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TRANSCRIPT:

*this transcript was mostly generated by AI, please excuse any mistakes

Here is your daily dose of the Ultimate Sales machine coming to you from the new edition. Visit ultimate sales machine.com to get your copy or multiple copies. I am your host, Amanda Holmes, CEO of Chet Homes International. What you’re about to learn has assisted a quarter of a million businesses to generate billions of dollars working faster, better, smarter.

Amanda: Welcome everybody. Amanda Holmes here, CEO of Chet Homes International on the CEO Mastery Show, and I have with me Dave Gerhardt. Author of the Founder story and which has hit number one. Congratulations.

Dave: Yeah, thank you. Founder brand. If you’re gonna go to Amazon and Google it. Amanda’s laughing now, but that’s okay. No worries. Founder brand, it’s yellow. It’s very yellow. Like I like, like my back. Yeah, but I like the ultimate sales machines. The very I feel like Red is also a very popular book color, so it’s yellow, it’s called Founder Brand.

And it’s really for startup founders, entrepreneurs to help them do marketing in a way that they may not have think about marketing, which is to do something that feels a little bit unnatural, which is to be self promotional. And I’m leading with that because that’s what it is. But a lot of people, They’re afraid to do it.

They don’t want to be seen as self promotional, but I think that’s just a, that’s an excuse that I don’t buy anymore because the internet has basically changed how people do business. Where it used to be like social media was a side dish, and now it is it’s the way that we all buy and interact with businesses.

And so I think if you’re not using that channel in the right way, you’re missing out. And so I wanted to write a book to help startup founders think about marketing telling their own story as opposed to a lot of marketing advice that I’ve, that I see is, It’s much more tactical as it relates to selling your product.

When as a marketer, I found that oftentimes the founder, the person who started the company or the ceo, like you’re a perfect example of this, has some story that is so inherently great marketing and they’re just, they don’t often share that. And so I wanted to write something that would give people some ideas on how to do that and how to use social media in a way to help you grow your.

Amanda: And you got this from two different experiences. Can you share it? Cause I think you’ll do better than I will about drift and Sure. 

Dave: Yeah. I joined this company called Drift in 2015, and they’re a B2B SaaS company. They make sales and marketing software. And when I joined I was the first marketing person and the founders were pretty well known people.

They had raised a bunch of money before they had a product. And when we were looking at what ingredients do we have to differentiate this company? It was like the founders, they both had incredible stories. They had proven success in an industry before they had lots of credibility.

David, who’s the ceo, was very like, outspoken on Twitter about different kind of startup, businessy, entrepreneurial stuff, and had already, I think he had like maybe 50, 60,000 followers when at that time and it was just like, know, I think marketing is a world of you, you don’t always, you have a different recipe each time it was like what ingredients do we have?

It’s oh, this guy’s gotta already well known. And so actually, like our initial content strategy was really to. Do a lot through David. And so we started a podcast. He did an awesome job with his Twitter and LinkedIn and he wrote a lot, a bunch of articles on Medium, and we started to help him scale that by ghost writing.

And it was that stuff that took off and we felt a direct response and people really felt like they got to know him. Later on as part of that company, people felt like they got to know me through the marketing, and that just created a different type of attraction and level of interest from customers that I hadn’t seen, at least in my career before.

And that was really powerful to help like catapult that, that brand into building something. Because it really is a game of like, how can we get these people who we wanna sell to, to know and trust us? And I think the best way to do that today is through the founders. Or the face of the company.

Even in my case, I was just the marketing person and people felt like they got to know me. And then did it again unintentionally at a company called Privy which was sold last year to a company called Attentive in the sms e-commerce space and Privy. Similar thing where Ben, [00:04:00] who’s the founder, he had the company for like almost 10 years and didn’t do a lot of talking about his lessons and his learnings, and so we started a podcast for him.

He. Turned up his efforts on social media. The cool thing about him having a podcast was that it was like that created enough content for his social media channels on its own, and he’ll talk about how that’s, he talks about how that was very influential in kinda the reposition, repositioning, and rebranding of Privy was.

Really telling that story. And then selfishly I started to realize, oh, this is what I’m doing now. I don’t work as a CMO anymore. I’m not a marketing leader anymore. I of just run a, I’m a solar a solopreneur. I do consulting, I do speaking, I do workshops and classes.

I do a bunch of different little projects here and there. and it’s I’ve unintentionally built my own brand by sharing what I’m doing in the space. And I want to put I, I wrote it to push people to like, Hey, you’re already an expert in this niche. Yeah. I’m not asking you to like, take a picture of the, of your sandwich and like what you ate for lunch or take some like awkward selfie in your house.

It’s like you’re already [00:05:00] the content that people want today is they want expertise and they want education, and they want entertainment. And if you can kind. Get in the middle of that Venn diagram for your niche, whether that’s sales, whether that’s marketing, whether that’s fitness, whether that’s clothing.

You can go all the way down into very small niches. I think that’s the best content strategy that you can have. And we did it at those companies. And now I’m seeing it play out again through my myself, and I’m seeing it I’m hearing it from people like you and others who have read the book and they’re like, yeah, this is what I’m.

Amanda: I just for those that aren’t familiar with Drift so you, I read in your bio that it said you got to a billion dollar valuation. 

Dave: Yes. I I didn’t, the company did Drift. Yeah. A billion dollar valuation. I was a small part of it, but yeah, they yes, last year over a billion dollars in Last round of fundraising from Vista Equity.

So it was a, that company was a success and the privy example is a success. 

Amanda: And I, in a short period of time though as well, right? How long was drifting around? 

Dave: Yeah, drift. Drift was started in [00:06:00] 2015, so six, seven years. Yeah. There, yeah. Yeah, it’s not a billion dollar revenue.

It’s, but it’s a very successful company. 

Amanda: It’s very impressive is all. I’m just trying to point out to those that aren’t familiar or don’t know that world and I 

somebody that I really highly respect, my business coach actually, we run a coaching company, should have a coach and mine’s Jerry McNamara and he literally says, there are three of the best marketers on the planet right now.

And he lists you as one of them with Chris Lockhead and somebody. But he just reveres and he loves, he says it’s the smartest, what is it? Like $9 or $19 that he spends a month to be in your community? 

Dave: Yeah. He says $10 a month, but we’ve since doubled the price of $20 a month. . Yeah. 

Amanda: Still he’s this is, no, that’s smartest dollar ice.

Spend on my credit card statement is to be a part of your community. And he, he’s grown multiple companies to the 85,000 list. He’s known Joe Schmo, he’s [00:07:00] a great, brilliant human being. So it’s I got introduced again to you through him. So it’s, 

Dave: and the community that, that you’re talking about is called Exit five.

And it’s a little bit separate from, I think Jerry got in there because he was familiar with me and there are people who. And I would say the first a thousand members of the community were like, oh yeah, we’re familiar with Dave. We believe in the stuff he talks about and about marketing, blah, blah, blah.

But now it’s just taken on a life of its own and there’s over 3000 members, and it’s not just about me. It’s actually, I’ve pivoted it to be more focused, specifically on. B2B marketing, just because that’s the stuff that I came up in, in doing, and I heard from all these members, they’re like, yeah, hey dude, its great that you have lots of thoughts on marketing, but we want to talk to each other I’m a VP of marketing at this company. I wanna talk to another marketing person at this company, get their feedback. And it’s taken on a life of its own, but you could that’s exit five, just, I don’t want people to go in there and expect like it’s gonna be, that’s not the place to, to join.

If. Really deep in the founder [00:08:00] brand stuff, but Oh, okay. I love Jerry and I know that he’s in there and he’s a huge fan. So if you’re in the B2B marketing world and like you, you also do that stuff, then I think it’d be a great fit. Otherwise you just have to buy the book.

That’s okay. 

Amanda: Yes, absolutely. So 

very often I get a lot of our clientele that say, I market, I still cold call. That’s where I get majority of my business. Or, it was really hard for me in C because so 

many of my clientele came from trade shows or meeting people in person and it’s just not like how it was before.

And they’re still trying to grapple with social or maybe some people. Testing, but still haven’t, really, don’t feel like they’ve gotten the traction of social. What would you tell somebody that’s just starting to break into how to start sharing their story on social or why they should, why that’s even important.

Dave: So I think, there’s definitely, I definitely have empathy for people that are in an industry like I, I can understand that there are industries where [00:09:00] maybe you are cold calling. But I struggle with just, with how many people I see on TikTok and Twitter and Instagram. Maybe your exact direct customer might not be there, but somewhere in their like circle of influence and people that they might know somebody is.

And with social media, it’s no longer, like I mentioned before, it’s no longer just this side this side piece. It. Pick any brand. It is how they’re communicating with customers. And so I think like maybe I would see it as an opportunity, like sure, maybe nobody in your industry is doing it. But to me that would be the opportunity to go and do it.

Because clearly, because it’s, you might have, it, it, in many other industries, like in my industry, your industry, there’s so much noise. We have the opposite problem. It’s like there’s so much social media, like how do we stand out? Where in your industry, maybe you’re the only, maybe you’re the only one who’s putting out content and education.

about your niche. On, [00:10:00] on, on a blog or in a newsletter or on LinkedIn or in or on Instagram. And so I think that it’s the best source of it’s how people get news and information today. And your company and the product that you sell is a part of that. You want to be in that stream somehow, and it’s not a advertising channel.

So you’re not just, we’re not just saying show up and pitch your product, but the goal should be to how can you become like the, how can you become the number one resource? For the person that you’re trying to sell to. 

And so that’s okay,

you sell sales software, how can you become, how can you create a blog that becomes the number one blog for salespeople to read?

Oh, and by the way, you happen to sell X product. And because people know and trust you, they’re gonna be more likely to buy that thing. That’s how I try to break it down. In, in my head. I would also say, It doesn’t replace cold calling and outbound selling, but I think it enhances it because now all of a sudden if I’m doing cold call and I’m doing outbound, [00:11:00] maybe that person’s actually heard of me before and is the chances of you me opening that email or responding to that gonna go up if I actually have heard your name before or your company probably.

Or another scenario is, what if you cold call or cold email me or outreach me, or whatever your method is. I don’t reply, but a couple days later I’m scrolling through social media and I see either an ad or I have a thought to go look up the name of that company. Why? Why does that sound familiar?

Let me go Google that. Who I, oh yeah. Amanda Holmes cold email me. Who the heck is Amanda Holmes? I go to Instagram, I type Amanda Holmes. I was like, oh, interesting. Now all of a sudden I’m watching a video where you’re talking, you’re, yeah, you’re showing me how to do x I think.

W we don’t like it thinking in it, about it in a business standpoint because it’s, when it comes to like sales and marketing business decisions are much easier when it’s like very clear, direct roi. Like we almost love, like we love advertising way more than we do, like organic [00:12:00] social media like we’re talking about because it’s, oh yeah, I know that I’m gonna spend, if I’m gonna spend 500 bucks on this channel and I’m gonna get X impressions, clicks, whatever.

And you can’t, it doesn’t work the same. With organic social media content, but that to me is the opportunity, is to be, become an expert in your niche. And the reason that you and I are connected is I think we, when we first met, like I talked about how much I was a fan of Ultimate Sales Machine, but you mentioned Jerry McNamara said, oh, Dave’s such a good market.

I’m not good at all. Like I just have read a bunch of books, and done the marketing and it’s like, this stuff is all timeless. It’s Chad Holmes would say would it be better to be an ex? Would it be better to be well known or not? Not well known. In your niche, you wanna be well known.

That’s gonna give you way more power in a sales conversation. So I think social media can be a tool to become. To improve your awareness and attention in your niche, which is gonna make going and selling much easier. And that’s always been true. But now the medium is increasingly becoming social media as opposed to seminars and direct mail and webinars and [00:13:00] all that stuff.

Amanda: So you make a really important point. I think the first step, and correct me if I’m wrong, Identifying that niche cuz so many people, right? Wanna market to everyone you market to everyone you market to. No one. So that was such a great story with Drift as well. Can you share a bit of that? Cuz that’s a pretty crucial first step.

Dave: Yeah so an, I think of an, I think of a niche as The quickest path to reasonable traction, right? And so it’s like you can’t go all the way down. You can’t define a market so small that there’s only two customers here and we’ve got them both, and now we have no, no business.

Maybe if they’re, if those are huge contracts, but. In the Drift example, we were making sales and marketing software, and we knew that we eventually wanted to sell to all of marketing. And so we wanted to have the basic a full suite, a full platform of, you, you sell to the CMO or CRO or ceo and they buy all this stuff.

But we didn’t have all of that in the beginning, and it’s tough to come onto the scene as a new company without all those features and be like, Hey, we’re the new all in one [00:14:00] X. Because it’s that’s kinda like what everybody says. . instead the genius approach from David and Elise, the founders, was like to focus the company on his wedge, which was.

We’re gonna go after one persona first, which is product marketing, which is one subset of marketing professionals. We wanna first be interesting to product marketers. And that was amazing because it just simplified all of our decision making from a content standpoint, from a brand standpoint, from a feature building standpoint.

It’s Should we build this universe of a thousand things we could build? No, we need to build things for product marketers right now. And so while we were doing that, we started a blog that was exclusively focused on product marketers because we were our product team was out doing early customer research, talking to people in this role, bec.

Because we’re trying to figure out what to build for them. And in those conversations they, we got this like vibe from all them, separate from the, in the information they told us about what they wish they had had in software. They all had this you know what, nobody understands what the heck we do.

There’s nobody knows what product marketing is. It’s [00:15:00] like this like in between role in a marketing org. We were like, huh, there might be something interesting there. What if we become like the beacon for them, we become. The media company for product marketers. And so we just spent three months and focused all of our content marketing efforts on product marketing.

And we started a blog about product marketing and all of a sudden we had 3000 people on our email list and we were gonna start our product marketing podcast and do many product marketing events, but we built from that core audience first. And I think what. It just gives you something to build off of versus when you try to do this whole, like boil the ocean, you take every, you try to go after everyone.

You don’t ever get any momentum, you don’t get any learnings, you don’t get any wins. And so it’s it’s much easier to start with a niche. Like in the Drift case, we started with product marketing and then once we proved that out, we were like, wow, now let’s expand to demand Jen and sales. Okay, now we focus on three comp, three, three teams inside of a company.

And now today they can do all of it, but I think. I believe the same way with a niche when you’re talking about not just where to focus from a persona [00:16:00] standpoint, but what channels to focus on? So from founder brand perspective or okay, I’m thinking about should we be on LinkedIn?

Should we be on Twitter? Should we be on Instagram? Should we be on YouTube? There’s a mistake I see people make all the time is they take like average content and they. Spread it across all those channels and every YouTube video has 16 views. And then, Instagram reels has no traction.

The same is true with focusing on a niche, like focusing on one channel. So like just focus on LinkedIn, prove out that LinkedIn is working, get some momentum there, figure out how to speak that language, figure out what content works, what stuff people react. Then I would feel much better placing a bet on the next channel.

Hey, we’ve already proven LinkedIn. Now let’s go take, wow, we have so much content. We know what’s working here. Let’s go take that and then go build on our YouTube channel based on what we the feedback that we got from this, the place that we started. 

Amanda: That’s a really good point. I, 

when I think of what you just said, I, so with C hhi we were a little bit later to the game on social [00:17:00] because I had such a great email list and my clientele just kept saying, the majority of my clientele is like I was saying, 55 and above, but it started to get to more like 50 or 48 and above.

So I look at my clientele and I go, okay. How much are they really on social and just in the last few years, I think they’ve been more on social and, but it’s still that battle of which, so I’m just saying honestly, like for me, I’m a millennial, so I love to be on Instagram and I’m seeing more clients showing up there, but I would think that I would probably need to be on LinkedIn, but I don’t like LinkedIn’s user face.

Can you give some advice, Dave? Ge. , 

Dave: should absolutely be on LinkedIn. 

Amanda: I post there, I just don’t spend extra time there. 

Dave: So I think like LinkedIn, LinkedIn is the place. I think especially if you’re a, if you do anything around work, I think, actually, I don’t know. I don’t even know how to articulate anymore because I don’t think LinkedIn used [00:18:00] to be just like this used to be just for Very businessy b2b.

Yeah. Like your Rolodex. And it’s not, it’s now become a content platform. I think it’s a content platform where like the number one reason, the number one thing people discuss there is work related stuff. And so that either means as it relates to your company or your job or the industry that you’re in.

It might not be about your company, but you might be in sales and you’re really passionate about sales. You’re gonna talk about on LinkedIn and some people I roll at that and they’re like who would do that? And I’m like we all would. We’re all humans. We all spend a huge portion of our time.

At work and doing, and I don’t even mean, I don’t mean in the office, doing things that we consider work. And as humans, for whatever reason, our work defines so much, or like we are our personalities and who we are is often so much defined by our work. We become our jobs. And I don’t mean this as a positive or negative thing, but it’s like, , when you have work friends and you just have great conversations with a couple work friends sometimes, because it’s like these [00:19:00] three people like do the same.

They know the language that nobody else in your family are wor, you can’t vent to them in a certain way. Yeah. And so I think people have taken to LinkedIn to do that. And I think for especially the younger generation, like LinkedIn has become like the new resume where it’s not as important to have a.

A goo, a Microsoft Word document or physical copy of a resume. It’s like your LinkedIn profile is like the living and breathing format of way to do that. And it’s become like a blog where people, you don’t have to set up a blog, but you can write about all work related topics and now people are like it, you see just to be about work and now it’s bleeding into personal stuff.

And now it is the same thing I just said before, which yeah, because we’re people and so we, when we all talk, we not just gonna, we’re not just going to talk about work. And so yeah, people are posting all different types of stuff there, but I see it as people are there. I like it more than Twitter right now.

I found that it’s a little bit less anonymous and a little bit less like toxic or or angry all the time. And people, some people. Talk about LinkedIn and they don’t, they think like the content can be gimmicky. And [00:20:00] I agree there’s some like very cringe stuff that people post on LinkedIn, but that’s true for any channel.

That’s not just LinkedIn. People complain about LinkedIn. That is true for, I see some of the most cringy stuff on TikTok or YouTube. You see it. You see it everywhere. And so I see it as a huge. Opportunity to reach people that are talking about work related stuff and then of expand from there.

So for me I was on Twitter for a decade and got grew to like 30,000 followers and I don’t know what girls Twitter and I don’t have stopped trying, I was on LinkedIn for five years consistently and have built a following of like 140,000 followers. And and that was because, mainly because I just focused on marketing.

And so in real life I’m, I have more interesting things to say and I’m much more interesting as a human. But on LinkedIn, for the sake of my career and my business, I’ve really just focused on like marketing and startups and business kind of oriented lessons, learnings. So I think LinkedIn has shifted into become this big time [00:21:00] content platform that if I was focused on a.

Especially in the B2B professional service software tech world. I would focus on LinkedIn. I would still do it if I was in the consumer product space too, but I would also obviously focus on Twitter and Instagram and everywhere else. 

Amanda: Oh, 

Dave: is this your daughter? Yeah, this is a, this is Annie. 

Amanda: Hi Annie.

She looks like she misses her dad. Yeah, she does. 

It seems like you do a really good job of blending the two too. I’ve seen some of your content where you do talk about your daughter and picking up your kids and all of this. 

Dave: Yeah. Les is, I used to do more of that now. I’m seeing less of a reward. For sharing more about like my true personal life.

And so there’s really? 

Amanda: Why is that? I’m curious. 

Dave: I don’t know. I think that I have, part of it is like maybe there, maybe having a bigger audience now and just like the numbers, not that I have a huge audience, but [00:22:00] more like more than five years ago. I also just feel like I have. I’m just super lucky.

Like I’ve had, I’ve been really fortunate to like work for successful companies and do well personally, and it just, I feel like more vulnerable and like I, nobody wants to hear the, this off, bald white guy talk about like how great his life is and so I don’t feel as comfortable sharing that stuff anymore.

But to me it’s I can’t not be silly and say, talk about my, stuff that my family or kids are doing in that context, but I’m less likely to be like, here’s a selfie of me doing, doing this thing like with my, yeah. Yeah. So 

Amanda: interesting. Yeah. I find it fascinating 

so when I started doing more regular content it like to our list every once a quarter I would Write a blog post, let’s say that was more personal and like really personal, and I found that those messages and those blog posts.

10 x what all my other ones [00:23:00] did and it was something to take note of. And as I’ve watched those analytics, I’ve started to incorporate more of these more vulnerable parts of me. Cuz it seems as though, and I’ve included in my keynotes now where I’m sharing like I. I remember the first time I did this from stage and it was terrifying to put a picture of my father’s hospital room that he spent 382 nights in.

And I, I didn’t know how people would react and it felt uncomfortable, but I felt it was important to say, this is where I spent the year and a half with my father, when he was battling cancer. And hey, one in every three women today will be diagnosed with cancer and one in every two men. It’s a real thing that’s happening to a lot of people.

And I’ve found that it’s really resonating with people to be human. What do you think about that? 

Dave: Yeah, I think that, I think that is that’s different in a positive way. Like I think that, and it’s, you’re not doing that as click bait to, it’s a it’s like a [00:24:00] core.

It’s core to the mission and you now run your father’s company. I think that is that totally works and makes sense. , I think people don’t want to see. Yeah, I think I think. I think it depends on your story, and I think in, I think if I were like to interview for the first time, and if I were like to interview you for the first time and think about like, all right, what is your brand?

What are the things that are important? I think that would be a huge, that would be a huge piece of that story I think in my case. I’m just like, 

I think you have to have a love hate relationship with social media now, where I think you can’t. You can use it in the business context and use it to promote your stuff and become a publisher, but you can’t, you will, you, your mental health will go crazy if you sit there and react to every comment.

And yeah. for I post some years ago, you post something about or actually here I’ll give you, I’ll tell you a real story. I don’t think I’ve ever shared this, but whatever. I got asked to do this interview in. It was like working mother like more. I’m like, oh God. And I didn’t even think about it.

I was like, sure. I’m super proud to be a parent. I’ll talk about like work life balance and like [00:25:00] the response was like, and I didn’t write the piece I said yes to like being quoted in it and doing an interview and the response to it was like, Look at how tone deaf this is. This is terrible.

This is, this guy’s not a working mother. He’s a guy. This is and it just that just sent me in such a spiral like I did something that I didn’t intend to be bad. And it’s just like the world can just take that and interpret that and you spend. Weeks. Just wait, why am I obsessing over this?

And this really ruined my , my week. And so I think you have to be, you have to be conscious of that, the, this, the other parts about social media and what are people gonna say and think. And so I think there’s a balance between , you’re opening yourself up on a, for, on a forum where like anybody can interpret whatever you want in any fashion.

And it’s tough. It’s something I’ve been thinking about more recently is just like my relationship with with social media. And it’s hard because it’s so key to my business. My business. Yeah. And. , but I have to think about like how I use it and be intentional about the things that I’m putting out.

But also I think [00:26:00] just being more comfortable with a scenario like that. Like I wish I had the hindsight to like, Reject it and make a big stink about it. , .

Amanda: But it is, I think it happens, if you, if this is how many years ago and how many pieces of content have you posted since then that haven’t had that?

I had one too. So I had a cousin that passed and I was I watched him. And then I went and it was in the middle of one of our launches and I had to write an email that day and I’m like, oh my God. All I can think about is my cousin who I was just on his deathbed, like sitting with him in his deathbed.

And so I wrote an email that. Promoted my, what I was selling and I’m, and I shared about how my cousin was on his deathbed and how he was actually a huge part of this thing that I was selling, cuz I used to have all these conversations with him and I got 50 emails back of Wow, that was so vulnerable.

I really appreciate that. This so nice. And then I got two that were like, how dare you use your cousin’s [00:27:00] cancer and death to sell your product? And 

Dave: Those two hurt way more. , 

Amanda: those two set me under the covers for like hours and ultimately I got back up and it was okay. So it’s just, it comes with the territory.

But if I, if we can both think of one instance over. How many hundreds of things have we posted or thousands of things that we’ve posted, 

Dave: right? Yeah. Or another one was like, like I wrote about like how I how I skipped some work thing because I need to pick up my kids. And it was four o’clock and every over a bunch of the comments were like, yeah, it must be really easy for you to say as a guy and how do you and I didn’t see it from that angle.

And it’s just it’s very challenging to see. 15 different interpretations of something that somebody could have when they don’t actually know you personally. And there is a lot of nuance in social media with like typing words Very, yeah. You Black and white on a phone. Verse tone. Yeah. And and that’s not an excuse for people who say like some horrifically, racist and misogynist type of stuff that you see online.

Like I [00:28:00] I’m not even clo, I’m not near that line at all. I just feel like you have to, anyway, 

where I’m going with this is I think there’s a way that you can be really successful and maintain your mental health as you do this, and that is to focus on this. Expertise thing. And so for so basically what I shifted, and this comes back to you asking about you post personal stuff online.

I only talk about marketing and business now. And I inject my humor and personality into the way that I share those things. And that’s given me like the creative freedom and fun to have fun with it. But I’m not as, I’m not sharing as personal and like vulnerable or whatever stuff about my life and my family anymore.

And so I think to anybody that’s listening. I didn’t want this, I don’t want this rant to have you be like, man I gotta not do social media. Maybe you should just do cold calling . But I think that that’s the playbook that I like, recommend now is and I talk I work a lot with founders on this closely, and it’s like, what’s the niche that you started this company in?[00:29:00] 

Become the number one resource. You personally and your brand become the number one. For or try to become the number one resource for people in that niche. And then use social media like accordingly to do that. And then that guide guides like what type of content you create, not as a self-serving company who wants to sell a product, but like, how can you truly become a tremendous resource?

And it doesn’t even have to just be expertise. It could be maybe what you’re saying is not as, is not revolut. Great. And there’s a lot of competition in your niche, but maybe you say it in a funny, maybe you do it in a funnier way or a more unique way, or you have a different format, or you’ve picked a different channel, right?

Maybe nobody in your industry has ever created a TikTok page about this topic, and you do an analysis and you see where all your competitors are spending time. Okay? They, these people have a podcast. These people are on LinkedIn. A ton of people in our industry do events. Nobody’s really done TikTok.

Like there, there’s a guy right now, his name is Chris Walker and he’s a, [00:30:00] he runs a company called Refine Labs. And he’s doing awesome on TikTok right now. And it’s literally what we just talked about, which is basically he was he was on LinkedIn for a while, started to build a following and was successful with content on LinkedIn.

They started to get a sense for what worked and what didn’t. He sees the world consumer attention shifting to short form video. Yep. And so whether your industry is on there or not, overwhelmingly Bill, literally billions of people are on these channels across the world. And so Chris bets on Hey, if we figured this, if we figured B2B marketing out on LinkedIn, huh?

There’s nobody on TikTok that’s credible talking about B2B marketing, let’s be that. And now he’s cracked two channels, and so now they have LinkedIn and TikTok working. I think that’s a perfect example of like how I would think about. And assess which channels you should be on with this focus on, being the expert in your niche.

Amanda: I love that. It also makes me think of, I was a singer songwriter before all of this, and we have a saying in songwriting that how many love songs have been [00:31:00] written, and yet they just keep writing love songs. So you could write your own love song in your own post and people will resonate because it’s just the way that you do it is just 

a little different.

Dave: Yeah, and, and people, you often can’t articulate that into why? It’s I don’t know, why do I write, why do I read this one blog? And that’s the only blog I read. I don’t know. They just, the way that they write, and especially this is true when you’re in, if you’re truly an expert in a niche, which is oftentimes you oftentimes, if like you’re founders ceo, listen to.

you didn’t just pick this job because you’re like I would like to make a lot of money. Let’s be a founder of a company. It’s no. It usually starts with some story. Hey, before this you did X, and then this thing happened, and so that. Look at the, like the founder of Zoom was the VP of engineering and, and at WebEx.

And like they created some first, like one of the first like web and video conferencing platforms. Like I clearly knew that industry inside and out. That’s the perfect ex. It’s usually that founder story or Hey, you know this mom started this like healthy soda brand because her kids were drinking soda, blah.[00:32:00] 

so often the founder has that story and that’s, I think, the thing that you can lean on as your narrative. 

Amanda: I love it, man that this last five minutes has been my favorite of it all. Thank you so much. 

And so where will they find your book besides just, should they just go to Amazon or where do we send people?

Dave: Yeah, go to Amazon. Go to Amazon Founder. You can find it on Founder Brand. We have it in paperback. We have it in Kindle, and I did the audiobook. And so you could listen to the audiobook, which I think you were listening to, others have said recently. And then I’m just Dave Gehart everywhere online. 

Amanda: Can you but spelling your name, G.

Oh, sure. It’s R H A R D t. I always spell your name wrong. 

Dave: Yeah, you got it. David Perfectly. G r h a r d t. That’s right. . 

Amanda: Thank you so 

much. 

Dave: Yeah, thanks Amanda. Good to see you. 

Make sure to get your copy or copies at the ultimate sales machine.com. There’s a lot of special bonuses that you can’t get going [00:33:00] to Amazon, so make sure you check it out at ultimate sales machine com.