How Exit Five Became a 5,000-Member B2B Marketing Powerhouse

Exit Five is a B2B marketing community started by Dave Gerhardt that grew from a small LinkedIn following to a 5000-paying member large community-led business.

Let’s break down how they operate. 

Overview

Community: Exit Five

Platform: Circle

Members: 4896

Membership Cost: $30/m or $300/yr with a 7-day free trial

How It Started

In October of 2019, Dave left his job as VP of Marketing at Drift to tackle a new role as the CMO at Privy. 

During his time at Drift, he got obsessed with the craft of marketing - it became not only his job, but his passion. He started writing about the things they were doing at Drift on social media - primarily LinkedIn where his following quickly grew to 70,000. 

He started seeing a real opportunity to make creating marketing content his job. His first attempt at monetizing started as a paid Patreon account with a price of $10/month. Within the first 6 months, he gained 1000 paid subscribers. 

He didn’t position himself as an expert but instead shared the lessons he was learning through his daily experiences.

The idea for a larger community began when one of the members suggested not only hearing his thoughts on marketing but also opening up discussions among the 1,000 members.

That’s how the first iteration of the community was born. Dave created a Facebook group and called it Dave Gerhardt’s Marketing Group. 

This was his first touchpoint with scale - the group grew to 3000 paid members. 

Eventually, Dave realized the need for a rebrand to separate the community from his personal identity and give it a distinct character. He named it Exit Five, inspired by the highway exit he takes to reach his in-laws’ home, a place where he used to relax and recharge after stressful work weeks.

Moving Platforms

They experimented with a lot of platforms when trying to move off of Facebook - Kajabi, Patreon, and even a self-build solution. They ended up using Circle where the community is hosted up to this day. They’ve also white-labeled a private app for their community, instead of using Circle’s dedicated app. 

The main reason for moving off Facebook:

• A want for a more streamlined solution where both payment handling and memberships are under one roof. 

However, the move wasn't smooth. First of all, since they had to ask members to re-enter their payment details on Circle, they lost close to $25k in MRR.

Secondly, a good chunk of the audience enjoyed the Facebook group and complained about the platform change.

But to build a real asset they had to take a short-term hit.

Onboarding

When you join the community, you receive an automated welcome message from the founder (though I joined a year ago, it might be sent by another team member now). The message openly acknowledges that it’s automated but reassures you that there’s a real person behind it.

Then, you’re prompted to complete the Start Here steps where we see another touchpoint with Dave in a quick 60 second Loom video that explains the story behind Exit Five and how to use the community.

 Further down, there’s a 10 step checklist that is formatted using The Onboarding Blueprint by GrowthCommunity.

What I really want to highlight here is the 1-on-1 matchmaking program. Using Matcha, they’re facilitating bi-weekly matchmaking campaigns where users are prompted to schedule 30 minute meetings based on their industries, niches and interests. That alone can add a massive amount of value for the members, especially if you’re in a B2B niche.

Exit Five also runs a Contributor program which is an application-based content generation program. Contributors are designated with their own badges within the community and that prompts them to create more original content, creating more conversations and adding more value to the community.

Community Spaces

The community spaces are distributed with user intent in mind. The top ones are admin spaces - things like FAQ section, Announcements and Getting Started area. 

Then, it is followed by a general community discussion space. Interestingly, that also includes the Anonymous questions area - you can submit a question to a Typeform which would then be posted by one of the Admins in the General Discussions if selected.  

Lastly, there are also specialized topics for discussions within the B2B marketing sphere - Demand Generation, Content Marketing, etc. 

While I wouldn't recommend such an elaborate setup for most communities just starting out, Exit Five is nearly 5000 members strong which allows to expand the discussion spaces without losing engagement and minimizing overwhelm factor in new members.

Underneath the discussion spaces, there are also on-demand resources: Recordings of past events, Swipe File section and Templates. 

Events

Exit Five organizes 2 events each month about relevant topics for B2B marketers with a guest speaker. I like how detailed they are with the descriptions for the events, mainly highlighting the “Why you should join?” section which allows me to understand if this is something that I’m interested in and what value can I get from the session.

Demand Generation and Additional Revenue Sources

Exit Five has started to build a very impressive content flywheel to support their community efforts. 

They publish a weekly newsletter for B2B marketers that shares action-heavy advice. Additionally, Dave Gerdhardt has actively been publishing their podcast with 2 episodes going out every week positioning Exit Five as the go-to resource for B2B marketers.

Additional revenue generators are the job board that gets about 3000 visitors per month (job listings start at $199) and B2B Leadership Accelerator program - an 8-week cohort that’s priced at $499 for Exit Five members. 

Takeaways

• Member matching. The majority of communities would benefit from a member matching program - it builds deeper connections between members and that can be a huge value unlock for the members themselves.

• Contributor program. I like the idea of rewarding members (even if it’s just a badge) for adding value to the community. Sometimes a simple acknowledgement can do wonders for that. 

• LinkedIn. Dave built his business on the back of growing an audience on LinkedIn. Getting active on LinkedIn is something we all should do (if our audience is in a business niche).