Why Teams Fall Apart and How to Fix Them with Kevin Gaskell, Turnaround CEO

Most leaders talk a big game. Strategy, vision, culture. But when things go wrong, they panic, blame the team and start cutting costs. Today's guest does the opposite.

This episode is about what actually works. Clarity, accountability, hard work. No? So if you want the actual truth about leadership, not the LinkedIn version, this one's for you.

Foreign.

Welcome back to Business without bs, the alternative mba.

So today we're learning for someone who makes a habit of fixing the impossible with straight talking lessons from boardrooms, oceans and even the polls, Kevin Gaskell, who's taken Porsche from the brink to the top, grown BMW UK profits by 500%, not a misprint, turned around.

Lamborghini, built and sold multiple companies and somehow along the way has rode both the Atlantic and the Pacific and set the world record of both, I think. Both. Both, I mean, of course. So, yes, it's fair to say you've done a few things. So, Kevin, welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you. Great to be here.

Kevin, it's really impressive, all the things you've been doing. I mean, maybe let's just start with a fun bit. So is that. Is that your latest achievement, really, to row. Row the Pacific?

Yeah, that was the latest adventure. We finished in June or July, I can't remember now, last year we beat the world record by 20 days, which was very exciting. And it was, it was tough.

In fact, it was really tough.

Tough is getting up in the morning. This is like, this is murder. I mean, remind me, what is it? It's two hours on, two hours off.

For two and a half hours on, one and a half hours off this time, new shift. Because it was a. It was such a tight race and we were racing a bunch of professional rowers.

Oh, there was a competition.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Race. I mean, you know, you're racing your own class for, for the world record, but in our class was a. A five man from the American special forces.

And, and so we're racing them and whilst we got on grays in the harbor. Once you're out at sea, it's. It's no holds barred, you know, you go for it.

But how long? How long? So two hours off, one and a half hour off, flat out.

For two and a half hours rowing.

Yeah.

Then you get one and a half hour break.

But how many weeks is that then for?

So the world record was 52 days.

Yeah.

So you don't, you don't stop doing that for as long as it takes. But we smashed the record and did it in 32 days, which, which surprised us because we were aiming for 45 days and we did it in 32.

That's an enormous difference.

Yeah, huge. I was the. I think it's the third fastest crossing ever. The organizer said to us, so if.

It's the world record, it's the fastest.

Crossing for our class.

For our class.

There's a four man and a five man class.

Right, right, right. So you were in the five man.

We were a five man class.

Five man. So it's you, your son, three other people.

Tom, Stephen and Patrick. Yep.

And all in excellent condition.

I guess they were all in excellent condition. I'm an old man.

Not that old apparently. I mean that's remarkable. I mean and the like you, you alluded to it then you're all good friends at the harbor. It gets pretty tense between you.

No, what I meant was we were all good friends with the American special forces. But once you get in the water then the mind games start and, and they, they closely tracked behind us.

Oh, did you, you could see them a lot?

No, you can't see them? No, they're 50 or 80 miles away.

Ah.

But we knew they were keeping up with us and we were going as hard as.

You see the little dot on the map, can you.

On the digital map we can talk to Bass and Bass tells us we can't see them. But, but base is watching with satellite tracking.

Do you think they were doing the same split two and a half hours? One and a half? I don't know.

I don't know. We didn't ask that. But they were sticking with us.

You gave one to the Americans though, which I'm always happy to hear with my Union Jack underpants.

Yeah, they broke at about day 20. At day 20, they, they started to fall back and we just kept going. But it was really tough. Really tough.

What you get out of that, the most out of that experience. What is the thing that really you learn from it? I guess.

Well, I, I mean it exposes you as an individual. So you, you need to be in a team of that you've chosen for their attitude. Fitness is one thing.

You know, we're in a little 20 odd foot rowing boat and there's no support. People think we have some support vessel. There's nothing. Yeah.

What do you have? You have a satellite phone for emergency and this little bit at the end of it that you lie in for one and a half hours shaking.

That's a little tiny box at each end of the, of the boat that we climb into and we can get about 45 minutes sleep and then you're back on the oars because you want to eat as well and use the toilets and, and might be some fettling on the boat and you speak to base to get a weather forecast and then you're back on the oars.

How'd you get, I gotta ask, how'd.

You go to the toilet? It's a bucket. It's a bucket. Sit in a bucket. Or if you want to pee, you use a bottle, pee in a pee bottle and pour it over the side. That's it.

And it makes. 45 Minutes is never enough sleep for you to get any proper deep sleep, is it?

So doesn't that, isn't that detrimental in the end that you, you're going, your brain's just going mad and your performance goes down and yeah, it's trying to,.

Trying to find the optimum of maintaining the speed of the boat and maintaining the human. And we go nuts by day 20. I, I went barking. I mean, I, I.

And you know, it's as well as you start having hallucinations and seeing things and talking nonsense. I was talking nonsense very. For the last 10 days.

That's a horrible feeling. Do you remember it or.

Yeah, I remember it quite clearly. And you kind of. The other side of a wall, you can see reality but you can't relate to it. And, and your crew members.

I'm with my son and he's watching me and, and he said to me, he said, we were watching you because we, at times you were so nuts, we were afraid you're just going to jump overboard and just.

You were just babbling about anything.

Were you talking total bollocks at times and, and you kind of know it and you think it's real and it's very confusing. It really is. And for the last 10 days, if you've ever had a migraine, where you get the colored lights.

Oh, all the time.

Yeah. Well, I want it every day. Every day. All I could see were these jagged lights. So your body gets hammered and it's.

Even last 10 days. Not the last 10 hours, not even the last 10 minutes. Like 10 days of that.

Well, that wasn't the worst bit. The worst bit was I had a fall with about a thousand miles to go on the boat. The boat's very unforgiving. It's GRP and you fall.

GRPs are plastic or something.

Hard plastic.

Yeah.

Fiberglass.

Yeah.

And it was, it was a big C. And I fell bang on the. And I bashed my nose and blood everywhere. But I hurt my arm. I thought oh, blimey. I bashed my arm and it didn't get any better and broke it.

No, what I actually done was I snapped the tendon off the bottom of the bike. So. So my bicep squirted up here, up to my shoulder and I could still row because when you're rowing, I mean, it hurts. It was, you know, stung a bit.

When you're rowing, you're using your delts and your shoulders. But I couldn't hang on to the safety line. I couldn't hang on to anything, so I couldn't use it. And a thousand miles of rowing with that.

But nobody cares because everyone hurts, you know, everybody is in a lot of pain.

So you're going to sing the song? Yeah.

So what are you going to do? Just shut up and get on with it.

Do you know, it's so interesting too, the how much the human body can take because we live in these such sort of artificial worlds really, don't we? It's the whether you do the Wim Hof or whatever. It's all of this sort of realization that what we're capable of. My brother does extreme running.

He'll go and do 100, 200 mile races and he just seems illogical. There's a wonder thing if you've ever looked up pedestrianism. Absolutely hilarious.

I don't know what that is.

So people were huge spectator audiences. Someone walked the whole country and they would walk every hour.

So they'd walk for 15 minutes and then fall asleep for half an hour and then they walk. Anyway, compared to what people do now, it was nothing. But it was like it was sort of re, you know, what's possible and they're all placing bets.

It was a real sort of. And you listen to that and it's very amusing. And you look at what people are doing now.

There's just been this explosion, hasn't this sort of extreme activities. And I just. For me, I find it fascinating why someone would do that, why you would put yourself through such intense pain. But it's for.

It's for the mental. For the what, making life easier or.

Well, I'm involved in five companies, right, and I'm very, very busy 20 hours a day. I'm focused on my businesses. So to go away for a couple of months is a.

A Luxury, you have to plan it a long time in advance and make sure obviously covers in the business and then. But to go away for a couple of months is a luxury. But you go and focus. You go and do something like Rowan Ocean or climb out to whatever it is.

You can't be thinking about the business and so it puts your mind in a different place. You're in the here and now.

And I have a very good friend, guy called Pete Goss who's single handed Vonde Globe Sailor and he said to me, Kev, it's like wiping the hard drive. You come back and everything runs slick and all the noise is gone because you've let it go. You don't, we don't worry about all the peripheral stuff.

You just focused on what you're doing. So for me it's a, it's, it's a reset and I just, I miss, I mean I'm looking forward to the next, I have no idea what the next one is.

I've just entered myself in a 300 mile bike ride. But it's only a 300 mile bike ride and it's, I wouldn't bother.

I don't, I don't know why you.

Bothered but it's only three days but it's through some mountains and it sounds epic and. But I'm, I'm kind of thinking I need a, I need something else to give me that distraction.

Is it that ultimately being an entrepreneur like you are is quite an extreme sport in itself. And you clearly five companies, you're doing it this incredible intensity. So you have to find something else even more intense.

Yeah, I think so. You've got to take yourself out of the businesses otherwise it drive you nuts.

And I've been doing it a long time and I've been a CEO or a chairman now for 35 years. So I've been, I've been a CEO or chairman for longer than I wasn't a CEO or chairman in my life. And it's draining. You know, it's very challenging.

But you need to maintain your energy, you need to maintain your passion. So every now and then, you know, people call it a sabbatical. My sabbatical is to go off and do something extreme energetic. Yeah.

You've been involved in turning around lots of businesses. Porsche, not least. What do you think are generally the reasons of a failing company?

Leadership. Lack of clarity. Lack of clarity of strategy is number one. Where are we going? Where are we going and how do we get there?

And I had that conversation with one of my CEOs an hour ago where we were talking about the future of the business and he said, kev, we need to sit down and really nail down what that future looks like, because I can achieve that with a business. But you need to. The target needs to stop moving. And we're moving because the market's changing and we're a growing business.

So we're quite attractive to other companies who might want to come and acquire us. But you can't wait for that to happen. So you've got to decide where you're going. And so the biggest, the answer to your question is clarity.

And leaders being honest to that clarity. Yeah, and living that clarity. So everyone realizes that this is not just some conference logo. This is reality.

This is where we're going and we don't know how we're going to get there. I'm not suggesting everyone knows how to get there, but we'll work that out along the way. I climb that mountain. I know the job is to get to the top.

I'm not exactly sure which rocks I'm going to cross on the way up, but when I get to them, I'll pass them.

Is this sort of. You've got to boil it down to a really simple mission statement. We're Porsche, we will make the best sports cars in the world.

Or is it more detailed than that?

It starts at that kind of broad level. The phrase we had at Porsche was, we're going to provide a world class experience. That's what we said. We need to change the experience.

Because the day I was appointed out of 32 brands in the market, we were number 32 for customer experience. And you've got people who, I've spent 20 years, 30 years, 40 years dreaming about owning a Porsche and we weren't giving them the experience.

We give them the car, but they expect the brand experience around it.

Right. You weren't turning up and there was the big cloth off or everything. It was kind of like, here it is.

I mean, that's part of it, but it's also the. How do we deal with you? How do we arrange your finance? How do we. Yeah, just the whole thing, it's just got to be slick. It's just got to be crisp.

If, if, heaven forbid, the car fails, we have to make sure that we, we don't, we don't damage the brand experience.

The business that you mentioned, you were talking to your CEO earlier. What, what, what, what's that business out of interest?

It's an industrial company.

Okay.

Yeah, Telecoms. And it's doing very well. It's growing very quickly. Seen as one of the top 100 technology companies in the UK which was very nice.

Amazing throughout the Sunday Times Fancy dinner recently where they gave us very nice prize for being, you know, a very successful business. But, okay, so we're 10 years old and we're successful to now, but we've got another hundred years.

So it's a hardware manufacturer, is it?

No, we. We build fiber networks.

Okay. And so for that, in that example, it's, you know, we're going to be the best fiber deliverer or we're going to be. What would be your.

What would be your target in a business like that?

To have the right connection for every client.

Nice. And so you've got to start there with the clarity to yourself of what you're going to achieve and then communicate it, I guess.

Yes. And deliver it.

Okay.

And make sure that, you know, the guy or the girl who were out in the street actually connecting a customer understands that they are the point of contact for our brand.

It's all very well, me having a big sign and being in the Sunday Times and blah, blah, blah, but your reality is when somebody comes here to connect your new fiber, it's gotta be right and it's gotta work perfectly immediately. Oh, and by the way, when we tell you it's going to be 21 days to install it, it's gotta be 21 days or less.

And so it's about recognizing that price people will pay. Price is not a number. Price is an experience. And people will pay for that experience. But we have to deliver that experience.

If you're in a business, what are the red flags? I mean, you haven't got clarity, but are the obvious red flags if things are. You can see that it's not going to go well.

Yeah. Dissonance amongst the leadership team.

Dissonance.

Dissonance. If there's noise, if they're not. If they're not agreeing with each other, if there's back chat, if there's.

I'll tell you this quietly when he's not listening. No, no, he kind of thing. In this room, we are a team. You can say whatever you like.

We can disagree about points, we will debate points, we can argue about points, we can argue which way we're going, but once we agree that that's the way we're going, we walk out of this room and we all go that way.

And how do you know if you've got the right people in the room or you're not missing someone? In the room.

Well, you know, I've got the right people in the room by their. By their attitude. You know, hire for hire for attitude, train for skill. It's about attitude. I can teach you. I can teach you to be an accountant.

You've probably got a few basic skills now, but I can teach you to be an accountant. But if you haven't got the right attitude, you don't fit in the team. So we need people who, you know, go back to the boat example.

We need people who will get out of their bed five minutes before they're due to be on the oars, even though they've only had 45 minutes sleep. And we'll get back in that seat, back on those horses.

I feel sick even thinking about it. It's just some people at 4:00 in.

The morning, oh, my God. When they're freezing cold.

You've got music. I guess that would be my only.

Sometimes some people don't like music, so sometimes we had music, but it would wind some of the other crew up. They didn't want it. So you need somebody you'll get out of their bed five minutes before they do on the oars, who will sort themselves out.

Who will get out of that cabin when. When it's wild and you. You can't walk. And they'll find a way to get to the seat and exchange with somebody else.

Pacific. I mean, just the wildest waters. I mean, just the largest gap of ocean there is.

Yeah.

Largest expanse. Unbelievable.

And you've got swells bigger than this building. And you're going up and down and. And somebody's got to get in a seat without a word of complaint.

Fastening, strap on and get rowing every two and a half hours for 50 days without a word of complaint.

Well, luckily you did in 32 days. So that was a bad. It's the swells, too. I mean, you're falling out the boat, aren't you, trying to get in your seat.

Yeah, we had one day where we got knocked down seven times, where the boat rolled seven times in one day.

You must just find running businesses easy after that, isn't it?

It's a different kind of challenge. Yeah, but it is still about teamwork. It's still about trusting the guy who's next to you.

Do you establish the culture around the table like some tables might be? A lot of humor or no humor, or do you think you always need these elements like we always need to? Anyone can say anything. So we're gonna.

We're gonna listen.

We're gonna laugh. I think you absolutely need honesty, total honesty. And you can't have an environment where people are afraid to speak.

Inclusion.

You've got to feel included. You've got to feel part of the team. You've got to feel valued.

You've got to feel that your voice has an impact and is accepted, and your ideas are as relevant or as pertinent or as valuable as the next idea. And you've got to be part of that team. It's a team culture.

And what you do, if people. Okay, there is all that. How do you make everyone believe. Again, if you're sitting around a table and it's dissonance.

Well, then I. The way I approach is I take people off site on one by one.

Or everyone.

No, no, we go together, always together. We go off and we do something together.

So I had one business where we had a real row in the boardroom, and the business is in real trouble, and we had a very difficult board meeting, and people were going at each other, and I was the boss, and I realized there was a frisbee. For some reason, there was a frisbee on the cupboard on the side. And I said, right, stop. Stop now, stop.

Everyone looked at me and said, come on, follow me. I took the Frisbee, went outside, we had a bit of a lawn, and we just threw this Frisbee around for half an hour, laughing and joking.

The staffer watches out the window, thinking, what the heck? You know, and just that break, I said, right, now let's go back in and play Frisbee again.

But with the business, let's go back in and pass something to somebody else so that they catch it. You're not trying to make them jump over there to catch this thing.

I'm trying to give you something that you can build upon, and then you can pass it on. And he builds upon, and she builds upon, and we create something together. It's just us fighting won't fix this business.

It's the andor improv theory. It was invented, actually, by a lady trying to help some very troubled kids and getting the talk again, like, 100 years ago. But it's.

You don't say but.

Exactly.

You say and.

And.

Yeah, yeah, great point, Kevin. Really appreciate. You know, my brother's very good. This great point. I was thinking also, yeah, build upon. And that's the frisbee play. Basically.

It's just letting people realize that their job is to help their colleague. You're not competitive with your colleague. If our job is to throw this frisbee around between us and it never hit the ground.

Then my job is to throw it so you can catch it, not throw it, so you have to dive and miss it. And same in business. My job is to pass something to you so you can catch it and deal with it.

I'm not trying to trick you, I'm not trying to catch you out. It's not clever. And if I see that, then as the leader, my job is to deal with that.

So the starting place would almost be. If there is arguments at the table, if the numbers aren't doing well for the business.

It's the first bit of Frisbee plays to all decide what are we really trying to achieve here. Is that the starting place? Like what is the clarity? What is this company about?

Yes, yes.

And then you establish that. You write it on the wall. No, you, you just.

Oh, absolutely. Right on the wall.

Okay.

I think when I'm the CEO, when I'm chairman's different CEO runs a business, right?

Yeah.

But if I'm the CEO, I will draw up a plan, a paper plan, handwritten, where we, we. We write out what are we setting out to achieve. What's the goal? What other principles will apply to do that? Well, we'll do this, that and the other.

We believe in this. We'll always be honest. We'll do this, that, the principles. And then the third piece is a series of priority activities, but it's just very visible.

And then you stand in front of that and talk about it and it brings the conversation back into focus instead of going off and talking about, well, our business in France. We haven't got a. No, but we haven't got a business in France. Let's not spend our time talking about it. We don't have one.

But let's talk about logistics in the uk, which is where we have a business and where we have a challenge. If you want to talk about business in France, let's do we have a beer tonight? But it's in here. This is the plan we want to deliver.

Do you find, because I see this sometimes, that HR issues, issues with staff members and people love to talk about staff. You find that sort of takes over sometimes, or how do you manage that?

It's it. I work on the basis that if I've got a senior team around the table, if they're complaining about their staff, they're complaining about themselves.

Because your job is to support, mentor and train those staff so that they are successful. You don't come in here and moan about one of Your members of staff or one of your members of staff or one of my members of staff.

If you want to have that conversation, that's a private conversation. But you don't do it in an audience.

No.

You know, everybody is somebody's mother, father, sister, brother, son or daughter. Everybody. So treat people with respect.

Yeah.

Show people respect. And the funny thing is, they'll pay it back to you threefold, fivefold, tenfold, show people respect. We don't do anything without a team.

Don't achieve anything.

It's powerful, isn't it? You have to sometimes think quite carefully about what is to pay someone respect, isn't it?

Because sometimes paying someone respect might be to challenge them.

Yes, Sometimes. I spoke at a conference in Florida a couple weeks ago.

Big event, 3,000 people in the audience, and I'm the cook who walks out on that stage, and for an hour, I'm on that stage, and I have to command the room.

But I filmed all the support crew, and I walked around and filmed them, and There were about 10 people backstage driving the AV, driving this, driving that, driving the whole thing.

And I will post that on social media just as say, that audience is watching me, but they're not watching me, really, because all that stuff that's going on behind me and all the sound and all the videos and all the lights and everything, there's a whole team of people around here making that happen. And let's recognize that. And it's the same. That's a business. In our business, recognize the people.

I know. It's like when you're in a restaurant, you've had amazing food, just sort of tell the waiter, isn't it? And I mean, now often the.

The chefs are upstairs, but I hate it when they're down in the basement. I always sort of try and go and say, thanks, that was great. Yeah, you smashed it. And it's so often they're like, oh, thanks very much.

You know, it obviously doesn't happen all the time. It's like, I always feel I'm tipping the wrong person.

Two most powerful words in business. Thank you. I say to people, try using those words. Thank you. Use them three times a day. Thank you. That's it.

Sometimes I'm sorry.

Like, I'm sorry I got that wrong. Yeah, sorry. Tell me again, I got that wrong.

So powerful to admit you make. Making mistakes. It's a bit like, I love to find out I'm wrong about something. There's a. There's a. There's a piece of us all that we want to Be right.

We sort of can't help it a little bit. But if I got something wrong and I realized I'm wrong, that's great, because I learned something.

Exactly.

It's like, oh, I move forward here.

You know, when we try and drive a business forward, if everything's under control, you're not going fast enough. That's the reality of it.

Great way of putting it.

And. And when it's not completely under control, things will go awry. Something will go offline or it'll go wrong, or something won't quite work.

And when I build a culture, I try to say to people, that's great, because that means we're pushing it to the point where we're learning so we never lose. We either win or we learn. And when we learn, let's fold that back into the business and adapt and use it elsewhere.

You know, my job as a leader is to create the culture that is catching people in, not catching people out. Too many people think it's clever that they watch the business operate and something goes wrong. Aha. Look, look, I saw this.

Yeah, points.

Yeah, don't make a noise about that, mate. If it goes wrong, go and have a quiet conversation and explore it with the individual. What? What. What happened? How did it work out?

What have we learned from that? Where you make a noise and you speak loudly is when it goes right. And that's when you go. And you go, whoa, look at this.

Because everybody else will say, great, I want to be the one who's at the middle of the. Look at this bit. Whereas if you make a noise when it goes wrong, all people say is, do it yourself, Kev. Do yourself next time.

Criticism is cheap, isn't it Ridiculous? It's. It's so easy to get it wrong. It's so hard to get it right.

It's pervasive. You know, when you. When people say, oh, you. He's never happy. Well, people stop trying to make him happy. You know, my boss is never happy.

Well, then I won't give 100, I'll give 80. Because if I give 99, he won't. He won't be happy, so why bother? No, no, say thank you. Celebrate the wins.

Use the, the losses as an opportunity to learn. That's it. Not complicated. So I. I believe there's a big difference between motivation and inspiration.

Because people say, oh, people call me when I. I speak. Oh, he's a motivational speaker. And I say, well, I'm not. I don't stand on stage and go, rah, rah.

Rah.

I say, this is how I run businesses so that we become successful.

And if I can invite the team to come on the journey, come on the journey with me and let's create something that's world class, let's truly set out to be world class, let's understand what that looks like. Let's paint a picture of it. Forget the numbers, numbers will follow. But let's paint a picture of what success looks like. Will be like this.

People will see this, they will hear that, and they'll feel this. That's a picture of success. And then I need everybody to be engaged with that.

And if everyone's engaged with that and understands where they play a part, so we commit to something, then we connect people to it. And the third piece is create, and that's Create magic.

That's the culture where people feel they're making a difference, where they feel that they're being listened to, where they're being respected.

And if you can get that, commit, connect and create together, where they overlap, the Venn diagram in the middle, that is inspiration, because that's when people on a Sunday night think, great, I'm going to work tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to recording that podcast because I enjoy doing it. We've got an interesting speaker coming in.

I'm really looking forward to it. Instead of thinking, on a Sunday night, oh, work tomorrow.

And so our job as leaders is to create that triumvirate of we're committed to that, we're connected to it.

This is where I make a difference and we create this magic, which is the culture, because I enjoy working with you, because I know that you and I together can achieve something special. And Dee just makes it super special because he's the guy who knows how to do it. Technically.

Yeah.

It's about engaging people by trusting them. I give you the authority to make change, but I give you the accountability to deliver that change.

So authority and accountability are different, but here's the plan. We're committing to that. We're connecting. That's your part. And we're building a culture between us, which is creating magic. Now go do it.

I trust you to do it.

Yeah. And you say authority, accountability. Yeah, of course they're different, but they're part of. If you get authority, you get accountability.

They connect.

Yes. So I give you the authority. You know, people say, oh, nobody lets me make a decision. Make it. I give you the authority to make the decision. General.

You've got the authority. Make the decision. If you make it, you're Accountable for the result.

That means you're scared of making a mistake.

No, it means that you feel responsible for delivering an improvement.

And how do you deal with the mistakes?

When people copy, that's when, if it goes wrong, we go and we talk about it. What do we learn, Come back and go again. Not every idea in business is a great idea. Not everyone. Not every idea for improvement works well.

But if we stop people having the ideas, we'll never improve. So we want to encourage people, inspire people to use their bit of genius to create something special.

You know, we've all seen these big name business leaders. Oh, he's a genius. Oh, no, he's not. No, she's not. No, they're not.

The best leaders are genius creators because what they do is they align people around a plan and they coordinate people to a plan and they engage people with that plan. And you know, they say 5%, everyone's at least 5% genius. At least. Einstein's 65%, everyone's at least 5% Genius.

So if we've got clarity, come back to what's the first thing? First thing is clarity. We've got clarity where we're going. And I can get 20 people together to be clear to deliver that goal, whatever that goal is.

I got 20 times 5%. It's 100% genius because the knowledge is in the room. I led the turnaround of a boat business. I know three parts of Bug are all about boats.

In fact, I probably know two parts of a robot. I know nothing about boats. Forget the rowing boat. These were big boats. Least expensive boat was a million dollars. Our most expensive was $10 million.

And the business had made losses for 10 years. 10 Years. It had gone through 13 rounds of redundancy. The banks owned it. The banks had the keys. And banks are probably pretty good at being banks.

They're rubbish at running boat companies, right? So they called me and they said, kev, can you look at this?

Because we think it's kind of like Porsche, it's super premium product, it's high net worth individuals. You're selling an experience. We think this brand can be resurrected. Would you have a look?

So I went into this business and I thought, you know what, you could do something with this, you really could. Because the passion for the product amongst.

The workforce was enormous, even after 13 rounds of redundancy.

But they were terrified. They were terrified. And I, I joined a CEO. I went back to being a full time CEO, which I'd never done for years before.

Quarter past four one afternoon, and I just stood on a scaffold platform at the front of the factory and had a microphone. I said, hi, I'm Kevin, just introduced myself, I've just joined us CEO. And the noise started and I said, whoa.

I said, we're all here with the same objective, which is to make this business great again. I said, what's the problem with this business? And somebody said, you are. I said, I've been here four days, give us a chance.

They said, well, not just you, but the people before you who didn't know what they were doing and didn't let us do the right things to build great boats. And I said, well, I'll give you, I'll give you the chance to build great boats, but let's build a plan together. And we built a plan.

It was a unionized business, so it was pretty challenging. And that first day in that meeting, I was standing with my production director, I basically just met who's 6 foot 4, scouts this wide, big boy Joe.

And I said to him, I said, joe, stay close because we're going to get slapped before we get out of here. And the people expressed their frustration and their fear. They were fearful for their jobs. And I asked them what it was that was really critical.

And I got Joe, production director and Colin, who was my finance director. And we stayed that night in the office, a couple of pizzas sent in and we worked out a new bonus structure, a new pay structure.

And when the guys came on shift in the morning, we were already there. The front of the factory with a screen set up, PowerPoint presentation, good to go at 8 o'. Clock, I think we probably got two hours sleep.

And they walked in and they went, wow, what's going on? And I said, you asked me questions yesterday, I've got a response.

So presented them with a bigger pay rise than they expected that, let's knock that one on the head. There's a bigger pay rise than you expected, a bigger bonus than they asked for. And so really positive reaction to that. I said, but here's the deal.

I'll pay you that bonus, but only if you build the boats to proper world class quality. So we used to Build boats on a line and then we had another line where we corrected them. I said we'd get rid of the correction line.

We're not doing that. You build a boat to finish first time, first time.

It's quite dangerous what you're doing there. For a business that's struggling, how did it find the extra money?

It wasn't about extra money. They knew what needed doing. I invited them to make the changes.

So the handwritten plan on the wall and the ideas walls where we captured ideas and the team transformed that business. We're back in profit in 14 months. 10 Years of losses. Back in profit in 14 months. And they were so proud of what they were building.

We went back to having an open day where they all brought their families in to see these amazing boats. And they hadn't been doing that for years.

And it's about recognizing that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results if you give them the opportunity to do it and create the culture for them to be successful.

What do you think all these other CEOs were doing in that business?

They were telling the guys how to do it. They were cutting costs. They invested in a separate factory, call it the wood factory.

$10 Million boat is a big plastic hull with a five bedroom house and two big engines inside it. Right. And the five bedroom house is made out of wood, made out of plywood mostly.

And the company had invested lots and lots of money in building a, a wood factory to cut these pieces of. But no two boats were the same size because these are handcrafted. And so these pieces of wood were being made and they didn't fit.

And in the old days the guys would handcraft them. So they fitted and it just didn't work. And we spent all this. And I said, well, mothball a factory. Mothball a wood factory.

Yeah, but that was 20 million quid. I don't care. It's killing the business. Mothball it now. Let's find a way to do it differently. And we went back to more handcrafting.

I mean, some of these things had amazing marquetry and it was beautiful stuff. Went back to handcrafting, making it right. The skills were there, skills were there. But we changed the process, subcontracted some units.

Instead of building wiring looms inside the boat, we built them separately. There was a whole big rig for building a wiring room. We just standardized some of the processes.

And so the cost of boats came, the manufacturing cost of boats came down and we were able to market the boats better.

Some of it, when you talk about it's about hard work, though. You stayed there all night, you delivered in a day.

Yeah.

What you could have got said, look, I'll come back to you in two weeks and I'll have lunch.

But everybody does that, don't they?

And so you're just trying to show them you're not everybody.

So My first job CEO was Porsche, and I was 32 years old. I was green as grass. I didn't know what I was doing fundamentally. I kind of had an idea where we should go, but I was green.

And there was a network of CEOs, and it still exists. They changed the name. I can't remember what it's called, but local CEOs, you get 10 of them and they're part of the Newbury region.

And then you have some in Oxford, Whatever, whatever. Remember what this thing's called now. Anyway, I joined that and you have a professional mentor who, professional chair who chairs this group.

But you're passing ideas, and I'm the youngest in this group. I'm passing ideas between all these experienced entrepreneurs. Everybody wanted a sounding board or people just wanted to come and talk about things.

We'd have a speaker. Anyway, the mentor of that group said to me, kev, sometimes you gotta send smoke signals. Smoke signals get seen from a long, long way away.

And so I learned that sometimes you have to send smoke signals. So that that little bit of theater of turning up in the morning, being ready to go with an answer, a smoke signal.

First impression, first impression, who's this bloke? And people says he's going to do.

Something, does something, does something, actually does it.

And the funny thing then, of course is people are not afraid to give their idea because they think, well, if he listens to me, we might get the stunt. And it's a snowball effect. Then the ideas come flowing.

And in that particular business, we had ideas walls all around the business where people could record their idea. And then we'd go and stand in front of these just big sheets of paper with ideas on.

We go and stand in front of them, we discuss them and we take the ones that we thought would make the biggest, quickest improvements and we put them into practice. And so people believe.

So before we crack on with the show, please consider subscribing to this wonderful channel and to our mailing lists@withoutbs.com you get free weekly classes from the best minds in business and free downloadable resources that strip away the jargon and give you the real world lessons. You don't get a business school. Thank you. Do you think you always have to outwork everyone.

So it's a personal thing.

There are far, far better CEOs and chairman than me who can do it in much lesser time because they're smarter than me and they'll have ways of doing it. I counter my lack of intellectual capacity with just working harder. I just. I'll be the.

I'm not always the first thing because I tend to go to the gym first thing in the morning, but I'm always the last out. I'll be the last out of the business.

What is it? 1%? 1% Inspiration? 99. Perspiration?

Absolutely. Absolutely. It really is. You show me a successful entrepreneur or a successful business leader who doesn't work hard and I'll show you a rarity.

I. I agree from all the clients and people I work with. They work hard.

They work hard.

In this international world we live in. Are you concerned that we don't work hard enough in this country anymore?

There's a big question. Listen, I. I'm not a political animal, right? I. I'm kind of middle of the road. I want to see good schools, good hospitals.

I want to see welfare for people who really need it.

But I do struggle when I hear that 6 or 8 million people, or whatever the number is, are on welfare benefits or don't have a job and sick notes are growing and people are queuing up to get an ADHD diagnosis. I just think, oh, come on, come on. Put up with a bit of discomfort. Sometimes you got to push yourself.

And then the accusation is, yeah, well, it's all right for you guys. I accept that I'm at the upper end of the income scale. Of course I am. But I've worked hard for it and I'll pay my taxes.

I've never skipped a tax in my life. I will pay my taxes. But don't keep telling me. Don't keep shouting in the press and politicians shouting.

Those with the broadest shoulders have to carry the most load. I already carry the most load, guys. Yeah, I already pay tax at 50%. I already pay capital gains tax. I already pay every.

I already pay it when the stats are there. When you look at it, top 1% pay 20 of the tax. 55% Of people take out more than they put in, which is fine, but.

It's not fine, is it? It's not fine because it's not sustainable.

I think the hard work thing is really interesting that it's got to a point that nobody wants to say, but you just look at the competition internationally and how Hard they work. And you just think, you know, why are we at a stage now, like you say that we struggle with this as a conversation.

You couldn't, you couldn't have in the press, people need to work harder. You couldn't have a Prime Minister who stood up and said, everyone needs to work harder.

Well, Alan Sugar said it, didn't he? You know, he said working at home, whatever his words were, but working from home is basically taking the mickey.

And he got accused of being a capitalist dinosaur.

That's what I mean. You can't say it now. It's like, no, you leave me alone. Unproductive.

Yeah.

I mean, but is a. Is a boss. You can lead from the front so you can work hard and set the culture.

Yeah.

I mean, we find it difficult, but you don't want people having to work all hours. You almost want it. It's that sort of getting that balance with people who want to work really hard. Great.

Sure.

If you're, you know, you've got to get home, you've got kids or whatever, but I don't know, they're difficult. They're difficult things now to talk about. Whereas 50 years ago you could.

Yeah, I absolutely believe people should go home at night. You know, I'm not, I'm not of the school that. If you're not still here at 7 o' clock bent over your desk. No, I don't want to see you here.

4:30, Go home. And by the way, when it's the kids school play or the kids sports there, go, just go. And don't even record it. Holiday.

I know you'll put the hours back somewhere. I don't want you to take half a day to go and watch your kids run in a race. It's an important part of life. Go do it.

I want to have that kind of relationship where, where there's trust in the business that people can feel. Kev, tomorrow I'm not here at 2 because the kids. Yeah, fantastic. Okay.

And trust them to put the, Put the effort back in.

I do. And if I trust them, I think they'll trust me.

And it's sort of. You get down to the work smarter, don't you, when you come to work.

Work, yeah, exactly.

Which is almost part of the theory of the four day week is that you sort of say to someone, oh, I don't want to know about your doctor's appointments anymore, you've got Friday.

But.

But when you're here for four days, work your butt off. Yeah, I mean, I get some of that theory But I think that's nice and that's the right way to be, I think.

I think it's always in life, then you get the people who take the piss and then it's sort of, what do you do about that? But you know who they are, probably.

Sure. And as a leader, your job is to deal with that. If you've got people who are taking the mickey, then that's a mentoring and a. A tutoring opportunity.

I speak at conferences, as I said, and then I frequently get asked, when I talk about the kind of topics we're discussing now, somebody will pull me quietly aside afterwards and say, can I just ask you a question? And I kind of know what the question's going to be. And it is. I'd love to do that, but my boss won't let me. And I say, well, ignore him or ignore.

Ignore him and do it anyway.

Just change the way you operate to have clarity, to have your own plan for your division, your department, your team, and do it because when you're more successful, more efficient, more effective, your boss ain't going to complain.

No.

The reason when you ask them, they say no is because they don't understand it or they're afraid of change. Just do it.

I agree. What did your parents do?

My mum's a hairdresser. She's still alive. She was the village hairdresser.

Nice. What's her name?

Pauline.

Pick up, Pauline.

And my dad is power station engineer and worked his way up through power stations to run a power station. It was great. It was. It was a. It's an industrial situation, industrial environment.

And from the age of 16 through to 21, while I was at university, every summer I'd get a job there for six weeks, because in those days they take on casual labor, you know, we do anything, gardening, painting walls, whatever it was.

You could go in there for six or eight weeks of the summer and I was being paid like £100 a week, and I thought it was the richest guy in the world and I loved it. I was in there with the guys, the working lads, and I was learning about life from these blokes who, you know, it was a real world.

And listen, I come from a working class family, but when you're working with blokes, as it was, you learn a lot and you learn to kind of stand up for yourself because they'll take the mickey and this and the other. And my dad was the boss, so they knew my dad was a boss, but they also knew he wasn't going to come and Rescue me.

So, you know, one guy once had me against the wall, and whatever misagrement it was, I can't remember, but I do remember him having me against the wall. My dad wasn't going to come and rescue me. But what they did say, which was nice, was they all said, your dad's a great guy. Your dad's a great guy.

That's lovely.

And I said, why do you say. They say, he's just dead straight. He's just dead straight. And he'd come off the tools and, you know, he started off as a mechanical engineer.

Mechanical. And he'd worked his way up through the ranks. And I said, you, dad's great. He just says it as it is, no noise, great guy.

And I thought, I want to be like that. I want to be like my dad. And he'd talk to anybody. That was what he did. Teach me. I have a colleague who says, 10 up, 10 down.

And I said, what's that mean? And she said, you need to be able to speak to people who are 10 rungs above you on the social ladder or 10 rungs below you on the social ladder.

She said, 10 up, 10 down.

I think it's a beauty of our culture when you meet in Britain, when you meet people from other cultures, One of the things they'll say is, like, I love the way you all talk to each other, like, with equal respect.

And I think. I think as. As a leader, you've got to be seen to be open and approachable.

I. I visited an office today that I hadn't been to for a long time, and there's new staff in there. So the first thing I did when I dropped my bags was walk around the office and say, hello, hi, I'm Kevin.

And you don't walk in and say, hello, I'm the chairman. I always joke. And the CEO's secretary is called Georgina, and everyone knows Georgina. And people said, well, what do you do?

I said, I work for Georgina. All right, okay. Georgina runs our lives, you know, so you just go and show humility.

You just go and be normal and be friendly and be open and ask people about them and about their lives and show an interest. And that's how I believe you build.

Is that how you get the clarity when you're sitting around that table trying to work out what the company does, you go and talk to everyone at every stage of the business?

No, but you gather the information in the first place, and then as a leadership team, you set the clarity. But then your job as a leadership team is to cascade that clarity through the organization.

So you did the Pacific. I mean, it sounded like the other crew was maybe an elite crew. How do small teams win bigger? I guess. How does a little business be a big business?

Comes back to clarity, preparation, focus. So how did we go? Let's take the row as the example. How did we go from having five guys who'd never rode. Never rode. Not. Not rode a bit.

Five guys who'd never rode, who, when we discussed it, they said, they said the four young guys and the old fella, me, they said our objective is to break the world record. That's it? That's it.

Wow.

And so how do you do that?

Gosh, you all must be all be very competitive.

Oh, hugely competitive. I mean, if I went through them, the things that the guys have done, all of them are extraordinary. Really extraordinary.

Our skipper was in the top 10% of finishers in the marathon Desable. I mean, that's just phenomenal in itself.

It's a desert marathon, isn't it?

Yeah, desert, where you run seven marathons in six days. And people come from all over the world. And he's just quote unquote, you know, an amateur entrance and he comes out of the top 10%. Phenomenal.

Jesus.

So, and the other guys are equally amazing. Equally amazing. So, you know, higher for attitude, train for skill.

So they'd all got the ability to deal with extreme situations and recognize that we're going out to sea and nobody's going to come and get us and we are self sufficient and we're going to row for whatever it works out 18 hours a day and that's the way it is. So that's what's going to happen. So get used to that. So we did. But then. So I've written a book called Catching Giants.

And Catching Giants is one side of it is the row story. How did we train, how do we prepare? And the other side of the page effectively are 80 lessons for business. So they're two are transferable.

And we looked for how do you get 1% gain here and 1% gain or another 1% gain and another 1% gain, another 1% gain. And so we went through that boat, you know, when we pack up that boat this time in California, there are over 3,000 items on that boat.

It's a rhyming boat. We've got 3,000 items in the manifest that we have to check, double check and triple check. They get scrutineered and they go in that boat.

Every one of those has got to do a job. And it's simple stuff like what's going to break on a boat.

Well, we think the tiller arm might come loose or we think that the desalination plan, they're really critical items.

You get the water, there's desalination.

Yeah, we turn sea water into drinking water. Now if that packs up, you're in trouble. So you're going to be able to fix that. So part of my job as the engineer was to know how to fix that.

But more than that, at 2 o' clock in the morning, when that thing packs up and you're in a rolling sea and you need a tool.

You don't want to be going into a cabin to wake the guy up who's just got to sleep, to lift up the cabin lid to look for the spanner, to da, da, da, da, no. So one of the things that we did was every tool, every item, every piece of machinery had its repair kit taped onto it.

So I didn't have to go anywhere if the tiller broke. It already had spanner and screwdriver taped onto it. So I just take that and it's simple things. Everything's color coded, everything.

So yours is blue, I'm red, he's pink. And again, we learned that from the first row we did, which was if, if nobody owned. If, if, if it wasn't owned, nobody owned it.

And, and so team kit got trashed because nobody cared for it. So on the second row, everything, everything was color coded, so somebody's responsible for it. And again, it focuses activity. There's no noise.

Where's the screwdriver? I thought you had it. No, I didn't have it. No, I got it because it's got blue on it. I own it, therefore.

And so all these little things of taking the noise out and in business, take the noise out, if you can take the noise out, you can focus on the things that really matter and that's what drives progress.

Let's just talk practical leadership habits. What do you think is the best daily habit? Keeps leaders sharp.

Walk around your business or phone around your business. Talk to people, ask people what's happening, what's really happening, and don't avoid the difficult bits.

When something's going wrong, that's where you start. And you start with a positive, supportive approach. But don't avoid things because they're a bit sticky and a bit smelly and a bit difficult.

That's where people need help. So put yourself in there.

How'd you know what's going wrong? Some of the time you need to ask people.

Okay, Ask people and create the culture where people will tell you, okay, we've.

Got a problem with this in your business is you. If you're a CEO, you'd ring around almost every day or.

No, I wouldn't ring around every day when I was full time CEO. Never have more than six reports. It's another rule I have. Oh, never more than six people, six reports, never more.

And each one of them has an hour a week where we kind of agree what time. I used to do it on a Friday. They'll need an hour. You might do it in 10 minutes, but everyone gets an hour.

And we can either do it by phone or by sitting like this and talking. But every week we touch base.

What do you think about meetings? I mean, those can take up your whole life meetings these days.

It's a BMW. I was struggling to get the leadership team to work effectively together. And so I brought in a trainer who I'd worked with before.

And I said, his name's David. I said, dave, Dave, I've got a challenge here. This is not really working. And he said, okay, all right. He said, I'll come in and work with you.

He said, give me a week, I'll come work with you for a week. He said, I'll just sit in the corner and watch your meetings, and I'll sit in a corner and watch what happens. And he did.

And he identified for all of us. He then reported back to all of us. The activities, the wastes, the war stories, the blocking people you're talking, I put my hand up to.

Yeah, but that's offensive. And he identified all of this. And so we learned to take a number of those, process those negative time wasting processes away.

What he also did was he created a sheet. And at the end of each meeting, we would score the meeting, which sounds terribly basic. We'd score the meeting.

Things that we will do more of, things we'll do less of. And the other thing he did was he said, find your best chairman. I wasn't the best chairman.

My marketing director was a better management meeting chairman than I was. I was a CEO, he was marketing. And so I said to him, his name was Phil. I said, phil, you chair the meeting.

And what makes a great chair?

The ability to control the conversation. The ability to run to an agenda. The ability to stop the war stories. The ability to reach a conclusion.

Yeah.

So what is quite a skill? Yes, it's a real skill. It's a real skill.

It's very challenging when you've got five or six people around the table who've all got very high opinions of themselves and they've all got deeply held beliefs and you're trying to corral them. And Phil was great at it.

Did you see Phil do it once and thought, oh, he's good.

I learned from him and I attended, I used to attend his meetings as, as a participant and I thought, this guy's really good at.

So it's not necessarily about rotating. You keep, keep a tight group at the top and work out who's best at what. You don't have to be the CEO and run the meeting.

My job's to be the CEO. Doesn't mean I have to be the management team chairman.

So. And then, last question. What, what, what's one thing entrepreneurs could do this week to improve their business?

You're sitting there with a world facing you.

Make a decision on the biggest challenge you've got that you've been shuffling to the side of your plate again and again and again. Make a decision.

Make a call.

Make the call. And if you get wrong, you get wrong. But get off your plate. Make the decision.

Kevin, you've been brilliant. We'll just end with a little bit of a fun quiz so you might remember.

So we're just going to name a few things and you tell us whether you think they are business or bullshit.

Do I show it to you?

Yeah, you show it and say it. And then we can debate and discuss as we feel. You ready? All good?

Yeah, all good.

Trust building exercises.

I think they are important and they can be.

They can be as simple as throwing a Frisbee, which I've already spoken about, or more complex, where you go off site together and you do other things. When I first took over at Porsche, one of the first things I did was, I know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to get these guys together because we're in deep stress. We're going to go off site with a trainer and we're going to go and do some outdoor activities. Right. And we went off site to the Brecon Beacons.

And so we did some classroom work and then we went off and he gave us a challenge to go for breakfast here to there. And there was the top of the hill. I was the first one to the top of the hill.

All these Muppets were stuck falling in the rivers and they couldn't climb the wall. And I got to the top of the hill and I said, there you go, I showed you the way.

And when he debriefed Us at the end, he said, you know, Kevin, that's the worst piece of leadership I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of leadership. And I was shocked. I was a kid, you know, and I thought, oh, my job was to lead the way, to be the best.

No, he said, your job is to get your whole team to that point. Not to get you to that point, to get your whole team to that point. So physical exercises like that suit some people.

Not suggesting they all do, but get something that breaks the. Breaks normality and get people working together.

Yeah. Even breaking bread together is the power of eating together, isn't there?

Yeah.

Stretch targets.

You should know what your targets are. You have your internal targets.

You know, the targets you commit to your investor are usually should be, in my opinion, 10, 20% below what your internal target is. It's not a stretch target. It's about saying, we think that bigger target is achievable, and that's what we're going for.

We don't want to tell the investor that because if we fail, they'll get annoyed. We look like we failed, when in fact we've. We've actually achieved 20% more than most people expected.

So I do use stretch targets as a concept when I invite people to think differently. You know, instead of. Instead of doing that process in a month, I say to people, how could you in 28 days? Oh, okay, 27 days. And I go, oh.

And I say, okay, look, if I gave you all the resources in the world, how would you do it in 25 days? And they go. And I said, right, let me change the, change the paradigm here. How do you do it in five days? And they go, what?

And I said, how would you do it in five days? And people think differently because, you know, marginal gains, everyone thinks of improving a bit here and a bit there and a bit. No, no.

How are you going to do it in five days? What are you going to chop out that we don't need to do to achieve that goal in five days?

And it makes people think differently or encourages people to think differently. And so if that's a stretch target, then it's business. But stretch targets per se, you know, as a throwaway line.

No, we should know what we're going to do and deliver it.

Nice. Move fast and break things.

Yeah, that's business, you know, do it in five days. Don't do in 28 days, do it in five.

I love that example to just. You get brilliant ideas out of people as you say that bit of their Lateral brain.

It's like, yeah, the brain has the ability to do that too, doesn't it? It can be put in difficult circumstances. How are you going to get out this room? You're locked in the lift or whatever. It's like, okay, well.

And they suddenly think, well, we could do this.

Yeah.

Get rid of John.

Whereas if. If, if you're saying to people, you know, how can you improve this by 10%? It's marginal gains.

Yeah. It's BS. Basically, the customer is always right.

No bullshit. But you don't need to let the customer know that they're wrong.

Yeah.

What you need to do is understand where their experience went awry and how you deal with it. I mean, I have met some, you know, with the premium brands that I've sold in my life.

You've met some characters.

I've met some characters who have extraordinary expectations which are not realistic, they're not commercial, and sometimes they're frankly unfair. But doesn't mean I call them an idiot.

It means we find a way to deliver them a service or a product that they enjoy and we learn from it and we build that learning back into the business. But now the customer's not always right.

But, yeah, you just. You just have to smooth them, I guess.

Yeah. And sometimes, I mean, ultimately, sometimes you say, no, we can't deliver that. We can't deliver that, and we won't deliver that.

No, this is what you contracted for, and this is what we'll deliver. We'll give you 5% extra as a. As a gesture of goodwill. But you don't get twice, you don't get triple. It's no. No. So sometimes you just have to say no.

Yeah.

And, you know, somebody said to me a long time ago, if you're not losing 20 of your customers because you're too expensive, then you're not expensive enough.

It's a great rule. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't price for everyone.

No.

And finally, culture eats strategy.

Yeah. True business. Absolutely. If you have an amazing culture and a team spirit to die for, you can achieve extraordinary, extraordinary success.

I wonder what the culture was like on that boat when it was all on our boat.

Yeah. I mean, listen, it was mixed. Some people, if you were having a bad day, my job was to support you. If I'm.

If I'm having a bad day, your job is to support me. So the culture, we said, we start as friends, we finish as friends.

It's a bad day on that boat. You just can't go on. Is that what happens?

Well, there's no such thing as, you can't go on. What are you gonna do?

You're stuck.

Yeah, I had a couple of days where I was so befuddled that I didn't know how to go on. And the guy supported me and they gave me an extra sleep and they gave me.

That's, of course, what you can do. You can say, well, we'll let you sleep.

Yeah, you can. You can have another hour and a half sleep and we're gonna get some calories inside you.

And the amazing thing is, an hour and a half later, in my case, I come back and I'm good to go again. And you need to have that give and take.

Kevin, you've been absolutely brilliant, as always. Check out everything Kevin does. I think you speak from the heart and so clearly about how to run a business better.

And we need businesses running better always. We need a country fighting for it. So, Kevin, thank you for joining us again. This has been this week's episode of Business without bs.

We'll catch you again soon.