#59: Story is Strategy - The Power of Product Positioning

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Exit Exit. Hello. Welcome back to the main stage everyone. We are down to the final two sessions of the Day. Wow, I've learned so much. There's so much going on. We are keeping it real with dg. So just a couple of reminders before I properly introduce you to him. Use the chat to engage with each other, use the Q and A to ask questions. We're going to be monitoring that. And then yeah, guy Dave, he is the OG of brand marketing. He's really, really hard to get to and now you have access to his whole brain. So don't squander the opportunity. Ask anything you want. And lastly, make sure you tweet and share on LinkedIn. We have lots of little prizes. Use the hashtag summit. So let's get to it. One of the top minds in the country, Dave Gerhardt, DG as everybody calls him, helps businesses with brand building marketing strategy. He's been an in house marketer where he's had a ton of breakout successes. I mean if you're in tech, you've probably heard of the company Drift and you, if you're in E commerce, you've probably heard of Privy. He was the CMO at both of these places, had amazing exits. Drift, I think had a $1 billion valuation at some point. Maybe they're much bigger now. He also guest lectures at Harvard Business School, which I didn't know, which is awesome. And then yeah, Dave has traveled the world speaking, coaching bunch of marketing teams and startup founders and yeah, just generally has an amazing resume. So welcome Dave, excited to ask you a bunch of burning questions I have. But first maybe tell us what the heck is positioning.

Well, first of all, thank you for having me. No pressure after that introduction.

Sorry.

No, that was great. That was really kind of you. Most of that I wrote myself. So take that with a grain of salt for all you marketers out there. So we're here today to talk about positioning, which is great. It's really timely especially I think a lot of marketers are having a hard time hitting goals, generating revenue right now because of kind of what's happening in the market. And I think that it's a great time to talk about positioning because a lot of things that we think are sales and marketing challenges that we kind of just, we love to just poke holes in the tactics and kind of jam more into the sales and marketing machine. They actually end up being positioning challenges. And I'm lucky to have worked in my career for two founders, specifically David at Drift and Ben when I was at Privy, who really got this from the beginning. And so I think just, I would just want to preface this conversation today with saying like, this can't be done in a vacuum with just marketing. This has to be a strategic CEO level thing. And so it's not like, hey, marketing should care about positioning. And the CEO's too busy, she's got to go do 15 other things. And it's like, no, this, this should be one of the top two or three things that, that the CEO cares about at the top. So your question is, what is positioning? I think in the simplest definition, the way I think about it is that positioning is a way to frame your product, people. There's a lot of noise out there, there's tons of products in any industry and positioning is how you want people to think about your product or service. So that's what positioning is. It's in the simplest form, it's like, what is the frame that you want people to have for your product? And you and I had kind of traded some notes on examples. I hope you don't mind me jumping ahead, but just to, to give people an example. Well, first talk about why should you care about this? I come from, like, where I was at drift, there was 10,000 other martech tools. And so positioning was like our number one ingredient. It wasn't like, how are we going to send more sales emails than the other company? Or how are we going to convert our nurture emails 1% better than the other company? It was a strategic decision from the beginning to really focus on positioning. And so it is a battle for attention. And positioning is ultimately about finding the gaps where you can basically get the mic to talk about your product and your service to a target market. Who's going to care about that thing? And so a couple of positioning examples. I did a little homework because I didn't just want to give you B2B SaaS brands, even though that's where we come from. And I'll get there. But everybody loves right now talking about liquid death. Have you had liquid death?

We don't have it in Canada, but I have seen it.

Do you want to know what liquid death is?

That's water, right?

It's water. It's literally, it's water. Same as what is in here. From my. Well, they would not tell you that it was bottled from the, from the map, from the Alps or something like that. But it's a perfect example of positioning where to the point about, of finding a gap. What they did when they created liquid death is they found this gap of, look, there's a lot of people out there who, who maybe want to go to a party or want to go to a work event and, and they don't want to drink, but it doesn't want to be, you know, it's happened to me, I don't really drink and I. Somebody sees me in the water, oh, why are you drinking water? But all of a sudden you have liquid death. And it's this cool looking 16 ounce can. It looks like craft beer. And so like they kind of. That's already like one ingredient they have in their positioning toolbox. They also have this, this slogan about like smashing your thirst. And so they, they just take a little more wittier approach versus like Poland Spring or something. And then they also put it in a can that is recyclable and good for the environment. So those are kind of three bullet, three factors that they said, hey, we're not just gonna make another water. This is not just bottled water. This is liquid death. And so that's a good example of positioning. Patagonia is a legendary example. Let My People Go Surfing is one of the best books on brand building you could read by Patagonia founder Yvonne Chouinard. When you say Patagonia, what do you think of? Do you immediately think of tech bro, Zip up fleeces? Maybe. But I think what most people think of is a company that is environmentally conscious and they just happen to make clothes. And that's what you think about when you think of Patagonia. BMW. BMW is not a luxury car. BMW. They talked about BMW as the ultimate driving machine. RXBAR reframed how people think about protein bars. You go to the store and there's 50 protein bars in the snack aisle. Well, what RXBar did is they said there's mystery ingredients. Nobody knows why any of these things are different. They all kind of look the same. They have this kind of brown and yellow packaging. So what they did is they repositioned protein bars and literally on their wrapper is the best example of brand building. On the wrapper of an RX bar. It says something like three egg whites, four almonds, six cashews, no bs. I think that's an example of positioning. Vivo Barefoot. Barefoot shoes. I have a pair of them. They're not just shoes, they're a brand that's about teaching people what's wrong with the current shoes. And everybody's wearing these shoes that have this really narrow toe box. This is bad for your feet, which is bad for your knees, which is bad for your back. And so we're not going to give you these kind of. It's different than Vibram, which Has these five toe looking shoes. They actually look, they look nice. They look like you'd want to wear them or even now what we're doing with Exit 5. Exit 5 is not a Facebook group for marketers. Exit 5 is a community of like minded marketing people because nobody really goes to school for B2B marketing. So we have a place where you can, we can learn that. I think those are all examples of how positioning can be a way to change the frame and you're basically setting context for how you want people to think about your product and your service.

Yeah, those are great examples, like something that we encounter in everyday life. My favorite one because I drink a lot of oat milk is Minor Figures. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but that's cool.

What is it? Minor figures?

Minor Figures is the name of the company. They do a lot of. They do like oat milk and other coffee concoctions and stuff. I think they were the first ones, if not the first ones to coin because there's a lot of competition in the oat milk market. So I think they coined the term barista oat milk. So they position themselves as if you are getting oat milk in your coffee, you're getting a crochet or you're getting a picolo, whatever, right? It's like you don't want any other oat milk, some random oat milk or store bought oat milk. You want minor figures oat milk. I think that was like the barista oat milk category like is fascinating because it's like creamier and they add some whatever, oil or nuts or whatever to it to make it creamier. That's good positioning because they're just like there's oat milk and then there's barista oat milk.

Barista, right? It gives you. It's like that is to me is like two word positioning. It's that gives you a frame for like how the brand then has to act and operate. I think to me the thing about positioning that I think is so important is these are not just like cosmetic marketing decisions, right? It's not like the product isn't really barista oat milk or whatever it is, right? It's not just a headline on the website. Like these have to be fundamentally strategic decisions. And so this has impact, this has ramifications on like on the product roadmap, right? On how you sell, on how you market, on how you service this product, on the things that you're going to do in the future, on the events you're going to run. And I think what was unique about being at Drift was even before me growing into like a marketing leadership position there just as interviewing at the company as marketing manager. Dave when I first met with David Cancel and Elias, the founders, the first time they knew that this is where they were going, they were like, hey, we have this vision. Messaging and kind of chat apps are eating the world. We're all using Slack and iMessage and WhatsApp in our personal lives. But when it comes to communicating with the business, you typically go to a website and you fill out a form and here's what happens, right? You get chased down by sales, blah, blah, blah, blah. You fill out 13 forms. It's not an enjoyable process. And so for me it wasn't just like a marketing position. It wasn't just marketing messaging. It was like the company was fundamentally building a product to solve, solve that problem. And when you have those things working together, that's when like positioning actually works. It has to be a strategic, company level thing. And so it was very easy to look at what Drift was doing in the first year and say, oh, this is, this is live chat. You know, everybody knows live chat. And I think what we were doing behind the scenes though is we were actually trying to reposition live chat. And so we were trying to say, yeah, there is. Live chat is great. Live chat is great. If you're using live chat for customer support, however, there's a new way to generate revenue and what customers want, people who want to buy prospects and customers, people who want to buy from you want, they want a way to talk to sales instantly, not in four days and not just getting hounded by endless follow up emails. And so what we're building is actually the first sales chat tool. And that was there was a company that we competed with at the time and I guess still do, I don't really know, but it's called Intercom and, and we essentially repositioned Intercom by saying their product is great. Like we didn't, you know, we didn't talk down about them. We said their product is great. But what they're focused on is in app chat and support messaging, which is great. So if you want to use, if that's what you're looking for, you can use them. But we, our whole marketing effort was about painting this picture of telling this story about the shift that's happened in the world the old way and the new way. And here's where Drift fits. And so if you wanted, if you believe in this story that we're telling about how B2B buying is broken and you want to generate revenue through chat, you're going to want to use a tool that is built for this purpose. And that led to us creating conversational marketing.

And yeah, that story is well known. And I think to your point about the go to market motion changing, like your. The follow on that was, I mean, from an outsider's perspective was you didn't sell to product people, you didn't sell to engineering, which is what Intercom used to be focused on. You were like, no, going to go straight to sales. I'm going to go straight to marketing. I'm going to go to the person that owns the website or whatever that looks like, even if that's someone in creative or in marketing. And I think your buyer Persona was completely different than theirs that allowed for that further differentiation. It's a totally different budget, totally different line item, and solving a very different business need. So.

Well, yeah, and it's a great observation because to the point about making a strategic decision, we had one very clear ICP that we started with. I think it's so important with positioning to have a clear niche. And so we focused on. Eventually Drift went on to sell to the whole revenue suite, which is sales and marketing. But we started at the beginning with just focusing on product marketing because the bet was product marketing typically has the keys to the website at a SaaS company that we're selling to. And so if we could win the hearts and minds of product marketers, then we might be able to get them to believe in our story and install this, and that could be our wedge into that. And so I think as much positioning has so much to do with who you're targeting and the Persona as it does as what you're building. And that was a key part of our early success with Drift.

Can I ask you a dumb question? And this is partially coming from. I personally don't understand what people mean when they say brand or brand marketing. So maybe you can tell us how is positioning different or how does it dovetail into brand? Are they like in parallel? Are those things two parallel tracks?

Yes, they are. I think when I think about brand, at least in the context that I talk about it, it's about the company's reputation and what people, the perception of the company. Like, oh, Amrita drinks oat milk. That's on brand for her, right? That means, like, that's something that you would do, right? Dave wears black T shirts. That's very on brand for him. It's a reputation thing. I think brand marketing can often mean in people's minds more of like logo, website, color, design. And so when we're talking about positioning, positioning is the company story. It is the frame of which you want people to think about your product or services. So it's going to have an impact on your brand. Right. And so if you are BMW and you're selling what you're positioning as the ultimate driving machine, but your website and your marketing materials look like clipart, are those things going to match up in the mind of the consumer? This is a very premium purchase, right? Or same thing in liquid death. Like who is going to go spend $4.25 for a can of water? Well, when you have a brand that feels premium, you can kind of give that impression. But I also think that positioning is not a brand thing or a demand thing. It is an all company thing. And I think there's two. If you had to simplify marketing to like two motions, I think there's brand and demand. Those are the two tracks. But I think positioning goes across all of those things.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So assuming someone's figured out their positioning, how does one transform it to a story? You're actually really, really good at that. And it comes through in your writing. Like the way that I think someone said this in comments. Like one of the first comments was, everyone feels like we know. Dave Alexa said, you know what I love when DG comes on stage and everyone wants to head up the chat, Somehow it feels like we all know you personally. That makes sense to me because you're a storyteller.

Nobody said that. That's a planted. That's my mom.

Someone said that you scroll up into comments. It's true though. But that to me is like storytelling. Like how people know you is because you're a good storyteller. So talk to us about a framework or a method. Even if it's rudimentary, like, you take your position, you figure it out. Here's our differentiator. This is how we're going to stand out. This is the category we're going to create. What, how does that.

So I would agree that I'm a good storyteller. However, everybody has strengths and weaknesses and I'm good at storytelling naturally, conversationally, when I am not. And anybody that knows me will giggle about this is. I'm not a framework systems guy and it's one of my. My weaknesses. We all have strengths and weaknesses. And so I can't give you my framework, but like At Drift, for example, we didn't have a. And I feel like people have a hard time believing this business. We did not have a. Here's the step by step recipe for positioning, and I'm going to give you some examples, and I'm going to talk about that in a second. But I just want to. Want to say this like, it is a little bit like jazz or a freestyle with rap. And so David and I at Drift had a relationship. The CEO, the CEO and the marketing person had a relationship. We were talking 24 7, texting, messaging. This is all we talked about. And so we were constantly sharing, like, oh, check out this thing that Superside did. Check out this thing that Salesforce did. Check out this thing that these people did. Oh, this is interesting. He'd be at like a car place and he, you know, getting his car fixed and he'd send me like a picture on the wall of some way they laid something out. So we were always kind of like riffing on the Drift story like that. And so I think that ultimately more important than a framework is just like to tell a story. It's like what makes a great salesperson a great salesperson? Is it because they. They follow medic or, or band or whatever? No, it's. They're good conversationally. They can get people excited. They can tell a story. And so frameworks are important. We didn't have one in particular. I think ultimately we just really focus on answering the basic questions. So the bare minimum you can do to be effective is be a good storyteller and follow the fundamentals of what does your product do? Who is your product for? How is your product different than other alternatives out there? Give me some use cases, show me some proof. If you don't read one book on positioning, which you can answer those four or five questions in a way, and then as you're creating those things, you're going to literally take those bullets, write them down, and you're going to be like, huh, well, that sounds like every other company in the space. Okay, well then, shoot. We got to go back to the. We got to go back to the drawing board. Ideally, you're in the con.

You're.

You're having this conversation with the CEO, with the head of product. Like it's being developed at that stage. So that would be like the very basic is, please do not obsess over a particular framework. That said, some frameworks that I have found that have been really, really helpful that I want to share with people today is, number one, is this is April Dunford's book, which is obviously awesome. I have used this book. I have had people on my team that have used this book where if you're looking for a framework, it's kind of ridiculous that you can do this, but you can spend $15 on her book and go and create a billion dollar positioning for a company. And so she has a great 10 step process. And so if I do positioning for a new company in the future or something else, I've been using this like, hey, these are the 10 steps. And it's like, you know, here's your. Define your market. She shows you how to map your features and to value. She shows you how to really go through that. So I've used this obviously awesome April Dunford's book, which is great. I've also used this Donald Miller building a story brand for real. There's post it notes in here. I think we actually used this for a little bit at Privy. This was great. This was like a refreshing change of pace. And I'm not like a, this is not like me like BSing and I have no stake in either of these people. But like I'm real about this. Like I've done this. And what I like about this is this is a little bit more, this book is a little bit more of like a, it's like a Hollywood script. It's like there's a character and this character has a problem and then they meet you. Your brand, your brand is the guide. It's like the person you're trying to sell to is Luke Skywalker and you are Yoda and you're supposed to give them the plan. I think something like that works really well for creating a new category because you're trying to educate people on a new way of doing things. And so you need to give them a roadmap. But here's where I think this really worked is like, don't stick to just this. Don't stick to just this. Use your own brain inside of your own company. Answer those questions. Take some things you like from this book. Take some things you like from the other book. Listen to a, you know, grab some stuff for a podcast. Like I do think we just, we do in this industry obsess over like the particular way to do it. And I wanted to use that example of drift up front because I think which is a good example of there was no framework. We kind of like came up with this story and we're like, let's put this into a killer 10 to 12 slide deck. And so where this goes is in either case of these books. I think I always like to.

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Have the output be a deck, a story deck of some kind, a sales deck of some kind. Because I think that then becomes like the sheet of music. That and a deck is very translatable across the entire company. A deck is what sales uses. A deck is what the CEO is going to use to fundraise. A deck is what you're going to use for recruiting. It becomes this, this sheet of music that all of the other assets then go and get created. Hey, what I love about April's book is she's like, I hate positioning statements. And I hate them too, because I don't think they give you anything of value. It's like, for who does what, Unlike other. And you're like, what? What am I supposed to do with this? Versus deck is like, let me take you 10 to 12 slides. I'm going to tell you our company mission, our vision, how we're different than the other companies. I'm going to give you examples. I'm going to give you proof. I'm going to talk about this change in the world. And so the other thing that I forgot to mention was I also really like how Andy Raskin thinks about this, where he talks about it as a strategic narrative. He uses that phrase more than position. And he might argue that those are different things, but in my mind, it's kind of one. And what Andy talks about is the overly simplified ways, old way, new way. And I think a lot of us in this room are at companies where you're selling some transformation. And so can you build a story around old way, new way? And the hook for the old way, new way is this big shift in the world. And so that's what we did at Drift, which is like, we used this shift in the world like, hey, look, in our personal lives, we're all doing this thing. That's why this is applicable to what's happening right now. The more you can relate your story to a broader trend in the world that can be really beneficial. So those are some of the resources that I've used in the past.

Have you heard of the Challenger sale model by any chance?

I have. I have that book up on my shelf over here. Yes.

Nice. So we use that in our sales process and then we're trying to create a bit of a category ourselves at Superside, and we've called it cast like SaaS creative as a service. And there's a lot of good in that. But it's Also, it could be a little bit gimmicky, but the way we're trying to tell that story, at least to ourselves as a starting point, is trying to use the challenger sale model, which is everybody wants to just Google it and go to images. You'll see there's like this curve. And basically it comes down to this guy saying that, hey, first you need to warm them up and let them know what the status quo is, what is the state of the affairs, the state of the union. Then you go in for the jugular and say, reframe, here's what's happening in the world. Which is exactly what you were just talking about, Dave. And then you rationally drown them, which means you hit them up with a ton of data to back that up. And then you say all of the, you address all of their emotional triggers and pain points. So that's what they call emotional impact. And then you say, okay, and here's the solution, here's the value prop. So that sort of curve, that sort of motion is interesting. So I'm going to use your idea of building this actionable deck, but maybe do it in this challenge or sale model potentially.

Yeah. And there's some more actual stuff in both of those books. Like if you, if you do want a more kind of like company name, one liner category. Like in April's book. She has some good templates on how you can do that. But I, I do think it all comes back to all of the books and all the frameworks are great and they're definitely helpful. They're like a, it's like if I'm going to work out and I don't have a good workout idea in my head, I might go to YouTube or look one up and be like, I need a good 30 minute workout for chest and back, for example. And I'm going to follow that. Right. But ultimately sometimes the positioning just is there already. And so like I started this community called Exit 5. I didn't do any of these exercises. It was because I, I lived in this world for, for a decade and I'm like, wow, you know, I, I, I started this community kind of just as it was called dgmg, which is Dave Gehart Marketing Group, terrible name where it's just me ranting about marketing. Bunch of people were like, hey, dude, we don't just want to hear from you. We, we want to talk to each other, we want to talk to our peers. And so like, I'm in the community, I'm starting to see all this feedback. This was on in, in Patreon at the time. And it was like, oh, wow, we should start a community. And so we started the community. The community engagement just goes crazy and now all of a sudden it just clicks. It's like, oh, why is this working? It's because, oh, these are all B2B marketers. And like none of us really went to school for B2B marketing. We're all kind of doing this on our own. We're not, you know, we don't have a peer group outside of work. And so exit 5 can be your peer group. Boom. That was our positioning because nobody goes to school from B2B marketing. So I just want to hammer that point home to go for a walk, go for a run, work out, Think about it. It doesn't have to be. Don't be so married to what's in the deck. And oftentimes if you join a company and you really believe in the product and you believe in the market and you believe what's going on, some of this stuff can come a little bit more naturally. But it is great to use the books and use the frameworks to wrangle this and to figure out how to go and approach it and roll it out internally.

You know, I've watched so many documentaries about, you know, founders of great companies and stuff. And it is exactly what you're saying. Like at their base level, they already know you have these inputs. Maybe you haven't thought about it consciously, but you have these inputs and it's really about bringing that to the surface. But the answer you usually already know, that's great. Can we talk a little bit more tactically about how to use good positioning on your website? So like, how would you write, like a good hook, for example? I'll just. I've been observing Jasper's website because I'm fascinated by them. And also that's the last session that we're ending with. But I noticed that Jasper says on their homepage their whole value prop is Jasper writes original creative content for free, which is their real value prop. But they don't say the original creative content part up front. Like that's not the first thing on their homepage. The free part is that's not the first thing on their homepage. Talk to us about how to distill that down.

Well, I think like when you do a positioning exercise, to me positioning is much more all encompassing and what you're talking about is the homepage. And so I would use the deck, I would use the company story. So to use a Drift example, we create this great deck, 10 to 12 slides telling you about why you need conversational marketing. Well, that doesn't give you the homepage headline. The homepage is your storefront. It is somehow some way people got to Jasper's website and instantly above the fold. You need to tell someone who they are and what they do and in like 10 seconds. And so your headline to me is less of a like, this is the company's positioning and it's more of like what's a catchy one liner that falls under the umbrella of your positioning. And so clearly I'm looking at their website right now. They have this rotating thing that says create amazing art and images, create marketing copy, create sales emails, create SEO content 10 times faster with AI. So I would bet you that their positioning is about using AI to remove and it says it on the blank to remove the creative roadblock so you can get creative done faster. Right. And so their brand is going to be all about like helping you produce great creative at scale and faster. And so I'm thinking about like from a headline perspective. How can I convey that in a short way? I do think that we tend to obsess a little bit too much over that homepage headline, especially in a B2B context where a lot of people are coming from here because it's, it's very rarely like a, a direct response. It's not an instant conversion. It is, I'm going to browse the website. I've heard about you from somebody else, someone mentioned at an event and I'm going to go to the website and I think the goal of the headline on the website to me is to get you to read the next line and the next line is to get you to read the next line. And so eventually, and I think we put too much pressure on ourselves as marketers and we argue with the CEO and the board likes this headline and the VP of sales like this headline. We could come up with 50 headlines. To me it's about like, can I get you to keep reading? And I have a, I want to take you through this whole story. And so by the time I get through the all of Jasper's website, when I get through the whole homepage, I have a better understanding. Wow, 70,000 people are using this thing. Okay, this seems legit. Okay. It's the number one AI platform for creators. They're on the Inc 5000. They've been in the media recently. I don't know all the things that they do, but I know enough to be like Interesting. Tell me more. And I'm going to click start it for free. And so I just. I like to think of the headline from that context.

That makes a lot of sense, I guess, like, from an organizational standpoint. You already said, like, you know, marketing, the CEO founders are always sparring. If you're a more established company and you now know that, you need to, like, revisit that. Who owns it as a initiative or deliverable?

The CEO. Oh.

So when the CEO comes to us, we're like, you. You do it.

Yeah. I mean, it doesn't always happen that way. It might be marketing pushes the CEO, but I think. And Andy Raskin talks about this, April Dunford talks about this. All the very smart people, much smarter than me in this space would be like, you can't do it. And I feel this way. It's very hard to push up. It's very hard to be, hey, we should redo our positioning. And the CEOs kind of like, because it is so fundamental to what the company is delivering that I think it can be led. Maybe marketing is executing it. And so maybe Dave Gerhardt is the marketing person at Drift and he's organizing all this and he's writing a lot of it, but he's working directly with the CEO. I need the CEO standing right beside me as we then share with the exec team. Like, hey, in Monday's exec team meeting, David and I have been working on some new positioning, and we're so far from rolling this out. But I just want to start to talk about how we think about, we want to make a messaging chip, we want to make a positioning change starting in January in Q1. And I want to kind of give you some context, like where we're coming from and why. And so ideally, they're doing that together. Maybe the CEO taps marketing and says, hey, I need your help. We want to go lead this positioning exercise. Maybe the. Maybe it needs to be marketing pushes on the CEO and say, hey, hey, CEO. Like, we really need to make this change. And CEO, she's like. She's like, great, okay, let's do it. Let's work on this together. But I think ultimately you have to have everybody on that exec team bought in, because otherwise what you're just going to do is just. You're just changing the website copy. And this is more than changing the website copy it to, you know, your story ultimately becomes your strategy, as we've talked about. So it's got to be the management team level has to be bought in. It doesn't mean that everyone entirely agrees with it, but you have to give the opportunity. Like, I actually just did a podcast today with a VP of Product Marketing at $100 million plus SaaS company, and he was saying, it's, it's me and the CEO and what we do is we bring in each exec and we do a one on one with each exec. And we, we hear out the head of sales, we hear her complaints, we hear the head of product. You know, we talk about it, we disagree, we commit, we edit. We do all that with a small group of four or five people, and then we work on rolling this out to the broader company. I think it has to be everybody bought in. Otherwise you're just making cosmetic changes to the website and that's not going to do the trick.

100%. Cool. There's a couple of questions, but I think we're at time, so maybe, Dave, we'll end this by maybe you can just summarize your top lessons that you've learned while building all these brands for all these companies and for yourself, obviously. What are your top three takeaways?

Number one is, I think this is the most important tool you have in your toolkit as a business. A lot of sales and marketing challenges are not actually sales and marketing challenges. They are positioning challenges. And so maybe you're stuck right now. You need to constantly be evaluating your positioning based on what's happening in the market. And so if you're a, if you're a company out there and you haven't made a positioning change and your pipeline is stalling because of what's happening in the economy and blah, blah, blah, now's the time to go and do it. Number two is like, how do you start it? Maybe the CEO comes to you or you come to the CEO, but I think you have to raise it. And so maybe you're like, hey, I went to this session with Superside and it was great. I think we really need to be thinking about this. And here's where we're going to start. And then how should you start? I would go and spend $24 and get those two books that I mentioned and pair that with this recording and I think you will come out of there, you know, and these are easy to read books. They're each business books that are like 120 pages each. So there's just, there's no excuse to not read these books. And like, within three, you will be in a much better position than you are today.

Nice. Any other takeaways I think we cover.

A lot of it.

Okay, cool. Awesome. We'll end here. Dave, thank you so much. People can find you on LinkedIn, Twitter, and of course your Facebook group. Any other places you want them to.

Check out, Just go to the Google machine and type in my name and you'll see a website and LinkedIn and you'd be able to find ways to connect easily.

All the attribution data is going to point to search now, right?

I told you, I'm not a systems guy. I have no attribution. I have no idea.

Nice. Thanks a lot, Dave.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of the Exit 5 podcast. If you're in B2B marketing and you want to grow your career, you should also go and check out everything that we have over@exit5.com. We've got articles, we've got videos, we've got templates.

Plus we have a community.

A community of over 4000 B2B marketing pros. Whether you're deep in your career and want to connect with your peers or just starting up and you want a place to go where you can see what people are talking about, get smarter about B2B marketing in your own time to grow your career and help grow your company. Go and check it out. It's exit5.com you can get on the email list there. You can join the community. There's 4,000 marketers in the community. We have a job board. We're always adding new stuff. It's really becoming the number one place you can go if you want to grow your career and learn more about B2B marketing outside of what you're doing inside of your company every day.

So check, check it out.

Exit5.com and I also want to make sure I give a shout out to my friends at Hatch. That's Hatch fm. They produce this podcast. It sounds amazing because of the work that they do. And they work with B2B companies just like yours. They offer unlimited podcast editing and strategy for businesses. You can get unlimited podcast setting and on demand strategy for a low monthly cost. All you gotta do is just upload your episode and they take care of the rest. Go and check them out. It's Hatch fm.

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