Alex Smith, The Strategy Expert and No Bullshit Strategy Author: 10 Uncommon Strategies to Escape Competition, Enter Your Consumers Subconscious, Make Consumers Fall in Love with Your Brand

33:51It's just a different thing. The point of comparison is actually to some of these more performance-oriented brands like Lucozade and that kind of thing. And in that situation, it actually comes down to this idea of, okay, well, in order for a product to be truly functional and to truly deliver strong benefits, can you do that with all natural ingredients? So whether it's Lucozade or Barocca or any of these kind of products that I would say the true competitors of Moju, they all, because they're trying to deliver a result, they aren't about being natural and made of purely natural ingredients. They all have to have some hard stuff in there to get the job done.

34:37The question with Moju is, well, actually, can you have natural ingredients that have that same power? And they would obviously argue that if you make it very intense, very high doses of ginger and all these other kind of hero ingredients, that they can. So I would actually say that you're looking in the wrong place for the point of disagreement. There's also something interesting I'm teasing out here is perceived competitors versus true competitors. So like what I perceived as Moji's competitors is innocent. Yep. Well, actually, and I think that's where another thing brands can get mubbled, mubbled, jubbled, whatever the fuck it is, in terms of, oh, these are competitors when it's not actually.

35:16I can't remember who told me, but it's like with snacking, or with snacking built on for example built on are not actually competing with other built on brands necessarily they're competing with a bag of crisps or they're competing with a healthy poppadoms that so so i think that could be a really interesting framing of like okay well what's our perceived competitors versus what are our actual true competitors how can because even then if you're focusing again a lot of your competition are focusing here with the perceived competitors well actually we we position it here i think it's what you've talked about before is oatly weren't competing with other oat milk brands they're competing with milk yeah and then when you follow the thread on that it results in very very different behaviors than what other oat milk brands do and go looping all the way back to your first question about questions that you can ask to break out of the rails that you find yourself on so one question was how do you disagree with your nominal competitors the obvious competitors question number two you say nominal what does that mean that the ones that are like um that the the obvious ones like moju to innocent or like biltong to other biltong or oatly to other oat milks that the obvious yeah competitors that your mind reverts to so one question is how could how do you disagree with them fine so you can find some interesting answers there that maybe have some leverage next question might be as you say who are our true competitors.

36:49So you break away from all category thinking, and you simply ask the question, what might somebody buy or do instead of buying from us? And any answer that you can come up with to that is a competitor. And so in the case of Oatly, the answer, what might someone buy instead of Oatly? Well, it might be normal milk. That's a possibility. Then when you've got these non-obvious competitors, the true competitors, you then ask, okay, well, when we think about ourselves in relation to them, what is our point of leverage and how can we beat those things? And that's going to come up with some very different angles and avenues for you to explore than if you focus on the more obviously similar brands.

37:41So that's another really good question that you can begin with, just shifting that competitive set. There are so many great examples of companies who have built their strategies off that one single question. I want to talk about, so I obviously read your newsletter, I read a lot of what your piece of resistance on strategy. And I love it. I think it's absolutely delicious. But I'd love to know where storytelling kind of folds into this point. because i steve jobs has a quote the greatest uh person or the the most powerful person in the room is the storyteller i've just read will stores the science of storytelling and he talks about um how and what he's doing the podcast one of the things i'm going to ask him is he in that book it's amazing talks about um religion he talks about tribes he talks about um status community like everything is is kind of linchpin around storytelling but one thing he doesn't mention in the book is the role brands play in this and i actually believe storytelling um you know joseph campbell's the hero's journey oh yeah yeah yeah i believe some of the best brands make the consumer the hero of their brand's journey yep case in point um and actually define themselves by by what they're not is gym shark the other day and i literally was writing this in my newsletter i can fucking find it um did a thing yeah um so i found this saying um we're gym shark we make gym stuff and only gym shark built from the squat rack not we define this for our disagreement the running track we're not good at everything we're great at one thing because we're born in the gym and stayed in the gym but that's a delicious that's a small little story but that story the hit the if i'm going to the gym and i put my gym car gym shark uh top or whatever that feeling or how i become the hero of that journey is when i'm like red bulled up fucking going for a pv yeah versus say i put on my fluorescent nike trotters yeah on a little prots around yeah that's cool but that's the just do it so um i i believe storytelling is is is fascinating brands is what i want to ask will about and i also believe it um stories are there to spread ideas this is what seth was telling me it's like the way you create a story then that story spreads through three things affiliation i.e.

40:26we want to be part of the gym club a gym shark club status as in oh i'm part of the gym shark club affiliation status and fear fear just does spread ideas that's why news spreads um and i would love to know where with where does storytelling fit into strategy what's the relationship all right well you're playing right into my hands here because this is something i've been thinking so much about in the last few months and actually to quite an extreme degree. That's why we do these, mate. A degree that's so extreme that, and I'll explain this, it's so extreme that I would go to the, I would almost take it to the point where what the strategy is actually doesn't really matter, provided that, to use your language, the story is good enough or that it's charismatic enough.

41:26And you gave that Steve Jobs quote and I'll one-up you with another quote that I heard the other day, which I love from David Perel, which is... Is David Perel? He's this guy, he's all about writing online. That's his sort of shtick, you know, just writing. And he's worth following. He's one of these sort of like influencers that I really get a lot from. And he said, the world doesn't reward people with the best ideas. The world rewards people who are best at communicating ideas. And I love this idea, this thought, that the content of an idea or the content of a strategy is overrated. And what's underrated is how well communicated it is.

42:13and when you pull on the thread of this you can actually get to a point where and I don't quite believe this but I definitely think this is half true that there is actually no such thing as a good idea or a bad idea all the things that we think are good ideas are actually just well communicated ideas and all the things that we think are bad ideas are actually just badly communicated ideas and what actually happens when these ideas are implemented is essentially a roll of the dice. It's all in the hands of fate. It's too complicated for us to predict. And so obviously loads of quote unquote good ideas fail, and also lots of quote unquote bad ideas succeed.

42:54And that being the case, it actually does make you wonder, well, were they even good or bad ideas at all? Or was I just seduced into labeling some of the ideas as good? Because the person who described them to me, describe them to me in such a skillful way as that they convince me. Now, bring this back to strategy. And if we say that basically like, you know, sort of what the strategy is, is a bit sort of neither here nor there. The question is, you know, how much am I able to sell the story to people? Well, a strategy is nothing if it isn't executed, right? The strategy is just a, it's just a means of provoking action.

43:36It's the action that's actually going to bring you results. It's the going out there and doing something that is going to actually give you money. So it stands to reason that the number one criteria that a strategy must pass is, will people take it and do it? I don't care about the content. I don't care whether it's clever. I I don't care whether it's backed up by an insight. Will people take it and do it? Now, if you give people a charismatic, sexy, irresistible story around the strategy, your team, let's say, and they go out there and bloody do it, that's 90 % of the job. What actually happens as a result of your actions?

44:22Well, who bloody knows, but you didn't know anyway. What actually counts is that they went and did it. So, yeah, I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that the content of the strategy doesn't matter. But what I would say is that it matters far less than people think. And the narrative or the communication of the strategy matters far more. I think the greatest example of this is Prime, which I know everyone's now post-rationalizing. But I don't know too much about it, so you can educate me. But I know the vague stuff. but it's almost like the the we it's the best best example of we don't know what's a good idea or bad idea we only know the way it's communicated and what's happened with prime is the prime is the prime example of this right so not um and obviously now everyone on linkedin's post rationalizing it but i knew this was coming it's like we weren't saying that when it launched i could have seen it coming miles off it's like go on fucking put your all out when it actually means something and um and uh but to your point packaging in my again this is all opinion so it's like what's my opinion but packaging's in plastic it's pretty gaudy and gary the product's no good um or sorry so the product's no good but like it's not like that different yeah no no not that different that definitely no good is is kind of nebulous it's not that it's no good um and it on is the prime example of it's not the content of the strategy it's the way this is the storytelling and how good that end persuasive and charismatic that is so you then add on logan paul and ksi who are two of the greatest storytellers have huge tell stories for a living through their online media platforms they then put that in um into kids they they create scarcity meaning it's not everywhere which creates fear and pull in terms of seth godin's spread of the story to the kids who do get their mitts on it have status again the way ideas spread so you have this link of like was prime really that good or did we have really great storytelling you had seth godin's status disaffiliation and fear in terms of spreading the idea so it's spread and then what's happened now is and what some people have been saying is you know kids what the the the folly of their strategy was that kids like yo-yos like it comes and goes yeah and that was something so now we're actually looking at going oh yeah it was a bit shit post-rationally everything's easy post-rational rational rationally um but i think it's a darling example of how important the storytelling and the charisma of the idea and the strategy is versus the actual it's something we probably don't want to um necessarily we want to tell ourselves the strategy was amazing not the charisma of the strategist was.

47:31Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And look, I think that we should actually view it as being very comforting, this, because I think that we put, I think it's the story element and how we communicate the ideas. Number one, it's much more controllable than the quality of the analysis and the idea and everything. So I would suggest that in some ways it's easier to, I think people, they sweat too much over, like, is the idea exactly right without actually, and it's easier to just like tell a convincing story about it. Number two, if you can tell a convincing story, that actually bodes quite well for the idea.

48:19It's a really good way of judging the idea that you can actually spin a yarn about it and that you can actually get people sort of interested in it. It's a really great way to just judge the quality of the thinking. and it also then takes some it takes a bit of pressure off us thinking that you know that we have so much responsibility for the way that things pan out out there in the market because really really we don't the the randomness of what happens when ideas put out into the world when a business is put out into the market is absolutely gigantic and it isn't really a referendum on us what happens with it.

48:59The only referendum is, did you do something? What do you mean by referendum? So it doesn't really mean that we're sort of stupid if the idea fails or that we're smart if the idea succeeds. The only thing that we can really be judged on is did we put something clear and specific and bold out into the world and let it breathe and become what it wanted to become? Like, you know, and the results of that, you know, if it's a billion dollars, it doesn't mean we're a genius. And if it's a failure, it doesn't mean that we're stupid because we weren't really in control of any of that anyway. The only thing that we're in control of is actually getting some interesting idea out there into the world.

49:44So I think that's quite freeing. And I think it's actually sort of much more, and it's a very, very unstrategic thing to say because the whole sort of strategy thing is like, oh, well, you know, you do a lot of thinking and then you have this really clever idea. and because the idea is so clever, it's definitely going to work and all the rest of it. And the more and more I do it and the more and more I learn about it, I actually think that's kind of like a bit of a myth. And that's why now I do focus a lot more on the charisma of the idea, the storytelling of the idea than I do on, let's say, the data that's backing up the idea or the information that's gone into it.

50:22Because if these are two levers, right, that you can pull, you're like, okay, I can either have a really clever, intelligent, rigorous, well thought through idea, but that's a bit dry. That's one lever. Or I can have an idea that I farted out in two minutes on the back of a napkin. But when I tell it to people, they're like, oh yeah, that's cool. That's my other lever. Which of those levers am I backing to work? 100 % is the napkin lever. 100 % is the one with charisma. Because all of the things around that, the ability to persuade, the ability to provoke action, the ability for you to actually have a good time doing it, the ability for the market to understand it, the likelihood that it has differentiation built into it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

51:14It's got all those things going for it. That if the one thing that's missing is the rigor and the, and sort of like how, how sort of like a robust it is on closer examination, I'll take that trade. I'll take that trade. What's, so the example I'm thinking about the charisma of ideas or the charisma of strategy is Itzu and what Julian Metcalf did at Pret and at Itzu. So Pret's whole thing was eat fresh. Itzu's thing is eat beautiful. Clever. The Itzu one I love. Just eat beautiful. But the way, so what Julian did in terms of him being such a brilliant storyteller and telling it at every touch point is at Pret, the famous one is, it doesn't make sense from the P &L, but he would say to staff, um if you like someone today or you feel like you want to perk up someone's day give them a croissant give them a free coffee it's it's it's it's charismatic storytelling um which doesn't make sense on a pnl what he's and then so and i think that's that's example of that lever that napkin working stronger um and i think what that does we you know we talk a lot about the strategy what the strategy does for the consumer as in what's the point of difference versus the competitor what's the point of difference uh sorry the point of disagreement versus the category but what the story does is that actually mobilizes and brings employees together yes and it brings it brings the tribe together who like oh shit like if we work at pret we get to deliver this strategy of eat fresh or be fresh and guess what we get to give croissants to customers who we like whereas conversely at starbucks we're we're man managed i'm just using this example man managed every 10 seconds and we can't do it so i think the storytelling is what mobilizes the employees but then also what he's done at at it's is you walk into the office and um he's got a one of the first steve jobs mac um like prototypes it must be worth it's grant tens and tens and tens of grant thousands of pounds but as every employee goes to the lift goes into the lift to go up to the it's to um like reception area they walk past that and it's just a delicious example of this setting the tone setting the storytelling um i'd love to know sorry but just just to pick up on that because it's just a funny one but i want i wanted to get back to your question but on that people you know people forget and this is a really good example of like, how is there such thing as a good idea?

54:03Of course, the original Mac, the Apple Macintosh was a failure. It failed, right? So it was a quote unquote, bad idea. And what's funny about it is that Jobs basically, because he was so in love with the fundamental strategy behind that idea, which was essentially the blending of the liberal arts with computing, which is something that just hadn't been done before. And he did it with that. And When you say liberal arts, humanities, you know, like artistry, poetry, because he was super into all the kind of like the soft subjects, let's say. And obviously, computing was very sort of a hard, particularly at that time, hard mathematical, you know, engineering kind of thing.

54:46So, for example, he had the idea, the first person had the idea of putting fonts onto a computer. Now we think that it was obvious that you would have different fonts in your WordPress on the computer. But, you know, at the time, that was a really weird, arty-farty idea to bring to the world of computing. It didn't make sense, but he did it because that's what he was into. He wanted computers to be tools for sort of artistry, not just maths. I'm being a bit reductive, but you get the idea. And that was what the Macintosh was all about. And it failed. It did not work. And he basically held on to that idea for another 15 years, left Apple, came back to Apple, the iMac was the same bloody idea as the Macintosh.

55:26And he just basically tried to do the same thing again, the same failed idea he did again, albeit, you know, with newer technology and in a different time period. Oh, and the iMac happened to work. So like, could, there's a bit more to it than the way I'm telling the story, but broadly speaking, we could say Jobs' core idea that the entirety of Apple as a business, most valuable business ever was built on, is actually an idea that failed when he tried to do it the first time. And then just through sheer bloody mindedness and just because he fancied it and whatever else and he just believed in it, he came back and he had the gall to try doing the same idea again.

56:06But obviously the world was a different place. The technology was different, blah, blah, blah. Oh, and then the next time it worked and then we all say that he's a genius and this incredible company was created. Was it a good strategy? Was it a bad strategy? Was it a good idea? Was it a bad idea? I'm not really convinced that it was either, other than the fact that just the universe kind of clicked and moved in his favor the second time he did it and didn't the first time. So look, I mean, we can, again, I think that we should take heart from that. But what was true both times was that the charisma in the story was bloody irresistible.

56:38And people believed in Jobs and backed him, even with the original Macintosh that didn't work, because he was still doing that Jobs magic and selling the dream then. And he did it later on. How are... culture strategy and storytelling how are they different within a business or for a founder because I feel like it can get muddled. And also I know, and please, just before we, as a kind of launch pad for this, with your, I should have had this written down, you have your sort of strategy at the top, then it goes the arrow down. What are the arrows? So you have strategy at the top. Oh, I see, right, yeah.

57:24You've got, then you've just got basic, I mean, there's only really two if you really get reductive about it. How do you deliver on it? So what's the first one again? So the top one is what's our... The strategy is essentially, how have you found a way to deliver unique value to the market? Value that people want, but they can't get anywhere else. Yep. Then there's only two sides to how that's executed. There's the product side or the service side. Okay, how do you actually deliver that? So what do you make or do that gives people this thing that the business is trying to give them? And then there's how do you communicate that, which is all the brand and messaging and the sort of like the presentational side of it yep and essentially that's a whole business right there i mean what more is there to a business than the value you're giving the way you give it to people and the way you communicate it to people that is the whole bloody story um but to your question about the culture yeah i'm just i'm just sorry for pausing because i'm just thinking about this like i think that is it on the deepest level like if you really just boil and you say we're going to be reductive well let's be reductive right so and this works perfectly it's like okay well if you actually boil it down that is every single business under the fucking sun yeah really and truly and if it's not then it's probably not a business yeah but then why why do some take off and others don't and we're talking about the charisma and the storytelling that you you put on top of those things or maybe even even underneath it or behind it whether you push it but the ones that say say we've got two businesses exactly the same thing so you could have tnc who also did smartphones and fill in the blank of the smartphone brand the ones that really got off the start line and went further is because the the steve jobs's storytelling charisma behind that pushed it further do you know what i'm saying so i'd love to know yeah what are the differences between strategy storytelling and your culture yeah so So strategy, I mean, just my opinion on the question, strategy is effectively just like the idea that you have to create value.

59:30So the actual content of the idea. When you say content of idea. So, you know, in the Steve Jobs example, pretty much all it boiled down to was what if we were to blend, the humanities, liberal arts, and sort of creativity, artistry, all the soft stuff with computing, and make a computer that was really good at like, doing painting and like, you know, fonts and like had a personality and wasn't this sort of kind of dull gray programming box like all the other computers were at the time. So you know, what fundamentally is the idea? Then the storytelling part is just the way that you articulate that.

1:00:17So you know, you can tell well, once you've got your strategy, you can articulate that in a million different ways. And some of them are going to be more effective than others. This is where, you know, the whole Simon Sinek why stuff is actually really sort of useful. Because a lot of people get confused with that kind of thing, because they think that like a why is the same as a strategy or something like that. But no, no, a why is just a storytelling tool or a communication tool, which you can wrap around a strategy. So for example, in his presentation, he talks about Apple and he talks about their whole sort of why of thinking differently or whatever.

1:01:01That is just a way of wrapping up Steve Jobs' strategy and his ideas and his insights, but there's no content there. Like think different, doesn't tell you anything, doesn't mean anything. It's just like a piece of dressing to sell the more fundamental idea, which is making these computers that are really sort of friendly and accessible and easy to use, which was really what Apple were actually doing. But as Sinek rightly points out, he says, it'd be a bit boring if we just said, OK, well, we're just going to make simple, easy to use computers or something like that. You need to like dress it up with a little bit of vision and a bit of sizzle, including for the internal team.

1:01:41So that's where the storytelling comes in. It's just like, how do you communicate your idea in a way that people understand and in a way that people are going to be excited by? And then culture. Culture is probably, if we were thinking about the model before, where you have the strategy, the way you deliver it, and the way you communicate it. In fairness, culture is probably the third prong of that, which maybe if you were being thorough you should include, which is, and I'm no expert on culture, but I was speaking to a chap about this the other day, and I thought the way he explained it was really good, which was he said that depending on what the business is delivering, depending on what the idea of the business is, you will need to have a different form of culture to do that effectively.

1:02:31So as he said, like, The culture of the military is different from the culture of Pratt, right? In order for the military to do its job, it needs people to behave a certain way and for there to be certain cultural expectations. And in order for Pratt to do its job, it needs things to be different. And there's no such thing as a good culture or a bad culture. There is only a culture which is fitted to what the business exists to do and a culture that isn't fitted to what the business exists to do. So if at Goldman Sachs, people are being made to work like dogs and are being treated really badly, et cetera, et cetera, and all the rest of it, that's not a bad culture.

1:03:13That's a good culture because it's a culture that's fitted to making trillions of dollars the way that Goldman Sachs do and getting your massive bonus at the end of the year and blah, blah, blah. And the culture bloody works. So, you know, Goldman Sachs doesn't have a bad culture. It has an amazing culture given the strategy of the business and the market that it's operating within. And so then the culture then is something that you need to design in order to match what the strategy of the business is and what the business is trying to deliver. So again, if we bring it back to, I know that we keep talking about Apple and it's really annoying because it's so hackneyed.

1:03:50It's just an easy reference point for people. You can see how the business that Steve Jobs was trying to build necessarily requires, let's say, a more eclectic group of people in it with a different kind of set of values than Dell or a more sort of straight down the line business. Well, actually, Dell was not straight down the line. Dell was also a really strategically brilliant company who they came up with the idea, the first company to sell direct to consumers, to sell computers direct consumers. So again, Dell has this very kind of like sort of logistical mindset, which other computer companies didn't have.

1:04:36So again, you can see how there need to be different cultures with these two businesses. So I think that that's how I would fold culture in. You've got the product, the way you're delivering on the strategy, on the value you're trying to offer. You've got brand, let's call it, the way that you're communicating that to the outside world. And then you've got culture the sort of values and behaviors that are necessary for your team i interviewed the founders founders of honest burger uh and phil who's he's actually doing a degree in behavioral economics now masters built that business to what it was and that's now using you'll find really interesting actually using ai to to link culture together for hospitality businesses and he said someone told me culture is plumbing and the more i'm thinking about what you're saying it's a bit like analogous of if you're trying to build an amazing brand it's like building a house it's like the strategy is the foundations um it's it's the immovable things that are so deep into the ground it's it's it's who that thing is it's where the house is it's how big it is it's how many uh whatever and then the storytelling is important so that's the what color the the front door is it's the um how what water features on the drive race what gives it a bit of zoom and jazz yeah and then the cultures that is the plumbing that that makes the fucking thing the house actually runs so it's the plumbing the heating electricity and i think that's a nice way of well that's the way my brain's understanding it and understanding the three because i think it can and get so muddled of strategy that's really good strategy culture and and um storytelling i mean because i i mean we both read a lot but like it's they they sprout up as the same thing in in some instances but actually they are different love it and bring it and bring so bringing them bringing that back to let's say the point of like the culture in the military like it like i mean i don't exactly know what it's like in the military but just thinking about the movies or whatever.

1:06:45I do, mate. So in a normal business, you would not be screamed at in the face or perhaps even physically assaulted if you did something wrong, which may be in certain military contexts would happen. And indeed, I don't think now, but in the past, if you showed cowardice on the battlefield or you deserted from the front line, you would be shot. You would be shot by your own superior officer. And we can say, oh, well, that's a pretty bad culture to have you. I wouldn't want to work in that culture. But if what you are literally doing is such a life and death situation like that, it completely moves the goalpost over what the plumbing of an army, of a sort of mass killing machine, if you want to put it that way, needs to be.

1:07:41So it actually makes perfect sense that the culture actually sort of has to be like that. Because if it was like run like a business, let's say, then in the plumbing sense, the water would not actually move fluidly around the system because that plumbing system, it couldn't cope. It couldn't cope with what this house is designed to be. So I think it's a really good analogy for thinking about, yeah, it's not about the strategy and storytelling and all the rest of it. You're building the thing. But then when you push the on button and the thing starts to live. It's how you want it to run. And I think your point here of the culture of Goldman Sachs, of being worked like a dog, is actually great for achieving that top line strategy goal.

1:08:33Do you know what I mean? Whereas I think it can get muddled into other people looking at other houses and it's actually, well, this is the Goldman Sachs house deep down in our roots is make fucking trillions of dollars. The storytelling we're going to put on top is suits. The front door we're going to, what we're going to put on the front door is you're going to wear a Rolex, you're going to have a lovely suit. This is for the team or for the employees. But then the plumbing is, yeah, you're going to work like a dog. you may have a lambo that you can drive on a friday but you're going to work like a dog but that's the way the business operates but what i'm what i've learned from you mate which i find wildly interesting is the difference between so it kind of goes strategy storytelling culture but it always starts in those with those foundations um i want to talk to you about um oh yeah so um You talked about Apple and Jobs bringing liberal arts with technology, combining new things created.

1:09:41Arguably Mojo with shots, going into shots, kind of Juice and Lucas A combines this new thing. Yeah, that's right. Matt Ridley, who wrote The Rational Optimist, has a thing that progress is ideas having sex with each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are two ideas you'd like to have sex with each other? Oh, bloody hell. So, I mean, it's a hard question, but whilst you think, I was talking to this about Rory Sutherland, it's slightly tangential, but it's sometimes there's two industries that aren't don't even realize they're fornicating with each other but they actually are and i think what this is happening with whoop the wearable technology yeah and lucky saint well and alcohol free beer whereby people are tracking their sleep on whoop so my friends that have got whoops um soon to not be my friends and i'm joking but but they they're tracking their sleep their reasoning of having two or three pints even two or three pint points is um catastrophic to their sleep so then okay well i'm i'm gonna be i'm having more um uh i'm drinking less beer for my for my sleep means i can wake up the next morning and do more fitness which means i'm gonna use my whoop more and it's kind of a self-fulfilling circle of like okay well i'm using my whoop more i'm gonna tell more of my friends about it and then lucky saint set up a running club and loads of people there have a whoop so it's like these two ideas that are not meant to be having sex with each other kind of are and that's um that's one of the examples i've been thinking about i don't know whether that's true or not but have they is there actually any tie-up between them no no no no not at all just a hypothetical yeah it's kind of a bit like i think you wrote about this how half the reason oatly did so well is because it was kind of having sex with coffee culture it wasn't having sex with um traditionally go not you know other cities are available but like brighton you know health food store where people are walking around on roller skates and yeah you know you know that was kind of i mean i remember when when i was doing stuff with manny life i'd go down to this amazing gorgeous store in in brighton and this was just as oat milk was becoming to become into the kind of into the zeitgeist of um but it was it was traditionally bottom of the corner um sorry bottom of the shelf a bit like alcohol-free booze is it was in the corner it was that little shitty thing on the side whereas then it when it starts having this sex with the right thing it begins progress happens so yeah back if you've had some time to think i mean i definitely can't conjure up any completely random out of the blue things off the top of my head, I suppose just building on what we've talked about and just thinking about what I'm up to with my own business, I think that what I'm actively trying to pursue is this idea of mixing business strategy with motivation, quite literally Tony Robbins-esque kind of motivational principles because um the as in sorry you're doing this for basic arts is yeah yeah you're thinking of doing or you're pretty much pretty much yeah with you with you pretty much um because since since i've had the sort of like linkedin breakout and uh you start to see what resonates with people and then you know the book was a sort of big unexpected hit and then you start to think about, well, what's going on here?

1:13:35Like, what is this thing that I've accidentally created? And as you know, that's one of my big things that, you know, everything you do that's worthwhile is accidental, not pre-planned.

1:13:47And what I started to see is that the strategy industry as a whole and all of the kind of like the knowledge surrounding it, all the stuff that you get on MBAs and all the sort of experts out there and all the books that are being written and everything it the content is all superb like I got everything that they say is correct but for whatever reason it doesn't cut through to a mass business audience you know it really is kind of like quite quite a small group of sort of very credentialed very um very academic very knowledgeable people who are really like vibing with strategy. And then the other 99 % of people in the business industry, like they just don't connect with it.

1:14:34And that's why people sort of joke about what is strategy and like, you know, oh, it's this really complicated thing, or you have to be really smart or whatever else it is. And so then I've seen though, that with some of the stuff that I've been putting across, you know, it's opening it up to a new group of people. And what people really want, I think, is they want to engage with a form of strategy, which increases the likelihood that they go out there and take action and do interesting stuff and just, you know, have fun and sort of make the world move. And any form of strategy, which is in some way gums up the system or makes them pause over the actions that they're taking or sort of slows down their decision-making process, it actually stands in the way of big action.

1:15:23It doesn't provoke action, right? And so therefore, a form of strategy that's going to really provoke action is one that actually encourages you to do it in quite an experimental, quite a fast and sort of enthusiastic, even sort of joyful manner. And so what I want to do is I want to think about, okay, how can we take the core strategic principles, which aren't things that I invented, you know, they're things that, you know, are just proper strategy canon, which any sort of Harvard professor of strategy would recognize as strategy and sort of put them through a process where they're spat out as inspiring, motivational, encouraging, quick to understand and implement principles that sort of a mass of sort of founders and people out there in the real world who are really doing stuff can take on board quickly and do and which actually gives them the confidence and courage to go out there and make big moves right it's almost it's almost like so you're adding the charisma to it really i think so because i've spent you i suppose you spent a year or whatever since we've known each other coming up to a couple years i think in terms of you've built the whether you want to call it the kind of the what you said there about how do you get ideas to go mainstream and it's like you've almost built the strategy again i'm using the analogy of a car here but it's like you've got the sash is it shashy is that the chassis yeah the chassis sashashy um i can't some words i can't pronounce mate the guy interviewed this morning his name's osh oshin it's irish i was going oshan oshin nightmare but but but you know a lot of cars like bmws have the same sashy sashy as minis um but actually it's what you're saying is it's it's much easier to so say you've got a mini i'm not saying you know mini maybe for some people but if you say you've got the same sashy but what you're doing with this charisma is putting a different hood on the top so it could be yeah suddenly adding a lot of sexiness with the bmw with spoilers for some people you're you're spreading that idea and i think it's true because it shows those cars drive exactly the same strategy drives exactly the same but the one who's going to win if you for example if you put a lambo on top then lots it's going to it's going to be like a a magnet to people i think that's really interesting because it's yeah what i'm learning today from you mate it's not the best idea it's the most charismatic idea yeah exactly and so this is a you know i don't get a lot of sort of like hate online or people sort of like getting angry with me, but such as what I do get, it tends to be people who understand a lot about strategy, people who probably understand a lot more about strategy than I do.

1:18:14And they'll say, you know, so I'll say whatever, some sort of like point. And someone might chip in and say, well, actually, that's not technically true. What is true is da da da da da. But what they miss is that like, it doesn't matter what is true. What matters is what can people work with? What can people quickly digest, feel encouraged and motivated to go out? And then they go out and do the thing. And if the thing is actually only sort of 70, 80 % right, that's fine because you might've just, well, being real, you might've just dumbed it down a bit, or you might have put a slightly false spin on it in order so as that more people can interact with this idea.

1:19:01And what matters is the accessibility and the kind of pick up and play nature of the ideas. And so my view is that at the moment, what you have is you have a world where 0.1 % of people really understand proper academic strategy and they're doing it. And then 99.9 % of people are just doing nothing, nothing strategic. They aren't really engaging with it. So what I'm saying is, well, look, it will be a hell of a lot better to find a way of making strategy accessible to that 99.9 % of people and getting them to act at least somewhat strategically as opposed to what they're doing now. And if that means shaving off some of the rough edges and some of the boring bits and some of the kind of like overly technical wonkery that's necessary in pure play strategy.

1:19:52Well, yeah, that's bloody great. You know, it's like Starbucks, right? Like Starbucks, if you were a real coffee snob, you would say that what Starbucks did to the coffee culture was dreadful because Starbucks is not actually really proper artisan Italian coffee. But you know what Starbucks did is it got millions and millions of people who weren't interested in that world to start dabbling in coffee. And although Starbucks might not be the pure source when it comes to Italian coffee, well, it's a hell of a lot closer than what was happening before Starbucks, right? So, I mean, I guess if I was being really sort of like megalomaniacal about it.

1:20:38You know, I would say that I'm trying to be like the Starbucks of strategy. You know, you're not going to go to Palermo and have that sort of absolute 100 % authentic niche, very bitter, very hardcore espresso. No, you're going to have your Frappuccino in central London, but you're starting to play the game. And if more people can actually start to play the strategy game, then we're going to get better businesses. We're going to have more people giving value and we're going to have people being more confident to take the kind of bold decisions that we were talking about, uh, at the beginning of the pod.

1:21:20It's like charisma is almost like a wind that puts, puts, uh, puts wind into the sails of ideas. you know it's like is or short ideas and or strategies is again i don't know i'm picking houses cars boats but if you have loads of boats lined up the the charisma is what pushes it i want to talk about charles bukowski have i said that bukowski oh charles bukowski bukowski so yeah so i've read his book the postman oh i read that which is really good like i think that's a book just post office post office yeah sorry um so just to give some context for listeners is i think he featured one of his books in your best reads of 2023 yep um he was a a bum around kind of just failed drunk heavily but then kind of i think he became his work started to do well late in life but he's got a quote i love which is some lose all mind and become a soul insane some lose all soul and become mind intellectual some lose both and become accepted he's just he's just a great kind of and i know we've been talking today a lot about soul and intellect that's why i brought this in but what what what what did you read of his and what how did what did that so i so i did read that one what did he teach you about strategy but then um i mean it's i mean he's a poet uh primarily and you know he's recognized as one of the greatest if not the greatest American poets of the 20th century.

1:22:54And was he a poet? I didn't realize he was a, I thought he was just a. No, he's principally a poet. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. So this is where you're going to get the real juice. And you want to go onto YouTube because people have made these amazing videos of his poems, you know, where there's like a narrator who's just got a fabulous voice then reading the poems over sort of stock imagery type thing. They're so powerful. And the voice of the guy who, for whatever reason, does all his poems, it's just amazing voice. And so just search for, like, you know, Charles Bukowski on YouTube and you'll find loads of them.

1:23:28And they're very, very, very, very hardcore. They're very, very uncompromising. You know, a lot, they're very, very dark, a lot of them. And that's because they, I mean, they are just searingly honest. Like it's the most honest stuff you will kind of ever read. Is there a specific poem that spoke to you? There's one that like had me absolutely in pieces, which isn't particularly relevant to our conversation, but since you asked. I like going off the rails, mate. It's called So Now. And it's actually a - S-O space - So Now, that's it. As in like so in the now kind of, so now. S-O space N-O-D-O.

1:24:11Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. which he wrote when he was sort of dying of cancer. And it's just sort of kind of like about just a snapshot in time of his experience with all of that. That one really did it for me. He's got another one that is a bit more strategy related, you might say, although I don't think he would appreciate the comparison called, I believe that the actual title of it is called Roll the Dice. But the key line in it is he talks about, it's all about the principle of going all the way. And if you're going to do something, just bloody do it. But it's very, very, on the subject of motivation, it really makes the hairs on the back of your arms stand up and you're like, whatever the project is that you're working on now, you're kind of like, fuck yes you know it really makes you feel absolutely pumped is is poetry the greatest uh or the highest form of ideas with charisma yeah so uh there's um uh i've been getting quite a lot more into poetry recently for this very reason because what you're talking about is there's another great book to just chuck books all over the place called the elements of eloquence which is very, very funny read.

1:25:34And it's about rhetoric and about different sort of rhetorical devices. And the author, he says, it's not the exact quote, but I'll give you the gist. And he says, the way that they teach poetry in school is absolutely ridiculous because it's all about analyzing what the poet meant and trying to take out the message or what the hidden message of what the poet was really talking about. And he's like, this is so stupid because the point of poetry is not what the poet says. In fact, most of the poets, what they're talking about is complete bollocks and no one cares what they said. He's like, William Blake was a complete lunatic and everything that he said was completely worthless.

1:26:19And anyone who takes it serious, if he'd been taken seriously, he would have been locked up. The point about William Blake is not what he says, it's about how he says it. And so the act of studying poetry is not to, it doesn't matter what the poet is actually, what the message they're putting across, it's the way that they put it across. And so you can, and you know, there are people who write, you know, poems about bloody defrosting their freezer. And it's the most beautiful thing that you could ever hear. And it's not because defrosting your freezer is so important. It's because they've managed to find the exquisite in that act.

1:26:54And so you can see how then this is very, very relevant to, certainly if you're producing content, as I do a lot, you want to have those turns of phrase and that kind of that energy and that soul, which makes people connect with something. And then the more and more you do it, like the poet writing about defrosting his freezer, um like you can get people to be sort of enraptured by kind of anything right because that because there is just this going back to the is strategy about the content or is it about the is it about the inspirational fact of the charisma point at every single piece of communication we put out there it's 50 substance 50 style and we are in fact this is a great quote from the guy who wrote that book, he says, we live in a culture that is unhealthily obsessed with substance.

1:27:53And I thought this was fantastic. I think we are unhealthily obsessed with substance. I think that we believe that the substance of a post, of a strategy, of an idea, whatever, is the thing that really counts. And we've been taught to think that style is somehow, at best, not important, at worst, perhaps manipulative, perhaps a way of selling kind of bullshit. And I think this is wrong. I think that the style is everything, and it's the style which actually reveals the value in the substance. So you need to become, as a leader, as a strategist, as a founder, as anybody whose job involves communicating something to other people in a way that's going to make them act, which when you think about it, that's a hell of a lot of jobs.

1:28:53It's not what a bricklayer does. It's not what a coder does, but it is what a hell of a lot of jobs involve. And every one of those jobs, certainly a bloody founder, it's your responsibility to be a stylist. And so if your responsibility is to be a stylist, then it's your responsibility to take this seriously. And then you should actually be quite interested in poetry. And you come to someone like Bukowski, who is just communicating with such searing power that it kind of singes your eyebrows off in some cases. you then you've got to imbue that and you've got to start to develop a sensitivity for that and you don't have to like necessarily sort of unpack it and think oh how could I do a LinkedIn post in the style of Charles Bukowski or something but you just start to develop the taste the sensitivity for it and before you know it then you start to get even just one or two percent of his power and that's going to make a huge difference to everything that you're putting across but I also think there's a symbiotic relationship of what you said there and i thought this was a beautifully simple but poignant line of the style reveals the substance and actually like the more you focus on the style the more the substance actually i think it has a uh a way of improving improving the so much true yeah improving the substance and also i know you're an avid football fan but i've just been when you were saying that i was thinking well actually most of the coaches or the the big managers more or less they go through the same coaching badges they're getting the same strategy so why is if i look at klopp guardiola i'm a spurs fan so and postocoglu um these top managers it's maybe is it there but because their substance and strategy is better per game or is it their charisma and i think it's the most it's the best analogy of like where charisma wins what's what time have you got to go no no i've got i've got i've got no deadline but i just want to pick up on that because you've really touched on a real kind of pet peeve of mine which is that um you know how those old school football pundits this might mean nothing to people who do you support by the way uh man united so exactly exactly um oh but also also also got season tickets to ipswich town though very different story now that's those that's glory days coming back but the what you notice is that a lot of old school football pundits you know sort of Paul Merson types they're always talking about passion and the lads just weren't up for it and all that kind of stuff right did you see yesterday were you watching Paul Merson because obviously Liverpool lost yesterday yeah yeah yeah and then Paul and then Paul Merson I was watching on the Sky Sports was like yeah Liverpool have burned a door wild open and I think I think they've now got two front runners and it's going to be they're actually in two teams and then obviously he was giving the big enough arse not going to fucking sort this out and then at the end of the game he goes well he didn't say fucking it was like we bottled it we've absolutely bottled it thrown the league away choked and you can see his his uh yeah yeah sorry so the old school punters are like the old school pundits they often talk about like passion and wanting it more and then a lot of modern football fans and journalists now look down on them even though bearing in mind that these are people who've actually like played the game and know what it's like on the pitch and in the dressing room.

1:32:21They look down on that analysis as being a very sort of like old fashioned, small brain form of analysis. And they're like, oh no, no, it's really all about like, you know, what's the formation and like, you know, how are they doing the transitions and all the kind of like the substance, the technical, the tactical side of the game that that's, that's what really counts. And so they think that that is intelligent analysis of football. And then that, that never really sat well with me because I was like, well, I sort of get it, but you know, like the, when you actually listen to players, they're all about the passion and the motivation and the intensity.

1:32:57And wouldn't they kind of know? And then you take Klopp and Guardiola, for example, and Klopp and Guardiola, we like to think that they're these tactical geniuses, but what do players who've played for them talk about? They don't say, oh, he came up with this really clever system that unlocked all the other systems. They say that they are ridiculously strong motivators. And ultimately, Klopp and Guardiola are just sort of Tony Robbins-style motivators with, yes, good tactics, but that's just the cost of admission. There's this really cheesy thing that I remember that before one of the Champions League finals with Barcelona.

1:33:36And this, to the outside, this sounds so stupid and cheesy, but you can totally see how it would have worked. um, Guardiola had made to, to G the players up before the game, a sort of compilation video that spliced shots of the players with scenes from the movie Gladiator, the Russell Crowe movie. And, you know, with the Gladiator music and stuff like that. And this is what he played to them before the Champions League final. So we're meant to think that Guardiola is this sort of very cerebral technical manager, but what he's doing before the biggest game of his player's life is he's playing a cheesy ass gladiator mashup to his players but that's because that's the thing that is actually making the difference on the pitch as you say the the the the storytelling the emotion the poetry well it's the i mean one word and this is quite um synonymous with alex ferguson is they they don't say tactician they say hair dryer treatment yeah it was known as the hair dryer treatment and actually pulling out and going further swimming deeper into the oceans of is is it a good idea a good idea or is it the charisma of an idea case in point comedians are the only people in the world who can actually say to the to 90 of the world really potentially offensive um rude let's let's just start with those things so the offensive and rude ideas right which in 99 of people if they said it in x way is going to really fuck someone off right well you could be whatever i'm not going to get into it but you you say x this point it's going to really fuck someone off ends a comedian who basically has the power of charisma and storytelling and can make it funny that same idea i said through a joke or through in a poetic way suddenly makes people laugh and actually change the way they think or change the way they view things.

1:35:35I'm trying to think of like a funny joke, but I think Jimmy Carr's... Yeah, he does it all the time, doesn't he? Jimmy Carr's brilliant at this. But what he's doing is if I was to get 10 people off the street and they were to try and articulate what Jimmy Carr's, not necessarily punchline, because usually what comedians do is taking something that everyone believes and being like, why are you believing this? so if you get a Tom and Dick and Jane from the street says okay you believe this but you should believe this what Jimmy Carr does with more charisma says you believe this but why don't you potentially believe this and I'm going to make you laugh and there's going to be emotion and I think it goes back to the comedians are the best at the charisma of storytelling and their style is so equipped that it reveals the substance do you know what I mean I think they're the best yes i think the style reveal reveals the substance is because because when you when as a writer or someone who's trying to convey ideas you're um i'm trying to think i think one of the things you wrote i think i've talked to you about before but i think you say something went down like an ice cold beer on a friday night something in a beer garden like it's just the idea it just adds a layer of of charisma well it's funny you know actually because on like the linkedin post something that quite sort of like quite annoys me, but it's very revealing is that sometimes I do a post.

1:36:56I think, oh yeah, this is a really good post. I'll put it out there and then it's like getting, it's getting good engagement and everyone's sort of like, and everyone's sort of loving it. And then you get someone in the comments who will say, in a positive supporting way, they'll say, oh yes, it's basically, and then they'll just say a completely cliched articulation of what I'm saying. So maybe the actual substance of the post is something similar to, let's say, oh, I don't know, like, it's important to listen to your customer, right? So forgetting about what the post is, I'll do something that looks very original and creative and interesting, or in my head, it's like that.

1:37:38And then someone will say in the comments, oh, yes, it's really important to listen to the customer. And I'll be like, bloody hell. I mean, he's like called me out there in that what I'm saying is something completely generic and dull and stupid. Like, listen to your customers. And I'm presenting it like it's this like incredible insight or amazing new idea. But actually it's just this bollocks. But if I'd obviously, if I'd put out there, listen to your customers, no one would have reacted to that. But because I've found a charismatic, poetic way of saying a truism, suddenly people are paying attention to this idea that before was just bloody wallpaper.

1:38:20And so, again, is the idea actually an important idea? Not really. What is important is the energy that people attach to it and the extent to which they're going to follow through. Hi there, guys. Thank you so much for listening as always. means the absolute world to me. Before we jump into this episode, I need a really big, big, big, big favour. I have pitched to some massive guests, humongous guests, and unfortunately they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough. Please, please, please just hit the subscribe button on Apple or Spotify or follow. Ultimately, it helps all of us bigger guests equals better conversations, equals hopefully better insights for you, which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well.

1:39:03so please hit that subscribe button and yeah enjoy this episode it's so david ogilvy's got one which is you see no statues in community parks of committees and it's like that visual of like oh yeah i've never seen a statue of of like a group of people like what a gazillion other people could say is don't make decision by committee is what is basically is that is the kind of the the reductionist per bit of it but he's added some storytelling of um you know you never see and he's made it specific with garden and not garden he says it's in parks i think it is it says you never see a statues of committees in uh communal parks and straight away it's added this yeah that is a great example so if i posted or anyone posted that quote that ogilvy quote i mean if he hadn't done it already if you just came up with it people would be bloody loving it and you get loads of shares and all the rest of it right but if you said design by committee is bad you get zero likes so so answer me what are people actually responding to here they aren't responding to the idea yeah yeah the other one he's got which i because you know what i was saying about like i think david hyatt's one is your old gold is new gold someone else but what um uh and i actually applied this to the podcast in terms of like repurposing content.

1:40:27But David Ogilvie says, you're not advertising to a standing army. You're advertising to a marching band. I.e. people are walking past. I.e. people are fucking busy. It's like, repeat, you have to constantly deliver the same message. But he was, have you read Confessions of an Advertising Man? Mate, you need to - Wait, who read that one? David Ogilvie. I haven't read it. That is, in terms of the prose, because he has this weird structure whereby he'll write almost worryingly simple prose. Like so clear, kind of similar to you actually. I mean, the beauty of the city. There's no fat on it. But then every 15th, 20th word, he'll use like a big word like discombobulate or like curmudgeon or something like that.

1:41:18Just be like, yeah, I'm fucking on it. Do you know what I mean? he he he was he he was absolutely genius i want to talk about um strategy and man united like just because i think it could be um oh i i've got a lot to say on that let me just to punctuate the end of that other thing just so for something really practical which i've been doing recently and people should try um i would just say that if you have a strategy for your business or like an idea that you want to get across one really interesting exercise to do is to write the strategy as a manifesto. You can get lots of good examples online.

1:41:57Yes. Okay, sorry to interrupt because I'm getting excited. But just for listeners, what's the difference between a strategy and a manifesto? So again, the strategy is the way that the business is going to give value to the market that people can't get anywhere else. right? So the fundamental, basically the fundamental idea of the business. So the manifesto then is just a format. It's literally just a format, right? So if you can look up good examples of brand manifestos or company manifestos online, there's a really famous Nike example that's, you know, these principles, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

1:42:38Normally it's like a list of like 10 bullet points and each bullet point is written in a really kind kind of like sexy copywritten way. So just as a format, you take your core idea, whatever it is that you want the business to be all about and that you think is going to give you leverage in the market. And then you just write that in that format, in a sort of 10 bullet points that are meant to sound really motivating and like, yeah, let's fucking do it kind of thing. and that new format is a much better way of disseminating your strategy to the team maybe even to the outside world than what it was than if you just said it kind of straight so just to be practical about okay well how can you do this sort of charismatic storytelling that makes a half-assed idea sound like something that people are going to get really pumped by that's a good way you look at that bloody nike document and then if you try and pull out the substance behind it it's shit there's nothing interesting in it but everyone's like whoa this is this is this incredible this incredible piece of business history the um so so candy kittens ed williams is a big fan of david hyatt they're both welch welch i don't know what i'm saying like that mate but um they on the candy kittens you come down from the board meeting boardroom is they have like a manifesto candy kittens manifesto and ultimately i think it's an amalgamation of various other you know it could be nike but i think one constant theme of anyone who is writing this from the ones i've read so the nike one um is they're all action orientated yes so it's not like it's not like oh this is a way of thinking it's like this is a way of doing things so it's like david hyatt's be a speedboat not shipliner like that's basically just do things fast yes and nimble but if you say be fast and nimble oh that's that's the that's the shashy be a speedboat not shipliner that's the lamborghini hood do you know what i mean i i had a crack at writing one for myself do you want me to read it out at least and then yeah yeah yeah then you've got an example what is this for your personal like no no for basic arts it's a no bullshit strategy manifesto so it's not for basic arts but it's for the audience like thinking okay well if what i was the way that i was thinking about it was if people um obviously i'm trying to teach people how to do strategy and obviously they can read my book or they can do a whole bunch of or like um read all my posts or whatever it might be subscribe to the newsletter but i was like is there a sort of just a manifesto that i could put out where a person could pin it to their desk and like if they abided by these principles they would be really strategic so i was using this as like what's the most sort of like raw and direct and exciting way that i can communicate the approach which is like ultimately all it is that you're really doing so i'll just hang on i just gotta find it um but it just not really to advertise the content but just more to like to really give people a grasp of the format and what it feels like.

1:45:54So I did 10 bullet points. So I'll just read them out. The no bullshit strategy manifesto. One, give. Two, give people what they want, but can't get elsewhere. Three, give up space to your competitors and let them have it. You'll get it back and then some. Four, if you want to say you're different, do something different. Five, the shortest path to difference is disagreement. Start there. Six, don't look for insights. You'll never find them. Instead, look for secrets. Seven, secrets can be found two hours deep into an honest conversation with someone you trust. They'll be signaled by laughter.

1:46:40Eight, the right idea when it comes will demand no proof. it will only demand action nine and when you do act act go all the way and then keep going 10 only is better than best the end right so you get you get the flavor right they're like little aphorisms but they're like they're little little short one sentence aphorism stories really exactly exactly and so this is just like a digestible interesting way and you know and you you put something to that format and it doesn't matter how banal it is people will kind of they'll like it and david hyatt and he's a master at these and he was so he did a the best performing facebook ad they ever did for his jeans company was a a manifesto and it just like you know it just powers through and really yeah and because i wrote one on uh on holiday because of of of um and actually this is kind of segues nicely to what I want to talk about is

1:47:51basically eight things David Hyatt's taught me because I, because I actually not don't listen back to the episode, but when I'm upset, getting too obsessed or attaching too much of my self-worth to the podcast, he sees a great reminder of like, he has these beautiful aphorisms like scale kills magic. So yeah, why am I so, why do I want to grow 20 %? Like why? like do i i'm actually he says be a time billionaire i can literally we're with this kind of similar i know you've got kids but like we can literally i can't i'm in complete agency of my time it's like i may not have as much money as my mates but i can do that um uh speedboat versus ship liner don't turn your imagination into worry something i do all the time um i mean this shows how punchy is because i've yeah as in he's really taught me loads um just place lots of small bets to find to find your big bet but all these things all these things work but what i would love to know is how you've so i think when we did our first podcast you just the book was just coming out then the second one your audience grew substantially your audience is now pretty humongous across everything how are you dealing with like the pressure of that and like the almost the is there any fear i'm not saying because i've had this as well like in my fucked up head of like I'm like what if I'm what if the podcast isn't relevant anymore of what if how do you deal with those things because it's like that I don't think many people will I haven't already heard you talk about that and it's no I do think about that a lot I do often feel like I do often feel like was this just a moment in time am I just sort of flavor of the month uh on LinkedIn anyway am I gonna it is this sustainable can I grow um or was this just like you know I had a bit of energy behind me whether it was from the algorithm or like a finite group of people who are maybe into the stuff and then you hit a brick wall and that's it and you've just reached your natural size I worry about um will they obviously worry about will they change the algorithm to actually turn against my kind of content.

1:50:01I think I have a strong feeling of I have to make hay while the sun shines. And if I don't do everything now and really sort of exploit all of the traction that I have now, then it will just disappear. And then I'll be sort of back to square one, which I'm not even sure if that's physically possible, but it feels like it's possible. And everything feels very fragile. Everything feels more fragile than it felt when I was a nobody. Can I just interject here? Yeah. You're giving your ideas in your head that aren't necessarily true a lot of charisma. Yeah. And you're believing them. I mean, I do this all the time.

1:50:42You're saying I'm fragile. People would be in your position and be like, I'd love to have your following and all that. But we can play these tricks on ourselves. Internally, we can give our ideas a lot of charisma. you know what I'll say to you is like sometimes I just think if I can pile a ship everything I'm doing yeah and it's like it's not true but yeah so how do you I just think I've just tried to interject there because I just had this idea of like actually the idea is we work against you yeah it can work against you as well yeah yeah in your own in your own you know texture of mind so yeah so how do you how do you not how do you mitigate that or or try and stay sane in the realm of banging out content?

1:51:24Because it's not easy.

1:51:28Do I have? Am I actually even sane? Have I actually even managed to stay sane? It's, I'm not going to lie. I'm very sort of, you know, the metrics have quite a big effect on my mood, as I know they do you and anyone who's got metrics being thrust at them about themselves all day every day. I think that I'm trying to change the business model so it feels less intense and less rushing all the time. And what that means is, and I haven't done it yet completely, is that I need to move from being what I was, which is basically a consultant who writes some posts to market his consultancy to actually more like, horrible as it sounds, a content creator who does consultancy on the side, because you have to recognize where your strength lies, where your leverage lies.

1:52:44And although obviously it's the consultancy that pays the money, not the content, let's face it, you know, sort of like clients come and go. But the thing that you're building at the heart of the business, that is the asset, That is the tree from which the fruit grows. And so you can no longer treat that as a sideshow. You have to treat that as the main event, even if it doesn't have the direct, even if it isn't directly how you're earning the money. So I suppose what I'm doing to kind of try and grasp this stuff is to reorganize the business around the content, spend a higher proportion of my time producing it.

1:53:27So it isn't something which quite literally for a long time. And even now, you know, it's like, oh my God, it's 11am on a Tuesday. Let's quick bash something out in 10 minutes and then get back to work sort of thing. Is that how it is? Quite a lot of the time. Yeah. And that's not very, um, that's high stress. What's the case? Yeah. But I think there's a lot of, there's a beauty of chaos in creating content because it forces back to what you're saying in terms of the rails is sometimes I find that if I've got to write a piece in 10 minutes it will do better than something i spent fucking 15 hours on it's so jarring that's the bit does my nothing a million percent yeah very annoying and i'm not saying that the content would be better doing it another way i'm saying that it would be easier for me to manage if you when you start to sort of professionalize it a little bit and i'm very conscious of sort of not losing the magic so to speak um and not changing the actual way that i generate stuff.

1:54:26But for even a little thing, like I've been experimenting with making Mondays, my content creation day, you just spend a whole day on it, do the week. And then for the rest of the week, you can actually focus on other stuff with the business and not be constantly chasing your tail. I also think that, I don't know if this is actually an emotionally healthy response to the problem. But I feel like as long as you feel like you have forward momentum, you feel good about it. I think this is true of anything. As long as you feel like you're moving forwards, then it feels positive. And so one way of doing that, even if your metrics aren't necessarily moving forward, is to be sort of investing in it and planning on it and trying to move it onto the next level.

1:55:11So, you know, I want to move and do onto doing more video. So that's something I'm actively sort of looking into and getting the getting things lined up is that like the when you say video like that's you going through your ideas and talking about it essentially yeah just putting it fundamentally just putting it into a different format but a format that might be accessible to more people um you know every so often you know i get a bit of video material from a podcast like yours and i can share that and see how people respond the last bit of video that i put out there from a from a different podcast it performed really really well so it made me think, oh, well, if I was producing this for myself, then that would be great.

1:55:51So it's a way of just giving yourself this feeling, even if it's an illusion, of forward momentum, that you're building the house, that you're putting more bricks in the wall, that this thing is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Now, obviously, as long as your audience is growing and the numbers are going up and you're piling followers on followers, You feel that anyway. But can you feel that when the followers aren't going up at such a high rate? Well, there are lots of different forms of growth. There are lots of different forms of building. So I think that as long as you are, as long as you're really like pushing things forward, I think it keeps the anxiety at bay.

1:56:36Is that sustainable? I don't know, but it's a technique. oh so i thought they were trying to get into the room yeah it's it's it's it's it's it's it's yeah how can how can you not yeah let's quickly talk about the strategy of united then yeah because i think in terms of putting ideas you know from we've started very niche with kind of and all these things and um and but but i think one thing that is going to speak the language of the mass is football i mean football is the language of the world you go to any fucking country from a shack in rio de janeiro to a penthouse in milan to like a a park in oldham everyone speaks football that's one thing i learned when i went to columbia i was like fuck like you can't speak anything about anything but football speak about um and football could be a way of turning what we've talked about today into mainstream so what is going wrong with united

1:58:04strategy first, where does the charisma come into this and where does the storytelling come into this? Well, I got, and maybe the culture as well. Yeah, I got a big theory about this, which is probably complete bollocks, but it might be true. It can be bollocks as long as it's got charisma behind it. Exactly, yeah. If it's true, it explains everything that's gone on with United in the past decade, i.e. massive, ridiculous failure. And so it comes back to, like I said, so what is the strategy? Strategy is figuring out what this business, what this organization is there for, and what its primary thing to deliver is.

1:58:41Now, in the case of football is not like normal business because it's a sport. And because what that means is that all of the businesses have got kind of like the same goal effectively, which is to sort of win football matches. And it's not a problem that they're all kind of competing with each other because that's the whole bloody point of football. But ostensibly you think, well, what does a football club want to do? they want to win trophies. And definitely if you look at, you know, Liverpool or whoever, that is true. And they're putting all of their energies into getting better at football and winning the most number of matches possible.

1:59:10Fine. So people look at United and they say, how can they possibly have got it so wrong? How can they have been so crap for so long? And it doesn't make any sense. It's sort of like, it's such a historic failure of management and mismanagement that you can't really get your head around it, given that you assume that the people there know what they're doing. Unless, unless actually maybe things have been going according to plan all along. Because what if they are measuring themselves by a different yardstick to other football clubs, and they recognize that the stock in trade of Manchester United is not trophies, but eyeballs.

1:59:46Now, what is Manchester United? It's a media organization. Any football club, if you were to look at it as a business, as opposed to a sports team, they are media organizations. They generate units of media, which they then sell through sponsorships and TV rights and all the rest of it. So a successful strategy, if you were to look at it as a pure business, is you just basically try and become the most talked about, most obsessed over team in the world. And ironically, actually being too good can stand in the way of that, because you can be a bit boring. What you want is drama. What you want is sizzle.

2:00:25You want to be signing players who are interesting stories to sign. You want there to maybe be a little bit of drama. It's not that you want things to go badly. It's more that it doesn't really matter whether they go badly because you win either way because people are talking about you. And to this day, Manchester United get exponentially more clicks and more interest than any other football club on the planet, even though they are rubbish. And arguably because they are rubbish. So if you say that the United strategy is actually to just generate controversy and media, then they're phenomenally successful.

2:01:02And what that also means is that, you know, in terms of how they allocate their budget, for example, they will not allocate their budget on boring behind the scene things that only exist to improve football results. For example, coaching facilities and coaches, like there's no media value in that. All it does is make your players better at football, but you don't actually get any, it's not by the by for the goal. If you sign a player for 100 million quid, that has media value. So if you're choosing where to invest your money, you invest it in things that look good or interesting, but don't necessarily help with the playing side.

2:01:45So that is my theory about what has gone wrong, or perhaps more accurately, gone right with United over the past decade, that they are just a very strategically unusual football team that recognise that the big win in football is not trophies, it's eyeballs. And as the game evolves and when they bring in a Super League and all that bollocks, the people who are going to be left with all the money are going to be the ones with the eyeballs. And nobody has more eyeballs than Man United. it's a beautiful story well story or just reframe of like what strategy is on that much deeper level because you know we're talking about the beginning usps versus the the deeper unite um usd which is yeah um unique different point of point of disagreement yeah they're just like trophies of the top line usps for example yeah whereas the deep deeper strategy is um are we we want eyeballs and i think it's just it's just beautiful so i i kind of do agree with you but also let's just let's that that's a great i do but i'm probably giving them too much credit because that would imply that they are absolute bloody geniuses the people running the club and i'm not entirely convinced but then but then because i do i kind of i think that what you've said there's a great illustration of strategy and the difference between usps yes yes and the the whole of like strategies so far on the ground yes and actually you know what may look like an ugly house to one person i.e losing games uh is actually a beautiful house to the beholder because it means generating eyeballs for example but park that and let's talk about actually winning trophies let's just say that their strategy is to win trophies um which they're not doing and there's it's a great great the kind of example of where the kind of um deep strategy charisma storytelling culture all breathes around that club what on if the strategy the deep-rooted strategy is to win trophies where do you think it's going wrong um so this is that this is actually a much more complicated question than I think you think it is.

2:04:06Because there's something about sport, which like I was sort of hinting at before, it's very different from business in that in business, effectively, there are no rules. It's this open, infinite game playing field, and you just generate new value and you collect value. And by definition, you should not be doing what your competitors are doing, right? So you're trying to actively not compete with other businesses. The whole point of sport is that you have this very, very narrow, very restricted, very artificial set of rules, the rules of the game, which everybody has to compete under, which forces everybody into the same place.

2:04:45And explicitly, it's a competition. And it is literally who is going to finish top of the league, who's going to finish number two. So there is no bloody, really, there's no league table in business. You know, everyone's kind of playing their own game, or they should be. But in football, there is quite literally a league table because the rules are so narrow that everyone's doing the same thing. Now, in that scenario, the understanding of strategy becomes quite different because you can't really sort of play a different game than everyone else the way that you can in business because the rules are forcing you all to play the same game.

2:05:19Of course, you can come up with sort of like tactical innovations and stuff like that. So there is a bit of that. But really, the winner is not the person who comes up with this really differentiated strategy. the winner is the person who plays the game to the highest possible level and what that means which is obviously what you see with famously I think the England rugby team were big on this back in the day and lots of sports teams is you've got to squeeze out every marginal gain possible you have got to like do everything that one percent better than everyone else and that's why there's so much intensity and so much passion and effort and all of these things count because if your players are like 1 % more at the races than the other team's players, even if they're better than you, you can win because you can just sort of go the extra inch and push through.

2:06:13And in order to have that level of sort of like incredible high performance and intensity, which is what people like Guardiola and Klopp are famous for, everything needs to be obsessively and relentlessly geared towards the sport and absolutely no compromises. It's probably not nice to be inside an environment like that. It's probably bloody hard, bloody unpleasant, and it takes a real type of personality to be able to tolerate the pressure. So in terms of United, clearly that is not the case. Clearly this is not a club with a obsessive, aggressive focus on squeezing out that extra inch and putting it all on the field.

2:07:00Because they're, and this is not something I'm making up. This isn't my theory. This is something that people talk about with United all the time. Their priorities are very diffuse. Louis van Gaal, former United manager, he warned, current man United manager, another Dutchman, Eric Ten Haag, he said to him, I advise him not to go there because he would be better off at a football club that prioritizes football, not a commercial organization that prioritizes commercials. And what he meant by that is that United, for example, they make their players do all sorts of commercial activities that make them take their eye off the ball, which are other clubs they don't do.

2:07:40Such as? Oh, I don't know, photo shoots for sponsors, that kind of thing. Right. Right. So United are not wholly focused on the sport. Even if my other theory is bollocks, it's a fact documented by the prior managers that United is not a club wholly focused on the sport. And then you've got people, you know, players, when they sell the club to players, when they try and sign players, one of the main ways that they do it is that they show them how many more Instagram followers they'll get if they sign for United. You know, they'll 10X their Instagram followers overnight, which means that they're open to better sponsorship deals.

2:08:14etc etc that's true it's true it's fact other clubs don't do that um i'm not saying it's a bad idea because obviously it persuades people to sign for them who might not otherwise sign for them but you might question what kind of personality that attracts to the club and whether or not they are um people who are all about on the pitch glory and nothing else and so obviously people do throw those accusations at united players all the times that you know they're more about the brand their own brand than they are about winning trophies and blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's this lack of obsessive dedication, I think, that is what holds them back.

2:08:54And ultimately, it's the only form of strategy that when all is said and done really works in football. Because I want to stress, football is not about differentiation. Football is about intensity. And where I think businesses go wrong is that a lot of businesses, they try and learn lessons from sport and they think if we just try to be the best and if we just try to do things very intensely and just like um outperform our competitors that's how we'll win but that's wrong they're trying to build when businesses learn from sport they're trying to build the house as fast as humanly possible um without actually sitting back and asking what what house are we building or where are we building it do you know what I mean um and I think that is interesting the the differences and similarities between sports and because looking through the strategy lens it's like yeah well strategically united are fucking smashing it they have the most controversy controversy control god I'm getting I've done two podcasts today you can tell the controversy around it culture is plumbing these little things that tell the story of, well, we want the strategy to attract the most combustible, potentially players, players who are there for the brand.

2:10:15Well, then, oh, the culture is plumbing. We'll come here for Instagram followers. And all of this could be, you know, theoretical, but they're just great examples of teasing out the difference between strategy, story, culture. And I think it is interesting. I think as a Spurs fan, you see it. we almost had the complete opposite of that where we had everything, the bottom strategy, literally the new stadium being the kind of the epicenter of that, the mecca of that. But then you bring in the wrong charisma and the wrong storyteller, i.e. Conte, who plays a defensive system, culture is plumbing.

2:10:59You know, we were basically essentially parking the bus and we've got two fucking rapid wingers. get rid of him same strategy same deep strategy different storyteller different charisma more of a kind of paternal figure versus a combustible figure like conte and like well fucking we're probably not going to finish top four but like we're on we're on the way right we're moving um mate we're gonna have to wrap that up because i've got i've got a go shortly um but as always i could man i could talk to you about all this stuff for fucking yonks so yeah thank you so absolutely loved it yeah i hope we didn't meander too much or just the right now perfect thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much