James Watt | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:11Hello, my name is John Reynolds. Welcome to Extraordinary Life Stories. On this episode I'm talking with James Watt, the visionary co-founder of BrewDog. James's journey began with a passion for quality, unorthodox brews and a desire to shake up the traditional beer industry with bold ideas and even bolder ambition. On a mission to break into the top 10 beer brands in the world, which incidentally are all over 150 years old, BrewDog currently sits at number 14, so all is on track with the mission. James is a genuine disruptor and innovator. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So let's get into it.

0:52James, thank you so much for joining me. Happy to be here. I've been looking forward to this. Tell me, who is James Watt? Oh, good question to start off with. So it's so odd. I've been running businesses now for almost 20 years. I still see myself as a fisherman. If somebody was to ask me who I am, I think I'm a North Atlantic captain and I've spent so much of my life on boats, on the ocean. it's something I love it's something all my family did so I think I'm a North Atlantic captain turned business person. I love that when you were on the sea and all those it was 10 years plus wasn't it were you thinking beyond that or were you just super happy and present in the moment or were you actually thinking about kind of actually one day I'll go into business?

1:33I was super happy and super present in the moment I loved it I loved the people I was in the boat with and to this day my best friends the people that I spent time with on the fishing boats and I loved the challenge of it I loved the adventure of it. No days the same right? Yeah I love the kind of tenacity and resilience that you you needed to have and I always said when I set up the business let's take a massive gamble let's either build an amazing business or trash and burn completely because the space in between is boring and if I end up back in the fishing boat amazing because I love being in the fishing boat.

2:04So you kind of had a plan B? Yeah. So you actually could go and take the risks, explore, which is a huge curiosity, it's a huge part of business right, but what you did is you followed a passion, so you'd always loved beer, but what guy doesn't I guess, but how did you make a business out of it and be successful because how many people have probably sat in a pub going I could make a beer and so on, you've done it and you've flown with it. Yeah it's been amazing, I just feel so lucky to have spent the last 17 and a half years doing something that just doesn't feel like a job because I was so passionate about the beer, the experience, the taste, the flavour, the people, the mission of the company, the locations, like opening our own bars in Tokyo and Las Vegas and which has been in Berlin.

2:44It's just been the most amazing journey and we set out in 2007 as two humans and one dog and our mission was to make other people as passionate about fantastic beer as we are and everything came back to the beer. So we live and die by what's in the bottle, we live and die by what's in every single glass and we just wanted to elevate the status of beer and share these amazing liquids with as many people as we can. So going back to that sort of session of time where you're on the boats and you're fishing to then mapping out the business how did you dissect literally from ingredients of the beer to how you're going to then create a business out of it and brand it you know where did that all come from because you hadn't been doing that?

3:23And for me that was the best possible scenario, we had no idea what we were supposed to do. We had no idea how things were supposed to be done, which was absolutely amazing because if we knew how things were supposed to be done, we would have done things the conventional way. And if you do things the conventional way, you get a conventional outcome. So the greatest strength that myself and Martin had setting up the business is two very naive 24-year-olds. Naive's the word, right? Yeah. But it was your superpower. Yes, absolute superpower. We didn't know how things were meant to be done. We did things to any industry expert would look so stupid or audacious or naive or just completely incompetent.

4:01But as a small company, you do the same things as a bigger competitor. If as a small company, you do what's expected of you. You stay a small company, and we didn't want to stay a small company. So the fact that we didn't know what we were doing was one of the key ingredients of our success. And that ultimately is being a disruptor. You came in as a disruptor. And I love that, right? That's proper true entrepreneur. So but you've created your ingredients, you've created a brand, but at some point you're going to need to scale, you're going to need investment, you're going to need people around you.

4:28Did anyone come in at that time and say, this won't work, or you're not doing it the right way? And did you have to ignore that noise? Because I bet there's a point, from going back to the point where I can go back to the fishing boats, now this is getting real. Now this is like, actually, this could work. Did anyone come in your ear and go, this is not how you do it? Absolutely, all the time. And I think anyone who builds something has a few unusual mindsets. I absolutely love it when someone tells me that can't be done. You can't do that. It becomes a challenge. Just watch this. Just watch this.

5:00Let's give it a go. Let's see what we can do. And I always say to the team, we're bound by the laws of physics. Everything else is up for debate. And I just love impossible challenges. I always think it's the most difficult thing you have to do as a founder, as a builder that creates the most value. so the more times I hear someone telling me that's crazy, that's stupid, that's impossible, the more determined I am to find a way to make it work. And actually you were ahead of the curve right, there's a lot of disruption now, from AI to podcasts, we can move away from TV but in terms of an established industry if you like, I can't think of another story that apart from flipping an industry to say Gymshop, you know gym wear nike and so on suddenly what was your usb what was it that allowed you to flourish and scale to the heights that brew dog is now and you're sort right about beer as a category by the way if you look at the top 10 beer brands on the planet they're all at least 150 years old that is not super established any other industry we're now up to 14 by the way so we're kind of aiming for that top 10 and we knew we had to do a few things we're competing against these behemoths we had to find a way to stand out with no market and budget at all so we did things that were audacious we did things that were a little bit stunty we did things that were on the edge we made the world's strongest ever beer we threw taxidermy cats out of a helicopter over the bank of england we drove a tank through the streets of london we projected ourselves naked in the houses of parliament we made a beer at the bottom of the ocean and everything for us tied back to two things our passion for beer and our community so our business was selfish we made beers that we wanted to drink ourself and we had to make the best beers we possibly could everything came back to that and we focus so much on community and for me any consumer business community is the only competitive advantage you have and your success and your destiny is going to be determined by how well you engage your community versus your competition and from day one we built our business hand in hand with our very passionate community which by default means you've got such a loyal follower i I can see that from, let alone my personal perspective.

7:08You know that many of us speak to about you, and we're part of a pretty big entrepreneur community, if you like. But that makes you incredibly popular and talked about in the right way there. It also makes you very unpopular with the established, I won't name the big brands, but, you know, and I guess was there ever a feeling that there was a deliberate target at BrewDog, at you personally, because you're coming in as a disruptor, you're a threat? so many times and it is just inevitable if you are trying to facilitate change the status quo are not going to be be happy with that and they've got this kind of entrenched market position that's been entrenched for not just 10 years but for over 100 years so anything come in that's different that's innovative that's challenging that's trying to do things in a different way as a threat to them and for us we exist to show a different side of beer and I think if you look at the big beer companies, they've taken this amazing magical mythical beverage and just turned it into a lowest common denominator commodity.

8:07They've stripped the magic, the passion, the taste, the flavour, the quality out. Then they spend gazillions each year in advertising trying to convince people this commodity, this bland, tasteless, apathetic thing is what beer should be. So we wanted to smash that on its head and just open people's eyes up to this universe of flavour, depth, character, taste, experience they just didn't know existed and obviously that puts the incumbents on edge. Yeah there's so much passion coming from the way you're talking now it's like you couldn't make it up right it's just raw authenticity coming out. How do you stay relevant with that so you've disrupted you've come in and you've got this following you're opening up you know more and more around the world what can you do next you know and I suppose what I mean is Is it changing the shape of the bottles, the cans?

8:54Is it the taste? Is it the next prank, stunt? But just, you know, what can you keep doing? Because I imagine that's a key part of interest to you. You enjoy that whole kind of what's next. Yeah, for us, it's just continuing to innovate and make amazing, amazing liquids. And for us, everything has to come back to the liquids. And we can have the best sales team on the planet. We can have the best market and we can have the best digital, the best social, whatever. If we don't have amazing beers, none of that makes sense. and the most impactful thing that we can do to grow our business is continue focusing on making just absolutely outstanding beers and there's just so much potential for further innovation ingredients taste flavor in beers at the moment we're using nitro dispense we've launched a nitro stout that's doing amazingly well for us we're really big into innovation and non-alcoholic beers trying to make them taste feel as good as the alcoholic equivalent and actually i love this about our business we now sell more non-alcoholic beers in america than we do actual beers I didn't know this.

9:50In the US business. We're expanding geographically. We've got a big push into India. We've opened four locations. Big push into China. Amazing joint venture partnership in Japan. So just so much to go after. And I'm happy for us to chase down every single opportunity as long as all of the team remain laser focused on what's in every single can, bottle and beer glass. Love that. I really wanted to open up that non-alcoholic story. So you and I meet 10 years ago. We meet for a beer. It's got alcohol in it. It's highly likely now, whether it be the two of us or if there's four of us, and I went to the rugby on Saturday, and there was 10 of us.

10:25Six people, including me, had non-alcoholic beer. That's not something you could have even imagined talking about. It was kind of frowned upon. Why would you have a bit of a walk? What's wrong with you, yeah. But what feels like now, and the real focus is enjoying drinking the drink, is that a culture that you've not only stayed relevant with but encouraging? because clearly there's a lot out there that clearly demonstrates how bad for your alcohol will be in overconsumption. Is that something as a company that you're trying to encourage and embrace and almost not move away from, but just make sure you're providing both options and promoting?

10:58Yeah, 100%. And we want to elevate non-alcoholic beer. We don't want it to be seen as like a poor cousin. Yeah, exactly. We want to have a non-alcoholic beer with the same amount of taste, flavour, quality, ingredients, the same flavour, experience, the same excitement when you smell it, when you taste it, when you sip it and ultimately beer is about taking people together and giving them a shared social experience for me beer is best enjoyed with people you want to spend time with now not all of those people might want to drink alcoholic beer at the same time so the fact that you can still take people together as you said and have that shared experience enjoying something that's made with love and passion and hand-drafted and authentic and all of these things i think is absolutely amazing and also if we look at our non-alcoholic beers the vast majority of people who drink them are people who do drink alcohol so it's not people drinking them because they're teetotal or because they don't drink it's just people who want to consume alcohol in a slightly different way and they might have a few beers and a few non-alcoholic beers watching some football on a tuesday night they might go out but not want to drink that evening for whatever reason and i think it's just an amazing way to manage consumption one of the things that i love doing we do punk ipa and punk ef which is an alcoholic punk i just mix them 50 50 which gives me like punk at 2.7 % which is amazing.

12:09It's diluted yeah it's smart thinking about it it's really obvious but 10 people back to my Saturday I would have probably had a Sprite or sparkling water but I can still have a beer and that so that's that's giving you the business yeah that you wouldn't have had and I can still feel like I'm drinking the drink. And you're more involved in that experience because everyone's coming together with a beer and like for me a beer is a beer if it's got alcohol or non-alcohol it's like taking people together for the experience. and and again probably almost flipping back a few years anyone drinking beer would be associated probably with probably not looking particularly fit you came into this as someone that loved beer loves beer and you look fighting fit talk to me about that whole kind of it's almost like how you manage that so clearly it's probably part of your own research and development to drink beer and still enjoy that but what do you do to keep fit and what works for you in terms of morning routine and sort of actual exercise?

13:02I think it's so important for anyone who's leading a business, anyone who's looking after a business, you've got to look after yourself first and foremost. And I keep fit mainly because I know if I feel fit and healthy, I can perform at a nine or ten out of ten. So you're doing it for this? Every single day, consistently, as opposed to if I don't exercise, if I don't feel at my best, I'm performing at a six or a seven. I'm not the leader my team or the business deserves. So for me, I look after myself so that I can perform at my best at work. And I've got a list of things that I love to do. So I exercise most days.

13:38I do ice bath each and every single day. It's my most important part of my routine. When do you do that? I do it in the morning. And I've been doing it for three years now. Every single day, I still hate it. And I still try and talk myself out of it. It's like, well, maybe you don't have to do it. There's nothing to do with that at all, right? Yeah, but you feel amazing afterwards. and just it sets you up to have an amazing day because you've instilled that resilience that tenacity that determination and do a difficult thing so anything i have to do in the office much easier than sitting at one degree celsius for three minutes before i get there so that's really important for me i love doing walking meetings walking phone calls getting out of the office i use a standing desk and at the end of each day i make sure that i can switch off all my devices at least an hour before i go to bed and i like to read and journal are you Actually, I'm asking you from a fellow entrepreneur that I want to do that.

14:28And now I'm like, I'll just respond to this. And I know I should. And maybe I did it yesterday, but today I've completely failed at that. Are you pretty consistent? I'm really good at it because I know if I don't do it, I'm not going to switch off. I'm not going to sleep as well. So say that's a Monday night. If I don't do it on a Monday night, I know I'm not taking the best version of myself to work on a Tuesday. And I don't want to sacrifice a whole day's worth of delivery against my goals for a few text messages. That would make me feel really bad. 10.30 on a Monday night. Yeah, but it's the habit forming, right?

14:56Which is also back to the ice bath. And so what about when you have the day, forget being ill and so on, where you miss it? Are you straight back at it? Because you seem laser focused when I'm talking to you now. I can tell that's probably something you carry through everything. Are you really disciplined with that? It's like, right, I might have not been able to do it today. I'm having it tomorrow. Yes. So we all get to make choices. And I think we all need to be disciplined in the choices we make. and I think how disciplined you are in the small choices impacts how disciplined you are in the big choices as well.

15:26So I actually use a checklist each night before I go to bed and there's up to 10 things I know I need to do and I want to ensure I've done at least five of them. So that includes meditation, reading, walking meetings, rounding, reading, journaling, a bit of stretching, ice bath, sauna, keep fit. And if I haven't done five of those, I know I'm not being the best version of myself. And this is interesting. So a lot of people swear by a morning routine. any successful CEO business in which you ultimately are. There's so many books, podcasts out there that say you've got to be up at four in the morning, you've got to run the marathon, you've got to meditate and so on.

16:01And you're a dad as well, right? And recently engaged. Congratulations. Yes, thank you. Awesome. It's been a half a few weeks. But appointment is a lot of juggling, right? So are you saying that if you want to tick five of the 10 things off or preferably more, you'll just get them done in the day and that way you've got the day to do it or are you trying to tick them off before nine o 'clock in the morning before the day gets busy? No, I have to get them done the day and I would love to be one of these people that get up at 4 or 5 or 6 a.m. and they win the world before breakfast time. That is just not me.

16:31I do most of my best work late afternoon and into the evening. So I set up my schedule to facilitate that. So I use the don't start work before 8. I like to do things kind of late morning, early afternoon to kind of shake up my work and day. But then I'll happily work until 9, 10, 11 o 'clock at night. And that's when I work at my best. And I think it's so different for everyone. so it can try and shoehorn everyone into this like meditate and run between six and seven. It just doesn't work. You've got to find what's best for you, what's best for you, your business, what you're trying to achieve and it's completely different for everyone.

17:02I love hearing that because we've had this conversation about being fellow entrepreneurs and actually that brings into play, we both have the Great British Entrepreneur Awards on Monday, there's other entrepreneurs that dare I say you would back as an investor and you mentioned to me that you are the lead investor in the ice bath. It's gone from my brain. It's called Monk. Monk. So talk to me about that because you, the passion and the knowledge and the desire to be, to ultimately found, be the founder of BrewDoc. That's your, that's your baby, right? Investing into another business is a whole different thing.

17:36You've got, you've got, so you've got your laser focus. You've got to then trust another entrepreneur. You're putting your own money in. what makes you get involved in a business so I love investing and I've got a portfolio of 15 mainly consumer goods companies where I invest and I never just want to invest money anyone can do that I want to find someone who I can work with and who I can help and I've had an amazing journey with TrueDog but we've had highs we've had lows I've done some fantastic things I've made some huge mistakes and I want them to learn from my successes and my mistakes and my failures and help them build a fantastic business.

18:11Monk's a great example so I'm the lead investor, the chairman of the business, we've been working on it for two years, it's an ice bath company. My first Monk got delivered last night, I was so excited, it was like the moment where I first saw Punk IPA on the shelves in Tesco and what I love about Monk as a business, we're not just trying to build a business but we're trying to build healthier, happier humans which is a hell of a goal. Yeah what a great you know what a great mission right and actually to bring that back to that the individual you as as james we've talked about that community about brew dog you've got an amazing personal brand and actually having spent more time being honest uh looking at your socials in the build up to filming with you you put yourself out there you're talking to the camera in the morning so this is what i'm doing today this is what i'm going to try and achieve this is what i did yesterday that also leaves you wide open to particularly in in britain i think we're really critical right you know and and bring people down but you don't seem to care and I don't mean in an arrogant way it's just like this is who I am and this is what I'm trying to do and I'm going to let you know where's that coming from it feels like a heartfelt genuine authenticity I think so to the next journey with DrewDog we were never about trying to keep everyone happy we did something that we loved we took a stand for the issues that we believed in we wore our heart in our sleeve and we kind and just put everything out there and that's something I do myself as well and for me the UK needs more people to build businesses the UK needs more people to create jobs the UK needs more people to dive in with both feet and try and build something and if by being open and transparent about what I'm doing how I'm doing it the lessons I've learned how I structure my days what I'm trying to achieve if that can help encourage people to start a business if that can help people who are going through a difficult time in business if that can help other businesses other founders other entrepreneurs and I think it's a really good thing for me.

19:59I love that that's proper mentoring right and actually that's that's what it feels like coming from it's like you know if you can learn from me and that's that's the why behind this whole conversation I'm learning from you right now if you were to go back to a young James or an aspirational entrepreneur right now with all that knowledge you have got and continue to learn and to be able to share what's the one piece of advice you'd give? The one piece of advice I would give is it's supposed to be difficult and if it was easy everyone would do it and success would mean nothing and as a founder as a builder as an entrepreneur as a CEO it's when things are at their most difficult that you need to be at your best and I think it's how you are when things are at their toughest that ultimately determines your destiny so it's the version of yourself that you take to the most stern of challenges that has the biggest biggest impact and I think any business over the course of 10 years is going to have the same amount of good things and bad things happen to it.

20:58I think it's going to have the same amount of good luck and bad luck. I think it's going to have the same amount of opportunity and the same amount of challenge. So you've got to understand that, okay, you're going through a tough time, you're facing something difficult. All of your competitors are going to have to do that at some point in their journey as well. So this is a chance for you to show the world who you are, what your company is about and step up to the plate and deliver when things are tough. And that's what ultimately for me builds success. That's awesome. No pressure, no diamonds.

21:23No pressure, no diamonds. So with that, that really, for me, epitomises the fear of failure, which I've gone through before. I probably still have, and I really try and embrace that now. Almost like I have a chat with myself, are you scared of that? Because if you are, take it on. And you build confidence from the things that you've taken. Even this, this isn't something that I was doing three years ago, and it was an intimidation of cameras and lights, and to then not noticing that anymore because you got past it. if you look at the ultimately the success that you've had sitting here now how do you define success and how different is it to dare I say an answer you might have given back on the trawlers if you like you know pre the business start how do I define success so for the longest time my mission in life was to build a unicorn so that's a company that achieves a billion pound valuation and like all my heroes the people who I idolized from Musk to Gates to Walter like they all build unicorns like I wanted to prove to myself that I could build a unicorn and it was for me as a business geek it was one of the most amazing amazing things to do but that comes at a cost and like I worked every day non-stop for 10 years I didn't see amazing childhood friends for five years at a time.

22:40I wasn't present enough with family. So it does come at a cost and I think it's kind of understanding that cost. I wish I could find a better way to balance that. And also each time we achieve something amazing as a business, I was so focused on okay here's what we're going to do next. I didn't kind of pause even for a few hours to kind of bask in the achievement and kind of celebrate that with the team. So definitely I would kind of take a bit more time to kind of smell the roses on the journey and just try and find a little bit more balance I had when I just pushed things so hard for a decade straight.

23:14Is there something there that really summarises almost the kind of enjoy the journey and there wasn't the summit so the unicorn was the summit so and I can relate this to some business experience of my own where but if I build this and sell that or I achieve this I'll relax or I'll pull back or I'll have achieved what I wanted it doesn't it's not how it works and there's all sorts of milestones you could point at with with brew dog and probably some of the other businesses you've invested in and they will all culminate in maybe being a unicorn themselves but it doesn't actually change anything i don't think you call that success it's all part of a journey which brings it back to right the beginning being present you feel super present yeah and you're buzzing because you've just got engaged and but that's like that's the bit that's really important right these are all key things whereas yeah i get it the younger version but did you need to have that drive and that vision almost to then get to where you needed to have the new perspective?

24:09I think a hundred percent yes so it's like looking back you've kind of got that balance of well if I hadn't pushed it that hard and I hadn't achieved that thing then I'd still have this chip in my shoulder that I wasn't good enough to do the thing that I felt like I had to do in life and I think going forward still so focused on building fantastic things with Rhoodog, with some new businesses, with some investments, but just making sure that having done it once, making sure that I enjoy the process equally if not more than the outcome. Yeah and there's so many milestones, achievements you've got and probably positioning of the brand in cool places and things you probably envisioned.

24:52Sitting here now, what What would be a real North Star, a really cool achievement that you'd love to see for the brand? So we want to turn DrewDog into one of the top ten beer businesses on the planet. Currently we're ranked number 14, which is amazing given we were making beer in Martin's Mum's Garage just 17 years ago. In that top ten every single business on there is 150 years old. So if we could rake up this kind of cartel that has been going for more than a century and put our business in that top 10 globally, I think it would be amazing to go from, like I said, a garage in the northeast of Scotland to one of the top 10 beer businesses on the planet.

25:30That would be a phenomenal achievement. Yeah, well, you're on your way. It's manifesting itself. So you've got a great perspective here because you're a founder and you've also invested into a number of different businesses. How easy right now as we sit here in November 24 is it to start a business? I think at any time it's tough to start a business and I always tell founders the same things. One, what you're about to do is incredibly difficult, but it's supposed to be difficult. Two, do something you're insanely passionate about because it's only that passion that can sustain you when things are at their toughest.

26:05And three, you've got to find a way to be different. If you're doing something that's in any way similar to what's in your industry before, it's going to be very difficult to stand out as a startup. So no, it's going to be difficult, be passionate, do something different, and I think you've got a good chance. From the disruptor. We'll love it. I could talk to you for a hell of a lot longer. I'm really enjoying it, but we've run out of time. But thank you, James. This has been properly inspirational. Amazing. Thank you, John. Cheers, James. Thank you.

26:48Thank you.