Thick gorgeous dollops of sunshine poured across London. The electric bright Wandsworth Common Trees, thick hairy verdant little beasts, made everyone’s loins stir and shiver and melt into Summa Summa Time.
London, you gorgeous darling, blisteringly blue and balmy, sun like golden treacle smothering everyone into glorious, golden halcyon.
On Sunday drinking up a Summa Sundae, the smell of vanilla-seasoned suncream beaming off lobster-red burnt and milk-bottle pasty Hot n’ Bovved British bodies. Cold beers glugged back with waggish glee. Aperol-Spritz-Blitzed. Getting piddled in a beer garden in the sunshine is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
I sat by the lake in the Wandsworth Common re-listening to one of the greatest poddy’s I’ve ever recorded with Jeremy King.
King is the King of Hospitality.
The Service Sage.
The Gandalf of the Dining Room.
Jeremy’s prodigious army of absolutely-banging restaurants would make Churchill and Napoleon quiver.
Le Caprice, The Ivy, The Wolseley, Simpson’s, The Park, J Sheeky, Brassierie Zedel.
In Jeremy’s hallowed walls he’s welcomed The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Kinks. Princess Diana was a royal and loyal friend of Jeremy. So too Lucien Freud. So too Harold Pinter. So too A.A. Gill.
Jeremy says “Restaurants are microcosms of humanity”.
Understand restaurants.
Understand humanity.
Understand humanity - become a better marketeer and brand builder.
Some tingz I learnt.
Maintaining Your Standards Is The Fastest Route to Bankruptcy.
Jeremy told me a quote: for everything to remain the same, everything must change.
You must constantly reinvent, change when things are going well.
If you don’t, you die.
You see so many brands come and go, one minute they’re hot, the next they’re not.
The issue is when things are going well it’s SO easy to rest on your laurels like lugubrious loquacious little leach.
When things are going well.
That’s the EXACT time to reinvent, to improve, to make your brand better.
Good Enough is not Good Enough.
Jeremy rifted on the above point saying “complacency and arrogance is the greatest enemy of restaurateurs”.
The King posited, “Good enough is not good enough”.
Very much twinned with Sir John Hegarty’s famous line “Good Is The Enemy of Great”.
Most brands are good, but that’s simply not good enough.
I irrepressibly believe having a negative internal bias on your brand produces positive external results.
Founders who constantly look at their their brand like “ohh, that’s abit sh*t” only improve their brand.
Negative Internal bias = Positive External Results.
Caveat: pleeeeeeeease, don’t forget to be really kind to yourself…
A great question to always ask: what’s going right, right now?
It’s often way more than you think.
Humans only use around 30% of our brains actual capacity.
Jeremy details some delicious stories in el poddy, one about a woman divining water, another about a US military man able to use his prescience to find bombs on the battle field.
Jeremy’s point:
We only use 30% of our brains actual capacity.
Today, egregious Artificial Intelligence is getting it’s grubby paws all over our ability to FULLY use our brain.
This links very closely to the quote Will Guidara lives by to consistently create magic
“magic is being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would deem reasonable."
Magic hides in Hard.
Run Harder at Hard.
Running Harder at Hard unlocks a greater brain capacity.
Are you really using your full brain capacity?
“It's not a democracy. It's a benign dictatorship”
As you scale your brand, moving from solo-founder, to small team, to larger team, invariably you move from dictatorship to democracy.
Mandatory requirements for scaling.
Hire Sales Reps.
Operation Managers.
Account Managers.
Finance bros.
However, when it comes to “brand”, IMO, it’s ABSOLUTELY not a democracy.
As Jeremy says it’s a benign dictatorship.
THE VERY LAST thing you should ever give away is brand.
Giving away brand too early is akin to a Mother giving away her baby.
The founders of two brands I greatly respect Bold Bean Co. and Citizens of Soil, Amelia and Sarah, said the LAST thing they’d ever give away is brand.
Brand building is a democracy.
“Brand” is a benign dictatorship.
That’s aaaaaaaaall folks!!!
Have a top weekend
Popey xxx
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