A marmite advert made him richer than selling his company with Founder of Yo! Sushi

0:00Olly Fawcett:As the business is starting to grow, did you feel at all out of your depth when it's growing that quickly?

0:07Simon Woodroffe:Because success is scary. But at that point, I was good at letting go. That's what I was really good at. Most people who build businesses, their babies never want to let go. But I was willing to let go. And I sold fairly early on. I think it's restaurant number five or six. I sold...

0:27Olly Fawcett:Is this 2003?

0:28Simon Woodroffe:no yeah that's right yeah i sold to primary capital and i i had 90 and and um i i made a bit of money a few million quid and and you know it was a great great relief you know it was like a pack of cards those things and then um i ended up 25 of that business and i made far more money out of that 25 than i did but i'd also negotiated a royalty deal yeah and i made far more out of royalty deal that i ever made out of the two exits where did the royalty idea come from and just for

1:01Olly Fawcett:those that don't know what that kind of deal structure would look like could you just explain

1:04Simon Woodroffe:what the royalty deal is i i i am when i started off actually we had one of my very small partners was always complaining about my wages i said i'll just take one percent of turnover and he said it's not very much that's all right yeah so what you mean when you get bigger it goes up a bit i said yeah he said that sounds very good for us so i wrote that into a contract with my small shareholders and when we got to the first exits i said that is non-negotiable i won't even enter into a conversation with you guys uh venture capitals unless that's in there and they believed me and um so the deal went through and when we got to 100 125 restaurants 600 stores you know that's a great deal of money it goes on to this day and where did it come from and obviously i saw it in the music business but actually came from a girl called mary allen who was my first girlfriend really and mary was an actress and she was in a marmite advert and in those days if you go it went in adverts you know because it was theatrical yeah yeah you got a little royalty and she used to get a check for you know 25 quid every year i said i said that is a great business if that marmite ad goes out around the world you're going to get rich she said yeah so i suppose the seed was sown there and it's worked very very well for me and it worked well for me because of course as soon as you start to make some real money and you get those exits which is what we all want really um and you don't pay very much tax on it most most governments so far have given entrepreneurs breaks to encourage them to do that yeah um then you know suddenly you get some money in your bank and you you know i'm not one who goes out and spends it on ferraris i did buy a ferrari once actually but but i don't that's not my thing yeah i'm thinking what can i use to do something do the next project and of course they don't always go as well as the first two do i've had two big hits with the osushi and the hotel yeah i've done quite a few things that haven't gone wrong and if i hadn't had that royalty i think my money would have been chipped away quite a bit

3:06Olly Fawcett:because that's topped it up every year you speak a little bit about wealth in in the book what i think there's a there's a small story at the very start about going to an atm and seeing two million quid in the bank yeah that's right what did it actually feel like to finally have the security

3:20Simon Woodroffe:of a level of wealth for you i mean to me two million quid when that happens fairly early on was a really great deal of money you know i'd always been oh i've got nearly 200 grand tied up my flat i'm doing well can make it 250 you know and then um you know so it was a great feeling of relief and i tell the story in the book that um will you read it but no i'll tell you it yeah i'm standing at the atm machine it's on the screen and i'm there for so long looking at it the the queue forms behind me and they're also coughing and spluttering and i turned to the bloke behind me i said i said copper look at this mate and i can tell you i can tell you all that if if um if anybody tells you that money doesn't make you happy at that moment i definitely was happy but there's more relief really um but then you you know it's a good question actually at any point in your life is what is your relationship like with money yeah because i think a lot of people are scared of life anyway you know it's a scary world to live in and money is part of that and danny kruger who's the guy behind farage and reform yeah you know i'm agnostic on all of that but he's got a prison charity called Only Connect that I've been part of for years.

4:42Simon Woodroffe:And his new advertising marketing, you'll appreciate it, is for prisoners leaving prison and how they survive and how they don't go back. And he calls it love and money. And apart from health, which is what we all need, but love and money are the two things in life in life that are the most important, you know, love in its widest form, you know, friendship and everything. And money is an incredibly important part of our life and our security. And a lot of people are in denial about that. And I have a good relationship. And I think making money and creating wealth and making money for yourself and for other people and all of that is a fantastic thing to do.

5:25Simon Woodroffe:And I think money is a very, very good thing in the world. I don't think it's just about greed.