How Simon Woodroffe Built Yo! Sushi and Changed UK Dining Forever

0:00When people walked in, they went, this is so obvious. why hasn't somebody done this before and that's what entrepreneurs can do because if you're a big company you have to have a great big wide board and everything gets debated but if you're entrepreneur you just got a vision and you go for it you can do what you want you've got to build something that looks so real that people believe you and you can only have people believe you if you believe it yourself for the most part i did believe that that would be a success i always say 90 % I believed it, 5 % I had my doubts, and 5 % was sleepless nights of sheer terror.

0:38I don't think there was ever pressure to do better. Pressure for me has always come from survival. I never wanted to be very, very rich and very, very famous and very, very successful. I always wanted to not be very, very poor. That was my motivation. Tell us, where were you in life? what were you doing and ultimately what made you say screw it just do it screw it let's do it um i was 45 i'd been in the you know i left school with two air levels i've been in the rock and roll business i've been in the television business i've made films i'd lots of things i've had small businesses and for the third or fourth time in my life i was lost and i was down on my luck and i I've got to do something.

1:21And I started taking out people who, how can I describe? Well, maybe people who I was a bit in awe of or scared of. And one of them was a guy called Mr. Uehara from Fujisanki Television. And we were having, he took, kindly took me out to lunch at a sushi restaurant. We were having lunch and eating sushi. And I said, he said, what are you going to do? And I said, well, I'm just looking for opportunities. And I said, well, we're here. what about sushi you know it's not taken off here and he said the famous words which were what you should do simon is a conveyor belt sushi bar with girls in black pvc miniskirts that's what happened and two years later 1997 january 22nd actually i opened the first one wow and and before that point then i guess maybe there wasn't anything holding you back because you hadn't had that opportunity hadn't presented itself right well but there's nothing holding me back other than the fact that I was running out of money and I'm not pleading complete poverty but having had all those businesses and all the ups and downs of life I had and and the property values going up in this world I had 200 grand tied up in my apartment and you know I wasn't going to start some two-bit little restaurant it was much safer to start something big and it was in those days you know 25 years ago it was a million quid and so I put my 200 grand in and I was lucky enough to get what was then a government loan guarantee scheme which guaranteed another 200 grand some what I call shark leasing of all the kitchen equipment so I had about half the money and the rest was done on um beg borrower and steal and there's a famous story that I actually got Sony Honda and all Nippon Airlines in as they didn't know their responses but and they lent me things One of them gave me an upgrade to Japan.

3:08They lent me forward to old-fashioned television sets. And I made them my official sponsor and plastered over everything. I mean, it's a long story, but I'm not going to go now. But as a result of that, the world thought I was sponsored by these majors. So I got credit left, right, and center. And that's actually how I financed Yosushi and ended up opening and turning away the equity investors, the sort of angel investors who I'd been sort of nurturing and who were hovering in the background, and go, oh, now you're open. We'll come on in. I said, no, thank you. And I ended up actually only 95 % of the business.

3:43I mean, it was amazing how it worked out. Wow. And tell me a little bit about that. And then how did you get those connections to those brands? Well, I wrote to Sony. I mean, I had a really great looking business plan because it was very show-busy business plan. The front of it said, if you want to make God laugh, show him your business plan. I actually put that on the front. He said, you can't do that. I showed everybody in the bank. They said, at least you're realistic. And I literally called up all Nippon Airlines, called up Sony, you know, chatted them up, you know, and like you, I can do a bit of chat.

4:19And I said, all I want you to do is just lend me four of those big TV sets so I can put Japanese TV on in the front of the restaurants with the sound turned down. And I'll, you know, I'll do whatever. I'll over deliver on everything. and all Nippon Airlines upgraded me once when I went to Japan. And Honda lent me one of those Honda Jaro canopies, which just one of them, just lent them for a few months. And we actually ended up with about 10 of them running around London, the best advertising I've ever done. And then I wrote them all the letters saying, look, I'm so grateful for what you've done that I'm going to make you my official sponsor.

4:54If I don't hear back in the next seven days, I'll assume you agree. Of course, a big company never wrote back. So I put them out for everything. Wow. And you were, you know, once you'd opened and you turned down the private equity, the angel investing, you were obviously uber confident that you didn't need their money. You're never uber confident in a small business. It's like a pack of, you know, those cards houses you used to build as a child. they're like that the wind blows and you know and it's above the level that the parents could help out or friends could help out you know so you're never you're never absolutely sure but the first week and the second week nobody came it was a big big frontage it was in poland street and soho people walk past very intimidating to walk in you look through the windows this great big long conveyor belt and robots serving the drinks and all this stuff going people think what the hell is this?

5:51We covered it up so nobody could see it. And the second Saturday, Bruce Isaacs, who was my first general manager, came down to my office downstairs and he just went like this. He said, come here. And I walked up the stairs and there on that Saturday night, there was a queue all the way down the block coming. I don't know how long it was, but it was, and that didn't go away for two years. And why? Because I've been good at marketing? Because I've had great contacts? No. Because I'd spent the money. I sometimes say it slightly facetiously, throw away the marketing budget and spend all your money on doing something that when it opens word of mouth you know whatever that version is in this this modern world goes out and people talk about it and you know i always want the magic words which uh which uh the magic words and the same one later much later i'm sure we'll talk about it when i opened the hotel which had no natural light in the windows and the windows looking out in the corridors and the airports and if i'd done you know sushi and done market researchers said would you like to eat raw fish off conveyor belts with robots serving the drinks nobody's going to say yes but those those things when people walked in they went this is so obvious why hasn't somebody done this before and that's what entrepreneurs can do because if you're a big company you have to have a great big white board and everything gets debated and it takes down this that and the other but if you're entrepreneur you just got a vision and and you and you go for it you can do what you want.

7:15Yeah, yeah. It was that thing, isn't it, like with Henry Ford, if somebody had asked, you know, with the car and it was like, he would have been a faster horse. So, you know, similar. So what would you say, Simon, I've been, you know, looking at the Instagram page you started a year ago, that got me kind of reacquainted with you. Obviously knew who you were and what you do before that. But I can see you engaging with people on there with different ideas. What would you say to someone in a similar position today, i.e. they're sitting on an idea, but they're unsure if it's, you know, the right time?

7:43Yeah, there's a lot of different answers to that. But one, which I will be bold enough to put forward, is that I never met the person who went out to do what they really dreamed of doing in this short life and regretted it, regardless of whether they failed or succeeded. Because you can always start off again, especially if you're younger. But I met many, many people who look back from later in life and said, well, I wish I'd taken that opportunity when I had the chance. But more than that, I would also say on the other side, you have got to find a way, even if you're starting from a zero standing start, of raising the money to have enough money one way or the other.

8:23If it's true, and I use the word in its most beautiful way, some sort of confidence trick, a trick like I did with Tony's Andre, and it's by mistake, that you give people confidence. You've got to be able to raise the money. And people ask me that question all the time. And really, what I generally say is, is if you can't raise the money, that is a rite of passage. And if you can't raise the money, and you can't do that, you probably shouldn't be starting a business. And every single entrepreneur who's ever existed has always gone through that process. And it ain't easy. And at the beginning, you know, they say the three F's friends, family and fools, or people run up their credit cards.

9:07there's all sorts of ways to do it but then you've got to build something that looks so real and that's what i did so real that people believe you and you can only have people believe you if you believe it yourself and for the most part i did believe that that would be a success myself i always say 90 i believed it five percent i had my doubts and five percent was was sleepless nights of sheer terror but i've got it completely wrong so you never really know no but but seeing that cue i guess uh two weeks later or whatever the time scale was you went from 90 to 100 instantaneously it was um it was like taking off very very tight boots you know it was just as a relief oh my goodness and then of course the problems start because everybody wants what you've got and um you know and there's people and you know everything and then of course as soon as you are doing well you think it's going to go wrong tomorrow and i would you know i had to really good people in to run the day-to-day because you know for me if if i went in and saw one thing wrong i would uh have to walk around the block three times doing deep breathing exercises because i thought nobody would ever ever come again because i'm an entrepreneur and And I always say entrepreneur and operator.

10:29And Robin Rowland, who I got in three, four years later, he was an operator. So he would have a pad and he would just prioritize everything and do it one thing at a time. And that's the way to do it. You need both those people. You need the entrepreneur, flow by seat of your pants, which to some extent I was, probably less so now. And then you need an operator who can do it. You need lots of different types. It was all sorts of different. And the accountants, I remember in the old days, they always used to try and analyze the management of accountants and all that management people. What was the secret formula to entrepreneurialism?

11:01And of course, there isn't one. Everybody is different. No. And at the start, were you very much hands-on then until you, as you said earlier, you got the right people in to actually operate the business? The first three years, megalomaniac control. At that level. Not a bad way to be. Not a bad thing to do. Annoying for other people. I later found out in one incarnation in my life I was known as the steamroller. And embarrassing as it is now, I'm quite proud of it in a way that you absolutely know what you're doing or you think you do. It's hugely a delusion that you know what you're doing, but at least you have the delusion you believe at an absolute mechalemaniac control.

11:44But then what I did well was further in, I handed over control. It's a master surprise of everybody there who worked for us to a guy called Robin Rowland, who went on to run it for the next years. And I did the right thing. You know, I shut my door and let them get on with it, and it wobbled. And then it got to be stable, and they built it up. Yeah. And when you say, you know, those first couple of weeks, people could see in and, like, you know, see how it's all designed, how did your background in you know stage design production etc shape how you you built that brand experience that like theatricality was that always part of the plan well it's showbiz isn't there you know restaurants showbiz in many ways very very similar to doing big rock and roll shows you know being at the first night of rod stewart which you designed or ozzy osborne or whatever it is you know you've got your rehearsals and things go wrong and you've got technical issues and a lot the people deal with so that was the showbiz side and i think that is what it was it was exciting and i always used to say there's a there's a ziz in showbiz which is a bit so yucky they used to say in showbiz there's a ziz in showbiz but i always said there's a ziz in every business in the world if you can find it and appeal to people that way but i'd had also 10 years in the television world which was less creative some of it was creative but most of it was international deals to sell television rights around the world so i couldn't read legal contracts i just had a small company i could do accounts myself on the showbiz side obviously i could draw you know i could do technical drawing i understood pr i understood a lot of different things and i had that balance those two bits which a lot of people say i'm really good at the creative but i'm not good at the other you know and i said you can learn any of them you and you have to at the beginning and i learned everything so i had those two bits that meshed together and um i think that that's that that's that was a key to you know my success that's a good dose of luck always uh i i can actually remember taking my my two daughters in uh to yosushi here in brauma for the for the first time and um they you know they're now 16 and 18 and have a both have a lifelong love of sushi um but did you did you face any criticism early on and and if so how did you how did you handle that i don't think i did really i mean we were it was very exciting the early days the thing that i did learn early on and i suppose i learned it from i don't know where i learned it from but that was that not to talk about how great food was and not to talk about how great the ambience was because anybody's or how good the sauce was or whatever anybody's going to say that nobody's going to believe you it's an instinctive level so i talked about the world and life and everything as i am doing to you now and um of course i got and my show business background and um of course i got lots and lots of interests on a sort of personal level which together with um a very televisual opening you know i i remember the pr people said we're gonna do a do a eat will we only i didn't have that much pr people but we did a wine and he said i want to do um east meets west and i said no no we're gonna do world's largest longest conveyor belt sushi bar in a world that had never even heard of sushi bars, let alone conveyor belt sushi bars.

15:22So that was the thing, is to do that. And then, of course, the headlines we got were fabulous in the early days. We had Faye Mashler fast-forward for the conveyor belt sushi bar, somebody else Sayonara McDonald's, and Adrian Gill, famously. I hope this place sends all those mystery of the East... I hope this place sends all those mystery of the East knife wielders back to okahoma with those knives between their legs with their choppers between their legs choppers uh it's gold dust isn't it oh man um was there was there a this might not work moment at all um in in those early stages or as you said like for two years there was a there was a queue down the block what happened after that was there a this might not work moment early days yeah i I mean, I was concerned the whole time, to be quite honest.

16:18You know, you're on tento the whole time in the early days. We got a call from Harvey Nichols, from Dominic Ford at Harvey Nichols, who ran the fifth floor of Harvey Nichols, which is very fashionable from Ab Fab and everything in those days. And he said, could you come in? And we did that. And then we were in Selfridges. And then we opened another one. And then we went into Edinburgh, still with me having got it all together, which is miles away. And that absolutely bombed. And we spent a fortune on it. and it puts us right back several years. So the threat was more that we'd make mistakes. Of course, you know, you can be fashionable for three or four years and then other people have got to come along.

16:56You know, this works and then the food's got to be great, great, great, great, great. So, you know, I would say in the first few years that we got venture capital in, I can't remember if five, six years in, we got venture capital in and substantial money. and that was a big relief. But during that period working up, I would say, the one I always say is that if you're playing dice, there were a couple of times when I had to roll a three, maybe a four, and I did roll a three or a four. Maybe Poker Face or Smiling Face got us through some of those. And was there one location that proved the model or was it something else entirely?

17:37Yeah, I think the first location proved it together with Harbicles and Selfridges, you know. That first location in 1997, in that first year, in that summer, everybody came. I always say Madonna didn't come, but pretty much everybody else came. Really? And somewhere I've got a list. In fact, for my autobiography of writing, I asked the office to look at that list from years back because we wrote down all the fame, all the celebs. Did you? That would be cool. That would be cool. And it was really interesting. I mean, everybody came and I came and host a bit and went around and da-da-da-da. So, no, that – and, of course, that made it exciting, you know, because – and the other thing is in the very early days, the word got out and every single restaurateur, I would go to say in the world, came to see what this was all about.

18:28So they were supporting it. And, yeah, it was very, very, what's the word, fashionable, cool, trendy, and people would be going, have you never done a restaurant before? Can't believe it. And as you alluded to, you eventually exited Yosushi. How did you know it was time? Well, we made a couple of bespoke. I can't remember. I think Edinburgh, and then after that, we did the South Bank in London. and we you know suddenly we went you know everything we weren't doing didn't turn to gold and i remember we had a cracked floor in one of the big restaurants we couldn't figure out how to do it without closing it for three months and this stuff and the other and we needed we needed money and we knew and robin roland who is you know come in as a as an employee at that stage um you know he said we this is ready for rollout and we went re-approached three eye which is one of the big venture capitalists and they weren't easy you know because they want everything and then there was a smaller bcs a more boutiquey one called primary capital a guy called marrick was the guy that was there and um and uh we we we did a deal with them and i remember going to the um the closing meeting i mean it was there is a big deal at that stage you know i think it was nearly a million dollars in legal fees to get that deal done i can't remember what they put in but They bring tens of millions to build it out.

19:55And my 95 % went down to 25%, which I was totally, totally happy to make. And I made my money out of the 25 % and indeed a royalty, which I've had since day one. And I still have today from Yosushi, once in royalty, which is common knowledge. And anyway, I went to that closing meeting. And I remember, you know, there were all these documents, 39 documents and all this. and um and i hadn't really believed it was going to happen and robin i think to his credit um led the cavalry charge there and one of the lawyers took me aside and they said we're going to put the money in your bank and it'll be wired it'll be inside your bank account in 20 minutes could you give me the bank details and in those days we had checkbooks i pulled my checkbook out and gave the thought code and the current account and went and was the sub there was champagne and all the lawyers suddenly became nice people for the day and uh and we went home and um and on my way home i passed the cash machine i thought i better check it out so i went and checked out the cash machine and uh i was there for so long looking at this number on the on the uh sorry it's the mosquito looking at this number on the um on the screen that there was a sort of q form behind there's this guy coughing and spluttering behind me eventually i turned to him i said excuse you mates i said copper look at this you know he's sort of drunk i tell that story sometimes like i say if uh and this is for your viewers here if anybody ever tells you that money doesn't make you happy they're lying brilliant oh man wow and and i always remember chatting on this to um on the show to richard reed from innocent and him telling me you know once they'd done the deal with with with Coca-Cola, but, you know, went home to tell his wife and he was, you know, all excited and ready to celebrate.

21:40And she sent him to Ikea with a, with a bookend to get a refund for, for like 25 pounds. He said, I'm literally stood there on a, on a Friday night in Ikea in the, in the, in the return section. But on the Monday morning, him and his, I think it's three colleagues from Innocent, they, they started with what's now Jam Jar Investments. They started a brand new business like 72 or 48 hours later. I was like, what, what, what, what did the timescale look like for you between that and um yotel i started the next venture before we sold that because robin taken over only a short period before and i'd shut my door and gone inside and thought well i'm not going to come out i'm not going to go and be bossy and you know you know and i got a big piece of paper out which is what i do and i started looking at what what i could do with yo because i already had a sort of contract a licensed contract because the reason the license fee came above about you know the royalty was that um i had one small investor and he was always on to me about my salary well how is it i said look i'll just take one percent of turnover and he said oh that suits me fine no problem if it gets bigger you're welcome and um so um i sat it I sat in my little room and I owned the brand, and it was licensed to sushi in the hospitality of food and beverage area.

23:02And I thought, well, what else can you do? I looked at lots of other things, hoping that maybe I could be a new virgin or something like that. And I thought the obvious thing to do is hotels. And I met a guy called Russell Malkasingh, and he came in with a much bigger pad than me because I can draw, and he could draw much better. And between us, we sketched out, you know, maybe 30, 40, we were going to do Japanese capsule hotels, sleeping pods for homes. It could have been anything. All I wanted it to be is something that when we opened, people would say, you've got to see this thing. And that's what happened when we eventually opened the hotel in Gatwick Airport.

23:41Well, in fact, it happened when we eventually showed a full-size, I'm a believer in prototyping, We'd made a full-size prototype of one of the hotel rooms and took it to an exhibition at Earl's Court called 100 % Design. It was a big thing about design. And we were the one that had the queue down the block. People had pretty wanted to have a look inside. And people were saying, you know, can I get one of these to have at home? You know, put the queue, whatever. Yeah, that's sort of the... And then one of the TV companies all came down and it was good news. and I was good at blah, blah, blah to the TV.

24:19And the headline was, Space, the final frontier. Another great headline. Wow. And did you feel pressure at that time to top the success of Yo Sushi or were you pretty laid back about the whole affair? No, I don't think there was ever pressure to do better. The pressure for me has always come from survival. you know uh that it's the i don't know about you but it's the it's the sort of you know things you know protect against things going wrong you know things going very right and being you know i always used to say i i never wanted to be very very rich and very very famous and very very successful you know i always wanted to not be very very poor and that was that was my motivation you know and i had a sort of voice in my head when we did have yo sushi was a success in the hotel and that voice has did start up you're going to be very very rich and very very famous and very successful unfortunately i've been long enough in that world to know that this voice is just as big a delusion as this one the thing says it's all going to go wrong but you know fortunately this one you need from time to time so it gets you jumping out of bed in the morning and in when you go into a room people sort of believe you when you believe something yourself they believe you and then you know that's that's the way to do it and what was kind of digressing slightly but um what was what was your background like growing up when it when it came to money and um situation you were in like with your parents growing up etc you've done these interviews before haven't you couple very perceptive you know of course that is that's where it all comes from really well my dad was a senior army officer brigadier woodruff in ducapra association and he you know he grew up in a world where there was no inflation at all and then he used to call it yeah he's a bit of a posh guy he's just quit ghastly inflation and um you know he was very tight you know and he he um he uh he he we had to account for every penny and this that and the other and i suppose i was i was pretty resentful about that you know so i grew up you know feeling insecure about bunsen and also we my mom was from a lovely family of there were five brothers and sisters and they were all much much better off than us and my dad on an army salary um and they were all well off we used to go and stay in their rather nice houses and this that and the other and i think there was a kind of bit of a kernel of truth from the fact that i wanted to be one of them not one of us you know generally one's very loyal to your family and i wanted to be one of them so the seed was sown and i think the grit in the oyster and that oyster of that boy growing up and my dad who was a bit of a show-off you know i inherited that from him at the time and not such a good way sometimes but uh you know that sort of larger than life you know covered up you know if you want to go it would covered up as of low self-esteem that wanted to show the world and show my brother and all of that stuff.

27:27So I think, you know, so I, you know, if anybody's listening and they're thinking about doing things, I always used to think that it was not people like me who would go off and do difficult things like this. And if you're actually listening, actually it is. It's just people like you and me. And if you're a bit chippy or a bit, you know, insecure or whatever, it can be a pretty useful thing to have or a bit angry even. So don't waste it. put it to good use. And do you think that's part of the reason why you went into those industries to start with as well, be that, you know, putting on big productions, be that TV, et cetera?

28:06No, I mean, early days, I left school. I went to Marlborough, actually, Marlborough College, you know, and I left when I was 16. I was actually, I think I might have been just 17. I always say 16 because it just sounds much more entrepreneurial. We'll stick to six. Anyway, I left with two O-levels, two GCSEs. So I had nothing to do. But it was just after Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles had come out. The Doors' first album had come out. And it was rock and roll. And, you know, I actually went to Cambridge Tech to study A-levels. And I didn't get the A-levels. and in fact I got busted for drugs and spent three months in in a detention center which taught me never to ever break the law and you can imagine the brigadier and my mom were absolutely distraught you know I apologize to my mother if your podcast is reaching into heaven um I've I I'm so sorry that I put that through all that but it really taught me and I came out and I was you know it's the first time i was really down on my luck and i i remember going into the little news agent where we lived in essex i was an essex boy and buying i bought motor racing today farmers weekly because i like cars and i like um i liked uh well i like farming i worked on a farm to learn a few bob and i bought the stage and television today and in the back it said staff wanted professional and it said it wanted it was going to pay 10 shillings a day half a pound a day to work as a stage manager at the Little Theatre Club in a musical, two-handed musical called Life as a Cell.

29:46And I went, I absolutely loved it. And I could see how the money came in and I could see the production and the show-busy side. And that's how I got started. And I went from there to Richmond Theatre and then the Royal Court Theatre as a stage manager. I learned a lot about lighting. And then rock and roll came along and went on the road as a roadie. and from there I started a lighting company with a guy called Ricky Farr who put on the original Isle of Wight Festival we got the job to do the sound and the lighting at the sound company for a Rod Stewart tour his company has really worked for him and Rod said that his manager said that he wanted a big white stage and I've worked at Richmond so I knew where you bought the drapes and the rostrums and the this and that and the other.

30:36And I knew how to draw it as well. So I drew up this stage and took it in and presented it to Rod. And he said, I remember him saying, he said, well, if it can travel, it's what I've always dreamt of. Let's do it. And six months later, three months later, we turned up at rehearsals and said it's what I've always wanted. And I remember going to a dinner party, I suppose it was in those days. And people said, what do you do? And I said, actually, I'm a stage designer. you know one one in and that's what i did for the next 10 years and didn't put the big bands all the way through to live aid actually in 1985 i was just re-watching that that's come out yeah on the tv oh my studio did my jeremy tom who's my partner then did most of it studio did and but i remember suddenly that whole business the whole rock and roll business and grown up and was now being run by accountants rather than sort of you know wild boys and i remember thinking i'm sure none of your listeners ever have had this thought but I remember thinking I've got to get out of this business before I get found out and that's what I did you know imposter syndrome and I got it and that's how I got into the television world from there for a year in the wilderness but then I got into TV that so that was my story.

31:44What a great story what what other um artists did you um did you work with at those times? Well the very early days you have to cast your mind back it was the first tour I ever did was Jethro Tull the Moody Blues I traveled all over Europe with the on a private airplane with the osman brothers doing the lighting um cat stevens the rolling stones doing a spotlight for the rolling stones the faces um a lot of bands of those days and then later on you know big big shows as stage designer big shows that you know everybody from madness to ossy osborne to uh elton we did stuff for and um yeah no there was it was everybody but you know I went from being the working class of rock and roll into where the pop stars were the upper class, if you like, to work my way back up again and found my niche, sort of mid -Atlantic media kid niche, which became my world, having come from a strong host background at the beginning, host but improbable.

32:52If you hadn't taken that leap at 45 into entrepreneurship, where do you think you'd be today? What would you be doing? It's the big question. It is the big question. I don't know is the answer. I mean, do you think you always meant to build something? Do you think you're always meant to do that? Well, I think I was unemployable because I was difficult. So, I mean, I hope, I suspect, possibly I would have found a way to start up and do something else. I suspect I wouldn't have had one chance to do something that became a big deal. And I'm grateful to this day. I really am very, very grateful. That's why I try to spread it around a bit if I can.

33:36Well, can I try to spread it around full stop? so yeah no I'm I consider myself extremely fortunate and are you one of these people who believe that entrepreneurship is something you're born with or something that anybody can learn at any stage in their lives I think you can I think most stuff I think both things have an influence Felix Dennis is a publisher and there's a poem he wrote that I really like which is the first couple of verses are ideas we've had them since Eve first met Adam but take it from me execution's the key good fortune the truth is the harder you work the more that you sweat the luckier you get you want to hear the other verse yeah please though yeah um the money go find a likely investor to get what you need you toadies to greed the talent go find it but first wine and dine it it's tedious work with the talented jerk to win it.

34:37You've got to be in it, but never be late to quit and cut bait. Expansion is vanity. Profit is sanity. Overhead begs and it walks on two legs. The first step, just do it and bluff your way through it. Remember to duck. Godspeed and good luck. Love it. So is that in his book, Felix Dennis' book? It's the same name. Felix Dennis is one of the best of all those books. is called How to Get Rich. Yeah, I've read that. But he also wrote a poem by the same name. So you have to search around. Oh, I see. I've read his book. Okay, great poem. Very good book and it's a good poem. Yeah. It is kind of simple business for the most part.

35:24People are complicated and the most complicated one of the lot, me. Probably you. A couple of questions to finish up and then I've got a little quickfire round, Simon. potential of AI. How do you think it can change the game for entrepreneurs over the next decade or even quicker than that, the way things are going? I feel incredibly fortunate to be here, seeing how it will all unfold. And I'm totally positive about what will happen in the long term for the human race. The idea of superhumans, absolutely, I embrace, you know, you can't put the clock back you've got to embrace what what happens how we spread more fairly the benefits that ai will bring the world out across all the different areas so that you don't have these extremes of rich and poor in every sense in the west and across the world um i think is the is the really great challenge of our time and i risking being political i do believe that it is almost impossible to govern for anybody.

36:32Whoever we vote into power is always going to not work out because the system that we've got, 400, 1 ,000 people in Britain arguing with each other all day long, it just simply doesn't work. And I think my political view is that when digital voting arrives, that we will realize that we the people can vote for issues, not for political parties. and I do believe that with AI, what will actually happen in the much longer term is that AI will assess not our income, but our personal wealth. And we won't even pay tax according to our personal wealth, rather like council tax levels. We will pay for services direct, so we'll pay for the health system, we'll pay for education, one education system, we'll pay for roads according to our wealth.

37:23And if people don't like it, they can leave, and that's what we're saying and if the people therefore the people will take the decisions so they can't complain about them and the press will support the people presumably because they buy the newspapers and um it if the people make bad decisions you know i think brexit probably wasn't right but that's my personal view i'm not saying i'm right but if they make bad decisions they will soon learn to make good decisions. And talking of learning that's really trying to solve education in four years to turn the political party is impossible. We have to make plans for 10 or 15 or 20 years, and then we'll come through this difficult time.

38:06That's what I think will happen. It's another podcast there, isn't it? I mean, it's fascinating, isn't it? it really is um what does legacy mean to you now at this at this stage to you you um you're building something again you mentioned your book um talk to me a little bit about that simon um i i'm i'm lucky i i am i don't have a great i don't really care i won't be here for a kickoff um the two things i have is one is i won't be here for a kickoff so it doesn't really matter and secondly the risk of being a bit edgy here is that do you know how many little doobries there were at the point of your creation there were between 30 and 40 million people that are sperms competing for a chance at this life and you won i won you won so we are lucky we're lucky fuckers really we are to um to have had a chance at life and for me that's good enough and i don't want to you know one thing i can tell you is that when you get older i don't anyway spend my time looking back at what i did and being proud of this that and the other i think the legacy is you know who you've become have you become a better person for it you know all of that and that's what makes you feel good agreed no i like that um a couple of questions to finish out quick fire questions first thing that comes into your head um for you simon what is an entrepreneur first thing that comes into my head is difficult um what is a an entrepreneur is is a risk taker who is so obsessed with their idea that they have to do it because they want to see what it's like like it um what is a scale-up business?

39:52What I think is that opening some little business is not as safe as opening one which has an enormous amount of potential. And so the bigger you can go, and the more money you can raise, the more you can do. There's pros and cons to all of these things. But generally, my thing is go bigger, aim high, it's safer. What do we need to do to get More scale-up businesses. What's lacking? I can't do anything. And one of the things that I've learned in this, we live in a world where everybody has an opinion on what we should or shouldn't be doing. And I would rather say, I don't know. I simply don't know.

40:32All I know is that I can do my little bit. And if you follow me on social media, every day I'm talking about what experience I had and what I learned from it. and passing that on. And that's all I can do. But to go and be political and stand up on a platform and say, you should be doing this and you should be doing that. I don't want to do it. Apart from anything else, everybody's going to kick your bum. I can tell you what that, and I can tell you what I think, you know, a bit like Nostradamus. I can tell you what I think may happen in the world ahead. And hopefully that will be inspiring and influence people.

41:11But that's all I can do. that's why that whoever it was i can't remember his name broke how to win friends and influence people influence people is the thing not tell them what to do um last question um and this can be from somebody now or someone in the past um who inspires you when it comes to um entrepreneurship well i mean it's very boring but uh richard branson it was the first to do it and he didn't wear a tie and he didn't wear cufflinks and um i thought if he could do it anybody can do it anybody who get even the smallest entrepreneur starting a window cleaning company i'm a total fan of anybody who gets up steps out of their comfort zone and goes and does anything for reward for what they do rather than for the time they put in a fascinating life you clearly have um and you know some amazing successes in there um that are you know very inspirational uh that i know will resonate with it with our audience um as i say i i i came across you again through your your instagram page is that the easiest way for people um to to to connect with you and um to to learn from your experiences i know you mentioned you got a book coming out in spring 26 was that right yeah okay yeah no all all we're all the social media i think it's um at yo simon woodruff W-O-O-D-R-O-F-E and then there's yo.co.uk which takes you to everything and very welcome to come on forward and be part of the revolution in the best sense of the world Simon, thank you very much indeed 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.