YouSaid · the spoken record

James Watt

lines on the record: 131
first: 2022-07-04
most recent: 2022-07-04
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

“I think that's a great point, and I love your book, by the way, and I've actually highlighted a few. Yeah, I love a few points in that section.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So maybe it's like, well, if you lose that voice, are you going to be able to do these things? Is the voice. Thing that makes you able to build a business with your best friend from scratch to what we've built.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a lot of other things that happened subsequently Ended up in a messy court case with my father and I just didn't want anything to do with it. I was like, this is your thing. Sometimes people don't get on fine. Just start it out. It's not my thing. And she... Called me as a witness in the court case, which meant I had to sit there for five days in the court of session, and Ed and John, this was when I was studying law in the court of session with some of the students I was studying with watching the case and I was sitting there waiting to be called and I don't think she'd ever any intention of calling me and somehow she just wanted to subject me to the pantomime that was playing out that I didn't want any part of and I was forced to sit there and watch it which was which was tough.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I think there was a lot of incidents like that, and that's where that voice comes from. I mean, the voice is very much part of me. And I think it's helped me push maybe push too hard at times. It's helped me do some fantastic things. But I mean, 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Won't manage to get a PhD, so you need to think of something else. And I just remember not saying anything, taking my shard book and just like walking back to my bedroom in tears. And I'm like, okay, no more shark streams.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a combination of early childhood. Partly parents, despite being well intentioned, there was a story from my childhood where I've been obsessed with sharks my entire life. So my favourite hobby is to go dive in with sharks. It's like I'm happiest when I'm under the work with sharks. I recently went to Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico, dive with some great fight sharks, so I've been under the water with sharks is my happy place. And when I was a kid, I would always tell people, when they ask 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 shark book. Mother opened up the shark book and went through the four authors and the shark book and was like, James, look, 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're going to get study sharks because you just”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That inadequacy complex, like you're not good enough, you're never getting mice 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And maybe it's a theme of. You have on here, but Often, when you get to where you think is the thing that's going to make you happy, Couple of days. And then George Diala is almost the same. The demons are there. The challenges are there. The opportunity is there. But with people I've spoken to as well, it's never just this euphoric moment where you sail into the sunset and live happily ever after. It's 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The start code sent it to Bank in St. Petersburg, and they were like, well, the bank might not even want to send it back. I was like, okay,”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And a fun story from that. So the money came into myself and Martin. And I had Bethany, so it was like well into the tens of millions. I had Bethany, my amazing assistant, Em transferred it from the lawyer's account into my bank account for some reason. There was a typo in the account numbers. 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 to where the fuck is the money? What am I going to do? What am I going to do now? So in the fifth day, the boss of the boss of the boss of the person managed to find a way to get the money back and we got the money back. But for the five days after the deal, the money was missing, resumed lost, resumed never coming back.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I mean, I guess the closest thing we've had to a 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 sold air. 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. For me, that was my win and Oscar, scalip, score a win and goal in a World Cup final. For me, that was build a unicorn. And then the next day, I was just like, okay, let's go where do we go from here?”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Indifferent. If you'd asked me that then, I would, yeah, I'm going to spend half of my time in the office, half of my time traveling, and then just chill, whereas 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 real difference? Can we create the world's first top 10 beer business for over a century? And that's an exciting challenge.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's two answers to that question. So, one answer is the answer that I would usually give to media, which is, if you go back to 2007 and now you've built this, could you have envisaged it? Could you have imagined it? 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 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. In terms of if I spend maybe 5% of my time thinking, okay, this is good, 95% of it's 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 that our customers are going to love. We can open 50 new locations in India. We can continue investing in our people. We can make their profit share thing amazing. We can try and make sure that the equity that our people have in our team is as valuable as possible.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 beer. So what I'm insanely excited about is, okay, we've given ourselves a platform. We've now got over 3,000 staff. We now make beer in four continents. We've now got over 100 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 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a higher disk thing, so I'm very passionate about being CEO, and it's something I want to continue doing for the foreseeable future. Why? Because I think we're only just starting. So, a question that I get asked a lot when I speak to 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 close to that. 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...”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Site, and if that happens, then we haven't only made the lives better for the people that work in our business, but we've managed to fundamentally change our industry, which would be really cool.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's so common it took us a while to get there, but that is exactly it. Like we've got reasonably high expectations of our team. We like to push hardware in that 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 your people this way, but we've become a better business 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 50% of profits with the people that work in their...”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shared in 50% of the 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 the profits with the team that work there. So it's a whole new model where if you visit one of our buyers in Tokyo, in Berlin, in Cleveland, in Australia, you know that, okay, half of the profit that the smart 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 kind of couriers within hospitality. We've always been a real living wage employer, which has been very important for us.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost £100 million 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 worth of equity, and that's an evaluation today. So if we double in size, then that could be significantly more. And that's about recognizing we are all in this together. We want to win together. We want to work hard to win together. And it's about”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As 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'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 win 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 that'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 blueprints, which is, I think, the biggest, most important announcement in the history of our business. So firstly, I decided to get”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm relatively lonely, and there's another quote that I love from Ben Hardovit's author, one of my favourite 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 intense, it's difficult.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 that I've done in the last 12 months, we appointed an amazing independent non-exec chairman in Alan Leighton, who's run some fantastic business with 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 challenge. 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everyone's going to run through that wall. And again, a big lesson, and I've kind of reflected a lot in leadership in the last 12 months, is to take people with you, you've got to make them understand the fly behind what you're doing. And my kind of 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Her beers or visits to one of our buyers, they experience it's 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 buyer incredibly high and pushing incredibly hard. As a leader, because of that drive, because of that determination, because of that focus, I've definitely pushed some of the team members too far in the past. And I think that's been well documented, but that's 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 business as I do. 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That I maybe managed a handful of people in a fishing boat, but that is it. So it'll go from no experience in being a CEO, no experience as being a leader to managing 3,000 people at this speed and adding this year, well, last 18 months cumulatively, we're going to add 1,000 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. delivering exceptional value to our customer and making sure every time someone opens one of them”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the first 10 years of the business, I would say I contended with that very, very badly. 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 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, a lot of my best friends to this day are the guys that I worked with on fishing boats. Unusual and interesting set of characters as well. It takes a certain type of person to kind of do that type of work and do that type of work in an ongoing basis. They're hardworking, like to have fun, like to mess about a little bit, but all about the hard work. Especially when things get difficult, like seeing a good screw in 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 kind of later down the line.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then they proceeded 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 the beard itself was a parody of products which market themselves towards women, but then it just looked like another product that marketed itself toward women. And if anyone 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 taking 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the mistakes that we've made in marketing is when. Tried to do something which is on the edger, 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 takeaway from that could be negative. So I think a lot of the mistakes that we made from a marketing 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. We disclose that to just show how ridiculous 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have to send it to anyone's photons. So we met the Scottish requirements, which is what we said we did But yeah, my downmother was very unhappy and she insisted I change my name back to James.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Attacked us on that, as they have in many things. However, the BBC misunderstood the Scottish procedure for changing the name. So they said we didn't change your name by Deedpole. That's not a Scottish thing in Scotland. You need an official declaration to change your name, which we did.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we did. And just to go kind of back in the story, so Elvis himself, Elvis is a state sent us a letter saying we couldn't use the name Elvis in 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 pay us a license fee for every time they played one of Elvis's songs and got a huge amount of publicity at the time. We were both Elvis for a few weeks then we changed our names back. So the BBC”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I took that as a sign that we're doing the right thing. So I think unless other businesses are copying you or 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, oh, I'm 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 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. DIGO issued us a formal apology about the whole thing. That apology wasn't 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 the partner group was one manifestation of it.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About your own beer I think in that one to a certain extent it was job done. And to kind of show you how. Odd things were 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 words ceremony in Scotland in 2010 put together by the BII, the British Innkeepers Institute. And we got a heads up before the word ceremony. Hey guys, you're going to win the award for Scottish Barn Operator of the Year, so you guys better come to the word ceremony. So we went there, we booked a table. They were just about to announce it. 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 award ceremony. I was like, what happened? You told us we were going to win. And he was like, well, Diagio, one of the world's biggest drinks companies, they were the main sponsor. They told me five minutes before.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was Jessie, 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, would have thought that I was single-handedly responsible for the downfall of Western civilization by making an 18% beer. We had in the sun binge drinking, blame this man with like a cut out of my head and a bottle of toky. That took a bit of a explain into my very religious grandmother, but that's another story. 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 fantastic beer. 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, trying to ban products of this company that's looking to elevate the status, increased education.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did, so this was all the way back in 2008, and we had a few running battles with a few bigger players. One of them was the Portman Group. So the Portman Group was an industry still as an industry regulator. And for me, it was a thinly veiled cartel funded by the big drinks businesses who've got a vested interest in making sure that small businesses are not successful. And there was a huge rulings at the pout that were just so, so silly and fruitivolous that we wanted to make a statement so we complained about one of our”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 were on the edge, and sometimes we can cross that edge as well. But that enabled us to get our name or message or 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 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?”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've got two very simple tests that we apply to everything that we do from a marketing 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 10 extra turn 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 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 market 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 10 extra turn versus how my competitor would spend that money?”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So my dad is wealthyish, not excessively wealthy, and not nearly as wealthy as the BBC said. 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 it moved over to HSBC. So we were kind of very determined to do the whole thing herself. So the only support was ever”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's never just been about the money because we could every day's money in other ways, but it's about building a different type of business and a business that's focused in community. And we do so much with our community. We have our big AGM in Aberdeen, our annual meeting. Last time we had 15,000 equity punks come for our annual meeting. So I think it's like the most attended AGM 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 kind of everything that we love and believe in just comes together in one day. And it's always fantastic.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 can of Hazy Jane or Elvis juice or punk IPA in a Tuesday and a Tuesday evening.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 own buyers. When they buy a beer off the shelf, they feel it's their own beer because the power 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.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Game over for us as a business. So many people told us it was a bad idea. So many people told us people I might get to buy shares in a company on the internet. People that don't want to invest in a beer company. People just want to buy beer. There's a silly idea. There's too much paperwork. People's not getting to send in checks which they had to do back then as well as opposed to some online payments, but those were cumbersome. So most people paid by check. 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 enjoyed the beer.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Spoke to six companies, says, Okay, we can maybe do it, but let's get cost £150,000. There's a lot of risks. Nobody's done this before. We decided to do it. It cost us £150,000 at a time that we'd £50,000 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 Punks a success. I was so nervous. The day that we launched Equity Punks, It's the most nervous as I've been on this business journey because I knew if it doesn't work.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 do this.”
2022-07-04 · The Diary of a CEO · Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT