The BIGGEST Marketing Mistake Entrepreneurs Make

If you're building a business because you want to build a business, you're probably going to fail. If you're building a business because you found a need and you want to serve it, then you're probably going to be fine. You have to be passionate about it because, I mean, there have been years at Hawk that I didn't make any money because we were reinvesting. Like, you can't just do this because you think you're going to get rich. You have to do it because you really love it.

You know what, it's not often you get to have someone like yourself with so much knowledge when it comes to marketing. Right. I can speak from personal experience over the last five or six years, obviously, trying to develop a personal brand, trying to make a difference in the world, trying to make an impact. I have done nothing but waste money on agencies who, like, promised me one thing and then fail to deliver up on pretty much anything. And yet your brand is all about actually doing the thing you promise.

Yeah, well, I would actually say I'd be careful with anyone that promises anything until they jump in.

It still goes hand in hand. But I think the mistake a lot of JV agencies make is promising results that some other company got and like making. Setting expectations, like, yeah, it's easy, we'll get you 10 times your money. And it's like, if they're that confident, tell them to buy your fucking company. And sorry, I don't know, swearing is on this, but it's like it's, it's always baffling to me. And I get it for unexperienced entrepreneurs, but the experienced entrepreneurs that buy into that, I'm always baffled by too. It's like you think that there's someone out there that can guarantee you results for your company better than you can yourself and they're just going to run with it and like, again, like, it's just. It doesn't work that way. Marketing is a constant moving target and it's a testing and. And it also frankly depends on how solid your product or service is. Like, there's a lot of moving parts there.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I've struggled with specifically is I would consider myself a fairly seasoned entrepreneur. I've got a few businesses, you know, some of them don't have done really well and other ones are kind of like startups and stuff. And, you know, a lot of the companies I've hired in times past have been companies that have been referrals, you know. You know, we used to do work for Grant Cardone. We used to do work over here and all this kind of stuff. And like, you know, a lot of these folks I'm, you know, very fortunate to know and you know, I say, well, how do you know? How was your experience? Oh, they were great until we brought everything in house.

Yeah.

And you know, and then I have an. And then I go through the experience and I don't necessarily have the same experience that was kind of in that genre. How do you actually choose. And maybe this is kind of a two way question. How does someone like myself or how does someone like yourself choose the right client or right partner to partner with? With? When, when you have an ever changing landscape.

Yeah. It's finding the person that's gotten from where you are, gotten a company or person or an individual, whatever you're trying to find, gotten them from where you are to where you want to be. Like, you want to win a Super bowl, build a Super bowl winning team, hire Tom Brady, like, take it from the Bucks, like my Rams beat them this year. But you get what I'm saying, It's like it's, it's just. And I think like a lot of people make this mistake of like hiring that. Like, like you mentioned someone that worked with Grant Cardone. But like when did they start with Grant Cardone and when did they finish? What was the results? Like, how did that affect his enterprise and what did they drive a lot there? And, and what's important is how they kept up with how the landscape has changed. Like one of the worst types of agencies I see out there are the ones that are vertically focused on one type of marketing because that means that they're never thinking creatively, that they run the same playbook over and over again and they think that's how it's done. So you get like agency that only focuses on law firms. Well then they run the same law firm playbook for every law firm. And the problem is you're on a competitive landscape. If you're running the same playbook as everyone else in your industry, you're not going to do that well. You're going to be a victim of the ebbs and flows of the market. Not anything. You're not going to outpace the market. It's kind of like investing in the S and P. It's like, you know, it goes both ways where a lot of people don't beat the S and P. But like at the same time, if you're just going to invest in that, like, yeah, going to be A function of how the market flows. You're not going to be no skill in that. You're just hoping that the market continues to grow faster than inflation, which currently not so much.

Yeah, well, currently I think it's kind of hard to outgrow inflation at the moment.

For sure. Well, look, you know, one of the things I've heard you talk about before is this, this essence of different levels of agencies. You know, there's a, there's a point in time to even hire an agency versus do it yourself. There's a point in time to then scale up at various agencies. How does someone like myself know where I'm at in the season to determine who I should be working with?

Yeah, it's. I'd say first off, nothing's binary. So like when I hear someone that's like, oh, we brought it all in house, to me it's immediately a mistake because you can't tell me like, the example I'd give is, let's take our advertising team. So, like our Facebook and Google team, like Grant Cardone does not have the relationships. Maybe he does because of his celebrity status, so to speak. But like you're not going to have the relationships with Google and Facebook. So when things go wrong, they go really wrong for you because you can't get early insights into what's happening. You know, you don't get treated the same when you get banned or cut off. They don't, they're not coming back to help you. You don't have that direct help that you need. Plus the insights. Plus we know what's going on in the ecosystem. So I can look at your advertising and go, you know, let's say your advertising isn't performing very well. Well, I can go, yeah, it's a function of the market and this is what's happening in the market. Or it's a function of you. So we actually know where to attack it. Is it a problem with Facebook or is it a problem with your brand? Like, you can't know that when you're an individual brand running it. As an example of one reason why, like just doing your ads in house is a mistake almost always the only reason it becomes a benefit is if you're lucky enough to find a really good advertiser and you compare them with a shitty agency. Yeah, you're probably going to do better in house because there's an infinite opportunity cost on marketing. So that, that's the part. And then in terms of, you know, the agency side, I mean, it's just if there's you know, and it's something we do. But good agencies should tell you where they can help and where they should be focusing. And then they can also help you identify where you should have complement on your end. We do it all the time. We say, hey, you should probably have someone focused on this in house. Like we can do it but you're probably better off having someone full time for that. And there's plenty of things and every company is different. So it depends on the company what those things are. And those things change over time, which is how we've built our model is where everything's month to month so we can ebb and flow and change as the company's needs change.

Yeah, well, I know one of the things that you just, actually just mentioned was kind of a moving target for me. I don't even know what to expect and I'm speaking for myself on behalf of other entrepreneurs who desperately needing people like yourself in our lives to kind of make sure that we can make an impact. But what is performing well? Like, you know, there are some that say, hey let's, let's, let's focus on the initial sale. Let's get you an operating funnel and then we'll worry about lifetime value or you know, you know, that kind of thing.

Yep. Well, and I love that you just said that because yeah, that's exactly like I'd say performing well to start is sustainable. What is sustainable look like and doing it within a little, you know, a short period, not short period of time, I should say like three to six months. You should be at a point where your marketing can sustain. It might not be growing you yet. And then you optimize from there. And then performing well again, it's the infinite opportunity cost in marketing where it's like you can always make it better. Like just rationally it's, you know how and what you're going to do. Like that's a constant sort of moving target. So it's figuring out where you can, what you can do to double down. And again, every company is different and that's the issue. What are your gross margins? What is, what is your repeat purchase? What is your lifetime value? And then what. And then the other piece that you're missing that a lot of times good agencies can do and we're actually building a tool around this is benchmarking. So like how are you performing against the market? The problem is it, as much as that does help you just to know, like is it me or is it the market so to speak, that's good to know trends. Like that's really helpful for example, when we can say.

Hey, we're, you know, I know you, you're having trouble on Facebook. So is everyone. So it's not Facebook. Like it's that kind of thing where like we can give you like, I don't want to say it's confidence. It's more of like, you know, where to attack. Like, don't try to optimize Facebook right now. Everyone's having trouble. Or maybe you should still, but you know what I mean, like that's not the low hanging fruit that you're going to fix. Go focus on creating more lifetime value. Go focus on other channels, that kind of thing. So that focus thing can help. But in terms of benchmarking to be like, what's their CAC versus mine? Or what's their numbers versus mine? We've worked with so many similar companies. We currently have several swimwear companies and their CACs are, they're everything else about them. Like as a guy with women's swimsuits, we've laughed about this. Like we look at and go, those are the same fucking companies. Right? That's how similar they are. And their returns on their ads and their CACs are so astronomically apart with the same marketing team, similar designs, et cetera, et cetera. It's like the nuance drives such a chasm in that, that trying to base yourself off what someone else is seeing. Like we've had clients get 30 times their ad spend in the first week and then we've had clients get four times. One time. One time is actually like we just had this. A client was getting one time their ad spend in the first week, which is all Facebook with track right now. Which is the issue why people think it's not performing. One week is not enough time to see a purchase cycle for a month.

30 days or something like that.

28. Yeah, yeah. And, and still like most people's purchase cycles between three weeks and three months. So like even at 28 days a lot of companies aren't seeing their full, you know, their half life of a purchase, but at a week almost no one is. And so you're not seeing right numbers. So if you're seeing like a one to one, which to the company's credit, like they have cost of goods, like one to one is a loss. They're losing money on that ad from what the metric is saying. What we found out was there's tons of people obviously purchasing along the way and the average person buying is buying 14 times a year. So we're like, when we saw that, and they're like, yeah, we're trying to figure out how to scale our ads, but we're just not getting the roas. And we're like, just stop talking about roas. Like, stupid number at this point. Like, this is what. And we showed them, and they, to their credit, they're like, why didn't you fucking say this before? We're like, yeah, we had to dive in a little bit. But, like, this is the stuff that people miss. And, like, the key is learning from your competitors, learning from the market, benchmarking for a sake of, like, knowing what's going on and then diving into, how do you make yours the best? Because I also think a lot of people act binarily not just with, like, the agency versus hiring in house, but also with, like, does Facebook work for my company? Yeah, it fucking better. Like, Facebook's one of the most efficient marketing channels that's ever existed. So, like, you need to make it work. If it's not working, there's something wrong with your business. I just talked to a client that's telling me he wasn't. He didn't use us for Facebook. And he's like, yeah, I turned off Facebook. It wasn't working. And I'm like, why wasn't working? He's like, well, you know, the cost to acquire customers too. I'm like, what was it? He's like, it was like 30 bucks. But our average order value is only 20. Yeah, dude, the problem isn't Facebook. It's your average order value. And then I'm like, okay, so 20 bucks. What's your repeat purchase like? Not a lot of people repeat. I'm like, again, problems? Not Facebook. It's your product. Like, nobody, if nobody likes your product, you're not going to market your way out of a shitty product. So it's hard for people to hear that. But you have to be super objective in business and understand what is it that we're fucking up so that we can fix it. Because if you start looking at the wrong metrics, you're going to hurt.

Yeah, well, I think one of the things that you and hawk media or hawk marketing and then the do so well is you're honest. Right?

I appreciate it. We try to be.

You guys are brutally honest. Hey, this is why it's not working. This is where we think we can offer solutions. This is where we think we're getting it wrong. This is where we think the product is not doing as well as it could do all of that, all of those types of things. And one of the things that I loved about the Hawk method book specifically that I picked up on right away was this concept of the marketing tripod. And I'm a big fan of breaking things down into simple bite sized measurements. And for aspiring entrepreneurs or early adopter entrepreneurs or people very early in their journey, you know, maybe to the first million or $2 million, they're still very much, you know, gunslingers. They're just shooting from the hip left and right. Talk to us a little about the marketing tripod and how that can benefit pretty much anybody.

Yeah, basically it's, it's. And you nailed it. Like, I think people that are experts in things always love to overcomplicate it so that they seem smart. I just get that vibe and a lot. And I think that the skill is the opposite. And how do you break it down so that anyone can understand it? And I never thought that marketing was that complicated. And so over the years my job has been to explain marketing to our clients, potential clients, etc. And constantly talk to businesses and business owners about how marketing works and also analyze and give an audit to companies really quickly and be able to ascertain like what's broken, what's not. And so through that I started just developing a framework naturally of how we looked at marketing and how we could explain it easily of like what we were doing, how it fit in. And also like one of the biggest things is how to triage a marketing campaign and a marketing strategy very quickly. And so you mentioned that that came basically manifested into this tripod which comes down to three pillars. Awareness, nurturing and trust. Awareness is how do you introduce your company to new your, your product or service to a new potential customer. So how are you getting out there? You have to constantly be building that top of the funnel, introducing yourself to new people. We always talk about like if you're not doing that, your company will decline. Like you're going to lose customers, you're going to turn customers. Not everyone is just going to keep buying from you forever because forever doesn't exist. We all die. I'm just using it's the extreme. Like it happens. So like that's the extreme version obviously. But barring that, people move on, they find other brands, they do other things. Like it's just you're going to lose customers and so you have to keep filling the top. Like that never goes away. So you have to create awareness then. What we found, and I mentioned this earlier, is, you know, the Average person takes between three weeks and three months to buy a product. Usually it's based on the price of the product. Obviously there's other variables in there, but averages kind of play out. And so when we know that, it means that like from the first time I see a product to when I buy, if there's a period of time, like, what are you doing during that period? So many people, I just met a guy, I spoke at a conference for Shopify Thursday and the guy goes, you know, we have this, we have like 20,000 people that we've brought in, but we're, you know, we're not seeing great conversion and we're driving tons of traffic, but the conversion hasn't been great. And I'm like, oh well, so you have 20,000 people. I'm like, are you collecting emails on the homepage? Like, no. Like, so what are those emails? He's like, you know, customers are people that subscribe to the newsletter on the bottom. And I'm like, okay, cool. Are you emailing them? No, like, okay, so someone comes to your site through an ad and then you just hope and pray that on their own accord they remember to buy eventually because they're not going to buy right away generally. And like, and we've seen the stats on this is you're missing out on about two thirds of your revenue right now by not following up with these people. And so nurturing is that piece of like, what do you do between when they first come and become aware you exist to when they actually buy? Which are things like email marketing, SMS content, all these things to engage someone during that purchase decision, to get them to purchase faster and have them hire chance to purchase as well as after they purchase, you're hopefully merchandised well enough to get ongoing sales. Lifetime value is the key metric here and so can stay staying in touch with them, continuing to bring them back so they continue to buy more products and buy over and over again. Once you've built the third pillar, trust, they now know that you deliver what you say you're going to deliver early on. Trust is super critical when it comes from third party validation. So referrals, testimonials, reviews, endorsements, influencer marketing, pr, these things that basically someone else that is trustworthy is saying they can trust you. That's how that starts. Then over time, as you deliver consistently and you become known for it, you build a reputation that becomes your brand. That's trust. And so when you have that, it becomes a lot easier to convert later, et cetera. And so continuing to Build off of that. Trust is super important. So again, awareness, nurturing and trust are those three pillars. And so what we do is we go look at where's a company struggling? What are they missing? Why are we look at their metrics and then go, okay, like their conversion rate's low. That was a perfect example. Why is your conversion rate low? First question, what are you doing to nurture? You doing email marketing?

No.

There you go.

I just told you. I hopefully just tripled your revenue in three seconds.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

And we. And so the book is all about breaking that down so people can get that information for themselves, frankly.

Well, and that was the interesting thing that I felt with the book specifically. Is it such a easy read? But it's also a very highlighter read.

It pushes you to say, how am I really conducting myself on the business front? And one of the things that, and I'm speaking for myself again because obviously as someone who owns different types of businesses in different industries, the one that's been the most difficult to break through the noise and to show people that I actually have something to show and serve and help is this particular business unit. Because there's so much noise and confusion.

Yep.

What types of things are you seeing that are that that are working for, you know, thought leadership companies or things of that nature to help them cut through the noise? Because there's only so much content you can produce in a single day.

Totally. And I actually don't know that more and more content is what people need. I think, I mean it come it comes down to your differentiator, like why you versus else? Why do I follow you? And you can either be really niche and you speak to a very specific audience that isn't, it's underserved. That's a differentiator you can provide. You know, you can be contrarian, you can be like, there's a lot of ways that you can, you can talk about a category that people don't normally know about because I will say in the, you know, sort of personal brand world, there's so many me toos. Everyone's trying to be fucking Gary Vaynerchuk or Grant Cardone that like you try to. There's no prizes for best copycat. So if you're doing something everyone else is doing, you're probably not going to go very far. So I think this, this goes with almost starting any business, personal brand or otherwise. If you're building a business because you want to build a business, you're probably going to fail like that is a really tough way. If you're building a business because you found a need and you want to serve it, then you're probably going to be fine. And that's like. It's like our business. I didn't start out, start Hawk. Cause I was like, I want to build a marketing agency. Like, I'm going to go do that. I started Hawk because I was consulting for a brands to help them grow. And every agency I tried to bring into these brands dropped the ball and were awful and went, all right, I got to fix this. I'm just going to hire a few people and start working on it. And now we're 300 people like it. Just like I went to sleep and woke up and all of a sudden.

There'S a now you have a company.

I did not have a business plan. I did not start out with, like, I built a business plan a year in because someone wanted to buy us. And I was like, I don't know, what are we building? And so then I put together kind of a forecast and a plan. And then I went, no, I don't want to sell it. I think I actually have something good here. This plan set. This Excel file looks fucking great. I'm going to keep doing this. So that.

And it's working out so far.

It's worked out. Listen, it's ups and downs running a business. Got off the phone with a friend that runs a $100 million SaaS business with huge margins and crushing it. And we're just commiserating about the shit we deal with. Which I'm like, we can only complain to each other because everyone that looks at our lifestyles and stuff, we'll be.

Like, dude, come on, for real.

Last time I saw him was, yeah, a really nice, luxurious situation. So it's just like, yeah, we shouldn't be complaining. At the same time, like, running a business is you. You end up dealing with the biggest problems that happen in the business. So as you get bigger, those problems get bigger. Because the only things that fall on your plate are the shit no one else can deal with.

Yeah.

So by nature, they're the big crazy problems that you're having to rack your brain around. And most of the time, if you're a good operator, you can be like, yeah, this is it. Let's go. Let's figure it out. Sometimes it's like, Jesus fucking Christ. But that's part of it.

But.

But yeah. Again, back to the point is like, if you're building a personal brand, you have to just make sure, like, what was missing that you're serving and who's missing that and how do you find them and how do you speak to them to show them that you're solving this myth? Like, if you're, you know, teaching, if you're teaching people how to flip houses, like, you better be God's gift to that because there's a billion of those people, you know, like, it's like, what is that? If you're teaching people how to manage their own social media, again, like, what are you really providing? Because it's the same thing I see with agencies. Like, a shitty agency can do enough of a sales job on the ground game to get a few clients and just churn through them, but the amount of money you end up making running that agency, you might as well just go get a fucking job because you're gonna work way hard. What's that?

It's not scalable. It's no repeat, not at all.

It's zero scalability. And aside from scalability, you just, because of that, you also end up, like, churning so much that you're trying to stay on top of it that you don't end up making that much money. And, like, you get the prestige of being a CEO, but you might as well just go get a job. You'll be happier and safer and make more money. So. And if you're that much hustle that you can run something like that, you're just not that good at it. Like, again, people, like, it wasn't until I think sort of 2010, 2011, that entrepreneurship became a term and a sexy thing to do. You're just a business owner before you were, there was no entrepreneurs. I know it was a word. But like, people call the business owners or they said specifically what they did. Like, you run a marketing agency, you run a coffee shop. Like, that's what you're not. Entrepreneur. You do this and all of a sudden being an entrepreneur became this sexy thing that I think people try to do it and they. I've watched people like, spend a decade trying to launch something. Nothing ever happens. And they're just like, hustling to make ends meet by, like, doing little side deals. Yeah. Like, if they had just taken a step back and gotten a good job, they probably would have been happier, richer, everything. So that, that being said, the other side of this is if you're a go getter and you want to take on that kind of responsibility that you want to, you know, eat what you kill and you see something missing in the market that you're like wow. No one's doing this. Go for it. Don't be another crypto expert, though.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, one of the things I've realized about business in the times I've got a few hundred team members wide is business was actually a lot easier when I had a very small team.

Oh, yeah.

Walk into a room, we could have a conversation, we could hash it out. Might throw a stapler too, or whatever, you know, kind of thing. But we walk out, we have a plan, we'd go execute it. And then as the company scales now you have everybody who's not necessarily in direct connection with everybody consistently. And then you're also got the situation where everybody's bringing their own set of life to the table. Yeah, right. Moms, dads, boyfriends, girlfriends, kids, dogs, anniversaries, deaths, all that kind of stuff, you know, in the scalability phase. I am curious. One of the things that I heard you talk a lot about, both publicly as well as in the book specifically, that I think is super important. It's something that took us a while to get the hang of is the marketing channel, specifically knowing where you need to be. Yeah. How do we know where we need to be?

Yeah, it comes down. And what I talk about in the book is the context in which they're receiving the ad or receiving that outreach. It's, you know, the easiest example is Google versus Facebook. So Facebook, basically, you're creating new demand for something. Someone's sitting on Facebook doing nothing productive because no one is. They're just scrolling through their feed. And when I say Facebook, I mean Facebook and Instagram, you're just scrolling. And so I'm able to serve you an ad. Basically target exactly who my most likely customer is. Like, look like targeting, they're going to be similar characteristics to my existing customers. So they're going to be similar. They'll have similar purchasing habits. During a time when you're telling me you're bored, and I can test it very iteratively what creative, what copy works. And get to a point where I'm hitting you with the most likely messaging and image and everything to get this type of person to convert. At a time when they have nothing better to do that works. The issue you run into is timing. Like, if I want to advertise, I'm a DUI attorney and I want to advertise my services, who do I target on Facebook? People that like Jack Daniels and Mercedes. Like, it doesn't work. Timing is a tough thing on Facebook, which is where Google comes in. Google's more about answering existing demand. I have this need. Can you help me find it? So it would work well for a DUI attorney. It works well for when I again, I have a problem. You have the solution. But where Google doesn't work as well as more lifestyle. Like I don't get to build a brand on Google. It's text driven. I know there's banners and everything too, but like generally you're talking about text. And so when I'm advertising on Google, let's say I'm creating running shoes that are great new running shoes. Well, if I'm googling running shoes, I'm probably buying Nike, Adidas, Asics, one of the big brands and I might click your ad so charge you money and maybe once in a while you get a conversion. But until you've built a brand, I'm not buying your product. So for new up and coming lifestyle companies, it's really tough to succeed on Google. And it works the same on Amazon too, to be clear. Like if you're, you know, a lifestyle driven product and you're a higher price point than other products, Amazon's a commodity based site. So it's really hard. That's why Nike pulled off of it. Yeah. So the way you have to just think about the same thing with like, you know, the way people use Twitter, they're tweeting at each other or they're reading someone's specific tweet thread. They're not really just scrolling through their feed. So tweet Twitter ads. That's why they're not making any money, why Elon Musk might be able to buy it. The ads don't really work and they haven't really figured out ever how to monetize it. Well because it's not that lucrative now I'm speaking in hyperbole. Like there's ones that there's, you know, exceptions to this always. Um, but it's the same thing with a lot of these channels. The one that I'm really excited about is TikTok, because the difference between TikTok, it's really similar to Instagram and Facebook where it's like people just scrolling through their feed board. The difference is Facebook and Instagram are built off your social network. They're built off of literally who you've connected with and who you follow. TikTok's built off of what you're interested in, what you pause on. And they like constantly analyzing your interest to show you things they think you'll like to watch. And so it becomes really compelling because they have this whole graph of, like, what are your. It's based on an interest graph versus a social graph. Which means if I, like, I'm used to seeing videos that are. Have nothing to do with anyone I'm connected with. Which means if you show me an ad, as long as it feels seamless, you're hitting me at a time when I'm bored. And I'm already used to seeing things that are from people I don't know. So it becomes much more compelling. And from an advertising platform, I think TikTok, as they build out that algorithm and that ad platform, is going to be very, very lucrative for brands.

Yeah. Now, is TikTok still a great place to grow organically where everybody else is consumed for monetization?

I got a fun story that. So I went to launch this book, and in December. The book launch was March 8th. In December, my team was like, you got to get on TikTok. Like, I know it's not. I'm 35. Like, I felt like I was not the demo, but, like, you got to start using it. It's working. It helped with some of the PR and stuff. I'm like, all right, fine. That day, it was a Wednesday. I was in Miami for Art Basel, and I go to. A friend was launching a flying car. And so I went to his launch. I filmed the video of them literally, like, pulling the sheet off the car and saying, this is it. Like, 12 seconds. Not that interesting. Just like. And I put in text announcing the world's first flying car. The Aeromobil pulled it off. I post it at 100 followers, wake up the next morning, 600,000 views. I was like, oh, shit, that's cool. Wait, wait. I put it away. I go to lunch. I pull my phone out after lunch, let's say 2:00pm, and I have 8 million views. And I'm like, this is crazy. To this day, I have 69.2 million views on that video.

That is nuts.

And Now I have 200,000 TikTok followers.

Is your buddy releasing a car anytime soon again?

I think it's a few years. I think from what I hear, he was a little annoyed that it went so viral so fast. He's like, we weren't ready for this kind of attention. Because, I mean, it went. It, like, was on the homepage of Reddit. It was on the news all over the world. Like, it got licensed. Like, it went crazy. So that used to happen on Facebook. That used to happen on YouTube. That used to happen. But what happened was all these platforms decided like we don't want to give you free views, we want to charge for that. So we're not going to give you that much organic reach. TikTok doesn't care. They're letting you have the organic side. And I, I actually think long term getting rid of that organic reach is going to be the death of these platforms because it's the, the engagement and the ability to go viral keeps so much content flowing through it. TikTok is outpacing these other platforms like crazy. I just saw this stat. The average TikTok user last month was on it 25 hours last month.

Wow.

Their average user, like that is absurd. Almost an hour a day average. Like it's a scary platform, it's as addictive as the rest. But when you can go viral, people constantly create content and try post videos and take them down and it's such bite sized stuff. And so you get that usage and then again you get to be a brand where take it like again the average person's using it for an hour, throw your brand in there and it starts to become compelling.

Yeah. I mean with the changes, the ever changing landscape of social media specifically what type of strategies that are working, you know, kind of right now in today's timeframe in April of 2022 to help get around some of the struggles we're having with Instagram and Facebook. Like you know, is there anything working.

With YouTube or so the only struggles with Instagram and Facebook, there's two pieces in Google too. One is tracking. Like as I mentioned, it's a seven day tracking window. Stop tracking your marketing effectiveness through those platforms. You have to use other tracking methods, use Google Analytics, use glue, use other things that can help you see the longer term viability of your advertising. Because the in platform tracking sucks. It's just not working. Maybe they'll fix it at some point, but right now it is worthless. So start with knowing that. Because my favorite conversation I've been having way too many of not as much recently but for a little while is you know, well, you know, mid last year of Facebook ads, the performance fell off a cliff. I'm like performance didn't fall off a cliff. You went from tracking 28 days to tracking seven. Nothing happened with the performance. So that, that's really important to understand. And then number two, advertising has about doubled in the past year, the cost. So it is getting expensive. And that's where lifetime value and nurturing, you have to convert higher, you have to drive higher lifetime value to counteract that. That's just part of the game. And like, the good news is, and I always try to remind people there's two things. One, consumer spending was at an all time high last month. Consumer spending hasn't gone anywhere. And number two, everyone else is dealing with the same shit. It's a competitive landscape, so you just have to win. Because what will happen is a lot of companies will pull. Well, you saw it. Q4, Facebook had a decline. And I bet Q1, Facebook doesn't look good either because it's just like that there. It's not all these companies that aren't listening to what I'm saying are pulling off of it. And a lot of companies that are seeing just the double in price are pulling off it. So when it comes down, the prices will start to come down. It has to. And if it doesn't, Facebook's gonna struggle because it built itself on a performance driven marketing platform where there's not enough marketing dollars out there to support them on just brand building. So they have to be effective enough to be able to support that. And so I'm curious to see what happens the next year, but I think you're gonna see it ebbs and flows. It's gonna level out.

Well, I guess the next question really kind of centers on why you wrote the book. Right. So the Hawk method. Like, you know, there's, I'm sure the audience has already gotten the impression you know your stuff and you've done it for a very long time and you've been very successful at it.

Appreciate that.

Why put a lot of, why put a lot of your experience directly into a book?

Yeah, you know, I, I just never thought this should be opaque. Like, that's the reason I started the company. Our mission statement is accessibility to great marketing. How can we be the best at what we do, but easy to work with? And through that mission, it's like, yeah, we don't try to like pretend that we're like doing these crazy, intricate things that you'll never understand. Like, to me, that's always just such a dick thing to do. So we, we're pretty open about explaining what we do and how we do it. It's like, it's still a lot of work and it's still, there's still tons of nuance that goes into this. But this book allows us, we're sending it to every one of our clients because it's like, yeah, why don't you read this? Now you know what we're doing. You can collaborate with us. You still, we still have to do the work we're still cost effective, so we're not worried about that. You're going to. Someone has to do this stuff. But at least now you understand what we're doing so we can work as a team as opposed to like, you know, building trust is a huge part of this and you trusting that we're actually doing the right things and making good decisions. And when you don't trust that our job is a nightmare. So like here, this is what we're doing, like handing them the book. Here's what we're doing. So now you can talk our language, you can work with us and we can. Yeah. Go from there. Basically.

Yeah, for sure. Well, I went ahead and picked up on the. The ebook style. That's how I consume books. I know you can get it done in a physical copy as well as the audio kind of thing. So I would tell the audience this. Everything we've discussed so far in the interview is about 2%, maybe 1% of what's actually in the book.

Yeah.

Strategies and techniques and the why behind the what? You know, that kind of scenario. How did you get into marketing to begin with? Like, how did you find that you. This, this area lights you up with, you know, you had several other businesses before this.

Yeah, I mean, I always loved growing businesses. Like, that's just part of it. And so when I jumped into my other businesses, I realized that the hardest part of business to me was sales and marketing. Not. And I did have a natural knack for it, but it was also that, like fixing operational problems, fixing, you know, we were. I was making T shirts or activewear, like figuring out how to get a factory going or supply chain. Like there were very clear solutions to problems versus marketing, as I've mentioned, had an infinite opportunity cost. It was always a moving target. It was always changing. It was always. There was always more I could do. And so it kept me interested. And I also found that like, that was the tough part. Like getting people to buy something was the tough part, not delivering it. And so I focused on it. And then when I got out of my sold my last business, I had built a reputation and a knack for marketing. So I started advising for it. And then I found through working with a bunch of companies, like, I get to get paid to grow a bunch of different businesses. So I grow my business by growing businesses, which is one of my biggest fun, passionate things to do, is to keep growing and building and trying. And so now I get to do this for a living as a business. Like, it just fit all my skill sets and interests right away. And so was able to, you know, and that's part of it. Like, you have to be passionate about it because, I mean, there have been years at Hawk that I didn't make any money because we were reinvesting. Like, you can't just do this because you think you're going to get rich. You have to do it because you really love it.

Yeah. And it's so good because one of the things that I felt so interested in specifically with the Hawk method is it is overlayable with an aspiring entrepreneur who's getting ready to get started and you can kind of save yourself lots of money. Let me just put that out there. As someone who spent lots of money in different places. It also overlays very well with scalable companies. Who is your ideal client or who's the ideal person you actually wrote the book for?

So there's a few. I'd say it's marketing, student marketing manager, anyone trying to understand marketing frankly, or the biggest one is probably business owners because it's people that like, are. It's really for people that want to understand marketing. It's practitioners. Like, this could be a great framework. I'll say it. My favorite was the one. The one one star review I got on it was, this just seems like Modern Marketing 101.

It's like, Gee, that's so horrible.

Yeah. Well, that's literally the intent for the book.

It's like, that's literally what I was trying to do. And it's funny, I. Yeah. Anyways, that was a longer story. I looked the guy up on LinkedIn and he saw me view his page and immediately took it down. Took down the review, but left up the one star. I was like.

But like it was. That is. The point is it's modern marketing one on one. So for someone getting into marketing, someone wanting to understand marketing what. Someone wanting to just like. Because there's so much talk of this stuff and nobody explains it and everybody tries to make it, you know, super complicated and opaque. It's like, no, this is how it works right now. And like. And I think this framework is how it has worked. It's just a new way of thinking about it. And so for. It makes it easy for a business owner ahead of marketing or someone trying to get into it to quickly be able to address what's going on in their own marketing.

Yeah. And I think that's. I think it's very needed right now because again, you know, Facebook changes its algorithms about the same time we change our Pants every day. Google kind of does the same thing. You know, they're constantly changing their stuff about the time you think you got it figured out. I've always felt like we were always two weeks behind what used to work, and that's kind of where we've been at for a number of years. It kind of like, was frustrating. And with the book specifically, one of the things I like about it is it is a highlighter book. You can literally kind of build your own playbook just by following the steps. It's pretty well written in a chronological order. Right. To take you through building out your infrastructure. Right. At what point is it time to hire Hawk?

Honestly? I mean, we work with companies literally pre launch. I'd say you don't want to hire anyone until your company can afford to spend ten grand a month on marketing for a consistent period of time. Don't hire in house, don't hire an agency, don't hire a freelancer.

That's just ad spend.

No, that's all in 10 grand. That's baseline. That's like not nine grand, not eight grand, 10 grand. That's like the starting point. And you have to be able to spend that consistently for a little while, months, not a month or two. Um, and so my view of it is if you're a business owner, you gotta be able to generate enough revenue yourself as like, the business owner to get to a point where you can spend that or you're just throwing money at the wind. And, like, don't do that. You know, I get calls all the time. I had one the other day where it's like, what can you do with two grand? Put it back in your pocket and go build your business. Like, it's. It's just not. Don't spend that money. You're just wasting it. And you're just gonna waste two grand. And then, you know, you're gonna be tighter. Go like, pay. Pay your bills with that two grand and keep focusing on working yourself and finding ways you as an individual can generate revenue. Because you don't have a real business yet, and you shouldn't be hiring people until you do.

Dude, I can't say how many. How many sound bites would I get of this? This was pretty amazing.

Well, it's clear you love it. It's clear what you love, what you do for businesses. You know, as someone who's bought and, you know, bought and used agencies, a bunch of them have had some good experiences. If that's not. Not so at some not so great experiences along the way. At different levels, I learned that, you know, certain agencies are good to a point and that agency is good to a point and then, you know, that kind of thing. But I've also been the kind of guy that has struggled historically knowing which agency actually works for me. And one of the things that you said that I thought was so interesting is, is you get paid to help businesses scale their business. Whereas before a lot of the agencies that I work with, especially early on, I felt like we're in the situation of they got paid to have me spend money. Yeah, it really wasn't about them helping me grow my business or cutting through the confusion and noise and stuff like that.

It's, I mean, you have to treat like we try to model ourselves like employees, where it's like, you're going to pay your agency. And like, I think people like always try. Like when people try to do a rev share with their agency, it's the dumbest thing ever because you're basically putting the risk of your business on the agency without the enterprise value benefit. Meaning they don't get the value of your business, they get the value of the revenue. Your business is worth more than its revenue. And so when you do that, you end up misaligning actually more than you think. And they don't want to take any risk. So then you won't grow very fast. They'll hit some lucky streaks. But I guarantee over time, 100% of those agencies that do rev share either go bankrupt or con their clients. It's one or the other. There's no way to build that sustainably. And so I, I always see that pushback of like, you know, you got to be careful about paying your agency even though they're not performing for you. But that's where I'm like, just like an employee. Like, hold on to metrics. Hold them responsible for doing certain things, work with them, support them, help enable them, and treat them like your employees. Like, yeah, you're going to pay your employees salary whether they perform or not. You're going to fire them if they don't perform. That's how you. Same thing with an agency. I really believe that. And they don't want to be fired. Like, you know, there's an assumption that they're like, oh, they're just going to milk me for a few months, then move on. Yeah, that's not a sustainable business on the agency.

No, not at all.

Yeah.

Well, let me ask you this. When it comes down to it, are there some tactical, practical steps that entrepreneurs can make before they select an agency if maybe they're having to go at a lower level agency before they can get to that $10,000 a month category.

Don't go with an over agency before getting to 10,000. That's my point.

Like, that is the.

You have to get there yourself. Yeah, you have to get there yourself. You have to. If you're a business owner, you. If you can't generate 10 grand as a business owner, you're fucked. Like, I'm sorry. Like, you're not gonna. You gotta go figure that out. And I know that's a hard thing to hear for some people, but, like, you have to figure out how to go sell partner, you know, crawl your way to that point that you can sustain like an expenditure of ten grand. I'm not saying ten grand in revenue. Like no one else is gonna get there for you. That's kind of the point is, like, if you can't get there yourself, you're not gonna hire some $2,000 person and they're gonna just do it for you. Like, that's not gonna happen either. So, like, don't. Yeah. Firmly believe. Don't do that. It's not about our. And just to be clear, it's not like our minimums are 2,500. It's not about, like. And that's because we need to have enough money to like, actually perform. Yeah. It's not about my minimum or like us being too good for smaller fees. It's because you can't build a business off a platform that can't afford that. Like, there's no business yet. And so they're putting all of the onus on their business being successful on their agency. That's not a good idea.

Yeah. Now what they can do on the way to 0 to 10,000 is pick up the hawk method to get themselves on stable ground. Because I can tell you, had I known some of the things that you put in the book, I could have saved myself tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a couple of years in a heartbeat without even blinking. So I think everybody should go grab it and pick it up. Where can everybody actually pick the book up at?

Oh, anywhere. I mean, Amazon, Target, Walmart, Barnes and Noble. It's pretty much the airport. It's everywhere.

It's everywhere.

We got it out there.

Rock on. Where. Where can I find out more about.

You.

Or Slash Eric on any social platform?

Rock on.

TikTok included.

Tick tock. Yes. And he's blowing up on TikTok, folks. So go help.

Go. Double go.

Double the engagement. Awesome, dude. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on, man. I. I just got. It's like marketing 101 made simple kind of all together. I. I can't thank you enough for doing that, man. I think a lot of business owners are going to pick up a lot of. A lot of great info from it.

Thanks, man. Really appreciate it. Awesome, dude.

All right, we'll take care. See you.

All right, see ya.

I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here. Belief systems are the only thing that keep people from what they want. It's always so being more aware of, like, what are my beliefs? How can I change my beliefs? Studying it. It's a skill. You can literally change the way your mind works and start believing that you deserve more.