Ep 8. How Hawke Media Handled an Unexpected Employee Hiatus That Almost Led to Them Losing Half of Their Clients

Welcome everyone to another episode of Down, But Not Out today I'm joined by Erik Huberman, Erik is a serial entrepreneur investor and speaker his full-service marketing agency Hawke Media in 2019 was recognized as one of Glassdoor's best places to work number 893 on the Forbes 5000 list and Up City top Los Angeles digital marketing agency Erik is also the host of the podcast Hawke Talk and partner in several investment firms. Erik thanks for being on the show yeah thank you for having me all right I don't know if my introduction sufficed so tell the audience I think we got one miss who is the author of the Hawke Method it's coming out in a couple weeks. Yeah yeah awesome yeah. I don't know where you pulled that from but it worked. I got most of it from your LinkedIn and Media's LinkedIn so it worked out, I'm sorry about missing that one but You're fine. Yeah give us a bit more in-depth into how you got started in entrepreneurship and where your career started. Yeah I started in entrepreneurship I mean my dad was an entrepreneur my grandfather was an entrepreneur I just grew up thinking I would run my own thing at some point it was entrepreneur wasn't a word for me until the past decade I'd say before that when I was younger it was just running my own thing running a business and I mean it started at six years old I took a bunch of my parents stuff and walked door-to-door in our neighborhood selling this stuff I decided as a six-year-old my parents didn't need anymore eight years old I had a lemonade stand and then I started buying and selling Beanie Babies and made a few thousand bucks doing that and the whole motivation for that was I wanted to buy an electric guitar because I'm Erik and the only other Erik I knew was Erik Clapton so I gotta be like him so yeah I've always had that side of it but I actually thought I was gonna grow up to be a musician until I was about 12 or 13 and then I realized I wasn't that good so maybe I should look at the business side and there's a whole bunch of other details to that but got into business really liked real estate my dad had gone from waste to real estate and had been grown grown up around the real estate business and so when I got out of school I went and worked for a real estate firm and started exactly a week to the day before the entire US banking industry collapsed in '08 and so about six months in I knew that it was not going to be sustainable I was making no money I ended up making 350 that year which is not enough to live in LA just to be straight for anyone that doesn't live here 350 does not cover your expenses and your rent in los angeles for the year so I started building an online music company I built that for two years got it to profitability and then brought in the CEO to take it over because I didn't believe it was gonna be big enough to like as i put it at the time at 24 it wasn't going to put my kids through college which at 24 was an interesting comment but that's how I was thinking about it and so I ended up leaving and then I started a teacher subscription company called Swag of the month sold it after a year and a half then started a women's activity brand sold it after a year to Valley Total Fitness and then started advising and consulting for brands found that the marketing world was completely broken and that 99% of marketers and agencies frankly are full of [ __ ] and went I need to fix this so I hired a little SWAT team to help me with some clients I was advising for and that was the start of hawk media the idea we'd go in figure out where the holes are in a marketing org and then spin up different experts month to month an hour cart to plug those in and take over marketing so we could be the the whole mission of Hawke is accessibility to great marketing for everyone so be the best at what we do but really easy to work with a lot on back there a few different a few different entrepreneurial journeys and and successes on the way to on the way to Hawke Media the what what made you know what was your if you remember the decision process going transitioning from that music business to to the direct to consumer yeah our we just our customers were independent artists they don't by nature have any money so we were you know we were doing a great service we ended up with some really great musicians on this platform it was business coaching for musicians and we ended up with some successes out of it and all that but I found that 99% of musicians are struggling artists because they don't want to work hard not because they're or they're not good at music like they don't want to practice they don't want to actually put the work in to generate music they and they just use the idea of a struggling musician as an excuse to not be successful and the few that are good are awesome but I became motivated with like okay so we're churning through all these people because if they're not famous in a month they're done working and so we kept just dealing with that over and over again I just went you know what let's this isn't going to ever be big and that got so I got no I don't say fed up but I got disenfranchised with the idea that it was ever going to be a big deal because it felt like a hamster wheel yeah fair enough and then the the two apparel businesses which spun into a consulting firm a marketing firm and then which spun into Hawke Media and what year are we roughly so 2010 was the was swag of the month 2012 was ellie the activewear brand and 2013. I started consulting 24 beginning of 2014 is when I started Hawke right on and then your dominant story is around hawk media yeah tell us about the early days of Hawke Media ramping up to that story. Yeah so you know I started consulting I mean how that happened I had built a reputation in LA as being one had sold to ecom companies really early in the e-com rush so to speak and so a bunch of companies were trying to figure out how to use digital how to use e-com and so I started consulting and there there wasn't anyone else out there like me that had success at the founder level and then would now go consult and work with other companies that's a rare thing I've come to find and so I got clients really easily and was and then I started consulting with them and started seeing the results and I was like oh this you know what worked for me and my company does work for all these other guys and so kind of came up with a marketing methodology with again eight years is now in a book but that aside we started running it and about three months in i went wow there's a lot of work here i hired an assistant to start helping me and then six months in it really was I mentioned this already but I kept trying to find agencies to help these guys so I was just by myself consulting so I'd try to hire agencies hire in-house and I found again that 99% of agencies or in house were full of [ __ ] and the few agencies that were any good wanted long contracts high minimum something that made them hard to work with and the independents that were really good good marketers were really expensive too so again there was no access to great marketing these company a lot of the companies I was working with couldn't afford Omnicom and WPP so I decided just to hire a few people I knew that were good at what they did so I hired an Email Marketer, a Facebook Marketer, a strategy person like a fractional CMO, Web Designer, etc and then went back to these companies and said it's all a-la-carte month to month etc and so month one I went I doubled my revenue so I basically took my consulting income hired these people for cheap and told them hey if it grows we'll all make more money and then it doubled the first month because everybody hired us for at least one service it went great we're off to the races got a little small office in Santa Monica it was basically a room like this with a conference table in the middle of it and that was our office and with a window that faced a wall this far away and I'll never forget that because I told my stepdad about it he goes "Are you working or staring out the [ __ ] window?" It's like yeah so yeah we started building and like it was off to the races immediately we realized that we had hit a vein where like every company needed what we did and we were good at what we did and we just kept growing and so you know and leading to that story happened a month into really starting the business and so I built this team we get to work double our revenue in the first month and I don't know if you want me to tell more of the ramp-up or get right into it well just how many employees were you at revenue-wise kind of rough Yeah so we were doing numbers in there yeah January of '14 I think we did 65 grand in revenue and I had I think seven people. Yeah so and then how many clients roughly eight give or take eight yeah yeah yeah and then someone left for Hawaii yeah so tuesday comes for Tuesday February comes around and it was right before Valentine's Day I know this because my wife reminds me that on our first date which was february 13th a month to the day after I started Hawke Media I met my wife and I told her this story venting that had just happened while we were sitting there kind of panicking about what the [ __ ] I was going to do so somewhere around the second week of february it was the Monday so I could probably look it up but it was probably monday the 8th or something I got an email at 3am so I woke up at like whatever 6-6:30 and I have an email that's from this from our email marketer that says hey Erik long story short I met a girl over the weekend asked her where in the world or fell in love asked where in the world she wanted to go she said Hawaii we're here now I'll be working remotely and a selfie of him and this girl in front of the Waikiki Towers and I'm like you know half asleep like looking at this what and so it doesn't have to start to like a Netflix movie or something right and at the time the guy was managing half of our revenue so I try to call him hawaii's three hours earlier than LA so calling him at six am's worthless he he only at midnight his time so I try to call him again obviously he doesn't answer I think I got a hold of him around noon that day so 9 a.m his time and I knew if i went off on him that was going to be counterproductive like it wasn't going to go anywhere so I just went hey man like congratulations but I need you to handle your [ __ ] so he's like of course Erik I'll be working remotely which wasn't a thing I never talked about there's a work remote we have an office but he's like I'll be working remotely we'll be fine everything's handled don't worry about it like okay then we're good enjoy Hawaii go I hang up next day all he managed four of our eight clients every one of them calls me what the [ __ ] he hasn't delivered on this try not to name him but he hasn't delivered on this he hasn't delivered on that what's what is what happened here and they're freaking out and so I start to try to calm again and I can't get all of them and about 3 p.m he calls me back and I start and now I can't hold back so I was just like yeah[ __ ] man what are you doing he's like hey Erik I'm gonna stop you right there this is the happiest day of my life I'm getting married and I need you to respect that and he hangs up on me and I mean I was so stressed because it was like I knew he was out like I got it he's nuts and gone I looked at my business partner at right pretty much that point but Tony and I'm like what the[ __ ] do we do he's like I guess I'm gonna learn email marketing because we gotta service it so he would we went home and read we were using Bronto at the time that was recently shuttered I think oh Oracle bottom and just turned it off but he went home and read all the Bronto blogs and learned how to do it took over so he was able to save the clients but I'm fast forwarding too far I didn't know that so we're sitting there and we're like what what do we do here we can't we're not gonna get older him he's gone we don't know we don't no we do know how to do email marketing but it's not like we don't have anything else going on on our plates right now we have other [ __ ] to do like how the hell are we going to keep up with this work right now we're already grinding and you know I'm definitely panic because again if those clients decided to fire us which were month to month that's half our revenue I can't pay for our employees anymore yeah I can't pay for the office I just signed a year you know year lease on so we're you know I'm anticipating all that while trying to figure out what the hell to do about this guy and so that's when my partner goes yeah I'll go figure out how to do this and he was a smart guy and he so Tony ran the music company for three years after I left he was the one that took over and built it and kept it profitable and I was right three years later it hadn't really grown that much and we it wasn't a fault of his he's a sharp guy it was just not the right horse to bet on and so we shut it down and joined me and so he went home and started doing email marketing and he was frankly better at client management so he went home and started doing that I get out and back to the point my dad was an entrepreneur and so i called him and was like told him the same story of like you know get this female and then this and that and that and i go through you know whatever the five minutes it just took me to tell this story I'd tell him in the same detail with a lot more emotion because it wasn't eight years ago it was that day going what the hell am I gonna do and his response at the time was after five minutes of ranting oh yeah that [ __ ] happens all the time I gotta run talk to you later and he hangs up yeah I'm driving I still remember it because I still remember I must have had to leave early because it was February but it was still light out which means I it was before 6 p.m at the office but I remember the sun was in my eyes because it sets in the west so it's probably

30-5 pm I'm driving and he says that hangs up and I'm just like what the [ __ ] what do you mean it happens all the time people just take like what do you mean now smartest lesson ever went into business because your podcast is a testament to it like this [ __ ] happens all the time but what ended up happening Tony handled it we kept those clients yeah the guy came back showed up it was like a week or two later married and he was like I'm back to work I'm like no you're not get the [ __ ] out that was it yeah and we hired a new email marketer and we started building from there and we moved on but it was definitely like we were on the verge of losing half our business and having to fire everyone and you know not go the direction we thought we were going to go and it took it took a great business partner that jumped in and handled it and then understanding that like this is the first of many things that are going to come like this and that's part of it too because we know it never ends and the problems just get bigger so that was the first month in business since then there's been thousands of these stories yeah this one definitely set you back almost put you out how long from like when he when you got that three a.m to to when you're like okay that three a.m email to okay we're good we're going to be okay how long was that period two weeks oh wow yeah yeah yeah because we weren't remember you this way again it was like tuesday when he said that I think it was two no it was I went I can't remember the timeline but it was Tuesday or Wednesday that we figured out like this isn't good so by Friday we started to be able to pick up the slack but we still weren't sure if we were going to be out of the woods because they were our clients were pissed and then through the next week we were able to like really get their clients to calm down apologize for what happened figure it out kind of thing and you didn't lose any clients at that point you did not correct yeah and you avoided layoffs except for getting rid of that one gentleman that looks like he could I feel like if you worked yeah are they still together I feel like that's a question on a lot of people's minds do you know if those two are still together they are not okay all right I feel like that that was brewing in my mind it would be brewing in others as well no that's a that's an interesting interesting story interesting setback any big big brands you had at the time that you were like were your clients mostly yeah no we were in value over there Red Bull, Verizon, HP as well as some smaller brands bowie total things it was not a good situation I mean what I've learned like again that is the biggest lesson I've learned is that this [ __ ] happens all the time like sincerely yeah and so i was on the phone you mentioned before this lawsuits you know at this scale at this size in California you're going to end up with someone we haven't we went to court once over a guy suing us because he had like 15 customers for his brand and we put him on Facebook Ads to try to scale him two of his subscription customers quit he decided that Facebook stole those two customers and that we enabled them to do that i still to this day don't know what that means we tried to ask him no no rational thought but he took us to court and it was worth just settling so we just gave him his money back that's the only time we've gone to court but we had another time that we did have to go to arbitration and at the end of it we settled with the person they were they would have made up a bunch of accusations and it was like our insurance and us decided like this isn't worth going through a legal battle with which is the shitty underbelly of legal is like half the time it just gets settled because it's not worth fighting and we decided to settle which we don't do anymore because we also didn't want to set the precedent but we I told the mediator you know hey you were great but I hope I never see you again because he's like a professional mediator like you do and he's like on the contrary i hope i see you again because everyone doing well ends up seeing me again and maybe next time it'll be a class action lawsuit and I'm like don't tell me that but that's something that you threw that by some more successful friends of mine yep like show me a Fortune 500 that hasn't had a class action lawsuit like it's like it's the part of our legal system but that being said then show me the biggest companies in the world Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, let's say obviously not Steve Jobs anymore but Bill Gates whoever it is they're dealing with the biggest problems anyone would deal with with business it's not like you get to a point where there's a finish line like these just get bigger and there's going to and I remember several times when like revenue got really thin or we missed our numbers or something happened every time i'd run that by a more successful business person than me they're like yeah not gonna be the last time like if you're trying to do anything you're gonna take risk if you take risk you're gonna get over your skis if you don't take risks then you're just gonna decline anyways there's not really a way to just flatline in business you can't really like me or manage that perfectly you're either going to be growing your strength you're not going to just do it very rare does that happen and so if you know that then you're going to be trying to grow and you're going to make mistakes and screw things up and you're going to mess up if you're or you're going to shrink and you're gonna have to cut everything off anyways so it's just part there's a a book and I'm missing the title of it now early on that I've read that talked about like the reason you have one problem is because you don't have another problem right the reason you have HR problems is because you hired people and that is a that's a that's the reason you don't have a problem of being understaffed right like they're just because you have one problem because you don't have another problem so you're always gonna have problems and you you're always gonna have to put up with them and there's gonna be times over and over again that those trouble problems could be you know for your business life threatening and I don't think that only happens in almost any business like there's going to be times when you're crazy business you're gonna run out of funding if you're a bootstrap business you might run out of cash or you might get close to it you know making payroll you always hear these stories from entrepreneurs about like struggling to make payroll and then you realize like it's a pretty common thing at some phase in the business to do yeah and over time you get more solid like you become a lot more sturdy as you build a business if you're you should do it intentionally it's not just going to happen but through a lifeboat the lifetime of business you start you put more cash in the bank you end up with lines of credit you end up with things that can protect you in case you make a wrong step and you do most entrepreneurs do it intentionally I thankfully heard a story a friend of mine bootstrapped actually he says it publicly 1-800 Got Junk got to 100 million in revenue and made some bad cash management decisions and he had to borrow a quarter million dollars from his mom to help him pay payroll yeah so and that's a that's a nine-figure business right that's still going through that issue I remember hearing the story of Bill Gates went through that issue one time when they were when Microsoft was fairly large and he's like I'm never going through that issue again so when he was he was actively running it he would always have a year's worth of cash in the bank because he's like I don't want to deal with that again yeah but it happens happens to everybody and it's not by the way that's and people say yeah have a cure's worth of cash in the bank if you're trying to grow a bootstrap startup that's also very yeah it's a very hard decision yeah and how do you justify that to your investors hey I'm using you as a line of credit pretty much right so I don't understand that's the thing you can raise capital to have that which that's what that's what basically what Bill Gates did but I've heard that from people that told me that before I'm like I don't run that way at all why would I want to be selling cash when I'm trying to grow my business like I'd rather go invest like if I actually had like we did 36 million dollars in revenue last year if I had let's say 30 million sitting in the bank I would never have 30 million sitting in a bank it would not look like there's just no way that's a irresponsible way to run my business unless I'm having a price and it goes back to like what are you trying to do grow or shrink like if I'm trying to grow I can't just sit on that cash if I just want to sit on cash fine then i should sell like there's you know right that's not the I don't think the right move for most people yeah like you said these problems come from everywhere if it's not a lawsuit it might be a cash draft it might be it might be your email marketer leaving for Hawaii right but as you go through these what do you think they get easier to deal with like what is your take on that perfect I was just gonna go there so no I think they're harder problems but i think mindset's a big part of this and i hate i don't want to get too touchy feely with this but I it took me a couple years to learn that actually probably three years toward that west and like that [ __ ] all happens all the time which now we say all the time yeah and learning that lesson combined with really recognizing that I'm here by choice I hear so many entrepreneurs struggle because they you know they talk about how much stress it is to be an entrepreneur how hard it is it's like so get a job like sorry like you're you chose to be an entrepreneur there is no one forcing you forcing you to be here yeah so take that ownership stop being a victim and once you take that ownership then realize that part of your job as by choice an entrepreneur is to deal with the biggest problems at your company because if they weren't big problems your other rest your team would handle it so you're going to have to handle the big ones and so that's what you signed up for if you don't want to do it don't do it if you do want to do it then do it and so when you take that power on and it's by choice then when these things happen it's like yeah but this this is what I wanted to do right this is what I signed up to do yeah it's like going and playing football and you get tackled and you're like I hate this sport I can't quit like yeah this is this is part of it so not saying that I enjoy dealing with some of the challenges we deal with but I know I signed up for it no and so now acknowledging that acknowledging that I'm here by choice allows me to go yep that's part of it all right and you take the emotion out of it which means less stress less anxiety west you know the depression side of it and you can just have fun with it and then it's like you can remind yourself like if I ever don't like this I can always leave like you do have that option not that that as like I don't go there meaning like I'm not like constantly deciding if I want to stay it's just like I could if I wanted to I have that freedom so you get that like drama out of the way and now it's just like I'm here by choice let's go yeah I think that's a great lesson and definitely something that I need to take in as well the one the one thing that perception's everything right you could perceive like I don't want to do this task today like it sucks I don't want to deal with this or if you just switch your perception on it you actively try to go okay this isn't that bad to deal with then it gets a lot easier to deal with the other thing that always helps me with those is and this might be a little touchy-feely overdramatic but none of this actually matters at the end of the day right like we're floating on a rock through space so with none of it yeah if we that's exactly right yeah if humans were ceased to cease to exist on earth most other species would probably be better so none of it actually matters therefore don't take it so seriously don't take your own life don't take your problem so seriously and it's easier said than done there's something biological about like when you feel a threat to your business or ego you feel a threat to your life so it feels like it's my threat but that's why it's so important to try to take the feelings out of it just big it's okay yeah you'll be fine just yeah yeah it's never going to be the outcome is almost never going to be as bad as what you think it can be yeah that might be why Zuckerberg and and Musk might be so some people say they look robotic but they might be why they're so successful as well they're able to pull all their emotion out of everything right what's a higher level of thinking actually like the part of the brain that's logic versus emotion like it is a higher level of thinking that being said like being emotionless has a lot of challenges in a human-run world you have to be empathetic too but I think for your own sake not winning your emotion by the way it happens it ends up happening both ways once you get level-headed on the downside you also get level-headed on the upside you win a big award it's like okay cool back to work like yeah yeah which is kind of a shame honestly the high highs and low lows go away because they come with each other but it's much more sustainable yeah yeah you don't want to ride that roller coaster right up and down all the time that means you have to level out the opposite level of the level well it's stoicism that it's perfect definition right there being stoic about everything. Right, did you ever consider giving up or quitting? Through that moment specifically that no it was early on like no yeah no because it was more like I've always almost always taken the the when I have a child like an immediate threat like that it's a challenge to me and I almost like I'm the type of person I want to rise vacation like I go to battle like when covet hit all this kind of stuff like that's just how I naturally react is like I'm going to work harder I'm going to get into this I want to roll up my sleeves and I almost have to fight that a little bit now because when we have challenges in the business now that I don't need to be involved in and I my executives can handle I almost get in the way sometimes i'm like no i'm here let's go you know I'm ready to fight go get the[ __ ] go do your thing like we got it it's happening like the past couple weeks like we we've been affected Facebook's taken a huge hit that's affected our business thankfully we're diversified like Facebook isn't all we do so it's just been a little bit of a hit but we still need to do some things to rectify it I come in ready to like guns blazing like we're gonna fix all of this and my head of media and my head of services are like we already have a full plan it's a good one we got it it's like okay so getting used to that is but no I didn't think about quitting I will say there was a long period so 2018 and '19 we barely made any money because there's these growing pains that we went through where it's like we needed an exact team we're not quite there on revenue like we needed a lot of infrastructure not quite there in revenue but we needed it so it's like investing in the business for long-term scalability and but it is really tough to run a business for two years grind like you do any other year and not make any money like it's just a hard thing to see through and so private equity started knocking and we took some you know some meetings to take offers for the business and that i'd say more is what like giving up would look like for me than like just closing down the business I wouldn't do that so we we had those meetings we looked at it but you know realized that unless I have something else I'd rather be doing or want to retire which I'm a long way from that it almost no one's going to offer me the value for my business that I could derive out of it myself that's the point you want to buy my business for cheap so they can make a return well if I keep it then I make that return so yeah it became you know am I retiring or am I done nope do I need the cash nope all right well then we're gonna keep doing this so that but i did but i did come close yeah 2018. Yeah so not early on with that moment back to the retirement because I talked to other founders about this as well when do you do you think you'll get bored after you retire like no matter your age really I don't think I'm gonna retire no I honestly I don't think I could either at this point I don't see it in my not to be a dick but I'd correct that I don't think you would could again it's your option you can retire right yes okay but yes right to the point I do think I would be bored out of my mind and I love this stuff like my business partner said it to me he's you know thankfully one of the more blunt people to me that like I like being the guy and i'm not gonna deny that i like doing podcasts I like writing a book I like running a business I like we just expanded into Europe we're expanding into asia we have people in China like it's like this is all exciting to me all these new exploratory things that I get to learn and do I love this and so I don't know when that ends I hope it doesn't so that if it doesn't then I'll keep going and if it does it'll probably find the next thing this you know scratch that itch that's why we have a venture fund and a financing arm and all these other things we try to do I think that's a good way of simplifying youtube being that guy or that person that woman right and I actually remember the moment when I realized I wanted to be I was working for someone else at a marketing agency and they had just won the small business of the year whatever and I saw them on stage I'm like oh I want to be that person like I want to be the one on stage which sparked that that entrepreneurial side of how do I do that I want to be that person well you really have to go into business and for yourself and and build that up in order to do that so yeah that's interesting yeah it's all a trade-off I yeah I mean the biggest driver for me is like I want to get everything life has to offer personally and professionally so I've got thankfully a successful business that allows me to do a lot of fun things personally too but also I get to do all these things that I just mentioned and like try new things and explore new things and it all goes back to the benefit of the business like it's fun like just constantly learning and growing so to get back to the story and we'll wrap up here in a minute so 2012 2013 business started to take off the 2014 sorry 2014 business started to take off early on crazy unique story of an individual on your team running all your email campaigns leaving almost leaving losing house to half your clients half your revenue early on you're able to turn it around within about two weeks really your first down but not out moment give or take maybe the more serious one I'd say that was probably my first in this business I've had plenty in the other businesses but yeah I was the first in this and then since 2014 and that moment Hawke Media is obviously scaled up what are you at right now with employees we're 320. 320. You get some venture activities on the go as well I've got a book coming out got a podcast so things have definitely turned around from that moment and a great scale up over the past was that eight-nine years yep awesome yeah it's worked out yeah any other lessons from these down but not out moments that you'd share with someone going through come up with a plan and like so so sort of like a scenario planning has been a big one the big like one of the probably most stressful parts of my hot career was covid you know we lost 25 of our clients in a week and like I didn't know if that was the start of a trend so you know it's really stressful until you can step out of it and then just like this is the situation stop stressing what do we do what can we control let's figure it out and in that situation I didn't know whether we were going to keep dropping or not so I ran scenarios of like what happens if we drop twenty percent of revenue forty sixty eighty a hundred let's just let's just bucket it and what is our game plan do we have to do layoffs do we not blah blah and then let's make that and then we just know we know what the decision is going to be when we do it and then let's just focus on trying to mitigate that number as much as possible and that's work to retain our clients to bring in new ones all that kind of stuff frankly what like we always do but let's put a little more work into it and that's what we ended up doing and we ended up coming out really strong for you know and so in any of these situations you know you're it's going to be hard not to feel like you just got hit by a bus when a big problem comes to you in the business that's like feels life-threatening you're gonna feel like your wife is threatened take a second take a breath shrug it off doesn't matter now what do you do what are you gonna do about it that's it like what do you want the outcome to be okay what do you need to do to get to that outcome and that's that mindset is super important because again it'll save you emotionally a lot because these are going to happen and then it'll actually allow you to function rationally and solve problems probably a lot more pragmatically yeah I like that I think that helps me with solving these issues as you go through right take a step back take inventory look at the situation and then try to plan your contingencies of what's going to happen if this happens I think that's good perfect all right well Erik that's all for this episode so thank you for sharing your down but not out story with us to everyone listening I hope you enjoyed this episode if you did please leave us a review also subscribe to the show to be alerted of new episodes and finally like and share this episode on social media help us spread the word of Down, But Not Out bye everybody thanks Erik Thank you