What Is It Like To Be Your Customer?

Philosopher Thomas Nagel asked what it’s like to be a bat, and it turns out the answer matters for anyone who sells, hires or serves. Steve and David explain why “they’re just like me” is the laziest assumption in business, and what to do instead. Drew Eric Whitman’s eight life forces make a retur…

We Have Social Proof That Making An Effort Matters

David’s breakfast walk to Mylk Bar turned into the most talked-about blog post he has written, and Steve has a theory about why it hit small business owners so hard: our effort runs 24 hours a day and rarely earns a “thanks for doing that.” Robert Cialdini explains why a McDonald’s counter worker …

The Hidden Half Of Business Success

Dr Angela Duckworth spent years telling us to stick at it. Now she says the situation you stick at it in matters more than your willpower, and if your good hires keep leaving after six months, the problem probably isn’t them. Michael Blastland explains why the best-laid plans can fail on one small…

Is Your Business Leaving A Mark ?

A lamb ad and a locked-profile troll teach Steve and David the same lesson: the pause is the whole trick, and social media is built to make you skip it. A British comedy sketch about a dry cleaner called Touching Cloth becomes the unlikely launchpad for Mini Steve’s business-naming principles, tes…

Questions Arising From Women In Business

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 Eigh…

Take Your Profit First

Steve and David spend this episode on Profit First, the small business finance book by Mike Michalowicz. The core idea: set money aside before you spend it, not after. They trace the system back to depression-era thrift, compare “profit” against “long-term savings” as motivating words, and work th…

The Answer Economy Raises Important Questions For Your Business

Pete Blackshaw’s forthcoming book, The Answer Economy, has Steve and David asking an uncomfortable question: when AI tools do our searching for us, are we still thinking, or just nodding along. Steve and David dig into why Google’s AI overview might be quietly shrinking our critical faculties, and…

Are you talking to me? Social media marketing in the angertainment era

Ed Koper’s book Angertainment gives Steve and David a precise vocabulary for what most of us feel but struggle to name: the social media machine is not broken, it is working exactly as designed, and that design is not working for you. David draws the line that every small business owner needs to h…

If You Are Not Engineering Your Time In This Age It Will Be Engineered For You

David Epstein’s Inside the Box argues that the freedom to do anything is often the enemy of actually doing something. Steve and David work through what that means for busy business owners making decisions every day. Google’s AI-driven search overhaul has changed the rules for small business websit…

When You Lose, Don’t Lose The Lesson

John C. Maxwell’s How to Get a Return on Failure lands on the TAM desk, and Steve and David put it through their own filter: the folksy bits, the genuinely useful bits, and the bits where a neuroanatomist and a business coach turn out to be saying the exact same thing. David reflects on the day he…