#01: I Quit My Job. Here's What I'm Doing Next.

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Hey, what's up? This is Dave Gerhart and you're listening to DGMG Radio. Okay. Hey, what's up everybody? This is episode one of my new DGMG podcast where I'm gonna be. Daisy's going wild right now. We just came back in from a walk and she's got the Zoomies. Here you go. Hey, what are you doing? Anyway, okay, so I have a quick. I have an announcement that I want to make and then I'll talk about some. Some other stuff. And so I put out. I'm putting this out on social and on my website and everywhere today. But I'm just going to read it because it's something that I wrote and I'll just give quick context. So this is an update on my end as, hey, can you hang out if it. If at first it was kids like pre, like Covet it was. It was kids interrupting everything. And now I'm home alone. And the dog. And we have a dog. Okay. I spent the last decade working in marketing. I've gone from PR intern to Chief Marketing Officer. But I've always had an itch to build a business of my own. It's one of the reasons I've had a side project of some kind. It's one of the reasons I've always had a side project of some kind. From dating all the way back to tech in Boston over the last year or so, one of those side projects, DGMG has exploded. What started off as a podcast on Patreon about marketing has turned into a media company with 4,500 paying members. And it's time that I go work on DGMG as my full time job. As a result, I've stepped down from my role as Chief Brand Officer at Drift. David and Elias have been incredibly helpful and supportive in making this decision and that means the world to me. I'll continue to root for Drift from the sidelines. Going full time on DGMG will give me will also give me the space to play around with a few other ideas I've had and create something outside of the B2B marketing space. Maybe one of those things is my book Founder Brand which comes out February 15, 2022. But as Leah can attest to, there's many more things that I want to do over time. I wrote this as I was lying in my daughter's bed and now she's sleeping so it's time to wrap it up. Oh and P.S. to my mom and mother in law. Yes, this means that we'll have to get our own health insurance now. I'm on it. And then I put a J. Cole quote in here because I was listening to this yesterday. If I'm betting on myself, then I've completely doubled down. P.S. if you want to work together on something, send me a note dgavegearhart.com okay, so today is the first day that I am working for myself.

Surprise.

I'm going all in on on building DGMG as the founder of dgmg, DGMG LLC for the for tax purposes. But obviously I just want to shout out to David and Lias and the whole team at Drift. I mean what I said in there that I'll continue to root for Drift from the sidelines and they have been completely supportive of this. But me going to do DGMG full time is just an itch that I have to go scratch and Just for more context on like what DGMG is, because I think it started off as this podcast and Facebook community. And so when I called it dgmg, I think everybody thought that like, what the, what it stood for was Dave Gearhart Marketing Group, like literally like the group of marketing people on Facebook. But I've kind of always had this bigger vision, this longer term vision about like what I, what Dave Gearhart Marketing Group really is to me is, is an umbrella brand. That is all the things that I do. I love marketing. I've built up a reputation in marketing. I want to continue to educate, to make content, to work with companies. And I don't know if that's in the B2B space. The B2B space, anything. And so I wanted to create this umbrella brand which is dgmg. And so under that, right now I have the dgmg, like a DGMG membership which gets you access to the Facebook community and DGMG University. And so when I talk about 4,500 paying members, that's between DGMG community and the university is 4,500 paying members. That, that on its own is a. Has become an incredible business. And I could, I could just do that fully and work a couple hours a day and hang out a lot with my kids and do whatever I want. I could totally do that. And the honest answ is I don't know which direction all this stuff is going to go in. And I think having this, you know, going full time on my own gives me lots of, lots of options. And so we have DGMG 4,500 members. But then I'm also going to be doing some consulting. Like, I love working with companies on specific creative problems and giving marketing advice. And so I'm going to be working with companies in that capacity. Uh, there's a couple of B2B startups specifically that I'm, that I'm gonna be working with. But I'm, I'm open to things and I can be creatively pushed in one, one direction or another. If you know my stuff and you know what I might be able to bring to the table, hit me up. I can't. I don't know what I'm gonna be able to say yes to, but I think one of the things that's exciting to me is just to be able to like, finally say, like, I'm going full time on dgmg. What, what's, what's up? Send me a message. And I. Every day, this is like, so I didn't expect this rant to be so real, but I'm just going to share it anyway. Like, every day I go back and forth between do I want to build, like, the $10 million DGMG plus, which is like, I could see one path where, where there's, you know, there's multiple books, there's events, there's more online online training. Like, there's a. There's a path where DGMG could become something like SAST in the. In the B2B marketing world. I've also, like, had lots of ideas about starting a marketing agency of some sorts because, like, the thing that I do love is the marketing side of this. You know, I've had the opportunity to build marketing teams and manage people, and I've worked with amazing people. But I know that if it comes to, like, people, manager or marketer, my strength is as. As the marketer, as a creator. And so it would be fun to scratch that itch with an agency. But there's also a lot of things that I don't want to do on the agency side of things. And so I'm sharing all this to just give you a sense of, like, where my, you know, where my head is at, because there's so many different things that I want to do. But then one day I wake up and I'm like, I don't want to do anything. I don't want to talk to anybody. I just want to, like, write, like, hang out in my office and write. And maybe I'll just be a writer. And so. So I think going full time on DGMG now gives me the option to explore a bunch of different paths. And over the last, I guess, two years, it's been a crazy two years outside of everything happening. The World Privy was acquired while I was CMO over there. Drift obviously separate from even going back this time. I have a long history with Drift. They received a majority investment from Vista, and so those two things happen in this year. Plus, I have the opportunity to go full time on dgmg and I feel like the wind is at my back with DGMG right now, where if I didn't make this jump and go do this now, I don't know when I ever would. And so my next role, my current role now is I am the boss of me, which means I can only complain about marketing decisions that I make to myself. Life is too short to work for a CEO who doesn't get marketing now. Now I am my own CEO. So today is the first day of the next chapter, which is Being the founder of dgmg. As of now, my focus is on continuing to grow DGMG community and DGMG University and taking on some consulting clients in that capacity. But I have my book coming out in February, Founder Brand, which is really applicable to any startup founder B2B B2C. Uh, I'm gonna reinvest in this podcast and just kind of put some more. I. I don't know what the format is gonna be yet because if I'm being honest, I have gotten kind of burned out of just like calling people up over zoom and doing interviews. And it can be hard when like you're just doing kind of like the next question type interviews. Like I wanna hang out with people and have conversations, but I don't know how to do that without everybody coming to Vermont, which I don't think is a possibility either. So there's a lot that I gotta figure out. But my core focus right now is DGMG membership, continuing to grow that consulting and advising and working on getting the founder brand book out there. Other than that, we're going to see where this whole thing goes. DGMG is already a business that is like, I never believed that I could do something on my own to this capacity and I haven't even gone full time on it yet. And so that's, that's what I'm excited about. On top of just the ability to just create my own life and create my own schedule now as the running, I guess like a one. A one person company for the time being. So that's my update. Somehow this turned it into I told you a lot of things I didn't think I was gonna share, but this is like the real conversation that I've had with Leah, you know, over, over and over. And so here we are. Hit me up Twitter, LinkedIn, dgaverhart.com and let me know if you want to say, hey, also if you have ideas about. No, I don't want your ideas for this show. I'll figure out. I'll. I'll figure out something. I'll figure out something to do it to. To do with it. So.

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