How David Hieatt sold howies to Timberland, building The Do Lectures and Hiut Denim Co. - a story in Challenger “Being”

0:00Hello there and welcome to Hungry. Hungry is the podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brand looking to pour gasoline all over their growth. Each week we'll interview successful founders, thought leaders, unpack their lessons and provide you with a toolkit to scale super fast. I am Dan Pope, I am your host and without further ado, let's get started.

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3:22Thank you so much. Hello there people and listeners of the Hungry podcast. I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome David Hyatt on the podcast. David has very succinctly summed up your career and I found it on your website, David. He's bankrupt at 16, thrown out of college at 18, joined Saatchi and Saatchi at 21, started Howie's in 1995, sold at Timberland, left, started to do lectures, started Hyatt Denham, co um your work has been as i said before we hit the record button been super super inspirational to starting hungry especially purpose that's just such a great book i implore um our listeners to to definitely check that out check out the do lectures there's just a whole schleb of amazing uh just amazing different ways of thinking online it's just such a great um yeah great tool and kit and also your newsletter is absolutely fantastic so i'm incredibly grateful uh for you coming on today david oh my pleasure i mean it's um it's good to have a chat and and um you know if i could be of use to anyone fantastic if i can't then you know uh not so good but um i'd like to be i'm sure i'm absolutely sure you will be so where i'd love to start this conversation is sort of the first um kind of door i want to open i suppose is i was as i said i've been rereading a lot of your stuff in the last couple of weeks when i knew this interview was coming up and i was actually having lunch in hammersmith along the river about about about two weeks ago and it was sort of like the sun was shining you know it's like the sort of the sea almost looks that's not the sea the river looks like it's kind of like metallic it was like it was just sparkling it was gorgeous the sun was coming through and this sound came soaring past and it was this and like this speedboat just went like that and peeled up the river and i'd read your article um called b i think it's be a speedboat oh yeah and excuse my language i sometimes swear but i was i've always thought like fucking hell like how do i get how does how do i how do we say what the challenger brand mindset is and your story of this of being a speedboat versus a shipliner and what i took from that story was the shipliner is almost like the corporate the shipliner loves meetings about meetings the shipliner loves perfection the shipliner loves to go slow um but seeing that speedboat right up up the thames really brought it to life and it was just this ability to be nimble to swim fast or go fast but I'd love to know, like, why do you believe Challenger brand should be speedboats versus shipbuyers?

6:03And maybe add some more color to that analogy, because I think it's beautiful. Well, I mean, it is a strong analogy or metaphor, but the aspect really is, you know, we're in a really fast world. And the ocean liner is really slow, right? It's slow to turn, to change, to stop. And I think one of the strengths of being small and a challenger brand is your ability to react and to be agile. And in a way, your biggest strength is your agility and ability to change really, really fast. And the important bit about the ocean liner and the speedboat is don't drop anchor. because you know and that's and that's what the big ships have to do right they have to drop anchor and they have to stay put and they have to do things how they've always done them and the ability to be fast and react is a incredible strength in a world that is completely changing on a almost on a daily basis that the one thing that shouldn't really change is your values and and things that you believe in but your ability to get to them can change doing so for me it's you know like being small now is such an incredible strength i think as i said there'll be a lot of people listening to this on a walk on you know on a on a drive whatever and they'll they'll be thinking oh there's this kind of i love the day of david and glider story really speaks to me but there'll be a lot of people thinking oh we're too small we don't have the budget we don't have the the muscle of the big boys we don't have the uh the strength but when you said you don't have to drop anchor what what do you mean by that well i mean the big ocean liner has to drop anchor i mean it has to stop and it has to wait for the tide to turn so it can go into port.

8:17But this little cheeky little speedboat can zap around super fast. And the thing is you want to react to something in an incredibly powerful and fast way. The way to the future is to get there before others. Otherwise, you're always going to be copying and you're always going to be behind. And this little speedboat metaphor really is you going, hey, you can get to the future before anyone else. And if you can do that, your size doesn't really matter that much. And people get too obsessed with size because right now in a fast changing world, what's the biggest benefit is, is like you being slow isn't the thing that you want, right?

9:09So you can react, you can get to the future before anyone else. And so therefore, you don't need to be the biggest, but you need to be agile and responsive. And you need to read signals where others can't even see anything. And so you suddenly go, what does that mean? What does that mean to me? What could that mean to my business? And how can I go and respond super fast? that's you know this mindset now is the toolbox for a challenging brand is you've got a very fast changing world and you don't actually want to be that big because being big means you can't actually change super quick and so the the best armies are the fast armies not the biggest armies and and so i think we just got this opportunity in time to go like what do you need actually a big budget for do it the interesting thing about big budgets is you has you always have more people to be more worried about how you spend it i mean like yeah and when you have a really small budget nobody gives a shit and so you go so you can and you can place small bets find out um some data and then go and place a bigger bet because you got some data and and placing small bets is a fantastic way to to you know have ideas go and check things out go and see what the market actually thinks about as opposed to what you know you know the research companies tell you so the market always decides um but you can have a cheeky little small bet and just go okay i've actually learned something here and i kind of i think we're in this extraordinary time for small you know brands where you know like company of ones company of tens company of 20 people they're all kind of small um but you can be incredible at being small i mean like the the thing that i've always struggled with and we were talking before we went on air is really that thing of like you know like this growth like on one level we kind of want it just because everyone else wants it and then you go like um why do you want it well and i think about growth in perhaps different ways now and and i didn't always think this way um whereas i think now you can grow influence as opposed to size and so and and that's really about quality how do you 10x your of you know creativity as opposed to 10x you know the size of the company and you know we make jeans for you know renny rossetti in the past but he became world's best chef by serving 45 people and yet he's the world's best chef in fact he's won world's best chef five times he's not allowed actually to enter anymore because it's not yeah he's so good he keeps winning it's ridiculous and so how how you can look at your company now is like because growth can be really stressful something like and you think oh i've suddenly got all these mouths to feed and and and then the company runs you and you stop running it and and the amount of founders who just look like scared rabbits because they are scared rabbits because they just don't know actually how to a they've chased the wrong you know thing and then they climbed this mountain and they got to this top of this mountain and they look around and they just think i don't even like the view and then how do i get down from this mountain that i've climbed that i thought was other someone else's mountain and and then in order to go and go get back to reality again and and you know it's it's a real we're chasing other people's narratives and and i think for any founder listening to this right now is going like what do you value the most oh my time okay okay obviously your health your family's health you know and your happiness your ability to sleep um and how about growing those things and um and your ability to look after your energy your ability to look after your people's energy and your ability to look after creativity like i think we've been chasing the wrong thing but i i am interested don't get me wrong i am interested in 10x in my creativity my ability to have ideas my ability to be of influence in the world but it's not always it's not always the thing that people really focus on they just want to grow a number they don't even know why i want to grow 20 this year and you go why like um and they don't even know because it's really good not not all growth is good it just means what if you're growing something that a product you don't actually love um and just go yeah i just want to sell more of this shit you go why like so i mean it's a it's an argument like i'm battling just like everybody else out there we're all battling with the same argument and do you know where I'm actually winning is when I've got time to walk down to work.

14:52That's where I'm thinking I'm winning. You know, like when I'm in, now and again, I went, well, I went for a year and a half, went swimming with a mate in the sea for a year and a half, almost nonstop. And when we're winning is where we're kind of in charge of our time. and our swimming pool is connected to america and and you suddenly go and actually we're winning at that point we're sort of time millionaires time billionaires and and so that thing of founders i think they're kind of getting themselves into a pickle because they're chasing this thing this wannabe unicorn like why like don't you just want to be good don't you just want to be great at what you do why why do you think being big at what you do is better than being amazing at what you do i'd settle for amazing rather than big all day long a thousand percent it's i mean there's just so much kind of insane wisdom in there david and i think it is so true it's it's until really really going rereading your work i you know you know i was like i was becoming obsessed with the podcast downloads because i was like more downloads equals potentially bigger sponsorships did it i was like i need to get bigger bigger bigger bigger um and and then you know i do these supper clubs as well and i was i need more people more people we did one with about 25 to 30 people it was way too big and it was shit it wasn't shit it was it was all right but like we did one the other day with 12 12 to 14 and everyone was like oh my god that was so much better um one thing i want to go back back to and it's you said um you can get to the get to the future before uh before anybody else i think what you said that's that kind of speedboat analogy one thing and i've worked for in in in a challenger brand um which is actually a business that was selling into grocery and inside the supermarkets and what happens is You have brands who start out when they're naive.

17:09And I think naivety is actually a superpower. And you're going along like a speedboat because you don't even know. It's almost like a fish doesn't know it's in water, right? So when you're starting out, you're so naive and you can just soar along. You can get out of the storm quickly. You can avoid the iceberg quickly. But then what happens is these brands, I really think a brand is like a baby growing up. So it starts as a toddler. It doesn't know. It's just super curious. and then it gets to the age of maybe you know 13 which is like in the brand's life is maybe two three years down the line when they start getting insecure and they're like oh you know like a 13 year old going to a disco they suddenly realize oh my god i'm really insecure this happens to brands and then what happens they need to bring in a corporate person and i know this like um has happened so many times with people who listen to this podcast they bring a corporate person in which is basically maybe someone from a shipliner and suddenly they lose all the thing that made them great and they think they need experience and i'd love to just kind of go back to this speedboat thing like what are some of the maybe weekly day-to-day principles of like this is how we are a speedboat and this is how we are not a shipliner that you that you implement at Hyatt Denim?

18:28So, I mean, that's a really good question. And the thing that I'm really interested in is obviously putting new ideas out there and also understanding that quite a lot of the ones that we're going to put out there will probably fail. Like 95 % of them will fail. And I think that's an interesting culture because I only need really one idea to work, to really change a lot. And we've put things out there like a history tag where on a pair of jeans, you know, you would be able to. I was kind of obsessed by how jeans tell stories. And because I saw a pair of jeans in a Levi's store and it was 140 years old.

19:19And I just wanted to know the story behind it. What was its hardest day? What was its luckiest day? And the pair of jeans couldn't actually tell me that story at all. So that story died with the owner, right? But the jeans were still there. And so we came up with this history tag thing. And it was a lovely idea. And so therefore, people could, you know, when those jeans went into a secondhand store one day, that the stories would go with them too it was a really lovely idea except it didn't work and and i think for me is that thing of um the thing i'm fighting against is to i think on the ocean liner is they're quite happy with what they've got and they don't want to find the new way they don't want to find anything else than actually stick into their formula and for me a formula is a form of a trap and so at some point you'll go we always do it this way we always do it this way we always do it this way until one day that way is completely out of time the problem with the formula is it's really successful for a period of period of time and then it completely falls off the cliff and so that's where you see these amazing businesses amazing businesses and then almost overnight disappear and and i think that culture if you can create a culture where you just go like should we try this can we try this can we try this and they're small bets and and it can actually be quite like upsetting for people to go oh we'll try this thing and this thing didn't work either and and once you've done 90 experiments you find 90 ways that it doesn't work is at some point you've got to do something that does work and it can change you know that's what getting to the future is is is you have to you have to go and try stuff that is there's no formula for it you there's no comparison where you go oh it's a bit like airbnb but it does this that's not really an idea that's just copying and that's you know that's fine but for me the culture of experimentation and an experiment really is something you'll try something and you don't actually know if it's going to work that's an experiment because it if there's no risk there's no experiment and so so whereas the ocean liner is quite happy with exactly how it's doing things it doesn't want to change anything it wants to stay exactly as it is i think the opportunity with small brands is to go and go what if we did it like this um oh that didn't work that was a disaster you go okay well what what do we learn from that and can we now go and iterate something else which would maybe work and i think it's the The culture, you know, the metaphor really is about the cultures.

22:30Whereas, you know, one is of sticking to the formula and don't change. And the other one is a formula where, you know, we experiment. And one day we'll get to the future before anyone else. Because we just tried shit. And we kept trying shit. bohemi our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenger food and drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist your first hundred stockist to wholesale bohemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger bohemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollies ollies been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 % uplift in sales when using boemy to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff is coming to podcast in a couple of week weeks he uses it to manage the team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using boemy look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time island of his reading james dyson's book oh yeah yeah uh the second one invention i think it is and he was talking about all the stuff they're doing with sort of strawberries and all this sustainable farming and he was talking about staying how like the word experience like almost sends shivers up his spine um and it's interesting because it's almost like you need experience to to know and do better but you're you're mostly a huge healthy balance of naivety to almost stay dumb and keep asking the dumb questions so how do you how do you stay i don't mean this i can like how do you stay naive as you get older the the thing is like because there's no attachment to either the failure or the success where you're just gonna you just try stuff and i I mean, the interesting thing with James Dyson, I mean, I only met him once, but I got asked to do his brand book.

24:49And I was like, what? I mean, he already had a successful brand. Nobody's going to read. I'm going to go and write a brand book that nobody's going to read. Like, who cares? And I couldn't quite understand why they wanted a brand book, but it was for Japan and America. But the reason, actually, I went and did it It was because they showed me this poster of how many times he'd failed and iterated. It was a 5 ,126 times in order to get to the point of success. And at that point, I was just going, oh, yeah, I'll write that brand book. I just only because I just want to meet him. Like, yeah, yeah.

25:32And because I just loved that way of thinking where you just go, well, I'll do this, then I'll do this, then I'll do this. And I think the mindset of openness to failure, it's not like you want to attract failure. It's just you want to find experiments that don't work because then you're closer to finding something that does work. And I think when there's no attachment either way, and you can do things where you're betting the farm, well, betting the farm gate, not the farm each time. The problem with founders sometimes is they bet the complete farm on a hunch. And that can actually do well, but it can also, nine times out of 10, doesn't do well.

26:24But if you bet the farm gate, you just go, okay, it's a farm gate. I'll bet another farm gate. then i'll bet another one so it's small bets and that's what i'm kind of really interested in where you just go small bets you find something go oh hang on we've got something here maybe we need to go and pay more attention now it's um it's obviously i always think of this kind of a process and it's that you've got to hack a lot of lead to stumble across the gold and you've got to be okay with finding leads and you've got to be okay with just just seeing there's there's a beautiful lesson and gift in every failure i think and it's i think failure is the kind of the wrong word there needs almost to be a new word in the lexicon for these sort of speedboat challenge around businesses um but it's it's fascinating one thing i do want to talk about and you can almost spot it a mile off is when a brand has um you can have the best speedboat in the world it's like sat in the harbor it's shining under the sunshine it's red and blue and it looks amazing so that could be a brand with like great packaging and then you've got actually a pretty decent product as well and this podcast started more in the food and drink spheres so there's lots of brands that have that so they have great product pretty good packaging as well but they don't have the purpose and the purpose is like the petrol the pet it's it's the purpose is the compass the the the it's the petrol it's what gets you through the storms and one of your quotes i read somewhere is um teams need to know what change they're going to make in this world it is the fuel for the journey it is the grit it is the passion it is the meaning it is belief that there is or soon will be a better way to do this no vision no fuel no fuel no culture no culture no team no team no point and i just again this is why i implore listens to read your works it's brilliant but you started howies what what were some of the lessons you well you said you'd sold howies and you said you'd felt broken you said you didn't want to run around that track twice what were some of the lessons you took about purpose from howies that you'd then apply to hire yeah i mean it's um i mean it's kind of interesting because like we're sort of we're fed a story that you know you go and build a company and then you sell it and you get a check and you know and you're successful um and that's one narrative that people are told and and for me i didn't really feel you know that narrative i'd sort of i would we were growing howies and we'd never done a business before and it was growing too fast and we didn't really know what we were doing and in essence then we we went and sold it and then we got a big check and you go thank you very much but the mission was half complete so it was kind of like well got some money um but we've only half got to where we even wanted to get to and felt like we were really just starting that.

29:41And suddenly, so my learning was to, if you find something you love doing, then you have to find a way to keep doing it. And the notion of like suddenly selling a company just for money, and so that means that you're selling something you love, and so that might actually shorten your period of time for doing it. it doesn't actually mathematically make sense apart from you've got a bunch of money but now you've stopped doing the thing that you love so the thing that I really thought about long and hard was keeping hold of Hyatt before we started it and I'd sort of arranged to have a phone call with Yvonne Churnard at Patagonia because we'd done a bunch of stuff with them and we came pretty close to maybe, you know, selling Howie's to Patagonia, but at the time Patagonia were, you know, needed to focus on Patagonia.

30:51But I sort of got the respect of Patagonia. I'd written a thing about a journey of a carrot from Poland to Cardigan, which was completely and utterly one of the most boring pieces of copy had ever written and with every left turn right turn every roundabout every like yeah every waste that sign it was insanely dull and boring but it sort of inspired patagonia to go and do footprint chronicles and and so so to cut this story a little bit short is i'd i just wanted to have a chat with ivan and i'd been sending him the howie's catalogs so howie's catalogs became quite famous and you know collectible and and we'd built a company through words really and you know and telling people what was important to us and so i just asked him a question i said ivan like how did you keep hold of patagonia because i didn't keep hold of howie's and i want to make sure that i keep hold of it this time and he thought about it and and he just said well it's like 40 years hard work i went thought so um and then he said yeah and two remortgages i'm going yeah thought so um and i think that's the that's the beautiful quest is if you've found something you want to do and and this is where purpose is actually People can take purpose in the wrong way, and they just think purpose is just a nice thin air, a bit of brand washing.

32:33But in essence, the real core of purpose is you're doing something that gives you the highest energy. And because everything you do is a transfer of energy. And so when you feel it the most, you can transfer that energy to another human being. and you can do that through laughter, humor, you know, like with passion. And so it's a transference of energy from you to another human being. But when you're operating as a human being from the highest form of energy is you found your love. And so therefore, like, that's what purpose does, right? And you hope you're going to be successful. but grit you know you know hope needs grit and and what keeps you going is the fact that you kind of want to do the thing that you love doing the theory is that because you love doing it you're going to get really good at it like next level good and that's the thing that actually allows you to keep doing it because you're on another level compared to anyone else because that's what love has allowed you to do was love has allowed you to go and practice enough to get so ridiculously good that you can keep doing it for a long time.

34:00And I think for me, the saddest thing ever is when people go and build businesses and all they have is a five-year plan and then to go and sell it. And you're going, you just sold five years of your life. for money um and because by the way you can make money from doing the stuff that you actually love because you're actually going to be better than anyone else out there because you love doing it because you'll just do do it for longer and harder and work will be play so that notion of like um deferred life plans because you're going to go and build a business that you don't actually care about is a denial of life and and the thing for you is if you start thinking about what gives you energy and you know what makes you excited is don't you just want to do that and don't you want to find a way to become so good at it you can always do it and and so that's really it's it's not even that complicated apart from people make it complicated because they chase other people's dreams and and that's that's the sadness sometimes with founders they kind of climb mountains and and they get up to a top of a mountain after 10 years and they just work out they've climbed the long mountain and it's the saddest journey back down yes peaks and battles right so intro there's so there's so much in that so i think it's there's a um i think it's paul graham who's got the paul graham essays who's got the do what feels like uh play to you but looks like worse others i think it's something like that and that's one that's kind of why i went all in on this because i'm kind of i know we were talking before we hit record about how to slow down but because i'm so obsessed with it like it's it's very easy for me to do a 16 hour day and sort of like gloating but it doesn't feel like work like it's what i would do if it wasn't wasn't doing that do you mean and i think there's a lot in that for listeners i think the other thing is again if i was to go back to when i started this podcast i was like right i'm gonna the reason i'm doing this to help people help people know how to sell their brand i interviewed william chase who's the founder of tyrells and he said when you're in the winner's enclosure you realize that all the fun was in the race and that's a quote that's really stuck with me and actually probably one of the biggest things that i've unlearned is that selling the business is it's not something that's actually good it's this false narrative that we've been i mean you know kind of infected with and i think that's a really great quote i mean paul graham is fantastic as well i mean but the the the thing is like because like don't get me wrong like when you start something the odds are against you succeeding like a lot right so there's for every 10 startups maybe two or three succeed in the end right so that the odds are not good you know but we're risk takers and we're willing to take the risk and now there's two ways to look at um things and And it's, you can go and succeed and you can have a miserable journey.

37:33And you've got to find a way as founders, even though there's fear and there's stress and there's self-doubt, is you've got to find a way to enjoy the ride. Because whether you get to the winning enclosure or you cannot take a fall, is either way like if you don't enjoy the ride you're literally misspending time because the ride is all of the thing and actually the result is some other thing but it's not even as close to all the things you're ever going to remember are probably the hardest and toughest days where you just go oh my god when you were really tested and somehow you got through it and and and those you know those you know it didn't feel like it at the time but those were the days and and and then you think you're only gonna have a great day when um you win is that's so small amount of the time over 10 or 15 you appeared that one day where you suddenly you know someone tells you you know mostly probably through a big check that you won is this if that's the only day that you truly are happy you got all these other days that you didn't enjoy the ride and so like the the the thing for you for your life is to go and find a way to enjoy it and have belief have belief in where you just go like and you know have so much belief that that you just keep doing it until there's a point where you just can't do it anymore um and but even then you'll go again and but the the key thing is to go like you gotta um you gotta be true to yourself and and you just go like even even the hardest days are still your days where you've made a choice to do that and and you just go like you know like be resilient to it and and just accept it and just go like find a way to look after yourself find a way to switch off find a way to get rest but like ultimately play the long game but it's your game it is you you've literally chosen this of all the things that you could do in your life you've chosen this so you might as well enjoy even the worst of days because they they're oddly the ones that you're just gonna look back and laugh at just could you remember where actually we did that product and it was absolutely shit and no one bought it and we don't blame them during those that oddly those are the moments peak moments are when things go really well peak moments when actually also when things go really badly so the things that we remember are peak moments so so it's kind of like enjoy the ride because i mean that's all you got what what there's i want to go into in a sec um we'll hold that for a sec but one thing i want to talk about is is this purpose because there'll be a lot of people listening to this who as i said right at the beginning they've got the great product they've great got the great packaging but they haven't got the purpose and i almost think i always sometimes think of categories like a music festival right and the bigger the you've got loads of different tents i.e loads of different brands that ramp up the music the bigger the purpose the louder the music and people just gravitate towards that like a beacon right and you know reading your stuff is and and reading your work when you you kind of got it in that one sentence which is like get 400 people their jobs back in cardigan it's it's it's a story like i suppose where i'm trying to go with this david is like how do brands how do you found as you've got the the the the purpose in their soul right how do they transfer that into into like an actual story like are there any specific exercises they can do um questions to ask themselves well i mean i think in terms of brand storytelling is imagine if you could just own one word and it's actually a really good exercise especially if you're writing and I think all founders should write and the thing is because I teach founders on some workshops and the one thing I say look hey there's a million distinct words but you have to choose one because your ability to go from unknown to known relies on you being really clear about your voice and actually most founders they kind of think oh I can't find my voice well it's pretty easy you already got it it's just you haven't actually done the work on getting clear and so if you can go and choose one word is it it's kind of really i do this triangle exercise and and it's kind of like people just go oh my god that's incredible you go yeah i mean the reason nike beat adidas when they shouldn't have done you know because adidas had 40 years of you know they were 40 years ahead they had all the money they had all the athletes had all the product you know that all the distribution nike shouldn't actually even be in the top 10 apart from they had a guy called dan widen who allowed them to find the voice and made sport an emotional thing because it actually is an emotional thing and um and so like a founder has to go and do the work on your voice and if you can't find your voice i can tell you this now in a busy world you're literally not going to stand out and and so like so so i'm like going well it's it's pretty you know the reason like people innocent and all those stood out is because they found a voice.

43:44And it's a distinct voice. And it allows them to go from unknown to known in a busy world. And that's the work I would, if I was a founder right now, I'm just going like, oh, what's the one thing that could really help me learn to write like um and get quick at it and and get good at it because great writing allows you to do great thinking and and if you can write things and that could be about your ideas as well is it allows you to communicate with your community and a brand is really just a well-told story and apart from most founders can't actually tell their story you go hmm you're in the storytelling business um and you think you're in the making jam business you go don't get me wrong the jam has to be good it has to be the best in the world um but your ability to tell your story has to be as good if not better than your product

44:51there's yeah i mean my brain's kind of articulating with different ideas so so i think the first thing i want to kind of go back into and explore is this is this one word piece um back to the analogy about kind of categories like music festivals almost is i think brands can get stuck where they start looking and imagine going to a music festival you've got kind of oasis um i don't know stone roses and another manchester band like joy division they all sound very different and you want them to sound different because they found their unique voice and i think what can happen is brands get insecure and they start trying to sound like someone else so if you went to oasis and he was trying to and liam gallagher was trying to play like ian brown you'd be a bit like hang on a second and it loses that oomph and that unique connection that unique voice with this word piece like you said there's that triangle triangular thing like how can people find their unique voice with this triangle because i think that could really help us well i mean it's kind of an exercise I mean, it's not overly complicated.

45:56It's just like people in Adidas are still trying to find their voice. And it's the equivalent of when you have the handbrake stuck on in your car and you're driving and you're going, oh, it's not going very fast. And actually finding the voice is releasing the handbrake. So to give you an example, like, so like, you know, if your listeners know, like, say, you know, Brene Brown, like her one word could be vulnerability. You go like, go and own vulnerability, right? So, or Gary Vaynerchuk could own hustle, right? So it's like, what's the one word that you could go and own? And the nuance with it is then you've got to go and build your, and it's a triangle exercise, and at the top of it is your voice, and then at the bottom is your two characters, right?

47:01And so for Nike, it would be justified irreverence or grit, gonna make this shit happen whatever doing so and and if you put like the top of nike's thing would be empowerment and then you put those two words at the bottom in essence that triangle allows you to go and be fully in charge of your voice and to also brief anyone can look hey this is what we're about and it's and most most brands never do that works they don't actually know how to do it but but once you have you know the reason like brands come out and just go wow okay they they discovered their voice early and their ability to stand out is because they've found it um and a copy you know copycat bands now you know like like nobody wants to be a copycat band everybody wants the real thing and so I think it's important work for founders to understand how to cut through and the great thing is you don't have a budget you go great because actually having a budget and if you don't know your voice is really scary because you actually spend an awful lot of money and have no impact it's it's like a the the voice is the difference between a blunt arrow and a sharp arrow and you go oh i spent a lot of money i didn't cut through you go yeah because you actually um and don't actually know how to talk to another human being so they act they actually feel something and the voice allows you to you know you want to always speak to the heart because that's the biggest decision maker and most brands speak to the head and the heart makes most of the decisions it's the the storytelling piece and you're a very uh polished writer and i want to i mean i write every day as well and i want to explore i just i've been doing it for yonks but i just i would love to we'll go into a kind of creative process in a sec but storytelling is so important and i think i don't know which book it's in but there's the story of the guy in new york the blind man in new york and i think for listeners this is a great example of how you've got the blunt arrow versus the sharp arrow and i think and correct me if i've got this a bit wrong but there's basically a blind guy in new york and he's trying to um uh you know get get some money basically and then i think he changes the sign to i am blind it is spring and those that story is is delicious and it just realized okay well people the guy's blind at spring do you want to talk about that a bit because i think it's yeah it's it's the it's the context right so like you know the sign says um basically i'm blind give me money and but then the sign got changed because you know it's spring and i am blind so then everybody could actually understand what it must be like to be blind when all these flowers are popping off and the color's incredible and and you know and the bees are like out there and and so you know this person's missing out on all of that so basically you know great writing actually makes you feel something and and you know like for the other human being and and so it's just a really subtle change of words but that's that's you know that's the beauty of being able to write where you've got 26 letters just like everybody else and your ability to rearrange them in the right order so another human being can actually feel something is gonna separate you from you know being unknown to known and that's the beauty of it right so it's kind of like it's you know founders who can write actually do really well what what is your writing process like things i think i've read you know it's somewhere you've i just find it interesting how everyone's got their own different kind of idiosyncrasies obviously got a lot of books behind you there what what does your morning look like when do you write um what does that look like well like i think i mean it's a really interesting question because like like your ability to design your week is really important because the one thing you know like the founder is up against is basically busy and and busy is the most toughest gnarliest and sneakiest opponent that any founders ever can have and and we've also got this notion of you know 20 of what we do actually matters and the 80 doesn't matter at all and so and letting go of that 80 is going to be your ability to concentrate on the 20 and so in terms of writing is and the reason i say this is in a way the way most people that work is working is actually isn't work in and not in terms of a brain science point of view and and so what i'm trying to do and you know and this is like an ongoing practice is to you know i'll work on myself you know the first hour first two hours i mean i'll go either sea swimming i'll do some exercise to do some meditation and and all that stuff that's just kind of like just a bit of movement meditation movement you go yeah actually the founder has to look after the founder because the founder is looking after everybody else and so what i'm trying to do is to work in two hour blocks um so you know company one two hour block then two hours not do anything and then two hour block um you know then an hour not do anything and then last hour of the day is you know creative writing because well i always used to like start my writing in when i had the most energy but actually in terms of creative writing it's actually really good to do your creative writing when you're a little bit tired because you know the barriers um that you would you know have in terms of resistance to like maybe a dumb idea you think oh that's a really dumb idea the resistance is actually really low when you're tired and you just go um yeah maybe it's good maybe it's not so actually writing when you're tired is a little bit good for creativity so but i think you know like the the hard thing for everybody is we're kind of not doing any really deep work anywhere and we're um we're trying to multitask and it's an absolutely incredible awful lie.

54:24So if you want to actually do, the whole reason to say all this is, like, if you want to go and increase your influence, it's about quality. And it's the quality of thinking, the quality of creativity is the quality of writing, whichever quality you are chasing. So in order to get that, you have to block out time in order to focus on things you don't actually need to work harder longer is you just go you need to be more focused and you need to get rid of all that other shit that doesn't matter and by the way busy is a sneaky little shit um and um and and it's tempting to you know stay in busy because being busy is is actually easier than than thinking um you know sorry oh go on i was gonna i was almost this this busy narrative to bring it back to the speedboat versus shipliner is the shiplin is with loads of people super busy loads of just meetings about meetings whereas i think the speedboat it allows you to go deep work go in deep and move quick and and and the thing is you know with the speedboat is there's no passengers like you're on there and you have to hang on but like on an ocean liner like you can there's loads of passengers on a ocean liner and i'm not just saying passengers as in passengers i'm going the people on working on the ship they're kind of like they're like half steam ahead do you mean like they're not really you know busting their heads to do the best work they've ever done but on a speedboat everybody's there has to play a role.

56:06And that's what I kind of mean by the no passenger thing is everyone's there, we're going all in the same direction and we're going very fast and everybody has a job to do. That's kind of really interesting. I think in terms of your listeners is like, be really discerning with your time. and um and the tendency uh the the reason people go to overwhelm is they try and do too much they try and like oh i'm going to be on seven social media platforms you know try one like try actually you know punching really hard on one um and you know just have a singular focus try and try and do less but make it mean more and and that's how you go and 10x your influence in this world you go you know you go and write something and people just go oh my god that really did matter i love that and i i want to talk there's there's a picture on your website um and it says made in wales of the genes it's got a beautiful coastline i was down in cornwall uh two weeks ago and And just it started getting me thinking about the sea and creativity.

57:28And I think there's so many parallels between the sea and creativity. I mean, weirdly, I think creativity has been here since the beginning of time and will be here till the end of time. So is the sea. Do you know what I mean? When the pyramids were getting built, the waves were crashing against the sea. Long after I'm gone, longer after you're gone, the new innovations, they'll still be the sea. It's just this, I think creativity is a flow. Obviously, the sea flows. Creativity is kind of dangerous. the sea is kind of dangerous i think there's lots of parallels um you as you talked about earlier david about doing these sea dips with your mate like how does does being by the sea being in the in the west being i think you've got a quote which says innovation happens in the at the edges like how does the sea make you more creative and 10 extra creativity i think um the reason the reason i kind of um did the sea swims for a year and a half almost every day i mean and it's brutal and it's like there's ice on the sand do you mean it's kind of cold and yeah um but the the interesting for me was i don't really like the cold and i'm not that good a swimmer and i'm not got me doing hard things first thing and i'm going oh and and it was and it was never easy it didn't get any easier the more we did it it was like always hard for that moment you're going in and and i kind of like really liked it where you just go like you felt this freshness when you came out and you know whether you know there was a reset and you suddenly come out and you just you were ready to do you know you if you were ready to do the work that mattered most to you that day it sort of got you ready and and i think um when you're suddenly concentrating so much on like how cold it is it's like oh my god it's like it's bonkers cold then you've done hard things then and then there's a reset of like well all i gotta do say is try and solve this problem and so so and what it does in terms of creativity is it just gets you to understand like um solving problems is actually kind of fun um and and it is good to do hard things and and the reason you will go and succeed is because you can do hard things when other people can only do easy things and and you know and really what created to creativity is is seeing something that um from a set of data that no one else has seen and you put it in a form where suddenly people can go oh my god i didn't actually see that but you did and that's a hard thing but but you can only do your best work when you have a clear head and not a busy head and that's why we have to defeat busy because otherwise you will not win you will not have your best ideas you know a busy head gives you shallow ideas and and and and that's why we've got to like be really really intentional on our time on our energy and what we say yes to and what we say no to it's and i've so i can completely get wait what you're saying with with the founder and almost re-bending time which is what you've got when you can kind of escape busy when you've when you're now you're building the team at higher denim and there's there's people who expect to come into work at nine or i don't that's what i want to explore with you but when there is this kind of schedule further down or further across the hierarchy how do you get people in your team to not be busy so they can do their best work um and look the truth is this is like an this is a daily battle and yeah yeah yeah and just because we know the problem doesn't mean we always practice the you know the solution and and but what it really comes down to is focus and and i did this really great exercise and it was one of the meetings where everyone just went okay and i and i asked you know really two simple questions is what could we do to grow our business by 10 %?

1:02:17And there was 50 answers. And they go, no, we could do this and we could do that. And I go, oh, okay, whatever. And so now what are the things that we could do to 10x our business? And the answer was only two things. you know one was like go and you know you know get our website to do some of the things that it's not currently able to do um you know like that would 10x the business if we you know if we could suddenly tell you what your fit of gene is in 60 seconds um we would 10x our business the other one is to have more influence in the world and how do you have more influence is to have better ideas so so there was only really two things that we could do to go and 10x our business whereas if we wanted 10 our business there was hundreds of things and and so really the busy ness and how to defeat it is really what is focus and what is busy and and so you've got to be able to let go of some things where you just go, can we just let go of that?

1:03:35And by the way, some of these things you're going to have to let go of, you might have been doing for a long time. And it's pretty hard. And the team, like we've got a really small team, and there is a tendency even now to chase after busy work as opposed to the important work. And how much you are in your impact zone versus business zone will actually decide your future. And this is the work that every founder has to do.

1:04:19I think what you've said there about busy head gives you shallow ideas and busy zone versus impact zone it's just as you say there's there's no exact science to this and there's as as you see what was i think really reassuring is you know the problem but it's but doing that on an organizational level is really true because more people more people inherently baked into that equals busy so it's just it's just interesting um what would this is a question i ask quite a lot of guests is is what would you say in one sentence is creativity to you what what is your definition of creativity i mean not following two two words perfect i mean it's you know it's you know not following others it's it's kind of like it's a pretty good um it's pretty good metric and there are specific examples of that with so i've read a couple um listened to a couple of your talks you did and i think there was these some some i think it was the example of the back pocket in the gene with like the are they like i want to get into add some more color to this other examples of of these idea machines i think it's like um

1:05:40the you know if we go back to the ocean line and the speedboat is like the ocean line carries on with the formula and doesn't want to actually make any change materially so like a five pocket western gene hasn't actually changed in 140 years i mean the most innovative day was when mr davis um had an idea for like a rivet so that was the end of innovation like um same number of legs and but there's a coin there's a coin pocket on the five pocket gene which was for when you had like a watch like on a chain and so they invented that pocket so you wouldn't lose the watch on your chain so it's like well now we're not even wearing watches really apart from apple watches um so it's kind of redundant and it's like no one even actually knows why it's there in the first place and and all we've done is gone well can we redesign it so like you can put your earpods in it and so you suddenly go well okay and and people go oh it's got to be a bit wider it's got to be this you go like it's literally not even a big idea apart from like no one is actually doing it so they're quite happy having a pocket that makes no sense apart from 140 years ago when you were worried about losing your pocket watch um and so so i think it's just like like a big idea can be actually be quite small where you suddenly go oh okay is that a big idea you go well yeah apart from no one else is doing it it's fine um and but people are accepted that's the way it is like i'm going oh what why why do we have that pocket there it doesn't make any sense and there's no use to it and you can't even put your fingers in it and then suddenly if you then go or earpods which are like you know like i was kind of reading the other day like if you if they were um uh you know the earpod business is is bigger than some massive companies and people go it's it's a it's a big thing everyone has them um and now you suddenly well you can put them in our genes you go yeah it's not it ain't rocket science doing this just like but no one else is doing it there's a simplicity to it as well as what i think i'm i'm picking up from you david which which which i think the the impact is it simplicity equals impact and it's that's a really simple idea with big impact but going back to this busy thing if you've got a busy head you've kind of got shallow things you just almost like you can't see those uh simple things i don't know someone saying to me is that the answer is right in front of you i don't know there's a quote i don't know where i it was a podcast i think i was listening to it's like the answer is literally right in front of you sometimes it's just we've so busy with notifications and all this shit and it's hard to see through it i mean we've in order for us to like really try and win is we're gonna have to defeat you know this this thing about attention and so like if you want really great ideas i mean the reason i actually really admire james dyson was he walked past the the timber yard and he saw a centrifugal um you know device and anyone anyone could have like walked past the timber yard and gone hey what what does that actually mean but he went why do they use that thing or it must be the most efficient way to get dust out of a really dusty environment what if i put that in a um you know if i use the words hoover you'll probably like sue me but like if i put a small thing and actually you know um you know kind of made that the dyson you know like but that idea was there and but he observed it because the the observer muscle in the founder has to be extremely large um and and the danger is like everyone's just scrolling on their phones and they're not observing things that are actually there going hey there's the answer and you just walked past it but you were too busy scrolling and and i mean like we you know we are problem solvers but if we don't um actually understand even what the problem is then we can't solve it and so we've got to get our attention back from a busy world and we've got these incredible machines dopamine factory is called iphones and they suddenly go like um and we need you know we need the ego stroked every two minutes about how important we are um and and therefore we don't actually solve problems um and and so like we've got to have the quiet time um in order to just go well what's that actually mean you know like and you will have your best ideas very far from a computer and very far from a phone yeah there's a i think it was by john lennon who talks about a day of doing nothing like all the creativity comes from a day of doing nothing i don't know the quotes escape me but it's they're one of my favorite bands i kind of whack lyrical about them but there's this this ability to kind of pause and do nothing and then attack with speed and intensity um i want to talk about inputs versus outputs uh and it kind of goes to what you were just saying just then it's like innovation doesn't happen on your phone or like so kind of creativity doesn't happen from your phone or like you know in the office it comes from kind of weird and silly places um and you i think you've said in outputs are directly related to inputs we need to subscribe to magazines we've never been to need to go to places we never normally go to eat at places like that our entire place what as we were talking before we hit record is what is one or two books that you've kind of i'm asking for my own kind of i'll probably go and buy them right but what are one or two books that didn't really speak to your soul first time you read them and then second third time you were like wow so for me i i could not get my head around anti-fragile by uh nasim taleb first time there's about two three years ago but then second time i was like wow that was incredible because i think it's quite an interesting lens to to explore yeah well i think the the notion of like for creativity is to you know try and put things um you know odd things together and you know so essentially one plus one equals three and but you've got to be um aware of odd things and so and if you go looking where everyone else is looking you're going to go and find whatever else is finding and so it's not going to be that different to what else is out there and and and and industries tend to do that they they tend to you know gather together read together podcast together and and actually what you need you know really to have different viewpoints is to put lots of things together in a melting pot in order for you to have different outputs and and so like i think that's really important i mean i spent that an hour the other day listening to a gaming podcast i have no interest in gaming at all um but it was just going oh i wonder how they think and and i think you know for founders is you have to go and do that stuff um but if you stay in your lane or you stay in your industry you kind of start thinking like your industry does um and i think that's a challenge in terms of books like you know i mean it's a good question and i'll have to i don't really have like a book that i struggled with first time and then second time i really went wow okay I kind of love books.

1:14:03And the challenge for all of us is that we're on the thirst of knowledge, right? So we crave knowledge. And especially as founders, we're on this personal development accelerated program. We can't get enough information. apart from that means sometimes that we um we are more respectful of speed and quantity than quality and so like if this year you said i'm just gonna read five books and i'm gonna read them again and again and again until i actually understand them and so and so like because i i speak to a lot of people and they go yeah i read a book i literally can't even remember what was in there and so our retention of ideas and knowledge isn't as good as it should be and rather than reading more and more books is we should read less and have more retention and and that means reading a book in a different way that means reading it with a pen you know doing you know as tiago forte says like progressive summarization where you suddenly go, what does that mean?

1:15:24How does that mean? What does that mean? And then suddenly you go, oh, okay. And we're on a quest for more and more. And actually, if you picked 10 incredible books and actually read them until you totally and utterly understood them on another level, it'd probably be enough. And as opposed to - more and more what for you what would you say are some of those books that could get our founders listening to this to kind of not follow to be different maybe some of the weirder books I quite like weird books that I enjoy them I'll read them yeah I mean I think there's like a bunch of weird books but like I mean you know like I think Sansui Art of War still incredible book bonkers but brilliant um you know but also you know like um things like you know naval ravican um you know the almanac in terms of writing it's insane um but i i like i like books where it really gets you to really think about things in quite a different way and and so you know there It could be, you know, like there's a new book about writing called Smart Brevity.

1:16:50I think that's pretty insane. But there's so many amazing books. But like the thing is what we don't do, and we talked about this at the start, was actually rereading them to actually really understand them. I think the first time you read them and the second time you begin to understand them and the third time you start to actually understand exactly what they're talking about and and at that point i think you know then you just go i think we're on us sometimes we're on a quest for more knowledge was but what we should be is on a quest for more retention of the knowledge you know so it's it's kind of like not more books but more retention of the books that you should be reading it's almost again back to this busy piece more books equals shallow and busy less books equals kind of narrow and deep and i think that's really reassuring for me in in terms of uh i want to go into these the early days of of the do lectures and i think obviously now as you said you've you keep it at 100 people you keep it small you i think you said somewhere that scale kind of kills magic which i'd love but you also said that it was we didn't just the tickets didn't just go fucking selling like hot cakes that there was that that that real moment of just grit and almost as as paul graham says the trough of sorrow do you know what i mean like what was that like the first two two years what i mean it's it's um like everybody wants to um look at you and go oh that's now successful all right so selling selling tickets in the one hour um on one day all the tickets with a wait list and but it wasn't like that in the beginning we couldn't sell tickets even though we were you know selling tickets at a loss you know each time because we didn't actually know what we're doing and the your ability to keep going when the data doesn't actually give you evidence that you should keep going means there's something there and you don't know what it is quite yet but you know there's something there and and it fills you and fuels you in ways that you can't quite describe to you you know loved ones or your mom but you just go why do you keep doing this thing and and the thing that i've done which i've done don't particularly say is a good thing or uh but it's something that we've had to do where with howies we started it in 95 and we got our first paycheck in 2001 and and so but we had belief and and we just knew there was something there and we couldn't quite we when when you won't quit on something it's quite interesting because you why won't you quit because all the data says that you should and and i think that's a really interesting experience where you suddenly go um and and so you you went six years without getting a salary and and actually with the do lectures we went 10 years without getting a salary and people go why why would you carry on doing that it doesn't make any sense all money apart from it kind of does now um and you know we had like a 1.2 billion pound events company going hey you know we'd like to buy it and we said oh no it's kind of you know we're flattered and you know it's kind of nice and we you know we we went and you know had a chat and they did a term sheet and and in the end we just said hey i think we sort of worked out there's a really great beautiful business here and and we're enjoying it and and now isn't the time to sell and and and so we didn't actually look at the term sheet so we never found out what the offer was um and and they just said oh don't you want to know what the offer is i'm going to definitely don't know the offer because that thing of like there's obviously something there for us that fuels us and and now it is actually a really beautiful business that's in the business of actually helping people and you go and you go that's a really nice business to be in um and and actually 100 person event is i wanted to scale it at the beginning i wanted every way i could possibly to scale it but in the end i couldn't because the barn couldn't get any planning permission it couldn't actually get any bigger so i was helped by you know trying um because i would have scaled it and actually the best thing about it now is it's only 100 people and and so i was saved by the planning officer it's a great story so so a lot of people listening to this actually listen to this podcast because of that beginning bit when the data says give up your friends say what are you doing mate but there's some weird ethereal part of your soul that tells you to kind of keep bludgeoning your way forward but but specifically like how did you actually get the tickets to the first event sold and what did that first event look like well i mean it's i mean obviously we didn't even have a website um you know we were just like we were hustling and people bought tickets even though they knew they couldn't come because they just gone we just want this thing to exist and you think wow that's incredible and um so there was a lot of hustle and and i think you know like in the first year two years three years is you're gonna have to push you're gonna have to push like crazy in order for the world to you know you've got to go on that journey um you know from unknown to known and the invisible wall is you know you've got to go and climb it and you only climb it so you know like your ability to go and tell the story and being clear with that voice and that's the only way you're going to go and scale that invisible wall and and i think you know um like the the the interesting thing about like not paying yourself for like a 10-year period is you don't have any investors and you don't like and and and suddenly you don't have any meaningful debt and and so suddenly what has bought you is incredible freedom to go where do we want to go with this thing as opposed to someone telling you we need to go and do this and and so that that restraint and that grit allows you the freedom in the end to go ah yeah where should we go and play with this this thing's pretty interesting and and that's a beautiful place i'm not saying that's for everybody and i'm not saying that was a path um i would recommend i'm just saying that was the path that we took and there are benefits to that path i'm not saying it's an easy path at all um and and yeah and but that grit is an interesting one on the journey where you know like and hope does need grit hope hope does need grit i love that beautiful sentence the where i i kind of completely understand everything and and i get everything you're saying in terms of so so i've interviewed a few michelin star chefs on this podcast and i actually went up because i just i just find chefs fascinating i don't know if you know if you know um renee's resepi do you know tommy banks he's got a restaurant up in uh he's a really interesting guy but and he's um got a restaurant up in oldstead which is about an hour on from leeds and i went up the other day to interview him listen and back back to what you were saying about this uh you know you can create lots of magic when it's a small restaurant but in between the pork course they'd had this um they came out with these almost like these uh knives and they were like almost like choose your weapon right it's a beautiful piece of storytelling and a great reframe but the knives were all filled with things that had been foraged from the uh from the surrounding fields and their whole ethos is we grow everything and we forage so it's brilliant piece of storytelling cost them kind of bugger all other than the cost of the knives but created a really remark piece of remarkable magic that i'm telling you right now and i've told all my friends about i posted on social media what were the like the little things you focused on like in those first couple of events that that created the magic so i think it's the magic's lots of little things done well what if you whether you agree with that no it's um like how people remember is you know like the question that has to almost come before that question and and so how do people remember and there's a beautiful story um from a film called uh um i think it's mystery train by jim jamush and and it really tells you how people remember and and so there was two albus fans who lived in japan and they saved up for years in order to go to graceland and they they flew over and they got this crummy little motel stayed there but the next morning they got up super early and they they took the tour of graceland and they were both open-mouthed and and and and you suddenly go and they just like were like just gobsmacked and they just gone on they were such albus fans and then they went back to their motel after the graceland trip and the guy got his camera which had been on his neck all day and he started taking photographs of the curtains and the threadbare rug and the leaking taps.

1:27:19And his girlfriend said, what are you doing? You didn't take a single photograph all day. He said, yeah, but I'm never going to forget today. But it's these crummy average things I'm going to forget. I shut the door when we leave tomorrow. And so that's how people remember, right? So we remember the remarkable and we forget average and so like whatever you're doing whether it's brand building doing events is like you have to go and understand that's how people remember they remember peak moments so like um so like if people are arriving at the do lectures and they get off the train and there's a lady there holding a sign, the end of normal, you're probably going to remember it.

1:28:12But it's just a sign. And so... Yeah, but it's so good. It's so good, though, David. But it's suddenly you that are going... So your job is, whether you're doing events or doing brands, is to understand, you know, is people actually forget almost everything apart from the stuff that they remember. Why do they remember it? It's because there's a peak moment. and and then once you understand that you suddenly go well oh i can go and build my event understanding you know the arrival is pretty important the departure is pretty important and somewhere in between is pretty important and so engineering something for a peak moment is that's how you do it right you see something go right okay where's our peak moment okay how do you want to design it how do you want to engineer it how how do you get because i don't know if you a guy called rory sutherland who's um he was at ogilvy he's been on the podcast and we were talking about this and he was saying one of the uh exercises people can do to think about these small moments is uh hotels are very good at getting the check-in experience great but not very many people are getting the checkout experience great it's kind of like you're just you know get in your car and fuck off kind of thing i'd love to know like how do you make that end part that that end peak magical for for for for guests i mean it's a good point because actually um like i mean last year was our first year doing it after like two plus years of covid and stuff and and actually we'd sort of like um forgotten how important the end point was and it sort of fizzled out and you should never let it fizzle out and so so one of the things that we're engineering this time around is to you know make sure it's not a fizzle and it goes out with you know a big bang and and so one of the things that we're doing is like we're having a room where it's um it's just candles you go in before you leave and you're you're on your own and you have to go and write a letter to yourself and just saying this is what i want to leave on the farm uh i want to leave this behind and so it's one of the things you want to leave behind and so and it's the room is called last rights um and so then they put the envelope and they put it on the fire and but they also have an envelope we're going but this is what i want to take away with me and they write that letter so there's two letters and and again all these things like they're not like expensive they're just understanding where you are in that exact moment and what's important to you and what's not and what's important to you is you want to leave something you've come and found something and you you know the the barrier that's been stopping you you want to leave that behind and and then what you want to take it home with you is this new thought that you go i'm going to go and do this and so so those two letter moments is kind of really important but the burning is a symbolic nature because and and being in the candle room and it's called last rites is literally but you're on your own and the the smell is incredible and the feel is incredible and and and it's an old barn right now i looked at this morning it's really shitty and but by time they arrive it's gonna be incredible and but it doesn't cost money but like all these things it's always about how much thought you put into it and and what is the conversation that's going on in the attendee's head at that moment his so so i completely agree and one of the things tommy had actually done in this restaurant is say you're putting a chair in like this so say this is the table you put the chair in that way he'd actually just turned the chair like that to a slight angle and he walked in and the whole thing felt different and he was he was telling me about this magic it literally cost him zero pounds to go like that and you walked into his dining room and it felt i was like why is no one ever well i hadn't seen anyone else do that and i love these things as a challenger brand you don't have the money don't have the budget but my god you've got creativity and this the storytelling through the the the end letter and open um the letters is brilliant um conjure time yeah yeah so i just want to kind to go a few more things i want to want to explore but i'm really enjoying this um so danny maya or maya i don't know how the best to say it he's got a quote which was on your um on that uh presentation uh sorry on that quotes that changed my life i think oh yeah uh consangential pressure yeah and weirdly there's i interviewed i don't know if when you were living in london if caravan coffee was around oh yeah do you know caravan so i interviewed them the other day uh laura and chris and they live by that mantra actually of this of this kind of constant gentle pressure and then weirdly i interviewed a chef called greg martian who's got a really good story he was he's actually lost both his parents tragically in a in a car crash grew up in a uh in a french orphanage um and is now he ended up working under danny mayer at um uh i think it's gramercy tavern i think it's in new york i don't know yeah and um and and he he was telling me a lot about about danny mayer and some of the principles he's he's got and one of his things was this this with hiring he said two things to me that really struck a chord one of was like the eyes don't lie was the first thing and we were sat above covent garden he was like looking right and this is a bit intense and then and then the other thing was this 49 and 51 percent so i think what danny may says is he i may have got this slightly wrong but my interpretation is that you want someone who's got 50 51 and the kind of the 49 you can kind of teach them is kind of what greg was telling me and he was like his whole his whole process is is get that 51 right and then we can teach you the rest yeah and in terms of we're talking about passengers and not having passengers on the speedboat what how do you hire people and maybe we could like talk about danny mayer's 49 and 51 like what's the 50 you look for i mean it's kind of interesting because obviously down in terms of the the factory is because they've done it for like 20 000 30 000 40 000 even 50 000 hours like you can't actually teach them how to make a gene because they already know and and so um so the danny mayer thing is kind of really and i i give his book out to um people when i kind of you know especially for the dual lectures where you go hey go and read this book set in the table is incredible um because the thing of the 51 and the 49 is is understanding what you can train for and what can't and and so you can't really train for like to like human beings if you don't can't train for like having a great sense of humor if you don't like you can't train for integrity if you don't have it and and and it's all those things which are untrainable and and the rest is just capabilities and so you go so so the notion especially in hospitality is like do they actually like human kind of important um and because ain't gonna train for that you know if they don't um or are they going to make a problem worse or less worse like by worrying about it and so so the the untrainable that versus the trainable is like you know you should always hire higher for the the bits that you can't train that's essential and the things that they need training on that Well, that's kind of easy because it's just training.

1:36:28And for us in the factory then, especially upstairs, is you want to go and hire for hunger.

1:36:41Because if they don't have hunger, I am not going to train them. And so for anyone listening, you should always hire for hunger and you should train for capabilities. and because capabilities can be trained but hunger can't be. If they don't have it, they're almost never going to get it. And so you want to be around that hunger. Otherwise, from an energy point of view, all your energy is going to go to trying to give people without energy some energy and it's their job to give themselves energy. You want self-drivers. and so you've got to in order to succeed you have to go and be really good at hiring the right people otherwise you'll spend all your time trying to get rid of the wrong people and it's not fun and it's not nice and in essence you want to you never want to drop your standards because they can't meet yours.