← The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
#211: Growth | The Future of GTM and Sustainable Growth with Chris Walker, CEO at Passetto
00:57:25
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- [00:02]
Pranav
Today's episode is brought to you by Paramark. You know, I've interviewed hundreds of marketing leaders here over the years, and the number one thing they've all said they want to solve is marketing attribution. That's right. Measurement, especially in B2B, it's complicated, it's hard to measure. Or is it? That's where Powermark comes in. Their marketing attribution platform helps you understand what's working and what's not in your marketing so you know exactly where to invest your next dollar. Unlike other attribution platforms, Paramark doesn't rely on click attribution. They measure marketing performance without having to see UTM parameters or you having to get into lead attribution fights with your CRO. Parmark uses a combination of marketing mix modeling and incrementality testing to help you drive growth. They analyze your brand at every level, channels, campaigns, geography, and then they use.
- [00:50]
Dave Gerhardt
Those insights to help you grow.
- [00:52]
Pranav
Plus, Paramark is built by a former marketer. Their founder and CEO Pranav spent his career coming up as a B2B marketing leader and he cares about this problem so deeply that he started a company around it to solve solve it. Speaking of Pranav, he has probably one of the best offers I've seen on this podcast for our ads. He's going to give you a free brand assessment for your company. He told us he's willing to meet with you personally and analyze the performance of your brand. It's an incredible offer. Just for listeners of this podcast, you can head over to paramark.com brand-consult to schedule your free consultation with Pranav. He can't meet with everyone obviously, so it's first come, first serve. But don't wait. If you want this, go now. Trust me, this is going to be worth your time. He's an amazing speaker, top rated speaker at our conference, amazing podcast guest in the past, and he's going to give you his insights on your brand and help you with marketing measurement. Right now go to paramark.com brand-consult to put your name on the list.
- [01:51]
Dave Gerhardt
Today you're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt. 1, 2, 3, 4. My guest on this episode is Chris Walker. You know Chris from LinkedIn where he's been pushing the boundaries of B2B marketing for years now. Today he's CEO at Passetto and he's my guest on the podcast. Finally, after a few years of being away, I finally got Chris back on the pod. We talk about the future of go to market his Thoughts on the role of CMO and what's changed versus five years ago, why sustainable growth is the only way forward, what role AI will play in B2B marketing. And I even got to ask him some personal questions about his own workflow and how he finds time to write, think and create. Here's my conversation with Chris Walker. Chris, something you said all this stuff is. I don't know if it's LinkedIn. I've been listening to your podcast. I'm trying to stay sharp. You push me to stay sharp. You said, tell me what you mean by this. You said some people think I'm wrong, but I'm really just early.
- [02:59]
Chris Walker
Great way to start. It feels like I've been that way my, like almost my whole career, especially as I've gotten more from the outside. I was just telling you before we got on because I work with so many companies at once, I'm able to see the patterns and the problems and what people are trying and whether it's working or not and what technology they're buying and all these different patterns across 50 companies or 30 companies at a time. I've now have access to all their data and their finance and their CRM. And so I'm. And seeing perspectives across the executive team. And so I'm able to pinpoint those things years, maybe three, five years before someone inside might actually see it. And so I think, and a lot of people, yeah, sort of come at me for these ideas. It's been, I don't know, people call me a contrarian. I really don't see it that way. I feel like I'm just reflecting the truth that people don't want to hear. But yeah, I've been early around my, sort of my whole career on some of the things and I'm just communicating the things that I'm seeing. So. Yes. And you know, some smart people like you see the same things, hear the same things in communities, see those patterns. And there's a small percentage of people that are like, yeah, this guy's right. Like, maybe I don't see it right now, but I, I believe him. So that's how I think about being. Yeah.
- [04:11]
Dave Gerhardt
I want to ask you something more about like the feedback loop. I think you and I are uniquely exposed to this feedback loop which does create an advantage and allows you to be early, but saving that for later. Just this is more of a, of a personal thing. And I think what's interesting to is obviously people will know you from our, you know, there's a lot of overlap. This will be a very popular podcast episode. It's like feeding raw meat. You know this, like, just throw this by a cage, right? Like, it's going to be nuts. But you know, with that, like you. I think part of having a strong point of view comes with a lot of people who don't know you, don't like you and you get comments on social media. And I'm just curious because there's few other folks that are in this situation. I want to ask you this personally. Like, how do you not let that stuff get in your head? I see people trying to dunk on you all the time. Even when you're not trying to dunk on someone, someone sees. Thinks that you're trying to dunk on them. What's your evolution with social media been? You know, I see you in the, every now and then you, you can't help yourself. You do have to say something in the, in the comments. But I'm just curious, like, what your perspective has been like, as someone, like, hey, I have a strong point of view. I'm going to share my way.
- [05:14]
Chris Walker
Yeah.
- [05:14]
Dave Gerhardt
With that comes a bunch of people who either interpret the thing, don't like you, don't like what you say, interpret things the wrong way. Like, where does that sit in your mental space? As I'm an entrepreneur, I'm going to build a business trying to take care of my mental health. At the same time, there's a lot of dunking that happens. Where does that sit in your head space?
- [05:29]
Chris Walker
To me, it's, it's become more of an understanding and an acceptance. Like, I understand why people think that way. They don't have the perspective that I don't have. They haven't seen the data that I have. They haven't had the, the 50 CMOs tell them the truth. Under NDA, they haven't seen the finance data of what's happening at the company and how CAC is going up or whatever's happening in the finance data. They don't have the same perspective that I have. And so it's more of just an understanding at this point that other people, you know, don't have it. And then like, for me, it's, I've come to the point where I'm not making the stuff up. This is not my opinion. It's literally just like there's enough data to support this as a fact. You could write a clinical trial around some of the things that I say with all the data that's available. So, like, I just, like people are. And then people have Their own invested interests in the world being in a different way. Right. Maybe they sell, you know, something that I've, you know, have enough data to say, doesn't work anymore. Right. And so, yeah, I can understand that perspective as well.
- [06:27]
Dave Gerhardt
I have noticed there's a common theme that is the people that are often the most antagonistic or don't like the things you say the most, they're often solo consultants for some reason. Have you noticed that trend?
- [06:39]
Chris Walker
Yeah. And it's like, why, like, conversely, five years ago, refund labs, like, there are many people that come up to me on the street. It happened to me in Tulum last week. Some guy was like, you know, five years ago I was a solopreneur. Now I have a 35 person agency. And all I did was just follow the same stuff that you were doing. And I'm like, that makes me happy, dude. Like, and so why are these people pushing back? I'm like giving you a clear opportunity to make your business more successful.
- [07:01]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah.
- [07:01]
Chris Walker
And then, yeah, some people will do it directly, some people will do it in post and it'll show up in my algorithm. And I have a very, I've developed a very clear policy. I've only done it five times. But there's a difference between having a debate, having a, you know, intellectual or respectful debate, versus being disrespectful. And when people get disrespectful, it's just a, it's an immediate block at this point. I just don't have time for that bullshit anymore.
- [07:21]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, no, I, I agree. It's not healthy. There's also this weird thing. I was listening to this podcast today, but with this doctor, this woman, she's amazing. And she was, she's talking about parenting. I'm, I'm dealing with something with my, with one of my kids right now. And I'm trying to get better. Like anything, I'm trying to get better. I'm trying to be a better parent. Like, how do I help my daughter through this? You know, drive. We're driving each other nuts right now. And she was like, you know, there's no room for nuance in the world that we live in today. And I think that is what's funny about marketing, is like marketing as a craft, as a business discipline. There is so much nuance in marketing. And then like you throw marketing point of view and takes and advice on social media, and there's no room for nuance on social media. And so everyone, it just becomes this like this crazy thing. And I, I think it's also another example of like, if you listen to what you say long form. Like I got back into listening to your podcast recently because I knew you were going to be on. I kind of just cleansed myself other than doing this podcast. I'm like, I got to just like listen to not marketing stuff sometime. And so I, I learned through, you know, who I interview. And so I listen to your boss. I'm like, man, this is really good. And I think if a lot of people listen, if you listen to the hour long thing that Chris said about X, that would change your opinion versus if you just read the headline and the sound bite, you got to hear the tone of voice, you got to hear the nuance, you got to hear the backup. And so it's like sometimes I think the short form stuff actually does a disservice to the actual. Like, if you took the time to listen to the whole thing, you would have a different perspective. Yeah.
- [08:44]
Chris Walker
And then to back what you were saying, like, I'm starting to feel like it's time to like rethink the box that of marketing. Like, I think that there's a bunch of stuff thrown in one category that is poorly defined and there's too many responsibilities. Long term, short term, tactical, strategic product pipeline, all under one thing. I just.
- [09:04]
Producer Dave
Okay, save it, save it.
- [09:06]
Dave Gerhardt
That's later in my notes. Producer Dave, Save it. All right, so we got to that. Another thing I want to ask you about is talk about the ROI of having a podcast and being active on social media right off the bat. And I want to lead you in a little bit because I heard you talk about this recently and you talked about how it's given you such an advantage, whether it's a podcast or a live event, not to create pipeline or sales. Obviously that is a nice benefit if you can generate sales from your podcast or social media or content. And this is so key. It is. It's given you the ability to figure out a business's strategy and shorten the feedback loop. Instead of having to like spend six weeks coming up with a survey, trying to send out a survey, getting 500 responses. Can you just talk about that from a. As a marketing strategy for people listening to this? Just the value of the feedback loop and how you talk so passionately about like the strategic insights you get from this feedback loop?
- [09:59]
Chris Walker
Yeah, I mean in 2014 I worked with a consultant named Andy Midwin. I was a like product manager at a 10 million dollar industrial company. And he came in, he taught me a lot more about marketing. Than just running ads. There's this whole other thing which is like, what product are we going to build, how are we going to price it, how are we going to competitive position and how are we going to understand what people need, how are we going to test that, how are we going to beta alpha, launch, revise new features, roadmap? And there's like all this other underlying stuff. And so I remember going to trade shows and building like a survey and like spending more time not trying to sell the product, but to understand what do people want, what are we missing, how do we change the messaging, what on the brochure needs to be different. And at that point, the only time you had to do it was the five times that you went to a trade show. And so much has evolved in the way that you're able to access your customer and that you don't need to build a booth and for people to show up. Now you can host your own event, you can have your own community, you can have your own zoom calls with prospects and things like that. And so again, I didn't think about this initially, but the way that I've seen it now is that like, the value of the podcast is, as you mentioned, just not about the pipeline that's created. Like, the benefits that I'm seeing most right now is like all the objections that come up when people ask questions. Like the roadblocks that people say, like, hey, I want to implement this, but this is the roadblock I'm running into. The feedback and the insights you get from your customers help you shape your message, your product, how you help customers implement, how you structure your organization, how you price it. And so there's just so many benefits around those aspects that I find super valuable. And then I had another point, but it escaped me. So go ahead. Yeah.
- [11:31]
Dave Gerhardt
Do you think this is like, I often think about. I use this example a lot. I'm like, I used to be obsessed with like old school advertising, direct response, like Bill Burnham, you know, that type of stuff. Like the creative that was it made, you know, like there's like ridiculous ads. Like your doctor's favorite cigarette was like the lucky ridiculous. But I like understanding some of those principles. And I would often, when I talk about this topic, I often think about, man, you know what, that generation of marketers, they would kill to have the insights that we can get from like writing a post on social media and getting instant feedback. And I think this is something that can be true at any scale. Obviously, for both of us. We have lots of followers on LinkedIn, you know, have an email list, I have a community. There's a substantial audience there. But I think you can do this in smaller doses. And what you have. I used to think that social media used to be like an afterthought as a marketing channel on a team.
- [12:24]
Chris Walker
Now, kind of, it still is, which is crazy.
- [12:26]
Dave Gerhardt
Look at anything in the world. Social media is how the world communicates. And that is true whether you sell hoodies or, you know, enterprise software politics.
- [12:35]
Chris Walker
Like, the most powerful things in the world have, like, happen through social media. Yeah.
- [12:39]
Dave Gerhardt
And I think it's not always a direct response thing. It's not like, hey, I posted a link to my thing, and, you know, people sign up for my product demo. It's like the ability to test messaging. And so we did this in the early days of when I was at Drift. We used the CEOs, like LinkedIn. We used social media from the founders. We got a lot that way. But now I'm doing this in a different way with Exit 5. It's like the same thing we were doing seven, eight years ago. I'll give you an example to build on something you said there. We did our first event this year. I wanted to not pay a lot for speakers. I wanted to not hire famous people to speak at the event. I wanted to put on an awesome event. And so literally, I went to our podcast analytics and I sorted by most downloads over the last year, and I went through. I picked the top 10 episodes, and I reached out to each of those speakers and I said, hey, Chris, you were one of the most popular speakers on our podcast last year. We're doing an event in Vermont. It's in September. Would you Want to speak? 9 out of 10 said yes, because they already know us. They already have the relationship. And the content of the event was amazing because I already felt like I tested it right. And it's like, if you can have these little feedback loops in all of the parts of your business, so that's more context for you maybe to get. Get your idea back there. But I wanted to ask you, like, how would you. Okay, so give me that.
- [13:49]
Chris Walker
And then just the side benefit that I've noticed most recently that I think people really underappreciate is that I've actually found, like, my podcast content to be most effective for GRR and NRR retention and expansion. And that, like, when your customers are listening to your message and then, like, you know, you got the CMO and they're like, sharing it now with the CRO, and then all of a sudden you have an expansion potential and more people in the organization are bought into the theory and the message. And all of a sudden they're staying for longer and buying more stuff and happier and telling more of their pe, more of their customers and their friends about it. Like, that benefit is just not very trackable. Like, people just tell, my customers are like, hey, I was listening to that episode of the podcast. I shared it with my, you know, my counterpart. It's been like, amazing. They feel so much more aligned now. It overcame that roadblock. I think that people underappreciate all of these side benefits aside from pipeline creation.
- [14:38]
Dave Gerhardt
Well, there's just something about the format of like un, you know, structured but casual audio, you know, like I've been listening to Tim Ferriss for 10 years. I feel like I know the guy. Right. I'm sure you have people in your audience the same way they've been listening to Chris Walker for seven years on his podcast. They feel like they know you and that creates a connection at the same time and you can become a source of information for them. So how can we help other people? Like, I think it's easy for somebody to be like, oh yeah, well, you know, you guys have huge followings. Like, you can post something on LinkedIn and get a million comments, or you can send your email list, like, how do we make this possible for other people? Maybe you don't have a huge audience or you're at like an unknown enterprise software company. Is that a false belief that you can't tap into the benefits in the same way? How would you help somebody do that?
- [15:21]
Chris Walker
Everybody starts at zero. We both did.
- [15:24]
Dave Gerhardt
What was your zero? When was that?
- [15:26]
Chris Walker
I mean, like, I had 900 followers that I had collected from 2008, whenever LinkedIn started to 2019. I had 900 followers when I started, like actively posting on LinkedIn and giving it a real shot. Our first live event that I did had 17 people there. I did my first in person event. 10 people came. I had like a whole thing set up in Miami. We rented a space, 10 people showed up and like, so hopefully that's like encouraging to people to. And the benefits that I felt are relative to the scale that you're at. Like, at that point I had nobody knew me. I had like whatever three or four customers. I had two people on my team. We had no money in the bank. And just going there and getting one more customer, that's 25% growth. You know what I mean? Like, it's all relative to your size. And scale.
- [16:10]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah. Or having to test your. Okay, only 17 people showed up to that live event. But like they stuck around. They stayed. Having to test your pitch and test what you're talking about with those people, that's 17 more people than you got feedback and data from before. Right.
- [16:25]
Chris Walker
And how do you expect hundreds or thousands of people to follow you and listen to you if 17 people won't? If one person won't. Right.
- [16:30]
Dave Gerhardt
So also, I just, I've seen you do this, but for me, something that's like, like awesome about. We've tried to like consciously evolve the Exit 5. You know, once we started building Exit 5 as a real company, they're not like Dave's hot marketing takes anymore. It's like we're trying to. I'm basically like, I think I'm a good host. I love interviewing. Like, I'm a good party host. So I have CMOs and other people on my, you know, at my party. And then we're like a curation business instead of a creation business. Like we share their takes. Right. However, when I'm hosting, I noticed if I say something, I made an analogy. Like I use an analogy. I'm sure you do this same time you use analogy that even if it's only 17 people, the chat lights up because of a joke that you said or something that landed. It's like truly like the. A stand up comedian going to some like rinky dink venue to test out their things. And you're like, now I'm doing it right now. I make a note and I follow up that with that later. And then that becomes like a fleshed out perspective. And so I think there's also some value in you having to stand up and turn the mic on and just go for an hour.
- [17:27]
Chris Walker
It's a creative outlet to me. Like, it forces you to be there and be creative and try new things. Like that happened on my event like four years ago. The MQL hamster wheel came out there and it was like our leading message. People would say it all the time. It was the number one thing they started sales conversations with. It came from just like a random joke on a live event.
- [17:45]
Dave Gerhardt
Love it.
- [17:46]
Chris Walker
Yeah. Okay.
- [17:47]
Dave Gerhardt
If I were to start an agency, it would be a B2B social media agency. Because I think people don't know how to do it and don't have. Don't know how to think about it the right way. And it's still very. This is the value of it. You also get pipeline from it. That is like a nice. Also benefit is that people are going to buy when they show up in your self reported attribution. But we could talk for hours about this. All right, next topic. All right, so speaking of, you know, some people think I'm wrong, but I'm really just early. Five years is a lot of time, especially in this industry. You've said, you know, five years changes a lot. I give different advice now than I did five years ago and that's a good thing. Let's talk about what's different, 2025, what has changed? How do you summarize the things you're talking about right now as it relates to what's different? And our audience is B2B marketers. They want to be, you know, their current marketing leaders or future marketing leaders. So that's your lens.
- [18:35]
Chris Walker
Yeah, I think the big macro shift is the shift from growth at all costs into, you know, whatever you want to call it. Sustainable growth. I don't really call like calling it profitable efficient growth because many companies can also burn and be efficient. But that shift. Right. And so the first three years that I was talking about it like you could have silos of marketing and SDRs and sales and partner and divide the credit and in a simplistic four funnel model and not have any finance data coming in and just dump a couple more million and raise 18 months later. And didn't really matter if we got 30 customers or 20 or if our CAC payback was three years or two years, we just keep going. And then there was a big shift that happened in 2022, 2023, where the revenue multiples of software companies have fundamentally shifted, which requires us to be able to be a lot more efficient in how we think about our overall go to market strategy and how we integrate and combine the functions of marketing and SDRs and sales together to make one machine that delivers customers in a very efficient and sustainable and scalable way. So I think that's one big thing that the market still hasn't adjusted to. Finance is demanding that we cut cost. Right. So they're cost cutting, but they're not getting more efficient. More efficient means making every dollar work a lot harder. When you spend a dollar, instead of getting, you know, $1 back, we need to get $4 back. Right. And then if we do that, then we spend the same amount of money and we get four times as many customers. And like that's great for everybody, including shareholders, even the people that have 10,000 stock options.
- [20:02]
Dave Gerhardt
So is this related to like post? I guess. I'm a brand. I like to tweet and write on LinkedIn. I'm not a CAC metric. You know, this is your, this is.
- [20:11]
Producer Dave
Your hair, this is your hair.
- [20:13]
Dave Gerhardt
But is this like a 20? This is post. So like the bubble, you know, there was kind of 20, 20, 2021. Is it post, is it 2021 to now when this happened, like the, the, you know, flooding VC market growth at all costs. Like, is that what changed?
- [20:26]
Chris Walker
What fundamentally changed is how public investors value software companies. That used to be a lot higher and now it's a lot lower. And that compresses down into the private market and it changes how much you can spend to acquire a customer because that means it forces how much you're burning cash and how frequently you need to raise. And then at some point, like people get to the end and the founders don't even make any money, right? That happens in a lot of VC funded companies. So I think that's one major shift.
- [20:51]
Dave Gerhardt
Could you imagine, by the way, as someone who started multiple businesses now, could you imagine going through all that blood, sweat and tears and not making a dollar on.
- [20:58]
Chris Walker
And you don't take any distributions either. You know what I mean that VCs don't allow you to take. You mean, maybe you take secondary, but you don't get a distribution every quarter like you do in a company like ours. And then all of a sudden you sell your company for 50 million bucks and you have 100 million in preferred returns and you literally make nothing. So that's one big thing. Another thing that I've been obsessed with recently is just like the evolution and this, the speed of AI. I think that people are right, are. It's almost like the first version, like almost when like the Internet happened. People take the physical world and they just try and copy it into this new world with the Internet. So people are doing that with AI right now. Like how do we take our STR human and make it an AI sdr? And I think that's the first fundamental layer. But over time I think people will appreciate all of the additional capabilities that get created through this technology. So I gotta update myself. I'm excited about that.
- [21:46]
Dave Gerhardt
We're gonna come back to that. I'm updating mine. I'm literally, I'm literally live noting. I also sent a screenshot of us to Eric at Hatch and he just had exploded. So, okay, let's talk about, we're gonna talk about AI, but on this growth, like so the shift in growth at all costs, okay, so it changed how, you know, investors value companies. Yada, yada. I heard you talking about how, even how marketing measures the effectiveness of marketing. And so maybe I'm translating, I don't know if I'm translating this right or wrong, but you've talked about basically like how it impacts how we calculate things. Like CAC as an example. So like you spend a hundred thousand dollars on a campaign, you make 300 grand back and everyone's like woo. But you're like kind of raising this flag. You're like, hold on, hold on, hold on. If you actually go and unpack the actual costs inside of the company, what is the marketing headcount? What is the sales head count? What are all of the expenses? Is there something in there where you're, it's almost like you're saying like we want to measure, we need to get back to measuring these things. Like a lemonade stand. Like truly like I bought the lemons, I got the table, I got the jar. Like is that, is there a thing.
- [22:49]
Chris Walker
A topic here that you've been getting at 100%? Like if you're at the lemonade stand and your lemonade is a dollar and the sugar cost 50 cents and the cup is 30 cents and you the stand that costs this much money and all of a sudden you get the dollar for the lemonade, but it costs you $4 to make it. Like you're sitting at the lemonade stand losing money and free your time. And that's what happens in B2B SaaS companies right now. And so the, there's one best practice and it's an easy example because a lot of people do it where they take the Google Ads Manager and the Google Ads manager says, wow, we have a 3x roas on our Google Ads. So we spent, you know, a million dollars on ads and we have $3 million from some attribution model to say that we got $3 million in revenue from that. And they're like yay. And then, but you didn't include all the other advertising. So now it's down to a one and a half row as and then the head count and then the agencies and then the consultants and then the SDRs and the sales team and then all the technology and then the leadership and the sales enablement team and rev ops and it's like, what? Now all of a sudden we have a five year CAC payback and marketing celebrating in the corner.
- [23:54]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah. How does it get fixed? Like it's like everything is measured. It's just not a true statement of like where the money is going across the company. How do we fix that?
- [24:04]
Chris Walker
The guardrails placed on the investments that happen through marketing. Like marketing is the one who's responsible right now for saying whether their investments are working or not and for creating what the benchmarks are. Finance should be delivering a lot more strict and stringent guardrails around. We spend this money, this is how we measure it. This is the allowable range that we're in. Which would flag most of the investments as unacceptable at the moment. But because finance doesn't have a true understanding of go to market, they're not able to properly scrutinize them. Another big shift that happened, it's been going on for years and a lot of people are pumped about like marketing, mix modeling and multi touch attribution and things like that. Back in the day when it was single touch attribution, every dollar in revenue or every dollar that you spent could only get credited to $1 in revenue. And now with multi touch attribution, you can take $7 that you spent and give all $7 credit for the same dollar in revenue. And so it's very unclear about what is actually working or not. Maybe I can see you a little bit confused. Maybe I didn't explain that properly.
- [25:03]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, dude, I, I'm like a brand marketer. I make the T shirts and the pens. So let's explain the one dollar and the seven dollar thing again.
- [25:10]
Chris Walker
Single touch attribution, you get a dollar in revenue and you would have to say that was the Google Ad or that was the LinkedIn or that was this thing. Right, okay. Or the SDR, you had to make a choice. Right. So you had no double counting. And now all of a sudden with multi touch, you get the $1 in revenue and then each individual person, oh, the event did it. Oh, the Google Ad did it, the LinkedIn ad did it, the SDR did it, this person did it, this technology did it, and all of a sudden you have all these tools with their individual reports all taking credit for the same dollar and all of a sudden it costs seven times as much to get a customer.
- [25:37]
Dave Gerhardt
Right. The classic example of like someone you know in B2B has an amazing time at your event, then go to Google, search for your company, end up, you know, getting the ad, or the organic search query gets credit for that. When it's actually a weighted, you know, there's some percentage of all those things. So everything.
- [25:55]
Chris Walker
Yeah, I feel the need to clarify always. Like I'm not against multi touch attribution, just the way that it's used in Companies is totally flawed.
- [26:02]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, it's all right, dude. No one's going to listen to that nuance in detail. They're just going to throw. They're just going to roast you for.
- [26:06]
Chris Walker
Yeah, they'll probably just buy it.
- [26:10]
Producer Dave
Hey, it's Dave Quick interruption of this podcast to tell you about my friends at Compound Growth Marketing. They're sponsors of Exit 5. They're an amazing agency and I've worked with them not once but twice. Hired them at Privy, hired them at Drift. They're the go to growth partner to help you figure out demand generation. They've managed over 50 million in ad spend working with everyone from fast scaling mid stage startups to publicly traded companies. But what really sets them apart from the other agencies out there? They were built by someone who has actually done the job that you're trying to do. John Short, founder and CEO, was a VP of marketing in B2B SaaS. Like many of you that listen this podcast, he worked at companies like Log Me in workable and monster.com and he's built this company through that lens so they can focus on accountability, delivering results and being an extension of the marketing teams that they work with. So many B2B agencies that we see are B2C firms in B2B clothing. They focus on cost per lead, not pipeline, but CGM Compound growth marketing. They don't just run campaigns, they engineer compound growth strategies that turn your dollars into measurable roi. They know how to talk about it. They know how to help you present to the CEO, to the board to do it all. I've seen it firsthand. They take the time to understand your business, your goals and your challenges and they execute with precision. They are truly a growth partner. I can't say enough good things about John and the team at Compound Growth Marketing. And I'm pumped that they signed up to be a sponsor of Exit 5 because I think they can provide a ton of value back to you as a listener if you're looking for an agency. So if you're ready to unlock your next level of growth, head over to compound growth marketing.com and tell them you heard about them on the Exit 5 podcast. Hashtag attribution, compound growth marketing. Com.
- [28:00]
Dave Gerhardt
And so we got to this point because it was like kind of growth, all costs and, and it didn't really matter like what the true CAC was or like what the, you know, cogs inside of a company are. Like how did we get here?
- [28:13]
Chris Walker
Specifically, all that mattered was the blended cac, right? So like finance is up there Saying, okay, we have a three year CAC payback or whatever, it's all good. And then they just start dividing. Then we raised another round and it was easy and we did it at 100x revenue and we'll just divide more and we'll just spend more. And so the revenue leadership has never been forced to get take a hard look at each dollar and say, what are the things that work hard and what are the things that suck? It was just put more on each thing. And so it's no fault to a CMO or a CRO is easier because they have PRP targets and things like that. But for marketing, they've never been challenged to look at this in this way.
- [28:46]
Dave Gerhardt
What is prp? Is that like TRT per.
- [28:49]
Chris Walker
Yeah, it's like TRT per rep productivity. Like how much revenue a rep brings in.
- [28:53]
Dave Gerhardt
Sure.
- [28:53]
Chris Walker
And so people haven't been challenged around, like, how do we decide, like if we can't just spend a million on everything and we have to be very strategic around we only have this much money and this many things, we can't do everything. Yeah. How do we decide which things to do? I think most people struggle with that concept because they've never been forced to. At least CMOs that have been in SaaS for the past 10 years haven't been asked to by the board or the executive team. Yeah, for the most part.
- [29:16]
Dave Gerhardt
So ideally this would be like finance has strong guard. Like finance gives the marketing team strong guardrails and the marketing team executes within those guardrails.
- [29:27]
Chris Walker
I think it would be really beneficial to manager and director level people to say this is my target. Right. And usually they're like four or five times above the target and it's going to force them to be creative and innovative and try new things and do things. And I think that a lot of people would appreciate that. And maybe they do have targets. They're just not measured or thought through in the right way. So that's sort of what we're trying to do at Pesetta, which I some people think over here trying to. On marketing. I'm actually trying to empower marketing because when you do this and you deliver the right ROI and all of your investments, it becomes super easy to say to do the podcast, to do organic social media. Right. Because it costs not a lot of money and it drives a ton of results.
- [30:06]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that actually, but you said something now like, so you can do things that are creative and innovative. And I'm over here on my Own podcast. And I've gotten reviews of this podcast before. Someone's like, this is. I can't believe this guy was a CMO somewhere. He doesn't know anything. Well, you know what I'm good at, Chris? I'm good at brand, I'm good at product marketing, I'm good at positioning. I'm really good at creativity and innovation and, you know, getting people's attention. Isn't that what you want out of marketing? Like, we've gone so far in the other way. It's like, wait, no, do you want me being the finance? Like, do you want me spending all. Do you want the cmo? Do you want the head of your marketing organization to spend all their time figuring out, like the blend of spend across, you know, what is the head count of this and what is this? No, you want me coming up with good ideas to help grow the business and move us forward. And so real. And the reality is, if I could have a partner like this in my company or externally, that's going to allow me to fly, you want me to be in that position. It's like you want your engineers to actually write code, not spend all days in meetings talking about justifying the expense. And so I think it's actually like a one plus one equals three type of scenario. Like, let me be creative, let me be. Let me be the M in the cmo. Instead of like, half of my job is spent in finance, which that's not where you want me. You want to put me in a position where I can win.
- [31:20]
Chris Walker
Yeah. And just like the way that it's structured right now, like, prevents creativity, prevents doing new things. Like, it actually forces you to just do these small little things, Google Ads, performance marketing events that you're able to measure that people can't actually justify the roi, but they've accepted in their mind that we should. We're a cyber security company, we should go to 15 events, we should spend 250k. And that's just what cybersecurity companies do in marketing. And so it's like, right?
- [31:46]
Dave Gerhardt
And all this stuff is even more important now than ever because of what you talked about, because of AI commoditizing. Like AI is basically commoditizing, like shitty, shitty marketing.
- [31:56]
Chris Walker
Right?
- [31:56]
Dave Gerhardt
And so I actually think of it as an advantage. It's like all the things that are just like table stakes, that's just going to get done by AI. And so that allows, like the actual creative and strategic marketers to be able to think of, how do we win? AI is kind of like leveling the playing field for everybody else. And so how do we get to. How are we going to go and win in this space?
- [32:14]
Chris Walker
And I just think that the, the difference between, like, looking at analytics and structuring your rev ops and community, like processing the finance data and figuring out what the ROI is, it's just such a different responsibility and skill set than, you know, managing the magic quadrant at Gartner and developing the podcast and doing the product marketing and influencing the product roadmap and doing all the customer research and building the copy for your website. It's just incredibly different responsibilities and skill sets that we just put into one thing and say, okay, this is marketing. I think the same problem's happening in RevOps, to be honest. I think that there's certain functions that just have too many competing objectives and talents and skill sets that it almost becomes fundamentally impossible for one person to manage.
- [32:58]
Dave Gerhardt
I was going to ask you about this. So talk about the marketing thing, because I think this is. We had thought about the team when I was at Drift like this. David, the CEO was like, there's clearly two pods. I think at the time we had split them up into like brand and demand. You wrote something the other day that I saw which is like, there's kind of two movements in marketing and you know, correct me on the. What you actually called it, but it was like there's kind of one bucket that's like product marketing, content thought leadership, you know, brand building. And then the other one is more of like the traditional demand gen. What would be like the ideal way to split up marketing in that world?
- [33:29]
Chris Walker
Yeah, yeah. I really don't think that we should call it brand and demand. I think it's very confusing for people. The terms are poorly defined and people have their own thoughts. So I've come up my own. You have. There's a part that is strategy. There's a big part of marketing that is strategy, which is analyst relations, PR comms, product positioning, competitive intelligence, customer research. The that if you get it right, can 5x the growth rate right. You're not going to get that from advertising. You're not going to get that for certain things. It's like if we shift the positioning and launch this new feature and like, are able to message differently in this competitive situation, like our win rates could double. Like, there's massive value in that type of stuff that actually has benefits across the entire customer life cycle. It's not just about pipeline creation. It helps you win more deals and increase win rate. The speed and the Velocity, the renewal rates, the expansion rates. And so we can't just measure that part on pipeline creation and the skill set and the timeline in which you think in that is a much longer term timeline. I think thought leadership belongs in there too. I think that using a podcast as a way to get insights can, can belong in there as well.
- [34:35]
Producer Dave
All right, that's good.
- [34:36]
Dave Gerhardt
I'm down. I'll lose brand and demand. So strategy and what's the other strategy?
- [34:39]
Chris Walker
Right.
- [34:40]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah.
- [34:40]
Chris Walker
And like a great cmo, that's what they bring huge value to the business in like you're 50 million ARR. That's where you really do a lot of stuff. And then you have, I mean this.
- [34:48]
Dave Gerhardt
Is What I've spent 90% of my working relationship with the CEO talking about is those things. Like all we did was we had a WhatsApp and we talked basically 24 hours a day about strategic like positioning this play that play, showing up at this event and not doing the trade show thing. Like those things. We never talked about the individual like ad unit. So that's strategy. What would you call the other bucket?
- [35:09]
Chris Walker
And then you have pipeline creation.
- [35:11]
Dave Gerhardt
Okay, that works.
- [35:12]
Chris Walker
Which I've broken into three different stages. You have demand creation. We need to get our target accounts to be interested in wanting to buy our stuff. Then you have supply chain. How do we supply our prospecting engine? With high intent, high quality, qualified people and accounts that we're ready for prospecting. And then the prospecting engine, which a lot of times falls into sales, which I think is a poor, poor thing. We want to be able to have all three of those things. Which pipeline ends when our sales team has a qualified meeting, not when our SDR books a meeting before they qualify do band. And so bringing those functions together and then, and then marketing ops needs to extend all the way through. Like marketing ops usually ends at, you know, they filled out a demo request. It needs to go all the way through to our sales team has a qualified opportunity in pipe that we're going to win greater than 25%. And so like looking at it that way, that right now that split responsibility between marketing and SDRs just allows you to play the blame game. And so 30% of companies is my estimate that have compressed those functions together, SDRs and marketing and that becomes advertise like advertising. It's interesting to think that you know, you have SDRS and prospecting in there. The optimization of your website. A lot of events, like events could be driven for pipeline or it could be driven for strategy. So like it's interesting to think whether, like events should be spread out across the whole customer life cycle. And multiple people can have events. Why do all the event budget go into marketing just because they administer the event? I think we should be challenging that. Ops and data and analytics and process optimization and alignment between the functions, all those things should fit fall into pipeline gen. And that's a lot more math, quant, it's more like science. Right. And then the strategy becomes more like art. And I think that breaking those two things into different functions allows you to measure them differently and allows you to say, okay, these things over here, we're going to think about them this way. Like, we should be doing AR not just for pipeline creation, but also on retention. When we made that new investment, did our NRR go up like, and think more strategically across the whole customer life cycle. And then when you have the other side on pipeline, Genesis is very clear. Like, we're running a Google Ad. What is the goal is to get somebody into a meeting with our sales team. We spent this much money. Did we get the meeting? Did it convert? Did it work? Like, the ROI on that side becomes a lot more cut and dry too. And when we put it into marketing, it becomes hard.
- [37:28]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, that's a good way. I do like that because I also think you want to have collaboration between those two teams. Right? You want to have great product marketing. Clear differentiation. A strong strategy is only going to improve the conversion of those channels anyway. And so you got to, they got to be able to work together. Where I've seen it, it just becomes siloed. And like you have demand gen, which is just like, okay, all of marketing. Like at three companies that I've been at, the demand gen person, the demand gen leader has always been the most stressed out person at the company because we just put everything in that bucket and they got to do everything and they own the entire revenue number. And then, you know, product marketing and content, we just get to dance around and like, hey, let me know if you need anything.
- [38:08]
Chris Walker
Yeah. I mean, the best time when I was, I was running Pipeline Jen for a medical device company, it was the most amazing thing ever. Like, most of the marketing in quotes team was product marketing, clinical data, customer research. We had new features coming out, new clinical data coming out, new announcements, new positioning and new PR news releases. And all that stuff was just all podcast interviews was just all the fodder for our advertising. Like, okay, give me that new feature came out. Let me tell our whole customer base about it. Right? And so you have like the Creation and then you have the distribution side of it.
- [38:41]
Dave Gerhardt
It's funny, we've. It's been two years of doing Exit 5 and everything's been organic. And this year we're trying to grow more. We have bigger goals. Imagine this. We started spending on advertising. Guess what's working really well now? Advertising. Because we have an amazing brand and organic base and we know which content is going to work and like those things work really well together.
- [38:59]
Chris Walker
I know people are so in the either or game and like at the beginning maybe, but when you're at whatever 5 million somewhere in that range, it becomes a both game. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [39:08]
Dave Gerhardt
Okay. So that's good. That's helpful context. I hope people will hear you pass that. I don't think if you listen to that. I don't any. I don't think anybody would say that you're dunking on CMOs. I don't know a CMO out there who wouldn't want to have more alignment from the rest of the company from a finance side, have a clearer team structure to win. Anything else in the like, what's changed in the GTM side of things that's relevant for this audience or like current beliefs and opinions you have about where GTM is going?
- [39:39]
Chris Walker
I mean I think one that is blindly obvious to me but I think people argue about we need a lot smaller marketing teams at most especially more developed companies.
- [39:47]
Dave Gerhardt
Like yeah, I saw this in your predictions. So smaller internal W2 fixed cost marketing teams.
- [39:52]
Chris Walker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like a lot of my customers have a 50 to 100 person marketing team and then I have some customers that have a four person marketing team and the four person marketing team somehow puts out a 100 times better stuff a hundred times faster. It's because they're not sitting in meetings debating like why do we need four teams and five approval levels to send one email. And when you have big teams and responsibilities, it's like that's been the most.
- [40:13]
Dave Gerhardt
Fun part about having this business. Exit 5. We're a content and media company and we have five people and the level of things that we're able to put out because I think we know what we're doing and there's no nonsense like because there's nobody like arguing with the VP of Sales about like you know, nurture and MQLs and this. Like we can I say it all the time, like we're putting out work at the level of a 50 to 100 person marketing team because they're smaller. And then this is where the AI piece Gets really interesting is like it's not about writing shitty content, it's about like things. It just is. Like I think as somebody who's, I've always thought of myself as a full stack marketer. Meaning like I never want to wait for somebody else. Like I got the idea, I'm going to go into HubSpot, I can get the landing page done myself. Like what's possible now? It's nuts. I don't know if you're like a big Claude user or anything. Like.
- [40:59]
Chris Walker
Yeah, and Versal.
- [41:00]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, dude, I can make a landing. I could literally go make a landing page myself, right? Or at least make a mock up so I can have the idea, I can have the copy, I can have the landing page, I can then hand that off to somebody. So what's possible with like shrinking the, the cycles? Like I've been at companies where it's like, yeah, what's up with that thing? It's stuck with the creative team for three weeks. And so there is a lot of bloat in marketing. And I don't think the AI stuff is about like writing, you know, shitty blog post copy. It's like making me giving me a superpower as a marketer where I can now do the job. I can now do four or five things that I don't, I don't need a developer, I don't need a designer. That's what's possible, that's what's really exciting. So smaller internal teams, okay, it makes.
- [41:39]
Chris Walker
The speed much faster. But if you're in customer insights, your competitive intelligence, your, your strategy suck, then no amount of volume that's created through AI is going to or speed is going to make anything better. And so just really like if AI is an accelerant, just like many things, advertising is accelerant. Like it's an accelerant to something that's already working, that you've already thought through a great strategy, such as a point that I want to make. When you do have smaller headcount, it allows you to be a lot more flexible, right? Like think about E Comm, right? Like there's big buying seasons like Black Friday and Christmas and then there's very low buying seasons for certain products and the factory that they have is able to flex up and down. It can make a million things for Black Friday and then it can make a hundred thousand later. And because they're able to buy less materials and things like that, like there's no flexibility when you have so much fixed cost headcount. So lower headcount cost creates more flexibility. Oh, demand is down in Q2. Let's lower our advertising. Right? Like we can just cut it down. We can keep our CAC down. We like, we know people aren't buying. We're gonna change our strategy for that period of time. Most people are just like oh, we just run a hundred thousand dollars a month every single month no matter what it is. So I think it gets hard because.
- [42:50]
Dave Gerhardt
It'S like that's someone's job, that's someone's team. And so like what are they gonna do and how are they going to feel valued at work if we don't have things for them to do? It's crazy cycle. Are there, are there common. Oh man, people are going to get mad. Are there common? So of the bloat that you see, are there common like pockets of bloat? Are there any patterns among the companies where there are, you know, parts of the marketing org that are over invested that you would probably not need today?
- [43:17]
Chris Walker
I mean the, the places where I see companies reducing is probably a good way to look at it are partner SDRs sadly like content organic and then the program dollars that go to a. Like basically all program dollars are just all tides. Boats sink and rise the boats or whatever the saying is. So like events and advertising and programs just coming down naturally because they need a lower cac. But those are the things that I'm seeing companies cut. And then yeah, if you like have a smaller team then all of a sudden you have 80 of your budget to spend on programs instead of 40. Right. And that gives you double the amount of things that, that are creative. You can hire an expert like Dave to come in and give you, you know, give you a great strategy or something like that. Like where you don't have that budget because it's all tied up in W2 headcount right now. There's a couple other ones that I had that I think companies will just be a lot smarter around bringing external experts in. Like it's not about, it's just like in development right now, product development, that is in software engineering. It's not about how fast or how much volume you do anymore. It's about do you build the right thing. And like so and the right thing typically someone from the outside might be able to help you narrow in on what the right thing is a lot better. And maybe that'd be a better investment of $5,000 than having someone, the fifth person that's going to do your organic social channel.
- [44:40]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, I think you, you mentioned the Strategy piece, but as a good one. I talked to a CMO recently and she was like, yeah, one of the most valuable, you know, things is we I have this person who's amazing at positioning and messaging and I've basically hired her at every company and she comes in for three to six months. And we it's not a full time role and you know, to have 50, 100, 200 grand in the budget to be able to do that and not have to like sacrifice anything else because the the team is smaller. I think that makes a lot of sense. I have your list of trends. So smaller internal W2 fixed cost marketing teams, senior leaders getting back into execution. I think that's a result of having a smaller marketing team. You can't really just, if you have a smaller team, can't really just be in meetings all day I guess. Right.
- [45:19]
Chris Walker
And just like I feel like you need to be doing it to properly direct your team. You need to be on the event to hear what the customer says, see in the chat to know that that message worked. And I feel like, and I've been this myself like in 2022 I was this myself as a CEO I got so separated from our customer that it's hard to drive the strategy of your team or your company.
- [45:38]
Dave Gerhardt
What else, what else is on this list? Oh, follow up on the CMOs. So one of your thing that this is a thing that should happen but probably won't. CMOs need to own the prospecting machine. Is this also like, do you include like SDR in here too? Which is like the follow up like would in, in your ideal world would they own bdr? Because those terms can mean different things. But BDR is like prospecting. SDR is like actually following up on leads and booking the meeting with the marketing org own all the way to like getting a meeting booked and setting a meeting.
- [46:11]
Chris Walker
I mean I wouldn't call it marketing anymore but yes, in this org the pipeline creation org would be all those things together and it makes it way easier to understand what is the efficiency of all these investments blended and then how do we break it down more simply? And the split between BDR and SDR is simply whether you're using a third party data source like zoom info versus a first party data source like a lit like your marketing automation, your website and event. And so it's just to me those semantics are dumb for lack of a better way to say it. But yes, like at 100 million ARR, the thing that will hold back a CMO that's responsible for pipeline creation as one of their core KPIs is the prospecting machine. Whether you call it BDRs or SDRs, you use AI to do it or you have like super high deals and your AES do it, it doesn't matter. Like to actually hit your pipeline KPI, typically you need a qualified account that's talked to an ae. And so there's this layer between they fill out a form on your website to when they get there that you need to understand and have control over and influence and be able to move the investments and change how it's allocated and drive the strategy and create more cross functional alignment. And I watch a lot of companies specifically in the 100 to 500 million dollar range that have pipeline problems and I it's basically the split of that function where SDRs fall under sales because they want to have a training ground for AES which by the way usually doesn't work anyway that that split becomes the reason they don't hit their pipeline target or one reason, let's put it that way.
- [47:37]
Dave Gerhardt
Good job. You earned your appearance fee on this podcast.
- [47:40]
Chris Walker
I'll get a gold star. You could send it.
- [47:41]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, I'll send you a gold star. I'll use Eric, our intermediary to send you a gold star from me. Sign. This is more of a personal question, but I want to end on this because I think it is also about marketing and about leadership. How do you find time to think? Right. You've created a lot of really strong and insightful opinions. You have, you know, ideas on strategy for those of us out here that want to be future marketing leaders, future entrepreneurs, future CEOs. Like, do you intentionally. Are you reading all the time? Are you listening to podcasts? Are you going on long walks? Are you going to Tulum and taking mushrooms? I don't know what you know, whatever it is, but how do you find the time? Because I even feel like myself, I need to stay sharp, but I also need time to like write and think and to formulate opinions. And when I'm just, I get sucked into like, I spend my whole week on calls, reading emails in Slack, listen to podcasts, information, information. I'm like, I didn't take any time to like step away and put pen to paper and think and write out my philosophy. And so whether you're an entrepreneur or you're somebody listening to this podcast that's trying to think about the marketing strategy for their company, how does Chris Walker do it?
- [48:42]
Chris Walker
Yeah, when I discovered it was probably 2021, 2022, there's a theory between the manager schedule and the maker schedule. I don't know if you're familiar with this concept where managers just want to stack in 30 minute increments. How many meetings can I have and how much can I get done? From a productivity standpoint, that's how they get stuff done. Then you need the makers, the creators, where if you have a meeting at 9, then another meeting at 12, you don't get enough open flow to be able to actually create anything. And then you're thinking about the next meeting, what you need to do to prepare, and things like that. So I've shifted my schedule quite a bit where Wednesdays and Fridays are totally open. I take no meetings or calls during that time. If I want to call someone and brainstorm and do that, I usually do it through an audio call. But that's my choice to do it. I'm not obligated to have any type of meetings.
- [49:26]
Dave Gerhardt
This is how far we've come. He has to say audio call, is it?
- [49:29]
Chris Walker
Yeah, yeah. And then I stack all my internal meetings on Monday. I do all my podcast recording on Tuesday. I do most of my sales calls on Thursday. And then I spread out the rest of the sales calls throughout the Monday and Tuesday afternoon. Then I have two open days. That's like, like one thing that's been really working for me.
- [49:45]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, that's important because it's the context switching. It's like jumping from this to then, like now I need to go in deep work and like be in thought.
- [49:51]
Chris Walker
Mode is very hard, basically impossible. At least for me. I take a, at least a three, four day vacation. I leave my space and I go somewhere else. Not to do work or to do like I. Sometimes I do writing and thinking. I usually it's off. Sometimes I go by myself. Sometimes I go with one of my sister. Last, last time I did this. But then usually and it happened to me, I just got back yesterday from Tulum. It's funny that you mentioned that. And the minute that I get back, it's not even like the next day. The minute I get back to my space, I have all of these amazing ideas flowing out of me. It's like I get a hundred days in productivity in a couple of hours. Like I solve a problem that I've been like confused or lacking clarity for months in five minutes. And so I think like. And so now I intentionally, like, I consider it an investment at this point. Right. The. I used to think about the. It's an expense. Right. This vacation is going to cost $5,000. It cost me money. But then I get a million dollars in business value when I get back from it. So I see it as an investment now. And I think doing that at whatever frequency is, you know, financially feasible and right for you. To me, I found that six weeks is the right amount. So those have been two sort of tricks. And then I think the, the podcast recording, I do that for three hours a week. And I find that to be a very creative outlet. And I get most of the value because I re listen to the podcast. I find that like watching film as an athlete, like relistening to my thoughts, saying, oh, I could have explained that better. Or oh, there's like something right there that really hit. I can feel that. Or I would use this word differently or like, this is how we should position this part of the product or whatever comes up. I find that to be a really interesting way for thinking as well. Especially when you do it on a podcast like this or live. Like, I can't right now. Say, hey, timeout, Dave. Like, time out. Let me like write some things down and think about what I want to say. It becomes very organic. It's like. So I find those three things have been really helpful for my thinking.
- [51:38]
Dave Gerhardt
Oh, that's great, man. I love the idea of listening back. I think it feels uncomfortable, but I find myself. I'm like, because you just kind of just zone out and you're just talking and you're like, oh, that, that was really good.
- [51:48]
Chris Walker
Yeah, you almost like, especially when I do my own talks and it's like 20 or 30 minutes uninterrupted and unprompted. Like, yeah, you almost do just like black out and talk. And some people don't do it, so they don't understand it. But like, I'm not consciously remembering the things that I said.
- [52:02]
Dave Gerhardt
Right? But you're like, you're trying to. It is the creative exercise. It's like free, you know, it's like if you could rap, but you're freestyling. It's just coming out of you. And then you're listening back and like, that was really good. And then you cemented. And now you kind of have these, these takes, right? Like, I'm sure that, you know, we're talking about your trends for B2B marketing. It's not like you didn't sit down to go right on LinkedIn and think, what do I think about? You didn't just like on the spot come up with like smaller internal W2 fixed cost marketing teams that has come up over and over and over, and then you're able to label it, name it, and appeal becomes an idea. I also think just the schedule stuff. Let's remember that marketing should be a creative job. And. And there needs to be some of that in there. For those of you who are marketers that listen.
- [52:41]
Chris Walker
Yeah, there's a lot of, you know, it doesn't matter what the size, but like many of them, I. I find a pattern around a hundred million AR. There's many creative CMOs that don't get to do marketing anymore, don't get to be creative. Literally sit in meetings all day and have to deal with, you know, politics and fires and someone's not happy with some other person in the department. And that sounds like prison to me, kind of. And I think that some. I've. I've watched cmos from that position move to a, you know, series a company with three people and get to be creative again and reinvigorate their love for the practice and the. The profession.
- [53:17]
Dave Gerhardt
All right, Chris, great job, man. Great catching up with you. We'll do more of this. We'll do more of this. Eric, our guy here, Eric at Hat. So DM me if you think this is a good idea or a bad idea. He says that Chris and I should start a joint podcast together and just make the best show out there. I don't know if I'm ready emotionally and physically to commit to that, but if enough of you DM me about it, we could possibly float it up the. The chain. Chris Walker, always good to see you. I'm gonna take you up on that. We will be seen rucking together at some point in 2025, 2026.
- [53:49]
Chris Walker
Yep.
- [53:49]
Dave Gerhardt
Put it down.
- [53:50]
Chris Walker
Yeah, definitely going to be in Vermont. I haven't been there in a while. You're right by Burlington, right?
- [53:53]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah.
- [53:54]
Chris Walker
Yeah, can't wait. Yeah, that'll be great.
- [53:56]
Dave Gerhardt
As a member of our community told me on the way up here, he posted on LinkedIn, said, I'm off to the B2B marketing mecca of the United States, Burlington, Vermont.
- [54:05]
Chris Walker
Yeah. And then I know when I post this, I'm going to get 500 DMS. It's a. You and Dave have to do a live event. You have to do this live. So maybe that'll be back. It's a way to get started without committing to the whole podcast. I mean, maybe that'll be a good one.
- [54:16]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, we'll just, you know, flirt a little bit and see where it goes. Right. So, Chris, good to see you, my friend.
- [54:21]
Chris Walker
Thanks, Dave. Always good to see you, man. See you.
- [54:26]
Producer Dave
Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what?
- [54:30]
Dave Gerhardt
I'm not even going to ask you.
- [54:32]
Producer Dave
To subscribe and leave a review because.
- [54:34]
Dave Gerhardt
I don't really care about that.
- [54:35]
Producer Dave
I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private.
- [54:38]
Dave Gerhardt
Community for B2B marketers at exit 5.
- [54:41]
Producer Dave
And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review.
- [54:44]
Dave Gerhardt
Go check it out right now on.
- [54:46]
Producer Dave
Our website, exit5.com our mission at Exit.
- [54:49]
Dave Gerhardt
5 is to help you grow your.
- [54:50]
Producer Dave
Career in B2B marketing.
- [54:52]
Dave Gerhardt
And there's no better place to do that than with us at exit 5.
- [54:55]
Producer Dave
There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day asking questions about things like marketing, planning ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers.
- [55:07]
Dave Gerhardt
Building your own network of marketers who.
- [55:09]
Producer Dave
Are doing the same thing you are.
- [55:10]
Dave Gerhardt
So you can have a peer group.
- [55:11]
Producer Dave
Or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days, so you can go and check it out risk free and then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year.
- [55:25]
Dave Gerhardt
Go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community. Foreign.
- [55:38]
Producer Dave
Today's episode is brought to you by Ztle. Of all the 2025 marketing predictions out there right now, one that I truly believe in is that events are back in person.
- [55:47]
Dave Gerhardt
Events.
- [55:48]
Producer Dave
They're back in a huge way. We felt that this year, niche events, conferences, meetups, networking, all type of events. They're back and we have a big year of events planned at Exit 5. We did a couple this year and we're going to double down this year and I'm excited that we're going to be working with Zuttle. That's what we use for all of our virtual and in person events, including our flagship conference drive which we're bringing back to Vermont in September 2025. With Zettle, we've been able to get smarter about how we do our events. We can drive registrations, manage invites, and their platform handles all the communication, reminders, analytics and tracking. We need to be smarter about our event strategy. You can even track things like Pipeline and Close One Deal source by events using Salesforce, their Salesforce integration, which makes it super easy for you as an event marketer to tie what you're doing back to revenue without having to go get help from OPS to run reports for you.
- [56:39]
Dave Gerhardt
Zettle is great because what also sets.
- [56:41]
Producer Dave
Them apart beyond the product is that their team has been awesome. They've been insanely good at supporting us this year. They go above and beyond for any questions or requests that we have using their platform. And I'm excited that this year we're going to be using Zettle again for our this is not a typo. 26 virtual events, four in person events. That's 30 total events that we're doing this year with Exit 5.
- [57:01]
Chris Walker
Wow.
- [57:02]
Producer Dave
That's amazing. So we got 26 virtual and in four in person events this year. 2025. And if events are a big part of your marketing strategy like they are ours here at exit 5, go check out Zuttle. They're the top event platform for B2B event marketers to use in 2025. Head over to zuttle.com exit5 that's z u-d d l.com exit5 to learn more.