Espresso: Oisín Rogers, The Devonshire - Control Your Nerves Under Pressure

0:06When we look in like the reflection, when you look in your reflection, what about yourself scares you?

0:18I would think a good example of this is during the incredibly intense few months from June when we signed the lease here until November when we actually opened there was an absolute avalanche of work that needed to be done from the point of view of getting this, turning this from a chicken shop into what looks like a pub that's been here for a while. And the intensity of the dealings with the builders, the contractors, the suppliers, the staff, the setup, the purchasing of equipment and furniture and all of that stuff really became a whirlwind. It was incredibly intense. Charlie, Ashley and I worked, you know, a lot of 18 hour days in an environment that I'm not absolutely used to because it involved being on a computer and talking to people on the phone and dealing with contractors and timelines and schedules and cash and all of those things.

1:26And I found that incredibly stressful and intense on the basis that it was such a huge investment and there was so much involved in making it a success. And I realized close to the time we were opening that I wasn't able to tell the difference between being excited and shitting myself. So there was this kind of mad, intense, emotional feeling happening where I wasn't sure what the signals coming back to me were because I was so in it. And that was kind of a learning for me that they do actually feel quite similar. Yes. Excitement and nerves are the same thing. Yeah. I say that to myself from doing this because I get nervous before I do podcasts.

2:13Really? Yeah. You certainly don't seem nervous to me. Yeah, no, no, I do. Even today on the way up, I was, you know, I just always shit myself a little bit. Oh my goodness. But I believe it's a good thing. Oh, definitely. I think it adds, well, I've come to, because I've done like talks in front of a couple of hundred people and I was like, I'm actually like fucking shit myself. You know what I mean? And then after I've done them a couple of times, I'm like, it just sharpens the saw. Yeah. Like those nerves add a certain like gravitas to things that... Well, I remember the last couple of weeks in October, because we had planned to open mid-October.

2:45And of course, these things always slip a little bit. Yeah, of course. And that last couple of weeks, and you just do the calculations about how much money is going out compared to what should be coming in. And you look at the numbers and you absolutely go, oh, Jesus, you know. And that last sort of headlong 15, 20 days from the point of view, we thought, listen, we've got to get this open to actually getting it open. And, you know, there's some really lovely photos on the wall in the green room that were taken by Mike Taylor, which kind of punctuates that for me. And I quite often look at those days and I go, oh, my God, you know, that front bar didn't even have a bar in it two days before we opened.

3:24It looked like an absolute, the worst disaster that had happened. and to get through that and have it done and get the carpentry finished and french polished and open and get the beer flowing was just an incredible time quick one guys espressos have got a brand new sponsor unleashed unleashes inventory management software that talks directly to your finance and econ software we use unleashed daily islands i bloody love it we've got our admin time in half saving approximately 30k a year why use it save money save headaches save stress get granular clarity on your margins know where your stock is, don't miss availability look, your favourite brands literally use Unleashed as their backbone, Candy Kiddens Tiny Rebel, Trip, all use it religiously look, there's a link in the show notes please feel free to book a call with Josh he's a wonderful sales team at Unleashed they're amazing, even nothing comes of it and even better news, you'll get your first month free if you reference Hungary thank you.

4:23How do you surf the chaos of like the sweet I almost imagine like a wave of shitting yourself versus excitement, like a wave of chaos. And that relates to me massively. How did you, cause I'm asking this selfishly, like how do you like stay above the water, not stay above the water, but stay not calm, but like keep, do you know what I mean? Honestly, I do think, well, while the plan and the, and, and, and the timeline was there in front of me, I always thought about the moment that I was in and trying to, get the shit done that needs to be done right now and i'm quite good at getting things done quickly and right now and i felt like i couldn't think forward for a lot of that time it was all about right now i've got to do this list of things that needs to be done right now and i want it done before the end of day today and if it's not done before the end of day today it needs to be done tomorrow first thing and rather than having goals and action plans which which i fucked that by the I just had a list of things to fucking sort out and even if they weren't done to the standard I wanted them to I wanted to be able to get to a point where they were done and I could move on to the next thing and that was how I got through it Yeah, it's almost being in the moment What did it feel like on the day you open you've had this huge amount of work between the three of you lads God, it was What's the feeling in your soul?

5:49There was one particular moment where we got the beers on and the beers were delivered and we tested the the guinness and i think it was only me ash charlie ross sam and mike the photographer were the only ones here it was a probably a tuesday evening and i pushed it and pushed it and rushed it and rushed it and wanted to get to that fucking point where a pint of guinness would come into a glass and somehow we managed it and the technical the technical push that we had to get that done was immeasurably intense like I don't know how the technicians managed how the builders managed how we managed it but we managed to pour a few pints and the very first one I was I was really fucking happy with and we knew we'd nailed it and I just went and I said look I'm just going to sit in the fucking corner and I sat in the corner and it was pretty emotional i can imagine yeah that's amazing and mike actually took a photo it's over there but that for me was a was a big moment thank you so so much for listening it honestly means the world to me i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day let's be having ya if you want the full episode it will be in the show notes a link will be in the show notes the full episode thank you so much please leave friends as well means the world to me

7:20Thank you.