[00:00:00] Donny Dvorin: Modern marketing changes fast and great marketers needed edge marketers from challenger brands need to be especially brave. This season. All our guests are from challenger brands. Join us as they unveil the strategies and tactics behind the risks that they’ve taken. They’ll talk about the biggest coldest marketing campaigns that got their brand noticed and made an impact in the industry.

[00:00:29] Hosted. Brave software and me Donny Dearborn, head of sales at breathe. Join me to get fresh new perspectives and the inspiration to say yes to brave marketing moments.

[00:00:43] You’re. Listening to a new episode of the brave marketer podcast. Thanks for joining us This week, we’re really excited to have Jeremy Epstein on

[00:00:52] Jeremy is the CMO at GTM hub and they’re the world’s leading SAS provider enabling OKR software. And if you’re not [00:01:00] familiar with. Objective and key results, goal setting methodology. And really the idea is, is that everybody, cross department can be on the same page as far as what are the actual outcomes someone is trying to achieve in the quarter.

[00:01:15] And in December, 2020 GTM hump raised the largest series B round in the history of the category, $30 million. And they’re serving a lot of great brands like society, Generale, CNN, Adobe, red hat, and Tom top. So prior to GTM hub, Jeremy was the VP of marketing at sprinkler and concurrently. Jeremy serves as the co-chief investment officer of the crypto future fund, which is a thesis driven hedge fund that identifies undervalued high potential blockchain based tokens in the emerging crypto asset class.

[00:01:45] and with no further ado, here’s another episode of the brave marketer.

[00:01:56] why don’t we start with a very general question, welcome you to the podcast, the [00:02:00] brave marketer, and just wanting to tell us,

[00:02:02] what’s the most exciting thing you’re working on right now?

[00:02:05] Jeremy Epstein: Well, it’s an honor to be here. the name brave marketer, very simple yet elegant, which is the best kind of marketing.

[00:02:11] GTM hub is the leading provider of software for companies that are committed to the objectives and key results or OKR methodology. And, the market is just blowing up as more and more people adopt. the OKR is as the way to achieve results with some degree of predictability, align themselves across teams, large and small have accountability.

[00:02:35] What have you,and COVID just accelerated that trend obviously was more people go to remote work and we try to align strategy in execution. So that’s been amazing. It has been challenging because of. whereas if you’re selling, something like Instagram or Snapchat or Tik TOK, you get that immediate dopamine hit, and you feel that with OKR is, and the software and the [00:03:00] platform and the solution around orchestrating results that we sell.

[00:03:03] It really requires a sustained commitment by executive leadership and people throughout the organization. So that makes it challenging to, immediately feel how valuable and how transformative this approach to doing business can be. And it is transformative. So that’s really exciting, but it makes it challenging to explain what this new world, can be when you just empower your people to go out and do their best work.

[00:03:32] And you tell them what the outcomes are that you expect. And then you step back and just let them do it. you know, we’re creating a category and requires a mindset shift from this nine to five output mentality of like how much work have you done to.

[00:03:45] I don’t really care where you work or where you work. I care about the outcomes and I’m not going to watch you every moment.

[00:03:51] Donny Dvorin: I mean, at brave, we’ve talked about implementing an OKR strategy, but I think that, it’s one of those things where it’s never the top of the [00:04:00] list. It’s never a priority. It’s always oh, that’d be great if we like ditto, KRS. And then I don’t even know if people know that there’s okay.

[00:04:07] Are softwares out there. So there’s that awareness. well, number one, how do you find the companies that. Thought about having an OKR framework. And then number two is how do you get them to choose your

[00:04:18] Jeremy Epstein: right?

[00:04:19] you’ve nailed a critical issue, which is, there are many people say that would be nice, but it’s not my number one priority today. And so because like diet and exercise, it would be nice if my job 15 pounds, but like today I’m going to have the ice cream, and tomorrow, so I think you’ve nailed that issue.

[00:04:37] and what, our marketing challenges is how do we tell a story that investment is going to pay off big time down the road and you’ll start to see those results. After 30, 60 or 90 days when, I mean our employee engagement surveys come back. They’re higher than other companies because of the way that people are empowered.

[00:04:57] The sense of accountability, the sense [00:05:00] of, the ability to understand why, what you’re doing matters. You see how it all connects. That’s a tremendously fulfilling position to be in. But how do you tell that story? When so many people are used to working in that old industrial age mindset, even for digital companies.

[00:05:18] Donny Dvorin: And I bet you even showing the ROI is difficult because someone will say, we were going to do that. Or we were going to accomplish that anyway, we didn’t need the software. It’s hard to say, oh, it was because of

[00:05:28] Jeremy Epstein: this one. Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things we’ve seen is like 70% of first time.

[00:05:32] Okay. Our efforts. it’s just because it’s really hard. And as far as the software, like a lot of people say, we can do it without software. We can do it in spreadsheets. We can do it in PowerPoint. You can’t, you’re going to fail.

[00:05:43] So you’re totally, you understand the crux of the issue. That’s the marketing challenge, but you know, that’s what marketing is. That’s what makes it fun. As you get to try to tell a story in a creative way.

[00:05:54] I don’t think we’ve cracked the code yet, but we’re working on

[00:05:56] Donny Dvorin: it.

[00:05:56] can you tell the audience about your brave marketing moment? I’m [00:06:00] sure you’ve had many, but just to choose one,

[00:06:02] Jeremy Epstein: I’d say back in 2012, I was very, deeply involved in the social media world, which sounds like crazy right now. But at that point, people were still thinking like Facebook was a fad and why would I ever go on LinkedIn and stuff like that?

[00:06:16] And I was doing a lot of consulting and I’m doing a lot of speaking and it was great. I was making very good money and I got offered the opportunity to be the head of marketing as an enterprise software and management, social media management platform called sprinkler. And I went up to New York.

[00:06:30] I met the CEO, saw the, tech and within three minutes, I was like, this thing is going to be huge. So the guy offered me the role and I took a 70% pay. To go join sprinkler. And I think my wife is still upset about it, but it just felt like I needed to do this. I needed to have. I needed to be a part of this.

[00:06:50] Donny Dvorin: another reason why you’re such a great interviewee is because you have so much blockchain experience.

[00:06:57] this audience is interested in blockchain [00:07:00] and in crypto.

[00:07:01] So we’ve seen some mainstream brands really embrace crypto and NFTs. I mean, I feel like the past, a couple months and FTS are all the rage. What should companies keep in mind if they want to explore this area from a marketing perspective?

[00:07:16] Jeremy Epstein: I think what people should keep in mind is NFTs are both big, hyped up, but they’re also here to stay.

[00:07:24] So that sort of issue number one is likedon’t dismiss NFTs. Oh, this isn’t going to be around just because it’s totally hyper right now. I think that’s number one, but I think there’s a second sort of larger issue that people need to keep in mind, which is in any technology, revolution there’s sort of two phases.

[00:07:44] Phase one is where people say, wow, this tech is super cool. How do we use it to do what we already do? Better, faster, cheaper. And so a lot of brands now are jumping into like, Hey, NFTs are great for loyalty. NFTs are great [00:08:00] for customer acquisition and sure, yes, you should do that. But the more fundamental issue here is that we’re on the cost, but we’re already seeing it of this great decentralized.

[00:08:11] And organizations will themselves become decentralized and there’ll be community driven and there’ll be driven by their token holders and NFT holders. So what does that mean when your entire brand strategy and your marketing strategy is basically. Crowdsourced by the NFT holders and the token holders that you have, and you don’t work for your boss, you work for this community of customers and ecosystem.

[00:08:37] That’slike,the first stage of the internet, people were super jacked up about intranets. Okay, great. You should do intranet. They make you more efficient, definitely, but that’s not where the game is getting changed and NFT. in phase one are a vehicle to deliver, loyalty and customers and,and yes.

[00:08:56] Great. But don’t just say that’s the be [00:09:00] all end all because the real story is what happens when everything, including money at the base layer get decentralized. And then how does an organization evolve when it has an entirely new set of stakeholders, which are basically token or NFT owners, and that’s going to take a while, but I think.

[00:09:18] What’s the impact of the rival of the decentralized world more than how do we use these decentralized technologies?

[00:09:26] Donny Dvorin: Do you have like a favorite use case of a brand or,one that you think a brand should do to use NFTs?

[00:09:31] Jeremy Epstein: you can’t talk about NFTs and mainstream brands without talking about dapper last.

[00:09:38] it’s just not possible. those guys, I had the privilege of working with them for a while and helped write version one of the flow blockchain, white paper. they are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met for sure. And

[00:09:48] Donny Dvorin: they invented it for the listeners. They’re like crypto

[00:09:51] Jeremy Epstein: kitties, they invented NFTs.

[00:09:53] Crypto kitties was the first one, that they did, but for them it’s top shop, and they always said, [00:10:00] This thing is going to be consumer driven. And the only way it’s going to be consumer driven is if we partner with brands that people already know in love. So that’s why they partner with the NBA.

[00:10:09] That’s why they partnered with Dr. Seuss. they understand that when it comes to these types of things, the best tech doesn’t always win needs great marketing, brave marketing. I might add to go along with it and an understanding of the market, which is I’m not going to be able to sell you on NFT if you don’t know what it is, but I am going to be able to sell you on a LeBron James.

[00:10:34] And I think that’s to me,they’re like the apple, the Harvard of the NFC space at the moment.

[00:10:39] Donny Dvorin: Are you able to bring anything from crypto or blockchain to GTM

[00:10:43] Jeremy Epstein: hub? Yeah. I mean, I’d say like what I think crypto reminds you, is that So much of this success comes down to community.

[00:10:52] we sort of see there’s this group of OKR champions. There are people who say, okay, my job is to implement OKR is to make everyone [00:11:00] successful and drive this.

[00:11:00] And they understand the ins and outs. They understand the methodology, they understand what the rhythm and the frequency should be. And then there’s usually an economic buyer. Who’s like, oh my God, my team of teams is a total mess. I need to do something. And then they realize that there’s a way to orchestrate results across all of these functions.

[00:11:17] And OKR is that. what we’ve really worked hard at is creating a community from all of these big global brands of OKR champions, and really trying to bring some of that, respect for and deference to, and listening to the community that we’ve brought in as far as like some of the more advanced things like, NFTs and what have you, I have that up my sleeve, but I sort of wanted to make sure that I had some of the things.

[00:11:45] comfort before we got into that. crypto accelerates the trend that social media started, which is, it’s not about the brand having power over customers. It’s about communities having power over brands. in crypto, it’s like if your [00:12:00] community loses faith in you, it’s game over.

[00:12:02] Donny Dvorin: So marketing’s definitely changed, with COVID. What’s really breaking through and what can other B2B marketers, gleaned from your insights here?

[00:12:11] Jeremy Epstein: like you said at the beginning, it’s deliver the value first.

[00:12:14] So basically. we go to C-level executives and we have other C-level executives who, help us write a white paper or we’ll have these series where it’s like a white paper and then a webinar and a podcast, and a whole theme around the challenges that COO’s phase or CS. people want to know what are their peers do?

[00:12:33] So my boss at Microsoft way back in the day, he said to me, marketing just comes down to rhythm and process. all the sexy stuff, like, yeah, that’s great. marketing, I think I told you it was like a wedding cake, right?

[00:12:44] everyone pays attention to the icing and the decorations. I’m like, wow, that’s amazing. But 96% of that cake is just bad. If you don’t know how to bake a cake, it doesn’t matter how much icing you put on top, because it’s going to look like. do you have the internal [00:13:00] operations?

[00:13:00] Do you have the right people? Are you able to put yourself in the right events? Are you creating value in your content? Is your social strategy, like actually connecting with people in a relevant way? Are you promoting? It sounds like that’s just the cake baking. Once you have those layers, then you can step back and say, okay, now I’m going to go a little crazy with the ice, And so. I’ve been enrolled for about a year and a half. And I’d say most of this has just been baking the cake.

[00:13:25] Donny Dvorin: it’s so interesting that being in sales and heading up sales at brave, like the perfect model for the OKR. The outcome is the sales. And it’s like, I don’t care how many, I mean, I do care how many sales calls you do? How many emails you send, how many phone calls, like,all the blocking and tackling stuff.

[00:13:41] But I only dig into it if they haven’t hit the yet. It’s for the people who aren’t hitting the outcome and then you gotta PLSS.

[00:13:48] Jeremy Epstein: Sales always gets it. Exactly. It’s what is your quota and barring anything illegal? I think you can just go do what you need to, if you make one call and you hit your quota, like [00:14:00] theoretically, you’re a Jedi master, enjoy the rest of the quarter on the beach, Exactly.

[00:14:05] Donny Dvorin: A lot’s changed over the past 20 years. What. No longer working. What’s worked well in the past where it’s just like, let’s just take this out of the playbook.

[00:14:14] Jeremy Epstein: I’m not sure I’m ready to take it out of the playbook, but it definitely needs an upgrade. Which one for sure is email. it’s just, everybody relies on it too much.

[00:14:23] And you just have to really, be super talented to stand out. think about it. Like you look at the subject line and you. and you’ve already decided, LinkedIn sorta falls in that category as well. Like any of that type of thing, it’s really tough. And I think we probably have an over-reliance on it cause it’s just there and you get it in whatever, there’s a part of me that says, forget the whole thing and just blow it up.

[00:14:49] I tell people we’re basically laundering money from our VCs to Google and Facebook. That’s all we do. You know, there’s gotta be a way [00:15:00] to get better results and help me understand how to use my advertising dollar more effectively. How do I use it to be smarter in my testing, as opposed to just doing the traditional stuff?

[00:15:11] Like we spend a lot of money on that and we get a pretty good return. I’ve got an amazing performance marketing team that does it, but all things considered,it’s just feels like there’s so much, There’s so much better we can do. And it pains me. those are probably two that I’d say are up for re assessment.

[00:15:30] Donny Dvorin: Yeah. we were doing monthly emails now. We’re at every other week, we were just looking at the data a minute ago. I mean, we’ve gone to weekly. I’ve been talking to chefs, who’s on our marketing department about making the emails more bite sized. Like every email that comes out from our company doesn’t have.

[00:15:47] Magilla you know of okay, there’s six things that we did this month. I’m like, let’s just get this out weekly. You know, let’s just get this out and pick one thing.

[00:15:55] Jeremy Epstein: It should fit on one phone screen.

[00:15:58] Give me two bullet points. You want a link [00:16:00] from those? That’s fine, if it requires my thumb, you failed.

[00:16:04] What do you think about your competitors? I’ll list a few questions. You don’t have to answer them all, but like, who are they and how closely do you watch what they’re doing and how do you compete with them? And, what do you avoid when it comes to competing with.

[00:16:16] Honestly, I don’t think about our competitors very much.

[00:16:19] I want them to think about me, I mean, there’s really only one company that we run into. when I started, there were probably like 10 to 15 companies that we would run into. through a lot of work from many groups of people, we’ve been able to really get to the point where we are viewed as the premier player.

[00:16:40] And there’s one others who’s like in the hunt with us. Cause every big company needs to have a bake-off it’s called Workboard. I honestly don’t think about that because I am so confident in our leadership, our strategy, our execution, the way we use our cars. And most importantly, the product we [00:17:00] have is designed for this future. The product that they have is designed for like the past. And so.it’s going to be a dog fight for the short term, but as companies start to embrace the outcome mindset and they start to do things larger and larger scale, as many of our clients are doing, do you want a horse and buggy from work board?

[00:17:20] Or do you want a car? We got the car. I’m not saying we’re Lamborghini just yet, but we’re a car and there are horses.

[00:17:30] Donny Dvorin: now you guys, you know, you’re spending some money on Google and Facebook This privacy come up? What are you guys thinking about privacy over?

[00:17:36] Jeremy Epstein: Yeah, I mean,while we’re in a dog fight for sort of global supremacy right now, we are the dominant provider in Europe.

[00:17:43] And when you’re in Europe, like you have to take privacy seriously. Like GDPR is non-negotiable.

[00:17:50] So we’re the only SOC two type two certified provider in the space. So we’ve had all the audits, we’ve had all these types of things that basically say [00:18:00] you guys are as locked down as they come. So that’s just sort of maintaining the privacy.

[00:18:04] And a second thing is I’m a data minimalist. I say, look, yes. Maybe I’ll ask for email, but sometimes I don’t even need that. I’m just giving you this. And a lot of times it’s like,I’m not going to ask you a 37 form question.

[00:18:16] I want to earn the right to more information. You have to give it to me because you want to talk to us. Not because I’m demanding it and I’m gaining this particular piece of content. So it’s an experiential thing, but it’s also a privacy thing.

[00:18:29] I said to the team the other day, you know, with Apple’s recent change, and I think what Facebook’s outage the other day reminded us of how centralized and how powerful they are. As I said to the team, you need to start thinking as if you live in a world where there’s no data about a customer’s available, which is the web 3.0 world.

[00:18:50] So it’s like the only thing you have there is my theory. Imagine. And the balance and the transaction, everything that’s on chain. So like marketing, I believe, is [00:19:00] going to head in the direction of web three, because web three is going to eat web two eventually. And in a web three world, you’re not totally anonymous, but it’s, whatever’s on chain and whatever you voluntarily disclose.

[00:19:14] And that’s a very different than. let me go to LinkedIn, let me go to zoom info and let me just suck down all this data and whatever. So it’s a different mentality and it required any types of marketing tactics, which some of which haven’t been mentioned yet, but NFTs and brave answer all those problems.

[00:19:29] So there you go. Yeah.

[00:19:31] Donny Dvorin: Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on the brave marketer podcast.

[00:19:34] Any last thoughts for the list?

[00:19:37] Jeremy Epstein: I think continue to, demand value and I would say punish those marketers that don’t deliver value. Like I saw a thing from Seth Godin the other day that, I’m making numbers up, but it was something like 9% of the people would rather delete an email than unsubscribed from the mailing list. And every day I’m like, no, I don’t read [00:20:00] this. There’s nobody on I unsubscribed. And I’m just like, the more you clear out your life of noise by getting rid of the irrelevant, the better we’ll all be off because those marketers who are lazy and sending me irrelevant newsletters that I don’t read.

[00:20:16] They’re going to know for a fact that I don’t read it because I’m an unsubscribe

[00:20:19] Donny Dvorin: how can our listeners find you maybe plug your daily newsletter as well, your blog?

[00:20:25] Jeremy Epstein: So I blog every day at blog dot, never stopped marketing.com, heavy on the crypto, but plenty of other stuff that we will drop on occasion

[00:20:35] J E R 9, 7 9 on Twitter. That’s my big one. and then if you’re interested in learning about how OKR is, can revolutionize your life, I would go to GTM hub.

[00:20:47] And to the da.com and take a look and let me know if you think the story’s being told well, and what have you, but, I’d say those are the three ways to stay connected. And, as Donnie said, I love [00:21:00] hearing feedback on the blog posts and on the website. So don’t be shy. That’s the only way I can get better.

[00:21:05] Donny Dvorin: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was so great catching up with you and

[00:21:11] Jeremy Epstein: I’m honored to be here. Thanks for having.

[00:21:14] Donny Dvorin: Thanks again for listening to another episode of the brave marketer podcast. I have a question for you. Do you want to stay on top of everything that’s going on with brave ads?

[00:21:26] Are you a marketer? Do you want to know about our new product launches? Do you want to know about marketing in a cookie plus world, but do you want exclusive content and industry. Sites where there’s a very, very easy way to do that. And that’s signing up for our brave ads, insider newsletter, and you can do that@brave.com forward slash ad news.

[00:21:48] Again, that’s brave.com forward slash a D N E w S. And one other special special treat for you listeners. Do you want some brave [00:22:00] swag, some free, brave swag? Well, if you do just do two things, write us a review on apple podcasts, and then just tell us that you wrote a review. So we know ad sales@brave.com.

[00:22:13] So again, we’re going to send you swag. All you gotta do is write a review, an email. A D S a L E s@brave.com and finally musical credits go to my older brother, Ari and special, thanks to Sam and Chez for all their amazing production work. And until next time .