John Vincent: Why I Bought LEON Back, How Purpose Builds Better Brands & What’s Killing UK Business Right Now

It could really destroy my life, taking on the financial responsibility of running a business that was going downhill in an industry that's going downhill, in a country that's going downhill. I thought that this could be a very bad decision financially, but I thought I had to do it. They have killed the industry. Well, from today, I've never interviewed someone who sold the business and then bought that same business back. That's because it's stupid. Why tax companies from employing people? I mean, it's actually illogical in the same. How do you live in the so presently in the now, which is a beautiful thing, and head somewhere? It must mean that I have still a little bit of fear that my use of the word love might make people think that I am mad. Sometimes when I'm starting a business, it's literally difficult to breathe. On the day the deal was done, they were called to us, a conference called, to be told about the deal. They're all here. Oh wow! So they all had to go to different rooms with different backdrops, to be told. We have been in the outskirts of Mr Gray's story. It's really interesting to relive it with you James, actually, because I haven't really thought about it might sense, but that's basically what happened. John Vincent, hello. First we're introducing it when we've been downstairs drinking coffee for the last two hours. First we have probably been helping my wife on a business. A vice versa. A vice versa. A vice versa. A vice versa. A vice versa. That's good. I think we need to do a bit of a different way of working this interview. I think we'll do. We need to work out where we are right now, and then we'll have to reverse engineer how we got to it. How do we get here? Because it's a little bit like a thought of breaking bad. It is a little bit. Yeah, we see it. And then you have to be here. Because I've interviewed lots of people who've sold a business. I've interviewed people who've bought a business. I have yet, apart from today, I've never interviewed someone who's sold a business and then bought that same business back. There's the hook for the trailer. So where are you right now? So you're back. You've just bought Leon Restaurants back. And you're back in the full force of it, full till CEO. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. How do you feel about that? I'll make me feel bad. How do you feel about it? Oh. I am. Why is there no word for petrified and excited? Like, you know, in Chinese characters, they combine things in Chinese characters. Why do we not have a word for that? Why do you have to have two words? It's an obvious common emotion being petrified and excited. What should we do? Should we excite? Excite. I'm excited. You're excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. Yeah. We need to get. We need to look at the English image. If it's fit for purpose. Fit for purpose. Yeah. I'm excited. You're excited. How much excited and how much petrified as a percentage would you say? I think there's even various. Maybe I could have an excited and petrified kind of whoop. Yeah. I think usually, like, excited. You're excited, you need better sleep. You need better sleep. You're too excited. On Thursday night, when I worked out that my supply chain, my new supply chain might completely cripple the business, my new idea for the supply chain. I was petrified. And then yesterday I tasted some amazing food from the food team, especially Shantal, and I was excited. So I think the key thing is not to judge the ups and the downs. Do you know the story of Choi that really helps me? I heard you talk about another podcast and tell this one. Love the helps. Yeah. The way he helps. So, Syritry is this idea that, well, it's a story about a guy called Choi. He goes, he's a very poor man. He only has one possession, which is a horse. And he's having to take it to the market to sell it, to get some money because it's his last possession. And the horse runs away and the neighbor says, "Oh, Choi, you're so unlucky." And he goes, "Well, maybe." And then the next day, the horse comes back with two wild horses. The neighbor says, "Oh, Choi, you're so lucky." And he says, "Oh, maybe." And then the next day, he's son brings his leg trying to tame one of the wild horses. And the neighbor says, "Oh, Choi, you're so unlucky." And Choi says, "Maybe." And then the next day, the army comes and tries to take his son away. And they can't, he's broke his leg. So the neighbor says, "Oh, well, you're so lucky, Choi." This is what, maybe. So I think the key thing is, don't judge. Don't apply judgment to any piece of bad news or don't apply judgment to any piece of good news. I think that's probably sensible. On the excite, excite, or find whatever we call it, scale. How long before retaking the reins, did you know that you were going to make this move? Or there was an inkling that you were going to buy the bag? It was probably from about April, May of 2025 last year. And so sub one year, as we sat here today, from idea to execution, really. And then the real due diligence and the concentrated effort on due diligence started in August of 25 last year. Well, and deal done by December. So it's about 12 weeks. So it's 12 weeks. Wow. Yeah. But I mean, good people on the other side of the deal have to give a massive shout out to a guy called Rob Hattroll at CDR. And he's, he's Boss Gary Ho, they were brilliant. And Rob, CDR owned Leon through, owning Hasda and then owning Leon and also come to good EG with Moss and Azubarissa. And quite frankly, they were a, they were very, very good to deal with. They were very straightforward. You know, when they disagreed, when he disagreed, they disagreed. And it's a wonderful way to do business when you, you can agree to disagree on things. And you can be very transparent about what you both need and both want. So Rob Hattroll, big shout out to Rob Hattroll. You know, if Leon does survive, it will be a large part down to the fact that he decided not to close the island and to sell it to me. So thank you, Rob, to be honest. Because that was really interesting. Because I know you wrote a book called Fighting. Winning, not fighting. So when I, when I was thinking about the negotiation or the doing the deal back to buying it, I was thinking, how can you negotiate from the position of power when you're overarching belief is that when you are winning, you're not fighting. So by the sounds of it, you didn't, it wasn't a combative acquisition. All parties wanted the deal to happen. I mean, do you know, I mean, I really don't believe in the long term in the art of the deal and the trumpet way. That's not me trying to be lefty and soft. I just don't think it really is the right way of doing things. I do know there's a book called Getting to Yes. Do you know that book? No, it was sort of, it was about, I think the opening story is about two sisters that wanted an orange and they both fought over the orange. And in the end, they compromised and one person had half of the orange and the other sister had the other half of the orange. And a few months later, they worked out that one of the sisters wanted it to make orange juice and the other one wanted the peel to make the cake. And so if they'd have actually communicated better, they would have both won. Instead, they'd both half lost. Right. So I really believe in, it's like a jigsaw puzzle that requires transparency. It requires you saying, this is what is important to me in order of importance. This is what is important to me in order of importance. And then it's a question of how much you actually gonna construct the deal based on that transparency. And if you're centered, as you know, you've done Wing Chun with Sifu Julian here, which I wrote in the book with, if you're centered and you're saying to someone that that doesn't work for me, then they know that you're saying it for real. It's not an negotiation. I'm not gonna do the deal if that's the way you wanna do the deal. So, shall we find out a way that you do wanna do the deal? And how did the deal come back to you in the first place? Was it, you still involved, is like a shareholder or were you seeing that? No, I was very adamant when we sold it because I didn't want to earn out. I didn't wanna be involved. I didn't wanna be on the board. If it was not mine, if I wasn't running here, then I wasn't, I didn't wanna be involved. Right, okay. And then, a full break up. Full break up, full clean, conscious un coupleing. And then, I would say, I was very pleased not to be running it for a long while. It'd been quite stressful. We've been through COVID, we've been with the only restaurant chain or any food chain to stay open. They've opened your right. And you took some heat for that, didn't you? Yeah, it turns out. But, you know, we also, by the people that needed us in the hospitals or people that were working, they loved it. But we also did this single feed NHS because our restaurant was open. We did a million meals direct to hospitals. It's called feed NHS with Matt Lucas, Damian Lewis and the late Helen McCory. And it was quite tiring to actually, by that point, I don't mind saying that, I owned about 15% of Leon. Because it had been diluted and diluted in time through CapEx, requirements and investor, you know, rounds of investment. And I'd be, I'd say 10% ordinary shares, I'd 5% management options. And so, I was like, well, I don't even control the business anymore. I'm making you set a recommendation to a board to different sets of shareholders or board. There was no major, there was no single controlling entity. So, everyone had to sort of get on. But it was a little bit like being a captain of a ship and having to go down and make a recommendation to a secret committee that we should turn the boat left. Or that we should not let that incoming McFighter attack us. And so, I felt that I ultimately, in 2021, I was very happy not to run Leon. And then over time, I started to miss it. I started to realise I liked to make golf, and that's a metaphor. I don't have a girlfriend. I have a wife. But yeah, I've quite, yeah, so I started to miss Leon. I started to miss the camera radio with the people. I went in, I've got a nip from it, so platform like vested in, called invited. And we started to do some work really, and then went back and see it's all the same other. you know, when you go into the office and you think, they're saying, right? - Is that a sense that you had when you went in? - I felt it was, yeah, you can sense energy, can't you? - Yeah, for sure. I felt the energy wasn't right. And I started to think, oh, I think I need to, I like to fix this. And so that was sort of probably a year or so before 80 months or so before, before a quarter. And then I started to see the service go down here, and I started to see the food not quite right, the coherence of the menu. I didn't think that was going to be good. - What is this from day into story? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes I think, oh, they've had that screen, they've done those digital screens well or not the key or screen, it is with the, I wouldn't have done that, that's clever. They're moving it on. And I realized they weren't moving it on, they were moving it off. So I started to kind of like think, oh, that's a shame. It's come a dad's name above the door, that's not quite right, no quite like it. And then what happened was I, you know, I've got a bunch of businesses all around under this banner of the Longhouse, which is based on the idea of the Eroquire tribe where they lived in Longhouses, where they considered every decision they did, seven X or apocryphalic, seven generations from hence from now. So all about long term thinking, holistic thinking, I've done really not fighting, I had the job with the podcast. And I thought, all Leon is actually quite a good platform for the things that I've been really working on since Leon, which are all connected to, you can call it different things, total health, natural health, wholeness. You know, when you're not fighting from a Darwinist or Confucianist perspective, or a zebberless perspective, and all the things I've been really into and tried to work on and understand, I thought Leon might be actually a good platform for that, a business that means I don't have to start these things and scratch. It's an existing platform, I can do something with it. Now, it happens to in a terrible industry that's taxed to shit by possibly the worst government I've ever witnessed in my life. - Yeah. - So it's not an easy platform. - No. - It's a platform that's where you've got like, a government drilling under it to make a secret holes in it. So to try and make it collapse. - Try to sink your proverbial back. - I'd like to take it. - Other than that. - Other than that. - Other than that, it might be a good platform. - Wow, let's see. - So you, the extra thing I've heard you talk about one of the podcast, Brilliant Podcasts by a guy called Dan Murray Sir to seek believers. And I listened to that episode recently. It was really interesting because Dan comes in it from an investor, my ex-exec, whilst he's also growing up a scale up, he's a super intelligent guy. You on that podcast set, is it Heights, his business? - Heights, his business. - Yeah, which you do. - I'd say that very well. - Yeah, there you go. You can shout out, Dan. But he sort of asked you a set of questions. And one of the answers was, if you only less than 50% of a business, you don't own the business off of it. That's really interesting. And you also said, there might be people that say, I've got my own business, but actually, if you stop working, you haven't. You've got a proper job. - The job, your job, your plan. - Or a really bad job. - You're a freelance, so you got your own job. - For sure. - You built your own job, freelance job, yeah. - So you said there that you had ended up with only in about 15%, I don't know, from the get-go, you and your original co-founder gave away 50% of the APC. And you said you started from the off on the on the on the on the on the on the - I mean, first of all, the mistake I made was Henry said, look, John, I've already left Bane business consulting. You're still there. So why don't I have 60%, you have 40%. - Of the 50% is worth 100%. - Okay, so that was before we even raised the money. - Fine. - Stupidly, I said yes. - Why did I say yes? - I said yes because I knew I had some other work on the side, which I had to fulfill. There was a couple of white and white. When I was at Bane company, which it was a great consulting for a lot of them, or working there. I had a client called Vivian Imament, amazing South Africa entrepreneur. I mean, hilarious. I won't do his accent, but he's possibly the most direct. Tell it like he is person in business I've ever met in my life. - South Africans are like that, oh my God. He was like, John, what the fuck, what the fuck are you doing? - I knew you'd eventually do that. - Yeah, exactly. Literally, literally, I was like, are you gonna bleak these, can you bleep stuff out? - I can bleep stuff out. - Okay, he brings, he says, "Gerald, you're coming until this (beep) "you're coming until this (beep) "why we have to have control. "Come, come sit here, sit here. "Tonnie, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, this guy. Tell his fucking Indian John. "Why, why, why, why, why, why, why we have to have control on the businesses that we run?" - I like, I know, I know. So, literally, he taught me, he taught me the importance of control. - Wow, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. Anyway, Karla's story short, Vivian made me, he said, come and be the CEO of White and McKite, because he, - So we've been a client. - He'd been a client of mine. - Right. - And it was food and drink. It was like, so it was like, Dura, Dau, more, White and McKite. I've loved about all these other different brands, bought whiskey. And he said, "Jun, come and be the CEO." I said, "Can't be the CEO. I'm going to do my little startup." - You know, I'll fund your, - Petitey little startup, Neil. And then you can come and help me, right? So at the time, I thought to myself, "Fuck, Vivian wants to help run White and McKite." So it's okay that I've got 40, but I was doing two jobs, I was doing three little startup. - Yeah. - Right, you know, I call the startup stories. And then I was doing this quite tricky turnaround to this international business. - You know, 50 million could, even that profit that we had to sort of turn around. So it was a whole bunch of different, there's a different two different jobs at the same time. So that's why I agree, coming back to your point, that's why we did 40. Then the people that were going to take 40%, which is like Vivian and the Gargoyle Robbie, they said, "No, no, we're going to take 50%. So that was the last minute. Oh, and we're going to take a coupon of 15%. So I did a, we did a bad deal from the get-go. And we were like, that's for 17 years, that hurts. - Yeah, for sure. I mean, Henry got out most of his shares in 2014, when I became CEO, and it had a couple more years he stayed on the board. But then-- - When he sold his share, I think he sold out, I think he sold more shares in 2016 or something. So, but, and he then started a business, what did a business called, you know, I've got called London Union, which was like with the Gargoyle Johnson down, and they did like, for a festival, like big markets in London. - Oh, I forgot the names now, but you know, - Outdoor, some markets, - Night market, yeah. Anyway, so Bob, you can do all this stuff out, well, I'm just going off on one. But, yes, so your main point, so your main point, yes, we've got diluted. And that happens in capital intensive businesses. - Yeah. - That's why it's quite good to do a business that doesn't need too much capital. - So when you say about your little startup on the side, you'll talk about a very captally intensive business that's going to be in food services. And by the way, we're going to open our first one on Carnaby Street. So it's not really comparative to Vivian's business, it's a small entity, but it's not a small undertaking, is it? - It's complex undertaking. It does need capital, and it does need you to come into the real world. It's a Newtonian business, not a digital business. - Yes. - We built it in the digital age. It's not in the Newtonian age, but we have a Brick's mortar, electric, plumbing, extraction where a builder called John got stuck, and we have to pull him out by his legs, 'cause he got stuck in there, 'cause he's trying to fix the aircon. So it was a real thing. It was a real thing. And the team, I didn't know many people, not many people know this, but the team, we kept, because of the extraction wasn't working. We kept having to delay the opening, and the team genuinely thought they were on a fly on the wall documentary, that it was a, that it wasn't a restaurant, because of the team when they put CCTV in, they just started to put the cameras up. - Right. - They were like, "Oh, we're part, we're, this isn't actually, the real one now." - So it's got your TV. - It was literally like, "This isn't a fucking real thing." We were all on the RIT TV. - It's literally like, "This can't be the CEO." - Yeah, it's an India. John stuck in the air, in the aircon. - The builders were called John and John. - Oh my God. - And they were so large. - They were so large. - They were so large, we were big. - I can see my sounds like a TV show, they were there. - They literally got stuck, one hundred stuck in the aircon vents. - So you're at Bain, which is a very big consultancy firm, so you've got Bain and you've probably got one or two others that are there. - The Kinsey Bain BCG, or the three. - The big three. - What are the best in my view? Bains a little bit better. - Bains a little bit better. - Well, do business. - Yes. - Yes. - So Richard Reed and I had an advertising agency at college, and we also did the branding for Dance Events at University. And we'd done this one called Please. And it was like, Please wear a pair of sensible shoes. And it was a dance. Because we were trying to make dance with everyone in the year, but a bit ahead of us, was like jumping up and down to Dex's, literally, now, yeah, dance music hit, and all the events became dance music led. But because it was the first time at Dance Music, or EDM, we were going to call it, was really taking the hold. We wanted to create a brand that made it accessible. So we created this very cool, Please. Which would re-deny how to do this. We did, Please, we did, what's the magic word? Was the kind of like the teaser campaign. And-- - It's good. - And we even had-- Clients in Cambridge, like, Radio Rentals was a client of us. - Radio Rentals. - And he did it in the said-- - We also had at university, this-- OK, this was brilliant. I forgot on their names now, but there were two women that worked in the prunter print, whatever it was. And-- We used to like print in color all these flyers throughout dance events all these flyers with these advertising agency Completely for free, right digital prints that must have cost tens of thousands of pounds But because we kind of like got on quite well with the girls that were running the prongs of print Whatever it was copy print whatever it was we just got some all for free And so that was that was like me and him doing having an agency and doing dance events He went on to do this and smooth it's with Adam and with with John right also at college And and I was like I was well jail because when they started doing it I was like, I want to do something like that. That looks fun They get to actually decide their own diet. Yeah, yeah Actually build the energy that they want in their business Yeah, and I'd I'd always you know thought I'm not gonna be doing this PNG and Bain stuff Forever I'm definitely gonna have me own business and so Henry Dimblebee and I we went out for lunch once and He said this right down 10 ideas that we both want to do and they were like things like Well, he's list of common balls on wine. He said yeah, I could see no insurance. It was like this Just any any escape route. The fame was brilliant But we just it was when it was the second best job in the world and we wanted to do the best job Yeah, but the best business in the world and then we both were like oh look we both got good fast food on our list That's funny. So instead of being intelligent and going around the others Or the other whatever it was the other the other 18 lower and we were like oh Let's do that one and then it was Let's do that one As what happened was about he's six months later Henry where I was going to look just out of politeness I'm telling you that I'm gonna go and do this business. We were gonna do good fast food And I said oh just out of politeness. I come and do it with you then Then and then that's what we did so we just and what happens it Henry came with his plans like my hide it I still think maybe his ideas would have been better But he presented his idea of fast food, which is balls of food a bit more like I guess what you might call farmer Jade today Right and I presented this idea of it for Donald's in heaven and I think maybe because I On that day had it wasn't always good on that day had greater false personality I listen to side and we were gonna do my idea which was the McDonald's Just because you pitched it better well, I probably I probably insisted No, you a little bit I just insisted by the way if I ever have a commune. I'm gonna be in charge. I thought so yeah Yeah, I'm gonna set the rules the commune. Yeah, but it's fine with this. I think in a commune Someone needs to have the final final Given given the locations I mean I'm being christian to my friends. I did it. You do a commune. I said I fired as long as I'm really really really really Yeah, yeah, yeah, so what would McDonald's look like in heaven was kind of your methodology It was like Art class with Michael Angelo. Oh, you have a podcast because he probably does podcast now then the Michael Angelo What do you want probably would be probably so so Michael Angelo's podcast although I've read the Leonardo da Vinci Water Isaacs and biography. I've been meeting that I think that Michael Angelo's And Leonardo da Vinci was a nice man. Well, yeah Cool, he took all the way to yeah, so you have an art class with Leonardo. Yeah, yeah And he says not bad for first attempt. Let's go and get some fast food You know it all didn't know you had fast food up here and you don't worry not right down there Yes, it's in the middle of the high street. It has the same format as the McDonald's It has the same ordering process in McDonald's although there's a subtlety about that and Everything else is different. So you have ingredients that spring from the soil you've got a Place that springs from that community and you've got a culture that springs from the heart And so I was like yeah, that's what we're gonna do Henry and Henry went okay. We'll do that Okay, and that was it. That was it and then of course that was the start and then we fucked it up and got Togages and yeah conditioning didn't work and on carnivorous shit There's this walk that you walked down carnivore street and Round the ball arts and back up and every every time we were just I remember there's a time Sometimes when we're starting a business It's literally difficult to breathe. I find that now and you're like why can't I literally breathe probably so stressful? And so we would go on a little walk down the ball arts and back again often our problems have been our problem We worked out the answer to our problem on the walk. So is that the first round the ball arts is always a good thing Walk round up to the ball arts and round again. Yeah, so that one on carnivorous is still there. Yeah, it is Yes, it is but I'm having to decide now because the rent's gone up from £85,000 a week to about 50,000 pounds away. I told him, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, yeah, I told the lie. So 80, 5,000. That's a hundred. I ran it a week. No, 85,000. Oh, so I had so a lot of money to clarify. Yeah, exactly. A lot of waffle. 85,000 a year to about 300,000 pounds, yeah, and it's tiny. So we can't have hauled it. So I might have to pull it off. Yeah, he's a very, I was there a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. For an event I went and to eat there first, because I always had, if I nearly on that to me, figured a weird, they've done the screens at the front and the thing at the back. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But the point is that the market's gone mad. The rents, the rents are upward only. It's the only concept of class in the world where it goes up only up. Gold isn't allowed to only go up. Gold sometimes goes down. The share prices. Imagine if the stock price was by law, the stock, the share price can only go up. Yeah, he by law. That's that, that is, that is property. Yeah. Why? Because we still live in a feudal country. Yeah. The House of Lords is the House of Effectively the Landlords and they set the laws and agree the laws and the landry gentry and guess what? They don't like when going down even though for the market should go down, even if it should go down, called into the market. Yeah. So the other thing is I was going to let you look secret in Chinatown. Shouldn't really mention the landlord, but let's just say, the rule is that the set by the set by the set by the people that own this country. That's probably about eight people. The if one shop goes up in rent because of Saudi Arabian prints has bought that one shop. By law in the next rent review, they all go up to that one single precedent, single precedent, up with only rents. So what's parked? Right. Now what happens if you own a shop in Chinatown? This isn't not me being culturally different. But it's true. This this happens to be the case. Let's say you are pretending to be in the restaurant industry because actually you're in other industries. Yeah. That's always say. You don't really care if you're almost dangerous podcasting. Yeah. You don't get no, though. The one about the covert coming out of a lab, that was worse. The that means that they don't care what really happens in the rent because they're not they're making money, money elsewhere. Yeah. And it's a funneling process for cash, right? So then that then that landlord goes, look, that that that one's got up. You've all got to go up. Yeah. And that's how. Khan of the street gets from £85,000 a year of 2004 to £250,000. Wow. Now, and it's not worth it, especially now the government takes 36 P out of every pound that we take. Out of which you've got to pay cost of goods, you've got to pay leather, you've got to pay rent, we've got to pay everything else operating costs. So so this is why it's who is losing 40 million, whatever it is a year, pretzels your money. That's why as the couldn't run Leon is not the market. It's the non market related up with only rents and it's the non market related taxation that you read about killing the high street when when people are in tears who've built business over 30 years and they are in tears because they're going to administration. It's not the market. It's the government has done this and it's the landlords as well owned by the big institutions that seem to want to kill the mom and pop operator. So we've got, you know, we've got a prime minister that seems to not like commerce. We've got a chance of the checker that doesn't have to do what they're doing and it's killing industry. And that's why every time you cook or something like this I've moved to Dubai, I've moved to Portia, I've moved to New York. It's not fucking okay. I mean, we're sort of out. Let's pause there because what John's just outlined isn't just a rant about government policy. This is actually a masterclass in how fragile business models can actually be. Here's what that really means in real terms. If your margins are thin, your cost are fixed or even worse, if you're cost horizon, you might think that your business does one thing but actually the number one job of your company is survival. And that's a horrible place to be. Trust me. I've been there. I've done it. I've got that horrible t-shirt. Let's say that your business rates or your rent might have doubled. Let's say that you are one of those businesses that suffers from that distortion, which is actually eroding your margin and employment has become even more expensive. If you don't have ways that you can create extra leverage than you are exposed. And whilst it feels like there's particularly tough in certain sectors like food and hospitality and restaurants like in John's case, this actually applies regardless of what business you're in. Whether you're a D2C, branded agency, a SaaS, an e-commerce, whatever it may be. If you look at it from another perspective, let's say that your customer acquisition costs spikes. If your suppliers increase their prices or maybe platform changes the algorithm and all of sudden your content doesn't do as well as it was before, what actually happens? Do you have the room to absorb that shock or does your model actually collapse on itself? The real lesson here isn't about hospitality. It's this. Before you scale a brand, before you scale your marketing, in fact, before you do any of that kind of stuff, you must understand what clever management consultancy firms like Bain, who John used to work for, would call cost architecture. Because building a brand without margin is ego. I've had it where you had a client a few years ago that very nearly sunk my entire business because there just wasn't enough margin between what we charge and what it actually cost to deliver that service. In that instance, we were charging what felt like a lot of money. but with the additional costs in terms of people, times, software, freelancers, all that good stuff, the cost to actually deliver the service meant there wasn't actually enough margin left. By the way, when it comes to the costing side of things, let me share another top lesson, constantly keep watching that margin because costs have a horrible sneak away of increasing unnoticed and your margin can evaporate like fog on a sunny day. Basically, you don't always see it leaving. All of those things combined. - Well, I'll find that a bit more. - Yeah, 'cause you're clean and clear, you've gone, you've got a nice life. - I could have gone to Dubai. - Yeah. - Not that I want to. (laughing) - So why the desire to? - There was no desire, there's just a like, I had to. - Really? - So in the end, I thought, no, there's no point doing a list of pros and cons. - Right. - It's a little bit like, I wouldn't say this is, I thought you were gonna put myself up, there's a really useful story at the start of the Bhagavad Gita, do you know the Bhagavad Gita? - I know. - It's a Hindu script where Krishna is meant, there's this charity, chariot here, as a personification of Krishna, God, I think, has to decide what to do. And in the end, there's only one answer. 'Cause he has to decide to whether to support an army that he is in or an army where some of his uncles and relatives are in, which side to choose. And there was only one right answer, even though the answer was uncomfortable emotionally, there was a right answer. And so that's what I felt with Leon, it could really destroy my life with taking on the financial responsibility of running a business that was going downhill in a industry that's going downhill in a country that's going downhill. So I thought that this could be a very bad decision financially, but I felt I had to do it. I felt it was the right thing to do. I felt that if Leon didn't survive, it would be the wrong thing. I think it would be bad thing if Leon wasn't in existence. I felt that it was the vehicle I can use to help people eat well. It was the vehicle that I can help more powerfully to help people enjoy natural health more broadly, not using food as the lens. And it is the business that I felt could show that businesses should be genuinely based on love and based on purpose. So I felt that it was the best chance for me to demonstrate that and put into play some of the things that I've been talking about in winning off writing, 'cause I fundamentally believe by chasing money and making money the objective, the desire is not gonna affect on society, planet, et cetera. We only focus on money. We're seeing the effects of that. We're seeing the effects of the deleterious effects on society and the nature. And also it's not working. It's not like GDP is growing. - Yeah. - It's chasing money. - Yeah. - We're doing the wrong thing and it's getting the wrong life. - It's not that she led to more money. - Yeah. - And it has not, she led to anything good happening. So we actually need to get the cascading of that right. We need to say if we act from love with purpose and then we put product next, we put maybe business model next, we put our own people next, and then we put customers and then we put economics. Honestly, I really think that that is the order that most businesses should be thinking about. And if we just think about money, then actually we make less money and things become shit. And that's, so in a way, yes, it was to save Leon. Hopefully. Yes, it was to help people eat well. Yes, it was to help people enjoy natural health. But it was all about this idea of can you build businesses based on soy to use the word, but love, wholeness, harmony, balance, soul, with the purpose, where the purpose is real. So people come to work thinking, I am helping people eat well. I am nourishing people's journey to all this natural health. I'm not just pretending to do that in order to make some money. Does that make sense? I mean, so many businesses have their purpose as a bit of a veneer. They're like, we need to make some monkey money for our shareholders. Of course, let's pretend we have a purpose. And it's purpose washing, you've heard about green washing. Yeah, but it's purpose washing as well. And you've got to make the purpose genuine. That's why we stayed open in COVID because the purpose system helped people eat well. Yeah. It didn't help us financially to stay open in COVID, but it helped the team and it helped the long term fiber of Leon to do that to stay open in COVID because I did not believe, certainly by the time that the first lockdown ended, I definitely didn't believe in lockdowns. And I felt it was a bit of defiance to say, no, business must have up and down and help and business and we're killing business by this excessive lockdown and we're killing livelihoods and we're killing the health and mental health of our young generation. So that's why I felt very strongly in our campaign against lockdown. Quite difficult to campaign against lockdown. We had a secret group, not see where the group on what's at, different MPs, different business people, trying to kind of explain the damages of lockdown. But we were, we were pariahs, we were found it's so difficult to get any proper coverage other than your mad stupid right wing idiots. Yeah. Right wing, why does it make me right wing? Yeah. Because I believe in the whole thing because I can see the impacts on the whole. Why does that make me right wing? Yeah. Maybe I'm not right wing. I know, what define what that is, but I find it very frustrating that there was censorship. And if you put something up on meta, on Google, we found out in lockdown in, in, in COVID that media is highly censored. Yeah. And I don't think that's a good thing. I think we have to in, in crisis, it's when we need to speak. Yeah, for sure. We now realize like that the proper ideas don't get fed into the system. Yeah. But they went into, they thought they were clever and they were thought they were in wartime, wartime censorship. And I will never forgive them for what they did to young people who deserve that censorship. And arguably time will tell what they did on a medical firm as well, through medical negligence during COVID. Yeah. And the, some of the interventions they thought were heroic could turn out to have been quite damaging. So I think censorship is evil. I think we, we, we champion, we send people to, young people, a broad to die for our country to defend our freedoms. And then we give them away like that. Like we did in COVID. I think it's disgusting. And it's still one of the real reasons I want, and the additional reasons I wanted to, by about Leon was one day to have enough media capability or enough financial capability to counter some of the bullshit censorship that we saw and are still seeing. And still seeing in the era. I give an example, when Michael Gover was a front of the first leaders of the free world to actually publicly say that we think it's more and more likely that there's a body of evidence that COVID came from a laboratory which has big implications for how, why and, and, and, and so on. And immediately the BBC put him from, they, they stopped the inquiry. It's a cultural way. They muted him. They put him into the corner. And then we've got breaking news. We've got breaking news about how TICO, the, and retailer, about how the TICO went into administration. I'm like, I'm sorry, BBC. We're literally hearing for the first time that a leader of the free world telling us that the COVID came from a laboratory, contrary to all the official narrative. And you've literally muted him. And, and the breaking news of how a chain of, a chain of retailers went into administration is more important. Was that coincidence? Or was that deliberate? Discuss. Yeah. And then it was never mentioned 10 minutes later, or 15 minutes later, they had these experts, these three experts saying why Michael Gover wasn't telling the truth. That was out on anywhere or online. So that must have been prepped. Yeah. So so what the hell's going on with censorship? It's mad. It was a crazy time. It is still a crazy time. And what's really interesting is hearing your story in it, obviously in the sort of the, the preceding few days and weeks leading up to this conversation. I'm obviously not rid of a lot of stuff about you and listen to a lot of stuff about you. I have them. I have them. It's quite interesting because you apologize. I'm sorry to say this, but it comes from love. But you believe that the food and that purpose and that love is generally the foundation stone for building a better company, organization, community, country, world as it sort of positively ripples out. Why do you still, even now, apologize when you say it comes from love? Because it's so okay. I think that's a really great question, right? Because that must mean that if we always have a kind of choice of love and fear and you've said, they can't really exist at the same time, it must mean that I have still a little bit of fear that my use of the word love might make people think that I am mad or egotistical or there must be some fear that I'm just a little bit of a problem. As you asked me the question, I'm thinking maybe that is true. That must be true, right? I must be apologising for use of the word love because there's some kind of fear that people might judge me negatively. And there are two elements to that fear. One is the idea that people might think it's soft. And the other one is that perhaps people might think that I am hypocritical. because it's quite a big statement to say that you come from love. That does that make sense. Yeah. And therefore it sets quite a high hurdle. Yeah. And you can be judged if people think, "Well, that's hyper-critical, that's he's not doing that with love." Because we might all aspire to get as close as possible to act out of love. But as soon as we're doing anything for me go off here, even a little bit, then we're compromising away from that high standard. And so it must be an element of that in it as well. And there's a really good phrase from the "Dowler Ching," which is the verse from the "Dowler Ching," which is probably the most rational text that underpins "Dowler's" them from about 4,600 BC. When it was really sort of being disseminated and written by Loutzu, if that was his real name. But which is, when the "Dow" is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there's morality. When morality is lost, there's ritual. So it's when the "Dowler's lost," there's goodness. And when morality is lost, there's ritual. So ritual in the Catholic Church might be prayer beads or incense. Right? That's the prayer, or that's the ritual. Or Buddhists doing their flipping their spin-ed prayer things. Morality is a tinker-moments, "Dowler's shall not kill." "They'll not fancy a neighbour." Carol, I don't, sorry. I'm not, don't fancy Carol than either. Oh, lovely person. Oh, God, I was just curious. Goodness is what we can label as more powerful than morality. It's a term we put on, which is goodness. It's like, it's more powerful than morality. It's more fundamental, more universal, more. It's more undescribable than morality. But we can describe it with the word goodness. And then the "Dow" is undescribable. The "Dow" is the universe. It's the everything. It's the most powerful, wholeness and love, and ballots and harmony. We can't, and even those words that we use aren't good enough. So we have to use a word like the "Dow" because it's not a word that means anything. It's the everything. As soon as you name something, you lose its real essence. Because to a apple, to agree that something is an apple, we need a word for it. That means that you and I have a convention, that word. And to you and apple might mean, might represent New York, the big apple. To me, it might represent Adam and Eve. Or it might represent your lunch. It might represent the farmers and the thought they're dealing with right now. It might represent vitamin C. It's the word apple. As soon as we use the word, we lose what it really is. And so there's an element of, for me, love is just wholeness. It's harm and it's all of the "Dow". So for me, why shouldn't we start with love? Because love is the connection of everything. It's the understanding of wholeness. It's the understanding that separation is illusory. This idea of maya in Sanskrit means two things. It means to measure. Like that's where we get the word "meter" or "measure" from. And it's also means "illusion". So interestingly, the illusion of separation, the illusion of measurement, when we break down things into a year, a day, a kilometer, an acre, we think that these things are separate. The idea of the apple to come back to apple is separate from the tree or the branch or the root or the animal. When you actually realize this is an entire ecosystem, long attunement across time, across space, you understand that everything is whole. Everything is one thing. And therefore, it becomes quite interesting. And the word love, for me, is the best word for the wholeness or the understanding of the purpose. And composition. So why wouldn't you want to? Why do you separate your business from your home something? Because there's only one life. There's only one thing. There's only one person. But we create all these constructs like work. I mean, Leonardo da Vinci didn't go to work and then in the evening he painted. His life was painting. Painting was the work and the life offers. Yeah. And just doing dissections, understanding as a barbsaw below. That was wholeness for Leonardo. He acted his life and lived his life based on wholeness and love. So that to me, these separations that we've created are quite unhelpful. Well, they're just not true. And so for me, you have to start with-- you really want to create the most powerful business. It's not even thinking about it as the most powerful business. Living your life in the most powerful united, connected way. What you do has to be based on love. And you might call Leon a business. But for me, it's the manifestation of that understanding of love. I wouldn't even say pursuit of love, of that understanding of love. Yeah. Sure. And you've got to start that. You can't break it down into these separate illusory constructs. Our stories, we tell ourselves between life and work. The work is just a story that we tell ourselves. It's a construct. It's a set of, again, it's an agreed convention that that's different from life. I think it's really important that there's people like you who are willing to say these things with the vigor that you do and the genuine belief that you do. And also the outcome and success that you've created. Because I think a lot of the time people will look at business people who are, they are, like dragons dead. Dragons dead, it's a fun of us. Yeah, exactly. That kind of analogy of, you know, like, you know, tough person, very day driven blah, blah, blah. And you look at it and go, yeah, that is true. It's almost like, it's not this or this, yes and. Or, yes and, you could come at it from a position like you do. You start with the end very much in mind of the foundational principle that the love is the thing you're aspiring to. It's not end as in an output. Yes. So it's not like I will chase this. Yeah. I think it's really good. Alan Watts is, you know, a darling of a lot of kind of like, or increasingly re again, or increasingly again, the darling of lots of like, interesting hippies. It's the guy that, you know, he's got the best voice ever. But it's like the guy who in the 60s, British went to America, into the West Coast. And he's got this great little film where he says, "Life is not a destination, and therefore it is not a journey." So everyone just, you've got to enjoy the journey, right? It's not the destination, it's the journey. Well, he says, there isn't even a destination. Yeah. Life is a series of playful moments. So therefore if there's no destination, the present is not, you're not on a journey. He says that a journey is a terrible metaphor for life. The universe is inherently playful. You don't, and you don't work the piano, or you don't rush to the end of a concert with a big crashing chord. Because otherwise it would be a three-second piece and we'd get to the end with the crashing chord. Life, because there's no destination, there is no journey. It's literally a series of present moments where we have to enjoy what you might call the eternal now. And that eternal now is where the past and present, you know, connect that singularity, that time and space experience, where everything is now. And therefore it's not about chasing something for the future. And in Winchham, which is a martial art, that underpins really Leon, and underpins this book with Julian Nyrow called "Winning or Fighting", it's all about success, it's all about being true to yourself right now and giving up any fruits, giving up any fruits of ego, money, et cetera. You might sort of say, "Oh, I like it's nice to have a nicer car, it's nice to go on a nice holiday, but it's not chasing any of those things." And it's about not getting yourself off balance so that you are grasping for something in the future, which actually takes you out of the present moment and out of the enjoyment of the present moment. So for us, Winchham is definitely a process, you've done it with Julian right yourself. Yeah, yeah. It's very much something that you do in the present moment and it's enjoying that practice. And that is mastery. Mastery is experiencing the moment. Mastery is not something you achieve in the future. So how do you juxtapose that thinking with, if you're taking on VC money or they want an outcome, they're looking to turn their money in three to five years, they want shareholders aboard, are going to want to go, "Well, okay, John, well, you're back in the riding seat and we're going to give you this money, where's it going to be in five years time?" You can't walk into a board meeting and go, "Ghost, we're just going to love the moment because they're going to go, "Well, with respect then, we're probably going to take our money off the table and go elsewhere." How do you live in the now, which is a beautiful thing and head somewhere? Well, in the first thing, you have to choose VCs according to their own enlightenment. I have a wonderful investor called First and Lombarano from GP Investmentee, Vostotale, they're a Brazilian title or GP Investments. He is incredibly wise. He absolutely understands the need to make money. He absolutely understands that money is the outcome of good practice. Money is the outcome of businesses with the true purpose, especially in the real business, that do do the right thing now. In COVID, we had a ball call because we weren't meeting. He said to everybody, "Everybody, this is John's airplane." Do you know when the Qantas had that issue with you? I heard, yeah. I've told that story before, right? Tell it again now, because it's a great announcement. I must be fact-checked on this. That there were two, although Longhall, you have two pilots, and then you have another two, because it's such a long flight. You have to swap. OK, right. Four pilots often on a very long-haul flight, 12-hour flight, whatever. And then weirdly, they had another two pilots that were, with their monitoring the other four, so you had six pilots. And then I was told, these two fighter jets, that almost never you have another two pilots monitoring the two pilots that are monitoring the four pilots. 'Cause it was like train the trainers, train the trainers, train the trainers, I think. Anyway, and then there was one more, one of the most junior pilots, not pirates, said, "My airplane." They were, "Okay, your airplane." They have to be one pilot. So it was an engine daily, wasn't there? And the issue one or the two, and you think it was an A380 or something? So, oh, maybe it's four, I had to get my, now I see my, I see my, I see my, my, two engines, but, bottom line is, big, big problem. They were having to like deal with, you know, the technical people on the, on the ground, et cetera, trying to sort out what the hell was going on. And my point is that first one was like, this is John Zera plane. We must let John run this. So my point is, the first thing you've got to find investors that I have aligned values to you, I have, there were some good ones called pro active property. They have good values. And then on a personal level as well, this guy, first and a brand new, amazing guy. And he's so kind of spiritually aware. He knows he needs to make money, right? So the thing is, it's not saying that, we don't want, we don't, we don't recognize the need for money. We're saying money is essential to help feed the purpose. But the purpose is not there to feed the money. Yeah. It's like, you have to make things financially sustainable, otherwise everything would, would financially the whole world would work on our current system. So you've got to make money. It's very, very important to make money. But money is not the objective. Any more than the fuel in your aeroplane is the purpose that you fly. You don't fly to a beautiful island in Caribbean in order to burn fuel. But you have burnt fuel. And the fuel is the essential to get you to that beautiful island. Yeah. And I think that's how we need to think about money. So in this analogy, the money is the fuel. Yes. And the purpose is the island. I tend to think about money as water. I heard you say this. It makes sense to me, right? Because, and I think that previous generations understood this. And that's why we talk about cash flow. It's why we keep about money in banks. That's why we talk about liquidity. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Money is water. Current sea. It's the current account. Yeah. Yeah, currency. Right? The current account. Yeah. Current account. The banks. Ruh. So the liquidity in the cash flow and all that sort of stuff. What does that mean? That means water is, money is flow. It makes everything flow. And it feeds the plants. It feeds the soil. Right? But the purpose is of water achieves the bursting for quantity of nature. It allows the soil along with the sunshine to be verdant, to be abundant, bursting for quantity. And that is what the water achieves. But water is not the objective. Water serves. Yeah. The way money serves. But the question is, what does money serve? If you're not clear on what you want the money or the water to serve and you're only focusing on money, then you drown. Too much water, not enough earth, not enough trees, you drown. Right? And that's why billionaires are emotionally drowning in the amount of flow that they have, the amount of money they have. You become emotionally bankrupt. And it turns out you end up on some dodgy island. [LAUGHS] Fine, I'm done. I'll do it. Don't go on the dogs. I don't think I'll have dogs with Epstein's Island. No. [LAUGHS] So yes, I think that money is essential to make your work. And I'm not naive to that. But it's not the reason. Money's not the reason. We need-- Especially with externalities, because regular ones do which is externalities, as you know, in economics are the things that are not accounted for on your balance sheet. And they're not accounts for on GDP. So a company might say-- a gambling company might say, I've created shareholder value, a billion of shareholder value. But maybe what's the impact on society, what's the impact on nature? On the chemicals business, what's my impact on nature? On the rainforest, or on the water, or on the land. We need to recognize the fact that we have a free ride on nature. And we have a free ride on damaging impact on society. So it's all this idea that we've created value. We've grown GDP and share prices gone up, companies are making more money. But actually, in a money-hungry money, that's purely money-focused society. We are not measuring any useful terms, the externalities, which is the impact on humans, people, health, society. So Coca-Cola might say, it's made-- created this much value. But it's not measuring. There's no actual correct measuring in our accounting for the terrible impact they've had on the young kids in Mexico when they've made them-- when they fed them Coca-Cola, so I made them addicted to Coca-Cola or at the young age. But there's no measure for that. And there should be. It's difficult, but there should be. Good company called TrueCost, which helps people like Puma account for their natural capital accounting, their true externalities. And that's something we're going to be adopting at Leon as well, being inspired by TrueCost and by Puma. So I think we need to start measuring the externalities, not just measuring the purely financial internal measures like GDP and share price and market capitalization. Let's pause there. Because a lot of the time when founders start talking about love and purpose, people switch off. And I think, sure, a nice philosophy. But here's what it really means in business terms for John and for Leon. The brand's purpose really isn't a tagline. It's not purpose-washing. It's not a nice way to tick a corporate social responsibility box. It's actually their operating system. In essence, for this brand, it's a way of life. And notice what John said. It drives what they do, who they do it for, and how they do it. That's not branding. That's infrastructure. Most businesses optimize for maximum and extractional value in the shortest possible time. IE, they try to make as much money as quickly as they can. Now, of course, one of the big aims of any organization has to be profitability, or it just won't exist. But there's a big mentality change between those that focus solely on quarterly profits, short-term margins, and exit multiples, when money is the sole objective behaviors change, when the purpose is the objective, your decisions will change. But here's what I've seen in 20 years of work of your brands. Companies that purport to be based on purpose, love the meaning, have to really, really mean it. And it has to be part of their core, not just part of their core values. It gets stuck on a poster in the canteen. Now, let's get back to it. What externalities matter most to Leon, do you think? So number one, it's the impact that we have on the lives of people that work at Leon. So are they happier? In the long run, are they going to go off and do great things based on their dreams, in a signed language, based on their fish? We call fish. It's dolphin jumping out of the water because they're like fish. So what's your fish? We ask people at Leon, can we help you, based on your dream, based on what you want to do in your life? That's not measured in our share price, or we want share price. But in our profit, the fact that someone goes off in the future and does something brilliant. But that's something we want to support as externalities. The second thing would be clearly the health of the people that work at Leon. So the impact that we have and the halo effect that we have on their life more broadly, are they going to, based on a recipe that they've seen at Leon, going to go and change the way they eat at home? Are they going to maybe go and change the way that they could for their families? So that's an externality that would be simply as it is measured in our profit, but it's important. Third externality would be, hopefully, the environmental practices that we try on MSc Fish or better practices on biodynamic farming of what we buy. That has an knock on effect that we can't measure. And then lastly, the effect that people copy us-- we know that McDonald's copied our practices or other people are approached inspired by what we do. And they recognize the fact that there's opportunities for people to engage better with nature. So that's something which doesn't make my profits better, the fact that other companies follow what we do. But that would be, if properly measured, and properly understood. An example of externalities that is value that we've created. And not value we've captured. Yeah. It's value that we've created, hopefully. Yeah, for sure. With that then, because you said so really interesting early, there's no point in doing a pros and cons list. Because I just had to do it anyway. Is one of the big drivers, when you talk about something like that, when you said it was like, how does that make sense? But now hearing the rest of what you're saying, it makes complete sense. Is one of the biggest drivers for you now, then, to show-- like I say, like a McDonald's or like other companies, it can be done. You can do the right thing for the right reasons with the right people and make the right kind of money. You almost haven't approved in the Western capitalist society. Actually, the Dowditching was telling us the right thing the whole time. I'm going to show everyone that this can be done. The short answer is yes. What's the long answer? Yes. [LAUGHTER] Yes, yes. So-- [LAUGHTER] Where did this mindset of yours come from the Dowdy Chag, the spirituality, the Sanskrit, the understanding of Hindu culture. Where exactly? Where exactly? Like it. The way to come from. I think a lot of people that know. First of all, I think it comes instinctively. I think really? Yeah, I started to look around the world thinking something's not right here. I remember at college, even at school, primary school, chase after primary school, I just look at my teacher and think, "Oh, I think you're angry because of this reason." So I started to realise a little bit about human nature and then at school, I swaddling with London, I ended up sort of like, I think I ended up being a school captain or head boy because they understood that possibly it was better to, like, the Roman prefects, it was better to infronts and what tries to be a knot because I started to work out the dynamics of how things worked. In terms of people's fears and egos and shame and anger at our side, I started to instinctively understand psychology of individuals and organisations at a young age. And then I studied history at University of English. When you study history in English, it gives you all sorts of text storytelling precedents where you understand to what extent people are manipulating each other and for what reasons, ill reasons, through wars or politics or whatever. And then at University, I started the history of spying, the history of economics, the history of philosophy and the history of science and everything together. I started to think, we really, there really is a power thing going on in the world where people are told stories where they are manipulated based on their own shame or their own insecurities and and how health theaters when we throw those limiting beliefs off and how we become less controlled and how populations become controlled based on deception or how populations get control based on manipulation or power. And so I started to think something is quite wrong with our, some of the assumptions that we're making, what you're going to call the West. And then I met a wonderful woman called Wendy Mandy, who I talk about at the start of "Winnie North Fighting". She is an acupuncturist but much more than that, a healer in the broadest sense. We go to Africa with her where she's the only woman who's allowed to treat the shaman or person who's allowed to treat, sorry, the medicine man or to Brazil where she's the only person who's allowed to treat the shaman because of her healing capabilities. So she's a five element acupuncturist, which is a very ancient form of acupuncturist, it doesn't, it's not heard from the court in the ethnicity, I think it's the Ming dynasty in China. And her understanding of a lot of African, shamanic and South American shamanic teachings, which might be herbal or they might be around the way that these tribes understand humanity and understand the stories that we tell ourselves. And so she was a big person in my life and then she introduced me to a woman called Amy, who was going to be doing some coaching, she said, "Amy's doing some coaching, so these are free clients, such as in the Fnizzle coaching." And Amy interviewed me and then at the end of the first, she came back for the first, she recorded the first session, she came back for a proper session once he has I recorded it, I've listened to it a lot. I want you to know that it might not be a problem for you, but you speak a lot about being the general of an army, you used to talk a lot about fighting, you talk a lot about, you know, Leon having, you know, challenges in the front line and commanding an army and everything. She says, "If that works for you, that's fantastic, but I'd like to offer you an alternative metaphor." I said, "What alternative metaphor, Amy?" And she said, "Well, there was a guy in Sydney who had his pastor say, in about 1920, had his pastor say, "Eternity, eternity, if only I could preach the idea of eternity to everyone in Sydney." And this guy who was illiterate, who'd gotten in trouble after going back to, he was a heroine for us, a war, but got in trouble going back to Sydney, he was in prison for a bit and therefore he got into Christianity. And he wrote the word "Eternity," he said, "I wrote it in copper plates like it was almost came from God the way that I wrote it because I didn't think I could write." And he wrote word "Eternity on pavements on walls in secret little places." And everybody, everybody, sorry, talking about eternity, that's why in the 2000 Olympics, the word "Eternity" was on the bridge because it became folklore in Sydney. Anyway, the point of the metaphor is rather than constantly feeling stretched and I was fighting and that had to, you know, scarce resources, she said, "Why don't you think about shrinking your activity to something which would have a huge impact, but which is easily within your capabilities?" So reframe Leon and think about being in flow, think about simplicity, think about not fighting, think about winning in a simpler, more centered way. And then I read a book called, by the Kido teacher called George Leonard and it was all about the Kido philosophy and the sort of a previous Kido guy that had written a book called The Art of Peace as a country to The Art of War. And there's a much smaller book than a very simple book. And then I met Julian, who I bid for Julian, I went to a charity event, Julian does Wing Chun, which is absolutely my favourite martial art now. The one that I actually practice and I started to understand, we started putting these flip charts up in the Queen, which is where you know the Queen, where one trains, it's the Chinese Fedojo. And I was saying, "Body, these are the principles which I'm trying to run Leon now." It's like, stay relaxed, simplicity, take the shortest line, never attack but always hit first. It's like, all of these things, this is the flow by which I'm trying to run Leon. And I started to work with Julian to put into practice practically by training the baristas in Wing Chun. And then philosophically, all of these principles, simplicity, being in flow, staying relaxed. I started to realize there were fundamentals of philosophy and one of them expected to be punched was exactly why we stayed open in COVID because we've been moving practicing prior to COVID, this idea of something bad will happen. We just don't know what it is yet. And I remember we were going to Michael Steve L's who went to a couple of footballed Chipotle in America and he said, "John, nothing ever bad that ever happened to Chipotle. We were the golden child where this E. Coli break out." And the whole system collapsed because we were suddenly so fragile. So I trained Leon people, something bad will happen. We don't just don't know what it is yet. So we'd had Kingsway Fire, we'd had West Minnesota Bridge attack where our team members had gone and helped injure people. We had the barra knife attack where Rosie, two people came to be nice, we were going to be the first one in the barra terrorist attack where they were going to come in. She pretended to lock the door. She'd been training when she owned pretending to lock the door. You couldn't have keys were downstairs so they went past us. Our team, you know, it goes first day to everyone. And then I'd always said, "We're the fourth emergency service. We are here." And I'd always been really impressed by Walmart who responded better to how it can contriander than the federal government. The federal government was nowhere to be seen. But Walmart said, "So all of their managers in all of their places, you have full autonomy, your aeroplane, each store is your aeroplane, you have full autonomy to give up, blanket stoves, gases, gas, whatever." So the people that need it in your lanes. And I was like, "That's what, if there's ever a crisis in the UK, that's what I want to do." And eventually then we helped out on, there was, you know the whole PPE thing where they were all contripping up on people. Yeah. We advised the government on how to create UK manufacturing for free. They then came to us to help them find some quality PPE because all the PPE contracts were fucking up. So we found them prime production on that. My view is whenever, you know, if people need your help, if we want a small government, then businesses have to step up just like Walmart did in how I could Katrina. And actually I think good businesses can respond better than an all-rights government. They could example into the dome on Millennium, on New Year's Eve, whatever it was. It was a shit show. We didn't get in there till 2am because it was government, I tried to put it apart. And then look at Wembley Stadium, which was government contract, completely screwed up where the emerald stadium, private contract, done to perfection. So I think we wish, I don't see any state where the government really has all the answers. And I think good business has to step up. But if business is just about making money, then business doesn't step up in something like COVID. But if businesses have a real purpose, they form a fundamental part of society. Yeah, for sure. So that's why we say open COVID. And that's why I really believe that if your purpose driven, truly, if we have, if all the businesses were truly purpose driven, I would have a great society. But we've got private equity companies which are unfortunately just needed to be about money. We've got corporations owned by Vanguard State Street, that, well, like be there, you know, whoever. And so we've got a very faceless, amoral, non-lead-er-driven set of companies. And that's why I have big faith in, in entrepreneurial businesses, not me, but lots of entrepreneurs genuinely trying to do good. That just got to be the future for me. Yeah. Or at least we need more of that, like the old Cadbury family or the Quakers or, you know, all these families that built the round tree family, people that actually were doing things for some reason, a real purpose. They're a huge impact on society, people like the round trees and the cabbres. How do if there's people who are sort of at the start up phase of their journey, how do they embed a purpose into the reason for being to the extent where, like I said, you didn't have a choice to go back to them or not, you've just got to do it. You are, you are called to it. It is your calling to money. You can't do it. Anyway, it's a personal call. Yeah, it's for me. I don't want to pull things on a deck, but yes, that's fair. But yes, how do you do it? How do you build the purpose of it? Yeah. Well, first of all, you've got to decide something that's real for you. Something you really is going to be the thing that genuinely gets you out of bed and run to work. Yeah, you've got to find something and then you've got to find people that also bind to it. Or you've got to explain to people why that's important. You do sometimes have people perhaps from corporates that join your company because they want to make money. It's got to be really believe in what the purpose is. They've got to be really clean on that. It makes you only have a really do hire people that really, really genuinely care about that purpose. And so I think what you do first is you recognize the fact that you've got to build all the organizational systems around that purpose. So first of all, you've got to actually live it yourself. You've got to as a leader, you've got to remind people that when things can divert to business norges, this is about the money, you've got to say, how does this project help people eat well? How are the way that we're going to engage with people in our London bridge restaurant, make it people eat well when they're on their way back at 10 o'clock at night? How are we going to actually do that? Well, just selling more food. Well, how are we going to engage with those people? A lunch time to help them eat well. So you've got to make sure that every action is seen in the light of, is it going to make people eat well? Not is this actually going to make us more money? You've got to say, tell me, we're here to, we're here to help people eat well. How are we going to do that today? How does this menu launch do that? How does this training initiative do that? How does this service needs to? How do we design the restaurants in a way that helps people eat well? How do we do our social media in a way? Do we're going to share recipes, share content, inspire people to do that? So you've actually got to genuinely make it the driver of all the activities. Then you've got to make it the driver of all the organizational levers like recruitment or training or KPIs or incentives or celebrations. So every what you might call organizational touch point needs to reinforce the idea of helping people eat well. People's reviews, people's appraisals need to be, how have you helped people eat? Well, so you actually genuinely need to make it structurally and organizationally and financially the driver of people's rights. Yeah. And it's what you celebrate. It's what you report. So when we do an annual report, it's not, oh, good, you know, this much shoulder return. It's like, this is how we've helped people eat well this year. Yeah. And here's some measures on that. Oh, and by the way, it's good news is we can do some more of this in the future because we've made some money. Yeah. That's how I think you need to do it. So if that is the importance of building it from the sort of the ground up, you're now going back into a situation where you're, yeah, there'll be a bunch of people that were there before and kind of understand this is John's mission. Thank God he's back. We're getting back to helping people eat well. But there'll be our guess of bunch of people, probably quite senior roles who were brought in by either the venture capital or the or or as there or whoever it may be who are more corporate leaning. Yeah. When you go back in to that scenario, how'd you reensteal purpose when it maybe has been diluted? And is there? Yeah. Well, I'll ask that. I'll get first. Well, I can, I can take some other examples to illustrate what happens if you have a lot of bunch of people that don't buy into it because I'm lucky that underneath the there was probably someone who had been given the job of running it, running Leon itself as the kind of managed director who I would say was playing a holding pattern on behalf of Vazda while they were working it all to do with it. And probably it doesn't matter, but he probably that person probably didn't have what you might call a founders mentality. I know that he tended to think that vision is for founders. So I think that although he might be a fantastic person, he and I probably wouldn't agree on the way that I like to run businesses and no disrespect to him because everyone's different. Everyone can run a business based on their own values and their own. Yeah. For sure. Pro, so no disrespect to his view of life. But it's a different view that we have. But underneath that was a whole bunch of people wanting to do. A good job. So I was very lucky that when I went back in one of the reasons I thought it was going to be fun to go back in was like I loved the people that were at that level. And they just needed different ownership, I think, different zero, different culture, different culture, different culture, different energy. And they're responding amazingly well to that. Now I would say that I've been in different turnarounds and been part of a leadership in different turnarounds, including this white macaque one which I spoke about earlier, where there's a phrase which is the best way to do change management is to change the management. Got changed. He's very good. He's very good. He's very good. I know that one. That's very good. So yeah, so sometimes you have to do that and you have to say thanks so much, but this isn't right for you. What there's going to be somewhere else is better for you and you're going to flourish in a different environment because this environment is going to be about making it easy for everyone to eat well. And if that's what you like, that's okay. You can go and do what you like somewhere else and that's all good. Is there sort of on a very practical level, the deal gets done relatively quickly. So sort of April, Maytime, you're going, somebody's not going right here. August, you're looking at it October, deal is done. First day back in and maybe I may, maybe I think of this slightly grandiosely, maybe I've watched the founder and the Ray Crockins, the future many times. Is there a case that you, is there like a town hall where you get everyone back to give them? Yes. So what actually has been there? The sheriff's back in town. There's this fantastic hilarious film that I was sent after, which is some guy going back with a paintball thing on his first day going, "Hi, Frank." So he wasn't like that. He wasn't like that. He wasn't like that. He's not any of the muskets. Take the sink and let that sink in. Yeah, yeah. He's like, let that sink in. Very good, very good. I love that. Yeah, that's a good story. So because of the way it worked, it was, there was an element of that, but actually, I think that this lovely guy, I met, very smart guy, that TVR that I spoke about before called Rob Hattour. I think he knew that I was speaking to my people beforehand. So I actually, before the deal was done, the top six or so people, I'd been meeting in the quote secret. Right. In private. And for the first three days prior to the deal being done, so October 28th, we're in like 30th. On 31st, they were all with me. The scene that came with me here. First of all, we went to many partners, which is our new supply chain partner. Right. Then for the next three days, we have two days we came here to my house. And on the day the deal was done, they had to, they were called to us a conference call to be told about the deal. They're all here. They're all here. Oh, wow. So they all had to go to different rooms with different backdrops to be told, I shouldn't say this. The first of registered next week, we believe our only story now. If we have been, I'm sorry, Mr. Grady's story. I had to practice their supply cases. So they were all still in situ. Yeah. They were all here. So by the time the deal was done, we had up, we had quite a detailed plan. And you were ready to just execute it. When the time comes, no, very first. The Sunday it's like, I think it was the Friday that we announced it. And on the Sunday, Mariam, myself and Michael, we're in the office, beginning the literally starting the execution of the plan. The Sunday. Yeah. So no matter what's in the office. So we'd been preparing the plan for the previous four or so weeks. Right. For the first three days prior to the deal, we'd find June that plan together. There was a team here and we built that energy as a team here. We had a very detailed plan. We started it that day. We continued it through the Saturday and we met in three hours, met a person on the Sunday and then we kicked it off as a team again on the following Monday, two days later. So after the Sunday or one day after the Sunday. So so yeah, it was a and we had a with the managers. and the other leaders of Leon, the other head office team, we did a conference call on the 31st. We actually announced it before the video was actually physically signed. I don't think that's all because as Dora and I knew that it was going to get done. So we announced it and then two hours later we actually did the deal. We actually signed the documents. We executed it and had an execution call where you confirm the validation documents. And then at that moment in that split second, the company becomes yours again in that split second. And that's what happened. That's what happened. So it's really interesting to relive it with you James actually because I haven't really talked about it in my sense. But that's basically what happened. Was there anyone, obviously there's the sort of the existing team that are there, who are pretending they're in different rooms of the house or whatever in my bay? Is there. Maybe I'm thinking too much like a football analogy. Did you have. So you're the manager. Yeah. Do you have your second-in-commander coach with any sort of C-suite people that you built around it and got, "Right, we're going to get a sort of welcome." Yeah, almost like a high-atm and go, "I'm plug into that." The A-Team are those that are there in the business. They're not parachuting any extra to the team. So they were already. Did they stay from when you owned it originally? A lot of the people in the business that they're from before, right? And half are new people that actually are quite liked. Wonderful. So for example, the previous people, someone called Gemma, new people, someone that brilliant called Nariam, was running marketing. He's now running a new direct to consumer business. Miriam running. Evusually running grocery, Michael. Everyone, all the M's, Michael running IT. Actually, I felt that we had a really good team as a basis of it. Really great people, with brick hearts and the hardworking. Now, what I have to say, I like to say, there's this guy Chris Burford who's coming back. And I suddenly got unbelievable messages of support from customers, unbelievable messages of support from the industry, and incredible support from old people that wanted to just come and work for free. Otty, for example, people felt so passionate about the business that they wanted to contribute to it. That's the sign of a proper business where people are buying into, not me, they're buying into the purpose, they're buying into the camaraderie of achieving that purpose. It's something really special. I grew up being really. A big admirer of businesses like the Body Shot was run by a need to rod it. I don't think she was without her flaws. I'm not without my flaws. I don't think she was without her flaws either. She was a bit mad and off the wall and possibly a bit chaotic and change her mind and probably blah, blah, blah. However, the Body Shot had a purpose, it was to encourage people. Sorry, there is no laughing. I think her thing was against animal testing. Yes. There was this, I think it was something you had interviewed her. As she was like, is it not very responsible, if she had this character? Is it not very responsible to develop cosmetics that are not tested on animals? And a need to say, well, why? Well, what if you got someone your table and it knocks off and it accidentally falls on your dog? Anyway, so I'll call him in what he character. Mrs. Burton. Mrs. Burton. That was Mrs. Burton. Oh, right. I'm very responsible because some of it might fall off and fall on your dog. So, yeah, so she was a good time to say, but also more importantly, she was into understanding these tribal traditions and the kind of herbs that come from these tribal do, which are fucking powerful. So, yeah, I love the idea of running this mission purpose, mission, different business, but I have to say it's so tough now with industry. People are tougher now than it was. Absolutely. Really? Business rates are even higher. This nasty assurance is a tax against hiring people. It's in current, you recently see so many screens. It's now so expensive to hire people because of living wage and now because of nasty assurance that everyone in our industry is saying screw that, put the digital screens in. Bring the robots in to make food. It's impossible. If you don't want people to pollute, you put a tax on pollution. So why then be surprised if when you tax employment, it means that employers don't want to employ people because you've taxed employment. It's ridiculous. So how's penalising people? So, for employing people? In that instance there, and you've got this really hard-core mission-driven purpose at the centre of cutlerone and it bleeds this purpose. Right. The purpose is to help people eat more healthily. So how do you correlate that with? Because it's not just about health, it's about the enjoyment. You well, okay. I say you'd have to eat it. Yeah, yeah. It's the taste, health, social cohesion, you feel good after your eat it. It's kind to the planet. So health is key to it, but well, covers all the basic. If you don't like it. That's fine. Thank you for coming to me. Thank you. You're a little bit off-run there. He's got that for a brand message, isn't he? Quite well. How do you call it? I saw a brilliant post when you first called me to come. I'm sorry. I let me look. I think. So the little glass of big glass. I let the little glass. It feels real appropriate. Yeah, so why is it so appropriate? My purpose is to be sure you stay hydrated. Can I just say the reason it isn't appropriate is a friend of mine worked at Harrods. And as it happened, the people that worked on the perfume desk were all women. And here's a young intern who went in. He, you know, is a young man. And he's stuck with one of the girls on the perfume desk. And he found out that the next day after one of the girls was asleep, one of the new young men that coming in, they would come in and they'd put on the desk, on the perfume desk, they would put the size of perfume bottle, corresponding to the size of the penis. Oh, wow. So literally, so I think we should swap. I think we should swap. I'm John Cole. Don't know what that says either. So yeah, the correlation between the purpose, because I saw some brilliant posts from you saying we've taken it back over bare with us, we're going to make some changes, we're going to get back to what made us brilliant. And then I saw you ripping out screens going, we're getting rid of that. That was a bad idea. Yeah. Well, that helps us know what's the real thing. I've been to hybrid. Some people, some young people love screens, it turns out. For sure. And do you, and you sort of like realize that? As you've gone, I've ripped them out. As you've been there. I get a lot of people going, I hate the screens. Get rid of them. I've not come back to Leon since we've had the screens. And one of the people like, I don't like talking to people. I love the screens. I love the screens. There's a lot of generation. A lot of generation, we've been digitally retrained. To prefer digits over humans. Yeah. And look, you could decide whether that is bad or not, because it is bad. But you have to deal with that. You have to recognize the fact that some people genuinely prefer to browse on a screen and not have to talk out loud to a human. And looking at human's eyes, because it can be scary apparently. So you're going to have screens so you can sort of. And the idea would be, I think Sam Hegel. Humans is the third port call. You can use the screens either on the counter or separately, or you can use your phone if you want to in advance or in there. So I think we need to allow people to order the way they want to order. Which is cool. Yes. This is okay. We're not here to change behaviors. I would love a world where people are more comfortable dealing with humans. But it's not my job to coat that. No, and also with the context of living wage and national insurance, it's not feasible for the coming to an age. It's a shame. It is. It's a shame you can't. We should put the most lovely brilliant people. There's still the ones that are still good. But. You can take out of. Yeah, great people. Why tax companies for employing people? I mean, it's actually illogical in the saying. Yeah. I mean, James, what is. I'm not anti. I'm not pro-tourist. I'm not pro-socialist. I'm not pro-labour. I'm not anti-proglor. I'm very, very flexible because it's all. It's all shades of. and separations of a whole anyway. So. Why pin. Why pin yourself to any of those parties? But this kind of government is shit. And I. And they can't even blame lockdown because it was the later government that precious the tourists to lock down even more and then help bankrupt the country. So this current Labour government cannot blame the tourists for the economic mess of lockdown because Kierstammer was even more locky-down than Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson started by saying, "Would you're going to lose loved ones?" And then he was kind of by sage and by Labour really. really convinced to. and pressured to extend lockdowns way beyond anything that was bad. He changed his tune based on that sort of pressure. And so Labour can't say, "Oh, it's the government that's been all the money." It was locked down that screwed us. And it was. And it was Labour that were probably the most lockdowny. pro-lockdown, pro-lobe-ing, pro-aggressively-lockdown party. So they can't blame anyone other than themselves for this shit. And they're not thinking growth. They're not. there's no creativity in how they're thinking. There's no abundance. There's no smart joining up or wholeness. It's just literally very, very. damaging taxation that's killing livelihoods humanity in the history. And it's taking away the vibrancy of life in Britain, as well as destroying this economically. I've never known as many people who are saying, I'm out of here, I've gone to an ex-country or a white country. - Yes, it's so bad. And these are people who are employing tens, hundreds of people in their own ecosystem, their own in their businesses. - Yeah. - I mean, it is such a terrible, I'm gonna say, why are we putting the lawyers and the PPE graduates in charge of our country? Professionalizing politics, do they understand that? Politics is a profession where, actually, as a result, you've actually not experienced the world. It is crazy. We need to pay them all as well. We need to get your track of people in the politics. But I don't understand why this government is pursuing the policies that they're doing. It's almost deliberate. It's a field day for conspiracy theory. - Of course it is. - You're saying that they're trying to destroy capitalism. They're trying to destroy countries. And everyone goes, you know, he's a, you know, Kirsta Arms of Fabian, you know, trying to destroy socialized communities. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And you're like, no, that can't be true. And you're like, can it? Can it? - Well, the other reason, though, stupidity, co-compancy, conspiracy. Anyway, so we don't have to go there, but you know, that's just my concern. We don't have to go there. But we've certainly gone there. - Help me out here. And today's program, I'm quite interested in, we'll consider it something like that. In me, in me having a debate with Rachel Reeves. But I, oh, they, but do you think that I should or shouldn't do it? - 100% what you do is. 'Cause why make Cliff, tell us about it, definitely shouldn't do it. (laughing) - Well, I might do it, I might do it, but. - I've got social duty. - I feel that my mate Janet from the King and Queen and the Handball, she was in tears. Almost in tears, they're telling me how, she doesn't know how she's gonna carry on based on the N.I. and the rates that are killing her. - I think you should definitely do it. - And this, and even despite this slightly reversing it, slightly, slightly ameliorizing the rates, it's still a disaster. - Okay, I will think about it, James, we'll think about it, we'll think about it. - If I do it, it's my fault. - It's because you made me, fine, fine. If you were called back to do Leon, you could have not do it, no point doing a pros and cons list. But, because it is so difficult now, did you do even back at the tag packet, it must have to go, it just doesn't make sense, there's no way to save things that need bricks and clicks. - Of course we did a model, right? Of course we did a financial model. And I think the thesis is that, if it was just about the restaurants, I think it would have been a suicide mission, it might have been a suicide mission that I still would have done, but it would have been a complete suicide mission. - Camera cars, the entrepreneurship. - Got a car, got to hope that the grocery business, where we sell products into Sains, where we test go, Iceland, or Card, et cetera. And wait, Joe's hopefully. Is, I've got a hope that that's a viable business to build. And I've got a hope that I can build and direct to consume a club, e-commerce business, where we can send food to houses, where we can potentially build online content events, online courses, festivals. I've got to believe that that's a business as well as grocery. And if you can help me, I'd really appreciate it. - So, I think the restaurants are gonna be more of a kind of showcase, like an Apple store for the fine. - Although Apple store make a lot of money. - Restaurant of Dote. - Yeah. - I mean, on the economics of restaurants, we're quickly, we used to make sort of like, where we, the model in 2004 was 20% restaurant profit at a restaurant level, 8% head office costs needed to be contributed, so that was like 12%. We then had 6% say of depreciation, which is the money you have to put in each year, because you've put 500,000 capex into the actual units and the profit needs to pay that off over time. They would take you down to 456%. What happened then is they took rates that were 4% of sales and increased it to 8%. So you're 6% of profit went down to 2%. Then national insurance came in, another extra 3%, took it down to minus 1%, so lost making, and then you've got rents going up, then you've got energy costs pushing everything up, then you've got cost of goods up, because of energy costs. So that's why these businesses are lost making. And I don't think the government understands it. I don't think they've taken time to understand it. They don't understand the economics of the industries, they're taxing to understand whether it's going to kill the industry, they have killed the industry. Is it too far gone to save it? No, they did it now, I could save some. But they need to do it in the next few weeks. What would they have to do to make it? What's the biggest lever that they could pull quickly? The biggest lever is that they could normalize business rates. There are three levers that they can pull. Any one of them would do. They could take business rates back to what it was historically into that, you know, 2004 to do it. Or even in 2010, there was a business rates were sensible. They could reverse the national insurance, stupid national insurance tax on employment, which is 3% of sales. That was still a great give us a great economics, but it would at least help. And thirdly, they could take VAT. When you go to a restaurant and you eat in, and you have a salad and you sit at a table, you pay 20% VAT. If you buy that's exactly the same salad to get like, you go and eat it on the part bench outside Tesco, that salad does not have VAT, because it's obviously seen as like a normal grocery product. But as soon as you buy it from a restaurant, it has VAT. And that creates a very unlive all playing for your hospitality business versus, because if you're making minus 1% profit, 20% VAT is 20 times your, the profit of 20% VAT is 20 times the size of the lost. That makes sense. So it's quite an important lever to them. And in America, you have six or seven percent sales tax that's flat, of course everywhere. It doesn't penalize a hot or cold food. But another stupid thing, which is, if you make the particles go faster in addition, make it hotter, it's VAT, but if it's for takeaway, and you make the particles go slow in a fridge, there's no VAT. So that's why it penalizes hot food versus coffee, same amount of ingredients, same amount of prep. You put it in a machine with electricity, same amount of electricity, you turn the dial up, makes it hot, VAT, you turn the dial down to cool it, no VAT. And it's the same thing. It's all these legacy things, kind of things. And this is why rationally, it doesn't make sense to go back into this industry, but ridiculous policies have killed the high street. And I'm killing the high street. And the government, you know, commissions may report us to work out, how can we save the high street? It's a bit like, you know, some doctor poisoning these patients secretly, and then doing a report now, we can save his patient. Yeah. It's just killing it. They're killing it and then commissioning reports on how to save it. It just reduces the rate like that. And we've got to get it from growth. We've got to get creative growth in. And now of course, the big thing is, how do you get growth that doesn't kill the planet? And that has got to be the homework question. You can't be growth at all costs. It's got to be, how can we create industries that are actually creating goodness, doing something useful for society? Maybe the business business that are making nature better. Maybe businesses should state that as a name, which Leal does. And then at least if you're solving for the right problem, if you've got the right objectives when you're framing it with the right frameworks and moral frameworks, you're more likely to achieve a good outcome. It might not be easy, but at least if you're making an ameliorate or a betterment of society in the planet, an objective or a requirement, then you're more likely to achieve it than if you're not. So that's what I think we should be doing. We should be saying, let's create purpose, different businesses, one-board entrepreneurs that give a shit that are more like the routries and the graicas or the categories of old. That's what I think we need. Let's pause there because this might be the bit that really hits the hardest because this is where entrepreneurship stops being rational if it is rational at all. Most people would say that it's not. John effectively here is saying that what he's doing might make no financial sense at all. It might even be dangerous, but he has to do it. He's compelled, in fact, in his exact words, by and leon back could be financial suicide. And I can tell you from having lots of personal conversation with John, he really, really means that as well. This is pretty stark language and people's language is often very telling when it comes to their internal dialogue. So you can kind of get a sense of where it's heads at when he says this. Some ventures are vehicles for income and that's absolutely fine. Some ventures though are vehicles for identity and that's what this falls into most certainly. And the ones that create movements, the ones that people rally around and come back to and offer to work for for free like John's talk about there, the second type, their belief driven. Every founder that either of them who built something meaningful had at least one moment that didn't make spreadsheet sense or probably multiple times per week where it doesn't make sense, but they did it anyway and they feel compelled to do it anyway. If you optimise purely for safety, you might never build anything great for his the other truth. The sort of commitment John is talking about in this section of the pod is expensive. financially, emotionally, personally. So I guess the question is, is this a business that you just run or is this something that you're willing to be the custodian of regardless of the cost? By the way, in my opinion, there's no right or wrong answer. Plenty of people that I know do something for a living, but it just helps them to fund their life. And that's absolutely fine. I know loads of happy people who do that, by the way. But some, normally a much smaller number of people, by the way, I hellbent on building something that is actually often at their own detriment. Let's get back to it. - Yeah, last couple of questions. - So you're called to go back to Leon. And it doesn't mean that everyone who lives under this beautiful roof are called with the same mission in purpose. You're a beautiful wife, Katie, you're a lovely family. They probably had to sacrifice a lot of dad's time and John time over the years. - Over the years, yes they probably did a bit here. And then like you retired, John maybe suited them better. Maybe quite the opposite. Maybe you were a bit of a spin. - Well, it was a little bit of the opposite actually. - Don't get me all back. - It wasn't, it wasn't the classic. Oh my god, it's under my feet. (laughing) I wonder what happened. - And it's getting a hobby. - It wasn't that kind of cliché. - That's why we got the clue now that they're there. - Yeah, it was a lie. - It wasn't that cliché. Fine. - But what it was was, I think Katie recognises the fact that I was happy with a purpose and with the slightly bigger stays to achieve that purpose. Katie was incredibly supportive in taking me on back. She's incredibly supportive. I think she's like John's switch her phone off. Don't have as many meetings all day. Don't do a stupid podcast on a Saturday with like, "Grey James, but she didn't say that." - She didn't say it, she didn't say it. - She was thinking it. - She genuinely didn't say it, she wasn't thinking it. But so she's a bit like, look, now you have what it back, you do need some boundaries. You do need to look after your house. You need to get some sleep and not wake up at church on the morning like you are. Or speak Nigel Harris at 2.30 in the morning, who does a supply chain 'cause he's always been a green grocer and gets up that early. So she's like, don't do that stuff. Ah, we support you. And the kids equally supportive. My daughter, Eleanor, who is in New York, such she's just so fantastic about giving advice. My daughter Natasha, who is a great actor and writer of TV things, non-commissioned out, I'm sure they will be. She's also working in Leon supporting me. She's a great, great, great supporter of Viser. She's 25 years old, but she's really great advisor. And she loves the fact that I'm doing it. - The shame. - That we're doing it as a family. And it's a great gift to go out to evolve her. - Yeah, imagine it. - Imagine it. And for her to be very honest with me, she's very, very honest with me in the office. I mean, she's one of the first to disagree with me, if she thinks something's wrong. - That's great. - She pointed out the fear around you, not the big boss in that. - Totally totally. - Your dad. - She's really good. She's like, no, that's wrong. I don't think she'd do that. Think about it differently. - I love the fact that you see her as a great advisor. It's 25, definitely. And you said about your other daughter who's in New York, you said, but she's great for advice. It's a wonderful testament to the person that you are in the family that you've raised. - Oh, bless you. - To be able to look at that and go, how as a mid-50s die who's had this success, had the trappings of success. - I don't know how bad success, but thank you. We'll come back. - Go back into the fire. You take the advice from people half your age. - Absolutely, yeah, definitely. - You've got a lovely way of looking at the world. - I've got a way. - I could definitely deal with, I'm glad that we were wearing the same clothing. I hope that it runs off. - No, I'm not fucking, there's nothing special about me. There's nothing special. - You said that a lot on podcasts I've had. - You did, those in there. We're all the same. - Oh, we know. - Yeah. - Okay. - Yeah. We just, some of us have put more, here's my theory, don't know my theory. - Go on. - We all have a true self and we all have an ego self. The true self that each of us has is just as powerful as anyone else is true self. But some people have put more things in the way, have allowed more things to get in the way of that true self. And that is, there's a limiting belief built on some kind of fear. Some kind of fear that we're not good enough or that we might be embarrassed or fear and not being perfect or fear not being loved. And things have happened just in a life where we've adopted stories, we've adopted what the toll take people called a smoke, which stands between us and the mirror and the reflection of our true self. And that smoke can get in the way. And in Wingtron, which is a martial art that I do with Julian that you know because he taught you based on Taoism, Confucianism and Latvianism but it's all about understanding yourself, becoming conscious, connecting with others and ultimately freeing yourself from that smoke. That exists that stops us getting a true picture of the world. And the true picture of ourself. And people sometimes who have, for whatever reason, got to the point where they've diminished the smoke and they become more comfortable in themselves and more comfortable with their own insecurities or more comfortable with their own fears and decided that those fears are not their true self, that they are some things that are getting in the way of their true self. Those people appear to be successful. But fundamentally, each of us as individuals has represented by our true self, the innate beautiful self that we have that understands wholeness, harmony and love where we're most contented, we're most relaxed, we're not fearful, we're not driven by ego. Everybody's true self is as valid as anyone else's true self. It's just that people appear to be more successful because they have got rid of all some of the things that have gotten the way of accessing and acting from that true self. But I think everyone is equal in the world. - So the love of the way to look at things. Final question. Leo almost named after your dad. She'll think it's a beautiful thing. What do you think your dad would be thinking about you taking his name back under your wing if he could look down you and go, that's my boy, what would he be thinking and/or saying to you? - My dad had an incredible understanding of human nature. And I think his biggest thing would be, his biggest advice should be to make sure that you're not doing it in any way for ego reasons. I think he would be the first to check me on. He's not doing this because it's cool or because you think he can, you know, - To prove a point. - To prove a point. I think so his first course, I'm guessing, I haven't really asked myself this question. I think energetically his first question would be, his first caution would be, don't do this to vent your spleen. Don't do this to look cool or to prove a point. So I think he would be question, he would be politely and positively and lovingly questioning me on the motivation. That's a society that would be his first instinct. And the second thing would be probably secretly pleased, secretly supportive. He was always one, you know, after if I had a good parents evening 'cause my mum and dad's parents evening with my mum that would sneak in and say, "Oh, the teacher said these nice things." And my dad was much more like, "Don't tell him and don't tell him." You know what I mean? He was like, "I don't want a son that's kind of like full of ego." Do you know what I mean? We don't want arrogant son, don't tell him. Do you know what I mean? So I think he would be secretly pleased, but he would be, he'd have a very, very dry, witty sense of humor about it. And he would be the one who would be prepared to, in a positive way, put my balloon if I ever, if there was any ever chance that I was doing it out of ego. So I think that's probably what he would be thinking. He was probably quite proud of what we did and when he died, I found in his, one of his filing cabinets, the names of everyone at Leon and what they did. - Why would you say this? - Because he came to like the summer well being on winter well being events. And he'd be like, "Oh, hello Beth or hello, you know Sam or whatever." Oh, you know, I remember you told me this. So we keep notes about everyone at Leon. - Wow. - I'm maybe quite sad. - Yeah. - You're sad? To think about that, when I found that, when I found those notes, 'cause he obviously really, really cared about the people of Leon. - Yeah. - And he used to be in Barris that his picture in swimming was from suit in the med was one of the main, Leon posters, one of the main Leon postcards. He used to pretend he was very Barris, but yeah, sorry. - He quite liked it. - He calls you to think he was fit. (laughing) - What's fit? - Of course. - But does your mum think of it then? Your mum's obviously. - She's still here. - She's still here. She's still here. She's one of the most positive. My mum is better. - I met her. - Did you? - Yeah, she's here with most unbelievable positives. - Off the shirt. - She's not fantastic. - Oh, and radiance. - Real woman. - Yeah. - I mean, she had about six pregnancies. She decided to carry on being positive, become a teacher. She thought she could never have kids. She just became a teacher. I mean, that literally, if she has a mass potato, it's like, "Oh, that's my favourite." I mean, if she's a row of potato, that's my favourite. - I mean, literally, she's the most positive person I've ever met in my life. She has made herself better. She broke, she was fractured at back in two places. I don't mean in the kitchen and the bedroom, but two places in her back. She's like, so she fractured back and she just decided to get back to walking. She wasn't able to walk, because she chose to get back to walking. The power of the mind have to say, the John Vincent podcast, Leo Pruneboom, amazing, amazing doctor who's proving the power of the mind on not just our, not just a placebo, but a super placebo perspective on our body. So, so yes, I'd say my mum is really loving, really supportive. Gone, you can do it. Anything she's 89. There's 88, so 88 next week. She said, if there's anything that I can do to help you, let me know. She's so supportive. She came up with this dinner in London. She came up to it with like, you know, people that were supporting the deal and everything. No, absolutely beautiful person. So she's very happy. I think she thinks that life is about, she definitely doesn't think life is about money. She definitely thinks life is about love. I don't think I'm lucky to have got someone that from her, so that's good. Well, I've loved this conversation. I love the soul of who you are. I love the mission that you're on. My dad would be like, don't be a dick. Don't even allow people to love your soul. You sound like a wanker. You're fantastic. I think in a world of combativeness and divisiveness, I think the fact that you are someone who can walk the talk on both sides can do good. Can I just say one thing? Please do. My biggest, where I let myself down mostly is, and this is an oxymorl, which is, you know, when I feel my biggest fear is being controlled by others. Sometimes when I feel I'm being controlled by others, and I think there's a lack of love, I can be angry. So there was time, my anger is my inner inner in an end of gram eight. It's not shame. It's not fear. It's anger that comes from the fear of being controlled. So it's a special type of fear. And that, I would say, I don't want anyone watching this who's who's like, but you know, John's not perfect. I'm definitely, I don't want anyone to think I'm perfect, not at all. And my biggest weakness is I get angry when I'm being controlled by others. So I'm just being honest with you to say that is any gram eight can either be Nelson Mandela or Southern Hussein. It's like, well, the time I try to be Nelson Mandela. So I'm really, really, really, really, really fucks me off and really tries to control me. Then I can be like, no, fuck you. And I'm just being honest. That's my every, I can't imagine that. So I'm not 100%. Each of us have got a somewhere where we go under stress. Some people withdraw and become bitter and they piss in your suit without realizing it. I don't piss in people suit without them. I'm just getting the dining table. I'm honest with you. I can be like, well, fuck you. So I'm just being honest that that is, I don't want anyone to think that I am either trying to be or actually Jesus. Yeah, I think of each of us go to a different characteristic, I'm just in stress. And for me, I will fight back if people try and excessively control me. And that's just, if a ball tries to control me, I will just say, fuck you guys. This is ridiculous. So I'm quite expressive with my frustration. And I don't think that's always good. It's always true. And I try, I try and champion truth and telling people what I feel. And I think that is a good thing. But other people can see that as aggressive. Did you see what I mean? People don't like to have that conflict. My tolerance for conflict is higher than others because if I fail to have conflict, then I'm happy to have it. I try and avoid conflict. But if it comes to it, then I don't mind doing having a conflict. I'm comfortable with it. And that's because most of the time I am quite positive and placid, when I do go, when I do react and I do accept the conflict, then people are like, oh, the puppy dog has become a rock viola. And that can surprise people. I'm just being honest with you that's kind of a factor with me. The puppy dog can become what viola and that's that's just something which happens sometimes. And then for people that aren't there for that, they're like, oh, where did the rock viola come from? Where did the settlement come from? We thought it was Nelson Mandela. But Nelson Mandela and Sedema said they're the same character. They both want to look after the tribe. They both want the country or the, in case of South Africa, right to have the energy that is aligned to their their values. Yeah. It's so character profile. And actually Nelson Mandela was quite hardcore with Seal Revive Hose, okay, back and said, Nelson Mandela said, don't want you to go and agree that to pass the constitution to create new constitution after two thirds votes. Seal Revive Hose came back and said, oh, I've done it. I've done it. I just decided to go 50% and Nelson Mandela wanted to have it two thirds. He wanted to have it high threshold. And he went ballistic with him and said, you are out of my cabinet. You see what I mean? This like, the impression we have of some white Nelson Mandela was he was just like a sweet man walking around the world cup in 1995 and a nice shirt. But there was some real grit there. It was him to be imprisoned in Robin Ireland for that long. We do need to tell you. Terrible. Yeah. That's what he was imprisoned for. Exactly. So what I'm saying is that the any ground character that I have, if we end up under extreme stress, we'll become mafia bosses. So that's why we do it. So Seva, eat well and do good for the planet or dance. Go to Chinatown and go down that room. Goodling, goodling, goodling, goodling, goodling, goodling. So I'm just saying we all have us. We all have, there is no, it's like the Dow. We're all a package. You can't love people and spices. Everyone's good parts. Everyone's good points. Also in other circumstances, bad points to people. It's all about perception. So the Dow is our entire character wrapped up into what is in Western terms called good and bad. But in Eastern terms, I don't think about good and bad up and down. It all wetted. You kind of up without down, you're on a good, without bad. It's all the same package. That is the Dow. And if we recognize that in ourselves, then it's healthy and love is just an understanding of that. Love is just an appreciation of that harmony and that balance. I can't wait. If you just try and explain that to Rachel Reeves in (laughs) - Very good. - That's been happening. - Very good. - Thank you for this conversation. - Sorry, the love you, thanks. - Absolutely. - I loved it. Thank you for having me. - Thank you, thank you. (laughs) - Your more than that. - We'll tell you later. - Okay we'll tell you later. - Okay, we'll tell you later. - Thank you, thank you mate.