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Talking About Marketing

Talking About Marketing

By: Auscast Network
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Summary

Talking About Marketing is a podcast for you to help you thrive in your role as a business owner and/or leader. It's produced by the Talked About Marketing team of Steve Davis and David Olney, with artwork by Casey Cumming. Each marketing podcast episode tips its hat to Philip Kotler's famous "4 Ps of Marketing" (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), by honouring our own 4 Ps of Podcasting; Person, Principles, Problems, and Perspicacity. Person. The aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. - Oscar Wilde Principles. You can never be overdressed or overeducated. - Oscar Wilde Problems. “I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity. - Oscar Wilde Perspicacity. The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. - Oscar Wilde Apart from our love of words, we really love helping people, so we hope this podcast will become a trusted companion for you on your journey in business. We welcome your comments and feedback via podcast@talkedaboutmarketing.com

2026 Auscast Network Economics Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • Working With Your Whole Brain Costs Peanuts

    Working With Your Whole Brain Costs Peanuts
    May 11 2026
    Jill Bolte Taylor survived a catastrophic stroke at 36 and came out the other side with something most neurologists never get: a lived understanding of what happens when half your brain goes offline. Steve and David unpack her “Whole Brain Living” framework and ask what it means for the small business owner who operates mostly from one or two of their four mental characters. The Principles segment brings the same framework into the boardroom, with a practical four-question Brain Huddle that helps teams make decisions with the full weight of their neurology behind them, not just the loudest character in the room. The Problems segment takes a pleasing turn. Instead of a complaint, Steve offers praise for the banks doing something quietly clever to protect customers from scammers, and notices that Jill Bolte Taylor’s ideas are already built into the experience. And in Perspicacity, Melissa Menta of Peanuts Worldwide makes a compelling case for why Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, and Linus have captivated audiences across cultures for generations. Spoiler: the Peanuts gang maps almost perfectly onto Jill’s four brain characters, and nobody had to plan it that way. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 02:00 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.Jill Bolte Taylor and the Four Characters Running Your Business (Whether You Know It or Not) Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard neuroanatomist who woke up one morning in 1996 to find a blood vessel had exploded in the left hemisphere of her brain. Over the next four hours, she experienced her cognitive world disassembling in real time. It took eight years and major surgery to recover. What she gained in the process was a rare, first-hand map of how our four distinct brain characters operate, and how life improves when they work together rather than taking turns dominating. Steve and David walk through each character as outlined in her book, Whole Brain Living: Character One is the left-thinking planner, logic-driven, deadline-focused, and the source of all language.Character Two is the left-emotional protector, anxious, vigilant, and prone to catastrophising.Character Three is the right-emotional explorer, joy-seeking, present-moment, easily distracted by weeds growing through pavement cracks.Character Four is the right-thinking integrator, calm, values-led, and able to see how all the pieces connect. Most of us have a default character or two. The question Jill poses is whether we know which one is in charge right now. The practical tool she offers is the BRAIN Huddle:Breathe (90 seconds to calm the circuitry)Recognise (which character is driving)Appreciate (don’t bully any part of your brain into silence)Inquire (what would the other characters suggest?)Negotiate (bring them to an agreed path) David adds the sharp observation that two people locked in Character Two at the same time produces only one outcome, and it is not a good one. Steve notes he now catches himself mid-reaction and thinks, “That was a bit Character Two of me just then.” It is, as he says, hard to unsee once you know it. 19:15 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.A Brain Huddle for Your Business: How to Make Decisions with Your Whole Team’s Neurology The Principles segment keeps the focus on Jill Bolte Taylor’s framework, this time applying it directly to business decision-making. Steve acknowledges the book is not always an easy listen, particularly when the content drifts toward spirituality in a way that may not land for every reader. But both hosts agree the core framework is worth the patience. David clarifies that Character Four’s sense of awe and connection is not exclusively spiritual. Neurologist Andrew Newberg’s research shows that whether you are a meditating monk or a free-solo climber perched above a cliff, the same part of the brain lights up. Awe and spiritual experience are neurologically close neighbours. Character Four simply asks us to consider the bigger picture, whatever form that takes for each person. The practical application for business arrives in a four-question sequence Steve lays out, each question serving a different character. Character One: what are the facts, costs, and timelines?Character Two: what could go wrong, and how do we minimise it?Character Three: how will this feel for the team, and is there a way to make it more engaging?Character Four: does this decision align with our values and long-term vision? Running a meeting, a planning session, or even a solo decision through these four lenses is not a gimmick. It is working with the neurology everyone in the room already has. You’ll also experience us referencing it when running our Strategic Clarity Sessions with you or your organisation. 30:30 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.A Round of Applause ...
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    43 mins
  • The Recession Response Episode

    The Recession Response Episode
    Apr 27 2026
    Steve whispers the word “recession” in a dark alley at the top of this episode. David laughs. Then they get serious. Consumer confidence in the US is currently at its lowest since records began in 1952, lower than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That context shapes everything Steve and David unpack here, drawing on Mike Michalowicz’s book The Recession Response, written in 2020 and, as it turns out, very much written for right now. They walk through the five stages of a recession response, apply Michalowicz’s business hierarchy of needs to the decisions you are facing today, dissect a fear-based marketing email targeting allied health practitioners, and dust off a 1977 General Motors ad that tried very hard to convince anxious petrol buyers that a massive car was actually quite sensible. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 02:00 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.The Five Stages (And Why Knowing Them Restores Your Agency) There is a word that makes grown adults freeze. This episode names it. Mike Michalowicz wrote The Recession Response in 2020 as COVID hit and financial markets groaned. It runs just over two hours as an audiobook. That brevity is deliberate. He knew that a business owner in shock would not wade through a 400-page tome. The book is short because it had to be, and it works for exactly the same reason. His framework mirrors grief, applied at a societal level. Stage one is shock: businesses freeze, decisions get delayed, and the most dangerous thing of all happens: nothing. Stage two is retreat, where costs get cut, often including the marketing that was quietly keeping the pipeline alive. Stage three is adaptation, where businesses reassess what customers actually need right now and direct engagement becomes critical. Stage four is re-emergence, stabilisation, then controlled growth. Stage five is thriving: expanding, capturing market share, outperforming the competitors who never moved past retreat. David raises a striking piece of context. US consumer sentiment data goes back to 1952. The current numbers are the lowest on record, lower even than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Steve shares his FED System: Fish Every Day. A simple discipline of contacting one existing client or contact daily, not to sell, just to connect. It sounds almost too simple. It is also, Steve admits, easy to let slide when you’re busy. David adds a story from the 1987 crash: a colleague of his father’s arrived at the dinner table the week after, ready to buy a transport company, numbers probably solid, looking for partners. He misread the room entirely. The people he needed were still in shock. He came across as brash and self-serving. The deal never happened. The lesson: you cannot move people forward until you meet them where they are psychologically. 15:00 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.The Business Hierarchy of Needs Maslow had a pyramid. Michalowicz built one for your business. Most people are familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: physical survival at the base, safety above that, then belonging, then esteem, then self-actualisation at the top. The rule is simple: whatever the lowest unsatisfied level is, that is where your energy goes. Michalowicz applies the same logic to business, and David’s observation is apt: this model works whether there is a recession or not. The five levels, base to peak: sales (survival and cash flow), profit (financial resilience), order (systems and processes), impact (brand, loyalty and market presence), and legacy (the business outlasting the owner). Two questions drive the diagnostic. Do we have sales? If yes, do we have enough sales to generate profit? If the answer to either is no, that is where the work goes: not on branding, not on systems, not on anything higher up the hierarchy. Michalowicz’s starkest warning is about debt. Do not borrow money simply because it is available. If the business cannot grow sales and profitability with existing structures, adding repayment obligations makes the next stage harder, not easier. Steve closes this segment with a useful provocation from Stephen Covey: managers find the most efficient way to climb the ladder, but leaders check that the ladder is against the right wall. Michalowicz offers a grounding exercise to find your wall: draw a circle marked A on a blank page, draw three arrows outward, then place a circle marked B in the corner representing where you want to go. Are any of your arrows pointing at B? In uncertain times, the temptation is to move anywhere to escape discomfort. Moving without direction is costly. 26:45 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.When Fear-Based Marketing Targets Your Inbox Recessionary times bring out the opportunists. Steve shares an email received by a client in the allied ...
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    43 mins
  • The Duty Of Australians In Business

    The Duty Of Australians In Business
    Apr 13 2026
    In this episode, Steve Davis and David Olney take Lawson’s poem The Duty of Australians seriously, not as nostalgia, but as a working framework for building businesses that last. Alongside that, they wrestle with a 1985 book that predicted social media addiction decades before the first smartphone, examine a CEO’s cringe-worthy burger video, and flag a quiet data-harvesting threat hiding in the app store. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 02:45 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.What Henry Lawson Knew About Culture Duty arrives early. South Australia’s premier quoted Henry Lawson’s poem The Duty of Australians on election night. The verse urges Australians to welcome newcomers, find them people who speak their language, and make space for them to become part of what’s being built. Steve and David found it worth unpacking for anyone running a business. The core insight is this: you cannot assimilate until you have language. Steve knows this firsthand, having lived in Hungary in the early 1990s where finding other English speakers was the bridge that eventually allowed him to become part of Hungarian society. The same principle applies inside your business. David makes the connection plain. Inclusive workplaces are not a nice-to-have. They are the fastest path to higher productivity, better behaviour in front of customers, and stronger resilience in hard times. And the place to start is not with customers — it is with the people you hire. If your staff look miserable while you waffle niceness at customers, every customer notices. The harder truth is this: we now have smartphones, social media, and algorithmic echo chambers that allow people to live in entirely self-constructed worlds. Building genuine connection takes more deliberate effort than it once did. David’s suggestion is to start in the square metre where you are working. Because at work, everyone is already on common ground — shared purpose, shared customers, shared stakes. It turns out the phrase “work-life balance” may have the right word first. 13:45 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman saw it coming. His 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death argued that the real dystopian threat was never George Orwell’s vision of forced oppression — it was Aldous Huxley’s vision of a population that would willingly surrender its attention and agency in exchange for endless entertainment. Postman was writing about television. He did not live to see social media. He did not need to. Steve and David note that a US jury recently found Google and Meta liable in a landmark social media addiction case, with a 20-year-old woman’s claim that these platforms were deliberately designed to be addictive. A Meta representative reportedly suggested that 16 hours of daily Instagram use might be “problematic” but not quite addiction. Draw your own conclusions. What does this mean for your business? David frames it directly: why did you start your business? It was almost certainly not to amuse people to death. You probably wanted to solve a real problem, deliver a genuinely uplifting experience, or connect customers to something that felt like knowledge or beauty or meaning — not just distraction. The tools of social media are unavoidable. You need to be present where your customers are. But Postman’s real counsel, as Steve reads it, is awareness. When you understand the limits of these platforms — that they are shallow by design — you stop expecting depth from them and start using them intentionally. Content that informs, entertains purposefully, or genuinely helps someone is doing something the platform itself was not built to do. That is worth doing. 25:00 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.Stranger Danger for Apps Not all AI is equal. A Mashable article flagged ten apps among the worst offenders for leaking personal data. Most of them sound uncannily like the legitimate tools many of us already use — names like “Chat and Ask AI” and “Chatbot AI” that sit in app stores, free of charge, right alongside the paid versions of trusted products. These apps harvest chat history, search behaviour, and personal disclosures — the kinds of conversations people have about medical conditions, financial concerns, or relationship difficulties. That information trains the app and, depending on the terms of service, can be sold. David’s advice is straightforward: read the terms of service. And Steve adds a practical upgrade to that — if you are not going to read a long and confusing document yourself, copy and paste it into a trusted AI tool like Gemini and ask it to assess what you are signing up for. Using technology to scrutinise technology is a reasonable form of self-defence. The short ...
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    39 mins
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