FOUNDER #14. £200M LoveFilm Sale to Jeff Bezos’s Amazon - Simon Morris

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1:41What was your drug of choice back then? Just explain Blockbuster, Netflix, Love Film. If you wanted to watch a film, there was no streaming. platform you would go to a shop on the high street and you would hire a dvd you'd pay an amount of money and you'd have to bring it back by you know 24 hours if you didn't you got fined it didn't have range or selection it didn't have convenience and it didn't have value we came in with a business model sent dvds by post really sticking it to blockbuster what year did you do the deal with amazon vested in 2008 and then they bought the business outright 200 million 200 million you probably were partying hard all the way through the 90s to 2001.

2:23Yeah. What was the point when you hit rock bottom? Very quickly things sort of fell apart. What was your drug of choice back then? Very quickly cocaine and then very quickly lots of it. The most amount of cocaine you've done in one hit? I can't believe this could come back to hold me. Grams. Grams. Yeah, in one day. Oh God. And, uh... Hey people, I'm Dodge, host of The Founder Show. I've been an entrepreneur all my life, and over the last three decades, I've founded five businesses in the world of media, festivals, sport, tech, live events, and I've been lucky enough to have sold two of them. I promise this isn't your normal, boring, fluffy business podcast.

3:02This is real and raw with a lot of emotion. I'll delve deep into the guests' minds on the risks and rollercoaster journey of being an entrepreneur. I hope you enjoy. I was the marketing director of Sega when it launched in this country. That went massive, didn't it? It's still the biggest software sales in one day, Sonic Tuesday, when the 16-bit came out. So I did 8-bit, 16-bit, CD, Game Gear, Formula One, we just went to Damon Hill and he became world champion. Unbelievable, from a standing start to 80 % market share against an incumbent business, which was Nintendo. Simply, I mean, we can come back to that.

3:44Yeah, that was fascinating. How we had a blank piece of paper, we knew what we were going to do, and we executed on it. And then we set out with a vision, went for it, and overachieved on it. From there, you know, I don't think I've ever had an interview in my life. So from there, I got headhunted to go to Sky. So I was working in the rock and roll years of B-Sky B. What were we talking about for years? We were talking in the 90s. 94 to 96. Yeah. So I was working for Sam Chisholm and ultimately for Rupert Murdoch when Sky was very aggressively taking on the institutions of British television. And then from there, I was friends with Chris Evans from when he came down when I was at Sega.

4:31I used to get him to do stuff. We became pals. And so I ended up running his television business, TFI Friday. I used to be the bloke who knows what's going on on TFI. That went massive as well, wasn't it? TFI. Ginger TV. We had our finger on the podcast. Everyone, Friday night, you would either watch the five o 'clock show, which was slightly delayed because people went after, what's his name from Happy Mondays was swearing on TFI. We had to delay the start bit. So we started at 4.45. It went on air at five and then they repeated it. at all but everyone used to come in from the pub that's why i'm watching that's right that was that was before you know people could replay it and stream it and what have you but it was an appointment to view and we had our finger on the pulse but i knew that i wanted to um move into disruptive digital content and so i had got through a a very strange connection i got to know mike lynch who um um you'll know from that tragic disaster last year and uh bayesian yacht he was um you know he was a genius and uh i went to work for him in cambridge cambridge neuroscience park launching a brand called autonomy which was so far ahead of its time but at the same time i was running ginger crazy crazy crazy so ginger tv was that owned by chris evans yeah okay yeah and we the radio one breakfast show later on the virgin radio show tfi friday and a number of other shows as well and then i was sort of double jobbing a double duty working on this um launch of a disruptive large data mining software bank called autonomy um and then i wanted to do i wanted ginger to become a disruptive publisher for long story lots of different reasons you know you playing god laughs how that ended up was i ended up working with dan thompson and danny kelly the broadcaster and we created football 365 and then very quickly football 365 music 365 i think we even did gardening 365 the big one was cricket in quick info 365 we launched that went home came back in the morning and we had quarter of a million users and across you know cricket from the from india pakistan and northern america the the sort of expat community as pro that was over there we had suddenly had a global business as well um so was it a group 365 and within that group you had football you had your 35 was the brand okay did sports music and who was who were the owners of that me dan thompson danny kelly some early investors guy called um David Tabazal, who's been a sort of crazy investor angel of mine throughout my career.

7:35You know, early days was venture capital. Yeah. And then within, I think within four years, we floated that. We did an IPO. We were. Just to listen to that, an IPO? IPO is when you float, when you take a private company and you launch it on the stock market. So suddenly very, very grown up. So we had the Queen's Banker, I think it was a company called Casanova, taking this motley crew of startup rebels who were taking on, you know. Taking on the big boys, yeah. The big boys, the publishers of the world laughed at us when that happened. But, you know, it's shades of, it echoes of today and the podcasting and the digital world because, yeah, we just, we took on the Nat Mags and the Condé Nasts and the News Internationals and the established world order of publishing was suddenly turned on its head.

8:34And, you know, we did premium rate phone revenue off the back of the phone. The 0899 ones and what, pound a minute type thing? We were the only dot-com company that was making a profit. So just to roll this back then, so Football 365 was launched in what year? 96. 96. And roughly how old were you being then? Mid-30s. Mid-30s. And what gap in the market did you see? That I could see so clearly, as could Dan Thompson, David Tabers, all the people that were around us, that paper and ink, chopping down trees, you know, paying vast swathes of journalists to create this thing that goes out, you know, published, goes on a truck, goes to news agents, you buy it, read it, and then they start wiping on the next one.

9:22We could see the immediacy and the cost benefit and the, we always just say more is more. You create the homepage of Football 365 and you distribute that, You distribute that to 10 customers when we started, you know, pretty shortly, 100 ,000, pretty shortly after that, a million, pretty shortly after that, 10 million, 100 million. More is more in digital. And we were young enough and ambitious enough to just be able to see that more is more and that we had a right to an interest and a belief and an experience. experience that we had a right to go and create a publishing empire off the back of this new technology but i was i also say i i've just had the fortune to come across great mentors in my life you know sir john hegarty god bless him this this country's best advertising create the world's best advertising creative heart very difficult to argue that he isn't one of the all-time great he said he took me under his wing when i was 24 25 he when i said i was going to go and do this publishing digital publishing thing he encouraged me he he was he has always encouraged me and kept me on the straight and narrow and kept and kept my held my feet to the held me accountable but encouraged me to push myself.

10:51That's a key word there, holding someone accountable. Yeah. Like people kind of sort of brush over that, but that is the strongest thing someone can do as a mentor. How much older was he than you? He was, he's about 20 years older than me. And it wasn't a paid mentor, it was just someone who took you under his wing and you liked him, he liked you, and he's giving you good advice. I love him. I love him. I but I that's lovely to hear by the way yeah yeah of course it is because it's important that these people are mentioned because as entrepreneurs we don't get to where we get to by ourselves like people think entrepreneur it's a one man a one man band you're on your own I can't do what I can't do what I do here without having brilliant people around me I can't run a festival without having a brilliant team around me like you can be the front man yeah of course yeah I also think I I I liken it to I love a visual metaphor or an analogy you know if you're on if you're going somewhere if you've got that drive got that fire in your belly it's like walking down a corridor of of of rooms and you're knocking on the door and you're trying to get someone to open that door and listen to you and so you can put your foot in the door and you're waiting for someone to open the door and say come in your way and you know welcome I think what you're doing is a good idea i have found that you've got the drive and you've got the energy you're running down that corridor you're banging on doors and you're trying to get someone to listen you're trying to get some traction very often the door that you didn't expect to open might open up suddenly behind you and somebody else might be there and somebody else might give you a chance or half a chance or some support or some financial support or some spiritual support or some emotional or whatever it is or open some other business doors for you but i've found that i've had a direction of travel driven by my need from an early age to succeed in business and do things and make things and create and disrupt and i've found that as i've gone on that journey these people have just popped up along the way like Sir John Hegarty like Mike Lynch you know Mike Lynch was make no bones about it I think even in the 90s they were calling him the Bill Gates of the UK yeah he was up there and I've worked and been around some super smart people from Sega was actually a Virgin company you know that people forget that was it Virgin was it I did not know that yeah my employer I worked for virgin and i was the cmo of sega chief marketing officer for sega yeah so i was part of the virgin crew which was you know robert devereau branson's brother-in-law the early days of the games industry virgin was a big pioneer had the rights to sega in europe why did why people don't relate well i said there might be people that do but i never related virgin with sega and the sonic the Hedgehog.

13:52I never related to that. I just thought it was Sonic and Sega. Did Virgin actually own it? Or did they own the rights to it? Virgin owned the full distribution rights in Europe. In Europe, okay. And sold it back to Sega of Japan in 1994 at the time when Sky had come knocking on the door of myself and my other creative partner. It was a guy called Philip Lay. we were a good team really good and that's the other thing i'd say you know you mentioned individuals in your lives it's if you get a team of people that have got complementary skill sets you know if you if you start a business with your best mate who's exactly the same as you and got exactly the same skills yes yeah it's tough that's tough if you've got people where you've each got your swim lane and it's sort of like a venn diagram you've got complementary skills then you've got the ingredients for a good business a good startup and that that's my experience you know like danny i think of dan thompson at 365 who was you know he was a machine he was uh he was you know really financially driven really measurement driven really metric driven and and he's one of the four he was one of the three oh you got his three founders is there for 365 okay yeah and did you all split uh functionality yeah functionality but you're 33 33 percent each until you got vc did you go for vc money in early doors uh no we went for angel investment you went away why did you go out of interest why did you go for angel investment and how long did it take you to get to a point to say we need angel investment i think um well i had i'd had my experience with autonomy and i'd seen what mike lynch had done he'd raised money from a company called enic they ended up owning tottenham hotspur daniel levy yeah okay yeah um Apex, which was a sort of blue blood premium VC.

15:51So that was my introduction to VC. Our experience with 365 as founders was to find good angels that would give us the money and give us the flexibility to execute on a business plan. Sometimes venture capital can be early or can be too much of a shackle on a business. and it can be punitive and you can struggle with it. My experience and my path has always been friends and family, you know, individuals, family office, angels, early, protect them into the next stage, which is venture capital probably. And then you've got options after that, which range from, as we did in 365, a full listing, full stock market listing, how grown up was that couldn't believe it yeah yeah yeah but just at that point now that's interesting especially for the listeners who work on this journey or start up building something how much investment did you raise from angels not friends and family and getting bits of hearing but actually the angels do you remember how much you actually got from them I can't roughly I remember thinking the first million yeah so we all put money in yeah you know we all sold just to get it up and running silver and you know as you do as you do and um uh i think the first big raise was a million quid and in what year we're talking here mid-1996 96 okay that's a lot of money nobody else was doing there was there was last minute.com yeah you know there were a few there was a fashion brand i think around that sort of spectacularly crashed they were pirate bay do you remember then ripping files and what have you this was the wild west of dot com um but i'd seen what mike lynch was doing i'd seen what mike lynch had done at autonomy and how fast and grown up and how obsessed with scale he was and we'll come back to that yeah scale scale is key remind me yeah 100 you know it's amazon where i ended up at the sort of tail end of my career so you ended up but we'll go we'll go we'll go on to amazon i mean you ended up at work selling another company to amazon and then you worked for amazon as the 10 years as the chief chief creative officer the first one fantastic the first one i know not bad not bad for a boy from south london who has had and we're going to come to the world who's had a colorful life along the way very colorful um uh you know i'm i'm sure you are but that journey there from 96 to 2000 i'm really intrigued just on that journey for this conversation now for people watching or listening who are building and scaling and looking to looking to get investment or private equity or angels just explain your thoughts on getting an angel from your experience versus getting vc money venture capitalist money the difference yeah um the there are less strings with an angel but you want the right angel you ideally want someone who's going to bring experience contacts be a rainmaker i always think of people are people's contribution to a business are they running the business there there is a great expression finders binders and minders and i always classify people in business employees partners investors finders binders minders finders put apples together with oranges and come up with gold yeah um binders pull the thing together minders once it's built they keep the thing on the track yeah i'm a finder binder i know that and i'm a terrible minder and it took me a long time to not only realize that i'm a terrible minder but also to respect the minders i used to i think i used to disrespect the minders or or diminish their are you saying are you saying the minders are more like the operators of the business yeah they keep the trains on the track They do the booking.

20:00They make sure people turn up. They make sure the bills are paid. They make sure they deal with HMRC. They make, you know. All that stuff that you and I don't deal with. That swivel-eyed loom creative, big ideas, make it happen kind of a role. But any entrepreneur, like when I mentor entrepreneurs, it's like concentrate on this brand, concentrate on the sales, concentrate on the marketing, concentrate on the socials, concentrate. Let someone else operate your business. Because what I find is when entrepreneurs go into business, they started off doing sales and marketing and being the face of it and the front of it they only get caught in the operations and then the sales and marketing so often happens i've always gone in business going i know my lane i'm rubbish at that let's get good people in to run that side of it yeah but you do need to be on top of what the mind is you do need to be on top of the business i'm finding out in later life as i've sort of moved to becoming i've gone from being operational executive, C-suite executive, non-exec director, investor, now I'm a chairman.

20:57I can't believe I'm a chairman. Age-kicking him, mate. As a kid, I was always like, the chairman's the one who really knows his stuff, but he's properly old, that one. Sitting in the club with his whiskey and his cigar. I can't believe I'm a chairman. You're a good one, though. Look, I think there are two sorts of chairmen. There are operational and process and compliance, all of which are really important. And then there are the brain maker, the ones that can come up with something, make things happen. And that's where I think my path is going to be. But we'll come back to that. Angels. Angels.

21:34They put in a million quid. What percentage did you give away? I can't remember. Roughly? Too much. Go on. Give me some more. I think we gave away. It must have been a fair amount if they'd given you a mil. Yeah, I think we, I can't remember. I know it was more like, this was the start of the internet. You know, this was before silly valuations. And before silly valuations became correct. Well, we're talking 30 years ago. So anyone listening would be like. I mean, it was a million quid. And my recollection is we gave away 50%. Something like that. And then when you list on the public and you become on the public market and you become traded, you know, the public are buying shares.

22:15Institutions are buying shares. So we went from four years of starting in Dan's kitchen table, writing a business plan, come out with a logo, figuring it out. Four years later, we're doing a public offering, an IPO, a full listing where you then do a roadshow of all of the banks, pension funds, institutions, big investors, and you're trying to get big investors. So you're pitching to them? You're pitching to them. I did 50 pitches in something like, you know, less than a week in London, Paris, Belgium. And how many bit? How many bit of those 50? They all bit. They all saw where you were going with it.

22:59Yeah. Lovely. Yeah. Because we were, we were ironically an internet business that was making money because we'd merged with this premium rate phone company. So the West Ham, you know, premium rate phone was linked, was advertised on our content. Do you remember? I remember that, you know, like all those premium 089 numbers and people would phone for it. You'd get a pound a minute or a pound 50 a minute. I'll just break that little bit down there for me because that brings back good memories. I didn't use the 0898 number type thing for what it was, but I saw it everywhere in the 90s. Just for a listener and anyone watching out there, just explain that business model there.

23:40Um, it was, uh, you, a, the, the sort of deregulation of the phone industry meant that third party operators could, um, have a phone number, run that phone number. they could assign that phone number to a thing to a company to a to whatever and they went if they did everything from adult chat lines to west ham score chat club lines to um cooking tips to whatever to legal um and but that intermediary phone company would charge a premium for that and they would keep the difference between what they charge you what their costs were and what they had to pay to you know the British Telecom or whoever the genius but it was it was and it became sort of much maligned at the end after it got overused on television do you remember yeah that's right on Big Brother and you know what what was the what was the other one X Factor yeah well that's the ring in and people were then what was a three pound a minute and then all of a sudden you were on the phone for five minutes old man it's got 15 that's right it got it got it got overused it got overused so I did so you know we got that angel money and and that's what I would say good angels are great but i would also say good vcs are incredible that's interesting to hear that's refreshing to hear in fact listen on of people in the halls of my my business life there's a bloke called danny rymer at index ventures you know he and i have been together on a journey with Love Film through various mergers and acquisitions and eventually the sale of that business to Amazon.

25:26But he's been involved in lots of other businesses that I've been involved in along the way. And I think, you know, it's hard to find people that would have a bad word to say against him and his brother. So let's go with the Football 365. You built the Football 365. You turned it digital. Yeah. You were making a profit on this business. yeah and then the ipo the ipo'd it and then how long was it until you were out of that business uh me personally quite quickly after that ipo because the the you know stock market crashed and going back to all that childhood stuff and my reasons for doing things i was so driven i um you know had made money on paper had got significant wealth on paper and then a kind a year later than that like 2000 the the the bubble burst as they say that original dot-com bubble burst and the values of these companies just went through the floor so i felt like i'd got to the top of a mountain that i was trying to get to and then when i got there the promised land wasn't quite what i thought and then suddenly it got taken away from me and that's where my part my life took a very different path you know that's where the addiction and things that my life fell apart pretty quickly after that and it took me you know it took me until 2003 to get right get sober get clean change my life and you know I always tell people um a good a really good friend of my Mark Livingston, who I'd known, we were both 25 years old in the games industry early on.

27:13He was a business partner of mine in various ventures. And he gave me a call and said, look, you should look at this thing called Netflix. Look at this DVD rental business. I think it's going to take off. And another great venture capital investor is a guy called thomas hoag who was putting together what eventually became love film and i got involved in that at the start and and for me it was great you know it was a it was super high fast growth really sticking it to blockbuster do you remember them yeah of course you know and i i just explain just explain blockbuster just explain blockbuster netflix love film for the 12 year olds out there the day if you wanted to watch a film there was no streaming platform you would go to a shop on the high street when it was open nine till eleven you know ten o 'clock at night if you're lucky and you would hire a dvd if they had it vhs first if they had it in stock if you know 10 people hadn't got there before you you'd pay an amount of money and you'd have to bring it back by you know 24 hours if you didn't you got fined unbelievable so it was a very poor customer experience it had very limited range it wasn't um it was neither it didn't have range or selection it didn't have convenience and it didn't have value because you got fined if you bought this back we came in with a business model that sent dvds by post to people at home so we had 75 000 titles by the time we finished imagine what 75 000 title looks like in a shop we had a huge warehouse with millions of discs we were ultra convenient because we were putting them in an envelope we were sending them to dodge dodge opens the envelopes watch the video puts in the envelope sends it back we send another one it's that simple and then it was really good value it was 3.99 a month for capped or you could have unlimited for a bigger amount and that business

29:30transformed really disrupted a business model and and you know blockbuster were this i i look at them as as uh well personally there were there's some some stories in there as well they were personally very rude about us and we met with them in the early days to see if there was something we could do together but you know i'll never forget an executive at blockbuster telling me he'd done his research he had a dossier and he thought a dossier and he thought that the total market for dvd and rental was going to get to 50 000 and i said to him mate i said you know we've you know we've got 75 000 members ourselves and he didn't believe me so we've got 75 000 members including free trialists and it was another rival business doing really well who you know kept that rivals in space creates an energy we ended up merging with them uh we hated them you know there's a guy called alex chesterman who went on to found zoopla and then he went on to found kazoo and another guy william reeve who's a really good friend of mine i we hated each other we were like kids at school on the first day at school you know when you take lovers out of each other but then you end up becoming better yeah um you know two successful multiple companies starting out in a very competitive space looking at what netflix had done in the states eventually merging combining forces to take on blockbuster and netflix wasn't We had beaten Blockbuster by this point.

31:09You know, they went from being market dominant, high street owning, big, big 800 pound gorilla to being bust within a couple of years. It went that quickly. Why? Because we gave consumers range, by which I mean good choice and selection. Made it easy. We gave them convenience and we gave them great value. and those are the three good service those are those that well that's convenient range value convenience if you've got those three things in a consumer offering you're an easy street and that's something that was cemented with with my time at amazon later on down the line you know selection convenience and value on the side of the consumer but here's the thing here's the key thing with with that business i think we were pressing enough to spot the transition from physical dvds to stream okay jill product and we very quickly built the digital player for love film in 2008 and i think if you google um it's about april 2008 we did the world's first download to own and we did it with universal studios it was on a film called king kong i always tell people you know it was the equivalent of do you remember that when powered flight started the Wright brothers and that paper and wooden plane and it flew for about 50 yards and everyone went yeah yeah yeah powered flight yeah it was like that yeah and um you know we we we had this film it took about three hours to download but it doesn't matter it was that was the start of that transition and and usually in my experience when changes come like like in in television when television went from linear broadcasting to satellite broadcasting when games i was in games when games went from physical package good to digital goods when i've been in tv and uh or film into film and television via physical goods to streaming yeah when it happens It usually happens, takes longer than you think to happen.

33:28But when it does happen, it happens quicker. So the floodgates on streaming, it took a while for the industry to change to that. And then when it happened, it happened very quickly. So Love Film was in a place well positioned to transition. By then we had four plus million subscribers. Yeah. So what year did Love Film start? Two thousand. Three. Three. Yeah. And then you built it up for, what, 75 ,000 subscribers, and you built it up. Oh, it went to the hardest bit was the first 25. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. And then we sort of. People to believe in you. And then we cracked a marketing program, which was Member Get Member.

34:13It was so simple. Give your members that are happy with your business a reason to give their friends your business. And that, you know, was a significant boost. So we were in the millions by 2008 and then Amazon invested in Love Film, became a shareholder. So in 2008, Amazon, did you go to Amazon? Did Amazon identify you as like, guys, we could work with these, take it to another level? I know that Mark and I had been to see Amazon in Slough in 2004 when we started the business. Or to throw a few seeds out there. Well, to see, yeah, to see if we could get them to invest, to become a partner and, you know, and they didn't, they turned us down.

35:02And then. Why? I think because they thought. Too early? Too early and they could do it themselves. I don't. And they did. And they built their own DVD rental service within Amazon. but um i think they were the people that that did that deal were smart enough to know that love film had you know the people and the ingredients and it wasn't so much the subscriber base it was the technology that we had in the player the the digital player which ultimately became the player that is prime video today so love film digital became prime video okay and then And Amazon incorporated that service. Packaged that up.

35:47Packaged that up to their prime service. So what year did you do the deal with Amazon? You set it in 2003, got to 2008. When was the deal? They invested in 2008, and then they bought the business outright in 2011. What did they pay in 2008? I think it's on record. I think it's about 200 million. 200 million? Yeah. Quality. I think it was cheap. I think in retrospect that was really cheap yeah I think it was really cheap and then they got me along with the furniture yeah okay so you've done a deal with 200 million in 2008 yeah when did they buy no it was 2011 2011 when did they buy the whole lot yeah that was then oh that was the whole lot okay how much did they invest in the first time I can't remember I can't remember but they did they basically they'll invest we want a piece of the pie we want to see how you all operate we want to see if the team's good we want to see if we can grow it together work together and then we're coming again exactly and and and we they knew they were investing in us acquiring digital content yeah and and the focus was on growing the digital business and that so it was a strategic investment for them and then they fully acquired us in 2011 converted it took a while took longer than you thought you know to change yeah to convert changed it to prime video and then um i became uh i was the cmo a love film into prime video and then i i met another great person in my life guy called neil lindsey who you know i thought i'd leave amazon i just i thought i'm not going to be around for a big company was there an hour now they're saying right okay we're going to buy off you you can carry on working those or you can walk now no they they there was a it was a really you know good deal for the people there wasn't an hour now it was um you know everyone was paid but amazon had been involved in the business for a long so i think they knew everything about the business okay um you know i know now it's common for a lot of entrepreneurs and on an exit um but we didn't have one and uh and so i went to work for amazon i'd like to say with an open mind i think i think i just assumed they would i do i wouldn't have a place in a big company and um And don't forget, I'd had this colorful, colorful life.

38:07I'd lost everything in 2001. I'd gone from probably big bollocks, successful, exited entrepreneur to losing everything. I lost my job, lost my family, lost my health, nearly lost my life. You know, really, really very quickly went from what I thought was success to touch and go. Yeah, okay. um and i'd i'd built things back up and i'd been in love film and you know we'd also done a a few of us had invested in a business called graze which was the snack food i host and then a few of us also invested in a business called tails which was pet food yeah okay so we're like compulsive entrepreneurs and um i didn't think i really had a place at um amazon you know one of one of the things one of the definitions of an addict that is really interesting that i've heard is that an addict sees himself as a uh you know a piece of shit that the world revolves around by which they mean your actual you you may put on a good front yeah and you may you know take on all newcomers but deep down your self loathing and disrespect for yourself is is that is really prescient and um i think i didn't know whether i had a place there and I met people at Amazon who were amazing.

39:45You know, Neil Lindsay. But you were clean at this time when you went to Amazon. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you were clean when you went in 2001. October the 26th, 2001. Okay, before we get to that Amazon, I want to roll a little way back. In your 90s, not your 90s, in the 90s. Yeah, yeah. In the 90s, we all partied hard, right? Yeah. you had chris evans who was partying hard and on tv you probably were partying hard all the way through the 90s to 2001 what was the point when you said well what was the point when you hit rock bottom the point when i well i had i had a long slow rock bottom i was nicked drink driving four and a half times over the drink drive limit um in my flash motor on the Uxbridge Road yeah Porsche yeah and you were in your 30s here yeah yeah and very quickly things sort of fell apart after that were they spiraling out of control for for many years leading up to that no or was there a period when you were partying yeah what's on to a whole new level I think I remember the first time I drank in the morning to get over the night before and I remember the first time that you know casual drug consumption turned into something more there were there was there was some key fork in the road moments that i remember it now looking back on them and um but you know look i'm if there was a if there was an all-time british olympic addict team i'd be you're in it i'd be shooing for okay probably assistant captain you know or or team player manager yeah i'm i'm i'm had it all all for all multiple forms of addiction are we talking food addiction drug addiction sex addiction actually i have never gambled okay because so that's the only one you hadn't had yeah okay you know ocds in particular um i've ADHD, I found out in later life.

41:59We kind of spent an old session on that. I think it can be a superpower. If I declare my interest up front, I think if you've got ADHD, which is compulsive lateral thinking, but you have the ability to hyperfocus, I think it can be a superpower. 100%. It's not a limitation. 100 % superpower. And you can juggle loads. You can juggle 17, 18 things in your mind. Yeah. It's a massive superpower. but if you can and and as long as you got that hyper focus you're good um what was your what was your drug of choice back then out it was alcohol at first and then um very quickly cocaine yeah and then very quickly lots of it yeah and um you know my colleagues at work said sorry you're not right you need to go and get help and um i went to you know a well-known famous but i really went if i'm honest i went there for the wrong reasons i went there to um because i had a court case coming up to in my mind to swerve a prison sentence and um i hadn't gotten there for the right reasons pretty quickly i you know i got massive to i think i've done 240 hours of community service for the drink driving or something else yeah for the drink that's a stiff four and a half times that's a stiff sentence I caused the bus to crash and it was not pretty and I didn't really embrace the 12 step until about a year after that and and that's when things changed and then you know I realised I'd powered through life on that engine that I talked about at the start.

43:52Everything that I'd got in my life that I thought was good and had been successful had been from that drive and that ambition and that hard work and that graft and that workaholism. um but then suddenly i'm 36 years old i think i was and um every tool that i had in my toolkit i don't mean a box at all i mean yeah abilities tricks experience every tool in my toolkit didn't work when i'd got to the point where i knew i knew i was in trouble i knew you know my wife had told me you're in trouble i knew i was in trouble i knew i was drowning and the cruelest thing about any addiction is you know there isn't an illness any other illness you know if you have cancer and you can see the doctor and you get a diagnosis you know you've got it if you've got a common cold you do you know you've got a cold if you are suffering from addiction the cruelest thing about it is it's a disease that tell you you don't have it and that's why when you get a reprieve from that addictive behavior you need to remind yourself on a constant basis so i do four things religiously i go to meetings i 12-step meetings google them you know i know i'm not i'm not here to promote it but i'm you know it's a program of traction but it changed my life saved my life i go to meetings i work the steps i do service and i help others good for you and um but i do that to save my life yeah you know i i and also to help others what was step four like for you um i did my step four with a bloke called manchester tommy and god bless him i hope he's listening and you know what i did i've been in i've been in recovery for a couple of years and um i remember thinking there's stuff that i'm so ashamed of that i'm going to take to my grave and i'm not sharing that with anyone else um and i'd consciously looked around for a um sponsor somebody to help me through those steps that's how it works you go to the meetings you find some identity someone's gonna be awesome someone's gonna be support all in confidence who's been the path before you and they help you work through that steps and the steps break down into acknowledging you've got a problem yeah uh addressing that problem making amends for that problem and then a simple living steps you know some some process that mechanisms to go about your life on a on a a roadmap for normal living um but going through the wreckage of your past and you're finding your limitations your faults your actions everything you've done it's pretty it's pretty dark it's brutal people have gone through that but actually to go through that and actually have to stop and look back and see all the lies that were told or whatever was told or the things that you've done in the past that you've then got to go to those people and go i'm sorry for that what happened five six years ago and actually front up to it that's a powerful powerful step it's an amazing it's an amazing thing yeah and i would say this if there's anyone that is watching this is in trouble, it will save you a lot.

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48:34If you are at rock bottom, if you've had enough, and you've got a problem with an addiction or bad behavior, find one of the 12-step programs, go and do it. Suspend your fear, whatever preconceptions you've got, jump in, do it. by the time you get to doing those bits of the 12-step program, first of all, it's about saving your life. It's about stopping you drinking. By the time you get to step four, step five, if you've got a good sponsor around you, you're ready to do it. Do you know what I mean? It's like you're not learning to swim and they chuck you in the pool and tell you to do 100 meters straight away.

49:15They teach you to swim first, then you build up and then you swim 100 meters and then you start swimming swimming marathons you know and you have a roadmap for a normal life for people that that couldn't do that and you know i had gone from really having business success at 36 achieving the things that i wanted to have a family within a year i lost all that lost everything why within a year how did you feel how did you feel when you got to the top of football 365 365 and all of a sudden you were there thinking on paper i could be absolutely caked here and all of a sudden the ass the backside went out of it yeah you're like i've got nothing to show for this did that how did that make you feel at the time terrible yeah you know and because i think all of my life i was building up to if i get a nice lump of money i get some money to me meant security yes money meant a family that was you know i don't want to disrespect my um upbringing but it wasn't great and i wanted and my now i've realized i've subsequently realized and one of the things i love about my wife is she wanted that as well she wanted to break that cycle and have a stable a family environment that was you know happy joyous and free and different to the ones that we both experienced growing up to me the personal success was about my identity you know um it was about the security and the ability to do that i thought i'd got that and then it all disappeared very very quickly the it's really important though that i don't let you think that that was the reason that i became an alcoholic addict no it's a build-up of 10 15 20 years honestly i'm not a doctor but i think i was born i think you know i did that thing the other day you know when 10 ,000 hours, you're an expert.

51:25So I try to work out how many meetings I've been to. It's nearly 24 years since I've... I'm just saying amazing, by the way. Oh, thank you, man. 24 years clean. Thank you. Amazing. Thank you. Amazing. It's 23 years, 11 months, and one day, I think. That's beveless. And you can only take one day at a time, right? One day at a time. Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever now, like 23 years clean, you can be around alcohol, you can be around people, do you ever think oh shall i have one shall i have one does it ever go across your mind um there are so many things that you can act out on so you've got to be you've got to be on your alert but um it gets easier as time goes by you know they say they say things like there are great expressions you learn in 12 step there are things like you hang around a barber shop long enough if you're going to get a haircut.

52:18My other favourite was when Daniel left the lion's den, you know, in the Bible. When Daniel got out of the lion's den, he didn't go back because he dropped his hat, by which they mean. Yeah. Don't go back to those environments where you were. And in the early days, as a lot of people do, because that's the life you know, pubs and what you think is great, conviviality in your head, really it's not. But I've got very good fond memories of clubs and pubs in London in the 90s. But I had some... Unreal. I had some great times. Unreal. I had some great times. Yeah. I had some great times. But I think...

52:56But you knew you were an addict. You didn't know when to stop. When I tried to stop, it's too late. That's the point about addiction. So were you an addict in terms of go out boozing with the boys, have a laugh, get into a club, get in on the gear, and then would you come home, carry on? I'm going. You'd carry on. would you close the curtains and end up everyone's left apart and be by soap wrapping up okay birds tweeting you've seen the birds yeah i mean you're looking through your crumbs in your pocket yeah and i you know i was just so broken and it was i was nine and a half stone i think bloody hell you know my nose had fallen out i was in big trouble and um i had got sober i was doing what they were called white knuckling it on you know using real power let me go back to that point i said about tools the toolkit that you've developed in life to get you by to get you things you want to be able to work to do anything experience you know supposition all of that doesn't work when it comes to dealing with addiction once you've crossed the threshold here's the cruelest thing It's not like when, you know, Caesar came back to conquer Rome and he, he, um, he crossed the Rubicon.

54:15You know that in history, Caesar crossing the Rubicon. And that stands as a, as a story for passing a point of no return. There is no Rubicon when it comes to addiction. You don't come back and someone goes, Dodge, you know what? take another step another drink another night out and you are crossing into no man's land and you're going and you're in trouble you're going to descend into sometimes quickly sometimes slowly into a world of madness and you're going to be in big trouble if someone told you that i don't think you'd stop and bearing in mind what i said about addiction is an illness that tells you you don't have it yeah you think you so you then enter you've crossed that line you enter this horrible period where you know you're struggling you're trying everything you can to change that and it's failing and it's cruel because sometimes the sometimes things work you know i'll try i won't drink during the week i won't drink on the weekend or drink we'll have a month off in january yeah yeah that might work once twice three times and then you're going back to it do you know what you Do you know what I said to someone the other day, like one of the gens there, what is addiction?

55:30I said, I'm not an addictive personality, but I understand addiction. I've been around addiction all my life with friends and lots of people. And I get addiction. I said, how many times do you pick up your phone a day? Yeah. They look for the phone and go, I've picked it up 72 times a day. I said, that's the same as addiction. That is an addiction. You're going back to it. Some people wake up and go, I want to have a drink. Or where am I going to get my next bag from? Where am I going to get it delivered at work at nine o 'clock? and the next bag I've got three bags to get me through the day. Like, that's addiction.

55:59You know, if you try to put it into someone's head, like it's the same as having a mobile phone, picking it up every time and just double checking it, put it down and have another check, and that's an addiction. Yeah. You know? So imagine that, knowing that you're a gambler. You know, I've had Paul Merson, I've had Merson, and he was just like, the worst addiction is gambling because you can't hide it. You can rob you of your house, it'll rob you of your car, it'll rob you of everything. But you can hide gambling, alcoholism, you can smell it on people if i if i see someone who's copious amount of coke i can spot straight away in his eyes yeah i can spot straight away if you if you're a food addict i'm spot straight away if you're a boozer i can spot a gambler you can hide the whole lot but it's the most dangerous of the well until it's you've lost until you've lost a lot lost a lot yeah and i and i think i knew that i think i knew that i always tell people i'm a supposedly i'm a i'm an entrepreneur that's had some success and built and created that's some great part has had some great success ended up you know being chief creative officer of one of the biggest companies of all time being you know around you know jeff bezos and from from south london to seattle amazing you know nearly dying of my addictions along the way what i always tell people i found my math o level four times you know i'm not never going to be an accountant i'm never going to be you know a financial analyst and um i knew that if i gambled i would lose everything quicker yep and i still you know you asked me at the start who i am i think the first i'm i'm i'm a father i'm a husband first entrepreneur i think i'm someone who tries on a daily basis to be the best possible person man i can be cognizant recognizing my weaknesses recognizing my failings trying to learn from them i set out to be the best man i can be not doing things that don't give me purpose or are wasteful.

58:07You know, I'm so fortunate to have had the wife, my wife, Helen, and the kids that I have and the family that I've got and the close friends that I've got. And as I said to you before, those people along the way, whether they're, you know, John Eggerty or Neil Lindsay or my friend and partner, Mark Livingston, people that have come in my life and and just at the right time you know i i think the um giving you that self-belief that you can go and do it giving someone a chance i love giving people a chance yeah i love to be generous with my contacts i love giving people a chance i love people who have got who are like a sponge and you know you're going to get them on board they're just going to work and they're going to love it and you're going to bounce off them that's worth to that's where that's some just working day to day with people like that is a beautiful feeling it's very very enlightened yes to be that way and you know there's um there's a great advertising agency called lucky generals this guy called danny um brooke taylor and he always says be generous be generous be generous with your ideas and credit and accreditation and thanks and what have you and um when i went to amazon it was like a a crystallization of a lot of things like a finishing school in life for me and i learned so much from working for neil my exposure to to people like bezos and my exposure to other people fantastic driven think big yeah amazing business people in that in that world and at some point you know if you are a creative one of the things about being a creative is you you are not naturally predisposed to share your your your work with other people because it is your identity yes you know the idea and the thing that had the film, the TV series, the item, the design, whatever it is.

1:00:19That's where your identity comes from. So I think I'd grown up in a world where I very much tried to keep that to myself. And I remember a point at Amazon where Neil, who was my boss, amazing man, incredible right brain, left brain individual, said to me look your your value will be limited i'm paraphrasing this but he said your your value will be limited if you are just a great creative creator for us if you just do that you need to scale you know just as a business needs to scale do you remember what i said at the start more is more in digital scales everything growth is is important you know you you do need to be cognizant of scale personal scale he said to me you you need to be able to scale yourself you need to develop the mechanisms in the in the way you behave the way you run your bit of the business you have to have mechanisms that allow you to personally scale your influence to scale so that you're concentrating on the most impactful you know the most important things you're developing you're hiring and developing the best people you're hiring your replacement you know that's an important thing hiring people that you think have got the potential to be better than you absolutely that's the best really important that's the best bit the best bit for me is hiring people that's the most excited i get most people don't do that you know most people i think most people are um you know it comes back to fear it comes back to someone taking their role I've never had that at all.

1:02:04I'm just like, mate, I want you to be better than me. I want you to be better than me. I love that. I love them teaching me. Yeah, I think you're quite enlightened in that respect. But, you know, a lot of people don't. It's my experience. A lot of people don't want to hire someone that they think is going to eat their lunch and take them and then end up firing them. I hear you there. but because I've never been employed and because I have my own three businesses I guess if you are employed Maybe you don't want someone to be better than you just in case someone nicks your job, nicks your role. If you're employed.

1:02:44It's a different dynamic. Yeah, it's a different dynamic. If you're an employer, I'm like, yes, come in. You're a Gen Z. You're amazing. Yes, come in. You come in and we can grow. I think Gen Zs are amazing, by the way. They get a lot of stick. I love Gen Zs. You've just got to nurture them. You've got to guide them. You've got to give them confidence. You've got to allow them to be an entrepreneur within your business. Same as an entrepreneur. They've got no risk. you know it's great how the knowledge you know it used to be that you would go into a career you'd learn it you become you develop you become an expert then you hand that on whether it's i don't know stockbroking or filmmaking or pr or excuse me and you'd hand that down and then somebody else would be coming along that all got changed with you know the digital and social media world where 25 24 year olds are have the power of the knowledge that they can teach you yeah in that area and i i find that yeah really i find that great i find that even chat gbt now that's changing we've been what six months a year into this now it's like my god yeah yeah this is a game changer this is like what it was when social media come on the scene but with steroids this is turbo charging that the same feeling we had when the dot-com in 2000s we're like wow what's this thing dot-com a website then in 2006 seven eight and social media was coming on saying like wow this is a game changer what's happening right now is unreal at a super fast paced of course it is i mean i i get that extraordinary i'll tell you i'll tell you one thing that's been interesting intuition so um you know trusting there's a thing at amazon where jeff wrote the original leadership principles these are the principles by which people measure themselves thinking about business you know um values that are important things like earns trust and trust between colleagues customers employers will have you trust is a absolutely number one hard for easily lost thing one of the one of the amazon leadership principles which are freely available online go and study and i tell anyone who's starting a business go and study those use those in in use those mechanisms that amazon has developed over time and you could do you'll be in a good place because they are mechanisms for success one of them is a thing called um great leaders are right a lot you know that's how it's written great leaders are right dot dot a lot and that speaks to perhaps surprisingly in a business that's supposed to be so data driven that speaks to intuition and that speaks to what napoleon used to refer to back in the day as you know when they asked Napoleon allegedly what what you seek in your in your um leaders and your generals and he said luck give me lucky generals yeah and um it speaks to that thing which is that when you've got that thing that voice that intuition in you that knows it's right and and I have in certain swim lanes I have that and I it's binary when I feel it you know I I felt it You just know straight away.

1:06:08I know. I know. I can look at a script for an ad. I can look at, you know, something in games. I can look. And when I've got it, that's it. And I will fight tooth and nail. I'll use every tool I've got. I'll charm or I'll jump on your head. Yeah, yeah. Whatever I need to do. Yeah. Because I know that's the right one. And I have had that conversation with, you know, my old bosses and great leaders at Amazon where, you know, that became a thing that was valued. The ability to just know, here's five scripts that are in front of you and the answer is that one. That's something that if you have got that in a colleague or a partner or an employee or someone you want, you know, that's a valuable thing.

1:06:57you know estates and the people in property who just look at five properties and they go that way and you you and i might look at it and go well that looks like a car's yeah yeah okay bang bang bang that'll earn half a million quid we need to do that that and that yeah so that ability to to develop harness and listen to that intuition a lot of it's born from experience but it's not i have always understood visual content i've always understood it since i as long as i can remember since i was a kid i've been i've been you know the first thing i bought with my first money which was like a paper round well a milk round i was a milk boy back in the day when they used to let eight year old kids walk around with six glass bottles and can you edit it yeah i used to walk around in in you know um south london with i used to be able to carry six milk bottles three in each hand go and collect money on a friday but you know jumping in and out of traffic to deliver milk on people's doorsteps i used to earn a pound a day i had my first five pounds i bought a black and white tv and i used to watch that thing all night in the days when people used to say you watch that tv son you're getting square eyes yeah not no for me that was right okay that's that world is a world that i want to be in and to make my life in and do stuff and get fulfilled in.

1:08:20At what decade did you earn the most amount of money personally?

1:08:29The last decade of my career, or you mean noughties, nineties? I mean the last... Of your, we're talking the noughties, the nineties, the noughties, the tens. The tens. The tens, yeah. What, from 2010 onwards? Yeah, that's when it all came together. Okay. Do you remember how much you got paid from Amazon? Yeah.

1:08:55How much was that? It was good. It was, you know, life-changing. Life-changing. Yeah. Yeah. I've always said to people, look, I'm the bridesmaid, not the bride. Yeah. and but i've been the bridesmaid many times and had lots and lots of events and exits and i i would say because that you know people that are doing that ownership equity is important yeah um equity not options there's a there's a different there are lots of different classes of but as a founder you know your equity is important um the tax the capital gains and the tax benefit that is reflected on that um you know what you may earn from a salary is dwarfed by what you can earn by there's a humming a shareholder in a business totally agree and um it's not always case there are some may there are some businesses that throw off so much cash you know like a gambling business i would never do that but you know a gambling business is an example of a business that is just constantly throwing off so much cash that the dividends and the profits and what have you enrich people's lives um it's my experience that salaries have always been dwarfed by ownership in the business on an exit i've had equity and businesses like autonomy in early years you you don't know so much about mike lynch do you no i don't it's it's quite famous Do you remember the Bayesian yacht disaster last year when Mike sadly died?

1:10:37How did he die? In a freak accident. He was his founder of Son of a Fireman from Ilford, became a, I think he was a professor at Cambridge, genius. Yeah. Created this business that understood in the 90s, you know, data mine, huge data mining really really quickly sort of precursor of um google and the search engines evolved that business built it up sold it sold it to an american company called hewlett packard became a billionaire um then there was a controversy where hewlett packard um took exception to that and mike went through a long long period of a court case um it's all out google it it's all out there but he had been taken, you know, gone to, been extradited to the States to face trial, but he was, he was, you know, the case fell up, he was found innocent of that charge, that criminal case.

1:11:45And he was back in the UK after 10 years of this. The court case for 10 years. Yes, my God. and um i texted him and i spoke to him on the thursday and then on the sunday night monday morning i woke up and looked at sky news and this terrible accident this freak accident and happened on his boat in corsica and um what happened i i don't know the explanation what they're saying okay it was a it was like a freak mini tornado that capsized the boat yeah sadly you know some people survived and some people didn't and and mike and his 18 year old daughter and some of the guests didn't survive god and there are all sorts of conspiracies and stuff like that and um but you know he was an incredible mind incredible mind but he had you know you get great academic minds yeah you get driven business people that are streetwise mind you get streetwise Mike had everything, you know, come from the humble enough background.

1:12:50He had huge intellect, you know, and he was driven and you don't, you know, those are what the greats are like. The Bezos's and the Mike Lynch's and the Murdoch's and the Branson's that I've come across in my life have all got that characteristic to them. And it's something that, you know, it's something I admire. and I looked at and I've tried to find in my view but to go back to your point you know it's also about what does what are you doing it for and why and I'm I think these days to your question of great nights out in the pub I had great nights out you can imagine what it was like Friday night on TFI Friday you can imagine and living at large, to me, the definition of happiness now is absolutely all right.

1:13:51Do you know when you were at Amazon? Yeah. How many years were you working at Amazon for? 10, 11, nearly 11. From what year? From 2010 onwards? 2011 to 22, just before the Ukraine. 22. Yeah. what were the happiest period for you within that period in that amount of time in those years um it was um as a work environment it's uniquely um tough i think hard um i'm conscious maybe some people my old colleagues will see i i always thought of it as being you know like the special forces it's not it's not it's it's where you go to work hard have fun make history as i think they say um what were the happiest times uh that the happiest times were always achieving some solving some big business thing and knowing you've done it and making an impact so things like um you know so i did was worldwide creative director so for all advertising whether it's for retail or alexa or kindle or what have you things that gave me the most reward were a super bowl ad you know we did a super bowl ad where alexa's lost its voice you know we entertain the fact that with this idea this crazy idea that alexa's lost its voice i had to persuade you can find it on youtube but i had to persuade jeff to be in the ad and it was this conceit that Alexa's lost its voice so we've gone out and we've hired Gordon fucking Ramsey we've hired Rebel Wilson we've hired Anthony Hopkins to as replacement voices for Alexa and um you know it was quite a brave thing to do for for a company to entertain the idea that their product wasn't working you know albeit in an environment like the super where you're allowed to have a year long but um how much was that advert oh I can't remember like millions to make ridiculous to make and matters to make and how much i wonder how much you paid for that 30 second advert in the middle of the series they always say that don't they they always you you read the i don't know uk press will say adverts that cost 10 million pounds for you know i think there's a pause in that ad that was a very very expensive pause there's a bit where there's nothing happening in the ad and it was a very expensive ad but you know what i have learned from Amazon is get your metrics right in a business you know if you spend a pound are you getting 10 pounds back what are the high value actions that that action what's the double duty that any investment might do how are you thinking big enough in terms of I'm spending that money I've got options to spend this money I've got things that I can spend this money on whether it's people places things hiring people advertising new product development R &D I'm making those bets what's what's the return on that bet likely to be what's our plan what are our inputs that we are going to hold ourselves accountable to go and achieve that with and then things like what are the value actions that that might drive beyond the most obvious benefit are there other value actions that might be affected by that so you know people that are doing it are not just throwing their money away business doing absolutely you know you you've got a super bowl you you you're talking to something like 100 million homes in one afternoon you've got you've got an afternoon to talk to people when everyone is having a good time and they want to be entertained but these days you know we would we would have a a super bowl that that had up to 100 million people viewing it in the week before so you know it's big numbers and it's a big it's a potentially squeaky bun time in terms of assessing it but the returns are big you know it's an investment it's like any business to do the homework in the investment and get your numbers right get your reporting right and know what benefit it has for you and that that applies whether you are starting your business up you know i there are go back to those things frugality is a great one don't spend money on things you don't need to and looking at your desk here you know amazon famously in the 90s when it started used door tops, you know doors from Home Depot as its desks.

1:18:20They didn't go and spend money on things that they needed to spend money on. Frugality is key when growing a business. But do you know what I find interesting? People who are growing their businesses who have got VC money at the doors, they haven't got frugality. No, I know. This money's coming in, they're going yeah, let's hire 30 people, let's get the best offices ticket. They haven't even built a business, they haven't built anything and sold anything to go, right now we've got to a point where we can get VC money on board it i find it quite amazing these days i really do i'm quite you're getting old dodge you're getting no i just because i just just because i'm i think because i've just set up start up businesses and built bootstrap business that is kind of real yeah but a good like a good i talked to you before about having but i'm just holding a moment there because i find it i find it hard when i see people really celebrating they got vc money early doors on a business yeah and then i see two three years later they're absolutely drained they're out of the business they've rinsed it completely the business didn't work and it's just folded VC money, okay that's just another one we lost, we had 10 bets lost 7, won 3 like I find it I find it like this look a good VC won't let that happen I'm talking about the entrepreneur himself and the entrepreneur, shame on them for doing that they were spectacular you know in the early days there was a fashion brand in the mid 90s when we were all starting I want to say I want to say it was boo.com or something like that.

1:19:44There was a, there was a, you know, go online, we'll measure your shirt, we'll send it to you. They were, they were famous. Oh, I saw that. Okay. Yeah. Flying to New York on Concord and their expenditure was ridiculous. You know, good financial management in any business and a good, you know, enlightened CFO. Yeah. a great cfo that understands the business chief financial officer that understands what you're trying to do where the bets need to be available you know we made big bets uh love film we gambled not gambled we made a decision to go on tv in 2007 tv advertise which is a significant expenses took a big chunk of the say the cash available cash that we had significant risk if it had failed but the people that make that decision the core team that make that decision based on the metrics you've got you know are doing that that that's not that's a calculated business risk whereas frittering away money on stuff that you don't need to do is is not what business is about no how much do you think you need liquid in the bank to never work again oh i don't know i used to think it was five million quid it's probably money well invested with annuities and generating income is probably 10 okay which is achievable in the world for anyone to to do for any i always have five I had five with inflation I've doubled it to 11 I've doubled it to 10 that's a good question it's a good question because it's always a question that people don't know the answer to here's another question for you go on what's your version of a millionaire

1:21:41I don't know that's changed when I was growing up in the 70s you know they used to make programs about millionaires that the millionaires that have won the coupons on football do you remember things like that and they all like they'd live in suburbia and then a prawn cocktail and a rolls royce and uh you know and a place in surrey a place in surrey but that that vision of that has gone i think so what is your version of a millionaire today i don't think i even use that term anymore i think it's so outmoded yeah i'd stop thinking about that as a as an accurate representation of what it was supposed to mean it was supposed to mean when it started in the who wants to be a millionaire and you know long before the tv series it was meant to be the ultimate goal you've arrived at a position in life where you're comfortable and financially secure and everything's good and you've got money you know money freedom financial freedom um um i long since stopped looking at that as a number but the thing that it refers to which is um financial security and comfort and the ability to me it's the ability to have the freedom to do to how to choose what you want to do and and on a good day when i'm concentrating on my serenity I focus on that you know I'm going through something at the moment my mum has a lot of people are my mum has dementia and you know lots of other complications and it's tough it's really hard but what it has made me feel a lot more a lot more

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1:24:40Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply. Conscious of the time that I've got left now. And I know people talk about that and they say that, but I'm getting religious about not wasting a day. with people i don't want to be with not harboring don't if you're not with people they're not going to give you resentments but you don't want to be with i am not i am not wasting time on people places and things that are not right the average person lives 29 000 days yeah and that's a seven that's a 78 year old so roughly i've been like you can actually work back and it's a scary thing You made me turn my phone off to do this so it doesn't interfere.

1:25:34But I think I've been sober for something like 8 ,700 days. But I was fast. You know, I was heading. What's the most amount of cocaine you've done in one hit? One night? I can't believe this could come back to haunt me. 12 grams. 12 grams. Yeah, in one day. My God. and uh it was i was so full that i had to like bobbing for apples to clear my nose and when i'd done that i did what any normal person would do i dried my nose with a hairdryer and then carried on again but that's where addiction takes you that's where addiction takes you and i had a lot of cocaine isn't it to bang that'll be I was in a day.

1:26:22That just rots your head. And it's very insidious. I always think of alcohol as sort of physically brings you to your knees. Were you a dry cocaine user or were you always had to have a couple of pints before you'd make a call? Anything. I mean, when it starts, the two go hand in the hand. By the end of it, by the end of it, I'd stop drinking alcohol. I was just using it. You just use a cocaine black? I'm just an addict. Yeah, a world-class addict. So, you know, whatever, you need to make a difference. And then that has progressed. I mean, it's amazing that the number, I'm involved in a, one of my chairman roles is in a business that I think you know, a dog called Jack.

1:27:03Just ask a question. Wonderful. I think Jack's going to be a unicorn business. I said it from the start. Did you? I pulled it, I called it from the start. I truly believe there's going to be a unicorn, a billion dollar business. I truly believe that. I never invest in anything apart from our own businesses. Really? and you've invested in that i've invested six figures into jack the first time a couple years ago and i went again last month i need to be careful what i'm saying i'm telling you today i know now i know well i did know that you're an investor i'm telling you about the dark secrets from my past but you know what jackie's a driven mate we've all got secrets and dark secrets and I've done 300 % like this is the idea of this is just it's real and the beauty of it is you are clean for 23 years you've lived the experience anyone who's listening and watching is growing a business this is your journey I can take that away from you yeah you can contribute it's not you know I think I was I'm not a doctor I'm around we've got lots of doctors and clinical specialists and experts and what have you it's my belief my experience that I was born an addict And I get to do and spend time in the prison system.

1:28:15I have done for 17 years regularly. And I mean regularly. And it's my experience that, you know, addiction is hereditary. Alcoholism is hereditary. I don't think they've proved it. I think a lot of these conditions are hereditary. And it's like the planets come into alignment. You know, your life circumstances compounded by your physiology and your addiction that's in you. When that all comes together, when the planets come into alignment in a bad way, your life falls apart. You're in trouble. It did for me at that point. Why did you come on board with Jack? As I say, I'm only going to spend my time on things that give me a sense of purpose.

1:29:02and it doesn't mean I'm a, you know, do-gooder, but I, in the time that I've got left and with the skills and the talent and the abilities that I have. What value you can add to that. Backbook and the values that I can add and the mistakes that I've made that can help others learn from. We are all on a mission to do something about this tsunami of mental health that is happening. I personally think it should be called Mind Health. I said that to Danny Gray, the founder at the start. Did you? I also said that to the CEO, Alex Packham. I think it'd be a wonderful thing. Yeah, well, Alex is listening to sort of make it more half glass full rather than half glass empty.

1:29:44And we, I know without saying too much that the great guys and girls and, you know, Tiff and Marketing and the other are thinking about how to better express that. Yes. but whatever that is whilst you know 20 years ago when i got clean and sober it was sort of easier to say you're an alcoholic than it was to say you're a scuzzy drug addict i don't i don't even know what why that was i always think about you know it was almost all right in media terms to say he's got a drink problem it's definitely not all right to say you're a drug person i agree totally agree even today i still even today like alcohol like alcohol creates creates more trouble than any of any drugs that have done over the years yeah with fighting and problems and alcohol family the damage damage is well just go back to for whether it's going to jack it's addictions whether it's depression whether it's anxiety whether it's the long tail of any whatever those conditions are you know we know that when people who need help they're going to places like tiktok they're going to google and they're not getting the answers they need i will fight you over the nhs yeah i i you know i'm a proud i'm happy to have stayed in this country paid all the tax that i need to pay never but i believe in the nhs and i believe in what they're they're trying to do and just because we are talking about what's broken with the nhs doesn't mean that we don't believe in it as as as as a system and what it's achieving to do and how it's looking what do you what do you love about jack i love that it is private sector it's entrepreneurs investors with a shared ambition to do and achieve something you something really honorable needed scalable magnificent yeah um that doesn't exist yeah you know the the the existing health care and the ability and the tools for people to go and sort and fix their mental health challenges are not up to the size of the tsunami that that is hitting society today and jack is trying to do that in a way that speaks to people in the places and in the language and in the look or video you understand very video yeah very simple very app agentic ai you can now talk to jack on the app yeah you know keeping pace with the usage and the way people want to do but to improve a billion people's lives that's the goal our goal is to improve a billion people's lives and when we get there why stop do you know when it's interesting like um people have invested heavily into it and i look around and see the people look to my left and go god they've invested amazing it's my right and go wow they've invested as well and we've all sort of come together it's like this this pool of super positive people who can see where we're going with this we can see how big this is going to be we can see how it's going to help so many people with their mind health like and what an honorable thing well an honorable thing yeah and and by the way it's not easy you know there's a great expression if life was meant to be easy they'd have called it easy nothing's easy nothing's easy people say it's been what's an easy business to do there's no easy business there's no easy business it's going to take three years five years to break the back of it most businesses fail most businesses don't make money most entrepreneurs fold and start another bit fold and fail and fold and fail and then an ff business it makes something work and that's just that's just the way i think i i sort of subscribe to that view on ai that you know there's a chance that there's a 10 15 chance that it could be the end of days and there's a bigger chance that it could lead to a really enhanced life full of purpose and different you know and we've got to figure out how to do that but in the meantime how to get there to do that um but that sense of purpose i i i will only because i can now and i'm conscious of that and i and by the way i say that in my gratuity list and i do every day i'm i'm grateful that i have got the freedom to do and be involved in the things and work with people that I want to especially if they're hard yeah especially you know I'm a I'm a governor of the London Museum which is a voluntary position for a museum that you know we've had to get the money to build in Smithfield it's going to be a fantastic thing but you know what's your role at Jack I'm the chairman of Jack chairman Jack powerful amazing I'm what a wonderful role to play as a chairman of a company that's going to be global very very good everyone it's a very everyone contributes yeah you know it's a fantastic the buzz the buzz at the office is a is a yeah truly extraordinary isn't it i always say everyone like a whole creative it's like everyone's creative it's great to be on creative environments and creative environments at scale you know when i think back to when i've been in studios or when we were doing tfi fire day or when I'd come up and cracked great things at Amazon.

1:34:58That feeling, that buzz is the same. What's that feeling like of being around Jeff Bezos?

1:35:08Look, I love him and I feel privileged to work for him and I learned a lot from him. It's sort of part terrifying at first And then, you know, he's just such an incredible brain that has built such an incredible business and system and customer-facing, customer -centric, world-changing business at scale. What's it like being around and working with him? um different from the times that i met say rupert murdoch when i was at sky um i found him much more willing to change his mind you know it's not not as terrifyingly rigid um what i would say is you've got to you've got a nut you've got to be prepared you know there's a hopefully systems and weights and measures in place that when you, the more senior a meeting is in that business, the more thoroughly prepared you are for that meeting.

1:36:24And Amazon, you famously write documents. The meeting reads before anyone speaks. So the problem is presented or they actually presented in a mechanism that makes it easy for everyone to understand as a read within. So in an hour meeting, you might read a document for 30 minutes and then discuss it. I used to love the challenge of meeting Jeff. I used to love the fact that I had a partner in Neil Lindsay who I always think was so balanced in his right brain, left brain. And I used to love the fact that we were trying to do something different. you know we were trying to change the way we talked about the business through the voice of our advertising and we found a way with Jeff through experience data intuition learning all the things that I've talked about before to to to use emotional create emotional storytelling to achieve the thing you know I do a talk in business that I try and share with businesses that I've invested in or anyone who wants I'm happy to talk to people about it where I have a mental model about how great communication in business isn't just about giving that information it's about establishing an emotional connection with your consumer the person you want to do something and a lot of my time at Sky was Amazon was about moving from very transactional limited um advertising to more emotionally driven storytelling to connect with people and exactly and then the data and the measurement and the things behind that prove that that worked would you choose to go out for a beer with jeff bezos uh i'd go for a zero guinness with Jeff any day yeah yeah how do you explain his character um he's he's just super bright got a great sense of humor um very analytical very open very willing to you know question himself changes change why you know incredible thoughtful leader incredible copywriter if you're a if you're a young business um i would look at the ceo letters that you can find online these are the annual ceo shareholder letters that present what was going on in that business from 95 96 97 from the start to the time when he um what he'd moved on from being ceo and each one of them addresses sort of certain business problems like scale or the problem of stasis or you know um people or hiring the best or that's all online is it it's all on you can find them in a pdf and i would save you know that that's a that's a year at business school in that thing right so um i'd i'd go for a beer with him in a heartbeat i was acting in a thing called you me bum bum train recently as a as a side hustle and uh i'm not at it so it's community theater and um jeff came through as a passenger which was how many businesses have you exited um so uh 365 love film Greys Tales

1:40:21What have I forgotten? Have I forgotten anything else? I think it's five Five Yeah Which is the fifth one? What have I missed? 365 Love Film Greys Tales And Well Amazon Yeah You know in the way that you are which out of those five which has surprised you the most in the return of investment for you um i think look there's a there's a fantastic guy that i work with called graham bosher google him look him up you know he was the visionary behind graze which was really very similar to the principle behind that film you know a large selection of something personalized and conveniently sent to you just instead of being at films it was done with snack food i think i was um and there was some there was a there was a dark night of the soul in graze where you know i called it i always call it in my mind lights out friday where we got to a point where we didn't think we could make it work and you know everyone dug in and went back and found the margins and found the things that they needed to do to turn that around and make that work i think that was one that i was um i thought wouldn't there were there were many periods where i thought it wasn't going to work and then when it did work that was great fabulous yeah simon are we done i've really enjoyed this man have you mate yeah no i have this has been fascinating i think anyone who's listening out there who's in business to hear someone who's been around the block who's hit rock bottom come out the other side built businesses sold businesses invested in businesses and what i'm taking from this is you're just a bloody good bloke oh bless you mate you know i i hope that's what i do i hope some i hope people get something out of there you know i wonder it's it's not about going on instagram and finding an inspirational quote and a this that and the other and it's not being like about it it's hard graft yeah it's getting on with people committing trust that thing i talked about before you've got to earn trust with your partners your colleagues your people that are around you and all you've got is your reputation and your reputation that's the thing and you know it's okay to it's certainly okay to fall as long as you get up you know it's not how far and how hard you fall it's how you get up afterwards and apply yourself and go again um it's who you knock around with hang around with lucky people yeah yeah i think i feel like i'm like i love hanging around lucky people yeah the energy's different yeah the right people knock around and you know yeah you know straight away you know that people that are adding to your life yeah sire bless you mate thanks been a pleasure mate really has you're a good man cheers you're a good man cheers mate thanks a lot hi guys I really hope you enjoyed that as much as I did can you do us a favour and leave us a review as it massively helps us grow the show cheers guys

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