YouSaid · the spoken record

John Vincent

lines on the record: 52
first: 2018-04-09
most recent: 2018-04-09
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 it's fascinating the journey that you're on and it mirrors so much of the journey that I'm on and I'm sure that I'd like to reciprocate an interview you at some point because you sound like an amazing person.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you get five and a half, and I think understanding that and that there is no perfect partner, there's no perfect person, there's no perfect relationship, I think both of us love each other enough to recognize that.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I haven't got much, unfortunately I haven't got many silver bullets for you, but I think suddenly you will find a woman who fits, who's got her own confidence interests and strength of character so that you are a partnership of equals. And I think you'll find that. And I think you'll find that they will love the bits of, they'll recognize they can't love you in slices. So, you know, Katie says, look, I know I can't love you in slices. I know that, you know, living with you is fun. I know that living with you is high intensity. I know that living with you is rewarding and I'm going to put up with the stuff that pisses me off. And I think it comes back to in relationship to the same thing we talked about earlier, which is a lack of perfectionism. Some people have like a list of 10 things that they want a partner to have. And I think most people do wear.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's a buck coming. Yes, yes, you can see it. I'm sure there are times when she thinks, oh, John, please just relax and stop going over the same stuff in your mind about should I do this? Should I do that? I definitely allow my business life to pollute my home life. And I would like to be more disciplined about that. So I've tried locking my phone in a little red metal box on a Friday night, right? I've tried saying, right, I'm going to clear all my work stuff out of the study at home. But my brain is always thinking, and it's often thinking about work. And so I think her frustration is she will literally say, oh, what should we do tonight? And she has to ask me four times because my brain is just thinking about a business problem. I would love for that not to be the case. I would say for you, I...”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Katie is the most amazing person. She is a broadcaster, journalist, business person in her own right. She's got her own production company. She presents the proms. She used to be an ITV news reader. She's a DJ on Radio 3, a presenter on Radio 3. And she's been on strictly. She's done all sorts of stuff. I cannot, she's the most amazingly wonderfully spirited and talented person. And so she has her own adventures, right? So it's not like she's there dutifully cooking for me when I go home. So I think she absolutely is of a similar spirit to me. So she totally gets it and she totally understands.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe you are. I don't know. Oh, look, it's no funny she just texted me. She says, Oh, she says, what would Helen Wright like for her birthday? That's not very profound.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They come to, I hope my kids aren't listening to this, but I'm going to die a little bit earlier than I think I would have done. I think the stress that it puts on me is probably meaning that my cells are reproducing not as perfectly as they should be. I think that my gut health isn't as good because I'm stressed. I'm killing all the good bacteria. So I think the cost is a very physical and emotional one. And I sometimes wonder whether I sometimes find it very difficult. People might be very surprised with this, but sometimes I find it difficult to feel good. I sometimes find it difficult.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, trust me, I cannot tell you how unnecessary. Be careful what you wish for, right? It's the phrase which is a good version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else, I think is absolutely right.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also, would you want to be Mark Zuckerberg right now being called in front of Congress and Parliament to explain why you didn't admit that 50 million users have been nicked?”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Suggests ways to make things better. But that doesn't mean to say that everyone has to be the person that starts a company. And I think you're absolutely right. I think you've alluded to it or said it explicitly, which is the life that I lead is purely the product of my history, what I love, what I'm scared of, what I want my superpowers to be. And I think it's really dangerous to have role models sometimes. It's really dangerous to think I'd like to be like Richard Branson, or I'd like to be X or Y.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say that entrepreneurship if it's defined as imaginatively creating new opportunities and innovating, I think anyone can do that without having to be John Vincent. And you can do that by being a PA to a marketing director. You can do that by being a salesperson, working in a factory. You can be the person that puts their hand up and says, hey, I've worked out a much better way of making this widget. That's entrepreneurship. And I think that at the very least society should offer everybody the opportunity to be entrepreneurial in that way, the ability to contribute, the ability to be creative, the ability to be listened to, to be an intrapreneur within any organization or in any business. And I'd love everybody to be a leader. I'd love there to be six billion leaders in the world where everyone puts their hand up.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that anyone who has creatives achieved lasting fulfillment has achieved it by just saying this is who I am, I'm really cool with it. And I'm not trying to be these other seven things I could be. Because we're so imaginative. We imagine the banker, the John that is running Greenpeace, the John that is playing at Glastonbury next week. All of those are valid parallel universes. We could possibly, I couldn't do the Glastonbury thing, but we possibly could do any, maybe on the triangle. We could possibly do any of those, but we can't do, we can only do one of them. And I think that finding peace in that and finding simplicity and replacing fear of missing out with love of missing out, I think is definitely the way forward.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Said, I hated it in the end, but I'm so much happier now. I'm hopefully going to be nobody again. And I think that that's what people need to understand. There are a great, you're talking about, you know, if I think about some of the things about needing to have a simple life, a life that's focused in the present, recognizing the fact that you can do anything, but you cannot do everything.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have to understand that still so many unhappy people who have, I cannot tell you, I spoke to someone the other day, she said, I have killed myself online, I am so happy. She said, I won't say who it was because she's reasonably well known. But she's like, that person, person X, is now dead and I couldn't be happier. Do you know what I mean in terms of the stress of... The stress of having to be this person, the stress of having to post these glamorous shots that were all fake.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just very quickly, I know that this is about achieving your potential Do you think it's possible to achieve your potential”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that sometimes I suffer from stress that affects me at a physical level and sometimes I literally don't feel very well at night. So I feel like my best when I am not in the UK, when I'm on a small island in Greece or I'm in Africa or I'm in Brazil, those are the times that I sleep best at night. And I think that I suffer, and this is why the Wing Chung, the martial art, the Kung Fu martial arts is doing so much for me, is I literally physically sometimes feel so exhausted that I can't sleep, if that makes sense. So for me, I don't have worries that go round in my head at three o'clock in the morning. I find that I'm having a physical response to the thousands of small things that have accumulated through the day, if that makes sense. How about you?”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it scares me on a kind of socio political level because I don't know how we're going to get out of some of the shit that we are in if institutions like that don't act from love.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quashing love and quashing freedom and quashing spirituality and humanity. And I see organizations making the wrong decision because the organization is fearful or because they're not valuing the individual or not valuing love. And it sounds like a very macro thing to be afraid of, but it is the thing that angers me. And of course, if it's angering me, it's because it's coming from, as I said before, fear. or scaredness that I have. And that is the thing that frustrates me most about the world when newspapers write things that are not true and hurt people emotionally or they without any remorse. So I think it's people acting without love and people acting from fear or greed or ego, the thing that scares me most because it scares me on a human level.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really fascinating. I think that's a really hit the nail on the head there, both in terms of being scared is what defines us. Plus, we're scared of the wrong things. I think we had a Leon Wellbeing event in January and we went around the room and said, okay, what would your superpower be if you could have one? Because in effect, a superpower to some degree is the thing we'd like to have to counter what we are scared of, right? I said my superpower would be the ability to flick a switch and to get business people, politicians, individuals, whoever to switch from acting from fear and ego to switch to acting from love. And that is the thing that I am most scared of. I am most scared of big companies and big governments, and we see it happening in quite a few governments in the world.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Universal consciousness or somehow separate from each other or separate from sounds new age but separate from the universe. And I think the more we recognize the fact that we apple is really not separate from the tree or separate from the leaf or separate from the root or separate from the soil, there's this great thing that says Adam and Eve started fucking up when they started naming things as separate. So the tree was separate from the apple and reality is not. It's just part of one thing the same way as I mentioned before. The wave is not separate from the ocean. And for me conceptually and physically when I'm sailing or I'm out in a great expanse, I find death much less frightening and much less of a thing to be scared of.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's something which we are conditioned to be very afraid of in the West as something we don't talk about. It's like pooing. I would say I am sort of midway between the two, as in I definitely think that I suffer from the same psychosis or fear of death that most people have in the West. But when I travel to Africa, I feel I might have mentioned this phrase before, but reassuring the insignificant. When I'm out in and you cannot see any buildings and you can just see for as far as the horizon 360 around you and you can see the lines, you can see the animals and the insects, you see that insect dying there and that insect being born over there. I do find it reassuring how small and irrelevant we are. And I think that the more we attach ourselves to our self-worth, the more we fear death because the more we tell ourselves that we are somehow separate from”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To mirror his values and yet to create something that he was proud of. It's only weird that until someone dies you realize the energetic imprint that they've had on you, if that makes sense.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost trying to protect my dad, if that makes sense. And I think Leon, I think you've spoken in the past about potentially entrepreneurialism, not just being something to admire, but something to pity. Something which is maybe an illness I think that we all do things to maybe counter things or impressions and stories we've been inadvertently told as children. And I once sat down with acupuncturist on a massage bed and she said, wow, everything you do is driven by your dad. And I was like, oh, don't give me that kind of cliched bullshit. And I thought, oh my God, the whole business is named after my dad. Do you know what I mean? The whole business is an attempt to say, hey, dad, we can do this.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that I can speak about my dad just died. I think I mentioned that. Did I mention that? And I think that my dad was a man of immensely high integrity. At the same time, he loved his life. He loved poker and horse racing and snooker and sailing. And I loved him and I loved the things that he stood for. And he was quite a gentleman and quite a shy man. And often I used to look back at him being sometimes overshadowed by people with larger personalities. And I used to think that was unfair. Does that make sense? And I used to think that certainly at work maybe he was dominated by third parties, I think, or people with bigger egos than him. And I think there's an element of me wanting Become this number eight protector or challenger almost to make sure that that doesn't happen to me. Does that make sense?”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know that that's something which triggers me. So I've got, there's something called the enogram, which is a wonderful personality profiling tool, which I'd recommend anyone listening to go ahead and look at, E-N-N-N-E-G-R-A-M. And I'm a number eight, which is protector or challenger. And so, and the protector or challenger doesn't like things that are unfair. So 80% of the time, number eight is Nelson Mandela. And if triggered, they can be Saddam Hussein. There's an element of in my personality for whatever reason because of my makeup, my childhood, my development, or lack of development, I know that I can get angry if I think there's a lack of love or a lack of fairness.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100% I have to come back to the phrase of judging people's actions by their insecurities, not your insecurities. And it was one that I was told about 15 years ago, and it was really, it massively sort of rang true to me around how often our, if our response to hate is anger, then that really is our own fear which has caused that anger. And so I in a moment where someone might say, hey, I've rated your rapper 3 out of 10. Oh, and by the way, I bet McDonald's could have done a better job. If I'm a knackered. To be honest with you Be hungry, maybe C, there's so much other personal shit going on. And D, if I think things are unfair.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the purpose of the step, the first bit of an advert. And then people will pile in with the solution. Don't worry, you can have this anti-dandrof shampoo. Don't worry, it's got these amazing little micro pigles called some made up scientific name that means it's going to work. Constantly we are being bombarded with advertising that is manipulating us. And I think we have to separate ourselves entirely from those sorts of images, impressions, and not let our ego be manipulated.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is basically about if you've got money that you haven't necessarily earned or it's come as a windfall to you because your business has been overvalued or whatever, you don't feel good about it. And Bread of Shame people tend to spend on, I hate to say it, they spend money on cars or even hookers or whatever, because actually they don't feel spiritually good about the money they've made. I would say that unfortunately society has manipulated our fight or flight response, manipulated our fear response, and that when I was at P&G, which is a consumer products business, step one of the advert was create the fear. Isn't it embarrassing when you've got dandruff on your shoulders? Isn't it embarrassing when people can see a sweat patch underneath your arm? Isn't it terrible when people come and see you've got a dirty kitchen? That is all, and step one was create the fear. So I think what your listeners need to understand, especially if they're young, is that adverts are trying to make them fear.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All with the same values. And I would say being able to sleep at night and looking at yourself in the mirror, we have a, is it Ju Jing, a phrase in Wing Cheng called Ju Jing, which is face yourself? And I think the ability to face yourself with real comfort. And that absolutely does not come from money. Of course, if people are listening and they say, well, fuck you, I haven't got any money and it's fucking difficult. Yes, it's absolutely difficult when you haven't got any. But there's a threshold beyond which money does not buy you happiness. Money can take away some of the struggles that provide stresses to many people, but it's not a linear relationship after that point. The more money you have, sometimes there's a negative impact on your happiness. You start, there's something in the Kabbalah tradition called bread of shame.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's being liking yourself because a lot of people that I know that are billionaires, they kind of hate themselves. They're on their mega yachts and they've got someone to walk their dog and they've got a personal trainer who they see religiously every six months. And I think that unfortunately there are a lot of billionaires that separate themselves. Either they separate themselves from their true friends, the friends that haven't kept up with them financially, and they end up in this rather sort of, I think, sort of sick kind of world of billionaires, if you see what I mean.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we would say was let us protect the purpose of our activities must be to protect the soil, to protect our lives, to protect the tribe, to protect the ecosystem, but we need to do it in a way which is economically sustainable. And that is how we need to think about capitalism. We need to look down the other end of the telescope. So your friend who wrote to you or your podcast listener making money is the prerequisite for sustaining the good. So we need to start thinking about it the other way around. What is the purpose of the company? Is the purpose of the company noble? Does it make us support life on this planet and does it support fulfillment and happiness? And can we now make that financially sustainable? That's a second question. That's how we have to look at it. And that's how I'd encourage your listeners to look at it.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Killed the ants and the monkeys, and we poisoned the rivers and we chopped down the trees. Let's give back. Let's go to a charity auction by some Wayne Rooney signed shirt and give back. That'll make us feel good and we'll stick that up in our garage, in our mansion, right? We wouldn't think like that as a Brazilian tribe.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been talked about in a book called The Great Work of Your Life by a Yogi called Stephen Cope. And I'd really recommend people to read this because what it says is that fundamentally happiness and fulfillment comes from mastery, as I said before, and being in the present moment. Now, the money that Leon requires is the by-product of the mastery and it is not the objective. And I'll give you an example. Henry and I, my partner won an award called the Sustainable I think it's called the Sustainable Business Award. And Sandra Javitt, who was, I think that was, excuse me if I haven't pronounced his name right, the business minister stood up and said, oh, the purpose of capitalism is to make money, but oh shit, we better make it sustainable. And I realized as I was going up to accept the award, it's like looking down the wrong end of the telescope. If we were a Brazilian tribe, we wouldn't wake up in the morning and think, I know, let's make money. And then once we've made money.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, absolutely. So I think what's really interesting is that the purpose of Leon is not deferred happening. So let's take an example. Fuji had an objective to kill Kodak. That was their mission. A, that was future-based. And B, as soon as you've killed Kodak, what do you do then? Do you have no mission? And so the purpose of Leon is to eat and live well, starting with ourselves now. So the very purpose of Leon, the very mission of Leon is not deferred to the future. It's something that we can start now positively in the present moment. So everybody at Leon is not thinking our job is to increase the share price to X or the market capitalization of the company to a billion. That is not what Leon people think. And I think there's a book called The Bagvad Gita, which is a Hindu script, which is...”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could be a small frog, it could be a spider, it could be a tree. But just observe that that's a very practical thing that people can do.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the practical side, I would say breathing is the most wonderful way of becoming present and physical-based meditation. So some people may have downloaded the Headspace app or some people might have found that those sorts of things in terms of meditation help. I would say from the point of view of what we've learned in Wing Chung, the physical movement, even literally walking and breathing and allowing your body and your mind to synchronize and breathe as you do it, something literally as simple as going for a walk and consciously breathing as you do and walk away from your phone, walk away from any devices and be in touch with nature as in it could be a tree in a park in Manchester. It could be a small bush that you find on the estate where you live. But literally find something.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The very act of trusting our subconscious processes to drive our immune system or the process of making sure that we're breathing, only value that. So that will immediately put you into a situation where all your valuing is the things that are literally within your own body. As soon as you value a prize that you might get or what a girlfriend might think of you, you are putting yourself in a much worse position from point of view of your own mental health. And almost act as if you're dead. And I think some people might think this is a bit strange. So I think people are going to have to bear with me here. But if you say, I am dead, I've died. It allows you to suddenly revalue the things you really then want to value. So if you start with a starting point that says nothing, nothing is of value, I am dead.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're talking very practically, aren't we? Is that what you mean? Okay, so I think there's a practical element and then there's a sort of mental element. The mental element is to start by not valuing anything. So by which I mean recognize the fact that ultimately”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The ones that my friends have met in Brazil, they are rooted in the present moment. They are absolutely conscious and present now. And the problem with living your life abstracted online or abstracted in the future means that you are off balance and you are not getting fulfillment from the now. And the martial art that I do, Wing Chung, it's predicated on fulfillment coming from the practice, not from the result of the practice, not from one day I will win this fight, not one day I would have this glory.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The danger is that we start to become very unwell and we stop being happy now. So if I think about the major lessons, they are do not seek happiness from a future occurrence. Do not defer happiness to this magical island that exists at once we arrive at this magical island, we will be happy and do not associate your happiness with money. Do not associate it with fame. Do not associate it with recognition from third parties. Because as soon as we put ourselves into a situation where we are deferring happiness into the future, we are clearly off balanced in the present moment. And if I look at the tribespeople that I meet, certainly the ones that I meet in Africa,”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Based on a whole bunch of myths that we've told ourselves. So, first of all, we're in the cot and someone says, Steve, and then you keep hearing this name Steve. And you're like, fucking hell, this is getting ridiculous. They keep mentioning this word Steve. What is Steve? And then eventually you realize, shit, they think that I'm separate from them. That's weird. Of course I'm not separate from them. But hey, I better start believing it. And then you go to school and they call out your name in class and they say, Steve, and you put your hand up. That reinforces his idea that you're separate. And they say, Steve, you've won the history prize. And you go, hey, Steve's good at history. Now, whether it's true, half true, or not true, you create a sense of who you are. It's mostly not true. The Steve that we have in our mind or the John Vincent that we have in our mind, it's a set of myths, a set of stories that we tell ourselves. And we tell ourselves because we attach identity and constancy to it.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I've seen that happen. And so therefore, people think that what they see online is somehow real and true. And we pretend that social media is a window into truth. And unfortunately, it is a window into artifice. And the more artifice and lack of truth that we pervade and popularize, the more mental health disorders will be created. And I think it's based on the other idea, the fact that, you know, people talk about I and we talk about ego and we talk about the people that we are. But I think we need to recognize that we don't exist, by which I mean the Steve Bartlett or the John Vincent, they're both just constructs. Barack Obama. Barack Obama is just a construct. Barack Obama is a set of stories that have been told, set of media, imagery, media storytelling. And as we think about our own individual identity, it's worth remembering the we that we think exists.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's shit and that's not good. And I think that the dangers are that on the one hand we will lose our freedoms that I think are very dear at a practical and an emotional level and spiritual level for people to actually have freedoms. And the other is that we will start to believe our own storytelling and ego. And I think when you talk, Steve, really interesting about we are constantly told to create our own online brands to curate our own online brands. You know, I know perhaps when one of my daughters takes a photograph to go on Instagram, maybe it takes an hour and she chooses one photograph out of a thousand. That doesn't happen often.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it's like it's the old phrase, isn't it? If you put a lobster or a frog even into boiling water, it'll jump out. But if you slowly boil it, then it doesn't realize it's being boiled. And I think our kids are being slowly boiled and they don't realize it. And I went to a conference the other day where they were talking about how babies are going to be chipped and that mothers and fathers will be allowed to have lower taxes and lower insurance if they allow their babies to be tracked from a health perspective because of course it will reduce the NHS bill and of course it will reduce the policing bill if we know where everyone is. I think we all have to recognize the fact that we will be sold in very what seem to be very rational terms, very economically viable terms to track our own health, to accept being monitored in terms of our whereabouts and our physical health. And I think we need to recognize”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are something other than that by thinking that we're somehow special or the fact that we need to be different and special and disconnected from other people. And I think I find most comfort in realizing how insignificant and reassuringly insignificant I am. And that helps me”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And a lot of the lessons in there around Taoism and Zen, around disassociating yourself emotionally from the crab. I think I have learned from, and if there's anything that I can suggest to any of the people listening to this, it's really to learn to die every day. There's a verse in the Tao Teching which says, die every day, which means recognize the fact that we are all as low as water. The wave is not really separate from the ocean, if that makes sense. The wave looks like a separate thing, but within the next three seconds is going to submerge back into the water. And I think we need to recognize the fact that we are all light waves. We're all nothing. We're all as level as the sea. And I think that there's a certain mental ill health that has been developed in the West by thinking that we...”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To the fact that her brother was going to be a bit late with her phone, I shouted at her, right? And I hate that. I actually hate the fact that social media pervades people's lives so much so that I cannot escape it. As long as I've got internet connection, I'm going to be bombarded with shit reviews. I'm going to be bombarded with customer complaints. And I think to some degree, we need to recognize the fact that we are, we're technology building ourselves a bit of a horrible world where one finds it difficult to escape from that. But having said that, I'm finding a lot of insight in the work that I'm doing with the Leon Wellbeing Director called Julian Hitch around understanding some of the Taoist, which is”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the first thing to say is that it is never possible for me to suggest that I am some kind of guru or Jesus who does it continually. So the first thing to say is that anybody who attempts to disassociate themselves from that stress will find themselves failing at some point. That's the first point. I'll give you an example of that. My dad died last week, last Wednesday. I would continue as you would expect to be affected by that. And my wife was talking to me about something to do with the arrangements and also telling me that she had her brother was coming a bit later that night with the family. And I remember looking down and someone had given one of our wraps a three out of 10. And in that moment, with all the pressures that were going on with my dad, I got pissed off about it. And I ended up in that moment actually having a row with my wife about it. I mean, why I was rowing with my wife or taking it out on Katie because she was accusing me of not listening.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is an incredibly tough job to, and I think we achieve it, but incredibly tough job to keep all of those people motivated when shit happens because I promise you that with 52 restaurants there is something going wrong at any point and that could be a small thing or it could be a big thing. So I think one has to be zen about it at some point. If you become affected emotionally by everything that goes wrong and every mishap or every setback, then you could make yourself very ill running 52 restaurants.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On a WhatsApp group called what is called risks to trading. And the other one is emergency comms. And on things like risks to trading, I probably, although I've dutifully turned my phone over, I bet you when I turn it over, there will be a pump that's broken somewhere on that WhatsApp group or a coffee machine, which is 86, which means it's broken. And the intense practical operational stress, as you say, as you experience on an important level, that is just replicated now 52 times. I do sometimes look at people who maybe run hedge funds or people that run internet businesses. And I do think, wow, what it must it be like to not have those physical challenges that you experience in your mum's restaurant. It is an incredibly difficult industry. And we ultimately, our job is to work with people who are necessarily on living wage, often young people.”
2018-04-09 · The Diary of a CEO · E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT