E157: Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2022

⏱️ 110 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

James Watt is the CEO and founder of Brewdog, the Scottish craft beer sensation that is now valued at $2 billion. A former sea captain, he’s had to navigate increasingly choppy waters at Brewdog.

But after a string of allegations rocked the company, ranging from personal impropriety to financial misconduct to marketing scams, James has had to start from scratch in Brewdog’s reputation, and on his own management style. For the first time, James walks us through his mistakes, what he denies, and what he defends.

Where does the line blur between a hard-driving start-up and a toxic culture. It’s a tricky balance many challenger companies have to contend with. James’ is a story where he sailed a little close to the wind, when the revelations dropped it looked like everything he built could slip away. Can he navigate Brewdog back to dry land? He tells us exclusively how he plans to.

Topics:

Your early years
Being a sea captain & what it taught you
The start of Brewdog
Your marketing principles
Adjustments from being a fisherman to CEO of a global company
Your leadership evolution
Why don't you step down as CEO?
Did you ever imagine you’d be here?
Forgiving your mother for creating 'that voice?
Punks with purpose letter
Horrific interviewing techniques
Why did you invest in Heineken?
Autism
Whats the silver lining here?
Anxiety & therapy
The future of Brewdog - sustainability
Finance advice
The last guests question

James:

https://www.instagram.com/brewdogjames/?hl=en

https://twitter.com/BrewDogJames?s=20&t=wXnTEyTvBKbmeTrXwFFrcg

Shows mentioned Good Ship BrewDog, BBC sounds - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0cfkklv?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

The Truth about BrewDog - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013yfj

Books mentioned:

Ben Horowitz - amazon.co.uk/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

Sponsors:

Craftd - https://bit.ly/3JKOPFx

Huel - https://my.huel.com/Steven

Vodafone Business - https://bit.ly/3NIM35n

https://bit.ly/3AuPKsA

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You've had a lot of controversy over the last two years,
0:02.0	bullying, lying, and the fact that this mess was all of this stuff.
0:04.8	What did you say to that?
0:06.0	I did, I did preach people too far.
0:10.2	How fast did Brutal Brow?
0:11.6	We have grown on average 87% a year.
0:14.6	Fucking hell.
0:15.5	Everyone told us, make your beer cheaper,
0:17.4	change your name, change your packaging,
0:19.4	and we didn't listen to any of that.
0:21.1	How can we get our name out there with no money at all?
0:23.8	So we had to do things that were intentionally provocative
0:26.7	and sometimes we could toss that edge as well.
0:28.8	The best entrepreneurs have got to find a way to do things differently
0:32.9	to how other people are doing things.
0:34.3	We've got two very simple tests that we apply to everything that we do.
0:37.8	So the first test is...
0:39.2	This is the worst public health crisis for a generation.
0:44.9	I've only ever been in tears once in my job,
0:49.0	and I wrote down in tears addressing our team in March of 2020,
0:54.7	thinking that we're not going to be able to pay,
0:56.4	we're not going to be able to keep you in a job.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from FlightStory, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of FlightStory and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.