Pret a Manger & Itsu Founder - The Biggest Mistakes I Made Building a Billion Dollar Brand

0:00A founder is only really successful when they put themselves out of a job. My definition of success for myself is when I'm definitely not needed anywhere around. Is your product really better? Things never work out the way founders want. You know, you have a dream for a product. You lie in bed, you plan it, you plan it. Is it really as good as you thought? Or are you going to have to work twice as hard? That's the difference between founders who make it and those who don't. If you only concentrate on East Asian, freshly made, nutritious food without chemicals in it, you'll find we're really lucky.

0:28We can sell it anywhere in the world. A chicken gyoza we sell in Mumbai would be identical to the one in Toronto. There's no need to change it. What about at Pret? That was different. That's much harder.

0:45Julian, thank you so much for doing this again. I absolutely loved our first conversation. It was just, mind was sort of bubbling with wisdom afterwards. So yeah, thank you. There's so much I want to explore with you today. um but what i'd love to start with and i was speaking to um nadia this morning yeah about this tension between founders and as you when you start a business you've got this thing called founder mode and as you get bigger and bigger and bigger it becomes more operational i think that's that's an inherent tension in businesses and i want to start with well two things actually so one is i don't know if you know libby gibson at piper yeah i know you mean yeah yeah she's amazing and she she's got this thing called the 7 17 70 principle so she says businesses where it's probably whether you're scaling it to you're scaling press you go the founder has to change from when you go from seven stores to 17 stores to 70 like there's a massive change um in the way the bit the way the business is run but one of the inherent problems is that you can sometimes lose that founder's magic and like spark anyway so i've always i've always thought about this tension and it's been kind of on the tip of my tongue.

1:58I'll be trying to grasp what it is. And then I read an essay the other week by Paul Graham. And Paul Graham is the guy who set up YC Combinator. Silicon Valley made loads of startups. They did, invested in Airbnb, Twitch, Coinbase, Reddit, Stripe. And in this essay, we'll kind of read a bit of that and we'll detail it. It's a talk by Brian Chesky. He's the founder of Airbnb. and he's got all the best founders or some of the most successful founders in in in the room and he says this he says the theme of brian's talk was that conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken as airbnb grew well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale their advice could be optimistically summarized as hire good people and give them room to do their jobs he followed this advice and the results were disastrous.

2:52And what he's basically saying is the bigger and bigger you get, he then goes on to say founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides by the people telling them they have to run their companies like managers and by the people working for them when they do. Usually when everyone around you disagrees with you, your default assumption is that you're mistaken. And he says VCs haven't been founders themselves, don't know how founders should run a company and C-level executives as a class include some of the most skillful eyes in the world. He says, there's no book specifically about founder mode.

3:24There's no business school doesn't teach you about founder's mode. And I went to business school and I always felt like there weren't any founders teaching these lectures. It was almost like a farmer trying to teach ice hockey. It's a completely different sport, completely different thing. and I would love to know how your texture as a founder has changed or how you've had to change as you've gone from that sort of 1770 uh journey with with with Pratt and now Itzu it's a very big it's a big subject yeah I have a lot and if if you're um so the purpose of your podcast is you want your audience you're trying to get found founders I mean you want founders to listen yeah do you yeah because what you're saying is there's not a lot of advice for people who to start a business to find a business who have a vision for a product like how are they going to grow it without all these pitfalls that's that's yeah it's a listen it's a very difficult subject um and and and i 7 17 70 sounds quite yeah it's it's uh listen at the end of the day it's not nearly as complicated as people want to make up.

4:39At the end of the day, it's about a relationship between the product and the customer. So everything really is about that relationship, the product and the customer. And as long as you keep always coming back to that, the rest is not that complicated. In other words, if you think everything, you know, the relationship between what it is you're trying to make and sell and the relationship with the consumer, if that's 70 % of the issue, the remaining 30 shouldn't really cause that many problems. Don't get me wrong, it does. It does. And we can explore why. But it's really not that difficult. In my experience over the last, or ever since I've started, on the whole, where we've tripped up, where I've gone wrong, where we've all hit a brick wall, is when we've lost touch with the simple formula of the product and the customer.

5:36And is it this operation mindset and the more managerial the company gets that it can sometimes Well yeah obviously because by its very nature as you grow the process by which you create a product, develop a product, innovate your product is going to get more complex and it can often hit a brick wall where suddenly there is either the process is broken or the post the process is so complicated that it's lost its heart and soul uh and then it calls for uh someone in the business it could be the founder it could be the ceo to say hold on a minute we're we've fallen behind on on on this when did that happen with well i think it's it's very interesting isn't it?

6:20It's always at the risk of happening. It's there every day. Every day you have to ask yourself, are we on top of this? Is our product stimulating and wonderful and offering value for money to our customers? And are we serving this product in a way which is better or as good as or ideally better than the competition? So you just have to be very, very honest. and that's why sometimes founders are useful because they tend to be sort of more direct and and they have a really sometimes a really good understanding of what it is we're trying to achieve but in my experience um a great many leaders in in a business certainly and clearly it's um it's not the founder who really makes it all happen um it's it's it's a combination of the vision and the leadership and the day-to-day leadership that's what i'm trying to get to it's that tension between sort of the the operations and the managers um because i think if you go to founder mode it becomes a chaos yeah i mean what does that mean to founder mode i understand exactly what you're saying yeah so that's what for people watching this what i suppose people are are going to be asking i am i are well you You know, are you a business manager of people and product or are you a founder?

7:41Well, as a founder, what's your role? Your role is to have a vision for your product and your people and to help the team get their head around what it is we're trying to achieve. What is our purpose? And that can disappear or it can be watered down. So maybe that's the only purpose of a founder, really, because for a founder to build a successful business, you can only do it with lots of really very capable people. You know, the CEO, the boss of It's Your Groceries, far superior intellect manager, a discipline than I could ever be. But together, maybe the harmony comes from a combination of us.

8:23And the same with Prater and so many things. And when you say, and this is what I'm trying to get to, as you said, what is founder mode? And this is what Paul Graham's saying. I think it's about the product. It's about the product. I don't think it's actually complicated. You see, if we make this too complicated, not only will people switch off and get bored, but listen, it's very simple. It's about the product, almost nothing else. The purpose of the founder is to really never stop trying to make their product better, I think. So when is it not about the product? When? Think of it. Think of anything.

9:07Sometimes people make products and they're about price. In other words, you make a product which is dirt cheap. Fine, then it's about being unbelievably efficient and incredibly competitive. In our case, we've tried to create a product which adds real value to the customer in terms of how delicious it is, how pure it is, how it's made without chemicals and UPS and additives. That's what we stand for. And we've done it in a particular sector, which is East Asian food. Pret-to-manger was about, you know, unbelievable efficiency for the consumer. It was about speed. It was about being so convenient as well as, you know, a superior product because it was always made in every Pret.

9:48But, you know, in both cases, you know what? It's about the product. And it could be that you make a telephone or you make a computer or you make a cup or you make a glass. It doesn't matter what, I think. That's one thing we talked about last time. I think one of your abilities is to find simplicity and complexity. And I think you said it to me last time. You said simplicity is hard, complexity is easy. Everyone knows that. Yeah. And in terms of, but you can get, the managerial side can get complex, i.e. meetings about meetings. The managerial side will get complex. That's a fact. How do you find simplicity in that?

10:25So if there's one of the roles of a founder or a CEO is to continuously try and work out, are we getting complicated for the sake of it? Because layers of complexity will always come in. Yeah, yeah. Always, from when you go from one to two, when you go from one person to three, complexity will come in. Yeah. I mean, you know, complexity, it's like a virus. Like, it's just everywhere. Yeah. I interviewed the founder of BrewDog, James Watt, the other week. Yeah. The analogy, he said it was like barnacles on a boat. Yes. So he goes, over time, you won't notice a few barnacles. Exactly. But then in a year's time, you look, and you've suddenly got 100 barnacles there.

11:02Yeah, yeah. And this is slowing the boat down. And he goes, my role is just to clean the barnacles. Yeah, he's right. It's that simple. But then when you go from, let's go back to Libby's 7, 17, 70. When you're going from 17 to 70 sites, I know that's quite a reductuous way of looking at it. It just makes it simple. Yes. What are some of the complexities that came into the business? And not necessarily just with the managerial side, I'm talking about in general. And how did you begin, how did your brain work to really slice away and simplify that? You know, when you go from, what did you say, 17 to 17?

11:39It's 17, 17, yeah. So when you go from 17, it doesn't matter if it's 17 or 20 or 50. The same challenges are going to apply. which is you get very distant from the day-to-day, you know, go face your consumers. Invariably, you're going to not be on top of things at all. So you've got to have a really pretty good system, pretty good process by which you keep your product great. Because, you see, if it's all about the product, that's what matters. How do you keep your product great? And that product and how that product is served and packaged, if that's all that really matters for you to keep your competitive edge and to survive and thrive um you've got to as you say barnacles because the barnacles will come and they'll impede the your your your competitive edge um what was so the more everyone when you go from 17 to 18 you're going to get weaker when you get to from 20 to 23 you're going to be weaker of course you are so how are you going to fill those gaps what you're going to do what structure are you going to make where you can carry on um you know have you ever been to the forbidden city in beijing it's absolutely amazing apparently it's a bit like walmart they they used to bring everybody in i think i think once a month hundreds upon hundreds of people would travel days to to to you know it's all about communication in that case a bit like walmart but you how do you communicate to your to the people who you work with how do you communicate your core messages what you know weekly monthly we have a team brief in in in in it's you know every day every morning uh we have so many ways of trying to communicate to share this is what you know because it's you know every day you're invariably things are being watered down complexities coming in and what are some of those ways you communicate like i think i've got it i mean it starts it's all a lot of uh the minute you go from one person to two in any business it's about communication or it's about the vision the product and then it becomes about communication because when you have more than one or two or three four five human beings they've got to stay aligned and i don't know you've got to they've got to agree a purpose how did the communication change from when you're in those super early days to when sex let's start let's use pret as the example to when Pratt got it didn't really change at all no because it just got bigger I mean the system we used to communicate probably changed how did that change?

14:12I don't know the way you communicate with one person is clearly different to the way you communicate weekly with 200 but it's not that difficult we all get together often You know, we all get together every single week here. We get together every single day in every restaurant. We get together every single three months. We get, you know, we share information with each other. That's just common sense. That's absolutely vital. But then you dig into what are we sharing and why. And that doesn't actually change that much. What we share and why, I don't think it's changed since the day we started, really.

14:53It's about the product. It's about the people. It's about the customers. Quite obvious. 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 Chasum, crossing El Rubicon to grocery retail is not easy. It's the Champions League of FMCG. It's super hard. it means playing at a higher level and that's where some new 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 north star they are the team that's helping purpose-led fmcg brands go from gut instinct dreams to unstoppable pitch decks that actually unlock retailers northstar i'm not like another data company that force feed you data like foie gras 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 yeah this is the thing is this this is what is what i loved our conversation last time is your ability to find the simplicity and complexity because listen it's very very very good i mean when you when you employ let's say a couple of thousand people and so when you employ a couple of thousand people in your business you're invariably going to be employing more or less all the time because people leave, people come.

16:52So then you have to try and document, well, what qualities are we looking for? Well, what are the qualities over time of the people who've really made a big difference for the benefit of our business and our customers? So in ITSU, for years and years, we've evaluated everyone who works with us all the time on just four qualities. And we all know they're used all the time. So we've made something really complicated like personality of a human being into okay these are the four things which over time we've realized really really matter what are they in our case oh goodness well um the first one is uh i i care so i care i take pride i want to grow and i build trust those are the four everything if i if you worked with with if you worked at it soon and after three months or every every three months or twice a year you would be evaluated upon those four things so i you personally i want to grow i build trust i care i take pride and and how is that helpful well because let's say um you know you know take anyone go on care pride trust right you you name one and i'll an example uh care right you care okay so you've been the last three months you've been particularly tricky in the office you've upset people you've been disrespectful to people you you're just not you show no patience you are just disruptive rude um in other words you really don't seem to care or you lack empathy and or let's say the reverse you care you've developed you keep on giving people um your time your development time you keep on investing them you seem to be nurturing your your the couple of people you work with really well you you you keep on showing signs that you care about your work you care enormously about your product you care enormously about the people you work with you're taking a kind of a long-term view to your work and your relationship with the people that's what we're looking for so we're able to use iCare as an example to talk to you it'll help you so if you you know if you had arrived you know for this podcast and all your batteries have been completely dead because you hadn't been bothered yesterday to recharge them it would be an example say how can you honestly talk so you care about your work when you can't be bothered to charge your batteries the day before you know are you a are you a professional or are you just an amateur well you know do you pursue excellence so care and excellence thing whereas i build trust is completely different build trust is is a fundamental um characteristics we've found over many years which is so fundamental are you open are you honest do you really get to the heart of the matter or are you just a political animal animal talking book that's that's are you a bullshitter basically yeah well that's but there's a couple of things on that so i think the care thing is really interesting so seth go do you know seth godin is the yeah of course i do yeah so he's been on uh his podcast i've interviewed him twice since we spoke he's fantastic absolutely amazing awesome yeah um it was yeah i just couldn't believe i actually interviewed him it was kind of crazy but yeah he was he said he's got a quote i love which is the professional is hard on themselves and the amateur is soft on themselves.

20:24And by that, it means the people that really care are constantly looking at their work thinking, not saying that shit, but it's a bit like you with the product. You're looking at your product being, you've got to look at your product and say, this is crap for it to get better. I agree. So that's why we convert that into that word care. Care, amazing. And then on the trust. On trust is obvious. We've all, everyone watching this podcast has at some time worked for somebody they don't really trust. They're in it for themselves, they're kind of smoke and mirrors, a bit of a bullshitter. Building trust is a very, very important fundamental thing to the success of a group of people working together.

21:04It really, really is important. Like I want to grow is important. If your company is growing and you have ambitions to sell more of your product to more people and you are growing you need to have people who want to grow you need to have people who are prepared to take a risk and take on more responsibility and and people who are prepared to be accountable people who are prepared to judge their work you know are you prepared to put the extra hours into editing this podcast until it's really good or are you prepared to push the button release it when it's kind of half done because you want to go out and go to the pub it's down to you in the end in other words i want to grow there's a real amazing relationship between i care and i want to grow going to that relationship not everyone wants to grow which is fine what describe that relationship between care well there's obviously they're completely linked like one of those venn diagrams that you did at school um unless you unless you want to grow you know i caring about excellence being bothered about excellence uh is fundamental to growing and uh you'll find wanting to grow is more it kind of fuels that respect for excellence that last mile that last five percent or whatever it is they are related and not everyone wants to to grow and and that's fine too on the trust thing i think people like in any organization people can wear masks i know there's a thing about robert green which i love he wrote the 48 laws of power and he says a lot of people you'll come across are wearing masks and they can almost wear wear a mask that says i care i'm i'm trustworthy a lot i mean in the corporate world a huge amount how do you and this may be where the founder mode comes in how do you sort of spot that mask or how do you it takes time you you often can't at the beginning because people who are a great many people in the corporate world climb the corporate ladder because they are very presentable.

23:10They're very believable. And they're very political. And they are, you know, as human beings, we all kind of tend to want to believe people. We want to give people a chance. But then what they are usually not, and it takes time, is they are not accountable. They're not accountable at all for their own results, their own work, their own anything. But they're very, very politically astute. And in the corporate world, those people can do really, really well. Did you ever have people like that as as PrEP became bigger? And what did you do when you found those people? Yeah, all businesses do. All businesses do.

23:45And what did you do when you find those people? Were you fined behind the mask? It's not my job to find them. It's usually the institution that we all find. They stick out in the end sometimes after a year sometimes after six months sometimes after three years it just depends the company um if most people in your organization are not like that those who are get found out yeah the i want to talk about and they move to somewhere else usually yeah i want to talk about uh pano cristo yeah who was i think i don't know if you saw this but on linkedin it went completely viral about his his journey at pret right and uh for for listeners he's now the ceo correct me if i'm wrong um but he started out i think i read somewhere that he was he was a son of a taxi driver getting paid two pounds 75 working mcdonald's uh lived lived in grew up in tooting um based on those sort of care pride trust and growth what was some of the because Let's assume everyone does that at your organizations, Julian.

24:49What were the underrated slash different characteristics in Pano that you believe helped him soar upwards? Well, often people who come, which is, let's face it, 99 % of us, don't come from, didn't go to some remarkable university and were born with endless privilege. it takes time sometimes for people or sometimes most people never thank goodness really understand the political what it takes to you know rise up in a commercial organisation quickly so in someone like Pano's case he rose up because he did he obviously built trust he wanted to grow he cared he fulfilled those four he must have done Yeah, what sort of stuff was he doing to...

25:41Oh, I should think it was a combination of how people worked with him, I guess. How his results, the amount of customers he satisfied, the people who enjoyed working with him, I should think. Just the four things. I mean, his success would have been entirely driven on those four things. Nothing else. There is nothing else. It's mad how you... And we go deeper. These things are so simple. It's so simple. I know, but it's so simple to you, but it's so complex. I think people, as you say, complexity is easy. Even I get in a tiff about things. Just making things complicated. I think it's part of human nature.

26:18Those four things are everything. But in ITZY, we take it to one level on, which we then call it the Bs. We have five more which help guide us and guide everyone who works with us. And those Bs, if in doubt, think of the Bs. if you don't know whether to turn left or right think of the B what are the B's? in its case our B's we have be thankful, be clear be accountable be clear, be there that's an interesting one going to be there be there, be clear, be accountable be brave, be thankful those are the B's sometimes I get them muddled up I should think of a word I always think of them in the same order be there so be there in the case of retailing and hospitality um you've got to stay close to your your customers and your the people who work for you you've got to be that you've got to attend you can't run a hospitality business um like you can a great many businesses you've got to be there in fact all leaders need to be there doesn't matter really what you do you can't if you don't truly understand what it's like for your consumer your customer you're not going to be successful You've got to be there.

27:33You've got to be there. In the same way, the other four, you've got to be accountable. You've got to truly be accountable. Be thankful. Be thankful is interesting. Yeah, that's a really interesting one. Because when things go well, they will have been because of the effort and dedication of the people you work with. So make sure you're grateful, always. recognize the fact that the difference between excellence and mediocrity is very often hard work determination honesty you know i want to grow i build trust i care and you need to recognize it and you need to be grateful for it but you should never take it for granted ever so being thankful is a basic one i suppose being be thankful and that gratitude allows you to be there and it makes you care about the customers when you're super grateful that those well in your case you know you're only you know to settle this equipment up someone's got to get it make it charge it all get it working but you know if you're if you if you don't recognize the difference between someone who's good or bad at that i mean you know it's all about human effort the people you work with so be grateful when it happens well be grateful recognize it yes don't take it for granted yeah be thankful but be thankful that it's gone well yeah the person you're working with didn't leave half of it in the in the uber by mistake yeah yeah the the other thing that you've where uh pretz especially in the case of pano has bucked the trend is i feel a lot of people will go and work for an organization especially in today's time to get two or three years as they say sort of build out the cv and then bugger off somewhere else yeah you've done one well let's i don't know how long panna was at prep but it's 20 plus years i think marta who was at gail's she was with you guys for ages um i think founders uh losing talent is one of those sort of hidden costs where you think oh everyone's replaceable but sometimes it costs you so much money actually finding someone new that onboarding yeah keeping great talent is such an underrated uh skill for businesses and founders to do especially if they're good you don't want don't any dead weight you don't want barnacles in the training program that you guys have developed in the leadership program like what were you doing to get these people to stick around for like not just five years long time we're talking 10 15 years like what were you doing differently versus other businesses that kept them here it's a good question hopefully trying to create an environment which enabled them to thrive.

30:11An environment where their IQ, the IQs, the four, were able to buzz and come alive each day. A place where they were able to care and their care was respected and valued. A place where they were able to grow. A place where they were able to build trust. A place where they made a product they were proud of. You know, those are the four. Again, it comes back to the thought nothing else matters actually when people leave it's often a good thing because it gives an opportunity for someone else to come up behind them so i've never um i've never really worried too much about about when people have the guts to leave an organization to maybe go off and take on a bigger responsibility or start up on their end it's great it's great the product what you offer should be bigger than than any of us including the founder frankly that a founder is really only successful when they put themselves out of a job that's just just a simple fact a founder is only really successful when they put themselves out of a job it's hard to do sometimes my definition of success for myself is when i'm definitely not needed anywhere around when would you not be needed at it's well in terms of it's you grocery i work really well with a big team here and we passionately care about the product and everything else um most a lot of my time is spent on the innovation of the product which i about which i care massively so maybe i add value maybe i don't i don't know but i definitely care a lot about the innovation yeah i love how you can boil it down to those four those four tenants and everything else happens do you offer specifically Founders have a rough step.

31:51I mean, you know, the truth is founders within the commercial world definitely have a tough time because they are often irrational, they're emotional, they're passionate. And those are qualities which often are at odds with the commercial. You know, emotions are very inconvenient to the making, to money people, often. Money, the making of amassing of money is often about data and, you know, and emotion gets in the way and it's a pain in the arse. For that reason, many founders have got rid of. This one, this is what I started at the beginning. It's that kind of, no one can really detail exactly what it is, but it's that founder mode, which is the emotion, which is the creativity, which is the...

32:34No, it's the product. What it is, it's about where we were at the beginning. It's about the product. Yeah. And the money and the people who are pursuing only the creation of more money, why the product, even the product's inconvenient. it's about money equals money equals more money money money and the product is a pain it could be t-shirts it could be a sandwich it doesn't matter what it is it's about the lust for money and that lust is often driven by their crumbs what they get they get a bit of it in other words they make another million they get an extra i don't know ferrari or whatever it is they want what was the rough don't underestimate greed what was the roughest tension of founder care and love versus greed as you were as you exited pret because we're just actually before that to give some context because uh didn't didn't it go into sort of two stages the pret exit or how did that work yeah no i don't know if it were two three four maybe i mean there was a long long process as the company got bigger and bigger we needed more funds we we we we we sought the advice and sold shares to people who we thought were going to really help us uh then uh over time we amassed too much we amassed quite a lot of borrowings we got nervous so we brought in a partner to bring down those borrowings why did you get nervous well because you know i don't i don't know a lot of people in 2008 you know things were really worrying but you know things were bad for a great many people in commerce at that time and if you've got a company which is trading well but it has borrowings of huge you know too much you get nervous i really admire people who built their companies with no debt at all it's wonderful got to be careful borrowing too much you know uh so there were lots of there were three or four stages when we brought in people um either either for their expertise and they had chairs or money you know and how did how did that friction of as you said that the care well in our case there wasn't much friction and there wasn't sure there wasn't but i i think we chose the right partners and what was right about those partners because again they were right because they took a reasonably long-term view uh they shared roughly the kind of values we had um the values i've been talking to you about that you know i want to grow i take pride i they they kind of generally thought like we did uh we didn't just you know have you you said about you said you got nervous have you ever i was speaking to a guy from riverford the other day and they said they had a roadblock um where they lost their confidence as a brand yeah have you ever lost your confidence in yourself and in your brand yes of course i have when often often sometimes it's destructive something sometimes you wish you the speed with which founders can innovate, the speed with which founders' vision can be tweaked and can sometimes be destructive.

35:34In other words, a founder may be over-worried sometimes that their product's not good enough or sometimes they don't worry enough. But in my case, yeah, there are many times when I thought we need to innovate more and, you know, yeah. And what, so what does it feel like when you've lost that confidence? I don't know. I don't know. Let's just think, hold on, what do you mean? because some founders will be watching this and we don't want to get confused between the loss of confidence and the loss of something which is different, which is excellence. So they're different. How are they different? Well, what matters with your, if you come back to the beginning over and over again to the product, if your product is not excellent and doesn't represent in its own way value for money, a find out everyone you should you you should lose your confidence you're the main thing is the product um is your and if you're doing a whole load of stuff wrong and your product is not better and it's not value for money regardless of where it sits on the price graph uh then you you need to get your act together quick now you could say that's loss of confidence i don't think so it's probably the reverse it's about facing reality face reality which is by the way the greatest opportunity for the people watching your podcast which is you know comes back to the product is your product really better or is it just a vision you had which you've kind of half done things never work out the way founders want you know you have a dream for a product you lie in you plan it you plan it last year and then and are is it really as good as you thought or are you going to have to work twice as hard but that's the difference between founders who make it and those who don't can you pivot can you tweet can you change yes and you could call that a loss a loss of confidence it's not a loss of confidence it's the reverse it's i can look objectively at my product and it's not bloody good enough yeah it goes back to the amateur the amateur's easy on themselves, the professionals have on themselves.

37:48So it's not a loss of confidence. Yes, it's not a loss of confidence. It's not a loss. Yeah, it's interesting because this... Because many people, by the way, watching this will have had a loss of confidence about their success or failure. In other words, things haven't worked out as successful as they thought. And they will translate that into, I'm suffering from a loss of confidence. And it's very important. The answer to that is absolutely not what's happening at all. their consumers their customers are not buying their product because it's not as good as they hoped so fix it yeah fix it i interviewed a fascinating guy called james smith uh who's wrote actually wrote a book called confidence right and he says confidence isn't our relationship with success it's our relationship with failure i.e right it's not my it's not it's not about like oh i'm so confident because i'm successful it's i'm so confident because i don't care about failure that's that's too sort of myopic but like it's that ability to almost say like okay i'm looking at the product that's failed that's good it's as you said it's it's it's insecure that's confident that's exactly what i you that's you've just said it better than i did but that's the same thing yeah and so it's your your ability to to be objective about what it is you're trying to do and what what is what what's the example of that where you've been the professional that's hard on themselves with a product everyone i know who's been successful is hard on themselves with that product i mean i mean with it so when when so the product's being born into the world you've had this idea it's and it could be maybe let's let's go into uh the grocery because sure i think that's such a fascinating uh okay what you guys are doing is absolutely fascinating okay okay so product that was uh in your eyes shit let's just put it like that and how have you have you relentlessly done it and how is it so listen uh it's an important question that number one none of us founders or people we don't make shit products on purpose yeah if the products are not as good um as as as they could be it's all part of a journey so we we've never put out okay we've never put out a product knowingly which shit of course yeah a lot of people do because they they'll put out shit because it's um they can market it very very well they can pretend it's cheaper there's you know there's a ton of smoke and mirrors when you're in in our world of fmcg i mean tans it you know you can you can make a product and you can make it look like another product which costs three times as much and many of us will buy it you know we'll go online and we'll buy it and then we'll be disappointed because it's made with all the raw materials and it's just crap but um in our case no we've never known a put out a product which we know is shit we've very often put out a product where we haven't um perhaps created something which is truly marvelous because that's hard really hard work and we'll go back to it and we'll visit it and revisit the extra gear to get to truly marvelous combination of those four qualities i want to grow i build trust it's a simple thing you've got to have someone on the developer team says guys i know we launched this last year but i think we can make it better what's common advice given to founders that is actually incredibly complex shit basically that they're told that you that you would completely disagree with i don't know i don't know you tell me i'm not sure so one would be the i think all this managerial textbooks putting in systems when you don't need systems i've seen it firsthand when i worked for startup where we put it we were we were a team of sort of eight and you're acting like a team of 800.

41:25Yeah, that happens a lot. Yeah. It's heartbreaking, yeah. Yeah, and it's like... We're all guilty of that. Every company which grows very often stumbles there. They put in staggering complexity in process. In the effort to try and keep things simple, they put it, but actually all they do is take, rip the heart and soul out of the whole thing. Yeah, so David Hyatt's got a great thing called speedboat versus shipliner. So speedboat is when you can just, imagine a speedboat, just dart in to try new territories, new territories try things reverse out and ship line is when you're big you know uh lethargic going slowly and i think brands get insecure back to this um sorry founders and and or brands actually get insecure thinking oh my god we're getting bigger more revenues coming in when you start acting like a ship liner and then before you know it it's completely slowed you know that happens all the time speed's an interesting one how do you operate at speed and agility and keep that keep that going we don't there are many aspects of our business which is sometimes just hit a complete brick wall such as there's no point going into detail but people lose their collective sense of urgency i didn't jeff disson to amazon say we act like a startup every day i don't know if that's true but there's no doubt in an effort to to kill off stress and chaos but what it's it's only natural what people want to do is bring in more and more process which is good chaos stress is bad process in the end is the only way to deal with that but what often happens is you go from a group of people who are passionate and good decision makers and in an effort to reduce all chaos and all stress they become basically the brakes just go on everything of thing and that's a natural reaction you know you need these extremes what you really want to do is be a company which stays in the middle there's a good balance and a good harmony between innovation and change and process and and not too much stress and that's an elusive and never ever ever changing point by the way that's nasim taleb calls it a barbell strategy correct yeah which is where you're like so invariably in the swings at any one point sometimes you're way over here and way here there's a quote I love which is chaos is a ladder I don't know who that chaos is a ladder chaos is a ladder yeah I don't know I think I read in a listen to a podcast that was attributed to Napoleon but I could be completely fucking wrong there but I'd love to know how you've used chaos as a ladder as a company well I don't quite know what you mean by chaos is a ladder what does that mean do you think in my eyes when things are going incredibly wrong yeah you can use that as an advantage?

44:06This is completely random. Well, sometimes, yeah, if things are going completely wrong, it's a good reason to look at the communication or the team of people and find out what's gone wrong, where's the weak link, and change it. You know, good. It's not a science, the management of companies, but there's a lot of science and experience in the successful management of companies or a department. You know, usually keep it simple. If you've got a particular department which is completely underperforming, the reason for that invariably will be it's the leader of that department. It's very, very simple.

44:42And maybe they haven't had any management experience or maybe they're an arsehole. That could be any reason. Maybe they don't have those four qualities at all. You know, who knows? But you need to know and you need to find out and you need to fix it. Do you see what I mean? It's not that difficult, honestly. Really, it's not very difficult. I'd love to know, I interviewed the founder of Innocent, Adam Ballon who was brilliant and we were talking about learnings outside of food and drink that kind of give you not an edge as a leader but stuff that gave him a slight I love the intersection of different things and what we were talking about is he's got an obsession with racing around the track like car racing and he was saying that actually taught me a lot about building a challenger brand in that you've got the sort of back to that barbell we were talking about about kind of gusto going for it versus sort of data analysis and stuff like that.

45:40And he goes, actually, that's what racing driving's taught me. It's taught me on the one hand just to go for it. But actually, if you don't balance that out, as you say, with a swinging, there's a moving sort of pendulum with data, then you just go off the track. I'd love to know. It's got, exactly. To be very good at that particular thing, you need a harmony between brilliant product, wonderful engineering, passionate. You've got the four qualities. I care. I build trust, you know, because you've got a whole team of people. If then you've got the balls and the nerves and the guts of the particular driver at a particular moment.

46:14So you need both. You need. And the same with Itzu. You know, our restaurants are only successful when it's all working together. We are only as good as the managers and the people who working right now in every single itzit and many of them are amazing they give their heart and soul because they're they're committed they really really are those four qualities of sort of coming through every day um and we don't take it for granted so it's a never-ending you know in order for that to flourish that harmony out in the field today all over the country it's absolutely critical that here at our in the heart of the place we are allowing it to happen you know we've got to feed it got to feed their trust you've got to allow them to grow we've got to recognize that they care you know that's our responsibility here but but at the end of the day they are like the racing car driver they're making it happen it's their relationship with the customers their relationship with the product which makes the company successful we're just oiling the wheels you know how do you oil the wheels because that's uh well up to some point process yep to some point strategy and structure but a lot of it's down to human energy particularly in the hospitality business it's down to their commitment and their energy and how we recognize that you that's that i find that so interesting that that energy and it's i don't you know heard of the pub the devonshire in Soho which is now all the rage yeah I interviewed Osh the founder of that the other day and there's a there's a when you when you go and get a you can only notice something when it's not there I think so you go into the Devonshire you have a pint of Guinness and it's just this everyone's the the Irish their warmth you just get this palpable warmth that kind of goes through you and I was and but when you only notice it when it's not there then I went down to a pub down in Devon I won't say what it is but I was like this is place this feels cold and and vacant and just uh and but the food was exceptional yes how do you get how do you galvanize that energy and warmth in people like how do you stoke it how do you as you say oil it because i think it's it's it's something in my head that's complex but i'd love to know how you could kind of simplify that well i think the four iqs and i'm there we call them iq it's your quality so just allow them to breathe allow them to be you know i take pride invariably the poor the people pouring those drinks in the devonshire are take are taking real pride it's been they you know someone's come up with a vision of of doing it differently yeah do you know 100 um and that's wonderful so they take pride they really care they really care and because they care because for lots of different reasons but they care their customers care so they're feeding off that you know you create harmony it's like a circle where the people the pub you went to in devon it clearly the vision is it's just not quite right there or the commitment isn't quite there yes a bit of both yeah it's palpable it's just when you when you put the two it's a combination of the vision and the commitment isn't not quite there so in its use case we put it you know that after brexit that this country is facing some really difficult, the hospitality industry is facing some mega problems with the inflation of wages.

49:39I mean, it goes without saying. So we put in a great many kiosks, ordering systems, which actually offer the customers a lot. You can bespoke your food much easier, you can pay quickly, but it's cold. And we put in 600 of them. We spent millions and millions of pounds. we did it too quickly probably um and we lost some of that warmth but we're getting it back we will we are committed to that we're going back and putting more and putting some tills back in so there's much more human contact soon yeah but you know you live and learn you make this not everything's perfect at any one time yeah but we still will stand by the fact that when the you that we are way ahead of the market with our use of technology because the days of employing a great many people to do very mundane tasks on very low wages is over.

50:33It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. So it can be quite challenging on our industry, actually. The hospitality industry, when you have huge labor and food inflation, is quite challenging, as you will have learned from different people you've interviewed. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, it's even the, I did an interview with a gorgeous pub, but in this way, the most warm place I've ever been. It's a small pub up in, near Preston actually. And it's weird. It's all based on sort of Daylor Bowie, but it's a French husband, wife, and she's from Lancashire. But the warmth in that place, you can't even imagine it.

51:16And he goes, you know, we wake up every day and they call their work their paradise. And I love that. I go, our work is our paradise. And she goes, are you looking over these gorgeous moors? Sure. And she goes, this is paradise. And I kind of think it links a bit to your care thing. And actually, it's the be thankful and the caring. Because work can feel like paradise. And that's something that's really stuck with me. But the warmth. Anyway, what he was saying is he'd just been skiing with his son. And the VAT was like 5%. With the VAT over here, he goes, we are fucked. Because we're trying to keep this paradise going.