Dave Gerhardt on Marketing Leadership and Team Building

Welcome to the NextGen CMO podcast, where we sit down with seasoned CMOs and emerging talents in sales and marketing to explore the wins and occasional losses that shape today's leaders and the strategic maneuvers that can help propel you to the forefront of B2B marketing.

All right, everybody, welcome to our NextGen CMO podcast. Today I'm super excited to welcome my friend Dave Gerhart to the podcast. Dave. If you don't know Dave, which I'm sure you do, or you at least follow him or at least read his stuff or you're at least a part of his community, he is the founder of Exit 5, which is a large community for B2B marketers. So prior to starting that, he was the CMO at Privy and the chief Brand Officer at Drift, and he's worked all over this marketing and go to market space for a long time. So we're super excited to have him. Super excited to ask all about his career and about lessons he's learned along the way.

So.

So welcome to the podcast, Dave.

Yeah. Hey, Kelly, thanks for having me. That was a kind a kind background. Love talking about marketing and I think I'm a fan of yours now because you connected me with two amazing CMOs. We did this event in Austin and so any opportunity that I can pay it back because you made me look great with two of the CMOs that we got in Austin. So I'm looking forward to hanging out with you and chatting and seeing where this goes.

I saw that. So I saw Megan was one right. Leaders, you know, afterwards. And I saw her flash through on a promo on. On LinkedIn. She was able to do it.

Yeah. And Kim was the other one.

Oh, Kim.

Kim Storen. Yeah. So it's funny is there's like a mini, mini marketing lesson in this is the two of them. Neither of them knew who. Who I was or what we were doing. You know, they're, you know, in your community down in Austin, Austin area multi, you know, both like billion dollar company, cmos.

Yeah.

Okay. This guy's asked me to speak at an event. I'm happy to say yes, it's in my community, blah, blah. Noticeable change from our interaction pre event when they showed up and had no idea who we are to after when like the audio, you know, 110 people showed up. The engagement was awesome. The vibe and the buzz in the room was awesome. Like afterwards they were like, oh, this is so fun. And so it just like it was a per. It made me feel awesome. Just like, oh, good having somebody show up at the beginning, not know who you are and what you're doing and then feeling like the, the feeling of your brand post event. Kim's already connected me to one of her VPs. We're going to do an event in Boston. So it's. It helped me grow, helped my grow, helped me grow my network in, in the Texas area, which is awesome.

So awesome. Yeah, there's a lot of great tech leaders here. And yeah, Kim and I used to work together at amd.

Okay.

She was the chief of staff to the CMO and I was the chief of staff to the coo. And so we were both in the sort of grunt work strategy world for, for a while there. And even there was a time when if you googled me, Kim Space showed up. I'm not sure why, but that happened for a little bit now. I think it's properly me and properly her, but for a while they sort of mix a little bit.

Sorry to hijack your own podcast, but this is what I do. She had so. So it's just the last thing on Kim. So her name is Kim Storen. She's a CMO at a company called Zayo Group. They're a, you know, $2 billion telecom infrastructure type of company. Not in my wheelhouse, so probably not describing it right, but they, they do some serious stuff. And she had the line, she had the most quotable line of the event, which is I did a panel where I was interviewing the, the, these three CMOs talking about just lessons. As a CMO, one of her lines that really hit that I saw all over social media was if the company is in the red, marketing can never be in the green. Oh, and meaning like if the company is not hitting company goals, you can't be parading around the company with your like marketing metrics. Right. Because a telltale sign of like. Well, hold on then. Marketing is clearly not something is wonky. Marketing is not driving real business results. And I think that was a nice little, nice little pithy one liner that a lot of people related to about the importance of aligning marketing to company goals.

Oh, love that. That's a great line. Yeah, Kim is, is really sharp. I had her on the podcast, I don't know, a few months ago and she was great. I had Megan as well. Megan and I live in the same little community. Our boys are our best friends, like with another group of like seven or eight, like football player boys. So we're, we spend a lot of time together.

Oh my gosh, what a. What a dre. Have parent Friends and they actually understand what you do as a cmo?

Well, yeah, it's a little bit of both. Right. Like there's a tra. There's the side you were talking about your kids being, you know, more 75 age. There is something like I always grew up where my best friends were, my parents best friends or I don't know which came first, but. And it's the same thing here, except when I first got here I was like, am I the only working mom? Like this? Am I surrounded by stay at homes? And I look like the slacker who's never at like the. The class party.

Yeah, the slacker. Right?

Yeah. And then the more I've learned, like one, I think more I've gone back to work, but then I've sort of found and I'm like, oh, there's actually a bunch of us. And so, yeah, it's nice that Megan and I sort of live the same life.

Nice.

Yeah. So it's good.

It makes the small talk easier around, you know, family events.

Yeah. You can talk personally, talk professionally, you can talk whatever you want. Right?

Exactly.

Very cool. Okay, let's get on. You. We're so glad you're here. In three sentences sum up your career journey.

I went from PR intern to CMO in about 10 years. Mostly worked in B2B tech startups and SaaS, and now I run a community of B2B marketers. I've basically started writing about marketing. As I was doing it, built a following online and today, unintentionally, that has turned into a business. And that's my full time job.

Pretty awesome. That was pretty good. Succinct.

Yeah, it was like maybe four and a half sentences, but I figured it still like it would achieve the goal, you know.

Well, last time we did it, it was first time we'd ever. So you're the second podcast recording where I've asked the question instead of like, tell me your journey. Like I said in three sentences. And last time she did an awesome job. My guest, but she was like, I could tell she's like picking every word and. But you know, like just trying to make sure, like I don't want to go over my three sentences. Awesome. But it was like, yeah, that's. That's a tough challenge to put it in three put, you know, 20 years or whatever. In three sentences.

I was going to say like a short guy. Bald. LinkedIn. Yeah. I don't know. I'm glad I passed. I'm glad I passed.

That's funny. Okay, so speaking of LinkedIn. You did a post recently about being passed over for VP of marketing roles before, before landing, where you landed now really quick. PR intern to CMO in 10 years is a pretty fast path. So I'm guessing the VP of marketing happened in those 10 years or in a separate path somewhere.

Yeah, yeah, so, so it did. And, and you know, the big thing I think the big reveal there is actually I joined a company where I think the only reason that was possible for me was I joined a company as the first marketing hire when the company had 10 employees and the company was like a rocket ship startup. And so the company went from 10 people when I joined to 300 people year, you know, four years later. And so I was able to grow my career in marketing like as fast as the company was growing. And so I was like hired as first marketing person. They wanted to bring in a more experienced marketing person over me, you know, because of their investors and their board and their own ambitions and you know, I didn't have experience. And then that kind of just kept, kept coming back to me and becoming the guy. And they were like, well, I guess you kind of are the VP of marketing here. And then, and, and so that, that was how that happened. But I think it was, it's less about the time and more like I just happened to join a company where it was the right time in my life, it was the right company in my life. I came on as a hungry, kind of scrappy, do it all marketer and I was able to like, hey, you're doing really good in marketing. Do you want to hire like you, you get to hire people now, says the CEO, okay, like you're gonna hire one person. Let's prove out that they can work and report. Okay, now let's hire one, let's hire three. Now we have a team of 20, 30 marketers by the end. And so it just was really trial by fire and learning on the job. I also worked, you know, it was an early stage company. It wasn't like I was brought in to be CMO of, you know, a 2,000 person company based on my 20 years of experience. So I was able to ride the wave and grow as a company was. I got hired over to no fault of my own. It just is like this is how, you know, they didn't realize that I was going to be the marketing leader. And each time I kind of took it in stride because I was like, sure, I don't, I don't know if I'm ready or want this anyway. And so if I have someone to, you know, I always kind of would liken it to, like, weightlifting where, like, I felt like I'm doing everything at this startup. I got, you know, three, four. I got 315. I got 315 on the bar. And now all of a sudden we brought in a, like a real VP who has much more experience, and I can just kind of go back to the niche that the lane I'm good at, which is like brand and storytelling and product marketing. Now I'm just repping 135 and it felt amazing. And so I kind of had like two or three cycles of that before it was eventually my, you know, my job to. To have at the company.

Oh, that's awesome. I want to go back to talk about some of the lessons you figure out there, but in that process, and I got to think that you've experienced it if you've done primarily the startup world as you've kind of grown through marketing. This whole concept of, of sharing your Legos. I had to learn in a startup world about, you know, as the, as the company gets bigger, as the company is sc, you can't be the guy who does all of it. So people, you have to, like, actually give away responsibilities.

I have a funny. I have a story about that. I was the youngest exec at the company, and I'm in the management meetings. I'm, you know, everybody knows. It's my first time. That's okay. I wasn't trying to hide it. I took on the advice and the. The VP of product, who was maybe, maybe 10 or 15 years older than me, really an advocate of mine, my peer. I ran marketing, he ran product. He pulled me aside one day and he's like, hey. He's like, can I talk to you a second? Like, unsolicited advice. I'm like, sure, dude. Do you know everything? Tell me. He's like, you don't have to do everything yourself. And I was like, yeah, yeah, no, this is like, I own marketing. He's like, no, no, no. He's like, what? You, as you learn, you learn the great executives as you go, like, you are, you're the general manager, you're the coach, you're moving pieces across the board. He's like, they don't care if you hired an intern to do it, if you hired an agency to do it, if you spent your budget to do it, or if you did it yourself. The company, the CEO, the board, whoever they care that achieve the goal, and you will get credit for achieving that goal, so long as you're the person running the team, it doesn't matter who necessarily did it. And you need to now scale with this company so you can't be in the weeds. You can't be doing this. You have to know where your strengths are and you can spend more, More or less time there. And that was my first kind of like cold water splash in the face moment where, like, I had to realize, oh, yeah, the. You can only re you. You know, all this stuff coming in, it's like being a parent, right? All the things you. Your parents used to lecture you about. Then you have your own kids. You're like, oh, they were. They were right. I guess. But you have to live through it on your own. And so I've read all the articles in the world that said how different being an individual contributor is than being, like an executive and a team leader. But it wasn't until actually having to do that that I felt that firsthand. And so that was a liberating conversation for me to realize, like, hey, you got to. You got to let go. Like, your job is to manage this whole thing, but you can't. You can't possibly survive in this job if you're going to be trying to, like, edit every line of copy, approve every landing page and email before it goes out. It's just. You're not going to survive that way. And so you got to be able to let go.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's a hard one when you've been, I think, one when you're either growing so fast with a company or two in your own career. Like, I remember when I was at Rackspace, I was getting promoted. I was leaving Rackspace. That's what it was. I was transitioning from VP at Rackspace to my first CMO gig. And my old CMO tells me she's like, well, the first thing you need to do is hire great leaders. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I got to get my arms around the business first. She was like, yes. But she was like, just know that, like your graylers and all. I, at first think, because I had been. I was transitioning out of sort of more player coach to more of a coach role. And to realize that, like, oh, I actually need to, like, I need to not. Not about let go, but I felt like a lazy CMO if somehow I wasn't doing the physical lifting, you know, like, and. And sometimes I even tell my team, I can tell they. I, like, torture them with, like, little questions. Not always, but like, on some things, and then sometimes. And I realize it's driving them crazy. But for me, I'm like, I don't want them to think that they're in these trenches, al. I want them to feel that I have their back and I'm with them. But in the process, they probably also just want to do the job without me.

Yeah, but it's a. It is a weird balance, though, because I've. I've been on the other side of it, too. And so, like, I've had a CMO who was my boss, and candidly, this person had no trust in the locker room, so to say, because the person was so far removed from the. It was so obvious that they hadn't done this job in a while. And we're not, like, sharp in their craft. And so, like, there is some balance of, like, you need to let go and you need to manage the team. But I do think, like, I think the great CMOs and I've talked a lot. I've done this podcast that I've had for, like, you know, 10 years. I've been interviewing CMOs. I've probably interviewed 300 B2B CMOs. All the top performing ones are still in the weeds in some way to stay sharp. They might not be micromanaging their team, but they're. They're sharp in some way. And I think that matters. Like, it's like in, you know, sports where the coach has had to play the game and that coach has a lot more trust and credibility. So I think that matters. But so in. In my example, one of the things that I realized, the reason I was holding on so tight is because I didn't have the right team. And that is oftentimes the source of, like, that's the root cause. Like, is it that Dave's a micromanager? Is it that he feels like his ego has to do everything himself? No, he can't let go because he actually hasn't. He's done a poor job in hiring, and he doesn't have the right mix or the right people on the team. And so you can't truly be in that role. And so it wasn't until I went to another company where I left. When I left Drift and I went to Privy and the CEO basically gave me a blank slate to, like, read, start with marketing, and build the team that I wanted. And it was the first time in my career that I had a network and I had a brand. And so I took a new CMO job and, like, I got to basically pick People to bring to come with me. And I was like, this is amazing.

Yeah.

And so from right out of the gate, I hired two people who were like, truly a players. And man, three months into that company, I was like, this just feels different because my. My stress level is way different because I don't. I feel like I truly hired two people who are better than me and are smarter than me in each of these areas. And holy smokes, look at what this me up to recruit. This the free frees me up to have time with strategy. This frees me up to have time with the other execs and functional leaders across the company. And so that is often the root cause. And I used to roll my eyes that, yeah, it's all about the people. It's all about the people. But if you ever built a team before, it really is all about the people. And another common trait of all these CMOs that I talk to, they spend 80% of their time recruiting. That is. That is the job, like, always recruiting LinkedIn, taking phone calls, meeting people, because they know that that is the number one, like, currency in their. In their toolkit. Right?

Yeah. Even if we don't call it all recruiting, sometimes it's like, I just think this might be an area I need to have a pipeline.

Yeah, sure.

Like, I just need to know more people.

You learn place this function one day, you. You learn so much. And so even if you're not actively hiring, right. You. Your partner team kind of is not really what you need it to be. And, you know, if you have a friend, you know, your friend Megan, she. Her. The. The person who runs her partner team is amazing. You're gonna do a call with her not to recruit her because, you know, Megan would then, you know, have a. Have a problem because you're friends, but. Because sometimes I found that you need to interview people to know what you should even be looking for in the first place. Right. And so you just need to pattern match and get out there and talk to more people. Oh, okay. Yeah. Actually, we're not doing it so bad. I talked to a bunch of people who are doing it this way. We're good.

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. The pattern matching is important, and sometimes I'm like, I don't really have a role, but I'd love to pick your brain about what good looks like. So I know what to expect out.

Of this function or to be interviewing. Something I've realized a lot is, like, you need to start interviewing for roles to. To sometimes realize what you need, like, I talked to 20 people and I realized that, like, yeah, actually, no, I'm thinking about this role wrong. We actually need this person and we kind of gotta like, pause this and restart what we're looking for.

Yeah, you can definitely reframe rescope. And I always say, you know, I like, when I'm setting an org structure, I always try to set it on strategy and business objective first, humans second. But sometimes when you also look, you're like, oh, but this person has certain gifts here. I may need to kind of make an adjustment here to make tap into that gift while still solving the business strategy.

Yeah, I wish I have you come on my podcast now because, like, that is a thing. Like, you have to know the ingredients are always going to be different based on your, you know, the company's goals, the time horizon, the budget, the resources, who you have. But that's what's fun about the job is like mixing and matching those pieces. And like, yeah, I kind of got this person, but I might move her over here because we're trying to do this way. Like, then I learned like, oh, that that becomes the fun part about leading a team. Maybe I'm not writing all the copy anymore, but I get to be the tastemaker of sorts with the team.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, cool. Yeah, that's. That's the fun part. Okay, I want to go back to your, your role of kind of like growing with the company, getting passed over, but then also kind of ultimately getting it at the end. How do you, as you go, it sounded like probably in hindsight you were very level headed through it. You're like, yeah, of course this person knows more. Yeah, whatever.

In hindsight.

Yeah, in hindsight. But in reality, in the moment, I assume there was some ego, some pride that kind of gets in the way there. How do you stay motivated, productive? If you're getting either passed over or people assume that there's somebody else smarter out there or better out there or more experienced, how do you stay focused?

Well, it's nice to sit here years later and say I was calm and cool and collected. I think, well, I, I definitely, I kept my ego in check, at least at work, but for sure, personally, and I think this is important. I think also people don't realize about leaders. If you want to be a leader at a company, you can't be huffing and puffing and your team seeing you roll your eyes in meetings. Like, you got to be able to like, put a stoic face on for, for the company. And so, like, internally I was still committed to the team, but, you know, externally I was. You know, my, My wife, we've had, you know, we talk about work all the time. She knows. She knows I was pissed.

Yeah.

But I also tried to, like, think the, the stack of beliefs was like, regardless of my role, I believe in the company, the company's doing really well. I would be silly to like, not attach my wagon to, to not stay attached to this company, because this is the bright point in my career. And I think you always just kind of be got. You always kind of got to be looking at your career from, like, a higher level and saying, like, yeah, I could leave right now, but is that the right thing? No, the company's doing awesome. There's a lot to learn. Like, like, the, the rate of learning when a company's growing this fast is really high. So I'm going to stay here. You know, also, candidly, like, I, I was broke. Like, I hadn't made any money yet. And so, like, I had to exit.

So you're probably assuming the exit at some point or hope, right?

Which is like, that's another nonsense belief that we could talk, we could talk about. But, you know, I had a. I had, I was an early employee. I had some good equity in the company, and I wanted to, like, there was a. This is. The company was, you know, backed by Tier 1 Sequoia Invest, and we're connected. I'm flying out to California and we're meeting with, like, the cmo, Facebook and the CMO of Palo Alto Networks, and we're meeting with the best people. Like, there's, it was the, the possibility of, like, I think this company's going to have an exit. And it would be silly for me to, like, okay, I, I got some skin in the game now. But then there's also the, like, the learning and the, the access to people that I would have because I was at the company. And so I kind of took those three things into account and said, all right, yeah, it's probably. It's worth it for me. And then also, like, like, each time I was pretty burnt out. It's, you know, the job is a stressful job every one to two years. And so, like, there was a couple times where I was able to just look at and say, you know, I can remember one time in particular where my first kid was just born. I was, you know, sleeping two hours in a night, going to work. I'm like, yeah, you know, someone else getting yelled at for running marketing. Like, not the worst, not the worst. Thing. And so I was able to look at it as like, at, at this point in my life, is it, it, is it okay? And then ultimately I'm a sucker for like personal development, self development. And there's this guy called Jim Rohn who was Tony Robbins, you know, the Tony Robbins before Tony Robbins. And Jim Rohn has a line that he says, like, which has always stuck out to me when first time that I heard it was, learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job. If you work hard on your job, you can make a living. But if you work hard on yourself, you'll make a fortune. And so I kind of read that as like, you know what? This is one company I am. No matter how well or not well this company does. Like, I'm not going to work here forever. This is about my personal experience. And so what can I get out of this 2, 3, 4, 5 year stint? Like, this is my MBA. This is my career education opportunity. That alone is worth it. And so I'm going to take that. And man, look at today, like all the things that are possible in my life today came from that three or four year stretch of like working at Drift where my career really jumped off. And so I think you just got to have that look of like not going to work at this company forever anyway. How can I use this as an opportunity to learn what can I get out of this? Even at. At a privy. When I went there, I joined that company December 2019, had all these plans to hire and a budget and everything. You know, March 2020, just poof, it all went away. And it would have been easy to be like, oh man, I was going to be this cool CMO and spend all this money and do all this cool stuff and they, they froze the budget. Instead it was like, well, well, okay, what can we do with no budget? Great, great learning opportunity. How can we, how can we turn this into a positive situation?

Yeah, yeah. Learn to lead through uncertainty. Like 2020. Learn to, you know all the other lessons you get, the relationships you build, the networks you build. So that's pretty awesome. I love that. I think that's very wise. Again, probably maybe wiser in hindsight than in the moment, but I, I hope that you're able to exhibit some of that. But I did. There was a comment you made about like, I think he used the word stoic, but basically kind of saying straight face in front of your team, like not rolling your eyes and that feeling. What do you think the balance is in the world of I'm pretty I won't say I'm pretty direct but I'm pretty consistently the same person whether I'm talking to you or I'm talking to my team. I'm talking to my family. I'm talking to my me too. So sometimes. So how do you lead with authenticity and yet also be a professional in the room that puts your, your sort of stoic hat on? Like you want to be unbelievable but you also want to be a leader. You want to be all those things at one time. It's one of those things I watch like myself all the time. I can tell that where I didn't know it when I was, you know, 10 years ago. People try to rush their careers along. I'm like oh there's like there's it's not the hard skill development that takes time.

It's the soft skill. Yeah.

That takes time.

Well you're asking this mark question because.