EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Woodroffe Simon
Exclusive Interview
Getting over fear is the fi rst step to success, says the Yo! Sushi founder and former Dragon…
Setting off on your own in the world of business is a diffi cult gig. But for Yo! Sushi
‘horrendous’
founder and former Dragons’ Den investor, Simon Woodroff e OBE, the hard way has always been the only way. In 1997, recovering off the back of a divorce,
the 45-year-old
entrepreneur opened the first Yo! Sushi restaurant in Soho, bringing to London its fi rst conveyor belt sushi bar featuring call buttons, robot drinks trolleys and self-heating plates. A brand with which in subsequent years he managed to forge a business empire expanding into the hotel and housing markets. “I had lots of ups and downs in my life [before
starting up]. I had just got divorced – that was pretty horrendous – and I thought if I don’t do something now, I’ll lose out and I could become a really miserable and resentful person,” he says. “So, I thought to hell with
it. I’m going to give it a go. I left school when I was young and I didn’t really have any qualifi cations to fall back on. I didn’t set out to do sushi – I looked at lots of things. I attended quite a few of those Tony Robbins-type courses on how to be a millionaire.” Woodroff e’s dreams of making it to the
to prove myself,” he says. “I was always a bit of a show off , really. As a schoolboy, I used to tell people I would be a millionaire by the time I was 20.”
I thought,
to hell with it, I’m going to give it a go
But Woodroff e wasn’t a millionaire at 20. For that, he would have to wait over double that time after spending 30 years in the music industry, where he was involved in designing and staging concerts for artists such as Madness, The Boomtown Rats, Rod Stewart and George Michael, before setting up his Yo! Sushi empire.
“I think a lot of people have
big time didn’t just stem from his mid-forties, though: “If you go right back to growing up, we had a big family: some of them were rich, some of them weren’t so well off and I wanted
those thoughts,” he says. “If you have a nice comfortable job, a nice group of friends, a supportive family, and enough money coming in to support yourself, why would you set off to do something really diffi cult, which will cause you sleepless nights, as well as the chance of losing everything that you have to date?
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Keep a O
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