How to Build a Community People Trust with Matt Carnevale

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dave Gerhardt Show

Episode: How to Build a Community People Trust with Matt Carnevale

Date: January 12, 2026
Host: Dave Gerhardt (Founder, Exit Five)
Guest: Matt Carnevale (Head of Community, Exit Five)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the art and business of building a trusted, thriving community for B2B marketers. Dave Gerhardt and Matt Carnevale—Exit Five’s Head of Community—unpack their hands-on lessons and hard-won principles from nearly two years of Exit Five’s community growth, detailing what works (and what doesn’t), how trust is built, and why "community" must be more than just another channel or Slack group in B2B. The discussion is both tactical and philosophical, sharing practical guidance, honest stories, and the evolving strategy behind a community people truly value.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Matt’s Unusual Path to Head of Community

• How Matt Got the Job ([03:34])
  • Started in sales, pivoted to B2B marketing after disliking BDR work
  • Was an Exit Five community fan first: “I really knew at that point in my career I wanted to work with some elite, elite marketers, and I viewed you that way, I viewed Dan that way.” – Matt ([04:00])
  • Sent a cold email to co-founder Dan Murphy, including a YouTube video outlining top ideas for community growth.
  • Hired after a strong, proactive pitch and early drive.

2. What Makes Exit Five’s Community Special?

• Immeasurable Brand Trust ([06:04]–[07:07])
  • Dave: “There’s just something…you feel it, right? Do you still feel that way two years in?”
  • Matt: “Absolutely…the feeling of people love us as a brand and trust us a ton. It almost feels like whatever we want to put out there is going to work because we have that trust.” ([06:37])
  • Brand obsession: Dave describes obsessing over every single member touch—email, podcast, etc.—and parallels with legendary founder stories.

3. Defining “Community” in B2B

• What Does “Community” Mean? ([10:38])
  • Matt: “I define it as any group of people that have a shared interest…There’s some crossover with awareness and brand building, but that’s essentially what you’re trying to do.” ([10:56])
  • Community is not just a channel or forum—it’s a group with shared purpose, either broad (all who care about a topic) or narrow (a specific, defined group).

4. Tactics and Pitfalls in B2B Community Creation

• Why Most B2B “Communities” Fail ([14:34]–[16:53])

  • Many companies launch private communities without clear goals, resources, or commitment.
  • “If you just work backwards from like, well, why do I want to create this private community space?…Is building a Slack community really the way I want to go do that?” – Matt ([14:34])
  • Prediction: Most fail due to lack of executive belief, insufficient time/investment, or treating community strictly as a pipeline generator.

• Alternative Models

  • Encourage treating community like a paid, standalone product: “What if you made it a paid community and really treated that thing like a product…try and grow subscribers and really invest in it.” – Matt ([16:14])

5. Measurement, Executive Buy-In, and “Why It Breaks”

• Hard Truths on Internal Buy-In ([18:00])
  • Community success demands top-level belief and willingness to treat it as a true product—not just a pipeline channel.
  • “The only way I think it can work internally is if someone at the highest level of the company fully believes in that approach and isn’t worried about trying to measure it.” – Dave ([18:00])
  • Community’s biggest ROI: word of mouth, goodwill, and content engine—not immediate sales.

6. Community Management Playbook

• How Effective Communities Run ([21:30])

  • The old “discussion board = success” metric is outdated; today, quality and trust are key.
  • “People don’t want to just log into another platform…and just see more noise. They want to go to a place where…they can trust.” – Matt ([21:50])
  • Importance of real connection: “As you move up the career ladder…trust becomes even more important. You don’t need the basics—you need what your most elite peers are doing.” – Matt ([24:06])

• Behind the Scenes Work ([25:13])

  • It’s more than just letting people talk: thoughtful onboarding, matchmaking, tagging experts into threads, forced connections.
  • Example: Automated monthly peer-matching based on member interests, proactive tagging for engagement, detailed intake forms.
  • Real subject-matter expertise by managers is more important than just community “operations.” ([20:48])

7. Curation and the Importance of the “Room”

• How Exclusivity and Curation Shape Value ([29:28])
  • "When your community is just open reign...it's probably going to let in some people that maybe don't mix as well. You have to pick who your people are and bet on that." – Matt ([29:38])
  • The pain of even a single bad experience (“lost in buckets, gained in drops”)
  • Focused, niche communities have lower churn/higher engagement.

8. Most Underrated and Overrated Community Plays

• What Works Best ([37:51]–[38:36])

  • In-person events—connecting online and offline cements bonds, “unexpected benefit… in-person has made online better.”
  • “If you have people who initially connected, our events feel incredibly warm…the reason is because at least 50% of the people already have had some form of interaction online.” – Dave ([38:32])

• What’s Overrated

  • Virtual events/webinars: “People don’t join community to get talked at by the team…they join to meet others like them.” – Matt ([39:23])
  • Community cannot be just another broadcast channel.

9. Life Lessons & Reflections

• Importance of Where You Work ([42:13])

  • “You learn a lot more working under really great leadership when you have really good product market fit.” – Matt ([42:24])
  • Work culture/leadership/product matter more for enjoyment and impact than most realize.

• On Thought Leadership

  • It’s not just “being loud”—true thought leaders share real, helpful insights and data, not just noise ([51:48]).

• Work Habits

  • Rapid learning in fast-moving, small, high-trust teams. Importance of shock-to-the-system habits to maintain focus (early mornings, gym, etc.) ([46:34]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This feeling of people love us as a brand and trust us a ton. It almost feels like whatever we put out there is going to work because we have that trust.” – Matt ([06:37])
• “Community is any group of people that have a shared interest…not just a Slack or Facebook group.” – Matt ([10:56])
• “If you just work backwards from like, why do I want to create this private community space?...There’s probably 10 other ways to solve this problem or hit this goal.” – Matt ([14:34])
• “The only way it can work internally is if someone at the highest level of the company fully believes in that approach and isn’t worried about trying to measure it.” – Dave ([18:00])
• “You need to have the subject matter expertise in house…we’ll learn how to do the community management versus if we had community management but all fluff.” – Dave ([20:48])
• “Trust is gained in drops, lost in buckets.” – Matt ([31:03])
• “If you have to message me to ask if your post is self-promotional, it probably is.” – Dave ([34:39])
• “What if everyone did that? The community would go to shit…a mini LinkedIn.” – Matt ([36:23])
• “Real human connection is the differentiator. You can’t just automate or intern it out. That is the product.” – Dave ([27:25])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:34] — Matt's unconventional hiring story
• [06:04] — Community’s unique trust and magic at Exit Five
• [10:38] — Defining community in B2B and the differences between “group” and “platform”
• [14:34] — Strategic purpose of B2B community & pilot alternatives
• [16:14] — Paid vs. free communities as business models
• [18:00] — Why “community” often fails inside companies
• [21:30] — Evolved community management: trust, not just noise
• [25:13] — Behind-the-scenes: onboarding, tagging, curating the “room”
• [29:28] — The necessity of curation and managing “riff raff”
• [37:51] — Underrated: in-person events strengthen online bonds
• [39:23] — Overrated: virtual events as the default play
• [42:13] — It really does matter where you work
• [51:48] — Thought leadership: just loud, or actually valuable?
• [54:07] — How to measure podcast impact (beyond downloads)

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Tone & Style

Conversational, honest, irreverent, direct—Dave and Matt don’t shy from industry critique or sharing “unvarnished” truths about community, B2B marketing, or their own growth. The episode blends banter and tactical advice, with moments that poke fun at industry trends, past failures, and their own quirks (“work for a unicorn…are you stupid?”).

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Takeaways for Marketers & Community Leaders

• Build communities intentionally, with executive buy-in and long-term focus—not as a growth hack or pipeline channel.
• Invest in knowing your members and facilitating trust. Community management is a real job requiring real expertise.
• Quality trumps quantity—activity is no longer the key metric, depth and trust are.
• Curation is critical: protect the “room” and be willing to say no.
• In-person connection and true peer-to-peer relationships make communities sticky. Virtual events or forums alone won’t cut it.
• Thought leadership and brand trust are built on genuine insight, not being “loud.”
• Community success is hard to measure in short pipeline cycles but drives outsized returns in brand, word of mouth, and customer loyalty.

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Final Thoughts

The episode delivers actionable frameworks for community-building while candidly exposing common failure points. Matt’s journey from outsider to Head of Community, combined with Dave’s relentless focus on trust and quality, offers a blueprint for B2B marketers who want to do community right—not just as a channel, but as the heart of their brand.

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Follow Matt Carnevale on LinkedIn:
Dave challenges listeners to help Matt reach 15,000 followers by January 1st ([62:29]).

Explore the Exit Five community and resources:
exitfive.com

Listen to more episodes:
Check your podcast app or exitfive.com/podcast

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Transcript

[Dave Gerhardt]

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You're listening to the Dave Gerhard show.

[Matt Carnival]

1, 2, 3, 4, exit.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Matthew Carnival.

[Matt Carnival]

You.

[Dave Gerhardt]

What's going on? How did I do? Did I say it good? Did I say it right?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, you did good.

[Dave Gerhardt]

How are you doing? You know him as Matt. He's the head of community at exit 5. Matt, good to have you on. Thanks for coming on my show, Matt.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, of course. It's been a while since we did one, just you and me. I think that was like the early days we were doing that. So it's been a minute. It's been a minute.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You're supposed to say long time listener. Well, I guess we've done these in the past where I went on a hot stream. We're going to do these every week and then just cancel them all. Just stop.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. Founder mode. Founder mode.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Founder mode. All right, well, I'm super excited. We're hot, man. I told everybody I'm coming hot. The podcast is a real thing for me this year. I'm going to invest more time in it and I thought having you on would be a fun way to do that. Who knows? We'll rate today's session and we'll get the feedback and we'll see if you can be a recurring guest on my show. I know there's obviously rumors of possibly having your own podcast of some kind heading into 2026. If I'm able to check with management on that, we'll. So but for today, we're going to have a nice, a great conversation and. Okay, you're head of community at exit 5. You are actually now currently the second longest tenured employee. We count Dan. Dan doesn't count. He's the first person. He's my business partner. I'd say you're the first full time person at Exit five. We're coming up on, on two years. Just curious, can you tell people, let's rewind. How did you get the job at exit 5? Like how did you even come into the our universe?

[Matt Carnival]

I guess I'll just rewind a little bit even further. I started my career in sales. I was actually, I was a BDR at a company selling marketing software to SMB. I was doing like 75 to 100 cold calls a day. Absolutely hated it within that company. You know, within about six months to a year transition into marketing. And then that's really where my like journey started in B2B marketing. So prior to joining Exit 5, I was an in house B2B marketer and I was a member of Exit 5. And I loved the community. I loved, you know, all the stuff that you were putting out Dave podcast. So I was always like super attuned to like what Exit 5 was doing. And then I saw you brought on Dan and maybe like within a month of him being at exit 5 or less, he had shared a part time social media and community person. And at the time I had like zero experience in either. Like obviously I did my own, like social media to an extent, but not really anything with community. But I really knew at that point in my career I wanted to work with some like, elite, elite marketers. And I viewed you that way. I viewed Dan that way. So I was like, let me see if I can wedge my way into this. So, yeah, so What I did was I. I sent a cold email to Dan. And it's funny because at the time.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Daniel J. Daniel J. Murphy.

[Matt Carnival]

Daniel J. Murphy.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Did I call him Dan? Like, did I call him Dan? Did I call him Daniel? Hello, Daniel. Didn't you say, did we find the emails like, hello, Daniel?

[Matt Carnival]

I said, hi, Daniel.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Hi, Daniel.

[Matt Carnival]

Hey. Is just way too informal.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Hi. You would. Yeah, you would say hi. Hi, Daniel.

[Matt Carnival]

Hi, Daniel. So sent him a cold email. At the time, my testimonial of the community was front smack on the homepage. Part of my pitch was like, look, I understand what you want to hear, what Dave wants to hear about the community. Like, I know how to position this to other marketers. I was like, I'm not really a social or community person, but, like, I could do it all. I could learn on the fly, just like, pitching a bit of my accomplishments. He was like, sure, let's jump on a call. Before the call, I actually had an idea to create a YouTube video with, like, my top five things I would do to grow the X5 community if I were to get hired. And I, I edited it. Nothing crazy, but just some simple cuts. And I sent that off to Dan prior to the interview. And I think that's when I was creating it. I kind of knew. I was like, I think this is going to get me the job. And then when I sent it, I was like, yeah, I'm pretty sure this is like a sick play. And he loved it. He was looking forward to the call. And on that call, yeah, we got to talk about that. It was great. I got to like, reframe it around my ideas and then that was it. And then you guys hired me and then eventually came on full time within like a month or so. And rest was history.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Well, you've done an awesome job. You should be super proud of the last two years because you made nice little care of self. The other day I saw on LinkedIn just kind of recapping, recapping the growth. And I think the numbers are great. We talk about them off. You know, I talk about them in my, in my post or whatever. I just wrote one this morning. And we've doubled revenue in the company three years in a row, which is amazing. But there's just something. And I think you having worked at other companies, I think you feel this now too. There's just something that I feel with what we're doing that's like, the math is one thing. It's just so obvious, right? Do you still feel that way two.

[Matt Carnival]

Years in yeah, absolutely. I've also, like, worked at other companies where, you know, we had revenue growth and, like, people were buying our stuff, but there wasn't that feeling of people love us as a brand and trust us a ton. It almost feels like whatever we want to go put out there is going to work because we have that trust. We have a good story to tell. So, yeah, that's something that I feel every day. And that's what has made this, like, the, you know, super rare opportunity for me. I don't think this happens often.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, I don't think it does. And it keeps me up at night. It's like, you want it. This is what you want with any company, with any product. Like a brand trust, recognition. I think we have this channel in our slack called Love Love slash Proof. I don't know why I named it that term where we share just like the things that people say about Exit 5 online, and we see it all the time, that it's not normal. We have this amazing connection to customers and they're getting jobs and getting promoted and making friends and meeting each other. And when you have that, then you can kind of like introduce more things and new products into that stream and people are more likely to, like, try them because of that. But it also is the thing that keeps me up at night because it's like, that's the thing that we can't. You can't lose that. You need to, like, obsess over that, that response. And so it's like every email that goes out, is this good enough? Every podcast is this, Is this good enough? And maybe it's this, like, sick, this toxic trait, But I think one, you just keep leveling up. And I'm actually. This past week, I've been binging a bunch of you. Have you seen that guy with David Senra, the founder's podcast? Okay. He's become huge. And he has great ramp ads on the podcast, by the way. And he, he just basically does biographies.

[Matt Carnival]

He.

[Dave Gerhardt]

He takes and shares his notes on biographies and autobiographies of founders. And he's done everyone from like. This morning at the gym, I listened to the biography of the founder of Red Bull, which is amazing. Like talking about marketing, case study and brand and anyway, any of these successful founders, it's like this. The obsession over, like, the product, the quality. And so I think, like, we kind of stumbled our way into this business by having it be this like, Dave's side project thing. But the best decision ever was to, like, spend money and hire, bring you in Bring other people and invest because then you're almost like forced to make it great, right? Like now we're trapped. There's. There's seven people on the team. We got a bit, you know, expenses for next year. Everything's real. It's been this amazing forcing function to like have to continue leveling up.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I love that. I love those things that just force you to do the thing. And money's always a great one that forces you to want to make something worth it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So, yeah, money, money seems to work. All right, I got a bunch of things on our, on our list today. I think that the biggest thing I wanted to talk to you about is Community. We got our head of Community on. You've, you've two years in this role. We've spent a lot of time together. And so I think you can also like effectively speak for me on, on my beliefs about community. What's interesting about Exit 5 is like, I think we got here based on a bunch of efforts of mine at past companies where I think that this is the kind of key ingredient now. Like, I've never been an amazing, like hardcore demand gen person. It's always been like audience building and community building. And so I think we've gotten to take a lot of those lessons and now apply them to exit 5, where this is our business. But this topic I want to have you on now because this topic's super relevant heading into 2026. Like, I'm a bigger believer than ever that because of all the AI stuff, like real professional networks, communities, connecting people in real ways, real humans, connecting is like, I don't know what that trend is called, but I'm super bullish on that. And so if I was like a VC or trying to like raise money for Exit 5, I would like go on that. But maybe I want to use our time together today to really go deep on community. Defining community. Lessons from Exit 5. And I'm just going to like interview you like you're my guest and I'll obviously have some things to say too.

[Matt Carnival]

Okay.

[Dave Gerhardt]

First thing is like, how do we define this term community? It's such a hot topic in marketing today. What does community mean to you? When you think about it, that is community. Oh, Exit 5, the Exit 5 community is hosted on Circle and it's this private paywall thing. Is that a community? How do we, how do you define that?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, so I don't know if I, if I got this definition from you, from someone else, from myself, but I define it as like any Group of people that have a shared interest. So, for example, if I were to say the soccer community. I'm referring to anyone who has some kind of interest in soccer.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Wait, this soccer, like capital S soccer. They don't have, like, a circle community that you. That you log into. You don't get your information.

[Matt Carnival]

It's Facebook group. If I were to say I'm trying to grow the soccer community, I mean that I'm trying to grow the amount of people who are interested in that thing. Now, if I were to say I've created this thing called the Toronto Soccer Club and I want you to join, that's also a community, but it's more of like a. A more defined gate around what that community is. That's a specific group. So that's kind of how I differentiate, like, you know, what is community broadly? And then, like, what does it mean to have a community? That means to have this more defined space where a specific group of people come to do a specific thing.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's like. I think of my town. We've become. Our kids are in school, We've made a lot of friends, neighbors, whatever. We've become more active in our local town that is also a community, right? The community of this town.

[Matt Carnival]

Now, in a B2B setting, like, that's where people are going to be like, well, what does that mean in a B2B company? I think it translates, right? It's like, if you are a company that sells some kind of solution, building community would mean building the amount of people who have an interest in what you're doing, right? So it's like, there's some crossover with, like, awareness and brand building, but, like, that's essentially what you're trying to do. It could be people that don't follow you at all on social, but they pay attention to your stuff. It could be people that follow you in social, people that subscribe to newsletter, customers, all those people. Are you building community?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, I like that. Let's build on that for a second, because I think so in the context of community for B2B, right?

You would never.

What never works is just deciding that you should go do something. And so I think, like, where does community fit in B2B? We should first go. Go back and just talk about, like, marketing strategy for B2B for a second. And I think one thing that always works is in B2B, if you think of it as, like, the context someone has in work, right? This is my job. I work in HR or I work in accounting, or I work in finance, or I work in marketing. The goal of your marketing for the company, for you, as a B2B company is like one strategy. Not everyone. Everyone's. You don't have to do this, but this can be one way you can create advantage, right? Is to be like, let's try to be a great resource for those people. That turns out to be a great marketing strategy. Like, and this applies in personal life, too. Like, I'm super into CrossFit, right? I'm going to join a community that's going to teach me how to be better and share trends and, you know, meet other people. No, no. Different than accounting or HR or finance. And when you think about what we've done with Exit 5, it's like, oh, we're just tapping into. Like, it started with Dave. Like, this. Found this guy Dave, like, he worked in this industry. He built up a bunch of experience in this industry. He launched a community connecting other people in that industry. Our job is to now create content and educate and entertain and inform people who work in that industry.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, I think that's a great play. I think that's what you did at Drift, what we're doing now. So. Yeah, yeah, I love that.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So then it's like, okay, inside of the company. But then it's like, this is where it gets like. Then it's like, okay, so should we create a community? Which is different. Where it's like, if I sold accounting software and right. I would want to lead with education and teaching people and making them feel smarter and building trust, right? To build community around that, you could have events, you could have podcasts, you could just have a funny social media account and you could have community around that. You don't necessarily need to build private community.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. And I think that's where, like, not going to say people get tripped up, but they sometimes disassociate creating a community with like, well, what is the goal? And like, if you just work backwards from like, well, why do I want to create this private community space? I think then you realize, well, there's probably 10 other ways to solve this problem or to hit this goal. Like, is building a slack community really the way I want to go do that? I think it's important to ask yourself that question. I've had many members of Exit 5 on LinkedIn ask me over the years like, hey, we want to start a community. What should we do? And I'm like, why do you want to start it? And they're like, well we want to like get our prospects into this community and like they're going to talk to each other and it's going to nurture them and maybe they'll become customers. And I'm like, like, well, can you just start a newsletter or can you just write more in social? Like why a community? And I think that's the part where it's like, that's where you really have to like dig deep. And it's like, do we really have the resources to do this? The knowledge in house. It's not just something we do like five hours a week. It's. It could be someone's full time job. So that's where I think you need to like really weigh.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah. And I think it's interesting, it's interesting to think about how the mechanics of this work and it depends on what the community is. You know there's like back in the day it used to be every company would just kind of have a slack channel and you would try to create a slack, a slack around a particular topic and get people in there. But then eventually that goes to zero because nobody's really managing it or it's just kind of like the content intern has to manage it. And then if you do a good job of it at all and everybody wants to like turn it into a sales channel or like hey, we got 500 active members in our community but like pipeline is down this month. Like there's gotta be people in there we could sell our widget to. And then that's kind of where it starts to break down.

[Matt Carnival]

I almost think like if you. It's not going to happen in all cases. Like you said, it depends on the goal of the community. If it's like a support community, maybe it's, it's different than like if it's a community where you're trying to build brand and acquisition. But I almost like the play of what if you made it like a paid community? Even you're a B2B company that has software to sell. But what if you made it a paid community and like really treated that thing like a product and separate thing that you're trying to grow. I think that can be a good forcing function to be like, well we're already generating some revenue from it, so we don't necessarily need to like treat it as a sales engine. We're going to treat it like a product with an individual manager of that product and just try and grow subscribers and really invest in it. I think that could be a cool Play too.

[Dave Gerhardt]

We had some examples in here. So, like, do these exist or are these examples like you said, anthropic cloud code. Do they have a community?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, so Claude code. I know, I don't know if they have a community managed by the company. I know that there's obviously like huge Reddit threads related to it and I know that those are super active. Of course. I think. And same with lovable. I think in any case, where you have this solution that is like on some kind of cutting edge, like people are going to want to talk to each other and swap notes. So I think there was a natural demand.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

Like Holly.

I did a thing with Holly from Hey Gen. Like she runs a marketing B2B marketing at hey Gen. And they, they do like AI avatars, AI video stuff, and they have a huge community. And I was like, oh, really? I didn't expect that. And it's like all people who are kind of making AI videos and being in the AI video space. Right?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, yeah. Which makes sense. They have stuff to like, tips to share with one another. So in that case, it absolutely makes sense. Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I kind of think that for most, almost everyone, doing what we're doing actually is not the right move inside of a company.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. Okay. Why is that?

[Dave Gerhardt]

The only way I think it can work internally is if someone at the highest level of the company fully believes in that approach and isn't worried about trying to measure it. To be like, well, we have this many people working on it or we can do it, but we can only have one person on it and it has to be someone 20 hours a week. It's like, well, you're spending, you're not spending any time to invest. Whereas I'll just use my personal experience. If I went to start another company, I fully believe in this approach of having a community and community building. And so I would be like, no, we're going do it. Here's why. I know the benefits are like, it's actually going to become this content engine and like people will spread word of mouth and it actually becomes the number one marketing channel if you treat it like a product and all those reasons it breaks down if you're like, well, we're doing it for six months and it's either working or not. A, you're probably not going to give it long enough time to be successful inside of a company. And then B, what you define as successful is most often going to be like, well, it needs to lead to like sales meetings and pipeline. It's so different. Like any One of our sponsors. What do they. They all want the same thing. They all want Pipeline.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Does this thing drive meetings? And so it's like, wow, great. Like you have this great community and like, everybody loves it. But like, Pipeline has been flat for six months. Do you think that, you know, eventually someone's going to want to like, crack into that egg somehow?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, you're right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You're right.

[Matt Carnival]

Totally, totally felt that before versus, like.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I don't know, how could you think of it more as if you sold the CFOs and you're like, no, we're just literally going to like run a CFO community because we think it's an amazing thing for our brand and reputation. And what's going to come from that is like amazing word of mouth and connections and goodwill and, you know, you're meet a bunch of people. Well, you're obviously going to also drive sales from that.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. When you look at it as well, we just want to grow the community around our brand and the amount of people who care about us, like, that's kind of like just marketing too, right? That's community building.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yes, but it's like nobody. But that's the stuff that, like, you need to like, how do we measure that, man? How do we know if that's working, Matt? Like, how we only got three meetings from that effort this quarter. It's like I argue with Dan sometimes about like the podcast downloads as an example, right? Like, he just wants them to go up, up, up, up, up. And I'm like, that's just not how this work. Unless you're like the most popular consumer level show or. I'm not David Center. We're doing marketing interviews. I want it to be great. It doesn't work like that. There's many other benefits. I think that's why it breaks inside of a company. I don't think it has to, though. I think it just has to be like, treated it at the level we treated, which is like a real product because you've seen it. Otherwise it just becomes like a place for you to like, post updates about your company and then eventually dies.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, exactly. I think that's another thing where it breaks down too, is like people want to create community, but don't have anyone in house who knows how to do community. So it kind of just becomes another channel for you to communicate updates and webinars with your customers through another platform. So it's kind of like dies off.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I also think it's really hard to do it without Expertise in house, not on managing a community. I'd rather have the subject matter expertise in house and then we'll learn how to do the community management versus if we had community management, but like, all fluff and not any substance. Actually, like, lead the community with.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, exactly. I think just speaking from experience. I had no community experience going into this, but it was easy for me to pick up because I'm like, these are my people, these are all B2B marketers. And like, I just have to find ways to serve them through this platform. But I could do that through anything, through content, whatever it is. But it's like, I just happen to learn it through community. So I think anyone could learn. Community's not that complicated when it's like, you use an individual, understand the audience, and, like, can learn some cool plays along the way.

[Dave Gerhardt]

The community management playbook. Let's talk about how it's evolved. What we thought it was two years ago and what it is now. And I'll lead you in, like, what I'm trying to get at, Matt, is how it used to be the thinking from, like, discussion board to like, it's all about who's in the room and the connection. We've learned so much. I want to kind of riff on that with you.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. Even speaking from, like, you know, I was an Exit 5 member prior to joining Exit 5. I think there was a time when you knew a community was successful, when there was just a lot of discussion happening all day long. There was posts, there was comments, and people on the outside would look at that and be okay. This is an active, buzzing community. And I still think some of that does exist today. I think people want to see activity in a community, but I think in this time period, the amount of noise online has gone up a lot. And people don't want to just log into another platform, another community and just see more noise. They want to log into something and go to a place where there is discussion and people that they can trust. And I think that's where communities evolve to is are the people who are creating and managing the community, like, creating that environment of trust? Meaning, do I trust the people around me that they're going to know what I'm talking about and they've been there before or. Or on the same journey? I think that's a really important thing today and where it's evolved to. A lot of people that I'm speaking to now around, like, why community? Why do you want to join our community? It's because they want to. They don't want, like to have to catch up on a hundred discussions a week. They just want to know, like, there's a solid smaller group of people in here that I could trust that when I have an issue I could tap into them. So I think that's one of the big differences I've seen anyways.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, like that. It's like there's certain things that I'm gonna go to ChatGPT and ask questions and riff with ChatGPT about, but there's certain things that I want. We have a group text of a friend. Like Lee and I are friend, like parent friends. And there's specific things that we would post there that we probably wouldn't just like post on LinkedIn. It would be like, hey, anyone you know, anyone work with so and so before? Right. Like, or anyone have this teacher last. Did you have this teacher last year? And it's like in our world, if you're a cmo, are you going to go to Reddit and post? Like, hey, have you ever worked with this PR agency before?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You never do that?

[Matt Carnival]

No.

[Dave Gerhardt]

If you don't have like six people on speed dial to be able to text, what do you do? So I think that's, that's been the biggest eye opening thing. Now the content stuff does matter. Like we can't have, can't have posts and content that gets no engagement. Like you have to have people in there that are active. But I think you're totally right that it's the quality thing. Like, I wouldn't ask a specific. I'm posting this in this room for a specific reason.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. And as you, you know, I think you move up the ladder in your career a bit, the trust becomes even more important. I think if you're a junior marketer like I was when I first joined Exit 5, I'm like, if anyone could give me any insight on my content strategy, I'm so happy to hear. Yes, please, God, please. But like, you're the CMO of a $200 million company. You have a 55 person team. Like, your purview's really different. You don't really need the basics of 101. You need what are my most elite peers doing? Like, how are they thinking about this? Like, that's really important of a knowledge gap for me to fill.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I'm just, I want to paint the picture more of like the role of the value of community and the role of like a community manager here for a company. Because theoretically it's like if you got people, you just let Them talk to each other, like, what do we have to do? But it turns out, like, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes to run an effective community. Let's put some of that on tape because, you know, we just were saying, like, how a lot of times they'll just hire the lowest common denominator and just give it to someone, I'll give it to the content person and they'll just kind of do it. Maybe just, just. Let's riff on, like, what are all the things that go on across all of our communities in a month?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. So in every community setting, you need to have at least like one thing. Could be like a live event. It could be, we do like asynchronous events, which I could talk about in a sec. But some kind of event every month where it's like, if I'm an individual and part of that community, if I do nothing but go to that once a month or go to it every couple of months, I could get value from that membership. Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Because it's like at least one recurring thing, right?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, at least one. To start anyways. I think that's good. I think you need like, just like high level, some way to connect members with one another for those who want to do it. So if I'm a member of the community, let's say I'm part of some kind of community, I want to speak to other people like me in that community every now and then. So if you as a community company can connect me with other heads of communities, for example, like, that would be a valuable thing as a member of a community. So I think that's super important is some way of forcing connection. Because I think we talked about this earlier about where.

[Dave Gerhardt]

What would an example of that be? How do you force connection?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, so there's a couple things. One is having some kind of matchmaking program, something we invested in maybe like two years ago now. But it's just very simply like I opt into it and every single month, based on my challenges, I can meet with another marketer like me. That tool does a lot of the heavy lifting for you of matching people with one another. That's been a really, really great play. Another way to force connection is, you know, I think inevitably when you put people, let's say you put a hundred people into a community, there are people who are going to ask questions because there are some people who just kind of get that. But whether people actually answer with anything insightful is a whole other thing. And I think what's worked really well for us is just like, upon onboarding and intake of new members, collecting some basic information about them and their experience. And then when a relevant question comes up, force tagging that person in the conversation has been like a game changer for engagement for us because I think also people want to be nudged. Like, not everyone knows how to use community, no matter how much you tell them. So it's on. Use it as a management of the community to, like, pull people into a conversation and say, no, you need to speak to Tom. Like, he really gets Google Ads. Tom may not look at the community every day, but if you can pull them in once a month, then I think it's a great play.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, this is good. You're getting at some of, like, the secret sauce, which is like, how much we've learned that we need to invest in, like, onboarding and understanding who. If this is a people platform and what we're betting on is like, real human. Real human connection, then the differentiator is like, how well do you know these people? And I remember standing next to you, we were checking in people for our event in New York, and I'm looking at. I don't know everybody like you do. I know some people, but I don't know everybody. I'm looking at my phone trying to scam people, and you're like, oh, Artie, that's Tom, that's Mary, that's Meredith. I'm like, how do you know this is my job? And that has to be the job, right? And so it's like, the more you learn about someone. So to the point about, like, if you're running a community inside of your company, can you just automate this out or skip, you know, send this out to the intern? Like, not if you're just gonna just do some, like. And I've been in communities where this is the. Hey, what's everyone? You know, like, tell me a challenge you have right now and say, well, why am I in here? Right where, like, for me, personally, as a founder, I'm in a community. I'm in Hampton, and Hampton's great for me to be able to be like, I have a question. Because they have vetted people to a certain level. I know that at least if I post in there, I'm gonna. I'm going to do this perfect example, deciding on a holiday gift for the team this year. I'm terrible shopper. I don't know what other people are interested in. I posted in Hampton and it became this really popular post because it was a great Time. There's a bunch of founders being like, yo, what are you getting for your team this year? It was amazing. People had all different levels of answers. And one guy goes, cash. You know what always works? Cash. Four figures of green always works. That's how I interpret it anyway. And it was like, all right, done. That's what I'm doing. Cash. And so it's like things like that. But that's because they've created the room. Right. Or you're. I think it's just easy to be like, oh, yeah, we do matchmaking. Well, what does that really mean? Well, you need to know people. You need to know what they're interested in. You need to know what works and what doesn't work. There. There's a lot in there. And so it's like that. That is the product. You can't just have the intern or someone just post. Right. Like a conversation starter. There's a lot of community OS that has to happen behind the scenes for these things to be effective.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. And I think that plays into like another. Another big lesson of curating the room when your community is just like open reign to everybody. I think it's probably going to let in some people that maybe don't mix as well.

[Dave Gerhardt]

The riff raff. The riff raff. Get them out, kick them out.

[Matt Carnival]

Exactly, exactly. You know, because people have different incentives for community. And ideally, if you're running a community, you want to like, curate a group of people that have the same incentive. In our case, it's like we always talk about like the business owner versus the in house B2B marketer, and their incentives are a little bit different. I think they've coexisted well, but I think there's always a case to be made of. You kind of have to pick who your people are for that community and like, just bet on that.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, like, if you like using Hampton as an example. Right. The reason that it works is because it's exclusively founders. And so therefore you can understand and relate to the problems of a founder. We found that there are different needs to someone. I think it's different depending on the community. There's different needs to someone who's maybe in. Works at an agency or works in house. But there's enough common ground with the. With the thread of like working in B2B marketing and having knowledge. And a lot of agency folks have like, deep expertise. The problem is like 99.9% of the agency people is great. You get one or two people that mass dm your whole community like pitching your services. And that's why people are like, I heard you guys don't like agencies. We know it's not that. It's just like most often if there is a bad actor of some kind, it's usually not like in house, VP of marketing at some, you know, 100 million dollar revenue revenue company, some solo contractor, freelancer, solopreneur, which, you know, that's where it comes from.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. And that stuff always slips through the cracks and it's, it's all good. It's unfortunate though in some ways because like it's like that whole, that phrase, I don't know who said it but like trust is, is gained in, gained in drops lost in buckets. So it's like sometimes those things happen. And then like at the end of the year people are like, you know, community is great, but like way too many agencies are posting. And it's like, I know for a fact there was like maybe one or two posts for the whole year, but it's like that's enough for them to like have that sour taste. Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I don't know. I am also such a believer of like, I think we can continue to shape this and like quality matters, attendees matter, but like we can drive. I think a lot of it, you. We use this analogy a lot. A lot of it is like having a gym membership and like I'll see someone churn and like I'm just not using it. It's not a reflection that like the equipment doesn't work if you use it. We need to get more training and coaching and giving people more compelling reasons. I do think that focus is great in any community. The more you can be, the sharper you can be focused. You know, if I could niche down a community to like late 30s dads in Vermont working on Internet businesses, that community would be amazing for me. Right. The churn would be low and like the engagement would be really high. It's just like finding the right balance. I think we've, we've gone wide with B2B marketing and I think we're like honing in on, on certain areas. Right. And I think we're gonna just, I think continuing to focus. The hard part is like, it makes some people unhappy and you have to say no to some people in order to grow. But like, I don't know, go back and study any business of all time ever. And they always almost shift their market as they grow. Right?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, exactly. Like the word community is, it's inclusive by nature. So I think Some people think that, oh, if you're doing a community like.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I should be in, that's an interesting insight.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

All right.

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[Matt Carnival]

CUNY is actually very much. It's like anything, we're building this for a specific person and like if you don't fit that, then this isn't going to be for you. Like this isn't the right product for you. That's right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

We, we only have gluten in our pizzas. You know, like, I thought this was great. You shared this the other day. We'll give him a shout out to J Clous for me, my community is Hampton, yours is J. Creator. What's it called? Creator. Science. Creator Lab.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, the lab. The lab. Yeah, the lab. Yep, the lab.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And you shared this and this is which I thought was great. I don't share too much insight info as you know, but this is one that I like. You found the way that Jay frames gray areas with community and has them written up I think is really good because there's been a lot of things that have come up over the years with us, where it's like, what are the lines of self promotion or promoting your. You know, people say, I don't. I, I'll get messages all the time like, hey, Dave, I wasn't going to post this, but like, I'm worried about it being self promoting emotional. Like if you have to message me, the founder, if you to message me to like ask that, probably it's going to be like that. But then I. It's always this weird position because then someone will. Then I'll be like, I don't really have the perfect answer back to them. Like, I'm reading this. It's like the saying about like porn. Like, you know it when you see it is like, I can tell you this, this post feels like garbage to me. Feels like spam. And either is something that was copied from someone's LinkedIn and just changed. We've had that before. Or it was like, this is like a straight up promo, but disguise. Like, but come on, I'm being nice. I'm helping people for free. Like, and so I just think even just labeling it as a, this is kind of like it's a people business. In a people business, there's going to be a lot of things that are not black and white, they're gray. And so I think just acknowledging that we have gray areas. And so in his thing he wrote, sometimes solicitation or self promotion is a little bit of a gray area. In general, we're pretty strict about removing moving posts that are simply sharing links to content you've published. The reason is simple. In a community of hundreds of content creators, if we allowed sharing of any link, the whole feed would be flooded with each other's content. The result would be everyone sharing at each other and talking to each other. And Jay's obviously great big fan of his stuff, but the way that they frame that is perfect. That's what you want, right? You want people talking to each other, not at each other. And it's like, if I read your post, it sounds like you're talking at me.

[Matt Carnival]

Exactly. That was such a good framing. And this is something like I used to say in the beginning was like, what if everyone did it? It's like, well, what if everyone just shared their thought, leadership style posts like, this community would go to shit. So it would just be like a mini LinkedIn.

[Dave Gerhardt]

That's amazing. I have a book upstairs and one of the books that we read to our kids, it's called what if everyone did that? And it's like some kids eat Lunch at the party, just throws the trash on the ground and leaves. And it's like, what would everyone, well, you know what if everyone did that?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, great line.

[Dave Gerhardt]

But I think one thing we've learned also is just like, and I don't want to. I think community managers, men don't get enough shout out and don't get enough like recognition of refer. That's why these things succeed in companies. Because I do think there's just quite literally some level of like hours that you need to put in. I think just us like replying to every post, reading every comment, something we've been like nuts about over the last years. Like anyone that I see that doesn't have a real headshot profile picture, like, I know I'm commenting on it and I'm sending it to you. And it's like those are just the details that you need to be there all the time. And so are you willing to invest in a community? And now this thing is kind of always on 24 7. Are you going to like invest? Are you ready to be there at that level?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Because like the people on the other end, the members, they're not there all the time. They're just popping in every now and then. So when they're popping in, they need to have a good experience. If they don't have a good experience, they're never coming back. So that's why you as a community manager, it's like, yeah, you need to be there and you need to like make sure it's always good for everyone coming in and when they come in.

[Dave Gerhardt]

All right, so this was in our list of most underrated community plays. We talked about a bunch of bringing in relevant people, relevant members, in person events. We haven't really hit on it, but I think we learned an amazing lesson over the last year really, which is in person cements what happens online. And so if you have people who initially connected, our events feel like incredibly warm from the get go. And the reason is because at least 50% of the people already have had some form of interaction online. And so I'm like, oh, that's Matt, I recognize him. I'm go say what's up? That creates an incredible connection. So we're going to continue to do more of that. Like, and that's made our unexpected benefit to me is like the in person things have made online better in a way that I couldn't have anticipated.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. It warms, it warms people up. It's been great.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Well, just like now take Something like Lindsay o'.

[Matt Carnival]

Brien.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Or as an example, if I see a comment from her, I feel like I know her now and so I can like read the comment. Or like Charlie Riley messaging me all the time, you know, people now and stuff like, oh, I understand the context of that of which they said that. Market, market, what's upcoming. This is a great lesson. I just think for any marketing, this is why like as a marketer, having access to the roadmap and being involved in the product roadmap and development at your company matters. Because so often in marketing, like you might not be here yet, but you can talk about where it's going and what's coming next. And so I think us having stuff lined up about what's happening in the community this month is something that drives engagement and membership. You talked about pure connection. Most overrated. What doesn't move the needle. But people think virtual events. Matt.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, I think virtual events can be overrated in community. We still do them. I'm not saying we don't do them, but I think whenever I've spoken to people who are like starting a community like their brain, the first place their brain goes to is like, oh, we're going to do these like virtual events every month. Like almost like a webinar where it's like a couple people from our company are gonna like talk at our members. And I just don't think that is why people join community. I think maybe they had some kind of hook in, but I don't think they joined to get talked at. I think there's plenty of mediums out there where you can get talked at from smart people. They join to meet others like them. So if your whole play is like a virtual event every month where like the team is talking at the members, I just think that's not gonna be super interesting to anyone in there. So you could have them. But like maybe instead of we're going to talk at you that month, it's like every month one member is going to spot like one interesting thing they're doing and that's not going to be relevant to everyone in the community. But it's like great, like we're going to get 10, 15 people there. This person's going to talk about how they do X, Y and Z. It's going to be more of an open discussion where you can come off mute and actually talk. I think that's more how I would run these virtual events versus just like the typical way content.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Good for getting people in door, but not as much for making Them stay. That's where you need to learn to lean into peer connection. Yeah. I think the meta lesson that we've learned is we need to have marketing education and content because that's what's going to get someone to come in. But the sticky feature is when you actually make a friend meet someone. We have countless stories of those people. That's the thing that we want to foster more. If it was just like positioned as exit5.com hang out with other marketing people. Like, I don't, I don't think that hits in the same way. And so it needs to be like, learn about AI. But then I also met someone at this event who was really interesting.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. And that's why it's like super important to market what's upcoming. Your content, your events. That's what's going to get people to say like, oh, they have these like round tables where they talk about custom GPTs. Like, that's pretty cool. Like maybe, maybe I'll join for a month and go to the first one. And then when they join, that's when they like, oh no, like I met a couple cool people there. Or like, oh, they also have this like matchmaking program where I can meet other demand gen marketers. Like, oh, like, yeah, maybe this, this is worth keeping every single month. So I think that's. You could use that to hook people in. But then it's the other stuff that gets them to stay.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I said I can grant you three wishes right now for community at Exit 5. Each one of your things I think is a secret sauce I don't want to expose publicly.

[Matt Carnival]

That's fine.

[Dave Gerhardt]

But those are good. I agree. Let's go do those things. I have some listener questions I want to go through with you. That'll be fun. But I want to. Let's wrap up this first. I like this one. I like this question that I wrote. Coming up on two years here, second longest tenured employee. Just overall, reflecting back on the last two years of your career, work, community, marketing, what you learned. Curious to. You wrote some good stuff here. I wonder if you can call it to memory and try to talk to it. You said this. I really does. Ma. It really does matter where you work. Okay.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. That's a good one. Yeah. So that's been a big lesson for me. It's just like you learn a lot more working under really great leadership when you have really good product market, fit facts.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Just cut, cut. Click that first part. Click that.

[Matt Carnival]

So go find that, go find that. Go wedge your Way into that.

[Dave Gerhardt]

It really doesn't matter where you, where you work, just the importance of that. Like, sorry I took us offline with a joke, but I do think that made me think like sometimes when I read people's comments on my either posts on LinkedIn or comments in Exit 5, it's almost always the common denominator of marketing or enjoyment at work is almost always directly correlated. Back to this part, isn't it?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like the leadership is janky. The products doesn't work that well. Like it's always those things that break it. So that's why it's like you can't always fix all the problems or just.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Like, I don't know, you've told me about some of your past, like work experience. Like, and, and I think maybe one of the things here that I've seen for you is like, we almost have to like train these things out of you because here it's like, I don't know about you figure it out, you tell me. Wait, really? Like you got, you know, it's a small company, it's early. It's like you have the playbook where like so many times in marketing. I was talking about this with Jess yesterday. If you have people who don't get it or don't get business or don't, you don't see things eye to eye. Maybe they do get it, but it's just not your way. It's impossible to work when like you're second guessing yourself like constantly or you're having to be asked to justify something that you did. Like every time you breathe.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, exactly. Like that's a big one. Just having that, that freedom to like go and, and move fast and ship and break things. Like most people are like, they feel that if they go and do that, like someone's going to yell at them for something so they don't really like just go execute at a fast level. So. Yeah, exactly. Teaching those things out of me is totally, totally part of my experience. Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

That's why we're always like B2B. Marketing doesn't have to be boring. B. But really someone inside the company is like, I get that, Dave. But like, literally I can't do shit. Because every time we try, every time we like pitch a new idea to the team or we want to do something like, nope, can't do that. Don't have the budget, don't have the time. Like, okay, yeah, my bad. Like, I get that. That's exhausting.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, it's like this Really? I don't know what to tell you in that case. Like, it does suck. Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Just try to find a different. Go find a different job.

[Matt Carnival]

Just work for a unicorn. Like, are you stupid?

[Dave Gerhardt]

I'm sorry. When I say that must be nice to be able to say that, I'm like, well, you can.

[Matt Carnival]

You.

[Dave Gerhardt]

There's a lot of complicated markers. You'll be good.

[Matt Carnival]

There's. Yeah. It's not always the big names. There's a lot of small companies that have this too.

[Dave Gerhardt]

But it sucks. I mean, I talked to someone. VP of marketing for former friend of mine. I reached out recently. I sent him a message. Actually, it was for, like, our marketing leadership event that we're doing. Jeff sending invites. Hadn't heard from this person in a while, and they were like, you know, I'm actually gonna. I'm. I'm. I'm taking a step back from marketing. Like, I. I got laid off from my last three companies, and this. She's like a legitimate VP of marketing. Could just. Three companies bad in a row. It's like, God, it sucks.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, that's rough. That's rough. It's hard to see that from the outside.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, it is sometimes. Sometimes. You know, though, you're like that guy. He was wearing those weird open toe sandals in the office. That.

[Matt Carnival]

Should have known. Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Now I need to see his toes in the. In the interview.

[Matt Carnival]

His toes. I don't see anyone that works with toes.

[Dave Gerhardt]

No, please, please, not another one. Is that you put in your notes here is like community. So it matters where you work. Okay, that's great. Maybe me feel good. Community is so much more than a Facebook or Slack group.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. Kind of what we talked about earlier is if community building is part of the strategy, you're trying to grow the amount of people that have an interest, shared interest in what you do, what you're solving. It's not necessarily. We're creating a Facebook or Slack group or whatever. So I just think, like, that's something that before this, I didn't have that point of view, but now I. I understand community building at a broader level, and I think it's actually like, just not even. Not even talked about enough in that context.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And then you talked about it a little bit about something that's changed is how you work. You need to. You said, I need to start the day early and hit the gym right away. Sleeping in doesn't do much for me, making me feel too relaxed and lazy. Working from home is great, but the downside is it's too easy to Be in rest mode. Need to shock myself early in the day and it'll carry through.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, that's something that in past companies, and I think part of it has stemmed from, like, I'm now in an environment where I. I want to produce my best work and need to, you know, I think this company needs people who are operating at their best. And what I've learned for me is like, if I sleep in and start the day on a very relaxed note, I have a harder time really getting into it. For other people, it may not be the case. So I don't think this necessarily is the same for everyone. But for me, it's like, what works best for me is getting up super early, doing something that is kind of. I don't always feel like doing right away. And then it's like, okay, cool. I've kind of been like, shocked to start the day and now like, I'm just more like higher frequency, as some would say throughout the day.

[Dave Gerhardt]

A high frequency baby. I'm gonna do a workshop. I've Chris messaged me. He's like, you need to stop talking and come get yourself encoded. And I'm gonna go and learn all about it. But no, I think it's great. I believe in all that, by the way, hiding, like, totally. A lot of. So much of that is true. The people you surround yourself with, what you believe. Just last night, Leah sent me a picture from a post it note I had in my closet and it was the goals that I had for this year and wrote the number down on a post and put it in the closet. And she said, hey, you did that? And I said, yeah, we did do that. And the same exact thing happened here before. And the same exact thing happened the year before. Like, I believe that you speak things in fantasies, especially if you write them down on the routine thing. I wanted to call that out because so many people that listen to this podcast are marketers and they work from home. And I having worked through Covid, like from 2020 to 2022, it did feel kind of like I kind of did the same thing every day. I just would kind of like roll out of bed and open up my laptop. I've always been a morning workout guy, but I just mean, like in the last couple years, something that I've changed is like, getting out of my house, going over. I have a space here, but I'm going to try to rent a space if I could, or go somewhere putting on real clothes, being a real person, treating it like I am going into the office. Has helped me separate those two things and like, also shift into work mode. But it's also been an incredible advantage being able to work from home because there are many, many good things have come from, like, I'm just in my house and it's nine o' clock and I'm like, oh, got an idea. And I run out to the office and so, like, there's trade offs to both. That or you get a friend, you get an out of breath, like, audio note from me or something.

[Matt Carnival]

Exactly. Yeah. If you can bounce it. I think it's the best of both worlds for sure.

[Dave Gerhardt]

All right, let's take these questions from listeners. This one's from Alan. I want you to answer this, Matt. I want, I want to hear your opinion on how you would answer this. Alan says, how do you decide when to share founder struggles publicly versus keeping them private? This is from like a content strategy standpoint.

[Matt Carnival]

I'm not obviously not a founder, but I think individuals probably think that what they're holding close, people are going to be like, highly attuned to and like, maybe want to steal in some ways or like, view them as weak. I don't think others view it that way. But at the same time, I still do think, like, you want to keep some. I think perception matters and I think you want to keep some perception of like, hey, like, we kind of have our together here. Yeah, we go through struggles like everyone else, but, like, the ship's not sinking or anything. I do think that is important. If I were to spend like five grand a year in a product and the founders constantly talking about their struggles and things that are like, not going right, a part of me would be thinking, like, is this a sinking ship? Like, I'm kind of absolutely true. So to an extent, I think less struggle is more like, good stuff.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Hey, we had a really, we had a really shitty quarter. My marriage is falling apart, we missed our sales projections by 50% and I gained 12 pounds. But, you know, I just, I wanted to. I feel like I only post my wins on LinkedIn, so I just wanted to come here, keep it real with you. Hashtag.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, it's like, okay, a little bit too much information. Like, this is, you know, so that's my two cents.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Look, I think I'm. Ultimately, I see everything as marketing. And so I think the game is. I think you want to play a perception game. And so I think part of it is like, you know, people, people will say, like, well, you need to, you need to be more vulnerable, share more losses. I think it Depends on. Depends on what you're writing. And so I think the way to do that is acknowledge that, like, there are challenges. There are. I wrote a post today talking about, like, man, there are some that came up this year that was difficult. I didn't explain what it was. But just acknowledging that, like, I think where it doesn't work is when you just come off as someone who everything is awesome all the time. Like, this is a win. This is a win. This is why I think you just don't want to be that either.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think that's the way to, like, relate to people on a personal level is acknowledging that it's not always easy all the time. But. But how deep you get in those details is probably where you have to use some discernment.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Okay, this question's from Alexandra. Dave, Thought leadership is just an excuse for being loud online. And I'm curious. Sorry, that was leading. Let me reread that again. I'm reading it as the way that people. This must be what people do to me. They read my things and how they think that I will say them. Let me not project onto this one. Dave, thought leadership is just an excuse for being loud online. And I'm curious what you'd say about expanding Exit 5 beyond marketing. Seems like a lot of folks are already doing that with their own brand. First, let's answer the first one. Matt, reaction to thought leadership is just an excuse for being loud online.

[Matt Carnival]

I don't think people want to be. I think.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Sounds like a hater to me. Sounds like a hater to me. That's not the energy that I want. I don't care. Thought leadership is an excuse for being loud online. Look, I think that if you have something that you are proud of, that you have worked on, that you've created and you want to sell and get to others. Like, I think there's no shame in being loud about your product online.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. And like, thought leadership has maybe gotten a bad name in some ways. Like if you're posting good stuff online, like, that's not an excuse for being loud. It's. You're. You're sharing your work and you're sharing good stuff and helping other people get smarter and learn. Like, that's an amazing thing. That's. That's changed my life, that content online from other people.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So, yeah, perfect example. Jess was telling me yesterday about some founder of this SEO agency, like, brought all this great data out about AI and SEO and like, Kip and Kieran were citing it, and then she was Mentioning it on, on that podcast, it's like that literally, that's thought leadership. They just did a good job of it. Right. And so I think like, you know, boasting about like, you know, me sitting on the back of my truck shirtless with a bag of money, you know, talking about like how, you know, I made $6 million this year or whatever. Like that's being loud online. I don't think that that is advantageous. That's. But that's not what we're talking about here. I, I put this question in our mix because I want to clear that up and it's an objection that I hear from founders a lot is like why they don't want to like participate in marketing or like do any of the founder brand stuff is for that reason, which I think is a false tweet.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, agreed.

[Dave Gerhardt]

This is from Nidhi. What are two or three signals that tell you the podcast is driving real pipeline for Exit 5? Not just downloads. Always tuning for this at Connectly. I mean, Matt, you've hosted a couple podcast episodes, you've been in the mix, you feel what our business is. You see what the Slack messages are. I think the way that we tell is like quite literally people will tell us that they listen to the podcast. Like I wish there was. We just know, like, I do look at downloads, we do look at audience. We want to make sure people are listening. But I think if you've worked at our company for any longer than, you know, three months, you will quickly realize how many people tell us that they signed up because they listened to the podcast at some point. Now it doesn't, it's not like the, I listened to the podcast and then I bought your thing immediately. Right. But it's, I joined, I've been listening to podcasts for a long time or you know, started listening to podcasts. Whatever people will tell you, that's number one. What else would you add to that if you wanted to help someone understand the, the impact of a podcast?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, I think like for us it's, we have like tons of tons of new customers, but we're a more high volume business. So we're going to hear, we're going to get data quicker on like why people are signing up. I think in a business that maybe doesn't get as many new customers or as much pipeline, you're going to have less, less swings and at bats on learning why people join. But I think there's also so much to a podcast that isn't just like, yeah, some people will tell you they signed up because the podcast. But like there's so much to it. In a B2B company, you can meet and interview potential customers and that could be a way to like build some pipeline and move people through. I think it's like those insights feed your marketing strategy. They could feed your product strategy if done correctly. So it's like, I don't know if you're just going to view podcasts as like another ad for you guys. Yeah, maybe it's not going to always directly turn into a customer, but if you're viewing it as like an engine for a lot of things across the business, it's like, like, yeah, that should be having an impact on pipeline and business growth and product strategy then. Yeah, absolutely. Like, so part of that is like the selling of leadership as to why you're doing it in the first place.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, I love that. The podcast being the engine for your content machine, not, not just doing it. It could also be like you started, you start one just to like give some shine to your top customers. And that's the goal of it. Right? Who could answer that? Let's see. This one's from Alex. How do you plan and execute your podcast when you first started, how does your podcast prep, recording and post editing look now? So started my first podcast was 2014. That was 11 years, almost 12 years ago. Holy shit. And back then I was in person and it was in Boston. I would go around and I would do interviews with founders in Boston. And when I first started out, I would, maybe this is why my podcast was good then is I would just prep, I would over prep. And so if I was doing the interview with Matt, I would listen a bunch of interviews with Matt. I'd read stuff online. I'd find as much as I could about Matt. I'd come up with my own questions and I have this long list of, of prep. But then I noticed really quickly once you get into a conversation, because a good podcast is an actual conversation with someone, not just a back and forth interview, I would end up throwing away all my notes because I then once you get into the flow with someone, you're not so you're not so worried about like next question, next question. And I would have that to then like help me come back to. And so if you're just starting out, I would over prepare and then obviously it depends on the type of thing we were talking about. David Senworth's founder podcast before that podcast is him doing hours of prep for someone for a guest interview or he's Going through a book that he read. And so that's going to be different than this over prep. Really work backwards. Like what do you want to get out of this episode? I think now, because I've been doing it for over 10 years or whatever, I do just let it flow a little bit more and I have a sense of what topic I want to have. But I do know that the best conversations often are about the banter, not the did he ask Matt the hard hitting question? And that's why people want to listen. And so we do more of that. But now. And now we have a team. Right? So now like up to five day now Aaron's writing all of our podcast notes. We work with Hatch Hatch FM behind the scenes. They do all the post production editing. So we have like a team and a company that helps doing that. But you can be so successful with quite literally like an idea and a microphone. And I started with the engineer at our company at the time, like he was a DJ and he gave me some like $80 USB and then I just did all the editing myself in GarageBand on my laptop. And that was like, go back. You. You find literally every creator. We're talking about Jay Clouse before, like he's blown up on YouTube. If you go look at his YouTube videos and you sort them, you go about oldest and newest, you look at his old videos like they have no views. Everyone has started that way. And so I think there's been so much learning along the way. So if you're going to just do a podcast, I would commit to doing it. Not care so much about the setup and the technical stuff and the equipment. Commit to doing it and know that you will gain reps. I mean mat been doing more video podcast stuff and it's been two years. Just now you're like invested in the lights, invested in the planets. Got a microphone. Like there's no need to do that before you have anything. Now's the time to do that.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, Agreed. Agreed.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Okay, Matt, you. I'll let you. I'll let you rap. We can wrap. You can pick any final question to ask. Don't you ask. I mean you could, you could just like use your brain and ask me one a fun question. One of my, you know, favorite Drake album of all time. Most overrated rapper.

[Matt Carnival]

No, I, I think I got it. What's a Gearhart Christmas look like? You said you're having some, some family over tonight, so what does that look on paper?

[Dave Gerhardt]

A Gerhardt Christmas would be. No, Christmas would be Jews A bunch of Jewish people eating Chinese food somewhere. But now that we have co. Mingled families, I'm married. My wife's family celebrates Christmas. And by the way, we. We've just been rolling for the last eight days with Hanukkah. We're rolling into Christmas. We're hosting at our beautiful house in the woods here. We're hosting this year. My kids, there's no school. Everybody's already going bananas. What's happening over there? Like, when I hang up with you on this, I'm putting my laptop away. I'm going, no.

[Matt Carnival]

I hate.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I hate that image that people slams a laptop shut till Monday. I hate that. I hate that image. Don't ever post that image. I hate that. Everybody's coming here. We got people coming here.

[Matt Carnival]

We.

[Dave Gerhardt]

The wood stove is burning where we have. We're having tacos tonight. Just a little easy meal that everyone can. We want a low maintenance meal tomorrow. So much cleanup. And then everybody will be here tomorrow. We'll do the trick. We've adopted a tradition from my wife's side of the family. Don't tell anybody. Please don't tell anybody this. Don't cancel me. But we partake in the holiday tradition of burning our trash on Christmas, which is one of the most American, maybe even Canadian, joyful experiences ever. Just seeing a whole pile of just crap that's probably so terrible for you to be inhaling, just being eviscerated. It's just very, very, very heartwarming. Yeah. And we'll be here.

[Matt Carnival]

It's.

[Dave Gerhardt]

We're just, you know, tomorrow's a day where, like, what's so fun about my kids now is, like, I get to be a kid again tomorrow. It's the best. They. I play their toys, open their presents all day. What do y' all do?

[Matt Carnival]

Beautiful. Yeah. No. So tonight. Tonight, going to my parents and in Italian culture on Christmas Eve, you. You have fish.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Oh, tonight. Tonight's the fishes, right? This is the snipe of seven fishes.

[Matt Carnival]

Seven fishes.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Exactly.

[Matt Carnival]

Exactly.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Wow. What's your strategy for, like, eating today? Is it a normal eating day or you're trying to, like.

[Matt Carnival]

So you can't eat meat today. That's not supposed to eat meat. So I'm gonna.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Whoa.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. So I'm gonna do, I don't know, something, maybe eggs for lunch, something like that. And then the strategy is, is go damn hungry. But you don't. You know when you're, like, too hungry and then you eat that one thing.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And you're like, yeah, dude, I. I do that on Thanksgiving and I Can never. Like, I just don't have the Thanksgiving stamina because I don't eat. And then I, like, come out of the gate so hot, and I'm like.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, I think mixing a glass of wine, that always, always makes you a little. A little bit more hungry. Oh. Oh. This is a kid's podcast. Yeah. Mix in a glass of wine, you're good to go.

[Dave Gerhardt]

All right. And, like, what about gifts? Do you have, like, do you have gifts for your family, for your fiance? What's the plan?

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah. So typically every year it's like everyone gets each other a gift. But this year, we decided to do a white elephant with our families, which is super cool because it's like, you just have to get one gift for one person because, like, I don't know about you, but I found, like, I'm just buying things for the sake of buying things. Now I've been with my fiance for 11 years, and it's like, I gotta buy gifts for her family and her 11 times. I guess over time, you're just buying people things that they don't need. Right. So it's like one gift to one person. There's an element of surprise in it. I'm really excited to do that for the first year this year.

[Dave Gerhardt]

That's great. I'm happy for you. It's also way more environmentally friendly. You've dramatically reduced the carbon footprint with that. I'm very happy. No, we do that, Leah. We've done that for a while now, which is great. I didn't know I had a name. White elephant.

[Matt Carnival]

It.

[Dave Gerhardt]

That sounds like a song. We just get matched with someone. I always get Leah's brother. I'm a great gift giver. I'm not a good gift receiver.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah, yeah. Receiving is tough.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Who do you have to give the gift to? An uncle. Like a random uncle.

[Matt Carnival]

I can't say a lot. Can't say a lot.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Okay. All right. That means I'm getting something nice, guys. It's really. It's really exciting. You can't say. You can't say it.

[Matt Carnival]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Well, Matt, thank you. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for hanging out. On today's episode of Dave's Marketing radio talk show Life, it's Dave Gearhart podcast. How will we know if it's working, Matt? People will tell us. Go to LinkedIn. Follow Matt. All right, this is the call to action for today. Matt. I'm going to know. Go find Matt. He'll be linked in the show. Notes here. Matt has timestamped this the time of this recording, Matt has 13,722. Two followers. I'm like, Damn, that's pretty good. He got screwed Yesterday, by the way. 65 comments. I like 11 comments on that carousel, man. Like, come on, let's come back and give my boy some love. 13722 folks. Let's blow him up. I need more followers for Matt. What happens? What happens if Matt gets too famous? I don't know. That would be great. I would love that to happen. So let's blow Matt's up. Let's blow Matt's followers up. I want to check by January 1st he's gonna have 15, 000 followers. I don't think we ever that kind of magic, but let's see otherwise. Thank you for listening to the show. We've got a lot more great stuff coming in January. Go check out Matt on LinkedIn, all the great stuff on Exit5.com and we'll see you later.

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[Exit 5 Event Announcer]

Hey, by the way, we're doing a new event at Exit 5. On the heels of our very wildly successful and super fun drive, we're doing an event designed for marketing leaders. It's called the Exit 5 Marketing Leadership Retreat. It's a two day in person working session for CMOs and VPs in Arizona in March. Not a conference, not a marathon of content. It's a room of a hundred. Only 100 marketing execs from companies like Zoom, Snowflake, ManyChat, Bitly, G2, HP and more. You'll spend two days pressure testing real decisions with your peers who are doing the same job you are. What to hire next, what to cut, what's actually working, what's not. Small, intimate. Exactly what you have needed in a marketing event designed for leaders and CMOs and VPs like you and me. It's on March 18th through the 20th, 2026 at Mountain Shadows Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. We have a hundred spots and they're filling up fast. I think as of do as of recording this, we had 42 tickets sold. So if you're a CMO or VP of marketing and you want to think better, move faster and lead with more clarity this year. This event is made for you. We do awesome events. I'm su super excited to have this one out there. You should go check it out. Exit5.com retreat that's exit5.com retreat retreat.