you've had a lot of controversy over the

last two years bullying lying unfair

dismissals all of this stuff what'd you

say to that i did i did push people too

far

how fast did brudog grow we have grown

on average 87 percent a year [ __ ] you

know everyone told us make your beer

cheaper change your name change your

packaging and we didn't listen to any of

that how can we get our name out there

with no money at all so we had to do

things that were intentionally

provocative and sometimes we can across

that edge as well

the best entrepreneurs have got to find

a way to do things differently to how

other people are doing things we've got

two very simple tests that we apply to

everything that we do so the first test

is

this is the worst public health crisis

for a generation

i've only ever

been in tears once

in my job and i broke down in tears

addressing our team in march of

2020

thinking that we're not going to be able

to pay you we're not going to be able to

keep you in a job

i think people don't realize like being

a ceo is a very very lonely job at times

[Music]

that day

talk me through what it's like to be a

ceo when 300 people sign a letter making

these allegations about toxic workplace

culture unfair dismissals all of this

stuff

so without further ado

i'm stephen bartlett and this is the

diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening

but if you are then please keep this to

yourself

[Music]

james

what is the you've listened to this

podcast before so you know i have a

theme of where i start i'm like trying

to frame as a surprise that i'm going to

start with your childhood but

um first thank you for being here it's

um you know it's always lovely to hear

that people are um guests that we have

and also kind of understand the format

where i wanted to to start with you is

to take you right back because that for

me is always the context of of somebody

so when you when you look back and when

i read back at your early years in that

small fishing community you grew up in

um was it garden stone yeah garden stone

up in the northeast of scotland when you

when you look back yourself at the

foundational shaping um pivotal events

of like those early years that are

responsible for who you became in your

life the first events that you look back

and go that's the first dot i can

connect what are those

i think there's i think there's a few so

grew up in a tiny fishing village

northeast of scotland my dad was a

fisherman my mum was a school teacher

and being a fisherman is tough and i

just remember like the kind of hard work

ethic instilled from my grandparent who

was a grandfather who was also fisherman

my dad who was a fisherman so kind of

really hard working really honest kind

of salt of the earth type character but

then he was always away and i'd be at

home with my mom and my relationship

with my mum was was never that good and

i think i struggled a lot when i was

when i was a kid

um i had quite a severe speech

impediment when i was when i was growing

up and and this is something i haven't

spoken about before so

um so that kind of always made me a

little bit of an outsider a little bit

of a loner

always felt a bit socially awkward as i

grew up and became a bit older i had

quite severe acne so again outsider

loner socially awkward and i think it's

a trait that a lot of entrepreneurs have

in common they're a bit socially awkward

and i think if you're less likely to

read social cues then you're less likely

to do the same thing as everyone else

which in business is amazing

um and also a bit of a inadequacy

complex when i was a kid as well so kind

of mum's standards were quite high so

whatever i did wasn't good enough 98 in

the test why wasn't a hundred when uh

someone competition why did i win it

with an even better times like any

achievement wasn't quite good enough so

we're going up a bit of a loner bit of

an outsider a bit of a kind of

inadequacy complex as well which i think

from a business perspective those things

combined are good but

made it kind of quite tough for me at

certain stages of my childhood on that

point of i can relate a lot a lot to a

lot of that um

especially the the i the thought of

feeling a bit like an outsider feeling

somewhat different were you bullied in

school

a little bit i mean the speech

impediment was something that all the

kids love to make make fun of and then

the kind of acne that i had that was

quite severe in high school was

something that like has made fun of as

well which just kind of makes you feel

even more like an outsider when you're

growing up i guess speech impediment

yeah when i was like four five six seven

eight there was like certain words and

certain letters that i just couldn't say

and i kind of worked really hard with a

speech therapist and got there but for a

few years it was a lot of words i

couldn't say and because of that i just

wouldn't speak to people because i was

scared to let them see that i had a

speech impediment so very quiet very

insular like spending time by myself and

that kind of shaped a lot of my early

childhood i would say when you said that

you think entrepreneurs have that trait

in common where they somewhat feel like

outsiders

why do you think that's a common trait

in entrepreneurs

for me the best entrepreneurs they've

got to see things differently they've

got to find a way to do things

differently to how other people are

doing things so if you go and do the

same as everyone else you're just going

to get the same outcome as everyone else

and if you start off a business that way

you're just going to get lost in the mix

and i think 90 percent of small

businesses fail within the first two

years so

i think outsized returns or doing

something amazing with the business only

comes when you bet in some way against

the conventional wisdom and if you're

not tied to the conventional wisdom or

tied to social cues i think you're more

likely to see that and there's a quote

that i love which is if 99 people think

you are wrong you're either massively

mistaken or about to make history so

it's just that

maybe not caring too much what people

think and finding your own way to do

things and finding your own way to come

out of business an opportunity or a

problem and i think if you're a bit of

an outsider it maybe helps with that

you mentioned your mum as well

yeah i mean my relationship with my mum

was was always quite tough so nothing

nothing was ever good enough for

her mum when i was a kid and had a few

issues later and i haven't spoke to my

mum for over 20 years now really yeah

since you were

in your teens yeah in 1920s when i

stopped speaking to mum did you ever

because sometimes when i think about you

know my own parents

i with with age i've built a bit of um i

guess empathy towards why they are the

way they are

you know and you kind of when you grow a

little bit older you understand the

world a bit better in psychology but you

go well maybe that's why they were the

way they are have you thought about that

with your mother yeah i definitely have

thought about it and uh

it's something i continue to think about

there was just a lot of kind of

challenging things when i was a kid and

when i was in my teens that i think it

made it difficult for us to have a

relationship and for me it's

it's easier just not to not have contact

with her which

which is tough but i've got a fantastic

relationship with my dad and my rest of

the family and it's been that way for a

long time now did that have an impact on

you that that sort of really tough

feedback that you could you were never

enough for that your work was never

enough

possibly but i think it just

i think it gives you a bit of a

inadequacy inferiority complex which i

think has kind of been with me for it

for a long time

and there's ways to to numb it so can

numb it can numb that voice in my head

that's like

never been good enough not good enough

can numb it with a business achievement

with like doing a thing with a book

launch that goes well so you get that

almost temporary escape from that

feeling

by doing something that can be measured

objectively like succeeding in business

use the word temporary though

it's always there and i think a chip in

your shoulder in terms of like

motivation is

is quite a powerful thing to have

but it's that kind of saying it's like

everywhere you go there you are it's

kind of always always there at a certain

extent your dad

he he sounds like he was a very um

hard-working

individual he he was indeed i mean still

to this day he's in his late 60s he's a

lobster fisherman which is a kind of

tough intense i've seen the

early job every single day regardless of

the weather in the north atlantic he's

like pretty much out in his lobster

fishing boat so

yeah very focused on work and that work

ethic

that

determination i think a bitcoin

resilience as well so i spent actually

six years with my dad on the north

atlantic before i set up the business so

i studied law and economics at

university i got a job in a legal office

i quit after two weeks so i sat there in

a cheap suit doing glorified admin and i

was like this is just not how i want to

spend my life i don't want to stay in

this office and i saw myself like being

maybe 40 50 years in the future kind of

retired and sitting in that same office

in a suit and stuff i was like this is

just not for me so i spent four years

studying to do a job for two weeks i

quit and did something completely

opposite so i got a job in the fishing

boat and when i was doing that i went to

nautical college part time i became a

first mate i became a qualified captain

and i kind of cut my teeth in the high

seas in the north atlantic and i think

it taught me so much about

resilience about teamwork about

adversity what did you what did you what

did you learn then sort of it

practically inactionably what did you

learn from was it five years roughly you

spent on that boat yeah so you come out

of university you try it out as a lawyer

you're working in laws for for two weeks

yeah then you go and join your dad yeah

and eventually you work you up to being

captain

on that boat yeah and you're on a

trawler in the north atlantic yeah which

is

a stupid thing to do if you're me and

you're as big of a coward as i am going

out on those seas i've seen the

documentaries is it like the

documentaries yeah it's very much like

those documentaries some of those were

made in my homeport up in scotland and i

know some of the people that were on

some of those boats so i mean very much

like that the north atlantic in january

and february is a

pretty scary place what did you learn

from doing that

about life in people

i think the main lesson that i learned

is

and it's when i've applied to the

business as well you only really see

what someone's made of when things are

difficult

it's only when

things are going wrong it's maybe a

first-hand storm you're trying to get

the net back in the boat it's dangerous

it's early it's two o'clock in the

morning and everyone's been up for 24

hours it's at those times that you

really see what someone's made of and i

think that's something you can take to

business as well

when everything's going well it's easy

for everyone in your team to look like a

superstar it's only when things are

really really difficult that you see who

can you depend on and i've almost got

this test that i use when i'm building

my management team and we've got an

amazing management team at the moment

but the test is would i want to be in

the deck of a north atlantic fishing

boat at two in the morning in a storm

with everything going wrong with this

person by my side and if the answer is

yes

it's usually kind of bodes well for how

we work together and how we look to

build build the business together and on

in that example of what i want to be on

this on the deck with them at 2am in the

morning when everything's going wrong

what other character traits which would

make someone in that situation a good

person to be with on that deck

yeah there's something called the

stockdale paradox that i think is is

really important and kind of ties into

this so james stockdale was

an american naval captain who was no

prisoner of war camp for six years

and uh it's actually in the book good to

see by jim collins which is a fantastic

business book

and he's got a philosophy which is

you've got to confront the brutal facts

of your current reality without ever

losing faith that you're going to

prevail in the end and i think it's just

such an important lesson for life and

business you've got to believe that

you're going to get there in the end but

that belief can't blind you from

tackling the most difficult things about

your current reality head-on

with resolve with optimism but you've

got to kind of hold that paradox in your

in your hand we're going to get there

we're going to achieve this thing but

we've got these huge challenges at the

moment let's lean into those challenges

and i often start my business meetings

with my senior team in the very same way

okay let's put the agenda at the side

let's everyone write down a piece of

paper what's the three most difficult

things you're facing in this business at

the moment and let's discuss those

before we discuss anything else and why

is that important

because it means you face into the

problems and the challenges and i think

it's so easy for a business especially a

business like ours we've always got so

many exciting projects at the moment

we're opening a fantastic location on

the strip in las vegas we're opening

um 20 plus locations in india we've got

a fantastic location opening in waterloo

station so it's so easy to get caught up

in the excitement of those things

and everyone wants to speak about the

exciting things but you've got to

balance that with okay we've got these

challenges at the moment

and how we lean into those challenges

how we tackle those challenges

is what to a large extent it's going to

determine our destiny so we need to make

sure that's why else we're focused and

exciting things and what we want to

achieve we're focusing on the really

tough things we're facing in a

day-to-day basis as well

interesting i might steal that

but i stole it as well

steal the thing

did i say that out loud

i thought i was thinking it um

yeah so i um

you're right because there's always kind

of an elephant in the room at companies

where many individuals in the room will

know that there's certain challenges and

issues especially in the leadership team

they'll have the clearest idea of what

those are but

sometimes they're quite uncomfortable to

talk about right they are the things

that are least enjoyable to commit brain

time and power and resources too so

i guess that's a very smart way you you

spent you spent five years on this boat

yeah which was a really

great you know

brave thing to do in my in my estimation

your captain of the boat

yeah i spent a bit of time with captain

in the boat with my guys

why

why did you leave that that role

well i didn't i didn't quite leave it so

um

martin who's my best friend from from

high school we go way back we're taking

mates yeah martin dickey we're flatmates

at university together we started making

beers at home

and so in martin's mom's garage we would

make beer and we started to get into

beer when we tasted an american beer

called sierra nevada pale ale we tasted

it it was like wow we love this so we

would dedicate our weekends to kind of

trying to recreate that in martin's

mum's garbage and in 2007

we'd always wanted to start a business

we decided to turn our hobby into a job

so we we got a 20 000 pound bank loan i

had 30 000 pounds of life savings and we

decided to set up this business we set

up in a derelict dystopian industrial

unit in fraserburgh in a god forsaken

industrial estate and with no money so

it was

beg barter bootleg to kind of set this

facility up we had like old dairy tanks

our water tanks were plastic tanks from

a local garden center because with no

money to buy stainless steel tanks and

we set out in this slightly naive i

think you could call it mission to build

one of the world's best beer companies

with that with two humans and a dog no

experience no capital no business plan

nothing but just a huge amount of

passion for a fantastic beer a huge

amount of disillusionment at the status

quo of the beer market which was

essentially just big mass market global

mega corporations who turned

beer i think that we love in a lowest

common denominator comedy commodity

product and we wanted to make fantastic

quality beers and opens open people's

eyes to this

diverse spectrum of flavor taste quality

that they never knew existed and take

them on this beauty journey with us and

that's what we set out to do in 2007 but

the first the first few years were so so

tough what gave you the right to start a

beer company

nothing at all you can't make i can't

make beer

how did you go about educating yourself

and how to make beer

so martin studies how to make beer and

distilling at university so martin's

they're really kind of solid technical

background and he's always kind of taken

more of a lead in the beer side the

business and i've always kind of been

more in the kind of business side the

sales side the market inside the

expansion side of the business so yeah

first couple of years it was me selling

beer at local farmers markets and

selling beer out of the boot my beat up

volkswagen golf but we couldn't afford

to pay ourselves so i moved back in with

my dad martin moved back in with his mum

i had to start working in the fishing

boat again part time just because

nobody wanted to buy our beer everyone

told us make sure bear cheaper make your

beer with less flavor make your beer

with less hops change your name change

your packaging

and we didn't listen to any of that i

mean we were determined to okay if we're

going to fail let's fail doing something

that we love let's fail doing something

that we're insanely passionate about and

let's just keep going and see if we can

find

a way find our breakthrough to somehow

make that work and that breakthrough for

us came in 2008. and you you described

that period as being one of the toughest

of your life that first year

give me a a detailed flavor of the the

hardest is there a moment in that period

where you you account maybe your hardest

day

i think so yeah so

we did everything the two of us so it

was just the two of us so we did the

accounts we did the sales we made the

beer we packaged the beer like the whole

thing and we filled bottles by hand so

fill by hand put on a cap by hand

putting a label by hand the tanks held

about three and a half thousand bottles

of beer so that took us kind of 20 hours

to do so we did that

and then

straight through the night the next day

i was kind of okay let's go and see if i

can sell some of this beer so i had a

few cases in the back of my car punk ipa

which is our flagship here today was

that was the beer that we were trying to

sell back then as well i visited six or

seven different local establishments and

gave them my best sales pitch it's

handmade it's local it's full of flavor

everyone said no

the last person and didn't just say no

he tasted it and he just spat it back

into the pot

and just gave me the bottle back and

essentially told me to get out so i

remember just walking to the car and

just wondering okay what the hell am i

going to tell the bank we've got this

loan we can't pay the loan back we can't

pay the rent in the building

i've been up for almost 30 hours

this is going nowhere like what can we

do to try and get this business to

survive and for me that was a that was a

very tough moment why didn't you quit

would have been easier i could have just

gone back to the boat could have been

captain back out on the sea lobsters all

that

there was no way we were going to quit

why we were we were going to die in a

ditch for this thing it's

we're just so passionate about it and

back to that inadequacy complex this

voice in your head you're not good

enough you can't do it if i quit that

voice wins couldn't let that voice win

so we kept on going we kept on going and

i think any business story there's

a moment where you get a bit of luck

where you get a bit of good fortune so

for us that came in 2008 we sent some

viewers into a tesco beer competition so

this was at a time that we were selling

let's say

10 cases a week at most

sent the beer to the tesco beer

competition kind of forgot about it and

got back to local farmers markets and

all those things a few weeks later i got

a phone call from tesco saying that we'd

finished first second third and fourth

in this tesco beer competition so it's

like okay

so i went down to wait is that the same

day that the guy spat out same beard the

guy spat out first came first

came first the same there the same same

temperature

i think so

that's interesting

so i went down to went down to chessunt

which is where the tesco headquarters

were at the time and met the tesco team

and i sat there with my best poker face

on is they told me james your beers are

fantastic we want to put these four

beers into

500 stores nationwide and we can sell 2

000 cases a week

so i signed a contract to do that

without telling them anything at all

about the fact this was two guys and one

dog filling bottles by hand and there

was no way we could there's no way we

could make that order so we had four

months to figure out a way to do this so

got back sat down with martin it's like

okay we've got this opportunity but we

need a plan

and we decided okay we need a bottle

machine that's gonna cost us a hundred

thousand pounds we need tanks that's

gonna cost us fifty thousand pounds so

went to the bank which was bank of

scotland who we banked with at that time

and this was 2008 so this is when global

economy is going into this huge tailspin

and we sat down and like okay let's

let's pitch this as hard as we possibly

can this is our chance so we told them

about the contract with tesco young up

and coming company but we need a hundred

thousand pounds for a bottling machine

50 000 pounds for tanks and they just

laughed us out of the bank there's like

james martin you're not paying your loan

back

it's a tough time for bank and there's

like no way we can give you this money

here so undeterred what we did we went

to the bank that was across the the

streets we got an appointment there with

hsbc and we said to the guys at hsbc our

bank bank of scotland have just offered

us an amazing finance deal in this

bottling line in this fermentation tanks

we've got this contract with tesco but

if you match this deal we're going to

shift all of our banking to you we're

going place as a company we'd love for

you to support us and they they gave us

the money so business plan year one and

two was make happy american beers and

tell lies to banks are they still are

they still your bank they are still our

bank to this very well

doing that um

i waited ten years until i told them

until i told them the truth i thought

there's like a safe amount of time

they're not going to take the money back

uh we got we got the bottle machine in

we got the tanks in uh the first beers

came off the bottom line two weeks

before they were due to go into tesco

and we got the beers in the tesco they

sold okay

year one year two they sold a bit better

and we were able to kind of start

building our business from there that

gave us a foothold and at the end of

2009 i was able to quit being a

part-time fisherman and just focus 100

percent by 2009 end of 2009 two years

two and a half years wow

and so that that

that first year where they're selling

okay and in the second year but they're

selling much better yeah what was the

causal factor of that sales increase

that started to get the thing get things

moving was it word of mouth was it

marketing was it it was it was community

so one of the most important things in

the history of our business has been

community so it got to it got to 2009

and we'd exhausted the money we could

get from banks regardless of what we

said but we are a capital intensive

business so we need money for stainless

steel tanks to expand and we were

expanding quite quickly at that stage

and it was how can we get money to

expand our business and we spoke to some

potential investors but it just didn't

feel like the right fit for us as a

business

so in 2009 we came up with this concept

that we called equity for punks yes so

this was crowdfunding before

crowdfunding was even a thing and we

thought okay if we can sell some of our

business to the people who enjoy the

beers that we make we can hopefully

create this whole new business model

we spoke to five legal companies up in

scotland and they all told us what

you're trying to do is essentially

impossible you can't you can't do this

spoke to a sixth company it says okay we

can maybe do it but it's gonna cost 150

000 pounds there's a lot of risks

nobody's done this before

we decided to do it it cost us 150 000

pounds at a time that we'd 50 000 pounds

in our bank account so we gambled the

entire future of our business on making

this completely untried untested

business model that we just came up with

called equity for punx a success

i was so nervou like the day that we

launched equity punks

it's the most nervous as i've been in

this business journey because i knew if

it doesn't work

like game over for us a business so many

people told us it was a bad idea so many

people told us people are not getting by

shares in a company on the internet

people that don't want to invest in a

beer company people just want to buy

beer this is a silly idea there's too

much paperwork people's not going to

send in checks which they had to do back

then as well as as opposed to with some

online payments but those were

cumbersome so most people paid by cheque

but

we wanted to do something different and

with equity punks what we've been able

to do is shorten the distance between

ourselves and the people who enjoy the

beer that we make so we don't just have

investors we've got community we've got

advocates we've got ambassadors we've

got people who believe what we believe

who want us to succeed and who are on

this journey with us

the first equity punks was

enough of a success to keep us in the

game we raised 500 000 pounds from about

600 600 investors but since then we've

gone on to build a community of 210 000

people and we've raised almost 100

million pounds through equity punks and

for me it is

the most special thing about our

business so the largest shareholder in

our business is equity punks and our

team which i think is really cool so we

are community owned we're people owned

and having that community with us

who then when they walk into one of our

bars they feel like they're walking into

one of their their own buyers when they

buy our beer off the shelf they feel

it's their own beer because they're part

owner of that company so completely new

business model for a consumer around in

the 21st century one that takes our

consumers with us and that community

element is amazing they're our biggest

fans they're our harshest critics we get

fantastic feedback from them they help

us find new locations they help us

develop new beers and equity punks has

been key to what we've done as we sit

here in 2020 one of the biggest words in

marketing is community now yeah

and you've kind of detailed that i was

going to ask you but you've detailed

very clearly the value of community um

and the equity punching when i when i

read that i think okay it's one way to

raise money but there's other ways to

raise money but it's really more about

getting

greater buy-in from your existing

customer base and turning them into

advocates and to die hard which is

increases loyalty it gets them to

evangelize as you say when they buy beer

they're basically it's almost like

there's a discount on that beer i know

there is actually a discount as well but

there's actually a discount on it

because they're enriching themselves so

it's a really

interesting innovative model is that

similar to what like crowdfunding equity

crowdfunding is today

before this very similar so this was

before but it's very similar to what

that is today and i think you've

articulated what the model is perfectly

and for each of our beers that they

drink because when the company they get

a tiny little bit better off financially

which is an amazing incentive to have a

second kind of hazy jain or elvis user

punk ipa on a tuesday and a tuesday

evening

and it's never just been about the money

because we could have raised money in

other ways but it's about building a

different type of business and a

business that's focused on community and

we do so much with our community and we

have our big agm and aberdeen our annual

meeting yeah um last time we had 15 000

equity punks come for our annual

meetings i think it's like the most

attended atm in the in the uk yeah so we

do the business things we've got

fantastic live music we've got amazing

beers and it's just the day where can

everything that we love and believe in

just comes together in one day and it's

always fantastic on money raising did

you you the bbc released a podcast you

might have seen yesterday like a podcast

on the you know i know you've had a sort

of contentious relationship with them

one of the things that they they leveled

at you which i wanted you to respond on

was in those hard times they said your

dad is wealthy yeah yeah so they said

there was a

a suggestion that your dad might have

been loaning you money yeah and so my

dad my dad is wealthy-ish not

excessively wealthy and not nearly as

wealthy as the bbc said and the only

support my dad ever gave the business

was there was a period where one of the

banks wanted to withdraw a loan and he

secured that loan for us for six months

until we got moved over to hsbc so we

were kind of very determined to do the

whole thing ourselves so the only

support was ever the short-term security

on a loan until we moved it

quick one we bring in eight people a

month to watch these conversations live

here in the studio when we're here in

the uk and when we're in la if you want

to be one of those people all you've got

to do is hit subscribe

and then like going going to your your

marketing thesis because this is really

what's defined um

brewdog in the eye of the consumer in

the eye of someone like me that doesn't

honestly drink beer but knows about the

brand and considers that it to be a

famous brand and watched it on linkedin

and social media over the years build it

sort of a claim what is your like your

principles that underline your marketing

thesis because your marketing thesis is

very very different to

pretty much nearly all brands in this

country there's maybe a 0.1 percent that

maybe you've copied or that have been

inspired or that you know

chicken and egg i don't know who came

first but it's a very unique thesis

towards marketing what underpins it

we've got two very simple tests that we

apply to everything that we do from

american perspective so the first test

is would or could another business do

this thing

and if the answer is yes we've got to

seriously consider why we're doing it

the second test is

if i spend a pound on this is it going

to give me a 10x return compared to how

a competitor would spend that pound so

we are in an industry dominated by

global behemoths of businesses who are

hundreds of times our size and we are

we're closing that gap and we want to

close that gap but we only close that

gap by making our market and our

communications everything we do work so

much more effectively than theirs

if our marketing is only as effective as

theirs we don't close that gap and we

lose so the two tests are could or would

another company do this and is it going

to give me a 10x return versus how my

competitor would spend that money and if

i'm thinking about how to get a drive a

better return on marketing you know and

then i think about what you've done i

see well we've got to be probably bolder

to win share of voice we've got to try

and win headlines in more extreme ways

because nobody's going to be writing

about you for

for the fun of it if you're a smaller

sort of challenge challenger brand then

the second thing i i think is kind of

we've got to

do that on new platforms we can't fight

out on tv or in newspapers because those

are where you kind of throw huge amounts

of money and you get uh return so new

platforms and new approaches and that's

very much kind of signifies what i've

seen from brewdog very very bold

very bold and intentionally bold and

especially bold in our early years when

we had no budget whatsoever so the

challenge was how can we get our name

out there with no money at all so we had

to do things that were intentionally

provocative that we're on the edge and

sometimes we can exhaust that edge as

well but that enabled us to get our name

our message our business out there with

no budget at all so we have driven a

tank through the streets of london we've

thrown

taxidermy cats out of a helicopter over

the bank of england we've put vladimir

putin in the front of a beer label so

we've done a lot of things low budget

high impact but we've tried to make it

that everything we do

ties back and is underpinned by what

we're passionate about so it does so

there has to be a connection there so

does this reinforce what we believe in

what we're trying to do as a company

because otherwise it's just hollow and

it's fake and it's false so how does

this reinforce the kind of core beliefs

that drive this business

which is try to build an alternative

business and a huge passion for

fantastic beer one of the more extreme

things i saw the vladimir thing uh what

else have i seen i think to be

because i'm obviously a marketeer so and

running a marketing company and seeking

inspiration from lots of different

brands and seeing what they're doing and

the impact it's having especially on

social media which is my my battleground

um the the thing i read about more

recently was that you you put in a

complaint about your own beer

which triggered press we did so this was

uh all the way back in 2008 and we had

a few running battles with a few bigger

players one of them was the pokemon

group so the portman group was an

industry still as an industry regulator

and for me it is a thinly failed cartel

funded by the big drinks businesses who

have got a vested interest in making

sure that small businesses are not

successful and there was a few duelings

at the park that were just so so

silly

and frivolous that we wanted to make a

statement so we complained about one of

our own beers to make a

meta statement about how silly the

process is and how essentially corrupt

it was as an organization funded by the

big beer companies big drinks businesses

who've got a vested interest making sure

the small ones are not successful how's

that like so you make a beer that is

really high in avb is that was that the

correct term it was yes so we made a

beer we made a beer called tokyo 18 now

if you looked at the newspaper headlines

in the uk when we launched that beer you

would have thought that i was

single-handedly responsible for the

downfall of western civilization by

making an 18 beer we had it in the sun

binge drinking blame this man with like

a cut out of my head in a bottle of

tokyo that took a bit of explaining to

my very religious grandmother but that's

another story that everything we did

with that beer was we just made a

thousand bottles it was very expensive

it was for connoisseurs it was for

aficionados and we want to elevate the

status of beer and i think the more

someone can understand and appreciate

something the less likely they are to

abuse it and we make expensive

products for people who love love

fantastic beers so it was to kind of

make a statement of

you've got all these big companies doing

very cheap alcohol that's likely to be

abused

we're trying to ban products of this

company that's looking to elevate the

status increase education awareness

around beer and lead people to

appreciate and enjoy beer in a more

elevated way

and when you see yourself in the sun

with a cardboard cut out of your face

is that

kind of swings in roundabouts is that

good

in from a marketing perspective is that

a good outcome because you were trying

to get headlight you complained about

your own beer yeah you were trying to

get headlines so is that job done

i think in that one to a certain extent

it was it was job done and to kind of

show you how

odd things were back back then so this

was kind of 2009 2010 when we were

starting to get momentum and the beer

scene was starting to change so the big

companies had it their own way for way

too long and things were starting to

change

there was a award ceremony in scotland

in 2010

um

put together by the bi the british

innkeepers institute

and we've got a heads up before the

award ceremony hey guys you're going to

win the award for scottish bar operator

of the year so you guys better come to

the come the awards ceremony so we went

there we booked a table they were just

about to announce i was like halfway up

to the stage to get the award and they

announced a different company i was like

okay

but then the other company didn't want

to take the award because our name was

engraved in the trophy he was like well

we don't want it so the next day i spoke

to the person that organized the awards

ceremonies like what what happened like

you told us we were going to win

and he was like well diago one of the

world's biggest drinks companies they

were the main sponsor they told me five

minutes before i would give it to you if

they gave it to you guys they was going

to pull all future sponsorship you're

joking so we felt we didn't have an

option so we put this online it blew up

it was trending on twitter globally that

day diageo issued us a formal apology

about the whole thing and that apology

was kind of broadcast news but it just

showed back then

how the dynamic in the beer industry was

changing and how the big beer companies

and big drinks companies were acting

towards that change of which department

was one manifestation of it did you take

that personally

i took that as a sign that we're doing

the right thing so i think

unless other businesses are copying you

are trying to knock you then you're not

doing well enough so unless you're doing

something that's worthy of

people copying it and like a lot of

people moan on being copied it's like

unless you're being copied you need to

up your game and you need to do better

unless your competitors are trying to

knock you down you're not enough enough

of a threat to your competition so i

took that as a sign that we're on the

right track we're doing the right thing

let's keep going the the other

extreme marketing thing that i saw which

was um when i first read i thought this

is [ __ ] hilarious is the elvis estate

tried to copyright uh infringe you for

calling your your us beer which i think

is your most popular usb it is elvis

juice elvis juice yeah they sent you a

copyright uh statement just sort of like

a

basically a notice that you you're

violating a copyright yes and you

responded with some elvis uh rhyme we

did and and on the on the art on the

linkedin post that i saw it said you

changed your name to elvis yep then the

bbc come out and say that didn't happen

yeah

what is the truth in this one what did

you change your name to elvis yeah we

did and just to go kind of back in the

story so elvis sent um not elvis himself

um elvis's estate

sent us a letter saying we couldn't use

the name elvis and a beer and if we did

we had to pay them a license fee for

every can case and bottle of beer that

we sold so what myself and martin did we

changed our names to elvis and we sent

them a letter back saying that they

couldn't use our name on their music and

they had to pass a licence fee for every

time they played one of one of elvis

songs um got a huge amount of publicity

at the time we were both elvis for a few

weeks

and then we changed their names back so

the bbc

attacked us on that as they have on many

things

however the bbc misunderstood the

scottish procedure for changing the name

so they said we didn't change your name

by deadpool that's not a scottish thing

in scotland you need an official

declaration to change your name which we

did so what's that just signing a piece

of paper you sign an official

declaration piece of paper and that

counts as a name change in scotland and

you don't even have to send it to

anybody don't have to send it to anyone

scotland so we met the scottish

requirements which is what we said we

did

but yeah my grandmother was very unhappy

and she insisted i changed my name back

to back to james brewdog's marketing has

been so bold and it's been so standout

and in terms of how hard you've in terms

of the the return on every dollar you've

spent it's it seems to have been a

pretty astounding return per dollar

spent because you've done these like big

viral activations a lot of them are like

um

parodies or they're like taking the piss

of big corporations or they're sticking

it to the man in various ways or going

at the you know the incumbents in the

industry

some of them know that they

the even the example you gave there of

they're complaining about your own beer

with the pork root yeah yeah

obviously the complaint wasn't real yeah

because it was you because it was me

what is the line between between like

truth in when you're doing these stunts

and virality

and

uh untruth for you and where where do

you play

are you willing to to do something that

is from a marketing perspective that is

not necessarily true like complaining

about your own beer if you believe it'll

help reach the outcome which is to stick

it to the portman group

yeah well i think with that one it

wasn't necessarily untrue because

afterwards we said we made this

complaint so it was us who disclosed the

fact that we made the complaint that you

were triggered okay and we disclosed

that to just show how ridiculous the

system the system was so

if we hadn't said it was us that

complained about it then i would accept

that was being a bit dishonest but the

fact that we came out and we said hey

the system fundamentally doesn't work

and we wanted to expose that by making

this complaint was what we intended to

do there when we first started talking

about marketing one of the things you

said was um

we made a lot of mistakes yeah took

things too far yeah what did you take

too far

in hindsight now

now that you're a big global brand and

everyone is you know looking back at all

the steps when you weren't so big yeah i

think the mistakes that we've made in

marketing is when

we've tried to do something which is on

the edge earth which is controversial

which needs explaining

so if you look at the thing in its

totality then it is potentially a

positive thing but if you only see a

snapshot of it then your take away from

that could be negative so i think a lot

of the mistakes that we made from a

market perspective and we did some

amazing things but we did make some

mistakes was when

we got too clever with the concept and

the intention behind it which was

genuine got lost so a famous example of

one of the mistakes that we we made in

marketing and for international women's

day we wanted to highlight highlight the

gender pay gap and this was a project

that was put together by some of the

fantastic women we've got in our

business and we made a beer called pink

ipa that we always get sell 21 percent

cheaper to women to highlight the gender

pay gap which was something that we felt

passionate about

and then the proceeds from sale of that

beer went to charities which helped

women and women's pay in the workplace

and these kind of things but then what

happened was people just saw pink ipa

and it looked like we were it was the

beard itself was a parody of products

which market themselves towards women

but then it just looked like another

product that market itself to our women

and if anyone like dug into it and

understood okay this is to highlight the

gender pay gap and they're doing some

good with the money and they're chasing

your cause people just saw the pink ipa

they saw the image and came to the

conclusion that we're just doing the

thing that we were going to fight

against and that was a key key learning

that people just see a snapshot of a

thing

so you need to make sure that all of the

message that you want to land is in that

snapshot because a lot of people's not

going to dig deeper into what it is

what i got from that was that like

you've got to create a marketing

campaign where the context is sort of

can't be separated it can't be separated

from because it will be separated if it

can be exactly 100

um

coming from being the captain of a boat

to being the captain of brood dog quite

literally that is your job title

um

what adjustment was needed because on a

boat

when you're up all night and there's men

there and you know you've got a

screw your screen was it was the

give me uh a snapshot of what the crew

were like on a boat a troller

so a lot of my best friends to this day

are the guys that i worked with on the

fishing boats

but these are

an unusual and interesting set of

characters as well it takes a certain

type of person to

kind of do that type of do that type of

work and do that type of work on an

ongoing basis and

i mean they're they're they're hard

working

like to have like to have fun like to

mess about a little bit but all about

the kind of all about the hard work and

especially when things get difficult

like seeing a good

drew and a fishing boat come together

and work hard to get them kind of

through a tough time together was kind

of really inspiring when it came to like

business and leadership can i let her

down the line i can see you being a very

good captain on a boat you and i just

generally you're you in a couple of

moments you know i didn't know you

before you'd walked in the door but in a

couple of moments that i've been with

you you're very

focused

and you're someone that i feel like and

i don't know you but you feel very

resilient

and

then you you add that to the fact that

this is your business

and you said before i think you said it

in your book that no one will ever love

the business like you do

you being so hard working so out of

balance in your own life as you've

described

how do you not then

have that expectation on others because

this is something that i honestly i

struggled with

i struggled with especially in the early

years of my business was understanding

that i was a bit [ __ ] up

and that in fact everyone else was

normal and i needed to understand it

goes back to me saying about the dark

side and the cost of my childhood and

the insecurities i was a bit [ __ ] up

so how did

how do you contend with that

for the first 10 years the business i

would say i contended with that very

very badly so

there's like a lot of intensity there's

a lot of

drive there's a lot of determination

there's a lot of passion there and

understanding how to

lead people how to take people with me

on that journey has definitely evolved

over time and i'm now ceo of a business

that's got 3 000 people

before that i maybe managed a handful of

people in a fishing boat but that is it

so it'll go from like no experience and

being a ceo no experience as being a

leader to managing 3 000 people at this

speed and add in this meant like this

year well last 18 months cumulatively

we're going to add a thousand people to

the team so it's like a thousand amazing

well-paying jobs in a recession which

our country which our economy needs so

we're expanding all the time but just

how steep that learning curve is

to go from not managing anyone to

managing 3 000 people with all the kind

of stresses and strains of growing a

business and i think if i look back and

reflect a little bit we've definitely

had challenges and well-documented

challenges along the way

and

we've had periods of such intense growth

that we maybe haven't focused enough on

our people in our culture during that

period and as a leader i've always just

been so focused on building something on

delivered an exceptional value to our

customer and making sure every time

someone opens one of our beers or visits

one of our buyers the experience is

amazing and knowing that if someone is

choosing to spend their money with us

they're making a choice to do that

versus one of our competitors therefore

we need to set the bar incredibly high

and push incredibly hard

and

as a leader because of that drive

because of that determination because

that focus i've definitely pushed some

of the team members too far in the past

and i think that's been that's been well

documented but that came from a place of

doing this because we want to build

something amazing and it took a bit of

time to understand that okay they're as

amazing as their team are they don't

have the same level of investment in the

businesses as i do right some of them

want to push it that hard some of them

just don't and for a while there was

just like i'm going to run through this

wall and i want everyone else to run

through the wall as well

not everyone's going to run through that

wall and again a big lesson and i've

kind of reflected a lot on leadership in

the last 12 months is

to take people with you you've got to

make them understand the why behind what

you're doing and making a first decade

of a leader is like we're doing this

this is what we're going to do let's go

and what i've kind of found more

recently is like if people understand

okay we're doing this but this is why

this is what it means for you this is

what it means for the business this is

why it's a fantastic thing this is why

it's going to help us achieve objectives

where everyone's going to win together

it's much easier to take people with you

on that journey whereas in the first 10

years i was just like go interesting

that's such an important lesson because

you know in the example you gave there

on in one hand you would like dragging

people and all the studies show across

all industries that when people don't go

voluntarily it's it's burnout it's

pressure it's stress it's you know and

then when what you've said there is

leadership is in fact inspiring them to

come with you yeah and when it's

voluntary in terms of they know why

they're going and they want to go then

all the psychological implications

across multiple studies that i've read

about are significantly improved you

said you've been on a leadership

evolution

so speaking honestly what has that

evolution been from when you started as

a leader and the business it starts to

explode to the person that sits here in

front of me today what have you had to

work on and remove so it absolutely

still is a journey and i absolutely

believe that i can get better as a

leader and i think one of the most

important things i've done in the last

12 months we appointed an amazing um

independent non-exec chairman and alan

leighton who's run some fantastic

businesses so much experience so having

someone there who's like a mentor to me

because like if i hang out with my

buddies they want to speak about

football and golf and

that kind of stuff they don't want hey

i've got this kind of leadership channel

it's like they don't care which is which

is amazing but then being a ceo is a

very very lonely job at times

and like incredibly lonely and

there's another quote that i love um

from ben horowitz author one of my

favorite business books and it's like

the first rule of ceo psychological

meltdown is not to speak about ceo

psychological meltdown so i think people

don't realize like

being a ceo is fantastic but it's lonely

it's it's intense it's it's difficult so

having allen's kind of help and guidance

through that journey i think is really

important and i would say in the early

years the business i managed it like a

captain would manage a small team in a

fishing boat

whereas now i'm looking to evolve my

leadership style into

a ceo of a kind of medium to large

company which is

a bit less intense which is maybe a bit

less demanding but which is more about

taking our people with us on this

journey so here here's the we're going

to do this and it might be tough but

this is what it means for us as a

business this is why we're doing it but

then also making sure that incentives

are very much aligned making sure that

okay we want to create a business model

where we went together

as a company which i think is really

powerful and we've always wanted to

build a radically different type of

business a business that rejected how

things were done and what big business

was as usual and it's been key and i

think if you look at we're community

owned we're the world's first carbon

negative beer business

and the new things that we've launched

with our people it makes us a

fundamentally and radically different

business so we've recently launched the

blueprint which is i think the biggest

most important announcement in the

history of our business so firstly i

decided to give almost 100 million

pounds of my own equity in the business

to the team so it's over the next four

years but that means each salary team

member receives 120 000 pounds worth of

equity and that's in the valuation today

so if we double in size then that could

be significantly more and that's about

recognizing like we are all in this

together we want to win together we want

to work hard to win together and it's

about

incentivizing our team to act like

business owners but rewarding them like

business owners the second part of that

was we wanted to create a

completely new model for how a

hospitality business works so we've got

over 100 amazing hospitality venues all

over the planet

each of our buyers now share 50 of their

profits with the team that work there so

it's a whole new model where if you

visit one of our bars in tokyo in

berlin in cleveland in

australia you know that okay half of the

profit that this mark makes is shared

with amazing people that put this

experience together so we want to kind

of elevate the standard of hospitality

elevate the standards of careers within

hospitality we've always been a real

living wage employer which means very

important for us but

sharing 50 percent of profits with our

team i think helps us attract and retain

fantastic people i think it's something

that's going to resonate with our

customers and i think it's something

that's going to help us elevate the

hospitality experience for consumers and

consumers are ultimately the thing which

drives our business that's the thing you

know we the first point was like

inspiring people to come with you as

opposed to dragging them which again

many ceos many leaders fall into the

trap of doing that because we are so

blinded by our own mission that we

forget to communicate

it and bring other people but the second

thing you touched on there is um if you

know we sometimes ceos sit here and i've

probably been guilty of this you said

you've been guilty of this it's like

looking at you know the team that you've

built and and maybe questioning at times

why they're not moving with the same

energy that you are but they're not

incentivized to they're not going to be

a hundred millionaire gazillionaire if

this all works out they are getting

their their remuneration regardless of

outcome

so the second piece that i've garnered

from that of leadership is also to align

incentives and if you want someone to

act like an owner you have to make them

an owner

which it seems like common sense but

it's not so common

it's not so common it took us a while to

get there but that is exactly like we've

got reasonably high expectations of of

our team we like to push hardware in our

industry dominated by companies much

bigger than ours so we need to be on our

a-game we need to push things as a

business but

we need to recognize the hard work that

hundreds and thousands of people put

into our business every single day

they're the people that make the beer

that deliver the beer that make the

magic happen for the customer and i want

their incentives to be as aligned as my

own and i want them to feel as much

ownership as i do and i want them to

share intrinsically in the success of

the business but hopefully by doing this

we can create a new business model that

in a few years time i can then sit down

with other ceos and okay like we've

invested in our people this way but

we've become a better business because

because of it and then do other

businesses then decide to do the same

thing

is it maybe normal in five years time

for every hospitality business to share

fifty percent of profits with the people

working their site and if that happens

then we haven't only made the lives

better for the people at work in our

business but we've managed to

fundamentally change our industry which

would be really cool a lot of successful

businesses in the country i'm thinking

of the ben francis and thinking of the

huels hashtag ad just in case the asa

come for me

um

uh a lot of business owners that have

gone through extremely high growth and

i've sat here with those ceos of those

companies they get out of the way yep

they realize especially in your case

because this was your first shot at this

this is my first shot yeah so you're

gonna [ __ ] up like

many many many times

as well hugely

over and over again and still today um

but they get out of the way so ben

france has stepped down at a ceo when

there was 30 people the founder of

julian stepped out of the ceo role and

put someone in

did that ever cross your mind and why

didn't you do that sooner if you if you

knew that you didn't you had because

learning on the job when you got 2 000

people is a high risk

it's a high risk thing so i'm very

passionate about being ceo and it's

something i want to continue doing for

the foreseeable future and why

because i think we are only just

starting so a question that i get asked

a lot when i speak to the media is like

how do you feel about what you've done

what you've built what you've achieved

so far

and i wouldn't say the feeling is quite

as numb as indifference but it's

it's close to that

really yeah and for me what is exciting

is where can we take this from here so

we want to build one of the world's best

beer companies we want to build one of

the world's best companies overall i

look at

companies like

whole foods or tesla or google or

amazon or starbucks i mean that is the

scale of the ambition we want to do what

they've done in their industry for a

beer so what i'm insanely excited about

is okay we've given ourselves a platform

we've now got

over three thousand staff we now make

beer in four contents we've now got over

a hundred locations we've got

significant sales momentum where can we

take this from here and i think what

we've done so far

gives us an opportunity to do something

meaningful to do something impactful to

do something that enriches the lives of

our customers to do something that helps

us save the planet and fly the flag for

sustainability something that helps us

look after our team members even better

but helps us have a huge impact and what

i'm very excited about is okay what can

we do as a team as a company as a

collective as a community over the next

five to ten years that's what i'm

focused on that's why i get out of bed

in the morning and that's what i'm

really excited to

continue doing with the fantastic

management team and team that we've got

in the business i was startled when you

said it indifference

you you genuinely the way that you feel

about what you've achieved so far is

quite close to indifference kind of just

numb or like just meh

honestly

it's close and different so we've done

some fantastic things but

overall we're still

relatively small in the overall scheme

of things

i'm like in terms of like if i spend

like maybe five percent of my time

thinking okay this is good 95 of us okay

in the next 12 months we can open our

fantastic site in vegas we can plant

millions of trees in the lost forest in

scotland we can reduce our carbon

emissions we can launch some fantastic

new beers our customers are going to

love we can open 50 new locations in

india we can continue investing in our

people we can make the profit share

thing amazing we can try and make sure

that the equity that people have in our

team is as valuable as possible we can

continue expanding our german business

beer brewery

yeah so in 2007 if i'd gone when you

were doing you know you're taking that

20k loan from the bank

and i'd gone and seen you and dicky and

i said listen couple of years time

you're going to be the 16th largest

brewery in the world and you're going to

have thousands of stuff all around the

world in 111 locations whatever it is

you're going to be opening a thing in

vegas you would have and i said how do

you think you're going to feel on that

day what you said to me

well i think there's there's two answers

to that question

so one answer is the answer that i would

usually give to media which is like

if you go back to 2007 and now you've

built this

could you have envisaged it could you

have imagined it

in the answer that you've kind of got to

give to the media because anything else

sounds too self-assured no i could never

have imagined it it's been amazing

but the answer that i don't usually

share is of course i imagined it because

if me and martin didn't imagine it how

can we build it how can we make it a

real thing if it wasn't something we're

kind of planning to do or planning to

planning to build

so i think she went back and asked me

that question there i would have been

very excited about the journey and the

joy of building something but you if i

said how would you feel today so to that

i'm 2007 uh james and dickie okay and

i'm saying by the way look at this this

is what where you get to in 2022 yeah

you would you would i'm guessing you

would assume that on that day in 2022

you would be really content yes but

you're clearly not

you're not content are you because

you're saying that yeah you're saying

you're indifferent yeah no if you'd

asked me that then i would yeah i'm

gonna like spend half of my time in the

office half of my time traveling and

then

and then just chill where that's what

i'm doing at the moment is exact

opposite of that and what i'm focused on

is okay where do we take this thing from

here can we make a can maker dual

difference can we create the world's

first top 10 beer business for over a

century

and that's an exciting challenge

i've come to learn from doing this

podcast that um

we almost need to make goals that can

never be completed for that very reason

and so

the words like better

like will make brewdog better is a much

more useful word than will become number

one

because when you become number one

there's nowhere to go from there and

it's an anticlimactic

yeah exactly

so there's an ant there's a real

anticlimax about reaching these peaks so

it's almost like trying to climb a

mountain where there is no peak and that

is that's ultimately life and then you

die somewhere along the journey

but that kind of goes against the trend

of like goal setting and what's your

goal and what's your five-year plan and

this kind of underlying assumption that

finish lines will make us euphoric

have you experienced that that's kind of

why i was asking the question about 2007

yeah well i mean i guess the closest

thing we've had to finish line is in

2017

we took

a big investment in our company the

company was valued at just over a

billion so one of my things was always

like

let's see if you can build a unicorn so

unicorns are startup companies which get

to be valued over a billion called

unicorns because they're so there

there's so few of them happen

in the uk and especially in scotland and

i always thought okay if there was ever

something

that

would make me

feel okay i've accomplished that thing

i've done that thing i'm complete happy

content it would be okay build a unicorn

like that for me that was my win an

oscar school up scored a winning goal in

a world cup final but like for me that

was build a unicorn

and then the next day i was just like

okay let's let's go where do we go from

here that was your first big sort of

cash windfall personally because the

money some money went into the company

somebody went to the founders yes

yes so that was your first big um

dealings with being a cash millionaire

yes and uh i find a fun story from that

so um the money came in to myself in

martin

and uh

i had bethany so it was like well into

the tens of millions i had bethany my

amazing assistant and transferred it

from the lawyers account into my bank

account

for some reason we there was a typo in

the in the account numbers

and it went to somewhere in russia the

money was lost for four days at a point

in time

we thought

there was the money wasn't going to come

back so i went from the euphoria of okay

i've built a unicorn i've got a huge

check in my bank account where the [ __ ]

is the money what am i getting

tonight so in the fifth day

um the boss of the boss of the boss of

the person managed to find a way to get

the get the money back and we got the

money back but for the five days after

the deal the money was uh missing

presumed lost which is never coming back

russia what a place to send it

[Music]

yeah the start code sent it to bankinson

petersburg and they're like well the

bank might even want to send it back

because okay oh my god

so now now double triple check

every start code that i uh that send

cash to what was that date what was that

that like emotionally that's that was

what you were aiming for in many

respects in terms of financial freedom

what was it like

and and maybe it's a theme of

people you have on here but

often when you get to where you think is

good the thing that's going to make you

happy

a couple of days

and then

your reality is is is almost the same

the demons are there the challenges are

there the opportunities there

but with people i've spoke to as well

it's never just this euphoric moment

where you sail in the sunset and live

happily ever after it's a bit of a

bit of a celebration a bit of a kind of

quieting of the voices of the head for a

few days and then go again when you say

the demons what do you mean

that inadequacy complex like you're not

good enough you're never get managed to

build a business

this business is going to go nowhere

you're going to be a failure you're

going to be back in a fishing boat you

should have listened to everyone who

told you not to set up the business they

were right they told you it was a bad

idea who put that voice in your head

i think a combination of early childhood

potentially partly parents despite being

well intentioned

um there was a story from my childhood

where

i've been obsessed with sharks my entire

life so my favorite hobby is to go

diving with sharks it's like i'm

happiest when i'm under the water with

sharks i recently went to guadalupe

island off the coast of mexico dive with

some great white sharks so like being

under the water with sharks is is my

happy place and when i was a kid i would

always tell people when they asked me

what i want to be i want to be a marine

biologist i want to study sharks and

when i was eight or nine years old my

parents told me to go and get my shark

book i was like wow okay they're finally

interested in something that i love so

pajamas on just before bedtime went to

my bedroom come through with a chart

book

mother opened up the shark book and uh

went through the four authors in the

shark book and was like james like this

person phd this person phd this person

phd they've all got phds it's just not

something you're going to be able to do

so you need to stop telling people you

want to be a marine biologist you need

to stop telling people you'll get study

sharks because you just won't manage to

get a phd so you need to think of

something else and i just remember not

saying anything

taking my sharp book and just like

walking back to my bedroom and in tears

no okay no more no more shark extremes

have you ever forgiven your mother for

the way that she was

i don't think so you don't

but i think there's a lot of incidents

like that that's where that voice comes

from and

i mean the voice of the voice is very

much part of me um

and i think it's helped me

push maybe push too hard at times it's

helped me do some fantastic things and

but i mean it's it's always there and

after that big deal it was like okay

you've done that but now unless you can

do this then that voice starts up again

yeah i just i worry about that a little

bit

because um

yeah

why don't you think you've forgiven her

uh there was a lot of other things that

happened subsequently

and ended up in a

messy