Be the GM, Not the Player: A Story on Creating Leverage in Marketing (Micro-Lesson)

This episode is brought to you by Zttle. We're halfway through 2025 and one thing's clear. We've been feeling this firsthand for sure. Events continue to be one of the highest performing marketing channels. Niche meetups, conferences, curated dinners, networking, breakfasts, everyone's all in. Everyone's leaning into in person. Events have become a core part of our playbook here at Exit 5. So far we've hosted two virtual sessions. We do them twice a month. We do one large virtual event, sometimes two a year. One in person meetup. And we're deep in the trenches right now planning drive our annual conference coming back to Vermont in September. We use Zuttle to help us run a smarter event strategy. They help us with driving registrations, managing invites, automating, communications, reminders, analytics, tracking. They do it all. They have a salesforce integration that also makes it easy and simple to report on pipeline and revenue from events without having to pull an op. So you'd know exactly how your events performed. On top of that, the differentiator with ZTTL is how their team is insanely good at supporting us. They always go above and beyond for us and that's how we've been able to keep the momentum going with 12 events this year already and just a small little team here at exit 5. So if events are a part of your marketing strategy like they are ours, you should check out Zuttle to see how Companies like Zillow, CrowdStrike and Iterable are using the top event platform for business events in 2025. Head over to zuttle.com exit5 that's z-u- dash dash-l.com exit5 to learn more.

Alright, so I want to tell you guys a story. As you know, Exit 5 performs really well on LinkedIn organic. It's really our bread and butter channel, at least from an awareness standpoint. So earlier in the year we decided to experiment with LinkedIn paid ads, which only made sense right now. You can use thought leadership ads, you can boost your organic content to audiences that you select. So it only made sense for us to try and run some paid. And being the general marketer that I am, especially with experience in growth, I had run some campaigns in the past. So I raised my hand and said, you know, I'll take the first stab at it. So I created a couple different campaigns, ran a couple tests, but what I found was that I wasn't able to fully commit because I didn't have the bandwidth to do so. I was focused on other things that were more urgent to me. And since LinkedIn ads were a bet and a bit of a nice to have for us, I didn't prioritize it. And since I didn't prioritize it and I wasn't all in, I wasn't comfortable spending a lot of company money every month to see and to try and push on that channel. So in team meetings a couple times, I brought up the fact that LinkedIn paid is going to be big for us, but I can only tackle it when I have the bandwidth. And I kept pushing it off month after month until Dave stopped me and he gave me this mental model that changed my entire outlook on strategy and prioritization. He knows I'm a big sports guy, so he made a sports reference which is called the player versus the general manager, or in short, the player versus the gm. So he said, what you need to do is start acting like the GM and not the player. Meaning that if we have something that we think is going to make a big impact on the business, then we need to hire someone or acquire a resource that's going to help us with this thing. It's not about making the play or making the shot or doing the thing. It's about finding the person or resource that can do it for us and do it well, because we know and we believe that this is going to be a big growth lever for us. And that mental model has really stuck with me. It's totally reframed how I thought about my work and strategy. And another part of it is this is slightly ego driven, right? It's like, you know, I want the recognition for doing the thing. I want to look like the star, you know, when we launched the big campaign and it drives in a bunch of revenue, I want to look like it was me who started that thing from scratch and now it's killing it. But it's really not about that. It's just about how can I get the results and how can I be part of those results in some way, but not necessarily the doer of the thing, because if I am committing to only being the doer, my time is limited, so I'll never be able to do all the things I want to do. In sports, the general manager has a lot more leverage than the individual player, although it may not always seem like it. The general manager gets to select all the different players on the team. Things like how much you're going to pay them, who to trade. They get to select who the main coach is, who the offensive coach is, the defensive coach, all the coaches who Coordinates with the coaches, who the trainers are, doctors, et cetera. So they get to actually select all the different pieces so they have a lot more leverage and a lot more budget and resources to make the dream of winning come true. And in sports, it's often the player themselves that gets the recognition because they're the ones that are making the big shots and making all the plays. But it's the GM in the background who's pulling all the strings and making it happen. And when it comes to business, I think it's actually the opposite. It's great to be the player. Nothing wrong with that. But the GM is the equivalent of the leader in the company who is calling the shots, and they're the one who looks good in the end of the day, when all the right decisions are made and when things start to work out. So if there's something that you as a marketer have been waiting on, something that you know could deliver a lot of value to the business, but you're putting it on the back burner because you don't have the bandwidth or, you know, you need to work on it, and it's going to create a lot of leverage for the marketing team. What you should do instead, instead of waiting until you have the bandwidth or trying to be the hero, you should go to your manager and say, hey, here's this thing that I think's gonna have a big impact for us. Here's how much we need to spend to make it happen. I don't have the bandwidth, but I think we need to jump on this right away. It's gonna change things in a big way for us. So we need to hire someone. Here's how much they're gonna cost, and here's what I think we're gonna get from it. So if you're a marketer in that situation today and you have that thing in the top of your mind, maybe this podcast made you think of it, or maybe you're gonna run into it in the future. Go make that pitch to your manager, to the boss, or to yourself. If you're a business owner, be the gm, not the player. That's how you move up. That's how you create leverage and success for the company. So if you needed to hear this, go do that thing today.

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