Category Creation Playbook: How to Be Irreplaceable in B2B Marketing (with Josh Lowman)

Summary

Category Creation Playbook: How to Be Irreplaceable in B2B Marketing

Episode: Category Creation Playbook: How to Be Irreplaceable in B2B Marketing (with Josh Lowman)
Host: Dave Gerhardt
Guest: Josh Lowman, Founder of Goldfront
Release Date: June 5, 2025

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1. Introduction to Josh Lowman and Goldfront

Dave Gerhardt welcomes Josh Lowman, the founder of Goldfront, a category design studio based in San Francisco. Josh shares his journey, highlighting how Goldfront transitioned from a creative studio to specializing in category design around 2020 after working with prominent tech companies like Stripe and Uber.

Notable Quote:
[02:02] Josh Lowman: "It's such a fun thing."

2. Understanding Category Creation in B2B Marketing

Josh delves into the concept of category creation, emphasizing its role in making a company or product irreplaceable. He differentiates between actual category creation in the customer's mind versus mere naming by companies.

Notable Quote:
[12:44] Dave Gerhardt: "So a lot of people talk about vitamin versus painkiller, but you like this concept of irreplaceable. How to be irreplaceable?"

Key Points:

• Irreplaceability: Striving to make a product or company irreplaceable goes beyond being a solution; it becomes a fundamental need for customers.
• Customer Perception: The true category leader is determined by the customer's perception, not just by how companies label their categories.

3. Strategies for Achieving Category Leadership

Josh outlines four primary strategies to become number one in a category:

1. Create a New Category: Innovate to define a completely new space.
2. Transform an Existing Category: Redefine or shift an existing category to position as a leader.
3. Niche Down: Focus on a specific segment within a larger category.
4. Solo: Differentiate so uniquely that the product stands alone as its own category.

Notable Quote:
[16:00] Josh Lowman: "The most important part is that the product is categorically different. And you get in the mind of the customer, it tips into that realm of like, oh, I can't really put this into a bucket."

Examples Discussed:

• Drift vs. Intercom: Drift attempted to create a new category called conversational marketing but remained seen as part of the live chat category by customers.
• Clay: Successfully became a category of one by fundamentally building a product that doesn’t fit neatly into existing categories.

4. The Critical Role of Unified Strategy

Josh emphasizes the necessity of a unified strategy that aligns all departments—product, marketing, customer service—towards making the product irreplaceable.

Notable Quote:
[34:29] Josh Lowman: "What would I do if I was CEO of this company and how do I need to get the mind of the customer to change in order for us to get to where we want to go?"

Key Insights:

• CMOs as Sherpas: Chief Marketing Officers should work closely with CEOs to craft and guide a unified strategic narrative.
• Product and Marketing Alignment: Ensuring that product development and marketing strategies are in sync is crucial for category leadership.

5. Differentiation Beyond Naming

Josh argues that creating a distinct category isn’t solely about naming but about genuinely offering something unique that stands out in the customer's mind.

Notable Quote:
[20:16] Josh Lowman: "The most important part is that the product is categorically different. And you get in the mind of the customer, it tips into that realm of like, oh, I can't really put this into a bucket."

Examples Discussed:

• Notion: Acts as a category of one by offering a unique blend of project management, notes, and collaboration tools that don't fit traditional categories.
• Clay: Positioned itself uniquely by integrating AI and APIs in a way that redefines standard spreadsheet functionalities.

6. Personal Development and Mental Health

In the latter part of the episode, Josh shares his personal journey with mental health, emphasizing the importance of therapy, meditation, and physical fitness in maintaining well-being.

Notable Quotes:
[41:21] Josh Lowman: "The happiest I ever am is right after I lift weights."
[43:15] Dave Gerhardt: "I'm not good at marketing, I'm not good at spreadsheets... but I can give you this, right? The vibes, the intuition."

Key Points:

• Therapy and Meditation: Josh credits daily therapy and regular meditation retreats for his mental resilience and personal growth.
• Physical Fitness: Weightlifting not only improves physical health but also contributes significantly to mental clarity and emotional stability.
• Balancing Professional and Personal Life: Dave and Josh discuss the challenges and benefits of integrating personal development practices into a demanding professional life.

7. Building an Authentic Community

Dave reflects on Exit Five’s journey in building a strong, authentic community that resonates with its members beyond just professional interactions.

Notable Quote:
[23:52] Josh Lowman: "If you want to continue down the road of becoming more irreplaceable, what I would do is as much as you can, double down on that."

Key Insights:

• Authentic Brand DNA: Exit Five’s unique voice, event styles, and community interactions differentiate it from other marketing communities.
• Strategic Narrative: Crafting a clear strategic narrative that aligns with the company’s ethos helps in sustaining a strong community identity.

8. Conclusion and Key Takeaways

The episode concludes with actionable advice for marketers:

• Think Like a CEO: Approach marketing strategies with the mindset of a CEO to ensure alignment and effectiveness.
• Embrace Strategy: A strong, unified strategy is fundamental to achieving differentiation and category leadership.
• Balance Heart and Logic: Integrate creative intuition with strategic planning to build authentic and impactful marketing efforts.
• Invest in Personal Well-being: Personal development and mental health are critical for sustained professional success and leadership.

Final Thoughts:
Dave and Josh reiterate the importance of creating value beyond mere tactics. Building a lasting brand and community requires deep strategic thinking, authentic engagement, and continuous personal growth.

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Listeners interested in category creation and enhancing their B2B marketing strategies will find this episode invaluable. Josh Lowman's insights offer a blueprint for making a tangible impact in the crowded B2B landscape by focusing on true differentiation and building an irreplaceable brand.

Transcript

[Dave Gerhardt]

Email, in my humble opinion, is still the greatest marketing channel of all time. It's the only way you can truly own your audience today. But when it comes to building those emails, well, if you've ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know just how painful that can be. I won't name names, but templates get too rigid. Editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever when it shouldn't. That's why we love knack here at exit 5. Knack is a no code email platform that makes it easy to create on brand high performance forming emails without the bottlenecks. If you're frustrated by clunky email builders, you need nac. If you're tired of hoping the email you sent looks good across all devices, just test it in NAC first. And if you're a big team that's making it hard to collaborate and get approvals on your email, you definitely need nac. The best part, everything takes a fraction of the time. You can see Knack in [e-mail] exit5. That's knock.com exit5. Or just let them know you heard about Knack from exit5. That's us. You're listening to B2B Marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt. Hey, hey, hey. On this episode of B2B Marketing with me, Dave Garrett. My guest is Josh Lowman. He's the founder of goldfront. They're a category design studio. We talked about this hot topic of category creation in B2B marketers. Should you create a category or not? Why to do it? Common mistakes, lessons, learnings. Plus we got into a whole topic at the end about personal life, personal development, mental health. Josh just got back from a month long meditation retreat. We talk about that plus everything you want to know about creating a category. Here's my conversation with Josh Lowman.

[Josh Lowman]

It's so nice to see you.

[Dave Gerhardt]

It's good to see you too, man.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So what the heck is your backstory? So you, you run a company called goldfront?

[Josh Lowman]

That's right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

That's correct.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. I own a company called goldfront.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Okay.

[Josh Lowman]

Goldfront is a category design studio in San Francisco.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And how long have you been doing that?

[Josh Lowman]

It'll be 12 years in December.

[Dave Gerhardt]

12 years. So that was 2013. Not many people were talking about category creation at that time.

[Josh Lowman]

We weren't talking about category creation at that time much. We came out as a creative studio.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So it's a creative studio.

[Josh Lowman]

That was our category when we started. We came out as a creative studio and we Happened to have a lot of experience and connections in kind of the tech world. So out of the gate, we started doing stuff for, like, Stripe and Uber and companies like that. So we kind of like, built up this reputation for working for tech companies.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Josh Lowman]

And it wasn't until we wrote a category POV for Qualtrics, then we did one for Newsela, and we kept doing a number of these category strategy engagements. Wasn't until then, until about 2020, that we repositioned as a category design studio.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And did you come up, like, as a creative director designer? You just gave me that vibe. So I don't.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I came out of school in the 90s, and I was like, I'm never getting a job. I'm going to be an artist. I'm going to write and direct movies. And then I procrastinated and I never got anything done. And then I was, like, terrified that I was going to be a waiter for the rest of my life. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And so I went through the yellow pages to find jobs, and I got a job as a digital designer, even though I didn't know what I was doing. And immediately I started designing websites. So I came up as a designer, moved to San Francisco because Wired magazine told me it was the center of the digital revolution. So I moved to San Francisco in 96, part of the whole dot com boom and bust, and did a bunch of really, like, interesting digital projects at that time. And at a certain point I was like, my heart tells me that I'm a writer. Like, I was like, maybe I can't be good enough as a designer. Maybe I'm actually a writer. So I switched over entirely to being a writer on, like, the traditional side of advertising. And I came up through that whole thing of writing TV spots and stuff like that. And then I just kind of like merged all these worlds of design, digital, traditional. And I was starting to shoot videos, and at a certain point I was like, God, I'm like a generalist to a fault, but I need, like, one flag to fly over all this stuff that I'm doing. And I was like, okay, I need to start a company. And that was goldfront.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Why'd you call it goldfront?

[Josh Lowman]

I wrote names for, like, a year, and at a certain point I just took the words gold front, you know, the grills.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I was wondering if that was like, goldfront seems like a rapper. Like, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Lowman]

And I just took the S off and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. It's like a nice. Instead of a cold front, it's a gold front. And it's about, like, gold records and success. And there's an agency called Funny Garbage at the time. And I was like, I want a name like that. Something that sounds kind of like, nonsense.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Josh Lowman]

And I shared it with, like, a good friend. He was like, that's it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So now it's like this crazy game of, like, you have to have a good idea for a name, and then you go to GoDaddy and you're like, God damn it. There's no domains available.

[Josh Lowman]

Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And so it's so great to have a phrase with, like, simple wording. Like, when I named Exit 5, Exit 5 is the only good name I've ever come up with. Everything else I've named, literally. I hosted a podcast interviewing founders in Boston in 2014. It was called Tech in Boston. The first iteration of Exit 5 was called DGMG, which is Dave Gerhardt Marketing Group.

[Josh Lowman]

I remember. I was there.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. And then Exit 5 was like. I was talking to Harry Dry, who does marketing examples dot com. He's amazing. And he was like, you can name things literal or lateral. So literal would be like, Tech in Boston.

[Josh Lowman]

Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Or lateral is basically like what you did with Goldfront or Exit 5, which is basically you kind of come up with a concept, and then you revisionist history, tell your story into that. And so it's like, right. You know, I didn't wake up in the middle of night and, like, had this vision for Exit 5. I was trying to, like, think of a good name for it. And then you come up with a story that you can tell. And even, like, working with founders in the past, like, in consulting and advising, I'm like, how can we kind of retell the story of your company so we can, like, lean into the name and give it more meaning? Even if that's not, like, the idea that you had from the beginning.

[Josh Lowman]

It's such a fun thing.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Okay, so. All right, that's great. Super helpful context. I'm sure there's a separate podcast that we would need to be, like, drinking a scotch or something and hearing all of your stories from, you know, the late 90s, early 2000s, and San Francisco. But the reason that I wanted to have you on this podcast is to talk about this topic of category creation, because I think if you were to make a list of maybe three to five of the hottest topics over the last couple years in the world of the people who listen to this podcast, I Would say that category creation is one of them and it's also the most commonly contested or there's the most objection around this. Yeah, yeah, there's some reasons for that that I'm not going to. I don't need to get into on this pod, but.

[Josh Lowman]

Well, why not?

[Dave Gerhardt]

No, like there's just more like personalities and personal. Not about the concept of category creation, but I think that there's a take that like the only way to win is if you create a category. And I don't believe in that.

[Josh Lowman]

Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You know, like the sandwich shop down the street from me, she runs a great place and they make great sandwiches and everyone in my town goes there. And she didn't once think about creating a category.

[Josh Lowman]

Man, it's crazy. I think of the sandwich shop down the road from me in the exact same context. Like when I'm thinking about a category, I'm like, well, they didn't create a category. They're great.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So do you agree with my take or do you have a way to frame that?

[Josh Lowman]

I agree totally with it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah. Now that said though, if you are building something large, ambitious, like many of the founders you work with, many of the people listen in this space, they work for those companies. If you're a founder that is out to build a world changing, life changing, billion dollar revenue, big exit type of company, then yes, I would argue that most of the time to have one of those exits, you need to have created a category. The third kind of thing of this though is it is much harder today than ever, I think, at least to create a category because so many names have been taken. Something I want to get into you and so then I'll shut up in a second. But if I try to just like block the term category creation and I just think about like from a marketing fundamentals and principle standpoint, like whether we call it category creation, whether we call it positioning, I'm sure you have a different definition for that. Like, is having a strong point of view about your company and the market the most important ingredient in marketing? I would say yes, if I could pick one thing. And I don't do consulting anymore, but when I was and I still talk to founders now just to take calls every now and then, the number one area that I think most companies are lacking is a differentiator, you know.

[Josh Lowman]

Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And so anyway, all of those things are like, yeah, I'd love to have you on and, and riff on this topic and I hope people, you know, hang up at the end of this episode and you know, finish Your run or whatever you're doing, and you're like, all right, I feel better about categories. So that's not a question, but I'm just curious to hear your reaction to any of those things I said.

[Josh Lowman]

I think that's all spot on. I just think almost like, I am thinking almost the same thing, and I want to go deep into some of this stuff so I can tell everybody how I think of it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Okay, so I actually have up this. I have this category blueprint that you guys put out a while ago, and I saved it because I think it's very useful, and maybe we can start here.

[Josh Lowman]

And so can I see it?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, this is how I am. I was on a call with somebody, and they're like, yeah, I got your book founder brand up. And they're like, so on page 33, you said this. And I'm like, number one is like, why does most category creation fail? Is that a good place to start? Or how about who should, when, and why should you create a category?

[Josh Lowman]

Okay, wait, I got a good place to start. Okay, let me take the mic. Okay.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Please.

[Josh Lowman]

All right, so, man, strategy is. It's pretty inaccessible. Like, it's kind of like. When I was in college, I thought about philosophy. I was like, oh, philosophy is, like, something that smart people know about. But, like, I probably can't figure that out. But then I had a roommate, Mike Ehrman Trout, who, like, wore all black and listened to the Cure and smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and all he did was do philosophy all day long, right? Read and write philosophy. And one day he told me, like, well, philosophy is really just trying to answer the question, what is a good life? And as soon as I heard that, I was like, oh, God, that's great. I can understand philosophy now. And in a way, his definition of philosophy is almost like my definition of strategy. The question is, what is a good company? Or you could say, what is a good professional life? If we start with just a professional life, like, what is a good professional life? I would define it as, you're happy and you're irreplaceable. Like, that's the best that you could get, right? So Dave says at drift, you're like, hey, I want $5,000 more a year. And they just go, well, you're kind of replaceable, so we'll just get rid of you and put somebody else in your place, right? So that would be a big problem.

[Dave Gerhardt]

No, what happened was I asked for more. I asked for more money, and they said yes. And I was like, damn it. I should have asked for, like, way more than that.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah, exactly right. And I think you've done a really good job at getting into that world where you're the senses that you're irreplaceable. It's the same thing for companies. Companies are just a group of people. So the goal of a company should be the people are happy enough and you have a product that's irreplaceable. And every company has their product on a spectrum of how replaceable versus irreplaceable are we. And you should try to get as far towards irreplaceable as possible. So a commodity like corn or eggs is totally replaceable. And hopefully these big tech startups that are trying to create a $100 billion category are making something that's really irreplaceable or they're going to have a problem.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So a lot of people talk about vitamin versus painkiller, but you like this concept of irreplaceable. How to be irreplaceable?

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah, vitamin versus painkiller, it's fine, but it's not that material. You know, if I'm a writer or a designer or a marketer and I'm like, trying to work on something, I can look at every single thing that we do and go, does this get us closer to the sense that our product is irreplaceable or further away from it?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Nice. I love this, man. This is what I love. I like when we can simplify things into, okay, so the goal is to how do we be.

[Josh Lowman]

You have a community that some of them are just. People are just kind of starting out in marketing. Right. I don't want any of those people to think, like, strategy is something that just like, smart people do. And, like, it's too intellectual. And it shouldn't be that at all. Just like, hey, how can we make our customer believe that this product is irreplaceable? And that has to do with the mind of the customer. So it's really important that we frame all of that as, like, what needs to happen in the mind of the customer in order for that to be true.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Strategy is everything. The more I've gone out of my career, it's like, I used to just kind of roll my eyes at that. It's just like a, you know, Harvard Business Review type of article. But it really is. And show me a company with a. For example, this concept of, like, how do you be irreplaceable? This can't just happen in the marketing room. It's gotta be like, Product engineering, roadmap. All of these things have to be aligned around this.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. I mean, once you start to think about how do we get the customer in their mind to think that we were irreplaceable, it gets rid of all of these divisions around departments in your company because you're like, well, the product has to do this and the marketing has to do this, and the customer service has to do this. And as long as you're thinking about the mind of the customer and that you want them to think it's irreplaceable, you no longer think in terms of silos. So that's just my way of setting the scene to say that, like, category does not really matter unless it's just in the context of, hey, it's a really good way to become irreplaceable. So the best way that I know of to become irreplaceable on an ongoing basis is to be number one in the category. There's, like, a very special thing that happens in the mind of the customer when they're interested in a category and you are number one. They will gravitate towards you just because you're considered number one.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And that's a timeless marketing principle. Right. I think 22 immutable laws of marketing by reason. Trout is number one, is the law of leadership. Right. Yeah. I don't want to take you off wherever you're going, but this is where. Okay, got it. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. This is where it breaks for me. Maybe I'm not good enough at this exercise, and I'm sure you guys are. Have a process, but then it's like, okay, but what is the ca. We are the AI generated slide deck. Gamma. Right. Gamma's a. You know, it's AI slide generation tool. So is their mission to be the number one AI generated slide generation tool? Like, I've worked with founders before, you know, because you can't just come out and be like, CRM is our category anymore.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You know what I'm getting at?

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, actually, before we talk about this, I just want to say one more thing about category. So if you want to become number one in a category, there's essentially four ways that you can do that. You could create a new category. You could transform an existing category like Tesla did with the electric car, or like iPhone did with a smartphone. You could transform the category so that you become number one. You could niche down, like, you know, LinkedIn is a niche of A social network. Or you could solo. And solo is kind of like really special where you could kind of like try to do every single little thing a little bit differently. And even if you're in a rational category that everybody says like, oh, it's kind of in this category, everybody knows that you're completely different. So an example of that would be notion. Like everything notion does is like different. Even if you're like, oh, it's a project management tool or whatever it is. So in that case, notion is a category of one. Okay, so now I forgot what your question was.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You were talking about the four ways to create a category.

[Josh Lowman]

Uh huh, yeah. And then I was talking about. Oh, right, you were talking about CRM.

[Dave Gerhardt]

No, but I think, yeah, basically like no one that I talk to will dispute that point. Right. Like the way to win is to be number one in a category.

[Josh Lowman]

Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

But it's the like number one in a category. And so then like, what is the category that we are going after? That is where I see the most questions. How do we come up with that?

[Josh Lowman]

So let me tease this out. So in the way that I see it, there's a difference between sort of the rational category that people call it and the actual category, which is the category as it is in people's minds. So to understand. And sometimes they're the same thing, like CRM maybe. But to like share this idea, I could use an example. Two companies. One is Drift. So what was a conversation? What was the category, you guys?

[Dave Gerhardt]

I don't know. They've deleted everything. Website's gone. Everything's gone. RIP Drift, a sales loft company. Breaks my soul when I see it. It's conversational marketing.

[Josh Lowman]

Conversational marketing. Okay. And so in that scenario, this is all subjective. So this is my take on it, right?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Sure.

[Josh Lowman]

In that scenario. Okay. Drift's this hot company. They're doing amazing. They created this category, but I think in the customer's mind they're like. Well, it's like Intercom.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Absolutely.

[Josh Lowman]

Yep. Yeah. So the category for the customer is whatever they think of Intercom and Drift. It's like that's the actual category for the customer.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yes.

[Josh Lowman]

Just because you named a category doesn't mean that actually was the leader of a category. The customer has to think you're categorically different from Intercom in order for them to create a category in their minds.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah. And this was actually one of the big challenges in doing this was no matter what we or Intercom did, those things all bucketed at the time was under live chat. It was a live chat tool. And there was live chat for in app. There was live chat for support. We tried to be the first to come out and say, we're the only ones doing this for marketing today. You might call it chatbots, but yes, you're spot on.

[Josh Lowman]

Okay? And so that is essentially, that is the problem with the way B2B marketing, the B2B marketing world thinks of category is that the B2B marketing world generally thinks of, like, what you guys did with drift as category creation, but you didn't actually create a category in the mind of the customer. You were number two in the live chat category. You tried to create a category, but it didn't work out. Right. Or here's another example, and I'm sorry to bring that up, because I love everything you do, but that didn't work out. But here's another example. Clay. I don't think clay considers themselves creating a category, but they are. If you use clay, you know, there is nothing like clay. So in your mind, it's like, that is a category. That is a totally new thing. And you're like, oh, what is the category? You're making it. You're putting it together in your mind. Well, it's kind of like a spreadsheet, but it's got AI and it has all these APIs, all these other services, and you create the category whether there's a name for it or not. And so the reason why they've succeeded is because they actually have created a category. They just didn't name it. And so people just go, oh, it's that they kind of, in their mind, they're all like, oh, Clay, it's like a new category.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Do they need to name it to make it a thing? Or is it like you've won if you've.

[Josh Lowman]

It would help. But it's not the most important part. The most important part is that the product is categorically different. And you get in the mind of the customer, it tips into that realm of like, oh, I can't really put this into a bucket. It's not really like Apollo. It's not really like, I can't put it in a bucket anywhere.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Your notion example makes sense too there, because it's like you don't just think of notion. You know, when you think of notion, you don't think workplace productivity.

[Josh Lowman]

Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You're like, damn, planning a wedding in notion. Right. Notion is my to do list. And then it's also kind of replace Google Docs at my company.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. So in your Mind, it just goes into the notion category and like, that's a very good place to be.

[Dave Gerhardt]

The clay example, though, that is so, you know, marketing didn't like put a spin on this to create a category. It is like they fundamentally built a new thing that can be number one in a new category.

[Josh Lowman]

That's right. Like, so much of it is, you know, hey, what are you doing with the product? But then marketing. They came out with this thing where we're going to like promote people's clay recipes. I think that's been a big piece of their marketing is they find other people that are using clay and they help them promote their clay recipes on LinkedIn or whatever. And that's maybe a way that they're marketing, supporting the idea. There's nothing like it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I asked ChatGPT, I said, what would Don Draper say about category creation in B2B marketing? He'd probably light a cigarette, take a long drag and say, you're not creating a category, you're creating a feeling. The category is just the box that they put it in after they believe. That's pretty good.

[Josh Lowman]

That's good. Yeah. So I think that's essentially like, if you see all the, like, flame wars or whatever on LinkedIn about category creation, I think what people are really saying, the people that don't like category creation, basically saying, like, we don't like fake category creation. You took something that's in an existing category, you called it a new category, and then you're like, ta da, we're a new category, but it actually isn't.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Oh, yeah, they hate that. And then there's always this, like, look at marketers renaming marketing things again and again and again and again. That's why any of the pushback on the conversational marketing thing was like, yeah, they just name it something. There's inbound marketing and there's outbound marketing and there's conversational marketing.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah, I mean, at Drift, you had me, I was like, oh my God, this company, they're going to tear it up. This new category is really exciting. So, yeah, you, you kind of did it there for a while.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Not good enough. I'm still working. So.

[Josh Lowman]

So let's talk about what category is exit 5? So.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Oh, good question.

[Josh Lowman]

This is what I think. Okay. Being a super fan, you guys call yourselves a B2B marketing community. Right. But I don't think that really says it in the mind of the customer. And I'm a member of this community. I think what happens in the mind of your customer is it's The Dave Gerhardt community, your brand is so strong. You have a very unique way of doing everything. So I think people are going, oh, this is the Dave Gerhart community. And that's a category of one. You don't need to call it that. It just is obviously that. So if you want to continue down the road of becoming more irreplaceable, what I would do is as much as you can, double down on that. And what that means is, obviously, you don't want to have to be, like, in the community chatting 24 hours a day, because that would drive you crazy. But, like, can you create features and events that have, like, the DNA of dg?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Josh Lowman]

So, like, if I'm in the circle community, you go, oh, we have this new feature. It's like this. And I go, oh, that's such a. That's so, like, in line with, like, how DG does things. That's strategically how you build the category.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I would agree with you. But I. I also think, like, in the evolution of the company, I think, and I want to riff on this. I'm not saying that you're right or wrong, but I think that, yes, that is what the differentiator has been today, which is like, I created this thing. I'm the tastemaker of this thing. If you believe in what I've done and you believe in how I think, then you are more likely to start this to come in. And if you look at analysis of our members, most of them come from LinkedIn and they reference either listening to this podcast or following me on LinkedIn. However, since deciding to create a real business around this, beyond a company of one, right. I would like Exit 5 to elevate beyond Dave Gerhardt. And maybe there's a founder's story, and I'm the person who started the company and made it the way it is. But we had an event in Boston a couple weeks ago, Josh, and people were, like, lining up to, like, shake hands with Danielle, because they know her and she writes a newsletter and they see her and they know Dan and they know Matt. And I feel like, especially in the last six months to a year, the Exit 5 brand is carrying more weight than just, like, the Dave Show. And also, I'm intentionally trying to make a company that's not the Dave Show. I don't want to be Gary Vee. I don't want to build the, like, you know, consulting funnel business. I want Exit 5 to stand on its own as a professional community for B2B marketers. And maybe the initial, you know, the DNA, though, is started by me. And so therefore, that community is going to be fundamentally different than a community that was started by the folks at, say, six Sense or Chris Walker or whoever else. Right. And I think that shows in the way that I write, the way that I talk, my personality. Can that work? You know, can it be like, this is the founder, but now the founder has multiple restaurants and you might go there because, you know, there's like the Wolfgang Puck branded, you know, pans and stuff.

[Josh Lowman]

Right, right, right. Well, it sounds like you don't want to go the Wolfgang Puck route.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Correct, yeah, correct. And this is an intentional back to strategy, though. This is an intentional strategy. I think there are different plays that I would be running if I wanted it to be like Dave Gerhardt's private community. And I would be doing more courses and presenting and public speaking. And I'm very consciously trying to make that shift. And it's like, this is a company and I run the company behind the scenes with people.

[Josh Lowman]

Okay, yeah, cool. You know, this brings up a really interesting thing about strategy, is there's kind of a thing in the product marketing world where it's like, hey, just tell people who it's for and what it is. Like, that should be the strategy. Just be super clear. And the problem with that is that's just like a moment in time that's like, this is what the product is right now. This is who it's for and what it does. A more holistic strategy will go back a step and go, what's the ethos behind the product? And if you can figure out what that ethos is, then you can give it to the product team and they can go make features in the future. They know how to make features in the future. If you define your strategy as like, what's the product right now, who's it for and what does it do? You can't give that to a product team and have them go, oh, I know what to build. And so in the, like, a strategic narrative that we would write, it always includes the ethos. And I think what we're talking about is the DG ness is like the ethos. Like, if you wanted to go to the Wolfgang Puck route, where your brand is everywhere and your face is everywhere, your ethos is. Let me check what my heart says and I'll just give you an answer. Right? It's just like, what does my intuition say? Like, but if you want to not go where, like, your face is everywhere and it's just all about you, then you need to, like, write down, like, just a few things about what's the ethos of Exit 5? How do we do things differently than any other marketing community? You need to get that written down so that Danielle and the rest of your team be like, oh, I know what to go build for this. How does that land with you? Does that make sense?

[Dave Gerhardt]

This episode is brought to you by webflow. There's so much buzz right now around AI search, optimizing your site for it and making your website actually perform in LLMs. They're calling it AI search, they're calling it LLM search, they're calling it Geo. Anyway, it's SEO for these AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude. But let's be real. Does anyone know what they're actually doing yet? What are the best teams doing? I've seen some people chatter about this. It's one of the hottest topics in marketing right now. And webflow's hosting an event that is going to help you answer some of those questions. It's called webflow Conf. It's free, it's online, and it's happening in September, September 17th through 18th. You'll hear from teams like Lattice, ABM and Whiteboard on how they're turning their websites into actual growth engines. Faster testing, smarter personalization, how they're using AI, better web strategy, less time waiting on developers. Plus, webflow's dropping some new product updates that are built specifically for marketers, creators and teams who care about web performance. You can go check it out right [e-mail] Exit 5. That's webflow.com Exit 5. Yeah, it's exactly where we're at right now. As we're scaling, we're trying to think about how do we do that. I think we're still trading off of that brand and reputation today. I don't think about differentiation a lot, actually, at all because I think we have a pretty big social media following an email list. I think we're good at promoting what we're doing and so we have a lot of inbound demand. But as we grow in scale, yeah, I want to have a clearer point of view on, like, why should you join Exit 5? How is this different? Yeah, I'm sure at some point we will be disrupted or attempted to, you know, someone's going to spin off a. You could just build a AI marketing community. It's like, well, why am I going to join that and exit 5? And so, yeah, it's definitely.

[Josh Lowman]

But I think you guys, you do think about differentiation. You're just doing it as like, okay, how do I speak in social? And that becomes your differentiation?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, absolutely. I don't have it written down, but I think it's like, it's the way we write. It's the who we choose to speak at our events. How are things looking feel? I saw this post the other day. Everybody's going nuts about right now, this topic of unconferences. And they're like, exit Fives Drive was an unconference. Spring was an unconference. Da da da Chili Palooza was an unconference. And like, dude, we didn't have a meeting last year. And we're like, we're going to do an unconference in Burlington, Vermont. That was just our way.

[Josh Lowman]

Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You know, and so. You're exactly right. Yeah. They're just the way that we write, the way that we talk, the way that we do things, that is the differentiator. But, yes, I don't have a way of like, perfectly naming that.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. But if, you know, you could just write down a few things. It's like, hey, we make B2B marketing accessible, not like, fancy or intellectual.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yes.

[Josh Lowman]

You know, just a few things. Like, voice is everything. We tried different ways. Like, we include everybody. Like, you don't want everything to be a bunch of platitudes, but, like, just a few things to say. Like, yeah, what's the difference between the, like, what you're saying, the way you teach B2B marketing, and the way everybody else was doing it before? I think that's kind of your ethos. Yes.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah. I'm going to write this down. I need to make it a vision, Doc. But one of the things that you made me think of is something that I believe in is I believe in this stuff. Like, not necessarily. I don't think the key to great marketing is knowing all the SaaS metrics and all of the acronyms and all of the jargon and nonsense. I like the focus of our community being like, the marketing fundamentals, the principles. You know, we might not ever have a workshop on, like, how to understand cact, ltv, blah, blah, blah. Because we're not trying to teach you how to be CFOs, we're trying to teach you how to be creative marketers. And this is the stuff that I love. And so that's kind of, you know, embedded in the DNA of the company.

[Josh Lowman]

Yep. Makes sense. If you don't have one. A strategic narrative that just tells the story of a big change that's happened in the world. Your customer who's left out in the cold in this big change? The price they pay for that, being left out in the cold. The new way that you guys are building a community that nobody else has that solves that problem. A little bit about what is included in that. Like, what do you mean by it's a new kind of community? A little bit about the ethos of it. It could be really short, but if you had that, that'd be a killer thing to be able to give to everybody in your company.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I agree. Okay, I'm on it. What else you can keep driving?

[Josh Lowman]

Well, I think mostly I want to clear up this thing about category creation, because that's been hanging out there on LinkedIn a lot, like, hey, category creation sucks. And it's. There's been this, like, trend of category creation that started in about maybe 2017 when Qualtrics came out, and it sort of, like, started going downhill at the beginning of 2022 where it's like, ah, this sucks. This doesn't work anymore. So it's that whole, like, trend of category creation has gone down for the last couple years, but still becoming number one in a category. And the fact that the tech world proliferates categories like there's no tomorrow. And the fact that categories are so important to customers means that it will always, now and forever be central to how you define what your company is doing.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Do you think things went the other way and this stopped working because of this obsession over, like, naming a category? And everything has to be the naming the category of X. And we go to G2 and there's no category on G2. So now we're the this is a bad example, but it's like CRM already existed category. Well, we're the mobile first CRM or something like that.

[Josh Lowman]

Is it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Is it that?

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah, that's a big part of it. Especially in the, like, rev ops space or marketing ops space, like those kind of SaaS tools. I mean, the name space is just so crowded and everybody's like, okay, well, this is already taken, so we'll take this and let's get analysts to adopt this. It's like, analysts probably are not going to adopt your category name. And not every company is, like, making a new category. And if you're just trying to figure out how are we going to name our category something different than one of our competitors, and you don't have a case for how the product is actually categorically different than that competitor, then it just falls into that, like, trendy category creation.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So what advice would you give to marketers listening to this because we kind of have this. We have this fundamental truth that everybody wants to win. Okay? To win. You want to be number one in a category.

[Josh Lowman]

This is what I would do if I was on a marketing. Well, first of all, it's different if you're the CMO or you work for the cmo. You're the cmo. You want to buddy up to the CEO as much as you possibly can and sell through the idea that you need a unified strategy, a single strategy that guides everything that the company does. And then once if you can get sell through on that or you verify that that's what the CEO wants to do before you take the job, then you can then become the Sherpa for the definition of that story. And you do it with product leaders and all the other leaders of the company in the room with the CEO.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yep, that's the dream scenario. That's what I had at Drift. We had a visionary founders, product leaders who wanted to build this roadmap, who believed in basically building a roadmap in alignment with our positioning product leaders, who would have new stuff to ship and couldn't wait to run down to my desk and grab me and pull me in a meeting. I don't think that's the norm at most companies. I think a lot of times it's like combative product leader. The product strategy doesn't actually match the marketing strategy and the vision. Maybe the CEO doesn't have a strong vision.

[Josh Lowman]

Right? Yeah, yeah. I mean there's some degree of, you got to kind of play the cards you're dealt. Honestly, what I would do and what I've done for my whole career, and this is maybe unreasonable, but if I was in a marketing department, I would just think like, what would I do if I was CEO of this company and how do I need to get the mind of the customer to change in order for us to get to where we want to go? And I would write strategy as if I was the CEO of the company. And then it's like, well, if this doesn't fit into like the culture here, because you told me these 12 things that really don't matter at all and I didn't write those 12 things into the strategy, then you will find like that's not a good place for you. And hopefully if you, at least for me in my career and I've been freelance more, not as much a full time employee, but it's really served me to just try to do things as if I'm the CEO of the company. And then some places I don't fit in because I'm not like, toeing the company line about all the 12 different things that I was supposed to say. And then other places are like, this guy is great. This is exactly who we need. And you kind of end up in those places where there's a need for that.

[Dave Gerhardt]

That's a great line, by the way, for people listening. I marked it so we can have a clip of it. But category creation or not, this mindset of that Josh just mentioned about, like, what would I do if I was in the marketing department? I would think what I would do as a CEO of the company. And don't bother with, you know, how you change the finance or and how you do HR differently. Just as it relates to, like, how do we sell more of this thing that we're making? And this is where I always say this on this podcast. But it's like, everything in marketing works. Direct mail works, TikTok works, YouTube works, SEO works, events work. You can't possibly do it. All right? What separates the great marketing leaders from everybody else is the great marketing leaders can have a strong point of view about how the company should be doing marketing. And then the tactics get chosen based on that strategy. It's almost always like this to your point in the beginning about strategy. Take your average post in the Exit 5 community, right? About someone who's having a hard time at work or something's not working. Like, if you kind of run the five whys on that, you kind of almost end up with like, okay, we gotta have a strategy. Something in the company's strategy is busted.

[Josh Lowman]

Right? Yeah. I mean, as much as I can, I just try to follow my heart. If I was a cmo, that's what I'd be doing. It's like, what is the thing that I'm most excited about if I. And. And how would I get that down on paper if I was the CEO?

[Dave Gerhardt]

That's what the kids call vibe marketing now. You know that?

[Josh Lowman]

Man, I'm so glad this word vibe got so big. I mean, it's probably like jump the shark now, but in the world of communications, especially in B2B marketing, we are so over our skis about everything that's like, logical and left brain cheat codes for performance marketing and all this, like, rational crapola. And the real magic is over on the right brain side of things, where it's like the feeling and the magic and the vibe of things. And that word vibe is so great because it basically says, like, there's something that's beyond logic, that's really powerful here. And I think all of the great marketing organizations get to that place where there's a kind of magic in the communications that you couldn't just put in a spreadsheet.

[Dave Gerhardt]

This is it, man. This is like I'm not good at marketing, I'm not good at spreadsheets, I'm not good at the metrics. But put me in a room and I will give you this, right? The vibes, the intuition. And I think especially in a world where a lot of marketing is going to be, you know, automated and done with AI and there's not a lot of soul in it. Like I was lucky to work for people at Drift like David and Elias, who are the founders there, who understood that a big part of the job in marketing is like taste making, right? And so there's two sandwich shops in town that same ingredients, same everything. One of them just makes a better sandwich because the woman is just better. She just knows how to do it better, right? And it's like that is what got me into this. Oh, I didn't. Well, I got into this job cause I was broke and I needed to get a job and I turned out to be good at it. But that's the fun part, right? That's like your roots as a creative, right? We need to bring more of this into marketing today. And it's even. Do you think this sole piece of this, is this even more important because of what's happening with AI?

[Josh Lowman]

Absolutely. There's a guy, a neuroscientist that wrote a book about left brain versus right brain. And what he says is that the left brain sees the world as a machine, kind of like a spreadsheet. Bunch of connected parts with cause and effect and mechanical. But it's an ultimately dead way to see the world. Whereas the right brain sees the world alive. It's energetic, it's holistic, it's vibey, it's, you know, magical, it's ineffable, you can't really quite put words to it. And what he says is our culture is just like continuing to get more and more left brain as we go. And if you look on LinkedIn and like all these cheat codes for cold email success and things like that, it just gets more and more left brained. And I think that for people like you, and maybe for me, the more vibey you are, the more you can kind of follow your heart and know that communications has to have some like soul to it, you're just going to get more and more valuable as we go.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Okay, what else should I have asked you or should we have talked about in the last five minutes before we wrap?

[Josh Lowman]

Oh, man. Someday I want to talk with you on the podcast about mental health, but I don't think we have time for that. We could also talk about weightlifting.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Let's spend 10 minutes there. I just got great feedback. I did this podcast with Emma Stratton, and we ended up talking a lot about personal stuff. And so let's go. We got 10 minutes left. Let's do a couple minutes on mental health, and let's do a couple minutes on weightlifting.

[Josh Lowman]

Okay. I mean, if I'm gonna talk about mental health, I would go back to when I was 30. I had a nervous breakdown, and I was trying to do way too much in my career and trying to make everybody happy, and I just completely lost it. And I went to therapy, and I started going to psychoanalysis. So I went to therapy five days a week for 19 years. And then just at the end of that, I started doing meditation retreats. I started doing, like, three or four weeks of meditation retreat every year for the last 10 years. And I also experienced a lot of a series of traumas when I was a kid. And so that's really what I was doing is I was trying to, like, work through that. And so, like, a lot of the posts I do on LinkedIn, I'm always trying to make sure that it's sort of, like, on the positive side from a mental health perspective. Like, I used to go to LinkedIn and see how successful everybody else was, and I'd, like, beat myself up over it, you know?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Josh Lowman]

And so I, like, I'm always trying to. When I post on LinkedIn, I'm always trying to say, like, hey, I'm. I'm not special. You can do this too. You know, I'm trying to always raise other people up, and I feel like you do that as well.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, it's a slippery slope. Social media is crazy because it's. You can basically dunk on anybody for anything at any time. I'll be like, the sky is blue. And someone's like, well, easy for you to say as a white male in tech. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait. What does this have to do with anything? Oh, my goodness.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And then my day is just like, you know, I'm talking my wife. I'm like, am I a good person? Like, my whole day is. I do take personally what people say.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

But, yeah, there is a whole world of people who just use LinkedIn to just dunk on other marketers. And, you know, I've done that in the past. We're just kind of criticize other people's marketing strategy as a way to teach. But I just, I don't want that. I don't want that energy around me. There's a whole world of people who get. People get really upset about, like, how people do LinkedIn. I'm like, I don't care. Don't click on their things then and you won't see it, like, curate your own feed. I like to use it as it's a creative outlet for me to write about my business and talk about the things that I'm doing.

[Josh Lowman]

You know, we're creating a category design studio. It's important when you're creating a category that you have a contrarian point of view. Right. And so definitely I'll come out against a certain maybe left brain or boring way of doing strategy. And I won't call out people specifically, but I can be negative about that stuff in my post. But then I always make sure that, like, all of my comments are positive. Even if I disagree with somebody, I'll like, call out, like, oh, I really like the post. I love your content or whatever. But I see it differently. I see it like this.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Josh Lowman]

And I think if you're on there and you're doing founder brand as a play, that it's great to be a little bit contrarian in the post, but in the comments, just be a sweetheart.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, I like to be silly in the comments. That's my move.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I like to just write. I'm usually responding to comments like, later in the day and I'll just say funny things or try to be funny. And I think injecting your humor and personality into it is also very disarming. But I'm glad you brought up the topic of mental health. I definitely. Everybody wants to talk about that. I think there's a great awakening, at least in the world of work, where people in tech and wherever, any job, really, the world is just more open to understanding that, like, if you're not good in your body and your mind, then you can't be great. You got to take care of yourself first. And I can be very hard on myself. And like, the man, like, my life is so easy. Like, I didn't even go to war. I'm on zoom calls all day writing on LinkedIn, like, how soft am I? This is such an easy life. And I try to not do that as much because I'm like, no, you know what? I'm here for a reason. I have a purpose. Like, I want to uplift people around me. I want to build something meaningful. Like, I can give back to my community because of the time that I'm able to get for my job. And I love hearing about people's journeys with mental health and personal development. I'm a huge believer in that. And if you invest in yourself, you can write your own rules. Like, I don't roll my eyes at any of that personal development stuff. It's the most important topic there is to me.

[Josh Lowman]

Absolutely. And I feel that, you know, you have a large audience on LinkedIn. I have a growing audience on LinkedIn, and I feel like we have a kind of ethical responsibility to not put ourselves out as, like, we're up here. Because there's a lot of people that are using social media to just, like, beat themselves up.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Josh Lowman]

And I think the way that you do it is great because you never make it seem like, hey, I'm up here, and you're. You're down there.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You know, I don't. But, you know, it's hard, though. There are people who don't know me, but they project that onto who they think that I am because I am a tech bro and I'm bald. You know, Like. Like, dude, the people. Most of the people that I meet in an event, in person, they're always like, oh, you're much more likable in person than I thought you would be.

[Josh Lowman]

Backhanded compliment.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I know. And I'm like, is that. Wait, but is that on me or is that on you? Is that, like, you reading my messages? But I even joke with my team. Right. Like in Slack, for example, like, the way that I write and communicate in Slack, if you don't have the context of, like, how I talk, my intonation, my sense of humor, it's very difficult. So, like, you know, we gotta be hanging out in person. Even if you have a remote company, you gotta be, like, cementing who somebody is in person, and then you can read their messages with that context now.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. Okay, wait and wait. So you did.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Do you say, 19 years of daily therapy.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. Five days a week. Psychoanalysis.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Psychoanalysis, yeah. Good for you, man. That is a. It's just like, any habit to put that in. 19 years of consistency is probably quite literally, like, rewiring your brain. I'm sure there's still things you have.

[Josh Lowman]

To work on, but, like, yeah, I mean, the greatest gift is, like, I have two daughters, 11 and 13. And just. I just have a great relationship with them. And I never would have. That never would have been possible without really doing some work on myself.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Do you meditate every day?

[Josh Lowman]

I do, yep.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Is there a better time of day to do that?

[Josh Lowman]

First thing in the morning is the best time. I make some coffee I actually like. I'll bring my coffee with me. So I'll sit there, I'll have a cup of coffee, I'll meditate, take a little sip. After a couple minutes, meditate.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You have to get better at it. I feel like I would like to meditate first thing in the morning, but I. Maybe it's a false belief. I feel like I would just go right back to sleep. Is it something you have to work through?

[Josh Lowman]

Have you tried that?

[Dave Gerhardt]

No. Obviously, I'm giving advice on something I've never done before. Classic.

[Josh Lowman]

I would try it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I mean, I like it in the middle of the day as a reset. But I do feel like if I started my day slower in that capacity, it would be beneficial. I can 100 see the benefits of doing that.

[Josh Lowman]

Well, the coffee helps me, but.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, but Huberman says you can't have coffee first thing. You need to get outside view, sunlight, sauna, cold exposure. Then you can have your coffee.

[Josh Lowman]

So my whole morning routine, the tech bros coming out. Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So first thing in the morning, meditate. Okay. And then you mentioned weightlifting. Sorry, I literally, quite literally, in the last four minutes, I just got my son's cold on this podcast. So mark it down, let it be known. I can't pass it through you. It's just a nose. I'm just a tech bro working through some, you know, working through some illnesses. I'll be good. What's your relationship with weightlifting?

[Josh Lowman]

Okay, so I'm six four. I've been skinny my whole life. Then I started putting on some weight. So tall, skinny, and fat. It's, like, not a good look. And I turned 50, and I was like, I don't know, 235 pounds and not much muscle. And I was just like, okay, something's gotta change. So I got into weightlifting, and, man, it's been the best thing ever. I didn't realize that weightlifting is so much better for you than, like, cardio. I didn't understand that. How it changes your metabolism and how it burns calories, even on your day off because your body's trying to, like, build muscle.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yep.

[Josh Lowman]

But I just love it. I don't really feel like I'm a weightlifting guy necessarily. Like, it feels weird to even say, like, oh, yeah, I'M really into weightlifting, but I think it's great. I'm not like pushing like really heavy weight, but I'd say like on squats my high would be like 240 for 4.

[Dave Gerhardt]

That's pretty good for a 64 guy. You got a long way to go then that getting that squat.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah, yeah. So where are you?

[Dave Gerhardt]

There's definitely a trend of more people being willing to lift weights. And I think the narrative used to be cardio, cardio, cardio. And now it's kind of like, no, you gotta lift weights.

[Josh Lowman]

Yep.

[Dave Gerhardt]

It's like the number one. I think it was like the number one. Cause of the reason people get injured when they get older is because they fall and they break something because you don't have enough bone density. I try to push everybody in my life to, to lift and it doesn't take much. It doesn't take much. But we don't have the time. We got all this other stuff people can't live. I get it. Excuses.

[Josh Lowman]

Oh man. I mean we're talking about mental health. The happiest I ever am is right after I lift weights.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Of course.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

That's why I have to work out in the morning. I have to move my day around it because I literally am a better person to work with and I'm more creative. If I like were to wake up and get right to my slack messages and email, I'm going to be an asshole. It's just a fact. I'm going to reply short. I'm going to say things I didn't mean. If I can just wait on that stuff for a couple hours and I get my workout in first. I have my coffee, I have breakfast. Then when I approach my work, it is a completely different person.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. It's crazy how when you feel good with yourself, you're just like so much kinder, better person to everybody else.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah. And look, I became a big. I've worked out my whole life but I think when I really my tune on it changed was after having kids. I didn't have the kids. I was there for it.

[Josh Lowman]

But.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And I just was like, Look, I got 20 minutes a day, I'm gonna do push ups. I got a pull up bar in my house. I couldn't go to the gym anymore and it was Covid. I got a pull up bar in my house. I got a kettlebell. I just did push ups, push ups, pull ups and squats and kettlebell stuff every day for like two or three years. And that was good enough.

[Josh Lowman]

Oh yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I have a lot of dad, friends, any parent really. And a lot of people feel like they don't have the time to work out. You know what I'll do? My kid will be in the bath and he wants me to hang out with him while he takes a bath. I will knock out my push ups and pull ups and squats right there with him in the bathroom. 12 minutes.

[Josh Lowman]

That's great. That's the way to do it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Better than nothing, right?

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. I think I told you on email. I was just at a month long meditation retreat. So a month of silent meditation. I did it a year ago too, and I lost like £12 going to that retreat. And probably like half or almost half of that was muscle. And my lifts went way down. So this year I brought these like heavy weights in my car. I had my car in the parking lot and every day I took a break from meditating. I walked down to the car, opened the trunk and did like 15, 20 minutes of weightlifting.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Just like straight up monk mode. Just like working out in the parking lot.

[Josh Lowman]

I had like, you know, the squats, it's like hard to have that much weight. So I had two 50 pound dumbbells. I would just like lift up on my shoulders and I would squat that.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Josh Lowman]

You know, it wasn't quite enough weight, but like it was enough to keep my squat only went down ten pounds from the time that I left to the time that I got back.

[Dave Gerhardt]

It's enough if you get the reps, if you try to go, if you're like, I'm going to try to do 25 reps right now and then it's plenty.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So you were away for a whole month?

[Josh Lowman]

Yes.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Meditating?

[Josh Lowman]

Yes.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Silent for a month?

[Josh Lowman]

Yes. You meet with a teacher every couple of days and you have like a 15 minute meeting, but otherwise you're silent.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And what does that do to you? What do you feel after you come back with just this like unbelievable sense of calm?

[Josh Lowman]

Okay, so here's what it does. It's like we don't know this, but in our normal lives it's like there's like a thousand blenders on. Like our minds are so noisy and we don't even realize it. So when you go to a meditation retreat like that, or let's say you just meditate at home, it's like five blenders turn off. If you meditate for 20 minutes, you're like, oh, this is nice. It's only 995 blenders around. But if you go to a meditation retreat for that long and you get two Three weeks into it, you know, a week into it, it's like, oh, there's only 500 blenders on. And three weeks into it, it's like, there's, like, five blenders on, and it's crazy. In your mind, everything is, like, crystal clear, and there's, like, very little in there. And it's the best feeling in the world. Like, there is no drug that feels that good. But that is not the reason why you do that. The reason why you do it is it gets you incredibly relaxed. And as you relax, you come into contact with a lot of things that you kind of, like, hold down, you know, feelings that have been kept at bay for a long time. And as you come into contact with those negative feelings, they start to dissipate, they dissolve, and they go away. And you feel a little bit more like yourself after you do that now you really see the effects. You can't really understand the effects while it's going on because there's these other, like, this crazy good feeling or whatever. But if you then go, like, three months into the future, like, huh, I'm just, like, 3% more calm. I'm 3% less likely to say something mean. I'm 3% more okay being who I am. And that 3%, it really makes a difference in life.

[Dave Gerhardt]

When you mentioned the blenders, is that, like, the feeling of, like, I'm talking to you right now, but in the back of my mind, I just like, wait, did I pay my cell phone bill? Why is my cell phone bill $100? Shit, wasn't it usually $98? And then, like, the rest of my afternoon I got to spend, like, dealing with Verizon when it's like, really? What does that matter?

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah, exactly. When you're, like, on your iPhone all the time, like, oh, God, you do this. Oh, and I got to go to my computer, like, oh, I opened up this app. I can't remember why I opened it up. Now I'm doing something else. Like, I was going to go to YouTube to search for this thing, but I'm like, I mean, it's kind of like that. And then it's also just all the tension that you feel in your body around some of these things. Oh, I gotta do all this. And, like, everything's really grippy, and you can't really see how noisy it is until you go meditate for a couple weeks. And you'd be like, oh, my God, I can't believe this.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And is that hard to be away for a month from your family?

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah, my wife Like, I'm so lucky because she holds it down. We got a crazy 80 pound dog too. So she's taking care of the kids and the dog and everything. I mean, it's easy for me compared to like how hard it is for them. But I call them once a week. Like, you give up your phone so there's no phone. You give up your iPhone. So I'll be off my iPhone for the month. And then they have a landline so I can call every Sunday and I have a conversation with my family.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And is it just like one of those things in life where like, yes, it's sucks to be away for a month, but you need to put this deposit into the bank for the month because the rest of the year is going to be better because of how you come out of this thing.

[Josh Lowman]

Yeah. Like if you could give, you just imagine, like, oh, I can give my wife a better husband, I can give my daughters a better father, and I can feel more comfortable in my shoes. Like 11 months out of the year. It's like that's kind of a no brainer. But at the same time, I mean, I also want to say, like, it's extremely enjoyable to be on a retreat like that. It's like very hard work, but there's a lot of contentment that comes with it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, I would love to take my phone and just give it away for a month. That'd be amazing. Take my phone, put it in a box. I don't want it.

[Josh Lowman]

It's so cool. Like when you get your phone back, you're just like, I don't even want that shit.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, right. Delete checking Instagram. All right, Josh Loman. This was great. Went in a bunch of different directions, but this is what's great about this podcast. We come on. Josh is an Exit 5 member. We hang out, we talk about marketing, we talk about life. Thanks for listening to this episode. Go find Josh on LinkedIn. Even though he's very wise and calm, it won't hurt to get him like seven more LinkedIn followers. So go find him on LinkedIn, connect with him, check out Goldfront, send Josh and I a message or DM us separately. And I have been enjoying talking a little bit more about life outside of the marketing stuff with folks on here because we're all people, we like to hang out, connect, learn from each other. So share some feedback with me and then make sure you join Exit five. You'll see Josh in there. He's active member. We love that he hasn't been active in a while because he was on his meditation retreat. But he'll come back soon. I hope so. All right, Josh, Good to see you, man. Thanks for doing this.

[Josh Lowman]

Thank you so much. I love being on your show because I am a DG super fan.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Oh, stop that. All right, man. Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode. You know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at exit 5. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exit55.com our mission at Exit 5 is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at exit 5. 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. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group 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. Go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community. This episode is brought to you by Ztle. We're halfway through 2025 already, somehow. And one thing's clear. Events are back, baby. I'm all in on events. Here I am, Big events guy. Niche meetups, conferences, curated dinners, networking, you name it. Everyone's leaning in. I felt this with our business at Exit 5. I talked to a lot of CMOs and marketing people and marketing leaders through Exit 5. Everyone wants something to do with events right now. And that's because events are human. We want to get out there and connect with real people. Events are a core part of our playbook. This year at Exit 5, we've hosted two virtual SESs each month. There's in person stuff, but there's also virtual. We do these virtual sessions each month. One large virtual event, one in person meetup. And right now, already we're deep in the weeds planning our drive conference drive 2025. Coming back to Vermont this September and to do it all, we use Zuttle. Zuttle helps us run a smarter event strategy from driving registrations, managing invites, automating, communications, reminders, analytics tracking. Their salesforce integration also makes it simple to report on pipeline and revenue from events without pulling in ops. On top of that, the differentiator with ZTTL is how their team is insanely good at supporting us. It's all about the people. They always go above and beyond for us and that's how we've been able to keep the momentum going with 12 plus events already this year and more to come. If events are part of your marketing strategy like they are ours, check out Check out zttle Z U D D L. You can look at Zuttle to see how companies like Zillow, motive, Iterable and US Exit 5 are using Zuttle, the top event platform for business events in 2025. Go to zuttle.com exit5 that's Z U DL com exit5 to learn more.