Is The CEO Getting In The Way of The Right Company Story?

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Hey, what's up? This is Dave Gerhart and you're listening to DGMG Radio. Hey, what's up DGMG Radio. Today, the little nugget that I want to talk about is about company storytelling. So I've seen this time and time again. And what's kind of cool about my new, my new job is that I'm actually going to have more perspectives because I'm doing consulting and working with a bunch of different companies and CEOs. And so I'm actually going to get to see more of the storytelling and alignment company narrative type things than just working for one company at a time. And this is not related to anything that I'm working on right now. But I'm just now that I've worked with five or six CEOs directly over the last however many years, one thing, man, this is so True for so much of marketing. Like so much of what we talk about and what comes up in DJMG community for example is like it's about internal alignment things. It's not often that the thing that's so frustrating and it's why I ended up going out on my own versus like you know what becomes so frustrating as a marketer or an exec inside of a company, it's like there's just so much internal bullshit that is the reason that the company is not succeeding. It's, it is so rarely because the product is not good enough, the customers don't want it. You know, those are definitely factors. But so often it's like, man, there's just so much internal, I guess overhead.

Is the right word.

So much approval processes and meetings and this person has to be on the same page and this person reports to this person but they also need to be involved and you know, they've been here for five years and so they're really sensitive to this angle and like, or you know, this department, there's just so much crap. Oh my God, it's insane. I'm getting fired up. Just think about it. That get in the way of, of marketing success and it's so rare that like imagine if you took all that stuff off the table, like what, what should be the differentiator is like marketing should be about like creative problem solving and it's, it's so often not. And so just shout out to everybody listening that is driving or walking along nodding their head some right somewhere right now. Like if it was just left down to like the copywriting and the storytelling and the creative, that'd be amazing. But it, but it's not. And it's one of the things that's frustrating. Look, I play the game. I definitely play the game on LinkedIn and social media where you know, I take very definitive takes and kind of toss out these one liners like that get people fired up. But like, you know, business advice, let's be honest, is very easily on social media because you can just like have a very binary take and spit it out there and people either agree or get upset. But like so much of business and marketing is actually there's just so much nuance because there's so many things that you don't know internally. So anyway, if you're dealing with a lot of that, that stuff then I feel you. But one thing I was thinking about this morning is it's so often the CEO who you know, wants a different company narrative or company story and, and I actually think that means strategy, because story is your. Your company story should be your strategy, right? That those two things should play, should play out together. But so often it's the CEO who wants to change the narrative or doesn't understand why the narrative isn't strong enough and it's not working. But what they don't realize is that so much of why it's not strong enough and why it's not working is because of the CEO's belief about what the product should be in the first place. And I've been in a scenario before. Luckily not at Drift, not at Privy. I've had the privilege of working with CEOs who, like, we clicked instantly or on the same page instantly about what the story should be. And by the way, that's another example of this. You know, I'm working with a couple companies right now, and I tell them, like, I'm not. Hey, just a heads up, like, I'm not the super, like, process framework guy when it comes to, like, improving the company story together. Because I, I do think a lot of this is storytelling and intuition. And like, if you're, if you're riffing on the company store, if you have a good sense of the market. And granted, I'm working with companies in spaces that I know, and so I have a. I have more experience. Like, I'm working with companies in B2B marketing. And so I know I've been a buyer and I'm helping on the storytelling side. Right? Whereas, like, if this was in cybersecurity or, you know, health care or some, some industry that I don't know, well, then it'd be a little, A little bit harder for me to do this. But so often, like, within the first one or two meetings, we'll click on a message and it's like, oh, my God, that's the hook. That's the angle. Go, let's build that narrative. It's not because we did some like 15 meetings process thing. We click on it right away. And what was so cool about being at Drift and Privy is like, I had that with Ben at Privy. We had one or two conversations about what, like, even, like, when we were initially talking, when I was initially talking about going there, within the first one or two conversations, we clicked on the story and early days at Drift, before I was even running marketing. Just like when David and Elias were bringing me in as marketing manager. First meeting I had with David, I was like, yep, this story is legit. Like, I believe in it. And so I never really. I Haven't had to, luckily I haven't had to fight against that. But I can start to see it now. And the CEO has to be willing to want to make the change and the CEO has to be willing to want to make trade offs because there's many different things like, oh well, this story doesn't perfectly, this is a good story, but we're leaving out this segment which is important or this legacy thing that's important that we sell to. Or you know, you have to be willing to make trade offs. You have to be willing to make bets like it's never, it's never that the story, like the angle for the story might be there and it might get you excited, but there's always going to be trade offs, right? You're always going to have to pick something that you're not focusing on because you can't be everything to everyone in your story. You have to create a story that will work as a wedge to get the right people interested in your business and then you'll earn the right to have conversations about other things. Or you know, the story should tell 80% of what you're, of what you do. It doesn't have to have every nuance. And so this is a rant on just like it really is. The more you can, and this is if you're interviewing for a job or if you're at your company now, the more you can get on the same page and get some upfront agreement from the CEO about the things that you're going to say yes and no to in the story. The much easier things will things will be. Because I've even been in a conversation where four of the other execs like disagree. They're like, I don't like this angle, blah, blah, blah. And the CEO is like, nope, we're doing it. I believe in it. And so it's not just about making trade offs and sacrificing. It's about like getting the CEO bought in upfront. Oh my God. Life is so much easier as a, as a marketer because then you're not battling over like, because sometimes you don't have this perfect data that says like, hey, we should focus our story on this Persona or this one ICP that you have, for example. But so often it's just like you have to just, you have to make that call and go for it and make a bet and you're going to piss off somebody's department because the company is shifting to focus on X, but this person is responsible for this smaller unit. That's now not as prominent in the store. There's always, you've been there, there's a lot of it. And so the more work you can do up front before you go in and do a company story, like if you're going to, if you're going to work on company positioning or storytelling, great, I'm happy for you. Go dive in, Go tell a great story. But before you do that, do the work to get on the same page with the CE and then go into the cross company meetings to shop around this new idea. It's going to be much harder if you have to shop around your new idea and get the CEO on board at the same time. You have to get everybody else on board. If you can go into that cross functional conversation or whatever that is and you have the CEO backing you up. Yep, yep. I love this. This is what we're doing. Dave and I talked about this. We are going to focus on this angle. Here's why. Now's the time to disagree and commit. Right? Like you don't have to agree with this, but we're gonna commit to it as a, as a company. So that's it. I'm drinking a cup of coffee and I'm gonna go check my emails. But this was something that came up. I posted this in DGM in the DGMG community this morning and like sometimes I know I post something right away and I came back and like within four minutes there was 10 comments on it of people being like, it was Wednesday, December 15th when Dave Gerhardt chose violence. Yep. They tend to get too visionary in the early stages. I was just talking about with my friend about this on the phone. No truer words have ever spoken. Oh, the stories this group could tell. I'm going to scream. So this is clearly something that resonated with everybody. But I wanted to just do a quick little rant on that. All right, DGMG Radio, nine minutes of marketing talk is over.

See ya.

Long.

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