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Dave Gerhardt (Founder of Exit Five, former CMO) and guests help you grow your career in B2B marketing. Episodes include conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, and subject matter experts across all aspects of modern B2B marketing: planning, strategy, operations, ABM, demand gen., product marketing, brand, content, social media, and more. Join 4,400+ members in our private community at exitfive.com.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:15]:
Hey, it's me, Dave. So this is a special episode. This was a session that we recorded live at Drive, our first ever in person event, which was early September in Burlington, Vermont. It was incredible. We had 200 people there. The NP's after the event was 88. We're gonna do it again this year. Don't worry.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:32]:
I know there's a lot of fomo out there. For those of you that didn't make it, we're gonna do it again September 2025. But we have all of the recordings right here for you on the Exit Five podcast. Now, this is just the audio if you want the full video and see the slides and everything that is available exclusively in our community. Not on YouTube, not on the Internet, nowhere else except inside of Exit Five in the community. Join 4400 members exitfive.com and you can see all the content. Okay, let's get into this session from Drive, last session of the week. I've had a great time.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:11]:
Anybody else have a great time? I've had a great time. Two things in life can be true at the same time. I've had a great time. I'm also ready for you to get the hell out of here. I'm just kidding. I've stayed up past 09:00 for two nights in a row.
Amrita Marthur [00:01:27]:
Woohoo.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:29]:
And I don't even really drink, so that's just. That's saying something. Okay, so we wanted to do. I wanted to do a session where, you know, I think a lot of events you go to, panels can be hit or miss. Candidly, the host of the panel is not always me. I think I'm decent at keeping a discussion going. But also I wanted to bring on three people who would not give you the canned kind of bullshit, nonsense answers you get on a panel. And we have three of them.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:54]:
And so we're going to spend the next 40 minutes or so. We'll wrap here. I have some stuff that I want to go through at the end after that, but we're going to have this conversation and we'll also. The Q&A has been really, really good. We actually talking about what we want to do if we do this event again. And I think having the speakers here in the audience is really cool. Having the audience participation is really cool. So let's also use this to your advantage and get some really thoughtful answers from these three.
Dave Gerhardt [00:02:21]:
One of the last big rounds of applause of today, I'm gonna tell you about each, actually. Let's get them up here and then I'll do quick intros. Come on. My panelists. Come on and join. All right. Look at. Oh, it doesn't matter where you sit.
Dave Gerhardt [00:02:46]:
Holy smokes. How about that song choice? By the way, my guy over there, Dan, he might look a little buttoned up, but that was his choice. That was his choice. Run this town, baby.
Peter Mahoney [00:02:58]:
Hi, I'm Tara.
Tara Robertson [00:03:02]:
You look just like me.
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:04]:
This is mine. You're all the talent. I'm the host here, so let me. Please quiet down. All right, so real quick, three intros. I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself because you can do better than I am. Peter, we know you already. Cause you spoke yesterday.
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:16]:
That was great.
Amrita Marthur [00:03:17]:
Hey, guys. Thanks for sticking around. This is the last session of the day. You guys look bright, which is great. I'm Amrita. It's one word. It's like saying I am Rita, but it's literally Amrita. I am currently unemployed, but I start a new gig on Monday, which I'll tell you where.
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:34]:
Where?
Amrita Marthur [00:03:36]:
Where some of you know, I'm starting as, like, I'll be leading the marketing team at Zapier Zapier. And I'm so pumped because this is the biggest job I've ever had. And I can't believe I got this job. And I edged out these, like, hardcore silicon Valley type guys, and I got it.
Tara Robertson [00:03:57]:
Because you're a badass. He's a badass.
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:03]:
All right. And Tara, the local Tara and I, she's, like, one of the few b. Two b marketing leaders that also lives in Vermont that I know, which they've all come out of the woodwork now. And Tara's had an awesome career running marketing at a bunch of different companies. Right now she's CMO at Bitly.
Tara Robertson [00:04:20]:
Hi, everyone. I'm Tara. I live here. Who here is from Vermont? Met a few of you. Oh, my God. More than I've had the chance to meet. Let's connect afterwards. It's been so cool to connect with our people in this area.
Tara Robertson [00:04:32]:
I work here in this space. So just a true honor being here today.
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:36]:
Not to put Tara on blast or anything, but, like, she burned both ends of the camp. She was out late last night, and unlike most of you, she was at the workout at 615. This morning.
Tara Robertson [00:04:47]:
I was out late, but drinking a lot of water and super fun time. So, yeah, CMO at bit ly. Prior to bit ly, I've worked at brands like Sprout social, hot jar, teamwork. So I've been really lucky to work on some incredible, incredible businesses and feel honored to be on stage with these two incredible leaders.
Dave Gerhardt [00:05:04]:
All right, here's where I want to start.
Tara Robertson [00:05:07]:
And Dave. And Dave. And this guy.
Dave Gerhardt [00:05:11]:
And scene. Yeah. Where's Matt? Where's Matt? Matt said some nice things about me at dinner last night. I wish I recorded him and was like, yeah, take that. But that's all right. We'll save that for another time. Okay, I got a bunch of questions. Usually I don't prep for these things, but I was nervous about this one, so I did prep.
Dave Gerhardt [00:05:27]:
Granted, I wrote these a week ago, and I'm a very impulsive person and I change a lot. So these could be shit, but I think they're going to be good. But I have a place that I want to start, is I want to ask each one of you, knowing what you know now, what is something that you could go back and tell yourself as a first time marketing leader? Now, I think of marketing leader, it doesn't necessarily mean job title like VP, CMO. I mean, like, hey, you could be, you're a marketing manager and this is the first time that you're being asked to run a team of three. Or lessons from being a VP of marketing or CMO. Peter, let's start with you and we'll work back.
Peter Mahoney [00:06:00]:
Yeah. There a couple of things that come to mind immediately, Dave. One is know the business to the point where I always, in any role that I have, the first person that I seek out is the finance leader.
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:13]:
Right.
Peter Mahoney [00:06:14]:
A CFO. If it was earlier in my career, the finance business partner was there and say, just walk me through, explain in detail how the business works. And it's a huge, huge unlock to understand what's going on and even do things like tell them what's your multi year plan, right. So have them walk through the financials of the business so you can understand the business impact of what you're doing. That's one. And the other thing I'd add in here, too, is I wish I trusted my instincts more earlier.
Amrita Marthur [00:06:48]:
Not data.
Peter Mahoney [00:06:49]:
Well, data's okay, too. No, but the point is, there's so many times when I felt like, especially early in my career, I felt like, wow, that doesn't look right. But what do I know, right? And often, if it looked funny, it was probably funny. And I was a little shy in some cases about speaking up and saying, I think that's wrong. And I wish I did that more earlier.
Dave Gerhardt [00:07:17]:
I would actually, in between sessions, I got stopped. There's a CEO here running a couple million dollar SaaS company and it was great. I wish his marketing team could have heard it. But he basically asked me all the things he wanted to understand. Why is everything going wrong with his marketing team? And it was the actual root, the root cause of it was what you said is like, their marketing strategy did not match how they had a marketing strategy that was set up for like, high volume inbound when they're selling $75,000 a year contracts. And it's like, well, that's why things aren't working. Cause you have the wrong strategy, but you can't get to that unless you know how the business actually works. I love that you started there.
Dave Gerhardt [00:07:53]:
Amrita, what about you?
Amrita Marthur [00:07:54]:
For me, it's actually like really simple. There's this phrase that a CEO I worked for. The context is just to take a step back. The context is I'd never done super early stage startup before. And I joined this company that was pre product, pre revenue. We didn't have anything. We didn't know who our customers were. We didn't know who they were going to be.
Amrita Marthur [00:08:15]:
And I joined in May, and five months had gone by, and I was about to launch and go to market, and I was like, poop in my pants. I was like, oh, my God, is anyone going to buy this? What's going to happen? I had a $4 million target and I was like, sweating buckets. And I think the CEO could tell I was sweating buckets. And I was like, some things were going wrong. And he was like, he was like, don't worry about money. Don't worry about revenue. Optimize for your rate of learning, your velocity of learning. And, like, I still get chills when I think about that because that just, like, helped me decompress.
Amrita Marthur [00:08:51]:
And I just realized, like, all I had to do was execute and focus on speedy execution and just learning really fast, and that's it. Learning really, really fast. And that would allow me to, like, make different bets. I could throw money at different problems, but if I didn't move fast, I wouldn't know what the heck was going on. So that's like the one most supreme lesson I have learned. And I wish I knew that earlier.
Dave Gerhardt [00:09:16]:
I love that lesson. Cause I think marketing leader or not, there might be people in this room, or we've all been there. You might be, your company might suck. You're not always gonna be at a company where things are going great, but you might be able to flip that into something like, can I learn right now? Right? I was running marketing at a company. I just got there three months in CMO, new team. We laid everybody off we started over two months in Covid happens, and they said, you gotta give all your budget back. And I'm like, well, what am I gonna do for the next two years? But then I took it on as a creative learning challenge, which is like, okay, well, what can I do with no budget? And how can those be turned into constraints that now I can use as a way to build skills in your next job? What about you, Miss Tara?
Tara Robertson [00:10:03]:
So I kind of want to build on what everybody's saying, but look at it from another angle. If I were to go back and say, what are the things that I wish that I knew? You don't know what you don't know. Like, that has been the number one learning for me. When I first started out in my career, when I jumped into leadership for the first time, I lived in the stress spiral that Natalie talked about yesterday. And, man, did it suck. And I think I had this expectation on myself that when I was in that learning mode and when I was trying to figure out, my budget's been cut, I need to figure out how to do this. I thought I had to do that, and I thought I had to become an expert in the things that I wasn't a marketing expert in, because we all have skills, you know, whether you're a t shaped marketer, whether you're a specialist, whether you're a generalist, you've got a skill that you're great at and a trade that you're great at. And it's not all of them.
Tara Robertson [00:10:50]:
That's just impossible. And the more that I learned that I don't have to be the one that knows that. Kind of like Peter was saying yesterday, like, even as a CMO, 5% marketing is actually hilarious because it's so true. The more that I've learned that there's people out there in this room that I guarantee you, 90% of you are better marketers than me in a lot of different areas. 100% of you, actually, 110%. And you really don't know what you don't know, but there is somebody out there that does. And so networking, learning, connecting, and really just putting yourself out there and being a part of a community like this has been what has been such a huge catalyst to my own growth, both as a leader, but also as a marketer and coupling. What Peter said, spend the time not just learning about your marketing trade, but your business.
Tara Robertson [00:11:35]:
Spend the time connecting with your colleagues. That's critical.
Dave Gerhardt [00:11:38]:
All right, I'm gonna jump all over the place. This is a. I wrote these myself. This is a fun one. It's a little fill in the blank, finish the sentence. You should not become a marketing leader.
Amrita Marthur [00:11:46]:
If Amrita, if you're not willing to throw a spaghetti at the wall, you gotta, like, have, like, a muscle to experiment and just try stuff.
Peter Mahoney [00:11:58]:
Peter, if you wanna do a lot of marketing, ooh.
Dave Gerhardt [00:12:07]:
That'S a real, I follow that. I have said, like, I think before, whether it's CMO or not, I think before you become a manager, like, if you go from individual contributor to your manager, you should have to take a test. And it's like, are you sure you know what being a manager is? It's like having kids. And I'm starting to realize, like, all the things that drove, like, I thought my parents were nuts about, I'm now doing. I'm like, oh, I understand why you, why you did that that way. Yeah. Tara, what's your answer?
Tara Robertson [00:12:32]:
If you don't want to communicate, it's like the number one part of this job. You have to communicate. You have to communicate out, you have to communicate in, you have to communicate sideways. You have to communicate in every possible direction. That is the skill that so many people don't talk about, especially within your business. That is critical.
Dave Gerhardt [00:12:47]:
How many people get all flustered because the vp of sales wants to dig deep on what's going on with marketing? So, well, that's the job.
Tara Robertson [00:12:53]:
Literally everyone.
Dave Gerhardt [00:12:55]:
There's no other way. Okay, I want to talk about goals. How do you and I've pulled, these are basically based on a lot of the common things that we see come up with marketing leaders or people that want to be a marketing leader. Talk about goal setting. How do you set goals for the team? I'm curious to know if you have a system. Do you do annual goals versus quarterly, goals versus monthly? And how important is goal setting in the planning process to Drive the team?
Tara Robertson [00:13:18]:
Starting with me?
Dave Gerhardt [00:13:19]:
I don't know. You're all grown ups.
Tara Robertson [00:13:21]:
All right, I'll jump in. Critical. I mean, goal setting is everything. Everybody needs a goal. And I would say as a whole, you've got your business goals that we work on with our executive team and with our leadership team. What's our revenue goal? What's our net dollar retention goal? How does that Drive across? But then we have our sub KPI's that we bring down into our teams. Some goals are obvious. If you have an acquisition goal, you know what you're trying to Drive.
Tara Robertson [00:13:44]:
Some goals might be new. And so, as Amrita talked about, if you're testing or if you're trying. We will always actually put a learning goal to that as well. And sometimes we might hit it nail on and be super proud that we figured it out. Sometimes it might swing in an either direction and that's also fine because we're learning. But everything always has a goal. We look at them annually, we then break them down quarterly and we review them monthly and weekly with all of our teams.
Amrita Marthur [00:14:09]:
And part of it depends on the stage of the company too, right? So if you're super early stage, maybe you don't need an OKR system. Like that's too complicated for you guys. You probably don't even have a team yet. One thing that I've seen companies do is just kind of have like a p zero and p one. It's like a priority, like stack ranked. And here are the five things we're trying to accomplish this quarter and try to make it as tangible as possible. Try to put a number behind it. But it's okay if it's a learning goal.
Amrita Marthur [00:14:35]:
It's okay if it's like a hiring goal or something to that effect, but just have like a p zero p one system and make sure that there's a Driver of the bus. The goals are nothing if it doesn't belong to somebody. So a team or a person needs to be driving towards that goal.
Peter Mahoney [00:14:50]:
So as you know, Dave, I kind of wrote a book on this and.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:53]:
You don't get paid for it anymore, so it doesn't matter.
Peter Mahoney [00:14:55]:
I know, I know. Complainy, I'm sorry.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:58]:
No, it's great because like ten people said, I love like little insights like that. I think it makes everything so much better. He's like, I sold the company. I sold the rights to the book. I was like, oh, that's interesting. You had to sell the rights of the book when you sold it. Like, that stuff is interesting to me.
Peter Mahoney [00:15:11]:
Maybe the book was more valuable than the company.
Dave Gerhardt [00:15:14]:
I guess.
Peter Mahoney [00:15:14]:
Maybe that was the. They actually didn't line in it out.
Dave Gerhardt [00:15:17]:
I'm not sure we could use this to start a fire.
Peter Mahoney [00:15:20]:
Exactly. Well said. But I'm going to answer a little bit differently because I've spent a lot of time and some of you may have seen some of my content I've done in the past. I've talked a lot about goals and a framework and setting and things like that. There's one thing that I have talked about a fair amount, but I think it's an important addition to this, is that it's not just the goal, it's the strategy. And that's where a lot of alignment gets broken inside companies. What's the difference? I just used this metaphor, I think, in the last 24 hours. So apologies to whoever I was talking to, but your goal is getting to the top of a hill.
Peter Mahoney [00:15:58]:
What's your strategy? Maybe I can climb up the front, the steep part, or maybe I go the long path around the back. Why does it matter what your strategy is? Your strategy is you need different tools. So if I'm climbing up this deep thing, I need ropes and those clippy things. If I'm going around the back, I need comfy shoes and water. Your strategy is really critical to understand with your goals. And, Dave, you just brought up talking to the CEO. CEO that you were talking to probably said, I want you to grow. Right? That was the goal.
Peter Mahoney [00:16:31]:
And they said, great, my strategy is going to produce this high volume, inbound kind of thing. And they said, well, no, it's actually not going to work. So not only getting alignment around what your goals are, but really understanding and connecting on what those strategies are to get there is just so critical.
Dave Gerhardt [00:16:49]:
I love that.
Peter Mahoney [00:16:49]:
It's missing in a lot of.
Dave Gerhardt [00:16:51]:
I saw Dan, he was like, looking down, and he started using this hill strategy goals thing. But it's great. That opened up a door for me because I feel like another layer of the strategy thing that people don't often talk about is, like, the constraints. And so to build on your example, like, okay, well, you need to get to the top of this mountain, but, like, we don't have any budget for shoes, but you still need to get to the top of the mountain. Okay, so then the tactics are gonna change, and your company may have gone through layoffs and you don't have the budget or I. Yeah, everyone says, go hire great people, but actually, like, our company kind of sucks and we don't pay that people well, and so we can't get top talent. And so maybe we should just try to spend the money on an agency. Like, those are all the layers that I'm like, man, I wish I knew a lot of this, how the game works now, just by show of hands for your business, how many of you feel right now you have the right goals set based on the strategy of the company?
Tara Robertson [00:17:40]:
For a minute, I thought it would be none.
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:43]:
Dan, this should be. Dan, this should be a issue. I was gonna say, this should be a good business for us. Nobody raised their hand. We got a lot education. We can help do that. That's crazy to that. Is that crazy? Or does that seem right?
Amrita Marthur [00:17:56]:
That's crazy.
Tara Robertson [00:17:57]:
Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:58]:
Like six are you guys operating?
Amrita Marthur [00:17:59]:
Like, what are you doing? Like, what's happening?
Dave Gerhardt [00:18:03]:
No, but I empathize with why. Look, having been there, like, there's, I think marketing often gets trapped with a lot of bullshit from the CEO. And if there's no clear company, if there's no clear company strategy, then it's going to be tough to set a marketing strategy.
Amrita Marthur [00:18:18]:
But one third of this room is CEO's. At least my group was all CEO's. Where are you all at? Are you setting the strategy for your marketing team?
Dave Gerhardt [00:18:25]:
They saw this was going to be a CMO panel and they left.
Tara Robertson [00:18:28]:
Can I build for a second on what Peter was saying, too? Because I think that there's a connection here in talking about the importance of communication as it aligns to your goals and as it aligns to your strategy. Because a goal is one thing, but a goal is a goal is a goal is a goal. The initiatives and the tactics and the work that you do that helps you achieve those goals is what you actually need to be communicating. And so for us, when I talk about these monthly rituals that we have, it's not about just how are we doing. Sometimes we're doing it, sometimes we're not. It's are we doing the things that we said we were going to do, and are those things doing the thing that we thought they would do? And a lot of time it's not. And so while your goals sometimes don't move, your initiatives, your objectives, your tactics absolutely should be fluid when it comes to the big bets that you're running. And so make sure you communicate that.
Tara Robertson [00:19:18]:
Bring your teams in, bring your company in it. When your CEO is coming to you and pushing back on doing this new thing, that's how you push it back on them, on where you're prioritizing your time to that top level.
Amrita Marthur [00:19:28]:
That is such a good point. And I will admit that I have effed up on that many, many times, partially why I'm on.
Dave Gerhardt [00:19:36]:
I've also, he'll never understand this, so I can say it, but I worked with this guy once, and this guy was obsessed with the framework, the OKR framework. I'm like, bro, it doesn't matter. What's in the framework is what is going to actually happen. And I have seen so many people rise to, like, high level management positions because they, they read measure what matters by John Doar and they love okrs. And it's like, no, I don't know that framework, but I can help develop a better strategy to get up the hill. And so I also think, like, don't get so married to the framework. Like, whether you call it okrs or whether you call it goals, like, can you write it on a napkin and write three to five bullets and can you get everybody in the company on board? How many people work at companies where you go through this, like, three month goal setting exercise? Like, that's crazy. What the heck?
Tara Robertson [00:20:23]:
Process for the sake of process sucks.
Dave Gerhardt [00:20:25]:
And so many people like, and I also think this is one of the things that helped me with imposter syndrome. I saw so many people rise to the top, and they're actually not very good at what they do. They just fake it. They do this fake work, which is like OKR planning, and think that that's the actual job. And a lot of people in this room did that. Mm hmm. Noise again.
Peter Mahoney [00:20:43]:
So, Dave, I love what you said there, because it's often about clarity and simplicity and not about having a fancy framework. A framework. It can be a tool to help you think, but it's ultimately about doing that. And a lot of people, I felt a shudder in the audience when I said the word strategy because people think that, wow, that's something that's weird and scary and sophisticated, and it's just not. It's replace it with how are we going to do it? And it is really, really simple. And I think people think of, and a lot of companies really get stuck on this idea of strategy because they feel like, oh, my God, it's such a big, complicated thing, and I need a Evp of corporate strategy to figure it out. No, let's just decide how we're going to get there together. It's kind of as simple as that.
Peter Mahoney [00:21:31]:
And if you can boil it down to that and the handful of goals that you need to do in a couple of bullets, you're much more likely to get the team behind you versus having a complicated framework with a hundred different things.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:47]:
And that's the game, not just setting the goals, but when the whole company is rallied around the goals, then your life becomes easy.
Amrita Marthur [00:21:53]:
As a marketer, I was just going to say there's something hidden. There's an insight in what you just said, which is like, can you get all of the goals in point form or whatever on a napkin? Like, if it can fit on a postcard or napkin, you're doing something right.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:06]:
Totally. All right, where do I want to go next? We're going to take your questions, too. Let's make this a little bit interactive in a second. Another thing that comes up is the delicate balance between short term and long term, we need to hit the pipeline goal. We need to hit the revenue goal this quarter, but also next year, we need to grow 100%. And so we better start laying some foundation. We want to do brand, we want to do whatever. Does any of you have a helpful framework for thinking about those? How can we help the humans in this room walk and chew gum at the same time? How do you do those things?
Peter Mahoney [00:22:39]:
Yeah, it's one of the first things I tend to do, Dave, is try to anchor the long term with the short term. Like to do it is I like to sketch a picture of what our future should be. So one of the things that, I know I talked about strategy, but that's just how you get there. One of the most important things in your strategy is to figure out, all right, well, what do we want the thing to look like, the thing we're working on in some unspecified period of time? Two years, three years, five years, whatever it is. What's that future state that we're trying to work to? And then as you start building your near term plans, you can start to think about the connection between the short term and the long term. Is that short term objective going to bridge me in the area of getting to the long term, or is the long term so different from what I'm doing today that I need to build in some change to get toward the long term? So we're dealing with this right now because I'm doing this big go to market transformation across this complicated business. And we have a current view of the way we go to market, and we have a future view of how we go to market. That's very different.
Peter Mahoney [00:23:49]:
So to get there while delivering our objectives in the short term, we need to make a bunch of decisions about building up and testing and making sure that there's actually some infrastructure so that in 25 and 26, we'll get to that view. But the only way you get there is by painting that picture of what the future is. And you're an idiot if you try to do it too specifically, because you're going to be so wrong. It doesn't matter. Literally, it's your saying sketch it on a napkin. If you can design on the napkin what you want your future state to be, whether it's your marketing team, whether it's digital marketing, if you're running that, if it's your company, whatever it is, then you will see the connections really quickly around how your work today is adding to that or subtracting from that. And that's the key in my mind.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:40]:
Tara, if you look at your current company budget, programs, people, whatever, how much of that do you have split between stuff that's going to help us hit our number this year and stuff that's going to be more future based budget wise?
Tara Robertson [00:24:54]:
I would say predominantly is stuff that happens with acquisition and demand gen, but there's always a pretty good percentage set aside for long term and big bets. And I guess the way that we think about this in what Peter's kind of talking about is we actually, we sketch it out in the forecast. And I would say if you're working for a bigger.org, it applies. If you work for a smaller.org and you're a solo marketer and you don't have someone in house get in an analyst to do this with you. But we'll work with the finance team and essentially look at our overall trends. And based on those trends and the growth rate we're expecting, what do we have just with the foundation? Because you have essentially your foundational things that you just have to do, and we call that our recurring work. And that takes capacity. That is where you start.
Tara Robertson [00:25:39]:
You have to have the foundation built. And then we look at that curve and say, okay, well, what's our gap to where the business needs to be and what we need to create for demand, whether that's, we're both product led and sales led. So we've got a product led funnel that marketing owns with product. We have a sales led funnel where it's focused on pipeline. And we look at that bridge between the, what is our natural growth essentially look like if we do nothing else, where is that going to land us? And then what's the difference? And then that's where we start to apply the big bets. And so budget isn't necessarily a specific calculation of an 80 20 split. It's really based off of getting into the strategy. What are the things that we think that we can do that will help us bridge that gap and then consistently look at that quarter over quarter.
Amrita Marthur [00:26:22]:
So the lens you use is budget. Like, is that sort of like you have like percentages?
Tara Robertson [00:26:27]:
We use demand to start, so we'll start with the demand and then we apply into that. What are the things that we want to do and then what is the budget? And sometimes you got to get creative. You don't have budget. And sometimes when you've got a little bit more flexibility, we can take the bigger swings. But I also really, I've just got an incredible team at bit ly that are just so much smarter than me and creative. And so it just makes a lot of fun jamming on figuring out what are the things that we want to try. And Dave, you had asked this, like, there is no space to not focus on the long term. You have to focus on the long term, and you have to think about the innovation, the creativity, and that creativity sometimes has budget that creativity could be also budget of time, like writing a book a few people on the stage have done, because it does really make a difference.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:10]:
All right, a couple random ones, and we're going to get your questions. Have you had worked at a company where you've been successful, but your counterpart was a huge pain in the ass and you didn't get along?
Tara Robertson [00:27:23]:
Yes.
Amrita Marthur [00:27:27]:
Almost always. Like, I literally can't remember a time where that hasn't been the case. Well, one company that wasn't the case.
Tara Robertson [00:27:35]:
People are hard. I think just in general, people are hard. And that's the part when we get back to communication being so critical. At the end of the day, we are all humans. And I think that's what we have to remember when we're working with people alongside us. And if our counterparts are difficult, ask them why. You just gotta face that head on. That's probably the biggest learning I've ever had.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:54]:
I'm asking because, like, there's some narrative and, like, I kind of feel this way about, like, team building in general, but it's like, oh, you should, you know, like, you're the, you're the vp of marketing, like, the VP of sales should be your best friend, you should have coffee together. And, like, I've been in situations where, like, we absolutely didn't like each other and I wasn't gonna leave the company over that, and neither were they. So we gotta figure out how to, how to productively work together. And what I'm hearing is you're kind of just like that. That's just life. Sometimes you need to be a professional and figure out how to work together.
Tara Robertson [00:28:21]:
You gotta figure it out. If you don't like each other, who cares? You got it. You're running the same business, you've got the same goals. Figure it out. And I think the important thing is, a lot of people say, like, oh, sales, product, they have to be your best friends, depending on your goal. Best friend doesn't mean that you're sitting down and you're kumbaya ing and have the best time together. It means you debate and that you've got challenges and that you're having those shared goals. But at the end of the day.
Tara Robertson [00:28:42]:
Your CEO doesn't care if you don't get along. What they care about is how you're working together and how you're growing the business, and that's up to you. And if you aren't getting along, then sit down and say, like, look, we're not getting along. We got to figure this out because it's our job.
Dave Gerhardt [00:28:57]:
All right, I'm going to read the.
Amrita Marthur [00:28:59]:
Temptation to run to the CEO as referee.
Dave Gerhardt [00:29:01]:
Oh.
Amrita Marthur [00:29:02]:
Which I have done so many times. Learned the hard way.
Dave Gerhardt [00:29:05]:
Did you hear that? Resist the urge to go to the CEO, to referee. That's like the ultimate lesson in managing up in a nutshell. Like, it's not their job to settle your tie. You were hired there because you're a grown up and you need to figure that out together. That's a good one.
Amrita Marthur [00:29:21]:
I'll remind myself of that on Monday. Post it notes everywhere.
Dave Gerhardt [00:29:27]:
We got this. It'll be recorded. We'll make a clip for you.
Peter Mahoney [00:29:30]:
Dave. I just have to say, I think I'm the difficult counterpart.
Dave Gerhardt [00:29:33]:
Me too. There's like a curve of, like, when I was younger, I thought they were the problem. And the older I get, I'm like, oh, it's me. Oh, yeah, it's Taylor Swift. Maybe you heard of her. Okay, quick one from each of you. Biggest risk you've taken in your career that has worked. Tara.
Tara Robertson [00:29:54]:
Oh, I'm first. Biggest risk I've taken in my career that has worked. Networking. When I first started out in my career, I was so nervous. So nervous to walk up to people and say, like, hey, can we connect? I'd love to learn from you of these people that I've just admired and still admire and still feel immense amounts of imposter syndrome sitting next to on stage even. But the biggest risk I ever took was walking up to that first person. His name is Kyle. He's still a good friend of mine.
Tara Robertson [00:30:21]:
And saying, hey, buddy, will you mentor me?
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:23]:
Love that. That's actually one. I've been saying this. One of my favorite things about this event so far is just noticing, like, even in the, like, the lunchroom was like an underratedly cool thing. Like, because we all kind of roughly work in the same world. Like, I just saw complete strangers just pop up and sit next to each other and have a lot of stuff to talk about. I see everybody nodding along and that was like, that's why we want to do more of this. That was really cool.
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:43]:
What about you, Amrita?
Amrita Marthur [00:30:44]:
I was going to say something similar, and I actually find that doing it with total strangers is actually extremely therapeutic. This guy Brendan, right there, was my therapist. We had a random call a couple years ago, and then it turned into an hour call, and you were just letting me cry. And that was awesome. And it was good. There's something about that just leaning on strangers who are smart, but you just don't know them and they don't know your business, and so they can actually give you actionable advice that's unbiased and not coddle you.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:12]:
What about you?
Peter Mahoney [00:31:14]:
Probably walking away from a big job, making a ton of money, and going to start a company where I made no money for three years. That was a big risk.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:24]:
You wrote a good book, though.
Peter Mahoney [00:31:25]:
I got a book out of it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:29]:
And looking back at that experience now, was that a good thing?
Peter Mahoney [00:31:34]:
Yeah, it was a really great thing. I mean, I grew a ton. Incredible stress. I mean, you know. Right. I mean, it's amazing stress. When you build something. There are a lot of people who are builders out here.
Peter Mahoney [00:31:44]:
It's. You got to put yourself out there in this crazy way and sometimes way outside your comfort zone. And it's stress more than you probably ever experience in your life. But how do you build muscle? You stress muscle. Right. And you grow incredibly when you put yourself under some kind of controlled stress. And not too much or it'll break.
Dave Gerhardt [00:32:06]:
How did you say it? If the thing on the other side, the ending part where I almost cried. That part. Yeah. Love that. Okay, here's the opposite side of that question. Let's send it back down. What's the biggest risk you've taken in your career and swung and missed starting a company? Amrita?
Amrita Marthur [00:32:29]:
I left a very, like a great job, great people. Everything was awesome. I left and joined a very PLG company, big company. You guys would know this name. And I took a risk because I was like, yeah, I'm going to grow. I'm going to learn something new. I want to learn the PLG business, how that whole scale thing works. And, yeah, that crashed and burned.
Amrita Marthur [00:32:50]:
A lot of it was my fault.
Dave Gerhardt [00:32:52]:
So does it rhyme with schmickup?
Amrita Marthur [00:32:53]:
Sorry? Does it rhyme with rhymes with schmickup? It does.
Dave Gerhardt [00:32:57]:
We're trying to get Monday.com as a sponsor anyway, so I don't really care.
Amrita Marthur [00:33:01]:
They're great. I love them. I have their stock.
Dave Gerhardt [00:33:04]:
What about you, Tara?
Tara Robertson [00:33:05]:
I mean, I had the same story at Rhymed with Schmatjar. Schmatjar. So I'm going to go with a different one because we won't have the same answers for everything. Honestly, instead of the big risk, let's talk about the little ones, because we talked about short term and long term and how do you balance them? That's good. I feel good about that. Probably one of the biggest risks is, or the biggest failures that I've seen in just marketing leadership and marketing in general is when I get stuck in the, oh, no, we're not hitting our numbers. What can we do right now? And you start to pivot from the strategy, and it's like, if we run an email and we give this discount, maybe we can get those win backs and it'll make an impact. And what does that do? Stress spirals the team.
Tara Robertson [00:33:52]:
It stress spirals yourself. It's the worst possible thing you can do. And I fucked that one up a few times. Sorry.
Dave Gerhardt [00:33:59]:
Can you say that again? The what? Like the impression that you did at the beginning. Could you say that part again?
Tara Robertson [00:34:03]:
Schmatcher.
Dave Gerhardt [00:34:04]:
No, no, that was great. That was great. That was really good. No, the other part, though, right now. Like that. Then how do we grow with that thing?
Tara Robertson [00:34:12]:
If the numbers are falling down, can.
Dave Gerhardt [00:34:13]:
You do that again?
Tara Robertson [00:34:14]:
I don't remember what I said. I was just blocking.
Dave Gerhardt [00:34:16]:
That's, like, the only mode that I know. So I'm trying to, like, figure out.
Tara Robertson [00:34:19]:
Why I blacked out. Yeah, it's. The numbers are down. What can I do right now? Let's just start going. Let's fucking go. And then you're like, that was a bad decision. That didn't get us any impact, and everybody's all pissed off because I did bad leadership. Don't get stuck in the short term gains if your numbers start to go in an opposite direction.
Tara Robertson [00:34:38]:
Stick through the things that you believe in and stick through the things that your team is bringing to the table.
Dave Gerhardt [00:34:42]:
Our last question, then we're turning to our audience, which has really just been great all week, with questions. How do you lead your team? I think this is applicable to anybody, CMO or not. How do you lead your team when you're not feeling inspired yourself? What's your strategy for getting out of a leadership rut? You know, we're humans. We're not always in great moods. Everything's not always good, and we just ride the wave, and it can be hard to come into work sometimes and be like, let's fucking go. You know, it's just. I'm just not in that mood today, folks. How do you rally and do that? Do you just suck it up and put on that face or.
Amrita Marthur [00:35:14]:
It's so hard. But the one thing is to just have some of your mentors on speed dial. I call this lady all the time. Like, I'm just like, you know, like, it's helpful to hear from people that are not in your shoes, not doing that exact same job at that exact same company, and then just genuinely just be like, I need a pep talk, and here's how I'm feeling. And most people, especially if you have the Mosfet dial, will help you get there. That's just, like, it's a tactic that's not gonna, like, last through all of the ups and downs. So you definitely have to, like, kind of have your own coping mechanisms, whether that's post it notes, whether that's, like writing your own. Like, if you journal or something, you can write in there.
Amrita Marthur [00:35:53]:
Like, here are the things that are, like, my fundamentals that I'm not gonna compromise on whatever those strategies are, but you kind of have to help yourself, and then you can have some friends and mentors and connections that can kind of give you some pep talks along the way.
Peter Mahoney [00:36:08]:
This isn't an issue for me, and I'll tell you, I'm a bit.
Amrita Marthur [00:36:13]:
Motivation is not an issue whatsoever.
Peter Mahoney [00:36:16]:
So here's the thing.
Tara Robertson [00:36:17]:
Tell me more.
Dave Gerhardt [00:36:18]:
He grows his own weed. It's fine.
Tara Robertson [00:36:21]:
You're in the right place.
Peter Mahoney [00:36:23]:
So I'm a big believer that your superpower is related to your kryptonite. And for me, a superpower is I am calm and I'm unflappable. But the kryptonite part of that is that I'm regularly told that I'm unreadable. And it's difficult for some of my employees, especially, who need to connect with me. They'll say, the greatest thing in the world just happened. And I'll say, okay, that's nice. And at the same time, I'll say, a terrible thing just happened. I'll say, okay, what are we gonna do about it? Right? And I think that sense of calm, it emanates from being one of six kids in five years and a middle child, I guess, and.
Peter Mahoney [00:37:10]:
But that's kind of me. But it is. I'm not the kind of person who can. It's not as natural for me to rally the troops, but at the same time, the world can be burning around me, and I'll keep going.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:23]:
It's interesting. Cause, like, you could say in a really happy situation, you're like, oh, that would be a negative thing. But I think we've also all worked with, like, the rah rah types. And that can also, like, no, I would much rather have the if I know what I'm always gonna get from you versus, like, the fiery, you know, leader on that point, do you do either? Maybe this question, Peter. And then you two can jump off on this. But do you tell your team, like, what your personality is? Like, there's this great. I forget what it's called. I don't know.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:51]:
Go read me stripe. Put out this book. And the coo wrote this. Like it was a Claire Hughes Johnson like guide to. Guide to working with me. And I thought it was a good exercise, and I haven't done it in a while, and I've changed a lot, but I've always wondered, like, do you tell the team that, like, hey, I'm new. Here's how I am, here's my personality. So you can expect that.
Peter Mahoney [00:38:09]:
Absolutely. And, in fact, we use a tool called insights discovery. It's, I think, a well known kind of tool to YouTube. And I forget what color I am. It doesn't really matter to me, but there's a color thing that goes along with that, and we use it at go to. But I did the same thing for people for a long time, is that I just communicate. This is how I work. This is what's going to work together for us.
Peter Mahoney [00:38:34]:
I try to adapt a little bit if I can, but I try to be really clear around sort of expectations and what works best for me. And that document is a great shortcut. In fact, I made my wife read it, and she looked at it, and she goes, yeah, that's about right.
Tara Robertson [00:38:51]:
I'll jump in on that and answer the first question and then the second one, too. And so, for me, I'm the opposite. I definitely am impacted by burnout all the time. And the advice I'll give is probably one of the best pieces of advice that has ever been given to me by one of my friends in the space is, you are not your job. Our careers do not define all of us. They are a part of us, and it's part of what makes us successful in various ways across the board. But for me, when I'm at that place where I'm just exhausted or I'm overwhelmed or I just have that moment, I find where I get energy from, and I get energy. I live in Vermont.
Tara Robertson [00:39:31]:
I go out into the mountains. I stare out into the space of the amazing world that we're a part of. I go out on my paddle board and just breathe nature. But that's me. Some people go for a walk in the city. Some people will go hang out with a friend at dinner. Find what brings you energy and find what brings you you. And that connects to the second part that Dave asked for is, do I bring my team in? Absolutely.
Tara Robertson [00:39:52]:
I have vulnerable moments every day. Like, I will tell my team when I'm stressed. I try to lead by example so that they can hopefully do the same. Because at the end of the day, growth is hard. It doesn't matter what stage you're in, it is hard. And, you know, you get all the time like, oh, we're not curing cancer. Some of you might be, in which case, like, you're amazing and I want to meet you and shake your hand and say thank you. We're working on, you know, the Kamala campaign, which is absolutely incredible.
Tara Robertson [00:40:16]:
But at the end of the day, it doesn't, it doesn't matter what you're doing. It's hard. And that is a really important thing to remember. And so find what it is that brings you energy. And for me, I know I have a two month expiration, so every two months I need a day where I just go get my energy and then bring it back to refuel the batteries.
Dave Gerhardt [00:40:34]:
We're going to go to questions. Awesome.
Amrita Marthur [00:40:36]:
Really enjoyed the talk so far, but I am curious. I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this, but basically, how do you know when it's time to move on from a company? Maybe you're in a marketing leadership role.
Dave Gerhardt [00:40:47]:
It's the most senior role of your.
Tara Robertson [00:40:49]:
Career, but there's just a point where.
Amrita Marthur [00:40:52]:
It'S time to go. If you develop insomnia or any health condition, if it shows up in your.
Dave Gerhardt [00:40:59]:
Body, that's not what she wants to hear.
Tara Robertson [00:41:03]:
That feels kind of late.
Amrita Marthur [00:41:06]:
That is kind of late.
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:08]:
For what it's worth, this was a hypothetical question.
Amrita Marthur [00:41:14]:
I can look into her eyes. No, but any kind of, honestly, any kind of. If it shows up in your body in any way, that's a telltale sign, in my opinion. And having been there a few times, that's like the first thing. And then the second thing is, depending on what your specific issue is, if it's like company strategy, that's going to be hard to change. But if it's a person, maybe you can do something about it. So try that first. And if this person is very senior, very powerful, has all these allies, and that's gonna be hard, then pick your battles, but choose you first.
Tara Robertson [00:41:47]:
I would also say it also depends on the situation which emrita was just mentioning, and I've been through all of them in my career. The situation of where you crash and burn. And it's like, oh, I'm in over my skis. And I just don't know if I can do this job. And that one still haunts me to this day many, many, many years later. There's the opportunity. Something new comes on that's just to the thing you can't pass up. And that's also okay because that's where you're growing in your career.
Tara Robertson [00:42:12]:
And it's that next stage that you want to take. And sometimes for me, at least when I knew it was time to move on is when I realized that my values didn't match the company's values. And that's something where you do want to make sure that's all things considered. Like, we're growing, we're doing things. It's working. It's not working. Like, those are the things you can work through. But for me, what I've learned is if there isn't a shared value, then that's just not worth it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:37]:
There's also a lot of, like, it's like tech. It's like a sunk cost. I feel like you're worried about the pain of having to quit is like, keeps you from staying there when actually you're. Then go meet someone. It's like being in a new relationship. You go and meet somebody new and they're excited to have you and everything is good and you're like, oh, I just. It's the uncomfortableness of like, oh, my gosh, I gotta tell this psycho that I'm gonna quit. We've all been there.
Dave Gerhardt [00:43:03]:
Go ahead, Ross. So hypothetically, a bunch of people quit and they get their next job. And they're leaders. They're going into these orgs for the first time. How do you navigate that? Well, what would be the blueprint that you think they should apply? Coming into a new, fresh face from your experience. Like, what would. You're about to go through it. What's your first, let's say, twelve weeks look like.
Dave Gerhardt [00:43:28]:
Change the website.
Amrita Marthur [00:43:29]:
Don't change the website. Yeah, no, just like, learn, learn, learn, learn as much as you can. Soak it up and just sort of like. I guess it's just sometimes it's possible that you're joining a company where things are quite clear and black and white, but sometimes there's unknown unknowns and you want to discover those unknown unknowns as quickly as you can. Tara did this thing. She just walked me through it yesterday in preparation for Monday that she interviewed every single person on her marketing team at bit ly. No matter what level they are, everybody. And she actually took all of their verbatim comments and put it in a spreadsheet and found the patterns in it and put them in these buckets of problem areas, like good shiny areas and just like, ah, there's some murkiness here that we'll fix at some point.
Amrita Marthur [00:44:15]:
And I love that because that's like super insightful. Like you kind of go in knowing like, hey, here's the known issues and here's some stuff that's like bubbling here, but I'm not quite sure what that is and I'm gonna watch for that. And so that's helpful as a leader. But if you're, you don't have to be a leader. Like you can still be on a listening tour, you can still kind of ask the same questions to everybody, whether it's your immediate team or your peers or your cross functional people. Personally, I like to keep revops, data teams and of course like sales and product really close, but especially data and rev ops. And so that's like, those are my go to people because they have their ears on the ground and they can always prove or disprove something that I'm looking for for. So yeah, that's a really good one.
Dave Gerhardt [00:44:55]:
And now you can just put that all in the chat. You can get the trend.
Tara Robertson [00:44:57]:
I know, the whole time, the whole time.
Amrita Marthur [00:45:00]:
You should see her spreadsheet. That should be an asset on Exit Five's community going to build just one.
Tara Robertson [00:45:05]:
Quick thing on that one. So one by the first 90 days for anybody starting a new, that is a great book and it's got a lot of really great frameworks in it to follow through on how to think through your 1st 30 days as your learning plan. Then you get into your strategy when you get into kind of the execution piece. And the one thing I would add to what I was showing Amrita is not just the marketing team, but also making sure that you're interviewing your executive team, you're interviewing your partnerships across the and parsing both of them. I treat my 1st 30 learning plan days in the same way I would customer research, going through understanding qualitatively what's happening and then comparing your team from the rest of the and finding the patterns of together to talk about what's happening internally while also doing your external research, competitive research, market intelligence, just what's going on and make sure you're curious, not judgmental. Everybody that you're working with has been doing it for quite some time and you want to make sure that you're also taking that into consideration as you're coming in and trying to present change, because where you could really fail is coming in and say, here's all the things we're going to do, and people aren't going to feel heard. So that's really important that you do. Beginning of any job.
Dave Gerhardt [00:46:13]:
The nuance that I really get curious, not judgmental. I'm oftentimes instantly judgmental.
Tara Robertson [00:46:19]:
I'm always judgmental first, and then in my head, I'm like, no, Tara, be curious. Always curious.
Q&A [00:46:27]:
Yeah. I guess there's always conflict when it comes to leadership, but everyone's different. And do you have any tips or something that you do when you have to go against your natural personality and, like, what's comfortable for you? Or is it more about being comfortable in what's uncomfortable?
Amrita Marthur [00:46:46]:
Hmm. I feel like I don't think people would agree with this, but I'm just very much about authenticity and my own identity, and I wouldn't give that up for anything. So that's me, and it's landed me in hot water. So don't follow this advice. But I'm just saying that's me personally, and that just works for me. And I think it sets the tone for what you see is what you get. And everybody that cares about that will know that it's truth seeking and honest, but it's not for everybody, and it doesn't work in every environment. So you kind of have to choose your environment very, very carefully.
Peter Mahoney [00:47:18]:
Can you say more about what specifically you're trying to deal with? Because that might help.
Q&A [00:47:23]:
No, I guess just, like, I guess, like, for myself, I'm more of a people pleaser. So in a professional setting, like, I really try to kind of go against that in situations where you need to, like, challenge, because that's just kind of what you have to do, and that's how you get to, like, the best end result. But I wasn't sure if there's, like, I don't know, like, a trick you do or something that, like, kind of helps you break out of that, like, innate nature.
Peter Mahoney [00:47:48]:
I think the first thing you said, I mean, you. You identified a thing about you as a people pleaser, which, like I just said, it's a superpower in kryptonite, right? So there are amazing things about being a people pleaser because you can build bridges, you can create relationships, et cetera. You have to know that. And that's not especially changing your values or your personality, but you need to know about you, where your natural instincts will bring you. But just like with Tara, who apparently is very judgmental, you need to. You need to keep that in your frontal lobe somewhere. And then to the extent that you can just know that about yourself and know that sometimes you need to be a little bit more critical as an answer, but you've already got the first step, which is a lot of people who are people pleasers don't especially know that about themselves. So you know that, you know, lean into the area where it's a strength for you.
Peter Mahoney [00:48:47]:
But then just be conscious of the fact that sometimes that attribute of you is not going to be helpful in a specific situation. And you have to make a hard or uncomfortable decision. And that's always the case. I mean, we all have to do things that are outside what is happy and comfortable for us. We have to do things like give people harsh feedback. Sometimes if they're not doing what you need to do, there's a great way to do that. You can do that and frame it appropriately and have a good discussion. Sometimes you have to business conditions and you lay people off.
Peter Mahoney [00:49:21]:
Horrible thing to do, but we have to do it right. There are lots of things that you need to do. But just understand about you. What's the thing about you? When is that okay? And then make sure there's a little bell, like Tara's judgmental bell that goes off apparently very frequently and know to how to react.
Amrita Marthur [00:49:40]:
Basically.
Tara Robertson [00:49:40]:
Everything all right?
Dave Gerhardt [00:49:40]:
Sorry. This is the voice of goddess we got to do. I want to get these last two questions, and we have to wrap in the next two minutes. So. Boom, boom. Hey, guys. I've heard on the podcast that the CEO is the CMO. Do you agree with that? Do you not agree with that? And why? It's not a direct quote.
Dave Gerhardt [00:49:56]:
He missed a lot of nuance in there. But feel free to answer that how you will.
Tara Robertson [00:50:01]:
The CEO is not the CMO, but the CEO is the CEO. And I mean, I don't know how else to say that. I've never worked for a CEO that doesn't think he's or she is an incredible marketer and have a lot of really great marketing ideas. And sometimes they're great ideas, and sometimes I'm like, come on. I think at the end of the day, what it really comes down to is your CEO is your number one ally, along with your CFO, along with your CPO and everybody on your executive team. That is your team, your department, or the team team that you work with is the team you lead. And so at the end of the day, you have to have a good relationship with your CEO. And I know Dave talks about this a lot on all of his content, but it's hard to work for a CEO that doesn't believe in marketing.
Tara Robertson [00:50:50]:
If your CEO believes that they're also the CMO, that's actually a really good thing for you because it means that they believe in marketing and it's about making sure that they understand your strategy, your priorities. But I will tell you, I have so many rituals with my CEO right now from learning with other CEO's that I've worked with in the past. If I don't hear from him in a week, I set him an update. Here's all the things we're working on. Here's how we're trending with the numbers. This is what the forecast is. If you have questions, let me know and it helps keep us on the same page. I own the one on ones the agenda to make sure that I can kind of keep him updated on the things that I know are important to him and also the things that I need as a point of view on.
Dave Gerhardt [00:51:28]:
Question for anyone who wants to take it, at what point do you start seeing like that short term drop in leads, things that are making you maybe start to reconsider your strategy and actually reconsider your strategy. Like what would you look for? Is there any framework you say, okay, like short term volatility is no longer short term volatility. Like we put on flat shoes to hike the hill, but we really needed crampons.
Peter Mahoney [00:51:51]:
Yeah, you have to look for trends over time.
Dave Gerhardt [00:51:53]:
The panic button.
Peter Mahoney [00:51:54]:
Yeah. So you have to look for trends over time. And that's a very hard thing to figure out sometimes because it's, hey, it's down for a week. Well, that's okay. It's down for two weeks. It's down for a month. And it really depends on the normal volatility of your business and how those metrics are trending. But it doesn't take a lot of time to spot a trend.
Peter Mahoney [00:52:15]:
And if you see that for a number of weeks as an example, things are going another direction, then you need to evaluate whether things are working that could be very tactical. There are lots of things that can make a metric trend in the wrong direction, but the art of leadership is figuring out as those things are, as the signals of the business are indicating that something is off track. At some point, obviously you have to make the call that you need to start to try something different, but you have to resist it because think of executing your strategy like sailing and I always use metaphors I know nothing about, so don't ask me sailing questions.
Dave Gerhardt [00:52:56]:
So, yeah, you said, when you're talking about hiking, you said either those clippy things.
Peter Mahoney [00:53:00]:
So if you crampons flipping them on, if you are headed to Bermuda, then that's your destination along the way because of weather or what conditions you tacked, right? I think that's what they call it, tacking Amrita. And that's the same thing, right? So you'll adjust your things. At some point you decide, I'm not going to make it a Bermuda, I need to go somewhere else. But you got to watch the trends and be careful about jumping too quickly because otherwise you're never going to get anywhere.
Tara Robertson [00:53:30]:
The resist is the key. That is the part. Every day to your first question, something is a little wonky and you don't know if it's because the data broke, if it's because the channel's off. And so it's really important to know your numbers and to know what the trends are looking like and what you're projecting them to be. But to resist the temptation to jump in, that's where it's, you know, be curious, don't judge, and jump to conclusions and say, like, ooh, this is off. Let's jump on that right away. But over time, if you do see that that trend stays consistent, then that's when it's really about. How do you pull together the right conversations to figure out what is your strategy going forward? And that's where the strategy becomes fluid.
Tara Robertson [00:54:06]:
You have to be able to be fluid with the numbers.
Amrita Marthur [00:54:09]:
I'll just add one quick thing, which is if you're trying something for the first time, you might want to just look at the leading indicators rather than the end point because that milestone might be too far down the rabbit hole. And, like, lots of things are breaking along the way. But if you know what the leading indicator is, like you said, leads. So I'm just going to jump on that. Right. You found a channel to generate leads. Hopefully they're the right leads, but they're too few. What's the leading indicator that you would look at? You know, it could be, oh, is our landing page converting? Oh, is this ad? Or is this, like, content, like, actually pulling in the right people? Look for those first, correct those first before you say, oh, this whole thing is not working because that's just like, way too down the rabbit hole.
Dave Gerhardt [00:54:48]:
All right, we gotta go. Give it up for that panel. That was fantastic. Thank you, Tara, Amrita, Peter. Okay, we're almost there. This is the home stretch. Look, while we change, while we move off stage, is that what we're doing? Yeah. While we move off stage.
Dave Gerhardt [00:55:04]:
This is our feedback survey. Cause this is it. This is the end. You're gonna get this in an email later, but show us your technology wizardry and fill this out now. Dan has promised me it's only 47 questions, so, no, it's very short. All right, I'm moving on. All right, so real quick, obviously, man, this has been, like, just incredible day and a half, and I just wanna, like. I really, really mean it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:55:26]:
Thank you for coming. This has just been so humbling. I can't even tell you when I made these slides ten days ago, like, the event wasn't real yet. And my bullets say, thank you for coming out. Bullet number two, Dave, fill about how the last two days went, what was good, et cetera, and it was awesome. There's a lot of things that we learned from this, but I think the main one was just the power of, like, in person connection. Not to be corny or, like, make us think that, like, AI is going to replace all of us one day. But there just was something about being here, like, being in the lunchroom, being out there.
Dave Gerhardt [00:56:06]:
The conversations were easy. People just would come up to each other and say hello and sit down for lunch. And I want to make sure if we do more events that that is, like, the thing, and then kind of, like, organically, like, even just emceeing. I didn't plan to be talking on the mic that much, but I really love the interactiveness of the Q&A and the audience interaction and kind of all of us feeling like we're solving problems and questions together and, like, you know, there's a mess up on the slide. It's not like all the lights are dark. You know, you can't see anyone out there. There was a really cool feel to that. That is really important.
Dave Gerhardt [00:56:41]:
So just a couple notes. If you haven't gone to the websites of each one of these companies and accepted the cookies yet, you won't be invited back next year. But those are all products that you can use in this industry, and that's pretty unique. And obviously, these are all companies that took a chance with us and wanted to get behind this event, which says a lot. It is much easier to go second, and I think that's when the prices also go up. So, sorry for them. But the companies that go first, whether you're an early adopter personally or as a company, that means a lot. And so shout out to calendly and user evidence and novotic for being a part of this.
Dave Gerhardt [00:57:18]:
And if I'm just gonna take a minute, that's some pretty legit stuff for the year one of this event. That's pretty cool. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for being a part of this. So what's next with Exit Five? Well, a couple of things. Number one, we're doubling down. I think we've built the number one community out there for B2B marketers over the last year, and we're investing in all of it. Eleven months ago was a solo business.
Dave Gerhardt [00:57:40]:
There's now five awesome people on the team, and I just would like to take a minute and say thank you and give it up for the Exit Five team for putting this on. Yeah. Give him a standing ovation. Let's go. That feels great. Thank you. Heck yeah. And bring him up, bring him up, bring him up.
Dave Gerhardt [00:58:01]:
Where's Dan? Where's Anna? Where's Matt? Where's Danielle? Let's go. Come on up. Come on up. Come on. Where's Anna? Where's Anna?
Tara Robertson [00:58:12]:
Woo.
Dave Gerhardt [00:58:19]:
You don't need to pay an event agency 100 grand when you have four people who like what they're doing and are willing to work their asses off for six weeks to do it. So shout out to you all. Thank you. It's been awesome. They're all coming to my house later. Yep. That's exciting. And so on, that trend, I mean, I feel like we're just getting going, working together.
Dave Gerhardt [00:58:39]:
I think we have the opportunity to build the best resource for B2B marketing out there, and we're going to take advantage of that. We're investing in our community. The podcast newsletter, all. It's all going to get better. And I promise you, I'm having so much fun, and it's my mission to make this the best thing ever. And then our mission, I think you felt that today, is to help you grow your skills and advance your career in B2B marketing. But maybe you're an agency owner, maybe you're a CEO. There's a lot of people who want to learn about this that are in here.
Dave Gerhardt [00:59:04]:
Anybody in there? There's a bunch of people from Austin in here. Any of those folks still here? All right, shout out to you all. We're doing an off site to plan for 2025. We have to be like a real team now and do all that nonsense like trust Falls and Okrdeh. And so we're having, we're going down to Austin in November, and this was pretty cool. Maybe we might do like a dinner or meet up or something. If you want to be part of that, send us a little note and then tell a friend. In marketing, obviously, like any business, it's so funny.
Dave Gerhardt [00:59:31]:
We all smash our heads against the wall trying to find ways to grow. And surprise. Here's another business. And guess what? Our number one marketing channel is word of mouth. No secrets here. So tell a friend, keep spreading the word. That's the best. And then, you know, you can find us, even if you just send them to any part of our funnel, LinkedIn, podcast, newsletter, whatever.
Dave Gerhardt [00:59:49]:
And I'm really excited because while you're here today, we're launching something new. It's called this, the marketing leadership accelerator. You're supposed to clap now. So one of the hardest, one of the hardest parts about doing this event was we knew there would be so many people that couldn't be here, and so obviously they're going to get access to the recordings. But the number one question, God, I say this line for basically anything ever, and I'm sorry about that. One of the top things that comes up is around Exit Five, is like, hey, love the tactical stuff is great, like how to run LinkedIn ads, how to do ABM, how to do this. But I really want strategy help. I want help growing as a marketing leader.
Dave Gerhardt [01:00:26]:
And there are other companies out there that do this, but I think we're going to do it our way. And I think we have an interesting opportunity to help marketing leaders grow. And so we're making a play in this area, and we want to do more specific content for marketing leaders. This is not going to be something about, like, here's why you need to be on TikTok, and here's how to do TikTok growth. It's going to be like that panel on steroids over the course of eight weeks. It's an eight week program. It starts October 3. It's all online, so you can do it all at home.
Dave Gerhardt [01:00:52]:
But we're building out, we're carving out a separate community for this group over the course of eight weeks. Matt has a bunch of awesome programming planned there. So we're going to have an hour and a half live session with an expert on a topic. I'll show you the content in a second. Plus, you'll be in this online community space where we'll have all the recordings, resources, templates leave behind. The speakers will be in there. I think because of how we've already built our community, the things we've already learned, we have a really unique opportunity to do something cool here. We teased this out a couple of weeks ago and we had 700 people on the waiting list, which is a really good signal that there's something here that people want.
Dave Gerhardt [01:01:25]:
And just to give you a dose of the content, it's going to be things like how to plan your, how to build your 2025 marketing plan, how to manage your marketing budget. Who needs help with that? I do building alignment between sales and marketing, how to do positioning, how to use social to build brand and Drive pipeline. Yeah, she's amazing. We're excited about that one. How to build a team and hire, how to decide whether to hire in house or agency. How to work with other execs and CEO's. You can get a sense where this is different than a session about growth marketing. And it's going to be hosted by myself and Dan and Matt.
Dave Gerhardt [01:01:59]:
We're going to be in there hosting each session. And so we got this first taste. We saw what it was like to do an online event. I'm really excited about doing this program, and it's perfect timing for the fall. Like October through November is when everybody's in kind of planning and level up and strategy mode. So that's what we got and I'm really excited. We're going to do a cool little certification. After everyone that completes the course, I'm going to come to your house and we can film a selfie that you can use online.
Dave Gerhardt [01:02:23]:
No, we're going to give you a certification that you can add to LinkedIn and you can share with your company. And I'm really excited for this. So this is live now. We just launched. You can go to Exit Five.com accelerator. Since you're already here and you got a ton of value out of this week, we took off a big discount. It's $3.99. If you're here right now, you can go do it, or just take a picture of this and you can do it tonight when you're back in your hotel or wherever you're at, at home.
Dave Gerhardt [01:02:46]:
And we have a code for you, which is Drive 399. And that way you can get a nice big fat discount on this and be one of the early members in accelerator. And then, you know, Matt will go home and sleep for a day or two, and then we're right back on it with, with accelerator. We. I guess we don't really have to wear pants for those sessions, but we definitely have to bring the heat. So other than that, this was gonna be my last slide, but we just made a decision about 2 hours ago that we're gonna do this event next year. We're gonna run it back. Will you come if we do it again? I can be somewhat of a hype man if you know, that's not.
Dave Gerhardt [01:03:26]:
We literally just a couple. A couple hours ago decided that. And the CEO of hula, like, pulled me aside and she was like, this is amazing. And that kind of made me feel really good. And so we decided. We were like, let's run it back. I also spent lunch. We've all kind of been, like, testing out feedback throughout the day.
Dave Gerhardt [01:03:41]:
We heard all your feedback. I can make you a bunch of different promises. Well, maybe a couple small promises to start. Number one, the size. No need to be any bigger than this. No need. I can't promise you that. I might not raise the price of a ticket next year, but I'm not going to go any bigger than this.
Dave Gerhardt [01:04:03]:
Okay. Because there just is something here and I want to just copy and paste that and I don't know what it is and I want to. And I think keeping things small and intimate is. Is a very important part of this. We want to do things like maybe a little bit longer sessions with more, you know, Q&A more time to help you specifically, I think. And we have. We have a year to riff on this, so. So we'll get there.
Dave Gerhardt [01:04:26]:
But then also, I think people love the breakout sessions. Right? But imagine if we did something like, and you can give us all this in the feedback to, like, help us shape the next one based on that one. But imagine if we did one of the breakouts was like, let's go get your group and go. Go on a hike for 2 hours or something, or get on a boat and go on a lake or go out to lunch. And, you know, I think there's lots of different options. I think we really. We're at the intersection of something really cool and we're going to do it same time, same place next year. We'll take everything we learned and we're going to keep getting better.
Dave Gerhardt [01:04:55]:
So I just want to say, heck yeah. I'm really excited. Thank you for an awesome, awesome last couple days. I will see you in the Exit Five community, and maybe I'll see you back here next year in Burlington one more time. Now, this one is for you. Thank you all so much for coming out. All right, get out of here. Here I am.