The Addiction to Progress with Erik Huberman Founder of Hawke Media

Cult of Startup Podcast

Erik Huberman is the Founder & CEO of Hawke Media, a full-service outsourced CMO based in Santa Monica, CA that launched in 2014 and has been valued at $60 million. In just 3 years, Hawke Media has grown from 7 to over 120 employees and has serviced 400+ brands.

Prior to Hawke Media, Erik founded, grew and sold Swag of the Month and grew Ellie.com’s sales to $1 million in four months. Erik is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including Forbes “30Under30”, Inc Magazine’s “Top 25 Marketing Influencers”, Influencive's "Top Influencive Influencers of 2017". Erik is a regular contributor to major media publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Business Insider, and is proud to have and recently joined XPRIZE as their key marketing advisor.

Some Questions I Ask Erik:

• What is Hawke Media? 1:50
• What about the traditional marketing agency model is broken? 2:26
• How is Hawke Media's business model different from the competition? 4:50
• Where did the concept of an “outsourced CMO” come from? 5:38
• How did you start slinging Beanie Babies? 6:56
• Why did you focus on learning opportunities over making money in college? 13:09
• Why the hell did you take the LSAT? 15:18
• From your early entrepreneurship days, what are some of the greatest lessons you’ve learned from that time? 18:10
• What was Swag of the Month? 24:33
• What are some of the biggest lessons you took away from founding a ecommerce company? 25:40
• What advice do you have for young ecommerce companies? When does unit economics come into play? 26:30
• Take me through on how you sell 80k worth of product in 2 weeks? And how you did 2 million in the first 6 months? 30:30
• The fitness clothing brand completely changed their game plan all of the sudden, why do you believe that was a huge mistake? 33:15
• Why did you decide to start an agency over going to get a job? 35:51
• When you first started Hawke Media were you outsourcing or hiring people right here and there to cover the needs of clients? 39:23
• Walk me through the hiring process you used to grow Hawke Media? 40:19
• How do you qualify clients and how do you keep them happy? 41:57
• What would recommend to a startup looking hire agency? 44:22
• Why do have a huge neon sign in your office that says “Get shit done, learn quickly, be cool” and what does it stand for with Hawke Media? 48:40

Connect with Erik:

Twitter: @ErikHuberman

Instagram: @ErikHuberman