Premium Consumer Goods & Luxury Retail: Happy makes money (podcast episode #131)

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Perception changes everything.

Think about many of the chores your customers endure in their lives. Or you do personally. The perception of a chore is not positive, right?

Take shaving – dragging a sharp metal object across your face every morning to meet societal norms…sometimes even drawing blood. Ouch. Literally.

So how do you turn something like that into a luxury experience? According to my latest guest, that is ‘the power of storytelling in branding.’

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Eric Malka, CEO and Founder, Strategic Brand Investments, and author of On The Razor’s Edge: The story of The Art of Shaving.

Malka was the co-founder and CEO of The Art of Shaving and sold it to Procter & Gamble. He currently advises and coaches seven entrepreneurs and founders through Strategic Brand Investments. He has invested in more than half of their companies.

Hear the full episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.

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Key lessons (backed by critical case studies) from what he made

The power of storytelling in branding

Malka shared how a simple shave oil became the foundation of a luxury brand and how crafting an emotional story around The Art of Shaving transformed a niche product into a global success.

Truth in marketing matters now more than ever

Malka discussed marketing with authenticity and purpose, how he built The Art of Shaving on genuine quality and transparency – and why cutting corners on authenticity is a mistake that many brands make.

Word-of-mouth helps you find your best customers

Malka explained how he went from a boutique store to a national phenomenon, turning a single-store concept into a multimillion-dollar business with strategic marketing, retail expansion, and word-of-mouth advocacy.

Actionable takeaways from the people he made it with

Greatness in the detail

via Miriam Malka

Miriam used to insist on going to the printers when they were printing the packaging and inspect every element of it. Sometimes she noticed details so small that the printer had to get a magnifying lens to see what she was talking about, but she would be correct, and they would reprint the packaging.

Sometimes firing someone is doing them a favor

via Boris Milgram

After nine years of being a shopkeeper, Malka hired Milgram to be the VP of Retail for The Art of Shaving. Milgram taught Malka the humanity of being an employer and managing people while genuinely caring.

For example, Malka was shocked to see a former employee hug Milgram after getting fired, because Milgram helped the employee realize that while they were unsuccessful at The Art of Shaving, they could find another company that better matched with their abilities.

Every brand should have a battle cry

via John Emerling

Malka shared how a razor-focused framework turned into a lucrative brand philosophy. Emerling helped craft ‘The Four Elements of the Perfect Shave,’ a simple but powerful framework that became The Art of Shaving’s battle cry, guiding product development, marketing messaging, and customer experience.

Discussed in this episode

Authentic Brand Storytelling: Embed creative within your business model (podcast episode #105)

“Authenticity” vs. “Professionalism”: Should you be your authentic self in your brand’s content and marketing? Or must you adhere to certain strictures considered “professional” in your industry?

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Transcript

Not ready for a listen yet? Interested in searching the conversation? No problem. Below is a rough transcript of our discussion.

Eric Malka: We opened a store and in our store, if you if you look at our store that did $300,000 the first year, for example, or $500,000, and we had $100 per transaction, that's 5000 or I don't know how many thousands of customers that my wife and I served personally because we had no other employees. That was the best laboratory focus group you can ever dream of.

And these customers were affluent men that really were vocal about what they liked, what they disliked, and how we should run our business. By the way, as a third that far we didn't listen to, but they told us every day. And here's the kicker about what they said to us a thousand times the same thing. So even if we were like, kind of stupid and dense, we couldn't avoid learning from these guys what they wanted.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing. From marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the senior Director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Burstein, to tell you about today's guest and.

Daniel Burstein: Perception changes everything. Think about many of the chores your customers endure in their lives or you do personally. The perception of a chore is not a positive, right? Take shaving, dragging a sharp metal object across your face every morning to meet societal norms, sometimes even drawing blood. Ouch. Literally. So how do you turn something like that into a luxury experience?

According to my next guest, that is the power of storytelling and branding. Here to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories, is Eric Malka, CEO and founder at Strategic Brand Investments and author of On the Razor's Edge The Story of the Art of shaving. Thanks for joining me, Eric.

Eric Malka: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Daniel Burstein: Absolutely. So Eric is probably best known as the co-founder and CEO of the Art of shaving. He's also the co-founder and CEO of ingredients. And for the past 11 years, he's been at strategic brand investments. Eric currently advises and coaches seven entrepreneurs and founders at SBI, more than half. He has invested in their companies. So, Eric, give us a sense now.

What is your day like as CEO?

Eric Malka: Well, it's pretty flexible. I, I that's that's how I designed my work in, in this stage of my career is to have a lot of flexibility. But basically, you know, I have my morning routines. It's all about my mental and physical health when the day starts. And usually I have anywhere from 2 to 4 meetings scheduled with our CEOs.

Along with other responsibilities. I have, as you know, in my investments and, and other occupations that I sit on boards and so forth. But from a strategic brand investment perspective, I basically, speak to my founders about they're each in a different stage of their business. So these conversations range from scaling the business to turning around the business to raising capital.

And I have a lot of fun just being, sitting on their shoulders and walking along with them in this journey of entrepreneurship, which can be a lonely place, you know, and a difficult place, an uncomfortable place. Let's call it.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, I like that word fun. You know, you don't hear a lot of investment managers and visors, those types of folks, the people on Wall Street, those types of folks saying fun. They're saying things like, you know, earnings and all that stuff.

Eric Malka: There's no reason for me to do anything in my life at this point. That is not fun, because I can pretty much choose how I spend my time. That's the real freedom I have. And to me, fun comes from three things. One is, lowering my stress and the stress of the people. I advise by giving them, you know, my my job is to lower their stress.

If I can lower their anxiety, their fun goes up almost immediately. And the people I choose to work with, that's the fun part for me. If I choose to work with horrible people, my day is going to be horrible. But I always choose to work with people that I enjoy being around. And in the extreme cases, there are a lot of fun to be around.

So and the work I do with them is fun, helping them build their companies. I don't want to sit on the board of a fortune 500 company. I want to I want to be the advisor of a guy that's doing $1 million, that aspires to do 20. That's. That's really what gets me juiced up.

Daniel Burstein: All right, well, let's take a look at some lessons from your career, how you got to this point, but also what we can learn from them if we unpack it. So, you said your first lesson is about the power of storytelling in branding. How did you learn this lesson?

Eric Malka: Well, it's a big subject. I mean, branding and storytelling is, you know, they go hand in hand. One of the one of the things that I realized early on in our, in our, startup called the Art of shaving, was that my story? And the story of Neram. And I really resonated with consumers and the press. And back then, storytelling was not as, common, knowledge as it is today.

But the fact that we seem to realize that our business model was really innovative, but what really resonated with the press and with consumers was the fact that we had started in our kitchen. This business, we had sold our car for $12,000 to start the business that I had. You know, that we were both immigrants to this country.

I was illegal for six years. I arrived on a Greyhound bus at the age of 17 to New York City with $100 in my pocket, 24 year, you know, these these were the first understanding that we have to lead with our story, that the founders are as important as the product that we sell.

Daniel Burstein: Well, let me ask you, because you mentioned how things have changed and moved in this direction. I've seen that too. So let's fast forward to today. Can you give us a breakdown or perhaps give an example of what you look for in a story when you decide right now if you want to get involved in a company? And I'll give you one example real quick while you're thinking of that.

I interviewed Diego or Soria, the founder and chief creative officer at Lobo 1707 tequila on how I made it a marketing, and one of his lessons was embed creative within your business model. And so that's why I like what you said here, because that whole idea embed creative within your business model. I think it used to be the way the world used to work.

Right? There was a manufacturer, let's say Gillette. They make they can make a lot of razors and make them really cheaply, really good. And that's all they did. They manufactured. And then they went to Madison Avenue and the Mad Men, and they said, okay, here's our product, figure out how to sell it. Right. But something I've seen the evolution of business, and I think you were probably one of the early innovators of this.

And fast forwarding to today is it's not just, hey, we can make a bunch of stuff cheaply, efficiently, let's add a story to it. It's the story is baked into the brand and baked into the company from the very beginning. So what do you look for? Give us a sense. What do you look for when you decide?

Eric Malka: First of all, I would say that before, you know, on top of creativity, creativity is part of what I would put under the general umbrella of innovation. And to me, innovation is really the most important part of brand building. And creativity comes is part of that. But it's not the only part of that. I think what I look for in a story is authenticity.

Obviously, there's a lot of stories that are fabricated in marketing departments by people that have no, no relevance to the story about the brand they're selling. It's just it's just the way they crafted that story. And sometimes that's even not true. Lloyd's is really, so authenticity is really, really important in the story. For example, I just invested in a company that's very similar to the Irish show called Barbary Notes.

And Barbary Nos is the leading luxury men's grooming brand in Italy, and we're bringing them to the United States with a lot of success. But the great the story goes like this. The great grandfather of our CEO, co-founder and CEO, came to America in 1910. We found his record at Ellis Island with his name on it, and he made his way to Boston, where he was working.

I think railroads. And at night he was 18 years old, by the way. At night. One day he found a box. And a box was all these barber tools of a barber that had passed away. And he started to learn how to cut hair and shave. And basically they they nicknamed them Barber Marino, which in Italian, everything that is young is an inno like Bambino is a young, you know, person.

So he became the young barber and barber he knows is now the brand name of this, who we believe is going to become the future leader in the world of men's grooming. And the luxury space. So this is what I call authenticity. I think that that's where I would start.

Daniel Burstein: Let's. Yeah, let's unpack that authenticity. You mentioned that, the truth in marketing matters now more than ever. So could you tell us a story of how you came across to figuring that out?

Eric Malka: Well, I've always been extremely on. First of all, I'm obsessively customer focused. You could call me a consumer advocate within my company. Right? That's my pseudo title. So when you when you when you dig into that, when you start peeling the layer of what it means for me to be the advocate for my consumers, transparency is top of mind, right?

Being honest with your customer, delivering quality, delivering service. But really, you know, when we created ingredients, for example, ingredients was known for being radically transparent. We were the first brand to expose our exact formula to the consumer on the front of the bottle, unheard of in the industry. It's usually a best kept secret and tucked away on the back of the bottle.

So to me, that's where that's where I would, you know, that's how it evolved. But it was always about the customer.

Daniel Burstein: Okay. Let me ask you, this is probably the impossible question. Right. But and how I made it marketing. We like to beat up these ideas to better understand them. And I've heard this word authenticity comes up all the time. And how I mean, it comes up all the time. More.

Eric Malka: Yeah. Authentic, right?

Daniel Burstein: No, no. But that but you're telling your authentic story. But it's a.

Eric Malka: Buzzword, man. It's a buzzword.

Daniel Burstein: That's the thing I'm trying to get underneath. Right. What it really means. So let me ask I'm going to ask you the impossible question. Tend to second think about it. Are there any times we should not be authentic? Right. And I'll give you a quick example. We run a fun test with our CEO and this a little different.

We're in B2B, right? Where, it just just so happened we he was doing, videos. He's up in Montana on a mountain using videos in a suit. So we typically did for some reason, had to come back and record the video. He was just dressed like a cowboy in Montana, is how he's normally dressed. For whatever reason, both these videos turned out to work, so the team thought, let's ab test them.

So one in a suit versus his authentic self dressed as a cowboy. And we all were pulling for the cowboy, right? Everyone wants to just like a cowboy in the suit one. Now again this is B2B obviously it's a little different to B2C in some of these things, but there's all this buzz around authenticity now people talk about it's a buzzword and just trying to understand it.

Like, are there any times where maybe there there's certain occasions where there are things where it shouldn't be authentic, or am I just way off? It's just, you know.

Eric Malka: No, you're no way off. I think, yeah, it's a case. By case, I mean, if if being authentic is something that is not going to resonate, you know, I think I think that wouldn't work. But you should always ideally lean in first to authenticity and be yourself. I'm always of the mindset that, okay, be yourself authentically.

And if people don't like it, I mean, it is, you know, you know, they don't like your authentic self. That's not resonating. I mean, that's okay, but I've seen so many, great, great brands that became very successful because their founders were so authentic but authentic in a way that resonates. If you're authentic in a way that's offensive or boring or anything like that, that will work.

And that's why not everybody is successful. But I think you should always lean with authenticity, because especially in today's culture, with access to information, people really appreciate honesty and authenticity. Transparency is at the core of building an honest relationship.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. Let me ask you about authenticity and luxury. Right. So I think you did something really interesting in luxury by, like you said, did transparent ingredients, all these different things. But are there some times when luxury brands should hold things back to be more luxurious to. Because, for example, I think of a lot of the high end fashion brands and some of those brands out there, I don't necessarily look at those brands and think, ooh, that's authentic, right?

I think they're trying to fabricate some world right there. You look at, you know, Vogue magazine or some of these things, or they're trying to fabricate some world and create certain things here. But I don't see a lot of authenticity in the story of how being how that that's made.

Eric Malka: Well, I think they're being authentic to the original vision and the heritage of their brand, which could be a hundred years old. Now, I've, I have a weird saying, which is that if you want a lie, tell the truth. And what I mean by that is that you can craft your story in many different ways. I can tell you a true story that sounds boring, and I could tell you the same exact story.

That sounds exhilarating, right? So, you know, maybe I'm leaving out a couple of details. Maybe I'm almost embellishing some details. I'm not lying. Ever. I'm always being truthful. But I think, you know, if you're talking about old couture, you know, today, I see them producing synthetic fabrics in Asia and selling them for thousands of dollars. Now, 30 years ago, you took a, old couture brand, and.

And it wasn't a natural fiber made in Italy or France. That was a no no. But today, it's an acceptable thing. But do they go and authentically promote that, Prada bags are made in China or that, you know, they're not going to do that? That would be shooting themselves in the foot. So, I don't know. That's that's all I have there, but.

Daniel Burstein: I guess no, I can't. Erickson said the truth. Well told. Right. So I think that's a key part of truth.

Eric Malka: Well, thank you. That's. I'm just.

Daniel Burstein: Do you think, like what you mentioned with what you did with the ingredients? So when you talk about what some of these brands do, I think the challenge that happens is as a brand grows or as bigger companies get involved, then what happens? The investors come in, they start looking at margins and they start looking at these other things.

And I think that's our job as marketers and as customer first, customer passion, people to say yes, we will get, you know, $0.03 more on the product if we do this synthetic fabric, but we have this high margin brand, and it's because if we invest more in ingredients or.

Eric Malka: Whatever it is. That's right. And I'll tell you two things about that. One is something I completely forgot now, which is that, we had a dilemma when we started the Art of shaving, when we create our own brand about authenticity. My wife and I are obsessed about ingredients. That's what we called our brand ingredients. And we were always obsessed with ingredients and natural ingredients and pure essential oils.

But deep down, I knew in my heart that the middle aged men we were catering to couldn't care less what the ingredients were. So if we had led with that which is our passion and which is the magic sauce, we would have failed. We realized that early on, the story had to be about something relevant to the customer and relevant to us, and what was really relevant to the customer was achieving the perfect shade, not achieving the natural shaving, you know, product shave.

So we made that decision, and that was kind of a fork in the road in our storytelling. And we hit it out of the park by doing that, by by focusing on the perfect shape as our messaging and not on the natural ingredients, which was our passion. We really made a big difference in our success. I don't think we would have been very successful trying to, convince guys to use, you know, pure lavender essential oil in their face, every morning.

Right. But they did appreciate it. But it wasn't our story.

Daniel Burstein: That's grit. And it's finding the highest element of appeal. And your value proposition, too. You also mentioned that word of mouth advocacy can help you find your best customers. So how did you activate word of mouth? That's something we're all trying to do as marketers.

Eric Malka: Well, you know, I'm talking about the 90s and the early 2000, right? So you can translate words from today. We call them influencers. And PR but, you know, in our days, we could not compete with big advertisers. We cannot buy a page in the GQ magazine for $30,000. We couldn't get a billboard on Madison Avenue, but we had a great story that the press wanted to talk about.

The press. What we sell to the press are stories, like we sell shaving cream to customers. The whole world of media became a customer to us, that we supplied with good stories to write about for their readers, and we started learning about that again by accident. I'll tell you the story if you want to hear it, please. Six months after opening our first store, which was doing about $10,000 a month in business, we were breaking.

Even then, we were kind of happy about it. But fast forward four months in to, starting our company in January 1997, I heard that a barber I knew in London worked for the brand we sold and store at the time was coming to Bergdorf Goodman to do a barber event. They used to do that anyway, to store it to, to do an in-store.

But I asked them if you would be willing to do a day event in our little store. And he agreed graciously. We sent out 400 postcards because we had only 400 names in our database, and we made this beautiful little postcard, that said, you know, come and enjoy a hot towel shave by London's foremost barber to the royal family and the Prime Minister, which was again, it was true.

He was he had a royal, a member of the royal family, but it was probably like the, the least important royal, you know, member of the family like a second cousin's roommate or something like that. But we, you know, we crafted a nice email with beautiful imagery and believe it or not, 25% of those cards came back for appointments.

We had 100 appointments from 400, I think both cards, and that was pretty amazing. We asked them to do three days instead of one day, and he again graciously agreed to do that. One of the postcards landed on the lap of a young public relations person. She worked in a firm not too far from our store. She walked over and said came to us.

She spoke French as well and said, I love what you're doing with this event. This is wonderful. I can sell the hell out of it to the press, hire me and I'll do a great job. And we said, you know, we have no money. The hired PR, we didn't even know what PR meant at that point. So she says, listen, I'm going to do this event for free.

If I do a good job, maybe you'll hire me. I said, yeah, well, hundred percent. You're right. Fast forward to the event we had, I would say, 40 publications that covered the event, including CNN. I don't know if you remember Jenny Moss. She's do these quirky three minute segments on CNN. She did one of our store, and then we were asked by The New York Times if they could have an exclusive before anyone ran their story.

Our publicist highly recommended. We agreed to the exclusive. We have no clue what The New York Times was. At the time, we had no understanding of any of that. We were really just very young and naive. We agreed to it. And believe it or not, on March 23rd, 1997, there were there were there was a two page article in the Metro section of the Sunday Times about our little tiny store.

The next morning, my wife and I were to get married at City Hall because of the immigration laws changing and all that, we had to rush to do it. Then we decided we going to go do it at eight in the morning, and by ten we'll open the store. As we turned the corner to get to our store, we see eight people or six people in front of the store, very unusual for a side street on Monday morning and in the Upper East Side they were waiting for us with little clippings of the article.

And as I opened the gate of our store, I would hear the phone ringing. I picked it up. It was a guy from Dallas and then call waiting a guy from LA wanting to order product. Long story short, we did $10,000 that day, the same that we did in 30 days prior to that, and that went up for 2 or 3 months of just emptying the shelves, filling them up at night.

Next day, mob seat, emptying the shelf. And we were just ecstatic. Our business completely blew up. And that was, that was a direct impact of, of that event and, and public relations. I think today we call that going viral. Right. Our little store went viral around the country and the world because of that New York Times article.

Daniel Burstein: And it was on Madison Avenue. Right. That's where your story.

Eric Malka: The first one was on 62nd Street between Lexington and Third. The money from that event allowed us to open a Madison Avenue shop, which was a pretty bold move, by the way, when you talk about margins before, my entire mission at the Art of shaving was to increase my cost of goods sold, increase my selling price, and find the highest rent per square foot I could afford to sell my products.

It.

Daniel Burstein: Let's talk about that Madison Avenue shopping, the highest rent per square foot. Because what I see now is, you know, when we talk about making an impact with the moon stairs, it's so hard. Digitally and digital is infinite. Right. And you do see some internet retailers now moving towards brick and mortar Warby Parker. Right. But of there's other examples.

So what can they learn from you when it comes to having physical presence?

Eric Malka: First of all, it's extremely validating to me because of two reasons. One is, you know, for the last 13 years, I've been told that brick and mortar was, you know, dinosaurs dying. And I was saying to them two things. One, no, retail is not dying. They're committing suicide. Secondly, you you cannot have a war between online and offline.

It's a marriage. You need both. And I feel very vindicated now that I've seen these digital native brands migrate to retail, some of which I've told they should do that to, what can they learn from us? I mean, I'm not going to teach Apple or,

Daniel Burstein: One of these if they're not listening now and they have a digital only brand and they're on that, they're like, do we open a physical retailer? And I ask because I'll tell you, go.

Eric Malka: I'll tell you we're doing that with Barbara Enos. Barbara Enos, the the way they we brought them to the United States is by opening a store, a Madison Avenue. Now, it might sound old fashioned, but the reality is that within the first 12 months of being in this country as a new brand, they've generated $1 million profitable.

And we're going to be opening more stores. And that's going to be part of our digital strategy, because a digital native strategy, first of all, has become extremely expensive compared to 5 or 6 years ago before iOS 14. Secondly, it's really not, community building effort. It's also a very unprofitable business model. For a long time. And we we think we're moving into a more fiscally responsible era of brand building.

And I think brick and mortar play a very strong role, along with third party retailers and the digital platform. So our our strategy is for our digital platform as we reach the $50 million mark to be about 20% or more of that revenue, but half of it will be organic because of everything else we're doing profitably. Otherwise, it's very hard.

Daniel Burstein: Right? Is there anything you do for the customer experience in that store to we talk about word of mouth, make it go viral into these things.

Eric Malka: Is there anything we do for the customer experience? Is there anything we don't do for the customer experience? There we.

Daniel Burstein: Go.

Eric Malka: Okay. That's it's that's the only thing that matters. Like once you realize that there's nothing more important than your customer and there's nothing more important than your customer experience. That's the number two, level of that. And again, I always start and finish. First of all, I'm a shopkeeper at heart. And what I try to tell digital companies is you've lost touch with your customer to a certain extent, and you need to become a shopkeeper.

It's not because you're digital or retail or you're working in a flea market. You're still a shopkeeper at heart. You have to embrace your customer. You have to hug your customer, not physically, but metaphorically. You need to hug. That was that was the famous, Stanley Marcus, book on retail. Hug your customers right. So for me, you know, customer experience was at the forefront of our company, by the way.

We I ran my company as an inverted pyramid, which means that I was the least important person in the company. Being at the bottom of the of the pyramid. And my sales teams were at the top of the pyramid, and they were the most important people in my organization. And we were all here to serve them, to succeed, to serve our customers.

So that that that drives everything for me, obsessed of being obsessively customer focused, drove every single decision in my company how we managed people who we hired, how we hired them, we trained them, what products we made, what locations we we did. Everything was driven by that. And for me, if you were working in my warehouse, packing boxes, you were in my sales department.

If you were cleaning the bathrooms, you were in my sales department because, you know, my sales staff is going to go in there and it's going to be a clean environment. They're going to be proud to work here, and they're going to service my customers even better. So everybody was the sales. I built a sales organization, basically, and I think that's a little bit of a lost art.

A lot of people I consult with or advise the first, the biggest complaint is I don't have no sales. And my my first question is, do you have a sales department? Answer is usually no. You have a sales process, of course, that you sell. I mean, what do you expect, my friend? Well, so no, go ahead.

Daniel Burstein: Go. I know in the faith we talk about, you know, leading indicators and leading indicators and sales is a lagging indicator and a leading indicator. And it sounds like you're saying this too is customer obsession.

Eric Malka: Customer first and a percent. Yeah, hundred percent.

Daniel Burstein: Well let's so we just talked about some lessons from the things some of the things Eric made. In just a moment we'll talk about some of the lessons from some of the people he made them with. But first I should mention that the how I Made It in Marketing podcast is underwritten by Mic Labs. I the parent company of marketing Sherpa.

You can get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneer the conversion industry in the AI Guild and the community to collaborate with as well. Grab your free three month scholarship to the AI Guild at Joint Mic Labs ai.com. That's dynamic Labs ai.com. Okay, so we talked about, as I said, some of the lessons from some of the things you made.

Let's talk about some of the people you made them with. You mentioned Miriam Malka. That last name should sound familiar. That's your wife I know with her, and you mentioned that greatness is in the details. So what did you see Miriam do that you learned that lesson?

Eric Malka: Miriam? Little did I know when I met her, she was only. She was just turning 20. She was 19. Still, so I had no idea. She had not really showed her colors to the world, if you will. But I discovered little by little, you know, 22, she made our appreciable in our kitchen for me to, you know, protect my skin, my sensitive skin.

By again by 22, she had the vision for how our first store would look like and be, the interior design. Even though I gave her great limitations by giving her a budget of $12,000, and she became the ideal partner. And I think partnerships are a really important part of success. Right. And our partnership was, again, she was obsessive about products and I was obsessive about customers.

If you create incredible breakthrough innovations and you create incredible customer experience, I mean, your chances of failure are relatively low. So that was basically our our partnership to this day, you know, products and, and and customers. And for her, she drove us crazy. I mean, at first I wanted, you know, to strangle her sometimes because she would drive us crazy with, with perfection.

And mind you, perfectionism is a necessary skill for her job. But my job as a CEO is to know when to stop the perfectionism and take some heat from the creator. Right? So if you if you let her go the product, the store will never look good enough to open or to lunch. It will just never get there.

So I had to at one point, I had to say, you know, the pursuit to excellent has brought us to a great, you know, point. Let's just go for it. Which would make her pretty angry at me. But at the end, I knew as a CEO I had to make tough decisions that were not popular. But she would go to the printers for our boxes.

You know, our box had a circle around the logo that was made of gold foil. That was very, very, that had to have the certain distance from the rest of the logo. And, you know, she would detect things on the, on the press. That the printer would both appreciate for the sheer, you know, obsessive nature of the person and also be frustrated because they're losing money reprinting boxes.

But she would find little things. They would have to get a magnifying glass to see it, and then they would say, you're right. We're off the tolerance. You know, it's like she got us again, you know? But at the end, I didn't appreciate that. Maybe when I was in my late 20s and struggling to make payroll, but the reality is that it was a really important part of brand building is to you.

It can't, you know, can't be an afterthought. Just making a good product or finding a product that you can sell a lot of doesn't build brands. That brick that builds an Amazon, you know, shop, if you will, and you can be very profitable. You could be very, successful. But you're not building a brand. It has to be set.

To build a brand requires certain elements that are almost sometimes counter intuitive to building a company. So those are the things that I've learned from her is impeccable taste, attention to detail. She was for the 12 years we ran our company, she was in charge of housekeeping for our stores and our offices. And I can tell you that six months after we left the company, we would walk by our stores and see dust in the window.

And we knew that Miriam had not been on top of everyone for for for that reason.

Daniel Burstein: That's painful. But I like what you talk about about balancing. And I think that's what a lot of startups and founders and companies have to do. Balancing that perfectionism with chipping, getting out the door, getting the thing done. And so I wonder, what advice do you give to CEOs and founders and companies now to find that balance? Because on the one hand, we hear about, hey, get the minimum viable product out the door, just get it done.

Eric Malka: It depends. It depends on what you're into. If you you know, I speak from the lens of luxury goods and you don't get a second chance. If you're in tech, that's different. You can launch a first version and improve upon it. But as a luxury goods consumer, I would say that the lens should be something I heard at P&G once, which I thought was really cool.

And it goes like this I always take a hard right, not an easy left. So when you're finding yourself taking an easy left, you're you're cutting corners and that's dangerous. But if it's good enough and you're ready to roll, go and keep improving. If you see the first product we launched in 1997 to test the thesis that we could have a product with our store name on it, they look very different from the products we launched a year later, when we had the confidence to go all in.

So, yeah, I would say don't cut corners, but perfectionism is bad for business. It's good for creation, it's bad for business. So you need to have a balance. Again, it's it needs to be a telling war. You know, if if my wife wasn't around, I I'd be, you know, I'd be launching products way too early, way too sloppy.

You know, she pushed me so hard and I had to push back. You know, it's that talking war that gets the the perfect situation right is by saying, no, it's not ready. Yes, it's ready. And really challenging each other's, position. That makes us really it's it's the same notion that when people say, I don't want to be surrounded by people saying yes to me all the time, right.

Because that really makes you sloppy.

Daniel Burstein: Yes. And also maybe do those people help you get in ahead of the customer? So I wonder, how did you get in the head of the customer you mentioned earlier about, oh, like about the ingredients we mentioned they wouldn't care about the ingredients and care about the shave. You mentioned your wife making the first shave oil and testing with you.

But I know I'm looking at you now. I don't know if this is true. Back then, people can't. People won't see this as an audio podcast. You have a beard so you don't sound like a big shaver.

Eric Malka: Yeah, I listen, I'm I'm a grooming guy. I'm not a I'm not a shabby Felice, by the way. I'm not a shaving Billy. So I, I'm like most men, I don't enjoy shaving as much as the next guy. The difference is that my business, the shaving, was an opportunity. My business was infused with my real passions about customers, about natural ingredients, about promoting health, about creating a great company culture where people enjoyed working in.

That's why I was passionate about what I did. Shaving couldn't care less. It could have been shoes. It could have been cars. So your question was, how did we find out? That's probably the the biggest lucky break we ever had, which is the way marketers sometimes do it, is they do focus groups to get into the head of customers.

Well, we neither had the money nor did we believe in focus groups, nor did we understand that we could do that back then. But we opened the store and in our store, if you if you look at our store that did $300,000 the first year, for example, or $500,000, and we had $100 per transaction, that's 5000 or I don't know how many thousands of customers that my wife and I served personally, because we had no other employees.

That was the best laboratory focus group you can ever dream of. And these customers were affluent men that really were vocal about what they liked, what they disliked, and how we should run our business by two as a third. That part we didn't listen to, but they told us every day. And here's the kicker about what they said to us a thousand times the same thing.

So even if we were like kind of stupid and dense, we couldn't avoid learning from these guys what they wanted. We we heard the same exact thing from 80% of our customers. They said, do you have any products without fragrance that every day? Do you have any products with for sensitive skin? Every one of them. So what did we do?

The first products we launched were fragrance free for sensitive skin to achieve the perfect shape. Right. So we we heard them loud and clear, and we created the products and this and the atmosphere and everything to service that.

Daniel Burstein: Well.

Eric Malka: Your customer.

Daniel Burstein: No, that's another great example of why a brick and mortar retailer can be very helpful. And also not only if you look at a brick and mortar retailer as this is what we look at it sometimes. How can we cut costs as much as possible to make a profit? It's okay. We're having all these customer interactions. How do we make sure we're getting this customer wisdom into one place where we're actually learning from them hundred percent?

You mentioned you learned sometimes firing someone is doing them a favor, and you learned this from Boris Milgram. How did you learn this from Boris?

Eric Malka: Boris was our VP of retail. He passed away. Unfortunately. Years ago. Sorry, guys. Thank you. But he was a game changer for my organization. I, I when I went out to build my management team in 2005, one of the position was the somebody to run retail. And, I met a lot of people. And since I was a shopkeeper and I was running my stores for the last nine years, I knew what I was looking for.

And he was, first of all, extremely endearing personally as soon as I met him. But he he started telling me all about customer experience. Customer experience. He was the first person I would hear saying the words come out of his mouth. Customer experience. I mean, you know, it's like the Jerry Maguire you had me a customer experience. It's and he came from Neiman Marcus.

He had you went up the ladder from the corporate ladder, from being a stock boy that barely spoke English to running a $150 million store. So, I hired him right away, and he taught me so many things about managing people. He he created he took my culture that I was looking to create. And he blew it up.

He just it was just a perfect fit. And people were so happy to work in our company, primarily because of the culture we had built, but because he was the, the, the in charge of that culture. Right? Most of our employees were in the stores and selling. So he taught us a lot about how to, the humanity of, of of being an employer and managing people and really caring, genuinely caring for your people.

That's something he taught me. It's not just, textbook like, yeah, we need to do this because it shows that we can't. No, that's not genuine. Showing that you care is nice, but caring is genuine, right? You know, and what we told our our people in our store is customers are coming into your house. Just greet them, just say hi to them and welcome them.

Be welcoming and be genuine. Because when people come into your house, they can tell if you're hypocritical. And definitely they'll say, can I help you with anything? Right. So, Boris really exemplified some of my, my philosophies, which I, which were not completely, clearly expressed by me, but is how I felt about, you know, I always hated working for people.

And I wanted people to love working for my company, which they did. And Boris made it an even more fun environment, more successful. We had a, I came up with a couple of, phrases for our teams. One was happy makes money. Actually, one of my ex employees made a beautiful, work of art for a house and says happy makes money because what it meant was, you know, creating a happy environment for people, whether it's your customers, your, your your or your your employees is going to generate more business.

It's just a better wage to go. And then Boris told me, I think what you were referring to, we spoke about earlier, I always have to fire people before I had a management team and hire people, so it was an uncomfortable thing. I hated firing people. I felt like I was ruining their lives and I felt guilty for it.

I had no choice. They really, you know, they were really bad. I had to let them go. But I felt that. And Boris, I remember the first time he fired one of our employees and I look, we had glass windows in our offices and I looked and he was they were basically hugging, I said, which, you know, did you buy the guy?

He's like, yeah, but you know, I'm doing him a favor. You know, he's being unsuccessful here and this is not the right path. And I'm giving him the opportunity to find the right path for himself and really work in a place where his abilities are going to be a fit for the job, and he's going to be very successful.

And I explained that to him. I said, oh my God, this is like the greatest lesson in the world. You know, having somebody thank you for firing them is not a skill I've seen too many times in my career. So he was that kind of got it. And it was fun to be around. He used to have a bell every time we had a wholesale sale, you would rank Bill.

And you know, these are little things, you know, they seem insignificant. But it was like Pavlov, every time I heard that bell, my brain lit up and everybody in my office, the 56 employees in their office, their brains lit up because of that bell. So these are some of the things he taught me. And customer experience was it was our our our our blood, brotherhood between him and I, we, we we cared so deeply about customers.

We would reprimand employees on purpose when they did something good for the company. That was bad to the customer. You know, that's that's just the way he he was and, and and we really got along for that. So I by the.

Daniel Burstein: Way side of that, that is a key lesson. When they did something that was good for the customer but bad for the company.

Eric Malka: You said no, that's a good for the company and bad for the customer. That's when they got reprimanded.

Daniel Burstein: Okay, okay. Yeah, I like that. Yeah.

Eric Malka: If they're bad, you know, they would say no, but we're going to lose money if we do this. So if we get back, if we take back that razor, it's two years old and I'm like, dude, you know, take the razor back. It's, you know, we have high margins. I'm not going to get into the details. Is that costing us 200 bucks?

And you know, you're killing one of our customers. You know, actually what I taught my sales staff is the best opportunity to win a customer. Somebody come for to return merchandise. Why is that? Because when when a customer returns merchandise in the brick and mortar more than on the internet, they are face to face with the salesperson. Then they come with the bag and they say, I have to return this for a refund.

And invariably the the, the sales that feels bad. They're going to lose part of the commission. Their, their sales numbers go down. So it's an awkward moment. And when people are defensive or apprehensive and you make them really comfortable right away, they have a sense of relief and you own them forever. I mean, you have a customer for life.

And I used to tell I used to play that game when I was the manager of the store where customer came in and uncomfortable. I need to return this gift that I got for, you know, and that was like, no problem. Let me see what you got. You're going to take care of you right away. And oh, you know, then the conversation starts.

Now we have a good relationship because I'm a great guy. He loves me. And my my goal was to get him to buy more stuff, you know? But I would happily take the return. I remember one guy in my first store came in with a broken razor he had bought months ago because he was tapping it, on his sink, and it broke the head.

$200 reason. And he wore ripped sweatpants, which was not fashionable in those days. Today it's normal. But back then, when you wore ripped sweatpants, you basically gave up on life and you're homeless, right? So I said to him, no problem. I'm going to give you a new one. Don't worry about it. We're not going to set it for repair.

Here's a new one. He left the store so appreciative. He came back 50 minutes later and he said, my son's getting married. We have to get ten groomsmen gift and you spent $3,000, which was a lot for us at the time. And he says, I love the way you your customer service is amazing, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh my God, this is this is proof in the pudding right here.

Daniel Burstein: Well that's great. Well, so I like how you said how you would recommend customers. I mean, that that's a mistake your employees would make, right, when they were doing something that seems right for the company but wrong for the customer. Which makes me think these brands you've worked across now, I think currently with seven, maybe 11 total brands, what is the biggest common mistake you see companies making today?

What is the biggest common mistake you see them making? If you can kind of as far as customers, just in general running the company in.

Eric Malka: General, I mean, the, you know, the the failure rate is so high. And I think impatience is at the core of of entrepreneurial failure. You need to have urgency when you want to succeed in life. There's no time like yesterday. But impatience is your worst enemy. And you see impatience unfolding in many areas of marketing. In every area of your business.

You're going to see impatience cause mistakes, cause, losing money. And the way you see it in marketing, for example, is, you know, sometimes we overspent the, you know, the the idea of testing under a microscope is lost, right? Test. And once you find the right model, go all in. But be patient. Building a company, you know, it's what what did I hear recently?

Go. Go fast and fail fast or something like that. Finish fast. You know, and what I tell entrepreneurs when I start working with them is, do you want to be successful in 15 years or less? Or do you want to be failing in five years or less? You choose. Those are your two options. So for me, impatience and it manifest at all levels.

The second biggest mistake I see is not a really a mistake, but lack of industry or business acumen. And you need to really develop that. If you are not an expert in an area of your industry, you know, especially in my industry in beauty and grooming, there's a lot of amateurs launching your brand because the barrier to entry is so low.

And if you're doing that, you really need to get some expertise in your corner. Otherwise you're going to be in for a long ride.

Daniel Burstein: In that patience, I start going.

Eric Malka: No patience, man. Patience.

Daniel Burstein: No, I, I mean, I see that clearly the the lifetime value of the customer is very important to you. Very. In everything you were doing with the returns. Let's take a look at one more lesson here. You said every brand should have a battle cry. And you learn this from John emerging. How did you learn this? And what was your battle?

Eric Malka: Oh, yeah. John. And rolling was an incredibly he he still is an incredible guy that that was introduced to us by our designer. He was, freelancing at the time. You you had a Madison Avenue, advertising agency back in the, in the Mad Man days. And he was such a quirky guy. He would draw characters, he would draw caricatures when you talk to him, and then you would show you the whole scene you were just in for the last hour.

Just a, you know, a very, very cool guy, an idea guy. And his big thing in his later, years of his careers was all about the battle cry. And he would help companies, with a two day session to come up with the right battle cry. And he's very proud of of ours because, you know, he's seen the impact his battle cry had on our company.

And that's when we let me let me back up a little bit before I go there. When we started our company, we we our sales process was broken. The customer would walk into the store and we would say, they were almost always look for they wanted a shaving cream, usually, you know, basic product. And we would have to tell them the best way to use our shaving cream is with a shading brush.

And then we would tell them, but if you buy the pre shape oil, and then we had to show them all the different brushes that we sold, different qualities that we tell them about the pre shape oil to start before you put the cream on. And then when you finish you need your skin to to heal and to look better with the after shape balm and we have four different aromas.

It was a grueling process and a lot of customers bought one, two, three, you know, sometimes the whole thing. But it was very fragmented. What what John helped us to do is by helping us come up with the battle cry, call the four elements of the perfect shade, which which was our four step system. Prepare, lather up, shade and moisturize.

It brought clarity to our entire brand, not only internally, but externally. We became laser focused and we no longer sold hundreds of different products. We sold a system back then. We called it a regimen, the Shaving Regiment. We later on realized that we had created a shaving ritual, and an experience. And the battle price, basically a phrase that must be ten words or less that communicates your brand promise and must ring true when you hear it for the first time.

And everyone must know it, like their Social Security number is the fourth rule. And basically.

Our sales staff was not able to answer, what do you guys do here? You know, who are you? So think about a value proposition. Think about your 22nd elevator pitch. Well, the battle cry is an even more distilled version of all that. And as you can see from ours, it really tells you what we do. It's a four step system to the to the perfect shades.

And we started to create these kits that were including the four elements, and we wrote four elements on it. Everything on our website was rebrand it and I remember one day that was when I really do that. We were on to something. I, I was on the phone with the editor of GQ magazine, who I had never met.

That was the first time we spoke, and I got on the phone and said, Eric, I love what you guys do. The four elements of Perfect Shave, prepare, lather up, shaving, moisturize. I'm like, oh dude, this guy knows my battle cry by heart. And I've never met him. So I knew that that was in our business when vertical.

From that point on, even we sold to all the department stores, but we sold products like that. Customers didn't understand there was nobody to help them. We had this perfect shaped box, one for $100, one for $25 to try it out. And we were I mean, we were selling. I mean, it was just an incredible, incredible tool to have a battle cry at that moment in life.

Daniel Burstein: So you talk about that battle cry going viral, GQ knowing, I mean, someone else had found out about this battle cry, and this company was Procter and Gamble, right? And ultimately, there was an exit from the company. They acquired it. So I wonder if you could walk us through it all. You know, we talked about a lot of the key steps you did to build a company to sell to individuals.

It was a very, you know, in the early days, you were very personally a 1 to 1 selling. Did any of these skills help you when it ultimately came to negotiate with a fortune 25 company and to figure out how this and that worked out?

Eric Malka: Yes and no. I mean, in my book, I call it on train the slay the drag it right. Your you wake up and you wake up from a dream and you are the quarterback of the of the football team on that in the Super Bowl. But you've never played football before. That's basically M&A in a nutshell. Sometimes, listen, two things.

First of all, I knew I wanted to exit my business by a certain date and a certain amount, and we reached that. But once I made that decision, I never thought about it again. It was all about creating the most incredible company. Forget that. The rest will come. We'll come to you in 2005, something incredible happened, which is that Procter and Gamble acquired Gillette's portfolio brand for $57 billion, which is still to this day the largest acquisition in consumer goods history.

Okay, so not a small thing. The next the next month after the acquisition, they're launching the Fusion Blade razor with five blades. Now, I know if you remember in those days when they were launching the fusion blade, the press was very, very critical, almost mockingly critical. And, you know, they had the three bullet, the two blade and the four, but now they have the five blades.

I mean, you know, it's like Rocky seven, right?

Daniel Burstein: Yeah.

Eric Malka: So we fitted our fancy razors with a Gillette heads, and when a new system came out, we would lose some sales because customers were waiting for us to have the new razors fitted into the hands. So I told my team, knowing that from past experience, I told my PR team, get me, get me it. Give me a sample of that blade so we can send it to our manufacturers and have them ready when they launch.

When they have their billing, the launch, we'll have the razors in our stores. Perfect. What they called and the and and they said nobody, nobody can touch or see or hear about this product until it's launched. However.

I think that if your CEO tried the razor and spoke in the media, it would go a long way to change the conversation around these five blades. So that was a huge opportunity. I flew to New York. I was in, you know, it was like a CIA operation, more than, you know, more a PR thing. They want it to be in the.

I'm like, you don't have to be in the bathroom with me. Just make my phone. And they, you know, I've got nothing on. You're saying your secret's safe with me? I shaved with the razor, and I was on CNN the next day, telling them how much I love this razor. Frankly, I would have said I love that, even if it wasn't good.

But it was great. And, that's not authentic, but I just think that. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't have done that. I'm being. I'm joking. It was incredible. I mean, that razor was the smoothest reserve ever had at one on CNN. Spoke greatly about it. Who was watching me? The president of Procter and Gamble in charge of men's grooming.

Who is this kid talking about our billion dollar launch year? Next thing you know, his executives come down to Miami to speak with us and we become the first company to ever license the Gillette brand in the history of the company. Yet there's never been another one. We're the only one, the first and only ever to license, which was a great honor for us.

Right? Being this was like our we were being recruited to the big leagues, if you will. We collaborate. We have this beautiful fusion Chrome collection, co-branded Gillette and the Art of shaving that launches the marketplace, the premium marketplace. We do very well with the razor and, in 2008, the president of of Procter and Gamble asked me if we are interested in selling them.

Our company. So that was early 2008, that started the process of this M&A. And then, you know, it was a it was a big journey. I mean, the next the next 14 months were a wild ride because of the financial crisis. But it started with, against my better judgment, because I was in secure in that category. I leaned on our investors at the time and they recommended I hired Goldman Sachs.

I told them I thought we were too small for Goldman to small, big fish for them. We're not going to get the right you know, I like to have medium size banks that could that I could work with one of the principals instead of a humongous brand, a bank where I would be given to the, you know, to the, the, the, receptionist to handle my, my M&A deal, you know, which was big for me, but tiny for that.

Anyways, I hired Goldman. They really gave me a a B level team. They ran a bad process. I gave him a great brand. I gave him a great buyer. Just just bring it together, add water, get it to closing, dragging their feet. Next thing you know, we finally get into, After they messed up the deal, I brought the buyer back to the table.

By the time we got into due diligence in, October 2008, in the middle of due diligence with P&G people in my offices in Miami, Lehman Brothers collapses, taking the stock market down with it. Retail sales dropped 25% overnight in Q4 of 2008, the most important selling season for us and, you know, they're packing. They're you know, imagine them packing their, their their folders and and running to their cars, you know, is not the look I want in the middle of my day.

You know, this is an 8 or 9 figure deal. And I don't want these guys to be running, bolting out of my office. The deal's off the table. The world is upside down. Our company's tanking with everyone else in the world. My wife is six months pregnant. I'm pretty stressed. Right. We're running out of cash. I mean, we have a $3.5 million hole in our cash flow that we were expecting from Q4 by January.

Our investors, who still had money to invest in our business earmarked for us, refused to put any more money in. I think they gave us I think we went from an $80 million valuation with them. They wanted to revalue the company at 1 million and give us half a million for six years. I don't know, they wanted to take my company basically, to which I politely turn to, you know, the fuck themselves.

Sorry, you can beat me out, but that's the only thing I could sell at that moment.

Daniel Burstein: The authentic thing. We're not beeping it out. The going.

Eric Malka: Yeah, they thought I was a nice guy until then, and they really saw how I could be, a formidable adversary. Meanwhile, our bank, Merrill Lynch, who we had a few million dollar line of credit with, was acquired by Bank of America for pennies on the dollar bank America starts to foreclose on our $3 million line of credit, even though I show them this, and I have this huge offer from Procter and Gamble, I had money in my bank.

I could you know, worst case, I'm going to pay you if the deal doesn't go through in a month, give me two months. Anyways, they go through that and P&G, you know, weeks away from signing the deal, find out that we're insolvent, that we're being foreclosed on and that are basically our investors don't have our back. So they were good, good old Midwestern values.

Didn't try to really, you know, kill us, which I wouldn't have allowed. But they did reiterate our deal, in the tune of $20 million and including and earnout. So that was a hard pill to swallow, but I still got the deal done. It was good enough. You know, at the end of the day, the only reason for me not to do the deal is because I didn't think I could get the earnout and I could get more in a year or two years from that, which I had.

No, you know, I wasn't greed was not my, my, my driving principle. At that point. I wanted freedom. And, I was getting enough money to buy my freedom. Not as much as I wanted or I thought I was going to get. But, you know, that's that's life, right? Nobody cries about my situation, but I'm just telling you, it was a hard pill to swallow.

$20 million that, you know, job. Jane. We got the deal done, and, you know, it was extremely stressful, period. Fighting with my investors to the last minute, and then the next morning, you know, I had an 18 month contract with Proctor to continue running my company and get my earnout, which was substantial. I mean, it was a $25 million earnout of which I would get, you know, 80 plus percent of it.

So it was really, you know, I sold my company. But you know what they say the the one battle was behind me, but the the war was still raging on, if you will, for the next 18 months. I had to get that burn out. So that that's really a little bit of, of the tail of, of M&A. And then in my book and in, in my life, I talk about what we call the morning after.

So after leaving my company two years later, you know, the morning after is the, is is where you know, what the lucky entrepreneurs find themselves after selling their company. Now what? You know, you wake up the next morning, you're out of a job, you got a pile of money and whatever your situation is, and and I, you know, a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs suffer from mental health issues at that point, loss of identity, loss of purpose, you know, confusion, you know, and that can be very difficult, period.

For which, again, they get very little empathy because they're living the dream from the outside looking.

Daniel Burstein: Let's end on a high note though, and get back to where we began. Because the first word you told me was fun. So I understand there's are things to overcome. But let me let me just ask is freedom fun?

Eric Malka: Freedom is the most fun thing anyone can aspire to. I think that people are confused. They're chasing money. But what you should be chasing is freedom. And, that was my decision about taking the deal at the end. Is this going to allow me to have freedom over my time, over my life? And the answer was yes.

And therefore I went through with it. So yeah, freedom is a lot of fun. It can be challenging at times because, there were periods where I had too much freedom. Right? I had a lot of white space in my calendar. I was raising my kids and, you know, I didn't know what I was going to do.

If you're in real estate or your doctor, you go find other properties, you find another hospital, you find another cabinet, but an entrepreneur. I'm not going to go and start the art of grooming the next day. You know, I had no intention of that. What am I going to be? And I realized at that point that, you know, I, I, I'm very analytical and strategic.

So I treat everything in my life like that, like a business. And I ask myself, okay, so what do I want? You know, what am I going to do with all this freedom? What's the purpose of my wealth? What's the purpose of my time that I have available? What's the opportunity of selling my business and made this new position?

And I realize, first of all, there's what you want. You know, maybe. And there's what is in front of you, right? Usually what's in front of you is, is that is is really the clues. You know, we're treasure hunters, right? So the clues are right in front of you. And, you know, as I was asking myself that the morning after, you know, there was a baby crying in the other room, and I realized, listen, my priorities are very clear.

You know, I've neglected my health. My father wasn't around growing up, and I've come into a nice chunk of money. And these those three things became my priority, my health. I'm going to focus on my health. I'm going to focus on my kids, and I'm going to focus on my, on my investments. And this became my job for the first 5 to 10 years.

Daniel Burstein: Well, normally I end an episode by asking, what are the key quarters of an effective market? But for this one, I think that's too good of an end. I love that, so I just, I love that end of don't chase money, chase freedom. I think that's a lesson we can all learn from no matter marketing, entrepreneurship, life. That's a fantastic lesson.

Well, I thank you so much for your time today, Eric. I learned so much.

Eric Malka: You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.

Daniel Burstein: And thank you to everyone for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing rpa.com and.