The Best Bad Option with Al Elliott (1/2)

Welcome to episode 235 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 1 of a discussion with Al Elliott, detailing his experience as an entrepreneur and owner for two different business, how the experience of going bankrupt give him a unique idea for a new business, and we’ll discuss whether entrepreneurs make great leaders. Original Recording Date: 06-10-2023 Topics – Meet Al Elliott, The Young Manager, The Entrepreneur’s Vision, Thoughts on Investors, The Best Bad Option 2:43 – Meet Al Elliott 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, but Al tells us over the last year his focus has been on building up the podcast along with his wife. You can hear some other background on Al relevant to this discussion from episode 16 of the Truth, Lies, and Workplace Culture Podcast. It’s been interesting for Al to learn the podcasting world, and he feels it has opened up the opportunity to meet many people he might not otherwise have met. Right now Al might say he is a podcaster moreso than marketer or business owner, but he remains all 3 at once. Al went to university in the UK and failed his A-levels except for math, and the only thing he could do after that was teaching math. After teaching math for 2 years, Al found he hated it. Al recounts gaining some practical experience teaching and a conversation with the schoolmaster that followed. The schoolmaster told him he could be making over 38,000 pounds per year…after 25 years in the role. This was enough to make Al want to seek out alternatives. Next, Al pursued pub management (or bar management). He studied through a program in this field for about a year before taking a job at a pub in Manchester, England that would bring in about 80,000 pounds per week. This was around 1999. During this experience Al learned about management, recruitment, and dealing with drunk people. He would later get a job running his own pub in Leeds, England. Al took the previous marketing experience gained from his boss in Manchester to make this pub turn from the 27th worst pub in the area to 3rd best. At some point money went missing from the pub, and though Al pointed this out, he was fired (despite not having been the one who took money from the pub). At age 22, having achieved a degree in pub management followed by some great results in the business, Al wasn’t sure what to do next. The only job that would take him was commission only door-to-sales. Al did this for about a year and calls it the best and worst thing that has ever happened to him. “You learn lots of ways in which people can tell you to go away….most of which I wouldn’t be able to repeat on this podcast.” – Al E