MAKE YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE RADICALLY STAND OUT

 “I was just stuck in my own ideas…”

I couldn't see it from the lens of my buyer. I wanted to figure this buyer research thing out because I had been percolating over it for two years. I had an obsession with this idea that comes back and attacks me every now and then.

I tried to launch this product and shared it with a whole bunch of different people. I had a bunch of conversations with people who I thought should buy this, but no one understood it.

I just had some spreadsheets with process ideas and questions to myself. And I had a failed landing page that didn't generate the business that I was looking to generate.

I just sold a $10,000 research project that I couldn't figure out how to position for two years

...before I'd even finished STFO.

I now have insights into a little area that could be mine.

The whole process of coming through and bringing this thing to life was so exciting for me. Because it's something I've been so excited about bringing to life and I just couldn't figure out how to do it before.

I have a better understanding of what exists in the market and what the unmet needs are. I have insights into a little area that could be mine very profitably and in a very differentiated way.

I am very busy but it doesn't mean I don't take really good opportunities when they come

I do a lot of stuff all at the same time. For example, I'm taking Spanish lessons, at six in the morning, a few times a week. I'm doing a lot of work right now.

I took on this new buyer research, like a test pilot project, which is taking me three times the time. But that doesn't mean you don't take opportunities that are really good when they come. I think STFO was just like one of those opportunities, whereas it felt right.

STFO changed my entire approach to marketing

The last person who did that is a really smart researcher with 20 years of experience working at Gartner. Radical differentiation is a concept that everyone needs to get their head around. Everyone needs to get this. It is the most important thing marketers should be thinking about.

They're thinking about their competitors and they're thinking that's how they differentiate, but real differentiation, which I love, is really about understanding your customers and figuring out what they're tired of and what they're sick of.

You don't get the insight from the competitors. You get the insight from your customers. And so that kernel of it is what I think a lot of marketers are missing. 

I rarely like people in marketing...

I know that such a mean thing to say, but I'm just being fully honest. There are so many people who are just trying to build their careers versus actually serve customers.

I love the people that I met through STFO. I think they're super cool. Even though we weren't all selling to the same types of customers, there was very genuine respect for humanity and care for the people that they're serving in a very authentic way that just really spoke to me.

I really appreciated the thoughts and reflections I got from some of the other participants as well (not just you Louis).

I also liked the way you shaped those conversations. They were empathetic, but they were also “Cut the crap. You can figure this out.”

"Is it going to be one of those courses that tells me I need to write a story around my brand?"

There are a lot of these storytelling courses where they all say “You need to find the unique positioning, and you need to tell a story about your brand.” And that was my biggest objection.

I didn't want it to be another one of those courses that you just buy.

And luckily it was not.

I had a bit of confusion around the services that we provided

I needed to get clarity on how to position our agency in conjunction with our content that we send out every week.

And how all of these fit together. This was really not clear to me.

That’s why I signed up.

It was exhausting to have all these options open

I was reading all those books, like Blue Ocean Strategy and all that, but it never clicked for me. It made me maybe feel tired and lose motivation a little bit.

It might seem like a luxury problem, but it isn't really. It's just tiresome to constantly every single time to send out a newsletter or record a podcast and ask yourself, “What is it that you're trying to do?”

I now have a story that I use in sales calls

I just didn't have that before. I have a story that connects with people and that I now use in sales calls.

I had a sales call with a lead last week and I could just immediately connect with her on the fact that I know how it feels to be a new marketing leader.

I think we’ve got the contract because of it.

I was not expecting...

...to learn a step-by-step repeatable process of how to narrow down my target audience and craft a unique positioning for my segment or niche that I can actually own.

It just makes me feel like very relieved because I don't have to think about how I'm going to do this every single time for the rest of my life.

It ultimately gave me the clarity that I needed.

"The mental commitment is 8 weeks; can I really put myself into it?"

When this came out, I was like, “Oh, I want to do it.” And I was talking with my wife, “I don't even know if I have the time."

I have marketed in isolation. I don't really meet up with people, not around marketing. I just live in my own world. I worked on this company and it proved successful, but I felt the process was messy.

I couldn’t do this again with a new product of just walking in the fog. I wanted a roadmap. I wanted structure. And that's something you always did with the podcast. You gave a step-by-step structure. And when it comes to launching a product, I wanted to see what a roadmap was like from you.

Once I made that mental commitment, I was like, “I'll just make time, whatever!” 

At first, honestly, I was a little worried, “Oh wait, is this just going to be like an inspirational marketing course?”

The one thing I was not sure about was how you built the skills of a marketer, and the limitations, and the mental health aspect of being able to act on that roadmap.

I thought that was really clever. 

I walked away with just a really clear step-by-step roadmap, which is an incredible feeling to have. I walked about with a precise positioning of our product. You really walked me through a competitor’s weaknesses, the customer wants, even the customer vernacular around the product. All these things, I was able to gather in eight weeks in a very clear way. 

And I don't just mean positioning in marketing speak. I mean, positioning it for my understanding of the product. So I can have a lot of creative spring off of that.

I always had this belief that you don't have to bullshit people with marketing

If you have a quality product, you can just be totally transparent and make it interesting. 

There's a lot of people who are just selling inspiration. I didn't know if I was just being overly moral. And coming across your podcast was just validation for me.

Between us, STFO was much bigger than I thought it was going to be

There was more inside of the program, more content, more strategy, more thought put into it than I had anticipated. I was thinking, what you would pull off in eight weeks was going to be probably modules one, two, and three. And that's it.

The promises you make about your podcast crystallized into a class. No bullshit, actionable, no fluff.  It's a strong and true brand, and you put it into a class.

"There are so many techniques and things you can learn out there, it's very mentally tiring."

Everyone is screaming out on the roofs, saying, “This technique is the best and it's the new thing you should do!” And then this person’s saying the exact opposite. And it's just so noisy. No one is talking about the fundamentals, right?

Forget about the internet, forget about anything, what is evergreen? And I felt that STFO was going to be that evergreen thing that was completely different from all the shiny things.

Our market was so wide, we would have lost years

Before STFO, we didn't know exactly who was within our segment.  It was so wide and so open.

We didn't know who to target online. And that was always in the back of my mind, “Maybe it's okay to cast a wide net and attract as many people as we can?”

We avoided making a huge rookie mistake

It really felt like we didn't know where to go or what communities to activate. We just hadn’t done our homework.

Now that I've taken the program, I realized that we probably would have lost years and years lost business just because we would have been so general, so vanilla that no one would have really believed in such a small company.

STFO really saved us potentially months or years of not being well positioned.

Everything came together in major ways

To see the effects of all the work from the previous weeks being finally emerging together into that unified differentiation that we can activate and use as part of our strategy was amazing.

Now it's making sense for my own business and I see how to do this now. And this is freaking cool.

STFO gave me a huge amount of relief mentally

Now, whatever we do is based on very solid foundations and a very specific segment.

We know exactly who to activate actually. We know that we have to go for this blog, this blog, and this blog, this forum, and so on. It helped tremendously, too, to know how to focus our efforts as founders.

You really went into answering people's issues and concerns

That's super interesting because there were several feedback loops. There was a feedback loop within the private forum. Then there was a feedback loop during the weekly calls. You created this group dynamic in a way that was genuine and that helped people really put it to practice, get that feedback, iterate, and close the loop.

If you're on the verge...

...wondering if you will gain at the end of this program the answer is absolutely yes. So just do it, just trust that there will be a huge gap between where you are now and where you will be after.

There will be a lot of work involved but just freaking take that course and see the results for yourself.

Just the best course I've taken. I don't know anything remotely close to it. 

You care as a mentor. I know that you're not there to just make a quick buck. It’s great knowing that you really truly care.