March 24, 2023

Episode 209: Erik Huberman, CEO & Founder of Hawke Media

CEO & Founder Erik Huberman launched Hawke Media in 2014. Now valued at over $100 million, Hawke Media is the fastest-growing marketing consultancy agency in the United States. Prior to its launch, Erik successfully founded, grew, and sold two e-commerce companies by the age of 26. Erik has since continued to strategically expand his business portfolio inclusive of a handful of company acquisitions—Hawke Ventures, which raised $25M in its second fund, and most recently HawkeZ, an agency offering brands the tools needed to tap into GenZ. As a serial entrepreneur and marketing expert, Erik has been recognized by his industry peers through honors and awards including, Forbes Magazine’s 30Under30, CSQ’s 40Under40, and Inc. Magazine’s Top 25 Marketing Influencers.

Julian: Hey everyone. Thankyou so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have ErikHuberman, CEO and founder of Hawke Media. Hawke Media is the fastest growingmarketing consultancy agency in the United States. Erik, it's so excited to haveyou on the show, not only because of your experience growing companies, scalingthem, but also seeing how companies really gain this brand recognitionattention and really connect with their customers.

I think as Saunders, that's what we alltry to do but don't always do it successfully. So I'm interested to hear fromyour experience how that's done. But before we get into all that, what were youdoing before you started Hawke Media?  

Erik: Built, sold toe-commerce companies, so, jumped into those after I got into real estate.

One week before Lehman Brothers crashedin 2008, was a commercial real estate agent outta college. So, time sounds alittle too familiar right now, and Yeah, so made 350 bucks that year, kind ofscrambled. Started working online on my own digital businesses, was able tobuild two companies, sell 'em, and then started advising for others on how, andended up building Hawke Media.

Julian: It's incredible tothink about, first of all, the time you were in, in that moment in time, and I,I just can't even imagine having to deal with the weight of having that, goinginto real estate and then starting two businesses. What was the catalyst forwhat kind of led you into the businesses that you ended up running?

What did you see in the market at thattime and, and how did it lead to, or if there's any correlation? How did itlead to Hawke Media in, in where you are now?

Erik: Yeah, it was just, ,it was a function of like the, the tools that were out there and why hadn'tanyone done this. So like the first company was a T-shirt subscription sitecalled Swag in a month.

And I just was like, I hate shopping. Sodo most guys, E-commerce is a thing, but I don't want to go find t-shirtsonline. Like, can't someone just send me something that fits, like what I liketo wear and just ask me like, what's your style? Great. We'll send yousomething. Yeah. Like that seems so much nicer for most guys that just don'tgive a shit about the details.

And so that's why we launched. It waseasy to do a style quiz and we, had PayPal as a subscription partner until webuilt out some other stuff. But you know, it was super. But yeah, it turns outsubscription e-commerce became a thing pretty quick. . Yeah, just, yeah, justsetting like, why doesn't this exist?

I wish it did. Well, I'll just  

Julian: build it.  

Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like a lot offounders have that kind of idea or have that inspiration to a product, but it'snot, not all of them get off the ground, and it's for many different reasons,whether it's. Maybe they're not able to find product market fit, or maybe thatthey weren't allowed or not able to get as many customers onboarded in acertain amount of time to continue the business.

What have you seen for companies thatare successful who come from, whether it's a product led motion or coming froman idea and then going out and finding users, and then building backwards? Whatare, what, what makes the The ones that are successful, successful and, andwhat makes those who failed? What have you seen for the common reasons?

Erik: I think most companiesfail generally because someone gives up. Like, just to be blunt, like there'salmost always an option. I just watched this, the past year has been a reallygood highlight of like what companies weren't how to navigate and whatcompanies just fail. And so we and sorry if there's some noise.

I've got my six month old over here, sothere might be a little bit of tactal cries going out, but yeah, so it's a weend up. , I watched like a, companies that were underwater on the finance side,rework their debt, rework their investments and make it work. And other people,they just go, oh, we're outta business.

We can't make this work. Like, yeah,it's, it's that, that's been the biggest learning I've had the past year islike, oh yeah, businesses don't just fail. Like, it's not just like one daythere's a stamp that says failed and it's gone. Generally it's the founder,trying everything they can or just giving up.

Yeah. And. It's been the difference. Andso, that's why being passionate about what you do is must, because it is hardsometimes, and if you're not into it fully into. You're gonna take the easy wayout. You're gonna just toss in, throw in the towel because Yeah, it's notalways roses and sunshine building a business.

Julian: Yeah, yeah. Andthinking about, in terms of gaining traction from, a customer standpoint oreven just like when you want to turn on the marketing engine and, and itdoesn't always happen initially, you. You get to, know, customers to adopt yourproduct, you work through the kinks of it, you build out your features, thenyou have some kind of, goal that you want to hit in terms of whether it'sattracting clients or building a brand.

What are some strategies for companieslooking to actually turn on a marketing engine and get people interested in theproduct, product and build a brand? What kind of leads to that point and whatare some ways that as founders, we can. Which strategy we should deploy,whether it's social media, marketing, LinkedIn purchase ads, what have you.

Erik: Yeah. It's basically,I, we so wrote a book called The Hawk Method, which usually I'm sitting righthere, but I don't have it right now. But the idea is we wrote the threeprinciples of marketing that helped us grow over thir three. 3000 brands, whichhonestly now is like 4,500. Yeah. And it was, what we found is like the generalthesis is there's three principles of marketing, awareness, nurturing, andtrust.

Think of it as three. Three parts of atripod. Yeah. Awareness is how do you drive new awareness to your product orservice new potential customers to make them aware you exist. Nurturing is whatdo you do from the time that you create that awareness to the time theyactually buy and then post-purchase to bring them back and create that lifetimevalue.

And then trust, also known as brand. Howdo people trust they're gonna get what they actually believe they're gonna getwhen they buy from you? Initially, a lot of third party validation helps thatPR influencers, endorsement deals, and eventually you're consistent, you'rewell known, and that's when people can just trust your brand.

And so when you're talking about how doyou build out, when you're launching a new product, it's always about figuringout like how you're gonna introduce new people to it. , how are you gonna thennurture that? Because there's something called a sales cycle. There's like thebiggest thing people miss in marketing, like from the first time people see yourproduct or service to the time they buy, usually takes a while.

Like yeah, weeks and months. And mopeople like when I say that, it's like, no shit. But then when you look at yourmarketing spend, everybody loves to say, well, I spent a thousand dollarstoday, how much did I make? Like that's all this works. Yeah. And. Nurturing.Doing things like email marketing and SMS and creating great content and doingall these other things to engage that audience are critical to get them throughthat funnel and then keep them in that funnel once they buy something.

Having your merchandising set up so thatthey have other things they can buy or it's repeat purchases. Super importantto make money. And again, setting up that trust factor too. All these things workingin conjunction have to happen because you're competing against other peoplethat are doing it really well.

Yeah, and if you want. Sorry, likecapitalism's a competitive game. It's a transfer of wealth, not in a creation.So you've gotta be able to win and beat the other people out there that peopleare spending money with.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And whatare ways that, you can see founders, whether it's like. Going in, in a certaindirection to build their brand because even the branding pieces is sodifficult.

Who am I? How would people interact withmy product? What our product stands for? A lot of a lot of companies try to gosay, we're better than our competitor. Others try to build a standalone. Othersbuild the same products. Is that all customer discovery? Is that seeing what'sin the market? How, how can founders be better educated on what their brandneeds to be?

And in, in an, in an environment whereattention is, is a valuable commodity.  

Erik: Yeah, totally. And agood question. I would say, when it comes to developing your brand, think aboutwhat your brand, so take a step back. Everyone purchases something throughaspiration. That's how people buy things. Yeah, it's, I mean, I don't mean thatin a grandiose way.

What I mean is like, You might buy, youbuy toilet paper cuz you're outta toilet paper, in which we all know the reasonwhy you buy toilet paper. But that's an aspiration. You're aspiring to not besomeone that doesn't have any toilet paper. Like it's, that's what I mean byaspiration, right? So whatever your product or service is, what are peopleaspiring to achieve when they purchase your product?

Understand that. And that's what you'rebranch stand for. So if you're creating a running shoe company, why do I buyrunning shoes? I wanna be healthier. I wanna be happier, healthier, whatever itis, I wanna look better. Figure out what those things are, and then create abrand around. That's what we're, that's who we are.

We're the good looking, happy, healthycompany. And you can be us too if you buy our shoes. Yeah. That's the way ofthinking about a brand is what is that aspiration? How can I be like you? Andyou can create.  

Julian: I love theaspirational piece. That's something that I haven't heard yet from, from a lotof, whether it's founders or people who, who run kind of agencies aroundmarketing and, and.

Erik: Well, it's superimportant not to confuse your brand and your target. Mm-hmm. , because whatpeople are aspiring to. Is very different from who that aspiration compete iscompelling to. Yeah. So when I say running shoe company, you wanna be happy,healthy, good looking, whatever. You create that as a brand.

That doesn't mean that happy, healthy,good looking people are your customer, right? It actually could be the opposite.It could be unhappy unhealthy, ugly people are your customer. Yeah. Yeah. Andfind those people cuz they're the ones that want to be that and that's whythey're gonna buy the run shoes If I'm already happy, healthy, and good.

Well then your branding shoe's not gonnaYour brand isn't gonna be compelling to me. I'm already there. Why do I need tobuy your shoes? I already achieved that. Right. So that's the target.  

Julian: Yeah, the tar, thetarget. I can see that the, well, obvious it is kind of the obvious thing, butit's the, this difference between the two kind of functions, like theaspiration and the target.

There's one thing that was reallyinteresting to me that about Hawke Media and you kind of have this a la cartemethod. You, I think the way the company's structured, A monthly service andyou continue to either utilize certain features or not. How does that work in amarketing, marketing function in relation to what you said earlier where youknow what's done in a marketing campaign isn't completed in a month and youdon't see the results until, maybe somewhere down the line.

Is it a lot of experimenting? What'sthe, what's the grand plan for companies who come into Hawke Media want to usethe services, but you know, may not need everything or toggling through whatthey need and Yeah. And then how do I measure my success?  

Erik: Great question. Sobasically like our whole methodology, so actually I keep doing this, but it'sstep back.

We took the past eight years to buildsomething called Hawke AI, which is basically we take 8,000 companies marketingdata in real time. That's growing every day. And we digest it and we can, cannow benchmark one company compared to their industry in real time across everymedia metric, marketing metric, and revenue metric.

So we can actually see where you'remaking your money, where you should be and et cetera, et cetera. So we runthrough that. When we talk to a new company, it's all three. We run throughthat. We do an audit on their company and we go, oh, here are the four thingsyou're underperforming on. We can take those.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like ifyou're doing really well on Facebook ads, we're not gonna take them cuz like,then we're just gonna take 'em over. We're not gonna do a good job becauseyou're already doing a good job. You're gonna be pissed off, you switched andyou're gonna fire us. So instead we're gonna focus on things you're happy thatwe can actually do well with.

And we're month to month and now atcarts, so it's like we're gonna pick exactly the things we can help with. We'regonna jump on those and then we're gonna ebb and flow as the needs change andbe flexible with our clients. And that's really the nature of the business. Ourmission is accessibility to great marketing.

It's how can we be the best at what wedo, but really easy to work with.  

Julian: Yeah, you mentionedthe AI piece and it's, and, and it's one of many ways that a lot of industriesare adapting and evolving into, utilizing technology to better have strategieswork more efficiently. And what are some ways in terms of marketing as, as a.

As a collective industry in terms ofwhat's being more effective and, and, and I don't know if it's based on thebrand. I don't know if it's based on, where the attention is or what your useris. If I have a certain user demographic, maybe it's download, TikTok, maybeI'm on Instagram, maybe I'm on these other channels.

What have you seen in terms of theevolution of marketing being that people are now seemingly way more aware? Whothey're, what they're buying, where they're digesting information and what theoverall outcome is when they have a relationship with the company.  

Erik: Yeah. Great question.By the way, gotta hand it to you.

I do a lot of podcasts. This is fun onthis one. What I would say is it's, you're right, the consumers a lot brighterthese days. And like we've all been burned by a stupid TikTok ad that was likesome product outta China. Like I've seen so many means about this. And it'slike I bought one, I bought the like floating island golf set where it was likean to put in your pool.

And I was like, that's dope. And Ibought it and it came, it's like a piece of like turf and there's like floatand I'm like, what the fuck? Yeah, we've all been there. And so what that meansis it, you have to do everything right now. Like what was interesting is likewhen I start, I started Hawk almost 10 years.

You could sneeze and run Facebook adsand make a bunch of money. Yeah. Like it was, I, I still have like these casestudies from Facebook where like we were getting campaigns that were running,80 x returns and a hundred x. It was like fucking crazy. Yeah. It was money.Now you can still do that.

You can still make crazy money, but you gottado everything right. Right. You have to do really well. You have to run theplatforms. Right. You have to have everything else. When I talk about likethese three pillars of marketing, yeah. You have to do it all to even besuccessful. If you don't, it's really hard to just stumble into success.

Yeah. So when I hear about people sayinglike, oh, E-commerce is too hard these days, or E-commerce, that train is, orThat ship is sailed, we can't, no, e-commerce isn't working. Well, it's notworking for idiots. Yeah, it's not working for people that are not savvy atthis, but honestly, like we still have 500 companies paying us without anycontracts that are all doing really well online.

Yeah, that's just us. So like the, thee-commerce movement or the whole side of e-commerce is, nothing's gone away.It's just you have to be good. And all the people that weren't very good thatjust were riding the wave are not doing very well. Yeah. But there are a lot ofcompanies watching it.

Julian: Yeah. It seems likeeven more so today, brand loyalty is in, in, in kind of the surprising way isbecoming extremely more valuable and. You are what you wear, you are what youconsume, and And it's for that experience. Exactly. If we have a greatexperience with something, the word of mouth, that contagious really begins tospread, and you'll see a lot of companies who do the things right, becominghighly, highly successful, even with the most minimum products, the mostminimum value that they bring to customers.

And it's around Also, another thing is,is like community and fostering. Community and building kind of a conversationaround, what your brand or your product is and how have you been able to, or howhave you deployed that? If you have for com, for communities or, or forcompanies that you work with in fostering that part of the ecosystem, which isnot just like, okay, we have the attention now we're in the nurturing piece.

How do we create a conversation aroundthe products? What are some ways that you've done so successfully for.  

Erik: Yeah. Honestly itwhat's, it's funny you say that cuz it's really comes down to if it's a greatproduct or service, it's easy. If it's not, it's impossible. Yeah. So you don'treally have to force it.

Like I think a lot of people assume thatlike the reason people are really rabid and having conversation around aproduct is because the company did something really brilliant. Right? Honestly,no one's that smart. It's usually because it's just a great product and theytime it right. This is happening right now.

I, I don't wanna blow 'em up too much,but I have a company that is literally the answer to the problem with svb.Yeah. I'm an advisor to it where they're a client of ours. Actually. No, I willplug 'em. They won't hate me for that. They love it. It's so treasure.tech.Yeah. They're treasury management. So basically instead of having your cash ina savings account, they go and manage it and put into conservative investments.

They get higher returns in a savingsaccount, but they're also not holding your cash. So there's no run at the bankfor them. Yeah. Yeah. So, The answer for security around your cash if you havecash sitting, which for venture companies, this is the problem is if you raise10 million, that money goes and sits in a bank account.

Yeah. While you burn through it. Yeah.And they're like, well, hey, you can give it to us. It'll earn 8%, which willextend your burn quite a bit. Yeah. And or whatever their percentages they canearn. They're not promising returns, but they're getting good returns. We canearn you money on it. And by the way, there's no run at our bank.

We are just holding it on your behalf.So yeah, it'll come right back when you need it. And, Oh, this is what I meanby like, guess what happened yesterday or Monday? Yeah. They're justskyrocketed cuz they've been spending, and this is after several years ofbuilding this business and getting the name out there and then all of a suddeneveryone that had been talking to was like, oh shit, I get it now.

Yeah. Here flooded. And so what arepeople gonna say? We'll get that overnight. But that founder, Sam, like raisedmoney in 2022 when it was impossible, like almost went out of business, like,was scared about making payroll, all the shit you go through, and then finallythat fucking thing hit. And he took advantage of it.

Yeah. He was ready for. And that'sgenerally what happens, like this building community, getting the name outthere, it's like more about, it's like the grins and repeats scalable piece ofthis is so much more important. And then when that time hits, right, gettingready for it. It's the, o what is it?

Luck is opportunity, meaningpreparation. Yep. You prepare, you prepare, you prepare. The opportunity popsup and you go for it. Yeah. And you  

Julian: execute. And, andthat's a huge component to it, right? Exactly.

Erik: Well that's, andthankfully they know all this stuff, but like now they, they have to deliver,they have to manage that money.

Well, they blah, blah, blah, but nowthey have all the opportunity to make a huge company.  

Julian: Yeah, it's sofascinating, the timing piece, as you mentioned. And, and I was having aconversation around overnight successes and what that really meant. But therewas a lot of previous work that happened before, and it's amazing to hear thatthat company's having success.

Thinking about Hawke Media, obviouslyyou've worked with thousands of, of companies, helped thousands of brands.What's next? What's next on the horizon and, and what keeps you up at night?What, what are some of the biggest challenges that you see the company facingtoday?  

Erik: Yeah, so, all thefirst part, we always say world marketing domination.

Like we are expanding. We just, wehaven't announced it yet, but we closed an acquisition last. We're working onanother one. We're, we're buying up agencies where we, our venture fund'sactually thankfully, doing really well. Even all through this we have someincredible investments we've made like Postscript and Clavio and Tap Cart andfaring all these MarTech and e-com tech companies that are awesome inskyrocketing.

And so that's going really well. We'vegot our financing arm, we've got Haw ai, which is new, and we're really excitedon what that can turn into. So these are all pieces that are a part of a biggerpie of the idea is, again, to really build out this promise of accessibility togreat marketing. Be the best at what we do, but easy to.

We're now leveraging this platform we'vebuilt on how can we continue to be better and better and better. Yeah. Thananyone else. You could call, cuz part of my goal is like, it should, like,there's no pit. Like people ask who our competitors are. Just anyone that woulddo marketing instead of us, obviously.

Yeah. But I want it to be like, you'regonna work with someone else. Like I want it to almost be like, really? Yeah.Why? Why We're cost effective and we're the best at what we do. There's no oneelse that can compete with us across the board. Like it'd be, it's kind ofridiculous. And that's really what I continue to try to.

build and we, I'd say 99% there,honestly, there's still some other great agencies. And so, yeah, I just want itto be more and more like now I look at like, what are the top agencies outthere doing? Like, more of our, sure. When I say competitors, funny enough, thetop agencies out there are not the people we really compete with.

I'm not in pitches with the other bestagencies. Sure. Usually it's me or some bullshit agency that's over promising.Yeah. That's where we struggle. But the other good agencies now, I'm like,those guys suck. If someone's gonna make a decision to work with them, I can'treally help. , but let's look at the really good ones.

What are they doing that we're not, andvice versa. So we can like accelerate and be better and better and better. Sonow we're almost competing with ourselves in that sense. Sure. It's like, thisis where we are now. How do we now improve ourselves 20%? What are the thingswe're missing that we think we can do better?

And how do we have this constant pursuitof perfection? Yeah. Though it's never achievable given the tools that comeout. So the good example there is we launch Hawke AI waiting for something likechat G P T to come up. Yeah. And now it. And we're like, perfect. Now we haveall the data to teach a natural language processing AI tool.

How to, how marketing works. So we canactually have an automated marketing strategist. Yeah. Like we can have an, amarket marketing assistant would be an understatement of it, but that, an AICMO is what we're trying to create now. We actually can just about get theregiven our data and the tools that have been created.

Yeah. So those are things that we'relooking at is how do we continue to stay on top of that to continue to deliveron our promise of being the best  

Julian: yeah. .And the secondquestion there was, what are some of the biggest challenges that you face todayin  

Erik: good thank you.Reminder. Yeah. It's so, when you're at a, when you've spent a year and a halfof the media and everybody's saying, cut, cut, cut.

Slow down, slow down, slow down. Thedemand for marketing is lower. Yeah. And so I've not navigated a market likethat, and it took me a few. To really understand what that looked like and whatto do in these situations. Cause I just, I, I ran a business that grewmassively every year for eight years. Yeah.

And all of a sudden, year nine, it'slike, stop. Everyone stopped . Not me, but everyone else, we gotta stop. Andit's like, what do you mean stop? Why would you stop? We're all making money.Yeah. And it's amazing what fear does to people. Like I had to talk to someoneon Monday that was like, Hey, we need to hold off on marketing cuz we have tosee how this bank stuff shakes out.

Has, the company has nothing to do withbanking. It's a fashion company. Sure. And I'm. I'm like, who do you bank with?Like JP Morgan. I'm like, ? Yeah. What are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah.Like.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. We've hada few conversations in-house about, different, different people.

It's like those who deposited and thosewho haven't but are in an adjacent industry are, are one branch of people andthen everybody else is just kind of watching and seeing it all unfold from,from the sideline. Right.  

Erik: And I mean, even thecredit suis had their thing, like it was First Republic Monday, then it wascredit suis today, and it went, and then everything's fine.

Like, it's like it's gonna be volatilefor a couple weeks and everyone's gonna fucking not forget. It was the secondlargest bank failure in history. It's not, no one's gonna forget this, but it'slike, I don't think it's gonna be like it's a signal that banks are gonna havesome issues. I think bank stocks being down is actually really reasonable.

It's like they're getting squeezed onrate. Like we increased rates at crazy. It was obvious that banks and realestate, and I have a huge real estate portfolio, like both are going to get hitin this. Yeah. It's obvious who's directly affected by the increase in rates.Like that's, it's really simple. Yeah.

Right. , once it shakes out it'll befine. But like it showed, there is a little bit of weakness there, but theredidn't necessitate a run at the bank, like SFB wasn't going anywhere. Soanyways, that is, these conversations have been the challenge because whenpeople aren't bullish on the future, they're not gonna invest heavy into it.

Yeah. And so it's just been slower.Yeah. Not being said, when I say challenged, the business is more profitablethan it's ever been. Cause we got also very frugal. It's, running well. We'rereinvesting into Hawke AI heavily. We're that's growing like crazy. So it'sjust like our growth has. , but everything else is fine.

Yeah. And so it's just, it's more of a,as a founder, it's a mental mountain to get over. Yeah. But I like growth. Iwanna grow my fish. Shit. That's what's fun. Yeah. It's just like, all right,all right, all right, we're gonna go efficient. We're going figure out whatwe're gonna do, period. But we better get back to fucking growth soon. Andthat, that would say is challenge, honestly.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I lovethat. And I know we're strapped for a little bit of a tighter episode here, soI want to get a couple of quick answer questions from you quick responses fromyou. One, what's particularly hard about your job?  

Erik: I, and I hate to bedismissive, but I think it's important to understand is like for everyone elseat, at company, if they screw up or the company goes under, it means they haveto go find another job.

Yeah. Which sucks. Being unemployed isscary. Like, don't, I don't wanna dismiss that, but like, that's the, that'swhat happens to the most senior to a CEO of a company that's not the founder orthe owner. What happens if you screw up? You have to go get another jobsomehow. Right, right. the founder, their world ends.

Yeah. Like this is everything. Yeah. Andit's hard to explain what that means, but it's like your, your entire soul isin your company when you, that's what it takes to build one of these. Yeah. Andso failure of it is so much more meaningful that it's, they say it's lonely atthe top, but again, even I kind of dismiss that until it gets harder.

And then, Wow. It, it's interesting.Like that is the hard part is knowing that like, this matters to all myemployees. Like they're, I have my team's awesome, I love my team, but the endof the day, if it, if I had to stop paying everybody and we have to just keepworking for a year, cuz I've had to do that myself.

Yeah. Very few are sticking around.Maybe some actually thinking about it. Maybe some would, maybe some could.Yeah. So I couldn't, from a financial perspective. But that's stuff that likethe owner has to do. And so the, the weight on the shoulders thing, if you askwhat the hardest part on, it's more, it's actually, it's, it's the weight, butit's almost knowing like it's on you.

Yeah. There is no, you don't get to gohome at night. If there's a problem, you're fixing it. If this needs a push,like I, I've worked harder the past year to, keep things going, then I everhave because that's what it takes. Right. And there's, and there's no one else.Like, and don't get wrong.

There's a lot of people working hard ata. , but it's like they're gonna do, they're gonna push it as much as they canand then it stops. Right. For me, it's like I don't get to check out. I have tojust keep working to make it happen. Yeah. And that generally is fun. It comeswith a lot of benefits. It's world's smallest violin in here.

I love being a business owner, but yeah,at, at times it's like Jesus Christ. Like, I want to take a nap. Yeah. But Igotta call. I gotta make,  

Julian: yeah. Yeah. Exactly.And last question here is whether it's early in your career or now, what booksor people have influenced you the most?  

Erik: No, I, funny enough,number one I'd say is easily my dad he's an entrepreneur, was an entrepreneurtoo, and literally like eight years old, wanted to play electric.

Guitarist said, I wanna be a rockstar,so you better get a fucking job, . And like that. He, he definitely pushed meto be an entrepreneur and indirectly like, educated me on money and numbers andlike always was in the back of my head and I just naturally gravitated towardsthat because of that and was always a great sounding board.

So that's one. That's an easy. Book, Ialways mentioned this book cuz it's not as well known in the entrepreneurialworld. It's a music book. I, my first company I started after real estate, Ididn't mention was a music company. And I wanted to learn about the industry.And this book had just come out from a rolling stone writer named Steve Knopper.

It's called Appetite forSelf-Destruction. And it's about the music industry's perpetual. Actions thatcontinue to screw themselves over. Like, yeah. When the CD came out, everyonebeing like, that's never gonna work, and not wanting to adopt it. When digitalmusic came out and all the record labels just tried to sue and stop it.

And now Apple owns the biggest digitalmusic platform at Spotify. Like, why doesn't Universal music own Apple, whereSpotify like, it's crazy. And I was, and it just, it was such a great book as ayoung entrepreneur because it's in the back of my mind with my own business allthe time. What am I doing that I'm in ignoring innovation.

Sure. Don't end up letting innovationdisrupt me, which is where my venture fund came from. It's where Hawke.ai camefrom are both like tools. Yeah. And AI that I think disrupt what we do. Yeah.But why don't we own both of 'em? Yeah. So it's that kind of, that was soimpactful. So self appetite for self destruction. Love that book.  

Julian: Amazing. Erik. Lastlittle bit is, where can we find you? Where can we find Hawke Media? Give usyour plugs, your websites, your LinkedIns, your Twitters. Let's hear it.  

Erik: Yeah. Super simple forme. It's Address slash Erik Huberman on any of those. Any social media channelI'm easy to find. And then hawkemedia.com you can also buy the book, the HawkeMethod Hawke AI, all those things.

But really easy to find. We try to bevisible.  

Julian: Amazing. Erik, it'sbeen such a pleasure chatting with you and learning about your experience, butyou're working on Hawke Media and overall, I, it's such a pleasure having youon the show. I hope you enjoyed yourself and thank you for being on BehindCompany Lines.

Erik: Yeah, thanks forhaving me, man. We'll talk soon.  

Julian: Yeah.

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