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

“It was community. So, one of the most important things in the history of our business has been community. So 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”
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
“They're still our bank to this very day. How do they feel about doing that? I waited 10 years until I told them the truth. I thought there was like a safe amount of time. They're not going to take the money back. We got the bottle machine in. We got the tanks in. The first beers came off the bottling line two weeks before they were due to go into Tesco. And we got the beers into 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 at the end of 2009. I was able to quit being a part-time fisherman and just focus 100% of myself. End of 2009”
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
“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 £100,000 for a botley machine, £50,000 for tanks. And they just laughed us out of the bank. It was like James, Martin, you're not paying your loan back. It's a tough time for banking. 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 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. And this bottling line and 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 places a company. We'd love for you to support us. And they gave us the money. So business plan year one and two was make copy American Beers and tell lies to banks.”
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 so. That's interesting. So I 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 as 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 meet that order. So we'd four months to figure out a way to do this. So got back, sat down with Meir and was like, okay, we've got this opportunity, but we need a plan. And we decided, okay, we need a bottle machine. That's going to cost us £100,000. We need tanks. That's going to cost us £50,000. 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 pitch this as.”
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
“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 got a phone call from Tesco saying it would finish first, second, third and fourth in this Tesco beer competition. So I was like, okay. So I went down to...”
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 no way we were going to quit. Why? We were going to die in a ditch for this thing. We're just so passionate about it. 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. 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 beers into a Tesco beer competition. So this was at a time that we were selling, let's say,”
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 just give me the bottle back of this house they 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 very tough moment.”
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 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 filled by hand, put on a cap by hand, put in 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 beer 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 didn't just say no. He tasted it and he just spat it back into the pot.”
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, Martin studied how to make beer and distilling at university. So, Martin is a really kind of solid technical background, and he's always kind of taking more of a lead in the beer side of 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. We didn't listen to any of that. I mean, we were determined, 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.”
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
“Beer, a thing that we love in a lowest common denominator comedy commodity product, and we wanted to make fantastic quality beers and open people's eyes to this diverse spectrum of flavour, taste quality that they never knew existed and take them on this beery journey with us. And that's what we set out to do in 2007. But the first few years were so, so 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
“Always want to start a business, we decided to turn our hobby into a job, so we got a £20,000 bank loan, I had £30,000 of life savings, and we decided to set up this business. We set up in a derelict dystopian industrial unit in Fraserborough, in a god-forsaken industrial estate, and we'd 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 centre because we know 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 two humans and a dog, no experience, no capital, no business plan, nothing but just a huge amount of passion for fantastic beer, a huge amount of disillusionment at the status quo of the Bureau market, which was essentially just big mass market global megacorporations who turned.”
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 didn't quite leave it. So, Martin, who's my best friend from high school, we go way back where Martin Dickie, we're flatmates at university together. We started making beers at home. So in Martin's mum's garage, we would make beer and we started to get into beer when we tasted American beer called Sierra Nevada Paleo. We tasted, 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 garage. And in 2007,”
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 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. So at the moment, we're opening a fantastic location on the strip in Las Vegas. We're opening 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 to determine our destiny. So we need to make sure that's whilst 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.”
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's something called the Stockdale paradox that I think is really important and kind of ties into this. James Stockdale was an American naval captain who was an extrisoner of Ware Camp for six years. And it's actually in the book, Good To Great 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 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 to the side. Let's everyone write down a piece of paper. What's a three more?”
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
“If the answer is yes, it's usually kind of bodes well for how we work together and how we look to build the business together.”
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
“Think the main lesson that I learned is 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 10 storm. You're trying to get the net back in the boat. It's dangerous. It's gnarly. It's two o'clock in the morning. 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 an Earth Atlantic fish in boats at two in the morning in a storm with everything going wrong with this person by my side?”
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, it's very much like those documentaries. So some of those were made in my home port 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.”
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, very focused on work and that work ethic, that determination, I think a bit of 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 was like, this is just not how we want to spend my life. I don't want to stay in this office. And I saw myself being maybe 40, 50 years in the future, kind of retire 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 season North Atlantic. And I think it taught me so much about resilience, about teamwork, about adversity.”
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
“He was indeed, I mean, still to this day, he's in his late six days, he's a lobster fisherman, which is a kind of tough, intense. I've seen gnarly job.”
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
“Because it's always there. It's always there. And I think a chip in your shoulder in terms of motivation is quite a powerful thing to have. But it's that kind of say and it's like everywhere you go, there you are. It's kind of always, always there at a certain extent.”
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
“Possibly, but I think it just gives you a bit of a Adequacy inferiority complex, which I think has kind of been with me for a long time. And there's ways 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 doing a thing, with a book launch that goes well so you get Almost temporarily escaped from that feeling by doing something that can be measured objectively, like succeeding in 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
“Yeah, I definitely have thought about it, and it's something I continue to think about, and there was just a lot of challenging things when I was a kid, and then when I was in my teens that I think it made it difficult for us to have a relationship. And for me, it's easier just not to have contact with her, 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.”
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, I mean, my relationship with my mom was always quite tough, so nothing was ever good enough for 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.”
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
“Maybe not caring too much what people think and finding your own way to do things and finding your own way to come at a business and opportunity or a problem. And I think if you're a bit of an outsider, it maybe helps with that.”
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
“Me, the best 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% of small businesses fail within the first two years. Think outsized returns are doing something amazing with a 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. There's a quote that I love, which is if 99% of people think you are wrong, you're either massively mistaken or about to make history. So it's just that.”
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, when I was like four, five, six, seven, eight. There were like certain words and certain letters that I just couldn't see 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.”
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
“Lot. I mean, the speech impediment was something that all the kids loved to make fun of, and then the kind of acne that I had that was quite severe in high school was something a lot of kids made fun of as well, which just kind of makes you feel even more like an outsider when you're drawn up, I guess.”
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 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. And also a bit of an inadequacy, complex when I was a kid as well, so kind of mum standards were quite high. So whatever I did wasn't good enough. 98% in the test, why wasn't 100? So when competition, why did I win it with an even better time? So like any achievement wasn't quite good enough. So growing up a bit of a loner, bit of an outsider, 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.”
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 a few. So we have a tiny fishing village northeast of Scotland. My dad was a fisherman. My mum was a schoolteacher. And being a fisherman is tough. And I just remember the kind of hard work, ethic instilled from grandparents who was grandfather who was also fisherman. My dad who was a fisherman. So it was really hard work and really honest kind of salt of the earth type character. But then he was always away and I'd be at home with my mum and my relationship with my mum was never that good. And I think I struggled a lot when I was a kid. I had quite a severe speech impediment when I was grown up. And this is something I haven't spoken about before. So that kind of always made me a lot of 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, 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.”
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
“Only ever been in tears once in my job, and I broke down in tears addressing her 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 realise 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
“we have shown on average 87% a year 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 kind of crossed that edge as well. Best outrage, they've 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”
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