Simon Woodroffe: The Art of Instinct, Risk, and Reinvention | The Mental Ledge Ep.1

0:00How'd you do your leg? I tore my ACL and my MCL at football. Oh god, football. Or at least it was something you were doing. Just something fun, right? Rather than just walking to Tesco's, yeah. This is The Mental Ledge. Conversations at the edge of human potential, exploring resilience, healing, reinvention, creativity and the psychology behind building a meaningful life. founder of yo sushi yo tell x dragon on dragon's den so happy to have you on today thank you for being here pleasure to be here emma i'd love to start with this question what did 45 year old simon understand that 25 year old simon didn't 45 years old was when i started yo sushi and um um i don't think you know a lot of people say that that at 25 you you think you know everything I don't think I did think I knew everything.

0:53I was a sort of out there hippie. I'd been in prison when I was 19. I'd been a roadie and I used to piece signs and mean them, had long hair. I was just drifting along, really. I wasn't doing very much at that point. It was soon after that that I got going. That's really interesting because I think a lot of people that go through their 20s with a sort of let's go with the flow then seem to regret it. later on but I don't from what you said and what I've listened to and read about you I don't think you have I think you really valued those times of kind of having a wildlife before getting to the sort of entrepreneurial stage later um yeah I don't think I left school when I was um you know I was actually 17 I always say I was 16 because it sounds better but um I left school young and I didn't have any qualifications to fall back on so I just scraped a living and uh yeah I think it was fun looking back but you know it wasn't that easy either I didn't know where I was going and you know it was scary at times I guess you know not being quite sure who you are and where you are and I had to put it back all together and that was you know it took me a long time to do it but you know along the way I did go a bit beyond 25 we get we get going a bit and do you see that as all part of the journey to get to where you are now yeah I mean look whatever you go through is you isn't it it's we're we're a product of our genetics of being very young and how your character is formed and then the experiences you have along your life and I was a you know at that age I was a rebel without a clue and um and on I went and I started learning and you learn and you I suppose by the time I got to 45, I had had some small businesses.

2:51I'd learned an awful lot. So mine was a learning process. I don't think I was overconfident when I was young. It took me a long time to build that confidence. And do you think you just kind of run with your intuition at that point? Or did you try to be pragmatic about figuring things out? What was your sort of MO? I've never been a process-driven person. You know, I've always, you know, I've discovered as I've got older that I need people around me who are process driven and who work things out rationally and reasonably and all of that. I've always followed my gut feeling on pretty much everyone and everything.

3:28And, you know, proof of the pudding, it's worked out pretty good for me. One of the things I do do, and I think I've always done, is I try to, I call it sort of imagined hindsight. I try to look into the future and imagine what is going to happen and measure things out against that. So I do research. That's what I do. I do research. I get to know a subject really well. And then I make gut instinct. You might call it educated instinct. Okay. And I think I saw somewhere that you tend to give things a bit of a trial period as well. I think maybe three months, you'd said. is that part of that sort of research that's something i learned along the way was was three month periods are quite good you know because it's a manageable period of time um and when you're thinking of doing something new um to set yourself three months to go out and do the research and and ban yourself ban your brain from deciding whether you're going to do it or whether you're not going to do it you know three second rule one two three right that's it stop thinking about that just get on with the research and three months is a good period of time because it's a bit of a monomic but um it's nearly 100 days so you know if you just one percent it doesn't seem so overwhelming if you just say a one percent a day and at the end of that three months you have 100 percent more learning and uh you know then you're in my sort of way my educated instinct is in a better position to make good decisions that makes a lot of sense and is that is that how yo sushi sort of kicked off i know there was a serendipitous meeting but then did you give it that three months yeah i mean i said i said that three months and i'm you know at the end of that three months that sort of negative voice in the back of my head which was sort of going you know if this is a good idea somebody would have done this years ago um sort of dried up and um i had another voice that was waking me up in the morning going you're going to be very successful and very rich and very famous but fortunately I've been around long enough to by that time to realize that you know the the the negative voice um you know which was just there the positive voice is just this big delusion as a negative voice you know somewhere in between the two is a sensible person who gets things done.

5:55And who do you let drive the car, so to speak? I think there's an author that talks about which kind of inner voice you let actually drive the car and which can be a passenger. How do you balance those voices? I don't think I've ever been very good at balance. One thing I have discovered is that it is more important to make decisions, mostly, look, there's the opposite to everything, but mostly it's more important to make decisions and keep on moving and doing things because you can always change your mind and do something different. And if there's one thing I've been accused of over the years, it's, oh, you're always changing your mind, Simon.

6:34And actually, they're absolutely right. You know, and often I wish that politicians would, you know, when the journalist comes down on them and says, oh, but two years ago you said this. And they go, oh, no, no, I didn't. I just, but I said this. He said, no, what they ought to be saying is, absolutely, I changed my mind. I'm just like a normal person. I get influenced by other people, and I changed my mind, so I changed my mind. In business, once you commit to something and you're doing something, there are a lot of cases where you don't want to change your mind at all because it gets to be very expensive changing your mind.

7:08But in the early stage of something, I'll absolutely chop and change until I get it right, and if instinctively I feel something's not right, I'll try and deal with it there and then and change early you know quit and cut bait change early do something as early as possible that that is something I've learned you know reach deep into your pocket where you might sort of know what's ahead and if there's something that's worrying you deal with it you know don't put it to one side don't put it under the carpet deal deal with things early. And is that part of the reason Yosushi was such a success that it's been?

7:48Can you take us through sort of the journey of that? Well, Yosushi, you know, I left school when I was 16, 17 and ended up in actually in North Sea Camp, which was a detention center. I got busted for drugs. And I think it was a sort of public school boy. You can tell me I'm a public school boy with a slightly posh accent here a bit transatlantic one hopes by this this stage anyway they made a bit of example of me and i did that and then i came out and i was lost in the wilderness and i got a job working in theater in the very early days of fringe theater and i absolutely loved it and then i went to work at richmond theater in the royal court and then rock and roll sort of was starting to go along come along and the early days of touring shows and if you knew your stage left from your stage right you were an expert in rock and roll and i went out on the road doing lighting for one of the very early lighting companies for people like the moody blues and the Jethro Tulls even the Rolling Stones and later Rod Stewart and Elton all these people as really as a roadie and putting the lights up and when I got the chance I'd tell these bands that they ought to be doing big shows like you know Busby Berkey did for the movies of the 1920s you know big spectacles they go no man no no no none of that you know um where this is rock and roll and that show business and never the twain shall meet and of course after a while they listened to me and i one way or another i got a big break and i became a station designer actually i got a big break because rod stewart by this time i started a small lighting company was the first of proper enterprise i did with a guy called ricky farr and um rod stewart he got the job to do the sound of Rod Stewart and I got the job to do lighting with very lucky break really and um Rod's first ever tour really but first of a big tour Rod wanted a big white stage you know he he knew show business and I'd um I'd done I could draw and um I'd driven the van for Richmond Theatre so I knew where to get all the drapes and the rostrums and this and the other and I did a design and took it in to show him and his manager Billy Gaff and Rod said well if it can travel I love it.

10:05It's just what I've always wanted. And the next thing I knew, I was a stage designer and I said nobody else was doing it in those days. And I had the clear patch to myself for a few years. And I was doing all these big rock shows as a stage. I remember going to dinner one night and people said, what do you do for a living? And I said, I'm a stage designer. You know, suddenly I'd become something, you know, I'd acted as if and I became something. and you know that was a serendipitous unfortunate thing that happened but as a result as you say because I put myself out there and stood up and said say yes say yes was a big I remember that was a little saying I had in my head if somebody gives you an option always say yes even if it's out of your field it's above your pay grade or you're out of your depth and that's what I did And, you know, I made some mistakes.

11:00We made a lot of mistakes in the very early days of touring rock shows. Really difficult. Lots and lots of problems. Lots of things going wrong in different countries of the world. But when I look back, it was a wonderful, exciting time. But I think at the time it was like, oh, my God, how are we going to put this far out? How are we going to deal with this? And they rate pop stars sometimes and sometimes very, very happy pop stars. You know, he's a genius, Simon. You know, we love him. he's really made my show you know so it was a it was a roller coaster it was a hell of a hell of a roller coaster and certainly the book I've just written Yo Man which is out in June where you'll probably be broadcasting and by then you know that's that's got a lot of those stories in there about that period of my life you know before we ever got to we ever got to yo so you know and of course you know I learned being in show business is not so different from starting restaurants which is the first business I did with you and you know they've got they got their first nights and their rehearsals and all of that stuff and it's got a lot in common really so I learned an awful lot about that and then later after that rock and roll business before yo sushi I was in the television business selling television rights to rock shows I knew the managers of the groups and there I learned international business and contracts and all of that sort of stuff so I had the two I had the creative part and the businessy bit and I was I was lucky to have both those you know not in university or out of a book but in the school of hard knocks that's where I learned and did that give you the confidence to kind of go from the entertainment industry into entrepreneurship knowing all those skills were transferable yeah I mean you're dead right that's exactly what it is you know most businesses are the same in many ways that skills are transferable whether whether I had the confidence or whether I just had the chutzpah and the bravado to go and give it a go or whether you know out of pure desperation if I didn't you know something worse was going to happen so I was willing to take the risk you know I think all of that stuff was in there if you was to analyze what what got me up and got me out and going but certainly i learned an awful lot from the things that went wrong and somehow i got away with it and and um and you know obviously had some lots of successes as well but there were equal number of things that didn't go well you know you learn much more when things don't go well it's not very good at the time but you do learn awful lot more and I'll not do that again I'll not make that mistake again you know and I think I was willing to I think probably one of the advantages I had is I was willing to look at myself and take responsibility on and I was never a blamer you know I'm very reading reading somewhere that one of the great secrets of life is that that you don't blame other people that you take complete and utter responsibility for anything that happens even if somebody does you in or behaves really badly to you it's your own fault for getting involved with them in the first place and I think once you do take that ultimate responsibility for everything and not blame people even when they're to blame actually and not blame and not try and trip people up all of which I've done in my time when you do take that you know life is life is difficult and and business is difficult everything is difficult actually business in some ways is quite simple but um you know life is difficult and people are difficult and um yeah when you actually truly accept that that life is difficult you stop complaining and has has that awareness developed because of those experiences over the years has your philosophy evolved because of the challenges and the hurdles and I'm assuming a load of self-doubt probably came up at certain times.

15:07How did you approach that and how has that shaped you? Well, I didn't have an easy childhood one way or another. I had a controlling dad and a emotional mom. And, you know, it wasn't their fault, but one way or another it wasn't that easy. and so when I came out I had to figure out you know how to be how to get through life without a lot of training you might say which generally you get at school also leaving school you know being a rebel at school and leaving school very young I didn't get that training a bit of bit of a few self-improvement courses in the early days of the 70s when those things started to come out helped and a bit of therapy along the years helped as well um but i think i did i definitely learned from the school of hard knocks i learned making lots and lots of mistakes not not behaving well all the time and um having to look and realizing that you want to always look at myself and not somebody else and that's where So I think a lot of this thing about success, whatever that means, because it's not just about making money.

16:23Certainly making some money is a good thing to do because it takes away the daily sweat and worry and anxiety about money. It doesn't necessarily make you happy. But yeah, that's what I think about it. But you can have a very simple life. and I've talked to people who've got really relatively simple lives, don't earn a great deal of money, go on holiday and stay in hostels, not in hotels. And when I compare with them, when I have an honest conversation and compare with them what my level of happiness is and what their level of happiness is, often if somebody's done that right, they're just as happy.

17:04So they're just as successful. So anybody listening who thinks you've got to go out and be a big businessman or make a hit record to be happy and successful is not true. Success can come at all sorts of different levels. And I've always said that. And there have been times when I thought, I'm gone. After I got divorced, actually, before Yo, I went to live in Chamonix in the French Alps and I thought, I'm going to give the whole thing up, all this trying hard to be Mr. Success. and I'm just going to have enough money in the value of the flat. My flat had gone up to buy a little, tiny little apartment in Chamonix.

17:43I thought I'll just rent it out and go and stay with a mate and have a simple life climbing and skiing because I was a climber and a skier and a sailor. And eventually I thought I can't, I've got too much, there's too much grit in my oyster thinking I want to go out and be somebody. So I came back to London and started Yo! is what actually happened. oh wow okay so that was sort of the uh the launch pad could have gone the other way could i could have been just living in the mountains living a simple life you know being a ski instructor or something but um i didn't i i came back and i went for it and and uh you know my ambition and dream paid off and um yeah that's what happened i think it's really interesting because i think sometimes when we do just kind of release the inner pressure to be something or achieve something and just even just being in nature being in the mountains I think can give us that reset to then have that kind of blank canvas to move into that next chapter is that what you felt sort of yeah I think I think you know anybody listening here who is thinking of giving up a day job or starting something of their own or indeed as you have Emma I mean we were chatting just before I came on air with you and you were saying that you felt the overwhelming need having done podcasts before to come back and really do one again and here you are doing it so you know that sometimes there is an inner voice that says I'm going to give it a go and I was talking to somebody earlier today actually who's much younger he's 23 and he's starting something and he wanted my advice and you know I tried when I was when I when I was knocking on people's doors I always He said, if I ever got successful, I would always try and make time for people who wanted some help or advice or whatever.

19:32And this 23-year-old, I said, you know, actually, you should just totally go for it. He said, should I try and raise money? It's difficult to raise money on a very small level like that. He said, or should I bootstrap it? I said, bootstrap it. Put everything in. Borrow as much as you possibly can. Run up your credit cards. All the things that probably the careers advisor would tell you not to do. and give it a go and see if you can get it off. Because, you know, you're young enough that you're, and he was a clever guy, two of them, and they were clever guys, and if things had gone wrong, they'd have found a way to save up and pay the debt back and get on and have another stage of your life.

20:10If I'd started that young, I didn't really. I mean, I had lots of small businesses, but I didn't start a year until I was 45. And if I'd done that much earlier, if I'd done it 20 years earlier, I'd probably be Richard Branson, you know, because it was in that period you know I've or another Richard Branson which is I always kind of aspired to be and and I'm not you know I'm me version of smaller version of that in terms of you know total turnover and everything but um yeah that's I think the earlier you start the better and people listening I never met the person who went out to do what they really dreamed of doing and regretted it regardless whether they succeeded or failed but I met lots of of people who sort of look back from much later in life and said I wish I'd put my head above the parapet and given it a go which I can see Emma's head nodding here and being able to relate to that yeah what's that quote isn't it of you regret the things you don't do yes it's what you do to you do you do you strongly agree with that based on your experiences I don't know I I'm very fortunate in some ways well at least I always profess to have a really bad memory actually I can remember certain things like when I'm on the ball I can really remember there's lots of stuff I have forgotten so I do tend to live in the present and I don't really thinking of them now obviously one or two coming your mind but really I don't have any regrets you know I've you know it's worked out pretty good for me and I don't have any regrets and I haven't always been perfect by any means to it my behavior has not even been great at times but I don't really sometimes it sometimes that's what needed I was at one time in my life I was I found out much later when I was in the tv business they used to call me somebody used to call me the steamroller and it was probably pretty true but you know there are times when being a steamroller at the beginning of something can work pretty good I've always said you know what's the word you know complete control over something you know so almost Machiavellian is not the right word but you know total dictatorship at the outset of something an obsessive no work-life balance at the beginning of something is a very good way to be but the sooner you can get off that platform and allow other people to help you and do things their way the better but at the beginning one person's view I mean Steve Jobs is the the best example of it really he was a complete some people said he was absolute bastard but you know it depends what that word means but you know he it was his way of the highway you know I want this done by five o 'clock that's it finished or you're out it sort of thing and it worked very well for him and he got things done you know because he had a real vision and and he got people to follow him as a result of that because they want they wanted to be part of it and he'd go uh well you can't argue i'm making you a lot of money i'm making everybody a lot of money so just do what i say you know and there have been times that i've been like that later you have to share i guess on that note and going back to something you said earlier what does the definition of success mean to you well

23:34okay um i'm not very good at and or even terribly interested in kind of analyzing things and working them out but i do one thing i did um you know it's a bit it's a bit personal but i remember having a vasectomy which is where you know and um the doctor i was asking the doctor about how we get created, you know, and the whole thing about the sperms and all that. I said, at the point of your creation, how many sperms were there? And he said, he looked at me over his glasses and he said between 30 and 40 million of them. And I said, so I won the race to get there. If somebody else had, another sperm had got there before me, would it have still been me?

24:20And he pulled his glasses down over and looked down at me and he said, no. So I was one in 40 million. I had a 1 in 40 million chance that's a very very low chance of success to get a chance at this life and I reckon that's good enough that's a good enough reason just to live this life and to do it as best as you can because you might well not have had the chance at all and so is everybody listening you are the lucky sperms to put it crudely You know, you are the lucky ones. So make the blooming most of it that you possibly can is the way I see it. And I think success is becoming the person that you want to be, actually.

25:12I didn't know I was going to say that, but I think it's sort of becoming the person that you, it's a constant work in progress for me to become, I'm trying to get to be a better and better person in every respect in terms of capability, of how you deal with people, what you contribute to the world, all of those things. And I think if you end up, I'm on my second wife. I was a serial monogamist, I think, so something like that. But I'm on my second wife, who's Thai. We live in Thailand quite a lot of the year. And they have some very good sayings over there, one of which is don't think too much.

25:49I don't analyze everything. and I once asked her, I said, you know, in one of my more loving moments, I said, you know, if I was dying, if I got a terminal illness, I just want to be with you really, I don't need anybody else, you know, you're enough for me. And I said, what about you? She said, nah, don't need anybody, I'm comfortable with myself. And I thought, you've got that right actually, you've got that right. and in a world of distractions where we're sort of told in various forms to strive to be somebody else and strive to have external things I think that's a really powerful message that as I've got older that's you know background noise in my head you know it's always used to describe as a dangerous neighborhood my head um has got much quieter and the earlier you can get that kind of whatever you call it, peace in your mind, that you can just be comfortable and sit there and not have lots and lots and lots going on.

26:53The better decisions you make for a kickoff, the more comfortable you are with yourself. So I think somewhere in there, there are words and descriptions, but somewhere in there there's a lesson to be learned about what success is. But success doesn't have to be at a high level. It doesn't have to be big cars. certainly one of the things that I've always done when I haven't had money which and I I've been right down on my uppers you know running out of money before the end of the week in my time one of the things that I've always done is to try and live within my means you know really just not spend money when I'm starting something up and not feel I've got to have this and not and not buy even when I've made money not buy things for status and in fact even today I try not to have too much because you go you know make some money you can have this next this I've had the yachts and polo ponies and the whole bit but you know you just have life just gets too complicated and so to live quite lightly is another way of being successful I think you know live quite lightly through move quite lightly through life not not have hundreds of possessions that i've got really very i think i have no positions possessions that i'd really mind losing you know the whole line of oh it's got sentimental value i don't really have that but i do respect that other people are collectors and love to have things that they collect over their lives that furnish their houses mine's i'm just much lighter in that respect i think there's a freedom to that isn't there that that you can own things, but they can own you too.

28:29Yeah, yeah. It's a bit monkish, but I quite like that. Yeah, I think there's a truth in it. So I guess sort of following on from what you've been saying there, both on the monetary side of things and the more philosophical side of things, reflecting on everything, what comes to mind is the 5 % things that almost threatened everything and the 5 % things that actually you're really proud of and you feel catalyzed getting where you are now. but five percent of of uh of the time certainly when i was starting year and in the early days first five years probably 10 years you know is was uh was just sort of you know terror of things going wrong and and financial things especially once you're you know those starting those businesses is like building a a pack of cards what am i proud of um you know i'm proud of lots of things when i look back at all the rock shows that I did in the 70s and the 80s, one after the other, all the way up to Live Aid was one of the last things I was involved in, or what my design studio was anyway.

29:31And I'm proud of lots of those things. I think opening Yo Sushi, I was planning to open Yo Sushi at the end of one year, and eventually it took me two years living on a pittance with my money running down. And that was in Poland Street in Soho. It was a big, big site. It was no small restaurant. It was a million-pound restaurant. And I managed to raise the money. And actually, I managed to raise the money and keep 90 % of the business. The day we opened, I owned 90 % of the business. I had a lot of bills to pay off. But I did own 90 % of the business. And, you know, quite how I pulled that off, I'm still not quite sure.

30:12but I did and nobody came in the first week and the second week we had a queue down the block and it lasted for years and the money was rolling in and as I used to say it's you know we're looking back at it well as I say in my book and Yo Man which is my new memoir the money was rolling in and I was running the business so the money was rolling right back out again and that's what I did get the professionals in who really knew how to do those things. And what did your lowest period teach you that success never could? You know, I had several low periods, actually. You know, once when I left school, what the hell am I doing?

30:54Once when I, you know, in 1985, when I got out of the music business and I was in the wilderness, what the hell am I doing? Once when I got out of the television business, what the hell of what's going to happen now? I'm going to run out of money. And, you know, those were the low points. And getting divorced around about that time, just before I started, you know, you know, they were low points when I thought my life could have gone badly wrong. And when I look back at it, you know, I mean, my life could have gone badly wrong. You know, I often wonder, well, I don't often wonder, but I have wondered why, what would have happened if, you know, if that first restaurant in Poland Street in Soho in 1997 hadn't worked.

31:37I often wonder would I have been able to dust myself off and get up and start again and I don't know the answer to that question I suspect it could have gone both ways, I could have been quite a sort of happy unhappy person, bitter person or a survivor maybe I would have done I don't know, just simply don't know but as it happened it worked out so I'm happy and I think I'm a good and inspirational example possibly to anybody wanting to start up because you know if it works out for me you know um I'm not that clever I'm an ordinary Joe in many ways and and if it works out for me it can work out for anybody if they really put themselves on on the line and on that note if if you were starting again today you're you're back to 25 year old Simon it's 2026 you've managed to scrape together let's say a thousand pounds you want to make sure you're not in that position of vulnerability financially what do you do uh what if i started again with a thousand pounds that i always thought there should be a sort of game show or a tv show about that you know you're giving a thousand pounds though i suppose there are probably are things like that um um yeah no i mean i i was i was lucky that it was less regulated in those days um i think i'll try and turn the thousand into 10 ,000 for a kickoff by running up debt and by working my proverbial bollocks off to do whatever it took to increase that amount of money or to learn a new area, go and work in a new area and do something and save every penny.

33:21And, you know, hopefully my creative mind would kick in you know ideas there's a poem by a guy I'm very fond of quoting called Felix Dennis and the first line is ideas we've had them since Eve first met Adam but take it from me execution is the key meaning it doesn't really matter what you do you just got to do something it doesn't have to be a super creative super clever thing and And then he goes on to say, good fortune. The truth is, the harder you work, the more that you sweat, the luckier you get, which is what I'm talking about. He says, what does he say after that? He says, the money, go find the likely investor to get what you need, you toadies to greed.

34:08And we live in an age when you can raise money. It's possible. The talent, go find it, but first wine and dine it. It's tedious work with a talented jerk. To win it, you've got to be in it. but never be late to quit and cut bait. Expansion is vanity. Profit is sanity. Overhead begs for people 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. And I'm telling you that poem because it's kind of a simple, it's a simple way of looking at how, if you want to look it up, it's called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. He also wrote a book, a very good book, called How to Get Rich, which is one of the books that I've always put a lot of store by.

34:57But he also wrote this poem called How to Get Rich, which kind of says it all. I'm so impressed you know that by heart. That's an amazing poem. Thanks for sharing it. And what are you still hungry to create? I mean even though I was an investor in Dragon's Den and I have had various investments in things that haven't been yo I can pretty truthfully say not completely but but most of them haven't done very well you know I've never been a great investor so I'm not and and now I don't really want to invest i don't want to get i want to have a good life and um i think that my main thrust at the moment you know i've had two big hit records if you like um yo sushi and yo tell which is a much bigger business than yo sushi is 35 big big hotels around the world both of which i'm still the um license or if you like i own a royalty from them and that's finance really all the other projects and I've lost a fair bit of money on quite a few other things along the way but that's that's fine it's the they're about to happen and so now I I actually started doing social media and doing podcasts like this as a way of promoting and selling more copies of the first of all the book of year which is my first book and now Yo Man which is the book coming out and I did it to do that because I wanted the book to be successful not to make loads of money particularly but I'd like lots and lots of books to be out there for people to read and what I've discovered in the last 18 months doing that is that the real joy has come from helping people which sounds terribly altruistic but it's quite selfish in a way because you know people ask my advice which I love and I've got a good instinct for knowing what people should do at different points of their life and knowing what they're like and I also know that success for the most part in business if you want to sort of stay in business not go out of business is about is about getting your head in the right place you know if you can get you know calm and get a vision for what you want to do and get your head in the right place and be a good leader and have people respect and look up to you and want to follow you and want to help and do things with you and for you um you know you've got that is more important than um you know the developing the product the putting the fires of everyday life out of raising the money finding the right people to employ all of those things all emanate from being the person that you want to be and I think that's really what I've been able to help people with is is for the most part is becoming the right person but also the practical side of how do you get things done and what's the right direction to do and how do you get yourself ready to do an exit because the purpose of building a business really is you know you're only borrowing even if you created it yourself it's only on loan to you for your particular span of your your tenure of running it because you for anything like me you'll be on to the next thing so you're always looking for for an exit or somebody else to take it out and do the boring part which is roll it out over a much longer longer period of time or at least the bit that i find boring and i guess coming up to the last few questions i think we're coming up to an hour-ish 10 10 20 minutes left um there's several questions that come to mind actually um one is have have you noticed sort of repeatable or identifiable traits in people that and you can you can answer this any way you want because i think it comes back to the definition of success we can say people that are business successful but also people that maybe are just happy and and genuinely content?

39:12No, a good way of putting the question. Well, in terms of the sort of business side of it,

39:23honestly, I think one of the most attractive qualities in people is enthusiasm. You know, that, and I've always said to people, the trick, whether you're starting out as a 16-year-old or further on in your life is to over deliver to everybody, whether that be your customer, your employer, your person you're consulting for is always to over deliver and not be thinking, am I getting ripped off? Am I getting, you know, not be thinking about what you're getting out of it, but to over deliver it to others. Because I know that when people do that to me, I just want to do everything I possibly can for them and to keep them, you know.

40:04so over delivery is a is a is a really important quality and um yeah I think that's I was thinking I was trying to think of I had another one in the back of my mind as we were going but it's gone out of my head now um over delivery then it'll come back give me another question and I'll see if I can remember what I was thinking it'll come back at two in the morning um what was your mental ledge moment a time in your life when you knew that you were either going to turn back down the mountain or you'd have to put on the backpack and continue to climb as arduous as it may be the two years it took me i was going to start yo sushi in one year as i said and the two years that it took me to open yo sushi i've always thought that when i look back as healthy in years i knew exactly what i had to do i had there was no way out that was it i was going to start yo sushi because otherwise I'd lose everything you know so I knew exactly where I was going on that mountain so once you know the way that is half the course and I got up every morning and I jumped out of bed and I jumped out of bed not because I wanted to be rich and famous I jumped out of bed because I didn't want to lose everything and be poor much better motivation so that's when I thought there was no turning back.

41:25So yeah, that's what I would say. And then it goes on with every project I've ever done from there on in. But I am a mountaineer, and I know this very deeply, actually, from being in the mountains, and I'm a sailor as well. I cross the Pacific Ocean in a sailboat, and I've done a lot of things. but you know you've got to know when to turn back and certainly on a mountain a mountain any good mountaineer would tell you that you know knowing when you've got to be guining for the top you've got to have absolute determination but as Felix Dennis says in that poem never be late to quit and cut bait and I've done that several times I was several million plans into developing Yo Home and it just got out of hand and I pulled out of it and I was absolutely the right thing to do when I look back at it and in fact Yo Tell then went on and did Yo Tell pads which have been quite successful and in fact were probably better than my concept I have to admit but there's lots of reasons not to give up when you're that far in you know ego what you've told people but everybody just always forgets anyway so it doesn't really matter um um but yeah no knowing when to quit and cut bait and just get on with the next thing and i've had lots of things like that that haven't happened i have to ask yes what was your best sailing adventure what was my best sailing adventure well my dad taught us to sail when we were children he was in the army and we were stationed in germany near the dutch border so we learnt as kids I used to hate it there was a wooden boats and your hands got freezing and yet he was army so you had to lace up these covers and everything and as soon as I got a bit older and I thought what should I do this weekend you think okay let's go sailing let's go rent a little boat with some mates and go sailing and of course I got to be the skipper and I loved being the skipper you know I've always liked being the leader somebody said to me once they accused me of not being a team player.

43:30And I said, when have I ever been a team player? I'm definitely a leader. I mean, there's the semantics to that. But sailing-wise, I did lots of sailing over the years. And then once Yosushi and Yotel were up and running and being run by other people, and I'd let go and let them, which is what I'm professing that you need to do eventually, I said, I'm going sailing. and everybody said, oh, good luck, have a good time, and they wouldn't miss me, and I didn't miss them, and I left them to get on with it. It was exactly the right thing to do, and I bought a boat in Panama, a 57-foot catamaran, and with three friends, I sailed it across the Pacific.

44:11I sailed it all the way to Fiji, nearly to Australia, and then we bought it back via South America and sold it in America, so that was a hell of a thing, and that took two and a half years. I met a girl on the way and ended up living in Tahiti for five years well I say I lived in the Tahiti I was backwards of forwards to that I mean a Tahitian girl so yeah that was that was a hell of a thing to do and that was a dream I'd always had to go ocean sailing and actually that would be my fallback plan if it had gone wrong I was gonna go and buy a little 25-foot boat and go sailing on my own and sail around the world and um i could have been pretty happy not as happy as i am now but i i think i would have been okay with that that's quite a small boat i used to have a 23 foot boat and it's quite maybe it would have been a 30 foot boat now that's uh that would that would have been quite the adventure but you've had so many adventures but people do that i met i've met people were sailing across the pacific i met you know i remember meeting these swedish kids when iPhones had just come out.

45:17And, you know, in my day, you had to learn how to use a sextant and this, that, and the other. And they were just navigating on their iPhones. And they were having a brilliant time, four of them, just sailing a little 30-foot boat that sold it all the way from Sweden, and they were sailing around the world. Sailing across oceans is not very difficult. Sailing in the land and rocks is very difficult. You have to be very, very careful. But people do do that, and there is a big community of people sailing around the world. you know, some pretty happy people as well. Some fucked up people, but some pretty happy people as well.

45:52Maybe two of the same kind. Yeah, I think it sort of brings you back to basics and sort of the basic human nature that we all have, getting out of civilized society, so to speak, and being more in harmony. Well, that is true. And there's a lot of talk about it with iPhones and everything. But yeah, no, I mean, I love nature. I really do. and where we live in Thailand, we're way out in the sticks in the jungle. But we've got a flat in town as well. So I always say it's, you know, five star or a tent is where I'm happiest. But I don't really want to live in suburbia. Yeah, I understand. That actually brings me on to my panosmic question, which is what brings you the most joy?

46:34Well, different at different times, you know. but if I'm honest about it you know my loving relationship brings me joy my family's brought me joy in my time but really the thing that the truthful answer is that is that when I'm with somebody else and we're doing something together and we've got a project and we're scheming it up and we're putting it together and making it happen and getting people on board that's very joyful thing it's a really really fabulous thing to do um or anything creative i mean writing the book writing yo man which you know i didn't didn't take me three years but i did it on in bits and pieces and fits and starts and i never set myself a discipline to write i just wrote as i felt like it that was very joyful to do something i remember um i made an album record album with the block heads after Ian Durie.

47:35Remember Ian Durie and the block heads hit me with your rhythm stick and and uh after Ian Durie died I made an uh eight songs with them and that was very joyful to you know to write songs and sing them. Not that I'm a very good singer but Ian Durie wasn't a very good singer either but he got away with it. Um but the creative side is is is what brings me joy and doing that with interesting people and having a project that you can share with others is good. Have you read the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert? I have not She introduced me to this notion of creativity being synonymous with consciousness itself And I think from my experience with whether it's music or art or creating a business idea There's something in it that feels very innately spiritual in a way And it sounds like maybe that's been the same for you Yeah, no, I think the creative thing And a lot of people say, well, what is creativity?

48:34You know, and it's, I think I was lucky not to have had too much schooling because I think if you're not careful, schooling and academia can knock the creativity out of you. And so, you know, so if you're out there, keep on daydreaming. That's where creativity comes from. It's from daydreaming and keeping your eyes open and thinking how could something be better or what could I do or, in case of a song, what rhymes with this or that or the other. Don't think about it too much. There's a famous line from Bob Dylan who has accompanied me through my life in terms of, you know, he was a singer and a wonderful songwriter.