How To Get People's Attention To Your Brand With Dave Gerhardt

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Tales from the Pros. And this is Michael Giorgio, your host and co founder of Imaginovation. I have a very special guest with me here today. He is the VP of marketing at Drift, which is the world's leading conversational marketing and sales platform that helps businesses connect now with the customers who are ready to buy now. And he is also a B2B marketing leader, brand builder, and co creator of the Seeking Wisdom podcast, Hyper Growth and the official book on conversational marketing. This is Tales from the Pros, where business leaders and influencers share their stories of inspiration, struggles and successes. And I'm your host, Michael Giorgio. Please welcome Dave Gerhard. Dave, appreciate. Thanks for being on the show, man. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I'm happy to be here. I love talking.

I guess all of us marketers love to talk, man, because I was a born market. I never shut the heck up. So, Dave, just real quick, you know, kick off the, the, the podcast here. You know, like, I connected with you on LinkedIn. I see all of your content on LinkedIn, which I absolutely love your content, your videos are fantastic. You have really authentic and, and just honest messages, which I'm sure you're going to talk about, you know, later in this. In this episode. But with that being said, you know, do you ever, like, what do you consider an integral part of how you became the marketer you are today? How did you tell us a little bit about your. Your. Your story, your background?

I actually have no idea. Like, I think the way I got to. What I'm doing today is I think I used to always, like, try to chase this perfect, like, marketing career, and I cared too much about stuff, skills that I needed to acquire. And should you be a T shape marketer or a generalist or. Oh, my God, I know how to do content, but I don't know how to do this thing. So I got to go do this thing. And the reason I'm using that as an example is because I think so many marketers get caught up in best practices and doing what the industry thinks you need to do in order to grow your career. Where for me, it was, I actually jumped around a bunch. I was at five companies in six years, and from the ages of like 23 to 28, like just a bunch of different companies. And I treated it just like, I'm gonna acquire as much knowledge as I can about marketing. And then I got an opportunity to join Drift, which was, for me, didn't even care what the company was gonna do. I took a bet on the team and the founders and had an opportunity to join as the first full time marketing person, which meant I got to get my MBA in marketing, which is like, you know, I learned a bunch in the first five, six years of my career. But you don't actually get to do anything at a big company. A lot of times you don't get to actually, you know, press the button or, you know, fail on your own. You know, everybody kind of has these, these bullets on their LinkedIn that says, you know, grew revenue, blah, blah, blah to blah, blah, blah. And like, you were just, you're one of, you know, 75 people on the marketing team who like, did that. Sure, it's great. It's not, I'm not knocking on that, but, you know, you don't actually get to learn and experience that firsthand. And so I took the job at Drift because I wanted to just do everything. I wanted to do SEO and content and paid and demand gen and video and events and just figure it all out. And so I've just spent the last three years kind of mo moving from individual contributor, where I did everything, to now there's a team of 15, 20 people in marketing at Drift, and it's been an amazing learning for me and Evolution. So I think that's how I got here today. But I wanted to use that as the intro because I think a lot of marketers would just get caught up on like, okay, I can do SEO now. I got to learn this where to me it's just all about go to a place where you can learn and you can learn by doing, not by watching other people do it, you know.

Absolutely. And I agree. And I'm sure you, you know, Gary Vaynerchuka, he talks a lot about that, right? Execution, you know, and, and I love what that you said that because I hear, I deal with startups all the time and all different, you know, different types of companies and different types of marketers. And I, I hear that a lot. It's, it's not as much doing, right. I just hear people talking about it and it's not as much execution and implementation and, and just trying things out and trying to, to even make mistakes because we're all going to make a ton, ton of mistakes, right? That's how you're going to get better, right?

Yeah. I think you got to learn. I think, like, there's only so much like, let's say, let's say you want to be a great, you want to be a great podcast Host. Right. There's only so much you can learn about being a great podcast host before you do it and before you do it on your own. And also, you know, in marketing, we like to follow whatever the best practices are. Verse. Like, what if, like, the best way for me to do my podcast is to do a podcast every single day or to only release one a month, but it's two hours long. And just try to do things the way that nobody else is doing them to build your audience. I just think you don't always learn that stuff if you just follow best practices or do it how everybody else has already done it. You got to do your own thing and just be willing to go and learn.

Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. Well said. So tell us a little bit more, Dave, about Drift. I mean, I've heard of Drift. I know some of your products, and you guys got. I mean, it's an amazing company from what I've read and what I've heard. Can you tell us a little bit more about that company and where you work and where you guys are kind of headed?

Yeah. So our mission at Drift is really to transform the way businesses buy from businesses. We think that there's a big disconnect between the way that people like you and me as people, not B2B marketing Dave, but as just like Dave the human, communicate how we communicate and how we want to buy online and how B2B companies actually kind of make us communicate, which is go to my website, fill out my form, and my BDR team will reach out to you when they're ready. And so at Drift, when we think about conversational marketing, Drift connects you now with the people who are ready to buy now. Right? And the key word there is now, not later. Not go to my website, fill out this form, and somebody on my team is going to reach out to you later. Not come back tomorrow at 9am when we're here. It's all about now, because Real time. Yeah, it's real time. Right. We all expect that. I could go walk outside of the office right now and call an Uber or Lyft on my way home, and they're gonna scan the area for the driver closest to me, and within 12 minutes, I'm gonna get a ride. And we're also so impatient as consumers now, I don't know if you do this. I do this all the time. I have both Uber and Lyft apps on my phone, right? And I pull up Uber, and if the Uber's seven minutes away, I pull up Lyft and if the Lyft is four minutes away, I call the Lyft. Right? And the same thing, like that. Same reason why we love Amazon, because one click, I can buy everything I need for my house tonight, and it'll be here tomorrow. But then there's a huge disconnect between how that actually happens in the marketing world and especially in B2B.

Yeah, no, that's great. And it was with Drift. I know you guys, that you guys have awesome products, but is it also services as well? Is it just more products?

Products.

Just products. Okay. And I know, you know, I actually, it's. It's pretty funny because I. I tried to get. Is it David Count cancel?

Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I read a lot about him. Is awesome, man. I saw a lot of videos and articles about him, and I actually tried to get him on the show a long time ago, but he's so busy, so I'm like, oh, my. That's crazy. But I finally was able to get you on the show, so it's pretty cool that that kind of happened.

Look, every. Everything, about 98% of what I'm telling you, I learned from him. So it's like, it's the next best thing.

That's great. So, Dave, were there certain focus areas that you had to really work hard on or pay attention to that essentially helped to become a branded marketing leader?

What do you mean?

Well, were there certain. Were there certain things that you had to. That you had to essentially, like, focus on integral parts in the past or. Or anything that you had to like and like, strategy or. Or anything like, like, like videos or anything that you felt in today's, you know, digital age that helped you to become more noticeable as a marketing leader, helped you get more attention. Like, what worked.

What worked was actually none of the new stuff. What worked the most was going back and studying kind of history. Like, not like US History, but like marketing history and direct mail and advertising and copywriting and dc. The guy you just talked about, Drift, CEO, founder, he pushed me really early on at Drift to go back. He said, forget about what the best practices are in marketing and all that stuff. Go back and study the timeless lessons. Go back and read copywriting books from the 1920s. And I read a book that was published in 1924 called Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. And that book blew my mind, because when I read it, it was 2015. And every lesson in that book, which was written almost 100 years ago, was still true today because, you know, technology continues to change, marketing continues to change, but what hasn't changed is people. And marketing is all about reaching people. And they're their fears, their dreams, their desires, their motivations. And so I spent more time wondering about how I can understand that stuff and social psychology than I did about, you know, how do I set up a marketing automation campaign that can do X, Y and Z? Because you can learn that stuff from anywhere. And so I've really spent the last couple years really just kind of geeking out on old school marketing, on classic marketing stuff and really trying to understand, you know, consumer behavior and social psychology. And also I'm just, you know, neurotically curious person where I have to know the reason for everything. I have to know how this works and why and why does this plug in here or why did this person mention this thing and not this thing? And I just got to try to figure everything out. And I think it's a gift. And the curse, the curses, it drives me crazy. The gift is that I think it helps, it helps me in marketing because I always want to learn more. I'm just super curious about, you know, how people did things and want to study brands and marketing teams.

Yeah. And also, like, just based on your experience, like, what do you see as some of really the toughest challenges and problems that B2B marketers face today? And not just on, on LinkedIn. I know you're, I'm sure you're on LinkedIn a lot, but just in general, do you see something that, that a lot of these marketers are doing wrong?

It's not so much what people are doing. So there is one thing people are doing wrong, which I think, I don't think as marketers, we often have empathy for the people that we're trying to do marketing to. Right. Like nobody, no marketer, no person, nobody wants to be marketed to, nobody wants to be sold to. And of course you always get a sales rep or marketing person who's like, that's not true. I love taking sales calls because that's an outlier. That's not true. Right. 99% of people talk to my dad or my cousin or my wife or my friend. None of them want to be marketed to and want to be sold to. And so the biggest mistake is not having empathy for how people actually behave and what they want and then actually matching that to how you do marketing for your business. I think that's a huge disconnect where, you know, sure, well, who cares? I gotta get people to my webinar. But it doesn't matter if I send five emails in six days, right? Where like, wait a second, if you were on the other end of that, you would flip out. You'd hate that. And so I think it's having empathy for that. And then the other thing is just really, damn, I lost my train of thought. That's a pretty good one. The empathy one is super important. Maybe you can, you can remind me of what I was gonna say.

Well, I think, like, I agree, I think, and I know a lot of leaders talk about empathy. I think it's understanding, not only understanding your audience, but understanding the psychology behind it and how they're thinking and, and, and relating, finding a way to relate to them. Because I think I always talk. If you hear a lot of my, my episodes in this podcast, I talk a lot about motives. I think having the right motive and intent behind your message is very important and trying to relate to the people that you're talking to. I see, like when you, when you have these video. When you have these just simple iPhone videos on LinkedIn, and they just seem very, I don't know, like some of them, they're, they're. You're giving a lot of insight, but some you're just kind of talking about what's going on or your, your day or what have you, or. But if they're very. I, I just feel the value that you're providing to your audience, which is great. And sometimes when I see the content out there, it's very salesy like you talked about. And none of us really want to be sold to, right? And I think that you wanted to add on to that, that it's not really, it's not really the best method is to just be sold to on all these channels.

Yeah. So you reminded me of my other thing. I was going to say the other thing. The challenge is, you know, content used to be like the secret weapon for marketers, right? Like if you had a blog or if you had a podcast or if you had video, everyone has all those things today. And so content is a commodity, right? Every company, every person has a blog, has a podcast, is doing videos on social media. And so, like, that alone is not unique anymore. And as a person, like, I'm not. Nobody's going home and being like, you know what I wish, I wish I had another podcast from a brand, right? Like, you don't. Nobody needs more content. Nobody needs more blogs, nobody needs more videos. All that stuff is a commodity. And so that really changes the landscape for marketers. How do you compete in a world where information is free, Right? Customers have all the power today. Like, I use this example a lot, but a month ago, my wife and I went and bought a new car. And we said, we're gonna buy this car today, right? This isn't like, this is 2018, 2019. I'm not gonna go there, evaluate it, come back, drive again. Like, no. We did a ton of research. I talked to a ton of people, friends, family, whoever had other cars, similar, whatever. We walked in the dealership that day and we had it basically narrowed down. I said, I want to test drive this one and this one, and here's the terms that I want. And the sales guy was like, okay, great. Here you go. Drive it. And we made our decision. And that's how we all buy today, right? We gather, like, there's so many studies out there, from Harvard Business Review to Boston Consulting Group, where, like, you know, 75, 80% of the research in the buying process is done by the time you actually talk to somebody at the company, right? Where think about the change from 10 years ago. You'd have to show up on somebody's website and be like, I don't know anything. Can you tell me? Right? But now information is free. You can find all that stuff out. And so I think that's really changed the balance of power for marketers. And you have to have this philosophy where you're okay giving stuff away, right? We give away, I would say, 99% of our information. We give it away for free at Drift. No forms, no gated content, no paid content, nothing. Like, we give it all away, and then we know that good things are going to come out of that. Because when people actually want to talk to us, they're asking the right questions and they're interested.

Yeah, no, I definitely get that. And I think kind of going back again to. I love Gary Vee, by the way. I just. I love Gary Vaynerchuk, but I always talk about that. You're saying so many things that a lot of these other leaders have said is that you're just giving away this free content that's going to make you a thought leader in your industry. You're not really expecting anything in return. You're kind of just giving, giving, giving, and that's going to make you a leader in your industry because you're providing so much value, and they're going to come to you. They're going to think of you in their head, and they're going to come to you first for any product or service. And I think that's great.

Yep, totally agree. And to me, that used to be a differentiator. Oh, wait, we have a blog. Everybody has a blog now, right? Like, what is your thing? How are you going to compete? That's the question.

Yeah, absolutely. And what do you think, David, in regards to. For future leaders, marketers, entrepreneurs, listening? What would you consider the most important things to focus on to be a better marketer, in your opinion?

I think you just learning like this. This. This growth mindset where anything. I think I love marketing because everything to me is marketing. Like, I'll be standing in line at the. At the grocery store and see a tabloid magazine in the shelf, and most people would be like, that's trash. Why do you spend your time reading that? I'm not reading it, but I'm looking at it. Because that. That tabloid sells millions of copies, and they know something about writing headlines and what the COVID should look like. And how can we steal that inspiration, use that for our magazine or our website or our blog or our headline. And so I think it's really just about always being curious and understanding what makes people respond to certain things and then figuring out how can you translate that into what you're doing as a marketer. So number one is like being. Being super curious. Number two is just being able to learn faster than other people. And so I'm just obsessed with reading, with listening to podcasts, with listening to books, you know, on, like, I read a book in the morning, walk into work, listening to a book on Audible, and always watching YouTube videos and getting podcasts and stuff. And that's not to say I'm unique, but I think that's an advantage because if you're just taking in information from everywhere, you're going to have a bigger palette to pull from when you need to come up with ideas. And I think, you know, I was talking to someone earlier about, like, how do you come up with more ideas? And the way you come up with more ideas is by just learning more stuff. Like, read every newspaper, every book, every blog, every pocket. Like, soak all that stuff in, Find people that you want to learn from. You don't have to learn from everybody, but pick out two or three types of people in an industry. Or, you know, hey, there's this one CMO from American Express that I think is amazing. I just want to follow her stuff, right? Or I love this author, and he's great about social psychology, so I want to learn everything he has. And I think just being intentional about what you're learning and what you're gonna find is the more you learn, the more creative you're gonna be. That's something I didn't understand until a couple years ago. I used to think, like, I'm not that creative. But now, like, just the more you learn, you're gonna, you're gonna be able to come up with ideas left and right all day long. And I think that is really the secret to becoming a great marketer is you can come up with ideas for anything. I could figure out how to sell you this, you know, water bottle on my desk if we needed to. And I think that's, that's an advantage.

Yeah. And you know, I definitely want to ask you this question. One of my employees actually asked me to ask you this is, you know, with your videos on LinkedIn. We all know LinkedIn is very powerful and we're all trying to, we all try to utilize it to the best of our ability. But with you, we read, you know, me and some of my employees read one of your articles about how to, how you got 100,000 views. Not that numbers matter, but it's just kind of, we're using that article as an example how you got over 100,000 views on a lot of, on most of your, if not all of your videos. And you had certain key, you know, key methods and strategies. Do you want to talk a little bit about that just so people. I definitely want to provide insight for people who are trying to improve their, their, just their messages and their videos and content on LinkedIn.

Yep. So I'll give you, I'll give you a real answer that, that was a head, that was a clickbait headline that I wrote. Because the, the real answer is just consistency. It's consistency. And I keep forgetting this lesson and learning it over again. The only secret that I found to like getting all those views on LinkedIn is just being consistent. Publishing every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, at certain times, and no matter what, rain or shine, if I have an idea or not, like gotta post something. Consistency is so key. The other thing, the other hack is I try to respond to almost everybody who comments on a post because like, what's the point of social media if it's gonna be a one way channel, right? Like, I try to respond to everybody. People who don't like it, people who like it, people who, you know, comment with an emoji and you don't have to write an essay back to everybody. It's like if I'm sitting on the train or if I have 10 minutes, I pull up my phone and I try to respond to Everybody. And I think that makes a difference because then what happens is when they see your stuff in the future, they're like, I'm more likely to engage with that because I know that somebody's on the other end, right? Like, you know that it's not. When you see a video for me, even if you don't like it, you know that it's actually me doing it. Right. And so you're more likely to comment or like or engage on that post because you know there's somebody on the other end. It's not some automated thing that a brand is posting. And so, you know, I am super conscious about, like, I do spend a lot of time trying to respond to everybody because I think that makes a difference. Then the third. So consistency, responding to everybody. The third thing is really just what I said before is really understanding the social platforms and what content works. And I think you have to be able to, you have to post a lot. Now that I've done this consistently for over a year, just posting three, four times a week, I could tell you which posts are gonna be successful before I even post them. And that's not. Cause I have some magic trick. But like, you just know, you start to understand the audience, you start to understand which content is gonna work. Every now and then I'm, you know, obviously I'm surprised about something that did work or didn't, but, you know, for 75% of them, I can tell you, if you told me right now a type of post you're gonna write on LinkedIn, I'd be like, I'd actually make it more about this because I think this is gonna work better and you just gotta understand the audience. Right. You mentioned Gary Vee before. He has this down to it to a science. You don't have to like him, love him or hate him, but he knows every platform inside and out. He knows what content is great for Instagram, he knows what content is great for his podcast, he knows what content is great for YouTube, he knows what content is great for LinkedIn. He knows what content is great for his blog, and he has a deep understanding of all of those channels, and that's what makes him great at social, is he understands how to tailor that. I think the biggest mistake people still make, and they've been making this for a decade since social media really started to be a thing, is just taking one piece of content and distributing it across all five channels without tailoring it or changing it it for any, for, for those audiences.

And do you feel like, for example, I mean, you're a perfect example for. This question is in regards to people that work at other companies, not necessarily owners or, you know, founders of companies, but. But high level, you know, representatives like yourself, VP of marketing at a great company like Drift. Do you feel that you need to have, like a plan before each video, so. Or do you just kind of wing it? Do you think it's better? You think it's gonna be more authentic to just. To just kind of wing the video? I mean, having a little idea, but not like a straight up strategic, like, oh, this is exactly what I need to talk about.

I mean, my answer, My answer isn't gonna help anybody because I think you got to do what. What is comfortable for you, right? Like, if you are not comfortable just like pulling out your phone in the middle of a crowded street and recording a thought, then don't do it. Don't do it because I do it. Don't do it because you've seen other people do it. Like, find a channel that is comfortable for you. For me, that just happens to work for me. Like, the other night I was walking to pick up dinner for my wife and I, and on the walk I was like, oh, I just had an idea and I pulled out my phone and I recorded a video and I posted it, right? I didn't think about it for more than five minutes. I just posted it. The video was blurry, probably shaky, whatever. I did it and that and that, and that worked because that's what works for me. Some people need to, like, sit down and be more like some people. There's different. There's a great book from Peter Drucker called Managing Oneself. It was written in 1940, 1950, about, like, really understanding yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. And he basically broke down, like, there's different. There's two different types of. There's two different ways people learn and communicate. There's, you know, visual learners and audio learners or. And for me, like, that's just a channel that is comfortable for me. For other people, it might be writing. And so maybe your thing is you can spontaneously write something. But I think it just depends, right? It doesn't mean that if you want to do LinkedIn videos, you don't need to sit down and write a script and do it. Maybe you can be great at that. And that might work on LinkedIn, but this is just kind of one method for me. And it's. There's actually, you know, just today as we're recording this, somebody posted this thread on LinkedIn and was like, you know, why, why is, you know, why does everybody do this, like walking around, selfie style video? You know, I wish there was another way for people to, to make content. And I commented, I'm like, look, that's just what works for me. That's what I, that's the way I do it. It doesn't mean that it has to be right for everybody. And if it didn't work, then I would stop doing it, but it's working. And I think that's, that's an important lesson is to like, not do something because you see everybody else in your industry do it. Find your take, right? Maybe. I bet you could build a massive audience on LinkedIn if you did the opposite of what I do, which is you have a production crew, you spend six hours editing tightly, you know, you're curating this video, animations, transcripts, all that stuff. And you make this like 4 minute video that is like production worthy. And I bet you could do that. But that's not my strategy and that's not what I'm doing. So you got to figure out what works for you.

Perfect. I appreciate being, thanks for being so, being so honest. I think a lot of people are going to really appreciate that. Just kind of being yourself. Be authentic. Don't just kind of be a copycat or don't try to do something that other people are doing. Just be yourself. So I love that. So jumping just a little bit here, Dave, did you face any, like, tough personal or career obstacles in your, in your past that pushed you to really get to where you are today? And how did you overcome them? Because, you know, we all go through obstacles. We all, everyone in business, every leader goes through tough challenges and, and just, you know, hurdles. Was there anything that you went through that really pushed you to learning and becoming who you are now?

I don't have like a particular story of struggle, but I think my thing has just been. I never thought to be like, I never got good grades. I was always getting, you know, Cs and D. Like in my house, a C would get hung up on the fridge and we would go out to dinner. And so that's just always. I just never, I never cared too much about school and homework and reading books and all that stuff. And for me, the change was like when I got into work and I realized that, like, I just felt more of a connection between the input and output where school, it was just like, what's the point of this? At work it was like, whoa, I just learned something that got me better at my job, that got me better promotion, that got me more money and a bigger title, and, you know, all that stuff, right? Like the vanity stuff. And I started to see, like, oh, this is directly related. Okay, cool. I want to learn more. What's next? What else can I learn? And so I've just always kind of had that chip on my shoulder a little bit, which is like, I didn't. Didn't go to, you know, not from the smartest background, didn't go to the best schools, but I've just always kind of continued to figure things out on my own. And I think that's a mindset that has been super helpful, especially in marketing, where the rules don't really matter. It's whoever can figure things out faster and just be super creative and continue to learn.

Fantastic. So I always ask these last three questions, Dave, for every episode, and I call it the Three House. And how would you define failure? How would you define entrepreneurship? And how would you define success? How would you define failure?

What was the first one? How would I define failure? Just like or however you feel like.

It could be business, it could be personal. Anything in general.

I don't know. I think when you have it. When you have a goal and you don't. You fall short of the goal. Is failure? I don't know. I don't have a. That's a very tough question. What is failure? What is life?

No, no, just. It's. I. Hey, I always ask that because everyone has a different take on it. You know, some of them say it's just a mindset, but it's always good to hear every. Every. Every person's take on. On failure, even if. If some believe it even exists. And how do you. How would you define entrepreneurship?

I don't know. I don't even think of myself as a entrepreneur. I think, like, I think I just. Just. I think. I think the piece of. You know, I've never. I've never started. I've had side projects. I never started my own company. But I think entrepreneurship is. It's more of a mindset. I think it's a mindset. It's. It's kind of throwing out the playbook or knowing that there is no playbook and being willing to start something from scratch. And I think I have this in my LinkedIn bio. But just like I love. I love building something from nothing and getting the right people to pay attention. The first half of that is the part that I love, which is like, the entrepreneur mindset is building something from nothing. I think there's usually, like, a couple types of people that you run across, right? There's somebody who's like, okay, Dave, I'm going to tell you what we got to get done. We got to start a podcast. Nobody knows how to do it. There's no budget for it. I don't know. There's two people, like, people could react to that two ways. One of them is, like, the entrepreneur mindset, which is like, great. When do you need to buy? Okay, cool. I'm going to figure this thing out. The other mindset is like, I'm already doing seven other things. I have no idea how to do a podcast. What's the budget for this, by the way? Oh, that's not enough money. That's the opposite of the entrepreneurial mindset. And I think I just try to apply that to that piece. I try to apply to everything that we do in marketing is there's always a different way. There's always a new take. I want to try every different challenge that we have versus having to follow everything in this cookie cutter system.

That's a great answer. I love it. And how do you. How would you define success? Another hard one. I know, I know.

Yeah, that's. That's the closest one to, like, what's the meaning of life? How do I find. Find success? I don't know. Success? For me, success has continued to mean different things as I've, like, continued to grow and. And get older and stuff. And to me now, success is like just being happy. To be honest with you, like, if I'm happy, if I can be happy in my own, if I can walk home and be like, I'm just happy, like, my family's healthy, I'm having fun, then that, to me, is success. Where I think 10 years ago I would have been like, you need this house, you need this, you need this car, you need this. None of that stuff matters.

No, and I appreciate that. You know, it's always good to see, you know, sometimes I know they're very hard questions. It's. It's good to hear some people have very specific answers. They're like, so, oh, yeah, I have a perfect answer that some of them are like, yeah, this is a tough one. I don't know. But I always like to hear everyone's take on it. So I really appreciate that, Dave. So can you tell us where everyone can find you?

You can find me anywhere. There's an Internet connection. I'm Ave gerhart on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, all that stuff? Pretty much. Pretty much. Everywhere company is drift.com and if you go to drift.com book, you can pre order the brand new copy of our of our debut novel. It's the definitive guide to conversational marketing, which is in stores everywhere on January 3rd.

Thank you so much, Dave. I really appreciate it, man. I know. Like I said, I'm sure you're very, very busy guy. And thank you so much for being a part of this podcast and sharing your story and your expertise, expert insight. So I'm very, very thankful.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I do. Like, I'm just giving you a hard time. I like your question.

No, that's good. That's my job.