{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"How to Build Community & Make Great Marketing Accessible","description":"Erik Huberman is Founder and CEO of Hawke Media, an agency serving as \u201can outsourced CMO-level expert\u201d which, Eric says, \u201cputs client success ahead of our own.\u201d The agency\u2019s \u201cSWOT team\u201d identifies \u201choles\u201d in a client\u2019s marketing program and provides a \u201ccomprehensive \u00e0 la carte menu of services and month-to-month contracts\u201d to address those needs in a timely manner. Month-to-month works, Erik says, because the idea of signing a long-term contract with someone you have just met is like getting married to someone you\u2019ve never even dated.\u201d When the agency started 6-1\/2 years ago, the scope of services was relatively narrow \u2013 primarily e-commerce. In short order, Erik added content creation, production work, and web design. Last year, the agency purchased its first affiliate agency. Erik says that it was the -commerce community that built Hawke Media and e-commerce is still 70 percent of the agency\u2019s business. Today, customized, data-driven, performance-based solutions facilitate product launch, scaling, and business vitalization for a broad range of industries and business sizes. \u201cBig\u201d companies are responsible for only two percent of the agency\u2019s revenues.  Erik says his agency\u2019s goal is to expand into 3 to 5 new territories this year. Rather than acquiring agencies or opening offices in new locations, Hawke hires talent in places \u201cof interest.\u201d When things in a particular area \u201cstart to open up,\u201d the agency evaluates the kind of space they want . . . and if they want a space. New markets are selected based on market opportunity, cost of living. high concentration of ecommerce brands, SMBs, startup community, and agency saturation. He believes that TikTok, once it scrapes through the political issues, will be \u201cone of the first things since Facebook and Instagram, to be a viable [and quite possibly great] advertising platform.\u201d Erik notes that building community is one of his agency\u2019s core values. Hawkefest, an annual summit, has drawn 600 brand owners every year for the past 3 years. Since inception, the agency has sponsored weekly e-commerce Happy Hours, recently started fun bi-weekly Zoom events, and even more recently introduced a trivia night. The agency will partner with the city of LA to hose an e-commerce week starting September 28.  Erik says that one thing he has learned over the years is that hiring and investing ahead of expected growth is \u201calways a mistake.\u201d Reacting to reality makes growth far more sustainable than proactively building for something that might or might not happen. Hiring and training executive talent is more difficult than hiring and training staff. Hawke operates a venture fund that invests in marketing and e-commerce technology and e-commerce brands. E-commerce-related business doubled in Q2 of this year . . . both large businesses and small. Eric sees cellphone SNS (social networking service) marketing as a massive opportunity in the coming months, even more so than email. Erik can be found on his agency\u2019s website at https:\/\/hawkemedia.com\/ or on any social media platform, including TikTok, @ or \/ErikHuberman.  ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am very excited to be joined today by Erik Huberman, Founder and CEO and Hawke Media based in Santa Monica, California. Welcome to the podcast, Erik. ERIK: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It\u2019s good to be here. ROB: Excellent to have you here. I\u2019ve heard about Hawke Media for years; why don\u2019t you tell us about Hawke Media? ERIK: Sure. Started about 6-\u00bd years ago, basically with the idea that great marketing is not accessible. As a business, it is really hard to find great marketing talent, whether to hire in-house or good marketers as agencies. I just got sick of the ecosystem and decided to build a small SWOT team to help the companies I knew needed help \u2013 a bunch of people each with their own expertise, like Facebook marketer, email marketer, web designer, fractional CMO, etc. I just created this a la carte, month to month really simple model where we go into a business, identify holes in their marketing, and then spin up those people. The whole idea is making great marketing accessible. ROB: A la carte, month to month is a little bit unusual. A lot of people aspire, especially as they grow and build their business, to get deeper into retainers, to get deeper into packages. How do you handle that degree of flexibility? ERIK: It\u2019s a few things. At scale, it\u2019s a lot easier because averages play out. We know on average, we\u2019re going to keep this many clients, sign this many clients, lose this many clients, etc., so that we can actually staff accordingly. Again, the percentage variability gets a little more evened out. Our people work on multiple companies. Our biggest clients are 2% of our revenue. It allows for a lot of spread-out, so it allows us to actually build a business that is sustainable around doing that. What\u2019s nice is our clients actually get the benefit of the efficiency of our employees working on multiple companies, so it allows us to charge less, make it easy, but then we get the benefit of the averages playing out and being able to ebb and flow as companies come and go when they need us. ROB: I feel like I hear a layer of systems-thinking underneath what you\u2019re sharing here. You\u2019re talking about thinking about average duration, and even when you\u2019re talking about sharing staff and clients and being able to spread the work around, there\u2019s some knowledge transfer that has to happen. Have you had a natural dispensation towards process? How did you come to the ability to build and hand off a client? A lot of agencies really can\u2019t handle that. ERIK: This is my fifth business, so I\u2019ve done a lot of operations. I wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019m necessarily an ops guy. I\u2019m an operator in terms of the traditional sense of the word, but I\u2019m not \u2013 honestly, it\u2019s 7 years of doing this, almost. Now I know the numbers cold. I manage my business, I care about it, I love it, so all these things have become very clear. In the beginning, it was a lot simpler. When I hired seven people, it was more just \u201cHow do I create something sustainable and profitable?\u201d Then you start to see these benefits and you start to be able to scale off these benefits. It\u2019s the hindsight thing, where looking backwards, I can tell you why our company succeeded, but in the beginning I was like \u201cThis makes sense intuitively,\u201d and it came from me running businesses and hating the way our agencies worked and continuing to have to make changes, and building off of that knowledge. But then a lot of the unforeseen benefits came in too. ROB: What were some of those prior businesses, if I dare ask? What was your journey? ERIK: There was a whole entrepreneurial journey of selling stuff door to door. Got into Beanie Babies when I was 8 years old and made a few thousand bucks. So, there\u2019s a lot of history there being an entrepreneur. But the real first business was actually filtering storm drains in California. California passed a law in 2006 that you legally had to filter your storm drain. If you were caught not doing it, you would end up getting I think a $75,000 curb drain fine. It was big. I had a friend that pursued solving that problem and being the one that would actually handle that. I came in as his partner and handled sales and marketing, and we started to scale it. There\u2019s a very long story here, but it was that. Then I went into real estate the week before the entire banking industry collapsed, made $350 that year and went, \u201cI\u2019ve got to figure out something else,\u201d because that\u2019s a really rough sustainability in terms of salary, to live in LA on $350 a year. There\u2019s no arrows pointing there. So, I started an online music company, built it for 2 years, hired a CEO to take over. We got it to profitability and then I realized it wasn\u2019t going to be that big. Then I built and sold two consecutive fashion subscription ecommerce companies. Scaled them really fast, did really well. ROB: I imagine in that ecommerce you had some agency partners that maybe didn\u2019t function the way you were hoping they would? ERIK: Yeah. The number one thing, which is why we\u2019re so keen on month to month, was the idea of signing a year contract with someone I just met. Like, \u201cLet\u2019s get married even though we\u2019ve never dated.\u201d ROB: In the early days of Hawke Media, how did you even come to the name? What\u2019s the significance behind it? What did the early days look like? ERIK: I wish I had a good story for the name. It really was as simple as I was originally going to call it Growth Hacker Group, and I mentioned it to a friend that was a partner of mine, helping me do some media buying, and he\u2019s like, \u201cErik, I just signed with Walmart. You think they\u2019d ever put their name on a contract that says \u2018Growth Hacker Group\u2019? Just keep it simple.\u201d I grew up in a small town called Ojai; I loved red-tailed hawks as a kid. Basically, I started looking on GoDaddy at 9 p.m. at night. I still remember sitting there, and I found that Hawk Media without the \u201ce\u201d was taken, but with the \u201ce\u201d wasn\u2019t. I was like, \u201cThat sounds good. I like that.\u201d Made the website, and we were off to the races. It was that simple. ROB: And now, at least when we actually do go to conferences, your logo, that name \u2013 those are things that you see at conferences commonly. Hawke\u2019s a meaningful name out in the business world, so congratulations. ERIK: Thank you. And that\u2019s something to learn about all names and all brands. It\u2019s what you make of them. It doesn\u2019t really matter. I\u2019ve really learned, especially in B2B, just make a name that isn\u2019t going to turn anyone off. It should be pretty simple. And then what it turns into is based on how you build your business \u2013 your reputation, your consistency. ROB: Did you ever have an inclination to pursue the rebrand, or was that an idea you had disabused yourself of in prior businesses? ERIK: Say that again, sorry? ROB: The name. Did you ever, over the course of the journey, have an inclination towards changing it? Or is it an inclination you shook yourself of in prior businesses and learned that lesson earlier? ERIK: The only thing we\u2019ve talked about with Hawke Media is dropping the \u201cMedia\u201d at times. But no, again, at this point we\u2019ve made the name what it is and we\u2019re happy with what it is, so there\u2019s no reason to change it. ROB: Early on, were there any particular lines of business you were deep into? Were you deep into ecommerce from Day 1? Any particular things you said you wouldn\u2019t do? Were you not doing SEO or paid social? Or has it been the full board? ERIK: We definitely have scaled our services. We bought an affiliate agency last year; we didn\u2019t do it before that. We didn\u2019t do much content creation for clients for a while. We didn\u2019t do production work. In the very beginning we didn\u2019t do web design. That came in pretty quickly. So that\u2019s definitely evolved over time. Ecommerce was a big core of our business because that was my background, and in the beginning, it was all arm\u2019s reach. Anyone I knew that needed help is who hired us. So, it was mostly the ecommerce community that built us. We\u2019re still probably 70% ecommerce because those clients begot other clients, etc., etc., and it just scaled from there. But we\u2019re agnostic in what we want to take; just our reputation is massive in ecom. ROB: Certainly, and that probably drives some of where you show up, where you speak, where you market. Not entirely, but a good amount. ERIK: Yeah. That is the core. Again, it\u2019s 70%, which I like. I\u2019m happy that we still have the 30% that isn\u2019t, and we do a lot of cool stuff in SaaS and brick-and-mortar stuff and even restaurants and gyms and all sorts of stuff that was more affected during this. But a lot of it has been \u2013 it\u2019s nice to have that diversification, but we\u2019ve doubled down on e-com, too. We\u2019re hosting Ecommerce Week LA with the city of LA as a partner September 28th. ROB: Interesting. Have you done that before? Is this the first year of that event?  ERIK: This is the first year. We\u2019ve done a summit every year for brand owners called Hawkefest and had about 600 brand owners every year at that, and then we wanted to parlay it into something bigger. I\u2019m the guy that, when we accomplish something, I\u2019m like \u201cGreat, what\u2019s next?\u201d Hawkefest has gone really well. It\u2019s been awesome. We\u2019ve done it for 3 years, and it was like \u201cWhat\u2019s next?\u201d So, we got the city of LA to sign off on doing a full week of events. We were trying to push it for last year, but we couldn\u2019t get it done with the city on time, so now it\u2019s this year. Now with what\u2019s happening with COVID, we\u2019re going virtual with it. But the nice thing about virtual \u2013 and we\u2019ve already thrown some virtual events \u2013 is we can have way larger headcount and way bigger pipeline, which means for next year, it becomes a great audience and community to make next year that much bigger. ROB: Right. At that point we may be able to travel, we may be a little bit itchy to travel and maybe come on out to the LA area. ERIK: Exactly. ROB: Especially in the fall. Some of us are looking to get away from where it\u2019s getting cold. ERIK: LA\u2019s a beautiful place. ROB: Absolutely. As long as you have more than $350 a year to make a living. ERIK: Or at that point a really good max on my credit card. That helps. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] You mentioned it was the third year of Hawkefest. What did the first year of Hawkefest look like that you punched up to get to 600 people? What made you feel like it was something that you needed to pursue? ERIK: It was pretty big the first year. I think it was 300 the first year. It wasn\u2019t like some massive jump. We could afford more, so we spent more to give more room for people. We capped it out. That was 3 years into business, the first one. We knew we had a community around us, I had connections, etc., that we could pull it off. It was something I wanted to do from the beginning. We\u2019ve hosted Ecommerce Happy Hours since before I started Hawke Media, and now we\u2019re hosting what we call NightHawke, which is biweekly Zoom fun events. Tomorrow night we\u2019re doing a trivia night. So, we do stuff like that. Build community is one of our core values. That has always been a big part of what we\u2019re doing. Once I started to see the momentum, I realized basically at the end of Year 2, \u201cHey, now we\u2019re at a point where financially we can take the risk. We have enough partners and sponsors we could probably bring in. I feel confident I can bring in the speakers people want to see and we can get it out to an audience. Let\u2019s go for throwing our big summit.\u201d It was something I had in mind for a long time and then pulled it off. And then once we did and felt comfortable with it, then we started making it an annual thing, so then we had it for 3 years. We were going to have a fourth one this year; the idea was it was going to be the capstone of Ecommerce Week. But with COVID, we decided to literally just not have that piece. We don\u2019t need to have a virtual Hawkefest. We can just have Ecom Week. ROB: Seems like you\u2019re always thinking one step of what\u2019s been done and one step of what\u2019s next. What are we looking to see in Hawke Media in the next couple of years? I get the impression you might know where you\u2019re driving with it. ERIK: Oh yeah, 100%. It\u2019s shifted, and it\u2019s still shifting because of, again, the change in the world. But we wanted to expand into three to five new territories this year. We have a list, which is Dallas, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boise. They\u2019re places we wanted to open up this year. We already have New York, Boston, and LA. Originally it was, \u201cLet\u2019s look at maybe acquiring a couple agencies or opening offices in those places.\u201d Acquiring is harder because it\u2019s harder to meet these agencies. Opening offices makes no sense. But hiring in those places now really does, so we\u2019ve actually made hires in Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, and Chicago already, and we\u2019re interviewing someone in Boise right now. San Francisco we haven\u2019t touched yet, but the rest are starting to move. We\u2019re just doing it backwards. We\u2019re actually making the hires first, and then when things start to open up, we can assess what kind of space we want, if we want any in those territories. So, we\u2019ve started to execute on that. Our M&A is ramping back up. Just got off a call before this with a company we\u2019re looking to maybe acquire. So, we have quite a pipeline there. Hired someone new to build out that corporate development arm of our business. Our venture fund has performed incredibly well because we\u2019re invested mostly in marketing and ecommerce technology along with ecommerce brands \u2013 which if anyone\u2019s paying attention, doubled in Q2 this year because that\u2019s where the most benefit came from with this. And that includes Shopify doubling, not just Amazon. Small businesses doubled too. We\u2019re just seeing a lot of success on that side too. So that\u2019s the gist, along with I\u2019d say the biggest new challenge, which is: how do you create nuance and camaraderie amongst a team when they don\u2019t get to hang out by the coffee machine or in the lunchroom? That\u2019s something we\u2019re working through. We\u2019re going to be hiring a new Head of People and HR and trying to think through how to build a really tightknit remote team. ROB: It seems like some of the things you\u2019re doing for fun with the NightHawke sort of events \u2013 it seems like there\u2019s almost a virtuous cycle between the stuff you\u2019re going to do to build a good remote team and the stuff that\u2019s going to be good for a broader community. You could do a trivia internally or externally, and it probably transfers well. ERIK: That\u2019s 100% right. We include our own employees in our events, so there is overlap. Community is community. Our internal people, external, etc., we try to open it up to everyone. But yeah, exactly. That\u2019s part of it, but the one thing that\u2019s hardest to replicate that we\u2019re still thinking through is, how do I create that nuance where two random people that don\u2019t work on the same team meet each other at lunch and then end up going out for drinks, being friends? The amount of people that become best friends or roommates, etc., through Hawke Media \u2013 even couples \u2013 is something I value. The fact that people can actually meet \u2013 if you survey our team \u2013 and we just did this, and I got a lot of the feedback yesterday. We asked all the good and bad, like \u201cBe blunt with us; what do you love, what do you hate?\u201d Number one thing everyone says is they love the people around them. We\u2019ve got to keep that. That is critical for our business. ROB: Yeah. What do you do? ERIK: I work on it. [laughs] That\u2019s the fun thing. I\u2019m interviewing for Heads of HR. It\u2019s my main question to them. It\u2019s a hard one. I\u2019ve talked to people with 15-20 years of solid HR experience at great companies, and it\u2019s like, \u201cUh, happy hours on Zoom on Fridays?\u201d Like, sorry, no. I mean, it\u2019s fun to have now and then, but that doesn\u2019t really do it. That gets the 15 people that like to drink and like each other already to hang out. That doesn\u2019t get the people that would\u2019ve never met each other to actually do it. So, creating that \u2013 we have something called Donuts that automatically pairs two people a week to grab coffee. Someone random every week, or someone you already know. A lot of times it\u2019s people you already know. That\u2019s been fun, but we\u2019ve made it optional. I\u2019m almost ready to make it mandatory so that people just have to meet someone every week. Those are the kinds of things we\u2019re \u2013 again, it\u2019s not easy. ROB: You had to already be thinking about this, though, because you were looking at these new markets. You already were operating on a predicate of being even more distributed than you already were. I\u2019m curious, though; what was your process in selecting the new cities that you\u2019re going into? ERIK: It was mostly market opportunity. Five of them out of the six new ones are basically the Top 5 cities where we already have business. They have the highest concentration of ecommerce brands, SMBs, startup community, etc. Most opportunity, along with \u2013 it\u2019s also measured against the agency saturation. There were a lot of cities that had similar opportunities, like Denver, that may have a lot of marketing agencies. It\u2019s just going to be too competitive for the market share. We did a whole analysis over a bunch of different \u2013 and also we were looking at cost of living. Like, are these places where we can actually build teams in a little more cost-effective way? And then Boise came up because actually my COO moved to Boise 2 years ago \u2013 I think it\u2019s been a little over 2 years \u2013 and has been commuting in to the office from Boise every week, in LA. Obviously with COVID, is not, and we\u2019re probably not going to be asking that again in terms of full-time. So that\u2019s always been a desire. Boise is a much cheaper place to hire, it\u2019s got great talent and probably a lot more loyalty. LA and New York are tough because our employees literally get emailed every day to get poached. So, we have to work really, really, really hard to keep them, and still it\u2019s almost a futile effort a lot of the times because you\u2019ve got Google and Facebook offering four times their salary sometimes. So yeah, part of it is just diversifying. That\u2019s really good too. But mostly it was the market opportunity. We know that our clients like working with a local partner. ROB: Right. It is clever with places like Boise, where you\u2019re college-adjacent but you\u2019re not a college town, so you can make really high quality talent hires and keep them somewhere they like to be, but it\u2019s not just a stone-cold college town where there\u2019s no business there to be earned. ERIK: Yep. ROB: Makes a ton of sense. Erik, when we look back at the journey so far, 6 years or so with Hawke Media, what are some lessons you\u2019ve learned along the way you might do differently if you were starting over today? ERIK: I\u2019d say probably the most mistakes I made had to do around a few things. One is we learned hiring ahead of growth and investing ahead of growth, assuming growth is coming, is always a mistake. Things happen, things change. It\u2019s never what you predicted. So being more reactive than proactive in all the ways we build out our business has always been a much more sustainable way. It causes little pain points because sometimes you grow too fast and you\u2019ve got to deal with a lot of stress, but that\u2019s better than not growing fast enough and being overstaffed, overleveraged, etc. That\u2019s been a big lesson that thankfully we got through, but that caused a lot of stress at times when we tried to double and we only grew 60%. That becomes a problem. Funny enough, growing 60% is still a huge win, unless you spent money like you were going to grow 100%. That\u2019s one thing I learned. Also, when hiring executives and building out executive teams, a lot of people think it\u2019s going to be \u2013 and including I used to \u2013 when you hire an executive, they take that thing off your plate. So, if I\u2019m going to hire a Head of HR, now HR is handled. That takes a year plus, and you\u2019ve got to be hyper-collaborative and working very directly with it during that time. That\u2019s been the other thing that\u2019s really helped at this point scale: spending a lot of time with our executives on how I want to see the business run so that they get up to speed and start to think similarly so they really, truly can run that piece the way we want it run. ROB: You\u2019re typically probably hiring people you have measured to be fairly capable. If someone\u2019s expecting, does it take longer to get an executive performing the way you want or a staff? ERIK: Oh, executive by far. There\u2019s just so much more nuance. People are the same. I get that there\u2019s people that are smarter and dumber, etc., but we hire smart people across the board. So, it\u2019s not an aptitude thing. A lot of times experience helps them do certain things, but there\u2019s so many moving parts for an executive that they have to pull into and understand all the nuances of the business. It just takes a lot longer to get those nuances so that in their quick decision-making, it starts to take account of the nuances they\u2019ve been now accustomed to. It takes time because there isn\u2019t \u2013 our business in a lot of ways is unique. We do things differently. Most businesses do certain things differently, so they have to get ingrained with that nuance before they can really be productive. ROB: It\u2019s interesting what you say there. I think we all get happy hiring hands sometimes when we\u2019re excited about growth. We see it coming, but it\u2019s not quite there. But how do you know \u2013 it sounds like you hire at that point where it\u2019s almost too late, and I mean that in the best way. ERIK: That\u2019s correct, yeah. And every once in a while it is too late, in a sense, and it causes our team to work harder than they really want to or should. I\u2019ve been very clear with our team that that\u2019s going to happen sometimes. That is part of the job. There will be times, like most agencies and consultancies and service businesses and any business, where you have to put in 60-hour weeks. That exists. Then we\u2019ll right-size and we\u2019ll get you back to normal hours, and then it\u2019ll happen again. It\u2019s kind of an ebb and flow. Unlike investment banking, we\u2019re not making people work 100+ hours a week all the time. But we definitely have ebbs and flows where there\u2019s some hard periods.  ROB: Is there a measurable you\u2019re able to use to figure that out? Is it a number of hours billable? Is it a utilization rate? ERIK: Exactly. We look at utilization and we look at our people, and how many clients they\u2019re managing and what the average time spent on a client is overall. At this point we\u2019ve been doing this long enough, we have a lot of averages, so we can give an idea of like, \u201cThat person\u2019s fully loaded, that person\u2019s way overloaded,\u201d etc. Again, we have enough size now that we should be able to never overload someone more than 10%, meaning going from 40 to 45 hours a week. When it gets more than that, it\u2019s usually either a perfect storm of a ton of sales and maybe someone leaving or something that is painful. But generally we\u2019re okay there. ROB: That definitely makes sense. I think it\u2019s hard sometimes for people to imagine \u2013 when you are at let\u2019s say 10 people, they\u2019re not even all interchangeable functionally, so you may have some roles that are overlapped only by two or three people. So, you\u2019re trying to figure out these huge step functions of \u201cHow do I increase my capacity here by 50% and when do I pull the trigger on that one?\u201d Although I imagine in a lot of those cases, and maybe for you, that\u2019s also the founders eating some of the pain. ERIK: Exactly. Everybody has to jump in sometimes, so the pain gets spread out too. [laughs] ROB: Interesting. Of the different marketing channels that you\u2019re involved in, what has been bumping up as a good opportunity? What\u2019s been attenuating? And maybe an upcoming opportunity that we don\u2019t realize yet? ERIK: I\u2019d say SNS marketing is a massive one. We\u2019re seeing crazy performance there, and I think that\u2019ll continue, especially as things open back up, because getting people on their cellphone and texting when they\u2019re out and about is a great way to reach people versus email. Email\u2019s still powerful, to be clear, but I think SNS will also be a great platform. I think TikTok, if you can get through the political stuff, is still \u2013 it\u2019s one of the first things since Facebook and Instagram that looks like a very viable advertising platform. I hope Snapchat figures it out, but it\u2019s still not as great. Twitter is not really great, YouTube is not really great. But I think TikTok will end up being a great platform. ROB: Do you think Microsoft can manage to not mess it up if they do buy it? ERIK: They did a great job with LinkedIn. They did a terrible job with Skype. [laughs] It just depends on how they manage it. If they keep it separate and let it go \u2013 I know a lot of the senior team at TikTok in the U.S. I think there\u2019s a great team there. There\u2019s an opportunity there, and I think Microsoft\u2019s way of M&A has gotten better. ROB: Sure. They\u2019ve done a good job with GitHub as well. They really have chilled out on a lot of things they maybe used to goof up. TikTok, I imagine, has pretty strong alignment with where you are geographically. ERIK: Yeah. They also have offices in New York, but yeah. I think they\u2019ve created something that\u2019s a very passive user experience. Once they build out their advertising platform better \u2013 again, ignoring the political side of this \u2013 I think the way people use it is going to be a really powerful ad platform. We\u2019re one of the first official partners to TikTok, agency-wise. ROB: What does that mean? ERIK: We\u2019ve got a full-time team there that\u2019s working with us on everything we need to do to make the platform better and utilize it correctly, and if we have any needs to perform, basically. Same thing we have with Facebook and Google. We have full-time teams, we\u2019re on the Slack, etc., so we can make sure campaigns are run with best practices. We can have them double down with us. It\u2019s a true partnership in that sense. ROB: That\u2019s a real asset. What is your engagement with legacy media? You\u2019ve got \u201cMedia\u201d in your name, and some folks with media, it means very, very new media; some people, it only means very, very old media. What\u2019s your engagement with out-of-home and video?  ERIK: We utilize it all. TV, radio, out-of-home. We usually start with digital because it\u2019s a lot more iterative and we can actually test a lot better, but as our clients scale, we start leveraging all those other things too. We have great teams around more traditional media channels. And it works. It\u2019s different, and there\u2019s different ways to use all of them in a full marketing sense. ROB: I think what I heard in there is one of the things you may do is actually iterate on messaging in digital formats before amplifying it out to more analog. What\u2019s an example of maybe a campaign you can talk about where you figured that out? Maybe something a little bit unexpected in the digital domain. ERIK: Honestly, off the cuff, I have a hard time trying to think of where there was an \u201caha\u201d moment. It\u2019s not like \u201cOh my God,\u201d this epiphany like \u201cThat works way better. We should do that.\u201d It was more like \u201cLet\u2019s test these 10 messages. Okay, that\u2019s the message that\u2019s working really well on Facebook, but scale that a little bit. Okay, this value proposition has always performed the best. Let\u2019s use that value proposition on the billboards we\u2019re going to go buy.\u201d  ROB: You\u2019re a tremendously sensible yet ambitious man. It\u2019s a fun thing to hear. It\u2019s all very matter-of-fact, \u201cYeah, we do it this way.\u201d It\u2019s not so clever; it\u2019s just you almost seem to get out of your way by not trying to be too clever. ERIK: Yeah. We\u2019ve had problems trying to work with big creative agencies that have these robust creative ideas. We\u2019re like, \u201cCool, but in practicality that means absolutely nothing and it\u2019s not going to drive any business. But it looks really pretty.\u201d [laughs] We care about growth. We care about the company\u2019s goal, which is usually revenue and profit growth. That\u2019s what we\u2019re driving towards. ROB: On the ecommerce side, are you able to get everything dialed in enough to actually be able to tell them return on ad spend metrics and that sort of thing? ERIK: Oh yeah. We even like to talk more CAC to LTV because return on ad spend is super misleading if you have any kind of recurring business, and if you don\u2019t, that\u2019s a really hard digital business anyways. So yeah, we like to really give guidance into the real numbers versus \u2013 ROA ads is a very deep metric, and a lot of times it\u2019s misreported because they\u2019re not tracking long enough because the purchase cycle of a company, usually people forget. So, they\u2019ll spend ads today and look at ROA ads tomorrow. They completely forget that people take time to buy something from seeing an ad. It isn\u2019t instant. 95% of the time, it\u2019s not an instant purchase, so you\u2019re missing out on most of your returns if you look at marketing that way. That\u2019s the issue. That\u2019s not the way to look at it. ROB: It\u2019s interesting to hear that CAC to LTV mention, this customer acquisition cost to lifetime value. That kind of bleeds over into the startup and SaaS world. I know you\u2019re in the startup world as well with your venture arm. I think I saw you had somebody from Upfront speaking maybe last year at Hawkefest. Did that metric start more in the ecommerce side or more in the software side? How did it bleed over? ERIK: That comes from the ecommerce company I ran before. We were always CAC to LTV. That\u2019s a ratio that\u2019s mattered for a long time. Thankfully it\u2019s getting more and more prominent. Dollar Shave Club is a good example of this. Again, I worked at the incubator with them, and from what I\u2019ve heard, their CAC was like $20 bucks and their average order value was $5. If you looked at their ROA ads, it was 25%. Like, that\u2019s terrible. But their lifetime value \u2013 I don\u2019t know what it was, but let\u2019s say it was 18 months. That would actually turn that $5 into $90. 20 to 90 is decent as long as you have the working capital to get through that. It\u2019s those kind of things \u2013 and it does matter. Also, knowing that payback period is super important too because you have to finance through it. So, there\u2019s all sorts of nuance there. Yeah, running a business is more complicated than just a return on ad spend, which is why you see all these guys that are posting on Facebook about their 50x return on ad spend that they\u2019re driving for companies and never seem to actually make any money. Because it\u2019s B.S. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] Perfect. That makes a ton of sense, especially with the subscription model. But I imagine as we go deeper and deeper into ecommerce, a lot of non-subscription businesses have become significantly more predictable and recurring. Have you seen something like let\u2019s say a Columbia Sportswear become almost like a subscription, even though it\u2019s not? ERIK: Not subscription in the sense that they\u2019re forcing people to buy on a certain regular cadence. It\u2019s more thinking about lifetime value, like \u201cHow do I get them to come back and buy more?\u201d Managing your existing customer base and getting them to upsell and buy more is much cheaper than getting new customers and much more lucrative. Assuming you have a decent product that people like, it\u2019s way easier to get those customers to continue to buy. ROB: Perfectly sensible. Erik, when people want to find you and Hawke Media, where should they go to find you? ERIK: Any social media platform, @ or \/ErikHuberman. Even TikTok. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] And what we will we find on your TikTok? ERIK: One video, I was sent a sweat suit by \u2013 what\u2019s Josh\u2019s last name? One of the biggest TikTokers. He just moved to Triller, too, because of all this stuff. Josh Richards, I think is his name. He\u2019s got like 20 million followers. He sent me a sweat suit. I had to wear it and make a TikTok video because it just felt like the right thing to do. It\u2019s me sliding in with the sweat suit on. It\u2019s important. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] Perfect. Erik Huberman of Hawke Media, thank you for coming on the podcast. Congratulations on everything you\u2019ve done and everything you\u2019re doing. We\u2019ll look for your people in all these new American cities. ERIK: I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. ROB: Be well. ERIK: You too. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com. ","author_name":"The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast","author_url":"http:\/\/spinutech.com","html":"