#233: Mastering Messaging, Copy, and Clarity with Emma Stratton

#234: Messaging | In this episode, Dave sits down with Emma Stratton, founder of Punchy, to break down what great B2B messaging actually looks like - and how to get it right. Emma has worked with hundreds of B2B tech companies to sharpen their positioning, eliminate vague copy, and train marketing teams to write with clarity and impact. They cover what makes messaging actually resonate and how to spot and fix abstract or weak copy. They also dive into Emma’s process for creating message-market fit, doing customer research, and working with execs and cross-functional teams.

And BONUS: they spend the last 20 minutes talking about personal development, productivity, journaling, and managing your mental energy to be a better marketer (and human).

Dave and Emma also cover:

• How to go from vague to punchy by writing with specificity and buyer empathy
• Why most B2B messaging falls flat and how to avoid the “sea of sameness”
• How to use customer interviews, sales calls, and concrete language to create strong messaging
• Why writing, meditation, and personal rituals are so important for creative energy

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro to Emma
  
• (04:38) - – What makes B2B messaging actually good
  
• (08:20) - – Common messaging mistakes (and why "clarity > clever")
  
• (11:18) - – Positioning vs. messaging: what’s the difference?
  
• (15:31) - – Why it's hard to name great B2B marketing examples
  
• (17:55) - – How to sharpen weak messaging and fix vague positioning statements
  
• (21:03) - – Simplifying complex products without dumbing it down
  
• (25:17) - – How to write for buyers (not just execs)
  
• (28:49) - – Using customer interviews and research to build strong messaging
  
• (33:27) - – Standing out in a crowded, buzzword-filled market
  
• (36:11) - – How storytelling fits into B2B messaging
  
• (39:17) - – Messaging advice for early-stage founders and startups
  
• (42:32) - – How often should you revisit and update messaging?
  
• (44:42) - – Productivity, managing your energy, and staying focused
  
• (47:57) - – Journaling, mindfulness, and being intentional with your time
  
• (51:52) - – Final takeaways

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Dave Gerhardt [00:00:00]:
You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt. All right, My guest on this episode is Emma Stratton. Emma Stratton is the founder of Punchy. Punchy is a consulting and training firm that helps fast growing B2B tech companies win. On positioning and messaging. We talked about how to write messaging that resonates with buyers, how to balance clarity versus creativity in messaging. How do you actually get a clear and compelling messaging? But the back half of this podcast, we actually spun off into a completely different direction, talking about how to be productive at work. We talked about things that I didn't expect to talk about, like going for a run, meditation, journaling, cold plunging.

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:53]:
It all seems silly, but it's had a huge impact on both of us. And it's a sneaky little podcast on how to be better and more productive and work on yourself, because that is one of the most underrated things in managing your career, is you got to learn how to manage yourself if you want to grow. We talk about that. So it's a little bit of marketing and personal development mixed into one podcast. Enjoy my conversation with Emma Stratton.

Emma Stratton [00:01:15]:
I'm Emma Stratton. I'm the founder of a training firm and consultancy called Punchy that focuses solely on positioning and messaging for B2B tech companies, high growth companies. So I, you know, work with teams on refining their messaging, developing it, and I also train marketing teams at all kinds of software companies how to do messaging as well. And I wrote a book on messaging called make it Punchy. So all about messaging, baby.

Dave Gerhardt [00:01:45]:
Love it. I love it. All right. I love copywriting. I love writing. Over the years, a lot of people have, hey, do you do any training? And I've always thought, man, I'm not smart enough to be able to train somebody else on how I write. And, you know, writing and copywriting and messaging is such an art form. How do you train that? But at the same time, I've always thought, like, yeah, if you could have a way of doing things and you could train others on it, like, there is a huge appetite for training marketing teams on messaging and on copy.

Dave Gerhardt [00:02:16]:
So how did you create that?

Emma Stratton [00:02:17]:
There really is. So, I mean, I don't know exactly what the phrase is, but it's like that next level of understanding a subject is when you can teach it to someone else. And that's totally true. I think for me, it started organically. First it was me, you know, starting out my business, deciding to help, you know, startups and tech companies with their messaging and just Figuring out how to do it myself. So there's like a couple years of, all right, how do I do this? I mean, I'm a natural born writer, but not naturally born to write for tech companies. I mean, who is? So I had some basic skills, but I had to figure out how to do it. Then you have that intuitive knowledge and how do you kind of get that out of your head and help other people? So when I started growing my team and I had a writer who was taking over the writing I used to do, I had to figure out how to tell her what I was looking for.

Emma Stratton [00:03:09]:
So that helps me kind of understand, okay, what does good messaging look like? How do you actually describe it and direct it to someone so that they can do it?

Dave Gerhardt [00:03:17]:
It's like a gift and a curse, right? I struggled with this at one of the companies that I worked at, which is like the founder and others in the company, they always wanted me to write the emails. Like, it's gotta be your voice. Like, you're. And that's amazing. It's flattering. It's great. They work. But.

Dave Gerhardt [00:03:31]:
But that's no way to live because then you just become a bottleneck and, you know, essentially, like, despite my job title was like VP of marketing, but I was essentially like copy editor for like, oh, we got this email going out tomorrow. Well, has Dave looked at it? It's funny now, but that's just like, poor training on my part. Right? Like, that's no way to run a company.

Emma Stratton [00:03:50]:
I think it's really common. You know, you find someone who's got the gift and you just, you're like, you do this because you know how to do this. And to everyone else, it's a mystery. And I, When I thought about delegating and getting someone else on my team to actually do the writing, at first I was like, oh, is someone else going to be able to do what I can do? Like, I just do this. I don't know how someone else can just do this. And it took a bit of time, but it forced me to figure out how to articulate, this is what we're going for. This is the style. This is how it needs to be.

Emma Stratton [00:04:20]:
And through coaching her, it actually helped me better understand, okay, what does good messaging look like? What's the standard here? And working with teams for a while, I realized, hey, no one really knows how to do this. Like you said, most teams has like a couple people who are just naturally good at it, that they ask them to do everything. And everyone else feels like they're not good at it, or they wish they were better at it. So I thought, all right, I think there's an opportunity here to train teams. And actually, it was a team that came to me and said, hey, could you train Our team of 20 product marketers how to do messaging? And I was like, all right, I'm gonna do it. And I just took my best crack at really breaking it down into simple, practical techniques like, do this, and then you will get a good result. I'm not a big fan of, like, theory and kind of getting into all the philosophy of it. I'm into, hey, do this, and then you will get a good outcome.

Emma Stratton [00:05:23]:
Here's, you know, a framework, here's a formula, here's a way of thinking that anyone can do and get a good result. So honestly, David took years of in the trenches and then refining and working with people and seeing what resonated. It took years to do. It's not easy.

Dave Gerhardt [00:05:41]:
So basically, your thing is messaging. Right. Lots of folks have come on this podcast talking about position. There's positioning.

Emma Stratton [00:05:48]:
Yes.

Dave Gerhardt [00:05:49]:
There's messaging. There's copywriting. I often use the term storytelling. You intentionally use the word messaging. Let's talk about that. What is messaging?

Emma Stratton [00:05:58]:
Yeah, so messaging is really that handful of sentences, core messages that really encapsulate and bring to life your positioning, but articulates that unique value that you really offer a certain set of. Of customers. So to me, I define it as really, it's the first step of positioning actually coming into life. Right. Positioning is like a strategic document. Positioning is making decisions about how we're going to put ourselves in the market and who we're up against. But messaging is the first time that actually turns into words. So it's that handful of sentences that really capture what makes you unique and why people should care.

Emma Stratton [00:06:41]:
And it directs all the copywriting and content that comes from there.

Dave Gerhardt [00:06:46]:
So that's what it is. That is the kind of like, you know, textbook definition. Now we get into the actual hard part, which is how are you unique? How are you different? What makes the messaging good, especially in B2B? And I've been writing and talking about this a lot lately, but it's harder to stand out than ever before.

Emma Stratton [00:07:05]:
Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:07:05]:
And I think that curve is going to continue. And so when it comes to messaging, how do you do that? How do you stand out? I think this is the number one question right now is how do you show that you're different? And then the hard part is, even if you are different or better or whatever, your thing is that you're gonna claim people don't believe it because marketers are, you know, we're doing our job, we're marketing things. Right. I can tell you that my thing is the fastest. And even if I tell you it's the fastest, you're gonna be like, yeah, but I mean, he wants to get me to buy it, so of course he's gonna say it's the fastest. Fastest, right?

Emma Stratton [00:07:37]:
Right, yeah, that's the million dollar question. Dave, I agree with you that I think messaging gets harder every year. Differentiation gets harder every year. I feel like when I started doing this in like 2016, it was kind of hard then, but now it's really hard because there's so many more people in the market. And I think differentiation is this thing that people are obsessed with. You know, they're like, if I can just nail differentiation, like, all of our problems are going to go away. That's what I hear from people. And it's not as simple as a differentiated message.

Emma Stratton [00:08:15]:
Like you said, that's not going to do it just by saying something that maybe is different. Because then you have this whole situation where everyone's just copying everybody's websites and messages. Like, it's so bad now. I mean, people used to do it by failing. It's even worse now, which makes this expectation that, like, hey, I'm gonna come up with a value prop at the top of top marquee and it's gonna differentiate us. It's like, no, that's putting unreasonable demands on a sentence or two. So I think people need to get real about differentiation. And it's not just the message.

Emma Stratton [00:08:50]:
Like, it's the product, it's the customer. You know, it's the experience. Experience that you're giving people. Yes. It's also the marketing, it's the content. So differentiation is bigger than just what the message is. I think what people really struggle with and that would really help them is to have a clear positioning, to not try and say, we're going to be this for everyone, or we're going to stand for X, Y, Z and ABC for everyone. I think that's the thing that people struggle with.

Emma Stratton [00:09:22]:
They don't want to narrow down in any way. They want to leave everything open. I was working with this earlier stage, this company the other day, and they were already having issues with trying to serve everyone and talking about a product that is like five years away. I was trying to rein them back from marketing to everyone, and they're like, but wait, but what about those Personas we don't even no we're gonna sell to yet.

Dave Gerhardt [00:09:51]:
Get out of Silicon Valley. Is this real?

Emma Stratton [00:09:53]:
They weren't even a Silicon Valley startup. That's the scary thing, you know, and I was just like, people, no, you know, they had this one audience that was great that there was still so much room to grow that they could have had an amazing message for them, but they didn't want to do it. They wanted to water down the message and speak, speak to like everyone that might one day want to buy this product. And so their messaging got really generic. I really feel like this is the thing that no one wants to do. And if people would just do it, they would have a more differentiated message because everyone's trying to, you know, be all the things for everyone.

Dave Gerhardt [00:10:31]:
Funny enough, this morning I was listening to an interview with Seth Godin and he was talking about one of the key parts of a successful product or business is being able to turn people away and articulate who you're not for. And he's like, you know, somebody shows up at the Ferrari dealership and well, I've never been to the Ferrari dealership. I drive a RAV4, but somebody shows up at the Ferrari dealership and they say, yeah, I want, you know, something great. I got six kids and I need to take them all to school every morning. Well, the Ferrari salesperson is not going to try to, you know, jam them into a Ferrari. They're gonna be like, yeah, why don't you just get back in your car and go drive down the street to the Volvo dealership?

Emma Stratton [00:11:07]:
Right?

Dave Gerhardt [00:11:07]:
And I thought that was great because I do think that it is as important as that you can articulate who you're not for to find out who you're for. And one of the challenges though, and I've seen this in my career, is like, there's kind of like this wave of companies, especially in the venture backed company world, where you start off as a point solution with a very clearly defined customer Persona, icp, niche, whatever you want to call it, and then you sell to multiple Personas and then, you know, five, 10 years down the road, I think it's almost easier to be better at messaging as a startup, as a, you know, a challenger brand. Right? Totally. Like, totally. It's when you have, you know, $100 million in revenue and all these different product lines and different VPs with different incentives, that's where it starts to get really hard.

Emma Stratton [00:11:51]:
And here's the thing, you know, when I've worked with earlier stage companies, I don't know if You've noticed this. They're like, let's do messaging. Like Salesforce does messaging. Messaging. Let's organize our website the way, I don't know, Oracle Salesforce comes up a lot. And I'm like, no. Salesforce has their own problems, which you just described, Dave. Of all the products, all the industries, all the Personas, you have such an advantage as an earlier stage company where you are a point solution and you have a defined audience and you can write awesome messaging because of that.

Emma Stratton [00:12:23]:
So people often ask me like, oh, what companies do you like with their messaging? And I have a hard time answering that.

Dave Gerhardt [00:12:30]:
Oh, this question is the bane of my existence.

Emma Stratton [00:12:32]:
Oh, thank you. I was afraid you were gonna ask me. I was like, oh, no, no, no.

Dave Gerhardt [00:12:37]:
It is with me. It's like, because I have a marketing community, I have a career in marketing. My whole brand is marketing. Like, I'm supposed to just be able to like rifle off three brands that do great marketing right now.

Emma Stratton [00:12:48]:
Because I'm like, have I failed? You know, am I some failure? Because I don't have sticks to just stick. Thank you, Dave.

Dave Gerhardt [00:12:54]:
Because you know what? I don't pay attention. I only pay attention to, like, when I'm in the funnel for something. My brain is like, I'm running a business, I got children. I'd like to do other things. I don't have a list, honestly. I'm not kidding, Emma. Two years ago, I made like a note in my phone of Apple Notes. Like, I was going on this podcast and it was when I had my book Founder brand come out, Plug Founder brand.

Dave Gerhardt [00:13:16]:
And they were like, can you recommend some people that are great to follow on LinkedIn?

Emma Stratton [00:13:19]:
And I'm like, I hate that question.

Dave Gerhardt [00:13:21]:
I can't. I really can't. I open the feed and I see who's there and you know, there's not. Also, like, I just end up hating everyone. I'm sorry. Don't meet your idols. Like, everyone has flaws. And so there is my other least favorite question is like, dead or alive, three people you'd go out to dinner with?

Emma Stratton [00:13:38]:
Oh, God, like, I don't know.

Dave Gerhardt [00:13:41]:
No one. How about I'll just my wife and I, or maybe I'll go sit by myself at the bar. Is that a good answer?

Emma Stratton [00:13:46]:
I know. Oh, my God, I love that. Thank you so much. I feel extremely validated now. Now I'm going to just be. Be like, no, I don't have one for you.

Dave Gerhardt [00:13:55]:
Sorry, I don't, I don't. Or like, you know, you just be an investor and Just like pump your portfolio. That would be the way to do it.

Emma Stratton [00:14:00]:
That's right. That's right.

Dave Gerhardt [00:14:04]:
Love that. All right. I don't even know where we were from this. I don't know.

Emma Stratton [00:14:07]:
We were talking about something about messaging.

Dave Gerhardt [00:14:11]:
So you mentioned early, before we started recording, like, you work mainly with B2B SaaS now, but you came up, you know, working with kind of P2B non SaaS. We get a lot of questions in Exit Five as we've grown. Like people want more of non SaaS. And you said something. I want to hopefully get you to say it again on the record. But it seems like SaaS or not, those two things are not as different as you might think.

Emma Stratton [00:14:37]:
Absolutely. They're really similar. So I used to work in consumer. That's where I started. I was living in the UK and I was working on consumer packaged goods, writing, packaging, copy and coming up with like personalities for like sausages and toilet paper and sex toys, like all kinds of things. And I moved back to the States and I had a baby at the time, so I was like, I just need the shortest commute possible. Like, that was my number one criteria. And so I worked at this kind of sleepy B2B marketing agency that had quietly been existing for like 20 years.

Emma Stratton [00:15:14]:
No one kind of really knew who they were, but all of their clients were kind of traditional business to business, like pest control, chemicals manufacturing, I can't remember, like, you know, machinery parts. Just. You've never heard of these companies, right? And some of these companies are still running print ads. I mean, this is back in 2012, but, you know, they're running print ads in trade journals and getting decent returns. Right. Kind of different. You know, I'm coming from like proctoring gamble now. It's like pest control.

Emma Stratton [00:15:47]:
I'm like, what? So that was the whole thing, like B2B. Oh, my gosh. But because I was sort of not, I don't know, naive or I was like, look, I don't see how this is totally different from what I was doing in B2C, where it's like I'm trying to connect with a consumer. I'm trying to figure out who they are and come up with something that kind of connects with that. So that was kind of like I saw, okay, there are some similarities, right? But then my first big client with this agency randomly was an enterprise data management company. It was a company that had recently IPO'd. They had great software, but their messaging was really complicated. And so I started helping them.

Emma Stratton [00:16:31]:
And that's where I realized, oh, my God, the tech world has a really, really big problem with explaining what they sell and writing a story and acknowledging that they're selling to humans. But I find that, you know, in the other B2B industries, it's similar, right? We're all talking about features, we're all talking about the things we produce, right? Whether that is SaaS, software or metal machinery, right? Those are all our products. And we talk about this specs of the products, we talk about what we sell, and then maybe we talk about ourselves as a company. And kind of everyone does that in B2B. And the goal to have better messaging and better marketing is to remember that, hey, you're trying to talk to the potential buyer or customer, and you want to talk about them, not you. And you want to get out of your features and your product. Don't just go there straight away. Give people a reason to understand why they should care about it in the first place.

Emma Stratton [00:17:33]:
Draw them in a bit. You can get to your products and feature specs later. So it's the same problems that I see in B2B. I think each industry has its own jargon, right? Each industry has its own lingo and buzzwords and things that they're putting out there that maybe are a bit meaningless and unhelpful for the customer or the reader, but kind of we just put it out there anyway. I mean, that happens in SaaS big time, but it happens in other industries as well. The words are just different. Like, you know, health care, they've got their buzzwords, they've got their phrases that kind of make the messaging less human and relatable. So I think there are some common challenges that all B2B companies are dealing with when it comes to their messaging.

Dave Gerhardt [00:18:21]:
How do you chip away at vague messaging? How do you start to peel back the layers there? Right? We talked about differentiation a little bit before, but if you come to someone, like, what would be the exercise you run through to someone? Like, if the messaging kind of seems a little bit weak or a little bit vague, how do we make that thing punchy?

Emma Stratton [00:18:39]:
Yeah, this is what I'm obsessed with teaching people about this. This is when I get my English teacher, like, glasses on, and I'm like, okay, first, I think it's really important that people understand what abstraction is. What is an abstract word? Abstract words are what make things vague. It's the bane of our existence in B2B messaging. So words that end in shun, like, I don't know, operationalization or, like, you know, all these Ridiculous words that we put out in business. And you're like, what does that actually mean? Right? That is an abstraction. Strategic solution. Okay, That's a great example of an abstraction.

Emma Stratton [00:19:20]:
What is that? Right? You're like, okay, I kind of know what that means, but what is that? And the tell is, can you picture in your mind what a strategic solution is? Now, Dave, if I asked you what you're picturing for strategic solution, it's probably something slightly different than what I'm picturing. And that's the problem with abstract language. People don't really know what it means. And everyone's kind of coming up and filling in the dots of sort of what that means in their mind. And so that's vagueness. The opposite of abstraction is concrete language. And being concrete is how you make a message go from vague. What does that even mean? To something really specific.

Emma Stratton [00:20:02]:
So here's my example of abstract versus concrete. So an abstraction would be high performance. I'm like, high performance, what does that mean to you? And I ask people this at talks. What are you picturing? Some people might be like, oh, a race car. I'm thinking of an energy drink. I'm thinking of a sales team. I'm thinking of an athlete. Right? So there's all these different ways to really think about what high performance means.

Emma Stratton [00:20:25]:
It's abstract, it's unhelpful. Now, if I say V8 engine, everyone's like, okay, I'm kind of picturing the same thing, like a powerful engine. So a V8 engine is the concrete version of high performance. Rather than leaving it vague, I'm getting concrete and I'm getting specific. I'm saying V8 engine, and we're all picturing the same thing. So you apply that to messaging. A great way to do that is to ask yourself, okay, what does this actually look like in the context of my buyer's lived experience? How does this actually show up? So the example I use, and it's a bit sassy, but it would be real time visibility for a financial platform. We're like, hey, it's got real time visibility.

Emma Stratton [00:21:09]:
And we think that just says it. All right, done. Real time visibility. Well, to a head of finance, they, like, kind of might know what that means. But nothing about real time visibility is making them be like, oh, my God, I gotta get this thing right. Because it's vague. It's just like, okay, so if we want to get concrete, we think, okay, what does that real time visibility actually look like through the eyes of our head of finance in their day to day life. Well, it's.

Emma Stratton [00:21:36]:
Now you can see all your financials from different accounts in one place, or.

Dave Gerhardt [00:21:41]:
I'll give you another one today, the equivalent of that is AI powered.

Emma Stratton [00:21:44]:
Oh, God, don't get. Don't get me started on AI.

Dave Gerhardt [00:21:47]:
Purpose built. Purpose built for X.

Emma Stratton [00:21:50]:
Exactly. It's like, what does that mean? So if you actually think, okay, what does this look like in my buyer's life through their eyes, now, that requires a bit of translation. How it looks to them is not going to be how it looks to you as someone who works at the company, you know, or someone who's built the thing. It takes some translation, but that's what messaging is really about. It's translating a complex technology into something that your buyer can simply grasp and understand to need that translation. So whenever you write something and someone else reads it and they're like, what does that mean? Just ask yourself, okay, what does this actually mean to my buyer? Like, what does this actually look like? How can I put it in a way that they're actually going to understand that will force you to get more concrete and specific. I think the tough thing is, and, you know, I see this with teams when I work with them. I think we're always trying to be exciting and we're trying to convey innovation, you know, and so we kind of go to these big words and these fancy, seemingly fancy phrases to try and get people to listen, and, hey, we're innovative.

Emma Stratton [00:23:00]:
And it really just confuses people and they just kind of move on because it doesn't mean anything.

Dave Gerhardt [00:23:06]:
What's the best information that informs good messaging?

Emma Stratton [00:23:10]:
Yeah, I mean, there's two things that I love the most when I do messaging engagements. I mean, the first is talking to customers and prospects. Right. I mean, that is really the best. And doing it with a messaging lens. So this isn't the kind of interview you would have with a customer to write a case study. This is really talking to someone and digging into the challenges they were facing, kind of the triggers for actually looking for a solution, the benefits that they've experienced, the value in their own words. Not only do you kind of understand what really matters to customers, you can kind of that can help shape your hierarchy, but their language can help you actually write messaging and keep you honest to make sure you're writing messaging that's kind of in their language.

Emma Stratton [00:24:01]:
So customer interviews are the best, but I recognize that not everyone has access to customers or time to do it. Sometimes that's a big ask. So the next thing I always do, you know, Most of the companies I work with have sales teams. I speak to salespeople because they are, if you think about it, kind of running their own messaging tests. Like every day, all day. They're just like, you know, trying stuff in conversation, they're trying stuff in emails, they're talking to prospects and they have a really down to earth realistic outlook on what potential customers care about, what they're looking for. And that can really help with shaping messaging as well. So those are my two favorite inputs for messaging that I always, always use if I can.

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:51]:
How do you get over like consensus and committees in writing messaging? Because it's, you can always tell when, when you wrote kind of the safest copy, the safest headline. There's so much that can be data driven in marketing today and we like to make decisions based on customer insights and data. But so much of this is, it is a craft, it is having taste, it is being able to say like I got a crazy idea, here's the thing that we're going to say. And being able to have, you know, five people inside your company disagree with you but you ship it and it ends up working out. And you're like haha, no, we would never do that. We would be like, well you know, you know, things happen. But you know what I'm trying to get at? Like I want to just shed more light onto the art of this. There's so much science in marketing today, but there is a little bit of an art involved at the same time.

Emma Stratton [00:25:39]:
There is so much art and to be honest. And look, I do training. I mean that's the most of what I do now. I really love it. So I've trained the marketing teams at all the tech companies you've heard of. I've run training with those teams and we spend half a day doing writing exercises in small groups and sharing. I mean I love it. Like it reminds me of my creative writing classes.

Emma Stratton [00:26:03]:
We're just writing and sharing and it's a space out of a busy day where you can do that and people get so lit up, they have such a good time and they come up with such amazing ideas and they're so excited to kind of use it moving forward. But the thing that kills me, Dave, is that it's so rare. That experience is not common in most people's day to day in marketing. What I actually see a lot of these folks up against is yeah, the committees coming in, the pressure to deliver. So you don't even have any time to be creative. Legal coming in with a red Pen and sort of deleting everything or the brand Team, right? Some other kind of team stifling creativity. And so I think you're really lucky if you're in a company that makes space for the art of messaging, because creativity does take space. Good writing takes space.

Emma Stratton [00:27:02]:
I think, you know that, Dave, like, you can pump stuff out, but, like, those really inspired ideas and headlines come from a breath, a pause, you're taking a walk, you have some space, space from it. And I think a lot of teams are just, you know, being pushed really hard, and it's hard to come by the space that the art needs. So that's one thing that I see. The other thing, the other side to it being art is that's why everyone loves coming in with their opinions. Everyone secretly wants to be the one with the great headline. Like, even the people who, quote, unquote, aren't creative. I think everyone kind of wants that because it is creative. And I think that's why people are attracted to kind of giving their feedback.

Emma Stratton [00:27:48]:
And I also think that's why it can be hard to not have all the opinions coming in, because everyone wants to be involved. Like, everyone wants to be the one that comes up with the great headline or the great name. You know, I've seen that just over the years. That's just what I've seen. So it is art, but I think that's what makes it hard to do it in your job.

Dave Gerhardt [00:28:14]:
How does all the evolution with AI play into the world of messaging?

Emma Stratton [00:28:20]:
Yeah, I mean, I asked myself that same question. Where is it going to go? I mean, right now I think the best use of it is polishing up, you know, helping you kind of come up with different versions or tightening something, seeing what it comes up with. And of course, writing mundane emails for you. I mean, there are some things where it's working really well, but messaging is different. So, you know, messaging often gets mixed up with copywriting or people kind of use the two interchangeably. Right. But messaging is that first manifestation of positioning. It is more strategic than it is just about wordsmithing.

Emma Stratton [00:29:01]:
And it is about kind of making these decisions. What are we going to stand for and how are we going to say it so it comes through and what are we going to focus on versus all the things? And so there's a strategic element. And that's why at the moment, I don't think you can just hand it over to AI. AI is kind of wordsmithing, right? It's riffing on words, but there's a strategic element where you have to make those decisions in messaging that I wouldn't hand over to the bots just yet.

Dave Gerhardt [00:29:32]:
What about just like on the research and ideation process? Right. Like, I don't want to automate all of my messaging, but I found that one thing that helps me as a writer is I'm able to take large amounts of data and synthesize some of the lessons and learnings and findings. And so that could be, you know, recordings from 50 customer calls. Right. Let's pull out the trends in there. Where before, I think it's important to listen to customer calls because you hear the pain in somebody's voice. But I remember the last marketing leadership job I had, I would have the Gong app on my phone and for the first couple weeks of that job, I would just listen to those instead of podcasts. It was incredibly boring, but very insightful and it helped me become better at positioning and messaging for the company.

Dave Gerhardt [00:30:17]:
But today I could basically pull out key themes from all of that. And ultimately I feel like it's true that great writing is great editing and the ability to like whittle down and chip away at a lot of this information is where you get that punchy copy and punchy messaging from.

Emma Stratton [00:30:34]:
Yeah, definitely. It is great for kind of throwing it in and getting those high level themes and especially lots of sales calls. And if you did tons of customer interviews, I will say this is probably just my age. Even I will do that. But I will still listen to all the customer interviews and I will still print them out on paper and read them and I just still will. And that's more about my brain. To do my job, I need the input in my brain. So yeah, I print things out still sometimes, you know, and it really, really works for, for me.

Dave Gerhardt [00:31:10]:
So for some of you listening at home, a printer is this. You connect it to your computer and you're able to get the things from your computer onto paper. It's. It's much different.

Emma Stratton [00:31:22]:
Do you print anything out, Dave?

Dave Gerhardt [00:31:24]:
I do. Depends on what I'm doing. So yeah, I print out my tax forms. No, but, but here's an example. Like we're doing an event in Boston in a couple weeks and I'm interviewing three people and I have prep notes for that. I don't like to sit up on stage with my phone or with my iPad. There's something about physical paper and so I'll print that out. And I like to scribble and take notes.

Dave Gerhardt [00:31:49]:
And actually more telling than printing is like I write notes like as I'm Interviewing you and talking. And I'm very. I have a bunch of notes all over and so, like, I'm very bullish on AI. I love the tools, but I'm also still analog, Dave. Like, I have written in a journal every day for like eight years, I believe. Yeah. Huh. And my daughter's just getting to be able to read now, and I'm a little bit worried that she's gonna find all these, you know, journals and read them.

Dave Gerhardt [00:32:15]:
But I do think that there's something about the physical writing that I think it's really important for humanity not to lose. And I think there's some brainwave connection that you make when you, when you write things down. So like, sometimes if I'm just stuck on something, I need to just print something out and write it down or I found that my best writing. Anytime I need to make a presentation, even if I'm going to use AI to make the presentation, I got to write it down first. I have a whiteboard in my office. I'll have a notebook. I got to start there because I just feel like some of the tools, it's too structured. And I think ideas need to be more free form and flowing.

Dave Gerhardt [00:32:47]:
So I do still print things and I do still write things down.

Emma Stratton [00:32:50]:
I love it. I totally agree. Humanity needs to keep writing analog. May I ask what you write, what your journaling practice is?

Dave Gerhardt [00:32:58]:
Absolutely. It's about time somebody asked me a question back on this damn podcast. Gosh. So I have two notebooks that I keep. One of them is. And this is. I've learned this process over years. And so one of the notebooks is like my work notebook.

Dave Gerhardt [00:33:11]:
And I found that before I go to bed at some point at night, usually around like once I get my kids to bed, which you know, is between 7 and 10pm Very wide, very wide ranging window. I like to write out my plan for the next day because I feel like it just gets it out of my head and it allows me to just like be home and just be chill and do whatever. And so I'll just kind of like sit there with my laptop, look at my computer. I'm gonna write down my kind of three or four big things I want to get done for the next day. I'll write em down and then boom, it's in that notebook. Get outta my head then. The journal is something that I've kept basically every day, either that night or the next day. I just recap what I did the day before.

Emma Stratton [00:33:49]:
Wow.

Dave Gerhardt [00:33:50]:
And it could be three paragraphs, it could be two Lines. Or it could be like three pages if I'm on a plane. Like, my wife and I went to New York over the weekend, and I had 40 minutes on the flight, and I just decided to put, like a long journal entry in there now. And I usually just write about what's going on at this point in life, what we did today, basically the flow of the day, anything interesting that that happened, any funny things at a kid said to me or something that happened in life. And I hate doing it. I really don't enjoy it. But the value in it is, like, being able to look back at it later. I love myself that I did it, because I'll just go grab a random notebook and I'll just be like, hanging out with my wife.

Dave Gerhardt [00:34:30]:
I'll be like, check this out. July 2021, you know, Tuesday, July 10, 2021. And I go to my journal from that day. And we were both instantly transported back to that day. We were, you know, up all night because I got food poisoning because some garbage that I ate. And then here's how this happened. And then that was the day that I quit my job. And then you can pair that with, like.

Dave Gerhardt [00:34:53]:
Then you go to your phone and you type, you search that date on your phone and you can see photos from that day. And so I think it gives me this unbelievable log and history of life. It's just a cool little running way to do it. I've tried doing it, like on a computer, on Apple Notes, on Google Docs. There's something about just, like, having that and then also, like, back to the analog point. I want my kids to see me using a pen and paper at the same time. I'm very, you know, much on my laptop all the time. I want them to see me writing things down.

Dave Gerhardt [00:35:21]:
And it's just a little habit that I like. And now that I have done it so long, I feel like I can't break the streak. In fact, I just realized that I didn't write in my journal last night. And so after this later today, I gotta go fill in yesterday at some point.

Emma Stratton [00:35:33]:
Oh, I love that. That's so cool. I mean, I really struggle with journaling. I've, like, tried and abandoned it. You're inspiring me to. Cause I thought that would be really cool.

Dave Gerhardt [00:35:41]:
Well, there's a bunch of methods I kind of have found, like, sort of like meditation. I don't know if you do any of that.

Emma Stratton [00:35:47]:
I do. Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:35:48]:
I do it all. Cold plunge, sauna, meditation, grounding, breath work, journaling, all the nonsense. Do you Mostly, Yeah, mostly. I'm not joking about anything that I said there.

Emma Stratton [00:35:58]:
I do all of that too. I mean, I do all the things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:36:01]:
And they work. People like to joke about it and, you know, shit on you online. But I think that our brains just like, run crazy. And I do believe, believe that, like, controlling your stress and control, like a lot of the stuff that happens in life is really just made up in your mind. And if you can control that a little bit more. I do that through exercise. I do that through getting in the cold plunge. I do that through sauna, through journaling, whatever.

Dave Gerhardt [00:36:22]:
Like, I have seen a amazing impact on my life. And I have friends or family or colleagues or whoever, other people in life who have a lot of issues. And I think that you can manage a lot of that stuff by working on yourself and doing it through those methods. So I do that. The thing about journaling, though, like, meditation is like, I feel like when I try to stick to somebody else's way, like, for me, like, meditation stuck when I can just like, oh, yeah. The goal is really just to sit there for 10 minutes.

Emma Stratton [00:36:48]:
Yes.

Dave Gerhardt [00:36:49]:
I don't need somebody's mantra. I don't need a guided. It's just like the act is sit there for 10 minutes and each time your brain races to, like, nonsense you got to do later, you just come back to right now. And so I've done all the journals, I've done the bullet journal, I've done the five minute gratitude journal. And like, I did that for like 60 days and like each day write the same things that I'm grateful for. It's like, I don't want to do this. This is nonsense. And so I just write, you know, I just write a little recap of the day.

Dave Gerhardt [00:37:15]:
And I try to, like, if I have some time, I try to take a minute and like, write down the things that I'm thankful for and, you know, write down what my goals are and, you know, repeat that. But I found that I don't like to repeat a lot of that stuff. I just like to kind of like document what's going on and how I'm feeling. And then also you can also, if you don't want to keep, like the daily journal, I've just found, like, if you're super stressed out or you're just pissed off or you're grumpy, just get a piece of paper. It doesn't have to like, live in a journal and just like write out all the things that are making you mad. And then it Just gets out of somehow. It's like amazing. It just gets out of your body and onto paper.

Emma Stratton [00:37:47]:
Yeah, I love it. Then you could just. You could burn it. I.

Dave Gerhardt [00:37:50]:
You could burn it, throw it in the fire. That's right.

Emma Stratton [00:37:52]:
No, I love what you're talking about. I mean, there is power in handwriting. I mean, I love that you make this point of writing with pencil and paper for your kids. And it's different. Like, not only do you think differently when you're handwriting and it kind of changes what's going on in your mind, but I believe, like, real inspiration kind of frees up and can come through. Did you ever read, like Writing down the Bones?

Dave Gerhardt [00:38:18]:
No. What is it?

Emma Stratton [00:38:20]:
Oh, you should. It's classic Natalie Goldberg. It's one of those classic. It's sort of like Zen Buddhism and writing, creative writing. And each chapter, some of them are really short and they're standalone, so you can just pick it up and just read one. And she talks about morning pages where you write, you know, you just have journals and you just like every morning you just write and just let that flow go. But she draws a lot of parallels between the two and it's super cool. So recommend that.

Dave Gerhardt [00:38:50]:
I love that. I just think it's so easy to just be so reactive all day and to slack in emails and social media and to just take a minute and be able to sit down and write and not just like context switch all day.

Emma Stratton [00:39:04]:
It's not healthy what the world we're the world we're in and kind of the technology and Slack and the just bombardment of stuff and information and potential triggers and all of that. You really have to be mindful. You've got to set up those boundaries and find that quiet space for yourself. Totally.

Dave Gerhardt [00:39:23]:
I think for anybody listening, though, I think also it's just like this. I believe in this like constant act of just like working on yourself and finding the right way for you to work. And so I just started to notice this pattern of me. It was like, man, I get to the end of the day and I'm like, I have an amazing life. I have the easiest job in the world. I live a very soft life. I talk about marketing on. In Slack and zoom.

Dave Gerhardt [00:39:47]:
Like, what the heck am I so stressed out about? I was like, oh, your brain is not wired to be like Slack message, tech, message, email. Your brain feels like you're in war. Like it's insane. And so this is all self selected. And so I'm like, oh, maybe Dave, you shouldn't like check Slack every five Minutes, right? Maybe don't check your email every. It's literally like I'm just in my inbox, like, looking. I'm like, waiting for somebody. Waiting for somebody to piss me off, you know, it's so dumb.

Dave Gerhardt [00:40:18]:
First, like, I found that the best way for me to work is like, I have one or two big rocks, big projects a day. I spend two or three hours on them and I work out already, my day's gonna be good. Then I go and do that. One or two big projects checked off the big thing. Then I can go spend an hour getting through my slack messages, getting through email, checking in on the team, making sure everybody's good. Just do that once or twice a day. I've noticed a humor, humongous difference in, like, how I feel, and I gotta work at it. I haven't done a good job of that today, as an example.

Dave Gerhardt [00:40:51]:
It doesn't happen every day. I'm not perfect. I gotta work on it. But I do think this, and I think so much of, you know, to tie this a little bit back to our conversation about just like work and marketing and life is one of the things that I think I learned a little bit late, you know, as I continue to progress in my career, is just like, you have to be able to manage yourself, right? No one is going to manage your work for you. We just had a conversation with, there's six people on our team at Exit Five, and we have like a flexible, you know, time off policy where like, you don't get like 14 days or whatever. It's like, it's on you. And I shared with the team, I was like, look, I need you all to be grownups and be adults and like, you gotta be able to take time off. You have to be able to regulate yourself.

Dave Gerhardt [00:41:34]:
Because what happens is. And I'm guilty of this too. This is like my toxic trachea. My toxic trait is like, work so hard, right? But it happens to all of us. Like, yeah, it's been like six months. If you haven't taken one day off and you wonder why, you're burnt out. And so I do think a big part of, like, the thing that we don't talk about a lot enough at work is just like, your ability to, like, regulate yourself and manage yourself and manage your workload and manage your stress plays a humongous. That's probably twice in the last three minutes I've said humongous now, but it does.

Dave Gerhardt [00:42:03]:
It plays a humongous role in your happiness and how you do at work. And by the way if you're less stressed and things are a little bit slower, you have more time to be creative and to make your things punchy. Emma. Right, like, that's right.

Emma Stratton [00:42:18]:
You can't.

Dave Gerhardt [00:42:18]:
It doesn't happen. This is what my biggest thing is. I hate. I hate. You're probably the same way I hate the brainstorm meeting. I'm not good at brainstorming on the spot. You want to call me up and get some ideas from me, you're not going to get them. We need to have a conversation about it.

Dave Gerhardt [00:42:31]:
Then you need to give me two or three or seven or 21 days and I gotta go away. And then boom. Oh, I got it. Right. That's just how work happens. But you don't create that environment if it's like Slack email. Slack email, Twitter, LinkedIn, DM meeting. It's insane, right? It's insane.

Emma Stratton [00:42:48]:
Yeah. No, I'm all for that. Kind of. You know, my biggest productivity hack is just going on a run, right? There are those times where I'm like, okay, should I just sit at this computer and, like, grind out a couple more things, or should I just say fuck it and go on a run? And I will go on that run. I will have ideas, I will just capture them, like mid run, and I will. I will achieve more by going on that run than I would have sitting at my computer.

Dave Gerhardt [00:43:13]:
Exactly. And you've never felt bad when you said, fuck it, I should go on a run? You've never been like, damn it, I wish I didn't do that.

Emma Stratton [00:43:19]:
No. I wish I had stayed at my computer on Slack.

Dave Gerhardt [00:43:22]:
Because you feel amazing, right? You get the endorphins and all that stuff. You feel amazing from it. But also you often get ideas from that.

Emma Stratton [00:43:29]:
I always get ideas. Always. I always just, you know, open up voice recorder, just record my ideas. They just flow in a way that they just do not flow when I'm at my desk.

Dave Gerhardt [00:43:40]:
Yeah. You should hear how many breathless voice notes I have in my phone.

Emma Stratton [00:43:46]:
That's what I'm like.

Dave Gerhardt [00:43:47]:
I'm like, all right, so here's the deal. I got the idea. It's not AI powered, It's purpose built. It's this. Yeah. It's literally my life. Yeah.

Emma Stratton [00:43:57]:
I have like thousands of messages like that in the exact same way.

Dave Gerhardt [00:44:02]:
But it's funny, I always have this feeling like, oh, my gosh, I need to document this because if I don't, I'm going to forget it. Then at the same time, you don't ever forget it. But I'm Never confident enough to just let myself. I like to document it so I can get out of my head. Otherwise I got to, I'm thinking about it until I get back to my computer. Right.

Emma Stratton [00:44:18]:
Yeah. It's funny, we both do that.

Dave Gerhardt [00:44:21]:
Yeah. But there's something to this that's about why are we wired to like what is it about going on a run for however long you run for that makes you feel awesome after. And I think knowing those things and Tony Robbins has talked about this forever. He's like, change your state, change your, you know, and it, but it works like if you just got up and just did 20 squats or 20 push ups or just went for a walk for 10 minutes. I read this book a couple years ago called Built to Move by Kelly Starrett. He's like a mobility, you know, physical performance type of guy. And they, there was a picture in the book and it was kids brain activity before a walk and after a walk and like your brain is just lit up for like a 10, you know, 10 to 20 minutes. So if you're listening to this, hopefully you're on a walk right now.

Dave Gerhardt [00:45:09]:
You're scribbling on your phone. But man, this is a fun time. I want to do. Forget the marketing stuff, let's do a podcast on this.

Emma Stratton [00:45:15]:
Well actually Dave, I'm launching a podcast on this. So I have a podcast. Yes, get outta here.

Dave Gerhardt [00:45:20]:
What's it called?

Emma Stratton [00:45:21]:
And now I'm like, I want you to be on it.

Dave Gerhardt [00:45:23]:
I'd love that.

Emma Stratton [00:45:24]:
Well, it's called the Emma Stratton show because I didn't want to pigeonhole like a topical name. So it's. Yes, I love that. Yeah. And it's all about how personal development, how inner growth kind of reflects outer growth. So I fell into all this when I started my own business. I wasn't into any of this until I started a business. And then I got deep into personal development and spirituality and all these things that actually helped me grow my business, which no one talks about.

Emma Stratton [00:45:51]:
Everyone gives you the stupid kind of, oh, do this. You know, all these kind of like rational stuff when really it's the inner work that dictates the growth in the, in your business. I'm like a huge believer in that. I have amazing stories. So yeah, I'm sharing that and I'm talking with people. So Dave, you're going to be on it now. I didn't know you were one of these people but now you will be on it.

Dave Gerhardt [00:46:18]:
Love that. Yeah, I'm just a B2B marketing bro on LinkedIn. But there's more beyond the surface.

Emma Stratton [00:46:22]:
He's more. He's so much more than that. I even have a question that says, what practices and rituals do you do to support yourself? Like ice bath plunges, meditation. Yeah, that's a question.

Dave Gerhardt [00:46:35]:
I got all. The answer is all. All of them.

Emma Stratton [00:46:37]:
Well, I want to hear about it because I've never done an ice bath plunge, but I hear they're great.

Dave Gerhardt [00:46:41]:
Yeah, I. Cold showers are great too.

Emma Stratton [00:46:43]:
Okay. A cold shower works.

Dave Gerhardt [00:46:45]:
Yeah. And I feel like a cold shower is great and I just set a timer for two minutes because what happens is like if I go for a run in the middle of the day, then I go take a shower. If that shower is warm, man, I'm going to be in that shower for a long time and I got to get out. So it's like a two for one. So set a timer, two minutes. It sucks because it's cold and you feel amazing after.

Emma Stratton [00:47:03]:
I'm going to try it today.

Dave Gerhardt [00:47:04]:
Yeah, Go take a two minute shower. Let me know. Well, the ideas are going to be flowing, but I love that. And by the way, if you're listening to this right now, I want you to do me a favor. I have a feeling that a lot of this content is going to resonate with you in a. In a way that you didn't expect. And so DM me on LinkedIn or just email me davexit5.com I'm just curious. And yeah, Emma, I'm happy to come on your thing and talk about it, but I wrote this quote down a while ago.

Dave Gerhardt [00:47:27]:
I don't know who said it or where I got it from, but because I've been feeling the same way. It says entrepreneurship is the ultimate personal development program.

Emma Stratton [00:47:34]:
That is so true.

Dave Gerhardt [00:47:35]:
And it's one of the huge underrated benefits of whatever happens with Exit Five. Like, it just forced me to be better. And I think that's a huge outcome.

Emma Stratton [00:47:43]:
Absolutely. Right there with you.

Dave Gerhardt [00:47:45]:
All right, Emma, this was a blast. Thanks. Thanks for making me not talk about marketing the whole time. It was really fun.

Emma Stratton [00:47:49]:
I know. Yeah. We didn't talk about our favorite website.

Dave Gerhardt [00:47:52]:
I don't have any. My favorite websites are none. I love Google. I love the minimalist design of Google. Go check it out.

Emma Stratton [00:47:58]:
I'm a big Apple fan. What can I say?

Dave Gerhardt [00:48:00]:
What can I say? Yeah. All right. She's Emma stratton. She's on LinkedIn. Go check her out. And that's fun. Go listen to the Emma Stratton show. The Emma Stratton and experience at some point in the future when it's out.

Dave Gerhardt [00:48:11]:
Right. And I'm going to check it out. All right. See you later. Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review, because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at Exit Five.

Dave Gerhardt [00:48:32]:
And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exitfive.com our mission at Exit Five is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at Exit Five. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day, asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are. So you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days, so you can go and check it out risk free.

Dave Gerhardt [00:49:12]:
And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more exitfive.com and I will see you over there in the community.

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