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:

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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

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

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

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

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,

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

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.

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

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,

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,

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

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.

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,

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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,

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

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

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.