From Broke at 48 to Yo! Sushi Founder, Here's What I Learned

My name is Simon Woodruff. I'm the founder of Yo Sushi and Yotel. It's interesting, isn't it, that you go on ChatGPT or whatever, you go on AI, and I don't spend all my time thinking, who's behind AI? Is somebody manipulating this? Because I don't think they are. I started Yo Sushi at 45. The first time I made an exit, I exited Yo Sushi 3 times, sold different parts of it.

They hire somebody that they couldn't delegate to because they're just not good enough.

And it feels like you got the perfect match Fundamentally, I think it's become almost impossible for a government to govern from the top down. It's just too complex a world. My name is Simon Woodruff. I'm the founder of Yo Sushi and Yo Tell, former and original dragon actually on the Dragon's Den, a performer at Edinburgh Festival, a recording artist with the Blockheads. And everything else, Yo!, and a few things else along the way. And now my second book, Yo! Man, published author. So I've done a few things. That's who I am.

Fantastic. And Simon, where are you in the world and what do you spend your time doing these days?

I am still the licensor effectively of Yo! Sushi and Yo! Tell. I've been writing this last few years. I broadcast on social media. I'm trying to give something back to the world and improve it in some way, whether that be politically or directly helping one person at a time. I always said to myself that if ever I was the one knocking on, you know, when I was knocking on other people's doors, if ever I was the one whose door was knocked on, which is what the situation I find myself in now, I would always try and respond to everybody. My home is in Thailand. I was brought up in Asia, in old Singapore, and I've lived all over the world, and this is the best place I've found. And I, with my wife, my Thai wife, I travel, and life's good. Life is good, and it hasn't always been. It's been a long, hard life, and today is terrific.

Simon, that's brilliant. Thanks for coming on the show. What are, what are some things that you, you think are true that the rest of the world probably thinks are bonkers?

Um, I always used to think that one day we'd have a wiki or a Google that we could trust, and that would be the end of fake news and conspiracy theories. And I realized that we already have it, Because as a human race, we are already, even in this short time, trusting what AI tells us.

Okay. Okay. What's next?

I think that— what do I think? I think that in 50 years from now, we'll look back and say paying 50% plus, plus, plus with stealth tax is absolute madness. And how could they have done that and given it to the government with their inefficient spending ways when now I'm imagining 50 years hence we have only 20% tax. Uh-huh.

Okay. Like that one. What's next?

I think that when digital voting arrives, which it must do soon, it will become obvious that people can vote on the issues and the matters of the day. Not on political parties. And I'll tell you, if you hang around government, which I've done, they're always asking what the people want, what's the mood of the people, and that will be it. And I think that eventually, we will have an executive of perhaps 40 people, a bit like Singapore or Switzerland do, that implement the will of the people.

Okay. Okay.

Key, not political debate.

Okay. And, okay. And what next? What's the next one?

I think that with AI, we will have a wealth assessment or means testing so that especially for the big spends of government, which are education, And the NHS, I think that we will have— we will be able to elect where we send our children to school freely and where we get hospital work done, and we will pay according to our wealth. But we're not through the tax system. We'll be able to choose. If somebody wants to go to Thailand or Malaysia to have medicine, they'll be able to go. Or if somebody doesn't need to go to the hospital, they won't. Or if they want to self-educate their children, they won't. But we will be free to do that. And also, government will not tell hospitals how to operate, and they will certainly not tell headteachers. Schools will operate in that to educate their communities as they see fit. As David Hockney says, stop bossing us now.

Okay. And what might the last one be?

What's the last one? I think that we will look back 50 years hence and say Brexit was the best thing that ever happened. Not for the reasons that people say now, but because we will in the next 50 years, this entrepreneurial little island of ours, this creative race of ours will reinvent what I've just described as a model society and how to regovern, and the rest of the world will copy us as, believe it or not, they've done throughout history.

Fab. Look, let's, well, maybe we dive into that one, right? So the, uh, stay with that one first. The, um, a model society. What are the, what are the bits? What bits do you think that we could, um, lead the world in?

Well, fundamentally, I think it's become almost impossible for a government to govern from the top down. It's just too complex a world. And to have 400 people in the House of Commons and another 600 in the House of Lords, 1,000 people spending their time arguing with each other about policy is an absolutely hopeless model for the future. What we need is a small executive of very, very good people. In Singapore, they have a 40 people who run that country, and they're each paid $1 million each. And that's what we should have. And we the people and the press indeed need to get behind— will need to get behind that executive so that you can get really, really good people in there. People say to me, you should go into politics, Simon. And here I am talking politics, if you like, but I'm not going to go and have my ass kicked. But I probably would if the people got behind us. You can't— if we ran a company where all the employees just kicked the asses of the people at the top, which is what we're doing with UK PLC, it wouldn't get very far. And that's why we're not getting very far. And I think the further the pendulum swings to the crisis that seems to be that we're in at the moment, the closer we get to what could be radical change.

Yes, you, you, that, um, yes, pay people, pay good people what they're worth to run the country. Absolutely.

Rather than, rather than— The management of, of part of MPs, honestly, some of the people at the top are really, really good, but the middle MPs, I wouldn't employ any of them.

To do anything? No. Okay, okay. That's probably, yeah, that would be a seismic shift paying good people to, because at the minute it's the sort of, if we get to the top, I get non-exec directorships, I get advisory board positions, I get on the speaking circuit if I get to become MP, if I get to become Prime Minister or cabinet. It's a bit of a lottery, isn't it? You know, I mean, they're smart people. If you've got to Cambridge, you're not a dumbo.

Yeah, these are politicians and it's their job. And truthfully, they're not trustable. What we need is we need a younger generation, people who are younger than me, in their late 30s and 40s, who come from the digital age, possibly people who've started and built businesses like I have and exited them and are looking for the next challenge and want to really create a better world and are willing to, you know, to put hell and high water, as I have done and as a lot of people who start businesses do, into doing whatever it takes to make things happen. Execution.

Yes. Okay. I'm the, uh, 50% tax versus 20% tax? What? How? What? Where does the 30% saving come from?

The only way that you can radically change the taxation system is very simply for the government to spend less. And at the moment, the government are probably the worst purchasers of all. You know, they, and not because they're bad people or probably not even because the civil service is incapable. But because they have such scrutiny that they can't do what we do in business, which is to go out and look for the very best deal for everything and spend the minimum amount of money because they have a vast pile just coming in all the time. So the only way to reduce taxes is to take the NHS and the education system and to have people pay for it directly. And then demand the best for their children and their health. And I think then we would get something. But at the moment, everything goes through the tax funnel.

So is that a free— is that more of a market? So, you know, there are 3 state schools I could send my kids to. And so I choose the one and the money flows with the children rather than— Which is really how private education works.

I'll tell you something somebody told me the other day, which I thought was very good, is you could get rid of the entire taxation system. And this is really blue sky, but you could get rid of the entire taxation system and have purely a 1% tax on every single transaction, whether that be selling a company or buying an ice cream. And the The tax collectors would be the bank clearing system, so it would be super simple. And I'm told that that 1% would pay for everything.

Ah, okay, okay, okay. Um, but just the other one to dive into a little bit would be the, uh, fake news and trusting AI. I thought that was—

It's interesting, isn't it, that you go on ChatGPT or whatever, you go on AI, and I don't spend all my time thinking who's behind AI, is somebody manipulating this, because I don't think they are. But AI seems to me to give a balanced view. And most people you ask don't give you a balanced view. They have their own personal angle, me included. So I think that We will learn to trust AI, and that executive that I'm talking about who will govern will use AI big time to get the most efficient way of spending money.

But also, I think you're right. There was some research that I saw recently which said, if you like, a search in AI is 15 times more powerful than a search in Google because it feels like a third-party trusted referral, not You know, you're not sort of going into it going, I need to find— I need to try and pick my way through the truth here to get to a conclusion. It's, oh, I've done all the research for you. This is the one that you should do. And there's a lot of trust put in that.

Yeah.

Fascinating.

There will be lots of people, I imagine, of your audience watching this going, ah, but, ah, but, ah, but. But we know that there's an ah, but to everything. These are big picture ideas, but the ah, buts to AI, I think it will all become clear eventually because I don't think there is somebody. I don't think that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or whatever is behind it saying, I wanted to do this so as to sell more books. I simply just don't believe that that's— true or possible. Um, so I think that we will, we will trust AI, and that's who we will turn to rather than people with their own agendas.

Fascinating. Um, look, so let's dive into— I've got your, your new book over my shoulder here, Yo Man, and, uh, fascinating to go on your journey, your journey with you. Look, let's start, let's start, um, Well, one of the things that early on in the book that just made me laugh out loud was your ATM story, where some guy behind you is getting agitated with you. What— maybe you could just retell that anecdote for me.

No, I mean, at the age of— God, what was I? You know, I started Yo Sushi at 45, and the first time I made an exit, I exited I received it, Joe's Sushi, 3 times, sold different parts of it. And the first time I made a few million, it was such a relief. And the lawyer, the lawyers, lawyers, a lot of them suddenly turned into nice people for the day. And I went back and he said, the money will be in your bank account. I gave him, I pulled out my checkbook, gave him my current account number. And of course, I had to go to the ATM to just check it was actually there. And I was looking at it for so long, this long number, that there was a queue form behind me and the bloke behind was sort of coughing, excuse me. And I just turned to him and I said, excuse me, mate, copper, look at this.

What was your bank balance that he was ordering?

It was over £2 million and that was 30 years ago. So that's quite a bit of money in those days. And for me, it was like a relief. Actually, what is interesting about that, thinking about it, thinking back to that, is that I remember going home and then a lot of things happened, Dragon's Den and all sorts of stuff. Of course, I met lots of people who were richer than me, and I started feeling inadequate. I thought, this has got to stop. That is a form of madness. I haven't got enough. And I've been lucky in that I have had that thing of, you know, enough is enough. You know, I've gone on to make a great deal more than that, obviously. But I don't, you know, I count my— every day I wake up and I think I'm lucky beyond belief to have had that. And I did have to— I was lucky. You know, there was luck involved. I had to throw a— I always say I had to throw a 4 or more several times, and I did. But, you know, the harder you work, the more that you sweat, the luckier you get. True. Yeah.

So what, um, you, I mean, the, um, it wasn't, uh, it wasn't that conveyor belt sushi was a thing that had not been invented before you brought it to London. So what, what was the, why did you bring it to London? What was the genesis?

Well, the internet hadn't been invented, first of all. So lots of things all over the world that we didn't know about. It was very good in those days. And I remember I always used to go to America and see what's next. And the talk in those days was whatever happens in America arrives in Britain 5 years later. And I really like sushi. But when Mr. Uehara, who was a TV producer, I know he took me out to lunch and I said, what about sushi? And he said, what you should do, Simon, is a conveyor belt sushi bar with girls in black PVC miniskirts, which is what he really did say. It was like an arresting moment. And I ended up in Japan, and I found out there were 2,500 of these conveyor belt sushi bars in Japan, and they'd been going since the 19— actually since the early '60s anyway, and nobody had heard of them. Japan was the last great mystery of the East. Nobody had been there. It was too expensive. They didn't speak English. You know, it was a different place 30 years ago.

But do you know what? I was reading that and I thought to myself, I still meet people though, who have a business idea and launch a startup or launch a business and do almost no research, right? So you got on a plane, flew to Japan when it was difficult, found suppliers, brought it back to the— and I meet people today who do, today with the internet seem to do, everything's at their fingertips and they do even less research than that and they start a business and then they think, well, why is nobody buying a thing that I've built?

Well, that was the disadvantage of not having the internet. But the advantage was if we'd had the internet, everybody would know about conveyor belt sushi bar. And of course, I went to Japan and the first thing I did was I phoned the Japanese embassy and said, could you tell me about conveyor belt sushi bar? And they go, it's like phoning up the English embassy and saying, tell me about fish and chips. So anyway, they weren't much help. And then I you know, I had to pick up the phone. In those days, we didn't have WhatsApp or any of that, so it was very expensive to make phone calls. I started calling Japan, and I got through, and I kind of found out these things existed. And actually, I got a brochure through in Japanese of these conveyor belt sushi bars that had pictures of katakana writing. And I thought, wow, wow, wow, wow. And in English, it said 2,500. That's how many— I figured either how much they cost or how many yen, or it was how many there And it turned out to be how they were. So then I had to save up or go and find, dip into my limited coffers to get a ticket to Japan. And I went for it and I went for it and I did it and arrived in Japan and mind-blowing, absolutely mind-blowing. I love Japan.

One of the things you talk about, which I think is probably relevant to many entrepreneurs, is your You had a nickname, maybe, of the steamroller early on in your career. What was that? Was that hard to change? Did you change?

Yeah, sure I did. Sure I did. But I mean, being a steamroller, you know, it's not very attractive, slightly embarrassing, and I have owned up to that, but it's pretty useful. I mean, at the beginning, I don't know what you think, but I think at the beginning of a business, at the beginning of any business, megalomaniac control is a very, very good way to start it. You look at Steve Jobs, he was an absolute— he was a bastard, basically. He was absolute megalomaniac control. It's my way or the highway. I know how to make money, do this and have it done by the end of the day. And I probably wasn't quite as tough as that, but I was megalomaniac controller. But the thing is that most people who are like that carry on doing that forever and they become a pain in the neck. But I got 3 years into Yo Sushi and I took on an operations director called Robin Rowland who had never been an MD. And he said, you're amazing, Simon. He said, you know, I could never have done this. Nobody here could have done what you've done. But you change your mind every day. What you need is a professional to run this. And I said, if you think you can do better, you run it. And he said— and they, they all went, Simon's never going to let go. And I thought, I'll show him. And I did. And that was what I think. So megalomaniac control at the beginning, and then hand over and let somebody else do it and get on with something else. And that's when I started Yotel, actually.

Aha. So how, how big were you when Robin started running Yosi?

We were, we were 6 restaurants. We had We had, well, the first one was in Poland Street, the famous one, and then we had Harvey Nichols and Selfridges and Finchley Road and Edinburgh and one in the Finchley, and we're just about to open Paddington Station. So that's when he came on and, you know, we were doing pretty good, but he came on and he had a system. I, you know, if something was wrong in the restaurants when I was running it, I used to have to walk around the block doing deep breathing exercises just to calm down. I thought nobody's ever going to come again. What Robin was, was an operator. I was an entrepreneur, he was an operator, and he'd write it down on his yellow pad and he would execute, you know, he would do what he needed to do in order of importance. He was better at running it than me, and he was the guy who expanded it and took it up to what it eventually got to, is 125 restaurants.

Deep.

Before we went to markets, which was the big expansion.

Did you, um, uh, should you have done Yotel when you did, or should you have kept your creative energy poured into the, into the sushi?

Exactly the right thing to do in retrospect. It's not what, what I did do when I started Yo! Sushi. We had the delivery service, we had a clothing range, we had 3 Yogaloo bars. Those were mistakes. We should have focused just— in fact, Robin closed all the bars down to my chagrin, but he was absolutely right to do that. But I just closed my door in the office and I let them do it. And it wobbled at first, and then they got on and built the business. And I was sitting there going, what next? And when I had sold my majority shareholding, in Yo Sushi, I'd kept the, the name. So I couldn't do another restaurant with that name, but I could do anything else. And that's when I started working on Yotel. And basically I repeated the same thing that I'd done in Yo Sushi, and we got the thing up and running. And now we're at— I think we're over 30 hotels, big, big hotels. It's a much, much bigger business than Yo Sushi, and it's all over the world and rapidly expanding. So it was exactly the right thing to If I'd started in my 20s like Richard Branson did, I'd probably be in doing a whole load of other things, but I left it a bit late to start. So if anybody's, you know, in your 40s or your 50s, you know, it's not too late. That's what I did.

And are you still involved in the hotel business?

I, I am. I earn a royalty for, for almost every quarter, so one, roughly 1% of turnover. So, you know, that's allowed all the different things to happen. And everything that I've done since has been funded by that fundamentally. I made quite a bit of money from the exits, obviously. But trouble is when you get some money, if you're not careful, you spend it. And I was pretty good at coming up with new ideas. And quite a few, if you read the book, quite a few ones that ate an awful lot of money up. And I'm sure if I hadn't had that royalty, I would probably be broke by now.

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I did. I mean, Robin was tricky, but then so was I. If I'd hired somebody who wasn't what I perceived as tricky, they would never have done a good job. The thing that was good with Robin is that he was better at running a restaurant business than me, much, much better. I realized that early on. He made mistakes. He went into America small time, and he should have gone in absolutely— if I was there, I'd have gone and done it big time. But mostly, he made good decisions. Hiring somebody who is better than yourself, I look back at the younger Simon Woodroffe, and really, I'm very proud that he did that, that I had the— I was willing to sacrifice my own ego to some extent and allow somebody to be better than me to do something. When I find people who are better than me, I always say to people, especially kids starting out or anybody starting out, that the secret is twofold. One is enthusiasm is just great to have people who are enthusiastic around. And the other is overdeliver, overdeliver on everything. And when I find somebody who overdelivers, and Robin Shaw did overdeliver, all I want to do is put my arm around them and say, have some more. That's what I think.

The other thing I thought that you had is underrepresented that I think you've got in spades, which is probably from your background before you got into restaurants, is your understanding about theater. And in sort of B2B, there's a real lack of— there's a real lack of theater. But yeah, you know, you know what, talk to me about—

Well, that famous thing in the theater, it was unreal. So, uh, they used to say there's a ziz in showbiz, and I always said there's a ziz in every business in the world, but you've got to find it. And to get noticed, you've got to stick your flag up and wave it. And, you know, what are examples of that? I mean, I remember before the internet when Apple first brought out the Apple Mac and they had an operating manual. Yeah, it was a kind of book like that, you know, and you went through it, but it was so good that you wanted to go to bed and read it. You know, it was fun to read. And that has— is that sort of ziz, you know, in every business in the world. there is so much competition today, far more than when I started. You know, whatever you do has got to be great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great. That's just a given, whether it's food or a service or whatever. But there's also got to be something that gets people talking about it, you know, whether it's on Instagram or to your mate. You know, word of mouth is the most important thing. And what you— what I want when I open something, I want the people to say to their friends, Have you seen what they're doing there? Have you seen— you've got to go and see this thing, it's amazing. Which obviously is what Elon Musk's just done, saying that he's going to colonize Mars. I mean, everybody talking about it, and that's what you want. So there's got to be, exactly as I say it, there's got to be a bit of zizz, as there is in every business in the world.

Yeah, well, I Well, and as you used the Apple example, I was thinking, and that was not a middle management decision. You only fight the organization if you are the megalomaniac founder to make that manual. Because that has to be the entrepreneur saying, this is the thing that we're going to do differently from everybody else. Because the rest of the organization would've just said, Well, it just needs to be shit like everybody else's. Nobody has an expectation that it'll be better.

You know, they put it all up on a whiteboard and sort of just be reasonable. I mean, that's why I say make the maniac control at the beginning. I know that when I run something myself, everything gets done well and it's all part of an overall plan and da da da da. It all it all comes together. And as soon as you give it to other people, it's like it's never going to be as good as when you do it yourself. But then as something grows, you have to let go and let others, and you have to let go and let others do things their way, not my way. That was a big lesson to learn. Let others do things their way, not my way.

The, um, what were some of the big, um, you said, you said he closed Yobalo and that was much to your chagrin. What, uh, what I, I, what was Yo!

Below? Yo! Below was a bar which we did underneath the first Yo! Sushi, and then we did one in Edinburgh and one in, in the East End.

Right.

And, uh, you sat on the floor on Japanese-y sort of tables. We had, uh, we had self-serve beer at every table. The waiters and wait— we had dance music, and the waiters and waitresses used to have microphones stuck in their belt, and that they were recruited because they could sing. And they would sing, you know, classic rock songs in between the dance music. There would be singers, and the whole place would sing along with them. It was a riot. We had smoke— you could smoke in bars in those days, and we had smoke-extracting ashtrays. And I told the Times newspaper that when they legalized marijuana, which they were talking about at time, but we'd extract— we'd extract all the smoke into a special room and we'd charge people to go in there. And the headline was, Yo Goes to Pot. Got attention.

Oh, totally. It's, you know, totally. Um, but what, um, how did you end up on Dragon's Den?

Um, the, the That period, end of the '90s, was really the beginning of entrepreneurs on telly. You know, the chefs had had their go and entrepreneurs were coming along. There was a whole series of programs, you know, The Mind of a Millionaire, London's Richest— they got that one wrong— you know, all of these, these TV shows about entrepreneurs and people doing things. It was very fashionable. And I lived on a houseboat on the Thames, and I used to have lots of entrepreneurs parties and people used to come over. And so I got to know a lot of, you know, the Innocent Drinks guys and the— Duncan Ballantine was a friend of mine. We met, you know, René Caro, people who I met doing those shows, you know, met in the studios or going on Question Time or going on Politics Today or whatever it was. And, um, and I met all these people and actually Duncan Ballantine said, oh, he said, you ought to come on this show. I've been approached to do a I'll try to imitate Duncan Ballantine's voice here. He used to come in and I went, no, no, no. And they called me up, the producers, because I was on the speaking circuit and I was, you know, I could talk and do all this stuff. And I'd actually appeared at Edinburgh Festival. I did a one-man show at Edinburgh Festival, so they kind of knew I was in the groove. And the producers asked me and I said, no, no, no, I've only just made some money. I'm not going to give it away on Telly. And then it went on and on, and I heard about it. Everybody in my little group was talking about it, and I kicked myself. I thought, you idiot, of course you got— should go on that. Some incredible publicity for you. Your speaking fees are going to go up. Everybody's going to go to Yo Sushi. You know, everybody's going to hear about you. And I just kicked myself. And then one day I got a call from the producers, and they said, we just made a pilot. And I know you turned it down, but one of the dragons we used didn't cut the mustard. Would you reconsider? And I said, step this way, of course I would. Yeah, and that's how I got on Dragon's Den, you know. So I very nearly wasn't, you know, shows how close things can be.

And then did it meet your expectations? And what happened? Like, did you decide you didn't want to do it anymore?

It was terrific. So the first thing that happens is that the BBC's, I don't know, wardrobe department came over to my houseboat, had a rifle through my wardrobe. I think we could do a bit better than this. She took me up to Savile Row, and she took a couple of my suits, and that all became BBC property for the period of the filming.

Right.

That was pretty cool. And then the film crew arrived to make Yo! Sushi! to make a great big film, which was introduction of the show in the first series. And at the beginning of every show, they ran this picture of me and Yo sushi, and it said Yo all over it. Big publicity. That was fabulous. And then I went out to the first day's shooting, and I turned up, met all the other dragons. The producers were nervous as hell, and we filmed it. And everybody in it, including myself, we were experienced on TV, so we were generous to each other. We gave way. We didn't overtalk. Although in those days, the pitches would go on for an hour and a half each, and they'd edit them down to 7 minutes. I'm sure they've got it shorter now. So yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thoroughly enjoyed it because, you know, that's what I'd been doing is going on telly, and I'd got to be reasonably good at it. And that was very enjoyable.

And you invested in some businesses. Did any of them turn into anything?

No, I didn't. I did. I invested in 3 things, but the— well, none of them ever came off. But the one that everybody remembers is a guy who said that he could, he could grow truffles in a greenhouse. And I was imagining, okay, we're going to buy some land in France and we're going to get these greenhouses up, and then I'm going to have a fashion branch that sells truffle hunting trousers and special glasses. It was going to be a whole thing. But as it turned out, he, he didn't have the technology to do it, otherwise I'd have done it for sure.

Oh.

So no, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't actually make it. And then for the first 3 series, I would— people— I used to tell people, they'd say, well, how much money did you make out of Dragon's Den, your investments? I said, I made more than any other dragon. And they'd say, how much was that? I said, zero. Because the others obviously lost in the early days. I think a few of them have made some money now, but I don't think it's— if you want to get really good investments, don't go and ask the BBC, that's for sure.

Brilliant. I've got one other story I'd like you to, or sort of a reminiscence really from the book, which is you opened Poland Street, and then for the first 2 weeks, nobody came in. And so, that's the— did you think, what have we done? Or were you just the word?

I absolutely thought, I thought I could have made a terrible mistake. But, you know, that 2 years that led into Sushi, I was going to open at the end of 1 year and I lost my sight. And the second year, all things happened, you know, the robotic drinks trolleys and the call buttons and everything that made it. So I was very lucky with that. But yes, I— and, you know, 90% of the time I did really believe, I believed that people would come, that people at least are going to come and have a look at this conveyor belts and robots going around. There's a big place, had a big glass window in the front. You know, I thought people had got to come to that. And then, you know, 5%, I wasn't quite sure. And then 5%, you know, 5% of the nights where I had sleepless nights thinking I've sunk because I put everything I had in the world into it, the whole lot, lock, stock, and barrel. And yeah, as you say, nobody came the first 2 weeks. And the second Saturday, our opening manager Bruce Isaacs came down to my little office downstairs. He said, come and have a look at this. And I came up the stairs, and I swear to God, there was a queue 100 yards down the block. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but it was a long way. And that queue lasted for 5 years. Why? Because we'd done— because everybody loves sushi. Nobody even knew what sushi was. Um, it was because we'd done something so completely different. The word of mouth went out, and people said, you've got to go and look at this thing. It's wild. That's what—

Well, and, and you've— and it's, uh, it stood the test of time because it's still going.

It is. It's 30 years old in January.

Which is just sensational.

And it's now— we've now got, I think I was told the other day, it's nearly 600 outlets when you include all the supermarkets. So it's, um, it really has stood the test of time. pretty amazing really and gone on to spawn a hotel. And who knows what it may do in the future. But I've tried a few other things, you know, YoHome, we didn't get off the ground, although YotelPad they've done. There's 3 of those around the world now where you can actually go and buy YotelPads. And I bought an island in the Caribbean called—

Of course you did.

Which I was going to call, as you do, which I was going to call Yotopia. And at the end of 3 years, I was going to build, build a sort of eco-tented luxury glamping on it. And at the end of 3 years, I had one tent up. And everybody, you know, it's not easy building things in the Caribbean. I reckon that if it would have been the first thing I'd done, I would have I would have pulled it off, but it wasn't, and I had other fish to fry. So I sold the island. I actually sold the island for more than I bought it for, but that's not to say I didn't lose money on the whole project, but I did sell the island for more. So that, that was, that was a, you know, that was a bit of relief.

What, what other, um, what other Yo extensions did you think about but not launch? Is there one where you think, is there one where you think, oh, that would, that Is there one that you just think that would have just been fantastic?

Well, the one—

your favorite miss?

There was, um, the Yo Zone was— and there were 6 Yo Zones, and that was a spa for everybody, you know. The idea being that the brand would give to everybody what rich people have. That was the sort of thing, you know, right? Brought the price of sushi down, brought the price of hotel rooms down, um, And that was going to be a spa for rich people. What else were we going to do? We— I was going to— YotaGrow, which was, you know, farming in greenhouses with restaurants within them. We're going to do Yoships, which is inflatable airships that could cross the Atlantic in 2 days carrying 150 passengers in luxury.

Okay.

There was even talk of, uh, uh, Yo— well, it was— somebody pitched me on doing funerals, Yo Below. And, uh, and, and the one that the Money Program wanted me to do was Yo— was the marijuana one, which was Yo to Blow, they said it should be called. If you're around us, and I'm sure there's people watching, you can think of, you know, Yo's a pretty good name because one, it's in Spanish, it means mine. In Japanese, it's a greeting between men. It's a short, memorable word, and it rhymes with lots of things. Yes.

Oh, and did you land on that really quickly, or did you spend Hours and hours and hours until you go, ah, that's the one.

No, I did. I have got a piece of paper somewhere which has got all these names like Circus, Yo Circus, Yo Rotating Sushi, you know, all of these names. And then in the middle, there's this one that says Yo with an exclamation mark. And there was a girl called Lika Sikateri who used to come into my office years ago in the early days of Braving. And she'd come in and you'd go, hey, hey, Lika. And she'd go, yo! You know, so like that. And so that's where I got the name from. And yeah, exactly that. So, and then, you know, it became obvious that it's a great name. And when I published my autobiography, which is the one that I'm talking to you about, is what's it going to be called? Obviously, it's got to be called Yeoman, hasn't it?

Totally. Well, I, you know, I thoroughly— I was saying to you before we started recording, thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. Lots of laugh-out-loud moments and near misses, which I think so often when I read a book where somebody seems to have had a plan and executed a plan flawlessly, I don't feel drawn to them. But there's chaos and risk and luck involved in your story.

Mine is not flawless, but it is an inspirational tale. Even I'm inspired by my own.

If you just keep going, things Things happen.

And I always say that, if I say it in the book, but I always say, you know, you get these showstoppers. I'm sure you've had them, you know, things, oh my God, you get a phone call where, you know, some terrible things happen. And I call them showstoppers. And I say, go around stone walls. And there's always a way around the stone wall. Go around stone walls and build golden bridges, you know, make connections with people. people like doing business, they like working with people they like and they trust. And so, you know, there's a lot of talk these days about your personal brand. And look at you, you've got your own personal brand with your glasses and your, your hair and your, your orange clothes. You know, we all got our personal brand. Dress up, look good, and, um, be a nice person, be a good person. I mean, I say be a nice person. You can be tough as nails, and you got to be tough as nails. I met a zillionaire once, very, very nice guy in Bali, and we were talking about business. He said, you know, one thing about business, he said, the time to fire somebody is the first time you think about it, which is a kind of shocking thing to say, but it's sort of true. And that's true of a lot of things that are ahead, if you can put your hand deep in your pocket and pull out what the future is, you already know what the problems are going to be. And the earlier you get to them and deal with them, the better.

And is that— is that— I mean, I, I think that is, uh, if I think about one thing I do, you know, when I'm coaching clients, yeah, is, uh, I find myself often telling them they have to shoot their dog, right? It's, uh, you know, it's, it's— they know that somebody needs to go, but they're hanging on. So I think that—

All of that stuff is hard, and we all want to be good people. But I mean, the thing about firing people is, uh, you know, if you are a good person, you want to do good things, what you're actually doing is making room for somebody else to come in instead and to do that job. But I think we, all of us, I don't know what you think. You coach people, so you've seen a lot more people than me probably. But we all know if we are— if we can have the foresight in our busy worlds, whether we're putting fires out or surviving every day, if we can in our imaginations imagine what's going to happen in the future, we know a lot about the pitfalls that are going to come ahead. And the earlier you get to them and the more courage you have to face them and deal with them, Strongly, the luckier you get.

Totally. Well, it's part of that hard work thing, isn't it? It's just, you know, these are difficult decisions, and if you make them rather than put them off, then difficult decisions don't get better because you, because you ignore them.

Exactly. Most decisions, if you do make a bad decision, you can change it the next week. That's what I— that's the way I see it. Make decisions, move on, change your mind. Which politicians say that? You know, when the, when the, you know, the, the heavy interviewer goes, ah, but 2 years ago you said this, you know, the answer has to be, yeah, well, I changed my mind. I had dinner with somebody last week, sorry, and they took me another point of view and I've changed my mind.

Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, and are there, um, are there any business books that you've read along the way, or even just books that you've read along the way that have been inspirational, useful, people should pick up and read?

I've skim read all those business books, and there's lots of people, I think. But I'll tell you, the one I really like is Felix Dennis, who's now dead, who was a publisher who actually wrote a book called How to Get Rich. And, um, and actually it's a really good book, but he also wrote poems. He eventually—

Oh, right.

Wrote poems, and he wrote one which is called, uh, How to Get Rich, same title, you should look it up. He goes, good ideas, we've had them since Eve first met Adam, but take it from me, execution's the key. Good fortune, the truth is the harder you work, the more that you sweat, the luckier you get. The money, go find a likely investor to get what you need, you toadies to greed. The talent, go find it, but first wine and dine it. It's tedious work, With a talented jerk. To win it, you've got to be in it, but never be late to quit and cut bait. Expansion is vanity, profit is sanity. Overhead begs and it walks on 2 legs. The first step, just do it and