$150M Agency Owner Shows Me His Office In Santa Monica California

It might just be me, but I'm a complete achievement junkie, really. That's what drives me with all this.

Like I like to grow and build.

And feel like I'm doing more stuff.

And today we're at Hawk Media headquarters. Hawk Media is a marketing agency that has worked with some of the biggest companies like Verizon, Barstool, Sports Crocs, Casamigos, Red Bull and many, many more. And right now I'm about to meet up with the visionary and CEO Eric Huberman. He's going to show me around the office of this marketing giant that's valued at over $150 million and talk about how he this from a startup from the ground up. Let's go in and see for ourselves. What's up, dude? Look at this guy, man. Good to finally meet up in person.

Yeah.

Seriously good to see you.

Yeah.

This is it.

Dang.

Nice, man.

Yeah.

This is beautiful.

Thank you.

Look at this about you. Oh, okay. You got the gong about that.

Going to do it.

This is the sales gong, huh?

Exactly. Oh no, that's the sales gong.

Oh, wow.

What's this?

Like a little mini.

That was the original one and you know, we had to step everything up.

Oh, wow, look at this, dude. This is nice. And when did you hit the ink.

5,000 every six years in a row.

Wow.

From the moment you started. Oh, okay.

No, no, we're 10 years, so 28. But you can't. Yeah, you can't. Or we skipped a year, we forgot to apply. One year is really what it is. So we should have added seven years. But you can't apply until you're I think three or four years in business. So.

Really? Yeah. Wow.

So was it all remote before?

We were remote. Postcard coveted, pre covered. We weren't. And then post coveted. We were remote for three years. And then a year ago moved into like what I called our training wheels office. It was like just, it was a quarter. This size.

Yeah.

Just sort of like warehouse.

And then this popped up and I was like, well, if we can make it work.

And yeah, now we're here. We signed a five year lease on this.

That's beautiful.

Be here for a while. Yeah.

That's awesome. You guys are valued at, you know, 150 million from what I've seen online. And it's like companies that are doing nine figures, it's usually you have in person office and a remote. I've seen, I've seen that.

Yeah.

I prefer an office. I think that you get like, I mean, we were joking about it today, right now. My business partners here. He's actually based in Boise. That just amount you can get done in a couple hours in person versus weeks or months. Not it's like that's why we end up on planes a lot flying to each other.

Yeah.

But like Hawkeye is.

Our software business is doing really well. Our head of marketing works here, head of sales and our sales director are there.

And then for the business partner, he's more of like the behind the scenes operator.

Yeah, it's a. Yeah, we've run a few other companies together.

Yeah.

Okay. Oh, so. So before 2014 when you started hawking.

No. Yeah, we. I started a music company in 2009 that he took over in 2011.

What kind of music?

It was basically business coaching for musicians. So I think master class for the music industry. Working with independent artists back then too.

Like that was.

That was awesome. We raised a million bucks, got it to profitability, did well.

But I knew it was never going.

To be that big, so I hired him to take over. And then I started two e comm companies, sold them, started this, called him.

And said, I think there's a lot of opportunity here.

You might want to come join me on this.

And that's how it took off.

Dude, how did you even land? Like, because a lot of people are going to be watching this, like beginner entrepreneurs and stuff. But also that's like entrepreneurs that are doing millions of dollars as well. Like with agencies, the number one question is always client acquisition.

Right.

Did you. Did it just land like.

Yeah, I mean at the.

I mean 2014, it was easy. I mean, well, and it was easy for me because I had built the credibility. I think my opinion is most agencies.

Struggle because they don't actually know what the fuck they're doing.

So like if you're starting an agency and you don't have a background in marketing, you had success in it.

What are you doing? It's like again, it's like being a.

Dentist and you've never fixed a tooth. Like, well, that's not going to work out very well. You might be able to talk a few into opening their mouth, but it's the same kind of thing. So I found really early, like there was so much bullshit in our space.

That if I was able to just. I had the credibility that everyone wanted to see. Like, I built and sold two good quality e commerce companies that everybody in town knew. And then once I signed a few clients, I did good work for them.

Yeah.

And then it just went and it's like Go figure.

Reputation and doing what you say you're going to do.

Yeah.

Go a long way.

Yeah.

That's why I see it with agencies all the time where they struggle because they're not good.

Yeah.

And like, your work product, your quality, like, that's where you.

If not, you're going to just churn through clients and be on a hamster. Whee.

And eventually your reputation is going to run out. And we have the opposite, which is nice. Which is the once in a while we do have an angry client or someone that says bad mouths us.

We have so much good reputation that they get shut down without us even saying anything.

It's like, yeah, okay, we're bad. Look at the list of cred credentials we have. Like, you know, your clients come to.

Back you up and you're social proof, your trust, everything.

And you need that because you're in a space that it shouldn't be subjective, but it is. Meaning, like, people can feel whatever they want to feel.

And so you're going to have people.

That naysay, but if the majority of.

Them are, you're screwed.

Yeah.

It's here and there, which is going to happen.

Then you're not as bad.

Yeah, exactly.

My favorite thing is I think we have, like, a couple bad Google reviews.

Yeah.

And every time someone will be looking to work with us and they'll be like, hey, what about these reviews? And I'm like, let's pull up your company.

And they're like, fair enough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's see. Let's see what you got going on behind this.

Because, like, nobody gets away without some angry person.

Yeah.

Becoming a customer.

When you first started Hawk, like, back when you and your business partner, when you're like, yo, this could be. This could become something. Did you see Office? Did you see.

Okay, well, no, it was reactive in the beginning, which worked really well.

It's just working. Like, you just sold E Comm.

And now it's like, just keep going.

Just keep going. Wait, that's working. Double down. I had, like, the first four years.

Kind of mapped out where I thought.

I knew where we were going, but I didn't really, like, I didn't really.

Pick my head up.

I just went for it.

Like, it wasn't like, oh, I've got this grand vision.

We're going to be this huge company. We have tons of people. Like, I didn't really care. It was just like, I'm making money right now and it's working and people.

Are happy and I'm. And it's Fun.

I'm just going to keep going.

Yeah, that's where I came from.

That's, that's pretty much like. I think that overwhelms a lot of people too. It's like they think that everybody has this huge vision and it's like I've, you know, and some people do, but it's like you kind of just keep doubling down on what's working and you just keep pushing the button until it just stops. But if you don't stop, it's never going to stop.

Right, so agreed.

Yeah.

So show me some of your favorite things that you've got in here.

Yeah, I mean, what's fun is we've won a lot of awards over the years. So actually having all.

What awards are these? Okay, so I've never seen these before.

They're all different. I mean this is, you know, we get asked to apply to different awards.

Best affiliate marketing Campaign.

Yeah.

Okay, that's interesting.

Best Digital marketing Campaign.

And is that, is that the digital marketing. So Tucky is the company that gives you these awards?

No, that's the company we won for.

Oh, okay. So what's Tucky?

I forget what these guys are called, to be honest.

Do you mind if I touch it?

No, you're good.

Wow, look at this.

Dude.

This is. And that's heavy to look at that.

These were based off like quality of work and stuff that we submitted a ton of work and what we were doing and just like an overview on the agency.

Okay. And they just took all of consideration. They're like, damn, every awards different, you.

Know, ask for different things. We have a, you know, we have a PR team that focuses on getting us press, getting, submitting for awards, doing all these things because you kind of need to continue with that relevancy and that trust build. Like. Yeah, again, it's all like people, people know they need marketing. It's why us.

Yeah.

I don't want to work with people that are questioning whether they need marketing. But it's like, why are they going to pick me versus everyone else out there? And that's the constant not struggle but focus of especially me as a founder. Like, that's why we do a lot of things we do is like that proof point and it has to be real. Like the nice thing is it can't just be a facade of like, you should work with us because like these awards, frankly, like everyone asks, how do I win so many awards, Michael, in step one, apply like that, that helps.

Yeah, yeah.

But, and, but like building Hawk AI where it's like, now we have a whole AI system that we can optimize campaigns way faster than anyone can, have way more visibility in the market than anyone can. We have haw Ventures, which allows us to invest and fund the rest of the martech that we need, which makes us more efficient and more innovative. Constantly. We're always interpreting new technology, like, all these things that really feed into how do we be the best marketing company on the planet. And our whole mission thesis was, let's be the best at what we do. But really easy to work with.

Yeah.

Because that was the other part that I saw when we were starting was there are good agencies out there, but they're all pain in the ass to work with on contracts, high minimums. They only want to work with the Fortune 2000. I'm like, well, why can't we work with small and medium businesses too and be great at what we do? Like, why is that not a thing? So that's been a part of a big part of our success.

Which one, if any of these here, maybe not, has been your favorite or. I didn't even know there was a room back there until I just saw.

Yeah, the telly's fun because that's a very legit award for the commercial we filmed for Hawk Media. This was a fun one to win your outsourced cmo.

Wow.

Yeah, we did a commercial for Hawk that still holds water today, which was.

That the commercial of you in the old office with the kids?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that was an award.

You haven't watched that one. You got to go watch that commercial.

I'd say Forbes under 30 was probably my most proud one. Now it's kind of, I think, gotten a little washed out. But, like, I was a year younger than everyone growing up, so, like, I wasn't the. I was athletic. I was not competitive because I was tiny. I was a head shorter than everyone. So, like, I wasn't the guy stacked with trophies in my room. So, like, when I got that award, it's like I felt like I got the trophy, the top trophy for the thing I was, which was a young executive business person. So that meant a lot at the time. And then since then, I got 40 under 40 from CSQ magazine. I got four under 40 from the American Advertising Association.

Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that one.

Oh, yeah.

Those are pretty fun too.

And this. This is hilarious. Okay. From one advertiser to another, you got to respect this. If you don't know what this thing is, then you don't like ads. Yeah, the Bug assault.

Guess who does their marketing?

Hawk Media. No way. And you actually have one too. That's true. Proof of concept.

They work with us.

You love the client.

Yeah, I know. It's fun. And I watch my. The sad truth is we get flies in here because we like leaving the doors open. So I watch them walk around with.

That thing all day.

This is my office.

It's being taken right now, but.

Okay.

Yeah.

Kensington Library.

Yeah, exactly.

A couple other offices here.

Pull up bar. This used to be a little gym, but yeah, it's fun.

That's a pull up bar?

Yeah, go pump some. Yeah, man.

So dude, this is nice. You can do a little dead hang too. Yeah, get a little relaxing.

How many you got? At least 20. At least 20.

All right.

Three, four.

Dang.

Thanks for putting.

Yeah. Oh, I was.

Dude, that's pissing me off.

I'm gonna.

It's gonna make me mad.

Wow, look at this. Come in here, check this out.

It's a nice quiet room.

If your company doesn't have a meditation room, then. I don't know.

Exactly. And then we have all this, which.

Is great because it's funny how you laid it out. Pull a bar to meditation to take some deep breaths.

We've got a couple of guys have like a daily push up routine up here. I think it's 100 push ups a day they gotta do.

That's awesome.

Oh, honestly, you'll see people up here hanging out on the couches a lot with their laptops. We always called our office the most comfortable place to be uncomfortable. We're like, we don't care about like suit, be at your desk sitting upright. Which obviously is antiquated anyways now, but even 10 years ago when we were talking about it, we're like, fuck all that. Like wear your workout clothes, I don't care. But like you're gonna work hard. But like, do you know, none of the other stuff really mattered to me.

When it comes to the branding. Right. So the hawk on the hat, was it just your favorite animal? Was it just something that.

Yeah, I mean, to an extent. I grew up in Ohio, small town north. We had a Native American chief, Chumash Chief tell me when I was 7 that Hawks were my spirit animals. Red tailed hawks. And so when I went to name Hawk Media originally I was going to call it Growth Hacker Group is when Growth Hacking was starting to become a thing. And a buddy of mine was like, I just signed a contract with Walmart. They will never put their name on a contract that says Hacker on It. So, like, keep it simple. I was like, that's good advice. And I literally just was like, what do I like? What's simple? And I was like, I like, you.

Know, I've always liked Hawks.

I like, you know, the idea of it, etc. But hawk without the E was taken on Godaddy.

Hawk.

Hawk Media without these. So I threw an E on. It was like, yeah, great. Again, I didn't have a vision of building this, so I was like, yeah, I'll just keep it simple. Called a college friend of mine and give her a few hundred bucks to make me a little logo. She nailed it. Pretty. Like, I think she gave me four options and this was one of them. And I'm like, because I told her I want an icon, iconic Hawk landing on the K. So Hawk Media.

There we go.

And I was like, this is what I want it to look like. I want it lowercase, blah, blah, blah. And she sent me that one. I was like, perfect.

Yeah.

And that was it. That was it.

That's awesome, man.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because I'm always. I'm always curious about the branding side of things.

Yeah.

It's a huge thing.

And it's honestly my view of naming and branding and all that, like, you make the brand what you make it, so it doesn't really matter other than like, what's a Google, what's a Facebook, what's a Amazon? Like, doesn't really matter. It's more about what you turn it into. I just believe that to make it easier on yourself, the icon should be iconic. Like, think of it as a religious symbol. And that's what, like, every time I wear this hat, which is why I wear it so much now, is like, it was like, that's fucking cool. What is that? I'm like, it's nice. So, and that was the vision from the beginning, is I want it to be a symbol that people want to rock, that want to wear. No one's going to get the tattoo of the marketing agency, like, to do liquid death. But like, yeah, but they. But I still love that there's like a icon that more my own people, the staff, the employees, like, you want to fly the flag. You want to, like, it feels like a symbol you can get behind.

That's awesome, man. Yeah, that's beautiful. Talk to me about the book, right? Yeah, everybody knows. I mean, me personally, I was a huge fan of obviously Ogilvy, you know, OG in the space, the. The godfather of advertising. Some say. Yeah, Confessions of an Advertising Man.

Yeah.

Wrote the book, obviously. Used it as a lead magnet almost, if you will, to get more clients. The moment I saw you drop this, I bought it. Read every. Read every word of it. I still tell people about this one right here, which is the actual marketing tripod.

Yeah.

This thing, the way you explained it is just so, so perfect. So, like, how long did it take you to develop that method specifically? Because that's what is the foundation of.

And that. That is it. Basically, I was already doing it with my own companies. But then with Hawk, the biggest job is to articulate what we're doing for clients. Like, whether we're selling into a client or we're working with them, we got to tell them what we're doing. And so that was a big part of the job. And so I found myself trying to simplify the way we explained it and not just go into jargon and make it super complicated. Be like, no, it's just. Think about it.

This.

This.

Yeah.

And so that's where that came from was like when I was talking to clients and thousands and thousands and thousands of companies we were working with and then started doing a bunch of public speaking about marketing. And I distilled it down to that, and then it became a talk I did a bunch of times, and I'd go and speak around stages.

And then, you know, six years into.

Hawk, I got approached by a guy who's like, hey, thought about writing a book. And I'm like, I actually had already worked on a different book that I decided I didn't want to put out. But then I was like, yeah, you know, I think I could distill what I've been, you know, basically just our marketing methodology.

Yeah.

It's like, well, I can help you.

Do it pretty easily.

And so then there was. It was a great, easy way to write the book.

Yeah.

Marketing. And it's all different story. Well, regardless of having a marketing agency, doing the book tour is a lot really. Oh, yeah. It's grueling. Actually. I've talked to a few writers that agree. Like that process of. Because the first week book sales.

Yeah.

Or what Matt, is what gets me this little logo. The USA Today, any bestseller list. It's about the first week, maybe two. So, like, it is brutal leading up to that to make sure that everything's firing on cylinders. Because like most companies, you make a couple mistakes and things you can pivot change like this. It all matters in one week. There's no. There's no data. There's no optimization. You just gotta go.

You just gotta promote it. Everywhere, as hard as you can, every client and get them to try to buy it as well.

Yep.

And how much. What's the even qualifications for USA Today?

Like it's just the top selling copies. It's. Yeah. How many books you sold? I sold 30,000 copies. I think it was 12,000 in the first week. I think was the number or 13,000.

Yeah.

Beating myself from yesterday's. I don't care about other people. Like competition wise, like I could care less.

I'm happy for like our biggest competitors in la. I'm friends with all of them.

Really?

Yeah. I'm happy for them when they're successful. It's not a big deal.

God forbid we lose a client here.

And there to each other. It's more about like I want to.

Know that I beat myself now.

If they're standing, truly standing in the way of me being successful, that get a little different. But it's like, it's more about me and what I'm building.

And so at the times like business isn't linear. So the times when let's say you're.

Having more struggles in work.

If I have something personally I'm achieving at least it just helps me stay in the game.

Wow, that's a huge, huge tip. Because it seems like when most people's business maybe isn't going in the right direction, they tend to actually take their foot off their personal life because they let it stack where you're like, okay, well clearly this is a little bit of a different season. But let me work double on myself to get.

Well, it's not even double. It's just maintain. It's like just have like so like, you know, I'm triathlon in a week that I committed to at the beginning of the year. And I'm a big snowboarder. So I was like, I'll start training in March. So I gotta find one in mid late summer because I was snowboarding and training for snowboarding during that season. And then I already signed up for a half marathon in November because I want to maybe do a full marathon in March. And so I just keep this like personal thing going. I also set like training different types of like hobby goals. Like I'm gonna learn piano or I'm gonna learn how to do this or.

You know, now I'm working on a marksmanship with shooting.

No way.

Yeah, it's fun.

You saw the guy in the Olympics. He saw the guy in the Olympics, the one which is the glass by the way.

He's what, 52?

Yeah.

I'm 37. I'm like, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go to the Olympics.

That's not.

I've been doing it for a little while, but that was definitely a thought of, like, wait, you don't need to be that athletic for this sport. I gotta figure this out. So, yeah, honestly, either there's things like that that I just, like, put a target on of, like, what's something that I can feel like I achieved something new.

Got my pilot's license, my captain's license.

All these other things. So it's. That's always been very helpful for me and keeping in the game.

What have you found to be, like, a big thing with retaining talent today? Because a lot of people have flexibility, work from home. They have a lot of things they could do, different side projects and all that.

Yeah, I found that, you know, I think you have to run the company you want to run and get. You'll get the people you get. I think people, like. Like, there's so many people in the world that, like, I'm not really worried about finding. Like, we're not being anything crazy or unreasonable here, like, saying, let's work in an office together, like. But I will say, like, I saw.

A poll about a month ago that.

Actually surprised me, which it was if Would you rather work 25 hours a week and make 125 grand a year, work 70 hours a week and make 300 grand a year? And I was like, no brainer. 70 hours a week, make 300 grand. Like, I want to work like most wants so I can live like most can't. Like, that 100% drives me, and I would definitely do that. And I expected the majority of people to want to work 25 hours a week instead of 70. But what percentage do you think of people would rather work 25 hours a week?

At least 80%.

80%? Yeah. 92.

Wow.

Yeah.

I'm sorry. 98.2. 98.2. Excuse me.

Wow.

So, yeah, so just under 2% of people will actually want to put in the work to make the money. I'm like, okay, so I need to find that cohort.

Yeah.

And I need to make an opportunity where they can, but I want to find the people that want to grind, that want to work hard. And I think when you set up your culture and you set expectations that way, I think you'll attract those people and you'll scare off the other people. And that's okay. It depends what you want to build. I think other people, you know, I saw an interview with Eric Schmidt yesterday that he was at Stanford this week speaking and he was talking about like, Google's lost its edge because they became more concerned with giving people work from home and work, life balance and vacation than they did with innovating. And I hear that that brings up.

A good point because it's almost basically exactly like when you manage client expectations, client relationships.

Right.

Because I'm sure you have at this point thousands of clients, multiple thousands of clients that you've worked with. And like, I'm sure some clients are like that too, where it's like they come to you with unrealistic expectations. You kind of have to reset them.

A client come to us yesterday and tell me they want to launch their company. They have 90 grand and they expect to do. I think it was $30 million in the first six months. And I was like, that's gonna be tough. So many, we don't do that much spec work. Like you want to hire us. We have enough credibility. Like, hire us.

Okay.

Like we're not gonna go do a bunch of free work and hope that you want to work with us because we've been taking advantage on that side too. That we're like, nope, like, you know who we are. We, we're very capable and if we're going to, we'll go figure something out, but we're not going to do it for free.

Yeah.

And so it's usually just presenting ourselves. And you know, thankfully we, you know, we bring on 40 to 50 clients a month. So that's over the past 10 years. So we've had 5,000 companies that have worked with over 5,000 have worked with Hawk Media. And there's different reasons. Different ones are exciting. There's the big win of like we sign Nike or we sign like we brought on giant bicycles this week. Oh, we brought on the Harvard Business Review, we brought on Bloomberg this week. Like these, those are great brands. Those are all fun. And like the first time you bring on a big brand that, you know, it's fun. But thankfully I started very early. My first client was Bowie Total Fitness. So like, you know, and pretty quickly I got Red Bull and Verizon and hp. And so we had big wins pretty quick. And then you realize you like. And we know this, we just did the analysis again. Like we make more money and have more engagement and make more impact with the sort of medium sized brands that like 5 to 50 million revenue brands, you know, don't get wrong. We can add just as much. We can add $50 million to Red Bull's.

Revenue too.

They just don't give a. So it's just like, you know, we still, it's fun, but it is fun to work with the flagship brands too. But then there's like individual, like, we just, we signed Cali Water a couple months ago and that's been super fun. That's Vanessa Hudgens and Oliver Trevina's Cactus Water company. Because we're like using it. Our events where the campaigns are going well, they're rolling out in tons of stores. The success is fun.

Yeah.

And it's also, they made like a healthy version of Capri sun that now I have my two year old daughter, Dr. Cali Water. And like, that's been a fun brand. So the win isn't really like you win the pitch anymore just because Frankly it happens 50 times a month. So it's not like, oh my God, we won the client. Because I know that's, that's when it starts. It's not like, yeah, exactly, we won, we're done.

Yeah.

Like, it's, now I got to get to work.

Now you got to fulfill.

And that's where my head has always gone is like, yeah, exactly. You got to fulfill and keep it and all that.

Well, let's talk about Bally Bally. Right, so this was the first client you signed for Hawk Media back when you first started and that did. That you mentioned, did it kind of fall into your lap after the E Comm sale?

Very much so. So I met the guy and he wanted to build an online activewear brand. I was running an online activewear brand. He said, hey, can I pay you to make give me a business plan? I was like, sure, I can put a business plan together. Obviously, I know the business.

Yeah.

And so he asked me how much I'd charge and I threw out basically what I made in three months. Meaning, like with my three months salary that I was able to make, like, and I was making decent money. Just throw out this big number.

And my heart was going.

I was like, there's no fucking way. And he goes, can I pay you half up front, half after? I was like, yeah, yeah. He's like, great. And I said, I need a month and a half though, to make it look like I was gonna do the work. And I did it in a weekend and made great money. And then he ended up deciding, instead of using that business plan, could he buy my company.

Wow.

He bought Ellie.

And then he said, no, I want you to come work for me. I was like, absolutely not. He's like, oh, I'm like, I'll come consult one day a week. And he said, I want you to consult three days a week in my office. And I'm like, can I have my own office so I can do some other work too? He's like, sure, like, great. And I ended up throwing out a number that was basically what, four times what I made an hour for three, three part days a week and said, done. Like, okay. And so all of a sudden I'm working three days part time a week, making way more money than I ever made in my life. Still had four days because I was 26.

Yeah, stud.

Four other days a week.

So I didn't care about my weekends.

I started bringing on other consulting clients and figuring out other things to do. And that was the birth of hawk. So it was like I had enough money to pay my bills and then some with my first client. And then I signed another one, another one, another one. And all of a sudden I'm making four times as much money as a consultant.

Yeah.

And living really well at 26. And that's when I started hiring people and going, oh, there's something bigger here.

Yeah. Wow.

It sounds like from that story alone, it's just like very clear that you already knew your worth and value.

I was just going to go there. I didn't. I learned it, I realized and now I see this in hindsight where it's like the amount of money I saved that guy in terms of like that business plan and what he could have had to do and then like helping him navigate for a second I was totally worth every dollar he spent on me. But to me, I was like, I was used, you know, I was not used to being offered that. But it wasn't about what's market rate for me, it's what money can I make him. And so that was a very eye opening experience that allowed me to then grow. This whole thing was like, well, what else would he have spent on? How would we save that? How much money can we make? Like it's the same thing when people, and you'll, I'm sure, deal with this too. When we're talking to somebody about our percentage of ad spend that we charge, we charge on the media side. And they're going like, let's say they're spending 100 grand a month and let's say we charge 10% just to make it easy. So it's 10 grand a month. And they go, you know, we found someone else that'll do it for seven, like three grand savings.

They're like, yeah.

I'm like, so what do you need your returns to be on your marketing, which, let's just be real, if it's not four times plus over ltv, like, it's not going to work. So let's just say four times. Okay, so you need me to spend 100 grand a month and make you 400 grand.

Yeah.

And you're going to take a risk on someone that wants to charge you seven instead of ten. So you're going to save three grand and risk that 400. Like, do you understand the decision making process?

You're trying to save three grand right.

Now versus picking the best opportunity to make that 400. I promise you I can make three grand more from for you than this other person. Like, this is. You're going to outsource it to India and you're an idiot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is stupid that we're even having this conversation and people don't realize that. So the whole knowing your worth thing, it's like, understand the value you're creating and like, why are you talking about my fee right now? If I don't perform, if I don't hit that 400 now, fire me. Like, you can't. You can't afford to have me. But like, if I can hit your numbers, you're going to make a decision over a few thousand bucks when we're talking about hundreds of thousands.

Was it, was it, was it always like that? The, like bally red Bull, like you're saying those things for.

They didn't all push back.

A lot of the smarter marketers know that. So they're, they're not going to make that decision. Like who?

Which is why you said earlier in the office, you're like, we don't really work with people that need to be sold on marketing. Like, they already know they need marketing.

Yeah.

Why us over someone else? And if, and again, if it becomes a commoditized cost perspective, then they're not that savvy. And that's, that's a problem. And sometimes we'll work through it and sometimes we won't. And we just had it where someone wanted to build a website with us and they started telling us, well, they found someone in Indonesia to build it way cheaper. I'm like, and should I get your product in Indonesia? What are you talking about? It was just like.