The Golden Circle

Rob Bell:
This time, we're tackling the Golden Circle.

People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Tom Pellereau:
For those of us who've got young children, oh my God, it's pretty tough.

The why of that smile that they give you that pulls you through some of the very challenging times.

Rob Bell:
The why will supersede the what's of everything you have to put up with.

That's what everyone says.

Jono Hey:
That's not going back.

It's possible to be taken advantage of if people are working for the why.

It's a missionary company, so we're going to work you all hours of the day.

Ollie Goffe:
Phil Knight, the Nike founder, not running a business for money.

He was running it to make a difference in people's lives, and I love that.

Jono Hey:
You're on a first date, and the first you say, well, I've got lots of money, lots of famous people, I'm very good looking, I've got a beautiful house.

Rob Bell:
Have you been on my Tinder profile?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, exactly.

Rob Bell:
Hello, and welcome to Sketchplanations, the podcast.

Money makes the world go round, or so they say.

Interesting then that they also insist, time is money.

In which case, if you substitute money for time, because time is money, then, well, the statement time makes the world go round would also be true.

And at that point, they've lost me.

But if you take another example of what they say, and apply the same substitution, time is money, things do start to make a little bit more sense.

Because if you look it up, then according to the Royal Horticultural Society website, time is a bushy dwarf evergreen shrub with small aromatic dark green leaves.

And so when they say money doesn't grow on trees, inferring that because time is money, time doesn't grow on trees, well, with trees and shrubs being completely different things, then it stands to reason on this occasion.

They're absolutely right.

Time doesn't grow on trees.

QED.

Well done them.

I'm Rob Bell.

Time is no object.

And joining me once again on the podcast, the timeless Jono Hey and the well before his time, Tom Pellereau.

Hello chaps.

Tom Pellereau:
Hello.

Does that mean that time and therefore money does grow on bushes though?

Rob Bell:
No, because it isn't specific.

It just says time doesn't grow on trees.

Jono Hey:
Money grows on shrubs.

Rob Bell:
Money grows on shrubs.

Jono Hey:
I get confused.

Do they say that?

I'm not sure they do.

Tom Pellereau:
That's what I thought the QED was going to come from.

Jono Hey:
They say an awful lot of stuff, don't they?

Rob Bell:
They really do.

I mean, it's not great when you feel like you have to really explain what it is you're trying to say in a joke or a nonsensical mini essay, as that was in that case.

You know, a bit awkward, but it's quite fun to go into that.

I was trying to find an equation that I could go into, like speed is distance over time, but if time is money, then speed equals distance over money.

Jono Hey:
Jono could probably work this out, his distance over speed.

Rob Bell:
What?

Jono Hey:
It doesn't make any sense.

Rob Bell:
Then I started imagining doing something like that at the beginning of an after dinner or in a more public forum.

I thought, that could go down really badly, and then you're stuck there, and it feels quite awkward.

Then I started thinking, well, what do I tend to do now in those?

Tom Pellereau:
Depends on the crowd.

If you're doing it at the IMEC-E, you'd probably get a lot of questions.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, but you're not supposed to get questions in an after dinner.

You're supposed to get laughs and claps, yeah, toasts.

Tom Pellereau:
Certainly, the beauty events I go to, that wouldn't go down very well.

Kind of, hello, beauty awards.

I think they'd be like, who booked this?

Rob Bell:
No, but come on, right?

Have you done beauty awards stuff?

Have you hosted?

Tom Pellereau:
Not hosted, I've given awards.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Do you tend to have a few little beauty quips and gags up your sleeve, ready to pull out?

Tom Pellereau:
Well, they don't usually tend to expect me to start talking.

I obviously do, but no.

Rob Bell:
I know what you've got up your sleeve.

Tom Pellereau:
Nail files, brush cleaners, you name it, it's all coming out of your magic jacket.

Look what I've got here.

Jono Hey:
Whispy selling.

Tom Pellereau:
BBC Breakfast, there we go.

Oh no, I've got a nail file.

Rob Bell:
ABC, always be closing.

Jono Hey:
Oh yeah, Tom's closing.

Rob Bell:
ABS, anti-lock breaking system.

What do you tend to do in awkward situations now?

Tom Pellereau:
ABS anti-breaking system, that seems ridiculous.

Rob Bell:
Breaking system.

Tom Pellereau:
ABS.

Jono Hey:
Anti-breaking system.

Tom Pellereau:
But it's ABS, not ALS.

Rob Bell:
A, breaking, B.

Oh, it's anti-lock breaking system.

Tom Pellereau:
So it's not just the lock bit at the second, the hyphenated.

Rob Bell:
The hyphenated doesn't get an entrance.

One word.

That's a great way around things in anything with a word count.

You hyphenate to your heart's content.

Well, I think a lot of the times in awkward situations now, I'm quite happy to just call it out when something's going to be awkward between you and somebody else or an audience.

Jono Hey:
How do you call it out?

Rob Bell:
You just say, oh, well, I've got that wrong, right?

Or, oh, because the awkward situations, I don't know if you've misheard someone's name for the third time.

And instead of going, oh, OK, yeah.

Do you know what?

I'm not getting your name.

I'm really, really sorry.

Jono Hey:
I did read one time if you didn't, if you're not sure what somebody's name is, say it loud.

So don't go like...

Rob Bell:
And then what?

And then they can correct you rather than just mumble it.

Jono Hey:
And then they can correct you.

Yeah.

Hey Rob.

Don't do that.

Say, hey Rob, it's Mike.

Oh yeah, Mike.

Yeah, of course.

Sorry.

But at least you're clear after that.

Rob Bell:
Or even if you're just making up syllables, you're just putting noises together because you didn't hear what their name was or it wasn't a name you recognize.

Go for it.

Is that what we're saying?

Jono Hey:
I think you're probably better off saying I didn't get it at that point.

Yeah, okay.

Rob Bell:
It's good.

These are all very useful bits of advice.

Yeah.

And it's just nice to talk them out sometimes, I find.

Jono Hey:
As I've gotten older, I feel like I've got a bit more confident about saying, sorry, I still miss that.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
What are we talking about again?

That kind of thing.

When I think I was a bit younger, I might have been a bit, oh, yeah, yeah.

And then hope nobody doesn't come around to you to so nobody finds you out.

Rob Bell:
Do you think that's because with age, your kind of resistance to shame is slightly stronger, maybe.

Jono Hey:
But just it's not shame by it, right?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
What is there to be ashamed of?

Tom Pellereau:
I think also potentially you've got less to lose from getting stuff from looking wrong.

Like if you're a more senior, if you're the most junior in the room and you don't know what's going on, you kind of maybe don't want to admit to it because then you look bad.

But if you're a more senior member of the room, it sort of doesn't matter maybe.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, I think you're right.

Jono Hey:
I struggle with it.

The problem is if I haven't paid attention, that's when I struggle.

There I'm more likely to go, I think I might just listen a bit longer and maybe they'll explain it.

Rob Bell:
Well, there's nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about here.

If you've misunderstood, if you don't know, if you've forgotten, you've got it wrong.

Don't worry.

That's why we have Jono.

Let's pop our shortcomings away and learn something new.

Let's podcast.

This time, we're tackling Jono's sketch, entitled The Golden Circle, based on the notion that people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

A principle worth consideration in many walks of life, but especially so in starting and running a business.

And lo and behold, to help us explore this sketch, once again, we welcome a guest onto the show, someone who has started and is running a successful business.

Ollie Goffe is an entrepreneur, advocate of Slower Living and co-founder of Marloe Watch Company.

Having started out his career working various roles in marketing, Ollie now runs the business side of Marloe Watch Company, allowing his co-founder and friend of the show, Gordon, to concentrate on the creatives and design.

Ollie and Gordon started the company in 2015 and they're now working hard towards bringing out their eighth collection series later this year.

Ollie, welcome to the podcast.

Ollie Goffe:
Thank you for having me.

Rob Bell:
So you and I know each other, Ollie, because we were at the same school.

Ollie Goffe:
We were a long time ago.

Rob Bell:
A little while ago.

But I know you mainly through your older brother who's in my year, but I used to come around to your house to basically play football with you and all the other kids in the neighborhood.

Ollie Goffe:
Yes, absolutely.

With your Luton town top on.

Rob Bell:
Ah, Luton's coming up again, yeah.

I mentioned in my introduction, Ollie, that you're an advocate of slower living and you'll probably know where I've taken that from, right?

And what it refers to specifically from the interviews you've done about you and your business.

Ollie Goffe:
Yeah, yeah.

I imagine you've pulled that straight from the About Us page or something like that.

Rob Bell:
Where else do you go for an intro with somebody?

So tell us why you use that language when you talk about you and does that expand wider from what we're talking about, about the business and about watches?

Ollie Goffe:
Yeah, I mean, it's a real cornerstone of the business.

I'd worked in sales and marketing for a long time, 15 plus years, and my wife got a job in Sweden, and I relocated to Sweden with her, and we lived in Stockholm for three years.

Very, very quickly, having gone from an office just off of Trafalgar Square to the bustling cities of Stockholm, it was a completely different lifestyle.

The way that they balance life in the summer, they have six weeks off, they have their summer stugas, which are their summer holiday homes where they sort of retreat to for six weeks.

Some of them don't have electricity or Wi-Fi, anything like that.

And they are huge advocates of this sort of slower living, and it was something that was very powerful for my wife and I.

I mean, it really changed our lifestyle, what we wanted out of life, and I think it was the first sort of, well, it was very eye-opening for me to think that it just wasn't all about the Monday to Friday 9 to 5 slog.

It was about life balance and all these Swedish people we hung out with, and that was one of the beauties of living there.

We didn't know any English people.

We only knew Swedish people, and they just took us along on this incredible ride of learning how to be Swedish and how to have some slower living.

It was an incredible experience, and part of the reason why I discovered Gordon and started Marloe Watch Company.

Rob Bell:
So you're living back in the UK now, right?

So how easy is it to maintain that slower living mentality and lifestyle now that you're back amongst British culture?

Ollie Goffe:
Yeah, it's definitely very different.

We've also come back and had two children, so we have a six-year-old and a two-year-old, so you don't get much slow living there.

But I think you can still apply it to daily life.

I mean, even today is a good example where I finished work at about three o'clock, and I picked my son up from school, and I took him to a swimming lesson, and we had a bit of a chat and got some dinner, and then I picked up my daughter from nursery.

And it's not necessarily taking it as living slower, necessarily.

It's also about that life balance of not just going 100 miles an hour and trying to cram everything into your day that you possibly can.

Just getting that balance, taking time out to be with the people you care about and that you love.

And just, yeah, the perfect work-life balance, which in all honesty is what Marloe has given me.

I mean, I do not chase a high salary.

I'm not driven by money at all.

It's the life that the company gives me and our employees that is the most important part.

Rob Bell:
Do you know what, boys, this is reminding me of when we're talking with your sister Jono with the five ways to well-being.

And the one way that is springing to my mind here now is the notice, like just stop and notice and maybe acknowledge.

I don't know if that's resonating with you guys again, or if you were reminded by that at all when Ollie was talking there.

Jono Hey:
I think just getting, yeah, having a bit more time and taking the time to, yeah, spending it with your kid in the afternoon and being fully present in that moment.

I think that's part of what notice is about, right?

Being fully present.

And so it sounds like if you can engineer that kind of lifestyle and make that part of it, that sounds brilliant.

Ollie Goffe:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And I didn't, I don't think we deliberately started Marlowe to achieve that.

It was just sort of an aside.

It just sort of happened that way.

And I suppose once you start running your own business, you make the rules, which is also quite lovely.

And so, you know, we don't, anyone who works for us, we don't count holiday days.

We don't count hours.

You come in, you do your work.

Everyone's got a life to live around their work.

And we sort of want work to become part of your life.

It's just another thing that you do.

But yeah, we, you know, when people are at work, we try to get them as focused as they can be.

But if they're not in the office and don't even think about work, don't open your laptop, don't go on your phone.

Just, you know, enjoy being, you know, on the other side.

Jono Hey:
That's interesting.

I think that my naive view of I'm going to start a company seems like the opposite of what would be slow living.

You're going to be full on, you know, nonstop.

There's no escape from work, that kind of thing.

Ollie Goffe:
I mean, it can be like that at times and I would, you know, probably be lying if I said it wasn't like that at the very start.

The first year or two, in fact, for the first year or two, Gordon and I both had full time jobs.

So we did this in our spare time.

But at that particular time, we didn't have, well, I didn't have kids.

Gordon had a child and I could fit it in.

And I wanted to and I was passionate about it.

And even now, my wife works very hard and most evenings she's working.

So I'll pull out my laptop as well and do a bit of work in the afternoon.

In the evening, rather.

And yeah, I think I just find finding that balance in life is astonishingly difficult.

And a lot of the people we know work incredible hours and some of them are rewarded for it, but it blows my mind that they aren't getting that sort of life balance, especially with young children and things like that.

I think for me, it's my top priority that I need to have equality in my life, for sure.

Rob Bell:
Well, from Scandinavia, let's come back to Sketchplanations and let's introduce this week's sketch.

And it's a sketch that you've suggested, Ollie.

So I'm very keen to talk about the Golden Circle with you and how it applies to your work and the way you go about things.

On your podcast players now, listeners, you should be able to see the sketch that explains the Golden Circle.

And if for whatever reason it's not there, you can see the link in the podcast description down below and take it in at sketchplanations.com, where you'll also be able to peruse all of Jono's other sketchplanations.

And if you'd like to send us your thoughts and feelings and distaste for anything we talk about this time, then please send your e-mails to hello at sketchplanations.com.

Thank you, Tommy.

Right then, Jono, The Golden Circle.

Please, can you talk us through your sketch and tell us about how you came across this concept, this notion of The Golden Circle, which I hadn't heard about before seeing your sketch?

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Well, I tell you what, there are a lot of people that have heard about it because I heard about it from a very popular, a well-watched TED Talk by this chap, Simon Sinek.

And he actually has a book by the same name as TED Talk, which is called Start With Why.

And it's such an interesting TED Talk.

It's like 18 minutes and very confidently given.

And he has a flip chart.

It's like so low-key for TED, for a TED conference, it's just literally draws on the flip chart.

And so Golden Circle is something I knew from that.

And it's just such a simple diagram with admittedly, a catchy name that he gave it, which essentially is three concentric circles.

The outer circle is the what, the middle circle is the how, and then in the center is why.

And so that's what the sketch is.

And I remember thinking, oh, you know what?

That is a great sketch.

It's a great point.

It's a great model that he does.

And I'd like to be able to share that.

And his whole point is around communication.

And that a lot, most of the time, people do it the other way around.

We go outside in, we start with the what, and we end with the why.

And he says that the great companies start with the why and end with the what.

And I also added, because I think like that's fine.

And he literally, like I did it super sketchy in the sketch, because that's what he does on the flipchart.

Rob Bell:
It's brilliant.

Jono Hey:
Just draws some irregular circles.

They're like the worst circles I've ever drawn.

But as kind of a throwaway comment towards the end, he talks about Martin Luther King as a great example of somebody who started with why.

And how did he get all of these people to follow him and follow this mission that he was advocating.

And he says, oh, by the way, it was the I have a dream speech, not the I have a plan speech.

And so that's at the bottom.

And that whenever I think about the start with why, that little, it wasn't the I have a plan.

That was not what he said.

That's what sticks with me.

So that's what I put in the sketch as well.

Rob Bell:
It's brilliant.

I absolutely love it.

And I would urge all listeners to go and have a little look at that TED Talk.

Jono has provided a link to it under the Sketchplanations for The Golden Circle.

And I will provide a link to it in the podcast description as well.

But Ollie, the first thing I wanted to ask you is why this sketch particularly resonated with you?

Ollie Goffe:
I had only looked at a couple of sketches and I got to this one and immediately knew that was the one.

I think, I don't know, Jono, how old is the TED Talk?

Because I'm sure I've watched it a long time ago.

Jono Hey:
2009 it is.

Ollie Goffe:
Okay, I went through a period of watching many TED Talks back in Sweden.

Actually, when I was, this is before, just before we started Marlowe and I was in and out of work and I was just trying to find inspiration and things.

And I may have watched it back then or since, but it, yeah, it very much resonates with me.

And the line, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

I probably didn't write it word for word because that's far more articulate than I am.

But I wrote that to Gordon in one of our first ever emails.

It was, you know, why we started Marlowe was all born from the disappointing reality of a watch that I had purchased myself.

And it was all about doing it differently and why we wanted to do it differently.

And so this whole, yeah, the Golden Circle just is, it was sort of a no-brainer.

It was like, this is the one.

Rob Bell:
And so do you try and consciously use that model within your communications, within your marketing communications, I guess in work, but also outside of work as well, since you've been conscious of it?

Ollie Goffe:
I don't know if we consciously think about it from a marketing perspective.

I just think it's just there.

It's just this message that we'll always ask one another why.

Why are we, why would we do that?

And I'm not sure if Gordon sort of explained how we do things when we sort of immerse ourselves in a topic to bring a watch to market that, you know, isn't gimmicky and doesn't look like other watches, but ultimately it sits in the world of whatever that topic was that we researched.

And there has to be so many whys for everything.

And if you think about a watch, there's a lot of parts to a watch.

And we always sort of come back to that.

It's not about what we do, per se.

It really is about why we do it.

And that's what we're trying to do with everything to do with Marlowe.

It's all about the why.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

In the TED Talk, Jono, Simon Sinek talks a lot about applying this model to communication.

But would it apply elsewhere or are we mainly talking communications here?

Tom Pellereau:
It applies to everything.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

He is talking about it.

He does give the example of communication.

Like if you're going to introduce your brand or your products, this is how you should do it.

But I think his point also is like it is what inspires and drives people to take action.

And that includes the people who work at your company, not buying into why you're doing it, not just for the job or, oh, I want to make a faster PC or whatever.

And so I think it pervades everything that you're doing as a result is I think the idea.

I don't know what you're going to say, Tom.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, I remember reading this book a long time ago and finding it very, very challenging on the first read.

And I think people will, because you have to start asking some very deep questions of yourself.

And if you're a business founder of the why behind your business, right?

Why is it that you're doing what you're doing?

Is it, you know, and a lot of businesses are doing it, actually, they might answer just for money or for that or for.

So I remember reading this and having to think very, very hard about what it is.

Why?

Why am I doing this business with Lord Sugar?

Why did I put myself through all that and the apprentice?

Why am I working so hard?

And for me, it's all about my why is all about trying to make life better.

Life better through the products that we create.

And then our kind of you then start to unpack that and the how and the what.

And the how is we're trying to make a lot of beauty accessories are really expensive or they're no good.

So for us, it's about making beauty accessible.

So the best beauty tape that we're now bringing out, if you go to a salon, it's thousands of pounds and we're trying to make it that you can use it at home.

So you have to start with that why and I'm not at all surprised that Ollie was there because he's branding in Sweden and I can really get why you would start with this.

And on that first email, that's incredible.

But I must admit, it took me a little bit of time to really understand my why.

And then that has to be the middle and then you kind of work out from that.

And sometimes your why can be a little bit, to make life better, that's very abstract.

So then you have to kind of unpack it a little bit.

And maybe your communication is a little bit of an unpacking of it rather than just there, because you went to my website and went, we're here to make life better.

That's maybe a little bit too abstract.

Although some of the best brands do get away with that.

You know, Apple has always been, you know, to be different.

Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Would anybody else agree with me that sometimes it is quite tempting to go straight to what?

Ollie Goffe:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
In communications.

Yeah.

Ollie Goffe:
And we do, and I'm sure a lot of businesses do, you can't always work to this model exclusively.

I mean, maybe some brands do, but I would say that's almost impossible.

Rob Bell:
I think you'd be demanding quite a lot of patience from the people you're talking to if every time I say, right, so what are you up to now?

You started with the why, but I guess it is choosing the right moment with the right gravitas to make your point.

If you do want to go and start with the why.

I mean, I was thinking about how I could apply it to what I'm doing at the moment, and I'm pitching quite a lot of ideas.

And to start with the why is really, really powerful.

Well, you're telling a story, right?

And again, this is coming back to what we do in TV all the time.

We tell a story, rather than just tell you what happened when a really good documentary will tell you and take you on a story and bring you in to the characters involved and make you care about the characters involved.

And that's what the why does.

Ollie Goffe:
Trying to be, you know, we're definitely not the biggest watch company in the world.

And I don't want to sound arrogant in any way here, but you know, that's what we try to tell ourselves all the time, that we want to be storytellers.

We want to bring these people into these worlds in which we've immersed ourselves, and so that they can sort of come on board for the journey that we're going on.

I mean, as an example of this, we're working with the National Motor Museum.

They have a vehicle there that 99 years ago drove on Penn Dine Sands and hit 150 miles an hour.

Next year, we're creating a centenary edition watch to celebrate it running 100 years later on the same date, 100 years later and we're already with our customers, taking them on this journey of how we're making the watch, why we're making the watch, but the most powerful element when you talk to the customers about this is the why, about Malcolm Campbell driving an old Sunbeam 350 HP, 150 miles an hour on Penn Dine Sands.

I mean, it was in 1925, I mean, it's astonishing, but just to convey that story and take them on that journey of what's happened since and what's going to be happening next year is incredibly powerful.

It really is.

And people aren't buying it because it's a Swiss-made mechanical watch.

They're buying it because of the why, of what it signifies.

Rob Bell:
I don't know if this is an anonymous quote.

Let's say that it is for now.

Jono Hey:
They say it.

Rob Bell:
They say, people do business with people they know, right?

People do business with people they like, they trust and value.

Jono Hey:
Right.

Rob Bell:
I don't even know if that is a quote.

That's probably just some kind of mantra.

People do business with people, right?

And so if it's somebody new, then to hear their why, I feel does help you get to know them a lot quicker than just learning about what they do.

To hear why they're doing it, I feel, is really powerful to get more to the heart of who somebody is and what their values are.

Jono Hey:
Simon Sinek, I saw in another video of his, he gives an example.

He's like, imagine if you did this with dating, right?

So you're on a first date and the first you say, well, I've got lots of money, lots of famous people.

I'm very good looking.

I've got a beautiful house.

Rob Bell:
Have you been on my Tinder profile?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, just list your attributes.

And you know, that can work, but it doesn't tell you a lot about the person.

And so he goes, well, you're going to be much more successful.

If you say, well, I really love what I do.

It enables me to help people every day and push this forward or whatever, along the way.

I've made a lot of money.

I've got lovely plays.

You should come back and see it.

Listen to it.

Yeah, yeah, this is the tips.

Yeah, but the idea is like, yeah, you list the attributes, you don't get the same, you don't get the person, right?

You don't get the reason why it's happening.

Ollie Goffe:
And I think that's a really good example of what we found.

We're not from the watch world.

I was from a marketing background.

Gordon was a draftsman from an engineering firm.

And we just found that all watch brands are just, I don't know, just sort of cloak and dagger.

You just don't know anyone.

It is everything sort of behind the curtain.

There's so many secrets in the watch world.

Not that we know many of them.

And we came at it from an angle that we'll write, well, we're going to wear our heart on our sleeves here.

We're going to be the faces of the brand.

And I think that differential for us was huge, that people really engaged with us because they felt that it was a much more personable brand where you could call up and speak to the guy who designed the watch if you wanted to.

And I think that gave us a great leg up in getting established in the industry.

Jono Hey:
I think in many ways, a lot of businesses start, perhaps with quite a strong why, like this is why they got into the business in the first place.

Otherwise, it's a really hard work.

I could just go get a job.

But part of the challenge perhaps is often, how do you keep that strong sense of why as the company keeps getting bigger?

And I think very few companies managed to do that.

Probably if you were to speak with the founder of a large company, they might be very persuasive, but you might not see that come through in their products and the people that work there.

I was wondering if it, yeah, is it something that you think might be harder to do if you kept adding people to your company as the company was getting bigger?

How do you do that at scale or still get the why?

Ollie Goffe:
Yeah, it's really difficult.

I mean, we're still a small team, but as we have grown, yeah, I mean, that's for the first person that we employed seven years ago.

It was incredibly difficult because before that, it was Gordon and I.

And so to sort of embed all of those values and the why into this person is, well, it's pretty daunting actually, and it takes a while.

But interestingly enough, I can't remember if it was the second or the third person maybe we recruited.

It was a really interesting moment.

It was at the very early days of COVID.

And I was actually, I was living in the Netherlands at this point, and I'd set up four interviews for Gordon to interview somebody for sort of an unoperational role.

I think I'd set four interviews up over a couple of days, and the first person went in.

And within a couple of minutes of them leaving, he had messaged me and said, You don't need to send anyone else.

That's the person.

And so I called him up and I said, Well, why?

How do you know?

He said, Because she's Marlowe.

And it was this sort of understanding between us that some people have that same vision, that same understanding.

It's a really odd thing to explain.

But we've interviewed people who we know within moments.

And going back to your dating analogy there, Jono, I'm sure people on this call have been on dates and within seconds have known that they don't want to continue the date any longer.

But it's the same sort of situation.

You meet someone and sometimes you just know that these are the right people to come on board and to grow this business with.

Tom Pellereau:
That's very true.

One of the great things about virtual interviews, because you can do them quite quickly.

When they come in and you feel like someone's traveled quite a long way to come and see you and you know within like five minutes, you're like, oh, it's just challenging.

Jono, you've gone through two or three businesses that have grown from sort of five people to 200 people.

And I'm sure you've experienced that.

And have you got advice for people?

Jono Hey:
Well, I was reflecting on it and I feel like I've been at quite strong mission driven businesses in both times.

And I think it gives so much to an early company when you have people who are all fighting for a cause as much as anything.

So not maybe it was like fighting for the smaller investor, the people who don't have all the money and don't get the attention from a wealth manager.

But we still got to save for our futures.

How do we do that?

And as an educator, it was about putting money back into the system that's being wasted and not able to spend on schools and teachers and students.

And so people very much who came to work for us and also obviously who were interested in the product, I think they did buy into those things.

So like at Nutmeg, people were, you're the challenger brand, you're fighting against, you're the underdog against the big guys, the big city banks already.

And so people give you a bit more of a break for that as well, because you're like, actually they believe in what you're doing and they've got, like even if you're not doing it perfectly yet, they'll give you a little bit of a break for it.

And I think that helps with the team as well.

But I do think there are very few examples of companies that have gone to big scale who managed to keep that real sense of purpose.

And they tend to be like the ones with the mega strong brands, people like Nike and Apple to some degree.

You know, Nike and their adverts don't focus on all the specs of their trainers, right?

They have, you know, amazing athletes out running.

And that's what you buy into when you buy a Nike product and you take it for granted that the product itself is going to be great.

But not many places, not many places manage that.

I always think the classic, actually, I was thinking there's quite a few examples where, you know, like, can you remember cameras when you were buying digital cameras, it was all about the mega pixels or something.

Ollie Goffe:
Oh, yeah.

Rob Bell:
Like, oh, this 6.8.

Oh, mine's got a 9.2.

Jono Hey:
This camera's got more mega pixels.

And there weren't that, there wasn't that strong, well, maybe people get it with like a Canon or Nikon or something like that, maybe just about if you're if you're a pro.

But for everybody else, there wasn't that.

I actually think about watches.

I was thinking of I remember just as a kid thinking about, oh, this one's waterproof to 10 meters.

Tom Pellereau:
Yes.

Jono Hey:
Yours is waterproof to 30.

When am I ever going to go down with my Casio watch to 30 meters?

Never, absolutely never.

And yet.

But, you know, that's a long time ago.

But I think it's tricky as you get bigger, I just think very few.

Ollie Goffe:
I think when we when we first started to grow a little bit, we sort of had our first funding round and we tripled revenue.

And I think things were getting away from us a little bit.

And we actually happened upon this agency, this new startup agency, who I sort of a friend of mine had put me in touch with.

And they were sort of looking to do some sort of project work to sort of build out their portfolio.

And so we started working with them and we sat down.

We talked a bit about the Golden Circle.

And the Y was huge.

And they were the agency that sort of came up with our time well spent ethos.

And that was the whole...

And obviously time well spent is a little vague, but you need to put a bit more meat around the bones.

But ultimately, it's...

You know, we've talked about slow living here.

We deal in mechanical watches.

You know, spending your time well is...

It encompasses all of this.

And for us, that...

I don't hate to call it a tagline, but it's the best thing to call it, I suppose.

But that tagline for us is incredibly powerful.

And whenever somebody, you know, if we are straying from the path, we'll always try to come back to that.

And you know, well, is it time well spent?

And that is the why for us.

You know, it's a really important three words to us.

Jono Hey:
It's about as far as the little Casio ones with the little calculator on it as you can get, isn't it?

Rob Bell:
Yeah, time well spent.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, it really is.

It's beautiful.

It's a lovely thing, time well spent.

I can buy into that.

Rob Bell:
Maths well done.

Casio, maths well done.

Jono Hey:
He sounds done right.

Rob Bell:
He sounds done right.

Or not quite right because I press the wrong button.

Very, very small.

Tom Pellereau:
Ollie, have you read Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?

Ollie Goffe:
No, but somebody recently recommended that to me.

Who was that?

Tom Pellereau:
I think it's from an Olympic, it's an Olympic rower.

It's one of the GB rowers.

I'm not sure he actually was an Olympic.

Rob Bell:
Sorry to interrupt, but it feels like this is an important time for a factual interlude.

Will It Make The Boat Go Faster is a book by Olympic gold medalist rower Ben Hunt-Davis and executive coach Harriet Beveridge.

Back to you, Tommy.

Tom Pellereau:
But it was all about the whole like, focus it, because the why about, you know, when you're an athlete, it's all about, will the boat, ultimately everything was all about, will it make the boat go faster.

Rob Bell:
And so that is a very, very simple why again, isn't it?

That you can, everybody can focus, everybody can get behind that why, and then the what you do could be multifaceted.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, and he, they used that to kind of just cut through all the decision making.

I don't remember a great deal more about the books than that.

It's like 200 pages, and that's all I've gained from it, but it was a very good example, potentially of this.

Rob Bell:
Time well spent.

Jono Hey:
When you said about, it cuts through all the decision making, I was thinking about that with the companies I've worked at, where there's been a strong mission.

And actually, when I was doing my PhD research study, new product development teams, when you had a team which also had a mission as part of what they were trying to do, what you find is when people disagree about what the specifics is of, should we do this, or should we do that?

You always had this thing to fall back on, which is like, well, in your case, maybe, or will this contribute to time well spent, or will this help save money for the schools and give a better education for children, or does this help people save for their futures?

And you just had that, which was like, even if you disagreed on an individual level or on specifics of a product or something, it was really helpful that you knew that you all believed in this common vision.

So it really helped the decision-making, I thought as well.

Just like, does the boat go faster?

You can imagine, well, does the boat go faster?

Yes.

Rob Bell:
Right.

I was thinking about examples of when I've seen people communicate really effectively using the Golden Circle, starting in the middle with the Y and working their way out to the what.

And there are two politicians who I've seen speak live, who I left really, really impressed with.

Now, they were both talking about sustainability and environmental matters.

So there's an element there that they were kind of singing to the choir, to me in the audience, because I felt like I shared the values of what they wanted to say anyway.

But I felt that the way they did it really left me feeling like it mattered and that kind of everything I was doing, because I was working in that industry at the time, everything that I was doing in my day job really mattered as well.

So it gave me a lot of energy.

Now, and I appreciate that these, it was Zack Goldsmith and David Miliband.

And I'm aware that, you know, that is kind of their job to speak effectively and to communicate really effectively.

But it really worked on me.

The Golden Circle, I got absolutely wrapped up in the Golden Circle and I loved it.

So I was wondering if anybody else had examples of when they've experienced the Golden Circle and seen it done really, really well by others.

Ollie Goffe:
I actually remember hearing David Miliband's speech, I'm sure, speak, and I'm sure it wasn't the same speech, but I was very impressed with how he sort of articulated himself.

The parallel I draw with that is books.

I sort of got into a bit of a rhythm of reading autobiographies by entrepreneurs.

I think if anyone's read Shoe Dog, which is Nike's founder, it's probably one of the best books I've ever read, but best autobiography I've ever read.

But his journey is all about the why.

I mean, you're reading a few hundred pages of why.

It was just incredibly fascinating.

We've touched on Nike, we've touched on Apple earlier on.

There are some, and I've read Steve Jobs' as well.

Although that's not an autobiography, I don't think.

But even though Steve Jobs was a very odd chap, it was always the why.

You know, will it make the boat go faster?

It applies so much there to all of his products.

Will it make a difference?

I mean, him trying to take every single universal port off of his computers because he wanted to give people something completely unique, change their lives, change their worlds.

And that's something that has, that I went through a period a couple of years just reading autobiography after autobiography and it really changed the way I thought.

But I was very impressed with, Phil Knight is his name, the shoe dog, the Nike founder.

I think listening to him or reading him is just astonishing.

Rob Bell:
Lots of nodding and thumbs up from Tommy there as well.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, I bought that book in the airport on the way back from Spain.

Do you remember when we all went to Spain for the weekend?

I just found it.

I actually love book shops in airports because they tend to have excellent collections just randomly in the shop.

I basically didn't put it down till I finished it.

Ollie Goffe:
Yeah, I was really fascinated with this concept of not running a business for money.

He was running it to make a difference in people's lives and I loved that.

I absolutely loved it.

Jono Hey:
I was going to add another one along those lines I read was Yvon Chouinard's book about the founding of Patagonia Company.

It's called Let My People Go Surfing.

You come away after reading that, very persuasive, you buy into the Y of the products and the quality that they go in for and trying to do stuff to do business the right way is another example.

I was going to also add in terms of people doing it well, I've seen both the CEOs at my previous companies did a really amazing job of always bringing people at the company back to the Y.

And this is through like every, in a way, almost every communication that you do, but particularly, like, if you're talking at a team meeting, there's a reminder, like a connection with the big picture about this is why we're doing this, this is why we get up to go to work to have this effect.

And that's so important because I think it's so easy in the day to day to like lose track.

You're just doing all these actions and you forget that actually they all have a really meaningful effect in the end.

And so I've seen, I think from both the CEOs and there's something I've always tried to do is to help connect with the big picture whenever you're giving a talk to the people at your company, for example.

Rob Bell:
Because it can be really motivating for people to just remind themselves of the Y rather than just the what and what next.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I was always very conscious of, Dan Pink had this autonomy mastery purpose framework.

And so it's the P in that was purpose.

And that's one of the reasons why people come to work each day.

So, you know, for the purpose and so connect people back to the purpose.

And that's really, yeah, that's kind of the starting with the Y each time.

Ollie Goffe:
When I was in Sweden going through watching all of these TED Talks and things, I happened upon Dan Pink and his and his talks.

I think he did initially a TED Talk and then a couple of other bits and pieces.

Wikipedia, I think he gave is the best example.

He said, you know, there's there's all these hundreds and thousands of people who are putting together Wikipedia and they don't get, well, very few of them get paid for it.

But they do it because they they they get their own value out of it, whatever that value may be.

Jono Hey:
As a really quick aside to that was, I've also seen it sort of the negative side of it in a way.

And I've heard that it's possible to be taken advantage of if people are working for the Y and you might hear that from like, oh, it's a mission-driven company, so we're going to work your all hours of the day.

But also, I think particularly in professions like nursing or teaching, where a lot of people go into the job because they believe in the value of what they're doing.

Quite fundamentally, caring for people or, you know, educating children.

And as a result, often take a lot of sacrifices in order to do that.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, that's a really good point and I bet that is the world over.

Tom Pellereau:
I completely agree.

We had a friend of the dinner on Friday and she's worked for charities for the last 10 years and she's just been basically fired, sacked, made redundant from a charity because she was just not prepared to sort of toe the line.

And she said, you would not believe a number of absolute assholes that work in charity.

And these are some big charity.

She's like, I don't know what it is, but this is now the second business I've worked in, a big charity where there's just some really horrible people at the top who are kind of there and are hiding behind the y of the organisation.

And the others of us around the table were like, what?

No, you know, that doesn't actually like, honestly.

And I really struggled to believe it.

But then that what you've just said is possibly what happens.

Rob Bell:
I can imagine it does happen.

And maybe not even purposely so.

Like in the example you just gave, Jono, you know, with like the NHS and teachers, you know, public sector, you know, massively underfunded.

But yeah, you know, hundreds of thousands of people work in it and go to work every single day and know that it's going to be another tough day at the office.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, people might just accept more given to them than they would in other jobs.

Tom Pellereau:
Sorry, I'm just laughing because for those of us who've got young children, Rob is just about to enjoy this thing.

But oh my God, it's pretty tough.

And the why of like, you know, that smile that they give you and that sort of stuff that pulls you through that some of the very challenging times.

Rob Bell:
The what?

What everyone says is yeah, the why will supersede the what's, the what's of everything you have to put up.

Jono Hey:
Of parenting.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, that's what everyone says.

Jono Hey:
There's no going back.

Tom Pellereau:
The why is because you can't put them back.

Rob Bell:
How important is the how in The Golden Circle?

Because we talked a lot about the what's being on the outside, and the why in the middle.

How important is the how?

Or is that just to make it more of a, more of an aesthetically pleasing model?

Yeah, I struggled with it when I was thinking about it, and I didn't come to a conclusion.

Tom Pellereau:
The how is the perfect link between the why and the what, right?

You know, you can't just jump from one to the other.

You've got to go about it in a way.

And also, I think the how and how you go about it is vital for the why.

Is that abstract enough?

Yeah, I like it.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, good.

No, brilliant.

I'm clear as mud for me.

Tom Pellereau:
Good.

QED.

Ollie Goffe:
Well, this leads on to a good example, I suppose, in Watch World, or as Gordon likes to call it, Watch Land.

You can have a fantastic why.

You can have an incredibly powerful why.

But then if the how is, well, we've got to go to China to make it.

Well, in Watch World, that won't work.

You know, you don't go and make a watch in China.

And we did at the very start, we had to hit the price points we wanted to.

We don't anymore for various reasons.

One of them being that they have a failure rate higher than most other manufacturing countries that do this.

But as we've grown as a business, we're trying to bring as much of the production into the UK.

We've just set up our workshop in our office in Sun and Common.

We have a head watchmaker.

Our plans are to make big changes in this area.

And this is the how.

This is connecting the why and the what.

And the how is vitally important in watch world.

People want to know how their watch was put together.

It's a really, really big and valuable element of watch world.

Rob Bell:
That helps.

That helps me understand that massively, Ollie, yes.

Ollie Goffe:
Good.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

And I guess in this example, it's very tangible, isn't it?

That how is very tangible.

And I can relate to stuff that's more tangible.

Jono Hey:
When I first saw the TED Talk and I heard Simon Sinek talk about it, and he's lots of pithy phrases in the talk, like people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

And it connected with me partly because I remember the guy who ran Jumper Tossiers, where I worked in the US, he talked about products aren't just things that you buy, they're things that you buy into.

And I think that is true in so many ways.

Like if it's clothing, you're wearing it, this is part of you.

It reflects on you, Tom.

These are your products.

These reflect on you.

If you buy something and you don't agree with it, it doesn't feel right.

And there was this really dumb example.

There was this thing with M&Ms, and they had this sort of marketing gimmick at the moment.

And you could get custom M&Ms printed with your company logo on it or something like that.

So you could have a bowl of M&Ms with your brand on it.

And he said at the time, just imagine, you know, like, all of these M&Ms are like ones where they're companies that you don't agree with.

You know, it's like, I don't know, oil ones are easy to pick on, right?

You know, this is Exxon and Shell and BP and these M&Ms.

Like would you feel different eating these versus something else?

And you might feel different eating those, you know, because you because you disagreed with what was on them.

And so, yeah, when I think about what Simon Sinek was saying, I also think about this other thing, which is products aren't just things that you buy, they're things that you buy into.

And I think that's very true as well.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, which was the last product you bought that you hate to use because you don't agree with its values.

Tom Pellereau:
Petrol?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, well, I mean, it's, you know, you think of, like, the Marie Kondo, do things spark joy in your house?

I think Amazon is one where people are always mega-conflicted and you're like, oh, I bought the, it was cheap and it arrived quick, but it's a piece of plastic that's not going to last long.

I don't feel good about this.

It doesn't give me joy.

Now, you may have bought it out of necessity for the price, but it's not something that you take pride in and you want to show other people and feels like a nice wholesome part of your identity.

I think that's where people end up compromising, oh, I bought the cheap plastic one, but I don't feel good about it.

Ollie Goffe:
I have an example of it the other way around.

I'm going to basically borrow or steal a line from Gordon here.

We were talking about why we want to do what we were about to do, and we were committing quite a lot of time and energy to this.

He said he wanted to create something that was conduits for memories.

And I just couldn't believe this sound bite that I had heard.

Jono mentioned there about the clothing that you wear and things like that.

And watches are, there's an incredible identity with watches.

People will go out and spend money on a tag so that they can show their friends who they are, how successful they are.

But one thing that watches do more so than almost any other thing, maybe a classic car, is create these conduits for memories.

And when you hand them down to grandchildren and, you know, we have customers who come into our offices with watches that are there, their great grandfathers watch or whatever it may be.

And the memories attached to these things are absolutely phenomenal and deep, incredibly deep.

And for Gordon to be creating products that may well be around after he's gone is a pretty powerful why.

Jono Hey:
It's really nice.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Lovely stuff, Ollie.

Brilliant.

He's left us with a brilliant why.

And if you are interested in seeing the fruits of Ollie and Gordon, Ollie's co-founder and business partner at Marloe Watch Company, who we've had on the podcast and you can look up his episode as well.

If you're interested in seeing the fruits of their work and you want to peruse the range of watches they've created, you can head to marlowwatchcompany.com.

And on social media as well, is that a good place to follow you guys, Ollie?

Ollie Goffe:
Yeah.

We're on Facebook and Instagram pretty much, and a bit on YouTube as well.

Rob Bell:
Thank you so much for coming on, and thank you for suggesting this topic.

I don't think I would have suggested this myself, but then once I started delving into it, it's so interesting and it's been a real lesson for me, learning and talking more about the Golden Circle, because I know there are multiple areas in my life, both kind of socially and professionally, that I can bring this into practice and I can try and improve my communications in that way.

I'm so pleased we've talked about it.

Ollie, thank you so much for coming on.

Ollie Goffe:
No, thank you guys.

It was a pleasure.

Rob Bell:
Why?

I'm really happy because I now feel about as informed and empowered as I could possibly imagine being about The Golden Circle.

I don't feel like there's anything more I could squeeze out from this Audible Feast.

How?

In a few seconds I'll hit the big red stop recording button.

What?

It's the end of the podcast.

Thanks for listening.

Until next time, go well and stay well.

That does not work as an ending.

I must have been drunk when I wrote that.

All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.