👾 Leveling Up 👾

Welcome to Leveling Up. Today’s newsletter is a 4-minute read. 

Here are some things we’re going to cover:

• Communities and SEO

• Meta AI vs Grok

• Lessons from the hiring process

Thanks,

Eric Siu :)

Looking For A Community?

We’ve just started a free community that anyone can join.

It’s a place for marketers and business owners to help each other and share what's working to grow faster.

If you’re a new marketer, it’s the ideal place to start.

Check it out here (link)

Links You Might Like

Here are some of the best links I’ve found since our last email. 

🎤 Podcasts

3 podcast scaling lessons after 101,302,263 downloads (link)

🖊️ Writing

6 storytelling elements for good marketing (link)

🏢 Business

Is Starbucks responsible for more startups? (link)

📈 SEO

Are communities the best form of SEO? (link)

🤖 AI

Meta AI vs Grok – the key differences (link)

Deep Dive: The Hiring Process

Hiring experienced people has its plusses, but it can also be a double-edged sword.

I remember hiring people from large agencies. I drank all the kool-aid about hiring smart people and getting the hell out of their way. I’d let them contribute and 100% of the time, it has gone poorly.

People with lots of experience come pre-programmed with habits that sometimes go against how we do things.

That’s why it’s important that our onboarding experience be explicit about programming them our way.

We also hold people to a ‘no action’ policy where they just observe.

That means for at least 30 days, the new hire is expected to drink from our firehouse of knowledge - our onboarding docs, required books, talk to team members, and ask clarifying questions.

They are not allowed to ask questions that masquerade as advice.

The more senior they are, the longer the ‘no action’ policy holds. ‘The First 90 Days’ is a great book for this btw.

This also tells us if they can follow directions or not.

The curse of experience can quickly unravel a company as it’s scaling. Especially a rapidly scaling company. If everyone tries to contribute before understanding our processes, problems compound.

You want to make sure you prevent the headaches by being deliberate with training, and onboarding to make sure people are programmed the right way.

Otherwise, you’ll have to spend extra time reprogramming them which ends up being not fun especially if you have to do it for entire teams.

That’s not to say that you don’t want their input, you do. But you want them to understand as much as possible about YOUR company before they start to add in their take.

It also helps with rapport building. No one likes it when an unknown entity comes in guns blazing. People tend to trust someone that is an open-minded listener. It shows that they have restraint and they seek to understand before speaking.

Join The Agency Owner’s Association

The Agency Owner's Association (AOA) is our paid community that is for expert agency owners looking to scale.

It’s $199/month, and you’ll receive:

• Hangouts where you can ask all your burning questions around growth, paid traffic, operations, finance, client services, and more

• Access to all of our best training courses

• Special deals on software and other offerings

• Strategies and frameworks to create a predictable lead-gen system and get high quality clients

• Resources and templates to build the right systems, processes, and structure to scale your agency without losing quality

Interested?

Check it out here (link).

How I Can Help You

If you enjoy this newsletter and would like to collaborate with me, there are a few options available:

1. You can apply to work with my marketing agency (link)

2. You can join my Skool community for agency owners (link)

Interested in working at Single Grain? We have some new open roles:

• Business Development Representative (link)

• Paid Media Manager (link)

• SEO Manager (link)