- As we approach our 150th (!) episode of Seeking Wisdom, Drift’s VP of Marketing Dave Gerhardt (aka DG) is sharing the story behind how Seeking Wisdom came to be.
- In 2015, there was no content at Drift. There was no blog. There was no website traffic, there was nothing. DG had just joined as Drift’s first marketing hire, and he was starting from scratch.
- So if you were a marketing team of one, how would you go about getting a busy CEO’s time? For DG, the answer was starting a podcast. And Drift’s CEO David Cancel already had a name in mind – Seeking Wisdom – inspired by the book of the same name by Peter Bevelin.
You can get Seeking Wisdom on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the full audio version below 👇 or keep scrolling for more insights from DG.
If you’re in marketing, this story may hit close to home.
It’s 2015. DG is the first (and only) member of the Drift marketing team. There’s a website, but no blog. So DG gets to it and starts working on content for the site.
His whole strategy is wrapped around David Cancel (aka DC), Drift’s founder and CEO. Everyday, DC sends DG texts, emails, videos, Slacks, WhatsApp messages with great ideas. He’s an endless source of content. A marketer’s dream come true.
DG thinks he’s hit on his own great idea – to have DC start writing for the Drift blog. So he asks DC to write one article a week for the blog. It’s a slam dunk, right?
Wrong. DC doesn’t respond to the request. Which means DG is back to square one, and is desperate to find a way to get content from DC for the blog.
Raise your hand if you’ve been here before ?
What’s a marketer to do? You have this CEO with a ton of great ideas, but no time to turn those ideas into content.
Here’s what DG does.
He draws on his background producing and hosting podcasts, and starts booking time with DC – meeting one on one and recording their conversations as if they were media interviews.
At this point, DG just wanted to create a faster way to ghostwrite posts for DC.
But it quickly transformed into something else.
“My goal was just to interview him and just cut out my voice on the audio and publish that as a podcast. But what happened was that conversation actually morphed into a little bit of a back and forth. And that helped Seeking Wisdom become what it is today, which is a conversation between two people about life, learning, marketing, sales, what’s happening at Drift, reading, things we’re doing.”
– Dave Gerhardt
For DG, the secret to turning the Seeking Wisdom podcast into a real content engine was to focus on documenting the things we were already doing, reading, and working on – not creating new content out of thin air.
Fast forward four years, and now Drift is all-in on podcasts.
“It’s crazy to think back how something that started with me trying to interview DC to get ghostwritten content, has now turned into six plus shows. An audience of people that we love and feel like we actually get to connect with and talk to. The response from a podcast is unlike any other marketing channel. Because you’re literally in somebody’s ears while they’re at the gym, while they’re making dinner, cleaning the house, going for a walk.”
– Dave Gerhardt
It turns out that when you focus on documenting, not creating, you have a lot to talk about.
Fill Up Your Podcast Feed
By now you get that we’re obsessed with learning at Drift. And you’ve probably also noticed we have a thing for sharing what we learn in our podcasts. Here’s a refresher on all the shows we host:
- Seeking Wisdom. The OG. DC and DG get together every week to talk about life, learning, and leadership.
- Build. If you’re interested in product and product management this one’s for you. Host Maggie Crowley sits down with the best of the best across product management, design and engineering to bring you lessons from product greats at Atlassian, Pluralsight, VMWare and more.
- Growth. For all you growth hackers out there – this show show covers everything from growth tactics, the metrics that really matter to your bottom line, funnel mapping, how to run experiments, magic moments and so much more.
- Exceptions. Exceptions is our docuseries with Jay Acunzo, where we explore how and why a handful of B2B companies have built brands to experience breakout success. Learn what it take to become an exception.
- New! DG’s new podcast Marketing Swipe File. You’ll hear exclusive conversations with world-class CMOs, marketing leaders, and brand builders. Every great marketer has a swipe file. This podcast will be yours.
- New! Operations. Without ops pros, there would be no hypergrowth companies. In this podcast, we look under the hood of companies like Salesforce, Amazon, and Okta to find out what it truly takes to scale through hypergrowth.
- Coming soon! DC’s top secret new podcast. That’s literally all I’m allowed to say about it ?
There’s a lot more on the Seeking Wisdom story from DG in the pod. Listen to the full episode below?
Subscribe & Tune In
Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with DC and DG on Twitter @dcancel @davegerhardt.
