The Secret to Surviving Market Crashes Revealed! | Erik Huberman DSH #682

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.

All right, guys, we got Eric Huberman.

Glad we can make it happen, man.

We've been talking for a while.

Yeah, I know.

we made it 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 is a client.

Yep.

It's massive.

How did you start off with the marketing stuff?

Yeah, I just,

I graduated in 08 and wanted to get into real estate.

And it's funny, it feels like similar to like what's happened recently where I went into real estate, got my license, started in commercial real estate, 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, middle school and high school, and like 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 Masterclass for the music industry, built that for two years, hired a CEO to take it over, and then built a subscription teacher company called Swag of the Month, sold that, joined an incubator called Science that had just launched a company called Darwer Shave Club, helped them there, advised 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.

Wow.

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 like 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 better word, I'd say 99% of marketers are completely full of shit.

And

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're mostly, they should be focused on building a great product or a great service, finding a great partner is impossible.

And I was like, well, 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, you know, 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.

Yeah.

And a lot of people haven't.

When I say 99%, that's not hyperbolico.

Like, I mean that I think that they're probably 99% that 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 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, you know, my executive team's 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 like this is, 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 like, you know,

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 like, 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.

Like you hire us, your marketing's buttoned up and it's going to be good.

But 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 showing us on how we perform compared to the market wow and we know we outperform the market all the time like we are really good at what we do and we're again very flexible very easy to work with everything's a la carte we can move things around like we've built very different from the other talented agencies the 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 a company with no investors right yep yeah all bootstrapped nine-figure business yep Incredible.

Yeah.

So you were self-funding the whole way?

Yep.

Yeah.

It's 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 like, okay, finally, we need that.

We'll buy it.

We'll hire that person, that kind of thing.

But yeah, in terms of building, like 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.

Wow.

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 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 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 two high valuation, 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 Hamozi talk about this, I've heard Charlie Munger talk about this.

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 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 I 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 onto something and we didn't take it.

Wow.

But then I, 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 if 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.

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, it's, 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, 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.

If you create harmony, which I think a lot of 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 your business won't fail.

You're not underwater on debt.

And that's what I love about like 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 at nine, ten-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 that again.

I mean, I have friends in some of those companies.

Thankfully, we advised our portfolio not to over-raise like that, and they didn't.

But But

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.

Cause then it's like, I'm not, that'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 For us?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

If not, keep going.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's Hormoise's goal, too, right?

Yeah.

A billion.

Yeah, that's going to be tough.

You'll probably need how many companies under you, like 500?

No, I mean, it's, I mean, listen, there's individual companies that do that.

For us, I think it's just a change in strategy.

Like, you know, 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 of years.

Wow.

But

from there, I want to figure out how to, like, where 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, 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, you know, Allbergs 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.

Yep.

And they don't know how.

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, you know, 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 run that, 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.

And like, thankfully, since I started this business, my own bills have not been an issue.

So, like, 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 I used to, people used to ask me, like, what's the goal?

Are you 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 choke about it.

And then finally, we 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 it.

So we changed that a little while ago.

And it really does.

bring the people up in the company that like that aligns with.

They're like, we're, we're trying to do something here.

Yeah.

I like that you're crushing it in business, but you also have fun.

I mean, you've hiked with gorillas.

Yeah.

I got to 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

we went on our honeymoon on Safari in Kenya.

And while we were there,

and I'm big back to the like work-life harmony, what I talked to my business partner about was, why don't we do the things on ongoing that we would do if we retired or had a big exit?

So then there's no, like, nothing drawing us towards that.

Like, he wanted to, he likes to play golf.

So he's like, I want to play, you know, golf every other Wednesday.

That's easy to do.

Like things like that.

That was just like, I heard this from a DHH from Basecamp, 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 years up until then i was like on this thing of like if something's at the top of my bucket list let's just go do it yeah and that was one we did that while we were there someone goes you know 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 like we should should do it next year.

And so we signed up.

It was 2020, so it didn't happen, but we did it in 20

and 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 silver back, if he stares at you, just look down and go and don't look him in the eyes and you grunt.

And like, but they're super chill.

And we're not in the zoo here.

It was like in the wild in Rwanda hanging out with gorillas.

But 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, 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?

On that trip, we saw the golden monkeys, which are little orange monkeys.

I don't think we ran into much else there.

On Safari, we saw giraffes, 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, 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 like 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 revisit.

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 is 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.

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 he 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 of 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 to 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 going to 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.

Yeah.

It's just to be there and go back.

I guess if my lifestyle was the same, teleportation would probably make the life

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 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 yeah exactly uh you also did helly snowboarding what is that Yeah, I mean, we talked about like being a hobby junkie, and that comes back to like

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've just heard you needed 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 with 20 people just because, and he, so I went, Hey, just join me, they're with me.

And come 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 hellyboarding?

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 Martel 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 a, yeah, snowboarding is a big hobby of mine.

The king of time optimization.

Exactly.

Dan Martel.

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 fluff.

There's a lot of fluff.

Yeah.

She would always come to me with a summary and all the things she thinks she needs to do to make buyback my time.

Brilliant.

Are you very cognizant of your time?

Do you think about development?

Thankfully, like I've always been a very like efficiency-driven guy.

Like, and it's one of those things where like, I think efficiency and laziness get confused.

Yeah.

Where I'm like, no, I don't need, like, I never wanted to commute.

Like, I hate commuting and sitting in the car.

So I was like, when I look at jobs early on or find an office, it's always been really close.

Like, I'm always looking at like, 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 go 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, I don't, if I have free time, like, what am I doing?

Like answering email.

Like, it's like, I get anxiety when I'm, when I have free time.

Yeah.

I don't like it.

Um, and even weekends, like, you know, I have plenty of personal stuff going on, too.

I'm not just working all the time, and I pretty much stack up like what I'm doing.

It's very rare that I'm just sitting on the couch watching a movie.

Like, that's not where I enjoy it.

I can't do it.

Yeah, I literally can't.

There's points where I'm like, all right, I need a day off.

I've grinded.

Like, if I'm bouncing around, I have like five trips in a week.

I might say, 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 i the past five uh months i cut sugar out completely okay to see what it 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

discipline five months without sugar and i will say so i i don't drink alcohol i don't drink caffeine no i don't miss either really at all I like the smell of coffee or the taste and smell of coffee I like, but it's like not a big deal.

Alcohol, I barely miss.

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 in my parasite cleansing.

So they actually control your brain and they crave certain sugars and stuff.

That actually makes.

But after, if they crave sugars, after five months, you think they'd be dead.

Who knows?

No, 90% of people have parasites, you said.

Yeah, and that makes sense.

I just, and I've been friends with Ben Greenfield for a long time.

And then Brian Johnson and 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.

Throwing off sugar is not a big deal.

I also found a great meal prep company in LA called vet.

I gave them all my macros and what I want and 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 L.A.

and maybe Santa Barbara right now.

I think they're going to expand.

But yeah, I think he was Kobe 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.

Like, it's funny.

Like, I get in the tax.

So LA, right, LA went through definitely a downtrend in terms of like the crime side of that.

No arguing there.

And it's, you know, I don't like that side.

And one of my, 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, he married a friend of mine and Aaron Cohen's his name.

He called me and said, hey, I hear this guy that's really good at marketing.

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 him all through COVID and all that stuff.

The fact that that even needs is a thought of like there's actual practical use to that is insane to me.

But I do think LA is 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 called named Tracy Park that is awesome.

And like, if that can start to be more of a beacon of how it works, I think we're in a good spot.

We'll know this here 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 that's the problem.

Tax-wise,

you know, I think there's definitely a,

you know, across, we've saw it the past week, like Biden wanting to now tax unrealized gains and like all that.

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

yeah, 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.

Right.

But he, you know, 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 actually did a long LinkedIn post about this a long time ago because my dad was a pretty successful guy.

And he sold a company when he was 40.

I was eight years old.

Yeah.

And he wanted to move to Nevada, want to move to Tahoe.

And 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.

And 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 we ended up giving up the taxes.

He paid the taxes.

We stayed in California.

He then.

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.

Like, what are you talking about?

I'm like, but let's be real.

Do you regret it?

And he said, absolutely not.

I'm 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.

So to me, it's like you have to take the whole equation to 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 like long term, I believe that L.A.

and New York still win by far.

Like 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 still very big.

And the lifestyle is still awesome.

And I think the crime will be fixed.

And the weather is on the bottom.

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, 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 taxes 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.

Yeah.

It's a lot of jealousy, I think.

Yeah.

I'm surprised you're a Democrat.

You do not strike me as Democrat.

At this point, I don't know if I'd say

I just, 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 like, I always believed in 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, I, it's, 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 sort of that.

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 L.A.

are like three of the city council seats.

Like it is a thing.

And like,

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, if Bill Gates gave everyone $10,000, it would end world poverty or something.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And it sounds good on paper, but 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 wealth and I have my own, where it's like, no, if I 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

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 5,500.

People spend 110% 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

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, but

it's tough to agree with every single point on every side.

Totally.

And that's where I think we've...

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.

100%.

I grew up middle class.

And it's tough.

They can't even afford houses now.

Right.

I mean, it's terrible.

Yeah.

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 our grandparents.

I really don't.

I think that the way we work, the real grind that people had, like, our society is arguing for a four-hour work day or four weeks.

Excuse me.

Like, I don't see our parents or grandparents ever even wanting that.

You know, so it's like,

and again, who knows who's right in that situation?

You know, should everybody not have to work and all these things should be 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.

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...

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?

You turn your friend's highway reels and the amalgamation of them becomes what you want.

And it's 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, 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 lower, like the safety nets that are there, like it's we're in a place now where, like, again, it's 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 you're, 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.

Yeah.

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 see people that are literally, you want to talk about poverty, like there's nothing in the U.S.

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.

But because again, there was no comparison.

This is what I have.

And there's also, you know, a cultural belief and a religious belief back there 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

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.

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 it's closer to 70 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 it's in Walmart and online.

And

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 whole thing.

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.

But we've launched a lot of celebrity brands, dozens and dozens.

And for a while, it kind of took a lull 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.

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 and they're going to really put time into it, there's a lot of success to be had there.

Like same, like Casamicos, who's we work with too, they're a good one as an example because like George Cooney wasn't just like, we have George Cooney's face.

Like George Cooney 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 Cooney's house and having some tequila?

So like they, when they really get into it and they leverage who they are, it can, it just opens so many doors.

It's a great way to get to success.

Yeah, look at Mr.

Beast.

Yeah.

That'll probably be a billion dollar company.

Yep.

Feastables.

Yep.

Same thing with Terramana and The Rock.

And, you know, 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 all her co-founders very well.

And like, she was a part of it.

She wasn't.

It It wasn't just like, put Jessica Ellisbund's name on it and call it a day.

Most of those don't go very far.

100%.

What's the next step for you, man?

Marketing world domination.

Yeah, 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 buying up a lot of agencies, too.

We found that the M ⁇ A side of our business is really fun.

And for me, it's all about.

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 it goes back to checking off the bucket list.

This year was snowboarding in Japan.

My wife and I went and did that.

And then, you know, we'll figure out what the playing golf in Scotland is on there too.

So we're going to go do that.

And so it's like figuring 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, 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?

Adder/slash Eric Uberman on any social.

I'm pretty easy.

We'll link them below.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

Thanks for watching, guys, as always.

See you tomorrow.