Dave Gerhardt

Exit Five

Exit Five is a media company focused on B2B marketing. We help B2B marketers build successful careers through our content and community. Learn more at exitfive.com

Founder & CEO

GTMfund

Limited Partner

Paramark.com

Marketing measurement, experimentation, and forecasting for fast-growing businesses. Gain marketing ROI visibility with advanced statistics and machine learning — more accurate, comprehensive, and simpler than touch-based attribution.

Advisor

Equals

AudiencePlus

Hatch

metadata.io

Goldcast

Harvard Business School

Guest Lecturer

Drift

Chief Brand Officer

Startup CMO turned Founder. The marketing I did helped Drift to a $1B valuation & Privy to a $100M+ acquisition. Now I'm building a B2B media company called Exit Five. Exit Five is helping B2B marketers build successful careers through our content and community. You can learn more at exitfive.com. We have a small team of three and operate remotely. I'm based in Vermont.

Today is a big day. I’m sharing this news with the public for the first-time.

After months of planning and bringing in top analysts and consultants from McKinsey, Gartner, Forrester, we have decided to go all in on AI.

We’ve spent the last two years building a media company around B2B marketing.

• We have 3,000+ paying members for our community
• There have been 10,000+ discussions
• 20,000+ have watched one of our videos
• 300,000+ have listened to an episode of our podcast

We have crossed 7 figures in revenue. The company is 100% bootstrapped and profitable with high margins.

But I have had extreme FOMO watching what’s going on with AI.

The story of a B2B marketing media business isn’t sexy. 7 figures in revenue? Bootstrapped? Profitable? Who cares. If there’s not AI in there, it doesn’t matter.

The riches are in the niches and we’ve made the decision to niche down ever more and focus *exclusively on AI for B2B*.

Forget ABM, Email, SEO, Content, TikTok, YouTube, Events, Sales Enablement, and Thought Leadership. Forget everything you've learned about the principles of marketing, psychology, and why people buy.

The one thing that I learned from McKinsey, Gartner, Forrester, and the guy who changed my snow tires last week is that the ONLY thing that will matter in B2B marketing is AI, so I don’t want to wait.

We're going all in. And this starts today.

AI isn't just a tool for business; it's becoming the backbone of smarter, more responsive, and more personalized B2B interactions. 

The future of B2B isn't just about businesses talking to businesses; it's about intelligent systems working behind the scenes to make those conversations more meaningful, productive, and profitable. 

We're talking about a future where AI-powered platforms can facilitate seamless transactions between businesses, manage supply chains in real-time, and even predict shifts in global markets. Especially in the cloud. 

Imagine a world where business negotiations are enhanced with real-time data analysis and recommendations, making every decision informed, aligned, strategic, and world class.

So, yeah, AI is a big deal, and we're just scratching the surface.

We’re ditching the Exit Five brand.

To avoid any brand confusion, we’re rebranding as Exit Six.

And to honor today’s launch: if you use ChatGPT to help write your comment on this post, I will give you and your closest relative a free lifetime subscription to Exit Six.

Please include the rocketship emoji to be included 🚀

Welcome to the future.

See you at Exit Six.

Want to be CMO? Heck, or any C-level executive? You better learn to love meetings and internal communication. 
 
Unless you're the secret super genius CTO who doesn't have to manage people or take any meetings and can just code all day, you must become a top notch communicator if you want to be the CMO or CXO. 
 
And this is true for all formats. You need to be strong in-person, over Zoom, on video, and in writing. Group setting or 1:1. 
 
But here I'll talk specifically about marketing. 
 
*** 
 
Marketing is one of the most misunderstood operations inside of a company and if you aren't able to control the narrative, show what you're working on, and articulate why it matters, you'll end up with the status quo today: "my company has no idea what marketing should be doing." 
 
Clear and confident and compelling communication internally is one of the reasons I was able to advance my career quickly. I didn't realize it at the time, but it matters a lot. More than me knowing CAC to LTV and MQL this and that. You can be the greatest operator behind the scenes but as the marketing leader it all means nothing if you can't communicate externally. 
 
NOTE: This could also be a reason to *not* take a marketing leadership job by the way. Just like managing people and building a team, it's a completely different job than individual contributor and this is a big part of it. If you don't love this stuff or can't learn to love it or find the "why" in it, it's going to be a miserable road ahead. 
 
Being a great communicator starts with the end in mind - it’s not about what you want to say. It’s about understanding how to guarantee the audience understands. If they didn’t understand that’s on you. If they are confused or bored that is on you. 
 
So if you want to be CMO it's not about the cool marketing ideas and the big sexy brand campaigns. It's about this. Master internal communications. 
 
It's arguably the most underrated marketing channel. 
 
I prepped more for internal presentations and simple updates than most other things and it paid. Plus it helps you build reps for taking to customers. If they don’t believe you internally, customers never will.

And FYI you have half the budget you used to have. 
 
And the Product team and VP of Sales are not going to be onboard with the changes you're suggesting to help fix the revenue problem so you're going to spend 70% of your time in meetings that go nowhere ☺️ 
 
Good luck! 
 
Oh - forgot to mention: HR needs some help designing a new page on the website for something they want to do for recruiting, do you have time to squeeze that in this week??

Founder: Exit Five | Former CMO | The marketing I did helped Drift to a $1B valuation & Privy to a $100M+ acquisition. Now helping B2B marketers build successful careers with Exit Five.

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Raise $100M - endless messages, congrats, to the moon! 
 
Bootstrap $1M profitable business - cool man, hey so hows your blog going? are you still doing that?

In the past two weeks we have:

• Closed $50k in sponsorship revenue
• Created an additional $50k in pipeline
• Started work on our first in-person event (named it, built the speaker list, run of show, venue, budget)
• Finalized new logo and branding
• Developed a growth plan for the 2nd half of the year
• Created a plan to re-organize and improve our community
• Onboarded a new contractor
• All while continuing to create content for our community, newsletter, and podcast
• We have no office
• We had one "team" meeting this week
• We are prioritizing time with family, kids, mental health daily

We're on track to grow the business 90% year over year, and we should be in a position to bring on more teammates as we start planning for 2025 and building Exit Five.

The biggest waste of time in marketing:

"NURTURE EMAILS"

Has a customer ever told you the reason they bought was because they thought about you after the 8th email?

Or ... if someone hasn't responded or taken any type of action after the third email, is the solution to send more email?

No. It's not. At least in my humble opinion.

So if you're currently working on a problem, and one of your ideas for a solution is "nurture emails" maybe this could be a sign to revisit it.

FWIW, I don't have a problem with emails. I love great emails, great copywriting, and sequence of a handful of emails (when done right) can work.

I've just had experience in the past where the proposed solution (or some team inside of the company wants marketing to do this) is "improve nurture emails."

Have you bought something after email 4-5-6-7-8? 

I dunno....

Send a few emails over a few days, and then maybe move them into a different bucket where you email that group once a month and eventually (if no one opens or responds) just stop emailing them ....

But please we are looking for good examples to share and help educate other B2B marketers, so if you have had success with nurture emails, please leave me a comment.

I hardly have all the answers, just one guy with a LinkedIn account.

You can have all of the: 
 
- ABM 
- SEO 
- SEM 
- PPC 
- ROAS 
- CAC 
- LTV 
- MQL 
- SQL 
- SDR 
- ABC 
- 123 
 
I will take: 
 
- Strong POV 
- Differentiation 
- Creative, original marketing ideas 
- Speed of shipping work 
 
I know the timeless lessons in marketing. The ones that never go out of style. The basic principles beat all the acronyms and trends. 
 
Who will win?

Marketing (when done right) will overlap with every team inside of your company. 
 
That's because marketing needs to: 
 
1. Make sure people know that you exist  
2. Make sure people have a problem to solve  
3. Make sure people know you can solve it  
4. Make sure they have a desire to solve it  
5. Make sure they believe you can solve it  
6. Make sure they have the budget to solve it  
 
Marketing will never succeed if it's not aligned with sales, product, finance, and all of the key functions inside of a business. 
 
Show me a company that does great marketing and I bet we could peel back the layers and find this alignment. 
 
If you're interviewing with a CEO or founder, I'd go beyond the surface level marketing questions and dig into the strategy of the business. 
 
What is the vision for the company? 
Who are you selling to? 
How do you think you'll get customers? 
What role will marketing play? 
What sales and marketing motion do you think we need? 
What does the product team look like? What are they working on? How are they measured? 
 
Great marketing can happen when the strategy for a company is clear. 
 
When you find that ... go.

Normally being "for everyone" is not a good marketing strategy.  
 
But there's often an exception to the rule.

I pay $500/year for a LinkedIn scheduling tool. 
 
Simply because: 
 
1. You can't re-order the posts in the LinkedIn native scheduler if you want to move dates around. 
 
2. You can't edit a post without copy + pasting the content and picking a new date. 
 
But the LinkedIn scheduling tool I pay $500/year for doesn't have the ability to upload videos, and I like to post videos sometimes. 
 
So I have to schedule some posts with LinkedIn directly, but ... see points 1 and 2 above. 
 
And then sometimes I forget about them, and I double post. 
 
This is the only place in the world I can share this and people will be able to relate, so I'm writing it here. 
 
I schedule posts because: 
 
1. I write all my LinkedIn content myself 
2. I don't want to be glued to the computer so scheduling in advance is nice 
3. I have a business to run and LinkedIn is a big part of that business 
 
Some takeaways from this rant: 
 
1. This is the creator economy LinkedIn wants to support right? Well let me get some basic tools like a better scheduler and the ability to pin a post in the comments - I don't need a TikTok competitor here, I just want this stuff to work 
 
2. It's all good, because I don't own this platform. I am renting space on it. So my email list is the most important thing. 
 
3. In the grand scheme of life this is a tiny, small, inconvenience, but I still want it to work better :) 
 
4. You can build a nice little business off of another platform with a niche feature

Be kind.
Be flexible.
Do the things you said you would do.
Push back.
Share updates proactively when things slip.
Be proactive.
Move fast.
Do good marketing.

What makes a great teammate? 

If the sales team needs to practice and memorize the content from a slide provided by marketing with bullets on it about how you're different than the competition, you don't have a differentiator. 
 
Great differentiation is simple, memorable, easy to understand - internally and externally.

This company has been ALL OVER my LinkedIn feed.

I don’t know when it started.

At some point last year I started seeing posts from this company –  Apollo.io

I saw posts from the company page.

Then I started to see posts from this guy with long hair, thick black rimmed glasses, and a wide-brimmed fedora talking about community and the voice of the customer and even writing bluntly about Apollo’s direct competitor ZoomInfo.

(That’s Daniel Cmejla by the way)

Then I start seeing posts from Meryoli Arias

Then I get a notification that Andy McCotter-Bicknell joined Apollo.

Then I see that Brendan Short joined Apollo.

Then I get all these “job change” notifications from Apollo.io and dang it, Apollo has quite literally FLOODED my LinkedIn feed.

So when they reached out to sponsor Exit Five, it was an immediate yes from us. I already felt like I knew the personalities and the people at the company through LinkedIn (I ended up talking to Dan and he told me he took a few pages out of my old playbook from Drift…)

But not only has Apollo built an amazing presence here on LinkedIn, they clearly have a product that lands with B2B marketers too.

Marketing doesn’t work today without great data and Apollo has accurate data on 275M contacts and 65M companies.

They can help you with data validation and enrichment; contact and account list building (with filters like intent data, web visitors); and inbound data optimization (form shortening, routing).

And they have the proof to back it up:

Apollo is used by 500,000 companies globally and they have a 4.8 rating based on 6,638 G2 reviews.

You can get in there right now and start using the product for free at apollo . io / exitfive 

Find, contact, and close your ideal buyers with the help of Apollo now – you can use their product for free (no credit card required either) at apollo.io / exitfive

Or use this link directly:

https://lnkd.in/eqmTKn3J

Whether you need to find 1000 new leads or 100,000 verified emails and phone numbers, Apollo’s living database of 275M+ contacts has you covered.

And thanks to the team at Apollo for sponsoring Exit Five; you'll hear them across our podcast episodes and see them in our newsletter over the next few weeks.

Nothing kills good copywriting quite like an exclamation point.

Personal pages are (absolutely) more effective than company pages on LinkedIn.

That doesn't meant don't have a Company Page. It's important to show up there, as your company page on LinkedIn is often the number one place a candidate, partner, investor, future customer, etc. will go to see if you are "legit."

So I would use the Company Page as the "News Ticker" for your brand - the place where you post announcements, links, news, that award you won, the new role you're hiring for.

But I would use Personal Pages (through key employees and executives at the company) and focus on writing and thought leadership there .. well, actually here - since you're reading this on LinkedIn.

___

Here's some advice on what to do if you're a Founder or CEO that wants to write more on LinkedIn:

1. Shrink down the focus of what you write about. What's the one topic it would be most valuable for you to be known for? Start there.

2. Develop a clear POV in your industry. Who is your product for? Why do you exist? How are you different? What are the megatrends that matter to your customers? What is broken? How can you help them?

3. Win with depth. Don't worry about being witty or posting funny memes. If that doesn't come natural to you, it's not going to work here. Lead with education. Write to educate and inform. Maybe you also have some personality and let it show in your writing, but focus on educating and informing.

4. Write three posts a week. Why three? Because you need to start somewhere. If I tell you everyday you'll say no way that's too much, if I tell you once a week you'll say that's not enough (and you're right) so let's start with three posts a week.

5. Treat LinkedIn as your industry blog. This is where you write about work.

6. Keep a Google Doc or Notion with ideas for the backlog. You're in meetings and on calls all week with teammates, recruits, partners, advisors, investors, peers. There is so much knowledge and so many nuggets in there - you just have to flip your brain on for the good ones.

7. Set aside time to write your posts. You don't want to do this? Then you can't play this game. You have to find time for it, there's no other way.

8. Write them in batches. When you have writing time, use it. Ride the momentum.

9. Comment and reply. Make sure you do this. Start commenting on people's posts in your feed. This will make your feed better (you'll start seeing more of their posts when you comment), it will increase your engagement (LinkedIn likes to see that you're active beyond just writing your own posts), and this will give you ideas for future posts of your own.

10. Schedule your posts in advance. Use the LinkedIn native scheduler.  Simple.

I am obsessed with what AI can do for marketers too. 
 
But: don't let AI and automation keep you from doing the things that don’t scale. 
 
1. Send the hand written thank you notes to top customers 
 
2. Hook someone up for free unexpectedly 
 
3. Go out of your way to reply to feedback and responses 
 
4. Send some random customers t-shirts 
 
That type of stuff still matters too...

Sometimes I like to make my own ads for B2B brands. 
 
What do you think of this one? 
 
I'll make more just let me know in the comments which brand to do next.

I didn't realize it until the notifications, but today marks two years of Exit Five. 
 
For the first 1.5 years I treated Exit Five like my side project - I wasn't sure about going all in. It was a nice little thing, but I was committed to just doing it solo and having it be one of a few channels for me in the business world. 
 
But today, I'm all in. 
 
Earlier this year I decided to invest and hire. 
 
• We brought on a COO 
• We brought on a Marketing Manager 
• We have 3,000 paying members 
• We've had 10,000+ people register for webinars 
• We've  had 300,000 downloads of our podcast 
 
• Now we're starting work on our first in-person event (named it, built the speaker list, run of show, venue, budget - launching in May) 
• Finalized new logo and branding 
• Developed a growth plan for the 2nd half of the year 
• Created a plan to re-organize and improve our community 
• Onboarded a new contractor 
• We have no office 
• We had one "team" meeting this week 
• We are prioritizing time with family, kids, mental health daily 
 
And we're going to continue to invest and grow the team this year, which I am excited about. 
 
More to come soon. 
 
____ 
 
 
You didn't go to school for B2B marketing. 
 
OK, maybe one or two of you in the comments did (it always happens). 
 
But most of you (like me) did not go to school for B2B marketing. 
 
You're left to learn it on the fly - at your company - while also hitting the growth goals and doing a bunch of things for the first time. 
 
That's why we built Exit Five. 
 
To be the resource I wish I had growing my career in B2B marketing. 
 
Join 3,000 members in our private community. 
 
Or get the free knowledge and learnings from B2B marketing leaders (current and future) in our newsletter and podcast. 
 
All available on our website. 
 
See you there.

“Stop apologizing for being a B2B marketer. Why does that mean the bar is lower? It’s not. We drive more of the economy than B2C.”

Colin Fleming sent a little charge through the room at Goldenhour this morning. 

So I had to share that little quote here on LinkedIn.

If you are invited on someone's podcast - have a conversation (!) 
 
It's OK to ask the host a question back. 
 
It's OK to make a note and go back to something you wanted to finish earlier. 
 
It's OK to pause for a few seconds and take a beat before changing directions. 
 
You are not at a press conference where it's "Next Question"

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