Leveling Up with Eric Siu

Improving your income can start with some very simple changes.

1. Join peer groups Hang out with people that are near your level, a little ahead of you, and people that are way ahead of you. Being able to lean on other people's experience goes a long way.

2. Find the right coaches If the Kobe Bryants and the Michael Jordans of the world have coaches, then you can definitely benefit from coaching too. But you need to have a really good idea of what you need.

3. Understand relationship capital Build connections for yourself, and connect other people to help them. Being a connector goes a long way.

4. Create a content habit Create content to learn about the things you're teaching; it'll help you articulate your thoughts more clearly too. Content helps people discover you, and that leads to more relationships.

5. Have very specific goals Constantly remind yourself of what you're striving for. Put post-its where you brush your teeth | near your monitor | on your fridge, etc.

6. Write down your top 3 goals for the day To achieve your larger goals, you have to achieve the smaller ones first. If you're getting 3 important (meaningful?) things done per day, you're well on your way to achieving what you want to.

7. Create a health habit Get good sleep. Eat well. Exercise. You won't perform as well as you can at work if you're not healthy. It's not a waste of time to do those things, it's an investment into better performance.

Staying ahead of the pack and knowing what the next big thing is is not an easy skill, but it’s one today’s guest, Clinton Sparks, has mastered. As a Grammy-nominated producer, with over 75 million records sold, it would have been easy for Clinton to rest on his laurels and stick with music only. Instead, he is the former Vice President for Business Development at FaZe Clan, a professional esports company, author, and founder of Get Familiar Radio. Sparks  recently resigned from Faze and started the worlds most diverse gaming organization called XSET.

We kick off the show by learning more about esports and why Clinton thinks marketers should be paying more attention to it. He talks about the importance of understanding this young, internet-savvy generation who can spot inauthentic advertising a mile away. We find out more about how to properly speak to gamers and discover what resonates with them. We then turn our attention to how Clinton’s upbringing fostered his entrepreneurial spirit and the value of building enduring relationships. Clinton struggled to find his place in the world, but through hard work, honoring his relationships, and showing empathy, he has managed to succeed. From there, we move onto the younger generation’s desire for fame over greatness and how the culture of instant gratification has devalued the true meaning of the hustle. Throughout the episode, Clinton highlights the importance of your reputation and ensuring that business deals are about reciprocity over financial gain. We wrap the show up with a look at what is on the horizon in the esports world along with the main takeaways from Clinton’s book, How To Win Big in The Music Business. Tune in today!

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

• [00:41] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast!
• [00:20] An overview of Clinton’s background and some of his professional achievements.
• [01:26] Why marketers need to pay more attention to and spend more in esports.
• [02:32] Clinton’s suggestions of good places to start when delving into esports marketing.
• [03:52] How the gaming mentality is different from the typical consumer.
• [05:26] Hear more about Wendy’s recent Fortnite marketing campaign.
• [07:42] Find out more about how Clinton always manages to stay ahead of the curve. 
• [09:41] The scene from Good Will Hunting that Clinton finds so relevant to the world today.
• [12:29] Clinton shares more on his book, How To Win Big in The Music Business. 
• [14:55] The importance of being honest about where you are and where you aspire to be.
• [15:50] Why Clinton thinks people should focus on greatness and not fame to truly succeed. 
• [18:36] Hear more about Clinton’s expanded definition of greatness.
• [19:35] Clinton’s tips on building great relationships and his dirt pile strategy.
• [22:05] What is currently exciting Clinton most in the esports world.
• [25:11] Why it’s important to consider how valuable a business deal is for the other person.
• [26:43] Hear about why Clinton’s favorite business tool is social media and how he uses it.
• [29:20] Clinton’s favorite business book.
• [31:45] What to expect from Clinton’s book, the main takeaways, and how to find it.
• [34:51] The best way to find Clinton online.

Resources From The Interview:

• Clinton Sparks on Instagram
• Clinton Sparks on Twitter
• Clinton Sparks on LinkedIn
• Clinton Sparks on Facebook
• How To Win Big in The Music Business
• FaZe Clan

Leave Some Feedback:

• What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.
• Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here

Connect with Eric Siu: 

• Growth Everywhere
• Single Grain
• Eric Siu on Twitter

Is your podcast stuck? Are you wondering how everyone else got their show to be successful, while your show is still struggling to get downloads? That used to be me. For over a year I was only getting 9 downloads a day. It took me over 2 years to finally learn how to breakthrough to the next level and after deploying these strategies, I'm now well over 1.2 MILLION downloads a month.

You don't have to go at this the hard way.

Follow these strategies to skyrocket your downloads today.

Joining a firm as CEO requires a very specific skillset, and today we chat with Dennis Fois about his journey with Copper in this capacity, and what differentiates the company in the CRM space. Most CRMs have placed too much focus on increasing visibility at the company level at the cost of productivity at the user level, but Copper is different. In a nutshell, Copper is a productivity CRM designed for companies that use G Suite. Dennis begins by sketching out his experience and specialty of joining firms as their CEO to boost their scaling process and journey to product-market fit. From there, he gives us an idea of the vision at Copper – to be truly user-focused and increase adoption while making it more organic by honing in on amazing UX. We drill down on the process whereby a company onboards a CEO next, and Dennis does a great job of explaining when, how, and why this should happen, the typical differences between CEOs and founders, and what his experience joining Copper in the middle of their journey looked like. Building a great company culture across distributed and remote teams becomes our next main talking point, and Dennis lays out his brilliant thinking and approach to this matter. Make sure you catch today’s interview to learn how a CEO should run a firm from a man that was born for the role.

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

• [00:41] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast!
• [00:52] Dennis’s travels, his professional experience, and the value he provides as a CEO.
• [01:35] What differentiates Copper from other CRMs: Focusing on UX and productivity. 
• [02:19] How Copper charges on a per-user/per-month basis in a three-tiered model.
• [02:29] Growth rates for Copper after the pandemic and how their user focus affects this.
• [03:46] What captured Dennis’s attention at Copper and the roles of CEOs versus founders.
• [06:08] When and how CEOs should be hired according to Dennis’s experience of this process. 
• [07:22] Why an external CEO should be hired and how to find one.
• [08:40] The process for Dennis as far as his onboarding with Copper and what went right. 
• [10:38] Building a healthy company culture in a virtual/remote work landscape after COVID.
• [16:45] Considerations and insight while building a long-form writing culture in the company.
• [19:25] Growth areas for Copper: Scaling spend down while getting more conversions.
• [19:55] How people are finding/adopting Copper because they need it, not because they found it on an app store.
• [20:23] Dennis’s favorite tool that isn’t Copper and how he uses it.
• [20:49] A book recommendation from Dennis and other media he likes to consume.
• [21:44] Where to learn more about Copper as well as Dennis.

Resources From The Interview:

• Dennis Fois on LinkedIn
• Copper
• G Suite
• Jon Lee on LinkedIn
• Vonage (NewVoiceMedia)
• Peloton
• Basecamp
• Amazon
• Confluence
• Bear
• Malcolm Gladwell
• Tim Ferriss

Leave Some Feedback:

• What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.
• Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here

Connect with Eric Siu: 

• Growth Everywhere
• Single Grain
• Eric Siu on Twitter

Today we give you a step-by-step checklist for spying on your competition’s marketing. There are great tools for seeing what your competitors are getting up to in terms of their content, SEO, and ads, which allows you to stay ahead of the curve. Tune in to hear what kinds of things you want to be on the lookout for when spying on your competition! 

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

• [00:25] Today’s topic: A Step-by-Step Checklist to Spying on Your Competition’s Marketing. 
• [00:34] Hear why it is important to spy on your competition’s marketing. 
• [01:00] You can also benefit from seeing what indirect competitors are getting up to. 
• [01:04] Examples of the kinds of things to look at when spying on advertising campaigns. 
• [01:55] BuiltWith and Wayback Machine will show you what technology people are using. 
• [02:26] Use Social Blade to see the growth rate of various channels. 
• [02:45] A list of tools that will show you what others are doing in terms of content and SEO.
• [03:11] SimilarWeb shows referring websites and the breakdown of traffic. 
• [03:41] Google Alters will notify you every time your competition does something new.  
• [04:01] If you are in the tech world, check out Crunchbase to follow news about competitors. 
• [04:21] That’s it for today!
• [04:22] To stay updated with events and learn more about our mastermind, go to the Marketing School site for more information or text us on 310-349-3785!

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

ClickFunnels

Adbeat

BuiltWith

Wayback Machine 

Social Blade

Ahrefs

SEMrush

Ubersuggest

BuzzSumo

SimilarWeb

Crunchbase

Leave Some Feedback:

• What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below
• Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.

Connect with Us: 

• Neilpatel.com

Being focused on the profit might keep you out of harms way, but will it make you rich? Probably not. The massive advantage companies like Amazon have is how they redeploy their profits into the company. By reinvesting your margin into creating new and better products, you will leap ahead of your competition by a long shot.

Can you really afford to NOT be an influencer in today's digital world? In this episode, Eric shares some of the insane advantages you can have by creating your "one man" media brand, and how to leverage an audience to achieve your wildest goals.

Most legacy HR software is complicated, costly, takes forever to get up and running, and worst of all seems to neglect one of its primary concerns – people. Zenefits changes this by bringing everything HR into one radically simple app, including the human element. Today we chat with Kevin Marasco, CMO at Zenefits about its unusual growth story, while also digging into his accidental journey into marketing as well as his favorite hobby – ultra-marathons! Kevin starts out by telling us how he switched from engineering to marketing and software development as a student, thereafter stumbling into what became a 15 year-plus path through multiple exits with different high growth SaaS companies. From there, we get into the tumultuous and controversial story of Zenefits, touching on its pivot from an online insurance broker to HR SaaS platform and Kevin’s take on its 2016 scandal. Kevin takes us on a deep dive next into what exactly Zenefits does as an HR platform built for people, weighing in on its quick onboarding process and services in the fields of compensation, performance, and wellbeing. After hearing about pricing models, growth metrics, and an updated strategy for increasing organic reach at Zenefits, we dig into Kevin’s passion for ultra-marathons. He talks about why he started them, how they have helped in a charitable as well as a personal sense, and how he honed his skill for them in no time using a continuous improvement formula! Be sure to tune in!

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

• [00:41] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast!
• [01:25] Kevin’s accidental road into marketing and experience in the high growth SaaS sphere.
• [04:47] Being a part of Zenefits’ journey from online insurance broker to SaaS platform. 
• [06:44] Leading with freemium versus pureplay SaaS and a key Zenefits differentiator: quick onboarding.
• [07:22] Zenefits’ features; displacing legacy HR platforms by being built for people, not processes.
• [09:36] The pricing structures at Zenefits from eight to 21 dollars per employee.
• [09:50] Differences between mediatized portrayals and actual perceptions of Zenefits’ scandal. 
• [12:06] Metrics for growth, retention, customers, and Zenefits’ payroll solution adoption rates.
• [13:12] Moving to a more widespread and organic growth model and the benefits of this.
• [14:09] What ultra-marathons are, why Kevin does them, his mindset, and training process.
• [17:04] Why Kevin’s favorite business tool is Gong and how it improves marketing messaging. 
• [17:36] Turning adversity into advantage and Kevin’s favorite book on this topic.
• [18:37] The best way for people to learn more about Zenefits and find Kevin online.

Resources From The Interview:

• Kevin Marasco on LinkedIn
• Zenefits
• HireVue
• Growth Everywhere with Mark Newman
• U2
• Drake on Instagram
• Metallica
• HubSpot
• Workday
• Oracle
• SAP
• TechCrunch
• David O. Sacks on LinkedIn
• Gong
• Ryan Holiday
• Growth Everywhere with Ryan Holiday

Leave Some Feedback:

• What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.
• Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here

Connect with Eric Siu: 

• Growth Everywhere
• Single Grain
• Eric Siu on Twitter

Are you looking for creative ways to monetize your audience? Even if you have a small audience and are just starting out, these tips can help you think outside of the box and start generating revenue from your efforts.

Acquiring new customers is one thing, but keeping them is entirely another. Today we have Sunil Thomas on the show to speak about his company, CleverTap, a leading customer engagement and retention platform that helps brands maximize user time value. CleverTap tracks groups, segments, and data, and helps brands use it to market to their customers. For Sunil, what makes CleverTap unique is that they take a holistic view of customer retention by serving four categories: behavior analytics, segmentation, marketing automation, and individualization, using a mixture of manual and automated approaches to service delivery in each. Sunil shares details about some of CleverTap’s main clients and the verticals they occupy, before weighing in on why their customers who offer subscription models get the best out of their offering. We talk pricing structures and growth metrics for CleverTap and hear more on what their journey from idea to evangelization and product-market fit looked like. Our exchange covers the user experience of CleverTap too, and Sunil shares insights into the growth customers have experienced after adopting their platform as well as how open and compatible it is. We wrap up this great chat hearing bout Sunil’s favorite books and tools, so for all this and more, be sure to tune in!

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

• [00:41] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast!
• [00:45] Where Sunil got his surname from considering he was born in India.
• [01:21] CleverTap’s main service helping brands with retention and conversion rates. 
• [02:14] Metrics for clients, client success, and verticals CleverTap serves.
• [04:15] Four user retention categories and how CleverTap catapulted their growth.
• [05:18] Using manual and AI-assisted automation to help retain users in four categories.
• [06:32] Whether CleverTap best serves clients with mobile or web-based businesses.
• [08:14] CleverTap’s pricing structures based on user volume and add-on features.
• [10:30] Challenges educating buyers that solving user retention is important. 
• [12:28] The two and a half year journey to first payment and product-market fit.
• [14:13] Growth metrics for CleverTap and how they have more than doubled revenue each year. 
• [15:21] The difference between CleverTap and HubSpot: B2B versus B2C.
• [15:53] Favorite books of Sunil’s and why he loves Patrick Lencioni’s fable style.
• [16:32] Getting things done and why Sunil’s favorite business tool is Microsoft OneNote.
• [18:00] How to get in touch with Sunil and learn more about CleverTap.

Resources From The Interview:

• Sunil Thomas on LinkedIn
• Sunil Thomas on Twitter
• CleverTap
• Domino’s

• The Five Dysfunctions

• The Ideal Team Player

• Microsoft OneNote
• Notion
• Roam
• David Allen

• Getting Things Done

• Leveling Up with David Allen
• TechCrunch
• Tom Tunguz
• Growth Everywhere Episode 96: Tom Tunguz

• Must read book: Death By Meeting, The Advantage

Leave Some Feedback:

• What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.

• Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here

• Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes

• Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed

Connect with Eric Siu: 

• Growth Everywhere

• Single Grain

• Eric Siu on Twitter