← The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
How to Stop The Busywork in B2B Marketing (with Dmitry Shamis)
00:46:25
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- [00:00]
Grammarly Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Grammarly. You know, Grammarly? Have you ever had one of those weeks where you feel like you spent more time responding to slack messages and email chains than, well, actually doing any marketing work? Man, this is my biggest pet peeve. And if you're like me, you're not alone.
- [00:19]
Dave Gerhardt
I feel this way too all the time.
- [00:21]
Grammarly Sponsor
The average marketing team spends 28 hours a week just keeping up with comms.
- [00:26]
Dave Gerhardt
That's not actual work.
- [00:27]
Grammarly Sponsor
Let's do the marketing. The result is burnout, frustration, a whole lot of performative productivity that doesn't actually move the needle. This is a common symptom at a lot of marketing teams. Everyone's busy, but we're not hitting our goals. AI fluent marketing teams are flipping the script though today. This is where AI has the power to change the game for marketers. Grammarly's 2025 Productivity Shift Report reveals how the top marketing teams are using AI to reduce back and forth, automate content, research and reporting, eliminate busy work, make space for strategy, and just be more productive. Look, we're marketers because we love doing the marketing. Crafting campaigns, driving revenue, proving impact, actually doing creative marketing work, not spending all of our day buried in messages. Go and check out this report today to see how leading teams are making AI work for them. You can read it, show it to your boss, show it to your team, hopefully give you a boost and get you more productive. Go check it out. Go to go.Grammarly.com/5 that's go.Grammarly.com exit5.
- [01:34]
Dave Gerhardt
You're listening to B2B Marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt. Hey. My guest on this episode of the podcast is Dimitri Shamus. He is an OG B2B marketer. He ran the brand team at HubSpot for eight years, managed a team of 155 creatives, developers, people across the marketing. Org. We talk about the number one thing that B2B marketers need to do today, which is to find a way to help your brand stand out. We also talk about the role of AI. That's all everyone's talking about is AI right now. But Demetri doesn't feel like it's going to be the thing that's going to disrupt creativity and it's going to disrupt branding. Plus, he talks about this concept of busy work in marketing and why maybe your team is drowning in busy work and how to stop that and be more effective and more efficient no matter what team size you have. Here's my conversation with Demetri. I finally got Demetri on the pod. We've rescheduled 15 times for all sorts of, you know, vomiting and illnesses and snow days and nonsense. We're here now. Dimitri had my favorite line that I've used in the last year, which is when Dimitri was getting on a plane to go to drive our event with Exit 5, he posts a picture on LinkedIn. And I was so nervous about the event. Are people gonna show up? And he posts, I'm on my way to the B2B marketing Mecca, Vermont. And we haven't made that our tagline yet, but we should.
- [03:13]
Dimitri Shammas
I feel like it needs to be like, for drive 25, it's.
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Dave Gerhardt
Oh, drive 25, that's hot. I gotta write that down. Drive 25, baby.
- [03:22]
Dimitri Shammas
Drive 25. Yeah, that literally just happened. But yeah, drive 25. B2B Mecca. It was funny. I'm like, literally sitting there just waiting to get on an airplane. I'm like, I haven't posted on LinkedIn today because obviously, like you, I'm a thought leader and I need to do that. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- [03:39]
Dave Gerhardt
You don't have 177,000 followers on LinkedIn, dog. Relax.
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Dimitri Shammas
But, like, you know, are you kidding me? We're both sharing thoughts.
- [03:50]
Dave Gerhardt
Yes. Yeah, you're an actual thought leader. So I got a couple things that I want to talk to you about on this podcast. First, quickly give people context who you are, what you're doing, you're out. You have a solo business today. You were at HubSpot for almost a decade. Give me the short summary of who you are and what you've done in this world of B2B marketing.
- [04:10]
Dimitri Shammas
Absolutely. My name is Dimitri Shammas. I'm the founder of a company called the Creative Brand. Also world premiere for you, I'm starting an agency as well. Co founding an agency with my good friend Jen Proud, called. Oh, snap.
- [04:23]
Dave Gerhardt
Wow, I love that. Okay, let's talk about that in a sec. All right? Okay.
- [04:27]
Dimitri Shammas
Really excited about that. But I went to school for sports management, thought I was gonna be a sports agent. Realized I like sports way more than the business of sports, which, like, totally led me down this weird path of non traditional life where I became a talent agent, focused on, like TV and like media. Decided that wasn't working for me, gonna quit my job, learn how to code, which is totally normal, rational thing to do as well, you know, I bounced around a little bit, ended up at HubSpot as a dev, ended up taking over the web team. Then I took over the creative team where I oversaw the Brand grew that team to like 155 people over the course of eight years, which is wild. And then one day it was time to go off on my own. And you know, one of the cool things that I did at HubSpot was really like pioneer this sort of like self service model which I've been helping businesses build out. So I imagine we'll talk about this to a certain extent. But there's too much busy work, there's too much run rate work. Too many teams are bogged down with like really like incremental stuff and that's what's getting in the way of them actually doing like real work and taking big meaningful swings. So just trying to free them up to do cool stuff.
- [05:35]
Dave Gerhardt
Okay, we could jump into that right now. I think it's such a good topic. But talking about the nature of like what was brand at HubSpot and know you ran 155 person brand team. Last week I wrote on LinkedIn about this concept of brand and I think I talked to a lot of founders or marketers. You know, you see it in Exify, there's a bunch of different definitions of brand. How do you think you know the people listening to this and based on what you did at HubSpot or your how your point of view has changed, like what is brand? What is the role of brand? Because there's like the creative side of things, there's like the how do we look and feel and there's a kind of in house creative agency. But then there's also the brand which is like the reputation, right, the brand channels. You're wise in this area and I would love to hear your perspective on it.
- [06:20]
Dimitri Shammas
I mean for me brand is, it's like the worst definition, but it's everything. And the reason why I say that is because your brand needs to be infused throughout your business. So yes, it's your colors, it's your messaging, it's your logo, but it's also tied into that unique perspective and point of view that you have. So there's generally a reason in my opinion why people start businesses, companies provide services, whatever it might be. And usually it's because someone else is doing it wrong. And so you have this general idea and this general thought. And that in my opinion is what needs to be rooted in your entire business. Like that needs to come through in your marketing, that needs to come through in your sales, it needs to come through in your customer service. That brand needs to be felt in your recruiting efforts, like anything and everything. So like when I think about brand, yes, it's those like standard kind of branding elements, but it's also that story and how it is infused into everything you do.
- [07:17]
Dave Gerhardt
How do you play offense with the brand? Obviously we are at HubSpot size and scale. You have budget. You know, the other teams want to do crazy brand things like super bowl ads. Right?
- [07:29]
Dimitri Shammas
Yeah.
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Dave Gerhardt
For the maybe earlier stage marketers here. How do you think about making brand investments and what would the playbook there be?
- [07:37]
Dimitri Shammas
It's different for every company. Right. And I hate the it depends answer. I know, but it's one of those things where you need to understand where your audience is and go meet them there. You know, if they're on LinkedIn, start creating content for LinkedIn. If they're on Reddit, you know, shout out Russ Simmons like, you know, go be on, on Reddit.
- [07:53]
Dave Gerhardt
But like, so you kind of went right to LinkedIn and content there. And I think this is it for me. I think people underrate. Like when we talk about brand, I feel like people miss out. That like a huge part of the brand thing is the point of view. It's the company story. It's like the, what do you have to say to the market? And then the brand is like how you execute on that. Are you, do you feel me on that?
- [08:12]
Dimitri Shammas
100%, I think so many companies are like, oh, we need a brand. And that literally means like, we need a primary color, we need a cool looking logo and we need a website that looks somewhat put together and then that's it. And then everyone kind of like go off and be free and do whatever the hell you want to do. And then they're like, nobody knows what we do, no one knows what we stand for, and no one within the company internally is saying the same thing. And you have all this misinformation, whatever, going out and about. And so I think like a big part of it is right, you rally people together and then you share that common message across all of your different touch points. So I'm right there with you. Like, the point of view is at the core of everything. Like, your point of view should dictate the colors you choose. Your point of view should dictate what your logo looks like. Your point of view should dictate your mission and vision and get everyone aligned. Because your point of view is actually the one kind of differentiated thing that you're going to have from your competition.
- [09:08]
Dave Gerhardt
If you're working with someone, do you have a framework for like defining this point of view? Like, if I'm A founder. You're going to work with me. I don't have one. It's like a combination of a bunch of things I've learned over the years, books I've read. I like Story Brand. I like April Dunford. I like some of the classic, you know, Al Reese and Jack Trout stuff. I don't have really, like a template or a doc. It's more of like a. I have a founder friend that I'm kind of helping out on the side in my copious free time that I have. But it's fun because they're building a company in the AI space and it's fun to help shape that narrative. But I'm realizing there isn't, like, one template that we have. One of my favorite exercises is like, we're writing an article that's like. It's a blog post, but it's like if you were on stage giving a speech about, like, the future of work and where the world is going. And I found that that's an awesome way to do it. How do you like to go and capture that narrative?
- [09:57]
Dimitri Shammas
I like to piss people off, honestly. I want to know what that thing was that, like, broke them. Like, what was the straw that broke the camel's back? Because again, like, I think there's this underlying reason why anyone goes and does anything, and I want to understand what that is and how to frame that story up in a somewhat positive way.
- [10:19]
Dave Gerhardt
So in that example, like, you have to push. I just was a guest on somebody else's call before this, and they were like, the founder's kind of just like an engineer, and they wanted to build an email tool, so they built an email tool. How do I push them on point of view? And I'm like, well, that's tough, right? Like, if you just got in the business to make another email tool and make money, like, those are the harder companies to work with. I feel like what you want as a marketer is like the founder. It's why I wrote the founder brand book is like, you want the founder who, like, got into business for a particular reason. They had some previous pain and skill set, right? It. Can you force that onto someone? Like, can you retrofit that? Or does it have to be a part of the DNA?
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Dimitri Shammas
I think you can retrofit it if you need to, because I'm sure even with this email client, there was something about Gmail or superhuman or whatever that just wasn't working, that wasn't doing it for them. Like, you know, when I say I try to piss People off. Like, it's not like I want someone angry and furious and beating the table. Right. I think that would be cool because that shows you the emotional resonance of whatever their reasoning or thinking was. But there's always going to be some reason and either it's super obvious on day one or it becomes more obvious a month, a year, two, five, whatever in and you can come back to it. But you still on day one, I think need to think about what is going to set you apart. Because if you go to market with hey, we built another email client, who cares, are you going to go click that link or you open that email, do whatever? No, right, like you want to see that subject line or that video with the headline of just like email is broken, it's 2025, email is dead. Right? Like we all know email is that I want that differing opinion. So I'd prefer it on day one. But no, you can retrofit it if you need to.
- [11:53]
Dave Gerhardt
Okay, so you piss people off. So we start going on that topic. How do you agitate that and how do you get that out? Is it just trading slack messages back and forth? Is it interviews? Is it calls? Like how do you get to that?
- [12:05]
Dimitri Shammas
I prefer doing it on a call and just asking questions like I'm a five year old. Just like, why? Why tell me more. Like that doesn't make sense. We could maybe try role playing it if you want. But really what it comes down to is just pushing, pushing, pushing. Because what everyone generally tries to do is that like kind of, you know, I love everyone in the space and we're all friends and we're just trying to carve out our own thing, whatever. But like I don't want that friendly response. I want that like I hate those guys because of X, Y and Z. And then we say, okay, so your X and Y here are actually the thing. This is what you care about, this is the story that you're trying to tell and this is what we're trying to build as a result of that versus just like, you know, I'm just going to pick on them now like I'm building another email client because it just. Nothing about that works for me.
- [12:54]
Dave Gerhardt
How much does the like landscape of the market and existing tools, existing kind of companies and products and features, you know, I would like lay out the other companies that we would hypothetically compete with and there's this kind of exercise of trying to find the gaps and opportunities. Do you do something like that? Like you need the context of the market at the same time Right.
- [13:14]
Dimitri Shammas
Yeah. But I think that comes second because I think when you're looking to fill a gap, you may not be telling the full story or you may not be hitting your authentic beats. I think when you understand why you're doing something and then you assess the gaps, you can do a better job. Because even if there's overlap, it's not going to be one to one. You're still going to have something that stands out. And I'm always more concerned with what I'm doing or what my clients are doing versus what my competitors are doing, because if my competitors were that good, I probably wouldn't have a job.
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Dave Gerhardt
You don't want to do it. You need to make the first move based on your point of view, not in reaction to someone else.
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Dimitri Shammas
100%. That's the way I approach it. Any kind of brand work I do, any kind of ops, process work, whatever it might be. Right. Like the full spectrum of it all. I'm always more concerned with what's going on inside the house than outside the house. Yes. You need to understand what the competitive landscape looks like. You need to understand what's going on. But I feel like in marketing, we do this weird thing where we worry so much about our competition that we become them, and that's where everyone kind of just blends in.
- [14:28]
Dave Gerhardt
You just become the norm. It's just like a lot of sameness. Everyone's always done it that way.
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Dimitri Shammas
Yeah.
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Dave Gerhardt
There's a great book by the. Well, you're a sports guy, so this reference will land with you. There's a classic management book that people throw around a lot, which is Bill Walsh, the old 49ers coach. The score takes care of itself. And in that book, he has a line where he says, you know, the. I forget exactly what it is, but it's basically like a lot of times inside of a company, the answer is like, well, that's the way we've always done it. And he's like, that's the way we've always done it is a team that's setting themselves up to lose to a team who's not doing it that way anymore. And especially this is true at. As the company gets larger and you bring in new people, it's very easy. Well, we've always gotten a booth at Dreamforce, and so we're always going to do it. And it's like, well, let's question everything. Right. I love the idea of questioning everything. Why do we have to do it this way? What is our way? And I do think so. Much of marketing is a game of attention and finding the opportunities. And so just because you've always done it that way, how can we do something completely different? And that is the way you're going to get someone to pay attention to you. But it's hard to do that internally. And even if it's not internal, you're often looking at all the other companies. You're like, well, everyone that sold this email product has always done it this way. I think that's exactly the opportunity.
- [15:43]
Dimitri Shammas
Well, here's like a quick anecdote. So years ago, when I was still running web at HubSpot, there was a financial services company. I'm not going to say the name, but we would look at their website for inspiration. We were like, oh, we like the way that they're laying things out. We like the way that they're doing interactions. We like this and that. And a couple of years later, I met the person that ran the website there. I was like, oh, you know, I've always looked at your website as inspiration. And they're like, no way. Because I've always looked at your website for inspiration. So literally, it's just like, it's cyclical where, like, you start copying from one another and you just become this, like, weird amalgamation. And that's what the whole, like, this is the way it's always been done thing is, where it's like, oh, well, this is how so. And so does it. So this is how we should do it. Like, no, Bill Walsh probably knows a thing or two about winning and standing out. Right. So you can't worry about how it's always been done. You have to do it your way and hopefully that's the right way.
- [16:38]
Dave Gerhardt
How would you guide a founder today? Like, I feel like it's differentiation is the hardest thing today because of how much sameness there is out there. And maybe for the marketers that are listening, can you just talk about how you can't create differentiation in a vacuum. It's gotta be a whole company effort, especially the. We talk so much in Exit 5 and on this podcast and on LinkedIn about sales and marketing alignment. Sales and marketing alignment. I don't think there's enough conversation about product and marketing alignment. Can you talk about that?
- [17:07]
Dimitri Shammas
Absolutely. I mean, you need to include aspects of your marketing within your product. Yes. From a branding standpoint, but also from like, a messaging standpoint. You look at, like, some of these project management software options out there. You know, you close a task. There's confetti and unicorns and all, like, These fun kind of interactive moments that occur, those make the customer and the user feel good, they're fun. But if you're thinking about it from just like a pure productivity lens, which a lot of product folks do, you're not going to get that. If you're thinking about it just from like a pure interaction and fun and attention awareness grabbing kind of thing like marketers tend to do, you're not going to be able to actually be productive. So like you need to forge these relationships, you need to have these conversations and you need to find the appropriate middle ground. And it's the same thing on like the marketing side where like, you know, if you think about your website, it's the number one product sales tool that you have. So you can't just avoid the product, you can't skip it, you can't pretend that it doesn't exist if it's not like the sexiest or most fun thing. You have to figure out where that line is for marketing takeover, but for the product to still get its shine. And a lot of that happens from relationship building and from trust ultimately. Like I've worked with teams where it's like, oh well, product says it needs to be like this, so that's the way it is. And those are the teams that always have the most boring marketing you've ever seen. So a lot of it is about trust building and like you have to do that in stages. You have to find small opportunities and small projects to say, hey, what if we just try this? Like if it wins, great. If it doesn't, no big deal, not a big loss, right? Like you have to find an advocate. I talk about this with self service a lot because a lot of organizations that I'll work with will be like, oh well, the marketers don't want to do this or the salespeople don't want to do that. And it's just like you gotta find one person, find one person on that team that sees things the way that you do, or at least is willing to listen, work with them to implement some sort of experiment within their area of expertise, get a win and walk over to the next person, be like, this is what we did together and use that to start building. It's a snowball effect, right? Because like also once people see their peers being successful, they want a piece of that action as well. And that's where you start. You accumulate wins other people want in, you start building those relationships and that's where you start really figuring out where that line is of how you balance Marketing and product.
- [19:28]
Dave Gerhardt
We talked about busy work. I've been at companies and I've advised companies, and there's often this. The marketing team is never not busy. I've never been around a marketing team where no one's doing anything. It's actually usually the opposite approach, which is like, there's lots of stuff going on. There's so many emails going out. There's webinars, there's new ads, there's events we're going to go to, there's new pages we got to make on the website, there's new campaigns we got to be running. Sales needs this. The HR teams need that. The marketing team is always busy, but the worst case scenario is when the marketing team is super busy. Everyone's on the verge of burning out, but the company is not hitting their goals. And that's something. And I like how you frame it as busy work. This is a symptom. This is something that's going on at a lot of companies. Let's dive into this and talk about it a little bit.
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Dimitri Shammas
I love it. Yeah. When I think about busy work, just overall, it's all of those things that you just mentioned, and it's like the cleanup after all of those things. Like, they're regularly scheduled. They're always happening. They're predictable. You know they're going to happen. You know what's going to happen after the fact in terms of, well, that webinar. We're going to cut it down into clips and we're going to make social posts for it. We're going to write three blog posts, like, all of these things that you know are coming, and then the day they show up on your plate, you're like, whoa, what is this? I didn't know. Like, it's ridiculous.
- [20:48]
Dave Gerhardt
Let me read you this. A CMO posted this in our CMO club at Exit 5. They wrote, how do your teams handle many different projects and requests at the same time? The team always complains about workload, but that doesn't seem to be the real issue. It's more that they feel disconnected and stressed when lots of people are working on lots of things at the same time. We use JIRA and that work, so it's not a project management issue. I'm wondering if doing sprints where people work more simultaneously on the same project at the same time would be a solution or if this will lead to other problems. I also can imagine you can handle the same amount of projects, but it will be more sequenced if we do it this way, rather than running in parallel. Curious to understand how you organize your teams and projects where a B2B SaaS company with four different products directed at three different target audiences, there's 20 people on the team. My answer was like, well, is everything of equal importance to all these things? Map back to the one or two key goals. Right now it's hard to do everything and it's hard to say no. But sometimes less is more and more focused. Effort is the way. And then they said back to me, yeah, but is only one or two key goals per quarter. That seems very little given the size of our team. But isn't this the actual issue here? Is it, do we need to be doing all these things?
- [21:55]
Dimitri Shammas
No, it's purely prioritization and either it's leaders who don't know what's important, or it's leaders who don't like to say no or don't want to say no and you absolutely have to make calls. 99% of the time that I run into this issue with clients, it's because they don't know what their goals are or they as individuals have like, I have to get this many leads or have this many meetings booked, whatever it might be, and they're in direct competition with their peer as opposed to everyone having like one or two high level goals that they're all umbrella under. So what you're reading to me is a pure prioritization issue. And then the other part of it is, fine, whatever. Let's say these are priorities. Let's say these are important and they all need to get done. It becomes a resourcing issue in terms of like, does your team need to be responsible for all of these things? Are there pieces of this that you could outsource on a regular basis? Are there pieces of this that you can automate? Are there pieces of this that you could use AI to help you with? Going back to the whole, like Bill Walsh, like, this is the way it's always been done. There's a lot of that here where it's like, well, we've always done webinars and we've always done the same thing after the fact. So we're going to continue doing that regardless of if it's working or if it's actually meaningful to the business. It's much harder to like kill those projects to move on to the next ones. And you'll never do that if you don't actually stop to prioritize what is and isn't important. It's a keeping the lights on mentality.
- [23:23]
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- [24:27]
Dave Gerhardt
So it comes back to like articulating the having very clear company goals for marketing and then being able to say, and here's how we're going to go do them. Is it like a marketing strategy? You know, you were OG HubSpot, you worked there for a long time. I don't know if my experience is proper, but I felt like they did a good job of the company. Goal setting activity was good because I feel like you knew what the key initiatives were for the company and it's like, here are the key initiatives for the company. Because marketing can do anything. I say this on every damn podcast, but everything in marketing works, everything has been proved. TikTok works, YouTube works, ABM works, events work, all that stuff works. But I don't want to do all this stuff. Like, so what are the company goals? And marketing exists to serve the company and help us hit our company goals. Am I thinking about that right?
- [25:12]
Dimitri Shammas
Yeah. So I have like an all time favorite goal. It's something I think about weirdly all the time. And this was at HubSpot and when the company went multi product, we had to do two things. Break the perception that it was marketing only and break the perception that was only SMB. And that was amazing because it was like this really healthy guardrail that allowed every individual on the team to assess whether what they were doing was actually helping with breaking those perceptions. If you are working on a project and it was like marketing automation. Only then, no, you're not actually hitting the goal. Regardless of the leads. It might have driven the signups, Whatever it might have been, like, we're thinking about all in one. We're thinking about platforms, whatever the language was at the time. And it was the same thing where it's just like, oh, you know what, this campaign that you're launching, is it for SMBs or is it for enterprise? And if it was for SMB, like, is this really the right thing? Is this what we need to be doing when we're trying to break that perception? So that's a part of it as well, where I think, like, you need to be thinking about these high level goals. You need to be setting them. They need to be achievable, like ambitious, but achievable. And they need to allow for people to have the ability to make decisions against them. Because I think that's the other part of like the piece that you read from the CMO Club. It also sounds like project management isn't an issue. Why? Because everything is listed in jira. That doesn't mean that project management isn't an issue. There's still clearly a bottleneck somewhere where people aren't fully comfortable making certain decisions and they're waiting for certain orders to kind of come down. So there's a lot here, but you want to create goals at that high level that give people the room to operate, but that are also very clear in what those expectations are ultimately going to be. And then you can create like actual numerical goals against them.
- [27:03]
Dave Gerhardt
So I feel like usually the company goals are like, we want to deliver, you know, this number of this in pipeline and those things are easier to set goals around. How do you make the case to go out and do some of the back to our conversation about brand. The more brand oriented investments, you know, that maybe are harder to measure or harder to directly attribute to pipeline. But how do you make them a key part of like the work that the marketing team should be doing? Because I found that it's oftentimes like, yeah, we want to start a show, we want to start a podcast, because we believe in X, Y and Z. But like, nobody has the time to do it. We're overloaded with work, we got too much busy work. And maybe podcast is a bad example. But I think, you know what I'm.
- [27:39]
Dimitri Shammas
Trying to get at 100%. I think it's about speaking their language, which I know is a very common thing that people say and technique that they Talk about. But the people with the money, you gotta convince them to give you some of that. And you're not gonna do that by using terminology like awareness and, you know, all those kind of key, you know, oh, there's positive sentiment attached. And, you know, unaided recall is huge. Like, no one cares about that. They care about, like, are they getting in the pipeline? And how are they getting in the pipeline? And so, like, the way I've always talked about it was through phishing, which is weird because I'm not like a huge fisherman, but I've ran with this for years now. Where most teams, when they think about growth or performance, you're fishing within a pond and you're hitting those fish with messaging advertisements, whatever, and one of two things is going to happen. Either you catch the fish or the fish. Learn to avoid what you're trying to do one way or the other. That pond hasn't changed in terms of what's in there. And so you need to refill that pond. And that's where a lot of the brand plays come in, where what you're trying to do is constantly pump new fish into that pond so that those growth strategies and those performance strategies can be effective. When you talk about it through that standpoint, like, and you can measure, right? What's. You know, you talk about this all the time where it's like, you're not necessarily doing, like, direct attribution with UTMs or whatever, but, like, you don't need to. You know who's coming in through the pod, you know who's coming in through the newsletter, you know who's coming in through LinkedIn. And it's kind of the same thing where it's like, when you can showcase how you're then refilling that pond with a billboard, with a podcast, with whatever might be a YouTube show, people will start to understand and you'll be able to correlate. But if you go into that conversation just like, oh, you know what? No one knows who we are and we need to invest half a million dollars in getting whatever program off the ground, you're just gonna get laughed at.
- [29:25]
Dave Gerhardt
It was talking about this the other day, where a common trait, I think, among strong marketers and marketing leaders is that, again, everything can work, but it's being able to articulate, like, marketing. You work at a company because you're trying to help the company achieve the company goal, and marketing is the way you do that. And so having an opinion about how the company needs to do marketing to achieve the goal, and then Being able to articulate, like all of the things that you're doing, talk about them in the broader set. Like when I worked at HubSpot, for example, the reason I got the job at HubSpot was because they wanted to start a podcast because Mike, who is a cmo, they wanted to reach more of an executive audience. And this was in 2015. And so HubSpot was trying to like, move more up market. They had a strong following among, you know, marketing Mary, the marketing manager Persona. Right. But they wanted to reach more executives. And so his hypothesis was, you know, like, hey, I'm a big time cmo. I'm in the car, I'm listening to podcasts. This is how I get information. We want to start a podcast because we think that we can attract an executive audience and he's going to host it, he has a strong network of execs. We're going to build this show. And I, I thought that was a great example. So it's not just like, yeah, we're going to do a podcast because everyone's doing a, you know, podcasts are cool. It's like, no, intentionally we see this and we need to look at leading indicators like downloads and like, ratings and reviews. Right. But we're going to look at this investment over time and maybe it's going to be months or years later and we're going to start to see that we're getting into conversations because someone happens to become a fan because, oh, I listened to your podcast with so and so. That was awesome. Now I'm evaluating HubSpot versus Marketo and I think relatively the features are the same, but I really feel like I have a relationship with you and I like your stuff, and so I'm going to buy from you. Perfect example of being able to talk about a channel and how it fits into the company strategy. Right?
- [31:10]
Dimitri Shammas
Yeah. But if that conversation started with, you know, exactly like you just said it, like, we should start a podcast because everyone's starting a podcast, like, would it ever have happened? No. Right. It happened. And I mean, whatever, right? Like, Mike actually was the one who's making that decision. So maybe that's not the greatest example, but if you or I were the ones who were like, oh, we should start a podcast because everyone else is doing it, people would look at us sideways because there's no proof, there's no indication that it might work, and there's no rationale around why you would do that thing, besides the fact that everyone else is doing it and going back to, like, what we Were saying earlier around the competition, like, who cares? Like, who cares if the competition has a podcast? Like, is it actually working? Is it effective? Is it doing what it needs to.
- [31:53]
Dave Gerhardt
Do and can we do it our way? I was talking about this before where, like, the niche can be you, it can be the way you do it, right? Like, you know, you talked about being a sports agent in the past life, right? There's a million agents, right? But maybe someone just has a way that they see the world that's different, or you relate to them better, or they have a philosophy that's different that's going to be the differentiator. It's like, well, yeah, everybody has a podcast, but here it's going to be our way, right? This is how we're going to do it. That can be the differentiator.
- [32:20]
Dimitri Shammas
That needs to be the differentiator. Because, again, like, how many interview podcasts are there, right? Like, this format that we're doing right now, it's not unique. What's unique is you. What's unique is how you approach it and the questions you ask and the relationships that you have, right? But there are plenty of other marketing podcasts that get no. You know, maybe that's because they don't have thought leaders with 177,000 followers leading.
- [32:44]
Dave Gerhardt
Them, but no big deal.
- [32:45]
Dimitri Shammas
No big NBD. But the point is, like, if you go into it just trying to do the bare minimum or just doing what everyone else is doing, you're going to fade into the background. You have to have something that sets you apart. In this case, it's you. In the case of HubSpot, it was Mike in those early days, right? Like, whatever it is, like, you have to figure out what that differentiator is. You have to really believe in it, and then you take that to market in whatever way it makes the most sense.
- [33:09]
Dave Gerhardt
What role do you see AI playing in the future of B2B marketing? Specifically? What's interesting to you? What's overhyped? Where do you think we're going?
- [33:18]
Dimitri Shammas
I mean, I think a lot of it is overhyped, just period. And this is coming as someone who has built AI solutions for a long, long time. Like, I mean, the colloquial definition of AI has changed over time, but, like, the reality is just where it's at right now. And the way people are thinking about it feels a bit lazy to me. And they just want AI to be the ultimate solution to everything. And, like, what we realize is AI is not actually that great at writing. It's not that great at design, it's not that great at a lot of things. What it is great at is doing your dirty work. Like the things that take a ton of time, the things that take a lot of like mental calories that you don't want to do. That's what AI is for. I always say this line of like, don't outsource your thinking nor never outsource your thinking. And that's because AI doesn't have that lived in experience, doesn't have that human experience. It doesn't have the observational skills that you as a human being do. Therefore, like, the stuff that it generates is just mediocre crap.
- [34:17]
Dave Gerhardt
I do worry sometimes that a lot of us are going to forget how to use our actual brains because we ask ChatGPT for everything. And the real beauty is in the art. It's in the nuance. It's in the like, things that are authentic and not perfect. It's like the improvised jazz or like in hip hop, the producer, you know, J Dilla had that particular like, flow of his beats that would be hard. You know, the reason he was popular and his music sounds like that is because it wasn't very computerized. And so there is some, I think humans, we still have to be the taste makers, right? There's an element of that. I wonder and I sometimes I'm like, damn it, Dave, you don't need to. I'll be like on a run. And I'll be like, I gotta ask chat GPT how come you know in 1997 this, that. No, that doesn't matter. Just forget it. Just continue on with your life. You don't need to go to ask Chad GPT everything.
- [35:04]
Dimitri Shammas
But that's fine because you would have done that with Google beforehand too. I think it's totally fine to want to know the answer to a question because you're not going to go to the library and dig into encyclopedias and journals and all those things. Like, there's no reason for you to. That's like the perfect use case. It has now saved you hours and days and weeks of research time to get you where you need to go. But if you're just like, okay, now write me a blog post and you just hit publish without reading that thing or understanding it or even trying to figure out why it's relevant for your audience, that's where I think you're messing up. And that's where I think a lot of people end up messing up. Because the information is relevant. Of course it's relevant. But the Way you shape it and put it in front of your audience, that's what makes it actually valuable. And we've like foregone that step as of late. And it's been nice to see a little bit of pushback on AI. And I say this as someone who loves AI and uses it in my day to day all the time, but I've loved seeing people go like, you know what, it's actually not as hot as we thought it was going to be. We're going to figure out what the right use cases are and then ignore all the noise that we hear on a day to day basis.
- [36:12]
Dave Gerhardt
All right, Dmitry hates AI. You heard it here first. But don't you think though, like, if you look back to like, you know, running a creative team or like, you know, you started out on running the website and the web team, 155 people, you know, big Org, lots of stuff. There is an area though for even though like a lot of it is maybe overhyped. There is an area though that I am very bullish on, which is just the ability to turn more of us marketers into full stack marketers. You know, the things that, like back in the day I used to have to like, I needed a webpage done and I needed to submit the brief and then I have to wait for the creative team to make the image and then like, there's a lot of that. I do think a lot of that is going to shrink. Do you believe me, on that side of things? From a creation standpoint, like, the way that I as a marketer can go from 0 to 1 now is much faster than me being like, yeah, I submitted the design request to and granted, AI design still sucks. You know, everyone has, you know, nine fingers or like one really long ear or something. But I do think there's a lot of that that's going to make the job of marketing better.
- [37:15]
Dimitri Shammas
I think you just nailed busy work in a nutshell, honestly, because you're waiting for that graphic. The designers don't want to make that graphic either. You know, it's not exactly exciting work fair. And so that's where it's like, maybe AI isn't the solution, but that's where a canva template actually suits you. Where you have a repository of photography, you understand what messaging looks like. You have an easy to use template that you could just pop an image into, update the headline and export in five minutes and use that. Like, I think that's the side of this that's been forgotten about a little bit. But yeah, this is the work that needs to go away. This is the work that needs to disappear and be systematized, automated, whatever. Because how many times have you sat in a room and had this amazing idea and wish that you could run at it full speed, but it's like, well, we have 20 other projects ahead of it in the queue and I don't think we can get rid of this one or that one. But they're all garbage work at the end of the day, if you're truly honest with yourself.
- [38:15]
Dave Gerhardt
All right, tell me about. Oh, snap. So you're going to go start an agency?
- [38:18]
Dimitri Shammas
Yeah. It's really exciting. So, Jen Proud, she was director of design at HubSpot when I was running Creative and she and I are very much on the same page in terms of, like, thinking about systems and scale and growth and.
- [38:32]
Dave Gerhardt
Wait, wait, do neither of you have, like, stock or anything? You guys still work? You haven't made all the money. HubSpot Stocks continues to rip. Why you got to go do this?
- [38:39]
Dimitri Shammas
I don't know. Maybe we're just not good at sitting still. But, you know, we've been thinking a lot about, like, future proofing brands. Because my whole thing as of late has been like, you work with an agency and like, there's some great agencies out there. I'm not going to just like, trash the whole industry. But you work with some of these agencies and they hand you a PDF and that's it. And like, they disappear into the mist unless you throw them on retainer or something like that. They don't help you implement your brand. They don't help you with anything other than like, here's one headline. Here's your mission, your vision, here's some branding. So the way we're thinking about it is like, how do we one, just take your brand and get you prepared for that next stage? Like, we talk a lot about inflection points where it's like you have this ability to go up or go down depending on your choice. But you ultimately want to put yourself in a position where you're using the right technology. Your branding is on point and can scale in a way where it's more evolutionary rather than having to flip the switch every time you do any kind of rebrand. You know, you want to be thinking about your operations and your processes and how those help you get to where you're going. You want to think about those AI and automation use cases. So we're approaching brand from a really kind of like, systems focused area where we want to create something for Our clients that look really good, obviously, but also work with them today and a year from now and five years from now and all the things.
- [40:00]
Dave Gerhardt
So it's a creative agency.
- [40:01]
Dimitri Shammas
It's a creative agency. Yeah. We're not doing all of the things. We're going to work with partners to help. Like I'm not writing code anymore. No one.
- [40:08]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, yeah, but you can sub. You basically somebody can pay you to. Basically they don't care if those are full time employees or not. How can you get the job done? And as I've always thought about, like the main deliverable should be the website. Everyone needs a website with a strong creative and personality. Are you going to do website?
- [40:23]
Dimitri Shammas
Yeah, that's going to be a big part of it for sure.
- [40:25]
Dave Gerhardt
But I think that's a piece of like then when we're talking about narrative earlier, like the deliverable for that it's so often just like lives in a Google Doc and then what happens is like, yeah, you work with someone to get a great narrative done and positioning or whatever, but then it's just like, all right, well then we still need someone to go and do this on the website. And then I also think like the visual identity for a brand is such an important part of that. That to me is like a timeless company there until you can just write a prompt and generate your own website. Right.
- [40:50]
Dimitri Shammas
But, but like even this idea of like oh snap, it's a double entendre and that like oh snap, that's great. But also like the idea of snap and modularity and so a big part of it is like design systems overall and thinking about, yeah, how do you take these disparate pieces, put them together so you have something that actually works together. I think about brand a lot in terms of Legos and that's a lot of what we're going to be doing is like helping define what those Lego blocks are, what those bricks are and helping companies put those together, which I'm super excited about because yeah, it's like usually look at that website and it's just like this one kind of monolith, but also like, yeah, you got a Google Doc with some lines of copy and you got maybe a wire frame that only had the hero and then just Lorem Ipsum throughout. Now we want to make sure that like when you show up, that you come correct and you look good and you feel good and it's a reflection of who you are as a company and that that's going to grow since.
- [41:47]
Dave Gerhardt
You'Re going to be like hiring Designers for your own business. Do you have any tips and tricks or suggestions for those marketers out here who are like, how do you hire good designers? What should somebody be looking for?
- [41:58]
Dimitri Shammas
Curiosity. That's number one for me, regardless of what creative discipline it is. Like, okay, cool, you've built a thousand B2B websites before, designed a thousand B2B websites. Like, so what? That doesn't mean you're going to do anything fresh or interesting or innovative. I want to know what people are thinking about outside of work. I want to know what kind of content they're consuming. I want to know what they think looks good. Because in an interview, everyone's going to tell you your website and your brand are the best and that they love them and whatever else. Right? Like, that's how we interview these days. I'm always curious about what they're curious about. And then, yes, the skills have to match up. They have to actually be able to do the job that you're looking to them to do. But what is out there beyond B2B? Because this is the worst timeline. This is the most boring industry. So where are people actually getting motivated and inspired? Because it's not going to be from my website.
- [42:50]
Dave Gerhardt
And where would you look? Would you post on LinkedIn that you're looking for a designer? Is there a marketplace you'd go to? Where would you find somebody?
- [42:56]
Dimitri Shammas
I mean, at this point, like, a lot of it would be networking, which is not fair, I guess. But yeah, I would definitely post on LinkedIn. I would definitely look at, like, design communities on Reddit and within, like, WhatsApp and Slack groups. You know, all the discords, all the kids toys these days. I don't know. I'm an old man. I mean, we're like the same age, but I feel like an old man anyway. I don't know, Like, I've been traveling, my back hurts.
- [43:19]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, it's great. You got to use your core.
- [43:22]
Dimitri Shammas
But yeah, like, I would still primarily rely on my network. And, like, at this point, like, I've been fortunate enough across my career to work with a lot of really talented people who are in leadership positions now where it's like, I could say, hey, who do you know? Or who do you wish you hired, whatever it might have been, and try to get referred referrals that way. Cool.
- [43:40]
Dave Gerhardt
All right, Demetri, thanks for hanging out. I got a wrap. Good to see you. Good luck with Osnap. You can see Dimitri on LinkedIn. Go follow him there. He's also active inside the Exit 5 community. Maybe when OSNAP is ready, you can find some great people to work with. Direct five. All right man, Good to see you.
- [43:57]
Dimitri Shammas
Love that.
- [44:01]
Dave Gerhardt
Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode. Episode. You know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at exit 5. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exit5.com our mission at Exit 5 is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at exit 5. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are. So you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days, so you can go and check it out risk free and then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community.
- [45:11]
Grammarly Sponsor
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- [45:14]
Dave Gerhardt
Q2 is here.
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Dave Gerhardt
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Dave Gerhardt
Not so you know exactly where to.
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