How to Stand Out in B2B Marketing (with Louis Grenier, Author of Stand the F*ck Out)

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How to Stand Out in B2B Marketing"

The Dave Gerhardt Show (Exit Five) | Guest: Louis Grenier
Date: June 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features a lively, insightful conversation between Dave Gerhardt and Louis Grenier (author of "Stand the F*ck Out", cancer survivor, and influential marketer). The discussion centers on timeless marketing principles versus fleeting trends, with a focus on how B2B marketers can truly stand out. Using humor, storytelling, and even props sent to Dave’s house, Louis challenges conventional thinking and reinforces the importance of customer understanding, distinctive branding, and fundamental marketing craft in an AI-saturated era.

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Key Concepts and Discussion Points

1. The Human Story, Vulnerability, and Hooks

• [03:27 – 12:49] Louis opens by sharing his cancer diagnosis, survival, and how it shaped (but didn't fundamentally change) his perspective.
  • Memorable quote:
    “I didn't have this realization from, like, Hollywood moment of, I must travel and I must do all of this stuff. I didn't.” – Louis ([10:36])
  • He draws parallels between personal resilience and foundational marketing: Lean on core principles, especially when the “shit hits the fan.”

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2. The Trojan Horse: Meeting People Where They Are

• [14:00 – 20:51]
  • Louis sends Dave a “Worst Pinata Ever” (Trojan Horse) t-shirt, using it to explain meeting customers' expectations first, then delivering real value.
  • Key lesson: Don’t try to educate or change the market overnight. Use what people already know/desire as a bridge.
  • Louis:
    “You can only meet them where they're at and if you're lucky, move them slightly towards you. But, like, that's it.” ([20:07])
  • Dave:
    “Let’s assume everybody hates marketing... The name of your book, right, is like Stand the Fuck Out. That is the first principle I think about more than anything else right now.” ([16:03])

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3. Category Creation, Demand, and Positioning—Embracing Reality

• [22:13 – 26:34]
  • The myth of “demand generation” and category creation:
    “You can't generate demand for a category. You can only position your product into a category that is in demand and channel some of it to your business.” – Louis ([22:13])
  • Use of existing mental models—like the “horseless carriage”—to ease adoption.
  • Differentiate between distinctiveness (attention/getting noticed) and differentiation (unique solution):
    “Distinctiveness is about the ability to be noticed, to stick in people's mind regardless of the product.” – Louis ([25:50])

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4. Distinctive Brand Assets: Why B2B Needs More Personality

• [26:41 – 36:30]
  • Louis gifts Dave a rooster-themed swimsuit, illustrating “meaning-free” brand assets (i.e., unique, memorable, no category association).
  • Examples:
    • Gong’s Bruno the Bulldog mascot (irrelevant, yet memorable).
    • Posthog’s Windows 98 OS style branding.
  • Advice:
    • Use 1–2 unusual, category-independent brand assets for recall.
    • “The number one thing I would do [with a new company] is just come up with some insane, completely not like anything else, branding.” – Dave ([29:20])

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5. Sensory Branding & “Sonic Identity”

• [34:08 – 36:30]
  • The power of sound, visuals, and even personal brands (e.g., a founder’s face/voice).
  • Referencing Gary Vee and Tim Ferriss on sonic branding: “We remember things better when they tickle different parts of the brain. And if you can associate your brand with sound stuff, visual stuff, character stuff... that helps with cognition, recognition...” – Louis ([36:06])

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6. Permission, Courage, and Internal Buy-In

• [37:02 – 38:59]
  • Getting C-Suite approval for bold creative:
    • Frame creative changes in terms of competitive differentiation and buyer psychology.
    • “Ask for forgiveness and not permission... prove it. Ask for forgiveness later if you didn’t have really the permission to do it.” – Louis ([38:01])
  • Show results first; numbers matter most to the CEO.

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7. Standing Out Versus Blending In: Ad Creative & Messaging

• [39:01 – 41:43]
  • The paradox of “on brand” B2B ads—they fade into the noise.
  • Referencing Gary Halbert’s “A Pile/B Pile” (make your communications look personal/real, not corporate).

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8. The Power of Triggers: When People Actually Buy

• [48:39 – 52:43]
  • People don’t buy merely from pain but from “triggers”—change, urgency, specific events.
  • Analogy: TNT (stable until triggered).
    • E.g., new factory openings, organizational change in B2B.
  • “Once you understand the difference between the two [pain vs. trigger], that’s extremely powerful.” – Louis ([49:39])

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9. Consistency and Repetition: LEGO as a Message

• [53:45 – 54:44]
  • Don't fear repeating your message—rather, share one core idea many ways.
  • “Share one core thing 1000 different ways, not 1000 things one time.” – Louis ([53:45])

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10. Timelessness and First Principles

• Throughout
  • Marketing trends will come and go (AI, category creation, tactics), but foundational principles—customer research, insight, memorability, relevance—are perennial.
  • Historical analogies: Every “new” tactic is often just the latest version of something old.
  • “Study history. And don’t think you’re that clever… let’s check our ego at the door and be a student of what’s happening—of our customers, of the market, of history.” – Louis ([55:34])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote / Description | |-------------|-----------------|---------------------| | 10:36 | Louis | “I didn't have this realization from, like, Hollywood moment of, I must travel and I must do all of this stuff. I didn't.” | | 20:07 | Louis | “You can only meet them where they're at and if you're lucky, move them slightly towards you. But, like, that's it.” | | 16:03 | Dave | “Let’s assume everybody hates marketing... The name of your book... is like Stand the Fuck Out. That is the first principle I think about more than anything else right now.” | | 22:13 | Louis | “You can't generate demand for a category... You can only position your product into a category that is in demand...” | | 25:50 | Louis | “Distinctiveness is about the ability to be noticed... regardless of the product.” | | 36:06 | Louis | “We remember things better when they tickle different parts of the brain.” | | 38:01 | Louis | “Ask for forgiveness and not permission... prove it. Ask for forgiveness later...” | | 39:42 | Dave | “Why do the ads look like ads? Especially in B2B, we make these ads that look like... my brain instantly tunes that out.” | | 49:39 | Louis | “...people don't buy because they have pain points. People buy when they experience a set of triggers that lead them to buy.” | | 53:45 | Louis | “Share one core thing 1000 different ways, not 1000 things one time.” | | 55:34 | Louis | “Study history... let’s check our ego at the door and be a student of what's happening—of our customers, of the market, of history.” |

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Additional Highlights

• Personalization and playfulness:

  • Louis sent Dave a mystery box of props, each used to make a teaching point—ranging from a mini-colonoscopy set (serious and humorous), to a LEGO Harry Potter set (consistency and play).
  • These physical, unexpected elements themselves are practical examples of “standing out” and creating memorable experiences.

• Point of view:

  • The “bat signal” analogy—point of view is not for contrarian’s sake, but signaling to your people (“your ICP”) that you’re for them.
    • “A point of view... is really there to show your segment, your people, your ICP, that you're there for them, that you're there to protect them, earning their trust.” – Louis ([42:49])

• Rejections of shallow tactics:

  • Both Dave and Louis resist hollow “growth hacks,” instead advocating for customer research, true differentiation, and long-term brand-building.

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Useful Timestamps for Quick Reference

• Cancer and hooks/human storytelling: 03:27 – 12:49
• Trojan Horse & standing out: 14:00 – 20:51
• Category creation, demand, positioning: 22:13 – 26:34
• Distinctive brand assets: 26:41 – 36:30
• Getting buy-in for bold creative: 37:02 – 38:59
• Making B2B ads stand out (“A pile” rule): 39:01 – 41:43
• Trigger events, not merely “pain points”: 48:39 – 52:43
• Repetition & consistency (Lego analogy): 53:45 – 54:44

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• The most successful B2B marketers honor the craft, stay grounded in fundamentals, and aren’t afraid to be bold, distinctive, and customer-obsessed.
• Standing out isn’t about meaningless shock value—it’s about understanding people, meeting them where they are, and earning the right for deeper conversations.
• First principles, psychological hooks, creative assets, and playful risk-taking are not just “consumer” tools—they’re vital in B2B.
• Ultimately, if you’re in marketing, human stories, pattern recognition, and a willingness to “check your ego at the door” are your real competitive edge.

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For more from Louis Grenier, check his YouTube channel and book "Stand the F*ck Out". For more B2B marketing insights, visit Exit Five.

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Transcript

[Dave Gerhart]

Hey, it's Dave.

Today's episode is brought to you by

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See you.

You're listening to the Dave Gehart Show.

[Louis Grenier]

Exit.

[Dave Gerhart]

Hey, it's Dave.

We just dropped the speaker lineup for Drive 2026. I can't believe it. It's already summer.

And Louis Grenier, my friend right here,

is one of them.

We're revisiting this episode ahead of what's

going to be a great workshop.

Basically, after this podcast, I decided to

invite him to come speak at Drive because I really got a great vibe from him.

And he wrote this book, Stand the Fuck Out.

And every time I talk to him,

it reminds me why I got into

marketing in the first place about the craft of marketing.

And I think this is a little

break from a lot of the AI stuff. So enjoy my conversation with Lou.

Okay. All right. This is exciting because I asked Louis to come on the POD in November, and then I booked it foolishly the same day that I was having my hip surgery. Which man fucking this guy, making me tear up. I'm watching your talk from the marketing meetup this morning. Like, have my coffee, trying to get my mind right for you, and I. I got to sit through your cancer story, and I'm like, jesus, I was not prepared for that.

[Louis Grenier]

Oh, I'm sorry to make you feel sad. Do you feel okay?

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah, I'm good. I should be. I should be okay. I'll see if I can find the strength to do this.

[Louis Grenier]

And then you have your hip surgery. Oh, my God, Poor you.

[Dave Gerhart]

You know, so I'm excited to have you on. You know, I love the lens of the stuff that you talk about because I think we share a common fondness of the timeless stuff in marketing. And I think the more time goes on, the more it's funny how that stuff seems to be even more true because, you know, we're deep in this AI wave right now, and everyone's telling me that everything is going to change forever. And then, like, I, you know, I watched your stuff this morning, and you wrote a great book last year, and I'm like, yeah, this is the stuff. And what's funny, man, is anytime we talk about this stuff with B2B marketers, they're always like, okay, this is great, but I want a B, 2B marketing example. And I'm like, yeah, I. But we're missing the whole point here.

That.

Anyway, so. So give me your introduction of yourself. So you. You worked in SaaS for years, but now you kind of do your own thing. How do you talk about yourself?

[Louis Grenier]

It depends on who I'm talking to. But, yeah, I usually say I'm a dad, book author, as you said, a marketer, husband, a bowel cancer survivor. Very proud of that. One recovering Frenchman as well. So it's not easy to be in recovery, but I think, why are you

[Dave Gerhart]

in recovery for that?

[Louis Grenier]

Like, being French is. Has so much baggage. It's hard to see the world for what it actually is. When you're raised in France, you believe that everything about France is the best thing in the world. The food, the education system. And then you leave somewhere else and you realize food is okay, but it's quite greasy and the education system is actually quite bad and it's getting worse. So anyway, it's just, you know, I've been living in Ireland for 15 years now, so I see my flaws and so I'm trying to recover. But I think something you haven't said yet, the fact that I send you something to prep for this. Right?

[Dave Gerhart]

Yes.

[Louis Grenier]

So I would like you to open box number one.

[Dave Gerhart]

Okay.

[Louis Grenier]

It's for me. So I sent you that over the post.

[Dave Gerhart]

So. So for anybody that's listening, if you go over to YouTube, I can show you this. But very mysteriously, he messaged me a couple weeks ago and said, hey, you're going to get a package. Do not open it until we record our podcast. There's like a funny psychological lesson in that. It's like, because you told me not to open it. Like, I wanted to open this, like, five times, and my kids. My kids saw it. So, okay, so I have this.

[Louis Grenier]

So it's a big cardboard box with a few packages in it that are wrapped in this kind of gold wrapping. And I've numbered them. Is that number one?

[Dave Gerhart]

They're not numbered.

[Louis Grenier]

They are numbered. There's little numbers. There has to be.

[Dave Gerhart]

Oh, I got you, I got you.

[Louis Grenier]

So number one to start with. It's great content for the podcast. I'm gonna comment as you go. So he's going through each package. So he's reading the numbers and trying to find number one. And.

[Dave Gerhart]

Okay, I got number one.

[Louis Grenier]

Okay, so we're gonna open number one. You can hear the rapping. It's a Good.

[Dave Gerhart]

Asmr. Like ASMR for podcasting right now?

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhart]

Kind of smells nice.

[Louis Grenier]

Don't smell it. That's weird. It's not a candle.

[Dave Gerhart]

Okay, I got number one. What is it?

[Louis Grenier]

No, but describe.

[Dave Gerhart]

Looks like. Looks like something you'd see in a doctor's office.

[Louis Grenier]

Right, Right. What is the black thing there? What is the little tool there?

[Dave Gerhart]

Is this like a endoscope?

[Louis Grenier]

It's a colonoscopy.

[Dave Gerhart]

Oh, it's a colonoscopy. So this is. Is this, in fact, an anus?

[Louis Grenier]

Yes.

[Dave Gerhart]

Okay. All right. So look, you know, it wasn't dramatically off. You're like, no, that's an eyeball.

[Louis Grenier]

Well, no, that's right. It was. Yes. Okay. Anyway, so that's the first package for you. I think it's a good segue into, like, mentioning cancer briefly for two reasons. One, because I think it connects with marketing in a weird way. And two, because I've gotten emails, messages, from folks thanking me for talking about it openly, because that was the trigger for them to go get checked, because they have been putting it off for years. And some of them said, yeah, they found multiple polyps that could have become cancerous and stuff like that. So it's important, I think, to talk about that stuff. So you have in front of you, in your hands, a mini colonoscopy equipment.

[Dave Gerhart]

So right now I'm gonna give myself a colonoscopy on the podcast. Is that.

[Louis Grenier]

Is that your idea? Well, yes, that's.

[Dave Gerhart]

No, that's correct. Because you mentioned, even in going to my doctor, it was like, oh, you don't need to get a colonoscopy yet. Typically, it's after you're 40 or something like that. I'm 38. But your video I watched this morning, you said, I'm 36.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't get a colonoscopy for fun. I got it after a few symptoms, which are important to talk about. The first one was a blood in my stool within the end, like, towards a few weeks before I got. I went to my gp, and the other one was, like, changes in my bowel movements, which tends to be something people forget about or don't really notice, is like if you used to go three times a day, and all of a sudden you only go twice a day, once a day, or once every week, then there's something going on and you need to get checked. It's very unlikely to be cancer. But long story short, went to my gp, she prescribed a emergency colonoscopy, and within two minutes of Said colonoscopy. I could see on the screen bleeding blur thingy, blob. And I knew it was bad. And, yes, it was cancer. And the guy said at the end, I'm so sure it's cancer, we're going to order a biopsy, and even if it comes back as not cancer, I'm going to ask another one because it's cancer. So that was weird, right? But I was in November of. Was a year and a half ago.

[Dave Gerhart]

Wow. Wait, and you. You just went in to see your doctor to be like, hey, this. This weird thing is happening. They were able to do a colonoscopy, like, right there.

[Louis Grenier]

They said, let's. No, sorry, now. No. So they prescribed. I had to go to the hospital. I mean, now that we're sharing secrets or sensitive stuff. She did check in there, but with her finger. Yeah. Noticed that there was still blood and was like, okay, this is a big deal, the fact that you're still bleeding and it's not coming from hemorrhoids. And so therefore, I prescribe a emergency colonoscopy, and you'll get a call from the hospital in the next couple of days. So kudos to the Irish health system, by the way, which was fucking fantastic from start to finish. So, yeah, colonoscopy pretty much two or three weeks after. Okay, so this is not an entire episode about cancer. Although, you know, I could talk about it. But I guess the story and how it connects back to what you said earlier, the timeless principles in marketing and standing out and whatnot, is that in those hard moments of, you know, having the diagnosis, knowing that I had to go through surgery, not knowing whether I needed a stoma bag after, I still felt in control and at peace because I was in the right place, surrounded by the right people, and I didn't want to change anything about my life. You know, I didn't have this realization from, like, Hollywood moment of I must travel and I must do all of this stuff. I didn't. Right. And I think this calmness and tranquility is something we can really emulate in the marketing world. Like, whatever happens, you know, what foundations do we have that we can lean on even if the shit hit the fan? And that's why you open package number one. Right. I think. This way.

[Dave Gerhart]

Well, it's also just a great story. Obviously, you're through the other side now. But, like, I find myself this morning, I was watching your talk, and I'm like, this guy hasn't mentioned marketing yet, but I'm five minutes in because you It's a lesson in a hook. Like, unfortunately, the hook is. The hook is cancer.

[Louis Grenier]

Like, once I got it. Once I got cancer, I was like, oh, my God, this is gonna make such a great speech. I cannot wait.

[Dave Gerhart]

10 lessons I learned about B2B marketing from surviving cancer.

[Louis Grenier]

Well, that's pretty much it, isn't it? So, yeah, I mean, to close the loop. Surgery involved cutting the portion of my colon that had the tumor. Thankfully, it was. Wasn't too close to my rectum, because then it could have been meaning a stoma bag. And I was on my feet two or three days after, and now I'm fully cured. I have no cancer left. I had my second colonoscopy after surgery a few weeks ago, and it's all clear and all clean. So, yeah, go get checked.

[Dave Gerhart]

Good lesson. Psa. We'll take that. This is. Look, what's funny is, like, people listen to our stuff for all the marketing stuff, but 50% of it now is because of, like, the human connection, hanging out, trading stories. And so this is. That's a good example. For one, we will feel, you know, it's a good opportunity to put the PSA out there. And. Yeah. You know, honestly, I can't wait till my kids get home from school today so we can play with the mini colonoscopy machine that we have now.

[Louis Grenier]

Do you have pets?

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah, we have two cats and a dog. So anybody get it? Anybody could be up for a colonoscopy today. All right, should I open box number two? Yeah. While. By the way, while I do that, I'm just curious, like, did you have any. After that experience, did you have, like, a come to Jesus moment or, like, question everything in your life and you got kids and what am I doing? I. I see you back, and you're like, you still got a passion for marketing, for your work. I'm just wondering, like, if that changed anything at all.

[Louis Grenier]

But that's what I was saying earlier. It's like, nothing changed. It just confirmed that I was in the right place during the right thing. If anything, I'm being more intense about my day to day, but I haven't changed anything about it, which was such a great thing, knowing that even in those very hard moments, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, you know?

[Dave Gerhart]

What have you changed about your day to day? Did you say more intense or more like intense?

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah, like, I'm trying to have even more fun, but it's hard.

[Dave Gerhart]

How old are your kids?

[Louis Grenier]

I have one daughter, and she's four.

[Dave Gerhart]

She's Four.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah. All right, so Dave is opening package number two.

[Dave Gerhart]

Package number two.

[Louis Grenier]

And clearly couldn't wait. Okay, so what's the T shirt? So you're holding a T shirt. What does it say?

[Dave Gerhart]

I'm holding a T shirt that says worst pinata ever, and it's a picture of the trojan horse from 1114 BC.

[Louis Grenier]

I love how random it is, how, like, there's no connection between the two, and yet there is. So the story about this is I wanted to make a point about Trojan Horse, which is one of the first kind of marketing concept, timeless stuff I wanted to talk about today. I couldn't find any good ones. I wanted to get you a little sculpture of a Trojan horse. I couldn't find one, so. And then I saw this joke, like, this T shirt. I think it was pretty funny. I was like, okay, I'm gonna get that instead. So why Trojan Horse? It's one of the things that people struggle with the most when they're passionate about whatever they're selling. I don't know if you found the same thing, Dave, but it's like they are so in love with their idea or what they're doing, what they're selling, that they forget to meet people where they are at. And they try so hard to educate people about their way of thinking, to educate the market to do this while instead of just taking their point of view and starting from there. So that's kind of the concept of Trojan horse. But I'll stop here.

[Dave Gerhart]

Can you explain the joke? My history is not that good. So why. Why. Why was it a pinata? I know the Trojan horse story, but did they, like, what's a pinata? A pinata is, like, you stuff a horse, you know, full of candy, and you smash it open, and the kids go get the candy.

[Louis Grenier]

Right? So here, the Trojan horse is like, the joke is that it's a giant pinata because it's stuffed with soldiers. So it's the worst pinata ever because it goes into the city of Troy and kills everyone.

[Dave Gerhart]

Oh, like, the city of Troy was like, wow, check out this pinata we got. And then instead of, like, you know, Jolly Ranchers in there, it's soldiers that are going to kill you.

[Louis Grenier]

Exactly. So the worst pinata ever.

[Dave Gerhart]

I'm wearing that shirt to the gym.

[Louis Grenier]

That's for sure.

[Dave Gerhart]

I'm a wash. Well, and then you'd be like, oh, do you get the joke?

[Louis Grenier]

Do I need to explain it to you?

[Dave Gerhart]

They have a huge TRO and I'm a huge Trojan horse guy.

[Louis Grenier]

No.

[Dave Gerhart]

So you Mentioned something that night. We talk about this a lot now with our team. And one of the fun parts about Exit 5 now is, like, over the last couple years, it's more from my solo business to now we have a team of seven people. And it's super fun because I feel like I get to, like, do marketing again. And I'm involved in strategy and, you know, we're sending out emails and we're running ads and we're trying to get people to go to webinars. And that's fun. It doesn't matter to me what the topic is. It's like, that's the fun activity. And we talk about this all the time now, which is like, I sent an email, I took a screenshot of something we sent out the other day, and I sent it to our team. I said, hey, honest question, like, if you got this in your inbox, like, what would you do? And it was like, oh, right, to spam. Like, this is a terrible email. And I don't know where I got this. Probably from the drift days, like David and Elias, who are the founders over there, were very into, like, don't study B2B. Focus on consumer. Just, like, use your own brain and see things in your personal life that you react to and, like, take note of what catches your attention. And so I've always tried to, like, have that as a first principle. And we talk a lot about, like, we love webinars. Webinars work amazingly well for us other companies. Some people say, oh, no one goes to a webinar anymore. I'm like, if you actually break it down, Louie, what's different between a webinar and, like, watching a YouTube video or listening to a podcast? It's all the same. And how you get someone there is, like, what comes down to. It's what's in it for me? Why am I actually going to spend an hour out of my day hanging out with you? And everything has to start there. Let's work backwards from, like, let's assume everybody hates marketing. Let's assume everybody hates sales. Let's assume nobody wants to be marketed to or sold to. Let's assume that I, like, you have a thousand emails in my inbox. Let's assume that, yes, I've only been recording with you for 21 minutes, and I already have three missed calls on my phone, Right? Like, nobody needs more information. And so, quite literally, the name of your book, right, Is like Stand the Out. That is, like, the first principle that I think about more than anything else right now. And for some reason I want to rant the other day about this, but there's a whole crowd of people like, who are in the marketing sphere that they're like the holier than thou crowd, which is like, you know, you shouldn't do things to get attention. And marketing isn't about. I'm like, it absolutely is a game of attention because you quite literally have to get people to pay attention, to care, so then you can earn the right to tell them about your product later. And so I love that framing of like the Trojan horse is like, I want to get your attention first and then I can tell you about the thing that I want to sell you later.

[Louis Grenier]

It also goes one level deeper, which is first you need to give people what they think they need. Right? And then you give them what they actually need. And there's a lot to be said about positioning in services or products. I talked to a lot of folks in the marketing space offering services and they are so hell bent into I do strategy, I don't do tactics. I sell strategy to clients, but they don't buy strategy. They want Facebook ads, right? And they burn out within two or three years because they try so hard to educate people about it, right? And to say, no, no, no, no, no, don't forget about Facebook ads. You must do strategy first. You must put a strategy together. And I'm like, no, the tragic horse principle tells you no. You first meet them, where they're at. If they all want to do Facebook ads and you like working with them, then guess what? Your Facebook ad agency, to start with, or at least you offer services like that, and then slowly you bring them to where you want them to be.

[Dave Gerhart]

Oh, I love that.

[Louis Grenier]

But I've done that mistake before.

[Dave Gerhart]

Right back at Drift. Like when we started the marketing of the product, it was basically like we came up with a wedge, which was like, we eventually want to sell this to everyone, but we know right now we need to. It's a chatbot that goes in your website. And yeah, the limiting factor is going to be that not everyone in the company has access to the website. Like who can actually install the code on the website.

[Louis Grenier]

Right.

[Dave Gerhart]

Did you work at hotjar back in the day? Is that why? I feel like, okay, like, if you want to get hotjar on your website, you have to install the code and so therefore you have to sell to the person who can do that. And so even though we didn't think the product marketing role was our long term buyer, we're like, oh, they have influence and access to the website. So let's kind of like the Trojan horses, like, like, go through product marketing.

[Louis Grenier]

But you mentioned hotjar. There was an example. Hotjar, the majority of users came because of heatmaps, and we offered way more than that. There was website recording, there was survey, but guess what? Heatmaps was the feature. So instead of, like, fighting hard about, oh, you know, it's all in one, there's more to that. We actually created a lot of content around heatmaps, and big, like, ranked number one for so many of them that funneled so many users. So, like, letting go of your darlings and your ego. You're not God as a marketer, right? We are no God. You can't change people's mind. You can't generate demand. That's another thing. You can't make people believe something they don't believe. You can only meet them where they're at and if you're lucky, move them slightly towards you. But, like, that's it.

[Dave Gerhart]

On that point, I want to come back to your thing about generating demand, but on that point about the heat maps at Hotjar thing, like, that's a perfect example of this happens all the time in companies. It's like, no, no, we have 10 things. We have 10 features. We want them to know about all the features. It's like, well, can we get them to know about one? And then can we expand there? And I think this is where a lot of marketers that are listening to this are probably, like, in their cars or whatever, nodding along right now. Because the challenge is that, like, leadership. There's someone in sales or someone in this department or someone in this department is they want to talk about the whole thing. And it's like, our job as marketers is to help the company internally to show them, like, hey, we're not going to have the opportunity. We need to get the right to tell them about the whole thing and to tell them all of the things that Hotjar could do. But let's first get them. We have this great feature that's Heat Map. Let's get them to get addicted to that. Get using that, get value from that. Then we can be like, hey, you know us. You like us. You trust us. We have this thing that you use. We actually have other things that we can tell you about. But I think it's this. We want to try to do it all at once. When I think my favorite copywriting lesson is just this concept of, like, first line, second line, right? What's the goal of the first line of copy the goal, the first line of copy is to read the second line. And I think that's true about marketing in general. Right? Like, let's get you to use heat maps so we can get you to use this thing. So we can get you to use this thing. Let's go back to your thing about you can't. You are not God. You can't generate demand. Explain that.

[Louis Grenier]

So you can't generate demand for a category of products or services. You can only position your product into a category that is in demand and channel some of it to your business. When people talk about demand generation, they usually mean generating demand for a product inside a category that is in demand. But you can't do that. Otherwise there needs to be needs that are there. There needs to be humans wanting something, and you need to meet them there. You need to, like, it's a river, right? It's a flow, It's a demand river. And you need to just position your thing so that you create a little canal that just brings some of it to you. But so many marketers, founders, think that they can influence people so much that they can make them care about something they don't care about. And I get pushback on that a lot. About, oh, what about Labubus? I don't know if you came across those dolls. What about this? What about that? Whatever. And it always channels needs that are already there. And it's also the exception of the rule. Those things that are impossible to replicate. You can use the same playbook. You won't be the same. So I'm being very pedantic about the words.

[Dave Gerhart]

No, I. Look, dude. Also, I think, like, so many people that listen to this, I think one of the challenges that I had with, like, I believe in the concept of, say, category creation, however, the best tense. No, I think, I think I believe. Believe. Okay, okay.

[Louis Grenier]

You still believe in it.

[Dave Gerhart]

I still believe in it. But it. Everybody took the message in the wrong way, which is like, every single product ever created, we need to create and invent a new category for. It's like, yes, I. I don't agree with that. Because you could totally have a. What if your ambitions was to just create, like, a nice little bootstrap SaaS product and it's just another. Yep, it's another landing page tool, and it's like, a little bit cheaper and it works and people are happy and, like, that's the business you want to run. That can be okay. You don't. You can also go after a whole company by basically just, like, eating up A share of their market by saying like, yeah, you know, HubSpot has now become this like massive all in one platform. They have all these features. We're just going to do one thing really well and hold on, I'll let you go. I'll let you, I'll let you share your thing in a second. Where it does apply. Like, yes. Was creating the iPhone and the iPad a new category of device. Like you can make more of a connection there. I just think like the average person listening to this and the, the, they're working at a company, their boss is the founder, CEO, they're the visionary, like the next little like Martech point solution. It's very hard to like come up with some big category defining narrative for that. I guess that's where I come from.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah. So most cases claiming to be category creation cases are actually sub category creations cases which again, I'm being very pedantic here, but it's so important because like the air fryer, right. That Seb created, like it's a fryer but it's not using oil. And so it's almost always the same. It's like, it's like that, but it's slightly different in that way. So you're always leaning on something that already exists.

[Dave Gerhart]

There is other at drift, we said it's like live chat, but for sales and network.

[Louis Grenier]

Exactly. So like you need to lean on something that already exists because we are not God. And therefore you can't put thoughts into people's head. You need to meet them where they're at. So it's, it's like that's why the first car that did not have a horse attached to it was called a horseless carriage.

[Dave Gerhart]

You get comparing it to the carriage. But what would you say to like, I would quote this Ogilvy line all the time, which I do. You believe this? Then there's. He said there are no dull products, only dull writers. Which is like, okay, there are no boring products. There's only marketers who can't make it interesting.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah, for sure. That's more about distinctiveness than differentiation. So differentiation is ability to say we are the only one that does that thing. Unlike all of these other alternatives or direct competitors. Right. That position you as the best choice, the least risky choice. Distinctiveness is about to be noticed, is the ability to be noticed, to stick in people's mind regardless of the product. So if you are in demand, even if you have hundreds of competitors, by the way, that's a great proof that there is demand, then you can Be super distinctive and have a lot of fun. But you can't confuse the two notions because they are not the same.

[Dave Gerhart]

That also makes the point earlier of you can't create demand. Usually there is some form of demand. Right. There's tons of competitors in this space, which is a good sign. It means there's buyers, you know, there's people in this market.

[Louis Grenier]

They've done the education for you, right? Yeah. All right, can you open package number six? No, no, no, no. Number six.

[Dave Gerhart]

Classic. That's good marketing right there. We're going to interrupt. We're going to go to number six. Did you wrap all this? No. This had to be outsourced. Rapping.

[Louis Grenier]

So we asked my right hand woman, Diana, who works with me, we asked her best friend, who's still based in the US to order all of them to her house and package them.

[Dave Gerhart]

But that's why this smells nice.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah. So my package, like if I had sent them, it wouldn't smell nice. Is that, is that the implication here?

[Dave Gerhart]

I don't know. I don't. Dude, I've never, I've never smelled you firsthand. So I don't, I don't have the answer to that.

[Louis Grenier]

There's so many weird quotes from this interview like, is that an anus? Right.

[Dave Gerhart]

People really hate me. If we just crop this, this would be the true test of no context. Okay, so this, this is a nice pair of rooster. Is this a bathing suit?

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah. Okay, so it's a bathing suit with my Roger the Rooster distinctive brand assets on, right? Sure. The reason why I ask you to open this package six is because we are talking about distinctiveness a bit. And one of the core fundamental principle that I think many B2B companies in particular get wrong is this idea that you don't need to have to add and attach meaning to all of your brand assets in order to stand out. And in fact, you should probably go after one or two assets that are meaning free. So I'd explain what that means. It means like, you know, when you taste water, it tastes like nothing because our brain is kind of wired to, this is the average, this is what it should taste like. This is the bland thing. And it's there because if it's poisoned or if there was a dead sheep at the top of the hill and you drink that water, you could die. And so you don't want to create something that is meaningful. Like, you know, all of those copywriters that have a fountain pen as a logo because you run the risk of confusing your prospect brain. You're not the only one with a fountain pen. And therefore you don't stick in people's brain. You could use other categories, like in SaaS in particular, using very similar color, very similar logos, very similar vibes. At the minute, it's like the chatbot and how do you call them? You know, the coloring thing, like the lovable. What they do with the color. How do you call that? The neon, like. Anyway, so it's important to use some assets so that you make sure that people understand that you belong to a certain category. But you want to go completely left field with one or two that are meaning free. Yeah. So that you're the only one using it.

[Dave Gerhart]

I don't know why. I guess, like, I'm not doing this with Exit 5 because it's kind of like already working and things are established and maybe we could. But I feel like if I was gonna start a company like a SaaS company today, the number one thing I would do is just come up with some insane, completely not like anything else. Branding.

[Louis Grenier]

Yep. And you don't want to go too far. You want to go far enough so that they still know that you're part of this group, but you're not like the other girls. Right. So, like, I don't know if you saw Posthog website redesign recently. So, like, this product analytics tool, they redesigned their entire website to be like an OS experience, like Windows 98. So their entire website is essentially a. An OS inside the website. It's completely different from any other website we've ever seen. And they went all in with it. Right. Like, you can open menus, open windows inside. It's gorgeous. Right. And there's this little hedgehog as well. And I ask you, you know, what does a hedgehog have anything to do with product analytics? Absolutely nothing. What does have a rooster? Anything to do with positioning, branding? You could say, well, I'm French, the rooster, whatever. But that's how far it goes. No one else uses it. No one else will use it in MySpace. And so this is a meaning free brand asset. So back in the day, talking like an old man, you know, Gong.

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah.

[Louis Grenier]

They used to have this dog as their mascot called Bruno. Bruno the bulldog. A real dog. And they actually had auditioned eight dogs before picking this one. Again, what does bulldog have to do with anything around, like sales calls and sales? Nothing. So this is the. My advice, my foundational kind of first principle advice you could go after. I'm just going to share briefly the type of things you could look into. Like, there's the Sound stuff. There's the visual stuff, like logos, typeface, colors. There is mascots in particular, like characters. I would argue that for Exit five, one thing that is highly distinctive is you.

[Dave Gerhart]

Hey, it's me, Dave. Our friends over at Customer I.O. are sponsors of today's episode. They're a really cool company that helps marketers turn first party data into engaging customer experiences across email and SMS and push. And they built their platform for marketers who actually care about the craft, because marketing is a craft. It takes creativity, thought and taste. Right now, everyone thinks they're magically a marketer because they have access to AI and the result is kind of painful. More robotic emails, more noise, more bleh. AI isn't magic. It's not going to fix bad strategy or write great copy for you magically. But the best teams also aren't ignoring it. They treat AI as infrastructure. When it's built the right way, it actually makes marketing feel more human, not less. And that's what Customer IO is doing. Their AI handles repetitive work like setup, orchestration and tasks that should be automated so that you can focus on what actually matters. The craft of marketing, the strategy, the creativity. This is how good marketers are using AI right now. Not to replace thinking, but to support it. If this landed with you at all, this idea about the craft of marketing, I want you to go and check out Customer IO. It's Customer IO, Exit five. Go and check them out. Customer IO, Exit five. Hey, it's Dave. Look, I want to tell you about Drive 2026. This is our annual event we do for the Exit 5 community. It's a two day B2B marketing conference in Stowe, Vermont. We built it for marketers who want to get smarter and actually connect with their peers. This isn't a generic industry conference. It's a small, intentionally assigned event where the programming, the venue and the schedule all work together to create the conditions for real conversations. Attendees spend two days getting into the tactical details of B2B marketing. What's working, what's not, and how the best teams are thinking about the problems that actually matter. This is all about workshops, sessions and discussions that are built around participation, not passive listening.

I want you to actually come and

be there if you're going to take the time to leave your family, leave the office, get outside of work, like actually be here, take notes, pay attention. It makes it all worth it. And here's the thing though, the B2B marketing stuff, that's what's going to get you to justify the ROI on your Ticket. That's why you're going to be able to tell your boss that you want to go to this. But the best moments at Drive don't happen on stage. They happen at breakfast, on an afternoon hike, over a drink, after dinner. Right. Somebody's going to be roasting marshmallows at this place. It's that type of event. We designed this for, for this connection. This is on purpose. Long breaks, unhurried meals, and opt in activities where people spend time together outside the session room.

Because look, we're all people.

Where else in your life can you talk to someone else who understands your job as a B2B marketer? I go to my kids swim lessons. I can't sit there and talk to dad next to me about B2B marketing. But you can through the Exit 5 community. And that's what drive is all about. It's September 8th through 10th, 2026 at the Lodge. It's Bruce Peak in Stowe, Vermont. Check it out ex5.com drive to learn more about it. It's exit5.com drive and I hope to see you there.

[Louis Grenier]

And I think this is what makes it work as well. Not only from your network and all the stuff you're growing, but also your face, quite simply. So just being the main person in front of this company, I think makes it, meaning free, distinctive because no one else has your face.

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah, that's true. That's a weird thing for me to articulate because like, sometimes we'll be like, well, how are we different than so and so? People ask and I'm kind of like, well, me, I guess it's weird for me to say it, but it is like, this is.

[Louis Grenier]

It is.

[Dave Gerhart]

This is the ingredient, like the whole marketing strategy. When I learned how to do marketing, which I would say was at drift, was like, the founders were well known, had lots of followers, already had a reputation. So it was like, oh, boom, perfect. This is my ingredient. Like, I think what I love about marketing is like, each company is different, each scenario is different. Everybody has different budget, team availability. And what's really fun is like you get to like open the fridge and you're like, all we have is like three eggs, onion and a piece of bread. And like, we gotta make a decent meal with it. And that's what's fun to me. And so I was like, sure, I've worked at a company that had a lot of VC money that had no money. Now I'm doing a bootstrap. Like, this is the fun part about marketing's like oh, let's. That's why it's funny because you and I, like, we give marketing advice for a living. So I'm gonna like on us for, for a second. But it's like there is so much nuance. It's like, okay, maybe this company, like, everyone's like, just hire a players. And it's like, well, they actually can't hire a players because, like, no one's ever heard of them before. They have no money. So they kind of have to hire some like, C players who can maybe become a players. So anyway, I love that as a differentiator. You also mentioned just these little details, like, sound like Gary Vee's been talking about this forever. He taught this concept of, like, sonic branding, which I think is genius. And think about if you listen to musicians or podcasts, you know, they have a certain sound. Like, I've been listening to Tim Ferriss's podcast for 10 years. I could hum to you what his, like, intro tune is. And that's now cemented in my head as things like, we absolutely should think about these things in B2B.

[Louis Grenier]

And it goes back to scientific facts about the way memory works, right? It's not because Gary Vee said it. It's not because of any of that. It goes back to first principle, foundational, scientific stuff. We remember things better when they tickle different parts of the brain. And if you can associate your brand with sound stuff, visual stuff, character stuff that actually is stored in different parts, so that helps with cognition, recognition, Ignatius, all of that.

[Dave Gerhart]

I believe that we had an event a couple months ago. I'm not going to give any more details of this because I don't want to expose anybody, but I met a person who. We've traded messages forever online, you know, whatever, great, super friendly, super kind. I was talking to this person and they had the worst breath. The worst breath. And maybe it's a medical thing, I don't know. No disrespect. Every time I see that person pop up, that's all I can think of. Now. That's Louie with the bad breath. And I can't help it, but that is physically ingrained in my head.

[Louis Grenier]

We haven't met, so you. Easy. Yeah, but that's it. And I know that one of the questions that people are asking themselves listening to this right now is how do I get approval from the CEO or the C suite about this? How do we go? Meaning free? Like, they want to play safe and whatnot. And so it's. I don't know what's your advice there? I'm actually curious to hear what you would say to people asking this.

[Dave Gerhart]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've been doing a bunch of calls with people taking new jobs or founders or whatever. I think you have to really be a steward of like the craft of marketing. And if I just say to you, like, hey, I want to do some, I want to change this, I want to make this look crazy, then the CEO's gonna be like, well, I don't say, I don't get it. But if I can actually sit down with you and be like, hey, Lou, can we sit down for a second? I just want to like talk about like our competitive landscape and how people buy and like how they make decisions. And if you can talk about it in the framework of like how we're going to get people to pay attention to us, then I like it. Right where, yeah, where nobody gives you the chance is if you just kind of do a one off thing and you're like, we want to try something different. I think that can be hard. How do you answer that?

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah, like that pretty much. Now I would add a couple of tactical stuff. One thing that I like to advise is to ask for forgiveness and not permission. So try to like within your realm of responsibility to try something, a campaign. Let's say you only run Facebook ads for your company and you want them to try something different. Well, run a Facebook ad campaign with that idea in mind with a small budget that won't like get you fired and prove that it's working better in whatever metrics. Right. So like prove it. Ask for forgiveness later. If you didn't have really the permission to do it, that tends to work well. Another thing is.

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah, yeah, Results. If you could blind cover up the creative and you just showed like the CEO the results. They're almost always. I've never met a CEO that is not interested in the result side of it.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah. Or you could appeal to the ego and say, well, why don't you create a campaign? Or why don't you do the way you think and I'll do the way I think and compare results. That also works.

[Dave Gerhart]

They'll never do it well.

[Louis Grenier]

And then you say, well, it's my job.

[Dave Gerhart]

Something I think about when I go on LinkedIn as an example is like, I see, I don't get why. And I'm sure we do this too. So you can find our ads and you can dunk on me for this. So whatever. I think a lot of times, like, why do the ads look like ads. Especially in B2B, we make these ads that look like. It's so odd. It's like A, because of what you said, because of the root cause of this was like, because it has to be on brand. And so there's this ad in my LinkedIn feed that basically just looks like a flyer for the company. It's got the same font, the same logo. It's like my brain instantly tunes that out. Where. Did you ever read the Boron letters? Gary Halbert.

[Louis Grenier]

Yes. Gross.

[Dave Gerhart]

Okay. He has this thing in the book where he talks about the A pile and the B pile. Like, when you get your mail. When you get your pile of mail, you come home and, you know, I got all this stuff. These are my, like, bills and everything. I put these away. I put these in the side. But then there's one handwritten note that's clearly, like, human and there's kind of smudge in the back. I'm going to open that one first.

[Louis Grenier]

Yep.

[Dave Gerhart]

Because it's a handwritten note. This is why years ago we went to doing plain text emails and kind of like, you know, lowercase subject lines like, don't you want your ads to stand out? Isn't that the point? I want to get you to click on it.

[Louis Grenier]

What's funny about it is how that changes over time is like, as more marketers use the same tricks, then that becomes the norm. And so the opposite of that could very well be what used to not work now works, Right? And it's also, I think there's an argument against it saying, like, a lot of big, big, big brands keep growing by just being there, right? Like Coca Cola, McDonald's, all of that. They need to stay top of mind. They need to keep their share of voice, share of market, and they need to look like extremely successful company that run ads. Because running ads, people associate that with success on the fact that, oh, they have budget and they're there. And even though we don't necessarily react to it, saying, oh, I must click on that link, I must do so. That page, that ad tells me deep down it's there, right? So I think these arguments against not just going just for that type of ads, but for small brands.

[Dave Gerhart]

That's probably different, though. Like, I think about that when I travel, I go to the airport and I'm like, this whole terminal is like Cisco, you know, I'm like, who? How do they measure it? But it's exactly your point. That feels legitimate. If I'm traveling for work and I'm like, Damn. Cisco is everywhere. Like, okay, that's a legitimate. And then when my company's working with them, that totally makes sense.

[Louis Grenier]

Like, you don't get fired from hiring IBM, as they say. Right?

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah, right. I saw Zoho CRM everywhere in like the Detroit airport and I was like, oh, they must be doing well.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah, but there you go. Exactly right. And that might not be true. Who knows? Why don't we open package four? I'm careful, I'm mindful of the time, and I want to make sure you get to open all of your little things.

[Dave Gerhart]

This has got to be 4.

[Louis Grenier]

If you're listening to audio version of this podcast, I'm just going to describe Dave's face. Dave is very, very excited.

[Dave Gerhart]

He's very handsome.

[Louis Grenier]

No, no, I didn't say that. I said he's very, very excited.

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah, no, that means in French.

[Louis Grenier]

That means handsome in French means

[Dave Gerhart]

we're not cutting anything out of the audio episode because this is going to get people to watch. This looks like a bat signal.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah, it is a bat signal. Yeah.

[Dave Gerhart]

Okay, that's it. Thanks for coming on the pod, dude. Yeah, it's great to see you.

[Louis Grenier]

That's just. That's just for your. For your office or whatever. So. Yeah, it's a real light bat signal thing. I think it was handmade or something along those lines. It's not a mass produce thing. And so one of the other principle I wanted to.

[Dave Gerhart]

Wait, what does that supposed to mean? Should I care about it more? Does that mean we're supporting some local entrepreneur?

[Louis Grenier]

Whatever it is, yeah, exactly. You should care about it more. So bad signal. Why the fuck did I send that to you? I think the one thing that keeps coming back when I already broke it. Oh, for fuck's sake, Dave. Do you see that, how excited he is? He's just shaking excitement and it just broke the lamp already. And the concept of a bad signal is related to point of view. And I know that a lot of folks hear about this advice on. You must have a point of view and your company should share a point of view. And that's how you stick out. And I don't like it that much because I think it, again, forgets about the first principle behind all of it. So a point of view is not there to be controversial for the sake of it. It's not there to steer shit. It's not there to be a contrarian or anything like that. A point of view. It's really there to show your segment, your people, your icp, that you're there for them, that you're there to protect them, earning their trust. And you do it by talking about the struggles they face. You do it by naming the monster or the enemy or whatever. And you do it in a way that is consistent everywhere, so that that creates a sense of coherence and control. Right. When you share a point of view throughout everything you do, people understand why you're here. And I don't know if you've ever come across a business or someone on LinkedIn, let's say, where you're like, what's their game? Why are they here? Why are they doing this? Right. Like, what's the deal? Right. It's because they're lacking this kind of through line, this point of view, this bad signal that they should broadcast to the world. So that's why you had the best signal as a light.

[Dave Gerhart]

Wait, so you're saying you don't. You should have a point of view, but the point of having one isn't for the sake of content.

[Louis Grenier]

It's not there for the sake of contradicting people for the sake of it, or just cheating on a group of people for the sake of it. A lot of advice around point of views or narrative is like, basically say the opposite of what others are saying. And that's not at all what it should be. It's about signaling to the right people that you're there for them, you're on their side. And it takes time. And a lot of people do it without thinking. Like, I mean, you're an example of that with Exit 5. Like, everything you do is centered around one thing. And you don't do it just to piss people off or to annoy a group of people. You do it because nobody gets to school to study B2B marketing. Right. That's kind of the overarching point of view, and that trickles down to every single thing you do. That's what.

[Dave Gerhart]

So it's a good observation because something that I'm trying to. I try to edit out a lot or like, I don't want to. I think as we've morphed from, like, my personal brand to the company.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhart]

A lot of the way that I would write online is, like, it would be very polarizing. Like, this is wrong. This is da, da, da. Right. And I vowed to basically be like, I'm not going to do that, because I really think everything can work. And so instead, our mission as a company with Exit 5, if I was doing solo consulting, Dave, I'm trying to get pipeline for myself. Like, I would take a different approach. But we want to. I want to be a brand that, like, lifts up marketers. We celebrate the craft and the job of doing marketing. And we are a resource where you can come and learn.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhart]

And then there's people who don't like me for whatever reason. I don't know how you can not like me. That will then translate. I could Never follow Exit 5 because Dave's full of. That's totally fine. But our content is meant to be, like, designed for you.

[Louis Grenier]

Yes, but that's how. Again, exactly this. That doesn't prevent you from having extremely strong point of view because as you said, you're there to help your people, like B2B marketers, to have thriving careers and influence the companies they work for. And that's why everything you do boils down to that. But I would disagree with something you said where you're like, oh, when I post something, I'm like, I don't like this. I don't see that at all. Like, in the way you write, it's actually quite. You do have nuances. And you don't just say, this is all shit. You shouldn't do it. You don't. So, yeah, I would disagree with that assessment. Right.

[Dave Gerhart]

But on the point of view thing, though, don't you also think. I think the other thing is, like, this can't be just a marketing thing. Can't be, like, marketing develops a point of view. I think people that do this really well, it's like the point of view is actually embedded in the DNA of the company. Like, I'm into these. My feet are all messed up because I've been wearing bad Nikes and Jordans and shoes my whole life. And so I got really into, like, finding a barefoot. The concept of, like a barefoot shoe that kind of spreads out your toes is better for your feet. And there's this brand, Vivo Barefoot. Right. Perfect example of this. Like, that's not a marketing message. It's. Their point of view is literally baked into, like, how they build the product. And that's where this can be really powerful. And so your point of view has to be baked into, like, yeah, we do have a new way of doing this and that's going to be represented in our marketing.

[Louis Grenier]

It has to come from a place of. Yeah, it's not a marketing trick. It has to come from a place of generosity towards the people you seek to serve. And it's like broadcasting that vaccine all into the sky, saying, hey, if you need this, if you struggle with that, this is where you can find us and there's no trick there. It's not about being controversial for the sake of it. Okay, Dave is going rogue. Opened the. He's just open. What's the number that you opened?

[Dave Gerhart]

Oh, do you want me to do this one first?

[Louis Grenier]

I don't know. You've already opened the other one, so go ahead. There's no.

[Dave Gerhart]

This is. This one I was worried about. This is the one I was worried about because you sent this to my house. This one wasn't wrapped. I'm like, oh, like, is someone trying to get me?

[Louis Grenier]

So that's a tnt. Do you remember the. The Crash Bandicoot?

[Dave Gerhart]

Oh my God, dude. My, my kid, we bought a PlayStation 1 so he could play the original Crash Bandicoot and it's upstairs, the only video game he likes.

We love we.

Yes, yes, I do.

[Louis Grenier]

That's for him then. So that's a little clicker, like a TNT box clicker. And that's another principle that I think is probably the most underlooked principle in B2B. And it's the fact that people don't buy because they have pain points. People buy when they experience a set of triggers that lead them to buy. Because you can be in pain quite literally for years without doing anything about it. And it's only when specific triggers happen that you actually do something. So I'm just going to give you two examples. I'm working with a SaaS at the minute that sell to manufacturers and they were struggling with that concept because for them the problem was they're overwhelmed and they need to manage their day to day better inside a factory. And I argued that's just common. Everyone suffers from that problem. How are we going to reach people when they need what we offer? And we discovered through interviews and stuff that one of the key reason why people push that TNT trigger, that chemical reaction happens when they either buy a new factory inside the group or they get bought or they expand or they move to a new factory, a new site, right? So all of those things that are like life changing moments where there's a big change happening, the pain is still there, but then they're like, okay, now that we've moved to a new site, we might as well take care of this, right? And once you understand the difference between the two, I think that's extremely powerful and it's like a TNT thing. The reason why TNT has the gift because crashbound liquid for once, but also because, I don't know if you knew, TNT wasn't discovered as a explosive device. Explosive thing first. It was a very stable compound. I don't remember what it was for, like, for dying colors, stuff like that. And it's only when it's actually put under a massive amount of pressure that it just fucking explode. So it's the same for people on how they decide to buy.

[Dave Gerhart]

I thought you just get one of those like intense signal vendors and they tell you when this moment is about to happen and then you just email people and then boom, you do it.

[Louis Grenier]

No, you're right, actually. I'm sorry, I'm, I'm wrong. But you see, that's why the first principle, thinking is so important. Once you know that that's how people behave and you can look back at everything you've bought in the past, I can guarantee you I'll find at least one trigger that is not directly related to the pain point or problem. Once you understand that, you can then apply the tools on the insight from 2026 to your stack. So yeah, at the minute it's all hot like GTM signals and whatever. That's the same principle, that's the same thing. But they focus on stuff like neural, new company, whatever that.

[Dave Gerhart]

So like, let's get into a company, we're going to go work on a new company, a new product that, you know, we're going to go help this company that already exists. Like the very first thing we're going to do is like deep research on the customer. Let's look at the last 50 customers who have bought and are good, fit customers and let's try to really talk to them and understand like what was the kind of inciting incident, what was the thing that actually led to the purchase? And that's not going to mean we're going to send some perfectly timed email about it so we can build an understanding of how people buy and then where do we need to show up along that journey?

[Louis Grenier]

Exactly. The power of this is not only just to be, oh, they change job, therefore we should send them an email. It's about being there before they even start thinking about us. It's like if you sell to factories, if you sell like a SaaS to factories and you know that moving out or moving in or whatever is a big trigger. Guess what? You create content about it. You associate yourself with the theme and the topic of moving in, like preparing the move and whatever. And then once they are ready, once they moved in and they look into a solution like yours, they think of you first. Right? So that's the beauty of thinking this way is you can anticipate what's going to happen next. Once you really understand triggers usually like they are almost always the same. Once you start identifying, looking into, research.

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah, well, what you're talking about, that also makes the case for like investing in brand and let's do things to get people to know we exist before they're ready to buy from us.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah. That's why I think a lot of B2B marketers struggle with the pain point problem kind of messaging or approach is because they get stuck there. It's like, yeah, but what if they don't feel the pain that much? What if there's no urgency? Where do you go from there? Like, what are you supposed to do? Well, you look at trigger events and you go back into the timeline and that's when you can build, associate yourself, your brand with key category entry points or trigger events or whatever you want to call them.

[Dave Gerhart]

I also got this 50 pound dumbbell.

[Louis Grenier]

Oh, well, that wasn't part of the thing.

[Dave Gerhart]

This is a bonus. This is a bonus.

[Louis Grenier]

That's a rogue, that's a vendor who decided to like throw things. All right.

[Dave Gerhart]

Trying to tell me something. This is.

[Louis Grenier]

All right.

[Dave Gerhart]

And then I got the last one, which is what got my face going because this is. I'm gonna make it look like this was a gift to my children. And when they come home from school today, we're gonna put this together because look, we're all.

[Louis Grenier]

Do you think that wasn't on purpose? I mean, do you really think I'm that.

[Dave Gerhart]

No. I know this is a good move. Surprise. So marketing principle number 17. Surprise and delight.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah. So this is a LEGO set. A Harry Potter LEGO set. Harry Potter, because I believe your daughter loves Harry Potter and Lego. Because that's one last concept about it, which is people thinking that if they repeat themselves too much, they'll bore people out. And so they always try and find new ways to say stuff. And I think the principle should be like, share one core thing 1000 different ways, not 1000 things one time. Right. And so the LEGO set is kind of this analogy of all those bricks that are there to kind of build the same thing. And goes back to the point of view. Right? Yeah.

[Dave Gerhart]

So there's a real analogy is like we will have fun putting this together, but what they actually love most is once they put something together, now we have. Then eventually everything gets taken apart. Now we have this massive bin with all the random pieces and like my son can play for hours with just all the random. Like we got some Sonic the Hedgehog Legos. We got some Star wars, we got some Harry Potter. It's like putting those all together is what's fun.

[Louis Grenier]

Exactly. So I think you've opened.

[Dave Gerhart]

The other thing is, like, I've been reading a lot of, like, history fiction, historical fiction. It's amazing because if you just take a step back and like, study history for a little bit, you're like, oh, all this stuff is the same. It's. It's just different now. But, like, I forget what I was reading. Maybe I was listening to a podcast. Listening to founders podcast. And that guy David Senra, they. He was doing. I listen to one about Red Bull. Amazing, right? Red Bull's like this crazy. It made an energy drink and like, now they're like, you know, sending people out of space and they own an F1 team and all this stuff. And it was like, all the reasons that this guy wanted to start this company in the 80s or 90s, whatever. There's so many lessons that apply to whatever products we're working on today. Go study history. Study people. Yep.

[Louis Grenier]

I did this whole study on vibe coding tools and the market about it, like, for one company that hired me to do it and realizing that history was repeating itself from the first web builders like Dreamweaver and all of that that appeared and how Dreamweaver became very clunky. And so therefore Microsoft front page started to take over and like, it basically did mirror image of what's happening now. Faster, but same thing. So, yes, study history. And don't think you're that clever to actually, you know, do something that shouldn't. Really won't follow those principles. It's like, let's just check our ego at the door and be a student of what's happening of our customers, of the market of history.

[Dave Gerhart]

What do you say to someone who would listen to this or hear anything about this in the same vein that we would talk about and say, yeah, yeah, this is great, I get it. But, like, you guys didn't show me any B2B marketing examples. Why are people.

[Louis Grenier]

What?

[Dave Gerhart]

Why do people obsess over that? Why do we always have to know that, like, Salesforce had this landing page and it worked really well, and so that, like, that counts. So why does that matter?

[Louis Grenier]

I think it's a version of, like, risk. It's. We don't like risky stuff. We can remove as much risk as possible from our decision the better. So asking for B2B example means it's way less risky because I know it's applied to my world, and I don't have to think that much.

[Dave Gerhart]

Right.

[Louis Grenier]

Don't make me think. But I would say we shared a lot of B2B example here. We shared talk about hotjar. We talk about the SaaS for, like, the industry. We talked about Posthog. Yeah. Posthog Drift Gong with Bruno the Bulldog. I mean, come on, you know?

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah, you're right. Go rewind this. And what are you up to these days, Sir Louis?

[Louis Grenier]

I've launched a YouTube channel, doubling down on something that I can't touch, which is like meeting people in person and actually doing some fun marketing work together. So I launched a first series about locking three freelancers in a cottage in Ireland and helping them with their positioning. That was fun. So that was four videos and we're doing another one pretty soon. I'm gonna go to the house of a SaaS founder and just be there for two or three days. Film everything, Help him with his marketing, but also understand his story behind it. I'm a big fan of documentaries, man. I love Louis Theroux in particular. Like, I fancy myself as someone who could do a good job there doing some mix of, like, the documentary style with marketing and advice. And so that's the main thing. And then the book, Stan Fuck out is still. I send that to everyone who asked me. I still talk about it all the time, but that's. Yeah, the YouTube is pretty much the one thing at the minute that I'm obsessing about because it's fun.

[Dave Gerhart]

Do you have a film crew in. In your area that you trust and hire, or you hire freelancers each time?

[Louis Grenier]

So for the first time, the one in the cottage, I hired a videographer. But for the one with the Sass founder, I'm actually going to go on my own. I have two cameras, I have my gear, and I'm going to do that myself. I want it to be intimate. I don't want it to feel like there's an entire crew there and it might fucking fail. But I'm going to try.

[Dave Gerhart]

What are you going to fail? What do you got? GoPros. You put GoPros around? No.

[Louis Grenier]

So I have a DJI handheld camera, and then I have a Sony. Oh, nice thingy. I have, like, the wireless microphone. I have a shotgun microphone. I have mounting gears. I have everything I need.

[Dave Gerhart]

Okay, Louis.Louis. on LinkedIn, it says Louis Frenchie Grenier. That's it. Check him out. Stand the fuck out. I love this topic, man. I'm happy to do more of it.

[Louis Grenier]

I.

[Dave Gerhart]

If I could be an advocate for one thing, it would be this. This Type of stuff. So if you like this hour with Louie, I want to hear your feedback directly. Email me davexit5.com or go to Louie's LinkedIn and send him a message. Because I. I think we can do a good job of advocating. Like, I understand a lot of the tactical stuff matters, but I want to get more people to think, you know, Harry dry a little bit. A little bit now.

[Louis Grenier]

He's a good friend of mine.

[Dave Gerhart]

Yeah, let's see. Okay. Yeah, you guys are similar. He told me. He told me he spoke at Drive this year and it was great. And it was one of the most well received sessions because it was exactly this. And I saw a guy in the lunchroom after and he was like, man, I talked with Harry, like, reminded me why I love marketing. And I feel the same way when I talk to you. This is. It's not about this, like, you know, abm, data provider use case. And here's what you can do. It's like, I like talking about this stuff and it's fun. I've been looking forward to this. I got a whole mess of presence and stuff. And so you should go. It's my YouTube channel. It's hey, Dave Gearhart. Or just search Dave Gerhart. YouTube or Exit 5 Dave Gerhart. We'll have this up here. You can see. I don't know, maybe I'm just gonna take the rest of the day off and I'll get this Harry Potter thing set up before my kids come home from. From school.

[Louis Grenier]

Can I add two things very briefly? Sure. So thanks for today. It's quite fun. The first time we talked, the first time I interviewed you on my Now Dead podcast, everyone has marketers, was nine years ago, man.

[Dave Gerhart]

Just to let you know.

[Louis Grenier]

Nine years ago. So that was 2016, 2017. You were just starting at Drift.

[Dave Gerhart]

Oh, my God.

[Louis Grenier]

If I not mistaken, I'm gonna throw

[Dave Gerhart]

up because my daughter was just born now she's.

[Louis Grenier]

I know, it's weird. It's fucking weird. So one thing. Do take any symptoms relating to your bowel seriously. Don't be ashamed of it. They see way worse. So blood in su, massive changes in bowel movement, tiredness, a lot of stuff like that. It's unlikely that you have it, but do fucking take it seriously. And then the last thing is.

[Dave Gerhart]

Amen.

[Louis Grenier]

The fun thing about the concept and the first principle we talked about is whatever happens in your career or entrepreneurial life, you will stand back up. Right? If you fall, you will stand back up because you have those principles, foundations to Lean on. And so whatever happens, new AI, shit, whatever, you will feel in control. And that's a nice feeling when you're in marketing.

[Dave Gerhart]

That's a good message. Because it's hard. I feel like I have these skills and I have constant fomo. Like, my new thing lately is like, dude, everyone's talking about cloud code, and I don't even know how to write a single line of code. Like, am I toast? Is this it? I want a business.

[Louis Grenier]

Yeah, you're fired. You're fired. But that's why, exactly why I'm saying it. Because you're not alone. I'm not. Like, everyone feels this way. And it's just like, to ease up your nervous system, to say, you will figure out if you have those foundations. You will figure out. You will. No problem.

[Dave Gerhart]

We will. All right, Louis, great to see you, my friend.

[Louis Grenier]

Likewise.

[Dave Gerhart]

I'm gonna get you to Vermont in September. You'll be here. We'll figure it out.

[Louis Grenier]

We have a problem with that.

[Dave Gerhart]

Okay, we'll talk about it later.

[Louis Grenier]

Bye.

[Dave Gerhart]

Goodbye.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review, because I don't really care about that.

I have something better for you.

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