Fake Coaches, Instagram Gurus, and Fast Money - Rick Jordan & Erik Huberman

Eric Huberman is the founder and CEO of Hawk Media, a leading outsourced marketing firm that's helped scale hundreds of brands. Known for his no-fluff approach to growth, he's built a data-driven model that delivers results across industries, making him a trusted voice in modern marketing and entrepreneurship. This is Eric Huberman on Frequency. dude you're here you've got a lot going i mean it's hawk media but you also have hawk ai right it's both of those which is it's all integrated but we have hawk ai we have hawk ventures we have hawk capital so yeah that's awesome that's really cool the biggest thing kind of stuck out about me is you had an exit before you were 26 years old right two two of them that's incredible tell me about those man how big were they small um they were both you know e-commerce sites doing a few million bucks in revenue so it wasn't like massive massive like fuck you money but it was you know decent and enough to be able to decide what i wanted to do next and not jump into something so yeah it was the first one was a t-shirt subscription site called swag of the month sold that after building it for a year because we were just really early in the subscription e-commerce business the company that bought it actually just wanted the software we had built because we built a subscription module on top of or on top of Magento pre-Shopify. And so that went really well. And then I joined Science Incubator just as they had launched Dollar Shave Club, advised on their portfolio companies, helped them launch a women's activewear brand. And that we sold a year later to Valley Total Fitness. Wow. Wow, that's phenomenal. You worked for Dollar Shave Club then, or you worked with them? I worked with them. I was advising for them a little bit at the incubator that had launched them. That's pretty cool. What aspect of it? Marketing? Marketing, yeah. Yeah, it was. So this is what's funny is like, I, I've never been, I guess I kind of was when I was at science. But prior to that, I was never a CMO. I just focused on marketing because I found it to be the most challenging part of building a business. Like, you know, obviously, you need a great product, but I wouldn't start a business unless I, you know, figured out a great product. Once you're there, I always felt like operational problems were solved with logic and could be solved. Whereas marketing and sales problems are there's infinite opportunity cost and there's always more to do. So I leaned in there because it seemed like the harder thing to do. Yeah, dude, you said something just a little bit ago, too. Because you said you wouldn't start a business unless you had a good product. Right. Right. How many people have you seen? I mean, I've seen a lot, man, that are like, oh, this is going to change the world. Oh, totally. There's false bravado. But there's also, I think, even worse. There's many, many people that just want to be an entrepreneur for the sake of being an entrepreneur. and it has nothing to do with what they're building. And so they just chase trying to find the product so that they can start the business. And I think that's where I see more of, which is, you know, it never goes anywhere. Like the entrepreneur thing is kind of a glorified title now, right? It's the thing that everybody sees. Right, it's the dropshippers. I hate to start to speak ill of them, but like, you know, there are a few dropshippers that have made tons of cash and like, it's been a real business. There's a lot of others that are just like, the manufacturer is making a lot of cash with all the stuff you're buying from them, but you're not making anything. No joke. That is the, that is the most annoying thing to me, right? Because I, if I scroll through my Instagram feed, I see all of these ads that are on there, you know, about how you can make 10 K a month dropshipping is easy. You know, just buy my course for three 99 or whatever it is. And I'll show you step by step. Yeah. Thankfully when I was 17, my dad taught me that lesson of why, like I read rich dad, poor dad, which is a great book to be clear, but I read it and I went to my dad telling him all about how great this book was. He's like, yeah, you know how that guy makes money. I'm like, how he's like selling fucking books. Yeah. And I'm like, Oh, well, that's like Hormozy, right? Yeah, exactly. I don't, I actually don't know enough about her Mosey's MNA side to know if it's actually legitimate or not. But, um, so, but yeah, I mean, to the point, like if it was that good, you wouldn't need this mastermind and all this other, now I, the justification he gives is that that's deal flow. So I can buy it. Like maybe he's the one guy that actually, or one of the few people that it actually is. And Cody Sanchez says the same thing. I've known her forever, but I, most of these guys, if you're selling courses, like I don't buy it. Like it's most of you are like you, it's the, and I, it's a probably a little bit of a slur, but if you can't do teach kind of thing, like that's what it feels like. That's just a, that's an old phrase, man. That's been around forever, but it's so true. Yeah. I see so many coaches in a lot of different industries. It's a, that are like be an entrepreneur, grab a product. You can be a drop shipper, go for it. That's exactly it. If you were so good at real estate, as an example, you'd go own a bunch of real estate and you wouldn't want to tell anyone about the secret because it'd be such a good thing. You'd make so much money there. You'd just go do it. The same reason we've never sold marketing courses. We've done a few in collaboration just because there's been good partnerships and some of our tech partners have asked me to do courses. LinkedIn asked me to do one. I've done that, but I've never done it for the money, nor has it really made me anything. It's, you know, most of the time I do stuff like this and just try to give away the knowledge for free because my business is doing it for people, not selling the knowledge. Like I feel like at that point, don't get me wrong. There are specific things I think that courses should exist for and there's knowledge that I think is worth it. But the get rich quick stuff pisses me off. You think we just said, yeah, I'm with you. But do you think we just crushed everybody's dreams to scroll through Instagram? It's like I can make 10 grand a month easy working two hours a week. Well, I talked to someone very bright and well known about this yesterday. We sadly live in a time now where the perception of the upward mobility is really low. And so that's the stuff that preys on that. When people feel like they don't have a lot of paths to success, they start going for the get-rich-quick stuff. The lottery shoots up, these coaches shoot up, and I'd rather crush the dream now because it's not going to come true. I remember, like, Tai Lopez to me is the biggest con artist of all of it. And now he's getting indicted. I have people that invested in that deal that he's getting indicted for. And I told him like, what are you doing? He's a blatant con artist. And here we are. And I had people argue with me about it. It's like, and it's one of those things where like, I look at him, like, you can see, he like literally brags about his cars, some of which he never, he didn't own until he bragged enough that he could own them. Like, it was like, this whole thing is a facade. Like I wouldn't, and I've learned my lesson. Like I've invested in people that I've actually, no, I shouldn't say that I invested in someone that ended up being kind of a con artist. Actually, con artist might be a little exaggeration, but just a bad actor. And right after he blew $50 million of other people's money, he went off to start a second thing. And I had friends go invest in that. And they knew the story. So I was like, what the hell are you guys doing? You know what happened. I'm like, oh, we're going to keep an eye on it this time. Like, don't worry, we're keeping it on a short leash. They all got screwed too. Like you cannot do business or get help from people that like to con. They will screw you. They will find a way like ethics and integrity are really important in business. And if you want to succeed and finding people with that, which is goes the other way to what I've found is doing the right thing for the right reasons and having integrity. People will hold on to you as tight as possible and be a part of that because most good savvy business people know you get like once you find someone that will do what they say they're going to do. You got to stick around. Yeah, for sure, man. For sure. but all of that i mean you're giving gold to everybody who's under 26 years old right now seriously because i mean it's a if you look at when you say small you know everybody has a different idea of what small is when it comes to an exit but they were still pretty phenomenal you know even of the sizes and there was uh there was someone really close to me as i was growing up kind of like a big brother thing right and he used to talk about real estate and he was only maybe 26 years old. And at that time, you know, when I was 16, I was like, man, this is a big house for somebody who's 26. And he says, well, Rick, here's what I did. He's like, I've turned a lot of property. That's it. You know, I'd stay in a house for a year or two, you know, when the market was good, you know, and then I'd sell. He's like, I didn't get attached to these things and that's how I got here and I'm going to keep doing it. But it sounds like that that could be an analogy to really how you started in a lot of things because you built some smaller exits and then that compounded to be able to go towards the larger things yeah and what the exits did for me more than anything was give credibility of like oh he knows how to build and sell these things like we should like this was kind of the perfect storm that created hawk media which is by far bigger than anything else i built and it was oh you know how to build these companies we all want to build why don't we just bring you on to show us how to do it and then i did and then it worked And so then it just, that's how that literally is what gave birth to Hawk Media and, you know, got us through the first few years before we had to really systematize the business was just, I had built a reputation for myself and was running through a wall trying to help everyone I could figure out sort of the digital marketing landscape in like 2014, 15, 16, when no one understood it. Yeah. I think that we're going to get into Hawk Media in probably about two minutes. Yeah. The one thing I'd love to hear from you, because since we've crushed everybody's get rich quick dreams that they've had with all this stuff, looking back, man, what would you say to those that are 20, 21, 22 years old that are like, I'd love to have my first exit by the time I'm 26? You know, I wouldn't set that goalpost. Like, every business I started was for the rest of my life. And then at some point you go, the opportunity is better. I have something better to work on. I got the right offer. Like, you know, I sold the first business because I realized I either had to raise a lot of money or sell it because there was no organically scaling. It wasn going to work at the rate that I wanted to do it So it was you know kind of a shitter get off the pot moment The second business we sold because we vertically integrated and then you need the same thing It needed so much capital It was like, do we tap into a bigger resource and get the capital or do we go try to raise it, which it wouldn't have justified the amount of money we needed to raise to do what we wanted to do at that point. So there were reasons we sold and it's the age old thing. Like someone has to buy your business for more than it's worth to you. Like that, that is how this has to work. If not, you keep it. And so I talk, I really learned that lesson with, you know, stick with it. Assume you're going to keep it a long time and build it so that you want to keep it a long time. Because I mean, one of the cliches I really like is if you don't build a business, like you're going to keep it forever, you will. That's incredible, man. Yeah. But on that note, the big, the real advice I'd say is work your absolute ass off. and you know what's sad that i see is when i was in my 20s working your ass off was celebrated grinding the hustle culture like it was celebrated to grind and now i feel like people uh use the term what is it um being exploited and take getting to getting taken advantage of when you work your ass off and i've been around long enough now i'm 39 i've been grinding for a while yeah i've seen it hard workers make more money people that work hard are more successful like that you look at a room of people that are hyper successful, what do they have in common? They work their ass off. Yeah. And, and it's not a bad thing. It is actually incredibly fulfilling. It's what we were biologically built to do back to the days where we literally had to eat what we kill. Like it's something in us. And the idea of sitting around all day doing nothing that is not fulfilling. You want to talk about rise in depression and anxiety, like find a purpose, find something to focus on and fucking work, learn how to work your absolute ass off day and night. and it doesn't go away. I was in five different cities last week. Like it's just part of it. And you, and it, but that's not a bad thing. It's fun. I'm, I don't have to do it. I could retire tomorrow. Thank you. I'm there. I'm done if I want to be. So it's, it's finding that motion because you will benefit from it. Whether it's moving up in a company and not being an entrepreneur. Cause I do think about 99% of people shouldn't sign up for this. Um, but if you still like hard work isn't going to hurt you. And I think that's an important one because there's this weird tone in the world now, again, about hard work is a form of exploitation. And it's like, that is the dumbest thing you could absorb. No joke, man. And that kind of correlates to what the Gen Z thing that has been going around the media lately about how it's the dumbest generation. I saw that. I mean, they're basing it on test scores, but a lot of it is just because of the lack of desire to work and it comes from, I think it comes from parents and everything, but I think you hit on a good contrast too, is that, you know, there should not be grind just a grind. Right. Yeah. Cause I actually, I would take that back. You, you, you work out for what reason? I go to the gym for health. That's it for health for, yeah. I like to look good too. Yes. Yeah. All of that, but you don't do it because you're going to go compete in the Olympics. Yeah, right on. So I do actually think there's a value in working hard for the sake of working hard. I think there's a value in just flexing that muscle the same way. You're working your brain. You're working your grit. You're, you know, the idea, and they, you know, Andrew Huberman talks about this. There's a lot of now studies about this in terms of your ability, getting used to doing hard things makes life easier. Yeah. Doing things you don't want to do, doing things that grind, and that includes work. Like it's, I find that when I take too long of a vacation and come back, this place hits me in the fucking face. I'm like, Oh my God, like there's so much to do. I start to get stressed out, but within a few days you're back in the motion of it. Kind of like muscle memory. Same thing when you take off from the gym for two weeks and then you go back and try to lift again, you're like, God, this sucks. But in a few days you start getting it back because you have that muscle memory. If you've never built that muscle, it is really hard to learn how to grind. For sure. Yeah. I bet. I guess that would even be the case. I mean, just working out. there's times where I've had surgeries and I've had to stop for, you know, three months or whatever, but those first three times getting back to it suck. Stuck. However, it's like your arms pop back almost immediately. Exactly. And you remember it and it quickly comes back. If you had never done it in the first place, very different. Yeah. Right on, man. Right on. Out of all of this, I mean, with the grind, you know, you've watched good founders, right? Do everything right. I have to, and they still lose. Oh yeah. You know, how do you go home with that every single day? You know, I think it's one of those, like they lost, like it's first off, I, I, there was a another great like meme going around about like the, the win rates of all the top athletes in the world and the completion rates, the batting averages of the best baseball players. Like you're going to lose most of the time. The, the idea is in whether, you know, to win a high, having a high win rate, isn't the strategy it's keep going. And so, you know, that was another piece of advice from my dad was just when I was starting out and it was just swing the bat, keep trying, something will connect. Like, you know, you never know what's going to hit and how good it's going to hit. And I, you know, I, I feel like if you work really hard and you have a decent level of intelligence, you're going to be some level of success, but how successful is going to be luck, right? There is a luck component of timing, of being in the right place, right time of something just catching that. Like for me, even the start of Hawk, like I got lucky. One of my first clients wrote for Forbes and decided to feature me in an article when Forbes was a little more red. And it was like right after Wolf of Wall Street came out and he got his Forbes article. So all of a sudden, in a weird good way, and I know Jordan, but there's a lot of bad things in that. I was like the wolf of marketing and people started talking about me because of this article and it took off. And then Forbes under 30, et cetera. These are things that these days wouldn't have the same impact. It reminds me of Warby Parker. I got to hang out with those guys and they credit a GQ article at their launch with all of, with the early success. Like that's what did it today. You get a GQ article. It's going to do almost nothing for you. So like the, the timing of like things just going right is a big factor in the success that people have, you know, ring doorbell. They had that robbery that got went viral. And then Richard Branson invested. I remember we were actually talking about taking over their marketing at that point. And you know, there's six months to get ahold of what's his name, Jamie, because he was like, I'm busy now. This just went crazy. So you see Dollar Shave Club, that video, that video cost them like eight grand or something or five grand. It was something negligible. They never thought that was going to go anywhere. And then it just went nuts. And so that part is a really, luck is an important factor. But here's the difference. They still made the video. They still got the razors together. They put up the website and they tried. And it worked out. And before that, you know, he was a, he was an improv actor and now he's a, you know, a hundred millionaire. So crazy how that works, right? Yeah. Like Miles Smith, right? He was in an office building, you know, like four years ago or something like that. And now he's one of the biggest movie stars, music artists in the whole world. Incredible, man. I mean, stuff can happen overnight like that. And usually it doesn't. So it's, again, that's why it's like more about the base hits, like just move the ball forward. Cause like, yes, you can get lucky, but that's like the lottery is not a strategy to get wealth. You know, it's like you can. I have a close friend that won $107 million in the lottery. I have really tough firsthand experience of how easy it can happen sometimes. But the likelihood of that happening is very low. Did they spend it all right away? You know, did they lose? No, he's been very boring and savvy and great. Like he barely spent it and he invested it and he's crushed it. And he, you know, has a place in Florida and actually just sold this place in Mexico and he hangs out and plays golf. Man, those are the stories you don't hear about lottery. Oh, yeah. there's nothing he had a wealthy father and uh and so he frankly like funny enough his dad worked his entire life he was c c o of marriott oh and overnight his 25 year old son was wealthier than him yeah from a lottery ticket that's great but he uh but yeah and so he invests his dad he had his dad to give him advice on investing he did it right you know but he just kind of hangs out and plays golf and you know but the point being like that's not a strategy it can happen yeah it's the same thing as like thinking your business is going to go viral. It's like the incremental hard work growth. Like, you know, you, you have to, but he had to actually, that is a good example. He, he bought a lottery ticket. He was in an office pool that they would all buy lottery tickets together. And that was the day that everybody else bailed. And he still went out and bought his own lottery ticket. So the day he did it himself, correct. Rather than being, that's incredible. That's a crazy story. So I mean, it's another quick joke, but I love it. It was every day a guy wakes up in the morning and goes, God, please today, let me win the lottery. And every morning, this guy prays to start his day, God, please let me win the lottery. And the days go by, the weeks go by, the months go by, he's getting burnt out. He's asking God every day. And after years, the clouds open up, the sun shines and God speaks, you got to meet me halfway and at least buy a ticket. That's great. It's that, and that's like, you got to go for it. Now the luck can't happen without getting off your ass basically. Yeah. That's a good, that's the fantastic point of everything that you're saying, man. That's exactly it. There's no way that luck can be in position if you're not in position. Right. Let's go by no matter what. Right. And, and then, and that's why, like, that's what motivates me. Like, as I mentioned, five cities and five days last few weeks, because like being in the room, going out and about, like you never know what's going to come up with that new thing is, whether it's something from my core business or all the random, you know, great investments I've gotten into or other opportunities or just learning more, like just expanding what you doing expanding your network There so many things that happen when you go and move And you know again I think the combination of like not celebrating success and sort of an agoraphobia that happened post COVID that people just don leave their houses anymore For sure. It's like, that's where all of my successes come from. If I look at like the biggest deals that got done, right. Yeah. Person doing things with people. 100%, man. Absolutely. You talked about your dad a little bit. He seems to have had a big influence on your life. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. He was a successful guy. Great. What's that? He was in media too. Correct? No, not at all. No, he, in fact, when I was building and growing and things started to hum here, his line was, uh, I don't know, or what is it? I don't know. I don't understand what you're doing, but as long as it's legal, I'm proud of your buddy. That's great. I don't, I don't get this, but as long as you're not breaking any laws, no joke. No, we're good. Well, Hawk has taken off, man. I mean, congrats on all your success. It's incredible what you're doing. The exits before built this. Did you ever see it going where it's at now? Hawk? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I always was confident that I'd be successful, but that was never quantified. So I knew I wasn't ever worried about, will I actually build something great or build a big business or anything? but like, it was never like, it's going to be worth this much, or it's going to be this many people, or it's going to be this, like, it was none of that. I just, I always felt like I'd be just fine. So the answer is no. Like early days, I would have said yes. The first four years of the company, I set a goal, like the week one of Hawk, I set four, four years worth of goals. And we came within 1% of all of them. And so like the first four years, I was like, very focused. This is what we're going to do. And then it's not as easy to just brute force to the point. So then we start, you know, it was harder to set that. We've had great years, setback years, all of it now at this point, 12 years into this. But overall, if you were, you know, to rewind 12 years ago, no, not at all. Now, I think, again, it's more incremental. Let's see, you know, I do have a vision of like what we're going to do this year and hope to execute it. And if we do this, what will happen. And that those it's a little more direct, but so like on a year basis, yes, But looking at the broader picture, absolutely not. That's awesome. Where did you think it was going to go? Did you have anything in mind whatsoever when you started it? Yeah, I had. So again, I thought I was going to do one, two and a half, five, 10 million. That was the goals. Yeah. Hit them all. And I was like, I'm going to take that cash flow and invest in real estate and build a real estate portfolio over the next 10 years that then I don't have to do anything. And by the way, that's what my dad was in, was in waste in real estate. So I had an interest in it and had a little basic knowledge of it compared to an everyday person. I was in real estate for a year out of college, had my license. So I got the business. And so I was like, that's what I'm going to do. And the first year I did that, I took my profits and put it into real estate. But then I did my first angel investment, which I wasn't planning on doing. I was like, I'll spend my time on risky stuff and put my money into conservative things. But a friend of mine convinced me to invest his company. And that company turned into a multi-billion dollar company very quickly. And so I went, oh, I have a lot of access and relationships. Maybe I should look at this more closely and started angel investing. and angel investments went nuts. So I was like, okay, there's a balance here. I can own real estate, but I should start looking at other stuff. Then a month into starting Hawk, I also met my wife, now wife, and she's in private equity. So I started going, well, what's that about? And started understanding that. And so there's a whole other side I don't talk about much, but the wealth management side. I'm in every different asset class. I really have CNBC playing on the screen all day behind over Europe where I'm looking. I have both balances. I really like finance and numbers and I love the creative side of marketing. That's left brain and right brain, man. Yeah, and that was the original thesis was cash flow business. I did not think I was building something big but once it started to take off that's when I was like, wait, this is bigger, there's a much larger opportunity than I dreamed of. I thought it was going to be a great way to make some money and work with some great companies and try different things and it grew to that, you know, $10 million mark. And then I was like, and honestly, I went through probably two years of like, well, I don't know what's next. We grew, like we went from 10 to, I think 15 to 20. And I was like, you know, so I was like, we're growing, but I'm like, but I don't really, I didn't have that much of a vision at that point. And then I went, and then it clicked of like, oh, this is what we've built and where the opportunity is. And I got really focused and it's been great since. That's important, man. I'm picking up some things that you're saying. And it's, I love that you didn't know exactly where it was going to go. And you had a specific vision, but then it's almost like you caught up to the actual vision that was there in front of you. You didn't even know yet. Well, and the funny thing is it was always there to your point. Like it was like, I, the reason I started it is the exact reason we still exist, which is there's 90,000 marketing agencies in the U S 99% of them are full of shit. And the few that are in a good, we want to work with the fortune 2000. So that means every gross stage company, every challenger brand, every SMB has to weed through 90,000 crap agencies to maybe find a diamond in the rough. And to me, this is ridiculous. Why can't there be an agency that's one of the best of what they do? I'll never say the best, but like one of the best, but remains easy to work with and well known for it. So why isn't there a name brand and sort of SMB gross stage marketing? And I mean, still to this day, like we've built a name for ourselves, but nowhere close. We're just scratching the surface, which is a good thing to me. Like when people say, oh, I've never heard of you. Sorry. I'm like, no, that's great. If I don't want to be known, because if I'm already well-known and we're already there, that means we've already arrived and we've already built the company we're going to build. I want to know that I want to be, you know, uh, what do you call it? Um, like on the word, but I want to, I want to know that nobody's what's that. It's like, where's the fun in that? If you get there and you've already arrived. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I like the, I, it's amazing to me that we're really not well-known and we've already built this size of a company because to me, I think that the market is so big and the opportunity so massive and yeah so that's that's what we're marching on yeah it's almost like the the inverse of what the the influencers that we were talking about about the quick get rich quick right because this is another area it's like anybody you think could be a marketer these days it's a it's more ads that i see all the time on social media you know for marketing agencies like hey get some more leads here you go hire us and it's like cool you and the 27 000 other people i saw today yep and none of those strategies work it's like it's yeah it's what does not easy what do you see in marketing that you know where the where the trends are growing what are people actually responding to from like the things we're doing for our clients or the things we're doing to build the agency of things that you're doing for your clients yeah um it's it's all the things that have been working for a decade are still working it's just you have to do all of it together because it's more competitive so that's the easy way to think about it it's like meta ads are great Google ads are great. CTV is great. TikTok's great. You need to be doing email marketing and SMS to nurture that. You need to be doing great content. You need to have a great website and conversion funnel. You need to also be building community and throwing events and getting your name out there. You need to be checking all the boxes, which is what I've always done with my business. And it's worked out really well because I learned this marketing theory when I was at Science, when I launched their activewear brand that we sold. It was early, early influencer marketing. Influence marketing at the time were still bloggers. There was no Instagram influencers. And I decided to send 1,200 bloggers an outfit and just was like, I'm going to send them all. It was like $24,000 worth of clothing right when we launched. Just like, we're sending this out. And the partners in the business were like, that seems risky. I'm like, if we send 1,200 bloggers an outfit and they post about it, and on average, we had 50% margins. I was like, on average, they can't sell one outfit, which would pay for it. We're fucked anyways. And we should just blow the 24 grand. If it doesn't go well, we should wrap up. That's back to that good product thing, right? Yeah, exactly. And we did it and it drove like 1.2 million in revenue. Wow. And $24,000. And so I've always kept that like, yes, the data and science part of marketing, like I'm really a numbers guy. So like it matters. Yeah. But there has to come a point where you take a step back and go, well, if this doesn't work, our business is broken and we're fucked anyways. So we just got to go for things sometimes too. That's worked out. Thanks for diving into that because everybody wants to know, especially SMBs, man, because it's a hard answer because there's no silver bullet and it's doing everything right. But that's the point. And I'm not that competitive of a person, even with other agencies. I'm like, if they're successful, good for them, happy for them. Unless they actually stand directly in my way of something, they steal a deal for me or something. Thankfully, there's enough business to go around, especially in the world we play in. I've always been friends with my biggest competitors. I'm not that competitive, but you have to realize that in business, it is competitive. Meaning, if you're not doing all the right things to nurture your leads, someone else is, which means they can pay more for those leads, so they're going to get more of them. By nature, you have to be good at what you do or you're going to lose to your competitors because they're willing to pay more, they're willing to spend more, etc. Yeah. Moving into AI, which we touched on a little bit at the beginning of this, you've also built Hawk AI. How does that correlate with everything else that you're doing? Yeah. So Hawk AI is digesting about 6,000 companies marketing media and revenue data in real time. We can then plug in an individual company, benchmark how their marketing's doing, and immediately do a SWOT analysis on here's what's working, what's not, here's where the opportunities are. As detailed as this campaign has a click-through rate that's 20% below market, we need to figure out why you're copy or creative, or targeting isn't working there to like, make that convert better. And then it quantifies it to say like, here's all the opportunities you have, if you just get to average. And so that basically, and that's how it started. And so that's a shortcut of like, we know exactly what we need to attack and where we need to go And it came from what we know about marketing and where all the buckets fall And you know we wrote a bestselling book I think I have it somewhere here Yeah right here Called The Hawk Method And it taught in a bunch of MBA programs et cetera And basically, this is the software based on The Hawk Method. Here are the buckets that everything falls into. Here's what we need to be doing. And here's how it looks. And then from there, we have, you know, our team of 220 people using it. And now their office is right there, the Hawk AI office. I watch people through my window all the day going in there and having them build things now because of the way Vibe Coding works now. We're building out features and feature sets and things for it that help my team become more efficient. And to your point of like, the nascence of all of this was I learned about AI from a guy named Peter Diamantis who runs a thing called XPRIZE. And he introduced me to a guy named Ray Kurzweil that ended up running AI at Google later. But I think it was 2013, he predicted sort of the timelines of AI. I met him in, I think it was 2015. 2015 or 2016, I can't remember. And I looked at how AI was working. We're talking about all these disruptions. And at the time, they were using these terms like, what's going to be the Uber to your taxi company? What's going to be the Netflix to your blockbuster? And so I was early in business, but I was already thinking that way of like, what's going to disrupt me? And when I heard AI, I'm like, oh, well, that's obvious. But I didn't. So Ray Kurzweil, his predictions, but what do we came true? He predicted that by the beginning of 23, we'd have something that looked like AI. ChatGPT came out in November of 22. He's off by two months, but we'll give it to him. Ten years before. And then he predicted by 2029 is when we'd have real AI. So we'll see what happens in the next three years. But it seems to be trending kind of where he says, or maybe even adjusted to 2031 now. Anyways, point being, that was the prediction. I went, well, if that's true, by 2023, we need to have built something that can take advantage of that situation. And at the time, there was IBM Watson, which was like the original AI node. And I watched how that worked. People plugged into it. They used it as sort of this open source thing. I was like, that's probably how AI is going to be. And I'm not going to be the one to actually create the AI. Again, ChatGPT was literally being predicted. And I was like, I'm not going to be the one that does that. But I should build something that educates that. So how can I be the marketing teacher to the AI and have my unique data? And go figure, now the moat for all of AI is data. But we figured it out a decade ago and started collecting all that data. And so now we have all that data that's running through it. And we continue to build on top of it. So back to the original long time ago question, you said, we're building the thing that replaces a lot of what we do because marketing strategy, it just makes it quicker and quicker. Now, to that point, I don't believe the headlines at all about jobs are going away. People are going to not need to work anymore. There's no more capital. I think it's all bullshit. And at this point, it feels like they're either dumb or intentionally misleading. And I think it's the latter. and it's kind of annoying when I see Anthropic CEO or Elon Musk talk about, you know, no jobs are going to be needed in a year. Like I am in the weeds with this stuff all day. Global, high income, all of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's bullshit. Yeah. And like what it's doing, including our own AI tool and what all these AI tools are doing are making people more productive and efficient. That doesn't mean that jobs go away. So did industrialization. So did the internet. It actually created more GDP and more growth and more opportunity. And I think AI is going to be the same thing. The doom and gloom of it, I'm not into. I do think it's overhyped in its current state. I think people are way over calculating the abilities of AI. But like, I've been in a contract negotiation for a month now with someone that like the deal terms are done, but the legalese are going back and forth. Yeah. And we were stuck on something Friday and to his credit, the other side said, why don't we just run this through chat GPT with the problems we both have with it and see what happens. We did it. We settled it. We're signing. It's a hundred percent. The point is our lawyers still got paid by the way. We still had to have lawyers as a part of it. because I can't just rely on it alone. He's still, he's getting a job. Like we're hiring this person. That's what this was about. And it was just like, it all came together and it's, but it's like, it was an enabler. It wasn't, it didn't take away. And now this happened and it would have cost us a lot more money or not really actually, probably still spent a good amount of money on it. But like we got it done versus maybe it hadn't, wouldn't have gotten done. So like, I think that is a small microcosm to like what ends up happening with AI where like so much more is going to be accomplished and get done and move forward. but it goes back to what i originally said to the under 26 year olds yeah you got to work your ass off and use this shit to actually make anything happen it's not just going to happen for you for sure most people won't most people will just still want a job and be told what to do and they're going to hopefully leverage ai hopefully exactly i saw you mentioned anthropic right i saw they published a list recently about the 10 jobs that are just going to go away right and i was looking at and of course being in cyber security you know i'm seeing all of them like all of these are computer science related jobs. Yeah. By the way, there's, there's, there's definitely, but who is going to run the AI? Like let's say you use or whatever, like who's managing that? Cause it's not going to be, we're not in a world of CEOs all managing their own AI businesses. That's it. That's not what's about to happen. So it's going to be a different job. It's the same thing happened when Adobe Photoshop came out. The headline said that it's the death of the art director and it proliferated the art director because it made it more available to be an art director same thing with computer science like with ai now more people can be coders yeah right on and it's just going to change it right on it's like the factory line workers how they're like oh you know so many industrial jobs went away well there's still mechanics and the mechanics are now the ones that are fixing the robots on the lines correct there's hydraulic experts there's uh there's motor experts you know and that'll change robots will start fixing those but then there'll be something else like the one of my other favorite metaphors there's two metaphors that really hit me with AI. One is not a metaphor, but it was a story out of actually the show Silicon Valley, which I don't know if this is even a real story, but apparently in right before the, uh, right at the end of the 19th century, there was a prediction that, uh, all cities, all major streets were going to be covered in nine feet of horseshit because of industrialization of people commuting in on horseback because they hadn't predicted. Yeah, that's great. So it's like, because you didn't, you didn't know the, the entirety of the future. All they knew was industrialization and we ride horses. So this is what's going to happen. So like there, that was one prediction that's like, it feels the same with AI. We're predicting our same existence with the effect of AI, not realizing that our existence is going to change. So that's number one. Number two, there's a great joke. It's for the context. Two guys are walking through the woods and a bear comes out and starts charging them. One guy bends down to tie his shoes. The other guy looks at him and says, what are you doing? You can't outrun a bear. He goes, I don't have to outrun a bear. after i'll run you that's how i feel about ai right it's not this like i've got to beat ai or it's going to take my job it's i have to use it more efficiently and better than my competitors yeah and that i'm not worried about again back to the 90 000 agencies that are full of shit right on my 65 year old general counsel you know when we talk about ai replacing lawyers he goes no it's going to replace lawyers that don't use it that's it exactly and by the way it won't though Cause there's going to be certain lawyers that are like, it reminds me of my tire guy. I have my, like my dad had a tire guy in LA that I use and Bob's tires. And, uh, that guy, I don't think he has a website. I think he still has the fucking credit card. Like the thing you print over the credit card. Yeah, exactly. Like it works. His business is fine. He doesn't need to like, he didn't miss like it because he didn't need to. It's another great story. I love all these anecdotes, but there's another one, uh, fisherman comes back from fishing all day with a great catch. He came back with a bunch of fish and a banker is sitting on the dock and sees him and goes, wow, you did really well today. Have you ever thought about expanding? He goes, what do you mean? He goes, well, you could maybe bring on some more crew and you could take on more fish. He's like, okay, then what? He goes, well, then you could buy a few boats and maybe expand into a fleet and go out and catch even more fish. He's like, then what? And he goes, well, then you could probably even open up new locations and maybe start expanding around the country. He's like, then what? You could build a global, you know, fish business. You could have fish fisheries all over the world and you can really build this out. He goes, then what? He's like, you could probably sell it for hundreds of millions of dollars. He goes, okay, then what? He's like, then you could just chill all day and fish. He goes, okay. That's full circle. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, I'm reminded that all the time. It's like, what are you gunning for? Like, sometimes you don't need to adopt all these things and you're doing just fine. from an investor perspective, my best piece of advice I got as an investor is invest in the ambition of the founder. I'm one of those sick people that the sky's the limit. I could already retire and fish all day if I wanted to right now, but I want to keep building and growing. My fulfillment, joy, et cetera, comes out of building something great, massive, huge, world-class. But you don't have to be that person. A lot of people are not as mentally unwell as I am. And there's like a level where your bills are paid. You're fine. You don't need to chase the next shiny thing. Yeah. Right on. Eric, you've been amazing, man. Thank you for this. I think we need to put up a poll, right? Reels of all of your anecdotes and see which ones. Yeah. What's the best one? Exactly. They were awesome, man. But, uh, I think everybody needs to, needs to hire Hawk Media after talking to you seriously. Yeah. Just incredible outlook, how you have on all these things. But the biggest things I took away, man, it's like, if you're gonna if you're gonna be an entrepreneur, right? Don't be one just to be one. Right? Just because you get the name. The second is, you know, don't do the grit, get crit, get rich quick schemes, the 10 grand a month for YouTube videos. And the third, if you are going to be when you are going to market, you kind of have to check all the boxes, period. Yeah. Yep. Cover your bases. Awesome, brother. Well, thanks for coming on, man. This has been fun. Thank you.