He Risked Everything At 47 To Build Yo! Sushi | Simon Woodroffe OBE

0:00What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't the lack of ideas, it's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnall and this is Screw It Just Do It, a podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. To live within your means within any period of your life is really great, but also to risk what you've got. I risked everything when I was in my late 40s and I risked everything I had. Both my brother and I were absolutely rebels. We wanted to get out in this new and changing world, spending two years and putting my life savings, which was a couple of hundred grand, tied up in my flat, all on the line, putting everything on the line and yo opening and it being very successful.

0:47I'm pretty proud of that young man and I'm not quite sure how he did it. You know, that was a hell of a thing to do. And that is something that you have to learn and you have to build and you absolutely can do it. And the only way to do it is to get out there and be knocked down and have a few failures and try it out. Simon, a lot of people know the Osushi story, but who was Simon Woodruff before all of that? Where were you? What were you doing? Well, Simon Woodruff was a little sort of, you know, fairly privileged boy. who went to Marlborough College, who did peace signs in 19... What was it?

1:27It would be the end of the 1960s and thought, I'm out of here. The Doors album had just come out. The Sgt. Peppers had just been released. It was a colourful world out there. And I thought, I'm out of there to have some fun. And Simon Woodruff was a boy who a year later got busted for selling drugs at my first entrepreneurial enterprise. enterprise that put a stop to that pretty quick which is a bloody good thing i managed to get into the theater which led to rock and roll which led to television rights and all every time i got lost and that was who i was before i eventually got to the opening of the doors of yo sushi wow where do you even go back to start another question in that so when you speak to or when i speak to a lot of people about you know just it's kind of dinner table questions like if you could pick a moment in time to go back to and and live if you weren't in that era a lot of people would pick that era of like sergeant pepper the doors albums coming out um tell me about tell me about that era and and what excited you and how you ended up getting busted and how old were you um well there's a few questions in there yeah i mean that era look every era of your life if you're honest has its ups and downs you have good days and bad days and it wasn't all swinging London yeah but it was a very colorful world and what I think really underlined it for me as a boy leaving school at 16 was that we thought we were changing the world at that time nobody under 50 got on the front pages of any newspaper and then the Beatles came along and suddenly our generation was rocking and you know the beatles and the rolling stones and our parents said that rock and roll wouldn't last and it wouldn't happen until our absolute delight it absolutely did last and the world changed and we did believe that we were selfish motives as well and we were having fun but some of the time um but we you know we did believe we were changing the world for a better place and i think we did i didn't think we did change the world there was there's a lot of things that have happened since and there's a lot of things that we screwed up screw it let's do it we screwed up a lot of things as human beings do in new cultures but it was a pretty a pretty amazing time and then your other question was you know and what was it like going to prison well i mean i've been to boarding school so i had a bit of education in the in that but um it was pretty surprising and of course my mum and dad you know it was beyond their ken yeah and um that was difficult um but um i survived it one way or another i mean but and i realized i was very compassionate for anybody who goes through hard times and really there but for the grace of god would have gone you me and any of our listeners today if you'd had the background that a lot of those kids had had that was a crime education place i was in it was a short sharp shock a detention center and um and uh yeah it was um I was pleased to be out don't ever break the law I'm telling you now and you know leaving school at 16 um what kind of hopes aspirations did your parents have for you before that do you think well there was you know I mean it hadn't been easy really growing up and my parents got divorced and and all of that I mean I think my dad actually there's probably a bit of it he was quite pleased because you know he wasn't particularly well off he was an army officer but he didn't and they had really scrimped the safe to send me to this expensive private school and you know that was considerable saving in money for him um they they he had thought i'd be a stockbroker or going to the navy or something like that and you know my both my brother and i were absolutely so absolute sort of rebels you know so backseat of the bus boys and um and um we wanted to get out in this new and changing world and um that that is eventually what happened to both of us actually yeah um do you think you're always somebody who challenged the status quo and the way things were always done i think in later days perhaps you know i intelligently and today i hope i'm intelligently challenging the status quo because I think we need radical change in this country and all over the West all over the world really I think we can't go on in this very old-fashioned way that we do how we govern countries but I think as a young man I was just the guy who wanted to you know smoke cigarettes and go to the pub and you know do things behind the bicycle shed or whatever it was I was a rebel and why are you a rebel because you're not completely comfortable at home you know your family life is not that easy you haven't really worked out how the world works you know and a lot of families just talk around the kitchen table and you really learn about life yeah and I didn't really and I had to relearn that much later on in my life you know I always sort of termed it how the world works you know how relationships work how you get to make friends how you get to be successful how you get to do all of these things and be a good part of society if you like yeah but i didn't so in that respect i think i i just was a rebel and it and it's helped me it helped me get to where i am i'm not complaining yeah yeah and and how did you react like when your parents split up at that age how old were you it was a sort of relief really because you know you know it was a pretty stilted atmosphere in the house and my dad went off to london to live with a sort of wicked woman and all that business and got himself into trouble with her actually and and my mum was was bereft really and he didn't treat her very well and I felt very protective and as when I came out of prison I went back to live with my mum which you know anybody listening you can imagine what that was like you know it's depressing and she couldn't really help she didn't know what to do and eventually I got a break and actually the break was an amazing break you know I was I was 19 then living at home you know not working going out the bicycle and i went into the local newsagent in whitham essex i was an essex boy about that time and um they believe it or not there was a copy of the stage newspaper on the shelf and i bought it of all places and in the back there was staff wanted professional and i answered an ad and got a job in the west end in fringe theater doing the lighting and the sound and being a stage manager with no training whatsoever a bit of bullshit about how i'd done it at school and um and and that led to working at the richmond theater and then at the royal court and then if you knew your stage left from your stage right you're an expert in rock and roll and rock and roll which is my first love really you know music and the west coast of america and all of that and i i i became really became a roadie at the very beginning going out with a A lot of the bands, the Moody Blues and Jethro Town.

8:44Still going. Even the Rolling Stones, you know, in the very early days of rock shows, yeah. Who was your favourite band back then? Well, you know, there were, there were, who were just sort of bizarre, really. I mean, ABBA were incredibly nice people. The Moody Blues were very nice. The Osmonds, I toured all over Europe with the Osmonds on a private plane. They were the nicest family in the world. You couldn't believe it. They didn't smoke or drink, and they kept us in cigarettes and alcohol for the entire place. After the show, they'd wait on the tarmac in their private jet while we took all the lights down and the sound down and put it in a truck.

9:21And then they'd wait till we arrived, and we'd come on board. And they used to have parties on the plane. I remember flying into Paris. You wouldn't do that today with Marie Osmond carrying a candlelit cake down the aisle for the manager, Ed Leffler's birthday. We were on a plane. Yeah, you win the answer. Quiet, planes. Yeah, yeah. That's brilliant. That's such a great story. And do you think you were, and that was literally seeing the advert, going to an interview and getting the job, like one interview, one got the job straight away. It did feel easy. Yeah. And, you know, people say, but it's not so easy now.

9:57You'd have to go to a college and do this, that, and the other. That is true in some respects, but there wasn't so much money around for people then. it wasn't so easy in many ways and I think in many ways there's more opportunities we'll talk about it later there's more opportunities now I think and do you think you were always entrepreneurial and did that come out well when I bought and sold cash and a bit of LSD in the early days in the days when it was kind of okay to do that because we were doing well by doing good and I wasn't, it was not a big deal we were made an example of we were super small time I was going to say, was that small?

10:34very small there was a policeman behind the door when I got home me and my friend Andy and he stepped out and he said he said it's a fair cop Simon and I said I'm not a criminal he said I think you will be soon son and actually they turned into quite nice people you know it was me with his kids yeah and now it's interesting like knowing a bit about your story but beforehand from the from the book which we'll come on to now but again I was I was younger when my parents like split up in divorce but again I was like brought home by the place and stuff like that were you really yeah and i and friends of mine ended up going to jail and i could have gone down that route and i think for me it was and i think maybe a lot of people have this experience a certain teacher in school takes an interest and then introduced what was his name gareth davis to the welsh name from cardiff right gareth davis i used to always ask it's a really good trick is i used to ask people their favorite and worst teacher at school and then put it into my database and two years later when you told me a story i'd say mr davis would have been pleased about that and you went how did you know that i love that um but it takes someone taking an interest i think and for me it was introducing me to to rugby because we'd moved from england to wales didn't know the sport and i'm just getting that aggression that that was kind of in me going up i was in cardiff the other day actually rugby places and i was at the bbc and the BBC building there is enormous.

11:59It's bigger than here in London. That's where it's all moved to, Cardiff. That was my first job out of uni was Cardiff Radio. Sorry, BBC Radio Wales. Cardiff's amazing now. It's unrecognisable, all those buildings. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's as good as it was. I don't know. Neither do I, no. I haven't lived there for many years, but I know friends whose kids have now gone there to uni and I love being a student in Cardiff. Yeah, okay. before we dive into the book which is my next question did you always believe you would build something big or was that something that only very later on in life as we'll come on to when you started it the age you did but you know being entrepreneurial at a young age did you ever have an inkling that you'd build something big i think i secretly hoped so yeah but i don't think i really believed it and i used to big myself up to people as if i was going to be somebody like that but I think there was low self-esteem and I didn't really believe I could do that and when I eventually opened you know I knew all these had all these pop stars as people I knew and clients you know and so that gave me some kind of prestige yeah but I didn't really know how to make proper money out of this and sort of put myself back in society if you like yeah and when I started yo I think I did it just really to survive you know that's as far as I looked ahead but secretly I hoped it could go into could I be the new virgin yeah maybe but you know I didn't really believe it but later I started to believe that okay and were you confident at all we said like maybe some low self-esteem was there like a front it's a funny thing confidence because it's it's like sort of in the summer you can't imagine what it's like in winter and vice versa and it's the same and I wasn't always like here arms we're talking to each other confidently but I'm sure you went always and I certainly wasn't confident always and that is something which you have to learn and you have to build and you absolutely can do it and the only way to do it is to get out there and and be knocked down and have a few failures yeah and and try it out you know I remember when I first started public speaking I was absolutely terrified now I can go on telly I can stand in front of an audience of a thousand people and i can talk like i'm talking to you now and feel very natural about it but it is practice and you know i've had moments of what's gonna happen i'm gonna forget what i'm gonna say next year all of that stuff yeah you know feel the fear and do it anyway step outside the comfort zone 100 you can absolutely do it and that's what i wish for young people as they go out and that's what we should be doing in schools is teaching kids confidence and building that not just not just all the lessons i agree and i think that's the danger isn't it of you know 90 of people who won't try something and kind of stay behind the phone or the laptop and don't actually go out or the um or the um or the deck or the business plan you know yeah exactly it's um it's it's a crutch isn't it yes um and i agree with i think confidence can be learned um but you've got to try stuff act as if act as if and you become the person that you're your actor you you become you we play the part of ourselves to some extent in this life i like that um something mentioned earlier you've written business books before but yo man for those watching can see the book feels different it feels much more personal why this particular book and why now in 2026 well they say everybody's got a book in them and you only write one by autobiography or maybe i wrote another i don't know but um but that was the one that came out and i think i always have been fairly open and honest you know perhaps too open and honest some people would say yeah um so i wanted to write an entertaining book about my life and um but my life had also been hard and I'd been through hard times.

16:01And when I read business books, I didn't want to hear just what was the next great success that you had. I want to hear what was going on in that person's head so I could, you know, learn for that. So that's what I've done is I've written a book and people say it's a rollicking, good swashbuckling story. And then you should read it. Somebody said you should read it another time just so you can steal some of the ideas, some of the things. So there is stuff I learned along the way, But really, it's a story about a guy who worked hard and did some interesting things, left school early, didn't have any qualifications and got lucky as well.

16:38Was there a moment at all where you thought, I need to write this down? And I know you documented stuff like on your Instagram channel and talking at live events. But was there a moment you thought I actually need to write all this stuff down? I don't know if I thought I need to, but what I came out of it thinking is that is a pretty good cap on my career. And also, you know, we're all going to pass away at some point. And I actually think having written a book and told the story of your life and actually changed it from being a difficult life into what a rollicking time I've had, you know, that will make it easier as I get older.

17:18and I have actually thought that perhaps if I ever did get a terminal disease, I'm pretty healthy actually, but if I ever did get a terminal disease or something like that, that would be a really interesting thing to write about. You know, I'm always looking for the next book. The next book I'm thinking about is something about the future, you know, imagining how the future could pan out because we're going to see more change in the next 10 years than I've seen in my entire life. Yeah. And that is, and I can imagine it and I'm very pro the whole thing. Okay. But you know, also write about the thing that everybody's scared about is is dying and try and do that as well as i've done my life when you say you can imagine it again are you a very visual person do you find it easy to to visualize um you know goals dreams compared to i really struggle to visualize things what are you kinesthetic which means cuddly feely or are you audio audio like like a yeah like like a musician is yeah yeah no i'm very visual like i could when we when i was putting yo sushi together and i didn't know the statistics of opening a restaurant is not very high chance of success long term but i could visualize lots and lots of people coming in but i could also visualize the place completely empty and nobody coming in as well so if you can imagine something however you do that whether it's in words or as a system or analysis or in my case gut feeling and a visual thing then you know where you're going and if you know where you're going you've got a chance of getting there true true um who did you write the book for that's a good question nobody's ever really asked me that question who did i write who did i imagine well i did imagine my father who's dead reading it i I imagine some of my relations.

19:07I imagine my brother reading it. I imagine various of my friends reading it. And then I imagined people saying, that's a really good book. And even some famous people reading it. So, you know, thinking, oh, he's one of us now. You know, so there was the whole gamut of, you know, all of that stuff. That's the honest answer. Yeah. is there anything like when you what was the process like by the way first of all maybe was it quite a cathartic experience was it a difficult experience did it just flow i got a book deal about 20 years ago which i turned down because i got three ghost writers to write chapters and it was crap you know it wasn't my vice so i thought i could do it better so i turned it down and then i'm very glad i waited till much later and i was on holiday and there was nothing to do on an island actually in thailand and i had only my ipad with me and over a course of a couple of weeks i wrote 30 000 words and i kept you know 30 000 in a couple weeks in a few weeks and and you know that feeling when you do something and you run it back in your mind and i was reading back my own book and i just kept thinking this is really good i'm really i'm really enjoying this yeah but you have no idea whether somebody else would enjoy it it was just your vicarious pleasure yeah um so that's how it started and then it went through a whole process and i only wrote when i felt like it and then eventually i had a very very good editor who never wrote anything for me but he gave me some really good tricks like um you know bring the audience into it and ask their opinions do you ever feel that um it was another or another trick was uh it it was another four years before yo would open i didn't know that yet you know so you're always asking them to go forward and the other thing is what used to drive me crazy was when people talked about their childhood was i wanted to always get to the main event yeah yes but actually in this book i talk a lot about when what what went on before yo and it's all that seems relevant but i because i draw it back to what i was learning before i opened yo and so you're drawn into it so it's fun i like that and how long from say that moment when you were away for a couple of weeks through to um right we've got something now that we can put out to the market how long it was about three years okay three years i didn't push myself i thought you know this can wait this way the longer you wait the more is in the story that's true um and when you you know that experience of of looking back on your life were there moments that made you think that really changed everything yeah i mean i was kind of proud when i look back at some of the things i did in rock and roll i was proud that i survived after that i was proud that i got through divorce very good friends of my ex-wife now um and i was really proud that i went through the two years of seeing hearing about conveyor belt sushi from a guy and spending two years and putting my life savings which was a couple of hundred grand tied up in my flat all on the line putting everything on the line and yo opening and it being very successful at the beginning you know within a few weeks um i'm pretty proud of that young man and i'm not quite sure how he did it because you know that was a hell of a thing to do yeah and he he he did that and i'm pretty proud of him yeah somebody i mentioned earlier actually a guy called jim cregan from jimmy's ice coffee i interviewed him after he sold the business two years ago um to britvick and said and i think it had been maybe a 14 year journey something like that and i said if you had to do it all again knowing what you know no and the exit would you do it again and he went no not a chance and i really surprised me and i've got to ask you the same question my answer would be the same if you could um would you give away all the money you've got to be able to go back 30 years i go i'd give away quite a bit of the money i've got to have an extra 30 years but not to go back and go through all that shite again it was too hard work and it's too much fun having got through that chicane and one of the great things about getting older i found every anyway that every decade i've had and a lot of people don't say they look back oh i remember with relish you know my 30s or 40s i've enjoyed every decade a bit more i don't know about you yeah yeah it gets better as you go on i agree so the benefit of getting closer to your demise is that it's more fun yeah and you're still healthy i hadn't thought of that before and then i was listening to chris evans on on virgin radio and i think he's 59 but turned 16 and he was saying the same thing he was you know he had some crazy you know 20s and 30s etc and he was like i've enjoyed each decade more and he goes i can't wait for my 60s yeah yeah and i was like that's really i'm 56 now and i was thinking okay i actually get what he's talking about yeah yeah whereas i had before it was interesting you said that yeah um one thing i love about your story Simon is that it feels there wasn't just one screw it just do it moment it feels like there's a whole bunch of them in there would you agree with that yeah I you know the screw it let's do it is is a very good title I've definitely had that and the fuck it syndrome and all of that but I've also been pretty damn sensible I haven't said screw it let's do it I don't care if I lose that money i've been really sensible with money and i've been careful about every single penny i've spent especially on myself you know when i started i didn't have the the car the bmw and the nice house and all of that and i didn't i didn't even go out i used to think twice about breaking into a fiver yeah and to live within your means i think within any period of your life is really great but also to risk what you've got and i risked everything when i was in my late 40s 40 45 46 47 i risked everything i had um i think i was lucky because there was a bit of desperation in it you know it could all go terribly wrong if i don't do this and i sort of believe for much of the time but it would work was that illusion probably was deluded but it worked out so that's okay so yeah that's a great place to go back to actually so yeah for those people listening who think um it's too late you know and i've had conversations with people who like in their 30s who think it's too late that that the opportunities passed them by to start a business that their life made a decision for them you know they they fell into a job they've been in the job for a decade and i had a conversation with someone one of the girls at running club the other day been been in their 15 years has this idea to start a business doesn't have any confidence but from the outside looking in i thought she was the most confident person in the world no um but having that safety net of the safe secure job kind of holding her back from doing it and you know doesn't have kids doesn't have those kind of responsibilities doesn't have a mortgage and i'm thinking why wouldn't you just do it because you know i have a certain risk level you know i've started i think five or six businesses now you've started a whole bunch of them what would your advice be to somebody like that well i've heard venture capitalists say and we used to say this at dragons danos dragons is that somebody who is getting on and there is a real call to action and no second chance and i've got to make this work so that they are very investable um and i think if you've had a lot of experience and you haven't in my case i hadn't made any real money i'd had some successes but I hadn't really made any money.

27:08I think I was teed up. I'd had the creative side of building all these stages and things. And I'd been in the television licensing business, selling rock shows actually to TV stations around the world. So I knew contractual law. I knew how to do accounts. So I'd learned everything. You get so many people going, oh, I'm really good at the ideas. Oh, I've got this great restaurant idea. But I can't do the money. I just need somebody to do that for me. And actually, you can learn anything. and I enjoyed I got to the point where I really enjoyed the money and the financial and the contracts I enjoyed all of that because I learned how to do it I had to go through a bit of pain to learn that but life is painful you know it's one of the great realizations you know nobody promised you a rose garden yeah so I think that people in their 40s and even 50s even 60s you know there's all sorts of people who've been very successful at that time and the thing to do is to focus on starting something especially today starting something and getting to an exit as soon as possible because that is the name of the game you know they're a house of cards these businesses you know like those playing cards that you built when you're a kid you blow and they fall over yeah so you know you want to you want to get them up and then move on to the next thing which of course is what i did and when you reach that stage as you said you you were like risking everything and you say you put all your life savings in and that was the money that you had was a property right?

28:37I had 200 grand tied up in a property and I put that whole 200 grand in and I got 200 grand from a government loan guarantee scheme thank you very much Gordon Brown and Tony Blair for putting that in place yeah and I had some very very expensive leasing 100 grand's worth of leasing and I pulled in an awful lot of favours and I did a lot of it DIY literally I paid every single carpenter and I got the things and I negotiated every little price and I did all of that and I built a million quid using my 200 grand yeah and we managed to get to opening and people because it was so different you know it had robots and conveyor belts and all of this everybody working on it really wanted to see it happen yeah so they were giving me breaks along the way okay yeah in those days and i got to opening and actually the story is that um i i'd got three things as sony had given me four old-fashioned tv sets on which to show japanese television and all nippon airlines upgraded me once when you could get upgrades on airplanes when i went to japan and so and and honda motorcycles uk lent me one of those three wheeled honda gyro canopy bikes which we painted up and they ran around they had 10 of them at one point and anyway they just lent me one of them and i remember writing to honda saying um i'm so grateful for you lending me this bike i'm going to make you my official sponsor if i don't hear back from the next seven days i'll assume you agree of course a big company never wrote back and i put them over everything i just you know over deliver has been my thing to everybody i put and so when we opened the private investors who i'd been courting were there i owned 90 of the company at that time they were there with their checkbooks out and i said go away i thought i'm going to find a way and actually i went to my biggest supplier and i said would you lend me the money to pay your bill a bit of humor and they eventually did and do you know why they did because the head guy said told his his lads he said this is going to be big we should stay in with these guys and the money is totally safe you know who's backing them don't you sony honda and all nip on airlines I hadn't planned it that way but that's how it worked out that's amazing isn't it the perception yes reality right um apart from the money then what were you risking at that point I think uh the money was was the big thing you know there's I got a friend Danny Kruger who's the guy behind Nedra Farage who left the conservative party and he's got a charity called Only Connect that I've been involved with many years.

31:15And that's for prisoners, people coming out of prison, which obviously dear to my heart, and how to help them. And he's got a new initiative that he's started that he's calling love and money. But the two things, the health later on in your life, the two things that are really important are love and money. And most people have a difficult relationship with money. Oh, money is not everything in all that business. But money is incredibly important. and um yes i was risking reputation and what people thought of me and of course i'm human being so all those things are important but really money was what yeah you know because money if you can have a business you've got to have money coming in because it's the oil that makes everything happen and when you do make some money i didn't go out and buy ferraris and all i did actually buy ferrari at one point but it's not really my thing yeah i i i am i am i i i i want to use the money to spend on new projects and i did it's in the book a lot of the projects i did i did not make money out of you know i lost money but i had a royalty stream coming in from the businesses because i owned the brand yeah so that kept me afloat otherwise i would have you know probably lost a lot of it people forget don't they and i worked for um for richard branson for nearly 20 years with two businesses and i always remember being out in johannesburg for a party for the launch of virgin cola nobody remembers virgin cola right that was a whole big song and dance for the for the launch of that and you know vodka and yeah virgin vodka is another one yeah exactly exactly but nobody remembers those ones right he made i i watched him very closely and he made an awful lot of mistakes as i did and um lost money and and obviously went on to incredible things yeah was was there anything that nearly stopped you in the in the lead up to that you know when you're putting like this million pounds yeah there was um i've had i call them showstoppers you know and you've had them everybody has their own business you know things that you know you go you know opening yo sushi and the health and safety people come along and say well excuse me i'm very sorry but i know you put a lot into this but you can't have food going around in a conveyor belt you know it has to be in the fridge and all of that business and it's like oh god the heavy breathing you know or the fire brigade says you know you can't have the kitchen out in the open like that with all that kitchen and i call them showstoppers and you know i like the expression go around stone walls you know pretend it hasn't happened okay yeah fine we'll deal with that thank you very much you know really really helpful and you kind of carry on yeah and then things work out and the other one i like is build golden bridges you know your relationships with people and how you help and in the end i remember opening yo and the fire brigade came and went this is amazing mate well hope we'll find a way of making this work and that's what happened brilliant um and if you hadn't made those decisions what do you think you would be doing now what would life look like do you know i've i have asked myself i wonder if you had or you haven't gone now i've asked myself and the truth is i don't really know i mean people say we know you simon you would have got back up and got something else but not not as successful as this has been and i think i've been lucky that it's made me a better person not a worse person you know i've become a a kinder easier person um i think you know you've you've got to be pretty tough when you start these things um and certainly certainly i was you know i always say at the outset of a venture especially a startup like i've always done um that megalomaniac control is absolutely the right way to do it you know steve jobs sort of i want it done by five o 'clock and i want it done now and trust me i'm the one who's making their money sort of thing yeah megalomaniac control but i think the other thing that i learned which was very very good for when looking back and i'm proud of is that after three four years when we first made the first sale of yo um part of it that i handed over to a guy called robin roland actually and and and i allowed other people to do it their way without trying to control it and went on to do the other things that i was able to do and that's that's most people most a lot of entrepreneurs want to hang on to my baby i don't want anybody else touching it i know best yeah fortunately i knew i had the i know best but my i didn't know that it was a delusion and and yeah remind me how many years into that did you like sell some of the business and actually not necessarily take a back seat but actually bring other people in to run it their way robin always says it was three and a half years i think it was more like five but We'll never agree on that one.

36:07So pretty early on, really. It was pretty early on, yeah. Like you see, some people hang on for decades, right? Decades, yeah. And I sold, I own 95 % of the company, 90 % of the company actually, and I reduced my shareholding to 25%. But at that time, I made not a great deal of money, a few million quid, and I made far more out of the 25 % of Yosushi than I ever did out of the rest. and I made much more out of the 1 % royalty that I'd negotiated right from the beginning that I still have to this day. Really? Did you come up with the idea to put that in the contract or was that something else? I knew about royalties because of the music business.

36:49I was going to say exactly that. And I saw how those artists were doing. I suppose that was in the back of my mind but actually I had a small investor called Pierre Turand who used to sort of question me about how much salary I was taking. I don't blame him. And in the end, I said, well, why don't I just take 1 % of turnover, and that's it. And as it goes up, you know, you'll all be good. And these small-time investors went, oh, yeah, that sounds good to me. It wasn't very much money at that time. So I put it into a contract with them, and I made sure that the lawyers tied it up. And when we got to the first exit, I think that the venture capitalist people thought that if they didn't kind of honor that, that I'd walk away from the deal.

37:36And I think I was lucky to get away with that. And so that has really gone into the kind of the O DNA. And of course, it's grown. Yeah, it was interesting. I said you really had this like founder roundtable and dinner last night. And it was all about, you know, what breaks when you scale internationally. and one of the, we have about 15, 20 founders there, it's probably over a billion pounds in revenue between 20 businesses there. And there was a lot of talk between quite a few of the founders. We never kind of got to the end game from it, but there was a lot of conversations between founders there around when to sell a part of your business to kind of realise some of the liquidity in your business or to never do it, et cetera, whether just to hold on to that ultimately.

38:22I do think, you know, certainly to make your first million or whatever your metaphor is, is the earlier the better. And especially if you've got it in you to go off and do the next thing. Yeah. Which I very definitely had. Yeah. And to try and get pipeline and get it ready. So it looks really good to the next people. Always to have that in your mind. I think that is a really good. You can do that more and more. I mean, you took that much time. and Yotel, really Gerard Green, who came in to do that, took much of that over before we opened the first restaurant. I mean, we raised, after Yosushi, we raised, I think it was$13 million just on a business plan that I'd written with Gerard.

39:06And he met somebody in Kuwait and they came up and said, we'd like to do this and we negotiated a deal. and um and we actually used it the bunny to be initially just literally to build a prototype you know obviously being the yo sushi success and the success i'd had and the brand name and everything yeah and we took the prototype to 100 design that was an earl's court exhibition show and everybody came in to this hotel room and if i'd done market research and said would you like to eat raw you know raw fish off conveyor belts with robots serving the drinks you're not going to say yes and would you like to sleep in a seven square meter room with no natural light which is the first year of terror people are not going to say but when they came into this room they said this is so obvious why didn't somebody do this before and that was the um the catalyst you know the oil that british airports authority first invited us to do one at gatwick and one at heathrow and then we went to the skippel airport and charles de gaulle and then gerard was in new york and we were we met related over there and we who were a big property company the biggest one in the thing and they had a hotel half built which they'd lost their clients on and we built nearly 769 rooms nearly 800 rooms biggest hotel in new york in 10 years i was told at the time yeah and um that just happened as a result of all those you know what's the next thing to do yeah and how important um was building a brand versus like building a business and it's especially moving on to Yotel after.

40:38Well, it didn't escape me that the word brand was not so far different to the word band, and that's where I'd come from. Yeah. And I don't think that bands sit there thinking, how am I going to do the brand? It's a natural response to their creative thing of doing a thing. And a lot of the pop stars I've met along the way, a bloody good business band, not least Mick Jagger, is a very good i mean he's run that whole organization as well as being the front man and a lot of those guys are are really good at that so i think i never sat down with a brand agency for yo ever ever ever i mean mark norton who designed the logo who actually used to do um he was the only guy who did two rolling stones album covers apart from andy warhol which they're such a demanding client yeah and he did the yo brand and sort of showed it to us and he always used to say yo is always destined to be a brand in lots of different things it just happened to be a sushi bar in its first manifestation i thought that could be good yeah yeah but so no i never contrived to brand i always allowed it to grow out of what we were doing yeah i love that um i'm interested to know what broke if anything first when you started scaling yo sushi well what broke down was um we went to about six restaurants in we went to edinburgh and i thought we could open anywhere off pitch and you can't open anywhere off pitch because there's other people coming onto the onto the onto your your area by then and edinburgh is an awful long way away to manage something from and that slowed us down by a few years so that right that was a kind of breakage what broke in a good way is really robin taking us into shopping malls which had always been anathema to me i was wanting to do big things on the high street and he was dead right and we went to the shopping malls and once it worked in a few it rolled out and in other countries as well yeah um what broke was that he robin then took you know into opened a small one in new york and i was going no no no we big big it's got to be big let's get them lots of money and do something so that everybody knows it.

42:54I was absolutely right. We should have done a big flagship. We'd have been all over America if we had. And then the next incarnation, Robin left, and another guy, Richard, came in, and he'd done all the supermarkets for Pizza Express, and he knew that world. He took Yo into supermarkets, and we're now, I think, in 400 supermarkets, not just on the shelves, but with our own people and our own stands in supermarkets in the UK. elsewhere as well and that's that's so that's a hell of a big thing so that's that and nearly 100 restaurants you know it's it's a big it's a big operation now and of course the hotels are even bigger much yeah and and what's maybe like the hardest lesson that you've learned i think i mean i think you know there's been a lot of pain put it that way along the way and sleepless nights and moments of terror and it's all going to go wrong and it could have i always say if i'd had had a dice i had to row four or four or higher several times and i did roll them you know good fortune the truth is the harder you work the more but you sweat the luckier you get felix dennis yeah um so um but you know there have been lots of lessons on any day of the week i'll tell you a different lesson i've learned if you read yo man there's a lot there's the best value you can get for 22 quid for the hardback and paperback coming out soon yeah so there's an awful lot in there that you can soak up and um yeah definitely and and you you mentioned earlier we haven't talked about it before but tell me about dragon's den um and how that opportunity came up well um i think i first heard about dragon's den we were at richard branson's fast track 100 down at his house in oxford and i met i know you've been there and i met uh i met duncan bannettine i think was there with the film crew he was he was intent on getting publicity and there'd been quite a few uh the mind of a millionaire which is a three-part series london's richest which they got that one wrong well it wasn't at that time but um there have been a lot of entrepreneurs entrepreneurs were having their their moment and he told me about dragon's den and i i and i was approached by the the um producers and i said no i don't want to spend my hard i just earned that my you know that first money i'm not going to spend that and then in our little circle everybody was talking about this new thing dragon's den it's going to replace the apprentice noise and um which had come out just before and i kicked myself and one day i got a call from the producer this guy called dave tibbles and he said he said uh we've just done a pilot and one of the dragons hasn't cut it would you reconsider and i said step this way so that's what happened and of course it was a very very good for the brand and for me and everything and opened doors i was going to ask you that yeah did it open lots of doors and you know and of course i met people people who are much much better off than me and you know having sort of you know got more than i ever dreamed of i felt a bit inadequate and i thought that is a form of madness and that's got to stop right now i'm very very happy with what i've got yeah and even again going back to because it's fresh in my mind the evening last night you know somebody in there and they built you know three different brands and he said you know i the ceiling i keep hitting is i can't get above 10 million and i said he said i saw the list of who was coming to the event tonight and he said i had inferiority complex and i was like but you've built three really successful brands what are you talking about he's like i know but then i looked at so-and-so he's got 500 million pound brand and so-and-so's got a 50 million pound brand and it so it goes on that's all of that but you know but then i think back to people who are really starting out and you know who have nothing and I and I've been poor I mean I've actually been poor like running out of money before the end of the week poor so I do know what that feels like and you know the disparity of wealth in this country for example I think that there will be radical things I alluded to at the beginning that we we need that we need radical change really um in Scandinavia they have a thing called Yanti's law and Yanti was a philosopher at the turn of the century and he had 10 laws and they all basically say the same thing which is don't be better than your neighbor and as a result in scandinavia um people are very reliable there's very few famous people actually and there are some rich people but they're rich country obviously they have oil out there but um it it is good in a culture where you you can spread it around and everybody's everybody's okay um but here we have a lot of people who really really struggle and i don't think that's good for the world and i i think it will change simply because very rich people won't want won't be comfortable living in a world where the the rest of the people are revolting if you like you know revolting it and that's why the the jeremy corbyns and the trumps and the things get in because people are deeply dissatisfied with now that the world is so transparent so i think we will see change you know i'm a fan of china actually a very contentious thing to say with their human rights record but you know they have taken people out of poverty incredibly well and singapore i always get his name wrong copone you has done an incredible job here they just at the beginning they just had 50 mps and they got paid a million pounds each million dollars each and they were taught to work very very hard and to deal only in outcomes not to argue with each other about policy and and he from a country that has no natural resources he's built an incredibly successful country and that's what we should be doing in britain now that we're free of the manacles of of uh of europe you know we're free is to make a new model society that the world will copy and that's what i might call out to entrepreneurs is to be part of that and i hope that in the next 10 20 30 40 years the people who are making money and becoming successful now will be the dudes who do service to their country at a million dollars each yeah yeah exactly and to get these young people in running the country because honestly i wouldn't employ sorry guys but i wouldn't employ any of the mps they are hopeless yeah for the most part the senior people are some good people but but most of them are you know it's nonsense and all this arguing what a waste of time what a total waste of time i think you said you're meeting simon scribb next week i think you'll get on really well with with simon he's lived built his business in the far east and sold it in the far east and you know this call to action for entrepreneurs to be part of this you know to change society good well i think so that that's that's i think that's my job actually now at my age yeah i think that's my my mission is people ask me if i have any regrets I've always said no, not really.

49:50I'm delighted with how my life's worked out. But I think if there is one, if 10 or 15 years ago I'd gone into politics, not to be an MP, but to actually advocate reform, and it's never too late. Here am I. I find myself doing it with you right now. Was there a moment you felt successful? Was it taking some money out of the business, first of all, that kind of three, four, five years in? Or was it before then? Was it literally the opening night and you thought, well... There's never really a moment. You know, there's a couple of different graphs that go on. One is the ups and downs. You know, one day you do a big speech and everybody applauds it or you open a new restaurant and it goes well or you do something new or you're on TV or whatever and you have a high.

50:33And then the next day you've got a bunch of problems to deal with. And then there's another graph which goes underlies it all, which, you know, it's taken many, many years to get there is that I no longer. You know, there are threats around, but I think the chances are I probably won't be poor and on my downers anymore. But all sorts of things can happen and there's health ahead and all of that. So, you know, I'm sitting here talking to you and people interested in my book and hopefully that will do well. So there is a sort of sense of I've been successful, but there's another sense of, you know, I've got to get on with every day and make the very best of my life.

51:13just the same as everybody else and there's ups and downs every day you talked about potentially writing another book yeah I'd like to do something I've got that one I said about dying perhaps and something about the future and how things could work out maybe it's kind of almost like Nostradamus Yostradamus or something that's brilliant I love that. But, you know, just to imagine what the world would be like. Because, you know, people are very scared of what's happening, of AI and all of that. And I do think that, I mean, my view is that you have to embrace what you've got. And I think it could be very good.

51:57I mean, I'm very, very pro-AI. Just because pragmatically that's the best way is to embrace and get on with it. As I am the exploration of space. And I find myself, actually, even though it's very early days of AI, I mean, I like its character and I find myself trusting it because it gives a balanced view. Human beings will always give a self-interested view. And I can see the, I can usually argue both sides of anything. Yet we human beings generally always argue one side. My belief is this. That's how we're educated. so I think that AI could be a very large part of governance of modern countries to give a balanced view and get rid of a lot of conspiracy theories and a real understanding of how the world works you know is there a cabal of very rich people who run the country yes there are rich people and they do have influence of course that's true yeah but um is there a cabal that's a plot probably not you know is the truth and I think that the I always thought there would be a wikipedia of what's true in the world you know to get some sense of it and i think ai will be that do you have a definition of success for the book like what you want to get out of the experience no i don't i don't they don't even have a number just get it out there just just get you know one one step at a time yeah um it's a good book i think you know the thing i learned from the book of yo which i wrote which is also an online you can see it online the book website yeah it's an interactive of book is it's a very very unusual sort of thing and that that is um that's out there but what i learned was books take time you know you put it out and you know it's not so is it a hit you know if you open a retail store first three months are very important a book you know is out there for forever you know so hopefully it will influence people people are still reading um you know Dale Carnegie for example you know I hear kids talking about how to win friends and influence people and how to win friends and influence people is a great title for a book yeah and yo man is not bad either it's a great title it's a great title what did you not worry about enough in the early days if you can kind of cast your mind back now just last couple of questions kind of reflecting back on what you've put into the book you know what you've learned over the years Simon?

54:25I think that you know how would I have done things differently if I'd gone back I think I would have been better at people I think I would have had the courage to employ better people and to spend more time finding the right people that's the key right to finding the time finding the right finding the right people and finding the time to do that rather than be you know I took on people I just met okay you'll do you know let's get going you know do it and I'll do it all myself. But a lot of the stuff, you know, the DIY, do it yourself. You know, even today, funnily enough, I've taken back doing more on Yo Man than all the PRs, the this, that, and the other, you know, and doing it myself.

55:07And I've actually, I thought, I can't be bothered to do all that myself anymore. I can hire people to do it. They'll never do it as well as you will. So I've enjoyed stepping back into it, and it's been enriching, and I formed relationships with people as a result. So I think I could have been better at people over the years and I think I'm certainly better at it now. And I'm enjoying this later part of my life of broadcasting and talking and doing all that stuff and hopefully doing action. And charities, I've always avoided. Early on I said I'm not going to be on the boards of all these charities.

55:46They're talking shops. And if I can help using my money or my influence, it's one person at a time. One person at a time. And I think that's the best way to change the world is one person at a time. Agreed. What would you say to somebody who has an idea, but they're still sitting on it? They're still waiting for the perfect moment, which we know that doesn't exist. What would your advice be to that person who's listening or watching? well even though i i risked all at uh coming up to 50 um the younger you are the more you should be risking because you've got more time and chance for recovery yeah um and i never met the person who went out to do what they really dreamed of doing regardless of whether they later succeeded or failed but i mean many people who look back um and said i wish i put my head above the parapet earlier and taking those opportunities when i had them and the other thing i wish i i suppose i wish i'd known is that most people aren't looking at you judging you thinking about what they think about you they're thinking about themselves so so it doesn't really matter what other people you think it's true yeah and it doesn't matter what other people think it doesn't but it is the age of comparison isn't it with social media and um smartphones all of that stuff all of that stuff But if you can sort of cast that off and be resolutely yourself and say what you're saying and not be scared of saying, I'm a big fan of China, for example.

57:20Oh, what about the human rights? Or, you know, I wish politicians would say when the interviewer goes, ah, but two years ago you said this. And you go, well, actually, I changed my mind. I met somebody at dinner last night. It's always a fun bearer of mine. Yeah. No problem, just like everybody else. It's normal. Yeah, it is. Look, this has been a really cool conversation. I know we did one before online, but I love meeting people in person. I've wanted to meet you for a long time. So I appreciate your time. Just got a quick fire round to finish, just four quick questions. What would be your definition of an entrepreneur?

57:57I'm not a definition analysis type person. Okay. But I do know that there are entrepreneurs and there are operators. and I was an entrepreneur I'm good at enthusiasm I'm good at getting things going I can imagine things and I can make them start up operators are people who can prioritize every single decision and analyze it work it out and keep the thing going over a long period of time like it and when you went from startup to scale up and you certainly scale number of businesses um what was the difference what what you know what was it that turned that business into a scale-up business to be a scale-up business you need an operator not necessarily an entrepreneur entrepreneur has a role in it yeah um and if the two can work together um that's really good but the difference between entrepreneur and operator is is exactly that and and corporate and as you get to be more corporate and we certainly are more so in yo sushi hotel's still very very entrepreneurial um it's much more difficult to be um creative and to constantly innovate which is what you need to do so woodruff yo man thank you very much today so thank you there are difficulties at every at every level this is a good one for you that i've been wondering what you're going to pick um given your background in music if you could pick a song that reflects your entrepreneurial journey what song would you know i wasn't prepared for that one and well the the the one that the one that reflects it both is i made an album when ian durie died i am i wrote to chas jankel and i with some song lyrics for a song called how i got my yo and we ended up making eight tracks with the blockheads i did simon woodruff and the blockheads and it's on spotify and it's called how i got my yo my name is simon not a lot of people know so that that kind of tells my story that's perfect i love it um if this conversation resonated with you don't just sit there act on it make sure you follow or subscribe for more game-changing conversations and remember the only thing standing between you and your business breakthrough is the decision to screw it and just do it.