Building a B2B Audience and Media Company with Dave Gerhardt (DGMG)

Hello, hello, this is Alex Burkitt and you are listening to the Long Game podcast. In this episode I'm talking with Dave Gerhardt. If you work in B2B marketing, you know Dave already. Dave runs DGMG, a B2B marketing education platform and consulting company. He was before the Chief Brand Officer at Drift and before that the Chief Marketing Officer at Privy. His resume is absolutely stacked so I'm just going to stop right there. If you spend any time on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook, you know Dave for his great content as well. So in this convo we covered quite a bit from his recently launched book Founder Brand, what it was like writing it and launching it, why he wrote it and what he learned from the process to his thoughts on building a media company if you're a B2B brand. We also get a sneak peek at his Long game vision for building dgmg. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Dave Gerhardt. I wanted to ask about your book launch because that's probably top of mind for you right now. I've seen you post a lot on DGMG and all that. So how has that gone? How's the book going?

The book is going great. I didn't really know what to expect. I was kind of nervous about it because it's a big deal like a physical book and I just was ready for everybody to hate it. And I got in my head about it and the responses has been amazing. It's been so cool and it's not even from big tech CEOs that are reading it. But I'm talking to just people who run their own business and had been thinking about wanting to do more to build their brand and grow their business and they just started posting and they're like I got your book and they're sending me pictures and it's just so cool. In a world that's so Digital, my Twitter DMs and Instagram and LinkedIn has just been all strangers sending me pictures of different pages of the book and everything. That part has been really cool. And the other thing that the reason I said really good is just not even like a, it's not a financial thing because it was actually a terrible money making choice because we did a 99 cent Kindle, basically giving it away version to do a promo for the first week. But it's been such a. So many people that I haven't talked to in years have reached out this week to reconnect for some reason, which is so funny because all the stuff That I talk about in FounderBrand, I've talked about in DGMG, I talk about a lot of. If I created an online course called Founder Brand, there's no way that like my kindergarten teacher who owns a local bookstore in Worcester, Massachusetts, was would be like posting and taking pictures and like sharing it with people. But it's just like something about, like, I've had like four or five people that I played college baseball with that I haven't talked to in over 10 years. Like, we don't keep in touch at all. Have messaged me and they like read it or bought it and something about it being a physical thing that has, like, created this connection. And that was not a intentional thing. And so I've kind of been like, wow, there's the thing that the thought that I'm lately stuck on is like, there's just something to like, one or two philosophies that I felt they weren't like, unique to me. As like, somebody, you know, said the other day, like, this there's nothing groundbreaking in this book. Some guy left me a review. So, like, there's nothing groundbreaking in this book. And he's not right. He's entirely right. This is all clearly taking off of the things that I've ingested over the years. But what I spit out into the world was, hey, here is a playbook that I think, at least here's how I would articulate. This is kind of what I've done with the companies that I've worked at over the last couple years. I'm going to try to put it into a book and kind of like cement that a little bit. And I think actually the process of writing a book helped me clarify that idea. The same way writing can be the thing that brings clarity. And so it was like a cool exercise to try to have to package this and actually think about it. And so the way that I came up with Founder Brand was, well, something that we did at Drift was like, very focus on building a media company and using the founder. And we had a podcast and very active on social media and similar but different playbook at Drift. And then in my own life with dgmg, that starts to explode. And the thread between all that were those ingredients, which is like Twitter, LinkedIn, podcasting, strong storytelling and strong connection to the feedback loop on social media. I was like, I wonder if there's a way that I could talk about what that is. And I was like, I came up with the name Founder Brand and I was inspired by. I really liked Donald Miller's. Book, storybrand. And I loved the title for that book. And I was like, oh, what? Story brand is a great concept, but kind of what I've been doing is Founder Brand. Look it up. Does anybody own the domain? Founder Brand? Nobody owns domain Founder Brand. Okay, cool. Maybe I'll call Founder Brand the title. And then the coolest part was like, I had the outline and I had written like the six page, like outline just like in one sitting. And that's what I knew, like, this was gonna be a. This was real to me. So, like, I didn't have to slog through, like, what's the book gonna be about? I sat down and I was like, for a couple hours, I just banged out like the start, you know, the founder. Here's why. Here's why. I still think social media is so underrated and being used wrong by most B2B companies. Here's how you can do it. Here are the things that. Screenshots, examples. I do this every day. And one of the coolest parts was the most meta piece of it was I tested the title with the DGMG community people. I have this private Facebook group of a bunch of marketing people. And I first shared the concept of the book and I said, hey, I'm thinking about writing a book. Knowing what you know about me, what would you write about? And it was amazing. I had like a hundred comments of all these different ideas and a lot of them started to hit on this concept. And so then I went back and a couple weeks later I had a bunch of ideas on the title, title and the title. You know, you go through the title process and like, I shared an idea for the title with, with the community and people gave me feedback on and they tweaked it. And so it was super cool to be able to like, actually test it along the way with the community. And then like, the ultimate lesson is like, if I, if I wrote it right, and it's like I had, saw. I see. I saw enough like, signals through social media and other channels that, okay, there's some subset of people who might be interested in the things that I say or my perspective or experience about marketing. And so, like, I think, I think I could sell. I think I could sell a book if I did a book. Whereas, like, probably six, seven years ago, I may have wanted to write a book for like, the creative process of it, but I maybe could have sold like 40 copies and, you know, they all would have been my friends and family. And so I think part of it was like, I Had some success with Drift and some success with Privy. And I shared a lot of B2B marketing thoughts, and that's what I like to talk about on social media. And so those had led to building a small audience of my own. And I thought a way to go further with that audience would be to create a book. And then I love talking about marketing and I love teaching and sharing and creating ideas. And I also love the marketing part of it. And so I, as much as I wanted to write the book, I actually wanted to, like, go through the process of it because I love coming up with the title, coming up with the COVID coming up with the layout, the structure, the marketing plan, the offers, the who's, you know, like that. That whole strategy, like sending copies to early people and having them post on social media or, you know, that. That type of stuff. I love that. Then the last part of it was like, I kind of had like one or two philosophies that I felt they weren't like, unique to me. As like, somebody, you know, said the other day, like, this, there's nothing groundbreaking in. Some guy left me a review. So there's nothing groundbreaking in this book. And he's not. He's entirely right. This is all clearly taking off of the things that I've ingested over the years. But what I spit out into the world was, hey, here is a playbook that I think, at least here's how I would articulate. This is kind of what I've done with the companies that I've worked at over the last couple years. I'm going to try to put it into a book and kind of like cement that a little bit. And I think actually the process of writing a book help me clarify that idea. The same way writing can be the thing that brings clarity. And so it was like a cool exercise to try to have to package this and actually think about it. And so the way that I came up with Founder Brand was, well, something that we did at Drift was like, very focused on building a media company and using the founder. And we had a podcast and very active on social media and similar but different playbook at Drift. And then in my own life with dgmg, that starts to explode and the thread between all that were those ingredients, which is Twitter, LinkedIn, podcasting, strong storytelling and strong connection to the feedback loop on social media. I was like, I wonder if there's a way that I could talk about what that is. And I was like, I came up with the name Founder Brand, and I was inspired by I really liked Donald Miller's book storybrand, and I loved the title for that book. And I was like, oh, what? Story Brand is a great concept, but, like, kind of what I've been doing is like, Founder Brand. Look it up. Does anybody own the domain? Founder Brand? Nobody owns domain. Founder Brand. Okay, cool. Maybe I'll call Founder Brand the title. And then the coolest part was like, I had the outline and the. I had written like the six page, like, outline just. Just like in one sitting. And that's what I knew, like, this was going to be a. This, this was real to me, was so, like, I didn't have to slog through, like, what's the book going to be about? I sat down, I was like, for a couple hours. I just banged out like, the start, you know, the founder. Here's why. Here's why. I still think social media is so underrated and being used wrong by most B2B companies. Here's how you can do it. Here are the things that I do. Screenshots, examples. Like, I do this every day. And one of the coolest parts was like, the most meta piece of it was like, I tested the title with my DGMG community people. Like, I have this, this private Facebook group of a bunch of marketing people. And I first shared the concept of the book and I said, like, hey, I'm thinking about writing a book. Knowing what you know about me, what would you write about? And it was amazing. I had like 100 comments of, like, all these different ideas, and a lot of them started to hit on this concept. And so then I went back and a couple weeks later, I had like a bunch of ideas on the title and the title. You know, you go through the title process and like, I shared an idea for the title with. With the community, and people gave me feedback on it and they tweaked it. And so it was super cool to be able to, like, actually test it along the way with the community. And then like, the ultimate lesson is like, that's kind of what I talk about in the book, which is like, at Drift, we built up this engaged audience of people through a podcast seeking wisdom, which had nothing to do with the product that we were selling, but that created super fans. It created this, like, amazing connection with people that created our initial audience, that helped us get initial traction, which helped us get our existing customers. And so I've seen just, like the power of building an audience, what you get from that. And like, you know, you and I recently just work together on some content stuff. But, like, all the ideas that we came up with for content were basically driven through the community. And so the thing that I talk about in the book is how it's not just about publishing on social media to be vain and gain followers. It's about this insane marketing hack, which is. I hate to even use as a hack, but it's like, if you have an audience, you can literally foolproof this. And so this is like a long rant on the book. But ultimately I felt like, okay, the book can't be that bad because I've already kind of tested a lot of these concepts with people. And I felt really good that if I do a book, then it might sell. And it's kind of like a lot of the stuff that I talk about is the stuff that I've been doing.

There's so many directions I want to go here. But you mentioned a couple of times, media company, building a media company, building an audience. And that's something that I hear a lot nowadays. When I was at HubSpot, that was a huge focus, obviously, since the beginning. And then they bought the hustle. Stripe is doing publishing arm. I think Coinbase is doing something like this as well. Everybody's going straight to the audience as opposed to going through public relations and publications. But I don't feel like anybody's really truly defined what a media company means in the context of, like a B2B brand. I think you are a media company in many ways right now, and I think, like, Drift was a very good example of that. So, like, what do you. How do you define, like a media company outside of. I know you mentioned the channels that could be useful for this, like Twitter and LinkedIn. And you mentioned storytelling, but how do you go from going through the motions in those places to actually building something that people care about and want to follow?

Well, okay, I think that. I don't know. I've never had to give a sexy definition to a media company, but I think I would say that it's probably something like an entity that puts out content about a particular topic and attracts. With the goal of attracting and building an audience of people who might be interested in that topic. And so that could be. You are the Hustle, and you talk about entrepreneurship and these kind of like unique business ideas, and you're going to build an audience of entrepreneurs or solopreneurs or entrepreneur, whatever they are. Right. And I talk about this a lot because I think that most, and I mostly talk about B2B companies is that that's your world on this, right? Like, mostly, yeah, I would say for the most part. Yeah. Okay. For the most part. I think the advice applies either way. But most B2B companies struggle with like, things like content marketing and social media because I just think they use them wrong. They use them as like promotional channels for their business, which is already kind of like by nature going to be more boring because it's usually B2B. And I don't think B2B is boring. I just think, like, it's not the. It's harder to build a. It's harder to build a social media presence for a B2B company than it is for like a golf meme account or something. Right? Yeah. Or Wendy's. Right. It's just that you're just appealing to different things. And so what I see happen over and over is like these companies, they just kind of like they had their own all these channels, but like the way they use Twitter and LinkedIn and YouTube or whatever it is is they just kind of post like all stuff related to their company. When I think the real way to like actually build an audience and build a following is to be like the number one resource or a top resource for your dream customer and work backwards from there. So, like, if you are. If I want to build an audience of event marketing people and I'm an event marketing software company, the way that I will be effective at building an audience on social media will be through trying to become a number, trying to make that event marketing person laugh, smile, share something, learn something, get something new to be the number one resource for that. And so if you and me just had our own side hustle, we're like, we're going to build a newsletter for event marketing people and it's just going to be awesome. Like, we could probably. We would have a better chance of growing that, just you and me, if it was our side hustle than we would if we were like implanted on the marketing team of a B2B SaaS company. Because they're. They're going to be like demand gen team is like asking them, hey, can you promote this on social media? And can you promote our webinar on social media? And can you promote this event on social media? And we got to promote this award on social media, but we just like keep doing all those things and then you don't actually ever build an audience and a following. And it's not that I don't think that I'm not interested in the vanity of building an audience and following, but I think the following really does matter, because ultimately the goal is to drive some type of results for the business. And so did HubSpot drive more buyers in the very early days because of their presence and the content they put out on Twitter and LinkedIn? 100% it mattered that they were one of the only B2B accounts with a million Twitter followers back in the day because they had reach, and so they could actually, when they needed to promote something, they could actually drive people there. And so maybe like, you know, 8 out of 10 times they're talking about inbound marketing or marketing, and then when they have to promote something, it actually works. And so I just. I like to use the media company mindset because I think it's a. It's a different mindset. Like, how can you be the media company? How can you be the blog, the newsletter, the resource for your niche? Not like, we're a B2B SaaS company that has social media channels.

You mentioned offhand that, like, you and I could do a newsletter, and probably that would be more successful than if we were implanted in a company doing the same thing and trying to build that. So I'm kind of implying that. I would guess that's because there's less red tape. We could just kind of, like, fire off and have more authenticity and personality. We could add more of ourselves there and less of the promotion.

I don't think it's a personality thing. I think it's the misalignment around, like, goal. Like, somebody would try to goal it, and within two weeks of us getting a hundred subscribers on it, the VP of sales would be like, yo, let me monetize. Wait, let me. Let me hit them up. Yeah, let me. Let me send them. Like, let's get them in our funnel, right? And it's such a hard thing to, like, to wrangle inside of the company because, like, everyone's. Everyone's working hard, everyone's stretched in. Everyone's trying to, like, hit the number, hit the goal. Like, you use. Kind of always want to use that channel to promote it. But, like, here I'll give you an actual example to explain this better. When we start, like, in the early days of Drift, we started Seeking Wisdom, which was a podcast about, like, just learning books. We were learning what we're learning as we're building Drift, David's observations and lessons and all that stuff. And we never talked about, like, here's how to use Drift's Chatbot product. But people built a relationship with us. We talked about topics that were kind of like, Tangential to the people that we wanted to sell to. So sales and marketing people were interested in stories about entrepreneurship and book reviews and things we were learning. But we never like, promoted Drift heavily on that show. But it was because we were associated with Drift and we ended up building an email list and we ended up, then after like six months of doing the podcast, when we actually launched our product, we could do a podcast episode and be like, hey, we've kind of been building in public doing this along the way. I know we don't often talk about our product on this podcast, but we actually launched it today. Here's what it is. You can actually then earn the right to do that, but that has to happen over long stretches of time. It becomes like, cool, we're going to do this newsletter after a month. Like, how are we going to turn this into a pipeline? How are we going to turn this into revenue? Where, like, once you build an audience like, like Gong is another great example. Like they focus on LinkedIn early and they just kind of focus very specifically on LinkedIn. And they're one of the few, like B2B SaaS companies I've seen that has like a meaningful, like they have a hundred thousand followers on LinkedIn and the engagement is real. It's not just like people commenting like, you know, it's not like just employees commenting on the post like, nice, love this company. You know, it's like actual, actual substance, actual thoughts. And so because they built that LinkedIn, that LinkedIn funnel, the content team at Gong is not like slamming their heads against the desk trying to figure out how will we optimize this content to get more eyeballs on it. They built this amazing top of the funnel strategy. One out of every ten posts they tell you about some in depth research guide that they wrote about sales templates. That research guide about sales templates is actually going to help them drive revenue. And they've only promoted Gong really 1 out of 10 times. And so instead of the VP of Sales asking for like, hey, when can we sell to this audience? You basically like build up a strong, engaged audience. You prime them, you build credibility and trust. And then when you have something, they're still coming with value. They're not promoting on LinkedIn, like, hey, go sign up for our demo. They're like, hey, go get these 300 sales templates. Okay, well, the people that go and get those sales templates are probably in sales because they're going to use them and then they're probably a good fit for Gong. And so like at that point they introduce it. But just as like, content is not a direct, at least in the way that I think about it, like, content is not always a direct response channel. And I've seen multiple different examples of like, the power of building an audience. And I'm not saying that everybody has to do this. I'm definitely biased by my experience and my approach to marketing has been very like social media, content, audience building heavy. You can definitely win with other playbooks. I'm talking about what I've seen and I've seen it be an advantage. And I've also seen, I talk to a lot of companies who are very analytical, but then I talk about some of this stuff and they're like, I'm speaking an entire new language and they've never even thought about doing some of that stuff.

Well, there's a time and a place for, I think, both of these because my background is in conversion rate optimization and direct response stuff. So I'm like a performance guy. But now that I'm at the agency, it's like, you can't really do that much performance marketing. You've got to build these brand channels. So with the podcast in particular, we, we haven't tried to squeeze any juice from it too early. We're like, and maybe we never will. Maybe it's something that we just continue to build up trust and authority through that and build audience.

Yeah, I mean, like, I honestly, like, I think you could be like, if, if it was me, I would be like, share. My podcast would be all about like, yeah, talking to, talking to other marketing people, whoever you want to talk to. Like, I'd be telling my story about, like, why did you all quit your jobs to go start this, this, this content business? Right? What did you learn? Like that to me, and that's like exactly like the point of founder brand. Like, I think that is the best ingredient you can use today because there's so much noise, there's so much competition, it's harder than ever to stand out. Like, the way you're gonna win clients is not because you're cheaper or you do, you know, you're not gonna, you don't wanna win on that. So, like, and especially in a services type of business, people are gonna buy from people. And so I wanna feel like, shoot. The reason that I worked with you all in this example is like, oh, these people are legit. I know their backgrounds, I know where they come from. They've done some meaningful stuff and I respect that. The three of you all quit your jobs and you're going to go build this agency. That, to me, is the best marketing content. Now, a lot of people are like, they might not be comfortable with putting that out there. And I'm not saying that you have to share your full revenue numbers and expenses and everything, but there's a lot of damn interesting stuff. I think, you know, the stuff you and me talked about even before you were recording on this podcast, I think would be great podcast content to build up your credibility. And so I think, like, people just forget that. We do think so often about the conversion rate optimization stuff. And it's very important. But with so many brands in any industry, like, so much of marketing is a game of, like, do people know like and trust you? Because there's five companies that do event marketing software. They all might be the same, but how can I be the one that people feel like they know like and trust? And, like, hey, that's why I went with them first, and then they blew me away with a product demo. But I went with them because I like them for this reason. And that's not going to be the same for everybody, but I think it can be a very effective strategy.

I totally agree. And you said something that multiple clients have said, which is like listening to our kitchen side episodes, which is just me and the founders talking about different. We'll brainstorm ideas or last one. We talked about, like, our backgrounds and content and how we got to this point. They say that that allows them to picture what it's like working with us. It's like they're in our meetings, and I think that's pretty powerful. But you. You kind of mentioned that, you know, you build up an audience and then there's this.

Flip.

You switch, right? Like, and then you maybe can start to monetize that. I don't know if that was what you're going with, but you don't want to monetize in the first month. But eventually you do get to this privilege where you can promote something, such as your example with the Drift podcast.

I think monetization is one way to think about it, and that can be one goal. But I think it's almost like, I think a better way to think about it for most people might be you're trying to transfer your audience from that platform to somewhere else. You know, it's like, hey, you've been, like, getting all this. You've proven that you're interesting and relevant in some way, and so are those people who like and comment on your post. Are they willing to actually, like, sign up for one of your events, listen to your podcast, buy your product, right? Buy your course, buy your service, whatever it is. So I don't think it has to be monetized, but I think it's like, ultimately the end game or the end goal for any business is not just to have a bunch of social media followers. It's like, how can we use them to buy things and drive value?

And how do you know when that point is? How do you know when you've built enough trust with your audience?

I mean, you're kind of like, you're kind of just always testing. I think you should be always testing different ideas, different creatives, different offers, different things, because you don't just build up for six months and then like, all right, I'm going to now promote my thing, because you just don't know. It could have happened earlier. And so I think ideally you're building multiple channels as you're doing it, but you're going to just test small. And so you're going to say, like, okay, can I first. Well, I think first, what's the most natural connection? And so if somebody has been engaging with your content on social media, what's the next best step? Is it to get a sales demo? Probably not. Is it to, like, hey, we also have a newsletter where twice a week we send out tips to content marketing professionals. And it's not stuff that we share on LinkedIn. Can you join our newsletter? Great. Or we do this weekly CMO interview series and you should go check it out. And now you're subscribed to our podcast. And so it's tough to answer that without saying, like, you have to zoom all the way out and map out the stages of the funnel for your business. Right. And so, like, I like to think about, like, all the different channels and have them working together. And so, like, we think that social media is going to be the first place. And so once we get them on social, we want to get people onto our email list. Once we get them on our email list, we want to get them to our podcast. Once we get them on our podcast, we want to get them to our quarterly events. If we can get them to one of our quarterly events, maybe then we can sell to them and give them a demo. You can't have this media company just completely operating in a vacuum. There has to be some thought to how does this fit in with your funnel and with your other assets? And I think this might have been from Russell Brunson, who's the founder of ClickFunnels but he calls it an information funnel. And so you have your product funnel, which is your sales funnel. I raise my hand and I'm interested, but you also have this information funnel. How are you going to teach your dream customers about your way of doing things? And what are all the steps? And so I like to layer them in. And so it's not about monetizing right out the gate. But now I've used social media to grow a community of 4,000 paying members. That happened only because for like six, seven years I was putting content out on social media. It wasn't like I didn't decide to go the paid route on day one. But it could have been an email list, it could have been a YouTube channel. It starts with like, what are the channels that you're trying to build for your business and why? And then can you match those up with the steps that you want somebody to take?

There's this interesting blending that I'm hearing here. I always reference this, this framework that I think people talk about in like book writing, actually like novels, which is like Planner and Pantser. So like you either plan meticulously, every character in the development, the plot up front and go from there, or you're, you know, kind of flying by the seat of your pants. And it sounds like you have a mix whiteboard out, like all these different channels and the information.

No.

Okay, so you're not.

I, I would, I mean, like that, I would like, if it was like, hey, we're, we're going to start a B2B SaaS company, like, what's our funnel? I would 100% do that. Yeah, we did that at Drift, I've done that at Privy.

But for dgmg, it's not been something that's been meticulously planned from the top.

No, I am very off the cuff and I wish more people knew that I am the farthest thing from. I have this thing planned. Literally Monday morning of this week, I was like, I've been getting a lot of LinkedIn questions, let's do a LinkedIn session on Friday. And we did it. Right. And so for me it was more like, yeah, it was more just very off the cuff and testing as I go. But that what, that's what was so powerful about having an audience on LinkedIn and social media.

You can see stuff all the time.

Yeah, all the time. All the time. And so like I have this example in the book actually, but like a couple, like two years ago when I, when I went to Privy and I joined a cmo I needed to recruit a whole new marketing team, but I couldn't hire anybody from Drift. And so I'm like, well, I can't hire anybody that I know. I've kind of only been focused on Drift for the last four years. How the heck am I going to build a new network of people? And so I went on LinkedIn and I posted. I'm thinking about doing a marketing breakfast in Boston. It will probably be in January. If you're interested and you work at a B2B startup in Boston and work in marketing, come in here and just let me know if you'd be interested. And oh, actually I created like an email alias for like a Gmail and I made it like there's a lot of damn interesting stuff. Like I think, you know, the stuff you and me talk are really good about it. And so I kind of just, I kind of have. I kind of just continue to like feel my way around that way. And it's one of the reasons why like you have to actually be on social media because other that stuff is hard to feel and quantify elsewhere. So I don't have all those steps. I do have some sense of like a funnel that I want. And it's actually recently this year started building out my DGMG company page and spending more time with my LinkedIn and social media because I see how much 90% of the top of the funnel for my paid community is. Everybody says they found it from LinkedIn usually now that I'm like, okay, how can I grow that top of the funnel? And so I want people to follow on social media. And then I added an email list this year because I realized that the step was too big. It was like, okay, well now I'm crossing the chasm of the people that are already DGMG members are the people who already knew me and have already paid for a membership. Now I got to go to Alex who doesn't know me, and this guy who's just sharing rants on LinkedIn is all of a sudden going to think I'm going to pay him $20 a month to join his community? Hell no. And so I needed to, like, that was a conscious thought, like I needed to fix that somehow. So instead I added an email list, a newsletter, and Now I have 12,000 people on that newsletter. And so now the funnels, like, it doesn't just go from social media to paid community, it goes social media. Then on my email list I Send out free B2B marketing tips and rants and lessons every week. And Then in that newsletter we promote the community and sometimes people subscribe. And then if people are in the community over a couple of months I realized like, wow, I see all these questions coming up. People want more, okay, let me try to do a paid workshop or let me. Now I, now I now like I'm. My full time business is consulting. The four clients that I have for consulting have come entirely through like the DGMG funnel. And so it hasn't necessarily been like conscious and intentional, but you kind of like, once you're out there, you start to figure out some of the steps like on the fly, and then you can go and pop them in. I would have not have been this successful. I almost guarantee it. If I came out of the gate and I was like, this is my funnel and I'm going to measure it every week. This is how many LinkedIn followers, this is how many email people, this is how many paid subscribers, this is how many clients. And some people want to measure it that way, but I'm just much more of like the, My bias is creative content communication. And so I just figured like, look, there's a niche. I'm going to talk a lot about this niche and I'm going to build this funnel like on the fly as it comes up. But that's one of the most powerful things about building an audience.

I love that.

Yeah.

I mean, I approach things similarly. I like to use a pretentious word for it, which is epistemological humility. Right. Like if you analyze everything up front and say this is your funnel, you're kind of, you're not admitting to yourself that you don't know all the answers, whereas you're leaving a little bit of space to say, I don't know what's going to work and I'm going to.

Find out it's relative to what you're doing. And so yeah, if you're an E commerce brand and you're selling hoodies, then your funnel needs to be a lot more quantitative than what I'm saying right now because it's like, we need this much traffic, we need this much conversion rate. That means we need to spend, we need to get CPMs for this much and click through rates for this much and you can build your whole funnel that way. But I think what I'm talking about is from a B2B standpoint. And so yeah, think about like, what if your agency business was built on like this spreadsheet that had like how many times a week you needed to post on LinkedIn? You know, if you get 20,000, and this is where so many companies make this mistake. They try to like come up with these like arbitrary goals. Like, well, 40,000 followers on LinkedIn should convert about 2% of people into email lists. It just never works that way. And so it's good to have some of those thoughts about what you want the funnel to be. But ultimately your best sales strategy from a B2B standpoint is I think it's like this one, two punch approach, which is on one side of the coin. You're going targeted one to one outreach. Who are your dream customers, who you've already helped, These types of people who can you go find, you're going them directly and then while you're doing that, you're starting to build up your awareness and build up your brand through content, through personality, through thought leadership. And it's like those two things can operate in parallel. People just think that you have to either be doing one or the other. And that's not true.

That's exactly what we're doing. So I love to hear that you mentioned you get a lot of leads for the community from LinkedIn and that's kind of the top of the funnel and you're thinking about scaling that up.

Yeah, I mean, and think about scaling meaning, like, I'm just actively trying to. I feel like I have a why for posting now because I'm building this business with dgmg. I'm actually going to work on like rebranding and renaming it. And I have a bunch of ideas around that. And so I do want to have more of that funnel.

Have you? I mean, your brand and voice is very, you know, top of mind. So like, when somebody sees what you post on LinkedIn, I think you've got a distinct style. So after a certain point, like, can you, you couldn't outsource this, could you? Maybe you could, I don't know. I asked my LinkedIn right now and it's not.

Well, okay, so you can, you can. And I have somebody that helps me with LinkedIn, but what he helps me with is not my words and my thoughts. Like, and there was actually somebody recently who's like, I want to, like, I want to do what you did and I want to, you know, like, I want to build this business and I want to build it off of LinkedIn and like, let's just hire me a ghostwriter and I'm gonna build my LinkedIn account. And I was so offended by that because I'm like, I spent 10 years putting content out about Marketing, focusing on marketing, sharing what I'm doing, building credibility and trust. And so now, and I put out a ton of content. Like I do a bunch of podcast interviews. I have a newsletter, I have a blog. I'm posting five, six, seven times a week in the DGMG community. Like now I'm a ghostwriter's dream because I'm putting stuff out there and so I don't have to say like, hey, let's figure out. And I'm tweeting all the time. And so, like, I don't think you can. I think you first need to, you need to have something to say and you need to have a point of view and you need to like communicate that regularly. And maybe once you have a system, I'm working with somebody who's like, the goal is to help me scale it because I've proven now to like, you know, 100,000 followers or whatever on Twitter. I feel like that could grow. And if that grows, I'll get more people that will find out about dgmg. So he's helping me with that. I don't think you can outsource the content piece of it because eventually it's just going to break eventually. You run a content marketing agency, so someone's going to ghostwrite for you and post some content memes and maybe some of your thought leadership and it's going to work. But it's ultimately about the long term consistency thing and it takes a really long time. You might get lucky and it might happen overnight, but I think for most people it doesn't. And so it takes a lot of time and it's a hard thing to. It is a hard thing to outsource. However, though, you can outsource it better if you have some other content things. Like Ben, who's a CEO at Privy, for example, he has a daily podcast, so he's doing a five to ten minute day podcast episode. If he wanted to outsource his social media, I would say that could probably be effective because his voice is. He's already putting that out into the world multiple times. And so there's actually something for someone to work with versus if you're playing this game of founder has never really said anything. Ghostwriter, trying to guess what you want versus I got a founder who's done 100 podcast episodes, then yes, we could get someone to ghostwrite and help social media from that capacity. But I think for most people it's got to be you.

And in that sense it feels a lot more like repurposing than ghost writing. You're just taking that content that they've said and building it for this specific format, which it's basically the same thing as an example.

Now, the help that I have with LinkedIn is more like. It's more about. I posted a bunch of things a year ago that got a lot of traction or were interesting, but LinkedIn, let's say you have 100,000 followers on LinkedIn. Do 100,000 followers see every one of your posts? No. I could post something right now in. 7,000 people would see it. And so there's 93,000 people who never saw that post. And so we're like, I've put out content so much on LinkedIn now it's like, okay, are there. Can you replay the hits? And like, you know this from a content standpoint, but just because you wrote it once doesn't mean it's not going to work again. And so, like, it's about taking. Taking this other stuff and getting it back into the. Into the mix. But ultimately, you have to be. You have to be interesting. You have to. The. The advice is not like, just post on LinkedIn every day, Alex. You'll build a brand. And that's not it. You have to first be Alex and have something interesting to say and have people who care about the thing you're talking about and have a different way to convey it. And for me, it was like, I came in at a time and we were questioning a lot of the traditional B2B marketing stuff, and that attracted a new group of B2B marketing people. And now I've evolved and I don't necessarily. I'm not so negative and questioning things all the time. Contrarian. I'm not so contrarian all the time. I'm more like sharing what I'm doing and what I'm observing. And now I'm in a different spot and I have four clients and I have a community of 4,000 marketers. And shoot. I have a unique perspective on B2B marketing now just because of the things that I'm observing every day. And so I'm not thinking about, like, I got to think about what I'm going to write. I'm like, I just had a call with a client and they clearly still don't get email marketing. I'm going to write a rant about email marketing. And that's not just me making that up. That's based on something that I learned.

This is funny. David. My co founder and I have been working on our Twitter and LinkedIn stuff and at first, he had trouble thinking about what to write, but then he thought, what annoys me? What do I disagree with? What do I get angry about in the marketing space? Then he would just find himself passionately writing responses to that. And it reminded me of this scene from School of Rock when they're trying to write their first rock song and they're like, all right, what ticks you off? It's like homework. Homework ticks me off. And they just go through each piece and write this whole song about just ranting about things they don't like. And I do feel like that's a method you could use to at least have some opinions that stand out that aren't just cookie cutter, fortune cookie marketing fluff.

Yeah. Have an opinion for sure. People even will say things like, email's not dead still. And that will go viral. And it doesn't have to be new, it just has to be relevant. And I think when it's based on things that you're actually doing, then it will come off as authentic and real, you know?

Totally. So on a personal level, who are you chasing and what's your long game?

Who am I chasing?

Yeah, what's. What's the long game for you? Like, where are you looking for?

I don't know. Honestly, I'm in a. I'm in a weird spot. I don't. I don't have a. I don't really have a big master plan. I, you know, like, this is personal, but I'm just. I'll be honest with you. Like, I. I worked at two companies in the last couple years that. That got acquired. And so, like, you know, we've done well financially. And so I don't. I don't feel the need to, like, my master plan isn't, like, to, like, grind and build DGMG into some fun, you know, some $100 million business. I feel very, very, very fortunate at this point in my life. And I'm in my mid-30s and I have two little kids. And so, like, my number one priority is to, like, do what I want and spend as much time with my family. It's chaos in my house right now. If you can hear. Spend as much time with them as possible and then do all the marketing stuff that I want to do. And so, like, I don't have some master plan, but I am. You know, I do love marketing and I love building. And so, like, I kind of, like, that's my number one. But number two is, like, I would like to see what can happen with dgmg. And I think what I have learned is that it started off as like a paid community of people who wanted to, like, hear me talk more privately about marketing. But what it's evolved to is it's become this community of B2B marketers who are, like, getting promoted not because of things that I said, but I've created the community, but they're talking to each other or there's like, they're learning from other threads. It's not like, hey, here's Dave, here's a rant. Ah, let's rant about email marketing. Yep. No. And so that was the initial wedge, but it's like, evolved from that to be like, my realization in the last probably a couple months is like, whoa, there's something really special here about, like, B2B marketing and helping B2B marketers finding jobs and getting promoted. And I've been there as a B2B marketing person at a company, you don't have a lot of people inside your company to talk about and like, hey, Dave, go create your marketing plan for the year. And I'm like, I've never done that before. Like, how many, how many marketing people doing, like, when first time I had a team, it's like, how many people should I hire? I have a budget of X. What are the ratios? Who should you hire? What agencies are you working with? And so it's kind of like organically come together as that. That compared and marry that up with the trend of I'm seeing more companies like HubSpot acquire the hustle, like Outreach acquire sales hacker like Zapier acquire MakerPad, and there's millions of other examples. And I've been lately thinking about, like, should I be thinking about this differently? And there could be some longer play. I don't need that to happen. It would be cool if it did, if it was the right fit down the road. But that's kind of the thing that I'm tinkering with right now. And so my biggest, like, creative challenge right now, now that the book is out, is how can I kind of like pivot dgmg? And I don't mean pivot, but more like repackage and rename and rebrand. How do I. How do I make it not like the Dave Gerhardt show, which I really don't want it to be, and people don't want that to be either. To more like, this is the place to go if you're in B2B marketing and this is your cheat code. And like, this is like, you. You got a Leg up on getting a promotion because you joined this community. That's what I'm trying to focus on. And, like, what are all the things that need to happen? And then how does. How can that grow? Should I be doing more with my podcast? Should I be doing more with video? Like, then I might actually think about building a funnel. But you got some very real, honest answers from me on that one, so I hope that was okay.

That's sick. I love that. Yeah. I mean, to me, it sounds like a creative playground, and you've got a ton of optionality and it's just, like, fun to work on right now. Um, we're.

Yeah, it's a gift. It's a gift and a curse. Because I. I can do anything and I can. And then, like, I'm the only one to hold it. Yeah. Like, and then I'll have a week where, like, I'll be like, yeah, I'm going to go build a golf brand. And, you know, forget this B2B stuff. This stuff is boring. I don't know how to do this. And then I'm like, no, dummy. Stick to what you know. And, like, you're just at the beginning of this thing and you can do that other stuff later. So it's just the constant battle with myself. Yes.

Yeah, man. We've got similar minds. Blessing and a curse. So we're basically at time. So I want to ask if one, if there's anything you wanted to say that you haven't said, and two, just point people where they can find you online. We mentioned DGMG a bunch, but where should people go to find you?

Yeah, just the best thing now is go to grab a copy of my book. You go to Amazon and type founder, brand, that has a lot of this stuff that we're talking about. And the early response to the book has been positive. So if you like that, check it out. Otherwise, I'm everywhere. Dave Gerhart on my website and social media and stuff.

Amazing. Thank you so much.

There's a niche. I'm gonna. I'm gonna talk a lot about this niche, and I'm gonna build this funnel, like, on the fly as it comes up. But that's one of the most powerful things about building an audience.

I love that.

Yeah.

I mean, I approach things similarly. I like to use a pretentious word for it, which is epistemological humility. Right. Like, if you analyze everything up front and say, this is your funnel, you're kind of. You're not admitting to yourself that you don't know all the answers, whereas you're leaving a little bit of space to say like, I don't know what's going to work and I'm going to find.

Out it's relative to what is relative to what you're doing. And so like, yeah, if you're an E commerce brand and you're selling hoodies, then your funnel needs to be a lot more quantitative than what I'm saying right now because it's like we need this much traffic, we need this much conversion rate. That means we need to spend, we need to get CPMs for this much and click through rates for this much and you can build your whole funnel that way. But I think what I'm talking about is from a B2B standpoint. And so yeah, think about what if your agency business was built on this spreadsheet that had how many times a week you needed to post on LinkedIn. And you know, if you get 20,000 and this is where so many companies make this mistake. They try to like come up with these like arbitrary goals. Like well, 40,000 followers on LinkedIn should convert about 2% of people into email list. It just never works that way. And so it's good to have some of those like thoughts about what you want the funnel to be. But ultimately like your best sales strategy from a B2B standpoint is I think it's like this one two punch approach which is on one side of the coin. You're going targeted one to one outreach. Who are your dream customers who you've already helped, these types of people who can you go find, you're going them directly and then while you're doing that, you're starting to build up your awareness and build up your brand through content, through personality, through thought leadership. And it's like those two things can operate in parallel. People just think that you have to either be doing one or the other. And that's not true.

That's exactly what we're doing. So I love to hear that you mentioned you get a lot of leads for the community from LinkedIn and that's kind of the top of the funnel. And you're thinking about scaling that up.

Yeah, I mean, and think about scaling meaning I'm just actively trying to. I feel like I have a why for posting now because I'm building this business with dgmg. I'm actually going to work on rebranding and renaming it and I have a bunch of ideas around that. So I do want to have more of that funnel. Um, but yeah, have you.

I mean, your brand and voice is. Is very, you know, top of mind. So, like, when somebody sees what you post on LinkedIn, I think you've got a distinct style. So after a certain point, like, can you. You couldn't outsource this, could you? Maybe you could. I don't know. I'm trying. I ask, is trying to outsource my LinkedIn right now, and it's not.

Well, okay, so. So you can. You can. And I have somebody that helps me with LinkedIn, but what he helps me with is not my words and my thoughts. And there was actually somebody recently who's like, I want to do what you did, and I want to build this business and I want to build it off of LinkedIn and let's just hire me a ghostwriter and I'm going to build my LinkedIn account. And I was so offended by that because I'm like, I spent 10 years, like, putting content, like, out about marketing, focusing on marketing, sharing what I'm doing, building credibility and trust. And so now. And I put out a ton of content. Like, I do a bunch of podcast interviews. I have a newsletter, I have a blog. I'm posting five, six, seven times a week in the DGMG community. Like, now I'm a. I'm a ghostwriter's dream because I'm putting stuff out there. And so, like, I don't have to say, like, hey, let's figure out. And I tweet. I'm tweeting all the time. And so, like, I don't think, you know.