← Built Online
Built Online
Most People Don’t Start a Business — But He Made $150M Before 25 | ft. Erik Huberman
00:50:07
Loading summary
Transcript112 lines
- [00:00]
Eric Cuberman
I don't take myself that seriously. I don't think I'm that impressive. I know that I work hard. I know that I built something cool. But, like, I think that most of the people here, if they want it, really wanted it, would be able to do the same thing. It's more about the. The desire to do it than it is the ability.
- [00:14]
Cody McGuffey
Welcome to Built online. I'm Cody McGuffey, and this podcast is all about one thing. Building the business of your dreams. Selling art, teaching classes, starting a blog, launching a brand. Whatever your passion is, we show you how to to turn it into real income. I created Ever Be to help anyone with a dream start and scale business.
- [00:36]
Eric Cuberman
Ever Be, Ever be Ever be Ever be Ever be, Ever be.
- [00:40]
Cody McGuffey
We now serve over 800,000 creators all across the globe. On this show, we bring on real entrepreneurs who've done it. They share their secrets. They share their failures. The exact steps that you can take to get started. What if you can get one golden nugget out of today's episode? And it's the breakthrough that takes you from just dreaming to actually living a life on your terms. At Everbee, we believe that every human is a creator, and every creator should own a business. Eric, what's up, man?
- [01:06]
Eric Cuberman
What's going on?
- [01:08]
Cody McGuffey
Happy you're here, man. How are you?
- [01:10]
Eric Cuberman
Good, Good. Good to be here.
- [01:12]
Cody McGuffey
Happy you're here too. We met before, we talked about a little bit before we hit record about a year ago, and I think. And that's when we get to learn a little bit about Hawk. Hawk Media and introduced by a mutual friend who was on the podcast actually, too. Nice. A year and a half ago, Grant. Grant came on and talked about his entrepreneurial story, which was cool. And. But, yeah, I don't think I really got to dig deep into your story and Hawk Media story, so I'm excited.
- [01:37]
Eric Cuberman
To do that today. Yeah, no, it'd be great. Happy to share.
- [01:41]
Cody McGuffey
Awesome. Let's do it. So would you mind starting us off, like, a little bit of your background, because people know you as like, Eric from Hawk Media at this moment. Right. But as we all know, that's not how it started. You started, like, when you were. You were probably an aspiring entrepreneur and eventually turned into an entrepreneur. Can you walk us through that early stages of Eric in the past?
- [02:01]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah, I'd actually say, I guess the entrepreneur term wasn't really a thing till I was already running businesses. Like, I was always looking to build businesses, but I feel like the sex appeal of being a business owner didn't really kick in till like 2011, 2012. Like, I was already on my way before that. I just took it for granted. And not in the colloquial use of the term, but the literal, where it's just like, my dad was an entrepreneur, my grandfather was an entrepreneur. I just thought that like, if I took a job, it was to learn something so that I eventually could go build my own thing. I just thought that's what you did. Like, it wasn't like there wasn't an option that I was going to go be an executive and build a career. I'm like, why the hell would I do that? I want to go build my thing. And so that I never thought about, like, I kind of like a lot of the cliches about entrepreneurship. I never really accepted, like, it's risky. I'm like, so is working at a job, your boss has a bad day or makes a dumb decision and you're fired. So I don't know why that feels stable, like letting someone else control your destiny. I guess taking the responsibility off your shoulders is maybe emotionally stable, but your, your job is not. And by versus running a business where it's like, it's on me, I, I'm going to grow and shrink this and run it how I run it. And if it fails, it's because I did something wrong or picked the wrong horse to bet on.
- [03:11]
Cody McGuffey
What is your grandparents? What does your family do? Like, so give us a kind of a snapshot.
- [03:15]
Eric Cuberman
My grandfather ran a scrap metal yard. He was a Polish immigrant from World War II, and he ran a scrap metal yard in East L. A after working a ton of odd jobs, you know, while he was getting set up in the US and then my dad went to work for him and then basically had someone buy his dad and brother out, took over that business and turned it into a massive waste business. And then got into the commercial real estate business as well. So started buying real estate around his waste facilities. But we ran the waste management for LA Oxnard, Sacramento, Fremont, a lot of like coastal California. Um, and so watched that and watched what that took. Hard work wise and the dedication to that. And just, you know, grew up hearing him on the phone and watching how he worked. Did a couple things for me. One is like, again, I just thought that's what you did. And two, there was never like a business person that, like, I don't want to say impressed me. Impressed is not the right word, but like, intimidated me. Like, I see a lot of people like our education system, you call your teachers Mr. And Mrs. And you're raised in a way that you have to like, respect people, you know, that have done are sort of higher than you, so to speak. And I just had grown up where my dad was the CEO. I didn't, you know, it was my dad. I didn't think it was any. He was great. I loved my dad, but it was not nothing special. So when I met other people that were running big companies, I kind of looked at him as just people. And so that kind of helped me also see myself in that position because it was like, it wasn't some unattainable person that's, you know, again, intimidating me and crazy. It's just like, oh, so you worked hard and had some luck and you got here. Cool. Good for you. I'm gonna do that.
- [04:44]
Cody McGuffey
I agree with that, actually. It's interesting like, thing too. That's just occurred to me too, that probably I was most intimidated by people that were in the school systems and like my bosses at companies versus when I met multiple CEOs and multiple founders of like, massive success when I was a kid and younger, these people were like, literally the most human people out of compare. If I compared them to like my teachers or like, you know, university professors and things like this. Like, these people were actually, they were so relationship driven.
- [05:16]
Eric Cuberman
You have to be like. That's the thing is like depending on the industry, but most industries, to be a CEO, you have to have people that want to work for you, that are super capable. If you want to build a decent company, you have to be doing business with other people. You have to like. People have to like you. Meaning you have to be like a bull. So not many people get very successful being pieces of shit, just to be blunt. So they're, they're very approachable. And so, but. And that's the thing is when you don't have those sort of preconceived notions and inhibitions about talking to them, when you open those doors, it just reinforces it because you realize these are great people that want to help and are doing cool things and that, you know, I very early in my career became addicted to the sort of meeting other entrepreneurs and learning what they did and networking, which has definitely benefited my business. But it became a really fun part of why I like my business and why I like running my business, which is my job is to meet great entrepreneurs all day and work with great entrepreneurs and figure out how I can bring our value to them. And so, you know, a good portion of my time is just spent meeting and talking to people doing really cool things in different fields.
- [06:14]
Cody McGuffey
Did you ever get a chance when you were younger watching your, your father and your grandfather? Did you ever see the downsides of owning a business, like where it almost turned you off? Or did they, did it really, did they do a really good job of just like only showing you the upside?
- [06:31]
Eric Cuberman
I don't think it was like showing it was not intentional. So I want to get. My dad was, you know, a teacher by watch what I do, not listen to what I do. So he was not like thinking consciously of, not of sheltering me from the downside that that wasn't a thing he, you know, he had. He was a pretty stressed out, volatile guy some of the time. But I never associated with that. He said things to me that didn't resonate until later, much later when I was running a bigger business. Things like what was a good example? Oh, he got into real estate because he wanted to sleep at night. And I'm like, what does that mean? And then he realized, oh yeah, cause real estate's not an operating business. There's still stress in it, but it's not the same. Whereas waste management, similar to like running any business. Like if you're running a day to day operating business good, you don't get to check out at the end of the day. You don't get to just turn it off. Like it's stressful. And so, you know, saw that in different ways. I also like early on when I used to like call him with my business problems, he'd be like, yeah, that's nice, bye. And just like hang up because he's like. And I was always like, what the fuck? And then I realized like, oh, you're dealing with the same stuff and I'm just bringing more like PTSD to you because you're like, I. I have my own problems. Like I do not want to hear this right now. So you start to realize like the, the anxiety and stress stuff, like different people manage different ways. But I now in hindsight I go, oh yeah, he was probably really stressed out at that point. He went through this. I mean we were about to put this out, but I was, it's a story I remember that I had completely forgotten about when I was like a month into business. And looking back, it's like I completely understand his reaction now. But I got a call, no, I got an email at like 3am on a Monday morning from I had, you know, a handful of employees and the guy that was managing half our business basically emails me and goes, hey, Eric, long story short, I fell in love, asked this girl where in the world she wanted to go. She said, hawaii. We're here now. I'll be working remote this week. This is pre Covid. Like this is 2014. There was no working remote. It was, this was super unstable behavior. It was like, what are you talking about? You met a girl over the weekend and fell in love. Like, what? And I was relying on this guy to manage half my client base and was very early. We didn't, like, we lose those clients, we're done. And so I tried to call him, tried to call him, tried to call him and finally I got him on the phone and I was like, hey, man. Like I. And I knew if I came at him, he was just going to get defensive and volatile. So I was just like, hey, just make sure you're handling stuff. He's like, of course I'm on top of everything. Don't worry about it. I just wanted to take this girl to Hawaii. We're good, don't worry. I'm like, okay, nothing much I can do. It sounds like you're on it. Let's give this a shot. Next day I get all four is we had eight clients, he had four of them. The four clients all call me, pissed off, where the fuck is your guy? Why is nothing's been delivered? What's going on? I'm like, oh, Jesus. So I try to call him, try to call him, can't get a hold of him. It's Hawaii. Finally he calls me back at like 3pm Pacific Noon, Hawaii time. And I'm like, yo, what are you doing? He goes, I'm going to stop you right there. This is the happiest day in my life. I'm getting married tomorrow. I need you to respect that and back off. Okay? Hang up and look at my business partner, Tony, who's still my business partner. And like, he's like, I guess I'm going to go learn how to do some email marketing some other things right now and jump right in. He took over and so I'm like, nervous we're going to lose those four clients. I call my dad and I'm like, tell him this. Basically a 5 minute version of that, what I just said in a minute. And he goes, yeah, that shit happens all the time. Anyways, I got to run. Talk to you later. And he hangs up. And I'm like sitting there like I was, you know, existential, just like, oh my God, what am I going to do? How am I going to handle this? Are we Going to be able to take this da, da, da. And he's like, yeah, it's welcome to running a business. I got to run part of it.
- [09:55]
Cody McGuffey
It's part of the deal. Yes. It's so true. And it's probably so true for even more so for like blue collar type of work, like waste management, like steel. It's like you're dealing with actual humans, not the Internet so much. Right. People actually have to show up to work every single day, get in that truck, drive the truck like it needs to happen. And if someone doesn't, if someone doesn't show up, like, you are literally like you're in tight spot now. And yeah, I agree. My, my father, my step, My stepfather, my mom, all this stuff very, very similar to. It's like that just sounds like a normal, normal thing.
- [10:25]
Eric Cuberman
Like, no. And you know, I've had over a thousand employees now. It's a very normal thing. People flake. People do that. It's like. And they blame everyone else for where the outcome is, which is a sad truth of it. But it's just people, you know, people are hard to work with sometimes.
- [10:39]
Cody McGuffey
You. You so did. You did. So you knew. It sounds like you knew you're gonna be an entrepreneur pretty early age and.
- [10:45]
Eric Cuberman
Then you moved six years old.
- [10:46]
Cody McGuffey
Six years old. What? Maybe skip past maybe. Like what was your first. I would say your. What would you consider a real business.
- [10:54]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah.
- [10:55]
Cody McGuffey
And kind of led us into Hawk Media.
- [10:57]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah. Because they're all the little like kid stuff of selling flowers and beanie babies and that kind of stuff. Yeah. So to skip over that, I did. I was my. What was that? Sophomore year of college. I wanted to learn sales because I kept hearing that sales is like the most important thing you could learn whether you're gonna be an entrepreneur or just to sell yourself in a job. And so I did Cutco. Coming out of that, I broke a bunch of records.
- [11:18]
Cody McGuffey
I did Cutco too.
- [11:19]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah, it's great. And so they asked me to open an office for them in my junior year, summer. I was about to do that and I got a call from a friend that had. California had passed a while that you had to filter storm drains and no one knew how to do it, but if you didn't do it and they enforced it, it was like $75,000 per drainage, not filtering it. So it was like a real fine. And so we. This my friend had figured out, had patented and figured out a. A drain filter for storm drains and. But didn't know how to go to market with it didn't understand sales and said, hey, why don't you just come in and join me and do this? So that was our first business. We built it for the summer. This was like, this was 2000, summer of 2007. So it was like Mark, the whole like dropping out of college and pursuing a business had become like the sexy thing to do. And so I was entertaining the idea of not going back for my senior year and building this. And I got us our first contract and I wrote the contract and did everything. I played lawyer for us and did a bunch of stuff. And then I got to the end of summer, I'm like, you know what, I don't want to filter storm drains the rest of my life. So I'm not going to stick around and do this. I'm here to help, but you take it. I had half the company. I just like don't worry, we didn't. What age was this?
- [12:25]
Cody McGuffey
Approximately what age were you? 2007 doesn't say. How old were you? I guess at this stage 20.
- [12:30]
Eric Cuberman
20.
- [12:31]
Cody McGuffey
20 years old.
- [12:32]
Eric Cuberman
Cool. Yeah. So I, he took it over. He built it to be a multi million dollar business and I went back to school to finish school and then came out and went into real estate. But that was, that was the first business that I like, real business that we incorporated started, did the real, you know, got it going.
- [12:48]
Cody McGuffey
When I was looking at your. When we did some research when you were 21, you got into like you said you went into real estate. That was, that must be 2008 recession hits.2022.
- [12:56]
Eric Cuberman
It was a week before Wayman Brothers went bankrupt. It was the week I started.
- [13:00]
Cody McGuffey
Wild. And then I'm. When you say going into real estate you like as an agent or.
- [13:04]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah, commercial agent.
- [13:05]
Cody McGuffey
Commercial agent. Wow. Tough year. Tough couple. Multiple years. Okay, perfect. And then essentially you eventually led into FR Fame wizard and then eventually led into Swag of the month, which one was like more e commerce based and then kind of product focused. Was one of the, one of those.
- [13:23]
Eric Cuberman
Oh, Swag of the month for sure. Fame wizard was like business coaching for musicians. So it was online based and we, we honestly just hacking Craigslist to make that business work. We were just posting in the gig section to help people to get gigs and like found a bunch of ways. It was, it was a real nice like on the ground, like hand to hand combat of how to do marketing and meet people where they are. But yeah, we built that to profitability. I knew it was never going to be a big business because frankly having Independent musicians as your customer. Like if you're going to build a business, maybe have a customer that has money and sadly like 10% of independent artists are hardworking, great people. 90% are just using it as an excuse not to work. So learn that and like picking your customer in the way and so hired a CEO to take over. Knew it wasn't going to be big. Moved on, started Swag of the Month, the T shirt subscription site.
- [14:08]
Cody McGuffey
That's what it was. T shirt subscription. And this is around 24 years old at this time. At this point what I'm saying the recurring theme is like problem solving. Problem solving like helping others, helping others, helping others and then obviously just charging for that service that you're. That you're the problem that you're solving. And I want someone to take away from this is like I mean at this point you're 24 years old. How many at bats have you have you taken at this point? Right? It's multiple. We're talking like almost a half, three.
- [14:35]
Eric Cuberman
And that's if you don't count. Like when I tried to start a music website at 12 and then my dad wouldn't co sign on a seller's permit. So I got the site live and all the dealer had all the distribution partnerships like Fender and Ernie Ball and Gibson and all these things. But then they asked for my seller's permit when I went to do an order. I'm like what's that? And I'm like dad, I need you to take me to the courthouse and get me a seller's permit. He's like the are you talking about? So didn't end up launching that one but like I had taken and like I'd built sites to launch I even when I was working in real estate one of my the guy that actually still one of my best friends but at the time like the colleague I got along with the most. My first job out of college we bought the letter r talk.com and we're going to build a real estate like community website like social media website. When everyone was building social media for this and that. We never launched it but there were a lot of like the at bats that actually went and made money and turned into businesses were those three. But there was a lot I was.
- [15:23]
Cody McGuffey
Always tinkering same same I same with me. I was selling stickers on the side of the road when I was you know, whatever, whatever years old. Put my Pokemon cards I was selling them right didn't even know how to do change yet. Same thing. And I do Remember specifically of Cutco, There was a point with Cutco when I was like 20, whatever I was in college. What is it, 22, is that right? Age. There was a point where I was trying to sell Cutco online. I'm just like, there has to be a better way to do this. And going door to door, like there has to be an online way to do this. And I was like posting them on Craigslist and stuff. Just like obviously no results there or not much at least. But the ideas were coming, which is really cool.
- [16:01]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah, let me get into that.
- [16:04]
Cody McGuffey
Let's jump into Hawk Media a little bit too because we're about halfway through and I want to make sure that we cover one of the biggest things that you've been building for the past, I would say what, 10 years now that you've been building Hawk.
- [16:14]
Eric Cuberman
Almost 12, 11 and a half.
- [16:16]
Cody McGuffey
Wow. Maybe can we jump to where it is today and then we can kind of reverse engineer to of how we got there. So like where would you say if someone ask you like, hey, how successful is Hawk Media? Can you give us a snapshot of like some bragging numbers that you typically wouldn't ask, say unless someone asked you specifically, like hey, brag to me about Hawk Media.
- [16:36]
Eric Cuberman
I mean over 3 billion in net or gross revenue, not net revenue. And then we've worked with almost 6, 000 brands. We've successfully grown. We've got about 250 full time people, 23 acquisitions of other agencies. We've got our, we're on our. We're mostly through our second venture fund, $20 million fund. Our first was five and a half. So you know, managing out with SBB is about 30 million on the investment side.
- [17:05]
Cody McGuffey
Okay, so you're investing in other. You're saying that's what you're using to leverage.
- [17:08]
Eric Cuberman
Using. You're investing in marketing technology, e commerce technology, like different tech companies. And then I'm trying to think what else, what are other, you know, tons of awards. I actually last night got honored with Executive of the Year by LA Times, which was super fun. Did not expect that. I thought I was going to an event where it was like there was a giant list. I mean I think it was a few hundred people like up for the award nominees. And I thought that was the list. Like I was just one of a couple hundred people and I was like cool, like I'll go to a dinner with a bunch of people that are being celebrated. And then I got a text, you're going to show up tomorrow, right? I'm like, yeah. They're like, because you're a finalist. I'm like, what's a finalist? What do you mean? This is a competition. Like, I had no idea. And I showed up. I was, I actually the president of Valley Times. We were in yp. We know each other through ypo. And I was definitely the only person in the room in a T shirt, let alone not a suit. Because I had no idea that this was some, like, real award. I thought it was just like a fun one of the publications, like put these lists out just because it could get some attention and some engagement. I thought it was one of those. And it was like, no. This has been going on for, you know, years. And this is a real award. And I'm like, oh. So I show up her on stage. She's like, of course. This is the only guy that can show up in a base. I was literally wearing what I'm wearing right now. So she's like a T shirt and a baseball hat at this event. Like, yeah, my bad. But yeah, that was a fun success. So we've won tons of awards. We, we've really like, it's weird because these are all metrics that kind of give you an idea of scale. But the real goal, which I think we're getting closer and closer to solving, is being the go to marketing partner for any small and medium business. And it's like everybody our size, every agency our size goes up market, they only want to work with the Fortune 2000 because they're bigger budgets, better margins, blah, blah, blah. And I've just not had the same enjoyment from that. I do like working with certain big brands and it's fun. But a business only focused on that. The reason they do it is because a lot of private equity and a lot of bigger businesses measure net revenue. Retention is becomes the driving metric, which is basically how much revenue did you have this year and how much was still here next year? Because it gives the appearance of stability.
- [19:04]
Cody McGuffey
Sure.
- [19:05]
Eric Cuberman
And so I don't fault that. I get it. And I think that the ability to help people that actually need the help, businesses that really want to grow, get access to the best marketing out there is a nobler cause in some ways. So it's. And it's more fun because of that. But it's also like a massive, massive market where there's. There's 2,000, Fortune 2000, and there's 600,000 businesses starting every month in the United States. So it's, you know, seeing that, it's like, that's what We've tried to create. We want to be the household name that's like if you're building a business you call Hawk Media and that's, that's been fun. And so those metrics are more of like how far along are we with that? Which is fun because again we've built a decent sized business here. We've worked total over the past 11 and a half years with almost 6,000 brands and there's 600,000 starting every month. So it's like we've got some time and some growth ahead of us.
- [19:55]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, I feel the same. I love going after that market too. Everybody's been, people have like said suggested the same thing like hey, to go up market, go up market which I understand the same things of course like going after enterprise, enterprise brands and you could do that and maybe there will be one day when we do that. Right. But it's not going to be the primary core of our business because I just genuinely enjoy helping the small dude.
- [20:18]
Eric Cuberman
The majority of the biggest companies in the world's revenue come from small businesses. Amazon, Google, Meta, TikTok, they're driven, their ad revenue is driven by small businesses. They have big businesses too and they help but the percentages are the other way in a big way. So it's like well you're telling me the biggest companies in the world didn't go up market. They have upmarket but they didn't focus on it. And they, the only one that actually hasn't done a great job of that is Snapchat which is the struggling one. And, and so I'm like, you know, everything tells me like and I've said this bluntly to private equity funds we've had conversations with where it's like my metrics are revenue and profit, not net revenue retention. Like that's a secondary metric. It's important but like I want to know are we growing top line and are we growing bottom line? Like that's what matters in a business. And so if I can do that, these other metrics are great metrics to work on and like but you know we always talk about our client typology. We're going to have higher churn than a three year contract on a bunch of Fortune 500s. That's going to be a factor. So just build a business that adapts to that and can still be great.
- [21:19]
Cody McGuffey
Interesting for Hawk Media. How, how do you measure, like what's your long term game plan for Hawk Media? Is it to eventually it sounds like you're branching other things. I'm sure. You think about the long term vision.
- [21:29]
Eric Cuberman
Often, very often we've got a long way to go to be, you know, what we want to be. So I'm more focused. Like the best way to put it is I am very focused on building a business I want to run for a long time. So the things I don't like to do, make sure I have people that do them. The stability that I need to make sure that this can last. Let's build that. Like how do I build a company that I could do forever and I can enjoy running? And that I think because businesses fail for two reasons. Either the leadership burns out or you get underwater financially. So don't take on a bunch of debt or investment you can't pay back and don't burn out. And you will, your business will last forever.
- [22:04]
Cody McGuffey
So very seldom do I meet someone. Yeah, very similar, very aligned with this too. That's the same thing we talk about. And that's, I think that's, that's where you win long term. You win not in two ways. You win in business, but then you also win in your personal life. Like what's the point of even having this, doing this whole deal if you hate it? And I don't want to be forced into a sale.
- [22:24]
Eric Cuberman
I would say I've been, been in those positions where I've woke up with dread in my brain three months in a row. It is the worst experience of my life. And you just go like, and you're ready to just irrationally throw it all in. And so like fighting that and being like, nope, you get through with the bad times. And then like really focusing on how do I make this so that I enjoy it again. That you can contract if you need to. Like, businesses can grow and shrink and you get your sort of emotion out of it in a way that is just like, let's just have fun with this, gamify it and see what we can do. And that, but that takes giving yourself, you know, building a business model that works, that you can hire people that can help you, that you can, you know, scale it. And now we've got a great leadership team we're building, we have a couple other executives we need to bring in to get to like real, you know, humming in the sense that I'm trying to do, but I'm doing that right now. And we have thankfully an excellent new in house recruiter that's getting me tons and tons of interviews. And we're, we're, we just hired a new sales director. We're hiring a cfo. And then frankly, at that point, we should have the leadership we need to. You know, I. The goal again, the goal for me is be additive. I do not want to manage day to day. It's just not fun for me. There are people that love the TDM and love that I like running around, shaking hands, kissing babies, waving the flag, beating the drum. All the different metaphors that my business partner has used for me. And so finding a way where I can be in that pocket but know that everything else is handled is important.
- [23:45]
Cody McGuffey
If you could walk us through like the last 12 years. And I want to kind of cater this towards the. The agency builders that are listening to this, right. Who have heard and they know that they have a skill they want to bring and they have a problem that they could, I guess they can solve, clearly being agency, but they're also hearing this in the back of their head is like, agency is hard to scale. And, uh, how do I, like, continue to like, get a repeating sales cycle? Um, I've. I've been in business for like six months and I like only have one client or two clients. Like, can you can kind of walk us back 12 years and maybe like year one I had this much revenue or whatever you can share and kind of give some inspiration, but also help them.
- [24:25]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah, I mean, yeah. How do I put. There's a lot of different ways to answer that. Um, so year one, we did a million in revenue, like 1.01. My goal was a million. We beat it by $10,000. It was awesome.
- [24:34]
Cody McGuffey
And you charge on average how many customers or anything?
- [24:38]
Eric Cuberman
I don't know what our average. I mean, I charge three grand per service per month, but I would guess we were charging between six and eight grand per month per client at that time, which is what we're still doing. Just to be blunt. Like, we're still. I think we're just under 8 right now is. I think it was 7900 last time I looked beautiful. So that hasn't changed much, which is funny because our prices have gone up, but people just hire us for less things at the same share wallet. So. And when I say our price has gone up, I think over the past 11 years, our price has gone up like 25%. It's not some drastic thing because we've tried to find efficiencies that let us keep serving at the same price with, you know, even though inflation's a thing. And we, we're constantly trying to, you know, our mission has been be the best of what we do. But easy to work with. So easy to work with becomes a big driver of how we roll these things out. So trying to.
- [25:25]
Cody McGuffey
So a million a year, 1, 2.
- [25:29]
Eric Cuberman
And a half, 5, 10 was the first four years net revenue. To be clear, our fees, the. So I got a really good piece of advice that I think really relates to even reflecting on yourself around investing was one of the, I think the best piece of advice I've had in investing because it's so simple but so important and something I look at in every deal I do. It's invest in the ambition of the founder. Because wherever your head's at as a founder is what you're reaching to. If you're like, I'm going to build a $500 million business or a billion, and I mean revenue, so I'm going to build a $10 billion, you know, value business. You're shooting for that. Your actions, your, what you do is very different than someone that's like, yeah, it'd be great to make half a million a year. Which by the way, not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying it's a bad thing as an investor, not as an operator. For yourself. If you're happy making a couple hundred grand a year and you can, you know, you live somewhere where that can afford you a lifestyle that totally works for you, you can probably remove a lot of stress from life and run a decent little business. That, that is what you have to kind of come to terms with. So like to your point of like if you've been six months and you got one client, I would ask what the hell you're doing all day. Like you're. Because one client shouldn't be taking all your time. And you know, running a business is 24 7. I'm, I'm 12 years into this with 250 employees and I have not taken a day off in. And I mean and usually I do, but in weeks because I've had. And when I say day off last week I was at a conference or I was at a local conference and a bunch of events around it. I worked from 7am to 11 or 12 or 11pm 12am every day for the entire last week and, and weekend. So it started Saturday, then Sunday, then Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, then got back in the office Thursday but still had an event Thursday night, then Friday and started an event Friday night because I love it. I want to grow this thing and I'm nowhere close to where I want to be. So I'm pushing, pushing, pushing and, but that, and I say that because you get the feedback, you know that it's working. You want to do this stuff and you keep pushing you. If you're someone that doesn't want to work like that, you're not going to build as big of a thing. Like, it's just hard work. And being smart enough and working hard enough are the two big factors of success. How successful, I think is where luck comes in. But you got to work your absolute ass off and you've got to be smarter, work smart too. And you know, I always joke about like the four hour work week. It's like, then why wouldn't you do that 10 times or 12 times? I can work 50, 60, 70 hours a week, no problem. So if I can build a business in four hours a week, why wouldn't I build 15 of them? So it's that. But that's me. So again to the advice to someone that's building their agency, it's like, well, how bad do you want it?
- [28:14]
Cody McGuffey
I think that probably is a big thing because a lot of times agencies are first businesses, at least like in my group, it's like this is like their first real business. And so a lot of times they don't understand how much they need to work in order to make something reality. And I think what you started off with before we even hit record was just like, everything's hard. Like running a hundred thousand dollars a beer business is. It's very hard. And running a million dollar business here and a hundred million or one hundred million dollar business here, it's all hard.
- [28:42]
Eric Cuberman
It's just different, I would say. And it's not. I've had friends that run smaller business. Maybe like, well, you're dealing with much bigger stuff. Like yeah, but I have more resources. So like it's all relative. It's all hard. The stress that I dealt with when that guy left my company or you know, bailed on me when we were like seven people is just same as when I get, you know, some massive hit in the business now. Like it's, it just the emotional reaction is the same. It's all hard.
- [29:06]
Cody McGuffey
All hard. Yeah, I can, I completely agree. And yeah, and, and I would argue that actually gets easier as you get bigger. Um, I know that not everybody would agree with that and maybe you wouldn't either. I just, I think that you have more resources.
- [29:20]
Eric Cuberman
You have more resources, but the problems get a lot bigger. You become a target, you get lost, frivolous lawsuits, you get all sorts of stuff that happens that I always like, thankfully I came to reality of this a few years into business where I watched Apple getting hit up by. They were dealing with antitrust law and they're dealing with geopolitical problems. And frankly, some of the stuff we're doing with again now with like tariffs in China and da, da, da, and it's like biggest company in the world. And that guy doesn't get to sleep on the weekends either. Like, Tim Cook at the time was Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs or Tim Cook or whoever. Like, there is no finish line. When you're running a business, you gotta run it. And I've, you know, I had a point three years ago, a little more where I had built my executive team. I thought everything was running smoothly. It turned out, without going into too much detail, I was being lied to by a few executives and it was not going as smoothly and I was getting fake falsified reports. But I went through a period of a few months where I was snowboarding all the time and having fun and checking in and really had this lifestyle. And when I found out everything had gone sideways and I had to fix it all. I have an advisor that I. Or an unofficial advisor, but the guy just gives it to me straight that I call that super successful multi billionaire, et cetera. And I told him the whole story and he goes, yeah, it looks like he had a nice vacation. Get the fuck back to work. Like, he's like, you think someone else is going to run your company for you? You're delusional. Like, that doesn't exist. The moment that you're done, when you're out, you either quit or you sell, or you hire a CEO and don't care about the outcome of the business anymore. Like, that's when you're done. But you got to really not care for one reason or another because it's not going to go the way you want it to, et cetera, et cetera. Like, I watch friends try to hire CEOs for their business once they get to a certain scale. Very, very, very rarely does it work out unless that person giving up the reins doesn't care anymore. They've made enough money, they've got a new project, whatever, and they're focused and they're like, whatever happens to that happens to it.
- [31:08]
Cody McGuffey
I see a lot of friends probably going, maybe going down that path right now, actually, that I have also. And I wonder how it's going to work out for them. I. I think it's a good time to move into. There's a million things we could talk about and I Wanted to go into more, but rapid fire questions.
- [31:23]
Eric Cuberman
You ready? Yeah. Let's do it.
- [31:25]
Cody McGuffey
What's your favorite business book? You can say, you can't say your own. By the way, I know you wrote a book.
- [31:30]
Eric Cuberman
Appetite for Self Destruction by Steve Knopper.
- [31:33]
Cody McGuffey
Appetite for Self Destruction. I'm writing this down as we speak.
- [31:37]
Eric Cuberman
Rolling Stones author talking about how the music industry just never adapted to the innovation, so they just constantly disrupted themselves or destructed themselves. Because, like, why, like, why doesn't Universal Music own itunes? Because they didn't believe digital was going to be a thing. Like, you know, and it happened over and over again. So it just really highlights the idea of disrupting yourself and having to innovate to stay afloat versus, like, resisting where the world's going.
- [31:59]
Cody McGuffey
Love that. What's the one thing that you wish that you knew before starting your business?
- [32:06]
Eric Cuberman
That the job's never done. I don't know if I wish I knew that or not, but, like, they're similar to what we just talked about. Like, it's just. There's no finish line. It's about the journey. Um, I worry that if I knew that, I might have not done it. But. But I also, thankfully, in a lot of ways, was always adamant about enjoying it along the way. So, like, I've had a great lifestyle the entire time. I built. I worked my ass off, but I also, I did a lot of fun things and continue to. Traveled all over the world, you know, you know, kind of check things off the bucket list to a point now where I'm like, what is the next thing we should do? So it's. That's been, you know, so I kind of live that. But I, yeah, definitely think in the beginning I thought there was going to be a point where it's like, well, if we get to that point, then it's going to be a lot easier. And it just. That doesn't happen.
- [32:49]
Cody McGuffey
I thought the same. I agree with you. It's interesting. My wife and I, we. We have three kids and we started our businesses together when we were right out of college. And we have this interesting thing, I think about where when we were first starting our businesses, we were like, the goal was like, total financial freedom. And like, we literally said, like, soon as we get to this point, I think it was $10,000 a month. Like, we're chilling and like, we're gonna go and like, go and travel and like, not really build anything past that. I remember this. We were ambitious, but, like, I didn't really know what ambitious meant. At the time, totally.
- [33:24]
Eric Cuberman
Yep.
- [33:25]
Cody McGuffey
And now when sh. Sometimes she throws it in my face jokingly, but also, like, we're not nearly slowing down, if anything. Like, the goals have, like, just 1000x and we've surpassed that by, like, you know, whatever. And to the point now where I'm like, we're never going to retire. I'm never going to retire. This is like, the game that we play. This is. This is. I'm built for this. This is in our DNA.
- [33:48]
Eric Cuberman
Well, and you got to be careful if that's driven by, like, just the fun of it or the sort of FOMO of it, where it's like, you know, I've got friends that are worth billions of dollars. And the good news is when you start, like, you get to a certain level where you make enough to cover the bills and to go on cool trips and eat out whenever you want, those kind of things, you start to realize that, like, the difference between someone that makes a couple million dollars a year and someone that's worth billions is minuscule in terms of lifestyle. Like, private jet. You get a jet, a bigger boat, bigger house. Like, few, like, you know, material things, but they eat it. They go on the same trips, eat at the same restaurants, hang out with the same people. Like, you start to realize, you know, go to the same locations, that kind of thing. Where it's like, yeah, I mean, do I. How much does that really matter? And so if that doesn't. Which for, like, me personally, it doesn't, then it's just a function of, like, playing the game. Like, I just do it because it's a scoreboard and it's fun.
- [34:41]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah. It's very easy to measure yourself on it. Right. It's very objective. I feel the same. At first, it wasn't like that, I would say, if I'm being honest. But then eventually, like, you get to the point where you kind of have the ability and access to a lot of these things, and you're like, well, this can't be the end goal. Like, this doesn't. This is pretty empty, too. Very cool. But, like, it's like, it's. It's done, you know?
- [35:02]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah, exactly.
- [35:04]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah.
- [35:04]
Eric Cuberman
Then it has to be the journey, not the destination. You're not doing this so you can afford another supercar. You can do. I guess you're doing it because you enjoy the process of running a business. Then you enjoy building and growing things, which is the intrinsic value.
- [35:16]
Cody McGuffey
It also. Actually, it's interesting because freedom was the goal, too. But as soon as you achieve, like, Quote, unquote, financial freedom. Like, it's not the goal anymore because you've already been financially free for a while. And that was an interesting thing for me. It was an interesting observation of like, okay, money's not a concern anymore. Actually, like, yes, I want to do bigger things to donate more and like, helping people and all this stuff.
- [35:35]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah, your kids are going to be fine. You're putting food on the table. Maslow's hierarchy is covered, so to speak.
- [35:42]
Cody McGuffey
That's interesting because then you have to like, now that was the goal for so long. You have to like, reattach yourself to another thing. And that's an interesting. I'm kind of probably in that phase a little bit, if I'm honest, where.
- [35:51]
Eric Cuberman
I'm trying to like, fall in love with the journey. I. I went through similar period. So that period when I got, like, blindsided by executives, it was definitely the most stressful, worst part of probably my life. Like, I was in a deep, like, anxiety. Just bad because I just got like, I thought I could trust these people. It was bad. And I also had a lot of conversation. Like, I've made enough money. Like, I'm like, why do I do this? Like, I. I'm not worried about our bills. So, like, why am I. Why do I care so much? And it was like this weird kind of like, it was a shift in that because again, for up to that point. So that was three years. So it was eight years into business. I was like, I make enough money. Like, I'm not worried about, like, we. We have a great house. We're, you know, our. We didn't have or. No, we were just having our first kids. So it was like, our kids will be fine. I'm nothing. Like, there's nothing we're left wanting here. So, like, what is the reason that I'm grinding my ass off and doing. Dealing with all this stress and doing it and then really real. Found a new, like, life in that. But it took some time. It's definitely a weird transition emotionally, mentally.
- [36:49]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, I could totally. It's hard to put in words too. I would say, yeah, yeah. What's the worst advice about business that you've ever received?
- [36:58]
Eric Cuberman
God. I had one for this. I'm trying to remember what it was. I mean, probably the biggest one was in the beginning when I was building the business I built. It was, that's never going to work. You can't. We were month to month, everything's a la carte, super flexible. And they're like, you can't build an agency that way. And I'm like, I built, you know, again, I built the T shirt company, then I built a women's activewear brand. I was like, I didn't have long contracts for people to buy pants. I just had to fucking market to them and have a product that people want to come back and buy. So I don't know why, like, I never understood why all these agency founders are telling me that it would never work. And thank God, because yes, it created a different type of agency where we had to find ways to really, you know, retain our clients. But I was like, I think this is, I just disagreed. And I was talking to people that sold agencies for 100, $200 million that had, you know, multiple successes at C Suites at the biggest agencies in the world. And I knew why they looked at their business that way. But thankfully I was young and cocky enough to be like, yeah, you don't know what you're talking about, and went with my way, so. And like, people that I really respect, close friends. My dad even was like, that's going to be a really hard business to build, not having contracts, the lack of predictability. Like, he was a smart businessman. He's like, I don't think that's like, he's like, you can start that way, but like, you're gonna have to pivot 12 years later. I mean, we now we discount for longer term agreements because we want them, but, like, we don't force it. And it's worked because turns out the numbers play out, the average play out. And if you do good work, people generally stick with you to how.
- [38:23]
Cody McGuffey
What do you think Hawk Media is worth today if you had to value it?
- [38:27]
Eric Cuberman
That's hard to answer. I mean, the market's so different that.
- [38:30]
Cody McGuffey
It, you know, but you have a conservative number. You have a conservative number and you're like, maybe on the aggressive number.
- [38:36]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah, I'd say between this year we're probably worth between 100 and 150 million.
- [38:44]
Cody McGuffey
And what do they trade at typically?
- [38:46]
Eric Cuberman
What's funny is I would say. So we were valued at 150 million at the end of 2021, like October 21st. And I'd say we've worked now another four years or three and a half years to maintain that valuation because of how the market shifted. Yeah, if I'm being honest for that.
- [39:01]
Cody McGuffey
That's awesome, man. Thanks for sharing that too. It's super inspiring for probably somebody listening to this, like, oh, wow, you can't.
- [39:06]
Eric Cuberman
See, that's why there was a time where I Cared about where I was, like, what are we worth? What's our value? And that was like, the scoreboard part of the scoreboard. And then you just again, my scoreboard now is, bills are paid. I'm enjoying it. And it's growing. Like, I'm not selling it. So who gives a fuck what it's worth? And it's worth whatever someone's going to pay for it. Like, you know, a private equity fund, it's probably, you know, Even maybe it's 80, to be honest, knowing the multiples right now, somewhere between 80 and 100. But a big strategic. It could be 300 if they, like, just need what we have. So you just never know. And so it's more like, am I building a business that I can run forever? Because then I can take whatever number I want if I want to.
- [39:41]
Cody McGuffey
Totally agree with this. If your family and your friends and your customers had to get together without Eric being in the room, and they had to write an article, Article or a book about you, characterizing your traits, like, the good stuff and also the bad stuff, what do you think they would say?
- [39:57]
Eric Cuberman
I did this exercise. I. I went through a program called Birthing of Giants at University of Austin, University of Texas, Austin. And they made me, I think they anonymously reached. I just remember it being a really good strategy. This is years ago or a few years ago. And it was actually really awesome what I got back, because it was the two things that came back constantly, which was, I, like, I'm a hustler, but not in a hustler. Like, I'm hustling people, but, like, I working my butt off. And I'm always on, and I'm, like, really moving. Like, I'm a driver, I'm a grinder. I like to work. And I am. I. It was a bunch of different versions of high integrity. I do what I say I'm gonna do. I'm super trustworthy. I do the right thing. Like, I take care of people. I'm always fair. Like, all those things were said over and over and over and over again, which it's nice to know. Like, I actually really, like, pride myself on that. I try to be fair. Like, I always use the metaphor of, like, if a judge was sitting here listening to this debate or argument, what would they say? Like, I try to think that way. What is the fair and objective thing we should do here? Whether it's how I've taken care of our employees or when we have a dispute with a client, I'm like, I'm not going to tell you what I think it's going to be or what I want it to be. I'm not going to fight for my outcome. I'm just going to give you what I think is the right thing. And so I've been able to. So knowing that that is my reputation across all our partners and clients and employees and friends and family, like that's cool. I'm not sure I probably should. I got this the other day. I have a way about me from a guy that was a new consultant we hired that was seemed, it seems very comfortable with giving me shit, which I like is. I mean I think I'm intense, which I don't normal. I'm not as self aware of as I want to be. I. I unders when people say it. I'm like, okay, but like I don't actually know why they feel that way. And it honestly I do scapegoat a little bit. The idea of like positional power where people in general are just my title CEO. So there's just an. Most people are raised to be like, well he's the CEO, so like everything he said is gospel. So I'll like say something in passing just like a side comment to me. But it'll change someone's entire week, good or bad. And so being self aware, that's probably a blind spot that I continue to try because I don't take myself that seriously. I don't think I'm that impressive. I like, I know that I work hard. I know that I built something cool. But like I think that most of the people here, if they wanted, really wanted it would be able to do the same thing. It's more about the, the desire to do it than it is the ability. So I don't like, I'm not that cocky and so I forget that people look at me differently where it's just like, oh yeah, you're the CEO. I'm like, I'm doing my job here. Just like you are. Like, you do your job, I do my job. That's how this works. Like you know that. So it's that I think that's where I miss.
- [42:37]
Cody McGuffey
It's an interesting thing. Yeah, same for me too because we're, we're 45 employees right now and full time plus of course contractors and stuff. But it's an interesting thing to think about too for, for us because sometimes I'll. I'll hear my. Even my family members or maybe friends or just you have people around and they're just like, oh Cody, you're Just, like, really, really busy. And like, oh, yeah, I'm just like, I haven't heard from you. Like, you didn't call me back or. Or I'm sorry. Like, you didn't call me when you told to tell me that thing. And they're just like, yeah, but you're just probably just so busy. I'm just like, yeah, I'm not like, I'm just like, I'm just still me. Right. But I think the positional. They see us doing these things. So all of a sudden, like, they put us in this weird spot exactly. Of too busy to call, too busy to disturb. They don't want to be a burden. And I'm just like, I'm still your brother, though, you know, I'm still your family member.
- [43:27]
Eric Cuberman
Yeah. Yeah. Thankfully, my family takes me less seriously than I take myself. So they've never. I've never had an issue there. Like, because my. My siblings grew up. Like, I did. Like, they're, you know, and both my siblings work at my dad's company now. So it's like they. They don't. They're. They're like, yeah, good. Like, it's more again, like a good for you. Like, you're doing great, you're working hard, but it's not. It's never been like, oh, we know you're busy, Eric, so, like, we're going to leave you on. It's like, fuck off, you're coming to dinner. Like, what are you talking about? So. Which is great. I honestly, my leadership team here at Hawk is pretty close to that. You know, I try to coach them. Like, I'm like, your job's not at risk by pissing me off like that. Actually, you don't do your job. You don't hit your numbers. That's a problem. Like, I'm objective, though. Like, you say something to me like, eric, fuck off. You're not. You're not helping right now. I'm going to be like, oh, maybe I'm not helping. And I'm going to reflect on what you said and why I pissed you off. Like, I don't. Again, I don't. Like, there's two different types of respect in that way, but the sort of like, formality side. Not me. I actually would much rather have people that give it to me straight. Do not spare mince words like, I want to know if I'm doing something wrong. I want that reflection. I want that mirror. And I've had that. That's been the thing. Like, my best friends in high school put me in my place all the time and still are two of my best friends. And, like, I always crave that. Of like, I want the. I want to be reflected back. Like, you're. We're all gonna have blind spots. And I. You know, it's the Marcus Aurelius thing of the guy that fought. Was it him or Julius Caesar? That a guy follow him around and said, you're. You're only immortal, or you're. You're a mere mortal or something like that. It's like, don't get me wrong. I'm not comparing myself to fucking Julius Caesar, but, like, I think everybody can use that mirror of like, don't get big for your britches. Don't let your ego. My wife's good about it. My wife works in private equity and invest in companies way bigger than mine. I remember when I. I think we hit like, 2 million in EBITDA. I was like, you know, that's kind of like the. Used to be the kind of the line for, like, private equity gets interested. And I was like. She's like, do you know how many companies in the fucking country are doing 2 million in EBITDA? Like, come on. It's like, good job. But it's. I was, I think, bragging about it, and she's like, it's not good job, but, like, relax. And I'm like. Because she runs Deal Flow for a now $4 billion fund. And she's like, you know how many companies I see like this every day? Like, take a chill pill, which is good. Like, to be clear, it's not like, deflating and, oh, I suck.
- [45:40]
Cody McGuffey
That's a reality check. It's a little.
- [45:41]
Eric Cuberman
It's a reality. Yeah, exactly. Like, great. You built something a lot of people have to like. And I think it's a good thing to know that. It's a good thing to be like, no, like, know where you stand, know, be. Come down to earth. And to be clear on the other side, I think it's awesome to celebrate milestones, but I've never been driven by competition. I could care less what other people are doing. Other agencies are actually, most of the time, when I see other agencies being successful, I'm happy for them. You know, I'm close friends with the guy that built our biggest competitor in LA and sold it, made a ton of money. And we share a night nurse that likes to gossip back and forth between us about each other because we have kids that are two kids that are now very close in age. We talk all the time, and it's like, even when we were running competitors, we were a little careful not to share too much, but we were still going out to dinner, we were friends. And you know, I've never had that, like, oh, I got to beat you. I just want to win, whatever. And the only time I get pissed off at other agencies is when they're unethical, when they do shit that's, you know, whether to me or to other people that make the industry look bad.
- [46:37]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, I agree. When you have like a certain amount of scale too, you have the ability to like almost this responsibility to grow the market rather than like compete of the existing, of the existing pie. Right. How do we grow the pie essentially? How would you define a creator? Would you consider yourself a business creator or is it only content that you.
- [46:57]
Eric Cuberman
I just wouldn't. Yeah, I would never. I've never thought of myself as a creator, but I create like, I guess the same way. I've never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. Like I've used the title, but like, I think of myself as I run a. Like when people ask, I hate that response when you say, what do you do? I'm an entrepreneur. The. Does that mean, like you're. What do you do? I run a marketing agency in a venture fund. Like, unless I want to get deeper. That's what I say to people. And so do I. We create a lot of content that helps drive that marketing agency. So I definitely am, you know, my. I have a full time brand manager that helps me create tons of content for social. I'm spending all day tomorrow filming a bunch of commercials and content. So, like, could I fall into that category? Yeah, but I guess I wouldn't define myself as a creator. I'd say like, I do create things.
- [47:41]
Cody McGuffey
I would say that. The way I see it too is I feel like creator is traditionally mostly used for content creators, but reality is founders are creators. Like artists are creators, musicians are creators.
- [47:53]
Eric Cuberman
And what I'd say is there are people that define their career by being a content creator. That's not me. Do I create content because it helps my business? Yeah. But I define my career as running a marketing agency and a venture fund.
- [48:04]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful. Who do you think should be a business owner? Last question.
- [48:08]
Eric Cuberman
Someone that wants it to their core for the sake of doing it. Like to do it to get rich. Good luck. Because you're going to have times you don't make any money and it's going to be tough. So like, you got to enjoy the journey. You're going to burn out. So I think it's I actually, this was fun. I had two. I always host. I went to University Arizona, and I host, like, students at our office, and I'll take on one day shadowing interns and stuff like that. And I had two girls come and shadow me a few months ago and spend. I just. I change it up trying to figure out, like, what's the right way to do this. And this time I decided, like, you're just gonna sit here with me and watch my day in the Life. So you're gonna sit and watch me go on a podcast like this. You're gonna sit and watch me take calls and deal with this, and I'm gonna be super transparent about what I'm dealing with. You're gonna watch me have to, you know, get a bank loan to go do this and work on our line of credit and yell at one of our managers for not handling something they said we're gonna handle or whatever. And at the end of the day, they both looked at me and said, yeah, we don't want to run a business. Glad I could be the window into that. I don't want to dissuade you, but I think it's. 99% of people won't like it, and I think that's okay. I think, like, the. The lack of stability, the chaos that happens when you run a business. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm figuring it out every day, like, constant. The target's constantly moving, too. So you got to thrive in that and enjoy it, or you're going to be miserable in life. And that's why depression, mental health issues, suicide rates really high in entrepreneurs and founders. I think mostly because people do it because they think they're supposed to and not because they actually want to. So you got to be really careful falling into that.
- [49:31]
Cody McGuffey
Interesting, Eric. People find you Hawk Media, get in touch with you guys all day above.
- [49:38]
Eric Cuberman
So we're always happy to dive in and do free marketing audit and look at what someone's doing. That's just hawkmedia.com with a e at the end of hawk. And then I'm on every social adder slash Eric Cuberman. I'm pretty easy to find.
- [49:49]
Cody McGuffey
Intentionally beautiful. And guys, if you're listening to this or watching this, we'll drop all those links in the show notes or in the description, depending on where you're watching it. But, Eric, appreciate you, brother. Thank you very much for coming on and sharing all the insights.
- [50:00]
Eric Cuberman
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
- [50:01]
Cody McGuffey
Awesome, man. Talk to you soon.