#93: My Story From Marketing Manager to CMO, Building Exit Five, and Life Beyond Marketing (Interview with Dave and GTMfund's Scott Barker)

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Machines 1234 Exit.

Exit.

Hey, it's Dave. Just a quick note in context for this episode. This was an interview that the tables were actually turned.

This was an interview that I did.

With Scott Barker from GTM Fund.

I've known him and Max over there.

For a while now. They reached out and wanted to do an interview and we talked about a bunch of topics that don't typically come.

Up when I'm the one doing the interviewing.

And after it I was like that was interesting.

I would love to run that and.

Take that and do it as an episode for the Exit 5 podcast as I know that you would probably find value or find some interesting stuff. So I just want to drop a.

Quick note to say hello and give.

That context to this episode. I think you'll get something from it. I really enjoyed this conversation with Scott. Here it is.

Thanks.

Super excited for this podcast. I say this maybe somewhat frequently, but there is times and episodes where I genuinely just get to catch up with an old friend and sometimes those old friends are incredibly busy like this man is. So this gives us about 40 minutes just to catch up, see what's going on in their life and then hopefully leave you with some stories and some actionable go to market tips, tricks, strategies that you can go and implement in your own business. I am joined by the very infamous Mr. David Gerhardt. Dave, what's up man?

Infamous man. Infamous. I'm very infamous. And first of all, just to clear up something I'm not that busy. I just am very picky.

Okay, well, now I'm, like, almost defended, maybe.

No, we're doing it. That means that I'm happy to grant you some of my time. No, I love you guys. I. I love you guys. It's good to catch up. And it was fun. When Max reached out, I was like, oh, did you know? I haven't talked about a lot of this stuff, and I think it's fun to have a conversation with somebody who actually knows you and knows some of the story. Just makes for way more of a fun conversation. So when you guys reached out, I was like, heck, yeah, this will be a fun conversation. And I'm happy to reconnect and happy to do it, man.

Totally, man. Well, we appreciate it. Our listeners appreciate it, and it has been cool, man. Like, I feel like from when I started my career, at least in, like, more the US Tech ecosystem was like, eight years ago, and obviously just been watching your journey since then. We were in such close proximity at your time at Drift, and it's been cool to watch the growth and the evolution. So you mentioned something there, which I've noticed you do, which is, I think, a transition that a lot of, I guess, successful folks have to make at one point, and that is this idea of kind of being a yes person. Yes, I'll do this. Yes, I'll take this promotion. Yes, I'll take over this team. Yes, I'll take this new job into now. You're an entrepreneur. You have your own things. You've got a family, you love playing golf, and you've had to learn this idea of no. And some serious time management. Walk me through how you do that.

I'm noticing the both sides of that now. And so it's. This is not lost on me. So I don't want this to come off across as tone deaf, but it is really interesting. And I think that a big part of my career, and I know you're. You, you know, have had a similar type of kind of hustle and work ethic and just the culture that you were around. I did get ahead, I think, because I would say yes, and I would record 10 podcast episodes in a week and say, do 10 sales calls with the sales team when I was VP of marketing or even back to, like, earlier in my career, like, being an intern, and like, say, yes, I will go run that errand or do that thing. And so. And I've probably even written this somewhere, talked about on a podcast, like, in the early days of Drift, you know, one of the big things that I talked about was how like I responded to every email and you know, had all these one on one interactions and now I'm just at a different point in my life and I actually am on like I believe on the other end of the spectrum now which is like, oh it's so funny like the things that got you here. Now I'm like, man, I can't respond to every message and I need to take more time off of social media and I got somebody helping me with customer support who does this. And so it's not, it's not lost on me the both sides of that. But I just think you grow and you evolve just like a business evolves and the needs of that company are going to be different. You know the needs of a thousand person company is going to be much different than a 10 person company. And so I think I've grown and learned and evolved and now I'm just much more. I also have a different, it's a different point in my life. I have two kids. I'm at a little bit of different point now career wise. And so like I can now make a decision where before it used to be like shoot, I got offered to go to this event and it's in San Diego and it's tomorrow. Like I'm getting on that plane and I'm going now I'm like I'm not traveling for, for anything or anyone. And that's just kind of like the macro version of that.

Yeah, yeah. I was actually talking to a friend of mine about the same idea. Christinato, you may have cross paths with him but I was telling him because he's always, he's super responsive, he's in the later stage of his career but I know this guy like answers emails right away. He's like on top of it and I'm feeling a similar, I guess like pressure. There's too many LinkedIn messages, there's too many Twitter messages, there's too much going on and I just can't respond to all of them. Do you get anxiety when you leave people on red, so to speak? Do you have systems that help you? Do you have an ea? How are you managing that evolution?

No, I have no systems, I have no automation, I have no ea. I've kind of just decided to like, just to manage all that myself in some ways. And I know there's a lot of automation and VA people out there but for me I found that I just, if I can't do it myself then I think I've taken on too much. And my goal is to basically work for myself and have a one person company. And so it's easy to think about like, well, all of a sudden if now I'm doing so many things that I need an ea, is that really helping me? Like, am I spending too much time in meetings? And one of my guardrails was like, oh, I don't want to start a services business, I don't want to start an agency. And so all of a sudden if I have lots of client meetings and lots of admin looking stuff, then it's like, whoa, red flag. That's this is not the business that you're trying to create. And so like, I think ultimately I've been very intentional about what I'm trying to do. And I'm building a business where I work by myself and I can generate enough income to support my life and invest and do things that I want to do in the future beyond B2B marketing. And so like it's, that's one of the reasons why I don't have that because I'm actively not trying to grow into that. And that's just at the point that I'm at. And this is different for anybody. I hold no judgment or have no, you know, no judgment for anybody. Some people love the business and they're always going to be starting companies and hiring people and the work travel and work meetings and, and kickoffs and off sites that gives them energy. I'm not criticizing anybody for any of that. I've just learned about myself throughout my life. I'm much more of the like lone wolf creator creative. I need the freedom, I need the unstructured time. I need to be able to do things my way. And I'm fortunate enough to now be able to like run my own business and be in a position to do that. But I think it just all comes back to like understanding like, who are you? What do you want? Where do you want to spend your time? What gives you energy? And then somewhere in that Venn diagram also has to be like, and where can you generate income? Because I would love to not do any of this and just like go do yoga on the beach or play golf somewhere. But like, I still feel the need to generate income and revenue and stuff. And so I do some stuff. But I'm very intentional about like, I have a very, very much at peace with like the what am I doing? And, and where does that exist layer of this. Where the last time we talked was, it wasn't a decade ago, but I'm just going to use that as a chapter in my life. That was more in my middle, mid to late 20s, which was a much different time period than I'm where I'm at today in my mid to late 30s. So it's just a different chapter in my life. We could play this conversation in 10 years from now when my kids are in high school and college and I'm like, I started a 50 person company and I love going to office every day and I fully reserve the right to change my mind. But I think at this season in my life, this is where I'm at and what I'm comfortable doing.

I love that level of self awareness and self reflection to figure out what actually drives you, what motivates you. I think that's sometimes can be a, a missing piece and we just get caught up in like building, growing, building, growing, because that's what we're supposed to do.

Well, I'm going to, I'll talk about this stuff here because it's relevant to this audience and it'll be interesting. But I've actually, Max and I have texted a lot about like what I should or shouldn't be doing with Exit 5. And so I think there's one path of me that's like, this could be a 10 person business. I could easily hire a team. Like I, I see that path, I see how it could be a 10 to 20 million dollars a year business. But I also have sat down and kind of like outlined a bunch of things that I don't want to do right now at this point. And like, I can't get them to work. And so instead I'm not focused on making Exit 5 this big humongous $10 to $20 million company. Not humongous, but to me, hiring a team of 10 people. Right. I'm very intentional about. I want to stay small and I want to do it this way. And so that, that drives a lot of my decisions. But man, this goes all the way back to like, we'll talk about company stuff later. I've realized that every marketing and sales problem inside of a company almost always stems from just like lack of clear strategy and goals. And I'm now like feeling that again. And anytime I work on something, it always comes back to. It's not the tactics, it's like the what are you doing and why. If I don't have that, then that's usually when things are way off.

Yeah. And we'll, we'll dive into that because I want to unpack that a Little bit because it's incredibly crucial for building teams or building your own company, but just sort of to set the table for those listeners who maybe don't have a LinkedIn profile. Have never flipped on LinkedIn. DG was the. Started as a senior marketing manager at Drift. I believe it was back in 2015, had a great run up until 2019, ended up as the VP of marketing. Was very much the face of that business, at least how I perceive and remember Drift during those years. And then left and got a CMO role at Privy. And then it ended up jumping back as a chief Brand Officer for Drift again, a shorter run that time. And then, you know, you started, I think it was like consulting and advising to begin with and then you spun up this community that has now taken off. And I believe it's like the number one community for B2B marketers at least. Again, in terms of perception and what I hear, people absolutely love it. We've got.

That's what I write. That's because I write. I write it's the number one community.

So that's where my perception comes from.

Being we're being honest.

And I got to shout out, Sarah Del Barrello is our marketing community manager. That's one of the first things when we were onboarding her. We got her a membership and she's absolutely loving it. She actually shares in our Slack channel all the time, so it's been cool. But what's missing in that journey, and I guess I'll frame it differently, you grew your career tremendously quickly to the VP level. Your time at Drift, what do you attribute that to?

First of all, thank you for the testimonial for Exit 5. I joke around about it, but I'm blown away by the quality and it makes me so happy when I hear stories from actual marketers in the space who go there and get value from it. That's awesome. And I've seen Sarah in there, so, man, you got the career picture better than most. You really do not. I was like, oh. You're like, oh. He left and then he went back and then he did this thing and they did consulting and he community. So you. You got it all for sure. I think there's a couple things. Number one is I jumped around a lot in my career actually before joining Drift. So before Drift, I'm pretty sure I worked at five companies in six years. And a lot of those traits still are from the. The software. Hello, me. Which is I. I'm very impulsive and I change my mind a lot, which is a gift and a curse in some scenarios. And I think I would get inside of a company and I get bored very quickly. It's actually a miracle that I've even had Exit five for two years, given the way that I work. And I remember at the time I was very like self conscious about that and jumping around and it's like I knew I needed to jump, but I was curious. I was like worried about the long term ramifications of that. And what's funny is somebody told me, like, once you land at that great company, nobody's ever going to remember. And that's exactly what happened now. And I even remember, like being at Drifting, David Cancel would say, like, I had this bio that I wrote that was like, you know, was a PR manager here and then marketing at HubSpot, and he's like, dude, just change your bio and just write like, Dave Gerhardt is VP of marketing at Drift. And I was like, oh. Like once I was at that company, it was like nobody remembered what else happened in that. And at that point in my career. So I say that to say this, which is, I think so much of your career is built on one or two companies that you're at, and it's not just about the company, but it's about where you are at that point in your career and that point in your life. And so for me, it was like I was in my late 20s, I had kind of jumped around a bit at a bunch of different companies and I had gotten this itch to be at a startup. I was at a big company and then I didn't join the right one and I wasn't doing the right stuff. And I finally, just by luck, I fell into this opportunity at Drift where I had this podcast outside of work that was my own called Tech in Boston, where I was going around and interviewing startup founders. And it kind of had grown a small little audience inside of Boston. We had done like 50 episodes, couple thousand downloads, a couple thousand people on the email list. It was small, very small. But David Cancel and Elias had went and they started Drift and they were basically launching the company. And they DMed me and said, like, you know, hey, we're having a party. We're having a launch party, like, invite to you if you want to come. Like I was a local blogger or something, right? And I didn't go, probably because I don't like to go to things like that. But I messaged David back and I said, like, I'll cover it in my newsletter. And by the way, could I have you on my podcast. And so I ended up having him on the podcast. I go and I interview him, and we hit it off at the same time. They were hiring their first marketing person. And I remember I did that interview, and I. I was working at HubSpot at the time, and HubSpot's an amazing company, but for me at the time, it was not the right place. I. It was a little bit too big for me. And I met these guys at Drift, and they had this startup energy, and they also had raised a bunch of money because they were proven entrepreneurs already. It just was this perfect scenario. And I applied for the job. And I get an immediate message back the next day from Keith, who I love, who was doing recruiting there, and he's like, hey, sorry, we already got somebody. I was like, damn. I thought this was the opportunity. Later that day, I get an email from David Cancel, who says, hey, Keith told me you. You applied. Like, come back. Let's hang out. And I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like, there's a chance here. And I'm getting energy even just retelling this. So I went back and I talked to him, and we. We spent a bunch of time together. I spent a bunch of time with Elias, and it was like, I was like, oh, this is going to work out. I'm going to get an offer. And I was getting married at the time, and they were like, all right, go get married. Go on your honeymoon. Like, this is, like, within two weeks, right? Go get married. Go on your honeymoon. Come back, and we'll revisit this, and we'll make an offer. And I just remember feeling like, man, these people are so connected in this industry. They have raised the best money from the best VCs. They have the best network. Like, I felt like I was cheating. Like, I could get this job. I was like, they. If I go away for two weeks, they're going to hire some actual smart person. That's literally. That's how I felt, honestly. And I did something that I never. I'm not a very, like, pushy type of person when it comes to stuff like this. And I did something that I'd never done before, which is, like, kind of straight up out of, like, a startup, like, hiring book, which is, like, I emailed them. Like, Keith sent me that message, and I was like, no, this is not what's happening. Like, I had no leverage. Also, I was like, I need an offer now. If you guys want me. Like, I need an offer now. I was like, I'm just Gonna ask for it. And I guess they loved that. And I came back in. I basically, I met Re Elias, like had me in a conference room for like an hour. And I basically just like passionately pitched like, why you need to make me this offer. And. And they did, and I ended up going there. So sorry to go on a rant and tell that story, but I haven't told that often. And fast forward to right place, right time. Got to grow really fast, do a lot of things. Like, I had a bunch of side projects on my own and I kind of. I worked inside of a company, but I never got to touch all the stuff before. And so it was like this perfect point in my career where there was like, whoa, we don't have a website. Okay, Dave, figure out how to do a website. We don't have co marketing. Figure out co marketing. We've never done ads. Figure this out. And so I got to do all those things within the first year or two of the company. I got to hire some people and build a team. And so I think it was a combination of like the right company and me being there at the right time. That fast forward, I spent, you know, about four and a half years there. And so I was able to kind of grow as fast as the company did during that time. And then I left.

Thanks for sharing that story. And that's what this is all about. This podcast is those, you know, stories that haven't been, like, widely told. And I love the tenacity, the guts to just be like, listen, I need that offer now. And I feel like there is those inflection points in your career where you, like, looking back, I don't even know what came over me. You know, I had that with this like sales hacker role. I just like, I could see the opportunity. I was just like, I'm just gonna get this. I don't care. I'm just gonna make it happen. And those end up having such an incredible impact. Like that little inflection point. Look where it led you had you not went that hard. Do you ever think about that?

Yeah, I think about it all the time. I could have easily not. And I do think about where I would have been. And I will confess though, obviously it was a life changing experience for me. HubSpot as a company has continued to do very well. And so I do often think about, I do the math on like, well, if I had 10 years of HubSpot stock.

That's true. That's very true.

And like, I don't mean that in with Any disrespect at all. It's just like you kind of always like weighing out both of those. But I.

My bet is you wouldn't have lasted 10 years at HubSpot.

Oh, hell no. So it's not even a real scenario. It's not even a real scenario. No way. So that's fair. I think the thing that I take away from that drift experience though is there was some financial gain for me from it. But a lot of it has come later in that I still to this day I have companies or people reaching out to me that were like, hey, we're fans of like, what you did, what the company did, like, can we hire you to do consulting? And I've had many opportunities that have come that were not directly like deposited to my bank account from that experience. And so I think it just comes back to like, you got to be able to look at your career. And I didn't know this at the time, but to look at your career and think like, yeah, I might be making like X fixed number in salary, but like being around these people, like I got exposed to so much by being there. Like I got to get on a plane and go with the two founders of this company to Sequoia and hang out at Sequoia on the west coast and meet all these companies. And we got a 40 minute meeting just to talk with the CMO of Facebook at the time, like things like that, or to be in meetings and learn these different experiences. And so I think like I actually wrote about this recently in Exit 5, which is, I was trying to like be positive in a world where like a lot of marketers are getting laid off or there's budget cuts or like, maybe the company that they're working at is like not growing as fast as they used to and they cut their budget and so it's not that fun. And I just was like, look, you gotta be able to see this as a career. Like you have to be selfish and think about yourself and see all of these things as like assets that are gonna help you in your career. And so maybe you're, maybe you're a marketing manager at a company right now and like they just laid off half the team and you have no idea what you're doing. But they asked you to like lead marketing for the first time, right? It's easy to be like, oh shit. But it's also like, you know what, Even if I fail at this, like, I'm going to spend the next 12 to 24 months learning a hundred times More than I knew about marketing right now. And I can go then get another job after this and I'm going to already be better. And it was like one of the fun things for me about going to Privy and changing companies was like I got to then take all the lessons that I learned the hard way at Drift, both good and bad over four years and like start new and apply them to a new company. And so I think having that lens and like it doesn't. I believe in like you getting the most salary and make the most money that you can make for sure and look out for yourself. But at the same time there's some intangible cost that comes from like the learning and the experience and being on the team. And so I think outside of the day to day job, so much of this matters at like which company are you at? What are the other managers on the team look like? Who are the other VPs? What's the culture like? Is it in the right industry that's going to give you the right playing field to be on to learn and then you can monetize those skills in different ways down the road other than just the salary that you're getting.

Couldn't agree more. It's like I feel like a lot of us, particularly in tech, we see our equity package and we're like, ooh baby, that's going to be the big payoff. I'm going to spend my four years here and then I'm going to ride off into the sunset. Or you get a promotion, you have this bigger salary. But I've found the same thing. It's the experience, it's the story and the network that become the real wealth creation tool that no one can take from you. And that's repeatable, it's scalable. You can do it again and again and again once you have those things. So I want to pull it back to something you said earlier, which was most of the friction or mistakes that happen in marketing and sales, you know, we can expand that out to the whole go to market team comes from not having a clear strategy and goals. Do you have a, maybe an example of a time at Drift or Privy when first you did that right and everyone was beating to the same drum and it just felt so easy. You crushed it. And then on the flip side, today's.

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Was there a time period where there was no clear strategy and goals and you ended up falling on your face?

Yes. So the first one, there's this phrase Andy Raskin talks about a lot. I think it's like Talks about your story is your strategy. And so at drift in the early days it was so clear we were so rallied around this idea of conversational marketing that I've never been inside of a company that was so aligned for like a 24 month stretch because there was like a category that was buzzing and growing. It was very clear who we were building for and what we were doing and why. And our mission was to build the leading conversational marketing platform. And so if we launched a new video product, positioning for that product was easy because okay, it's going to be conversational video. It's all going to tie back to like, how does this product help you start conversations? And so typically inside of a company, when the positioning and messaging questions are harder or, or less clear and less obvious, it's because there's lots of layers on there. And so like, well, we want to be. So this is a made up example. This is not about drift. But I'm just building on that example, right, which is like, well, we want to be conversational marketing, but we have this legacy product and then we have this other one and like we now kind of compete in this market and one of our partners does this and so we can't say this. And then there's this one VP who wants us to target this Persona and like we have a new sales team who's focusing on this. And so then, then they're like, hey, marketing team, like, right, positioning for that. And you're like, fuck, this is impossible. Versus like at that time in the company, it was early. We were just trying to get market share and bring on good fit customers. And so the positioning was very simple and easy. That made it great. Then a not example of when that change was. Eventually we hit a wall where inbound, like we had grown basically all through word of mouth and inbound and then all of a sudden we started to reach a new point in the market where people didn't know who we are. And so we had to sell and market differently. And that was a rude awakening. And that was not a change that you can make overnight. And I wish I had more foresight to have seen that coming. And like we changed the mix earlier, but then the company decided to like go up market and it's very hard to change who the ideal customer was when you have existing teams that have existing plans and goals that are like more focused on the old strategy. And so it's like, well, we still want to keep the SMB revenue because we don't want to just like our revenue to go to zero and have the board and everybody questioning what the hell we're doing. So we need to support that. And we have a team of X people on there and whenever there's a team of people on there, those people have performance based incentives goals. It's all going to be tied to that. But then the company is fundamentally going like more enterprise just creates a lot of internal friction and waves and mismatched incentives and people are aligned differently. And so that's an example there. And then when I went to Privy at the time, they had just a different sales and marketing. The two sales and marketing motions were fundamentally set up to compete with each other because the sales team, for whatever reason, like they had a self service motion and a sales motion and the sales team would not get credit for anybody that came in through the website and like didn't get. I forget exactly how it worked, but there was this. The way that the sales and marketing teams were set up, they were fundamentally at odds. Like if a deal closes via marketing, sales is pissed because like hey, you just took commission out of my pocket. Which is like, well, how are you ever going to win in that world? Right. And if sales closes a deal, marketing is, is pissed because like now they're metrics. Look off. And so we had to fix that. Right. And those things all seem simple and obvious, but when you add in people and goals and incentives and competing plans, like this stuff gets very complicated very quickly. And so unless the CEO is very clear on a simple clear plan that everyone agrees to and then everyone has to go build out a strategy, a plan that maps back to that strategy, that's the only way it's going to work is when your individual team goals are based off of the company goals. And so that means we're talking mostly sales and marketing people here today. Right. That means that you have to. When you think about your revenue goals for the company, it needs to be sales plus marketing equals X in some way. You have to go into this as a unified group. If it's sales verse marketing in that the comp plan for the VP of Sales is different than the VP of Marketing whose comp plan is all about MQLs and whatever, you're going to be wrong from the start.

Yeah. And so the fix there, just to make sure I'm hearing it right, was moving to one revenue goal that sales and marketing jointly owned.

Yeah. The fix is like let's back all the way out of this thing and say like what are we trying to do? Book new revenue or whatever the goal is. Okay. And how are we going to get there?

Great.

And this is why, like, ABM is such a good idea. It's such a good idea for many companies is because in an ABM motion, nobody's arguing over who gets credit. Because the perception of marketing in that company is not like, it's like more of like, marketing is supposed to assist us in closing deals versus in the other way. It's like marketing is supposed to close 200 customers on their own this month. Like, why haven't you done that marketing? And like, I asked Hillary Carpio, who runs ABM at Snowflake, about this on our podcast. She says there's no misalignment because, like, fundamentally, sales and marketing are measured together as, you know, team 1A and 1B as part of the revenue strategy. And so I think it falls apart at a lot of companies now because, I mean, how many companies do you guys see that they have a freemium funnel and an enterprise funnel, and then you have a marketing team that's supporting both and then you have sales. Mary supports the freemium business, but James supports the enterprise business. And like, they need different things. It just right there with two sales reps, it's already complicated and just you create a ton of mess from that. And those are things that I still don't know how to fully deal with, which is like, probably why I'm working for myself. But you need to be able to think about that from a company standpoint first before you go and layer on the sales and marketing tactics. You got to have people who know how to integrate sales and marketing.

And now we're seeing, you know, usage based pricing and deals become more common too. So people are trying to, like, experiment with that in its own little world and see it's getting.

Oh yeah. And then you got expansion, because everybody wants more expansion. And. But where does expansion magically come from? Like, nobody owns that number, but it's in the plan. We're going to generate $10 million in expansion revenue. And, like, we have two sales reps. And then James from the content team is going to write some blog posts for them. That's not how this is going to work, right?

Maybe an expansion ebook? No.

James is going to help the SDR team pull a list and they're going to just email people and say, would you like to expand?

I love it. Okay, so I think that's great. Great advice. Get alignment. And you only get alignment through incentive structures being in lockstep. Going back to the first example, when things Are all good. You've got this conversational marketing messaging, and it's really landing. How did you keep the team engaged in that messaging? I'm sure it evolved over time. Would you have weekly all hands was your team remote? I feel like nailing a messaging is one thing, but then distributing it and getting people excited about it and getting them bought in and like, the ongoing enablement is a whole other beast. So how did you manage that effective?

The getting people excited about it part was not hard because the company was growing really fast. And so there was a lot of stuff that was working without us having to do a lot of work on it. And I don't mean that it was easy, but it was like, there was a lot of buzz, There was a lot of inbound. And so it was like the customers that we were getting, the messages that we were getting, it was very easy to be like, huh? Even if you're like, man, I don't care. This is B2B software. Like, I'm just an engineer here. We would even see those people be like, yeah, because it's just contagious. Like, there's something about being on a team, whether you're selling software or you have a community food drive or whatever, there's just something about that. And so I think winning was contagious. The company was doing really well. It was fun to smash the gong and have a new record and a new record. And that kind of just. That is infectious in a positive way inside of the company. And so a lot of it was that. And then the other part was like, I think there was a clear vision for conversational marketing today and, like, where the company is going in five years. And it was not a stretch in people's minds. And they saw a clear roadmap to the future. And so I think people struggle when it's just very much like, this is who we are right now, today. Okay, cool. I can do that for, like, a quarter. But then all of a sudden, now it's like summer and half the year's over, and I'm like, hey, we said we were going to do that thing. And so I think the product team was amazing, and they shipped really fast, and the founders had vision and they shipped really fast and delivered on that vision. And we told the story to the market, and the market continued to receive it. So you got to have all of the teams inside of the company, like, rallying around this vision and working to produce it. You know, it's like, it's not just marketing. That's Doing this, it's like the product team is making better widgets and we're selling the widgets and the feedback is getting better. And so all of those pieces matter. I would also give us a lot of credit on the internal marketing. We spent a lot of time on internal marketing and I spent a lot of time one on one with David, the CEO on internal presentations. Like, hey, like, we would spend oftentimes like more time because it's easier to do later. In two weeks, we need to unveil this, like, new strategy to the company. And like, that's what David and I would spend literally two weeks on inside of the company. And so people would be like, I don't know what he's doing. It's like, well, I'm in meeting, I got to cancel all my meetings for the day and catch up on everything later because David and I are writing some new vision. And it would literally be him standing up in a conference room, you know, pacing at a whiteboard. And I got my laptop and I'm like making slides and taking notes on the spot. We had such an amazing relationship from a creative standpoint. So we would spend a lot of time there on the story. It was never like we hired some outside agency to build us this narrative. It was very much like we were constantly messaging and texting and talking about the narrative and spending time on it and almost always used internally as a way to like pressure test something and do a lot of the work on the messaging. And then when you roll it out, like, we would have this company ritual called show and tell on Fridays where at 3 o' clock the whole company would shut down and every company would kind of ship would do like a five minute presentation on what they did that week or something. And I love doing that as part of marketing. And so basically every Friday at show and talent Marketing, we didn't just present the marketing metrics. We used it as an opportunity to talk about, like the mission of building the leading conversational marketing platform, how that's going, where we sit in the market, feedback from people. And it was like it would create buzz internally and get people fired up. And so it was a big part of. It was also the internal marketing.

Yeah, I think that's a great tactic that people can easily implement. This idea of a weekly show and tell, so much accountability comes from that. You can use it as not only an update, but also showcase interesting things that you want to infect the company with. And I feel like a lot of teams miss the internal marketing piece and miss that opportunity not only just to pressure test the ideas, but you're in a thousand person SaaS company that's a lot of different distribution channels you have through each employee. And if you're infecting them with the right ideas, messaging and where you're going, that's ultimately going to get you there much faster. I thought that was great. Okay, I want to switch gears a little bit because we do have a part in this where we allow founders listeners to give us questions and this one is just stupidly relevant to you and a lot of the things you've done. And I think I'm going to take some liberties and actually expand the question. But the original question is, I'm a new founder. Should I start a podcast for my business? I'm going to expand that as should I spend time building out a founder brand. And as someone who has written the book on this, I would love your. Your take both the pros and the cons.

Yeah, I mean, well, I actually don't necessarily agree with you that I wouldn't conflate starting a podcast with building a founder brand. Right. Because we could say that you could start a narrative style podcast about your company and you do this profile series. It doesn't have to be like, I am Dave the founder. I'm going to start the Dave podcast and build the founder brand that way. So I think that's one strategy. But I think what you're getting in my answer is I would just. Sure is my answer. Like, I think, should you start a podcast? Maybe. Should you start a YouTube channel? Maybe. Should you do webinars? Maybe. Should you do email? Maybe Like, I think it's more about like, what are you trying to accomplish with a podcast? And so for me, this always starts with what is the hook going to be? What are you doing a podcast for? Do you have a new idea that nobody in your industry has done? And you want to, you want to start this podcast because you think you can build an audience there, or do you want to do it because you have 50 awesome customers and you want to make them stars and interview them? So I would just ask yourself a couple more questions first and then. But to actually give you specific advice here, if you do that exercise and you say, yes, I would start the podcast. If you are someone who enjoys having conversations. Right. Do you enjoy having conversations or are you going to write, script and make it narrative? I do see oftentimes a founder wants to start a podcast, but then they are miserable at talking into the microphone. They don't want to do it, they don't want to make the time for it, they don't get energy for it. Right. Versus if you find you have to think about what your natural skills are. And so maybe you are more of a writer, maybe spend that time instead. It's going to take a couple hours a week writing a newsletter or just starting to contribute thought leadership content to LinkedIn, for example. And so I think a lot of it comes back to your. Your personal strengths. But a lot of founders are giving lots of talks and conversations all the time and they often have lots of connections inside of an industry and it's a very natural extension to then go start a podcast. So depends is my answer. Sorry, depends?

Depends is always like the only real.

It kind of always without a shitload of content. Yeah. Like, I don't know, maybe. Maybe like you are company is in a really boring niche and you're not an interesting person and you have no customers and you have no internal experience to help start a podcast, then like, no, but what if you're like amazing and a dynamic speaker and you know, 20 of the most badass founders in your industry and you want to go start the podcast? Like, yes. So there's a lot of nuance in any marketing answer.

Yeah, Yeah, I think it's the only honest answer. I'm going to hijack the question a little bit and just selfishly ask one that I'm interested in because seeking wisdom back in the day I thought was very cool in its ability to discuss things that were relevant to B2B SaaS, but also give thoughts and ideas to things that are outside of just our little tech bubble that we all think about, you know, in our day to day lives. And it's almost like even more so back then you'd put your work hat on and then you go put David Holmes hat on. And I think it did a great job blurring those, those lines maybe for the first one at least in like a B2B SaaS kind of podcast. How did you measure success for that podcast? Because it was a little bit different. Or did you?

It's my favorite question. We never thought about measuring the success because almost immediately a couple episodes in, the response was unlike anything that either of us had experienced before. And so it was like David would send me a DM of someone who said like, who took a picture of them, like working out, listening to the podcast and we're like, who the hell is this? And someone else would leave a review and like call out something very specific. Or someone would Send a book recommendation and mail a person a handwritten note to David in the office. It was like, very quick responses on Twitter and email and in person. At the time, we were working in Boston in the Copley Mall, which is like a big mall downtown where there's a lot of shopping and offices. And David and I would often walk around the mall and go get coffee or something. And we were going down the escalator one day, and a group of people went seeking wisdom. And we were like, this is unbelievable. And so there was just lots of little examples like that. And they kept building. And then it would be like a sales rep was, hey, I did a demo today with Okta, and head of marketing at Okta loves seeking wisdom. And we're like, whoa. And so I think that was also the reason why it worked. It was a podcast with two people who worked at a B2B SaaS company who sold marketing software and would occasionally talk about the business. But people would hear about what Drift was doing. Not because we were, like, promoting products, but we were like, so in the past year, we've grown from 20 to 100 people. Like, let's talk about what that's been like, David, like, you know, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we'd also, like, talk about music or talk about a book that we read or some other lesson. And so it was like reality TV marketing, I guess, in some way.

Awesome. Awesome. So I'll start kind of wrapping it up with two final questions, and I'll leave these intentionally vague for a reason, so you can take it any way that you want to go highlight something we already talked about or something that you feel strongly about. The first question is, what is one tactic or strategy that founders or revenue leaders believe to be true that you think is BS or no longer relevant?

I think that some people obsess with measuring everything in marketing, and I think it's great that we've gotten so data driven, but I do think a lot of it is. There is a big science part of it, but I think there's a lot of art to it also. And I think it's very easy, especially now with budget cuts and people playing more defense. It's very easy to kind of shrink into this, like, defensive mode and just do paid and just do SEO and just do X thing. That's very easily measured where, like, coming up, especially through Drift, like, I was pushed by David and Elias and David specifically on the marketing stuff to, like, not do things like everybody else. Think outside the box. Not that that's a cliche thing. And so I think, and I credit so much of what we did to, like, there wasn't this pressure of, like, well, to what we just talked about with seeking wisdom. Like, we need seeking wisdom to generate six new sales meetings a month for us to keep it going. So. And so I think you gotta be able to do things that don't have that direct response measurement.

I like it. It doesn't allow much room for experiments or creativity if you're just following the numbers. Numbers don't get too creative, but it's hard.

It's also. I also understand that it's like, there's two sides of the coin, which is like, if you're never hitting your numbers and you're always behind and things aren't going well, it's tougher to then go and, like, get the freedom to go and do some, like, crazy, unmeasurable campaign. And so, like, I've been lucky to be at companies where, like, things were going pretty well. And so it was like, sure, we want to take a swing at this. Like, you can. So I do have empathy for marketers who are like, things are not going well. Yeah, it's not going to be the best time to go try some crazy strategy, you know.

All right, final question, brother. It's that one kind of flipped on its head. What is one tactic or strategy that has been working for you, has been working for people in the community that you think founders can implement tomorrow and it will start moving the needle in the right direction?

It's not so much of a tactic, but I. I'm just constantly reminded of the power of a narrative and your positioning and your story. And so I think it's very easy to get lost and try to do 15 different things from a content standpoint. But I think the closer you can narrow down, like, how specific can you be to a specific group of customers? Not to double up on specific there, but the more you can niche down and say, we are focused on this industry and these types of customers and here's what we're going to do. To go after them is very, very underrated. And any mistake that I've made at a company is when we've tried to get too broad. And so, like, when I think of, in my company right now in growing exit 5, it would have been very easy for me to try to build, like, the biggest and be the marketing community and be B2C and, oh, there's cool stuff happening in B2C. But so much of our growth has been because we made the conscious decision to basically specifically focus on B2B SaaS marketers and that has helped attract the right audience. It dictates what type of content we should create. I think you got to get back to basics and really figure out like that who you're serving and why you can help them specifically is so underrated and it makes the rest of the tactics stuff easier. If I can give just like another half answer on this is from a tactic standpoint, stop trying to do 15 different things in marketing. It's going to be one or two very specific channels that make the biggest impact at your company. And I love to use the example from like Gong. I had Devin Reed on my podcast recently. But like, the reason their content works so well is because they didn't try to do YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and a podcast and a newsletter. They're like, we're just going to focus entirely on LinkedIn and we're going to develop content specifically for that platform and then we're going to drive people back to our site and get their email addresses and that was the recipe. And they focus on creating two long form, good research, original data type stuff a month. That works really well. I'm not saying that's the only way to be successful, but I would much rather see you have a very like opinionated and specific approach to marketing like that then trying to do, which is a mistake I've made a bunch of times is like we're going to do 15 things and we're going to be everywhere.

Yeah. And I think those two kind of go hand in hand. It's like niche down on a specific narrative, positioning, story, Persona, and then marry that with a simplified strategy, one to two channels. Again, simplify, simplify. I think that's fantastic advice, particularly at the early stage. And we get a lot of early stage founders. Like if you spread yourself too thin, that's the kiss of death. Beautiful. Well DG, I appreciate you spending the time with the GTM community. Love what you're doing at Exit 5. Appreciate you as a friend and a human. And if folks want to follow along, pretty simple. LinkedIn, Twitter, join Exit 5.

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