HUNGRY.

In 2016, I read Business For Punks.

One of the greatest business books of all time.

And, a huge inspiration to start HUNGRY.

Total honour to sit down with James Watt, BrewDog founder

This is a F*CKING BANGER!!!!!!

Deffo watch on Youtube if you can, first time we’ve recorded in 4K cinematic a.k.a grown up cameras.

ON THE MENU:

1. The Swimming with Sharks Gratitude Rule: “there’s a 100 billion to 1 chance of you being here so GO FOR IT” 

2. Why Good founders solve problems, but Great Founders use obstacles to find a different way of thinking

3. Be thankful for obstacles “obstacles are the way you differentiate, find magic + show the world what you’re really made of” 

4. BrewDog “Challenge Everything” Dogma = Einstein “blind faith in authority is the greatest obstacle is truth”

5. BrewDog “Speed” Dogma = “You set the speed of your company, you set the deadline” 

6. BrewDog “Speed” Dogma = “We count time in dog years” “Brands don’t understand the impact of speed” 

7. . BrewDog “Dogs on Deck”” Dogma = “You simply HAVE TO BE where the action is “

8. Nassim Taleb Speed Barbell: “Speed speed speed + accept 20% of the time you’ll be going wrong + Use your customer to course correct”

9. . Seneca Barbell: pure action + pure reflection = Pain + reflection = progress

10. Why BrewDog Will Never Hire Blue Chip Losers ever again 

11. Why Competition is a Gift From God - but NEVER focus on the competition 

12. Barnacles On a Boat Rule: Don’t just put systems in, a straight jacket of policy

13. Why James Has Two Desks: Analogue vs. Digital “you can’t create the future looking at an inbox”

14. Question One: If I spend this £1 do I get a 10x return vs. competitors?

15. Question Two: What could you do that would kill your business?

16. Question Three: What is 5 craziest random things I can do right now to grow by business 

17. Why Founders MUST accept: Your Team will NEVER think like a founder + Your head is different vs your team

18. Fire Fast Rule: "If you were running a marathon you wouldn’t wait till mile 22 to take the stone out"

19. Why Brands Fail in Supermarkets: “You didn’t fail because of the supermarket listing, you put something on shelf that wasn’t good enough”

20. How BrewDog Used Price Laddering Psychology to go Premium Mainstream 

21 . Price Laddering: “You need hooks to bring people into brand” + “Value perception” + “Create margin enhancing opportunities”

22. Why Staying successful is harder then getting successful "everyday re-earn your success"

23. REMEMBER: You Don’t Own Your Brand Your Consumer Does 

23. Elon Musk Advice for Food & Drink Founders “Don’t do sales” + “Cut the crap committee”

============================================== 

🌟 HUNGRY's Absolutely Bloody Marvellous Sponsors🌟

A massive shoutout to our incredible sponsors who make HUNGRY possible:

►Big Fish: (https://bigfish.co.uk/) ►North Star: (www.northstarbc.co.uk)

🤝 Let's Connect!

►Let’s link-up here ​ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-pope/)

►Stalk me here ​ (https://www.instagram.com/_hungry.pod/)

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/alex-smith-the-strategy-expert-and-no-bullshit/id1537239469?i=1000659223965Listen to the full episode here

📙Download HUNGRY Big Banging Reading list here 
🧾 HUNGRY survey would be so grateful if you may please fill out 

The Unruly Pig is The UK’s Best Pub

🐷 Number 1 & Winner – UK Top 50 Gastropubs Awards 2024

🍺 National Restaurant Awards 2024 Top 100 -#56

🐷 GQ Magazine Food & Drinks Awards 2023 – “Best Pub”

🍺 Taste of East of England Awards 2023 – Winner & Gold Award

🐷 The Sunday Times-Best Sunday Roasts in the UK 2024

🍺  The Good Food Guide 2024 – “Britain’s 50 Cosiest Pubs”

The food is slap-bang, full-sha-bang STONKINGLY delish.

Brendan Padfield, Unruly founder, is a wonderful human.

Garrulous raconteur who oozes delicious stories.

THE perfect long-luncheon conversation companion.

(we’d had a 3.5 hour lunch before we’d even started the f*cking 2 hour poddy🤣)

ON THE MENU:

1. How The Unruly Pig Survived a Fire burned down their pub three months in “always look for the positive” + “Excellence is the ability to withstand pain”
2. Thinking Fast & Slow: How the fire made them slow down and refine. refine. refine the menu.
3. How Brendan Deals with the Burden of Being The Best “only the paranoid survive, but don’t be too paranoid”
4. How The Unruly Pig created the “Britalian” Category of One to become the UK’s No. 1 Pub
5. Why The Unruly Pig NEVER SELL a Burger or Fish & Chips: If you’re the same on everything, you’re in a race to the bottom
6. The Dishonesty in Hospitality: suppliers underdelivering, staff nicking wages + how to solve it
7. Brendan’s one question to stay BOLD + SIMPLE: what’s your conviction rate out of 10?
8. The REAL Reason Michelin Star Restaurants are going under “our VAT rate is 20% compared to 5% in Europe”
9. How we Change Hospitality from “Transient Job” to “Illustrious Profession”

🤝 Let's Connect!

►Let’s link-up here ​ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-pope/)

►Stalk me here ​ (https://www.instagram.com/_hungry.pod/)

Tarquin Leadbetter dives into his absolutely genius strategy of focusing on local brand building in Cornwall, capturing the seasonal tourist market, and gradually expanding nationally. He describes how he used a regional focus to market cost-effectively across the UK—a concept he calls the "Doom Bar effect" - based on the small brewery born on the North Cornish coast that scaled to become the UK's best selling cask and bottled ale.

Key Takeaways: 

• you can market to a national audience on a local Level
• market locally and then follow everyone back to their home
• brand awareness builds meek fans 

📙Download HUNGRY Big Banging Reading list here 
🧾 HUNGRY survey would be so grateful if you may please fill out 

In 2018, Jeremy Pang built a HUGE cookery school, School of Wok in Covent Garden

So huge, so forward thinking
Tesco , Sainsbury's , Waitrose & Partners come knocking.

Suddenly, 
School of Wok launches into 1200 stores

Happy days? 
Right? 

Well, 
that’s when it started to go wrong (all revealed in our conversation) 

Thankfully,
Jeremy Pang is a total legend. 

Relentlessly resourceful. 
Go getter-grafter. 
Deal maker. 

Grit-graft, twist-turn, plot-pivot, Jez, got School of Wok back on it’s feet

Charlie Munger: Wisdom is Prevention

Our chinwag is a Cautionary Grocery Tale

Listen slowly, soak in quickly 

We also chatter: how China town changed, the rise of asian cuisine in London, sales tactics, building a massive Youtube Channel, Portuguese influence on Asian food 

ON THE MENU: 

1. The Subtle Art of Wangling Free Stuff: what are their BENEFITS + what are my asks?

2. Two Golden Challenger Sales Rules: What’s their victory speech + how do we make our buyer famous

3. The Simple Challenger Principle: Make as money as you can, spend as little as you can 

6. How School of Wok got traction with No budget: Do Things That Don’t Scale
 
7. How to do MASSIVE Brand deals: Use your specific knowledge to fill specific gaps 

8. Outside The Box Thinking to Maximise Trade Shows on a TINY budget: where can we add theatre? 

9. Gokwan’s Business Secrets: know your audience, know your customer, know your product 

10. Why the Industry narrative “buyers are the be all and end all” is totally WRONG

11. The Art of Creative Strategy: Creativity + constraint = Simplicity in Complexity

12. Redbull Effect + Brand Frame: We need Anthropology > Economics 

12. What ACTUALLY is MORE for your brand? Don’t go into grocery if it doesn’t stick to your values 

📙Download HUNGRY Big Banging Reading list here 
🧾 HUNGRY survey would be so grateful if you may please fill out 

Tarquins are a brand I adore. A brand who followed no “rules”.

Tarquin turned beautifully constrained budgets from headwind to tailwind

They’ve built a WHOPPAAA business, by not focusing on London.

Distribution Density> Distribution Breadth

Brand Depth > Brand Awareness

Die Hard Fans> Meek Fans

LOVED this episode. 

ON THE MENU:

1. The Prudent Path to Profitability: Why Founders must OBSESS with the path to profitability “Giles Brook you don’t have a business if you can’t hit 40% gross margin”
2. How Tarquin Mastered the Art of Timing: Timing is Tailwind, but you need to be in the water to catch the wave
3. Sell, Sell, Sell: How Tarquin got the brand off the ground hustling to pubs in Cornwall
4. Distribution Density: Why Tarquins constrained their distribution to Cornwall for 5 years
5. Seth Godin’s Purple Die in Swimming Pool vs Ocean: why Tarquins opened 7 retail stores Brand Depth > Brand Awareness
6. The Doombar Effect: how to market to a national audience on a local level
7. Margot Robbie & Pimms: 4 Ways Tarquin would reinvent Pimms to make it BOOT OFF in USA and Australia
8. Permission marketing: How Tarquins use email to build a HUGEEEE D2C channel
9. Why momentum solves a lot of problems
10. Perry Haydn Taylor Packvertising: Why Tarquins focused all their beautifully constrained budgets on the bottle

📙Download HUNGRY Big Banging Reading list here 
🧾 HUNGRY survey would be so grateful if you may please fill out 

I remember the day with marble-polished clarity. The day I sodomised my first Black Bear Burger

Brixton. 2020.  In the strangled-mangled shackles lockdown, at my mates on Efra road.

A celestial chubby steaming parcel of joy arrived. Lip-smackingly, soul-spankingly, face-melting YUM.

My fave Burgus in London, and Stew is an absolute G

ON THE MENU:

1. Packvertising Genius: How Black Bear Burger turned their Deliveroo packaging into a Storytelling Machine
2. Surviving Crispy Chips Crisis: How BBB solved the customers problems BEFORE they existed
3. The Simple Reframe Behind Why Black Bear Burger worked at Exmouth Market when Dirty Burger failed - we are a restaurant that sells burgers NOT a burger restaurant
4. The Beer Sommelier Rule: Focus on the thing you’re competition can’t to STAND OUT - why BBB Focus on the Sides.
5. A Master Class in Persistence: The dark grit of street food market and BBB blagged their way into BoxPark
6. Battle vs Boredom: How to push through the tedium of persistence
7. Why HipPop Is the greatest music to eat burgers too = layers + layers that, warmth and connection added to your burger

📙Download HUNGRY Big Banging Reading list here 
🧾 HUNGRY survey would be so grateful if you may please fill out