Real World Entrepreneurship

In this week's podcast Alan and Bhairav talk about Atom CTO's marketing journey

It has been a number of years since Bhairav talked about his experiences of marketing and in this podcast, he gives an update on where Atom is today with regards to marketing and the key lessons he has learnt

The main takeaways from this podcast are:

• You should approach marketing in the same way you would any other function within your company
• Have a clear set of objectives in mind before you start
• Take time in finding the right team that will understand your business and help you market
• Don't be tempted to market to everyone and everywhere, keep your marketing focus
• Be consistent in your messaging and maintain the same look and feel

As a start-up founder are you thinking about your business from a global perspective? Do you look at what is going on overseas and take inspiration from the way others have solved problems and feed their thinking into your own

This week's podcast was meant to be about whether now is a right time to start a new business but as ever we veered off topic and talked about how the rest of the world sees the UK and whether from a business perspective the UK has any real influence around the globe

In this podcast you'll hear from Brant Cooper, author of a new book called Disruption Proof

Brant is an exponent of mission driven teams where companies provide teams with clear objectives and let them get on with the day to day management of tasks to reach those objectives

He also discusses his book Disruption Proof where he discusses how disruption proof organisations are Resilient, Aware and Dynamic (RAD)

To learn more go to www.brantcooper.com

In this podcast Alan and Bhairav talk to Andy Connelly the founder of Coast Entertainment

Coast Entertainment is a business that is based on live events, they provide quality live entertainment for over 20,000 weddings and events in the UK and Ireland

Covid crippled his business and in this podcast Andy recalls the low points of the crisis and what the company did to maintain their relationships with customers and musicians

Andy also talks about how Covid forced him to re-examine his business and to take tough decisions that ultimately led to the company exiting the crisis leaner, fitter and stronger

This is a story with a happy ending....

In this week's podcast Alan and Bhairav discuss how to find and manage a marketing team that fits for your company

What we learn from this podcast is:

• The process of finding and managing a marketing team is much like tech
• If you don't know what you want, you'll get what you don't want
• Write a brief!
• Marketing and advertising are different things!!
• Be crystal clear with your expectations and how to measure outcomes

In this podcast Alan and Bhairav talk with entrepreneur, podcaster and YouTuber Mark Drager

This is a wide ranging podcast that covers the following questions:

• Are entrepreneurs courageous?
• How can you be less conservative in business?
• Building a company culture
• Are brands fluid or set in stone?

In this podcast we talk about Vision - that word that comes up all the time when you're talking with investors, startup accelerators, mentors etc

What is a vision, should we be calling it "ambition" instead? How do you set a vision and once it is set, should it remain set or should you be looking to change and adapt as your business evolves

What you will take away from this is:

• Ambition is probably a better term
• Language is key
• Don't be blind to what is going on around you and make sure you adapt

In this podcast, Alan discuss with Bhairav about communities and their importance to businesses

We discuss the following points:

- How communities are relevant for an entrepreneur journey

- What a community strategy looks like

- Tips on building a community

- Can every business build a community?

In this podcast we started talking about community and ended up talking about what Bhairav is up to with his blockchain business....

What does "investor ready" really mean?

Do you need to have 1M in turnover before you can approach investors?

In this podcast, Alan and Bhairav talk about what that phrase means and whether there are any real hard and fast rules for when you can approach investors and what you should have in place before you even start thinking about raising funding