The Future of Events, Digital Events, and Founder Marketing Lessons with Goldcast CEO Palash Soni

This episode is brought to you by Zttle. We're halfway through 2025 and one thing's clear. We've been feeling this firsthand for sure. Events continue to be one of the highest performing marketing channels. Niche meetups, conferences, curated dinners, networking, breakfasts. Everyone's all in. Everyone's leaning into in person events have become a core part of our playbook here at Exit 5. So far we've hosted two virtual sessions. We do them twice a month. We do one large virtual event, sometimes two a year. One in person meetup. And we're deep in the trenches right now planning drive our annual conference coming back to Vermont in September. We use Zuttle to help us run a smarter event strategy. They help us with driving, registrations, managing invites, automating, communications, reminders, analytics, tracking. They do it all. They have a salesforce integration that also makes it easy and simple to report on pipeline and revenue from events without having to pull an op. So you'd know exactly how your events performed. On top of that, the differentiator with ZTTL is how their team is insanely good at supporting us. They always go above and beyond for us and that's how we've been able to keep the momentum going with 12 events this year already and just a small little team here at exit 5. So if events are a part of your marketing strategy like they are ours, you should check out Zuttle to see how Companies like Zillow, CrowdStrike and Iterable are using the top event platform for business events in 2025. Head over to zuttle.com exit5 that's z-u- dash dash-l.com exit5 to learn more. This episode of the Exit 5 podcast is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers.

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1, 2, 3, 4.

Exit. Exit.

Exit. All right, Palash is here. What's up my friend?

Doing well, tg. Just another busy day, but excited about the journey.

So background, you're not a B2B marketer, but you've, you're building a company in the, in the B2B marketing space. And full disclosure, Palash and I are working closely together. Gold Cast is one of my first clients companies that, that I started working with when I went out on my own in January. And I was actually was thinking about this yesterday. Right now we're just starting to have some like the most productive and best conversations and it's just been, it's been cool getting to know you just really quickly like what is your reaction to some of the stuff that we talk about from a marketing perspective? Like what's one or two takeaways that you think like other marketers might get value? We don't have to tell them like what we talk about, but just in our conversation so far as a CEO, like what's changed about your perspective or anything?

Yeah, I think, couple of things I took out as like high level themes from our conversations that have been really, I would say game changing for us. Right. In the last few, few weeks. As one is, I think the best marketers are very strong first principle thinkers. Right. It's very easy to get lost in MQL and SQLs and it's, it's a complex jungle of things. Right. That you could always get lost into. And I think what that does is getting lost there breeds incrementality and you kind of lose sight of who the customer is and what do they want and the ability to think big is, is tiny if we get into that. So I think that is one thing that I got out of it. Like being very first principle and thinking simple and that's hard.

I love that I just wrote that. I just wrote that down. I, I actually just made a video about this for, for the exit 5 tick tock. But like when I do podcast interviews, I like to write down things in the moment that I think will be like good clips later just because it makes it easier. But I think what you said is so important, like first principles thinking. And I'm now just like spitting this back to like know working with you. But I realized like this is what I got drilled into my head at, at Drift working with David and Elias there. Like they were building a Martech company in the Martech space. But I think what was so great about their approach is like they just had this confidence that was like, we don't care about the traditional names or metrics or anything. Like if you learn about business and you learn about what it takes to get somebody to buy from you, typically, you know, you're selling a 20, 30k annual thing like Gold Cast, for example. Right. What does it take? And I think some, we do get caught up so much in the weeds. And I used to think like that, like when I was in my late 20s, like just marketing manager Dave, I used to become obsessed with like studying every acronym and like, you know, downloading every analyst report. And I'm not saying that's not important. I think it's wise to like pick stuff from that. But I think the way you framed it is so perfect. It's like the ability to just like take a step back and simplify things and understand like some of the first principles for decision making.

Yeah, exactly. That's been, I think my biggest sort of learning working with you in the last few weeks.

I got a bunch of good little nuggets from a secret, a secret source. And I have a bunch of things that I want to get into and ask and we'll talk about what you've learned with Goldcast and everything. But first, is this true or false? You lived in a one bedroom place with four people. Your wife, your baby, your mother in law for two years while starting Gold Cast. Is that, that's true.

I did. I did. Yeah. It was crazy.

You don't have nearly enough. You have too much hair and not enough gray hairs for having gone through that.

I know, I know. I cannot do that again. But it was, I think that was the time that it was pretty challenging because we were just taking off. It was Covid, you know, I, I knew not much about, you know, thriving and living in the US but probably also the happiest time of one of the happiest time of my life.

Wait, can you give the background on like what Goldcast is now and then kind of just like your journey? Like you, you guys came out of hbs. Did you start, did you have the idea for Gold Cast pre Covid? Like was that already a thing?

Yeah, great question. So actually you are also part of the story a little bit. And I can tell you about, about the Pre story right before and how we came to Coldcast very quickly. So I started my life in. In manufacturing, right. So I was a technical guy, but different kind of tech, right? Like manufacturing chemical engineering, machines. And what I realized spending three years there in that CPG firm is that I can do whatever, but I cannot change the trajectory of the company because it's a marketing driven company. Right. So I built a pretty heavy fascination for marketing at that time and I didn't understand it as an engineer. So my next step was at this company called Inmobi, which was an ad tech martech company. Right. So I got exposure to how tech influences marketing. And this was 2015, when the movement of dollars from billboards and TV to digital was at its peak. Right. So I saw that and it was pretty fascinating. And what I realized over time is that marketing always goes through this shift, right. There's a new medium of marketing or existing mediums get disrupted because of technology. And that happens every. Every few years. So those are the themes that I took with me when I came for business school. Right. And we have this thing called startup boot camp. Yes.

Oh yeah.

So we had that as a forcing function. Kishore and I got together, you know, when we were initially in business school. And Kishore, consultant by background, right. So he was leaning on me to say, okay, let's point us to a few spaces, you know, where a tech business can be built. And we were always looking at Martech because of this, like, insight. Right. Okay. You know, there is going to be some medium that can be significantly changed by tech. So we had a couple of ideas going in to start a bootcamp. And one of them was, how can we build a CRM of sorts or something of some kind of a thin CRM which can give insights on events, help event marketers figure out how effective their events are, and what is the impact on the bottom line? Because that's an answer most people in events struggle to give. And the amount of money that was going in events was not commensurate to the kind of measurability that you were getting from events. So we started with that and I think the session with you at that time in the big HBS hall, that was pretty impactful because we got to learn about marketing a lot and how important something like this, the brand storytelling, et cetera is for a company. So we started leaning in towards that idea. And when Covid hit, we realized we have the opportunity to build not only just the intelligence layer for the event, but own the event as well. So that's like the quick Genesis story.

And so for people who don't know today, you have today, basically you've, you've morphed into this full blown digital events platform. You can do webinars, you can do virtual events. We've done a bunch of live sessions. Exit 5. I know other companies that I know, like metadata are using you, but what was the initial like when you said that you. I'm just interested in this insight about events because like people measure events, they look at sales directly. Like, what was the flaw in how marketers were measuring events? Or like why do you think, why were they struggling to measure the impact of those things?

I think there are two parts to it. One is understanding what and how to measure right, and how events actually impact the company's go to market motion. And what we realize is that the process of doing events itself is so complex and putting them together is so complex that event folks will generally deprioritize that part. And so you could do a great event, but if it doesn't fit with your company's go to market strategy, it doesn't align with what the company wants to do. That is no good. The other is just having the tooling and the abilities to measure what has happened. So for instance, like one thing we realize is a simple insight that a lot of marketers, event marketers, didn't even know how many prospects versus customers attended their events. Or like what is the part of the funnel that they impact. And then there are all sorts of challenges working with Salesforce, getting this data from their system into Salesforce and just answering some of those basic questions. So we realized that this is, you know, just we could build products that can help solve this problem, make it like super easy and insightful and add a lot of value to event marketers without having them go through all of this while they can focus on doing what they are best at, which is like putting together a great experience.

I think events are hard because it's like something that there is a lot of value in doing. But like if you only try to measure events by direct sales, like we did this event and then we booked X dollars in pipeline, like that's kind of like what we default to. But then like I've made the mistake of like, well that might not necessarily have been the goal of the event, like typically. And like I see this happen. Like, and you probably see like a lot of companies in our space, they'll do these very like inspirational type of events and then try to like connect that to Pipeline, but it's like that's not the right offer that matches. And so I think there's so much nuance in like type of events. For example, like I, I've done like at Drift we did like a customer dinner in San Francisco with 10 customers and the value and insights that we got from that customer dinner and like the referrals and like product ideas and marketing ideas, it's like also tough to quantify that. And so it's like well we spent 20 grand on this dinner or whatever and that's a made up number. Don't judge me on that. On that price. Actually niv's definitely not 20 grand. If I know what I know. It's hard to quantify that. And so like I think you're also in an interesting space now because there's definitely like a, a brand affinity, like brand awareness play that I think is really powerful from events. The old school way used to be like do an event or a webinar, give all the leads to the sales team, they try to follow up and that's how it works. But like we're seeing so many more companies use events as a way to like just build relationships and further the affinity for someone. That's like the question becomes, well, how do you measure that down the road?

Yeah, that's a great point dg. And this is one of the things that we have learned and internalized also after we like saw pulled this one thread of how to tie results with events, right. That events primarily more so today are more of a vehicle for marketers to tell their story. Right. They build a connection with their audience, between their audience and the brand. And this can be done in many ways, right through thought leadership events or you could do small field events, whatever. But ultimately it's events would be that vehicle that can help you build that connection. And that connection has to come first. The experience has to come first before pipeline impact would come either close or down the line. So yeah, that's I would say pretty obvious. But one learning that that was not obvious for us not not being marketers ourselves.

You also mentioned this like event planner versus event marketer.

Yeah.

As a cmo, as a former cmo, like head of marketing.

Yeah.

I've struggled with events because I think events can often be like the best demand gen revenue type channel and they need to be run at a, in an operational programmatic way. But then typically the person who's going to like create the event and run that experience is not that person. I've struggled with like the Difference between where you need an event planner versus where you need an event marketer or events being part of the demand. Can you talk about like what, what you all are seeing with, with your customers?

Yeah, I can talk about it. And this is also obviously coming from speaking with who we consider like the top notch of event marketers. Right?

Who is the top notch of event marketers? At least the companies that you talk to. Like who are you shouting out?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think some of the people that we look up to. One is Sarah from Zendesk, right. She's, she's amazing. We have learned a lot from her. Lindsay from Pendo. She is also like a, like a great event marketer. Natalia from Attentive. I think one of the things that they do really well in that really separates event marketers from planners and I'll tell you why. They both cannot coexist as well in a company. But one of the things they do great is they are very aware of what the company's go to Market Motion looks like, what it needs to take. Right. They are very in sync with what the cmos goals are and what their counterparts in sales and product and what their goals are. Right. So you could occupy yourself doing events and doing events themselves is a challenge in and of its own and putting together an experience. But how does that experience actually impact my further? The goal of my CMO or the company's go to Market motion is that having that connection is something that cannot be done in silo by say a demand gen person and be handed over to an event planner to execute. The event marketer has to be like a full stack person who can think about the experience and how it helps the company, but also execute that and then close the link.

I think that's the difference between to me, like not everybody has to go like the marketing leader track. You can definitely be an individual contributor forever for sure. I'm now someone who has no team and I don't plan on having a team forever. But on that point about the. This is true for any role. I think the more you can understand what are we trying to achieve as a marketing team to help the business and then being able to like relate that to why are we doing this event. I just, I do see so many times we just get in the, we get on the rhythm of like we're just doing stuff. Yeah, we had an idea for an event and so we're doing it. We had an idea for a podcast and so we're doing it versus like back to what you mentioned in the beginning about first principles thinking, the more you can understand the overall marketing strategy. And I think I've been lucky to be like, a company. For example, like, at Drift in the early days, David Cancel, the founder CEO, like, he was adamant about, like, I want to do events. He had a belief. And so that made it easier for us to do events. It wasn't like, oh, yeah, let's try this channel. He was like, I believe events are powerful because what we're trying to do as a company strategically is not just sell marketing software, but we want to build a brand. We want to build a brand. We want to get people to know, like, and trust us. And he believed because he went to events and saw it at other companies, HubSpot, et cetera, that, holy shit, events are an amazing way to do that. And it's not easy to quantify, but it made my life so much easier. And the rest of the team was like, we didn't have to judge, like, the hardcore ROI of doing that because he believed that, like, there's so much value in that. And so, like, there's value in the relationships, the footage, the photography from a brand and, like, perception standpoint. Right. Also in, like, getting eight to 10 hours of content from that event. That's videos, that's clips, that's podcasts. And I think when you have a philosophy like that, it makes life so much easier. As opposed, like, we're just testing random channels. Like, they. He believed in that.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it was successful for you guys because you guys still had a strategy behind it, right? Like you wanted to make a splash, build a big brand. And we have seen that marketers, like the best event marketers, are agile about what they do. Right. They're not always just thinking about that big user conference because it might not. It definitely does work for Splash, right. Given how the company is and very heavy on storytelling, but not true for every company. Sometimes you might be better off just doing like 20 small field events instead of, you know, doing that one big user conference. Having that understanding is very key and it's. It's actually challenging. It's challenging to have that clarity while also being very good at executing events.

Not to, like, pivot. I have other stuff, but what about from an actual marketing, like, as the CEO of a SaaS company, how do you articulate, like, what your marketing strategy is and how you see the role of marketing as a B2B SaaS CEO?

Yeah, great question, DG. It's a vast question. I think it depends on the Stage and we have transcended a couple of stages. So it has changed I think very initially, right. Which is from say 0 to 2 million kind of stage. We were just very tactical in our approach. We always had this big vision that we want to become a core part of the go to market stack and you know, become power the event marketing as a channel. But we knew that we have this one opportunity, right, which is virtual events right now we have to go after it. So it was a lot of tactical demand gen initially, initial days. So we had a pretty small team. You just go and do that. And we grew because of that. I think right now we are at a stage where we have a, we have brand affinity people, we have channels where we can talk to people. Now we are actually trying to pioneer the message of or that Persona of event marketer, right? That the event people in the team, they hold the key to the company's story and how it's told to people in an engaging way, in a scalable way which you cannot do via emails, right. Or ads. And so the event marketer has that onus to do that and also drive results for the company. And then the future, I would say feed it would be the future feeder for two CMO roles and VP roles. Right. So that's the like the high level message that we are trying to say and we always keep on discussing that. Now if you look at this, this is not necessarily directly related to the Cold Cast product, right? We sell to marketers, yes, but we don't do a lot of things that they do. But we still like we are driven by that message. So our marketing goal is to kind of build an affinity around that Persona, kind of try to build content and say things that understand that they have a very important role to play in this decade in marketing. And not necessarily directly related to what cordcast is doing.

What you explained is like when I talk about don't build a marketing team be to build a media company or build an audience, that's exactly how I think I would execute on that. Which is like. And you don't have to do it this way. There's lots of marketing strategies but like this is a bet that you're taking. And I think this is like what Gong did in the early days. They basically built a mini brand around salespeople and it wasn't to sell them their product directly, but it was like news, information, research, education, entertainment for salespeople. As a result, they built an audience of salespeople. They start to build affinity within salespeople then when they have something to sell them, it makes it easier. Right. HubSpot did the same thing, which is like they kind of put content marketers on the map and kind of said like, you know, you drive revenue, you do marketing that people love. And so what you're doing is like placing a bet on like let's win with education and entertainment for event marketers while we're also building the product for them behind the scenes.

Absolutely, that's the plan.

What's happening right now with event marketers and and budgets? Like I ask a bunch of questions in the Exit 5 community and it seems like I would say majority of people in there have not cut budget, but there obviously are budget cuts and layoffs happening at companies because we're seeing it every day. What are you seeing with gold cast and like how people are buying and what's happening with events today?

That's a great question. Eg.

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A few things that we are seeing there's obviously companies are more cautious about spending money, right? And what we see in our case is that because our customer concentration is a lot in growth stage, well funded VC backed companies, right. They still have a lot of growth goals to hit, right? So they have not completely pushed the brakes on marketing like what would happen in a typical recession where say the entire marketing team has been let go. So they're still investing in marketing, they become a lot more cautious. So while there is headwinds because of budget cuts, there's a tailwind also. We are seeing that companies are now weighing saying, okay, do I do like this $2 million in conference in Vegas for 500 people or should I do digital events which have really up leveled in the last two years and can provide a different kind of experience, but a great experience in reach and incur a lot less cost while we can probably spend the rest of the money in say smaller, more intimate, in person field events with higher value audience. So that's one tailwind that we are seeing that many companies are also going back to digital. It's not like en masse, like Covid, but until I think that's happened.

Yeah, I think, yeah, that makes sense. Or even I'm seeing more, more people. Like in the past they might have only done in person and now they're doing in person with a virtual component of it. So digital events. More people are doing digital events.

Yeah.

One of the things that I struggle with sometimes is like how do you get people to show up for that? Right. Because I do think sometimes it Becomes a game of like, well, I don't want to go to this thing. Like, when you're gonna go in person, you're, you know, you're buying a plane ticket, I'm there, I'm gonna be in Chicago. Like, I'm going. Once I buy that ticket, I'm there. But with a, with the digital event, you know, something can come up. What do you see your customers doing? Or like, how do you drive that to be like, look, you should go to this event even. It's not just like a webinar and we're gonna send you the recording after. Like, how do you, how do companies do that? Well, that would be amazing advice if we're able to, like, share some of that for people. Because I think it's not just like, hey, do an online thing. And then after, everybody's going to get the recordings. Like, how do you make the live component actually happen?

Great question, dg. And this is again, some of the learnings that we have had working with creative end marketers, right? So, and that's where I think the, the event marketer DNA shines a lot, right? We have seen many ways in which people, I think, crush it. But making people attend is ultimately like, goes back to that first principle, thinking of what would they want the most, right? So, for instance, we look at Zendesk events, right? And they have a huge attendance in their, in their virtual events, in their digital events. And, and what they do is they always like, tailor the message to what is current and what people will be looking for most, right? For instance, today, right now, they are going heavy on things that impact retention, right? And that's a question that stops offline for everyone, right? Every customer leader, post sales leader is thinking about retention now more than before, where it was more growth, right? So I think having that kind of very deep understanding of what your customers are facing as problems today, that is going to attract people the most. The second, I think, is you can also put a live experience angle to the event itself, which is much, much more than what recording could ever be. So, for instance, attentive. If you look at their events, right, they have, they always have a roundtable with the two speakers. They will do a roundtable just after the event where, say 30 people would gather and ask questions and just discuss life. And so you can always add those kind of angles which give. Which you cannot get in a recording that you can get in a live session. But those are more tactical. But I think just tailoring, being very, very thoughtful in what the content is and what people are going to get in the live event and how it's going to help them is the key.

Yeah, I think it's so it is way more fun. There's a certain element of like the people that show up on a live event, like when things are happening in the chat and when people are coming up on stage and asking questions. I think that's like, you feel, why, oh, this is better than just watching this live. And so I think, like, if you can be smart about like building in ways, like, I guess one, the easiest way would be like, we're not sending this video out to anyone.

Yeah.

You only get it if you register. But the, the marketer and content person in me is like, well, that also then dramatically is going to diminish. Who, who's going to be able to see this message? I want more people to see it. So there's like a trade off with that. But I think if you can build hooks in for like engagement or is there some type of thing that's, that is only going to happen on this and it could be, you know, show. I think you got to do more than just like, show people the experience. Like. Yeah, because you could get your questions asked in chat or you could not. You could sit there for 40 minutes and we never raise your hand. So I think like building those things in, it's almost like thinking about in person, like, well, what are we going to do to get people to our, to our trade show booth at an event? Right. It's like, not enough to just have a booth. Like, how are we going to get people there? And I feel like that is a, that's a strategy. I mean, that's a talent, like to think as a team, like, what is the hook? We just go and make stuff and it's like, well, did we even think about what the hook is this? Like, we're like, let's, let's do an event in September. Great. And then all of a sudden we're off to the races with this event. And it's like, well, like, what's the hook for this? We got to spend more time on that. Like, that's where this stuff really works. It's not just like, yeah, go do this virtual event and people are going to show up.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the hook, rightly said, is the most important thing and that has to be done. Like when people are signing up for something or deciding whether they'll attend it or not, they have very limited information. Right. And tracing that hook at the right place. Is the key.

I think one of the best live events I've done lately is we did website teardowns. And that was amazing because we picked. So you did. People that joined didn't know necessarily which websites we're gonna go through. We also had time to, like, call up people and have them show their sites. And so there was a little bit of element of, like, if I show up, this increases my chances of, like, getting free advice on this website. But also what happened during the event that was really cool and unexpected was, like, in chat, people were giving ideas about, like, how they would write the headline and what they would change. And so, like, it was really fun for me as a host because, like, it was like having a live audience for. For a podcast or something because, like, I get, like, little sidebar comments and, like, make a funny joke about what somebody said in chat or, like, this person had a good suggestion or had an answer to something I didn't know. It's like, you're able to. If you can find a way to, like, tap into the wisdom of your crowd, especially when, like, everyone there is, like, often all in the same niche. It's like all marketers or all event people or all HR pros. There might be something to that.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think one of the things that we do is we have event marketers live, right? Which is. Which has a pretty good attendance, like, under plus, people always from the event industry come over, and we always would put polls there, which will be very timely. Right. And which people are always wanting to know. Right. For instance, the simple ones we did initially was in the next six months, Are you actually going to invest in hybrid events? Right. Everyone keeps on talking about hybrid events, but no one knows whether if their peers are investing in those. Now what we do is whenever we have, say, there is looming recession, right. We ask a lot of questions about budgets and do you see budget cuts in events and what does that lead to? Change in strategy and pose these simple questions in polls and then discuss them, discuss them, bring people in on stage, talk about it. And it adds a life component that's impossible to get in recordings.

This stuff that we just talked about, to me, this is like the biggest. If you're listening to this and you do a ton of webinars today, like, one of the biggest things that I see is just the same boring webinar content over and over. Like, it's got to become a skill to be able to, like, come up with this campaign. And, like, how are we actually going to get people? How Are we going to get actually going to get people there? I actually saw something yesterday on Twitter from Amanda Natividad, who was on this podcast a while ago. She's at SparkToro. And she basically wrote this killer article about like, how to do buyer Personas the right way. And in that article was a CTA to go and join them for a live session where they go deep into buyer Personas and like go past the article and she promoted it on LinkedIn and she wrote great copy with it. She gave away the template for free. But that blog post, the blog post drove 900 registrants for the session. Now, do you think 900 people signed up because she like, knew some like, magic about like the right time to post on LinkedIn and like the right way to do it in the blog post. It's like, no, that to me is, that's a perfectly executed, like, hook and campaign. Like, ultimately we're going to do that. We want to do a live session where we dive deep into buyer Personas. The way that we're going to get the right people there is by writing like it was in the article is killer. It's not like some like shitty, you know, article on Fiverr. It's like in depth screenshots, graphics, walkthrough through like. So that's going to attract people who are interested in buyer Personas. They're going to go to that article and be like, whoa, this is legit. This article is legit. This person, this is not fluff. They actually know their shit. Oh, they're doing a live session. I'm going to sign up. It's like, think that's how you got to bake all this stuff in. If you just pop up randomly and promote your webinar on LinkedIn and that's how you're going to have 17 registrants and like, and not much to show for it, but like when you bake it into an actual campaign like that, that's when you can actually start to see a better, a bigger impact.

Yeah. And I think one thing, dg, which you pointed out rightly, is webinars were actually done that way predominantly before. Right. And webinars were the only actual digital events happening. And they were seen as a medium to just throw content in front of people. Right. And so there was no actual difference between doing it on demand and on life. Right. Now, I think with what Covid has shown and what the technology that was built to fulfill the desires of marketers was that you can actually create an experience. Right. And do things in the live event that are going to be a lot more impactful because ultimately it's a, it's a way people interact with your brand. Right. And it's a lot more, I would say, impactful than a user visiting a website. Right. I would rate someone actually attending my digital event, like 10x more impactful because I have their time, attention to engage them and tell them something about my business that will at least give them value and then eventually maybe make them a customer. Which is, I think, one thing people have started realizing a lot. And so there's a lot of innovation happening in how they place the hook, what they do once people are inside, and how they actually then follow up after the event.

Talk to me about LinkedIn. You, you as a founder, have recently started posting more on LinkedIn. Tell me about. I want to hear the real truth of the hesitations of doing it and then why it might be valuable. I just, there's a lot of people that listen to this and I think more marketers could be helping their founders do a better job with social media. So I'm just curious to hear what you're learning.

Yeah, great, great question, DG. So, so you have to be fascinated by LinkedIn, right. And what it can do to be able to make that jump. Right. So we have all this or any channel, right.

Like if you're just like, oh, I want to be on TikTok or like, yeah, I'd rather you make come to that assumption because, like, you're on it personally and like you have a bunch of accounts that you really like and you have ideas of what you could be posting. Yeah, I think that's a good point.

Yeah, exactly. And this was like my fascination was built when, in the early days of being at hbs and at that time DC was super active. Right. And so I would, I had no idea what conversational marketing is. Right. I was just, I just knew ad tech and martech a little bit. But I would always look forward to a sports because they will say something that will like, get my attention and will be valuable as well. Right. So we realized that, yes, LinkedIn has become a pretty, pretty great medium. I'm not the kind of person who's like, I have a lot of friction that I create for myself and overthink before posting on LinkedIn a lot. So that was the only hump that I had to take over.

So now, which, by the way, as a, as a person is, is it is a pro and a con. It's not, not, you know, like you also, you're not. You're not gonna just turn around and post a picture of yourself eating a sandwich. And, like, that's totally okay. I know.

I know that there's definitely a kind of personality that takes to. To excel on LinkedIn, and some marketers are very good at it. And it's. It is a competitive advantage, right? Being able to be out there on LinkedIn and put good content, but also not take yourself too seriously and be okay with, you know, failing in public. It is a competitive advantage. And what I was doing wrong before was I followed the classic sort of advice of doing it daily, right? Force yourself to do it daily. And I think it was too much for me to digest. And what I ended up was doing it not at all. So now we have taken a more achievable goal of doing it once a week. And Kishore and I discuss what we post about. And I generally have a lot of thoughts. But, like, condensing that into a LinkedIn post is. Takes up work. So I'm doing it now.

Okay, So I just went to your LinkedIn page, by the way, and I haven't seen these lately. But it's funny because, like, yeah, the advice is not just, like, go post daily and then, like, if you just post, like, quotes, you'll magically build a following. But, like, what I love about what you did is, like, you came out of the gate hot with, like, actual things to say. And I think that's why this is working. So I'm looking@Palash's LinkedIn. You hadn't posted in five months. You hadn't posted in five Months. You hadn't posted in five MONTHS. You have two posts you've posted twice in the last week. One of them has 691 likes and 173 comments, and the other one has 407 likes and 77 comments. And, like, we can argue about the vanity metrics of that. And that's not my point. That's not my point here. My point is if the average person had not posted on LinkedIn, these posts would have 7 likes and no comments. But what you did was you understood what types of things you need to say and you form strong opinions. And so your first post was you went to hbs, right? Your first post is, do a startup instead of an MBA is one of the most terrible pieces of advice floating around for young professionals. Professionals. And then you go in to explain why that's a fantastic headline and a fantastic hook. And then just last week, your. Your other post was I envy marketing leaders who make budget decisions. Like, if I put in a dollar, can I get $10 out of it? And then you, you go to explain that. So I think like, you're formula, you don't have to post every day, but you're formulating strong opinions. And, you know, this is all based on like, observations that, that you're having something might happen next week at work where you're trying to hire someone and this thing happens, happens, and then you have a thought about that later. I think you're doing a good job of like being active there, but not doing it with like fluffy vaporware, you know, nonsense.

Yeah. And that's what I'm the most, I'm most cared about having paperware kind of content. But what I've realized is that I do have a lot of strong opinions about a lot of things. I just need to, I think, kind of archive them and put it in a way where they can be shared. And those are the two things that I think the most about. Right. Like startups. Right. And I always talk to founders about.

And then to back to some first principles and like simplifying things like the way that I do LinkedIn. I do this for LinkedIn and my newsletter and my community. And basically like, I have, I have a note just like Apple Notes app on my phone. And the note is called newsletter. And when I think of something that's an idea for a future newsletter that I want to write, I put it in there. And that could be like something that I posted on LinkedIn that got a lot of traction and conversation. That's a good topic to put in my newsletter. So I just literally copy that link, put it in my Apple Notes, and then like on Thursday when I go to write my newsletter, either I have a fresh idea in my head that I just want to go right now, or I go to the backlog and I find some ideas. And so like, that's, I also do that for LinkedIn. I don't, I don't always just post things directly. Like, I'll just keep a backlog of. Oh, here's an interesting, like, perspective I have. I write it down and then when I go to post something, I go to that. That's not rocket science, but it's like capturing ideas of things like that you have to say in that moment and then being able to go, go back to that list later and then allowing yourself to like, if you do right now, after this podcast, if you have a really specific idea and like, oh, I got an idea for A post and you haven't posted in a while, then like you can go, go do that. But I think give your. Give yourself a way to like capture some of those ideas and have a backlog makes a huge difference.

Yeah, absolutely. I think what changed for me was that same thing. I have started what we call a swipe file, right. And I keep a list of ideas and that's where, you know, the best ones kind of jump out when we read it later. It's like an evolutionary circle.

I think it's huge. Yeah, you have to have a swipe file. And I used to like, I used to do this at Drift with David and at Privy with Ben. As the marketing person, I would see them say things internally on a wiki in Slack or whatever and then I would screenshot it and send it to them on the side and I'd be like, this would be a fantastic thing to write on LinkedIn. And so I think like for the marketers out there, you, you can enable your founders, executives or yourself or others. Like you're doing so much communicating inside of the company. Update emails, wiki posts, Slack messages, whatever. It's just about thinking about like, well, that stuff is probably going to be relevant if you're a company that, that's selling to event marketers. What you're writing inside of those four walls is probably going to be interesting and relevant to an event marketing person. And so how can you take that out? I just think that that perspective makes it like the blank page problem is not such a big deal because the point of like why I wrote founder brand was like this stuff is all inside of your company already. Like people want, people don't have time for the fluff. They want information and expertise like focus on their niche and you're literally building a company in this space. So the best thing you can do is just start to share some more of that public publicly.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, I want to wrap up on. This is not a. Not a B2B marketing specific thing but I heard you're a big reader. Yeah, I love getting book recommendations and so give me and listeners something or tell me what type of stuff you read.

Yeah, Niji, I read a lot of popular science history and sometimes science fiction as well.

Kindle or physical book?

I prefer physical but if not then Kindle and a couple of books that I read recently and made a big sort of difference in my thinking are actually biographies of two scientists. So there's this book called Code Breaker which is written by Walter Isaacs and about Jennifer Doudna and she invented crispr and she's one of the most consequential scientists ever. Right. And that book about how she went after a problem which is super daunting, right. And then came out with something which is useful and can become something real. That's the same kind of problem we as CEO's face. Right where the space is daunting and you've got to chase that dream. Be persistent.

Do you think I have the intellectual capacity to handle Code Breaker?

Absolutely. Yeah. It's pretty written in a pretty lay language without dumbing down the science, which is I think what Walter Isaacson does really well.

What's your opinion? Obviously you're a smart guy. You had a successful job, mechanical engineering before and then you went to HBS and now you're a startup founder. Do you ever read business books?

I do, I do read them. But most business books are actually can be condensed in an article. Right. So I think a lot of people read business books because it makes them feel good that I have read this and I feel like I've learned. But they can be condensed in like a two page article. So I generally avoid them. But some of them I do read. For example, I just recently read Amp it up by Frank Slootman, right. Who's CEO of Snowflake. Very little book actually can be an article if not a book. And very to the point. And so those are the kind of business books I like.

I like that. I think with founder brand, like it could have been a blog post also. And I'm not afraid to admit that, but I wanted to have a physical. I wanted to have a book and people like that. But we also did like the book was over when it was over. It wasn't like let's stretch this out. And so I love the idea of like Frank Slootman writing a book that was, you know, not hundreds of pages. I think when do you read? Is it like part of a daily routine or something that you do or just comes up all the time? Like when do you actually get your reading in?

It's actually an hour before midnight when my kid is asleep and slack is calm down.

An hour before midnight. The problem with me is if I read, I read two pages on my Kindle and then next thing I know the Kindle smacks me in the nose and I wake up because I had just fallen asleep.

Actually falling asleep to a book is probably the best way to fall asleep. So I won't.

It's a guaranteed. A couple of weeks ago we had, we had a wedding and we were at a hotel and I lost, for some reason I had my Kindle in the Uber and I lost my Kindle and I had such a hard time going to sleep that night because I just was laying there with my, my thoughts before bed, like, as opposed to reading two pages of a book, you know. All right, this was great. Great to have you. Great to talk a little bit more, a little bit perspective on, on, you know, being a B2B SaaS founder and then also like what you're, what you're seeing through gold cast and event marketers. Everybody can go and check you out. Palash Sony on LinkedIn now that you're super famous and viral from, from your controversial posts. If you haven't already checked out Goldcast, the Goldcast website is Goldcast IO. I'll plug it for you so you guys don't have to. It's been a pleasure getting to know you guys a little bit better and I'm sure we'll, we'll have more to come soon. See you, Plash.

Thanks. D by all right man.

Hey, thanks.

For listening to this episode of the Exit 5 podcast. If you're in B2B marketing and you want to grow your career, you should also go and check out everything that we have over@exit5.com. We've got articles, we've got videos, we've got templates. Plus we have a community. A community of over 4000 B2B marketing pros.

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