Truth, Lies & Work

# business

41 moments across 34 episodes. Click any moment to jump straight to that part of the episode.

0:00Intro — the founder who did everything 'right'Al Elliott: Richard Clarke did what every founder dreams of. He built a company, spent 10 years growing it, and sold it. Surely that would make him very happy indeed Richard Clarke: I should be the happiest person on theEP 317 · 9 Jul 2026·intro· 0:00–2:4438:25How much passion is enough?Al Elliott: Can I ask you, what's your thoughts on starting a business that you've got no passion about, but you just think, well, I'll start it, I'll systematize it, and then it'll make me money and I can go and do my pEP 301 · 14 May 2026·interview· 38:25–39:4338:59What business owners need to know: stop gatekeeping support and universal designLaura Dean: For business owners, I think there's some really important things to think about here. The first one is about, first of all, Don't gatekeep support. Don't assume that people are going to disclose to you becauEP 289 · 2 Apr 2026·interview· 38:59–44:4744:05Workplace Surgery: Common people problems in businessAl Elliott: Yep Leanne Elliott: Is that fair? Al Elliott: Yep, 100%EP 276 · 17 Feb 2026·workplace surgery· 44:05–48:0632:33Advice for their younger selvesAl Elliott: So as you're either entering or approaching sort of 7-figure turnover, what might you have said to the 2 kids back in 2010 when they were just approaching their first, their first mil? What advice would you gEP 271 · 29 Jan 2026·panel interview· 32:33–38:260:00Meet Beth Sherman: from TV writing to the business worldAl Elliott: I want you to meet Beth Sherman. She's written for David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres, and the Oscars twice. In fact, if you've laughed at it on TV, there's a very good chance she's written it. And she's got a EP 269 · 22 Jan 2026·interview· 0:00–5:089:27Why an awesome workplace is fundamentally good for businessJosh Levine: The science of work. Why? This is something that I've struggled with, right? So my, my whole pitch to the world Is that we need to start employing and deploying culture as a strategic business advantage. It EP 264 · 6 Jan 2026·panel interview· 9:27–10:469:42Why making the shift matters for business outcomesAl Elliott: Yeah Tony Cooke: We're back of house, we're not front Leanne Elliott: I want to ask you, why is it, why is it important that we make this shift? Why is it, what does it mean to the, to the business commercialEP 231 · 11 Sept 2025·interview· 9:42–15:0520:08Zingerman's – A Favorite Case StudyMeghan French Dunbar: Oh my gosh. They're like one of my favorite case studies in the United States. And when I told you I get really excited, this is like the Steve Irwin thing where I'm like, ah, let me tell you all abEP 229 · 4 Sept 2025·interview· 20:08–25:214:34Bringing Conducting into the Business WorldLeanne Elliott: And how did you begin to bring all of that into the business world? Roit Feldenkreis: Well, it happened like organically. It's really amazing, you know. A few years ago, I started giving keynote speeches EP 209 · 26 Jun 2025·interview· 4:34–6:300:00The gap in support for working dadsAl Elliott: Got to turn up and be a dad and grow a business. I mean, what's that feel like? Amit Singh Kalley: It's been hard to cope with the idea that my business, you know, I'm not growing it at the pace that everybodEP 191 · 24 Apr 2025·interview· 0:00–1:2747:16What's next: The King of Pops founder storyAl Elliott: Okay, I think that's the end of the episode, Leanne. Uh, coming up this Thursday, well, let's just say this is one of the most fun interviews I've done In a while, we're bringing you the story of Steve Kass, EP 180 · 18 Mar 2025·news roundup· 47:16–49:263:43How HubSpot is embedding AI across the businessLeanne Elliott: Can you share some of the ways that HubSpot are using AI to support businesses in elevating In terms of AI, there's a whole host of things that HubSpot is doing Crevan O'Malley: We obviously provide CRM sEP 169 · 6 Feb 2025·interview· 3:43–4:159:04What's working for businesses adopting AILeanne Elliott: Do you mind sharing maybe some of the things that are working particularly well for the businesses that are starting to implement some of these new features? Crevan O'Malley: We had some senior executivesEP 169 · 6 Feb 2025·interview· 9:04–14:2933:06The ethics of AI in businessLeanne Elliott: I want to ask you about ethics. That's what I hear as a psychologist. That's what my world is talking about. Do we need to, you know, what do we need to consider when it comes to the ethics of using AI arEP 169 · 6 Feb 2025·interview· 33:06–38:3824:43A real-world MQ transformation storyJames Fleming: We've got lots and lots of stories. Why don't I tell you about a team, a business? So we had a business, a really, really large company based in Yorkshire, and they had taken over, they'd bought other busiEP 165 · 23 Jan 2025·interview· 24:43–27:4146:45Why hiring people with mental illness is good for businessKody Green: The first thing I always mention is people with severe mental illness or just mental health issues, someone who's going through a difficult time and maybe struggling more than they usually do. In my experiencEP 153 · 12 Dec 2024·interview· 46:45–52:5434:45Al's concerns: where's the money coming from?Geoff Roberts: It can Leanne Elliott: But come back Al Elliott: Yeah, come backEP 106 · 13 Jun 2024·interview· 34:45–38:5941:13What the founders are most proud ofAl Elliott: Building a business from the ground up is tough, and it's important to reflect on how far you've actually come. I asked Lydia what she was most proud of so far Lydia & Amelia (Ivee co-founders, merged ch): ThEP 94 · 2 May 2024·interview· 41:13–43:130:00Understanding cults: from extreme to insidiousAl Elliott: The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,EP 80 · 29 Feb 2024·interview· 0:00–1:4330:43MIND's Mental Health at Work commitments — practical steps for businessesSarah Hughes: So we at MIND, We've got the mental health at work commitments that we do in partnership with a lot of corporates. We run our mental health index so that people can sort of assess where they are in terms ofEP 79 · 23 Feb 2024·interview· 30:43–32:5610:51How do you know when things aren't working?Al Elliott: So how would you know when things aren't working in a partnership? I know for me it was just that I didn't have the interest or the energy I once had for the business that I was in partnership with. And just EP 76 · 1 Feb 2024·interview· 10:51–12:4712:47When do you know the partnership should end?Leanne Elliott: Okay, so you know it isn't working, but when do you actually know the partnership should end? Joe Fier: I think a lot of people thought that it's— we had a good thing going, and I think we both would agreEP 76 · 1 Feb 2024·interview· 12:47–15:0334:45Translating sports communication to business meetingsAl Elliott: And if you can kind of translate that to a business meeting, you know, sit down, this meeting is for this, this, this, and this, you know, we need to speak in this way, then actually that makes it a lot easieEP 65 · 17 Nov 2023·other· 34:45–57:397:30What is the health gap — and why should business care?Al Elliott: Yeah, so most people talk about the health gap in terms of economic terms, so, uh, poverty, Wealth. That's the health gap. I know we are talking specifically the UK here because I know that in America the heaEP 58 · 28 Sept 2023·other· 7:30–10:5523:29Fueling the entrepreneurial spirit: building businesses across industriesManeesh Goyal: I have since— since I got out of the agency business, have pivoted to the hospitality business and And I currently run and operate 2 hospitality outposts in New York City, a very cool contemporary Indian rEP 56 · 14 Sept 2023·interview· 23:29–30:2045:05What happens when businesses get it wrongLeanne Elliott: This is something we see very frequently, and be very mindful of this if you are a business owner putting in these types of interventions. It's called the deficit model. It's when we put the emphasis for EP 45 · 28 Jun 2023·panel interview· 45:05–53:530:00Intro and Al's fanboy momentAl Elliott: The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,EP 38 · 10 May 2023·intro· 0:00–9:3966:58Theme 10: Making people and culture more commercialAl Elliott: I'm really excited about this report Leanne Elliott: It's a real landmark report. It's the first time ever that all the aggregated data that supports thriving employees has been analyzed in one place. We've bEP 37 · 3 May 2023·other· 66:58–74:0812:48Why the 4-day work week matters right nowAl Elliott: Yeah, absolutely. Leanne Elliott: perspective, the 4-day work week could have a really big impact on protecting our planet. Al Elliott: Who knew? Well, I'm pretty sure that our guests knew because they're cleEP 36 · 25 Apr 2023·other· 12:48–16:4252:08The commercial cost of doing nothingLeanne Elliott: And all of this on a commercial level is likely to look like stagnant growth, a reduction in revenue per head, a drop in profitability. Toxic workplaces aren't just bad for employee mental health, they'reEP 34 · 12 Apr 2023·other· 52:08–57:4436:38The power of a clear 'why'Al Elliott: I think I totally agree. And I think that with a lot of businesses who start off, they, they're kind of, they're seeking this product market fit where people actually do want to buy the stuff. But they're alsEP 33 · 5 Apr 2023·other· 36:38–38:030:00Intro — asshole days and the 60% statAl Elliott: The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,EP 30 · 15 Mar 2023·intro· 0:00–1:470:33Recap of Part 1: Why investors back people, not businessesAl Elliott: Nice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses Simon Berger: Can I sell it to you? So I said, yeah, yeah, come on, John. He said to me— so he looked at me, came up to the deEP 28 · 1 Mar 2023·panel interview· 0:33–2:597:01Are you the bottleneck or the lifeline?Al Elliott: So I think most people would think about that and go, purpose, okay, well, my purpose is to make a, make a load of money. Let's build a company to exit it. But that's not really what Leanne was talking about EP 28 · 1 Mar 2023·panel interview· 7:01–14:2517:50The famous-yet-unknown deal that changed everythingAl Elliott: So let's look at one of the, one of the, probably one of the most famous and also at the same time not famous, um, acquisitions, which was WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook, now Meta, uh, probably about EP 28 · 1 Mar 2023·panel interview· 17:50–19:4149:48Culture can be measured (Leanne's getting a sign)Leanne Elliott: The cool thing about culture as well is that it can be measured. I understand it might feel a bit intangible. It might feel something that, that's just the way that we do things around here, but culture cEP 28 · 1 Mar 2023·panel interview· 49:48–52:249:07Why personality matters in businessmidroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge): You have? Stephen Short: One of them is still very much in my life right now and is one of my best friends. I think it's a really important relationship to have in the workplace Al Elliott: BEP 26 · 15 Feb 2023·panel interview· 9:07–19:545:09Lessons from sports teams for businessAl Elliott: Yeah, that's a great question, and something I actually talk about fairly often with folks who are managers on my team. I think within sports, there's a lot of clarity around your goals as a team, like what aEP 23 · 25 Jan 2023·other· 5:09–7:1338:54Why we're in this business and the HR parallelAl Elliott: That was brilliant. And I think that, I mean, we have to remember why we're in this business. What are what us entrepreneurs? What are we doing this for? So we're growing our business because yes, of course, EP 23 · 25 Jan 2023·other· 38:54–47:029:25The human story vs. the business realityAl Elliott: As much as it is a human story, we have to remember, and this is what some of the users don't seem to understand, is that Twitter is a business, and it's now a privately held business. I've seen tweets this mEP 12 · 15 Nov 2022·other· 9:25–13:26

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