How to Build a "Founder Brand" with Dave Gerhardt of DGMG

Hey, everyone. In today's episode, I sit down and I talk with Dave Gerhardt. Dave has worked in marketing for brands like Drift, HubSpot, and Privy. Today he runs a community of nearly 5,000 marketers called DGMG. We dive in and we talk about ways that marketing leaders can gain influence within their organization. We talk about why companies tend to overcomplicate their brand voice. And we also talk about what it takes to build a brand that's built around a founder's narrative. There's lots of great takeaways in this episode, so let's get into it. So, Dave, thanks for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for. Thanks for having me. Fun. Fun. Fact is, we were going to record this earlier, and then I blew out my back and I had to go to the chiropractor, and now we're back. So I'm happy. I feel much better than we. Than if we talked the other day. And I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, I appreciate that. So I just. There's, like, sorry, my son just came in and he was like, like trying to give me cookies and. And things.

No, I love it. That's great.

Yeah. So, by the way, that actually brings back a memory. I. I remember when you, I think, just started with Privy, you had, you know, you got into, you know, doing a lot of the podcasting, you know, and sort of getting things put together, and you had this clip that you'd put out of you and your daughter talking, where she was talking about goose poop. And it was like, yeah, that's it, right? I mean, that's exactly like what you kind of need. I think in a. In a time where we were all kind of locking down and everything at.

The time, we totally forgot about that clip. I gotta go watch that again.

That was the best clip.

She came in, she came, and she's like, dad, guess what? I was like, on something. She's like, there's goose poop in the lawn or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, goose poop. What? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you were on with, like, a CMO of somebody, you know, a pretty big company, I'm sure. And, you know, yeah, whatever. But it was pretty awesome, so. But it's. It's sort of like real life, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you know, we're all, you know, figuring out what that is, and most of us have sort of like, come to the other side of it. We've got. Either we've sort of gotten used to the new world as it is, or we haven't. And you know, things. Things probably have changed. But I, but I think what that really, I think showed me was that, and this is probably my first question for you, is that, you know, you're sort of real and authentic when you're talking to your audience and you're speaking and you're having a conversation and you're not sort of just that LinkedIn, you know, LinkedIn influencer, you know, you know, that sort of sets back and tries to be the expert about all things. And I don't think very many people would do that. Right. And it's pretty clear that they don't. And I guess my question is, was that surprising to you, like, that people sort of resonated that way, the way that they have with, you know, DGMG and everything else over the last couple of years or so.

It's only surprising in that, like, I just, I. Yeah, I think, like, I think the stuff that I talk about and put out is not. It's not like rocket science and not groundbreaking. And it's just a case study. And like, if you can be someone who has an opinion and show up consistently, you know, And I think, like, I talk to a lot of startup founders and others who don't feel like what they have to say will be interesting to people online. And I think more, more than the authenticity part is like, I've just been blown away by the fact that, like, me talking about marketing has attracted an audience of other marketers. And I think that's just like a perfect example of one of the values and benefits of using social media in this, in this context is like, you know, if you talk about golf, if you love golf and you talk about golf regularly, the people that are going to follow your stuff, if it's interesting, are not going to be fishers or people that make cookies at home and have E Commerce cookie, it's going to be golfers. And I think the same is true with marketing. On the authenticity side thing, I just, I've just, I think it's too hard to try to be a character and because then you have to think about, like, all right, I'm doing this interview with Eric. I gotta be in cabinet full character mode right now. And like, that's impossible to know whether you're on or whether you're off. And so I've just always kind of felt like it's easier to just be myself and show my personality that way, whether that's in text form or, or in video. And it just makes for an easier. Makes for an easier go of It. And I think there's a great book, Let My People Go Surfing by Patagonia founder Yvonne Chouinard. And he talks about in that book how for Patagonia they never created some, like, fictional character for, for the brand because he said it's, it's so much easier to do nonfiction than it is fiction. And I, that line has kind of always stuck with me. And I think, I also just think it's a much more relatable. That's how people want to interact with each other now. It creates some people who don't like you or don't agree with you or don't actually. Or make flash judgments about you and how you might be based on words that you write on LinkedIn. And that's okay. You just have to be okay with that. But, yeah, I think it seems to be the right approach for now.

I think if you don't have a line in the sand that you draw and you don't create some sort of, you know, dichotomy. Right. You know, it's very difficult to, you know, you got to come down on one side or the other. Right. And then I think that that's part of the audience building piece of it and the authenticity component, it's like, it's got to be real, otherwise it just falls flat and you don't get the kind of reaction that I think that you sort of want. But, you know, people talk about it all the time and it's never like truer words have never been spoken. But stop trying so hard. Just stop trying so hard and just be you. Right? And that, you know, and as long as you're sort of saying things that resonate. Sorry. As my cat comes through, you know, there's a, there's just a, there's a, there's a truth in that. So, so let's, let's talk about, like, just what sort of brought you to where you are. Right? So most people in the audience is going to, they're going to know who you are. But in terms of the, you know, maybe the ones that are not or, you know, they're, you know, junior marketers are maybe coming up, you know, so you spent time at HubSpot, I should mention, constant contact, you know, drift, you know, obviously privy, you know, you, you help sort of come along, you help create the no forms movement. You know, I can sort of go on, but talk to me just like really quickly about sort of when you were in these roles and you were helping to build out the marketing organization, what was sort of the thing that you felt like was the, when you went into it where you just felt like, I don't know enough and I need to learn and be better at this.

I mean, I still feel, I still feel that every day. So I think, I don't think there was. It's different at each company. And so I think each company you're presented with a different set of like, you know, you're the chef and you have to deliver a dish and at each company and, and, and you have to do it at each company no matter what. At 5pm we have to make this meal. But at each company, you're given a different list of ingredients and a different time frame and a different, you know, in a different way. You have to do it. And I think the fun part for me is going to. Each of. Has been going to each of those companies and, and seeing what was different. And so like the playbook for what Drift did was entirely different than what Privy did. And so the, the only thing that has saved me was learning early on at Drift just how, just like what, what things I was good at. And David, who's a CEO at Drift, really, you know, pushed me to focus on brand copywriting, storytelling, product marketing, more of that side of marketing. And instead of like a lot of marketing advice, especially for people early in their careers, like, you know, make sure you're well rounded, you know, go learn all these different things. And you know, I was not very, I was not very strong on the math and, you know, analytical and operational side of things. And instead of David being like, you need to, you need to go boost those things or else, you know, you're not going to make it here. He was like, you have the opportunity to be world class at these other things. Go. He gave me the freedom to like, be great at those things and really focus. And like, what I learned was if you go look around all these other marketing leaders, they never come up. They never all have this perfect, you know, they're not 25% this 25%, this 25%. They might, they may have came up through PR, they may have come up through product marketing, they may have come up through demand gen, but it's kind of ongoing. Like, you got to be an expert at some slice of marketing that you can use. But then you start to work cross functionally and I work really closely with all these other teams and you start to observe what good looks like in those departments. And so you have to know where your bias is and where you're strong at. But I Give the example of like when I went to Privy, very first hire that I made going in was a really, really strong analytical demand gen type of person who was kind of like the yin to my yang. And that was the, that was the perfect foundation. So that was, that was an important learning and just understanding that like you have to be able to know what you're not good at, know what the company's not good at. You have to know what's, what are the right spots to fill and what are the ingredients that you need to have. And just kind of always having this like learning mindset like we, we should always be learning from other companies in our space. We should always be talking to other marketers, marketing leaders and marketing teams. Even hosting a podcast like this, you get some of that stuff. And so just kind of like that, that, that lifelong learner mentality to, to marketing is really helpful.

Yeah, I love that because I think the two things that I've sort of learned over the years is you've got to really have a good sense of how to tell the story and get buy in across teams, right? And then you have to be able to sort of speak the language of your cfo.

You gotta really be able to. That first one was something that I discounted for a lot. I used to be like, oh, I'm really good at writing and storytelling and communication, but it's just words like I, I gotta learn the, I gotta learn the finance and the, the operational side of the business. And yeah, I learned that lesson firsthand of just how important storytelling is across the entire company. And, and so often we spent so much of our time in marketing, especially dealing with internal battles as opposed to solving like creative marketing problems.

Absolutely, absolutely. I think in a lot of, most people will resonate with that, right? They'll say half my job is just communicating internally, right? Just getting through to the people in product or getting through to people that hold the purse strings, etc. Etc. And just getting that alignment. And I think that's the, that's the thing that nobody tells you about, right? Is that kind of stuff, you know, when you like when you're thinking about like going into a new position or when you're earlier on in your career, you don't really think, wow, I'm gonna spend half my time like spending a lot, you know, spinning my wheels, trying to get buy in from, you know, from people that are supposedly, you know, in my own organization. And, and I think the story is what like paves the way, right? It reduces the friction, reduces Sort of the entropy that happens in that kind of, or, you know, that kind of situation. Right. So I guess that leads to my next question. Right. So in B2B, I'm, I'm sort of thinking about B2B here. Right. So how do you know when the story that you have created is sort of, is, is hitting with your audience? Right. And, and how do you know that, that it's, that it's working? You know, how do you sort of. I don't, when I say attribute, I don't mean like in the general sense of attribution, but like, how do you really know that? Like, it's, it's starting to take hold.

Well, I mean, ultimately there, there's some conversion metrics that you, that you should be able to measure. I think it's not a, it's not a like touchy feely thing. It's. If you tell a better story that's more impactful and more meaningful, more people are going to show up on your website, more people are going to sign up for your trial, more people are going to request a demo, more are going to buy. Ultimately, it's about making it easier for people to buy. The story is not just some like thing that you measure separately. And so I would look to measure that by what, what's the ultimate business result that we're, that we're trying to achieve through, through this story. That's number one, no doubt. I don't think people are doing it just for, just for fun. It should be we want to sell more widgets. We need to tell a better story about widgets. Are we selling more widgets? Right. But on top of that, you also get a lot of more qualitative feedback. And so you get more emails from customers telling you how much they resonated with your story or like your product or like this experience or you start a podcast and you start to, you know, you, you build a really loyal audience. Or more people are subscribing to your newsletter and writing in comments. Like, your story has a way of, when you tell the right story, people have a way of telling you. And it's not so much about like, we're seeking this thing out, but like, since, you know, I felt this firsthand at Drift, for example, where when we created this movement, this conversational marketing thing, we started to get. Every day I would come into work and my inbox would be two, three messages from marketers who were like, hey, I read your blog post about this. I totally feel this. Like, that's not something that I can perfectly attribute and like, measure over time. But, like, I'm sharing those screenshots around with the team. Like, this is, this is amazing. Like, this person who's our, who's a dream customer from another company emailed me to tell me that she listened to our podcast and totally believed in how we laid it out. Like, you get a handful of those things over time that you, you know, you mix with the, with the, the quantitative stuff to get a sense for. Wow, this, this story is really landing. And, and the story is very personal, often very personal for the people that, that you're selling to. Even if you're not selling a very emotional thing, like you're selling marketing software, you're still selling to people who have jobs and who might be stressed out or frustrated at their jobs or want time back. And so you're still working with people who are going to be like, oh my God, I've been waiting for somebody to do this. Thank you so much. Or I totally agree with your perspective in this article. You're going to hear from them in addition to the actual data that you're getting.

Yeah. So I, there are so many things I want to say, like, to unpack that. I mean, there's, there's, there's the, there's the qualitative part of sharing what's working and what's resonating with your audience or with your customers that you can as a marketer use to be able to sort of, for lack of a better word, sort of chop up, tell, like create a story out of it and drip it out to executives. Right. That's one of those things that you can do to be able to, you know, for that internal communication and buy in. And I think, you know, the fact that you started out with, well, storytelling in and of itself isn't the thing. Right. It's the outcome. Right. It's the business outcome. And there should be able to tie it back to some sort of conversion metric, etc. Which that's sort of. My background is, you know, I sort of grew up in testing and optimization and, you know, and so, you know, when I think about numbers, the being able to communicate as a marketer, I think that's one of the things that I, when I talk to marketers all the time, what I, what I typically get back is I don't know how to communicate what it is that, you know, my campaigns that I'm running right now, when I'm in a meeting, when I'm, when I'm talking to this, let's call it the CFO and I start talking about campaign metrics and I talk about, you know, improvements and whatever, their eyes start to glaze over. Right. And, and that happens so often. I see it in like digital marketing agencies that lose clients because they can't tie to, you know, what they're actually producing. Like, you know, I see it with marketers who are not yet able to sort of communicate that way to, to a decision maker. And I use the CFO and really I really kind of put it all under an umbrella of non marketing executives. Right. So anybody who's a non marketing executive, you know, needs to be able to understand like how is this thing that you were doing, this campaign that you were running actually tying to, let's call it pipeline and an actual revenue or you know, if you're a B2B company, let's you know, close one deals, right? So I think I want to like maybe drill in one more into that. Right. So they're like, you've worked, you've worked in organizations where you've had a sales team. You, you know, you were, you know, you were part of the marketing team and you were responsible for helping to create pipeline and ultimately get alignment. So what was the thing that you sort of did that you felt like, was like the thing that really helped?

Well, like in, in, in that example, the answer could be maybe in, in that example.

I'm just kind of curious.

I think, I think there's a, there's a couple, there's a couple of things to diagnose in there. So, so one of them is now if you're at a huge company, there's always going to be someone who is in the weeds on a tactical channel and you just feed them to the wolves and they just, they're explaining some AdWords channel to the CFO and it doesn't connect to me. That's a leadership, that's a failure of leadership which is like you can't put some, put the tactician in there to present to the, to the board and expect. And so that's fair. I think that number one, the number one cause is usually leadership in that there's not very clear and simple to understand goals for, for marketing. And in a lot of companies there's just a hundred things going on and each team has different goals and different priorities and not everything is aligned. And so like as an employee so long I hated goal setting. But now as a, as a marketing leader and manager, like it's the most important piece because you know, ideally that Conversation with the cfo. Maybe there's some nuance based on the channel, but it's like, hey, you know how marketing is working on these two key initiatives this year? Well, here's how this channel fits that. It's so often that like all of a sudden, like marketing is off in the weeds talking about something related to the blog. And they actually haven't articulated, like, how that fits into the broader strategy. And so I think more marketing teams could benefit from very. If, if whenever things feel out of whack, like, you should do this, you should do stop, start and continue as a team and, and think about like, what's. That's all to have this discussion together. What are the things? Because very quickly when you get everyone in a room and you say, like, what's everyone working on? You start to see, holy cow, I have a team of 30 people and everyone's doing different things. No wonder I feel like I need to hire more people. Like, the team is all stretched thin. But if we wipe that whole slate clean and we said, hey, for the next quarter, everyone in the team has one goal and that is to blank. How will you each use your channel to help serve that goal? I think, like, that's the, that's number one. It's gotta always, it's gotta all go back and cascade from like the what is, what is marketing? What are the very clear goals for marketing? And those should all cascade from like the what are the very clear calls for the company. So it starts with what are the company goals? What are the. How does marketing play in drive those company goals? And then what are the key objectives for marketing? And like that, that's like a back to basic discipline. Discipline that I still mess up and still have to go back to because things come up and priorities change. And the thing that you talked about last quarter, but you have to be able to boil that down, like, what are the two or three big bullets that marketing is focusing on? But the other thing that you mentioned is as a marketer, this is especially as you grow your role as a marketing leader. The people that you're presenting to are your customer. This is your target audience. And so you have to know, like you said, these people are not marketing people. So well, then if I'm presenting to someone who, if I'm presenting the chief product officer or, or somebody on the finance team or somebody in hr, somebody in operations, if I just go in there blind and I just go marketing jargon, Babel marketing, like that, that message is not going to land. You have to know who am I presenting to going in. This is Eric. Eric's not in marketing. He's going to have no clue about the things that we're doing and why. And so I need to first use this off Eric. You know, I'm excited to show you this stuff today. Just want a level set. First I want to give you a breakdown of like here, here's what marketing is focused on for the year. These three things, like you have to be able to always level set and always understand the context. Just like what makes you a great marketer. You have to understand who you're trying to get this message to. The same is true internally. You got to present. I see this all the time. People are like, I, we did so and so, you know, we did all this stuff for the sales team and nobody ever watch, nobody ever watches the videos. Sales team is too busy. Well, is it? The sales team is too busy. The sales team is always going to be too busy. Is it that they're too busy or that you haven't like actually figured out the channel that they're going to digest and what they want and really have a deep understanding of them? And so if you want to get better at presenting and sharing internal information, get outside of your marketing world and think about who am I sharing this update with and what are they going to care about?

Yeah, that. What are they going to care about? Like, why should they care? What, why should it be important? Right. How is it going to make their life better? Right. How is it going to help them hit their number? Right. Then they all of a sudden they start perking up.

Yeah. And also like I think the power of. Same way through, through marketing, but like the power of advocates. And so like if you're specifically trying to like improve adoption of something among the sales. Org. Before I go and try to roll this out to 100 sales reps, I want to, let's say it's like a new deck or something. Right. Because we always love decks. I'm going to sit down with, I'm going to ask two or three of the top sales reps or whoever. Sales reps that I know and I'm going to work on this in a much smaller group with them and I'm going to first get feedback from them and tweak it with, I go to roll it out with the broader team. I already have other salespeople on, on board with me. And hey, this has helped me here. Like you, you need to build advocates of the same kind. Right. Like so, so the more you can get one or two sales reps or, or whoever you're working on a project with engineering, could you get one or two engineers involved with you? And you know, I think it's anytime you can get an earlier adopter and turn them into a champion, it's the same, same way that we talk about like customer acquisition and marketing as a, as a whole. Same thing applies internally.

Yeah. So the story piece of it, I think just as much as the story, you know, the sort of the great equalizer can also be real data that actually, and like true customer insights that are actually helping you tell the story. Right. Using examples. You like to talk about that. Right. Just use examples and examples. And I think that can come in the form of data that can come in the form of testimonials and third party credibility and you know, like, you know, you can go down the list. I think the, the thing that I kind of look at is when I'm thinking about communicating align, like trying to get alignment, trying to get buy in with either a sales leader or I'm trying to get buy in with somebody who again, I keep thinking the cfo. And you know, a lot of the time it is really understanding like what's driving the campaigns that I'm running all the way through to, you know, something that they care about. Right. And that's usually pretty far down into the funnel, you know, if not all the way at the end. And I think, you know, there's a, there's a challenge with that too. You know, as we sort of in the middle, like we're all really fascinated with, you know, as marketers, like, you know, we like to throw things against the wall, you know, signing up for tools and you know, things that, you know, we're trying to whatever the next big flashy things. We like to sign up for things. Right. That's, you know, we like to call it testing, but that's really what it is. We just like flashy things and, and that's really not the solution. Right. Ultimately and we get ourselves into trouble. I think when we, we try to be so reliant on the tool without understanding what the objective is and, and really understanding what the core need for the, you know, for the, the solution is. And I, and I think there's a, you know, and I guess this sort of segues into the question, which is how do you determine whether or not something is like, useful for you like to invest in? And as a marketing person, that could be. Yeah, as a marketing leader. Right. Let's say, let's say you're director level or above, right? As a marketing leader, like, how do you just, how do you determine that.

FOMO just see what everybody else is doing and then fear like, we're not, we're not using. No. I don't know. It. It depends. I think I, I partially agree with you about shiny new things, but I also feel like technology can be used to an advantage and to your advantage. And so, but, but I do think it starts with like, what. What's the problem that we're trying to solve? And then like, could technology be one of those things? And then like, let's come up with a plan to evaluate different things that we think might, Might solve this problem. So for me, as a marketing leader, I used to care about like, how we. Basically what I learned is that nobody cares how you get the job done. And I don't mean like, do. Do bad things. I just mean like a. Whether you use this tool or that tool, or use HubSpot or Marketo or use Mailchimp or Constant Contact or use Privy or Klaviyo or whatever, no matter what you're using, the CFO doesn't care. The CEO doesn't care. They want you to hit, they want you to hit the number. And so whether you hire people, agency tools, technology don't care. Hire one piece of software and have them do the whole thing, they really don't care. And so first is like, take a step back and say, hold on. As the marketing leader, I have different resources to do my job, which is to achieve this goal. People, technology usually, right? Unless there's a third, third thing that I can think of. And so I think you have to be thinking about it. But there's also a, there's also a, you know, there's also like a, a cost and, and time thing that goes into it. And so I don't know. I don't, I don't know if there's a, I don't know if there's a. There's a perfect answer. But I think of like, I think that the best marketing leaders today are putting technology first and they are thinking about how they can use, how they can solve business challenges through technology and not always having to hire 10 people to go do that. But I think where a lot of people get broken up on that is having some big implementation process. Can you break things down? And I'm just a big believer in, is there a way we can test into this before writing a line of code or before building an integration or before buying this thing. And so my bias is to just kind of be very scrappy and see the things that we can hack together and do ourselves and just get a little bit data before we go and make some, you know, we take on some, some huge thing. But I also think, yep, this is why like having a peer group of marketers is very important because like I want my team to be coming to me with like, hey, my friend is, does demand gen at this other company and she told me that they're using this tool and we could be using this tool. That stuff can be amazing. Is like, but your team needs to, you need to have peer groups and other people. And so even, you know, even on the personal level, like I've always tried to have a couple other marketing leaders that I talked to that were like, hey, what, you know, what are you using for this? How are you testing this? And so it's primarily driven through like team need and team making the case and, and word of mouth and just thinking about, okay, when we have a couple of our big rocks and big challenges for the year, how are we going to go in, how are we going to go and attack those? We need to deliver $10 million in new pipeline this year and one of the big levers that we think we have is to increase the show rate on meetings. Okay, great. What, how are we going to increase the show rate on meetings? Well, here's three things that we can do, people related. Here's three things we can do, technology related. Let's stack rank those and let's go figure out like which, which one of those levers that we're going to be able to pull.

Yeah. So I'm curious, you got what, what you're, you're probably coming up on what, 5,000 members at this point?

Yeah, it's over, over 4,500. There's always, at the end of the month, there's always a bunch of churn and then they, and then people come back and so. But yeah, I think it's right, it's, it's in between 4 and 5,000 right now. Yeah.

So I remember, you know, we, you, I would see posts from you. This is over Christmas, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Is that during that time? Right. Pre Privy. Right. And you were putting out these posts and you were like, I can't believe it. Like we're up to 50 members. This is amazing, Patreon. Right. And to see, you know, in a couple of years how sort of vibrant the community has become is really, is really impressive, I think. You know, so now You've got a sort of an interesting business challenge, right? You know, now you're in a situation where you're saying, okay, I'm. I wouldn't say you're out on your own, but, like, you're. You're doing your own thing. You are the guy, right? You're the. You're. You're building your own strategy. You've got, you know, you're leveraging this community in a way to build off the back of that, right. Like a publisher, you know, would.

You're smart.

And I'm kind of curious, like, how do you. Like, how do you think about that? Going, like, how do you think. You know, I don't. I don't want the playbook, but I'm just kind of curious, like, how do you think about that large. Like, you've got a captive audience, right? And there's a time, there's a window where you have this captive audience. And so I'm curious, like, how do you build off of that? Because there's a. There's an excitement that has to come right, along with fear, all at the same time. And I'm just kind of curious, like, how you.

Yeah, I mean, like, fear of just being on my own.

Yeah, Well, I mean, look, I mean, you're going to be able to go get a job somewhere else, right? So it's not like you don't need a safety net. I think it's really more like you want to make this thing work. And there was probably a very hard conversation that I'm sure you had internally with, you know, your family or whatever, right, where you were saying, you know, I have this great platform right now I'm back at drift, right? And now I got to make a decision. Like, I made the. I'm potentially faced with this decision. So now you made the decision, and you're moving forward. So this becomes a platform for you, right?

And.

And to be able to. To do things. So I'm just kind of curious, like.

Yeah, I mean, this is, like, top of mind right now, kind of. I think you're. You're exactly right. There's a window in time, and I'm trying to think about which direction to go in, because I think one of the cool things about building something like this that I've learned is it. It just constantly evolves. And so what I launched was this, like, Patreon, which is just me, like, kind of privately ranting about marketing. And that was great, and it grew. But then through that, what I learned was, like, you know, people don't it's not just about hearing from me. People are here. I start, you know, now it's clear, like, all these people in B2B marketing are here because they want to get better at B2B marketing. And there's not, like, a resource inside of their company. And so this is become. It's not, you know, Dave's megaphone to hear him, like, privately rant about marketing. It's about, like, I'm here to get better at my job. Regardless of Dave, I might be the one that facilitates it. And I also just. I love. I love creating content, but, you know, it's. It's a lot to always have to be the face of the content. And so I'm trying to think of how can I scale content creation? And so I think, like, the biggest, like, nugget that I'm around right now is how do I shift so much from Dave talking about marketing to. I think I have a unique opportunity to really build a really strong community and platform for modern B2B marketers. That is a place that they go to learn about B2B marketing where they don't. They don't get that in school. They don't get it inside their company. More companies right now are willing to invest in a couple hundred bucks a year to improve, you know, employee development and learning. And I did get so many messages now that are not about me. They're about, like, your. The community has, like, been a game changer for me in my job. And so I'm thinking about how. How can I. How can I scale that? And then ultimately, like, I have. I have other ambitions and there's other things that I want to do. And so I'm trying to think about, like, how can I, you know, unbundle. Unbundle, like, DGMG from. From myself so much. And, like, I think now I have the opportunity to. To really be its own platform as a destination for B2B marketers. And I'm Dave, and I happen to run that, and it becomes a business. But there might be other things that I do. But I also think, like, there's just value in having distribution and having reach now means also I can. I can make a compelling pitch to others and say, hey, help me teach B2B marketing to others. And you might, you know, get a following for your niche or for the thing that you're doing. And so that's. That's a topic that I'm kind of, like, circling around a bit. The fear is more just like, I don't know It's. You have B. Everybody gives you feedback, and that's the gift. And the curse of it is not everyone's going to like the decision that you make or. Or do that. And I think the hardest part about being in this business on my own is there's not many people to like. There's not a team of things to like. All right, you know what? Even if we screw this up, six of us got this wrong. Right? It's like, it's like. Yeah. And I, And I see some of that, but honestly, at the end of the day, it's not a life or death business. It's an opportunity to help people get better at B2B marketing. And I think there's a cool. I think there's a cool little media company that I can build in the B2B marketing niche, and that's how I would really sum it up.

Yeah, I love that. I think, you know, I also think not knowing you, I've only met you, you know, recently, but I. But I think you potentially can be your own worst enemy because now you have more time to think.

It's all. Yeah, that's right.

So, you know, like, you know, it was different. Like, it was like it was a job. And then there's. There's this thing on the, you know, not necessarily on the side, but it's a big thing. Right. And now it's. It's like everything. Right. Well, a good chunk of things. So. But yeah, that's. I, I'm really happy for you. I think it's really cool that, you know, you've been able to build something that resonates with this audience that frankly, they need or, you know, we, as a community, marketers need. And it's everybody with a job title of, you know, marketer, you know, in some form or fashion. And I think that's, you know, that's a. That's an interesting. You know, it's an interesting area in my. By the. And the reason why I'm fascinated by the question is just because. Or the answer is because my past life.

Yeah.

Are you familiar with Marketing Sherpa at all? Back in its heyday. Okay, So I used to run Marketing Sherpa. And. And yeah, and so that's what we did. Right. As we were thinking through, okay, we have these newsletters, and, you know, we had like six of them a week. And then, you know, they were all cut up by Legion or whatever. And then we'd have events, obviously, we had our summits that would go across the, you know, Six or eight of them a year. And then we'd have the benchmark guides. I'm sure you probably remember those and the handbooks and. And I always kind of looked at it like, you know, sort of before me, you know.

You know, it's funny, I.

Right.

I didn't really. I didn't really make that connection until now, but I've been recently thinking about what would I name dgmg? Like, I'm just trying to come up with a different name and different brand and. And I start. I was like, oh, yeah, remember, remember marketing? Because I started thinking like, marketing profs. Oh, there's marketing profs and Hanley. Right. Then. Then marketing Sherpa. Yeah. I mean, you. You should bring that business back. And then right now would be the time for you. You could crush dgmg.

Yeah, well, I think. Well, I don't have anything to do with that anymore, but yeah, I mean, the, The. The concept behind that. And I don't know if you'd ever met Ann Holland, but she was brilliant at building. She came out of, like, the paid newsletters, paid subscription, like, era. Right. And, you know, Bob Bly and, you know, you sort of go down the list. And so, you know, she, like, just. She worked at Thompson and, you know, a few other companies and really nailed it. And she's sort of that marketer's marketer and dealt exactly with this kind of sort of dilemma. Like, you know, I want to build something that's like an asset. Right. And grow it. And I want to make sure that it's not necessarily about me. You know, it started out as me, and then it kind of grew and, and, and built out from there.

And.

And I learned a lot from her, and she just. There's a. But I also learned that there's a window. Right. You know, that's. That's part of it, too, is just, you know, creating that.

Yeah, I. I mean, I think that that's kind of. That's why.

Less so. That's why.

Anyway, like, I feel like I have a one. I have like a one. I feel like I need to do this in the next year or two. And. And.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. So that's kind of like what I'm working on. But it's. It's. It's a mental. Like, it's a mentally taxing project because it's like it could be as big or as small as you want to chip away at it, you know, from like a. It could be hire an agency, do a whole rebrand, do a whole Website, do this whole crazy biggie, big thing, make a huge investment, or it could be, like, slow to chip away at it. And I don't know if there's a right or wrong approach, but it's kind of fun and it's kind of. I'm enjoying. Like, I talk about B2B marketing, and that has helped me grow audience, whatever. But I like thinking about the business challenge and thinking about that. You know, how am I going to do that? That stuff is the fun stuff to me right now.

Yeah, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. Well, yeah, I appreciate your sort of opening up about that. I think it's just watching sort of from the. From the outside in, you know.

Yeah, thanks.

It's just fun to see. So. So I. Yeah, so I think that actually segues pretty well. Right. You know, so you are on, I believe. I want to make sure I get the date right.

Tuesday the 15th.

It's Tuesday the 15th. Right. So I. I have printed it. I know this is probably not economic or economically.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Ecologically friendly. But I. I printed it out because I like to hold things in my hand and I like to be able to, you know, and. And, you know, I see a pile of books in the background, too. So I'm kind of curious, like, you know, maybe talk us through really quickly. You know, obviously you didn't turn this thing out overnight. You've been thinking about it over time. You've been building out these chapters. You've been putting thought into it. You know, you're working on this project for a while. What was the rationale behind it? Like, both, I think, kind of like the practical rationale behind it. And then also maybe like, what's the. What's the thing you're trying to talk about? And maybe that even connects to what we just talked about.

Yeah, I mean, the platform. No, the logic behind it.

So.

So I think I've always wanted to write a book of my own. And I love marketing, and marketing is the thing that I focus on. And I kind of had. I don't know, I just was always observing people in marketing that had kind of published their own. Their own. Their own thoughts, their own point of view, their own unique take on things, and I have plenty of those. And I really wanted to set a goal of creating a book. And mainly because everything is digital now. Podcasts, Facebook group, email list. There's just still something. I mean, I have bookshelves, but I love having physical books. And I thought that people that were interesting in Marketing. I thought it would be so cool to be able to kind of codify and put down some of my thinking on marketing at this point in life at least, and give it to people. And I've kind of had a unique, not traditional playbook for helping companies that I've worked with, growing. And I realized that one of them was centered around this idea of really building a brand for the company founder and the CEO and making the marketing function kind of act more like a media company like we've talked about, and having a strong presence on social media and doing something like a podcast and having an email list and having a unique point of view and you know, really becoming a publisher. And I've seen like a lot of marketing teams just kind of go and they just focus on marketing the product and they're, they're, they're blind to like a story that might be there. And I think we talked about this earlier in the podcast today, but like, I think as the marketing leader or as a, as a CEO or the founder, you got to look at all the ingredients you have to grow your business through marketing. And I think one of the best ingredients that you have is to build a brand through the founder because so often the founder of that company has a very unique point of view, a very unique story. And in the case of Drift, I went there and David, the CEO not only did have a very unique point of view and strong opinions, but he was, he had a, he had an audience. He, he was a former chief product officer at HubSpot. Him and his co founder, the co founder Elias Torres, they had built a couple companies together before he had built his own audience. And so the first marketing channel that we really like tried at Drift was to elevate his personal brand and to tell the company story through his social media and through his podcast. And that was created an unbelievable connection with an early in audience that I haven't seen anywhere else really. And then we did a similar thing at Privy. I was like, man, I should write, I should write about this because I think a lot of founders still like are sleeping on, on social media or they, they're just thinking about it wrong. And so I wanted to put down my thoughts on like how to actually use marketing as a founder beyond like the traditional funnel, demand gen stuff, how to use social media, podcasting, building your email list, how do you use those things to your advantage, what to say, what to do as a founder. And mainly because the founder, you know, 99% of the time they have some very unique story about why they started the company or, you know, or something that happened to them in order to start the company. But they're also the person that's uniquely positioned to have something interesting to say because they're the ones in conversations with customers all day with partners all day with potential investors, all day in hard conversations about product roadmap and trade offs. And they're thinking about the future of the industry. Like those are all the best ingredients for social media. Not, and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, not just delegating social media to the 22 year old intern. That person can do an amazing job on social media. But I think especially in the B2B context, people want to hear from the founder, the expert in that industry. And so often it is that founder. And so I wanted to give people like a very actionable playbook to do that. And that's how we got founderbrand.

I love it. I think that's so cool. There's, there's such a, there's such a connection, I think also to like, what you yourself are doing and playing this out in your own.

Well, yeah, I mean, I talked about, in the book, I talk about like how even testing the initial title and concept for this book, I've been doing that for over a year in DGMG and like, so whether the book sells or not, whatever, but I feel like at least I know that I've kind of tested some of the content with people and they helped write the title and help come up with the concept and that was really powerful. But even this example today, I've done three podcast interviews throughout the day from my house and my book marketing plan is the last couple weeks I started talking about the book. And on two Tuesday, I'm gonna email everybody in my list and I'm gonna promote on social media. And like, I didn't hire a PR agency. I don't have a marketing person helping me with this because I've built my own audience, I'm able to kind of set my own path as a publisher. And my marketing plan for creating this book is to use the channels that I've built up over the years to hopefully sell some copies of the book. Right. Like that's, that's the meta lesson that you pulled out.

Yep, that's right. Yep, yep, that's right. Yeah, I love it. I think so. You know, there's a million more questions that I would love to ask you. We're gonna have to have you back on the show at some Point. But I, but I. Yeah, just for everybody who's listening, we'll have this out, you know, pre. You know, within the next day or so, the, the podcast itself will drop. But the. Yeah. Tuesday 15th. And they can get it where?

Amazon. And if you get it, if you get it on Tuesday.

There you go.

I think the kind of version is going to be like 99 cents. So if you're budget conscious, we have that option available.

Awesome, man.

It's actually supposed to be some marketing. It's supposed, supposed to be some marketing.

Scheme to shoot up the rankings, I guess.

So we'll see how it goes.

So that's the analytical part of me. And like, I'm thinking, okay, you've got X number of, you know, people on your list. You know, there's the, the podcast road show that you're out on, you know, and then you, you sort of piggyback off the back of that with.

I mean, I, I have no, I.

Have just the, the algorithm. It'll be fun to see.

I really don't. I. If, if, if 100 people buy it and it's really meaningful to 100 people, that would be awesome. And if more than 100 people buy it, then. Then that's great. But more of just like, I wanted to put, I wanted to put my perspective on this.

Yeah.

In a book and give some people tactical advice. And. And I think we did it. So. Yeah.

That'S cool.

Thank you. Appreciate it, Eric. Thanks.

Dave, thanks for joining us. Absolutely. At all. Back in its heyday. Okay, so I used to run marketing Sherpa. And, and yeah, and so that's what we did. Right. As we were thinking through. Okay, we had these newsletters and, you know, we had like six of them a week. And then, you know, they were all cut up by Legion or whatever. And then we'd have events, obviously, we had our summits that would go across the. The, you know, six or eight of them a year. And then we'd have the benchmark guides. I'm sure you probably remember those and the handbooks and, and I always kind of looked at it like, you know, sort of before me, you know.

You know, it's funny, I.

Right.

I didn't really. I didn't really make that connection until now, but I've been recently thinking about what would I name dgmg? Like, I'm just trying to come up with a different name and different brand. And. And I start. I was like, oh, yeah, remember, Remember marketing? Because I started thinking like, marketing profs. Oh, there's Marketing Profs and Hanley. Right. Then. Then marketing Sherpa. Yeah, I mean, you. You should bring that business back. And then right now would be the time for. You could crush dgmg.

Yeah, well, I think. Well, I don't have anything to do with that anymore. But yeah, I mean, the, The. The concept behind that. And I don't know if you'd ever met Ann Holland, but she was brilliant at building. She came out of like, the paid newsletters, paid subscription, like, era. Right. And yeah, you know, Bob Bly and, you know, you sort of go down the list and so, you know, she, like, just. She worked at Thompson and, you know, a few other companies and really nailed it. And she's sort of that marketer's marketer and dealt exactly with this kind of sort of dilemma. Like, you know, I want to build something that's like an asset. Right. And grow it. And I want to make sure that it's not necessarily about me. You know, it started out as me, and then it kind of grew and built out from there. And I learned a lot from her and she just. There's a. But I also learned that there's a window. Right. You know, and that's. That's part of it, too, is just, you know, creating that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's kind of. That's why I left.

That's why.

Anyway, because I feel like. I feel like I have a one. I have like a one. I feel like I need to do this in the next year or two. And. And.

Yeah.

Yeah, so. So that's kind of like what I'm. What I'm working on. But it's. It's. It's a mental. Like, it's a mentally taxing project because it's like, it could be as big or as small as you want to chip away at it, you know, from like a. It could be hire an agency, do a whole rebrand, do a whole website, do this whole crazy biggie big thing, make a huge investment. Or it could be, like, slow to chip away at it. And I don't know if there's a right or wrong approach, but it's kind of fun and it's kind of. I'm enjoying. Like, I talk about B2B marketing, and that has helped me grow audience, whatever. But I like thinking about the business challenge and thinking about that. You know, how am I going to do that? That stuff is the fun stuff to me right now.

Yeah, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. Well, yeah, I appreciate your sort of opening up about that. I think it's. It's just watching sort of from the. From the outside in, you know.

Yeah.

It's just fun to see. So. So I. Yeah, so I think that actually segues pretty well. Right. You know, so you are on, I believe. I want to make sure I get the date Right.

Tuesday the 15th.

Right. It's Tuesday the 15th. Right. So I. I have printed it. I know this is probably not economic or economically.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Ecologically friendly. But I printed it out because I like to hold things in my hand and I like to be able to, you know, And I see a pile of books in the background, too. So I'm kind of curious, like, you know, maybe talk us through really quickly. You know, obviously you didn't turn this thing out overnight. You've been thinking about it over time. You've been building out these chapters. You've been putting thought into it. You know, you're working on this project for a while. What was the rationale behind it? Like both, I think, kind of like the practical rationale behind it, and then also maybe like, what's the. What's the thing you're trying to talk about? And maybe that even connects to what we just talked about.

Yeah. I mean, the platform. No, the logic behind it.

So.

So I think I've always wanted to write a book of my own, and I love marketing, and marketing is the thing that I focus on. I just was always observing people in marketing that had kind of published their own thoughts, their own point of view, their own unique.