#109: Marketing Leadership | Starting an Agency, Growing Exit Five, and How to Be a Great VP of Marketing in B2B SaaS (with John Short, CEO, Compound Growth)

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One, two, three, four, exit.

Exit.

Exit. All right. John and I spent. We did our golf podcast before this. I was ready to keep going. You had me going there. You had me deep. You had me deep.

I see the long game stuff behind you.

Oh my God. I got it set up. Also, what I also have behind me is this nice guy sent me arcos golf sensors, right? And I just wanted to make sure I be the first person to shout out arcos golf sensors on my hugely popular B2B marketing podcast. So feel free to continue to send anything you all want. John, last year got me a subscription to the Golfer Journal as a Christmas gift, which is great. I was surprised. You're like a good gift giver. You got me something that's awesome in two years in a row. Very good friend. Send me more golf stuff. I'm into that. Anyway, John.

Yeah.

How you Doing?

Man, you should see what I have in store for Dan Murphy.

Dan Murphy. What do you think about Dan Murphy? What do you think about me hiring Dan Murphy?

Sketchy hire proven. We don't know if you guys have ever worked together before.

I'm willing to be vulnerable on this podcast with you, my friend.

Yeah.

Don't you feel like a year ago I was talking on the phone with you and saying like, I didn't really want to build a team and now all of a sudden I'm here. What is your observation of what's going on with Exit 5 from the sidelines?

Everything is completely normal compared to what I've seen. I started compound growth not wanting to ever hire people. I was burned out of working in house and here we are at 30 people. And I think the same is true. But that's the way to do it. To hire people who you've already worked with before, that you don't need to train as much because I think that's what can kind of bog you down a little bit.

That was exactly what my hangup. Wait, so when you first went out on your own, you were going to be just solo marketing consulting?

Yeah, I just wanted to move out of the city. I wrote it down. I wanted to move out of the city like an hour outside the city. I wanted to spend more time with family. So not get home at 6 or 7, but get home at 5 and still work on intellectually stimulating projects. And so I thought I was going to do that through freelancing or consulting, whatever you want to call it. And I didn't hire for the first three years of the business.

Damn, I didn't realize that.

How many years in are you? I mean, since quitting a full time job?

3. Well, I just did some revisionist history. I got interviewed for some article and they said, when did you start exit 5? And I said, I just went with the date that I changed the name to exit 5. April 20th. April of 2022 makes all. It makes all the growth numbers sound much more impressive. And then I don't have to explain, like, well, I was CMO at this one company, but I started this Patreon thing on the side and it did really well. And then so I just said April of 2022.

But you were all in on solopreneur. You were trying to own that white space on Twitter. And now it's like, I'm hiring. I'm hiring now.

Yeah, I'm hiring. And so I was like, I put it off for a while and I Even remember a moment where I met with somebody that helps me with my business. And we had lunch like last year, and he's like, you need to hire. You have this asset. It could be an incredible thing for you. Like, higher. That's the solution to all of your challenges and future problems. And I was like, I knew I needed to do it, but I really had a hard time letting go and giving up. It's been in my head for three years. And so it's so hard to offload that off board that to other people, give away control to grow. And I didn't want that to encroach on my life and be annoying. And I was just very like, look, why would I want to bring that on? And then I was just like, putzing around the house one day and I said to Leah, my wife, I said I would just write a blank check to just hire Dan Murphy right now and have him just clean up a bunch of the shit. And she's like, well, why don't you? I was like, okay, maybe I should. And I texted him, and I texted him, I called him the next day. I was like, hey, would you come, like, work on Exit 5 with me? And he was like, yeah, that same day. And I was like. And then since that day, I've just had. I've had so much energy and excitement about it and it's been super fun.

Isn't that how it happened the second time you hired him too?

Yeah, sure, of course it was. Yeah.

No, you were like, the second time you hired him, you were like, ah, I don't know, like, I need to hire someone for this role. Maybe it was product marketing something. I need a number two.

Yeah.

And then you're like, oh, yeah, like, I've done it with this guy before, right? I should just try to hire him.

No, but he. Yeah, yes, but he was still at drift and I needed to, like, reach out and talk to them and ask for permission and do it the right way. And. Yeah, so that's what slowed me down to that. And then this time, I hadn't talked to him in a while. Wasn't really sure what he was doing. You know, you floated his name to me a couple times, but I just. It never registered. Like, you should try to hire Dan. Maybe I even had, like, imposter syndrome about my own business. I was like, yeah, I could spend, you know, I have to pay him, like, real money, right? Yeah, I have to pay him real money, real money of my money to get him to do this. This is not you know, some VC raised this money and the.

Right.

Well, okay, so I got to double my burn rate for this year. But okay, wow, this is going to push me to grow. And there was a lot to it. And I, I think once it was a big deal to me, like hiring somebody who I've worked with since 2017. Right. Because I like to move fast. I like to do things on my own. I like to make decisions quickly. And kills me when like you try to give feedback on something and somebody takes it personally. And I'm not even being a jerk. I'm just, just if it's a landing page or something, just like, hey, I don't like it. Here's why. From little things like that to like anticipating the way that the things that I obsess over or get stuck on or can be annoying about, like, he knows all that shit. And so there's no, We've shrunk all of the personal, like, you know, like we can be such on the same page. And I think that is so important on so many levels. And I was like, sure, yeah, I'm happy to pay you much more than I would pay somebody else because of all these reasons. And now I'm like, let's hire 20 people.

Yeah.

Also, it's also been fun because I get to change my identity a little bit, which is like, I don't want to be, you know, Dave with the hot B2B marketing takes. Like, I now can kind of transform to like, oh, I, I run a business and I'm building a company and this is kind of cool and interesting and yeah, it's given me like a new creative energy. Right. Where I've been talking about the same stuff for a long time now in my career.

Right.

It's like. And so this has given me a whole new world of things that I get to like focus on and use my brain on, which is really exciting.

Right? Yeah. What you said about imposter syndrome was really interesting. The first couple of years that I started compound growth marketing, people would be like, oh, you're an entrepreneur. And I always associated through the first 12 years of my career. Entrepreneur was someone who raised $100 million from a venture capital fund.

Totally.

And like tries to sell their business for a billion dollars. And so it took me longer to hire than it probably should have because I was like, I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm just like a burnt out VP of marketing.

And what advice do you have for me? What have you learned? I know that I have to let a lot of things go to grow the business. Right. You have to be able to scale things. But I also have strong opinions about how things should be and I can get in my own way sometimes. So what, what have you Learned going from 0 to 30 people?

I don't think my advice is actually going to be that new for you. I'd say find time to think. Like you spending time to think as the visionary of your organization is important and so you, you don't need to be at your computer all the time. It's like finding time to think and figuring out the right ways to think, which I think you already do.

I'm good at that part.

Yeah. And then you look to hire in the places where you're weakest, especially early on. And I think Dan is more of an operational minded person and you are more of a visionary creative type. And so I think that's a really good dynamic.

How do you get over the. And this is something that I struggle with this in every role that I've had. How do you get over the, like, if you oversee something, there's all these little details that keep you up at night, you know, like, is that, is that email still on? Are we still doing that? And what's in that? And where does that work? You know, like you just kind of have these normal, it's the same thing in life, right? Like this happens in life also. I'm, I'll give you an example, you know, like you're, you're just driving down the road, maybe you're going to get a coffee and you're like, did I make that contribution in my kids college thing this year? It's end of the year, it's December, some random thing I gotta go do. Like I just wrote myself a note in the car today, right? And then that sets off six other questions that happens to me all the time with the business. I'm like, wait a second, am I still paying, you know, $400 a month for that fucking tool that I'm not using? And then I gotta go find it and then we gotta go kill it. Do you still have those moments, right, Even though there's 30 people or do they go away?

No, you still have those moments. For me, it's the like parts of the customer experience that are most important. Like what are we consulting on? What are the core values that we're trying to push through to our clients when they're thinking about marketing strategy? Right? And so I still have that, but my goal is to build a company much bigger than 30 people. And so part of it is understanding that as we scale, I need to let go of some of my, my Legos. And then I'm also just not that detail oriented of a person. So I look to bring on people who are very detail oriented around me.

I do.

And then it's finally prioritization, like, what's going to have the biggest impact and where is my time spent most effectively. So the email campaigns that we have set up for our marketing, that's not hire, our ROI activity or how we consult with clients on specific activities. It's not just about changing that one thing. It's about building the culture in order to enable that. Right. And so that's the challenge that I have. Like the other day I was thinking, oh, I should write like a short ebook for everybody who comes on so they understand the compound growth marketing philosophy. And so it's not like, you know, going into Slack and messaging everybody and saying, hey, make sure we have the, like, reporting set up X, Y and Z away. It's like, no, the problem. Like, I need to step back and like, it's not just going to happen through me getting on people. It needs to be built into the culture and everything that we're doing.

We just had a conversation like this today. We were going back and forth on a bunch of different things and I was like, you know what? This is what I need to work on. Like, it's clear that we need a. We're a media company. We're doing podcasts and videos and community and content. We. It's just been me kind of organizing it. So it's kind of just like all over the place. Right?

Yeah.

And I was kind of doing that to Dan. I'm like, we need this and we need this and we need this action. No, you know what I need to write down my vision for? Well, here's what this content operating system should look like. Here's what it needs to be in it. I need to, like, present that to you all, get you excited about it and interested in it, and then you're gonna go and execute it. And that was like, oh, yeah, this is exactly how we were meant to work. Like, how we should be working together.

Yeah. And thinking about how does your team consume and learn? Is it through video content? Like, we have loom. I have loom tutorials. I have some, like, blog posts that I write internally for the company. I want people to learn through, like, the content that I put out on LinkedIn as well inside my own company. And then we have a number of Standard operating procedures because we're consultancy. But for you, it needs to be a little bit different. The fact that your first thing going to your mind was we have this email going out and like that customer touch point, like, you need to think about what's the experience we're trying to drive for our customers. And like, what is the standard for every single communication that goes out from Exit 5. And like, you know, we don't want to send an email to everybody every day. We do want the communications to sound like this. It's brand voice, it's all that type of stuff. But the same is true for marketing, right? This is why being in my job now, like owning a company, would help me be a better head of marketing.

I totally agree with that. And I've already felt that, like, I've thought almost every day how much more I know about operations and finance and how that would shape, like, how I do marketing.

It's totally related, right? And marketing, you're like, if you're working in house, you're still building like a scalable machine that can work and operate. And you want this philosophy that permeates across the organization in terms of every single brand touch point that comes out. Whether it's email, whether it's an ad, an in app message. You want to make sure there's alignment and consistency across the company. And so thinking about the different ways to kind of build a repetitive scalable kind of process for that is really interesting. And I think of it like as a VP of marketing, as a cmo, you are the, like, CEO of that marketing organization, right? I especially think about it that way because I run a company that is outsourced demand gen for a lot of companies. So I'm always thinking about how, oh, if I were CEO, I would have done that, or if I was cmo, I would have done this differently when working in house because we want this repeatable, predictable system for generating leads for the company that we're working for. Same is true for finance, Same is true for operations. Why are you laughing at me?

You know, here's a funny story. I started this golf podcast and I have one of my friends, he just is always talking some type of shit. And I keep doing podcasts. I started one in 2014. I worked on one at HubSpot. I had one at Drift. I did all the most people that know me personally are like, oh, Dave has a podcast. I started this golf podcast. My buddy texts our friend group thread and he goes, hey, Dave, how'd you have the idea to start A podcast. Just shitting on me for like having yet again another podcast, which is amazing. No, so I, I know what I'm talking. I was nodding my head, laughing because I thought of this in the car the other day. I was driving and I was like, there was. When I was at Drift, like in the earlier days, one time I was working on, like, I got asked to work on this project. I'm not going to give too many specific details, but I'll give you the sense of doing. I got asked to work on this specific project and I did it, but I couldn't get the budget for it. And I literally emailed the CFO and the VP of Finance and I was like, look, the CEO is asking me to do this. Isn't there like 30 grand you can just get from some other budget and give it to me? And like, I, I'm not even joking. Like, I dead seriously thought there just was like a reserve budget and they'd be like, you know, what, for this? Sure, here's, here's 30 grand. Now that I see. You know, so the CEO, like, I realized that.

No, what?

He, he has no idea. You know, he's just saying, like, we should go do that. I'm like, no, no, no, Trust me, the CEO said it. So, like, give me the 30 grand to do this project.

Take it from his salary.

Isn't there some, like, I just assume, like that's what his credit card went to. Like, there's just his budget. And they were like, his budget is the marketing budget, dummy. Like, it comes from there. So, yeah, go talk to the people you work with and like to make some trade offs if you want to do this. And I was like, right, like you can't just do what the CEO says all the time.

Yeah, even the CEO doesn't have that.

Power, which is great. All right. Anyway, you had an awesome segue in there, which is we segued into talking about thinking like a CEO as a VP of marketing. A topic that comes up a lot that I think is evergreen, that I wanted to do since you're here, is talk about what makes a great VP of marketing in SaaS. And, you know, I want to talk with you about, like, what's the difference between going from a director and a vp? And I don't mean the actual, you know, specifics of the title, but what changes, the responsibilities, what changed in you? You know, you were once a senior marketing manager, right? Like me or whatever. And we went from marketing manager to director to vp. What advice would you have for People, it's a topic that I want to try to get some more content around. Yeah, let's talk about that.

So before we go into this, I think that it's important to understand my view of marketing comes up through the world of demand generation. But I think there's like three or four types of VPs of marketing that typically come up. There are four tracks, right? There's demand generation track, there is a creative slash brand track, there is a product marketing track, and then there's a track of people who come in through sales, usually end up in product marketing and then move up to CMO or VP of marketing. And so just kind of understanding that in the backdrop, a lot of what I'm going to be talking about is probably biased towards demand generation.

Okay. By the way, just curious, what impact do you think that has? Like if you came up from brand or something, like what plays out differently in your strategy then because of that?

Well, yeah, I think the perspective is different for someone who comes up through brand or product marketing versus demand generation. Like I think demand generation tends to be like. I think that that kind of framework kind of explains the challenge that ahead of marketing has where there's three very different skill sets that are required that you're now running once you get up to the top of an organization. And so understanding the importances, the importance of the technical team, which is demand generation, the creative and brand team, which is like kind of understanding your customer, and the product marketing team, which is understanding the market, you know, the feedback you're getting from the sales team and the product, those are three different skill sets. And so not discounting any one of those skill sets and kind of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each and then understanding how to set goals around those or how to motivate the team and what good like looks like for each one of those functions is the challenge that a head of marketing has these days.

Nice. I'm taking some notes during this and just trying to reframe. So there's almost like three buck. Like if you're going to be VP of marketing, right, Maybe earlier in your career you owned a specific channel or a specific piece, right? Like you were doing product marketing or you were doing demand gen or brand marketing, whatever. When you make the switch to vp, you now own the business goals, the budget and the people. And those are just kind of three rough buckets. And it's your responsibility to figure out what goes in each of these buckets and you start to realize like, oh yeah, how we get there can be Different. I can hire people, I can hire agencies, I can do it this way, I can team structure this way. It's almost like before you have kids, you're like, why did my parents do something this way? Right? And then once you have kids, you're like, oh, I kind of see exactly why my parents did it that way.

That's a good analogy.

But you know what I'm talking about. Like, you have to know the marketing, but you start, you have to think differently about like things like using the budget, right? Like what is the budget? And using the budget and setting goals and learning how to manage people. Those are so different than the skills of just doing the marketing.

Right. Like being a search marketing manager, running paid ads, and then getting into the, the VP marketing role where a lot of it is, how do you represent your team? How do you collaborate with other teams? How do you communicate up in the organization about what the marketing team is doing? How do you then take that information down in the organization? Right. So there's this two way street. You are literally a middle manager. I figured out I was a middle manager. I thought I was an executive when I got my first VP title. And then like two years after I got it, I was like, no, I'm just a middle manager. Like, my team tells me what they think we should be doing, I go up to the CEO, the CEO says no, then I have to take that information back to my team below me and I have to be able to.

Do it all over again.

Yeah, but you have to be able to represent why the CEO doesn't like it. So your team can produce, you know, a different set of ideas the next time you take it up in the organization. And that was, that is an incredible challenge. Right. So when people aren't doing well in this role, a lot of what they do is they dump on the information that they got from the top or they don't take the information from the bottom. And they only take their ideas versus working with their team to cultivate ideas, build the business case, coach the team on what data we need in order to make this case up. And then when they get the no from above, or when they get the direction of, hey, go get $30,000 from the budget and you know, build the case for it, you need to be able to take that across the organization and sell it even though it's not completely your idea.

Yeah. And where do you learn how to do that? Like, yeah, you don't either either. You have a good one of the other execs kind of like is willing to coach you and show you or you're going to learn by doing and probably make a lot of mistakes. And that was one of the fun things for me about like when I left one company to go to another. After a while it's like it was fun to have a fresh start and a new market and a new problem because you get to now like do this on five years of learning, right?

Well, I think mentors are critical there. That seems to be. When I listen to people talk about how did I learn how to get buy in across the organization, they're oftentimes talking about how a mentor kind of took them aside and said, hey, like you came in, you pitched this idea. I think it's a really good idea, but you probably should have played the room a little bit beforehand with, you know, kind of sharing these ideas with the VP of sales, sharing these ideas with the head of finance. So when you did finally pitch it in the all executive meeting, there was buy in across the organization and people didn't have as many questions for you. And so I think it's a skill, I think it's a skill that needs to be developed. And like marketers just need to kind of understand that a part of their job is selling. It's figuring out how to sell within your organization to get things done. So great marketers sell great. Heads of marketing also have business acumen. They aren't just specialists inside the marketing industry. They aren't just specialists inside of Sixth Sense or you know, within product marketing or within, you know, Adobe Photoshop or, you know, whatever, cms. They aren't just specialists in there. They need to have the business acumen to be able to pitch the business case for what they're doing. And, and it seems like I don't want to kind of get down on marketers, but it does seem like a lot of times the difference between marketing like sales is able to get things done very effectively because they point to revenue and they have the business acumen to show how what they're doing is impacting the bottom line.

I messaged Dan and I said we need to build out a YouTube channel for Exit 5. And he said we're going to on it because I want to. Like I had something that I was going to pull up with you. Anyway, I asked Chad GPT because obviously, who knows better what makes a great VP of marketing in B2B SaaS? Being a great VP of marketing in B 2B SaaS requires a mix of strategic thinking, creativity and a solid understanding of the industry. Here are a few key traits and skills. Deep industry knowledge. Data driven decision making. Customer centric approach Innovative thinking. Cross functional collaboration Leadership skills. Adaptability Strong communication skills. Results driven mindset. Global perspective. I'm not even gonna lie, I'm not even joking about ChatGPT. But like, those are all accurate. Yeah, yeah. So like, hey, here's the 20 things.

What am I doing here, Dave? Do you want me to jump off?

Yeah, yeah, just hang out. No, I'm using this to make a point, you jerk. Yeah, like, it's not like one thing. Like, and so I think it's easy for you and me to like write about stuff on LinkedIn about like, you know, what to do as a VP. But there's so much nuance from being inside of the company. Like just the relationship with the CEO, the VP of sales. Like maybe you report to the CRO or you report to the CEO. The CEO has no idea what marketing does. The CEO is really involved in marketing. There's just so much nuance and I think you have to be. It's so much more than I ever thought it was about understanding how the inside of the company works and then marketing. It's not like I think a lot of people have the blinders on. Like, I am the marketing person, I'm here to do the marketing. It's like none of that matters unless you have a deep understanding for the inner workings of this company and how you can influence change.

Right? Yep. And it's also like, I remember I learned, I took an organizational theory class in college and probably the only thing that I took from that class, I don't even remember the grade I got in it, but the only thing I took from that class was like a statistic around. A lot of times we promote the individual contributor to manager because they're very good at their job as an individual contributor. But what makes them a great individual contributor does not make them a great manager. So if you're looking to get into that VP role, that's a great kind of example. Like that sounds intuitive, right? Doesn't it?

Yeah.

So if you understand that, then you understand that as you're in the mid level of your career, as you're in the director role, as you have a small team, like you need to be building the skills that managers need around effective communication, around selling up, around selling down, not just producing the results from your team because eventually you're going to have capacities that you, you're not an expert in and you need to learn how to effectively communicate with Those you need to learn how to effectively set goals. You need to learn how to build cross organizational relationships with sales, with the customer success team. So what gets you to the next level isn't necessarily what's going to make you successful at that level.

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Building on that you mentioned as far as getting to the next level, how important in your belief is learning how to set and manage to goals? How important is that to your success in marketing?

For me personally, yeah, that was critical. That is like you and I always talk about golf. That's one of the reasons why I got so into golf, because it was a measurable way for me to measure the things that I was using to strengthen my mind on the golf course, strengthen my body and improve my swing. And so goal setting is going to help you in any career that you go into. I think it's one of the reasons why we've been successful at compound growth. And I'm in a very separate role than I was in when I was working in house as VP of marketing. It's the goal setting that has been one of the glues that has been consistent across every job that I've ever had. So learning how to set goals, learning how to build those out has been a critical piece.

I just look back and I, I can see like, if I make a list of like mistakes that I made in my job or anything or as a manager or leader, it almost each one of them could be traced to like not having the goal, not knowing the goal, having the wrong goal. Like, oh yeah, why did I hire that person? Well, that was wrong that, you know, we didn't have that right goal set for. It always comes down to that. And I, it's one of the things that I harp on the most, which is like, show me a company that has clear company goals and clear goals of how marketing contributes to those company goals and I'll show you a marketing team that's probably going to be successful in many different ways. Yeah, it's like when I see messages or community posts or whatever from someone who's like, yeah, I'm fully blocked off from this metric. You know, my team is responsible for this. But it doesn't make any sense. It almost always comes back to the clarity of those, those two goals. And there's the number one connection there is usually the CEO. And I think that's the number one defining role for like, should you take this VP of marketing job at this company, it's going to be, can you have a working, a strong working relationship with the CEO and what is their involvement in marketing going to be or how receptive are they going to be to listen to you?

Right. Yeah, I wish I could pull it up and I, I might try to, but I was interviewing for a job and was very nervous. Like the previous job I had gotten laid off from and was taking on this job. They wanted me to come in and start spending $300,000 of their money. I felt part of the reason why I was let go from my previous job was I was spending a ton of money on advertising and they didn't really understand. So I sent the CEO a list of four questions around the business, around the goals, around what was effectively going to help us get there. And really kind of broke down and made sure that I was on the same page with the CEO and to make sure that they had a thought process around, like why they were looking to bring on this person to the company. And, you know, understanding that being able to ask those questions and making sure I was on the same page, making sure the CEO could tell me what success looked like in my role and they at least had some kind of understanding of marketing was the reason why I ended up taking the job. And it was, you know, the most successful role I ever had in my career. But I had that kind of. I was on the same page with the CEO from day one of. Working in that job makes the biggest difference.

All right, we gotta go. I could talk to you forever. Thanks for coming on for a little bit. People will see you about once a quarter in the Exit 5 community for an AMA, which is always helpful. We should make some plans to do some more content together. I'll have my people contact your people. John, we'll have you back on the Exit 5 podcast. And if you're not, go follow John. John Short on LinkedIn. You've been doing a nice job there lately writing a little bit more. I think you found a nice little lane of doing a little bit more in depth content. I think that fits, it fits your brand and it works nicely on LinkedIn. So you're in a nice lane right now.

Thank you, Dave.

Yeah. How did you get to that lane, by the way? Is this your own doing?

Yes. I spend 30 minutes every day writing as powerful for me my own internal thought process as it is for kind of helping us gain customers. Because forces me to think. I love writing in that perspective. It forces me to think, wait, so.

Do you have a. Is it a calendared thing every single day?

Yeah.

And what is the format of it?

I mean, I block my calendar off every day until 9:30 in the morning. And I'm out of the house around 8 or 8:30 every day. And so I usually go to the coffee shop down the street from me and write. And I've had a writer's block recently. But a lot of times I'll have customer calls, I'll have client calls that I get my motivation, hear the questions from. And then I'm working for the first 30 minutes of my day on kind of writing some things down and putting some thoughts together. And I think it's powerful because you're. And this is one of the things I recommend to managers, this is one of the things I did when I moved up to vp, was I wrote a weekly update to my boss. And I wanted to get them to see my thought process for why I was making the decisions I was making, what my thought process was around the different channels, what I thought we should be doing. But it was also helpful for me to kind of clarify. And it was just one channel for me to communicate those things with them. But it helped me get by and it helped me build their trust by showing that thought process to them. And so the same is true with the LinkedIn content that I write. It helps me kind of clarify my position and kind of improve things. And I love that I get immediate feedback when I write something stupid.

Yeah. My immediate feedback now is just these chat GPT comments. And I've been responding. I take their comment and then I go to chat GPT and I said, hey, this person wrote this on LinkedIn. What should I write as a response? And I just comment with the response back to them.

That's amazing. Yeah, you gotta.

I think it might be tanking my engagement. I'm shadow banned now or whatever they say. All right, we gotta go. John, good talking to you, my friend. Go and connect with John on LinkedIn. John Short. He runs a compound growth marketing agency that I recommend. John's a good guy. I've hired him twice. He is a much more diligent, demand gen funnel man than I am. And so he's been a great partner on that. Always good to chat with you, my friend. I'll see you later.

All right, thank you, Dave. Exit.

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