How To Run A Wildly Successful Podcast With Louis Grenier

Louis: Not try to please your guests. You basically have a guest on that you admire or that you like for some way or some reasons, and then you try to make them look good. And to me, that's the number one error. You're not there to make the guest look good. You're here to make the listener get value.

Allan: In this episode, I talk to Louis Grenier. Louis Grenier is a longtime podcaster, and he's the host of everyone hates marketers. Now while I don't agree with that premise necessarily, he has been doing podcasting for a very long time, and I'm really new to the game. So that's why I'm getting his advice in this episode on how to run a successful podcast. Welcome, Louis.

Thank you so much for joining me today. The reason I had you on today's episode is purely selfish. I'm starting a podcast, and I wanted to be successful. I'm a total beginner at this, and so you've been doing this for quite a number of years. You've been incredibly successful, and so I wanna basic see how can I download your expensive experience that you've done through trial and error, that you've done through your years of podcasting, your years of interviewing people, and see if how I can shortcut that process?

So I guess maybe before we jump into that, can you give us a bit of background on you? Who are you? What's your claim to fame?

Louis: First of all, thank you for having me on. I'm a recovering Frenchman, and I help marketers to stand the fuck out. That's the short, short spiel. The podcast is called Everyone Hates Marketers, and I started it 8 years ago at this stage.

Allan: You're a podcasting OG then?

Louis: Yeah. Which is crazy to think about because at the time, it didn't feel like that. I can get into it, but there is advantage to that as well.

Allan: You've been podcasting for a long time. I guess the first question a lot I think a lot of people would ask, am I too late to the game? Is it too late to get started? What are your thoughts? There's 2

Louis: ways to see it.

Allan: Right? So either, oh, shit.

Louis: There's so many people out there, and how am I gonna stand out against all of that? Or, oh, that's good. That means there must be some demand in some way, shape, or form. Right? And I know you are into the exact same philosophy, which is you want to tap into the demand that is there.

You don't want to try to generate or create something out of thin air, which is impossible. So I always say if there's many people there, it means it's a good sign. And then, of course, you need to be resilient enough to push through.

Allan: With all of these kind of things, starting anything new, do I do these unscripted? Do I script them? What does workflow look like? Tell me about how does workflow work. Do you do tons of preparation?

What do you do in terms of research? Who does that? Does someone on your team do that? Do you do that? How does all that work?

Louis: Yeah. So, again, like, what I'm sharing here is the way I've learned based on my personality, my experience. It doesn't mean that it's going to work for you. Right? And for folks listening as well, it doesn't mean it's going to work for them.

I like to keep things very light in terms of research. Not that I don't do any research, as you said. I'm interested in the topic anyway, so I will know things without actual research. Right? So I would know about you before.

That's why I've invited you in the first place. I would rather have read your book. So I don't even consider that to be research because that's kind of my job anyway. But I like to keep the process light because if I overthink it and try to plan what's gonna happen too much I'm gonna put myself into a corner and if things are not going as expected, it's not gonna be going super well. Probably the most important thing I've learned over the years.

I like to pick an angle, like a very specific topic that I'm gonna go in-depth in the episode. So it's less about you as a guest, It's more about the topic, which is why it allows me to have people multiple times on the podcast. Again, it's my process. So others might find it depending on the angle, but like I like to keep an angle very specific, actionable, something that others would have never learned or heard about before? In your case, the first time we talked about your 1 page marketing plan, we went into actually each chapter in detail.

Was it original? Not necessarily, but I think we went in-depth and it was probably one of the most popular episodes of the podcast. The second time, I wanted to know about you and how you've built the business behind the scenes. And that, I had never seen or heard you talking about it. Right?

So this one I was happier about the originality, specificity and all of that. So that's kind of what I care about and sometimes it takes me 5 minutes. The guest would fill out the questionnaire. So I have a little questionnaire before, which is important in my opinion. I actually make them do the work for me.

So I would ask them what is the one specific thing you'd like to talk about in the podcast? And I make sure that they understand what specific means. Right? I think once this is done, it's 50% of the job is done. And it's a bit like journalism.

It's basically journalism in the business world.

Allan: I've actually never thought of it that way because I always thought, okay. I'm gonna read the person's book or watch another interview they've done or whatever. But to go in with a specific angle, I like that. That's a really good tip. Workflow wise, what does it look like?

So most podcasters are using something like Riverside or whatever. Okay. So you've got the episode recorded. You've got your Riverside thing. Do you send it to an editor?

Do you just upload it raw? How does that all work?

Louis: So I've tried 2 formats. I've tried interview style, unscripted, pretty much, let's speak, an angle and go for it. And I've tried solo narrative using bits of different episodes to create a kind of a story. And the first one was much easier for me. I think I lasted 20 episodes for the solo stuff and it was so draining, so it wasn't for me.

Yeah. But I think it goes back to the angle. Meaning, once I know that the angle of the episode is nailed, we have something actionable, specific, something that we can claim to be the only one of sharing this, then the rest is easy and the production is easy. It's like, okay, anything that is not really touching on that, anything that is where we talk about something tangential that doesn't add value, anything where maybe the guest really struggles for a while to kind of make a point, we will remove. Anything else we keep as is.

So it's light enough editing. Don't spend too much time on it. I want people to feel like a conversation where there are pauses and people are thinking out loud. If you remove too many of them, because with AI now it's easy to do, if you remove too many silences or too many pauses or some bumble, then it's going to be very difficult for the brain to comprehend from the other side. Like if it's non stop, it's like very tiring.

So you do need to let it breathe as well. So it's kind of in between. But I don't pay a crazy amount of attention to this production side. I pay a lot of attention on the positioning of the episode, like the angle itself.

Allan: One of the things that concerns me is often with a guest, especially who's been on a lot of podcasts as a guest, and like myself included, almost every episode is the same. Right? So how do you get a guest off script? Do you worry about that, or does it come back to the angle that you're starting with? How do you stop the pre rehearsed performance that every guest comes with?

Louis: Yeah. That's something that I've been thinking about for years. I think I found the answer and the answer is to not try to please your guests. You basically have a guest on that you admire or that you like for some way, some reasons and then you try to make them look good. And to me that's the number one error.

You're not there to make the guest look good. You're here to make the listener get value. Right? To use the buzzwords of the day. To actually learn something or be challenged or be educated or have laugh or whatever.

So if you try to make your guest look good, yeah, it's gonna be like yet another episode. If instead your number one goal is to make sure that people listening get something out of it, then you will naturally maybe stop them in their tracks, maybe cut them off, half sentence and stuff like that. Right? And I actually do it from the very start. So before we start the recording, I tell them, listen.

I might interrupt you. I might cut you off. I might contradict you. It's not because I don't like you, it's purely because I want to make sure that my audience gets value. Right?

So they know what's gonna happen. And with the right angle then, what I try to do as well is I try to not ask the questions in the flow that you're used to. So I don't tend to ask who they are. I don't tend to ask anything about them because I do that in the intro. And what I like to do instead is ask them a very cheeky sarcastic or controversial question at the very first one.

Right?

Allan: Okay.

Louis: Just to throw them off a bit and make them feel like, okay, that's going to be different. So they have to think, right?

Allan: Like what? Give me an example.

Louis: So what I make them do is, in the questionnaire, I ask them to fill the number one thing that pisses them off the most about the topic they've chosen. And so sometimes it would be like that marketing is super hard, that it changes all the time. Let's say someone says that, right? They are sick of hearing that marketing changes all the time, that you need to learn new tools and stuff like that. So I would ask them a cheeky question about that.

I would say, for example, what's the number one tool you recommend in 2024 to do marketing the right way or something like that, right? So I'll have a twinkle in my eye so they'll know where I'm getting to. And they usually the bait and they get annoyed. It's not at me, but at the topic. And so then it starts off, well, I don't do it all the time.

Sometimes it's, I can't find it, but most times I do it to see what they're made of.

Allan: And I was gonna ask you about this. I've been on a guest on podcasts, I don't know, probably 100 of times now. There's kind of a bit of awkwardness there about, okay, I'm gonna do the intro later, and this is how it's gonna work, and I'll ask you these questions. Alright. Let me hit record or whatever.

I think the best podcasts as a listener are where you're just like the fly on the wall. You're just listening to 2 people having a cool like, recently, I was pretty often, I go for a walk in my local area with David Jenens, the author of Systemology. And so many times, we we'll go for an a walk and talk for about an hour or sometimes we'll go for a swim or whatever. And so many times, I'm like, why didn't I press record? You know?

We had such a cool conversation. We talked about cool stuff. People would have loved to hear some of this stuff being a fly on the wall. And so I think the way that I'm gonna start all of my podcast is it's gonna be recording from the beginning, and I'll let people know, look, there's not gonna be any intro. There's not gonna be any I'm gonna introduce you or whatever.

We're just gonna get on and record the conversation like we would if we were just getting together at a coffee shop or something like that.

Louis: Yeah. I'm pretty sure that if we were to look back at those conversations with the author of systemology that we would find frames, we would find commonalities, we would find things that you keep talking about on topics. This is what I'm challenging you on. It's like, I'm certain that you always talk about raw, freely the same things, right? Like there is a cluster of things.

So probably fitness because like I know your fitness journey. So there's an exercise that I like to make people do, what you want to ask about, let's list down those things you fucking hate about the category. So in this particular thing, what do you typically hate about existing podcasts? So okay, we don't like the small talk at the start. Okay.

We don't like that. Okay. Great. Okay. What else?

Allan: Basically, the same performance by the guest. So you've heard this guest on 10 different podcasts. They pretty much gave the same performance on 10 different things.

Louis: Okay. Maybe, like, when it's only talking about a very specific marketing, it doesn't go beyond Yeah. Right? It's just marketing marketing marketing. Right?

Allan: Yeah. And where it's obviously a performance element. Right? And I think some guests are such professionals that it would be almost impossible to get them out of that frame. Another good one is kind of almost intrusive questions.

Sometimes they will ask stuff like, wow, I can't believe he asked him that.

Louis: Is that something you love or hate?

Allan: I like it. I like it.

Louis: Okay. Okay. So that's interesting. Right? Like, to me, based on everything you said so far, this is the spiciest of all.

The other ones, I would almost say at this day and age now it's almost expected even though it's not the case everywhere but it's more common than it used to be I feel and I'm not saying you shouldn't do it it's just like that one that you just said that feels the spiciest. It's like no small talk. I mean, you're gonna have to do it because you're human. Like, there will be small talk even if it's recorded. But, like, the first question you hit them is, okay, so how much salary did you generate in the last 12 months thanks to your business?

Right? Or even crazier stuff, just to throw them off. But I'm sure that's not exactly what you mean. But

Allan: It's not to throw them off, and it's not to be purposely intrusive. It's like if you're interviewing someone and they're a SaaS startup or whatever, they had an amazing exit or whatever, I wanna know how much was the exit for? How did the deal come together? Did the deal almost fall apart? Because normally, they'll tell the polished story.

You hear kind of the external story, but I wanna hear about almost dying. Tell me about how much did you exit for. How did you structure this deal, and where did you go? And did how much tax did you pay, and how did you avoid paying tax, and all of this sort of stuff. That's some of the stuff that I really wanna know.

Louis: Right. That's great. Now here is what you're gonna stumble upon. I'd say first of all, before that, you're going to have to make sure that the guests know because there might be NDA needed or whatever or like non NDA, but like letting them know so that they can prepare the figures. A lot of times they wouldn't know, or like prepare the facts behind it.

Sometimes they won't know this, oh, I have to search for it. And it's an excuse. Which brings me to the second point. You mentioned the 5 ways. You're gonna have to be very good at the second, third, fourth, 5th questions.

I mean, not necessarily good, but fucking resilient and keep asking the same thing. Right? So how do we maximize the chance that the guests come in? Like, they are prepared to know that this guy is going to details about the business side or whatever the details are. Because they will 100%, especially as you mentioned like very used to this game.

They will 100% fight back and not give you anything. You can ask the questions they don't want to answer to. They will they won't. Right?

Allan: One of the things I absolutely hate and I don't ever agree to it anymore, like, some podcasters will say, prior to the episode, let's do a 10 or 15 minute prep. Every time I did that in the past, I regretted it, and it made the episode shit because, like, there was no spontaneity or whatever. Right. So I never agreed to it anymore as a guest, and so I don't wanna do that to people who are my guests as well. So to prepare for it, I guess you would have, like, a one pager where you would have, look.

Hey. We're very candid on this podcast. We're gonna go into details. If you're not comfortable disclosing anything, that that's fine, but we would love it if you would, something like that. Is that what how you would approach it?

Louis: Yeah. So I'm I'll share exactly how I approach it. When they book a time, they have a question they have to fill out. And so I make them pick the focus. Obviously, most times actually it's not exactly what I'm going to cover but it's make them think.

It's in the questions that I ask them. So what popular belief do you totally disagree with? So I ask them framing like questions that kind of are is the frame of the podcast and the vibe of it. I think that's important. Right?

I agree with you. I hate those prep thing before. So you don't wanna say necessarily what you're gonna ask, but you want them to arrive in the frame of mind of it's not going to be yet another interview where they ask the basic boring questions. So I don't think you need a one page thing. I don't even think you need anything but a good guest questionnaire.

And then whatever tool you use doesn't matter. You'll have reminders about it that you can send to their inbox. And so they resee their answers and they'll know. That's my way of doing it.

Allan: So let's shift gears a little bit. Promotion. What do you do for promotion? Because it seems to me like podcasts are one of the formats that's probably the most difficult to build an an audience for. Like, most of the successful podcasters that I've asked say on other podcasts or mentions on other podcasts or whatever.

So it's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy. So what are your thoughts?

Louis: I'd say it is the hardest channel to grow. I've tried everything. I know a few friends in the industry who've tried a lot more. I thought I tried everything, but the bottom line is the only way to grow efficiently is to be on other people's podcasts. Not necessarily as a guest, that's usually the most effective one, but you can do swaps, Right?

So, like, you could, for example, send me this episode and I can put it on my podcast as a bonus episode. Right? So that's one way. And then you can do ads and then you can do guesting. And the reason behind why it works and the rest doesn't tend to work is because everyone has an email address, but not everyone listens to podcasts.

This is why, like newsletter ads and stuff like that, no one really has reported any success with it in the long term. So audio podcast, it seems to be like the true proven way is that, which is getting on other people's podcast and be patient. So that's the first one. Now the you mentioned YouTube, which is I'm investing money and time resources into that as well.

Allan: Did you start with YouTube immediately at the beginning or is that No.

Louis: No. No. No. Not at all. I mean, 8 years ago was only audio podcast.

If I had known that I was early and that it would have grown that much, I would have put so much more emphasis into growing this.

Allan: When did you start YouTube?

Louis: I started YouTube properly a less than 12 months ago, but before that it was automatically putting the audio episodes on YouTube, like, with the thumbnail. So like Yeah. But if I had known, yeah, I would have spent way more money from much earlier on. The problem with YouTube is it's the intent of it is different. So again that's what I found you might find something different but I found that when you're listening to podcasts as you said you would go on a walk or you go to the gym you put podcasts on Right?

Or you do cleaning or you prep food or whatever you put the podcast on. Yeah. For YouTube, it's a bit more active where like it's obviously the 2nd biggest search engine in the world. So it's more search intent based, how to do x or like a 12 minute Mr. Biz video or basically I want to be entertained I want to be but you're watching it so it's a more active thing and what I found is long episodes they tend to not work so well.

So breaking down the episode into, like, smaller chunk of 8 to 12 minutes or something like that. That answers a specific question.

Allan: One of the behaviors that I've noticed myself so I used to be always listening on a podcast app. Like you say, if I'm working out or if I'm going for a walk or whatever, I would use a podcast app now. I mean, I subscribe to YouTube Premium, so I don't get the ads. YouTube is my first place that I go to even when I'm just listening. So even when I'm not watching.

So when I'm working out and mostly, I'm just listening, but also it's cool to see the person's face. Sometimes they do, like, a screen share or whatever to show something or whatever. But to me, I think you Did

Louis: you discover a podcast on YouTube or did you go to YouTube to find a podcast you already listened to?

Allan: Yeah. I go to YouTube to find a podcast or

Louis: But that's why I'm asking the question. That's where it comes back to promotion, right? So I know that some people will listen to my YouTube videos because they rather see people or whatever. But to discover your podcast, I think this is where the intent is important.

Allan: Having said that, I have discovered podcasts on YouTube. I'm watching one of my podcasts, and something comes up related. In fact, it happened with you today. Like, I was preparing for this a little bit. I was watching another podcast, and then I thought, oh, I wonder if Luis is on YouTube.

And then I watched most of the episode of you with April Dunford the other day because I'm gonna be speaking to April a week or so. So I thought, kill 2 birds with 1 stone. I'll see how Luis does YouTube episodes, and I'll see some of April before I speak to her.

Louis: So what's your assessment of the episode?

Allan: Oh, it was excellent. April's very sharp. She written her an excellent book. I like how you're doing the podcast. I like the thumbnails.

I think it's good. YouTube is my first place now for podcasting. I hardly ever open my podcast app anymore, and I'm annoyed if a podcast is now only audio.

Louis: Okay. So I mean, are there are other people like you? Quite possibly. But from having talked to a lot of podcasters, especially in the marketing space, to try new things, I see 2 things. I see what I described, which is like the search intent stuff.

They would break down the episode in smaller chunks and it's easier to search and the average view percentage is higher. And so therefore, YouTube would recommend it more. So that's a very good, like, top of funnel type thing. Or they do, which is like the self fulfilling prophecy, they would start doing episodes on YouTube about YouTube, and then it becomes like this kind of

Allan: Yeah.

Louis: Almost pyramid scheme of, oh, the episodes that work the best on YouTube are about YouTube and how to grow on YouTube and so they specialize in it. I've seen that happen a few times. So you don't want that either?

Allan: No. I don't. Do you do shorts to promote, like either on YouTube or on TikTok or anywhere? Do you take clips?

Louis: Yep. So that's part of the process now. We take around 3 to 4 and we put them on YouTube. We're planning to do more on like TikTok and whatnot. What we've seen is, for example, like we get sometimes the highest was 22,000 views for a short, which you'd be like, oh, that's a lot.

How many people end up listening to the full thing after it? Not that many but I think it's a numbers game, right? It's about like mental availability making sure people see you and they've come across you through a shot maybe 6 months in, they see you again, they're like they remember it somehow and they're more likely to click. It's difficult to see a correlation between the 2, to be honest. And I think you need more numbers.

But what we've tried to do was let's pick the ones that work organically, where people seem to like, and let's put some money behind it for ads. So that's gonna be the strategy for YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.

Allan: For ads, do you mean, like, YouTube ads or, like, for

Louis: TikTok or Instagram. Yeah. Like, if we know that, organically, people like it without pushing it, then chances are that more people will like it. So that's the hunch. Again, it's not as clear cut as you send an email, there's a call to action at the bottom, after a few hours you check your inbox, you get a few sales.

It's such a long burn, so you have to be there in a long it's not direct response, Right?

Allan: Yeah.

Louis: To go back to your your first love. It's not direct response.

Allan: Totally. Well, if you read the second book and you're one of the very first outside of my circle to get access to it, you'll see I'm thinking wider than direct response these days. So

Louis: I thought I was in your circle. Jesus. That's very mean.

Allan: I mean in my team. So Alright. Good. People who are on my team. So you're one of the very first.

So tell me about monetization. Do you monetize? Do you think about it? I mean, I know starting from 0, it's probably I'm a long way off from monetizing. And I think even if I got to a high number of views and subscribers and all of that, I would probably monetize with my own products rather than somebody else's products.

What are your thoughts on it? What do you do?

Louis: I used to be completely against any sort of monetizing, like through ads. For example, I don't like podcast ads because most of them are irrelevant and the guest clearly doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. He's just there to get the money. Again, when it comes to listing down the things I don't like. So I do have changed my mind last year and I've started to look at sponsors that would be a very good fit.

So tools that I would use myself, stuff like that, and only accept those. So I'm actually waiting to answer from a company, from a tool I use every day almost to probably get into something long term. So like if it's niche enough, the podcast, you can get a lot more money from it because they know that they can reach folks that are difficult to reach, right? So yes, that adds if you do it, I think if you do the same method that we did describe earlier, which is like listing down what you don't like about them and do it your way. It's really good.

But the long tail is fascinating. I mean, there's some people that became my customers of my coaching or consulting or team workshop or whatever that have been listening to your podcast for years and we have been having conversation for years and they have never given me any money and then up, they just wake up and ask for a 20 ks workshop for their team. So yeah, this is the two ends of the spectrum. So I think not to hurt your reputation, being very cautious about the type of sponsor you get is usually I mean, that's what I would advise. And then being patient for the long stuff, but you know that as well.

Allan: One thing I wasn't sure about is with so obviously on your podcast, you swear and things like that, you use colorful language. And that's totally fine. I've got no issue with that. I do too. Does that give you a penalty?

Because I know some podcasts, they beep it out, and I'm like, there must be a good reason why they're doing that.

Louis: Yeah. They do it because countries, like, let's say, in the Middle East, for example, it's all about touching as many people as possible. So I think they are the exceptions, not the rule in a sense of, like, if it's really a visibility play and they're already influencers in their own right somewhere else, than to reach more people and making sure that no one is offended. But for me, it was a very cautious choice from the start to make it. Like, I like the fact that there is an explicit tag next to my episodes because no other marketing podcast have it.

Allan: It's like the best thing that can to an album is that it gets banned. Right?

Louis: Yep. So So I love that. So it's definitely on purpose and I don't curse, like I say there, all the time and only when I get annoyed or whatever. Like, I don't really do it that much all like all things considered but yes this is why I'm doing it and it might hurt my reach but I don't care I think in the almost top 10 in the UK for marketing top 10 in a few other countries without a massive team behind me, without a massive budget, with an explicit tag. So it doesn't matter as long as the positioning is good.

Allan: Finally, what don't I know? What am I going into that I don't know that I should be aware of?

Louis: I think you don't know how you will naturally fall back into what you like, what you do for work. I have a feeling that you'll tell me in 6 months time you were right all along. You're so smart, Louis. Can you hire me? I want to be to work with you now.

I'm sick of my business. No, I think this is it. I think you'd be surprised how much of your unconscious pops out in the conscious world when you talk to people and how much there is commonalities between every guess and questions you ask.

Allan: Okay. Alright. I'll think about it. I'll take that as a good thing. I don't know.

Well

Louis: Yeah. It's not a bad thing. You just don't know it.

Allan: Very cool. Well, thank you, Louis. I really appreciate your time. And like I said, this was very much a selfish episode about me being a beginner at something, and I like to speak to people who are experienced when they're on trying something new. Not that always guarantees any kind of success, but I think I wanna stack the probability in my favor and, you know, I want you to tell me what I'm doing is right and awesome as usual, and I wanna have fun with it.

Louis: Great. Well, best of luck with it, and let me know when the episode goes live so I can promote it.

Allan: Oh, thank you so much. And, of course, your podcast is everybody hates marketers. I don't know if I agree with that premise.

Louis: Everyone hates marketers.

Allan: Yep. Sorry. Everyone hates marketers. It's fine.

Louis: People can find you either way.

Allan: And it's really cool. You do really good interviews, not the standard podcast, which is one of the reasons why I'm speaking to you. So I wanna follow in that style, and I wanna create something relatively unique. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Louis: You're very welcome.

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