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I’m joined by Eric Siu, Founder of the digital marketing agency Single Grain. We discuss million-dollar trends and opportunities entrepreneurs should have on their radar right now, including pay-per-performance agencies, AI customer service, AI transformation agencies, and so much more.
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Episode Timestamps
00:00 First business idea: Pay per performance agencies
05:05 Second business idea: AI customer service agencies
09:28 The potential of Smart Contracts
11:35 How to gamify daily life
15:50 Lifestyle trends to have on your radar
20:12 Existing products you can rebrand
23:39 Opportunities for agency owners
25:40 Third business idea: AI transformation agencies
If you enjoy the podcast, consider leaving a review to help others discover the show :)
05:05 Second business idea: AI customer service agencies
09:28 The potential of Smart Contracts
11:35 How to gamify daily life
15:50 Lifestyle trends to have on your radar
20:12 Existing products you can rebrand
23:39 Opportunities for agency owners
25:40 Third business idea: AI transformation agencies
If you enjoy the podcast, consider leaving a review to help others discover the show :)
Creators & Guests
What is The Startup Ideas Pod?
This is the startup ideas podcast. Hosted by Greg Isenberg (CEO Late Checkout, ex-advisor of Reddit, TikTok etc).
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LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/
Free 5 day course on using the ACP method to turn strangers into customers via internet audiences and communities over here https://www.communityempire.co/
Eric [00:00:00]:
Have you seen retail AI? For sure you have?
Greg [00:00:02]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:00:02]:
When I did the demo last week, like, they were setting up like a dental appointment, I would try to, you know, throw it off like it was perfect. I was like, imagine if you can build this at scale now. They can take the call with the lead. They can then set up the next call, and then also the lead might say, oh, I need to reschedule. They can handle all the rescheduling. It'll probably get to a point where eventually it can just close the customer too. I think that's going to be a big thing because you saw the Klarna report like two days ago. They think they're going to add 40 million in profit because they added like 700 new agents, AI agents.
Eric [00:00:30]:
So how are we not going to go into this world?
Greg [00:00:33]:
It is so good to see you.
Eric [00:00:35]:
Yeah, been seeing you for a couple of hours already.
Greg [00:00:39]:
But likewise, we just recorded Eric's podcast right before this.
Eric [00:00:43]:
Greg did great.
Greg [00:00:45]:
I had to bring you on for a few ideas that you had, and you've been gracious to write down a few ideas.
Eric [00:00:52]:
Yeah, no great questions.
Greg [00:00:54]:
And I got them right here. So you've got a lot. But let's start with this paper performance agency. Why is that a business idea that's exciting you right now? Because when I hear paper performance, I'm like, hasn't it been done before? Why is paper performance an interesting startup opportunity right now?
Eric [00:01:11]:
I'll give you two stories on this one. So one of my friends, his pay for performance agency does $80 million a year, 30 million in profit, and they have like 30 employees. And it's like, okay, well, that sounds agency is a boring business. It doesn't scale well, blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, all he does is he focuses on one industry and just runs paid ads. He's really good at copywriting, they're really good at strategy. His co founder is technical, and they just build a lot of interesting things for people in that industry. And what they do is, let's say you are in the finance industry.
Eric [00:01:45]:
I'll say, okay, well, how much are you willing to pay per customer? Like $500. I say, okay, we're going to run a test. We're going to run some traffic towards you, and if you like the customers, we can continue the conversation, but there's no need for long term commitment. You only pay us if we perform. That's a good offer. And my whole thing is, as a marketer, if you're a good marketer, you would charge on performance, right? But most people aren't willing to take the risk, and I've always wanted to emulate that model. And so I don't think pay for performance will ever go away. In fact, I think we can go towards, like, smart contracts.
Eric [00:02:16]:
I think it's going to get even crazier.
Greg [00:02:17]:
Right.
Eric [00:02:17]:
The best marketers are going to capture even more value.
Greg [00:02:23]:
I also think that in an AI world where an AI, and just like data world, the marketer has more data, so they're able to underwrite and be like, okay, we're willing to bet on this particular opportunity. Right?
Greg [00:02:38]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:02:38]:
And here's the other thing.
Greg [00:02:40]:
Yes.
Eric [00:02:40]:
And imagine all the stuff you're going to be able to build, which we might get into. But there's another pay for performance agency. They focus on telecoms, and I think they're probably doing over a billion in revenue now. And one of the guys I used to work with at another agency a long time ago, he was one of their early employees, and they were not really doing much at the beginning. I think they were doing like a couple million dollars a year. And then they started to do this pay for performance thing, tongue twister, where they would basically drive you leads through Google Ads, and then they get paid for the leads. Eventually what they did was they got bigger, they started acquiring call centers, and then they would basically just gift wrap a customer for you and then a bunch of private equity, like, invested, but they just gift wrap customers for at T, Verizon, you know, all these T Mobile and all that now. And so I think it's a big opportunity because there's not a lot of capital expenditures to set it all up.
Greg [00:03:33]:
I feel like a lot of people have done pay per performance in the lead space. Is that insurance lead?
Greg [00:03:39]:
Sorry.
Eric [00:03:39]:
Yeah, because you want to go into a space where they'll pay you a lot per lead.
Greg [00:03:43]:
Right.
Greg [00:03:44]:
So what other spaces would be interesting?
Eric [00:03:46]:
I think finance depends on, like, I think there are a lot of crypto companies reaching out to us. Right. A lot of the biggest exchanges, they all want to do pay for performance. And there's money in crypto. Right. AI is a very broad space. I think you need to focus on the actual industry. You can't just say SaaS or AI.
Eric [00:04:04]:
It's got to be like, for, like, hotels would be another example, right? Wherever they're going to pay high cpas, right?
Greg [00:04:12]:
So you just make a list of industries that are paying high cpas and then create a brand, a landing page.
Eric [00:04:23]:
And you test it. And my friend, by the way, what he does is he creates a lot of different brands. So he might have like 20 different websites, like California hotel group or something, or Florida hotel group, and he just drives traffic there. Because if I'm working with you and you decide you want to screw us or something, sure, you can cut us off, but we'll just go to your competitor.
Greg [00:04:42]:
Right.
Eric [00:04:42]:
And so the relationship is a lot more balanced now.
Greg [00:04:45]:
I like it. I feel like.
Greg [00:04:49]:
A lot of the.
Greg [00:04:50]:
Affiliate world does a lot of this paper.
Eric [00:04:53]:
This is basically affiliate marketing. But the way he does it and the way these come, like, these are actual businesses, they're not doing it in like dirty ways, and they're not doing it like they won't do anything it takes to get the conversion.
Greg [00:05:06]:
Other startup idea that you've been thinking a little bit about is AI agents. Tell me about what sort of agents. Well, maybe explain what an agent is and why you're interested in it.
Eric [00:05:18]:
So have you seen retail AI? For sure you have?
Greg [00:05:21]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:05:21]:
Okay, so tell people what it is.
Eric [00:05:24]:
Retail AI is basically like a voice llm, right? And you can basically, when I did the demo last week, it was like they were setting up like a dental appointment. It's like, what's your name? Blah, blah, blah. And I would try to throw it like it was perfect. It's like, oh, when you would, Eric.
Greg [00:05:44]:
You would try to throw it like.
Eric [00:05:45]:
When do you want to have a call? Or like, when do you want to meet? I was like, never. And she's like, okay, well, let us know when you want to meet. And boom, hang up. Right? And so imagine if you can build this at scale. Now, these agents at scale for companies where they can take the call with the lead. They can then set up the next call. And then also the lead might say, oh, I need to reschedule. They can handle all the rescheduling.
Eric [00:06:09]:
So there's a tool called scheduler AI. They've actually gotten really good at rescheduling calls. Now, combine those two, right. It'll probably get to a point where eventually you can just close the customer too, especially if it's SaaS or help a customer or try to set up phone calls to move over to your AES. I think that's going to be a big thing because you saw the Klarna report like two days ago. It's like what they added, they think they're going to add 40 million in profit because they added like 700 new agents, AI agents, and they handled like 2.3 million chats. And I don't know, like 80% to 90% faster. So how are we not going to go into this world?
Greg [00:06:48]:
I also think there's a huge opportunity to just go to companies with big customer service teams and be like, going back to your pay performance thing, it's like, we're about to save you $2 million a month. Give us a percentage of that by using agents for customer service.
Eric [00:07:04]:
So I was thinking on exactly the taking the percentage piece, but then I listened to a podcast episode. I think it was my first million. And a smart bear. God, what's his name again? The guy that found the WP engine? James Cohen, maybe something like that.
Greg [00:07:22]:
The WP engine guy.
Eric [00:07:23]:
The WP engine guy. So this guy, as I was thinking about this, he literally, he was like, yeah, you guys might as well just. You can either try to save a company money and take a percentage there, or you can just go straight for the value and you'll capture, like, four to eight times more. And I'm like, that was the thing that was kind of, like, bugging me in the back of my head.
Greg [00:07:41]:
Go for the value. What does he mean by that?
Eric [00:07:44]:
Instead of saying, hey, I'm going to save you money, it's like, no, I'm going to get you x more customers or something like that, and just charge them up front like that. But I had this little twist, like a little knot in the back of my mind, and he just unknowed it.
Greg [00:08:00]:
Yeah, a good line, a good podcast line. Sometimes that does that. I don't know. I think contingency lawyers, right? Like people who. Lawyers who will say, I'll take your case, but I want 50% of the money I get. I think, like, yeah, if you can.
Eric [00:08:19]:
Take a fat percentage.
Greg [00:08:20]:
Fat percentage. That's awesome.
Greg [00:08:21]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:08:22]:
Which is probably the move.
Greg [00:08:23]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:08:23]:
I also think that if you're trying to start something like an AI customer service agency like that, sometimes it's really helpful to start at a percentage of cost savings, and then you can move to something else.
Greg [00:08:35]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:08:35]:
Or I think to your point, I think if you want to derisk yourself, the entrepreneur wants to derisk himself. Maybe there's a base cost first, just so there's some skin in the game, because I've seen a lot of situations where people will save money and then they just will stiff them and they just won't pay the money.
Greg [00:08:49]:
I think there's an opportunity to create pay per performance conversion rate optimization agency.
Eric [00:08:54]:
You know, there's actually a pay for performance CRO agency based in Atlanta. I forgot their name. Spiralize. That's their name. And let's say your conversion, your ECOM conversion rate is 1%. Right now. I'm like, okay, well, if we double it to 2%, how much money is that worth? Well, 25 million. It's like, okay, well, we're going to take two and a half million on that 10%.
Eric [00:09:14]:
Is that fair? Oh, yeah, it's fair. And that's what they do. They just take a spread that I.
Greg [00:09:19]:
Think is a huge opportunity.
Eric [00:09:20]:
I think that's the move. And then you start laying on smart contracts and everything, which is we're still probably, like, 510 years out.
Greg [00:09:30]:
How do you see smart contracts playing it a role in that?
Eric [00:09:34]:
I think, like, chain link is moving. They do a lot of stuff in enterprise, right. And so I think the way I imagine it working is like, okay, we have an agreement. If we hit these numbers for you, this money goes into escrow and it's released to us. Like, a portion is released to us. If we hit these numbers, if we don't, by this time period, then the money goes back to the customer, and then it's very transparent, and it's fair, and there's no anxiety on either side.
Greg [00:10:00]:
Yeah, I feel like smart contracts is going to be, like, something like that. Such an obvious use case. Yeah, I feel like speculation, bitcoin. Speculation bitcoin goes up, and smart contracts like that. I don't need to trust a third party. That's where I think crypto is really interesting.
Eric [00:10:22]:
That's why DeFi works so well.
Greg [00:10:24]:
Yeah, that's why Defi works so well.
Greg [00:10:25]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:10:25]:
Do you have any other smart contract ideas?
Greg [00:10:28]:
Well, I think also just in general, in general with agencies. I don't know about you, but.
Greg [00:10:37]:
We'Ve.
Greg [00:10:37]:
Had two clients who just didn't pay us because of financial difficulties. One of them particularly is, like, a huge company now. If it was a smart contract, we did our work, we delivered it. They actually loved it. If the money was in an account, it just got, like, escrowed into our account. But what ended up happening was they hit some hard times, and there was a bunch of people, a bunch of debt that they had to pay off. So, yeah, I'm interested in smart contracts plus service providers.
Greg [00:11:16]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:11:16]:
So are they, like, ignoring you now?
Greg [00:11:17]:
No, they're just ignoring us. It sucks.
Eric [00:11:20]:
Yeah, that sucks.
Greg [00:11:20]:
What would you do, honestly, what do you do in a situation like that?
Eric [00:11:25]:
I think even if you sue them, it doesn't matter because it takes forever anyway. And then there's, like, appeals and everything, and it's like, this is why smart contracts need to happen. But I'll give you another example with how we actually built something internally for my agency. I bought the domain for it. Incentive Sol. Right. My whole thing. We're talking a little bit ago about how we see life as a game, or at least I see life as a game.
Eric [00:11:53]:
If that's the case, then how do we just gamify everything? And so we have an employee engagement tool called 15 five. And it's like, if you fill that out on time each week, by end of day, you get a dollar or $2 in Solana, right. Or if you get a really high rating from someone, or you complete all these deadlines in your Asana. A lot of stuff is trackable through APIs, but you can give people little micro incentives, and then a leaderboard gets created. You can see who's getting the most stuff done or whatever. You can see who's lagging behind. And that's also grounds for who should be promoted and who shouldn't and maybe who should be cut, too. And that increased our engagement on a lot of these tools by, like, I think it was like 77% crazy.
Eric [00:12:38]:
We had it going and we still have the code and everything, but it's like, I'm just really. We got to focus, right? So eventually I'll probably come back to it.
Greg [00:12:47]:
Did you see the Apple vision pro demo of someone vacuuming? And there's just, like, coins and they're, like, vacuuming the coins. What'd you think of that?
Eric [00:13:00]:
I think that's awesome. Now imagine if you can reward your kids and based on how many coins they collect, right?
Greg [00:13:07]:
Totally.
Eric [00:13:08]:
That is for sure is going to happen.
Greg [00:13:09]:
And it's going to work. Yeah, it's going to work.
Eric [00:13:11]:
Kids want to play.
Greg [00:13:12]:
I wanted to play.
Greg [00:13:13]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:13:13]:
I was looking at, like, it was like in Mario, when you're trying to.
Greg [00:13:17]:
Get all the coins, it was really cool. What other boring parts of life can we gamify?
Eric [00:13:27]:
Okay, well, I mean, you're married, so it's like you probably get asked to take the trash out all the time, right?
Greg [00:13:32]:
I do, actually. Yeah.
Eric [00:13:33]:
So it's like, gamify. All the things that you want your spouse to do, and there's little micro rewards. It maybe doesn't have to be money. It can be something else, right?
Greg [00:13:42]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:13:42]:
Like, what else? What else can we get rewarded by?
Eric [00:13:45]:
Maybe it's like, I'd imagine your favorite stores are going to have little coins. Maybe you get an Amazon coin or something, right?
Greg [00:13:53]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:13:54]:
So I like it.
Eric [00:13:55]:
The question is, who's going to build? I mean, maybe you would just build all this stuff? Let me know if you build all this stuff.
Greg [00:14:00]:
Well, who's going to build it? I think it's an interesting time with spatial computing is because it's early. Apple said they're going to sell 500,000 units in the next twelve months.
Eric [00:14:12]:
Is it a breaking that they're going to break or.
Greg [00:14:14]:
I think they said 400 and now it's 500. It might be 600. Point is, I think it's like, even if you got 10% of that, right, it's still not huge. Right. So I think on one hand it's a small market, but on the other hand, now is the time to sort of get the reps in.
Eric [00:14:31]:
Smartphones were really small market at some point. Exactly. But what we talked about maybe like an hour ago or so is with AI copilots and everything, like, developers are becoming four to eight x more effective. And so you can probably build a lot of this stuff as long as you have the vision and the taste. Yeah, the taste, yes.
Greg [00:14:52]:
You need to have the taste. When I was watching that demo of the vacuum, like, the sounds and the way the coins looked, it felt good. It felt good, right. And that's what a good product does.
Greg [00:15:06]:
Right?
Greg [00:15:07]:
Like, think of the difference of when you close a door on, I don't know, a Rolls Royce versus Honda Civic. The sound is going to be different.
Eric [00:15:18]:
Never heard of Rollsroyce close.
Greg [00:15:21]:
Neither have I, but I imagine it's pretty.
Eric [00:15:23]:
Yeah, it's like a CRISPR sound.
Greg [00:15:25]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:15:26]:
I mean, I drive a Volvo. You've been in my car.
Greg [00:15:29]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:15:29]:
You took me home. Yeah, from poker.
Greg [00:15:31]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:15:31]:
Thank you for that.
Greg [00:15:31]:
It's not the nicest car on the planet. It's about ten years old, but it's safe. Those safety features, like, I once was driving and someone ran across and it stopped. My car stopped. Oh, like automatically.
Eric [00:15:42]:
Automatically. Okay, got it.
Greg [00:15:43]:
And those are the little things, right? And that's what great product design is.
Greg [00:15:48]:
Totally with you. Yeah.
Greg [00:15:49]:
What else is on your mind?
Eric [00:15:53]:
Do you pay for like a longevity practitioner or anything like that?
Greg [00:15:57]:
I don't, but should I?
Eric [00:15:59]:
Okay, let me tell you my pain in the ass story right now. I'm happy to introduce you to these guys. Every quarter, they'll draw like ten vials of my blood and they'll tell you all my metrics. But then automatically, inevitably, what happens is, oh, you need to have all these supplements. Now I'm just like, dude. And then it costs you a lot of money, too.
Greg [00:16:19]:
How much is a lot of money?
Eric [00:16:21]:
So the last invoice I got was like, $5,000, and one of the supplements alone was like, $2,800. I was like, can I just take that out? But my markers have gotten a lot better. I think the trouble with that is it's still a lot of manual work. And so I'm just like, well, how can I just have imagine, like, levels, right? It's kind of stuck in you, but, like, ongoing biometrics, it's scanning you every day. It's coming up with recommendations for you, and maybe it's like auto ordering for you, too. And maybe it's using Mark Cuban's cost plus drugs thing, where the drugs are a lot cheaper because all this stuff is marked, you know, I think if you can do deep discounts with this and have it be more. Less of a pain in the ass, a better user experience, I think you're going to get a lot more people. A lot more people are caring about their sleep now.
Eric [00:17:09]:
A lot less people are going to clubs. I think this space is just going to get a lot bigger.
Greg [00:17:13]:
I mean, anything to do with sleep, just in general, that's what we've learned, right? Is like, sleep is such a big driver of health and wellness, and you can literally die if you don't get good sleep.
Eric [00:17:28]:
Dude, kids, now, I don't know if you saw this, but the sleep scores are like, people are sleeping earlier now, and then the sleep scores are getting better. People aren't drinking as much alcohol. It's like, all the education that's like, I think the world's trending towards healthier now. Dr. Peter Tia, Dr. Andrew Huberman.
Greg [00:17:46]:
Yeah, but those guys, like Artia, isn't he charged, like, up the wazir to be? How do we get Artia in your pocket? And you know what mean? Like, it feels like, yes. Huberman does a free podcast, so you can learn that.
Eric [00:18:04]:
Um, haven't you seen this Dexa AI where they just scan everyone's podcast, and then it's like a little LLM. You can just ask questions.
Greg [00:18:11]:
Okay.
Eric [00:18:12]:
I don't know how legal that's going to be in the future, but that's what's happening right now. They're just scanning all of Huberman's stuff. Peter Tia's podcast, the drive. A lot of the stuff is free. And then he has some of the paid stuff.
Greg [00:18:24]:
Okay. Yeah.
Greg [00:18:25]:
I have a health idea.
Eric [00:18:26]:
Yeah, what is it?
Greg [00:18:26]:
So I recently got a nightguard.
Eric [00:18:31]:
What's that?
Greg [00:18:32]:
So it's a mouth guard. And I sleep at night with. Because I grind my teeth. I think because I drink too much caffeine or something.
Greg [00:18:40]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:18:40]:
Anyways, turns out a shocking amount of people wear nightguards in the US.
Eric [00:18:48]:
It's just to stop the teeth grinding.
Greg [00:18:50]:
It's like, basically a plastic thing.
Eric [00:18:52]:
It's not annoying.
Greg [00:18:54]:
It's annoying. It's totally annoying.
Greg [00:18:56]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:18:56]:
So, yeah, make idea number one. Make a less annoying nightguard. But no, the real idea is I heard about someone who would put whitening in their nightguard so that when they're sleeping, it whitens their teeth.
Greg [00:19:15]:
Okay, interesting.
Greg [00:19:17]:
There's the idea.
Eric [00:19:18]:
I like it. And so, with the nightguard, are you, like, using your mouth to breathe when you sleep?
Greg [00:19:24]:
I try to sleep with my mouth closed just because apparently it's better for you.
Greg [00:19:30]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:19:32]:
The Nightguard, I mean, it's basically just plastic. It's like a plastic thing that goes over.
Greg [00:19:37]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:19:38]:
I mean, everyone's complaining about microplastics. Right. So how do you can solve for the microplastic piece? The whitening piece.
Greg [00:19:43]:
Totally.
Eric [00:19:44]:
And then what I do, this is combining our can. I've been wearing sleep tape for, like, seven to eight years before it even became cool. And that forces me to use my nose to breathe. So all three of those things think you're good because didn't Sam and Sean talk about that mouth tape business that does, like, 14 million a year?
Greg [00:20:04]:
Yes.
Eric [00:20:05]:
That's just good messaging and good storytelling and good branding.
Greg [00:20:07]:
Totally. And what's it called? Hostage tape. Hostage tape, yeah. I mean, I wonder what other opportunities exist where the product exists already and you just have to rebrand it. Rebrand it?
Greg [00:20:19]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:20:19]:
I mean, all over the place. Okay. I'm asian, right?
Greg [00:20:22]:
You're asian?
Greg [00:20:23]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:20:24]:
You guys can't see me on the video, but Asians like wearing slippers. That's my point. And so how do you create a better version of slippers? The americanized versions we like wearing, like, bamboo slippers. Reason? Because it's more airy. We'll just put it that way.
Greg [00:20:43]:
But, yeah.
Eric [00:20:44]:
How do you brand something where it's like anti sweat slippers and bamboo is actually good for that?
Greg [00:20:49]:
Totally, yeah, totally.
Eric [00:20:50]:
Someone should do that.
Greg [00:20:51]:
Bamboo linens became really big recently. Yeah, that's the other thing.
Eric [00:20:55]:
Is that what you use?
Greg [00:20:57]:
I don't, but I've used it in the past. I think there's a huge opportunity, like, startup ideas wise, to see what's working in one culture and bring it to another culture.
Greg [00:21:06]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:21:06]:
Because each culture has good habits. Indian cultures, they're very Buddhists. That's asian cultures, too.
Greg [00:21:20]:
I was just talking to someone about this. The idea of a supper club, which is a place where you go for dinner that turns into a nightclub, is actually not that popular in America, but is popular in places like Europe.
Eric [00:21:35]:
Is this a supper club? So I thought it was supper club. And then I heard on a podcast today, someone said, a british person said, super supper club. Interesting.
Greg [00:21:44]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:21:44]:
Oh, well, a british person must know English better than.
Eric [00:21:47]:
So, anyway, continue.
Greg [00:21:48]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:21:48]:
A canadian American. What do we. But, yeah, this isn't an Internet startup idea or anything, but the idea around supper club, which, like I said in Montreal, I went to a few of them where you'd sit, you go with a group of friends, you have dinner, and then they kind of remove the chairs after, and it kind of like, people have drinks, stay around some dance, whatever. It's like, okay, how do you bring that to another city?
Greg [00:22:15]:
Right?
Greg [00:22:15]:
And it's interesting.
Eric [00:22:16]:
I think you can combine that. We're now moving into community. So that piece, for sure, I think that's a good idea. But also, we talked about Eo and ypo. What about EO for certain community. So, like, we know Sam started Hampton, but I know someone. He started dental entrepreneurs Organization, Deo.
Greg [00:22:38]:
Wow.
Eric [00:22:39]:
Right. And Neil and I, we just started agency owners association. And I think people crave community, but it's like, you need specific community, too. And YP and eo, they've been around for a while. There's a lot of space, I think.
Greg [00:22:53]:
Totally.
Greg [00:22:53]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:22:53]:
I have a friend who has a Hampton like, competitor called Benwise.
Eric [00:22:58]:
Oh, interesting.
Greg [00:22:58]:
And it's like, for ctos and cmos.
Eric [00:23:01]:
That's cool.
Greg [00:23:01]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:23:02]:
Chief.
Greg [00:23:03]:
Remember that chief was for women entrepreneurs.
Eric [00:23:06]:
I think it's just women executives.
Greg [00:23:07]:
Women executives, that's right. So I think it's sort of like the unbundling of YPO.
Eric [00:23:15]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:23:18]:
There's a ton of opportunity there. And the cool thing is, it doesn't cost a lot of money to get going. Like, what do you need? A brand, a landing page, and a vertical.
Greg [00:23:27]:
Yeah.
Eric [00:23:27]:
Communities and agencies, like low capex. Good to go.
Greg [00:23:31]:
Yes.
Greg [00:23:33]:
Are you still bullish on? I mean, you run an agency.
Eric [00:23:36]:
I used to hate it. Yeah. Because I come from working in tech.
Greg [00:23:40]:
Right.
Eric [00:23:40]:
I'm like, oh, my poopoo doesn't stink. I'm too good for a services business. But the pod I do with Neil, just looking at numbers, we talk all the time. And pre 2022, you're at 5 million in EBITDA. You can sell for 15 to 20 if your agency is really good. 15 to 20 x. And so that's like a 100 million dollar business if you wanted to sell. But then the other thing is, if your agency is doing 510 $20 million in profit a year, that's an exit for you every single year.
Eric [00:24:12]:
And then you can sell later if you want. And so I think with my founder buddies, the consensus now is like, no, you want to build something generational. Forget a decade, like 2030 years, and we're just like, let's just keep compounding. And I think any business, it's a boring business. It's not sexy, but it's also what I know and the audiences that I've created, it just makes sense to funnel it into that. So it seems like the best engine. And then I can also build cool products and services, especially with AI being so deflationary. So it makes a lot of sense to me.
Greg [00:24:44]:
Yeah, you can incubate software products. Noah Kagan doesn't run an agency, but I had him on the pod recently, and he has appsumo, which is doing really well. It's 80 million a year.
Eric [00:25:00]:
80 million a year.
Greg [00:25:01]:
But he's got all these kind of SaaS software products that he's spitting up on the side.
Eric [00:25:06]:
Well, I mean, let's use him as an example. It's like he had sumo back in the day, the pop up thing, and that quickly got up to eight figures, I think, but then it didn't work out. But he had a lot of things going on, and he was sitting in that seat. Focus. At the end of the day, I think he realized how important that was. And I think I've just got punched in the face so many times. I'm just like, things are a lot better when I just focus. So I'm just very bullish on agency.
Eric [00:25:34]:
It seems like you're like that, too, and you have your own model. It's like community first, which I think is genius, and then agency.
Greg [00:25:39]:
Exactly.
Greg [00:25:40]:
Yeah.
Greg [00:25:42]:
Other than paper performance, any agency ideas, or any spaces that you think over the next twelve to 18 months, there's opportunity to build in.
Eric [00:25:50]:
Yeah, well, we probably have the same mindset here. AI transformation agencies, everybody. Digital transformation is still a thing right now. Now it's AI transformation. Looking at boring marketer, right? Like AI assisted content. I think we're going to see more agencies doing programmatic SEO, too, because you have this one to two year window where you can do it. And I think search just changes. I think creative is becoming more and more of an x factor, and it's really hard to find a damn good creative agency.
Greg [00:26:28]:
I like it. Eric, where could people get more of your ideas.
Eric [00:26:32]:
Yeah, just at Eric O siu on Instagram or Twitter. Or you can just go to the search for leveling up Eric do on YouTube, and that's where I'll hang out, too.
Greg [00:26:42]:
Amazing. All right, thanks a lot, man.
Eric [00:26:44]:
Thanks for having me. Later.