From Cod to Culture: What Inishmore Teaches Us About the Experience Economy

0:00This episode is sponsored by Michael's, your destination for all things birthday parties. We just had Lucky's first birthday, and it was so great to be able to go into Michael's and get everything. Of course, I knew they had craft supplies there, but I didn't realize how expansive their party supplies were. And Michael's really is where you can go to get everything for a party, whether you're planning a kid's birthday or even an adult celebration. They've got over 4 ,500 party supplies, more than 60 different themes, and prices starting at just 99 cents. Plus, they've recently lowered prices on hundreds of items.

0:30We found adorable decorations, balloons, everything we needed to pull the party together without making a bunch of different shopping trips. Plus, I always have a good time going to Michael's. I love shopping there. I could just browse the aisles forever. But if you're short on time like I always seem to be, you can also get same-day delivery or buy online and pick up at the store. They even offer free helium inflation on select balloon styles, which is such a lifesaver, and it was for our party, truly. So if you've got a birthday coming up or just a celebration, remember Michael's Everything to Celebrate Anything.

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1:55David McWilliams: The� اس it Ghilaire Theŭ ó' a south So with Genesis, the Polish culture is still alive. And it's a glorious day. Good morning. And I'm a little bit older and I'm a little bit older in the Gaelic. And I'm a little bit older. You hate all that shit. Will, can I go and do it again, Lars? Anyway, I'm a little bit older. And I'm a little bit older than me. And I'm a little bit older over the weekend. You were. And I'm just telling you, John, you're sitting in the Nishmoor, you rent a bike, right? You're sitting there on the quay, right? In between the rain. Viché, fluk bojtje. Which there was a lot of.

3:13David McWilliams: There was a lot of rain. Fluk moor. There was a lot of bojtje. There was a lot of bojtje, right? But renting a bike, you go out, you just, there's a little place called the Aran Bike Hire, a fella called Michael, rent a bike, off to Dunengis. Lovely. And you're sitting there and you're looking at these structures that are so ancient and so different and they're so evocative. And then you're going for a little stroll. I was probably the only man who walked from Dunengis to Kilronan, which is a long walk. It's just, it was across the top spine of the island. Yeah. And sat in the afternoon. The lads didn't go with you at all.

3:52David McWilliams: No, the lads couldn't be arsed. The lads couldn't be arsed. They sat in the boozer. but I was getting into my poetic self I was trying to figure out a podcast John and I was looking out on all of Connemara you could see the 12 bends, you could see the Gael Thugton Connemara, you could see out beyond Clifton, you could see the other side just beyond Inish Man Inish Ear, you could see out to the Burn it was extraordinary it gets quite high up, it gets quite high Inish more and then of course you're in great bars great bars lovely little bar called Joe Waddy's and we sat there thank you very much Grace for looking after us in Joe Waddy's and I just thought it puts you in touch with a different type of Irishness something that brings you into and it's because of the deep culture there and it's because of the remoteness and it's because amazingly that the people there have figured out tourism without I think, now maybe people will disagree, without over-tourism.

5:01Didn't feel over-touristic. For example I cycled down to the very very very west of the island. Not a sinner. So once you get away from Dunengis and the main town there's nobody there. Is Joe Wattie one of those bars that is a bit like a lobster pot? Like it's easy to get in there

5:20David McWilliams: but it's very hard to get out there And there is an even bigger lofster, but I can tell you, called McDonough's. Yeah. Right? Yeah, we didn't get out until very late. But again, what I'm saying, the contrast, John. Yeah. Between last week, we were at Ile d 'Aray in France. Yes, you were. With a bit of sunshine. Ile d 'Aray in France. Sunshine. Without the bosta. Sophisticated, cosmopolitan. Well, actually, Inishmore is so cosmopolitan. There are so many different races there. It's amazing. And the reason one of the locals told me, he said, the local young fellas don't want to work. everybody...

5:53David McWilliams: They don't want to work? Yeah, he said everyone working in the bars are Guatemalans or Spaniards or French people. Yeah, it's quite strange, right? So it's like a microcosm of Europe or the world in this island off the coast of Ireland. The most remote place in Ireland. And a lot of those guys, are they arriving in Inishmore to kind of get away from it all? I would say lots of people are getting away from it all. I would say lots of it. And actually, the whole podcast, John, today is going to be on the economics of experience. Right. And I'm going to contrast the fortunes of these two islands, the historical fortunes.

6:26Of Ile de Re.

6:27David McWilliams: Ile de Re and Inishmore, right? So I know that for the seasoned French traveler, the comparison between Inishre and Ile de Moor might not necessarily be the thing. But as I was cycling, Jean, I thought they're very, very similar. They're remote, whatever, except, of course, Ile de Re, much, much richer historically. Yeah. And the type of punter who goes to Ile-le-Raye is a very well-heeled French bourgeois creature. The type of fella who turns up in Nishmoor, anyone could turn up. Yeah, that's the beauty of it. And it's wilder. Yeah. And it's much more fun. Yeah. And it really is much more fun.

7:08David McWilliams: It's got a madness about it. And it's got a crack about it. And you can sense that anything can happen. You go into one of those lobster pots. Yeah. And God knows who you'll come out with or in what shape or whatever, right? I mean, it was a lot of talk and nonsense at the bar. But what fascinated me was the way in which the islanders of Inishmore have actually negotiated the change in the global economy. So in the past, the idea was that if you're from a place like Inishmore, you are remote, and as a consequence, you are always and everywhere going to be dependent on somebody else. But what I saw there was a thriving local tourist economy giving people an experience, not just tourism, but it's an experience we'll talk about that is actually very memorable, number one.

8:02Do you know how many tourists they get a year to Inishmore? Between 250 ,000 and 300 ,000 people go to Inishmore, right?

8:11David McWilliams: It's phenomenal. They get 2 ,500 people a day during the summer. Now, lots of them are day trippers over and back in boats or whatever. But that is an amazing success story. Yeah, it is. It's an extraordinary success story. And they have managed at the same time to keep the culture bio and the Chang 'e bio and all that sort of stuff. So what I was thinking was the podcast is going to be how remote places maintain and even increase their economic strength, their economic diversity, their economic muscularity. at a time when you have the internet, you have massive competition for people's attention.

8:52David McWilliams: That's what we're going to talk about. Well, it's interesting, though, that, you know, we've kind of spoken about this before. We've talked about it a lot off air, but it's the whole idea of other places, just to compare the likes of Ilderay and Inishmore being a real hub and lively and all that kind of stuff. But there's all these areas of Spain and France where they are completely emptying out. And they are the kind of these beautiful remote areas that are devoid of people. And that is the big downside. The question is whether or not we're looking at the death of distance. Does distance matter?

9:33When we were younger, distance mattered a lot. Yeah. The question is, how have certain communities managed to actually sustain themselves? else now one of the interesting is inish more do you remember we finished the last time podcast on the cooperative housing yes it really struck me when i was there and i was talking to a couple of locals and they were saying the problem is many of the young families who are coming home from australia from dubai from the united states you know again what you forget is that rural ireland particularly the western ireland is an incredibly globalized place incredibly globalized place these people have traveled all over the place they're working all over the place and they're saying when families come back and want to settle down they can't find and they can't get planning permission yeah planning permission for places to live so it just struck me that would be the ideal place to have a cooperative members only development of cooperative housing because you could imagine you could access to the cooperative would be based a on your ability to speak Irish, which would be absolutely crucial, which is an entirely legitimate form of discrimination in a Gael Tuch.

10:46Because the Gael Tuch's raison d 'etre is to speak the language, right? That's the first thing. And the second thing is because everyone knows each other and because the GAA is very strong there. So it struck me that what Inish Moore would be an ideal blueprint or prototype for the cooperative housing model we spoke about last time. And in so doing, you would preserve the culture as the same time as not changing economic dynamism of the tourist economy. But you need to preserve the culture because it's the language and the culture and the sense of deep Irishness that give the islands the authenticity.

11:30that allows them to punch above their weight when people are actually buying experiences rather than just buying goods and services. So that's what I want to talk about. Yeah, but you hear this all the time as well about locals from not just the islands, but from the Gale Talk in general all the way up and down the Western seaboard, that when they do either go to college or they grow up and they want to come back home to set up a business or to live, bring up their kids or whatever it is, that they're priced out of the market purely because of, you know, holiday homes. Second homes. Yeah. Rich people from Dublin who say, I'm going to pick up that little cottage for half a million.

12:15So exactly. So that's why the link between today's podcast and the last podcast is cooperative housing. It makes absolute sense to have Gaelthuk-based cooperative housing initiatives. And this will be something that Uderos, the Gaelthuk, or whoever is actually running it, should actually come up with because it makes so much sense. And it's the only way in a part of Ireland where people want to spend holidays and want to spend summers, that you're going to allow local people compete with more well-heeled Dubliners, people from Galway, or G4, as they call it. Not D4, G4, right? You know, swanky people from Galway.

12:58But it was a fascinating thing. And the one thing that interests me about both islands is, both islands, John, derived their economic existence for hundreds of years from the very same fish, cod. Yes. And it's an interesting story that we will tell you. Can I just ask you, before we talk about cod and codology... Exactly, this is the economics of codology. Does Ilderay suffer from the same problem of holiday homes? Oh, yeah. And the locals are kind of priced out of it there.

13:35David McWilliams: Yeah, completely. It's the same thing. But what's fascinating is... It's Ron Nogar's fault, isn't it? Absolutely. Just blame Cork people, even though my mother is from Cork. But I think what fascinated me about Ile de Rey and La Rochelle in general was what made this part of the world extremely rich. What made this part of the world extremely rich was salt. And the French had something the Irish didn't have, which is we had the oceans, we had the seas, and we had the same ability to fish out into the North Sea, out into the Atlantic, which is obviously full of cod. but we didn't have salt production facilities.

14:17And therefore, we couldn't and we didn't create a situation where we could actually send trawlers out that they could salt the cod. The cod could then be preserved. And then once you preserve the cod, you could sell it, not tomorrow or the next day, but weeks hence. Yeah, yeah, you keep it throughout the year. So the story of Ilderay is the story of salt. And that's the interesting thing. When you're cycling around it, you realize there's all these salt flats everywhere. And Ilderay was the most northerly part of southern France. And by that I mean it was the part that was sufficiently hot to allow solar evaporation.

15:00Yeah. Which is the easiest and cheapest way of getting salt. So basically, they're blessed by the fact that the Atlantic, both in Ireland and in France, is incredibly tidal. And there's huge swells in the seas. And you really feel that. Even when you're going across from Rossaville to Kilrond, it's like there's massive swells. But those swells are great for having sort of tidal waves that deposit sea in the land. And then if you can create these little salt flats, you capture the sea there. And if it's hot, which it is in Lidore, the sun burns off the water. And you're left with the salt. And that is the story.

15:39The poor doesn't have that. Exactly, exactly. So one of the reasons that you have this extraordinary, beautiful architecture and huge wealth was that basically Ilderay and La Rochelle were the centre of the European cod industry from the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries. Cod coming from the great banks in Canada and all the way up in the North Sea and in the cold Atlantic. It's fascinating because in the old days, all economics just came from nature. Yeah. So if you were blessed to have sun, you could do your thing, right? Yeah, well, you just worked with the land and the elements to your advantage.

16:16To your advantage.

16:17David McWilliams: Because you had to. Because you had to. So, John, because La Rochelle was beside Ile de Re, La Rochelle had sold productions. And just give you one figure. When your man Henry Cabot went to find Canada. Right. Leaving out of Bristol, but he was a French man. He went... Cabot then, wasn't he? Cabot, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like Cabo FC. Cabo FC was named after the great French discoverer, John Cabot, right? And he left in 1497, right? So from 1497 to 1550, the records show that 100, and they went to Canada to get fish. Yeah, yeah. That 128 fishing expeditions left Europe to go to Newfoundland. Of those, more than half of them left from La Rochelle.

17:06and they were, all of those boats were full of salt from Ilderay. That's how they got rich. They also got rich because of the Catholic Church's ban on meat on a Friday. Oh, yes. God, do you remember that?

17:21David McWilliams: Yeah, do you remember you have to eat fish on Friday? And of course, that was a boon for the fishing industry. Yeah. Do you know the funny thing is I hated fish as a young fella because of that. Because I have to have it, so I used to always have eggs. But anyway. Yeah, well, exactly. But the fascinating thing, if you start looking at the history of fish and cod and salt, because the podcast is getting very complex here, right? But I was thinking this when I was talking to a couple of East Greece at the bar in Ishmael the other night, right? That the Vikings came down to France. And one of the reasons they came down was they were looking for salt.

18:00Okay. And within generations, those Vikings started speaking a dialect of French, and they became Normans. Right. So the entire Norman history is based on the search for salt. And why did they end up in France? Because on the Atlantic coast of France, from Ile d 'Ire up to Brittany, they have this extraordinary coincidence of the weather's warm, the sea is huge, and the salt flats can be constructed in order for solar evaporation in the summer to create this extraordinary asset. And why was salt so brilliantly and unbelievably expensive? Was because salt could preserve meat and fish. And then once they found cod, the fascinating thing about cod was that cod has very little fat.

18:54Oh, yeah, it's a great fish. Yeah, it's a very muscular fish. And without fat, it preserves for longer because it's fat that goes rancid. Right, okay. Not muscle. Yeah. So it had this amazing attribute of, number one, it was full of protein. Yeah. Number two, it hadn't got any fat in it. And number three, because of that, it could be salted and preserved for months. Yeah. Which is why, bizarrely, when you go to Portugal, the national dish is bacalao. Yes. But Bacalao, the cod, has never ever been caught off the coast of Portugal. Right, yeah, because it's up in Canada.

19:28David McWilliams: It's up in Canada and the Faroe Islands and up off the coast of Ireland and whatever. Yeah. But salt was the elixir of economic growth for those people. And was that one of the reasons why salt became a currency? Exactly. So the word for soldier comes from salt. Right, okay. The world has sold out, right? The expression, he's worth his salt. Yeah. A pillar of salt. All these things come from the fact that salt was regarded as not just a currency. It was for many, many years, the currency. And amazingly, what Europeans were constantly devoid of salt. So it was incredibly scarce. Yeah. Because you could only get it from minerals from salt mountains.

20:16Yeah. Which had to be dug up, or from salt flats. I'm just going to give you one last thing about Ireland and salt in contrast. So whereas Irish fishermen didn't import salt from France in order to salt the fish, in order to export the fish, which the Portuguese, the Basques and the French did in massive number. Because we couldn't afford it? Not only because we couldn't afford it, but because of the bias against fishermen in favour of farmers, which is something that has always been evident in Ireland. Oh, okay. Since the Normans arrived. Right. Full circle, right? So if you look at when Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, every single politician went out of their way to give farmers, particularly beef and dairy farmers, a massive, massive injection of cash through the common agricultural policy.

21:10Yeah. What did we do? Fishermen? We did the opposite. We opened up our Atlantic waters to quote us. Yeah, yeah. Why? Because there were never enough fishermen. They weren't organized enough because they were located in concentrated areas by the seaside. Yeah, of course. So Irish fishermen have always played second fiddle to Irish farmers. And it goes all the way back even to these days. Why? Because the Irish did import salt to Ireland from France. And we did land hundreds of thousands of tons of salt from France to Waterford and Cork. But what did we make? Don't know. Chips. Corned beef. Corned beef, yeah.

22:01Irish salted corned beef fed the British army. and there was an alliance between Irish strong farmers, as they call them, typically people of Norman extraction, going back to our Viking friends, okay, who owned the land and, of course, the Protestant descendancy who owned the land and the biggest consumer of Irish corned beef was the British army. Wow. The British army basically fought the empire on, And as Napoleon always said, give me well-fed armies. Yeah. And the Irish corned beef. An army marches on its stomach. Exactly. And the corned beef was the protein source of the British army. And it all came from salted beef, salted in Ireland, a place where there are very few salt deposits.

22:55And they all had to be imported from France. Wow, that's really interesting. I didn't know that. I mean, you don't see corned beef much these days. no you don't there used to be a staple back in when I was growing up

23:05David McWilliams: and it's also the reason when we were kids everyone because it was cheap it was protein and it was cheap and the one last coincidence here John is that the and you like this because you like wine right funnily enough is the link between Irish sounding vineyards your lynch badges of this world yeah yeah feeling Frank feeling Frank feeling all those right comes as an adjacent industry to the corned beef industry. Going from the... What do you mean? So basically the people who were importing corned beef from Ireland, we were importing salt from the French. We were producing corned beef. Those people were quite rich.

23:47David McWilliams: They said, oh, why don't we get some wine? Some fiend, as you'd say, oscualiga. Yeah. And then those families were networks and they started intermarrying. They started to feel very close to the French. And before you know it, they're over in France making wine. Yeah. But a lot of those, in fairness though, a lot of those French winemakers, like the Lingus and the Phelans and stuff, are direct descendants of the wild geese. Now, I will challenge that. I think that is a really good marketing spin. Right, okay. I think it's much more likely that the wild geese ended up soldiers in the French army because they were, after all, aristocratic military men.

24:24Yeah. And it's much more likely that the merchant class that ended up as winemakers sitting in wine were much more closely related to the corned beef barrens. Right, okay. That's my thesis. We throw it out there

24:38David McWilliams: and if anybody actually knows what they're talking about... Yes, I can't argue against that one. But it's... The economics of salt, John, is the whole thing. It's a fascinating thing. But also, can I just ask you then that the French fishermen were more wealthy than the Irish fishermen and therefore had the facilities, had the boats to actually do those long-diff - Because they had salt. So they could put salt in the boats, right? Yeah. But the Irish fishermen only had crooks. Because they couldn't preserve. So if you think about fishing, if you can't preserve your fish, you can only go out a few miles.

25:16We had smokehouses, though. We started doing a lot of smoked mackerel, smoked salmon, all that kind of stuff. But it wasn't at the industrial scale of the salt. So if you think about, and again, this is why economics is always fascinating. If you can't preserve your catch, then there's no point catching lots because it's going to rot on the dock. So you can only catch little bits. Whereas the French, because they have access to cheap salt, this is the key. It's cheap salt could create an entire industry around preservation, which put them in pole position to become the cod merchants of the world.

25:54And why was cod so desirable? because it was cheap and it was high in protein and it could be sold cheaply to French workers and British workers and whatever. And that's the story of salt, the story of cod. And the reason I want to say that to you, John, is that in the past, places got rich because they were lucky enough or clever enough or nature was bountiful enough to give them a comparative advantage over other places. now with the experience economy which we're going to talk about that competitive advantage is gone and the only thing that people have then is what's between their brains can they create an experience for tourists and visitors yeah that makes people go back there and that's why we're kind of in this amazingly weird world we're moving into it and this is what i saw in the more of sort of serial entrepreneurs who can come up with ideas that lodge in people's brains and therefore us, i.e.

27:02me and people who go there, go back there. Why? Because we have a better experience. So we're moving from commodity economies to industrial economies, to service economies, to experience economies. And that's what we're witnessing in the West of Ireland now. And tech has played a huge role in that, as you talked about, the depth of distance. Yes. So let's get into that after a bit of this.

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29:04Of course, I knew they had craft supplies there, but I didn't realize how expansive their party supplies were. And Michael's really is where you can go to get everything for a party, whether you're planning a kid's birthday or even an adult celebration. They've got over 4 ,500 party supplies, more than 60 different themes, and prices starting at just 99 cents. Plus, they've recently lowered prices on hundreds of items. We found adorable decorations, balloons, everything we needed to pull the party together without making a bunch of different shopping trips. Plus, I always have a good time going to Michael's.

29:34I love shopping there. I could just browse the aisles forever. But if you're short on time like I always seem to be, you can also get same-day delivery or buy online and pick up at the store. They even offer free helium inflation on select balloon styles, which is such a lifesaver, and it was for our party, truly. So if you've got a birthday coming up or just a celebration, remember Michael's Everything to Celebrate Anything. Visit Michael's in-store or shop online now.

30:09So we've covered off the old world and the old island life of fishing and the value of salt and how it gave rise to a very wealthy Ilderay, whereas the Aran Islands and the west coast of Ireland were very poor. Because we didn't have cheap salt. Because we didn't have cheap salt. But now the tables are kind of turning a little bit. Yes, they are. Why is that? We're talking about the experience, experiential marketing. Experiential, right? So it's because, John, consumers have changed.

30:42David McWilliams: So in the past, if you think of it, look at a historical cycle, right? Initially, we bought agriculture, bought food from each other, right? Yeah. Agricultural economies. Then during the Industrial Revolution, we started to begin the process of creating a consumer class, right? But at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, there were no consumers. So it was big businesses selling to other big businesses. But then what you get is as the colonies emerge in, let's say, 17th, 18th, 19th century, what you see is the importation of exotic goods from the colonies. Sugar, coffee, you know, all sorts.

31:22David McWilliams: Yeah, no, exactly. Tea, these things that were rum, things that were extraordinarily exotic, right? and that creates another product. And the other product is the fusion in the case of the colonies, which was lamentable of slave labor and natural resources. And that propelled the beginning of a consumer class. Then the Industrial Revolution, you have the emergence of a middle class and they start to want things like we talked about pianos and bicycles. Consumer goods, consumer classes. Then the beginning of the 20th century, You get the emergence of large-scale shopping centers all over Paris and London, whatever.

32:01David McWilliams: And this is a consumer class buying stuff, consumer goods. Then, of course, as we go into the 20th century, we started to sell services to each other. So, you know, banking services, this service, that, insurance, la, la, la. Now we are so rich vis-a-vis where we came from in the West. And what people want now is the elixir of advertising has always been your product needs to have, or if you can have this reaction, which is not I like this, but I am like this. so whatever you're selling in the eye of the buyer isn't just a thing but it's a tribe it's an identity it's an experience this is the type of person i am it's the brand identity exactly so this is the maslow hierarchy of needs the very very top it's brand identity right and of course the brand identity maybe 20 years ago was you know the type of sneaker you had right sneaker who says sneaker rollers yeah that's how runners you had right okay fair point fair point the type of runners yet but now the brand identity is the experience you have yeah what gigs you go to you know are you are you sort of an altogether now sort of person what bands you're into what restaurants you go to what experiences what cultivations you have do you speak languages do you are you into you know people are into food so this is the this is at the very top end right and of course you get lots and lots of inverted snobberies like lots of people don't watch the premiership but they're good to see bows which is the greatest classic case of where it all goes wrong where where the premiership just becomes too consumerist yeah yeah yeah and and going to Daly Mount are going to Tala Stadium is a more authentic experience.

33:55David McWilliams: The reason I say authentic, it's all about authenticity. Yes. And that's what Inish Moore offers. Yeah. It's an authentic, unusual, remote place that is the home, the throbbing heartbeat of Irish culture. And conversely, the likes of, say, Temple Bar, which tried to sell itself on the authentic Irish experience is anything but. What's really authentic about Temple Bar is the 11 euro point. Yes, yes, exactly. That's deeply authentic. That's an experience. Right, okay. So if you look then at the offering, and it is fascinating because this is what Ireland has to do. This country, we have to actually become, in a large part, an experienced economy, an experienced society.

34:44So there is something that is uniquely defined as Irish.

34:49David McWilliams: It is very different from spending time in France or Spain or Italy or Croatia or wherever that happens to be. And that difference has to last in the memory of the person who comes here, so much so that they will come again, number one. But number two, more importantly, they will proselytize. They will act as influencers. They will act as your salespeople. And so what they say is there's four stages of this experiential society, our offering. First is entertainment, so it has to be fun. Yeah. But different fun. Yeah. This is about tourism, really. Yeah. It can be educational, which is really different.

35:29So people with aspirations and notions want to achieve things. They don't want to just go on holiday. They want to come back a better person. Yeah, more enriched and a little bit more enlightened or whatever.

35:41David McWilliams: Exactly. And then the things, also the aesthetic is really important, right? It has to be an aesthetic. It has to be a different feel. And then finally, of course, the real Nirvana is escapist. It takes you to a different place. So it's not just like a holiday in the sun. It's a holiday in the sun with a backstory. And this is why I believe if we play our cards right in Ireland, that the backstory, the story, the spoofing, the yarns, the storytelling that we are good at, the talking, the chatting, if we can create in the mind of the foreigner, because all countries, you never get rich selling to yourself if you're small.

36:29You just run out of customers. Very quickly. Everybody has one of those things. So you have to expand. Now, this comes to your point about technology. Because of the internet, because of social media, because of the death of distance, you can sell a story. You can sell a feeling. You can sell a memory to people.

36:53David McWilliams: and I think when I was sitting, obviously this is why I went for a walk. The lads were so sick of me shiting on, right? I would say so. They said, Mac, just go for a walk. Just spend some time on your own for a bit. Go to Dune Angus. That's true, by the way. It is. Our mates have about an 11-minute threshold with me and then they tell me to go out and get yourself a snack there, right? Lie down. Yeah, lie down. Your mad ideas. So this is why I didn't get a taxi back from doing Angus. I walked because I was thinking about all this stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. But that, you know, the escapist thing is that they're selling.

37:35Yeah. And it works. And it really works. And then what you can do to be very wanky about it is you can move up, the awful expression, John, the value chain. Right, yes. Right? So you're actually selling into people's heads who are answering your offer, not saying, I like this, or saying, I am like this. And that's where you get away from competing with everybody else who are competing on price. Yeah. What you're doing is you're competing on imagination, on memory, on experience, on brand. but what you're doing is you're burrowing a hole very deep into their heads where price can't go yeah where people are prepared to pay more and that's how you create a high value added society well can i answer just just before we go can i just ask you though the fall to ireland obviously have done a great job with marketing the wild atlantic way which is just it's always been there.

38:42I know, it's just the road. It's the coast road. But it's great. But they've done a great job on that. But the other part of it though that I want to ask you about is that, you know, a lot of younger people now who are earning fairly decent money in good jobs and all that can't get on, as we speak about many times, can't get on the housing ladder. They can't afford to get the housing. And many of them, and I've spoken to a lot of people who've just gone, I can't do this. So they're now spending some of that money on experiences and travel. Well, that's what you're saying. So the consumer is changing.

39:21Yeah. And the consumer wants something new. And what they want is experience and memories and tribe and identity and gang and group and all these things. And therefore, it's up to anybody who's selling anything. What you've got to do is you've got to be able to live rent-free in someone's head, right? Yeah. Okay? And how do you do that? You create, in the case of Inishmore or wherever it happens to be, in the west of Ireland, rural Ireland, or in Dublin City, wherever you want to be, you create a backstory that validates their initial decision to go, to buy, but more importantly, makes them feel when they leave a different person.

40:10Yeah. Yeah. And that is the elixir of economic growth in the 21st century. And I saw it, John, through the bottom of a glass of stout last Saturday night at about 2am in McDonough's Boozer on the quay in Kilroney in Inishmore. You had a moment.

40:31David McWilliams: I had a moment. The lads wouldn't talk to me. I was on my own. People were giving me a wide berth. Yeah. They said, Don't talk to him. He's the Egypt in the corner coming up with podcast ideas very late at night. Slán live, Kaleir. Call us off.

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