Speaker 1Hey, what's going on? Welcome back to the James Kennedy podcast. How you doing? Apologies for missing you gorgeous misfits last week, but I was busy scribbling away on my new book and also recording some new material for that hot chart-topping band, James Kennedy and the Underdogs. That's right, baby, there's going to be some new material coming your way real soon, as well as live shows and all of that good stuff. As I've said before, if you haven't yet joined the awesome Secret Society community, come and join the crew now and get the first scoop on upcoming gig dates, new music, and loads of other cool shit that's going to be happening real soon. Just go to jameskennedystuff.com slash tribe and enter your email address and your city so we know where we've got friends around the place and we'll come and make some noise for you. That's jameskennedystuff.com slash tribe. There's also a link on that page to join the official Secret Society Facebook group too, so you're all welcome in there. Please come and join us. And thanks again to you all for continuing to check out my podcast. I really do. Appreciate it, man. I appreciate all the kind words and the feedback and all the love and support. You guys are awesome, and it's what keeps this show afloat. So thank you so much for keeping me doing this thing. I have got an amazing guest coming up really soon for you guys today, and there's likely to be a lot of puns on the theme of dogs today, because as you may or may not know, my autobiography was called Noise Damage, My Life as a Rock and Roll Underdog, which led to my new band being called James Kennedy and the Underdogs. And we have a thing called The Dog Game. I'm going to show you a little bit of that. So if you're interested, which is a fans with flaws scheme that we run with our amazing and generous tribe of misfits around the world who accommodate our sad, sorry asses when we're out there on the road doing our thing. But the reason I mentioned all of this is because on the show today, we have got a man who is almost literally the top dog in the world of craft beer and someone who has artfully blended my much-loved punk rock ethic and aesthetic with huge global success in the very crowded beer market to carve out their own thing in their own way. I'm talking, of course, about Mr. James Watt from the global phenomenon Brewdog. But before we jump in with all four feet, sorry, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on any and all platforms. This thing is available everywhere, including Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Stitcher, CastBox, and also on YouTube. So please, please, please, if you want to help a brother out, please hit that follow or subscribe button. And if you could give me some stars or review, it would mean the absolute world. And it would be a huge help in helping me continue to push these conversations out there. You know, I don't have any advertising and I don't get paid to do this thing. So if you're enjoying these conversations and think they have value, please give them a share and get involved. But now, as promised, from underdog to alpha dog, James Watt and his fellow band of pirates at the mighty Brewdog are roaring louder than ever. And we've got a ton of stuff that I want to get into. So let's just get down to business and bring him onto the show. Mr. James Watt, I know you've got way more important shit to be doing right now than talking to me. So I really appreciate you taking the time out to stop
Speaker 2in, man. No, good to catch up and excited to do it. Me too, man. I mean, how you been doing? Yeah, I'm doing awesome. I'm excited to be the second James in a two James podcast.
Speaker 1Yes, and two Celts as well. A Welshman and a Scotsman. So what could go wrong? I was going to crack open a Blackheart, which is absolutely fucking delicious, by the way. But 11am is too early, even for myself. So I'm going with black coffee instead. I hope that's
Speaker 2okay. I've got coffee as well, but I'm sure it's 5pm somewhere. So I don't think it's ever too
Speaker 1early for a Blackheart. Oh, yeah, they've twisted my elbow already. What's going on at Brewdog HQ right now, man? You're a busy dude. What's happening? Yeah, super busy. So we're just,
Speaker 2it's kind of geeky, but we've just installed a new canning line. So I've just been like watching it, the speed it fills cans. So it fills 60,000 cans an hour, 1,000 cans a minute. And going back to the early days of the company, to fill 1,000 cans used to take us kind of 24 hours. So we can now fill the amount of cans in one minute that took us 24 hours to do back in the early days.
Speaker 1That is awesome, man. I can imagine that that would have been a very, very cool nerd fest to be a part of. And hey, more beer for us as well. So everyone's a winner, right? It's insane how far you guys have come. In such a relatively short space of time. And long before I was a fan of the beer, which I'm 100% a massive fan of, I was a massive fan of the branding and the marketing. Because your marketing is genius. And I know that you get asked about this all the time. So we don't want to dwell on it too much. But we've got to talk about it, man. Because obviously, you know, I'm a musician. I'm from a punk rock, aesthetical, ethical background myself. So your messaging and your imagery and your marketing has always really resonated with me. Because the Brewdog brand is undeniably steeped in punk rock, isn't it? So where does that come from? I mean, is that your background? Or is it just an extension of who you are as a person?
Speaker 2I think it's a bit of an extension. But the thing that we were massively inspired by from the kind of whole punk movement was like, to smash the system, you need to be able to exist outside of the system. So you need to learn the skills that you need to succeed yourself. So it was that kind of DIY, hands on kind of ethic that we just kind of fell in love with. And that's what we've kind of built up. And that's what we've built up. And that's what we've built up. And that's what we've built our business on. So always like to learn what we what we need to do ourselves, not dependent on the system, not dependent on anything that's outside of us and being happy to kind of live or die on the merits of what we what we do ourselves. And that was the kind of attitude that we've tried to build this thing. And I think it's I think it's been good, good so far. And it's kind of made for a super fun journey as well. Oh, 100% man, it's been a fun
Speaker 1journey for the rest of us to watch as well. I mean, your marketing, like I said, is just genius. It's bang on. And that whole, you know, giving a finger to the to the establishment figures and, you know, just doing things your own way and not giving a fuck. You know, I love all that, man. And it clearly is an authentic extension of who you are as a person, because it would just be impossible to maintain that this this convincingly for this long, you know, but in order to take what's clearly quite a natural voice for you into the model of packaging a product and a business and, you know, strategies and all that sort of shit. Did you study and learn any of the things that you've learned in the past? Or did you just have a natural voice of yours into a brand and a marketing campaign? Or do you just have a natural talent for this shit?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's, I think, you know, I think we've come up with a much better way of building our business in terms of community ownership in terms of beers that we make and in terms of what we do. So that naivety, that lack of knowledge, that lack of experience, I think is actually one of our strongest assets. And I now do a bit of investing in smaller businesses. And I'm always excited to back someone up. That's got not much experience, not much knowledge, because I think that's how you figure out a way how to circumnavigate a whole market and come up with a new way of doing things.
Speaker 1That is a great point, man. Yeah. And already, you know, you're dropping, you're dropping some pearls of wisdom here, man, I think people can learn from, you know, regardless of the industry that they're in. And speaking of that, I wanted to flip things on their head. Whilst we're on the subject of punk rock and business, I wanted to ask you how you might approach the sort of change that we had in the music industry, if it was in the beer industry, what would happen if all of a sudden, overnight, the product that you sell, the physical, tangible product that you sell became a free commodity that literally streamed out of the internet for free? Which, as I'm sure you know, is exactly what's happened in the music industry. And some artists and some labels have been able to sort of navigate that and others have just sunk. So I'd be really interested to hear what somebody from a completely different industry outside of the music industry would potentially manage that problem. Should you wake up tomorrow and the product that you sell is the center of your business?
Speaker 2Suddenly became free? Suddenly became free? Suddenly became free?
Speaker 1They're still going strong 40 years later. And that's exactly what he said. I said, what do you see in common with all of the main bands and labels that have stayed afloat this time? And he said, adaptability. He said, shit's always going to hit the fan. And it's those ones that can adapt and change are going to be the ones that stick around. So yeah, I love that, man. Beautiful quote as well, because the Darwin quote often gets misrepresented. People say the strongest, survival of the strongest and the fittest. That's not actually what he said. It's exactly what you said, yeah. So thank you for clarifying that. So as a thought experiment then, if you weren't, say you got jacked off with BrewDog and you wanted to actually go into the punk rock business and you were managing a punk rock band from scratch, what would you do in the, I don't know if you know anything at all about the music business, but I mean, it's damn hard out there at the moment. We could do some great minds like yours. When in a world where the product is free and every douche in the world has got access to the platforms, you know, so the platform is saturated with every man on his dog and a demo tape, you know, how do us dumb ass musicians navigate that world? What would the evil genius of James Watt do if he was managing a punk rock, a punk rock band starting today?
Speaker 2So I'm going to caveat this heavily by saying I know very, very little about the music industry, but if I was looking, if it was managing a punk rock band, if it was managing a coffee shop, if it was managing a car wash business, if it was managing a fintech business, whatever, I would always go at it with the same kind of underlying principles. So three principles, very simply. Firstly, you've got to kind of try and be a force for good in terms of what you're doing. So everything is so saturated with people doing stuff. Similar things. People want something to believe in. The market for something to believe in is infinite. So you've got to try and like do some good in terms of what you're doing. Secondly, and this one for me is massively important. You've got to find a way to disrupt. You've got to find a way to do something different. So if I was managing a punk rock band and if I was just doing exactly the same as every other punk rock band manager out there, I would be a stone cold failure and it would go nowhere. And like the success would be limited. I could only ever be a, a percentage as good as the other people in this race, which wouldn't interest me at all. So find our way to do things differently. And that often involves taking a risk, but unless you take a risk and are willing to take a substantial risk, you're never going to open yourself up to the possibility of real success. And the biggest risk is not taking a risk at all. So be a force for good, do things differently, take a risk. And thirdly, I think the best businesses kind of today and in the future are going to be so deeply rooted and embedded in community. So that connection of community and like, we don't feel like our band is ours. We feel it's, it's our fans. Like Blue Dog belongs to our fans, community of 220,000 equity punks. They help us design new beers. They help us find new locations. They're the kind of heart and soul of our business. So I would focus on being a force for good. I was trying to do something disruptive and I would put community and community ownership at the heart and soul of whatever I did. And that would be the same as if I was managing a punk rock band or any other new business that might. - That's awesome.
Speaker 1That was actually the next question I was going to ask you. So we ticked two off in one go there, you're fucking flying through it. And what do people do? Because this is the question I've asked a lot of music industry people. So it'd be interesting to get somebody who's had success in business in a totally different industry and also quite saturated market with some heavy players that dominate most of the market. What do people do to get heard above the noise of everybody else doing it? 'Cause there's a lot of talents out there. There's a lot of hardworking motherfuckers out there, but again, they might not be talented. They might not be talented in business or marketing. You guys have been very, very good at blasting yourself into the public consciousness and stay in there as well. What can people do sticking in the music business? I know you said it's not something you know a lot about, but in a predominantly digital world that it's very, very saturated, what can people do to get heard above the noise of everybody else?
Speaker 2- Good question. So first and foremost, let's just assume that the kind of base product, be it albums, be it coffee, be it beer, be it software, let's assume like the base product is of like outstanding best in class, elevate the category quality. So for us, we set out in an industry dominated by global behemoths, thousands and thousands of times our size. We were two humans and a dog with a big mission to make other people's passionate about fantastic beer as we are. And like all odds are on us getting completely lost in the industry, but we haven't done that. And we've now built the 14th most valuable beer brand in the planet, which is Fittish Daisy. And our strategy was very, very intentional. It's okay, so the companies we're competing against spend tens of millions, hundreds of millions every year in advertising, trying to convince people that cheap mass market, lowest common denominator beer is a quality product. If we try and spend a tiny amount in advertising, we're going to get absolutely lost. We've got to find a way to, you know, cut through that noise. We've got to find a way to get our message out there. And we've got to find a way to do that while showcasing what we are passionate about. And for us, that time and time again came back to, okay, let's take massive risks. Let's put everything in line for what we believe in. Let's try and move the narrative forward. Let's try and make sure it's underpinned with the passion that we have. And sometimes it can come across quite stunty, but I mean, the intention wasn't for it to be stunty. The intention was, okay, let's do something that gets people thinking and speaking about beer in a different way. We made the strongest beer in the planet because we want to challenge people's perceptions of what beer is, how it can be enjoyed, how it can be savored, how it can be made. And that leads to a very different discussion we're talking about beer. We drove a tank through the streets of London to announce the opening of our Camden location because with no advertising budget and like a little beer company opens a bar in London, you're going to get no media coverage at all. Like us driving a tank through London, celebrating the opening of our bar there made headline news. We hired a helicopter and flew the helicopter. And we did this twice over London and New York over the kind of Bank of England and the kind of Wall Street in America. And we had kind of little stuffed cats and we threw them out of the helicopter with a lot of parachutes. This was death to the fat cats 'cause we were rejecting corporate finance and building a completely, completely new finance model for small businesses. So not taking ourselves too seriously, wearing our heart in our sleeve and being willing to take, take a stand. So we took a huge stand against the World Cup in Qatar 'cause we felt that was the right thing to do. Not many companies have the guts to do that. And if you look at most companies, they're so bland, they're so corporate. You don't know who they are. You don't know what they stand for. You don't know what they're about as a business. We wanted to kind of make sure that people knew who we were, what we stand for, how we, how we do things. So take risks, take gambles, do things that can cut through the noise, which is difficult in a low budget, focus on community and be very clear about who we are, and what we stand for. And by doing that, we've been able to, we've been able to grow in that industry dominated by the kind of mega bucks advertising and cut through. And we're now one of the best known beer brands in the, in the UK, despite the fact that our competitors over the last 20 years have spent, cumulatively probably in excess of 2 billion on advertising, we've spent next to nothing.
Speaker 1- That's so cool, man. Yeah, and it's certainly worked, dude, as well. I mean, like everybody loves the brand. I mean, even like my mother, when I said that you were coming on, she said, "Oh, I love BrewDog." And then my 96 year old grandmother who was also there said, "Oh, I love BrewDog as well." So, you know, you've clearly reaching all, all the whole demographics there.
Speaker 2- 96, that's a good age.
Speaker 1- Oh, dude, you've got, you've got to, you've got to invent a new drink called a Little Treble. My nan swears that the key to her longevity is whiskey. And she calls it a Little Treble, which is basically half a glass of fucking whiskey. It's like half a pint, but by calling it little, it implies that it's innocent, you know, Little Treble.
Speaker 2- I think somebody should tell the Scottish whiskey industry about her. I think they've like found her next marketing campaign or something. It's like, if you want to get to 96, this is the way to do it.
Speaker 1- Oh, she would love that, dude. She would, she'd be more than happy to cash in on that one. But yeah, you're totally right though, man. Like the tank thing was absolutely fucking genius. I love that idea. And I think another thing is that you've got to be prepared to make some enemies because I know you guys can be quite divisive at times and you have made, you know, you've, you've, you've gotten quite a lot of flack over the years. But, you know, if we're going to use cool quotes, you know, to follow on from the Darwin quote, I mean, I love the quote, you know, a man with no enemies is no man at all. I mean, if you're trying to do some shit, you're trying to break into a very monopolized market and you're trying to take on some longstanding behemoths, you're going to make some enemies and you're going to piss some people off. And I know that you guys have probably made some mistakes and errors of judgment or whatever over the years, but coming from where you started from with the resources you didn't have in a system that has been very well established for such a long time with, with main players were very powerful and very deep-rooted. I suppose it's impossible for that not to happen. Do you think that's fair?
Speaker 2- Yeah, absolutely. And we've always been quite divisive as a band. We've got some people who absolutely love us and some people who don't. And for us, that's fine because any band that sets out trying to keep everyone happy is going to be so vanilla, so beige, so indifferent that you're never going to get people passionate about it. And it's almost like, unless you have, some, some haters, you're never going to kind of build the army of love, which is not flip side of the coin. And like, some people don't like people being successful doing what they love because it makes them feel inadequate and insecure, the fact that they're maybe not that successful and not doing something they love. So the natural response is to, is to kind of hate on that. So we've, we've always taken flack. Some of it justified. We have made mistakes along the journey. We're two guys that set up a company when we were 24. We've been so high growth and companies are that high growth. It's difficult to connect. to keep all the plates spinning the way you want and sometimes you can't do everything super well so we've made mistakes along the way we've held our hands up when we have made mistakes but i think the amount of flack we sometimes take is definitely disproportionate to the amount of mistakes that we've made as a company it's what it is we know who we are we know what we do we know who our fans are and we just keep keep building our business in the uk and internationally and keep going and it's something that just sometimes happens especially
Speaker 1in the uk with with success but yeah well you've got some powerful enemies as well and people don't like you know when people don't like when a new dog turns up on the block you know what i mean um i think that's probably where a lot of the disproportion of that comes from you know you've got some pretty pissed off powerful enemies that had a pretty comfy position at the top of the table and you guys have come and kicked the fucking the legs of the table away you know um speaking of those guys and the behemoths not necessarily in your industry but i know your life has probably changed significantly now from when you started the business and you i'm sure that you mingle in some corporate circles um probably against your will oftentimes i know that sustainability is a big part of what you guys do and it harks back to one of the key principles you mentioned about doing good as a company or a band or whatever it may be so many companies don't i would i would i would hazard a guess that most don't now you've rubbed shoulders with some of these guys i'm sure um what's your feeling on why they don't i mean they've got grandkids too right i mean it can't just be greed what's the
Speaker 2reason so sadly and i'm going to speak about our sustainability journey then i'll speak about why why they don't care so we we thought we were doing our bit for the planet we thought we were doing our bit to kind of help against climate change and that assumption just came crashing down after i had dinner with sir david just before covid hit and after that dinner i was hit with a blindingly stark realization that we weren't doing nearly enough and we were part of the problem that our planet is currently facing and we are sleepwalking as humans off the edge of a cliff we're facing an existential climate crisis and we're not doing enough to help against climate change and we're need to wake up and huge huge huge changes needed across the board not in 2050 and not in 2040 not in 2030 like huge changes needed today sometimes scientists think it might already be too late i don't subscribe to that view i don't think it's too late but we need to make cataclysmic change across the spectrum of what we do as humans on this planet to be able to survive here so on the back of that meeting and despite our business going through the teeth of covid we decided to completely pivot everything we do so we work with professor mike berners-lee he's our kind of lead independent scientific advisor and one of the kind of world leading experts on climate change carbon footprinting and sustainability and we became the world's first fully certified carbon negative beer business that means we take twice the carbon out of the air every single year that we emit so anytime someone has one of our beers our planet has less less carbon but kind of sitting underneath that our first focus is on reducing our emissions so it's good that we're removing carbon we also need to reduce our emissions we've made huge investments across the business so we've now got an on-site bio energy facility that turns our wastewater into biomethane green gas which then comes back and powers our system we're working hard on the electrification of our of our vehicle fleet we've got an advanced heat recovery system in our throughhouse that kind of takes the heat that escapes and then uses that to kind of heat the next batches of batch the beer we're now fully wind powered in the in the uk so huge investments to reduce our footprint and also when we count carbon we count all of the carbon so including the carbon in our supply chain right at the moment we work with kind of a very high class high quality removals and offsets so there's so much noise or so much nonsense or so much disingenuity in the offset market so mike bernersley and his team vets that we usually do most of our work for the nature conservancy of canada which is kind of very sensitive to kind of all those kind of key factors with the removals that we're doing we also bought um 10 000 acres in the heart of the scottish highlands so 10 000 acres it's it's huge it's bigger than 17 actual countries and in the lost forest we uh we've now started but we're planting well over a million trees to take carbon out of the air so our carbon is our problem and we are determined to fix it ourselves and we'll have 300 000 trees planted uh by summer and we're not just planting trees we're creating a native biodiverse broadleaf woodland habitat and kind of rewilding a key key part of key part of scotland so that's where we are on our sustainability journey um and i fully believe that to drive the change that we need as a society as humans on this planet the change has got to come from the best progressive businesses working hand in hand with leading scientists i don't think politicians are able to help us here because the time scales they work on four or five year reelection cycles is incompatible with the pain that we're going to have to take as society to make the changes we need so it's got to it's got to be business that that drive the change here and business has got a huge responsibility to do it as to why other companies are not doing enough the answer is sad and the answer is simple and the sad simple answer is at the moment consumers simply don't care enough about climate change to and a small pocket of consumers do and maybe 10 or 20 percent of consumers make their purchasing decisions based on sustainability the vast majority of consumers at this moment in time don't care enough which is going to change at some point in the next five to ten years the sooner that changes the better and members of need to realize they can have way more of an impact when it comes to fighting change right climate change with how they spend their money every single day than how they vote every four or five years so consumers need to and it's a sad thing to say but ultimately consumers need to care more and as soon as consumers care more and demand that of companies the companies will change but until there's that huge demand from consumers there's not enough incentive for the big companies who are mostly public who want to make money for their shareholders to make less money if they have to invest in sustainability so at the moment they're focused on making money for their shareholders and members of the public it's going to change but the vast majority of consumers are going to have to invest in sustainability so at the moment they're of the public don't care enough yet about sustainability to force big companies to change
Speaker 1all right that's a very interesting answer very well put as well i didn't see that one but i thought you were just going to say they're a bunch of greedy bastards that don't care because they've got they got their underground dungeons with their maids and their robots they don't care
Speaker 2no so so they care about one thing i mean they care about their sales and it's so the consumer has got so much power but also so much responsibility here because soon as the consumer demands that and as soon as the consumers only starts buying the most sustainable products they're going to start buying the most sustainable products they're going to buy the most sustainable things in the category everything will have to aspire to that bar so it's a bizarre thing to say but how consumers spend their money is one of the key factors and if we're able to successfully fight climate change on this planet
Speaker 1100 that's a great answer and do you think then i mean you guys answer this question for me but do you think it is possible for all businesses to um survive and have longevity and and make profit and do all the things that a business needs to do while still being ethical and ethical sustainable and not having an army of eight-year-olds in a sweatshop somewhere so in this ship is it is it possible because they say a lot of them say that we wouldn't make any money
Speaker 2if we did that it's absolutely possible but coming back to that adaptability point it's going to require adaptability so if they keep doing the same thing not possible if they're willing to change if they're willing to evolve then absolutely absolutely possible but it's that flexibility it's that nimbleness it's that willingness to be able to change things that may be being done that way for 10. 20 30 40 50 years however we have to make change as society as individuals as companies to fight
Speaker 1this crisis that we're facing beautiful love it what we are i'm keeping an eager eye on the clock here and i'm trying to rattle through as many questions as i can whilst i've got you here in front of me so i hope you don't mind the speed that i'm throwing these at you i i uh i like the
Speaker 2speed we've actually got an internal saying in our company that we like to count time in dog years so i think any company like speed especially any small company like speed is your superpower like so many kind of big companies so many industries are so slow so bureaucratic so if a normal company once usually does something in seven days we want to do it in a day if a normal company does something in seven weeks we want to do it in a week a normal company does something in seven months we want to do it in a month so we love to count time in dog years and that speed has enabled us to go from two humans and a dog to the 14th most valuable beer brand in the planet and just under 15 years amen
Speaker 1but you're clearly very comfortable with the speed so you're keeping me on my toes on my paws excuse the nice that was that was bad that was bad well i want to move away from this sort of marketing and the corporate and the punk rock and down to the personal level because your life i'm guessing has changed immeasurably you know you you you've kind of you know for people on the outside who who are like starting up a business or a band whatever it might be you've you've done it you know i mean you've started out you put the whole new disruptive model you've taken on the mainstream and now you've got all the success to show for it and you're still true to your values you've got a great product that's very well respected and loved on the streets um has it changed you as a person at all what how has it changed your life is it like we all imagine it is that once you get to the top of that mountain it's all fucking awesome and life is great and yeah you know you're you're bathing in your millions or is it just you you're the same guy but now you've just got less time and more shit to do and more pressure and more stress i mean is it is it what we imagine or is it something else
Speaker 2it's a good question so for me it's it's never been about the money at all and if it was about the money i would have sold the business completely three or four years ago or it'd be like sitting in a beach somewhere drinking a cocktail and never have to do anything ever again and like that's not who i am that's not what i want for me it's always been about like fading something enduring something that we're proud of so like myself and my team are given our kind of energy or time or commitment or passion like we want to build something kind of look back in five ten years time and we've tried to be part of that we've tried to be part of a company that did something differently that popped the climate that changed the beer industry and it's it's nice to be successful and i still live in the same place that i lived in before i was before i was successful i still i still do the same things i still like my best friends to this day are the people that i used to work with on the on the fishing boat so i think my life and who i am has kind of changed very very little and still so focused on like every single day i wake up just like i did in like the first the first week it's like this is what i love this is my hobby i get to do this as a job i get to work with people i love i get to make something that brings people joy that brings people together that they can find that they can find like enjoyment and relaxation and the beauty the beauty and i get to elevate the status of beer which is something i'm insanely passionate about so i wouldn't want to stop for a second hopefully i'm doing this in 5 10 15 20 years time because it's something i absolutely adore and the success is this is six the success has been good but still very much the same person in the same place trying to do the same thing just i guess with a bit more kind of personal comfort which which is nice but um the ability to the ability to scale and i often kind of get asked by journalists and kind of people interviewing me like what do i think of what we've done what we've achieved what we've built in the first 15 years and i wouldn't say i'm callously indifferent to it but i'm reasonably indifferent to it so for me what is exciting is okay what can we do from from here so we built ourself an amazing platform we now make beard and high-tech beautiful facilities in in scotland in columbus ohio in berlin in australia in china in japan in in ireland we've now got distribution in 65 countries we've got a equity punk community of 220 000 so what we've done so far is we've now got a distribution in 65 countries we've got a okay what can we do from here how can we turn our business into the world's leading beer company at the same time showing business can be a force for good flying the flag for sustainability and elevating the status of beer in as many people's lives as possible and that's what i'm excited about that that's what gets me out of bed every morning and that's what i'm determined to put everything in line to try and achieve over the next decade love it long will you continue man i
Speaker 1mean how do you um i got one more personal question how do you manage your um the practicalities of your insane workload then i mean do you get down time do you get rest time do you get to exercise because like i'm not flying anywhere near the level you are man i'm you know i spend most of my time in the house in my pajamas like i am now you know like do it do a podcast i'm supposed to be writing my second book which i've been working on for fucking months and recording a new record right like i get to do you know all my favorite things in the house but even even i struggle to find time to meditate to exercise to eat well to visit my mom to have some downtime and see the missus i can't imagine how hard that must be for you do you do you manage to do any of those things or is your life just
Speaker 2fucking high speed no i mean i i have to and i think it's so so important and what i find if i don't make time to do those things i don't take the best version of me to work so if i don't take time to exercise if i don't take time to kind of spend quality time with my daughters if i don't if i don't ensure that i sleep well i'm also huge at the cold water immersion at the moment so if i don't make time to go in my my bath if i don't do those things if i don't get enough outside time like i'm i'm maybe like 70 of the ability and work ethic and like focus that i think i need to take to work so it's almost if i'm building up the blocks of my time obviously i want to be like i work a lot like a hell of a lot and i want every hour that i work to be as efficient as i can and i want to be as efficient as i can and i want to be as efficient effective as it possibly can be but i know that over a course of a week if i don't make time to do those other things those hours that i work are not going to be as effective right so it almost i don't feel guilty about doing those things because i know that the work that i do is going to be better because i do those things that i enjoy because i do those things that keep me keep me healthy keep me focused keep me connected and such an important way of using my time and i'm going to be better because i know that the work that i do is going to be better because i know that the work that i do is going to be better because i'm regardless how successful they are regardless of how much money they are all gets 24 hours in the day and for me what determines to a large extent how successful someone is is how effectively they use their time over the course of a day so i do i do loads of things like i batch my meetings i only reply to emails at certain times and too many people they just kind of they have no structure to how they use their time so they'll send an email they do a point of the hop about every time you switch tasks it costs you focus it costs you energy it's a it's kind of more likelihood to get distraction and it can throw a bit of kind of social media strolling in at the same time so i uh i monitor how many minutes i use my phone a day i monitor how many minutes i'm in social media day i track that i record that i try and keep that low so i can focus on other things i spend a lot of time doing what i would call like deep focused work so my favorite way to work is with a do not disturb sign on my door with noise canceling headphones on i give my phone to my assistant and i turn internet off and you need to create that space to focus because otherwise you're trying to do deep work but at the same time you peck away at an inbox you jump onto social media you do a phone call you need to create the space for that and then also like to block out significant amount of time to spend with my team but i like to do that kind of back to back to back so i'm in that mode where i need to be engaging where i need to be a leader where i need to connect with with people so thinking very consciously about how i use my time how i structure that time and how i minimize the opportunity cost of working with people and wasted time by switching between tasks and how i maximize the focus i have i think really helps me and the difference between a productive week and a less productive week is absolutely massive but then if you times that by 52 if you times that by 520 over a course of a decade so i truly believe that these little things kind of add up if you do them again and again and again so kind of really discipline disciplined and structured in terms of how i use my time and kind of how i allocate the
Speaker 1focus that i have that is some great advice yeah i mean i'm guilty of a lot of those uh errors my self man i'm trying to write a book and then i'll i'll take oh i'm gonna take a break i'll go on facebook and then half an hour later you know it's like what am i doing so yeah i'll be oh well my uncle's got a new dog oh that's really interesting i'm gonna spend half an hour talking about that yeah yeah so i'm guilty of that myself so i'm gonna take that away um for sure because i got
Speaker 2i got a lot of shit that i gotta get done the best work that i always do is when i'm completely undistracted so you've got to like carve out a few hours at a time no internet no phone calls no connection nothing and you need to almost decouple your head from where things are so you can't and something i often say to the team and say say to myself as well you can't build the future if you're so concerned with what's happening at the moment so you've got to kind of create that space to be able to look ahead and and build something and i think i've got some good qualities as a ceo i've probably got some things i need to work on as well i think my strongest my strongest students i've got some good qualities as a ceo i've probably got some is that ability to kind of build something create something but you've got to give your head the
Speaker 1space and time to be able to do that that is great advice yeah i will definitely be taking that on board myself what do you get from the cold water therapy oh i love it so i started doing it
Speaker 2about two years ago i've actually uh one of the investments that i've made recently is in a company called monk which is designing a beautiful kind of ice bath to go in people's homes and i originally started doing it to kind of help recover from from workout from exercise but what i'm really into now is the kind of mental health benefit so every time you do it regardless of how many times you've done it it is it is still very difficult but i've now got like a ice bath in uh in in my home so every morning i would go in for two and a half three minutes and the fact the kind of sense of accomplishment that you've done something that difficult first thing in the morning and it's impossible not to feel good afterwards you get kind of flooded with flooded with endorphins you kind of feel more alive than after you've had kind of two or three coffees but it's also kind of so beneficial for your heart for your muscles for your recovery but that kind of buzz that high that focus that kind of sense of accomplishment as uh it's always a very difficult two two minutes and what i love about it as well you've got to be exactly there so you've got to be so focused and so present if your head's somewhere else you need to jump out after 10 seconds you need to be calm you need to slow your breathing down i always find it difficult to meditate because my head's quite noisy you can't have a noisy head when you're in cold water you've got to be so calm so focused so relaxed so so in that moment so i think there's so many benefits i think it's gonna be the next it's quite niche at the moment i think it's gonna be the next big mainstream health thing that more and more people people do and it's just got so so many benefits and also benefits in terms of kind of weight loss it kind of eats up fat off your body as well and benefits in terms of kind of reducing inflammation reducing kind of aches and pains in your body and if you exercise if you work out it massively speeds up recovery as well and huge amount of mental health benefits as well so i would encourage everyone to do it and you don't need to have an ice bath so i started by just doing kind of 15 seconds every day at the end of the shower on cold and after a few weeks you build it up to 30 seconds and 45 seconds then in a minute and if i'm traveling if i'm in a hotel if i don't have access to the ice bath itself it's just two minutes full cold at the end of the shower and you get exactly the same benefits you don't even need to invest anything and anyone can get the benefit so it's it's it's tough it's tough but doing something tough kind of builds up mental resilience and everyone needs a kind of good good amount of mental resilience i think so for me it's a it's a fantastic thing and i would uh one of the things that i've become most reluctant to
Speaker 1to not do as part of my day well you've convinced me to give it a go because a few people have mentioned it on the podcast and uh it does sound like something i definitely need to do but man oh god the idea of that just fills me with terror so i'm gonna i'll give it a try i'll give it a
Speaker 2try and i'll tweet about how i got on okay let me let me know i'm excited to hear how you how you it won't be good and maybe if we do the podcast again we can we can do it whilst we're uh up to the neck in ice water
Speaker 1yes and we'll have the aforementioned pint of black heart as well that's the one let's do it
Speaker 2sounds good see how many minutes the podcast is maybe one or two
Speaker 1i think you'll win that i'll be like fuck this i'm out of here man i'm more than happy for you to win well james i've got one last question before i let you go because i'm gonna try and let you get away early because i know you've got shit to do um we've got quite a few related themes in common as i said i'm in a band my band is called james kennedy and the underdogs which was taken from my book that came out in uh in the lockdown my life was a rock and roll underdog i was i'm a political uh punk rock band my album is called make anger great again i know you've got a thing called make earth great again and also i've got a thing called the dog house which is fans with floors basically so when we're touring out and about because we're like a diy punk band um we've got um a database of fans that put us up on their sofas and their floors it's called the dog house so we've got quite a few with dog related themes there that come from my band name i just wanted to double check i'm not gonna have that i'm not gonna get chewed up by the brew dog um mafioso at any point you know am i or is the uh or is the head dog give me a green light and said it's okay uh you are all good and like some of
Speaker 2those things that you just mentioned that can i see so much resonance with what we do and i love some of those initiatives you're doing so i will definitely check out the band and check out the
Speaker 1book oh thank you so much i'll send you some shit man i'll send you i'll send it to your assistant i'll get whatever the irrelevant po boxes to send it to and i'll post it across well we can uh we can thank you by sending you some beer as well oh well i will never ever say no to that so thank you so much man i really appreciate it james i'm gonna let you go now man because i know you got so much for giving us your time today dropping all these pearls of knowledge and wisdom on us and thanks for quenching our thirst with all these gorgeous amber neck charmers over all these years as well and for sticking it to the big dogs and bringing a bit of punk rock to the pint glass so thank you so much man and i hope to see you again soon awesome love the conversation i love the questions and thanks for having me anytime at all man thanks again james speak to you soon mate take care take care bye-bye there you go guys raise your glasses and howl like drunken dobermans for the main dog of the brew mr james what i hope you enjoyed that chat that guy certainly knows his stuff huh he's got a lot to say and he does not mince his words um there's a lot of great info and advice there i think for anyone running or starting a business or indeed a band or whatever you know it's very kind of james to share all of that wisdom so generously and uh you know unfortunately i got so carried away with all the questions i totally forgot to ask him as i always do with the guests you know what is coming up from broodog hq um which fortunately you know these guys don't need my help with any promo so i'm sure he's gonna be okay about that but as i mentioned earlier the guys do have a creamy new addition to their arsenal of fun called black heart which is absolutely fucking delicious stout and is available at all of their bars as of right now and also in canned form at the supermarket and i would 100% recommend that you go and sink one of those cold bad boys at the first opportunity i know james and co have had a lot of criticism over the years for different things and i know that they are divisive and i know that people are going to be saying to me why didn't you grill him about this and grill him about that you know but uh that's yeah i'm not i'm more interested in the wisdom and the learning opportunities this ain't fucking jeremy paxman you know i mean and i just think that broodog is such an interesting and unique entity in the world of business and what they've done is so interesting so i'm much more interested in getting into the minds behind all that and the practical insights that you lucky bastards can gain from someone who's clearly supremely talented in areas that i and i'm guessing most of you motherfuckers are certainly not so why not listen and learn you know what i'm saying you don't need me to tell you but broodog are at broodog.com at broodog on twitter and broodog official on instagram and mr james what is at broodog james on twitter and instagram so go and give him a follow i hope you gained some useful ideas there and some definitely some food for thought as always do leave some comments start a conversation join a conversation share the episode around and let me know what you guys think don't forget to subscribe and join the secret society at jameskennedystuff.com tribe and i will see you again next week with another awesome awesome guest until next time my friends have a great week fight the power and i love you loads
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