organization, and we thought it would be helpful to have a group, a peer group for agency owners where people can connect and they can all help each other elevate. Right, And we know a lot of agency owners. They're struggling to grow faster, they're struggling to get more clients, they're struggling with operational issues, hiring issues, and both Neil and I have been throughout all that, right, So in terms of covering getting an agency to six figures, seven figures, eight figures, Neil in his case got his agency to nine figures, right, maybe even ten figures one day. But we wanted to share those experiences with you to help you grow faster. And there's a lot of value in this group. You'll see below all the bullet points on the things that we currently have and we're going to continue to add value to this group over time. And the cool thing about this group is you can cancel on any time, so there's no commitment. You can sign up right now for whatever price it says down there. It's going to continue to grow up, grow and grow. I will tell you that this group initially started at one hundred and forty nine and it's going to continue to rise right so now is going to be the best price to get in on it. You can cancel on any time, just known that when you come back, it's going to be at the elevated price. And that's what we thought we'd do. And those of you that are doing seven to eight figures, once you join the group where actually you can even see it, there's an application to join a live mastermind. So this is a live Mastermind that where you'll be able to hang out with Neil and myself and we'll have other agency owners at your level. But that's for agencies that are doing seven figures and above. I think once we have enough demand for maybe the six figure groups, we'll figure something out there. But for right now, seven and eight figures for an in person mastermind and then online community a bunch of other benefits. If you're doing six figures and below, you'll see that right below, and then we'll continue to figure out and grow to sing as we as we continue on. So without further ado, go ahead and sign up below. If it's not for you, that solely, fine too, but no commitment. Why not if it helps you, If you think it can even help you ten x the price that you're paying for one month, then why not just give it a shot. Right, So that's it for this little intro over here, and just go sign up somewhere over here and we'll catch you inside. You know. I was listening to a podcast with Tim Ferris, I think he did it with Kevin Rose, and he said this a couple of times, but he said that there will never be another Oprah because the half life of fame is going to come down so much, meaning that you know, because of because of TikTok, because of Instagram, because of YouTube. There's there's a quick rise of people, but then there's always gonna be someone else that rises up quick, up and down, up and down, up and down. And so like Oprah, a lot of these people back in the day it was just a couple of channels, right, and then you have cable that came out, but like they monopolize the attention and that's how you became someone like an Oprah. And so you know that that reinforces that the need to work with these influencers as they come up and down because you just don't know. So you're almost going to need to have someone on your team that's a good talent spot for these influencers that knows who's coming up and then what kind of deal to negotiate with them. Well, back in the day, it would take a while for Oprah to build up her brand with the adoption of technology, just like you discussed earlier on how long it took for electricity to get around the world and for everyone to really adopt it. It took what did you say, forty fifty years? Forty five fifty years for electricity and then color TV is like twenty thirty years, I think, yeah, And the smartphone was very I don't know, smartphone was maybe you got to seventy five percent penetration in maybe like tennis years or so. AI penetration in like a year or two. AI penetration in the US it's already reached one hundred and thirty one hundred and twenty five million people or something, So that's a third of the population. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of crazy. And I also think there's more people who are leveraging AI, but they're just not counted because they're using platforms that have AI, like Google, and they just don't know. Yeah, but if you look at influencers now, right, because of technology and mass distribution, they're actually growing way faster than OPRAH growing. They're growing way faster. But the problem is because it's more democratized, nobody can hold all the attention for that long anymore, which I think is good. It's a good thing because all the keep in mind, everyone like all the attention with media like Fox do, CNBC, I don't care where you lean politically. They had distribution and they could actually, like my parents used to say, when they're watching the news all the time, as it was the most important thing in the world. But now because of all the democratization of news of information, we can all make decisions for ourselves, right, and we're not trying to get political here, and you can get the news whenever you want on demand. Yeah, yeah, i'd definitely say it. And then The other thing that you end up seeing is it's not only that these brands grow and they can fade really quickly. They're also not the hot thing anymore. And I'll give you an example. Remember when Uber came about, it was a hot thing for a while. Same with Warby Parker, same with Pinterest. But now Pindrist is still a legitimate, big company. And this happens with both personal and corporate brands. No one talks about a lot of these companies as much as they did in the past. You know what the key is, you have to keep reventing yourself. So like when you look at the rock, right, the rock even in w w E Rock, there's so many versions of the rock. I don't know if you watch this, but like you know, there's there was the Nation Rock, then there was then there was a Hollywood Rock, right, please explain these. I don't know what the Nation the Rock I mean. He had an evolution in WWE, right, like first he started out nobody liked him, and then he joined a group called the Nation, right, and then later he became like the Corporate Rock where he joined like Vince McMahon and Stephanie McMahon and anyway, My point is he kept reinventing himself and then he went to Hollywood. Did he actually went to Hollywood? He became an actor, he owns like tequila brands now and then now he's back in a WWE turning it around. He's he's the owner of what was it called again, the group t K O uh group, part owner of Endeavor. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah right because WWE is owned by Yeah, so t K which my endeavor owns WWE and UFC. Yes, and they bought a they bought a slapping Championship too, Dude, I've seen that on Instagram. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, And so Dana, I think it's data white right, He's like, oh no, everyone makes fun of it. If it's the best thing ever, we're gonna make it so big. And anyway, point is, so someone like the Rock, He's constantly reinventing himself. That's why he stays relevant, right, mister Bees like he's going. He's gone from spectacle videos like short videos, quick cuts and everything, to not as many quick cuts. Now there's storytelling, Now there's emotion, there's different formats. He's constantly reinventing himself. Even in this podcast, we've reinvented it. We're having longer conversations now, we're talking about news, and we're gonna have to continue to reinvent otherwise people aren't going to listen anymore. So that's right, but that's the only way to end up doing it. But it is, it does get harder. Just look at single grain. Okay, you guys, try to reinvent yourself this year as AI forward agency where you're folks. Really, I'm We're doing a lot of things behind the scenes that I'm doing, but forward wise I haven't really all right, but either way, you've been running the business for how many years? I've had the business for six seven? No, like nine nine years after Sujin? Yeah, like fully, so you had nine years, nine ten years? Yeah? All right. You guys are decent size. You have a good amount of employees. I was out, Yeah, yeah, go on. How easy is it for you to continue to reinmit yourself to the public each year? It's hard? Yeah, it's hard. Yeah. How do you how do you stay relevant? I think the difference now is if you ask me, okay, how long have you had MP Digital four? This will be our seventh year. How many years would you say those seven years, you were completely focused on Empy Digital all seven years, Okay, So I would say I was probably focused on single grain for this year. Now I'm completely focused maybe the last two three years or so, So I've probably been really focused on single grain for four out of the nine years. I would give you hardcore focus for like two or three of the years. I'll take it. I'll take it because even the other If you're saying four, maybe you were, but you were also spending a lot of time on like that ammunition side gaming style, old people's homes. And I'm not saying you weren't more focused on single ring, but if you look at your last two three years, you've really cut down on everything and you're just like, no, no, this is getting one hundred and ten percent of my focus. Well before you were getting more and more focused on single rain, but you still had distractions and you slowly cut them down, so instead of being you know, thirty percent to start going forty fifty, sixty seventy. Although I would say year one, you're probably really focus on it because you were table rained. Yes, No, so year one that's when I was probably No, That's when I made it go from bad's worse. We dropped all the way down to one person really in the first year of single grain. Yeah, I thought you had to clean it all up. No, no, no, I was trying to. But I remember I told you I read a book called Let My People Go Surfing, and I took it too literally because the Patagonia co founder is like, oh, yeah, I let my people go surfing at work. So I was like, oh, okay, well, I'm just not going to show up to the office anymore. And then everything started going downhill. So my fault at the end of the day. But that's what happened, all right. So the two three years is actually pretty sound. Yeah, two three years I would say. But going back to your question again about about reinventing yourself, Yeah, I think if you're locked in on it to the outside, you look like you're focused. If you're doing too many things and you're trying to revent yourself, you actually look like you're sloppy at the end of the day. And I heard his quote somewhere recently, but it's like, if you want to and this is from from God, that does really well. I forgot his day. But if you want to operate, you can only operate one or two things max. If you want to manage, you can manage like up to six things. And that's it unless you're Elon Musk. Yeah, he's operating many things. Yeah, there's always an exception to the rule. Yeah, you know, I got rid of my tesla, right, Yeah, you told me that for the third time. Alty, And then I saw I saw your driver this morning, and I saw your new car. I was like, film, how many new cars does he need? Right? Yeah? Yeah, he just laughed at me. I go through like their tic TACs. Yeah. Yeah, So you know, it's interesting, by the way, it's you got to know your strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day. One of Neil's weaknesses you just can't drive, which is a fair It's it's a fair weakness. I'm a I'm a terrible driver. Eric is a really good driver. You know what it's because, interestingly enough, Neil can't focus when he drives. I focus when I drive. I can't. I just think about work. Yeah, but your life is on a line. It doesn't make any a neurological person. It doesn't make any logical sense. No, I can't turn off work. That's the problem. Yeah. Well, by the way, if you guys haven't seen Eric's car, he has one of the most beautiful cars that I've ever seen, the colors of me, except you haven't seen Neil's cars, which I will not even talk about his cars right now. So Neil has a few very nice cars. We'll just put it that way. They're very nice. Let's move on to a different time. Yeah. Oh here, I got a good one here. So you know, you know Frame dot io. Have you used it? Dude? I've been using the frame do io before it was even part of Adobe. Yep, we'll same here. When when did you start using it? Like probably in the first week that it came out? When was this long time ago? We've been using a frame I've been using it since like twenty seventeen. Yeah, when we were an early customer Frame Yeah. Anyway, So they sold for a one point three billion dollars so Adobe, this guy Emery Wells, he tweeted this. So I built and sold Frame dot io for one point three billion dollars to Adobe, and along the way I received plenty of advice that turned out to be entirely off the mark. Here's a look at some of the most glaring misdirections. So we're going to go through each one and react to each one. Okay, so number one, we're gonna start with number one. As CEO, focus on executive business tasks, right, That was the quote, So he says, this couldn't be further from the truth. The core purpose of any company is the product it offers. As CEO, your primary role is to ensure that this product is the most valuable it can be for your customers. It's not just about overseeing, it's about being integrally involved in delivering quality. Agree or disagree with that, I totally agree. I don't think CEOs should be focusing on executive tasks. We always tell our executives we expect them to be player coaches. If they're not willing to get their hands dirty, they're not a fit for our business as CEO, though, as a CEO we tell everyone executives and CEO, I think, really, what this says to me is and I think you so I would say we're both on the same page here because I used to not get involved in the details around the product and the service. I call it the product. It's the service, right that we deliver services for our respective agencies. But at the end of the day, though, whatever you're selling, whatever you guys are servicing, it's a reflection of you, and you have to be somewhat involved in You have to be involved in details, like somewhat at the very least. My mistake in the past was not being involved with them. So that's the first one, right, So we agree on that. All right, welcome to the Marketing School school group. Okay, so Marketing school skool group, right, And so this is a free group that Neil and I are doing. And what I want to do with the free marketing community is I want to build a very strong group of people that are sharing the latest knowledge, the latest trends, the latest topics, and we'll share our content as well, and we just want people to engage with each other and build a strong community, right because people ultimately stay for community at the end of the day, people are longing for community. And we thought, with all the free content that we do, what's been missing a free community where we can continue to help people level up in terms of their marketing and hopefully we can help people find jobs. In the group, we can even maybe even create a job board, but even offer a lot of our other content package it up for you just to help you get better at whatever it is that you do in the world of marketing and whatever it is that you do in the world of business. Right. So, Neil and myself, you know, we thought that you know, from a retention standpoint, we do a lot, we do very well with the acquisition on all the channels that we have, all the audiences that we have. But from a retention standpoint, building something that's that we think we can be proud of for a very long time, why not do a free group, right, So we have a paid group obviously called the Agency Owners Associations for Agency Owners and if you want to go to that, there'll be a link somewhere over over here to that. But this group will always be free and as long as people are continuing to engage, this group's continuing to grow, then we'll continue to invest more resources into it. But we thought this was a long time coming. So you can sign up for free. You might have to fill out some information or not. You might you will have to fill out some information so we get a sense for where you are and then we can start to help segment the group two right, based on whatever it is that you're looking for, because we want to continue to add value and hopefully we'll have a very strong database of people and you just tell us what you're looking for, what you need, and hopefully we can make those connections. So go ahead and sign up somewhere over here and we'll see you inside. Number two. To scale, you need to decentralized decision making. Do you know what that means? You can't have all decisions go to you. Yeah, so, he says, Actually the opposite is often more effective. As organizations grow more complex, Centralized decision making can slice through red tape and foster quicker action. Even environments that champion decentralized processes, top down leadership often proves to be the fastest route, which is what Jensen Wang does right. He cuts out the direct the middle managers, sixty direct reports. Let's just get to it. Yeah, we have it set up the same way. It's all centralized for us. Yep. So what does it look like for you guys? It's me and Mike, and Mike make all the decisions in the company, got it? And what level ortant decisions? If something is like five grand, we're not making a decision on or even ten grand. Okay, so this is like buying another company. This is like making an executive higher, right, expanding into a country. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, that makes sense. And you guys are how often are you guys talking daily? Daily? Like a couple of times a day, right, yes, not always together, but we're pretty in synct got it. And by the way, everyone, these calls aren't scheduled. You guys are just calling. Yeah, we do ad hoc yep, all right. Number three CEOs shouldn't get caught up in the details. This is a myth. Consider leaders like Steve jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Brian Cheske, and the Collison brothers all are slash. We're deeply involved in intricacies of their business, of their businesses. Emulating their approach is not misguided. It's a blueprint for hands on leadership. Remember a couple weeks ago we talked about how Mark Zuckerberg is like, no, I actually don't really believe in delegation, Like you have to be very involved. I mean here, I'll start first, Hey, I drank the whole co kool aid. Right, It's like, yeah, you know, you want to hire an operator and CEO, get out of their way as quickly as possible, and I'll tell you what didn't really work out, And if you want to eat glass for a couple of years, be my guest, right, So I will say being involved, like absolutely, be caught up in the details, because nobody's gonna want to move it as quickly as you want to move it, and nobody's as incentivized as you are to move it forward. Go ahead. You already know what I'm gonna answer with this one, So yeah, you're just seeing. And by the way, Neil's a very detail oranged verson. We both took a personality test. His detail oriented is like ninety nine percent out of one hundred, mine six percent. Just so everyone knows. Yeah, yeah, Okay, we're gonna finish this off and we're gonna do four and five and then we're gonna wrap it up here really quickly. All my executives and my co founders are all very detail oriented as well. But you didn't design it that way. No. But I tend to remember, you're talking to me about your Gary Vee interview and you're talking about brands versus creator, data versus creativity. Huh. Most my leadership is very similar to me. Where they're detail oriented. They're very data driven, so they're like you in many ways. Interesting, so the other way where I try to plug my weaknesses, but I think it's good to have a mix of both. I do focus on plugging the weaknesses, but culturally if they're not like data driven, it's a hard fit where I know I'm not going to agree with them in the future. You're gonna hate talking to them exactly. Yeah. Yeah, So, but that's actually plugging your weakness because you realize you can't deal with it correct. So like, for example, our CEO is amazing at managing I'm not right, So that's plugging my weakness. And he knows the product and service better than me because he's been doing it for more than twenty years at an agency. And he gets in the in the weeds if a client is training, even if it's three hundred grand, which is a very tiny percentage of revenue, he gets pissed off and wants to figure out why and how to fix it so it doesn't happen. I guess yeah. I think the key thing here is you have to understand yourself. If you're trying to take something away from this, you really have to do the work. Like if you need to go talk to your team and figure out your zone of genius, all these things, you need to actually go put in the work and be open to feedback at the end of the day. So number four tenext engineers are a myth and believe in them is harmful. Quite the contrary, In many teams, a small practice, a small fraction on the workforce often generates the majority of outcomes. Recognizing and nurturing high performing individuals isn't just realistic, it's crucial. Yeah, we don't have big engineering teams. We feel that when you add people just like what star players you kind of with with Mike and Mike, right, those are your star players, Like they're driving more than a ten X outcome than a regular burst. Sure, yeah, but they're not engineers. But we also do have amazing engineers, but we don't have tons of them. We should just say the tenex's employee sure is a myth. Yeah, so in that case, like, yeah, we agree with this guy. Dude. Right before we started recording this podcast, all right, I was talking to my co founder Mike. My CEO is also named Mike, but my co founder is named Mike as well. Yeah, I was talking to my co founder and I was telling him how, you know, we're talking about the CEO and how he spends a lot of time generating new business right and working with clients and making sure clients are happy. And we both said we wish we could buy ten of them, like higher ten of them, not buy but higher. Yeah, wait to hire my AI agents. Remember you said this, but I remember you said this sound was like twenty four to twenty five years old. And then you're like, man, it'd be nice if we could have like half an Eric or something. This is way back in the day when we first met each other. But I think, what we're just to reinforce this facts. So there are definitely ten EX employees that are out there. I would argue that you finding your co founder Mike, like, I know, for a while you're looking for that ten X partner, and I think once you found Mike, like that was it right there, and then that was the that was a big inflection point. Would you agree or disagree with that he was able to solve a lot of this stuff I was weak at, Like, he's really good at operations and managing sales, teams. Not only does he like learning, which I do too, but he likes getting in the weeds and he pays attention to all the details. But he does it for the stuff I'm weak at. He's also pretty empathetic too. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's good at that. Okay, last one, last one, not least everyone. So the quote here is you must validate every decision with customer research. Contrary to popular belief, not all successful decisions from extensive customer research. Many of my pivotal choices were guided by my own instincts and preferences for the product. Trusting your vision and building a product that you would use yourself can lead to creating something that resonates deeply with your customers. Personal intuition can be a potent tool in product development. I would say that's absolutely true, because your gut comes from all the experiences that you've developed over years, and you have your own taste, just like you have your taste, I have mine. You have a certain working style, I have mine. I think one of my biggest mistakes was offloading that to somebody else and thinking that they could figure it out for me, and then on my end, I would say, we do a combo of both. We use our gut, but we also look at data and what other people are saying, and that also guides our decisions. But we do a combination of both. You can't just rely on what other people are doing and the data out there. And the main reason being is you're only going to be just as good as them if you try to copy all the same stuff. Sometimes when you just look at stuff like my team will sim me a problem like this is not usable, fix this and that, And I don't care what the stats of the data shows. You just know, like why do you need to take ten clicks when you could have gave it to them in two clicks. Yeah. It's just like when you don't give one of your kids a fork and think you go put it in a little socket, right. Yeah, It's just one of those things that are that that's intuitive. And so look, I think these were good lessons from the frame dot O Frame dot Io founder. And like any advice that you get, always take it with a grain of salt. And he just proved five different things over here. And I think if you take advice to literally, like when I read that book, let my people go surfing it tends to hurt sometimes because anybody's advice comes from their experiences, and that's their experiences. Yes, but you've also learned too. When I first met you, you would read books and you'd usually, depending on the book you read, you would take what you learned and you would implement it and you would take it to heart. And now as you progress, and we've all made mistakes and we've all learned from experiences, you will now read a book and you'll take concepts you like and implement and ignore the rest or evaluate or maybe discuss them with other people. But you don't just go out there and be like, oh, everyone said this book, let me just go and implement everything in it. Yep. It changes over time, right, you gain more experience from it. But what I'll say about Neil before we get out of here, it's going back to mic really quick. Over the years, Neil was looking for that ten X partner. It took some time to get there, but I think Neil was always reaching out to see who who that could be. And I would say, those of you that can find that partner, it gets it gets more manageable once you have it. You've always had co founders around you, That's what I would say, and they take a big load off your shoulders because it does get lowly. It's also hard to do it by yourself like Eric's doing. And I've never been a CEO. I think that's the crappiest job out there. It's hard, a lot of ups and downs. And don't get me wrong, as a co founder you still have to deal with a lot of the crap and the ups and downs. But being the CEO is the hardest job. I'm just not good at it, so I try not to do it. It's the hardest show. And plus, like the other thing is you've seen We've talked about this before on the podcast. But you look at a Darmashaw, you look at you look at some other people. They're just focused on what they're good at and they're like, I never want to touch I'd rather Darmash that day, He's like, I'd rather not be average at something when I can be good at something else, Right, I could be a world class at something else. And to wrap this up on the ceopiece, we've talked about this, but I can go a little deeper here. It's nobody's ever going to pat you on the back. Right, you're always eating crap. By the way, you're the last one to eat too. Right, if things are going bad at the company, you're funding the company. You're not making any money. Right, you're dealing with all the people problems. Anything people don't want to do, you're going to do it. You're making the ultimate sacrifice. And I think still though, you're going to learn a lot at the end of the day, Right, you're gonna come out if you can come out of it, you're gonna come out of it stronger. But a lot of people tend to give up, and a lot that's why a lot of people just aren't cut out for it. So, as a CEO or as a founder CEO, what do you spend majority of your day on If you had to pick one thing, Like, what's the biggest thing? You spend majority of your time on problems? So just solving different problems, yeah, whatever, Like a lot of by the way, a lot of stuff gets dropped off. Even though we have this called we if they bring a problem, they have to come up with like three four solutions or so, and then they need to pick the best one. Even in that situation, sometimes I need to still need to sit back and figure out how to coach them and say, well, no, this thinking, this thinking isn't right here. Oh I'm all over recruiting, all over recruiting, and then I'm all over marketing as well. I have to help with sales sometimes. So everything right, it's all the things that people don't want to do. But hey, makes sense. It is what it is, So I'm not complaining by the way, It's just it is what it is. So yeah, no, it's tough when it is rewarding, I will say that. So, yeah, it's tough when you get pulled into tons of directions. Luckily for me, I don't have to do that. I you know it' spending. I don't even spend that much time even on marketing. I spend almost all my time on just strategy. Yeah, yeah, I'm an a strategy Yeah. All right, So that is it for today, and go to Marketing School the iOS Slash Agency to sign up for our Agency Owners Association. The group has continue to grow and by the way, we're upping the price every now and then as we continue to increase value there, so go check it out if you want to grow your agency faster. Marketing School and the Ioslash Agency. Don't forget the rate of for you subscribe. It helps us grow and thank you for your attention. Check us out on YouTube as well.