EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Simon Woodroff e
sold his remaining stake in Yo Sushi in 2008 and has since moved into the hotel and housing markets
Very successful people even now have failures
been a gap in the market sort of person – is look at something you get really excited about. Because to do something like this you have got to work 12 or 14 hours a day. You have got to love it. Look at lots of diff erent things and something you already know.” Indeed, Woodroff e’s dedication and
long hours in the fi rst two years of business, after taking an interest in sushi from spending time in Los Angeles, earned him the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1999 and crowds queuing around the corner to try the new dining experience. But
even now, restaurant openings, after re-invention of 100 14 hotels
across three continents, an OBE which he received in 2006 as well as a radical
the
city apartment on the agenda, the one aspect he still wishes he knew when starting out is to expect and
prepare for failures. “I used to think successful people went around succeeding all day,” he adds. “Very successful people even now have failures;
O
Employ better and more expensive people earlier on and allow them to do things their way.
they get knocked over but they’ve learnt to pick themselves up and keep going. In fact, in Japanese there is no word for good luck – the equivalent is ‘keep going.’ “I didn’t start a serious business until I was
“Are they a diff erent sort of person? Do they have a diff erent background? Is it the U
thought – and I think I had this – that ‘I could do better’? You need the capacity to want to do something. When you’re doing it because you want to make lots of money or you want change it’s much harder to do.” And from that Woodroff e gives us his fi rst tip
for starting up a business: do something you have a passion for and already have a decent amount of knowledge on. “There are clever kids out there who conduct
business with each other and I call it the new bottom line,” he says. “And they’re not doing it to please shareholders but because they want to and that’s very powerful. “There are opportunities everywhere,” he continues. “The fi rst thing to do – and I’ve never
45 years-old. The forties are a fantastic age; I had lots of experience and quite a few failures. People who have failed are quite investible as they know not to make the same mistakes, whereas people who have had one successful business think they can do a second one. They always say the second is the most diffi cult.” It is this outlook on
shortcomings why Woodroff e believes the fear of failure shouldn’t get in the way of following your dream. Quite the opposite, in fact, as the tycoon even says you should actively seek fear to expand your comfort zone. “I went out and sought advice and I’ll tell
guy called Harvey Goldsmith is up there. So, I called him up and he replied, ‘How are you doing?’ I haven’t heard from you in ages!’ He was really friendly! I had the courage to call him up for a chat and it opened opportunities. Soon after I read a great line that to ‘follow your fear is to fi nd your destiny.’” “I have [also] never met a person who went
out to achieve something they really dreamt of doing and later regretted it – regardless of whether they succeeded or failed,” he continues.
“But there are lots of people who look back and say, ‘I wish I’d taken more risks.’” There are other little changes Woodroff e’s
made along the road to success. One of which is his mantra to ensure everyone else on the other side of a business deal feels comfortable, saying it’s ‘incredible what happens’ when being considerate before all else. We’re all human after all –and that is the case whichever industry you choose to start your new venture in. “I used to think that business is business,” he
says. “As time went on I realised people make decisions mostly based on human emotion – and I wish I’d known that earlier: that learning the skill of making friends, over-delivering on everything, doing exactly what you said you’d do and not always looking for the deal for yourself but giving people more than they could ever appreciate. That, I think, is the secret in later years.” He also learnt there’s no harm in sharing
Look at something
you get really excited about
the workload – no matter how hard that is in the early stages of the business – for longer term benefi ts. “I wish I’d have known to employ better and more expensive people earlier on and allow them to do it their way, not my way,” he says. “At the very start of the business I was a workomaniac – I learnt to do Sage accounting myself, I could even make the sushi myself so that I could
do everything.” After handing out more responsibility as
you what was a crucial moment for me: when I worked in the music business, I asked myself ‘who am I most frightened of in the world?’ A
time passed, before selling his remaining 22 per cent stake in Yo! Sushi in 2008, Woodroff e has funneled his concentration into coming up with the ideas. And for that, there are various sources for inspiration. “For me, all of my good ideas Page 11
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