Bitter Truths and False Sweeteners: Embracing Failure and Contradiction the Healthy Way

David Duchovny reveals why success can leave you alone on a pedestal while failure invites you into a community of shared experience.

We unpack the delightful contradiction of business advice books – from bootstrapping beginners to broccoli-avoiding delegators – and why different paths might all lead to the same summit.

Meanwhile, VentraIP’s ‘complimentary’ domain names and Microsoft’s Skype funeral remind us that in business, what’s presented as sweet often leaves a bitter aftertaste.

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.
David Duchovny’s Blueprint for Embracing the Upside of Your Failures

When most celebrities discuss their journey, they craft a narrative that conveniently drops the missteps. Not so with David Duchovny, who offers a refreshingly nuanced take on why his post-X-Files ventures into filmmaking sometimes flopped – and why that might be a good thing. As our hosts unpack Duchovny’s conversation with Adam Grant, they reveal his core insight: success isolates while failure creates connection.

The discussion evolves into an exploration of Australia’s peculiar relationship with both success and failure. Unlike America’s entrepreneur-friendly “fail forward” culture, we’ve developed an environment where discussing either triumph or disaster feels equally uncomfortable. As David notes, “We’re not allowed to talk about failure and we’re not allowed to talk about success. What exactly are we meant to talk about?”

The segment concludes with Duchovny’s deliciously pointed observation about Silicon Valley’s “fail fast” mantra, describing it as merely “success culture wearing failure drag” – a concept that resonated with both hosts as they reflected on how our relationship with failure shapes our capacity for authentic human connection.

14:00 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
The Contradictory Wisdom of Business Guides (Or: How Every Book Can Be Right)

What happens when the business advice you’re receiving appears to contradict itself? Our hosts dive into this conundrum by examining the tension between Simon Squibb’s bootstrapping philosophy and Blair Enns’ “don’t eat your broccoli” approach to delegation. The first tells you to do everything yourself; the second tells you to outsource what you don’t enjoy.

Rather than picking a winner, Steve and David suggest both perspectives might be simultaneously valid depending on your circumstances. “It’s like what Rabbi Brasch once told me,” Steve reflects. “There are many pathways to the top of the same mountain.”

The conversation takes an elegant turn toward Richard Koch’s 80/20 principle as a possible reconciliation between these seemingly opposing views. David reframes the delegation question: “It’s not whether broccoli’s good for you or bad for you… it’s a question of if I spend time eating my broccoli, am I wasting time on something else that would be even better for me?”

This philosophical dance culminates in a real-world application as Steve discusses his newly launched “Website in a Week” offering – a service that contradicts his 20-year philosophy of encouraging clients to build their own sites, yet perfectly aligns with the principle of allowing people to focus on their strengths.

21:00 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
The “Free” Domain Name That’s Anything But (Or: When Gifts Come With Strings)

In a segment that sparked evident frustration from both hosts, Steve details how Australian web hosting company VentraIP has adopted a page from the cynical playbook of LinkedIn’s “free premium” offers. Their “complimentary” domain name – presented as appreciation for customer loyalty – automatically renews as a paid service the following year.

The hosts dissect not just the questionable ethics of this “gift” but the deliberately cumbersome process required to decline it. “It is a center of confusion in the business world,” Steve notes, pointing out how small business owners regularly forward domain renewal notices to him, unsure whether they’re legitimate services or