Executive Summary: Content Led Growth
1/ I’m a firm believer in the power of media/content and marketing. Media Mobilize & Context VC might be one of the most active media investors with investments in Morning Brew, The Hustle, 6AM City, beehiiv, SparkLoop, and others.
At Media Mobilize, we help marketers reach and acquire customers at scale across email newsletters, influencer advertising, web, YouTube, and podcasts.
Additionally, successful marketing has been core to The Military Veteran's growth.
For all the above reasons, I was looking forward to interviewing Dave Gerhardt. He’s one of the smartest marketers I know, and we recently interviewed him on The Military Veteran podcast.
2/ Dave and Exit Five embody/manifest four major business trends:
✏ Content led growth (or my updated & fancy way of saying content marketing): how companies and creators are growing through content
😎 The consumerization of B2B marketing and media: how the best B2B marketers are taking notes and adopting consumer marketing tactics
🏗 Creator to Company: how he’s scaling beyond being a creator and institutionalizing his work through ExitFive, a company. In his words, he first had a business with his creator content, but with ExitFive, he now has a company
💸 The virtues of bootstrapping a business: how bootstrapping helps founders stay disciplined because some founders believe they need to immediately spend what they raise
3/ Here’s what Dave Gerhardt shared about starting a business:
💡 You can build a business around topics if you have deep expertise and deep passion
📈 It takes a while to become an expert, but experiences and content compound. For example, Dave started as an intern at a PR agency and now runs a thriving business. He advises military veterans, marketers, and frankly anyone: “Get in somewhere and learn on the job.”
🤝 Surround yourself with intelligent people and learn the vocabulary of the industry, whether it’s marketing, military, or any other industry/vertical
4/ Here are some marketing trends and topics that we discussed on the podcast:
🤖 AI and ChatGPT are cool, social media is cool, new tech software is cool, but a big and engaged email list is the best thing for marketers because it provides owned audiences
🎣 Marketing is sales without getting on the phone or sending off 1:1 emails. Sales are a bit like spearfishers—trying to find one fish at a time, whereas marketing uses a net to catch a lot of fish.
5/ As I was drafting this post, I realized that the virtue of participating in a podcast is that you learn something the first time you interview (listen and learn—referencing my post from yesterday) someone. However, I really grasp concepts when I listen a second time and when I write/share the takeaways/insights from a conversation.
Additional context: This podcast episode stemmed from a LinkedIn post Dave wrote on Veteran’s Day thanking veterans. I then messaged him, and he agreed to join us on our podcast 🔥🙏!
Entrepreneur | VC Investor | Wharton MBA | Military Veteran
2moAwesome to see you there, Rich - thank you for joining us!