E14: John Vincent - Building A Restaurant Empire

In Chapter Fourteen, I'm honoured to invite John Vincent, Co-Founder of hugely popular healthy eating fast food chain Leon. Having built an empire of 52 restaurants, I wanted to find out what drives him and the lessons he's learnt along the way. Tragically, John's father passed away a week prior to our conversation, and he discusses what his fathers influence has taught him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  John Vincent, co-founder and CEO of the European restaurant chain Leon, 53 restaurants and counting. This podcast is deep, it's introspective, personal, and at times it gave me goosebumps. John created Leon in his father's image. John named Leon after his father. And the week before I sat down with him to do this podcast, his father tragically died. When you dedicate your life to creating something for someone and then they die, how do you feel? How does he deal with the inevitability of bad news every second of every day that running 53 restaurants brings him? How did he build Leon?

• 0:44Steven Bartlett?

  What was the sacrifice? What is his truth? What does he need to tell you? This conversation with John has terrified my ego. It changed my perspective and it reminded me of what actually matters. You have to listen. Without further ado, this is chapter 14 and I'm Steven Bartlett. This is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:17Steven Bartlett?

  John, thank you so much for joining me. It's a great honour to meet you. I'm a big Leon fan.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, so Leon is my way of staying in shape and being good to my body. I'm living a very busy life and it was very interesting to read about the inspiration from Leon. I read that it came from you being left with very little choice as to what food you ate when you were having business meetings, is that correct?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  I was working, Hen and I were working basically as business consultants for a company called Bain and Company. We were advising a lot of boards on how to, you know, with their strategy. And we worked 80 hours a week, 90 hours a week. And, you know, the choice was cold sandwiches or it was fast food, it was late night pizzas, late night takeaway. And we were getting fatter and fatter, to be honest with you, and we were more and more ill. And so we thought, shit, there's got to be a better way of feeding people. I used to love McDonald's as a kid.

• 2:06Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  I remember being so excited that my mum booked me a birthday party there. I remember being, you know, on the floor in the hall, kicking arms and legs in it with joy that I was actually going to go to McDonald's. And then, you know, then I realized this stuff ain't good for me. So I thought, why don't we, you know, I'm sure people have heard about it, why don't, why can't we reinvent this stuff so it's just as tasty, but it ain't killing us? And that was the idea.

• 2:27Steven Bartlett?

  Well, thank you for creating it because you've actually helped me keep in shape while I've been running my business. Leon now has, is it almost, is it forty restaurants?

• 2:35Speaker 01

  I think fifty-two, yeah.

• 2:36Steven Bartlett?

  Fifty-two.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Fifty-two, including, I think, three in Holland.

• 2:39Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so fifty-two. Getting to that point, I grew up working in my mum's restaurant and I was seven years old and I remember scrubbing the floors and using a knife to take the old paint off the restaurant walls and then painting the walls through my summer. What I experienced from running my mum's restaurant, or at least one, you know, the salad bar,

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58Steven Bartlett?

  was incredible pressure and stress and, you know, you've got thousands, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of customers, some of them aren't very nice, complaining, immense heat in the kitchen as well. I hated being in my mum's restaurant. You have fifty-three of them. What's the hardest part about having fifty-three restaurants?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  I'm one of WhatsApp group called, two WhatsApp, one is called Risks to Trading and the other one is Emergency Comms. And on things like risks to trading, I probably, although I've dutifully turned my phone over, I bet you when I turn it over, there will be a pump that's broken somewhere on that WhatsApp group or a coffee machine which is eighty-six, which means it's broken. And the intense practical operational stress, as you said, you experienced on an important level, that is just replicated now fifty-two times. I do sometimes look at people who maybe run hedge funds or people that run internet businesses. And I do think, wow, what must it be like to not have those physical challenges that you experienced in your mum's restaurant? It is an incredibly difficult industry. And

• 4:08Speaker 01

  we, ultimately, our job is to work with people who are necessarily on living wage, often young people. And it is an incredibly tough job to, and I think we achieve it, but incredibly tough job to keep all of those people motivated when shit happens. Because I promise you that with fifty-two restaurants, there is something going wrong at any point. And that could be a small thing, or it could be a big thing. So I think one has to be zen about it at some point. If you become affected emotionally by everything that goes wrong and every mishap or every setback, then you could make yourself very ill running fifty-two restaurants.

• 4:51Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of people will make themselves ill over very minor things. Their boyfriend has uploaded a photo on social media. She, a girlfriend has liked someone's photo, you know, this kind of sort of like menial thing, which kind of allows you, you know, makes you think that unhappiness or at least some, you know, dissatisfaction is subjective. How have you learnt or become able to deal with so much bullshit? So much unpredictable bullshit at scale?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  I think the first thing to say is that it is never possible for me to suggest that I am some kind of guru or Jesus who does it continually. So the first thing to say is that anybody who attempts to disassociate themselves from that stress will find themselves failing at some point. That's the first point. I'll give you an example of that. My, my dad died last week, last Wednesday, and, you know, I was continued, as you would expect, to be affected by that. And my wife was talking to me about something to do with arrangements and also telling me that she had, her brother was coming a bit later that night with the family. And I remember looking down and someone had given one of our raps a three out of 10. And in that moment, with all the pressures that were going on with my dad, I got pissed off about it.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  And I ended up in that moment actually having a row with my wife about it. I mean, why I was rowing with my wife or taking it out on Katie because she was accusing me of not listening to the fact that her brother was going to be a bit late with her phone, I shouted at her, right? And I hate that. I actually hate the fact that social media pervades people's lives so much so that I cannot escape it. You know, as long as I've got internet connection, I'm going to be bombarded with shit reviews. I'm going to be bombarded with customer complaints. And I think to some degree, we need to recognize the fact that we are, with technology building ourselves a bit of a horrible world where one finds it difficult to escape from that. But having said that.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  I'm finding a lot of insights in the work that I'm doing with the Leon Wellbeing Director called Julian Hitch around understanding some of the Daoist, which is traditional Chinese philosophy, and some of the Zen philosophy that informs a martial art that I've been learning for the last three years called Wing Chun. And a lot of the lessons in there around Daoism and Zen, around disassociating yourself emotionally from the crap, I think I have learnt from. And if there's anything that I can suggest to any of the people listening to this, it's really to learn to die every day. There's a verse in the Dao

• 7:29Speaker 01

  de Qing which says, "Die every day", which means recognise the fact that we are all as low as water. The wave is not really separate from the ocean, if that makes sense. The wave looks like a separate thing, but within the next three seconds is going to submerge back into the water. And I think we need to recognise the fact that we are all like waves. We're all nothing. We're all as level as the sea. And I think that there's a certain mental ill health that has been developed in the West by thinking that we are something other than that, by thinking that we're somehow special, or the fact that we need

• 8:09Speaker 01

  to be different and special and disconnected from other people. And I think I find most comfort in realising how insignificant and reassuringly insignificant I am. And that helps me.

• 8:23Steven Bartlett?

  We live in a world where, as you said, everything is designed to make us feel significant, right? The sort of fundamental design of social media is to reinforce us in some way that we are what we said were smart, funny, or, you know, worth sharing. What, in your perspective, are the dangers, and you've touched on a few of them there, of our kids and your kids growing up in this sort of social media world?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's like, it's the old phrase, isn't it? If you put a lobster, or a frog even, into boiling water, it'll jump out. But if you slowly boil... Then it doesn't realise it's being boiled. And I think our kids are being slowly boiled and they don't realise it. And I went to a conference the other day where they were talking about how babies are going to be chipped. And that mothers and fathers will be allowed to have lower taxes and lower insurance. If they allow their babies to be tracked from a health perspective. Because of course it will reduce the NHS bill and of course it will reduce the policing bill if we know where everyone is.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  And I think we all have to recognise the fact that we will be sold in very, what seem to be very rational terms. Very economically viable terms to track our own health, to accept being monitored in terms of our whereabouts and our physical health. And I think we need to recognise that that's shit and that's not good. And I think that the dangers are that on the one hand, we will lose our freedoms. That I think are very dear at a practical and an emotional level and spiritual level for people to actually have freedoms. And the other is that we will start to believe our own storytelling and ego.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  And I think when you talk, Steve, it's really interesting about we are constantly, you know, told to create our own online brands. To curate our own online brands, you know, I know, perhaps when one of my daughters takes a photograph to go on Instagram. It's maybe it takes an hour and she chooses one photograph out of a thousand. That doesn't happen often. Sure. But I've seen that happen. And so therefore people think that what they see online is somehow real and true. And we pretend that social media is a window into truth. And unfortunately, it is a window into artifice. And the more artifice and lack of truth that we pervade and popularise, the more mental health disorders will be created.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  And I think it's based on the other idea, the fact that, you know, people talk about I and we talk about ego, we talk about the people that we are. But I think we need to recognise that we don't exist, by which I mean the Steve Bartlett or the John Vincent. They're both just constructs. Barack Obama, Barack Obama is just a construct. Barack Obama is a set of stories that have been told, a set of media imagery, media storytelling and.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  As we think about our own individual identity, it's worth remembering the we that we think exists is based on a whole bunch of myths that we've told ourselves. So first of all, we're in the car and someone says Steve, and then you keep hearing this name Steve, and you're like, fucking hell, this is getting ridiculous. They keep mentioning this word Steve. What is Steve? And then eventually you realise, shit, they think that I'm separate from them. That's weird. Of course, I'm not separate from them, but hey, I better start believing it. And then you go to school and they call out your name in class, and they say Steve, and you put your hand up. That reinforces his idea that you're separate. And they say, Steve, you've won the history prize. And you go, hey, Steve's good at history. Now, whether it's true, half true, or not true, you create a sense

• 12:00Speaker 01

  of who you are. It's mostly not true. The Steve that we have in our mind, or the John Vincent that we have in our mind, it's a set of myths, a set of stories that we tell ourselves. And we tell ourselves because we attach identity and constancy to it. What's the danger of us doing that? The danger is that we start to become very unwell, and we stop being happy now. So if I think about the major lessons, they are, do not seek happiness from a future occurrence, do not defer happiness to this magical island that exists that once we arrive

• 12:43Speaker 01

  at this magical island, we will be happy, and do not associate your happiness with money, do not associate it with fame, do not associate it with recognition from third parties. Because as soon as we put ourselves into a situation where we are deferring happiness into the future, we are clearly off balanced in the present moment. And if I look at the tribe's people that I meet, certainly the ones that I'd meet in Africa, and the ones that my friends have met in Brazil. They are rooted in the present moment. They are absolutely conscious and present now. And the problem with living your life abstracted online

• 13:27Speaker 01

  or abstracted in the future means that you are off balance and you are not getting fulfillment from the now. And you know, the martial art that I do in Chengdu is predicated on fulfillment coming from the practice, not from the result of the practice, not from one day I will win this fight, not one day I would have this glory.

• 13:47Steven Bartlett?

  I hear what everybody is asking themselves, which is, how do you be present? I read your Twitter bio and it says that you're taking a break from Twitter to be more present. So I was going to ask you about that. So how do I be more present in a very, very busy digital world where notifications are bombarding me and everything is about the future and making plans and schedules and things like this?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  So we're talking very practically, aren't we? Is that what you mean? Okay, so I think there's a practical element and then there's a sort of mental element. The mental element is to start by not valuing anything. So by which I mean, recognize the fact that ultimately, the very act of breathing, the very act of trusting our subconscious processes to drive our immune system or the process of making sure that we're breathing, only value that. So that will immediately put you into a situation where all you're valuing is the things

• 14:53Speaker 01

  that are literally within your own body. As soon as you value a prize that you might get or what a girlfriend might think of you, you are putting yourself in a much worse position from a point of view of your own mental health and almost act as if you're dead. And I think some people might think this is a bit strange. So I think people are going to have to bear with me here. But if you say, I am dead, I've died, it allows you to suddenly... Revalue the things you really then want to value. So if you start with a starting point that says nothing, nothing is of value, I am dead, you then start adding back the things into your life that are only the absolutely critical things.

• 15:35Steven Bartlett?

  And what are those things to you?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  On the practical side, I would say breathing is the most wonderful way of becoming present and physical based meditation. So some people may have downloaded the Headspace app, or some people might have found that, you know, those sorts of things in terms of meditation help. I would say from the point of view of what we've learned in Wing Chun, the physical movement, even literally walking and breathing and allowing your body and your mind to synchronize and breathe as you do it, something literally as simple as going for a walk and consciously breathing as you do and walk away from your phone, walk away

• 16:18Speaker 01

  from any devices and be in touch with nature, as in it could be a tree in a park in Manchester, it could be a small bush that you find on the estate where you live, but literally find something, it could be a small frog, it could be a spider, it could be a tree, but just observe that. That's a very practical thing that people can do.

• 16:41Steven Bartlett?

  How do you pair running a business which is, you know, making a lot of money and being an entrepreneur and pursuing scale in business with the pursuit of valuing nothing and not putting importance in things like money? So I remember a couple of weeks ago, one of the podcast listeners asked me a question. He works in a company at the moment and he's been on a journey of kind of figuring out what's important, meditation, and he's almost arrived at the point where he believes that what he's doing every day is to generate money and success, which he doesn't think is important anymore, but he's now

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Caught in that.

• 17:23Steven Bartlett?

  Caught in that. And he wanted to speak to me about what's important and, you know, he almost feels like he's become something or driving towards something that he knows won't make him happy. Yeah, so there's kind of two questions.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So I think what's really interesting is that

• 17:40Speaker 01

  The purpose of Leon is not deferred happiness. So let's take an example. Fuji had an objective to kill Kodak. That was their mission. A, that was future-based, and B, as soon as you've killed Kodak, what do you do then? Did you have no mission? And so the purpose of Leon is to eat and live well, starting with ourselves now. So the very purpose of Leon, the very mission of Leon, is not deferred to the future. It's something that we can start now, positively in the present moment. So everybody at Leon is not thinking our job is to increase the share price to X or the market capitalization of the company to a billion. That is not what Leon people think.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  And I think it's, there's a book called The Bhagavad Gita, which is a Hindu script, which has been talked about in a book called The Great Work of Your Life by a yogi called Stephen Kope. And I'd really recommend people to read this because what it says is that fundamentally, happiness and fulfillment comes from mastery, as I said before, and being in the present moment. Now, the money that Leon requires is the by-product of the mastery, and it is not the objective. And I'll give you an example. Henry and I, my partner, won an award called the Sustainable, I think it was called the Sustainable Business Award. And Sanjay Javed, who was, I think that was, excuse me if I haven't pronounced his name right, the business minister, stood up and said, oh, the purpose of capitalism is to make money.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  But oh shit, we'd better make it sustainable. And I realized as I was going up to accept the award, that it's like looking down the wrong end of the telescope. If we were a Brazilian tribe, we wouldn't wake up in the morning and think, I know, let's make money. And then once we've made money, we've killed the, you know, the ants and the monkeys, and we've poisoned the rivers, and we've chopped down the trees. Let's give back. Let's go to a charity auction, buy some, you know, Wayne Rooney signed shirt, and give back. That'll make us feel good, and we'll stick that up in our garage, in our mansion, right? We wouldn't think like that as a Brazilian tribe. What we would say was, let us protect.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  The purpose of our activities must be to protect the soil, to protect our lives, to protect the tribe, to protect the ecosystem. But we need to do it in a way which is economically sustainable. And that is how we need to think about capitalism. We need to look down the other end of the telescope. So your friend who wrote to you or your podcast listener are thought making money is the prerequisite for sustaining the good. So we need to start thinking about it the other way around. What is the purpose of the company? Is the purpose of the company noble? Does it make us support life on this planet? And does it support fulfillment and happiness?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And can we now make that financially sustainable as a second question? That's how we have to look at it. And that's how I'd encourage your listeners to look at it.

• 20:40Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. When I was 18 years old, I thought that life was all about me buying a Lamborghini. And I remember writing in my diary. When I'm before 25, I want to be a millionaire. I want a Range Rover to be my first car. And two other things which were equally as empty. And then upon getting to the age of 25, and multiple people have, you know, tried to buy my business and yeah, there's been a number of offers along the way. I found myself when I first got the first offer and finally thought, you know what? There's a chance that I could make a tremendous amount of money. I Googled cars and then I Googled big houses. But 25 year old Steve realised in that moment that cars or houses wouldn't add to my happiness at all. And actually, my fear was

• 21:25Steven Bartlett?

  that if I bought a nice car or a nice house, I'd actually be more unhappy. Because that would send me off on a path of

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 21:32Steven Bartlett?

  Not knowing what was important. What advice would you give to 25 year old Steve? About what he should be focused on? That isn't financial. And you've done it there, but if there was like one or two very specific things that I should focus myself on. Someone told me once that a lot of sort of purpose and fulfillment comes from like personal challenge. It comes from doing good for others. What are those things to you that if there was one thing, let's say, that I had to focus myself on? That's not buying a nice car or a nice house. What would it be?

• 22:03Speaker 01

  I think it's being liking yourself because a lot of people I know that are billionaires, they kind of hate themselves and they're on their mega yachts and they've got someone to walk their dog and they've got a personal trainer who they they see religiously every six months. And I think that unfortunately, there are a lot of billionaires that separate themselves. Either they separate themselves from their true friends, the friends that haven't kept up with them financially, and they end up in this rather sort of, I think, sort of sick kind of world of billionaires, if you see what I mean, all with the same values. And I would say being able to

• 22:47Speaker 01

  sleep at night and looking at yourself in the mirror, we have a, is it Ju Jing, a phrase in Wencheng called Ju Jing, which is face yourself. And I think the ability to face yourself with real comfort, and that absolutely does not come from money. Of course, if people are listening and they say, well, fuck you, I haven't got any money and it's fucking difficult. Yes, it's absolutely difficult when you haven't got any, but there's a threshold beyond which money does not buy you happiness. Money can take away some of the struggles that provide stresses to many people, but it's not a linear relationship after that point. The more money you have, sometimes there's

• 23:29Speaker 01

  a negative impact on your happiness. You start, there's something in the Kabbalah tradition called bread of shame, which is basically about if you've got money that you haven't necessarily earned, or it's come as a windfall to you because your business has been overvalued or whatever, you don't feel good about it. And bread of shame, people tend to spend on, I hate to say it, they spend money on cars or even hookers or whatever, because actually they don't feel spiritually good about the money they've made. And I would say that unfortunately, society has manipulated our fight or flight response, it's manipulated our fear response. And that when I was at P and G, which is a consumer products business, step one of the advert was create the fear.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Isn't it embarrassing when you've got dandruff on your shoulders? Isn't it embarrassing when people can see a sweat patch underneath your arm? Isn't it terrible when people come and see you've got a dirty kitchen? That is all, and step one was create the fear. So I think what your listeners need to understand, especially if they're young, is that adverts are trying to make them fearful. That's the purpose of the step, the first bit of an advert. And then people will pile in with the solution. Don't worry, you can have this anti-dandruff shampoo. Don't worry, it's got these amazing little micro pigils called, called some made up scientific name that means it's gonna work. So constantly we are being bombarded with advertising that is manipulating us. And I think we have to separate ourselves entirely from those sorts of images, impressions,

• 24:58Speaker 01

  and not let our ego be manipulated by those messages.

• 25:03Steven Bartlett?

  You touched on a second ago about hate. That three out of 10 you, you got for the raps from that person that reviewed online. Obviously not true, your raps are amazing. But that's beside the point. How do you deal with hate, not just online, but much closer to home? From friends, family? I imagine when you said, you know, to people around you that you were gonna start this restaurant, there was a lot of funny looks or people that were giving you false good wishes. How have you learnt to deal with hate? Does it go away at a certain level?

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Thank you, it's a good question.

• 25:40Steven Bartlett?

  Because clearly you've not quite managed to master it yet. What a total stranger said about your food, which you knew wasn't necessarily true. And you notice the internet caused you to have an argument with your wife.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I have to come back to the phrase of judging people's actions by their insecurities, not your insecurities. And it was one that I was told about 15 years ago. And it was really, it massively sort of rang true to me around how often our, if our response to hate is anger, then that really is our own fear which has caused that anger. And so I, in a moment where someone might say, hey, I've rated your rapper three out of 10. Oh, and by the way, I bet McDonald's could have done a better job. If I'm A, knackered, to be honest with you. B, hungry, maybe. C, there's so much other personal shit going on.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  And D, if I think things are unfair, I know that that's something which.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Triggers me. So I've got, there's something called the Enneagram, which is a wonderful personality profiling tool, which I'd recommend anyone listening to go ahead and look at. E N N E A G R A M. At the moment, number eight, which is protector or challenger. And so, and the protector or challenger doesn't like things that are unfair. So 80% of the time, the number eight is Nelson Mandela, and if triggered, they can be Saddam Hussein. So there is a, there's an element of, in my personality, for whatever reason, because of my makeup, my childhood, my development, or lack of development, I know that I can get angry if I think there's a lack of love or a lack of fairness. And where does that come from?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  I think that I can speak about, my dad just died. I think I mentioned that. Did I mention that? And I think that my dad was a man of immensely high integrity. At the same time, he loved his life. He loved, he loved poker and horse racing and snooker and sailing. And, and I loved him, and I loved the things that he stood for. And one of the, he was quite a gentle man, and quite a shy man. And often, I used to look back at him being sometimes overshadowed by people with larger personalities. And I used to think that was unfair. Does that make sense? And I used to think that certainly at work, maybe he was dominated by third parties, I think, or people with bigger egos than him.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  And I think there's an element of me wanting to become this number eight protector or challenger, almost to make sure that that doesn't happen to me. Does that make sense? Or almost trying to protect my dad, if that makes sense. And I think Leon, I think you've spoken in the past about potentially entrepreneurialism not just being something to admire, but something to pity, or something which is maybe an illness. I think that we all do things to maybe counter things that, or impressions and stories we've been inadvertently told as, as children. And I once sat down with an acupuncturist on a massage bed, and she said, wow, everything you do is driven by your dad. And I was like, oh, don't give me that kind of cliche bullshit. And I thought, oh, my God.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  The whole business is named after my dad. Do you know what I mean? The whole business is an attempt to say, hey dad, we can do this, our family can do this. We can have a business, we can grow something big. We don't have to be fucked over. And I think that probably some of the stories that I told myself as a kid, whether they were true or not, definitely wanted me to be the big Avenger. They wanted me to create something powerful and worthwhile, but something in tune with his values of integrity and fun. You know, I want people to look at Leon and go, shit, that's, they're the real deal. They've got integrity, but they're a fucking laugh. Do you know what I mean? And I love the food, they're fun, and they're creating a world that's actually worth living in. And the more, you know, even in the last week since my dad died,

• 29:34Speaker 01

  I've been thinking more and more, shit, I really did build Leon to be him, and to mirror his values, and yet to create something that he was proud of. It's only weird that until someone dies, you realise the energetic imprint that they've had on you, if that makes sense. And talking about death itself, what's your view of death? I think it's something which we are conditioned to be very afraid of in the West, as something we don't talk about. It's like pooing. Are you scared of it? I would say I am sort of midway between the two, as in, I definitely think that I suffer from the same psychosis or fear of death that most people have in the West.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  But when I travel to Africa, I feel, I might have mentioned this phrase before, but reassuringly insignificant. You know, when I'm out in, you know, and you cannot see any buildings and you can just see for as far as the horizon, 360 around you, and you can see the lions, you can see the animals and the insects, you see that insect dying there and that insect being born over there. I do find it reassuring how small and irrelevant we are. And I think that the more we attach ourselves to our self-worth, the more we fear death, because the more we tell ourselves that we are somehow separate from universal consciousness, or somehow separate from each other, or separate from...

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Sounds new age, but separate from the universe. And I think the more we recognise the fact that we are, that the apple is really not separate from the tree, or separate from the leaf, or separate from the root, or separate from the soil. You know, there's this great thing that says, yeah, Adam and Eve started fucking up when they started naming things as separate. So the tree was separate from the apple. And reality is not. It's just part of one thing, the same way as I mentioned before. The wave is not separate from the ocean. And for me, conceptually and physically, when I'm sailing or I'm out in a great expanse, I find death much less frightening, and much less of a thing to be scared of.

• 31:42Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. I wrote in my diary this week, what you're scared of will define you. And we're all scared of something. Most people are just scared of the wrong things. When you hear that, there's two questions I have, which is the first is, what are you scared of? And how do you think what you're scared of has driven your life?

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Really fascinating. I think that's a really hit the nail on the head there, both in terms of, you know, being scared, what is what defines us plus we're scared of the wrong things. I think we had a Leon Wellbeing event in January, and we went around the room and said, okay, what would your superpower be if you could have one? Because in effect, a superpower, to some degree, is the thing we'd like to have to counter our, what we are scared of, right? And I said, my superpower would be the ability to flick a switch and to get business people, politicians, individuals, whoever, to switch from acting from fear and ego, to switch to acting from love. And that is the thing that I am most scared of.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  I am most scared of big companies and big governments, and we see it happening in

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Quite a few governments in the world quashing love and quashing freedom and quashing spirituality and humanity. And I see organisations making the wrong decision because the organisation is fearful or because they're not valuing the individual or not valuing love. And it sounds like a very macro thing to be afraid of, but it is the thing that angers me. And of course, if it's angering me, it's because it's coming from, as I said before, fear or scaredness that I have. And that is the thing that frustrates me most about the world, when newspapers write things that are not

• 33:36Speaker 01

  true and hurt people emotionally or they without any remorse. So I think it's people acting without love and people acting from fear or greed or ego, the thing that scares me most because it scares me on a human level and it scares me on a kind of socio-political level, because I don't know how we're going to get out of some of the shit that we are in if institutions like that don't act from love. On a more granular level, what keeps you up at night? I think that sometimes I suffer from stress that affects me at a physical level.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  And sometimes I literally don't feel very well at night. So I feel at my best when I am not in the UK, when I'm on a small island in Greece, or I'm in Africa, or I'm in Brazil. Those are the times that I sleep best at night. And I think that I suffer, and this is why the Win Cheng, the martial art, the Kung Fu martial arts is doing so much for me, is I literally physically sometimes feel so exhausted that I can't sleep, if that makes sense. So for me, I don't have worries that go round in my head at three o'clock in the morning. I find that I'm having a physical response to. The thousands of small things that have accumulated through the day, if that makes sense.

• 34:57Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  How about you? What keeps?

• 34:59Steven Bartlett?

  What keeps me up at night? I guess it really depends on the week. A lot of the stuff that keeps me up at night is fear of not reaching my own potential. Which is something that I think there is so much that I could be doing and there are so much that I need to do. That I don't wanna sleep because I could use that hour to fix one of those problems or to achieve one of those things. I'm generally not a warrior. I have no credit of my own, because I've not done anything to create who I am, really. I don't tend to worry about things too much. I think that derives from a lack of fear of losing it all. I'm generally not scared of losing it all. I I came from a place where I had absolutely nothing. And I was fine and happy then, so I feel okay with going back to that place.

• 35:41Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not okay with other people losing their jobs, but I'm okay with losing my own, if you know what I mean. And I worry about really petrol and things that I imagine all like CEOs worry about, you know, how someone in the office feels or someone hands in their notice at work that might get to me one day and stay with me for a week or having to dismiss someone might literally keep me up and thinking for weeks.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  If I have to get rid of someone who I know is not performing, but I really like.

• 36:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  That has kept me up at night or not.

• 36:08Steven Bartlett?

  In the last year, that's the one thing that affected me the most was someone that had been with me for a long time. Having to go and see them and to let them know that they wouldn't be in the team anymore. Was the one thing I can cite as giving me the most, I'd almost say anxiety, to the point where I found myself laying in this little thing, I have the little bathtub hot thing I have on the terrace at night time. Trying telling myself to focus on the leaves.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:33Steven Bartlett?

  Because I just needed to like center myself and be more present because I was thinking too much about the future. And that's never too good.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  And did you, well, having done that, would you find it easier next time? Or did you, was it more than easy?

• 36:48Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, I've done it multiple times and it doesn't seem to get that much easier. I mean, from the first time till now, it's it's definitely easier, but it's still incredibly hard.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:56Steven Bartlett?

  So that's one of the things that I just hate. It's the worst part of my job.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  And then just very quickly, I know that this is about achieving your potential.

• 37:01Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Do you think it's possible to achieve your potential?

• 37:04Steven Bartlett?

  No. And one of the things that I've I've posted up on my Instagram, I think it was yesterday in fact, was I've learned that I have to be at total peace with the fact that I will never get there. In fact, there is the journey and therefore I am already there.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 37:21Steven Bartlett?

  I'm trying to live. This has probably been something that I've really embraced over the last six months. And everybody that follows me on Instagram will know is really believing in this idea that I'm already there. I'm already enough. I already have everything that I want and need. And being completely honest, I've always known that I was there. When I was eighteen and I was shoplifting pizzas to feed myself in Moss Side, which is notorious for all the gun crime and living in this shithole with no electricity. I was really happy.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  How do you shoplift a pizza? That's clever.

• 37:53Steven Bartlett?

  You go in, what you do, you walk in and you go up to the, straight up to the person behind the till. You ask them something because then they don't think you're scuttling rum bags trying to steal pizzas. Then you go get the pizza. Yeah, and you're just as smart as you can. So like, I, you know, I would never steal. It was just because I would, I'd not eaten for like days on end. So I would go into takeaways and hope that someone had left some scraps there and take those. It was just tough times, you know, but the point was I knew I was as happy then as I am now. And that's one of the, the things that I'm most grateful for because I didn't pin my happiness on attaining something. But I was told by Instagram and these new influences in the world that I would become happier or, you know, something when I got money and stuff.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  People have to understand that there are so many unhappy people who have, I cannot tell you. I spoke to someone the other day, she said, I have killed myself online. I am so happy, right? She said, I've, I won't say who it was because she's reasonably well known.

• 38:46Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  But she's like, that person, person X is now dead and I couldn't be happier. Do you know what I mean? In terms of the stress of, the stress of having to be this person. The stress of having to post these glamorous shots that were all fake. He said, I hated it in the end, but I'm so much happier now. I'm hopefully going to be nobody again. And I think that that's what people need to understand. There are a great, you're talking about, you know, if I think about some of the things about wanting, needing to have a simple life, a life that's focused in the present, recognizing the fact that you can, you can do anything, but you cannot do everything. And I think that anyone who has creative, achieved lasting fulfillment has achieved it by just saying, This is who I am. I'm really cool with it. And I'm not trying to be these other seven things I could be.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Because we're so imaginative. We imagine the banker, the John that is running Greenpeace, the John that is playing at Glastonbury next week. All of those are valid, parallel universes. We could possibly, I couldn't do the Glastonbury thing. We possibly could do any, or maybe on the triangle. We could possibly do any of those, but we can't do, we can only do one of them. And I think that finding peace in that and finding simplicity and replacing fear of missing out with love of missing out, I think is definitely the way forward.

• 40:01Steven Bartlett?

  And it's also the thing that I've come to sort of investigate in myself is, why do I want to be John at Glastonbury playing the triangle? Is it because that's what would give me fulfillment? Or is it because I've been somehow told that being John at Glastonbury would make me happy? And it's the same almost, I think, with entrepreneurship and why I think, I personally don't think it's for everybody. I think that I, part of the reason I did this podcast is because I want to make sure that the people that follow me, that I know that are just not, this would, my lifestyle and what I do would not make them happy. I want them to know that it's not all roses and wonderfulness and happiness. Like, I'm happy because I'm doing me.

• 40:45Steven Bartlett?

  But in doing me, if you try and do me, you might lose you.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 40:51Steven Bartlett?

  And that's like, and entrepreneurship has been glamorized. I remember that, you know, the Social Network movie.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 40:56Steven Bartlett?

  You see Mark Zuckerberg there, billion users, all this money, all these things. Do you think entrepreneurship is for everybody? And explain.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  The short answer is no, but I guess it depends what we mean by entrepreneurship, because if we say entrepreneurship is.

• 41:09Steven Bartlett?

  Your life.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Is.

• 41:10Steven Bartlett?

  What you do.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  I would say I am.

• 41:13Steven Bartlett?

  At the scale you do it as well.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  I would say that entrepreneurship, if it's defined as imaginatively creating new opportunities and innovating, I think anyone can do that without having to be John Vincent. And you can do that by being a P A to a marketing director. You can do that by being a salesperson, working in a factory. You can be the person that puts their hand up and says, hey, I've worked out a much better way of making this widget. That's entrepreneurship. And I think that at the very.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Least, society should offer everybody the opportunity to be entrepreneurial in that way, the ability to contribute, the ability to be creative, the ability to be listened to, to be an intrapreneur within any organisation or any business. And I'd love everybody to be a leader. I'd love there to be six billion leaders in the world where everyone puts their hand up and suggests ways to make things better. But that doesn't mean to say that everyone has to be the person that starts a company. And I think you're absolutely right, and I think you've alluded to it or said it explicitly, which is, the life that I lead is purely the product of my history, what I love, what I'm scared of, what I want my superpowers to be. And I think it's really dangerous to have role models sometimes.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  It's really dangerous to think, I'd like to be like Richard Branson, or I'd like to be X or Y.

• 42:38Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things I think, and you've just said it there, is that my generation and younger generations, because of we live in the social media echo chamber, are confusing admiration with aspiration.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  That's a good point.

• 42:49Steven Bartlett?

  So they look at Mark Zuckerberg and think, I want to be Mark Zuckerberg, but you're not Mark Zuckerberg. Your brain is not Mark Zuckerberg's. You weren't brought up in the same way that caused Mark Zuckerberg to have the internal desires.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  And also, would you want to be Mark Zuckerberg right now, being called in front of Congress and Parliament? Explain why you didn't admit that 50 million users have been nicked.

• 43:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  I mean, trust me, I cannot tell you how unnecessary it's kind of be careful what you wish for, right? It's a phrase which is be a good version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else. I think he's absolutely right. And yeah.

• 43:22Steven Bartlett?

  What's the cost of being John Vincent, CEO of Leon?

• 43:26Speaker 01

  I think I'm a, I hope my kids aren't listening to this, but I want to die a little bit earlier than I think I would have done. I think the stress that it puts on me is probably meaning that my cells are reproducing not as perfectly as they should be. I think that my gut health isn't as good because I'm stressed, I'm killing all the good bacteria. So I think the cost is a very physical and emotional one. And I sometimes wonder whether I am, I sometimes find it very difficult. People might be very surprised by this, but sometimes I find it difficult to feel good. I sometimes find it difficult to not think of myself as a failure. And that doesn't happen often. But you know, you have to check yourself, but I have, there are times when I think shit,

• 44:08Speaker 01

  I'm such a failure. I haven't got fifty two restaurants, or I still haven't achieved X or Y, or I still haven't got the freedoms that I wanted to have. So I think the cost is physical, and the cost sometimes is like a bit like you were saying about fulfilling your potential. I sometimes have to tune way back into the lessons of Wing Chun or Taoist and Zen philosophy in order to stop myself not feeling down about what I haven't achieved.

• 44:37Steven Bartlett?

  Katie, she's your wife.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Nice girl, yeah.

• 44:40Steven Bartlett?

  I read about how you met her. She was wearing a fake wristband. She said.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Your research is good.

• 44:46Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, ain't it right? You said to her, you've gate crashed, but I won't throw you out if you snog me.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:51Steven Bartlett?

  I think if that was.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  You're fucking me, you're, you should have been forty, am I six, man? Or maybe you are, I don't know. Oh, look, isn't that funny? She just texted me. She says, oh, she says, what would Helen write like for her birthday? That's not very profound, is it?

• 45:05Steven Bartlett?

  But you've been married for fifteen years, and this is, I guess this is my last question. But married for fifteen years, doing what you do, and all the stresses and all the bullshit, that's unpredictable. Every time you look at your phone, she might be, as you said, talking to you, and you might be a million miles away because you've just received some news in your emergency WhatsApp group about something's on fire. Does she understand what's the impact that running this business and running businesses like the one you run has had on the relationship? And speaking more selfishly, as a single guy that's failed in relationships, I think because I run a business, what advice would you give to me? So three questions, but answer how you like. So does she understand?

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, that's what the second one.

• 45:48Steven Bartlett?

  Second one was, what has been the, the impact on the relationship because of early on? And the third one was advice for myself. So let's start with, does she understand?

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Katie is the most amazing person. She is a broadcaster, journalist, business person in her own right. She's got her own production company. She presents the prom. She used to be an ITV newsreader. She's a DJ on Radio Three, presenter. On Radio Three and I couldn't, you know, she's been on Strictly, she's done all sorts of stuff. I cannot, she's the most amazingly wonderfully spirited and talented person. And so she has her own adventures, right? So it's not like she's there dutifully cooking for me when I go home. So I think it's, she absolutely is of a similar spirit to me. So she totally gets it and she totally understands. Is there a buck coming?

• 46:45Speaker 01

  I think there's a buck coming. Yes, yes, you can see it. I'm sure there are times when she thinks, oh, John, please just relax and stop, stop going over the same stuff in your mind about, should I do this? Should I do that? I definitely allow my business life to pollute my home life. And I would like to be more disciplined about that. So I've tried locking my phone in a little red metal box on a Friday night, right? I've tried saying, right, I'm going to clear all my work stuff out of the study at home. But my brain is always thinking and it's often thinking about work. And so I think her frustration is she will literally say, oh, what shall we do tonight? And she has to ask me four

• 47:28Speaker 01

  times because my brain is just thinking about a business problem. I would love for that not to be the case. I would say for you, I can't, I haven't got much, unfortunately, I haven't got many silver bullets for you. But I think suddenly you will find a woman who fits, who's got her own confidence, interests and strength of character, so that you are a partnership of equals. And I think you'll find that. And I think you'll find that they will love the bits of, they'll recognise they can't love you in slices. So, you know, Katie says, look, I know I can't love you in slices. I know that, you know, living with

• 48:11Speaker 01

  you is fun. I know that living with you is high intensity. I know that living with you is rewarding and I'm going to put up with. The stuff that pisses me off. And I think it comes back to in relationships, the same thing we talked about earlier, which is a lack of perfectionism. Some people have like a list of 10 things that they want a partner to have. And I think most people do well if you get five and a half. And I think understanding that and that there is no perfect partner, there's no perfect person, there's no perfect relationship. I think both of us love each other enough to recognise that.

• 48:46Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much for your time today. I know you're incredibly busy man with your 50 year restaurants and I've taken more of your time, I should have, but it's been a really interesting conversation. How have you found it?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Amazing. I think you're a really nice guy. I think it's fascinating the journey that you're on and it mirrors so much of, you know, the journey that I'm on. And I'm sure that, you know, I'd like to reciprocate and interview you at some point because you sound like an amazing person.

• 49:09Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much. And I will leave all of the links and stuff of where to find you if anyone wants to reach out and contact you. It's been an absolute pleasure and you're a very fascinating person. And I think I've learnt quite a lot, or at least built on a lot of the things I was thinking from having this conversation with you. So I appreciate it.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 49:27Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much for listening to this chapter. It means the world to me. If you can, please do subscribe to the podcast and you'll be notified the minute it's released. I'm often quite bad at letting you know when it's out on my social channel. So this will give you a bit of an advantage. Also, if you have a couple of seconds, please do leave a review for me in the app store. Everybody that reviews the podcast and tweets me, I promise you, if you leave your handle in the review, I will get in touch.