E173: Pret & Itsu Founder: How I Built TWO Billion Dollar Brands At The Same Time!: Julian Metcalfe

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2022

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Julian Metcalfe is the founder of Pret A Manger and Itsu, and since he’s been a young man has been on a mission to change the way we think about eating out and how we eat. His companies are together worth over $3 billion.

But he’s also been on a mission to prove something to himself after the suicide of his mother and a life threatening car crash when he was still young uprooted his life as he knew it. Like all founders, he chose the long road back to being secure in himself

Julian spews with original thoughts on how to really take a company from zero to $1 billion+, from hiring and firing to knowing when to take the leap to expand your brand. Business is a game of thousands of little decisions, a few really big ones, and a hawks eye for knowing when to pounce. Few people we’ve encountered on the podcast had such a good gut instinct as Julian, nor were so good at articulating exactly how they did it.

Topics:

Early years
The affect your parents had on you
The importance of transparency
Affection & self esteem
Was money driving you?
what was the "specialness" that made Pret successful
How I run my businesses
Selling Pret
Starting ITSU
The hardest day of your career
Finding out you had a daughter
What are you scared of?
Your happiness recipe
The last guest question

Itsu:

https://www.itsu.com/

Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://g2ul0.app.link/aTf9jh8Zvsb

Vodafone Business - https://www.vodafone.co.uk/business/sme-business?cid=psoc-ent/vhub/doaceo/aws/3.22/ntst

Craftd - https://g2ul0.app.link/gZ8in6Dsvsb

Huel - https://g2ul0.app.link/wjmvak5nAsb

Transcript

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0:00.0	I love failure. I fail every day. I don't care about it. Just get on with it.
0:05.2	Pratt and I, you know, you're too, you are absolutely an entrepreneur at heart.
0:09.2	As all the fish are going in one way, you suddenly look around, you think,
0:12.5	damn it, I'm going to go the other way. When you look back at Pratt,
0:15.5	at a business you ended up selling for two billion.
0:17.6	I have no idea what I was doing. It wasn't planned, endless moments of magic,
0:21.6	moments of bizarre creativity and confidence.
0:24.6	What was motivating you, I wanted to make a difference.
0:27.3	I suddenly found myself with this responsibility to open a restaurant.
0:30.8	From that start we built 76 of them. We started developing it so it could become the future.
0:38.9	The absence of both parents, he was quite distant, my father.
0:42.2	My mother committed suicide when I was seven. That created a loneliness.
0:47.6	To create something new, you've got to put yourself in slightly uncharted territory.
0:51.2	Business isn't just business to you, is it? It's not just about the money.
0:54.4	No, and it shouldn't be to anyone. I'm far more interested in the relationships with
0:58.4	the customer and the staff and the product. I was obsessed by that.
1:01.5	Obsessed? It's incredible what people can do, people don't trust them,
1:05.2	or don't nurture them, because they're too busy being selfish, nurturing themselves.
1:10.1	What's the worst crisis you've ever had in your business?
1:12.0	I'd any want to go into it. I want to hear it.
1:16.7	So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is the DarioVaseo.
1:21.3	I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this yourself.
	...

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