0229 | Hawke Media: Your Data-Driven Focused Approach Outsourced CMO with Founder and CEO Erik Huberman

Hi, I'm Eric Huberman, CEO of HawkMedia.com and you're listening to EA Interviews, EA.

Interviews, episode 229, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect interview. Have you ever wanted to increase your marketing? Do you have a company and whether it's a mid sized one or a large one, you just were like, I don't know what to do. I know I need to be bringing in more leads, but have them qualify. You know, there's so much to do. Maybe it's not your specialty, you just want to serve your audience. I've had that feeling and that's why I'm excited to have TEDx speaker, podcast host and CEO of Hawk Media, Eric Huberman here today. He's got over 180 employees, 500 different clients to the likes of Alibaba K, Swiss, Verizon and hundreds of other ones. So I'm going to bring them up right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn. Learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Eric Huberman. Eric, how are you feeling today?

Doing great. How you doing?

I'm excellent. I can't wait to dive in with you. Because marketing is so essential to so many, every business, not so many businesses, every single business. Why do you think most people get it wrong?

You know, I think people take it for granted. I think, you know, it's one of those industries where it feels like you can just use your best judgment and logic and get away with it. But just like any other vocation, you, it takes a lot of time and a lot of trial and error and a lot of, you know, a big knowledge base to actually be able to do it well. And marketing versus a lot of other jobs, it the doing it well has an infinite upside and infinite downside versus like, you know, a lot of jobs, a lot of vocations. You do it right or you do it wrong. Marketing, every little tweak, every little difference in how you do it is a difference in ROI is a difference in how things turn out too.

What do you think most people try to do when they start off with marketing and what should they be doing?

Yeah, I think, you know, these days most people go, they put up a website and Start running Facebook ads. And what we see is, you know, Facebook is a great place to advertise products and services, but you need a good funnel and you need a good net and people forget that you don't see an ad and then immediately go buy something. Generally it happens, don't get me wrong, But a lot of times people need to be nurtured, people need to be brought along the sort of purchase cycle consideration period to actually go from learning that your company even exists to actually buying something. And so things like email marketing and SMS and chatbots and content, all these other things that come into play that actually help with conversion. A lot of companies skip over when they're first starting thinking that, like, let's just run some ads and see how it goes. And the problem is, if it goes well, great, congratulations. But if it doesn't, that doesn't mean anything because you're not doing it right. You're not running the whole funnel the.

Way you need to.

Let's just dive in a little bit deeper with the funnel. If someone's listening and they're not quite sure what a funnel is, or they might not be familiar with the term, you know, some people call it an onboarding process. And, you know, I think I personally take that as more of a, I'm already interested and now you have to onboard me and get me through the thing. But I've heard some people just say interchangeably, so how would you define a funnel and why are they important?

Yeah, so let's take a literal funnel looks like this. And the idea is at the top of the funnel, you have just anyone that's become aware of your, let's say, actually at the very top of the funnel, you have the entire world. And then comes the people that are aware you even exist. And then comes the people that are potentially interested in purchasing. And you kind of break the funnel on like every step of the way of like they, they now know I exist, now they've shown some interest, now they've given me information, now they've shown like, like they're ready to purchase and now they've purchased. And then even past that, what you do to take someone that's already bought from you and continues to buy, and so it gets more and more narrow, frankly, because it's a percentage of each step that makes it through the next one. That's why they call it a funnel. But the idea is to bring those that big base along to the point that you're really getting those people that are ready to buy. And so during that whole transition period of going from aware you exist to actually buying something, doing things to help people along is pretty critical.

So what is the difference from someone like Alibaba and Verizon versus a mid sized business? And.

Let me ask you.

I'll let you answer that first. And I got another one from something I saw on your website.

Yeah, so I mean, when it's that large of a business, there are brand equities out there. So there's usually a level of trust. We talk about marketing. We're actually going to be publishing a book about this called the Hawk Method. And we talk about marketing in three different categories. Awareness, nurturing, and trust. And we've already started kind of talking about this. Awareness is letting new people know you exist. Nurturing is what you do with that awareness to actually bring them to be a customer. And trust is building that trust that you're actually going to deliver what you say you're going to deliver in the way you say you're going to deliver it. And when you're a new company, you don't have intrinsic trust or also known as brand. So getting that through third party validation, meaning things like PR or influencer marketing or word of mouth where someone else is vouching for you, helps a lot.

And you need that.

Those three pillars are critical to actually making a sale and actually creating a successful marketing campaign. Companies like Verizon, Alibaba, they have intrinsic trust. People already know who they are. They already trust. And when I say trust, I don't mean that you even have to like it. Like McDonald's is a good example of this. Like we all, if we buy a Big Mac, we trust we're getting a Big Mac. We trust that we're getting a very unhealthy piece of food that might be made partially of cardboard. But I'm not saying, you know, don't mean to disparage them, but we also, like, we know it's.

But you're just being truthful that it's not Ruth Chris.

Yeah, correct. But that's still trust. You trust. It's consistency in that sense. You know, you know that what you're getting, the same thing goes for Verizon, same thing goes for Alibaba. Not the same thing goes for some company you've never heard of that you stumble across upon a Facebook or Google Ad for. So that's really a big gap in that is two things. Like when you talk about awareness, nurturing and trust. Verizon and Alibaba already have a lot of awareness and they already have a lot of trust. It's really much more hammering down on the nurturing side of it to bring people along from, you know, we exist, but you should really buy something and then, or you've already bought something, you should buy more.

So let's talk about that intrinsic value of the brand for the companies that are out there, because I feel like there's some, and these are more small to mid size, let's say, you know, if they're starting off and they're still under the million mark or under the 5 million, you know, that's a relatively small business. That's a, you know, congrats for them. But that's a relatively small business in the grand scheme and everything. But why do you think some of them seem to not want to build a brand? I mean it seems like they just want to get sales and go through it where others, they're focused on branding from day one and turn it into a brand. Why do you think the branding is so important and how long do you think it takes to actually get that intrinsic value of trust?

Yeah. So from a numbers perspective, brand does a few things. One, it increases your conversion rate. If people trust you and you have a built brand, you're going to convert at a higher level because people aren't going through that purchase decision in such a critical way because they already trust you. And it also creates more longevity of a brand. You don't need to be spent. It's not as much of a hamster wheel because you've committed yourself to memory with a lot of people and created that trust and consistency through a brand. You don't need to literally buy every customer you have because you have base that's going to always come back, that's always going to talk about you and tell people. And so it really comes down to what business you're trying to build. There are some great businesses that were built off just direct response marketing and just that, you know, input output kind of marketing that they're not trying to build a brand, they're just trying to drive people in to buy and get them out. And you can do that. It's not the business I want to build. I think it's a much more volatile and it's a, it's a less stable business, a less secure business. With a brand you can make a lot of mistakes and still have a sustainable business. With a doctor machine like that, you can't. It's easy, it's kind of fleeting and that business can go away overnight.

Okay, and how Long. Do you think it takes to establish a brand to be at the point where you have some of that? What do I. I'm thinking of, like, Kevlar suit of armor. You have that, you know, every. You have some leeway where it's like, the goal isn't to mess up, but when you do, because you will, you have some. Is leeway the word? Yeah, let's go with that. You have some leeway to just, you know, hey, I'm here. But, you know, this isn't the norm. It's one out of a hundred instances.

Yeah, I think it's, you know, there isn't really an answer to that because it depends on your own audience. Like, if you. If there's 10 people that know you've been around for 20 years and it's just those 10 people and you screw up for one of them, they're going to give you leeway. If you're. Let's say. Because I have one. Like a local tire shop where the guy's been, you know, changing your tires since he changed your dad's tires 40 years ago. And it's a friend of your dad's. If he screws up and leaves a nail in one of my tires or something, I'm like, yeah, I know who this guy is. It's not a big deal. I trust him. So it can be on a small scale or when you're talking about large scale, the thing is, it's bleeding too. It's something you have to continually reinvest in because you have companies like McDonald's or Coca Cola that all of a sudden people's priorities have changed and now they have to change with them to keep that brand as relevant as it was before. And that's why, you know, Coke Bot Suja, the juice company, and McDonald's is now full of salads and Burger King's doing the impossible burger. Like all these things are moves to understand that their customers are looking for something new and staying relevant and keeping their brand relevant.

And I think that's a great point you're bringing up, because the example I've used for years is exactly what you mentioned. Coke. Coke and Pepsi. And people go, I've been drinking them for 20, 30, 40 years, 50, whatever. Why do they keep, you know, why do they keep advertising? Yeah, because you have. But the next generation hasn't.

Well, it's not just the next generation. Also, if I'm.

Let's take. What's a third party to that? Sprite Sprites on my Coke. But sure, let's Take Sprite just as an example. And now I'm hitting you heavy.

And you're.

And this is true, you're sitting on your couch watching football, and I'm advertising Sprite over and over and over and over again. And even though you've drank Coke for a long time, you're now like, kind of craving a Sprite.

Haven't had one in a while, huh?

What's that?

Haven't had one in a while. That maybe I should get some.

Either haven't had one, or like you.

Normally would go to the store and buy Coke, but now you've had Sprite implanted in your brain, they're sitting on the shelf next to each other, and you go, that looked really refreshing. Boom. I just transferred. I just spent money. Now you've just transitioned from buying Coke to buying Pepsi. I just won. So for the big CPG companies, when it comes to advertising, it's actually about retaining and gaining market share. It's not customer acquisition. It's when you go to the store, you pick my soda over someone else's. When you go to a restaurant, you order my soda over someone else's. And so with that, there really isn't a limit. When you were talking about, like, sodas, which are pretty ubiquitous as far as the audience, to hitting everybody. Same thing with alcohol, where it's like, if I'm Bud Light, I just want to make sure when you go buy a beer, it's a Bud Light. So I'm going to advertise to you in every way I can and make myself relevant so that you go buy Bud Light.

Because they've already acquired you, but they want to make sure you're not getting diluted in their increasing market share, like all of it.

It's.

They're available everywhere, is the idea. So distribution has to come to play with that too. And then the idea is you're going.

To pick me over everyone else.

Whether you have in the past or not, I still need to ensure you're.

Going to do it next time.

Keeping that consistency in there. Now, let me ask you about A and W. Would they be third party? To my knowledge, I don't think Coke or Pepsi owns them.

Yeah, I think you're right. And that'd be a great example.

Like, you know, but same thing like with Minute Maid. I know that's Coke and you know, so let's talk about that because you're talking to diversification along the lines. Because it's not just Coke and Pepsi, it's all the subsidiaries where you Go into Minute Maid and, you know, Yum brands with lay's potato chips and, you know, Frito Lay. And then they're partnered with Taco Bell, which is owned by the same parent company and all of that. How do you deal with that? When do you take the same marketing approach? I mean, do you think that they're all universal or do you have. Are there some nuances you found from working with conglomerates and their subsidiaries?

Usually there's a customer archetype that fits each, and a lot of times it's the same. There's overlap. Like, there's a lot of people that drink both Coke and Sprite. Like, there's a lot of people that go to Taco Bell and, you know, kfc, I think, too. So, you know, it's. It's also like the fact that there's overlap and that's where a lot of these conglomerates get it. And there's, you know, they want individual brands for individual reasons and. But people have preferences. I mean, that's part of it, too. So it's okay, as you get into the bigger conglomerates to try to grab every micro market is what they're trying to do in every niche. And sometimes those niches have overlaps, you know, intertwined a little bit. But it's also grabbing people that may not like kfc, but like Taco Bell.

So for each of them, whether they're all subsidiaries of the parent company or they're completely different brands, it sounds like you're focusing on the ideal customer profile and you're not just going, oh, they're all the same. Because it's the same company.

No, not when. Yeah, the financial aspect of it in corporate structure, meaning they're all owned by the same corporation, doesn't mean anything. There's every once in a while nuance where they want to be careful. But generally, if it's a smart corporation, they're not buying full competitive companies like Coke is not buying Pepsi. If they are, they're probably transition. And I don't know enough details about the Coke and Pepsi target, but I guarantee there's a lot of overlap and a lot of combating there. And there's probably also. It's a Venn diagram. I'm sure there's probably a lot of.

I've heard it.

There's tons of people that will drink Coke and not Pepsi or vice versa. They are different drinks, even though they're very similar.

Yeah, I've always found it interesting at restaurants where it's like, can I get a Coke? It's like, well, is Pepsi okay?

You know, that is like, well, is Monopoly money okay?

Yeah, that's. I was just thinking of that too. There's so many. There's so many little nuances, but at the end of the day, the business is the business. And like you were talking about, is it client acquisition, is it market share? You know, what's the goal of it? And I think so many people are confused at that. So for someone listening, going, well, he works with Alibaba and Verizon and all these huge companies, I could probably never afford them. I noticed something interesting on your website as you take the role of being the CMO and your approach is a little bit different. Why don't you go into detail as to how you do it? Because clearly something's working. To have started just over five, six years ago and grow to the point you are. What approach are you taking that most companies aren't?

Yeah, you kind of highlighted it. Number one, Our mission is accessibility to great marketing. So we want to make sure that people can easily work with us, but we're also the best at what we do. It's that simple in a sense. Like, we want to have the best in the business, but we want to be easy to work with, which is a nuance that most agencies don't want. If they're really good at what they do, they generally have long contracts, high minimum, something that makes them hard to work with. So, yes, we work with Nike, Unilever, all these big brands, but then we also work with tiny startups. Our fees start at two grand a month, so we're able to work with the entire range of size companies and bring the knowledge we get from working with these big ones and the sort of, you know, to the small guys and then bring the knowledge of like the scrappiness you have to have as a small and new company to the big guys too. And so there's this balance of our skill sets that really pull from both to help each other, which has been great.

So the big guys, they have all the branding and advantage in that regard, but I know it's harder to steer a big ship than just being lean and nimble and everything. Conversely, the smaller companies, and you mentioned the local tire shop.

You have the agility, but they might be working on the branding. So do you in instance, like that, would you help the smaller ones with the branding in addition to the other.

So our met. Our methodology is not like, it's not just branding. So we'll go look at what do we think they're missing based on the marketing mix that we have.

So you might do some direct response marketing in there to get clients and leads if that's what they're seeking up.

It's not and it's less seeking. It's what do we. Where do we think they're falling short? If they have a great funnel and a great brand and they just need some more customers. And the answer is yes, absolutely. If they're getting a ton of interest but nobody's converting, we're going to look at their funnel. We're going to look at. Well, why, what are you doing to actually convert customers if they're having tons of customers come in once and never come back? We're going to look at that. So we do a full analysis before we actually recommend. Here's what we're going to do. But yeah, the idea is to plug and everything we do is a la carte month to month. So the idea is we're going to plug in very prescriptively into exactly what the company needs and focus on that and then ebb and flow and change as the company needs it.

That's fantastic because I know people that they only work with smaller companies and some only work with midsize and others only work with the big guys. But I think it's very unique and it's. One of the reasons I wanted to you on the show is because you have this mix of people and like what you just said, you can take the good from here and share it with them and you can take the good from here and share it with them and you have this synergistic relationship which is what I'm always looking for, no matter what it is. Personal, professional, you know, just how can you help someone that.

And I think that there's a lot to be said about hiring outside resources.

That live and breathe this aspect of your business. We do it with a lot of other parts of our business where, whether it's HR or certain things where we're not HR experts compared to an HR expert company. So why not hire some outside resources that help that do this? Kind of like law firms. I can go hire a GC and try to pull someone off the street, but why not hire a firm that has a process built day in and day out to make sure they were handled Here, an accounting firm, we're thinking of the same model for marketing where it's like we might not be the person that's going to hide your money in the Caymans, but we know best practices for marketing and we're going to make sure that if anything, you're doing the right things and scaling your business. And then for us, we're successful pretty much 100% of the time if it's a good product or service that people want.

So tell me a little bit more about that. How do you qualify someone to say they're a good fit? We're going to keep that 100% success rate and there's no confusion over even 5%. They may or may not be a good fit down the road, but let's give them a shot.

We always test.

Accessibility is in our mission.

We're going to be accessible. So if they want to give it a shot, we're going to be transparent with like, hey, here's what we know, here's what we're going to test. But we're going to make the decision like we don't want, we never wanted to be the gatekeeper. I think the agencies are like, we, you know, we're really picky with who we work with, are frankly full of shit.

Like, you show them any amount of.

Money, you show them the right amount of money, any agency is going to take the business. So when people try to say that, I think it's bullshit. And I think we'd rather be like the opposite, just open. Like, we're not here to be the gatekeepers or dictators of who has a good service or not. And I've been shock and surprised many times both ways where there's no way that's not going to work and it doesn't and then there's no way that can work. And I'm like, oh, shit, there's a huge market apparently, you know, and so I've been surprised so many times that, like, I'm not going to make that call up front. We're just going to test it and see what happens.

Okay, that's a great approach because I've done it with, when I'm helping my clients with book publishing. Hey, what do you think of this cover design? No idea. Let's ask.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't have a crystal ball. I have. So, you know, I have guidelines. It's like, don't use serif font because no one's going to read it in cursive at 12 point.

But there's best practices. Exactly. Best practices on the nuance for sure.

Like, someone shows me their website, I.

Can probably point out a few flaws. But someone shows me a product and I'm trying to give my opinion without knowing, like, you know, one of my favorite Clients. Years ago, we successfully launched a vitamin that helped women produce breast milk. And it was like a five hour energy shot. It was marketed by TN Tamara, the Sister Sister. And I was like, I did not expect that that was going to be a successful launch. But it was. They ended up having other problems with recalls and product problems. But it did sell well through Facebook ads. So we're convincing pregnant women, and recently women that had recent newborns to take this five hour energy shot from sister Sister to help them produce breast milk. I was surprised, but it worked really well. I wouldn't have, like, if I was sitting in a room and had to peg that one, I wouldn't have.

That's the importance of testing.

Yep.

What percentage of your clients do you run paid advertising for?

And is it always Facebook?

It's not always Facebook. I'd say. I don't know. I don't know the actual number. So I don't really want to quote. It's definitely over half, but it could be anywhere between 50 and 80%. I actually don't have the exact number.

Oh, and that's fine, but it's not a hundred percent. It depends on the client.

A lot of companies come to us for just branding work, websites, overall marketing strategy, lifecycle marketing, all these other things that we do, content creation, etc. But yeah, and we do a lot on Facebook and a lot on Google. Both are pretty split. And then we run podcast, ads, tv, radio, billboards. We have an Amazon team, We have a really solid affiliate marketing team. So it's. It's actually a little more diversified than that.

How many businesses do you think should be doing paid ads? Not necessarily your clientele, but do you think all businesses should be doing them or who. Who would it benefit the most?

Extent. I mean, I don't want to say.

All because I'm sure there's some business.

Out there that doesn't shouldn't advertise. I don't know what that looks like, but I think, you know, I just believe there's all these. I mean, Tesla doesn't advertise, as an example. They market, but they don't advertise. Can they get away with that? Yeah. Could they maybe sell a few more Teslas if they did some ad work? Yeah. So do I. I think that it depends. You can be patient and save the money, but I'd rather pay for a little growth and find a way that you can profitably advertise. And I think that just about any business can benefit from that.

All right, I appreciate you sharing the Insights and the details and everything. Why don't we kick it back and tell me the behind the scenes story of how you got started with this because it's impressive. Congrats on your success. I know it's only been six years now.

Almost seven.

It'll be seven in January.

Okay, so almost seven years now and you started in 2014?

Yep.

How did you get into it? Because you're, you're one of the ultra successful companies that's been growing and you know, you haven't been doing it 20, 30 years. How did you do it in such a short time? And what were you doing that launched you into it beforehand?

Yeah, and it's. I just had this conversation with one of our employees earlier, but it's definitely a lot more luck than anything. I mean that and I don't mean that to be honest. So I graduated college 2008, became a commercial real estate agent and the entire banking industry collapsed a week later. So my first year out of college I made $350. Was always a little bit of a video game nerd and computer nerd. So I was like, I'm going to start working on an online business because real estate was making nothing. Launched an online music company, had a friend's dad that I played music since I was 4 years old. There's a guitar back there. So my drummer and my band's dad I knew nothing about other than I grew up in a small town so he had a cool avocado orchard. But having property in my hometown meant nothing. There was like wealth wasn't, it wasn't expensive, real est. So turns out the guy was a very successful entrepreneur. Was co founder of Pay per View on the board of Men's Wearhouse, had a company with Deepak Chopra and he came to me and said I want to partner with you to build this online company and helped raise a million dollars for it in 2009 and launched me into digital and e commerce. Built this online business coaching for musician platform for two years, got it to profitability, hired a CEO to take it over and then consecutively built and sold two different fashion e commerce subscription companies. So here I am, I'm 26 years old, it's that point, 2013, I've built and sold two E commerce companies and all of a sudden it was a year after Dollar Shave Club launched. I had actually worked in the incubator as Dollar Shave Club launched and advised for them, advised for a bunch of brands. Here I was again, a 26 year old with a great brand Knowing how to build e commerce companies when everyone was trying to figure it out. So I started getting job offers everywhere and I said no, I don't want to work for someone else, but I'll advise or consult. So I started advising and consulting. Spent about six months doing that and six months into it, I'm making 350 grand a year as a 26 year old.

Working part time. And so I was like, well, this is a lot longer story. But realized basically what created the admission for our company. It was really hard for me to find agencies to help my clients to find people to help them hire. I tried to help them hire in house. That didn't make sense. It was always just cluster to get them marketing help. So I just hired my own, as I called it, SWAT team of all these experts. I got Facebook marketer, email marketer, web designer, et cetera and went back to them and said everything's a la carte month to month cheaper than hiring in house. But I'll just spin up the team you need. And these are people already working with me as an advisor. So I great, do it. So literally overnight. So I started in January of 14 and by the end of the month, literally we doubled our revenue and now the company was making 60 grand a month and I had seven employees and it penciled, I got those employees frankly to join for cheap with upside and we started to build the company and then it just organically grew from there. We still haven't raised any money or have any debt. We've just organically grown it over time on that model.

Wow, congrats. That's awesome. That's very inspiring.

Thank you.

So why I say lucky is I should be a commercial real estate agent right now, maybe a couple income properties.

I have invested in real estate. But I, you know, I made fun of marketing majors in college and what happened was through building my own companies, I realized marketing was the hardest part. It's easy to figure out how to manufacture T shirts, it was easy to figure out how to manufacture activewear, it was easy to figure out how to ship it. Like logistics, operations, they're all important. But I found that the place where people have the most challenge is sales and marketing because it's more proactive than reactive where it's not solving problems. It's literally trying to always figure out what's the next best thing you can do. The opportunity cost to is infinite. If you do something, you can always do better, you can always make more money there. And so I was just more compelled by that side of the business and focused on it. And you know, 12 years later, I've been doing a lot of it.

So if I heard you correctly, your background's more in music and commercial real estate. You don't even have a background in marketing. You just saw the need and filled it.

Yeah, I'd say the only thing I have is I sold knives door to door when I was 19 and broke every record. So it turned out I had like a natural knack for sales. And so I understand kind of psychology, sociology and how people react to different messaging. Just inherently you got common sense. Yeah, in some senses, yes.

And a lot of our.

And you, it's. I also hear that you surrounded yourself with a team of great people that, you know, you're not trying to be the expert in the end all, be all to everyone. You just say, hey, I have the people though.

Yeah. And at this point especially there was. I mean, I really try to keep my finger on the pulse of like marketing strategy and what's working and not from like sort of the general level. And then grab experts to figure out the detail level. Like I know TikTok from a general marketing thesis is going to be a great advertising channel as they build it out, but I am going to, you know, have my people go research and partner and figure out how to leverage that platform. I just assume the platform is going to be powerful.

That's awesome. There's so many people that, you know, marketing is so broad and everyone talks about the leads and the funnels and it's important. But I love getting this information because this is what people are missing. Because not everyone builds a six, seven, eight figure company. And it sure as heck I don't think they've done it in five plus, you know, because it's not like you only got successful at this point this year. I mean you were well into it. I know you won awards, 30 under 30 and all of that, which was, you know, like you said four years after you started. But it's just like you focus on the sales and helping people and that sounds like that's it.

Yeah, I mean the biggest driver of our success I think has been just doing the right thing for the right reasons and like really just really trying to be the best at what we do for our people, for our clients, like giving a shit. And also we've always been long term focused on this. We've never been rushing for an exit. Like at some point, if we sell the company, we sell the company. But I doubt anyone's ever going to offer Me what I want for it, because I like working, so it's really hard. Like, I'm not the burnout kind of guy. I'll go take a vacation. I've had. I've. I've traveled a ton and had plenty of vacations running this company. Like the entrepreneur that just, like, grinds and grinds and grinds for some finish line. I think, like, most of those people never succeed. So my partner and I agreed, a year into business after turning down a pretty decent offer to sell, was, you know, they just wanted to basically acquire, hire us. And I was like, we should stick with this, but let's make it sustainable. Let's make it a marathon, not a sprint. And so what did that look like? And this is now, almost six years ago. He wanted to play golf every other Wednesday morning, and I wanted to go on two or three epic trips somewhere in the world a year. And he's now got two kids, and life's changed, so there's some other priorities. But we just always believed in work, life, harmony, finding ways that it all works together. And so I've been able to fill mine. He's a scratch golfer, and I've seen, like 36 countries. I think I'm at, or 35, something like that. So it's. We've been able to do that. So there's never been a rush to, like, get out because, like, I like working when I have nothing else to do. And then if I want to go do something, I go do it. And we treat our people the same way.

That's fantastic. I can. I can relate to that because I always loved helping people start my first company at 12, but I never wanted to work 24 hours a day. And, you know, it's why. It's why I film back to back for the show. And it's, you know, I'm not killing myself to do it. But I was thinking the same thing. Long term, 10 years down the line, like, what can I do to sustain and grow and have fun in it? You know, if I'm not having fun, no matter if it's business, the show, whatever, why are you doing it?

That's such a good point. Because I think it's important to understand that, like, there's only 24 hours in a day. So once you work 24 hours, well, and let's just assume you don't need sleep for whatever the reason that is, there's no progress past that. If that's how you measure your productivity, is how many hours you put in, you cap out and that means zero scalability, not incremental zero. So you have to figure out how to leverage your time properly so that you can get a ton out of eight hours. Because what I like to do is let's figure out how to really delegate, build it scalably, et cetera, work eight, ten hours a day. And then when I do put in 16, 17, 20 hours, because it happens regularly too, it's hyper productive because it's not just me grinding and hustling for the sake of it. It's because I've read everything off my plate and I've got something super compelling that I'm going to get done and that's more sustainable. When I'm doing those kind of long hour days, which again still happen regularly, it's usually fun because I'm doing it for a reason. I've offloaded all this bullshit day to day stuff. It's usually to buy an agency or to close a deal or sell one of the venture portfolio companies we have. It's usually something very compelling that I'm putting that kind of time. And not just to run my business. Because if you're running your business by working 18 hours a day. I did that with my second e commerce company. That was why we sold it. It was unsustainable and we didn't build a model that I could hire people at that point. So I had to either raise money or sell because I couldn't get over the hump of getting myself on the business instead of in the business. And so I was literally shipping T shirts, you know, five hours a day and doing the marketing and doing the procurement. And it just became unsustainable. And there was nowhere to go from there. I couldn't add more hours in the day.

You're sharing some great expert authority insights because I've been there too. And that's why I stopped with the agency and transitioned. Because I had 38 simultaneous clients and I was just like. And I had a team. It wasn't just me doing all of it, but I was like, this is just nuts. It's just how it was going. And I was like, this isn't me. We were doing great. Everyone was happy. But I was just like, do I want. Do I see myself doing this the next 10 years? And the answer was no.

Yeah, really cool note on that.

There's a guy named Robert Glaser that runs an agency called Acceleration Partners. Great guy. And he pays his employees. I forgot what it is, but it's some amount of money to go on a one Week vacation a year and not touch their email or cell phone. He's like, you can't be in touch at all. You got to check out for the week and you get it. And it gives a bonus when they do it. The reason is it forces them to then figure out processes and delegation so that there isn't a key point of failure. And as a CEO or a founder, you've got to do the same thing. Go take two weeks off and go, good luck. Because it forces you ahead of time to make sure everything's buttoned up so that you can leave and then when you're gone. Great example was my honeymoon. I went away for 10 days or two weeks, I think it was. But for those two weeks, and there was one thing that I had to deal with. We had a problem where our payroll company double withdrew from our account, which our payroll is by far our biggest expense. And so we ton of money. I had to go deal with our bank account and realized, like, I still, as the CEO, was the only one with access to managing the bank account at that point, my COO and my business partner got access to. It was like, you have to. And don't get me wrong, be careful with the money side of it, but there's a lot of things that, like, you shouldn't be a key point of failure in anything and no one should in your business. That is what creates scalability.

That's huge. That's a great expert authority insight. Well, I'm appreciating everything you're sharing and I know we could go for a long time. I have one more question before we thank our sponsor. This is the Wheel of Whatever. It's a little bit of fun thing. I even interjected in the show. I like it.

Matches the branding too. You see that, what I did there?

Yeah, no, I definitely see that.

Oh, look at that question. Yours is who is a client you'd love to work with that you haven't yet.

You got a lot of good ones. I was checking them all out.

A lot of fun ones.

A lot.

We've checked a lot of the boxes I really like. I've reached out to them. They're just sold out. So, like, it's hard to sell them on. They should get marketing help. Is Super 73. The electric bicycles are advertising anywhere, Everywhere. Those are really cool. They're like, they look like old cafe racer motorcycles, but they're electric bicycles. I think those are cool. So we've been reaching out to them.

Trying to think if there's another brand.

That I mean, we've been talking to a few recently that I can't share that are awesome. Like honestly, we're in talks with a few brands that would be just super fun to work with.

Gibson, I talked to them today. I will name them because we're not under anything there yet. But I've met the CEO. I reached out to him, I've talked to some of their team. We have a 12 foot Gibson guitar in our office.

And there's one sitting behind me too. Not a 12 foot normal one. So it's, I'd love to work with them just because I've been like when I was 16 I saved up and bought myself my first Gibson guitar and like it was like, you know, such a moment for me. I still have that guitar, Gibson sg and so that would just be fun for a personal level.

I can appreciate that. I started, I was in band, choir, drama, marched, delto, sax, play piano, still played, play alto and tenor. So I definitely like the music side of stuff too.

Yep, I just started trying to play sax during quarantine.

It's a fun one. All right, we're going to thank our sponsor and we're going to come back with the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why you should visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice, what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable John Cody I've worked with Mario.

Over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books.

Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process.

Adele if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner.

I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now. And I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Eric, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Do it.

60 second or less response answers rapid fire questions. First one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

I would say being the best salesperson.

Okay.

As the owner you got to be.

Able to sell absolutely 100%. I'm loving this. We should do a two or three part. I know you just have a wealth of knowledge and you're sharing a lot of stuff people don't realize.

2 what is the biggest problem you see your prospects make and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Yeah not understanding that the purchase cycle or consideration period meaning that from the time someone sees an ad to the time someone actually buys something, there's a period there. So to actually double down on nurturing email marketing, SMS content, things that bring people along your funnel from when they become aware for you to actually purchasing really focusing on that and also measuring your advertising properly knowing that it could be three weeks, five weeks, two months, three months before someone buys from when they see an ad. So when you're measuring the efficacy of your advertising understanding there's a timeline there.

Absolutely nailing it. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Number one good product or service. They're going to want to buy more from you. The other mistake I see people make actually have stuff that people can buy more of people a lot of times just don't merchandise properly and don't give people the options to go buy other things from you when they like you. That's it is that simple. And then stay in touch like give them add value above and beyond a purchase decision. Again great content can do that so you get people to engage. Red Bull's notoriously the best at this. Like all their content has nothing to do with selling their product. But they sell billions of dollars in product because they create great content.

Great value. Great value. What books would you recommend to Expert Authority world that have impacted your life?

Number one favorite would be Appetite for Self Destruction by Steve Knopper, a Rolling Stones author. I need to find that guy at some point. I read that book when I was 22 just out of college. The market was falling apart was getting into music and it's about the music industry's failure to adopt, to change and innovation over and over and over again and miss out on opportunities where, you know, whether it was like Napster is a great example and itunes, like, why does Apple own itunes and not universal music or a music company? Like, it's those kind of things that they've always resisted and it's always shot them in the foot. Spotify. Now they're all arguing about why Spotify doesn't pay them enough. It's like, well, why didn't you create Spotify? So this was pre Spotify and pre itunes. Or I think itunes was that when the book came out. But it's more about like their habit of this the past hundred years. And so really love that book because it's a great testament to any industry and making sure to disrupt yourself and keep innovating.

That's. I've not heard of that one and it's not been a recommendation. So thank you for that. It sounds very intriguing and it's kind of funny because, you know, everyone's always mad after the fact, but it's like, hey, you want to put up the risk and the money, that's welcome to entrepreneurship, so don't be upset when we get the rewards. But there's also been probably a lot of failures you didn't see.

All right, where would you like people to learn more?

Yeah, I mean, any social media platform at or slash. EricHuberman. I've got my podcast Hawk Talk on all the major platforms, so that's easy. And look out for our book in the next hopefully year or so. The Hawk Method.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Eric. It's been a pleasure and I appreciate you for sharing.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

All right, Expert Authority world. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless. You're already the expert. But have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the expert authority effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now. Once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already. I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.