INTERVIEW | Make Money by Understanding Value, Scaling Smart, and Winning with Modern Marketing with Erik Huberman

Summary

Travis Makes Money: INTERVIEW | Make Money by Understanding Value, Scaling Smart, and Winning with Modern Marketing

Guest: Erik Huberman (Founder & CEO, Hawk Media)
Host: Travis Chappell
Date: June 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the art of making more money by understanding value, scaling businesses intelligently, and harnessing modern marketing strategies. Serial entrepreneur Erik Huberman shares pivotal career moments, candid lessons in value-based pricing, agency building through M&A, and the evolving landscape of digital marketing. The conversation is packed with actionable insights and practical examples for entrepreneurs, marketers, and anyone curious about building wealth in creative and sustainable ways.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Lessons on Value and Pricing

• Monetizing Skills Beyond Expectations

  • Erik recounts an early consulting win: getting paid $25,000 for a business plan he could build in a day. This experience highlights how other people’s perception of value may differ drastically from your own.

    "There's a difference between the value, how I value it, and how they value it. ... If I give you the outcome you need, my fees don't matter."
    — Erik Huberman [03:00]

• Understanding Client Psychology

  • Charging too little can devalue your offering. Higher pricing can sometimes deepen perceived value, especially for affluent clients.
  • “Counterintuitively, he probably would not have valued it if you only charged him 800 bucks for it.”
    — Travis Chappell [04:14]

2. From Side Hustler to Agency Founder

• Building an Agency with Real-World Experience

  • Erik describes consulting for multiple brands and using the surplus to build Hawk Media. He emphasizes starting with what he knew best—eCommerce marketing driven by hands-on experience.
  • “The big thing I’d say is: you have to be exceptional at something. ... I had built and sold two eCommerce companies and knew how to grow them.”
    — Erik Huberman [12:55]

• Value of Staying Lean During Growth

  • Despite earning significantly more, Erik maintained a modest lifestyle and reinvested into his business.
  • “...before I started hiring a team, I got to about 35 grand a month. So I had 32 grand a month to spend... and I used that to start hiring people.”
    — Erik Huberman [07:12]

3. Building a Scalable, Repeatable Business

• Full Picture Marketing from Day One

  • Hawk Media began as a one-stop-shop, offering services across Facebook, email, web design, and more.
  • “90% of marketing is scalable and repeatable. Constantly jumping into new things that aren’t proven is not the way you build business.”
    — Erik Huberman [12:42]

• Diversification & Avoiding Platform Reliance

  • Success often requires diversified channels to avoid over-dependence on volatile partners (e.g., TikTok, Snapchat).
  • “Being reliant on them for your business is a great way to watch your business go away at some point.”
    — Erik Huberman [13:54]

4. Scaling Through Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A)

• Organic & Strategic Acquisition Approach

  • Hawk Media uses four key growth channels: M&A, inbound, outbound, and partnerships.
  • “M&A happened naturally… I had invested in an incubator... then we acquired [an agency], and it worked out.”
    — Erik Huberman [15:20]

• Lessons from Doing 10 Deals in One Year

  • Running multiple acquisitions surfaced critical lessons about risk and deal structure.
  • “We did 10 deals in 2024, broke everything, fucked up a bunch of stuff, learned a lot of lessons…”
    — Erik Huberman [16:40]

• Transparent, Win-Win Deal Structures

  • Hawk’s M&A model is built on clear, aligned incentives and mutual risk-sharing rather than exploitative earn-out schemes.
  • “Our goal, sincerely...when I ask [acquired founders] how things are going, I want them to say, ‘It’s everything I thought you said it was.’”
    — Erik Huberman [17:58]

5. What Makes a Good (or Bad) Agency Acquisition

• Acquisition Targets & Philosophy

  • Focus: $1M–$5M revenue agencies where Hawk can add value without competition from major holding companies.
  • Success rate explained as roughly thirds: a third are great, a third are okay, a third are distractions or failures.
  • “The third good offset the third bad, hopefully. ...You gotta be really, really, really careful doing this.”
    — Erik Huberman [18:52]

• What Hawk Looks For in Deals

  • Seeks both similar (easy integration) and complementary (synergy expansion) agencies.
  • Also actively integrates newly acquired services into the broader Hawk client base.
  • “Either way it’s great, because it’s either really easy and complimentary or...you get a lot of synergy and a lot of growth.”
    — Erik Huberman [21:10]

6. The Future of Modern Marketing: AEO Over SEO

• AI Engine Optimization (AEO) vs. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  • AEO is now more valuable, as people increasingly treat AI responses as authoritative.
  • PR and major publications are crucial for surfacing in AI results, replacing Reddit’s earlier influence.
  • “AI is trying to find if someone answered the question that it can pull, and is that someone credible? For some reason they decided Reddit was credible... now it’s major publications.”
    — Erik Huberman [25:07]

• The Current Power of PR

  • PR’s resurgence aligns with AI’s dependence on authoritative sources.
  • “Now, article for the sake of an article is actually good again and it’s great.”
    — Erik Huberman [25:43]

7. On Podcasting as a Business and Relationship Tool

• Why Erik Still Podcasts
  • Not for marketing—he uses Hawk Talk as a relationship and inspiration platform.

    “I was meeting really cool people... and I was like... if I’m going to have that conversation, publish it and let other people learn.”
    — Erik Huberman [26:40]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Perceived Value:

  “If I give you the outcome you need, my fees don’t matter. If I don’t, you can spend all the money in the world — we are fucked.”
  — Erik Huberman [03:00]

• On Building the Business:

  “I want to build the dominant marketing agency for everything but the Fortune 2000... all growth stage companies, challenger brands.”
  — Erik Huberman [14:09]

• On Agency Acquisitions:

  “We just try to get it as fully aligned in success as possible. If it works out for both of us, it works out for both of us. We lose together, we win together.”
  — Erik Huberman [19:38]

• On AEO and AI:

  “People think AI is a person and they take it as credible. ...It’s almost a trust factor and third-party validator.”
  — Erik Huberman [23:45]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:27] Erik’s earliest surprising money-making story and learning value-based pricing
• [05:38] Transition from eCommerce founder to marketing consultant, starting Hawk Media
• [11:44] Full-picture marketing and channel selection advice for beginners
• [12:40] Importance of scalable/repeatable marketing and diversification
• [14:50] Approaching growth through M&A and lessons learned
• [17:38] Agency acquisition: deal structures, risk, and ensuring win-win outcomes
• [23:40] AI Engine Optimization vs. traditional SEO; the rising power of PR
• [26:01] Podcasting as a vehicle for deep connection and brand alignment

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Tone & Language

The conversation is candid, practical, and at times humorously blunt—especially from Erik, who openly discusses failures alongside wins. Both host and guest speak in plain terms, focusing on actionable insights over jargon.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a masterclass on creating value, scaling with purpose, and adapting to the ever-changing digital marketing landscape. Entrepreneurs will find tactical advice on pricing, building a service business, structuring agency acquisitions, and leveraging the latest in AI-driven marketing. For those seeking to make more money without sacrificing integrity or lifestyle, Erik Huberman’s journey offers both inspiration and a real-world playbook.

Transcript

[Apple Narrator]

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[Travis]

listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you all make some more money on this episode of the show. I have a old friend, somebody's been on the show two or three times now at this point. His name is Eric Huberman. Eric's a trailblazing entrepreneur, marketing expert, celebrated for redefining how brands grow and succeed in an ever evolving marketplace. Since founding Hawk media back in 2014, Eric has transformed it into the fastest growing marketing consultancy in the U.S. under his leadership, Hawk Media has helped scale over 5,000 brands worldwide, including industry giants like Red Bull, Verizon, Casamigos, Funko and Crocs. Eric, what's up, dude? Welcome back to the show.

[Eric Huberman]

Thank you for having me, man. Good to be back.

[Travis]

Yeah, dude. So let's, let's go back in time first and talk a little bit about how this started. Tell me, tell me the first time that you ever made a dollar. That, that was like shocking to you. That was surprising. Like, I can't believe somebody paid me money to do this.

[Eric Huberman]

That's funny. I mean, like, you know, it wasn't. I've made a lot of money. I mean, I started making money when I was six, but it wasn't shocking to me. So that's a good question. I actually remember when it was shocking to me was I got asked to build someone a business plan when I was building my activewear brand. And they said, hey, I wanna figure out how to do this E Commerce stuff. Can you build me a business plan? And the guy wouldn't stop bragging about how much money he had. And so I was like, yeah, sure. And I was, to be clear, this was like the peak of how much I was making. At the time. I was making 100k a year. And he's like, I knew this would take me a day But I told him it would take me a month and a half. And he's like, how much? And I'm like 25 grand. And he's like, can I pay half up front, half after? I was like, sure. Like, what the. Just made it a day, what I usually make in three months. And I was 25 and I was jet pumped. And so that was the first time

[Travis]

I'm confused on how this dude had this much money but didn't know how to write a business plan.

[Eric Huberman]

He didn't know how to build a digital company. And so he wanted a plan of like, how do you deal? How do you build an E commerce brand? How does this work? And you know, in hindsight, like, I've spent way more than that on shit like that now that I have the money. So, you know, it wasn't actually crazy for him to pay me that I saved him a lot of money because he learned a lot in the process and ended up not pursuing it.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Eric Huberman]

And so, you know, that was worth it for him. But, you know, and that was really a huge lesson is like, there's a difference between the value, how I value it, and how they value it. And again, understanding that. And I deal with this all the time as a marketing agency because sometimes people will be like, you know, talking to me about my fees. I'm like, my fees. I'm like, if I don't perform for you, my fees are fucking inconsequential. Like, it's not about my fees. If I, if I give you the outcome you need, my fees don't matter. And if I don't, you can spend all the money in the world. We are fucked. So like, it doesn't. That's the wrong thing to be looking at. It's what's the outcome and what's that worth to you? And so that's, that was a big realization there that honestly, a lot of money building that 25 grand for a

[Travis]

hard day's work is, is really not bad when you're making 100k a year, 25 years old.

[Eric Huberman]

And by the way, that was my first year making 100k. Before that I made like minimum wage. So this was just like, what?

[Travis]

Wow. Were you just trying to like get him off your back? Almost like, were you just kind of like, sure, I'll do it.

[Eric Huberman]

The guy, he wouldn't stop telling me about how much money and profit he was making and he owned the whole business and he just like pulling up in nice cars, all of it. And I was just like, it. I'M gonna shoot my shot. Yeah, I know. I was trying to gauge like how much I thought I could get. Yeah, yeah. And I think I nailed the number. I think a guy said 50k laughed me out of the room.

[Travis]

Sure, sure. Yeah, exactly. And, but that, that's kind of the whole point though, right, Is you cannot bring your preconceived notions means to somebody else. You can shoot yourself in the foot over and over again doing that type of stuff because you could have easily been like, ah, you know, I guess, eight, ten hours of work at $100 an hour. Sure, $800. You know what I mean? Counterintuitively, he probably would not have valued it if you only charged him 800 bucks for it.

[Eric Huberman]

Totally. Exactly. And that's, that's. And that's something I did learn early on. If one of my first advisors told me that like he talked me the lawyer thing, it's like, you know what the. Between $350 an hour lawyer and $1,000 an hour confidence that like it's. I. And, and to his credit, I have some incredible $300 an hour attorneys. And I have some incredible $1,500 an hour attorneys. Would I put. I would say the 1500 is probably in the right situation. Better. But I don't like for a lot of things. No, I wouldn't use him for M and A. Yeah, litigation. He's great

[Travis]

dude. So. So you had a activewear brand, E commerce company. Is this sort of like where you cut your teeth learning digital marketing that ended up becoming Hawk Media or what? Like bridge the gap for me between like early twenties to founding Hawk Media?

[Eric Huberman]

Yeah, I mean, it was right then, actually. So I did that deal funny enough. And then I started and I was building my own activewear brand. I ended up selling that and, and then I. That guy. Actually this is a. I don't know if I've told the story. So that person ended up buying the activewear brand, then asked to hire me, which I was.

[Travis]

Wait, the guy that bought the, the business.

[Eric Huberman]

The guy that made the business model, then went by your company. So he bought it and I don't think I've told this. And then he asked me to work for him and I said no, but I'll consult. We went back and forth on price, but again, I knew who I was dealing with. So I ended up making per hour four times as much as I was currently making. But I only worked part time and it was like now I have working

[Travis]

for the same company.

[Eric Huberman]

Yeah, well, but he was Having me basically integrate E commerce across his. He had a portfolio of brands he owned Bowie, Total Fitness and a bunch of other brands.

[Travis]

And so gotcha. Okay.

[Eric Huberman]

I was doing that working for him from 7am to 2pm, three days a week. Because I said I'll work. He's like, you'll work for me full time. Like I'll work one day a week. He's like, you'll work three. Like all right, three part time. And he was in east la. I didn't want to go out there, so I went. I woke up early and just did the commute, you know, beat the traffic and then came home before traffic and took calls back and forth. But it wasn't because I was lazy, it's because I felt like it was a waste of time. So then I started consulting and advising for a bunch of other brands while I was doing that. And again, he alone was paying me because I was working halftime, but at four times the rate, I was making double what I had ever paid before. And then I was going in consulting for a bunch of others. So pretty quick I'm making more money than I know what to do with. And I started. And then that's when I really realized that came from like I was advising for all these companies, trying to, including him, help him hire a Facebook agency, you know, email agency, a web design company. Like I was just being a fractional CMO and found that 99% of agencies are full of shit. And the few that are any good won't work with even a mid market brand. They only work with the Fortune 2000. And so I was like, all right, well how is there not an agency that's the best at what they do and easy to work with? And that became our mission. And 12 and a half years later, 250 people later, here we are. And it worked. And I started hiring from then and back to the point I was making that kind of money. My lifestyle didn't change at all. So I was still living like I was still living off about three grand a month. And so I was gonna ask about that. Yeah, yeah. And you know, before I started hiring a team, I got to about 35 grand a month. So I had 32 grand a month to spend is how I did look at it. And so I used that to start hiring people to get a small office, all that. That's how I started building.

[Travis]

And what was the first iteration of this agency? Cause I know it's evolved a lot over the years.

[Eric Huberman]

Not, I mean the mission's been the mission. So like how we do it, what we service, that kind of thing, like that's evolved but like, you know, and operationally it obviously evolves a lot. We've talked before we started recording about M and A, like there's a lot of ways we now go to achieve that mission. But the North Star has still been the north star of this, you know, a la carte, super flexible, nimble, cost effective marketing. But bringing that sort of Fortune 500 marketing horsepower to the masses has been the North Star and has stayed true.

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[Travis]

Chime.com disclosures Was there a certain channel platform, anything like that that you were sticking to when you first started? Like I guess looking at it from the perspective of somebody who might be listening, who's like I got some skills in this arena and I've thought about jumping into this space but like do I do I do SEO and ads and copy and landing. Yeah.

[Eric Huberman]

So for me it was. It was the full picture right away. So it was at the time Facebook marketer, email marketer, web designer, fractional CMO influencer, marketer myself. And I know there and I know there was one more person and I'm blanking on who. But yeah like we. Those were the things at the time that worked. What the which tools to throw at it change over time slightly. I mean Meta is still a huge marketing channel. Google we you know we. That's what I think. I think I met as a Google. But anyways Google marketing still, you know Meta and Google have been the two biggest channels or like two biggest advertising channels since we started and still are. But now we do more CTV we TikTok wasn't even a thing. So things have shifted but like again it's been 12 and a half years people act like this is the craziest industry and things are always changing. It's like not quite. It's like if you're super, I don't want to say add. If you're like, you got. There is a level of like, you got to go down the tried and true path. Like 90% of marketing is scalable and repeatable marketing. So constantly jumping into new things that aren't proven is not the way you build business. You try them out, you try to find diamonds in the rough to get a little bit of jump. But you need predictable scalable marketing is so much more important. So that's been. It creates less volatility in that because. And like we were happy to jump on new channels but like, I wish Snapchat had picked, taken off. They continue to like start to do the right thing and then fire the whole team. And like, I, I don't know how to keep up with those guys. So it's, you know, there's, there's that where it's like, if it does like, you can wait for it to be proven out. There's not really a first mover advantage. And so to your point, someone starting out, the big thing I'd say is like, you have to be exceptional at something. Like by nature. Like the thing I had was I had built and sold two e commerce companies and knew how to grow them. So when I was talking to other brands, it's like, you want to do what I did? Let me just give you the roadmap. So that's where the sort of fractional CMO work came in. Is like that was the roadmap they needed. They didn't need me to help them figure out how to manufacture T shirts. They need to figure out how to market them online and sell them. And I had the roadmap and then I had the team to do it. So that's how I did it. You know, I know there's a lot of young people that have mastered in some ways TikTok shop that have built little businesses around it. The thing I would say is you have to be really careful. Like it's just like an investment portfolio for your clients and for you. Like TikTok does a lot of crazy shit with their partners. And like the other day they tried to make everyone use their own 3 PLs and raised everyone's price 30%. Now they got enough backlash that they took it back, but they were being bulldogs about it for a second. So like their culture's not that friendly. So like being reliant on Them for your business is a great way to watch your business go away at some point. So diversification is important quickly. But you know, it just depends on what you're trying to build too. Like I'm trying to build the dominant marketing agency for everything but the Fortune 2000. Like I want all growth stage companies, challenger brands, we're the go to and that's, that's the North Star. Not everyone's trying to build that. And when I say I want to build that, everything that comes with it, it's a pain in the ass. It's hard. There's a reason all the agencies half our size go up market like it's a very difficult business to build. But I motivated by the opportunity. If you're not and you don't want to grind like that, then you know, you could build a great lifestyle business doing TikTok until it dries up and then figure out your next thing. Like it just depends on what it is that motivates you when you, when

[Travis]

you are looking to expand the business, scale the business. At what point did you decide M and A was going to be that path?

[Eric Huberman]

So I mean, it's a path. Like we have four paths. I'd say if you broke it down, we have M and A inbound marketing, outbound sales and you know, networking and partnerships and channel partnerships. Those are the four ways we drive new business. And M and A happened naturally. Like a couple years into business, I had invested in an incubator in LA that had funded an agency and I was kind of like, guys, what the fuck? You used my money to fund a competitor. But of course, and I would say this, never raise money. And I just tried to talk a young guy out of this, like, don't raise money. As an agency, I own 100% a hawk. Like it's like there is no reason to raise money unless. And not even unless, like just don't do it. Go build your company a little slower and own the thing. And so, and as someone that owns a venture fund too and invests in a lot of companies like a service business where you can't provide the service, you shouldn't be building it. So I don't. The shortcut isn't worth it. Now later on when you have, you know, an input output model where, you know, if you pour gas on the fire, there's stuff you could grow out faster than. Sure, make it faster, that's fine. I can sure, you know, understand that. But early on I don't think you should need it. So they ran out of money they couldn't figure out to do. So we acquired them and it worked out and it actually was a decent deal. And I came at it from more first principles because I didn't have a background in M and A. So I made up my own deal structure and it worked. And so I was like, oh. And then I. We published it. So then a friend of mine reached out and said, hey, we're trying to divest of an agency out of our bigger business. Do you want to buy it? We did that deal like a year later and so we started to look at like, oh, I see how these work. And then three years ago I decided to ramp it up and we did four deals that year and saw like some success and we went, great, we'll wait. And then I went 2024. That worked, but now I really want to pressure test this. So we did 10 deals in 2024, broke everything, fucked up a bunch of stuff, learned a lot of lessons, took those lessons, did a couple last year, but still like had to re. And then. But the problem was, you know, being transparent, all the lessons we were in. We then tried to put a bunch of protections for ourselves in our deals, which scared all the deals off because it was just too. We put all the risks out there that we were buying. And so then we came back to, you know, if all else was equal. What do you done dose 10 deals again? The answer is yes. So great, let's go do 10 more deals. And so we went, we actually reverted back to our sort of simple deal structure that really protects the founder a lot more and put some risk on us and when, you know, just need the majority to do well. And that's where we are now. So we've done. We just closed a deal last week and we're back on to growing that again.

[Travis]

Do you see a lot of other agencies that are doing a model like this? Like, is it. Is it more or less difficult? Are there certain things that are like in your buy box with, in the agency model that you're looking for?

[Eric Huberman]

So we're looking at the 1 to 5 million revenue agencies. Generally that's kind of the range we're in. And so we don't have that much competition in like bigger hold cos trying to buy that size or too small. And so the answer is like our competition is more like small agencies merging with each other because there's not really a buyer. And if there are, it's like again, 90,000 marketing agencies. There's little buyers here and there, but like From a broad sea. And most of those buyers are either predatory or dumb, meaning they're either going to do something that really, like, we're just really transparent and straightforward, like, no one's going to be tricked. Like our goal, sincerely, and we say this to all the founders the day we actually close a deal and for the few months after that. When I ask them how things are going, I want them to say, it's everything you thought it, I thought you said it was like, it's exactly what I thought I was getting to. That's our goal. So we try to be really explicit, really transparent because we've learned people hear what they want to hear. So we have to like, be super repetitive in the shit we say. So they know, oh, this is what it is. Like be super, super, super clear. This is what it is. So in.

[Travis]

Yeah, in your mind. In your mind, are you, are you acquiring, are you acquiring clients? Are you acquiring customer data? Are you acquiring teams?

[Eric Huberman]

To finish your question, I think a lot of people try to get into it by like, you know, a $2 million agency tries to buy a $1.5 million agency. And the problem is half of them go bad. I mean, I'd say a third of them go bad. A third of them are okay and a third of them are good. So the third good offset the third bad, hopefully. And the third that are okay are kind of like we could have. It's kind of a wash. You did it, it's fine. Gave you a little scale, but it's not like a win or anything. And so knowing that it's kind of same as like a venture portfolio and everything else. Like if you can't, if you're going to do one deal that has a, you know, good 66% chance of not doing anything for your business and just being a huge distraction. And so you got to be really, really, really careful doing this. And so that's one. And then I mentioned, you know, there's the predatory side, which I mentioned is like people, they'll do these earn out structures where they'll say, like, we're going to value your business at $10 million. We're going to give you $10,000 upfront. The rest is in an earn out. And if you don't hit your growth targets, you get zero. So really what you're doing is selling your business for $10,000 and going to get a good job. It's crazy. Yeah. And we just do, we do a hundred percent in earn out. We don't pay money upfront, but the earn out is just directly tied to how they perform and there is no zero. Like it's up and down with how they perform. So we just try to get it as fully aligned in success as possible. If it works out for both of us, it works out for both of us. We don't. We lose together. We win together, basically. And where we, you know, again take the risk on is we guarantee profit margins, we guarantee a lot of salary, certain things that make give them some downside protection and we take on all the expenses so there's no more payroll pressure, all that kind of stuff. And then the idea is we give them infrastructure, we give them growth engine and we hopefully can grow it together.

[Travis]

And that's what.

[Eric Huberman]

That's the third that I celebrate are the ones that we really are able to grow.

[Apple Narrator]

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[Eric Huberman]

Wow. And so, but that's again, it's founder dependent was what I found is like the founder has to be motivated in terms of. What was your question? I wanted to make sure I covered that. Like the.

[Travis]

Yeah, the. The what. What exactly are you looking for to acquire? Are you trying to acquire talent, Customer

[Eric Huberman]

list clients, all of the above? Like, what I say is like, because we get asked that when we're talking to agencies of like, well, why us? Are we super? You know, you guys already do Facebook ads. Why us? If it's super complimentary or sorry, it's the exact same agency as us. Like it's, you know, the overlap's 100%. Then integration is so easy that it's a really easy deal to do. And then we can help just pour gas on the fire with them because it's so easy. If it's super different, then we get the synergy. So it's like, oh, it's a whole new service we can offer. Like, we just acquired a PR firm which we had some pr, but this really helps us build it out. And PR is becoming so significant with AEO and optimizing for AI that we wanted to step into that more. So we get a whole new service. It's a little harder to integrate because it's not like just you live here now. But now we get the synergy. So either way it's great because it's either really easy and complimentary or it's a little harder. But then it's, you know, you get a lot of synergy and a lot of growth. So when you, when you have a

[Travis]

new like kind of bolt on service like that, do you have, is, is you have like a sales team or somebody that's like calling through existing clients and other arenas and saying like, hey, we now have this other thing to offer. Like are you immediately integrating that?

[Eric Huberman]

Yep. A hundred percent.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Eric Huberman]

Now are we perfect at it? Absolutely not.

[Travis]

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that, yeah, I think, I think that's, I think that's just part of the game. You know what I mean?

[Eric Huberman]

Yeah.

[Travis]

How much of a pulse, Eric, do you keep now on the marketing stuff yourself? Like are you fully just like, hey, I'm, I run, manage the business, we're scaling, we're growing team, we're trying to get to a certain amount of ebitda, we reach this sort of target. Or are you also like, you know, in on some of the accounts? Do you keep a pulse on like what's good in marketing right now, what small businesses should be focusing on?

[Eric Huberman]

Yeah. So I want, we have weekly wins and daily reports that I watch, like what are, what's working for clients? How are things working? So I keep a pulse that way. I definitely keep tabs on a few accounts that are friends and stuff and I get pulled in. So like I, I, I end up, you know, at least weekly talking about what client are looking at something and so that helps me keep fresh. I'm really involved with our own, we drink our own punch. We spend $10 million a year on sales and marketing for OC Media right now and scaling. So it's like I, we drink our own punch in that sense. And I, so I do a lot, I'm doing it a lot myself. And then when I see something working, I go, go tell all of the other ones. Like we're doing a, yeah, we're spending a ton of money on Meta, Google, TikTok, CTV, direct mail. We have our own email systems. We're leveraging AI in a bunch of ways. So it's like all those things that we're doing ourselves, we then go, thankfully I'm a peer to a lot of our clients.

[Travis]

Is there a channel or a platform that you think is wildly undervalued at the moment?

[Eric Huberman]

Wildly undervalued? I actually think AI optimization still wildly undervalued. Just where people because people are impatient and it's not an instant thing. But yeah, what's amazing about AEO versus SEO is like people think AI is a person and they take it as credible. So it's just regurgitating shit from the Internet. But people take that as if it's gospel. Whereas, you know, SEO, the top search result people would take into account, but they don't. There's still like a hesitation now they feel like quad is telling them to do that. And it's crazy. It's. And it's irrational, but it's. But you know, biologically that's how we're built. So it's this third. It's almost a trust factor in third party validator. I think it's. And we're in this wild west period where they're changing the algorithm a bunch and there's. If you can move quickly, you can really optimize for it. And so I think it's a massive, massive opportunity that I don't think people taking as seriously as they should.

[Travis]

What are the differences in your view between SEO? Well, well, well executed SEO versus well executed AEO and how. Or yeah, like, like are there, you know, if, if you're, if you were trying to rank your site on Google 10 years ago, it's like, well, we're talking about blog posts and we're talking about optimizing the keywords and the total volume of words. What, what do you find now affects the, the AEO more than SEO?

[Eric Huberman]

Yeah. So Reddit was a big driver for a long time, having huge chains on Reddit and conversations about the product that fit what people would ask aeo, SEO, interesting thing. People probably know. And then now it's pr. Which is why I mentioned the PR thing is like. Because what AI is trying to find is if I ask it a question, has someone answered this question that I can just pull it and is that someone credible? For some reason they decided Reddit was credible, which is fucking crazy. But they did for a while and now it's major publications, major news outlets, which is why PR is back, which is interesting. What about, what about podcasts we were looking at as like an asset? Like it's a great third party validator, back to the point. But you still had to then use that asset and go put it in front of people. So running ads to a great article and doing things like that, that stuff that worked now article for the sake of an article is actually good again and it's great. So you can, you know, you decide like what do we think People are asking AI that I want to show up for and then go get press about that. It's going to serve you handsomely.

[Travis]

What about podcasting?

[Eric Huberman]

I don't know how to index podcasting. I actually can't speak from an expertise there. If podcasting actually gets indexed, I know YouTube gets indexed. So I guess uploading video to YouTube and having. The. Right, back to the point. If you do a video on what someone's asking AI about, it's going to source that video and the transcription and probably pull from that, too.

[Travis]

You have. You have your own. Your own show, Hawk Talk, right? For quite some time. Why do you still carve time out of your calendar to do your own podcast?

[Eric Huberman]

You know, it's the same reason I started it. I didn't start it for some business model or marketing thing. I actually started because I was meeting really cool people through. It's more of a hobby. Like, I was meeting really cool people with what I do, you know, Nobel laureates, Olympians, you know, celebrities and big business people and entrepreneurs. And I was like, how, you know, I can't call XYZ pro football player just to go grab coffee for the hell of it. Both of us are busy. That makes sense. Turns out when you ask like, hey, you want to come on the podcast? It goes pretty well. And then it's like, if I'm going to sit down and have a conversation, it's all origin stories. So it's all like, how did you become this person? And it turns out, why not, if I'm gonna have that conversation, publish it and let other people learn about those people. So, yeah, that was the idea. And also again, Hawk, it's a lot of like, you know, taking companies from 1 to 100 kind of thing. It's like, this is all these people's origin stories. So it does fit. You can draw a dotted line to it and how it could fit the brand, but it's also just really fun.

[Travis]

Big fan, man. Love all the stuff you're working on, Eric. I always appreciate any of the time we get to spend together. Where can people go to get more from you and Hawk Media?

[Eric Huberman]

Everything you're working on, pretty easy. Add or slash Erichuberman on any social channel.

[Travis]

Eric Huberman. E R I K, last name Huberman. Go check out some of the stuff that Eric's putting out. If you like listening to podcasts like this one, go check out Hawk Talk as well. And then if you're a small business, Hawk Media, they do some of the best small business marketing out there. So or and mid market as well. So Eric, appreciate you taking the time. I know you're a busy guy. I don't take that for granted. Everybody else tuning in, Remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's solve that one first here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.