Espresso - The Devonshire Founder 1% Improve Your Way To Perfection

0:02Yeah, because when you have that sort of meteoric success and it just absolutely boots off. How do you keep that sort of humbleness and humility in keeping it apart? I'm not really humble. I mean, I'm not. I'm delighted about how it's gone. But I think there would have been a real danger of going, okay, I've made it now. I'll just sit back and watch it. But I don't think that's ever in my nature anyway. We're always, between Charlie and Ash and I, we're always trying to tweak little bits around the edges to make sure it's always good. And we do beat ourselves up about, you know, you get the odd one star review when someone doesn't like it.

0:40And you really sift it out and see what's happened and work out whether you can make things better. And we're constantly and always doing that. And I don't think that's going to change. So you just constantly, when you get those bad reviews, because I think part of anyone who does something well, especially like in a creative pursuit, you've got to have a sort of mendacious little thug in your head saying that shit. I think I do have that. Really? It can be quite annoying at times. And you lie awake at night going, you know, there's people waiting at the bar the other day for like two, three minutes at one stage.

1:11How do we pull that cork out of the bottle so they don't have to do it? And think, do you put an extra member of staff on or do you increase the flow rate of the beer? Do we need more taps? Do we need to do this? And like we spent a lot of capex on increasing volume on the bar in particular. So when you say capex. It's cash, basically. Right, yeah, yeah. On doing things, you know, and same in the kitchen with bits of equipment and moving stuff around and thinking about, you know, how people flow through the building and taking tables out here, putting them in there, moving stuff around, making the zones a bit more comfortable where we can.

1:52And obviously you can see the green room continues to sort of change and evolve and turn into something. And I think that's probably a symptom of what our brains are like, that we will always try and add incremental little bits in where we can. What are some of those, because I completely agree, and I've got that voice in my head. I listen to a podcast back and I'm like, that was shit. I can't even know if I've done a hundred of these. I stop it. I listen back to it and I'm like, I can't. I should have asked that. And as I said to you, when we did this last one, as I was walking out, I was like, fuck's sake, you didn't ask about the artwork.

2:25Yeah. It's one of the most interesting bits about this place. But yeah, what are some of those little 1 % or 2 % tweaks that have then had, in your opinion, a massive change in perception? It's a really interesting question, though, because each one on its own doesn't make much difference. It's when they're all there that all of a sudden you feel in a different place, you know? and you know I can say that you know we put the Guinness Zero in or we added in an extra Budvar tap or we changed the configuration of the fridges so that the wine was closer to where and each one is like minimal it makes a tiny difference but when you do 50 of them then there's a difference yes you know and I thought I could probably they're all boring things if I'm honest with you yeah yeah yeah but but you know they are things but the way and the way between the three of you because i think we talked last time about um your chaos charlie's uh order and ashley's perfection i love that sort of that but it's so true yeah yeah and i i'm not saying it happened totally by accident but somehow that that balance works between the three of us and i think you know we get on we're really tight we're really close but i think my chaos definitely frustrates the other two their perfection definitely frustrates me sometimes but we we we we need it.

3:39You need that sort of three balances in there. But that voice in your head, that's what I'm trying to get into, is that, as I said, that sort of just that thing that says, that's not good, that's not good, which is so ironic, because that's what you need to create something super successful. I don't know. Whether you do need it or not, it definitely kind of... What does it sound like to you, that voice? Oh, I mean, it's always there. It's like a monotone in the background. You know, I'm looking around the room now, I look at this and saying that that that picture is slightly wonky. I need to move that coffee cup, the phone over there.

4:12It's just like two degrees out. I've always got this stuff going on and I try and when I see things do them straight away or as quickly as I can. So the impacts are and it's about taking away sort of silent irritants, things that irritate you in the eye or in one of your senses that you don't necessarily vocalize. they're the things that make the difference and we look at those all the time or try to look at those all the time you know music been too loud or or or not loud enough or you know things like a a lingering smell in the background that's only just uh perceptible you'll never you never go oh i don't like smelling here but in your head you got it there and it can lead to kind of a negative thought about the business and i'm always watching out for those things but yeah that negative thought is what makes it better i remember i listened to a podcast of stormzy when he came off the stage at glastonbury absolutely fucking smashed it came off the stage like literally everyone was like going this is sick he came off the stage started crying he was like that was shit yeah it's like that little voice in your head going i didn't hit that note i didn't hit that note yeah loads of comedians i'll get that yeah loads of comedians um there's this comedian stavros forgotten his second name hilarious guy and he was saying that he'd released his special netflix and he'd wish he'd give it another four more months but the special went absolutely insane but it's that that creative i think you can't have creativity without as i say like a voice in your head that's just telling you looking for the the bad things well i think um i i've got great sympathy for creative people who do performances and do one thing like that i mean that stormsy thing i beat myself up like mad about that yeah you know even if everyone's telling me it's great and the problem he's got is he's only got one chance to do it whereas we're doing it every day and we're always adding you know even if we had 0.001 every day over a long period you're getting an improvement and I like feeling those improvements how do you think like because obviously what was we got here super early say like 6am and you see the sort of um the underbelly of the place you know you've got the guy cleaning the floor yeah we're talking about that and i think going through london it's like that film 28 days later you know first thing in the morning yeah there's been it feels like there's a fucking apocalypse there's there's people sweeping this sweeping the streets yeah you're clearing you're clearing away the aftermath yeah yeah and it does feel like a performance doesn't it how would you say as i said we're just going with the flowy like i'm just following my curiosity but how would you say um the this the build-up of of the devonture is like a sort of theatrical performance we're surrounded by theater around here i don't know i always try and find the odd sort of synergy between what we do and and the creative industries but that's just my natural leaning yeah and i i kind of love it that we get painters artists poets filmmakers uh songwriters singers performers all of those people kind of come in here and we buzz off that because there's a great there's a great feeling of you know doing something that that's making people feel feel good yes you know and you know and that's really what this room is about and when you said you borrow from the creative uh and arts i know there's like lots of like sing-alongs in here like yeah what are some of those one or two things you kind of pull from there and and weave into the way you run run this place because i would say this when i was as i told you i've been here for many piss up but on a on a friday like this is analogous to like i'm not a rave maybe that's too strong but there's there's like a feeling like that when it is uh raucous righteous it's all those intangible but it's definitely some sort of vibe yeah and what yeah what would you say about the people it's always about the people that are there and how they're how they feel and how they're made to feel and if everybody's happy in a room it's contagious it kind of feeds in and we we try and do that and try and facilitate that at least as much as we can thank you so much for listening to that espresso i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day let's be having your boy and please do subscribe follow the podcast Share this espresso on WhatsApp if you liked it.

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