$150M Business Founder Says: Don’t Forget This One Thing

Being top of mind is really important, and nobody's gonna promote yourself more than yourself like it's just not gonna happen. And so I do believe in self promotion for the sake of driving your business. If you think you're providing value to the world, then it shouldn't be an issue, because you're just letting people know the value you provide.

This is the Entrepreneur School Podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you, the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair, and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under three. I'm a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out on this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to entrepreneur school.

I am excited to introduce you to my guest today, Erik Huberman, who is the CEO and founder of Hawke media and the co founder of Hawke Ventures. Now this is a incredible case story about a man who has been a serial entrepreneur all of his life, is now also a dad, and he has built his business Hawk media over the past 10 years to become valuated at over $150 million so this is not necessarily a goal that we have. Who's listening to this. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Literally never occurred to me to try and grow a business of that magnitude. But I think it's really amazing to listen to this story and to hear some of Eric's tips regarding like, the basic foundations that apply that can really create this kind of success and any kind of success that you're looking for in your business. And I'm like gonna spoiler alert, it's not about your social media following, or how active you are on social media, or any of those things. So tune into this episode to hear this great story and to hear some tips for how you can also focus on growth and what some of the mindsets are that are required to, you know, continue to build sustainable business. All right, I'm so excited to welcome Eric Huberman to entrepreneur school. Thanks for joining me, Eric. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, so I want to just like, hit this right off the bat with you. Built a really successful business valued at over $150 million in under 10 years, which is probably not even like on the radar for so many people who are listening to this show. But I love to, like, unpack that journey a little bit, and if maybe we could, like, reverse engineer it in terms of anything that you did on this road that you wish you didn't do or you would do differently if you were giving advice to somebody who is, you know, more at the beginning of their journey.

Yeah, I'm trying to think what like because later on, yes, but early on, it actually went pretty well. We made, like, the mistakes got bigger as the company got bigger. So like, the mistakes that stand out to me are more recent ones than they are. It is, I'm trying to think of, like, earliest, yeah, I'd say the first thing that I did that wasn't the right move was my original team was all arms reach, like people I knew that was like, Hey, come help me with this. Come work with me. And the problem is like, when they're either friends or they come in in that kind of a tone, and it's not like a professional, like interview, let me figure out if we're going to work together to take it away. It was just like, I need people come on in their sort of attitude towards the company was similar, where it was kind of waxidasical. And so none of those people lasted, actually, only one, and he became my business partner, but the rest of them, like we lasted less than six months because they were not signing up to be to come work for a company that they had, like, gone through the process and felt lucky to be at. They're just like, okay, Eric, like, I'll come work with you whatever. Like, it was, again, very passive in that sense. And so, you know, making the the onboarding professional even, like, I'm not saying don't hire people, you know, like, you could do that, but you need to do it in a way that makes them feel like they earned it, not that they just got it handed to them. That I think that's important.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Actually, I find a lot of the times entrepreneurs that this is how I feel, and I've hired and then, like, scaled back to being a solopreneur again. At this point, it's like, how do you actually translate that desire and the passion that you have for wanting to make your business your vision. Like, how do you actually, you know, find people who want to do that?

Well, if you think about like, when someone takes a job, generally, they've gone through an interview process, and like, it feels like a win, like I got the job. But when you just call up a person you already know, or a friend and say, Hey, can you go more. With me, it's like there was no, none of that, like, excitement. You kind of took that, take that away. And so I think that that, but I think that's an important part of like stepping into something, is like actually feeling like you want to process, versus, you know, like, yeah, there's no emotion then tied to it. It's just like, Yeah, okay, sounds good. Like, this could be cool, but it's just different. And I noticed the the actions were very different. The way they came to work was very different.

So do you find that you have people now who you really think are, like, you know, involved in the like, on board with your vision, and really like an extension of you in that way?

I mean, we would have never built what we did without that. That's, that's an important part. And it wasn't necessarily that those people lack the same vision. They were just again. It wasn't like they they didn't feel the wind on the coming in, and so it was just like they weren't, you know, I was lucky to have them. They weren't lucky to have the job, and that, that's probably a big part of it.

Okay, so what does business look like for you today? Like, what's the, what's the day to day, and what's going on in Hawk media?

Yeah. I mean, we're hawks, about 250 people. We also have our venture funds, and we just closed our second Fund, which is $20 million fund. We have our software business that's up and running, got a CEO on that. So these days, it's a lot. I mean, I've always been the guy that's waving the flag, beating the drum and promotional like I just spent the past four days at a venture capital conference in Napa hosted by the guys from the online podcast, so like Jason calcanus and chamf and David Sacks and all these people and so it's I've just been able to get into rooms and kind of build a network and brand of Hawk that I do a lot of that that's probably a third of my time. Another third is just focusing on growth, working with our sales team, our marketing team, our partnerships team, our M and a team. We're acquiring a lot of companies right now, and like really building that way, so spending a lot of time on that, and then another third of my time spent on all the other stuff, working with our other my partner, our head of services, and really helping with strategy on the overall business and how we grow this thing. And so, you know, probably the best use of my time, but a lot I spend a lot of time too, like, just talking to people, partners, clients, prospects, employees, you know, executives, etc. And I would joke all the time that I'm a traffic coordinator, because I'm like, I'll be the first point of contact. And okay, you talk to this, you do this, you get, like, just directing everything the right way.

Yeah. And we talk a lot about visibility on the show and promoting yourself, and that's one of the things that a lot of business owners struggle with, because we don't like to, you know, brag or talk about ourselves or ask for money or any of this stuff. Like, yeah,

I think that might be and just because I spent a lot of time there, I think it's more of a Canadian thing than an American thing.

Yeah, that's true.

I know that we bought it. We acquired a couple Canadian companies, and the self promotion doesn't seem to be an issue for most Americans.

Okay, so step one, be more like the Americans. Yeah, it's fine. You can be brat like,

I look at it this way, because, like, I've talked to people that do feel shy about it, and I'm like, Okay, so my view of it, I don't do the promotional stuff because of an ego thing at all, like, I would be the most silent person in the world if I didn't think it drove business. But being top of mind is really important, and nobody's gonna promote yourself more than yourself. Like it's just not gonna happen. And so I do believe in self promotion for the sake of driving your business. And there's a couple things that I think are important. Number one, if you think you're providing value to the world, then it shouldn't be an issue, because you're just letting people know the value provide. Like if you're not, then yeah, don't promote yourself and maybe find another vocation like this is not what you should be. You should probably not be taking advantage people. So if you feel good about the value you're providing to people, then promoting it shouldn't be an issue. And number two, if you're worried about turning people off, I can almost guarantee the people that will be turned off by you promoting yourself. We're never going to work with you either way, because the people that watch the promotion again, if it's quality and authentic, and they're like, Oh, you're actually doing good things, and your product or service is doing good things for people, they'll be interested. If they're put off by it, they would never get a potential customer anyways, and in that case, who cares? So totally, I think that's super important, that stuff.

Yeah, so good. So are any particular, like, scrappy, like, really, you know, effective ways that you've promoted yourselves that maybe are less

It's actually, and it's funny, like, secret sauce isn't necessarily in the promotion. The promotion is nice because, like, you know, I've got a bunch of social media followers, and I continue to gain them, and now a lot of times, it's keeping me Top of Mind with a bunch of people I've already connected with. But the biggest thing is actually just staying in touch with your contacts. Like, you know, if you're depending on what the person's doing for business, but if you're B to B, like, This simple act of just checking in on someone every quarter, every way, depending on your business, however often you should for to the follow up, the staying on top of that sort of pipeline will completely transform a business. And I watch like, 95% of people don't do any of it, and they shrug it off, like, oh yeah, I gotta get to that. It's like, that's literally the most important part of your business, the nurturing. Of your leads is like, that is it? And people go, Well, no, I need to go focus on posting. You know, Instagram reels. It's like Instagram reels aren't doing anything for you. Stop it. Go. So you've got this base. Go talk to them and fill the base. Like, that's the simplest part of that. Like early entrepreneurs in individual entrepreneur kind of side is like, you should be building your contact list and staying in touch with them. Start there. It's that simple, and most don't do that. So I can probably say, like, start there, and then once you're got that system in place, then other things become worth it. Because if I get, you know, a couple more contacts through doing a good social post, what do we just one or two, but I put them into a system of follow up and staying in touch that's going to make sure they don't fall through the cracks. Now, all that other stuff is worth it, but if I don't have that net built that I'm actually going to utilize that awareness, then it's vanity metrics, you know? Oh, good. I've got, I know so many people with millions of hours on social media that make no money, and it's like that, sort of like, don't focus on those metrics. Focus on actually, how do I build a business.

Thank you. I'm like, I love how. You know, that's very validating. I preach that exact same thing, but to show like that the results and the outcome that you've been able to have by focusing on that, because it's truly like business and life and everything. It's all about relationships, right?

Yeah. I mean, I spend a lot of my time going to events. I meet people, and then, like I just mentioned, I went to this event the past four days. I probably came back with, you know, 2030, new contacts that are all mostly, have all heard from me already and staying in touch. And who knows what business comes out of that. But, you know, 30 very solid venture capital funds that I know and talking to probably going to be able to turn into something.

Yeah, exactly. And so I think what I'm hearing you also saying, just to like, point it out directly, is, don't let those business cards collect dust on your desk when you get home from an event.

Never, yeah, that's a great actually, I don't even do that with so there's an app. This is a little side note, because hopefully by the time this airs, it might be up. There's an app called captio. It's this, and it's literally just a notepad that I type in whatever and hit send, and it goes to my email box. So my way of doing it is I literally hand them my phone and go, Hey, give me your email. And then let's follow up after this. And then when I sit down in my email box, their email address is sitting in front of me, and I can't send them an email right there. So there's no like second step of like. And what do we have? Someone hands me a business card. I do it myself. I type their email in into this and just have it in my inbox and then throw out the business card. And I don't have business cards, because the other piece of this is, I'm not hoping that they respond or follow up, because most people don't, so I'm going to get your contact. And again, it's even someone that's trying to get a hold of me, like, I'm good about it. So like, if someone's like, I want to show you my software. Like we have our venture fund. I want you to invest my company. I'm like, Yeah, company. I'm like, Yeah, give me your email. I'll shoot you an email, and they're, if they're like, really easy about it, and don't get my contact. I'm like, probably not a good investment. You're not going to chase people down. You're not a good salesperson. I'm out. But the a lot of times they will rightfully be like, Well, no, let me get yours too. I'm like, No, that's, yeah, sure. Here. It's just my email is easy. It's e at Hawk media.com, and so it's like, anyone getting a hold of me on purpose, but I'm like, also, I will follow. I'm disappointed about this. This is you will hear from me. And so what I was going to say is that app was taken off the App Store. So I went to my tech team and asked them, could you replicate this? And in two hours, they built this. So we have Hawk pad now, which we're now waiting on iOS approval to have it on the App Store.

Oh, cool. I love that because it is actually a really clunky but something that's so important. And like, I go to events regularly as well, and I, you know, try, I try and do different things. I have a QR code that takes them to all my things or whatever. And that fourth day actually

then they have the control. And I'm always like, No, I'm gonna control this process, because I know I'm disciplined about it. And, you know, it's really especially for, like, younger salespeople, new entrepreneurs. It's really easy for people to be like, you know, oh yeah, here I'll give you my contact. And then their head, they're like, Why did my job? If they reach out, great. And it's like, no, no, no, no. You want to control your destiny in every way that you can and so that, and that made it really easy, because again, even the new bump, then, you know, bumps back on iPhones or whatever, you get the person's contact, but where's the reminder to actually follow up? Like that? I'm like, people do that. I'm like, great. But what I end up doing is, I do the bump, I give up my contact. I get there is then I copy their email address and put it in that so I remember I still need to follow up. I have the contact great. I still need to follow up with them and remember to do that. So that app becomes my to do list too, because then my email box is my to do list, so keeps everything in one place for me too.

That's like, I don't know why. We're having a mind blowing moment about remembering to email people when they give you, yeah,

It is. I mean, again, I've 250 people on my team, and even my own team that has watched me do this, I have to remind and get disciplined back on it. As I wrote, it's like, it's just for some reason I am disciplined about it, and I'm not disciplined about a lot of other things. But so many people don't prioritize this. And it is that simple. The secret sauce is usually something simple. It's not some groundbreaking technology. AI is not running my world. You know, we do have an AI tool. It's going great. But, like, it's actually the basics that really help you with

That's such a good reminder, because it's so achievable.

Yeah, yeah. And the hard part is you just gotta be out there too. Like, you have to get those contacts to email them. So, like, that part's important too. But I just, I usually see people struggle on the they follow up more than they struggle on the opening the door.

Totally. Yeah. So where does all this come from? Like, when you let go back to the beginning and, like, talk about a little bit about how you got started in business, and what some of the initial practices were that you think helped you build.

Yeah. I mean, so Hawke is my fifth company. Started it when I was 20, just turned 27 and started working on it at 26 so I was early entrepreneur. I mean, even as a kid, my grandfather and father were both entrepreneurs, so I came from that. So, like, I took it for granted in the literal sense of the term where it's like, I just thought that's what you did. You like, you might get a job to learn, but you build your own business. Because that's what I saw. And so I decided my dad got me he used to do what? Why did? I can't remember why. He said, Oh yeah. He got me excited about the idea of, like, saving money for the sake of saving money. Like, I got to save enough to have $1 bill, then a $5 bill, and then a $10 bill, like he got me excited about, like, leveling up in dollar bills when I was, like, 456, years old, and so at six, I wanted to figure out how to get to that higher dollar bill. So I went around my house and grabbed a bunch of my parents things I decided they didn't need anymore. I just went door to door with a trash bag selling my parents stuff in a small town where it was safe. It was really funny, and did it with a friend, and ended up splitting the money with him, but feeling that was so unfair, because it was my parents stuff. Why did he get to split the money with me? But I think he made 100 or $1.35 that day. Yeah. So anyways, at eight years old, I wanted to get I wanted to be a rock star. I needed an electric guitar to do so and told my dad, and my dad's response to me verbatim, was good, get a fucking job. Okay, at that age, it's not like, you don't look at your dad and girl, what are you? Are you crazy? You're telling an eight year girl to get a job. Like, I was just like, okay, that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm gonna get a job started with selling lemonade. And I did not make enough money. I was like, making and he was like, I made $14 the first day. And I'm like, This is gonna take me, like, weeks. Like, This won't do. I don't have weeks, you know, there's a kid that's way too long. So then I actually went to start buying and selling Beanie Babies. And then that got really fun for me. And I ended up making a few $1,000 as an eight year old buying and selling Beanie Babies. That was that was a good time. So then put some money away. I bought the guitar, I bought a BMX, and then save money for a car, actually. And so I was like, business, but again, I wanted to be a musician. Realized about 12 years old, I wasn't that good. All my friends started playing and were immediately better than me. And so I was like, okay, maybe I should just make this a hobby and do business. And I thought I'd be a music manager, until I was like, 1617, and then I was like, all just, I don't need to make music my career. I can have a hobby and go do something else, and out of college, went into real estate. My dad was in the waste and real estate business, like the trash business and real estate business, and I had learned about it just watching him, but I went off on my own. But I started one week before the entire banking industry collapsed in the US, so September of 2008 so yeah, great timing. Made 350 bucks that year, and realized it was like six months. And I was like, this isn't gonna do and I started working on a side project that turned into one on one business, coaching online for musicians. I independent artists, uh, raised a million dollars for that company, brought in a bunch of great executives. Deepak Chopra was an advisor Tom Silverman from Tommy Boy Records. Like I was, it was, what it was, was the drummer in my band through middle school and high school. His dad, I didn't know, but reached out wanting to partner with me on this. He was one of the founders of pay per view on the board of Men's Warehouse, like at a nonprofit with Deepak Chopra. So like just keeping in touch with a childhood friend and helping him out when he when I went to business school or undergrad, and was kind of helping guide him. And his dad appreciated what I was doing for his son, and just said, Hey, we should do something together, and that I had no idea who his dad was. It was like as kids, you don't care what your parents your friends parents do you like doing your thing, and so, yeah, that was super helpful. Launched that built it for two years, hired a CEO to take it over because I realized it was never going to be that big, and learned the problem of having a business with when the like each business of ADA barbaric, key problem that one was having a customer that doesn't have a lot of money is really tough, and independent artists don't. So it was just a hard business. Then built a t shirt subscription company, bootstrapped it and ended up selling it after a year and a half. But we really got to a point where we realized why companies raise money. Because we were grinding. It had grown fast, but we did not. We had great unit economics, meaning the individual sale, we were making great margin, but we hadn't hit a scale where we could really scale up and hire the people we needed to. So I was working 1820, hour days, seven days a week, and we couldn't afford to, like, replace ourselves yet. And. And I just got to the point, after a year and a half, where I was like, this isn't sustainable. It's not growing fast enough. We can't find the bandwidth to do everything we need to do. So we have to raise money or shut it down or sell it, and we ended up getting the opportunity to sell it. And one little side note there, there weren't as many podcasts at the time, so I didn't know that you were supposed to pitch hundreds of VCs and hear tons of no's before you got a yes. So I met one VC guy named Howard Morgan, who is a legend in the VC world. He had started a fund called first ground capital, and I met with him. He loved the idea, but had just invested in a company called fab.com and so it was potentially competitive. And so he's like, I can't, sorry. You're like, this is awesome, but I can't do it. And to me, it was like, well, the VC said, No, so I'm not no more raising money. And so we ended up, luckily, meeting someone that I wanted to buy it. They we sold it for enough to pay off the debt of being in the financial crisis and two startups that I was in. And so got to, you know, reset at zero, and then got recruited by an incubator called science that had just launched a company called Dollar Shave Club, advised for that company, along with their other portfolio companies, helped them build an active, aware, them build an active wear direct brand that we sold a year later. And the issue I saw there was they decided to vertically, vertically integrate the entire business because they thought the valuation would be higher, meaning we opened our own factories to manufacture active wear versus using other factories. The cost almost took us out of business, and it was just like to run a business for the sake of the exit versus the sake of a good business, like just run your business as if you're going to hold it forever. And that was the lesson there. We ended up selling it. And then that's when I started advising consulting, and then built out Hawke media.

Did you always think they were going to build businesses and sell them?

No, and I've been at Hawk I've had for over 10 years now, so no, it's, you know, I think I actually in this has been something that is counter to a lot of what people's advice is, I like re being more reactive than proactive. Now, proactivity is great, like it, you know? But quote, like building a company to sell. There are definitely reasons to look at why companies get valued more and why they become sellable? Because a lot of the reasons they are are good business practices, you know, having more stable revenue and more predictable revenue, you know, making sure that you're not a key man risk, meaning, like, if I get sick or something, the company doesn't fall apart. Like, those are good business practices, but actually built planning on a sale and going, like, we're going to sell in two years, or, you know, go big, or go home. I think that's ridiculous. Like I would again, I worked with dar Shave Club, and I watched that path, and they were going to like, if they didn't get the sale at Unilever, that company was pretty much out of business. They were in big trouble. And so there was a binary outcome that ended up working in their favor, but if it but it was like, the gamble, like, there's so many other companies that play that game and then end up not getting it and they're gone. And so for me, I was always like, Well, why would I play that versus like, why not just like, the level of success can ebb and flow, but it won't be zero, because companies fail for two reasons. Really simple. Number one, they get underwater on capital, so you take on debt, or you take on investors, and you can't get above that line anymore, and you never can. You either can't pay back the debt or you can't get to a point where the investors make money and you end up losing your company. That's number one, why companies fail. Number two, super simple, the leadership team gives up. That's it. Because if you don't have a debt hurdle or a finance hurdle to get over, your company can shrink and grow and whatever like. It doesn't matter how big or small you you might make a little less money. You might make a little more money, but as long as you don't give up, that company can sustain. And so what that means to me is there's two things. Don't get underwater on financing and find ways that you can do this forever. And that's that is when we realized that early in the business, and so we just focused on that, like, how can I make sure that this is sustainable for me, that I'm not going to that I'm not gonna emotionally just go out the window or physically cannot work anymore, kind of thing? And so building a model around that, building a business around that, super important.

Yeah, I've heard lots of that. You know, the struggle of entrepreneurship is real, and the daily like, need to get up and and feel like, okay, you know, I'm working towards something important. This isn't this matters to me. It matters to who it serves and the impact that it has. And, you know, the only way to fail is to quit, right?

Yeah, it's true. And it's like, you know, there's that great Chinese proverb about, like, we'll see where it's like, basically, like, every step that feels like a failure. Well, let's see. Like, could be the best thing for me. I'd be a real estate agent right now, if it wasn't for the financial crisis at the time, it felt like a failure and a disaster. But I am so glad that that happened. So like, the idea of like, when you're in the middle of it and it feels like you're failing, well, it's only if the story ends there. And so it's about just playing it out and not and honestly, like everything you can do to train yourself to not be emotional, running a business is hard, you know, like all the metaphors I've heard, but one of my favorites was like Gary Vaynerchuk at a conference. He said, like, entrepreneurship is eating shit, and your ability to swallow will measure how success. Basketball, you are, like, really vivid way of putting it that is too true, because it is like you're dealing with stuff, and it's the world's smallest violin, too. And like, one of the big again, knowing your audience is a lot of entrepreneurs that my sort of mantra that I don't remember where I heard it at first, but it is something that I repeat to myself every time I'm pissed off about something. Is work, like most won't, so you can live like most can. And by the way, if you're working like most won't, and you're not living like most can, then don't do that like then it's not worth it. So like your lifestyle, your ability to live really well needs to match the amount of work you're putting in. Because I have heard the other advice, which I think is totally valid. There's the past decade, a little more than a decade, it's become sexy to be an entrepreneur. Like entrepreneurs have become celebrities and all this stuff. And like I think that with that comes up, the problem that comes from that is so many people do it for the hype of it, that you realize you're working three times as hard as you would in a job to make half the money, and unless you are actually fulfilled by it, which a lot of people aren't, don't because, like, if you're doing it, because of the ego and because, like, you want to be able to tell people you're entrepreneur, but you're actually miserable. There is my step dad used to say it to me was a pretty successful guy, that he's like, You know what? There's no harm in being able to go home at night, like, and so if you're not, like, but like, for me, it's worked out that I work like most won't, and I live like most can't, like, so I enjoy doing it. I remind myself when things are hard and like, Yeah, but it's worth it. And if it's not worth it, that's an important part, too. And I have run into a lot of entrepreneurs, and I'm like, you know, again, they're making less than I would hire them for, like, just get a job. Like, it's okay. Like, you're gonna make more money, you're gonna be happier, you're gonna be more stable, you're gonna realize like that is why 99% of people aren't entrepreneurs, and though the likelihood of success isn't that high, but if you can do it, you can put in the work, and you can, you know, we also say on the venture side, like you always talk about betting on the jockey and investment where you want to bet on the person running the company, because they're gonna pivot, they're gonna change, but you wanna bet on a jockey riding a donkey, and so is what we always talk about. So like, if you're working really hard on a business, this is just not a good business. It's okay to walk away from it too.

Okay, sorry, there should be a lot down back there. I think, I think I just want to ask you, like, what is your definition of success, and how's that maybe evolved as you are, as you've changed, and your life has changed, and you've you've got a family now and all of that.

Yeah, it's always been the same things for me because, like, I think success is individualized. Everybody, like one of my closest friends since first grade, runs a bed and breakfast on the beach in Thailand that it's five bucks a day to stay at, and she lives on the beach, has two half Thai kids, and, like is loving life and lives that lifestyle, and that's success. To me. There's she's not promoting anything like the pursuit of happiness is really what I think it's about for me. What drives me is the idea of experiencing everything wife has to offer, both personally and professionally. We talked before getting recording, like just had a or not just now she's almost two, but I have a daughter now, building a family. All these things are really important to me and so but I have friends that go house having kids. I'm like, It's great if you want them. Like, I know people that have, like, just fallen into it, like they thought they were supposed to, and they hate being parents. And I'm like, well, that sucks for all of you, like, you brought kids in the world and you weren't, didn't know what you're getting into like it, by the way, it's not that hard to find out what it's like to have kids like, there's many movies, many blogs, many things it's like. Thankfully, you watch a few movies, you kind of get the picture like it's on the pragmatic side, the emotional side's different. But I've been driven by that. So the business side, for success, for me, is costing growth, constant learning, constant new things, and so I get really stressed, anxious, etc, when I feel like we're not making progress. But if I feel like we're making progress, I'm having a blast. And that can be all sorts of different scoreboards. It could be top line revenue growth, it could be profit growth, it could be expansion into new territories. It could be new business lines, getting into software, getting into investments, all these different things. That is what drives that is because that's where I get excited, is what's the next, you know, rock we can turn over and see what we can, you know, create out of it, and what's the next innovation of our business? That's where I have fun. And again, different people are, some people, it's $1 number. Some people, it's, you know, it's accolades. It just depends on what drives you. But I think figuring that out super important, because then you can build something around it.

Yeah, yeah, that's such a good point. And we're constantly shown all of these and we listen to podcasts, and we hear all these stories about people in their journeys, and then we start like believing that we're supposed to follow a certain path or have certain goals or achieve certain things, and we lose track of what, what matters to us individually.

And I've interviewed, so I have a podcast, talk, talk, and I've interviewed. I think we're at like 140 like Highly successful people in every type of vocation, like Olympians, Nobel Prize Laureates, entrepreneurs, musicians, at top athletes, everything. And. It's all origin stories. So like, how did you get to where you are? And I was hoping that there would be, like, I would figure out over the course of 50 of these, or out of these, like, some common thread that drives people to success, and I realize the exact opposite, that there is no common thread, that everybody's path is different, and so replicating paths, it's kind of like when I see these people that post, like, I get up at 4am and meditate for half an hour, and then do yoga for half an hour, and then eat my breakfast, and then, you know, Asana, and then cold pledge and blah, blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Like, that's cool, that that works for them. I also know many billionaires that wake up at 10am so it's like, it's all individualized. It's what works for you. And being self aware enough to know I am doing myself a disservice by this, or I'm not, like for me, you know, I start my day around seven, but I don't have a standard morning routine. I maybe it would help me. I don't really think it would. I'm not that much of a morning person, but once a week I need to get I sleep in. My wife and I trade off on weekends at one morning each weekend I wake up with our daughter. She does and like, I need my sleep. And I have days where I wake up and go I am exhausted, and I have called in sick just because I'm like, I know I'm better when I'm fully energized. Like, my energy is really important for the way I work. And so if I'm working myself to the poor taking a day off, not hard for me, because I work seven days a week anyway, so God forbid I take a day off. Like, it's like, but giving yourself that permission, if that's what you need. And like, it's just everybody has to be self aware enough to know, like, either that'll be it, or it is the person that needs to wake up and meditate and do yoga and do all that stuff. And if that's you, great. My work. I work out five, six days a week, but three days a week I work out with a trainer in the middle of the day, because I found that the break, because I'm like, it's 10am on Mondays, and then 2pm Tuesday, Thursday, that break allows me to then, like, work into the night and see, like, I got a break and I got, you know, reset. So if there's if it's a good day, it's just funny to get a workout in and I'm enjoying myself. If it's a stressful day, it gives me a quick reprieve to then get back into and get fresh. So I found that that was good for me. It's all figuring out how you can make it work.

I love that because you're saying, like, let's stop looking to other people for the exact route on, like, what we should follow on, how we should change and what we should do and start, like, getting more in tune with ourselves and what we need. You know, like, I did this yesterday. I I didn't start work till 10, and then I still had a nap in the middle of the day. And I was like, did I like, I'm kind of feeling a little shame about the fact that I needed that, but I did.

There's someone barking you on social media to work harder. And frankly, my dad was like, I like, I remember when I was in real estate, i for i called my dad to brag to him that I was out or in the office at 6am every day. I was opening the office. I leave at seven. I was closing the office, working 13 hours every day during the week, but 21 years old. And I told my dad this, I'm like, I mean, at 6am every day, he goes, What's wrong with 5am god damn it. So that was, that was the chip on my shoulder that was created by a hard working dad, that, being said, hard work is also important, and finding something that you love enough to keep going at it. But it's also, again, I'm over 10 years into this needing, you know, it things shipped as well, where it's like, we're a big enough business now that if this thing is relying on me working 100 hours a week to sustain it's broken. But my I also love it, so I do work all the time because it's I'm focused on growing it and how I can build on top of it.

Yeah, you just keep moving the finish line for yourself. Exactly. Funny. Okay, so just last question to wrap us up. I just want to know, like, how things have changed since becoming a dad, and how you prioritize your family, and what that looks like for you.

Yeah, it's fun. It's interesting. So I kind of went into this a little bit, but the anxiety of becoming a dad, the only piece I was worried about was, how is it going to affect my ability to work like I do? And, you know, I really want I'm not done. I've thankfully built something great. I've built a great lifestyle. Like, we, you know, I was, yeah, we said we'd get pregnant. My wife and I been together 10 years, and we have a two year old. We said we get pregnant when we around 35 and we said this, like, years ago, and she got pregnant two weeks after I turned 35 so it was, like, funny that, like, usually you're not supposed to time these things. But there it was. And we sort of at a point where, like, we've established ourselves, she's an incredible executive at a private equity fund too. And so we could have, we weren't worried about anything other than, like, how is this going to take away? I travel half to two thirds of the time, like, I'm all over the place. And the shift for me was prioritization, where, you know, if I get invited to speak at a this happened. I got asked to speak in Barcelona at a conference. I went to Barcelona for 12 hours, went in, spoke, got on a plane, went home, and so just being more direct, and I stopped taking invites to, like, speak for 30 people in North Carolina or something like that. It's like I could do a remote, but I'm not going to make it to North Carolina for something that's not going to be worth it. So it actually got me focused on, what are the things that have actually been worth it for our business? I also found in that same note we had been focusing on, like expanding into Europe and expanding into Asia, and like opening cross border. And it was like, Well, wait, I started looking at my time invested there versus what we got out of it. I'm like, I get way more out of being in the US. But. We've built a great brand here. I'm better off saying no to conferences over there, so I can say yes to stuff here. And that realization was because I was also looking at, how do I be more efficient with my time? And jumping overseas is really hard to do efficiently where I hate the place, but I've, all of a sudden, I've been in Vegas every month the past six because there's conferences there all the time, but it's an hour flight I can literally. I did this twice. I went to Vegas. My flight was like a 10am flight, landed, spoke, went back in the Uber, got up, back on a plane, and was home before dinner. So it's like finding ways that I can adjust my lifestyle. Because I really want to be a president. I love being a dad, so it's been, like, my favorite thing ever. I knew I'd like it, but I will love it way more than that. So the adjustment has worked, and I'm still on the road. You know, I'm still, last year I was 70 times, so it's like, I'm still jumping everyone all over the place, but, and we have a nanny to help us during the week, and we got baby sitters if we need them on the weekends. But that's but, like, really just trying to be more conscious of what I'm saying. Yes to has. It hasn't hurt the business, thankfully, which was probably the only thing I was anxious about.

Yeah, that's good. And I know my kids are 11 and nine, so I could say that things will change, like, probably every year, every two and then when they're this age, every six months when there's a different sports season that you have to balance on.

Yeah, I've heard that. I've got tons of friends with kids, and I see what they're, you know, thankfully, again, it's, that's what I was kind of saying. If you pay attention to your friends and, you know, social media about kids or movies like, watch, look who's talking the classic, like, something like that, like, you'll understand, like, yeah, the first three months are really hard. They never sleep, and they're always crying, and you're cleaning up diapers you don't know what to expect. And that's that's one other important note. I will say that I've now noticed this. Entrepreneurs that have kids do not seem to be as thrown off by it as other people, because I think we're used to chaos. We're used to not having any idea what we're supposed to be doing. So when it happens with kids, you're like, Yeah, this is, like, I deal with this every day in my business. Like, you know, they're crying. I don't know why, my business, we're not making enough money. I don't know why. Like, it's just like, you you're used to having to figure out and solve problems. And I noticed, like, friends that don't come from that have a lot harder time adjusting actually, you know, totally.

And vice versa. If you have kids first and then you start a business, it's like, Oh, I get this Exactly, yeah.

Like, it is very familiar in the sense of, like, yeah. I mean, when we uttered and I watched it with my wife, who likes structure, and she was really stressed about, like, I don't know what we're supposed to do. I'm like, neither do I. But like, I'm like, listen, I know that we're above average intelligence. I don't know how much above, but I feel like we are smarter than the average person, and everybody does this, so we're gonna be okay. Like, that was always my I was like, we're gonna be fine. Figure this out. We're smarter than average people. And like, let's be real. There's some really, really unintelligent people out there that have added a lot of kids, and those kids have survived, so we'll be all right.

That's true when you need a reminder of the level of the bar, just yeah for a minute. Oh, well, thank you so much for sharing all of this. It's been really great getting to know you and hearing your story. Eric, yeah, do you want to let everyone know just where to connect with you?

At or slash Erik Huberman, on every social channel and just hawkemedia.com always happy to help entrepreneurs. We'll do free marketing audits, and we have all AI system that will do like, a full benchmark report of like, where your marketing's working and where it's not that we are digesting over 8000 companies marketing, media and revenue data. So we're always happy to help companies use that, et cetera. We know we're in this for the long haul, so we're always happy to help the ecosystem, so to speak.

All right, awesome. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you.

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