Transcription
Ladies and gentlemen, we are back. Another episode of Behind the Diary. And this week, I watched a video which punched me in the face.
Please welcome to the stage, Sir Johnny Ivan.
If you haven't seen it, and you're a creator, a creative, a builder, an entrepreneur, a manager, a CEO, a founder, or you want to be in the future, please make sure you watch this video that I'm going to link in today's episode.
And also, I saw in the comment section you love me showing the tools that I use. I'm going to show you three pieces of software that I use every single day to communicate with my team, to storm my ideas, to think, to manage, to be more productive. Probably the two most important tools in terms of productivity and running my actual company.
Finally, and maybe most importantly of all, I want to talk to you about this book. I read this book this week and I've become the guy that brings it up in every single conversation because of the profound impact it's had on me. If you're building a business or building anything in a market that is saturated and very competitive, then this book has the answers. It is the thing I didn't realize when I was where you are in your journey. And I wish that someone had grabbed me and said, "Stephen, let's do it."
Think about your favorite company. And now imagine that they let you see in every meeting in every room from day one. We're building a media company and an investment fund. This is Flight Story.
Any questions you want to ask me? Anything you want to know?
I want to know what four things you look for when you're hiring.
Yeah, it's a good question. One of them comes to mind is um urgency. Yeah. Because it's just so like just from a first principal's perspective, if you can bring half deadlines, you accomplish in six months what your competitor takes a year to accomplish. Yeah. The biggest way to get more time in a business is just to create fake deadlines. I'm like such a master of fake deadline. Just make sure every project has a deadline. I just say to the team, you tell me the deadline. You can you can pick it whatever day you want. And it's remarkable. It's remarkable what happens. The only projects that take a long time are the ones that don't have a deadline. And most organizations, they don't they lose their urgency, especially as they get bigger. So just this this sense of like what can we do to save time at all at all corners? um is like any we can basically double our headcount in terms of productivity if we say 50% of the time in organizations everything is like I'll get it to you soon whereas we need to develop a mentality of like Q Friday we'll do it by Friday not like Q2 like Q Friday so like how do we get develop that mentality how does every project we're working on have a deadline so nothing floats
Do you know what I would love is if I had a to-do list that was actually screenshots so what I do Now, I was like, I spoke to Rox about it. I was like, cuz like I got this really long message and I need to like think about this later. Yeah. So, how can I put that on my to-do list without having to do anything? I thought if I could just screenshot it and just write. So, that's what I do. I screenshot it and then if you click on the screenshot, you can put add to quick notes and it just leaves it there and it's got everything I'm thinking about and everything I'm doing. So, these are all my screenshots that of things I need to do in case anyone else wanted to steal that brilliant stuff from me.
We do need all of this. As I said, I'm pulling it from Slack cuz you're downloading into Slack. I'm pulling them up onto a Monday board. You're creating another Monday board. So, if you can see here, I've got like I'm doing company culture. I'm like, okay, hire ahead of happiness, putting the met the metrics on the wall in the office, improving the hiring survey, flights through passports. I'll be building up a candidate bank, clarifying cultural principles. So, I'm just I've not started filling out yet.
Steve, I'm starting exactly the same thing. This is like my head. This is not But I'm your head. I've studied the same thing. I've just called it Steve's projects because we're both creating the same thing and that's pointless. Well, it's not because I need this for me because I need to be able to on and I need to think to basically keep track of my thoughts.
Just had that conversation in the office with Jules, my chief of staff about the different tools and software and to-do lists that we use. So, I just wanted to double down on this. There are really four tools that I wanted to tell you about in this week's episode of Behind the Diary that are really foundational to how I run my business, how I think um and store my ideas.
The first one I'm going to say is notion. Notion I use basically for storing ideas, but also it's a central hub for all of the documents in our company. So even now I'm writing a new book. What I do is as I go through my life, I save these ideas in little notion files because I find notion really, really simple. I find the app really simple.
And the other tool that I use is Slack. And that's a communication tool for our teams. Once you get above 30 people in your company, I highly recommend moving over to Slack because then you can have channels and different subcategories and chats. And now they've introduced AI, which means that if you have a big company and there's lots of people talking all the time, the AI summarizes what everyone in your company is saying and gives you a little newsletter at the top of Slack every day, which I love.
And the third tool, which is what I was talking to Jules about just a second ago, is Monday. Monday is my to-do list. And we have these boards in Monday, which are programmed and automated so that if I approve something, it is sends a notification to the next team member and basically passes the relay bat on. Got my focuses, which is just a board for me and all the ideas that I have and the things I'm working on. This is the TX schedule, the podcast. I have my speaking list with my manager. Guest booking research team. This is where I approve guests for the DEO, my commercial list, which is different deals and partnership opportunities. My assistant behind the diary where I approve things for this vlog. Flight X is my innovation team at Flight Story where we work on bigger innovation projects. My chief of staff and me have a list for everything that's going on. Uh various offer approvals. This is this is where I approve who joins the company. I look at their profile. I look at the project that they worked on, maybe a test that we gave them, the survey responses. I look at every interviewer's feedback on the person and I either ask more questions and if I don't have any questions, I'll approve or decline the hire to join my company. Flight fund is where all the deals come through that get through our fund. Again, this is my kill and continue list, which means that either we kill the deal or we continue it to the next stage in the investing process. PR and various comms list, my newsletter list where I approve my newsletter and um edit it and things like that. I basically run my business from Monday, Monday and Slack. And those are probably the two most important tools in terms of productivity and running my actual company. So I highly highly re recommend them.
And the last tool, which is a bit of an outsider tool, is a tool called Dscript. Uh Dcript is basically an video editing tool. And if you watched last week's episode of Behind the Diary, I actually used Dscript to make these videos that you might have seen in there. I love Dcript because I'm not a video editor. And with dscript, you drop the video in and then you edit it just by changing the text. So if I want to get rid of that sentence, I just highlight it, delete, and it edits the video for you. It's like Canva for video. That's the best way to describe it.
Oh, Canva. That's the fifth one. I'm obsessed with Canva. I use Canva all the time.
Just to recap, Notion, Monday, Slack, Dcript, Canva. My five top tools for productivity, for running my business.
Anyway, hopefully that helps. Beautiful day here in London. Look at that view.
Um, I have a phone call this morning with a billionaire friend of mine who I used to work with when he built up his career about a decade ago. I was alongside him as he built what is considered to be one of the great companies in his industry and he scaled it to a global business. Then he left. He sold his shares. He left the company and a couple years later the business began to struggle. And this is a story that I hear time and time again from founders, from entrepreneurs, from CEOs. When an exceptional person leaves a company, they take with them this sort of gut feeling which made the company what it is. So he's going back into the company to try and turn it around and he wanted to call me this morning because I was with him sometimes five, six days a week traveling around the world with him as he built this company. So he's going back in and and he's asked for my perspective on how you turn a company around.
Heading into the office, got that phone call first thing. Going to crack on with my day. Come with me. That's kind of what got us here in the first place. We had this uh relentless and we were fearless. We need to get back that that confidence, that arrogance, that you know, oh that belief, that self-belief again. Like this business needs that. I I know the story of Steve Jobs going back into Apple and what he did there. It's a really powerful video that Johnny Ives explains. When Steve walked back through the doors, we were going bankrupt and we were going out of business. And Steve said this to us. He basically said to the team, he goes, "Obvious thing to do is to cut costs." But Steve Jobs goes, "Essentially, we're not going to do that. What we're going to do is we're going to get back to what made us great, which is making products that our customers absolutely love and need." Johnny Iris talks about how powerful that was. When Steve came back, that's how he articulated what the goals of the company needed to be. It takes a tremendous courage when you're losing um fabulously last large large amounts of money to say our goal isn't turnaround. Our goal is to make a great product. Um that's not a a natural sort of reflex to that situation. Um the reflex is well let's not spend this money and let's try and get a little bit more cuz we're about to go out of business.
I agree. I agree. And that's what we've had to go back to. you brought to the business like emotion, brand, perspective, fearlessness, innovation, risk, but actually much of the thing that you brought to the business was you were so focused as a founder on brand on how it made you feel. So, you were doing these like big contrarian bets that no CFO would ever sign off.
Wednesday, it starts again. Yeah. It's exciting. It's terrifying and exciting at the same time. But I do you know what? This is the most scared and most excited I've ever been in my business. Yeah, I'll tell you that. That's the truth. I've never been scared about anything in my business, but I am scared because I know there's a lot of riding on this.
Yeah, that's life, mate. That's the best place to be playing.
Okay, I've got a meeting now with a firsttime founder who we've just invested into. Um, and in this meeting, the sort of theme of this meeting is I'm going to tell them every single thing that I wish someone had told me at the start of my career. They are calling in. I'm going to run into the meeting room and um should be interesting especially for you guys that are starting out and have something that you want to build whether it's a company or something else um because this person that I'm about to speak to is probably at the exact stage that you're at. Come with me.
Where you are with the business you're approaching launch. Um what are the big pain points in the business at the moment for you? Just being me is probably a big thing. And it's it's just you at the moment. There's no other Yeah. Okay. I think maybe the most important thing outside of the money is purely just making sure some of the fundamental mistakes that almost every founder makes whether they're building a fashion business or another business, you do not make them. The most significant cost will be when you start hiring exceptional people. And this is like this is one of the things that I want to make sure you mistakes you don't make is some people will come along and they'll have a fantastic CV, but they're absolutely not right for the stage you're at in your business. What you need is someone who is willing to put more like dirt under their fingernails. Someone who is willing to work 16our days or 12 hour days with you probably seven days a week. And then the big thing which no found asks me about which they should be asking me about is how do I get world class people to join me. It is the thing I didn't realize when I was where you are in your journey. And I wish that someone had grabbed me and violently shaped me and said, "Stephen, I know you think this game is going to be decided by how hard you work and how how many hours you put in and how many good ideas you have, but actually this game is going to be decided by the group of people you're able to assemble around you. You're going to go through what we call you call it hell, but when you come out of hell, it's this place called the promised land. And the promised land is where like Ben Francis got to. I'm 20 whatever it is three 24 I am purely going to focus on my strengths now and that's when I went into a brand role a product role a marketing role Steve became the CEO that was then like moved away from me and I purely completely and utterly focused on this and that was your decision the promised land is when you can do the thing that your business needs you to do and only that thing and for most founders whether it's Hu or Ben Francis or George at repres who did the same it meant that they were no longer the CEO and they were head of either like head of brand or they were the visionary founder. That starts day one. That like planning starts day one.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it. Thank you. Bye.
This is such a cool It's such a cool point of view, mate. This is cool. Will, I can record. Do you think we should use these to show people what it really is like behind the scenes? I'm thinking like meet and greet from your perspective. people just so people can actually see. That'd be cool. I'd have to we'd have to just give them a disclaimer. He's wearing glasses there if they can record. So, just so you know.
Ah, now you're recording. Go on, Steve. Inspire some people.
Hello. I'm Steven and we are testing out Meta's new Raybang glasses. Meta's very interesting cuz it's just an interesting new perspective on on my world and it feels really immersive. It's actually how it feels which I think is interesting. You truly get to see through their eyes. I mean, isn't this what we've been trying to do? It's funny reading a lot of these questions for today question around um something that nether is around sustainable high performance. So how do you balance the intensity with work life balance? That's a good question. That's a [ __ ] great question. But the honest answer is an important one you know like do you find it difficult that you actually have to have like the public facing narrative? No. My public facing narrative is whatever I consider to be the truth. So it depends what your your goal is. If your goal is to be average, then work life balance doesn't need to be a perfect work life balance. But if you want to be truly exceptional, truly exceptional, like a Mr. Beast, if if that's what you want, and that's where the question needs to start. What do you want? Yeah, that's fair. And then we can look at the patterns of people that got exactly what you want. So if you tell me you want to be Mr. Beast, I'll show you exactly what it took from 10 people who have achieved similar greatness in their industries. Yeah. And what are the themes? The themes are total obsession, probably relationship troubles, no time off. I guess what something I like really really admire in Emma Garrett. Say her last name right is that she's so open and honest and she's like there like I don't have balance. But is it possible to be number one but still have all of my evenings and weekend? No, you're not. No, no. If if it's possible, tell me who she is and I'll show you a liar. Here's the thing. Work life balance is your problem. If you want to grow, if you want to be one of those people that's like, you know, at the top of the organization, the chances are you might have to work a little bit more. That's the truth. Like, what are we talking about here? We're going to lie to everyone. Do you work 5 days a week, Stephen? No, babe. You're working on a Saturday and a Sunday. And if I text you wherever you are in the world, you come back to me within about an hour. And that's how I roll. And that's how most successful people roll. And but I think that we have to have a level of honesty about what it takes to be really successful. It's not productive to tell people you can you can do it all. Yeah. Yeah. It's becoming cool again to say that. Come on now.
Thank you so much. The things that you were just talking about there, how do you actually apply that to your own life and how you shifted your own approach work life that balance thing that we don't like?
Balance is a really interesting question and I think nobody on earth can tell you what work life balance you should have and don't let anybody gaslight you into thinking that you are getting it wrong in any way. We all have to realize that we're all like fundamentally different. And when I interviewed Mr. Beast and Mr. Beast tells me last week that he spent 18 hours on the phone talking about the algorithms and then he fell asleep dozed off and woke up and he picked up the phone again and spent another 18 hours talking to his friend about the algorithm. That is his stability. And I know it's not for you. And I know you don't understand. But can you understand that you don't understand? I work all the time. Unless my girlfriend is in town. I I was up till 2 to 3:00 a.m. last night talking to Cristiana, sending her CVs as they were coming in in real time. What about this person? What about this person? And the the central question is, am I happy? And only you can answer that. I've cultivated this ability to yeah tune it into what how I feel and act to the point very very quickly and make the distance between how I feel and the decisions I make as short as possible.
Built my company social chain around the world where I'd say 10 days away from our listing from one stock exchange to the other on the Frankfurt stock exchange. I quit. I no longer felt good. I remember the email back from my chairman saying you absolutely can't quit. We've got I go yeah I'm done. And I didn't need a plan because so much of us are waiting for some kind of certainty to escape our certain misery. And ultimately the relationship with that uncertainty with not having a plan B correlates to your happiness and your ability to get to wherever you want to go. So thanks mate. Thank you. Thank you.
Right. Let me put this down so I can talk to you properly. I'm just sat here on my computer. Um I'm about to write a job spec for someone that I want to hire. This is what I do at 1:00 a.m. I write job specs.
When I spoke at the Chapter 2 event the other day, an event I spoke at on stage, a bunch of people emailed me after. And one particular email I got from a lady called Rona um was incredible. So what I did is I sent her a email straight away and said, "Can you meet me tomorrow?" She came into the office. I think Will caught a little clip of us having the meeting her. She was amazing. So I'm trying to put her through the interview process. In order to get her into the interview process, I have to think about where exactly in the organization she will add the most value. And then she'll go into the interview process. She'll meet five, maybe six, maybe seven, probably seven individuals in the company. We'll all score her individually without speaking or conferring. We'll then come back together. We'll have a conversation and make a decision. The really interesting thing you can do is you can take someone's LinkedIn, screenshot it or link it, put it into chat GPT and say, um, with this experience, give me 10 job titles that you think this person could do for my company. flight story. Chachuino is my company now because we've had so many conversations. So yeah, it is Saturday morning here in London. Going to be working for the next couple of hours and then leave here. Probably going to end up going straight to the Ford shoe and then going to end up going to the gym. Come back, work here all night. That is my plan.
Sounds kind of toxic. You know, I had Mr. Beast on the podcast. He talks about his level of obsession. It feels like it rewired my brain. I'm I'm happy with however my brain is wired. I don't really care to change it. Um I I like I said, I think one of my greatest superpowers is my obsession. And it allowed me to be proud of the fact that I'm just absolutely obsessed with the work that I do. I think there's been so much like gaslighting and shaming of people who just absolutely love working. But the point I'm making is that Mr. Beast taught me be proud of whatever you are and just be honest with whatever you are. And some people they like working one day a week because and that is amazing and I'm so proud of you for having that self-awareness and do you and design your life so that you can work one day a week and then these there's these other people that I've met who like to work 7 days a week. They are just absolutely obsessed for whatever bizarre [ __ ] up reason but that is who they are. Both people are feeling the exact same thing. My path to feeling engaged and content is extremely hard work. Now, here's the big caveat. Obviously, the science generally is pretty clear. The science would state that those who have the most happiness in their lives also have incredibly strong relationships and social connections. And here becomes the paradox because you can't have work 7 days a week and also really maintain great social connections. So, I I make time for my partner, for date nights, for my friends, and there's really not much else. And I love it. There were times in my life, many years of my life, where I didn't have that privilege, and I hated the people that I sat next to because felt like I was building my escape. And if you're in a situation now where you feel like you're plotting your escape, there's two things that I think are important to know. The first is it probably sometimes will feel like you're not making progress fast enough. And the second is the most important thing is to have unwavering belief that you're going to get out of a situation because those who think they can and those who think they can't by way of that belief alone are both usually right.
Anyway, one must get on with it. Oh, and also yeah, um when I leave here, going to work until 1:30. Then I'm going to go to the office and we've got a shoot with Forbes, which I'm very excited about. Thanks.
Hello. Hey, I'm Alex. Nice to meet you. I'll be interviewing you today. So, thank you so much and I didn't know what the word entrepreneur was when I started my
First business. I didn't know how hard it was. Maybe there was an element of, like, necessary delusion in thinking that I could have an idea and then that there was nothing between me and the realization of that idea.
The thing I always think about is the single most important trait I had wasn't like smart or intelligence, or didn't have parents that could give me any money or anything like that. The single trait I had was a healthy dose of delusion. And that delusion is sometimes also referred to as self-belief. Like I didn't think there was anything between where I am now and where I wanted to be. I couldn't see a thing. I just never felt like I had a plan B, and there was never an alternative path.
It's funny, cuz I think back to the way I was behaving when I was 18. So I've called my mother. I've told her I'm dropping out of university. I'm the only child that did that. So, I'm disowned, and I'm in Manchester. I'm broke. I've got two CCJs I managed to collect, which is—it sounds like a qualification. It's like the closest thing I came to a qualification. It's actually a county court judgment, which is when they're—they're—they're coming for you because you owe them a lot of debt. And um, in that moment, I was videoing the bailiff letters that I had. I was documenting. I was like, "Look how many bailiff letters I've got." I was opening my fridge and I was going, "Look, there's nothing in it." And then I was filming myself as if I was shooting a documentary. And in that, it's like bizarre behavior because you would expect someone in such a situation to be like despairing. My mindset was that this was an interesting story I was going to tell one day. And actually, I think it's that mindset that gets you out of that situation, cuz I really think you can make heaven out of hell—hell out of heaven. My favorite quote ever because it just like hit me like a ton of bricks many years later is, "Those that think they can and those that think they can't are both usually right."
Yeah. I want to talk to you specifically about a couple things. Just like we've seen like $100 million deal after $100 million deal. That is not a route that you have gone down. Did you ever think about one of these exclusive signings with these streamer platforms? Have you always wanted to stay independent? What is—what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, we got a pretty big offer. Flew to New York, went through the process, considered the offer that we had received, and we thought about what was important to us. Um, and one of the things that's really important to me is that we control who our partners and sponsors are. We wanted to be able to keep the ad inventory lower, being able to choose the kind of conversations that I have and follow my curiosity. All of that is quite contingent on us remaining independent and being masters of our own destiny. And in fact, when I think about the commercial side of this business, um, uh, Diary of a CEO can generate this year, forecasted, probably north of 30 million. And we do a couple of ads in the show, two, three ads in the show maximum. Um, to do those numbers with another partner, we would be looking at 10 ads in—potentially up 10 or more ads in the show, up to 12 ads in the show. We would have to potentially just focus on one particular platform. And so the math doesn't math. When history looks back on this company in 10 years, I think that what we're doing on a—from a commercial perspective, I think that will represent the future. So, I actually think what you're going to see over the next 10 years is a business like us will end up being those um major media conglomerates who are signing the hottest, newest talent.
Love it. Okay, cool. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Everybody watching this should have their own newsletter. I remember 10 years ago when we first started building big social media pages on Facebook, we noticed that every year we'd lose 50% of our organic reach. One of the great life rafts of being able to protect and own your own audience is email. I consider it to be at the bottom of the funnel. You have the sort of mass awareness platforms like TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, and then you pull people down that funnel into an environment where you can speak directly to them. You have their data and a relationship with them directly, with no algorithm in the way.
I have launched a new newsletter called 100 CEOs, and the idea is simple. Every single week, we email 100 famous, respected, successful CEOs one really, really interesting question that you guys have asked me to ask them. And I email it to you every single week. We launched this newsletter, and 150,000 people have joined already. And I'm meeting with Cat in my team right now to go over how we keep this newsletter interesting. And one of the things I've come to learn from doing podcasts or content or writing or writing books is that cliché is the absolute enemy of interesting. And this is really advice for anybody doing anything creative, whether it's a podcast or Instagram page or a TikTok. If it's cliché, if the world has seen it before, if it doesn't challenge, if it doesn't push people forward, if it isn't raw, if it isn't honest, the world doesn't need it from you. Do something else with your time. If you haven't joined it, by the way, do join it. Just go to 100CEOs.com and join our community of people getting the most interesting answers to the most interesting questions from the world's top CEOs.
It needs to be like the oh my god, controversial. Not controversial, but just like interesting, right? No cliché—like cliché all on—is that one in this—on the scale? Yeah. And then super interesting. I've never in my life heard CEO's answers before. I could not go on ChatGPT and speak to ChatGPT about this. I couldn't go on Google and find some listicle about this. I've never heard anyone ask this before. Cliché is like juggling a relationship and work is difficult. But for some people it's easy. For some people it's like what I'm doing here is I'm taking—no—I'm just like sitting on the fence. I'm just saying nothing. If the world has heard it before 50 times, then we have no right and no—we should have no duty or job in giving it to the world for a 501st time. Yeah. We're in the business of interesting and original. So if these people don't answer with something interesting, yeah, we don't include it. And I think keeping it nice and short and punchy and tight is really important. It goes back to what I said as well about like just imagine every line, imagine we lose 1% on every 1% of people on every line. Mhm. And every line is an like a speed bump. That old adage of make everything as simple as possible but not simpler. So like tight and punchy.
One of the great women that is behind me in my company is a lady called Sophie Chapman who has been my assistant now for the last nine years. The Diary really started about four and a half, five years ago. So she was there four years before that. She was there before I was on Dragon's Den. She was there before I had an audience, a following. She was there. She's been there the whole ride. I owe her so much. And you know, I have to be honest. I am someone who thinks a lot about how we can be better and how we can push forward. So I think as a leader expressing appreciation is something that I sometimes should do more of. Um, because one of the great motivators I think of all people in all facets of business and life is feeling appreciated. So in flight story whenever it's someone's first-year anniversary, second-year anniversary, whatever year it is, whether it's their birthday or whether they've done something good, we try and appreciate them. We actually have a gratitude channel in our Slack channel where anytime you're grateful for any team member, you share it. So, I'm going to go appreciate Sophie for spending 9 years today by my side helping me through the chaos that has been my life. So, come with me.
That was so dramatic. Oh, stop. I would cry more. The journey just gets better and better every year. The more new faces just means the—the more adventures and um, yeah, thank you. Well, Sophie, um, from the very bottom of my heart, obviously, you've been the most important person in my professional life over the last 10 years. So, there's no words that I could possibly say that sum that up. So, I know I said it to you last week, and we had a good chat last week about all of this stuff, but it's been a ride and it's—and I stress that I do believe that I've got 9 years left in me at least. I'm so proud. You know what I think? Say, god forbid you lost everything tomorrow, team, finances. I would 110% be like, "Let's go. Let's do it again." Thank you for being uh everything to me over the last 9 years and giving me a level of like loyalty, commitment, dedication, brilliance, care, concern for me, for my family, for my partner, for my dog, and for everything in between. There is just no words that I could say that would um perfectly articulate how valuable you've been to my life over the last 10 years and how lucky I am to have found someone like you. So, thank you so much and um, here is to another—and also Pablo also wanted to say thank you—but here is to another amazing nine years. Thank you so much.
Fast forward today, he's a globally recognized entrepreneur, investor, speaker, author, and the host of Europe's leading podcast, The Diary of the CEO. I—I wonder if you were to swap places with a Swedish investor on Dragons' Den, what would you be most excited about? What would you look for?
It would be all the same things I look for anywhere. There's almost no business I can think of where their initial hypothesis of what they thought they were building and the problem they thought they were going to solve in a certain way ends up being true even a year from now. So if you look at some of the great companies of our time, almost none of them resemble the thing that made them incredibly successful when it was in the garage. So do they care about success or being right? And those are two very different things. The other thing I would look for is ambition, and it's kind of cliché, but it does appear to be true in my life that I just wish at every single moment of my life from when I was 18 to 21 to 25 to—to even now—I just wish I times my ambition by 20. The world has this remarkable way of moving out of your way and—and bending out of your way based on what you say—what you say you're aiming at, it conspires to make it happen. It's just this idea that those who think they can and those who think they can't are both usually right. And in that, I'm not saying that your predictions are correct. I'm saying that belief itself is one of the most important factors to make the world conspire to make something happen. It means that exceptional people will come and work for you because they—exceptional people want to do huge things. It means investors will believe you because investors want to do big things. I mean suppliers, social media, everything will galvanize around you if the amount of energy you're giving out is large enough.
Say you were so inspired. Oh, thank you so much. Appreciate it. What's your name? I was listening together with my father. Oh, really? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Johanna. I just want to say thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much. You're the best. Oh, you're so few. Today and yesterday. What do you do? Uh, I work as a new business. It's tequila. In tequila. Interesting. It's so hard. Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very hard. That's why I always make the point of if you're about to make a brand then it's like really—like there's lots of tequila. So, in the—in the second section of my book, there's four sections. I talk about like how to make a brand that actually stands out. Uh, more pricier, but the taste—we got samples already—and it's outstanding. It's really hard—like marketing is really hard—and so—so like there's so many tequilas—like I can see like 15 over there—why yours—and it can't be yours's taste the best because they'll all say that. There's a really good—good book called um Blue Ocean Strategy; it explains how to win when you're in a really saturated market. So like a red ocean is when all those wine companies are just like playing with a on the label, trying to make it sound better, how old they are, etc. And then it shows this—this other wine company came along out of nowhere, and they said, "We're not even going to mention our vineyard. We're not going to mention this. We're not going to mention this. We're going to change the form a little bit into a can, and we're going to try and um like go for Gen Z, for example. We're not going to talk about how the—the grape and the age and this bullshit." And they managed to pull in new customers that never would have drank wine before and pull away old customers. And it explains the strategy of doing that. So, how to create a blue ocean in tequila. A red ocean is when it's—it's a blood bath. It's like everyone's competing over the same No, it's just a margin war. It's like—it's such a painful business to run. And a blue ocean is when it's uncontested waters. So, how can you create a blue ocean for your tequila brand? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to stand out. Thank you so much. But you inspired me, and I'm really willing to take the next step in life. Good. You got it. I think I'm ready. I'm excited for you. I'm really excited for you. Thank you. You made me more excited. And thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is the end of Behind the Diary this week. But I told you that I would show you a video that punched me in the face this week. And it's a video that I saw from a guy called Johnny Ive, who is an inspiration and a role model of mine. He's the guy that designed the greatest Apple products that we all use, things like this iPhone. He's talking about how everything you create has a spiritual connection to the person on the other end that receives it. Actually, I remember working on some absurd details in terms of packaging. This will seem so trivial, but I had such a clear awareness that in designing a certain solution for—for example, how we managed a cable that's in a box—that designing that—I knew that millions of people would engage with this little tab. I believe that when somebody unwrapped that box and took out that cable and they thought somebody gave a about me, I think that's a spiritual thing. I also think, and this goes back to the first thing I was saying about, you know, my sense of Steve and the Apple team looking at the first Mac, that you sense care. I really do believe and I wish that I had, you know, empirical evidence, but I do believe that we have this ability to sense care. I think you might understand it more if I said you sense carelessness. You know carelessness. And so I think it's reasonable to believe that you also know care and you sense care. And we worked very hard and I felt passionately about finishing the inside of products. We designed everything, and we cared about everything. A great cabinet maker finishes the back of a drawer even though it's unlikely it will be seen. But in the same way, I think a mark of our—how evolved we are as people—it's what we do when no one sees. I would be haunted by if all we did was the outside; I would have this nagging feeling in my tummy that we were just being superficial. This is exactly why you should sweat the small stuff in all things that you do. And for any of you—all of you—this will be—that are building a brand of any type in your life. I think it will make you think again before putting work into the world that didn't truly—truly care about the person that's receiving it.
Do you know when you become that guy when you read a book and you just can't? And also—and also what the is this? Sorry about that. And finally, I read this book which has fundamentally changed my perspective of how you build a business. Okay, let's try this again. Camera. It's camera. Yeah, cuz it's recording you. Oh, you just say—Yeah, he is. He's really cold. Oh, yeah. Probably. Say it now. Huh? Say it now. Talk that You were talking in there. Look, Steve again losing his AirPods. Say it now. Pattern recognition. Say it now. Tell him. Oh my god. It's Wilson. Wi-Fi back.