#158: Career | High-Pressure CMO Roles, Avoiding Burnout, and Growing your Personal Brand with Amanda Goetz

Dave is joined by Amanda Goetz, a 2x founder, 3x CMO, and the author behind the popular weekly newsletter Life's A Game. Amanda shares her expertise in personal and professional growth, brand building, and content creation.

Amanda and Dave cover:

• How Amanda transformed her LinkedIn strategy to grow her following and engagement
• The impact of personal branding on social media and its role in business growth
• Creating a feedback loop to refine and improve content strategy

Timestamps

• (00:00) - - Intro
• (06:46) - - How to Use LinkedIn Video
• (10:14) - - Shifting from Twitter to LinkedIn
• (14:00) - - Developing a Clearer Target Market and Products
• (14:43) - - Building Sustainable Momentum Amid Burnout: A CMO's Perspective
• (19:04) - - Why Your Content Strategy Must Be Focused
• (26:07) - - The Brand Pyramid
• (27:02) - - The Emotion Behind Branding
• (30:32) - - People Are What Matter In Branding Success
• (36:10) - - The Growing Creator Economy vs. Traditional Corporations
• (37:28) - - Creating Emotional Brand Connections for Growth Marketing
• (42:00) - - How Amanda Became a Fractional CMO
• (44:34) - - Why Amanda Looks to Alex Lieberman for Inspiration

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Dave Gerhardt [00:00:15]:
This is nuts. Amanda's here. And you just said, right before we started recording, you said you lost 15,000 LinkedIn followers. I wanted to talk about this on the podcast. Cause the people who listen to this are. This is the LinkedIn geeks. And so if you don't get it resolved, this podcast is not going to come out for a couple weeks. I hope you get it resolved.

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:29]:
But can you tell me what happened?

Amanda Goetz [00:00:32]:
So, yesterday I got a security breach, which happens when you're a creator. You know, they're like, change your password, whatever. I've been locked out of my twitter before. Some things have happened. And I got that yesterday, logged back in. Everything was fine. And then today, just like 30 minutes before this podcast, literally, I watched my follower count go from, like, I think it was like, close to 28,000, and it jumped to 11,000. And I'm like, well, that's not normal.

Dave Gerhardt [00:01:02]:
Oh, fun. And how did you notice it? Did you just happen to look and.

Amanda Goetz [00:01:06]:
Like, I just happened to pull up LinkedIn like I do, you know, 80 times a day, and I literally saw the number change. It was the. I'm like, that's a glitch. And then I went into my analytics, and there's this huge cliff. Like, look, I've been on social media for a long time now. There's several things that could be happening. Path one is it's bots, and if so, okay, followers are in vanity metric, and that's fine. I'd rather have quality followers.

Amanda Goetz [00:01:39]:
But the second thing is that something happens through, like, I have third party plugins that, you know, I use a scheduling tool. Who knows? Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:01:49]:
What do you use? So I use taplio, and I just happen to look at something on your post. And this actually, my friend Tass, she said LinkedIn is also cracking down on use of third party tools like Taplio. Multiple people have asked me that, and I've never seen it. But now I'm like, oh, I literally just made myself a post it note. Like, should I remove taplio?

Amanda Goetz [00:02:07]:
Well, so it's funny because I've used it for eight months and actually partnered with them because it truly is incredible for me. I had been scheduling my content. I schedule my content out a week at a time, and it's great. But if that's actually happening and all of a sudden, LinkedIn removed all the followers I gained from Taplio, that would be a big concern.

Dave Gerhardt [00:02:30]:
Imagine they're like, these don't count. We're taking them back.

Amanda Goetz [00:02:34]:
Right.

Dave Gerhardt [00:02:35]:
Well, the good news is, this guy Michael commented on your post, this must be a mistake or glitch. Well. And he said, you have gained a real follower in me.

Amanda Goetz [00:02:41]:
So that's 11,000 2001.

Dave Gerhardt [00:02:45]:
Yeah. Shout out to you, Michael. All right, well, I hope that by the time we post this, I hope this gets resolved, and I hope those come back.

Amanda Goetz [00:02:51]:
We'll do a brown two, and I'll let you know where I'm at.

Dave Gerhardt [00:02:54]:
Damn. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that, people. I got a message the other day that somebody was, who knows people are texting people saying that it was me. And it was like, hey, this is Dave Gerhardt. Like, I have something urgent. Can you please call me?

Amanda Goetz [00:03:06]:
Yeah, well, I had a Twitter thing happened probably two years ago now. That was horrible. So people who follow me, they know, like, I'm a single mom, I've got three kids. I've been tweeting. I have now 110,000 followers on Twitter. But I share openly about what I'm going through and life as both a marketer and a mom. And I got locked out of my account. It was somebody in Europe.

Amanda Goetz [00:03:34]:
They locked me out of my account, detached everything so I couldn't change my password, I couldn't get in, couldn't even verify my identity that it was my account. And they were dming people saying, hey, I know I never do this, but my kids really need some money. Can you please send? And my followers were doing it, and I felt horrible. I offered free coaching to, and I tweeted out once I got my account back, I tweeted out, if you were a victim of this, let me know what I can do. Like, I will do free coaching, free consulting calls. Like, I was trying to help however I could because I felt horrible.

Dave Gerhardt [00:04:11]:
Oh, and that's such a hard thing because it's like you have no idea who or how or any control over that. People write mean things to you sometimes on Twitter. Have you noticed a difference between Twitter versus LinkedIn and how people react?

Amanda Goetz [00:04:27]:
Look, I reached anywhere from 20 to 40 million impressions a month on Twitter, and I'm not near that on LinkedIn. So I don't think it's apples to apples because I get a lot more trolls on Twitter, but I think it's just because I reach a lot more people. And it's funny, there's certain content topics that if I touch them, I know it's going to. It's just an invitation to please say horrible things to me. But LinkedIn so far has been. I've grown really slowly and steadily. Like, I just started being really intentional on LinkedIn a year ago, and it's been very steady. So I know people say LinkedIn can be a little crazy, but you tell me, what's your LinkedIn experience like?

Dave Gerhardt [00:05:13]:
Well, so I've been on Twitter forever, and it just doesn't really move the needle. Like I have, I don't know, 37. I've had 37,000 followers for, like, seven years. I feel like I, and I go back and forth between, like, just deleting it and not even having it, but then, and I don't really have a strategy there. I just kind of, like, randomly post things. And then I used to share a lot more and I noticed that, like, it is really, I found that it's really toxic. And I've seen some of the stuff you write about, right? You write about your life and your family and single mom and kids and whatever, and, like, people just take what you say and completely flip it, and it's like, wait, what? And then that comment goes nuts. And it's just like, I have a harder time with, like, the mental health side of Twitter.

Dave Gerhardt [00:05:59]:
But I, at the same time, like, seven years ago when I was working at this company, Drift, we really started writing on LinkedIn a lot. And LinkedIn launched LinkedIn video when we were there. And I was very comfortable being on video. And so I was doing marketing at a company that sold marketing software, and the company had a really strong brand and buzz and got a lot of attention, and they, people really liked the way we were doing marketing. And so I was sharing, like, regular updates about the things that we were doing. And I would do it by, like, videos, walking and talking, like, literally, like, drinking a smoothie on my way to the office, like, sharing what we were doing. And LinkedIn had just launched video at that point, and I noticed my videos were getting, like, hundred thousand views. Any new social platform, any social platform, they wrote, like, a new feature.

Dave Gerhardt [00:06:40]:
They kind of prioritized that thing, and so it just went nuts. And so I went from just using LinkedIn, like, to remember it used to be just like, oh, I met you at golden hour. I send you a connection. I was like, great to meet you, and we'd send a connection request, and now you're in my Rolodex. But it shifted to be a content platform, and so I just started, like, connecting with everybody and requesting connections, and I had 50,000 followers. 60,000 followers. 70,000 followers in, like, a year. In the time it took me to go on Twitter for ten years.

Dave Gerhardt [00:07:07]:
I've been on Twitter since 2009, and now I have 165,000 followers on Twitter. But it's mainly because I focus on B. Two B. And I have to play a different game, I think, to grow on Twitter. And so now I just, like, I have Twitter. My new strategy is, like, once a day, I'll share something that I wrote, mostly long form, mostly from LinkedIn. I just put it over there because what I notice is the value of Twitter for me is the DM's. There's people that will only reach out to me in the DM's.

Dave Gerhardt [00:07:33]:
Like, I've become close with the CMO at HubSpot. This guy, Kip Bodner, and we're on LinkedIn. We have email, we have text messages, but he'll dm me be like, hey, I'm coming up to Vermont this week. Like, we should play golf.

Amanda Goetz [00:07:45]:
Yeah, it's another WhatsApp for many people.

Dave Gerhardt [00:07:48]:
Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Goetz [00:07:50]:
LinkedIn feels still like the Rolodex. Like, it's very buttoned up. It's like another texting platform for me. I am talking to my friends, my Twitter friends on Twitter in the DM's all the time. And, I mean, I raised $2.6 million for my last company in. I would say 80% of it, if not more, came from Twitter.

Dave Gerhardt [00:08:10]:
From posting on Twitter, like, having a presence, but looking good enough to post, and then, like, having active DM's. The DM's that I get are amazing. Like, I got a shout out on the. My first million podcast because those guys somehow were paying attention to exit five and Sean, his co founder, this guy Ben, like, I find out, you know, like, you ever click on someone's profile and you're like, this person follows me.

Amanda Goetz [00:08:31]:
Yeah, all the time. Jack Dorsey follows me.

Dave Gerhardt [00:08:34]:
What?

Amanda Goetz [00:08:34]:
Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:08:35]:
Hey, maybe he loves CBD gummies. I don't know.

Amanda Goetz [00:08:38]:
Well, actually, no. I grew so fast on Twitter that I was invited by the Twitter executive team when Jack was still very active there. And I got to do a phone call with the entire executive team as part of their, like, monthly team meeting to understand how they can make Twitter better for women.

Dave Gerhardt [00:08:58]:
Well, when was that?

Amanda Goetz [00:08:59]:
I did a YouTube about it. It was probably, like, 2021.

Dave Gerhardt [00:09:04]:
Interesting. Were you nervous before that conversation?

Amanda Goetz [00:09:07]:
Yeah, I didn't think Jack would actually be on it.

Dave Gerhardt [00:09:10]:
Was it a straight up phone call or were you on video? It was video and he was on video.

Amanda Goetz [00:09:14]:
Yeah. I've created maybe four YouTube videos in my life, but that was one of them.

Dave Gerhardt [00:09:19]:
So if LinkedIn didn't get rid of your 15,000 followers. Do you have a different content strategy for Twitter than you do LinkedIn?

Amanda Goetz [00:09:27]:
If you would have asked me six months ago, I would have said yes because Twitter was my primary focus. But now I'm in maintenance mode with Twitter because I think that I've reached this kind of global maximum. Like, I have the contacts I want, and it's just about staying connected to people. And LinkedIn is my primary focus right now because I believe that you can grow faster, faster, to your point. Like, you plateau on Twitter, you can grow faster more intentionally. There's an actual system behind LinkedIn growth. Twitter just feels a lot more like, recently I had the most viral tweet on Twitter for the day. You get, like an email when you have the most viral tweet, and it was Stanley cup when that caught on fire and the CEO responded, yeah, and I maybe got like 200 followers from that, and it was the most viral tweet of the day.

Dave Gerhardt [00:10:23]:
Interesting. Do you remember how many impressions, do you remember the impression number?

Amanda Goetz [00:10:27]:
It was 30 million.

Dave Gerhardt [00:10:28]:
30 million impressions and you got 200 followers?

Amanda Goetz [00:10:31]:
Yeah, it was crazy. It was wild. There's no rhyme or reason with Twitter. It's harder. But LinkedIn, there's like a real approach, minus when you get 50,000 followers removed. But I. I saw it like, the formula was very consistent. If I post twice a day, engage with ten people a day, I'm showing up after I post and engaging with the comments for, you know, at least 30 minutes.

Amanda Goetz [00:10:57]:
If I pulled these levers, I watched the number just keep going up, up, up.

Dave Gerhardt [00:11:01]:
You actually wrote this earlier. Three years of tweet, and I think this is a fantastic advice for just a general content strategy. Three years of tweeting with no intention or system, 100,000 followers. Two cent months of tweeting with intentions and a system, 101,000 followers and 30k. Create a goal, optimize your system. Focus on quality of content, not quantity of followers. Can you give me the narrative behind that?

Amanda Goetz [00:11:28]:
So I quit my kind of corporate career. For those that don't know me, I've started two companies. I led marketing at the knot in between my first startup and my second startup. So I was at the knot for five years. And then after that, I sold my last startup in 2022 and went on to just go be a vp of marketing, kind of just trying to figure out what I wanted to do next and decided I was going to go on my own and do this whole solopreneur thing. So I quit my job with no safety net. I was like, okay, I've got foul. I'm going to figure this out.

Amanda Goetz [00:12:04]:
Like, that's a my founder brain. I like the forcing function of just, I'm going to figure this out and I need to. So I quit my job in September. I gave myself six months to hit a five figure a month MRR, and I did it in the first two months.

Dave Gerhardt [00:12:23]:
What was intentional about the content strategy? Like going from tweeting just because, yeah, I'll give you an example. Like, if you think of Justin Welsh, you think of solopreneurship, right? I've seen even in my own content, like, the reason I've grown on LinkedIn was because I wasn't growing when I was sharing everything. Like, here's my workout. Here's what I did this thing with my kids. Check out this thing. I like when I just focus on. And I often say, like, oh, you wouldn't believe how much more I do in life beyond marketing. But on LinkedIn, that's just what I talk about because that's the topic.

Dave Gerhardt [00:12:54]:
And I know, I think you and I have talked about in the past, but when you were first starting your newsletter, you're like, I don't know. Everybody says niche down, but it seems like you do from a content standpoint. If you want to grow and if you want to monetize that in some way, you do need to have like one or two things that you're known for. Did you develop a content strategy based off of that?

Amanda Goetz [00:13:13]:
Yeah, two things. I developed a much clearer ICP and then I had an offer because obviously you can't make money if you have no way for people to give you money. And so I actually had to spend the time building the products on the back end. So the ICP was really, really important work because social media for me was just like, it was almost like a diary, but a somewhat filtered diary. I mean, other times it wasn't as filtered, but then I actually said, well, what do people come to me for? And I did surveys. I had a newsletter for a few months before I got really intentional about making money. I sent out a survey. And the funny thing was I thought people wanted to learn from me.

Amanda Goetz [00:13:56]:
Marketing. You know, I've been a CMO several times, but when I did the survey, the thing that came back was, people want to know how I get shit done. They're very curious about how, you know, there's a lot of productivity gurus that have no kids, and they'll tell you how to structure your day and you're like, you have no clue what it's like to run a marathon. In my day before 09:00 a.m. so I realized that my ICP is actually people who are building and they're teetering on the edge of burnout and they know that they don't want to go there, so they're trying to create sustainable momentum.

Dave Gerhardt [00:14:39]:
So you created that. You're like, okay, I'm going to write content about this topic. What does your writing process look like? How do you create content? Because it seems like you went from, you're creating content that's like this diary. Like, I just did this thing. And you can still mix in some of those things, but I want to know the system behind your content. And can you also say, what's the offer that you created? Was it your newsletter? Not having a newsletter?

Amanda Goetz [00:15:04]:
So my flywheel is social media feeds to my newsletter. And then as I learn what works and resonates in my newsletter, that feeds my social media. So that's the first flywheel then, of my newsletter. I drive people to one of two things. They can either take my course that's very do it yourself, or they can join my community. The community is very hands on. I'm there. We're in slack every day.

Amanda Goetz [00:15:29]:
It's about building accountability. We teach best practices around branding. And then I learn from that. That feeds my social, that feeds my newsletter. Then the last tier is the high ticket prices where I do coaching. I have eight people that I'm coaching on their business, but both like inner work as well as the external stuff. Because I have been in therapy for six years. I've had a Harvard trained coach for ten.

Amanda Goetz [00:15:57]:
I think a lot of people's blockers are a lot more internal than they are. What's the algorithm? It's like, no, actually, let's talk about why you're struggling to take up space and then the highest ticket price is actually working with me as a fractional cmo, and I do CMo workshops and stuff like that.

Dave Gerhardt [00:16:15]:
I love that you mentioned the feedback loop. So most of the people that listen to this, I think your story is relevant for two reasons. Number one, I think you're a master at the content and social media world. And I think that flywheel is the most underrated thing. It's something that I relate to. That's my whole strat. That's been my whole playbook as a marketer, especially in a b two b world. We get caught up on ABM, this strategy, this thing.

Dave Gerhardt [00:16:39]:
I don't have a framework. I don't have a funnel. What I'm good at is understanding my audience, creating content for that audience, and then getting the feedback loop going. I mean, just this week, we did a whole new rebrand, we did a whole new logo, whole new website, whole brand, redesigned everything. And we already are making changes because we launched it. A couple things we didn't like. We heard some specific comments and feedback, and so we're going to change it. We have an advantage.

Dave Gerhardt [00:17:05]:
We have an audience. We have such an advantage. We're doing our first event, which you said you're going to buy a ticket to, which everybody, like, I say to my kids, when my kids, when it's like 630, and my son yawns and he's like, oh, I'm so tired. What do I say to him? I say, prove it. Prove it. Prove it by going to bed like.

Amanda Goetz [00:17:21]:
Oh, I'm stealing that.

Dave Gerhardt [00:17:22]:
I say, prove it. Yo, you're so tired. Prove it. Because usually you know what happens, right? They eat dinner, they take a shower, then, like, everybody gets a second win and it's like 915. Everybody's still up. So my line has been saying to everybody who says they're going to buy a ticket, I say, prove it. I know you will. So we came up with the whole concept for the event, all the speakers, everything, this whole podcast, right? Like the whole exit five media business is this flywheel that you talked about.

Dave Gerhardt [00:17:43]:
And I just think it's such an advantage when you have a clearly defined ICP. The marketing world that we live in today, there isn't social media and content and marketing. Right? And I think I talked about this with you, with Alex Lieberman at golden hour. Like, this is how you do marketing today. And you get it on a personal level. And I just would love to see more b, two b marketers and brands adopt this strategy. And people say, well, no, it's different. She's talking about productivity.

Dave Gerhardt [00:18:06]:
Nope, it's the same because people are people and they want knowledge and expertise and information. And you can do it whether you're trying to help somebody be more productive or you sell payroll software. Do you agree with that?

Amanda Goetz [00:18:17]:
I agree immensely. I'm working on my marketing strategy right now for my client, and I sat down with them and they're like, okay, you know, what's the social strategy? What's the content strategy? What's the email strategy? And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We have to first come up and say, okay, what do we stand for? Who are we talking to? And then content strategy, because content strategy is your email strategy, is your social strategy. And so I take people through the content strategy framework and say, okay, teach me, inspire me, help me. What are your kind of big pillars? What are you actually trying to teach people? And I think help me is such an important content pillar because when you say help me, that forces you into a lens of what are their pain points? What are they asking for help with?

Dave Gerhardt [00:19:06]:
Yeah, this is really good. Is this like a framework that you've used or just, are those bullets that you. I love this. For people listening. This is such a good tip for a content, for your strategy, for your company. Teach me, inspire me, help me. You can apply those to any niche, any industry. The person who's there wants to get one of those three things.

Dave Gerhardt [00:19:26]:
I love that.

Amanda Goetz [00:19:27]:
Yeah. And then the last one I'll throw in is sell me. But we sell by showing, not by selling. And showing means testimonials. It means like, I teach this in my office hours. I'm like, if you're trying to own the. It's like the art of the humble brag, right, is there's so many ways you can say this. Like, oh, I was just talking to a client today and their biggest thing was this, and I did this, and then all of a sudden human psychology is just like, oh, they have clients.

Amanda Goetz [00:20:02]:
Oh, that person, oh, I was just talking to a client that's doing 100 million in revenue. And their biggest pain point is this. Now you're in their mind as an expert and you have $100 million clients. The art of the humble brag is the fourth pillar in that. And selling me does not mean sell me, it means show me.

Dave Gerhardt [00:20:24]:
Oh, I love that. That's really similar to the concept of why I wrote this book, founder brand, which is basically like, you're the founder of this company. Think about your journey. Just using an example, starting house of wise, right? You're the one in this meetings every day. You're meeting with investors, advisors, employees, partners, branding, this and that. If you just share, the company doesn't have to be growing, but if you're just documenting what you're doing, you're going to attract like minded people. And that kind of ended up being your story. And I think the same is true in B two B.

Dave Gerhardt [00:20:57]:
If you're a founder marketing team at a B two B company, what are the meetings you're in? Nobody's there just for fun. Like, hey, let's start this B two B services company because we want to get super rich. It's like, oh, no, you must have had deep experience in some industry somehow, so share that stuff. I love that. The art of the humble brag is really good.

Amanda Goetz [00:21:16]:
I was just saying, I know. I have found our brand.

Dave Gerhardt [00:21:18]:
You're in it.

Amanda Goetz [00:21:19]:
I know. Look at this, love.

Dave Gerhardt [00:21:21]:
That's great.

Amanda Goetz [00:21:21]:
Right next to me.

Dave Gerhardt [00:21:22]:
That's great. I get about $33 a month in royalties from that. No big deal.

Amanda Goetz [00:21:27]:
I mean, I have a book coming out next year and I definitely am like, let's not add that to the line item of revenue.

Dave Gerhardt [00:21:34]:
No, you can't, you can't, you can't. However, who knows? You could be presently surprised. You have a great audience. It opened up a lot of interesting relationships and conversations, though for me that I haven't. I can't really quantify that. I think if you're trying to do it, if you're going to, like, I'm going to sell x number of books at this number of price, it doesn't work like that.

Amanda Goetz [00:21:53]:
Yeah, you always say, is it a means to an end or the end? And if it's the end, that's probably not the right use of time because it's a lot of time.

Dave Gerhardt [00:22:00]:
So you talked about working with companies and helping them come up. Like, the very first piece is like, you can't come up with the email strategy and a social strategy and a content strategy. People like you and me, we can do that stuff in a heartbeat if we know what you stand for. Yeah, right. So take me into that exercise with founders, with companies. How do you go in there and unpack what you stand for? I think sometimes in this world we call it like, the company story, the strategic narrative positioning. I think people get lost in the weeds of like, having the perfect framework for like, if you and I could just text each other and come up with like, yeah, we're going to start this new company. Here's what we stand for.

Dave Gerhardt [00:22:35]:
We could do it over messaging. What's your framework for coming up with, what do you stand for?

Amanda Goetz [00:22:39]:
So a couple tools that I use, the brand strategy pyramid. Like, the brand pyramid is kind of my holy grail of what I use because it takes you through, it's very Maslow hierarchy of needs for any. I'm sure everybody listening to this knows what a brand pyramid is, but starts with the very functional benefits of your product. So you are software, or you are an energy drink. You are served in a plastic bottle. Or if your house of wise, my last company, it's like, okay, we are sleep gummies, stress gummies, et cetera. But then you start moving up this pyramid, and it's a forcing function to really get to this top. Say, what is your brand essence? What do you want someone to feel when they're connecting with your brand, which is very Maslow hierarchy of needs you move up to, like, emotional and then self actualization.

Amanda Goetz [00:23:34]:
And at the self actualization of a brand is really like, what's that essence? What do you want somebody to feel? Coca Cola, infamously, is it's share a coke, because they are all about community. When you're drinking a coke, whether you're a polar bear or people on the street, it's this idea that you're with your family and community and you feel connected. They added that as like the wrapper to a very functional product. And so for me, I am a very emotional brander. I always care about what emotion do you want someone to feel when they are using your product, experiencing your customer service? Are they super inspired? Do they feel related to, do they feel at ease? And so that's the first tool that I use. The second tool is starting to really chip away at the language and the semantics of the language. So I use an only statement. So, like, you are the only blank for blank to do.

Amanda Goetz [00:24:37]:
Blank in a time where blank. If you do an only statement, you're starting to really finesse that language even more. And the third tool is, what are we not? And that's when I'll do the chart and I start plotting different things on the opposite end of the spectrum and say, okay, are we social or are we personal? You know, are we focused on a community or are we actually focused on an individual? Like exit five, you know, it's like, are you focused on it growing as a community and the support of the community, or are you really focused on growing the person? And so I start plotting those things and I say, show me where you think we are on a spectrum. Are we over here or here? Because when you force people to do that, you start to see where there's disconnect, especially if you get all the executives in a room.

Dave Gerhardt [00:25:29]:
This is really good. I'm furiously scribbling notes like I do, and I can see founders and executives in this meeting, though. How do you balance what you can do today versus where the company is going? I feel like the variable here is so often like, the product and the roadmap and specifically that only conversation. Is there a lot of friction there early trying to figure out, like, we're the only, there's a lot of nuance, especially today. There's so many products in so many industries, how do you really come up with a strong differentiator?

Amanda Goetz [00:26:01]:
It's usually in the psychographics and the emotions, but for sure, chief product officer, your ctO, they're the ones that are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But I have to always remind them, this is aspirational. Where do we want to go as a brand? And then we're going to build a roadmap to get there. We may not be there today, but where do we want to live in the consumer's mind, and especially in early stage companies, you know, beehives, a great example. Like, they came out and they said, we're going to be the fastest, we're going to ship the most. And even though they couldn't compete with substack, right away, they started chipping away at that. And you see that when you live in the consumer's mind as being something, you will work into that and you will develop a roadmap with that lens.

Dave Gerhardt [00:26:49]:
Interesting. So you can go after the, we might have similar features as someone else, but the way that we talk and you said emotions and psychographics, that is like how we come off as a brand and who we focus on could.

Amanda Goetz [00:27:04]:
Be our differentiator and the people, like, I think the world of b two b needs to kind of peel back the layers of your employees in bringing creators into the fold and ambassadors and who's a part of it. I mean, as a CMO, I'm looking around to say who else is working with them? Who works there? What do they stand for? I think it's a really cool opportunity when you have amazing people that work at your company. Getting them to talk about your company is such a no brainer for me. I mean, morning Brew, starting with, like, you just were watching like, Alex and Austin and Dan Toomey, and they're all tweeting at each other and you're like, well, these are cool people. I'll read this thing. That's how brands work nowadays. It's the humans behind the brands. Golden hour is a great example.

Amanda Goetz [00:27:58]:
Like meeting the team behind that. I was like, yeah, I will do whatever I can. I'll promote you guys. You're just a good human.

Dave Gerhardt [00:28:06]:
Yeah. So, like, using that to your advantage in your marketing versus trying to be like, well, this product that we compete with has these ten features, but we have these eleven. And we're going to win on this variable.

Amanda Goetz [00:28:17]:
If you look at the brand pyramid, if you're competing down here, you're going to lose. I launched a company in one of the most competitive markets. When I launched House of Wise, CBD gummies and products had been out for years. But the place that I wanted to hold in someone's mind is that we are helping women take up space. Because when they took one of our gummies, they were making space for their workout, making space for sex, making space for sleep. And it was so much more than this gummy. It was like giving yourself permission to have those things. And so I wasn't competing down here in function.

Amanda Goetz [00:28:59]:
There's lots of gummies out there with these same ingredients. I had to compete at the top.

Dave Gerhardt [00:29:04]:
The emotions, the brand pyramid, so people can look this up. Is it literally called the brand pyramid?

Amanda Goetz [00:29:09]:
Yeah. If you just Google brand Pyramid, you'll see tons of example.

Dave Gerhardt [00:29:12]:
So you have brand essence, brand personality, emotional benefits, rational benefits, functional benefits. So you could literally print this out and get a pen and paper, fill it out, and do the exercise. There's this company that is much bigger than we are, that's doing something similar. And I'm starting to get more questions about how we're different. And I just want to scream through the microphone sometimes and be like. Cause it's our way. But I have to. We gotta do a better job with articulating that over time.

Dave Gerhardt [00:29:38]:
But, like, there is something there. Like, the niche can be you, and we're. It's our flavor. We make the pizza differently.

Amanda Goetz [00:29:44]:
I literally just wrote this. This is my newsletter yesterday, which was all content is chicken. It just is. You have to decide what your flavors and spices and recipe are. So it's okay. There are so many people talking about productivity, but my flavor, my recipe is that I'm a single mom, and I have four businesses that I'm building, and the people that like my recipe will come to me. Your flavoring is the blend of you, your team, how you make people feel, the existing people that are in the community, that are like the energy and heartbeat of the community, those are parts of your seasons. And it's like KFC.

Amanda Goetz [00:30:27]:
It's the special blend of herbs and spices that you can't really put a finger on.

Dave Gerhardt [00:30:33]:
And you'd never feed it to your children.

Amanda Goetz [00:30:35]:
You shouldn't feed it to your children.

Dave Gerhardt [00:30:37]:
No, I like that. That makes me feel better, because I've been going hard on this narrative. I didn't create this company to copy somebody else. It's just like, I got here because I started podcasting and writing about the lessons that I learned going from PR intern to CMO. And I'm building the resource that I wish that I had as a marketing leader, and we're focused on b two B marketing, because, like, none of us really went to school for b two B marketing. You didn't really wake up one day. We all wanted to be athletes or creators or artists or whatever, and you got to learn how to do this. And so I'm just, we're leaning into that.

Dave Gerhardt [00:31:09]:
And I think if we can build trust and get people to watch our videos and listen to our stuff and be in the community, it's like, oh, okay, I can see how this is different.

Amanda Goetz [00:31:16]:
Yeah, exactly. And even with my community, I have people who are building the same type of community in my community, and I let them in. I don't filter it out because part of my flavors and spices is that I am accessible. And I want people to feel like this is accessible, tangible, learning. And if I were to start blocking people out, that's against what I want somebody to feel.

Dave Gerhardt [00:31:42]:
Have you ever done anything with brand archetypes? So I think this is initially this guy, Joseph Campbell came up with this concept, but there is, this might be up reality, but basically there's twelve different brand archetypes that you can have. And their names, like the Explorer, the outlaw, the magician, the hero, the lover, the jester, every man, caregiver, ruler. And you basically define the characteristics of that brand. So, like, are you really edgy? Are you a challenger? Or are you more interesting? I'll send you a link. Yeah.

Amanda Goetz [00:32:13]:
Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:32:14]:
All right, let's start with this idea of fractional CMO, and we'll wrap with this. So you've done a bunch of things. You've been a vp of marketing, you've been a CMO, you've been a creator. Now you're going back into the fractional CMO game. There's a lot of people who actually, this is very relatable for. A lot of people work in marketing, maybe want to break out, go do their own thing, or companies that want to hire a fractional CMO. What is the world of fractional CMO look like, and why has it become so popular?

Amanda Goetz [00:32:42]:
I think as the creator economy just continues to blow up, people are really, really interested in owning their calendar and not feeling tied to a single company being able to take on multiple revenue streams. And unfortunately, the creator economy is moving way faster than the corporate economy. Like in thinking corporate world is still very much like, you're loyal to me, you can't tweet about something else and just the way that the world is with rising costs. And I saw Professor Galloway's thing about how we're the first generation to not surpass our parents and income and all of that. But I really think that corporations are stunting their own growth by not embracing the creator economy, which is spinning out more and more fractional employees. Now what I'll say is, as I'm, I have a lot of people who are looking to become fractional cmos that join my community. You have to run the same process of what's your ICP? Who are you for? Because what happens is when you step out of the CMO world and now you're injecting yourself as a fractional CMO, you have to have a very clear value prop. You have to understand what your strengths are.

Amanda Goetz [00:34:00]:
So you have to run all the things that you do. When you go in to be a fractional cmO, you have to flip it on yourself and run all of these same processes. When I first was starting out, I'm like, okay, what is my brand pyramid? When I putting on the CMO hat and I found that I helped early stage pre series A companies get their marketing ready for a series a. So I am the person that comes in and make sure the brand is ready to go for that huge capital injection where you're going to do a lot more growth marketing. So I'm not a growth marketer. I never claim to be. But my specialty is going in and making sure all of this brand work, that emotionally emotional connection, every touch point that you experience with a brand, you feel that. So that when you open up the top of the funnel, all the leaks are gone.

Amanda Goetz [00:34:53]:
I'm great at retention marketing, email marketing, so I get all the leaks gone so they can turn on the faucet.

Dave Gerhardt [00:35:01]:
And in the fractional role, like do you or. I don't actually know much about it from other people either. How do you work with other people? With resources? What does the setup look like?

Amanda Goetz [00:35:11]:
The setup's very similar to a regular CMO role. Just less hours, which honestly, because of the way I work, like they're getting a full time employee. I just am way more efficient with my time. But you're still running an operating like an operational heartbeat. You have your okrs are set, you're managing the team, you're doing stand ups, you are making sure everybody knows where they're going, what the next milestone is, and you're managing agencies. I think that meeting hygiene is so important as a fractional CMO because you could just spend all 20 hours in meetings if you're not careful. But I just make sure that the team when you're working in the stage. I am.

Amanda Goetz [00:35:58]:
It's smaller teams now. There are fractional cmos that go into way larger companies. They don't manage the teams they're coming in to do the rfps and the agencies, they lock in all the people they look@the.org. chart, they say, we're under resourced here, we're over resourced here. We're going to set the structure of the team. But it's really nice. Fractional CMO works really well when you have a lot of soldiers but no lieutenants and you have a lot of people that can do the work. We have no one telling them.

Amanda Goetz [00:36:28]:
How does this all bundle together towards one vision and one roadmap? Cause you have a lot of people doing stuff, like over here and here, and you're like, well, nothing's working. It's like, well, yeah, because you don't have someone that's actually coming up and connecting it.

Dave Gerhardt [00:36:45]:
Do you feel like the soldiers listen to you?

Amanda Goetz [00:36:48]:
That's an interesting question. The culture piece is difficult, for sure, and you need to have complete buy in from the executive team of your purpose there.

Dave Gerhardt [00:36:58]:
Basically, like, how do you not get treated like the substitute teacher? You know, like, I think it could work great if the team is pumped to work with you, pumped to learn from you, but if all of a sudden you're, like, perceived as this part time person who then is like, has to do one on ones and manage people, I don't know if you've run up against that, but I'm just thinking of the other side.

Amanda Goetz [00:37:17]:
Yeah, I've done this now with, I think about six companies, and the ones that work the best are when you have an existing operating rhythm that works and you're plugged into that. Second, you have a CEO that you're in lockstep with, and they are supportive and they are embracing feedback loops because I'm coming in and these people may have been working there for five, seven years, and I need to know that they feel comfortable giving me feedback. And if they're triangulating the whole time, it's never going to work. If they have to go feel like, I got to go tell the principal that I don't like what the substitute teacher is doing, that's never going to work. And so I go in very clearly with a, hey, I'm going to come listen. I'm going to go listening to her for a few months. Here's my background. Here's why I'm here.

Amanda Goetz [00:38:15]:
Here's what I want to do. To help you. And I always just try to phrase it as you're frustrated. Usually they bring in somebody because the team is frustrated. They're not making the progress they want. And so you come in and you just really make sure that you're speaking in their language. You're trying to make their job better.

Dave Gerhardt [00:38:32]:
So for you and for people like that might be, there's a couple interesting things. I think. One, there is this trend of you can work for yourself and you can work remotely. And so there is a whole career path where it's like, if you're listening to this podcast and you're not happy in your current role, and you're like, I don't want to go work for a company anymore. There's a path, right, Amanda, where you could be a fractional CMO for two or three companies and probably make more money than you were before and work less hours or be more efficient in those hours. And so I think it's an interesting career path if you're a marketer and you're like, I'm tired of this one company thing. I could go do fractional CMO and rotate, but it sounds like the qualifier has got to be CEO, has to be involved and care and passionate about marketing. If it's like, we just want to outsource this, I'm not invested in this department.

Dave Gerhardt [00:39:19]:
I want to hire you to, like, babysit marketing and give me the updates. That's when it's not going to work out for you.

Amanda Goetz [00:39:24]:
Right, right. Exactly.

Dave Gerhardt [00:39:25]:
Okay, let's wrap up. What's your workout today?

Amanda Goetz [00:39:28]:
I'm trying to get my run time down, so I'm going to go do sprints. I am trying to get back to like a seven minute mile.

Dave Gerhardt [00:39:35]:
We'll see a seven minute mile.

Amanda Goetz [00:39:38]:
We're trying. I did it two years ago summer. I broke seven minutes and I was.

Dave Gerhardt [00:39:42]:
Like, okay, for 1 mile.

Amanda Goetz [00:39:43]:
Yeah. So I'm sprint training. So I have this little workout I do on the treadmill. It's 30 minutes, but it's a lot of sprint. Calm down for a minute. Sprint. So do that for 30 minutes, and then I'm just going to do arms today.

Dave Gerhardt [00:39:58]:
Oh, yeah. Friday afternoon, arm day. Let's go. Love that.

Amanda Goetz [00:40:02]:
I'm in Miami.

Dave Gerhardt [00:40:04]:
Yeah, of course. I have so much respect for that. And when you're running, when you're walking, when you're outside, are you headphones on? No. Headphones. First question, headphones. And what are you listening to?

Amanda Goetz [00:40:16]:
Taylor Swift all the time.

Dave Gerhardt [00:40:19]:
I've never heard of that person.

Amanda Goetz [00:40:20]:
I've never heard.

Dave Gerhardt [00:40:22]:
That's exciting. My wife and her friends are going to her show in Paris in a couple weeks.

Amanda Goetz [00:40:25]:
She's in Paris right now. Is she coming?

Dave Gerhardt [00:40:28]:
Or maybe it's neat. I don't even know. It's somewhere in France, and it's at the beginning of June or end of May.

Amanda Goetz [00:40:34]:
I'm so jealous. I might go to London. I've been once. I might go again.

Dave Gerhardt [00:40:38]:
Yeah, it's like they found this hack where it's cheaper to go to Paris. And they're like, well, we're going to Paris. I'm like, well, that's nice.

Amanda Goetz [00:40:44]:
The cheapest tickets I can find in Miami. She's coming to Miami on my birthday, $3,000. So I'm going to London.

Dave Gerhardt [00:40:50]:
No, let's get you a sponsor. Let's get you a newsletter. Sponsor, three granddaddy, one time placement. You could run a bundle. Get your Taylor Swift.

Amanda Goetz [00:40:58]:
You want to reach marketers, founders, and you want me to wear your logo at the Taylor Swift concert.

Dave Gerhardt [00:41:06]:
Yeah. You could be like Alex Lieberman did at the Michigan game with HubSpot, but this could be for Taylor Swift. All right, Amanda, good to see you. Thanks for hanging out. We'll plug all your stuff, people. Go find you on LinkedIn. We got to get your LinkedIn following.

Amanda Goetz [00:41:18]:
Please follow me on LinkedIn.

Dave Gerhardt [00:41:19]:
We got to get you back. Boost it up. All right, good to see you. Enjoy your weekend. Thanks for coming and hanging out with us on the exit five podcast.

Amanda Goetz [00:41:25]:
Exit five. Exit.