To succeed in business we don't need to do clever things, we just need to do less dumb things
Why do smart people do dumb things? This is the question posed by author Keith Cunningham and discussed by David and Steve in this episode.
One hint might relate to how much time smart people spend each day actually thinking.
It's an interesting discussion that might just help give you the edge in life and business.
Steve also picks up an unexpected insight from the book, Chokepoint Capitalism. It has nothing to do with money and everything to do with disabling thoughts that can rob us of happiness and clear thinking.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
01:41 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
Chokepoint Capitalism
While reading Chokepoint Capitalism by scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow (a great book, by the way, that explains how Amazon, Spotify, book publishers, record labels, and streaming services all conspire to exploit artists by keeping us happy) one quote grabbed Steve unexpectedly.
Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy.
In this discussion, Steve and David discuss the profound truth in this quote, and offer a couple of mitigating strategies.
09:21 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
Travelling The Road Less Stupid
Smart people do dumb things.
So argues, Keith J. Cunningham who labels himself as having been one of those "stupid" people.
David explain's Keith's thinking from his book The Road Less Stupid, in which the author sets out to show us that we don’t need to do clever things to succeed in business: we just need to do less dumb things.
Keith argues the vast majority of our poor results are consequences of emotional, overly optimistic, and insufficiently thought out decisions.
The solution? We all need to invest more effort to make and utilise thinking time.
Here it is summarised on a bumper sticker: Operators react and sweat. Owners think and plan.
18:47 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
Domain Name Registrar
A plea from Steve. If you do not have direct access to your domain name registrar and your webhosting, stop everything and get it sorted now.
While working with some people running a fishing charter business, Steve experienced yet another small business that had no idea about these very very important bits of information.
It is a complete and fundamental business risk not to have this rectified ASAP.
And if you'd like to know who is recorded as the official registrar of your Australian domain name, visit this service: whois.auda.org.au.
Need help? Book a little time with our web people.
21:56 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case stude from the past.
The 5AD Superchart
Something different for this segment is a walk down memory lane to the once great 5AD Top Forty charts.
Steve recalls these charts kept the radio station top of mind. It gave a focus to our understanding of and access to popular entertainment for many decades.
Former 5AD legend, Greg Clark, recently shared a video from the popular music show he used to present, Music Express, when they celebrated the 25th anniversary of the chart.
But would charts like that work today? Do we need them?
Steve and David discuss this in the podcast.
TRANSCRIPT This is a transcript of the episode. Please note, although checked briefly, this was crafted by an AI tool and will contain errors. For quoting purposes, always check against the original audio.
Caitlin Davis: [00:00:00] Talking about marketing is a podcast for business owners and leaders, produced by my dad, Steve Davis, and his colleague at Talked About Marketing, David Olney, in which they explore marketing through the lens of their own four P's, person, principles, problems, and perspicacity. Yes, you heard that correctly.
Apart from their love of words, they really love helping people. So they hope this podcast will become a trusted companion on your journey in business.
Steve Davis: Hello David.
David Olney: Hi Steve.
Steve Davis: I was trying to do my best cartoon style nincompoop because the title for our episode today is The Road Less Stupid, and I just couldn't help myself. Did I pull it off?
David Olney: You did, because I immediately [00:01:00] wanted to go, Oh no, how do I do an equally goofy, not so bright voice?
Steve Davis: So we're getting into that. And in fact, there's different flavors of stupidness, which is all stupidity.
We're going to tackle them in a nice way and a positive and constructive way. At least that's what I'm saying up front. You'll be the judge by the end of this episode.
Caitlin Davis: Our four P's. Number one, person. The aim of life is self development. To realize one's nature perfectly. That is what each of us is here for. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: For the person segment this time around, I want to reflect on something that happens inside our heads that can undermine us and our happiness. And it arose from the most unlikely of places. David, I listened to a book called Choke Point Capitalism. Have you come [00:02:00] across that book?
David Olney: I've got it in my wish list and I was very excited to hear about it when you were telling me about it.
Steve Davis: Basically, it's described as a call to action for the creative class and, and workers to rally against the power of big tech and the big media corporate, because they've concentrated all the power. I'm not going into that. That's not what the thrust of our discussion is today. It is actually fascinating and it does make you feel extra.
Guilty when you hit play on Spotify, I'm weaning myself away from it, actually for a whole host of reasons. One thing just as a quick aside is that if you have Spotify and you want to listen to a song and you allow it to then start providing other songs that it thinks are linked, I've long marveled and thought they've actually done a pretty good job here.
What I learned through Chokepoint Capitalism is yes, they're trying to match my needs, but they are definitely skewing the choices towards those pieces of content for which [00:03:00] they pay the least amount of royalties possible. And that is probably buried somewhere in the fine print. It's not something that your typical user comes across.
Does that leave a slightly dirty taste in your mouth, David?
David Olney: It does, and it reminds me of another book. The Accountant or Statistician. Who worked for Spotify in the early days, who worked out how to best manipulate data to keep people listening and make Spotify profitable. His book is one of the most horrendous reads ever on just how yucky The underpinnings of manipulating data to get us to listen or watch and Manipulating data to minimize how much cost there is for the company.
But these two things together are a pretty brutal model.
Steve Davis: Yeah, well, it's a pretty brutal book. I do recommend you if you want to have a listen to it It is just an eye opener, But there is a point later [00:04:00] in the book where the authors are talking about Artists really should stick together in their fights to try and get a more equitable share of the profits from their work, but they note that what can work against that is envy.
Let's have a listen to this quote.
Chokepoint Capitalism: Artists, like all workers, I've been subjected to 40 years worth of propaganda about the importance of the individual in economic and political situations. If you get a good contract, it's because you've earned it by producing a catalog that has publishers or labels bending over to please you, and by being represented by a cunning and ruthless manager or agent who only takes on the most promising clients.
But, there's another... Countervailing force in artistic lore, the story of the [00:05:00] mentor, the person who lifts up others, the musician who starts a label to feature obscure acts, or the author who funds an imprint to showcase underappreciated writers. Everyone who's worked in the arts has wallowed in the toxic stew of comparison, treating some other artist's success as your own failure.
We all know deep down that comparison is the thief of joy and Celebrating and lifting up other artists isn't just a favor. We do for them. It's a kindness to ourselves
Steve Davis: So David, I just want to reiterate that I love this turn of phrase I think we're never too old to be reminded of it comparison Is the thief of joy. We can start comparing ourselves to others. And in this era where everyone or most people are sharing the best fragments of their [00:06:00] life across their social feeds.
And if you're having a particularly down day or a challenging time, it's easy to despair. When you see everyone else seemingly gloss through life without a care in the world, and it is tempting with human nature to wish them unwell. It's not a healthy state of being, is it?
David Olney: No, it reminds me of why ancient Greek philosophers used to talk about we should aim to flourish, not to be happy.
Because even 2, 400 years ago, philosophers in Athens had realized that the minute you start comparing your current moment, which might be a happy moment, to other people or other situations, you can undo. The positivity or happiness in a current moment in seconds. So really we had this message long before we had the technology we use now to only show each other the perfect [00:07:00] snippets of our day.
Steve Davis: So the dilemma is when we were talking about this before, this reminds us that we have the ability to destroy our good days all by ourselves. Can you remind me, you had some wonderful phrasing that went into that.
David Olney: I don't remember what my specific phrasing was, but essentially, you've just said it, and that is, we don't need any help to wreck our own day.
We do it better than anyone else can.
Steve Davis: So is this where we try to learn something from, who are our lovely people who always live an austere life, and they're not wanting to get too bogged down on possession?
David Olney: The Stoics weren't the first people to do this. It was actually Aristotle that wrote, there's an ancient Greek word that Aristotle wrote about, often called eudaimonia.
And eudaimonia now, very often by poorly trained philosophers gets translated as happiness. Whereas it means to flourish. And Aristotle's argument is, if you work towards [00:08:00] flourishing, i. e. being healthy, being fit, looking after your friends, looking after your family. If you do all these things, guess what?
You're probably going to end up being happy. But his observation was, if you try to be happy, you probably won't flourish.
Steve Davis: So, to keep us all sort of buoyant. Resilient, optimistic, full of energy, not sapping out curiosity. Perhaps there's two sides of the coin. There is, this is for all of us. I'm not just preaching to others.
I'm talking to myself as I say this, keeping that flourishing as a goal, as opposed to happiness itself. What, what can I do to help me and those around me thrive? While on the other side, from the Stoics, that little reminder to take stock as often as possible, at least daily, of the things that we can actually be grateful for right now, which is another way of getting that focus back on what we have, and not what we don't have or [00:09:00] yearn for and haven't yet achieved.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number two, principles. You can never be overdressed or over educated. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: David, for some reason, I just had this image of me sitting in a rocking chair and you as a little kid coming up and I'm sitting here on my lap. You're wondering where this is going, aren't you?
David Olney: I'm wondering if this is going to be a case where you get out the shotgun and shoot the prairie dog a hundred metres from the veranda.
Steve Davis: No, and I say, David, David, here's a lesson for life. You don't have to be brilliant. You just need to take time and think and avoid stupid decisions. And if I said that to you, I think I'd be quoting Keith Cunningham from the book, The Road Less Stupid, which you've brought into my life. I'm yet to listen to it.
I'm, you've really whetted my appetite. Tell us [00:10:00] more about why The Road Less Stupid might be a good read for those of us running or leading businesses.
David Olney: The Road Less Stupid is a great book for everyone who's striving to achieve something, because the common story we hear, we hear it from most people who are also striving to do well, or people who've already achieved pretty amazing things, is, oh, you had to have the big idea, or you had to have better execution, or you had to do your bit better than anyone had done it before.
And what I really love about Keith Cunningham's book is he's like, no, I was really rich. I made a heap of dumb decisions, I lost all that money, and then I thought, Oh, that was dumb of me, and then it dawned on him. Hang on, do I need to be brilliant? No, I just need to make less dumb decisions. And his big observation was...
Just stop, and think, and ask questions about what is it you want to achieve, what [00:11:00] things can impact it, who is your ally, how many things can go wrong, why am I leaning towards one path forward rather than another. How much am I making an emotional decisions rather than practical decisions based on analysis of data and the situation.
So Keith's all about just stop and think and ask some practical questions. And his whole book is about you don't have to be a superstar. You don't have to be the best person in your field. Just. Stop doing small, dumb things.
Keith J. Cunningham's Book: The Road to Less Stupid\: It turns out that the key to making more money is to doing fewer stupid things. That's true. I don't need more good ideas, I need fewer ideas. That I think are good that i've executed on. Yeah, [00:12:00] and so i've had the experience over the last 47 48 years of being in business of Having done some smart things where actually it wasn't that smart, but in reality I was lucky I happened to catch a big wave And I mistook catching a big wave with being a good swimmer.
And it's what Warren Buffett is very famous for saying. Most of you have heard it. You never know who's swimming naked until the tag goes out.
David Olney: And I really like that because we can all do a few less small dumb things and would benefit from doing so. And the great thing about it, he's not saying you need to be better than someone else, that you need to, you know, trample on them to get where you want to go. No, if you just do a few less dumb things, stop and think for a while, ask some better questions, come up with some more reasoned answers, [00:13:00] you would probably do better than you're doing now.
Steve Davis: Okay. That's great. In theory, in the cut and thrust of life, busyness, et cetera, does he give any insight into the habits or disciplines or actions that will help us maintain an awareness of having an early warning alert system when we're about to do something stupid to help avoid that pathway?
David Olney: This is the wonderful thing with him, he's so practical.
So what he realized after losing a ton of money was, I'm gonna mandate thinking time every day. Oh, what? Where he just sits and thinks, doesn't answer the phone, unless like, it's a family emergency or something like that. Other than that, it's just a quiet period. He has now, that he's successful again, he has a specific thinking chair.
He has his thinking diary and his thinking pen, and when he goes and sits in that [00:14:00] chair for whatever amount of time he's nominated, he writes down the question that he wants to think about in that period of time that day. Like, I have a business opportunity. What are the benefits? What are the risks? If I was to take advantage of this opportunity, what things would I have to be concerned about?
That could be a week's worth of thinking broken down into a chunk each day, but his premise is, you give yourself a question. And you just sit and you write down your answers as they emerge. And if they look like they emerged too easily and were too positive, and emotionally driven it's the thing you would like, ask another question of it.
You know, why do I think it would be that easy? What can I do to make it successful? Because it can't be as easy as it seems. So it's very practical and very simple and quite small. Like, I kind of developed my own version of this with students and people I've mentored, but I labeled it differently. I said, look, you know, if you're a person who worries about things, I want you to have designated [00:15:00] worry time every day.
Pick your 10 or 15 minutes and sit and worry, and see if the worrying helps. Now, worrying without structure doesn't help. Worrying with questions, what am I worrying about? Why am I worried? What can I do to change that? Tends to have a huge impact on people's outcomes. So strangely, I'd found a variation of what Keith does, but I'd never thought of applying.
That sit and think and write down the answers time as broadly or consistently as he uses it in his book and has used it to huge success in his business career.
Steve Davis: And any, at a really practical level, how long would we want to start with our daily thinking times? Is, is quarter of an hour the sort of thing that would at least be, is it, is it a case of something is better than nothing?
David Olney: Absolutely, like Keith seems to try to give himself at least a half hour a day, but he's on the board of a lot of companies [00:16:00] and owns chunks of a lot of companies and advises a lot of companies. So his thinking time is distributed between, you know, more than just his small company and his life. There's lots of other things going on.
So even if you could only find 15 minutes, but have, you know, a pen and paper or a pencil and paper, Or your laptop there in a Word document, but you can't wander off and look at your email. You can't wander off and use the Internet. Like, he gave up trying to do it with technology and went back to using the book and a pen, because otherwise he would get distracted and he would wander off and he would start using the Internet or social media.
The other part of the book that's really important is, he said, a big thing to think about, and it doesn't directly fit with the name of the book, but it's the other thing he's really You know, really focused on, he said, you know, a lot of what you should think about in business is how are you going to build a good environment with good culture so that when people come and work for your company, they very quickly [00:17:00] know what the company is about, what their role is, what the expectations is, and and those things are so consistent.
That people know at what level they have to behave every day and find it easy to keep behaving at that level because it's the level they see all around them. So the book really has the two sides, thinking time and doing less dumb things, but also through doing that, building really good Corporate culture, where people know what their job is, know what's expected, know what the moral standards are, and know that that is maintained across the workforce, no matter how senior someone is, or how junior someone is.
So it's sort of a book with truth in its title, and a buried subtext of the importance of good corporate culture.
Steve Davis: Yeah, I like that. I actually understand why you went back to the pencil and paper. I think that is the most distraction free medium we have and I guess it's the writing down of that question is there to, if you find [00:18:00] yourself wondering, I'm thinking of my Sam Harris daily meditation mindfulness, he always says, now, if you find you've been captured by thought, let's just focus on that thought and watch it disappear.
The question written down just brings you back to what it is you're thinking about. I like it. It sounds good. I'm going to do this. It's excellent. You've taken us to the road less stupid, David. Thank you.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number three, Problems. I asked the question for the best reason possible. Simple curiosity. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: David, I've got to be frank. I'm not sure if I've talked about this problem before in our segment, but I'm going to talk about it again. And it is domain names. I want anyone who's listening to this right now to stop the podcast and ask yourself, do, in fact, just wait till I say what I'm going to say before you stop the podcast, just as an aside.[00:19:00]
Where is my website's domain name registered? Can I get in there right now and log in and see all the settings? And the same for my web hosting? Can I log in, actually log in with a password that works, and see whether I've got domain names there or web hosting registered? I am still staggered 20 plus years in this game.
In fact, I did my first website in 1998 of how many people in business Have trusted others to hold this information and do not have it themselves. And what happens is, it can just blow out the time of a website project because we're left waiting for someone to talk to their brother in law who is no longer in the state and has lost interest.
And everything's tied up to his Yahoo account or his SE net account or whatever it might be. And [00:20:00] you just don't have access. This is an absolute business risk at one end, because if he or she lost control of that and someone with nefarious motivations got hold of it, or just something was wrong and we need to change, we can't get in there, business risk one side, but just.
Business operations on the other, when you're working with someone who's helping you with your website, they will often ask you for this and you need to have it. So I don't want to get all tub thumpy over it, but please, it is one of the core bits of business hygiene in 2023. Can you log in right now to your domain name?
And can you log into your web hosting? If you can't, seek help, get, I mean, just ask us and book an hour's worth of David's time, David Murren, to go hunting to find that for you. It'll be the best little piece of money you've ever invested for peace of mind. Or, ask around, get that brother in law, or [00:21:00] sister in law, or cousin, or uncle, or estranged former business partner to hand over the keys because we can't go on.
Without taking this seriously. There. I feel so much better now, because if you do this, you are going to be in a much happier and safer place.
Caitlin Davis: Our four P's. Number four. Perspicacity. The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: What a feeling, David, that every breath you take gives me a total eclipse of my heart. It's like sending me an angel and dealing with the fact that in life there's normally a fraction too [00:22:00] much friction. What do you think? What do you say to that?
David Olney: Welcome back to the 80s and skin tight jeans and mullets.
Steve Davis: Yeah, for our perspicacity this time around. We'll be take something in the past and apply our thinking to see if it would still work today. I want to go to the, this is for our South Australian listeners in particular, the 5AD, the 1323 5AD super chart, which used to be a weekly chart that was put out that had the top 40 singles and the top.
Albums, along with a little prediction of the songs that are bound to be hits. And it was required reading by all teenagers and possibly even some adults as well. Do you remember all the chatter about this thing, David?
David Olney: I remember the countdown of the 40 songs, was it every Sunday or Saturday morning?
I certainly remember as the blind kid, not reading it, but other people did. But in my case, it was, you know, always having the [00:23:00] radio on. You know, normally for the, the 40th to 21st song going, well, what's moving up the charts or what's the more interesting odd music?
Steve Davis: Yes. Well, that would have been the national charts that you were listening to.
Take 40 Australia, those sorts of things. When I was in radio back in that era they used to come in on big reel to reel tapes and we would play them through. That'd be a little cue thing. We play our ads, we come back to it, Barry Bissell and take, you know, all those sorts of things. Yep. But 5AD Closer to Home was able to say, you know, for example, I'm looking at the one which was the 25th anniversary.
This is, this is 15th of July, 1983. It was 25 years of these charts. And if I was on there, I'd say what will I say? Here we go. We're about to listen to Michael Jackson and the song Beat It last week. Sorry, it's been in the charts for... Nine weeks now. Last week, number five. It's just dropped down to number seven.
Let's have a listen to it, et cetera. And so it just gave announcers extra [00:24:00] context of things to talk about. Obviously, the people promoting at the record labels, they could report back to their boards of what they're doing. And it just created fresh ways for people to be talking about And so my question is that worked back when those radio stations were the gatekeepers generally, the main ways that we could access content, especially popular content.
In fact, Greg Clark, who I've had on my other podcast, the Adelaide show in looking back over the history, he was a. A raving DJ back in those times, he even found a little clip from one of the TV shows that was on that was celebrating this particular milestone of 25 years, Music Express, let's have a little listen to that.
5AD Superchart: Well hello and welcome to yet another Music [00:25:00] Express that was the number one song of last year, 1982, from a lady who was a pleasure to interview too, Tony Basil and the song Mickey. Well, a very special show today as we celebrate the 25th anniversary. Five eight East Top 40. And to celebrate the 25th anniversary, a special 25th anniversary, silver Super chart.
There it is on screen right now. It's printed in silver and it's in the stores at this very moment. As well as that, you may have seen this in the Advertiser on Thursday. It was a full page, and what it is, is a reproduction of all the, the charts in five year breaks, starting at the very first one here in 1958, right up to the.
The current one there, that's the silver one from 1983. So there it is! Now today, he's wearing a silver jacket as well, as well as new clips from René and Renato. And in excess, we'll have some number one songs from years gone by. Later on in the interview, I recorded with Sharon O'Neill. Our special guest later on with Dizey will be Chief Inspector Owen Bevan from the SA Police Force.
He'll be answering some questions about blue lights. Now to today's Power Play, here's Louise Tucker, midnight Blue.[00:26:00]
Steve Davis: So David, there we are. That was the... The passion, the chat worthiness of these charts back then, nowadays, there are almost as many potential ways of slicing and dicing the charts as there are people listening, because the landscape is so fractured. There are different places we can go to listen to music, and some have some of them, some don't.
Is this an era? Where the whole idea of a an important central chart would actually be really helpful or is it just too far gone? We are too fragmented for it to mean anything.
David Olney: I get the impression that the chart is still important, but you're not going to get one that is representative as a bigger group anymore of young people in a state, like that 5AD chart used to be.
Now we're going to have the algorithm saying, you're here at the top. You know, 10 songs that are new [00:27:00] this week on Apple Music or Spotify that people like you are listening to. Now, we won't know who the people like you are. It could be lying. It could be true. We're still going to be affected by, Oh, what are people like me listening to?
But we can't see anymore who produced it, who might have been considered, what evidence was put into the calculation. So we're now kind of accepting these things without any data to explain where they come from, who made them or why they made them.
Steve Davis: Yeah, I like the interesting thing about the, it's unlikely we'd find a chart that captured everyone's interest, because even this one was a bit rough around the edges.
Yeah, I mean a song like Midnight Blue by Louise Tucker was. Just dirgey classical string led sad sort of song that was a waste of three and a half minutes of your life. But here it is at number 29 first week in, I don't think it did much more than that. But if I look through most of these charts, [00:28:00] there were these odd ones that just stuck out that I would never want to listen to.
But of course, 5AD would often play them because they're on the chart, which then forced...
David Olney: Yea but then we could see the power that the record reps bouncing around from record store to record store, getting record stores to say to their customers, Hey, this new things come in, you know. The reps are really backing it, we're really backing it, so what we saw was the power of people to make these charts, in a sense, become true.
Steve Davis: Yes, which they certainly did at certain parts of this history, they would go around and buy X number of records back just to shake the charts.
David Olney: Yeah, it's a bit like now with audiobooks on Audible, for example, where we can buy the daily deals. Cheap. Now, there's a way of pumping up sales and saying, this many copies of this book sold.
Yeah, but if you've taken it from the cost of a credit down to 2. 99, of course, you're gonna sell a lot more. So really what we see is humans always manipulate these things. The question is, [00:29:00] Where's the value? How big is the group, and who's doing the manipulation, and for what reason? They're the questions that perhaps are more ambiguous now than they would have been in the 80s.
Steve Davis: There is something that I think would be hard to get back that I used to love, and that was my friend at school, Boris Peticic, in year 9, we would During German lessons, ignore the teacher, Mrs. Zimmer, and we would look at the chart. No, we would actually vote ourselves. We would both have a list of paper.
We'd put songs in order. We then used maths to work out what the ultimate top chart would be. And then we did our own countdown show and we sang the songs through and did the back announcement. Which is partly why I have almost no German to this day, but there was the intoxication of watching, and we kept records, we could see which songs had gone up and down, that fascination's there.
I don't think that has any meaning today, but a curated list of interesting things that I might not have been exposed [00:30:00] to, I think that still has value. But, but it's really hard to get away from the joy of watching things chart and track over time. It's a, it's a messy conundrum. I, I would like to think they could still work, but I, I doubt it.
I think it's very fragmented. I don't think we'll ever be the same as it once was.
David Olney: No, I agree. I think very much it's now about the curated list of the person from whom we've learned about enough cool things or the streaming service that keeps giving us things we like. So whether we know where the curation comes from or not.
It's that trust of an individual or a service more than, well, we're all following the same chart. So it's, it's a strange personalized version and it wouldn't work the same way anymore.
Steve Davis: The only thing I can see from a business perspective, marketing perspective is. I think there's a universal human attraction to the sense of watching things track over time.
[00:31:00] If you, let's say, ran a market, or a cafe, or restaurant, and you had the wherewithal to do this, imagine having your list... On your site of the top five most popular, I don't know, ice cream flavors if you're an ice creamery and you just update that and chart it over time to see the changing trends and flavors in either flavors bought or is it more hot drinks this time or is it cold or I think that could create a little bit of interest.
Admittedly, it's light and fluffy, but at the same time, if you had the time and the wherewithal and the discipline to do that, in chunks of time, looking back, you could actually generate some meaningful. Chat worthy reflections on how our tastes have changed over that set time, which just gives people a fresh reason to have you top of mind and to talk about what you want, and maybe fuel a little bit of FOMO and curiosity.
Oh, [00:32:00] I wouldn't mind having one of those now, and I think there's a little bit of fodder there. David, final thought?
David Olney: I would like to go to a cafe that has a sign up, that someone in the cafe can read to me, that says favorite three beverages in our cafe, favorite three meals. Because when you don't know what to eat or drink, just hearing it, it's the favorite across the people who go to a place that you also like.
Some days when you're tired and you just want to make a good decision that's going to make you happy. How nice would those simple lists be?
Steve Davis: I think it would be hard to beat it. It would take a blue Monday and make it shiny, shiny, so that you could be still standing with happiness and drive off in your little red Corvette.[00:33:00]
Caitlin Davis: Thank you for listening to Talking About Marketing. If you enjoyed it, please leave a rating or a review in your favourite podcast app. And if you found it helpful, please share it with others. Steve and David always welcome your comments and questions, so send them to podcast at talkedaboutmarketing. com.
And finally, the last word to Oscar Wilde. There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about.