The Prescription - In Conversation

This episode is about risk, decision making, and what actually drives people once money stops being the goal.I’m joined by Ben Perrins, who describes himself not as an entrepreneur, but as a “wingman” to them. He’s spent his career working alongside founders, helping scale businesses, make decisions under pressure, and navigate uncertainty.We talk about the decisions that took him from corporate life into consulting, the moment he took a significant pay cut to back himself, and what it really cost to build something that eventually delivered an eight-figure exit.But the most interesting part of this conversation isn’t the story. It’s how decisions get made, and his observations on the NHSIn Ben’s world, decisions are fast, individual, and based on trade-offs. In mine, they’re made through committees, influence, and shared accountability. That opens up a much bigger question about how we think about risk, certainty, and control in complex systems.We also get into what happens when you reach the thing you thought you were aiming for, and why meaning often replaces money as the real driver over time.If you work in the NHS, or any complex organisation, there’s something here about how you approach decisions, how you handle uncertainty, and what you actually want from your work.Chapters below if you want to jump to a specific part:00:00 Why this conversation matters00:42 The “wingman” mindset05:30 The Ferrari decision10:20 Leaving corporate15:50 The scale-up and the cost of success23:10 Committees vs individuals: how decisions really get made31:50 Why perfect decisions don’t exist38:40 What actually drives us45:50 What this means for you

Hello I'm Ewan Maule, and I'm excited to introduce The Prescription: In Conversation.Like many people who work in NHS I spend most of my time talking to other people who also do. And that can get a bit…samey. So this is an opportunity for me to step outside that. I'm going to be talking to fascinating people who work in very different environments, with different pressures, different incentives, and different ways of getting things done.I’m interested in how they think about risk and reward, how that shapes the decisions they make, and what I can learn from their ways of thinking.Because if we want to be more effective, whether that’s making decisions or influencing them, we probably need to look a bit wider than we usually do.If you want to know more about anything else I’ve been building, please check out the website at theprescription.co.uk.But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy the discussion.