James Watt, BrewDog Founder - 17 Years of Billion Dollar Brand Building GOLD in 2 Hours

42:19So all I did by trying to give the team that concept was encourage too much frivolous spending across the business because people couldn't quite handle that paradox. So the default was, apart from a few key select members of my management team, is we're just super tight in everything because the team weren't able to handle that. And I think as a founder, you think that everyone thinks the same way you think, everyone's going to respond to the same stimulus, everyone sees the world in the same way they don't. So what you've got to do is get a message and a framework and a way of operating that people who see things in very different ways to yourself can understand and can implement and can add value in.

42:52And I think a big mistake was like when I tried to take the team with me in journeys, which are kind of paradoxes, which the team just weren't able to have. And is there a way around that? Or is it just an acceptance of, this is the way my brain thinks and we're going to have to put systems in place to, is that how it works? I think that, or finding a way, which is kind of what I evolved to, because I don't like just putting systems in place. And I think way too many companies have got way too many systems and policies and procedures. And I used to always say, okay, let's not scour in the first cut.

43:24so many companies they make a mistake they get cut policy policy policy policy then like all of a sudden you're in this straight jacket of policy where nobody's got any autonomy nobody can move quickly and you've just got like all these like committees and meetings and policies and noise and documents that you don't need and that's like barnacles on a ship and uh what can i often say is like these are barnacles on the ship do so if you think of like the hull of a ship yeah you build up barnacles over time right so if you go to sea for 12 months in the ship you're going to have an amount of barnacles on that ship after 12 months, after 24 months.

43:55So what you do is you take the ship out of the sea, you blast the barnacles off it, and then the ship can go fast again because the barnacles impact your speed. And I think any company does this. So you've got to blast away the barnacles. Now, the best one in the world, any company is going to build up policies and structures and procedures as they grow that they just don't need. So I would always say to the team, like every 12 months, like, what can we cut? What is noise? What is a meeting that we don't need what is a standing thing we don't need what is a policy document that we don't need and we used to speak about it that way like we're blasting the barnacles off the ship so we can make the ship go fast again and keep the ship ocean worthy because otherwise you just end up building so much stuff james timpson who i love at timpson shoes he's got something similar which he calls the cut the trap committee so he's got a committee to meet every two weeks like what can they cut what can they cut what can they cut what can they cut what what is not important so in terms of policies i don't like fixing things with policies because you end up just with so many so many policies i think the evolution was trying to lead the way and put dogmas in place in a way that doesn't leave paradoxes and juxtapositions because those are difficult for the team to manage with and give them a clearer better set of kind of operating instructions and manuals for the business the barnacle thing's a really good way of looking at it because it's that slow moment of time and before you know it you're like oh we've got loads of barnacles on the boat two barnacles no big deal ten barnacles no big deal hundred tons of barnacles you're going over let's have fucking huddle about having a coffee is pointless the um i want to go back to this think week like what was some of the stuff you were reading in that like a recent week and what were some of the learnings that blossomed out of that period of submerging submerging yourself in the analog underworld and great question that elon musk biography was uh um walter isaacson one and i think it's just absolutely fascinating so that was kind of top of my agenda and i just like highlighted like half of the book i found it fascinating i think he's an absolute genius i love how his head works i love how he how he sees things so that was like a massive point of kind of inspiration for the latest thing what do you think are some of the lessons we could take as food and drink founders from elon um don't do sales which i think is really impactful so a key is create something that is so amazing people want to buy it if you're having to sell something the core of what you've created isn't good enough isn't strong enough like tesla is not very sales focused they're focused on just kind of doing something creative doing something amazing and i also love his algorithm which is cut cut cut cut cut and if you're cutting away policies procedures areas of spend things that your company does unless you've got to reinstate 20 of what you cut you haven't made enough cuts to that noise and those policies and things in the first place and like if you cut something you've always got an opportunity to put it back in if you don't cut it it's going to be kind of there there forever and i just love the intensity with with which he with which she thinks and kind of which which he works it's uh i think it's amazing you end up feeling quite inadequate as an entrepreneur after reading about ellen it just kind of was like well he um he needs it on my game significantly he said on joe rogan is something really fascinating which was everyone wants to be me everyone wants to be um elon musk gazillion absolutely minted tesla spacex going to mars he goes you don't want to be me yeah because of the voice in my head and i think that people talk about you've got if you want to be someone you've got to do a wholesale swap you've got to you can't just get like say say people loads of people would want to be you james right but you know you you caught a tiger woods is a great analogy for this it's It's like you don't just get the gulf.

47:26You've got to take the work ethic, you've got to take the demons. The demons and the dad berating you, telling you're an idiot all your life. The craziness and cataclysm of his marriage. And I think with everyone who's really great, I think there's a kind of a shadow. And I think the shadow is part of the drive. What are the, if we were to do like a wholesale swap or people who want to do a wholesale swap, what are some of the hard things that you'd be like, a bit like Elon Musk, like you don't want to be me you know what i mean yeah um nothing is ever even closely good enough even if i work from six o 'clock in the morning until 10 at night i'm always dissatisfied with the amount of work i've done yes that day so just that kind of constant need to be better constant need to push kind of relentless focus i mean i will and i kind of stack it with my kind of running and stuff like i'll sometimes be like so focused like my breathing's like fucked up for two hours just because I'm like so deep and like so deep in a focus I'll just like hold my breath because I think I can like focus and do more so just that kind of wired intensity and like I love it I love working but like that that doesn't go away it's like after the third maybe even second day of holiday I feel guilty because I'm not working out for dinner I feel guilty because I'm like I'm not working because I'm like I'm not adding value so it's like difficult to switch off difficult to disconnect but like I'll take that all day long because I'm so lucky to be able to do things that I love, to be able to build things, to be able to add value.

48:49So like, I'm not for a second saying it's bad, but there's like a lot of drive, a lot of intensity. And I think with Elon, I think with a lot of people, like that drive comes from some kind of deep rooted kind of inner voice in your head, some kind of childhood. I think a lot of entrepreneurship is just trying to make up for kind of childhood trauma, to be honest, of like inadequacy, not good enough, outsider, loner. Does the voice, because when I write and I write every morning, the voice in my head which is a nefarious little fucker right as i said with seth godin podcast yesterday just saying that everything i was like kind of listening to the back of that was shit that was shit that was awful like and then i was just like fuck me give me a break when i go into this underworld um sounds very matrixy it's not meant to be some movie by the way the first one second and third one doesn't much yeah yeah it's not like i'm getting in one of those like weird fucking things and you know um but does that voice change when you when you attack that blank piece of paper it can keep quiet for a bit interesting it can keep it quiet for a bit and i suppose that's that's almost like the voice is moving from self-criticism to imagination and that kind of softens it it can it kind of softens a bit but i don't remember i showed up and this is like how my head works it's different to how the team's head works so i showed them a slide in the presentation it must have been kind of 2018 the slides now infamous but it was like the drew dog logo and the apple logo the tesla logo the whole foods logo the amazon logo the starbucks logo and it was like compare us to them and we are a bunch of like pathetic and adequate losers compared like what they've what they've done so like how do we unlock a level of thinking that kind of closes that gap and like that made sense in my head and that's kind of how my head drives me but then for the team who built an amazing beer business and one of the kind of best beer businesses in the planet to all of a sudden be hey wait a second what's this an adequate loser thing james so it's just like back in my head that made perfect sense like my heroes jobs musk gates walton like i haven't achieved what i want to achieve unless i've built something that's in the same level with some of the things that they've built yes whereas if you're doing a job and a committed dedicated employee and a company that's growing and doing well you just don't think that way and how have you um like how do you so that slide's really interesting because because it's again back to this nuance it's like what drives you as the founder is very different to what drives the team and i think and you know i've seen this happen i've experienced it is where the founder can say something like that which would be really demotivating for someone who's worked their tits off to get say the rate of sale in sainsbury's amazing how have how have you become a bit more delicate in that dance between the voice in your head and getting people to to um to feel proud of of what they've done at brew dog and feel part of brutal i interviewed a guy uh called will saw wrote an amazing book called the status game unbelievable book and he basically says the best businesses help their staff feel status and it's about finding and he just summed up culture like in the most beautiful way and it's finding the me in we so when someone comes to brewdog they're proud but if you from a top level are saying we're not fucking shit but basically are yeah how do you delegate that so like your ambition but then helping the brewdogs employees find the me and we yeah amazing question that's something i've got significantly better at doing and it's just a balance because like ambition is inspiring it is exciting and like people want to work for a company that is like ambitious but unless you're the founder there's an amount of ambition that is exciting and fun and there's an amount of ambition that is just wait a second this is just insane and scary and stupid and risky and i think all of these things so it's been a bit clearer in terms of the goals it's making sure that we celebrate the successes along the way and like i would just like take that for granted and like success is fine but it's no better than fine because if it wasn't success it would be a massive failure and like with the pain that came along with that it's like making sure we're gonna stop and like celebrate those successes have the ambitions and goals and something that is aspirational but not something that's going to kind of cause people i think what the fuck is that that's that's the fucking barbell as well isn't it the i want to talk about um another bit in the book and just i think the way this podcast started uh this came about is i wrote a post about why brands should say no to supermarkets and then you said i disagree with you that was me yes and i'm not wedded to my ideas um and i'm very i like them being teased around and stuff um but i'd love to explore this yeah so my kind of thinking is it's more that i see my mates who've got got haven't got investment they win a listing they don't know they're in way too many stores so they can't actually go and check availability they don't have the money to invest in the marketing plan so they can't really drive the rate of sale, they can't activate it.

53:48And at one point, three or four of my friends lost their businesses because they'd gone into grocery and were out the door so quickly that it fucked. So that's where my post had come from. But I'd love to know why I'm wrong. Why do you think that is? And it is common advice that brands say no to supermarkets, go and build in the indies, go and build elsewhere. I suppose, why am I wrong? And it's just, yeah, the first thing. And then the second thing is, I think you said about making really win-win partnerships. How did you do that in grocery? So business is hard and tough and super harsh. So my feedback to those people that lost their business is because they went to the supermarkets is what you put on the shelf wasn't good enough.

54:31They're done, they've dropped position, they've dropped it. You didn't fail because you sold supermarkets. You failed because what you put on that shelf wasn't good enough. Okay. And if you're going to do a business, what you put on shelf needs to be good enough to get people taking it off shelf. Putting it on shelf is the easy bit. Your job is getting people to take it off shelf. And if I was them, I'd rather know that it was going to be a failure sooner than later so I could do something else and kind of try and up my level of thinking. So I don't think they failed because they put things in supermarkets.

54:56I think they failed because they did something that wasn't good enough. And you need to find a way to get people excited about your product, if it's your packaging, if it's your comms, if it's your positioning, if it's your social, if it's your community engagement. I know with any business, you need to engage your community. Everything starts with community engagement. The best businesses have got engaged communities. Normal businesses don't. So from day one at Roodog, from day one with the business I'm involved in, we focus on community engagement. Tallow and Ash is an amazing example. Tallow and Ash.

55:26It's a liquid laundry detergent company. I've been there from day one with the founders. the job that they do in their social channels in terms of engagement is amazing the business is just 13 months old but we're done at 10 million dollars on rate revenue based on social engagement and like businesses that go into supermarkets you need to have an engaged community you then need to work with that community to help you pull that stock off shelf and if you've got a big enough engaged community to get a little bit momentum in the supermarkets initially you do a giveaway with your community send us selfies with this peanut butter with this with this jam with this whatever with this skincare product in store buy it there we're going to incentivize you we're going to reward you we're going to build this thing together because we are developing for you we're going to listen to your voice we're going to take you on that journey with us and we're going to drive footfall to our supermarket partners which gets you a little bit of kind of buzz going so to sell at supermarkets if you don't have an engaged community forget it but if you don't have an engaged community you don't have a business in my view either and that's the kind of founding cornerstone of any business so i think you've got to deal with supermarkets but you've got to put something on the shelf that's good enough to sell.

56:29Secondly, you've got to play the supermarket game slightly different to how your competitors do it because supermarkets are used to dealing with massive companies. They pay for their distribution and they pay for people to take it off the shelf with promotional discounts and that just comes out in the wash in a big company. That can't come out in the wash in a small company. So you've got to add value to the partner. Like supermarkets are not a charity. They're not going to do things like out there in Goodwill. You've got to find a way to add value to what they do. If that's through product, if that's through innovation, if that's through margin profile, if that's through the people you put in store.

57:00So supermarkets back in the early days of DrewDog loved us because with all the customer data, somebody who bought DrewDog in the supermarket was buying other high margin things and had a higher total basket spend. So we're adding value to their business. And we told them, look, we can't pay a listing fee, but we can do a social media competition. We can do some joint PR and we can drive our community to your store. We can give you this amazing inclusive beer, which is going to further diver community to our store we can add value to your category these are the dermagraphics of our shoppers this average income this household income this spend this is an upgrading query at the moment we are putting these people into your store so you've got to find a way to add value but you've also got to be able to stick to your guns so i walked away from so many supermarket deals in the early days i would go into that meetings and i was like this is what we do this is the value we attach to it this is how we make it this is the product quality story this is how much we need to sell it for you to be a viable business and to invest in things we love which is our beer and our people if that works for you amazing we will support you till the cows come home we want to build this with you if that doesn't work for you all good we'll come back another time we'll continue that discussion elsewhere but at a cost less than this it makes no sense for us a business and it's not something we're willing to do so many people get so seduced by the wow i've got 400 distribution points in tesco that must be the next big thing and the deals that they end up doing or with Sainsbury's like they compromise themselves so much in the deal that the economics even if they got sales on it wouldn't work and wouldn't help their business so I think with supermarkets you need to have an engaged community first and foremost you need to have an amazing product you need to find a way to add value to their business but the most important thing is you need to walk away if the deal is not right for you or your business because if it's not right for you and your business you've eroded all the value before you've got it I wrote about this called the blinded by the listing lights in one of my newsletters and it's like you know yeah yeah you know as a as a as you know i had this when we were at money life all we thought about was getting on you especially with linkedin now you just want to do the star jump outside say no's and be like fuck me we're in here yeah and it's like don't get blinded you're rabbit in headlights like don't get blinded by that and i think yeah adam from innocent said this he goes he says more get more brands get sunk by saying yes to supermarkets on bad terms that's the biggest thing.

59:16What would you say, and I think the way I love what you said, James, there about we kind of played that game differently. What would you absolutely walk away from? What are the terms that you're thinking, fuck this, we're not doing this? And then the second part of that is, what do you think is, what the absolute, you need this to make grocery work? Because where I want to eventually get to is, I think you're one of the first brands who managed to make premium and do mass market, another tension. But first, yeah, get into those sort of deal specifics yeah i mean just so many of the times like we had a price in our head that we had to sell the beer to that meant that we could continue to keep the product quality the same like we live or die by what's in every glass every bottle every can as soon as we lose that product quality we are a lousy version of a big beer company and we're in a race to the bottom so just making sure like this is what we can do a deal at this is what makes sense for us and it was like a commercial discussion like so many times we walked away because that didn't work for the partner sometimes it did and the stars aligned amazing but that meant we were building and kind of good and powerful distribution.

1:00:18And what I would say to companies that kind of go to a supermarket and they can't do a deal in the terms that they want, your drop position is not strong enough. Your brand, your perception of value, your consumer, your engagement, your attraction isn't strong enough. And that's why you can't do the deal that works for you. So you need to work on those things and kind of try and strengthen your hand, but just be prepared to walk away. And the mindset was always, this is what we do. This is a value we attach to. We would love to do a deal, but if we can't do a deal in these terms, we'll wish you all the best and we'll do visit it in 12 or 18 months time if you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in d2c but you're struggling to crack retail then you've got to listen to this maybe you've got an ocado listing maybe you've got a whole foods listing maybe you're absolutely killing it in selfridges maybe you're absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your indies but my friends making the leap crossing el chasm crossing el rubicon to grocery retail is not easy.

1:01:10It's the Champions League of FMCG. It's super hard. It means playing at a higher level. And that's where some of your amazing brands sadly stumble. Look, retailers want stories backed by data, not dreams and a pretty pitch deck. And let's be real, supermarkets are not just going to magically make a space for you and your little brand. They need data. Something's got to go for you to get in, for you to get on shelf. And that is why I've got to tell you about Northstar. They are the team that's helping purpose-led FMCG brands go from gut instinct dreams to unstoppable pitch decks that actually unlock retailers.

1:01:47Northstar are not like another data company that force feeds you data like Foie Gua that act like a NASA space mission. It's super, super simple to use. Their team are amazing and they actually get the challenger mindset. Northstar are your shortcut to smarter decisions, stronger pitches and investor confidence all built specifically for challenger brands like yours. You don't need a massive sales team. You need Northstar. Link in the show notes. Click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with Northstar. Highly, highly recommend that. And thank me later. Then on the piece about doing premium but at a mass market level, I think you guys were one of the first to really do that.

1:02:29and so many challenge brands start as as premium and then they have to go across and i think in the book you talked about price laddering as a way to kind of percept create perceptional value uh which would actually drive more shoppers to the core punk ipa could you could you kind of add some color to price laddering and how you used it across both on trade and off trade to to create that perception that allowed BrewDog to become premium, craft, but mass market? I think price laddering is one of the most underrated tools in business. And again, with the business that I work with and help if their pricing is flat, it's like the first thing I can work with them on to do.

1:03:10So firstly, what is price laddering? Great question. Okay, so let's just take cans of beer. If all our cans of beer cost£2, we would have a flat pricing strategy and not a ladder pricing strategy. If some of our cans of beer cost 150, if there was a special kind of beer that cost 125, if there was a few cans of beer that cost 195, if there was some cans of beer that cost 225, if there was a few cans of special limited edition beer that cost 325, and if there was these crazy one-off limited edition beers that cost 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, even 20 pounds, that is rice laddering. So you can use that to give the customer choice, give the retailer choice, give people different entry points into the brand as well.

1:03:52and a lot of the times because what we do is a little bit niche it's a little bit more expensive people's like no i'm not paying that so to give people an entry point to have a rurag experience that then can trade up to our most profitable things and at the moment we do loads with lost lager which is a little bit more accessible from a price perspective 35 of those people go into buy hazy jane or punk ipa where our margin profile is significantly better but then also being able to offer the geeks that aficionados the connoisseurs something that gives them this kind of crazy immersive experience be it a beer that's Asian scotch whiskey cast for 12 months or a beer that's made with special ingredients and a belgium yeast that we got from a monastery in belgium so you've got that kind of depth to the experience of there which gives credibility to your main mass market options because you're doing something that's geeky and cool and niche and kind of hype in that space as well so i think any business to have that laddering but i would also have that ladder in a trust not just price point i would have that ladder in a trust accessibility as well so what are kind of some more accessible things not just in terms of price point but in terms of the product offering because like so many small companies what they're doing it's niche they're trying to find a kind of core community they're trying to get mass market acceptance on the fringes which by default you're doing something which is kind of more elevated kind of more bespoke more artisan you've got to have a few hooks for people that love their brand that want to kind of come into your universe that are not quite so difficult to get in as well and kind of helps you kind of draw the pond you're fishing and so i think ladder and important in terms of price but also important in terms of accessibility so with the accessibility so so yeah so these little hooks is that is that almost trying to convert say having a skew that you're going to get the someone who buys a fosters 100 so if you look at our portfolio at the moment we've got a beer called black heart that's convert people who drink in us we've got a beer called lost lager that is to convert people who drink premium laggers heineken um heineken astrea peroni that's it we've got a beer called cold beer which is to convert can i more mass market beer drinkers into what we do so we've got those different now any category that we're in we want to do something that is so amazing from a product quality perspective fantastic ingredients great taste great liquid non-pasteurized non-filtered super fresh super amazing but we want to give those people who are starting off there a way into a universe a way to kind of enjoy the passion that we have for a beer as opposed to being a closed shop and hey we're just for geeks we're just for aficionados we're just for somebody that wants a seven percent ipa that's got so much bitterness and hops it's going to hammer the pours out of your tongue yes and then also does it work so say say i don't know what the rrps are but let's say say punk ipa is three quid right can next to a fosters are two quid next to a proni at one pound right that looks fucking expensive but if you put it next to like uh another another say another skew of brew dog hazy jane which is four quid suddenly the the punk iba looks much cheaper and it just drives more to the core so what's a hundred percent there's so many kind of psychological experiments there's a classic one that's been done in the u.s with a menu and it's got a main course at twenty dollars in the menu and that's the one that most people want now if all the other things in your menu are$16 and$18, the customer's value perception is very expensive.

1:07:08If the other things in your menu are maybe$18,$20,$22,$24,$26, the same$20 all of a sudden feels like much better value to the customer and all you've done is created some margin-enhancing opportunities for yourself and provided a better perception of value to the customer. Where I want to go now, and we don't have to go here so you can tell me to bugger off, we will, but is kind of Scottish stoicism and you lost your old man very recently, which I'm so sorry to hear. And Dan Bolton as well, I think, was your sales director.

1:07:44And Scotland to the brand is something that really makes me super interested. And actually, like, I don't know why the bagpipes are coming to mind, right? But the bagpipes is such, and I watched that video at your old man's funeral. It's such a unique fucking sound. and I think we hear all about sort of the ancient Greek stoicism, you know, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, but I'd love to kind of explore with you, James, Scottish stoicism specifically, and I think you said somewhere about almost a darkly comic stoicism about Dan, and I think we've talked a lot about leaning into challenges, that fucking grit, but I'd love to really pull that into the Scottish, go above the border with this.

1:08:27is some of the Stoic quotes that I love, you know, be tolerant with yourself and be tolerant with others and strict with yourself, Marcus Aurelius. We are more often fright than hurt and we suffer more in imagination than reality, Seneca. I mean, I love that. But I'd love to try and create some sort of Scottish Stoic principles that are important to you. So what would you say in one sentence Dan taught you about Scottish Stoicism and the texture of Scottish Stoicism? Dan was English not Scottish. Oh, fuck it now. So your eloquent, beautiful build up is kind of blown out of the water, but let's not cut it out because it's kind of funny.

1:09:03So yeah. We'll have to go with your old man then. Well, so this year, just a bit, this year has been so, so difficult. So I've lost probably two of the people closest to me with the same disease, which is patriotic cancer. So Dan Bolton was my age, one of my absolute best friends, was a sales director in the business, incredibly close to Dan and tragically lost him in January. Just devastating for Dan, devastating for his family, devastating for the company, such an amazing guy. And then always being incredibly, incredibly close to my dad. My dad was so fit, so healthy, 69 years old. And this summer in June, 22nd of June, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and six weeks later he was no longer with us.

1:09:45So to go from super healthy to no longer with us in that short a time period, I thought my dad was completely believe-true. I thought he'd be catching lobsters and he's a little boat with his dog for another another 20 years to come and it was just so difficult. I was with him the whole of that six weeks every single day and just watching him kind of go downhill each day a little bit more a little bit more was just it was it was incredibly tough and I think the most darkly stoic thing that my dad did and it was a week before he passed away and he had an incredibly difficult Friday and the Saturday morning he was a bit more buoyant.

1:10:19I got there in the Saturday morning my cousin was there my auntie was there and he wanted to put a calendar on his wall with dead or alive on it and moved each place a 10 pound bet as to which day he would pass away that was like a week before he died and he said james if i'd been taking bets yesterday i would have made a fortune yeah but i think not but sorry not forgetting to write down was was was english but the yeah i think there is there's something about that darkly comic bit which you mean when your dad's exemplified with i'd be a rich man and i think it's so crucial to this to this brand what was the last thing your old man said to you um so last thing my old man said to me and he was at that time like on a lot of drugs and on a lot more often so my dad was a skipper a captain in the north atlantic all of his life and he told me that he didn't think he would like to be skipper of a hospital which doesn't make that much sense it's not like this kind of deeply meaningful kind of profound life lesson or anything that's why i think it actually is i actually think that's exactly why it is meaningful and profound because it's that as i said all these fucking hooty flutey wanky stoic faces you get from marcus aurelius yeah but it is it is that you know and it is something uniquely scottish and i interviewed james cosmo you know he's in braveheart uh the guy who's like lord you remember me that guy yeah uh worst scottish accent ever but he said something happens when you go above go over the border in scotland and there's a there's a sort of a dark mysticism and stoicism to it and i think and i think it's so integral to the brand but almost linking it to your old man of saying look i'd be a rich man if we bet on the days we'd we died um how have you dealt with it in the last few weeks because it's been quite recent um it's just been it's just been really really tough so yeah just so close my dad and like sometimes i forget so like sometimes i pick up my phone to like phone him i can't phone him like i was at the harbor and i was like looking for him and his boat and i forget like almost every single night since he passed away i've i've dreamt about him like a couple nights ago i dreamt that i was out with him in his lobster fishing boat he knew he was going to pass away and he knew that me and my daughters were going out in the boat the next day so these little ziploc bags and he was hiding gifts in the lobster pots for my daughters that they were getting to when they kind of hold up the lobster pot.

1:12:46So yeah, it's just really tough. And I think it's something that so many of us can relate to. Like so many people have lost a parent, they've lost a loved one. It is part of this kind of crazy, beautiful, tragic journey that we're on called life. But I think key thing for me is just like, I miss him so much and I miss Dan so much. And it just, it feels so odd to have lost like probably the two men who were closest to me in the space of six months to the same disease and it was such a head fuck because i dan spent a lot of the time in a hospital in london and then my dad was in the same hospital two doors down for the room that i used to sit with dan with the same doctors the same consultants just six months after so that that kind of really really messed with my my head as well and yeah i just just miss him so much and just really sad that he's he's no longer here and like so much of who i am is like came came from my dad my dad was an amazing captain so much of my approach to life to leadership comes from my dad so like i am at least 20 30 if not 40 percent my dad so the scary thing as well is like like who am i now that that person that massive influence is like no longer here like what is success going to feel like because like with success the thing that i was most excited to do was tell my dad when something good happened in my life the thing that i was most excited to do was like tell my dad about it like if you take that away it's just this void it's uh yeah definitely so so sorry about your loss and appreciate you being open because i think it will help a lot of people and i think um you know what what would you how he talks about him being the captain um literally of a fishing ship and i think you know you we are literally part of our parents like fucking literally and actually i think a brand is an extension of the father sorry of of of the owner 100 how would you say your some of the lessons from your dad came from your old man through you and then into the brand that you know as they're kind of little moments we're sat in waterloo now like what are some of those bits that are in in the brand do you think well look behind you hold fast good good shape you do dogs like my dad's like on the wall like two feet behind your behind your head you know some of his his hold fast james hold fast like if anything was difficult in the boat like hold fast hold my dad always always said like hold fast it's like a kind of little a little nod to the head so yeah it's what he told me and like such a work ethic so i work a lot like that work ethic 100 comes from my dad and my dad was a amazingly effective leader so whatever he was involved in he always took the lead and did it in a kind of compassionate humorous way and he was a leader who led by example he would be in the middle of the people fixing the net fixing it as fast as he could be in the middle of the people moving the box to fish he'd be the like so that was like his leadership style he loved work and he loved what he did loved his family and i think that work ethic that i have like comes a hundred percent from my from my dad and also it's that you know you said be where where you are in the business i think at the the action is.

1:16:02Yeah, that's that's you being at the bar is like your old man fixing the fishing nets. He was he was always, always where the action was. I love that. Thank you for being so open. I want to ask, there's a there's a quote which I just fucking loved in your book, right? And it just and I really believe the founders journey is as much about creating change in the world for people, but it's actually a journey of self discovery as well. And you said a punk is someone who knows how to ask the world uncomfortable questions and does everything possible to make sure the world can't cop out of answering those questions a punk is a person who lives and breathes astonishment astonishing astonishing other people and astonishing yourself that that's what art is for us and without art life can can't exist it would be too boring i mean that is just a beautiful beautiful quote i don't know actually you wrote said that quote but it's fucking good what were what were some of the hard and questionable questions you were asking the world not like the retailers or the bars what was what was what was the world you were trying to ask ask and how are you using brew dog as the vehicle to ask those questions firstly what do you want beer to be like consumers do you want beer to be this lowest common denominator product that is insipid that is apathetic that is made by huge companies that only care about maximizing their off it or do you want beer to be something made by passionate artisans who want to put the taste and the flavor back into the beer glass and put the value back into this drink that's been a bedrock of society for almost 5 000 years i think question one what do you want beer to be i think question two like what do you want a company to be and we always wanted to build a company that took a stand for the things that we believe in that wore our heart in our sleeve but a company that had a personality we didn't just hide behind a logo we didn't hide behind a corporate facade and i think we want to try and build a new type of company in a company that did things differently so i think the second question is like what do you want the company to be and then the third question where the answer has been disappointing is what do you want business to do when it comes to sustainability and i think one of my biggest disappointments for the last five years is just overall across every market across every industry across every sector the customer doesn't care enough about sustainability and a customer's got so much more ability to impact sustainability with how they spend their money than how they vote every kind of four or five years in an election and i would love to find a way to get the world at large to wake up to this existential crisis that we're facing and kind of care more about sustainability but i would say if there's like three big questions what do you want beer to be what do you want a business to be what do you want a business to do about sustainability why do you think there is such a lag with sustainability in consumers?

1:18:42Because we almost need like a price laddering magic reframe for sustainability. Do you know what I mean? I think governments are massively to blame here. I think the amount of pain that society is going to have to take to give ourselves a shot of fixing this as long-term pain, which is simply not compatible with a politician who wants to get elected again in four or five years' time. We need systemic change across all elements of society and how we do it. Politicians care about getting re-elected more than they care about kind of taking taking the fight to climate change and kind of standing up for that i also think it's just so easy and amongst the noise of today there's so many issues and there's so many crisis and there's so many things to be concerned about and you should be concerned about those things but it's easy not to realize okay there's one that kind of sits above all these which is an existential threat to humans on this planet like if nothing changes are there going to be humans in this planet in 150 years time i don't think there's going to be humans in this planet 150 years time unless we make radical drastic changes now that is a scary message to tell a consumer and like somebody who wants to have a beer in a good time doesn't want to doesn't want to kind of have to deal with that with that message in and i haven't been able to find the unlock i've tried to take community with us we've tried to do this amazing forest project in scotland again another massive regret like we've taken a hard time in the media for loads of different things but like the purest most altruistic good deed that we ever did was a lost forest 20 million pounds project almost a thousand acres in the Scottish Highlands where we're planting well over a million trees just during peatlands the amount of criticism we've taken for that is we'd have been in a far better position from our land perspective if we hadn't have done it just because why were you getting slaughtered by oh we're getting stricised by some of the trees failed but that was due to the weather so we planted them again but we got you're not gone we got hammered for that and we got hammered because there was two gamekeepers worked there we made the gamekeepers redundant because we don't believe in blood sports and shooting we got two rupees for that we've got two pieces as part of this kind of green layered thing where it's like people are buying land for sustainability but what's alternative we're all burning hell on the planet uh we got two pieces because people didn't like the type of trees we were planting but we worked with amazing experts to do something that was sustainable and kind of local and native and rod leaf and all of these things but just that and i think it's a disincentive for other companies to do good things anyone any company looking to do a good thing for the environment she's going to look at what happened to us for trying to do this amazing thing where we've just taken so much bad press and hey wait a second so like why why do we why do we do that so the whole sustainability thing is is challenging and i don't know how we get people to care more to be aware of it more and to make better choices when it comes to sustainability the i want to talk about i was saying to queenie outside before you arrived mate about being in Japan like four years ago in Tokyo and I was doing the Rugby World Cup and I was with my old man and then I just fucking saw the brutal bars like this is not love the Tokyo one yeah yeah look just sick we went in there and had a pint and so you've got this very you know kind of darkly stoic but this fucking fierce punk brand but what you've done so well is you've got it to work in loads of different countries you know around the world what I again this is probably another barbell slash tension is like getting those those steadfast brand values and how you want to sharpen the world but doing it in different cultures where the where the message may not land as a fact for example i interviewed um who gives a crap you know toilet paper who gives a crap works in australia and and and the uk because we've got banter right in america it probably works too but trying to get that colloquialisms on the bog in fucking germany for example may not work How have you navigated that?

1:22:24What's been the hardest country to get people to get BrewDog? Great question. I think intentionally from the start, we wanted to build something that was kind of global and international from day one. So a lot of the early decisions that we made in terms of short names, it's easy to pronounce in different languages, things that can translate a kind of standard proposition that we felt we could translate. Because I think any standard has to adapt things too much internationally. You'll lose efficiencies of scale in what you do. you'll lose economies of scale and you'll lose the kind of coherence and structure that comes from a really strong master of brands so for me the best brands don't really change much if at all of what they like does apple show up differently in australia to new york absolutely not does nike does lululemon does adidas no they don't and i think if you start trying to make your brand show up differently in different places you just create all these kind of inherent contradictions and tensions in your brand that's cut becomes confusing we were like always like so tight like this is our guidelines this is what we stand for this is how we show up this is how we do things this is it if this doesn't work in that country hey it might not work in every country i'll take that in the chin i'm not going to create this whole kind of odd paralleled universe where we tweak things about what we do to kind of try and make it work there and like we've worked in some countries germany we haven't changed much we haven't worked that well in germany but i'm not going to create a whole new identity for what we do in germany so you yeah because this is the thing I think you said in the book, Sweden before Tesco, which I loved.

1:23:51Another tension is, so you almost built this, you thought massive from the go get, from the jump. Always said with Martin, when we started the business, this business is going to be one or two things. We're going to be a massive global success or we're going to trash and burn completely, which is totally fine because the space in between is boring. So let's think big. Let's double down. Let's take your risk. Let's take your risk. Let's take your risk. Let's push it and see how far we can go. I want to talk about Martin actually because I've listened to a lot of podcasts but I haven't heard you talk about him specifically.

1:24:18and actually linking this to the analog world. So, you know, Christopher Nolan did Batman Inception, that wonderful director did Oppenheimer. He lives a completely analog life, doesn't do emails, has an assistant who does emails for him. He draws out, like you on a piece of paper, all his films. It's all drawn down. But he writes the films with his brother. So his brother, whose name's Escape Me, something else, Nolan. And there's a great quote about how they work together. and he basically says that, you know, I'm, where the fuck is it? He basically says how Chris, that they work like in this beautiful yin-yang relationship and he basically says that Chris is right-handed, I'm left-handed and what it allows me to do is look at his ideas with a completely fresh perspective and tear them apart and that yin and yang works and they create these masterful films.

1:25:12I'd love to know how that works with you and Martin because obviously you do a lot of the press, you do a lot of the kind of face of the brand, but how important is Martin in this and how is he kind of different? How is he your yin and yang? Building the company with Martin has been absolutely amazing and having a co-founder, especially in the first decade of the business that I can't just having someone who, like if you cut them, they were going to bleed, like they were getting bleed, like having someone. So I could be in America doing sales. He could be in Scotland looking after the production facility.

1:25:43We both knew the other person was going to like do everything they could anytime anything to like make sure everything is good and everything is a success where as a solo founder if i was in america i would have to depend on an employee to make sure everything was fine back in scotland or i'd have to be there so just like having someone you knew was like like would die in a ditch with this thing as well it was just absolutely amazing and i think i've known martin for so long we've known each other since we was 11 years old we've got mates at university like we know how we work we know what we're good at we kind of know how to get the best out of each other and we know how to really push and kind of build something together and like i'm more like outgoing think more about kind of marketing the customer the brand marketing is more kind of process flow engineering technical liquid liquid development liquid engineering that type of thing so i think the kind of combination of skill sets and like as the company has grown we've both had to get very good at like the kind of skill sets with other but the kind of split kind of for the first decade was like everything liquid everything beer everything equipment everything production facility like martin would take care of that and the team and i would know it'd be done amazingly well then everything that happened between the beer being packaged and the customer i would take care of that and martin would know it'd be done incredibly well and at that time the kind of the lines was quite clear so i would always say like we can have challenging debates we can kind of challenge back and forth but if something happens in your side of the business martin i'm going to challenge you i'm going to give you my opinion ultimately you make the call and like we knew that and i was like if something happens in my part of the business we can have challenging debates we can throw it back and forth ultimately i'm going to make the call so we were very clear that okay if we have arguments we have disagreements there fine okay we've had the discussion your call all good we go so like we even had that kind of framework for how we disagree like that way we never had a serious disagreement which i think is quite uncommon especially for founders that kind of built and built and built something but we're just very clear for the outset this is how we're going to do things but this is how we're going to handle difficult situations as well and this is how we're going to resolve those and this is kind of what we're getting to going forward and that just worked really well in the journey for us i want to talk about social tip yeah uh i think i think first actually just to set the scene for listeners is let's talk about the moment you stepped down as ceo and what that felt like we've talked a lot about being the captain on the ship your old man being the captain on the ship you stepped down as the captain on the ship quite literally yeah what does that feel like is that change happens yeah odd odd to be honest so i never intended to do something as long as i was for your dog CEO.

1:28:28I was CEO for 17 and a half years. It is a long time. And I loved every second of it, even the challenges, even the kind of tumultuous times. And I love like the business, the people, the locations, the beer, the mission. Like I adore the whole thing. I always said to myself, I want to build multiple fantastic companies over the course of my career. Like my heroes have built multiple fantastic companies. I want to do that. I don't just want to build one business. And I was actually thinking of kind of stepping and down as CEO just before COVID and I had a plan in place to do it and then COVID hit and it was kind of all hands on deck and it was crisis mode and I had to lead the business kind of through that crisis and that was kind of 13 and a half years into the journey.

1:29:08So I'm really excited to still be involved and kind of do the things that I love in the business and excited not to have to sit in like 10 hours of back-to-back Zoom meetings about 20, 25 budget by department, which was kind of never my strong point. And I mean, including our franchise locations, we're kind of close to 4 ,000 people in the business now, which is amazing and I love it, but I love building things and like the 127th location is never going to be as exciting to open as the third or fourth location the the 10 ,000th supermarket distribution point is never going to be as exciting as the first one and I think the business is built it's an amazing path it's got a fantastic team so I wanted to still be involved but I wanted to give myself the kind of time and space to invest to work with founders but also build some other businesses of my own as well what there's a quote which i think you you said when i wrote down which i thought was brilliant which is when you become a little bit successful at something it's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking everything you do will be equally successful and i think you see this a lot in in uh life where you know you get one success you think you you you jack the peanut kind of thing and everything you touch turns to gold what are some of the blind spots you see from being successful in BrewDog that could come to sting you in making social tips successful?

1:30:27That's a great question. And I would start off by saying, like, even though BrewDog's successful and been successful for maybe a decade now, every single day we need to re-earn that success. Re-earn. Yes, so many companies that have become successful. That is when things are difficult. Every single day you have to earn that success again and again and again and again. And it becomes more difficult because loads more people are trying to kind of, pull you down from the top of the mountain it's slippery in the top of the mountain so you've got to re-earn and re-earn that success and there's a great quote that uh somebody I love has got kind of outside their office which is only the paranoid win yes you've got to be so paranoid you've got to work so hard so like with social tip everything is online with any startup the overwhelming likelihood is it's going to fail and the only reason it might not fail is if me and my team work hard enough work tenacious enough and fight fight hard enough but like i'm under no illusions like any startup like the odds are stacked against you regardless who you are regardless how successful you are regardless of what you've built before you've got to fight you've got to push hard you've got you've got to like push push push and you've got to earn it every single day and i almost think it's more difficult for someone going again trying to build things the second time because there's expectation and there's like which makes it even more difficult and especially in the UK I think there's a bit cynicism I think in the US if somebody's built something they've tried to build again there's that kind of can-do mentality the American dream and they're kind of happy like people's like wow they're going I think in the UK it's like why the fuck are they doing that why are they just like sitting in an island somewhere what's wrong with them it's like you got that you can't we're so sardonic as a nation and it's just like yeah it's like go on mate the in terms of what was when was the most you were most successful at brew dog and i love that earn earn your right every single day you have to what were you paranoid about when you were most successful everything everything yeah just like you're constantly on there on the edge like a squirrel nervously eating a nut out in the open like thinking like what's that coming what's that right what's going on so like you kind of stay on your path but you've got to be so aware of kind of everything that's happening like success can come and go like that and the amount of people have been successful and then quickly unsuccessful there's like so many instances of that of that happening so just got to earn it got to fight for it and like i think staying successful is more difficult than becoming successful in the first place staying successful is harder than becoming successful and then just for for listeners what is social tip like so i think that's right i should have asked that sorry mate social tip is my new business and it's kind built on everything I've learned about marketing over the last decade and in a nutshell Social Tip exists to turn a company's customers into its influencers.

1:33:11So our wholesale pitch is rather than pay one influencer with a million followers£5 ,000 to do one post you're significantly better off if you give 500 of your customers£10 to do 500 posts. You're going to get more eyeballs, you're going to get better content, you're going to get better return on investment and you're can shorten the distance between you and your most important advocates. So we are all about democratizing influence and enabling anyone, regardless of how many followers they've got, public or private account, to become an influencer and earn money when they post content online and helping the best brands win by turning brand love into a competitive advantage.

1:33:47It's so interesting. It's almost the influence of things almost lost its influence in that people are now so aware of it and aware that it's, you know, like the whole genius of influencer marketing back in the day like i remember working for an ad agency in 2015 when i first heard the word influencer i was like fucking hell it was like one of jamie oliver's um food tube channels like he's an influencer i was like what the fuck is that the reason it worked is because it was a kind of it was there was an illusionary veil to it was authentic it was genuine yeah whereas now i think people are like well did they really buy that toothbrush did they really use that skincare product did they really go on that holiday did they really buy that leggings now not to say the influencer doesn't have value it still has value But I think it's ad, well, not to say that influencer doesn't have value, I think it still has value, but I think its value is equivalent to an advert.

1:34:34So it's brand awareness, you get visibility, but that kind of genuine advocacy that it has isn't there anymore. So I wouldn't say for a second, I don't do influencer, but I would just be aware that engagement is quite low, authenticity is quite low. It's the equivalent impact for Erdand of taking out a TV, radio, magazine, Bill Verdand. And then how does it work then? So say, let's use Ben's brand, Living Things. he's coming he's coming on the podcast in a couple of weeks I love Living Things yeah yeah he's a really good mate of mine got so much time for Ben Living Things wants to use social tip so they're not they don't have the big budgets yet for fair actually they've raised a shitload of money but like say they didn't and they could go for some sort of micro influences with you know 10 because I think that this is really interesting it's like 10 ,000 followers you know not like a fucking Kylie Jenner how do they use social tip how do you yeah how does it get the flywheel spinning with these brand evangelists?

1:35:27Do you know what I mean? Yeah, amazing question. So they would deposit an amount of money, say a thousand pounds in their social tip account. They would let their community know that they can earn money when they post about living things. Their community would make a purchase. We'd verify the purchase. They would post about it online. We would pay them for that post. So they would facilitate their followers, their most loyal fans to be paid for when they create living things content. And do you have to, does the person have to say, I'm using social tip like legally? do you know what i'm saying and we use hashtag social tip yeah okay okay so that's how you get around interesting how we get around it but then you post the content on instagram you post the content tiktok and the average payment is about seven pounds fifty to ten pounds so the idea would be that a social tip member would post about living things about tala about pure gym about huell about p and co about asos about spec savers we've got 210 fantastic which i signed up and over the course of a month they might get kind of 25 35 pounds in their social type account that they can then withdraw their bank account and if you think like when i was a kid everyone wanted to be a movie star a pop star a football player a sports person a politician an author whatever now everyone in the next generation wants to be an influencer so this lets that generation emulate their heroes by earning money when they post about the things they love online yes the um you wrote a thing and i reminds me of charlie munger's like wisdom is prevention like the inversion rule and you said five reasons this this won't work social tip we might not get enough and i think this was back in july i don't know when this post was we might not get enough users we might not get enough brand partner brands uh posts may might lack authenticity the lack of control scares brands we are heavily regulated those five obstacles kind of i suppose those may have come from your analog world but what out of those obstacles what has actually sprung up as a as a a thorn in your sort of rosebush of obstacles and how are you kind of back to this real hard thing i want to wrap up with this this hard in the hardship blossoms the opportunity like yeah great question firstly who at a time they're looking for investment tells everyone the five things that's going to go wrong with their business which isn't quite an unconventional approach in the first place so why did you do that like i've i just think like sometimes like being like so open and so candid is refreshing and it can cut through the noise so it's something i've kind of focused on especially in linkedin which is the platform i use the most but just like i think one of my biggest articles was like my top 10 mistakes or my worst decisions or my biggest mistakes is connect ceo and i think that kind of level of honesty lets people see that business is real and it's ready and it's difficult and everything's not just a kind of self-polished success story and i think like letting people see kind of behind the bit like these are the challenges that I am struggling with and to be honest I think we're struggling with all of those challenges at the moment so we've got 3 ,000 users sign up we're pre-launched so we're launching in a few weeks time we've got 210 brand sign up which is amazing but we need significantly more to scale and because we hold money on behalf of brand partners and people we're regulated almost as if we were a bank which is a whole lot of fun to go through so that is challenging but ultimately the biggest challenge is going to be getting enough users on the platform.

1:38:43And what I think we're finding at the moment is, and it's bizarre, the messaging is almost too good to be true. So people don't believe it. So some of our messaging, like you can earn up to 10 pounds for this post that you're going to do anyway. That messaging so far has been bouncing off people a little bit because it just feels a bit spammy. It feels a bit disingenuous. And I can't figure out how to phrase that messaging so it's hooky enough. And it feels like an authentic, genuine, real thing, which this is as opposed to like fuck that of course i'm not getting 10 quids you know in trust pilot people believe don't like five star reviews because they think this is it's a scam so people actually buy more on trust pilot if it says 4.7 yes exactly that's so interesting yeah i hadn't thought of that it's like yeah it's like it almost goes against the it's you've got to make your offer a little bit shitter to make it it kind of links it i suppose that's another kind of psychological frame in terms of the price laddering it's like you need to yeah it's it's super interesting uh final thing mate or final couple of things is is you what are some of the real impressive founders that you kind of hang out with and what have you kind of what some of the learnings that i could implement listeners could implement from those people like who's in your kind of orbit that you speak to a lot and my favorite founder on the planet is sir tom hunter and Scottish business legend and Scotland's first ever billionaire and he's got an amazing foundation at the moment where he focuses on giving back to society on education and venture philanthropy and he's just given me so many good nuggets of advice what's his original business a chain of sports stores which he sold for about 300 million then he had an investment fund that he kind of built after after that amazing yeah and I remember kind of sitting down chatting to Tom it was about five six years ago and I had an issue with somebody in my team and I was like Tom should I deal with this just now or should I wait until this this and this happens and kind of deal with it kind of four to six months down the line and he looked at me kind of quite quite stoically and just said to me James if you were running a marathon you wouldn't wait until mile 22 to take the stone out of your shoe and that's become like a mantra within our business it's like if we've got something to do we're like stone shoot like we need to fix that difficult thing now if it's a people challenge, if it's a logistics challenge, if it's a electronics challenge, if it's an operations challenge, like take the stone out of your shoe.

1:41:02And like doing that is difficult, but like so many companies, again, like they just run with the stones in their shoes because they're not taking them out. So like do the difficult thing today, fix it, take the stone out of your shoe. Random one, what in one sentence is a brand? A brand is emotion a member of the public feels in their head towards what you do in their head towards towards what you do yeah fuck me now yes you know i interviewed seth yesterday he was got this new book called this is strategy and he talks about how strategy links to story and that brands sort of uh you know extol the virtues of storytelling he actually says the strategy is the strategy here and it links with the story the story is what the consumer tells themself about what you do it's exactly the same thing that's so you so you don't own your brand you don't own what your brand stands for that lives inside of someone's head how do you control the story in someone's head though you can you can't control it but you can try and influence it yeah and a lot of branding is like trying to influence a story someone tells themselves in their head about what you do but then it's so like so many brands are about control control controller you can have all the control in the world the customers get to think what they think about what you do and that is what your brand is it's their instant gut instinct snap second bang starbucks bang it's a thing yes costa bang it's a thing john lewis bang it's a thing tala bang it's a thing lululemon bang it's a thing the that will store guy who wrote the science uh wrote the status game also wrote a book called the science of storytelling and he came on the podcast i was asking about like how do brands what how do brands play change the story in someone's head and he almost said like you know the christmas carol scrooge is the hero right in every hero there's a hero any story every story there's a hero and in um you then got the three ghosts of christmas who are like the light figure and the light figure is almost that person in a story could be gandalf in lord of the rings who's kind of that wise person trying to influence um and and influence their brain and their way of thinking with christmas carol it was scrooge and he says a brand is almost like the light figure so the heroes the customer's the hero the brand's a light figure and it can kind of influence the story in their head or the way they think about it but it can't plant it in their head and i think that's a real interesting way of looking at it uh final question is what's one truth you believe that most people would disagree with you on oh that's a fantastic question um and also when i was in stephen bartlett's podcast do you leave a question for future guests yeah yeah that was the question i left for future guests oh what's one truth you yeah because that's from peter teal's zero to one it's from peter yeah yeah we both stole it borrowed it from exactly the yeah from exactly the same place it's such i asked it to a lot of guests great question um i think if you step aside and this is a bigger bigger thing i think if you step aside from political parties kind of where they sit on the spectrum i think over the next kind of 10 to 20 years democracy as we know it is going to have the biggest challenge since we've had democracy as we know it.

1:44:12And here's why. So we seem to be in this never-ending spiral. And this is like agnostic. This doesn't matter if Labour, if Conservative, if Democrat, if Republicans are in power. So if we take the UK at the moment, taxes are going up and up and up. Debt is going up and up and up. Servicing that national debt is going up and up and up. So that's the end line unless something fundamental gives can only go one way. Taxes are going to continue to rise. We're going to have to continue to service a massive national debt. So that is going to happen. At the same time in society, what we're paying the taxes for, NHS in the worst shape that's ever been when it comes to waiting times, when it comes to service.

1:44:45The prisons are so full, they're putting dangerous criminals back on the streets because they don't have the capacity to keep them in there. And this is at a time that taxes are as high as they've ever been for society and taxes are about to go higher. So we're going to get this crazy, depressing inflection point of taxes going up and up and up and the things that we pay the taxes for getting worse and worse and worse and this again it's not like i'm completely agnostic barnacles on the ship as it's happening so slowly that you can't and it's not a labor thing it's not a conservative thing it's just how our democracy has trended over the last 50 back something is going to have to give in this equation taxes can't keep going up to a point where there's no incentive at all left in the system and services can't keep getting worse we've got so much debt as a nation we've got no option for that taxes to get up and then a lot of those taxes is just getting to go and servicing the debt so we can't make the services better so like where do these lines logically go where taxes 90 plus and services are worse than ever and then democracy has got a fundamental problem and how do you what how do you potentially look to to be prudent and avoid that situation or do you think it's unavoidable at the moment with current political system we've got i see it as unavoidable and i think it's going to be an existential threat to society into into what we do James odd note to finish a business podcast yeah but it sets us up maybe for round two once we get to that point but look I've absolutely loved this it's just I think with you and these barbells that we've really unpacked love that I just think you are the founder that embodies that have built this beautiful amazing brand that everyone fucking loves and looks up to I can't wait to go and have a pint now yeah so thank you so much I love that really appreciate it amazing and just because that end was like maybe a bit political and a bit dark do you want me to give you an alt on that or do you want just think that's good for your audience well I think that's good but if maybe if maybe if we if we go for one which is um no because I think that's really interesting but I think maybe one that's more for um I'll give I'll give you one word just so you've got it yeah yeah so what's one truth you believe that most people disagree with you on I think working from home is the worst thing that has happened to to businesses i think it is incredibly inefficient i think it's really bad for individuals as well i think isolation has got such an impact and kind of people's mental health can a part of a team and it had to be in place because of covid but i think businesses that now do it i think they'll lose their edge they'll lose their competitive advantage there's something magical about people together in a space working towards a collective goal and i just don't think you can build something that changes the world if everyone's dialing in in a zoom meeting do you have but then how do you create analog time or like you know you want your employees to be to go into these deep dives yes the other to play this back to you is i know for a fact when i was working in office is i'm obviously a nitter natter it's good for a podcast yeah i would just chat shit all day and i would need that time to go into into the analog underworld how do you get that and still be in the office all of that so we do a few things so in drew dog we've got a lot of open open plan offices we've got the drew dog do not disturb kit so we give every team member a pair of noise cancelling headphones and we give them a water pistol.

1:47:57So what it means is it is your do not disturb sign. If you've got your noise cancelling headphones on, you're deeply immersed in a task. You're not to be disturbed. You're focused. And if somebody loses their focus to answer a query, it's 10 minutes before, 10 minutes until they get the same level of focus. So people wear the headphones. Also benefit if it kind of kills the background noise because they're noise cancelling. If someone disturbs them when they've got them on, bang, water pistol. And can you do that? That's beautiful. And it links to the whole brand. but say they're getting peppered with emails like can you check this can you check that like how do you because they could have their headphones on and then still be getting peppered with emails like is that you do you have a policy it's like fucking leave me alone email like it's subject line like do you know what i mean because i think that's the issue and i've had that a lot when i try and write is obviously i don't have my emails on but say it can get to a stage where i'm like the emails are popping in or slack's popping off and it can't you can have it on your fucking laptop it's like a nefarious disease that gobbles from your phone to your laptop like how do you put that in place?

1:48:54Well, I think it very much depends what someone's job is and what is the highest value they can deliver at the company and how they can build their career. So some people, if it's customer service, if it's logistics, they need to be in emails and that is their job, that is what they do. So I think it depends. If somebody is writing like yourself, I think there's a mix of you need to answer emails, you need to get back to clients, but you need to connect the creative space. What I would often do is have an autoresponder on my email just saying, I'm trying to build the future I'm focused on some big projects I'll get back to you as soon as possible if you need an answer quicker here's how you can get an answer so you're just kind of not creating an expectation of an instantaneous response but they've had some type of response so they're happy so very much depends on the position depends on what someone's doing depends on what their goal is but if an element of what you do needs to be great if you need to be in deep thought you need to find a way to kill the noise to do that it's like that Paul Graham link we started here we'll end with him is that maker versus manager schedule and I think having that again to another barbell if you can have maker versus manager schedule in your culture then you build something like this but yeah I know you've got to run you've got to go somewhere else but mate I fucking love that so grateful we managed to make it happen and yeah thank you so much good luck with the social tip cool thanks again thank you so so much for listening to the podcast I really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much