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

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: The Dave Gerhardt Show — How to Stand Out in B2B Marketing (with Louis Grenier)

Date: January 19, 2026
Host: Dave Gerhardt (Exit Five)
Guest: Louis Grenier (Author, Stand the Fck Out*)

---

Overview: Episode Theme & Purpose

This episode features a lively conversation between Dave Gerhardt and Louis (Louie) Grenier, focusing on how to truly stand out in the noisy world of B2B marketing. Louie shares his hard-won life lessons, including a recent cancer experience, and distills timeless marketing principles—distinctiveness, attention, triggers, and first principles thinking. The episode is equal parts strategic, tactical, and personal, peppered with both humor and actionable advice for marketers feeling overwhelmed by the AI wave and industry trends.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Human Stories & Hooks: The Power of Authenticity

• Opening Package #1: Louie sends Dave a mini colonoscopy kit as a cheeky nod to his own cancer survival and emphasizes the importance of talking openly about health.
  • “I’ve gotten emails from folks thanking me for talking about it openly. That was the trigger for them to go get checked.” — Louie (06:14)
• Lesson: Use genuine stories and human connection as marketing hooks. “The hook is cancer”—not for shock value, but for honest connection and to tie personal resilience to brand messaging and trust.

2. Timeless Principles in Marketing: Trojan Horse & Meeting People Where They Are

• The Worst Piñata Ever (Trojan Horse Analogy): Louie gives Dave a t-shirt depicting the Trojan Horse as a failed piñata to illustrate how marketers must enter prospects’ worlds on their terms.

  • “People are so in love with their idea, they forget to meet people where they are. Instead, take their point of view.” — Louie (13:49)
  • “First, you give people what they think they need, then you give them what they actually need.” — Louie (17:04)

• Hotjar Example: Louie recounts Hotjar’s focus on heatmaps—a single feature buyers wanted, even though the tool offered more—and how narrowing the message builds trust and engagement.

• Copywriting Wisdom:

  • “My favorite copywriting lesson: the goal of the first line is to get you to read the second line.” — Dave (20:39)

3. Demand Generation vs. Demand Channeling

• Louie challenges the notion of “demand generation,” arguing that you can't create need from nothing—you must tap into existing flows of interest.
  • “You can only position your product into a category that is in demand and channel some of it to your business. You can’t generate demand for a category.” — Louie (20:48)
  • “Most category creation is actually sub-category creation. You’re always leaning on something that already exists…” — Louie (23:25)

4. Distinctiveness: Meaning-Free Brand Assets

• Opening Package #6: Dave receives rooster-brand swim shorts—an example of ‘meaning-free’ brand distinctiveness.

  • “You should go after one or two brand assets that are meaning-free… so you’re the only one using them.” — Louie (27:52)
  • Discusses PostHog’s OS-inspired web design and Gong's past use of Bruno the Bulldog—mascots or motifs unrelated to core products but highly memorable.

• Personal Brand as Distinctive Asset:

  • “For Exit Five, one thing that's highly distinctive is you.” — Louie (29:19)
  • Dave reflects on crafting brand strategy around unique, sometimes outlandish choices to stand out—“If I started a SaaS company today, I'd come up with some insane, completely not-like-anything-else branding.” (27:54)

5. The Value of Sensory Brand Triggers

• Sonic Branding:
  • “Tim Ferriss’s podcast—after ten years, I could hum his intro tune. That’s now cemented in my head. We should absolutely think about these things in B2B.” — Dave (32:51)
  • Louie connects multisensory memory from branding to neuroscience—tickling more brain regions means better recall.

6. Building a Point of View: The Bat Signal

• Opening Package #4: Dave gets a Bat Signal lamp as a metaphor for signaling a brand’s point of view.
  • “A point of view isn’t just to be controversial. It’s not there to shit-stir. It’s there to show your segment you’re there to protect and serve.” — Louie (40:02)
  • “It takes time… But people understand why you’re here. It’s a way of attracting the right people.” (41:49)
  • Dave: “It can’t just be a marketing thing. The companies that do this well have it embedded in the DNA of the company.” (44:04)

7. Triggers vs. Pain: Understanding What Really Moves Buyers

• Crash Bandicoot TNT Box: Louie uses the TNT metaphor to distinguish between ongoing pain and critical purchase triggers.

  • “People don’t buy because they have pain points. People buy when they experience a set of triggers.” — Louie (45:52)
  • Identifying specific change-events (new factory, acquisition, etc.) reveals when prospects are ready to act.

• Actionable Research:

  • “Let’s look at the last 50 customers who bought and understand the inciting incident: what actually led to the purchase?” — Dave (48:32)

8. Surprise & Delight / Repetition vs. Reinvention

• LEGO Gift & Concept:
  • “People think that if they repeat themselves too much, they’ll bore people out. The principle should be: share one core thing 1000 ways, not 1000 things one time.” — Louie (50:57)

9. Overcoming Internal Resistance to Creativity

• How to advocate for bold, distinctive ideas in risk-averse environments:
  • “Ask for forgiveness, not permission. Try something within your remit—prove it works. Show results; CEOs care about results.” — Louie (35:14, 35:49)
  • Dave: “If you talk about it through the frame of getting people’s attention, you’ll get buy-in.” (34:38)

10. Learning from History

• Dave and Louie stress the value of studying business/marketing history for recurring patterns and enduring strategies.
  • “Go study history. Study people… It’s all the same. Just different now.” — Dave (51:59)
  • Louie: “Let’s check our ego at the door and be a student of what’s happening, of our customers, and of history.” (52:46)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You can only meet people where they're at—and if you're lucky, move them slightly towards you. But that's it.” — Louie (18:42)
• “We are not God as marketers… We can’t change people’s minds.” — Louie (18:42)
• “First, you get the right to tell them about the whole thing—by winning their attention on one thing.” — Dave (19:25)
• “You should go after a couple of brand assets that are meaning-free. No one else is going to choose a rooster in B2B marketing.” — Louie (27:52)
• “Your face is the distinctive brand for Exit Five. No one else has your face.” — Louie (29:19)
• “A lot of the advice about point of view is: say the opposite of what others are saying. That’s not what it should be.” — Louie (41:49)
• “Share one core thing 1000 different ways, not 1000 things once.” — Louie (50:57)
• “Whatever happens—new AI shit, whatever—you will feel in control if you have those foundational principles.” — Louie (58:16)
• “Do take symptoms seriously. It’s unlikely you have it, but do fucking take it seriously.”— Louie, on cancer and health checks (57:51)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------|--------------| | Opening, cancer story & authenticity | 02:01–11:00 | | Trojan Horse, B2B lessons | 12:42–18:01 | | Demand Generation myths | 20:48–24:59 | | Distinctiveness & meaning-free branding | 25:14–30:23 | | Sonic branding and sensory triggers | 32:51–33:43 | | Building a point of view (Bat Signal) | 39:33–44:51 | | Triggers vs. pain, buying psychology (TNT box) | 45:18–50:24 | | Surprise & repetition (LEGO analogy) | 50:48–51:59 | | Overcoming internal creative resistance | 34:14–36:16 | | Learning from history | 51:56–53:30 | | Louis’s current projects | 54:28–56:17 | | Closing reflections & final thoughts | 57:28–59:03 |

---

Episode Takeaways

• Be human, be memorable: Authentic stories create connection and open doors, both in health and in business.
• Meet buyers where they are: Start with what your audience thinks they want, not what you wish they knew.
• Distinctiveness > Differentiation: Use brand triggers (even weird or meaning-free ones) to cement recall.
• Don’t try to create demand from nothing: Channel existing needs; identify actual buyer triggers.
• Repetition matters: Hammer home your core idea many ways; don’t chase novelty for its own sake.
• Stand on first principles: The marketing fads will change, but the fundamentals remain the bedrock for adapting, surviving, and standing out.

---

Connect with Louie:

• LinkedIn: Louis 'Frenchie' Grenier
• Book: Stand the Fck Out*
• YouTube (experiments in “AI-proof” marketing, docs with freelancers and SaaS founders)

Connect with Dave/Exit Five:

• Community: exit5.com
• YouTube: Hey, Dave Gerhardt

---

P.S.: Get your health checked. And when in doubt, send a mini colonoscopy device to break the ice—just as a true marketer would.

---

Transcript

[Sponsor Host]

Okay, everyone, look, we're all using AI right now. Point blank, that's. That part's done. ChatGPT, like my dad's talking to me about ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. It's all gone mainstream and everyone's using it for copy help, idea generation, the baseline stuff. As Jess on our team head of marketing likes to remind me, I'm. I'm only scratching the surface and there's clearly a gap. Most marketing teams are using AI tools to think, but not actually do. And that's where things are heading next. Our sponsor, optimizely, built this platform called Opal that lets you use autonomous AI agents to go and do the stuff you shouldn't be doing manually versus just being another chatbot. This is stuff like creating and optimizing on brand web pages, emails, SEO content and campaigns by audience segment. It catches brand, legal and accessibility issues before anything else goes live. It pulls data from your other systems like Google Analytics or your CRM and sales tools to auto build reports, summaries and recommendations. And guess what? It's completely no code. So marketers like you and me can build and leverage agents for any use case that we dream up without needing to rely on developers. Heck yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So get this.

[Sponsor Host]

Optimizely has this awesome offer for Exit 5 listeners. They're offering a free personalized 45 minute AI workshop to help you identify the best AI use cases for your marketing team and map out which agents can save you time with a practical plan you can actually go and use right away. So if you need help demystifying all of this AI agent stuff and you want to figure out where you can put AI agents to work inside of your marketing team, go and check this out. Go to optimizely.com exit5 and check it out. That's optimizely.com exit5. You're listening to the Dave Gerhard show Exit.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Okay. All right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

This is exciting because I asked Louie 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, having 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 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Have your hip surgery. Oh, my God, poor you.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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, 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 B2B 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 worked in SaaS for years, but now you kind of do your own thing. How do you talk about yourself?

[Louis 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

In recovery for that?

[Louis 'Louie' 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, yes. So I would like you to open box number one for me. So I sent you that over the post.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 of 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 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

They're not numbered.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

Oh, I got you. I got you.

[Louis 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

Okay, I got number one.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

This is like ASMR for podcasting right now.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Kind of smells nice.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

Okay, I got number one.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

What is it? No, but describe.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

Is this like an endoscope?

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

It's a colonoscopy.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Oh, it's a colonoscopy.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

So this is.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Is this, in fact, an anus?

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Yes.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' 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.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Sure.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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 Gerhardt]

So right now I'm going to give myself a colonoscopy on the podcast.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

No, that's crazy, 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 'Louie' 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 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. 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. Wow.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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 it 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. 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 Gerhardt]

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 I got. Unfortunately, the hook is. The hook is cancer.

[Louis 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

10 lessons I learned about B2B marketing from surviving cancer.

[Louis 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

Good lesson. Psa.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

We'll take that.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Do you have pets?

[Dave Gerhardt]

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?

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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, what.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

How old are your kids?

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

I have one daughter, and she's four. She's four? Yeah. All right, so Dave is opening package number two. Package number two and clearly couldn't wait. Okay, so what's the T shirts? So you're holding a T shirt. What does it say?

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' 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 what you. 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 Gerhardt]

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?

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Like, what's a pinata?

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

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.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Are going to kill you. Exactly. So the worst pinata ever.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I'm wearing that shirt to the gym, that's for sure. I'm a wash. Well, and then you'd be like, oh, do you get the joke?

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Do I need to explain it to you?

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

No.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 fuck 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 'Louie' 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 talk 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 Gerhardt]

Oh, I love that.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

I've done that mistake before.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

No, 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.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

However.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I think.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

I think.

[Sponsor Host]

I believe.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Believe. Okay, okay.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

You still believe in it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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'. 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, 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 'Louie' 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. 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 Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' 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 didn't have a horse attached to it was called a horseless carriage.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 product. There's only marketers who can't make it interesting.

[Louis 'Louie' 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 able to be noticed is the ability to be noticed, to stick in people's mind regardless of the product. So if you're 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 Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

Number six is 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.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Rapping. 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 Gerhardt]

But that's why this smells nice.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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're 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.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

So that you're the only one using it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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 post hog 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 fucking 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 Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Louis 'Louie' 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. 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 Gerhardt]

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? If 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 'Louie' Grenier]

It is.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 I 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 boost shop. Like, this is the fun part about marketing. He'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 going to 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 differentiate you all right? AI generated slop. I think it's the best thing to ever happen in marketing actually because it.

[Sponsor Host]

Raises the bar, right? AI Slop is going to kill deals, kill brand and kill trust. Today marketers like, we're also customers too, right? And so we have to actually put ourselves in the position of our customers and think about all the AI slop they're seeing. And it's on us to create things that actually make matter. Things that have meaning and impact, things that are educational, entertaining, funny, useful, specific and relevant. And that's everything that our sponsor Air Ops stands for. They're helping reshape how people discover and connect with brands. Because AI Slop is not going to win. Air Ops is built for marketers who want to create content that sounds like their best subject matter expert, not another chatbot. This is content grounded in real sources, real insights and real information. Here gain their content engineering platform helps you surface your highest value opportunities in AI search, then shows you how to actually take action on them. Not just see dashboards, not just get another recommendation or SEO report, but actually go out and execute. And this is the topic that everyone is being asked to get smarter about right now. AI search and SEO. If you care about this topic, then you want to go and check out Air Ops. They're built for you. It's airops.com exit5. You can learn learn more about Air Ops and what they're doing in the AI and SEO space. That's airops.com exit5 who also mentioned just.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 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 'Louie' 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, being noticed, all of that.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

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.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Right where. Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

Yeah, yeah. Of 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 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

They'll never do it well.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

And then you say, well, that's. It's my job.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 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 'Louie' Grenier]

Yes. Gross.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 smudged in the back. I'm going to open that one first.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Yep.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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 through that page, that. That tells me deep down it's there, right? So I think these arguments against not just going just for that type of.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Ads, but for small brands, 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 mention 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. I.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

This has got to be 4.

[Louis 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

He's very handsome.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

No, that means in French. That means handsome in French.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

And.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

Yeah, it is a bat signal light. Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' 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. You see, that's 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 Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

It's not there for the sake of contradicting people for the sake of it, or just shifting 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 it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Right.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

Yeah.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

Oh, my God, dude.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

My.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 it. We love. We. Yes. Yes, I do.

[Louis 'Louie' 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 move 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, right? 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 explodes. So it's the same for people on how they decide to buy.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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.

[Sponsor Host]

So like let's get into a company.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

Exactly. The power of this is not only just to be, oh, they've changed 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 Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

Yeah. And 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 Gerhardt]

I also got this 50 pound dumbbell.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

This is a bonus. This is a bonus.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

That's a rogue, that's a vendor who decided to like, all right, trying to tell me something.

[Dave Gerhardt]

This is all right. 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 going to put this together because, look, we're all.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Yeah. So this is a LEGO set. A Harry Potter LEGO set. Harry Potter, because I believe that 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 Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

Exactly. So I think you open.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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. I was listening to Founders podcast, and that guy, David Senra, they would. 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 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.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Yep. 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 is 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 it basically the 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 Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' Grenier]

What?

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 'Louie' 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. Right. 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 Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

I've launched a YouTube channel. Doubling down on something that AI 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 are 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. Cause it's fun.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

So for the first time, the one in the cottage, I hired a videographer. But for the one with the SaaS founder, I'm actually gonna go on my own. I have two cameras, I have my gear, and I'm gonna 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 gonna try.

[Dave Gerhardt]

What are you gonna fail? What do you got? GoPros. You put GoPros around the house? No.

[Louis 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

Okay, Louis, Louis. On LinkedIn, it says Louis Frenchie Grenier.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

That's it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Check him out. Stand the fuck out. I love this topic, man. I'm happy to do more of it.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

I.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 Louis 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.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Harry dry a little bit.

[Dave Gerhardt]

A little bit now.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

He's a good friend of mine.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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 talk 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 Gearhart, 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 school.

[Louis 'Louie' 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, Heights Marketers, was nine years ago, man.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Just to let you know.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

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

[Dave Gerhardt]

Oh, my God.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

If I not mistaken, I'm going to.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Throw up because my daughter was just born. Now she's.

[Louis 'Louie' 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 ensue, 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 Gerhardt]

Amen.

[Louis 'Louie' 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 Gerhardt]

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 don't want a business.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Yeah, you're fired. You're fired. But that's 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 shit out. If you have those foundations, you will figure shit out. You will. No problem.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Likewise.

[Dave Gerhardt]

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

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

We have a problem with that.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Okay, we'll talk about it later.

[Louis 'Louie' Grenier]

Bye. Goodbye.

[Sponsor Host]

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast.

[Dave Gerhardt]

If you like this episode.

[Sponsor Host]

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. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at exit 5. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exit55.com our mission at Exit 5 is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at exit 5. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are. So you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days so you can go and check it out risk free. And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community.

[Exit 5 Event Announcer]

Hey, by the way, we're doing a new event at Exit 5. On the heels of our very wildly successful and super fun drive, we're doing an event designed for marketing leaders. It's called the Exit 5 Marketing Leadership Retreat. It's a two day in person working session for CMOs and VPs in Arizona in March. Not a conference, not a marathon of content. It's a room of 100, only 100 marketing execs from companies like Zoom, Snowflake, Manychat, Bit, Ly, G2, HP and more. You'll spend two days pressure testing real decisions with your peers who are doing the the same job you are. What to hire next, what to cut, what's actually working, what's not. Small, intimate, exactly what you have needed in a marketing event designed for leaders and CMOs and VPs like you and me. It's on March 18th through the 20th, 2026 at Mountain Shadows Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. We have a hundred spots and they're filling up fast. I think as of do as of recording this, we had 42 tickets sold. So if you're a CMO or VP of marketing and you want to think better, move faster and lead with more clarity this year. This event is made for you. We do awesome events. I'm super excited to have this one out there. You should go check it out. Exit5.com retreat that's exit5.com retreat.