Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading irreverent podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate b*llshit.
Join Chris Norton and Will Ockenden, founders of the award-winning Prohibition PR, as they sit down with industry leaders to dissect the career-ending f*ck-ups they’d rather forget. The show moves past any pretty vanity metrics to uncover the brutal, honest truths behind marketing disasters, from £30,000 SEO black holes and completely failed companies, to social media crises that went globally viral for all the wrong reasons.
We don't just celebrate the f*ck-ups; we extract the tactical blueprints you need to avoid them yourself. If you are a business owner, or a CMO looking for a competitive advantage that only comes from real-world experience, this is your weekly masterclass in resilience and strategy.
- Listen for: Raw stories from top brands, ex-McKinsey strategists, and industry disruptors.
- Learn from: The errors that cost thousands and the recoveries that saved careers.
- Get ahead by: Turning other people's nasty disasters into your unfair market advantage.
If you have a story to tell and would like to appear on the show, tell us your biggest marketing mistake and drop us a line.
Embracing Marketing Mistakes
The Costly Hiring Habit That Nearly Broke Sarah Clay’s Business
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Ever hired someone just because you clicked with them? You are not alone. In this candid episode, our guest admits to recruiting based on personality instead of business needs. The result was duplicate roles, major skill gaps, and tough decisions that still sting years later.
From letting go of an “amazing assistant” before the pandemic, a decision they still regret, to realizing the need for complementary skills over similar personalities, this is an honest look at one of entrepreneurship’s most common and costly mistakes.
The turning point came when they recognized the problem and invested in professional hiring help, creating stronger and more balanced teams. Whether you are making your first hire or managing a growing company, this episode offers lessons that can help you avoid the same pitfalls.
Is your strategy still right in 2026? Book a free 15-min no obligation discovery call with our host: 👉 [Book your call with Chris now] 👈
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Hiring Mistakes Introduction
Speaker 1We talk a lot about mistakes on this podcast and I'm sure you've made a few in your time, especially LinkedIn's all about testing and making mistakes anyway, but you said that yours was about hiring and firing at the wrong times. Do you want to explain a little bit about what you've had with that?
Speaker 2Constant. It's been a constant problem for me. It's been a constant problem for me. My, I think my problem is well, I know what my problem has been because it's now all changing, because I've got I've got help, which is what I needed. I hire people I like and I think, right, I like you, um, you're funny or interesting or whatever, let's get you into the business and see what you can do here and maybe in a bigger organization that could work, where you've got space and time and money for people to move around.
Speaker 2But you know, I found at one point I had two fabulous employees. Oh my gosh, they were just brilliant. I loved both of them, but they were both doing exactly the same job and I had a big hole in my business that nobody was doing because neither of them wanted to do it and neither of them were really capable. They didn't really have the skill set. So I thought, right, I've got to get rid of one of you. And that was horrible. Actually, that wasn't a nice thing to have to do, but you know, we did it.
Learning From Past Hiring Errors
Speaker 2But I did have early days, very early days. I had this amazing assistant, and this was before lockdown. She used to come here three days a week, sit at my other desk over there and we were great together and I let her go. And I still look back and think why let her go? And I still look back and think why did I do that? Why did I let that amazing person go? She's now gone on to do some incredible things. So, yeah, hiring people has been my weak spot and, as I say, I now have invested a bit of money in getting somebody to help me with that and actually not just hire people who are like me, because I need people who are not like me, and I think a lot of people actually made that mistake. Oh yeah, they're great, we really like them, and they say that they're good at this thing. That person comes into the business and actually they're not great at that thing, but they're good at something else or or whatever. But it's really looking at the skill set of the people rather than their personalities. So
