High-Pressure CMO Roles, Avoiding Burnout, and Growing your Personal Brand with Amanda Goetz

Summary

Podcast Summary: High-Pressure CMO Roles, Avoiding Burnout, and Growing Your Personal Brand with Amanda Goetz

Podcast Title: B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt
Episode Title: High-Pressure CMO Roles, Avoiding Burnout, and Growing Your Personal Brand with Amanda Goetz
Host: Dave Gerhardt
Guest: Amanda Goetz
Release Date: May 8, 2025

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Overview

In this engaging episode of B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt, host Dave Gerhardt converses with Amanda Goetz about the intense pressures faced by Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), strategies to prevent burnout, and the importance of building a personal brand in the B2B landscape. The discussion delves into social media dynamics, content strategies, brand identity frameworks, and the emerging role of fractional CMOs.

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Social Media Challenges and Security Breaches ([01:24] - [05:23])

The episode opens with Michael sharing his recent ordeal involving a security breach on his LinkedIn account, which resulted in a significant drop in followers from approximately 28,000 to 11,000.

Notable Quote:
"I watched my follower count drop from nearly 28,000 to 11,000 in just 30 minutes. That's not normal." ([02:13])

Amanda and Michael discuss the potential causes, including bot removal and LinkedIn's crackdown on third-party tools like Taplio. Michael emphasizes the importance of having quality followers over sheer numbers.

Notable Quote:
"I'd rather have quality followers. It's fine." ([03:01])

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Comparing Twitter and LinkedIn ([05:39] - [11:40])

The conversation shifts to the differences between Twitter and LinkedIn as platforms for professional growth and engagement. Michael highlights Twitter's vast reach, achieving 20 to 40 million impressions per month, but also notes the higher presence of trolls and less consistent growth compared to LinkedIn.

Notable Quote:
"I reach anywhere from 20 to 40 million impressions a month on Twitter, and I'm not near that on LinkedIn." ([05:39])

Amanda shares her experiences with both platforms, noting LinkedIn's evolution into a robust content platform that facilitated her growth from 50,000 to 70,000 followers in a year, compared to her stagnant Twitter presence.

Notable Quote:
"On LinkedIn, if I post twice a day and engage with 10 people daily, my follower count just keeps going up." ([11:35])

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Content Strategy and Brand Flywheel ([12:13] - [29:43])

Michael elaborates on his content strategy, emphasizing the creation of a flywheel that integrates social media, newsletters, courses, and community engagement. He underscores the necessity of defining an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and developing a clear value proposition to drive meaningful interactions and sustainable growth.

Notable Quote:
"Social media for me was almost like a diary, but I had to become more intentional about how to monetize that." ([14:25])

Amanda praises Michael's approach, aligning it with her own strategies at Exit 5, where understanding the audience and maintaining a feedback loop are pivotal.

Notable Quote:
"Teach me, inspire me, help me." ([20:18])

Michael discusses the importance of balancing content pillars—teaching, inspiring, helping, and selling—to build a comprehensive and engaging brand presence.

Notable Quote:
"The art of the humble brag is the fourth pillar in that." ([21:35])

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Brand Strategy Frameworks and Differentiation ([29:26] - [33:36])

The duo delves into brand strategy frameworks, particularly the Brand Strategy Pyramid, which Michael describes as a tool to define a brand's essence, emotional benefits, and self-actualization goals. They explore how emotional connections and psychographics play crucial roles in differentiating a brand in a crowded market.

Notable Quote:
"What's your brand essence? What do you want someone to feel when they're connecting with your brand?" ([27:49])

Amanda emphasizes the significance of articulating a unique brand narrative to stand out, using her own experience with Exit 5 as an example.

Notable Quote:
"The niche can be you. It's our flavor. We make the pizza differently." ([32:04])

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Fractional CMO Roles and Insights ([34:33] - [41:58])

The conversation transitions to the concept of a Fractional CMO—a part-time Chief Marketing Officer who offers expertise to multiple organizations simultaneously. Michael explains the growing popularity of this role amid the rise of the creator economy and the desire for flexible, multiple revenue streams.

Notable Quote:
"Fractional CMOs run the same processes as full-time CMOs but with greater efficiency and flexibility." ([35:02])

Amanda and Michael discuss the operational dynamics of fractional CMOs, including managing teams, setting objectives, and maintaining an effective workflow without becoming perceived as "substitute teachers."

Notable Quote:
"You need to have complete buy-in from the executive team for the fractional CMO role to work effectively." ([39:05])

Michael shares his approach to integrating into organizations as a fractional CMO, stressing the importance of aligning with the company's existing rhythm and fostering open communication channels.

Notable Quote:
"If the team is frustrated and seeks progress, a fractional CMO can bridge the gaps and streamline efforts." ([39:18])

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Conclusion and Personal Insights ([41:58] - End)

As the episode concludes, Amanda and Michael exchange personal anecdotes about workouts and daily routines, reflecting on the balance between professional responsibilities and personal well-being. Michael shares his sprint training and arm workouts, while Amanda highlights the importance of personal connection and authenticity in both professional and personal spheres.

Notable Quote:
"Taylor Swift all the time." ([42:36]) – Michael on his workout playlist.

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Key Takeaways

1. Quality Over Quantity: Prioritizing meaningful engagement and quality followers on social media platforms is more beneficial than merely increasing follower counts.
2. Platform-Specific Strategies: Tailoring content strategies to leverage the unique strengths of each social media platform, such as Twitter's reach and LinkedIn's professional networking capabilities.
3. Integrated Content Flywheel: Developing a cohesive content strategy that interlinks social media, newsletters, courses, and community engagement to drive sustained growth and brand loyalty.
4. Brand Differentiation: Utilizing frameworks like the Brand Strategy Pyramid to define and communicate a brand's unique essence and emotional appeal.
5. Emerging Role of Fractional CMOs: Embracing the flexibility and efficiency of fractional CMOs can help organizations navigate complex marketing landscapes while allowing professionals to diversify their expertise and revenue streams.
6. Personal Authenticity: Maintaining authenticity and personal connection in branding and professional interactions fosters trust and long-term relationships with the audience.

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers valuable insights into the high-pressure roles of CMOs, the challenges of managing personal brands in the digital age, and innovative approaches to content strategy and brand differentiation. Amanda Goetz and Michael provide actionable advice for marketers seeking to navigate the evolving landscape of B2B marketing, emphasizing the importance of intentionality, quality engagement, and authentic brand storytelling.

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For more episodes and resources, join the Exit Five community at exitfive.com.

Transcript

[Dave Gerhardt]

This episode is brought to you by Webflow. If you're a B2B marketer right now, you're probably being asked to do more with less. Less budget, fewer resources, tighter timelines, and you're expected to somehow grow pipeline anyway. They don't say do less, but also we're shrinking the goals. They say do less, but do more. That's why more teams are switching to webflow. Webflow is the website experience platform that helps you consolidate your stack, reduce program spend and move faster. Instead of juggling a dozen tools and waiting. Webflow gives marketing and design teams the power to build, launch and optimize sites all in one place with no code flexibility, dev level control, built in, a B testing, SEO, localization and AI tools. They've got everything you need to turn your website into your highest performing channel. So you can check out webflow right [e-mail] exit5webflow.com exit5 bonus. Since you like to get marketing examples, I often reference them as a great marketing website for someone who sells to a bunch of different Personas. So check them out. Webflow.com exit51, 2, 3, 4.

[Amanda Natividad]

Exit5 exit.

[Michael]

Exit.

[Amanda Natividad]

This is nuts. Amanda's here and you just said, right before we started Corner, you said you lost 15,000 LinkedIn followers. I wanted to talk about another podcast because the people who listen this are, this is the LinkedIn geeks. And so if you don't get it result, this podcast is not going to come up for a couple weeks. I hope you get it resolved, but can you tell me what happened?

[Michael]

So yesterday I got a security breach, which happens when you're a creator. You know, they're like, change your password, whatever. I've been locked out of my Twitter before. Some things have happened and I got that yesterday, logged back in, everything was fine. And then Today, just like 30 minutes before this podcast, literally I watched my follower account go from like, I think it was like close to 28,000 and it jumped to 11,000. And I'm like, well, that's not normal.

[Amanda Natividad]

Oh, fun. And how did you notice it? Did you just happen to look and.

[Michael]

Like I just happened to pull up LinkedIn like I do, you know, 80 times a day. And I literally saw the number change. It was so I'm like, that's a glitch. And then I went into my analytics and there's this huge cliff. Like, look, I've been on social media for a long time now. There's several things that could be happening. Path one is it's bots and if so, okay, followers are a vanity metric and that's fine. I'd rather have quality followers. But the second thing is that something happens through, like I have third party plugins that, you know, I use a scheduling tool. Who knows?

[Amanda Natividad]

Yeah, what do you use? So I use Taplio and I just happen to look at something on your post and this. Actually, my friend tas, she said LinkedIn is also cracking down on use of third party tools like Taplio. Multiple people have asked me that and I've never seen it, but now I'm like, oh, I literally just made myself a post it note like, should I remove Taplio?

[Michael]

Well, so it's funny because I've used it for eight months and actually partnered with them because it truly is incredible for me. I had been scheduling my content. I schedule my content out a week at a time and it's great. But if that's actually happening and all of a sudden LinkedIn removed all the followers I gained from Taplio, that would be a big concern.

[Amanda Natividad]

Imagine they're like, these don't count, Right? We're taking them back.

[Michael]

Right.

[Amanda Natividad]

Well, the good news is this guy Michael commented on your post, this must be a mistake or glitch. Well, and he said, you have gained a real follower in me. So that's.

[Michael]

I got one more. 11,001.

[Amanda Natividad]

Yeah. Shout out to you, Michael. All right, well, I hope that by the time we post this, I hope this gets resolved and I hope those come back.

[Michael]

We'll do a brown too, and I'll let you know where I'm at.

[Amanda Natividad]

Damn. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that, people. I got a message the other day that somebody was, who knows, people were texting people saying that it was me, and it was like, hey, this Dave Gerhardt, like, I have something urgent. Can you please call me?

[Michael]

Yeah, well, I had a Twitter thing happen probably two years ago now that was horrible. So people who follow me, they know, like, I'm. I'm a single mom, I've got three kids. I've been tweeting. I have now 110,000 followers on Twitter. But I share openly about what I'm going through and life as both a marketer and a mom. And I got locked out of my account. It was somebody in Europe. They locked me out of my account, detached everything, so I couldn't change my password, I couldn't get in, couldn't even verify my identity, that it was my account. And they were DMing people saying, Hey, I know I never do this, but my kids really need some money. Can you please send. And my followers were doing it. And I felt horrible. I offered free coaching to. And I tweeted out. Once I got my account back, I tweeted out, if you were a victim of this, let me know what I can do. Like, I will do free coaching, free consulting calls. Like, I was trying to help however I could. Cause I felt horrible.

[Amanda Natividad]

Oh, and that's such a hard thing. Cause it's like you have no idea who or how or any control over that. People write mean things to you sometimes on Twitter. Have you noticed a difference between Twitter versus LinkedIn and how people react?

[Michael]

Look, I reach anywhere from 20 to 40 million impressions a month on Twitter, and I'm not near that on LinkedIn. So I don't think it's apples to apples because I get a lot more trolls on Twitter, but I think it's just because I reach a lot more people. And it's funny, there's certain content topics that if I touch them, I know it's going to. It's just an invitation to please say horrible things to me. But LinkedIn so far has been. I've grown really slowly and steadily. Like, I just started being really intentional on LinkedIn a year ago, and it's been very steady. So I know people say LinkedIn can be a little crazy, but you tell me, what's your LinkedIn experience like?

[Amanda Natividad]

Well, so I've been on Twitter forever, and it just doesn't really move the needle. Like, I have, I don't know, 4, 37. I've had 37,000 followers for, like, seven years. I feel like. And I go back and forth between, like, just deleting it and not even having it. But then. And I don't really have a strategy there. I just kind of, like, randomly post things. And then I used to share a lot more, and I noticed that, like, it is really. I found that it's really toxic. And I've seen some of the stuff you write about, right? You write about your life and your family and single mom and kids and whatever. And, like, people just take what you say and completely flip it. And it's like, wait, what? And then that comment goes nuts. And it's just like, I have a harder time with, like, the mental health side of Twitter. But I. At the same time, like, seven years ago, when I was working at this company, Drift, we really started writing on LinkedIn a lot. And LinkedIn launched LinkedIn video when we were there. And I was very comfortable being on video. And so I was doing marketing at a company that sold marketing software. And the company had a really strong brand and buzz and got a lot of attention. And they. People really liked the way we were doing marketing. And so I was sharing, like, regular updates about the things that we were doing. And I would do it by, like, videos, walking and talking, like, literally, like, drinking a smoothie on my way to the office, like, sharing what we were doing. And LinkedIn had just launched video at that point, and I noticed my videos were getting, like, a hundred thousand views. Any new social platform, any social platform, when they roll, like, a new feature, they kind of prioritize that thing. And so it just went nuts. And so I went from just using LinkedIn, like, to remember, it used to be just like, oh, I met you at golden hour. I send you a connection. I was like, great to meet you. And we'd send a connection request. And now you're in my Rolodex. But it shifted to be a content platform. And so I just started, like, connecting with everybody and requesting connections. And I had 50,000 followers, 60,000 followers, 70,000 followers in, like, a year, in the time it took me to go on Twitter for 10 years. I've been on Twitter since 2009, and now I have 165,000 followers on Twitter. But it's mainly because I focus on B2B. And I. I have to play a different game, I think, to grow on Twitter. And so now I just. Like, I have Twitter. My new strategy is, like, once a day, I'll share something that I wrote, mostly long form, mostly from LinkedIn. I just put it over there because what I notice is the value of Twitter for me is the DMs. Yeah, there's people that will only reach out to me in the DMs. Like, I've become close with the CMO at HubSpot, this guy Kip Bodner. And we're on LinkedIn. We have email, we have text messages. But he'll DM me, be like, hey, I'm coming up to Vermont this week. Like, we should play golf.

[Michael]

Yeah, it's another WhatsApp for many people.

[Amanda Natividad]

Interesting. Yeah.

[Michael]

Yeah. LinkedIn feels still like the Rolodex. Like, it's very buttoned up. It's like another texting platform for me. I'm talking to my friends, my Twitter friends on Twitter in the DMs all the time. And, I mean, I raised $2.6 million for my last company, and I would say 80% of it, if not more.

[Amanda Natividad]

Came from Twitter, from posting on Twitter, or, like, having a Presence, but looking good enough to post. And then, like, having active dms. The DMS that I get are amazing. Like, I got a shout out on the My First Million podcast because those guys somehow were paying attention to exit 5. And Sean, his co founder, this guy Ben. Like, I find out, you know, like, you ever click on someone's profile and you're like, this person follows me.

[Michael]

Yeah, all the time. Jack Dorsey follows me.

[Amanda Natividad]

What?

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Amanda Natividad]

Hey, maybe he loves CBD gummies. I don't know.

[Michael]

Well, actually, no. I grew so fast on Twitter that I was invited by the Twitter executive team when Jack was still very active there. And I got to do a phone call with the entire executive team as part of their, like, monthly team meeting to understand how they can make Twitter better for women.

[Amanda Natividad]

Well, when was that?

[Michael]

I did a YouTube about it. It was probably like 2021.

[Amanda Natividad]

Interesting. Were you nervous before that conversation?

[Michael]

Yeah, I didn't think Jack would actually be on it.

[Amanda Natividad]

Was it a straight up phone call or were you on video? It was video and he was on video.

[Michael]

Yeah. I've created maybe four YouTube videos in my life, but that was one of them.

[Amanda Natividad]

So if LinkedIn didn't get rid of your 15,000 followers, do you have a different content strategy for Twitter than you do LinkedIn?

[Michael]

If you would have asked me six months ago, I would have said yes, because Twitter was my primary focus. But now I'm in maintenance mode with Twitter because I think that I've reached this kind of global maximum of, like, I have the contacts I want, and it's just about staying connected to people. And LinkedIn is my primary focus right now because I believe that you can grow faster to your point. Like, you plateau on Twitter, you can grow faster, more intentionally. There's an actual system behind LinkedIn growth. Twitter just feels a lot more like, recently, I had the most viral tweet on Twitter for the day. You get like an email when you're. You have the most viral tweet. And it was the Stanley cup when that caught on fire and the CEO responded, yeah, and I maybe got like 200 followers from that and it was the most viral tweet of the day.

[Amanda Natividad]

Interesting. Do you remember how many impressions? Do you remember the impression number?

[Michael]

It was 30 million.

[Amanda Natividad]

30 million impressions and you got 200 followers?

[Michael]

Yeah. It was crazy as wild. There's no rhyme or reason with Twitter. It's harder. But LinkedIn, there's like a real approach minus when you get 50,000 followers removed. But I saw it like, the formula was very consistent. If I Post twice a day. Engage with 10 people a day. I'm showing up after I post and engaging with the comments for, you know, at least 30 minutes. If I pulled these levers, I watched the number just keep going up, up, up.

[Amanda Natividad]

You actually wrote this earlier. Three years of tweeting, and I think this is a fantastic advice for just a General content strategy. Three years of tweeting with no intention or system. 100,000 followers, $0. Two months of tweeting with intentions and a system. 101,000 followers and 30K. Create a goal, Optimize your system. Focus on quality of content, not quantity of followers. Can you give me the narrative behind that?

[Michael]

So I quit my kind of corporate career. For those that don't know me, I've started two companies. I led marketing at the Knot in between my first startup and my second startup. So I was at the Knot for five years. And then after that, I sold my last startup in 2022 and went on to just go be a VP of marketing. Kind of just trying to figure out what I wanted to do next and decided I was gonna go on my own and do this whole solopreneur thing. So I quit my job with no safety net. I was like, okay, I've got foul. I'm gonna figure this out. Like, that's my founder brain. I like the forcing function of just, I'm going to figure this out and I need to. So I quit my job in September. I gave myself six months to hit a five figure a month mrr and I did it in the first two months.

[Amanda Natividad]

What was intentional about the content strategy? Like, going from tweeting? Just because. I'll give you an example. Like, if you think of Justin Welsh, you think of solopreneurship, right? I've seen even in my own content, like, the reason I've grown on LinkedIn was because I wasn't growing when I was sharing everything. Like, here's my workout, here's what I did. This thing with my kids. Check out this thing I like when I just focus on. And I often say, like, oh, do. You wouldn't believe how much more I do in life beyond marketing. But on LinkedIn, that's just what I talk about. Because that's the topic. And I know I think you and I have talked about in the past, but when you were first starting your newsletter, you're like, I don't know. Everybody says niche down, but it seems like you do from a content standpoint, if you want to grow and if you want to monetize that in some way, you do need to have like one or two things that you're known for. Did you develop a content strategy based off of that?

[Michael]

Yeah, two things. I developed a much clearer ICP and then I had an offer because obviously you can't make money if you have no way for people to give you money. And so I actually had to spend the time building the products on the back end. So the ICP was really, really important work because social media for me was just like. It was almost like a diary, but a somewhat filtered diary. I mean, other times it wasn't as filtered, but then I actually said, well, what do people come to me for? And I did surveys. I had a newsletter for a few months before I got really intentional about making money. I sent out a survey and the funny thing was I thought people wanted to learn from me. Marketing. I've been a CMO several times, but when I did the survey, the thing that came back was people want to know how I get shit done. They're very curious about how there's a lot of productivity gurus that have no kids and they'll tell you how to structure your day. And you're like, you have no clue what it's like to run a marathon. In my day before 9am so I realized that my ICP is actually people who are building and they're teetering on the edge of burnout and they know that they don't want to go there, so they're trying to create sustainable momentum.

[Amanda Natividad]

So you created that. You're like, okay, I'm going to write content about this topic. What does your writing process look like? How do you create content? Because it seems like you went from you're creating content that's like this diary. Like, I just did this thing and you can still mix in some of those things, but I want to know the system behind your content. And can you also say, what's the offer that you created? Was it your newsletter? Not having a newsletter.

[Michael]

So my flywheel is social media feeds to my newsletter. And then as I learn what works and resonates in my newsletter that feeds my social media. So that's the first flywheel then of my newsletter. I drive people to one of two things. They can either take my course that's very do it yourself, or they can join my community. The community is very hands on. I'm there. We're in Slack every day. It's about building accountability. We teach best practices around branding. And then I learned from that. That feeds my social, that feeds my newsletter. Then the last tier is the high ticket prices where I do coaching. I have eight people that I'm coaching on their business, but both like inner work as well as the external stuff. Because I have been in therapy for six years. I've had a Harvard trained coach for 10. I think a lot of people's blockers are a lot more internal than they are. What's the algorithm? It's like, no, actually, let's talk about why you're struggling to take up space. And then the highest ticket price is actually working with me as a fractional cmo and I do CMO workshops and stuff like that.

[Amanda Natividad]

I love that you mentioned the feedback loop. So most of the people that listen to this. I think your story is relevant for two reasons. Number one, I think you're a master at the content and social media world. And I think that flywheel is the most underrated thing. It's something that I relate to. That's my whole strat. That's been my whole playbook as a marketer. Especially in a B2B world, we get caught up on ABM, this strategy, this thing. I don't have a framework, I don't have a funnel. What I'm good at is understanding my audience, creating content for that audience and then getting the feedback loop going. I mean, just this week we did a whole new rebrand, we did a whole new logo, whole new website, whole brand redesign, everything, everything. And we already are making changes because we launched it. Couple things we didn't like. We heard some specific comments and feedback and so we're going to change it. We have an advantage. We have an audience. We have such an advantage. We're doing our first event, which you said you're going to buy a ticket, to which everybody, like I say to my kids, when. My kids, when it's like 6:30 and my son yawns and he's like, I'm so tired, what do I say to him? I say, prove it. Prove it. Prove it by going to bed like.

[Michael]

Oh, I'm stealing that.

[Amanda Natividad]

I say prove it. Yo, you're so tired. Prove it. Because usually you know what happens, right? They eat dinner, they take a shower. Then like everybody gets a second win and it's like 9:15, everybody's still up. So my line has been saying that everybody who says they're gonna buy a ticket, I say, prove it. I know you will. So we came up with the whole concept for the event, all the speakers, everything, this whole podcast, right? Like the whole Exit 5 media business is this flywheel that you talked about. And I just think it's such an advantage when you have a clearly defined icp. The marketing world that we live in today, there isn't social media and content and marketing. Right. And I think I talked about this with you with Alex Lieberman at Golden Hour. Like, this is how you do marketing today, and you get it on a personal level. And I just would love to see more B2B marketers and brands adopt this strategy. And people say, well, no, it's different. She's talking about productivity. Nope, it's the same. Because people are people, and they want knowledge and expertise and information. And you can do it whether you're trying to help somebody be more productive or you sell payroll software. Do you agree with that?

[Michael]

I agree immensely. I'm working on my marketing strategy right now for my client, and I sat down with them, and they're like, okay, you know, what's the social strategy? What's the content strategy? What's the email strategy? And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We have to first come up and say, okay, what do we stand for? Who are we talking to? And then content strategy. Because content strategy is your email strategy is your social strategy. And so I take people through the content strategy framework and say, okay, teach me, inspire me, help me. What are your kind of big pillars? What are you actually trying to teach people? And I think help me is such an important content pillar, because when you say help me, that forces you into a lens of what are their pain points? What are they asking for help with?

[Amanda Natividad]

Yeah, this is really good. Is this like a framework that you've used or just. Are those bullets that you. I love this. For people listening, this is such a good tip for a content. For your strategy for your company. Teach me, inspire me, help me. You can apply those to any niche, any industry. The person who's there wants to get one of those three things. I love that.

[Michael]

Yeah. And then the last one I'll throw in is sell me. But we sell by showing, not by selling. And showing means testimonials. It means like, I teach this in my office hours. I'm like, if you're trying to own the. It's like the art of the humble brag, right, Is there's so many ways you can say this, like, oh, I was just talking to a client today, and their biggest thing thing was this. And I did this. And then all of a sudden, human psychology is just like, oh, they have clients. Oh, that person. Oh, I was just talking to a client that's doing 100 million in revenue and their biggest pain point is this. Now you're in their mind as an expert and you have a hundred million dollar clients. The art of the humble brag is the fourth pillar in that. And selling me does not mean selling sell me, it means show me.

[D]

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. NAC is a no code email platform that makes easy to create on brand high performing emails without the bottlenecks. If you're frustrated by clunky email builders, you need Knack. If you're tired of hoping the email you sent looks good across all devices, just test it in Knack first. 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] exit 5. That's K-N-A-K.com ex exit 5. Or just let them know you heard about Knack from exit 5.

[Amanda Natividad]

That's us. Oh, I love that. That's like really similar to the concept of why I wrote this book, Founder, brand, which is basically like you're the founder of this company. Think about your journey. Like just using an example, starting house of wise, right? You're the one in this meetings every day. You're meeting with investors, advisors, employees, partners, branding this and that. If you just share, the company doesn't have to be growing, but if you're just documenting like what you're doing, you're going to attract like minded people. And that kind of ended up being your story. And I think the same is true in B2B. If you're a founder marketing team at a B2B company, what are the meetings you're in? Nobody's there just for fun, like hey, let's start this B2B services company because we want to get super rich. It's like, oh no, you must have had deep experience in some industry somehow. So share that stuff. I love that the art of the humble brag is really good.

[Michael]

I was just saying I know. I have founder, brand, you're in it. I know. Look at this.

[Amanda Natividad]

Love that. That's great.

[Michael]

Right next to me.

[Amanda Natividad]

That's great. I get about $33 a month in royalties from that. No big deal.

[Michael]

I mean, I have a book coming out next year and I definitely am like, let's not add that to the line item of revenue.

[Amanda Natividad]

No, you can't, you can't, you can't. However, who knows, you could be pleasantly surprised. You have a great audience. It opened up a lot of interesting relationships and conversations though, for me that I haven't. I can't really quantify that. I think if you're trying to do it, if you're going to like, I'm going to sell X number of books at this number of price. It doesn't work like that.

[Michael]

Yeah, you always say, is it a means to an end or the end? And if it's the end, that's probably not the right use of time because it is a lot of time.

[Amanda Natividad]

So you talked about working with companies and helping them come up. Like the very first piece is like, you can't come up with the email strategy and a social strategy and a content strategy. People like you and me, we can do that stuff in a heartbeat if we know what you stand for. Yeah, right. So take me into that exercise. With founders, with companies. How do you go in there and unpack what you stand for? I think sometimes in this world we call it like the company story, the strategic narrative positioning. I think people get lost in the weeds of like having the perfect framework for. Like, if you and I could just text each other and come up with like, yeah, we're gonna start this new company. Here's what we stand for. We could do it over messaging. What's your framework for coming up with? What do you stand for?

[Michael]

So a couple tools that I use. The brand strategy pyramid. Like, the brand pyramid is kind of my holy grail of what I use because takes you through it's very maslow hierarchy of needs for any. I'm sure everybody listening to this knows what a brand pyramid is, but starts with the very functional benefits of your product. So you are software or you are a energy drink. You are served in a plastic bottle. Or if you're house of wise, my last company, it's like, okay, we are sleep gummies, stress gummies, et cetera. But then you start moving up this pyramid and it's a forcing function to really get to this top. Say, what is your brand essence? What do you want someone to feel when they're connecting with your brand, which is very maslow hierarchy of needs. You move up to like emotional and then self actualization and at the self actualization of a brand is really like what's that essence? What do you want somebody to feel? Coca Cola infamously is it's share a Coke. Because they are all about community. When you're drinking a Coke, whether you're a polar bear or people on the street, it's this idea that you're with your family and community. You feel connected. They added that as like the wrapper to a very functional product. And so for me, I am a very emotional brander. I always care about what emotion do you want someone to feel when they are using your product, experiencing your customer service? Are they super inspired? Do they feel related to? Do they feel at ease? That's the first tool that I use. The second tool is starting to really chip away at the language and the semantics of the language. I use an only statement. You are the only blank for blank to do blank in a time where blank. If you do an only statement, you're starting to really finesse that language even more. And the third tool is what are we not? And that's when I'll do the chart and I start plotting different things on the opposite end of the spectrum and say, okay, are we social or are we personal? Are we focused on a community or are we actually focused on an individual? Like exit 5? It's like, are you focused on it growing as a community and the support of the community, or are you really focused on growing the product person? And so I start plotting those things and I say, show me where you think we are on a spectrum. Are we over here or here? Because when you force people to do that, you start to see where there's disconnect. Especially if you get all the executives in a room.

[Amanda Natividad]

This is really good. I'm furiously scribbling notes like I do and I can see founders and executives in this meeting though. How do you balance what you can do today versus where the company is going? I feel like the variable here is so often like the product and the roadmap and specifically that only conversation. Is there a lot of friction there early trying to figure out like we're the only. There's a lot of nuance, especially today. There's so many products in so many industries. How do you really come up with a strong differentiator?

[Michael]

It's usually in the psychographics and the emotions, but for sure, Chief Product Officer cto, they're the ones that are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But I have to always remind them this is aspirational. Where do we want to go as a brand? And then we're going to build a roadmap to get there. We may not be there today, but where do we want to live in the consumer's mind and especially in early stage companies. You know, Beehive's a great example. Like they came out and they said, we're going to be the fastest, we're going to going to ship the most. And even though they couldn't compete with Substack right away, they started chipping away at that. And you see that when you live in the consumer's mind as being something, you will work into that and you will develop a roadmap with that lens.

[Amanda Natividad]

Interesting. So you can go after the. We might have similar features as someone else, but the way that we talk and you said emotions and psychographics, that is like how we come off as a brand and who we focus on could be our differentiator.

[Michael]

And the people, like, I think the world of B2B needs to kind of peel back the layers of your employees and bringing creators into the fold and ambassadors and who's a part of it. I mean, as a cmo, I'm looking around to say who else is working with them, who works there, what do they stand for? I think it's a really cool opportunity when you have amazing people that work at your company. Getting them to talk about your company is such a no brainer for me. I mean, morning brew starting with like you just were watching like Alex and Austin and Dan Toomey and they're all tweeting at each other and you're like, well, these are cool people. I'll read this thing. That's how brands work nowadays. It's the humans behind the brands. Golden hour is a great example. Like meeting the team behind that. I was like, yeah, I will do whatever I can. I'll promote you guys. You're just a good human.

[Amanda Natividad]

Yeah. So like using that to your advantage in your marketing versus trying to be like, well, this product that we compete with has these 10 features, but we have these 11 and we're going to win on this variable.

[Michael]

If you look at the brand pyramid, if you're competing down here, you're going to lose. I launched a company in one of the most competitive markets when I launched House of Wise. CBD Gummies had and products had been out for years. But the place that I wanted to hold in someone's mind is that we are helping women take up space because when they took one of our gummies, they were making space, space for their workout, making space for sex, making space for sleep. And it was so much more than this gummy. It was like giving yourself permission to have those things. And so I wasn't competing down here in function. There's lots of gummies out there with these same ingredients. I had to compete at the top.

[Amanda Natividad]

The emotions, the brand pyramid. So people can look this up. Is it literally called the brand pyramid? Yeah.

[Michael]

If you just Google brand pyramid, you'll see tons of examples.

[Amanda Natividad]

So you have brand essence, brand personality, emotional benefits, rational benefits, functional benefits. So you could literally print this out and get a pen and paper, fill it out, and do the exercise. There's this company that is much bigger than we are that's doing something similar, and I'm starting to get more questions about how we're different. And I just want to scream through the microphone sometimes and be like, because it's our way, but I have to. We gotta do a better job at articulating that over time. But, like, there is something there. Like, the niche can be you. And we're. It's our flavor. We make the pizza differently.

[Michael]

I literally just wrote this. This is my newsletter yesterday, which was all content is chicken. It just is. You have to decide what your flavors and spices and recipe are. So it's okay. There are so many people talking about productivity, but my flavor, my recipe is that I'm a single mom, and I have four businesses that I'm building, and the people that like my recipe will come to me. Your flavoring is the blend of you, your team, how you make people feel, the existing people that are in the community, that are, like, the energy and heartbeat of the community, those are parts of your seasons. And it's like kfc. It's the special blend of herbs and spices that you can't really put a finger on.

[Amanda Natividad]

And you'd never feed it to your children.

[Michael]

You shouldn't feed it to your children.

[Amanda Natividad]

No, I like that. That makes me feel better because I've been going hard on this narrative. I didn't create this company to copy somebody else. It's just like, I got here because I started podcasting and writing about the lessons that I learned going from PR intern to cmo. And I'm building the resource that I wish that I had as a marketing leader. And we're focused on B2B marketing because, like, none of us really went to school for B2B marketing. You didn't really Wake up one day. We all wanted to be athletes or creators or artists or whatever, and you gotta learn how to do this. And so I'm just. We're leaning into that, and I think if we can build trust and get people to watch our videos and listen to our stuff and be in the community, it's like, oh, okay, I can see how this is different.

[Michael]

Yeah, exactly. And even with my community, I have people who are building the same type of community in my community, and I let them in. I don't filter it out, because part of my flavors and spices is that I am accessible. And I want people to feel like this is accessible, tangible, learning. And if I were to start blocking people out, that's against what I want somebody to feel.

[Amanda Natividad]

Have you ever done anything with brand archetypes? So I think this is. Initially, this guy Joseph Campbell came up with this concept, but there is. This might be a reality, but basically there's 12 different brand archetypes that you can have, and their names like the explorer, the outlaw, the magician, the hero, the lover, the jester, everyman, caregiver, ruler, and you basically define the characteristics of that brand. So, like, are you really edgy? Are you a challenger, or are you more interesting? I'll send you a link.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah.

[Amanda Natividad]

All right, let's talk about this idea of fractional cmo, and we'll wrap with this. So you've done a bunch of things. You've been a VP of marketing, you've been a cmo, you've been a creator. Now you're going back into the fractional CMO game. There's a lot of people who actually, this is very relatable for a lot of people work in marketing, maybe want to break out, go do their own thing, or companies that want to hire a fractional cmo. What is the world of fractional CMO look like, and why has it become so popular?

[Michael]

I think as the creator economy just continues to blow up, people are really, really interested in owning their calendar and not feeling tied to a single company, being able to take on multiple revenue streams. And unfortunately, the creator economy is moving way faster than the corporate economy. Like, in thinking, corporate world is still very much like, you're loyal to me. You can't tweet about something else. And just the way that the world is with rising costs. And I saw Professor Galloway's thing about how we're the first generation to not surpass our parents and income and all of that, but I really think that corporations are stunting their own growth by not embracing the creator economy, which is spinning out more and more fractional employees. Now what I'll say is as I'm, I have a lot of people who are looking to become fractional CMOs that join my community. You have to run the same process of what's your icp? Who are you for? Because what happens is when you step out of the CMO world and now you're injecting yourself as a fractional cmo, you have to have a very clear value prop, you have to understand what your strengths are. So you have to run all the things that you do when you go in to be a fractional cmo, you have to flip it on yourself and run all of these same processes. When I first was starting out, I'm like, okay, what is my brand pyramid? When I putting on the CMO hat and I found that I help early stage pre series A companies get their marketing ready for a series A. So I am the person that comes in and makes sure the brand is ready to go for that huge capital injection where you're going to do a lot more growth marketing. So I'm not a growth marketer, I never claim to be, but my specialty is going in and making sure all of this brand work, that emotional connection, every touch point that you experience with a brand, you feel that. So that when you open up the top of the funnel, all the leaks are gone. I'm great at retention marketing, email marketing, so I get all the leaks gone so they can turn on the faucet.

[Amanda Natividad]

And in the fractional role, like do you or I don't actually know much about it from other people either. How do you work with other people with resources? What does the setup look like?

[Michael]

The setup's very similar to a regular CMO role, just less hours, which honestly, because of the way I work, like they're getting a full time employee, I just am way more efficient with my time. But you're still running an operating like an operational heartbeat. You have your okrs are set, you're managing the team, you're doing standups, you are making sure everybody knows where they're going, what the next milestone is and you're managing agencies. I think that meeting hygiene is so important as a fractional CMO because you could just spend all 20 hours in meetings if you're not careful. But I just make sure that the team, when you're working in the stage I am, it's smaller teams now. There are fractional CMOs that go into way larger companies. They don't manage the teams, they're coming in to do the RFPs in the agencies, they lock in all the people, they look at the org chart, they say we're under resourced here, we're over resourced here. We're going to set the structure of the team. But it's really nice. Fractional CMO works really well. When you have a lot of soldiers but no lieutenants and you have a lot of people that can do the work. You have no one telling them how does this all bundled together towards one vision and one roadmap. Because you have a lot of people doing stuff like over here and here and you're like, well nothing's working. It's like, well yeah, because you don't have someone that's actually coming up and connecting it.

[Amanda Natividad]

Do you feel like the soldiers listen to you?

[Michael]

That's an interesting question. The culture piece is difficult for sure. And you need to have complete buy in from the executive team of your purpose there.

[Amanda Natividad]

Basically. Like how do you not get treated like the substitute teacher? You know, like I think it could work great if the team is pumped to work with you, pumped to learn from you. But if all of a sudden you're like perceived as this part time person who then is like has to do one on ones and manage people, I don't know if you've run up against that, but I'm just thinking of the other side.

[Michael]

Yeah, I've done this now with I think about six companies. And the ones that work the best are when you have an existing operating rhythm that works and you're plugged into that. Second you have a CEO that you're in lockstep with and they are supportive and they are embracing feedback loops. Because I'm coming in and these people may have been working there for five, seven years and I need to know that they feel comfortable giving me feedback. And if they're triangulating the whole time, it's never going to work. If they have to go feel like I gotta go tell the principal that I don't like what the substitute teacher's doing, that's never going to work. And so I go in very clearly with a hey, I'm going to come listen, I'm going to listening to her for a few months. Here's my background, here's why I'm here, here's what I want to do to help you. And I always just try to phrase it as you're frustrated. Usually they bring in somebody because the team's frustrated, they're not making the progress they want and so you Come in and you just really make sure that you're speaking in their language, you're trying to make their job better.

[Amanda Natividad]

So for you and for people like that might be. There's a couple interesting things, I think. One, there is this trend of you can work for yourself and you can work remotely. And so there is a whole career path where it's like if you're listening to this podcast and you're not happy in your current role and you're like, I don't want to go work for a company anymore. There's a path, right, Amanda, where you could be a fractional CMO for two or three companies and probably make more money than you were before and work less hours or be more efficient in those hours. And so, like, I think it's an interesting career path if you're a marketer and you're like, I'm tired of this one company thing. Yeah, I could go do fractional CMO and rotate. But it sounds like the qualifier has got to be CEO, has to be involved and care and passionate about marketing. If it's like, we just want to outsource this, I'm not invested in this department. I want to hire you to like babysit marketing and give me the updates. That's when it's not going to work out for you.

[Michael]

Right, right, exactly.

[Amanda Natividad]

Okay, let's wrap up. What's your workout today?

[Michael]

I'm trying to get my run time down, so I'm going to go do sprints. I am trying to get back to like a seven minute mile.

[Amanda Natividad]

We'll see a seven minute mile.

[Michael]

We're trying. I did it two years ago summer. I broke seven minutes and I was.

[Amanda Natividad]

Like, okay, for one mile.

[Michael]

Yeah. So I'm sprint training. So I have this little workout I do on the treadmill. It's 30 minutes, but it's a lot of sprint. Calm down for a minute. Sprint. So I do that for 30 minutes and then I'm just going to do arms today.

[Amanda Natividad]

Oh, yeah. Friday afternoon arm day. Let's go. Love that.

[Michael]

I'm in Miami.

[Amanda Natividad]

Yeah, of course. I have so much respect for that. And when you're running, when you're walking, when you're outside, are you headphones on? No headphones. First question.

[Michael]

Headphones.

[Amanda Natividad]

And what are you listening to?

[Michael]

Taylor Swift all the time.

[Amanda Natividad]

I've never heard of that person. I'm not. That's exciting. My wife and her friends are going to her show in Paris in a couple weeks.

[Michael]

She's in Paris right now. Is she coming?

[Amanda Natividad]

She comes back or Maybe it's neat. I don't even know. It's somewhere in France and it's at the beginning of June or end of May.

[Michael]

I'm so jealous. I might go to London. I've been once. I might go again.

[Amanda Natividad]

Yeah, it's like they found this hack where it's cheaper to go to Paris and they're like, well, we're going to Paris. I'm like, well, that's nice.

[Michael]

The cheapest tickets I can find in Miami. She's coming to Miami on my birthday. $3,000. So I'm going to London.

[Amanda Natividad]

No, let's get you a sponsor. Let's get you a newsletter sponsor. Three grand, one time placement. You could run a bundle. Get your Taylor Swift.

[Michael]

If you want to reach marketers, founders. And you want me to wear your logo at the Taylor Swift concert?

[Amanda Natividad]

Yeah, you could be like Alex Lieberman did at the Michigan game with HubSpot. But this could be for Taylor Swift. All right, Amanda, good to see you. Thanks for hanging out. We'll plug all your stuff, people go find you on LinkedIn. We got to get your LinkedIn following, right?

[Michael]

Please follow me on LinkedIn.

[Amanda Natividad]

We got to get you back boosted up. All right, good to see you. Enjoy your weekend. Thanks for coming and hanging out with us on the Exit 5 podcast.

[Michael]

Exit.

[Dave Gerhardt]

This episode is brought to you by Customer IO. You know that feeling when you open your inbox and it's just noise, Bad marketing, spam, some brand sending you another, just checking in email, or hey, Dave, did you get trapped under the filing cabinet or referencing some line about your college that you don't care about? Most companies are out here just talking at customers, not talking to them. Marketing messages should do more than just land in an inbox. They should create an impact, mean something to your customer. And that's where customer IO comes in. They help companies send smarter, more personalized messages using first party data. So instead of another generic, hey, first name email, you're crafting messages that hit at the right time, in the right place, on the right channel. Email, sms, push notifications. Wherever your customers are, your messages can meet them right there. And the best part is it's all automated. So you're not just blasting campaigns and hoping for the best. You're running a machine that delivers real human engagement at scale. This is why 7000 brands already trust customer IO to make their marketing feel less like noise and more like a real connection. You can join them by visiting Customer IO to get started. That's Customer IO. Check them out and tell them that we sent you at exit 5.