Real World Entrepreneurship

Alan Clarke

5.0 (1)
Entrepreneurship
Monthly

In this podcast Alan and Bhairav talk about the real world issues that are faced by entrepreneurs and small business owners We have both run successful businesses, raised money, grown them globally and now we're giving practical advice to the next generation of entrepreneurs. We don't do platitudes. We also talk to entrepreneurs from across the world and get them to share their stories and challenges

2d ago

Your Business Has a Strategy. Are You in Charge of It?

You might not have a strategy document, a vision statement or a slide deck, but you do have a strategy. Every hour you spend and every pound you invest is a strategic choice. So the real question is whether you chose it, or whether it chose you. With end-of-year planning season upon us, Alan and Bhairav dig into what strategy actually means for a small business. Do you really need one? Why do so many end up in a drawer? And what does a bad one look like? Thoughts and ConclusionsEveryone already has a strategy. Look at where your time and money go, and that’s your strategy. Trying to do everything for everybody is still a strategy, just not a very good one. Strategy is about what you don’t do. Alan points to Apple, which spent billions exploring an electric car before deciding to walk away and focus on what it does best. Saying no to a good opportunity is often the most strategic decision you’ll make. Without focus, the loudest voice wins. At Team Rock, Alan’s plan was to do three things really well. They ended up doing 22, and the money went to whoever shouted loudest at the time. Without a strategy, you have no way of deciding whether an opportunity is good or bad. Your strategy shouldn’t change every week, but your action plan should. If interest rates jump for three months, that’s a reason to adjust your plans, not to tear up your ambitions. Strategy is where you’re heading, and the action plan is how you deal with the weather on the way. The chaos story is the better story. Founders on stage love to say they made it up as they went along, because it makes for a great tale. In reality most of the "troubles" businesses face are just events you'd normally expect in the course of running a business. Hold yourself to account. At Atom CTO, Bhairav ran yearly strategy reviews to check whether we were still on track for our ambition. You don’t need a board to do this. A non-exec, a mentor or even your own honest review will do the job, as long as someone asks whether you’re doing what you said you would. What a bad strategy looks like: It’s a compromise designed to keep everyone happyIt’s a list of KPIs and objectives rather than a directionIt runs to pages and pages when it should fit on one or twoIt’s full of fluffy, big words that nobody can act onNobody is held accountable to it Bigger isn’t always better. A strategy is about being what you want to be, not about being the biggest. If it isn’t what you really want, you won’t keep going when it’s pouring with rain. Where We DisagreedShould a strategy make people uncomfortable? Alan: If a strategy doesn’t make some people uncomfortable, it isn’t a very good strategy.Bhairav: It’s the opposite. People may not like a strategy, but if they aren’t comfortable with it, they won’t follow it. Did the big success stories really wing it? Bhairav: The founders on stage all say it was chaos and they made it up as they went along.Alan: Chaos makes a better story. “We had a plan and stuck to it” doesn’t get a round of applause. Is choosing the mountain the strategy? Alan: The fundamental decision is which mountain to climb, because you can’t get three quarters of the way up and switch.Bhairav: Choosing the mountain is the ambition. Strategy is what you do when the weather turns and the food runs low. One Thing to Try This WeekLook back at last month’s calendar and bank statement. Where did your time and money actually go? That’s your real strategy. Now ask yourself whether it’s the one you’d have chosen. Memorable Quotes“Every business has got a strategy. It’s simply a case of how well defined it is, and how appropriate it is.” Alan“Strategy is about what you don’t do.” Alan“We set out to do three things really well, and we ended up doing 22 things, most of them really poorly.” Alan“Everything you do has to be channelled towards that ambition, and you have to prove it to yourself.” Bhairav“Don’t be driven by other people’s expectations, be driven by what you want to be.” AlanListen to the Full EpisodeIf you’ve ever written a strategy and then forgotten about it, or never written one at all, this one’s for you. Listen to the full episode, then tell us in the comments: what’s one thing your strategy says you won’t do? Real World Entrepreneurship is co-hosted by Bhairav Patel and Alan Clarke of The Business Growth Partnership (tbgp.co.uk).
Oct 26

Who Are You Selling To, the Customer or Their AI?

You tell an AI agent where you want to go on holiday, give it a budget, and let it search, compare and book. No salesperson, no brochure, no conversation. So who exactly was the seller selling to? That’s the question Alan and Bhairav wrestle with in this episode. If agents start doing the buying, does everything we know about selling go out of the window? Or does it make the human side of selling more valuable than ever? We didn’t fully agree, which is half the fun. Thoughts and ConclusionsYour facts are now table stakes. If an agent is doing the searching, the basics of what you offer have to be out there, clear and easy to find. If it isn’t stated, as far as the AI is concerned it doesn’t exist. Sell the qualities, not just the specs. Facts get you onto the shortlist, but the qualitative and emotive parts of your offer are what make someone choose you. Generic, AI-generated copy promising to “save 80%” won’t do that job. Efficient isn’t the same as effective. Alan remembers a time when a letter took days to get a reply, so every word was considered. Email made communication faster, but not necessarily better. AI may follow the same pattern, unless we use the time it saves to have better conversations at the point where it matters. The line between “AI can handle this” and “you need a human” is moving. Commodity sales, such as tickets, food, hotel rooms, look set to be automated, while anything involving judgement, atmosphere or fit should keep a human in the loop. Alan described ChatGPT telling him which part of Barbados would suit him better. If AI is already making qualitative calls, where does your business sit? What about reviews? Today we lean on reviews for the qualitative side, but reviews are weighted, gamed and inconsistent. If an agent is reading them on your customer’s behalf, how much should it trust them, and how much should you rely on them? And who’s watching? Alan points out how much talk there now is at government level about controlling AI. That might be the clearest sign yet that people are realising how fast this is moving. Where We DisagreedIs this just digital all over again? Alan: AI feels like the move to digital and the dot-com boom. Both were exciting and terrifying, and both turned out to be brilliant in parts and horrendous in others.Bhairav: Digital made information easier to reach, but we stayed in control. With AI, the bit we least understand is the loss of control. Who stays in the loop? Alan: People buy from people. A friend who runs a travel agency isn’t worried, because she adds the personal touch that AI can’t.Bhairav: That’s true until agents are talking to agents with access to bank accounts and credit cards. At that point the human isn’t in the loop at all. Who adapts to whom? Alan: Technology will ultimately bend around human behaviour.Bhairav: We’re already changing our behaviour for AI, right down to the way we write and communicate. One Thing to Try This WeekAsk an AI tool to find a business like yours, the way a customer might. Does it find you? Are your facts right? And does anything of what makes you different come through, or do you look like everyone else? Memorable Quotes“People buy from people. In a world where everyone is using AI to take the human out of selling, putting the human back in might be your biggest differentiator.” Alan“There’s no way for us to capture all the nuance of how we feel in data.” Bhairav“You can make things incredibly efficient, but that doesn’t mean they’re effective.” Alan“If everyone’s leaving it to agents talking to agents, with access to bank accounts and credit cards, the human isn’t anywhere in that loop.” Bhairav“Technology will ultimately adapt around human behaviour, rather than human behaviour adapting around the technology.” AlanListen to the Full EpisodeWe don’t claim to have the answers, but if you sell anything to anyone, this is a conversation worth having. Listen to the full episode, then tell us in the comments: are you selling to the customer, or to their AI? Real World Entrepreneurship is co-hosted by Bhairav Patel and Alan Clarke of The Business Growth Partnership (tbgp.co.uk).
Sep 22

Culture is what you tolerate

Culture is one of those words that gets thrown around in business without anyone pinning down what it actually means. In this episode of Real World Entrepreneurship, Bhairav and Alan dig into why culture is always set from the top, why most businesses have a culture they didn't deliberately choose, and what happens when nobody addresses the one person who doesn't fit. Bhairav shares a story about working under a CEO whose shouting could be heard from down the street, and how that behaviour cascaded through every layer of management beneath him. Alan draws on his experience working across businesses led by very different personalities and offers a simple definition: culture is what a business tolerates, rewards, and prioritises. Together they explore what it takes to actually shape culture rather than inherit it by accident, how to deal with outliers who undermine it, and why the real test of a company's culture is what happens when something goes wrong. What We Cover Why culture is always top-down, driven by the leader's behaviour rather than posters on the wallThe difference between culture by accident and culture by designHow toxic leadership patterns get absorbed by junior staff who don't have the experience to recognise themWhy values on a balanced scorecard often mean nothing in practiceDealing with cultural outliers: when to coach and when to manage someone outThe generational dimension: how different age groups experience and expect workplace cultureWhy the real measure of culture is how problems get handled, not how things look when everything is going well Key Takeaways Every business has a culture. The question is whether it was built deliberately or inherited by default.Culture is what you tolerate, reward, and prioritise. If you tolerate poor behaviour, that becomes the culture.In small businesses and startups, the founder's personality is the culture. There is no separation.Young employees in their first or second role often can't see a toxic culture because they have nothing to compare it to.Avoiding a difficult conversation about a cultural outlier doesn't make the problem disappear. It makes it structural. Links Bhairav Patel — https://bitsbytesandbusiness.com Alan Clarke / The Business Growth Partnership — https://tbgp.co.uk
Sep 14

Fear is Normal, Embrace It

Fear is the dominant emotion of running a business, and almost nobody talks about it. In this episode of Real World Entrepreneurship, Bhairav and Alan confront the thing that sits behind every decision a founder makes: the constant anxiety of not knowing whether it's all going to work out. Bhairav reflects on his eight years running Atom and realises that fear was the thread running through the entire experience. Fear of losing customers, fear of running out of money, fear of making the wrong call. Alan breaks entrepreneurs into three types: those who use fear to stay sharp, those who are overwhelmed by it, and the most dangerous group of all, those who don't feel it at all. Together they explore why fear is actually useful when you act on it, how to turn vague anxiety into something concrete you can deal with, and why the entrepreneurial world's obsession with success stories makes it harder for founders to admit what the job actually feels like. What We Cover Why fear was the overriding emotion across eight years of building and running a businessAlan's three types of entrepreneur: fear as fuel, fear as paralysis, and the dangerous absence of fearHow to turn abstract anxiety into something actionable by writing it down and breaking it apartThe difference between fears you need to deal with now and fears you can park for laterWhy the fear of AI is actually simpler to address than most founders thinkThe role of advisors, mentors and peer networks in managing fear you can't see past on your ownWhy entrepreneurship's highlight reel of mega-successes makes the reality harder to talk aboutThe fine line between fear as a power tool and fear that stops you performing Key Takeaways Fear is normal. Every honest founder Alan has worked with has admitted to feeling it.Most fear comes from uncertainty. Making the unknown specific and concrete is the first step to managing it.The most dangerous entrepreneurs are the ones who feel no fear at all, because they take everyone else down with them.Action is what separates useful fear from debilitating fear. If you act on it, it sharpens you. If you sit with it, it freezes you.The entrepreneurial world doesn't talk about fear enough. Normalising it would help more founders than another success story ever will. Links Bhairav Patel — https://bitsbytesandbusiness.com Alan Clarke / The Business Growth Partnership — https://tbgp.co.uk
Jul 13

How to Build a Business That Lasts

Most business advice is about getting started. The harder question, and the one Alan and Bhairav dig into here, is what it actually takes to still be standing in twenty years. In this episode of Real World Entrepreneurship, the two of them step back across their earlier conversations with Richard McCombe, who has run a Glasgow print business for two decades, and use his story to unpack a broader theory of durability. The result is less a recap and more a working map of what a lasting business looks like, and the challenges that quietly try to knock it down.
Jul 7

Every boss needs a boss

Richard McCombe is Managing Director of Graphic Warehouse, Scotland's largest independent large format print company. In this conversation, Richard talks candidly about the loneliness of running a business, the cost of having no one to hold you accountable, and the nearly ten-year relationship with an external advisor that changed how he leads and how the business runs. This episode is about why the instinct to escape having a boss is exactly what leaves so many business owners without anyone in their corner, and what changes when that gap gets filled properly.
Jun 29

Innovate or Die

Real World Entrepreneurship with Bhairav Patel and Alan ClarkeRichard McCombe is Managing Director of Graphic Warehouse, Scotland's largest independent large format print company. In this conversation, Richard takes us through twenty years of building and rebuilding the business, from early vehicle graphics work to a decade of consumer products that never quite scaled, through to the pivot that finally made everything click and the AI tooling he's building now. This episode is about the real cost of innovating without commercial clarity, and what it actually takes for a traditional industry to stay relevant.
Jun 22

Expect the Unexpected: What do you really need to worry about in business?

IntroductionIn this episode of Real World Entrepreneurship, Bhairav and Alan dig into a question every business owner wrestles with: what's actually worth worrying about? Between cash flow, co-founders, market reception and the things you genuinely cannot see coming, it's easy to spend energy in the wrong places. Alan and Bhairav talk through how they've each dealt with the unexpected over the years, including a deeply personal story from Alan about a cancer diagnosis that tested everything he believed about planning and control. What You Will Learn From ListeningWhy detailed planning gives a false sense of control, and why that's not actually a problemThe difference between risks worth preparing for and risks not worth the effortHow COVID exposed which businesses could adapt and which couldn'tWhy Eisenhower's two quotes on planning are more useful than any risk registerHow Bhairav's experience selling Atom challenged his own assumptions about strategyWhy founders should run a "hit by a bus" scenario on themselves, not just key staffAlan's personal account of being diagnosed with cancer two weeks after buying a companyWhat the "trough of disillusionment" is and why it hits most founders around six months inHow to tell the difference between problems worth carrying yourself and problems you can hand offA simple test for deciding whether something is actually worth worrying about Memorable Quotes"No matter how thorough your risk register, things will happen that you've not even thought of." — Alan Clarke "That is not very convenient." — Alan Clarke, on being told he'd be off work for six months following his cancer diagnosis "You're the one living it, no one else is doing it for you. You've built up all those years of experience. Trust yourself, back yourself." — Bhairav Patel "I worry about everything, and seldom did any of it ever happen. The things that I really, with hindsight, should have been worried about were the things I never saw coming." — Alan Clarke SummaryThis episode opens with a simple premise. Founders spend a huge amount of energy worrying about business risk, but most of that worry is misdirected. Alan and Bhairav use Eisenhower's two famous quotes on planning, that no plan survives contact with the unexpected, and that planning itself is invaluable even when the plan isn't, as a frame for the whole conversation. They walk through real examples, including COVID and Bhairav's own experience selling Atom, to show that the businesses which fared best weren't the ones with the most detailed contingency plans. They were the ones able to adapt quickly when circumstances changed. The conversation takes a more personal turn around the halfway mark. Alan shares that seventeen years ago, two weeks after buying a company, he was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and told he'd be off work for six months. It's a candid, unguarded section of the episode that grounds the whole discussion in something real. Bhairav uses it to raise a question most founders avoid: what happens to your business if you, personally, can't show up? From there the discussion moves into founder fatigue, the point around six months into a venture where the initial energy fades and the gap between expectation and reality starts to bite. Alan and Bhairav both offer practical ways of testing whether something is genuinely worth worrying about, including a method Alan picked up from a former boss: ask whether it will still matter in a year. This is worth listening to if you've ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things that could go wrong in your business. Alan and Bhairav don't offer a formula. What they offer instead is a more honest, more useful way of thinking about risk, and a reminder that resilience matters more than any plan ever will.

Great Show

03/27/2021

Joseph wilkinsz

Love listening to these guys

In this podcast Alan and Bhairav talk about the real world issues that are faced by entrepreneurs and small business owners We have both run successful businesses, raised money, grown them globally and now we're giving practical advice to the next generation of entrepreneurs. We don't do platitudes. We also talk to entrepreneurs from across the world and get them to share their stories and challenges

Creator

Alan Clarke
Years Active

2020 - 2026
Episodes

107
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Copyright 2026 Alan Clarke
Show Website

Real World Entrepreneurship