Dan (2:54)

I'm just bullshitting all, by the way, but people are much more likely to like take screenshots and, and share photos of it. And like, I wore tux one time and, and it was great. So I'm just testing this out today. Let's, let's see. And actually my main goal, this is really just to troll, to be kind of a troll, because sometimes it's fun to do that. I'm hoping that someone sees this and, and gets really upset and talks about how arrogant I am and like, who does this guy think he is? And da da, da, da. I'm wearing my sunglasses today, but I'm also fully on brand. I got the Exit 5 Exit 5 shirt on. And then also I just, I just found this in my office. Anybody that has, has children, your kids kind of like just make a bunch of mess in the office. And it takes me so long to get ready for these podcasts because every time I come back to the office, like something is missing, something has changed. And anyway, this is, I, I found this in here that says room rules. It says room rules. Annie is the boss. That's my daughter. Number one. Rule. Annie is the boss. Number two, no screaming. Number two, no fighting. Number four, listen to the person who's talking. Listen is spelled L I S S I N. And then number five. No Grown up. No. And then it's G O G R O N U P. So no grownups. Well, haha, they're at school and I am a grownup and this is my office. And so I thought it's the beginning of December. Team is on me to be making more podcasts. And I've, I've had this, I just had this hip surgery, which I'll talk about. And so I've been a little bit on the sidelines. Haven't been able to make a podcast in a bit. And so you know what? I'm fig. I'm feeling really good today. I'm feeling better. I'm ready to do this. And so I spent this morning arranging my office, getting everything set up. And I'm going to do a little solo pod today. So I have a bunch of things I, I want to, I want to cover. Just really talk about, talk about the last month, talk about November. We got through Thanksgiving, talk about what's going on, talk about Exit 5 team went to Arizona. I'll recap that. I did a poll about Thanksgiving and Exit 5 community. I want to talk about that. I'll tell you a little bit about my hip surgery that I got people. People are giving me a hard time for this. Like, man, how old are you? And I'm, I'm, I'm like, no, it's actually because I'm such an athletic freak that I had to get this fixed up. And I'll, we'll talk about that in a second. And I'm 38, for the record. But I do have some, I want to start with some marketing stuff because I think, you know, people come for the marketing, stay for the other stuff. And so I wanted to cover, like, there's so much happening with AI right now, and AI Slop is everywhere. That's kind of like the, you know, the troll take of just like, AI Slop is everywhere. Da, da, da. But then we're also using AI in a lot of positive ways in our business. But I feel like we're missing across the world, like, across marketing, like, an understanding of the fundamentals of the timeless stuff in marketing. And I made this list, and I just wanted to talk through some of these things because I think it might be helpful and interesting to you. And so I also feel like there's a bunch of. You need to study the timeless principles in marketing and understand them, because no matter what happens with technology and AI, that stuff's going to change. But people, as long as humans are the people that you're trying to sell to, like, humans have not changed in hundreds of years. Go read Sapiens by, by Uvald Noah Harari to get a better understanding of, like, you know, I guess in the, in the scheme of the, the universe, 14 billion years is, is a lot of time. But in the past, you know, two, 300 years, the, the things that we care about from our, from our brains and how we're kind of biologically wired, that stuff doesn't change. And that's the stuff you need to understand. And so I wrote something this week, and I, I, I just want to, I want to go through some of it. So there are five timeless principles that everyone should be thinking about when it comes to your customers. And really, the, the overarching one is that, like, people don't care about your product. They don't care about that new integration you shipped. They care about themselves. And so the more you can work backwards from understanding, like, why would someone. Let's use webinars as an example. We do webinars at exit 5. I think one of the things we think about all the time is, like, why would someone take an hour out of their day to actually go to this webinar? I was having this discussion with somebody yesterday. They wrote in and said, like, hey, like, do webinars still work? And I said, yes, of course they still work. Like, what's really that different about it? Some. They said a webinar seem to be really outdated. And I said, well, not really. If. If you think about it, what's different between, like, a webinar and watching a video on YouTube or listening to a podcast? Right. Maybe the only difference is there's a live component. But then you could make the case that, like, you know, one of the biggest platforms in the world is Twitch and people do Instagram Live and YouTube. Like, there's Li. Live streaming does work. And so for me, it's not about it being a webinar. It's about, like, why would someone come and sit with you for an hour and take time out of. Out of their day? And so, like, I just like to work backwards from that and, like, what's in it for me? Why would you give me an hour and listen to this podcast or whatever? You got to work backwards from there. And so people don't care about your company. They don't care about your product and your features. They don't care about the new integration they just shipped. They care about themselves first. We're biologically wired to be selfish. Because for so long, in the course of humanity, the number one job has been survival. And so it's not even an ego thing. It's like, you know, quite literally, my job is to think about myself and protect myself and make sure I'm okay, and then the rest can follow. And so there's really five things. So. So number one is you can make someone focus on. Make. Make someone look good, right? Whether it's to a boss, their team, or the industry, people are wired to care about status. So can you help them impress someone? Can you give them an edge? Can they copy and paste your idea and look smart in the next meeting? I remember one of my first jobs. I was working at a company called Constant Contact. And I was a junior product manager there, product marketing manager there. And my boss asked me to make a marketing plan for this, like, little thing I was working on. And I was like, I Have no, I have absolutely no idea how to do that. And I religiously was following HubSpot at the time and HubSpot had this amazing article on their site about how to create a marketing plan. And I pretty much copied the template, made it my own, and then put our stuff in there and showed it to my boss. And she was like, wow, this is amazing. Like you did this. Like, this is super legit. And that moment was when I became a super fan of HubSpot because they made me feel smart, right? I wasn't even ready to buy their software. It had nothing to do with their software. But that made me feel super smart. Like, that felt awesome for my boss to, basically because I copied this thing from HubSpot, it made me look good and she was impressed. And so that's a perfect example of how you can build brand affinity by making somebody look good. Number two is save time.

Dave Gerhardt (9:27)

Time.

Dan (9:28)

Time is this constant. We're, we're, everyone is in a constant battle with time. It's the one thing that none of us have enough of. And so if you can help someone do something faster, with less friction, fewer steps, be more efficient, this is the way people will always pay for time savings. Like I will always pay a little bit more if I can get something done faster. But here's the thing, this is one of those claims that everyone is saying, everyone is going to say faster, cheaper, right? And so you have to actually be able to prove this. It can't just be a marketing claim. You need data, you need stats, you need testimonials, you need to show the receipts if you want to show someone how you can save them time. Number three is make me money. For all the things that I read online about how awful capitalism is, it seems to still be the best system, system in the planet that exist. And so look, I don't make the rules, I'm just observing them here. And so it doesn't seem like anybody's created a better way so far than capitalism. And so this is something that you should lean into because money does matter in our society. And so whether someone is going to admit it or not, your customers, the people you're trying to sell to, they want to make more money. They want to save more money. And look, they're all people. We, we all, we all do have an interest in money. And so whether directly or indirectly, people are, are tuned into the ROI of their time and, and what they're doing. So if you can help someone drive revenue, get more leads, reduce, churn, or even on A personal level, like, get a raise, get promoted, then you can get their attention. Now, I think there's like, a completely gross and douchey way to, like, lead with money as the main benefit for your product. But I think if you can show someone how you can help them achieve more wealth, earn more status, I think this is a value that you can really lean on. Again, here's the catch in all this has to actually be believable, right? Everyone's kind of bullshit meter is higher than it ever was before. And so you have to be able to back all these things up. This is why. Maybe a topic for another episode. I think one thing I've learned in 15 years I've been doing marketing is, like, the product team who you work with on that side of the company really does matter. And so there's a lot that you have to be able to back up here. It can't just be a marketing claim. And in fact, good marketing is oftentimes one of the fastest ways to put the company out of business. If you can't back up the things that you're actually doing. So you gotta have proof. Number four is help me avoid pain. We are back to this whole theme about survival and our instincts, right? We are all wired to avoid pain. There's a bunch of books on this. I feel like I. I can't cite one off the top of my head. And one of my biggest pet peeves about online creators is, like, there's this one guy in particular that I see online that basically he just, like, recites everything that's ever been written by, like, Naval or Stephen Covey, and, you know, kind of makes graphics and repurposes as his own. And he's like, built this massive, massive account. And so I don't ever want to be that guy. So forgive me, but there's a bunch I've read in here. Probably something in Influence by Robert Cialdini. And I also think Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a great book on here. But we are wired to avoid pain. We would almost always rather avoid pain than get some type of gain, because nobody likes to look stupid. We don't want to feel behind. We don't want to get in trouble. And so if you can speak to something that someone is secretly worried about, a mistake, a missed goal, a clunky process. It's why we pay so much for things like safety and security. There's a huge opportunity here to lean in and show them, like, a way out, show them how to avoid this pain. Help me avoid this pain. They'll lean into your messaging. And then number five is help me reach the next level. This could be personally, this could be professionally, right? It could be like, why do I take creatine gummies? Well, because I want to try to get more jacked. Or why do I have a subscription to Masterclass? Because I want to get smarter, right? Why do I spend so much money on books and audible? Because I want to learn more. I want to. I want to help my. I want to grow, right? So help me reach the next level. Great marketing often speaks to ambition, right? Speak to the ambition of your customers. And this is what's really cool about B2B, right? Where you're often selling. You know, you're always saying that often you're always selling to someone who. Who is at work, right? Who wants to do their job better inside of their company so they can, you know, do all the things we talked about. They want to save time. They want to save time. They want to make more money. They want to help me avoid pain. They want to look smart in front of their boss. And so how can you help people reach the next level? So that's make me look good, Save me time, make me money, Help me avoid pain, help me reach the next level. Right? Notice how none of those I talked about AI. Now, you could use all these things. You could take the transcript of this podcast, put it into ChatGPT, and, like, start to run your messaging through these things. These are some of the things, though, that you have to be wired to think about if you want to understand. Like, how can I get more people to read our newsletter? How can I get more people to go to our webinars? Like, why would someone show up at an event and actually stop by our booth? These are all principles that you can use that apply to that stuff. So there's a lot of noise in marketing right now, but I am bullish on. Like, the more you can understand these things, then go figure out where the tech and AI stuff fits in. You'll be in a better position to succeed. So those are five timeless marketing principles. Obviously, I didn't make those up. I've been a student of this game for a while. These are things that I keep going back to. And actually, I'm glad that I recorded this because I want to share this with our. Our team at exit 5. All right, so that's. That's the first part. What else? Now let's get into the fun stuff. So we spent November, so I'm recording this in early December, we'll try to turn this, this around quickly. But November was an awesome month. So we, we did a couple things at, at exit 5. Number one is we, we went out to Arizona. We wanted to do a team off site. There's seven of us on the team right now. And look, I'm very thankful to have a remote company to have the flexibility, especially at this stage in my life where I have young children, to be able to work remotely. I think it's a huge benefit to us. We have somebody on the team. As an example, where before working at Exit 5, she had to do two hours of commuting every day. Now she's like, oh, my God, I feel like I have my life back. I can. I could work out again. I can, you know, be there in the mornings and at night. That's an amazing feeling. But I'm not gonna lie in person. The energy and connection that you get, it's just. It can't be replaced. And I think it's more important than ever because I'm spending so much of my time in my office on zoom calls, recording podcasts, talking to Chad, gbt. And so I think the more we can hang out in person, the better. It's the same way. I've been on this podcast talking about the value of events. There's just no room for nuance online. And I noticed that when you have a connection with someone online and then you go hang out in person, it's so much better. You can laugh together, joke together, make eye contact, eye contact, understand nuance. And so it helps us work better, right? You can understand the context of what someone's saying is so much better. If we've hung out, then if you, if you just read the things I say in Slack, you would think I'm the biggest dick in the world, right? But if we can hang out together in person and we can actually build chemistry, build rapport. So we've kind of. We've been doing a bunch of events. I'm. A sneeze is coming. I'm trying to fight it off. We've been doing a bunch of events with Exit 5 over last year, but a lot of times we go to these cities and we only have time to, like, we're doing dinners, we're doing this meetup. We don't have time to hang out. And so we wanted to do an off site where literally the goal was just to hang out. We didn't even have crazy, you know, planning structure to do that. We did about an hour or two of like kind of future thinking each day. But we went to Arizona. Dan, Dan lives out there. My business partner, he lives out there. And so we all went out to Arizona. We got a nice hotel, we went to a bunch of nice dinners together, we went on a hike together. Another purpose for the trip was we're doing an event in March called the Marketing Leadership Retreat, which is for in House VPs and CMOs, a hundred of them in March. You can, you can find that it's exit5.com retreat if you want to check it out or just email me. Dave, exit5.com we can, we can send you details about that. But we wanted to scout the venue there. It's called Mountain Shadows. And so we went there for the day and it was just awesome to have three meals together, to work out together, to hang out. I don't know, maybe all in the trip costs us, I know 10, probably 10 to 15k to get 7 people out to Arizona. All the meals, all the travel, everything. And we. Look, I'm at the stage now where if I'm going to travel for work, respectfully, I'm not going to stay. I don't want to stay at, you know, some like gross, gross motel, you know, on the other side of the country. And so like we picked nice places, we had a really nice time with the team and I think it's a perfect example of like perception is reality and how you treat people like trickles down to your brand. And so the fact that we had a nice hotel, we went to nice dinner, we did nice things together, I want the team to see that and feel that. And it's important part of our culture. And I'm very thankful to be in a position where we can, we can like spend money on those types of things because I think it really does make a difference. We just had an awesome time. The feedback from the team was awesome. We spent a little bit of time planning.

Paramark Representative (18:15)

All right, it's that time of year. Everybody's scrambling to wrap it up, justify budgets, get those plans in last minute and quietly hope that the numbers are going to hold going into 2026. But here's the uncomfortable truth. Most marketing teams still don't actually know what's driving real results and what's just taking credit.

Dan (18:32)

There's a difference.

Paramark Representative (18:33)

And you can't make smart calls for next year if you're just guessing about what's working, what's not, and where to.

Dan (18:38)

Put your next dollar.

Paramark Representative (18:39)

Paramark has built something to fix that. It's their free incrementality calculator and it takes two minutes and it's going to give you a simple reality check on one question. If you stopped a campaign, would the results still happen? Anyway? I can think of a few ideas in my head right now that I would like to run this through. Maybe branded branded search would be one of them. Anyway, that's incrementality and it's how the best marketers are cutting waste, tightening budgets and figuring out which programs actually deserve to make it into next year. You'll get a quick read on whether you're ready for incrementality testing and how much money you could be saving right now. So go and check it out. Completely free free tool from Paramark. It's Paramark.com calculator that's Paramark.com calculator Arizona.

Dan (19:26)

Is a wild place, man. I, I come from Vermont. There's, there's, there's greenery, there's trees, there's seasons out there. It was like, it was just, it's.

Paramark Representative (19:34)

Bone dry out there.

Dan (19:35)

It's crazy. Then Dan and I played TPC Scottsdale for my golf people out there. We played TPC Scottsdale on Friday as a way to a little celebration for, for him. It's been two years since we started working together. Two year anniversary. So we did that put it on the ramp card because it's a write off and, and we had an awesome time. Then the sad part is when we came back and the I had to do the thing I've been dreading all year, which is I have this injury in my hip. I have a torn labrum and a hip impingement and I've been basically dealing with it for 10 years. Finally decided to bite the bullet and, and get the surgery to basically it's not a hip replacement. It's just like a cleaning out and basically re redoing the hip without having to take the hip out. And it's like a three to six month recovery. It's. I'm on week three recording this right now. I'm off crutches trying to get movement in my leg back. I'm feeling better every day. But it's been a mental challenge for me. Now I say to myself like I'm, I'm very thankful that like I'm not, I'm not sick thankfully. Right. I'm not sick. I have all my health. This is just an injury. Like this is okay. It's more of a challenge for me up here because I haven't been able to, to do all the things I Like to do hike, run, lift, workout. And so I'm just sitting here sending a thousand slack messages a day right now. But good test of my mental state. And one of my favorite mindsets comes from Jocko Willink. And he has this kind of video on YouTube. It's like two minutes and basically anything that happens in life, you, your answer is like, good. Okay, so this whole thing happened to me. I can't run, I can't lift, I can't work out right now. Good. Like, invest in the business. Spend time, you know, read more books. I've read a ton of books this month. I finally got to watch some tv. I don't watch a ton of tv. I binge watch succession, which is I, I, I turn into the character that of the show or book that I'm read. So I've been joking to Dan right now that like, anything you're seeing from me, which is terrible, anything you're seeing from me is based on succession right now. So send me a message if you watched succession. So I've been doing that. I said I would give you some book recommendations. So I try to, like, read one, One book for work. One, one book for life. And kind of not, not always work like a marketing book, but maybe just like a business philosophy kind of personal development book. And so the books that I read in November, I read Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks. Strength to strength, Finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life. Look, I'm 38. I hope this is not my second half of life yet, but this is a great book just about how, like, hey, your, your potential, like, your peak is. He used a great example of, like, look, NFL players and athletes, like, they're done at 30, right? A lot of other creative professions, you know, the peak of your career might be happening right now in your 30, you know, early 30s, early 40s. But life goes on after that. And so you have to be able to, like, be prepared, be mentally prepared to, to tackle that next chapter. And I just love stuff like that. I'm a big believer in investing in yourself. I love this. One of my favorite, like, business and life philosophers of all time is this guy called Jim Rohn. He had this book, seven Strategies for wealth and Happiness, that, that I read a bunch of years ago. And he says that all leadership, he has this quote, all leaders are readers. I've been telling my kids this. My kids are 8 and 6. But all leaders are readers. And it basically means that, like, leadership requires a commitment to continuous learning and leaders across all Industries and fields are typically the ones that are committed to continuous learning. They're voracious readers who are seeking knowledge to grow and improve. And leadership, you know, in leadership you have to be able to rise above the ordinary. And books are an amazing way to do that. All of the knowledge of the world is somewhere out there. And I have this feeling, I don't know if you can relate to this or not, where I'm like, I'm gonna die one day and I'm only gonna have read like a tiny percentage of the books out there. And so I have a really low tolerance for if I'm reading a book and it's doesn't. It's not interesting to me. I'm like, oh my God, this is such a waste of my time. I wasted three nights reading this book and it's, it's not meaningful. And so big believer in like continuous learning. This is a good one. And I think it's important to have that introspective type of material sometimes to like, to, to help. So that was a good one. Strength to strength. Arthur Brooks and then been reading a lot more fiction lately. Thank goodness. For a while I did like the 10 years of like, you know, only reading like the Simon Sinek, Brene Brown, Seth Godin, Tim Ferret, like that type of stuff. I've read them all. I've read every business book, marketing book under the sun. I'm good. I got it from high output management to the hard thing about hard things to every marketing book. I know it all. I got it in my head. It's all in chat GPT now anyway, I never was a reader in my life, but the last probably 10 years I've gotten really into reading and luckily now I've found like fiction is fun. Fiction is fun to read and it's really good for you. It's good for your brain. It's good for my creativity. I always noticed the more that I'm reading, the more creative ideas that I have coming out of me. It doesn't matter if I'm reading about murder or Harry Potter or that. So I read. I read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weird. Great book. Shout out to Jess on my team, who also talked about that book. If you listen to that, if you want to listen to it, the audio version is amazing. This guy, Ray Porter is an incredible, probably the best narrator I've ever heard on an audio book. He's like truly an actor doing impressions and accents. It's amazing. Project Hail Mary was great. And then that's the Same guy who wrote the Martian. And then I read the Fury by this guy, Alex Michalitis. It's a, you know, I don't know how to say his last name perfectly. The book is called the Fury. My wife Leah, she told me to read this. We were at the bookstore because I was being really grumpy after my surgery. I was feeling really depressed and sad for myself. And she's like, we're going to get out. We're going to take a trip. We're going to get out of the house. We're going to go to the bookstore. And she was looking for the Silent. This book called the Silent Patient for me, but they didn't have it. But they had this other book from him, the Fury. Really good thriller, murder mystery, has nothing to do with business or marketing. But I ripped through that and it was a great read. And I also think right now it's really important to be reading because so much you're probably like me if you're listening to this podcast. So much of my time is like Slack, text message, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, meeting the call, ChatGPT. It's insane. I'm really trying to, like, take time to slow down, to, like, work. Your brain is a. Is a very important muscle and it can be trained and you can learn. And I need to like, slow down and learn how to just operate a little bit slower. I'm really trying to lean more into meditation. Nothing crazy. Just like 10 minutes a day of just sitting and doing nothing, which is something that I need to prove to myself I can do. And I also think reading is another thing here because how many of you like me? I feel like I've lost my attention span because I'm constantly context switching and multitasking. Reading is an amazing way to rebuild that muscle. So that felt really good. Plus, I like, couldn't do shit. So I'm sitting on the couch and like, I gotta read. And I can't watch Succession all day, unfortunately. So those are the three books that I got through in November. But I love getting book reviews. I look, I love getting book recommendations from people that I know and like and trust. That's the best. Like Goodreads in real life. Like, my guy Harry Dry messaged me last night and sent me a book review. So if you have a book you think I might like and you're listening to this pod, send me a note, Davexit5.com or just DM me on LinkedIn. I always love getting book recommendations. What else? Oh, I'm Also reaching a. We're also reaching a really cool phase of life with our children. They're eight and six, and they're both reading now, first and third grade, like, holy smokes. They come home and they just sit in front of the fireplace and they just read and the house is quiet and they're. They're soaking in knowledge because all leaders are readers. And it's an amazing chapter of life and super cool to see my kids getting into reading. What else? Then we had Thanksgiving, American holiday. In case you're not familiar of it, Matt on our team, he posts. He posts the same meme every year on Thanksgiving now because he's Canadian. And, uh, it's. What's his name? Milhouse from the Simpsons. He's throwing the Frisbee back and forth to himself, which is amazing. Matt worked on Friday, that worked on Thursday and Friday after Thanksgiving, like, was closing deals, making things happen. I was like, what a genius move by us having a. Having a, you know, Canadian employee, because we can. We can keep the lights on. But that was awesome. So Thanksgiving. And then I Posted in Exit 5 in our community, I posted like, before Thanksgiving. Overrated. Underrated. Tell me about your ideal Thanksgiving meal. Let me read you the AI summary. It's great. So everybody. Because my whole thing is like, you know, if turkey's so good, and this is not my own original take, right? But my whole thing is like, if turkey's so good, why do we only eat it once a year? It doesn't really make any sense. Maybe, maybe, maybe you don't. Maybe you eat it all the time. I eat a turkey sandwich, but not like this kind of carving turkey. And so my answers were overrated, turkey. And then my favorite, you know, underrated is I wrote pecan pie till the.

Dave Gerhardt (28:15)

Day that I die.

Dan (28:16)

That's a bar and a half right there. Then somebody told me, you need to put chocolate chips in the pecan pie. So that's next level. But let me read you the AI summary of this was. This discussion centers around personal opinions on overrated and favored Thanksgiving foods. With turkey frequently cited as overrated and pecan pie widely celebrated as a favorite, participants also share alternative dishes they enjoy, including sweet potato casserole, unique regional foods, and variations on traditional sides and desserts. There's a mix of humor and nostalgia, with some commenters noting non traditional or vegetarian preferences. So thank you, AI inside of Exit 5 for giving us that summary. The general consensus, though, about me saying turkey overrated is that we're just not doing it right. Basically, everyone who's ever deep fried or smoked a turkey said that that is the way to go. So I'll have to explore that. But this is one of the things that I love about our community is like, it's not just marketing. We're sharing fun stuff in here. We're all humans. Like, I love the Venn diagram of like, people come in because they're marketers, but we hang out and connect as, as humans. So I posted that in there. You should, you should go check it out. A lot of love for pecan pie. I, I see it overrated for Mac and cheese though. I'm not, I'm not gonna, I don't have the, the time for that, so. And then November we wrapped up. We just came back to, to work this week. Somehow we got 30ish days left in the year. You'll probably listen to this and there'll be less than that. We made a big announcement at, at exit 5, which is I promoted Dan to Dan's our COO and made the decision to promote him to CEO of exit 5, effective December 1, which is super exciting. Shout out to you, Dan. Proud of you, man. He's came here two years ago and just has absolutely kicked ass for us and really helped turn this thing from Dave's solo project into a real company. We've doubled every year. I feel super confident saying we have the top community in B2B marketing, but I don't even care about the numbers. I really don't. The revenue is awesome. The team is great. This is one of those things in business, though, that I can just feel it in my gut. And if you see, if you saw the messages that I get, the comments people send the dms, like, we're, we're getting, we're making a real impact on, on people and getting promoted and growing their careers and just giving people this kind of. I love this concept of a third space where you have home, you have work. Exit 5 is that third space where marketers can hang out and talk to each other. Dan came in two years ago and was like, my, honest to God, my initial reason for hiring him was like, I was just going to treat this like an investment property. Dan was going to run it, I was going to go do other things. But he came in, he took a look at the business. He's like, dude, you have something amazing here. Like. And his energy has translated into my energy. And now I'm working. I used to brag about how little I was working. Now I'm working. I don't at 20 feels like every hour of the day I'm working. I guess like checking slack all the time isn't necessarily working, but Dan coming in to do that gave me a ton of energy. We went from just the two of us and now we have a team of seven. We'll cross $3 million in revenue this year. And I want to keep going. I want to, I want to do more. Not just because I'm this evil capitalist and I want more, more, more, but I've seen how over the last two years that this whole entrepreneurship thing is a vehicle for personal development and I want to keep going. I think I've become the best version of myself over the last two years because we're working on this business and I want to do more. So the reason we made the decision to promote Dan to CEO, I'm not going anywhere. I'm the founder of the company, I'm the owner of the company. But I think my strength is in being the storyteller, the visionary, the creator. And I see this as a creator led business, no different than how many other creator led businesses like eventually hire a CEO to come in. Dan's already been doing this role for us as coo. I think making the title more official just gives us more structure for the future. And I think the way that I think about this is laid out perfectly in the book Traction, which I have over there somewhere. But in Traction, excuse me, interaction, they outline this entrepreneurial operating system and they say that the, the ideal pairing in a business is between the visionary, which is the founder, and the integrator, which is the operator. And that describes the partnership that Dan and I have perfectly. So visionaries are. This is me, by the way. This is why you get to wear sunglasses and be on the, On a podcast. Visionaries are creative, strategic, restless, full of ideas. That's, that's me. And honestly. And honestly, a bit dangerous reading this now. And honestly, a bit dangerous without the right counterpart. They are known to start fires and run guilty, guilty as charged. Integrators, on the other hand, they bring structure and process. They turn chaos into clarity. They run the business, manage the team, keep the trains moving and allow the visionary to focus where they are most valuable. And so I really want to continue to grow this business and continue to work on it. I felt like personally the best place for me to be is to not be in one on ones, not be in budget reviews. You know, Dan's, the, Dan's on, Dan's on calls with my accountant, the lawyer. You know, he's bringing in ramp and 155 and structure and operations in the business. That's the best place for him to be. The best place for me to be is to be skating out ahead, creating, having a vision for where we're going. Plus, I think the thing that I love most about my job is I get to be managing editor. I'm working on with our team on every podcast, every email, every webinar, headlines hooked, all that stuff. And I want to have more time to spend there. And I think it's just the perfect separation of our skills to work together for Dan to be CEO and run the day to day business for me to be able to be founder and owner. And so we made that change heading into 2026. So if you see Dan, give him a shout out. Proud of you, man. You're doing an awesome job. Fun to be able to like promote somebody into that type of role and put us in a position to continue to grow and evolve our business. So that's it. I'm done. 30 minutes in and out. I did it. I wanted to record a solo podcast. I'll have to do this more. I think it'd be fun to maybe do like a. A monthly recap. Thanks for hanging out with me and, and listening to this episode of my podcast, the Dave Gearhart Show. By the way, the reason we rebranded it to the Dave Gerhart show as opposed to the Exit 5 podcast is because in 2026 we have more shows, more podcasts, more stuff coming from exit 5. I see the future of our business as a multiple, having multiple creators. We have Jess, who's our head of marketing. She writes a newsletter called the Prompt, which is all about AI, which is different from the newsletter that I write, by the way, if you're not on that newsletter, go to exit5.comnewsletter to get my newsletter. And then I just want to make sure the. The prompt. What do I is it exit5.com the prompt. The- prompt. Let me check it out. It's exit5.com the prompt newsletter. We'll fix that. That's got to be shorter, but go check it. Exit5.com the- prompt-newsletter get on Jess's Jess's newsletter if you want to learn, you know, specific tactical stuff every week about AI or just check us all out. Exit5.com you'll we'll see there. Have a great day. Great week. If you enjoyed this episode and you want me to do more solo pods like this, send me a note davidex@5.com or message me on LinkedIn or maybe leave a comment on YouTube. We got all of our stuff up on my YouTube channel now. And I'll see you later.

Dave Gerhardt (35:22)

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.

Dan (35:30)

I have something better. Better for you.

Dave Gerhardt (35:32)

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, exit5.com our mission at Exit.

Dan (35:44)

5 is to help you grow your.

Dave Gerhardt (35:45)

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. 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.

Dan (36:20)

Go check it out.

Dave Gerhardt (36:21)

Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community.

Dan (36:34)

This episode is brought to you by.

Dave Gerhardt (36:35)

Our friends@customer IO remember when a personalized message in marketing meant just putting someone's.

Dan (36:41)

First name into the email?

Dave Gerhardt (36:42)

And that was magic. Hello David or hello Gerhart or whatever.

Dan (36:45)

Fake name I put into the form.

Dave Gerhardt (36:47)

Well, those days are long gone. 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 people. Today, personalization doesn't just mean using my name. It means actually having the right context. But there's a problem because even though this sounds great in theory, most teams can't actually do it because they're stuck with broken reporting, siloed data, and outdated tech stacks. It's often easier to just keep doing things the way that we've always done them. So our friends at Customer IO recently surveyed 600 marker like you and me to figure out what's working and what's broken in lifecycle Marketing right now and how the best teams are actually solving these problems. The report breaks down 2026 priorities, where budgets are moving and how to tame the measurement mess that we're going through. Real world examples from brands like Notion and Monarch Money that are using AI personalization experiments and understanding the next chapter of AI, what's on marketers wish lists and how customer journeys can get smarter, not just faster.

Dan (37:49)

So this guide is packed with examples.

Dave Gerhardt (37:51)

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Dan (37:53)

Right now if you want to get.

Dave Gerhardt (37:54)

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Dan (37:56)

A great free resource.

Dave Gerhardt (37:57)

So where my email marketers at? My life cycle marketers listening to this, go and grab it right now customer IO exit 5 and you can grab this and learn how to build lifecycle marketing that keeps up with today's expectations. That's customer I.O. exit 5.