The Success Nuggets

The Success Nuggets #57 - Everything Always Works Out by Simon Woodroffe

• David Abel • Season 3 • Episode 14

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Simon Woodroffe (YO! Sushi, YO! everything) joins to talk about starting again at 47, treating fear as fiction, roaming instead of queuing, robots as theatre, and why execution beats visualisation. 

But behind the creativity was something deeper: fear, patience, failure, and the quiet belief that “if you wait long enough, things always work out.”

In this episode, Simon shares how low self-worth can drive ambition, how to build courage when you’ve got everything on the line, and why comfort zones are there to be stretched, the 100-day rule → money, meaning, and learning at 74. 

🎙 A conversation about curiosity, grit, and the freedom to keep reinventing yourself — no matter your age.

Nugget of the day " If you wait long enough, things always work out. "

With thanks to One Golden Nugget and Maxwell Preece for editing, support and artwork

SPEAKER_02:

Today's guest is one of those rare people who made business feel like a bit of theatre. In 1997, at the age of 40, Simon Woodroff didn't just open a sushi bar, he reinvented what eating out could feel like. Conveyor belts, robot waiters, lights, energy, the famous Blue Monday. Yo, sushi wasn't food, it was fun with systems. But what fascinates me most about Simon isn't the sushi or the success. It's the mechanics behind the magic. The way he talks very candidly about life, fear, drive, failure, and the grit in the oyster that keeps us creating. This next conversation isn't even about what to build next, it's about how to keep building yourself. Simon has lived more than most, always keeping the show on the road whilst having fun on the way. Let's meet Simon, who's dialed in from Thailand today, and his curiosity-filled mindset, which is full of gold. Simon, it's great to have you on the Success Nuggers. Welcome.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, nice to be here.

SPEAKER_02:

I've been reading your book, The Book of Yo, which is a fantastic playbook on how you've uh worked through businesses. I'm 46 now. I remember being in my 30s, feeling insecure and knowing it as well. I still don't feel like I've reached my potential. Do you remember what that felt like? And do you feel like you have reached your potential yet?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, a couple of questions there. Um, no, well, 46 you are, and I was 47 when I started Joe Sushi. So, any of your listeners who are older, there's always a chance. And I had had small businesses most of my life, but Euro is the first thing I did on a what I remember calling it so grown-up level, you know, a much bigger business. It was to do with self-esteem about how you felt about yourself. And I think at that time, and I think yes, I'd I'd been through a roller coaster of low self-esteem and not quite sure if I could do things, but I did always step out of my comfort zone and jump up and do things, and that's what I did. I spent two years trying to put Yo Sushi together and trying to find the money to do it and the site. I didn't want to start some sort of little restaurant, I wanted to start something that was a big deal, and I had 200 grand in the world, my tied up in my flat, and I determined to put it all on the throw of the dice for Yo. And um at the end of two, at the end of a year, I was um going to open and I got I lost my deal. And in the second year, all the things happened that made Yo a big deal when we did open, so I was very fortunate in that respect. That sort of two years getting it all together was house in years because I really thought I was onto something, and I think for 90% of the time I believed it. You know, you have to kind of delude yourself into believing something for it to happen and visualize it opening those doors and people walking in. And then for probably five percent of the time, I had nagging debts, and five percent were were sheer terror that I'd made some terrible mistake.

SPEAKER_02:

Makes me think about even just the operations of the business, how you got the conveyor belt working. Did you have little prototypes and practice runs putting the food out and the bowls out? Was it easy to source those kind of things?

SPEAKER_03:

I'd been a stage designer. I'd done a lot of different things in my life. I left school when I was 16, and I was went on the road as a roadie, and I knew lighting and the theatre and all of that, and then big rock shows, and uh so I knew how to get things together and how to do the construction side. You know, that wasn't so hard for me. And conveyor belts uh are not difficult to get. There's lots of people who make them around the world, and I could draw, and actually I could do accounts on my computer and read legal documents from my time in the television business. So I I had quite a few of those skills to get that together. But the restaurant side, I'd never done it, but you know what you do when you're sort of in your mid-40s and you can't think of anything else to do, start a restaurant, the the odds of succeeding are extremely low. So I went off to Japan to research it, and I remember going to the Japanese food machinery exhibition in Tokyo, and I've been in, you know, Burbank Studios in Los Angeles with Ozzie Osborne rehearsing new shows or Rod Stewart at big rock shows, and I was much more interested in being in the Japanese food machinery exhibition. I was so turned on, excited by it. And actually, I drew and designed the kitchen before I ever got the first chef. But yes, then you have to find the chefs. And I did that by going and eating in lots of Japanese y restaurants before they were the sort of trendy thing of today and chatting up the chefs. And I eventually found one called NASA, who is our first head chef. And you can find people when you when you want to do something, if you can if you're putting your 16 hours a day or whatever it is, seven days a week, you find the answers to things. That's what happened.

SPEAKER_02:

And um, what about a couple of the saviors who came along the way? Do you find there a common thing? I think it was Philip Brown, who was your assistant bank manager, who didn't have any authority at the time, but he got promoted, perhaps the right place at the right time. Do saviors like that just turn up?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh you were very well researched. You said Philip Brown, like, who is that? Of course that is exactly right. He was the manager at that West Bank. And actually, the saviour that happened there really was that there was a small sushi bar that actually had a conveyor belt in it on Liverpool Street Station called Mushy Mushy Sushi. And it opened, and I went, oh no, somebody's picked me to the post. It's all gonna go wrong, it's never gonna happen. But it wasn't terribly well known. And I was able to go there and just do all the research before I even went out to Japan, and I took Philip Brown there, the bank manager, and he was very enamored, you know, he really was good for him. And there was a thing called a government loan guarantee scheme, but I knew nothing about, but he told me about. He said, if you can get 10% of the money you need put up by private investors, which I did from a childhood friend at a bloke I met on the street in Paris, 10 grand or something. And uh, if we, Nat West, would have invested the money if you had security for on it, which I didn't, we can get a government loan guarantee scheme which will guarantee 70% of our risk. And that's what he did for me. And yes, thank you, Philip Brown. If you're watching, I've not really ever said thank you to him properly. I'm sure I did at the time, but here's one from the fast. Thank you, Philip Brown.

SPEAKER_02:

Excellent. We put some good energy out into universe. Absolutely. Um now patience. He's a great teacher. You had to wait a couple of years, you'd put all your money on it. A lot of people see fear as a stop sign and not a signal. Was that the first really kind of high-risk move you'd you'd played in your career?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, there's two words there, one is fear and one is patience. Impatience is a very good quality. I want it done and I want it done now. And patience is also a very good quality because if you wait long enough, things always work out. That's one of my rules of life. If you if you really wait long enough, you can do it. And sometimes you have to wait a long time. So both of those are very, very astute of you to say that patience and impatience. And fear, yes, I mean, you know, I think, you know, human beings in this difficult world, and for your listeners, you know, fear is probably one of the most common emotions there is in all its guises. My thing is that we all try to get into comfort zones, you know, places where we feel reasonably comfortable in this insecure old world. And what I've observed about successful people is that they actually do step out of their comfort zone. And, you know, like the sort of the pebble dropped into the water, the ripples go out, and the comfort zone gets bigger, you know, your circle of comfort gets bigger. And I think that's what happens. And so to be a little bit uncomfortable for a period of time is is absolutely the right place to be. I've been through a lot of difficult things in my time, and yeah, I'm still here, so they have always worked out. But being uncomfortable, we we're we're taught you don't want to be uncomfortable in life, and actually being a bit uncomfortable is a very good place to be, and you build the muscle of being able to deal with that. That's the way I would describe it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. It's almost impossible to die. You can get dented all over the place, but you soon pop back into shape.

SPEAKER_03:

But it is pretty it's pretty amazing, isn't it? That human beings survive their 70 or 80 or 90 years, and we have so many close calls along the way, and so we are extremely resilient and clever and astute at surviving.

SPEAKER_02:

If you can get into that mode, if you can get into that mode, and so many people, you know, especially with 2007, they gave us the like button, which has just changed everything. Every time the phone pings, bing, have I got validation? Emails are coming through to businesses every five or six minutes, and a lot of people are waking up and literally just stroking their phone, almost in this, they're there, that's better. I survived yesterday. Well, did you do something first thing in the morning? This was all pre-digital as well. How did you get yourself into the zone of where's the comfort?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I started 1997 when I started Josushi was pre pre-digital. You know, internet a few people, very few people had websites in those days. I mean, as the technology came along, I absolutely embraced it 100%. I had an Apple Mac 3 way way back in my stage design days, and then the internet came along. I've actually changed over onto Microsoft because I got a phone call out of the blue one day. You talk about sort of, you know, do you how would you get lucky? You know, how do you make get good fortune? And, you know, the famous adage that the harder you work, the more that you sweat, the luckier you get comes along. And I got a call out of the blue one day from a company called Ogre V not OgreVMA, but what they call it. They were the advertising agent for Microsoft and ESPN and a whole load of people. And this this American boy said, she's he said, we want to make a TV advertisement about you and your Yo Sushi conveyor belt robotic restaurants for Microsoft, and it's going to be broadcast all over the world. And I, you know, of course, I I I thought I thought it was somebody winding me up with an American boy, so they came over and did that. And I remember turning to everybody in the office and I said, We're gonna have to get rid of rid of our Apple Macs and change over to Microsoft, but actually we didn't and they didn't mind.

SPEAKER_02:

Robotic restaurants. I was in Selfridges just at the weekend with my kids, and I saw a robotic dog running around. I had a conversation with a hologram there as well. Like, when did you first get introduced to the robots? How they behaved at first?

SPEAKER_03:

We well, that that first restaurant, I mean, way before robots. I thought that at least we've got a conveyor belt going around in the in the restaurant, and people are gonna walk past, you know, we've blocked off the windows and nobody could see it while we were building it. There was a big, big conveyor belt, and people are gonna walk past and say there's a conveyor belt in that restaurant. You know, that is a f well, that's a point of interest. You've got to tell somebody about that, aren't you? So I thought that was it. And then I thought, well, we're we're uh we're just serving drinks in a conventional way. That's it was the idea before we opened. I thought, what about having a robotic drinks trolley? It had a ring to it, it was way ahead of its time. And um in those days, I remember saying to people, I don't know if you ever tried to buy a robotic drinks trolley, they don't exactly sell them on every street corner. They do now, but they didn't 30 years ago. And I called up the universities and I got put on to Edinburgh University eventually, and you know, pre-internet, even, somebody answered the phone. It said, Edinburgh University Robots Department, how can we help you today? So I couldn't believe my luck. And I took a technology that they had developed, which was actually it was a trolley that it was for kids in wheelchairs, this technology, and it was a in it followed a hidden wire that they taped down on the floor, just a piece of gaffer tape hidden down, and we put the wire underneath the concrete and called it a robot, and it was a trolley that sort of followed this electric wire around, but it had a sensor in it and it stopped and it uh spoke, it had a digital voice, and it was built by a company called Brilliant Stages who did a lot of the big rock shows for me. And just before we opened, I remember this thing turning up, and all the workmen put their tools down to have a look at this. You know, I'll believe this when we see it, mate. You know, it was a bit of that sort of moment. And um, we watched this robotic drinks trolley drive of its own volition and turn a corner. And as it turned the corner, the the it had this digital voice, which actually was my voice, you know, some digital American robot voice. It said, move your fat ass. Somebody's got a fucking job to do in this restaurant. And we opened I rem and well, first of all, my fear level went down as soon as I saw that. I thought, people are gonna come and have a look. If food's still gonna be great, great, great, but we're gonna have a look at this. I remember opening and people were just they couldn't believe it. I said, I realized that if you change the rules of operation about anything or change the landscape you're working in, you can do anything. Or we're through those robots, and one of those a female one, and she said, uh, she said the old adage, she said, is that a is that a mobile phone in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me? Which was very of its time because mobile phones had only just come out. Everybody thought it was funny. Bit of humor and a bit of technology and science fiction, and that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02:

Humor in business comes round again and again.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I mean, in in your relations with people, but also as a brand thing, if you can, you know, if you look at all the great advertising thing, there's a lot of funny stuff out there that's been done, and sincerity, you know, it's humor with sincerity as well. You know, gone are the days of oh, you know, dine with us for a wonderful dining experience, you know. So I got a lot of press, but I never talked about how great the dining experience of food was. Everybody's gonna say that, aren't they? I talked about the world from life and everything, and told stories as I'm doing with you now, and and people liked it, I guess.

SPEAKER_02:

I think that's refreshing. Uh my time at Ted Baker, we were a bit more about the life and and the humor as well.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, but he would that was an innovative thing, Ted Baker, definitely.

SPEAKER_02:

But the business behind Yo Sushi as well was was actually pretty smart. You can eat as quick as you want, you can choose what you want. There was a lot of convenience and control. So behind there's a a shrewd businessman. Oh, and I think bit like me, you've got a fascination for business.

SPEAKER_03:

I have I'm very lucky because having had a sort of small left school young and only never never paid PIY, never really worked for anybody else, always had a small businesses. So I had to learn through the school of hard knocks. So I I've got on the one hand, having left school, I never had the imagination educated out of me, is the way I described it. So I'm creative and I like ideas and I can imagine what things are going to be like. I can draw, do all of that stuff. But at the same time, I can leak read legal documents, I understand cash flow, I understand more than I understand balance sheets, probably. But you know, I mean, I understand how business works. And I spent 10 years in the television business selling television rights around the world. So I understand how deals get made. And so, yes, I could talk both languages. And people very often say to me, they said, you know, I've I've got this great idea and it's this and that and that, but you know, the business side I can't do. I need a business partner to do it. And I think you actually we live in a world today where you can learn anything. You really can. And I think at the beginning of any business, you're much better off to do it than you're in. Oh, if you've got a good partner, that's terrific. But but megalomaniac control at the outset of something is a very, very good way to do things. One, two, three years in, you need to really have a team in place and hand it over to people who are more experienced, perhaps, than you. I'm an entrepreneur, not an operator, probably. Um, and I was lucky enough to be able to hand it over to Robin Rowland as our first CEO, and he was an operator. He could he always used to say, I could never do what you did, and I'm a risk adverse and I couldn't do that. But he, if it was a problem in the restaurant, for example, I would have to walk around the block doing deep breathing exercises, whereas Robin would put it on his list and prioritize it and knock it off one thing at a time, and that's the difference between an entrepreneur and an operator.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, there's also a way as well that you've got to look what someone's got to work on the business, the verticals, and someone's got to work in the business.

SPEAKER_03:

I can do both of those. I can be a micromanager and get down into every single little detail, and I can also see it as I'm doing now a bit further on in my life. I can sort of see things and try and put some give some perspective for that for people coming through.

SPEAKER_02:

And how did Robin and the team sort of react uh every time you had a new idea? Let's do massages in the bar now. Yeah, I think you were a real creative sponge or highly inspired in your approach.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, we were very lucky because that first yo sushi, it was very busy very quickly, basically because it had robots and conveyor belts, and sushi was completely new and it was big, it wasn't some little restaurant, and and word of mouth just really, really went out. That was what happened, that we had enough money to be able to for me to do some of these ideas, and they would always try to be sensible. But I always say that the that first two, three years, the money was rolling in, and I was still running the company in those days, so the money was rolling right back out again. And uh, yes, we did massage in the bars, we had uh smoke extracting asteroids. I told the Times that when they legalized marijuana, we're gonna extract all the smoke into a special room and charge people to go in there, and their headline was Yo-Go's the pot. I mean, it was a fun period, you know. That that period at the end of the 90s, beginning of the 2000s, you could say things like that, and it was it was all fun. And uh so, yes, we did we did all of those things, and Robin and the team they would try to talk me out of things, and they did, they talked me out. There's the one they talk me out of, which I really regret, is I wanted to have a digital sign because I figured out digital voices that nobody else has done by then. I wanted to have a digital menu outside. You could sort of press the button, and the digital menu would tell you what was going on and what you could have and how it works, how to yo, and um, you know, people who have fun standing outside and pressing the buttons. Then when we were closed, I wanted it you to press the button and it said, fuck off, we're closed. It's a you can't do everything talking. I really regret not doing it. Was everybody and their mum would have come around, you know, after they've been out clubbing, you've got to see this thing, you know. And that's what I want in when I start something new, especially something retail, is that I just want it to be a super talking point. I want people to say, you have got to see this place, whatever, you know. And when we do go into a new area, what are they gonna do? What's if the sushi is like that and innovative, what's what's the hotel gonna be like, sort of thing? Or what's the uh the home your homes gonna be like? So that's what I'm always looking for.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, I loved it, I loved it. You're a really early adopter as well on that. You mentioned Ogilvy. I think they said there's not there's no statues of any committees.

SPEAKER_03:

That's that's true, yeah. Ogilvy he he I nicked that from him. That that uh you know, search all the parks in all the world and you won't find a statue to a committee. And as I say, you know, megalomaniac control of one or two people at the very outset is a really good way to start a business. Great big whiteboards with all your ideas on it where everybody can pull them apart. There's always you can always find a uh a reason not to do something, and sometimes sometimes you've got to do it and just work through the problems and tick things off as you go along. But so yeah, that but I did I did um actually in that book of you, I find a really good photograph of a committee. There's it there aren't any statues to committees, but there are in Russia. Russia's the one place that's got lots of statues to committees. Says something.

SPEAKER_02:

It does. I love this line, z the ziz in showbiz.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, that's right. Yes, that is one of my lines. Well, when I was in the theatre, I worked at Richmond Theatre originally when I first started off, and then at the stage manager at the Royal Court upstairs, and uh all the lobbies used to say, Oh dear, dear, dear, there's a ziz in showbiz. And so I used that and I said, you know, there may be a ziz, it was a bit like you know, yucky, but I said, Well, there's a ziz in every business in the world if you've just got to be able to find the ziz, and the ziz is what people talk about.

SPEAKER_02:

Any that spring to mind of today's business?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, there's there's lots of people who've done it. Yeah, Southwest Airlines in America were one of the great ones. And they used to get on the the pilots used to get on the tanlight at the beginning of the flight, and they'd say, they'd say, uh, this is the you know, we're we're concerned about your safety. And if we if we have an emergency landing, uh I want you to get into the brook prone position, which you put your hands on your head like this, put your head between your legs. And the reason we do that is that if I screw up the emergency landing, that way you can kiss your ass goodbye. I mean, they said that on a booming aeroplane. And uh, you know, they got a lot of attention by being outrageous like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Some of the talks I've seen you do, you're inspiring new generations. Who'd you speak to? Why'd you speak to them? Do you enjoy those kind of business conferences?

SPEAKER_03:

Very early on in the first few months, there was a convention thing that I went to, and they asked me to do a speech to a hundred people in a room, and I did it. I did it three times in a row, and it was rather good because I did it three times. All I did is I just told my story of what had happened to me. I didn't tell anybody what they ought to do, I just told stories about what I'd gone through, you know, pre-restaurants, really, and people liked it. And a public speaking agent came and he said, We can we can get you two grand a pop to go and do that. So I thought, well, that'd be good, you know. So I was just motivated by going and getting some money for it. And then, of course, you know, having been a rodeo, I knew all the rodeos by this time had got out of doing rock and roll and were doing conferences because that was the big thing. They used to I meet, used to meet these guys I'd work with years before. They said, How come you're on the stage? And uh, you know, I'd be up there, and then uh, you know, that's what I did. And I did that for for years, actually, many years. I pretty much told the same story with different things about what happened. And yes, as you say, people people said he's you know, I was saying I'm an ordinary bloke, and anybody can do it, and you get good at doing something if you do it lots and lots of times. And I went up to I did it at Edinburgh Festival and had how I got my yo. It was a me show after Janet Street Porter had done her own me show in the early days. But then I was very lucky because there was a wave of entrepreneurial things in the early 2000s, and there were lots of TV shows about you know the mind of a millionaire and the London's richest, which I wasn't, but I was on that show, and all of those things. And so I did a lot of TV and I did question time and and politics today, and this, that, and I got to be I got to be good at it. I got to be comfortable in front of the camera as I am comfortable with you, as you are indeed comfortable doing this sort of stuff and being yourself. And then Dragon's Den, Duncan Bannertine actually was the guy who I'd done quite a few of these TV shows, and we were both so tarts, you know, trying to get ourselves on uh the faces in the in the press. And he told me about Dragon's Den, and he said, You put your own money in. And I didn't, I think he just got some real money selling a part of yo. And um, so I thought I'm not gonna waste that and invest it in other people's businesses at the BBC fine for me. So I said, no. And then I kicked myself because everybody in our little world was talking about it. And one day I got a call from the producers and they said, We just made the pilot, and one of the dragons hadn't cut the mustard. Would you reconsider? Because we thought you'd be really good on it. And I said, Step this way. I said, Absolutely, it would. And so that's how I I I very nearly wasn't very nearly was the guy who turned dragons then down, and and things would have been a lot different. Because, of course, if you do get out and get on TV and get in these things and you can talk like this, um, you know, and people get to know you um and like you, they become your champions, and uh that's the way you build the thing. And I always said with public speaking that it was a bit like being a band in the early days, you know, you go running up and down the M1 or running around the world to do these gigs. If somebody sees you live, they really do feel that they know you on television a bit more, radio something. So the more you get out and expose yourself, as you well know, the better. And it's not just about your product, it's about you.

SPEAKER_02:

The 7114, have you heard that one before? No, I haven't heard of that. All right. So they say to get a conversion from someone, you need seven hours, eleven interactions on four channels.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, very good.

SPEAKER_02:

If I was to say, we're selling uh D2C products, okay. You see Facebook ad, you come to the website, you sign up for the email, you follow us. Uh you're almost at four straight away.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's very, very good, very good. I w I've just written it down actually, it's seven eleven four. I mean, my version of that was I called it the seven meeting rule. But rather, I never believed in the elevator pitch. Because people are intelligent, they know what you want if you want money or whatever you want advice or whatever. And I'd say don't try and get people to say yes. Try to get them not to say no and go to seven meetings or at least meet them in whatever guise seven times. And after and don't ask them direct. And after a while, people know what you want and need and say, Maybe I can help you on this. And that's much stronger than the pitch, you know, which you get one chance and they go, not really. You give some other picture, they're hardly gonna say, Okay, I'm in, you know, you've got to get to know them.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it builds a relationship, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03:

And yeah, absolutely. That's it's still about relationships.

SPEAKER_02:

Big time. Where else can we go here, Simon? I think we've covered so much. You're now 72.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, believe it or not, I'm actually I'm nearly 74. So the thing you know when you're getting older, when you you actually do tell people what your age is, and you and you're not embarrassed about it, you rather like it when they go, Oh, you're looking pretty good for that. So no, I'm I'm I'm a little, but I'm still at it, you know. I'm still doing something. We got a farm out here in Thailand, and I'm here living here with my my wife out here, and I travel quite a bit, and I'm in the UK quite a bit. So I have a have an interesting life, and I'm still doing things, and uh, we got a whole load of stuff we're we're doing at the moment. In fact, we're asking the public, should we or shouldn't we? If you follow me on the social media, yo or no is the question. Yo or no. So I'm still doing things, but I don't, I'm not in the front line as I used to be. And I'm always looking for young entrepreneurs who want to do things, you know, especially things that are yo things. Always on the lookout for people of the watching, yeah, very open to hearing. And people always go to me, they go, Oh, you're so busy, Simon, you're so busy, I'm sure. And I always go, No, I'm not. I've got time. I'd be I'm quite clever. I don't put too much in my diary. I even tell people to give me a call without an appointment so that I keep an empty diary. And and I'll talk to people who are up against it. Quite a lot of people call me and go, Look, I've got such good ideas and I've got all the effort, but I just lost all my money and. I just got divorced. What the hell am I going to do? And my answer basically is there's always a solution in this life. There's always a solution. It's just a question of working it out. So, and I like helping people to do that. In fact, I'm doing a we're launching an app later on next year called Yohoo. And part of that app is is a hundred-day start a business or change your life course. 1% a day.

SPEAKER_02:

And so when people will ring you up, is it here's the business or is it here's the mindset? Is it a bit of both?

SPEAKER_03:

It's all it's mostly about the person, mostly about you know getting to know that person and what they're like. But no, it's definitely it's about ideas. I love talking about ideas, and and I can be quite direct with people. And I always say, look, I don't really, you know, mostly I don't know. We used to say that on Dragon's Dem, we don't really know just because we've done other businesses. You know, you're the one, if you're in it, you're the one who knows the best. And I always say, you never ask somebody, should I or shouldn't I do it? That's the one question you should never ask. You can ask their general advice, and then as they, if you're a good listener, let them talk. And you may get something out of it. Take what you need and leave the rest. And I've I've got a filter. A lot of stuff people tell me goes in the rubbish bin. Some of it I'll listen to, so some of it I take advice. That's a good idea. I'm gonna nick that. May I steal that one from you? And so, yeah, I'm a I'm a sponge, and um, I suggest to everybody that you become a sponge, but don't think that they know better. You know best what's best for you.

SPEAKER_02:

And the hundred-day thing, one percent every day, is that starting with the end goal in mind, or just let's work 1% better every day? How's it how funny enough?

SPEAKER_03:

I was just talking to somebody about it the day, and he said, I've got I've got some really good business ideas, and I've I just haven't got the courage to leave my day job. And I said, Well, don't leave your day job. Absolutely don't, but spend the next hundred days doing the research on all of those ideas, putting some money into it, small amounts of money, you know, what or something, what whatever you can afford, put money into it, put time into it, work your 16 hours a day or whatever you need to do on top of your job. And at the end of a hundred days, it's a very interesting thing. If you're really committed and you really, really work hard at developing something and you know everything about that subject, at the end of a hundred days it becomes absolutely obvious whether you should do it or not. And either you quit and lose what you put in, quit and cut bait, I call it, or you go into go mode and you give it, put your notice in, you've got a bit of money that you've got, you've got to try and raise some more money. And you know, the question, of course, people always ask me, how do I raise money? And what I generally say, and there are lots of it's kind of obvious what you do is you friends, family, and fools, the three F's at the very beginning, and then if you can make something appear absolutely real, you can get investors if you if it looks like if you they might miss out if they didn't get it, that's a very strong way of getting money. But really, every entrepreneur, uh yourself included, I'm sure, every entrepreneur in this world has been through the rite of passage of raising money. And if you can't raise money, you probably shouldn't do it. It's a test.

SPEAKER_02:

What is your one golden nugget for life, Simon?

SPEAKER_03:

One golden luggage for life. Well, what I do know is that if I got asked that question on any day of the week, I could give a lot of different answers to all of those things. But I think one thing I would observe is if you're thinking of starting a business or making a big change in your life or doing anything that requires enormous commitment and your own money probably or other people's family or whatever. I mean, the question I would always ask myself is, or ask you, is why would you, if you've got a nice job and uh, you know, a good circle of friends and a nice family and all of those things, why would you give up all of that to have sleepless nights and stress and anxiety and all the rest of it? You know, it's um you know why? It's because starting things up and making big changes is not easy and it's not comfortable for all of us who've been through it. But if you've got a bit of grit in your oyster, I mean, even if you're a bit angry with the world or if you're a bit chippy, I think I was probably at a bit of a chip on my shoulder at one point. Um, you know, that's not such a bad place to be. It's it's okay to be like that. And if you've got a bit of grit in your oyster, then that those are the people who go off and do that in spite of the warnings I've given you about how difficult it all is. And I've never met the person, mind you, who went out to do what they really dreamed of doing and uh regretted it, regardless of what they were later succeed or failed, because you can always start up and try again. And but I met a lot of people who said to me, It said, Good on you what you've done. He said, I wish I'd taken a few of those opportunities. I wish I put my head above the parapet when I was younger because you know I had ideas and I wanted to do it, but I was always too scared to do it. So uh yeah, strike where the hands are.

SPEAKER_02:

Fair playing for the audience out there. Remember, Simon was still 47 before he went and stood in a different he didn't he got out of a different queue and just went his own way, went and roamed around as well. Simon, one other thing that's been on our radar just the last week is how a target on your back provides incredible motivation and takes you to levels you didn't think you could get to just because someone challenges you. Have you noticed that? And is there another way to look at it as well that just shows you you're not at this level, you're you could be three or four quite easily if you just saw it.

SPEAKER_03:

A target on your back. I never sort of looked at it quite like that, but it's rather a good that's rather a good thing of people, you know, competition and all of that. I have I have three rules, my three rules of life, which is don't take anything personally ever. So that's one. Don't try and change anybody ever. And the one that relates to your question is that everything always works out, always. Have to be patient with it sometimes, but things do work out. Um, and there's always a way around everything. If you've got a target and you're being gunned at, there is always a way around, you know. I like the image of go round stone walls. When a sort of showstopper comes in front of you and there's a stone wall, just go round the stone wall, pretend it's not there, and build golden bridges, you know, i.e., make it easy for people to help you and to like you, um, and have time for people. That's what I really do these days. I I try and have lots and lots of time for people, and it's amazing, you know, it's about relationships. People want to help people, and I used to be Mr. Busy, you know. I was I was always too busy for everybody. Look, I'll talk to you later, but I'm too busy now, you know. And it's actually important to have time for people, be a good leader.

SPEAKER_02:

Why can we shout you out? What do you want people to do? Go.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I've I've got a new um, I've got an autobiography coming out later in later in the year, next year. Um, it's called Yo Man. Uh, so keep an eye out for that. And uh follow me at social media. I'm I'm pretty active these days talking about stuff like this at yo Simon Woodruff. Simon Woodruff, W D R O D F E. And you can always, if you get lost, yo.co.uk is about as simple as you can get. yo.co.uk, and that's got everything on it.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, we wish you luck for that. And audience, please go follow Simon. Simon, one thing that I really admire about you is your your candor. You just say it how it is. In today's world, there's a lot of pressure to be someone else.

SPEAKER_03:

It's not been a strategic thing. I've always um I think I learned very early on employing people that where what people really want to know when they're employed is where they stand with the boss and where they stand uh, you know, good the good, the bad, and the ugly. I've learned to be very careful about what I say, you know, and not so much uh I'll I'll tell you how I feel and about things and tell you in in the first interview whether I like you or not. What I don't do is overpromise. And if if I don't like something or I don't think it'll work, I'll tell you candidly. I may be wrong, but I will tell you candidly, and people really appreciate it. I've learned to say no. That's what I've learned. I've learned to say no as well as to say, good on you, go through.

SPEAKER_02:

Great stuff. Well, listen, thanks for all the digital live bulb, live bulb moments. Thanks for your own today again. For the audience out there, it will come if it's coming. Anything can be sold, and we can work it out. See you again.

SPEAKER_00:

Join David and his incredible guests next time on the Success Nuggets Podcast. And to find out more, visit oneGoldenNugget.com. Thank you for listening.