Interviews with top marketers sharing tactical tips, strategies, and lessons learned to help you grow your business. Hosted by Dave Gerhardt, founder of Exit Five, former CMO, and author of Founder Brand. Learn more at exitfive.com
#399 | Dave sits down with R. Ethan Braden , Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Texas A&M University, to talk about big brand swings he took with NASCAR, Fast Company and SXSW to insert the university into the national conversation and change the perception of a 150-year-old brand. Ethan explains why Texas A&M University's challenge is reputation and how he got the whole campus telling the same story. Ethan also covers why he holds marketing to the same rigor as finance and engineering, and why his strategy involved going where other universities aren't. Ethan covers how he turned…
OK maybe it's not so secret, but it makes for a more clickable headline. We're doing an Exit Five Meetup in NYC October 15 and we'd love to have you. Tickets here: https://exitfive.com/nyc/
#398 | Dasha chats with Ross Simmonds , founder of Foundation Marketing and Distribution.ai, live at Drive. They talk about why most marketing content fails: it gets created once and then left to collect dust. Ross breaks down his full distribution playbook for a single blog post - from social and email to Reddit, shorts, carousels, and reposting on a schedule. Then, Ross shares the receipts: 10X traffic and a three-year-old asset that now gets cited in AI answers and still generates leads. He explains his rule to create ridiculously good content once and distribute it forever, the four E's…
#397 | One of our most popular episodes ever, inducted into our Best of B2B series: April Dunford is a B2B positioning expert and author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch . Sales Pitch guides you through an eight-step sales pitch structure the helps you stand out and win business. Building on the concepts of the bestselling book, Obviously Awesome, Sales Pitch will give your sales reps a story that makes your product shine. We talk about her new book, lessons from her first book, and covered: - Positioning vs. Category Creation vs. Strategic Narrative - Lessons from 200+ B2B sales pitches…
#396 | Dave and Dasha recorded this episode live during Drive 2026 - our biggest event yet. Dave explains how Drive nearly moved to Boston, and why he thinks keeping it in Vermont matters. They also went deep into how Dave wrote this year's keynote. He shares his struggle of building an outline with Claude that had no soul, and asking Harry Dry for help. Eventually, the talk became about one idea: connection. Dave also covers how that experience changed the way he gives feedback to his team, his biggest wins of 2026, and what he's betting on for 2027. Timestamps (00:00) - Interviewing Dave…
#395 | Dasha sits down with Freya Ward, Associate Managing Director at Headley Media, to talk about why MQLs get a bad rap and what to do about it. Freya explains why the problem is usually the framing rather than the tactic, how renaming MQLs changes how sales handles them, and what you should rename them to. They also get into how to run a workshop that aligns the team on what counts as a qualified lead, and three specific fixes you can make today for better sales and marketing alignment. Show notes Gareth James at Hallam on getting brand investment signed off by finance directors:…
#394 | Dave takes his phone to the conference floor at HubSpot's UNBOUND in Boston and asks 5 B2B marketing leaders two questions: what are you doubling down on at work, and what are you doubling down on in your personal life? He opens with thoughts on why strategy and positioning matter more than tactics now that AI makes everyone sound the same. Then you'll hear from Jonathan Hunt of HubSpot on treating brands as live experiences, Palmer Houchins of G2 on balancing AI efficiency with effectiveness, Sangram Vajre of GTM Partners on the power of one-on-one conversations, Jess Cook of Vector…
#393 | Dave interviews Katie Miserany, Chief Communications Officer and Head of Marketing at SurveyMonkey, about why the company rebranded to Momentive to go upmarket and then reversed the decision after going private. Katie explains why sales believed nobody would spend six figures with a company called SurveyMonkey, what changed under the new CEO, and why she now sees the monkey as an advantage. She also covers her path into marketing from communications, why more comms leaders are moving into C-suite marketing roles, and the advice she followed when she took over the function: get close…
#392 | Everyone’s talking about AI agents right now. It's hard to know what's real and what's just LinkedIn noise. If you haven't built an agent yet, it’s hard to know where to start. If you have built agents, you might be looking for ideas for what to build next. Wouldn’t it be great if a pro marketer would just share their screen and walk you through their best agents? Here's what I built, this is what it does, and here's how much time it saved me this week. We agree! That’s why we brought in seven B2B marketers to show the agents they built, and are using at their companies today. Check…
#391 | Dave sits down with Hailey McDonald, VP of Revenue Marketing at Sprout Social, to talk about what revenue marketing looks like inside a 16-year-old social intelligence platform with 30,000 customers. Hailey explains why demand gen has become the hardest role to hire for in B2B. She shares her core framework, how she maps segments against solutions, and how that turns into budget, channel bets, and pipeline tiers by vertical. Dave and Hailey also get into what it takes to go from sales-led company to product-led growth, and what north star metric she uses instead of leads or pipeline.…
#390 | Dasha sits down with Connor Lewis, founder of Studio Lewis, who's produced 800+ B2B video ads for ClickUp, Zapier, and Ahrefs. Connor gives away the formula he tells everyone to copy. Plus, the system he uses to turn customer research into a dozen testable scripts. He breaks down three real ads on the record (why Monday.com's Viking ad works, and where the classic motion-graphics launch video actually belongs). He also explains how he got 56 ads out of a single shoot day using hook alternates and the three proof points that get video budget approved, and why he won't put AI-generated…
#389 | Dasha sits down with Kristina Frunze, founder of WebView SEO, who's spent 10 years in SEO and the last 3 running experiments on AI visibility for B2B SaaS. Kristina gives away the framework she uses with every client – SEO is the foundation, AI search is the roof. Plus, the 60/20/20 content split that puts the bottom of funnel pages first. Kristina also talks through the 3-layer attribution model she uses to show leadership what the work is doing when organic clicks are down. She walks through a full client case study on the record (a construction tech company that tripled AI overview…
#388 | Dave sits down with Melissa Rosenthal , co-founder of Outlever and former CCO at ClickUp, CRO at Cheddar, and VP of Creative at BuzzFeed, to talk about why most B2B content strategies fail because they're measured like ad campaigns instead of built like an actual media outlet. Melissa breaks down how she trains writers to think like journalists instead of bloggers, why third-party trade publications tend to outperform company blogs, and what it actually takes to run a media operation instead of just posting content. They also get into her wild LinkedIn distribution playbook - five…
#387 | Six B2B marketers share tactical plays for using AI to make content that doesn't sound like AI. This Exit Five Live session breaks down a set of specialized agents that lifted blog traffic 700% in six months, a 23-step agent that researches and writes AEO content straight into WordPress, and the winning play: turning original survey data into an ownable narrative. Also on the agenda: a structured review process that replaces vibes-only QA, a Claude skill trained on stakeholder feedback so drafts land pre-aligned, and five rules for using AI to learn faster without outsourcing your…
#386 | When your ad budget is zero but your creative ambition isn't, three simple techniques can still make you scroll-stopping. Dasha Shakov sits down with Shlomo Genchin , founder of unbore.com, the "unofficial school for B2B ads," to break down what actually makes a B2B ad good. Shlomo walks through his two-part research process for beating the blank page, then unpacks three frameworks - A World Without, Visual Analogy, and Personification - behind some of his highest-performing client campaigns. They also get into hiring actors on a budget, winning over a nervous CEO, and why Shlomo…
#385 | Five B2B marketers share their single best-performing webinar play - with the real numbers to back it up. This Exit Five Live session breaks down the exact tactics behind a signup flow that 5x'd conversions, a post-webinar follow-up system that closed $1M in pipeline in a week, and a series format built to compound results instead of resetting with every session. You'll also get a look at running a webinar program like an in-person conference, and how to borrow an influencer's audience to solve the cold-start problem. Real plays, receipts, and step-by-step mechanics you can steal for…
#384 | A lot of people say B2B marketing is boring - those people couldn't possibly be in B2B. Take Clare Corriveau , VP of Marketing at Tekmetric: her buyer is an auto repair shop owner who isn't on LinkedIn, doesn't check email, and isn't downloading anything. Clare walks through how Tekmetric built its messaging around a founder who ran a shop for a decade, why every new hire visits an actual shop before touching a campaign, and how peer groups and an unmanaged 6,000-member Facebook community became a real lever in the company's growth engine. This episode focuses on marketing to an…
#383 | YouTube is the second-largest search engine on the planet, yet few B2B marketers know how to use it optimally. Dasha Shakov , the newest Exit Five podcast host, sits down with Samu Kovács , founder of the B2B YouTube agency KS Media, to unpack why he calls YouTube the hedge against AI slop. Samu breaks down the research process his team runs before writing a script, what belongs in a hook that keeps people watching, and how clients repurpose high-performing LinkedIn posts into YouTube videos instead of starting from zero. They also cover the realistic 90-day timeline for results, how…
#382 | Rob Sobers has been CMO of Varonis for 15 years - through its growth from startup to public company doing over $700 million in revenue. Dave talks with Rob about how he's stayed sharp enough to keep the job this long, starting with the fact that as an engineer, he still writes JavaScript and even fixes bugs on the Varonis website from time to time. Rob explains why no manager on his team oversees work they don't do themselves, why he'd rather keep marketing simple than layer on complexity as the company scales, and his "reasonableness test" for deciding which programs don't need to be…
#381 | Dave sits down with Emma Robinson, Head of B2B Marketing at Canva, and Christine Siegrist, VP of Consumer Marketing at Canva, to talk about how the two teams operate as one org instead of fighting over lead credit. They get into Canva's matrixed structure across consumer, B2B, and international, how signals from free users turn into team and enterprise upgrades, and why Canva built a dedicated data science team so marketers can make bigger creative bets instead of smaller, "provable" ones. They also unpack the Love Your Work campaign, why out-of-home ads make a consumer brand feel…
#380 | Eight B2B marketers get two minutes each to pitch the single best marketing play they ran this year - and the crowd votes on who moves forward. Dave Gerhardt and Dasha Shakov hosts the second round of the Exit Five B2B Marketing Blitz, and this episode covers a lot of ground: updating old blog content to win AI search citations, turning product into research that got a company's CEO in front of Congress, an AI agent that rewrites website copy for different buyer personas, why LinkedIn articles are quietly dominating AI search results, scaling influencer marketing from a tiny…
#379 | Dave sits down with Patrick Shea , SVP of Global Marketing at BlueVoyant, to discuss how enterprise marketing really works inside a $175 million cybersecurity company built heavily on partnerships. Patrick breaks down the difference between hyperscaler tech alliances and reseller partnerships, how BlueVoyant defines and qualifies leads by account rather than volume, and why he treats partnership stakeholders like a market of their own. They also get into the cost-per-opportunity formula Patrick uses to win budget back from finance, why he's trying to kill long-term planning in favor…
#378 | Dave sits down with Ethan Clouser , Head of Marketing at Bland AI, to talk about running marketing at a 22-year-old-founded, enterprise voice AI company that just raised $100 million - at 22 years old himself. Ethan breaks down Bland's early viral bets like the "Still Hiring Humans?" billboard, why they bought Soulja Boy's voice rights for an AI phone campaign, and how a giant red telephone car became one of their best marketing investments. Not to mention, Bland AI's marketing team built its entire website with Claude Code - coded by a guy who'd never written a line of code before.…
#377 | 80% of B2B brands are completely forgettable - and it's not because their product is weak. Dave sits down with Louis Grenier , founder of Stand The F*ck Out and author of the book by the same name, to unpack a study he ran scoring 100 B2B companies on how distinctive their brands actually are. Louis breaks down the real difference between "distinctive" and "different," why almost no B2B SaaS company has a mascot (and why that's a missed opportunity), what Wiz and Mutiny are doing that most brands aren't, and why sound might be the most underused brand asset in marketing. They also get…
#376 | Eight marketers. Two minutes each. One live bracket to crown the best-performing paid ad play. We brought back the Blitz Exit Five Live session format - this time for the Paid Ads Playoff: a head-to-head paid ads showdown, where marketers pitch their single best ad from 2026 in real time to our live voting audience. The plays cover a lot of ground: scroll-stopping creative for an unfamiliar category, testing TV as a full-funnel channel, measuring out-of-home, a 9-minute LinkedIn video that beat every short clip, incentivized demo offers, ChatGPT ads, fighting Google's AI Overviews in…
#375 | If you can double your ad's click-through rate, you can usually cut your cost-per-click in half. Anthony Blatner , founder of Speedwork, sat down with Matt Carnevale to walk through how he's using AI to run LinkedIn ads at scale for clients right now. The conversation covers connecting Claude Code directly to the LinkedIn Ads API to automate bid management and reporting, building personalized ad campaigns, landing pages, and lead magnets for dozens of segments at once, and using account-based marketing principles to get LinkedIn's algorithm to reward you with lower costs. It also gets…
#374 | Most B2B marketers think brand means bigger budgets. This episode shows otherwise. Dave sits down with Ryan Narod, VP of Marketing at Rippling, to talk about what it actually takes to build a brand people recognize in B2B. Ryan walks through the real campaigns behind that shift - from scrappy iPhone videos and webinar promos to high-production customer films and their Super Bowl commercial. Ryan breaks down how he built a content flywheel, why injecting real humans into every piece of content matters, and how they measure brand impact without losing accountability to pipeline. It's a…
#373 | Dave sits down with Rebecca Busk , CEO and Partner at Kvalifik, to talk about what it actually takes to show up in AI search. Rebecca breaks down the three types of prompts you need to rank for - foundational, core, and must-win - and why most AEO content fails because it's too generic to ever get cited. They get into the technical side of AEO like crawlability and schema markup, why Reddit and community platforms carry more weight than LinkedIn in AI citations, and a ten-point checklist for content quality you can run against your own site today. Check out Webflow's free AEO…
#372 | Dave sits down with Jay Schwedelson , founder of subjectline.com and Guru Media Hub, one of the sharpest tactical minds in email, webinars, and live content. Jay explains why so many B2B marketers get live content wrong from the very first step, and how small shifts in packaging can completely change who shows up and who doesn't. They dig into the psychology behind when people actually open and engage with email, why shorter almost always wins, and the habits that quietly keep you out of the spam folder. Jay also shares the specific email and send-day habits he swears by, a few of his…
#371 | Most B2B companies gate everything and hide their pricing. Funnel Leasing does neither, and grew from $3 million to $50 million in revenue anyway. Dave sits down with Alex Howe, SVP of Marketing and Growth at Funnel Leasing, to talk about how he built that growth engine with no marketing background, no paid ads, and no sales team pressure. They get into why his whole philosophy is built around being different rather than better, why ungating everything (including pricing) builds more trust than gating ever could, and how to prove marketing is working without hard metrics like a…
About The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
Interviews with top marketers sharing tactical tips, strategies, and lessons learned to help you grow your business. Hosted by Dave Gerhardt, founder of Exit Five, former CMO, and author of Founder Brand. Learn more at exitfive.com
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five) is a English business podcast from Exit Five. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.
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