Single Grain

I manage sales, operations, marketing, culture and the overall vision.

Chief Operating Officer

Leveling Up with Eric Siu

Founder

Growth Everywhere is a weekly interview series where I interview world-class entrepreneurs on business and personal growth. 

Past guests on the show include Marketo co-founder Jon Miller, Eloqua founder Mark Organ (sold to Oracle for >$1B), Jason Lemkin from SaaStr, Andy Johns from Wealthfront, and Ron Klein (inventor of the magnetic credit card stripe).

To learn more, go to http://www.growtheverywhere.com

Member

Marketing School Podcast

Marketing School is a daily marketing podcast where Neil Patel and I provide actionable bits of marketing advice for 10 minutes a day.

Listen at marketingschool.io

Co-host

University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business

Guest Lecturer

ClickFlow

Chairman

Entrepreneurs'​ Organization

Pepperdine University

Treehouse Island Inc.

Responsible for acquiring users and growing overall revenues.

- Conversion Optimization
- SEO
- Social
- PPC
- Media buys
- Affiliate program management
- E-mail marketing
- PR
- Video advertising
- Content marketing
+ more

User Growth Lead/Head of Marketing

Team Rubicon, Inc.

Online Marketing Strategist (P

Founder @ Growth Marketing Agency - Single Grain, Podcaster @ Marketing School + Leveling Up

Single Grain is a digital marketing agency focused on driving scalable and predictable revenue growth using Facebook advertising, Google Ads, YouTube advertising, SEO, video production and content marketing. 

We've worked with companies such as Amazon, Uber, Nordstrom and venture-backed startups to create and execute on custom-tailored growth strategies.






-> For those of you that are interesting in marketing and personal growth tips from top entrepreneurs, please visit http://www.levelingup.com for our free podcast. You'll hear from billionaires, authors, and other high performers.

-> For my daily marketing podcast, go listen to Marketing School at https://www.singlegrain.com/marketing-school-podcast



Skills:
SEO
Paid Search (Pay per click advertising)
Affiliate Marketing
Display Advertising
Mobile Advertising
Remarketing/Retargeting
Facebook Marketing
Video Advertising
Twitter Marketing
Google Analytics
Conversion Rate Optimization
Sales
Strategic Partnerships
Content Strategy/Development
Business Development
Social Media
Community Development
Operations
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate program management
Retargeting
Growth Hacking

The founder who 'hired a CEO and stepped back' just shut down. Here's the email he sent me.

"Eric, you were right. I thought I could hire my way to freedom. 3 years and $10M in burn later, we're done."

His mistake? The same one I've made. Multiple times.

He believed the fairy tale that you can bring in a CEO and disappear. That somehow a hired gun will care as much as you do about your baby.

Here's what actually happened:

The CEO made 'strategic pivots' that gutted their core product.
Revenue dropped 40% in 18 months.
Their best engineers left because "the culture changed."
Customer churn hit 35% when they stopped innovating.

The founder watched from the sidelines, thinking he was being smart by "not micromanaging."

Truth is, no hired CEO will ever match a founder's obsession. They're playing with house money while you built the house.

I've tried this move 4 times. Each time ended the same way - me jumping back in to save what was left.

The successful founders I know? They stay involved. They might hire CEOs, but they're still in the trenches on what matters.

There's a reason Zuckerberg, Huang, and Musk haven't "stepped back."

Your company needs you more than you think.

What's your take - can founders ever truly step away?

Eric Siu ✓

So Amplitude pivots to AI-driven SEO, Profound raises $58M from Sequoia, and Ramp 'engineers' 120k+ monthly organic visitors.

So is the AEO push a bubble? Yep. At least right now it is.

- Spamming the internet with templated pages works until it doesn't.

- Tracking your LLM rankings is mental gymnastics unless you do something about it.

All the new people coming into AEO/GEO/LLMO think they've discovered something new when the reality is that they're running the same playbook from 20 years ago.

It's just that they haven't been punched in the face enough times to know that these strategies won't last for the long term. 

Old school SEOs remember the pain.

Definitely keep AEO in your marketing mix, but if you want long-term sustainability, you need to play the 'search everywhere optimization' game. 

That is, wherever your customers are hanging out, you should be too. Longform YT, shortform clips, X, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc. etc. 

Don't think that you'll get away simply by spamming alone. Google and OpenAI have too much to lose by letting their products fall apart.

Thoughts?

ChatGPT Hack 🤠

Follow for more AI business education!

The difference between a $120k/yr deal vs $1.2m/yr deal comes down to one skill which these questions will help you unlock.

Most people hop on customer calls like drones; they ask the same questions over and over without thinking twice about the highest leverage opportunity - pricing.

If you learned how to price based on value, you'd make a lot more money for the rest of your life. That's the world we're moving into with AI products pricing on outcomes, so you might as well learn now.

Here's how:

- Always ask them what success looks like. More specifically, ask them for success metrics.

- Then ask them what the value of meeting that metric would be.

Is it $10M? $100M? 

- 'If I could guarantee that we make you $100M, would it be fair for us to receive 10% of that?'

Them: Why yes, I don't see why not. I mean, it's a guarantee.

I have NEVER seen someone once say no to this question. Why would they?

- Now, go back to your team and calculate the odds of success. If your odds of success are 50%, that is now your multiplier.

E.g. $100M * 10% (your take) * 50% (your odds of success) = $5M

- Now you price in 3 tiers:

High = $5M
Mid = $2.5M
Low = $1.25M

Viola, instead of charging $2.5k/mo for every deal and leaving millions on the table, you are now aligning yourself more with the value that you're bringing to your customer.

Your delivery team will also thank you for not stacking them with a bunch of small deals and giving them quality customers to work with. 

And you’ll be able to impact their business more because you have more budget to work with.

Happy selling.

ChatGPT just launched its apps and unlocked a new distribution channel with 800M+ users.

This feels like the App Store in 2008, huge first-mover advantage if you’re fast.

Risk a few weeks now or miss out for years...

It Took Me 11 Years To Learn This About SEO 🧐

I help businesses increase their marketing and SEO ROI with modern AI tools! Follow to learn more!

ChatGPT's retention graph is nuts. It resembles a smile. 🙂

Over time, you'd expect churn to increase. In this case, it starts to level out and then people start to RETURN to the app.

In fact, the retention rate is getting higher and higher which means the value of the product is compounding.

There usually isn't just *one* variable that drives things but if I had to bet, it's probably tied in with memory. I use ChatGPT significantly more than the others because it knows me well.

What do you think?

Organic social is like a slot machine. 🎰

This post was from a year ago and started ripping recently - probably bc the labor market is weakening and people are worried considering all the layoffs happening.

You never know what will hit and when it will happen.

I’ve had posts that I thought would be complete duds get millions of views.

So just keep getting more shots on goal.

You will suck in the beginning but that’s par for the course. 

Perfect is the enemy of done, so get moving.

ClickFlow (my internal AI-powered SEO tool) used to save 20 hours per person each month, now it saves 55 hours.

Those who master and implement AI tools, agents, and workflows aren’t 10% better, they’re 10× more valuable.

And those who don’t will feel unbelievably slow in comparison.

Companies talk about “AI strategy" but Few actually use AI to make money.

Model Context Protocols (MCPs) change that, they act like autonomous specialists who run experiments, optimize pages, and grow your business while you sleep.

Are you too late for a career in SEO? Absolutely not!

But only if you are willing to adapt fast. The winners in digital marketing aren’t clinging to old tactics.

In business, there are always those who adapt while the competition buries their heads in the sand.

Guess who wins?

“I Want To Use AI Tools But Don't Know Which AI I Need To Use” 😩

If you want to learn more about how to use AI to save hundreds of hours per month, reduce costs, and scale your business, follow me for more AI education!

How I Would Build A Marketing Agency In 2025 From Scratch 📈

Need a more in-depth guide on using AI to scale your business? Follow for more AI-marketing education!

What's the Difference Between 10K/Month vs. 10M/Month Business Owner 👀

Want to incorporate AI into your business, but don’t know where to start? Follow for more AI updates, tips, and education!

AI SEO Bubble Alert?... Amplitude pivots to 'AIO', Profound snags $58M from Sequoia, Ramp spams to 120K visitors/month.

But it's recycled 2000s SEO stuff - it works til Google/OpenAI nukes it.

If businesses want to survive, they must play the 'search everywhere optimization game':

- Diversify (YT, shortform clips, Reddit, X, etc.)
- Build real value, not spam

Old SEOs know the pain of losing all their hard work. 

New AEO entrants are in for a rude awakening.

Happy "AEO'ing". ;)

6 counter-intuitive lessons about breaking through revenue ceilings after being in business for 17 years:

1. People think you can ‘hire a CEO and get out of their way’

It doesn’t work. I’ve tried it many times, and so have many of my friends.

Hiring a CEO certainly works, but you will have to be involved than you think you need to be. Why? Because no one is incentivized as much as the original founders.

They simply don’t care as much, as they shouldn’t!

2. Having multiple businesses is a noob mistake

People like to brag about having multiple businesses, but to a seasoned founder, they just look unfocused.

Focus compounds.

3. It takes decades to bootstrap something big

If you want to build to 8-9 figures+, it will take 10-30 years, depending on how big you want to make something.

4. Think about the ‘who’, not the ‘how’ as you grow

Sure, in the early days, you might be doing everything and that’s fine. But as you scale, you’ll need to flip that mindset to hiring 80% of people who have ‘been there, done that’ and 20% on ‘potential’.

I used to have that ratio flipped, and it was a disaster.

5. Be super involved

Whatever is new or broken, jump in where you can add value. It’s your company, and you can see the entire playing field.

There’s a reason why Elon Musk, James Dyson, and Jensen Huang are still heavily involved today.

6. Micromanagement isn’t good or bad; it’s a tool

Common management books would tell you that micromanagement is ‘bad’.

It’s neither.

If something is extremely high-risk and the person has limited experience, you need to micromanage more.

If something is low risk and the person has less experience, you micromanage less.

What did I miss?

Is this the death of the corporate job?

There are multi-trillion dollar companies paying people $212k/year+ to manage people to create documents for other teams who create documents for senior leadership to not read the documents.

The hidden economy of nonsense is growing larger by the day, especially for big companies. 

Will this continue?

Can An AI Expert Help Business Owners Dealing With Low Sales & 100-Hour Work Weeks? 🤔

Follow for proven AI strategies to save hours and boost profits in your business!

The Elon Musk algorithm sounds good on paper, but…

Question, delete, simplify, speed up, automate.

I was skeptical.

That is, until I ran the exercise with my team.

It’s incredibly therapeutic to call out dumb stuff we do and take out a chainsaw to delete.

We often should be stopping a lot more things than starting things. And we often have things backwards with automation - we try to automate before truly understanding what the needs are.

Worth running every 90 days.

Hell, get your entire team involved - ask everyone what stupid things you are doing in your company right now. I guarantee you’ll get 10/10 topics.

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