My heart breaks for all those readers, clients, and community members in Los Angeles facing the devastating impacts of climate change and natural disasters. It feels increasingly odd to keep talking about marketing and small business growth given *all of this*, but here is today's newsletter.
I just finished Louis Grenier’s book Stand the F*ck Out: The No-Nonsense Guide to Positioning your Business, Finding your People, and Building a Durable Brand.
It’s one of my top 4 business books from last year - I couldn’t put it down. (I’ll be doing a short piece on each of those this month!).
The intro to the book reads:
Stand the F*ck Out (STFO) is a no-nonsense marketing methodology designed to help businesses find their unique positioning, build a distinctive brand, and reach their ideal customers - all without falling prey to marketing bullshit.
And what struck me about the book after reading - and what I wanted to share with you - is the order of what was shared. Because it’s focusing on the 20% of what gets airtime, but is 80% of the impact.
The Segment (aka specific customer profiles) didn’t come until midway through the book.
Whaaaat? Yes! Where most business courses start with “define your niche”, to stand out means to gather real insights first.
The entire first segment was about understanding the “juicy insights” from potential customers and a variety of segments.
In Louis’s framework, leveraging a “jobs to be done” methodology, he asks you to do customer research/insight foraging - including interviewing your most recent customers, observing customers in the wild, collecting stories from others who have made similar purchases, and mining reviews. Yep, our first step is interviewing our customers or customers in an active buying decision.
Next - we’re still not at segment - it’s about understanding the first three of six insights. The job to be done, the alternatives, the struggles.
And only then do we get to the segment, the broader category, and the trigger/catalytic moment.
The segment is the “specific group of people we can serve in a way that gives us a distinct advantage against alternatives”, and the category “is the group of things that solve similar struggles in a similar way.”
We didn’t get to Segment until page 127 of a 300 page book.
Because you can’t be distinct, find your people, and stand out for them until you understand them.
So if you’re wondering this year how to get more clients… ask first, do I really know my clients? Do I understand their the struggles (and their irrational struggles), and the job to be done - in their words? Do you know your category and alternatives: direct competitors and the other ways the customer gets the job done (including the status quo)?
And Channel - the means of meeting potential customers and being present/accessible in their context came in page 267. Almost at the very, very end!
Channels are the ways you communicate and/or be a familiar place for when they experience their catalytic events and are ready to buy. So, distribution channels like email, social media, etc. were the very last topic covered in building a durable brand and finding your people.
Because as you’ve noticed, it’s getting sloppy out there online - specifically, filled with AI slop. Even as recently as this week, Meta changed their content moderation and fact checking policies so we’re going to be potentially flooded with even more disinformation. The amount of noise is growing, and the amount of trust on any of these platforms is shrinking.
There’s so much messaging about how to write better hooks on LinkedIn, to package better on YouTube. 30 day posting challenges, and weekly newsletter challenges. But if your marketing and communication is generic, in the wrong channel, or otherwise isn’t speaking to the core struggles and goals of your clients, then it’s time that could have spent elsewhere.
So unless you’re planning to get exceptional about Daytrading Attention (has anyone read the book by Gary V, to save me from having to read it?), it’s critical that we get specific about our customer insights, our point of view, our frameworks, and our brand distinction first.
And then we can speak in a way (and with the right channels) that most reaches them where they are and stands out amidst the dreck flooding the algorithms.
That may mean broadcasting less and talking, listening, and writing more.
That may mean ditching the daily social media posting schedule in favor of 2-3 insight foraging/coffee chats a week to expand your network and talk to your potential market.
It may mean sending out email broadcasts less frequently - but still at least once a month for building your body of work, maintaining your creative practice, and staying aware for your subscribers. Instead, you might be conducting voice of customer interviews and want to consolidate your insights and deepen your understanding through writing about what comes up.
It may mean doing more solo episodes on your podcast to explore your thinking publicly, and improving the product versus focusing on show promotion.
You might say, “But that doesn’t scale!” You’d be right - and I think in 2025, it’s what’s unscalable at the start that builds momentum.
You might say, “I don’t know customers or potential customers to get on the phone for insight foraging.” And I say, if they aren’t in your network now, how will you reach them for a sale? Social Media is at its nadir point of showing your work to others who don’t already follow you, especially if you have a small audience. (LinkedIn, YouTube, and short-form video are the exception, so are you willing to play the game there - and play at the level required?)
You might say, “But shouldn’t I publish more frequently?” I encourage you to always be creating, always be writing or talking it out on a podcast/video. And I’d much rather see you take the time to have a point of view, versus stopping at the 100 word mark for a social post. Your mileage on ChatGPT may vary, but it’s an effective thought partnership tool (but not an effective writer). But if you're not totally sure who you're talking to and what they need to hear, I encourage you to spend time getting clear on that first.
Say less, but mean it more.
PS - these topics are assessed in the Authority system of my Deeper Business Systems assessment. Take the free assessment here!