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Erik Cabral left corporate America after 20+ years. He jumped head first into real estate investing in order to achieve financial freedom. Educating himself, building networks, and analyzing hundreds of deals he purchased his first multi-family building in less than one year.
He’s a partner in the Renault Winery & Resort, which is the 2nd oldest winery in the US, offers private capital to his network of investors for various projects and looks for opportunities to expand and grow his network. Erik shares how it all started and his experience in branding, and marketing strategies as well as helping others leverage the power within the podcasting platform.
As a family man, Erik has been able to see the importance of creating an environment where he can thrive. Due to his strong work ethic and focus on boundaries he was able to gain clarity and maximize productivity.
Erik stresses the importance of focus in order to achieve goals towards successful entrepreneurship while he prioritizes his family and supports their values!
Listen to this amazing episode for some great advice and motivation!
In This Episode
- How it all started for Erik Cabral.
- What is Erik’s personal wealth strategy?
- Erik’s personal vision statement.
- Erik’s personal boundaries and structure.
- Mr. Cabral’s advice for you to accelerate your wealth!
Hey everyone, welcome to today’s show on Wealth Strategy Secrets. Today, we’re joined by Eric Cabral.
Eric left corporate America after 20 years and jumped headfirst into real estate investing to achieve financial freedom. Educating himself, building networks, and analyzing hundreds of deals, he purchased his first multifamily building in less than one year. He’s also a partner in the Renault Winery and Resort.
Eric is the founder of the media agency On Air Brands. With multiple businesses, partnerships, and podcasts, Eric is the quintessential serial entrepreneur who spends much of his time helping others grow their businesses, brands, and reputation.
Eric loves to share his decades of experience in creative branding and marketing strategies, as well as helping others leverage the power within the podcasting platform. He sits on the board of a real estate investor group and is also a proud member of GoBundance. He lives in Central New Jersey with his wife and two daughters.
Eric, my friend, good to see you.
Thanks, brother, I appreciate that.
It’s funny always hearing your own bio. I’m like, man, there are some things I want to edit in there. Like “serial entrepreneur”—I remember that being a cool, sexy thing, and now, in hindsight, through everything I’ve experienced, especially lately, I’m like, yeah, that just sounds to me like unfocused.
Thanks for that, man. I gotta update that.
Well, you’ve got a lot of things going on, that’s for sure—a lot of things.
I’m going to have fun with this. We’ve been looking forward to this interview. I’ve been on your podcast before, which was an absolute blast—still one of my top memories. In addition to PodMax and what you guys created, which is just so innovative, you know what you put together.
We’ll jump into that and some other good stuff. But for folks who aren’t familiar with you and your background, kick us off with your journey. How did it all start for you?
Yeah, brother, I think of this time when I used to drive an hour and a half to this job you referenced.
When I was in corporate America, it was an hour and a half each way, and I was just miserable. I was a big fat mess. I wasn’t exercising, wasn’t eating right, wasn’t getting much sleep. I was a corporate executive making six figures, so why didn’t I feel happy and fulfilled? I was just grinding. I wasn’t doing the proper things to take care of myself—my mental health, my well-being, my spirituality. It was just money, money, money.
I was given the task by my corporate heads to let go of the entire staff. They said, “Yeah, we’re closing up shop. We’re going to outsource everything to India and Ireland.” The five people I started with had grown to 25. The half-a-million-dollar flat I walked into had become a two-and-a-half-million-dollar business that I helped build in about a year. And they said, “Thanks, but no thanks—we’re shutting it all down.”
I was like, wow. So I’m driving, Dave, and I’m thinking to myself, I’m going to this job that’s not going to be my job anymore. They gave me three months to lay everyone off, and I’d be the last.
I’m listening to Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki’s book, and I’m literally punching the steering wheel out of anger, frustration, and inspiration. I’m like, freaking do something with my life. This guy—he’s the pill, man. I call him the purple pill. The book’s the purple pill.
Once I realized assets versus liabilities, that my time is valuable, and that creating and adding value to a business or an asset is key—all these things were new to me. ESBI. Man, all my life, I had been in the E quadrant. And I was like, no more. No more.
I’m going to live in every quadrant. I’m going to transition. I tell my wife, “I’m becoming a real estate investor.” And she’s like, “What are you talking about? You know nothing about real estate.”
And I’m like, “I don’t care. I’m going to figure it all out.”
I’m blessed to have her in my corner, to have people in my corner who trusted my decisions, who saw that I had the drive, passion, and intelligence to set forth on something new.
And that’s really what happened, man. That moment broke me open and opened the door for me to create everything you know of and where I am today.
Yeah, that’s so awesome. I love that, Eric—the purple pill.
There are so many case studies. He should almost have a reunion, gathering all the people to see the success that came from his book. It really took off in the late ’90s, and it would be fascinating to see what people have accomplished based on it.
I think part of that core concept is that it’s all about financial education. And it’s amazing because we’re just not taught that anywhere. We’re not taught it in school. You can’t even go and take a class on it.
It’s learned through podcasts, reading, networking, and learning from other people. He’s right on the money—education in this area is sorely missed, and we need more of it.
I feel like it’s part of our mission—folks like us—to help others discover that there are other ways to create value as an entrepreneur. Other ways to drive income instead of being handcuffed to that W-2 position.
Yeah, 100%, man.
We were fortunate enough to interview him on one of our shows, and at the time, he was either unaware of his impact or just being extremely humble. He was like, “Oh, what? I did what?” And I’m like, “Yeah, you ever hear of BiggerPockets?”
“Bigger what?”
He had no idea about these things. But if you listen to every BiggerPockets podcast, 98% of them will say Rich Dad Poor Dad was the pill that started them on the path. It’s pretty wild.
I think he may be aware now since he was on the BiggerPockets podcast, but yeah, he’s an amazing dude. He’s changed a lot of lives.
Yeah, yeah, it’s really cool because everything is focused on how to make money. You learn a particular skill set, and it’s all about trying to make money. But there’s nowhere that talks about how to actually protect and grow your money.
Clearly, the wealthy have figured this out, but there needs to be a lot more education on the topic.
That’s a good segue, Eric. I know we’ve talked about my book before and how, in our community, it’s all about having a comprehensive wealth strategy—not just one particular asset class or one specific investment.
So share with us a little bit about your personal wealth strategy. What do you have in place right now?
Yeah, I mean, I’m constantly looking and thinking of opportunities to create passive income.
I was very active several years ago in acquiring assets, managing them, sourcing deals, and being involved in the real estate investing community. But during that time—and this is when I met you—I started leaning into what I was passionate about, which was being creative and creating for myself and others.
Whether that’s branding, logos, websites, social media, or now podcasting, I reached a fork in the road, David. It was like, do I allocate all my time to what I love—my superpower—being creative? Do I go all in and grow my business, On Air Brands, which was truly serving the real estate community in ways they needed more than I did?
Or do I continue down the left path, moving into syndication, raising deals, and raising capital? I was moving very quickly into that space in 2017 and 2018.
I decided—I’ve got to go to the right. I need to make money doing what I do best, even though I love what the passive side does for me. But I can still stay connected—90 to 95% of my network and the clients we serve are all real estate investors.
I realized if I built this asset—just like a multifamily property with hundreds of units—On Air Brands could eventually be sold. I could still be an equity partner, sit on the board, or have a liquidity event, a capital event. That became one of my main strategies, if not the main strategy today.
As I continue to gain passive income from my investments and private lending, I do that through my self-directed IRA. That’s the most active I am today—looking at deals when people come to me saying, “Hey, I need $50K” or “I need $100K.”
But in terms of where I dedicate all my time, it’s in building this asset and creating so much value in the marketplace that eventually, one of our partners will come to us.
And this is something I learned from having a podcast. When I interviewed James Altucher, he said, You’re most likely to be acquired by a company you’re already working with and partnering with.
We have a lot of those big players as clients—large multimedia agencies that need us. And eventually, hopefully, one of them will come to us and say, “Hey, rather than hiring you, why don’t we just acquire you and partner up?”
Yeah, excellent.
A lot of the ultra-wealthy, if you actually look at their portfolios, are completely lopsided compared to what typical wealth planners talk about—putting everything in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
It sounds like about 60% of your balance sheet is in your business, as well as some of your syndications.
Well, yes, there are syndications, and we also have a large portion of our wealth in stocks as well.
You do?
Yes, though that’s not being managed by me—clearly—because I would lose it all. Honestly, I make very emotional decisions.
Much to the dismay of financial advisors, a lot of it is in Tesla. We bought four or five years ago, before the splits, so I’m very happy, but I know it’s a risk. I know that having 60% of our wealth in the portfolio riding on basically one guy wasn’t planned, but yeah.
We get dividends from our stocks, which is nice, and we also get cash flow from our properties. That’s there, but it hasn’t quite reached that financial freedom number yet.
Honestly, Dave, it’s getting closer. Sometimes people are financially free and don’t even realize it. That might be the case for us, only because we’ve lowered our cost of living—thanks to 2020.
When we went back into our finances—we use Mint now, my wife and I—I was like, Oh wow, we significantly lowered our cost of living by 30 or 40%.
So yeah, it’s getting to that point where the financial freedom number is most likely there—or very close.
Yeah, well, every time I hit that financial freedom number, I level it up. I’m saying, Let’s increase our cost of living expenses so we can do more things, right?
Yeah, have a bigger impact. I like to make it dynamic because otherwise, you have what I call abundant complacency.
That’s really cool. So, Eric, do you actually have a personal vision statement?
I do, I do. It leans very heavily into the spiritual space. But if you’re asking me to say it right now, I don’t know it off the top of my head.
Oh, you do?
I do. It’s on my wall, actually.
Okay.
Yeah, so there are two. My company’s mission is to make the world better, one mic at a time. We do that in various ways—through podcasting, interviews, introductions, and speaking.
I like to speak on stage, introduce folks like you to events we’re running or partnering on, and things like that. That’s how we make an impact.
Then, my personal mission—and I’ll read it to you—is: My divine mission is to create confidence and inspire others to find happiness and love within themselves.
That really came to me during prayer and meditation one morning. It aligns with the company’s mission, especially during this whole… I referenced 2020 jokingly, but I feel like there’s been a spiritual awakening.
I was one of those people who leaned into that for answers, and that’s when this divine mission came to me—to help people realize they already have the answers within themselves. They don’t have to seek it externally.
Right, and by creating that vision, did that bring more clarity to your life?
Absolutely. Yeah, it gave me clarity each and every day. It gave me clarity when faced with a challenge or an opportunity—Does this align with my goals? Does this align with my mission?
If the answer is yes, then absolutely. But if it’s a no, then it’s a quick, easy no. That applies to partners, friends, and people in your life.
There are always people who will come to you and say, Hey, I have an opportunity for you. But if it doesn’t align with your personal goals and mission statement, then yeah, it’s much easier to make those decisions.
Yeah, it’s so powerful, Eric, because I think not enough people have really thought through a vision statement and what that truly means.
That’s why I like to talk about holistic wealth, because to me, wealth isn’t just about money—it’s really a path to self-actualization. You get your financial security in place, and you ensure protection for your family. Those are the basic needs.
Then, as you move forward, other things become just as important—like your health.
You talked about that, right? You were in a period where your paycheck was strong, but your health wasn’t. And if your health isn’t right, how are you going to support your family, your friends, and others?
There are so many key components to looking at life holistically. It’s so easy in this day and age to get caught up in being reactionary and short-sighted.
But if you take the time to create a vision statement, as you have, it brings so much clarity and intentionality to your life. The way you live your life becomes more purposeful—it’s very powerful.
Yeah, I appreciate all that, David. One thing I wanted to highlight is that once you gain clarity on a mission statement—some kind of GPS for your life—you’ll start to notice something.
You begin to attract the right people and the right opportunities.
When you put it out there—especially on shows like this or just by speaking to my team—I’ve noticed that I’m not surrounded by negative people. I’m not around people who are only out for themselves, who just want to take without any thought of giving.
And that’s because of the clarity of my mission. By putting it out there, I naturally attract more team members and partners who align with that mission.
It does so many wonderful things when you put in that work.
Right, and I think at the core of most entrepreneurs, it really comes down to freedom.
Not just financial freedom, but freedom of purpose—the ability to do what you want to do in life.
Freedom of relationship—to work with the people you want to work with.
And freedom of time—the ability to spend your time intentionally.
But you’re absolutely right about freedom of relationship—it’s been so refreshing to be surrounded by people who align with my vision. People who share the same ethics, the same morals. People who are on a similar mission—they’re inspirational, they’re not complaining.
One of my personal rules is no complainers. I don’t want complainers in my life.
And when you work with these kinds of people, your success becomes inevitable. It’s just so much more rewarding.
For me, I felt like I lost that sense of mission in Corporate America.
When I was in the Marine Corps, there was such a deep sense of mission and purpose. But once I entered the corporate world, that disappeared. It was all very short-sighted.
Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s hard when you’re in that kind of bubble because everyone is there for one specific reason—typically, a paycheck. I think it was Kiyosaki who said the two most addicting things in life are heroin and a weekly paycheck. And if that paycheck is your driving force, then you can’t be focused on anything else—like being mission-driven or having a greater purpose.
That was the thing that was missing for me. I kept asking myself, What the heck is my purpose here? I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day—waking up, doing the same thing, over and over. I didn’t feel like I was evolving. And looking back now, I realize that taking the step to change my life—especially in my early to mid-40s—was huge.
By the way, I just turned 50! People like to label that as a midlife crisis, but to me, it was a midlife opportunity. An opportunity to reflect on what I’ve done over the past 40 to 50 years and ask, Have I made an impact? Have I been a positive influence in people’s lives?
Especially when you have kids, you start thinking, Now it’s really on me to be the shining light for them. So that when they grow up, they can continue that path—knowing, My dad was this. My mom was this.
I didn’t grow up with the tools we have today—financial education, literacy, opportunities for growth, and self-awareness. And self-awareness? Man, that was huge. There was no self-awareness in my household.
And communication? Forget it. If there was an argument in my house, we’d just stop talking for days. Then one day, you’d sit down for dinner, and suddenly, Dad’s talking again. And you’d think, Okay, I guess it’s okay to talk now.
Versus now, if someone in my house gets upset, we talk about it in the moment. I’ll say, Hey, I understand you’re upset, or Daddy’s upset, and here’s why. I didn’t get much sleep, or I’m worried about this or that.
I think we’re going through a household awakening. We’re more intelligent and intentional about what we do—so we can raise better children.
Right. Have you formalized any type of family values culture in the house?
So good. Thanks for asking that, man. Yes, I I’ll give it to you in two forms. First, you have to surround yourself with people. I’m a part of two organizations—you mentioned GoBundance, but I’m also in Front Row Dads. So big shout out to John Roman and Hal Elrod. Hal is the one that introduced me to the group, but I don’t think he owns or runs it.
They introduced me during that very early on. The community there is big on this one book from Jim Shields called The Family Board Meeting. And what it does is set a cadence for basically quarterly for all the corporate heads out there. So every three months, every 90 days, you meet with one of your children for four hours—complete digital detox, no phones. And you tell them or you ask them, What do you want to do today? This is your day. We do whatever you want. We go wherever you want. We eat whatever you want. And I am completely yours and engaged and present.
That is the key, man—be present. That’s why we shut off all phones.
So this, I’ve noticed, has changed the game. Like, we’ve been implementing the Family Board Meeting. And when I say board meeting, the book is referencing a surfboard, right? Not a nice corporate conference room.
Yeah.
And it changed everything. My little girls look forward to that. Daddy, when’s the next Daddy-Daughter Day? And then when I’m away with one of them—we have two little girls—then my wife is having Mommy-Daughter Day with the other. And it just, it creates this, this indelible memory for them forever, where they look forward to it.
I remember, like, they remember what we did. They remember the laughter. They remember all these little things. And during that day, when we do whatever we want, we always end it with a meal, right? Whether, you know, it’s a—sometimes it’s ice cream, or sometimes it’s this or that, where we go to a restaurant. And we reflect on the day, right?
Hey, my daughter’s—my oldest’s name is Veronica—Veronica, what did you love about today? And this gets me, I don’t want to get emotional, every time, 100% of the time, she’ll say, Just being here with you today, Daddy, was the win.
And then that—well, isn’t it worth it, bro?
Right. That melts.
Yeah. Every time, and it’s just wonderful. And the thing is, you have to read the book, because you’ll hear all the great stories of why you need to follow the formula. Because most people are like, It’s so good, I want to do it more! But it does—it takes away this, what’s special about it.
Like, you need to create the build-up anticipation. That’s like having Christmas every day, you know? The reason Christmas is so special is it’s once a year. So that’s why this flow of every through nine—and put it on your calendar.
For us busy entrepreneurs, on my calendar, I block that Saturday morning to afternoon, every 90 days for each one of them. That’s been key.
The second thing, David—do you want me to stop there?
No, good. Please go.
Yeah. The second thing that we’ve recently incorporated is the weekly family meetings. So, I got to come up with a sec—I’m a marketing guy, so I got to come up with something cool, uh, in terms of branding for that. But we—right now, we’re calling it the Family Meeting.
And every Sunday, after brunch—we have, I make pancakes, or I make some big breakfast—we’ll get together, and we’ll, we’ll, we have an agenda of like, Okay, let’s reflect on the week prior.
What were the wins? What were some of the things that you could have done better? So everyone goes around the, the table and they state whatever win and what could you have done better?
And then, um, we go through an issues list, like, Okay, are there any issues that you’re— This is—they’re eight and five, so the little one’s always like, Veronica kisses me too much, and she doesn’t have permission. It’s always the same complaint. Yeah.
So, but things like that—but as they grow and, and become adults, they’ll understand, This is the place where I can now share my grievances or my wins. And it’s a safe place for me, you know, to have an open dialogue without being judged. Or, if there’s something bothering me, this is a place for me to share.
So, we’ve created the Family Meetings. And then in there, we’re currently in the process of our core values.
What are the Cabral family core values?
And I have this—I highly recommend—it’s not here, it’s typically behind me, but um, the—you know Gary Keller wrote a book called The One Thing? Well, they have other things outside of the book, and one of them is the Core Values Deck of Cards. And there’s literally like hundreds and hundreds of cards with words on it—um, that’s leadership, or empathy, or uh, you know, compassion, whatever it is. There’s all these adjectives, and you spread them all out, and you start weeding it down from 100 to 50 to 20.
And then, I want to weed it down to five, and to potentially three. But five core values of the, the family.
And you run it just like your company. Every time you make decisions: Does that align with our values? Right?
Like, faith is one of them. Like, Does that decision that you’re making align with that one?
And it’s just like business. But now, it applies to the family.
Family. So powerful, Eric. I know people are really going to enjoy that, and it’s so important. The age of your kids right now—mine are older, so it’s harder to corral them. But when you can instill those values and get that in place at an early age, it’s really powerful.
And then that fuels your success. It drives you. It’s aligned. Really inspirational. One of my goals is to build a family office.
And I want to have the family office centered around these core values and all of that structure. But I haven’t heard that one—the Board Meeting. I love that, and I’m going to check that one out for sure.
Yeah, man, it’s great.
So it’s a quick read. You can finish it in an hour at most.
Yeah, short.
Very nice.
In Strategic Coach, I’ve learned that one of the challenges as entrepreneurs is we always tend to be this rugged individual where we think we can—
Do everything, right?
And better than everyone else. It’s a little bit of a curse and a blessing. But you find yourself doing things all the time. On weekends, I grew up in an environment where it was all about working hard and demonstrating that all the time.
So whether that was chores and yard work around the house—if you were sitting down, you were doing something wrong, right? It was always about putting in an effort.
In Coach, they have this powerful concept called a Free Day, which is a 24-hour period where you don’t read one business book, don’t answer one email, don’t answer one business text, and are completely—for 24 hours—not engaged in business and 100% focused on your family, your spouse—whatever it is you’re doing.
It’s amazing. It took me years to perfect that and actually give myself permission to unplug from work.
But what it does is train you like an athlete, so you get this super restorative regeneration during that period.
You go back to work on Monday so much more energized, because you’ve had that real quality time and are technology-unplugged with your family or spouse.
I’ve really been able to foster relationships with family and friends a lot better by being dedicated and present.
It’s interesting, right? Some of these places that you can go.
I’ve become very aware of this recently—creating boundaries. As a startup, and even when I was in Corporate America, I never really established boundaries. I was always very open and loving. Come on in, you can stay over, I’ll cook you some barbecue, whatever.
But the thing is, that set a tone and an expectation—not just from friends and family, but clients too.
They’d step into your world, call you on a Saturday, and if you’ve set that non-boundary expectation, backtracking can be detrimental. That’s something I started to realize over time.
I need to create boundaries.
I don’t pick up calls. I see clients or friends who are still in the business space, but I won’t pick up Saturday calls.
I’m here with my family. I’m engaged. I want to be present.
If I see a missed call, we’ll talk on Monday.
Here’s the weird thing, David. I think this also happened with 2020.
I moved away from having a personal assistant. I had a physical personal assistant for years. She was a retired exec, won Emmys for soap operas—brilliant.
When she left, I thought, What am I going to do?
Then I got introduced to Calendly.
I started sending it to our friends—you know many of them. They’d say, “You’re sending me a Calendly link?”
Now, everyone uses it.
And that has changed the game.
Now, on my phone, if someone wants to meet—here’s a 15-minute link.
Get on my calendar.
And then, weeks, sometimes months, are all booked out.
It’s great.
It creates the boundaries and expectations that are needed to have balance in life.
To understand that we can’t do it all.
We can’t continuously work without burning out.
Boundaries are really key to creating some control and structure, and also, it’s really a productivity hack as well by time boxing the different things that you do. The best way to think about it is just to think about elite-level performers. Whether you’re going on stage in theater or you’re performing in some major athletic event, they have three different phases. They have a phase where they’re resting and recovering—that’s all they focus on. They have a phase where they’re in preparation, and then they have a competition phase. Our competition for us is running our business, but if you don’t factor in that preparation time or that rejuvenation time and time block it, you become a little less effective all the way through.
So, Eric, with that, let’s segue into your business. Tell us what’s going on with On-Air Brands. What would you like to share with everyone right now? You guys have had some amazing success, and maybe you can even talk about the model right now. I know GaryVee is still involved with that.
Gary, you know, we produce one of his C-suite Chief Heart Officer Claude Silver’s podcasts, and we’re very proud of that. In terms of how, I don’t know, but I’m on weekly, and at this point, they’re bi-weekly marketing calls. I love being a part of the Vaynerverse, as they call it, because they have their finger on the pulse constantly in every aspect of branding, marketing, and content creation. I’m privileged to be in the room with heavy hitters, and typically, the CMOs of companies like Scotch, Land Rover, or even Apple. Sometimes I’m in the room, and I think, how did I get here? Here I am, this little guy from On-Air Brands, surrounded by these massive corporations, all learning just as I am.
They’re very heavy on TikTok, by the way, not that Gary owns any stock in TikTok, but what we’ve learned always trickles down to our clients. We share strategies, implement ideas slowly, and test-drive things based on what we learn from the big dogs like Vayner. On-Air Brands has gotten very focused—very, very focused—on podcast launches, weekly production, and social media promotions for every episode. When I gained that clarity, David, because you met me when, yeah, that was something we did, but I didn’t really talk about it. We did events, live streams, all these things, and that was where the serial entrepreneur side of me was unfocused.
Once we gained clarity on the mission, that opened the door for clarity on what we do, and from there, it 10x’d the business. Now, I don’t say that to humble brag in any way because it’s a blessing and a curse. It comes with a whole host of challenges that you can’t foresee. You can talk to someone who has gone from six to seven to eight figures, and you’ll understand it, but you won’t truly know it until you’re in the trenches and in the game. Now, we’re implementing EOS, which wasn’t part of the plan. Anyone who knows Gino Wickman’s Traction and Rocket Fuel—we were holding off on that until 2023, but now we’re implementing it due to the growing pains we’ve had.
It’s great, but it’s very rigid for a creative person like me. My CEO, though, loves it, so it’s working out. We’re also reevaluating our core values, which have been in place for four or five years. Some of them are now irrelevant or don’t fully speak to who we are today because we’ve changed. It’s huge, and we’re blessed to be in the space we’re in.
That’s really excellent. Are there any other offshoots of that, or are you still doing PodMax events or anything else?
Well, that was where the lack of focus came in. We still do the occasional event for our group, Abundance. We partnered with GoBundance this year to handle their global events, and that was a version of what you were part of—the live PodMax experience. It looked similar, but it wasn’t our event; it was someone else’s. It’s great because we get to serve, meet new people, and do what we do best, mostly in the real estate investing space.
A lot of people in GoBundance, for those who don’t know, it’s a mastermind group of successful individuals who hold each other accountable, live bucket-list adventures, and maintain balance in life, health, wealth, and family. I love it. I’ve been a part of it for two or three years now, and just being able to help that community through my company has been great. But it’s not a focused effort for us. It’s not something we’re going to build into a business for ourselves or others.
Sure, and for people not familiar with PodMax and the specifics, can you share what that model looks like?
Yeah, it was a lot of fun when we were doing it. We’re not doing them anymore. It evolved from live to virtual during 2020 and 2021, but we’ve paused all activities on that company because of the lack of focus. We had one team, not two, so we had to decide—do we have an events team, or do we have a creative and production team? That was the fork in the road, and we ultimately transitioned all of our services, focus, and talent to creating podcasts.
What PodMax was, essentially, was a live experience where you stepped into a room filled with influencers—many well-known podcasters we all admire, like M.C. Laubscher from Cashflow Ninja, Matt Faircloth, Liz Faircloth from The DeRosa Group, and Real Estate InvestHER. Attendees had the opportunity to meet them face-to-face, be featured on their podcasts, and receive a lot of social media and video assets from the event. It was a great experience, and it naturally evolved into a sort of masterminding community.
Then we took it virtual, and that’s when everything really exploded for us. The connections we started making—with the Vayners of the world—completely changed the game. Having them on our virtual stage opened doors for us to partner and work with major industry players we wouldn’t have met otherwise. But for now, we’ve paused all activity on PodMax to focus entirely on podcast launches and production.
Focus is the best way to scale, for sure. And how about from a productivity standpoint? I know you’re a productivity junkie like myself. What are you focused on lately, Eric, that you’re seeing the most gains?
Yeah, sales and then marketing is also critical—the yin and yang. You can’t have one without the other. But when I focused on who I can serve, who I can help, and identifying the people that fit the criteria—they call it an avatar in our space, in marketing—that was the game changer. Truly, you can do all the PR and marketing you want, but if you’re not focused on communicating with the people who need your help but don’t even know you exist, that can hurt you long term.
I started to see that, and I became very focused on my speaking engagements. I speak on stages and am writing a book about personal branding called Be Your Brand. I was very unfocused, David, and when I realized, Oh, I’m not focusing on sales at all, that’s when I started to see the dip. When you pay attention to the numbers, you realize that sales is critical. That’s a lesson I recently learned and have been focusing on a lot lately.
Sure, and if you could give just one piece of advice to listeners about how they could accelerate their wealth and truly live the life they want, what would it be?
Clarity and focus—write these things down and hold yourself accountable. That’s been extremely helpful for me. I write down my goals, but not too far in advance. I’m talking about weekly goals, 30-day goals, 90-day goals, and focusing on the micro steps to get there. Then, every once in a while, I step back and focus on the macro. Being able to document your steps to success and hold yourself accountable is crucial. Surround yourself with the right people, and have business partners who keep you accountable.
Don’t surround yourself with yes-men and yes-women—have people who will call you out on your crap and won’t be afraid to do so. Encourage that within your team. Tell them, Give it to me straight, because my ego doesn’t exist. I packed a lot into that answer, but yeah—focus and clarity are the main two things.
Love it. That was actually very succinct. It was a focused comment. Sometimes people take 10 minutes to explain that, but you gave it a lot of clarity, so I like that. Well done, Eric.
Eric, it’s been so awesome having you on today. I really enjoyed the discussion, and I know everyone is going to get a ton of value from it. If anyone would like to learn more about what you’re doing with On-Air Brands or wants to reach out and connect with you, what’s the best way to do so?
If you have a podcast or are thinking about starting one, I highly recommend downloading this PDF. Go to erikcabral.co/guide—my name is spelled with a “K”—so that’s ErikCabral.co/guide. I have a podcast do’s and don’ts guide, and David, I don’t think you’ve downloaded this yet, but I highly recommend you do.
In there, you’ll find everything I’ve collected over the years of podcasting. I’ve had close to a thousand conversations, and there’s just stuff in that guide that I don’t think is out there in the metaverse yet. It’s completely free, and there’s even a link to book a call with me. No pressure to do that, but if you want to have a conversation, it’s there.
Awesome—thanks so much for joining us today, Eric. Really enjoyed it.
Yeah, brother, thanks for having me.
You bet.