E163: Soho House Founder: How I Built The World’s Most Exclusive Club: Nick Jones

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2022

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nick Jones is the founder of Soho House, the worldwide exclusive private members club worth an incredible $2.8 billion. He’s rewritten the rulebook on hospitality, and his business covers restaurants, hotels, events, and so much more!

If you want to know not just how to build a business, but invent a whole industry, this is the conversation for you. If you want to know how to maintain worklife balance while making billions, this is the mentoring you needed to hear.

Nick is so calm and collected in his thoughts it’s strange to think it all came so close to crashing down, and his business was born out of his first initial business failure when he had nowhere else to turn. Because when you get knocked down, sometimes that forces you to come back in a whole new way.

Topics:

Early years
The first inspiration for soho house
What did you have that others didn’t?
Why dyslexia is a great gift
Starting your own restaurant chain at 22
The best marketing tactic
Why did the first SoHo House work?
the factors that made SoHo house what it is today
The line between ambition & family
What do you wish you had known?
Whats hospitality taught you about life?
Are you shy?
Whats next?
The last guests question

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

Sponsors: Huel:

https://my.huel.com/Steven

Crafted: https://bit.ly/3JKOPFx

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I wasn't experienced enough, I was too young, you just branded thick.
0:03.8	Nick Jones, the founder and CEO of Soho House.
0:06.6	With an empire of private clubs around the world.
0:09.0	It's the most C and B scene, the type of place.
0:13.2	Not everyone gets it.
0:14.9	Your upbringing is particularly compelling to me because you were somewhat counted out.
0:19.4	I'm hugely disliked, sir.
0:21.0	People didn't understand about it. You just branded thick.
0:24.6	There was not much choice for me.
0:27.0	You've created a business which brings a lot of people joy.
0:29.4	That first Soho House on Greek Street, why did it work?
0:32.9	I wanted to prove that hospitality could be done differently.
0:36.0	I can't think of a time where I was thinking about making an aspirational brand.
0:40.3	I've always been obsessed about the member and that was always my number one thing.
0:45.2	They've created that.
0:49.0	If you don't make mistakes, you're not pushing yourself.
0:51.0	You're not taking yourself out of your comfort zone.
0:53.5	Maybe I was trying to prove to my family that I could do this
0:57.5	and I think that's an invaluable lesson.
0:59.8	At what point does that desire to prove something
1:02.3	need to be contained because it might come at the expense of life balance?
1:07.7	A very good question.
	...

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.