68. Ex Gordon Ramsay Group CEO reveals his turnaround playbook | Stuart Gillies

24:00Stuart Gillies:that were your decision points on why you decided to close something or and what you were going to

24:05James Reed:open it definitely wasn't emotional it was it was just logical for me that sort of job when i get that role or even how I'd always functioned as a operator and as a chef for me it was often it was it was just mathematics some things added up and some things didn't right so you got to make decisions that are not emotional you really need to get the facts gather the data and make a really informed decision so I'd always done that my whole career and probably my my whole life in lots of ways just naturally so when I got into that role as CEO you just have to strip back and see you need to be able to see what the root of the problem is get get to the get underneath the skin get to the core of the problem and then make a decision and move on and then and then execute that so so these

24:51Stuart Gillies:were businesses you didn't really see a few future in because the mathematics didn't add up and you

24:55James Reed:couldn't see a way of turning that around didn't it didn't add up financially and it was also draining the the resources because when you have businesses in trouble every entrepreneur it consumes cash and it also eats up all your time you put way more time into a business that's doing badly than you do into a business that's doing well. That is just, that's just the facts of it. A business that's trouble, you put way more time and emotion and energy into that to fix it. A business that's going well, you just keep an eye on it and you let it tick along. So there were lots of those businesses that needed attention.

25:28James Reed:And a lot of them were international deals that had been set up by other people that were just draining resource, weren't contributing financially. They were eating up Gordon's time. so you'd have to get Jordan on a plane fly him out take his time up which was taking him away from things actually that were generating yeah that were more profitable simple as that so so so those 12 were fairly easy decisions actually and what were you looking for in terms of opening new ventures well as as I looked at it and spoke to Gordon about so we saw that everything was branded Gordon and Ramsey which makes sense for lots of people but I think what I saw when I looked into the group and and the the the micro detail levels i saw that everyone was hiding under the brand and they were looking thinking well if things aren't working we'll just wait for the brand to fix it but it wasn't and so the people working within it had got used to the good days big spend high income so that was fixing all the problems in lots of ways until you get to a point when that stopped and so my my view was we debran we create individuality and we bring in new people to support the current team who have unique skill sets so they're not all born of the same yeah core um central um what would we call it i suppose area where they've all worked together in that level of fine dining at a super high level you need people who are diverse who have only worked in bars or worked in brasseries or worked in different environments where they have different

27:03Stuart Gillies:skill sets that's interesting because that is a different business strategy to say recreating the ivy in lots of places or yeah yeah yeah cafe rouge that was a big deal at the time or i'm thinking of

27:15James Reed:gales now which is a sort of well it's different if you've got one phenomena if you've got one thing that works and you can do the cookie cutter yeah and mass produce it really well then there's

27:26Stuart Gillies:nothing wrong with that that that's very clever yeah but your business was not like that you're

27:31James Reed:saying it was different it was already diverse right it already it was already a collection of restaurants as i called it and it was it as i say it had great elements within but there was so there was so much noise that we had to really individualize and start to put responsibility and pressure into individuals within their bricks and mortar establishment rather than them looking to head office and central support area. So you wanted people to take responsibility in their own kitchen location. Be involved in the decision making and actually make decisions that were going to drive the business forward.

28:11James Reed:And they would then own and manage that decision rather than we hand down a directive or a command, so to speak, and then they would just execute it because you just lose so much along the way.

28:25Stuart Gillies:So you were basically devolving sort of responsibility from the centre.

28:30James Reed:Yeah, well put. That's exactly what we did to the point where I made a really unpopular decision and I changed the name of head office to support office, which was really unpopular. Who was that unpopular with? Obviously head office. Not those people in the other office. No, because I said, look, without the restaurants, there is no business. I always say at Reid, we don't have a head office.

28:49Stuart Gillies:Yeah, it's a collective force.

28:52James Reed:And you don't need a head office. We're all one team. Because everyone's out doing their thing. But together, you're a brilliant machine. And it works brilliantly because everyone's an integral part of that machine. So that's how I explained it. And the teams understood it completely. So we're, as you say, devolving power to you. This support team will help you achieve that. And you need to drive this. And you need to hit your target. It's a new need to achieve. So we did that. And that then created the individuality of different brands, Bread Street Kitchen, Uni Street Cafe, London House, and then all the developments in the United States with Burger, Hub.

29:28James Reed:So there was lots of that individual focus on each of these businesses that then were more self... Well, they were self-perpetuating to a large extent. And then the support office gave them the resources to see what was good and bad and grow that business. And that was pretty much what I spent my eight years doing was growing new businesses, new contracts, new relationships with Caesars, with Sands Casino Group. So CEO, it's a completely different job to being a chef. You know, I wasn't cooking. I wasn't spending time in that way with teams, as I would have done before, much more focused on the artist side of the business.

30:08James Reed:I was purely involved with banks finance costs that is a very different you know

30:17Stuart Gillies:role I mean did you did you find that you could rely upon things you'd learned as chef it does mean chief doesn't it chef in French yeah it does yeah boss yeah boss actually means boss you're boss of a kitchen a boss of a company other sort of things you took from one to the other well definitely yes I I

30:39James Reed:just transitioned from one job to the other people had some other people i knew outside the industry who were already ceos they said you know it's going to be the loneliest job in the world being a ceo because you have to make tough decisions and people won't understand those decisions but you've got to make decisions do you find that to be true become a hundred percent it's true i think the things about being a ceo there were a couple of things i really learned First of all, it's the loneliest job in the world. And secondly, you're really up against it with regards to your strategy, depending on who you're trying to keep happy.

31:14James Reed:Whether you're trying to grow the business for the future and build something, or whether you're trying to keep your shareholders happy. Those two strategies are, in my experience, very different. Because the shareholders had more short-term expectations. They have financial expectations. They want dividends. They want some money. yeah well i think in lots of businesses you know ceos are really and you don't know until you're a ceo that you're really under that pressure because you go to the board meetings and it's all about money shares what what's in it for us kind of thing and that's what board meetings i suppose i've oversimplified it but that's what they're really about but if you want to build something for the long term for the long term it's not going to make your case don't you it's not going to look pretty you're going to have to put money in you're going to have to do things you're gonna have to break some shells you're gonna have to build you have to structure you have to build and i see a lot of these companies around the world that are producing results and people say they're doing badly but i will see that they are putting money into growth they're investing they're investing into growth so your results aren't going to look pretty if you're building if you're building and in growth it's extremely unlikely the results will look pretty because it takes money it takes investment and and no matter what the business you just don't know how well it's going to go your forecasts and your projections they're literally just guesstimates you you take the best guess you can and you push it out there um but to the point i think um my strategy was rebuild restructure bring in new talent individualize and create then avenues that can be grown into future individual brands things that could be segregated whatever it might be that was always my focus so the de-branding point wasn't to remove the name or anything that was negative to gordon it was creating individuality within that which was then associated with this amazing brand just by association which when we did savoy grill that was the last restaurant that i was in charge of as a chef director so i remember having the conversation before chris left and they wanted to call it gordon gordon ramsay savoy grill and i said no no no it's got to be savoy grill that's it and you let the quality speak so i mean it's a famous restaurant it's a famous restaurant so you can't be bigger than that name it's been around for 150 years you know even a massive name now isn't bigger than the savoy grill it is an institution so let's just let it do the work and let everybody else bring the name in and let people know that it's run by gordon ramsay's exactly let the press talk about it let the article say that that's much more i think it's much more endearing and it's much it's much more of a statement of confidence in your ability you don't need to stamp the name right it's the it's the quality that shines through so i think that was where we got to with a lot of what we did uh and grow the us of course was different completely different because gorm was a huge name out there uh and you needed to stamp the name on everything because that's how the american market works uh because it's off the back of the tv not off the back of a career of 20 30 years yeah it's off the back of tv and that that's how the us works differently to here maybe not so much these days but certainly then it was it was quite different

34:28Stuart Gillies:strategy well that's very interesting so so you were there for eight years you say and then you decided to pursue your own strategy and start your own business is that right is that the right way

34:40James Reed:yeah so you you you set out on your own again is that right yeah i finished up with uh gordon rams group as ceo uh in 2018 every 2018 finished and um then looked that towards that next chapter of 20 years my wife and i talked about it i'd been away a lot as ceo and as a chef i hadn't i'd been home but i hadn't been fully 100 at home i was either on the phone i was either just on emails or i was completely consumed by something that was uh work related and when i was ceo i was away once a month traveling sometimes for for a week or 10 days so when i'd come back my plan was organize this speak to this child speak to this child it was it was the same as i organized my work life everything was on a list which is really bad but it's just the way you function because you're so busy juggling things so we looked at it and agreed that yes this next chapter will be different we will start our own business and because we do that we're the creators we know how to run these things let's just do it so that was in 2018 we had the chat we looked at options and then in 2019 we launched our first business bank house in chislehurst september 2019 so everything looked great the world looked amazing and hospitality had a massive opportunity to grow and sun was out sun was out so we had six good months and then and then yeah then covid hit but so what happened yeah that must have been a bit

36:05Stuart Gillies:of a nightmare wasn't it it made this big investment yeah and then suddenly covid hits

36:10James Reed:it was a nightmare yeah full stop because we just had a review by grace dent right in the january grace dent came unannounced gave us this review phenomenal review which is exactly what you want as a local business you know the biggest food critic in the country at that time she comes and gives you this amazing review and talks about how incredible it is why can't every local business be like this and you start to build immediately on the back of that and then covid hits so no doubt we lost all the value of that review and that positivity that had come uh that we'd spent ages building towards but here's what it is what do you do you start it again in a sense you pick yourself up and you just keep going and then we we are still a startup business six and a half years later there's no doubt about that because every six months we have to review everything we have review the pricing the menu what works because every six months the landscape has changed for the last five years really um not by choice it's just the way the world has gone through the economy through the external factors um even post-covid all the new things came which was the war costs utilities so we are still a startup um but we just keep going and i would say even through all the hardship and the pain and the frustrations the journey of working uh with my wife cecilia and our kids has been something that i never planned but it's probably been the best thing that happened working with our kids actually who were back then aged what were they uh 18 down to eight pretty much or seven so you just don't know how that's going to go and the kids came into the business to earn some cash we dragged them in they were typical owner operator kids you know they get dragged in you know often by choice and often not by choice but um so this is a real family business yeah full on there were there were times when there were five of us working in the business my brother was babysitting for our youngest he was at our house and we were just they're all working between kitchen kp runners bar front of house that the whole thing and and i'd say yeah that that created a whole new dynamic and a whole new chapter with our relationship with our kids so the kids had never understood what i did they just knew they would go to lots of restaurants all the time and everything would be really great and everyone would know us so that's what they thought life was like a front of house experience kind of yeah But it wasn't, you know, when you look back and you think there's not a good way to teach your kids.

38:49James Reed:They just become so, so, so privileged in lots of ways. And so it was different because they saw their mum and dad working extremely hard, really long hours and dealing with so much stuff inside, outside the business. And I think it was the best chapter that we've had with the kids where we taught them the value of hard work of if you want something, go and do it, go and get it. and you've just got to have this work ethic. So our kids are 100 % working kids. They are super hard workers. If they want something, they know that they will achieve it and they will go and get it. And they've just become those sort of adults.

39:29James Reed:So James is 25, Harry's 23, and Luca's 20, almost 21. And they all, now James is digital media, so he's in hospitality in that way. He works with restaurants in central London. And then Harry's in Australia in Sydney. has been traveling a lot like I did and he's working in Sydney in sales and he loves Sydney at the moment not sure if he'll come back and then Luca's a chef, serious, serious chef so Luca has gone on that path and he's fallen in love with food and become consumed by food and cooking and he's currently at Elendero's at the Connacht as a young 20 year old cook and your youngest, what's your youngest

40:10Stuart Gillies:doing, still helping you?

40:11James Reed:So Arthur's 13. So he's been desperate to come into the restaurants and work for ages. For years, he's been telling me, I can earn this much, I can do this many hours. And he got fed up wasting. So Arthur, age 12, started a car wash business. All right. So he started a car wash business with lots of kids too. And he's got to a point where he's now 13 and he's got about 15, 16 clients regularly. He started now what they call a detailing business where he does really high levels of car washing and he earns really quite amazing money. Because his attention to detail and his levels of, I suppose, finesse and perfection is so high, which he's got from Cecilia.

40:52James Reed:more than me because she's very meticulous as you know with perfection and those you know in that ocd manner so he's got all that detail so he's suddenly creating his own business and now employing other kids who come and work with him he drags a trolley down the street he's got his cart he's got and it just sounds like a very good education for everyone it's been quite phenomenal but we didn't plan it but i would say if we could have chosen it to be like that we would have said

41:18Stuart Gillies:how could you create but that's very interesting the family aspect of this and how positive that has been at the super business together yeah it was completely unexpected we did not expect that

41:29James Reed:and we didn't set out to do that we didn't force our kids to do that they just organically chose to do that and organically they've seen us deal with a lot of stress drama yeah people managing people how to um deal with financial situations external factors a lot from that yeah they're unfair but you just need to make a plan and get on so yeah i've had the best time with my uh me personally i've had the best time with my sons the last eight years yeah and i had for all those years where i would have thought oh they're seeing me as a ceo but it was completely disconnected yes uh now they just see they see the raw world of what you do how you deal with stress how you deal with everything and it's it's been the biggest education for them of how to actually get on in life did any of them go to university only harry only harry went harry went and studied uh finance and economics right for three years and yeah i don't know if it was worth it really

42:27Stuart Gillies:well that's what i'm wondering because you learn so much doing what you've described yeah the others

42:30James Reed:didn't want to they definitely didn't they were quite clear james is always really artistic as a photographer and set up his own website own company so again very entrepreneur he went out and got business with people that he was doing photography for for dinner for sketch for the goring for the connor for a wong just incredible clients with no no university qualifications just based on what he did his um talent and his website that he built and those people seeing the attention to detail with his photography and they're like yes that's our level of sophistication um and that's that's hearing you say attention to detail a lot and it sort of reminded me of

43:15Stuart Gillies:the early part of our conversation when you were talking about those chefs in sweden from austria and germany places that you said then had great attention to detail do you think this is a skill that isn't sufficiently sort of emphasized you know being good at the detail do Do you think we've sort of become a bit sort of grandiose and sloppy in the management of things?

43:38James Reed:Well, I think this is a really difficult question to answer, but I would have to say short answer is yes. I think it's critical. I don't think I had it as a kid at all. I think I was young as the four, pretty casual, pretty sloppy and not particularly focused in any one area. Apart from sport, I did a lot of judo and I achieved really high results in that and won lots of competitions. So I guess it was in there, but I needed the training of all those people to be extremely strict with me and discipline that if you follow this way and you plan and you have this structure, you can achieve great things.

44:14James Reed:And I think that just organically stuck with me and grew that if you're meticulous and detailed, you can achieve.

44:23Stuart Gillies:So what sort of I mean, what sort of disciplines or structures help to be?

44:29James Reed:focused in this way i i think the basics are what you get out of every motivational book and speaker in the world um make your plan get up early keep yourself mentally and physically fit and ready you know constantly challenge yourself never be afraid of failure and risk it's it's all internal none of it is is unachievable for anybody every all the basics you're like the david goggins you know education of you know be hard push hard train hard i think everyone has their own version of that but i think it starts internally so our son luca for example is 20 was yeah for want of a better expression all over the show as a young 17 year old didn't know what to do he was going into property and you know wasn't consistent wasn't reliable he was a classic teenage boy who was just a bit all over the show and was distracted really easily couldn't focus on anything and then he worked with me in the kitchen for about six months when I was back in the kitchen about three years ago just rebuilding the structure and he fell in love with it he fell in love with the discipline that every single day he had to repeat and replicate the set up and he had to check everything exactly the same way every day and if he did that come the busy time he was okay right and he just saw the the beauty in being prepared and being organized for any eventuality that then he could just get on with stuff um and i think that's really that is impressive for other people to see i think that attracts people to you because you're so consistently meticulous and it gives great confidence to people you know what you're doing confidence i think it's to draw you need energy to do that you need to be driven you need to be super focused you don't get distracted uh you can have fun but you really have this sense of purpose i think that's what it maybe comes down to and that's probably the best expression i've read over all the years is this sense of purpose if you have a sense of purpose and a drive and a determination to get somewhere and you might achieve it and you might fail it doesn't matter you've got this sense of purpose that you are going to achieve this and get somewhere i think that is incredibly infectious other people see it and they're like yes i can control all my distractions all the noise i can deal with all that if i just stay on point and i stay focused and i keep my own discipline personal discipline if i keep it really rigid and meticulous then i can and even the things that get in the way they're just problems to solve because there's always something that will stop you but it doesn't matter if you have a plan for that and you counter it if you wanted to train regularly and you haven't got time to train it's because you're not getting up early enough and i'm not saying that people should get up early to do it i'm saying you need to structure your life with what you've got to work with so you've been dealt a hand work with that and then build on that and i think then anybody anybody can achieve like you know their wildest ambitions by having that sense of structure and a sense of purpose and if you want to build a company yeah that is infectious that passion and drive is super infectious people migrate to that so much and when I talk about restaurants and food and different things or even people management with our teams yeah I really believe and mean what I say with that and I think that helps keep our teams together because our teams have been with us a long time in a really complicated period of time.

48:13James Reed:So a lot of the team has been with us six, seven years. And we build and we grow more. But our ethos is always the same, that we're super focused. We shoot high and we want to achieve the best. And we're determined to get there. And nothing will stop us, not financial issues, not problems with people. Whatever the problems are, they're always going to be there. They're just there.

48:40Stuart Gillies:um so yeah i'm i'm i'm signed up i like the sound of this so you put me into a space there well no it's interesting because when i asked you about number eight your other restaurant in seven oaks and all those other restaurants in the town i mean you said we look within and about getting it right from what's within our control and everything you've just said so it supports that i mean one one thing i'm interested in beyond what you've been explaining so brilliantly is your working relationship with your wife Cecilia because I mean quite a lot of people embark on business ventures as couples what advice might you give them you know what makes that how do you make that work I mean I used to work for Gordon and Anita Roddick who founded the body shop yeah brilliant both of them and learned so much from them both but they were obviously a famous business couple too what do business couples need to think about

49:38James Reed:well i don't think it's easy that's the first thing i'll say i think you have to tread carefully i think uh it was cecilia and i had history already working together we met working together so we launched a restaurant called teatro with lee chapman back in late 90s which was a massive success on charlesbury avenue and had a members club and a restaurant so cecilia was a young 20 something french super professional from paris who'd been working with market pierre white and i just come back from new york uh so i was it was my first head chef job and i was full on and completely focused on um yeah self-achievement i guess or on this mission uh cooking so we we worked together professionally we clicked because she was super professional so then we fell in love had kids and then celia spent all those years giving me the space to spend 80 90 hours a week in kitchens uh and and she was at home with the kids so when we got back to working together you You don't know how it's going to work.

50:37James Reed:But we clicked together within, I think, two weeks. Like we'd never stop working together again. Because Cecilia is so professional. She's so focused on detail. And Cecilia's good at things that I'm not good at, which is really important, I think, in the couple. You both need to have your individual skill sets that then contribute and make you a stronger unit. So I think that was always the way it was. I'm a chef. I'm all about food. I'm all about structure and engineering systems. to work and I'm about finance and cost control yeah because that's the career I've had and that's what I've learned Cecilia is all about being the people the person that people like so if they choose out the two people who they like best it's always Cecilia it will always be Cecilia a hundred times out of a hundred because I'm focused on just being professional and running a business Cecilia's charming bubbly charismatic she's got all the finesse of the front of house with an immaculate training from paris um and she's got such a so much of a softer approach with the team that just wraps them in a warm we can do this so so i think those two factors sounds like a good team it's a good team because then you know if there's something to be said i'm the guy who brings the hammer down sits them down and says it's not good enough it's not good enough for this reason and that reason this is what you're going to do and the team are okay i get it i've got direction i'll go and do that and so they learn and so that's what they all want all those people whether they're 20 years experience or two years experience they want still to learn and be structured so a lot of our team have got a lot of experience some of our team are in their 50s but they still get direction and guidance from me in certain ways which is what they want and i think that's very hard to find in our industry um where you can go somewhere with a lot of experience and still get developed i think that's very difficult for people to find um and if you don't get development you plateau so i think um appointment it's it's amazing to work together as a couple but i think you really need to make sure you both focus on different areas of business and you're not clashing too much that said when we used to have management meetings we would often sit there and it and for the team it's like being in some domestic um home argument because the scene would be like a teenager and i'd be saying can you be quite pleased or i'd be telling her off at the meeting because she'd be too bubbly and having fun with the team and i'm trying to get some points across and the team are just sitting there not knowing what to say so it's more like a family than because they're terrible yeah terrified but i think that's been a lovely dynamic that the team really love they I love the fact that there is this dynamic, which is pure family.

53:21James Reed:And it's not just corporate. It's not just a meeting of professionals. There is this whole side to it, which is ultimately what hospitality is. I think when you lose that in hospitality, you really lose that nuance of exceptional guest care. Attention to detail again for the minute of time. You know, it's those little soft skills with the guest are critical. but you can't do that if you don't have I think your structure really well organized and your engine meticulously tuned so then you can have fun mistakes can happen you know it's not a big deal

53:57Stuart Gillies:Stuart you work with your wife Cecilia very successfully it seems um what if a couple is thinking of embarking on a similar business journey as you both did and are thinking of working together what questions should a couple ask themselves before going ahead

54:16James Reed:so tread carefully that's for sure don't just think it's going to be easy because it definitely won't be easy to be honest make make sure you're strong as a couple make sure your marriage is strong and you're not doing this to fix something else because it won't it won't fix something else this will be its own challenge all on its own and you need to make sure you are strong and you have a good marriage we have our problems in our marriage like every couple me and see but we work hard to make it work and if you don't have that ability to talk and get through that then it will be super tough again it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what you both do within that structure it will be tough at some point and you can't be blaming or angry with the other person for that and that's a natural emotion that comes out so yeah be a strong couple if you if you've

55:04Stuart Gillies:got to work on that first work on that first so what about sort of back at home i mean are you talking business all the time or do you have to make time when you're not going to talk about business or does it not matter does one have to stop and the other begin in terms of home and business life or or is it just a sort of fusion so that's really tricky i have to say because the

55:25James Reed:especially when your business uh isn't doing so well you're going through a tough time then that that consumes your home life as well so that that can put your relationship under a massive amount of pressure i'll be honest that is just inevitable you can't avoid that um you try and balance it out you try and cut it off but ultimately you can't because the stakes are so high aren't they you can't yeah even when things are going well or you're discussing stuff you can talk about personal things for a while but eventually that is always going to segment back into something um work related yeah we're quite strict and disciplined with that at times when we we block it out and we just talk about us and we section that that it's about us and it's about our time in the future but you really have to be disciplined do you take holidays or we do take holidays yeah and often they're amazing and sometimes they're completely consumed by problems with the businesses that come up just before you go you can get a message or yeah something happens something happens and because i'm you know the head office the term we don't use because i am head office because i deal with so many elements of the business if we have to recruit i have to focus on that or if there's something that comes up that's to do with an issue or payment or whatever i have to deal with it i can't not deal with that well we can help you

56:45Stuart Gillies:with the former if you need it so so um just to sort of pull this together i mean you you've touched upon some of the challenges there running a business is there a failure i mean you said earlier that you weren't put off by the prospect of failure is is there a failure that you had earlier in your career that in hindsight shape your leadership style particularly or a failure that you look back on and think i really learned from that and this is what i'm going to do

57:12James Reed:differently i mean that's tough i mean there's lots of failures really i've had that's that's a fact there's lots of things i've done wrong or badly um and hopefully lots of stuff i did well which uh carried me through but i don't know if there's one particular thing um no it's really

57:34Stuart Gillies:hard that actually i'd have to say but your your spirit that's coming over so strongly is is to keep going i mean kind of maybe that's one of the lessons from the failures of the past to keep going

57:47James Reed:well i think yeah i think i think you you just have to keep going i think life will just grind you down whether you're doing well or whether you're not doing well in business i think there comes a point when there are there are issues and obstacles and there's there's adversity and you have to see that adverse i think that's probably it i'd always seen adversity as something that i needed to overcome no matter what it was so if there was a challenge i'm bet i'm better out of my in fact that's the lesson i'm better out of my comfort zone i am better under pressure and out of my comfort zone i did i did a couple of courses when i was ceo gordon at a couple of courses at harvard the exec ed courses they do this executive education courses where you do a big chunk of a BA course in you know 10 days and it's really intense and you live together as this group so you live on campus you live together you study together and and you work in almost like 24 7 it's super intense and I was definitely you know uh probably the least smart person in both the courses I did which I have no problem saying because all the people have done a lot of these courses before and I didn't I was a chef and newly promoted CEO I didn't know what I was walking into but I took the most out of those courses that's for sure because I just learned more about the fact of how to look at business how to look at the future how to look at what did what being a disruptor means all that and also about internal focus on you how that then impacts other people and affects other people there was so much I learned from that just by being in that community and with those teachers they were fantastic courses and I think that's what Harvard puts them on for is to teach all those values not just stuff you can learn from a book it's about the whole package of being a a good business person that capitalism can be good if you do it well there's nothing wrong with capitalism if you spread the love and you spread the you know the profit and so that was a really big education for me so so i think the big learning was i'm better out my comfort zone when i'm not out my comfort zone i'm probably not pushing myself enough i'm not reverting back to that focus my mind get up earlier get my list done make my plan

1:00:07Stuart Gillies:and go attack and achieve uh well that's a very good point and probably a good place to finish i mean i think the message of getting outside of our comfort zones is a really good one and and you've exemplified that in your life whether it's going to dangerous parts of south america or heading off to Italy with a one-way ticket at the end of each of these conversations I always ask the same two questions which I'm going to ask you and the first one because here at Reed we love Mondays is what is it that gets you up on a Monday morning Stuart?

1:00:44James Reed:The problems from the week before probably but yeah no I'm a morning person I've always been a morning person and I have no problem getting up it's it's the it's the comfort zone thing again it's that what am i not achieving enough of what am i not doing enough to achieve better that that's probably the thing that gets me up always so i don't look to be comfortable or relaxed or i'm going to have a chill monday that probably never ever enters my mind right i'm always like what haven't i thought of this week so you're actively seeking discomfort and to do better what can i do better yeah

1:01:24Stuart Gillies:and the last question which is from my interview book why you 101 interview questions you'll never fear again that's a shameless plug Stuart is where do you see yourself in five years time

1:01:38James Reed:we'll be doing the same thing we'll be still working in hospitality we'll have more restaurants we will grow and we will do more we love working with teams and as I've said we're not phased by how difficult that looks like. That doesn't put me off. It just means I have to work smarter and I have to plan better with the team. So that never scares me. And I think you have to have an appetite for risk and almost danger to be able to get through that. So I see myself doing the same and developing hospitality people who really need that development. They deserve to work with people who are enthused with passion and love for what they do.

1:02:21James Reed:And from grassroots level up, from the young kids up to really senior people. We love working with all people within that structure. And we love working with people. We love the guests. We love the complexity of people. We love the challenges. And we love food and drink. We love food and drink.

1:02:37Stuart Gillies:So we love food and drink. And if anyone listening wants to enjoy some of Stuart's food and drink, number eight in Sevenoaks and the bank house in Chiselhouse both have very good ratings. Thanks so much for coming in to talk to me. Been a pleasure James. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks Stuart. Thank you Stuart for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host James Reid, Chairman and CEO of Reid, a family-run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Reid, number eight Sevenoaks or Bankhouse Chiselhurst, you'll find all the links in the show notes. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

1:03:13Thank you.