{"podcast":{"title":"The Reluctant Entrepreneur Podcast","slug":"the-reluctant-entrepreneur-podcast-7049244","podcast_index_feed_id":7049244,"rss_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/show/6346062/episodes/feed","website_url":"https://www.mikekonrad.com","image_url":"https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/0c0e18f8fee88bf987c05cd6e1532a66.jpg","author":"Mike Konrad","episode_count":127,"summary":"I’m your host, Mike Konrad, the author of The Reluctant Entrepreneur - Anatomy of a Business Start-Up - From Uncertainty to Unstoppable, available on Amazon as a paperback, e-book, and an audible book, and I’m excited to share real stories that reveal the many paths people take to build their own businesses. Whether you stumbled into entrepreneurship or you’ve always known it was your calling, this podcast is for you. Let’s start with what it means to be a reluctant entrepreneur. Many entrepreneurs don’t set out with a grand plan to build a business. Maybe you worked for a company that didn’t value your vision, and one day you thought, “I could do this myself”, that was my story. Or maybe life pushed you in an unexpected direction—losing a job, facing a personal crisis, or discovering a passion that grew into a business. Reluctant entrepreneurs often find themselves starting a business not because they always dreamed of it, but because it was the best—or only—option available. And then there are intentional entrepreneurs. These are the people who’ve known from the start that they were meant to create something of their own. They may have planned meticulously, crafted their vision,…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-31T16:18:29.568615+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-reluctant-entrepreneur-podcast-7049244"},"episode":{"title":"EA Clarke on How Founders Get Hiring Wrong -And What to Do Instead","slug":"ea-clarke-on-how-founders-get-hiring-wrong-and-what-to-do-instead","published_at":"2026-06-14T06:10:38+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-reluctant-entrepreneur-podcast-7049244/ea-clarke-on-how-founders-get-hiring-wrong-and-what-to-do-instead","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-reluctant-entrepreneur-podcast-7049244","url":"https://www.spreaker.com/episode/ea-clarke-on-how-founders-get-hiring-wrong-and-what-to-do-instead--72519099","audio_url":"https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72519099/re_87_eac_01.mp3","summary":"Entrepreneurship is often portrayed as a talent problem. Find the right people, build the right team, and everything else falls into place. But what if the real problem isn’t talent at all? What if the problem is that most companies have no idea how to attract the right people in the first place? Because hiring isn’t just a process. It’s a story. And most companies are telling the wrong one. Today’s guest, EA Clarke, has spent more than 30 years inside the recruiting world, not just observing it, but breaking it. As the founder of Pivot + Edge, he’s built a company designed to challenge traditional recruiting by flipping the model entirely, shifting from transactional hiring to a marketing-driven, story-led approach. He’s not just a recruiter. He’s a serial entrepreneur who has built and exited early-stage companies, raised capital, and experienced firsthand what it actually takes to scale a team when you don’t yet have the brand, the systems, or the playbook. In the first part of our conversation, we’ll talk about that journey. The reality of building companies without a roadmap, the hiring mistakes that almost every founder makes, and what he learned the hard way about scaling beyond your immediate network. Then in the second part, we’ll shift to what he’s focused on today. Why traditional hiring is fundamentally broken, how storytelling has become one of the most powerful tools in attracting top talent, and how founders can compete for high-impact people without simply throwing more money at the problem. If you’ve ever struggled to hire the right people, or wondered why great candidates seem just out of reach, this is a conversation that will challenge how you think about building a team. https://www.pivotandedge.com","meta_description":"Entrepreneurship is often portrayed as a talent problem. Find the right people, build the right team, and everything else falls into place. But what if th…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2731,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-reluctant-entrepreneur-podcast-7049244/episodes/ea-clarke-on-how-founders-get-hiring-wrong-and-what-to-do-instead/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-reluctant-entrepreneur-podcast-7049244/ea-clarke-on-how-founders-get-hiring-wrong-and-what-to-do-instead.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}