Dave Gerhardt's Recent LinkedIn Posts

"My job is to build brand over time and drive sales overnight." - Jessica Serrano, CMO at Bagel Brands (they own Einstein Brothers, Noah's, Bruegger's, Manhattan Bagel). *** My guest this week on my podcast is Jessica Serrano -- bringing a consumer CMO on to talk about B2B marketing? Absolutely. Everyone wants to be in B2B marketing. Even the restaurant brands. It's the same reason every startup eventually wants to move up market. The math is just always better. It makes more business sense to focus on fewer, bigger customers. Getting a small group of people to pay you more (and on a repeat basis). I TOLD YOU B2B MARKETING IS THE GREATEST JOB IN THE LAND OK no but seriously - Jessica is awesome and we talked about the things B2B and B2C marketing share in common (but also made me think of the many ways B2B is different because of the complexity in buying). We cover: • Why consumer and B2B marketing are way more similar than people think • How she’s using AI across marketing/sales • Her philosophy that her job is to ‘build brand over time and drive sales overnight.’ Jessica shares how COVID forced Dig Inn to rebuild itself as an e-commerce business, how she built a B2B catering sales motion from scratch using HubSpot and buyer personas, and how filtering work emails out of a consumer list became a real customer acquisition tactic. Listen to this episode to learn tactics that work whether you're selling bagels or software.

What are the best (and worst) ways to be using AI in marketing right now? Drop yours in the comments. Dom Odoguardi happened to bump into me in Vermont (strange) and asked me this question...

We polled ~100 CMOs at companies $50M - $500M+ ARR on what their top marketing challenges are right now. Here are the top takeaways. _________________________________________________________ 1. AI. No surprise. 85% said AI adoption is # 1 priority for 2026. But this goes beyond the cute use cases you see on LinkedIn and from the AI creators showing you all the new things to do with the new tools. "I need practical use cases and quick wins to show” - VPM $25M ARR “We are expected to be using AI to scale marketing efficiently” - VPM $30M ARR “We are under pressure to demonstrate hard savings and additional value created via AI adoption.” - CMO $450M ARR “Wondering am I moving fast enough on AI transformation — not just adopting tools, but truly rethinking how marketing works from the ground up.” - CMO $600M ARR _________________________________________________________ 2. Everyone said some version of this: "We need to grow more, spend less, & prove marketing did it.” Grow more. Spend less. And PROVE that marketing did it. That is the key word there. They all talked about revenue growth, but the framing has evolved beyond "drive more MQLs." The dominant language was: • Marketing-sourced and marketing-influenced pipeline (not just leads) • Pipeline quality over volume • Tying marketing to ACV expansion and retention, not just new logos “We ned to tie marketing more directly to revenue outcomes — not just MQLs, but marketing-sourced and marketing-influenced pipeline, ACV growth, and expansion revenue” - VPM $85M ARR _________________________________________________________ 3. The other repeat topics we heard included: • Team too small for scope of work • Feeling caught between strategic work (positioning, GTM, C-suite influence) and heavy day-to-day execution • Structural misalignment after acquisition or reorg • AI search disruption • Moving upmarket • Moving from single product to multi-product _________________________________________________________ PS. We run a private group for in-house B2B marketing leaders. If you're running the marketing team at a company doing $50M+ ARR you should check this group out. Apply here: exitfive.com/cmo-council

We invited 100 B2B marketing execs to Arizona for the first annual Exit Five Marketing Leadership retreat. Kicked off last night with a little welcome mixer and dinner here on the lawn and spent the night hearing the same thing: "this is awesome, I'm so happy to be here." And we haven't even gotten into the programming yet! People are here because they want a peer group, a network, and they want to separate the hype you see on LinkedIn from reality; what's going on inside of a $300M revenue cybersecurity company from Texas and a $100M manufacturing company based out of Seattle is much different than what an AI creator with a Substack is telling you. A peer network is more important now than ever. We hear daily from our members that there's a “ton of change” in marketing leadership now, and you're all under more pressure now because of AI - it hasn't made things easier, just ratcheted up the pressure. We're building the best peer network for B2B marketing execs with Exit Five, and it's so obvious whenever I get outside of the building and go meet everyone like this. Today's agenda: - First going to get a quick workout in before breakfast - Keynote from the great Dave Kellogg on what it takes to the CMO everyone wants to work with - Breakout groups based on industry/size/stage to discuss AI (off the record) - Workshops on presenting to the board, managing up, team structure/org design, and personal branding - Then we're outside all afternoon splitting up into pool, golf, yoga, workout, and back for dinner tonight

LinkedIn is the number one channel for B2B marketers (for content, social, ads, you know we love it here) so I had LinkedIn VP Marketing Davang Shah on the podcast this week to go right to the source about what's working, what's not, and trends across the platform. We covered: - What actually works with LinkedIn ads right now - Brand vs performance marketing strategies and how they differ - How to think about measurement beyond last-click attribution on ads - Why 95% of your buyers aren't in market at any given time and what to do about it Davang also shares the data behind thought leader ads, what most marketers get wrong about the buyer journey, and how he's leading his own team through the AI shift at LinkedIn. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/erc8w2vM PS. Did you know the average B2B deal takes 211 days and involves 22 people?

If I had $1 for every time a founder has DMd me over the last 5 years looking for this unicorn Head of Marketing hire, I could have retired by now. I don’t. I wish I did. You’d think because I run a community of marketing professionals that I’d have some secret list. A Rolodex. A deep bench of marketing leaders waiting for the next opportunity. But I don’t! Because I don’t think there is a perfect fit on paper. It’s almost always more like this: you take a chance on someone who you think might be able to do the job well right now. And maybe you (the company) and that person match. And it goes really well. And she eventually becomes your rockstar head of marketing, runs the team, promoted to CMO one day etc. After working at Drift I’d get it all the time “hey where can I hire the next Dave G” Well Dave G stock when they hired me was low! I hadn’t don’t anything yet. I took off while at Drive and became good over that period. *Drift - whoa, freudian slip I wrote "took off while at Drive" It was like hitting on a 6th round draft pick. Unless you’re in the top 1% of companies with the deepest pockets and can go hire a professional CMO from somewhere. Probably gotta take a flyer on a 6th round draft pick.. Wrote this while making my coffee from my phone at my kitchen table don’t be mad about grammar.

As hot as AI is right now... every time we talk about ABM we get more engagement than most other topics combined. I don't know why, but it's been that way for four years of running Exit Five now. I wonder if it's because ABM usually means "we're not just doing random acts of marketing" so it's an attractive strategy. Less chaotic. Or if it's because ABM usually removes a lot of the conversations about "credit" in marketing since you have to be aligned to sales. This week in my newsletter I shared four ABM lessons from marketers at Ramp, Snowflake, and Hightouch based on how their teams actually run ABM. Not the theory, the real stuff. We pulled out four key takeaways in the newsletter covering account selection, the ideal number of accounts per AE, why the CRO should own the list, and how to prove ABM is working to the exec team. Here's the full newsletter here if you want to read it (and then subscribe if you like it so you can get more B2B marketing insights like this 2x/week): https://lnkd.in/erVPJD4m

After some reflection, I have isolated one of the reasons I am not a billionaire yet. I am sure there are many others. But the main one is probably my time management. I do not buy back enough of my time. I simply do not think like a billionaire. I mean, when was the last time Jeff Bezos went to the Post Office? Do you think Elon Musk takes his kids to school every morning? Does Sam Altman bring out the compost? Time for some deep reflection heading into Q2. I need to decide which type of man I want to be. Will report back. Feel free to make any suggestions in the comments...

Forget all of this "we're replacing the marketing team" with AI agents stuff. I want to know why no one is talking about replacing the CEO with an AI agent. That's the real question! I'm sticking up for the marketing team...

What's the ROI on an Exit Five membership? It's not about how many likes and comments a post gets in our community. It's about THIS. Meet Sara Ajemian -- a marketing exec, been a member of E5 for a bit. She's in the community. On some of the calls and live sessions. Writing comments. Sure. But this is the perfect example. We did a dinner in NYC back in October. She came in, sat in the middle of the four other women that were also B2B marketing leaders and they hit it off instantly (I know because Anna and I were sitting right there and we couldn't get a word in). That night led to a follow up conversation, which lead to a lead on a new job, which led to - well, a new job. And I don't know the math on exactly how much money she's making now, but I can make the ROI math work on the E5 membership 10 different ways. We just wrapped up filming a bunch of these real customer stories and I'm going to publish them here to convince you to join Exit Five in 2026. Whether that means getting an online membership, attending one of our in-person events, or even just starting to get our newsletter and listening to the podcast. Real stories, from real people. Because earlier this year I saw another community running ads on LinkedIn with FAKE customer testimonials; WTF is that??? 🚩 🚩 🚩 PS. We are different in two ways: 1. We focus exclusively on B2B marketing. Not sales, not rev ops. We're a community of marketers. We believe in the craft of marketing. 2. If you talk to our best members, they will tell you there isn't one secret feature. They might say something like: "I dunno, they just have a certain way of doing things that I like better." A CMO messaged me last week and she said: "Hey was just chatting with [redacted] who is also here in [redacted]. We both went to a conference here last year, you know the one. We were debating attending again not because it wasn't good but because it feels so bro-y and vendor heavy. Kinda got an ick, tbh. We both agreed that your conference is much less bro-y, more normal, dare I say, less annoying probably because you seem pretty normal. Anyway, thought I'd pass on this compliment. Also, i'm sending a direct to Drive this year."

Are you putting out bangers in B2B? My guest this week is Erin May 🎙️ (CMO at User Interviews) She joined the company as the full-time first marketer, started with a two-page website and zero recurring revenue and helped them grow past $20M+ ARR over eight years. Erin breaks down how she picked one niche audience and went all in, why she led with ungated content, and how she built a quarterly operating rhythm around "Bangers" (i love this term for it) that get the entire company involved. We also get into podcasting ROI, what she'd do differently with AI-driven search today, and why she thinks the brand vs. demand debate is just noise. Listen to our conversation here: https://lnkd.in/dd-2cUVW

Four years into building Exit Five. We've grown from a solopreneur business to a team of six. Thousands of members in our community. A popular newsletter and podcast. Our content will reach 12M+ people in 2026. We've built the best little media company and community in B2B marketing. I know that from the data, NPS, feedback, and financials. But it becomes even more obvious when we get together in-person. Six months ago we did our event Drive with 200+ in Vermont and the NPS was off the charts; and then we immediately shifted to being planning for this - our first annual Exit Five Marketing Leadership Retreat in Arizona. We'll get the results in over the weekend but I don't need to see them, because I've been here the last three days. 100 CMOs, VPs, Heads of Marketing here having a great time, off the record conversations, and many of them have already pulled me aside to tell me what a great job the team has done (and asking for more stuff like this). IRL is the way to build real brand advocates too. The conversations that have happened at the pool, on the golf course, in the gym, at breakfast - that is where it happens. Thanks to everyone who came out this week, and an even bigger thank you to the Exit Five team - you fill my bucket and continue to reinforce that starting this company was the best decision of my career! What's next???

Lmao the promise of AI and me getting all this time back. I’m ready for it! Feels like the last 6-12 months has just been an all out sprint. Done nothing be work MORE because of what I can do with AI. Less waiting. More power in my hands. More excitement. But I’m definitely not working any less because of AI right now. OR. Maybe it’s this subconscious fear that I’m going to be replaced. So I’m sprinting… Yes. I’ve seen the HBR article… Tpyos so you know it’s real

Claude Code Replaced My 20-Person Marketing Team (Here's How) 29K views Claude Code Replaced My Marketing In 20 Minutes 44K views Claude Code Built My $450K Marketing Campaign 73K views Claude Code & MCPs Built My $145K Marketing Machine 43K views How Claude Code Replaced My Marketing Team 11K views How Claude Code Can Replace Your Marketing Team 4.8K views I Built An Entire AI Marketing Team With Claude Code In 23 Minutes 14K views I Built An Entire AI Marketing Team With Claude Code In 16 Minutes 11K views

Took me 15 years to be a decent copywriter. I’ve read every book under the sun. I’ve created copy for websites for two brands that had successful exits. I’ve written thousands of emails. I used to be the sales team’s best copywriter (not hype, ask them). But now… My copywriting knowledgeis a Claude Skill that can anyone can deploy for $20/month. SMH. I’m going to be driving Ubers around Vermont by 2028 telling everyone how I used to work in marketing aren’t I… PS. I’m on location in Stowe, VT this week testing out everything for Drive 2026 (our big event at Exit Five) tickets are on sale now at exitfive.com/drive The hardest part about being the founder is having to get treated like a VIP at this bougie resort and using all the AmEx points 👆 just some catnip for LinkedIn Lunatics and the AI comments am I rite

The biggest mistake I made in marketing... Falling for the trap that there's some one. One way to do things. Impossible. Every company is different. The team. Founders. Market. Financing. Industry. Location. All of it. There are no playbooks in marketing. Everything has been proven to work. Ads work. TikTok works. Email works. Events work. For someone ... PS. anyone who tells you there is a playbook is because they are trying to sell you one... #marketing

I miss the early days of social media. When you could post something like: “Taking my kids to soccer practice.” And get a bunch of replies and none of them were like: “Oh yeah?? Soccer practice? Must be nice. Some people don’t even have LEGS!!! Screw you pal. Can you believe this guy? Not respecting other people’s lived experiences!” Simpler times. Have a nice Wednesday. Cant wait for the AI comments on this one btw

In 2021 I left my job as a marketing excec and decided to go out on my own and do consulting. It was the reaction to a bunch of inbound from founders after two successful exits at companies where I was involved in the marketing and building a strong personal brand of my own. If I had a dollar for every founder that has DM-d me over the years asking me "how to find their DG" I could have retired by now. So I took that as a signal and realized I could be a company of one and set out to build a consulting practice. I had four clients, things were going well, and decided to write a book about some of the stuff I learned about B2B social strategy called "Founder Brand" to cement the topic. It's easier to get clients when people think your famous because you wrote a book. I spent a year writing the book, self published, and it came out February 2022. But .. I change my mind ALL THE TIME (gift and a curse) and during the year of building the Founder Brand thing, I realized the real opportunity was to build what is now Exit Five. So the book launched and then I kinda just ... let it run it's course. I didn't really do much with Founder Brand beyond the book. I was going to start an agency around it, and today I see many people have built these founder brand agencies. Grass is always greener, but I am so much happier with Exit Five and I know that what we've done with this company can have such a bigger impact. I realized that this was the four year mark, so I decided to login to Amazon and see how many copies the book has sold because really truly I never check ... but this was neat. Nearly 8,000 copies of Founder Brand have been sold and I still get 1-2 messages about a week. Nice to compare this with the one star Amazon review from "Todd" (of course) that said "this should have been a blog post." PS. If you want to get rich, don't write a book. But it does give me ~$500/month in book royalties! That's not nothing.

Want to see B2B marketing examples from real marketers at real companies? There's a big difference between what a full-time AI creator influencer posts on LinkedIn vs. what the VP of Marketing at a $200M manufacturing software company actually needs to know. Our newsletter at Exit Five is built for that second person. Twice a week we send real plays and examples sourced from thousands of B2B marketers in our community and the guests we have on our podcast and webinars. Recent editions cover AI SEO, webinar strategy, podcasting, events, branding, managing up, and presenting to the board. I try to reply to every subscriber. Drop me a note after you sign up and let me know where you're calling in from. exitfive.com/newsletter

Back from a week in Arizona. Spent hours with 100 people from our community. So incredibly valuable - and fun. To get outside of the office, to put down Claude. Just hanging out in person. The eye contact! The nuance! We talked about work and marketing stuff. Plenty of that. But also about families. Kids. Hobbies. We played golf. Spontaneous group of 7. There was a hike. We hung out in the pool. My bucket is full. I need to buy some stock in IRL companies :)

CMO at a $1B+ company signed up for our thing last night, but used his Gmail. Should we count it as a lead or not?

I've been down for the count the last few days. My kids got me sick with something awful. And it's always this time of year. You think you're in the clear. November. December. January. Oh I'm good! And them BAM. Always the week before winter vacation we get crushed, and I got crushed. Whoever said sauna and cold plunge make it so you don't get sick is a liar. ANYWAY: I was sitting in bed and just wasted two days DOOM SCROLLING and I feel f-ing terrible. I am reading about how by 2028 we're all going to be screwed. The market is going to crash. Software companies will all go out of business. While watching the Cartels set fire to the airport in Mexico. While feeling completely out of touch with reality scrolling through social media hearing about all of the ways these guys are running their lives through OpenClaw and how inadequate I am. Oh also we might be going to war with Iran for a cherry on top. AND I JUST FEEL GROSS. AWFUL. I WANT TO THROW MY PHONE AWAY. Now, if I write about staying off social media and avoiding the news, they pop up in my comments and say "ohhhhh must be nice, Dave, what privilege you have to have to avoid social media and the news" but like ... this can't be how we were meant to live. To have access to a 24/7 feed of crap like this? To be able to pull my phone out my pocket and get PLUGGED in to everything that is happening in the world, right now, in real-time? No way. The future must be about touching grass. Connecting with people. Looking each other in the eye. Going for a walk together. Sharing a beer. Maybe even working in an office together?? My mission: I'm going to make sure my business can last and stand the test of time because we're going to focus on people. That's with Exit Five today and whatever else I do in the future. I need to find a way to be in the people business. I want to be around people. Ideally outside. While touching some grass. Put that in your OpenClaw and smoke it.

When the event NPS is over 80 AGAIN 😎 (50+ is world class btw…) So proud of the work this team puts in. Events ARE the product for our business, so every detail matters - and it shows. Drive 2024 - 88 NPS Drive 2025 - 75 NPS Marketing Leadership Retreat - 85 NPS Still taking all the dopamine we can get, but we’re already digging in to how we can make this event even better in 2027, and now we shift our focus to Drive in Vermont this September. Tickets available now: exitfive.com/drive

If you need help separating AI hype vs. reality for marketing teams today — good time to check out the Exit Five community. Much less chaotic than LinkedIn. Real marketing leaders sharing what is actually happening at work right now. Join here: exitfive.com

Want to see B2B marketing examples from real marketers at real companies? There's a big difference between what a full-time AI creator influencer posts on LinkedIn vs. what the VP of Marketing at a $200M manufacturing software company actually needs to know. Our newsletter at Exit Five is built for that second person. Twice a week we send real plays and examples sourced from thousands of B2B marketers in our community and the guests we have on our podcast and webinars. Recent editions cover AI SEO, webinar strategy, podcasting, events, branding, managing up, and presenting to the board. I try to reply to every subscriber. Drop me a note after you sign up and let me know where you're calling in from.