Will AI Impact SEO, Are Sales and Marketing Converging, The Timeless Principles of Marketing

The only thing that matters is understanding the timeless principles. Like, you could plug me back in right now. I don't know anything about cookies. I don't know that much about. I plug me back in and I will do good work because I understand the importance of positioning and messaging, how to craft a narrative, how to find the right customers, how to get people to pay attention. That stuff matters so much. You had a post about this the other day. This motion or that motion? Like, yeah, those things matter, but they don't matter more than like the offer and the positioning exit. Good to see you, dude. Hello. First of all, I gotta do a disclaimer. I gotta do a disclaimer. John, Somebody was mad that I always have you on and I recommend you. And to that I have to say sorry. It is what it is and I'm not sorry. In this life, in this business, in this world, you make a couple of friends along the way. And I enjoy hanging out with you and I enjoy, like, we have families, we have shared interests. We happen to be connected in this space of B2B marketing. I like to have you regularly on the podcast. Somebody sent me a message and they said they don't like how anytime somebody is looking for a recommendation for an agency, I always recommend you. And compound growth. They were really mad about that. And I'm not laughing to take away from that. I, I understand that, but I actually, I really don't feel bad about it because, like, you and me go back and I have every right to, like, you're a good person, you do a good job, you do good business. I'm going to keep recommending you. And that it is what it is. Like, I can't remember every agency that you know under the sun. And it is unfortunate not everybody's going to have a fair chance to be, to be recommended. But I like talking to you, John, and you're going to keep coming back on and I just want to give that disclaimer. So now if anybody knows, like, be careful, be careful if you do want to work with compound growth. Because I am, I, I am friends with John and just, just, just heads up. But we go, we go back to starting your first business when you didn't even want to build an agency when you were just going to be solo. John and I saw you at the Friendly Toast, which we've talked about a bunch of times. So there's the legal disclaimer. That is the conflict of interest statement. Now that we've put that out in the open, we can continue on with this. Yeah.

And to that person I'd say I'd love to be friends. Yeah.

Or like, you know, tell me if you, if you operate a great business, like, feel free to tell me about it. The hard part is just going to be like, I'm not going to be able to keep up with the, with the result, the results. So.

Yeah, you just asked for a lot of Twitter DMS right there.

Don't DM me on. Don't DM me on Twitter. You got new cgi, new CGM hats. I like that.

Yeah, we got Car Heart, which was some Carhartt winter hats as well, which is an interesting mix of kind of a blue collar brand and a very remote white collar.

Yeah, it's like, like Patrick Cantlay and DeWalt. He has Goldman Sachs and DeWalt as sponsors. And that joke will not land with, you know, 1 1000th of this podcast. But that's a, that's okay. I'm always just interested. What, tell me about your week. What's going. What, what has gone on? What. Just what did you do this week at work? I'm, I'm interested as a friend. What's your work? What's your week been like?

I had a couple of lunch meetings. We just brought on a new head of client services who I'm not kind of talking about publicly yet, but we just brought someone on there. So we're spending a lot of time onboarding them. But it's an interesting time in the company. I've talked about it a little bit with the people inside the company, but I'm kind of like relearning what my role is in the company because we brought on a chief revenue officer in November and then this client services person. And up until now that's been a big part of my job. And so now, you know, it gives me time to kind of focus on different things. So it's been an interesting week. A week of self reflection. I was talking to our mutual friend Chris about, hey, you know, now I gotta figure out where my focus goes next.

Yeah, Chris, I talked to him last week. He's great. Chris Litzler. Chris is like a CEO coach now and he was, he ran a bunch of the business back in the day when I worked at Constant Contact. I was a very junior marketing person there and just took a liking to him and he took a liking to me and I got to do skip level meetings with him like once a quarter. And I was always bummed when those got. You remember that? Like when you got to Have a meeting with like a big person and like, they would like reschedule it and you're like, oh, damn. But like, the once a quarter I got to, I got to meet with him. It was, it was really cool. He's up in Vermont a lot now. And I had texted you a couple weeks ago because we're doing a lot of things at exit 5, and I felt like we, I felt like I could use some strategic guidance and like, now that we're really doing this thing, like, you know, I value our relationship and I like to text you, but having someone who's seen a bunch of things just, you know, it's, it's a, it's lonely and you get trapped in your own head. And so I call, you know, I got, called him up and we just talked. It was like an hour therapy session and he took great notes and we had a bunch of good, good ideas come out of that. But it was much like therapy in that. Like, there's not a lot that it wasn't necessarily new, groundbreaking stuff, but I needed to like, get it, say it out loud and then like, have somebody talk it back to me and understand. And it was, it was really valuable.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it sounds like it's a really interesting time at exit 5. And I'm curious, like, more like, what were you trying to, are you okay to talk about? What were we trying to get at? What were you trying to get out of the conversation with Chris? Like, what? Because we texted about it and I thought I knew and I recommended my eos and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Well, I guess for me the biggest thing is what is the future of the business? Like, look, look like. And because I see a very clear path that is just like, keep doing what we're doing. Keep the things, like have the same structure and just do a little bit more and it will grow a little bit every year. But that's not what I want to do. You know, that's not that. That's not what I'm. That's not that exciting to me. And so I just needed a place to put, to put that. And what he helped me frame is something that I've been actually thinking about a lot, which is. And I have no. Exit 5 isn't going anywhere. The business is doing great. It's going to continue to grow. We should double. We should quite easily double this year, which, I mean, you'd hope to do that. It was just me last year. I brought on two full time people and like, yeah, if we didn't double, like, but, but it's great. Things are going great. I'm happy, Everything's happy. We've basically, we've doubled the business, reduced my time in the weeds, scaled and automated all of the systems, which is amazing. I mean, as recently as four or five months ago, I was managing all the podcasts, like post podcast production, pressing upload on a new episode myself, doing all the social, you know, making sure the newsletter goes out, working with sponsors, building more pipeline, figuring out ways to grow the community, making sure, oh my God, I haven't logged in the community in two days. Like, I got to go in there and post this stuff. All that stuff is happening. And you know, we have a team and people, and it's the most amazing feeling. But I just was like, I read this book, 10x is easier than 2x. I don't know if you know that.

Yeah, no, I haven't read it, but.

Okay, yeah, it could be a blog post. No disrespect, you know, my book, founder brand probably could have been a blog post too. So that's okay. But basically the concept is like, it's much easier, it's easier to grow 10x than it is to grow 2x, because 2x, you kind of just need to keep doing more. Like, just do a little bit more. And that's exactly where we're at right now. Like, the way we have, we grew from where we're at last year to where we're at today is a little bit more, a little bit better, a little bit more, a little bit more focused, yada, yada. So we're going to keep doing that. But this is, I see such an opportunity here. Not necessarily like with the community business. Like, I don't, I don't see a world where I want to have a 5, 10,000 plus member community. That's, that's not what I'm after. There's just a lot of, we have strong product market fit. The things people talk about around Exit 5, like, the demand from sponsors is there, new member growth, the connections and relationships and things people are getting out of the community is there every day. I'm like, man, this is amazing. And people, when they come, like Dan and Matt who came in the business and saw that, they're like, whoa, this is, this is real. And Dan, Dan said to me, he's like, this, this thing has the same buzz that we had at the last two companies that we worked together. And like, this is real. This is so real. And I just keep Thinking, okay, so I'm, I'm, I'm obsessed with this 10x thing. Like, it's easier to grow 10x because you need to, like, push yourself to not think of the small optimizations. You want to think of, like the big. What are the big ideas? Right? And if, even if you don't grow, the goal is not to grow 10x. Right? Let's, like, let's say Exit 5 is a $2 million a year business right now the goal is not to next year go to 20, but if you shoot for 10x, you're going to miss and maybe you grow 6x. And it's like, so I really have been on this, obsessed on this idea of like, thinking about what am I not seeing? What's the real lever and real opportunity here? And that's kind of what I wanted to talk to Chris about. Just like, hey, am I thinking about this? Right? I have a couple of ideas about, like, what the next play should be. And really, I'll share it on this podcast. Like, I'm, I see Exit 5 today as a product and business that, that I'll continue to run. But I think there's a bigger wrapper here that I'm operating, which is more of like a holding company where exit 5 as you see it today is, is one part of that. But there might be Thing two and Thing three, and I'm getting much closer doing that. And, man, I can't believe I'm going to tell you this. I think I really want to build a software product.

Okay. What type of software?

I have no idea. I don't know. Yeah, marketing. No. Yeah, marketing. Yep. And I, I don't know. I'm being vulnerable and telling people this and sharing this publicly, but we, you know, we will make a million dollars in revenue this year off of talking about other people's products. We should have our own product and we should sell that product. I don't want to do it just to make money. I want to do it because I'm passionate about it. I want to find something really interesting. And so I'm starting to think more like, okay, what are the spheres? And I wrote this book, founder Brand, a couple years ago, and I kind of just forgot about it. I got busy, did some other stuff, didn't really care about it. I still see people talking about it. And it just, it was another thing that reminded me, like, man, there's something here I shouldn't be. I don't need to try to, like, monetize a golf podcast and build a mer do this thing. I just need to double down on this area. Like, this is. I have this written on a post it note on my desk, which is, Rory, come on the pod. Which is unique ability. Like, what is your unique. What's your unique ability? And I think my unique ability is like one, the ability to write and communicate and content. That's. That's a thing. But then also what we've built the, the audience and reputation and force that we have in this niche of B2B marketing. And so I'm like, yeah, imagine if we built an amazing tool. I don't know what that tool is. Imagine if we built a tool that like all of the people that we that listen to this podcast could. Could use. Like, that's the opportunity. And so I don't know if it's going to happen, but that's the type of stuff that I'm like, pushing myself to think of. And it's so funny because, you know, I. You and I have had many conversations where like, two years ago, I was, man, like, I was like, screw this, I want to shut it down. No more B2B marketing. I want to go live on a farm. But anyway, that's. Sorry to. Sorry to talk.

Were you before you started hiring?

Technically four. Like, I started. I started pay. I started on Patreon in December, in like December of 2019. I rebranded it, repackaged it as Exit 5 in like 8. In April 22. In April of 22. So two years ago. And so, so I was like two years into the real business part of it before I decided to hire.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's funny because I started my thing the same way. It was like I wanted to get out of the city. I wanted to spend more time with family. I wanted to work on intellectually simulating projects. And then three years in, it was like, okay, it's time to start hiring. And it was a similar kind of inflection point or piece of advice I had gotten. I forget who it was from. I think it was like, probably somebody on VC Twitter who is saying essentially the same thing. It's just as easy to try to tax as it is to try to maintain the same. And one of the people who's been a close advisor to our company, one of the first things he ever said to me, and it kind of fell on dull ears because I wasn't ready to start hiring at that point was, if you're not growing, you're dying. And I didn't really understand what that was because I think I Was probably still in my first year of business. But if you're not growing, you're dying. Like there's a lot of truth to that thing. It's not completely true. There are a ton of people who have great, kind of great careers as consultants or running lifestyle business that produces enough cash flow for them to live very comfortably. But to me, through my experiences, it's kind of rung true of you're spending just as much energy trying to just stay afloat as you are trying to grow and become a much bigger company.

Yeah. And I think I see how it's so easy to just get caught up in the whack a mole of like all of those little fires and you never actually like take the next step. And I think hiring was a huge piece in me taking the next step. Also I was so hesitant to like build a real business because I, my kids are, you know, our kids are similar age. I had the opportunity to like work, work from home and be around a lot. And so I was like, I didn't want to like sacrifice that life. And I've just realized like, no, I'm in charge. Like we can build the business the way that I want and we can build it around those things and I can have both. And also I'm creative and competitive. Like I need those, I need those things. I need this. And so I need those pockets of work to give me structure and like provide, you know, some, some clarity for like ah, I love like I can't wait. It's you and I recording this at like 2:30 on a Friday after this podcast. I'm done. I'm shutting this stuff down and I'm done. I'm done for the afternoon and we're gonna go hang out and my kids will be home and like I can just be home and, and still be excited about business. I think I was caught up in this like binary. Like I either have to be at a 500 person company in an office or, or doing this. And I think I've gotten a lot of clarity on that. So I don't know if, I don't know, I don't know for sure if we're going to do that. But that's the stuff that I'm starting to think about and I don't want people listening to think that that's going to mean not investing in Exit 5. I don't see Exit 5 going anywhere and that in fact I think Exit 5 is like the moat where the community, the podcast, the content, that, that, that, that's Actually, the strategic piece of that, that needs to keep growing. Right. I just see it as like, man, so many other startup, like a new company could come in this space and they would, they would kill to have the audience that we have and the engagement that we have. We just got to figure out what the, what the right thing is to do. And turns out, like, we're also pretty good at marketing and so if we can find the right product, you know, and people have told me not to do this in the past. They're like, you have no idea what you're doing. You don't know how to build a software product. And you're, you're right, I don't. But we have a budget, we have team, we have people, we have people like, yeah, yeah, I've seen much, much, much worse people find their way.

Have you thought about an acquisition? Entrepreneurship?

Yes. Yes. So I, I think it's build or buy. Yeah. Huh. And you and I should talk a lot about that. But I, I, yeah, I, I, I, it's, it's tough. I see a lot of stuff out there and I'm like, I just don't know, I don't know how good this is. There is a, there's definitely a play though. And I know, I know how you think. There's definitely a play of like buying a business, making it better. That would be very strong out of the gate for sure.

Yeah, it's scary. I mean, I go on those sites all the time. I think that's like the new equivalent of buying a domain, right?

You go browse on those sites, there's no domains left yet, but you just.

Go on those sites, you browse, you send it around and you're like, should we do this? Like, and then you're like, what's going to happen when I purchase this? Somebody just like copy the front end UI of some other software, rebrand it. Now they're trying to sell it to me.

Like, I just don't like, I don't like, I don't like when I don't know about something, which is, I don't know about law a lot, a lot of things. And you know, it's like, do I, am I going to put up $725,000 to like, buy this thing? And then someone's like, well, actually if you do this, you can only pay this and you only put this down. I'm like, there's just so much that I don't know that you know what I mean?

On Instagram, there's a guy who Kind of breaks down the business.

Let me just write some tweets and I'll be good. Like, let me write some copy and I'll be good. All right, well, thanks. So, yeah, so we're thinking about something about that. And when I say we, I think like, that's, that's also what's cool about bringing, like, Dan into the business. I don't, I don't see him just as like operating at exit 5. I think we have the opportunity to build a small team that will work on these things together. And I think that's like, it's not a team that just works on Exit five. Like, I see us building a team of three to five people that work on all of our businesses together. So we'll, we'll see. Also the, the, the more that I see, it's like, ah, the business you, you need. The, the obstacle is the way, like, I want, I want ultimate freedom. I want more time with my family. Like, this is going to be the way to, to get, to get that. Okay. I actually did some prep for this conversation today. So you said there's a lot going on in the world. I'm happy to talk about all the changes happening in marketing, Google cookies, Google and Bing using AI, the farce of AI generated content. And I'm actually just going to flip over. I'm just going to put you on the hot seat and world. I'm happy to talk about all the changes happening in marketing, Google cookies, Google and Bing using AI, the farce of AI generated content. And I'm actually just going to flip over. I'm just going to put you on the hot seat and.