The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everyone to the Authority Podcast on the Bee Podcast Network, so pleased to have you join us once again. I do want to send just another thank you to all of you, our loyal listeners who've made the show a success. And to honor your loyalty, I'm going to keep working on getting great guests with Invaluable Insights.

sites. The topic we're discussing today, we haven't done a full episode on it, but it's come up a lot. We did talk to Andrew Campanella from National School Choice Week from the parent perspective. And it's come up in a lot of conversations, but branding communications, how you present yourself, it's essential.

It impacts parent engagement, student achievement, enrollment. teacher recruitment, retention, community relations, everything we're doing. This really is a through line. [00:01:00] And, as we do say here on the authority, we have conversations with people who know what they're talking about. And when it comes to marketing, we have a guest that certainly fits the bill.

My guest today is Eric Huberman. He's CEO and founder of Hawk Media. And he launched Hawk in 2014, growing the company to a value of over 150 million, working with 3000 plus brands worldwide. Red Bull, Verizon, Eddie Bauer, a lot of others that you'll be familiar with. He's also expanded the business portfolio with Hawk Ventures, which raised 25 million in its second fund and Hawkeye, which has helped over 5, 000 companies benchmark their analytics.

Eric has been named to Forbes 30 under 30 CSQs, 40 under 40 Inc. magazines, top 25 marketing influencers. So like we say, we talk to people who know what they're talking about. His book is called the Hawk Method. The three principles of marketing that made over 3003, 000 brands sore, Eric, welcome to the authority.

Erik Huberman: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Ross Romano: So getting right into it. So the book is based on the marketing tripod as you call it, right? These three [00:02:00] legs. And if you look at a tripod without any one of them, it won't really stand. They're really important awareness. Nurturing trust. They go together. I actually want to skip straight to trust, because I've heard you call trust synonymous with brand, right?

And we're talking about brand and how important that is. So I want to go right there and say, you know, in your opinion, why are those two synonymous?

Erik Huberman: Yeah, it's basically brand takes over for trust when you have a brand. So what I mean by that is, most consumers over 75% stated they won't buy from a company. They don't inherently trust. And so how do you gain that trust? Well, initially, nobody knows who you are. So you can be making the, you know, you can be curing cancer.

But if I come up to you with a pill and go take this and if you have any cancer ever, it'll cure it. Are you taking that pill off the street? The answer is no. Great value, but I have no idea who you are. So how do you get that trust in the beginning? It's third party validation. So it's referrals, testimonials, endorsement deals, influencer marketing, press.

It's [00:03:00] basically borrowing someone else's trust. And making it your own and someone else's brand and making it your own by them leveraging that other brand. And that creates trust. It's that third party validator. And so that's how you start. But then over time, there's going to be stories that people over and over again about people, you know, you curing cancer with this pill and then people go, Oh, it's actually legit.

Like, look, it's happened. It's worked. And now I've seen it over and over and over again. Now I believe it. And now I, you have an inherent brand that a better example of this would be like McDonald's. Like, I don't need to read any press about the dining experience at McDonald's to know what it is. Everybody knows what's going to happen at McDonald's.

It's going to be fast. It's going to be unhealthy. It's going to taste consistent. McDonald's is what it is. It's built a brand. I don't need to have anyone else talk to me about it. Same thing with like Coca Cola, same thing with some of the biggest brands out there. Nike, like I don't really need validation of Nike to go buy a pair of Nike shoes.

Like it's Nike. That's when you've established a brand, but, and that's what I mean by that. It being synonymous is in the beginning when you don't have that brand, you need to get [00:04:00] that from somewhere else and build that trust over time. That trust becomes whatever you deliver consistently, basically good or bad.

Ross Romano: right. And so much of that is, you know, to, to engender trust. We need to think about who are we to the audience, right. And what, what matters to them. And that starts with. Who are they? Who is our audience? What do they care about? What things matter to them? As you said, you know, the study shows 75, 80% of people won't buy from a company they won't trust.

And we have people in different scenarios here who may be listening. We may have some who are on the founder marketer side, who certainly are dealing with this from that perspective. We may have others who are in leadership in schools and districts who based their customers don't have a choice. About whether to be their customer, right?

I'm your student, I'm the parent, and yet they have to buy what you're selling or else you're going to really feel that friction to say, okay, you're essentially, it's a monopoly. Sometimes you're [00:05:00] forced to be here and yet you don't trust what we're providing because maybe we've taken it for granted that we don't have to sell to you, so to speak, because you're here.

But, how important is that aspect at the beginning of it to saying we have to put ourselves in their shoes and think about what's going to make them trust us.

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Erik Huberman: I think that's what people miss is you can tell me how great you think you are, but if I've never heard of you, I'm not going to believe it. So it's like that, that's where that third party, when you're just in the beginning, getting validated by people that are trusted. Now there's a few at all.

Sort of departures from that as well. Trust is a funny thing with people. And there's a, TV show that's not on the air anymore, but it was How I Met Your Mother. And there's a part of this, and now I have more of a story to this. So I've, been talking about this with my team for pretty much the entirety of Hawk Media.

Where the main guy in it, it's all him reminiscing about the story about how he met. Their kids mother, but he's talking about basically is, you know, dating experiences in New York City as a, you know, late 20s guy and one of his [00:06:00] best friends is this total like, you know, sort of player kind of guy that's always picking up women and his favorite thing.

And he's always trying to get Ted's the main character. Barney is always trying to get a girl and his way of doing it as he walks up to random girls and go and goes, hey, have you met Ted and just makes the intro? They don't know who Barney is. They don't know who Ted is, but this guy's introducing him and it's a great icebreaker.

That type that builds trust again, they don't know who Barney is, but then by Barney saying, have you met Ted? They immediately, it brings down the defense and they go, Oh, well, this guy is validating this guy. So maybe, so when it comes to building that third party validation, that my favorite business example of this is wait for you personally, do you buy things on Amazon Ross

Ross Romano: I do.

Erik Huberman: cool.

Do you ever look at the reviews? Like, do you look at how many reviews it has or if it has a five star review? Like, is that

Ross Romano: I, I do. I do. Understanding all the problems with them. I still do.

Erik Huberman: that's exact. You just went to where I was going with that. I'd say, I've said this in like physical rooms. I've been like, show of hands, who looks at them?

Show of hands, who believes that most [00:07:00] people are faking their reviews? And everybody agrees, they're probably fake, but just because they're there, it makes me feel a little better about the purchase. Which is bizarre. We all are rationally aware that it makes no sense. But we still do it because there's something in our biology or human nature to have that third party validation.

Even if that third party, we don't trust either. So like, that's part of that building trust. No, don't game it too much. Cause then you'll get a reputation of being sleazy, like people that'll affect your brand in other ways. Like it's not about just like. Being shitty about this, but understanding how that works so that when you're constructing it, knowing that you don't necessarily need, you know, some one of the biggest, you don't need Taylor Swift to pump your brand to create trust.

Like that might do just as much as like a random fitness influencer, like actually. So it's figuring out like how to play this game in a way that serves that purpose. And the purpose it's trying to serve. I think a lot of times to again, you mentioned the book, like we talked about the three pillars, awareness, nurturing and trust awareness being like, how do you create new awareness for your company so that you introduce new potential [00:08:00] customers?

Nurturing is what do you do with that awareness to actually nurture them to be a customer and stay a customer? And then we talked about trust, some people will go down the avenue of trying to fix their trust, but then get distracted with, well, how does this create awareness or nurture that awareness?

It's like, don't like sometimes things do have multiple purposes, but careful serving two masters. So I use say that because of the back to Twitter or Swift. You can reach her whole audience. But if your purpose is to build trust, I don't care about reaching her audience. If you're looking at Taylor Swift as an awareness play, there's probably cheaper ways to go get that as many impressions as you get with her.

So you have to really think about how does this, what are the other options versus just going with a major celebrity or something like that.

Ross Romano: One of the things that, I think about is how often the influencers are inside the building that we're not tapping into in the case of, for example, on a broader case, I'm in here in Washington, DC and, the, the local NFL team has had its share of, disrepute over the years.

Right. But when they hired a coach, [00:09:00] Ron Rivera, who was a highly respected person that a lot of people thought was, you know, it almost rubs off to say, Oh, well, if he says it's okay over there, maybe it's not as bad as we think, you know, or in in the schools, right? How powerful your teacher, right? People trust people more than organizations.

And are we actually equipping those people to go out and be positive ambassadors for what we're doing here? Or are we one not even thinking about that, not discussing that with them and you know, not that to give them a job to do, but just to say, Hey, Here's how important and here's what a difference it makes for how people react and respond and feel about our organization here.

If you're going out there and sharing good things about what we're doing, because people are really going to trust your opinion a lot more than they're just going to trust us as a, you know, as an entity here saying what it's all about,

Erik Huberman: Yeah. The faceless entity thing is, is a part of the problem is like, I don't know who this person is. So, [00:10:00] you know, for us, like, I don't know who Hawk media is. It's I know who Eric is, which is why I'm very, I'm on podcast and very forthcoming with. Who, what we're about and who I am so that there's a face to it, which is again, you even look at companies like who cares who Tim Cook is or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, but people care.

That's the face of the company and the face of the company actually matters. So it's that creating that personification is important because when you don't have that. And I would say some brands get away with it. I actually can't name the CEO of Nike. I don't think Phil Knight's hasn't been it for a while.

I can name the founder, but that's more recent. I think a lot of people, that's because I think he made a name for himself now with the movie book and all that. But, there's a lot of companies that you probably engage with every day. I have no idea who runs it, but there is, there's also that, that brings up a good point.

There's a lot of ways to do this. There's a lot of ways to build trust. Like, while Nike doesn't have, maybe Phil Knight was traditionally not the face of Nike, but Michael Jordan was one of them. So, like, you still get that same benefit there too.[00:11:00]

Ross Romano: Right. And it doesn't, of course, a lot of, in a lot of scenarios we're talking about where people spend their dollars, but It could be any expenditure, spending their time, their energy, people who want to be a part of what you're doing, who want to associate themselves with your reputation, right?

Talked about the Amazon reviews. Well, we're on a podcast, there's podcast reviews, right? And we're not asking anybody to spend any money here, but if they're going to say, I'm going to spend my time to listen to an episode, let me see if anybody else says it's any good. You know, and.

Erik Huberman: talk about teachers, like, how do we get students to care about being in the classroom? Are they supposed to just trust the teacher that that's... What they say. So that's how it goes. Like, how do you get them more engaged because now they trust that they're there for a good reason.

Like these are all these, this is human psychology. It's not just, you know, driving revenue.

Ross Romano: Yeah, and there's a piece that stood out to me when I go through the, the traditional AIDA model and marketing listeners. If you're not Really it's [00:12:00] awareness or attention is the first day interest, desire, action. I mean, it's the customer journey, the steps you're taking them through. And I think in most cases, whether we're a marketer selling something or whether we're anybody else, we don't really pay enough attention to what desire really means, right?

We can make people aware, we can get them kind of interested and we want them to take action and sort of skip over, like. We want them to really want this, and especially we're talking about learning, development, growth, you know, there's intrinsic motivation there. I need to, but I need to tap into that to make people really want to have, what I'm providing here, you know, interest is not enough.

You know, and, but I think that that's the word if I were to pick on one where it's like we try to skip too fast to action and then we wonder why aren't people doing what we wanted us to do or why are they doing it once and then not doing it again. It's because we didn't [00:13:00] really create that emotional connection and that's, you know, desire is the emotional element.

Erik Huberman: Yep. 100%. And that comes from a relationship, which can come from trust that can come from. Yeah, actually, I would say it does come from trust because you can still nurture someone without that and just be like, Hey, you should buy this. Hey, you should buy this. Hey, here's 20% off. Now you bought it and they never come back.

That's not a relationship.

Ross Romano: Yeah, it's totally I mean and it's all about relationships to that point and that's You know, that that middle part, you know, awareness, nurturing, trust, I mean, relationships are across, but that nurture piece, even that word, what's, you know, what that word connotes, would be a relationship, right?

Where we nurture, children, we nurture our relationship to our spouse to be. And again, so often, right, we have people, if, we're talking an organization, a company or whatever to people. We maybe think we know what kind of relationship we want them to [00:14:00] have to us

Erik Huberman: Yep.

Ross Romano: aren't necessarily saying, well, what's our relationship to them?

How are we? And you know, the concept nurturing a lot of it is about the concept of creating that lifetime value, right? And so in a customer sense, it's how do they become a recurring customer, keep coming back to us and so on. Same thing. Once again, if it's, if they're not. Purchasing something, but it's how many times do they engage with us?

How many events do they get involved with? How, you know, many, opportunities do they take advantage of to support something that we need, a fundraiser or whatever. You know, did they, did they bake cookies, right? Because they felt like they know what we stand for. They know what we're doing.

I think one thing that's important to even kind of clarify is. the life cycle of the nurturing, right? Because if I'm not mistaken, it begins before they're ever a customer or, part of our community and [00:15:00] continues all the way past the point where they leave.

Erik Huberman: Yep. And that's, what people forget is that it's this ongoing thing. It's not just a transaction, it's a person. And I think that, that's why like marketing and one of the sort of secrets of it that I think like people always ask, what's the secret sauce? Why? Cause we just got awarded the top performance marketing agency in the country.

Like. We've been able to bootstrap this company to, and have had a lot of success. And everyone's always looking for some secret sauce. And it's like, well, one of it is like, we actually understand people in business. Like the problem is most marketers, especially these days, it used to be, all I understand was pretty pictures.

I was like, well, I used to make fun of a lot of marketers and be like, yeah, you guys are great at drawing things. Like it doesn't actually compel anyone to do anything, but it looks pretty. And then it became, now it's almost the opposite where like, nobody actually understands the. Pretty picture side and everybody's watching spreadsheets, but they don't understand the nuance of the spreadsheet.

So it's like, Oh, our row ads on Facebook is X, Y, Z. How do we improve that? Which I'm speaking in acronyms right now, or, but it's basically the return on our [00:16:00] advertising is X, Y, Z, but they don't understand the, you know, time to take someone to purchase. Why those are the numbers where they're coming from?

How do you affect those numbers? What are the other things coming to play? And then where do you go from there? These are all like, it's just a number and it's like, great, we got this back. And if it's a positive number, we're good. If it's a negative number, we're bad. But then what? And so, yeah, understanding that full funnel becomes critical.

Ross Romano: Yeah. And I mean, then there is a point, I mean, the numbers of course are important and whatever the data is, whatever it's, representing is important, but. What does it mean? You know, numbers can also misrepresent, right? Somebody who doesn't exactly have a context for what's good or bad, they don't know.

But, and one of the things that can be really interesting, particularly in, in the marketing world, right, is that, companies, I think, who are say hiring a marketing agency or a marketer, they want to be sold. Based on the metrics and like, well, how, you know, what's the ROI going to be, et cetera.

And yet when you're [00:17:00] selling them, you're selling, a feeling, an affinity, you know, and I think about some of the clients that you've worked with, the Red Bull Crocs, right. Companies like that. If I see one of their commercials, one of their ads. I'm not getting into granular details of

Erik Huberman: Yeah. One of the materials that, I mean, funny enough, Croc's material is actually a big part of it, but they don't ever talk about that, you know?

Ross Romano: right. And how would I even know, right. As a customer, or, you know, Red Bull, this ingredient does this, or it's, these things that make it memorable. It's these things that say, I want to feel like that, or I want to. You know, when I go out during a particular day, these are the kind of things that I want in my life, but they're intangible.

They're tapping into personalities again, to the relationship piece. You need to understand who you're working with, at an early stage and have done the homework to say, well, what are the things that. People are interested in feeling and knowing and doing. And, [00:18:00] I see it plenty among people who are technically professional marketers, but certainly among those who aren't, who are a product creator, who are a leader of whatever organization that.

They jump way too fast into, in the weeds. Okay. I went to your homepage on your website and I, don't even know what I read all details. When you work through that process and you think about you're working with say a new, client and you're discussing kind of what they're wanting to do, what, what does the process look like for determining what the feeling is that you want to create among their audience?

Erik Huberman: Yeah, it's the, what is the aspiration that someone is trying to fulfill, by buying my product or service? And I say aspiration, not in like a grandiose term, but like, you know, I buy new socks because my old socks have holes in them and it's time for new socks. Like, you know, it's like, that's, that's an aspiration.

I don't want socks with holes in them. Like, it's not necessarily like some big thing, but like, what is the reason that I am someone's [00:19:00] making this purchase? Because if there isn't an aspiration, there isn't something they're trying to achieve. Thanks. They're not buying your product. There's nothing you there's no need.

So what is that? And that's where you understand the emotional appeal of The product or service, like why? Let's go back to the socks thing. Like, why do I want new socks? Well, my socks have holes in them. Well, what's wrong with having holes in them? Well, they're uncomfortable. Well, why don't you want to be uncomfortable?

Well, it's being uncomfortable. You can like you go to that. Why? Why? Why? And you get to the point, the root emotional response, which is like, It's stressful to be uncomfortable. I don't want to be uncomfortable. So I want to be comfortable. Oh, well, if comfort is the level, well now I can talk to that. Like we have the most comfortable socks.

You're going to feel great. Or is it holes because of my perception? I don't want to look shitty. Oh, so you want fashions that, okay, well, you're going to look great in our socks. Like what is, you know, really understanding why people buy this thing. And then that's what marketing hits on. Is that emotional reptilian response of part of it.

And by the way, this is B2B marketing. This is B2C marketing. People screw this up all the time. People [00:20:00] hire Hawk media because they want to feel like the marketing and growth of their company is handled. They want to know that this is covered, that they're set, that this isn't, doesn't need to be a stress point.

The practical reason is they want to grow their business profitably. The emotional reason is. This is a lot to deal with. I can't keep up with this shit. I need someone that's an expert. That's got me that has my back. That's my partner. And that goes both ways by that is important with any company, but especially with ours in some ways is we need to be very careful to not give them any reason to believe that we aren't going to be able to fulfill that.

So like if I buy a pair of socks because I'm getting rid of my ones with holes in it, and one of those pairs has a hole in it, even if the other, the rest are great. This is why I came to you. You fucking gave me the same thing I already had like this. Now I'm angry. And that's the same thing with every business.

Like you really have to also be able to fulfill that on a product level, because if I catch you on an emotional level, you're going to be emotional. And if I fulfill that and succeed, I've got you. You're now with me. You're my customer. You love me. If I don't, if I. Fall short on [00:21:00] that I've now I've already triggered that emotional side and that gets negative fast too.

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Ross Romano: All of that is also tied up in with how much more powerful, aspirational messaging is versus scarcity messaging, or, you know, if you do this thing, it's going to help you achieve X, Y, Z dreams versus you can avoid that, right? If you're somebody who lives your life and your, your goal is to avoid going to prison, You may not live, the most ambitious life, but you'll just kind of be mindful, at least about covering up your, your misdeeds.

If your ambition is to become president, you're probably going to, you know, not want to have any risk there.

Erik Huberman: You probably won't be on social media anymore.

Ross Romano: right. Or, or with, with You know, students, I mean, it came up in an interview I did recently, and this is purely speculation on my part. I don't know if anybody has the data on this, but I said, you know, I would bet that [00:22:00] students.

Who, cheat on exams because really they just want to avoid failing right that their average grade is probably a B or a C, you know, something like that they don't fail if they don't get caught, but they're not necessarily, you know, getting a perfect score versus a student where somebody has inspired them more aspirationally to really be their best. They're the ones who are aiming for the top performance. And it's the same with it. It's any message we're selling any communication we're giving, you know, if you're operating on fear or whatever, by this, so you don't look bad.

You know, maybe I'll buy it, or maybe I'll buy like whatever the cheapest possible version is, so I at least can avoid embarrassment, right? But I'm not going to say, hey, if I keep committing to this, I can get even better and better. But that's critical across, across the board, and again, like, not always adhered to.

Erik Huberman: [00:23:00] right. Exactly. That's it is it's not always adhere to consistency is really important in this too.

Ross Romano: Yeah, and I think that relates to one other thing that we, you know, I definitely don't want to overlook, which is word of mouth, right? Again, how, how much more motivated are you? To really get out there and spread the word of mouth about something, if it's something that you think is great, that is selling you a positive message, you'd feel like change your life versus, how much word of mouth are you sharing for your, I don't know, you know, your tax accountant who maybe did a perfectly good job, but it was like, it was fulfilling an obligation and, you know, I mean, actually for my tax accountants, I've, I've tried to advocate for them a lot, but

Erik Huberman: I'd say actually,

Ross Romano: on it because they just don't, they're not that good.

Erik Huberman: yeah, it's funny. I actually, I was going to say, I refer a lot of business to my accountant because he does a great job. In fact, I had a CFO that advised we go to like a normal, like mid market firm and it's made that switch and they were horrible. And I came crawling back to him. It was like, sorry, [00:24:00] I listened to an executive that won't happen again.

But yeah, my, by the way, if you need an accountant, let me know because the guy's amazing. He's great.

Ross Romano: As I said that, I said, the people who do the accounting for my business, I recommend them all the time. And I feel like people aren't, you know, and there's a lot of people who say, well, I can do it myself. I'm like, no, please don't, but to get, but on this word of mouth point, either way, you know, I mean, I, I think it's referred to in the book as the number one, most powerful mechanism.

Erik Huberman: yeah, it is. I mean, at the end of the day, and it's funny because it's not like we have a word of mouth service at Hawk Media. So, like, when I say that, it's important to understand that it's not a loaded statement. It's actually almost contrary to what I service. It's not contrary. The reason word of mouth is important is because it goes back to trust, actually, is most people don't buy things until a bunch of their friends tell them to buy it.

That's just human nature. Like, You go see a movie because your friends told you about you might and that's it's like again, the sequel to something or a story you know about or an actor. That's why they do all these things. You already have brand recognition or trust. [00:25:00] That's why those actors get paid so much.

And there are numbers associated with that. If we're going to get the rock to do this, because we can put the rock in a tooth fairy movie and you're going to go see it. Cause it's the rock actually happened. So like, you know, it's like they know that that trust that's there. You're just going to go see it.

Cause of that person, same thing happens with, companies with everything else. Word of mouth. Comes in one is like the biggest driver trust because if it's a new show, a new movie, a new product, something that doesn't have that and you don't have that trust, most people are just going to wait to hear about it from a friend.

And even so, like when Apple launches their newest product, you have, you know, the 10, 15% early adopters that go buy the new, what's the, whatever they called their new, headset. That are going to go spend 3, 500 is going to be 10 or 15% of their addressable market. We'll just go buy it because it's Apple.

And then a lot of people are going to wait and hear from a friend. Did it was, how was it? Was it good? Did it work out? And that's when they go buy it. So that's part of where word of mouth as well as a lot of people don't watch commercials and aren't [00:26:00] constantly looking at ads and are kind of don't not compelled by any of it.

What they're compelled by is what their friends tell them to do and what their social circles tell them to do and their family tells them to do. And so that's where it all comes in. Now, what's important is you just said it like servicing a customer is the best way to drive word of mouth, like, and exceeding their expectations.

They want to brag about how cool this was. But one thing that people miss that's super critical there is making it easy and how you make it easy. The one thing that we try to work on with a lot of our clients and we're really adamant about it is you need like five to seven words that are easy to rearticulate that define what you do.

So for Hawk Media, that's where you're outsourced CMO and marketing team. So when people go try to tell people, Oh, you got to work with Hawk Media. They know how to like, it's like a quick pitch. It's like the, you know, the modern version of an elevator pitch, but it's that five to seven words that make it easy for me to articulate what you do.

So that I feel comfortable telling other people about it. Cause that that's really important. If you can make it easy. They'll go tell a bunch of people. But if I, if I said, Oh, well, we're a performance marketing agency that specialize in Facebook, Google [00:27:00] email, SMS, chatbots, web design, graphic design, strategy, data, dah, dah, dah.

I can actually say this to someone in person really quickly and go through everything we do and how we do it and do the 32nd to three minute pitch. But that's not what I'm doing. I'm asking other people to talk about me. They're not going to regurgitate that. So the moment they go to try, they're like, they're like this marketing performance.

Like, you know, they do like social media and like, I don't know, but you, yeah, maybe you should talk to them. And that one time that that happens and they were uncomfortable talking about it, they're never talking about me again. And so instead it's like outsource CMO, outsource CMO, outsource CMO. And then they go, you got to talk to media.

They're like, there's outsource CMO. And then the person goes, okay, yeah. And boom, that felt good. Now I feel comfortable doing it again. And I've just driven word of mouth. And with every company, helping people articulate what you do becomes a really big driver because, now to bring it back, like for advertising, you're generally attracting those 15% early adopters, 10, 15, what I was talking about with the headsets, like that small group that will jump in just because it's something cool and new.

And they like that stuff. There are [00:28:00] people like that. So you're going to track them and you're going to buy them you through advertising, through whatever efforts you're doing, that's going to cost you money to get those people. If you can then drive word of mouth on top of that, it creates an X factor.

If they go for every person you buy, I'm doing air quotes. You then get another three, four or five customers from them because they go tell people on average. Now you just five or six X, your returns on your advertising, and you've created a very scalable business. If you have to literally buy every customer that you get, because no one talks about you, that is a very difficult business to move forward with.

Ross Romano: Right. Yeah. And, and exactly. It's not scalable, right? You can't go to each individual and fully from the ground up, build a total relationship with them and resell yourself. To your point about. The outsourcing of the clarity of how to create the word of mouth. Something we've talked about on here before, right?

If you don't tell people your story, they're going, they'll fill in the gaps, they'll make up their own. If I don't tell you what my values are, you're going to intuit whatever you think they are. [00:29:00] If I don't tell you what our organization is doing here or our mission or what we're striving for, you're going to describe it however you describe it.

And you're going to have. At the very least, you'll have the people that like you, but they're telling 1000 different stories about what you are. And at the most, you're going to have people who misinterpret or, you know, negatively interpret what they think you are stand for, for no other reason than they think you're hiding something, you're not being clear, you're not being transparent.

The word of mouthpiece also reminded me that I should touch on the point of, you know, you mentioned about TV shows, right? And so if I watch a new TV show, Did I watch it because, one of the actors in it, somebody I really like, and I trust that it's going to be good because they're in it? Do I watch it because I heard the director interviewed on a podcast and I really liked what they talked about?

Did I watch it because my brother told me it was good? Did I watch it because, I, you know, a critic that I respect said it was [00:30:00] worth watching? The answer is yes. The answer is yes, it's all of those things. And that's why,

Erik Huberman: Right. Exactly.

Ross Romano: overemphasis on one thing or on strictly, okay, if we did this one digital campaign or this one outreach thing, what exactly is our ROI one, no one thing really works by itself.

And two people are unreliable narrators, right? So I've worked with companies. Who say, well, we did this campaign, and, you know, people didn't really tell us that that's what referred them to us. And I said, well, how do they, how do you know? I mean, because maybe they heard about you a few different times, and one day your salesperson called them and they picked up the call because they said, oh yeah, I've heard of them.

Let me hear 'em out. Or, you know, you people , they need to hear a bunch of different ways from a bunch of different people before they take action in this crowded marketplace. So, you have to have a holistic plan.

Erik Huberman: well, I love that you're saying that because like one of the biggest fallacies I've watched in the [00:31:00] past decade and like a really quick way for me to know a marketer doesn't know what they're doing is to hear the word attribution because is it important to track where things are coming from and get the best visual of how things are coming into your funnel?

Yes. Is it? Possibly what you just, we deal with that all the time when they're like, well, this customer clicked on a Facebook ad, a Google ad, an email, and then answered a phone call and then converted. So do we give 30% credit to Facebook and then 20% to Google? Like this is shit marketers are actually trying to figure out.

And the answer is it's a hundred percent to all of them. It took all of those things to get that customer. There's no split of that customer acquisition. It's all of them together is what drove it. And for some reason. Sincerely, most marketers do not understand that, and it's exactly it. It takes all these different things working in conjunction.

And what I always talk to people about is like, you start with the basics, you build that out, you make them work, and then you add to your marketing mix without taking things away. That's what makes things more robust. You constantly add new synergies because these all work [00:32:00] together. Someone sees a digital ad, then we do a mailer, then we do an email, then we do this.

And then we start to get into the TV. I don't stop doing mail to do TV. I do both of them and I keep adding and adding as the company grows, because that's where you get, again, those synergies.

Ross Romano: right. And this also really came up on a recent episode regarding our ability to change and, you know, that we have this fear of change, based on imagined consequences. And yet after change occurs, our mind has this plasticity where we don't even remember what it was like before that.

It's the same thing with awareness, right? There's these companies that You don't remember when you became aware of them. You don't really remember anytime when you weren't aware of them, but there was a certain point when you didn't know about them. And then you did. And, but you don't know why it happened.

It's just because there was some, there was a lot of touch points. They just kind of connected with something. Eric, before we wrap, I wanted to ask you about one more topic. This is a space I know you've gotten involved in. It's the It's AI, right? It's what everybody's talking about. [00:33:00] But particularly in this case, when we're talking about one, I mean, I just mentioned fears that people haven't changed, right?

The fears that we're trying to put around restrictions that are, I think going to end up being self defeating or purposeless. And then also for this next generation, right, of students who are preparing for the future for this.

When we're trying to say like, how do we avoid this versus how do we empower

Erik Huberman: it.

Yeah. No, people are trying to develop tools to discover if students are using AI for their work. It's like, are we not preparing them for future? Because that's what they're going to be doing in the real world. So, like, why would we do that? I just saw a friend of mine was going on a rant to his kids school about this.

So, yeah, it's an interesting topic. I think, yeah, in terms of how we're preparing people, like, listen, everyone's afraid of change. But the 1 thing I think is also interesting is our country has become fascinated with innovation. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but people always forget that human adoption is slow.

And so. You know, the headlines I remember from like four years ago were that, you know, there will be no truck drivers by 2025. That's the prediction. I don't know who made that prediction, but that was every headline. And it's [00:34:00] like, now we're in, halfway through 2023. Do we think there are no truck drivers in the next year and a half?

Right now I hear there's a shortage. So no, that is not how these things work. Do I think AI is going to replace all jobs by 2030? No. Do I think that things will shift? To me, this is like. When computers came around, everyone said, well, I guess art directors are done. Computers will just do it. It's like, well, no, someone's got to do it.

Like it's not completely replacing similar to like, does no one work in McDonald's anymore because we have kiosks? No jobs shifted. They probably have less employees, but no, that's not how these things work. It creates other jobs. It creates more opportunity. And frankly, it creates more efficiency for that company to then reinvest in the economy and create more.

Opportunities in other ways. So I don't believe that this is like some dystopian, scary future at all. I think that a lot of the guys in a I want to believe that just like the people in crypto wanted to believe that the U. S. Dollar is going to go to zero and that Bitcoin is going to take over. Like, there's a lot of like.

Even subconscious [00:35:00] motivation that that's what's going to happen, which is why you see guys like, Sam Altman talking about that. We know we got to regulate this or it's going to take over the world. Like, that's probably not what's actually gonna happen. But, it will. It will definitely change jobs now on the education side.

That's where I think it's hard because it's really hard for the education system to shift how they've taught. A lot of things are being done the same way they were done 80 years ago. And so, you know, understanding that, like, yeah, making someone write an essay versus go put together a really good prompt on AI and then edit it to be your own and go pull new sources and add to it.

Like, that's how you should be teaching people is, like, how to become a great curator and editor and researcher, not how do I go write, you know, five paragraph essay, which I, like, I loved English as a kid. I'm not trying to, like, shy away from that weird, which is weird to say, because I wasn't that academic.

Bye. I actually really liked writing and, but I would say if I was going to go back into school now, if something like knowing what I know, if someone was telling me to go write five pages or five paragraph essays, [00:36:00] I'd be like, I want to understand the mechanics of this, but then I want, but from an editing standpoint, so I can go leverage this with a chat GPT and then make it my own.

Cause that will be a much more efficient use of my time. And that talent will be very useful in the market.

Ross Romano: Right. Yeah. And writings, I mean, it's a great example because it comes up in so many ways, comes up in schools, as far as essay writing, homework, et cetera, it's at the center of, you know, the, the film and writers, film and television writers guild strike right now. And then, then there's things like, well, you know, taking out the quality, even if it became super quality, well, there's legal concerns that you can't copyright something.

Right. So it's good to be aware of it. The surest way that it might replace your job is if you just don't pay attention to it and you don't know what's going on. But it's also a way to become more aware is to be less afraid to say, I'm not afraid to pursue this career path because I see the things that I'm bringing with my unique skill set, the ways it's technologically [00:37:00] enhanced.

Eric, thanks so much for being here. Is there any, you know, anything else you're working on anywhere our listeners should find you?

Erik Huberman: We're, always working on expanding, so you can always, if you need marketing help, reach out hawkmedia. com. You can, we're always happy to dive in and do a free consult and see where we can help and where your opportunities are. We use our AI tool that we've built. So we didn't really mention that, but we built Hawk AI.

We launched it last year and then have just recently incorporated, open AI into it. Where we actually have 8, 000 companies marketing data running through in real time and can run a quick audit and go exactly at where you're missing, where you're falling short, where your opportunities are on the marketing side.

So you leveraging that we're always happy to help people out with that side of things. And then easy to get in touch with me. I'm just at or slash our Cuban on all social. Yeah, Hawk Talk, our podcast, Hawk Method, the book, we try to be pretty accessible. It's part of our mission statement, accessibility to great marketing, be the best at what we do, but easy to work with.

Ross Romano: Excellent listeners. Check that out. And yeah, to the book, the Hawk method, you can find that at hawkmethod. com. We'll put the link below to that and to the other social [00:38:00] media and resources you can find, please do subscribe to the authority for more in depth author interviews like this one, or visit all of our podcasts at the podcast.

network. Eric Huberman, thanks again for being here.

Erik Huberman: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.