ERIK HUBERMAN – THE HAWKE METHOD

Erik Huberman is the founder and CEO of Hawke media. The fastest growing marketing consultancy in the United States launched in 2014. Hawk media has been valued at nine figures and has grown his company from seven to over 300 employees. Internationally. The company has serviced over 3000 brands of all sizes from startups to household names like red bull, Verizon and Alibaba.

Hawke media has taken home numerous industry awards, including Inc 500 list of fastest growing companies. Fortune magazine’s 50 best workplaces with Erik being named the international business. Entrepreneur of the year in advertising, marketing and public relations as a serial entrepreneur and marketing expert.

Erik Huberman is a sought after leader in the world of digital marketing and entrepreneurship. He is also a regular contributor to major publications like Forbes entrepreneur magazine. He’s also about to release, His new book, the Hawke method. We’re looking forward to talking about all things, branding and marketing, as well as the new.

With our guest today, Erik Huberman, welcome to the run GPG podcast. Yeah. No, thank you for having me. Yeah. Excited to have you. There’s so much, I do want to cover with you, in this interview today and that’s because, you know, you’re a successful entrepreneur. We were talking about that, before we started recording here.

But you do have a proven method to grow and scale brands and you have a unique perspective on this. And of course your book talks about that. But first, to get some perspective, I do want to ask you, what is your background and how did you get into the world of advertising marketing and. Yeah. It started with a judgment and animosity towards the world.

As a lot of times it does. No. I mean, I always joke that a lot of people think they’re born for what they do. And I in college would make fun of marketing majors and be like, what are you doing? Like draw pretty pictures. Like what’s, what’s a marketing mate. What are you setting? And what’s funny is like I took management, which is just the same thing.

Like, it means nothing. What was business management as a college degree, but. I, yeah, I didn’t really take it seriously, but I graduated oh eight, went into real estate exactly a week before the entire us banking industry collapsed. And so, scrambled to figure out what I was going to do and ended up getting into e-commerce.

So I started an online music company back in early, no mid 2009. Hey, what do you call it? And so I did that for two years. Then I built a t-shirt subscription site called spike in a month that we sold after about a year and a half. Then I built a women’s act for a brand that we sold about 80 total fitness after.

Started advising and consulting realized that the marketing ecosystem was completely broken. And I had a little bit of a track record of that point, started helping some companies do it and realized I needed a team because most agencies were terrible out there and I’m simplifying it, but started growing and building.

And here we are 300 and change people later. I, I paused when you said swag of the month club, that’s a great name. Thank you. Then it was like when swag beat was like the word of the year, we got swag of the month and then it caught on like that whole company was built off press, but it was fun. That was a fun ride.

But then we just, like, we did not know how to scale a business. At that point. I was 24 when I started at 25. When. It’s amazing. So young, a lot of experience, in a short time now, your entrepreneurial journey a little bit, I want to unpack that a bit, you know, as mentioned in your bio, you went from seven employees to over 300 multiple countries and continents now, right.

And you did all of this without outside capital, you know, how were you able to grow and scale so quick? You know, some sleepless nights and some heartburn, but like going forward. I mean, I’ve always been into this for the sake of like learning and growing and, building. And so I get bored really easily if we’re not to the moment, things are good and stable.

I look for how okay, what’s next. And so that’s materialized and how do we expand the business? How do we grow internationally? How do we, what is the next phase of that? And looking down the field a little bit, and I also thankfully have such a great executive team. I have the benefit of being able to do that, but it also manifests in other parts of the business.

We’re watching our venture fund, launching our finances. Writing a book, all these things that all play in with each other and are synergistic, but the driving force behind it is frankly, a desire to experience what life has to offer and try all these things and learn new things. And. It’s amazing. The, you know, when I was preparing for this interview, you know, I, I was, I was watching an interview with you where you were talking about mergers and acquisitions being a part of your growth.

Right. And then you were, you were, you were talking in a little bit more detail about the creativity that goes into mergers and acquisitions, right? How you can structure these in so many different ways. And a lot of people don’t think of, you know, M and A’s that way. What are your thoughts on that? And what advice would you give someone entering that space for the first time?

Yeah. One of my least favorite lines is this is how things are done. I’ve like, I, I’m a very level headed guy when like executives have said that to me, or like partners I’ve snapped because like, I think that’s a, a thing that people take is like, well, this is how it’s done. So this is how we should do it.

And like questioning everything and not in like a grandiose way, but even an M and a. Well, you know, people ask me questions like, well, what revenue EBITDA, multiple you’re paying for these businesses? It’s like, well, sometimes we don’t pay any, but that multiple it’s like, what do you mean? It’s like, really?

You think there’s only one way to buy a company like come on. So it’s, you know, thankfully we’ve had some great partners in acquisition, but we’ve been able to get creative that we align the interests of what I’m more than a lot of these traditional holding companies that frankly are just running the same playbook they were hired to do, because most of the people running M and a and holding companies are hired guns.

So when you’re a founder, And you can kind of just, you don’t frankly know everything there is to know about MNA. Cause I don’t come from the finance world, but I’ve learned a lot and I just went, well, why can’t we just do a deal like this? And you know, we had a couple go early, which gave me the confidence that it could work.

We had a bunch fall through and it went, oh, well, you know, maybe there’s a chink in the armor here. And then it started to really pick up and we realized the model that would work the type of people we needed to do deals with that kind of thing. And so. Now it’s become a really cool, scalable part of our business.

We just closed our eighth acquisition and we’re already under contract for a ninth, looking at a 10th and 11th. So it started to move pretty fast and we have a team around it now, but it’s all done in a way that is pretty scalable for. That’s super cool. Thanks for breaking that down. Now w again, when I was prepping for this, I heard you, talk about 2017 being a pivotal year for you.

You had an experience in Monaco with a friend that changed your personal life. It was with my wife. Was it okay? My girlfriend at the time, but yeah. But it changes your perception, perception and outlook for your company. You mind unpacking that? Cause I love this story. Yeah. And it’s kind of evolved because I just got quoted on another podcast that I didn’t think this was the clip they were going to call out, but it was kind of fun.

So at the time it was, and it’s the bougiest story, so it’s ridiculous. But in 2017 business was doing well. I looked to my wife and said, you know, we’re young, no kids yet. Boyfriend girlfriend, but we had been together three years. So I’m like, why don’t we just go check off the bucket list stuff like, let’s go, you know, let’s go to the Monaco, grand Prix.

I want to go heli boarding, which we have a mutual friend there. I want to do all these things that, we can, and that we’ve wanted to enjoy and start, just check it. Why wait till you’re older? And so she wanted for her 30th birthday to go, you know, south of France, we stumbled into the, Cannes film festival, not even knowing it was going on.

When Ray bought a tux and rented a dress and went to the parties, met a bunch of people. And we’re sitting at the Monaco grand Prix at the top of the Fairmont because a buddy of mine was staying there where it’s like, that’s where, like, it’s what the hairpin turn for the grand Prix is at the Fairmont.

It’s a crazy place to be. And I’m looking at all the $500 million boats sitting out in the bay. And I’m like, you know, not that I ever want. One of those. But I’d like the option to have one and the way I’m building my business right now, I was 85% of our sales. I built a small sales team, but they weren’t doing that much.

Cause I wasn’t, I was kind of in the way. And I was like, I can’t scale anymore. And I’ve got to get out of the way. And so at that 0.3 and a half years in the business driving, most of the sales, I just injected myself from the sales process. And when we need to find a way that this can grow so that it can have the option to do whatever I want.

Not because I wanted to exercise it, but because I wanted optionality at night and I wanted to be able to grow something big enough that I could do with the things I wanted to do. And that was a pivotal moment. I still remember sitting there like great weather looking out at these boats. And again, I really don’t have an interest to be on a 400 foot boat.

Like, I’ll go on one. It’s cool. But like, I’m actually, I do like being on boats. I could be in the ocean, but I want to be on a boat that I can like, just jump in the water. And not that I have. You know, get a crew of seven people to go, well, we’re this electronic swim step. I get that. Doesn’t sit with me as well.

So it wasn’t about the yacht. It was about the concept of freedom. And that really drove a lot of decision making, going forward at the company. And then also, and this is what I’ve talked about in another podcast, finding out that like my friends that have made billions of dollars in their wives all live off the same sort of one to $2 million a year, living the most crazy lifestyle they want find private vacation homes.

And we’re going. Okay. So really the threshold is one to 2 million a year to really live that fun lifestyle. After that, the difference between someone that makes 2 million a year and some of them makes 200 million a year is actually not that big of a deal. If they’re just reinvesting it, donate it to charity, buying a bigger house, bigger yard, bigger plane, but it doesn’t really change your life.

That’s really interesting, right? Like these life events that give you perspective on things. I love that story. You know what I heard you tell it? I actually, I thought it was really cool now, that may have been the beginning of your journey to writing a book. I’m not sure, but when it comes to branding and marketing, it looks like you’ve codafide, or created a process for it, with your book, right?

The Hawke method, the three principles of marketing that made over 3000 brands soar. So what was the Genesis behind this book? And why did you write. Yeah, no, it’s it’s what’s fun. Is. I feel, and it’s not meant to be a conceded statement, but I feel like I did it the right way. I, we ran this method. I spoke on this, I did many, many, you know, keynote speeches on the Hawke method forever at a named at the hoc method yet it was just our marketing methodology.

How do I do marketing? How do I look at marketing? And I’ve been asked and one of the ways that have made us really successful, I’ve found myself as a peer to CEOs versus a lot of agency owners, meaning like I’ve been invited in like YPO and all these organizations that allow me to. Be the guy in the room, that’s a CEO, but also knows marketing, which I didn’t learn until partway through the business.

Most CEOs don’t. And they’re looking for the silver bullet marketing leader or a marketing agency to fix it. And 99% of them are terrible. And so I started doing talks on like the things you should look at as a leader. To monitor your marketing and the things that we do to look at, you know, we do an audit with every client coming in and we have a method of like, what do we look at to make sure we are attacking their low hanging fruit and figuring out where their opportunities are.

And then we need to do that on an ongoing basis. And so there was this whole strategy around, you know, the three pillars are awareness, nurturing and trust, which are kind of three buckets that you have to cover in marketing. And I can go into more details, but it’s all in the book too, but it’s basically like looking at well, where are they missing?

If something’s missing in their marketing, what would it be? Where should we attack? What are the, you know, how do we audit a marketing strategy? And then I frankly met someone that I ended up. Bringing on to help me ghost write this. So I basically dictated to him, we edited it together, et cetera, but I met him at a party and he said, why have you wanted to write a book?

I had actually put together a pretty much a whole book before that I decided not to publish because it was about doing business without being greedy called greed list. Decided to hold off on it and visit it. Wait, I didn’t like how the D the content of it turned out. I liked the concept, but not the content.

And, and I just didn’t want to spend more time on that. So when he approached me, it’s like, I’ve gone through this before, but on this case, I can probably bust out the content in a day on what I’ve put in this book. Cause I talk about it all the time. We do it all the time. It’s not like I have to research or like I had to pull stats to support what I was saying, but I knew all this intuitively.

So that’s where it came from was right before COVID. So about two and a half years ago, met him, decided to go down and do it. I think it took us probably a total of seven, eight hours to put the content of the book together. And then edit it. And then it’s taken this two and a half years to build a launch plan, get a publisher, do all that stuff.

So it’s a process, but yeah, at this point we just got the first print, so it comes out, it looks fantastic. It looks fantastic. We’ll put the, the visual and the links in the show notes, after I’ll get that from Terry, I guess, the forward in the forward to the book, which was written by, Keith Ferrazzi, right?

Yeah. never eat alone. Fantastic forward. Actually, I really love this board because he mentioned that when you find something that works in life for business, that it’s our duty to teach others. How does this book uphold that obligation? Oh, it’s, I mean, it’s core to it. I, that’s why I agreed with it so much is I don’t feel people are like, well, if you’re giving all your marketing secrets away, then people can just do it.

I’m like, yeah, well, it’s more than just a bunch of like black box stuff that we do. It’s it’s work. So yeah, we’ll introduce you to everything you can go to your self. And our mission at Hawke is accessibility to great marketing. So the idea of making great marketing accessible, because I always found that the best marketers are not that there’s some, a bit of pretentiousness and just a culture around marketing that if you’re really good, you only work with the best brands too.

Well, that’s ironic. So what about the brand? All the other ones that need your help. That was how we built Hawke media. And so this it’s the same idea here. Like there’s people that can’t afford Hawke media. We started two grand a month. We’re not expensive, but there’s people that don’t have that kind of money that now I can, they can buy a $15 book or 1695.

I think Amazon’s still discounting it though. And so you can buy a $15 book and, get a bunch of our methodology. And if you can run some of it yourself, You can scale to a point that you’re going to want our help. And we do, we always talk about like our value. Isn’t just the knowledge we have. It’s also the actual bandwidth and execution.

And so what’s put the knowledge out there, frankly, we’re sending this to every one of our clients, every one of our employees, because then we speak the same language. They know what we’re doing. It still takes work to do these. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s, you books are, I mean, that’s a, it’s an adventure in itself.

I know people that have started the process, they have a great concept. They have the content and they gave up because it was, so that was me. I mean, that was my last book. I got it to proposal and outline and actually had written a lot of the book and just went, you know, this isn’t going the direction I want.

So I’ll revisit the content later. Yeah. No, absolutely. Now that forward also had an interesting question in it and I wanted to ask you the same one. It says, what comes to mind when you hear the term marketing? Like what, like. And I thought that was a really interesting exercise. Just that one word, like what comes to mind?

So what’s your definition of marketing? And I asked this question all the time. Cause it’s something we’re passionate about too, which is branding and marketing. What’s the difference between branding and selling.

And I ask this question all the time. And we’re passionate about too, which is branding and marketing. What’s the difference between branding and selling well, branding and selling? I think I can define a little better, but I would say the term that comes to me, I’ve never actually directly articulated this.

So I appreciate the challenge, but I would say it’s something along the lines of every bit of the. focus of the management of the customer journey from when they first become aware you exist to when they buy and what all the touch points that make that customer journey. And I do believe that even merchandising has parts overlap with marketing and things like that.

So customer experience, obviously all those things are part of marketing. Well on the spot, that was a fantastic breakdown. Probably the best definition of marketing you’d get on the spot from anyone and so well done. now, you know, you have helped thousands of brands succeed by unearthing deeper aspects of marketing.

And you touched on this, but maybe if you could go into just a little bit more detail, like how do you do that? What’s the process. When you sit down with the brand, where does it start with? So where it starts. I mean, honestly, it’s you, if they’re digital, it’s quick, look at their analytics to see where you’re getting your traffic and your revenue from.

So that’s for digital, which is a majority of our clients. I’d say a small majority, like 60, 65% and probably are more than that because we do have a lot of software companies too, but we do a lot of brick and mortar stuff as well, but digital helps us get a start. And I’m looking for the three pillars, so I’m looking okay.

So how are you creating awareness for your company? And when I say awareness, I mean, how are you introducing your product or service to a new consumer that you didn’t have before? And that doesn’t mean they’ve bought yet. It’s just making them aware. And so that could be, where are you advertising? What kind of PR, how you driving word of mouth?

How is word of mouth going? Do you have a good viral coefficient? Are people talking about you? All these things that I want to look at? Then we go to nurturing. What are you doing on the nurturing side? And nurturing is the most missed part of marketing by far. And it’s missed by, some stuff in the book about it.

Like I’ve seen a miss by multi-billion dollar companies. It’s crazy. Where actually I’m talking, we’re hopefully bringing on one right now that I think they finally have an email marketing strategy and I think they do $8 billion in revenue a year. Something like that. Publicly traded company. What do you mean?

Cause that drive from our clients, it’s like 25% of revenue and you’re just not doing it like crazy. That being said, so nurturing, basically there’s a principle that people miss in marketing, it’s the idea of a purchase cycle or consideration period. And it basically what it is, is from the time you’re introduced to a product or service.

So you’re created awareness to the time you buy. It’s usually weeks to months. It’s not days it’s not hours. It’s usually on average weeks to months. And so people think that if I throw a big advertisement, I’m going to get a big lift in revenue today, and that’s not how it works. And so we watch a lot of people not understand that concept and ended up, you know, cutting their marketing short because they haven’t let it play out.

And there’s another one that it’s actually a quote from my business partner that I say all the time. Cause I think it’s a great line is nine women. Can’t make a baby. There’s there’s nothing you can do to accelerate this time. It takes time. What you can do is guarantee a higher conversion during that time, and maybe do a few things.

You have people a little more interested faster, but generally the averages are going to play out. And so the ways to do that are email marketing, SMS, content, chatbots, all sorts of ways that you stay in touch with your audience while they’re going from. I know you exist to, okay, I’m going to buy this to buying it to also post-purchase like once get.

It’s very hard to have a viable company that doesn’t have repeat customers. So you need to do things to keep them in touch. So that’s nurturing and then trust synonymous with brand. You mentioned brand earlier. I look at brand as a trust builder, so it’s consistency. So early on when you don’t have a brand of staff, It’s all third-party validation to build trust.

It’s, you know, testimonials, referrals, press influencer, marketing, things that borrow trust from other people. And then as you build a more S ubiquitous brand and a brand that people recognize, then it’s all about consistency. What are you consistent, consistently delivering? And how are you doing? So that’s what you become know for is that Zappos became the brand in customer service because they delivered happiness as they put it constantly.

That’s what they were about. And they became known. Part of that also, by the way is saying that you’re about that. And by the way, politics aside, I sincerely like I am not a Trump fan. I’ll say it publicly, but make America great. Again was a great slogan. And I think Reagan might have used it too, but you say, make America great again, over and over again.

And you associate yourself with that. People are gonna believe that you’re gonna make America great again, like that is how people work and it’s a dangerous tool, but it’s a real tool. And so it’s the same thing with building a brand consistency. Yeah. Statement is just as much as consistency of delivery.

You go the opposite you might get in the U S you have Cox and Comcast cable networks have the worst customer service ever. And they’re known for it. Like you are known for what you’re good and bad at and what you’re consistent with. So that becomes. A big part of branding. So again, the three powers, awareness, nurturing trust.

So when we look at a brand, if we look at what are they missing in those things, what is hurting them? Where are their numbers off? And part of the importance of frankly having an agency that has this kind of visibility as we benchmark it. So maybe they think their Facebook ads aren’t performing, but we know that the entire Facebook community isn’t performing, hence the $10 billion loss.

So it’s not them. It’s the platform, vice versa. Maybe they go, well, Google is not doing well either right now. It’s like, no, it’s not Google. Google’s fine. It’s actually. Let’s go fix that, that, and that’s an important aspect as well. So we go through all that, figure out what they’re missing, put together a strategy of here based on your finances, based on what you’re missing.

These are the things we want to start with. And then frankly, we’re month to month in our cart. So we change an ebb and flow all through it, but we figured out a good place to start. So just interview awareness, nurturing and trust. Those are the three pillars, the other broken down in the hoc method. Yep.

What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the world of marketing and branding over the last few years? And what do you see going forward in a post pandemic world? So Facebook for a decade has been the golden goose. You can build a brand to mid eight figures on just being good at running Facebook ads and a few other things, but Facebook can drive that and iOS change early on wasn’t as effective.

I like we saw some small bumps, but as the year place. It’s been much bigger. And now you’ve seen the losses from Facebook. We saw that coming. We’ve seen the losses on our Facebook team. Like it’s just not performing like it used to, and it was a golden goose. So when that core marketing channel goes away, you start looking at, okay, how do we diversify off of this and bring back more of a complex marketing strategy.

And that’s, what’s necessary now we’re talking to a lot of companies about this. It’s like, they’re so used to, oh, so should we just move our Facebook budget to tech talk? It’s like, no, you should do. And Google and email and SMS and TV and radio and direct mail. And I know it’s miserable because it was so much easier when you needed to do two things, but you gotta be a good marketer now and look at all the tools out there and the landscape and try a bunch of things because different brands are seeing different success in different areas.

Now, as opposed to everyone can just spend on Facebook or Instagram and it’s fine. And so that’s really, what’s changed and it’s a big change because a lot of times. There’s a lot of shuffling happening. We’re seeing tons of agencies go under because all they did was rely on Facebook. We’re seeing, tons of brands go under because all they did was rely on Facebook, but that also makes room for either new people or existing incumbents to go.

Okay, great. Now your market share has gone. I’m just going to take it over. So for us, thanks. We were diversified and we were built for this because it’s always been our marketing principle as goes back to the hoc method that we do a bunch of different things, not just focus on Facebook. It was an easy, it’s been an easy pivot for us, or I shouldn’t say easy.

It’s been a pivot for us that took some work, but we’re fine. And for a lot of people, it’s just devastating for them. Yeah, it was interesting. it was a couple of months ago. I don’t know if you remember where, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, I think went down for a day. Do you remember that? Yep. And well, of course, but what was interesting about that was, you know, I was on some social audio apps and, you know, in our industry, it literally shut down businesses for day.

Like they were freaking out and it forced the conversation to your point. What else are you doing? You need to cover all the basis of that goes down. Pick up where you left off and it doesn’t kill your business exactly. By the way. And we talk, I have a video, I just filmed on this. We talk about it, like treat your marketing strategy, like a stock portfolio.

Would you go all in on one stock like that? Unless you have some insight information, which deputy careful, you probably shouldn’t do that. You should probably diversify. Be in different sectors and industries. So that one thing goes down it’s okay. And I believe that by the way, between digital and traditional too, like, there’s going to be a point, I think at some point it’s a catastrophic event, but we’re going to lose internet for awhile.

I just believe like it’s bound to happen. I agree with you. I agree with you. And so if you don’t have a backup for when the internet goes down, that’s not good. Right? Like I think they’re setting us up for that anyway. I think they’re, they’re hinting at it anyway. So I think that’s coming and then. The biggest changes to the industry, I guess, kind of what you talked about, right.

Just making sure you’re on the president on all platforms. Is that what you’re thinking? No, I wouldn’t say quite omnipresent because you eat, there’s also like stay focused. Like there don’t chase the shiny object, whatever the newest hottest thing is. You can, there can be a lot of wasted time, you know, like clubhouse, thankfully I got out of it.

And you mentioned audio. Thankfully. I got a lot out of it when I was on it, but I have like 70,000 followers on platform and users usage went just through the floor after a few months. And it was great for a few months and then was gone. And if someone had really invested in it, it would have been a wasted effort.

Now. I hope they come back. I really think that they, they do have some, I, I love clubhouse. I’m on clubhouse quite a bit, actually. And it’s great, but it went from like amazing people all the time. Great content. I couldn’t find a single channel that want to hang out at. And so, I think they’re going to figure it out, hopefully, but in the meantime, that’s a good example of how many brands spent a bunch of time on there trying to figure out how to monetize it and all that time was wasted.

And now they’re like, oh, all right, next thing. And I think a lot of companies get stuck chasing that shiny object versus. Going in on the things that are working. And this is a good one too, is, you know, people think that marketing is shifting all the time and everything’s bottled all with Facebook and Google where the best channels to market on for the past, like 15 years.

Like it, it just, or not quite 15 decade. So past decade, that’s what you’ve been doing. That’s just shifting. So, oh, God has shift every decade. Like that’s not something to worry about. Like, and that’s, I think where it’s also important to remember, like, yes, you want to take advantage of the tools out there, but don’t chase every new shack.

If you could pinpoint one thing or. Maybe I’ll put it this way, in your opinion. What’s the most important thing for companies and brands to focus on in 2022 and beyond one thing, lifetime value of a customer it’s between merchandising, marketing. How do you extract as much share of wallet out of the customer as you can, because advertising is getting more expensive and less targeted and like cookies are going to go away soon.

That’s going to be another shift. So getting new customers I think is going to continue to get harder. And so leveraging the fact that you have customers and getting a high lifetime value, which has always been a big part, but I think it just gets more important as the other parts got. Ah, man, I’m so happy.

You said that. I talk about it all the time, especially in my industry, like I’ve been in real estate for a long, long time, but you know, agents every day, boots on the ground agents, they don’t understand the, the lifetime value of a client. They don’t, we’ve actually done studies on this it’s eight transactions, which is a lot of money in a transaction, the lifetime value because they move every five years and then they refer family and friends.

So if you nurture them properly, Yeah. And you touch them properly. It translates into, eight transactions over the lifetime of that client. That’s huge. Yeah. Versus not doing it. I’m doing one. You’re going to do eight X your business by just handling your existing relationships. I’m so glad you said that, man.

That is. Yeah. Like of everything you’ve said, like, this is so profound, the lifetime value of a client or a prospect or lead, like you just, if you put it into those terms, you’re going to take them a lot more seriously. And then you’re going to have, like you said, the nurturing, the entry. Yeah. It allows you to be more strategic with how you market to, because if you now are making eight times as much off a customer, what can you do to get that customer?

How much more can you spend in advertising? How much more can you put behind it? If you’re able to derive eight times as much out of a customer. So that that’s exactly. And that’s what we look at because you get a lot of people that want to focus on. You know, how much did I spend and how much did I make off the first purchase?

Well, that’s a really short-sighted way. And we’re living in a marketing’s competitive. You’re what someone else is willing to spend more than you are, because there are know how to actually monetize that and how to measure it properly. And so you’re going to end up losing ad space, not knowing how to monitor it.

And then you get people that say things like, oh, I don’t think Facebook is good for my business. No, no, no, no, no. Facebook is good for almost every business. You don’t know how to manage your business properly to make this work. And that’s, that’s the trade-off we see a lot. So in that sense, think about what an agent could do again, if they knew they were making eight times as much money as they thought they were off each client.

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And you may have answered that. And then we’ll move to a, kind of some personal development stuff, but you may have answered this. What advice would you give an aspiring ad executive looking to make, you know, an impact in the world of advertising and branding brand new? Just, you know, another first question.

I appreciate it. At executive. I think like one of the biggest things I’ve seen is people think they’re either performance, you know, Dr. Marketer or they’re a brand marketer and you need both and you need to have chops in both. So it’s really find ways to blend the two. And that’s where you can really do good or great work and stand out like the answer isn’t one or the other.

It’s both. And so when, as you’re becoming an ad executive, like understand the performance side and how to measure ROI and how to measure by fan value and CAC and all these things, but then understand how does, what are all the things that you don’t measure that build brand equity? Because both come into play when you’re building a business.

And what we see is a lot of businesses get really performance driven. I get it. But then when they get to a certain scale, that performance tapers off and they have no idea how to scale, because they don’t know how to build a brand vice versa. You can throw a bunch of money at a brand. If you don’t get any performance, the short term, that’s pretty hard.

So it’s that combination that I think makes a really skilled marketer. It’s fantastic advice. Okay. Moving along to a little bit of a wrap up here, Eric, it seems like you work hard. And play hard. Right. Can you tell me a bit more about how you approach that work-life balance? So I think, cause there’s a cliche statement there.

I actually don’t drink alcohol anymore, so it’s not like work, play hard in terms of like, I’m going to go rage on the weekends. It’s I, we have, we almost sold the company a year and, and it changed. It’s been for a while. So my partner and I met, we decided not to sell, but the conversation was how do we turn this into a marathon, not a sprint.

How do we make it? So I want to do this forever and I’m not rushing for somebody. And so at the time it was pretty simple. We were, I was just like, I want to visit a cool place two or three times a year. I want to go on a 10 day trip somewhere. Cool in the world and travel internationally. That was my priority in 2015.

his was, he wanted to play golf every other Wednesday morning, but it was actually like, what would we do if you’re retired right now? I’d travel. He’d play golf. Cool. Got it. Why don’t we just do that anyways? So that’s how we set it up. And then from there. More and more of this driver for me, that drives me personally, professionally was like, I want to experience everything life has to offer personally and professionally.

And so with that, I, you know, got more, it was always a snowboarder, but I got way more into it. And I did these heavy boarding trips and then I started training for that way and got better. And then I got scuba certified for my honeymoon and then realized that was really fun to challenge myself intellectually, meaning all the studying you do outside of work.

I hadn’t done that in while. And so then I signed up to get my pilot’s license and spent a year and a half getting that and got my pilot’s license to continue to do education there. And I find myself to be a hobby junkie as much as I’m a workaholic where it’s like, what’s the next fun thing I can do.

And it’s created a great sort of harmony between. And we talk about this a lot. I believe in work-life harmony, not balanced, balanced, connotes, opposing forces that I can only have fun or work. Not both or have life, I guess. For me, it’s like mention a few times here, Howie boarding with a bunch of Canadian entrepreneurs, even though I’m not Canadian.

And I feel honorary, I’m going surfing with a bunch of entrepreneurs doing, you know, going to a conference and then doing something else now, you know, find myself to a conference cause I can get there faster. I have a lunch schedule, then like three weeks with a VC we’re partnered with not in terms of investment, but do work together.

We wanted to go to lunch about an hour away. And I was like, well, it’s fine. And so going to fight us both, they’re like finding ways to do both have fun, do work. I think has been a big driver of me and also. Has allowed me to turn down a lot of acquisition offers that are life-changing money. That like my grandkids I’ll be great.

My great grandkids, like true generational wealth that I could sell the business for that it’s like, but then what? And so I already do like all the things I would do if I sold the company already. And I don’t have anything else I’m trying to do. So why change it? And that’s, that’s been a big driver, so yeah, I definitely try to play hard too.

Whether it’s mountain biking still play a, I play guitar since I’m Forrest, to having fun with that, going on a 10 day snowboard trip. No, I know who you run with. I get it. I get what you guys do. Obviously you party with Kanye. I’ve seen that. So you do play hard. Do you have a daily routine? Do you have a, like a morning routine, anything like that?

Or is it organic? You know, get up at four 30, do yoga for 20 minutes, then sit in the hot infrared sauna, then get a workout. And then, you know, I guess meditate for half an hour. Like. None of it. I wake up, I stare at my phone for about 15 minutes trying to get, you know, wake up and then I shower in like 10 minutes and back out to my laptop to start my first call usually.

So I usually get up between 30 and 45 minutes per first before my first call again, and take 15 minutes, get up shower, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, go. I don’t eat breakfast. Realized that the, it being the most important meal of the day was actually a general mills advertisement, not an actual thing. And I never really cared about breakfast, so I usually just lunch and dinner.

And so I would have we’d get up and like, we work from home now. So I I’m in my window. Converted garage is where I have my office. So if it’s cold outside, I might sit on my couch for the first few calls or I’ll walk outside to my garage and, get to work. And that’s, that’s really my morning routine. And I don’t really, I do.

Exercise almost every evening, these days, but I do have a lot of evening dinners and things like that too. So I try to balance that, but I do try to exercise between five and six days a week, some sort of activity. I have a trainer three days a week. So that I’d say is pretty routine, but I’ve also never really liked full routine.

Like it’s nice to have for like a month. And then I like to break it up. So for the Canadians listening, he did say when it’s cold outside and he doesn’t want to go from the house to the garage, he did say that.

Canadians are rolling their eyes right now. It’s a little cold in LA right now. And it was 42 degrees yesterday morning. Oh, well, listen, man, I’m proud of you for doing that. Spent that’s fantastic, but you know, a refreshing take on a, on a daily routine, you know, I think it’s getting to be a bit much, you know, when you see some of these influencers and entrepreneurs talking about pouring their spring water and doing 10 minutes of the whole point of it is just a little annoying to me because I think it creates anxiety for people that don’t.

You have some confidence, like it’s okay. If you like, you know, I’ve seen all the ads or the things about like all the entrepreneurs that wake up at 3:00 AM to start their day. And it’s like, yeah, for all of them there’s entrepreneurs. I know that wake up at 11:00 AM, like do what works for you. And that’s okay.

And I think that’s important. That’s it? You nailed it. That’s exactly the point I was just going to make here, which is, you know, what, whatever works for you. If you need that structure, then do it, you know? But success leaves clues and Eric doesn’t need it. Okay. Here’s the. Here’s the question. If you could have dinner with any three people in history past or present, who would they be?

Who I would say maybe Thomas Jefferson. ’cause I, I haven’t like, I love living here. I’m not in terms of like weird patriotism, but just, I love the U S and I love being here. I feel fortunate to be here as more of the word, but I’d love to know after all the arguments about like where our constitution came from, just to ask them.

That created it. These also obviously got a lot of foresight and frankly, some lack of, so I’m curious the thoughts there, Richard Branson, I think is a great sign of that. Work-life harmony that I talk about. And as someone that I admire and I’ve met him, but never really got to sit down and talk, talk for a long period of time.

So that’d be one third one. I hate to be cheesy, but it comes to mind. So I’m just going to say it, but my dad passed and it’d be great to sit down with him. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, me too. Same as me. Yeah. I, I agree with you. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of funny, you know, when you, when you, it forces you to like, think about who you, you know, you value as like mentors, without being mentors in a weird way, you know?

So yeah, I think that’s fantastic. And this is, you’ll know this question. You’ll know this question. Are you opening a bottle of champagne one year from now celebrating something you’ve accomplished? What would. Yeah. So we’re really working on creating a tech between acquisitions and work. We’re working on a training, a tech background for Hawke that can just completely differentiate us in the market.

Like we are thankfully have differentiated. We’re done just fine. But I want to, like, I went through an exercise in September, actually went to UT Austin for a week to talk about, with this program called birthing of giants. And we talked about like, how do I go from where we are? You know, exponential growth, which funny enough we’ve had exponential growth.

We are one of the biggest companies in the room, but I still went through the exercise and really took it seriously. And we’ve been talking about big sort of tech enablement and what that looks like for seven years and not in like some like, oh, now we have a great CRM, but like true. What is going to disrupt our company?

What could we be move with? And we figured it out and we may we’re we’re under due diligence right now, probably going to partner with. Company has built part of it and then continuing to building it. And the goal is by the end of the year to have that rolled out in a way that we can be this, you know, take up an notch in what we’re already doing.

And that’s, that’s really what we’d be selling. That’s awesome. You know, sometimes I put people on the spot with that question in, they kind of him and hall and they, that they haven’t really projected out a year from now. You got the answer. So I like that. I like, you know where you’re going. Final question.

So much talk about legacy right in the mark. You’re leaving, you know, when all of a sudden done, what does the Eric Huberman legacy look like? What do you want to be known for? Yeah. You know, I really, our mission at the company really aligns with me. If I can find a way to. All the crap and get out of marketing and really make mark great marketing accessible professionally.

I think that’s great. I have a lot of personal legacy stuff too. Like I want to leave a great family. I’m going to leave great kids behind. I want to do all that side of the two, but if I’m talking about my true public persona well-known legacy, it would be that is actually achieving some level of accessibility to great marketing for every.

That’s awesome. what a great discussion. Thanks so much for, joining us today. Good to get to know you better break down the Hawke method, right? And the three pillars they’re here, your entrepreneurial journey. Very inspiring, fantastic takeaways for anyone who hears this episode. Great stuff I want to thank you very much, Erik, for that.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.