Our Regrets On Interviewing James Watt

0:00All right, welcome back to Secret Leaders. I'm Dan I'm Chris That's Chris Yeah that's true Yeah and we are You're Dan The host of Secret Leaders We're Secret Leaders Yeah so This is a little Christmas recap Because Tis the season So we're named Secret Leaders Really when you think about What the show is I said that to you Yeah yeah I said that to you The more we do it though I'm like it is a strange name Because they're not that secret As leaders I said all of this to you A few months ago Yeah you did It's true You were like Should we change the name And I was like Yeah should we change the name Before we invest all this money In branding I was like it was my favourite podcast Yeah it was really stubborn about it i was low ego about it then he got me all confident about it again and now we sit in here on the intro to a christmas episode second in the business charts so so the thing that you want to reflect on diary of a ceo is quite an odd name i mean it doesn't do that either yeah that is a weird name the best podcast name full stop in my opinion modern wisdom high performance yeah it's also exceptional high performance may be the best yeah that's really good yeah they are good anyway I mean, we'll sort of start with this name now.

0:58So yeah, so I'm Chris. Anyway, no. So speaking of Chris, Murs. Okay. Yeah. See what I did there? No. Yeah. It's a Christmas episode sort of thing. So I suppose what we're going to try and do today was we were trying to recap the season so far. Obviously, I joined the show this year. It's been quite a thing. Very challenging. Very fun. Very funny. We always actually said like the thing of coming together and doing a show together is like at the end of the day it has to be really fun we have to enjoy what we're doing and i would say that um for everything else that's happened and i feel like it's been a really great period so far we have laughed a lot we've laughed a lot and you know the thing that i always said i really wanted was for when you describe how you feel about it the first words to be it's very challenging so i'm i'm just thrilled podcast businesses are nuanced they tell you they have their challenges yeah they do basically getting really great guests into a studio on time yeah yeah which you were very i mean i feel like you've had some you've had some very strong preconceptions no no they'll come to us you'll no no no all this stuff they will yeah but i feel like these have slowly been broken down you've seen our numbers do you remember the time that tony wheeler the guy that managed to travel the world couldn't get from fucking shoreditch to that feels like a long time ago yeah he was such a dude as well sold a business what he's selling a business for 90 million and then now he's just like chilling he just goes on nice flights all over the world doesn't he travels and talks at events and says things like i was invited by italy to come to their event who is it yeah what italy invites people to events does it no first of all it's a really good times i mean richard harpen stands out to me like that you know from home serve yeah from home serve to actually sell a business i mean valuations are crazy to actually sell a business for four billion it's quite crazy and his number one bit of advice was like copy and pivot and i think the other businesses yeah so simple i really liked it so what do you think was the best interview of the year um do you know what i think the one that i maybe enjoyed the most was probably nadim zahawi yeah i really enjoyed that interview i thought he was really interesting i kind of came from a place i think the interviews i always enjoyed the most anyway are ones where i've got low expectations because i have preconceived ideas did you have no expectations of that it's more that i really don't like boris and i don't like the tories yeah i've never voted for the tories and he's so presumably don't like him then in advance yeah and i'm not like that tribal that i'm like therefore all the politicians but yeah he was chairman of the tory party and so i think it was tax scams yeah exactly right so it's just all of these things that i'm like no this is someone that i won't like and actually i thought he was superb he was great on the day great on the day brilliant communicator very charming took tough questions so charming all my banter very well including me rinsing him about boris parties he took that very well i think we could have been tougher on him but he was very good on the day you you weren't that tough on him i did keep on bringing up the boris parties to him yeah very uncomfortable i was early in my podcast yeah i feel like i feel like you as well um have been feeling your way into it a little bit, right?

4:12At that point, you just weren't going to rinse him. No, I wasn't sure how he would go. Tell us about how you dodged the tacks, which if you want to come back on. We did ask him how he dodged the tacks. You can come back on. We did. Anyway, I thought he was good. I really enjoyed that interview. So that was probably my favourite. What about you? Honestly, there have been so many I've loved. I love the moment you get lost in the interview. as in like I know I'm interviewing someone and I'm having so much fun that I'm just like I've got loads of questions to ask this person ah so Spencer Matthews yeah I mean Spencer Matthews was funny the one where he went anonymous you were so into it he got lost didn't say much in that one but I also really did like that one because I had watched Maiden Chelsea when I was younger and so I was like it's so nice to have one on the cast here and it was interesting to hear about like his wife's business and all that sort of stuff so yeah a good interview uh deborah median for me i think was awesome because one i grew up watching the show and i love dragons then two i don't know if i've seen her on like other shows so yeah she's not she doesn't do a lot of yeah she doesn't need to but she doesn't do much i let's say i mean podcasting is difficult if you've got lots of great shows you're gonna have good people on lots of shows it's good publicity but i haven't seen her do a long-form interview before and so being the people that were able to capture that moment i thought was really fucking cool obviously for us like a hit as a hit of an episode but she was also most popular episode of the series she was also just so fucking nice and so nice in person and so you know she doesn't have to be like she's probably the most famous person we've had on recently and yet she was i would say probably the nicest person we've had on recently which i think is awesome she was authentic you know when people say that and it's a bit like overused word but she was she was authentic yeah totally herself um and then yeah i mean outside of that and also i gave her my heights products and she rejected two of them which i thought was quite funny i thought it was great yeah because obviously you know that it's honest though that's why i like she was like i'm not gonna take these i don't want them and you have you know you have to shill those products yeah in every episode and so i always just leave the room i can't handle this anymore yeah and then and then she i just i stayed around i'm just surprised you didn't offer to help her with her personal brand yeah well i mean there's still time um and so i stayed in the room and she she said no she didn't want them but she did take them she took one of them she took vitals yeah but that's why i quite liked it that's what i mean and I described them all to her and she was like, oh, this sounds good.

6:34The other two, nah. But that's how you know that someone actually meant yes on the first one because she was just rejected all of them. It's not overly polite, yeah? Yeah, oh no. She was herself. Yeah. If you were only going to listen to one episode this year, my interview with Chris Donnelly. It's just a masterclass. Was that this year? Well, I think so, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was in 2024. How crazy is that, by the way, that I interviewed you this year? Yeah? I think maybe January or February. What, that came to your house this year? I think January or February, yeah. Maybe February? it's a fucking quick turnaround yeah so i interviewed you um and we had a lot of fun and then we went to the pub yeah we did and we were talking about well i think we were talking sense at the start and not by the end yeah and yeah and then um here we are here we are running the company together and co-hosting in a studio that we've built and all of this stuff it's pretty pretty interesting turnaround i can't believe that that was a shit i mean this year i would say has been the fastest most without being too cliche transformational year i've ever had and that means so much stuff has happened this year it's very hard to feels like three years and one but it also feels like a lot of years leading up to that moment as well so that can't be your favorite actual episode though i mean it was really terrible yeah it was awful yeah um i come back to me yours yours yours i guess yours is definitely just deborah meadans right uh deborah meadans is great I mean, and this is like funny because the interview was so early.

7:59It was so last minute. He literally filled in for us. But like Daniel Priestley for me, like I've read Daniel Priestley's book since I was like a kid. Oh, that was your first interview as well. Was that the first one? That was your first interview on Secret Leaders. Oh, it actually was. That was your first episode. Yeah. So like legitimately. You always remember your first. Yeah. So I've read Dan Priestley's books for 10 years. Like I've loved them. I've read them. I've read Key Personal Influence four, five, six, seven times. I've read like oversubscribed so many times. I've given them to so many entrepreneurs.

8:31And it's your philosophy. Like you're doing what he talks about. Exactly. And so like, I can't remember who dropped out, but someone dropped out. Herman Hauser. Herman Hauser dropped out, which yeah, that's, yeah. I mean, he's worth$180 billion, his company. He's joining us next season. We've already recorded it. He's coming on next season. Which is amazing. And that is amazing. but I think yeah with Priestley because I would say like he quite intimately had an effect on me as an author I obviously then got to know him a little bit later and I still think he's awesome I think he's amazing at explaining relatively complex things to early entrepreneurs which I think is quite a challenging thing to actually do and I think that most advice you see online these days is like you know not that practical whereas like I feel he's very practical and so I actually love that in interviews yeah i know you mean you felt like listening to daniel priestly you understood a lot better about the opportunity that entrepreneurship is and where it's at um in a period in time right because he was talking about you know what it's like in the 1800s and the 1900s then now and what that looks like in the future and that geography doesn't necessarily matter so much he's a very good he's a typical author right he spends time thinking about what those thoughts are and how to shape them and stuff and i think you know it makes a difference yeah so who's yours do you know what i'll tell you who i absolutely loved yeah surprising because it wouldn't wouldn't have been in my top 10 i don't think of choices lana barba i really enjoyed that interview very strange interview wasn't it like what a story but it's also you know why it's interesting is because we're usually interviewing the actual entrepreneur about their journey and their story and this was an interview with the ex-editor of the ft so one of the world's best journalists yeah and like we talked about putin we talked about massa like it was wild actually as interviews go it's just really interesting rich stories he was super engaging um and maybe one of the reasons why i like that so much is because i'm so used to interviewing entrepreneurs I'm not as used to interviewing proper journalists.

10:43And so you've got this very different energy out of him. But my God, it was a bloody good interview. Yeah, it was a great interview. What was it like for you to enter the big podcasting world with two big Ds? What, you and Dan? DMS and Daniel Priestley, yeah. I mean, it certainly didn't feel like I was entering stardom, shooting the first episode in your front room of your house. Oh, I see. It wasn't like I was... I sort of had a vision of, you know, me walking on to, you know, the diary of CEO. You're there. Herman Howes is there. I'm like, okay, I'm interviewing a guy who owns a company worth 170 billion.

11:18And this guy. God, actually, that was supposed to be your first interview. That's a very intimidating first interview. I was shitting myself. Yeah. And I would say I get nervous about nothing. And yeah, I was absolutely. I remember walking to your house that morning being like, how did we end up with the guy that invented the microchip that's in 99 of all smartphones how was that my first interview and then yeah that's not a gift that is a curse it was wild and then i think we also had simon scribb that day yeah he's obviously a friend of ours which is which was nice because yeah i think that's easier yeah by then i was much more relaxed but i mean podcasting is strange i thought this year i wasn't going to be doing doing much and so i thought it was going to be a relatively quiet year i didn't think i was going to start a new business um and so this year has been marked with busyness obviously the pod actually takes time and serious work and serious consideration and like it's not for the faint-hearted well also our setup because we've been wanting to move into a studio yeah our plan was to record on fridays yeah and that is the the deal yeah full stop for both of us um but when you don't have your own studio that's not how it goes and it's chaotic without how it goes down it's like where can we get a studio spot and when at what time it's being stressful my general advice to people starting a podcast is that it doesn't come with the immediate media publicity stuff that a lot of people associate with it you know the the growth of the podcast i think comes from the youtube algorithm fundamentally and then short form content that drives the pod and so you're not just building a pod you're building a whole marketing apparatus for a pod yeah and so i'm really pleased with what we've done so far i mean i literally i think that the amount of people who reach out they say we're like love the show like it's ranking so well but yeah i mean it's it's challenging like the economics of it it's not neither of our primary business and so it's not it doesn't have to make loads of money but for it now to be you know breaking even and making profit is a really nice feeling yeah uh so yeah i feel like it's been is it six months we started recording in july um when i launched my new business yeah timing huh timing huh but yeah i mean i've loved it i feel like uh i mean even from a personal perspective like we interviewed nicola and then you and nicola were like you should meet my husband when you go on holiday and i met her husband on holiday and like he's the coolest dude ever and so i had such a nice holiday with him i wasn't on holiday with him but we hung out with him a lot and that was really nice so coincidental but so to meet actual friends through the process of doing this um and so yeah like i think it's been amazing how do you think you've seen your interview style change like since you've been starting because obviously the first one you're a bit deer in headlight scene now i mean even today he's just like chilling quite comfy yeah i looked horizontal in that photo i saw of the episode afterwards you were very relaxed yeah um i don't know i mean i'm not saying i regret not being harder on guests necessarily but it's something that's played in my mind that you were upset about james what uh yeah i was and i think i'll get into that like the when i came on the show originally like i actually think that interviewing is a style that you learn and you get better and better and better and you become more comfortable asking questions in between the planned questions and therefore there's a skill to that and remembering what you're going to ask at the beginning i was like i have to exactly say it as exactly as it's written and then i was like no i don't i just have to ask the question and so i think that took a few weeks to get used to but obviously there's been interviews that i would love to push harder on like the nadim one if we're going to do an entrepreneur interview normally it's an entrepreneur conversation but with like the nadim one you could have pushed harder on that one as i could have and then obviously james came on from brew dog and you know his story is nuanced because he took the people to court who um called him out and he won that case and so publicly everyone's like you know you guys should have crucified him on the episode but it's like but he did win the case in court and so it's so much more nuanced but i do wish we had explored that topic more with i think that one's really interesting because i i personally because i think that what's important is you're doing the right thing that you believe in as the interviewer so the reason i went harder on adeem and then i was like okay that was pretty good is because i don't like tories and my bias was coming out all over the shop right you know it was anti boris and yeah it was just coming out all over the shop this is really me well it's james watt i've been following that case you know for you know his career via linkedin before we became friends so i know that he took those people to court i know that he won and i'm sure there is some nuance there like you said but like i actually do believe in his version of events broadly i actually do and i know he has aspergers and so there will be like personality things but he built a big billion dollar brand and you know that takes a lot and a certain type of person and a certain type of culture in a period of time so i've personally been on his side for it i think for you it's slightly more difficult because you've built an audience on social media so much of it has been around uh the entertainment of bad bosses and here's what i believe exactly you do yeah that's what i mean that's that's so your thing and here's one of the poster boys of it and that's why i think you maybe got a lot of shit i didn't but it's not my thing i wouldn't even say i don't even mind about getting shit i just felt like i finished the episode and i thought wow we made a good episode there but i wish i had pushed more on let's say you did win the case and you were right do you think you could have been nicer yeah considerate towards your staff easy question to ask exactly yeah should have asked stuff that you care about yeah it's so yeah yeah damn and be like i'm screenshotting the answers yeah thanks for the content my people um so yeah i think that's that's been a it's been something to get used to but like i'm now really i feel really comfortable doing it now but how much more combative do you want to be because like oh as your friend you're not actually that combative you're quite direct but you're not i'm more challenging than you like as in in general in terms of like a personality that are dynamic between us like all that stuff like that's not that's not i wouldn't say so naturally you you're actually quite easy going yeah i think it depends on the situation right i feel like if in my ordinary life day to day i would always seek to have like a quiet life that's what i mean yeah and i'll allow opinions to happen around me that i don't agree with yeah and i won't challenge them but if you're like coming on the show i would say then you get the more direct more combative side of me which is like the difference is when someone's saying something around me that i don't agree with i'm okay for that to exist if i'm platforming it i have to associate my view with it right right right i think that's the key so i don't know if i'm inviting people on for combat necessarily but i feel like that will be part part and parcel of going forward like i'm not a huge fan of the fact that i think that entrepreneurs and celebrities and whatever do get away with with lying so much and i feel like if if you come on the show like we will probably explore those things and so i think that's fine yeah i also think you know thing that you rightly value as views and actually challenging people and that stuff will get a lot more views in general yeah that's one of the things that's quite interesting right if if if we had actually challenged james a lot more on that stuff probably you know would have actually someone else just did it on another pod and it's a really great segment really yeah yeah so obviously you've been doing this for seven years yeah and originally audio under the duvet to make the sound quality better on the audio which is wild to think about and also like the backlog of secret leaders is crazy yeah never to be forgotten that the reason i joined the show is it was my favorite show uh so how has it changed for you because obviously now it's all video we're in a studio there's two things one is obviously having a co-host and then the second so a really interesting different dynamic on intimacy when there's three of you um then on just two of you and i think that can be a positive thing and a negative thing but i think our dynamic is very natural which is fortunate it wouldn't necessarily be so i think that's why lucky that it's just very natural i feel like we feel very comfortable and therefore can make a guest feel really comfortable because that is the thing about the best thing about doing a podcast in person instead of over zoom or whatever just audio is the intimacy um is so much more palpable and valuable in person yeah it just really makes a big difference yeah and so that can sometimes be the challenge if uh there's three of you versus just two of you is can you get that same intimacy from the person can you get that same depth can you get them to feel as comfortable i think we've actually done a really good job of that but i think that wasn't a given like we just had an interview mark and that felt like three people having a conversation who were really enjoying the conversation yeah definitely that wouldn't you'd never have that over zoom no no no no for sure not yeah like i was 100 in that conversation yeah so i think that that side of it and then video um i'm still working Am I up to video, right?

20:20Video was my big challenge this year. I set for myself on my personal brand and everything, you know, it was like, can I do videos and stick them on LinkedIn and Instagram and move the podcast to video? Because at the core of all of this, like I'm just still really, really deeply British, which is I'm trying to work out of me, right? I'm trying to, and so, you know, process of osmosis surrounding myself with people that inspire me with their attitude to the whole personal brand stuff. yeah you are right at the top of that list like you and simon squibb are right at the top of that list um and tim you know tim and like you guys are people that i spend a lot of time with um and the fact that you're all doing it and you're all recently doing it as well like longer than i have but still recent in grand scheme of things yeah helps me feel more comfortable about all this video in my fucking face all the time and talking to the video and yeah i mean it's it's working right i mean if you just look at like we haven't been doing youtube very long and the views are starting to fly in the subscribers are growing yeah you know obviously we could do much more broad content but that wouldn't be like true to the show and so yeah i'm i'm incredibly pleased what we've made so far and if this is like our first six months together yeah not even right it's actually your first three months of actual just having the show out is that right yeah christ i do feel like i've done this for a while that is amazing isn't it yeah yeah there's a show's only been out for three months yeah and we built a team built a studio office yeah obviously we kept jay yeah i call him muscles jay jay well you do now i've never heard that yeah i've never heard that yeah yeah yeah if they keep this in the show jay has amazing guns that's what we were talking about earlier this is true yeah we say we built this studio i think jay built the studio and tom does like that yeah um well actually you say jay that tom made you carry everything but tom's version of it is you got annoyed when he suggested he'd carry one thing apparently you wanted to and you didn't want to use the lift either jay was like let me uh let me get this one yeah exactly so i think the other thing that's very important about a show is like you interview someone but then the key takeaways that someone gives you so if you're to point to a couple of points we've got from guests in the last couple of months like what are standout points that the audience should take away well if i'm thinking back to one that i thought was super interesting justine roberts founder of mumsnet yeah um there's so much in that episode that's really fascinating i think they're the fourth biggest social media company in the uk they are the first company i think in europe to sue open ai so chat gpt um in a case that you know they're right about realistically you know which is that chat gpt's basically been scraping their data and is monetizing and selling it you know that's like you know they're the first publisher or social network to do that um and underneath all of that is a founder who's been in that business for almost two decades right um it's still like deep in the weeds with it really cares about it passionate about it so passionate about it and i think that's you know that there is a lesson there as well which is that like you know she's also a very powerful woman like she now has a cbe so you know interviews prime ministers interviews you know prime ministers beg to go on mom's net if they want to win the vote yeah because they basically have all the women in the uk that go on Mumsnet and just like, so there's a really interesting sense of like purpose and power that exists there.

23:54And even though she did come on and say, you know, she doesn't want to be there for another decade, you know, she does want to think about who our successor is and move on. I think there's often not enough celebration of founders that are building lasting legacy businesses, businesses that are designed to stick around. You know, I think in today's world, we spend a lot of time celebrating ultimately by accident get rich quick kind of founders yeah like flash the pan vc once you know they had the exit for the 100 million but then like nothing ever happened after that you never heard them but they're gonna end up getting shut down the founders doing something else that's a very natural progression and i understand it but actually not enough people do what justine's doing and i think it's really cool like it's really cool to like genuinely care about your mission so much and be making a dent in really really valuable space that you were doing ivf and learning from there right and you're a bloke like there's so much more to just like mum's net than just that right it's a culturally important place so i think that to me i find that very inspiring because sometimes like all people building brands some days i'm like god when will this fucking just end and i can be out and free and other days i'm like i really i think i should do this the rest of my life actually i'm so happy why would i want to exit like do you really want to leave a business on purpose that you found like your your right fit for it's so hard to find that in general and all businesses are hard so why rush to leave it so i oscillate between the two i think it's important to find that i think it's such a good topic that we should cover more in the future is like i think there are businesses you should exit and businesses that maybe you don't need to exit and i'd say like my first business an agency business like 100 staff loads of clients still even in the moment where it was making millions of pounds of profit yeah still felt like sand in the hand because like you lose a client and then you have to like reduce the staff and then like suddenly you get this cascade of stuff down whereas yeah momentum is everything and momentum goes both ways whereas like a business like lottie a business like heights like they are just the most unbelievable example of compound yeah You know, like year after year, they just grow and grow and grow.

26:04And the retention's amazing. And before long, you're like, wow, that is like a really sizable business that pays out a really healthy dividend. Yeah. And actually, you know, when you say that stuff, it does make me think I'm really excited to be building secret leaders alongside actually having a live consumer business out in the world. Like you're really interesting to see where this isn't two, three, four years. Right. Yeah. Because like you say, those businesses, they really do compound. Yeah. I mean it's the thing that young entrepreneurs always say they understand compound growth compound no one understands compound yeah they just say they do and it's obviously easy to spot in retrospect but like the the reality is that like great businesses just fundamentally don't happen overnight and it often really if you're looking into it like we just had a great business on we had Mark from Horace on you know he's 10 years into that journey he's now making 25 million in a year but it's 10 years in and yeah the first few years you wouldn't have looked at that and been like wow that was you know amazing i think my i think my key takeaway from the entrepreneurs i've enjoyed the most and we talked to mark about this a lot earlier was like really fundamentally getting down to the nuts and bolts of who the customer is and i think he was so good at explaining that as a d2c brand like how he connects with men for skincare and like how he does that how he connects them how he thinks about it and i think that the takeaway i would say is like you're never wasting any time talking to your customers that's true like any time spent with your customers asking them what they want how they want it when they want it is always good news because like if you got like a hundred heights customers in a room and you just ask them a hundred questions you would literally walk away and be like okay i've got the roadmap yeah like here's the next five years i'm literally doing a customer shoot next week so i'm but not 100 i wish i had 100 in of room a bit amazing yeah maybe you could heights conference yeah yeah for sure i mean i think you're right but then you know people don't tend to turn up just so that you can ask them tons of questions so kind of what's the value but anyway um giving some free pills i'll tell you who else i thought was really really interesting and a very different vibe damien bradfield you know half a billion dollar exit not happy no very understated as well very like getting out of him the number that he sold for it was near impossible i mean we gave it a good go didn't you have like a is it high is it lower yeah apparatus which is quite fun but yeah not happy but strange story in the end we transfer wasn't it it was a strange story and it had a very rushed exit six weeks to exit yeah um huge exit but like again not happy because he wasn't in control of the exit it's not how he wanted it to go down and weirdly like and that's after almost getting public for a few billion as well so that does make sense like in that light as well as it smacks a bit after yeah sure it's i mean we we transfer it's like one of those businesses that if you had owned like the majority of it yourself out there the dreamiest business ever to own and so i sometimes think again like the and that was his point yeah that was his it would be great but it would be a great business to run yeah that was his point his point was that it was a massive mistake to raise money he had the best business on on earth and raised money and it made it a business that was designed to sell when actually it was never really a business design so it was a business designed for unbelievable cash flow and incredible careers yeah there is there is something that daniel priest said to us which i listen to and i think about a lot which is i've built a business this year which feels like to the ordinary person the one of the more remarkable businesses they've ever seen however dan priestly sat down and was like if you discover a business like that so not similar to we transfer for example or businesses like that super high defensibility you know incredible margin like not that hard to run people will come coming for it and that means that like market forces will identify the unbelievable outcome that you have in your business and therefore will like copy as richard harpen says and pivot your business and so like the only the only reason why you might sell a business is that the external market forces are driving at you and like year by year knocking away at your profit and margin and that's fundamentally what we see happening to massive businesses all the time is that they kind of go stale they they don't reinvent and then the market eats up their lunch basically yeah and so i don't know if you can hold on to a business forever for the dividend but you certainly don't need to be as much of a rush to sell it as I think a lot of people are.

30:28And he said that, and I remember being like, fuck, that is some good shit. Thanks, Priestley. Write a book on it. There was always in parallel James Watt's perspective of die in the chair. He was like, you know, I hate it when entrepreneurs, when entrepreneurs come to me asking for investment, and then they're like, here's the exit slide. Which is quite ironic because every founder is told to do that, but whatever. Sure, that's James's approach. He's like, your exit strategy is to die in the chair. Especially while he's like exiting. yeah exactly right exactly um but then at the same time you know timo bolt from gusto he seems very much like someone who wants to die in the chair like he seems like there isn't really a number that he would exit for he just he was so passionate so mission driven i remember being like i remember i might have even said it in the interview i was like i could follow that guy yeah like i was like i can buy into his mission yeah like to me that mission wasn't so big until he communicated it to me and i was like that's a big mission yeah yeah then they do hundreds of millions in revenue on meal boxes and i'm one of their customers right i absolutely love it um but you know he makes a good point in terms of like how big that company can go and yeah you see it you see there's an angle of like die in the chair energy um i think it's like listening you know even just a reflection of some of the people who've said this the biggest business owners the ones who built the biggest brands that we admire the most they're multi-decade stories typically speaking and again it's one of those complete fallacies that you can build a big brand and make a dent in any kind of way um without doing that without sitting in the chair for a long enough period of time and driving it and being the driving force behind it yeah and like you know even even my own experience i did verb for 10 years exactly 10 years almost you know yeah and so i'm not saying that was a massive business but it was a very big success yeah and that took exactly 10 years and so i just don't think it's possible no matter what you read online you see all these videos you know you know ultimate wealth or like get rich in x period of time most of it's just clickbait nonsense yeah yeah and fundamentally the real key to this stuff is just to still be in love with your mission at some point because if you fall out of love with the mission or you get bitter like damien did like you know that does fundamentally change how you feel about the business and then it's not going to last for you yeah so unwrapping our christmas episode here those are some of the things we've enjoyed throughout the year yeah what are you looking forward to next year i think we have this like crazy roster of people coming on so i i genuinely believe that there are few if not no shows that have the amount of successful billionaire multi-billionaire founders coming on who and we will get into those stories like we have founders worth you know combined 200 billion coming on in the first few months of next year which first few weeks first few weeks and like we're going to get into with them we're going to talk about like how they built it how it works like what was the nuance what makes a billion pound business and you don't get many shows that get to do that you know like we're having really successful entrepreneurs coming on which i am personally very excited about and i know we've shot some of them already and they're insane uh so i think that's my most looking forward to what about you um i'm a man of simple tastes chris the general knowledge that i'm going to come to this studio and record in this studio with our team our team and not and as much as i've loved going to other studios because they genuinely they've been fucking awesome and fun yeah they have but like i can't live my life that way there was a period of time where i feel like okay cool yes can we record this emergency thing on a tuesday and now on a thursday what yeah yeah for a little period of time sure but um i can't be just running heights and i'm sure you can't also be running creator academy like this like i can't be doing those things well without a consistent schedule so knowing that this is going to be happening on fridays in this studio in this space and this is where guests come to i think it's going to make me fall in love with the whole process even more yeah and i've really enjoyed transitioning from doing this on my own um you know first over zoom and then in our front room and stuff and then doing it with you like starting off in the front room and then this studio and then that studio into here to wrap up the year i've enjoyed that but this feels very much like the start and i'm so looking forward to people coming here seeing how beautiful the studio is how awesome our office is how great everything just looks and feels how awesome our own team is um honestly that like building vibes for 2025 and that's just going to result in bigger better more interesting guests more organized team better content like it's a full it's a full business now and i think that the the sky is the limit for where we can go and there's so many shows that were great business shows that now aren't great business shows and i feel like that really is a gap for us to fill something that's really useful to entrepreneurs yeah yeah with some behind the scenes chat like this i think the other thing we're going to focus on next year is uh obviously we'd be making ads because as much as everyone hates ads a podcast tends to make the majority of its money from ads and so we have to put ads in the show to create the content and so some people have not liked our ads a huge amount and to those people i say suck it up suck it up guys well we can make slightly better ads i think we can we can improve we yeah we can make better ads but i need you guys to understand okay all of you that we're going to get on the best founders in the world to the show we have a whole studio a whole team of people we're going to make incredible episodes and we do need sponsors to pay for it that's right yeah yeah so we're not selling you anything like we're making this stuff for free right yeah we would love you to use wise for your bank account yeah some iso 27001 i mean why is like i actually did do an ad for wise it's so funny with ads actually because with an ad you have to make the ad that the sponsor tells you to make but what i'm about to tell you is actually way better than the ad which is i started a wise account for my new business recently and it has literally been amazing because the problem i had before i have loads of international clients all paying into a uk-based pound sterling account disaster like losing so much money whipped up a wise account next couple of days like multi-currency accounts therefore immediately saving more money the other problem that most banks get wrong especially the neo banks is the fact that they don't allow you to have someone administer the account on your behalf yes it is a fucking disaster yes we don't talk about that that's so annoying it's honestly so frustrating like i my new business has gone well and so it's like processing a lot of money a lot of supplier payments and so forth and i'm having to sit there you have to be exactly i'm sitting there on a friday my fd is like can you make these payments i'm like logging in like typing put the password and every whereas with wise i just immediately assigned it to my fd and now my life is better so if you want an ad yeah that was not an ad but should have been an ad and same as secret leaders right we've just got russ just send them all to him he does them we're not doing the payments personally i'm still not if you run a business if you run a business and have a bank account you will totally relate to what we're saying there's such a stupid setup that it's unbelievable uh so thank you wise for that and go to dubai also wise is a fucking sick product so like it's so funny that they make you be like wise is the best currency multi-account that there possibly is in the world just show them us using a product so easy anyway this may have sounded a bit like a christmas episode yeah it's not officially uh please do come back next week christmas episode more vibes with mark from horace so founder of yeah he's the founder of france's number one skincare brand for men yeah um literally built it in the last decade overtaken everyone else flying and we're gonna have a little christmas wrap up ourselves with a christmas giveaway yeah indeed we're going to be giving away all of christmas money are we are we well well i mean there's no point giving away my money it's more exciting to give away yours sure okay yeah are we giving a tax thing don't worry we're giving away books we're giving away books yeah that's true yeah our favorite books our favorite books and uh it'll be a whole christmas giveaway thing we don't want to give away too much right now because you need to come back you need to come back and listen so anyway without further ado i'm dan I'm Chris and this has been Secret Leaders see you next week