Ryan talks with Dave Gerhardt, one of the leading voices in B2B marketing and E-Commerce

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 If it's radical we cover it here's your host Ryan offer
 Hey
 Guys, it's Ryan offered welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast
 We are closing out the e-commerce series the digital commerce. I'm trying to change my vernacular
 I'm tired of the word e-dave, but
 Into the digital commerce of the perspective. I'm joined by a Dave Gerhardt who is the CMO of privy the number one sales app on
 Shopify and you've likely heard of them if you haven't you need to go check them out
 But we'll get into that Dave great to have you on the show
 That's so excited I punched a mic. Thanks for having me appreciate it
 Yeah, e-commerce is a word that makes me like I hate I don't know what I don't know what it is
 I've seen some people
 Web Smith maybe others on Twitter just say it's just commerce and I get that also
 But if you just in either case if I told my mom I'm just doing commerce
 I don't think she would understand it so I think it's you can't win either way
 You can't win either way and you know if you're doing SEO and other things
 It does kind of like own the world of the space of like search volumes and different things like that
 Yeah, you know, it's you know, it's funny related story that I think your audience might appreciate when when we launched so we launched a
 SMS product at privy last year and it was right right after I started in
 I was torn because I always believe in like marketing and naming things really simple
 I don't care if you're B2B B2C D2C whatever it's just people doing business
 selling stuff online like let's not make it any complicated more complicated that isn't
 We name the product privy text because I just I just said who says like hey Ryan
 Hey, great. Have me like why don't you shoot me SMS later, dude. Like it's not how people talk
 However to your point all of the
 Search volume from a SEO perspective and stuff in the shop by apps or you know, it is about SMS
 And so it's like just you know that just made me think of that which is like we had we had to tell it both ways
 But text is a preferred, you know, way I would say it. Yes, you can put all your LinkedIn posts and your
 Your maybe your headers can be text but you your blog posts and everything else you'd have lots of SMS in it
 Yes, it is true. I love to be the human, you know, approach and follow on your content and we preach that as well
 So well, Dave I know we've jumped right in um, you know for any of our listeners that may not have followed your path and things like that
 They we just start down
 I mean, you are one of the leading voices you never leave my feet on LinkedIn. Uh, so you're doing something right
 Well, I would look I would assume that nobody knows about me because I think this is like we live in a bubble inside of a bubble
 You know, it is so so um my name is Dave and
 I and the chief marketing officer privy as you mentioned
 Before that I spent um four and a half years at a company called drift which is in the b2b sales and marketing software space
 And I've kind of only been I've been a marketer at marketing companies my whole career by coincidence
 Now it's obviously intentional because people want to hire you to do that if you've done it for a while
 So I worked at a company called constant contact which is an email marketing and then um, I worked at HubSpot and then I worked at drift and and now I'm I'm at privy
 Uh, that's it. Honestly, I got a job in business and marketing because I had no idea what I wanted to do
 I graduated in 2009. It was a terrible time to get a job
 I never took school seriously
 I never wanted to do do business or anything. I just wanted to like hang out and maybe you know play sports with my friends and stuff
 And and I got it and on unpaid I got a paid internship was $10 an hour at a at a PR agency
 Just because that was the only company that would hire me and and I it was successful because of my writing
 I was good at writing emails
 I was good at getting reporters to to pay attention to stuff and I was like
 Holy cow, this is a actual real skill and I got to see how that can be parlayed into getting more coverage for my clients
 And if I got more coverage for my clients and I would get promoted and if I got promoted
 I would make more money and if I you know want that want the next raise and and be more successful and and it just
 It became really fun that I hey holy cow writing communication
 Is like the most important skill in business and I can use this to to my advantage that to build a business build a career
 And I've spent the last decade really you know doing marketing to marketers
 And so B2B B2C doesn't matter. I've gotten to learn
 B2C over last year at privy
 But I actually think a lot of the lessons could could really be just
 Applied in either case because at the end of the day we're all trying to just
 Convince or persuade people to to buy to buy our stuff. Yeah, love it
 So I you know
 You're you're being humble, but you know whether it's within our bubble or not
 I think you're considered
 You know one of the leading voices out there. I know we'll talk a little bit about the DGMG
 But talk about and I see it now talking with you and I've been watching your content
 I think there's qualities about you that are really approachable and really human which puts you preach
 But what do you think have been those qualities that have led to the
 And maybe it's both intelligence and approachability but
 But tell in your words
 What what has been kind of that lead up to why you feel like you're getting the reputation as being that voice
 There's a couple things so so one of them is I just don't care like I really don't care
 And what I mean by that is
 People I publish so much because I don't care what people I don't care if it if it works or if it flops and
 And so like I think people just a lot of people are I don't think anything that I'm saying is that is that groundbreaking
 It's not I'm just saying it in a world where 99% of people in my profession are not and so like I'm able to stand out in that world and just and just say and so
 like
 Do me posting like a freaking like picture of a quote from a book people love that stuff
 I didn't write the quote you don't even know if I read the book
 But I'm getting credit for for that thing and I'm just publishing that right and I've always kind of understood
 How that piece of content works and so I don't think that I'm doing anything
 I just I just don't care and I think like the problem is most people don't ever build an audience
 Forget personal brand for their business because they're so afraid I'm in stealth mode
 I can't I can't tell anybody what I'm doing and I've just taken the opposite approach which is I said nobody's paying attention to me
 So what do I have to lose if any nobody's seeing my stuff anyway if I have oh all the six email subscribers on my list are gonna be you know
 Whatever it doesn't matter and so I just started posting
 Consistently and the thing that I did was I realized that people love to hear about marketing and they want to learn about marketing
 And I'm a marketer and so about five six seven years ago
 I just started sharing what I'm doing as I'm doing it. I love talking about marketing
 And so like I'll be posting on Twitter and social
 You know Twitter linked in wherever about things that I'm doing in marketing and I saw a reaction to that a response to that
 Wow, there's a community of people here who who want this okay?
 I'm gonna I now I know what topics they want because I'm posting regularly and I see that wow
 People love when I talk about copywriting so guess what I should do I should talk more about copywriting right if you want a restaurant and people you
 Always sell out of that pepperoni pizza. Are you gonna sit there and be like we shouldn't make that no you got to make more of it
 Because that's what people want so just really like understanding
 Social media and content and being able to publish consistently
 I've also launched a bunch of podcasts on the side and I think podcasts have been
 You giving me a huge advantage in my career because even before drifting before privy
 I had a podcast that I started as a side project and this is when I was at a company
 I was at a big company two thousand people
 I couldn't really do anything right like I can't really touch anything or spend any money
 But on my own I had to figure out how to start out how to build a website how to get sponsors how to
 Promote episodes how to do audio how to find freelancers to do to create project you know create work for you and like
 I was able to accelerate my career by also doing something outside of work and so
 I'm a huge advocate of just people having side especially if you're to you know
 You're inside of a company if it's not your own thing
 I'm a huge advocate of having a side project or something where you can tinker on something outside of work
 And so I've always had one of those and so in parallel to talking about work
 I've talked about what I'm doing you know with my side stuff and that just becomes like this marketing narrative that
 I'm putting out to the world and now
 Three four five years later, it's consistency that is going to continue to win
 I love it the
 Before we get like maybe hardcore and on into our commerce discussion
 our the
 Electronic our electronic commerce discussion. Yeah our electronic
 Uh, sometimes digital
 Absolutely not a brick or any mortar
 discussion the
 But
 It's interesting hearing you say that and I'm wondering you know having working for the companies that you have
 Do you feel like there was ever um
 Look at this guy self-promoting what what who's what companies he trying to get to hire him
 You mean like inside inside of the company? Yeah, like I think I've you just chosen companies that accept that about you
 And know that that's actually helping them or do you is that ever been an issue where you felt that like this
 um motor
 I don't know. I think
 Well, I think there's two separate questions in there one of them is like to people at the company
 Um, are they okay with it? I think like at my last company
 I really only talked about drift because I was like a really early employee there
 um
 well-funded venture back SaaS company, you know, will go you know will go public
 Hopefully one day in the future and so I was the first marketing person there and I grew the team from zero to 30
 People in the company 300 so I I was wearing that jersey. That was only jersey that I'm wearing right and and the same is is true now
 With privy it's definitely privy first, but I but I have more I think I have a more substantial like thing
 Uh
 On the side that I want to promote because it's real and there's real value there and so um, I think they make me
 The way that I pitch it is I think it makes me better. I'm able to learn from thousands of other marketers and many other people at at scale
 And so yeah, there there might be there might be trade-offs
 I get a lot of messages from from recruiters, but but like that's that's normal. I just don't think like
 I don't know I want to give you a real answer on this because I think it's an important topic like
 I guess the short answer is probably yeah probably people think that and I don't care about it because I know personally how it's made me better
 I'm working on like I'm working on multiple like multiple things in marketing
 I'm talking about multiple people. Here's an example. I have a podcast. That's called the B2B marketing leaders podcast
 This is this is separate from commerce, right? Yeah
 I did an interview. I got to talk to the former CMO of Slack and CMO of Zendes for one hour
 And he told me everything how he structures his teams how he sets goals
 I got to learn all that stuff and now I get to go back and take it back to privy and say hey
 We're gonna be better as a marketing team because I just stole all these ideas from this guy. Yeah
 So the tradeoff is you either you don't get that or you you know, hey
 No, I don't talk to anybody else outside. I only talk to the 60 people here in this team like that that's how that's I think what the tradeoff is and I think
 Um, I encourage people that that work with me to have side projects because I've seen it how that how it makes them better
 The only the only thing that I will say is I do think that I do it only because I have the confidence of results
 And so if I was struggling in my job
 Not hitting goals consistently have a miserable team nobody likes to work with me
 Uh, you know, that I would say hold on. Is this is this becoming you know, is this becoming an issue?
 And so like you got to put the you got to put the job results first with the results you earn
 The the credibility to go do more stuff and that's not just
 Side project that's inside of the company. Hey, we're gonna talk about brand later
 You want to do more brand great first you better stuff the pipeline full of sales
 Then you can go do the do the kind of crazy, you know, you fund stuff and I think the same is true in your career
 Yeah, I love that and I think it's important because I think there's people listening
 Either on either side of it. I think we have
 Business owners. We have a lot of business owners
 Listen to our podcast that need to hear that and understand that their people get better when they grow and learn from others and not be threatened by it
 And then the same for people that are
 On the fence of whether they should do it. I think that's great perspective
 And by the way you don't have to do like I think that what I think that my ability is a marketer
 I think that's what I'm good at and that's what I should be doing
 You don't have to be self you don't have to promote your stuff like I do you could you could tinker on a side project and never tell anybody about it
 Yeah
 Well, it's kind of like what I you know
 We we spend a lot of money time and effort at our agency on our own
 social media and content and
 Because I it drives me crazy when I'm you know pitching to a client. They've got another agency
 And I just go take a look at you know, I'm like you're selling social media services and they do no social media
 You know like I like yeah, so practice what you preach
 Yeah, you got it if you walk into a restaurant and that place is nasty and dirty up front
 You're gonna be like no trust me. We're gonna give this place a chance the food is good. It's the same thing
 They want to see you know it if you go if you go to get a personal trainer
 That person's not in better shape than you. Are you in the right place?
 A hundred percent
 So I know this is just I didn't completely realize this but this was this is your second stop at privy
 Yeah, I didn't explain it in the intro because it really just it blows up the whole intro
 But yeah, it's my it's my second time. I I wanted to get into startups and so I left I was 25 years old
 I left the company that I was at I met Ben the founder. Yeah, I was there for a year
 I was our customer success person, which is maybe why we ran out of money
 I was responsible for making sure our customers read you know stayed happy and and paid us
 Um the company ran out of money. I was in a position where I couldn't afford to not work and make money and and so
 um
 I I left to go to HubSpot
 Um where I got connected with Mike Volpe. He is a board member and investor at privy
 And so he he kind of knew what was going on and so he reached out to me from HubSpot back in the day and said hey you could come work here
 I did that Mike has been one of my closest mentors and coaches since and he's now now I'm back at privy
 And I'm presenting to him at the board meeting and so it um it's pretty wild seven years later to think that I was there
 There was there was a tearful day where like we had to let Ben had to like let a bunch of people go is awful
 Yeah, I was like that's it. I'm never gonna work at this company again
 And Ben's amazing. We've stayed in touch
 He's a huge region obviously of why why I'm here. I think
 CEO founder, you know fit as a specialist marketing person is really important and um we stayed in touch
 And finally just the timing was right at the end of last year where I made the jump
 What's um
 All right, let's get let's talk about commerce digital commerce. Yeah
 It's interesting for me as we evaluate platforms and different things for clients, you know privy is I think 100% on Shopify
 My saying that right is that I mean, I don't think you're on other platforms. No, yeah, we are I'm a gentle and um
 I don't know. I don't know all them off top of my head, but I guess I just always see Shopify. So I just assumed it
 Yeah, we so so we we have prior we have prioritized that from a
 messaging standpoint because I would say the majority of our customers are on Shopify and
 Google Shopify market cap when you can and see what's happened since 2019
 um, and so we've just prioritized that from a messaging standpoint like if you go to our website
 You see you see Shopify, but then if you scroll down and it says hey, here's all the other platforms that we also support if you're there too
 You guys, you know, just from I guess is your is a marketer, you know, and
 We push we're a Shopify partner. We move we push clients to Shopify 95% of the time
 You know
 When when to Shopify not makes sense for a company. I mean like
 Yeah, I don't know I'm I'm not sure. I don't know. I'm not I'm not a I'm not an expert on on on Shopify
 Um, yeah, I don't know. That's that's what that's what they pay the e-commerce agencies for yeah
 I guess that's why they pay us because I haven't said I we've we have a perspective on it, but I like to ask others
 what's um
 For anyone out there that doesn't understand um or it isn't as privy to privy
 Talk about what privy does for e-commerce brands um
 Specifically through Shopify. I guess through that lens maybe you but I guess it's again like you said
 It's holistic to every platform
 But maybe talk a little bit about what it does and how it plays in the overall digital commerce playable
 Yeah, those companies
 So the simplest way to think about it is privy helps you get sales because just because you have a store
 It doesn't mean people are gonna come to it and and chop right and so there's there's three products
 That we have a privy one of them is a website conversion product
 And so somebody visits your your store for the first time
 You've probably seen them pop-ups on people's stores that says hey, uh, you know
 Join our list and and get a code for a free gift with your first purchase or 10% off or free shipping whatever right
 So so we help you convert more visitors on your website
 You know, we have customers that are converting from anywhere from one to five percent with a with a pop-up like that on their homepage
 The second product is email
 It's not just that it's not enough to just convert people into email addresses on your website
 You need to actually communicate with them and
 Despite what a lot of people want to say email is not dead email is still the number one sales channel
 Period B2B B2C whatever there is no I mean, I'm sure you you all know this like there's no better print money channel than email
 Right if you're gonna send an email to your list right now
 You know that you know that something's gonna happen and so privy has a two most important tools and in e-commerce
 Which is like the ability to grow your list to convert website visitors and grow your list and actually communicate with them
 And then last year we launched this SMS slash tax product like like we talked about before and so
 The way that we think about it now is look there's I think the average you might know him this morning
 But but um we have some status like the average Shopify merchant is using six to eight apps and and so the the pitch with privy is like
 Look, do you want to use six to eight apps? Most people are not here to be a marketer anyway
 You started this you know clothing company because you love a
 Parallel and you really want to start to start a brand and you have expertise in that field
 You're not a marketer. Let us help you with that and so install privy use privy for a conversion and communication with your customers
 And and we'll we'll take care of the rest. I think there's a huge opportunity to
 To simplify the marketing stack for for e-commerce brand we I mean you you guys probably know this as agency
 We've seen some companies you you go into the backend on Shopify and there's like you know
 50 apps you've never even heard of that it takes run run that business
 Yeah, there's a it's a add-on. It's like the tech stack of
 You know Coca-Cola and it's like a you know $10,000 a month D to C burn
 That's like oh god. What do we do to piece this together? You know, I mean think about it right that that's that's a that's an important thing
 A ten you you're making ten ten thousand dollars in sales to to do what where there's a couple
 It's the 80-20 rule applies to so many things especially business and especially marketing
 There's there's always going to be a couple things that are going to have the biggest impact from what you can do on your on your site
 So I know you guys just released the book we we bought one copies for the team here. So
 You know, I've followed enough of your stuff and I'm sure you've put enough into it that uh
 That I was like we're gonna we're gonna get this and read it
 But talk about what people can expect from that book and you know, let's plug it a little bit
 But specifically I want to know what people that are you know, maybe the people out there that are their companies are moving into D to C
 or
 You know solopreneurs that are thinking about D to C or you know, etc. What talk about the book a little bit
 So we want this is a physical book like like sits on your desk physical book
 We wanted to write that because that's just how real people operate
 Uh, I think that you're not thinking about marketing first. We wanted to write a book that could literally
 Sit on your desk. And so as you're you know, making you know, just just doing business right
 You can sit there with the book and say hold on I got page, you know, 42 doggeared and and highlighted and I got this thing
 And we wanted to make something really tactical and really practical one of the about one of the cool things about
 Our business is we work with a lot of small merchants and so
 We get to when you work with a lot of small company. We have there's 500,000
 Brands that are using privy today and so like across all of them one or two things comes up all the time
 It's like I don't know what I'm doing. I need help. I wish somebody would just tell me how to do this
 This is too complicated. Why can't somebody just tell me the marketing things to do and we said hey
 What if we just like we've been doing this podcast now for almost a year and we've had maybe 40 50 guests on
 What if we just take a bunch of the people that we already know are experts
 Can we get them to sit down with us and write this book together? And so, you know, there's a chapter on
 On SEO. There's a chapter chapter on email. There's a chapter on SMS
 It's a chapter on on copyright and there's a chapter on advertising on brand building
 And so we really wanted to make a practical
 Book that people could have on their desk
 Beyond just like hey some piece of marketing collateral and it's been it's been amazing
 I think we sold like a thousand copies in the in the first week and the responses like have me feeling like oh my gosh
 We got to double down on this people want more of this how to content
 Let's give it to them. So the book was a cool way to deliver that and there's just something about
 It's why I do to see is such a thing. It's like
 There's just something about giving something people something physical
 Yes, it's just just feels different. I love it. Well, we we do a lot of b2b
 marketing the large company work with Cisco and some other large brands and we encourage
 The physical aspect we're doing a lot of direct mail that has a physical component to it still and it's still
 It's like you said emails not dead and neither is direct mail
 The mailbox is actually less clouded. I believe it or not because people think that direct mail is dead
 Yeah, of course, I mean the hard part is now if everybody's working from home
 You just got to make sure you get the right addresses direct mail accompanies is easy because you know most businesses have a have a have a address listed
 Yeah, exactly. So what are you seeing um
 You know, I don't I don't know if you're a crystal ball guy or not, but whether you are aren't maybe you know
 Put your crystal ball hat on is there anything that you're seeing like you were getting close to
 Black Friday holidays all that stuff and you know
 Maybe a touch there if there's anything you're seeing or recommend that maybe people aren't doing
 But as you look forward to 2021, you know is there stuff that you're seeing that like okay? This is
 This is in the early stages, but this is going to be you know with so many companies coming into D to C with so much
 Kind of digital commerce happening, you know, maybe put your both
 Uh short-term holidays, you know had on and then you're you're 2021. I mean anything. Hey
 This is like a board meeting. All right. So what are you going to do to grow the company right now?
 Yeah, then also what are you going to do to make sure that we still have a company in six months?
 Exactly
 So so so short-term
 I think we we did a quick survey with with customers and we found that like basically 80% almost 80% of people don't do anything with Black Friday
 So I remember until like a couple weeks ago
 So if you're listening to this
 I would go get started uh go get started with a plan
 It is going to be the number one shopping day of the year
 And I think you're silly to not take advantage of that in some capacity even if you're not a to even if you don't
 Participating in Black Friday summer Monday. I don't think means run a discount
 You can that that can totally work that could work out you
 Fifth self-fifty percent off making a one-day insane deal
 But you could also do you know gift with purchase create value ads stuff right there
 There's a lots of opportunities
 So I don't want people to think that oh, I can't participate because of of a discount or not
 But the reason that it works so well is because everybody all of your potential customers are primed right now
 We all know consumer Dave knows that Black Friday summer Monday. There's going to be good deals on stuff
 Yeah, I don't even know what I'm buying but I am buying something that weekend
 And so you got to be part of that you want to be part of that conversation as as a brand the hardest thing in sales and marketing is
 Friction and there's very low friction on Black Friday summer Monday because people are in buying mood in a buying like mood mode
 Right, you want to take advantage of that so
 Prepare now and that can just mean mapping out a campaign. What are you going to do? Do you have the right product?
 Like can you package your stuff? I did a great interview with Nick Sharma the other day
 You're just telling me about how they just think creatively of like all right
 What what inventory do we have how could we package it? How can we make a cool bundle with you know selling a bunch different products
 That would really you know increase the the average order value
 But then also you know still give people a really good
 A good deal the other thing is building your list
 If you haven't if you don't have a list
 You can still build one in the next month and you could definitely do it
 But you have to you have to build a list because
 I think everybody falls into this playbook, which is like I'm just going to run ads and people are going to buy from me
 well
 maybe
 But how often do you as a consumer buy something with the first time you see an ad from a brand very very rarely
 And so the opportunity is to get somebody on your list so they can
 Get to know you get to like you get to trust you and then a month from now when they happen to see a deal from you
 Then they're going to buy like that's the opportunities to build a relationship
 That's that's a short term stuff longer term you mentioned a really important thing
 Which is like there's way more competition coming into d to c e commerce right now what it you know
 What does that mean? I think what it means is you need to build a brand right?
 It means that a lot of products are just going to get commoditized
 Take a take a look at some some company. Okay. I'm going to give you I'll give you an example right now
 I'm wearing I haven't changed yet. I'm wearing a gym shark t-shirt
 Great great brand. Didn't they just get acquired for some insane price or something like that?
 Billions. Yeah. Billions. Let me tell you something about this shirt
 It's nice
 It's probably not that different than the shirt you're wearing honestly
 They've built this brand and community around
 Gymshark and that now they now they can do it at scale and I'm not a e-commerce operator
 So I don't know but my guess is that their moat is a brand. They have people that are part of this community
 That they now have you know advocating for them word of mouth
 And so the opportunities to build a brand don't become a commodity even if you only sell one product doesn't make it a commodity but build a brand
 Around it. I did a interview a couple weeks ago with a
 Shoot I forget the name of the company, but they're basically like
 They focus on people who grow cannabis
 But they don't sell cannabis, but they make like
 Amazing like journals and notebooks and and paintings and pictures and he's like we don't do discounts
 We have this clear statement about who's our brand. We don't want to be big
 We just want to be for the right people and so like the more you can invest in telling telling your story
 Really focusing on who who are you who are you serving like
 What is your brand you got to define all those things versus like if you just try to run the playbook of
 I'm just going to set up
 DG's hoodies and try to you know drop ship some hoodies to people and like think that's going to be a wild business
 It's probably not it's probably not going to be you got you got to think about brand and you got to think about what what
 How can you tell your story people want to again back to what we just talked about people want to buy from people
 They know like and trust how can you use your brand to do that?
 I love it. Well
 A wise mentor. I know it's out there now told me the riches are in the niches and the you know, they're you know where that
 That's where you build your brand you know
 So as we close out here Dave um you talked about this
 But I think it's an interesting
 Dynamic and I'm sure it's one that it comes up probably for your company and I know it comes up for a lot of
 Companies in building brand and you just talked about it, but how do
 For companies out there that are starting up whether they're starting up or not
 What's the balance between because as a longtime marketer and agency guy
 I cringe a little bit at the word performance marketing and it kind of drives me fucking crazy just to be real
 And but it's like because it's I think there's a lot of these people that think exactly what you just said
 We'll set up some Facebook ads. We'll set up the paper click
 Will this ring in customers we start selling that's performance marketing sure
 You know, what's the balance of that with the brand market
 Can I let me this is this is just to give you a real tactical example
 I want to this is not any commerce example, but maybe you know
 I hope people are smart enough to be able to apply it
 This year at privy
 We've invested heavily in the brand and so we launched a podcast we wrote a book we do a ton of interviews like this right
 We have a blog um
 We've done a like all these online master classes
 We have not really spent a lot of time in very tactical SEO and performance marketing
 And yet direct traffic to privy.com has grown 40% this year
 Right, where do you think that came from because more people are finding out about us
 So now it's not the problem is right. It's not either or it's both like you got to do both
 Because now when we can crank up SEO and we can crank up paid
 They're going to be but they're going to be more effective more effective for a couple of different reasons one
 We have a bigger audience and so we can there's you know retargeting audiences and and you know
 There's more word of mouth people are just going to
 More people know privy so in ad that was an ad might now become shared organically, right? There's lots of opportunities like that
 But but it's also going to be mean like we've now learned through brand building and content
 We can create better paid content right we can we how could you know if you just go into a
 market and you just
 Launch with paid
 You can test paid messaging sure, but you're never going to do that be be able to do that at scale
 And so my preference would be start a start up a small Facebook group start a community start an email list
 Even with 10 20 30 people right get the learnings from those people use those to fuel what you're going to do on paid
 And so it's like it's beyond just the
 Hey more people are going to know about you if you build a brand, but there's also a ton you can you can learn from that
 And I think ultimately they have to work together
 But you're never going to be in a good position if you have to spend
 50 60 70 80 100% in your budget in order to go acquire you know acquire people to come to your site
 Yeah
 I think about like one of the first campaigns that worked on was Verizon and work literally
 I say that I was in the room because I think I was in the room
 It was in 2001. So forgive me as an old as old guy
 It's like the first one. Can you hear me now is written on the board
 In the room and you know that became Verizon's campaign, you know like that
 And I think about the performance marketers like would they ever wrap their head around why that end up selling more cell phones
 You know or why yeah
 You know, I don't know Jared it's subway before we became a pedophile or
 Like the Clyde stales going down the street when when worked on a Budweiser campaign and you know the mid like
 It's here's a difference here's difference if it's a difference between people seeing your ad and being like who the hell is this brand
 verse oh
 Yeah, I love their podcast or oh, I know that I went to I went to their vent and what which would you rather have right?
 I've also the way that like for me with a b2b background the way that I've always explained this is have you ever done cold calling
 Is it any fun? No
 But imagine you could pick up the phone and say
 Uh, hey Ryan is Dave. Um, it's Dave from Coca-Cola like you don't know why I'm calling
 But you've heard of that company before and so now you at least have a little bit more of an end than you had if you just went straight up cold
 Lou than that exactly
 Dave a lot of great insight. I appreciate your time um working people keep up with you working
 We buy the book working. We keep up with everything privy. Yeah, go to go to privy.com
 um
 slash book and
 Let's do this if you buy the book by the book. We'll create a promo code specifically
 For for you guys so um, what should what should we do radcast? Yes, right? Okay, let's do that. So punch in the promo code radcast
 This is very important. Don't do this while you're driving put the promo code radcast and privy.com slash book
 We'll hook you up with some kind of some kind of sweet discount
 I'll go talk to the team after this and I'll try to make it a big one
 um
 That's the disclaimer safe. It's not a big one. Don't yell me. It'll be all right
 It'll be good. We'll put an asterisk on the marketing where we uh promote it
 No, just hey radcast radcast radcast check it out and then um yeah privy privy.com slash book is we can get that and then
 I'm at Dave gear heart on twitter and and pretty much everywhere and uh
 I'm a shameless self promoter like you mentioned so you you know
 I don't need to plug anything else if you follow me you will you will see it don't worry
 Yeah, as a as a uh
 fellow shameless self promoter. I uh, I um appreciate it and uh and
 Lesson the the dgmg we didn't get to but I wanted to be conscientious of your time
 um any
 Last where we find that info if you want to find and follow a little more specific on the broader
 Dave
 Dave
 Marketing machine. Yeah, it's um it's dgmg.co
 Okay, by the dot com because I'm too cheap right now
 dgmg.co
 Cool Dave really appreciate your time and uh look for it keep falling you and uh
 We'll look for that radcast permanent. Yeah, radcast plug it in. See Ryan. Thank you. Appreciate you. Have me. Thank you
 Really appreciate this episode with Dave gear heart
 Dave is one of the leading voices in marketing and e-commerce especially on LinkedIn
 So definitely want to go follow him really enjoyed listening to just the authenticity of Dave
 Which you can see why he is so approachable and why people follow him because he does
 Tell things in ways that really are understandable for people
 Go for a long day, and you can really unpack some of the stuff he talked about with branding driving performance
 Love that and love everything they're doing at privy and with the Shopify platform
 We'll see you next time
 To listen to full episodes or to contact us visit us on the web at the radcast dot com
 Or follow our host at Ryan offered on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in