How to Stand the F*ck Out with Louis Grenier.

Louis Grenier

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Founder

of

Everyone Hates Marketers
EP
112
Louis Grenier
Louis Grenier

Episode Summary

Today on the show we have Louis Grenier, podcast host of Everyone Hates Marketers and the creator of the 8 week course called Stand the fuck out.

In this episode, we talked about how the course can help you and your business STFO and why you need to. We also chatted about the motivations that led him to create it in the beginning.

We also discussed why Louis hates the idea of category creation and what he believes you should aim for instead, and then dove straight into the different steps you need to take to achieve radical differentiation. Finally we discussed why big brands and market leaders can afford not to be different.



NO-BULLSH*T MARKETING RESOURCES
Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Mentioned Resources

Highlights

Time

What is “Stand the Fuck Out” and what led Louis to create his 8 week course. 00:02:16
Why do you want to stand the fuck out and how it u. 00:05:03
Why Louis hates the idea of category creation. 00:09:10
Why big brands and market leaders can afford not to be different. 00:12:50
Join the waiting list and stand the fuck out. 00:15:30
How Louis would reduce churn for a company in 90 days. 00:31:03
The one thing Louis knows about churn today that he wished he knew when he first started with his career. 00:37:12

Transcription

Louis Grenier Interview

Hello, and welcome to the show 

For the listeners. So we have Louis Grenier on the show today, or as he likes to call himself, Louie, the grenade Renia eh, he's the host of everyone hates marketers are popular contrarian marketing podcasts that reached 1 million plus downloads with no ads and listened for years. And the course creative stand the fuck out.

And eight week high intensity only works. Designed for risk-takers, who wants to radically stand out in a sea of competitors and attract customers that love and respect prior to doubling down on the hem and his cost, Louie [00:02:00] was a coworker of mine and her job. We focused on marketing content, marketing strategy, positioning, and differentiation.

Before that he was also a marketing consultant, helping companies like Forrest and Dropbox. So my first question for you, Lou, is what is stand the fuck out and what are you trying to achieve with it? 

Louis Grenier: [00:02:16] Thanks for this wonderful intro, man. It was great to chat to you again. I follow the record. I don't call myself the grenades.

You came up with it, which is actually pretty fucking good. 

Andrew Michael: [00:02:26] Was that a meetup we met for the first time? It was like, hi, my name's Louie, Louie, the grenade. And I was like, why Graydon is like, because I dropped bombs wherever I go. 

Louis Grenier: [00:02:34] was like, nah, 

Jesus people will actually believe you cause you're such a good liar.

But yeah. Thanks for asking. Stand the fuck out. That came from years and years of trying to find myself on exactly what I wanted to do in this life, because we both know it's, it's a short life and I wanted to do something meaningful that was giving the energy that I was good at, that I could pay be paid well from.

And that was in demand. And yeah. Radical [00:03:00] differentiation is something that came to me after years of years of this kind of internal work with myself. And also the people I seek to serve, like the audience that I started to build through everyone hates marketers. The work has to, to do through Hotjar.

And it's the kind of, that's the destination of all of that, but it's, it would be way too easy for me to do this kind of survivorship bias thing to say, it just came up to me like that and it's working and it's just the years and the years. And we can deep dive into that if you want. 

Yeah, 

Andrew Michael: [00:03:30] absolutely. You started the course now, this is the second batch that you going through, or you had to think give us a little update on what's happened so far. 

Louis Grenier: [00:03:38] So I'm running it twice a year. It's limited to 20 people and it's not just a bullshit scarcity tactic. It's genuinely because I get to know everyone in the cohort.

I get to challenge them. Me, we work together. We're quite the same in that sense. We have weekly group calls and I would single out everyone making sure they do their work, making sure they ship, making sure they get feedback, making sure they challenged their self limiting beliefs. [00:04:00] And I can't really do that after 20, I realized that 20 is probably the max.

And yeah, we are running the second cohort now and and I'm running here twice a year, only because as well it, it takes a lot out of me. I don't want to as possible. So I want to keep this balance between giving value as many to as many people as possible, but without losing my energy, 

Andrew Michael: [00:04:20] Yeah, for sure. Very cool. I like as well. The focus that you've had though through everything that you've done and that we've worked on as well previously, like starting with the podcasts. When I first got to know you, like I met you on the first day, I heard that your podcast has loved the name as well. Everyone hates marketers.

It almost there at that point as well as already, like. It's a little bit contrarian and sorts, like trying to fight back against shady marketing tactics and really focused on delivering value. I think that sort of comes back to it. And so what you're talking about now is after 20 difficult for me to add value as an individual, but really like below that let's dive into a little bit more than what's somebody going to learn on this course? Like why would you want to stand the fuck out as a business? What do you hope to achieve after these eight weeks or [00:05:00] with the lessons that you get from going through it? 

Louis Grenier: [00:05:03] So it's, it's easy to do. You scrubbed a problem. Everyone knows that intuitively a clutter is everywhere, right?

Everyone with a brain and a computer and any internet connection can create something tomorrow or today, they can claim to be marketing consultants. They can claim to be started boner on whatever, like anyone can start a blog and newsletter a podcast, a business today. So by default, Dan. It's beginning normal, difficult to stand out because the barrier to entry is getting so much lower.

So whatever you're trying to do, that should be our top priority. That should be your top priority to be seen and noticed because if you can't be seen and noticed she can sell, she can sell, you can make money. It just goes back to so instinctively. I don't need to spend a lot of time on the problem because people get it.

I know if you're listening to this right now, you just get the problem. So what I teach though, is the problem with. People telling you, Oh, you just need to be different. You need to be authentic. You need to sell, you need to tell stories. I hate this one. You need to use [00:06:00] storytelling is that they never tell you how so you would read books on positioning and differentiation.

I've read them all. And I keep reading more that I discover. And they all get your kind of creative circuits firing. They all get you excited. They share examples of massive brands like Disney and Harley Davidson. And, and all of those, I'm telling you, this is how they do it. But when you go to the nitty gritty and that's what I try to do for years, you never get a blueprint.

You never get some sort of a method that is rooted in psychology and first principles that is very unlikely to change because it's rooted in the way people think that actually make you. Create something that is radically different by design. And that's what I wanted to do. And that's what I did when I took a month off like months ago to try to compile all the stuff I had in our heads, all the interviews from the podcast that touch on the topic, all the books, I had read my experiences and try to condense it to something I felt.

I can [00:07:00] actually teach people to do that from start to finish. And at the end, they'll have clarity on a very solid positioning that is radically different from the rest. And at the end, they'll have a sentence that only says we are the only whatever that does whatever for those people. And once you have these.

Sequence these three attributes kind of sentence, you have achieve radical differentiation, but obviously the work is not over. You need to spread the word and four years after that and that kind of outside of the remit of the, of the program, but the core foundation is, is that. And so that's what I'm trying to solve.

Andrew Michael: [00:07:39] Yeah, it's awesome. I think having worked with you as well, personally, I think one of your big skills really has been always that has been able to take a huge amount of data and condense it into a really small continent, meaningful and you used to bring these one pages. You used to love your little one pages.

But they were always super impactful and really, really easy to digest. And then [00:08:00] at the end of the day, like easy to work off and get the team to rally behind. So I'm definitely intrigued and interested now to what you put together over that time 

Louis Grenier: [00:08:09] that you were 

Thanks, man. And, and, but just on that, and you've, you've picked up on exactly the core concept here, which is, and you picked it up earlier.

You mentioned a little earlier as well, which is the idea of congruence that. Everything makes sense. Everything is you could put it on Australia and he just connects and there's no fluff. There's no bullshit on top. There's no disconnection between stuff. It's not as if you're a big company and you claim to be, let's say for women's rights and feminism.

And then you don't allow your pregnant employees to have time off, it's like congruence. If you want to be radically different, that's the call to learn is that you must achieve congruence. And it means removing a lot more than you think from the entire experience. And I'm not talking about feature here.

I'm not talking about different [00:09:00] through features. I'm talking about 3d on entire. Thing that people see and exactly one pagers on all of that is the same concept is congruent simplicity. 

Nice. 

Andrew Michael: [00:09:10] So I wanna ask you a couple of questions on this then as well, specifically, like getting to that final sentence, you said something like we are the only.

That that does X for X. Because I think this is also plays into it a little bit about the idea of category creation. And it's actually a book that I've read recently played bigger and a few others. And I see you cringing as well. While you're cringing this, you started that. 

Louis Grenier: [00:09:33] I because I fucking hate it for multiple reasons.

So I hate this word of category creation because there's, there's a few reasons why it's wrong. First. You need to have years and years of experience and huge deep pockets, and a lot of patients to pull off a category, a real category creation move, which means creating an actual brand new category that people don't know.

It takes a lot of time according to play bigger, it's it takes from six to 10 years. [00:10:00] For category creation to actually be fooled. Yeah. And so David canceled from drift can pull that off because he has years and years of startups and years, and so many connections in, in Silicon Valley that he can pull that off for 99.9, nine, 9% of companies out there that are not VC backed tech startup with huge innovation.

It's very unlikely to be for you if you're listening to this and you're not in that space or you're a smaller bootstrapped company and whatever. It's unlikely to be for you. The second big reason why it's a big issue that I have is that most category creation case studies are actually not category creation, case studies.

They are subcategory. For example, in, in blue ocean strategy, they mentioned this new fry maker from a French company called Seb. And they said they created a new category by doing a air fry maker, which uses around 80% less soil. Apparently. And they are saying it that that's they sell to the new blue ocean and there is no competition.

Bullshit. It's absolutely bullshit. They're still part of the same category, which is a fry maker and yes, they've [00:11:00] innovated, they removed a few things. Great. But it's not a category creation, move. People still understand that it's a fry maker. And so what I'm teaching through radical differentiation is try to avoid that.

Very kind of very difficult move to pool and say, hold on, you can play inside the category and do a lot of damage and challenge the category leader and have fun with it without trying to invent something that you're going to have to educate millions of people about. And that's the toughest thing to do.

And this one I'm getting fired up. One of the toughest thing to do in marketing is to make people change their mind. And a date deadline. It just takes years. So you must use something and lean against something that already exists or else you're gonna have a tough time.

Andrew Michael: [00:11:48] For sure. I, so I think we a hundred percent like creatures of habit.

And I think even now, like in terms of COVID, I think we overthinking the changes that people are going to have posts. If we ever get back to like post COVID. [00:12:00] I saw it here. Like I stay, I live in Cyprus, a small little Island. We had a big spike last year when it just like the rest of the world.

And then the cases went to zero for most of the summer for five, six months, people just went back to life as normal. There's almost like COVID, it had never come in and gone, whatever it was just life as usual. And I think like we are these creatures of habit that just as soon as things got back to normal, so it's very, very difficult to change those habits and those behaviors and a hundred percent agree with you as well on the fact that you need a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of education to.

To build a category. I would push back that on. So I think like when you do now, let you nail it and then you become that position. But absolutely. What would be the difference though, in what you're saying? Like at an early stage of care, really just figuring out this category that you, that you're sitting in and how you can differentiate within it.

That almost becomes the foundations for a future play. And I think that's also maybe. It should be that maybe the thoughts and cause this is something I'm thinking about now for my start of is that yes, we're never going to create a category from day [00:13:00] one and we're not to, we're not that stupid or naive that we're going to be able to do it, but it's more what can we do internally to set the foundations, to set the path on the direction that we see the world going?

And I think I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. One is what is the difference between these two paths? So if they are pretty similar in your mind, like how do you see this evolving and how do you see it becoming something bigger? Would you say it doesn't need to be just because the category is big enough.

If you make enough noise and make enough mess, like you can build a really good business. 

Louis Grenier: [00:13:27] So th the main difference between playing inside an existing category and creating a new category, couldn't be bigger. The F you, by playing inside the category and picking one, you are linear against. Stuff that people expect and know already.

So you're basically leaning on the work of others. So you don't have to do it for any go to market strategy and any company that I want to cross the chasm, the strategy is always the same. You must obsess over a specific group of people who have similar characteristics, so that word of mouth can be part of it.

You must build and create an [00:14:00] experience that is better. Than alternatives out there. So that's, the actually rave about you and you must do that in a congruent way, meaning removing as much as possible and making it super lean and obsessing over one specific thing. And then you must spread the word.

Over and over again, using a fame first kind of mindset, which is about becoming famous inside that group of people. It doesn't mean in a vain way. It means becoming famous. Meaning people start to see you, they start processing you, they start remembering you, they start building memory strictures around you and therefore they will pick you the next time they think of, that category.

And once you do it, that is the bowling pin strategy from the book crossing the chasm. You absolutely can grow bigger in a bigger market, in a bigger category and maybe play and fight against the category leader. Or once you've made enough money may be maybe a category, a new category, an actual, genuinely new category can be created.

But [00:15:00] it's, there is so much to play with inside categories that already exist, that it shouldn't be discounted and you can create subcategories. You can, you can obsess over a group of people that have been underserved. You can remove it all of a sudden, there's so much you can do inside. So that's the biggest thing, 

Andrew Michael: [00:15:14] yeah. And I think it's all, especially now with what's happened and how the world's accelerated. And if we talking about the context of like subscription businesses, software, and like categories have just expanded over, not like the market share and the size and the audience with so many more people moving online.

So the opportunities there, like it's just. Going to be expanding imminently for the next few years with what's happened recently. Let's talk a little bit about the details then. So I get started now decide I want to stand the fuck out. I want to separate myself. What's the action plan. Yeah, that's the first 

Louis Grenier: [00:15:47] step.

So there's basically four parts. The first part is the mindset. Something that no one really talks about in those books and expelled on really internship. That's the biggest hurdle. You must challenge a limiting belief. The biggest one is to think that [00:16:00] that is, this is a risky move to stick your neck out.

In France in particular where I'm from, it's not something that people like, you're not supposed to stick your neck out and you need to go back to the, to the average people who make a lot of money are thrown upon and people are being jealous of them. Anyway. You must take some risks, but actually taking risks is the safest safest option.

If you don't, nothing's going to happen for you, you're gonna, you need to fear obscurity over anything else. And by changing such meeting belief, it's really about trying to write down the things that you're afraid of and really finding counter arguments to each because the people who actually are different, if you think about it, The people that the artists that you love, like daft punk I'm doing a TL down on their differentiation soon.

And that point is they just retired and brilliant example of different differentiated artists. They all talk about that. The both of them say about, we have been fearless from day one and they would have done, there was so many things they would have done differently. They would have never tried so many different things [00:17:00] if they were afraid and you need this confidence to just push through and fucking go for it.

All in. If you go 50% in, if you dilute things a bit, if you make the Curry less spicy and round up the AGS and change the name, everyone hates marketers too. Everyone loves marketing or, then it's, it's just not gonna stick. So you're gonna have to go. Obscurity is your enemy. So I could go on.

There's a lot of more self-limiting beliefs like imposter syndrome, thinking you're a fraud and people will remote you. People will throw rocks at you. But overall, my biggest advice on this journey is to talk to a coach, talk to a therapist, talk to friends do some work on yourself because this is where it is required.

The mindset is the biggest thing. So having said that second step is the minimum viable market, your market to people you seek to, to serve. And there's a few other people talking about the exact sentence step, obviously, cause I'm not claiming to have invented anything. I'm just connecting the dots. From experts who are much more smart [00:18:00] than me.

The part here is really about, instead of starting with the product that you already have, all the idea that you already have it's to forget it for a second longer than a second and obsess over that market first. So the. The best example I can give is instead of thinking of a market in term of demographics or firmographics, like B2B stats that companies use to think about the actual core psychographic decor thing that they want to achieve, the costing that you can have, then do the, making a customer list.

If you have already customers, or if you don't listing down hypothesis of the people that you have access to. Very important. Who do you have access to? Because when it comes time to market them, you're going to struggle. If you don't have access to any joy, do you actually enjoy working with those people?

Are those people you want to work with? I prefer to work with consultants, small business owners, founders Mavericks that people who love taking risks and [00:19:00] artists over CEOs of fortune 500. That's super important, obviously profitability. Are they, are they making a lot of money for you or they're not, but it's not only just money.

It's are they sucking the life out of you? They're making it very difficult for you, like time-wise and whatnot. And those three criteria's on their own. Plus the pain. Are they in pain? Is there something big that you can solve for them? Makes kind of the, the kernel of the type of people you need to obsess about to understand exactly who they are and a lot of advice that they are about the money, so they will tell you make a list of your top customers, identify the top 20%, and then those who makes the most, and then those are the ones you should obsess over.

And I don't think that's right way surely because radical differentiation as a, as a journey. Requires you to have fun as well. And if you just obsess over customers, you can make a lot of money for you. I think you, you make me sell it on the bigger picture and sure. You might have to price your stuff 10 X less, [00:20:00] but it's, it's like this congruence again.

If you really serve people you hate and you don't really don't get a lot of energy out of you. You're going to struggle in the longterm. To do this. You've talked about that on the podcast. A lot of time alone, a lot of time. Once you have at least to do this, you just interview people. And when I say interview people, you start conversation and you ask them to understand the journey from start to finish.

When was the first time you ever heard about us and all of that, I'm not going to go through that in detail, because you've covered that before. And it's the common questions that people are the, the code. So I have here though, is to avoid asking questions and talking to people who never. Cross that bridge, meaning who never bought your solution or never bought a solution similar than yours.

You're gonna talk to tire-kickers then, and you're going to get false data. People are very good at talking about their past and what they've done in possible to talk to people about the future. They can't come up with solutions for you. So that's the biggest mistake to avoid? I would say one question though.

That I've never heard. Really being [00:21:00] mentioned anywhere in those type of interviews that I use a lot now, which is super fun to ask is what are the things you hate about our category or industry? What other cliches that you can't stick anymore? Now it's a hit or miss question. Sometimes people don't have any idea.

Sometimes you get so much insight, so many insights you're are like, we can play with that so much. We can remove all this other dimension or we can make fun of it or whatever. And so that question usually unlocks and all the fun stuff.

 So never had done that. 

You make sense of the interviews and you stop talking to people once, you know what they're going to say next, that's the rule, right?

Like once you, once you talk to enough people and they repeat the same thing the same way as then, you can almost finish that sentence. You have a congruent group. And this is when you must write down the definition of the, of that market. And it's difficult. It's difficult advice to give them because it takes a bit of taste and experience.

To get to the point of [00:22:00] knowing, okay, this is a congruent markets that I can obsess about. That seems small enough for me to own, but big enough for me to make money, it takes a bit of time. So give me, let me give you a quick example. I work with a client that sells shampoos in the U S and the original idea was that the minimum viable market were Latinas in general.

Okay, underserved market niche enough. Niche millions of people, a few this description. So very demographic base. Doesn't tell you much of a why they buy and all of that. So we went on to do exactly what I told you and what we discovered was that the minimum viable market for them to carry on all of the group, they must obsessive about before moving on to bigger things were Latinas with long hair, frizzy hair in particular.

Who like to buy online. So youngish spending a lot of time on Instagram as well. Apparently who lived in two States in the U S [00:23:00] Florida and California, because this is those two States had very warm and humid weather all year long, which made the pain of having long frizzy hair that they couldn't control.

Even bigger, right? Yeah. And once you have that market, I can tell you, it gets so much easier to build an experience that is radically frown just for them. It gets much easier. Again, my biggest advice is to think of psychographics and why they buy an attributes that are relate to that first and then apply a layer of demographic and firmographic saying, okay, those people who, long hair on frizzy hair, they tend to be women.

They tend to be between 20 and 30, but that's not the biggest thing that you need to care about. And then, and then it takes a bit of experience like that's the. I know, I don't like to give that that's that's the way it works. It takes 

Andrew Michael: [00:23:51] a bit of time.

 I think it takes a bit of time and Texas, but what you mentioned, the been encouraged, because I think this is one of the biggest areas where companies fail is they never [00:24:00] pick an audience.

They never. Because it's also the, what about alienating others? What about missing out potential market? Yes. And I think it's probably the biggest mistake you can make is trying to be everything for everyone. And when you become nothing for no one and your case, like what you highlighted now, the examples like sounds super specific, but it also sounds super powerful at the same time then eh, we, all your marketing spend is going to go into which States, like exactly what.

The types of campaigns, you're going to be running off of the back of that. How to speak to an actual individual, living in a state with a specific problem and potentially even a specific time of the year, because that's also influenced in as well by the weather and things like that. So like you can get so much more specific in terms of the strategies that you go to acquire and approaches.

And I think in the context of the show as well, this is like one of the biggest areas as well, where we see lecture and happening a lot is. Were you bringing in the wrong customers through the door. And the biggest area of that is by just doing like a spray and pray strategy, where you try to acquire as many customers as possible.

It doesn't matter [00:25:00] who they are probably not great fits for your product and coming in, and then just turning later, but starting off by knowing exactly who you're going after. Exactly why you're going off to what if their biggest pain problem is you almost set yourself up for success. It's like prevention is better than churn.

And it starts with just knowing the customer, knowing the problem. And then everything just becomes so much easier. What you build for them, how you go about figuring out what goes on the roadmap what's most important.

 Yes. 

Louis Grenier: [00:25:28] And so to come back to this One self-limiting belief. I didn't mention at the start, but that's one of the biggest, if we focus on one tiny market or that seemingly tiny on one message or one product or one part of the experience we get to miss out on other opportunities.

So that's the typical maximizer mindset, which is really about, a bit, what if the, what if the, what if, what if we get more, but you need to ask yourself the other question, which is. By focusing on one market or one message or whatever by not focusing on markets, one message, whatever. What are you missing out on by not focusing on the [00:26:00] market?

You're missing out on congruence. You're missing out on less churn because you're going to serve the right people. Throw the experience from start to finish. You're going to miss out on expertise or perceived expertise from the other side. If I'm telling you that we are the only shampoo in the world that actually is specifically made and works the best for sure.

Women with long hair, frizzy hair or whatever. It's just so much easier for, for, for them then to pay even a premium for that because they know it's just for them. And so we need to flip the question. What are you missing out on by not going niche? And it's not just niche it's by just not going specific.

As soon as you open up the door, you open up the door to mediocrity. You make the Curry less spicy I've thing, five rich people. So you and Lindsay be clear. You can't be radically different without a very specific markets that you obsess about. If you try to be Disney and Google and whatever, you're fucked.

Andrew Michael: [00:26:55] Yeah. Again, it is one of those very, very tough things, I think, especially in the beginning as well, [00:27:00] when you maybe don't have the time, don't have the resources to really spend the time. So I think a lot of times when you get started, this is a step that gets skipped is like really doubling down on understanding the problem really.

Just going out and speaking to customers over and over and over again, before you start building anything. I think that's one thing I've definitely been guilty of in the past this time around though. Cause the total opposite, I was like, let me first really try and understand. And not even just yesterday we were chatting with the team was like, I think we've started customers started using the product now, but.

We haven't taken a step back again to reevaluate what we building. We went down a train of thought, said Hey, this is where we believe we need to go. Obviously from our own experience, being our own customers, I think is a good place in position to be in. But it's super important to keep going back and keep challenging these beliefs.

Really trying to understand. And we did it at a hot shot, like a few times, I think, in terms of trying to identify the ideal customer profile. If I'm honest, I don't think we ever did. It. Did a great job when we ever really stood out. I think we've had this discussion as well before where but I think your counter arguments, if I remember [00:28:00] correctly at the time was like my Hotjar being market leader, that it is.

It always had that market leader dynamics that were going to pull it forward no matter what without needing to really push the boundaries of standing out and focusing on a specific niche. Yeah, 

Louis Grenier: [00:28:13] that's a very important point. So the reason why big brands and big companies that are market leaders can afford not to be different anymore and be distinctive, meaning just being seen.

That's the main thing is because they are market leader. So that's from the grade book from Baron sharp, how brands grow, which is really about that. The more market share you have, the more people would talk about you and the more likely people will be loyal to you. The less market share you have, the less, the more people will actually cheer on and go to a competitor.

And so how'd, y'all had this market, that Anik being first, they were the first to combine all those features together. And actually, if you think about it from a differentiation perspective, they were the first and only one to do that. And then thanks to that. They went from [00:29:00] minimum viable market to minimum viable market where agencies.

And like consultant and stuff for the clients, but not any agencies, agencies that reckon up the forefront as early adopters in the adoption curve. And from that, it starts with snowballed and then they started to cross the chasm and they started to serve everyone in that category, that's the journey.

Every brand has the same journey. And if you think you are the only one who's not going to apply this way, you're badly mistaken. Just another quick example, outside of tech red bull, like that's a big brand. Everyone mentioned. How did they start? They started in Australia. The guy are minimum viable market where.

Male students who partied like crazy, that was their first market in Australia. And they went in, in nightclubs and they paid students to be the ambassadors and they gave free samples away. And that's how they started. They didn't start like the media powerhouse that they are. [00:30:00] They started like everyone else's by obsessing over a small group of people.

Red bull 

Andrew Michael: [00:30:04] is I think a case study in its own. And there was a line, I think from the CMO time, my head of marketing was like, He said that we're a media house that just happens to sell an energy drink. So they almost shifted their entire focus as a business to content into production and a thing that they like energy drink commerce became an afterthought eventually.

But like you said, I they started from somewhere and it was really specific and focused. Unbelievable. Brad would have been able to do that. Cool. So I see we're running up on time as well though. I want to save some question that asked every guest that joins the show. I'm looking forward to hearing your answer to let's imagine a hypothetical scenario.

Now you're arriving in your company and churn or retention is not doing great. And for some reason, this year turns to Louis Grania will be the grenade Renia. And says, Hey, Louis I really need you to drop some bombs. Now I already need to question for us. We have 90 days we needed to [00:31:00] have some results. What are you going to do? 

Louis Grenier: [00:31:01] I wouldn't I wouldn't assess a child. I would obsess over. What I just said, I would simplify stuff, remove as much as possible, which will allow me to talk to you about the next two paths. So once you've done, I will do what is basically what I said. I went, interviewed customer obsessed over them, identify a congruent group of people who actually have is very painful pain that we are able to S to, to solve.

And then I would engineer the radical differentiation. I would map out what everything is required in a category, or is expecting in the category we picked. At least I with everything from, and then I, again, I don't mean features here. I, I mean everything. So in marketing podcasts, if you pick that as a category, you would list down the fact that you have ongoing ads at the start in the middle.

At the end, it'll have the guests that does never, that doesn't really do it. You'd have they cover multiple topics instead of one you can, you can, you can write down everything and then you must challenge and think, what can I remove or reduce, what can I do to really shed light on the negative on the positive?

Because [00:32:00] this is what happens when you. Shed light on the positive people with rationalize the negatives. That's super important to understand when you remove stuff, people will understand why UNSW, because you only focus on a few things. How Joe did that very well. Not in term of features because we had a few, but they, they obsess over removing the complexity.

And so it became UN is still known to be the easiest to use because they really obsess over that. And so you can think of any example, like red bull, one product for years and years and years And, and so that's what he takes. The variable here is removing. You must look at the congruence between the markets that we have.

How do we actually give them the best thing for their pain? How do we remove the cliches? How do we do things in a streamlined way that will become one so that we are known as the only that does that. And so it takes again, experience to do it takes guts to do, but think about, think about the companies and the people that you.

That you love that are very, that you [00:33:00] think are different and think about what they are not doing instead of what they are doing. Think about the stuff that they removed and the stuff they're not doing. And you will likely find the fact that they'll never own that many channels that they are not focusing on that many customers.

You look at the product it's about removing more than adding, and then yeah, you can add sprinkles of stuff. So that you can help people solve their pain better. You can take ideas from other industries. If you're in B2B tech, SAS, don't just stay in that industry. Think about any type of industries, any stuff that you like and try to like add a few stuff that.

Contribute to the overall story. And once you have that, the last time, the rest stuff I would do is I will do a jolt. I would make sure that this market know who we are by sharing a gift. And by a gift, I don't mean a stupid lead magnet or a newsletter buy a gift. Something generous. That people can either use to elevate the boredom or to tell a story to someone else or higher, have a higher status [00:34:00] or do something they couldn't do before.

And so in that definition, it could be anything, it could be a TV ad with a good story. It could be like a guide. If you want to, it could be a podcast interviewing people and whatnot. But the idea of the gift is way beyond just an inbound marketing tactic is really about. Being generous and showing up giving stuff for free before you expect anything in return.

And you likely, if you do, that's where the experience you likely attract the right people make them super happy and they are way likely to stick around after that. And that's the core thing. It ties back to results. There's plenty of studies done that showed that differentiated brands are able to keep their customers for longer.

And are able to pay to make them pay a premium for it. And but again, intuitively we know that, so that's what I would do. I would just follow the blueprint I gave you, and I wish we had way more time to, to go through it, but that's the way podcast interview goes. That's what I would do. 

Andrew Michael: [00:34:57] So I wasn't really paying attention. Do you mind [00:35:00] going back a few minutes and saying what you said. 

Louis Grenier: [00:35:03] Yeah, sure. So step one is to change your mind. Okay. 

Andrew Michael: [00:35:06] So the next question that was fantastic. I think definitely out of all the answers I've had so far in the show for that it was generally, it starts with the first step and it just elaborates on the first step, but it's nice that you followed through with like what to do after that, what to do after understanding like the customers, the pain points, the problems.

And I, I love the points as well of just removing things I think. More often than not. Our immediate reaction is to go to what's missing. What should we add? When more often than not like just removing complexity, simplifying things is the answer. But as humans, I think like we immediately.

The initial response or care, what's missing, what should we be adding? But maybe having those additional features that are like prompting additional requests are the cause of conflict to begin with and just pulling them out would save you a lot of time and energy. 

Louis Grenier: [00:35:54] So two things, yeah, just briefly.

Yeah, absolutely. And we are taught to do this. We are taught in [00:36:00] school to be, to increase our grades everywhere. We're taught in school to add and to be, to be good at everything. That's the wrong mindset she wants to radically differentiate. And the second thing is it's not about features only, again, to repeat that super important. When I say remove it's not removing features only, it's about thinking of the entire experience from start to finish where you are, where you spend your time and whatnot. That funk is very well known to do exactly that thing, which is not appearing in public.

That's all billing scarcity this week, which is a generous thing, by the way, by not showing up, you allow people to tell stories about it. You basically alleviate the burden because when you show up, it's just going to, blow up. They are not showing their faces. They tried with beanbags before going to helmets.

And they've stopped doing that. They've really focused on a few handful of albums instead of being an Instagram everyday and what not. So if you look at everything out there, you'll see the principal being everywhere. It's just a convention, like a common thing that you see from differentiated artists or creators or [00:37:00] companies.

Andrew Michael: [00:37:00] When are you getting them on the show? Sounds like you need interview them on everyone hates marketers.

 Imagine! Jesus Christ 

Yeah. Cool. Last question then what's one thing, today about churn and retention that you wish you knew when you got started in your career.

Louis Grenier: [00:37:12] If I had to pick one, is that It's not about adding shit and on and on, and the making your stuff cumbersome is really about having the discipline and the confidence to, to create a few things, but do them extremely well.

Andrew Michael: [00:37:26] Awesome. I think that's an amazing end to today's show. It's been a pleasure as usual, do we actually missed working with you as well? So it's good to catch up and have a chat 

I miss you too man 

and I'm taking the piss as well today with you, but it's always said, this is the relationship we had, and I really, really appreciate you joining the show today.

I'm really excited for the success you've had on this first course and for all the listeners. Definitely definitely recommend like checking him out on his next one. If you can get into if this space because he's definitely standing the fuck out by what he's doing is creating a space of his own. And I'm pretty sure that every [00:38:00] course is going to be fully booked from here on out.

So thanks so much for joining. I wish you best of luck now going into 2021. 

Louis Grenier: [00:38:07] Thanks man. On Lake for you.

 Cheers.  

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Louis Grenier
Louis Grenier
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The show

My name is Andrew Michael and I started CHURN.FM, as I was tired of hearing stories about some magical silver bullet that solved churn for company X.

In this podcast, you will hear from founders and subscription economy pros working in product, marketing, customer success, support, and operations roles across different stages of company growth, who are taking a systematic approach to increase retention and engagement within their organizations.

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