Book Review: Courageous Marketing by Udi Ledergor

I met Udi Ledergor at Canva Create on April 10th at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles. Udi spoke on a panel and generously handed out his recent book, Courageous Marketing – The B2B Marketer’s Playbook for Career Success.

As the Chief Evangelist and former CMO of Gong, an AI platform helping B2B sales teams understand and improve their sales process.  Udi helped take the company from zero to hundreds of millions in revenue and a multi-billion-dollar valuation. Over his 20+ year career, he’s led high-performing marketing teams, advised startups, served on boards, invested in early-stage companies, and mentored hundreds of marketers.

His book, Courageous Marketing, is packed with insights that are directly relevant to the work we do at RIZZ. Here are three takeaways that stood out:

1. Marketing + Sales = Results

Udi doesn't see marketing as a silo. He shows how bold marketing is most effective when it's aligned with sales. That means shared goals, consistent messaging, and real collaboration. This is exactly how we operate at RIZZ; everything we do is designed to support the business development pipeline.

2. Build an "Experiments Budget"

One of my favorite concepts in the book is the idea of having a budget set aside just for experimentation. He suggests, if you want to test a new event, campaign idea, or social channel, use the experiments budget. If it works, scale it. If not, move on. This kind of agile thinking is essential, and it’s something we encourage our clients to adopt, especially when venturing into unfamiliar territory.

3. Measure What Actually Matters

I really appreciated his framework for evaluating event ROI. He recommends tracking:

• Number of accounts or contacts influenced

• Number of new accounts or contacts

• Number of active opportunities sourced

• Number of customer meetings held

• Session attendance

At RIZZ, we use similar KPIs to show clients what success looks like and where to double down.

And about that LinkedIn strategy...

Udi shares a tactic, taking high-performing public posts and creating premium content as a natural next step. His example in the book resulted with a conversion rates of 70-80% on landing pages. It’s a great reminder that strong LinkedIn content isn’t just about visibility, it’s a real demand gen tool when used intentionally.

If you're a CRE operator, lender, or service provider looking to create meaningful visibility and drive measurable results, take a page from Udi’s book. Courageous marketing isn't just for tech companies. It works in real estate too, when you're bold enough to try.