Are sales reps becoming marketers? Dave Gerhardt on Sales and Marketing Alignment.

All right, everybody. This is a great conversation with a good friend of mine, Dave Gerhardt. Dave used to run marketing over at Drift, which is where we got introduced and he's been at HubSpot. He's been all over the place with his personal brand, but also in a lot of cool different marketing. So we talk about sales and marketing alignment. We talk about founder. He's got this book coming out called The Founder Brand and how we all should be using our own personal brand to do PR instead of going in and outsourcing that. And I talked to him about my whole theory of sales reps becoming mini marketers and also companies having to get very comfortable with individual people within their businesses representing their brand.

So there's a lot of complexity to this one. Sales and marketing alignment all over the place. Enjoy the ride. What's up, everybody? Big shout out to our partners today, SalesLoft, ZoomInfo, and Reprise. SalesLoft is a game changer for cadences and APIs that streamline workflows and deliver incredible outreach results immediately. ZoomInfo has the best data in the business hands down, and their data orchestration game is unmatched in the space today. Put big ups to our friends at Reprise, the number one full funnel product-led growth platform that's changing everything. Close more deals, increase conversions, and create interactive demos with Reprise. Let's pass it over to JB and introduce this week's guest.

See you later, everybody. All right. I would like to welcome to the podcast a good friend of mine who I haven't talked to in a little while, so I'm excited to catch up with him. Dave Gerhardt. How are you doing, brother? What's up, John? It's nice to catch up with you. I'm in a good mood. We had a nice catch-up before, and I'm excited to be back and do a little chit-chat. So thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on, man. And people are going to get sick of me saying this because I'm starting off on my podcast with... I'm redoing my whole brand, my personal brand. And now that I can take a step out of the business and let it run, so I got to figure out what that is. But I've decided that moving into 2022, the only people that I'm going to talk to, associate myself with, or engage with are people that bring positive energy to the world and no more negative assholes, no more jackasses just because they're smart, right?

That type of stuff. Like, I'm just... I'm forcing positivity with where we are. So the fact that you're in a good mood and we're having this conversation and you got some palm trees behind you, my friend, that is a perfect scenario here. Well, I was going to say, for people that don't actually know me, which is most people, I would think that most people would be shocked that I'm in that realm of things that bring you positivity. So I'm glad I could do that. Hey, man. Look, I don't know. Do you know Larry Long Jr.? No. No? Dude, you got to know Larry. So I brought him on the podcast right before that. Dude, anytime you're in a bad mood, just go look up Larry Long Jr. And that dude will just put you in a happy mood.

So, but with this one, man, for those people that don't know, we go back a ways, right? I think it was Drift was when we first met each other, but give everybody the journey here of where you're from because you've had some killer ass marketing roles with HubSpot and Drift and all that other stuff. So walk us through that little background. And I think that'll put some context on what the conversation is all about. Sure. So I've basically just kind of after college, I fell into... A PR agency. And then I got my way into tech through a company called Constant Contact. And that's how I got into SaaS. And it was at a time where SaaS company, I mean, they still are growing, but where SaaS and startups were exploding.

And so I worked at HubSpot for a little bit. And I actually, I met the founders of Drift early on, and I left HubSpot to go work at Drift. I was the first marketing person at Drift. And then the company grew from like 10 people to 300 people. And then this year, recently, over a billion dollar valuation. And then I was CMO at a company called Privy for a year and a half. Privy got acquired by Attentive, which is a company in the SMS, text messaging and e-commerce space. And now after spending the last 10 years in kind of B2B SaaS, B2B marketing, I'm running my own business, which is a combination of consulting. And I also have a community and I do a lot on the content side. I have like 4,500 paying members in the DGMG community and that kind of universe.

And so now I'm here and just seeing what's going to happen in the future, running my own business and seeing where we'll go. Love it, man. I think that's, I mean, the journey is always really interesting to me as far as how people end up and where we're going, right? And I'm not even close to finished. I'm trying to figure out my next step here. And can I ask you something just before we get into this, those topics about sales and marketing and stuff like that? Sure. What are you, what's your approach these days to like goal setting and stuff like that and your vision for yourself? Because I've really, I've started to really try to figure out, you know, you know, this year I'm like, I've got to set my goals again, but I figured out I'm really more of an evolutionist than a, like, than a stake in the ground guy.

You know what I mean? Like I'm an opportunist where I just kind of evolve and I'm like, I shift and I drive. So how do you like, with where, especially where you are right now, like how are you looking at your... I'm not the, I am not the guy that has the Google sheet with all my goals and week by week, you know, broken down. And I, you know, my wife and I want to save 20%, put 20% savings. And so we're budgeting. I'm not that person. I've kind of become very comfortable more of like on an intuitive, just kind of, I don't know, go with the flow, but like I, I am very, I'm very ambitious in my day to day stuff where like, I have so many ideas and I go so fast and I want to execute. But lately I've just been having kind of, and I took, I just did this in Mark from a marketing strategy perspective.

I kind of just have two or three pillars, two or three bullet points that I'm, those are my goals. They're things that I am working towards. And so they're not things like I've, cause I fell in the habit of like, you know, I want to work out 300 days this year and then you have some tracker that that's just not who, that's not who I am. So for me, like I have two very clear personal goals this year. And one of them is business related. I have, it's a revenue goal that I set for DGMG. And the other one is a personal related, uh, related to golf. And I could have set 10 different things, but I've just determined that like, I, I, I'm spending a lot of time with my family and them, I'm very family first.

And so I don't feel like I need to set goals around that because that's just kind of like, that's like saying like, Dave, wake up and take a shower. I'm going to be doing that. And so I just like, I said like, Hey, what are one or two things that I am intentionally want to be thinking about? And that's DGMG and golf. And then the other, the other things are kind of happening today. And so I use those as kind of my guiding principles. And so when things get off track, when I'm stressed out, when I don't know what I'm going to work on, I just take a step back and say like, okay, well, my goal was to grow is to grow DGMG to this revenue goal. Where am I at? Take a day, go see where I'm at. Okay.

Let's, let's pause, figure out what things I want to stop, start and continue. And then we'll keep going. Love it. And, and if you phone like, so I'm, cause I'm extremely similar to you. I, I tried, I've tried to get the detail nuance stuff. And I just, I'm like, I realized I go through the exercise. I'm like, ah, whatever. I'm just going to keep rolling here. And it changes all the time. So I, I look more day to day now. Um, but I do have a bigger picture, you know, some bigger things, but do you subscribe to the whole why? Like what's your why type of thing before you can do anything? Yeah, for sure. For, for sure. Uh, but I think that, I think that like, for me, I spent a lot of time trying to like overanalyze the why.

And then I had kids and I'm like, there's your why. Oh, okay. I, that's my why. And that's not to say like, there's people that you don't have to have children and some people can. And that's my point is not that my point is, um, that's what it is for, for me. And so my why is I want to give my kids the most amazing life. And, and, and I want to spend as much time with them and my wife and my kid that I can selfishly. And so my why is, yeah, I want to have a business that I generate a boatload of money so I can do that with my family so I can have that freedom. And so that's the way that I talk to myself, which is like, I got to remind myself like, Hmm, should I do this thing or not? Well, to me, money is really just, I want money because I want time.

I want to just be able to say, you know what, I'm going to go, I want to go hang out with, I want to go hang out for a week with just my kids and my wife, or just going to go do something, or I want to go, you know, um, be able to take care of my parents or visit my, you know, visit whoever. So my why is just like, okay, what am I willing to trade time for? Well, I need, I need to, I need to generate income because I, I want to, you know, take care of my family and do all that stuff. And so it just comes back to like, Oh, I want my kids. I was never able to never able to be a great artist or a great musician or a great athlete. I dabbled in all those things. I had to go into business to pay my loans, to pay my way through school, to pay for my stuff.

What if I could, what if my kids could grow up and be like, yeah, you know, my daughter's an amazing artist. Like, I don't have to be like, you need to get a job sister, you know? Cause like, I want to let her pursue that verse. Like if that was me growing up, like, well, well, dude, you're broke. You have nothing. So, so you, you gotta, you gotta go get a job. You know, you're, you're not good. You can't take five years and go backpack Europe. And I'm not saying Annie, if you're listening to this one day, you're not doing that either. But if you want to do, you know, if you want to take one of these more creative pursuits, like I want to, my wife and I talk a lot about like, I want to be in a position to, to, to do that, uh, and not have to trade your passion for, for, for money.

Um, and I don't know, somehow we ended up in this like very philosophical thing, but that's, that's how I think about it. And I, and I honestly, um, I also think a big part of it is, is like knowing the things that I enjoy doing and the things that are like positive, uh, that actually bring in income. Right. And so like, I think a lot of people get caught up in this goal setting and then you're okay, go cool. Well, there's no need for the thing that you're offering. So I understand that that's your passion. You want to build a business around this, but like, you know, you, you still have to have a, a, a market for that, for that product. And so it's like, it's never going to be perfect. It's that, do I wish that, uh, DGMG was a consumer golf company instead of B2B marketing?

Of course, that's my passion. Right. But like I've, okay. My why is I'm using this, like, you know, I'm using my knowledge that I've gained my knowledge and experience over the last decade in B2B sales and marketing to help out other companies. They find that very valuable. And so, um, that's kind of like the business that, that I've set up. And, um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I say that to my daughter all the time as I say that when somebody asks you, what do you want to be when you grow up? The answer to that question is happy period. Right. Like that's it. It's, it's happiness and whatever happiness means for you, right. If that's being an artist and supporting yourself and being able to do, or if it's going into business or if it's traveling the world, whatever, as long as you, I can say at the end, at the end, you're, you're happy.

Then I think I've done my job as a parent. Um, so yeah. So as long as happy doesn't mean, um, taking all of dad's money and going to Amsterdam and, you know, you know, like blowing, blowing the whole bankroll. So I want you to be happy too, but not at, you know, let's, let's be reasonable. I completely agree with that. Um, although I have gone to Amsterdam and blowing a lot of money. So I can tell her at least some stories, right? It's your business. It's your business. It's okay. So let's, I'm curious, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to reach out to you, first of all, we hadn't caught up in a long time, but one, the other thing is, is COVID changed a lot of stuff. Right. And I think it accelerated a lot of things in some good ways.

And it, and it threw a lot of other things away, um, that, that we were doing that didn't make sense. And to me, this, this, the marketing and the brands right now, I've been chirping for a while now that sales reps need to become mini marketers at this point. Right. Um, we gotta, it's about laying the groundwork and it's all about positive impressions, right? So yes, we have account marketing and doing account-based marketing and all this stuff, but if you really want to own it as, as an individual contributor, but also even as a, as a leader that you really got to buy into this like marketing mindset in a lot of ways, could you get like, how have you seen specifically over the past two years, things shift from a sales and marketing standpoint?

And where do you think the, the focal point should be these days for companies and individuals? Let's, let's talk, you know, individual reps and then let's blow it out a little bit to the companies, but how do you see things shift? Yeah. Well, John, in these unprecedented, as you know, in these unprecedented times, um, I hope you and your family are well. Okay. You use it. Yes. I hope, I hope all is well. Uh, Dave, and I saw you went to Wagner college. Yes, I did 15 years ago. Um, so I think there's a couple of things that are important there. So, so we should talk about, we should talk about both of them, but what, cause there's like, what's changed, what, what the landscape is. And, but then there's also like, you mentioned this, I want to talk about this part first, uh, sales reps should be mini marketers.

And I think if you're listening to, if you're in this world of B2B sales, um, I think you have the best opportunity right now to build a mini brand for yourself and we can go on a rant about what that means or not, but like you should be, if I was a sales rep at any company, I would be using LinkedIn to build up my own mini audience, uh, separate from the company, separate from anything else, because ultimately like B2B selling is about, uh, education and expertise. And so if you're a rep at this company, you're in these meetings all day, you're doing demos all day, you're talking to customers all day, you're hearing objections all day, you're hearing pain points all day. How can you turn that into content that you're sharing about your niche?

And that means if you're selling financial technology, then you're going to be, you should be posting as many, you know, once a day or three, four or five times a week about your observations, about what's happening based on conversations that you're having in the financial technology market, not always promoting your company, but just like you contributing your knowledge. Because, you know, if you have a, if you have a beer with, with, with a sales rep like that, she could probably go on for six hours and tell you, um, things from the industry, take that and become your own publisher. You can literally reach your, like you can reach your dream customers online via social media and have your content and your thoughts and your principles in front of them before they ever choose to buy from you.

That's a huge advantage. And LinkedIn is just like absolutely exploded. It's like, we're, we're not asking you to go on Facebook and, or, or, you know, where like your family is and start talking about your job. I'm asking you to do it in like the stream where everybody's is swimming. You're not going to get laughed at if you post some sales thought on LinkedIn. Like that's, look at the terrible things people post there every day. You posting actual valuable content is not going to, it's not going to hurt anybody. And it's only going to help you become sharper too, because you're going to have to write something every day, publish something every day. You're kind of always working on like giving your own thoughts a little bit more clarity.

And so I think that LinkedIn is still the most underrated channel to be used by sellers. And I actually think that like, to me using LinkedIn, you're only using like half of LinkedIn. If you're just using it for like sales navigator and like, Hey, I see you're connected to John. Can you reach out to them? You can be your own thought leader in, in your niche. And, and you can, you don't have to have lots of experience to do this because you're not, you're not, you're not saying that I am an expert. You're saying I work for this company. The company has raised X millions of dollars. They are clearly the expert. I'm just me on my journey and I'm going to be the tour guide. And I'm going to be, I'm going to narrate all the things that are happening.

I would be posting that stuff on, on social media all the time. And I think you'd be, if you could do that, you'd be surprised at how much easier, um, cold intros, uh, sorry, how much easier cold messages, uh, get opens and responses when you have that and how much more stuff might, might start coming in inbound to you. I think the problem is a lot of companies just try to make it like employee advocacy and they're just like, yeah, Hey, tweet out links, you know, post, post a link on LinkedIn about, and talk about our webinar next week. And that that's not what works. Yeah. I think that, you know, what do you, so you come across it a lot. What's, uh, um, what do you think the biggest hangup is of why they don't, why reps or founders or whoever don't start putting our content?

Is it because they're scared? They don't think they know enough. Is it, is there an imposter syndrome? I, my personal opinion is there's no short term benefit to doing it. And we're, we're in such a short term world, specifically in sales. Like I got to hit my numbers. So yeah, me posting, that's going to be cool. It's going to help me build my brand, but I got to hit my number this week. So screw that. Well, like, what are you seeing in the biggest hangup? Yeah. Well, I think that that's a, that's a bullshit objection also, because that same person is sitting on the toilet, scrolling LinkedIn, scrolling Instagram. And so like, it's not additional time at all. Um, I think, I think what's stopping it is, yeah, it's a, it's probably a laundry list of those things.

It's, it's the perception of, yeah, I think they're all, they're all valid. They're all valid. They're all valid. Like, um, I'm worried that I'm going to get laughed at. Well, first of all, okay. There, you know, uh, comfort is the enemy of growth. Right. So like, I, I get, I get frustrated when somebody gives me all the 10 objections about why they won't post on social media. I'm like, okay, you know what, then maybe it's not for you that don't, don't complain about not being able to generate more interest for your business or whatever the, whatever the benefit is. Um, but I think like, look, first of all, go to LinkedIn and there is so much crap on there. And if you go to LinkedIn, if you actually go to LinkedIn and read the things people are posting and you still feel like your idea is going to get laughed at, then we're not talking about the same thing.

And so first of all, you're probably going to be, you're probably going to be fine. Second of all, nobody's going to laugh at you because probably nobody's going to see it because you don't have an audience there anyway. And so that's a problem that you don't have to worry about right now. Um, God forbid people did see it and did respond to it. That, that, that would be a good thing. Um, not knowing what to say. I think, you know, what to say, you just have to change your perception of what you think. You don't need to come up with some, some big, you know, is there a funny story from a call that happened last week? Is there one pet peeve you have? Is there a book about sales that you love? And there's a, is there a quote that you could talk about there?

I just think you don't, you might not know where to draw inspiration from, but that's why I like the idea of just like, just committing to do it. Don't set a short-term goal. Like the, I think the best short-term goal you could set is like, okay, for the next, I'm not going to think about metrics or anything, but from now until June, I'm going to try to write three posts a week. And that's your measurable goal. Your goal is just to show up three times a week, try to add something and like, keep a, keep a, keep a, the, use a notes app in your phone. And when you're on a walk or you just got off a call, write that down in the moment, you don't have to always like pull up LinkedIn. And it's like this blank slate and it's like, write something, write something.

It's like, no, I got a, I got 15 ideas or things that I've, that, that I've come up. Which one should I share now? Yeah, I do that a lot. I actually use video all the time. Like when an idea pops in my head, I literally just light up a video and I record it. I don't post it because I'm just like in the moment thinking about it. And then when I sit back and I'm like, all right, what am I going to post? Some of it is just the videos, but then some of it is the idea that leads to a converse, you know, leads to a post that, that I can then put some deep thought into. Right. But it's always a way to capitalize on wherever you're coming up with those ideas and wherever you're getting that inspiration from.

Also, just like, I think, I think that like so much of the most important insights and companies comes from the sales team and having worked closely with them. That's where like the best gems for what should be on the website. I'll, I'm not giving sales so much credit. So salespeople don't think that you can just change the website at any time. I'm not saying that. No, no, no, no. No, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just kidding. But, uh, you know, you, you get some of the best nuggets from, from sales reps. And if you catch us, if you catch somebody in a conversation, they might tell you, man, I'm so frustrated selling to this, this buyer. They don't want, they always come in and they think this, and they don't ask for this.

And I'm like, that's what the gold content is. Right. Like go, go share that. You don't have to post. Like I ate a turkey sandwich for lunch, like post the actual learnings. Like you, and, and this is not going to be for every rep at every company. Right. This is, I think that this is probably the top for top, for top performers, top three or four reps at a company are going to want to do this. And that's who I think we're talking to John. Like that's who probably is listening to your, to your podcast. But I also think like what's, what happens when that happens inside of a company is when a couple of reps, one or two start doing it and they start feeling the success of that. It's just like anything.

The easiest way to get adoption among a sales team inside of a company is have one or two champions. And so if all of a sudden Mike, Mike has been posting amazing LinkedIn content and all of a sudden he's getting deals that he never got before. And he's getting into meetings he never got before. And all of a sudden buyers are commenting on his posts all around the team. People are going to want to like, want to emulate that same way. They're like, Oh, Oh, Oh, who, who he, Oh, they're using this tech tool versus that tech tool. It's the same thing. So I think we're talking to that, that person, if that's you, all those thoughts that you have walking home from work, driving home from work, walking around the house, write them down.

And that's the stuff that you should be talking about, um, on LinkedIn. It doesn't have to be some silly meme or some like gimmick to get attention that that's not the goal. The goal is to lead with education and expertise. Yeah. You can do that on Tik TOK and stuff like that. But LinkedIn is, you know, and yeah, you drop a funny one every once in a while, but you know, I think the, the, the best, you know, one of the best hacks or approaches that I've seen a long time is, is, and I did this inadvertently, um, was I started a podcast, but my podcast wasn't because I was sitting there saying, Hey, I'm the industry thought leader here. And I want to tell everybody how smart I am. It was because this is how I learned.

Like I recognize in myself that I don't, I don't read, I don't, I don't like reading at all. I'll read like five pages into a book and I'll fall dead asleep. Right. I think I've read grand total, probably five or six books in my life. I also like seminars and stuff like that. Like I tend to fall asleep in seminars and listen to idiots talk. But when I have a conversation with somebody who's smarter than me and I'm genuinely curious, right? So what it's done is it's been an education for me, but obviously the content comes out of that, but the, the reps for instance, um, and sweet fish media does a good job with this. They're there, you know, for podcasts and stuff, they, they actually use it as a sales tool to leverage, to get into your tier one account.

So think about this, right? Instead of you co-calling into a CEO of one of your tier one accounts and say, Hey, I got this great product. I want to sell you. What about going ahead and interviewing that man or woman on your podcast about their expertise in your space? And then being, I mean, they're, first of all, they're 10 times more likely to respond to that. Second of all, you don't, and you can't be a thinly veiled sales pitch. You got to seek to understand, but inevitably it usually turns into, Hey, this was a cool conversation. Like, what do you guys do by the way? And then all of a sudden you're now have an impression where you can now talk to somebody else and it creates content. You got knowledge, you got access, all these different things for doing like one interview a week for crying out loud.

What's up everybody. I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring the heat. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JB sales content. All of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day. $365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members only, which you get access to all of us directly a hundred percent of the time, 24 hours a day. And then at the same time, you're going to get access to our bi-weekly ask me anything sessions where you can bring real deals to the table and get the help that you need where you need it.

This is very, very important. Sales reps that invest in themselves are often found at the tops of their leaderboards. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL one more time is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guests for this week. I've long been a proponent of, I think that every SaaS company should have their own podcast. focused on, uh, the niche of the company of the, of the market that they're trying to serve. And they should have a list of their top a hundred customers and should be going down that list and saying, we're going to try to do two interviews a week. And so we're going to get to, you know, a hundred this year and we're not going to sell to them at all.

It's not just going to be, it's not, it's not going to be a interview about the company or about the product, but how can you create a show that those people would be ideal guests on and it would be very valuable. And then that becomes like what you lead with. Uh, I think that's, and I think that's a great, that's a great strategy. And the, the, the, the funny part is it's very commonly recommended advice now. And people love to poo poo it and say, Oh, people, too many people are doing that. I actually think I haven't seen that many people do it because nobody is willing to stick to the commitment of it, the consistency of it. The CEO, the CEO wants to host the podcast, but then, you know, um, they don't ever make the time to record for it or they don't get excited about it.

And then all of a sudden they pass it down. And then every company, here's what happens. It regresses back to another shitty channel to promote the company product. And that is not how this, and then you're like, but Dave, my podcast is not growing. We tried this and it's not hard. Well, yeah, no kidding because nobody wants to hear that. And so, um, if you are, yeah, you gotta, it all starts with like reverse engineering. Like what's the, what, what's a show that your dream, your, you know, your ideal customers would actually spend an hour and a week, an hour out of a week and listen to that's the very first question. Okay. Come up with a bunch of different options. Which one of those could we create?

Who's going to host it? How are we going to do it? And, and I've seen this word now, all of a sudden the sales team is sending me, Hey, uh, can we offer, can we reach out to the CMO at this company and see if, uh, and offer her what we, you know, we really want to get a meeting with her. Can we, can we, um, promise her a appearance on your podcast? You know, like that, that, that type of stuff. And that's that, you know, of course I roll at that, but like, that's the level of like, that's the level of like, you want this, you know, you, people should be excited about this within the company and it should be a, it should be an asset. I also think it's a very powerful tool for the team internally.

Cause let's say you have a big, uh, a larger sales org. You have 30, 40, 50, hundreds of people. What if the CEO hosted a podcast and not only are people outside of the company listening, but now all the sales team and the marketing team are spending an hour a week listening to your CEO, do an interview with one of your ideal customers. I guarantee there'd be some valuable, like, you know, knowledge that you would soak from that. And so I, I, I love the approach, but nobody's going to do it because people don't want to commit to doing it. And six months in, they're going to look at the ROI of it. And the CFO is asking, you know, why are we spending 10 grand a month on a podcast? And there's too much, too much of that type of nonsense to deal with that.

I can, I can totally understand. And oh my gosh, we're so far behind in the pipeline number for this quarter. We got to make more calls. We've got to send more emails. We've got to do more short-term stuff. And that's the thing, you know, one of the reasons that it works so well, one of the reasons that it works so well for us at Drift in the early days was that it was the very first thing that we did. And so as the company grew, we had already established that. And so it was the thing that was helping grow the company. And so we didn't have to try to like justify it because it was like baked into the DNA of the company. In fact, we joked about it so much. We joked about, oh my gosh, how are we going to measure the ROI of this podcast?

Because so many people were sending us inbound messages telling us that they heard about the company from the podcast that it's just became like its own internal meme. That's kind of the same thing. Mine was almost like a by-product. I, I was doing like Facebook live and Instagram and all this other crap. And my team came to me and say, we got to do a podcast. I'm like, ah, just shut up. Could you just rip the audio from my Facebook live thing? And just, and it exploded. And then when I was, you know, when we were doing the circuit and I was, I was on, you know, all the keynotes and stuff, the number one thing that people would come up and talk to me about was a podcast. Like, oh man, I love your podcast.

Right. And to me, it was like, it was a happy accident, but thank God. And, and so it kind of leads into this personal brand and corporate brand challenge that I see out there. And I would love your perspective on this one. Cause the, I think we're moving into a world where companies have to be very comfortable with individuals within their organizations representing, like building their personal brands, but also representing theirs. Right. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the CEO, but like a rep. So like the chief evangelist officer, and I think that's going to start coming out more and more, but what do you say to the companies? And I specifically from a marketing perspective, I see so many companies scared to let their reps go on social and just kind of do, they want to control the message.

Right. So they want to like, I'm not going to name the name here, but there's a massive company that I work with who just put in a policy that anytime a sales rep wants to post on LinkedIn, they have to run it by somebody internally before it gets posted. And I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Like you are literally choking your marketing engine here by not allowing your reps to freely post. So how do you balance the, the fear of losing control of the messaging? Cause look, I come from a marketing background. That's my degree. I get it. Like we want to control the message to a certain degree, but, but, and, and, but also giving the autonomy to the reps to, to stretch and make mistakes. Like what, how did you find that balance within an organization?

See, my biggest problem with that is actually not the wanting to approve the post. It's that, that, that person who's approving that it's not like there's some like unbelievable social media marketer and have built this amazingly huge following and oh my, because it's growing so well, like we have a very specific type of copy that works. And so we can only post that. It's like, no, let's just make sure that this is some like horribly on message PR thing. And it's like, look, I think that I totally understand the risks a hundred percent. I just think that for some reason, when people have this discussion, they don't, they forget that like, Oh, there's a, there's risk in any, there's just in any business decision that, that you, you, Oh, you went into EMEA instead of APAC risk.

Uh, you're launching a blog on medium instead of your own risk. They're like countless. And so another one of them is, is there a chance that some asshole in our company could just go off and, and, and, and ruin us? Yeah, for sure. But you know what? You could also say that was not us. That was that one person. It was not someone going rogue on the corporate account. That was very clearly Ron Smith, who's an asshole and he's fired. Like, um, uh, but I also think like 80, 90% of the time that that that's not what happens. And the rewards are so great when you have the whole team, when you have, when, when you have it growing in your direction, because you know what, it's good for the company and it's, it's good for the person.

It's good for the employee. Yes. That, that person gets to build their brand, but like that person is working for the company. And most of the time they're going to be talking about something in the related space. And so like, you know, I'll use my, in my case, was it beneficial to drift at the same time that it was beneficial to me that like my personal brand grew while I was there a hundred percent. And I think that you, you, you know, you could only, you should be so lucky as the founder and CEO of a company to have three or four voices that people actually want to hear from. Uh, and so I, I just would, I would just would flip how I would think about that and say, yeah, there's, there's a risk that something could go wrong.

Um, but like, you know, that should all stem back to like, I think that's more of a, that would be more of like a cause from the hiring concern. Like, are you hiring assholes who are then going to go and do this first? Like, if you feel good about the, the company that you're building and the, in the internal team, and it also comes down to John, like you have to have a product that you care about and are passionate about. And so if you're miserable and if you're miserable in your job and you're not hitting your number and the product stinks and there's no vision, then like, of course, what you're going to be posting on, on LinkedIn, but like, you know, look like I, I look to drift in those, in those days, or you see like the, the sales team from, from in and around gong when they really believe it.

So it's gotta be, it's not just a cosmetic, like let's have the team post. It's like when you have a company that people believe in and they've seen the power of the product and customers are successful, like these are all cascading things that like, yes, then you should, you should empower people to, to go do that on social media. Yeah. I mean, you said on a like really good point that I've been trying to beat down right now, which is like the values conversation about how resetting and re-looking at those values as an organization and the vision to get everybody bought in and believing in what they sell. I mean, I sell it. I say it all the time that sales is, is the transfer of enthusiasm, right?

Is that if you believe that strongly in what you sell, then I'm not saying sales is easy, but man, is it easier? Right. And if you're just selling because you're like a commission check and whatever it is, then you're just a jackass sales rep trying to make a commission and you're not doing anything here other than filling your own pockets, which good for you, but you're not doing anything bigger than that. And like, what, what do people like, what do people expect? Like, what's the worst that's going to happen? And like, what do people, what do people expect? Like, I'm sorry. Don't answer. What's the worst is going to happen. Cause yes, people could post some, some terrible things, but I just think like, I think that the, I think that there's a misguided, like, I think people's concern is that like, someone's going to post a, you know, a video, like ripping a bong on LinkedIn, you know, doing a company video.

And it's like, I think that what they're actually concerned about is like, are we using the right, are we using the right messaging? Like, is the company, are we using the right company tagline? And I like the answer to the answer to that is like, well, you, I don't want people at the company just using the tagline. That's not what they should be doing. It's not just like a, Hey, go to our webinar tomorrow. It's not some canned social media posts. It's using the people with inside, with inside of your company. And you should want to do this because as the founder CEO, you're hiring experts. You're hiring an expert to run marketing. You're hiring an expert to run sales. You're hiring an expert to run customer success.

You're hiring an expert to run engineering. Why not let those people have voices to the market, to the public. And now I'm like, wow, I actually was reading the VP of sales's blog and her blog is amazing. And that kind of actually helped me build a better relationship with the company because whoever runs sales over there feels legit. So I just think there's definitely negatives. There's definitely downsides to it. But I think if you go into it with the right strategy and the right why, like back to our why conversation, what's the why for you wanting to have your, your, your, your, your, your team on social media, if you had, if you, if you're in it for the right reasons there, I think that will be like, um, give you some guiding guiding principles.

And, and here's a question for you, cause I'm going to relate it back to that is, do you believe in the notion that any PR is good PR? So either, even if it's bad, if it's creating a conversation, right, do you believe in that? And then I'm going to translate that to some experience that you and I have had, but as it relates to core values too, but do you believe that even if it was, even if you did let a rep go rogue or whatever it is, as long as your core values and your vision, if it did and you got exposure, is that, is that a positive or is that a negative in, in, you know, I guess it depends on what it is, but there's that whole adage, like all good, all PR is good PR no matter what. Right.

Do you believe that? Yeah. No, I don't believe that. I don't, I don't, I don't think not, not in, not in this, not in this space, uh, not, not in our world. No, I don't think all good, all PR is, it's good PR. There's definitely, there's definitely bad PR. And I think, uh, everybody is very quick to judge and react today. And, and I think that perception can often be reality. And so, um, I think, yeah, yeah, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be excited about some bad, I wouldn't be excited about some bad, bad PR. Now in, in the, in the long run, things can, things can balance themselves out. And, and, you know, like I think of like early days of COVID, you would have gotten canceled if you tried to do, make it happen masks, right?

Like, Oh, look at this guy profiting off of COVID. But like, right. Fast forward six months later, like masks, like fashion mass became like fashion. Right. And so I think, um, you know, time, time is honestly like the best is the best answer, but I'm, I'm not an advocate for going, going, go and get yourself some bad PR. No, no, but I think, but if it happens, right. And I think this is where it goes back to the why and the values here, because you can recover from it. If you have, if you're authentic, if you have strong values and you've proven that to, you know, like, let's talk about a company and an individual. If you're a rock solid company that has good values, you've done good work out there and you have one rogue rep that does some, you know, puts a dick pick out there or something like that, you can recover from it.

And, and I think that like, and a great example of this, and I know this is, this is, this was a rough spot, but you know, was, was with drift, right? I mean, with what Grant Cardone did up on stage, like that was a holy shit. And, but the way Dave and you responded to that, turned it into a conversation and turned it into a positive when it could have gone really, really bad. If, if, if the response and the values weren't there and people didn't know you guys for who you were. Right. Yeah. I think we fucked up and we owned it. And I wish we had realized that sooner. And I wish that he, he wasn't there and time is the best, you know, the best medicine. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I've had thoughts where like, I, I guess like in, even in that moment, it didn't, it didn't even hit me.

And then I like, cause I was on, I'm on the stage. I remember you coming up afterwards being like, okay, so. And I'm like, man, I'm like, but you know, I've played that moment in my head where like, yeah, I wish I was the freaking hero in that moment. It was like, fuck this guy. That's not okay. But like, I fucked up. Like, you know, I, I, it just, it happened. And yeah. And so, so like, I think, I think we, I think what, I think David did a great job of just being like, yeah, we, we, we fucked up and we, we owned it. The company's not going out of business tomorrow. We fucked up. We're gonna, we, you know, we got, we're going to take this one. We're going to take this one on the chin. And so I think, yeah, but I think if you were in the grand scheme of the brand, like, I think you guys had done such a good job at building your brand.

It was, it was the exception, not the rule, right? When it becomes the rule, when it's like, yep, I expected that from you, then I don't think you get much, right? Because then you don't get, well, you don't get rid of the doubt, but you know, for me, I always say like, I I've tried over the years to really build my brand in a very authentic, very real way. So people know who they, you know, what they're getting with me. Right. And so, yes, I'm going to fuck up. I'm going to say something dumb. I'm probably going to say something that's going to get me in trouble, but hopefully I get the benefit of the doubt because it's, it's coming from a good place. It's coming from a, you know, a core value that I believe in.

I just might not have articulated the right. Yeah. You know, and the, and the, I think you will retain your core, the core of your audience. If you do that, I think, you know, one of the challenges of today though, is that sometimes you fucking up once can be enough for, you know, I would say 80 80% of the people who are going to stick with you and be like, because they've seen all your stuff, but it's like the, the people that haven't, uh, and Gary V actually talks about this a lot. And he talks about how, uh, and I really love Gary and I think he gets a lot of hate. And I think it's funny. People compare him to Grant Cardone. I'm like, you, you are not looking at this the right way. This is, they're both loud and boisterous, but different.

So dime, like completely on the opposite ends of values, in my opinion. Yeah. It's so different. There's no, when I think of Gary V, I don't think drugs and private jets, like, you know, like he's, so anyway, but, but, um, you know, he talks about somewhere like he's, he's like, he says that he thinks he did himself a disservice because he's very, he's loud and he's definitive. And you just might see him kind of popping off on social media. And you're like, I hate that guy. And I, and I think that that's going to happen. And so like, yeah, somebody could see one thing that you did, but, uh, I think that's why the authenticity piece is the most important because it's also very hard to fake a brand.

And so like, I think that the best brand is the authentic one because you don't have to wake up and like, put your, put your like brand pants on in the morning and be like, Oh shoot. Oh, I was wearing my make it happen shirt. Fuck. Like, you know, like I'm brand, I'm brand John right now, because I know that if I'm brand Dave, I'm going to slip up because I like to talk and be real. And so it's just much easier in that context to be real and be a truly genuine person. And you know, people, not everybody's going to know, you know, you at that level and you just have to be okay with that. What are some of the brands you admire? Like macro, like, I mean, it could be individuals, could be businesses.

What are the ones that you look at and you're like, you know what? I admire them or, or, or, you know, they might not be my favorite, but right. The way that they carry themselves. Uh, there's some that you look to. I don't know. I suck at answering this question. Cause there's not like, I'm not like a big brand. I'm not like a big brand loyalist. It's like, here's this guy that's breaching brand. But like, um, I've, I've always been more into like, just kind of following, uh, individuals. Like I've always been interested in like the behind the scenes, uh, real, real part of things. But like, I, I don't know. I don't, I don't have a, I don't have a brand that I'm so. I'll give you an example.

I mean, Gary Vee's one, right? Like, um, cause I always wonder my, my struggle is always like, do you have to be a raging asshole to reach the pinnacle of right? Whatever it is, because you look at a lot of the super, what, what other people would consider quote unquote successful, like multimillionaires and all this other stuff. And, and you know, they're look, they seem like raging assholes. Um, and I've always wondered, do you have to be a raging asshole to get to that level? And there are a few examples that make me feel better about it. Richard Branson's of the world, the, the, the Mark Benioff's of the world, the Gary Vee's of the world. Now don't get me wrong. Have they probably pissed a lot of people off and they've, have they done some stuff that I don't know, obviously, but in general, I look at them as, okay, there's people who I believe are doing it the right way.

And for the right reasons, right. Versus other people that I look at, like Larry and those people that I'm like, Oh, Steve jobs. Like I know everybody looks at Steve jobs as a God, but the guy was a jackass. You know what I mean? He was an absolute jackass. And same thing with Elon Musk. Like I've heard stories about working for Elon, where it's just like, he will literally chew you up and spit you out if he's in a bad mood and it had nothing to do with you. So there's, there's the balance there, but those are the type of ones that I kind of look to, to say, cool. You definitely have an Android. No, I don't. No, I'm a, I'm a iPhone guy. No, I'm not one of those stickers. No, I hear you on that.

I've honestly become, I've honestly become the reason I don't have a, I didn't even have a good answer to that was because like, I've honestly become so jaded. Like, I don't care about Jeff Bezos. I don't care about Elon Musk. Like, I don't want to be one of, I don't want to be one of those guys. I don't. I, uh, that's the opposite of things that I think would, would sound fun. And yeah, like, you know, you mentioned some, you mentioned some names of people, Larry Ellison, Mark Benioff, but like, I actually, I don't know them. They could be terrible people to their family or whoever behind the scenes. I'm not, I'm not saying that I'm not putting that on them. I just, I've become, I'm at this like weird stage in my life where I've just become, I'm jaded to the, like the, look at this amazing, you know, look at this billionaire techie who I'm not, wow.

I'm not wowed by that. Give me, give me Casey nice. Give me Casey nice that all day over, over one of those people. That's who I'd rather go on and have a beer with and hang out all day long. And that's why I like other people's definition of success. Cause that's not mine, right? Mine is again, goes back to happiness. And I'm again, I'm on the Gary V train on this one. If you make 40 grand a year and you get to go home and put your kids to bed and go and play little league and that's happiness to you, then my friend, you are the winner, right? Cause there's multiple people I know who are multiple millionaires and stuff like that, who are just miserable pricks. And I would, I would never want to live that lifestyle regardless of the money that they have.

Right. Right. Yep. So I agree. Yeah. It's the absence of, it's the absence of wanting things, right? Like, well, when you made that, you made a comment earlier about time, right? About what the most valuable thing, like money buys time, which is the most precious asset there is. Right. So it's not like money buys happiness, but it gives you time to become happy. Right. Um, and, and I think that's what I made that mental switch of like, Ooh, I wanted to make money to buy stuff to, Ooh, I want to make money so I don't have to do things. You know what I mean? So I can spend more time doing the things that want to do. Yeah. Well, to me, to me, it's not even, it's, it's, it's even gone like beyond money.

And it, and it's like, what, what I have a limited amount of time in any day and any week and on the, on the planet, um, what do you want to use? What, what's the best resource of your, of your time for, for an hour? And I remember, I think I was at HubSpot and I remember like hearing Brian Allegan, who's the CEO, um, talk about this at some point, but he was like, he talked about something silly, like, you know, the best use of his time was like having someone like pick up his dry cleaning. And that seems dumb. Like, Oh, here's a rich guy, like having somebody pick up his dry cleaning, but it's more of just like, uh, uh, or like, I, I don't have a car. I have a, I take Uber everywhere and I got dry, but he's automated, like he's removed those decisions.

The four hour workweek stuff, but like, or like, if you, you know, if you can spend a hundred dollars every two weeks and have someone clean your apartment and that's four hours of you not having to clean your apartment, that's a great use of your, your time. I also care, I care more, I care a lot more about, uh, about that. Here's, here's an example. This is a random side story, but my, my, my parents came and visited me. Um, and I'm, I'm, I'm in Florida right now and their flight got in at like two in the morning. And my dad was like, so what, you know, what you're going to come pick us up. And I'm like, I'm not picking, I'm not waking up to pick you up at two in the morning to two in the morning.

It was like $80 to have, it was like $80 to have a car go and pick them up. And so I'm like, okay, I can $80 or something that I can afford. And so I'm going to, but he just could not fathom that I spent money to have, to have him do that where he would have, you know, my wife was like, well, in, you know, in fairness, he would have gotten up at two in the morning to pick you up. And I'm like, exactly. And that's the difference between us. It's also like a school mentality, right? Like parents are the same way. It's like, it's like, oh, you pick your parents up at the airport. That's what you do. Right. And it's like, fucking just take an Uber. That's what you do. I'm like, look, if you were, if you were landing at three o'clock in the afternoon, a hundred percent, but I'm not, I'm not going to wake, I go to bed at nine o'clock.

I'm not going to wake up in the middle of the night to go pick you up at the airport. Well, and it's look, it's a healthy exercise. I mean, I did pick that up through thing, uh, through a four hour work week, which is basically know your hourly rate, right? So it's like, how much money do you want to make divided by how many hours you want to work? And that's your hourly rate. And if you can outsource any of that for somebody who could do it cheaper, do it, just make sure that you're spending that time you get back on the stuff that is going to help you either make that money or enjoy that time. So I think it's important there. I'm just moving. Cause I got, I got to, I got to plug myself in the last couple of days.

No worries. We're, we're finishing up, but I wanted to tap in one more thing. Cause you're, you're writing a book, right? Yeah, it's, it's done. It comes out in, uh, two weeks. Nice. It's called, what is it? Founder brand? It's called founder brand. Yeah. Yeah. What's it about? What was, first of all, what you drove, what, what drove you to write this? This is great. This is great. Great plug. Hold on. I'm just plugging my computer. Uh, so I wanted to, I realized that there's kind of like this thing, thing that I've helped founders and companies do unintentionally, which is, um, build their name and reputation and awareness to the market, not just by marketing the product, but by like making the founder a key part of that, um, that brand and turning them into like the spokesperson of the company.

And it's, it's, it's a lot of what we talked about today, specific to like LinkedIn, for example. Um, I just believe that today as a founder of a company, you have all the tools you need to build an audience of your, of your own. Now you have to have something interesting to say the point of the, in my book, it's not just like, if you post on LinkedIn and Twitter, you will gain a MRR. It doesn't, no, it doesn't work. It doesn't work like that. But, um, but a lot, but a lot of times the founder started this business. Like if I use you, right, like if I'm the founder, if I'm thinking about you, you're the founder of your business, right? Like, well, you're the crazy guy who had this idea to start this business.

Most founders are crazy for some reason. They have some, either they had some like big epiphany or life changing event, or got fired from their job and had to go start their own thing. And it became this big thing. There's usually some story there that inherently makes them interesting. Uh, but also because they're the founder of this business that they're involved in 10 different tracks from investors, to advisors, to hiring, to recruiting, to training, to, um, deep industry knowledge, what's happening in the world. And so you, you end up getting all this like gold from a social media and marketing standpoint that you could be using. And on top of that, like we've talked about today, like people want to buy from people.

And so I want to, I don't just want to see your, your logo. I want to see your, your face because this is your company. I wanted to know. And I believe this is true even for big companies, like with Salesforce and Benioff. And even though you hate Steve Jobs and Apple, just play it. Um, and, and so I think like, Oh, hey Steve, I just heard he's the Apple process. That's awesome. I'm sure he was, I'm sure he was. Um, and so, so this is something that I did at Drift with David Cancel in the early days, like really spending a lot of time and, and, and PR effort around like building up his brand through social media and he already had a following. And so we tapped into that. And then at Privy, I did this with Ben, who's the founder there, launched a podcast and focused on his social media following.

And I've seen a couple of times how that has had an impact on more people showing up to then buy from your business, right? It's not a perfect funnel, but it's like, wow, I listened to the CEO of this, the CEO of Privy put out a daily podcast for a year. Wow. And so that guy's putting out a hundred episodes of tactical e-commerce marketing information. He's not selling Privy. He's teaching you how to do the thing that the product will then help you do. And so more people show up on the website for that reason. So I, I still think that it's an underutilized channel. And I still think that a lot of marketing teams don't focus on it because they have so much pressure to hit the number and build pipeline and do these direct response activities.

And so, um, I called it founder brand and wanted to, to help more founders and, and their marketing teams, um, turn the founders into like the mouthpieces for the brand. And I just think that like the PR model, and this is not to rail on PR agencies. I worked at one, I have deep respect for, for people in that industry. Um, but I just think the model is broken where you, you shouldn't have to pay, you don't have to pay 10 grand a month, but like hope that people find you and get articles placed because you have all the tools where if you have something interesting to say, like all the reasons for your being a founder, like we said, your customers are literally online. You can reach them. And so like direct, direct to consumers, not just for e-commerce businesses, it's for B2B also, which is like, you can reach your ideal customers where they're hanging out online without having to spend a dollar.

And I wanted to just put that together in a book and hopefully help teach people how to do it and get more founders to stop this like BS excuse of like, I don't have the time or it's not worth it. I think it's like the most important thing you should be doing. Well, and you're doing it anyways. I think that that's the shift, right? You're already having these conversations. You're already doing this recorded. So, and it actually totally like, like, and a perfect example of this is like, like immediately after this podcast, you could go to LinkedIn and you could be like, um, had a really interesting conversation with Dave Gehrig today about, you know, the future of LinkedIn and blah, blah, not to promote the podcast at all, but just to like comment, right.

Or like had a re talk to a really interesting candidate yesterday. And she told me one thing that she's seeing inside of a lot of SaaS companies. You're taking your, you're in these conversations all day. You're just thinking of yourself as like a publisher. And if there was like a publisher running around with you, like, Hey John, that was interesting nugget from that meeting. You should share that. Right. Yeah. And to push people to like build their own media properties instead of, um, just trying to do so much third party content stuff. Well, I think that just to tie it back to sales too, is like, you know, I, I wrote a post a while back called the founder's dilemma and, and it goes back to the transfer of enthusiasm, right?

Like when you believe in what you sell, it's, it's a lot easier because you can transfer that enthusiasm. What happens is founders, they, even the most introverted engineer you've ever come across, they create a product and they'll think they're not sales in any way, shape or form. But then you start asking them about the product that they created, the problem that they solved, how they went about it. And you literally watch them just start to light up and explain to you all the cool things that they did to solve that problem. And they're transferring that enthusiasm over to you. And it's just like, damn, I want to buy some of that. Right. So it's like, all you have to do is reframe the mindset of marketing and sales to look at it as, you know, brand or whatever you want to look at it as.

But I mean, the people that aren't on this, on this train, man, I think I'm, they're gonna, I don't know if it's a slow death anymore. Um, but it's going to get real apparent real soon. Uh, if it hasn't already, that, that that's kind of the future of the alignment, sales, marketing, PR, all of it together. And we all have to be our own mini machines here. So I agree. And, and, and you can, you can meet to that. I mean, that's the most powerful thing is you can, that, that can be your, your, your audience and reach people directly that way. Yep. Love it, man. All right. Well, we're coming up on the hour here and, uh, love the conversation. It was always just good catching up with you anyway.

Love to see what you're doing and love the kids in the background too. Cause like you said, family's number chaos. Yeah. And always two and a four year old, you say, yeah, you're writing the shit right now. My daughter's at least 11, so she can kind of go hang out for a while and not make too much noise, but I'm going to throw everybody in the pool. Right. There you go. Awesome. Well, anybody, you want to point anybody in the direction? Uh, is it, it's GG, DGMG, right? That's the, that's the company. Yeah. But everything's on my website, DaveGearhart.com. Awesome. All right. Dave, well, look, it was great catching up with you as always. And, and let's stay in touch here. Let's not make it. So it's another couple of years since we get together here.

Cause I'm, I'm loving what you're doing out there and I'm on a new journey myself. So I might pick your brain a little bit, uh, uh, on, on my personal brand journey and see where I'm trying to take it next. So cool. Okay. Sounds good. I appreciate it, John. Thank you. All right, brother. And everybody, as you're listening, thank you so much, uh, for listening as always. And like I always say, no matter how bad your day goes, no matter how bad your day went, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause if you make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all for listening. I'll see you on the other side. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast.

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