← Beyond Blind Blaming
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- [00:00]
A
We built our AI platform, Hawk AI, which basically digests about 6,000 companies, marketing media and revenue data in real time and allows you to benchmark all your metrics so you can actually see where are you performing compared to the market. One of the biggest reasons I did that was because I saw this was a great case where if I had a platform that could show them you're actually all the numbers here are right and objectively, without being like this is my expertise, but here's the number. Your load speed is really bad and that's where you're missing. That's what you need to fix. If I could show that objectively, it would save a lot of businesses from making stupid decisions.
- [00:32]
B
Today I'm joined by Eric Huberman. He's the founder and CEO of Hawk Media, one of the fastest growing marketing consultancies designed to provide CMO level strategy and data driven execution to brands of all sizes. Under his leadership, Hawk Media has helped scale over 4,500 companies and has been recognized as one of Inc. 5000's fastest growing companies multiple times. Beyond marketing, Eric is a sought after speaker, thought leader and author of the Hawk Method which he breaks down the core principles of successful marketing strategies.
- [01:02]
A
It's been really interesting to watch the people that give away their power and blame the market and stuff, then they don't fix it and they go out of business. The people that go, yeah, whatever that's happening, I'm going to go figure out what I do about it. Those are the people that continue to build bigger and bigger companies.
- [01:27]
B
Welcome to Beyond Blind Blaming. This is the place where we explore how easily hidden truths can hold us back, trapping us in cycles of frustration and blame, often without even realizing what's truly stopping us. Each week I'm joined by experts and professionals who share their journey of taking back control of their story, overcoming hidden challenges, and discover how to stop blind blaming from dictating their outcomes. The insights you're about to gain will help you see beyond your current limitations, find the courage to seek new perspectives and and ultimately live a life that's both purposeful and powerful. So if you're ready to break free from blind blaming and discover what's possible, you'll definitely want to listen to our next guest. I'm your host, Kevin St. Clergy and today I'm joined by Eric Huberman. He's the founder and CEO of Hawk Media, one of the fastest growing marketing consultancies designed to provide CMO level strategy and data driven execution to brands of all sizes. Under his leadership, Hawk Media has helped scale over 4,500 companies and has been recognized as one of Inc. 5000's fastest growing companies multiple times. Beyond marketing, Eric is a sought after speaker, thought leader and author of the Hawk Method which he breaks down the core principles of successful marketing strategies. His insights have been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider and countless other media outlets. His approach to business emphasizes transparency, strategic scalability and the importance of not just tracing trends, but understanding timeless principles of growth. Through his work, he helps brands navigate the complexities of digital marketing and brand positioning in a rapidly changing landscape. Eric, welcome to the show.
- [02:59]
A
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
- [03:00]
B
Hopefully I got the intro right.
- [03:02]
A
Yeah, it's right. I'm definitely as you're talking about. I'm like, I need to have that rewritten but it works.
- [03:08]
B
I'll get it for you. If I did it wrong, let me know.
- [03:11]
A
No, you didn't. No, no. Sincerely.
- [03:12]
B
Well, your journey from launching small businesses to building Hawk Media into multi million dollar powerhouse is pretty inspiring.
- [03:18]
A
Thank you.
- [03:19]
B
What first got you into marketing and what made you realize you wanted to build this model?
- [03:23]
A
Yeah, it was when I built my music company and my two e commerce companies. I realized, you know, the hard part in my opinion of building a business is the sales and marketing because it's an infinite opportunity cost. There's always more you can do, there's always more you can get out there. Operations always seemed very rational and logical to me. So not to poo poo on them, but I thought like this, there's a logical answer to this most of the time. And so it's cool problem solving, but in some ways kind of boring to me because it's limited. You're only you're going to solve the problem and then the problem solved and then you've got the good product and move forward. That doesn't mean you can't always improve your process and your product, but not to the same extent you can your marketing and your sales. And so when I was building these businesses that became my focus because again, it was the, the biggest upside was how can I improve that piece? And thankfully ended up having a knack for it. And then after selling my second e commerce company, started advising other people on how I did it and then realized how much the struggle is a lot broader than what I was faced with. And that, you know, there's currently 90,000 marketing agencies in the US and I find that about 99% of them have no idea what they're doing. And the few that are any good quickly want to Work with the Fortune 2000 and get really hard to work with and kind of pretentious about it. And so basically everybody else is left to explore this sea of muck that is the marketing landscape. Trying to find someone that either hasn't gone pretentious on them or hasn't quite got there yet. And so they catch them, you know, on the upswing or you end up most of the time with a terrible agency. And every single founder I know has a bad agency story. And I thought that's insane that there's an industry where, you know, unanimous that people have bad experiences. And so I was like, well, why don't we build an agency that's the best of what we do, but easy to work with, but can become a household name that every growth stage company can know that they have someone to go to that's tried and true, runs best practices, has all the horsepower of the big guys, but will work with the small and medium businesses in a way that's flexible, nimble, cost effective. And so that's how I got into marketing.
- [05:19]
B
I love it. You've given me flashbacks from when I own my marketing agency. It's. That was our biggest thing that we had to overcome in the beginning. Everybody had been burned, so we just ended up dealing with it in our sales process. And we didn't, we didn't kind of try to skate around it. We just said, you know, we did two things. What great things have you heard about us? It was a little pre suasion. If you've read that book, which I loved and then you know, have you ever had a bad experience and tell us about it?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Well, I love your book the Hawk Method. In fact, I set it aside to read again when I go to Europe tomorrow.
- [05:48]
A
Appreciate you.
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B
But it seems it lays out three key marketing pillars. Awareness, which I thought was awesome because that's the first section of my book, Nurturing and Trust. What was the aha moment that helped you distill your marketing philosophy into this framework?
- [06:01]
A
Great question. So in my business, like our methodology, we go in and run an audit on every company thinking about working with us and look at what are they doing, what needs to change and you know, running my own e commerce companies. I lived in Google Analytics back then and so I, for a long time that's what I'd go to. I'd say, and add me to your Google Analytics. I want to go take a look myself and see what's falling off here and then we can go from there. And I'd do it over and over and over again. And you start to get, you know, serious pattern recognition that it was always a handful of things, and then those things always fell into three buckets. Awareness, nurturing, and trust. So I was looking at which metrics meant what so I could come back with a strategy that made sense. And then I watched it work over and over and over again that, you know, there's nothing new under the sun. Almost every e commerce company had shortcomings in one, two, or three of those categories. If they were crushing all of those, I probably wasn't talking to them. They were probably, you know, going to the moon and raising tons of money and building a giant company. But there was always something missing. And that's the funny thing is if they were having great conversion and everything was, you know, coming through the funnel, great, then it was literally just a top of the funnel problem of, like, you just need to go get more awareness. And so playing with that for years, I started then getting asked to do a lot of public speaking and lecturing and going to colleges, going to the big trade shows and stuff and speaking, because we had at that point already, you know, worked with a couple thousand brands. And so then I got approached by a friend of a friend that was a book marketer and said, have you ever thought writing a book and longer story? But I had written a book, I didn't like it, so I never published it. And so I was like, yeah, I've gone through it. But he's like, well, what would you write that you actually think you'd like? I'm like, honestly, the content I already have is this marketing philosophy that we've talked about publicly. And that's. I had to distill it down when I went to do public speaking and talk, you know, for 45 to 60 minutes about, here's our how we look at marketing. And it was me just explaining, this is what I do every time I go in and look at a company. And it just, you know, the more I practiced it, the more I talked about it, the more it got more succinct. And then when it came down to write a book, it was like, yeah, no, I already know exactly what I'd put in a book. This is what it looks like. And then we wrote an outline, you know, in a couple weeks. Then he taught me a great trick, which I'm. I don't need to keep private. We. I would get on Zoom with him. He'd basically. We took the outline and he'd basically interview me on Zoom. And for A half an hour on each topic, each half hour was a chapter. And then he went transcript. Got it transcribed, edited it, sent it to me, I edited it and boom, you've got your book. And we submitted that to a publisher who then edited it again and did all that. But that's how we built it. And so writing the book was actually not very difficult because it was content I already knew I could riff on right now or anytime before. I wrote the book too. Riffed on it, then got it organized, pulled in some of my team also to help, which is why it's Byer Cuberman and the Hawk Media team is they definitely helped with some of the edits, some of the content. After I kind of set the framework and then yeah, we ended up publishing this thing.
- [08:46]
B
I love it. By my partner. He's like, you know, for a guy who's such a great speaker, your writing is so coarse. So he used to do the same thing with me. He'd get me on the phone and just say, look, I'm gonna ask you a few questions, just do it. And that's what he used to write our RBQ articles and advice and things like that. And he wrote it and he was a professional copywriter, so that was his thing. It was never my thing.
- [09:04]
A
Yeah, I mean if you said you read the book, people that know me are like, you're basically. It's just you talking like it's my vernacular, it's my words. Because it literally is I just riffing. It wasn't, you know, I think I actually deal with this with my team a lot and try to train people. Like when I send an email, I send it like I talk to someone. So I actually stop my team sometimes and go take a step back. Would you ever say that shit? You just type like, I think this is where school does a disservice to people because they teach you how to write, you know, very methodically and like, you know, a thesis statement, all these things. And I'm like, you know, a five paragraph essay, for example. And I actually got a, a C or a D in business communications in college because I refuse to do it their way. Because I'm like, no one in the working world will ever communicate like this. And I was just so adamant that I'm like, no, you send a page long email to someone, they're never going to read it. Like, don't do that. I hated that they were teaching that because I was already doing a lot of work in college and I was like, this is nuts. So same Thing I tried to teach my team is, in the same way I wrote the book is like, just write it like you would talk. Because that's how people are used to communicating. And they're going to be more engrossed because you're going to feel like they're having a conversation with the author.
- [10:08]
B
I was always taught never more than two to four sentences per email, of course.
- [10:10]
A
Oh, yeah, exactly.
- [10:11]
B
Newsletters have changed everything, but still trying to stick with it.
- [10:14]
A
And I've done this. I've taken one of my salespeople's emails that are trying to write their own prospecting. Because sometimes they'll just go off script and I'll be like, you know, hey, Kevin, my name is Eric Huberman. I work at a company called Hawk Media. Have you heard of us? Well, if you haven't, we have worked with over 6,000 brands. And I'm like, if someone walked up to you and said this, what would you do? I'd get. I'd freak out a little bit. I'd be like, this is weird. Who are you? Go away. So I'm like, don't do that. Like, what would you actually say to me? And then usually that once they start to get the hang of it, it works.
- [10:42]
B
I always used to use, with our team, I would say things like, this is like you walking up to somebody in a bar and saying, will you marry me?
- [10:49]
A
Yeah, right.
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B
It doesn't work. And they're going to think you're weird, or they're just going to ignore you and say, get the half out of my face.
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A
Yep.
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B
So.
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A
Yep, exactly.
- [10:56]
B
Well, as we talked about before we started, beyond blind blaming is all about uncovering hidden truths that hold us back. Sometimes it's something that we can't see. And you said you had a great story that you wanted to share. Yeah, and I'm anxious to hear about it.
- [11:08]
A
Yeah. We had a company that we took from half a million in revenue when they joined us two years later. 15 million in revenue. So really solid growth. And all of a sudden, their revenue dropped. Like. Or their returns, like their new business. Not the recurring revenue. No, actually, no. I think it was both. The revenue. Monthly revenue dropped like 28th of what it was doing before. And I didn't hear about it for a couple weeks. During those couple weeks, we were managing their Facebook ads. We were managing their email marketing. We were managing a lot of their traffic, driving. We'll get into what we weren't managing. So they're yelling at our team, you've got to fix Facebook ads. Or returns have gone through the floor. We're not converting anything. What did you change on Facebook? And my team, you know, sometimes they're good at pushback. Sometimes they're going to just take orders. And they were taking orders. And finally like two, three weeks in, I get wind of it. They come to me and they're like, what do we do? And I look and I'm going into Google Analytics, went into a bunch of different, different platforms, went into their medic account, went into check their site speed. And I was like, what is going on here? I'm like, well, let me look at the meta first. And you go, all right, your click through rate's exactly the same. Your CPM is exactly the same. You're sending the exact, like, you're getting the same track with same similar targeting. So like nothing here should have fallen off by, you know, 84%. Like that doesn't make any sense. So something else is wrong. And I'm like, what's going on the site? And that's like, oh, it's the conversion is dropped. Well, the only way that conversion would drop because of meta is because we would be targeting a whole different pool. If not people should convert at a similar rate that shouldn't have just fallen off. And I go, I ask them like, what did you guys change the site two weeks ago? Did you like make an update on your website? They're like, we just updated a couple images. Oh, no. First they said, not really. I was like, what does not really mean? They're like, well, we just updated a couple images. I'm like, okay. So then I go check their site speed. Their load time went from less than a second to eight seconds per page because that banner that they updated was corrupted and it wasn't loading well and it was slowing the site speed down 8x. So every single time you clicked a button, it would take another eight seconds to load. Guess who doesn't manage their website. So I explained this to them. This is where it's fascinating though. During that month or so that they were doing that, they decided to go sign a contract with another Facebook agency and fire us. And even when I brought that to their attention, said, this has nothing to do with your ads. This was your website. It took them two months to go and fix it because they didn't believe me. Even though it's subjective, this is literally what happened. Look at the data. And that company never recovered. They ended up selling it for parts a few years later. They like drugged over, chugged along. They were on the craziest trajectory in that one bad decision, because they hired an agency that went out of business that wasn't very good. They fired us, which we were doing a great job. And so I hinted at this, but we built our AI platform, Hawk AI, which basically digests about 6,000 companies, marketing, media, and revenue data in real time and allows you to benchmark all your metrics so you can actually see where are you performing compared to the market. One of the biggest reasons I did that was because I saw this was a great case where if I had a platform that could show them, you're actually all the numbers here are right. And objectively, without being like, this is my expertise, but here's the number. Your load speed is really bad, and that's where you're missing. That's what you need to fix. If I could show that objectively, it would save a lot of businesses from making stupid decisions, which is literally what you're talking about. So the nascents of our entire software that we spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on was trying to solve that problem.
- [14:26]
B
Well, I love it. And that was an absolutely phenomenal example of blind blaming at its core. And there's in the book We Talk. I'll set you a copy. If you're a reader, I've got the audio tape we just finished. So if you're not a reader, I've got that done. Finally. That's always fun when you sit in a room by yourself and talk to yourself for the ent. Entire day.
- [14:42]
A
Yeah.
- [14:42]
B
A little wore out at the end of the day, but anyway, it's a shame they did that. But there were several, like, cognitive biases that we talk about that causes people to do that because in their minds, they felt like they knew it was absolutely you.
- [14:54]
A
Yep.
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B
And it had nothing to do with it.
- [14:56]
A
Well, and I think that comes from a positive place, which is they hired us to be their marketing partner. And so I'm not going to worry about this. This is your job to worry about this, and you're handling it. And so if it's not going well, it's on you. Cause that's why I hired you. And that's where it comes from.
- [15:11]
B
And what you described is one of the main reasons we stopped working. This is what we did in our agency. We stopped working with customers that we didn't build their site for that very reason.
- [15:20]
A
Yep.
- [15:21]
B
We just stopped doing it. It was years ago.
- [15:22]
A
We have a web team, and we had one then, but generally, like now, thankfully, because of that learning, we're Just way, like, it wouldn't have the fact that it took a month or three weeks to get to the point where we knew that was a part of the problem. We also fixed that on our side that we can actually find the problem much quicker along with Hawk AI. But, yeah, we will work on companies that we didn't build their site, because a lot of times we're getting like, we just signed. Actually, we can say it. We just signed Electrolyt today. It's the second biggest, you know, performance drink in the country. And so, yeah, we're not building their site. They have a site. Cool.
- [15:52]
B
Yeah, definitely. I see. Well, I mean, you bring up something that's important for other people who have employees.
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A
Yeah.
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B
How have you gotten your employees to have the confidence to do what you just did? Because if they would have done that from the start. Like, I was very proud of an employee that we had one time who basically, I want to say, called a customer out, but she had the confidence in a nice way, to say, listen, you had this other marketing company, after working with us for 10 years, you had another company come in, and in 30 minutes, you decided to trust them more than you trust me. Am I hearing you wrong? And then she said, and plus, the three things that they brought up that are wrong, are not, and here's why. But she had the confidence to do it effectively. She did it by asking questions when I listened to the recording of the call. Because we always screened each other's calls, including me as an owner. We had employees listen to my calls, too. We just had a really neat growth mindset as a company. But how do you find that you get that skill set over to employees? Because I know a lot of owners struggle with that.
- [16:46]
A
Yeah, it's in the way the site, because we have 250 or so people now. It comes from, frankly, it's me trying to work with our man or executive leadership that works with our management, that works with the individuals on those kind of things. And same thing, we record calls, we identify when we have. Sadly, a lot of times we're identifying when we've already had a problem or we have actually, I'll plug them. Sturdy AI we have, which is watching all of our client communication and actually pinging, sending notifications when things seem off, when the client seems agitated, things like that. So we have like, almost an emotional AI that watches client interaction and goes, hey, here's the problem. And the best part was one of our senior execs got flagged by it the other day, and I thought it was hilarious because it was a person trying to scam us. So go figure. They were volatile and so our exec caught it, but sturdy AI was watching it, so it sent it to us and it was like, hey, this person's, you know, really combative with a client. It's like perfect, it's working. But it's really hard to get ahead of because you're also dealing with a, you know, an agency business. I'd say, you know, your employee retention is always going to be okay. It's, you know, tiny agencies. Yes. But like when you get to a larger agency, you know, Google has like a 14 month average tenure of an employee. Like not saying that we're that bad, but like people turn over. And so you're constantly, whether you're growing or replacing, you're having to train new people. And so you have to build a really good onboarding system, which we have in terms of things to say, not to build as much structure around how they communicate and then hope to hire people that like have eq. And that's a big one for us. It's like you gotta hire for EQ because like you're, you mentioned that employee that stood up. Like there needs to be a level of that. And I will say a lot of them don't have the confidence. So having support systems to, with people that do is important help. Like especially with younger employees, bringing someone senior in that can back them up is super important.
- [18:35]
B
So I love that because a lot of coaching clients that I have will, I'll hear this, especially if they're a newer client. You know, people just don't want to work anymore. Kevin. I was like, well, sometimes they just don't want to work for you. You know, I'll start asking, do you have an onboarding system? And my favorite reply is, what do you mean? And I'm like, wrong answer.
- [18:51]
A
But I will say I actually agree with the sentiment, but it's a, it's hyperbole. There's a lot of people that still want to work, there's a lot of people that don't. That should be a great part of your interview process. I agree. Making sure we, we try to scare people out of working here because we're like, please don't come here if you don't want to work your ass off. Like, because you're going to get, you're going to get fired or you're going to quit very quickly because there's no room to hide in Hawk Media. And I think we do a pretty good job of that now we don't have that many people. In fact, we just had one person we had to let go that chased me down for six months to work here, was like, super adamant and then got here and didn't. I don't think he showed, like, showed up late half the time.
- [19:24]
B
Oh, boy.
- [19:24]
A
I'm like, what are you doing? And I literally had this, like, exact tone. Like, come on, man. Like, you were so aggressive trying to work here. You got the job. Now just do the same thing now that you're here. But that happens. I mean, there was a stat I saw recently that it was a big survey across tens of thousands of people that said, would you rather work 25 hours a week and make 125 a year or work 70 hours a week and make 300 grand a year? What would you take?
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B
300?
- [19:48]
A
Yeah. Me too. Easy answer. What percentage of people do you think pick? 25.
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B
Now, what was the age group?
- [19:54]
A
It was all. It was on Twitter and went super viral. So it was every type of age group.
- [19:58]
B
I would. I'm guessing 50. 50.
- [20:00]
A
50. 50. I thought it'd be 70 would be 25 hours. 98.2%.
- [20:06]
B
Really.
- [20:06]
A
And by the way, I've said this on a few podcasts. I've been quoted on social. It's gone viral. I think that's actually an accurate depiction. I think most people don't want to grind for it. And to be clear, when you do the math, it's 80 bucks an hour for the 70 hours, and it's 90 bucks an hour for the 25 hours. You make more hourly.
- [20:24]
B
Oh, is it really?
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A
Yeah, but. So you make more per hour, but the real number is a lot bigger. And I'm like, I'd make. I'd rather. I care about the real number if I have to put a little more time. And it's not incrementally more or. Sorry, it's more money, but not linearly more money. I'm still okay with that. And almost every entrepreneur. Every time I ask an entrepreneur, it's like, quick your answer and how quick. It's like, no problem. But most people don't want to do that. And I think that is important to understand. And also, I've had a lot of discussions because I do a lot of speaking at colleges. Our book is taught at a bunch of universities too. And I've. I purposely talked to the students about this because I'm like, everybody talks about the 1%. Isn't it ironic that about 1.8% of people actually want to put in the work.
- [21:02]
B
Okay, well that gives me some great stats to share. Hope you don't mind if I ethically swipe and give that to you. Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating because we run into that one all the time. It's an example I use in my book.
- [21:13]
A
No, it's valid. I mean, you know, Gen Z has a much higher emphasis in the way they've been brought up on work, life balance. And I'm not saying that that's all negative, but I think that there's. It's been at the sacrifice of being taught that hard work pays off, which I truly have seen and believe that really committing and working your ass off can really pays off for almost everyone. And so, and when I say working your ass off, working smart too, not just, you know, yes, digging ditches for your entire life might not pay off. But if you really educate yourself, get good job, go down the right path, work at the right places, it really does pay off. And so you know that it's something I try to teach the people here and we got a lot of young people and thankfully generally they're hardworking people.
- [21:52]
B
Well, you gave a great example of when businesses blame their marketing company when, when things go down, especially revenue, profits. But I also see them blaming other external factors like market conditions, competitors, pricing strategy when their marketing efforts, quote unquote, fail. How often is the real issue an internal one like misalignment strategy, poor execution, team members, et cetera?
- [22:13]
A
Always. Let me clarify that 99.9% of the time. So my example would be like if you're a restaurant, actually there's a good example restaurants in Covid you are. No. At least specially in California, you cannot open, you're done, shut down. I still have a lot of friends in the restaurant business. They went right into delivery and had the most profitable year of their entire existence because they sadly they had to fire those people. So like for the people that lost their job, the waiters and stuff, that to me is. That's market conditions. That's not their fault. But as an entrepreneur there's almost always a way to pivot. Like my buddy was one of was the guy that owned and took Public Effects. Look up E Fax's revenue, Fax machine revenue. It is insane still today. So like the idea that like disruption happens and they just fall apart. Like yeah, I'm sure CD printing companies are tough. VHS companies. Like there's businesses that market does affect and just innovation disrupts. But those companies had the opportunity to adapt and maybe be the CD printing company when they were pivoting too. So to me, blaming market conditions is the bottom 25% of entrepreneurs that don't end up succeeding. Like, I've talked a lot about this recently, so Covid hits. I watched some of our clients, e commerce clients. We had a furniture company. I'll never forget this because we were crushing it for them. Call me and say stop everything. We're not doing any more marketing. Covid hit, we're turning it off. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, I survived 2008. I know the risk this is going. We're turning off all marketing. We're walking down the hatches. We're, we're doing this. And, and like your numbers are insane. Everyone's buying furniture right now. What are you doing? Like, stop it. Like. And he's like, nope, done. Don't call me again. We're out. Shut down everything. Company went out of business. We know what happened to furniture during 2020. Like craziest year of ever. Totally took off. Yeah. So that is what happens when people watch the news too much and let market conditions be the factor. Watch your own metrics and adapt accordingly because what you have the ability. Let's say it's a recession as an example. What happens in a recession? Good example. I just saw this report yesterday actually I think it's sweet Green and Chipotle's revenue store, like a single store. Revenue went down like 5% last quarter. Domino's went up 5%. So remember, people still do things, they still spend money, they just change. So everybody kind of like in a recession, everyone shifts down a peg. So if you're high luxury, you're LVMH or something else, you might have some struggles. But there's way again also recessions don't really affect the top 0.1% so you might be okay. So there's all these people shift that usually it's just a remixing. And so as long as you're still on the offense and being aggressive, you just have to find a new customer base. They're not gone, they're just different. And so again if you're someone that goes odds are recession, we just pull everything back. Well that's a self fulfilling prophecy. Turn off marketing, which a lot of people love to default to. Yeah, you're going to do less revenue and, and then your fixed costs are going to creep up and it's going to be a fucking painful time. Or you lean into it, you get more aggressive and you go find that new customer. And that's the other option. So what I've seen is Covid took out, you know, a bunch of people then 2022 with the rate increases. And I heard the Ukraine war being blamed for businesses. And I'm like, are you nuts? Like, I know we're in social media now, so we pay attention to every little conflict around the world. But like, there's always a war going on. Ukraine and Russia, I get where it could go, but it's not. And I'm sorry, there's almost no consumers in the United States stopped consuming because there was a war in Ukraine. Like, that wasn't a thing.
- [25:28]
B
So.
- [25:28]
A
And we saw that the stats are there now, but I heard people blaming that for why their business slowed down. And so when they use that, you give away your own power. You're just a victim. You don't focus on things you actually can control to make the fixes. Those companies go out of business. So then fast forward now tariffs hit, which were, you know, create at the beginning or you know, February of this year and the tariffs get announced. You know, all these product companies get nervous. But saw something really interesting. We have about 550 clients right now and we've worked with about 6,000 companies at this point out of 550 clients. I thought it was going to be another, like when Covid hit it was 25% of our clients freaked out and wanted to pause their marketing. Quarter of our clients. So I thought something not similar, but we're going to at least get a lot of phone calls of like, hey, we don't know what's happening here. Our cost basis might go up 3x. Like, we got to pause marketing. We got four phone calls out of 550. And I was like, huh? I thought I was getting ready to go to war again. And like, I've got to go figure out who's not affected by tariffs to be my customer. Because this is going to be rough. And no, what happened, in my opinion, and this is just opinion and conjecture at this point, but all the people that give up in the face of adversity already gave up in Covid. And in 2022, you're dealing with people that actually rise to the occasion now that are still running businesses. It kind of called the herd. And you know, out of those people, they looked at this like, yeah, it's another challenge. Let's go figure it out. And now, like, I've, it's been a few months. I've talked to a lot of people that run, you know, a lot of our clients, a lot of my friends that run E Comm brands and they just went and like, yeah, we had to renegotiate with our factory. We had to raise our prices a little. We had to find new territories because China's screwed. But then they punted it. So we're okay. And it's caused a little bit of headache, but I'm not going to stop marketing. Like, great, then I'm out of business either way. And so it's been really interesting to watch the people that give away their power and blame the market and stuff, then they don't fix it and they go out of business. The people that go, yeah, whatever that's happening, I'm going to go figure out what I do about it. Those are the people that continue to build bigger and bigger companies.
- [27:19]
B
I love it and it's such great advice. Thank you for that. Because we saw during COVID the people who kept marketing, they had substantial growth the next year. They didn't shut everything down. And the people who did never recovered.
- [27:30]
A
Yep, exactly.
- [27:31]
B
And a lot of them aren't in business. They sold because they got tired and burned out. And I think they just had the right mindset.
- [27:36]
A
So this has been something I figured, like I looked at for a while, I made some really big statements about then realized like I think I'm right here. But businesses fail for two reasons. I can't and if I'd love pushback on this cause I'm still trying to find it. But I found two reasons businesses fail and you just named one of them and the main one. But the first one that I'll name is they get underwater financially. You get into debt, you raise too much money, you can't pay them back and there's no reason to run it anymore or you lose control of your company. Like that's one reason. The other reason the leadership gives up, I actually don't know of another reason. Because if you don't get underwater financially and you don't give up, you can always be flexible, ebb and flow. Like it might be hard to get over mentally and ego wise that you're running a business a 10th the size if you have some really big headwinds, but you can still survive if you don't get underwater financially. So it's really to that point, you know, people that pulled back and now looking at a business that's they're running, that they used to run a business 10 times the size and now it's tiny, they give up. They're like, I don't want to do this anymore. And I'm not saying that that is not the right decision. But it's really nice to know that if you can build a business that's sustainable for you to run, that you want to keep running and you don't let your finances get out of control, you can be sustainable forever.
- [28:42]
B
Well, I think you bring up a great point because we have a mastermind company. We've got 40 some odd members. It's a very high end, very high cost for million dollar practice owners, business owners and above. Really. We do have a lot of medical field people in those groups, but we only work with one on one thing and that is the mindset of the business owner. So I think you are onto something and I 100 agree with you because our average growth rate is 43% in that group the first year. We do no marketing. We don't own my business partner. I both had marketing agencies and we know about it. We don't even talk about it. And it's 100% geared toward the belief system of the owner and what they think they can achieve. So I think you nailed it.
- [29:18]
A
Yeah. And it's building an environment in a company that you like waking up and going to every day so that there's nothing drawn you away from it.
- [29:24]
B
Yeah, something will light you up.
- [29:25]
A
Exactly. And then the money comes like that. And I think that's a cliche, that's not fully fair. But it's like, you know, I just had this conversation. A guy was in my office just now that's worth billion dollars. Like right before this podcast and we were talking about it, it's like this sounds crazy to the everyday person, but to the entrepreneur, hopefully it resonates. Once you make one, one and a half, maybe $2 million a year, you don't spend more than that. So like for an entrepreneur, it's not that high of a bar. For an everyday person it is. But like then it's got to be about why are you like the why becomes super important because it's a grind to build a business bigger and bigger and bigger.
- [29:59]
B
Well, I think you're onto something there too, because the moment we switched from trying to make money and increase recurring revenue to having an impact on our customers businesses, we exploded.
- [30:09]
A
Yep.
- [30:09]
B
And so I think focus has a lot to do with it. What are you trying to do if you get switch from switching from making money and what I hear you describing is having an impact. So great advice. Again, we've also scaled your business successfully. What are some of the Key leadership lessons you've learned about growing a company while maintaining your culture and vision, which you just got done talking about. Yeah.
- [30:28]
A
I would say another big lesson I learned was I. I wanted to build, and I still want to build a place that people love to work at. Really important to me. We got a bunch of the best places to work awards, and that was really rewarding to me. Like, I really love. I love people, honestly, and I love building a culture of people. But that started to manifest as all the people that had complaints focusing on all the people that didn't like it here and trying to make it better for them. So fixing things all the time. Like, you know. You know, we should have kombucha on tap. Okay, we'll get kombucha on top. Like, you know, oh, I. You know, I want to. You know, I'm working too hard. I want more vacations. That. Whatever. That's not that bad of one. But, like, I'm trying to think of examples, but we started to change the company to serve the whiny minority, and then all of a sudden, all the high performers started getting disenfranchised, too, because we were so focused on the negative that we weren't doubling down on the positive. We were trying to fix the negative. And so I. Thankfully, I mean, we did some damage during that period, but it was, like, you know, years ago. But for like, a year, I went down that path, and then I went, I hate this, and back to the point, if I don't like working here, this whole thing falls apart, and I'm just gonna, like, I want these people to leave. Like, it was a. It was a group of people that had, like, got festered and gotten worse and worse, and it was just all of a sudden, they were making claims about the company that just were not fair. And it was like, it just. You. You fed the complainers, and the complaints just got bigger. And so, thankfully, I was able to coach them out. And, like, we actually got rid of this cohort of people. We replaced them with people that were fired up and, like, were very clear on the vision. And it became such a better place to run and such a better place to work. And then all of a sudden, all our top performers liked it even more. And listen, culture changes. I think the best metaphor I heard my business partner talk about is it's kind of like going from preschool to elementary school to middle school to high school to college to adult life. It's not necessarily better or worse. Maybe you have fond memories because nobody remembers the bad Parts, they always remember the fun parts of high school or whatever, but you can reminisce but at the same time it's what fits the culture today and who you are today. And so as we got bigger and as we've changed and as the world's changed, our culture has changed. But, and so I don't see it as a bad thing, but I also look at like what is the culture we need today to accomplish the goals we have. And like in the beginning I think it was much more about a tight knit family that wanted to work day and night with each other. And like we were in the office 16, 18 hour days and all of us were grinding but we all, you know, blew off steam together, went out drinking together, etc. I don't even drink anymore but was like we were really tied. Now it's a big organization, it's, you know, HR becomes a factor a lot more professional of an organization. And that's okay because we, and we've changed the way we position it and what type of people we want a level of professionalism and you know, this is a business and like it's just different. It's the startup vibe versus the mid market vibe. But it's still fun, it's still a great place to work. It's just for a different type of person a lot of times. And some people make that transition, some don't. Some are meant to be in the smaller business, some aren't. And so it's constantly adjusting. What do we think we need to build? And I had this and I'm very conscious of it. So I've had very direct conversations with my leadership about like these are the explicit things we need to be hiring for and driving for if we want to accomplish what we're accomplishing. We need to hold people to these standards, but we also need to deliver these things. Like we need to make this a place focused on professional and personal growth, focused on how we're building. The example I give, trying to say this without throwing anyone under the bus, but there's a good lesson is okay, so I was coached by some of our execs, like hey, you should probably take some time to like really make space for people and let them air their problems and talk through what they're dealing with emotionally and you know, these kind of things, you know, because there were people that were doing this in the company and you probably need to take that over. And I went, you know, well I respect that. I know that some people need it. I think I'm Trying to build a culture, especially at this size, that's not a therapy session, that people don't need that here. I'm not saying individuals don't need that. And they. I go to therapy. I think therapy is a great thing. I don't think that expecting your work to supply that and especially your CEO is probably the type of people I want to attract. I think that creates a more dramatic culture. I think that creates maybe an emotional culture in a way that might not be so positive for what I'm trying to build. And I'd rather build a place with people that aren't looking for that don't need me to be their emotional rock, are solid enough on their own and can find that solution somewhere else. And I'm like, again, not saying that that's not right for certain cultures, but that's not the culture I think I'm trying to build. So we just had that conversation. I'm like, I want a culture of people that are here because we're pushing them, because we're looking for high performance, high output. We want to win. You know, and I saw a fun quote from Tom Brady I'm going to butcher a little bit, but Baker Mayfield took over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after Tom, and he said, you know, I've come in and tried to bring joy back to the locker room because it's been a very stressful locker room. Tom Brady responded with stressful. I thought stressful wasn't having a fucking super bowl ring. If I wanted to have fun, I'd go to Disneyland with my kids. And I love that quote because he's talking about football, so we're not talking about curing cancer here. But he wants to win in something that is fun. And I feel very similarly about this where it's marketing, it's fun, but I want to win and I want people around me to win. And if that doesn't resonate, if you want to goof off, maybe this isn't the place. And that's when you talk about culture. That's what I think this place needs right now. And it's getting there. And again, I love the people I work with. They're all great people, thankfully. And I've learned really fast not to keep people I don't like to work with. And I mean that not in terms of a homogeneous group, but in terms of like, our third core value is be cool, be a good person, be a fun person, being, you know, almost all of our employees are also client facing. So we need people that people like. We need, like, people, and that's important, so.
- [35:57]
B
Well, I think you. What you just described is something that. It's actually my book. It's called mfd. You ever heard of that before?
- [36:02]
A
No.
- [36:03]
B
Make a fucking decision.
- [36:05]
A
Yep. That's the first core value is get shit done. Literally what it is.
- [36:08]
B
Yeah. So you made a decision about what you want. You. You listen to what other people said and you said, you know, I appreciate it, but this is the way we're going to grow, and it's paid off for you. And I think more leaders need to learn to mfd. In fact, it just turned into this thing, and I didn't expect it to put it in the book because of a coaching client that I had. And she's like, what do you think I should do? I was like, you need to make a fucking decision, Kayla. She's giving me permission to use her name, by the way. And then I got her on the phone the next month, and I was like, well, how are things going? What's going well? And she's like, oh, my God, you've changed my life. I'm MFD all over the place, everybody. We're getting shit done, by the way,
- [36:39]
A
because I've been generally defaulted to that. But the moments that I haven't, that I start punting decisions and start not fixing problems is when they all pile up. And then you just end up burnt out, stressed out underwater, like. And it's like, listen, you're going to make wrong decisions, but it's better to make a bad decision than no decision for sure, because then at least people are marching.
- [36:57]
B
Yeah. She said, look, I've made some mistakes, but we pivoted and. And we're doing well, but at least we're moving forward.
- [37:02]
A
Example, like, maybe I'm wrong about the emotional thing. Maybe I realize that, like, we lose a bunch of great people that I wish you didn't because of that. And I go, maybe we do need to make space for people to, you know, air their grievances here in a different way. But I more look at it as kind of in the same breath, as, like, evolution and Darwinism, where it's like, you create an environment, whatever adapts to that environment the best will thrive. If you create an environment where you cater to a lot of emotional needs, you're gonna get a lot of people that have emotional needs. If you cater an environment that doesn't cater to that, you're gonna have people that don't need it, because the people that do are gonna leave or no. Join and that you're gonna end up with the people that are left that are people that I'm looking for that. Yeah.
- [37:38]
B
I love your Tom Brady Story, by the way.
- [37:40]
A
I saw it recently. I was like, that's a great.
- [37:42]
B
I gotta go look it up. I wrote down Tom Brady Story.
- [37:45]
A
Yeah. Baker Mayfield, Tom Brady. It pops right up because I clicked it up a couple times.
- [37:48]
B
Well, man, you've been amazing. I have one last question that I always ask every guest. You've clearly learned to invest in yourself over the years to become who you become. What are your favorite ways to do that? Is it reading podcasts, Mastermind groups, coaching
- [38:01]
A
events, going to play? Going to, like, very, like, great being in the room with great people. So it's a lot of traveling. And it's funny, I haven't ever answered this question directly, like, that way. I'm actually. I have a podcast, I have a book. I don't read that much, and I don't listen to that many podcasts once in a while, like, I'm training for a triathlon right now, so I, like, have long runs and rides and stuff. And so I'll listen to stuff, but I generally don't. My favorite thing to do is go talk to great people and interesting people. And so hosting my own events as well as I try to find great new communities of people. Masterminds are a good example, I would say my experience with a lot of masterminds, are there a little too much content. I want to go just meet people and hang out. And so I'm looking for the most interesting people. And so there's great groups like Summit Series, ypo I'm very active with. So YPO is a great one where it has the aspect of, like, you know, sort of therapy or, you know, group CEO therapy, which my forum is amazing. But I also get to travel around and throw events. I'm hosting our all of the Santa Monica events for next year or for this coming year, along with The YPO Under 40 event in Mexico City. And, like, I invest in, like, I like hosting, too, which I've really discovered, especially on someone else's budget, because the idea of, like, here's the budget, stick to it, but throw the coolest thing you can. I have a lot of fun with that. So it's almost like a side hobby that I've done a lot with, but then doing that and curating a bunch of great people. So I have a boat here in la. I host people on that like, one or two times a month that are like, Good groups of, like, brand owners or people doing interesting things. You know, group of VCs, things like that. I really try to collaborate with other people. Like, you bring a bunch of cool people. I'll host the event because then I get to. I really love meeting new people.
- [39:38]
B
Awesome. I love it. You're the first person we've done, oh, gosh, I want to say 100. So episodes that said, events.
- [39:44]
A
Oh, interesting.
- [39:45]
B
So I usually get podcasts for reading, of course, books and masterminds, and they have coaches that they enjoy, but have an. Anybody say events.
- [39:52]
A
So I'll give one other thing. I hired a sports therapist two and a half years ago. Or two and a half. Maybe three and a half years ago. Yeah, three and a half years ago. Jesus. That I'd see every other week, 30 minutes. Quick phone call that I talked to her. When I first started, it was a tough. We were in a tough period of. For Hawk, and I was like, hey, I need you to treat me like I am a quarterback that won a Super bowl and then had a losing season. So I've. I've been there. I've done really well, but I need to get the. The whip, you know, get back in the game because I. What she. Again, she works with a lot of top athletes. I was like, if you can get a guy to physically perform on the field after feeling like they've been beaten up, the stuff I've dealt with here is nothing compared to that because, like, to perform mentally and to perform at work, I think, frankly, is a lot easier than to perform physically in a football game or in a basketball game. So that I started seeing her, I still. That thankfully got through all that. Been great. I still see her every two weeks just for the habit of. I don't know, is anything holding me back mentally right now? And just, you know, and sometimes it's even just like dealing with, like, having a great, you know, psychologist to talk to about, like, hey, I have this executive that's acting this way. How do I manage that? Person or family stuff, whatever. But. But some half the time. Or not half the time, but, like, I'd say a quarter of the time, it turns into, like, something I'm dealing with. With work that I'm like, I can't get over this barrier. What do I do?
- [41:11]
B
I love it because sports psychologists, they're brilliant at it. So.
- [41:14]
A
Oh, she's. Yeah, she's in, like.
- [41:16]
B
That's such a great idea. Some of my favorite books to read, in fact.
- [41:19]
A
Yeah. And I've never been against therapy But I. I tried a couple of therapists, like standard therapists, and I saw and they even the last therapist before I saw said, you don't need therapy. Like, I am really good at understanding where I'm coming from. I. I'm pretty self reflective that I, like, I don't need someone to, you know, mirror me. But she was the first one I talked to that's like, oh, you should try this and do video. And it was like, oh, shit. Like, you know what you're talking about. Let's go.
- [41:43]
B
I love it.
- [41:43]
A
It's been great.
- [41:44]
B
Well, that's great advice too. That actually might be something that I try.
- [41:47]
A
Yeah.
- [41:47]
B
Well, Eric, if people want to get in touch with you, how do they get in touch?
- [41:50]
A
Yeah, for me it's just adder/erickeberman on any social channel. Really easy in that sense. Mentioned you heard me on here because I get spammed all the time, so if I don't know who it is, then I might not. And then for Hawk media, it's just thehawkmedia.com, we're happy to always look at a business. Do it, Run a free audit.
- [42:04]
B
Great. All right, buddy. Well, thank you so much for being here. It was amazing time. Wish we had more time, but we gotta end it up in. Your time's valuable too, so.
- [42:11]
A
Yeah. I appreciate you.
- [42:12]
B
All right.