Digital Social Hour - The Secret to Surviving Market Crashes Revealed! | Erik Huberman DSH #682

Episode Date: August 31, 2024

Discover the secret to surviving market crashes with Erik Huberman on this episode of Digital Social Hour! 📈💥 Tune in now as Erik shares his incredible journey from a commercial real estate crash to building a nine-figure business without investors. Don't miss out on insights into why longevity is key to financial success and how avoiding over-financing can be your biggest advantage. 🚀 Join the conversation as Erik reveals the pitfalls of the marketing industry and how his transparent approach has transformed over 5,000 brands globally. 🙌 Packed with valuable insights, this episode is a must-watch for aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business veterans alike. Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! ✨   #GrowthStrategy #MarketingAnalytics #EmailMarketing #SocialMediaMarketing #MarketingTips   #MarketingFunnel #MarketingStrategy #BusinessDevelopment #HowToGrowMyBusinessFast #FinancialEducation   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:26 - How Erik Got Into Marketing 02:06 - What Makes Hawkemedia Different 04:26 - Bootstrapping to 9 Figures 05:22 - Reasons Businesses Fail 07:06 - Work-Life Harmony 11:22 - Hiking with Gorillas 14:05 - Becoming a Pilot 16:45 - Buying Back Your Time 18:18 - Quitting Sugar 20:14 - LA Crime Problem 22:14 - California Taxes 24:17 - Political Views 27:35 - Social Media and Depression 29:58 - Erik's New TV Show 32:04 - What's Next for Erik 33:07 - See You Tomorrow   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST: Erik Huberman https://www.instagram.com/erikhuberman https://erikhuberman.com/   SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly   LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

America. We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At Grand Canyon University, we believe in equal opportunity, and the American dream starts with purpose. By honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. The pursuit to serve others is yours. Find your purpose at grand canyon university private christian affordable visit gcu.edu five over time and keep going you're going to make money you're going to grow like things are going to happen but longevity is really the game here and a lot of people want that quick get rich quick and the chances of that are really slim

so if you go for longevity and you know that there's only two ways i fail i either get underwater on financing or i give up and there's two things you need to do. Don't take on too much financing or any, if you can avoid it and find ways to make sure that you're always going to want to keep doing it. All right, guys, we got Eric Huberman. Glad we can make it happen, man. We've been talking for a while. Yeah, no, we made it up and crazy delay, but made it in. Yeah. Crazy. We're just meeting now because we've been talking for years, I think five up. Yeah. Crazy delay, but made it in. Yeah. Crazy we're just meeting now because we've been talking for years, I think. Five years? Yeah.

Something like that. Yeah. And you're marketing for the biggest brands in the world now. It's been good. It's been good. And you've built an awesome podcast. Thanks, man. Yeah.

You mentioned some clients already. Funko's a client. Yep. It's massive. Yeah. How did you start off with the marketing stuff? Yeah. I graduated in 08 and wanted to get into real estate.

And it's funny. It feels like similar to what's happened recently where I went into real estate, got my license, started in commercial real estate, and a week later the entire banking industry collapsed. And so that year I made 350 bucks and was like, okay, I can't, this is not going to be my career. I got to figure it out. And long story short, I ended up starting an online music company.

I was in a band from middle school and high school and wanted to figure out how to help musicians understand business and brought in some amazing record execs and big people in the industry and was able to make like the early version of master class for the music industry built that for two years hired a ceo to take it over and then built a subscription t-shirt company called swag of the month sold that joined an incubator called science uh that had just launched a company called dollar shave club helped them there advise for a bunch of their brands, helped them build an activewear brand called Ellie that we sold. It is still running. That was 11 years ago. And then spun out of there and just started helping some other brands grow and had built a name for myself.

I was 26 years old, but I was one of the only guys that had built and sold a couple of e-commerce companies. And all these other companies started trying to get into it. And I was offered jobs at Red Bull, Verizon, HP, a bunch of e-commerce companies and all these other companies started trying to get into it. And like it was offered jobs at like Red Bull, Verizon, HP, a bunch of different companies and went, I'd rather just advise and then saw how broken that ecosystem was and just started hiring people. And yeah, fast forward a decade later, here we are. Crazy. What was the things causing the broken ecosystem? Yeah. I mean, lack of a better word, I'd say 99% of marketers are completely full of shit and there's no, Yeah, there's no barrier to entry. It's just really rough.

So if you're a business owner and you're not a marketer, which most aren't, they should be focused on building a great product or a great service, finding a great partner is impossible. And I was like, it's annoying because, again, 99% full of shit. The 1% that are any good tend to get really expensive,

want long contracts, high minimums. They're just hard to work with as well. So there's nothing that's accessible and easy to work with, but also really good at what they did. And so I just went, why don't I just create that? And started with a little SWAT team and now 200 plus people, 5,000 brands later, it's been a good ride. Incredible, man. I've actually never had a good

experience with a marketing agency. And a lot of people haven't. When I say 99%, that's not hyperbole. I mean that i think that they're probably 99 it sucks so chances are you're going to work with a ton of bad ones and maybe find a good one yeah so what makes your model appealing are you doing a retainer model yeah we're still like we're month to month like but still on the retainer side but it's it's not that we're priced that different honestly it's more just like we do what we say we're going to do it's a cultural thing it's not that we're priced that different, honestly. It's more just like we do what we say we're going to do. It's a cultural thing. It's an execution thing.

It's a credibility thing. Like I come from building companies and knowing how to do this. And now my team has been built around that. Now, my executive team has been with me for a long time too. So like this whole company has been built by people that know how to grow these businesses. So there's no snake oil.

It's super transparent, super straight. We want to be successful for our clients. And so that doesn't mean we always are, but at least marketing a really good product is really easy. If you run the best practice, it's going to work. Marketing a terrible product is almost impossible. So we're not going to be the reason a company succeeds or fails, but we're also not going to be the reason marketing fails.

You hire us, your marketing's buttoned up, and it's going to be good. We know that. We can confidently say that. We've done it way too many times. We have all the data. We built a whole AI system showing us on how we perform compared to the market. And we know we outperform the market all the time. We are really good at what we do. And we're, again, very flexible, very easy to work with. Everything's out of the cart. We can move things around. We've built very different from the other talented agencies. So talented agencies generally get really hard to work with. And you have to be a big brand with a lot of money and three-year contracts. And that stuff's hard to swallow for a mid-market company.

So we've become a better option than that. That's cool. And you built the company with no investors, right? Yeah, all bootstrapped. Nine-figure business. Incredible. So you were self-funding the whole way? Yep.

Yeah, just built it off its own income and just stayed really responsible, trying not to spend money unless we needed to and grew it somewhat reactively in the sense of, okay, finally, we need that. We'll buy it. We'll hire that person, that kind of thing. But yeah, in terms of always having investment be the barrier, I've raised money for companies too.

We have a venture fund too, so we've invested in 95 different companies as well. We just closed a new fund, $20 million fund on that side. So I see like there's companies that need money to scale and I get that. But I've always believed that if you don't have the talent in your initial founding team to get what you're doing done and you need a ton of capital, unless it's super high tech, unless it's super high tech or it's super complicated in some way that like the cut the capital makes sense don't raise money figure out a way to build it because that comes with so many different things like there's only two reasons businesses fail number one is

you get underwater on fundraising you either raise too much money at too high evaluation you're never going to get over that and there's no reason to keep going or you raise too much debt and you can't service that debt you get underwater you can't make payments that's one reason it fails the other reason is the founding team gives up so to me if you want like the long game and i've heard homozy talk about this i've heard charlie munger talk about this like surviving is the game because if you can survive over time and keep going you're going to make money you're going to grow like things are going to happen but longevity is really the game here and a lot of people want that quick get rich quick and the chances of that are really slim so if you go for

longevity and you know that there's only two ways i fail i either get underwater on financing or i give up then there's two things you need to do don't take on too much financing or any if you can avoid it and find ways to make sure that you're always going to want to keep doing it you're retaining yourself in some ways so like in any job in any career in any business like thankfully a year in we got offered to sell the company for a lot of money but we believe we were going to we were like on to something and we didn't take it well but then i i always talk to my business partner about if you turn down an offer you turn down a big deal assume it's going to be a decade before you get that again damn like just assume that because of the market crashes how long it takes to recover, all that, like, you don't

know if the market's going to crash next week. I mean, it happened end of 21. We got a big offer. Yeah. And I went, nah, I'm good. I'm still doing this. And a few months later, the whole market tanked in terms of valuations and everything. Like, I knew that would happen at some point.

It did end up happening. And who knows how long it'll be before we ever get back to where that was. And we're also growing the business. So, like like we'll probably be all right but i just said let's make the decision with that assumption in mind that we're stuck here for a decade we're stuck here for a decade it changes the way you look at how you're working and how you run your business it's not a sprint it's a marathon so then you do a lot of things to make sure that there's a harmony with work and life and i say harmony not balance because i think that the idea of balance means that your life is in conflict with your work which i think is crazy it's a great way to be miserable but

if you can create harmony which i think a lot of like you and i do a lot of our friends do where you're enjoying what you're doing you're finding ways to do the things you enjoy along with it being productive whatever it is whether you like to travel or the hobbies that you have can somehow flow into your work then you're in no rush and you can keep going and again then, then your business won't fail. You're not underwater on debt. And that's what I love about a bootstrap business. You can shrink and contract if you need to. You can grow as much as you want to. It's kind of your freedom. Yeah. Yeah. You saw a lot of those tech companies raise that nine, 10 figure valuations and they're kind of screwed now, right? Or gone. A lot of them are bankrupt already. Crazy.

And it's, yeah, because they'll never get get that again i have friends in some of those companies thankfully we advised our portfolio not to over raise like that and they didn't but uh there's definitely a lot of companies we didn't invest in but are friends with that they're like they will never get over the hurdle they'd have to you know 10x their business to just to get to where they were two years ago to be able to pay the money back that they raised two years ago right so imagine having to grow your business 10x just to get out from underwater. That's why a business can fail. That's tough.

It's just not going to happen. I'm talking at a level of already doing $100 million a year. You got to figure out how to get to a billion just to break even. Right. Like that's crazy. That's nuts.

Yeah. A billion a year, is that the goal? For us? Yeah. Oh yeah. If not, keep going. Yeah. That's Horne Moise's goal too, right?

Yeah. Billion. Yeah, that's going to be tough. You'll probably need how many companies under you? Like 500? Yeah. Oh, yeah. If not, keep going. Yeah. That's Horne-Moissey's goal too, right? Yeah. Billion? Yeah, that's going to be tough. You'll probably need how many companies under you, like 500? No. I mean, listen, there's individual companies that do that. For us, I think it's just a change in strategy. I mean, we're already on a gross revenue basis doing $600 million, so we're not that far off.

We'll probably get there in the next couple years. But from there, I want to figure out how to, like, we won't be valued at that because of how gross revenue works, but I want a valuation of a billion. I think I'm probably five years from that. And is that based off profit? Yeah, exactly. Got it. Yeah. And a lot of companies in e-commerce struggle to make profit. Yeah, totally. And a lot of that comes from the fundraising dynamic because a lot don't struggle. But when you raise a bunch of money, the idea of raising money is you burn that money to grow.

The problem is if you don't do that in a way that is incredibly disciplined and hard to do, you can end up burning that money and then never figuring out how to grow profitably, how to make profit. Because you've built an infrastructure around the idea of not making profit. And so that's where Allbirds and Warby Parker

and a lot of these guys have struggled is they just raised venture money, got to IPO. And now it's like, now people expect profitability because yeah, at some point your business should make money and they don't allow. Yeah, I used to see purple everywhere, purple mattress. I feel like they disappeared. Yeah, I don't know what's happening to them.

I haven't talked to them in a while. Yeah, there's a few brands like that, but that makes sense because if they're raising so much money and then they just burn through it. Well, that's the beauty of bootstrapping. Like again, it's slower, but you are forced to run the business correctly.

So it's really like we did, our profit was really strong last year and our profitability continues to climb because we know how to run the business that way. We've always had to be profitable. And so I can flip a switch and it's my own money. So I'm not answering to anyone. So I can decide, okay, I want to make more money this year let's stop spending on these

growth things and stop doing this and stop reinvesting in this and let's put some money in our pockets this year i made plenty of money let's go spend on growth let's not i don't really give a shit about taking my own money out like thankfully since i started this business my own bills have not been an issue so i don't worry about paying my bills i've got all the luxuries and the vacation home and boat and all that stuff that it's fun i've got the fun toys and that stuff done this isn't about that this isn't about how i pad my pocket i get to live a lifestyle that i'm like i'm at the lifestyle level i'm good to live at i'm not trying to reach a new lifestyle now it's it really is what creates the for an entrepreneur you get to a different level where it becomes more of a game now how do i win how do i beat myself how do i keep growing what else you know we changed our

mission statement to marketing world domination because i used to people used to ask me like what's the goal you're going to sell i'm like i don't know like it's marketing world domination we want to take over the world from the marketing perspective and i would joke about it and finally was like no that's exactly what i'm pushing for and i want my team to understand that and rally around that and that's a little bit so we changed that out a while ago and it really does bring the people up in the company that like that aligns with that they're like we're we're trying to do something here yeah i like that you're crushing in business but you also have fun i mean you've hiked with gorillas yeah i gotta hear that story yeah no it's a that's probably one of the better trips my so my wife and i travel a ton

we've been to 40 something countries together and um we went on our honeymoon on safari in Kenya. And while we were there, and I'm big back to the work-life harmony, what I talked to my business partner about was, why don't we do the things ongoing that we would do if we retired or had a big exit? So then there's nothing drawing us towards that. He likes to play golf. So he's like, I want to play golf every other Wednesday. That's easy to do.

Things like that. There was just like, I heard this from a DHH from a base camp, the software company that like, they would only work 40 hours a week. And then he became a professional race car driver on the side too. Wow. And built base camp.

Like you can do that stuff. You can have that where it all works together. And so we went on this safari and I had kind of been working like for a couple of years up until then, I was like on this thing of like, if something's not at the top of my bucket list, let's just go do it. And that was one. We did that. While we were there, someone goes, if you love this, the best thing we've ever done is gone and hiked in the jungle with gorillas.

And I'm like, I'm sorry, what? And they're like, yeah, you just go hike. And my wife looks at me and goes, that sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I'm like, we should do it next year. And so we signed up. It was 2020, so it didn't happen. But we did it in end of 21, I think. Yeah. Late 21, we signed up it was 2020 so it didn't happen but we did it in 20 end of 21 i think yeah late 21 we ended up going and doing it and yeah you literally we hiked for

like six hours through the jungle up a mountain with like a guy with a gun or a girl with a gun and a guy with a machete and all of a sudden it opened up and it's a family of like 15 gorillas and you're this far away from them and they're like with the silverback if he stares at you just look look down and go and don't look him in the eyes and you grunt and like they but they're super chill and like i'm we're not in the zoo here it was like in the wild in rwanda hanging out with gorillas but it's it was really one of the coolest things we've ever done i don't know if a gun and a machete is enough for 15 gorillas no no no no actually ironically like these the gorillas actually don't really get aggressive water buffalo are one of the most dangerous animals in africa they were worried about coming

up on one of them oh wow i didn't know they were aggressive like that you see any other animals uh on that trip we saw the golden monkeys which are little orange monkeys um i don't think we ran into much else there on safari we saw we saw every giraffe, zebra, lions, all that. That's cool, man. Was that your favorite country out of the 42? Rwanda is up there, but not to, it's one of the coolest trips I've ever taken, but I'd say the two countries that I love going back to, Italy and Japan.

They're awesome. Both on my bucket list. Both, like those are the two easy ones. And they're for the same reasons and they're very different, but the same things. They have the best food in the world, those two. The cultures are amazing. The history, the architecture, the things you get to do.

But they're not similar in any of those, but those are the points that make them both really fun to make. You're a pilot, right? So are you flying to some of these on your own? No, no, no. I fly locally. Yeah, becoming a pilot was just like I like to challenge myself both in the business but then outside and like i've found that like i've probably one of the biggest things that drives me is achievement and not outside praise but just the idea of like hitting a level like it's almost like life is a game to me in a video game um my wife gave me that reflection so

i got my pilot's license because i went and got certified actually in africa scuba diving and it was like a small process like a few days and i was like that was fun and took a test and all that and i'm like i want to do something like that but that takes me like a while and i can really invest in and take time and like feel that and so signed up to get my pilot's license took a couple years got slowed down a little bit because of covid but yeah that was a really fun process but haven't been flying as much had a little girl and so i've like toned down like if i have free time i'd rather spend some family time these days but still fun to have i'll probably get back into it and there's this little aspect of me that i'm like you know there's a like hobbyist side of me

that's like i want to be batman like i don't have any superpowers but neither did he i'm gonna figure out how i can have all the gadgets and all the talents to love it yeah if you could pick one superpower to have what would you pick and why? That's a hard one. I would go, what's it called? Being able to teleport. That's literally where my head went, was teleport. Because I think we both have the same thing.

We have to travel so much. We have to be there and go back. For business, it'd be amazing. I guess if my lifestyle was the same, teleportation would probably make my life much easier. Some people say mind reading, but I feel like you'd be miserable. Yeah, exactly. I don't really want to know. I care about, yeah. yeah and honestly i don't think people in their own heads are necessarily thinking about like people don't know what they want kind of thing like i think that probably that might not be a good thing yeah because there is that belief that thoughts come from somewhere

else and they're not actually your own thoughts yep that's a little deep that's another podcast you also did heli snowboarding what is that yeah i mean we talked about like being a hobby junkie and that comes back to like uh the bucket list thing i was actually you had him on the podcast i was sitting on a cruise ship for a thing called summit at sea and i had a reservation at this steakhouse that i i just heard you need to reservations no one else did get there and this guy standing with his wife they won't let him in because he doesn't have a reservation i had a i just made like a reservation like 20 people just because and, and so I went, hey, just join me. They're with me. And I'm in, the guy sits next to me.

We start talking. And after 30 minutes, he goes, you like snowboarding? I'm like, yep. And he goes, you want to go heli boarding? I'm like, yep. It's taking a helicopter to go snowboarding. And I've done it every year with him since 2017. His name's Dan Martell on this podcast.

I go on his trip every year. That trip went from 12 people to 24 to 36 to 48 people go every year now. Yeah, it's awesome. I'm already signed up to go again next January. So that's, yeah, snowboarding's a big hobby of mine. The king of time optimization, Dan Martell. So I'll give him a shout out on that.

Buy back your time book. I had my assistant read it and she's got a report coming to me next week on what she thinks we should do based on the book, which I thought was like another level of hack for his book yeah that is next that's actually so smart but you need to trust the person reading it yeah she's great yeah that is one of the best things you could probably outsource because there's a lot in books but there's there's also not a lot in books there's a lot of there's a lot of fluff yeah she literally is

coming to me with a summary and all the things she thinks she needs to do to make buy back my time brilliant are you very cognizant of your time? Do you think about it often? Thankfully, I've always been a very efficiency-driven guy. And it's one of those things where I think efficiency and laziness get it confused, where I'm like, no, I never wanted to commute. I hate commuting and sitting in the car. So when I look at jobs early on or find an office, it's always been really close. I'm always looking at how do I mix two things, going back to the work-life harmony like i'll go on a snowboard trip but i'll plan

some meetings when i'm in that town or i'll do a dinner in vegas but see if i can get some podcasts so it's like i'm not just wasting time my calendar is stacked from 8 a.m to 6 p.m every single day 30 minute slots everything filled wow every day and because that's how i don't if i have free time like what am i doing like answering email like it's like i get anxiety I feel. If I have free time, what am I doing? Answering email? I get anxiety when I have free time. I don't like it. And even weekends.

I have plenty of personal stuff going on too. I'm not just working all the time. And I pretty much stack up what I'm doing. It's very rare that I'm just sitting on the couch

watching a movie. That's not where I enjoy it. I can't do it. I literally can't. There's points where I'm like, all right, I need a day off. I've grinded. If I'm bouncing around and I have five trips in a week where I'm like, all right, I need a day off. I've grinded. Like if I'm bouncing around

and I have like five trips in a week, I might say like, all right, Saturday I'm going to chill, watch a movie, hang out. But like normally I'm looking at what can I do during this time

and I'm big on the fitness exercise side too. So I'm going for a run or bike ride or hike or something too. Any weird biohacks you get into? Weird biohacks. I just got, it was fun.

The past five months I cut sugar out completely okay to see what i would do and i dropped 10 pounds of fat in five months whoa and i wasn't i'm not that overweight i don't actually this is the part that pisses me off i did a before and after picture and it looks no different what the fuck i lost the weight like i just i kept my muscle mass and lost all the fat weight um that's not really a hack it's just that's discipline five months without sugar and i will say so i don't drink alcohol i don't drink caffeine i don't miss either really at all i like

the smell of coffee it was a taste and smell coffee i like but it's like not a big deal alcohol i barely miss um sugar every day yeah like five months in no sugar and i'd still a friend would eat an ice cream next to me or have a cookie i'm like god damn it so you might have parasites then i'm on a parasite cleanser now oh maybe yeah that's possible i'll plug you in my parasite and I'd still, a friend would eat an ice cream next to me or have a cookie. I'm like, God damn it. So you might have parasites then. I'm on a parasite cleanser now. Oh, maybe, yeah. That's possible. I'll plug you in my parasite cleanser. So they actually control your brain

and they crave certain sugars and stuff. That actually makes sense. But if they crave sugars after five months, you think they'd be dead. Who knows? No, 90% of people have parasites, she said. Yeah, and that makes sense. And I've been friends with Ben Greenfield for a long time.

And then Brian Johnson I recently met. And I'm like, I basically am taking like baby steps. So like soon I'm going to do a full body MRI and a full body scan. I'm renewing my life insurance before that. Because if something comes up, I'd like to have my life insurance. But yeah, just trying to get like, not take it to the level, the extreme level. But the more like, what can I do without sort of inconveniencing the rest of my life yeah down yeah throwing off sugar is not a big deal i also found a great meal prep company

in la called kushi that i gave them all my macros and what i want everything's super healthy and they just deliver it to my door once a day breakfast lunch and dinner every day did they service nationwide or just la i think just la and maybe santa barbara right now okay i think they're gonna expand but yeah i was like i think he was kobe b Bryant's chef. And then when that happened, he went into this. That's legit. How do you like living in LA right now? I hear a lot of interesting things. Yeah.

This is my view of LA. It's funny. I get in the taxis. So LA went through definitely a downtrend in terms of the crime side of it. No arguing there. And I don't like that side. And my biggest COVID hobby I picked up was tactical training, both practically and because I enjoy it. So I, uh, and I met the guy that one of the guys that trained Keanu Reeves to be John Wick is what kicked that off. So he's like, Hey, it was funny.

He called me, he's married a friend of mine and Aaron Cohen's his name. He called me and said, Hey, uh, I hear this guy that's really good at marketing. Uh, if I train you to be lethal, will you teach me marketing? I was like, yeah. I don't know what that means, but let's do it. And so I trained with them all through COVID and all that stuff. The fact that that even is a thought

of like there's actual practical use to that is insane to me, but I do think LA's getting better on that side. I think that's swinging the other way a little bit. We've got a great city councilwoman on the west side of LA

named Tracy Park that is awesome. And if that can start to be more of a beacon of how it works if i think we're in a good spot we'll know this year with the da race if gascon gets re-elected it's a bad sign because that's the guy that just lets everybody out of jail they arrest people and don't keep anyone so like that's the problem um tax wise you know i think there's definitely a you know across we saw it the the past week like biden wanting to now tax

unrealized gains and like all that's insane it won't go through i'm pretty sure it's going to be ruled unconstitutional and i'm traditionally a democrat just to be clear and i've kind of become more i feel like democrats went one way and i stayed where i am so now i'm a centrist just to be clear on my politics but uh yeah that stuff that is comes in california too is insane to me and i hope that rhetoric slows down because but the problem with this is that stuff that comes in California, too, is insane to me. And I hope that rhetoric slows down. But the problem with this is that stuff starts to get introduced. It gets normalized. And sometimes people start to believe that is the right way to go.

But with California, the general tax situation, what's the 13% state tax to me? I still think that there is almost no better city in the country for opportunity. And I learned this. I still think that there is almost no better city in the country for opportunity. I actually did a LinkedIn post about this a long time ago because my dad was a pretty successful guy. He sold the company when he was 40. I was eight years old. He wanted to move to Nevada. He wanted to move to Tahoe. He told my sister and I.

My sister was six. I was eight. My mom. We started crying. We don't want to leave our friends. We had no concept. He was like, this is a lot of money. Like we're going to save a lot of money moving here, like more money than you guys understand. Like at the end of the day,

we won. And so he, we ended up giving up the taxes. He paid the taxes. We stayed in California. He then, uh, years later, probably five, six years ago said something about it. He's like, I can't believe you guys, or you didn't want to go to Nevada. I'm like, I can't believe you had an eight year old talk you out of keeping your money. money like what are you talking about i'm like but let's be real do you regret it and he said absolutely not like okay why he's like if i had moved i would have had so much less opportunity than being in la being in tahoe that i would have missed out on so much that like 13 i made way more than 13 extra money sticking around but so to me it's like you have to take the whole equation into account.

Now, that doesn't mean that certain people aren't going to be better off in Texas. Or if it's a one-time life event that is the biggest company you have made and you're done after that, it doesn't make sense to try to mitigate that tax. I get it. But in terms of long term, I believe that LA and New York still win by far. Miami's cool. It has nothing compared to those two. Austin, cool, nothing compared. Doesn't mean you can't make a living either.

I want to make that clear. But I think that LA, for me at least, I see the opportunity is still very big and the lifestyle is still awesome. And I think the crime will be fixed. And the weather is on people. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I agree.

I think people hate on LA because it's just easy to say. Yeah, and that's fine. Also politics. I was going to say, Yeah, and that's fine. Also politics. I was going to say, but even like, you know, I was at Arizona, University of Arizona, Jesus, 19 years ago is when I started there. And I remember people trying to shit on LA back then before all this was popular about the Tysons and stuff. Oh, Californians, you guys are crazy.

It's like, I mean, we have the perfect weather and a great lifestyle. And like that hasn't changed because that isn't something that humans can screw up. It's easy to hate on that. It's a lot of jealousy, I think. I'm surprised you're Democrat. You do not strike me as Democrat. At this point, I don't know if I'd say I'm Democrat. I grew up in a liberal town.

I grew up with a liberal family. Even my dad, again, super successful business guy, was a Democrat. And I always believed that there should be sort of a safety net for people that need it. And like I don't necessarily, you know. But then as I come around, it's the Winston Churchill line reminds me all the time, which is like if you're 20 and conservative, you have no heart. If you're 40 and liberal, you have no brain. And I'm like that's – I think that's where it comes because like the problem is you do get jaded in a way that's not inaccurate where you start to realize that a lot of the things that you hope for in a utopian world of like if we give all this to everybody and we take care of everyone, everyone will live happy. And you realize that's really just not how human nature works.

And so it starts to – plus again, we've gone – Democrats have gone from Democrat to some sort of social democracy, self-proclaimed. Like we have the Democratic Socialists of la are like three of the city council seats yeah like it is a thing and like i that's to me it's just rational show me a socialist country that has worked out facts and like that's that's where i have trouble with it if democrats were still the democrats of the clinton era and even obama i'd have a different conversation but it doesn't seem to be that anymore agreed yeah you always see that post on social media oh Bill Gates gave everyone ten thousand dollars it would end world poverty or something yeah exactly and it sounds good on paper but yeah it wouldn't work money always flows to the elites yeah and I think like that's the thing I think trickle up economics

is sorry trickle down economics is a fallacy so that's where I have trouble with Republicans it's like I know this because I grew up around well I have my own where it's like no if make more money, I don't just spend it on everyone. Like people invest their money. They put it into things. They keep assets. They frankly hoard. Like if I make an extra million dollars this year, I'm not going and spending a 1.1 million by leveraging that and going out and spending it. Guess what? If you take, if a person making 50 grand a year makes an extra five grand they spend 5500 people spend 110 percent of their income in the middle class so like in terms of the way it trickles through the economy you're way better off giving it to the lower middle class which is where like i believe in a higher minimum wage people would argue about uh inflation causing

factors which yes it will cause inflation not at the same level you'll raise the minimum wage. So what does that do? It brings the gap down. And so that's stuff that I do believe in that Republicans will hate me for. So that's where it's like, I don't know if I have a home politically anymore. It's tough to agree with every single point on every side.

Totally. And that's where I think one of the problems we're going off the rails, but politics in general, it shouldn't be a religion. Yeah. I do agree the middle class is being wiped out, though because i grew up middle class yeah and it's it's tough they can't even afford houses now right no it's terrible yeah and and the other thing i would say though and i think it's important is like i do think the opportunity is bigger than it's ever

been i think it's just you know and i don't think that people work like our parents did or grandparents i really don't i i think that the way we work, the real grind that people had, our society's arguing for a four-hour work day. Oh, yeah, I saw that. Excuse me. I don't see our parents or grandparents ever even wanting that. So it's like, and again, who knows who's right in that situation?

Should everybody not have to work and all these things should be taken care of? Well, maybe AI and robotics will solve that and people that want to work can work and everyone else can live a modest life modest life i do think social media causes problems with that though because you start looking at lifestyles of your friends that make money and this is i think one of the biggest problems in that sense is like i do it i'll see one friend buy a new house another friend go on a world worldwide trip another friend sell his company

and another friend spend the weekend with his kids and i go why can't i spend the weekend with my kids sell my company buy a house and go on a worldwide trip like you turn your friends highway reels and the amalgamation of them becomes what you want yeah tough it's easy to compare on social media i actually don't look at my feet anymore yeah i think that's healthy yeah i stopped doing that maybe two or three years ago and i feel amazing now but i used to feel like just so depressed. Yeah, because that's where we get. I mean, that's the thing is the bottom threshold of society in the United States

is better than it's ever been. Like the poverty levels are well, where like the safety nets that are there, like we're in a place now where like, again, it's comparably, it's not great because like, yeah, you might not be able to go on all these vacations and go and do these nice things, but there's not a, like, yeah, you might not be able to go on all these vacations and go and do these nice things.

But there's not a – like, people are not starving at the same level. There are people, I'm going to be clear, but, like, not at the same level as they used to be. So, like, from an overall perspective, we're in a better place than we've ever been. But when you open up this window to compare yourself to the highest-flying friends you have and you're reminded of that all the time. And I learned this – I taught school in India early on when I was 17. It was a great way to get a Southern California kid out into the real world, so to speak. But you see people that are literally,

you want to talk about poverty, like there's nothing in the US that compares to what you see everywhere in India, at least at the time when I was there 20 years ago. But they're happy. Because again, there was no comparison. This is what I have. And there's also a cultural belief and a religious belief back there that's that comes from the caste system that i was

born with what i deserve because of how reincarnation works that they're like this is what i was given in life because of what i did in a past life and this is what i deserve and so they accept it and when you accept that you can be happy with just about anything and so that was again philosophical but uh it's interesting to see how unhappy the upper middle class can be in the United States while the poorest of the poor in India can be super happy. It is fascinating. Yeah, it's relative. And top 1% income is actually only $42,000 in the world. Yeah, exactly.

Which is super low. Yeah. And most people make that in America. I think that's the average salary in America. No, it's much higher than that now, I think. Oh, it is? I think it's close to $70,000 now. Yeah, and people are unhappy.

So it's just all relative, I guess. Yep, exactly. You got a TV show coming out? Yeah, we've got Kings of Barbecue. It was out on A&E and it's coming out on Hulu. It's me helping Cedric the Entertainer and Anthony Anderson launch their barbecue brand. And yeah, it's been a, that was a fun ride.

And so help them get their brand is called ac barbecue and uh it's in walmart and online and uh fun to get a phone call to be like hey we want to film this tv show we want you guys to help launch it we want you to be a part of it so that's awesome yeah you're seeing a lot of influencers launch their brands now and it seems like the next wave of influencers yeah i think that that is it's something we've done for 10 years like there was an article about me like a month ago calling me the celebrity brand whisperer which was a fun title um but we've launched a lot of celebrity brands dozens and dozens and for a while it kind of took a while because i think that you have to nail it right like it has to be authentic it has

to make sense like cedric and anthony launching a barbecue brand like their favorite thing to do together is to barbecue like there's something there they you know cedric's from st louis anthony's from compton they're like there's a thing about that that's real and if it's real and it's something they're passionate about they're going to really put time into it there's a lot of success to be out there like the same like casamigos who's we work with too they're a good one as an example because like george clooney wasn't just like we have george clooney's face like george clooney hosted dinners for buyers at these markets to say like hey try my tequila. Come over to my house.

If you like it, please put it on your shelves. Who's going to say no to going to George Clooney's house and having some tequila? So when they really get into it and they leverage who they are, it just opens so many doors. It's a great way to get to success. Yeah. Look at Mr. Beast. Yeah. I mean, that'll probably be a billion dollar company.

Yep. Feastables. Yep. Same thing with Taramana and The Rock. And we've seen I'm not going to call them out Not to give them crap But there's other celebrities

That like yeah Take my face And then like Call me in six months And let me know how it went Yeah it doesn't work That doesn't work anymore I feel like it might have

In the past But definitely not anymore Yeah maybe in the very Early days of it But like yeah No I mean even Jessica Alba Was one of the first To really do it that way

When it was in terms of digital She was there every day Like she was in the office We did some work with them i know those all her co-founders very well and like she was a part of it she wasn't just like put my put jessica elspin's name on it and call it a day yeah most of those don't go very far 100 what's the next step for you man marketing world domination we got this new fund we're investing we're growing we're working with some awesome brands and continuing to grow the team we're you know buying up a lot of agencies too we found that the m&a set of our business is really fun and nice for me it's all about you know kind of what you said what's the next thing like i

like the sandbox i like learning and experiencing everything life has to offer and so personally and professionally so all goes back to checking off the bucket list this year was uh snowboarding in japan my wife and I went and did that. And then we'll figure out playing golf in Scotland is on there too. So we're going to go do that. And so it's like figure out the next personal thing. And then professionally, same thing. Like, okay, I've run the business this size.

We need to grow it. So we're aiming to grow 50 plus percent this year. Aiming for that billion dollar valuation over time. That'll take a few years. But in the meantime meantime looking for what are all the ways we can do that how do we you know sort of the day-to-day that allows us to get there is a big part of it too love it man where can people find you at or slash eric you remember on any social i'm pretty cool easy we'll link below thanks for coming on man thanks for having

me yeah thanks for watching guys as always see you tomorrow