Marketing that Doesn’t Suck: The Chicken Book with Louis Grenier

Louis: [00:00:00] I guess the big thing in my opinion is folks talking about the fact that marketing changes all the time you need to keep up and I strongly disagree with this.

Yes the tactics behind All of the principles change all the time, agreed, but marketing hasn't changed. Marketing will not change because people are not changing. Yes, technology appears or whatever, but if you use the first principles of marketing and psychology, we've covered a few together, like trigger events or whatever, you will fall back on your feet.

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Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Allan Dibb. And today we have our very first guest that we ever had on episode one, it's Louis Grenier. And it's such a pleasure to have him back because he's not only back because he's a cool dude. He's back because he's now He's gone from being a rich and famous podcaster to now he's become a rich and famous author for the [00:01:00] first time.

So welcome to the club, Louie.

Louis: Bonjour, bonjour. Good to be back. So, I was neither rich or famous. So, yeah, that's two things you got wrong. But I am a cool dude, so

Allan: Well, all right.

So, your book landed on my desk and, you know, I started reading it and, you know, I've made lots of notes and we're obviously going to talk about it a lot today, but You know, first of all, like I said, congratulations on becoming an author.

But what possessed you to write a book and what possessed you to write this book specifically?

Louis: But people like you I realized, seriously, I realized that over the years, the people I look up to almost like maybe 99 percent of them had written a book. And so I discovered them through that medium. So the reason why I discovered you and I interviewed you on my podcast a couple of times was because.

Of the one page marketing plan, and it's the same for most of my guests, the same for most of my friends in the industry, which you're, you are one of. [00:02:00] So I've always wanted to be one of those people who have a book, or like you say, you know, a uh, like a business card on steroids or whatever, so that's the why the, a book, but why this book, because I had a question that I didn't find an answer to, which was simply, how do you actually stand out?

How do you actually stand the fuck out? A lot of people would talk about how it's important and how you need to differentiate or die and all this kind of claims. But then, how do you actually do it in, for real, when you don't have billions or millions to spend, when you don't have much time or resources, when you are against big competitors, all of that.

I couldn't find any answer that were practical enough to satisfy me. So it was just based on my own itch I wanted to scratch because I was genuinely Fucking frustrated by it and the frustration started seven years ago, eight years ago and culminated into the book So that's why this book.

Allan: So going through the book, it felt to me [00:03:00] like, you know, I was going through like a course almost, like there's a lot of tables. It's actually beautifully typeset. It's like all in full color, which is quite unusual for a non nonfiction book. There's a lot of tables. There's a lot of explanations.

There's a lot of places to fill things in and all of that sort of thing. So it almost felt like going through a course to some extent. It's not just like, you know, there are some books that are like, it's one cool idea and then 60, 60, 000 words of filler and stories and all of that case studies and things like that.

This definitely does have stories and case studies and things like that. But this book. And I don't mean this in a bad way, but it just feels like hard work. Like, it's not like, Hey, here's one quick trick that you're going to do, and it's going to fix all your problems. It's like, no, this is going to be hard work.

This is almost like a course you need to

Louis: It is

Allan: and yeah, so.

where did that come from? Did that come from working with clients? Did that come from your experience in interviewing [00:04:00] other authors? Like how did that come about and how did you decide to kind of make the book that format rather than, you know, kind of like a much easier to swallow pill?

Yes.

Louis: As I said, you know answering the question How do you actually stand out can't be answered with a one trick or one hack or whatever if I wanted to genuinely answer the question In a way that satisfied me In a way that was genuinely helpful to others, I had to go Deeper than what I've read so far or come across as resources. So that was just the normal answer to me, to the question. Like you cannot just tell people the vague stuff, like you need to differentiate or whatever, without adding the details that are actually needed to help people, because I realized working with people.

over the years that, you know, it's everyone agrees with all of the statements. There's nothing new here. And most people are frustrated with the marketing books that don't tell you the how. So I wanted to create a, as you said, [00:05:00] it's a course of some sort, the structure of a almost a college book. So very structured.

That's, you know, the same sections for each chapter, like very practical with FAQs at the end, but also inject some of the fun that you could see in children's books, you know, or like stuff that my daughter who can't read just yet, would actually flick through the pages and still laugh, right? That was genuinely one of my, objective, right?

So I tried to blend in those two styles and yeah, my daughter call it the chicken book. My nephews call it the chicken book. They can't believe I wrote the chicken book. So like those things, this is also what I wanted, right? I don't want it to be seen as just a very hard to follow marketing book, very structured.

I hope for people reading that they realize it's not just that it's also a bit of fun, hopefully. , I just couldn't bring myself to write. A filler book with just one core idea to inspire people. There is enough of books like that. I wanted something else [00:06:00] and that was the answer for me.

Like, that satisfied me. Now I'm happy, right? Now I can, move on and do some work.

Allan: I think that's really the formula. So to write the book that you wish you had, I did that with the one page marketing plan. I did that with lean marketing. In both cases, I wrote the book I wish I had for my former self. So I think they're the very best books. And you know, while to some extent I envy a lot of these authors that just pump out a book every single year to me, that's a very difficult thing unless you've got so many.

Problems that you've solved for your former self, then um, yeah, I don't know how they do it to be honest. Like,

Louis: Yeah, me neither. Like, when did you publish a one page marketing plan? When was it?

Allan: published that the main addition that everyone knows is 2018 and lean marketing came out last year. So, yeah.

Louis: oh yeah. Okay. I thought it was longer, but okay. So 2018, that's like six years ago.

Allan: There was a very early edition that was like, it had a different cover and it was terrible. [00:07:00] Like it was just had a lot of grammatical mistakes and everything like that. That came out in 2016, but the one that everybody knows with the

Louis: Yeah. But still, so that's eight years ago you published the first one. And then last year. Publish the second one, so yeah. That would be the type of things I would do. Like for example, struggle to see what else I could write about because literally everything that I know all the mistakes, all the stuff is in one book.

I might do an extended edition I might add examples in the future, whatever. I just struggle to find a I mean, we'll see in 6 years or 10 years but for now, yeah I just don't know

Allan: Well, yeah. I mean, I, personally say a book is a 10 year project, right? Because a lot of people just launch a book, next project, next thing we are still pushing the one page marketing plan and lean marketing harder than ever before. And

Louis: Yeah, you really are.

Allan: yeah,

Louis: Because I try to like to talk about the backstory, right? On Amazon. I did a launch.

non traditional launch on my own side in order to to generate cash flow and, and upsell more so than just the book.

And then we are gearing [00:08:00] towards a more traditional Amazon launch now. And man, how hard was it to just get close to your two books? It's amazing how much Like, it's just, you are everywhere, number one, number two, in almost every category that I'm in. It's amazing to see, and realizing that I, I'm actually will struggle because I can't run ads on Amazon.

So, you have an

Allan: you run it?

Louis: because there is the word fuck on, in the title.

Allan: Oh, okay. All right. So, Louie, I want to read a few little passages and then get you to comment. But first the book is kind of broken up into four major stages, right? So. You broke it up into stage one, insight foraging, or some, I guess, another way of putting it is maybe really uncovering a lot of research, deep insight into your target market, your client stage two, you talk about unique positioning.

So how do you position yourself, you know, among everybody who's screaming, Hey, we're the best. We're the best. Number three is distinctive brand. [00:09:00] So, and. There are things in there that to be honest, I don't agree with. And we can discuss that, but that's

Louis: Oh, I love it.

Allan: then there's a continuous reach, which I definitely do agree with.

So, um, talk about that a little bit. And I've got a few bits that I've highlighted here as well. And we'll go through those, but let's talk insight foraging. So. How is that different to market research or just coming up with an avatar from the top of your head and defining a target market or a segment or something like that?

Louis: It's not really that different. It's the same concept of empathy and understanding customers and whatnot. So it's just a way to frame it that makes sense to me. Insight Foraging is really gathering the right data from the right people and using that to fuel everything else. So the unique positioning, the brand, the continuous reach.

So that's pretty much what it is. I think the biggest. Insight that I share in this stage is to only rely [00:10:00] on folks or data from people who have recently done something or bought something like a same product or similar category of like gathering inside things that have already happened instead of potential future things that people tell you that might never happen.

Experience people like you might be able to. And I've done it before, like, I've relied on insight that are not that. But for the sake of the book, and the sake of focus, and the sake of, you know, the one key things to learn on that stage is that. It's like, do not rely on anything else outside of this unless you're extremely experienced.

And I've done it before.

Allan: What are the best either tools or methods or frameworks or things that you've found for uncovering deep insights? Because, often when you talk to someone about market research or trying to understand their target market, they might do some Google searches and things like that. And I guess it falls into two categories.

So if you've been. In your target market, that makes it a lot easier because, you've been there, you've solved that problem for yourself. So for [00:11:00] example I've, been a business owner who didn't know how to get clients, who was struggling to get you know, leads, who was frustrated, who was scared about how am I going to make payroll, all of those sorts of things.

So I can talk to that at a very deep emotional level because I've been there before. Whereas If I started selling, you know, I don't know, makeup or whatever for women or something like that, I don't have very deep insight into that at all. I'd need to do a lot of market research. I'd need to understand what are the buying triggers, what's the psychology, what's the thing driving the buying behavior, all of those sorts of things.

So, what are your thoughts around some of the best tools and frameworks and ways to get that deep research?

Louis: So, I advise to collect six ingredients, six type of insights, right? So you mentioned one of them, which is the buying triggers. what is leading people to actually do something about. Whatever it is you know, investing in client acquisition or whatever.

So we have the job, the goal. What is the overall thing people want to [00:12:00] achieve? What are the struggles? What is stopping them from achieving this? The segments, the type of information about them that you want to know. The triggers, what is leading them to buy. The category, which is what is the type of things.

The group of products or services that they call you or that they call like, you know, the category and The alternatives which what are the things you actually compete against which are very rarely to be their competitors So the goal is to just collect those things and absolutely one of the best way is to just use your intuition and knowledge so for people like you Or me with this book, for example What you want to do is just rely on your own gut feeling and the first principles, right the things that will never change so many successful businesses are just built on that, and that's perfectly fine.

In my opinion, it's still market research, even though it's indirect, it's still insight for aging. Now, if you don't have the industry knowledge, or if you want to supplement that, you can look at existing data. So if you are like, let's say, I want to write a book on marketing, you can do like review mining and look at reviews on Amazon from other marketing books and find [00:13:00] data this way.

You can use internal customer inputs. So your own customers or talking to customer facing staff, if you don't have the knowledge, that's extremely useful when you join a company that is not yours and want to get up to speed. Or then you can gather new data. So there's plenty of ways you can interview people, you can have informal conversation with them, you can send surveys, you can do method marketing, which is like being a customer, right?

Of your own product that works better if You just join or you just start something because then you have too much knowledge and you start to forget about the obvious. So yeah, those three key methods looking at existing data, gathering new data, or relying on knowledge and intuition. And most times you can use a combination of the three.

Allan: I'll share a method that I use now to get it, to understand an industry that I don't know very well. And it's to, to attend one of their industry conferences, you know, in, in one day you will learn more than you will in. You know, weeks of online research of interviews on [00:14:00] all that, because they'll usually have the who's who keynote speakers, the keynote speakers we'll be talking about the hot button topics in that industry in between lunchtime, you know, you'll be chatting to the different people.

They'll be talking about what's top of mind for them right now, all of those sorts of things. I've done that for many different industries. I've done that in pharmacy. I've done that in IT. I've done that in real estate. And it's amazing the insights that you uncover from something like that just.

In one day or even half a day that you just would never have uncovered otherwise, because, you know, it's such a concentration of knowledge and insiders and, everything that's happening in that industry. I found that to be a really valuable way to do it.

Louis: Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that I mentioned in the method two, gathering new data, called the Sherlock Holmes approach, joining communities or real life conferences where customers already congregate. So, being, just literally getting out of the building, and yeah, just talk to people like this is something I fight for like you're not gonna get [00:15:00] That far with Google search and or even AI or anything like that. Like you're gonna have to just Get a bit uncomfortable, especially if you're trying to do something in an industry you don't know, like you mentioned pharmacy or IT or whatever.

But you know what, Allan, I'm very curious because you said there's a few things you don't agree with. I'm so curious to hear, because I want to hear your perspective on the things you don't agree with. Yeah,

I would probably agree with 90%

Allan: of the book. one bit that really stood out to me that I didn't agree with was you talk about branding and you talk about creating kind of symbols and things that don't mean anything. You know, so like, for example, you know, you've got the chicken and then you've got a few other examples where, you know, use a color or use a shape or use something that doesn't mean anything.

That's definitely something that you know, I would not recommend that to a client. get what you're saying, like, definitely this book stands out, right? On the shelf, this big chicken, right? But, also I want to use the [00:16:00] minimal amount of brain cells, the minimum amount of calories for someone to understand what is this about.

So, someone looking at something that has no inherent meaning in the brand is to me they have to now use brain cells to kind of figure out what is this, how is this related, and I kept thinking to myself, you know, I've got the chicken stickers. I love it.

I actually love the chicken looks amazing, whatever, but again, I'm not sure what the chicken's got to do with it. So, that's one thing I didn't agree with.

Louis: So, I'm glad you're talking about this. So there's nuances here. It's never black or white, right? I don't say to go completely bonkers on any type of assets for the brand.

So like audio, visual, like logo, letters, words, whatever. I don't say that at all. I said to just pick one of those and try to seek meaningless brand assets that. The likelihood that other competitors, direct competitors, would use would be like slim to none. So what is the likelihood that someone else will use a chicken [00:17:00] with a purple berry for everything they do in the marketing world?

Right? Zero to none. But I do use the codes and the category conventions of a normal book in the marketing space. The type of titles, the content, and everything else. So the shape of the book is the same, right? So I don't go bonkers in every single dimension. So that's what I mentioned here. In the book, I give this example of the Danbury Trashers, which used to be a ice hockey team.

Where it was owned by a mafia guy. And he owned bin companies across the Midwest. And their logo is a, trash can. Mean looking trash can holding a hockey stick. And it is meaningless. Yes. It connects with their business, but for someone who doesn't know, it doesn't mean why a bin, right?

It doesn't mean anything, but this bin is holding a hockey stick. This bin has glove. This bin has like the hockey puck, like just next to them. So you understand that it's a hockey team, but it's using one particular asset inside that mix that is completely different and meaningless. [00:18:00] So I mean, I hope that gives the nuances that is needed to understand that I don't say to go fully bonkers for everything. You need to really be smart about it. Like another example is DemoDiva, which is like a demolition company based in New Orleans that was created after Hurricane Katrina and same thing.

Like the owner. has a demolition company, there's demo in the words, in the brand the only bunker thing that she does really is the fact that instead of using yellow for her machinery, she's using pink, everything. That's it. The rest, it's the same as any other demolition company, right?

She still ranks for demolition company. She talks about the same thing others do. But there's the meaningless bunker thing that he adds to this, that creates this highly distinctive thing. And just one thing, I'll finish on this. This is not my opinion, right? Which I think is important. This book is not my opinion on things.

I try to back up pretty much everything I say. And this is backed by neurological, like, research and how people remember things. You do want to have something that is meaningless. to create a [00:19:00] node in people's memory that is not polluted with other stuff. So, that's kind of my nuanced answer to what you said.

But yes, at face value, yeah, like if you just read quickly, yeah, it doesn't make any sense to just go bonkers for everything.

Allan: I think there's definitely a line between being distinctive, like for example, using the pink color or using some different color than what's used in your industry versus someone using brain cells, trying to figure out what is this,

Louis: That's a big mistake. Absolutely.

Allan: To me always choose clarity over cleverness.

and often in creative whether you're designing a layout, whether you're designing a logo, whether you're designing, whatever, always choose clarity over cleverness, especially when it comes to writing as well. So a lot of times people will be trying to do some funny play on words or whatever, that sort of thing.

But I always recommend go for clarity over cleverness because, your thing, whether it's your book, whether it's a product, whether it's a course, whether it's your ad, whatever it is [00:20:00] I always think of it in the context of a thousand other things that the person has got going on, right?

So they're scrolling up and down Instagram, or they've got 300 emails in their email inbox, and I want mine to instantly tell them why they should open my email versus somebody else's email or whatever. So, that's basically the angle I take that

Louis: Yeah, we agree, completely. We're on the same

Allan: I'm very disappointed to hear that.

Louis: Yeah, yeah, no, no, we are.

Allan: All right. So I've got another couple of places that I've got highlighted here. So, you're talking about here, triggers. And I thought that was a very important point that a lot of people miss when it comes to marketing is what's the trigger. in one of my past businesses, we used to have a telecommunications company and literally the only times that someone would kind of.

seriously reevaluate or switch telecommunications companies was about two or three trigger events. Number one, they were moving offices. Number [00:21:00] two, their current phone system was either dead or dying or they were changing technology or something like that.

And so we started marketing towards. The trigger. So we would look for lists where real estate agents would tell us that, Hey, there's a new tenant moving into this building. So now we know, okay, they're going to be looking at their telecommunications. Or we would look at lists where we could find people had these kinds of.

Old outdated systems that now had to be updated because of a change in technology, all of those sorts of things. So I think that's something that's kind of missed in a lot of marketing books. A lot of people talk about, you know, being unique good messaging, all of that, which is all important, but.

That buying trigger. You know, I may 100% agree with your message. I may believe in your product. I might love what you're doing, but I've just got no pain at the moment. I've got no, trigger. That's forcing me to make a move. Talk to that a bit.

Louis: But that's a great example. So that's the classic example of a trigger

so that would be an anticipated event. [00:22:00] So expecting something that will happen, right?

So exactly to your point. Unless there's something that happens in your life, in your business life that triggers you to start saying, I need to do something nothing's going to happen.

And that's something that people still you know, struggle to understand is that you can actually be. So just try to be precise on the words I use, you can be in pain for years and know a brand that could solve that pain without doing anything about it, right? You can have a literal lower back pain for years and years without ever going to the physio.

And it's when your grandkids are coming to visit or there's something. That says, okay, I need to get my shit together because my kid is coming to visit. We're gonna, like, go for long walks and, I can't seem to be, to look like a crippled old dude and whatever. That's when you get started.

So that's the concept that I try repeat, is that yes you can have pain points and problems in your life without doing anything about it. In fact, most of us have. Unless there's a trigger, boom, right?

I mean, let's, put you on the spot, right? Like, I know you've been through this. Amazing [00:23:00] fitness journey. You shared recently a picture of you from, that looked like it wasn't at all the same person. Like, you look younger now than you did in this picture. Like, what if, I don't know if it's too personal, but you don't have to share, but like, what was the trigger event or set of triggers that made you

say, fuck it, I need to do something?

Allan: I'm happy to share. Yeah. So, it was actually my dad passed away and I was looking at a yeah, I was looking at a photo of him and I was standing next to him and we looked identical. We were both overweight, you know, and he had suffered all his life with diabetes, with back pain, with all sorts of health issues.

And, you know, I'm standing next to him, I'm looking exactly like him and I'm like, I am heading for disaster. I'm heading for the same kind of fate as him because I mean, although he did have a lot of health issues, a lot of them were lifestyle based, you know, he didn't move his body much. He just didn't look after himself in many different ways.

[00:24:00] And that was a big trigger for me. So you're a hundred percent right. And, you know, prior to that. And I write, I write that in, in my book, I couldn't care less about fitness. I couldn't care less about all of the health stuff and all of this. I used to pass somebody who was fit and muscular, and I would think, you know, what a meat head or whatever.

And now they have my admiration. And now if I'm scrolling I see someone muscular or whatever, giving a health tip or something. I stop I care about that. So, yeah, that was absolutely a trigger in my life. And that was something that definitely made a shift and not just health wise, but, you know, it kind of triggered my midlife crisis, you could say, so I reevaluated every part of

Louis: didn't want to say,

Allan: not just my fitness.

What's that?

Louis: I didn't want to say it was your midlife crisis,

Allan: it was, that's exactly what it was. Yeah.

Louis: no, but thanks for sharing. I appreciate you. I didn't know actually the answer to this, but yeah, that's a classic example of, you might not have thought about it actively, but I'm pretty [00:25:00] sure that the back of your mind, you're like, you know, you know, you're not too happy with the way you looked even before that event.

Right. And so it was in the back of your mind and you never looked into it. And then as soon as. That event, then everything came into place and you just started to move figuratively and not figuratively. So, yeah, there's a couple of I'm just going to share a few other types of triggers. So you have this anticipated event, as you said, like we're moving offices.

Unexpected event, well, that's for example your father's passing. Repeated events would be maybe like tax season is coming up. Like every year it is the same thing, like something comes up. An ad can be. Considered a trigger. That's why so many of us buy stuff we don't need from Instagram, TikTok or whatever, right?

Like it's sometimes just the ad is enough to make you move. Word of mouth. that's a classic. Observed views. So you would maybe listen to your voice on the podcast and then realize that you're using a specific type of microphone and you sound good on it. And so therefore I might buy it just based on observed [00:26:00] views.

Positive experience with a product. That's a classic, you know, you start buying something, you like it, and then you buy the thing to go with it. So like, I bought a camera, but then I bought the stand to go with it. Or a negative experience with the product. So, quite you know, you bought maybe a camera you're not happy with, you buy a new one, and then you buy the stand and whatever.

So, those are the type of triggers you can think about. But yes, it really unlocks so much because To go back to your first example of moving offices, what you've done is exactly what I try to explain when picking the right marketing channel is that once you know the triggers that happened prior to them.

needing you, you can really be at the right place at the right time, right? And so you reaching out to folks who just moved to a new office, that's like textbook taking advantage of knowing their triggers without sounding sleazy or whatever. You just read their mind. They're like, shit. Yeah. Yeah. We do actually need to look into our telecommunication stuff.

So it actually feels a bit like magic once you really get to the [00:27:00] detail of the triggers. It's not as overwhelming in my opinion to think about ideas, campaigns and stuff like that.

Allan: Yeah. So the trick of it, it really requires you to think upstream. It requires you to think two or three steps ahead, like a chess master. To some extent it's like, yes you know, point B is them buying your product, but then people think of point A and point B, point A, they're not buying our product.

Point B, they're buying our product, but there's really point A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and then. Point Z or somewhere along that, axis is them buying your product. So what is one, two, three, four steps before? So, again, you know, if you're a wedding photographer, you know, if the bride has chosen her venue.

Well now we've got a hot prospect, right? If she's got a wedding date right? so we are trying to now kind of reverse engineer what are the 2, 3, 4, 5 steps ahead that are upstream that are really going [00:28:00] to be some of those triggers and gonna be a high probability prospect. So that's a lot of what I think about is how can we think upstream?

A little bit

Louis: Yeah, that's a great way to think about it. So, just to give a couple more real example I actually work with a I mean, didn't work with them. I interviewed them to get to know their business and whatever they're based in down under East Forge called Bruty. Like yeah, cold routine can.

So it's like a mixed of two categories. And I just mined their customer reviews and I found one of the core trigger that was mentioned all the time was it's the end of the day and I'm thinking about treating myself, right? So this one is like almost every day, but you can think of end of week is more potent.

So in the evening, any day of the week when they're on the way back from work or after arriving at work In the car, you know, they're thinking they're going back from work, they're in the car. So like, just by saying those things, I can think straight away about, okay, well, that means radio ads potentially.

That means maybe billboards on [00:29:00] the way, like on very, very busy roads back from work. Or that could just be messages on, social media that are like maybe optimized to show up only a specific time of day to push that, like, you know, treat yourself today or something like that. So it sounds simple, but that's what it's meant to be, right?

you don't want to over engineer and be too clever as you described earlier. Right? Like this is as clear as day and sometimes it's staring you in the face those triggers and those campaigns that you could do on the top, on

Allan: And you're 100 percent right, perfect places to mine the two places I tell people, in fact three places I tell people to kind of look is their reviews, their sales calls, and their customer support help desk, and I ask people never to kind of interpret what clients or customers are saying, but get the verbatim words.

So what are the exact words, the way that they are saying, because often we will reinterpret it in our own words and it's different to how somebody else might say it or phrase it or whatever. So [00:30:00] use the exact verbatim words that they use in reviews. In customer support in the sales process. So listening to sales calls and even taking sales calls can be super

Louis: Oh yes.

Allan: you're going to hear all the objections.

You're going to hear all the reasons or you're going to hear, you know, how they phrase their problems and things like that.

Louis: Yeah. It's amazing. Right. And if you're a marketer working in house and you don't do this. You need to like, you need to ask the first thing is, I actually don't want to start doing marketing until I, I get to sit on sales calls, I get to sit on, I do support for a bit, I do, you know, like you get to know the real thing.

Just another quick example of the triggers to make sure. To show the power of it and I stumbled upon this toilet packet product that you can, you know, put down the toilets that you don't smell after going number two, right? And I mined the reviews as

Allan: I remember reading that.

Louis: And I found that one of the key things people keep mentioning was I was going on a holiday with a mate, with friends, with family in close quarters or in [00:31:00] places where I know I would have to share toilets. And therefore. This is when I'm starting to look. And funny enough, my wife went on holiday with two of her best friends in I don't remember where exactly, but in a sunny uh, country. And fair enough, she didn't buy this product, but in the same sector, the same industry, she bought a spray like a eucalyptus or something spray for exactly the same reason. And. Obviously the marketer that I am was like, you know, it's funny because, you know, I'm writing this book and I'm, you know, in the book I'm taking this example and just done the same thing.

So yeah it's just sounds, once you know it, you're like, duh, obvious. Knowing it, really doing the research first is, necessary. And then, yeah, you'll get the answer right in front of you.

Allan: And you're tapping into strong emotional triggers there, like in this case, it's embarrassment, right? You know, be avoiding embarrassment is a very strong emotional driver of decision making, right? So, I love that. . So. You talk about [00:32:00] offers right in the end, essentially where you usually offer is

um, I think Alex Hormozi wrote a hundred million dollar offers, you know, most marketers will often start with an offer. Why did you put it in the back of the book and how are you thinking about that?

Louis: Well, before I answer, do you agree or disagree with my, opinion on it?

Allan: I agree. I agree. I don't know if I'd put it in the back, but I would definitely not put it in the front. So I, I definitely want to understand the target market At a deep level, so before I'm crafting an offer, so definitely after understanding the target market very well and this is not necessarily right or wrong, but I tend to things in a very linear way.

So what is the customer journey? And so for me, offer is not kind of late in the customer journey. It's pretty early in the customer journey. So,

Louis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because, in your framework, you talk about the after sale and, and everything that happens after, which is not something I cover. But I think we do classify it the same way because you mentioned [00:33:00] with the trigger events.

You need to go back in time and go upstream, and I think this is why the offer is at the end for me, but then you have more stuff for you. But so yeah. Why at the end? Because purely because it's just the cherry on top. I genuinely think that if you do all the work before the all, if you have all the foundations, right?

Yeah. A nice, a good offer can make a big difference, but you need the rest. I mean, at least if you want to stand the fuck out, because you mentioned at the very start of this. Conversation that it's hard work. Yeah, it is hardware, but like the rewards are all equally gratifying and nice to have so Yes, a good offer is absolutely important.

However, if you don't have the rest You can do whatever you want with it. It's gonna crumble under pressure. So once you have the rest, yeah Speak think of the offer, but please don't just obsess over it. There's way more stuff to do and yeah Learning from direct response marketers and copywriters is important, but be careful because they are very narrow minded into [00:34:00] a very specific thing that they do.

There's a lot more to marketing than just the direct response

Allan: That actually brings me to a an interesting point and I didn't see this necessarily covered in the book, but what are your thoughts around kind of the brand guys versus direct response guys? Where do you fall in the spectrum? Are you somewhere in between? Are you like you know, just a brand guy?

Like tell me

Louis: I'm not, I refer to science, right? There isn't that many scientific facts about marketing and psychology, but one of them is the fact that it's been backed up by research over and over again in different sectors, different countries, different decades, even is that around 5%, of people in any category are actively looking.

into something, right? Now that depends on your purchase frequency and stuff like that. But roughly, right? That's across B2B, B2C, doesn't matter. And that means 95 percent are not actively looking, which goes back to our triggers and stuff like that. So I'm not you know, there is a time and place for both.

And I just [00:35:00] try to follow folks who are much, much smarter than me who've done the research and all of that. And it's pretty much agreed based on how people think that you first need to make sure that you have, that you are in their brain in some way, shape or form, which is why it's important to have like create nodes in their memories, associating yourself with triggers.

For example, you know, going back to your previous telecommunication stuff. Even before they move to a new office, you can start talking about, if you're thinking of moving your office, don't forget the telecommunication part of it type thing, right? So you can be top of mind when. They switch and they move to a new office where they become the 5%.

So yeah, I think it's one of those things. It's neither black or white. There's always nuances there. It's always depends like pretty much everything marketing where you are, the sector, the objectives you have, but I don't think, I think it's. fairly stupid to oppose those two things. It's just, it's, you need both in some ways.

Yes, sometimes you need more of one and the other, but you need [00:36:00] both.

Allan: What's something that you see constantly that you're kind of a contrarian on that you and maybe that's a long list.

Louis: do you have another three hours in front of you?

Allan: Well, give us your top ones.

Louis: I guess the big thing in my opinion is folks talking about the fact that marketing changes all the time you need to keep up and I strongly disagree with this.

Yes the tactics behind All of the principles change all the time, agreed, but marketing hasn't changed. Marketing will not change because people are not changing. Yes, technology appears or whatever, but if you use the first principles of marketing and psychology, we've covered a few together, like trigger events or whatever, you will fall back on your feet.

You will, whatever happens, whatever new channels come up, you will fall back on your feet. You will figure shit out because you have the right foundations to do marketing. So be careful with those type of, you [00:37:00] know, the people saying this, because they are there to make you believe, to make you feel bad about yourself, to make you think you're missing out.

And that's when they sell your shit, to you. So that's probably one of the biggest things that I really try to fight against not because I'm just a contrarian and French and being pedantic for the sake of it, but because people struggle with that and they tell me that every day.

Like mental health in marketing world is really poor because people are just overwhelmed. And so you will figure shit out once you learn the basics.

Allan: You're one funnel away.

Louis: Yeah, you're wonderful in other way. Yeah, from the life of your dream, 10k a month. Easy.

Just do it. You know, just do it. It's that easy.

Those templates.

Allan: one last bit, I know you, you had you went through quite a journey to write the book. Like, so when did you start? And when did you, I mean, obviously it's launching now or launched, but um,

Louis: stop launching, but yeah. Yeah, three years it took me.

Allan: three years. Yeah.

Louis: years of active work. [00:38:00] part that took me the most time wasn't the writing per se. It was the methodology behind it. Like building the actual, rebuilding the methodology, getting feedback from it and stuff. Writing around it was easier, slightly.

But yeah, it took me a long time. I don't recommend

Allan: I'm with you. I think, I think you have to be crazy to write a book. So I definitely agree with that. And, you know, I think you got the big idea, right? Right. So I think the thing that makes a good book is what's the big idea. what's the kind of big theme of it. And so I think you, you got that right.

Do you regret putting the fuck in it now that you can't advertise on Amazon or no? And can't

Louis: I'll find another way to advertise. I'll probably gonna toy with play with some newsletter advertising. And do it on a recurring basis. And point them to Amazon. I just need to figure out ways to Measure how much I can you know, see what's the return

Allan: can't you just leave the fuck off the ad? Can't you just say stand out

Louis: No, because, no, because the [00:39:00] the title is there,

Allan: All right.

Louis: Everywhere, right? Like it's

Allan: And so, I mean, there's tons of books with swear words on the front, like, like, you know, Marilyn

Louis: but they don't do ads.

Allan: And that, okay. Wow. Okay. I didn't know that.

Louis: Yeah, no, it's about profanity even when it's mask is not allowed. And so, yeah, you can't, it's not like you can do Facebook ads where you can actually comply to them without, like, you point to a page that doesn't have the title, like, the word fuck in it or anything.

For ads, for Amazon ads, you can't get away with it, so. It's fine, look, it's, I'll figure out a different way, but it's funny, like, people use those terms back to me to signify kind of the philosophy behind it of like taking risk while still understanding customers and doing things the right way and they do say it back to me a lot like stand the fuck out is now becoming the name of my company is taking over and so yeah i wouldn't change that at all just because bezos fucking multi billion dollar companies doesn't want me there i'll find a [00:40:00] way

Allan: There you go. I learned something about book marketing today. I did not know that profanity wasn't allowed in Amazon. So yeah, there you go. And are you, recording the audio book as well,

Louis: Yeah. I'm gonna do that in the next few weeks.

Allan: because this looks like it would be a very challenging audio book to narrate with all the tables and all of that sort of thing. One of the things while I was writing my book, I was thinking about how the audio will flow and I made sure that I didn't use diagrams that were critical to the text.

Louis: I think you've learned that. I don't like to make myself my life too easy. Like a bit of a challenge. I can't wait to actually describe the diagrams, the stuff I drew myself, actually the figure, whatever is showing myself with half a robot face, I look like a cyborg, and I'm pushing a shopping.

Trolley. Boom, moving on. Uh, yeah, I know it's not gonna be easy. But I'll find a way.

Allan: You will. I have no doubt. Well, Louis, it was a [00:41:00] pleasure talking to you again. You're our first return guest. So you were our number one guest on episode one. it's a pleasure to have you back and you're in the author's club. Your book is absolutely beautiful.

Like I said, it's all full color. This must be. Crazy expensive to print. I know what printing costs and you know, you've got a lot of color in there, a lot of tables, a lot of typesetting. You've done a great job. It really does stand the fuck out. Great book. It will help you stand the fuck out.

I highly recommend it. And we'll be spreading the word about it.

Louis: Thank you so much, man.

Allan: my pleasure. My pleasure. Any final words you want to give to the audience or anyone listening?

Louis: Yeah. My final words. Thank you for everything you've done. Like years and years ago, I would have only dreamt of this happening where you, someone I've looked up to for years with best selling author, you know, on the Amazon for like the marketing category or whatever would say that about my own book. So thank you.

Very humbled by that. Thank you so much for all the [00:42:00] nice. Stuff you said. And, yeah, people can find me just, they have to just Google Stand the Fuck Out, they'll find it.

Allan: Perfect. Perfect. Well, so the book is on Amazon. It'll soon be on Audible and yeah, stand the fuck out. Thank you, Louis.

Louis: Merci.

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