#252: Category Creation Playbook: How to Be Irreplaceable in B2B Marketing (with Josh Lowman)

#252 Category Creation | Dave is joined by Josh Lowman, Founder and Creative Director of Gold Front, a category design studio that’s worked with brands like Uber, Notion, and Qualtrics. Josh is a leading voice in strategic brand positioning and category creation. He’s spent over a decade helping high-growth B2B companies define what makes them irreplaceable in crowded markets.

Dave and Josh cover:

• Why most category creation efforts fail (and what to do instead)
• The four real paths to category leadership: create, transform, niche, or go solo
• How B2B marketers can align product, brand, and messaging around a single strategy to stand out and scale

Whether you're launching a new product or repositioning an existing one, this episode is a masterclass in strategic clarity.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro
  
• (02:38) - – Josh’s backstory and founding Gold Front
  
• (05:53) - – How Gold Front became a category design studio
  
• (08:08) - – What “category creation” really means
  
• (11:23) - – Why being irreplaceable is the real goal
  
• (14:28) - – The four paths to category leadership
  
• (18:13) - – Why Drift didn’t succeed in creating a true category
  
• (22:08) - – Clay and Notion as category-of-one examples
  
• (24:58) - – Marketing vs. actual customer perception
  
• (29:34) - – Can Exit Five be more than the “Dave Gerhardt community”?
  
• (32:29) - – How to scale brand DNA beyond the founder
  
• (35:19) - – Defining Exit Five’s ethos as a company
  
• (37:39) - – Strategy as a company-wide unifier
  
• (40:29) - – Advice for CMOs on driving strategy with CEOs
  
• (43:04) - – Why strategy is always the root cause
  
• (44:34) - – Vibe marketing and the rise of right-brain thinking
  
• (47:19) - – Josh’s mental health journey and long-term therapy
  
• (50:49) - – LinkedIn, self-worth, and staying grounded
  
• (53:19) - – Weightlifting, discipline, and mental clarity
  
• (56:19) - – Daily habits that improve mindset
  
• (59:34) - – What 30 days of silent meditation does to your brain
  
• (01:04:19) - – Final thoughts on presence, self-work, and leadership

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E5_Josh Lowman - Raw Transcript
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[00:00:00] To me at all, you know, it's my podcast. I'm gonna have fun doing it. And, uh, there's some people who wanna do the prep before and the PR team wants the questions. And that is, the questions are right in here, my friend. All right, good. Let's do it.

Um, it's so nice to see you. It's good to see you too, man.

Yeah. Yep. So what the heck is your backstory? So you, by the way, is your name Loman Josh Loman? It's Josh Loman. The Josh Loman. So you run a company called Gold Front?

That's right. That's correct. Yeah. I own a, I own a company called Gold Front. Okay. Gold Front is a category design studio in San Francisco.

And how long have you been doing that? Uh, it'll be 12 years in December.

12 years. So that was 20, 20 13. Not many people were talking about category creation. [00:01:00]

At that time, as they are. Yeah. We, we weren't talking about category creation at that time much. We were mostly, we, we came out as a creative studio.

Um, I can, so as a creative, sorry, I, I sneezed behind the scenes. We said it was a creative

studio.

Yeah. We, that was our category when we started. We, we came out as a creative studio and we happened to have a lot of experience and connections in kind of the, the tech world. So out of the gate we started doing stuff for like Stripe and Uber and companies like that.

So we kind of like built up this reputation for working for tech companies. Yeah. And it wasn't until, um, we wrote the, the category, POV for Qualtrics that we, and then we did one for news and we kept, we kept doing a number of these category strategy engagements. Wasn't until then, until about 2020. We repositioned as a category design studio.[00:02:00]

And did you come up like, as a creative director, designer?

Yes. You

just gimme that

vibe so I don't Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I came out of school in the nineties and I was like, I'm never getting a job. Uh, I'm gonna be an artist. I'm gonna write and direct movies. And then I procrastinated and I never got anything done.

And then I was like terrified that I was gonna be a waiter for the rest of my life, not that there's anything wrong with that. And so I went through the yellow pages to find jobs and I got a job as a, um, as a digital designer, even though I didn't know what I was doing. And immediately, uh, I started designing websites.

So I came up as a designer, moved to San Francisco because Wired Magazine told me it was the center of the digital revolution. So I moved to San Francisco in 96 as part of the whole.com boom and bust. And I. Did a bunch of really like interesting digital projects at that time. And at a certain point I was like, my heart tells me that I'm a writer.

Like I was like, [00:03:00] maybe I can't be good enough as a designer. Maybe I'm actually a writer. So I switched over entirely to being a writer on like the traditional side of advertising. And I came up through that whole thing of writing TV spots and stuff like that. And then I just kinda like merged all these worlds of design digital, traditional.

And at a certain point and I was just starting to shoot videos and at a certain point I was like, God, I'm like a generalist to a fault, but I need like one flag to fly over all this stuff that I'm doing. And I was like, okay, I need to start a company. And that was gold front. Why'd you call it gold front?

I wrote names for like a year and um, at a certain point I just took the words gold front. You know the grills.

I was wondering if that, I was like, gold front seems like a rapper. Like a, yeah.

Yeah. I

just

took the S off and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. It's like a nice, like a cold instead of a cold [00:04:00] front.

It's a gold front. Yeah. And it's about, you know, like gold records and success. Yeah. And you know, and it's just like, I wanted, there was a, there was an agency called Funny Garbage at the time and I was like, I wanna name like that. Something that sounds kinda like nonsense. Yeah. And, um, I shared it with like a good friend.

He was like, that's it. So

now it's like this crazy game of like, you have to have a good idea for a name, and then you go to GoDaddy and you're like, God damnit, there's no domains available. Right, right. And so it, it's so great to have a, a, a, just a, a phrase with like, simple wording. Like, when I named Exit Five, it's Exit five is the only good name I've ever come up with.

Everything else I've named. Literally I hosted a podcast interviewing founders in Boston in 2014. It was called Tech in Boston. The first iteration of Exit five was called DGMG, which is Dave Gerhardt Marketing Group. Mm-hmm. I remember I was there. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. And then Exit five was like, uh, I was talking to Harry Dry who [00:05:00] does marketing examples.com.

He's amazing. And, and uh, he was like, you can name things literal or lateral. So literal would be like tech in Boston, right? Or lateral is basically like. What, what you did with Gold Front or Exit five, which is basically you kind of come up with a concept and then you revisionist history, tell your story into that.

And so it's like, right, you know, I didn't wake up in the middle of the night and like had this vision for Exit five. I was trying to like, think of a good name for it. And then you come up with a story that you can tell. And even like working with founders in the past, like in consulting and advising, I'm like, how can we kind of retell the step, the story of your company so we can like, lean into the name and give it more meaning, even if that's not like the idea that you had from the beginning.

It's such a fun thing. Yeah. Um, okay, so then, so then fast forward, so, all right, that's great. Super helpful context. I don't, I don't wanna, we don't need to re, I'm, I'm sure there's a separate podcast that we would need to be like drinking a scotch or something and hear and hearing all of your, your stories from, you know, the late nineties, early two thousands in, in San Francisco.

But, um, the [00:06:00] reason that I wanted to have you on this podcast is to talk about this topic of category creation, because I think if you were to. Make a list of maybe three to five of the hottest topics over the last couple years, uh, in the world of the people who listen to this podcast. I would say that category creation is one of them, and it's also the most commonly, uh, contested or the most objective tension.

Yeah. Most tension around this. Yeah.

Yeah. There, there's some reasons for that, that I'm not gonna, I don't need to get into on this pod, but well, why not? Let's, let's get into it. No. Think there's just more like per, uh, uh, personalities and personal, uh, not about the concept of category creation. I see. But I think that there's, uh, there, there's a take that like the only way to win is if you create a category, Uhhuh, and I don't believe in that.

Right. You know, like my, the, the sandwich shop down the street from me. She runs a great place and they make great sandwiches and everyone in my [00:07:00] town goes there and she didn't once think about. Creating a

category. Man, it's crazy. I think of the sandwich shop down the road from me in the exact same context.

Like when I'm thinking about a category, I'm like, well, they didn't create a category. They're great.

So do you agree with my take or do you have a way to frame that? I agree totally with it. I agree totally with it. Yeah. Now that said, though, if you are building something large, ambitious, like many of the founders you work with, many of the people that listen to this space, they work for those companies.

If you're a founder that is out to build a, you know, world changing, life changing billion dollar revenue, big exit type of company, then yes, I would argue that most of the time to have one of those exits, you need to have a, you need to have created a category. The the third kind of thing of this though is like I, there is, it is much harder today than ever, I think at least to create a category, because so many names have been taken.

Something I want to get [00:08:00] into to, to you. Yeah. And so then I'll shut up in a second. But then basically like, but if, if I try to just like block the term category creation, and I just think about like from a, from a marketing fundamentals and principle standpoint, like whether we call it category creation, whether we call it positioning.

I'm sure you have a different definition for that. Like is having a strong point of view about your company in the market, like the best, the most important ingredient in marketing? I would say yes. If I could pick one thing, and I don't do consulting anymore, but when I was, and I still talk to founders now, just to take calls every now and then.

The number one area that I think most companies are lacking is a differentiator, like, you know? Right. And, and so, so anyway, all of those things are like, yeah, I'd love to have you on and, and, and riff on this topic and I hope people, you know, hang up at the end of this episode and. You know, finish your run or whatever you're doing, and you're like, all right, I feel I feel better about category.

So that, that's not a question, but I'm just curious to hear your, your [00:09:00] reaction to any of those things. I said

I think that's all spot on. I just think almost, uh, like I am thinking almost the same thing and I wanna go deep into some of this stuff so I can tell everybody how, how I think of it.

Okay. So I actually have up this, um, there, I have this category blueprint that you guys put out, uh, a while ago.

And, uh, I saved it. 'cause I think it's, it's very, it's very useful and maybe we can start here. And so, um, I. See it. Lesson number one is can I see it? What can I see it? Yeah. This is how I am. I was on a call with somebody and they're like, yeah, I got your book founder brand up. And they're like, so on page three, you know, on page 33 you said this, and I'm like, let me, I just put it in the chat of Art of Art Zencaster to you.

But number one is like, why most strategy? So why do, why does most category creation fail? Is that a good place to start? Or how about who should, when and why should

you create a [00:10:00] category? Okay. Wait, I got a good place to start. Okay, lemme take the mic. Okay, please. All right. So, um, man strategy is, um, it's a, it's a, it's, it's pretty inaccessible.

Like, it's kinda like when I was in college, I thought about philosophy. I was like, oh, philosophy is like something that smart people know about, but like, I, I like, I, I probably can't figure that out. Then I had a roommate, Mike Irman Trout, who like wore all black and listened to the cure and smoked unfiltered cigarettes.

And all he did was do philosophy like all day long, right? Read and write philosophy. And one day he told me like, well, philosophy is religious, trying to answer the question, what is a good life? And as soon as I heard that, I was like, oh God, that's great. Like I can understand philosophy now. And in a way, his definition of philosophy is almost like this.

It's almost like my definition of strategy. The question is, what is a good company? Or you could say, what is a good professional life? So [00:11:00] let's, if we start with just a professional life, like what is a good professional life? I would, I would define it as you're happy and you're irreplaceable. Like that's the best that you could get, right?

So Dave says to, you know, at Drift, you're like, Hey, I want $5,000 more a year. And they just go, well, you're kinda replaceable, so we'll just get rid of you and put somebody else in your place. Right. So that would be a big problem.

No, what happened was I asked for more, I asked for more money and they said yes.

And I was like, damn it. I should have asked for like way more than that. Yeah,

exactly. Right. And I think you've done a really good job at getting into that world where you're, the sense is that you're irreplaceable, right? It's the same thing for companies. Companies are just a group of people. So the goal of a company should be the people are happy enough and they, you have a product that's irreplaceable and every company has their product on a spectrum of [00:12:00] how replaceable versus irreplaceable are we, and you should try to get as far towards irreplaceable as possible.

So a commodity like corn or eggs is totally replaceable. And hopefully these. Big tech startups that are trying to create a, you know, a hundred billion dollar category, are making something that's really irreplaceable or they're gonna have a problem. Hmm. So, so a lot

of people talk about, uh, vitamin versus painkiller, but you like this concept of irreplaceable.

How to be irreplaceable.

Yeah. Vitamin versus painkiller. It's fine, but it, it's, it's not that material, you know? Yeah. The, the, if you're a, if I'm a writer or a designer or a marketer and I'm like trying to work on something, I can look at every single thing that we do and go, does this get us closer to the sense that our product is irreplaceable or, or further away from it?

Nice. I love this man. This is what I love. I love when we can simplify things into, okay,

so, so the goal is to, how [00:13:00] do we be the replaceable because you have a community that some of them are just, people are just kind of starting out in marketing, right? I don't want any of those people to think like strategy is something that just like smart people do, and like it's too intellectual and it shouldn't be that at all.

It's just like, Hey, how can we make pe make our customer believe that this product is irreplaceable? And that has to do with the mind of the customer. So it's really important that we frame all of that. As like, what needs to happen in the mind of the customer in order for that to be true.

And so strategy, strategy is everything.

The more the, the more I've gone into my career, it's like, oh, I used to just kind of roll my eyes at that. It's just like a, you know, Harvard Business Review type of article. But it, it really is. And, and show me a company with a, for example, this concept stuff like how do you be irreplaceable? This can't just happen in the marketing room, it's gotta be like product engineering roadmap.

Absolutely. All of these

things

have

to

be aligned around this. [00:14:00]

Yeah. I mean, once you just start to think about how do we get the customer in their mind to think that we were irreplaceable? It gets rid of all of these divisions around departments in your company because you're like, well, the product has to do this and the marketing has to do this, and the customer service has to do this.

And as long as you're thinking about the mind of the customer and that you want them to think it's irreplaceable, you no longer think in terms of silos. Okay, you got the mic. Keep going. Okay. So in that con, so that's just my way of setting the scene to say that like category does not really matter all unless it's just in the context of, hey, it's a really good way to become irreplaceable.

So the best way that I know of to become irreplaceable on an ongoing basis is to be number one in the category. There's like a very special thing that happens in the mind of the customer when they're interested in a category [00:15:00] and you are, number one, they will gravitate towards you just because you're considered number one.

And so, and that's a timeless, timeless marketing principle, right? I think 22 immutable laws of marketing by recent trout is, number one, is the law of leadership, right? Yeah. I don't want to take you off the wherever you're going, but this is where, okay, got it. I'm with you. I'm with you, I'm with you. This is where it breaks for me.

Maybe I'm not good enough at this exercise, and I'm sure you guys are, have a process, but then it's like, okay, but what is the k what we are the AI generated slide deck, you know, GA gamma, right? Gamma's a they make slide, you know, it's a ai, uh, slide generation tool. So is is their mission to be the number one AI generated slide generation tool?

Like I've worked with founders before, you know, the, the, the we get. So might we get so, because the big category, because you can't just come out and be like CRM as our [00:16:00] category Uhhuh anymore. Uhhuh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

You know what I'm getting at. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So in the wor so, yeah. You know, actually before we talk about this, I just wanna say one more thing about category.

So. So if you wanna become number one in a category, there's essentially four ways that you can do that. You could create a new category. You could transform an existing category like Tesla did with the electric car, or like iPhone did with a smartphone, right? You could transform the category so that you are, you become number one.

You could niche down, like, um, you know, LinkedIn is a, a niche of a social network, or you could solo, and solo is kind of like really special where you could kind of like try to do every single little thing a little bit differently. And even if you're in a rational category that everybody says like, oh, it's kind of in this category, everybody knows that you're completely different.

So an example of that would be notion, or like everything Notion does is like different, even if you're like, oh, it's a project management tool, or whatever it is. [00:17:00] So, okay. In that case, notion is a category of one. Okay. So. Then I forgot what your question was. Well, you're talking about the four ways to create a category, uhhuh.

Yeah. Then I was, you were talking about Oh, right, you were talking about, um, CRMs. Like

no one, I think, yeah, basically like nobody that I, no one that I talk to will dispute that point, right? Like the way to win is to be number one, right? In a category. Right. But it's the like, number one in a category. And so then like, what is the category that we are going after?

That is where I see the most questions. Right? Okay. How do we come up with

that? So, so let me tease this out. So like I, in the way that I see it, there's a difference between sort of the rational category that people call it and the actual category, which is the category as it is in people's minds, so to understand.

And sometimes they're the same thing, like CRM maybe, but, um, but if to, to like, um, [00:18:00] share this idea, I could use an example, two companies. One is drift, right? So what was the cat? What was it? Conversation? What was the category you guys? I don't

know. They've deleted everything. Website's gone. Everything's gone.

RIP drift, A SalesLoft company breaks my soul when I see it. I'm sorry. It was conversa. It was conversational marketing.

Conversational marketing. Okay. And so in that scenario, this is my, this is all subjective, so this is my take on it, right? Sure. In that scenario, okay. Drifts is a hot company. They're doing amazing.

They created this category, but I think in the customer's mind, they were like, well, it's like intercom. Absolutely. Yep. Yeah, so the category for the customer is whatever they think of Intercom and Drift. It's like that's the actual category for the customer. Yes. Just because you named a category doesn't mean that actually was the leader of a category.

The customer has to think you're categorically different from Intercom in order for them to create a [00:19:00] category in their minds.

Yeah, and this was actually one of the big challenges in doing this was no matter what we or Intercom did, every, those things are all bucketed at the time was under live chat.

It was a live chat tool, and there was live chat for in-app. There was live chat for support. We tried to be the first to come out and say, we're the only ones doing this for marketing today. You might call it chat bots, but yes, you're, you're spot on.

Okay. And so that is the, that is essentially, that is the problem with the way I.

B2B marketing. The B2B marketing world thinks of category is that the B2B marketing world generally thinks of like what you guys did with Drift as category creation, but you didn't actually create a category in the mind of the customer. It was you were number two in the live chat category. You tried to create a category but it didn't work out right.

Or here's another example, and I'm sorry to bring that up because I love everything you do, but that, you know, okay, that didn't work out. But, [00:20:00] um, so here's another example, clay. I don't think Clay considers themselves like creating a category, but they are, if you use clay, you know, there is nothing like clay.

Right. So in your mind it's like, that is a category that is a totally new thing. And you're like, well, what is the category? You're making it, you're putting it together in your mind? Well, it's kinda like a spreadsheet, but it's got AI and it has all these APIs to all these other services, and you create the category whether there's a name for it or not.

And so the reason why they've succeeded is 'cause they, they actually have created a category. They just didn't name it. And so people just go, oh, it's that. They kind of, in their mind, they're like, oh, clay, it's like a new category. Right. So the do And do you think you, do they need to name it to, to make it a thing?

Or is it like you've want It would, it would, it would help, but it's not the most important part. The most important part is that the product is categorically [00:21:00] different. Yeah. And you get the, in the mind of the customer. It tips into that realm of like, oh, I can't really put this into a bucket. It's not really like Apollo.

It's not really like, I can't put it in a bucket anywhere.

I guess, yeah, like no, your notion example makes sense too there because it's like you don't just think of notion, you know, when you think of notion, you don't think workplace productivity, right? You're like, I'm planning a wedding in notion, right?

Notion is my to-do list. And then it's also kind of replaced Google Docs at my company. Yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah. So in your mind it just goes into the notion category, right? And like that's a very good place to be

like in the clay, in the, the clay example though. That is so it's not just like market, you know, marketing didn't like put a spin on this to create a category.

It is like they fundamentally built a new thing that can be number one in a new

category. That's right. Like so much of it is, you know, hey what are you doing with the product? [00:22:00] But then marketing they, they came out with this thing where we we're gonna like promote people's clay recipes. I think that's been a big piece of their marketing.

Is they find other people that are using clay and they, they, they, uh, they help them promote their clay recipes on LinkedIn or whatever. And so, you know, that's, that's maybe a way that their marketing is supporting the idea that there's nothing like it.

I asked chat, GPT said, what would Don Draper say about category creation in B2B marketing?

He'd probably light a cigarette, take a long drag and say, you're not creating a category, you're creating a feeling. The category is just the box that they put in, put it in after they believe. That's pretty good.

That's good. Um, yeah, so I think that's essentially like if you see all the like flame wars or whatever on LinkedIn about category creation, I think what people are really saying, the people that don't like category creation are basically saying like, we [00:23:00] don't like fake category creation.

Like you took something that's in an existing category, you called it a new category. And then you're like, ta-da. We're a new category, but it actually isn't.

Oh, yeah. They hate that. And then there's always this like, look at marketers renaming, marketing things again and again and again and again. That's why any of the pushback on the conversational marketing thing was like, yeah, this is, they just name it something.

There's inbound marketing and there's outbound marketing, and there's conversational marketing.

Yeah. I mean, at Drift you had me, I was like, oh my God, this company, they're gonna tear it up. This new category is really exciting. So you Yeah. Yeah. You, you kind of did it there for a while.

Not good enough. I'm still working. So, so let's talk about, uh, the, what category is exit five? So, oh, good question. This is what I think. Okay. [00:24:00] Okay. Being a, being a super fan, um, you ca you guys call yourselves a B2B marketing. Uh, community, right? And, but I don't think that really says it in the mind of the customer.

And I, I'm a member of this community. I think what happens in the mind of your customer is it's the Dave Gerhardt community.

Your brand is so strong and you have a very unique way of doing everything. So I think people are going, oh, this is the Dave Gerhardt community. And so if you wanted to, and that's a category of one, you don't need to call it that. It just is obviously that. So if you wanna, um, continue down the road of becoming more irreplaceable, what I would do is, as much as you can double down on that, and what that means is obviously you don't want to be, you don't want to have to be like in the community chatting 24 hours a day.

'cause that would drive you crazy. But like, can you create features and [00:25:00] events that. Have like the DNA of dg. Yeah. So like if, if I'm in the circle community and you go, oh, we have this new feature, it's like this. And I go, oh, that's such a, that's so like in line with like how DG does things, you know, that's how you build, that's strategically how you build the category.

So I, I would ag I would agree with you, but I, I also, I also think like in the evolution of the company, I think, and um, I wanna riff on this. I'm not saying that you're right or wrong, but I think that yes, that is what the differentiator has been today, which is like, I created this thing. I'm the taste maker of this thing.

If you believe in what I've done and you believe in how I think, then you are more likely to, to start this, to to come in. And if you look at analysis of our members, most of them come from LinkedIn and they reference either listening to this podcast or follow me on LinkedIn. However, since deciding to create a real business around this, [00:26:00] meaning a co beyond a company of one, right?

I would like Exit five to elevate beyond Dave Gerhardt. And maybe there's a founder's story and I'm the person who started the company and made it the way it is. But we had an event in Boston a couple weeks ago, Josh, and people were like lining up to like shake hands with Danielle 'cause they know her and she writes a newsletter and they see her and they know Dan and they know Matt.

And I feel like especially in the last six months to a year, the exit five brand. Is carrying more weight than just like the Dave Show. And also, I'm intentionally trying to make a company that's not the Dave Show. I don't want to be Gary VI don't want to build the like, you know, consulting funnel business.

I want Exit five to stand on its own as a professional community for B2B marketers and maybe the initial D, you know, the DNA though is started by me. And so therefore that fun, that community is gonna be fundamentally different than a community that was started by the folks at say, six Sense, or Chris [00:27:00] Walker or whoever else, right?

Mm-hmm. And I think that shows in the way that I write, the way that I talk my personality. Um, do you think can, can that work? You know, can it be like, this is the founder, but now the founder has multiple restaurants and you might go there, be, you know, there's like the Wolfgang Puck, you know, branded, you know Right.

Pans and stuff. Right, right,

right. Well, it sounds like you don't want to go the Wolfgang Puck route. Correct.

Yeah. Correct. My, my, my goal with that, and this is an intentional back to strategy, though, this is an intentional strategy. I think there are, there are different plays that I would be running if I wanted it to be like Dave Gerhard's private community, and I would be doing more courses and presenting and public speaking and, and that I'm very, I'm very consciously trying to make that shift and it's like, this is a company and I run the company behind the scenes

with people.

Uhhuh Uhhuh. Uhhuh Uhhuh. Okay. Yeah. Cool. You know, this brings up a really interesting thing about strategy is there's kind of a, uh, there's kind of a thing in the product [00:28:00] marketing world. Where it's like, hey, just tell people who it's for and what it is, right? Like that should be the strategy. Just be super clear.

And the problem with that is that's just like a moment in time that's like, this is what the product is right now, this is who it's for and what it does, a more holistic strategy will go back a step and go, what's the ethos behind the product? Right? And if you can figure out what that ethos is, then you can give it to the product team and they can go make features in the future.

They know how to make features in the future. If you define your strategy as like, what's the, what's the product right now, who's it for and what does it do? You can't give that to a product team and have them go, oh, I know what to build. And so in the, like a strategic narrative that we would write, it always includes the ethos.

And I think what we're talking about is, you know. The [00:29:00] DG ness is like the ethos, right? Like if you wanted to go to the Wolfgang Puck route where your brand is everywhere and your face is everywhere, your ethos is, let me check what my heart says and I'll just give you an answer, right? It's just like, what does my intuition say?

Like, but if you wanna not go where like your face is everywhere and it's just all about you, then you need to like write down like just a few things about what's the ethos of Exit five? How do we do things differently than any other marketing community? You need to get that written down so that Danielle and the rest of your team could be like, oh, I know what to go build for this.

Hmm.

How does that land with you? Does that make sense?

Yeah. It's exactly where we're at right now as we're scaling. We're trying to think about how do we. How do we do that? I think we're still trading off of that brand and reputation [00:30:00] today. And, um, I don't think about differentiation a lot actually at all, because I think we have this, uh, we have a pretty big social media following an email list.

I think we're good at promoting what we're doing and so we have a lot of inbound demand, but as we grow and scale, yeah. I wanna have a clearer point of view on like, why should you join Exit five? Mm-hmm. How is this different? Yeah. I'm sure at some point, I'm sure at some point we will be a disrupted or attempted to, you know, someone's gonna spin off a, you could just build a AI marketing community and it's like, well, am I gonna join that and exit five?

And so yeah, it's definitely,

but I think you, I think you guys, you, you, you do think about differentiation. You're just doing it as like, okay, how do I speak in social? And that becomes their differentiation.

Yeah, absolutely. I, I don't

have it written, I don't have it written down, but I think it's like, it's the way we write.

It's the who we, who we choose to speak at our events. [00:31:00] How, how are things look and feel. I saw this post the other day. Everybody's going nuts about right now, this topic of unconferences. Mm-hmm. And they're like, exit fives Drive was an unconference, spring was an unconference da da. Chili Palooza was an unconference.

And like, dude, we didn't have a meeting last year and we're like, we're gonna do a unconference in Burlington, Vermont. That was just our way, right. You know, and so you're exactly right. Yeah. There, just the way that we write, the way that we talk, the way that we do things, that is the, the differentiator.

But yes, I don't have a way of like, perfectly naming that.

Yeah. But if you, but I, you know, you could just write down a few things. It's like, hey, we make, we make B2B marketing accessible, not like fancy or intellectual. Yes. You know, just a few things like, um, voice is everything. Uh, we tried, we tried different ways.

Like we, we include everybody. Like maybe you don't want, you don't want everything to be a bunch of platitudes, but like, just a few things to say, like, yeah. What, what's the difference between, like what you're [00:32:00] saying, the way you teach B2B marketing and the way everybody else was doing it before? I think that's kind of your ethos.

Yes. Yeah. I'm gonna write this down. I need to make a,

a, a, a vision doc,

but one of the things that you made me think of is something that I believe in is, um, I believe in this stuff. Like, not necessarily, I don't think the key to great marketing is like. Knowing all the sa SAS metrics and all of the acronyms and all of the jargon and nonsense.

It's like, I like being, I like the focus of our community being like the marketing fundamentals, the principles. You know, we might not ever have a workshop on like, how to understand CAC to LTV, blah, blah, blah. 'cause we're not trying to teach you how to be CFOs. We're trying to teach you how to be creative marketers, and this is the stuff that I love.

And so that's kind of, you know, embedded in the DNA of the company.

Yep. Yep. Makes sense. Yeah, I mean, uh, if you don't have one, a strategic narrative that just tells the story of, [00:33:00] you know, a big change that's happened in the world, um, your customer who's left out in the cold in this big change, um, the price they pay for that being left out in the cold, the new way that you guys are building a community that nobody else has that solves that problem.

A little bit about what is included in that. Like what do you mean by it's a new kind of community? A little bit about the ethos of it. You know, it could be really short, but if you had that, that'd be a killer thing to be able to give to everybody in your company.

I agree. Okay. I'm on it. What else? You can keep driving.

Well, I think mostly I wanna clear up this thing about category creation, you know, um, that, 'cause that's been hanging out there on LinkedIn a lot. Like, hey, category creation sucks. And it's, it's, there's been been this like, um, trend of category creation that started in [00:34:00] about maybe 2017 when Qualtrics came out and it, it sort of like started going downhill at the beginning of 2022, where it's like, oh, this sucks.

This doesn't work anymore. So it's got, it's that whole like trend of category creation has gone down for the last couple years. But still becoming number one in the category. And the fact that tech, the tech world proliferates categories like there's no tomorrow means, and the fact that categories are so important to customers means that it will always, now and forever be central to how you define what your company is doing.

Do you think it, do you think it people got, uh, things went the other way and they stopped working because of this obsession over like, uh, naming a category and everything has to be the naming the category of X. Yeah. And we go to G two and there's no category on G two. So now we're the mo Um, this is a bad example, but it's like CRM already exists as a category.

Well, we're the first, we're we're the mobile first

[00:35:00] CRM or something like that, right? Is it, is it that.

Yeah, that's a big part of it. I mean, if, especially in the like rev ops space or marketing ops space, like those kind of SAS tools. I mean, the name space is just so crowded and everybody's like, okay, well this is already taken, so let, let, we'll take this and um, and then let's get analysts to adopt this.

It's like analysts probably are not gonna adopt your category name. Um, and not every company is like making a new category. And if you are just trying to figure out how are we gonna name it something different, how are we gonna, how are we gonna name our category something different than one of our competitors?

And you, you don't have a case for how the product is actually categorically different than that competitor. Then it just falls into that like trendy category creation area.

So what advice would you give to marketers

listening to this?

I.

About how to [00:36:00] approach this because we kind of have this, we have this fundamental truth that, uh, to win, you want, everybody wants to win, okay. To win, you wanna be number one in a category. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean that, this is what I would, this is what I would do if I was on a marketing team.

Well, first of all, if I'm, it's different if you're the CMO or you work for the CMO. If you're the CMO, you want to buddy up to the CEO as much as you possibly can, and sell through the idea that you need a unified strategy that is going to, um, a single strategy that guides everything that the company does.

And then once, if you can get sell through on that, or you can, you verify that that's what the CEO wants to do before you take the job, then you can then become the Sherpa for the, for the definition of that story. And you do it with product leaders and all the other leaders of the company in the room with the CEO.

Yep. That's the dream scenario. That's what I had at Drift. We had a visionary, you know, visionary [00:37:00] founders, product leaders who wanted to build this roadmap, who believed in basically building a roadmap in alignment with our positioning product leaders who would have new stuff to ship and couldn't wait to run down to my desk and grab me and pull me in a meeting.

But I, I don't think that's the norm at most companies. I think a lot of times it's like combative product leader, the product strategy doesn't actually match the marketing strategy and the vision. Maybe the CEO E doesn't, doesn't have

a

strong vision,

right? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I mean, there's some degree of you gotta kind of, um, play the cards you're dealt, but, um, you, well, honestly, what I would do and what I've done for my whole career, and this is maybe unreasonable, but if I was in a marketing department, I would just think like, what would I do if I was CEO of this company?

And what and how do I need to get the mind of the customer to change in order for us to get to where we want to go? And I would write strategy as if I was the [00:38:00] CEO of the company. And then it's like, well, if this doesn't fit into like the culture here, because you told me these 12 things that really don't matter at all and I didn't write those 12 things into the strategy, then you will find like you, that's not a good place for you.

And hopefully if you, for, for at least for me in my career, and I've been freelance more, not as much a full-time employee, but it's really served me to just try to do things as if I'm the CEO of the company and then some places I don't fit in because I'm not like towing the company line about all the 12 different things that I was supposed to say.

And then other places are like, this guy is great. This is exactly who we need. And you kind of end up in those places where there's a need for that.

That's a great line, by the way, for people listening and marked it so we can, we can have a clip of it, but category creation or not, this mindset of that. Josh just mentioned about [00:39:00] like, what would I do if I was in the marketing department? I would think what I would do as a CEO of the company and don't bother with, you know, how you'd change the finance org and how do HR differently, just as it relates to like, how do we sell more of this thing that we're making?

And this is where I always say this on this podcast, but it's like everything in marketing works. I direct mail works, TikTok works, YouTube works, SEO works events works. You can't possibly do it all right? But where the marketing, what separates the great marketing leaders from everybody else is the great marketing leaders can have a strong point of view about how the company should be doing marketing.

Then the tactics get chosen based on that strategy. Yeah. It's almost always like this, to your point in the beginning about strategy. It it, if you run like, or take your average post in the exit five community, right? About someone who's having a hard time at work or something's not working. Like if you kind of run the five why's on that, you kind of almost end up with like, okay, we gotta have a strategy.

[00:40:00] Just something in the company strategy is busted, right?

Yeah. I mean, I just, as much as I can, I just try to follow my heart and I, if I was the CMO, that's what I'd be doing. Just like what is the thing that I'm most excited about if I, and, and how would I get that down on paper if I was the CEO.

That's what the kids call vibe marketing. Now you know that,

man, it like, I'm so glad this word vibe got so big.

I mean, it's probably like jumped the shark now, but, you know, in the world of communications, especially in B2B marketing, we are so over our skis about everything that's like logical and left brain cheat codes for performance marketing and all this like rational crapola. And the real magic is over on the right brain side of things [00:41:00] where it's like, you know, the feeling and the magic and the, you know, the vibe of things and, and that, that word vibe is so great because it, it basically says like there's something that's beyond logic that's really powerful here.

And I think all of the great marketing organizations get to that place where there's a kind of magic in the communications that you couldn't just put in a spreadsheet.

This is it,

man. This is like,

I'm not good at marketing, I'm good at this. I'm not, I'm not good at the, I'm not good at spreadsheets. I'm not good at the metrics, but put me in a room and I will give you this, right? The vibes, the intuition. And I think especially in a world where a lot of marketing is gonna be, you know, automated and done with AI and there's not a lot of soul in it.

Like I was lucky to work for people at Drift, like David and Alias, who are the founders there, who [00:42:00] understood that a big part of the job in marketing is like, taste, make, you know, taste making, right? And so those, there's two sandwich shops in town, same ingredients. Same, everything. One of them just makes a better sandwich.

'cause the woman is just better. She's just be like, she, she just knows how to do it better, right? Mm-hmm. And it's like, that is a, that is what got me into this. Oh, I didn't, well, I got into this job 'cause I was broke and I needed to get a job and I turned out to be good at it. But that's the fun part, right?

That's like your, your roots as a, as a creative, right? We need to bring more of this into marketing today. And it's even, do you think this is, this, this soul piece of this, is this even more important because of what's happening with ai?

Absolutely. I mean, you know, there's a, there's a, um, there's, there's a guy, a neuroscientist that wrote a book about left brain versus right brain.

And um, what he says is that the left brain sees the world as a machine, a bunch of, um, it's kinda like, kinda like a [00:43:00] spreadsheet, a bunch of connected parts with cause and effect and mechanical. But it's ultimately a. Dead. It's an ultimately dead way to see the world, whereas the right brain sees the world alive.

It's energetic, it's holistic, it's vibey, it's, you know, magical, it's ineffable. You can't really quite put words to it. And what he says is, our culture is just like continuing to get more and more left brain as we go. And if you look on LinkedIn and like all these cheat codes for, you know, cold, cold email success and things like that, we, it just gets more and more left-brained.

And I think that for people like you, and maybe for me, the more vibey you are, the more you can kind of follow your heart and know that communications has to have some, some like soul to it. You're just gonna get more and more valuable as we go. Okay. What else should I, [00:44:00] should I have asked you or should we have talked about in the last five minutes before we wrap?

Oh man, I, someday I want to talk with you on the podcast about mental health, um, but I don't think we have time for that. Um, we could also talk about weightlifting. Uh,

let's spend 10 minutes there. I just got great feedback. I did this podcast with Emma and we ended up talking a lot about personal stuff.

And so let's, let's just, let's, let's go. We got, we got, we got 10 minutes left. Let's talk about, let's do a couple minutes on mental health and let's do a couple minutes on weightlifting.

Okay. Alright. I mean, if I'm gonna talk about mental health, you know, I would, I would go back to when I was 30. I had a nervous breakdown and I was trying to do way too much in my career and trying to make everybody happy.

And, um, I just completely lost it. And I went to therapy and I started going to psychoanalysis. So I went to therapy five days a week [00:45:00] for 19 years. And then, right. And then just at the end of that, I went to, um, to, um, I started doing meditation retreats. I started doing like three or four weeks of meditation retreat every year for the last 10 years.

And, um, you know, I also experienced a lot of a series of traumas when I was a kid. And so that's really what I was doing, is I was trying to like, work through that. And so like a lot of the, um, posts I do on LinkedIn, I'm always trying to make sure that it's sort of like on the positive side from a mental health perspective.

Like I used to go to LinkedIn and see how successful everybody else was and I'd, I'd like beat myself up over it, you know? Yeah. And so I, like, I'm always trying to, when when I post on LinkedIn, I'm always trying to say like, Hey, I'm, I'm not special. You can do this too. You know, I'm trying to always raise other people up.

And I feel like you do that as well. [00:46:00]

It's a slippery slope there. It is. Very easy to, social media is crazy because it's the, you can basically dunk on anybody for anything at any time. Mm-hmm. Like, I'll be like, the sky is blue and someone's like, well, easy for you to say as a white male in tech. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Wait, wait. What does this have to do with anything? Oh my goodness. Yeah. And then my day is just like, you know, my wife, I'm talking to my wife, I'm like, am I a good person? Like my whole day is, I take very, I do take personally what people say. Yeah. But yeah, there is a whole, and there is a whole world of people who just use LinkedIn to just dunk on other marketers, Uhhuh, you know, I've done that in the past where just kind of criticize other people's marketing strategy as a way to teach.

But I just, I don't want that. I don't want that energy around me. There's a whole world of people who get, people get really upset about like, how people do LinkedIn. I'm like, I don't care. Don't click on their things then and you won't see it. Yeah. Like curate your, curate your own feed. I like to use it as [00:47:00] it's a creative outlet for me to write about my business and talk about the things that Yeah.

That, that I'm doing. Um, I mean, the way, also

just, I was just gonna say the way that I try to, like, I, you know, it's important, you know, we're, we're creating a category, category, design studio. It's important when you're creating a category that you have a contrarian point of view. Right. And so definitely I'll come out against a certain, maybe left brain or boring way of doing strategy, and I won't call out people specifically.

But I can be negative about that stuff in my post. Yeah. But then I always make sure that like all of my comments are positive. Even if I disagree with somebody, I'll like call out like, oh, I really like the fact that I like the, like the post I, like I love the, your content or whatever. But I see it differently.

I see it like this. Yeah. And I think if you're, if you're on there and you're doing founder brand as a play, that it's great to be a little bit contrarian in the [00:48:00] post, but in the comments, just be a sweetheart.

Yeah. I like to be silly in the comments. That's my move. Like,

yeah.

I like to just writes, I'm usually responding to comments like later in the day and I'll just say funny things or try to be funny.

And I think injecting your, your humor and personality into it is also very disarming. But I'm glad you brought up the topic of mental health. I definitely, we, we do have people, everybody wants to talk about that. I think there's a great awakening, at least in the world of work where. People in, in tech and wherever, any job really, the world is just more open to understanding that.

Like, if you're not good in, if you're not good in your body and your mind, then you can't, you can't be great and you, you gotta take care of yourself first. And you know, I think I'm very, I can be very hard on myself and like the man, look, my life is so easy. Like I didn't even go to war. I'm on Zoom calls all day writing on LinkedIn, like, how soft am I?

This is such a easy life. [00:49:00] And I try to not do that as much because I'm like, no, you know what? I'm here for a reason. I have a purpose. Like I want to uplift people around me. I want to build something meaningful. Like I can give back to my community because of the time that I'm able to get from my job.

And, um, I do, I love hearing about people's. You know, journeys with mental health and, and personal development, I'm a huge believer in, in that. And if you invest in yourself, um, you can write the, write your own rules. Like I don't roll my eyes at any of that personal development stuff. Yeah. It's, it's the most important topic there is Yeah.

To me. Absolutely. And I, I feel that, you know, you have a large audience on LinkedIn. I have a growing audience on LinkedIn and you know, I feel like we have a kind of ethical responsibility to not put ourselves out as like, we're up here because there's a lot of people that are using social media to just like beat themselves up.

Yeah. And I think the way that you do it is great. 'cause you never, you never make it seem like, Hey, I'm up here and you're, you're down there. You know, [00:50:00] I, I don't,

but you know what's hard though? There are people who don't know me, but they project that onto who, who they think that I am. I. Because I am a tech bro, and I'm bald, you know, like, like dude, the people, most of the people that I meet in an event, in person, they're always like, oh, you're much, you're much more likable in person than I thought you would be.

That's a backhanded

compliment.

I know. And I'm like, is that, wait, wait a second. But is that on me or is that on you? Is that like you reading my, my messages. But I even, I even joke with my team, right? Like in Slack, for example, like the way that I write and communicate in Slack, if you don't have the context of like how I talk, my intonation, my sense of humor, it's very difficult to to.

Mm-hmm. So like, you know, we gotta be hanging out in person. Even if you have a remote company, you gotta be like cementing who somebody is in person. Mm-hmm. And then you can read their messages with that context now. Yep. Yep. Okay. Wait, let's, and wait, so that, so you did, uh, [00:51:00] did you say 19 years of daily therapy?

Yeah, five days a week. Uh, psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis,

yeah. Wow.

Good for you, man. That's, that is a, it's just like any habit to, to put that in 19 years of consistency is probably quite literally like re rewiring your brain. I'm sure there's still things you have to,

you have to work on, but like, oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the greatest gift is like, I have two daughters, um, 11 and 13, and just, I just have a great relationship with them and I never would've, that never would've been possible, um, without really doing some work on myself.

And are you, do you meditate every day? I do,

yeah. Is there a better time of day to do that?

Uh, first thing in the morning is the best time. I make some coffee, coffee, wake up. I actually like, I, I'll bring my coffee with me. So I'll sit there, I'll have a cup of coffee, I'll meditate, take a little sip after a couple minutes, meditate some morning. You have to get better at it. I feel like

I would like to [00:52:00] meditate first thing in the morning, but I, maybe it's a, a, a, a false belief.

I feel like I would just go right back to sleep. Is it something you have to work through? Have you tried that? Uh, no. Obviously I'm giving advice on something I've never done before. Classic. Uh, I would try it. I mean, um, I mean, for me, I like it in the middle of the day as like a, as a reset. But I do feel like if I started my day slower in that capacity, it would be beneficial.

I could, I could a hundred percent see the benefits of doing, uh,

well, the coffee helps me,

but, uh, yeah. But, but no, no. The hu Huberman says you can't have coffee. First thing you need to get outside view sunlight, sauna. Cold exposure, then you can have your coffee. So my whole morning routine would be outta whack now, the tech bro's coming out.

Yeah. So first thing in the morning, meditate. Okay. Um, and then you mentioned weightlifting. Sorry, I literally, quite literally in the last four minutes, I just got my son's cold on this podcast. So mark it down, let it be known. I can't pass it through you. It's just a nose. [00:53:00] I'm just a tech bro working through some, you know, working through some, some illnesses.

I'll be good. Uh, what's your relationship with weightlifting?

Okay, so, uh, I've been, I'm six four, I've been skinny my whole life. Then I started putting on some weight. So tall, skinny, and fat is like not a good look. Um, and I turned 50 and I was like, I don't know, 235 pounds and not, not much muscle. And I was just like, okay, something's gotta change.

So I got into weight lifting and um, man, it's been the best thing ever. Um, I didn't realize that weightlifting is so much better for you than like, cardio. I, I just, I didn't understand that how it changes your metabolism and how it burns calories even on your day off because your, your body's trying to like, build muscle.

Yep. Um, but I just love it. I don't really feel like I'm a weightlifting guy necessarily. Like, it feels weird to even say like, oh yeah, I'm really into [00:54:00] weightlifting. But, um, but I think it's great. I'm not like, I'm not like pushing like really heavy weight, but I'd say like on squats, my high would be like two 40 for four.

That's pretty good for a six four guy. You get a long way to go than that. Get in that squat. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So where are you at with squat? I, I, there's, there's definitely a trend of more people being willing to being willing to lift weights. And I think the, the narrative used to be cardio, cardio, cardio.

And now it's kind of like, no, you gotta, you gotta lift weights. Yep. It's like the number one, I think it was like the number one cause of the reason people get injured when they get older is because they fall and they break something because you don't have enough bone density. Right. I try to push everybody in my life to, to lift and it doesn't take much.

It doesn't take much, but we don't have the time. We got all this other stuff, people can't. I get it. Excuses.

Oh man. I mean, we're talking about mental health. The happiest I ever am is right after I lift weights. Of course.

Yeah. [00:55:00] That's why I have to work out in the morning. I have to move my day around it because I literally am a better person to work with and I'm more creative.

But I can if, if I like were to wake up and get right to my Slack messages and email, I'm going to be an asshole. Fact. It's just a fact. Uhhuh, I'm gonna reply short. I'm gonna say things I didn't mean. If I can just wait on that stuff for a couple hours and I get my workout in first I have my coffee, I have breakfast.

Then when I approach my work, it is a completely different person. Yeah.

It's crazy how when you feel good with yourself, you're just like. So much kinder, better person to everybody else.

Yeah. And look, I, I, um, I became a big, I've worked out my whole life, but I think when I really, my tune on it changed was after having kids.

I, I didn't have the kids. I was, I was there for it, but, um, and I just, I just was like, look, I got 20 minutes a day. I'm gonna do pushups. I got a pull up bar in my house. I couldn't go to the gym anymore. And it was covid. I got a pull up bar in my house. I got a kettlebell. I just did pushups, [00:56:00] pushups, pullups, and squats and kettlebell stuff every day for like two or three years.

And that was good enough. Oh yeah. I have a lot of dad friends. Any parent really. And a lot of people feel like they don't have the time to work out. You know what I'll do? I'll do my kid. My kid will be in the bath and he wants me to hang out with him while he takes a bath. I will knock out my pushups and pull-ups and squats right there with him in the bathroom.

12 minutes. That's

great. That's the way to do it better than nothing, right? Yeah. Yeah. I was just at, I think I told you on email, I was just at a, um, a month long meditation retreat, so a month of silent meditation and, um, I did it a year ago too, and I lost like 12 pounds going to that retreat. And probably like half or almost half of that was muscle.

I was like, and my, my lifts went way down. So this year I brought these, like heavy weights in my car and I had my car in the parking lot, and every day I took a break from meditating and I walked down to [00:57:00] the, um, car, opened the trunk and did like 15, 20 minutes of weightlifting, just like straight up monk mode.

Just like working out in the parking lot. Yeah. I had like, I couldn't, you know, the squats you, it's like hard to have that much weight. So I had two 50 pound dumbbells. I would just like lift up on my shoulders and I would squat that. Yeah. And it, you know, it wasn't quite enough weight, but like, it was enough to, to keep I, my, my, my squat only went down 10 pounds from the time that I left to the time that I got back.

It's enough if you get the reps high, if you try to go, if you're like, I'm gonna try to do 25 reps right now, and then it's plenty.

Yeah.

Were you, so you were away for a whole month? Yes. Meditating? Yes.

Silent for a month? Yes. Oh my God. You meet with a teacher every couple of days and you have like a 15 minute meeting, but otherwise you're silent.

And, and what does

that, what do you, what does that do to you? What do you, what do you feel after you come back with just this like, unbelievable sense of calm?

Okay, so [00:58:00] here's what, here's what it does is like, you could imagine that, uh, in our, we don't know this, but in our normal lives, it's like, there's like a thousand blenders on.

Like our, our minds are so, they're so noisy and we don't even realize it. So when you go to a meditation retreat like that, or let's say you just meditate at home, it's like five blenders turn off. If you meditate for 20 minutes, you're like, oh, this is nice. It's only 995 blenders are on. But if you go to a meditation retreat for that long and you get two, three weeks into it, you know, a week into it, it's like, oh, there's only 500 blenders on.

And three weeks into it, it's like there's like five blenders on Mm. And you're, it's crazy. In your mind, everything is like crystal clear and there's like very little in there and it's the best feeling in the world. Like there is no drug that feels that good, but that is not the reason why you do that.

The reason why you do it is it gets you incredibly relaxed and as you relax, you come into [00:59:00] contact with a lot of things that you kind of like hold down, you know, feelings that have been. Kept at bay for a long time, and as you come into contact with those negative feelings, they start to dissipate. They dissolve and they, they go away and you feel a little bit more like yourself.

After you do that, now you really see the effects. You can't really understand the effects while it's going on because there's these other like, like this, this crazy good feeling or whatever. But if you then go like three months into the future, you are like, huh, I'm just like 3% more calm. I'm 3% less likely to say something mean.

I am 3% more Okay. Being who I am. And that 3%, it really makes a difference in life.

When you mentioned the blenders, [01:00:00] is that like I. The feeling of like, I'm talking to you right now, but in the back of my mind, I just like, wait, did I, did I pay my cell phone bill? And why, why is my cell phone bill a hundred dollars? Shit, wasn't it? Usually $98. And then like the rest of my afternoon, I gotta spend like dealing with Verizon when I, it's like really,

really?

What does that matter? Yeah, exactly. When you're like on your iPhone all the time, I'm like, oh God, I, I gotta do this. Oh. And now I gotta go to my computer. Like, oh, I opened up this app, but I can't remember why I opened it up. Now I'm doing something else. Like, I was gonna go to YouTube to search for this thing, but I'm like, I mean, it's kinda like that.

And then it's also just all the tension that you feel in your body around some of these things. Like, ugh, I gotta do all this. And like, everything's really grippy and Yeah, and it, it's, you can't really see how noisy it is until you go meditate for a couple weeks and you'd be like, oh my God, I can't believe

this.

Is that hard to be away for a month from your family?

Yeah, my [01:01:00] wife is like, like, I'm so lucky 'cause she holds it down. We got a crazy 80 pound dog too, so she's, you know, taking care of the kids and the dog and everything. Um, and it's pretty, it's it, I mean it's easy for me compared to like how hard it's for them, but I call them once a week.

They have a landline, like, you give up your phone so there's no phone, you give up your iPhone. So I'll be off my iPhone for the, for the month and then they have a landline, so I can call every Sunday and I have a, a conversation with my family.

And is it just like one of those things in life where like, yes, it sucks to be away for a month, but you know that if you do, you, you need to put this deposit into the bank for the month because the rest of the year is gonna be better because of how

you come outta this thing?

Absolutely. Yeah. Like if you could give. You know, you just imagine like, oh, I can give my wife a better husband. I can give my daughter as a better [01:02:00] father, and I can feel like more comfortable in my shoes, like 11 months out of the year. It's like, that's a kind of a no-brainer. But at the same time, I mean, I also wanna say like, it's extremely enjoyable to be on a retreat like that.

It's like very hard work, but there's a lot of contentment that comes with it.

Yeah. I would love to take my phone and just give it away for a month. That'd be amazing. Take my phone, put it in a box. I don't want it,

it it, it's so, it's so cool. Like when you get your phone back, you're just like, I don't even want that shit.

Yeah.

Right. Delete checking Instagram. Alright. Josh Loman, this was great. Went in a bunch of different directions, but this is what's great about this podcast. We come on, Josh is the exit five member. We hang out, we talk about marketing, we talk about life. Thanks for listening to this episode. Go find Josh on LinkedIn.

Um, even though he's very wise and calm, it won't [01:03:00] hurt to get him like seven more LinkedIn followers. So go find him on LinkedIn, connect with him, check out Gold front, and um, send Josh and I a message or DM us separately. And, uh, I have been enjoying talking a little bit more about life outside of the marketing stuff with folks on here because we're all people we like to hang out, connect, learn from each other.

So share some feedback with me. Uh, and then make sure you join Exit five. You'll see Josh in there. He's an active member. We love that. Um, he, it's, he hasn't been active in, in a while 'cause he was on his meditation retreat, but he'll come back soon. I hope so. All right, Josh, good to see you, man. Thanks for doing this.

Thank you so much. I love being on your show because I am a DG super fan. Oh, stop that. All right, man.

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