Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt | E157

Steven Bartlett 0:00 You've had a lot of controversy over the last two years: bullying, lying, unfair dismissals, all of this stuff. What do you say to that?

James Watt 0:06 I did. I did push people too far.

Steven Bartlett 0:10 How fast did BrewDog grow?

James Watt 0:11 We have grown, on average, 87% a year.

Steven Bartlett 0:14 Fucking hell.

James Watt 0:15 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 kinda crossed that (laughs) e- edge as well. The best entrepreneurs have got to find a way to do things differently to how other people are doing things. We've got two very simple tests that we apply to everything that we do. So the first test is... This is the worst public health crisis for a generation. I've only ever been in tears once in, in my job, and I broke down in tears addressing our team in March of 2020, thinking that we're not going to be able to pay you, we're not going to be able to keep you in a job. I think people don't realize, like, being a CEO is a very, very lonely job at times.

Steven Bartlett 1:06 That day. Talk me through what it's like to be a CEO when 300 people sign a letter making these allegations-

James Watt 1:13 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:13 ... about toxic workplace culture, unfair dismissals, all of this stuff. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

Steven Bartlett 1:36 James, what is the... You've listened to this podcast before, so you know I have a theme of (laughs) where I start. I'm, like, trying to frame it as a surprise-

James Watt 1:44 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:44 ... that I'm gonna start with your childhood. But... (laughs) Um, first, thank you for being here. It's, um, you know, it's always lovely to hear that people are, um... guests that we have on also kind of understand the format. Where I wanted to, to start with you is to take you right back, because that, for me, is always the context of, of somebody. So when you, when you look back, and when I read back at your early years in that small fishing community you grew up in, um... Was it Gardenstone?

James Watt 2:07 Yeah, Gardenstone, up in the Northeast of Scotland.

Steven Bartlett 2:09 When you, when you look back yourself at the foundational shaping, um, pivotal events of, like, those early years that are responsible for who you became in your life, the first events that you look back and go, "Now, that's the first dot I can connect," what are those?

James Watt 2:26 I think there's, uh, I think there's a few. So, we grew up in a tiny fishing village northeast of Scotland. My dad was a fisherman. My mom was a schoolteacher. And being a fisherman is, is tough. And, uh, I just remember, like, the kinda hard work ethic instilled from, like, grandparents, whose, uh, grandfather, who was also a fisherman, my dad, who was a fisherman. So, kind of really hard working, really honest, kind of salt of the earth type character. But then he was always away and I'd be at home with my mum, and my relationship with my mum was, was never that good. And I think I struggled a lot when I was, when I was a kid. Um, I had quite a severe speech impediment when I was, when I was grown up and, um, this is something I haven't spoken about before, so... (laughs) Um, so that kind of always made me a little bit of an outsider, a little bit of a loner. Always felt a bit socially awkward. As I grew up and became a bit older, I had quite severe acne, so again, outsider, loner, socially awkward. And I think it's a trait that a lot of entrepreneurs have in common, they're a bit socially awkward. And I think if you're less likely to read social cues-

Steven Bartlett 3:24 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 3:24 ... then you're less likely to do the same thing as everyone else, which in business is amazing.

Steven Bartlett 3:27 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 3:28 Um, and also a bit of a inadequacy complex when I was a kid, as well, so kind of Mum's standards were quite high, so whatever I did wasn't good enough. 98% on a test, why wasn't it 100? Won a swimming competition, why did I win it with an even better time? So, like, any achievement wasn't quite good enough. So, growing up, bit of a loner, bit of an outsider, bit of a, kinda 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.

Steven Bartlett 3:58 On that point of... I can relate m- a lot, a lot to a lot of that, um, especially the, the i- the thought of feeling a bit like an outsider or feeling somewhat different. Were you bullied in school?

James Watt 4:08 A little bit. I mean, the speech impediment was something that all the kids loved to make, make fun of, and then the, kind of, acne that I had that was quite severe in high school was something that a lot of kids made fun of as well, which just kinda makes you feel even more like an outsider when you're growing up, I guess.

Steven Bartlett 4:20 Speech impediment?

James Watt 4:21 Yeah. When I was, like, four, five, six, seven, eight, there was, like, certain words and certain letters that I just couldn't say, and I kind of worked really hard with a speech therapist and got there, but for a few years, it was, uh, a lot of words I couldn't say, and because of that, I just wouldn't speak to people, 'cause I was scared to let them see that I had a speech impediment. So, very quiet, very insular, liked spending time by myself, and that kind of shaped a lot of my early childhood, I would say.

Steven Bartlett 4:43 When you said that you, you think entrepreneurs have that trait in common where they somewhat feel like outsiders, why do you think that's a common trait in entrepreneurs?

James Watt 4:51 For me, the best entrepreneurs, they've got to see things differently and 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 gonna get the same outcome as everyone else, and if you start off a business that way, you're just gonna get lost in the mix, and I think 90% of small businesses fail within the first two years. So, I think outsized returns or doing something amazing with a business only comes when you bet in some way against the conventional wisdom.

Steven Bartlett 5:16 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 5:16 And if you're not tied to the conventional wisdom or tied to social cues, I think you're more likely to see that.

Steven Bartlett 5:21 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 5:21 Uh, there's a quote that I love which is, "If, uh, 99% of people think you are wrong, you're either massively mistaken or about to make history."

Steven Bartlett 5:29 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 5:29 So it's just that, maybe not caring too much what people think-

Steven Bartlett 5:33 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 5:33 ... and finding your own way to do things and finding your own way to come at a business, an opportunity, or a problem. And I think if you're a bit of an outsider, it maybe helps with that.

Steven Bartlett 5:40 Mm-hmm. You, you mentioned your mum as well.

James Watt 5:43 Yeah, I mean, my relationship with my mum was, was always quite tough, so nothing, nothing was ever good enough for, for Mum from when I was a kid, um, had a few issues later, and I, I haven't spoke to my mum for over 20 years now.

Steven Bartlett 5:56 Really?

James Watt 5:57 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 5:59 Since you were...In your teens?

James Watt 6:02 Yeah, in 19, 20 was when, when I stopped speaking to Mum.

Steven Bartlett 6:05 Did you ever- 'cause sometimes when I think about, you know, my own parents, I... With, with age, I've built a bit of, um, I guess, empathy towards why they are the way they are, you know? And you kind of... When you grow a little bit older, you understand the world a bit better and psychology a bit, but you go, "Well, maybe that's why they were the way they are." Have you thought about that with your mother?

James Watt 6:25 Yeah, I def- I definitely have thought about it and, uh, it's something I continue to think about, and there was just a lot of kind 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, it's easier just not to, not to have contact with her, which, which is tough. But I've got a fantastic relationship with my dad and the rest of the family, and it's, it's been that way for a long time now.

Steven Bartlett 6:45 Did that have an impact on you? That, that sort of really tough feedback that you could nev- you were never enough or that your work was never enough?

James Watt 6:53 Possibly, but I think it just... (sighs) I think it gives you a bit of a inadequacy, inferiority complex, which I think has kinda been with me for, for a long time. And there's ways to, to numb it. So can numb it, can numb that voice in my head that's like, "Never been good enough, not good enough," can numb it with a business achievement, with like doing a thing, with a book launch that goes well. So you get that almost temporary escape from that feeling by doing something that can be measured objectively, like succeeding in business.

Steven Bartlett 7:26 You use the word temporary though.

James Watt 7:28 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 7:29 'Cause, because-

James Watt 7:29 I, I do 'cause it's-

Steven Bartlett 7:30 Yeah.

James Watt 7:30 ... it's al- it's always there. It's, it's always there. And I think a chip on your shoulder in terms of like motivation is, is quite a powerful thing to have. But it's that kind of saying, it's like everywhere you go, there you are. It's kinda always, always there to a certain extent.

Steven Bartlett 7:45 Your dad, he, he, he sounds like he was a very, um, hardworking individual.

James Watt 7:50 He, he, he was indeed. I mean, still to this day, he's in his late 60s. He's a lobster fisherman, which is a kind of tough, intense-

Steven Bartlett 7:57 I've seen the doc-

James Watt 7:58 (laughs) ... gnarly job. Every single day, regardless of the weather in the North Atlantic, he's like pretty much out in his lobster fishing boat. So yeah, very focused on work kinda, and that work ethic, that determination. I think a bit of kind 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.

Steven Bartlett 8:24 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 8:24 So I sat there in a cheap suit doing glorified admin, and I was like, "This is just not how I want to spend my life. I don't want to stay in this office." And I saw myself like being maybe 40, 50 years in the future, kind of retired and sitting in that same office and all... In a suit and stuff. I was like, "I... This is just not for me." So I spent four years studying, didn't do a job for two weeks. I quit and did something completely the 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 kinda cut my teeth in the high seas in the North Atlantic. And I think it taught me so much about resilience, about teamwork, about adversity.

Steven Bartlett 9:00 What did you, what did you, what did you learn then? Sort of pr- practically and actionably, what did you learn from... Was it five years, roughly, you spent on that boat?

James Watt 9:06 Yeah, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 9:06 So you come out of university, you try out as a lawyer for... You know, working in laws for tw- for two weeks.

James Watt 9:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 9:11 Then you go and join your dad.

James Watt 9:13 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 9:13 And eventually you work your way up to being captain on that boat.

James Watt 9:16 On that boat. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 9:16 And you're in... You're on a trawler in the North Atlantic-

James Watt 9:18 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 9:19 ... which is a r- stupid thing to do. (laughs)

James Watt 9:21 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 9:22 If you're me, and you're as big of a, of a cow- coward as I am, going out on those seas. I've seen the, the documentaries. Is it like the documentaries?

James Watt 9:29 Yeah, it's, 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 the, those boats. So I mean, very much like that. The North Atlantic in January and February is a pretty scary place.

Steven Bartlett 9:41 What did you learn from doing that about life and people?

James Watt 9:45 I think the main lesson that I learned is... And it's one 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 force 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 usually see what someone's made of. And I think that's something you can take to business as well. When everything's going well, it's easy for everyone in your team to look like a superstar. It's only when things are really, really difficult that you see who can you depend on. And I've almost got this test that I use when I'm building my management team. And we've got an amazing management team at the moment, but the test is, would I want to be in the deck of a North Atlantic fishing boats at 2:00 in the morning in a storm with everything going wrong with this person by my side?

Steven Bartlett 10:33 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 10:33 And if the answer is yes, it's, uh, usually kind of bodes well for how we work together and how we look to buil- build the business together.

Steven Bartlett 10:39 And on th- in that example of would I want to be on this, on the deck with them at-

James Watt 10:42 Ooh.

Steven Bartlett 10:43 ... 2:00 AM in the morning when everything's going wrong, what are the character traits-

James Watt 10:46 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 10:46 ... which would make someone in that situation a good person to be with on that deck?

James Watt 10:53 Yeah. There's something called the Stockdale Paradox that I think is, is really important and kind of ties into this. So, um, James Stockdale was, um, an American naval captain who was in a prisoner of war camp for six years. And, uh, 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 gonna get there in the end, but that belief can't blind you from tackling the most difficult things about your current reality head on-

Steven Bartlett 11:28 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 11:29 ... with resolve, with optimism. But you've got to kind of hold that paradox in your, in your hand. We're going to get there, we're going to achieve this thing, but we've got these huge challenges at the moment. Let's lean into those challenges. And I often start my business meetings with my senior team in the very same way. "Okay, let's put the agenda at the side. Let's everyone write down on a piece of paper what's the three most difficult things you're facing in this business at the moment, and let's discuss those before we discuss anything else."

Steven Bartlett 11:54 And why is that important?

James Watt 11:56 'Cause it means you face 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-

Steven Bartlett 12:06 I've seen that. Mm-hmm.

James Watt 12:06 ... we're opening, um, 20 plus locations in India, we've got a fantastic location opening in Waterloo Station. So it's so easy to get caught up in the excitement of those things, and everyone wants to speak about the exciting things, but y- 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, is going to determine our destiny, so we need to make sure that whilst we're focused on the exciting things and what we want to achieve, we're focusing on the really tough things we're facing on a day-to-day basis as well.

Steven Bartlett 12:35 Interesting. I might steal that. (laughs)

James Watt 12:38 (laughs) Well, I s- I stole it as well, so it's like-

Steven Bartlett 12:39 (laughs) Okay. Yeah. That's very...

James Watt 12:40 So you can steal the thing that I stole.

Steven Bartlett 12:42 I'm not gonna say that out loud. Did I say that out loud? (laughs)

James Watt 12:43 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 12:44 I thought I was thinking it. Um, no, so, uh, yeah, so I, um... You're right, because there's always kind of an elephant in the room at companies, where, uh, many individuals in the room will know that there's certain challenges and issues, especially in the leadership team, they'll have the- the clearest idea of what those are, but sometimes they're quite uncomfortable to talk about, right? They are the things that are least enjoyable to, to commit brain time and power and resources to, so I guess that's a, a very smart way. You, you spent, so you spent five years on this boat-

James Watt 13:10 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 13:10 ... which was a really c- cr- you know, brave thing to do, in my, in my, um, estimation. You're captain of the boat.

James Watt 13:19 Yeah, I spent, uh, bit of time captaining the boat with my dad, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 13:21 Captaining the boat. Why,

Steven Bartlett 13:23 why did you leave that, that role?

James Watt 13:25 Well, I didn't, I didn't quite leave it, so, um, Martin, who's my best friend from, from high school, we go way back, we're flatmates-

Steven Bartlett 13:32 Dickey.

James Watt 13:32 Yeah, Martin Dickey, we were flatmates at university together, we started making beers at home. Um, 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 Pale Ale. We tasted it, it was like, "Wow, we love this." So we would dedicate our weekends to kind of trying to recreate that in Martin's mum's garage, and in 2007, we'd always wanted to start a business, we decided to turn our hobby into a job, so we, we got a £20,000 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 Fraserburgh in a godforsaken industrial estate, and we, we had 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 the local garden center 'cause we had no money to buy stainless steel tanks, and we set, set out in this slightly naive, I think you could call it mission, to build one of the world's best beer companies with, uh, with two humans and a dog, no experience, no capital, no business plan, nothing but just a huge amount of passion for a fantastic beer, a huge amount of disillusionment at the status quo of the beer market, which was essentially just big mass-market global mega-corporations who turned beer, a thing that we love, into a lowest common denominator comedy- g- commodity product, and we wanted to make fantastic quality beers and opens- open people's eyes to this diverse spectrum of flavor, taste, quality that they never knew existed and take them on this beer journey with us, and that's what we set out to do in, in 2007. But the first, the first few years were, were so, so tough.

Steven Bartlett 15:07 What gave you the right to start a beer company?

James Watt 15:09 (laughs) Nothing at all.

Steven Bartlett 15:10 Yeah. You can't make... Right? I- I can't make beer.

James Watt 15:12 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 15:13 How, how did you go about educating yourself on how to make beer?

James Watt 15:17 So Martin studied how to make beer and distilling at university, so Martin-

Steven Bartlett 15:20 Ah.

James Watt 15:20 ... has a really kind of solid technical background, and he's always kinda taken 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 marketing side, the expansion side of the business, so yeah, first couple of years, it was me selling beer at local farmers markets, um, selling beer out of the boo- my beat-up Volkswagen Golf, but we couldn't afford to pay ourselves, so I moved back in with my dad, Martin moved back in with his mum. I had to start working in the fishing boat again part time just 'cause nobody wanted to buy our beer. Everyone told us, "Make your beer cheaper, make your beer with less flavor, make your beer with less hops, change your name, change your packaging," and we didn't listen to any of that. I mean, we were determined to, okay, if we're going to fail, let's fail doing something that we love, let's fail doing something that we're insanely passionate about, and let's just keep going and see if we can find a way, find a breakthrough to somehow make that work, and that breakthrough for us came in 2008.

Steven Bartlett 16:14 And you, you described that period as being one of the toughest of your life, that first year. Uh, g- g- give, give me a, a, a, a detailed flavor of the, the hardest... Is there a moment in that period where you, you account maybe your hardest day?

James Watt 16:27 I think so, yeah. So we did everything, the two of us, so it was just the two of us, so we did the accounts, we did the sales, we made the beer, we packaged the beer, like the whole thing, and we filled bottles by hand, so fill by hand, put on a cap by hand, put on 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, we did that, and then straight through the night, the next day I was kind of, "Okay, let's, 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 the, 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, um, didn't just say no, he tasted it and he just spatted back into the bottle. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 17:15 Really?

James Watt 17:15 (laughs) And just gave me the bottle back and essentially told me to get out. So I remember just walking to the car and just wondering, "Okay, what the hell am I going to tell the bank? We've got this loan. We can't pay the loan back. We can't pay the rent in the building. I've been up for almost 30 hours. This is going nowhere. Like, what can we do to try and get this business to survive?" And for me, that was, uh, that was a very tough moment.

Steven Bartlett 17:36 Why didn't you quit? Would've been easier. Could've just gone back to the boat, could've been captain, back out on the sea, lobsters, all that.

James Watt 17:44 There was no way we were going to quit.

Steven Bartlett 17:45 Why?

James Watt 17:45 We were gon- uh, we were gonna die in a ditch for this thing. It's... We were just so passionate about it, and back to that inadequacy complex, this voice in your head, "You're not good enough. You can't do it." If I quit, that voice wins.... couldn't let that voice win, so we, 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, 10 cases a week at, at most. Sent the beer to the Tesco beer competition, kind of forgot about it and got back to local farmer's markets and all those things. A few weeks later, got a phone call from Tesco saying that we'd finished first, second, third and fourth in this Tesco beer competition. So I was like, "Okay." So I went down to-

Steven Bartlett 18:34 Wait, is that the same beer that the guy spat out?

James Watt 18:36 Same beer the guy spat out.

Steven Bartlett 18:37 Really?

James Watt 18:37 Came first, came first. Came first.

Steven Bartlett 18:41 The same beer?

James Watt 18:41 The same beer.

Steven Bartlett 18:42 Same temperature? (laughs)

James Watt 18:43 I think so. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 18:44 Wasn't flat?

James Watt 18:45 I think so.

Steven Bartlett 18:45 That's interesting.

James Watt 18:47 So I went down to, went down to Cheshunt, 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 was no way we could meet that order. So we had four months to figure out a way to do this.

Steven Bartlett 19:15 (laughs)

James Watt 19:15 So got back, sat down with Martin, it's like, "Okay, we've got this opportunity, but we need a plan." And we decided, okay, we need a bottling 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-

Steven Bartlett 19:34 Yes.

James Watt 19:34 ... tailspin. And we sat down and like, "Okay, let's, let's pitch this as hard as we possibly can. This is our chance." So we told them about the contract with Tesco, young up-and-coming company, but we need £100,000 for a bottling machine, £50,000 for tanks, and they just laughed us out of the bank. They were just 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, the street. We got an appointment there with HSBC and we said to the guys at HSBC, "Our bank, Bank of Scotland, have just offered us an amazing finance deal in this bottling line, in these 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 growing fast as a company. We'd love for you to support us." And they, they gave us the money. So business plan year one and two was make hoppy American beers and, and tell lies to banks.

Steven Bartlett 20:24 Are they still, are they still your bank?

James Watt 20:25 They're still our bank to this very day.

Steven Bartlett 20:27 How do they feel about hearing that? (laughs)

James Watt 20:28 (laughs) Um, I waited-

Steven Bartlett 20:30 Too often.

James Watt 20:30 I waited 10 years until I told them, (laughs) un- till I told them the truth. I thought there was like a safe amount of time they're not gonna take the money back.

Steven Bartlett 20:35 (laughs)

James Watt 20:35 Uh, we got, we got the bottling machine in, we got the tanks in. Uh, the first beers came off the bottling line two weeks before they were due to go into Tesco. Um, 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, and at the end of 2009, I was able to quit being a part-time fisherman and just focus 100% on business.

Steven Bartlett 20:55 By 2009, so that's-

James Watt 20:56 End of 2009.

Steven Bartlett 20:56 ... two years since.

James Watt 20:57 Two and a half years. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 20:58 Wow. And so that, that, that first year where they're selling okay, and then the second year where they're selling much better-

James Watt 21:04 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 21:04 ... what was the causal factor of that sales increase that started to get the thing, get things moving? Was it word of mouth? Was it marketing? Was it-

James Watt 21:11 It was, it was community. So the, one of the most important things in the history of our business has been community. So it got to, it got to 2009 and we'd exhausted the money we could get from banks regardless of what we said. But we are a capital-intensive business, so we need money for, for stainless steel tanks to expand-

Steven Bartlett 21:26 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 21:26 ... 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.

Steven Bartlett 21:40 Yes.

James Watt 21:40 So this was crowdfunding before crowdfunding was even a thing. And we thought, "Okay, if we can sell some of our business to the people who enjoy the beers that we make, we can hopefully create this whole new business model." We spoke to five legal companies up in Scotland, and they all told us, "What you're trying to do is essentially impossible. You can't, you can't do this." Spoke to a sixth company that says, "Okay, we can maybe do it, but it's going to 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 had £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. Like, the day that we launched Equity Punks, it's the most nervous I've been in this business journey, because I knew if it doesn't work-

Steven Bartlett 22:30 Yeah.

James Watt 22:31 ... game over for us as a business. So many people told us it was a bad idea. So many people told us, "People are not gonna buy shares in a company on the internet. People don't want to invest in a beer company. People just want to buy beer. This is a silly idea. There's too much paperwork. People's not going to send in checks," which they had to do back then as well as, as opposed to with some online payments, but those were cumbersome, so most people paid by check. But we wanted to do something different. And with Equity Punks, what we've been able to do is shorten the distance between ourselves and the people who enjoy the beer that we make. So we don't just have investors, we've got community, we've got advocates, we've got ambassadors, we've got people who believe what we believe, who want us to succeed, and who are on this journey with us. Eh, the first Equity Punks was enough of a success to keep us in the game. We raised £500,000 from about 600,000, uh, 600 investors. But since then, we've gone on to build a community of 210,000 people, and we've raised almost £100 million through Equity Punks. And for me, it is the most special thing about our business. So the largest shareholder in our business is Equity Punks and our team, which I think is really cool. So we are community owned, we're people owned, and having that community with us, who then when they walk into one of our bars, they feel like they're walking into one of their, their own bars. When they buy a beer off the shelf, they feel it's their own beer because they are part owner of that company. So completely new business model for a consumer brand 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.

Steven Bartlett 24:04 As we sit here in 2020, one of the biggest words in marketing is community now.

James Watt 24:07 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 24:08 And you've kind of detailed that. I was gonna ask you, but you've detailed very clearly the value of community. Um, and the Equity Punk thing, when I, when I, when I read that, I think, okay, it's one way to raise money, but there's other ways to, to raise money. But it's really more about getting greater buy-in from your existing customer base and turning them into advocates and to diehards, which is, increases loyalty, it gets them to evangelize. As you say, when they buy beer, they're, they're basically, it's almost like there, there's a discount on that beer. I know there is actually a discount as well-

James Watt 24:34 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 24:34 ... but there's actually a discount on it because they're enriching themselves. So it's a really interesting, innovative model. Is that similar to what, like, crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding is today?

James Watt 24:43 Very-

Steven Bartlett 24:43 Was this before this?

James Watt 24:45 Very similar. So this was before, but it's, it's very similar-

Steven Bartlett 24:47 Okay.

James Watt 24:47 ... to what, 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 they own the company, they get a tiny little bit better off financially, which is an amazing incentive to have a second can of-

Steven Bartlett 24:57 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 24:57 ... Hazy Jane, or Elvis Juice, or Punk IPA on a Tuesday, on a Tuesday evening. And it's never just been about the money, 'cause we could have raised money in other ways, but it's about building a different type of business, and a business that's focused on community. And we do so much with our community. Erm, we have our big AGM in Aberdeen, our annual meeting.

Steven Bartlett 25:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Watt 25:13 And last time we had 15,000 Equity Punks come for our annual meeting, so I think it's like the most attended AGM-

Steven Bartlett 25:19 Big piss-off.

James Watt 25:19 ... in the, in the UK, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 25:20 (laughs)

James Watt 25:20 So we do the business things, but we've got fantastic live music, we've got amazing beers, and, eh, 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.

Steven Bartlett 25:29 On money raising, did you, you, the, the BBC released a podcast-

James Watt 25:32 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 25:32 ... you might have seen yesterday, like a podcast on the, you know, I've, I know you've had a good, sort of contentious relationship with them. One of the things that they, they leveled at you, which I wanted you to, to respond on, was in those hard times, they said, y- your dad is wealthy.

James Watt 25:45 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 25:45 Yeah. So they said you, there was a, a suggestion that your dad might have been loaning you money.

James Watt 25:50 Yeah. Erm, so my dad, my dad is wealthy. He's not excessively wealthy and not nearly as wealthy as the BBC said. And the only support my dad ever gave the business was there was a period where one of the banks wanted to withdraw a loan, and he secured that loan for us for six months until we got it moved over to HSBC. So we were kind of very determined to do the whole thing ourselves, so the only support was ever the short term security on a loan until we moved it.

Steven Bartlett 26:13 Quick one. We bring in eight people a month to watch these conversations live here in the studio when we're here in the UK and when we're in LA. If you want to be one of those people, all you've got to do is hit subscribe.

Steven Bartlett 26:25 And then, like, go- going, going to your, your marketing thesis, 'cause this is really what's defined, erm, BrewDog in the eye of the consumer. In the eye of someone like me that doesn't honestly drink beer, but knows about the brand and considers it to be a famous brand and watched it on LinkedIn and social media over the years build its sort of acclaim.

James Watt 26:42 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 26:42 What is your, like, your principles that underline your marketing thesis? 'Cause your marketing thesis is very, very different to, to pretty much nearly all brands in this country. There's maybe a 0.1% that maybe you've copied or that have been inspired or that, you know, chicken and egg, I don't know who came first, but it's a very unique thesis towards marketing. What, what underpins it?

James Watt 27:01 Eh, 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?

Steven Bartlett 27:10 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 27:10 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 gonna give me a 10X return compared to how a competitor would spend that pound? So we are in an industry dominated by global behemoths of businesses who are hundreds of times our size, and we are, we're closing that gap and we want to close that gap. But we only close that gap by making our market and our communications, everything we do work so much more effectively than theirs. If our 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 gonna give me a 10X return versus how my competitor would spend that money?

Steven Bartlett 27:49 And if I'm thinking about how to get a, drive a better return on marketing, you know, and then I think about what you've done, I see, well, we've got to be probably bolder to win share of voice. We've got to try and win headlines in more extreme ways, because nobody's going to be writing about you for, for the fun of it if you're a smaller sort of challenge, challenger brand. Then the second thing I, I think is kind of we've got to do that on new platforms. We can't f- fight out on TV or in newspapers, 'cause those are where you kind of throw huge amounts of money and you get a return. So new platforms and new approaches, and that's very much kind of signifies what I've seen from BrewDog. Very, very bold.

James Watt 28:26 Very bold and intentionally bold, and, 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?

Steven Bartlett 28:36 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 28:36 So we had to do things that were intentionally provocative, that were on the edge, and sometimes we kinda crossed that edge as well.

Steven Bartlett 28:42 Yeah.

James Watt 28:42 But that enabled us to get our name, our message, our business out there with no budget at all. So we have driven a tank through the streets of London. We've thrown taxidermy cats out of a helicopter over the Bank of England. We've put Vladimir Putin on the front of a beer label. So we've done a lot of things, low budget, high impact. But we've tried to make it that everything we do ties back and is underpinned by what we're passionate about. So it does... so there has to be a connection there. So does this reinforce what we believe in, what we're trying to do as a company? 'Cause 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 trying to build an alternative business and a huge passion for fantastic beer.

Steven Bartlett 29:20 One of the, the more extreme things, I saw the Vladimir-

James Watt 29:22 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 29:22 ... thing. Uh, what else have I seen? (laughs) I think, I think I've seen it all, because I'm, I'm obviously a marketeer-

James Watt 29:27 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 29:27 ... so, and running a marketing company and ch-

James Watt 29:29 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 29:29 ... seeking inspiration from lots of different brands and seeing what they're doing and the impact it's having, especially on social media, which is my, my battleground. Um, the, the thing I read about more recently was that you, you put in a complaint about your own beer, which triggered press.

James Watt 29:43 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 is an industry regulator. And for me, it's a thinly veiled cartel funded by the big drinks businesses who've got a vested interest in making sure that small businesses are not suc- successful. And there was a few rulings at the pout that were just so, so...... silly and frivolous that we wanted to make a statement, so we complained about one of our own beers to make a meta statement about how silly this process is, and how essentially corrupt it was as an organization funded by the big beer companies, big drinks businesses who've got a vested interest just in making sure the small ones are not successful.

Steven Bartlett 30:26 How, how is that like? So you make a beer that is really high in AVB. Is that, was that the correct term?

James Watt 30:30 It was, yes.

Steven Bartlett 30:31 (laughs) AVB.

James Watt 30:31 We made a beer, we made a beer called Tokyo 18%. Now, if you looked at the newspaper headlines in the UK when we launched that beer, you s- would have thought that I was single-handedly responsible for the downfall of Western civilization by making an 18% beer. We had a, in The Sun binge drinking, "Blame this man," with like a cut-out of my head in a bottle of Tokyo. That took a bit of a explaining to my very religious grandmother, but that's another story. (laughs) But everything we did with that beer was we just made a thousand bottles. It was very expensive. It was for connoisseurs. It was, it was for aficionados. And we want to elevate the status of beer, and I think the more someone can understand and appreciate something, the less likely they are to abuse it. And we make expensive products for people who love, love fantastic 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, increase the education and awareness around beer, and lead people to appreciate and enjoy beer in a, a more elevated way.

Steven Bartlett 31:31 And when you see yourself in The Sun with a cardboard cut-out-

James Watt 31:33 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 31:33 ... of your face-

James Watt 31:34 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 31:35 ... is that kind of swings and roundabouts. Is that good for, from a marketing perspective? Is that a good outcome? Because you were trying to get a headline.

James Watt 31:43 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 31:43 You complained about your own beer.

James Watt 31:44 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 31:45 You were trying to get headlines.

James Watt 31:46 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 31:46 So is that job done? So...

James Watt 31:48 I think on that one, to a certain extent, it was, it was job done. And to kind of show you how odd things were back, back then, so this was kind of 2009, 2010 when we were starting to get momentum and the beer scene was starting to change. So the big companies had it their own way for way too long, and things were starting to change. There was a award ceremony in Scotland in 2010, um, put together by the BII, the British Innkeepers Institute, and we'd got a heads-up before the award ceremony, "Hey, guys, you're going to win the award for Scottish Bar Operator of the Year, so you guys better come to the, come to the award 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, 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. It was like, "Well, we don't want it." So the next day, I spoke to the person that organized the awards ceremony. I was like, "What, what happened? Like, you told us we were going to win." And he was like, "Well, Diageo, one of the world's biggest drinks companies-

Steven Bartlett 32:47 Yeah.

James Watt 32:47 ... they were the main sponsor. They told me five minutes before we were due to give it to you, if they gave it to you guys, they was going to pull all future sponsorship."

Steven Bartlett 32:54 You're joking.

James Watt 32:55 So we felt we didn't have an option, so we put this online. It blew up. It was trending on Twitter globally that day. Diageo issued us a formal apology about the whole thing, and that apology was on 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 drin- drinks companies were acting towards that change, of which the Portmeirionne Trip was one manifestation of it.

Steven Bartlett 33:19 Did you take that personally?

James Watt 33:21 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, 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.

Steven Bartlett 33:48 The, uh, the other, um, extreme marketing thing (laughs) that I saw which was, um... When I first read it, I thought, "This is fucking hilarious," is the Elvis estate-

James Watt 33:57 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 33:57 ... tried to copyright, uh, infringe you for calling your-

James Watt 34:00 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 34:00 ... your US beer, which I think is your most popular US beer-

James Watt 34:02 It is Elvis Juice.

Steven Bartlett 34:03 Elvis Juice.

James Watt 34:03 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 34:03 They sent you a copyright, uh, statement-

James Watt 34:06 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 34:06 ... just sort of like a, basically a notice that you've, you're violating their copyright.

James Watt 34:09 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 34:10 And you responded with some Elvis, uh, rhyme. (laughs)

James Watt 34:14 (laughs) We did.

Steven Bartlett 34:15 And, and on the, on the art, on the LinkedIn post that I saw, it said you changed your name to Elvis.

James Watt 34:20 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 34:20 Then the BBC come out and say that didn't happen.

James Watt 34:22 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 34:23 What is the truth in this one? What, did you change your name to Elvis?

James Watt 34:26 Yeah, we did. And just to go kind of back in the story, so Elvis sent, um, not Elvis himself-

Steven Bartlett 34:30 (laughs)

James Watt 34:31 ... um, Elvis's estate (laughs) -

Steven Bartlett 34:33 I'm sorry.

James Watt 34:33 ... 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, uh, one of Elvis's songs. Um, got a huge amount of publicity at the time. We were both Elvis for a few weeks, um, then we changed our names back. So the BBC attacked us on that, as they, as they have on many things. However, the BBC misunderstood the Scottish procedure for changing the name, so they said we didn't change our name by deed poll. That's not a Scottish thing. In Scotland, you need an official declaration to change your name, which we did, so...

Steven Bartlett 35:13 What's that, just signing a piece of paper?

James Watt 35:15 You sign a official declaration piece of paper, and that counts as a name change in Scotland.

Steven Bartlett 35:18 And you don't even have to send it to anybody?

James Watt 35:19 Don't have to s- send it to anyone in Scotland.

Steven Bartlett 35:21 Oh, that's fantastic.

James Watt 35:21 So we met the Scottish requirements, which is what we said we did. But yeah, my grandmother was very unhappy, and she insisted I changed my name back to, back to James.

Steven Bartlett 35:29 BrewDog's marketing has been so bold-

James Watt 35:31 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 35:31 ... and it's been so standout, and in terms of how hard you've, in terms of the re- the return on every dollar you've spent, it's, it seems to have been a pretty astounding return per dollar spent because you've done these like big viral activations.

James Watt 35:43 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 35:43 A lot of them are like pa- um, uh, parodies or they're like taking the piss out of big corporations, or they're sticking it to the man in various ways, or going at the, you know, the incumbents in the industry. Some of them though, they, they, t- the, even the example you gave there of they're complaining about your own beer.

James Watt 36:00 With the Portmeiriong trip.

Steven Bartlett 36:00 Yeah.

James Watt 36:00 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 36:02 Obviously, the complaint wasn't real-

James Watt 36:03 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 36:03 ... 'cause it was you.

James Watt 36:04 'Cause it was me.

Steven Bartlett 36:05 What is the line between-

James Watt 36:06 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 36:06 ... between like truth in when you're doing these stunts and virality and, uh-... untruth for you? And where, where do you play? E- Are you willing to, to do something that is, from a marketing perspective, that is not necessarily true, like complain about your own beer, if you believe it'll help reach the outcome, which is to stick it to the Portman Group?

James Watt 36:25 Yeah, well, I think with that one, it wasn't necessarily untruth because afterwards we said, "We made this complaint," so it was us who disclosed the fact that we made the complaint.

Steven Bartlett 36:35 That you were drink- okay.

James Watt 36:36 And we disclosed that to just show how ridiculous the system, the system was.

Steven Bartlett 36:40 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 36:41 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, by making this complaint was what we intended to do there.

Steven Bartlett 36:53 When we first started talking about marketing, one of the things you said was, um, "We made a lot of mistakes."

James Watt 36:58 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 36:58 Took things too far.

James Watt 36:59 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 37:00 What did you take too far, in hindsight now?

James Watt 37:03 (sighs) .

Steven Bartlett 37:03 Now that you're a big-

James Watt 37:04 (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 37:04 ... global brand and everyone is, you know, looking back at all the steps when you weren't so big.

James Watt 37:08 Yeah. I think the mistakes that we've made in marketing is when we've tried to do something which is on the edge or 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 market perspective, and we did some amazing things, but we, we did make some mistakes, was when we got too clever with the concept and the intention behind it, which was genuine, got lost. So a famous example of one of the mistakes that we, we made in marketing, um, for International Women's Day, we wanted to highlit- highlight the gender pay gap. Um, this was a project that was put together by some of the fantastic women we've got in our business, and we made a beer called Pink IPA that we would then sell 21% cheaper to women to highlight the gender pay gap, which was something that we felt passionate about. Um, and then the proceeds from sale of that beer went to charities which help women and women's pay in the workplace and these kind of things. But then what happened was people just saw Pink IPA and it looked like we were, it was, the beer itself was a parody of products which market themselves towards women, but then it just looked like another product that marketed itself to our women. And if anyone, like, dug into it and understood, okay, this is to highlight the gender pay gap, and they're doing some good with the money, and they're doing a 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.

Steven Bartlett 38:38 Mmm.

James Watt 38:38 So you need to make sure that all of the message that you want to land is in that snapshot, because a lot of people are not going to dig deeper into what it is.

Steven Bartlett 38:46 What I got from that was that, like, you've got to create a, a marketing campaign where the context is im- sort of can't be separated-

James Watt 38:52 Can't be separated, exactly.

Steven Bartlett 38:52 ... from-

James Watt 38:53 Exactly.

Steven Bartlett 38:53 Because it will be separated if it can be.

James Watt 38:55 Exactly. 100%.

Steven Bartlett 38:56 Yeah.

James Watt 38:56 100%.

Steven Bartlett 38:57 Um, coming from being a, the captain

Steven Bartlett 38:59 of a boat to being the captain of BrewDog, quite literally, that is your job title at BrewDog, um, what adjustment was needed? 'Cause on a boat, when you're up all night and there's men there, and you know, you've got to s- scree- was it, was the... Give me a snapshot of what the crew are like on a boat, a troller?

James Watt 39:21 (laughs) So, a lot of my best friends to this day are the guys that I worked with on the-

Steven Bartlett 39:26 Right.

James Watt 39:26 ... on the fishing boats. But these are an unusual and interesting set of characters as well. It takes a certain type of person to kind of do that type of, do that type of work, and do that type of work on an ongoing basis. And I mean, they're, they're hardworking, like to have, like to have fun, like to mess about a little bit.

Steven Bartlett 39:47 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 39:47 But all, all about the, kind of all about the hard work. And especially when things get difficult, like, seeing a good crew 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.

Steven Bartlett 40:02 I can see you being a very good captain on a boat. You, you, and just generally, you're, in a couple of moments, you know, I didn't know you before you'd walked in the door, but in the couple of moments that I've been with you, you're very focused, and you're someone that-

James Watt 40:15 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 40:15 ... I feel like, and I don't know you, but-

James Watt 40:17 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 40:18 ... you feel very resilient. And then you add that to the fact that this is your business, and you said before, I think you said it in your book, that no one will ever love the business like you do.

James Watt 40:28 No.

Steven Bartlett 40:30 Y- you being so hardworking, so out of balance in your own life, as you've described, how do you not then have that expectation on others? 'Cause this is something that I honestly, I struggled with. I struggled with, especially in the early years of my business, was understanding that I was a bit fucked up.

James Watt 40:46 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 40:46 (laughs) Do you know what I mean? And that, in fact, everyone else was normal, and that I needed to understand. It goes back to me saying about the dark side and the cost of my childhood and the insecurities, I was a bit fucked up. So how did, how do you contend with that?

James Watt 40:59 For the first 10 years of the business, I would say I contended with that very, very badly. So, there's like a lot of intensity, there's a lot of drive, there's a lot of determination, there's a lot of passion there. And understanding how to lead people, how to take people with me on that journey has definitely evolved over time. And I'm now CEO of a business that's got 3,000 people. Before that, I maybe managed a handful of people in a fishing boat, but that is it. So to go from, like, no experience in being a CEO, no experience as being a leader, to managing 3,000 people at this speed and adding this ma- like, this year, well, last e- 18 months cumulatively, we're going to add a thousand people to the team. So it's like a thousand amazing, well-paying jobs in a recession, which our country, which our economy needs, so we're expanding all the time. But just how steep that learning curve is to go from not managing anyone to managing 3,000 people with all the kind of stresses and strains of growing a business. And I think if I look back and reflect a little bit, we've definitely had challenges and well-documented challenges along the way. And... we've had periods of such intense growth that we maybe haven't focused enough on our people and our culture during that period, and as a leader, I've always just been so focused on building something, on delivering an exceptional value to our customer, and making sure every time someone opens one of our beers or visits one of our bars, their experience is amazing. And knowing that if someone is choosing to spend their money with us, they're making a choice to do that versus one of our competitors, therefore we need to set the bar incredibly high and push incredibly hard. And as a leader, because of that drive, because of that determination, because of that focus, I've definitely pushed some of the team members too far in the past, and I think that's been, that's been well-documented. But that'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, as I do.

Steven Bartlett 42:54 Right, so-

James Watt 42:54 Some of them want to push it that hard, some of them just don't. And for a while there was just like, "I'm going to run through this wall and I want everyone else to run through the wall as well." Not everyone's going to run through that wall. And again, a, a, a big lesson, and I've kind of reflected a lot on leadership in the last 12 months is, to take people with you, you've got to make them understand the why behind what you're doing. And 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."

Steven Bartlett 43:38 Interesting. That's such an important lesson.

James Watt 43:41 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:42 Because, uh, you know, in the example you gave there, on, in one hand, you were like dragging people, and all studies show across a- all industries that when people don't go voluntarily, it's, it's burnout, it's pressure, it's stress, it's, you know... And then when, what you've said there is leadership is in fact inspiring them to come with you.

James Watt 43:58 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 43:58 And when it's voluntary, in terms of they know why they're going and they want to go, then all the psychological implications across multiple studies that I've read about are significantly

Steven Bartlett 44:09 improved.

James Watt 44:09 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 44:09 You said you've been on a leadership evolution.

James Watt 44:11 I have.

Steven Bartlett 44:12 So speaking honestly, what has that evolution been from when you started as a leader and the business i- starts to explode to the, the person that sits here in front of me today? What have you had to work on and remove?

James Watt 44:22 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 a amazing, um, independent non-exec chairman in Alan Leighton, who's run some fantastic businesses, so much experience, so having someone there who's like a mentor to me. 'Cause like if I hang out with my buddies, they want to speak about football and golf and (laughs) -

Steven Bartlett 44:43 Yes.

James Watt 44:43 ... that kind of stuff. They don't want, "Hey, I've got this kind of leadership challenge." It's like they, they don't care.

Steven Bartlett 44:47 Hm.

James Watt 44:47 Which is, which is amazing, but then being a CEO is a very, very lonely job at times. Ins- like incredibly lonely, and there's another quote that I love, um, from Ben Horowitz, the author of one of my favorite business books, and it's like, "The first rule of CEO psychological meltdown is not to speak about CEO psychological meltdown." So I think people don't realize like being a CEO is fantastic, but it's lonely, it's, it's intense, it's, it's difficult. So having Alan's kind of help and guidance through that journey I think is really important, and I would say in the early years of the business, I managed it like a captain would manage a small team in a fishing boat. Whereas now, I'm looking to evolve my leadership style into a CEO of a kind of medium to large company, which is a bit less intense, which is maybe a bit less demanding, but which is more about taking our people with us on this journey. So here, here's the, "We're going to do this, and it might be tough, but this is what it means for us as a business. This is why we're doing it," but then also making sure the 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 that makes us a fundamentally and radically different business. So we've recently launched The Blueprint-

Steven Bartlett 46:11 Mm.

James Watt 46:11 ... which is, I think, the biggest, most important announcement in the history of our business. So firstly, I decided to give 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 salaried team member receives £120,000 worth of equity, and that's in the valuation today, so if we double in size, then that could be significantly more. And that's about recognizing like, "We are all in this together. We want to win together. We want to work hard to win together," and it's about incentivizing our team to act like business owners, but rewarding them like business owners. The second part of that was we wanted to create a n- 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 bars now share 50% of their profits with the team that work there.

Steven Bartlett 46:58 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 46:58 So it's a whole new model where if you visit one of our bars in Tokyo, in Berlin, in Cleveland, in Australia, you know that, okay, half of the profit that this bar makes-

Steven Bartlett 47:10 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 47:10 ... is shared with our amazing people that put this experience together. So we want to kind of elevate the standard of hospitality, elevate the standards of kind of careers within hospitality. We've always been a real living wage employer, which has been very important for us, but sharing 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 gonna help us elevate the hospitality experience for consumers, and consumers are ultimately the thing which drives our business.

Steven Bartlett 47:38 That's the thing. Uh, you know, we s- the first point was like inspiring people to come with you as opposed to dragging them.

James Watt 47:43 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 47:44 Which again, many CEOs, many leaders-

James Watt 47:46 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 47:46 ... fall into the trap of doing that because we are so blinded by our own mission that we forget to communicate, uh, uh, it and bring other people along. But the second thing you touched on there is, um, if, you know, we s- sometimes CEOs sit here, and I've probably been guilty of this. You've said you've been guil- guilty of this, is like looking at, you know, the team that you've built and, and maybe questioning at times why they're not-... moving with the same energy that you are, but they're not incentivized to. They're not gonna be a hundred millionaire-

James Watt 48:12 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 48:12 ... gazillionaire if this all works out. They are getting their, their, their remuneration regardless of outcome. So the second piece that I've garnered from that, of leadership, is also to align incentives. And if you want someone to act like an owner, you have, you have to make them an owner. Which it seems like common sense, but it's not so common.

James Watt 48:29 It's, it's not so common. It took us a while to get there, but that is exactly it. Like, we've got reasonably high expectations of, of our team. We, we like to push hard. We're in a industry dominated by companies much bigger than, than our, 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-

Steven Bartlett 48:53 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 48:53 ... that make the magic happen for the customer, and I want their incentives to be as aligned as my own, and I want them to feel as much ownership as I do, and I want them to share intrinsically in the success of the business. But hopefully by doing this, we can create a new business model that in a few years time I can then sit down with other CEOs and, "Okay, like, we've invested in our people this way, but we've become a better business because, because of it," and then do other businesses then decide to do the same thing? Is it maybe normal in five years time for every hospitality business to share 50% of their profits with the people that work in their 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

James Watt 49:31 cool.

Steven Bartlett 49:31 A lot of successful businesses in the country ... I'm thinking of the Ben Frances-

James Watt 49:34 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 49:34 ... I'm thinking of the Huels.

James Watt 49:35 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 49:35 Hashtag ad, just in case the ASA come for me. Um, uh, a lot of b- business owners that have gone through extremely high growth-

James Watt 49:42 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 49:42 ... and I've sat here with those CEOs of those companies-

James Watt 49:44 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 49:45 ... they get out of the way.

James Watt 49:46 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 49:46 They realize, especially in your case, because this was your first shot at business, right?

James Watt 49:49 This is my first shot, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 49:50 So you're gonna fuck up, like in many (laughs) cases.

James Watt 49:52 (laughs) Many, many, many times, yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 49:54 You know, I've fucked up a lot as well, uh, hugely.

James Watt 49:56 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 49:56 Over and over again, and still today. Um, but they get out of the way. So Ben Francis stepped down at, a, a CEO when there was 30 people-

James Watt 50:03 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 50:03 ... th- the founder of Huel, Julian, stepped out of th- the CEO role and put someone in. Did that ever cross your mind? And why didn't you do that sooner? If you, if you knew that you didn't, you had ... 'Cause learning on the job when you got-

James Watt 50:13 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 50:13 ... 2,000 people is a-

James Watt 50:14 High risk.

Steven Bartlett 50:14 (laughs)

James Watt 50:16 (laughs) It, it's a high risk thing. So I'm very passionate about being CEO, and it's something that I want to continue doing for the foreseeable future, and-

Steven Bartlett 50:22 Why?

James Watt 50:24 Because I think we are 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, it's close to that. And-

Steven Bartlett 50:42 Really?

James Watt 50:42 Yeah. And for me, what is exciting is, where can we take this from here? So we want to build one of the world's best beer companies. We want to build one of the world's best companies overall. I look at companies like Whole Foods, or Tesla, or Google, or Amazon, or Starbucks. I mean, that is the scale of the ambition. We want to do what they've done in their industry for 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 our team members even better, but helps us have a huge impact. And what I'm very excited about is, okay, what can we do as a team, as a company, as a collective, as a community over the next five to 10 years? That's what I'm focused on. That's why I get out of bed in the morning, and that's what I'm really excited to continue doing with the fantastic management team and team that we've got in the business.

Steven Bartlett 51:51 I was startled when you said indifference. You, you, you genuinely ... The way that you feel about what you've achieved so far is quite close to indifference, kind of just numb or like just, "Meh." Honestly.

James Watt 52:03 It's cl- It's close to indifference. So we've done some fantastic things, but overall we're still relatively small in the overall scheme of things. I'm s- Like, in terms of, like, if I spend, like, 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 gonna love. We can open 50 new locations in India. We can continue investing in our people. We can make this 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. We can continue expanding our German business."

Steven Bartlett 52:43 But you're fourteenth biggest beer brewery, aren't you?

James Watt 52:45 Sixteenth most valuable-

Steven Bartlett 52:46 Sixteenth?

James Watt 52:46 ... beer we've done. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 52:47 So in 2007, if I'd gone ... when you were doing, you know, you'd taken that 20K loan from the bank-

James Watt 52:52 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 52:52 ... and I'd gone and seen you in Dicky and I said, "Listen, couple of years time you're gonna be the 16th largest brewery in the world, and you're gonna have thousands of staff all around the world in 111 locations or whatever it is. You're gonna be opening a thing in Vegas." You would've ... And I said, "How do you think you're gonna feel on that day?" What would you have said to me?

James Watt 53:10 Well, I think there's, there's two answers to that question. So one answer is the answer that I would usually give to media, which is like, "If you go back to 2007 and now you've built this, could you have envisaged it? Could you have imagined it?" And the answer that you've kinda got to give to the media, 'cause anything else sounds too self-assured-

Steven Bartlett 53:28 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 53:28 "No, I could never have imagined it."

Steven Bartlett 53:30 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 53:30 "It's been amazing." But the answer that I don't usually share is, "Of course I imagined it, 'cause 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 were kinda planning to do or planning to, planning to build?" So I think if you went back and asked me that question there, I would've been very excited about the journey and the joy of building something.

Steven Bartlett 53:51 But you ... If I said, "How would you feel today?"

James Watt 53:53 How would I-

Steven Bartlett 53:54 So, uh, in two thou- I'm speaking to-

James Watt 53:55 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 53:55 ... 2007, uh, James in, in Dicky.

James Watt 53:58 Okay.

Steven Bartlett 53:59 And I'm saying, "By the way-"

James Watt 54:00 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 54:00 "... look at this. This is what, where you get to in-"

James Watt 54:02 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 54:02 "... 2022."

James Watt 54:03 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 54:03 You would, you would as- I'm guessing you would assume that on that day in 2022, you would be-

James Watt 54:08 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 54:08 ... really content.

James Watt 54:09 Yes. You-

Steven Bartlett 54:09 But you're clearly not (laughs) .

James Watt 54:11 (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 54:11 You're not content, are you? 'Cause you're-

James Watt 54:12 No.

Steven Bartlett 54:12 ... saying that ... Yeah, you're saying you're-

James Watt 54:14 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 54:14 ... you know, indifferent.

James Watt 54:15 Yeah. No, I, if, if you'd asked me that then I would, "Yeah, I'm gonna, like, spend half of my time in the office, half of my time traveling, and then, and then just chill." Whereas what I'm doing at the moment is the exact opposite of that, and what I'm focused on is, "Okay, where do we take this thing? From here, can we make a, can 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.

Steven Bartlett 54:37 I've come to learn from doing this podcast that, um, we almost need to make goals that can never be completed, for that very reason. And so, words like "better," like w- we'll make BrewDog better, is a much more useful word than "We'll become number one." Because when you become number one, there's nowhere to go from there-

James Watt 54:56 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 54:56 ... and it's an anticlimax.

James Watt 54:57 One down. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 54:58 Yeah, exactly. Uh, so it's a, there's an- there's a real anticlimax about reaching these peaks, so it's almost like trying to climb a mountain where there is no peak. And that is, that is ultimately life and then you die somewhere along the journey.

James Watt 55:08 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 55:09 Um, but that kind of goes against the trend of, like, goal setting and, "What's your goal?" And, "What's your five-year plan?" And this kind of underlying assumption that finish lines will make us euphoric.

James Watt 55:18 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 55:19 Have you experienced that? That's kind of why I was asking the question about 2007.

James Watt 55:23 Yeah, well, I mean, (sighs) 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, one of my things was always like, "Let's see if you can build a unicorn." So unicorns are startup companies which get to be valued over a billion, called unicorns because they're so rare. There are so few of them that happen in, in the UK and especially in Scotland. And I always thought, okay, if there was ever something that would make me feel, okay, I've accomplished that thing, I've done that thing, I'm complete, happy, content, it would be, okay, build a unicorn. Like that, for me, that was my win an Oscar, score a- score a winning goal in a World Cup final. But like, for me, that was build a unicorn. And then the next day, I was just like, "Okay, let's, let's go. Where do we go from here?"

Steven Bartlett 56:10 That was your first big sort of cash windfall, personally, 'cause the money w- some money went into the company, some money went to the founders-

James Watt 56:15 Y- yes.

Steven Bartlett 56:16 ... and co-chairs.

James Watt 56:16 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 56:17 So that was your first big-

James Watt 56:18 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 56:18 ... uh, dealings with being a cash millionaire.

James Watt 56:20 Yes. And, uh, a fun- a fun story from that. So, um, the money came in to myself and Martin. And, uh, I had Bethany, so it was like well into the tens of millions. I had Bethany, my amazing assistant, um, transferred it from the lawyer's account into my bank account. For some reason, we, there was a typo in the, in the account numbers. Um, it went to somewhere in Russia, the money was lost for four days. At a point in time, we thought-

Steven Bartlett 56:47 (laughs)

James Watt 56:47 ... 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 gonna do?" (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 56:57 (laughs)

James Watt 56:57 "What am I gonna do now?" So on the fifth day, um, the boss of the boss of the boss of the person managed to find a way to get the, get the money back and we got the money back. But for the five days after the deal, the money was, uh, missing, presumed lost-

Steven Bartlett 57:10 (gasps)

James Watt 57:11 ... presumed never coming back.

Steven Bartlett 57:12 Russia, what a place to send it. (laughs)

James Watt 57:14 Mm-hmm. Yeah, the start code sent it to a bank in St. Petersburg and they were like, "Well, the bank might not even want to send it back." I said, "Okay." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 57:21 Oh my God.

James Watt 57:23 So now, now double, triple check every start code that I, uh, that I send cash to.

Steven Bartlett 57:28 What was that day, what was that, that like emotionally? That's the, that was what you were aiming for in many respects-

James Watt 57:33 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 57:33 ... in terms of financial freedom. What was it like?

James Watt 57:37 (sighs) And, and, and maybe it's a theme of people you have on here, but often when you get to where you think is gonna, uh, the thing that's gonna make you happy-

Steven Bartlett 57:47 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 57:49 ... a couple of days, and then your reality is, is, is, 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, bit of a salutation, a bit of a kinda quietening of the voices in the head for a few days, and then go again.

Steven Bartlett 58:15 When you say the demons, what do you mean?

James Watt 58:17 That inadequacy complex, like, "You're not good enough. You'll never get managed to build a business. This business is gonna go nowhere. You're gonna be a failure. You're gonna be back in a fishing boat. You should've listened to everyone who told you not to set up the business. They were right. They told you it was a bad idea."

Steven Bartlett 58:33 Who put that voice in your

Steven Bartlett 58:34 head?

James Watt 58:38 I think a combination of early childhood, potentially partly parents, despite being well-intentioned. Um, there was a story from my childhood where I've been obsessed with sharks my entire life, so my favorite hobby is to go diving with sharks. It's like I'm happiest when I'm under the water with sharks. I recently went to Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico, dived with some great white sharks. Like, being under the water with sharks is, is my happy place. And when I was a kid, I would always tell people, when they asked me what I wanted to be, "I want to be a marine biologist. I want to study sharks." And when I was, uh, 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, uh, went through the four authors in 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 gonna 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 gonna study sharks, 'cause you just won't manage to get a PhD, so you need to think of something else." And I just remember not saying anything, taking my shark book and just like walking back to my bedroom in, in tears and like, "Okay, no more, no more sharks, James."

Steven Bartlett 59:49 Have you ever forgiven your mother for the way that she was?

James Watt 59:54 Hmm. Don't think so.

Steven Bartlett 59:57 You don't?

James Watt 1:00:01 But I think there was a lot of incidents like that, that that's where that voice comes from. And I mean, the, the voice, the voice is very much a part of me, um, and I think it's helped me push, maybe push too hard at times, it's helped me do some fantastic things. And, but I mean, it's, it's, 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:23 Yeah. I, I just, I, I worry about that a little bit.

James Watt 1:00:26 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:00:26 Because, um, yeah. Why don't you think you've forgiven her?

James Watt 1:00:35 Uh, there was a lot of other things that happened subsequently.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:38 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 1:00:39 Um, ended up in a-... a messy court case with my father, and I just didn't want anything to do with it. I was like, "Th- this is your thing. Sometimes people don't get on. Fine, just sort it out. It's, it's, it's not my thing."

Steven Bartlett 1:00:52 Mm-hmm.

James Watt 1:00:52 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 in Edinburgh. And this was when I was studying law in the Court of Session (laughs) with some of the students I was studying with, watching the case. And I was, like, sitting there waiting to be called, and I don't think she'd ever had 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:15 When people talk about forgiveness, they, they always say that it's a process of, like, letting-

James Watt 1:01:19 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:19 ... a prisoner go and realizing you were the prisoner the whole time.

James Watt 1:01:21 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:22 Um, and then another question. You know what I mean? Uh, well, I was gonna ask, are you... Do you think you've healed from it? But you've just said that you still have that voice today.

James Watt 1:01:32 Yeah, but on some level, maybe I want that voice.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:36 Interesting.

James Watt 1:01:37 So maybe it's like, well, if you lose that voice, are you going to be able to do these things? Is the voice the thing that (laughs) makes you ab- able to build a business with your best friend from scratch to what we've built today?

Steven Bartlett 1:01:51 But isn't that what the voice would say? Because the voice w-

James Watt 1:01:54 That is, that is what the voice would say.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:55 The voice values validation. It's s- it's desperately seeking validation, so of course the voice would say, "What if you lose me?"

James Watt 1:02:00 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:00 "Then you'll lose, then you won't be validated anymore."

James Watt 1:02:02 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:02 And validation is so important to us. This is a really interesting topic that I... Th- this was the last chapter in my book and I actually didn't know... I knew what I wanted-

James Watt 1:02:10 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:10 ... to try and get to, but I didn't know what the answer was until I started writing. And it's this whole idea of feeling if you're enough yet. Do you feel like you're enough yet?

James Watt 1:02:17 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:18 And I thought that the reason why I was ambitious was because I didn't feel like I was enough.

James Watt 1:02:23 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:23 So it was this driving force. But in fact, I came to learn that because I didn't feel like I was enough, I had fake ambitions. I wanted a Lamborghini and to impress people. These were never my ambitions.

James Watt 1:02:36 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:36 And the closer I got to feeling like I was enough, my ambitions changed.

James Watt 1:02:40 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:40 I still had ambitions. I didn't lose ambition.

James Watt 1:02:42 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:42 But they became intrinsically driven ambitions. Like I wanna have a wife, and I want to do things like a podcast-

James Watt 1:02:48 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:02:48 ... where it doesn't pay a shit ton of money. (laughs)

James Watt 1:02:50 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:02:50 It's not the best financial use of my time.

James Watt 1:02:52 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:02:52 But it's an intrinsically driven thing. Um, and so maybe your ambitions will change, but you'll be happy with the change. (laughs)

James Watt 1:02:59 I think that's a great point. And I loved your book, by the way.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:01 Oh, did you read it?

James Watt 1:03:01 And I've actually highlighted a few... Yeah, I loved that-

Steven Bartlett 1:03:03 Oh, thank you.

James Watt 1:03:03 ... I highlighted a few points in that, in that section. And I think at the moment, ambition are things that can be measured objectively, because that objective measurement helps with, helps that voice. But at the same time, you're right, the voice is like, "Well, if you lose me, you're going to lose your edge. I'm what's, makes you able to do all these things."

Steven Bartlett 1:03:19 Has that voice changed over the years with your success at all?

James Watt 1:03:23 No.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:24 Not at all?

James Watt 1:03:25 It, it just moves the goalpost every time.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:27 Really?

James Watt 1:03:27 Moves the goalpost. Achieve it, goalpost moved. Achieve it-

Steven Bartlett 1:03:29 No change at all in that voice?

James Watt 1:03:31 No.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:31 Fucking hell.

James Watt 1:03:32 No. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:03:34 That explains, explains a lot, to be fair, because you've really-

James Watt 1:03:36 (laughs)

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Steven Bartlett 1:04:21 (paper crinkles) So one of the things you announced, which you talked about earlier-

James Watt 1:04:24 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:24 ... is this, this new manifesto for-

James Watt 1:04:25 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:26 ... your business, called the Blue... the BrewDog Blueprint: Creating the Business of Tomorrow. And this is kind of the late-stage vision for a, a, a much more sustainable company.

James Watt 1:04:34 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:35 When I say sustainable, I'm talking not about carbon emissions. I'm talking about a company where your team and your, your mission can be achieved in a sustainable, holistically sustainable way. You've had a lot of controversy over the last two years.

James Watt 1:04:47 I don't just think over the last two years. I think controversy has followed us almost every year since 2008.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:53 And much of that you've actually welcomed. You've, you've tried to get controversy.

James Watt 1:04:56 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:56 It's been central to your marketing strategy.

James Watt 1:04:58 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:58 And it's, but it's actually, from my estimation, especially in those early years, served you tremendously well, because it... This made the, the marketing dollar work a lot harder.

James Watt 1:05:05 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:06 Um, the controversy in more recent years starts with this Punks With Purpose letter that was written-

James Watt 1:05:11 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:11 ... 300 of your ex-employees-

James Watt 1:05:13 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:13 ... and some of your current employees at the time. In, I think, in 2020 or