Slideshow with Dave Hayward, Ep 6, Season 2 (#19)
Episode links
Stu Lees has worked through the marketing of hundreds of businesses. The same three things are missing almost every time. Not obscure things. Basics, most owners assume they’ve already sorted.
Stu Lees is a marketing advisor, strategist, and founder of the Shoestring Marketer. He’s spent 20-plus years working across small businesses, global tech startups, and everything in between. In this episode, he walks through the three fundamentals that keep disappearing from B2B marketing — and what to do about each one.
- The first is the customer persona: not a two-paragraph demographics summary, but a deep emotional map of fears, frustrations, aspirations, and context, written in the customer’s own words, because that’s the raw material good copy actually runs on.
- The second is the full funnel and email nurture. Stu draws on a real case study here: $2 million in sales in 18 months, 40,000 emails a week, a 45% newsletter open rate, and no cold calling.
- The third is personal brand, and specifically why building one has never been more urgent.
On that last point, Stu’s argument is direct: AI is making it harder to stand out as a brand and harder to feel safe as an employee.
His answer is three specific tactics: a daily LinkedIn connection habit he’s maintained since 2014, getting out from behind your desk, and investing in public speaking and community. All of it connects back to a phrase that runs through the whole episode: being unapologetically human.
Episode highlights
When Stusays most customer personas are “two paragraphs and not fucking enough,” he means it — and the framework he offers instead, built around fears, frustrations, and the emotional decisions people make before logic even shows up, is the effective description of a framework that marketers have weaponised and rendered meaningless by overuse.
The $2 million in sales from 40,000 weekly emails and zero cold calls is the kind of number that ends arguments about whether nurture marketing is worth the effort.
And his LinkedIn habit — three connections a day, every day, since 2014 — is absurdly simple and absurdly effective.
The thread running through all of it is what Stu calls being unapologetically human: the idea that in a world drowning in AI-generated content, showing up as a real person isn’t a soft strategy. It’s the sharpest competitive edge most businesses aren’t using.
Links and things
Slideshow with Dave Hayward podcast links:
Produced by Europa Creative Partners
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:10 Stu’s background: the SF tech startup and global marketing
03:00 The marketing academy and teaching B2B services
05:30 How Stu learns: immersion and osmosis
07:35 The Shoestring Marketer and the book
09:00 Public speaking as a superpower
14:00 Setting up the three neglected things
15:30 Neglected thing 1: deep customer personas
17:00 Emotion first, logic second
19:30 The persona framework: fears, frustrations, aspirations, context
22:00 Frustrations as a cheat code for writing content
24:00 Case study: “not on my watch” and the backup software campaign
26:00 System 1 and system 2 thinking in marketing
27:30 Neglected thing 2: the full funnel and email nurture
30:00 People don’t buy from ads, they buy from relationships
32:00 The $2M case study: 40,000 emails a week, no cold calling
35:05 Neglected thing 3: personal brand in the age of AI
35:38 It’s never been more unsafe to be an employee
38:30 The daily LinkedIn connection habit
40:35 Get out from behind your desk
43:50 Being unapologetically human
44:35 Public speaking and community as brand builders
48:25 Three skills everyone needs in 2026
51:00 Real rooms beat digital channels for trust
55:00 Your monthly newsletter as proof of consistency
58:00 Wrap up
Keywords
B2B marketing, small business marketing, customer persona, ICP, marketing funnel, email marketing, personal brand, LinkedIn strategy, content marketing, New Zealand business, audience building, marketing strategy, public speaking, emotional marketing, shoestring marketing
FAQ (for humans and search engines)
What are the three things most small businesses miss in their marketing?
Stu identifies three consistent gaps: a deep-enough customer persona that goes beyond demographics and into emotions, a considered full-funnel nurture strategy rather than just top-of-funnel content, and a personal brand that works for both the business and the people inside it. Most businesses are doing pieces of one, occasionally two, and almost never all three together.
Why isn't a two-paragraph customer profile enough for good marketing?
Because marketing works on emotion, and a two-paragraph profile won’t get you
anywhere near the fears, frustrations, and motivations that actually drive buying
decisions. Stu’s framework requires writing the persona in the customer’s own
words, in first person, without grammar-checking, so the raw emotional texture
stays intact. That material then becomes the basis for copy, creative, and
targeting decisions that connect at the right level.
How does understanding customer emotions improve marketing results?
People make buying decisions emotionally and use logic to validate what they’ve already decided. Stu’s point is that your marketing needs to connect at the emotional level first, through frustrations, fears, and the desire to be seen a certain way, before any statistics or rational arguments will land. His “not on my watch” campaign for a backup software client led with customer fear, resonated immediately, and produced serious results.
Is email marketing still worth the effort for B2B businesses?
Stu argues it’s one of the most underrated tools in B2B. His evidence: an email list of 40,000 people, a 45% open rate, and $2 million in sales in 18 months without a sales team or cold calling. His observation is that most businesses invest heavily in top-of-funnel content and then neglect what happens once someone is in their inbox. A well-run newsletter also proves consistency, which signals to potential buyers that you’ll show up the same way as a supplier.
What's the best way to build a LinkedIn presence without posting every day?
Stu’s approach is to connect with three people every day, a habit he’s maintained since 2014, taking him to over 28,000 connections. LinkedIn is a connection network, not a creator platform, and sending consistent connection signals changes how the algorithm treats your content. Each new connection guarantees your last two posts appear in their feed, giving you guaranteed impressions without writing anything new.
