In this webinar with Holly Xiao, Dave Gerhardt walks through how Exit Five went from “just posting” to a real B2B marketing community and media business. Not with a big launch or a master plan, but through small moves that stacked over time: showing up consistently, following demand, and building the systems (and team) needed to scale past one person.
Build leverage first, then monetize it
Dave’s creator journey began while he was at Drift, right as LinkedIn shifted from a networking tool into a content platform. He treated it like a personal blog, posting marketing lessons, ideas, and observations a few times per week.
His audience grew from 10,000 to 50,000 to nearly 200,000 followers. But the point Dave made in the webinar wasn’t “go chase followers.” The real ROI was the inbound. People reached out with speaking invites, podcast requests, collaborations, and opportunities he never could’ve planned for. Those behind-the-scenes signals gave him confidence that he wasn’t just creating content; he was building more leverage.
Then came the turning point. In 2019, Dave saw his wife paying for bonus podcast episodes on Patreon. He didn’t even know what Patreon was, but it sparked a simple question: why couldn’t he charge for his content, too?
He launched a Patreon as an experiment: could he get 100 people to pay $10/month? He shared daily audio recordings, marketing insights, screenshots of ads, and lessons from work. Within months, he had around 1,000 paying members generating roughly $10,000/month.
What mattered most wasn’t just validation; it was capital. Dave called it the best “angel investor” he could’ve had because he reinvested that money into contractors and support to make the business stronger.
Lesson for founders: Don’t start with monetization. Start with trust. Once you have consistent demand and a clear point of view, monetization becomes a natural next step, and it can fund your growth.
Decide if you’re building a creator business or a company
Holly framed one of the most useful themes of the webinar: knowledge businesses usually follow one of two paths:
- Solo operator: The creator is the brand and the system
- Company model: A team and infrastructure reduce dependence on one person
Dave lived as a solo operator for years and eventually hit the ceiling most founders recognize: if growth depends on you showing up constantly, it doesn’t scale. He described it as “getting on stage and dancing” for every launch, post, event, or sale.
Worse, the business pulled him away from the work he actually wanted to do. Instead of creating, he was buried in operations, customer support, sponsors, administration, finance, and logistics. It was real, but exhausting.
That’s when he made a shift that founders should pay attention to: the business needed an identity beyond him. His original name (“Dave Gerhardt Marketing Group”) made the company inseparable from the founder. So he rebranded.
He wanted something memorable and scalable, ideally with a .com. After thinking through meaningful “places,” he remembered the highway exit he used to take to Vermont: Exit Five. He bought exitfive.com for around $400 and invested in brand and design. The impact was immediate: people started treating it like a company, not a side project.
Lesson for founders: If you want to build something that lasts longer than your personal bandwidth, your brand has to stand on its own.
Buy back your time with hiring and AI
After the rebrand, Dave hired help, starting with someone to run operations and manage sponsors. That freed him up to focus on the work only he could do: content, vision, and product direction.
He later brought in a business partner, which he described as a major energy shift, moving from “solo survival mode” into building a real company. Exit Five now has seven full-time people. Dave acknowledged the tradeoff: teams add complexity. But they also unlock scale, resilience, and learning (he described it as “getting an MBA on the job”).
When the conversation turned to AI, Dave framed it as an advantage, not a replacement. The biggest shift is speed: founders can now go from idea to version one dramatically faster than ever. Tasks that used to require multiple contractors, such as writing drafts, editing videos, creating visuals, and building landing pages, can now happen in minutes.
But Dave also warned against using AI to create noise. The value still comes from POV. AI can accelerate execution, but it can’t create differentiation.
Lesson for founders: Use people and AI to remove everything that drains you, but protect the part only you can do: your point of view (POV).
The key for founders
To close, Holly asked what someone could do this week if they feel stuck in “creator mode” but want to move toward a real business. Dave’s answer was simple: decide what you’re building. Get clear on your goals, list what drained you this week, and figure out what can be delegated, automated, or eliminated, even if it’s just 10 hours per week.
In 2026, the founders who win won’t be the ones who post the most. They’ll be the ones who build leverage, design for scale, and use teams and tools to stay consistent without burning out.
Learn more about how HeyGen empowers startup founders to do more with less.
