B (4:22)

Clock.

C (4:23)

So one of the hardest things, this is maybe the sign of getting older or being such a man. To routine. One of the hardest things is having a dinner. Like, I usually eat some, this big ass meal at one of these things and I, I really don't drink that much anymore. But, but then at these things, I'll have like, the guy next to me is getting a margarita. I'm like, that sounds great. And I'll have, I'll have a margarita and then I'll have some heavy dinner. And then it's like 8 o' clock at night and then I get back to my hotel room and it's like I'm trying to fall asleep. And so I got it. This is a, if I say it out loud, this is a reminder to myself to like, control yourself. Don't need to have a huge dinner, maybe don't get a margarita tonight. And that'll, that'll improve the sleep. So anyway, I just, I thought, you know, I'm gonna record a little bonus, bonus marketing lesson today. And I was at a event last night here in Vermont. Just a local, local homeowners association meeting is the event. And I was talking to one of our neighbors and she's this amazingly accomplished speaker, writer, author, you know, New York Times bestseller, ish type of person. Super impressive. And she said, hey, I listen to your podcast. And I was like, oh, no, please don't say that. And she said, listen to your podcast. There's so many acronyms though.

B (5:42)

I like it.

C (5:42)

I don't know what any of the hell of it means, which is funny, but we got to talk about marketing. And she said, you know, actually, I've really come to love marketing and I've realized that it's such an important skill in building my business. And I love talking to people like that because it gets me outside of the, like, you know, B2B marketing bubble. I just like talking about marketing in general with entrepreneurs and business owners. And so, like, I play golf with my accountant and I love talking about his business with him. My financial advisor. He's always hitting me up like, hey, do you think I should be doing this?

B (6:15)

Or that?

C (6:16)

And local, you know, deli owner down the street. I like those people because they just help you reframe, like, how much nonsense there is in our world of marketing and how complicated we make things when on the, at the end of the day, it's about, you know, getting people to know you, to like you, to trust you, and to, you know, hopefully tell people about the services and value that you can provide. It doesn't have to be some sleazy, you know, clickbaity Internet marketing type of tactics. That is the goal. It's like, hey. And in this woman's case, she's an amazing opportunity author that writes important books about parenting and education and raising kids. And that's, you know, those are important topics. And so marketing is her vehicle to like spread that message. And so she was saying, anyway, the point of this is, she's saying, and this is something that comes up in Exit 5 a lot lately is everybody says nothing's working, email doesn't work, this doesn't work, that doesn't work. And she said, hey, you know, I lived on email for a long time, but email is not as effective anymore. And it's not because what she's sending is not effective. It's just because all of our inboxes are just filled with messages. There's so much stuff, right? And so even if she has the best offer in the world, it's buried inside, you know, this Uber eats email. This some service I signed up for six years ago that haven't unsubscribed. You know how it is in your inbox, right? So she's like, but, you know, it's working. I've had an incredible time with mail, direct mail. I was like, no shit, That's. Tell me more. That's amazing. And so she said, here's what I do. She said, I make a list. I have this list of people that I want to contact and they work at schools, universities, local communities, whatever. But she doesn't have some like secret, you know, data broker or vendor for this list. She's like, I've been basically hand curating this list for a decade and it's a really kind of niche industry. And so when someone leaves one place and go to another, like, I see that and I mark it down on my sheet and I send them a note, like a job change thing that we would do with like, I don't know, zoom info. I don't even know what you would use for that. One of those tools. Not a data guy. And so the effort there is like. And this goes back to. There's a great book, I think it was 2007. It's a red book called the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. And he talks about this concept of the dream 100. Every business should have a list of your top 100 people, customers, whatever. Maybe it's 100, maybe it's 500, maybe it's 1000, whatever the tiering of that is that you could sell to right now. And so for all of the making content and Doing the inbound marketing stuff, it's like, hey, who's the list of 100 people you could sell to right now and how are we going to reach out to them and get in front of them? And so she's hand curated this list and she's like, the list, you know, takes time because it's real, you know, and people's contact info is changing all the time and it's got to be up to date and it's got to matter. And so I appreciated that. I think we can often be quick to like get data, get a list, blast it. Wonder why the response rate is so low. But to hear her like really take this time to curate the list was really was, it was a good timeless lesson. Now, now the other piece of that she talked about is the thing that's working is mail. And she doesn't just send like, you know, a shitty piece of mail. She has this like flyer printed up and has a personal message to them with, you know, what she can offer with all of her credentials. And on the back of it has, just has 300 schools and places that she spoke as social proof. And she's like, I don't send it to the, you know, the CEO or the head of the school or whatever. Like, you have to find the person who actually manages that program and they're the person who probably doesn't get that many things in the mail or doesn't get that level of value. Hey, this is going to be a really good fit for you. Here's all the places I've spoken before. And then people reach out and call her back to book, to book her to do a workshop or to speak or whatever. And I was like, that's, that's an amazing lesson which is like, let's put in, let's put in a little bit more effort. Let's really think about the end state of this person who we're trying to get in front of instead of just like, well, it's just a numbers game, you know, the just funnel math. If I send out 10,000 emails, I'm going to get, you know, 0.1% where, you know, I'm going to get a 1% response rate versus like, what if we, what if we actually cared about the quality? What if we put in more time into the outreach? What if we put ourselves. I think this is what they call empathy, right? I always mix them up. Empathy, sympathy, I don't know. Not that, but let's put ourselves in the shoes of the person who's on the other end of this. And if I was, you know, working in a school and this thing showed up on my desk, am I gonna pay attention to it? Am I gonna open it? Am I gonna throw it, throw it right in the trash, right. And then what's the offer? What's the thing that I can offer that's valuable? And so it was just a refreshing lesson in life, the life of marketing from it, from a normal person. And this has been one of my, you know, one of the things that has kept me interested in marketing. I've, I've done marketing at companies that have been mostly in the B2B space, so selling services and products to other businesses to help them with their business. Right. But I just love, I think the things that I like about marketing is the art of storytelling, getting people to pay attention, creating content and things that get people to know, like, and trust you, so then you can provide them with value and, and help you sell something. And I like when we break it down and we talk to someone in what I would say, air quotes for this podcast, like real life, and hear about how they're doing marketing and then think about, okay, that's a good lesson. How can I apply that to my business? Like, let's get back to the whiteboard. Let's simplify things a little bit. Doesn't have to follow the latest framework or funnel, but it's just like common sense marketing that I think will stand the test of time. And it was a refreshing lesson. So I'm going to finish my hike now. I'm almost at the top of this little mountain and I'm going to get some breakfast, catch up on some work, and I'll see you in New York city for the exit 5 New York City meetup. We got a dinner tonight, meet up on Thursday night, and I'm hoping to record a little content with the Exit 5 team while we're there. So maybe I'll check in on the podcast between now and then. So thanks for listening. If you like these little short style in my phone episodes, you know, I had a version of it edited where I used like just a little audio processing software thing and it ended up removing a lot of the background noise out. And so it made my voice sound louder and clearer in your headphones and in your car. But it was missing sound of like the, the ambient. Like, you know, you can tell that I'm on a walk right now and I'm in the woods and. Come here, Mo. And my dog is here.

B (13:32)

Come here.

C (13:33)

Good boy. And I think that that's what makes these more fun. So let me know how it's sounding for you. I'm not going to change it either way. I'm going to record into my phone, but I just want to know. You can email me davexit5.com or if we're on LinkedIn and we're connected there, send me a message. All right. Until the next episode, this has been the world famous Imagine I was that guy. The world famous Dave Gerhardt Show. Goodbye. Hey.

B (13:59)

This episode is brought to you by our friends@customer IO. You remember. I'm old enough to remember this. You remember when a personalized message meant slapping someone's first name into an email? Hello David or hello Gerhardt. Yeah. Well, those days are long gone in marketing. AI has raised the bar for lifecycle marketing because now you can deliver smarter context aware communication that actually feels personal and you can do it at scale without hiring five more content people. Personalization today doesn't just mean using my name. It actually means having context about any previous interactions. But the problem here happens because even though this sounds great in theory, most teams aren't actually doing it. They're stuck with broken reporting, siloed data and outdated stacks. It's often easier just to keep doing things the way you've always done them right. Isn't that kind of the the norm? Default to the status quo. So customer IO they did a survey on this. They surveyed 600 marketers just like you and me to figure out what's actually working and what's broken. And this is what we call Lifecycle marketing. And they detailed how the best teams are actually solving these problems. The report breaks down 2025 priorities, where budgets are moving and how to tame the measurement mess. Real world examples from brands like Notion and Monarch Money that use AI personalization experiments and understanding the next chapter of AI what's on marketers Wishlist right now and how customer journeys can get smarter, not just faster. It's packed with examples, data and strategies you can put to work right now. If you want to get smarter about lifecycle marketing, this is a great free resource. So go check it out. You can get it@customerio exit 5 and you'll learn how to build lifecycle marketing that keeps up with today's expectations. That's customer I.O. exit 5.