Slideshow with Dave Hayward

Dave Hayward has changed industry and discipline more times than most people change jobs. This is what all that jumping taught him, and what it cost.
In his first solo episode of Slideshow, recorded from a talk at Revved's Write-Offs event, Dave works through four lessons from a career spent jumping off the deep end: sinking before you swim, treating optimism as a tactic rather than a default, surviving bad bosses and impossible targets, and the dream job that fell apart and led him to revive Europa Creative Partners.
Along the way, he gets into forgetting the coffee for a coffee tasting and closing the deal anyway, a sales target that was doubled and then tripled with no extra resource, and the dream job that fell apart and pushed him to quit with a fresh mortgage and no plan, the write-off that became Europa Creative Partners.
He also lands on why 2026 might be the best time in years to be a generalist, and why the self-doubt never really goes away. Worth a watch if you have ever taken on a job you had no business taking, and made it work anyway.
Links:
Dave Hayward, LinkedIn
Europa Creative Partners
This episode was recorded from content that was part of Dave's talk at Revved's Write-Offs event.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:50 A first solo edition: the Write-Offs talk
01:40 Imposter syndrome and the 84 percent
02:50 Breadth, depth, and optimism as a tactic
04:00 The welding job he wasn't ready for
05:20 Birmingham: a coffee tasting with no coffee
06:10 Bad bosses and a target that doubled then tripled
08:10 The dream job and the scandal that followed
09:20 Quitting with no plan, and how Europa came back
11:50 Why 2026 is a good time to be a generalist
12:40 Still jumping, just picking better watersFind full show notes, links, and transcript at europa.nz/podcasts.Produced by Europa Creative Partners.

A funnel is just the journey a customer takes from not knowing you exist to paying you money. That's it. Today’s Slideshow with Dave Hayward, we’re going to explain it clearly. Most small business owners want a viral reel. Stu Lees wants to know if they've mapped what their customers are actually afraid of. One of those will grow a business. The other is just noise.Produced by Europa Creative Partners (europa.nz).In this episode of Slideshow, host Dave Hayward speaks with Stu Lees, a marketing advisor, strategist, and founder of the Shoestring Marketer, about the three fundamentals that keep disappearing from the marketing of businesses (large and small).The conversation covers Stu's customer persona framework — built around fears, frustrations, and motivations rather than two paragraphs of demographics — and why marketing works on emotion first, with logic arriving only to validate a decision already made. Stu also shares the email nurture strategy behind $ 2 million in sales in 18 months with no cold calling, and why he believes personal brand has never mattered more for both businesses and the people who work inside them.Links:Stu Lees, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartlees/The Shoestring Marketer: https://shoestringmarketer.co/Dave Hayward, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haywarddave/Chapters 00:00 Introduction01:00 Stu's background: the SF startup and the marketing academy05:00 Learning by osmosis: how Stu learns anything new07:30 Public speaking as a superpower09:00 The Shoestring Marketer and what it's for14:00 Setting up the three neglected things15:00 Neglected thing 1: deep customer personas17:00 Emotion first, logic second19:30 The persona framework: fears, frustrations, aspirations, context22:00 Frustrations as a cheat code for writing content24:00 Case study: "not on my watch" and a backup software campaign26:00 System 1 and system 2 in marketing27:30 Neglected thing 2: the full funnel and email nurture30:00 People don't buy from ads. They buy from relationships.32:00 The $2M case study: 40,000 emails a week, no cold calling35:00 Neglected thing 3: personal brand in the age of AI36:00 It's never been more unsafe to be an employee38:00 The daily LinkedIn connection habit (started 2014, 28,000 connections)40:30 Get out from behind your desk43:30 Being unapologetically human45:00 Public speaking and community as brand builders51:00 Real rooms beat digital channels for trust55:00 Why a monthly newsletter proves you're a reliable business58:00 Wrap up

Your community wants impact, not your slides
Laz Csite has spent decades in high-end consulting. He chose to walk away from that and spend the next 10 years on something that actually matters to him: helping charities, social enterprises, and B corps use digital tools to deliver the change they exist for.
Produced by Europa Creative Partners (europa.nz).

In this episode of Slideshow, host Dave Hayward speaks with Laz Csite, founder of 360tuned, about why digital transformation keeps failing in mission-led organisations, and what it actually takes to get it right. Laz brings a rare combination: the rigour of a career at KPMG and PwC, and a philosophy shaped more by rice terraces and bamboo than by tech roadmaps.

The conversation covers the gap between board-approved strategy and the people who have to deliver it, why most nonprofits are nowhere near ready for AI and what to do first, the spaghetti problem hiding in almost every nonprofit back office, and the pizza framework for thinking about digital architecture. Laz also shares the "black Toyota Corolla" approach to choosing tools, a story about donor lifetime value that stopped a 15-year-old nonprofit in its tracks, and why boring, reliable systems beat shiny ones every time.

Links:
Laszlo Csite, LinkedIn
360tuned
Dave Hayward

A framework that is both actionable AND delicious
In this episode of Slideshow, Dave Hayward speaks with Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, the AI-native video editing platform, about her practical framework for surviving the AI hype cycle without losing your ability to think clearly.
The conversation covers the sandwich bet technique for defusing doom-spiral conversations by forcing specifics (what exactly, by when, measured how?), the "work slop" problem and Laura's internal Descript memo on AI and human thinking, why generative AI is missing its "Finding Nemo" moment, Dave's audience sandwich bets from Bright Objects readers, and what the word "intrepid" means when you're running a company through genuine disruption.

Links:
Laura Burkhauser, LinkedIn
Descript
Dave Hayward, LinkedIn

Chapters

00:00 Cold open: intrepid
00:45 Introduction
02:00 Why AI hype exists: the cynical and good-faith takes
03:30 The AI political horseshoe: doomers vs hypers
05:30 Descript's AI-native origins (before AI was a discourse)
08:00 The generative AI problem: slop and the wrong conversation
09:00 Finding Nemo and what generative media is still missing
10:30 Human creativity will survive this moment
11:30 Vibe-coded briefs and the limits of AI in creative work
12:00 Work slop at Descript and the human collaboration memo
13:30 Writing as two acts: what you cannot delegate to AI
15:00 From hype to action: becoming a translation layer
16:30 AI hasn't reduced the workload: the rising tide reality
17:30 AI vs the internet: scale of impact and the 30-year problem
20:00 Non-linear careers: German literature meets tech
22:00 The sandwich bet: framework explained
24:00 Why sandwich bets shift conversations from fear to curiosity
25:00 Sandwich bets as an internal leadership tool at Descript
26:30 The Lisa Oakley crossover: depersonalising difficult decisions
27:30 Bread talk and Vogels toast
28:00 The Descript Slack bet: getting concrete on the labour market
29:30 From vague doom to specific, measurable hypotheses
30:30 Kahneman's system 2 and shifting from reacting to thinking
31:00 Optimism, the pandemic, and humanity's problem-solving capacity
32:00 Andrew Mason identified Laura as his successor within weeks
33:00 Intrepid: the leadership quality for a disruptive moment
34:30 Serenity prayer, Rumsfeld, and the limits of what you can control
35:00 The VP-to-CEO paradox: more accountability, less control
36:30 Wrap up

FAQ

What is a sandwich bet and how does it work?
A sandwich bet is a conversational technique for defusing AI doom-spiral conversations. When someone makes a large, fear-inducing prediction, you ask them to make it specific and measurable: what exactly will happen, by when, and what metric would prove it? If they're right, you buy them a sandwich. The low stakes lower the emotional temperature. The act of getting concrete forces rational thinking. Laura uses it at Descript both in team conversations and externally when AI discourse becomes unproductive.

How should business leaders think about AI's impact on jobs and the economy?
Laura's position: people consistently overestimate AI's short-term impact and underestimate its long-term impact, the same pattern that played out with the internet. The internet took 30 years to fully reshape the economy. AI likely works on the same horizon. At Descript, full adoption of AI coding tools has actually increased the urgency to hire engineers, not reduced it.

What is Descript and what does it do?
Descript is an AI-native video and audio editing platform that lets users edit footage by editing a transcript, the same way you'd edit a text document. Its AI co-editor Underlord executes entire editing workflows from a single text prompt. Used by podcasters, content creators, business teams, and marketers who want professional results without specialist editing skills.

Lisa Oakley has a private investigator's licence and a habit of walking into rooms where things have gone badly wrong. What she's found: the conflict usually wasn't the problem. The avoidance was.
Produced by Europa Creative Partners (europa.nz).
In this episode of Slideshow, host Dave Hayward speaks with Lisa Oakley, Director and Lead Consultant at People Associates, about why workplace conflict is best understood as data — information your organisation is generating, whether you act on it or not.
The conversation covers the three types of conversations that prevent most workplace friction from escalating (expectation, accountability, and repair), a practical, hard-conversation framework drawn from problem-solving science, and why formal investigations often make things worse rather than better. Lisa also shares what she's seeing on the frontier of workplace HR: AI-generated complaints that are genuinely difficult to authenticate.
Links:
Lisa Oakley, LinkedIn
Dave Hayward, LinkedIn
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:00 Conflict is Data: The Core Reframe
03:00 Why Leaders Avoid Conflict (and What It Costs)
06:00 Intercultural Conflict in NZ Workplaces
09:00 The Three Conversations Every Leader Needs
12:00 A Problem-Solving Framework for Hard Conversations
15:00 Is This Relationship Recoverable?
18:00 Where Conflict Ends and Bullying Begins
19:00 What Leaders Get Wrong: Kindness Without Clarity
22:00 Delegating Conflict Upwards
24:00 PI Meets HR: AI-Generated Complaints
28:00 When Investigations Protract the Problem
31:00 The Art of a Real Apology
34:00 Conflict as Progress: The Boardroom Story
36:00 The "I Like, I Wonder" Technique
39:00 Wrap Up
FAQ
What is "conflict as data" and why does it matter for business leaders? Lisa Oakley's core idea is that conflict isn't a dysfunction to suppress — it's information your organisation is producing. The way a team handles disagreement, friction, or tension tells you something about your culture, your clarity, and your leadership. Treating it as data rather than a problem to eliminate means you can actually learn from it and act on it.
Keywords conflict resolution, workplace conflict, leadership, difficult conversations, HR, people management, organisational culture, conflict management, New Zealand business, team performance, mediation, psychological safety, accountability, leadership development, high-performing teams