Pret a Manger & Itsu Founder - The Biggest Mistakes I Made Building a Billion Dollar Brand

Julian said every mistake he ever made boiled down to two things...

When you lose sight of these two core relationships...

Product <> Customer.

Simplicity <> Complexity.

Get these right.

LITERALLY everything else falls into place.

ON THE MENU:

• How to Scale from 7 to 17 to 70 Sites… “70% of issues you’ll face is losing focus product and customer”
• Founder Mode = Just make the product better. Never stop making your product better. Complexity is Organisational Cancer. Constantly find simplicity in complexity.
• Barnacles on a Boat Rule: constantly remove complexity.
• Why Simplicity is HARD, complexity is EASY.
• ITSU’s Unique Hiring Policy, the 4 qualities
  •     I care
  •     I take pride
  •     I want to grow
  •     I build trust
• Why Product is always bigger than the founder and the team
• ITSU Character Qualities
• Be thankful
• Be there
• Be accountable
• Be brave
• Be there. Stay close to your customers, always.
• Never let bad negative energy get in the way of pursuing excellence
• Brand Building is a very simple formula: customers + product ripped up lost touch of simple formula of product & customer
• Be objective and truthful about your product + Inconvenient truth: your product is everything
• Human energy oils the wheels of the machine
• Seth Godin: This is crap = this is I care
• Why you must stick with hard that’s where Excellence is built