Russell (00:07.541)
What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Ecommerce Unlocked podcast, where as always we're talking about e -commerce, the tactical, the strategic things that you can put into place in your business today. Today we're talking with Eric Huberman. He is the CEO and founder of Hawk Media, which if you've never heard of them, they are an absolute juggernaut in the marketing agency space. I've worked with thousands upon thousands of brands, insight and data and analytics on even more than that. So it's really going to be an awesome,
time to talk with Eric and kind of pick his brain on the current state of marketing, where he sees the market going. So before we jump into kind of the meat and potatoes of today, Eric, do you mind giving us just like, you know, the quick synopsis of your background?
Erik Huberman (00:49.326)
Sure. Yeah. Been in e -comm for about 15 years, built an online music company and then two different, I was one of the first movers in subscription e -commerce and built an online subscription t -shirt company and then a women's activewear brand. Sold both of those and about a little over a decade ago started advising consulting for a bunch of brands on how to weverage marketing and grow revenue. And now fast forward, we've got POC media, we've got 220 full -time people running marketing currently for about 500 brands.
Uh, have a whole AI system we built starting eight years ago that powers a lot of what we do and makes us one of the best in performance marketing along with a venture fund that we've invested in about 95 different marketing tech and e -commerce tech companies. So we're deep partners with all the technology space and, you know, kind of look at ourselves as an AI enabled tech integrated, and then just trying to be a marketing powerhouse.
Russell (01:37.109)
Yeah, before we kind of jump into some of those, like, you know, the marketing and the specific stuff when it comes to e -commerce, the fact that you've been able to grow such a big marketing agency within the e -comm and, you know, beyond space is very difficult. Like, it's got to be systems processes. So what have you seen as like maybe the one or two top things that you've done at Hawk Media make it like work really well and work for a lot of different brands?
Erik Huberman (02:03.086)
Yeah. Number one is do what we say we're going to do. That's shocking, but I think we've all experienced it. Like most people don't. Like it's, it is that simple. Like they sign up for things they can't handle and then they don't figure it out. And like just being able to deliver on what we promise, uh, from an execution standpoint, but then the results for marketing are going to vary. The products are going to vary. The appetite from the audience is going to vary. All those things vary, but we execute and do the things we say are going to do. And that is actually for the savvy entrepreneur or marketer that was looking for a good marketing partner, like.
That's why we built such a great reputation. We have such great ratings is I'd say that's number one. And it's not a silver bullet. It's actually knowing how to do marketing and executing. Like we say, we're going to do it is thin. The thing that drives us more than anything. And then because of that, leaning on that, bragging about it, promoting it, being our own customer, doing all our own marketing and advertising and all that. And it turns out we do know what we're doing. So our own marketing efforts are actually really lucrative too.
Russell (02:57.333)
Yeah, that's awesome. That's a...
Emerson (02:58.638)
No, Eric, I think it's crazy as you're talking about all the stuff that you're you're doing. First off, like your history is nuts as far as like all the stuff you're being involved with. And then pre show you're like out there crushing it, snowboarding, you're out there, you're active in a lot of different things. I mean, first off, that's jealous of that. I mean, for the podcast, we started recording Eric was just casually dropping his in Japan, snowboarding all these other places just crushing it. Maybe kind of just talking on that personal aspect. How is that like personal?
Erik Huberman (03:11.662)
Yeah.
Erik Huberman (03:24.59)
on. Yes.
Emerson (03:27.246)
characteristics of being involved in a lot of things a lot of interest or just like it seems like you're on the go go lifestyle is what it kind of comes off as at least on that side stuff. How does that translate into the business maybe that culture of the business that you've you've created there?
Erik Huberman (03:39.854)
Yeah, I think it's a few things. Um, it's definitely like, I've realized like you, you asked one of the secrets of growth. It's foot is on the gas all the time. Like, you know, the moment we have a great month, it's like, okay, so how do we build off of this? Not, oh, it's celebrate. What's chill. Oh, I'm going to go hang out and I'll talk about Japan in a sec. But like, it's like, I want to get the most out of life here personally, professionally, family, all of it. Like I want to experience everything life has to offer. And so once we've already done something, I'm moved on and it's, it's a
Russell (03:54.261)
Yeah.
Erik Huberman (04:08.622)
It's probably a blessing and a curse because I'm never really satisfied, but it makes me always want to keep pushing, keep pushing, keep driving. And I also know that as the owner, I'm the one that's got to push the most. And I don't mean that in like a, you know, shitty way, a bullying way. Like art, we have people that have been here for six years, eight years, 10 years. Like, I don't think I drive people. I definitely drive people crazy, but not in a malicious way. I think they're just like, Jesus, here's Eric again. Yeah. What are we going to do this month? Is it, Oh, we're going to jump over month? Sounds good.
Russell (04:32.533)
Hahaha.
Erik Huberman (04:35.022)
But like, you know, we're all friendly in that sense too, but I'm always pushing like, you know, our goal from our marketing team, they hit it last month and I said, so how do we grow that 50 % now? We know, we know that's achievable. Now how do we reach that next level of achievement? And like, you know, at first he went, dude, can I just celebrate for a second? I went, sure. Have a nice evening tomorrow. Let me know how we're going to hit, get 50 % growth. Um, it's like, and we have that rapport that it's like, it's fine. But at the same time, he came back to me a week later is like, no, I think I have a plan here.
And I think we'll get there in the next couple of months. We're going to grow 50 % on our weed generation in the next couple of months without spending more money was his addition to that. So he's like, I think I can clean this up, do this more efficiently. And he showed me, you know, the first few days of the month, we're already achieving much faster ramp. If we actually keep our pace that it's been the first couple of days, which is not a great statistical significance, but he's like, we're going to be up 80%. So like, I think I've unlocked some things here that I think we can actually get there quick. So what I've learned is that push.
makes people think a little broader and a little bigger. And that is important for me to keep doing. So with that, I also think that life's too short, like just to be blunt, life ends really quickly. It can be abrupt or not, but it's like, it goes by fast. I'm 37 now and I don't know what the hell happened already. And so I'm thankful that starting, it was actually, I remember it was 2017. I had a couple of years of making good money here and I was my girlfriend at the time. That's not my wife. I was like,
Emerson (05:45.87)
Ha ha.
Erik Huberman (05:58.062)
We should just start checking bucket list items off and like figure out ways that we get to like, Oh, actually I take that back. It started even before that we were offered to sell the company one year in for a good amount of money, not compared to where we're worth now. But at the time it was actually kind of ridiculous. And my business partner and I were like, well, you know, I don't, I think we can go a lot bigger with this. Like, do we want to sell early? And I was like, no, but like, if we don't sell now, I always said this, if we don't take a sale, assume it's going to be another decade before we can get another one.
Because the market can shift, things can happen, whatever way, just assume nothing's coming back for a decade. And we're going to have to grind for a decade to ever have this happen again. So if that's the case, we're turning this into a marathon, not a sprint. And so what does that look like? And it'd be this whole concept of work life harmony came into play, not balanced. That means there are odds of each other, but how do I make it so that I'm doing fun things with work and I'm complimenting that with things that I like personally so that I don't really look for an exit so I can go. And at the time it was like, well, what does that look like for me? What would I do if I was retired?
Like I want to go to two or three epic trips a year. And my business partner at the time, both of us were not married, no kids. He was like, I want to play golf every other Wednesday morning. Well, that's really easy to do. Like, you know, that's a complex doable. And he did it and I did it. I ended up, I've been to like what I think it's like 45, 46 countries now, traveling all over. And then 2017 hit, we thankfully had made decent money. And I started looking at like, God, I'd love to, oh, the first one was Howie Snowboard.
Emerson (07:05.774)
Ha ha ha.
Erik Huberman (07:23.694)
I was like, I really want to try it. That's top of the bucket list. And I was like, I should just go do it. I can like, I should just try this out. And I did it. And now I've gone every year since 2017. Um, and I'll get the same group of guys. It's like a group of now 50 entrepreneurs that we all go together every year. And so that started, frankly, we did the Monaco grand prix that summer. Like we did some cool stuff and I was like, I like this, uh, sort of balance, but again,
Emerson (07:34.958)
No way.
Erik Huberman (07:50.798)
The way that it worked, what was interesting is I found that I went heli -snowboarding with, at the time, 24 entrepreneurs. I ended up doing business with a bunch of those guys. I went to Monaco Grand Prix. It turns out people there, like there are great connections and some of that turned into business. And it started to realize like, I can go do these crazy things and it actually can also be work. And probably the most valuable thing I can do for the business because I can't, like I can actually translate it and turn it into something. And so then it started like the Japan trip.
Russell (08:16.853)
Yeah.
Erik Huberman (08:19.47)
was with one of our best tech partners, Maripost, shout them out, the founder was like, let's go, I'll go with you. And then we ended up meeting a bunch of other tech and founders out there. And like, was it like absolutely transactional that we ended up like, we're signing a million dollar deal? No. Was it great to spend a week with a huge partner that there's going to be so many things we do around that and we had a blast? Yes. So that's what I mean is like the other piece is we have a boat now and I do one or two entrepreneur days on that boat every month.
On Fridays, it's nice out, thankfully LA it's pretty much, it's already summer now. And so we, we jump on. And so I did one last Friday or Thursday and with a bunch of VCs in town, cause we just closed our second fund and to celebrate it. And I was hanging on the boat for Thursday afternoon. Like is that work? Technically no, or, but it was super productive and I spent a ton of time with a bunch of VCs we do a bunch of business with. And was there a better use of my time on Thursday afternoon? Actually no.
For me to spend, I think it was about 30 people to be there with my partners, with these other guys, all collaborating and figuring out how we can do more together while having a blast. That was probably the number one use of my time. While the same time I was having, it was the number one use personally too, cause I loved hanging out with these people, hanging out on a boat. Like it's that kind of, and again, this is all high life situations, obviously, but I think that can translate into even smaller things. You, whatever you love, you have to play golf, take out some of your executives and actually get four hour, four and a half hours of un.
Emerson (09:37.294)
Mm -hmm.
Erik Huberman (09:45.582)
interrupted time with some people on your team while doing something fun. Like there's things you can do just on a day to day. I now most of my conference calls, cause I'm on the phone all the time. I've now just started doing not started. I've been doing this on and off for a long time, but I go for walks on the call so I can get out in the sun. I can get some exercise in, I can move around and I can feel like it's not just me sitting at my desk, miserable. I get to move and feel like I'm doing something else. Like these kinds of things that just make the whole journey a lot more sustainable.
Cause I think the biggest I've learned businesses fail for two reasons. One, they get underwater on debt or capital. Like you just can never get above that mountain. That's one way. Um, but so avoid that. And then number two, the founder gives up the leadership team gives up. That's it. Like there isn't, I have, I've said this a lot waiting for someone to challenge. Well, there's this third option. I still haven't found it. So if anyone has one, shoot me a note. Really curious.
Russell (10:35.061)
Yeah.
Emerson (10:35.598)
Ha ha ha.
Erik Huberman (10:38.094)
I, but I, so far I have not thought of something that doesn't fit into those two buckets. Cause if you raise too high evaluation and can never give back that pref return you get on venture, or again, you get debt and you can't service it. Like that hurts. But if you're a founder, you can shrink a business to bare bones and still run it if you're willing to stick with it. So at some point that it becomes untenable or unreasonable and they give up or they give up before that. But for me, I'm like, okay, so to keep this thing working, I need to make it sustainable for myself. And that is.
that balance, have fun, having things to look forward to, enjoying the things I do in the business, all those kinds of things. And we're again, over a decade in.
Russell (11:12.373)
I love that. So when you first started talking about kind of this, you know, the way you've grown the business and everything, I kind of got some like Grant Cardone vibes of just being like obsessed and just like all in. He's a pretty intense dude. But then you kind of brought in this cool piece. I love the work life harmony and not balance. I haven't heard that before, but I think it's a great call out. And so I think that is something I was listening to a podcast earlier this morning and they were talking about how like, decide what you want to do and don't let your schedule like,
force you or like decide what you're going to do. Like you, you can, you even as like a low level employee, like an entry level employee. Yeah, maybe you need to put in some time, but you can move your trajectory of your career in a way where you get to say like what you do with your time. And it may take a few years, but like you're going to get there. Right. And so I love that you called that out.
Erik Huberman (12:00.046)
Yeah. When I got, yeah, I think there's the part like you're going to dislike parts of every job or business. Like that's just part of it. There's no business that you're not putting out fires and dealing with shit you wish you didn't have to deal with. Like that doesn't exist. And there's no job that way that I had believed either. That being said, I think that yeah, employees too, like especially, like I just don't believe I'm very anti like victim mentality. Like if you take a job, it should fit something you like to do or some way that it fits into your sort of design of your life.
Russell (12:07.669)
Absolutely.
Erik Huberman (12:29.134)
If it's not, then you're just not taking control of your life. Like there's sorry, unemployment's drastically well. It is not that hard to get a job. It's hard to get the exact thing you think you deserve that you want at the money you want maybe. But like, you know, there's plenty out there, plenty to look for. You just have to be flexible as well, in my opinion. And then you know, constructing that in a way that it fits how you want to live. I think is really good too. There's remote jobs, there's in -person jobs. There's all sorts of, that's an example, but there's a lot of stuff you can do there. And it's also, I talked to our team about this.
There's parts of our business where it's people that can come in, do their job and leave and have a normal full -time work schedule. There's even part -time people. And then there's people that it's like, you're here because you're going to run through a wall and work as hard as you can. And you can make unlimited amount of money. There's both opportunities. Some people want to grind for that. Some people don't. And again, it's all these different levels of options.
Russell (13:18.645)
Yeah, no, I think that's a great call out because it is easy. Like I find myself like a slave to my calendar. And this guy that I was listening to this morning, he's like, I don't have a calendar. Like it's just done. I do what I want in the day. And he's like, it took me nine years to get here to the point where like I get to choose my schedule. And I'd like, this sounds interesting. I'm going to do it. But.
Erik Huberman (13:40.238)
One example, because I'm still a slave to my calendar, almost 11 years in that being said, when I say slave, I book myself to the T because I'm still pushing this thing and still trying to achieve a higher level here. Whereas like I could totally, if I wanted to, if I liked where we were, I could definitely free myself up completely and live a lot chiller and not do it. But like, I feel like I just got to phase one of the plan, so to speak. And so I'm trying to move to that next one and trying to push that over. So.
Russell (13:44.149)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Erik Huberman (14:09.39)
Um, and I don't know if you guys know who Dan Martell is. Yeah. So I have my, that's, that's who runs the heli boarding trip I do every year. He put it together. So I think I lost you guys. My internet just cut out for a second. Okay, cool. Um, so yeah, he puts together that heli boarding trip that I go on every year. So, uh, and now I have my assistant reading his book, but the idea of buy back your time, I think.
Russell (14:12.341)
Yeah, oh yeah, our boy Dan.
Emerson (14:12.494)
Oh yeah, we love, oh yeah, he's our homeboy. Never met him, but our virtual homeboy.
Russell (14:16.565)
We feel like we know.
Emerson (14:23.31)
Oh no way, sick. Fun.
Russell (14:23.349)
Oh, yeah.
Emerson (14:28.366)
I gotcha.
Erik Huberman (14:39.246)
That is huge. I think like focusing on your highest and best use is important, but for me, I found my highest and best use is communicating with people. So my calendar is booked from 8 AM to 6 PM every day with phone calls, meetings, podcasts, things like that, or events. Cause that's where my best use is. But it is, but I am working nonstop. That's the key. If you love what you do and you want to grind and build it and make it bigger, find your zone of genius and stay there and get everything else off your plate.
Russell (15:06.805)
So as I mean, kind of transitioning this topic into marketing specifically, like AI, you know, it's this new thing out, you know, it's a couple of years. You guys have been digging into AI for almost a decade from what I hear, but the AI is like a big hot topic the past two years. I think it really kind of hit this.
Erik Huberman (15:21.742)
Yeah.
Russell (15:26.869)
this wave of like, man, yeah, it's gonna change the world of marketing. And then everybody realized that it's like quite not as not quite as good as we wanted it to be as far as content creation and that kind of thing. We're getting there. Obviously this year, like we've already seen a lot of really cool things come out and we're just quickly moving towards a space where AI is gonna play a huge role, even a bigger role than it does today. But I guess my question is, how have you guys, so being able to leverage AI to,
do more, you know, like 10x your output. Are you guys seeing that within Hawk Media? How are you leveraging AI to get this work -life harmony? Right. I mean, that's kind of pulling that into the marketing space, right.
Erik Huberman (16:06.702)
Well, and it's kind of like, I've said this about the four hour work week. It's like, well, if you have the ability to have a four hour work week, why not do, you know, 20 different jobs and still work, you know, and work 80 hours a week, but then have 20. Like to me, like that was always the thought is like, if I can do one business and really run it well within four hours a week, then I'd like to have 20 businesses. So with AI it's either free yourself up. And again, that's why I say harmony versus balance because freeing yourself up means that you were trying to get away from it. And you want to do something else versus.
Emerson (16:16.256)
You
Erik Huberman (16:35.918)
You know, can it create, take some of the things off your plate so you can be so much more efficient and maximize our average salary has gone up crazy. So we're paying, we have less people making way more money. So our payroll has not gone down, but our headcount has with better revenue because, and I love that because I talked about a couple of years ago, I want to work with really high quality people that are doing really well and having a good time. Like that was something that became really apparent to me in terms of longevity here.
And so that's one thing I was in. So like the way we thought about AI, thankfully I was introduced to it. As you said about nine years ago, um, I was on the board of a nonprofit called X prize and I was talking to the CEO there at the time, Marcus shingles, and he kept saying, what's going to be the Uber to your taxi company? What's going to disrupt you? And, uh, he said that he thought it was going to be freelance market was going to just completely crush the agency business. So I was like, for like, if you've, if for maybe a tiny business, sure. And that already exists, but like,
If you've ever managed like 15 freelancers at once, you would never believe that's disrupting the agency business. Like it's a nightmare. They all decide to move to Bali and blow off their clients. Like it's just not what's going to happen. And so, um, and don't get me wrong, there's some great freelancers out there, but it just, and it, it just didn't make sense. It wasn't what I was worried about, but I was like, but this AI thing we keep talking about, like rationally that's going to replace a lot of logic work. So it's going to replace ordering at a restaurant, then it's going to replace legal and accounting work. But some of what we do is logic driven too.
our analysis of performance marketing, our, the ROI analysis, the data pulling all that is a huge amount of time from a marketer right now to then decide what changes do I need to make and how do I need to move? And so like, if some, if AI could actually do that piece, it would save us probably half our time and probably take away half of what we need to do. And he goes, well, why aren't you building it? And this was eight, nine years ago. I'm like, well, I don't think text there yet from what I understand it's going to be till 2023 that computers can actually compute that fast.
Number two, I'm not an engineer. Number three, I'm not sure I know where to start. I like the push. So let's go figure this out. And so I ended up designing what I thought would be the right way to do this. And what it started with was, okay, let's assume I'm not going to be the one that creates the actual core AI. And at the time we already had IBM Watson. So it wasn't a stretch that we're going to be plugging into someone else's AI. I'm like, so let's just assume that's number one. Number two.
Emerson (18:33.454)
haha
Erik Huberman (18:53.614)
Ray Kurzweil was the biggest thought leader in the space. He ended up running AI at Google. He's still around. He had a timeline and I had no reason to believe anything, to do anything other than follow his timeline, which believed that by 2023 was when computers would mimic AI. That's when computer processing speed would be there. That's when we could actually start to see AI come to life, but it wouldn't be true AI till 2029, 2030. This was by the way, in 2015, kind of creepy that that is a chat. GPT was like November of 22.
Like the accuracy in which he predicted is insane and he's still updating his predictions and talking about how they're playing out. But so I believed that was true. So I was like, all right, I have some time, but in the meantime, what do I, I'm not going to build the AI cause I don't have billions of dollars. So what am I going to build? I'm going to build the thing that when that exists, what is my unique advantage? My unique advantage are two things. One access to data. No one else has. We are a very, we've worked with so many brands and we continue to work with Sony brands. And even back then we, I saw that we were, you know,
working with tons and tons of different companies and have access to so much data, that data is super valuable. We actually know how all these different companies are moving, how they're spending their money, where it's working, where it's not across the board, which is what made us valuable as an agency is that anecdotal evidence of like, oh, these companies are doing really well on their Facebook ads versus Google. We should put more money into Facebook because that's where people are winning right now. Those kind of simple things. So like, let's grab all that data and continue to grab all that data in real time.
So that when AI becomes a thing, we can take that data and take our second advantage, which is we actually are one of the better marketing agencies out there and know how this stuff actually applies. So we have the insights and the data. If we can teach both to AI, we then can create automated marketing strategy way faster than anyone else could operate this. And so I started collecting all that data. We started developing this. We tried to build dashboards for it three different times and had completely failed experiences with developers. We spent probably a million bucks on that. That went south.
And then, uh, it was late September of 21, uh, a dashboard company out of Toronto pitched me on their great agency dashboard that had all these flagging systems and insights. Didn't have benchmarking, didn't have all this data, but had a lot of the visualization I wanted. And I went, how's the business going? Oh yeah, you know, we're just really getting going. We've been building it a long time, but we don't go to markets. Been tough. I'm like, you guys open to being acquired and they're like, let's talk.
Erik Huberman (21:11.15)
by, I think it was February of 22, we bought Morpheo. And then I, and I, I had talked to them, no, it was March. And I said, Hey, how long would it take you to implement all my data, plug it into this benchmarking, create insights, build all this out so that it can measure one business against what's happening in the market. At that point together, we had like 7 ,000 plus companies, marketing media and revenue data in real time. So we could see how the market's moving. I'm like, how long would it take you to incorporate all that?
So we can plug in an individual company and point exactly at what the opportunity is for that company and where that will hang you for it is. He's like, uh, I need two months, right? Two months. He's like, yeah, like, okay, sounds good. So it was like May 15th was the target date. I'm like, sounds good. Let me, let's, let's, you know, we talked over the, you know, every other week or so, and we got up, I was out of town that May 15th. So I came back like the next Monday and we get on the phone and I'm like, yeah, how's everything going? They're like, great. Things are moving. I'm like, okay. And how, how are we on that deadline for May 15th? They're like, oh no, we're done.
It's all implemented. No way. I've worked with tech teams. You guys got all that done in two months. And now we need just a couple of months to get the rebrand done. They said we need till September 15th to get the rebrand done, to call the whole thing Hawk AI and launch it and all that. And I was like, okay, cool. We'll give you the September 15th. If we can get it done by August so we can beat holidays and back to school and all that, that would be great. Two days later, the CTO who's still with us, he's awesome, emails me and goes,
Russell (22:09.781)
Uh huh.
Emerson (22:10.222)
Yeah.
Russell (22:13.269)
Yeah, yeah, right.
Erik Huberman (22:34.35)
Yeah, I found a workaround. We can get it done by August 1st. No problem. What? And this is like, we had to like redo the contract with, yeah, they're amazing. And so then two months later, Shatch EBT comes out. Ray Kurzweil was right. We plugged that in. And so now we have this machine that is literally processing 7 ,000 companies, marketing media and revenue data in real time, digesting an individual company based on that, showing exactly where they're missing based on the market and able to identify the quantify.
Russell (22:38.741)
Okay.
Emerson (22:39.342)
Who are these guys?
Russell (22:47.157)
Mmm.
Erik Huberman (23:03.278)
Hey, if you were going to prove these three things by doing this, this, and this, you should be able to unlock this much in revenue. And that's what we've built and we're operating it. It's how we power our own strategy. It's what we're using across Hoc Media. We do also allow other people to sign up out, like come in from outside. We sell it outside too. We haven't really pursued it because frankly, it's been so good as an internal tool. We're like, yeah, people want to think and have it, but we have no go to market strategy on it. Um, and, uh, it's been great. I mean, it's literally, we are completely AI enabled and what I would.
AI, I think the best metaphor and I love this metaphor is think of it as an army of 17 year old interns. So you still need adult supervision. You still need to look at it, but it's like, it's crazy how much work can get done like that, that you would have had to spend hours doing. That's just like, here it is. Now you have to like proofread it, but it's good. And with our data, we had a bunch of hedge funds that are data to make sure that it was actually valid so they could trade against it. And we had like a 99 % correlation with Google, Facebook and Shopify's public market data, but in real time versus when they do the reporting.
So it's also been great to trade the stock market against. Yeah. But the cool thing about that was less about the finance industry side, but it's also been really valuable because we know the data is super accurate. And so all the benchmarks are super accurate. On top of that, we're now getting, we're using it a lot for diligence. So a bunch of the big CPG companies, the holdcos, a bunch of big private equity firms will have us come in and do an analysis on a company and their marketing stack before they want to buy them to make sure that like.
Russell (24:05.653)
Interesting.
Emerson (24:06.126)
Very interesting.
Erik Huberman (24:31.086)
They're doing well, but there's opportunity. And so the newest evolution of that, which is more like literally as of last week, now brands have heard about that and they're calling me pre -fundraising to have us doing an audit to tell them where they're missing. So they know before they get to the buyer where their blind spots are. So it's been a fun tool.
Russell (24:48.533)
That's fascinating. Have you guys seen, I guess with, so I guess for me to boil it down, you are basically using AI to crunch the data and give good insights on what you can do better. You're not deploying like AI images and like, are you guys dabbling with that kind of thing, the AI video and that kind of thing, or is that a big part?
Erik Huberman (25:06.35)
Yeah, we didn't build it, but we invested in Go Charlie, which has been a great content LLM. But what I like is the concept of a vertical LLM where it's not just chat GPD and this broad spectrum. But I also know, I think it's UC Irvine's developing a medical driven LLM. It's really interesting when you teach based on a specific language set versus not just broad language to really communicate. Because for marketing, obviously language really matters.
And these guys go charlie .ai built a really good language model. So we're using that for like the first draft of a lot of content and creative that we create because they can just jump right into it and create a bunch. And then we can go edit it and make it better. Um, that's again, 17 year old intern. That's been super powerful. We are using that across the entire agency and we invested in it. Um, you know, other than that, the imagery, I don't think it's there. It still doesn't look real enough that it looks like an AI image. So like, I think it's fun. I think it's interesting. I think it will get there. I mean, the mid journey updates that happened, whatever it was a month or two ago or.
Russell (25:55.765)
Yeah. Yeah.
Erik Huberman (26:03.534)
fascinating. So the rate that this is getting better is crazy. But I also think that these are all great augmentation tools. I don't think it's replacing people anytime soon.
Russell (26:14.069)
Yeah, I totally agree. It's an augmentation. It makes it so that you can do more in your job. You can get more done faster. You can ideate probably quicker. I mean, just to get past writer's block, I use Chat GPT. Like, okay, crap, I'm just not, the juices aren't flowing. So I just start throwing stuff in. And that's where I've personally gotten the most value out of AI is just like getting past writer's block. But I love to hear the data analytics side because that's marketing, right? I mean, we're in an age where you have so much data.
Erik Huberman (26:25.646)
Yeah, exactly. Great way to use it.
Russell (26:43.893)
but it's so hard to parse out. And to be honest, like Facebook, Google, like you can get lots of really good data out of those platforms, but it's not like, it's not a silver platter. Like it's not like, here's the, like, this is what you need to do better or whatever. Like they try to do that, but I don't necessarily feel like I've gotten the best like insights straight out of platform. And so have you guys seen, have you been able to quantify pre -Hawk AI to post -Hawk AI? What...
Erik Huberman (27:01.166)
I agree. Yeah.
Russell (27:11.157)
type of like lift you're seeing in your marketing efficiency.
Erik Huberman (27:15.79)
Um, uh, quantify, I could look honestly, like the cool thing is, yeah, I have all the historic data from the day we plugged it into the day we did it. Um, I know it's significant. The cool thing is we can now see objectively how much we beat the benchmarks across the board and like that, you know, you would hope that us working with someone would bring them above averages across the market. It turns out it's completely correct that we are, uh, an X factor for the companies we work with. And so we can see that in real time, like.
We have this actually, there's a good example. Last week, um, we had a client that their, uh, their CAC was better than market, but it had increased by 18%, which is not good. And so we're like, Oh, we need to look at this. Did we do something wrong? Is the click through rate bad? Like did we change ads? What happened here? And then we thankfully had the benchmarks and we looked, Oh no. And what's nice is we've now set up hockey. I had to just tell us this right away. No, this is the problem. Google in general, the CAC had gone up 23 % for March.
And so as by the way, a real stat. So it was like, Oh, so Google just raised the prices. Like this is it. And so then the discussion doesn't go from, it goes from how do we make your ads better? Because there are, they haven't gotten worse. It's not about your ads. Google just raised their price. So now it's not, how do we improve this? It's, is this tenable or not? Cause it is what it is. And that's, it's just, it's so much more like, again, the, the amount of time my team has had to spend in most marketers spend on trying to improve something that is not improvable.
is insane. And we've seen, I've seen it happen tons of times anecdotally where like people think their Facebook ads have gone through the fork because they're not making the same row as, but it turns out it was their conversion rate on the site that was the problem. Like all these kinds of things that you have to spend a lot of time kind of dissecting the data to figure out where the problem is. Where now it's just like, here it is and we can focus on fixing it and whatever those fix, the rational ways to fix it are. Cause if it's again, if Google, if it was just us that went up that much, well now let's go look at why is our click through rate bad or.
ad ratings, like what is the problem that caused that? We now know it's just Google raising their prices. So now it's just, okay, well, do we want to move the budget to another channel? Cause that didn't raise their prices. That's the conversation.
Russell (29:23.797)
No, that makes a lot of sense.
Emerson (29:24.014)
Well, it seems like you guys are kind of dabbling into a lot of different things as far as like, when I think of marketing, I think of it pretty linear. Like I'm an ops guy, I'm a supply chain guy. I'm like, you make a Facebook ad, you put it online, you pay 50 bucks to push the ad or whatever it is, and then you get money back. And it seems pretty linear, but kind of what you're talking about, Eric, maybe how you've grown Hawk media and how maybe your strategy at Hawk meat as a whole is you guys have a lot of lead gen tools. You can have talked about even in this conversation, as far as like you're personally going out to these meetings, to these events.
Erik Huberman (29:38.222)
Yep. Yep.
Emerson (29:54.446)
Going skiing, what are all these people to like drive revenue? Hopefully eventually. I mean, that's like a marketing maybe funnel on your side of stuff to build business there. You also have your AI tool that's bringing people in. You wrote a book that seems like a pretty successful book on marketing and stuff like that. It seems like even in your own hawk media marketing strategy as a business as a whole, there's a lot of different avenues that you guys are bringing those lead channels in instead of just being so linear. Like this is one path to growth. There's multiple ways to grow that.
What are some of those like unique ways? I mean, you talked about a lot of different ways I haven't thought of marketing in the past that you guys are doing. What are some of those unique strategies that are really working them besides like maybe it's the AI, maybe it's that paid advertising or is there like a certain niche you guys really hone into or is it more of a holistic full brand strategy?
Erik Huberman (30:40.142)
No, it's holistic. That's exactly it. It's, I think, I think people get really narrow with this stuff and forget that it all works together. So, you know, we're running Google ads and meta ads and Tik TOK. It depends on the brand, obviously, but like we're running all these different platforms. And my favorite part is like to the B2B people that listening like, Oh, well, you know, we are B2B. So we go to LinkedIn. It's like, you realize that it's an individual making a decision of the business. It's not a, no business hires a company, no business makes a buying decision. It's an individual.
And they're all on tick tock and meta. And, uh, I always hear that word like our best ads performance is on meta and tick tock for hawk media. And we're, you know, we work, we're getting, we, I know, cause he just yelled it out to me yesterday. We got three really sizable businesses that all clicked Facebook ads for us yesterday that all came in and wanted to talk to us three. And so the lead Jen on, and that's just one day to be clear. So like the lead Jen on those channels is real and like,
It's the same. You're just talking about targeting individuals. And so in terms of like the mix though, like things I see people do is like go way too heavy into one channel. And I looked at it as like a stock portfolio, like things are going to have in flow. Things are going to change. You want to be diversified. Cause I think most people forget that you need to build a business for longevity. It's like the whole, if you don't build a business, like you're going to keep it forever. You will. Meaning like it's never going to, you're never going to be able to sell a business that you like build to sell. And like that idea, like, you know, and you know, good book by the way, built to sell, but at the same time.
You've got to be able to build sustainability and longevity, even for the case of like a deal to sell your business is going to take longer than you want it to. And during that time, you better be able to sustain through it. And so when you're thinking about that, you can't have like Google change an algorithm and it takes out your entire company. So those are important on the advertising side. Also people like this is all what happened the past few years. You now have to do things like email marketing and SMS to convert. Cause if you're not doing things to nurture people through the pipeline.
you're just wasting a ton of ad dollars and you're not going to be able to compete with people that are savvier. Cause that's all this is, is a bidding system who will pay the most for these, uh, the cost for these ad units. And if you're not doing, maximizing it in two ways, one nurturing it. So you get a higher conversion. Number two, your lifetime value, which has to do with merchandising, frankly, more than anything, having the right product set so that you can actually sell multiple things to a customer and actually value that customer at a higher level.
Erik Huberman (32:59.662)
Because if I make $5 ,000 off each customer I get and you make $200, you're competing with me and I'm going to win every time. Cause if I'm making five grand, we have the same gross margin. Let's say we have a 50 % gross margin. I make 2 ,500 bucks in profit off a customer and you make a hundred. Yeah. I'll spend two grand on acquiring a customer. I don't give a shit. I just made 500 bucks and now you're stuck with never being able to compete with me or even close and you're not going to be able to grow your business. Now, and those are very extreme examples, but still like you have to think about like.
For average order value is one thing. How do I get this person coming back, buying more? Like that's where you get true sustainability of a business because it's hard to acquire customers. And so thinking through all of that is a big part of where Hawk drives. And again, we can look at, and we talk about it in our book, Hawk Method, like awareness, nurturing, and trust are the three pillars of marketing. How do I create awareness for a brand that we can drive new people in? How do I nurture that to get them to convert and stay a customer? And how do I build trust? Cause 75 % of people won't buy from a company they don't inherently trust.
And so we're always looking from an analytical standpoint, where are we missing? Where are the metrics telling us we need to focus on? You know, and again, we have the benchmark. So if we're seeing great traffic, but it's not converting, we're probably going to look at trust and, uh, nurturing and what are we doing there wrong is email marketing function like it should is SMS functioning like it should. Are we doing good content? Are we created a great brand out there? Have we gotten third party validation? These are all things we're constantly looking at to see where do we need to build a better mousetrap here.
Russell (34:25.589)
Do you guys prefer to take the full marketing stack for brands, specifically e -commerce brands, or is it something where you come in, run paid ads, and maybe they have an in -house person for email and SMS and that kind of thing?
Erik Huberman (34:36.27)
Yeah. So we're, we're our cart. Um, it's really, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If they're doing a great job on something, we don't want to touch it. If they're not, we do. Cause it all works together. So if they have an email marketing person in house and they suck, yes, we want to take it. They have an email marketing person in house and they're doing a great job. No, we don't want to. Cause we know that if we do eight things right and one thing wrong, we're also fired. Like it puts strain on the relationship. We'd rather focus on where we can have an impact. And if they're already doing a great job on something, we don't need to mess with it.
Russell (35:03.221)
Well, this has been fantastic. I love kind of hearing the flow of this entire conversation, but I'm kind of curious with a lot of this stuff, AI specifically, but the marketing industry, you've been in it for 15 years. You've seen some massive shifts in SEO specifically, and then you're talking about ads, you're talking about, I mean, everything has changed so much over those 15 years. Where do you see over the next six to 12 months, what do you think is gonna change the most in marketing?
Erik Huberman (35:32.11)
I mean, I think it really is going to be just AI. And I think that'll probably change content first more than anything. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, but the flood of AI content and all this written content stuff is. I mean, it was already a problem where like, you can't rise above the noise. Media really doesn't like meaning traditional media doesn't really mean that much anymore. It's just like getting an article, getting press, all that. I'm really curious how that content sort of flood gate happens with AI and what that looks like. Cause I think it's going to really diminish the value.
Um, but then, yeah, the optimization of all that, and then where, you know, focusing on where the advantages come in after that, like we have with the data piece where it's like, you know, okay, if that's the new paradigm, how do I win in that situation? Cause this is competitive. So if you're a brand, how are you going to use all this stuff to be better? And I also would caution like, don't get over consumed with it. Like human adoption is really slow. So it's not going to be like tomorrow, everyone's doing this and you're not. I think people get like a lot of anxiety and.
may lose focus on what's important in their business because they feel like they need to keep up here. Like it should be part of your time and part of your attention, but not like fully focused on this AI thing, unless that's like core to your business. But in general, I think it should be an aspect. It's kind of, I think the best metaphor and comparison is think of it as the next internet where it's like, if you didn't have a website the first year the internet came out, you're fine. But if you didn't have a website at 10 years later and you haven't touched any internet, you're probably getting disrupted.
Like there's businesses that don't need it too, but like it's pretty tough to operate without some sort of use of the internet in your business these days. I'd be, I'd be surprised. So same thing with AI. I think it's like, it's going to evolve. People are going to adopt it. It's going to create advantages. It's not going to completely kill everything. And the other, I do a lot of talks on AI now because of this. And the thing I remind people is like, we even as recent as of last year, people were saying that we would have all driverless trucks by 2025 and there'd be no need for truck drivers anymore. And we're in a truck driver shortage right now.
And I don't know that we have almost any driverless trucks in 2024. So do I think in nine months we're done with that industry? No. I think people really overestimate the human adoption component of innovation.
Russell (37:36.757)
Well, thank you for your perspective. We really appreciate kind of the expertise that you have within the marketing industry, the AI world. But as we wrap up, I'd like to, we'd like to ask all of our guests this, but if you were gonna start a physical product e -commerce business today, what would it be and why?
Erik Huberman (37:58.222)
Yeah. You guys did prep me for it and I still haven't come up with something good, so let me think on it for a second. Cause there was a time where I was always like, someone needs to build this. Like we called it Socks early on. I was like, someone needs to build a great sock DTC company. And then, uh, what's it called? Uh, Bombas and Stance came out right after that. And then we'd said pots and pans. And then you ended up with like Mother Goose and Carroway and, uh, our place. And it was like, okay. I think, you know, it's more.
Russell (38:12.789)
dance.
Erik Huberman (38:24.11)
I think the niche piece is a little better these days where it's like, instead of trying to like just check a box, but actually instead of answering it directly, I think the best thing to do, cause I just had a friend that built an amazing laundry detergent business because the strategy is go look at all the major CPG companies and look at someone that hasn't innovated or really updated the brand and the marketing in a long time. Cause there's so many. And in his case it was tied, but you also have magic spoon, which you just talked to them. They're crushing it. Like what's a category.
that just everybody uses, it's rinse and repeat, you know, could be toilet paper. It could be, again, laundry detergent.
Russell (38:59.349)
Don't rinse and repeat toilet paper though, right? Maybe. Maybe that's the play. Yeah.
Emerson (39:01.806)
Hahaha!
Erik Huberman (39:02.542)
Maybe you can put maybe technology there. Maybe that's the problem. But yeah, I mean, honestly, I think that there's innovation to be had in all those basic categories. And it's usually right in front of you. That's how I look at it versus like, trying to come up with the next sexy business, I'd much rather figure out like, what's something that everybody uses that we just could do it better.
Emerson (39:21.742)
Sounds like Eric's gonna be asking AI what's the next best business to make then. We'll leave them AI's hands then to figure that out.
Russell (39:22.293)
Okay, it's.
Erik Huberman (39:27.47)
Yeah, there was a time where I was trying to like spin up businesses and incubate them here, but like you can only serve one master. So now like we'll partner with brands and all that, but like we stopped focusing on that, which is why it hasn't been as top of mind.
Russell (39:28.533)
Yeah.
Russell (39:39.477)
This is a, honestly, this question is pretty fascinating because some people are like right off the bat, oh, this is the product that I would go with. A lot of times people, especially in the agency space would be like, well, this is what I see working well when it comes to marketing. And they kind of give a criteria. I like, you're one of the first to say, this is how you find the idea. Look for something that hasn't innovated. I think that's a key. A lot of people are wanting to find something, but like, I don't even know where to start. But that's like little nugget right there. Where do you start?
Erik Huberman (39:59.502)
Yeah.
Erik Huberman (40:07.95)
Yeah. Yep. And you go see what do people already have a huge demand for it? Cause educating the market sucks. So what do people already have a demand for that needs to be innovated? I think it's an easy place to start. Um, and then from there it's an X factor. And the other side is just because it's done, doesn't mean it can't be done at an end. I mean, look at Harry's and dollar shave club. Like it, you know, it's, it's like there's room in every market. There just is what's your solution. Why do people need it? And what's your, why are you passionate about it? Cause by the way, if you're doing this for money, good luck. Like you got to really love what you're doing.
Cause you're going to go through ebbs and flows and like through those, in those ebbs, so to speak, you've got to be a love it inherently and want to keep doing it.
Russell (40:44.373)
Yeah, I mean, to your point, true classic tees built basics like t -shirts. Like they have built $100 million plus revenue businesses on basic t -shirts. Nope, no logos, no nothing, just like.
Erik Huberman (40:56.622)
Yep. I was with the founder of True Classic for lunch Monday and he doesn't even know how it happened. He's great by the way. He's just like, he's made a lot of swings. He's had a bunch of businesses. He's like, not, you know, you just keep trying and all of a sudden you got something and it worked out really well. Like that's, you know, that's part of it too is swing the bat. Don't get into analysis promises.
Emerson (41:03.246)
Haha.
Russell (41:16.437)
Yeah, that's 100%. Most people do get kind of tied up in that. So love the answer, thanks Eric. And then last of all, where can our audience find you? How can they connect with you?
Erik Huberman (41:27.822)
Super easy, just add or slash Eric Huberman on any social channel and then we're always down to do a free marketing audit, use the AI system for someone. So that can be done just at hawkmedia .com.
Russell (41:38.453)
Cool. And that's Hawk with an E at the end of Hawk, right? Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you again. We're stoked to have you on. And hopefully, we'll have you back when AI takes over the world in 2029.
Erik Huberman (41:40.654)
Yeah, right. Exactly.
Erik Huberman (41:52.846)
It won't be me, it'll be my AI, but perfect. Yeah, thanks guys.