Dave Gerhardt is hiring for Exit Five

All right, so I was at lunch with my buddy Daniel Botero the other day. He's actually blowing up on LinkedIn. So if. If you're listening to this, go follow Daniel Botero on LinkedIn. He talks all about kind of career stuff. And anyway, we were at lunch the other day, and he starts telling me this crazy story. Last time he was back home, Colombia, and he was coming back, he was in the airport going through security. There's this guy in front of him. And, you know, the guy's texting in front of him and kind of looks down and not really super paying attention, but I think he noticed, like, the luggage tag on this guy's luggage, and he recognizes the name and kind of taps the guy on the shoulder, and he's like, hey, do you know. You know, Albert Botero? And the guy turned around and was like, that was my best friend. And Daniel's like, that was my father. And Daniel's father passed away when Daniel was, like, three years old.

What?

And, like, I'm getting goose chills right now. Just. Just telling the story again. So he, like, his dad passed away suddenly. I think it was pancreatic cancer or something like that. And it was, like, very quick, like, found out he had it, maybe even a few weeks, maybe a couple months later, passed away and knew this guy's name because Daniel's mom would talk about this guy. Like, I mean, they were. They were best friends. And so he had mentioned, you know, she had mentioned the name, but I don't think Daniel had. You know, Daniel didn't remember the guy or anything, but he just knew the name. And so they get through security, and they end up meeting on the other side of security. And this guy's, like, obviously, like, wanting to, you know, engage with Daniel and, like, hey, like, tell me about your life. Tell me what's like. Right. But they're like, on their. I think they were on there. They were leaving Columbia, I think, headed to Miami or something. And so they end up swapping information, and they're like, hey, we should meet up either the next time we're in Colombia or, like, let's meet up in. In Miami. So fast forward a few months, they end up. They end up meeting up. Turns out, dude, this guy is, like a baller. Like, his dad was a pretty successful guy in business, but they were in, like, their early mid-30s, so, you know, was successful. I think they both came from, like, family businesses that were pretty successful. This guy's now, like, I think one of the wealthiest guys in Colombia.

Wow.

And so he's meeting with Daniel, and. And Daniel's like, I have struck gold. Like, this guy who just happened to be my dad's best friend, I've randomly connect with in this airport in the security line. And now I have this incredible mentor who's, like, wanting to invest in my life, and he's like, I've got to be, you know, I'm trying to be careful. I'm, like, not trying to, you know, ask too much because it's like, oh, I don't want to. I'm sure this guy has people going to take advantage of him all the time because of his success. And. And he. So he's like, I don't want to do that. Like, I. I just want, like, a relationship with this guy.

But, dude, how crazy is that, dude? I think the point that is wild, once you think back on it, is the fact that he had the courage to tap on his shoulder and, like, because the chances of it actually being who you're thinking about just based on, like, the luggage tag. Like, I don't know, man. Like, there's just so many people in the world. What are the odds? That is nuts. And, like, he could have just let that moment slip, and then nothing would have ever happened in no. No story, no mentor, no nothing.

But, like, yeah, when they were talking in Miami, I think they've met a couple of times since then. Text back and forth. It's like, this guy could literally change the trajectory of Daniel's entrepreneurial, like, life. I don't know if he'll end up funding, you know, businesses that. That Daniel wants to build down the road. But it was crazy. When they were talking, Daniel was like. He was telling me that this guy was telling him, like, Daniel, you've got it. Like, some of the things you're saying, like, I hear your father whenever you say that, like, you're processing, you're thinking about things exactly like your dad did. And it just almost made me tear up because I was like, how special is that to get to this father that you never really knew? Cause you were three when he passed away. And you get to hear from someone who is his best friend that you resemble him in the way he thinks and the way he, you know, mannerisms. He was calling out different mannerisms, and I was just like, oh, that is so freaking special.

That.

Wow.

I mean, again, kudos to him for the courage, because that's the type of story you want. That's a movie type story, but you just don't get it that often.

Well, that's it for story time with James today. Let's get into this.

I can put it this way, James.

Yeah.

This story I'm about to bring up. Dave Gerhardt might need one of those airport moments. He's like trying to tap somebody on the shoulders. We both have been tracking this story. Dave Gearhart posted within the last couple weeks about wanting a business partner to help him run exit 5. And there's a lot here. He's really just sort of describing the place that Exit 5 finds itself right now. He's not looking for a marketer, which, you know, most of his network is going to be marketers. He's looking for a GM type position and laid out, you know, salary. It's a remote position, but there's a number of things in here that were interesting. One, he's just using his network. He's literally posting this on LinkedIn, which is not the most B2B SaaS way of going about things. It's just like, hey, here we go, here it is. If you want to apply, go for it. And it's like Google form and people went wild. 966 likes and 190 comments later. So when you saw this, I mean, I thought it was brilliant. But beyond that, what really stood out to you? Because it's almost a job posting, but we both thought it was pretty creative in some of the ways that you did it.

Yeah. So my initial take is that DG is a brilliant copywriter. And it's funny because actually in between, I think he had like, he's posted about the job opening like twice in between that he actually posted about, I think a book called like Breakthrough Advertising or something like Ryan Dice sent it to him and you can't find the book on Amazon for like less than $400 or something crazy like that. And so the guy clearly studies the craft of copywriting ad writing. But there are a few things that I noticed that I just specific things about the job posting itself that I think so many HR teams phone in. They don't think about it like a marketer thinks about it. And so clearly, I mean, he, he's a marketer or a former marketer and now entrepreneur and, and marketer. And there's a couple of lines in here. He says, if you've been looking for an opportunity to get out of the B2B SaaS world, this could be a great opportunity to jump for. And I just think one that's incredibly timely and relevant based on what's happening with tech layoffs, right now, so he's tapping into the, that people have of like, I don't know if my job's going to be around next week because all these tech companies are laying off thousands of people. And so that was an interesting line. Another, another line that I really liked. He said, you can get your life back while still getting paid and sharing in the profits. You can work out during the day, do your errands, pick up your kids, do this work from anywhere. Plus, who knows, maybe we'll become a great team and do more things together in the future. What he's doing there is subtle but brilliant in that he's painting a very vivid image of what life is going to look if you join him. And so you can see yourself in the job. You can. He just paints this very clear picture, which again comes back to brilliant copywriting. And then the other thing, and I saw this called out in some of the comments, he includes the salary in the job post, which you know, is $150,000 a year. You know, it's nothing crazy, especially compared to a lot of these tech like B2B SaaS salaries. It seems like people are demanding 3, 300, 400, $500,000 a year salaries more and more. I think a lot of what's happened in the last year is probably dying that down a little bit, but very straightforward. 150 grand a year. You know, it was funny as I was looking at this yesterday, prepping for this episode, I was like, man, why do more companies not do this? And I ended up talking to another friend of mine yesterday, CMO at a tech company. And he was talking about a role that he was hiring for and how they, they don't include salaries because, you know, it's, it's a global role. And so based on where somebody lives, the salary is going to be different. And he was like, you could push back on that and say, why wouldn't you pay the same? But reality is like based on cost of living. Like, it just makes more sense for the business in a lot of cases to, you know, not like if you can pay somebody, you know, three fourths of what you would pay them if they were living in America versus, you know, somewhere overseas. Like it benefits the business to pay them what is the appropriate rate in their country. And some people would argue that. Anyway, I was going to come in strong here and be like, why don't all companies just post the salary in their job? And then hearing his perspective was interesting because I was like, okay, like I can understand from, you know, that that perspective, I still think for us, you know, we're, we're primarily hiring in the US because of time zones. Our clients are in the US So it makes sense for like, the job is what it is. Like, I made a note here. It's like, be like CarMax. Like, I love sh. Buying a car at CarMax because there's no guessing the price of the car is right on the car. There's no negotiating. It is what it is. And there's nothing more infuriating than getting all the way through the hiring process and then being like, oh, let's negotiate. And I'm like, no, we had you click multiple buttons saying you understood that this was the salary for the role during the hiring process. B2B brands are on a hamster wheel trying to create more and more awareness. They're putting so much work into creating awareness and not nearly enough work into making sure that the content they're putting out is actually good. You can pay to build awareness. Brands do that all the time. But does the content resonate? The question should be how do we create content that builds affinity? And that's where sweetfish comes in. We're here to help you build your market's favorite show, not just another show. Learn more@sweetfishmedia.com and there's nothing more infuriating than getting all the way through the hiring process and then being like, oh, let's negotiate. And I'm like, no. Like, we had you, like click multiple buttons saying you understood that this was the salary for the role during the hiring process.

It's weird that we're in the in between with that because it feels like companies are just taking different approaches. It doesn't. It's not, to me, it's not on a good to bad spectrum. It's. There's a lot of preference baked in for the person applying where, like, if they can't see it, some people are going to be, oh, I get to negotiate. That could be a good thing. Some people are going to be like, no, I want to know what I'm making before I spend the effort to apply for this role. And so I've definitely talked to different types of temperaments of people that are all over the map on how they feel about companies and whether they post or not. And then definitely it makes business sense if you can get something cheaper to get something cheaper. So I never think of it on a good, bad scale. But I, I do think for a team of two and day like Dave needing to just. This post got me thinking about what's his superpower? What are the things that he does really well and one of them is just being super personal. And if that's kind of his MO then he has to post the salary because that's like, that's what I would expect from him. Almost like that's the type of community he's built. It's very transparent, it's very open. He's building in public. So contextually I was like, of course, right? When you see this post, you're going to see how much you would make in the role. And it's a way to get the right types of people that like, are in that, that, that bubble, that range. I also think he just, the way that he's combined media with community to grow. Exit 5. He used what he's so good at and like just has, is slowly building this empire on top of it. And so seeing all of the comments, so cool, man.

Yeah, they all knew that he loves golf. They like, they, they knew because I didn't see anything about golf in the job post.

No, he just posted about it previously.

He talks about it all the time because he like shares his life and it was very clear in the comments that people know him. The other perspective on the salary thing that I thought was interesting was talking to my buddy yesterday about it. He was like, the other piece is we may list a salary, but particularly with marketing roles, like, there's widely different skill sets. And so I don't want to shut down the opportunity or the conversation with somebody because they see a salary and they're like, now like, I would need $50,000 more than that minimum. Well, if it's the right person that has the right skill set, we might be able to be a little bit more flexible on the budget because there's more value to be had if we could land this particular person. And so just another, another added perspective for like why some companies aren't being as transparent with salary information. But anyway, the other piece that I observed from this was that his Google, the Google form one I just thought was like ninja, basic, simple, totally on.

Brand, straight to the point. Man, that was not long.

Yep, five fields, email, first name, last name. Why would you be a good fit for this job? And then your LinkedIn profile link. And part of me like, I know he's not looking for a marketer, but, but that LinkedIn profile link does so much like, I, I just can't imagine he's going to want to hire somebody to run a B2B media company that doesn't know media that doesn't know how to build an audience. And so he says he doesn't. It's not looking for a marketer. I think I saw somewhere on there, like it's not a content creation role, but I'd be surprised if he doesn't want somebody that knows how this stuff works. Maybe they haven't built an audience for themselves personally, but they've been a part of.

It's the operator behind something that's been successful previously. I think that's definitely having a proven track record there has to be important because a lot of that job description when you look at what he says is like you are building a media company so you have to be good with community webinars, events, podcasts and sponsorships to manage, improve and grow. It's like, okay, so that, yeah, you've better have optimized a media thing before.

We just did a sponsorship with Colin and Samir. So they, they're like, they talk a lot about the creator economy and they've got a YouTube channel that's blown up. They've got a newsletter. I think it's got 50 something thousand subscribers on it. And we just sponsored one of their newsletters to advertise our job role for a producer that we were hiring. And as I was interacting with their team, it's not actually Colin and Samir or anybody on their team. There's this outsourced provider. I think it's like smooth ops or something like that that they work with that does all of their backend operations. So it's interesting. Like what? I didn't think about this till last night actually. But what Dave is looking for, they're starting to pop up like some, some fractional like outsourced services for creators to literally be the operator of the creator business so that they can focus on creating without having to worry about figuring out brand deals. And like, because I didn't interact with Colin and Samir at all. And that makes perfect sense. They're creatives. They don't want to be sending invoices and getting contracts signed and circling back with me to negotiate pricing. And that seems like exactly what Dave is trying to avoid as well. Yeah, I think he's wanting something a little bit more nuanced and with the community building stuff and he's wanting somebody who understands B2B marketing. So service like that might not be a fit for, for someone like him, but for, for any creators that are listening to this know that there are starting to be options available. I think the folks that are working With Colin and Samir were early employees at Morning Brew and kind of built that business with Alex. And I'm blanking on the other co founder of Morning Brew, but they went out and I think it's like Kinsey. She used to host one of Morning Brew's podcasts. And a couple other folks from Morning Brew have built this smooth ops operator business for creators, which. That was interesting too.

Yeah, super interesting. Okay, three comments that Dave chimed in on that I thought were funny. First one, he said, I also need to hire someone to help me go through these responses. 300 plus applicants. And there was people that chimed in saying, hey, I'm willing to do that if you want to, like, have me just go through and figure out what's relevant. He also said, lots of resumes and also lots of in quotes here. Hey, I know you wanted X, but I'm actually completely not the thing, so. So we'll see. Need to find the needle in the haystack. And there hasn't really been. At least at the time of this recording. There's no update here. The third one was Josh Allen. He's the CRO at tive. He said, wait, what. What happened to solopreneur for life? And Dave just said, yeah, shit, guess that. Guess this is a break from that definition. Like, you get to the point where he's scaling and it's like, oh, yeah, I wanted to be a solopreneur, but no, I don't want it that bad. I need somebody to help me operate this thing. And he's definitely at that point with.

I did think it was interesting. When I was looking through the comments, there was one comment in particular. It was like, hey, Dave, you know, I would be very interested in this, but I'm not looking for full time. You know, could this be part time? And I see that and I go, like, you clearly don't know how. Like, part of. I'm like, you don't know how big of a deal this is that he's like posting this. You don't know how big of a deal Dave Gearhart is.

Like, if that goes well for you, dude, you don't. Yeah. What are you.

Yeah, like, like, what do you. What do you do? Like, oh, like, I would be interested in this. Me, the guy that you've never heard of, but you know, in order to get me, I'm going to need to be part time. And it's like, but to me, it just communicated the. The value of building personal brand. Because had that been Justin Welch that made that comment it was like, hey, man, I'd be interested in this, but I could only do it part time. That's a conversation like, oh, I can get Justin Welsh, but some guy that nobody's ever heard of. I looked at his LinkedIn. I couldn't, you know, and maybe he's awesome. Like, I don't know, but he seemed like kind of a junior marketer. Didn't get a lot of engagement on his content. It was just like, man, there's so much leverage to be had when you just do the work of building a personal brand, whether it's opportunities like this or a million other things. But another little observation from this, but if you're listening to this and you want to be the GM of Exit 5, work with Dave Gearhart every day. Should definitely go and look at his LinkedIn profile and apply for this thing because it seems like it's going to be a super legit opportunity for the right person.

And if you have a job posting and you need to get better at copywriting, maybe you take a few notes on how he went about this because there's things to be learned there as well. So that's it for this episode of B2B Growth. We're out.

Sam.