From My Prison Cell to £100M Sushi Empire: Simon Woodroffe

0:00Simon Woodroffe:I'm an ordinary Joe. Founder of Yo Sushi and Yotel. One of the original dragons on BBC's Dragon's Den. And one of the most unlikely success stories British entrepreneurship has ever produced. A man who spent three decades behind the scenes designing stages and rigging lights for some of the biggest names in music. They called me a steamroller at one point. If you want to make some money, don't go and ask the BBC. A bit like sleeping with an old girlfriend. People are scared to go and ask for money to start a business. you've got banks and other people involved and they're not going to let it go down so was there ever a point where you thought that's enough i'm happy you know i've not strived for great success i've strived to avoid great failure when you've left school and without the qualifications you've got a bit of a chip on your shoulder yes okay all right say how it is i went to prison when i was Simon, welcome to the podcast.

0:53Thank you for joining us. Big question, we always kick off the same way. Who are you and what problem do you solve? Who am I and what problem do I solve?

1:06Simon Woodroffe:Well, I'm an ordinary Joe who left school with no qualifications and has spent their life trying to first of all survive and then to thrive. And has got to a place where I have become pretty much the person that I always wanted to be. And I've made some money and I've spread it around. and if anybody ever tells you that money doesn't make you happy, they're lying. Okay. When you say money doesn't make you happy, why do you think you would be the best person to have a conversation on that? About money. Because I think that money is like death. Money is something that people don't really want to discuss in the old traditional British way, so we don't talk about religion and we don't talk about money.

1:59Simon Woodroffe:and actually in this day and age our relationship with money and you know wanting it and having a good relationship with it is enormously important and if you're going to go out and really try and succeed which I guess is why I'm invited to come and sit on this podcast because I succeeded from nothing and there's everybody listening at home is thinking am I going to learn something from this not just am I going to be entertained hopefully we'll do that but am I going to learn something and I think that learning about how you think about money and how you think about success and being able for example to be go and ask people for money you know people are scared to go and ask for money to start a business actually I say you're doing the person a favor if you've really done your research and you really want to do something and do it good you're doing somebody a favor they're not doing you the favor giving you the money so that's a relationship with money and then actually if you start making it, how can you be careful so that it doesn't all go away?

3:05Simon Woodroffe:As soon as you start to make money at any level, the worry that we all have, you and you and you at home, is I'm going to lose it. It's going to disappear. So it's a very important part of our lives. Most people say, I want happiness. I want to split it around. Money is not so important. Actually, it's enormously important. as is the ability to deal with the emotions of jealousy or envy or fear or shame or any of those things which we don't get taught in school. So there's a whole curriculum I've just done of what we ought to be learning in school rather than maths and geography, which we've got instant, something like that.

3:49pre-money, pre-yo when you look back now, obviously you've written this great book Yo Man, where are those first signs of entrepreneurial spirit that you can spot?

4:00Simon Woodroffe:I think growing up my dad was a senior army officer and he was one of those geezers well he wasn't a geezer, he was a posh guy, but he had a spotted handkerchief in here and he was a hell fellow he was terribly charming and all of that sort of stuff and a bit of show-off really and I think that's where I kind of learned it from and I kind of thought that's what you did to be popular you know you you were a big show-off and actually it covered up you know quite a lonely childhood in many ways and I think in modern idiom people would say I had low self esteem but I covered up with a great big front I used to tell people I was going to be a millionaire by the time I was 20.

4:42Simon Woodroffe:I mean, you know, no chance. And then I got to 20 and I went through, and I remember going through, you know, having a good time. So I said, put off being a millionaire. You know, you can put things off. People don't remember you putting them off. And I remember getting to 40 and thinking, my God, I've completely forgotten to become a millionaire. Not that that has necessarily, certainly not been my motivation to make loads of money. My motivation has a lot more to do with the idea and wanting to make it happen and wanting people to see me doing well. But yeah, I had grit in the oyster, that's for sure.

5:14Simon Woodroffe:And if anybody's listening at home and you're a bit chippy or a bit difficult or people say, oh, you're difficult, you're on the right track, man. You really are because, you know, you need a bit of anger and grit to go out and get things done. Otherwise, why would you bother? Why would you go through sleepless nights and try and go out and do something really adventurous and big in life if you've got a nice, easy life and lots of life relationships and family who love you and this, that and the other. And I think I didn't have that, so I wanted to go and prove myself. It was quite useful, really.

5:47Do you think the relationship with your father is something that spurred on, I need to become the millionaire, I need to be noticed, or was it more than that?

5:55Simon Woodroffe:I think my relationship with my father, yeah. I think he was very conventional. He used to say things like, oh, I know you don't think that, or reasonable people would think like this. He was doing his best, and I love my father when I look back at it. But it was very difficult with him. He was a control freak, and he taught me to be a control freak. He said, yeah, I'm very influenced. We were all influenced by our parents. My mum was quite anxious, so I got a bit of anxiety from her. That spurs you on. But I'm sure it was the same for you guys. You're thinking, and you listening at home are thinking the same thing.

6:33Simon Woodroffe:How was I affected by those first few years of my life? Change is difficult. And to become successful or do anything in this world, in life, is not about what happens or how you meet the person who gives you the money, how you do the spreadsheet that shows what you're going to do, how you're creative, like in your office here. You guys, this is an amazing place that you've got here. How you're creative. It's about getting your head into the right place so that you're able to communicate like I'm doing now or you're doing to me. Zach Thompson, do you ever get sick of calling kebab houses and nanas when you're trying to speak to qualified decision makers?

7:16I do. Well, I think I might have found the solution. 98 % correct qualified data, which means when you're cold calling, you're always going to be speaking to the right person. Do you know what the solution is? It can't be Prospio, can it? Prospio. Let me spell it for you. P-R-O-S-P-E-O dot I-O. If you're looking for great qualified data, then you know what the solution is. Prospio.io. So you've got this grit and it sounds like maybe when you've left school and without the qualifications, you've got a bit of a chip on your shoulder.

7:51Simon Woodroffe:Yes, okay, all right, say how it is. What was the, for you someone then, what was the first step that you felt, I'm doing something, I'm showing the world who I am?

8:05Simon Woodroffe:well my first job I went to prison when I was 19 for selling a bit of hash they made an example of me and I did three months and I came out and at 19 I was really a lost boy and I bought a copy of the stage newspaper at our local news agents and in the back there was an advert that said staff wanted professional. And for 10 shillings a day, 50p a day in those days, I suppose it's worth a tenner a day or something, I got a job in the West End, the little theatre club. And I walked in there, and they taught me how to do the sliders for the lighting, and I was the stage manager, and I set it all up.

8:48Simon Woodroffe:And I could see how they collected the money, and I could see how you had a creative production. And I was in business. And suddenly, from being absolutely lost, I had focus, and I had a mission. and that led to working in the theatre and then into rock and roll as a roadie really and then production and becoming a stage designer and selling television rights around the world and eventually to Yo and it was a whole series of happenstances that happened, not planned at all. Did you see, if I was sat here now with like 20-year-old Simon who had just got that job, did you think that was it for you?

9:24That was your career? Like I was always destined to be on the stage, working in the scenery? Or did you think this is getting me by and actually there's bigger things to come later on down the line? I think I had no idea.

9:39Simon Woodroffe:I think I was like most 20 years. I'm sure 20-year-olds today actually do have ideas because there's a lot of career stuff out there and you can follow other people doing it. I think I was pleased not to be completely broke. I was pleased to have a few bob and I was pleased. I was kind of good at something. I was actually starting to feel good about myself so it was a slow build up and over the years I have let things unfold but no, I think mostly and I don't know what people think at home but mostly I've always thought that the bubble's going to burst and everything's going to go terribly wrong I think that sort of fear has driven me a lot and you two are nodding your heads so I think you may have been there as well That's the thing.

10:29Simon Woodroffe:I've not strived for great success. I've strived to avoid great failure and survived. And because I've kept pushing and kept doing and not being scared when people were going, you know, and just kept going in my sort of lumbering. They called me a steamroller at one point in my life. and in my sort of way I've kept going things have worked out keep going in Japan they don't say good luck they say keep going which is kind of probably more useful isn't it yeah definitely I think one thing people will be thinking at home is look I've just heard that right you went from theater to working with Rod Stewart what's the connection there well when I was a kid we used to go on these sailing holidays with my dad and I got really into boats and I learned to draw up boats with a scale rule so I knew how to draw a scale rule and I was having worked in theater a bit you know I saw I saw how they have scenery and how they you know it's a long tradition of theater and how they do put shows on and when I used to go and see the early rock shows which were nothing to do with theatre.

11:48Simon Woodroffe:It was like, oh no, we're done about showbiz, you know. You know, this is rock and roll. We don't want showbiz in here. And then after a while I used to come up and have ideas and sort of say, you know, it would be good if there was more of a show here. And a few people started to kind of click onto it, you know. And so eventually I became a sort of stage designer. I started doing the sketches because So I knew where to buy the rostrums. I knew where to get the curtains made. I knew where because I used to drive the theatre for Richmond Theatre Van. And so I used to go and pick that stuff up. So I knew where to get things made and how to get things done.

12:28Simon Woodroffe:And then Rod Stewart, it's a long story, but one way or another, I'd started a lighting company with a guy called Ricky Farr, and he got the job to do the sound for Rod Stewart, and I got the job through him to do lighting for the first big Rod Stewart tour. and Rod said, well, Billy Gaffer, who was his manager, said they wanted a big white stage. And I said, hey, we can do that. We do big white stages, specialists. I mean, I really did say that. It was a sort of bluff, you know, and I went away and I realized I could get a big sheet of paper and I drew it all out and then I knew somebody who did airbrush before computer graphics and I took this drawing in to Rod and Billy Gaffer and Rod said, he said, it's just what I always wanted.

13:07Simon Woodroffe:If it can travel, let's have it. and I gave them my design fee and I gave them the, and I made a markup, a hidden markup on what it would cost to build and I made a very nicely thank you profit and when we went into rehearsal Rod came in and he went, oh it's great man, really, I can't remember what he actually said but he really, really loved it. There was a big white stage with a runway that went round it and white curtains, everything was white and then in my next tour he said, I want it all red. he said because I'll go to the theatre and they have those red velvet curtains in the theatre so I did the red velvet curtains but we made them cherry red not classic old fashioned red and he went oh it's just what I always wanted came in wearing the same colour jacket it was cool, it was amazing it was a big break but I did it through I guess a lot of bottle when I look back on me that's a lot of bottle to go and do that but it was being an actor it's almost like sometimes you have to act as if you're somebody to become that person and you know but making it sound easier it wasn't, there were so many things that went wrong along the way I was going to say, you were mentioning before about you maybe picked up some anxiety from your mother that to me, and probably people listening at home if they follow along this far will be thinking so no experience designing stages before what if Rod Stewart comes in and goes what the fuck's this?

14:35surely that would be something

14:37Simon Woodroffe:yeah how did you deal with that or maybe that um the anxiety that i picked up from my mother i'd learned how to deal with anxiety i read a really good book once which was called the secret life of the unborn child and what it really said is if the mother while she's carrying a baby suffers from you know you say oh you shouldn't be too fearful you shouldn't get too stressed actually fearful and stressed or whatever she's doing the baby's learning at some deep level to deal with the real world that it's about to be born into. And that's actually what happens. So to have too easy a childhood, we've heard spoiled, is not good for kids.

15:18Simon Woodroffe:You need to have stuff that they can come up against so they can learn how to cope with the difficulties, which every one of you at home had. And you guys, you're sitting here nodding. You had that same thing. You went through those difficulties and you learned how to deal with it in your way. we're all kind of the same but we've all got different ways of dealing with it or have we is that right i think so you you spoke a lot about like happenstance and i think that that can the dots can only be connected in hindsight obviously so like when you think about if we've got rod stewart and doing that tour there and you've kind of there's a lesson there of saying yes and making it happen one way or another when you look back on that period of your life now what are some of the other examples of things that are branched off from that experience well i suppose first of all um to be able to walk into the room at a level above your pay grade you know and and just to keep on going up above your pay grade and in the same way that perhaps I was dealing in tens of thousands of pounds at that time and then we started doing sushi in hundreds of thousands and then when we first opened the hotels in New York in tens of hundreds of millions of dollars and I've sort of learnt as I've gone up the ladder that it's the same amount of work to do$100 million it's actually a bit safer because if you're dealing with$100 million you've got banks and other people involved and they're not going to let it go down.

16:59Simon Woodroffe:So in some ways it's safer. Because if you're dealing in tens or twenties or fifties of thousands or hundreds, if it goes wrong, you can't exactly call up your mum and dad unless you're very lucky and say, help me out here. But if it's hundreds of millions, there's other people involved. So I think some learning to... I sometimes equate it to stepping out of your comfort zone. If you draw a circle in the sand and you're metaphorically in your comfort zone that what we're taught to do is when you're not feeling good is you step quickly back in but actually if you stay outside your comfort zone gets, you know, like the pebble dropped into the lake, the ripples go out and your comfort zone gets bigger.

17:44Simon Woodroffe:And I think sort of, whether you're a politician or a rock star or a podcaster or a creative agency or whatever it is that you're doing, that's actually what happens. if you can relate to that. So you went into business and you've set up the set design company and then what was the trajectory from there? At what point did you get to where you said, I'm feeling like there's another chapter around the corner for me? Well, I remember after the Rod Stewart thing, about three weeks later, I went to a dinner or a dinner party or something. Somebody invited me to it very well and somebody said, what do you do for a living?

18:23Simon Woodroffe:And I just looked me straight in the eye and said, I'm a set designer. Oh, really? That's interesting. What sort of stuff do you do? Oh, rock shows. Oh, that's really interesting. You know, that felt pretty good. You know, so, you know, from there, you know, I was pretty enamored. You know, I was out, who's going on tour next? How do you find out who's going to be touring? You know, calling people up, putting the word out, you know, before, you know, any social media or anything like that, before email. so getting out of the front door that was the big thing and going to see people and going to places where you could meet people and hanging out and making connections and all of that stuff and then getting gigs you know getting the opportunity to go and have a meeting with I don't know 10cc or the Moody Blues or Paul McCartney later you know and actually going to meetings with these people and talking to them about how their show could appear you know and having a creative conversation like you do in your studio here with the nhs or whoever you're dealing with you know or me you know and then you're talking to interesting people and you suddenly your world starts to feel a bit bigger and you sort of you know your pay grade goes up or your bluff grade going up who was who was your favorite you think you've worked with oh god you know there's some you know people like i mean abba were incredibly nice people to work with and their their management there's a thing in there's not really many famous people come from scandinavia there's a thing in scandinavia called the anti-law which goes way back which is the anti-law is 10 of them actually these laws and they all say roughly the same thing which is um don't try and be better than your neighbor or be modest you know you'll be a good listener that's a big good one to do you guys are good listeners have you learned anything that's unique around so the first thing i'm thinking of is like rod stewart and all these different artists obviously come with like an ego and an idea of like i want my show to look a certain way have you learned anything between marrying up i've got a solution to how i manage your ego and there's something in the middle well there's two questions there is ego and you know whether those people actually do know what they write their shows like you know and uh you know actually musicians are very oral you know they they hear stuff you know and then people like you probably and me were much more visual and then the other people are kinesthetic you know they they're touchy-feely um so i think a lot of musos didn't really know about you know someone went to the theatre and saw what they wanted to do.

21:06Simon Woodroffe:But very often it was just trying to suggest things. And then how did you deal with ego? Yes. So I had a bit of ego myself. So I think the better we did presentations, the more excited people got. I remember we did a presentation for Queen once in the early days in those days we didn't do visuals because we didn't have computer graphics so we just used to build these models and we did one for Queen which was pretty amazing that you lifted the lid off a flight case and there was this whole stage of theirs and you press the button it played we are the champions and I remember them just going you know we did one for AC DC when they had the big bell cast for their show and it lowered from the ceiling and you pressed a little button this tiny little electric motor lowered the bell and you heard the visual go ding and people loved it they used to i remember the first one the moody blues we did one for and justin haywood who's the singer in it he said he wanted to um he said oh god can i have the model and i said well you can buy it and he used to have it in his dining room a lot of them used to buy the models and things and and you know and actually funnily enough i'm doing a project at the moment your home where we're actually rather than doing visuals on the screen we're going back to building these actual physical models showing the truck that can move them around you know so it's like old school going back to do that but you know that sort of presentation if you can present it people are very convinced rather than just rap rap you know or trying to get what they want out of it Bob Geldof I remember coming in and he said we're on a big stage we've got a big show big show okay any ideas what you're doing yes we were on O's and X board and O's and X is Noughts and Crosses right in Irish and he wanted and I still don't know to this day why he wanted we did a really really big it was 40 foot high and it had and they used to flash up noughts and crosses and i still don't really know i do remember that we i tell the story in the book actually we we turned up to rehearsal in the rainbow theater in north london and we put this whole thing up and they were doing this the first time they'd done a big big kind of the rock show you know and um they put this thing up and they their manager was called fortnor killia and he i kept trying to get paid and he wouldn't pay me and I was getting quite worried because he so instead of calling the lawyers in or doing something like that I rewrote the they had a song out at the time called tell me why you don't like Mondays and I rewrote the story the song to tell me why you don't like paying and I got this singing telegram girl in a bikini stand on stage during rehearsals while they were having a break the roadies colluded and sing tell me why you And they were going, oh, that's great crap.

24:12Simon Woodroffe:We'll tell Faulkner to pay you straight away. And then I remember Bob going, oh, man, this is a great story. We're going to put this out to the press. And Faulkner, Kelly, the manager came and said, I don't think it would be a very good idea. He painted us in a very good light. You've been in all these amazing rooms, Simon, with some of the biggest rock stars and musicians on the planet. If we think about what you were talking about earlier, One of the phrases I was listening to on a podcast last night that gets thrown around is like imposter syndrome. And if you speak about that, like anxiety that you might have had, is there anything that you look back on now that you did to make yourself feel more confident in those rooms?

24:54Or was it more evidence that stacked over time because you were in more situations like that?

25:00Simon Woodroffe:I think you build confidence. Yeah, you have to build it. You have to be an actor to get to building that confidence. and the more you research and the better you do your work and the more you do your job and the more you practice just like you guys you're sitting here actually very confident and you're very very good listeners I don't mean to over egg it but you are but you've only done that because you've practiced and you've made mistakes and you've looked back on the work you've done so the harder you work the more you practice the luckier you get so I think but certainly imposter syndrome I have suffered from definitely I definitely have you know I felt like I've been out of my depth and then looking back I think I'm actually quite proud of what I did I remember doing on that TV show that David Frost was a bit of an old school guy did called Through the Keyhole where you went into your house and you know the panel had to guess who your house who you were and I remember telling him a story about imposter syndrome.

26:06Simon Woodroffe:He said yes, he said he was quite so full of himself, David Frost he said I've never had that but David Niven, the famous film actor from the pre post war said he always used to suffer from that you know, I thought at least I'm in good company Some other people have. And then you strike me as a man that probably has like very few or little regrets about life because you've lived a very rich life I think on paper and in experience but when you think pre-yo are there any key business lessons that you've taken away thinking I wish I'd handled that situation differently or in that situation I wish I would have done x yeah I mean I made so many mistakes along the way you know on the one hand how you deal with your relationships you know are you you know overbearing as i was for a long time and you know not a good listener and all of that stuff um through to you know how you manage money how you make markups how you deliver things you know lots of mistakes i made or or just in the design world and building things so i've made lots and lots of mistakes but you know if you survive if you don't die you get better at it you know I look back you know you know those moments you look back on and I don't know if you still haven't but for a while you moments where you actually but blush with embarrassment when you remember and actually you go red you think oh what did I say that and I remember being in this room with this girl late at night there was two suitors in the room with her and there was absolute silence because they kind of probably they both wanted me to leave and there was a song out at the time by Paul Simon and Garfunkel called Silence is Golden and there was this embarrassed silence and I went, silence is golden isn't it oh my god how could I have said that even blushing now thinking about it so yes you do you have those moments for sure but you learn, you learn, you learn that's the thing and if you can wear life lightly and not get super stressed about it and make mistakes and dust yourself off and get back up and keep going and not think that the world is looking at you, judging you because they're not actually.

28:35Simon Woodroffe:That's what you learn is they're not. They're all too involved with themselves and what you're thinking of them, you know. They soon forget. They soon people forget. I'm forever telling people what I'm going to do next and then a lot of it doesn't get done some of it does for sure but a lot of it doesn't get done but nobody comes around with a hammer and goes you said you were going to do that last Friday except I suppose if you're a politician you might get that but I often think that politicians should say when somebody goes ah but back in 19 such and such or 2020 you said this and now you're changing your mind and I wish they'd just go, yeah.

29:16Simon Woodroffe:You know, yeah, I met somebody on Wednesday at dinner and they really persuaded me and I've just changed my mind on that. Don't you? We all change our minds all the time. What's that about? I want you to like and subscribe. Don't hurt him, John. Please don't hurt him. You've got to like and subscribe and if you do not like and subscribe, I'm going to kick his head in. Please do not allow violence in the facility. like and subscribe and we can all go home safe thank you

29:49the so the yo sushi piece i wonder if you could take us to maybe the key moments before you got there that maybe started to plant the seed of the idea well it's a famous story that i've told many

30:01Simon Woodroffe:times now and it's in it's in the old man the book is that um i decided i was down on my luck for the third or fourth time in my life, trying to crawl out of the hole quite depressed. What am I going to do next? Will I ever get back up there? And I determined that I was going to call up the people I was most scared of in the world. And I called up a couple of them. One of them was Harvey Goldsmith, who was a big rock show promoter. This big, scary guy. And I called him up out of the blue, having not spoken to him for two or three years. Not expecting him to even answer my call. He said, how are you doing, Simon?

30:35Simon Woodroffe:What are you up to? He was really friendly. It was like, wow, okay, this is working. And then I called up this guy called Toru Uohara, Uohara, Uohara-san, who's a Japanese guy, who's a pop star originally in Japan, used to produce Japanese version of Top of the Pops, which in Japan was called Hit Studio Deluxe. Not a lot of people know that one. And anyway, I said, look, I'm thinking, I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do next. And he said, you better come out to lunch. I'll take you out to lunch. And I was really surprised that he did. he took me out to lunch in Bartley Square at a Japanese sushi restaurant, and he said, what are you thinking about?

31:12Simon Woodroffe:And I just thought, off the top of my head, we were eating sushi. And I said, you know, what I've noticed is that whatever happens in America happens in the UK five years later. So I've been thinking about what's going on in America. In America, California, sushi, what we're eating, is really big. And I'm thinking of doing it over here. And I just kind of made it up. and he said and he looked at me straight and there was this a bit of a Japanese silence you know kind of quite taciturn and he looked up and I let the silence end and he looked I looked up and he said what you should do Simon is a conveyor belt sushi bar with girls in black PVC miniskirts and we never did the miniskirts but it was just like a moment in time I think he meant it should be kind of cool or whatever and and yeah that was that was really how the Yo Sushi thing started.

32:05Simon Woodroffe:And then I went off and did the research and, you know, read the book and you hear the whole story. But, you know, it was... The biggest problem was that voice in the back of my head that said, if this was really a good idea, somebody who knew a lot more about restaurants would have done it years before. No internet at that time. But in the end, I got on the phone. We had to pay for phone calls then. So, you know, even running up phone calls to Japan was really expensive, trying to keep them short. and I eventually got on the plane and went to Japan and I went actually to the Japanese food machinery exhibition in the Mitsubishi Hall or something like that.