YouSaid · the spoken record

Alan Barratt

lines on the record: 110
first: 2019-04-10
most recent: 2019-04-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Very often think, you know, potentially I will probably be thinking, I wish I'd had children or, you know, whatever, so that potentially something could carry on. Because otherwise as well, what's it all for? You know, so if Most people, again, want to just make sure the kids are okay and look after their kids. But like I said, I can't do that. So it's been fairly important to me the last few years to be involved in philanthropy in some other ways to try and make things better. For the people and people who are less fortunate. So I would hope that. Friends and family around depending how many, I've got any friends or family left at the time, I would hope, you know, would certainly.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it depends what you've done in your life and what you leave behind. I really want to leave something iconic in sports nutrition because sports nutrition is my life. I've done it. I've been involved in it since I 13, 14 years old. So to hopefully do something big in an industry I'm passionate about and I love, you know, I would like to look back and say, you know what, I couldn't have done anymore. So if I leave something iconic that lives on after me, I think that'd be great. Now, most people do that through children. But, you know, I'm the last of the barracks. I've got a sister, but she can't have kids. So, you know, if I don't have children, that's it. We're done. And, you know, we've got generations of hard workers. So, you know, it's...”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess it depends how long that time period is between perhaps you know you're going to die and you're dying. I mean I've thought potentially what's worse, would you want to? If you had a long drawn out illness, but at least you had time to do things.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something actually I live opposite someone who passed away about four years ago who was extremely well known. He passed away about four years ago, was extremely wealthy, nearly pretty much billionaire. And he had this enormous empire. But he never got married, never had children. And I think it was actually probably quite a lonely guy and never actually met him because he passed away just after he moved in. But we'd exchange a few messages. But I actually knew one of his close aides and they were there when he passed away. He had actually had cancer. He'd spent something like 100 million dollars on prostitutes drinking and drugs. But when he passed away, he said to this person that was there, he can leave all this behind. But he had an amazing life and been around and done all these sorts of things.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, that's a good one. I don't think so, but ask me ten minutes before I'm about to die. I don't know. I don't think I don't think I'd be scared of it. I've never really been around deaf much. Touchwood, I'm very fortunate to have close family and friends nearby. I mean, I guess it probably happens. I mean, you know, if you believe in reincarnation and stuff, I'm probably going to come back as a toilet closure or something if reincarnation is a thing.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, if you do it via luck, are you winning the lottery? I think people wouldn't like that. And I think people would realize how their friends and family would change.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If ever we would ever have a negative comment about that, it's just people that just don't know us. And frankly, I couldn't care less anyway, to be honest. But yeah, if all of a sudden you won the lottery, you know, do you think most people's friends and family would be pleased? Because I bet they wouldn't because jealousy creeps in. And I think it's hard to be jealous of someone that's worked hard because...”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the most part, it is. But then people go out and buy like three helicopters and stuff, and then they realize that actually it's quite a lot of time and effort and work having a helicopter and they're really expensive things and they go wrong and they depreciate and they're quite dangerous. All their family and friends would change. So I think the nicest thing about the way that Jules and I have built the business and we've created value is the fact that our friends and family have seen us do it and seen the sacrifice and everyone says, you know what you deserve it. The sacrifice you've made. Now people might say something different beyond our back. I don't think they would if anyone had ever say.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Having money or whatever is not the answer. And I think I'll go one step further. I think for people who potentially you could win money, you could inherit money or you could make money. Now I've made money by hard work, so I've got a gratification of knowing the value of a fiber. If you win money or inherit money, I honestly can't imagine anything worse. And I think when they call it the curse, the lottery, don't they, where people win the lottery? And all of a sudden, you've got people who win millions and millions of pounds. And for the first time ever, they've got options that they never had. And I think they think it's probably going to be amazing. And I'm sure.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And she actually put one, I left infant school at the junior school. She wrote some, a book, and she smiling. So I just remember always being happy and we never, ever, ever had any money when I was a kid. We never really went in or did anything because mum and dad couldn't afford to. But they always gave us loads of love. And if they could do something, they'd always gave us time. More so my mum and my dad, because my dad was working all the time. So I didn't really see my dad when I was little because he worked seven days a week. So I didn't really have much relationship with my dad till he was older. But having money just gives you options. It's really got nothing to do with happiness. And I think if you're unhappy.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the missing link there is you can buy stuff that might make you happy temporarily. But I think really all having some financial means does, it just gives you options. So you've got the option of maybe having a newer car or a bigger car or the option of going on a different holiday, for instance. But as far as I remember, and you'd have to say my word for this, but even as a kid, when I was in infant school and I was walking around the school and it was like five, six years old, I remember a teacher saying to me once, Alie, you're always smiling.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Putting a smile on the face I can tell you that being brutally honest about it, I've not had money and I've had money and I know which I prefer. But it's really weird how people think there's a link between money and happiness. How can those nondescript bits of paper with a queen's head on? Just”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Won't care about that, or it won't be impactful. So, yeah, whatever's in the future is whatever's, you know, is going to be in the future. But yeah, we do get a lot of pleasure from going around and seeing products around the world and actually talking to people about it”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“swim for the first time or something. It's probably, or you know, walking. So when Grenade makes his little baby steps of doing something, we just get tremendous amount of pleasure from seeing that and we still do. So I can't imagine a time where I ever...”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We still do that. I can't go nowhere in the world. I'm like, I wonder if we're in there. And I go into like Walmart's and stuff in Canada and we go to quite obscure places. And there's lots of places again like out in the Middle East and stuff we can be found and just really obscure places. And I've got friends in the forces and they send us pictures and they're like, yeah, we're at this really obscure place in Afghanistan. And your products are here. And so we get a lot of pleasure from going out and seeing that. So like I said, it's probably like having a grenades our baby. It's probably like having a child and seeing them, you know.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a Friday evening and we drove out to go to our local Tesco, which is about 20 miles away because it was only in the big stores to go and see the product. And we were leaving the house and driving out of our road at like 10, 11 o'clock at night. And the neighbor drove past and he said, oh, where are you going? And we said, we're going to Tesco. He said to go shopping. No, we're just going to go and look at our product on the shelf. Said, but you know what it looks like? I said, Yeah, but we've never seen it on a shelf of a supermarket before. So it was a really weird conversation because he was quite right, but he didn't really get it.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, definitely use that. So that was a couple of years ago. And they've been great partners again. We've learned a lot. They know a lot about brands. They've invested in lots of big consumer brands, which people will know. Because, you know, no one's done this before. And no one's done it before. There's no one to ask. There's no path to follow. You just have to go and do what feels right at the time. And, you know, some things we got right and some things we got wrong. But even then, I remember the first time, for instance, we gone into Tesco's and we found out the products had gone live in Tesco. This was thermodetonator, our weight loss product.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did, yes. That's correct, yes. That was of March 2017, the last clean valuation we had, was line capital came in, valid the business at 72 million. That's interesting.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No one, you know, it's great for us, it's great for the team, it's great for our investors, it's great really for our competitors, put a lot of value in this space. Most of all, it's brilliant for consumers. They get great product in the locations they expect to find it, and it's better for the health.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would, yeah, I absolutely fear that. And actually, that's why I got back into my flying over the last 18 months, because I'm going to want to transfer the 70 plus 80 hours a week I spend on grenade. I'm going to want to transfer it somewhere else. So aviation is quite a good thing because I've known people who've been flying for 50, 60 years and they're still getting qualifications and ratings. You know, I want to go and do my rotary license and become a helicopter pilot. So I'd like to have helicopter and fixed ring ratings and stuff. So I'll have to go and find other things to do pretty quickly. But, you know, as long as I'm at grenade, I would hope we'd never become complacent. And I certainly try and surround myself with people that, you know, I don't want to let down. They don't want to let me down. And that we all care to the point we go out and do, make the best decisions possible.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I used to. Yeah, do you know that's my biggest fear? Complacency and boredom. And, you know, I said before, just not learning, just my biggest fears. So, you know, the day that I'm not at grenade is, you know, is going to be a strange day. You know, that first day, whether it's a month, a year, 10 years, 20 years, I don't know. I know that I'm unemployable, so I'm never going to have another job. So this is the last proper job I ever have.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what I took from that was actually, yeah, always looking for that next best thing and trying to get somewhere else. Whereas actually, it's fine to just stop and say, do you know what? I got there. I made it. I did it. Everything we set out to do, we've done, which actually we have to be fair, but there's a few more things I want to do. But it's really hard to remember that. You have to constantly say that back to yourself because otherwise you get drawn back in again and think, oh, I'll just do that. I'll just do that. I'll just do that. Yeah, you just want to run out of things today, but it's never going to happen.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By trying to do what you said to do, actually, on one of your LinkedIn episodes months ago, last year, so I've actually quoted this quite a lot because it really resonated with you said this. And I think you said I'm going to misquote you now, but you said something like, don't cut down the rainforest and then donate to the bees. Yeah.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got a thousand phone calls, a thousand emails wherever you are, you're supposed to be somewhere else. Um... I try and make it enjoyable. But a lot of the time it's not enjoyable, it's miserable. You're in hotels, you're on your own, you're stuck in traffic, you missed planes, late for planes, planes is allayed. But I just always try and reset at the end of the day and think, actually. We're really lucky to be here and doing what we're doing, and we're having this moment in time, so I really want to try and enjoy the roller coaster because there's a lot of highs and lows, as you'll know.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the business, there's no time for anything else. So people, yeah, don't see that. And it's very nice to have nice things, but nice things are the icing on the cake. It's not the cake itself. So, yeah, we've had hard times. I'm sure there's probably still hard times to come. But as long as we're happy and healthy and the people around us and stuff are happy and healthy, then we're hopefully doing good work. But yeah, I wouldn't be an entrepreneur is quite a lonely life, it's not an easy life, you know. Very often I'm probably quite probably admire people who can be content in doing something that's perhaps a bit more regular in terms of having a regular job or whatever and they have kids in the family and they go on holiday a couple of times a year and stuff, you know, I sometimes look at that thinking that's probably quite nice because you know what it's like it's nice getting on planes and going places.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, in the early days with my wife and I, we had a genuine conversation about us having to potentially lose in the house. And actually, we said, you know, if we end up like, you know, a one bedroom beds somewhere together, you know, as long as we're together, we'll be fine. Excuse me. We were enjoying ourselves and having fun and working hard. But, you know, we had the sacrifice of not having children. I mean, that would probably be a big regret. That was a conscious decision we made because we just didn't really have time for children. And when your wife and you were just both working 24-7.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, when, yeah, we had some fairly dark. I mean, you do still have dark days. And, yeah, this is going to be probably quite a broad answer to this question. People say to me a lot, you know, what's it like, oh, you're successful, you've made it? Firstly, we don't consider ourselves successful. And I'm probably sure most entrepreneurs never think they're successful because you just look for the next best thing. And that doesn't mean to say that you're never satisfied. It just people say, oh, you know, you've got there. I haven't got there. I don't know where there is. So that's something that, you know, we're always pushing ourselves and disrupting ourselves and keeping going. In a way, that's probably quite sad because we don't ever give ourselves probably a pat on the back, you know, for a job well done. But, you know, the job hasn't been done. And having a brand, a brand is never finished. So we're always working on the brand and trying to improve the brand and the brand evolves.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I spent a lot of time doing EPD. My thought of you know, if I can make my product better, then so can someone else. So I'll do it first”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely, definitely. That's why a lot of we do a lot of NPD, which is new product development. Half of my time is what we call EPD, which is existing product development. So we are always redeveloping our own product to make them better because technology change, ingredients change. We're learning all the time. I'm a big, big fan of learning. The minute you're not learning, I'm bored. I always want to be learning, which is weird bearing in mind that I hated school, but I wasn't learning anything.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most of these are brands that weren't around 20 years ago. And there's been a lot of disruption in the drinks space. And yeah, we've seen it with Fevertree and Broodog and they've come along with something different or done it better or been a challenger brand. And actually no one had really done it in chocolate or with food. And I think because most of the brands are so big and powerful that no one had really thought to do it. But again, it's back to that. If everyone's doing one thing, I'll go and do something else.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Including a lot of the really big players that we compete with. So they've had access to the same consumers that we have. And I think, you know, if we're going to talk about potentially disrupting the confectionery industry, because lots of people now, rather than going by a regular chocolate bar, will go and buy one of our protein bars. When I actually saw the top 10 best-selling chocolate bars in the UK, it was actually quite surprised because we were the only brand that had been launched in the last 20 years. It just hasn't been disrupted. And if you think of what Uber have done and Starbucks and Amazon and Airbnb.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lactos Free Milk, for instance lactose intolerance is quite a big thing nowadays and it's everywhere. Illy bankrupted him, we lost a fortune or got poured away because he invented it in the 1970s and no one knew lactose intolerance was. So, timing's huge. So, yeah, we're never going to turn around and say we haven't had good timing because we have. Then again, the opportunities that we've had through timing, everyone else has had as well.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“India's a big country. We had a lot of people talking about it, but there's no product. That was actually quite unlucky, really. You know, I think potentially. And by the time we got product into the country like a year later, just the buzzard died down. So we kind of missed out there. But a friend of mine invented.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“a business you can't outmanoeuvre bad timing clearly we've in an era where people are more health conscious certainly younger people sugar is the enemy I just don't see it changing anytime soon we've come along something which is high protein and low sugar you know with our drinks and bars so we're certainly helping a lot with that wave by making sure our product is everywhere that we think it should be so but Yeah, we're definitely having a moment in time and I think, I mean, in some ways actually we've been quite unlucky with some things that didn't come off that were quite unlucky, one of which was we had a huge Bollywood star that loved our weight loss product and he was talking about it everywhere and we couldn't get product into the country and it got stuck in customs and this guy's like he's one of his films in India is still the highest grossing film of all time. It's bigger than the Harry Potter movies and you had like”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean I certainly I would never ever say we've been lucky. I don't really believe in luck per se but I do think if we were to define were to try and define luck it's really just an opportunity meeting preparedness so definitely we are having a moment in time and lots of businesses get this it's actually I've talked about school a lot in fact in terms of timing you cannot I'm pretty sure”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just don't know anyone that goes to that Much into that much trouble. Again, maybe it's the OCD thing or something. I don't know. But it's strange whenever we talk to people about the brand, people's faces light up. It just seems to put a smile on people's faces. So that's price.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And most people couldn't tell. So we always try to focus on something where the stuff that we were good at hopefully shone through and certainly consumers feeling something was really important to us. And that's still the case now with our bars. I think our bars just taste better than everyone else's. A quality ingredients we use and everyone says this, but thus it's really true. We really do go over and above to find the best ingredients and the best suppliers. And no one else just seems to bother. And that's not just in this industry. That's in lots of industries. We spend years on product development, literally years. I spent two years working on our first bar, which was caramel, which we launched in 2015. That was a two-year project. The last bar we just launched, which we launched a few weeks ago, which is the white chocolate salted peanut, that was a further 18-month development project just on flavor. So even though we actually had the concept and bars, just 18 months on a flavor.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think, and actually, if we don't care, why should anyone else? So I think we've built this amazing brand that people really care about. And if people don't care about it, they don't like it, that's just as good. Because for someone not to like something we're doing, they'll still go and tell people, but at least they've got an opinion about it. So I think with grenade, hopefully it stands for a lot of things that both are hopefully fairly obvious and that's things like taste where people can immediately see taste or benefits for product. The early days, we always focused on product deliberately where there was an immediate feeling, so weight loss and pre-workouts where people could have it and within 20 minutes they knew they'd had something. Because otherwise, if you have a product potentially, so let's say water, for instance, most people can't tell the difference between water. So if you just drink another brand of water, do you genuinely think, well, it tastes better than that?”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think, I mean, when it comes to a brand, I mean, I'm probably fairly eccentric person, as you probably gather by listening to this podcast, but brands are always extensions of their founders, you know, good and bad. And I think because I care about the brand so much and because my wife cares about the brand and we built this thing that we care about, I think hopefully everyone we come into contact with, whether it's suppliers or retailers or consumers, I hope everyone we come into contact with leaves with a little bit of that.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Revaluate things you're working on or perhaps take a bit of time to do something else. But I'm just one of those people that I can't do something half cocked. I'm either all in or I'm all out. I'm just one of those extreme people. Some said to me once, he said, Al, you see everything as black and white. And there are shades of grey. And I just thought I can't operate in the grey. Despite wearing all grey, apparently.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“people never talk about consistency in business, but it's one thing working hard, but how long do you work hard for, a day, a week, a month, a year? Because what does a year of hard work mean? Osoma family work hard the whole life. So for me, I've worked hard my whole life, and I think nowadays people just don't have the staying power perhaps to do that, they get burnt out. I've been through stages where I've probably felt pretty burnt out. You probably have as well. But that's where you really takes that discipline, that mental strength to keep going. And maybe.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're better off being it has been than I never was. And I always remembered that because I thought, at least if this all goes horribly wrong, I never want to look back and say, I wish we'd worked harder. I wish we'd done that. I wish we'd gone to that show. I wish we'd met that person. So actually, we always put just tremendous amounts of pressure on ourselves. And I think it's one of those probably issues I have today, whether it's burgers or not, where if I think about something until I've gone and done it, I can't get out of my mind. I don't know if that's just me or that's probably quite common, but sometimes the strangest of things, nothing we're not going to run around killing people or anything, like the thoughts in my head are saying, right now, no, but I am, so I think hard work for us just meant, you know, getting up, putting the hours in. And I think that's what's been good actually about training for 30 years. It taught you a real discipline of putting the weights away, consistency. I think consistency is so important.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think maybe we used hard work as a substitute for lacking a lot of knowledge. So, you know, there's two of us. We've got no money. We know what we want to do. And, you know, within a year, we're trading in the US and there's two of us and we're working from home. When you think of it, really, it's just suicide. But I think approaching things fearlessly because we were probably very naive probably stood us in good stead. And actually, I remember thinking at the time, you know, there's going to be no one that's working harder than we are. There's going to be no one that's got a better brand. There'll be no one that makes better product. We're going to do more sampling. You know, when we hire people, we're going to get the best people. We're going to have the best relationships with our suppliers. We'll have the best relationships with our retailers. We're going to build up some amazing trust with our consumers. And I think hard work forms part of that. But I think collectively I thought if we thought about it, we went and did it because someone said to me once, they'd rather, you said, well,”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I have been in one plane crash, but not with me flying. But I think because we'd never built a brand before, but we had this work ethic.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I would say at its simplest form, and I'm not saying this is a good idea because I think, frankly, we probably, this is going to sound a bit of a silly thing to say, but I think we probably worked too hard in the sense we probably should have taken a bit of a step back at some point and maybe when you're working in a brand, I think everyone should take time to step back and work on the brand. So we definitely went down a few rabbit warrens. And I think with regard to hard work, but I'll tell you what did it very simplest form, just by working more hours than anyone else was doing. Certainly our competitors, you know, not having children, working seven days a week, if we were awake, we were working on the brand and actually we still are because it's very all consuming. So we never, when you've got your own business, you're never not thinking about it apart from when I'm flying actually. That's what I like flying because if I'm flying around, I'm hopefully not thinking about my brand.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out of college, so I need a job, and they'd got no money either. So they employed me on less than minimum wage. So it was about £1.80 an hour, I think. And this was mid-90s. So now it's 20 years ago, but it wasn't much, it was about £70 a week. It wasn't a lot then. And I took it and I loved it. And it's one of the best things I've ever did. And I did that for four years.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really disciplined. Like, I'll go away for four days and I'll take five pairs of shoes, six pairs of shoes, or something. But it's like, when I think about things, you don't need to have, you know, more pairs of shoes than days you're going for. And just, I just, it comes back to your point you were saying about potentially decision fatigue you were talking about the other day, but struggling to make decisions. And I get that like a form of dyspraxia like that. Maybe it's just I'm just pig-headed and awkward, I don't know, but I've just never really seen the point. If you want to make a difference doing something, do you make a difference by doing whatever everyone else is doing or can you make a difference doing by, you know, by doing something that no one else is doing, perhaps? So I just decided I just from that moment on, I just didn't want to be in the education system any longer. And I went straight, I took the bus from that sixth form straight to the gym I trained at and I said, can you give me a job? And he said, like, your mum and dad are going to kill us if we give you a job. I said, well, like, I've just walked.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, just because I'm quite dyspraxic. I walk into things a lot. So if there's a doorway, and even if it's 10 feet wide, I guarantee I'll walk into one of the door frames. So I'm quite clumsy and actually learn, I've met another friend of mine recently who's actually very heavily dyspraxic. And his takes the form as well, which mind us where if I'm packing to go away, it takes me a long time to do it. I can't decide what I need to take, so I try and take everything.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And she just, I can still still look on her face. She was horrified. And she stood the mouth open. And actually, my form teacher saw and overheard. And she said, oh, you need to go and apologize. I was like, nah. And I thought, you know what? I don't want to be here. I'm not enjoying it. I didn't really see myself getting anywhere. And I was just, you know, with no respect to anyone else who goes to college or university or whatever. I just knew it wasn't for me. I've always wanted to do something differently. It's perhaps it's like not liking football and rugby and so on. If there's a million people or a thousand people or telling people going one way, I just always want to go the other way. I don't know if it's, you know, my wife thinks I've got Aspergers. Why does she think?”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Morning, and the way she spoke to me, she was really quite rude, to be honest. And I said, I'm really sorry, I won't say her name. I said, I'm really sorry, Miss. I worked last night and I got in at four this morning and I didn't get up in time. I was just about to come and see her. I apologise and missed your class. And she just started lecturing me and telling me off. And I've got a really, really short views for this sort of thing. I just don't like being told what to do. So I did just tell her to F off.”
2019-04-10 · The Diary of a CEO · E30: Alan Barratt - From £27 to £72 million · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT