Welcome to episode 236 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_) – two technology professionals with backgrounds in IT Operations and Sales Engineering on a mission to help others accelerate career progression and increase job satisfaction by bringing listeners the advice we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share part 2 of a discussion with Al Elliott, detailing his process of scaling a business through iteration, how making an impact affects Al’s enjoyment of his work, and some ways in which we underestimate the number of times a successful business owner or entrepreneur may have failed on their way to having success.

Original Recording Date: 06-10-2023

Al Elliott is a business owner and one half of the Truth, Lies, and Workplace Culture Podcast crew. His background is mostly marketing consultancy and building businesses. If you missed the first part of our conversation with Al, check out Episode 235.

Topics – Ideas to Achieve Scale; The Entrepreneur’s Creative Iteration; Passion, Purpose, and Making an Impact

3:21 – Ideas to Achieve Scale



* Al and his business partner were doing something called “Sell and rent back,” which at some point became illegal to do unless you were certified in some way. Fortunately for them this happened about a year after he and his partner stopped doing the business (which was 2007, a tough year for the housing market). They had started in 2005 and ended in 2007.



* Al says at the core this business was about looking for a problem and solving it.





* In order to scale the business, Al didn’t have much when it came to marketing chops (skills).



* Al says he used to read a lot of Dan Kennedy, and that his first business book was by this author.

* The first attempt at scaling the business was trying to get in as many leads as possible. Al and his business partner used their last bit of money after buying their first house to buy space for an advertorial (a UK-specific term for advertising space in a newspaper). This was during a time when more people were reading newspapers.

* Al found that most advertorials were not written like newspaper articles and didn’t seem to be very catchy.



* Al tells us at this point (while working on the advertorial) he and his business partner had gone and applied for jobs because the business wasn’t working.

* Al spent a few days reading through newspapers to get a feel for how each article was written. He then wrote an article as a journalist would with a title of “Government Helps Homeowners Drowning in Debt.” Al referred to their business as the Homeowner’s Advice Center and shared a statement within the advertorial from his business partner Chris detailing how they help homeowners and how anyone interested could get a free advice pack.





* “That was incredible. That was the turning point. It went live on the Wednesday, and I woke up on Thursday and I genuinely had 40-50 people who had downloaded the [advice] pack….And then we had a call center who was managing our calls, and they had booked us in for like 8 appointments. And we were like ‘this is amazing!’” – Al Elliott, describing the business growth impact of an effective advertorial<br /...