You Made This.
From bitching to building, 8 years of B2SMBI
The birth of the B2SMB Institute started as a bitch session.
Actually, multiple bitch sessions. Over years.
In dozens of locations across the country. With dozens of people, always in small groups, always in what felt like the same conference room.
The bitch sessions always had the same players – really, the same job titles – represented in every location. Usually 5-6 attendees at a time.
And I was the only common thread.
The Players were all clients: Advertisers and Sponsors of bizHive.com.
I had started bizHive in 2011 with my co-Founder, Derick Thompson. It was what seemed an innovation at the time: an “informational marketplace” for Small Business.
The platform guided Small Business users from a moment of need or an item on a to-do list to a specific solution. The solutions were offered by our Advertisers and Sponsors, who paid us for the Small Business’ interest in “getting a job done” on a per-lead basis.
Hence the need for me to travel around the country and meet with those who would and did buy said leads from us.
It was on those travels – from Microsoft in Seattle to Austin for Dell to Kansas City and Sprint – I met a host of Execs charged with selling to Small Businesses at scale.
But as different as all of the brands and offerings represented in these meetings were, the bitch session was always the same:
“Small Businesses are so hard to reach…”
“Yeah and once you reach them, they are so hard to engage…”
“They don’t trust us.”
So if you manage to engage them, you can’t qualify them.”
“I’d settle for just a few answers to my questions. They stonewall. Or they don’t even know what they want.”
“And even if you manage to qualify them? Good luck closing them. Pack a lunch. Many lunches. They take forever to say yes.”
“Yeah, and there’s a second “yes,” have you noticed? They buy and then they never use what they bought. They never even break the seal!”
“And the moment the next thing catches their eye, they are gone. No loyalty.”
A collective sigh. Always a collective sigh around the room.
The bitch session was complete, and with eyes cast down, we proceeded to talk SMB lead gen.
One VP of Marketing said – never forget it – SMBs are the toughest sell on Planet Earth.
True that.
And there’s more than 30-million of them.
As fragmented as any Consumer market – maybe moreso. Self-described “snowflakes.”
“There is NO Small Business out there like mine!”
When you hear that 30-million times, you have to wonder what makes one florist so much different than another, but you still respect it.
You learn to embrace the fragmentation of your target market and you get to work, with the occasional visit from an outsider that gives permission to open up a fresh bitch session on the same reach-engage-qualify-close-keep agenda.
A Center of Gravity
Eight years ago, there was no center of gravity for those of us responsible for selling and serving Small Business customers at scale.
None.
When I met Peter Hutto in 2017, we bonded over our shared experience with bitch sessions, but he framed the bitch session in a way that cracked open my head.
“It’s crazy,” he said, “That all these people trying to sell to Small Businesses figure it out on their own time and their own dime.”
Peter’s framing defined for me, for the first time, a center of gravity.
A center of gravity for his work, my work, the people we were meeting, their work.
Really a recognition that there was no center of gravity.
How could all these smart people be struggling so universally, and in such isolation from each other?
More importantly, the framing prompted questions, variations on “Hey, do you ever talk to anyone about these challenges you bitch about?”
Nope. No, not at all.
So the question became obvious.
What if we got all these people in the same room all at once? And we let everybody bitch, and we let them realize they’re all bitching about the same things.
What happened next was… crazy.
Our ambition was hardly ambition: could we get a dozen or so leaders in this “space” of selling to SMBs in the same room, maybe at the Admirals Club in Chicago-O’Hare. Quick in, quick out.
Could we talk about how we find solutions to SMB reach and engagement and sales and service?
Could we frame that whole “own time, own dime” “center of gravity” argument and actually get anyone… to show up?
We started dialing.
And everyone picked up the phone.
Erik Day, the VP of SMB at Dell was literally the first.
Then Laura Goldberg, the CMO of Legal Zoom.
Peter brought Randy Parker, the Founder of Constant Contact.
I was introduced to Raj Mukherjee, the EVP/GM of Indeed.
Then Janet Shijns, the CMO of Office Depot. “I’m so in.”
Christal Bemont, the CRO of SAP/Concur.
Scott Gifis, the President of AdRoll. “Can I bring my team?”
Doug Llewellyn, the CEO of Purch/Business.com. “Do you take Sponsors?”
Jeff Perry of Docusign. Steven Handmaker of Assurance. Pete Steger of Kabbage.
Not only did every one of them have something to say (they understood the “framing” all too well.)
They wanted a stage to talk about it.
I had coined this combination of letters – B2SMB – and I was dubious about how effective it was. I honestly thought it took too long to explain – Business-to-Small-Business.
But during those first few phone calls, everybody got it.
More importantly, when I said that B2SMB was fundamentally different from B2B, a specialization, a genuine skillset and a different operating system (I was rolling) I was met with “Yeah. Yeah!”
And the center of gravity started to take shape.
October 3-4, 2017
The legendary investor, Howard Tullman, an early supporter of bizHive, offered us space inside of 1871, Chicago’s famous start-up incubator inside the Merchandise Mart for Day 1.
And it was there that over 100 of us squeezed into too-small a space to talk and listen about this profession that up to that moment didn’t have a name with people we up to that moment had not met.
It was very, very hard to get people to sit.
Not surprisingly, it was Erik Day of Dell who fixed everyone’s attention. He said something that froze the room: “I’ve taken 100% of my digital ad budget and directed it to SMB Influencers.”
I recall asking “What’s an Influencer?”
But the room had already erupted in questions.
The moment crystalized both the shared pain and the desperate need for new relief. Paid search had grown ridiculously expensive – what was the workaround? Everyone was experimenting. Erik had found something.
The “model” of peer wisdom was manifested.
Day 2 was more of the same, and our crowd grew to over 200.
Steven Aldrich, the CPO of GoDaddy back in 2017, told a story that still resonates.
It came from his early days at Intuit, re-tooling Quickbooks.
Steven’s small QB Dev team was in a windowless office space, like a basement skunk works. And besides the single door in and out, there was a green door on one wall that, for whatever the reason, no one really ever opened.
On the other side of that door was the Quickbooks Customer Service Team.
When the green door between Product Development and the “Room Where Customers Spoke” was opened, magic began to happen.
Steven’s team spent hours sitting right by their CSR counterparts, just listening.
Listening to the SMB, one at a time. Gaining insights. Recognizing patterns. Converging inputs not into a fragmented pile but into a cohesive vision that quite literally made the Quickbooks juggernaut.
The obvious answer – listen to the customer – just needed someone to open that green door.
We didn’t just hear from the Big Names. Howard had suggested 5 start-ups to attend, and we agreed to give each of them 3 minutes on stage to give their pitch. All had Small Business offerings.
3 stood out.
Brian Bar of Victory Lap, fresh from building the Groupon sales organization, he was offering scalable sales training for SMBs. Still going strong.
Nicole Wood of Ama la Vida, a career-coaching start-up, who asked the audience, “What does a Small Business look like? She looks like me.” Still going strong.
And Adam Johnson of Active Campaign. Yes. Right on the cusp of exploding in the unicorn success they enjoy to this day.
From those days forward, it was the people. There wasn’t even an “Institute” yet. But we had the people.
By the end of October, it was beyond clear: we needed to put a structure to the moment and all that we had discovered within it.
Without meaning to, we were transcribing the principles of building and selling products and services at scale to SMBs.
Those 40 leaders who took the stage in October of 2017, the 200+ attendees who listened, were not just bitching.
They were doing serious work.
They were encountering peers who were serious about their work of serving Small Business customers. They were treating each other seriously.
For most, it was a new feeling.
That was especially true for those from the very large companies whose offering to Small Business was a watered down version of their Enterprise offering.
Hutto, Aldrich and Sam Artmann (SVP of Web.com) tag-teamed the breakthrough of that first Summit, articulating a different discipline required to succeed with Small Business.
They planted flags:
-Small Business success requires different approaches in the total absence of Big Customer procurement.
-It requires different service in the absence of IT departments.
-It requires a different native curiosity in the absence of an RFP.
-It requires listening – especially between the lines – of what SMBs say.
-And a different patience. A whole new level of perseverance.
It requires – and still does – building for fragmentation while operating at scale.
This work has always been serious. And so were the professionals who carried out that work.
What was missing pre-2017?
Continuity.
Connectivity.
Collaboration.
A place where what was learned “on one’s own time and dime” could be saved, and shared and celebrated.
A place where those doing the work could multiply the effort together.
The Covid Years
At no time was our community more vital – and alive – than in early 2020, at the onset of Covid.
On March 21 of that Spring, I cancelled our 2020 Leaders’ Forum planned for Calistoga Springs.
I honestly thought we were done for.
But we were not. We doubled our Membership in 9 months, pushing our network past 3000.
Everyone wanted to talk to each other, and we were the forum for top-to-top exchanges, small group hangouts, and capacity-busting Wine Zooms.
Our virtual Leaders Forum in July of 2020 drew over 1000 attendees, and we had our greatest line-up of Speakers ever.
During that time, too, we built a permanent bridge from our world of B2SMB Enterprises to the world of SMB Advocacy Organizations. After all, we shared the same constituencies/customers – our precious Small Businesses.
By mid 2021, nineteen of the Top 25 Small Business Advocacy organizations were pro-bono Members of the Institute – from AEO and NAWBO to the National Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Majority and the Kaufmann Foundation.
We aligned on a singular mission: to help SMBs not just survive the pandemic, but to thrive coming out of it.
Not only did B2SMB feel like a Profession. The Profession felt aligned, on a shared mission, and realizing its own continuity.
While not written, the Institute began to live its Principles.
Principles lived by its Members.
What Now Exists
Over the past eight years, the B2SMB profession has begun to see itself more clearly.
And you’ve helped the Institute see itself more clearly.
Through conversations. Through shared experience. Through continuity.
The B2SMB Institute did not create this profession.
It simply recognized it.
And by recognizing it, it helped create the conditions for its continuity.
Today, you ARE the Institute, serving as the lighthouse for the $2.5 trillion B2SMB market.
Not directing it.
Not controlling it.
But ensuring that you and your peers navigating it can see clearly.
What’s on our shared horizon?
You already know that your professions will be shaped by forces even more consequential than those of the past eight years. So will the Institute’s.
Artificial intelligence will reshape how Small Businesses are reached, served, and supported.
New companies will emerge. Existing companies will transform.
But the fundamental reality will remain:
Small Business will continue to be the most important AND most challenging customer in the global economy.
The leaders responsible for serving them will continue to require shared intelligence, shared continuity, and shared recognition.
The Institute exists to steward that continuity.
To ensure that what is learned is not lost.
To ensure that those doing the work can see themselves and each other clearly, as peers and partners and co-authors of this market’s future.
My personal stake grew from a somewhat naive moment: I often said B2SMBI’s origins felt like the movie Footloose, with Peter and I hosting a secret dance in a barn.
Eight years ago, this did not exist.
Today, it does.
And the work continues.
- –The Partners Circle was born during Covid, when the instinct to connect proved stronger than the instinct to retreat. It has only deepened since and the numbers are beginning to show why. In a market where the cost of direct customer acquisition keeps climbing, B2SMB leaders who collaborate are outperforming those who go it alone. Not marginally. Meaningfully. The Partners Circle exists to make that collaboration systematic.
–Between the Lines and its companion podcast, Between2Bs are the only sources focused solely on B2SMB. There is no shortage of data, there’s a shortage of interpretation; no shortage of gurus, but a shortage of clarifiers; no shortage of patterns, but an absence of pattern recognition. Our content is built for decision makers. Not followers. Not views. But for leaders looking for clarity, for causation, and for the sometimes contrarian truth.
Eight years ago, we were a room. Then a newsletter. Then a Summit. Then a community. Then a network of Partners. The B2SMBI “product” has never stood still and neither has the market it serves.
Today B2SMBI moves fluidly across channels, with less friction and a wider aperture than at any point in our history.
More ways in. More ways to engage. More ways to belong.
Today we roll out:
-New monthly dues pricing
-New monthly billing options
-A new “cancel anytime policy”
-A new Membership tier for individuals
-And a new Membership tier for Start-ups.
The forces bearing down on the B2SMB market have never been stronger.
Acquisition channels collapsing, AI overwhelming, consolidation looming, fragmentation multiplying and isolation under relentless pressure mounting to figure it the fuck out.
Now more than ever, you need peer wisdom and shared playbooks. You need partners. You need top-to-top collaboration. You need serious connections.
That is what we have refined over 8 years to meet this moment.
With you. For you. Made by you.
Our network IS our value.
Peter. Erik. Laura. Steven. Raj. Cristal.
Eric Groves. Stephanie Gorski. Jill Nelson. Eric Spadafora. Mark Tina. Kush Shrivastava. David Patrick.
And so many more. You know who you are.
You are the Institute’s “Framers.”
You have not only framed your businesses, your careers, you’ve framed this B2SMB profession. This community.
You’ve framed its Principles. And you’ve framed the B2SMB Institute.
We’ve written these Principles down for the first time. They’re yours. Read them here.
One final thanks with some final thoughts for the occasion.
I offer all of this without nostalgia.
I present it as neither pitch nor pivot.
I don’t give it to you as a memorial, nor as a message.
Just “You made this.”
You made this.
Let’s build more.
Dave.
