A group of 1970s kids react to modern life in a viral clip, and their horror at “the little box” gives Steve and David a fresh look at the toll of constant connection.
Steve took his recorder to the Women in Business event and came back with real questions from real business owners, Jane from Eight at the Gate Wines and Ranee from Jarnell Cut Colour Curl. Their answers reveal a common thread that touches almost every small business.
A $500 Chevy ad from the 2012 Super Bowl proves that great advertising does not need a big budget, just a true human moment.
Get ready to take notes.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
02:15 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
What a Bunch of 1970s Kids Taught Us About Our Phones
A video of children reacting to modern technology, from paying monthly for music to strangers delivering food, gives Steve and David pause about what they have normalised. David, who grew up in the 1970s, offers a rare counterpoint from his experience as a blind person: technology has given him more than it has taken. For most people, though, the trade has not been so kind.
The conversation turns to research from Oxford University Press showing that reducing mobile screen exposure produces measurable gains in wellbeing, sleep, mood, and sustained attention. David distils it best with his old teaching trick: hold up the phone and ask, tool or toy? Steve lays out a six-step, fourteen-day experiment for anyone keen to find out which one their phone has become, from blocking social feeds during work hours to creating phone-free zones at each end of the day.
14:15 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
Jane, Ranee, and the Marketing Question Every Small Business Owner Asks
Steve took his recorder to Adelaide Business Hub‘s Women in Business event, in conjunction with the Office of Small and Family Business, and asked two attendees what they would want to know if they had a marketer’s full attention. Jane Richards from Eight at the Gate Wines wants to know which marketing activity actually drives sales. Ranee from Jarnell Cut Colour Curl wants to know where her limited time delivers the biggest return.
Both women have solid businesses already, and David points to a common thread: the constraint is not ideas, it is time and attention. His answer is the old 80/20 rule, applied to personas. Pick the ideal customer group most likely to move the needle, and build from there rather than chasing a hundred scattered efforts. Steve shares an old radio trick from broadcaster Jeremy Cordeaux, who kept a fictional listener named Gladys in mind for every interview, and suggests both women already have a “Gladys” walking through their door or tasting room every week.
The pair also unpack Jane’s daughter’s TikTok following, and David asks the question that matters more than the follower count: is it converting to income, or is it just a vanity metric? They close the segment with Steve’s long-standing digital marketing triage order: website first, then content, then email database, then reviews, then social media, with advertising last.
Learn more about Women In Business mentoring.
37:30 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
Meet Mini Steve, the AI Trained on Nine Seasons of Marketing Advice
A client in Darwin has been testing something Steve built by distilling everything from nine seasons of the podcast, his blog archive back to 2004, and her own StoryBrand framework into an AI tool powered by Claude. David has taken to calling it Steve in a box.
The test threw up a genuinely useful question: should a piece of content be a page or a blog post? Steve’s rule of thumb is refreshingly simple. Broad, essential content that most visitors need belongs in the main page structure. Narrow, specific content that answers one sharp question belongs in a blog post, where it can be found by search engines and AI tools alike when the right person goes looking.
David flags the safeguard built into the system: when mini Steve is out of its depth, it says so and sends the question back to the grown-up.
44:00 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
The $500 Super Bowl Ad That Beat the Big Budgets
Steve takes David back to a 2012 Super Bowl ad for Chevy that cost just $500 to make and still won the day. A birthday setup goes hilariously wrong when the neighbour’s new sports car gets mistaken for the graduate’s actual present, a humble bar fridge.
David and Steve agree the ad still works today, not because of production value, but because it taps something timeless: the human desire for status, the discomfort of watching a misunderstanding unfold, and the universal excitement of a friend’s big win. Steve’s takeaway is a good one for any small business without a big budget: constraint can force the kind of creativity that money cannot buy.
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