November 10, 2025 • 17 mins
I built my business on conferences and bestselling books — until the world changed and suddenly, none of it worked anymore...
Welcome to Retail Reckoning. I'm Clare Bailey, founder of Retail Champion.
Lockdown forced me to rethink everything. Instead of republishing my old books, I created something that actually fits the way people learn and work now — short, practical Playbooks.
In this episode, I’m sharing how I made that leap, what I learned, and why it’s been the most relevant thing I’ve ever done for modern retailers.
Timestamped summary
00:00 "Discovering Government Tender Opportunities"
05:09 Small Business Owners: Time Struggles
08:13 "Accessible Business Playbook Tools"
10:01 "Playbooks for Business Growth"
13:31 Business Evolution: Bold and Necessary
Mentioned in this episode:
Retail Reckoning Podcast Insights Newsletter
Get Retail Reckoning Podcast Insights and Goodies - https://retailreckoningpodcast.co.uk/newsletter
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Are you going through a bit of a crossroads in your business? Well, I
did too. And in this episode, you can find out what I did and how
I did it.
Let's be honest, the world of business support, like retail itself, has
changed beyond recognition. When I started the Retail Champion, people actually
(00:22):
had time to go to conferences and sit through workshops and even read business
books. Well, that world seems to have gone. So this week I wanted to
talk about how I personally evolved the business business, what I've learned and why
I made the decision not to republish my books, even though I could have done,
and instead to do something that for me feels a hundred times more
relevant to the way people work and learn. Today
(00:55):
owns the floor. So, bit
of a backstory. In 2007, I
launched a conference brand and I'd been running conferences all the way
from 2007 right through to Covid, multiple times
a year for quite a few years. And it was the cash cow. Yes, I
did consultancy along the side and I did speaking events alongside, but this was
(01:17):
what guaranteed the income. And these were events that brought people together
and also helped me build my brand and reputation.
And actually, it was even before COVID that things had started to shift. I could
notice that it was much more difficult to get sponsors to
sign off. It was even difficult to get decision makers who
were free to attend to attend because they were living in
(01:40):
a world of presenteeism and they didn't want to be seen away from their
desks in case they were considered dispensable. Furthermore, it was as
if management wouldn't sign off a train ticket to go to an event where they
might learn and network and benefit. So I was seeing
that the model needed to change anyway.
Covid was what backed me into the corner, though, because it hit and overnight, literally,
(02:03):
I think we were in lockdown six days before I was due to run a
conference overnight. That model, I felt, was done. It's coming
back slowly, but it's just not what it was. So now I'm thinking,
well, I've had to put my event manager on furlough, I've had to refund all
my sponsors, I've had to argue with the venue about getting the
money back from them. And I've basically paid someone for
(02:25):
six months to project manage this event and now I've
refunded all the revenue that has paid that salary. So
I'm in a bit of a pickle because now I'm significantly out of pocket.
So there we go, it's time to pivot
and it was a pivot from conferences and
consultancy to contracts with councils.
(02:46):
I mean, at first I did start looking around, trying to find a bit of
this, trying to find a bit of that. What could I do? And I did
do a few online webinars in replacement of conferences and, you know, they did
bring in some money, but it wasn't a replacement. And that's when I
discovered the government tendering platforms. And I'd never come across
this before because I'd never really had any involvement with public sector, but I quickly
(03:07):
realized that any business, and this is regardless of size, could
register, create a profile and become on the list so that
they'd receive daily alerts for any relevant tenders according to their own
setup. And it kind of opened up a whole new world. It was
in August 2020 I spotted
a tender from one of the councils, it was Sheffield City Council,
(03:29):
for a fund called Reopening the High Street Safely. And that was where it
all began, really. It was all about helping businesses who'd
been forced to close, reopen, navigate, understand
the rules. And if you remember back then, if you were in business back
then, every about three or four weeks, the rules changed. It was, you had
to do this, then you had to do that, then you would hear, 1, 2,
(03:50):
3, closing after 10, eat out to help out. It was
endless and it was so confusing. So part of that
contract was really about walking around Sheffield City with
seven others like me and explaining to the businesses not
only how they could change the way they trade in order to not lose everything,
but how to manage and navigate the chaos and complexity of all the
(04:13):
different lockdown rules. But the point here is it's that one
discovery, that tendering platform, that led me into the world of local authority
business support. And since then, I've worked with oh,
so many. But West Lindsay's a standout. We've been with them five years.
Chichester, Cotswolds and a whole load more. And these contracts have
helped, I would say probably hundreds, if not thousands of businesses.
(04:35):
Generally, they're small, independent high street businesses who could probably have never have
access to the structured business advice before. So
the more I worked with these businesses, the clearer the pattern became.
The retailers, well, large and small, to be fair, these days, were all under
incredible pressure. And particularly fast forwarding to today,
it's the inflation, the rising wage bills, fuel costs,
(04:59):
everything, really, utilities. So what was happening, they were
having to either cut staff hours or put prices up. And what
that meant was where they were cutting staff hours. The owners and
operators of the smaller business was walking more hours in the business
rather than on the business. And this made them even more
time poor than they ever were before.
(05:21):
So when a well meaning local authority, chamber of commerce, federation of small
businesses or similar pops along and says lets run an event to help
businesses. We'll do a breakfast, a networking session and you sort
of, you smile at them politely and think yeah, no one's going to turn
up. You might get the occasional high street solicitor or accountant
because they can close the office and they're not
(05:44):
required to be there for that in and out consumption. But shop
owners, cafe operators, bar managers, they're not going to turn
up. If they're not in the business. They're probably at home catching up on the
accounts or potentially out on a buying trip negotiating with
suppliers or even God forbid, trying to grab a
bit of their life back. What I realized was that they didn't have the
(06:05):
time or the bandwidth for, I guess I'd call it
invasive support. At the same time I noticed that
lots of one to many training programs just weren't cutting it. They were
too generic. Every single business I met pretty much has different skill
sets, personalities, background knowledge and
appetite for things. So you know, some want to know how to run a
(06:27):
range review, but others needs a 20 minute Zoom call to sort out a Facebook
issue. And there is no one size fits all. Certainly four
hours in a room being told how to do social media when really all you
want to do is understand TikTok is not a good use of your time.
So that led to the hybrid model. It was
(06:48):
one to one. They need it when it's quick, when it's specific
and personal. And then it was also backed up by what I
call evergreen content. And that's where the idea for
Playbooks, mini videos about five minutes long and
downloadable templates that they can use to actually turn the learning into action
became my focus. And
(07:10):
these are things that businesses could dip in and out of anytime
when they had the time. And it was reusable tools
to guide them, not just training. So I guess this
was when I had the light bulb moment because simultaneous to that my
books had come out of contract and out of print. They were
Originally published in 2012 and 2013, so it's quite reasonable that that
(07:33):
would happen. And I spoke to the publisher and they were quite
eager to do a second edition. Now okay, they're both
about 70,000 words. It wouldn't have taken me that long to update
them because I know the content inside out. I mean I wrote it. But I
realized something I've long since stopped reading books.
I can't remember the last book I did read, so if I don't,
(07:55):
why would I expect anybody else to? And then I thought about my Gen Z
kids. They consume everything in low
attention span, bite sized chunks, whether it's a blog
or guides, short videos. They're looking for quick wins,
quick learnings, moments of inspiration, and then they move on to the next thing.
It's that doom scrolling generation. But I do think that
(08:17):
that's how the world learns now. And if it applies to me as well,
then it must apply to a huge amount of my audience. Why
republish two books totaling, you know,
140,000 words plus when I could take all the best
bits, make them relevant to today and make them
more live and accessible. But also since then
(08:39):
I've grown my team. So rather than me being on my own, I could
tap into the expertise of my team as well and really turn this into
something that lots of businesses could benefit from. So that's
where the idea of creating many playbooks
was born. And this is going to be things like 18, 10 pages packed
with checklists, examples, templates, calculations for
(09:02):
things if necessary, backed up by videos
like mini webinars, not more than five minutes long and a complete toolkit,
not a textbook. And so that's what I decided to
do and completely revisit what I believed
I should be doing. Because for so many years everybody was telling me
your personal brand depends upon on you having a book. But I'm not really sure
(09:25):
it does anymore these days. So why did I decide to
go down this road?
So why did I decide to go down this road? And why have I
moved away from having books in print that I can take to conferences and
do book signings? Well, for a start, that feels really egotistical.
(09:47):
But also for me it was about businesses having
affordable, flexible access that they could make use
of when it suited them. You know, it's quiet, there's no customers in. I'll have
a quick look at that video. I've got five minutes to have a cup of
tea and have a look at this. That's the sort of thing I feel that
they want, rather than being imposed upon with the
invasive support, as I called it. But moreover, for the
(10:10):
local authorities, business improvement districts, growth hubs and so on,
it helped them extend their reach and impact, potentially
supporting thousands of high street operators without having to pull people off
the shop floor at a time when they can least afford it. And then
more selfishly, for the experts who write these Things, myself, my team.
It's an income stream and maybe even a brand builder for them because if
(10:34):
somebody looks at your playbook and thinks that's brilliant, I want to
call that person and ask for a 20 minute chat and get some advice.
Then I just thought that was a good way to help with their lead generation,
but it was authentic and they'd earned the trust without a large
commitment. And then if somebody did want to pick up the phone,
that was down to them. So, yeah, I'm planning to build my own little e
(10:57):
commerce, add on to the website to host and sell playbooks. You can
watch this space. Thing is, for me though, everyone's a
winner. The team's going to earn something. The user's getting practical and
reusable tools, the model's scalable and sustainable, it's future
proofed and, you know, maybe in another 10 years that will be out
of date. Just like what I think business books are right now,
(11:20):
on the same vein, evolving and moving away from this
and towards that and learning as you go. Evolution is something that
I feel any business doesn't just happen once. So for me, in
2020 with COVID the big pivot conferences are gone. What
on earth am I going to do by 2022? I
did a modest brand refresh, so I updated
(11:43):
the logo, just made it look a bit more modern, updated the website
and increased the focus on the business support and the bigger team because in
those last two years so much had changed. But by
2025, I went all in. Oh,
and this is not for the faint hearted. I did a complete
brand overhaul, a brand strategy, which is a
(12:05):
very emotional process, I might add, followed by
the visual identity and design strategy,
marketing and literally rebuilt everything from the ground
up. And actually that's when retail reckoning concept was born
too. It's a big investment and it takes a certain
level of bold and brave to do it, but I felt that
(12:27):
if I didn't do it, do it, I just end up looking old
and tired. I mean, I do want to look in the mirror anyway. But in
terms of business as well, I was lucky. I had a little
bit of a nest egg that I'd managed to set aside that gave me breathing
space. So yeah, it was still a massive leap and still a
massive risk. And I think that always doing stuff like this,
(12:49):
whether it's for your own business or even for a client, can be quite scary
because, you know, that's my livelihood or their livelihood in my hands.
But I kept saying to my team and my friends, this has Got to work.
This is such a big investment. And they calmly reassured
me, well, so far so good. I must say
I've worked with some of the best people for this kind of project and
(13:12):
what I also felt was important that I work with my own team because I'm
going to recommend these guys to a client. I've got to be able to hold
my hand up and say they've done all this for me too. So I have
absolute trust that they can do what I say they can do. So I
mean the list is Danny's brand strategy, Zoe visual identity, Kim
marketing strategy, Steph. Part one was copy content and SEO
(13:34):
for the new site. Jay did the technical build Front Sisters
Consumer Facing Socials. We're doing a B2B trial on Pinterest
and we've got plans to if I'm ever brave enough to show my face
on camera, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. Then Steph
Mark 2, she's back on the list but now she's doing all the blogging and
the LinkedIn, maintaining the SEO and then most recently
(13:56):
Neil supporting this podcast to round it all off. I mean,
in a short space of time, I'd say since relaunching this summer and launching the
podcast in September, I have seen a positive increase
in leads, better quality inquiries and stronger speaking
opportunities. So I would say evolution has to be baked
into your business plans and be brave and be
(14:18):
bold because who knows, in three years time or even less, if the market
shifts again, I'll have to do it all again. I don't want to go the
way of the dinosaurs, but at least what I've learned is how to do
it. So on reflection, and I guess Darwin
already knew this, evolution isn't a one off project, it's
an essential necessity and it's a mindset you can't hang on to.
(14:40):
Well, this is what we've always done and what used to work because what used
to work in the past doesn't necessarily work today.
You have to build what works now and also think to the future and how
things are changing faster than ever before and be ready to
rebuild again later. Maybe even set aside a little
budget every couple of months to say, right, that's going
(15:03):
towards the fact that I know to in a couple of years or maybe even
less, I might have to pivot and do things differently. And I
think that it's not just about survival, it is about absolute
relevance and offering something useful and meaningful and
staying ahead of the curve and rather than trying to play
catch up. So I guess if you take one message from this episode,
(15:25):
let it be, be brave. Whether that means changing your
business model, designing a new offer, culling
old stock that you've got a sentimental attachment to, but it doesn't make you any
money. Making a leap to jump into products maybe you've not
dealt with before, reinventing the brand. I think it's
important not to wait until you're forced to. Covid forced
(15:48):
me to think differently, but I guess it did with everybody. But
if we plan ahead, then we can be prepared, because
evolution is all about growth and relevance. And if
you approach it with a sort of humility,
honesty and that bravery, then you'll get
incredible rewards. So that's just a little bit of my
(16:10):
story. I'm Claire Bailey, the retail champion, and this has been
retail reckoning. Yeah, retail
reckoning. Retail reckoning.
No space for Dusty Shell goes.
Are you going through a bit of a crossroads in your business? Well, I
did too. And in this episode, you can find out what I did and how
I did it.
Let's be honest, the world of business support, like retail itself, has
changed beyond recognition. When I started the Retail Champion, people actually
(00:22):
had time to go to conferences and sit through workshops and even read business
books. Well, that world seems to have gone. So this week I wanted to
talk about how I personally evolved the business business, what I've learned and why
I made the decision not to republish my books, even though I could have done,
and instead to do something that for me feels a hundred times more
relevant to the way people work and learn. Today
(00:55):
owns the floor. So, bit
of a backstory. In 2007, I
launched a conference brand and I'd been running conferences all the way
from 2007 right through to Covid, multiple times
a year for quite a few years. And it was the cash cow. Yes, I
did consultancy along the side and I did speaking events alongside, but this was
(01:17):
what guaranteed the income. And these were events that brought people together
and also helped me build my brand and reputation.
And actually, it was even before COVID that things had started to shift. I could
notice that it was much more difficult to get sponsors to
sign off. It was even difficult to get decision makers who
were free to attend to attend because they were living in
(01:40):
a world of presenteeism and they didn't want to be seen away from their
desks in case they were considered dispensable. Furthermore, it was as
if management wouldn't sign off a train ticket to go to an event where they
might learn and network and benefit. So I was seeing
that the model needed to change anyway.
Covid was what backed me into the corner, though, because it hit and overnight, literally,
(02:03):
I think we were in lockdown six days before I was due to run a
conference overnight. That model, I felt, was done. It's coming
back slowly, but it's just not what it was. So now I'm thinking,
well, I've had to put my event manager on furlough, I've had to refund all
my sponsors, I've had to argue with the venue about getting the
money back from them. And I've basically paid someone for
(02:25):
six months to project manage this event and now I've
refunded all the revenue that has paid that salary. So
I'm in a bit of a pickle because now I'm significantly out of pocket.
So there we go, it's time to pivot
and it was a pivot from conferences and
consultancy to contracts with councils.
(02:46):
I mean, at first I did start looking around, trying to find a bit of
this, trying to find a bit of that. What could I do? And I did
do a few online webinars in replacement of conferences and, you know, they did
bring in some money, but it wasn't a replacement. And that's when I
discovered the government tendering platforms. And I'd never come across
this before because I'd never really had any involvement with public sector, but I quickly
(03:07):
realized that any business, and this is regardless of size, could
register, create a profile and become on the list so that
they'd receive daily alerts for any relevant tenders according to their own
setup. And it kind of opened up a whole new world. It was
in August 2020 I spotted
a tender from one of the councils, it was Sheffield City Council,
(03:29):
for a fund called Reopening the High Street Safely. And that was where it
all began, really. It was all about helping businesses who'd
been forced to close, reopen, navigate, understand
the rules. And if you remember back then, if you were in business back
then, every about three or four weeks, the rules changed. It was, you had
to do this, then you had to do that, then you would hear, 1, 2,
(03:50):
3, closing after 10, eat out to help out. It was
endless and it was so confusing. So part of that
contract was really about walking around Sheffield City with
seven others like me and explaining to the businesses not
only how they could change the way they trade in order to not lose everything,
but how to manage and navigate the chaos and complexity of all the
(04:13):
different lockdown rules. But the point here is it's that one
discovery, that tendering platform, that led me into the world of local authority
business support. And since then, I've worked with oh,
so many. But West Lindsay's a standout. We've been with them five years.
Chichester, Cotswolds and a whole load more. And these contracts have
helped, I would say probably hundreds, if not thousands of businesses.
(04:35):
Generally, they're small, independent high street businesses who could probably have never have
access to the structured business advice before. So
the more I worked with these businesses, the clearer the pattern became.
The retailers, well, large and small, to be fair, these days, were all under
incredible pressure. And particularly fast forwarding to today,
it's the inflation, the rising wage bills, fuel costs,
(04:59):
everything, really, utilities. So what was happening, they were
having to either cut staff hours or put prices up. And what
that meant was where they were cutting staff hours. The owners and
operators of the smaller business was walking more hours in the business
rather than on the business. And this made them even more
time poor than they ever were before.
(05:21):
So when a well meaning local authority, chamber of commerce, federation of small
businesses or similar pops along and says lets run an event to help
businesses. We'll do a breakfast, a networking session and you sort
of, you smile at them politely and think yeah, no one's going to turn
up. You might get the occasional high street solicitor or accountant
because they can close the office and they're not
(05:44):
required to be there for that in and out consumption. But shop
owners, cafe operators, bar managers, they're not going to turn
up. If they're not in the business. They're probably at home catching up on the
accounts or potentially out on a buying trip negotiating with
suppliers or even God forbid, trying to grab a
bit of their life back. What I realized was that they didn't have the
(06:05):
time or the bandwidth for, I guess I'd call it
invasive support. At the same time I noticed that
lots of one to many training programs just weren't cutting it. They were
too generic. Every single business I met pretty much has different skill
sets, personalities, background knowledge and
appetite for things. So you know, some want to know how to run a
(06:27):
range review, but others needs a 20 minute Zoom call to sort out a Facebook
issue. And there is no one size fits all. Certainly four
hours in a room being told how to do social media when really all you
want to do is understand TikTok is not a good use of your time.
So that led to the hybrid model. It was
(06:48):
one to one. They need it when it's quick, when it's specific
and personal. And then it was also backed up by what I
call evergreen content. And that's where the idea for
Playbooks, mini videos about five minutes long and
downloadable templates that they can use to actually turn the learning into action
became my focus. And
(07:10):
these are things that businesses could dip in and out of anytime
when they had the time. And it was reusable tools
to guide them, not just training. So I guess this
was when I had the light bulb moment because simultaneous to that my
books had come out of contract and out of print. They were
Originally published in 2012 and 2013, so it's quite reasonable that that
(07:33):
would happen. And I spoke to the publisher and they were quite
eager to do a second edition. Now okay, they're both
about 70,000 words. It wouldn't have taken me that long to update
them because I know the content inside out. I mean I wrote it. But I
realized something I've long since stopped reading books.
I can't remember the last book I did read, so if I don't,
(07:55):
why would I expect anybody else to? And then I thought about my Gen Z
kids. They consume everything in low
attention span, bite sized chunks, whether it's a blog
or guides, short videos. They're looking for quick wins,
quick learnings, moments of inspiration, and then they move on to the next thing.
It's that doom scrolling generation. But I do think that
(08:17):
that's how the world learns now. And if it applies to me as well,
then it must apply to a huge amount of my audience. Why
republish two books totaling, you know,
140,000 words plus when I could take all the best
bits, make them relevant to today and make them
more live and accessible. But also since then
(08:39):
I've grown my team. So rather than me being on my own, I could
tap into the expertise of my team as well and really turn this into
something that lots of businesses could benefit from. So that's
where the idea of creating many playbooks
was born. And this is going to be things like 18, 10 pages packed
with checklists, examples, templates, calculations for
(09:02):
things if necessary, backed up by videos
like mini webinars, not more than five minutes long and a complete toolkit,
not a textbook. And so that's what I decided to
do and completely revisit what I believed
I should be doing. Because for so many years everybody was telling me
your personal brand depends upon on you having a book. But I'm not really sure
(09:25):
it does anymore these days. So why did I decide to
go down this road?
So why did I decide to go down this road? And why have I
moved away from having books in print that I can take to conferences and
do book signings? Well, for a start, that feels really egotistical.
(09:47):
But also for me it was about businesses having
affordable, flexible access that they could make use
of when it suited them. You know, it's quiet, there's no customers in. I'll have
a quick look at that video. I've got five minutes to have a cup of
tea and have a look at this. That's the sort of thing I feel that
they want, rather than being imposed upon with the
invasive support, as I called it. But moreover, for the
(10:10):
local authorities, business improvement districts, growth hubs and so on,
it helped them extend their reach and impact, potentially
supporting thousands of high street operators without having to pull people off
the shop floor at a time when they can least afford it. And then
more selfishly, for the experts who write these Things, myself, my team.
It's an income stream and maybe even a brand builder for them because if
(10:34):
somebody looks at your playbook and thinks that's brilliant, I want to
call that person and ask for a 20 minute chat and get some advice.
Then I just thought that was a good way to help with their lead generation,
but it was authentic and they'd earned the trust without a large
commitment. And then if somebody did want to pick up the phone,
that was down to them. So, yeah, I'm planning to build my own little e
(10:57):
commerce, add on to the website to host and sell playbooks. You can
watch this space. Thing is, for me though, everyone's a
winner. The team's going to earn something. The user's getting practical and
reusable tools, the model's scalable and sustainable, it's future
proofed and, you know, maybe in another 10 years that will be out
of date. Just like what I think business books are right now,
(11:20):
on the same vein, evolving and moving away from this
and towards that and learning as you go. Evolution is something that
I feel any business doesn't just happen once. So for me, in
2020 with COVID the big pivot conferences are gone. What
on earth am I going to do by 2022? I
did a modest brand refresh, so I updated
(11:43):
the logo, just made it look a bit more modern, updated the website
and increased the focus on the business support and the bigger team because in
those last two years so much had changed. But by
2025, I went all in. Oh,
and this is not for the faint hearted. I did a complete
brand overhaul, a brand strategy, which is a
(12:05):
very emotional process, I might add, followed by
the visual identity and design strategy,
marketing and literally rebuilt everything from the ground
up. And actually that's when retail reckoning concept was born
too. It's a big investment and it takes a certain
level of bold and brave to do it, but I felt that
(12:27):
if I didn't do it, do it, I just end up looking old
and tired. I mean, I do want to look in the mirror anyway. But in
terms of business as well, I was lucky. I had a little
bit of a nest egg that I'd managed to set aside that gave me breathing
space. So yeah, it was still a massive leap and still a
massive risk. And I think that always doing stuff like this,
(12:49):
whether it's for your own business or even for a client, can be quite scary
because, you know, that's my livelihood or their livelihood in my hands.
But I kept saying to my team and my friends, this has Got to work.
This is such a big investment. And they calmly reassured
me, well, so far so good. I must say
I've worked with some of the best people for this kind of project and
(13:12):
what I also felt was important that I work with my own team because I'm
going to recommend these guys to a client. I've got to be able to hold
my hand up and say they've done all this for me too. So I have
absolute trust that they can do what I say they can do. So I
mean the list is Danny's brand strategy, Zoe visual identity, Kim
marketing strategy, Steph. Part one was copy content and SEO
(13:34):
for the new site. Jay did the technical build Front Sisters
Consumer Facing Socials. We're doing a B2B trial on Pinterest
and we've got plans to if I'm ever brave enough to show my face
on camera, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. Then Steph
Mark 2, she's back on the list but now she's doing all the blogging and
the LinkedIn, maintaining the SEO and then most recently
(13:56):
Neil supporting this podcast to round it all off. I mean,
in a short space of time, I'd say since relaunching this summer and launching the
podcast in September, I have seen a positive increase
in leads, better quality inquiries and stronger speaking
opportunities. So I would say evolution has to be baked
into your business plans and be brave and be
(14:18):
bold because who knows, in three years time or even less, if the market
shifts again, I'll have to do it all again. I don't want to go the
way of the dinosaurs, but at least what I've learned is how to do
it. So on reflection, and I guess Darwin
already knew this, evolution isn't a one off project, it's
an essential necessity and it's a mindset you can't hang on to.
(14:40):
Well, this is what we've always done and what used to work because what used
to work in the past doesn't necessarily work today.
You have to build what works now and also think to the future and how
things are changing faster than ever before and be ready to
rebuild again later. Maybe even set aside a little
budget every couple of months to say, right, that's going
(15:03):
towards the fact that I know to in a couple of years or maybe even
less, I might have to pivot and do things differently. And I
think that it's not just about survival, it is about absolute
relevance and offering something useful and meaningful and
staying ahead of the curve and rather than trying to play
catch up. So I guess if you take one message from this episode,
(15:25):
let it be, be brave. Whether that means changing your
business model, designing a new offer, culling
old stock that you've got a sentimental attachment to, but it doesn't make you any
money. Making a leap to jump into products maybe you've not
dealt with before, reinventing the brand. I think it's
important not to wait until you're forced to. Covid forced
(15:48):
me to think differently, but I guess it did with everybody. But
if we plan ahead, then we can be prepared, because
evolution is all about growth and relevance. And if
you approach it with a sort of humility,
honesty and that bravery, then you'll get
incredible rewards. So that's just a little bit of my
(16:10):
story. I'm Claire Bailey, the retail champion, and this has been
retail reckoning. Yeah, retail
reckoning. Retail reckoning.
No space for Dusty Shell goes.
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