Little Talks

If you've listened to Little Talks for a while, you probably know we're big fans of Jay Schwedelson. So when Roop and Claudia saw him on the UNBOUND schedule, obviously they had to be there.

This week, they're bringing some of their favorite takeaways from his sessions back to the podcast, starting with what's changing in email.

As AI summaries become more common in Gmail, Apple Mail, and Copilot, the actual text in an email matters ...

The gang is back together after two weeks of travels! Roop and Claudia recap UNBOUND and share with Sam what actually stuck with us after a few packed days of sessions, speakers, product announcements, and a whole lot of AI talk.

Some sessions were all-in on using AI to do more. Others made the case that as AI-generated content becomes easier to make, human judgment, trust, and personality matter even more.

We're probably somewhere i...

Sam’s on vacation this week, so Claudia is officially comes out from her behind the scenes roll producing the podcast and joins Roop on the mics!

And the timing couldn’t be better because the duo is getting ready to head to Boston for HubSpot’s UNBOUND marketing conference.

So this week on Little Talks, we’re previewing which sessions made it onto our schedules, and what we’re most excited to hear about ...

It's easy for media plans to become routine.

Search works. Social works. So year after year, the same dollars keep going to the same places.

This week on Little Talks, Matt Fogarty, SVP of Sales at Mogl, joins Sam and Roop to talk about why it might be time to rethink that approach.

Tools like The Trade Desk are giving mid-market brands access to more data, premium inventory, and insights that were once mostly reserved for companies w...

LinkedIn. Facebook. Instagram. YouTube. TikTok. Reddit. Threads. And probably three new platforms by the time we finish writing this.

Does your brand really need to be on all of them?

This week on Little Talks, Sam and Roop talk about whether brands should actually be doing less on social in 2027. Not necessarily posting less, but being a little more intentional about where and why you're posting.

A hundred thousand views looks great,...

Annual planning always looks great on paper.

The budget makes sense. The priorities are clear. Everyone knows exactly what they're doing. And then the year actually starts.

This week on Little Talks, Sam and Roop talk about planning for 2027 and why a good marketing plan needs enough structure to keep everyone focused, but enough flexibility to change when something starts working (or really isn't).

It starts with knowing your audienc...

Most companies have values. The bigger question is whether anyone can actually remember them.

This week on Little Talks, Sam and Roop talk about how LFG became a big part of Littlefield culture and why, six years later, it’s still something we use every day.

LFG came out of a pretty difficult time for the agency in 2020. As we rethought where Littlefield was headed, we also wanted values that actually sounded and felt like us. ...

"Can you knock this out by tomorrow?"

On its own, it's usually not a big deal. But after the fifth "quick request" of the week, those little asks start adding up.

This week on Little Talks, Sam and Roop talk about the capacity problem facing in-house marketing teams. Between sales requests, trade shows, last-minute projects, and everything in between, it's easy for strategic work to get pushed aside by whatever feels most urgent.

The ...

AI has made marketing faster. From writing and research to brainstorming and campaign planning, the tools keep getting better.

But as Sharon Toerek, Owner and Founder of Legal+Creative | Toerek Law, explains on this week's Little Talks, moving faster also means being more thoughtful about how you use AI.

Sharon joined Sam and Roop to discuss the legal side of AI, including intellectual property, data privacy, and why those conversati...

Planning isn't usually the problem.

Most teams have goals. They have strategy sessions. They have whiteboards full of ideas and calendars full of kickoff meetings.

The hard part is what happens after all of that.

This week on Little Talks, Sam and Roop discuss Traction by Gino Wickman and why it's had such a big impact on the way Littlefield Agency operates. The system isn't flashy, and that's kind of the point. It creates a rhyt...

AI search isn't coming. It's already here.

This week on Little Talks, Sam and Roop talk about one stat that caught everyone's attention: AI referral traffic to U.S. retail sites is up 393% year over year.

That's not just another marketing number. It's a sign that buyers are starting to search differently.

Instead of scrolling through a page of links, they're asking AI tools questions, comparing options, and getting recommendations bef...

Trust is one of those things marketers talk about all the time, but it's hard to point to on a dashboard.

This week, Sam and Roop discuss why that doesn't make it any less important.

When you're selling equipment that costs six or seven figures, people aren't clicking an ad and making a purchase that afternoon. They're talking to coworkers. Reading reviews. Watching YouTube videos. Asking AI questions. Checking Reddit. They're figuri...

Most equipment marketing is built for the buyer who is ready to own. That makes sense. Ownership is the big, shiny goal. But it also means rental buyers can get treated like a side audience, when in reality they may be the person with the most immediate need in the room.

On this week’s Little Talks, Sam and Roop talk about why rental buyers think differently and why the marketing should, too. These customers are not al...

Friend of the podcast Jay Schwedelson is back on Little Talks this week, and as usual, he didn't disappoint!

Jay joined Sam and Roop to talk about his new book, Stupider People Have Done It, and somewhere between marketing, AI, LinkedIn, TV, coffee, and life advice, we landed on a simple idea: people still trust people.

AI can help you move faster. Social proof matters. Your LinkedIn page shouldn't look abandoned. But as Jay pointed ...

AI has made it incredibly easy to make more stuff.

More blogs. More emails. More social posts. More everything.

The problem? Nobody was sitting around wishing there was more content on the internet.

This week on Little Talks, Sam and Roop talk about what happens when everyone has access to the same tools and can create the same types of content. AI can absolutely help. It's great at research, first drafts, and speeding up the work. Bu...

Marketers love a good audience segment until it gets too broad to mean anything. “Business decision-makers” sounds nice in a media plan, but it does not tell you much about where those people actually spend time, what tools they use, or what signals point to real intent. That is where things get interesting, and occasionally a little uncomfortable, because our phones know us better than most dropdown menus do.

On this we...

Agency size has a funny way of becoming a security blanket. It feels measurable, which makes it feel useful. A 60-person shop sounds safer than a 25-person shop, at least until you remember that all 60 people will not be in your reporting meeting, your strategy call, or the late-afternoon scramble when priorities shift.

That is where Sam and Roop spent most of this week’s conversation. The episode is not a tiny-agency rally cr...

This week’s episode of Little Talks is a special one. After 10 years at Littlefield Agency, Chelsea Clement joins Sam and Roop on the podcast one last time before heading into her next chapter: becoming a full-time mom.

Chelsea has been a huge part of Littlefield for the last decade. If you’ve interacted with our team, followed our content, listened to the podcast, or honestly just spent five minutes around the agency, y...

Dealer marketing can look really organized at the corporate level and still completely fall apart in the field. A portal gets built, assets get uploaded, launch emails go out… and then a dealer posts an off-brand phone photo five minutes later.

This week, Sam and Roop talked about why that happens. Most dealers are not trying to ignore the brand. They are trying to sell in their market, to their customers, in real time. And w...