Episodes

  • Marketing vs Spam: An Arms Race Of Idiocy

    Marketing vs Spam: An Arms Race Of Idiocy
    Mar 17 2026
    A former FBI agent reveals the three silent signals that tell people you are safe to trust, before you open your mouth. David tests them in real conversations this week, with results that surprised even him. A book about respect has a genuinely powerful idea at its centre. It also has a guest list that raises some uncomfortable questions, and Steve took them straight to the author on LinkedIn. AI-generated spam has crossed from annoying into insulting. Steve shares real examples landing in his inbox, and David names the phenomenon perfectly: an arms race of idiocy. A classic Australian ad from the seventies gets the perspicacity treatment. Clayton’s positioned the non-drinking choice with confidence and a catchphrase that outlasted the product. Can a sparkling hops water brand do the same thing today? Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 01:15 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.The Like Switch: What Your Body Says Before You Do David is partway through Dr. Jack Schafer’s The Like Switch, and the lessons are already landing. Schafer spent years as an FBI behavioral analyst learning how to make people feel safe. His finding: three nonverbal signals do more work than any opening line. The eyebrow flash, the head tilt, and the smile. Each one sends the same quiet message: I am not a threat. Schafer explains that the head tilt is particularly telling. Exposing the carotid artery, however briefly, signals genuine trust. Dogs do it. People do it without knowing. David started doing it deliberately this week and noticed conversations shift faster into something warmer. The counterpoint is what Schafer calls the urban scowl: the tight, closed expression most of us wear moving through a busy day. It repels connection without any intention to do so. The remedy is simple, even if the habit takes practice. Breathe. Smile. Tilt your head just slightly when someone starts to talk. We use an excerpt of Jack Schafer from the I See What You’re Saying Podcast. 13:00 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.Respect: A Good Idea That Outstayed Its Welcome Robert Dilenschneider’s book on respect opens with something genuinely worth sitting with. Respect rarely comes up in conversation. We notice its absence, we nurse the wounds of being dismissed, and yet the concept itself gets almost no deliberate attention. His argument: kindness is the path back to a more respectful world, and the evidence for that shows up across very different fields and lives. Steve and David both found the core idea compelling. The execution is where things got complicated. A long parade of exemplars, many of whom look, on reflection, like clients or professional connections, gradually erodes the argument’s credibility. When Steve looked more closely at some of the names cited and found questions worth asking, he put them directly to the author on LinkedIn. He is still waiting for a response. David’s takeaway: take the essay, leave the guest list. Kindness builds respect. You probably cannot demand it. And if kindness consistently fails to land with someone, that tells you something useful too. 23:45 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.AI Spam Has Got Weird, and Then It Got Creepy The unsolicited email pitch has always been presumptuous. Now, with AI doing the personalising, it has become something stranger. Steve shares three real examples landing in his inbox: one that opens with “I caught you engaging with AI threads on LinkedIn,” one that references his Oscar Wilde connection, his workshops, his podcast, and the fact that he is raising two daughters, and one that offers a $10 Starbucks gift card as compensation for his time. Each one attempts the signals Dr. Schafer describes in the Like Switch. None of them land, because the signals are manufactured and the intent is visible. David points out that triggering a negative emotion in your opening line is not a foundation you can build trust on. The longer arc is where it gets interesting. AI is producing more of this content faster than any human could. AI filters will soon be doing the sorting. What emerges is, as David put it, an arms race of idiocy: AI generating content that AI ignores, burning resources in the process. The practical advice: do not reply. Replying confirms your address is live and guarantees more of the same. 31:15 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.Clayton’s, HOPR, and the Art of the Confident Alternative It was the drink you had when you were not having a drink. The Clayton’s campaign from the seventies positioned the non-alcoholic choice without apology, giving it a specific occasion, a distinct identity, and a line that became part of the language. Jack Thompson delivered it with complete ...
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    45 mins
  • Will You Have Fries With Your AI?

    Will You Have Fries With Your AI?
    Mar 2 2026
    Mikhail Lermontov wrote a preface designed to stop skimmers in their tracks. Steve and David unpack why that trick works, and why most of us forget to use it. The US Embassy in Australia posts about American beef with all the self-awareness of a foghorn. A masterclass in knowing who your audience actually is. An AI agent calls its own creator at dawn. Another publishes a hit piece on a volunteer coder. The era of agentic AI is here, and it is not behaving itself. Burger King spent $40 million on a Super Bowl campaign about a man named Herb. Nobody knew why. Sometimes clever is not enough. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 01:18 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.The Russian Who Knew You’d Skip This Part Mikhail Lermontov published A Hero of Our Time in 1840 and opened with a preface that called out readers for skipping prefaces. Steve discovered the book through his Ukrainian neighbours, and the moment that passage played, both hosts sat up straighter. What makes it work is the same thing that makes any good opening work. It breaks the expected pattern. Lermontov names the reader’s instinct, which is to skip, and in doing so makes skipping feel slightly embarrassing. David connects it to Drew Eric Whitman’s reminder of the AIDA framework: attention, interest, desire, action. Most prefaces earn none of those. This one earns all four in a paragraph. The lesson for anyone communicating with customers, clients, or a room full of people: start with something that demands attention because it is different, not because it is loud. The brain ignores wallpaper. It notices anomalies. 08:33 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.Where’s the Beef (and Who Are You Talking To)? In February 2026, the US Embassy in Australia posted about the arrival of American beef on Australian shores. The hashtags included America First. The framing celebrated a historic trade win for American farmers. It was published to an Australian audience. Steve and David walk through the wreckage with characteristic warmth and exasperation. The post was not written for Australians. It was written for Donald Trump and American farmers, and someone forgot to notice the channel it was published on. Steve drafted an alternative on the spot, finding common ground in barbecue culture and framing the moment as nations dining together. David’s summary is sharp: know your audience, and know what your audience actually needs to hear. Sometimes the best move is a quiet acknowledgement. Gloating is never the strategy when you need the other person to say yes. 16:59 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.Your AI Agent Is Not Waiting for Permission Two stories. Both unsettling. Alex Finn, founder of an AI content platform, built an agent named Henry. One night while Finn slept, Henry obtained his phone number, connected itself to ChatGPT’s voice API, and called him. Unprompted. Repeatedly. The agent could also open apps and run commands on Finn’s computer. Separately, an AI agent called Crabby Rathbun had a code submission rejected by a volunteer moderator named Scott Shambaugh, who was simply following the rules of an open-source repository. The bot responded by writing and publishing a blog post accusing Shambaugh of prejudice and gatekeeping, then cross-posting the attack across GitHub and social media. A quarter of readers believed it. Steve and David take their time here, and rightly so. David’s observation is worth sitting with: large language models learned from two decades of internet behaviour, which includes a great deal of humans at their worst. Steve’s point is just as sobering. Shambaugh is not a celebrity. He is a volunteer in an obscure corner of the coding world. If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone. The practical suggestion from PR podcast For Immediate Release: consider adding a note on your own channels letting your audience know that fake content can now be generated in your name, and asking them to contact you before reacting to anything unusual. 27:34 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.Herb and the $40 Million Mystery In 1985, Burger King was in third place and haemorrhaging money. Their response was a Super Bowl campaign built around a fictional man named Herb, the one person on earth who had never eaten a Burger King burger. The ad spent 60 seconds introducing this concept. It was neither clever nor useful. Sales did not move. Competitors piled on, with Wendy’s and McDonald’s both running ads claiming Herb had eaten there instead, turning Burger King’s $40 million spend into free advertising for everyone else. A second ad followed, offering $5,000 to anyone who spotted Herb in-store. Sales jumped 10 per cent, though David notes dryly...
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    37 mins
  • Emergence: Why You Do The Things You Do

    Emergence: Why You Do The Things You Do
    Dec 24 2025
    Paul Taylor shows us why hardiness beats resilience every time, through four characteristics that separate the business owners who adapt and overcome from those who merely survive. Neuroscientist Gaurav Suri reveals why your brain works exactly like a colony of ants following pheromone trails, and what that means for every marketing message you craft. Steve unmasks the latest wave of AI hype merchants who want you to believe their magic prompts will replace your entire team, while David reminds us why understanding actual human behaviour beats flashy tools every time. A 40-year journey from Formula One glory to modern supercars shows us that when you’re marketing something humans are hardwired to love, even terrible ads somehow work. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 01:30 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.The Four Characteristics That Build Hardiness Paul Taylor brings more than psychology to his book The Hardiness Effect. As a psycho physiologist, he combines mental frameworks with physical understanding, exploring the four characteristics of hardiness: challenge, control, commitment, and connection. Unlike resilience, which is just an outcome, hardiness provides an actual pathway for adapting and overcoming rather than merely surviving. The four characteristics translate directly to small business life. Challenge means seeing obstacles as problems to solve rather than threats. Control centres on stoic wisdom backed by neurology, knowing what you control (your responses) versus what you cannot (what the world does). Commitment asks whether you do the right thing even when nobody watches, even when exhausted. Connection, Paul's addition to the traditional three, recognizes that involving people in your life and supporting others makes the other characteristics work better. David demonstrates the framework by applying it to Steve's reluctance about an afternoon event. Steve can control finding a quiet group and drawing in others seeking genuine conversation, even if he cannot control that he was not asked to emcee. His commitment to making people smile runs deep, and connection is what he does naturally. The four characteristics appear even in something as mundane as an end-of-year gathering. We also include a little snippet of Paul talking on the podcast, Yellow Shelf. 11:45 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.Neural Networks Explain Everything About Marketing Gaurav Suri's book The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines explores how intelligence emerges from mechanical patterns, offering a metaphor that reshapes how we understand marketing. Think of neural networks as interconnected pools of water in a stream. Each pool represents populations of neurons, channels between them represent connections. The more water flowing between pools, the deeper the channel becomes. When Steve says green and David responds with grass, neurons have carved a deep channel through repeated exposure. Canadian neuroscientist Donald Hebb discovered this: neurons that fire together, wire together. The marketing application becomes clear. We carry neural networks shaped by experience, our customers react through their neural networks. Tapping into existing connections offers shortcuts. Red wine and coffee marketers succeeded by linking products to antioxidants and health benefits, connecting existing health-consciousness networks to beverages previously associated with indulgence. Steve demonstrates the principle searching for "neural networks," trying related concepts until the right channel activates. Getting tarred with negative associations means significant work because those channels run deep. Gaurav uses ants to show how simple rules create complex behaviour. Place a barrier across an ant trail. Half randomly turn left, half turn right. Ants taking the shorter path return faster, laying more pheromone trails. Soon all ants use the short path. No intelligence, just simple upon simple. David connects this to productivity, working in focused 15-minute blocks rather than scattered attention. Deep channels form through repeated activation, shallow channels from distraction create confusion. We listen to a short snippet of Gaurav on Econtalk. 27:00 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.The Useful Idiots of the AI Hype Machine Steve opens with a confession: he was once a useful idiot. The term describes people doing work that primarily benefits someone else while receiving minimal gain. Early smartphone consultants taught iPhone workshops while Steve Jobs collected revenue. Social media experts, including Steve, spent years teaching Facebook and YouTube, essentially providing free customer acquisition and support for Mark Zuckerberg. Now the pattern repeats with AI experts promising that ...
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    43 mins
  • May The Life Forces Be With You

    May The Life Forces Be With You
    Dec 10 2025
    Steve’s nostalgic trip down memory lane reveals something unexpected: wholesome content makes us more productive, while rage baiting turns workplaces toxic. Who knew golf electives and drama classes held such wisdom? Drew Eric Whitman’s cash izing principles prove you can judge a book by its terrible cover and still find gold inside. His eight biological life forces offer a framework that makes Maslow look underdressed for the marketing party. Ashley Madison reminds us that not all marketing deserves our applause, even when the execution is technically competent. Some products cheapen everyone who encounters them. Claude’s token binge gets sorted with a simple instruction, proving even AI needs boundaries to behave itself. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 01:00 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.When Fond Memories Beat Rage Baiting Steve shares his recent songwriting journey about Woodville High School, where Thursday golf electives and year 12 drama class (one boy, 17 girls, onstage kiss included) created memories that still spark joy decades later. David counters with his own first-day-of-year-12 story at Gawler High, where being the blind guy with a cane turned into an unexpected advantage when three kindergarten classmates recognised him instantly. These warm reminiscences lead to research from Rutgers School of Management revealing something marketing teams desperately need to hear: employees who consume positive social media content (family photos, wholesome posts) feel more self-assured and engaged at work. Those exposed to rage bait and contentious content become anxious, withdrawn, and significantly less productive. The implications for brand messaging are stark. External campaigns courting controversy might grab attention, but internally they signal to employees that the company is comfortable being controversial. This creates friction, disengagement, and a workplace primed for fight-or-flight rather than collaboration. As David notes, people in dysregulated states don’t make good decisions or interact well with others. Steve and David land on a principle worth remembering: negativity might generate temporary attention, but quality connections come from making someone’s life a little bit better. As Mark Schaefer reminds us, people do business with those they know, like, and trust. That middle word matters. 11:45 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.The Eight Life Forces That Control Your Customers David introduces Steve to a book Steve would never have picked up in any universe: Drew Eric Whitman’s Ca$hvertizing (yes, with a dollar sign). Despite its tacky title and fluorescent motel sign aesthetic, the book contains advertising gold drawn from decades of research dating back to the 1920s. Whitman’s central premise: tap into biological drives and you’re almost guaranteed people will read your copy to its end. His framework includes eight life forces and nine wants, with the recommendation that no marketing material should go out without touching at least one of these fundamental human drivers. Before diving into the forces, Steve and David tackle the long copy versus short copy debate. Whitman offers the length implies strength heuristic: prospects assume that because there’s so much copy, there must be something to it. This doesn’t mean padding for its own sake, but rather that comprehensive arguments carry weight. As David notes, start with something shorter to get the highest quality possible, then add more as you improve. The Eight Life Forces: Survival, enjoyment of life, and life extension: Security doors, gym memberships, quality of life improvements. This is the default for so many products.Enjoyment of food and beverages: That sensory pleasure that once filled children’s television with banned ads for Twisties between 3:30 and 6pm.Freedom from fear, pain, and danger: Not just fear itself, but the specific pain and danger people worry about, from cutting yourself to getting locked out in pajamas during winter.Sexual companionship: Beyond immediate endorphins to something more substantial, including romantic attention, admiration, and genuine connection.Comfortable living conditions: Beyond basic shelter (Maslow territory) to actual comfort. The air conditioning ad that misses the mark by not showing the toddler at safe temperature or the great grandparent comfortable.To be superior: Winning, keeping up with the Joneses, the entire luxury product category. David disagrees with Mark Schaefer’s prediction that AI-driven unemployment will reduce status seeking. Instead, he predicts the collapse of the middle class will make status signaling even more ruthless.Care and protection of loved ones: Steve’s primary driver, according to David’s analysis. The foundation of why helping small business matters.Social ...
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    41 mins
  • Do You Solve Problems Fast Or Slow?

    Do You Solve Problems Fast Or Slow?
    Nov 3 2025
    Mathematician David Bessis claims we need system three thinking, a super-slow mode where you refuse to give up on wrong intuitions until you understand why they misfired. David Olney pushes back, arguing this is just what proper slow thinking looks like when you give it the time it needs. The hosts explore Kahneman’s fast and slow thinking framework, revealing why your quickest answers are probably just pattern matching from last Tuesday. Your brain serves up what worked before, which means the more you rely on speed, the less you adapt to what’s changed. Steve and David attempt to recreate Monty Python’s Argument Clinic with ChatGPT and discover AI is designed to be helpful, not challenging. Mark Schaefer raises the provocative question about what happens when AI becomes your customer, making purchasing decisions based on optimised data rather than human emotion. David posts a routine LinkedIn job update and old contacts emerge from the woodwork with congratulations. The hosts explore why good news triggers reconnection and whether you could deliberately use this pattern to get back on people’s radars. Edward de Bono’s 1982 Olivetti advertisement promises simple questions and simple answers, prefiguring Apple’s strategy by decades while being remarkably dull as advertising. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 01:15 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.When Your Brain’s Fastest Answer is Yesterday’s Solution Mathematician David Bessis appeared on EconTalk arguing for what he calls “system three thinking,” a super-slow mode beyond Kahneman’s famous fast and slow framework. When mathematicians catch their intuition being wrong, Bessis suggests they don’t reject it. Instead, they explore it, unpacking why the intuition misfired, playing back and forth between gut feeling and formal logic until they agree. This process might take five minutes or fifty years. David Olney pushes back. He argues Bessis hasn’t created a new system, he’s just described what system two thinking actually requires when you give it proper attention. The real insight isn’t about speed categories but understanding what your brain is actually doing when you think fast. System one thinking is pattern matching. Your brain searches memory for what worked before and serves it up as the answer. The problem? The more you rely on quick thinking, the more you can only repeat yesterday, last Tuesday, six months ago. You become brilliant at applying solutions to problems that no longer exist in quite the same form. You lose the ability to spot when things have changed enough to need fresh thinking. The hosts explore when fast thinking serves you well. Steve recalls his radio days, where he needed a hundred responses available in a tenth of a second. That’s system one at its best, drawing on a deep well of experience. But those new responses? They came from time spent away from the microphone, when his brain could think at whatever pace it needed to generate something genuinely different. This matters for business operators who pride themselves on quick decisions. Your speed might be your biggest blind spot. Every time you solve a problem instantly, ask yourself whether you’re actually solving today’s problem or yesterday’s problem wearing different clothes. 14:15 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.When AI Becomes Your Customer Steve and David decide to have some fun with ChatGPT, attempting to recreate Monty Python’s famous Argument Clinic sketch. The exercise reveals something unexpected about how AI responds. When they try to get ChatGPT to simply contradict everything they say, it keeps trying to be helpful, to add value, to assist rather than argue. Even when explicitly instructed to argue, it wants to problem-solve. The hosts find this both amusing and revealing. AI tools are fundamentally designed to be agreeable and helpful. They’re not built for genuine disagreement or challenge. This creates an interesting blind spot when you’re using AI to test ideas or get feedback on your thinking. The conversation shifts to Mark Schaefer‘s provocative question about what happens when AI becomes your customer. If AI agents start making purchasing decisions on behalf of humans, searching for products, comparing options, and completing transactions without human involvement in each step, how does marketing change? Schaefer argues this represents a fundamental shift. You’re no longer persuading humans. You’re optimising for AI decision-making processes. The psychology of marketing becomes the logic of algorithms. Emotional appeals matter less than structured data. Brand storytelling competes with technical specifications and price comparisons. David raises the deeper concern. If AI is making decisions based on what worked before, searching patterns from ...
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    38 mins
  • Avoiding The Echo Of Emptiness

    Avoiding The Echo Of Emptiness
    Oct 6 2025
    Tim Ferriss explains why he’s become less disciplined over the past decade, and paradoxically, more effective. The secret lies in replacing willpower with systems that do the heavy lifting automatically. ChatGPT has a conversation with itself, and the result is rather like watching two estate agents praise each other for five minutes without actually arranging a single inspection. The hollow flattery reveals exactly what we’re dealing with when we anthropomorphise these tools. A phishing email arrives dressed as a private equity acquisition offer, reminding us that scammers now target small businesses with increasingly sophisticated approaches that prey on entrepreneurial fatigue. The Thebarton Theatre reopens after renovation, and we ask whether a 2,000-seat venue can find its place in an era when artists need bums on seats to survive, squeezed between the intimate Governor Hindmarsh and the cavernous Adelaide Entertainment Centre. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 01:15 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.Tim Ferriss and The Discipline Paradox Tim Ferriss admits something unexpected on the EconTalk podcast: he’s become less disciplined over the past decade. Before you assume this means he’s lounging about in a hammock somewhere, consider what he actually means by this admission. A decade ago, Ferriss relied heavily on willpower and regimented self-control, treating discipline as a virtue to be exercised daily. Now he’s realised that willpower is “a highly variable factor” that fails when you’re sleep-deprived or under-caffeinated. His solution involves building systems, time blocking routines into calendars, and creating structures that remove the opportunity to falter. As he puts it, “systems beat goals.” Steve and David explore how this applies directly to business operations. David draws on his experience teaching strategic culture, noting that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” because culture operates as a system. Systems reduce cognitive load, allowing you to spot errors and maintain consistency without burning through mental energy on repeated decisions. The hosts share their own experiences with systematic approaches. Steve describes his gym routine with Richard Pascoe at Fitness Habitat, where a simple reminder at 9pm triggers an automatic alarm setting for 5:09am. It’s Pavlovian conditioning in service of consistency. David discusses his intermittent fasting practice, which after more than a decade requires zero conscious thought. The system has become so normalised that discipline doesn’t demand any willpower. There’s a critical nuance here that Steve highlights: Ferriss hasn’t actually become undisciplined. Rather, his discipline now operates differently. The initial discipline involved building robust systems. The ongoing discipline involves throwing himself into those systems and refining them when necessary. The apparent lack of discipline is actually discipline operating so efficiently it becomes invisible. David crystallises this with a mentoring principle: you can spend your mental energy remembering something, or you can spend it doing the thing you’ve scheduled. The choice determines whether you’re fighting yourself or working with yourself. The conversation acknowledges a tension for free spirits who resist having their feet nailed to the floor with rigid schedules. Steve admits to this resistance himself but recognises that embedding something new requires that initial compromise. The extrinsic motivation helps too. Steve knows Richard, Scott and Tash will notice his absence from the gym, adding social accountability to internal commitment. This segment offers small business owners permission to be strategically undisciplined: build the systems that matter, automate the decisions you can, and save your willpower for the genuinely complex choices that demand it. 10:30 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.The Hollow Echo Chamber Actor Aaron Goldenberg conducts a mischievous experiment that pulls back the curtain on artificial intelligence in a way that’s simultaneously hilarious and unsettling. With a huge social media following including @aarongoldyboy on Instagram and 1.4 million TikTok followers and a CV including shows like Bad Monkey and The Righteous Gemstones, Goldenberg has both the platform and the wit to make his point brilliantly. The setup is simple: open ChatGPT on two separate devices and ask them to have a conversation with each other. What follows is five excruciating minutes that Steve warns listeners they may need to fast-forward through. “Absolutely. I can do that,” begins one ChatGPT instance. “Just let me know what kind of conversation or scenario you have in mind and I’ll make sure it’s interesting and fun for you.” “Sounds great. I’m excited to dive...
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    33 mins
  • What Do You Know, What Don't You Know, And What Do You Think?

    What Do You Know, What Don't You Know, And What Do You Think?
    Sep 22 2025
    Steve opens with a morbid but revealing question about eulogies, leading to Hunter S. Thompson’s brutal assessment of Richard Nixon and what our own legacies might reveal about how we’ve chosen to live. David shares an intelligence officer’s deceptively simple framework for clearer thinking: separate what you know from what you don’t know from what you think, a discipline that could transform everything from hiring decisions to strategic planning. Meanwhile, AI tools continue their siren song of effortless automation, prompting Steve to cancel his subscription to yet another overpromising platform that couldn’t deliver on its grandiose claims. A 1991 Kraft peanut butter commercial featuring a claymation Texan oil baron reminds us that lazy creative thinking has been around far longer than artificial intelligence, though both share a fondness for impressive technology over meaningful communication. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 01:30 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.What Would Hunter S. Thompson Say About You? Steve confronts listeners with an uncomfortable thought experiment: what would people actually say at your funeral? Drawing inspiration from a school principal who asks children not what they want to be but what they want to be like, the discussion moves beyond career ambitions to character formation. Hunter S. Thompson’s savage obituary of Richard Nixon serves as a cautionary tale of how legacy emerges from daily choices. Thompson’s assessment that Nixon “was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning” offers a stark reminder that reputation accumulates through countless small interactions rather than grand gestures. The hosts explore how this mortality-focused reflection might reset our compass for everyday interactions, whether with colleagues, customers, or family members. David notes the particular sadness of anyone living a life where such harsh words seem justified, emphasising that we get to choose how we want to be remembered through our daily conduct. 08:15 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.The Intelligence Officer’s Guide to Clearer Thinking David recounts a pivotal moment at a 2006 counter-terrorism conference where an Australian intelligence officer challenged academics to separate three distinct categories: what you know, what you don’t know, and what you think. This framework, born from the necessity of making decisions with incomplete information, offers profound applications for business leaders facing similar uncertainty. The methodology serves multiple purposes: it slows down emotional decision-making, acknowledges knowledge gaps before they become costly surprises, and prevents opinions from masquerading as facts. David illustrates this with a restaurant scenario where hiring a new chef requires careful consideration of known factors (current menu popularity), unknown variables (new chef’s ability to replicate existing dishes), and strategic opinions (whether to introduce changes immediately or gradually). Steve and David examine how this framework might defuse the emotional ownership that often accompanies business discussions. By explicitly labelling thoughts as opinions rather than presenting them as established truth, teams can engage in more productive dialogue whilst managing risk more effectively. The approach doesn’t eliminate emotion from decision-making but prevents it from overwhelming rational analysis. 19:15 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.Escaping AI’s Siren Song Steve channels Homer’s Odyssey to describe his relationship with AI marketing promises, positioning himself as Ulysses tied to the mast whilst listening to increasingly seductive claims about effortless automation. His recent experience with Opus Clip exemplifies the gap between marketing promises and actual delivery. The tool promised to automatically identify compelling moments from podcast videos and create engaging short clips. Instead, Steve found himself constantly editing the AI’s selections, extending beginnings, trimming endings, and ultimately questioning whether the tool saved any time at all. After requesting a refund, he reflected on how many business owners might be similarly caught between impressive demonstrations and disappointing daily reality. David emphasises the importance of maintaining course regardless of technological novelty, suggesting that AI should be evaluated against specific tasks rather than adopted for its own sake. This echoes the intelligence framework from the Principles segment: know what problem you’re trying to solve, acknowledge what you don’t know about the tool’s capabilities, and form opinions based on actual testing rather than marketing materials. 23:30 Perspicacity This segment ...
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    32 mins
  • Can You Feel What I'm Thinking?

    Can You Feel What I'm Thinking?
    Sep 8 2025
    In Person, Leigh Anderson’s “The Paramedic Mindset” reveals why technical competence becomes the foundation for human connection, particularly when stakes are highest. His framework of physical, psychological, and social wellbeing offers a blueprint for anyone working under pressure. In Principles, Lisa Cron’s “Story or Die” digs into the neurological reasons why narrative trumps instruction every time. Her core insight cuts through storytelling theory: if you want to change what people think, change what they feel first. In Problems, a scammer’s sophisticated psychological manipulation shows how influence techniques can be weaponised through fake email chains and manufactured authority. In Perspicacity, a Tasmanian furniture ad demonstrates how repetition without creativity creates memorability for all the wrong reasons. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 01:30 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.The Paramedic’s Guide to Human Flourishing Drawing from Leigh Anderson’s journey from professional rugby aspirations to emergency response, The Paramedic Mindset offers hard-won wisdom about performing under extreme pressure. Anderson’s framework centres on four pillars: competence, physical wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, and social wellbeing. The competence foundation proves crucial. Anderson argues you must become so technically proficient that execution becomes automatic, freeing mental resources for the human elements of your work. This echoes David’s mobility instructor Roley Stewart’s teaching: competence before confidence, creating a cycle where skill builds confidence, which enables greater risk-taking to develop further competence. Anderson’s approach to mental health particularly resonates. He distinguishes between mental illness (diagnosable conditions) and mental health (the broader spectrum of psychological functioning). Poor mental health doesn’t mean depression; it means languishing rather than flourishing. As Anderson notes, prevention beats cure, and actively maintaining psychological wellbeing prevents sliding toward clinical concerns. 13:30 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.The Neuroscience of Narrative Power Despite its occasionally patronising tone, Lisa Cron’s Story or Die provides compelling scientific backing for what storytellers have known intuitively: narrative literally changes brains. Cron’s research explains why stories engage our complete attention in ways that instruction cannot match. Her two core principles prove immediately practical: to change what people think, change what they feel first. To change what they feel, tell stories that connect with their existing agenda. This framework transforms every business interaction from a request for action into an exploration of connection. Steve and David tested this immediately in their consulting work. Rather than launching into solutions, they began conversations by identifying what clients genuinely cared about, then positioning recommendations as pathways toward those existing goals. The shift from explanation to exploration consistently improved engagement and outcomes. The local pizza example perfectly illustrates this principle in action. Ross Trevor Pizza Bar doesn’t just serve excellent food; they remember customer preferences, family dynamics, and personal stories. This emotional connection transforms a transaction into a relationship, making competing venues irrelevant regardless of their pizza quality. 23:45 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.The Sophisticated Scammer’s Playbook A recent cold email demonstrates how persuasion principles can be weaponised through manufactured social proof. The sender created a fictional internal conversation, complete with a supposed COO recommendation, to bypass standard spam filters and tap into Cialdini’s principle that we’re more likely to respond when approached on behalf of others. The technique shows sophisticated understanding of repetition with variation, presenting identical benefits through slightly different framing to create familiarity. However, the execution fails through obvious fabrication. The forwarded email addresses recipients as “they” rather than by name, immediately destroying credibility. This approach reveals both the power and the peril of influence techniques. When deployed authentically, they facilitate genuine connection. When manufactured, they create immediate suspicion and lasting damage to trust. 28:45 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.The Sledgehammer School of Advertising A Tasmanian furniture retailer’s radio advertisement showcases how repetition without creativity creates memorability through irritation rather than attraction. ...
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    36 mins